Tom Altman’s Wedia Conversation

The logo lounge has posted a great article talking about logo trends.

At LogoLounge.com we look at A LOT of logos and see plenty of trends: Some are aesthetic, some conceptual, and some cultural. As the internet’s largest database of logos – over 50,000 to date – you can’t help notice the evolution of design – and trends.

For instance, we have seen many more 3-D logos that are designed to be in motion, never still or flat. These designs have completely shaken the earthly bonds of CMYK and exist only in ethereal RGB: The old logo design rules just don’t apply to them.

The rubber bands or dots have to be my tops.  OK - I rally like the half too!

Is 2008 the year of the diesel?  (probably more like 2009).

Most Americans have a bad impression of diesel cars. We think of them as loud, hard to start and foul-smelling. We sneer at them for lacking the get-up-and-go of their gasoline-powered cousins. And we dislike them for their perceived environmental sins, chiefly the polluting brew of sulfur and nitrogen compounds that they emit into the atmosphere. All those complaints were fair a generation ago, when the twin energy crises of the 1970s propelled diesels into national popularity and kept them there for a decade. Back then, many drivers ignored diesel’s faults, or were unaware of them, because diesel cars ran 30 percent farther on a gallon of fuel than similar gasoline-powered cars. It felt savvy to buy a diesel, even daring. Then fuel prices dropped in the mid-1980s, and drivers abandoned their clattering, odoriferous fuel sippers. They went back to gasoline.

Interesting post at arstechnica “Study: Ads in online shows work better than ads on TV“:

Good news for TV networks: online ads work. As TV shows continue their lengthy migration onto the web, new research finds that the people watching those shows actually pay more attention to both advertising and content when they watch online.

I know it’s true for me…when I watch internet TV it seems like the ads are made specifically for that application.

(I should preface this by saying I’m a huge car/motorcycle guy. And even more so - a VW fanboy)

Autoblog green posted an article called “Corvette’s chief engineer: CAFE will make muscle cars an “endangered species” talks of an end to muscle cars because of recent legislation from the US Government.

GM, the parent company of Corvette, would have to make a 45 MPG car, explains Tadge, to offset supercars.

The comment reads to me like 45 MPG is some over-the-top “magic” number. Have they heard of Volkswagen’s Passat? (Here is a 2005 “Test Drive” report.) This car gets 30 city/45 highway…this is no Honda Insight, this is a REAL 5 passenger car with a trunk.

We’ve got to quit thinking about what we can’t do and more about what do we need to do. Flip back to their post from a October 27th, 2007 - 1959 Licoln Diesel.

ReadWriteWeb posted a story “How Much Is Being The Most Influential Man in News Worth?“:

Who is the most influential man in American news? It’s not Brian Williams or Bill O’Reilly or Keith Olbermann or Larry King. It’s not Seymour Hersh or Charlie Savage or Frank Rich or Robert Novak. No, arguably the most influential man in American news is Matt Drudge. So how much is that worth?

Its interesting to see where others have taken The Drudge concept.

I really think Microsoft is “getting it” - this is a post from Monday at visitmix.com

You can imagine my consternation when I visited the offices of such a great partner (Microsoft partner), and discovered a bunch of their developers and designers using Macintoshes! In this interview, I try to get to the bottom of things and find out why the heck they are using Macs.

This is cool - because “Mix” is a set of Microsoft conferences and show to promote their stuff. So the fact they would post this tells me they are cool with things and appear to see Apple as less of a competitor than say, hmmmm…I don;t know - Google?

I found this post at ReadWriteWeb about Google hiring people to provide feedback on search results…yes REAL people.

TechnologyReview has published an interview with Google’s Director of Research, Peter Norvig, where it’s acknowledged that the search giant hires individuals to look at search results pages and provide their judgment about the quality of the results.

Seems like Google has made a living making algorithms do the dirty work. So my question is, is Google thinking that people may be the key…or are they just figuring out people think for the next best algorithm?

ReadWriteWeb has a great post about internet video in 2007:

From YouTube’s continued dominance, the television networks’ newfound willingness to experiment online, the rise of the desktop Internet TV application, and a number of new PC-to-TV devices and set-top boxes — it’s been a big year for Internet TV in all shapes and forms. In this post we look back at 2007 through the lens of last100’s coverage, highlighting some of the important stories and trends, and how they point to what we might expect for Internet TV in 2008.

MTV always seems to come up with a ringer every four years.

It’s totally like MTV to do something like this. For its “Choose or Lose” voting initiative that it ramps up every four years, MTV will be launching a “Street Team” comprised of 51 young, amateur journalists from each state and Washington D.C. to cover the 2008 election, emphasizing issues important to younger demographics.

First let me say - I really like and support Ron Paul for the 2008 presidential race…but this is something that I find totally intriguing. It’s a post at Digg.

Urgent! We are NOT going to break Hillary’s $6.2 Mil record

i206.photobucket.com — According to this projection, we are going to raise a little less than 6.2 million dollars. C’mon guys, dig deep and call your friends. A little extra money will result in a huge way the media reacts to this story. Hillary’s record already has been proven fake, but the media keeps spitting that figure out.

This is a post at Digg which is talking about a push to raise money for Ron Paul - and don’t get me wrong…I’m not trying to “ge the word out” about the fund raising.

What blows me away - is in that post there is no mention of Ron Paul, yet people know what the subject is. What other things would this apply to? Interesting.