Dear Starbucks

Two parts PR grab, one part gimmick and one part genuine interest in their customers ideas? It's anyone's guess, really. Either way, MyStarbucksIdea.com is Starbucks' Web 2.0 way of harnessing the collective intelligence of its clientèle.

Similar to Should Do This - a site I wrote about a few months ago - MyStarbucksIdea.com is a forum for Starbucks regulars to post their ideas on how Starbucks can improve on anything from products to service to the customer experience as a whole. All ideas can be voted and commented on and they are reviewed by a team of Starbucks "partners" (employees).

Currently the most popular ideas include:

• Adopt a frequent customer reward system (punch card, loyalty points, etc.)
• Offer free Wi-Fi internet access in all locations
• Create separate lines for brewed coffee and for special orders

The Ideas in Action section is Starbucks' way of showing us that they're actually paying attention. So, Collective Mind of the Internet, what say you?

Neverending Good Things

I absolutely fell in love with this flash site as soon as I saw it. As part of mobile service provider Orange UK's campaign for their new Speak Easy pay-as-you-go plan, the site Good Things Should Never End is a gorgeous interactive "never-ending" page that offers tons of little nuggets to click on and play with. It's really hard to explain.


The idea is you scroll down this rainbow and interact with the various characters you meet along the way, each offering a different activity. The site was created by a London-based company called Poke. One of the most interesting elements is the use of "share" links throughout the site.


Clicking on these links pops up a window with code that enables you to embed that particular element of the site into your blog, share it on your MySpace page or Facebook profile or post it to del.icio.us or StumbleUpon (with one notable omission: Digg). Behold:

More and more, marketers are becoming savvy to grassroots online marketing, particularly with the popularity of widgets taking off in recent months. They seem to be recognizing blogs and social networking sites as virtually free, far-reaching advertising vehicles - not that they didn't realize the potential before, but I feel like they're becoming significantly more creative in terms of how they tap in to that medium. Peak the bloggers' collective interest with a neat and innovative nugget and you could just make morning blogrounds™, reaching Jebus knows how many (surely lots!) of eyeballs.

P.S. I was too lazy to make it all the way to the end of the page (it's really long and takes forever). If anyone has taken the time to do so, please let us know if there's reward at the end!

Everything I Want In a Widget

Hello dear readers. I have a blog design dilemma that has been plaguing me as of late (oh the life of a blogger), and I thought I'd consult you since you're the ones for which I am writing. And you're also the ones that ultimately have to stare at the page. As you all know (obvs), widgets are all the rage in bloggerland. So I have recently added a widgetized version of the RSS feed of my tumblog in the sidebar of this blog (whoa that was some major geeking out on my part, sorry). Anyway you can see it right there --->

I have two options for the widget but I can't decide which I like best. There's the one from SpringWidgets (left) which looks pretty good and allows me set the length parameter (which I like to be long). Problem is it doesn't automatically resize the pictures so they look all gigantor like.

The one from Widgetbox (right) automatically resizes the pictures and has the slick iPhone-like scroll but doesn't look as nice and doesn't let me select the length (which is pretty short).


So now that I have displayed my geekiness to the maximus, please let me know which you like better (and why) or better yet, let me know where I can get a widget that gives me everything I want.

P.S. I'm so sure that not one person will read this post in its entirety. In fact I'm pretty sure I lost most people at "widgets". Or maybe "Hello".

Kanye Kan

First Kanye's house now Kanye's blog. Oh yeah he's got a blog just like you and me. Well, me at least. And also like you and me he posts things like pictures of himself with other celebrities at fashion shows in Paris, shout outs to Daft Punk, videos of himself free styling with Mos Def (sorry Kanye but Mos Def is mos def better than you), super expensive tech toys he buys for himself and interview with himself from various publications. So he pretty much just reads my blog and copies it. Actually I find his posts about himself rather endearing. Somehow I detect an undertone of childlike wonder at his own celebrity status. Not sure why but there's definitely "look at me, ma!" quality about his posts.


And when he's not busy writing about his awesome hip hop self, his main interests seem to lie in fashion, design and Japanese pop art. He also likes to back up his notoriously eclectic music interests by posting videos by Feist, Mark Ronson and Bat For Lashes (!!!). And then there's this gem:

God bless you Kanye.

Shoud Have Done This

This is one of those great ideas that makes me wish I had thought of it first. Like YouTube. Or Facebook. Or, uh, Google. Well maybe not quite like that, but a great idea nonetheless. But alas I’m nothing more than a lowly blogger. I don’t come up with great ideas, I just write about them. From the fine people over at Robot Co-op who brought you 43 Things, 43 Places and 43 People comes Should Do This, a site where anyone can offer a suggestion on how to improve, well, anything. From products to services to websites to people, you name it. You can browse and search posted suggestions and choose to agree or disagree with them. Some of the suggestions are good ideas and would probably be useful. Others are just funny. Here are some interesting ones I’ve come across:

• Apple should add internet radio to Apple TV
• Peter Jackson should direct Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
• My Bloody Valentine should reunite
• Everyone should use the services of a public library
• Picasa should allow uploads to Flickr
• Dunder Mifflin should make better paper

Via Fimoculous.

Tasteful Flashers

The nice people over at Web Designer Wall have taken the time to scour the internet to bring you 30 of the most brilliant Flash sites they could find. And now I've taken the time to scour that one blog post and look at those thirty sites to bring you the cream of the crop. Us bloggers, we do all the thinking for you, see? All you gotta do is sit back and look at the pretty pictures.


Formshape
Róth Anikó


Own Your C

Via Web Designer Wall via Tech Bee.

If My Blog Looked This Good...

Not only does artist/illustrator/musician Aaron Jasinski create some good tunes and some refreshingly lovely, playful and surreal paintings (describing visual art has never been my strong suit but I love love love his work), but he also has a clean, creative and extremely well-designed website to showcase all his work. The menus are beautifully designed and the animation looks smooth and effortless. Makes you want to click-clickety-click everywhere!

Via Fubiz.

YouBroken

Look, YouTube has a sense of humour.



Again.

Wackipedia

It seems that Wikipedia has been taking some harsh criticism in the last little while with respect to its accuracy and its editing policies. This bad press has been going on for some time now but lately (ie: today), I've come across a butt load of references (ie: three) to how easy it is for anyone to pass anything they want as fact. The recent criticism seems to have started with this Op-Ed piece by John Seigenthaler that appeared in USA Today where he's says that the entry for his name in Wikipedia mentions that he may have, you know, offed both John and Bobby Kennedy. And apparently he wasn't happy about that. Stephen Colbert also got in on the action in a recent episode of The Colbert Report where he discussed what he calls Wikiality: "the representation of truth on Wikipedia that is determined by consensus rather than fact." Colbert urged viewers to edit the Wikipedia entry on elephants to say that their population had tripled in the last six months - which of course a whole bunch of people did thus causing the article to be locked "because of recent vandalism or other disruption."


And lastly, the people over at Penny Arcade threw in their two cents with this comic. By the power of Greyskull! (click picture for biggerness)

Colbert info via GeekLikeMe and thanks to Adam (via Sasha) for the Penny Arcade comic.

U2 Opened For Me Last Night

Look! Now you can make your own concert ticket! Just like you've always wanted to! Hurrah! Exclamation point!

Zidane Knockout

Well we all knew this was coming, it was just a matter of who got there first. The hastily put together Zidane Shot game lets you channel all that headbutting rage into mouse clicks. How many Materazzis can you take down?

Thanks Sasha!


Also check out these animated GIFs posted on Game|Life. I'm just waiting for someone to make a hadoken fire out of Zidane's head. Any takers?

Falling Georgie

No plans this weekend? Fear not, I've got you covered. This here link will provide you with ample entertainment with which to fill the hours between Friday afternoon and Monday morning. Falling Georgie is a Flash piece that lets you watch George W. as he falls from the sky all ragdoll-like and bounces off some big bubbles. Want to get in on the action? Of course you do! Grab Georgie by the head (or feet or hands or ass) with your cursor and fling him around at will. Send him flying! Drag him through the bubbles! Have him do the splits! Make him perform obscene sexual acts on himself! I'm telling you, hours of quality entertainment here folks. Happy weekend!

Thanks Sash!


Via Planet Dan.

Flashtastic

Lots of crazy stuff going on at deviantART where people can (and do) post their artistic creation of any kind. Dave has pointed me in the direction of this little Flash ditty that had me playing for a little longer than I care to admit. It's called LineTo experimental and it was posted by deviantART member Volcamic-Penguin. It's got crazy squigly lines and colours and shit flying all over the place. It was a bitch to get these screen caps so the least you could do is pay it a visit.

Thanks Dave!

A History of Wikipedia

Taking a page out of Kottke's book (or rather a meme out of his blog), this is my Wikipedia contrail (ie: Wikipedia search history). I'm sure my search history is more extensive than this but I work from different computers so I don't have the complete list. I love Wikipedia so this was a fun exercise for me but I'm not so sure will be very interesting to all of you. But then again this is my blog. So here goes it:

• Battle Royale - a great novel that I was reading (and then movie that I saw) by Koushun Takami
• Coffee (history) - I was discussing the etymology of the word with my brother (incidentally I was right, comes from the Turkish/Farsi word kahve)
• Dominoes - just looking up a bit of history on the game for a documentary my friend is working on
  
• Julian Beever - for a blog post about his street art
  
• Kingdom Hearts - a video game my friend had told me about
  
• La Linea - reminiscing about one of the best shows I watched when I was a kid (and for a blog post)
  
• MacGyver - also for a recent blog post
• Monopoly - just out of sheer curiosity (which then turned into a blog post)
  
• Nintendo DS - before the release date was announced I was desperate for any information I could find!
  
• Persian Jews - wanted to know a little more about myself
  
• Rube Goldberg - I had recently read about Rube Goldberg machines and wanted to know a little about the man
  
• Serge Gainsbourg - I had read an article about him that my brother sent me and I wanted to know a little more
• Teh - call me dense but I started to realize that people were writing it like this on purpose and I wanted to know why
  
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - the fantastic book I'm reading right now by Michael Chabon
  
• Union Station (Toronto)- I don't remember why I was looking this up - I live in Toronto, maybe I wanted some history?
  
• Utada Hikaru - Japanese pop singer that has a really great song on the Kingdom Hearts videogame soundtrack
  
• W00t - I wanted to know the origin of this word, wonderful loot? We Owned the Other Team? Who knows?

OK so now that we've established that I'm a big nerd, I will tag a few people to see if they're big nerds too:

• Zigtai
• Vin
• Techbee (pardon, je ne connais pas votre nom!)
  
• Bibi
• Anyone else who wants to play
  

Balancing Act

For all of you who like games that aren't really games and don't have much of a point but nonetheless have the uncanny ability to suck you in (see Elektroplankton for the Nintendo DS), you might be interested in Levers (at least that's what I think it's called based on the URL). Wait for random objects to fall from the sky into the water and carefully add them to your mobile to balance it out. That's it. At least I think that's it.


Via BoingBoing.