A dose of inspiration: TEDxGreenville

Friday, we took a day away from the grind to join some of Greenville's finest at TEDxGreenville. TED is a California event (short for Technology, Entertainment, Design) that brings together creative thinkers to present "Ideas worth spreading." TEDx events are organized independently in the same spirit.

TEDxGreenville was an engaging, fast-paced and thought-provoking collection of 29 local designers, entrepreneurs, entertainers and original TED videos to give us all food for thought.

Some highlights included:

How Christian Long saw unconvential classroom design bring out the best in a group of young students
Some sassy flamenco foot stomping seldom seen at the 10am hour
Jim De Piante's account of the obstacles IBM overcame to make WATSON a worthy adversary on Jeopardy (who knew three years ago that WATSON was the underdog)
Gripping poetry enactments about the pain and determination of two women by Say What and Say Word poetry slam teams
A must-see video of how Salman Khan is reinventing education
A tear-jerker from Shannon Pierce, who shared how pain was the mother of her invention
Some introspection as kART Across America asked us, "What is your art?"
A glimpse at Alex Bogusky's interesting, if ambiguous, COMMON project - an effort to create a capitalist utopia that gives new product ideas a leg up
And the wry and witty Phil Yanov punctuated the presentations as master of ceremonies.

Great job, Greenville team. Presentations were top-line enough to be engaging, keep the day moving and foster questions and conversation during the sunshiney, riverside break time.

If you want some food for thought and unique entertainment too, check out a TEDx in your area!

Forget flying cars. All we need is glass. [video]

This Corning concept video caught our eye over the weekend. Have you seen it? (It has over 7 million YouTube views - not bad considering it's over 5 and half minutes long).

Corning's "A day made of glass... made possible by Corning" shows a day in the life of a family surrounded by smart glass interaction. It's visibly "the future" - and it's a future SLANT would love to see.

What caught our eye was the extent and connectivity of the graphic user interfaces within our most routine daily activities. Not only does everything look easy to use, but it just looks plain cool! And when your product is just a slab of (pretty awesome) glass, your customer's experience is going to be entirely defined by its user interface.

This is exactly what we meant in our GUI video when we said good GUI design isn't just a product feature - "in some cases [graphic user interfaces] are going to define products in a new way."

Deal deluge: Coupon etiquette for customers and businesses

Just one of many online deal companies.Who else is loving this new world of value? With daily and weekly online deals and coupons, we barely have to pay full price for anything anymore... besides gas. If we want these coupons to stick around for the long term, we all need to practice coupon etiquette - businesses and customers alike.

For businesses

Offering a deal has many benefits, but bringing in new customers without being prepared can backfire. Deal sites offer great tips - here are a few more to ensure your customers get a good deal and a great experience:

Come on y'all, let's take a ride

(Opening lyrics to Coolio's Fantastic Voyage - for those of you who missed the 90s)

Have you noticed the trend in fantasy-themed commercials? Here are just a few to prove our point.

The most elaborate example is Kia's "One Epic Ride" commercial from this year's Super Bowl:

Kicking the tires on Quora. Glorified message board?

This Chevy Nova grill is more interesting than a screenshot of the Quora websiteIf you've been keeping up with TechCrunch, Robert Scoble and other tech/social news in the past few weeks, you've probably heard a bit about Quora.com. SLANT took a tour to see what all the fuss was about.

What is Quora?

It's a social forum where registered users can ask questions and provide answers. Wikipedia does this, but it has a relatively small pool of contributors. With Quora, you're welcome to provide an objective answer, but Quora acknowledges that answers provided by the community may be biased, and they're ok with that. Just follow their three basic principles - embrace Quora as a forum of people who want to learn, contributors should "be nice" and whatever your answer or opinion, just explain why.

Got it? Good. So how does it work? Easy – just type a question in the toolbar and submit.

SLANT's Random Best of 2010

Wow, another year is ending. That calls for a list. But instead of listing our top 10 projects or ads or awards, here's a bunch of stuff that made SLANT smile in 2010 (besides the obvious "Bed Intruder" and "Double Rainbow" vids).

10. This non-sequitur email from a client. Does anyone know where to find fake kiwis?

Hi: I wanted to mention. You guys should be eating properly. Make sure to have some orange juice, kiwis (real ones), and at least some broccoli tomorrow. Soy milk also. Try to make sure it's all organic.

9. Seeing one of the actresses from our Philips campaign on the homepage of www.Maxim.com. Work it!

8. The three weeks of scraping, pounding and arms reaching in our windows as our building was repainted.

SLANT thinks big at ThinkTec

We may have mentioned that we're idea people (if you've ever sat around having a beer with us, you'd know that). And lucky us, there's an annual New Ideas SC business ideas contest every year, sponsored by SC Launch.

Perfect outlet for stuff you just think up, right?

SLANT submitted an idea for a radio frequency identification (RFID for short) child lock system. We were one of ten finalists in the Engineering category of ideas statewide. As a finalist, we were invited to attend ThinkTec 2010 right in our own backyard at good ol'... er, good new Memminger auditorium.

While we didn't pull in the win for our category, we did get to enjoy really compelling speakers, see some really impressive and innovative ideas from other businesses in South Carolina, and eat lots of really good food. Can't really beat that. So be sure to go to ThinkTec next year - you'll thank us.

Want to hear more about our RFID idea - or just want us to think up new and creative stuff for you? Then inquire within. And by within, we mean via email at projects (at) slantmedia (dot) net or call us at (843) 722-2221.

How We Spent Our Summer at SLANT

From left to right - Lauren, Will, Christopher and Megan (OK, not really. This is on-set for a shoot we did for Philips Electronics, N.A.)

Haven't heard enough about us over the summer? We understand. Let's catch up, shall we?

So...Christopher got locked up for MDA, Will found his inner marketer, Lauren furthered her clinical research on imperial brews, Megan channelled some aggression through a pair of skates & a mean elbow, and SLANT interns Duncan & Connor survived (relatively) unharmed. (A screenplay for Duncan's iPhone saga is currently in the works).

When Will first joined SLANT, Christopher promised him "fame & fortune". He's still waiting on the fortune but enjoyed several moments in the spotlight this Summer. Via a brilliant social media campaign, he was voted as one of the AMA's top 5 Charleston marketers of the year. The Charleston chapter of Architecture for Humanities asked Will to emcee their "20on20" version of Pecha Kucha that featured 7 presentations by some of the area's most talented architects & designers. Sadly, all of this extracurricular work derailed Will's audition plans for "Dancing With the Stars".

In the area of "real work", SLANT is preparing to launch a marketing campaign for Philips Electronics, N.A. that involved, among other things, creating a series of videos shot here in Charleston. You'll hear more about this in the next few weeks.... stay tuned!

Our continued SEO/SEM work on behalf of Dolphin Architects & Builders earned SLANT an American Marketing Association Spark award in the Firecracker category.

We're also in the throes of product branding and development with Rush3 Product Design Studio - one of those fun, creative, inspiring projects that makes it fun to come to work - and drink beer during meetings.

And, at the end of the summer we can now consider ourselves experts in catastrophic subterranean shelters, art deco styles of the 1930s, the simple elegance of the black and white ad, and the enigmatic nature of Canadian business models. Well, we're still kinda stumped on that last one, but the point is that we've learned a lot.

So yeah - despite this miserable "economic climate", SLANT is staying busy and we are looking forward to an even more exciting and productive year-end! We'll keep you posted.

Not News: iPhone 4 Drops Calls. News: I think I know why...

Pretty. Dropped calls? Not so pretty.I'm struggling with a love/hate relationship with my new Apple iPhone 4. See...it's pretty. Really pretty. But making calls, that's not working out so well. You've probably heard of the signal strength woes when you hold the phone a certain way. But that's easily fixed: get a case or hold the phone differently. I'm actually ok with this issue.

What I'm not ok with is the call dropping issue. And I'm starting to think it may not be the antennas at all.

Since I started counting, I'm averaging 8 out of 10 calls just completely cutting off. But I noticed I'm not getting the "Call Failed" screen you normally see when the call...you know, FAILS. I've also noticed that my cheek has hit the mute button a couple of times during a call. The screen is supposed to be off when it's smushed against your face to keep you from pressing buttons.

So this leads to my theory that it's actually a faulty proximity sensor (which some people have already noted, having issues with screens not turning off in general) causing the dropped calls. A bad proximity sensor could keep the screen from turning off (or staying off) during a call. Of course, when the screen is on, the buttons are on and your face becomes a giant finger...capable of hitting the "END" button and killing a call. Which would also explain the mysterious absence of the "Call Failed" screen.

I wanted to document my brilliance in case it turns out to be true.

News Alert: SLANT employee is Mayor of Starbucks (239 King St.) and proves Foursquare IS valuable!

So get this. The SLANT team all got a hankerin' for some coffee around 3:30, so we took a break, braved the heat and headed down to Starbucks. The one on King Street. No, not that one - the other one.

While standing in line behind other caffeine-deprived patrons, SLANT Art Director, Will Bullock, pulled out his iPhone and checked in on Foursquare - as he is known to do. Then he was all, "Hey guys, I'm Mayor!"

Will Bullock, 239 King Street Starbucks Mayor (06.16.10)I know. Big deal - right? I mean, my Mayorships have dwindled to four (I keep telling myself quality over quantity, Al Di La is more important than the gas station up the street) but I do get a kick out of getting that message.

It gets better. Wait for it...

This Starbucks has a MAYOR OFFER.

It kinda brings a tear to the eye that a big corporation rewards a $500/month coffee habit with a $1 off coupon, one person at a time.

So what if the baristas were slightly confused as Will displayed his mobile coupon and proof of mayorship. They pulled through and Mayor Bullock got his discount. And then bought the rest of us drinks to celebrate, which kinda defeats the purpose of a discount... but who am I to say no to free coffee?

Seriously, thanks Foursquare and Starbucks. You made at least one Mayor genuinely happy. People, look for a Foursquare Mayor Offer near you.

Congrats Will - long live the Mayor!

Update on 2010-06-17 14:33 by Lauren

Ooh, Sports Authority is bringin' it:

Mayors of Sports Authority Get $10 Cash Cards on Foursquare