Tom is the salt of the earth, and he was a joy to work with. If you read his book, you’ll see that he takes a very refreshing approach to marketing and branding, one that I really identified with. His belief is that to get people’s attention in a really competitive marketplace (how many times have we heard that phrase?), you have to be different. You have to provide the unexpected, you have to define yourself with enthusiasm and inventiveness.
Tom explains what this means:
Offer [customers] an experience that will demonstrate your passionate belief in your brand, in helping them. Articulate it with your innate and powerful, human voice and empower them to share it with others. Turn off the marketing noise (frankly, we’re all pretty sick of it), and turn up the volume of your childlike sense of wonder, compassion, and rampant enthusiasm.
What Tom is saying here made a big impact on me, because that’s really what Nutintuit Studio is all about; telling accessible, enthusiastic, and fun stories about products and ideas. I believe in making memorable experiences around the human need for understanding, or as I like to call it, funderstanding, and I believe in doing it with a “childlike sense of wonder” always close at hand.
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Here’s a great use of animation (and live action) to build “funderstanding”. It starts out a bit preachy, and my concern is that it could be off-putting to those who aren’t already in the choir, but it builds to some great points. Bravo!
After taking about a month off from racing, I finally got back in the mix at a local crit in Newton, MA — the Wells Ave. training series. It reminds me of the Seward Park series in Seattle.
Anyway, I felt horrible. Not going hard for a month really lops off your high-end power and speed. But I hung in there and finished with the pack.
After a long and tumultuous transcontinental move, it’s finally time to celebrate. I have found that curling up with something completely ridiculous, even downright ludicrous, is the perfect way to relax and unwind. And that’s why I’m bringing you this:
Special thanks to Mr. Smashcut for sending this my way
Here’s the latest video for Brooks. It’s fairly technical in nature, but it answers a question many people have when they walk into a running store: “What the heck does the word, pronation, actually mean?”
Knowing what kind of pronator you are is an important part of finding the right running shoe for your foot. I hope this video makes it easier to understand.
It’s been a long time coming, but the day is almost here: Nutintuit will be shifting shores to Bean Town. Why? Well, my girlfriend/partner got a great job out there as a professor at New England Conservatory. And these days, you can’t turn down a good academic job, what with the moribund job market in the humanities.
Anyway, we were just out there last week and we secured a place in Cambridge, so perhaps saying we’re moving to Boston is a bit off the mark. But hey, Boston is just across the river!
Eye-Fi is at it again with a new Wi-Fi memory card that not only lets you wirelessly transfer images from your camera to your computer, as well as an array of online photo sharing services, it also enables “place-stamping” of your photos. Now you can track, with startling accuracy, where you snapped every photo. This, of course, is not always a good thing, but I assume you can turn the feature off…
There’s just one catch; the card doesn’t use GPS technology. Instead, it relies on all those Wi-Fi signals floating through the air to triangulate your position (and no, you don’t have to be actually connected to a network. Just a signal is enough). This is great if you’re in a populated area with Wi-Fi all around. It won’t work when you’re snapping pics on your hike up to Machu Picchu.
Even so, says David Pogue of the NYT, the card can successfully add a location stamp to your photos in “70 percent of the populated areas in the United States.” Not bad.
Working from home can present some challenges. If you’re like me, you don’t like to eat out a ton, so you’re left to your own devices in the kitchen, especially at lunch time. Here’s a recipe for a work-from-home salad that will leave you satisfied and enriched, at least nutritionally.
First, some background. This salad comes to me via my partner, Jill, whose mother made a taco salad very similar to this one. However, as Jill puts it, the Work-From-Home Taco Salad is updated, with a more urban, more bourgeois twist. The original taco salad from Jill’s childhood called for Kraft Catalina dressing, Nacho Cheese Doritos, and iceberg lettuce.
1. Lettuce. Fill a bowl with your favorite lettuce, ripped up into bite-size pieces. I’m a huge fan of organic butter lettuce. That’s bourgeois update number one.
2. Kidney Beans. Crack open a can of fiber-filled kidney beans and lay them on top of the lettuce. I like to drain the juice first. Place the remaining beans in a tupperware for tomorrow’s Work-From-Home Taco Salad. UPDATE: I’ve had a flood of emails about kidney beans. I personally think they are vital for success here, but I am not going to be dogmatic. You can use black beans if you want.
3. Tortilla Chips. Here’s the fun part. Grab a handful of your favorite tortilla chips, flavored or not, and crumble them in your hands. Sprinkle the ensuing mess onto your burgeoning Work-From-Home Taco Salad. Now go and wash your hands.
4. Avocado (if you have it). Carve up an avocado and drop in some of that mushy green stuff for added flavor. I like to add a little lemon juice to my unused avocado
to keep it from turning to yuck in 5 minutes. Bourgeois update number two.
5. Cheese. This is optional for you vegans out there. I like to chop up a cheddar cheese stick.
6. Dressing. There is only ONE dressing that can be used on this salad successfully. It’s called Annie’s French Dressing, and it is the third bourgeois addition. You can use other dressings in the French dressing genre, to be sure, but you will always wonder if you’ve truly made the best Work-From-Home Taco Salad. Apply it liberally, as if you’re getting ready to shampoo a very dirty dog.
