Reinventing the clock

Think you've seen all the clocks there are to see? Mickey mouse, cat tail pendulum clock, binary, unary, etc...?

http://www.uniqlo.jp/uniqlock/

http://www.simonheys.com/

http://www.christiaanpostma.nl/clock_3.htm

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/04/11/Worlds_coolest_clock/1

http://www.curbly.com/DIY-Maven/posts/5591-Totally-DIYable-Chalkboard-Clock-

Man, now I want to make one too!

answers.yahoo.com

I am under the impression that there are MORE products that people care about than people who care enough to review products (professionally). Example: I want to know how the PERFORMANCE of an AMD 4450e compares to the older AMD 6000+ (which has the higher product number). Should I trust the product number? Yes in that case, but how do I compare an ATI 3870 vs an ATI 4670?

When product-line-explosion creates review problems you basically have to go to a forum, Amazon customer reviews, or something like answers.yahoo.com. Still, I find many questions unanswered. Maybe there is still a need to just go into a store and ask for some advice (if only the associates where helpful and unbiased).

Anyway, I found it amusing that people use answers.yahoo.com to answer HotOrNot-like questions:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AmHWfryoIcwqCrVw05k8OCQSxgt.;_ylv=3?qid=20081213163120AACAgkV

GM + ads + guitar

My co-advisor and officemates had a lengthy, multi-part debate Friday about GM, the bailout, the environment, and ads.

Btw, I also got a guitar on Friday.

Anyway, the thought that came to mind is that GM's commercial during the '08 Olympics were great. This despite the fact that it didn't make me want to buy a GM car. What it did make me want to buy was a Brandi Carlile CD (the ad used her song "The Story"). I saw a similar pattern in 2007, where an Old Navy ad had a catchy song that I wanted to buy, but I had no immediate interest in the sweaters they were selling.

Ads these days actually promote more than one product and more than one brand. I wonder if they ever pool money together and share the cost of the ad instead of having one party pay the other to license their work. I guess the common case is General Megacorp + Starving Musician. In the past it was harder to Joe S. to identify Starving Musician from the ad and purchase a CD. These days, you can just do a Google search. I don't know if it makes sense for GM to pay SM when SM didn't even need to customize the work for the ad.

Anyway it probably doesn't matter (peanuts compared to, say, $14 billion dollars).