Central Perk

joi, 19 mai 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Biggest Difference Between Men and Women
50 Celebrity Caricatures by Jason Seiler
What Would You Take If Your House Was On Fire?
Audi A7 Made Out of Paper by Taras Lesko
Mildred Patty Baena, The Mother Of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Love Child
Greatest Marriage Proposal EVER!
Behind the Scenes of The Famous Movies

Biggest Difference Between Men and Women

Posted: 19 May 2011 02:54 PM PDT

Two great tennis players Rafael Nadal and Steffi Graf. Check their responses when some one asked them "Will you marry me?" during match.

50 Celebrity Caricatures by Jason Seiler

Posted: 19 May 2011 02:39 PM PDT

A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. A caricature artist can usually be found at amusement parks, parties and famous tourist attractions.

Jason Seiler is an award winning artist from Chicago, Illinois. He specializes in portraits, character design, and humorous illustration. Some of Jason's clients include TIME magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, GOLF magazine, Business Week and MAD magazine. He also teaches how to draw and paint high-end caricature illustrations at Schoolism.com.

Below you will find my showcase of 50 caricatures by Jason Seiler. Enjoy!

What Would You Take If Your House Was On Fire?

Posted: 19 May 2011 12:17 PM PDT

What would you save if your house was on fire? This is one of those hypothetical questions that is often posed to make us evaluate what we consider important, what we consider worth saving, and to allow us to analyze our lives. Many people hate this question, while others actually have a fully formed list of what they'd save and how they would go about saving it.

In Robert Holden's 'Burning House' project, he photographed what a variety of different people collected that they would save. See if you can identify the items, and what they mean to each person.

Audi A7 Made Out of Paper by Taras Lesko

Posted: 19 May 2011 11:57 AM PDT

Graphic designer, Taras Lesko, is known for possessing a pretty artistic set of hands, having gained fame for some of his elaborate works made out of paper. But his latest work is defined not just for the intricate work done on it, but also for its general awesomeness.

It took Lesko 285 pieces of paper to make 750 parts for this 4 ft x 2 ft x 2 ft scale model of the Audi A7. The man logged 245 hours of work to get it done. The finished product is nothing short of amazing, and the elaborate work wasn't isolated on the exterior too. Even the A7's interior, complete with the infotainment system, was carefully crafted to make it look like the real thing.

Source: Audi USA

Mildred Patty Baena, The Mother Of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Love Child

Posted: 19 May 2011 10:38 AM PDT

The mom of Ex Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's love child has been revealed. Her name is Mildred Baena. She was reported to have gotten pregnant while working of an housekeeper in the Schwarzenegger's residence.

The 50 yrs old single mom of 4 kids was reported to have retired in Jan, of 2011 after working for 20 years with former first family. According to a source, the 2 lovers have numerous sessions of unprotected sex in the family residence during day time as soon as the former movie star got to know she is pregnant, he took up the duty of a "Big Daddy" pretending to absolutely adore the child.

As a retirement benefit, Mildred Baena is currently living in a 4-bedroom home with a pool, a couple of hrs outside of Los Angeles with the youngster and her three other little ones.

Mildred Baena pregnant picture

Greatest Marriage Proposal EVER!

Posted: 18 May 2011 08:32 PM PDT

Charlie took his sister Ginny to the movies. What Charlie knew, but Ginny didn't, was that Ginny's boyfriend Matt had bought a slot during the previews. And we have her reaction on video during the whole thing.

Behind the Scenes of The Famous Movies

Posted: 18 May 2011 06:52 PM PDT

These are photos from famous and popular movie sets.

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Marketing Ethics: Persuasion vs. Manipulation

Posted: 18 May 2011 11:18 AM PDT

Posted by Dr. Pete

The debate over “white hat” vs. “black hat” tactics in SEO seems to resurface every few months, followed soon after by a debate over whether those labels or the debate itself are even worth having. I thought it would be useful to step back a bit and look at the broader issues of ethics in marketing.

As marketers, our job is to persuade people, whether it’s to choose a certain product or buy it from a certain vendor. It’s not always clear, though, when persuasion becomes manipulation. I’m going to explore 5 scenarios in a white-board style format (read that: “crudely illustrated for your amusement”).

Scenario 1: Simple Alignment

The first scenario is what I’ll call “simple alignment” – the Customer wants X, your Client (employer, etc.) sells X, and you work to facilitate the process:

Illustration of Simple Alignment

The Customer is on one side of the wall, dreaming of a new car, and your client is on the other side, trying to sell that car. You (the green arrow) come in to bring the wall down. Alignment could just be the act of bringing Customer and Client together (like driving relevant traffic to a site). The end result is win-win.

Scenario 2: Simple Choice

In the “simple choice” scenario, the Customer wants either X or Y, but hasn’t made up their mind. So, you nudge them to make a choice that fits your objectives:

Illustration of Simple Choice

Is it unethical? On the one hand, the Customer wanted X or Y, so nudging them toward X is hardly a heinous crime. If you persuade them with features and benefits, this could be completely win-win. If you outright lie to drive them toward your Client, it’s a very different story.

Scenario 3: Competitive Choice

Scenarios (1) and (2) are based in an imaginary world where only one person actually sells anything. What if the Customer wants X, but your Client has a Competitor, and you steer the Customer toward buying from your Client?

Illustration of Competitive Choice

Obviously, the ethics of this situation can get complicated fast. Let’s say your Client makes 98% of their revenue selling pirated Justin Bieber CDs to al Qaeda, while their Competitor makes its money selling double-rainbows to puppies. I’d probably rather buy from your Competitor. On the other hand, as long as we’re not lying about our Client, the Competitor, or the products, this is still essentially an act of persuasion. The Customer wanted X and they ultimately bought X.

Scenario 4: Unknown Desire

Sometimes, Customers have no idea what they want – not in the sense of choosing between 2 or more options, but in the sense of not even knowing that an option exists:

Illustration of Unknown Desire

In some ways, this is the essence of much of modern marketing – it’s less about pushing us to choose from alternatives, and more about persuading us to want things we didn’t know existed. The iPhone is a great example – I didn’t know I wanted one until I tried it out. Until then, I had been suffering the delusion that my LG clamshell phone with no internet was all that I needed.

In all seriousness, this is a tough one. It’s the heart of modern consumerism, which many people would certainly say has gotten out of control. Is fulfilling an unknown desire inherently bad? No, of course not. Is manipulating people into wanting something by playing on their envy, fear, doubt, and uncertainty unethical? That’s a very different question.

Scenario 5: Altered Decision

Finally, what if we sell someone something they didn’t originally want at all? The Customer is looking for X and you convince them to buy Y:

Illustration of Altered Decision

In some cases, this may be like Scenario (4). The Customer thought they wanted the blue car until they saw it in red and loved it. In other cases, you may be aggressively pushing them to make a decision they later regret. Somewhere in between is the boundary between persuasion and manipulation.

It’s All About Intent

My point is simple – the ethics of marketing get complicated fast, and a lot of it boils down to intent. This is what makes Google’s job so hard – they can’t reach into our brains to see what we’re scheming, so they have to infer intent from action.

Take paid links, for example. Buying an ad to drive traffic to your site is perfectly acceptable to search engines. Buying an ad to build a juicy link back to your site and manipulate your ranking violates Google’s guidelines. If no one ever bought an ad just for SEO purposes, there would be no need to nofollow links. Since Google can’t judge our intent and paid links were abused, they have to assume that all paid links are suspect.

I’m not defending Google’s stance or claiming that Google’s guidelines are the same as ethical behavior. I’m simply saying that these situations are a lot grayer than we sometimes like to believe, especially when you consider the entirety of the internet.

Why Does It Matter?

So, why should this matter to you? Even if you’re not that concerned with ethical marketing, I think there’s something else at play here, and it directly affects your bottom line. Look at the 5 scenarios again:

Simple Alignment
Simple Choice
Competitive Choice
Unknown Desire
Altered Decision

What’s the easiest type of sale to make? Usually, it’s going to be Scenario (1). You just need to help the Customer find your Client, or maybe you need to improve your CRO to bring down a few walls within your site. The Customer already wants what you’re selling.

On the other end, getting someone to completely change their mind may not just be unethical – it’s also extremely difficult. If you find yourself constantly having to change people’s minds, even to the point of manipulation, you may be targeting the wrong market.

It’s funny that Scenario (4) seems to be the current Holy Grail of marketing. Apple is the poster child for selling us things we didn’t even know we wanted. There are, admittedly, tremendous advantages – being the first to market means you get a great head-start and can put up barriers to entry. For most of us, though, it’s just not necessary or cost-effective. There may be plenty of Scenario (1) and (2) clients out there, and your money could be better spent finding them.

This post was inspired by a conversation with a UX colleague, Harry Brignull, and his work on what UX folks have come to call “Dark Patterns”. This post isn’t really about dark patterns, but it’s a pretty cool concept (and very cool name), so I’d encourage you to check it out.

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Seth's Blog : Coming to Seattle for a half-day Road Trip session

Coming to Seattle for a half-day Road Trip session

If you're in the neighborhood, come join me early on June 24th. Ticket information is now live, and there are some discounted early bird seats.

No slides, mostly Q&A, the sort of thing you might want to bring your boss to. I hope to see you there.

Attendees in Chicago made a video about their experience last year...

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Taking to Twitter to Continue the Conversation on the Middle East

Your Daily Snapshot for
Thursday, May 19, 2011

Taking to Twitter to Continue the Conversation on the Middle East

Today at 11:40 a.m. EDT, President Obama will deliver a speech on events in the Middle East and North Africa and the United States' policy in the region. You can watch the speech live at WhiteHouse.gov/live.

Immediately afterwards, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes will participate in a follow-up Twitter chat. Pose questions and reactions to the speech using the hashtag #MESpeech. Learn more about the speech and the Twitter chat.

Photo of the Day

President Barack Obama works as his motorcade arrives at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Conn., May 18, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)