The Insane Benedictine University Recruiting Video
Rescued by Deadspin, re-posted by yours truly: an actual alum of Benedictine University in lovely (snark) Lisle, Illinois. Just in case it gets pulled there…
Update: The IP log reveals a lot of incoming traffic from ben.edu. Hi, there!
Font Your Face: Terrible Name, Great Drupal Module
It bears a truly unfortunate name, but this is a great Drupal module: Font Your Face (download). It’s stable and at the recommended release stage for both Drupal 6 and 7. Here’s a YouTube demo.
As a web designer and front-end developer, it’s possibly the most useful module I’ve come across in the past six months. Nearly any font is now available to web designers without using Javascript. It supports Google Fonts with no need to edit theme CSS documents or page templates. Caveat: it will stipulate the “font-family” characteristic in tandem with the module CSS, where the font-size, color, decoration, etc. still should be defined within a certain class.
Font Your Face supports Typekit (given a valid API), Font Squirrel (among others) and even accepts uploaded typefaces from your own library. Additionally, he UI/UX design is pretty great, especially if you’re a designer stuck using Windows rather than OS X.
Using OTF is a bit sketchy and forget PostScript fonts—works best with TrueType fonts—but it literally opens up thousands of possibilities for the web designer to style a site with its own unique typography. On the downside, it’s a bit scary to imagine less experienced web designers going insane with too many fonts. That “nightmare” awaits our eyes when this type of functionality becomes more common.
Hey, with great power comes great responsibility, no?
How the Rolling Stones and Microsoft Found Each Other
It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly seventeen years since Microsoft rolled out Windows 95. For those of you who don’t recall the DOS-based Windows 3.1, it was a revolutionary change that actually, believe it or not, made Microsoft cool for a while. With Apple’s influence on the PC market virtually non-existent in the mid-1990s, Windows 95 was the new industry standard for operating systems. Even the START button was an innovation.
It’s also where technology and marketing come together. Famously, Microsoft used the Rolling Stones’ 1981 song “Start Me Up” as the anthem to introduce Windows 95 to the world in the summer of 1995. It was the cornerstone of a $300 million ad blitz.
How did this “collaboration” come about? This in-depth post at The Post History Dig explores the subject in depth. A teaser:
Nearly 15 year after the song’s initial popularity, Bill Gates hit upon the idea of using “Start Me Up” for the Windows 95 launch. Gates happened to meet Mick Jagger at some point and asked him how much it would cost to use the song in advertising. Reportedly, Jagger replied with some amount in the millions — $10 million by one account — a sum, in any case, that Jagger thought would be outrageously high. Microsoft’s “Start Me Up” campaign was aimed at key groups of Rolling Stones followers — from baby boomers to twenty- somethings… But Gates, undeterred, didn’t flinch and agreed to the amount.
It’s a great read, especially when one considers how much this influenced Apple’s product rollouts in the last decade. Gates influencing Jobs. Who’d have thought that?
The iconic 30-second advertisement for Windows 95:
If Musicians Used Their Real Names on Cover Art
This would be a fun graphic design exercise to imitate: changing the cover art of classic albums to reflect the musicians’ actual names, not stage names.
It takes a bit of the steam out of the artistic mystique. Then again, I think Declan McManus is a cooler name than Elvis Costello, so maybe not in all instances.
Separated at Birth: Lauren Cook and Casey Anthony
University of Nebraska volleyball star and bad driver/bad person Lauren Cook (might not) deserve to be placed in the same company as the infamous Casey Anthony. Let’s just say she could be more than passable as Anthony for next Halloween, given the right outfit.
Conversely, maybe Anthony could don Cornhusker red bunhuggers and menace motorcyclists whilst driving a Toyota 4Runner.
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- Lauren Cook
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- Casey Anthony
“Battle of Los Angeles” Flash Microsite
To promote the highly-anticipated alien invasion movie from South African director Jonathan Liebesman, Sony has unveiled a Flash microsite incorporating faux viral videos with “expert testimony” and “eyewitness accounts” of extraterrestrial incursions. The actual Battle of Los Angeles/Great Los Angeles Air Raid (1942) and other reported UFO sitings and encounters of the 20th century serve as the movie’s historical context and back story.
From the microsite and limited production photos, the Battle of Los Angeles looks to be set in contemporary America rather than—as I’d hoped—just before World War II. Rather than rehash Independence Day, why not let the Greatest Generation take a crack at the aliens? Would the Allies and Axis powers have joined forces to defend the Earth?
Battle of Los Angeles stars Aaron Eckhart and is scheduled for release on March 11, 2011.
Related: The movie was filmed partially in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Why use Baton Rouge as a stand-in for war-ravaged Los Angeles? Check out this New York Times article.
Photo Credit: Richard Cartwright
Defend Oregon: One Huge Door Hanger to Rule Them All
Discovered today, weighing in at 5″ wide by an enormous 25″ tall, printed in three colors + black… a door hanger from the progressive advocacy group Defend Oregon. Click on the thumbnail to see a much larger version.
Is this too subtle a reminder that the election is Tuesday? Seriously, the back of the piece explains the potential impact of state ballot initiatives in fairly exhaustive detail, but we’re not going to scan it. It’s very copy-dense and therefore better consumed at the Defend Oregon web site.
Here in Oregon, such a collateral piece takes on additional urgency because of the state’s exclusive vote-by-mail elections. So, conceivably, one sees the massive door hanger, takes it inside, and fills out the ballot that’s been collecting dust on the kitchen table. It’s an effective piece made more effective because of the vote-by-mail policy. A reminder to go vote on Tuesday—even an ostentatious one—could be forgotten over the weekend.
One additional note: the color scheme bears a slight resemblance to the Pacific Northwest’s only NFL team.
The 404 Files: Seattle Seahawks
A nice and polite 404 page from the Seattle Seahawks. We’re sorry that our webmaster couldn’t purge a busted link from search results before you clicked on it. In three seconds, we’ll take you to our shiny happy home page. Nicely done, and smart without being too cute.
Burger King Breakfast Menu Flash Advertising
It’s been hard to escape Burger King’s recent advertising push to promote their new breakfast menu. This kind of saturation may become more commonplace with a likely increase in Burger King’s ad spending under their new ownership. The fast food chain’s grip on the No. 2 spot in the U.S. (behind McDonald’s, ahead of Wendy’s) has been slipping the last two years.
The image to the right is a screen cap (actual size) of a block Flash ad (300 x 250 pixels) 
spotted recently on ESPN.com. Its differentiating characteristic is its most prominent: the countdown clock. The ad calculates the countdown to 10:30 am (when Burger King stops serving breakfast) based upon data from the user’s system clock, presumably. It also could be done with an IP trace to determine a user’s time zone, though that seems needlessly complicated to accomplish the same result.
The concept behind the ad is well-worn: false scarcity. Not the scarcity of the product in this case; the scarcity of available time to consume the product today. Do you really want to wait 24 hours for another crack at that delicious, nutritionally-void breakfast sandwich?
Given the ESPN.com placement, the target audience for this ad seems to be office-dwelling men who didn’t have the time or desire for a traditional at-home or even in-the-car breakfast. These are men who watch sports games governed by ticking clocks. Men who understand that a countdown demands decisive action and execution to succeed or, in this case, to solve a problem: the distraction of hunger. And perhaps to fulfill a want, as well, like the cheap and easy indulgence of fast food.
For the record, we didn’t run out to beat the clock and grab a Croissan’wich, but it certainly raised our awareness of breakfast at Burger King. And that’s more than the half the battle in any form of advertising.
Conan O’Brien Gets Dirty to Get His Desk Clean
Given his imminent and welcome return to late night TV nine months after the Tonight Show debacle, Conan O’Brien needed to clean his desk. Whether he needed to do it in a style similar to an infamous Paris Hilton commercial is up to you.
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