Wow.
Really, Amazon?

I caught this commercial during Meet the Press the other day. It’s hilarious. I feel like the tagline should have gone something like, “Being investigated for securities fraud? BDO.”
Or, “Whistleblower exposed your Ponzi scheme? BDO.”
How about this one? “Contributed to the collapse of the global economy while awarding yourself and other executives billions of dollars in bonuses every year? BDO.”
But why stop there? I’m sure BDO could help with other problems that corporate giants may face. “Caused environmental devastation that was picked up by the national press? BDO.”
Ooh, here’s another good one. “Hid the devastating side effects of a drug produced by your company? BDO.”
Seeing commercials tailored to the one percent is nothing new during news programs. But this is the first commercial I’ve ever seen that had the words ‘allegations’ and ‘violations’ in its script. This truly is a precious moment in American culture. Corporate malfeasance has become such a growth industry that BDO can advertise. This is why people hate Wall Street.

via Old Chevy Ads

Taken from Samsung’s 132-page engineer’s guide to copying the iPhone.
Question: Wouldn’t it be more effective to give that document to Samsung’s designers? Does Samsung have designers?

New banner ads push actual Google results to bottom 12% of the screen

Google might want to add another sentence to their company motto: don’t be a glutton.
Seriously, Google, I think you have a dependency problem.
(Image taken from Ars Technica)

Micro advertising. Yay!
(title refers to this scene)

Nilay Patel on Instagram’s terms of service reversal:

Last night Instagram announced that it was retracting a controversial terms of service change that was widely and inaccurately interpreted to mean that the company would be selling user photos. “Because of the feedback we have heard from you, we are reverting this advertising section to the original version that has been in effect since we launched the service in October 2010,” founder Kevin Systrom wrote in a blog post. “Instagram has no intention of selling your photos, and we never did.”

That certainly sounds like a win for consumers, but it’s actually a loss: the newly-reinstated terms of service clause is objectively worse for users than the new one, and it’s worded far more vaguely — the language feels familiar and comforting, but you’re giving up more rights to your photos. Instead of agreeing that Instagram may only “display” photos “in connection with” advertising, users will now continue to agree that Instagram may place advertising and promotions “on, about, or in conjunction with” their photos.

My images are still on Instagram, but I did use Instaport.me to download an archive of everything.

The recent uproar over Instagram’s terms of service changes got me thinking about paring back where I post my content around the web. I’m not upset about the direction Instagram is going. Maybe a little upset, but they are a company who offers a mobile photo sharing application for free, so this move should be obvious in heinsight, if it wasn’t already obvious in foresight. Remembering they’re owned by Facebook makes this advertising integration even more obvious.

It would be great if Instagram offered a version of their service I could pay for and avoid my images (potentially) being integrated into advertisements. This isn’t happening so I’ve stop posting photos to Instagram. For now.

I might go back to Flickr, but coincidentally I cancelled my Pro Account this past summer because Yahoo has neglected Flickr since they bought it in 2005. Very little has changed or improved upon. People are expecting great things from Yahoo’s new CEO, Marissa Mayer. We’ll see. Maybe she can return Flickr to glory and make it feel relevant again.

So, for now, I’m paring back my usage of other web services.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to create and post content on sites I control: Daily Exhaust & The Combustion Chamber.

This new Verizon/Windows Phone commercial is pointless.

The whole point of bringing technologies and devices into our lives so they can help us solve problems or make things that were once difficult to do, easy to do.

In this commercial, Microsoft is showing broken and cumbersome technologies surrounding us, then it shows how Windows Phone helps fix these things, right? WRONG. They show you how to customize live tiles and look at your contact list.

Awesome solutions you’re providing us, Microsoft. Way to go.

via Blog dos Carros Antigos