Photo: Tony de Marco

A city stripped of advertising. I’m not sure, how to react to this article – São Paulo: The City That Said No To Advertising.

The “Clean City” law passed last year by the populist mayor, Gilberto Kassab, stripped the Brazilian city of all advertising. So how’s it looking now?

In a lot of places, Piqueira says, this has led to the removal of posters but not the structures on which they were displayed. “It’s a kind of ‘billboard cemetery’.”

Photographer and typographer, Tony de Marco, has been documenting the new, ad-free world of São Paulo, publishing a sequence of images on Flickr.

At a time when outdoor advertising has become part of the urban landscape. With the amount of visual pollution, or rather an overkill of marketing blitz. Could you imagine New York Times Square without its ads. Or back in Bangalore, it’ll be quite a strange feeling to walk down Brigade Road devoid of its neon lights & ad hoardings.

A couple of days back I read this article on The Hindu, that Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) will be spending USD 10 million on brand building. Backed by mother brand TATA, a household name in India from FMCG, automotive, energy, engineering, hospitality etc.

“It (brand building exercise) is a major step ahead for TCS for making its brand name visible across the world…” – Keith Sharp, TCS Director Marketing (UK)

And I don’t think people will need to search for news that Hutch is now Vodafone. And if news are to be believed, Vodafone is spending Rs 100 crores (approx $25 million) for the transition campaign. To avoid alienation for existing customers, the pug & the cartoon characters might be around for a while.

Beyond the color palettes that I use for each different clients. I believe branding is of giving that personality/image into the consciousness of the customer. The greater sense of purpose or emulating that attitude (as in Nike).

In the case of Apple, sometime in mid 90s, John Scully marketing executive from Pepsi marketed Apple, boosting its ad budget from $15 million to $100 million.

“Apple’s brand is the key to its survival. It’s got nothing to do with innovative products like the iMac or the iPod.” – Marc Gobe, author of Emotional Branding & Principal of d/g worldwide

So, on a closing note,

“You now have to decide what ‘image’ you want for your brand. Image means personality. Products, like people, have personalities, and they can make or break them in the market place.” – David Ogilvy

You can take a short Brand Assessment Questionnaire.

Yawn… I’m busy or lazy… oh thats rhyme. Well it seems like the way of the internet is going full motion, I mean video. All new request has been to stream or embed video in online web sites. And let me tell, Sorenson kicks ass ;)

Seems like Mr Gates cooking up some interesting stuff for all those Microsoft bashers. After Surface, check out Photosynth.

Photosynth takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space. So who knows my Opera House Sydney photos on Flickr might be the next ;)

Its quite an experience when I tried it. But a higher system configuration recommended.

Jaw dropping demo by Blaise Aquera, architect Seadragon MS Live Labs,
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129

Experience Photosynth online
http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

Last August 2006, Jeff Han unveiled multi-touch interface.
I’m not sure if Bill Gates bought the same technology, but the future is definitely NOW :))

Microsoft Surface

Now the best part is, if I’m going out for a drink with a bunch of friends on a weekend. It’ll be lot more easier to split the bill (check video in “Possibilities”).

Everybody uses Google to search to photo storage to email to chat … the list expanding everyday.

No idea if its just another conspiracy theory. Interesting stuff, worth a look.
http://masterplanthemovie.com/

Found this cool image on the happening acquisition of Hutch by Vodafone

Mozilla announces the release of the Firefox 3 codenamed Gran Paradiso. This in no way represents a finished product.

There are still major issues. I haven’t had any stability problems, but there are bad memory leaks. Gran Paradiso, as Firefox 3 is code named, launches using about 33mb of RAM; after ten minutes of browsing that number jumped to 100mb and after a couple of hours it was close to 400mb — and that’s with no extensions installed.

Gran Paradiso Alpha 2 is being made available for testing purposes only, and is intended for web application developers and testing community. Please use at your own discretion.

Every person, at some point of a time, as a kid, dreamed of becoming an astronaut. Well I ended being a Web designer is another story ;)

Some people like Anousheh travel to space to realize that dream. I followed every entry of her space blog while she was up in space. But then she, reportedly, paid huge amount to book her seat.

Now the good news even lesser mortal, who can shell out a cool $200,000, will be able to experience space, with the new Virgin Galactic – THE FUTURE IS NOW: Booking Open.

And if you heard renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking is planning a ride to space, the news might just be true.

As for me I’d to wait till the next celestial rendezvous and hit a jackpot. Wish me luck. And after all, a 2 hr trip is not my liking. Yuk! the grape is definitely sour today ;)

Whipped up a super fast flash animation for the 7th Anniversary of E-Pao! Thanks for keeping Manipur online.

Have a great New Year 2007 everyone !
View it here