div|whisperer

How to Get Rid of the YouTube Search Bar

Drew — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:15:06 +0000

For those of you who have your own blog and include YouTube videos on it you will notice that YouTube decided to add a big, ugly YouTube search bar to the top of your embedded videos this morning. You’ll probably also notice that the embedded YouTube videos on my blog are sans ugly bar. Here’s [...]

The Real Secret to SEO

Drew — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:31:52 +0000

I’ve been in several meetings over the past four months or so where the topic of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, has come up and people have asked me about it. Buying search engine optimization services from a SEO firm is like buying an engine for your brand new car from your mechanic. The first [...]

Six Apart Buys Pownce and Shuts It Down

Drew — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 20:37:30 +0000

A really slow day ended with a surprise. Six Apart is buying Pownce and shutting it down - in two weeks. I don’t normally post “breaking news” but I thought it was noteworthy because I posted about Pownce earlier and my inability to commit to the platform, even though I really liked the [...]

Please LinkedIn, Make It Stop

Drew — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 20:42:20 +0000

LinkedIn is spamming me. Or perhaps more accurately, LinkedIn is enabling other people to spam me without allowing me a way to opt out. I’ve been critical of LinkedIn’s recent Application launch. Those problems still remain and a few weeks later, now that people are actually using them, they’ve presented more annoying [...]

Holy Frickin Robots!

Drew — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:35:29 +0000

The animation in this advertisement is fantastic. Kind reminds me, in terms of sheer epicness, of the Guinness award winning commercial Evolution, which is one of my favorite ads of all time (the Cannes judges agreed with me). It’s in German, but you can’t tell until the very end - at which point you’re not [...]

Books I Intend To Read

Drew — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 20:37:17 +0000

I haven’t bought a lot of books recently. Mostly because I am an avid sponge of encyclopedic data and the web is perfectly suited to do that. I really have only one good reason to buy real books and that is to punish trees. Trees may not have a heart but they [...]

Not Looking Forward To It

Drew — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 02:36:26 +0000

My girlfriend and I almost never agree on commercials that we both enjoy. I enjoy good advertising, and she apparently does not. Every couple of years however there comes along an advertisement whose quality is so beyond reproach that we manage to somehow agree. Jill found this one on YouTube and gestured [...]

Vote for Starbucks

Drew — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:02:05 +0000

Wieden & Kennedy dropped Starbucks as a client in September and I’m not sure if this is a leftover from their work or from one of Starbucks’ other agencies. I love typography ads. Starbucks is promising to give everyone who votes in the U.S. election on November 4th a free cup of [...]

LinkedIn Applications Launch Underwhelming

Drew — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:28:15 +0000

I’ll preface this post by saying that I like LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one of the social networks that I actually maintain an active profile on and monitor daily. With that established I was profoundly disappointed with their latest foray into applications - and it’s not because I hate applications either. How could you hate [...]

Marketing Rep Gots Mad Skillz

Drew — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:20:00 +0000

Fallon lets loose with four new additions to the Holiday Inn Express campaign that suggests that sleeping in their hotels can help ordinary people overcome being an idiot. The latest batch includes some celebrity appearances from Cal Ripkin Jr. and Jeff Burton - neither of which is particularly funny. The rapping spot above featuring a previously unknown [...]