Archive for the 'Advertising' category

Don't waste electricity

There could be waste in the most surprising places. So, don’t waste, use electricity wisely.

Via FAIL Blog.

If you want to know more, you can even buy those horse legs.

Free ad for friends in concert in Paris in a few weeks.

Gabriela Ungureanu / Anne-Elisabeth Halpern - Schubert

Schubert Concert on Sunday 24 May 2009 @ 12h30.

Airport by El Fotopakismo

After several months when we all heard that corporate jets were the mark of the truly immoral bank or corporate CEOs, it seems that private jet companies are starting to take notice: All this bad press is putting more pressure on them than they would like to in difficult times like ours.

Hawker Beechcraft and Cessna Aircraft (the Empire, here) are fighting back with advertising to support the idea that it’s only true visionaries who are able to forget about all this and will keep using and buying their corporate business jets. Say that to Richard Wagoner Jr or to Dick Fuld! Or speak of stimulus ads!

According to the International Herald Tribune and Reuters, Cessna Aircraft is saying “Timidity didn’t get you this far” or “True visionaries will continue to fly” in their message. Hawker Beechcraft is also promoting its King Air 350 as “the world’s greenest and highly efficient aircraft“.

I am not sure whether this will really boost sales abck to stratospheric levels, but it’s an example of companies which are decided not to let the business go down the drain, despite bad times and worse PR.

Some of my best images are available are posters, cards, prints, laminated prints, etc. on RedBubble.com. I like the quality of their service, their prices and the broad support (including good discussion forums about photo).

What you’ll like even more is that they reduced the shipping costs to NOTHING for a week. They are celebrating their shipment of 100,000 photo/art masterpieces around the world. At this moment, they decided to offer one week of free shipping. You just have to use the following coupon code when checking out: ‘100000masterpieces’

PS: The promotion will expire at 2359 on 30 October (GMT). Just in time to prepare your gifts for Christmas or for your 2009 new year’s cards.

Buy my photos at RedBubble

• Cards,
• Matted Prints,
• Laminated Prints (between shiny plastic sheets),
• Prints mounted on hard support,
• Canvas Prints,
• Framed Prints

If you have the heart of an adventurer, you may be interested to know that Ijust put in beta-test some new websites that I am working on.

• YLovePhoto.com (site specializing in digital photography)
• YLoveBigCats.com (about felines and other big cats)
• YLoveIllusions.com (optical illusions)
• YWantVisits.com (SEO, traffic optimisation and web site revenue maximization)

Your opinion will be welcome, but -remember- this is beta-test. So, it is full of bugs, problems, issues and don’t come back and complain if your significant other dumps you because of it.

Note: Most (if not all) of the photo-related news here will be applied to YLovePhoto.com as soon as I feel free with this new web site.

You can now start buying some of my photos at RedBubble. I sent them a few original artworks and it gives you access to some products like:

• Cards,
• Matted Prints,
• Laminated Prints,
• Mounted Prints,
• Canvas Prints,
• Framed Prints

Buy my photos at RedBubble

A campaign to protect Earth and save energy by CLM BBDO.

Project Offset, the running name of a company who promises to build one of the most expected action epic video games, has announced in February that they were bought by Intel. However, I have to admit that nothing has been shown since. Not even the slightest hint at what Intel intends to do with it.

Is the development still going on?

Just to let you salivate a little in advance, here was the trailer “leaked” to the Internet earlier in September 2007.

As I am writing this article, I am in Shanghai for a profesionnal trip (my company seems to believe that I can improve some things in our manufacturing plant of Pudong, in the suburbs of this big Chinese city). As an amateur photographer, I took some time for myself to look at some photo opportunities here. Two remarks may interest you too.

Shooting in Shanghai

The most obvious observation in this gigantic city of 17 million people is that the air is full of dust. And I mean it. Everybody notice it. The city is under permanent construction (or is it “re-construction”). Zillions of trucks are moving earth around to help build sky-scrappers all over the city. This and the overall industrial pollution makes it amazingly foggy.

I wanted to shoot a few photos; Don’t even think about deep landscapes (even from the highest buildings): On the clearest day, the sky is white and the visibility is limited to a distance surprising to even my pre-informed self.

However, Shanghai is one the modern world cities where night shots are a real pleasure. There is light and contrast everywhere: Buildings with lights from top to bottom, giant ads, displays of all kinds and all sizes, ligthed boats on the Huangpu river. So much light that you may even forget your tripod if your willing to shoot at high ISOs.

Click on the thumbnails if you want to access the larger versions

Buying photo equipment in Shanghai

OK! Shanghai is less attractive than Hong Kong, but China is usually a place where you can find photo bargains. In Shanghai, the place to go -apart from the usual electronics malls found all over the city, like in Pudong (South of Shiji Avenue)- is the big photo market at Luban Lu and Xietu Lu (in Chinese, “Lu” means “road”), that I found easly thanks to Internet (it is just North of Lupu bridge and Zhongshan N° 1 Rd, in Puxi).

Click on the thumbnails if you want to access the larger versions

You will find there anything for photo and photo activities. 6 floors of small shops. Of course, you will find camera sales on 1st floor (Canon, Sony, Nikon, Pentax, Sigma, etc.). But as in many Shanghai malls, the higher you climb, the better bagains you find (until you reach a level where most offers are presented in approximate stacks and packs).

Apparently, the risk of seeing fake products is limited, but it may be very difficult to find the difference between an original product and a fake one. However, I did not find any price obviously too-low-to-be-true (a sure mark of fake products), just a lot of good bargains and some less impressive prices. Apparently, prices are a little better than most Europeans prices (even taking into account an added VAT to be paid when returning home) with nothing Earth shattering. However, you must remember that haggling is standard practice here. Some advice:

1. Know the European price of the item you want to buy (not to be taken by a bad price in the heat of the moment),
2. Know the exact Euro-Yuan conversion rate (everything is paid cash in Yuans (or RMB) which is currently about 10 yuans for 1 euro),
3. Ask for the price in simple English (”for this, how much?”),
4. The sales people will show it on the screen of a desktop calculator. You can make a counter proposal just by typing a different value on the same desktop calculator (a 5% discount seems to be standard). If the sale is possible, a frank smile will be enough and an exchange of “OK” will be clear.
5. Always keep in hand the item you’re interested in. Don’t let the sales guy go to the back of the shop (to pack it, or something). There is always the risk seeing him/her returning with a different product than the one you paid for.

People are very welcoming and even customers proposed to assist me and shopkeepers not speaking English. Many people where genuinely interested in knowing where I came from, what I wanted to find, etc.

Speaking of bargains, I saw a few things that could interest Minolta and Sony DSLR lovers like me: The last 3 floors host a large number of second-hand shops of relatively good quality. Plenty of equipment from all the brands you could expect and a few more… Examples of Minolta second hand lenses:

• Minolta Apo G 300mm/2.8 for 17,500 RMB, including the original hard box and in good condition (a fair bargain if you don’t count VAT)
• Minolta Apo G 600mm/4 for 38,000 RMB, without the original hard box, but in perfect condition (60% of normal eBay price, plus VAT. A great bargain for a several kilos of glass and metal)
• Minolta 1.4x converter for 1,800 RMB, like new (a fair price)
• Sony 2x converter for 3,200 RMB (not so great, even for a near perfect piece)

So, you can dig and find a few good things. Or you can run for the shops specializing in lighting equipment (fourth floor). Or you can look for the designer’s Leica shop on the last floor. Or you can shop around for a half-priced tripod (all brands are available plus a few good local copies).

Conclusion, for now

Shanghai is a neat place to be if you love big cities and skyscrappers. Tourism is quite pleasant there and hundreds of thousands of expatriates (and more tourists from all over the world) have made the local people really welcoming.

Click on the thumbnails if you want to access the larger versions

Like all Internet reviewers, I hate this title because of the strain it puts on the writer just to put the name down on the keyboard. However, it has received a number of reviews. Let’s see some of them:

• JeuxVideoPC.com (screenshots)
• GameSpy (in English)
• CVG (in English)
• EuroGamer first impressions (in English)
• IGN (screenshots)
• Hooked Gamers (in English)
• All trailers
• Guru3D DX10 screenshots
• PCHG DirectX 10 video (Auf Deutsch)

Source: http://www.coreybehnke.com/.

Your hard disk drive is a black box in more meanings than one. Wouldn’t it be pleasant to be able to directly visualize its contents? That is the core of the following proposal: an external hard disc drive whose surface is covered by an OLED screen used to display a treemap contents like it’s done by SequoiaView (see the example here showing the contents of a large disc drive containing hundreds of small files and a few bigger masses).

The display is slightly different, but takes advantage of the same principles and gives you a direct perception of the internal status of your storage media. It reminded me (in a more practical way) the slightly silly proposal I saw a few weeks ago, of a USB key chain that would physically inflate as you fill it with data.

Source: TUE.nl.

Canon has been a major manufacturer of photo cameras for many years. Is this worth a museum? I don’t know but they decided that they could not wait for somebody else to build it. Canon opened an online virtual museum of its cameras: the Canon camera museum.

The Camera Hall is a database of historical facts about Canon film cameras, digital cameras, digital camcorders, still video cameras and lenses.

In the Design Hall, rediscover the visual appeal of Canon many products through the years.

The Technology Hall explains the many advanced technologies incorporated into Canon cameras and takes you on a tour through a virtual lens plant.

And the History Hall introduces historical facts about Canon cameras and the technologies that have gone into them.

Specially for graphics designers, for those who cannot stop seeing the word in Pantone colors, W2 Products designed coffee mugs branded by Pantone.

Out of stock already.