era404‘s PANTONE® Moods Facebook Application widget is now live on Pantone.com. The widget streams realtime Moods updates from around the world and provides the previous day’s most popular colors, moods, cities and words. Try submitting a mood from your Facebook app to see it on every page of the Pantone site.
Read the press release, here: http://www.era404.com/press/pantone-moods-widget-on-pantone-com/
I always say that the cobbler’s kids have the oldest shoes. The last relaunch of era404.com had been in 2005, before the widespread use of iOS devices (which don’t support Adobe Flash) and the release of browsers capable of supporting HTML5, CSS3 and JQuery.
For the last few years, as all designers seem to do, I kept saying “God, I really need to update our site.” As my brother Chris always says, “the second worst problem in the world is having too much work, but it’s far better than the alternative.” era404 has been fortunate in that we’ve never found ourselves with too much idle time on our hands. That said, we’ve been seriously lacking in the capacity to explore new business development and professional upkeep and maintenance on our public image. Until now. Read more
As we all know too well, free doesn’t always mean free. How often have you clicked on a link in emails or from search results only to be brought to a page that informs you that you must enter a credit card or complete a series of obstacles in order to get access to the elusive free product? Television offers for games, such as McDonald’s Monopoly game, always boast the “no purchase necessary” option to play. Gevalia touts a free percolator while also subscribing you to a coffee-o-the-month club for outrageously overpriced java. And dozens of pop-up “Free iPad” sites require you to enlist friends, sign-up for credit cards or buy magazine subscriptions in order to qualify for free products that you probably will never see. In fact, most spam blockers specifically look for the word “free” in the subjects or bodies of emails to elevate the email’s spam ranking simply because they know that free, online, isn’t always free. Free, online, means “free trial,” “free if you enter a credit card,” “free if you complete these tasks,” and “free*“. Read more
When I was in middle school, one of my classmates bought a braided leather belt about 10 inches too long. The guy was always meticulously dressed so, naturally, I wondered what he was doing. The pendulous accessory hung down his khakis below the pockets and swung as he walked down the hall in a phallic, eye-drawing manner. In retrospect, it was probably a little risqué for tween fashion in the hallowed halls of my midwest alma mater, Portage North Middle School. I’ve never been too fashion-forward, nor interested in following the trends of the day, so I diverted attention from the guy and passed it off as a fashion faux-pas.
Within a week, however, I noticed a few others had adopted the strange, over-sized accouterments. Within a month, there were dozens of other braided belts accessorized over the in-crowd’s fashionable attire. Then, it caught like wildfire an even teachers and staff were seen following the trend. I found it a little perplexing to watch the style grow in my little microcosm and attributed it to flukish nature of a town secluded from fashion. What I hadn’t realized, however, was that that, in itself, WAS fashion. This is how the world worked. Fluorescent macramé necklaces, rat tails, sillybands, metal-snapping bracelets, waterfall bangs, pegged jeans and acid-washed jeans ruled the day. And at some point, with each of these trends, someone undoubtedly shared my befuddlement: what was going through their minds when they decided to wear that to school?
As part of the newly launched Pantone Moods Facebook application, the world-renowned color gurus asked us how we could make the social phenomenon (a quarter million moods have been posted, to date) more exciting for users. Color enthusiasts have had the ability to share their emotions and tag them with Pantone color chip values for the past three years. However, in addition to tripling the color selections (Pantone GOE, and, now, Pantone Plus and Fashion + Home libraries) and and interacting with other members, mood-posters now have the ability to share their gender and location information with the world of users online. In league with OKCupid Trends and Mint Data, Pantone Moods users can see who has posted similar moods and color chips. They can even filter down by Facebook location, gender and time of post to see whose emotional spectrum is the closest to their own. Read more
We’re excited to be working with Pantone again to develop a more robust version of our Moods Facebook Application. The announcement went live on Facebook on Friday and I’d love any feedback you can provide while we’re working on developing it. Your ideas can help mold this and future versions of the application.
