Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Banned Ashley Madison super bowl Ad
Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Friday, October 22, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Reddit - the Voice of the Internet

Friday, October 15, 2010
The Wall Street Journal has called Mark Shields "the wittiest political analyst around" and "frequently the most trenchant, fair-minded, and thoughtful." The Washington Posthas called Shields "a walking almanac of American politics." His insights are first-hand and up-to-the minute, drawn from four decades of knowing, covering and savoring the country and its politics. A nationally known columnist and commentator, Shields has worked in Washington through the administrations of nine U.S. Presidents. He was an editorial writer for The Washington Post where he began writing his column in 1979. That column is now distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate.
David Brooks became an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times in September 2003. He has been a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, a contributing editor at Newsweekand the Atlantic Monthly, and he is currently a commentator on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." He is the author of Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There and On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense, both published by Simon & Schuster. Mr. Brooks joined The Weekly Standard at its inception in September 1995, having worked at The Wall Street Journal for the previous nine years. His last post at the Journal was as op-ed editor. Prior to that, he was posted in Brussels, covering Russia, the Middle East, South Africa and European affairs. His first post at the Journal was as editor of the book review section, and he filled in for five months as the Journal's movie critic.

Monday, October 4, 2010
First Assignment Fall 10
Observations about the Article below.
Who the hell ARE these people?
Maybe you can help me. I really want to know:
Who the hell are these people?
Who are these young, happy, pretty, multi-cultural people with great teeth and even better hair who hang out with notebook computers in sleek and modern conference rooms on B2B company Web sites all over the world?
Who are these international inhabitants of virtual corporate locales?
The reason I ask is because I've personally been inside hundreds and hundreds of B2B company offices in over 20 countries and have spent time in probably a thousand conference rooms over a 25-year career. Yet I have never seen these people who seem to inhabit a weird virtual world of corporate Web sites at organizations across the globe.
Don't get me wrong. I have no problem with stock images used in a clever way. In fact I use frequently use images from Shutterstock on this blog. I use stock images in presentations and I use stock images in my ebooks. It's not the photos. It’s the ways they are used.
Visual gobbledygook
The problem with the B2B happy multi-cultural conference room with computer shot is that it has become a cliché. It is world-class, cutting-edge, mission-critical visual gobbledygook. Just like written gobbledygook, this kind of image is so overused to have become meaningless.
These models don't look like you. They don't look like your employees. And they don't look like your customers (unless you run a modeling agency).
Because these models don’t look like you or your customers, it is insulting and demeaning to everyone (your employees and customers especially) to use these shots on your homepage and throughout your site.
Who is pimping your company?
Its sort of fun when I spot the same pretty model on two different sites. I've found one particular photo at use at multiple companies, including one of the biggest and most famous technology companies in the world. Is that really what you want? Some model representing your valuable brand? Really?
Use real people instead
Why not just use real people on your site? How innovative! Use real employees in a real conference room to represent your employees in a conference room! Damn. Why didn't we think of that? And use your real customers too.
Last week I presented at a meeting of executives atJackson Healthcare. I went into my rant of stock photography (in this case happy multi-cultural models posing as healthcare workers). I popped up a screenshot of the Jackson Healthcare homepage with a model pretending to be a doctor.
Then a remarkable thing happened. Just a few minutes later, the CEO of the company, Rick Jackson, raised his hand in the middle of my presentation to say they had swapped out the pretend doctor for a real one!
Wow. That was fast. And the actual doctor has a wonderful story too.
The baby being held in the picture is the child of a woman having surgery on the JH medical brigade in Honduras in 2008.
The story with Dr. Eustis was that he brought a teenager from Honduras to the US to take care of him and provide needed care for his leg in order for him to live. He did surgery on his leg in Honduras on the JH medical brigade, but wasn’t able to give him the proper care he needed there.
Now, isn’t that a heck of a lot better than a model dressing up like a doctor?
Just say NO to pretty models
Let me say again that stock images are great. I use them all the time. I'm not saying that you shouldn’t use stock images.
However, I am saying you must re-think using models to represent your employees and your customers. Lose the visual gobbledygook.
Link to Article: http://www.webinknow.com/2009/10/who-the-hell-are-these-people.html
New Class

