For designers, our bible of colour has always been the long established Pantone matching system. These colour swatch books are universally accepted as the industry standard for ink. In fact, Pantone is so popular, it is used as the global standard for choosing and matching colours in every country. It's almost like a universal language for designers.

For years, Pantone has been expanding their reach beyond just ink. They have evolved into other markets such as web, fashion, home, paints and interiors. And now, it seems they are getting into the hotel business.

Yes, you can now find all your favourite colours prominently displayed at the Pantone Hotel, located in Brussels, Belgium. The hotel offers you a variety of Pantone matched rooms, just choose a colour. In addition, they have used Pantone colours in almost every feature, from the exterior of the building, right down to the room key.

Now, not only did the hotel go so far as to use Pantone colours and the Pantone name, but they also stayed true to the Pantone brand itself. Everything from the familiar colour blocks, to the font itself, look EXACTLY like the Pantone products. The only question is, will designers want to sleep in a room that reminds them of work? Next time you're in Europe, a mere 89 euros will get you a beautiful Pantone 186 room. Hmmm, I wonder if the room numbers match the ink colours? If you go, let me know!

Check out the hotel: http://www.pantonehotel.com/

For those of you that don't know me, I'm not a fan of Facebook. I like to keep my personal information private and only share it with the people that are important to me. I don't want friends of friends knowing that I'm going out of town for a week, that i was born on some day of some month in 19xx, or that I have a child that goes to a certain school. Now, I'll admit that the concept of Facebook is great and the execution has been a huge success, but at the end of the day Facebook is a company looking for new ways to generate revenue, either by selling advertising space, or sharing private account information with third party companies.

Apparently I'm not the only one who feels this way. Upon browsing the vast waves of the internet, I stumbled upon a very ambitious project called Diaspora*. Their motto: "The privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all, open source social network."
For those wondering the meaning of diaspora: "diaspora ("a scattering or sowing of seeds") refers to any people or population who are forced or induced to leave their traditional homelands, the dispersal of such people, and the ensuing developments in their culture."

Not slated for release until September 2010, they've managed to acquire over $200,000 from over 6000 backers on kickstart and have been diligently working on the project all summer.

The initial release will include the following:

• Full-fledged communications between Seeds (Diaspora instances)
• End to end GPG
• External Service Scraping of most major services (reclaim your data)
• Version 1 of Diaspora’s API with documentation
• Public GitHub repository of all Diaspora code

It'll be decentralized, allow end to end encryption of data, pull all of your social media content back into one place, and allow members of the community to expand and build upon the core ideas of a private social network.

I'd recommend checking out their faq, blog, and media page if you're interested in learning more, and I'm hoping for a huge reception to the newest social media concept from those that are fed up with privacy issues.

Old Spice has been updating their image rather successfully lately with their hilarious, off-beat commercials starring Bruce Campbell and, now since the Super Bowl, Isaiah Mustafa of Seahawks fame. Today they've taken their campaign a huge leap forward through viral social media by taking over the @oldpsice twitter feed, announcing "Today could be just like the other 364 days you log into Twitter, Or maybe the Old Spice man shows up."

Sine then, the "Old Spice Guy" has been going strong, fielding questions and comments from users on Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit and responding with personalized videos posted to YouTube. What's more, these personalized responses are being posted about every 10 minutes and are getting the attention of celebrities, tech magazines, and newspapers. What's more, this campaign isn't just selling product, it's bringing people together. In the following video, the "Old Spice Guy" proposes to a woman on behalf of a twitter user.

She said yes.

If you're looking for a laugh, to learn how Old Spice can make you smell like the manly Old Spice Guy, or to see an awesome viral campaign at work, visit the Old Spice channel on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/oldspice or tweet them @oldspice.

The Threadless phenomenon reaches beyond just voting for T-shirt designs. The site also hosts blogs, Threadless TV, and interviews with designers, all the while fostering self-expression and originality from its contributors. Commonly the most successful designs boast interesting conceptualization, attractive colour schemes, and unique illustration styles or techniques - and a cheeky tagline doesn't usually hurt either. This outlet for designers is just another way graphic design is being encompassed in to the everyday, no media being left out. So maybe it's time to upgrade your tuxedo t-shirt afterall..

And no excuses, there really is a shirt design for almost everyone.. Here are a few that remind me of the guys in the office:

"I Thought the Future Would Have More Beep Boop Sounds"

"Nutritious Breakfast"

"Revenge Of The Sushi"

And my personal favorite:

"Real Bear Hugs Are Often Fatal"

Dave forwarded on this hilarious story regarding the bumbling Toronto Police Chief and his handling of the G20 security. In the article, it appears that a man was stopped by the police while riding the city's public transit and relieved of his "weapons", which included:

- Arrows with pool-noodle tips
- Foam shields & swords
- A chain mail vest

What horrible misdeed was this fiend planning? What filthy plan had he for destroying the peace and civility that Chief Blair and his men had so carefully maintained?

He was going LARPing, or as us non-nerds know it, Live Action Role Playing.

If you're not familiar with LARPing, good for you because it probably means you have a healthy social life and reasonably clear skin complexion. Essentially, it takes the notion of a role-playing game (like Dungeons and Dragons) and brings it into the real world, with participants acting out parts and battling each other with, you guessed it, foam implements of pretend war.

You'll find below a clip of LARPing in action, although I doubt seeing it in video will do much to remove the mystery as to why people actually do this.

I think after seeing the video you'll all agree that, despite Chief Blair's other obvious faults, he is owed a debt of gratitude; he may have embarrassed a city and country, but at least he saved a man from embarrassing himself.

Here are the list of appetizers:
Rob – Deviled Egg Oyster Surprise
Caitlin – Spinach Oyster Dip
Dave – Smoked Bacon Oyster Bites
Mike – Oyster Chowder
Chandra – Jalapeno Oyster Poppers
Sherry – Bacon Double Oyster Pizza
Sarah – Smoked Oyster Spread

Drumroll..........and the winner is...

Dave’s (with help from wife Diane) Smoked Bacon Oyster Bites

Runner up was Chandra’s Jalapeno Oyster Poppers and Mike’s (actually made by Mike’s wife Susan) Oyster Chowder.

I recently had the opportunity to watch a presentation by Ipsos Reid's Steve Levy on the CMA's 2010 Digital Trends report. While I was disappointed that most of the material was a little stale (by today's standards), one thing Steve mentioned got stuck in my brain and I've been thinking about it off and on for the past few days. It was regarding mobile marketing and its lack of traction in the market.

For what feels like a decade, marketing pundits have been predicting that mobile marketing will be the "Next Big Thing", and that reaching customers on their mobile devices is the obvious convergence of targeted and location-based advertising. But, as Steve put it, every year people make this prediction, and every year it fails to come true. The question is, why?

What is Mobile Marketing?
First, it's important to define mobile marketing. The Mobile Marketing Association defines it as "a set of practices that enables organizations to communicate and engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network." While the MMA lumps in-game advertising into this definition, for our purposes I'm considering text messages as the primary form of mobile marketing (since this is what most agencies consider "true" mobile marketing).

The rise of advertexts has been slow compared to growth in other areas of marketing. Generally there are two types of these programs - opt-in campaigns, or spam campaigns (whereby users' mobile numbers are sold by their carrier to a 3rd party, who bombards the users with unwanted advertising messages). I think it's obvious why the latter has been a flop, but the former is a more interesting problem.

This Should Work, Shouldn't It?
Everything we know about permissions-based marketing tells us that as long as users sign up to receive relevant messages, they should be effective. We've seen the same thing in email; people hate email spam, but they will read and react to promotional emails as long as they've actively signed up for them. Personally, I'm signed up on a few hockey-related websites that send me notifications of upcoming sales and new products; those emails have directly influenced my purchasing decisions, and I know I'm not the only one.

But people don't appear to react the same to mobile marketing SMS messages. A recent survey discovered that 77% of users don't like to receive promotional texts, a surprisingly large number when you consider that 1.3 trillion text messages were sent last year.

There is no qualitative data as to why people seem to dislike these SMS messages, but after considering the problem for a few days, I've come up with a couple of theories:

#1 - The cost of response
Okay, lets say that Rogers sends you a text message about a new program they've developed. That's great, but how do you take the next step to learn more? Typically it's by using your smartphone to visit their mobile website, which in turn uses up your data plan (costing you money). Many users don't want to waste the KBs to see a promotional offer they may or may not like. Until responding to these offers is free, users won't be tempted.

#2 - It doesn't create value
Think about the email offers I mentioned earlier. I've responded to them because I saw value there, either in sale prices, or new products. Unfortunately, too many advertexts are just being used for brand building, and aren't communicating enticing offers to users. Roger's texting me about it's new tethering service doesn't provide me any incentive because it gives no monetary offer and doesn't really tell me anything interesting.

#3 - It's invasive
I'm sure I'm no different than most people in that I always read my texts as soon as I get them. When I go to the trouble of pulling out my phone to read the message, it's irritating to find an advertisement sitting there. No one likes to be interrupted for no good reason, and with SMS there's really no other way but to take up someone's time.

What's the Future of Mobile Marketing?
So if advertexts don't work, what will? I think the main thrust of mobile marketing in the next few years will divert from SMS into two main areas - location-based ad services and augmented reality systems. For the former, I can imagine a situation where a user checking local showtimes on their phone sees banner ads for upcoming movies, influencing their buying decision. As to the latter, augmented reality apps (like the Nearest Tube app for iPhone) could direct users to landmarks, while also allowing nearby business to post tiny ads onto users' screens.

Either way, I'm forecasting the demise of SMS advertising in the next 5-years. Smartphones killed it off, but I don't think it'll be missed, and I think at least 77% of people will agree with me.

As I patiently await the release of the iPhone 4G, I couldn’t help but contemplate the great marketing machine of Apple. A few months ago I wrote that I didn’t really want an iPad, until, last week, I stopped to see one at the store. It was, I admit, kinda cool. I might even…want one. I might even be able to convince myself that I need one. Yes, I will admit my apparent weakness for Apple anything, I’ve had it since 1989 actually. And, as I toss my Blackberry to the curb, in favour of adding an iPhone to my ever growing collection of Apple products, I thought I’d make fun of myself just a little, content in the knowledge that I’m not the only one out there with a soft spot for Apple.

For example, you can date other Apple fans on a Mac-inspired singles dating site: cupidtino.com

Or, you can join a church of Mac: www.macgeniustony.com/thechurchofmac.html

Watch a movie about Apple fanatics: www.macheadsthemovie.com

Dress (or undress) Steve Jobs: www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/692flash.html

Read a blog dedicated to the cult of Mac: www.cultofmac.com

Make fun of us Apple owners: theoatmeal.com/comics/apple

And, last but not least, shop for Apple online: http://store.apple.com/us

Oh come on, I’m not the only fan out there, who else has some fun ones to add?