Indie Relief is a Mac software fundraiser for Haiti. All proceeds from today's (January 20th) purchases will go to charities chosen by the developers. Such a great idea. Buy something!
I love this piece of marketing from Burger King: Whopper Sacrifice. You use the Facebook App to "sacrifice" 10 friends by un-friending them, and you then get a coupon for a free Whopper. Those friends receive messages stating they were unfriended by their former friend and a chance to install the app and get a burger for themselves.
People I know who are using it are dumping friends for the burger but will likely re-friend them later which is just perfect. Good stuff.
There are some wicked ideas, and then there are some truly wicked ideas. Swoopo is about the most wicked I've come across in a while. It takes a few minutes to understand what's going on, but when you do you can't believe it's really happening.
I'll blow your mind even more: a current auction for $225 worth of "bids" is currently at $480. These are bids you can buy on the site for $225.
Zappos has an interesting way of testing new hires, after four weeks if you're not happy about the job and the company, they'll pay you your full salary for the time you've been there, and give you a $500 bonus (possibly $1,000 soon). The reasoning is if you haven't bought into what the company is about, you probably won't be the type of Zappos employee they need.
Oh, also they expect about a billion dollars in sales this year.
If you're not following Zappos on Twitter, you should. They're one of the few companies understanding how to use Twitter as a component of their company.
The Droste Effect is when a package contains a photo of the package. It goes without saying that this sort of thing is the sort of thing I like.
Notcot went to CES and brought back a list of items that are both cool and available (or nearly so).
Leo Burnett's retirement speech found on his Wikipedia page.
Also, I hadn't heard this fact from Wikipedia: "Burnett's use of the animation medium to sell products was slyly given a nod in the anime series Pokémon. Disguised as muffled backwards dialogue, the character James of Team Rocket, is heard mumbling a line in the grip of a Pokémon's mouth. The line is "Leo Burnett and 4Kids are the devil, Leo Burnett!", mocking both Leo's introduction of animated commercialism, and Pokémon itself, which promotes the Nintendo games of the same title."
The last post reminded me: Did I mention Amber and I are getting married in a few weeks? People have been asking about our registry and I'm happy to say "we ain't got one." We already have too much crap, and asking for more crap when you already have crap is a bit selfish. So we decided to just ask people donate to City of Hope.
If you've ever felt like there weren't any trustworthy charities (are you really buying a cow, a future cow, or the idea of a cow?), you can trust City of Hope. Here's more on what they have done. There's even more on Wikipedia outlining their contributions to the medical community and the different ways in which they provide medical care and support.