Central Perk

sâmbătă, 28 mai 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Business card with iris mechanism
How Life Feels To Butterfly Kids Campaign
20 Celebrities You Might Not Realize Are Asian

Posted: 27 May 2011 10:10 PM PDT

This video is a demonstration of the Large and Small Iris cards made by Cardnetics. They are functional iris mechanisms similar to those seen in photography apertures and sci-fi shows built into a card.

The Small Iris is the size of a business card 2" x 3.5" and the Large Iris is the size of a typical greeting card 5" x 7"

How Life Feels To Butterfly Kids Campaign

Posted: 27 May 2011 09:58 PM PDT

Buttefly Kids suffer on a disease called Epidermolysis Bullosa (short: EB). Even with the slightest friction this disease can cause painful blisters on the entire body: both externally (skin, eyes, etc.) and internally (such as inside the mouth or in the gastro-intestinal tract). Those with EB are living with permanent pain and undergo daily difficult wound treatment.

DEBRA Austria offers help, counselling and information to those, whose quality of life is significantly limited by this rare disease that has serious consequences and is often very painful.

Source: staudinger-franke

20 Celebrities You Might Not Realize Are Asian

Posted: 27 May 2011 09:21 PM PDT

You know all these famous people. You've met them on stage, in movies and advertising campaigns. But would you ever think these celebrities are Asian?

1. Keanu Reeves

He's a quarter Hawaiian and a quarter Chinese.

2. Rob Schneider

He's a quarter Filipino.

3. Kristin Kreuk

(From Smallville) She's half Chinese.

4. The Rock

He's half Samoan.

5. Ne-yo

He's a quarter Chinese.

6. Mark-Paul Gosselaar

(Zack from Saved By The Bell) A quarter Indonesian.

7. Enrique Iglesias

Half Filipino.

8. Karen O

Singer of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. She was born in Seoul, Korea to a Polish father and Korean mother.

9. Sharon Leal

Half Filipino.

10. Eddie Van Halen

His Mother is Chinese-Malaysian and his father is Dutch.

11. Dean Cain

(Played Superman) A quarter Japanese.

12. Vanessa Hudgens

Her dad is of Irish and Native American ancestry, and her mom is of Filipino, Spanish and Chinese descent.

13. Chad Michael Murray

He's a quarter Japanese.

14. Nicole Scherzinger

(Pussycat Dolls) She was born to a Filipino father and a Hawaiian-Russian mother.

15. Kirk Hammett

(From Metallica) He's half Filipino.

16. Freddie Mercury

100% Parsi.

17. Bruno Mars

Half Filipino.

18. KT Tunstall

A quarter Chinese.

19. Norah Jones

Half Indian.

20. Naomi Campbell

Her paternal grandmother is Chinese.

SEOptimise

How to Use Google Correlate for Keyword Research

Posted: 27 May 2011 04:52 AM PDT

Google have just rolled out a new tool called Google Correlate. It’s similar to Google Trends and Google Insights, but it takes the raw data and analyses it. As the name suggests, it’s looking for correlations – that is, whether the demand for a given keyword matches the popularity of any other keywords.

Sometimes the results are completely random, to the point of being ridiculous and far from useful for SEO. However, after a bit of testing, I’ve found out how you can use Google Correlate for keyword research.

Note that the tool is still a Google Labs project and US only, thus not really ready for prime time. On the other hand, it can already give you valuable information for your next US campaign.

After finding some useless correlations I tried to find some parallels that really mean something. So I searched for CNN on Google Correlate expecting to see a correlation of searches for other news sources.

I did indeed find that searches for CNN almost match those for MSNBC and Fox News. By ‘match’ I don’t mean the actual numbers but the tendencies. Actually, many more people look for CNN than for MSNBC, but the actual demand levels change in a corresponding manner.

CNN: MSNBC, Fox News

What does this mean? When something newsworthy happens, people flock to the Internet and type CNN, MSNBC or Fox News into the address bar and Google searches for them.

Likewise, you can look up other matching demands. For example you can see what people search for Christmas every year.

Even more useful for keyword research is a search like [vacation] on Google Correlate. Now you can see what else people have in mind when looking for vacation:

So basically Google Correlate is great for predicting seasonal demand. Also, you can find out whether people who search for a brand search for other brands as well.

To use this for your industry you have to come up with the major generic keywords and brands that are dominating your niche and try them. Sometimes the correlations will be purely incidental. In other cases you will find out what searchers in your niche are looking for as well.

Weekly Address: Biden on the American Auto Comeback

Your Daily Snapshot for
Saturday, May 28, 2011

Weekly Address: Biden on the American Auto Comeback

Vice President Joe Biden delivers the Weekly Address, celebrating the success of the American auto industry in the wake of Chrysler paying back their loans.

Watch the video.

Seth's Blog : Bar gymnastics

Bar gymnastics

Some people I know work hard to lower the bar at work.

That was my strategy at gym class in high school. Not only did I do the minimum amount permitted, I worked hard to do just a little bit less than that. By the time the semester was over, the teacher was relieved if I even bothered to show up at all.

Most people seek to meet the bar. They figure out what's expected, and do that.

A few people, very few, work to relentlessly raise the bar. She's the one who overdelivers on projects, shows up ahead of schedule, instigates, suggests and pushes.

Raising the bar is exhausting, no doubt about it. I'm not sure the people who engage in this apparently reckless behavior would have it any other way, though. They get to experience a fundamentally different day, a different journey and a different reputation than everyone else.

[Why now? What has changed that makes promoting bar gymnastics more than a selfish effort by the boss to get more labor out of the workforce?

Simple. This is the post-industrial era. Success is not about speeding up the assembly line as much as it relies on individuals able to create leaps forward. The person capable of doing that sort of work is in far higher demand than ever before.]