I bought a Mac. (Well technically it’s my second Mac, I owned a Mac Classic II in college).
I was saving for a new computer to replace my Dell desktop and decided that I really wanted to play with OS X and should probably have another laptop instead of custom building a $2,000 desktop that I won’t use to its full power. Since they’re running at 2+ GHz they’re not a bad little machine either - at least I can tell from the 45 min I spend playing with one in the Apple store at Southpoint.
The box is sitting on my kitchen counter.
Its partly an exercise in restraint (I had some work to do tonight [what else is new], and I’m taking next week off, so there is plenty of time to play :-), partly an attempt to get to bed at a reasonable hour (I knew that if I opened it up at 9pm when I got home I’d be up REALLY late and I’m almost certain, based on the 2nd sleep study that I did last week, that I’ve got narcolepsy), and partly an exercise in getting rid of buyers remorse (if I let it sit there for a bit I’ll be confronted with it’s “returnability” and just get over it… I saved the money and can afford it.).
Just caught The (white) Rapper Show on Much Music in Canada. I guess its on VH1 originally. Its like American Idol, except its all white people, they only rap and its hosted by MC Search, formerly of 3rd Bass.
This idea is reflected in one of my all-time favorite print ads, which was created in the 1960s by Charles Piccirillo to promote National Library Week. The headline consisted of the alphabet in lower case letters like so:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
It was followed by this copy:
At your local library they have these arranged in ways that can make you cry giggle, love, hate, wonder, ponder, and understand.
Its astonishing to see what these twenty-six little marks can do. In Shakespeares hands they became Hamlet. Mark Twain wound them into Huckleberry Finn. James Joyce twisted them into Ulysses. Gibbon pounded them into The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. John Milton shaped them into Paradise Lost.
The ad went to to extol the virtues of reading and mention that good books are available at your library. There are several messages here, but to me the most important is that that creative ideas come from manipulating your resources no matter how few and simple they are.
I just read an article in Strategy + Business magazine online about innovating in complements. The author starts off talking about how the Michellin brothers started producing travel guides and giving them away for free, and how that in turn helped them move from simple rubber processing to specializing in tires.
There are plenty more examples in the article and a summary of "five good questions" to ask that might lead to complementary innovation:
Five Good Questions So how do you uncover and evaluate innovation opportunities in complements? Here are five questions that can guide your thinking and help you set priorities.
1. What complements are currently constraining demand in our markets?
2. What new product might boost demand for our core offerings?
3. Would our customers buy more if they had better information?
4. Would we learn valuable lessons by innovating in complements?
5. Do we have competitors whose fortunes are tightly tied to the price of complements?
If you haven’t tried Qumana yet, you need to. It is by far the best blog editor that I have found. Many thanks to Luis (aka Captain KM) for his suggestion.
One of my favorite features is the droppad. I keep mine in the lower right hand corner of the screen. It’s great for cliping little quotes or images that I want to blog about, but more importantly it serves as a little reminder to keep my blog fresh.
And while I’m at it, I’d also give a nod to FastStone Image Capture as one of the best screen capture / editing programs I’ve use.
When I was a kid I used to love Razzles. The maker had a contest to come up with a slogan which I excitedly entered … bringing my “A” game with this this little gem:
Razzles are a candy… Razzles are a Gum.
Razzles make me want to say Yum, Yum, Yum.
This was a play on the “First it’s a candy… then its a gum” slogan that they already had. I was so convinced that this was by far the best possible entry that I really expected to win. Not just hoped to win, but absolutely expected to win. I can remember feeling incredulous at one point having not received my prize (I don’t even remember what it was).
I didn’t win.
Fast forward to today and lo and behold I came across them at the World Market by Southpoint Mall. I’ve had a couple of packs and now I think they need to update things. The slogan should be something more like:
First it’s a candy… then it’s a gross powder… then its like wet crusty breadcrumbs… then your mouth is full of sugary spit… then it approximates a gum and is all brown because all the artificial colors run together.
One of my favorite features is the droppad. I keep mine in the lower right hand corner of the screen. It’s great for cliping little quotes or images that I want to blog about, but more importantly it serves as a little reminder to keep my blog fresh.