Tag archive for ‘advertising’ at bioneural.net

Tag archive for 'advertising'

TomTom latest map guarantee trap

Published by Bruce on May 23, 2008 in Rant. 44 responses

Just bought a new TomTom with a 30-day latest map guarantee? Don't download any map update as prompted by TomTom HOME on the day you register your device. Why not? Because if TomTom do release a new map in 30 days time, you won't be allowed to download it. You may still be within 30 days, but you will have the map that was current on the day you got your device. If, however, you carefully count to day 30 before downloading any map updates, you will get the latest map as of that time. The ambiguous guarantee is not for the latest map within 30 days—it's for a map within that period.
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Block IntelliTXT faux links with ease

Published by Bruce on January 12, 2008 in Quicklinks. 0 responses

Bugged by faux hyperlinks with intrusive IntelliTXT pop-up ads on sites like MacWorld UK? Disable them in Firefox with Adblock Plus, or an ABP clone called SafariBlock if you're using Safari.

Great NZ logos

Published by Bruce on March 30, 2007 in New Zealand. 0 responses

There are several symbols that are very strongly associated with a New Zealand identity: the kiwi, the silver fern, and the koru. Here is a small collection of notable logos that incorporate these symbols.
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Unravelling Amazon link formats

Published by Bruce on February 25, 2007 in Internet. 9 responses

According to Mint, most of my blog visitors are American. To reflect this I decided to change my default Amazon Associates links from the UK to the US. In the process I got confused over the link syntax I should be using, but now have this sorted. For managing links to specific items on my site (automatically tagged with my Associates ID) I use Amazon Media Manager. AMM is a WordPress plugin that will randomly show a specified number of product links, categories of which can be matched to categories on your blog. AMM development is not active, however, it is easy to hack the plugin to use the more recent link syntax.
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IOTW: Imitation v inspiration

Published by Bruce on October 16, 2006 in Photography. 0 responses

Sometimes it surely happens by chance that two logos are as alike as peas in a pod. At other times (and I've seen several examples on the 'net) it is equally clear that there is something more than chance at work. During our recent trip to China we noted a few shop logos that looked remarkably familiar, despite a zero probability that we had encountered the shop displaying it before. An imitation is intended to copy or at least closely simulate a design. It is the antithesis of design by inspiration, which implies a certain measure of creativity, innovation and imagination—without stretching all the way to originality and inventiveness. Inspiration is a valuable artistic tool for those suffering from a depletion of vision, but can readily be taken too far. Here is a shop logo that may have been conceived due to lack of inventiveness, sheer laziness, or maybe the constraints of time or budget. But I suspect it may have been re-engineered from a famous logo for reasons of brand association. It makes good marketing sense: a vaguely familiar or trustworthy logo may draw in customers otherwise confused by the visual cacophony of a busy street. You decide: imitation or inspiration?
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Embedding iStockPhoto feeds revisited

Published by Bruce on June 15, 2006 in Photography. 6 responses

In an earlier post I described a JavaScript-based method to include recently-approved iStockPhoto images in a page on your website. When I migrated from a static blogging system (iBlog) to WordPress I found a useful plugin that worked very well in MAMP. Unfortunately it broke when I moved my developmental site to a live DreamHost server. Here is a bit more background to the problem and an eventual solution that uses SimplePie. Although the focus here is on displaying photographs, it's a solution that should work with practically any feed you might wish to embed.
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