• Lower-Income Mobile Users Look to iPhone for Internet, Entertainment - MarketingVOX
  Who says only the rich buy iPhones? Not comScore. Highest growth rate is in the 25K - 75K income range
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Fondue’s favorite treat

Originally uploaded by jasoncalacanis

Since Calacanis stopped blogging, I’m finding his content (and I mean photos, links, whatever) much engaging. There’s something about the feature article-ness of a nice long blog post still relevant, but this snack content is much better delivered through places like Flickr and FriendFeed. Here we see Jason’s dog Fondue munching on some of the hundreds of electronic devices lying around his house. It’s probably one of those places a non profit that gives phones to poor people could clean up at in one visit.

• Google Soups Up Analytics Features - MarketingVOX
  New Analytics goodness from the googleplex
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• Zinch social network for colleges
  Zinch is a social network dedicated to matchmaking of prospective students and universities. Their tagline of "I am more than a test score" speaks to the site's mission to help college bound students interact with institutions beyond their test score.
  (tags: colleges admissions universities widmeyerhighered)

• YouTube - GoogleBusiness's Channel
  File this in the "really cool and valuable resource but never remember to use it" category. I wish I could remember all these sites or better yet they were on iTunes as a podcast.
  (tags: google adwords)
• Ei Engaging ideas
  Don't know why I love little cards and new uses for them but this Engaging ideas card pack is something I'll order for the office soon.
  (tags: cards ideas)

If you review the Opinion Research Corporation study for Cone in September, the answer is that 60% of those that use social media interact with companies on social networks.

6 out of 10 Americans think companies should have a social media presence

There’s a bit of the preaching to the choir factor here as the respondents already used social networks but the important thing is that in a medium that’s all about interacting with people, that 6 out of 10 seems quite willing to invite companies into their social media activities.  In my last post about humanizing print and user experiences, this is somewhat validating for me.  We’re human and we prefer more human ways of getting and interacting with information and organizations.  Strike another one for the human factors professionals.

from eMarketer

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I’m in the midst of planning a campaign for a client that compliments their brand identity advertising campaign, so I’m very focused on how the brand statement (advertising) becomes brand behavior (PR and digital). It’s more or less along the lines of creating a user experience that reflects these new brand attributes that are promised in the advertising. It’s a fun project.

I’ve had some inspirations of late and here’s two:

GOOD SHEET is a pamphlet I noticed in a mall location of the ubiquitous Starbucks coffee chain. At first I thought it was a Starbucks newsletter of some sort but visiting the good.is site revealed it’s a Starbucks exclusive publication but from the GOOD.is organization. They have some other advertisers but it looks like Starbucks went for the extra big ass (Idiocracy reference) sponsorship, which gets them an exclusive in-store publication.

The GOOD SHEET in Starbucks

The pamphlet masthead has the following description:

THIS IS THE GOOD SHEET. IT’S A WEEKLY SERIES BREAKING DOWN AN IMPORTANT ISSUE TO HELP MAKE SENSE OF THE WORLD AROUND US. EXCLUSIVELY AVAILABLE AT STARBUCKS.

It gives me the warm and fuzzies and that’s well and good (no pun intended) but what was most pertinent for me as I work on my client project is the notion of breaking down a seemingly complex issue and doing it in a timely and relevant, if not more human, approach. This particular issue (#4) took on the subject of gas prices. Open the GOOD SHEET up and you reveal an almost 11 x 17 spread with a big image of gas pumps in the background and more than 10 call outs for various aspects of the issue.

Inside spread of the GOOD SHEET

At first glance my contemporaries might think “woah, there’s too much going on here. Information overload! Help!” But in a world where the primary interface for information is frequently a computer screen and more specifically a Web browser, this layout would probably score higher on the heuristics for sub-oldster (including myself in that group) audiences. My camera phone pic above doesn’t do it justice but you almost want to click on the call outs.

Here’s another from marktd

from marktd. Go visit their site.

PSFK’s Nico Margolies had a post on Adidas’ new print campaign that incorporates the magazine fold into the functionality (dare I say) of the print ad. Even though I hang to the digital side of marketing for the most part, I always appreciated that print had a user experience of its own, although I’m pretty sure that term is rarely used in the print world. This Adidas two-page spread makes the fold (the UI of the mag) part of the creative presentation.

These examples of humanization inspire me on my current project, but I hope I can retain that when I consider user experience for any project I’m working on. Human factor and usability folks are saying “no duh, doofus” so this post is more my personal reminder than real value for the blogopshere.

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There will be hell to pay if someone doesn’t buy me one of these from bigcityslider.com

• Power Readers in Politics
  Who says politicos are laggards when it comes to new and social media? Here's a page featuring candidates, journalists and other political personalities who are apparently using Google Reader and we get to see what they're sharing. I wonder if we'll see candidates sharing stories from their oppponents' blogs.
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I love visualizations and this one is really cool.  Check this video from Nicolas Loeillot posted to Vimeo.  The only thing missing is that Goldfish-looking alien from Star Wars (original) that goes over the plans to destroy the Death Star.

Holographic Google Earth from Nicolas Loeillot on Vimeo.

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