With Christmas now safely behind us and the new year comming around in a few days (unless you’re celebrating Kwanzaa or the Chinese new year), this is a time for reflection. A time where those “best of”-lists start popping up all over the place.
And when looking around the web there seems to be a list for EVERYTHING! Whether it’s search results, albums or singles, movies, photographs (Time and Reuters), most blogged-about books, wines, men of the year, (despite my post) most annoying celebrities, best invention, webcomics, pc products, games, concerning travel, cars, cellphones, toys or whatever: it’s been done! All the lists you ever want have been made.
And whether you agree with them or not, making lists like these is always about the writer’s taste. And as the saying goes: there’s no accounting for taste. There can be every conceivable list on the planet where everyone shares their taste about every subject imaginable and still it’s better to have a personal opinion. Don’t let anybody tell you what to like or dislike but find out for yourself. Let that be on the top of your list every year.
See you next year!
Because of declining sales, Gap management decided to spruce up the stores (and not the line of clothing surprisingly) and wanted to use a tv-commercial for people to take note.
They turned to Spike Jonze, one of the more innovative filmmakers of this decade. His movies like Being John Malkovic and Adaptation are of course helped by the great scripts from Charlie Kaufman, but his visuals make it the brilliant pieces of cinema that they are. Jonze is also responsible for music videos for, amongst others, the Beastie Boys (“Sabotage”), Fatboy Slim (“Praise you”; “Weapon of choice”) and Weezer (“Buddy Holly”; “Island in the sun”).
The result is this ad called “Pardon our dust” and it may be one of the funniest (but unseen since Gap decided to pull it after a few runs) commercials in years (The link provided is the original Jonze cut, with the music of “Hall of the mountain king” playing in the background. Gap management decided to go with a different, more Hill-billy tune for the ad that aired on US television, making it less powerfull).
Jonze once again doesn’t dissapoint..
New York has Central Park. London has Hide Park. Pretty much every major city has one. Parks where you can relax and get away for a little while from the frantic pace, noises, smells and pressures of the big city. But free space in a city has become a very sought-after commodity. Developers keep on developing and building real estate and that means that smaller parks where you could have relaxed are now becomming obsolete.
So what to do? Bring on the guys from Rebar. They’ve invented the Temporary Urban Park. A small piece of “park” which you can use for relaxation during your lunch. On november 16th they occupied a parking space in San Francisco for 2 hours to set up their little park and soon they found people using it. This of course was a little experiment where they were, as they say it themselves, “temporarily expanding the public realm and improving the quality of urban human habitat, at least until the meter ran out”.
But I think this is a great idea. I definately see possibilities. How about a “Guess where the park will be next”-contest? An indoor version so that people in Siberia can have a “Concert in the park” in the middle of winter in a sports arena. A smaller version for cubicle-dwellers. You could get them all natural with real grass and trees (in different variaties) or all artificial with astroturf. A Christmas or Halloween version. I think there is a market for this…
Original link via kottke
We’ve all heard or experienced the horror stories surrounding customer service. Whether it’s the trouble of just contacting the service, the impossible procedures you have to follow or the hassle of getting your money back. Dealing with customer service can be a real pain. And that’s why it’s so refreshing to tell a story about a very positive experience.
I’m talking about the customer service at bol.com (a sort of amazon, but they just sell in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and China). I’ve been buying books there for about 4 years now (and with the expansion of their stock, also my Creative Zen (not an Ipod kinda guy) and other gadgets) and never had any trouble with deliveries untill about 6 months ago.
I ordered “Tishomingo Blues” from Elmore Leonard and received the order a few days later. To my surprise it contained what could be discribed as a “used book”. Let’s just say that my first indication that something was wrong was the tear in the cover and a list inside the cover with a little index of the people who loaned it from a library in Williamsburg, Virginia.
I went to the site and easily found the email adress to send my complaint to. And whatta you know, next day I received an apology mail, enclosed with the information on a free shipping adress to which I should return my erroneous order. I send it the next day and received another email 3 days later informing me that they had received the shipment. I also was told that I could considder the invoice I received with my order to be null and void. If I had one little quip about the service it would be that I had to order the new copy myself. But well, you can’t have it all. And I had the same experience a couple of weeks ago with a faulty JBL Creature II which I could return to them with the same ease (although, truth be told, it took a little longer for them to respond to my original mail) and with no costs attached. So this may not be a fluke. It proves it can be possible to have a great customer service as a company.
And it’s also true what they say: people who have had a satisfactory experience with a customer service will become advocaters of the company itself. I find myself telling friends, family and acquaintances of my experiences and the positive look I have towards bol.com. And what does bol.com get from this. Well, more business from me to begin with…
