Madison Ave. Collective » Lainie Turner

Lainie Turner — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 22:34:31 +0000

The web design blog at 1st Web Designer has a cool page: From Concept to Completion: 50 Examples of the Logo Design Process. Many styles, many stories. A great time-waster, oops, I mean go-to page.

Make and host tutorials for free

Lainie Turner — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 18:52:22 +0000

Tildee.com is a nifty little site that gives you simple steps for creating “how-to”s and hosts them for you, all for free. Check it out here.

“Square” payments: game changer through great design

Lainie Turner — Tue, 24 May 2011 16:40:08 +0000

Square launched a new “credit card case” app earlier this month, generating serious buzz. With Square, anyone with a bank account can accept credit or debit card payments by downloading the app and plugging a little plastic cube into the headphone jack of an iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, or Android phone. After a quick swipe of the card through the reader, the merchant turns the device over to the customer to sign his or her name on the touchscreen using a finger instead of a pen. The customer can add a tip, either by percentage or a particular amount, and then enter their phone number or email address. In the best case, the receipt message will buzz in the customer’s pocket as an email or SMS text message while walking away with their purchase. Customers are charged as usual by their banks or credit card companies, and Square settles up the net funds with merchants each night instead of at the end of the month. The swiper and application are both free and include access to an online dashboard with analytics that help merchants track exactly what they’ve been selling.

Could this payment system have as profound an effect on how people pay for stuff in the real world as the iTunes store has had on the distribution and sale of digital media? FastCompany reports on the design-driven solution:

Jack Dorsey is the brains behind Square and the cofounder and chairman of Twitter. Here’s how Square got started: Jack’s former boss and good friend (and eventual co-founder) Jim McKelvey lost a sale for his hand-blown glass because he had no way of accepting credit cards. The problem was one many people had–the barriers to setting yourself up through conventional processes to accept credit card payments were too high for many people. So Dorsey set about seeing if he could create a better system. The result was the Square reader, which launched a year ago and which allows just about anyone to set themselves up to take credit card payments. Even you. Planning a garage sale and want to enable people to pay for your gerbil cages and Shawn Cassidy LPs by credit card? No problem. Square’s for you.

“”I don’t think a lot of financial institutions have spent a lot of time thinking about design,” Dorsey says. “Design is not visual. It’s about simplifying and getting something down to its essence.”

I like the idea that if I am selling a sofa on Craigslist I can take a credit card without going through a huge merchant qualification process with my bank. But I especially like that now I can let small business clients know this solution is available and likely to change the way customers expect to transact business.

Rename Your Agency in One Easy Click

Lainie Turner — Tue, 10 May 2011 22:10:55 +0000

The online Advertising Age magazine has a new, fun time-waster: Agency Name Generator. With each click, a random selection and arrangement of words is presented for your delight or disbelief. You can keep trying, and there’s an option for Tweeting the names you’d like to share.

Try it out here, and be sure to share the best ones with the rest of us*.

*Disclaimer: The Madison Ave. Collective has no current plan to change its name.

Google Motion lets you control Gmail with your body

Lainie Turner — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 02:35:17 +0000

Google is always exploring new frontiers. Just in time for April Fool’s Day this year, they introduced a new (now in Beta!) technology that allows you to control your Gmail with your body.

Check out Google Motion here. And be sure to click the “Learn More” link in the Coming Soon paragraph, for even more entertaining photos.

Do Nothing for 2 Minutes … if you can

Lainie Turner — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 21:49:12 +0000

Go here and see if you can do nothing for 2 minutes. Striking any key or moving your mouse resets the timer back to 2 minutes. I lasted about 20 seconds but have promised myself I will work up to the full two minutes. This is a beautiful site and a welcome reminder to take time out to stop, listen, and just BE.

Buyer Beware

Lainie Turner — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 19:29:36 +0000

Many at the Madison Ave. Collective are Early Adopters. Who doesn’t love having the latest, shiny software to make our lives more productive? That’s why I want to give you a heads up about this review by David Pogue, Tech Editor at the NYTimes. His bottom line is: you should skip Microsoft’s new Office 2011 for Mac, because it’s actually worse than the current version, Office 2008 for Mac.

As commenter Scott Moore writes from Seattle, “After having used Office for Mac for two years now, and having worked at Microsoft, it’s my feeling the company has killed Office for Mac on purpose.” He thinks the glaring issues with this release amount to sabotage of the product for the Mac market.

But then, maybe you went over to iWork long ago …
(Apple just started offering a free 30-day trial of iWork. Coincidence? You be the judge! :)

The Future of Money

Lainie Turner — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 03:36:17 +0000

A new conversation has started. It’s about money. It’s about new ways of thinking about currency, wealth generation, community, and the changing flow of services and goods. What will banks look like in the face of massive peer-to-peer exchange? What are bright young people doing/thinking/saying?

First, take a look at this video, the conversation kick-off, part of Venessa Miemis’ presentation at the SIBOS Conference in Amsterdam, 25 October 2010.

Then, join the conversation at facebook.com/futureofmoney.

(Props to Sarah Kennon for sharing this on Facebook.)

VideoEgg buys SixApart

Lainie Turner — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 22:31:14 +0000

Ad network VideoEgg has purchased blogging network Six Apart and formed SAY Media, a new company that will create advertising campaigns it is billing as “conversational and interactive.”

Six Apart, founded in 2001, was at one time one of the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley—its founders speaking at global conferences such as Le Web and TED. It owned LiveJournal, designed MovableType blogware and the TypePad blog hosting service and Vox, the latter of which the company will shut down at the end of September.

The SAY Media website went live yesterday, Wednesday, Sep. 22, with this message:

The SAY Media platform brings together VideoEgg’s rich advertising platform with SixApart’s suite of content creation and aggregation tools to power advertising campaigns that are more conversational and interactive. The result is advertising that is more efficient, useful and social.

In a blog post today, Sep. 23, new CEO Matt Sanchez rushed to reassure Typepad bloggers who just want to blog for fun, and don’t do it to become “conversational and interactive.” Whew.

LayerTennis: competitive design, live

Lainie Turner — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 02:36:51 +0000

A friend just turned me on to Layer Tennis from Chicago design group Coudal Partners. Here’s how it’s described:

Layer Tennis is a series of live design events on Friday afternoons presented by Adobe® Creative Suite® 5.

Two competitors swap a file back and forth in real-time, adding to and embellishing the work. Each artist gets fifteen minutes to complete a “volley” and then we post that to the site live.

The players may be designers, animators, illustrators or pretty much anything else, and they can use any tool or application they like. The match progresses volley by volley.

A third participant, a writer, provides play-by-play commentary on the action as it happens.

The match lasts for ten volleys and when it’s complete, opinioned Season Ticket Holders sound off and we declare a winner. Check Tennis HQ and get lost in the archive of past matches.

Season Ticket Holders can vote on match winners, post comments, participate in remix contests and a whole lot more—all free. Get your Season Ticket here.

Don’t miss the 130-second video recapping the high points of Season Three’s Exhibition Matches.

(Sci-five to Mike Burnard for sending me this.)