Here you are on January 7th finding out about the perfect calendar. It was put together by “The Fertile Earth Foundation” and it features months and months of beautiful women covered in shit.
Fertile Earth is a Miami-based hippie clusterfuck that encourages people to compost using their own organic waste. Grow a potato from your poop. That sort of thing.
[Thanks Glenn!]
Facebook is planning on using Instagram to roll out a radical new advertising platform which is capable of following users’ emotions in real time and target advertisements based on how they are feeling. The platform - internally codenamed the Tom Parsons Project (TPP) - will “combine Instagram’s vast user base and high daily use rate with advancements in facial recognition technology to connect users with products which most fit their immediate needs.”
In the new TPP-enabled Instagram whilst you are taking a photo with your smartphone’s rear-facing camera the TPP software will discreetly activate the front facing camera and lock onto the image of your face. The app’s facial recognition function will then record the precise positioning of your facial features and send them to Facebook’s database where the firm will assign an emotion to the facial pattern and log your emotional state.
The company will then use a highly advanced algorithm which combines this new emotional data with the demographic data Facebook already has to create a near perfect ad targeting system. […]
“If you’re a woman with cyclical mood issues due to the harshness of your menstrual cycle, the new Instagram should be able to accurately predict when your cycle is peaking and connect you to valuable products and services which may reduce your discomfort before your moods become a burden on others.”
Privacy advocates are expected to protest the new technology, but legal experts say the method is legal in the United States so long as it’s disclosed in Instagram’s new Terms of Service Agreement.
Swiss scientists have developed an algorithm which they claim can determine the source of spam, computer viruses or malware by analysing a small percentage of network connections. […]
The researchers said the algorithm could also be used as a tool for advertisers who use viral marketing strategies by using the Internet and social networks to reach customers.
The algorithm would allow advertisers to identify specific Internet blogs that are most influential for their target audience and to understand how these articles spread throughout the online community.
Arousal, the researchers contend, actually affects our perception of time. […]
The researchers presented 116 males with images from an online Victoria’s Secret catalog and gauged their response to receiving one of two fictitious Amazon.com promotions: a gift certificate available that day or one available three months from now. They asked the subjects the dollar value that would compensate for having to wait. Those exposed to sexually charged imagery (versus those in a control group exposed to nature images) were found to be more impatient and expressed that future discounts would have to be steeper to compensate for the time delay.
painting { Willem Drost }
He concocted an astroturf outrage campaign to publicize the screen adaptation of his client Tucker Max’s book I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell. He bought billboards and defaced them with stickers saying Max “deserved to have his dick caught in a trap with sharp metal hooks. Or something like that.”; he used fake email accounts to send angry emails about the movie to college progressive organizations; he started a boycott group on Facebook; he started fake blogs reporting false stories about his client’s “outrageous behavior.”
previously { On ABC News, he was one of a new breed of long-suffering insomniacs }
artwork { Ellsworth Kelly, Black Relief II, 2010 }
Advertisers bombard us relentlessly. Fortunately, our brains have an inbuilt BS-detector that shields us from the onslaught - a mental phenomenon that psychologists call simply “resistance.” Ads from dodgy companies, our own pre-existing preferences, and a forewarning of a marketing attack can all marshal greater psychological resistance within us.
However, a new study suggests that funny adverts lower our guard, leaving us vulnerable to aggressive marketing.
Reddit user delverofsecrets posted photos of a cryptic note that he or she obtained from a “homeless looking man” on the 1 train in New York City. The user asked Reddit for help in identifying what the characters might mean, and the post quickly shot to the top of the front page as Redditors discussed and looked for clues.
[…]
There’s plenty more money to make. Figure this out and prepare to meet July 19th, 56th & 6th. There’s a hot dog stand outside Rue57 cafe. Ask for Mr. Input.
photo { Robert Frank, London, 1952 }
previously { NotSoSerious.com–the campaign in advance of the Dark Knight }
There are billions upon billions of ad and spending dollars in our phones, waiting to be snatched up. Why can’t big, cynical corporations capture them? […]
We thought they were like laptops with different screens. We were, Gassée writes, very wrong.
image { Karin }
unrelated { Raunchy dance routine a PR nightmare for Microsoft: “The words MICRO and SOFT don’t apply to my penis.” | GeekWire }
SPIEGEL: Professor Kahneman, you’ve spent your entire professional life studying the snares in which human thought can become entrapped. For example, in your book, you describe how easy it is to increase a person’s willingness to contribute money to the coffee fund.
Kahneman: You just have to make sure that the right picture is hanging above the cash box. If a pair of eyes is looking back at them from the wall, people will contribute twice as much as they do when the picture shows flowers. People who feel observed behave more morally.
SPIEGEL: And this also works if we don’t even pay attention to the photo on the wall?
Kahneman: All the more if you don’t notice it. The phenomenon is called “priming”: We aren’t aware that we have perceived a certain stimulus, but it can be proved that we still respond to it.
SPIEGEL: People in advertising will like that.
Kahneman: Of course, that’s where priming is in widespread use. An attractive woman in an ad automatically directs your attention to the name of the product. When you encounter it in the shop later on, it will already seem familiar to you. […] When it looks familiar, it looks good. There is a very good evolutionary explanation for that: If I encounter something many times, and it hasn’t eaten me yet, then I’m safe. Familiarity is a safety signal. That’s why we like what we know.
[…]
Psychologists distinguish between a “System 1″ and a “System 2,” which control our actions. System 1 represents what we may call intuition. It tirelessly provides us with quick impressions, intentions and feelings. System 2, on the other hand, represents reason, self-control and intelligence.
SPIEGEL: In other words, our conscious self?
Kahneman: Yes. System 2 is the one who believes that it’s making the decisions. But in reality, most of the time, System 1 is acting on its own, without your being aware of it. It’s System 1 that decides whether you like a person, which thoughts or associations come to mind, and what you feel about something. All of this happens automatically. You can’t help it, and yet you often base your decisions on it.
SPIEGEL: And this System 1 never sleeps?
Kahneman: That’s right. System 1 can never be switched off. You can’t stop it from doing its thing. System 2, on the other hand, is lazy and only becomes active when necessary. Slow, deliberate thinking is hard work. It consumes chemical resources in the brain, and people usually don’t like that. It’s accompanied by physical arousal, increasing heart rate and blood pressure, activated sweat glands and dilated pupils …
SPIEGEL: … which you discovered as a useful tool for your research.
Kahneman: Yes. The pupil normally fluctuates in size, mostly depending on incoming light. But, when you give someone a mental task, it widens and remains surprisingly stable — a strange circumstance that proved to be very useful to us. In fact, the pupils reflect the extent of mental effort in an incredibly precise way. I have never done any work in which the measurement is so precise.
photo { Richard Avedon }
Facebook is just another ad-supported site. Without an earth-changing idea, it will collapse and take down the Web. […]
The daily and stubborn reality for everybody building businesses on the strength of Web advertising is that the value of digital ads decreases every quarter, a consequence of their simultaneous ineffectiveness and efficiency.
Adscend Media agreed not to spam Facebook users and pay US$100,000 in court and attorney fees, according to the settlement. […] Adscend Media’s spamming generated up to $20 million a year.
To justify its sky-high valuation, Facebook will have to increase its profit per user at rates that seem unlikely, even by the most generous predictions. Last year, we looked at just how unlikely this is.
The issue that concerns many Facebook users is this. The company is set to profit from selling user data but the users whose data is being traded do not get paid at all. That seems unfair.
Today, Bernardo Huberman and Christina Aperjis at HP Labs in Palo Alto, say there is an alternative. Why not pay individuals for their data? (…)
If buyers choose only the cheapest data, the sample will be biased in favour of those who price their data cheaply. And if buyers pay everyone the highest price, they will be overpaying.
drawing { Tracey Emin, Sad Shower in New York, 1995 }
{ Back in late 2009, an Apple patent application surfaced showing that the company had explored ad-supported operating systems, with the user receiving free or discounted goods or services in exchange for viewing the advertisements. | MacRumors | Continue reading }
Pew research has a new survey showing that tablets and smart phones are now 27% of Americans’ primary news source. The overwhelming share of this is phones, not tablets; and a reasonable view says this will rise to 50% in three years. (…)
But it is also a depressing development, portending, once again, the end of the world as we know it: the news business has been plunged into a crisis because web advertising dollars are a fraction of old media money. And mobile is now a fraction of web: the approximate conversion rate is $100 offline = $10 on the web = $1 in mobile.
