December 2007
84 posts
Rico Mambo in Prison →
How can you not enjoy this?
crazy cathedral →
[Drew this cartoon outside Sagrada Familia when I was in Barcelona the other week. Later it occurred to me that Sagra F. is not technically a cathedral, but a church. Life is suffering etc.]
November 2007
85 posts
A Little Help for Finding a Website Color Scheme →
Finding the right colors for your affiliate website is an art and a science. And if you’re like me you are neither an artist nor a scientist when it comes to color (which explains why 99% of the t-shirts I own are black). Happily, there are many tools and resources out there to help you pick an appropriate color scheme for your next site. One that I ran across today is on Wellstyled.com and seems...
Zonday Back for Dr. Pepper [1] →
We’re pissing ourselves off and probably you too by posting this. But can you believe how far this guy has come? 12 million hits on YouTube, then a Dr. Pepper commercial. Somehow these ideas lose every bit of magic once an advertiser gets a hold of them. Shameful stuff.
OLPC smash hit among pilot customers →
Much love to Jason for the caption work. Feel free to hack away at this.
Pirate iPhones show up in Russia →
Much love to Nizar (fo’ shizar) for the link to these amazing shots of a really bad iPhone knock-off complete with phony Apple icon. Wow. Here in Cupertino we’re saving all of these clones and having a contest to select the absolute worst iPhone clone that gets made. No, the Prada LG phone doesn’t count. Ahem. See the original here. (Photos by Yuri Yobtvoyumat, Pravda.)
[SPOILER ALERT] Car and Driver 10Best list... →
Filed under: Etc.
Earlier this week we got a tip from a reader who had already received his January 2008 issue of Car and Driver in the mail. The January issue is, of course, the 10Best issue, and while we had no reason not to trust this reader that the ten cars he listed were in fact all winners, we decided to wait until a second source could corroborate the information. Well, Car and Driver has...
The Lung Association Ad →
A great headline needs nothing more. Agency: TBWA\Vancouver. (Via Ad Goodness.)
Welcome to Scotland, Stupids →
If you were heading up the tourism board for Scotland, and you spent $250,000 to have an agency create a new tourism slogan for your country, and your old slogan was “the best small country in the world,” how would you feel about the following slogan, after 6 months of work? “Welcome to Scotland” Yes, that’s what $250,000 buys you these days. Becuase I’m such a...
It's true, there are some things we won't... →
Check out some of them here.
What You Can't Get Engraved on Your iPod →
Here’s a list of the things that Apple will and won’t let you get engraved on an iPod.
Here’s some favorites of mine, first off, things you can’t have engraved:
10,000 Stolen Tunes Inside
Not to be used as a suppository
Lick My Shiny Metal Ass
Something small & white that Enrique Eglasias Isn’t In
Steal this? Will self destruct when used
Screwing The RIAA...
Remarkable Airline Safety Videos and Affiliate... →
I think many of us can admit that we are not totally excited about the products we promote to make our living. Take me for example. I help people find insurance, a noble cause, but being perfectly honest; insurance itself doesn’t exactly get my heart racing with excitement. A lot of times, those of us who promote highly profitable but less than exciting products or services end up building...
Excessive Taxi-ation →
It’s turning out to be a rough week here in the Eternal City. For months Rome’s taxi fleet has been jockeying for a substantial increase in fares (25%) by means of citywide taxi strikes that make transport difficult, if not, at times, downright impossible. Yesterday, 28 November, the mayor’s office countered the demand of Rome’s tassisti by offering them an 18% fare increase, while at the same...
Ask 'em! →
Don’t remember where I was among the many stops during my just completed mega-trip. But I do remember the exchange, more or less. It went like this: Exec: “But Tom, how do we find out what it is that people really want?”
Tom (after a long pause and a lot of thought—and I’m not kidding): “Ask ‘em.” Of course I acknowledged that it’s not so easy as...
Earth To Your Desk →
Do you spend your entire day dreaming of drinking a cocktail on that Tropical Island pictured on your desktop? Well, snap out of it — you’ve got some work to do. Instead of focusing on a distant fantasy, why don’t you stop torturing yourself and put something useful on your background. No, I’m not talking about that picture you had scanned of you and Kareem Abdul Jabbar from your...
"Welcome to *@#$&" →
Scotland just spent $250k and 6 months worth of effort to have their national slogan changed to Welcome to Scotland. Are you shitting on our collective faces? (From Digg.)
Golden Gate bridge accident averted by selfless... →
Filed under: Etc.
We don’t particularly enjoy posting about auto accidents, as totaled cars and injured humans is never a good conversation starter. Every once in a while, though, we get an opportunity to post about a crash that didn’t happen thanks to the quick thinking and selfless nature of a good samaritan. Such a near miss happened yesterday in San Francisco when a driver on the...
Get That 'Mallow!!! →
Dear Japan,
Thank you for sushi, awesome electronics, and this:
[SIDE NOTE: Has anyone else noticed this blog has had pretty much nothing to do with marketing for the last few months? Interesting…]
Top 10 Food and Drink Hacks [Lifehacker Top 10] →
You may not be able to power an iPod with an onion, but there are plenty of neat tricks and techniques that actually do work with everyday foods. We’ve posted dozens of food- and beverage-related stories here at Lifehacker over the past three years, but today we’ve compiled the top 10 most clever, interesting, fun, and useful food hacks of them all, with video clips. Come on in to...
TIWE-d Watch →
You know we go ape for watches here at JoshSpear, and although I personally use my cell phone as a timepiece, I still love the novelty behind Lv Zhongfang’s TIWE-d watch and hope it’ll someday get out of concept stage. Zhongfang dreamed up a futuristic-looking watch that has constantly moving OLEDs that assemble — as if called to order suddenly by a sergeant— into the recognizable hands of a...
why facebook might be consigning themselves to the... →
[“Social Media”. Drew it about 20 minutes ago. Inspired the post below etc.] So what’s stopping Facebook from putting in a small, tickable box that says, “Please do not let my ‘Friends’ send me any more of these REALLY ANNOYING Vampire/Zombie/Super wall/Super Poke/Whatever invites. I really, really don’t want them etc…”? Heck, it would...
Matt Cutts Breaks Down the Google Search Results →
In the video below, Google spam Czar Matt Cutts give a breakdown of what is included in the Google search results page, and how Google chooses what to display there. While some of this video might be old news to most of you, there are some helpful tidbits that helped clarify some things for me. Here’s the video: Something interesting from the video was that Matt mentioned that Google knows that...
First Drive: Bugatti Veyron →
Filed under: Coupes, Supercars, Bugatti, Driving
Click on the image above to view more hi-res pics of the Bugatti Veyron I opened my inbox one morning to find this question from a publicist: “Would you have time to drive the Bugatti Veyron?” Would I have time? Really? Would you believe, uh, yes? And that’s how I found myself at Westlake Village with a black and cream Veryon...
Time Based Bid Optimization →
One thing that super affiliates do well is optimizing. When it comes to PPC, super affiliates spend a lot of time collecting and analyzing data that might seem mundane to most people, but to them it is the key to maximizing profit. One metric that PPC marketers can use to optimize their accounts is time of week and time of day. Both Google AdWords and MSN AdCenter provide tools to modify bids...
32 Hours and 7 Minutes - The Driver →
Over the Thanksgiving break I read Alex Roy’s book, The Driver. If you’re a car/rally nerd like me, I’d recommend it. While some of the spiritual aspects of the book get a little annoying, hearing real stories from Gumball and Bullrun made reading the book well worth it.
Not surprisingly, the book ends with Roy’s record setting trip from New York to Los Angeles in 32...
Loose lion chases cars in Ohio →
Filed under: Etc.
I am beaming with pride for my home state of Ohio as I deliver the news that motorists should keep an eye out for lions on the roadways this holiday season. Last Wednesday a pet lion named Lambert escaped from its owner’s cage near Columbus and began chasing cars on the highway. This King of the Asphalt Jungle escaped through the top of his pen and was the source of some...
Kevin's Belly Landing →
Having a friend who’s a pilot is pretty cool. Having a friend who’s been on the news is also pretty cool. Having a friend who’s a pilot and has been on the news because his landing gear didn’t go down and he had to do a belly landing with his flight instructor on Thanksgiving is REALLY COOL. So Kevbo, thank you sir for being really cool. Glad you made it down safe and...
A Picture Is Worth a… →
We’ve all heard the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, but if you’ve ever tried to buy stock photos to use on an affiliate site, you might want to revise that saying to “a picture is worth a thousand bucks.” 99 times out of 100, affiliates don’t have a thousand bucks to spend on a single image, so what to do? Regardless of what an image-free Craigslist has managed to do, images are...
In the Autoblog Garage: BMW 335i Convertible →
Filed under: Garage, Convertibles, BMW
click above image for high-res gallery of the BMW 335i Convertible Thanksgiving is when I put the snow tires back on the cars. Here in New England, you never know what’s going to happen; we’ve had our first snowfall already. Freezing temperatures also tend to herald the end of convertible season, though there still may be one or two Indian Summer...
relentless →
Auto Art: little cars meet their little ends at... →
Filed under: Etc., Toys, Lifestyle
So we’ve told you about slow motion car crashes, a Warhol painting of pictures of a car crash that sold for $71 million, and of course there’s always Lindsay Lohan creating her own life-sized crash-themed art. Now we present John Rooney, a Boston artist who creates set pieces of small, intricately detailed cars that have met their ends at the trunks...
"The World Has Only One Sun" - Tinariwen →
Tinariwen is one of my favorite music groups thanks to a blog post from Hugh MacLeod a while back. I ended up listening to them as I traveled across Italy with Kristi, and as far as traveling music goes, Tinariwen is tops.
Who is Tinariwen? Well, I lucked across this documentary on YouTube that will give you a good idea. Needless to say this group is a product of their environment, and their...
An SEO Guide for the Newbies out There →
Getting started in SEO can be a bit challenging, but not for the reasons you may think. The first skill one must learn when learning about search engine optimization is how to filter through the gobs of SEO information online. I can’t tell you how many times an affiliate or colleague has approached me with an outdated SEO tactic that they learned about from a webpage that is two or three years...
New 'Ring record: BMW M3 CSL laps in 7:22.8... →
Filed under: Auction Action, Etc.
The era of ‘Ring attacks has begun. Next atop the heap of Nord-lappers is a lightweight, supercharged BMW M3 CSL that took a full five seconds off the Pagani Zonda F’s best run. The car has, of course, been modified, but the changes aren’t outrageous — you might see more extreme mods at your local M3 gathering. The incredible thing is that...
Escalator Ambient [4] →
Disruption has a whole series worth checking out highlighting the rising use of escalators as a media vehicle. One of the many examples below.
The Difference Between Dave and a 747 →
My Uncle Todd passed this on to me…it gets funnier every time I watch it. It starts kind of slow, but get better and better as the video goes on.
Rendezvous in Paris →
Alex Roy calls the video below a “snuff film” for auto enthusiasts. Shot in Paris in 1976 the driver, highly respected French director Claude Lelouch, drove his Mercedes 450 SEL 6.9 across Paris at top speed. The result is something that’s scary, amazing and hard to believe all at once. Enjoy.
Girly Man by Buffalax →
OOOOOOOOOOOK…my small obsession with the Benny Lava video has taken a new turn…could be for the worse. Turns out the guy who did the English sounds-like translation for Benny Lava, Buffalax, is doing translations for a bunch of foreign language videos. Check out this Indian version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which shall be referred to as “Girly Man” from this day...
MyMiniGolf →
I don’t like golf. However, I do love mini-golf, because the two are like, completely different, right? I’m jump-starting my office gift wish-list with this oldie but goodie, MyMiniGolf, a nine-hole DIY mini golf game designed by German design duo Georg Pal and Hannes Weber. The complete classic set comes with 13 obstacles, 1 steel club, 2 balls, 1 score pad (very important) and 1 transport box...
Pay-Per-Post Reviews Targeted By Google – More... →
Last week Google took its most aggressive swipe at paid links so far by wiping out the visible PageRank for sites in the Pay-Per-Post network. From an objective point of view, this is a pretty smart move by Google. In effect, Google is breaking PPP’s business model by broadcasting that they’ve been devalued. I’m sure it’s not the last time we’ll see Google target specific linking schemes with a...
Friday Fun with Eric, Beef and "Benny Lava" →
Fridays. You’ve got to love them. You might remember the “Benny Lava” jam I pointed out earlier this week (it’s the second video in this post)…well this Friday a couple of my coworkers decided to break the monotony with a little dance party, India style. In this video Eric and Maribeth (a.k.a. Beef) are both watching the Benny Lava video and trying to mimic the dance...
Tales From the Cube Farm - Dancing to "Benny Lava" →
It was a Friday, the cube farmers were bored and “The Beef” and “The Ugandan Twister” decided to work on their Indian music video dance moves. The jam is from the “Benny Lava” song from the Funny or Die site. See the original video here - http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/9da8271a25. Author: marketingpunk Keywords: cube farm, cubicle, dance, stupid, Benny...
Fat David →
In keeping with our recent focus on all things Florentine (see this week’s Photo Saturday entry), we offer you Fat David, an image from an advertising campaign created for the German Olympic Sport Committee.
Once ultra-buff, David has become beefy from too many years of standing in one place. Abraham Lincoln, too, has suffered the same fate after so many years sitting in that oh-so-classical...
More Adventures on the Cape Evans Road →
As promised, here are some more pictures from the Cape Evans trip:
Here I am standing out on the sea ice. In the “summer” those rocks in the background are islands. They form a great big ring, and are part of the caldera of an extinct volcano. Little black dots in the background = penguins!!
My co-worker Aaron took this picture of the penguins - next time I come down I’m bringing a much...
PayPerPost Bloggers Get Slammed By Google (Duncan... →
PayPerPost Bloggers Get Slammed By Google — If participating in PayPerPost wasn’t questionable enough morally before, today it’s now a poisoned chalice as Google has commenced punishing PayPerPost bloggers by completely removing their page rank. — IZEA (the new holding company for PayPerPost) …
Source: TechCrunch
Author: Duncan Riley
Link: ...
Whoa: AdultFriendFinder May Have Been Acquired For... →
Whoa: AdultFriendFinder May Have Been Acquired For $1 Billion+ — Update: Penthouse Media Group may be the buyer. — The world’s basest online dating site may have had a major liquidity event. Palo Alto based Various, Inc., which owns AdultFriendFinder and scores of other sites …
Source: TechCrunch
Author: Michael Arrington
Link: ...
Who’s Visiting and Where are They Going →
Occasionally we get a call from an affiliate who tells us that they’ve got a ton of visitors on their site but none of them seem to convert (or even click through to InsureMe for that matter). The affiliate may rank well naturally for some keywords and is usually baffled that so many people can see InsureMe’s offer and simply pass it up. Usually, after a bit of diagnosis we find that the issue has...
Back with a Vengeance: Schumacher takes all in... →
Filed under: Motorsports, Ferrari
The critics have been silenced, and silenced good.
Michael Schumacher retired a seven-time world champion, but his eighth title narrowly escaped him right down to the line at his farewell grand prix in 2006. Retiring after losing the championship two years in a row to a younger Fernando Alonso, many started asking if the driver that dominated the sport for so...
El Bulli - El Awesome →
I don’t know what it is, but for someone who used to care very little about food, I’m now terribly interested in it. Maybe it has something to do with Kristi showing me that vegetarian food can be interesting and tasty, or maybe it’s just part of getting older and yearning for a potbelly. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve become a bit of a fan of the chef/writer/TV guy...
The Wild West May Be Gone, But the Affiliate... →
So I just finished reading How the Affiliate Marketing Industry Killed Itself on the DM Confidential site, and I got to say I’m a bit annoyed. Maybe this article was just written to get some links, and if that’s the case, congrats to the author David Rodnotzky, you got one. But seriously, if links were your goal you could just write an article called Why Puppies Should Be Refined and Used as an...