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Tag archive for 'advertising'
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.
Continue reading 'Great NZ logos'
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.
Continue reading 'Unravelling Amazon link formats'
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?
Continue reading 'IOTW: Imitation v inspiration'
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.
Continue reading 'Embedding iStockPhoto feeds revisited'
Google are currently beta-testing intergration of AdSense adverts with various blogging systems. A few of the feeds I subscribe to in NetNewsWire now carry ads (e.g. Engadget). Since I already use AdSense and it makes a (tiny) amount of $US, I applied to be a beta tester out of curiosity but was turned down. However, I decided to try and make it work anyway using iBlog...
Continue reading 'Ads in your iBlog RSS feed'
