Daily Links
Public transit patent trolls get thrown under the bus
This couldn't happen to a nicer group of scumbag-trolls.Clinkle
Here is one to watch. They just raised $25,000,000 in VC. The CEO is 21. Their app is a working prototype that ran a short test at Stanford. The app aims to replace your wallet.Sun-Times vs Tribune
The Chicago Sun-Times fired all its photography staffers and gave their regular reporters iPhones to take pictures with. These two front pages summarize the result...
Kickstarter in Canada
Later this summer, Kickstarter will finally allow Canadians to pitch their projects and ideas without having to jump through the "have a US bank account" hoops we do now.
Daily Links
Canada Day 2013 Festivities In Winnipeg
If you're making plans for your long weekend, Access Winnipeg helps you out with a list of handy suggestions :)
Windows 8.1 Preview
Microsoft makes the upcoming free update available to download as a preview. So far, people are welcoming the changes to Metro and the OS.
Lorem Gibson
Another in a trend of random filler text generators, this one based on the works and writings of William Gibson.
Visual Lizard's Summer Newsletter for 2013
Hey there everyone!
If you're a a partner, a friend, or a long time fan of ours, you likely received our very first official email newsletter yesterday. We ran a fun little contest in the newsletter, and we thought we'd share some data with you... as well as let you know who won!
First, lets take a look at the newsletter. We sent the email out through Emediatemail.com, our awesome service for creating and sending electronic newsletters. The numbers over the first 24 hours look like this:
- From our 4 lists under Visual Lizard, we sent to 1,131 contacts.
- We've had a 34.99% unique open rate.
- 82 people clicked giving us a 22.84% click rate.
- Canada accounted for the most opens. USA was second. The Netherlands, third.
- The top link clicked was more than halfway down, and was about the contest on www.visuallizard.com
- The link attached to our "lizmouflage" banner at the top was second in total clicks.
- We had a 1.07% (11 people) unsubscribe rate with 0% marking the email as spam.
- Our website registered the most visits in a single day for this past year.
Overall, we're pleased with the results we saw from this newsletter. As part of the awareness campaign we're embarking on, we plan to send our newsletter out quarterly. We've set the bar pretty high with this first one!
Someone Said Something About a Contest?
Since summer is such a special time here in Winnipeg, we decided to pick an outdoor activity for our contest. We figured golf (which, admittedly, is not something everyone likes doing) would work for a prize. An all expense paid round was chosen, including beverages and lunch out at the prestigious Elmhurst Golf and Country Club.
The challenge was a scavenger hunt to find the golfball "icon" (clue #1) hidden somewhere on our website. We didn't want to make the contest too easy, so we made the icon subtle. Once you rolled over it there was a tooltip telling you "congratulations, you have found the golfball!". If you clicked it, an email launched with the subject line "I found the golfball".
We had some really creative answers. Some of the best were:
- It's the Portage la Prairie School Division logo!!
- I found it on your map. It's the little green pin golfball thing right? Right??
- The golfball is on the side of the lizard's head.
- We also saw several people use the search and look for "ball", "secret", "golf, and a few others.
Three hours after we launched the contest, Russ from MGEU was the first to spot the icon. We had placed it under Services > Email Campaigns. We actually debated putting it there as we thought it would be too obvious. It turned out to be the perfect spot. 45 minutes later, John from MNP also emailed in a correct answer, complete with screenshots and arrows.
Congratulations Russ and John for winning the first ever email contest from Visual Lizard! We're looking forward to an afternoon round in July with you. To our friends and partners, we apologize for the momentary loss of productivity. To everyone else that didn't get a chance to play (or didn't want to win a golf game), stay tuned; we plan on sending out another newsletter in the fall with more fun stuff!
Thanks for reading! If you have any specific questions, please don't hesitate to ask them in the comments, via twitter, or through the contact form.
Daily Links
How to use a SuperDrive with a Mac that already has an Optical Drive
By default an Apple SuperDrive won't work on a Mac with an optical drive - but you can change that.
The Boy Who Loved Math
A wonderfully written and beautifully illustrated childrens book on the life of Paul Erdős. At the age of four, he could ask you when you were born and then calculate the number of seconds you had been alive in his head... but he didn't learn to butter his own bread until he turned twenty.
Director Saschka Unseld discusses Pixar, photorealism, and the making of The Blue Umbrella
I haven't seen Monsters University or The Blue Umbrella yet, but it looks absolutely stunning from the clip featured in The Verge article. I can't wait to see it on the big screen.Meta tic-tac-toe
Okay, now *this* sounds clever! I want to play a couple rounds of this playground game again. :D
Apple Looking into MacBook Air Wi-Fi Complaints, Issuing Replacements
Posted for Dwayne and his new MacBook Air 11". The battery life is disgusting on it, but perhaps that is due to the wifi craping out early in the day ;)Daily Links
Apple Seeds iOS 7 Beta 2 to Developers with iPad and iPad Mini Support
Downloading it now. Hopefully the lag and the battery consumption have been tightened up. Remember not to forget that this is still a BETA though. File your bugs at radar!NetNewsWire 4 Open Beta
Black Pixel releases the Mac RSS reader app as open beta, and is accepting pre-orders at 50% off.
Daily Links
Daily Links
Remembering James Gandolfini and Tony Soprano
Terrible loss. I have always been a big fan of the morally conflicted, true to their word, anti-hero that was Tony Soprano and others like him. Just a guy trying to do the best he can within a world of brutal and sometimes insane parameters. Hopefully his ground breaking work won't be forgotten.
Daily Links
McDonald's Should Bring This Awesome Gem Back
The sandwich sucked but the ad campaign was terrific and it helped launch Jason Alexander's career.
Your instagrams in stone, coasters
Coastermatic is a pretty simple and awesome concept. There are going to be some nice Christmas gifts given to the relatives this year.I ran for a year
Great storey over at Medium about running. For anyone thinking about getting into it, like the slogan says, just do it. Start small. Set small goals. My current goal is to break the 5 minutes for 1KM mark. I ran a 5:03 yesterday. Getting there!Daily Links
Battle for the planet of the APIs
"Once Facebook had proven that it was possible to be the one-stop-shop for your user’s every need, that became the model to emulate."CBC's Chicago vs Boston Opening for Game 3
Damn if hockey is not the coolest game on earth. It also doesn't hurt that Neil Young is featured. My motto this playoff run has been "anyone BUT Boston" so go Chicago!
Daily Links
Rogers LTE
If you live in Winnipeg and you have an LTE enabled cellphone (such as the iPhone 5), then you may see your Rogers wireless internet being super zippier starting today! :)
Periodic Table of the Muppets
For all your Muppet identification needs.
Shirts.io
What isn't there an API for these days?