If he’s truly still in high school, he’s a Bieber-esque talent in the UI/UX field and deserves to be mobbed by teenage girls. When I was finishing high-school, the only People’s Choice awards I was winning were for near-nude debating and under-age beer buying.

Mozilla Labs Design Challenge – Yatrik Solanki’s “Home Tab”

Yatrik’s also proposed a solution to “click blindness” – using cursor hover icons to demonstrate links that lead to a large file that essentially “freezes” your browser until it downloads or figures out what’s going on.

How are you talking to your audience?

I’ve been researching Facebook’s Promotion terms and compliance for a number of clients lately and always run into the same question – if it’s not technically allowed and everybody does it anyway, is it still a good strategy?

The key ingredient in most Facebook promotions is the “Incentivised peer promulgation” – ie. Tell-a-friend. I discovered the Westfield promotion through (many) friends’ status updates. In fact, status updates are part of the entry mechanic:

When the Westfield Facebook application has been uploaded, individuals must then update their Facebook status to read as “All I Want for Christmas is a Westfield Gift Card” using the application functionality.

BUT: Based on my reading of the Facebook Terms & Conditions of promotions, requiring ANY action on Facebook (becoming a fan, status updates, wall posts) as a condition of entry is a no-go? Or am I confused (as others seem to be)?

4.2 In the rules of the promotion, or otherwise, you will not condition entry to the promotion upon taking any action on Facebook, for example, updating a status, posting on a profile or Page, or uploading a photo.

I’m not saying Westfield is in the wrong – more power to them for promoting a very successful campaign and raising awareness of their Gift Cards as a Christmas gift option – but perhaps it’s time for Facebook to step in and clarify their guidelines to agencies, so that compliance-focused maraketers can rest easy that their promotion won’t be yanked a la section 6.4:

6.4 We may remove any materials related to a promotion at any time, regardless of whether the promotion was approved, where we determine the continued marketing or administration of such promotion may be unlawful under applicable laws, rules, regulations or guidelines or may cause unreasonable liability for us.

If only so that I get my chance to win $10,000 to spend on puppies at Pets World.

[UPDATE] Just wanted to clarify my post above: At 369,000 + users, I don’t think anyone can argue this has not been a successful promotion. For a $10,000 wholesale cost, plus ~$2k – ~5k to build the app, I’d say this stands up as an excellent example of how you can engage 1/3 of a MILLION people in less than 5 days through Facebook.

My issue isn’t with Westfield’s (or the app’s users) SPAM ACT 2003/4 compliance, as my reading of it certainly includes this kind of activity within compliant action.

My question, rather, is around the murkiness of Facebook’s promo T&Cs. Is this app promotion legit, and if yes, how exactly so? This would be a good test case for all digital marketers to know the right way (or maybe, the wrong way) to go about marketing via Facebook within regulation.

You know, the  “Interesting preposition: Enticing promise of the position, comma, and something wacky” variety.

Features:

Then: The Hobbit
Now: Bilbo Baggins and the Mountain Dragon: Part 1 of 4 of the Middle Earth Cycle

Then: Pride and Prejudice
Now: How to Land a Rich Man…and Fall in Love With His Surly Demeanor, Too!

Then: The Wealth of Nations
Now:  Invisible Hands: The Mysterious Market Forces That Control Our Lives and How to Profit from Them

More: http://yourmonkeycalled.com/post/185927647/book-titles-if-they-were-written-today

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• Joyce Dallas

Riveting. Denouement leaves a little to be desired, but overall, 2 thumbs up.

This book costs USD$8,539.00

The reviews are hilarious, but something in me doubts all of them are genuine. Call me a cynic.

Via: Amazon.com: Chemical Shifts and Coupling Constants for Silicon-29 (Landolt-Bornstein: Numerical Data and Functional Relationships in Science and Technology – New Series)

That’s the premise behind Twitshirt, from the clever-sounding kids at Airbag Industries.

Twitshirt - Are You Cool With Someone Selling Your Tweets?

Who Owns Your Tweets?

Under the surface, it raises a big question: Can your tweets be sold? Printed on a shirt? Worn by others?

Everyone loves having their updates Re-Tweeted, but what if the Re-Tweeter, or in this case Tweeter-Printer, was making cash off them?

Twitshirt operate on a royalty system – “Giving back to the Twitter community” – by sending 50c your way for every $20 shirt your tweets appear on. But is this enough?

YOU Own Your Tweets.

Mark Cuban has pondered the same thing: Are Tweets Copyrighted? and a few reasonably-legalese-speaking commenters have suggested that YES, you own Intellectual Property rights over material you publish on Twitter. They even point to Twitter’s FAQs:

“Twitter Copyright Policy

We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Twitter service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours. You can remove your profile at any time by deleting your account. This will also remove any text and images you have stored in the system.”

Can they be sold?

Whether you’re happy with Twitshirt’s 50c per shirt royalty tip, or not, it raises a question about the ownership of property in the public domain. Regardless of character length.

UPDATE: Since I started writing this, Twitshirt have added an opt-out.

Personally, I find it INCREDIBLE that only 52% would pay to use Google, which if it included Gmail, GCal and other G-Properties, is probably one of the more valuable tools I use each day, besides my workable knowledge of English.

By contrast, how much value do you get from the $1.20 newspaper you buy EACH DAY?

Via: Fee vs. Free in Tough Times – eMarketer.

Cliff Kushler, one of the inventors of the ubiquitious T9 input method used on pretty much every mobile phone until BlackBerry/Treo/iPhone came along, reveals his latest world-changing release.

Swype allows messy, writing-style input on a QWERTY keyboard.

This would be an awesome upgrade to the iPhone, if the SDk allowed you to touch the Core functions. Which it doesn’t currently.

via: Webware: Cool Web apps for everyone – CNET