Social media has become a major sounding board for opinions and trends relating to society’s never-ending fascination with popular culture. Social media platforms have been buzzing with commentary and speculation about the Oscar nominees. Everyone is weighing in on who they believe to be the frontrunner in winning the most coveted prize in Hollywood on Sunday night, regardless of how much the film made at the box office. [Read more...]
Have you ever been out shopping and noticed another customer staring over at you with a perplexed look on their face? You look over at them, give a small nod and smile, then go back to digging through the t-shirts at Urban Outfitters looking for the right size — even though you know everyone already has the ‘Pugs, Not Drugs’ shirt (since when did pugs become so cool anyways? Ugh, mouth breathers). They come over and kindly ask if you have x shirt in a medium. At first you don’t hear them, shrugging it off to them speaking a different form of English than you. But, it happens again; they ask the same question. Which is right around the time you begin losing your cool. [Read more...]
E-Readers have jumped onto the scene in a big way over the last year, with the iPad and Amazon Kindle Fire becoming the must have gifts of the 2011 holiday season. The population of bookshelves across the country are seeing less growth over the past year too, with more and more people purchasing their books on an e-reader. But what are the characteristics of the typical e-reader buyer, and could e-readers become the next big advertising platform in the years to come? [Read more...]
Tumblr is one of the most popular micro-blogging platforms on the internet, with nearly 43 million blogs and counting, reblogging animated gifs and feminist Ryan Gosling memes have never been so popular. Tumblr is an interesting ecosystem, with a large part of it looking as if it was designed for 15 year old kids who sneeze glitter while needing everything cool and hip under the sun… and while this sounds pretty great, it isn’t exactly what the community of Tumblr looks like down deep. [Read more...]
With its roots dating back to the Ancient Roman fertility festival, Lupercalia, and the 400 A.D. Saint Valentine martyrs, Valentine’s Day has come a long way. Valentine’s Day has become one of the most romantic days of the year, if not the most financially driven, with couples in the United States showering their loved ones with flowers, gifts, chocolates, cards, dinners, and sparkling wine. [Read more...]
One of the greatest things about design is that people are constantly coming up with new and creative ways to solve problems, display information or convey a message in a better way. Paul Marcinkowski (AKA Kaplon) is the designer behind this tattoo infographic which he made for a class project at the Academy Of Fine Arts in Łódź, Poland. While poorly made infographics have been called the ‘plague’ of the internet, it’s great to see an artist sink their teeth into the medium and create something truly original. [Read more...]
In this evolving world of technology and business, there are businesses who seem to appear on everyone’s radar seemingly overnight… like magic (think Pinterest). However, there is far more than magic which goes on behind the scenes to bring these companies into our collective conscious. Startups are beginning to employ the best and brightest the job pool has to offer and, with the recession and economy the way it is, companies are able to take their time and grab insane talent on the cheap. Perhaps the best way to explain their employment tactics: it’s like fishing with dynamite. With this kind of job atmosphere, it’s no wonder the best startups who hired the brightest from the talent pool are able to quickly take their company from idea to acquisition. [Read more...]
For years, science has helped humans make sense of the world around them. In their endless toil to understand our world, scientists have come up with simple innovations to make life easier, complex ones to get us from point A to B, insanely advanced discoveries which have led to putting a man on the moon, and miraculous ones that have saved humanity from previously incurable diseases. However, not everyone is convinced of the value that science brings to humanity. [Read more...]
It’s no secret that waistlines and food portions have been ballooning across America, the land of the free and home of the artery clogging super-sized value menu. The last few decades have seen a massive shift in the thinking of American consumers, restaurants, fast-food chains and food manufacturers. The emphasis has changed into giving the consumer more food for less money; hasn’t anyone noticed that a small soda has turned into a medium, a medium into a large, and so on? This focus on more for less doesn’t just stop at out-of-home options either: packaged food companies are making portions larger, plates are getting bigger, and we’re so surrounded by this growth that we don’t know how much we really need to eat. [Read more...]
Millions of jobs have been lost and buried under the economic rubble of 2008, with only a ‘Hail Marys’ hope of resuscitation in the current economic climate. What isn’t as obvious is, at the heart of today’s 8.6 percent unemployment rate, sits the greatest skills mismatch our economy has ever seen. We have many Americans still training (or waiting) for jobs in industries which aren’t coming back. The grave of these industries will soon firmly reside in the ashes of the roaringly irresponsible financial times of 2008, with no hope of becoming a phoenix, and rising from the ashes to be born again. [Read more...]
