According to the book Made To Stick by Chip and Dan Heath there are 6 principles that would cause a product, service, story or campaign to be remembered in the minds of consumers.
They are:
1. Simplicy
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotions
6. Stories
Each is outlined to a satisfactory degree in the book.
Which one(s) is(are) used in this video?
Ok, I’m tired of other people always developing the cool sites for cool stuff. Kinda makes me cranky.
So last night I put a new site together.
It’s called Crranky.
It’s a site for all the cool stuff I like. I’m adding new stuff all the time. Take a looky and check out some Crranky. Cool. Stuff.
Ok, so here ’tis.
I just LOOOVE the illustration! It’s fun, whimsical, and a little snooty. Perfect. I put the illustration in the “App field” with the orange border and the glare. I also changed the color of the Viceroi logo.
I think it all works. What do you think? Any thing I could do differently?
Next time, coding the site.
So, I need a logo for my new iOS app store website viceroi.com.
But I wanted to try something new. Remember the whole crowdsourcing idea?
I know lots of amazing designers. Amazing. I love design and therefore I love designers. I’m trying to turn my daughter into one. Not sure if it will work but I’ll save that for another post.
So instead of calling on one of the amazing designers I know I signed up at 99designs.com.
Pretty cool. Try it sometime.
So to make a long story short. I received almost 200 different designs. Here is the one I picked.
I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. After all I really didn’t have a very clear idea of what I wanted. The thing about 99designs is once you start giving high ratings to a design you like, everyone else just starts making very similar designs. So I really didn’t get to see a lot of variety. But happy nonetheless.
Hmm. After I took possession of my new logo I came up with another idea. I wanted a cool illustration of a “viceroy”. I wanted a fun viceroy character to go with my new logo. But in pursuing this idea, I am now running the risk of having a character logo and a type logo that may not work together.
Yes, it would have been better to have one designer to make both but I didn’t want to do that. I know this very amazing character illustrator that would be perfect for the job.
I’ll show you what he came up with next time.
Continuing my new website idea and development…
So I own a bunch of domain names. At last count about 60 some. Down from 70 some.
(I’m trying to cut down.)
So I was going to use the domain, Top10iOSApps.com for my new site.
Fairly good domain name. Pretty descriptive. Google will like all the keywords in the name, etc.
But I after careful consideration I decided…
It sucked.
Too generic. Not much to wrap a brand around. Never been a big fan of generic or descriptive domain names.
I want something cool.
So I decided on:
VICEROI.COM
What? You no likey? Don’t get it?
K.
I do. For these reasons. It’s a commonly understood word, just spelled differently. The spelling is in fact the REAL way you’re supposed to spell it – if you are olde English. If you google viceroi right now you’ll find it is not a crowded term. It’s unique. It’s not descriptive at all which is helpful in branding because the name can become the meaning of the site. Etc., Etc., Et Cetera.
I like it. Still like it.
So I now need a logo. I will show you next time… 
Continued from my last post I thought I’d start by explaining my idea.
I think it would be cool to have an iOS app store. Yeah, that’s pretty much it.
Here is the business problem. There are too many apps. People are in need of finding a way to find the apps they want.
My site might help.
So not to let the whole cat head of out the bag at once, I’ll leave it at that.
Sure there are lots of App sites out there. Most are terrifically lame. I don’t do lame. I do cool.
Stay tuned.
As I was walking up the driveway to the house after work today, this is what I see on the sidewalk.
How cute is that?
What is it exactly, I don’t know but I like it. It’s beautiful. Has anyone ever in the history of the universe made such an amazing presentation from a broken peace of fence, three pine needles, a blue piece of sidewalk chalk, a medicine cup, a twig, and a few wild flowers?
Answer: nope.
My 8 year old daughter instinctively knows what many adults to not.
Presentation matters.
Or, perception is reality.
I know a children’s iOS game developer that told me the key to selling an app or game on iTunes is… are you ready?
If the game or app looks good, Apple will featured it on iTunes under “New and Notable.” Once it is featured on the iTunes front page, it will sell. And it will sell well at least for awhile.
Not surprising and good to know.
Earlier this week I performed a little experiment.
I wanted to see how much traffic I could send to this site by commenting on two other websites.
The backstory:
This week Apple sent out a teaser image of their new product. The web has been a buzz.
Tuesday I commented on Mashable.com and 9to5mac.com with something like, “This the new Apple TV set, here’s why (URL).”
Here are the Google analytics visit results…
At this point, Zipop gets about 30+ visits a day.
I posted this Tuesday evening and received 125 visits. On Wednesday I received 315 almost entirely from these two website comments.
As you can see, yesterday all that traffic went away.
The take away is pretty simple:
Write interesting, provocative articles about popular topics and make interesting, provocative comments on other related popular articles.
Now the trick is to keep that traffic.
Stay tuned.
Ah Target. We love your store. We love your home furnishings. We love your build-in little Starbucks.
But more than that, I love that you know if I am pregnant or not. That you’ve developed an index for it. It’s called the Pregnancy Prediction Score. And…you advertise to me accordingly.
Take that Google.
Yes, Target has recently been exposed by Forbes for their amazing data collection and analysis of their customers. That’s you and me.
It seems they record every item you buy. Surprise! They buy lists of what you buy at other stores. They put all that data together and they send you strategic product coupons based on those buying habits.
In this case, they can algorithmically predict if you are pregnant. How? Well, for one Target knows if you ladies start buying unscented hand lotion, that can be an indicator that you are pregnant, right down to the trimester.
It’s a pretty creeptastic read. Kinda makes you feel like you have a target on your back.
Back a couple weeks ago when I decided I need to break up with Posterous and move in with WordPress I had a little angst over themes.
There are just way too many WordPress themes in the sea – most of them extremely craptastic. But I was determined to find a simple, clean, white theme that was highly customizable.
You see, with most WordPress themes, they are either too ugly, too migh maintenance, too gawdy, too hard on your pocketbook or just too sucky in general. In my mind an expensive theme is anywhere between $70 – $150.
I spent hours. Many hours looking for a new love.
And finally, I found a place with tons of great blog themes for not only WordPress but for other site CMS and templates as well.
Check out these sweet themes at Theme Forest.
For $35 I purchased the theme called Polyon and have been very happy with the set up of the future Zipop empire.
I have really enjoyed working with the intuitive custom settings.
If you end up trying one, let me know. I’d like your feed back.
Theme Forest Polyon on Worpdress, she is treating me great so far. I’ll let you know how well we settle in together.
