GreenPrint eliminates wasteful pages in any printout automatically, saving you time and money, and maybe more importantly, saving trees, reducing greenhouse gasses, and decreasing waste.
GreenPrint also incorporates an easy to use PDF writer, a fantastic print preview called GreenView, and a reporting feature which keeps track of the number of pages and the amount of money you have saved.
And it's free (except Mac users, they get a 30 days trial)
Just read an interesting Business Week article today on Facebook's strategy in the current doom & gloom economy. While the article details why Facebook keeps persuading a "spend now make profit later" strategy it also reveals a interesting take on Facebook's planned revenue streams :
Facebook hopes to make money in three ways.
- Online advertising is far and away the most important, accounting for an estimated $200 million to $225 million in revenues this year.
- The company is also selling digital goods—electronic versions of guitars, flowers, and the like that Facebook friends give each other. Charging $1 apiece for these goods will generate $30 million to $40 million this year, estimates venture capitalist Jeremy Liew.
- The third leg of Facebook's business may be the most controversial. The company is seriously considering a plan to take a cut of money from the software developers who create applications for the site.
Original article "Facebook's Land Grab in the Face of a Downturn", here.
As an illustration of "Starting the conversation from within" we launched The Sweetest Cook for our client Tiense Suiker earlier this week. Built on the product truth that a commodity product like sugar can actually become high involving in a social context, we urge people to nominate their favorite desert and its author. Herman De Croo, Joël Smets and Dirk De Smet already nominated their Sweetest Cook. Who will you choose?
Tom Himpe's is thinking exactly the same thing we're saying to our clients when we talk about "Building brand beyond the promise" so we thought we'd share his brilliant presentation here.
Earlier this week the Axion Banner Concerts-jury announced the 25 finalists that will compete to break out their banner for a "real concert" in the Ancienne Belgique. Non-musicians could get lucky too ; Axion is giving away 1 year of free calling and sms credit for that lucky guy/girl who votes for his/her favourite banner concert.
The second wave of our campaign starts December 1st but you can already have a peak at the contenders here.
Yesterday InBev announced that their takeover of the American brewer Anheuser-Busch was complete. The new company would continue to operate as Anhauser-Busch InBev, the largest brewer in the world and one of the five largest consumer product groups in the world.
When it was announced, this takeover wasverycontroversial in the US. Budweiser, A-B's flagship product, is widely recognised as a real American product, and popular sentiment had it that this pearl to the crown would be lost when the company ended up in foreign hands. No more "Watching the game, having a Bud". True.
Popular sentiment is a headstrong horse, and riding it can be very tricky. A-B decided not to try and change opinions with a large-scale advertising campaign, but chose to confront it head to head. It launched Budweiser American Ale, a beer that couldn't be more distant from InBev's Stella-Artois lager, and stressed it's American qualities :
"Brewed with caramel-malted barley from America's Heartland for a rich, amber color, and sweet malt character, and dry-hopped with Cascade hops from the Pacific Northwest for a noticeable citrus aroma, it's more than a new taste... it's a whole new tradition".
A-B continued to support this by advertising in Americana magazines and media, and by supporting media that also ranked high on the real-American scale, such as WBEZ-Chicago's popular radio show, This American Life, with presenter Ira Glass. Initial reactions werepredominantlypositive.
It's a great example of turning the tides, and launching a new product in the process.
The relation between YouTube and the owners of popular audiovisual media copyrights has always been amosttempestuousone. As an outlet for marketing and branding activities, the popular video site is a media company's wet dream, but as soon as someone else starts playing with their toys, all hell breaks loose.
Enter venerable British comedy anarchists Monty Python. Even though they have been a YouTube member for more than two years, they only just started posting their own videos, for free. Here's their rationale :
“For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking
tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are
turned. It's time for us to take matters into our own hands. We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways
too horrible to tell.
But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we've
figured a better way to get our own back: We've launched our own Monty Python
channel on YouTube. No more of those crap quality videos you've been posting. We're giving you the
real thing - HQ videos delivered straight from our vault. What's more, we're taking our most viewed clips and uploading brand new HQ
versions. And what's even more, we're letting you see absolutely everything for
free. So there!”
You have to admit, it sounds better than "If you can't beat them, join them". So, all hail the Pythons !
Barack Obama has a Flickr account. Upon which his campaign team posts a continous stream of behind-the-scenes material. You have to see this one: backstage pictures taken with a simple digital camera, right in the room where the Obama's are awaiting the results. Link: http://flickr.com/photos/barackobamadotcom/sets/72157608716313371/show/
Sprint Nextel, leading mobile broadband internet provider, wants you to experience the now. For that purpose, they commissioned a number of animated infographics that illustrate random data from around the world.
Next they upped the ante just an extra notch. In a clever play at the current information widget fad, Sprint presents Plug Into Now, a dazzling, interactive overview of random data and information about the world, now. The deluge combines information gathered from a variety of statistical sources with live feeds from all over the internet (top search terms, top Google searches, the Internet Buzz Meter).
Seemingly unrelated information are linked through the animated graphics (the number of houses being built vs the amount of forest being cut), and you can also add yourself (if you have a webcam). There's even a big red button that doesn't do anything (which reminds me of a certain Punch feature on a certain Marketing blog...).
And it goes without saying you can also download a condensed version for use on your favorite social platform. An great idea, superbly executed and wonderful to look at.
