Just Plain Smart Targeting

Well done Canadian Tire.

Yawn....Cannes already...who cares

Is there something wrong with me? Honestly, I could care less about Cannes, the hype, even most of the creative.

No one outside of our industry gives a shit, but to us this week means the world. Careers are defined, egos inflated, worldwide networks celebrated and a couple small little shops with a name like Cocktail Shrimp or Righteous Tide are given the green light to be seen as the next hotspots for boutique creative.

What a waste of time. Honestly, Cannes should happen every 4 years (like the Olympics) but unlike the Olympics there should only be one winner per category. That would make it worth paying attention to.

At the same time, I do wish I was there.....

PicLens - A New Way to Browse

After reading The Economist last night, I found a cool article called "Rummaging through the internet." The article was dedicated to the new systems that have been developed to surf the web easier and faster.

Two that I downloaded tonight, Hyperwords and PicLens, have already changed the way I browse. Hyperwords is program that allows you to take a single webpage and make it dynamic. Imagine the ability to select any word on a page, highlight it, search it on Google, blog it or post it anywhere. With Hyperwords, you can instantly and easily. No longer do you have to go to Google to find out a term, you can simply highlight it and find it.

My new favorite, though, is PicLens. I've always found "Next" buttons in sites annoying. Whenever I'm cruising Facebook, YouTube, MySpace or Flickr, I hate being restricted to the photo sizes and the "next" button. I want to view the whole album, or all my search results, on one screen. And I want the ability to search through them instantly and seamlessly.

PicLens gives me that ability. In less than 3 minutes, it was installed on my browser and I was viewing hundreds of Facebook pictures on one screen. I searched "Steve Colbert" on YouTube and every video on the site came up. One click and I'm watching a video, another and I'm onto the next.

The real power of PicLens though is its "Discovery" section. This is where you can browse the news, sports, business and everything going on the web easily and quickly. You can even install the app to your webpage or RSS feed. It will make it better, I promise.

If you want to see where the web is going, download this app now.