Springwise

After a tough, old-fashioned winter season, it’s a good bet everyone’s ready for spring. Seemed like a good time to mention one of our favorite sites—Springwise.com. They report on new business ideas from around the world. Many of the ideas are nontraditional, many will inspire a reevaluation of your own business. Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned corporate exec, you’ll enjoy subscribing to their eNewsletter and reading about the hottest ventures.

Here are a few of their latest:
Hyperlocal news from the New York Times The Local, which was just launched by The New York Times, will feature posts by both NYT journalists and community members alike about day-to-day life in five neighbourhoods.

Taco truck with a Korean twist, fueled by Twitter Kogi BBQ serves Korean-style Mexican food from two trucks that are_always on the go to new locations in the LA area. To find out where to get their Korean taco fix, customers follow Kogi on Twitter.

Insurer alerts clients by txt msg when roads get icy As soon as warnings are issued about weather that could make driving hazardous, Dutch car insurer Onna-onna sends its clients a text message advising them to be extra alert or even stay off the road.

Loews Hotels adopt local farmers Loews Hotels recently announced a new 'Adopt-a-Farmer' initiative, aiming to support local farmers while providing customers with locally-sourced, organic and sustainable food.

Short-term mall space for startups and minipreneurs The Oakland Mall in Troy, Mich., is offering small startups and minipreneurs special leasing rates that make it easier for them to test the waters at the mall without entering into a long-term contract.

Facebook new Terms of Service. Beware.

For all you designers, photographers, writers, artists, businesses, etc..., if you are on Facebook beware of their new terms of service. According to consumerist.com, they own everything you put on their site. Oh boy!

Local Local newspapers: The Printed Blog

Blog driven publishing is born. The Printed Blog is the world's first daily newspaper comprised entirely of blogs and other user generated content. The Printed Blog seeks to change the way people share and interact with news from the world around them. They hope to play a pivotal role in reversing the fortunes of the sinking newspaper industry with this new media project.

We like the possibilities to potentially create local, local, local newspapers that inform, promote and celebrate what happens in our physical community or business environments.

The mac is 25 years old

In 1985, I was at a conference on British design in Aspen and I wandered into a small booth and saw my first Mac with what looked like a photocopy of Princess Diana on the screen. No one seems interested in this beige box but me. I stretched her face wide and waited a good 20 minutes to get a print out. My first taste of a mac. I was hooked.

I have been working on a mac for 23 years. I worked in Pagemaker 1.0 and my first mac cost me $10k. I struggled with Photoshop 2.0 until layers came in 3.0. I hated floppies and Syquest disks. I learned to stay away from Microsoft Word. I never touched a mechanical board or rubylith again :)

It seems hard to believe that it has been 25 years since Steve Jobs revolutionized the creative industry with a small box that said "Hello". It's pretty incredible.

Mac world put together a great article. Check it out.

Green-minded font uses less ink

Green fonts are cool. I think this is a great idea. Please comment or share.

http://springwise.com/eco_sustainability/green-minded_font_uses_less_in/

Inside Out Magazine

Inside out needs your help. Please subscribe to keep them in business.

http://www.insideouthv.com/Subscribe/subscribe.html

Save the date: 2008 Art Studio Views

It's official. The maps are printed and everything is ready to go for the 2008 Inaugural Art Studio views of the Rhinebeck and Red Hook areas. Saturday 10-18 and Sunday 10-19 from 11-5 each day. Visit artsnortherndutchess.org for more information or download the map. Come and see our table across from the bandstand at Hardscrabble Day in Red Hook this Saturday 9/20. Send the link to your friends, art lovers and especially collectors ;)

Special thanks to our Art Studio View sponsors:
Rhinebeck Savings Bank
Rhinecliff Hotel
Keller Williams, Suzanne Stevens
Namaro Graphic Designs
Cross River Fine Art
Rising Tide Communications

Special thanks to everyone else. Now the hard work begins!!!

Diana Ayton-Shenker
Doris Cultraro
Nadine Robbins
Elizabeth Watt
Joel Weisbrod
Joanne Klein
Clive Jacobson
France Menk
All the Artists
Susie Linn
Dutchess County Arts Council
Rhinebeck Area Chamber of Commerce

Crowd Sourcing Turns Business On Its Head

What happens when a company lets consumers design and vote on their own products? In theory, at least, the firm's overhead goes down and profits go up.

The business model is based on so-called crowd sourcing, or community-based design. The success enjoyed by a T-shirt company called Threadless prompted other firms to explore how the model might work for them. Click here for the rest of the story!

The Experts Weigh In On the Subject

"Closing a magazine is no more a sign of the death of the industry than the cancellation of a TV series means the shutdown of a network, or a haircut is a sign that you're going bald.”
—Hachette President and CEO Jack Kliger

“No one is saying magazines will fade into complete oblivion even as they restructure and find new legs. In the words of Marie Claire editor Joanna Coles ‘As long as people take baths, there will always be a monthly magazine.’”
—Dorian Benkoll and Dylan Stableford

“More and more people are turning to online media for their general information…even if it’s the website of that same newspaper.”
—Danny Thompson, freelance copywriter

“If you talk to the group at Barnes & Noble, there are more kids’ books being sold than any time in history.”
—David Granger, Esquire magazine

“My position is that if you look at Americans’ tastes, we never give up something for something else. We add something to the menu. There are people who said that television was going to get rid of radio. It didn’t do that, it just changed the way people listened to the radio.”
—Alfred Edmond Jr., Black Enterprise Magazine

“Newspaper readers respond to ads in their newspapers. 56% of the target market either researched or purchased at least one product they saw in the newspaper in the last month.

Readers rely on the Internet to perform further research on products they see in the newspaper. 67% of readers who researched products they saw in the newspaper did research online, illustrating how newspaper drives web traffic.”
—Google-commissioned Study

“Print is not dead, but I'm glad I'm not starting a career in the offset printing industry either.”
—N. Reid, Reid Neubert + Friends

Lots and lots of links

We look all over the web for great stuff to pass along and help you keep up with what's going on in the business of marketing, corporate communications and graphic design. Below are just some of the sites we use and review all the time. Happy clicking:

www.marketingprofs.com/ (general marketing articles. Pay for full access)

Wall Street Journal media and marketing (It's the Wall Street Journal!)

marketingvox.com (general marketing articles)

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ (interesting perspectives on marketing today)

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/# (general marketing articles)

www.ragan.com (corporate communications)

Also, I just found an nteresting article about the Olympics of Illustration!
Look for the newsletter next week!

Cuil (pronounced cool) a new search engine

Great news folks. There's a new search engine out there to rival Google. Here's a snippet and a link.

The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now. Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

http://www.cuil.com/info/

A second look at Virtual Worlds

Why don't more brand managers market in virtual worlds? Check out this link for some very interesting statistics.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006166

Rhinebeck Area Chamber of Commerce Brand Unveiling

It's official. Yesterday morning at the Rhinebeck Area Chamber of Commerce's breakfast, Susan Utter and Nadine Robbins, unveiled the new chamber brand. Susan offered her insight on the process and introduced Nadine, who described in more detail the creative process and its application to all marketing communications.

Below is an animation of the corporate image presentation. In April, Namaro will have a section of their enewsletter devoted to the new chamber brand and will go into more detail about the process from concept to the unveiling. Keep an eye out for it!