Most useful feature, ever: GMail Undo Send E-mail

How often did you regret sending that e-mail that you wrote to someone in a fit of rage, or where you accidentally cc’d someone that shouldn’t see what you really think about them? It has happened to all of us.

Well, you now have 5 seconds to undo your possibly career-killing e-mails when you use Gmail.

After enabling the feature, Undo Send works much like Gmail’s other “undo” features. When you send an email, you get a message confirming it has been sent, along with a link to “Undo.” This message lasts for 5 seconds, at which point you lose the opportunity to take it back.
While that might not be much time, it’s probably enough to pull back emails where you forget an attachment, forget to cc someone, or catch an obvious typo. As for emails you later wish you hadn’t sent because of the content, Gmail still can’t help you there.

Via Mashable

Earth Hour: Switch off your lights for earth

To raise awareness, in 2007, our Leo Burnett colleagues in Sydney came up with Earth Hour, getting local government, the press and the residents and businesses of Sydney to switch off the lights for 1 hour. Because great ideas are worth repeating, 2009 will hopefully see another earth hour. By now, the concept has been exported to a whole bunch of other cities, and we hope that it catches on in Europe too.

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Benjamin Button and Viagra

Just found this beautiful spot by Z Mexico, which is a great example of how cinematic ideas can inspire ad campaigns. Highly reminiscent of Benjamin Button, the Viagra couple becomes younger, instread of older. A simple communication idea, beautifully executed.

Thanks to Florian for the link!

Ego-branding benchmarks: Will strip for Penthouse if 100K people join my facebook group

Today, I was one of the last 10,000 people to be invited to join a group on facebook which has a sole topic: the lady who started the group will take off her clothes for Penthouse if she gets more than 100,000 followers.

It’s a pretty straightforward strategy of the “Lonelygirl” variety:  use combination of social media plus male insight (in this case: i don’t care if I am being used to make someone else famous, as long as she takes her clothes off). That’s the oldest value propositions in the book. Still, it’s a pretty cheap and effective way to raise awareness for your career as a model, or actually to raise awareness for Penthouse (or whoever is behind it).

Homelessness Crisis in the UK by Radiohead and Leo Burnett UK

Using Wii remotes to do, like, awesome stuff

I’ve been watching Johnny Lee for a while on youtube. Now this stuff might be inspiring only to the techy readers of this blog, but I certainly dig it quite a lot because it gives you a source for an number of new ideas of what you can do technology.

Johnny shares practical and prototypical ideas and uses of standard Consumer Electronic equipment, for free for everyone to innovate with. Here are three examples of him using the Nintendo Wii remote to do new things.

Johnny, you rock!

Classical Music in the digital space: Symphony Orchestras on YouTube

Someone had a great idea. Take the most famous Orchestras in the world and have a worldwide competition of musicians on YouTube, where people vote for the musicians who should play a finale at Carnegie Hall.

http://www.youtube.com/symphony

NY Times Twitter Superbowl Timeline

NY Times Twitter Superbowl Timeline was a pretty cool idea showing what people twitter from what part of the country at what time during the game.

Apart from the fact that it is just a cool simple idea, it is interesting to see a whole country’s public consciousness on display over a live event. At the same time, it’s a bit scary to see a big nation being this synchronous in a medium that is all about variety and heterogenity.

Also interesting: check out the seperate timeline for which ads got the most feedback on twitter during commercial breaks.

Via Gerald’s Facebook Updates

Augmented Reality that makes sense

Augmented Reality has been discussed for a while, but it not until now that practical application are slowly hitting the mainstream of brand communications. Costs have sunk, processor speed has gone up and applications have been written that makes it a possibility for everyone to try out.

However, application of AR are often for the sake of using the technology and not so much driven by real utility that improves or literally augments people’s experiences. Here is a good case from Lego that actually makes a lot of sense: you can see the assembled toy truck by holding only its packaging up against the camera.

Via Notcot

Yes, MINI can.

My buddies over at Kreative Konzeption, who are behind the minispace.com site pulled a nice one: with their campaign claim “Creative Use of Space,” which has been running primarily in the digital space and initiates and supports collaborative design/architecture efforts all over the world, is a participative design platform that has garnered celeb appearances in the past, but mainly for the partying part. Now Minispace got coverage for a surprise visit by Obama to one of the design projects: a DC homeless shelter project.

Check out Minispace. It’s a great case study for any brand wanting to engage in acts, not ads. It redefines what brands have to do in the future in order to exist with a human reason for being.

http://www.minispace.com/en_us/article/hwkn-and-obama/181/