Denuo - denuology.com

Twitter and pro sports have had a tumultuous love affair.  On one hand, leagues have benefitted from players and fans connecting directly.  On the other hand, Larry Johnson.

At one point in 2009, it looked like Twitter and professional sports would never get along.  Teams and media properties were heavily regulating content of tweets or banning it altogether.

Thankfully, we’re to a point now where enough people in decision-making positions understand how Twitter works.  Teams are able to give players social media training.  They have gone from blanket banning to friendly warning if a player gets a little liberal with their tweets.  The change has been great for fans as we can get news and insider views like no other generation of sports fan before us.

Tonight will hopefully be the next step in the evolution of how we view sports.

Is it possible that crowdsourcing has become even trendier since we last spoke?  In just the past six weeks, we’ve seen everyone from bands, non-profit organizations, premium liquors, and auto manufacturers turn to the crowds for assistance.  I’m scared to blink, for fear of missing the newest collaboration between a brand and their consumers.  But for all of the hype, there is a level of redundancy to nearly every project announced.  Despite the subtle twists, there is a common thread: a distinct focus on advertising.

There’s a lot of data out there about us. In fact, it’s easy to forget just how much information various companies and organizations (and the Internet in general) know about us. The first page of Reflecteur this week looks at the ways two separate sites used infographics to display a huge amount of information with very different results:

* Where Americans are Moving looks at 2008 IRS data to map county to county moves. It’s your one stop shop to US migratory information and it only takes a few minutes of playing with the maps to realize that there are a lot of stories hidden within this data. Just click on ‘Detroit’.
* Watch a Phone Company Stalk a Customer is, not surprisingly based on the title, far more disturbing. This site maps, via a video, all of the data a phone company in Germany gathered on one of their customers over 6 months. It seems more spy movie thriller than real life.

Travel over to Page 2 for a bit more fun:

Page one features 2 reinventions:

* In an interesting twist to the reimagining world theme we often discuss, Picture Cook takes the stuffy old recipe format and redesigns it with a focus on experimentation. Even if you’re more into the cut-and-dry recipe format, these flowchart-like versions of recipes will look great on your kitchen wall.

* Travel Time Tube reworks the classic London Tube map. A fixture in the design world, this site completely changes the focus of the map from relation to time. Put in two stations and watch it change forms based on routes that take the longest.

Page two looks at two captivating photo collections:

* Ghana- The Electronic Dumping Ground of the World highlights the dark side of technology and electronics. Perhaps the ‘new gadget smell’ isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be?

* Finally, we get a glimpse of a somewhat odd underworld in Taryn Smith’s Contraband. These images showcase 1,000 various items confiscated at JFK airport in New York. Some items make sense, but some…. well you just need to see them to believe it.

Download issue 80 of Reflecteur here!

Greetings, fellow marketers. It’s me. Benny. I come bearing a simple request from the Game Developers Conference. Play deliberately. In your daily life, realize when you are playing something. Then, pay attention to why and how you’re playing what you’re playing.

It can be anything. Texas Hold ‘em with your buddies. Monopoly with the family. Angry Birds on your phone. Call of Duty: Black Ops against your brother from Toadsuck, AR. Just play and pay attention to why and how you are playing. It’s really that simple. The why and how of this simple request are just a click away. If you’d love to read, mosey on down.