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Hey, that’s a catchy headline….let’s make it a T-Shirt

Posted May 12, 2008 by Richard Mullins

Updated May 19, 2008 at 10:20 AM

CNN this month fired up a beta test on a nifty new service – making headlines into T-shirts. (A third party company, American Apparel, makes the shirts.) Looks like some automatic software is at work
at CNN, because some of the headlines make for weird, weird shirts. But if you’re in the giving mood, our birthday here at Life 2.0 is coming right up.
“Skimpy prom dress lands teen in cuffs.”
“Oops! Dad gives boy, 7, booze at game.”
“Babes seek farmers who love mud”
“Army barracks aswim in feces, ickiness”

Bonus points to CNN for the little-used word “aswim.”

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They’re “Real women” just ….you know …. Photoshopped.

Posted May 9, 2008 by Richard Mullins

Updated May 12, 2008 at 01:46 PM

Remember when Dove got kudos for featuring “real women” in their commercials – you know – actual, non-supermodel humans.

Oops.

Turns out those real women may have been digitally “improved” a bit. The New Yorker has a recent feature piece on Pascal Dangin, “the premier retoucher of fashion photographs.” In it, Dangin says he fixed some items on Dove’s “real” women. To quote Dangin in the New Yorker: “it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.”

BACKPEDAL ALERT: As of Monday, several companies issuing statements disavowing the New Yorker article, including the advertising agency (Ogilvy), Dove, the photographer (Annie Leibovitz) and their dogs too. The retouching artist Dangin issued a statement “My quotes have been taken out of context and my role with Dove misconstrued.” He now says he was only hired to “to remove dust and do color correction.”

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TiVO = More TV

Posted May 9, 2008 by Richard Mullins

Updated May 9, 2008 at 04:19 PM

People say they watch less TV once they got TiVo or other DVR doodad. Good for them, I guess.

But turns out most people end up watching more TV when they spring for a DVR, not less.

Ratings guru Nielsen, who knows a thing or two about TV watching, crunched some numbers from actual TV set-top box data and found TV viewing rose 3 percent at 9 p.m. and five percent at 11 p.m.  (Yes, your cable box probably records every click of your remote control.) That might not sound like a huge increase, but consider that people already watch about 5-6 hours a day.

Other fun stuff Nielsen found:
—The heaviest DVR time shifters are middle-income women, 18-49 who recorded about half the TV they watch. Hooray for HGTV and FoodNetwork.
—People pulling down $100k paychecks shift the least, just 10 percent, but they almost all have HDTV, so it looks real nice when they do.

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Ring, ring. That’s the Commander in Chief Calling you.

Posted May 9, 2008 by Richard Mullins

Updated May 9, 2008 at 04:06 PM

Sure you can vote in November. But why wait to get a ringtone from a future Commander in Chief.

Barak Obama’s campaign appears the hippest to the cellular set, with more than a dozen customized ringtones   from speeches or recorded by B. himself, including rap, club and bluegrass clips, and a Plain Jane recording of him saying “This is Barak Obama. It’s time to change America and answer the call. (Get it? “Answer the call.” )

Hillary Clinton doesn’t seem to have her own ringtones on her website. (Correct us if she does) But lots of other people do. Here’s one from myxertones.com, with her saying “I want you Barak Obama.” (Funny, taken out of context.) Slate.com has one of her laughing  rather awkwardly. Ok, really awkwardly.

Quotones.com has a half dozen John McCain ringtones with quotes about staying in Iraq 100 years, getting the “Guatemalans off his lawn” and a joking that he missed parties in the 1960s because he was “tied up at the time.”

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