(From the Wall Street Journal) - At the D&G runway show in Milan last week, the chief executives of Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman were relegated to second-row and third-row seats. In front of them, sitting primly in the first row, was Federico Marchetti, chief executive of online retailer Yoox.com . The moment—coming as the super-sexy women's styles for next spring pranced down Milan's runways—marked a shake-up in an ultra-hierarchical world. The privileged treatment of a digital-media figure showed that luxury fashion is ready to introduce styles to the public in new ways—new, at least, to this old-fashioned industry. More »

This morning I came across a really fascinating article covering the debate over inexpensive online logo & "branding" companies by Doug Bartow (id29) via the Under Consideration design discussion blog Speak Up.

It highlights the ongoing debate of accessibility of design for all (income brackets) versus "...the devaluation of the design process altogether, particularly in brand development and identity design, which many consider the pinnacle of our field." – by cheapening the proverbial playing field.

In his field study of this issue, Doug commissions 4 different online companies to come up with logo options for a fictitious project and then analyzes and critiques the results. It is a good exploration of what you really get from these types of logo chop shops.

The Challenge: Hire four online logo design companies, give them the same visual identity problem to solve, then critique the results.

Take a look here.

Rumor has it there are people out there in Internetland that subscribe to several social networks/microblogging platforms. As a confirmed and (varyingly) active member of (ready for it?) Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Plurk, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Pownce, hi5, and Plaxo (phew!) myself, I've often been hit with the annoying inevitability of having to update my status up to 9 times over and simultaneously lead a life outside of the Internet! Sound familiar? Enter hellotxt. Super simple in concept, the site allows you to easily update your status (and check the status of your friends) on 24 different Social Networks and microblogging platforms. Being active and alive online just got that much easier. Check it out here.

In honor of its 75th anniversary this year, Esquire magazine will be publishing a cover incorporating flashing text designed by MA-based company E Ink (whose technology is also applied in Amazon.com's reading device, Kindle). The text, which reads "the 21st Century Begins Now," will lose juice and stop blinking after 90 days.

“I hope it will be in the Smithsonian,” said David Granger, Esquire’s editor in chief,..."The possibilities of print have just begun. In two years, I hope this looks like cellphones did in 1982, or car phones.”

Read more about it in the New York Times here.

Pink may or may not be the new black, but [I'm hoping that] Plurk may, in fact, be the new Twitter. Taking Tweeting up a few notches, Plurk displays your Plurks (140-character messages), as well as the Plurks from your friends and those you follow, in a really great visual timeline, taking status/Twitter stalking up to a whole new level. It also allows you to formulate your message with a variety of qualifiers (allowing others to see what you need, like, say, wonder, feel, etc.) at any given time (don't worry, there's also the option for the freestyle Plurk for you more free spirited folks out there). With an overall better design and layout, and a little bit more of a fun factor, I'm hoping Plurk will catch on over Twitter. I'm definitely a convert. Now if only I can figure out a way to integrate this with my Tumblr...hm...

Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit, gives a great 3-minute rundown on the power of social media. Check it out at TED here.

Last week the Altimeter Group and Wetpaint released a study that analyzed the 100 most valuable brands (according to BusinessWeek/Interbrand) and how they engage across 11 different online social-media venues. The result of the study was published as  "engagement database" that critiqued the brands on not only their breadth of engagement across these channels, but also their depth, such as whether they reply to comments made on blog posts. Each brand was given a numerical score. The top 10 ENGAGEMENTdb brands with their scores are:

1. Starbucks (127)
2. Dell (123)
3. eBay (115)
4. Google (105)
5. Microsoft (103)
6. Thomson Reuters (101)
7. Nike (100)
8. Amazon (88)
9. SAP (86)
10. Tie - Yahoo!/Intel (85)

The full report is available at http://bit.ly/KRGNt. Personally, it's questionable to assume that  a company's social engagement can be correlated with its financial performance.   But, in Steve Rubel's words "good use of social media could be seen as a proxy for an innovative culture, eagerness to engage with consumers and take risks, a net positive for any business." Much more interesting then this is however to take a look at what the social media strategy of those brands have in common: All top brands weren't afraid of innovation, did so early, often (also after set-backs) and incrementally:

• Starbucks and Dell were early to leverage their fans for corporate crowd-sourcing.
• With Nikeplus.com, Nike was early in the game to use an innovative technology in order to connect its worldwide fan base in early 2006.
• Quite a few of the top 10 brands embraced Twitter early and in innovative ways. Amazon started offering deals on Twitter back in 2007 and EBay started to live-tweet earnings in 2008.
• Microsoft encouraged their employees to blog as early as in the late 1990. Yahoo and Google started and actively promoted their corporate and product blogs in 2004
• Other top brands were building out communities to connect customers and employees early on. Microsoft, for example, launched its inventive Channel 9 platform for developers back in 2004

Ok - these photos totally blew my mind when I first saw them. Smashing Magazine has put together a phenomenal gallery of examples of tilt shift photography (a photography technique where real objects look like miniatures). A few of my favorites are below (especially the Grand Central one - my favorite building in NYC!).

...you get the Most Innovative Celebrities in Digital Media, or, the Econoclast10.

We hear a lot about how the communications community is changing and we see more and more interactive applications, streaming media and social interactions, but services that specialize in entertainment seem to grow faster than the sector as a whole. This growth is definitely led by online video, but it isn't just about watching. Users now want to interact with video. Check out "BigStage". BigStage's software was originally funded by the CIA, which wanted 3-D computer models of suspects' faces to match against images in a database. The company's commercial customers take three digital pictures of themselves and upload them to BigStage's servers, and in about 50 seconds, they have a digital avatar that they can insert into videos or photos. Users will be able to post the ­videos to their ­Facebook pages or e-mail them to friends; eventually, they should also be able to purchase brand-name virtual accessories for their digital selves.

According to a new Nielsen Online report (and reported here by Wired), Twitter users have shot up 343% since September 2007 - making it the fastest growing social network in the United States. In growth rates, behind Twitter came Tagged.com and Ning. While Facebook has experienced a 116% growth since last year, MySpace still rules with themost members (59.4 million in September, compared to 39 million for Facebook), despite it's measly 1% jump from last year. See more on the Nielson Online report here.