The excellent MIT Advertising Lab blog has this example of Photochromic ink used in a DM piece:

Another example of the message being built into the medium -- a print ad for Sundown sunblock, one half of which changes color when exposed to the sun (see full creative here). If you know how they might have achieved the effect, could you please leave a comment?

Why, don't mind if I do:

Photochromic ink is a technology that I saw paraded around once a year or so when I was in Print Production. The related Thermochromic (heat-sensitive) inks are a little better known, being used in things from kids' snow boots to coffee mugs and beer cans, but photochromic has never really gotten going.
It's not cheap, especially for a DM piece that I imagine had a budget of under $1 a piece (just a WAG, but you know...).

Nice to see someone got a project out the door with this, anyway.

Adverlab article

Here's a manufacturer's page.

Well!

I've certainly been gone for a while.
After a great bloodletting at the agency I was working for, I'm now out on my own - and spending most of my time trying to get a new business going.
While it's still not really ready for public viewing, a small site is up - and I've committed to get back in here and post some more cool stuff for marketers.

MediaOnTwitter's mission is simple: It's a geographically organized list of

"Journalists, Bloggers & Media Outlets on Twitter"

Link

Another list, referenced at MediaOnTwitter:
http://micropr.wik.is/List_of_Twittering_Journalists

And another: http://www.twellow.com/category_users/cat_id/50

These sites could be gold for anyone attempting to create a 21st-century online press center. Obviously any PR department should be following all the relevant journalists - now, how about a tool to aggregate their tweets, organized by relevance to your agenda? Sort of like LinkedIn's "Company Buzz" application (discussed here) but more focused on professional journalists...

Would someone get on that please?

Here's a link to Virtual Greats, with a blurb about the company:

Virtual goods represent a $1.5 billion global market. Virtual Greats is the first company to create a platform to bring high-value, copyrighted material into virtual worlds and social networks. We are the world's leading virtual goods sales and distribution system, connecting celebrities, artists and content creators with a new generation of fans through the online trade of likenesses, fashion, catchphrases, and other virtual representations of real-world talent.

These folks came to my attention because of a post on the Millions Of Us blog. I'm quoting this extensively because the link from my reader is returning a 404:

Virtual Greats launches Snoop Dogg/ Tila Tequila Virtual Goods with Rockyou’s Super Pets in Myspace and Facebook
from Millions of Us by Reuben

I am so excited about this news from our sister company Virtual Greats for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it is the first time we’ve extended premium virtual goods into virtual worlds running within the world’s largest social networks.

For those of you not up to speed, Super Pets is a virtual pet experience that allows you to adopt a pet, train it and battle it against your friends’ pets. Within Facebook, Super Pets has 417, 000 monthly Active Users and within Myspace, it has 4.5 million monthly Active Users. One of the challenges brands had in being sucessful in Second Life was that while the monthly active population was large (and the time per user, enormous), there was no good way to get in front of all those users. Well, in Facebook with Superpets we’re now in front of an audience half as large as Second Life, and in Myspace, in front of one 4.5 times bigger than Second Life.

As for what we’re selling, we’re starting simple with items like winter hoodies for your pet that say Snoop’s cathcphrase, “Drop It Like it’s Hot” (you can see one on my avatar below, styled as a raccoon as a nod of the hat to my man Loic LeMeur and his Seesmic Logo.

So now I'm wondering - is Millions of Us moving away from being a mostly Second Life oriented shop?

Here's a convenient little app from LinkedIn - it watches Twitter and catches tweets referencing keywords associated with your profile (companies, schools, etc.)

Company Buzz is an application that allows you to see what people are saying about companies and topics you care about. Company Buzz uses information from your profile such as companies and schools to find relevant discussions on twitter. Company buzz also shows you how frequently your company or topic has been mentioned and the top words associated with your company and the topic. You may add new topics and customize existing topics with new search terms to get just the results you are interested in.

(Marginally) more info here.

Over at Seth Godin's always-insightful blog, there's this great list of attributes essential to a successful marketer (now, how many of these are applicable to the leaders of your enterprise?):

The marketer's attitude

Traditional job requirements: show up, sober. Listen to the boss, lift heavy objects.

Here's what I'd want if I were hiring a marketer:

• You're relentlessly positive. You can visualize complex projects and imagine alternative possible outcomes. It's one thing to talk about thinking outside the box, it's quite another to have a long history of doing it successfully. You can ride a unicycle, or can read ancient Greek.
• Show me that you've taken on and completed audacious projects, and run them as the lead, not as a hanger on. I'm interested in whether you've become the best in the world at something, and completely unimpressed that you are good at following instructions (playing Little League baseball is worth far less than organizing a non-profit organization).
• You have charisma in that you easily engage with strangers and actually enjoy selling ideas to others. You are comfortable with ambiguity, and rarely ask for detail or permission. Test, measure, repeat and go work just fine for you.
• You like to tell stories and you're good at it. You're good at listening to stories, and using them to change your mind.
• I'd prefer to hire someone who is largely self-motivated, who finds satisfaction in reaching self-imposed goals, and is willing to regularly raise the bar on those goals.
• You're intellectually restless. You care enough about new ideas to read plenty of blogs and books, and you're curious enough about your own ideas that you blog or publish your thoughts for others to react to. You're an engaging writer and speaker and you can demonstrate how the right visuals can change your story.
• And you understand that the system is intertwined, that your actions have side effects and you not only care about them but work to make those side effects good ones.

The cool thing about this list is that it's not dependent on what you were born with or who you know. Or how much you can lift.

Link

Over at Social CMS Buzz, there's an intriguing list of sites built on Drupal - some of which I wouldn't have guessed (Mission Metallica? Looks like custom Flash all the way to my eyes).
Social CMS Buzz article

Here's a link to Drupal founder Dries Buytaert's more extensive - and more informative - list.

AppVee has video reviews of two new apps for Google's Android phone platform - bar code scanners that use your phone's camera for image capture. (see YouTube links at bottom).
From MIT's Ad Lab article:

These applications seem to be among the few with one or two natural business models built into them from the start. Placing contextual recommendations next to price look-up results is one; powering branded wishlists and registries is another.

MIT Ad Lab article about the apps

Previous MIT Ad Lab article about Instant price Checking at retail

YouTube videos:

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2zMPbVFIYE

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZkxkvWq9zE

Guy Kawasaki has an interview with Nancy Duarte here.

Excerpt:

Question: Why do most presentations suck?

Answer: Most presentations suck because:

• The presenter has not given the audience any idea why they are there or what the content means to them; messages are disorganized and there’s no unifying story line.
• The presenter uses the slides as a document or teleprompter and reads their slides with his/her back to the audience. This makes the audience feel like the presenter is slow or not very smart.
• The presenter is not passionate or inspired and has not connected to the audience in a uniquely human way.

Did you notice that presentations suck solely because of the presenter? Great speakers like you can get by without much visual support. Emotive qualities are the greatest assets in a live performance.

Guy's Article

Duarte Design

Last month Esquire dropped the first magazine cover to incorporate e-ink technology. While the creative was underwhelming, the execution sure generated a lot of buzz.

Looks like in-store POP is next, followed one presumes by packaging (I'm betting on cereal boxes, but we'll see).

Quote:

Henkel's Right Guard is testing use of printed electronics to power flashing lights in corrugated in-store displays at Walgreens stores in the Chicago area, a first step for a technology from Arizona start-up company Nth Degree that could eventually bring low-cost streaming video to printed displays, packaging, direct mail or magazine inserts.

Link