SensoryMetrics

If organic carrots are good for you, this must be better!

The micro-brew industry has had a lot of ups and downs in the past few decades: intense consolidation and killer-legislation. As with all types of products on the long tail, producers can offer innovative products to a mass of consumers, without the costs and logistics of channel development. Same goes for beer. Organic beer seems to be taking advantage of that trend.

A great example of Long-Tail-Beer is Beau’s Brewery – a family operation out of Vankleek Hill, Ontario (near Ottawa). The power of the web and the public’s thirst for local / organic products works for them.

The scarcity of the product works against them (and for them!…). Luckily, today I found myself a bottle of Lug-Tread! This is fantastic packaging – a beautiful ceramic bottle. No light pollution here! I’m trying to see through the bottle here….

and the beer? My bottle came out of the Beau assembly line on April 27… assembled by hand by the family. It was still boxed up on the floor of the LCBO. It’s fresh and great tasting.

Tuesday night’s taste test: a great product, super marketing!

Popularity: 23%

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Business, Long Tail, Media, User Experience Beau's-Beer, packaging

The CanAm Baseball League announced a new team for Ottawa this winter. They featured a great logo, incorporating Ottawa’s whitewater river. The name was also appealing in both of Canada’s official languages: french and english (featured below).

It came as a surprise this week that before the team had even played a single game, it was already sold. The buyers are the founding members of Zip.ca, a Canadian version of Netflix. Ok… You’d think they’d have better business sense. To match their business’ cozzzy “z” name they switched the team’s name to the unilingual rapidz (in french, the plural “s” is silent). Because nearly half of the Ottawa region’s population is french, they’re missing out on a huge addressable market. This is especially important for sports merchandising.

To add more insult to injury, the Rapidz logo was transformed to a cheap cheesy “welcome to Canada’s capital” souvenir-style brand. That’s all the tacky made-in-China branded crap that tourists buy when shopping on Sparks Street (shown on right).

I do wish success to the team. We have a great stadium. Hopefully this season won’t become the baseball snozzzefest that the previous team had become. Go Rapidzzz, go. er… Rapidz!

Popularity: 22%

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Business, Events, User Experience Branding, logo-pitfalls, Rapides, Rapids, Rapidz

When designing new corporate logos, it’s wise to see what the thing looks like from different angles. Such diligence was missed by The UK Office of Government Commerce when they unveiled their new logo this week. According to the OGC

The new identity has been extremely well received, as it presents a very clean, uncluttered and modern identity…and is not inappropriate to an organisation that’s looking to have a firm grip on government spend!

The Register reports that the logo will look especially “nice” when place on mousepads with this lovely sideways orientation.

What does Frosty the Snowman think about all this?

Thumpetty thump thump,
Thumpety thump thump,
Look at Frosty go.
Thumpetty thump thump,
Thumpety thump thump,

Gotta love those Brits, huh?

Popularity: 17%

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Business, User Experience Frosty, logos, OGC

A few days ago I stopped by Walmart to buy some pool chemicals. I also picked up some bacon… Being in a rush I checked out using one of the self-serve stations. I bagged my jugs of chemicals, and bagged my bacon in a separate bag. After paying the friendly robot, I grabbed the bags and left. At home I realized I forgot my bacon… my forgotten, woeful bacon. The next day I dropped by again (you guessed it) to buy some more bacon. Half-jokingly I asked the friendly lost & found attendant if anyone had returned my lost bacon. Her response – yes they had my bacon, but suggested that I grab a fresh pack since they didn’t how long mine had been abandoned.

kudos to Walmart staff, and boos to Walmart robots. Since these robots are equipped with sensors to ensure you’re scanning and bagging accurately, they should sound an alarm if you walk away leaving a bag.

Speaking of bacon, and following a previous theme of meat flavoured drinks… Diet Coke with Bacon comes to us via Land’o'Lulu

Popularity: 19%

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Business, Long Tail, Usability, Web 3.0 bacon-coke, selfserve-checkout, walmart

For our Ottawa readers: SM friend Ian Graham has confirmed that the next Ottawa DemoCamp will be held on Monday May 26. Unfortunately, our cherished Clock Tower Pub is now too small to hold the growing mass of participants. So DemoCamp is effectively homeless for the time being!

I suggest that attendees arrive an hour early and we’ll build ourselves a traditional nomadic building on the lawn of the Museum of Civilization! Please state your hut preference on the DemoCamp wiki: High Altai, Yurte, Ger, Tshum or Summerhouse. Architectural plans available here .

UPDATE: No need to drag along those sticks and sheepskins… DC9 is now booked for The Velvet Room (69.5 York Street in the market)… This is going to be a pretty swanky camp!

Popularity: 21%

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Events, Web 3.0 DemoCamp, Nomadic-buildings

When you’re a pirate, the most dangerous thing out there is other pirates.

Symantec brings us this wonderful story on their blog: the Russian creators of the “Zeus” or Infostealer.Banker.C. malware are including a license agreement for those who purchase their code. Should you be in violation of this EULA, you’ll lose tech support. Underground malware developers have tech support??? Maybe they’d consider locating their call center in the soon-to-be-vacant Dell center in Ottawa!

Symantec kindly has translated the Zeus license agreement (don’t be gettin’ any ideas now!)

The Client:
1. Does not have the right to distribute the product in any business or commercial purposes not connected with this sale.
2. May not disassemble / study the binary code of the bot builder.
3. Has no right to use the control panel as a means to control other bot nets or use it for any other purpose.
4. Does not have the right to deliberately send any portion of the product to anti-virus companies and other such institutions.
5. Commits to give the seller a fee for any update to the product that is not connected with errors in the work, as well as for adding additional functionality.

In cases of violations of the agreement and being detected, the client loses any technical support. Moreover, the binary code of your bot will be immediately sent to antivirus companies.

Popularity: 19%

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Business, Pirates, Software Infostealer-Banker-C, Symantec, Zeus

Jaro is selling his 1972 Tatra 603. Last weekend I had the opportunity to visit Jaro at his farm and take some photos of this wonderful car while he still has it.

This car was completely restored by a Tatra factory trained technician in Czech Replic in 2002. Since that time, Jaro has driven it regularly here in Canada during the summer time; adding 16K km.

It has a 2.5 liter air cooled V8 engine, with twin carbs, 4-speed column shift transmission, 4 disc brakes. It runs great and the engine has a really nice sound to it. Jaro has really taken good care of this classic car. He’s considering his options for how to best sell the vehicle. Currently he’s thinking about using eBay however I’m not sure if that would be his best option and so I’m looking around for alternatives. Please comment if you have any suggestions on how to best sell such a rare classic car like this.

Jaro has great stories to tell about driving the car and also about having it restored and brought over to Canada. This car really catches your attention and it makes you feel cool driving in it. Fidel Castro is said to have a white T603.

If you are interested buying this Tatra, an appointment can be made to view it. Jaro says he will consider offers over $50K prior to auction. However, as I understand it, the same model was sold a couple of years ago for over $60K and these cars are hard to find, especially in such immaculate condition.

[tags]Tatra,Classic-Car-for-sale,T603,Classic-Communist-Car[/tags]

Popularity: 28%

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User Experience Classic-Car-for-sale, Classic-Communist-Car, T603, Tatra

Of course you may have your own preferences for bottled water. It seems that companies are desperate to find new flavours. Thankfully for the protein-deprived, there’s MeatWater from DinnerInABottle . Choose from these delicious entrees: Beef Jerky, Beef Stroganof, Cheese Burger, Chicken Teriyaki, Dirty Hot Dog, Fish’n Chips, Hungarian Gulash, Italian Sausage, Peking Duck, Tandoori Chicken, Texas BBQ, Wiener Schnitzel. In March they announced a new flavour at a festival in France: Escargots Chantecleer. (but, of course!)

This “you can’t believe everything you read on the web” find via The Dieline

Popularity: 21%

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Business, Innovation, Long Tail, User Experience dinner-in-a-bottle, meatwater

If you’re waking up in either the Netherlands or Holland this morning, you’ll be celebrating Commodore Day. Yep – this is the official day of adulation for the once-proud computer maker. The day is intended to remember Commodore’s glorious past…long before the legal brothels of Amsterdam… you could occupy yourself playing endless rounds of “Samantha Fox’s Strip Poker” or “Maniac Mansion”!.

Unfortunately, it’s been a bad week for Commodore – it’s bankrupt… again. The American computer company first expired in 1994. German company Escom bought the brand, but was then taken over by Holland’s Tulip Computers which re-founded the company in their windmill-ravaged country. In 2004, it sold the company to another Dutch firm, Yeahronimo.

I guess we shouldn’t hold our breath for the release of the next Boulderdash installment!

Popularity: 17%

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Business, Events, Gadgets Commodore, commodore-day, gaming, holland

You don’t ever see it coming… You’ve come to count on a regular dose of insight or humour from your favourite blog… but “in a wordpress minute” the blogger decides to call it quits. At about this time last year Kathy Sierra’s wonderful Creating Passionate Users was frozen in time. The reason (most blog followers will recall) was violent and sexually explicit threats against her.

On Friday, probably the funniest, acerbic, in-your-f*ing-face advertising blog shut down. New York blogger Mark “copyranter” decided that he spent too much time on it. We’ll miss the copyranter very much! No other advertising blog compares.

Meanwhile, other blogs are being recognized by IT World Canada with their “The 10 best technology bloggers in Canada” , including Ottawa’s own Alec Saunders and Michael Geist. Alas… no SensoryMetrics… Maybe we publish too many images of syphilis posters! (BTW, this Long Island health poster suggesting that an STD killed off dinosaurs – was brought to us by Copyranter.)

Popularity: 17%

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Events, Media Copyranter, Kathy-Sierra, top-10-bloggers