TechAddress

Black Friday Deals: 10 Best Resources

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 01:32:11 +0000

You can always tell when the weekend is approaching. If it isn’t Twitter getting killed, it’s podcasting dying, death of blogs, slaughter of the record labels or one or more form of Heritage media. It’s honestly quite difficult to top it every week. On the one hand, we bloviators have generally no compunctions re-using the same media type, but for it to really generate a respectable bitchmeme, you’ve got to really be creative.

Steve Rubel, well known for predicting economic doom and gloom due to over-investment in technology, this week predicts the death of all tangible media.

Steve says “by January 2014 I will wager that in the US almost all forms of tangible media will either be in sharp decline or completely extinct,” including (but not limited to) software, books, video games, newspapers, CDs, and DVDs.

Once again, Steve’s penchant for hyperbole gets him in trouble. Certainly, there will be a sharp decline in the usage of a lot of the media we still purchase to this day, and for a lot of the categories of physical media he alludes to, I expect them to disappear altogether a whole lot sooner. But all tangible media eliminated? That is something that won’t happen until we’ve as a race technologically transcended the need for human bodies.

Video Games

Steve cites systems like XBox live, and the advent of their online only markeplace for UGC content as evidence the death of video games in their physical format. The problem comes in when you consider the size of your typical video game can be between 4 gigabytes and 34 gigabytes. On your base level Internet connection, the download times start at six hours, and end at three days.

Even if you have one of those brand spanking new Comcast or FiOS connections, you’re still looking at least a couple hours. None of that takes into account those cute bandwidth caps all the operators have decided were such good ideas recently.

Newspaper and Music

He doesn’t get much argument on this one from me. Music, in physical form, is more or less dead. Physical record shops are a rarity, and the record labels continue to pursue self-destructive business models (suing your customers and their 12-year-old children is not a winning marketing move).

Similarly, newspapers around the world and across the country refuse to take drastic enough actions to adapt to life in the digital age. Those that understand that the future is online don’t do enough with organization to adapt to producing content for the web environment, and the rest of the industry is still in denial.

These are examples of industries that will not transition to digital media, but be replaced by a new guard that has the will and ambition to create viable solutions in this arena

Books

As dozens of Rubel’s commentors noted, there might be a transformation of the book business to a mostly online model, but it will never make the full transition. Books in many of their various forms and genres are considered collectible. Some commentors had other protests:

“I like having the artifacts of my reading around me to decorate the house. I’m in my 40s, though, so perhaps future generations will have no such nostalgia for tangible media artifacts.”

“I like being able to flip through an atlas and a few large picture books, something I can’t do on Kindle. These provide very different experiences than Google Maps and a Flickr photo album.”

I think that innovations in eBook technology will make the format so popular that this will be a moot point, but it’s almost impossible to put a date on when this will happen on a broad scale. There is so much that needs to be right about the device, from user experience on down to business model. Kindle is the closest we have at the moment, and I’m really excited about what’s promised by the PlasticLogic, but there’s no telling how the general public will receive it.

TV and Movies

We’re getting closer and closer to a world where physical media and even the traditional distribution methods are superflous, and no longer needed. The primary limitations in place that prevent a full on replacement of network TV, cable TV and the Hollywood studio and distribution system lay in monetization and, of course, bandwidth limitations.

It wouldn’t be fair to cite Blu-Ray statistics for a fair estimation of your average size, since many pundits think that Blue-Ray adoption rates indicate it won’t take hold as a standard before it become obsolete. If you take into account the standard size of a regular DVD movie, you’re still looking at average download times of five to seven hours for most broadband subscribers.

Timeshifting, media RSS, podcasting, and downsampling all can help to bridge this gap, but it will all be meaningless until someone is able to create some sort of set-top box for the living-room that people will actually want to use on a regular basis. This, in my opinion, won’t happen until the device makers in this space start to pay attention to the types of content out there and the ways that people like to consume their digital content.

I’ve been imagining this moment is just around the corner for at least the last five years. At this point, I’m starting to give up hope they’ll ever understand.

Given these factors, we won’t see the elimination of the physical media for movies for quite a while (with the outside chance that some device maker could have an epiphany tomorrow).

So, Could It Happen? Could It Happen by 2012?

Yeah, maybe. Maybe if …

eBook manufacturers absolutely nail the perfect combination of form, function and business model. Oh, and Oprah has to keep plugging it on a regular basis…

… the recording industry continues down it’s self-destructive business model…

… the New York Times goes out of business …

… device manufacturers finally read one of my articles about “the veg-factor” …

… and the cable and telco companies decide to lift bandwidth caps and finish building out a real broadband network for America.

Quite honestly, I’d love to believe that all this could happen in the next two years or so. I just don’t see it happening, though.

Source:Mashable!

In the United States, the day after Thanksgiving is known as Black Friday. Many stores offer tremendous discounts starting very early in the morning. For some, the day becomes a major operation as they strategize where to go for the best deals.

Luckily, there are websites that provide information from various retailers’ ad circulars in one handy location. Here are 10 sites to help you research deals to plan your Black Friday.

You can look up ads by retailer or category, or just sit back and talk about your favorite Black Friday stories on these sites’ various forums. What are your plans for the biggest sale day of the year?

BFADS.net - Keeps you posted on current hot deals as you wait for all of the Black Friday ads to roll in. Also has a message board for users to trade experiences and ideas related to the day.

Black-Friday.net - Offers some discount codes beyond the standard Black Friday ad scans, but that is the extent of this site.

Blackfday.com - Blackfday presents not only the sales info for the traditional brick & mortar stores, but also all of the big online retailers.

BlackFriday.fm - Partnered up with DealsPlus, BlackFriday.fm brings you the latest circular ad scans as well as a video explaining what Black Friday is.

BlackFriday.GottaDeal.com - GottaDeal offers up chances at bargains every day, but for Black Friday they have a dedicated section. Besides the standard method of looking up the sales by retailer, you can also look them up by product category to quickly see who has the best deal on your desired item.

BlackFriday.info - This Black Friday site brings you hot deals and coupons throughout the year, but for the actual big day they not only show you the ads early, but provide you with a shopping list of what will be available.

BlackFridayAds.com - Lets you look up deals by store or category, as well as prepare shopping lists so you are set to go on Black Friday morning.

DealTaker.com - DealTaker offers information for Black Friday and Cyber Monday along with tips on how to make the most out of both events.

TGIBlackFriday.com - TGIBlackFriday puts up circular ad items and lets you compare the Black Friday price to the everyday price from PriceGrabber.

TheBlackFriday.com - Offers pretty straight forward listings of stores in alphabetical order. Will be updated as ads come out.

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What’s Your Favorite Fashion Site?

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:31:34 +0000

Source:Mashable!

This article is part of the Open Web Awards, an open, international contest for the best websites and services.

Getting dressed is pretty easy (and not even necessary usually) for those of us that work from home as bloggers, but for everyone else, fashion can be a big deal. We’ve covered tons of different websites that try to make fashion easier, ranging from those who cover the latest fashion news to applications that let you rate what your friends are wearing.

To get an idea of some of the sites vying for top fashion site, check out our 25+ Sites for the Fashion Minded. Then, nominate your favorite using the widget below:

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“PartnerUp brings small business and social networking together to create a community where entrepreneurs find the people, resources and information to grow their businesses.”

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“iStockphoto is the world’s leading image market and a revenue-sharing social network. Browse 3.5 million images and videos starting at $1 or become a contributor.”

“With Quintura’s advanced visual-based search and analytics solution, content publishers can increase site usage while creating new ad revenues”

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“Infinite and Instant, Zazzle is the only on-demand retail platform for consumers and major brands, offering billions of retail quality, one-of-a-kind products, most of which are produced within 24 hours.”

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What’s Your Favorite Social Shopping Site?

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:33:43 +0000

Source:Mashable!

MySpace has launched an internally developed application called Primetime that is essentially a custom media player providing access to all of Hulu’s video content. The app allows you to embed the player on your personal homepage and profile, and lets you to search Hulu and watch video from within the player.

MySpace previously allowed users to watch some of this content – like Saturday Night Live and 24 – via a special page on the site, but now, users can simply watch whatever they want from their homepage or profile (where there friends can also watch and in turn add the app). Like Hulu, videos will include various forms of advertising like pre and post-roll commercials.

While it’s not surprising that MySpace is moving to make better use of Hulu content – it is after all a joint venture between parent company News Corp and NBC Universal – it does represent a massive opportunity to expand Hulu’s distribution. MySpace is still the world’s second largest social networking site, reaching more than 100 million unique visitors per month.

And while Hulu has shown impressive growth in its first year, many of those 100 million MySpace visitors probably haven’t checked it out yet - that all changes with the Primetime app. Smart move by News Corp to better integrate these two properties.

Source:Mashable!

Popacular, a site that measures popularity of websites according to the number of related tweets, has a huge counter that counts the overall number of tweets. I don’t know how accurate this thing can be, given that it’s third party, but if it is, then we’ve recently surpassed the billionth tweet mark.

This is just another sign of how big Twitter has become. For comparison, Facebook recently announced they host 10 billion photos in their database; however, Facebook is huge and has been around much longer than Twitter. If anyone ever needed a clear sign that Twitter has gone mainstream - however you define it - this milestone is it.

Also, seeing that counter spin amazingly fast makes us sorry for all those times we’ve made fun of Twitter’s engineers for not being able to keep the site up during a traffic rush. Sorry, guys, we understand now.

Source:Mashable!

This article is part of the Open Web Awards, an open, international contest for the best websites and services.

Unlike most categories in The Open Web Awards, social shopping is comprised largely of companies that sell physical goods (or at least procure them on behalf of their customers). Last year, our people’s choice winner was Zlio, a French company that lets you create your own online stores, while our judge’s choice was Woot, the “deal a day” website with a cult-like following.

Which social shopping site was your favorite over the past year? Nominate it using the widget below:

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“PartnerUp brings small business and social networking together to create a community where entrepreneurs find the people, resources and information to grow their businesses.”

Gold Sponsors

“iStockphoto is the world’s leading image market and a revenue-sharing social network. Browse 3.5 million images and videos starting at $1 or become a contributor.”

“With Quintura’s advanced visual-based search and analytics solution, content publishers can increase site usage while creating new ad revenues”

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Yoono Releases Onslaught of New Features, Finds an Interesting Business Model

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 12:35:26 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Those anti-monopoly laws are serious business. When Microsoft complained that Google selling ads on Yahoo’s ad space was akin to a search monopoly, they obviously consulted their army of lawyers who said that the deal has a big probability of failing.

According to WSJ (link behind a paywall), this probability is very high right now, and the companies might walk away from the deal by the middle of next week. You can’t really go around the fact that Google and Yahoo own over 80 percent of the web search market, and it seems that Google and Yahoo can’t convince the U.S. Department of Justice that it’s not a monopoly.

Yahoo spokesman Tracy Schmaler has given Reuters the usual PR drizzle; Yahoo, as she says, believes strongly “that this agreement will strengthen Yahoo’s competitive position in online advertising and will help to drive a more robust, higher quality Yahoo marketplace for their advertisers, publishers and users.”

Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich said even less: “We are confident that the arrangement is beneficial to competition, but we are not going to discuss the details of the process.”

Therefore, the deal may not yet be completely dead yet, but the Wall Street Journal claims that the talks both companies had with the Department of Justice on Thursday weren’t going too well.

If the deal doesn’t go through, it will only be a minor nuisance for Google. As far as Yahoo goes, the company is still nowhere: they’re looking at the possibility of merging with Time-Warner; this search deal with Google was part of the tactic to scare Microsoft away from trying a hostile takeover, so it’s doubtful that it’s a good idea in the first place, and their stock has been pretty much free falling ever since Microsoft said that the takeover offer is off the table. Things aren’t looking too bright for Yahoo shareholders.

Source:Mashable!

A while ago I laid down a theory that a significant number of users are using YouTube to share data that isn’t videos. Most often, it’s music, and therefore there are a lot of videos on YouTube that consist of a music track and some images slapped together just to make them videos. In a way, it’s untapped potential, because YouTube isn’t doing much to make it easier for users to share music that doesn’t necessarily have an (official) video attached to it.

Enter StreamDrag, a simple music search engine that draws its collection from YouTube’s massive database, although it’s not really transparent - or important - to the end user, who doesn’t see the video at all, he just listens to the song. Titles of songs such as “Tool - Sober (HQ Fullscreen)” can be a bit misleading, but it’s a minor point as long as you’re in it just to hear the music.

A nice option is the playlist; stack a bunch of tracks together and you’ve got yourself a party. This can be done in YouTube and other third party tools, but it’s extremely simple in StreamDrag; click on the “+” icon next to the song and it’s added to the playlist (to return to the search results, just click on “playlist” again). Everything else on the site is very straightforward: you’ve got play/pause, stop, rwd and ffwd buttons, as well as a repeat and sound on/off switches. I like it: by removing everything else and focusing on the music, StreamDrag is actually much more enjoyable (and faster) to use than many other similar services (including YouTube itself).

StreamDrag is a direct competitor to services such as Songza. The developer behind StreamDrag, David Lorenz, claims that the simplicity of his application is the key difference here, as well as some features that enhance the user experience such as looping a single track. I’m not convinced that this is enough to beat the competition, but I do admit that using StreamDrag could not be simpler, which is always a good thing.

Source:Mashable!

Yoono, the browser-based social aggregator, has announced a new release that includes features such as support for Internet Explorer, MySpace and imeem integration, and the biggest news of all, a shopping widget.

This new shopping widget for social aggregation will generate product recommendations and pricing comparisons based on the products displayed during a browsing session. The widget will work with some of the largest ecommerce sites such as eBay, Buy.com, Amazon.com and Shopping.com. While you search for products, Yoono will make recommendations for similar items with better pricing. These products can be bookmarked and shared with friends and purchased. The widget is scheduled to be released around Thanksgiving, just in time for the holiday season.

“This is a major change in the way the industry thinks about social aggregation,” said Pascal Josselin, CEO of Yoono. “We listened to our users and they want to do more than just watch and occasionally contribute to social networks. They want to have two-way interaction in a way that matches the things they are doing on the Web. With this launch we achieve more than watching the stream. We give users a way to get what they want, whether that is a conversation, a video, music or a new product.”

Yoono’s 1.8 millon users will now be able to connect to their friends on imeem and MySpace, in addition to those on Facebook, Flickr, FriendFeed, Twitter, Gmail, Piczo and several IM clients, all through a single sidebar. Yoono has also enhanced their User Interface to improve functionality.

The social aggregation space is extremely crowded with players like Friendfeed, Plaxo Pulse, Profilactic, socialthing and many more. By incorporating shopping cart technology and an intelligent recommendation system, Yoono might start a new trend. We might see others following suit if they are successful in their efforts to monetize social aggregation. In the long run, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing because everyone wins if this experiment works. We the users benefit from improved shopping experience, the vendors selling merchandise benefit from the sales as does the mediator, the social aggregator, in this case, Yoono. We shall soon find out.

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Daily Grommet Discovers New Products and Tells Their Stories | The Startup Review

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:46:13 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Company Name

Daily Grommet

20-Word Description

Daily Grommet tells the story of one product discovery a day with video, original content, live comments, blogs and emails.

CEO’s Pitch

Many people are delighted to support independent or innovative companies with stylish, inventive, useful products. But who has the time to find them? That’s what we do.

Daily Grommet discovers one fresh product a day, and tells its true story. One blogger called us the anti-Amazon because “rather than having everything for everyone with the consumer being responsible to find it, Daily Grommet has only one thing for you, as long as you dig what the Grommettes dig.” Even bigger, we’re taking all those conversations that happen among friends about the products they use and like, and we’re organizing them into a powerful, social media-based word of mouth campaign.

Mashable’s Take

Partially an ode to the Home Shopping Network or QVC, albeit styled in new media-esque proportions, and partially a play on the Woot philosophy of “one day, one deal,” Daily Grommet is a showcase of items shown individually, complete with video presentations, and a descriptive storyline of how the site’s reviewers came upon each product. Naturally, visitors are encouraged to post comments.

Looking into Daily Grommet’s history, the venture is certainly very young. Only a handful of items are listed at present in the menu of ‘Past Grommets.’ But the idea put forth by its creators is as quaint and homely as it is enjoyable to observe. For the job undertaken, the site’s dimensions are perfectly crafted, really. Others perhaps try to professionalize too much. This project, meanwhile, seems to connote that time honored phrase of “keeping it real.” Take a look for yourself. You’ll see what I mean.

Of course, there’s only one way Daily Grommet can really succeed in its pursuit. And that is to remain steadfast with its rollout. In the early days of the podcasting boom, the term daily was loosely used, and understandably so. Things were very rough cut and almost entirely unrehearsed and laden with defined schedules and the like. Now, the option to keep things casual doesn’t serve creators’ interests. No reason to jump to conclusions yet, though. All things being said, Daily Grommet is young, so we’ll just have to see where things go.

As far as its basis for existence is concerned, I think Daily Grommet holds considerable promise. While the product lineup to start the week isn’t my cup of tea, it is diverse enough to target a broad audience that doesn’t take to things like clearance priced flash drives and super cheap computer monitors. Today, for instance, the site features a Microplane Zester/Grater. Rejoice, all you kitchen hounds!

We’ll see what comes of Daily Grommet as the days go by. Suffice it to say that initial signs point to interesting times ahead for this one. Nothing’s guaranteed, but more often than not, sheer perseverance is what gets participants in the new media market to higher places with more potent exposure.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Coolspotters Puts Celebrity Fashion on Display | The Startup Review

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:37:50 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Gmail’s mobile application is getting a useful upgrade today. You can now compose and send emails when in a low/no coverage area and have them automatically delivered in the background when you regain a signal. While this is essentially the same way that offline email works on Blackberries (my device of choice) – which can already be tied to your Gmail account – the new Gmail for Mobile will allow you to perform these functions on other handsets like the Nokia N95 and Sony Ericsson W910i.

Along with the offline support, Gmail has added a few other features. Most notable is the ability to switch between multiple Gmail/Google Apps accounts from the Gmail Mobile interface. There are also shortcut keys for performing basic functions like jumping to the top or bottom of your mailbox, or undoing your last action.

As a Google product manager explains in the brief demo below, the offline support is probably going to be most useful for users that bounce in and out of coverage when traveling:

Source:Mashable!

There has been a lot of talk over the last couple of weeks about two Twitter ranking tools, Twitter Grader and Twinfluence. Any tool that measures the effectiveness of a Social Media site for a user is important to serious and casual users alike. The fact that there are now two tools presenting a user’s “ranking” in different ways is an indication of the efforts of Social Media to be taken seriously.

Tools that give an indication of the “influence” of a particular user are of use not only for users seeking authoritative users to follow, but for professional users seeking key “influencers” to work with. I decided to run an experiment with them both to see what actions affect your scores and what don’t and if affecting my scores actually did anything for me other than improve my own sense of self worth.

Twitter Grader and Twinfluence

Twitter Grader bases your score on the number of followers you have, the power of this network of followers, the pace of your updates, the completeness of your profile and “a few other factors.” Twinfluence gives you a slightly more sophisticated scoring, though I have found the system has a lag of about 24 hours. Twinfluence breaks your Twitter ranking into Reach, Velocity, Social Capital & Centralization:

• Reach measures the maximum number of people a particular Twitter could get a message to (basically your followers and their followers).

• Velocity measures the average of first order followers and second order followers added on a daily basis since you started your account.

• Social Capital measures the value of your followers network, e.g. how many followers do your followers have?

• Centralization measures how dependent your reach or ability to influence is on a small number of followers who have a large following. E.g. If the bulk of your network is made up of 10 superstars each with thousands of followers, then you have a very centralized network and it is perceived by Twinfluence to be fragile because if one or more of those superstars stops following you, your reach collapses in direct proportion.

How they compare

The two systems agree on the first factor being measured. Twinfluence’s measure of Reach is the same as Grader’s first two factors - the number of followers you have and the influence of those followers. After this, according to their descriptions they diverge. Grader adds the completeness of your profile, which does not seem to be a factor in your Twinfluence ranking. Grader measures the pace of your updates, Twinfluence doesn’t count that. Grader has a secret sauce, which may well contain some of the elements that Twinfluence is measuring as well.

At this point I can’t say which method I prefer most. Grader has the advantage of presenting a single grade, which makes it easy to see and take in, but I think some of their measures are great (profile completeness?). Twinfluence has some great metrics. I like Social Capital as a measure, but I find the site seems to have a lag that Grader doesn’t.

The experiment

Using these metrics I decided to see if I could affect my own score by trying different strategies. As I already mentioned, simply shotgunning Twitter and following hundreds of people might give you a short term boost in your score, but eventually it will backfire.

Why? Because it speaks directly to Social Capital. If by some chance you manage to attract followers who are highly ranked themselves but provide nothing but a stream of updates about your cat, the state of the coffee in your office and what you are going to eat for lunch, you are going to lose followers, and with them will go their followers and on both systems your ranking will diminish.

Analyzing top Twitter users

Just following the top 10, 20 or 50 Twitter users will lead you to similar problems. Here is an analysis of the top 5 Twitter users who have a score of 100 on grader right now:

• MarsPhoenix - Followers: 36,453 Following: 2

• Hodgman - Followers: 12,306 Following: 40

• wilw - Followers: 19,380 Following: 69

• Dooce - Followers: 17,771 Following: 60

• Timoreilly - Followers: 11,316 Following: 323

See the pattern there? Yes, they all have more followers than they do followees. So getting them to follow you and your adventures in cat training, coffee drinking and lunch eating is highly unlikely.

So how do you go about increasing your score? Well, the answers are really simple:

• Be Passionate: Think about why you want to network in the first place. What is it that you want more of? Search for like-minded individuals and follow them.

• Share: Provide useful, timely information to your network. Remember, it also appears on the public timeline (unless you protect your posts), which will attract more followers.

• Ask: And you will receive. Post questions, make them relevant of course - not “why is the sky blue?”

• Review: Check your network. Do you have spammers in there or people who aren’t contributing? Take them off your list of follows, unless of course they are your family and friends, in which case get them to read this post.

So, why would you care about improving your score? You probably shouldn’t apart from the fun factor. But by following the steps above, what you will find yourself with, in a very short space of time, is an amazing network that you can reach out to. People that you can help and that can help you. People that will provide you with a wealth of information and to whom you can pass along great information.

Let’s face it, with all that is contained on the Internet, it is impossible for one person to monitor everything that is going on, but with a significant number of people reading, watching, listening and most importantly, sharing, it becomes a little easier to obtain the information that is important to you.

At the beginning of this week I had a score of 36/100 on Grader, as of the time of writing my score was 66.

Simon Salt is CEO of marketing communications company the IncSlingers. He writes daily at www.simonsalt.com and weekly at Chris Brogan’s parenting blog Dad-O-Matic, and is also an avid Twitter user. He is focused on dragging traditional marketers into Web 2.0 before the arrival of Web 3.0. He loves to help out and volunteers his time and knowledge whenever asked. He is Director of Technology for the Austin Chapter of the AMA and is currently working on a Twitter guide for all users.

Source:Mashable!

Company Name

Coolspotters

20-Word Description

Coolspotters is your place to discover and buy the products, brands, and fashions being used by your favorite celebrities.

CEO’s Pitch

Put simply, Coolspotters is an association engine - centered around pop-culture. It provides tools for users to share everything they know about their favorite celebrities, products, brands, and entertainment.

Through a set of simple and easy-to-use tools, users can “spot” celebs with the fashions they wear in their real lives, or with the movies in which they’ve appeared, etc. Users can also spot products or brands with the TV shows and movies in which they’ve been featured. The result is a universe of interconnected profiles, allowing users to discover the latest style trends in pop-culture and entertainment.

Mashable’s Take

There are many places in the celebrity media space that position themselves as pseudo news and marketing engines. You know, the standard “who are you dating and who are you wearing?” scrutiny that the Peoples, US Weeklies and PopSugars of the world dedicate themselves to dishing piecemeal to a hungry audience.

Coolspotters does away with the gossip, and sticks strictly to what sells. If you want to learn about Madonna’s divorce, you’ll need to consult other sources. Instead, if it is the bag she’s toting or car she’s driving, Coolspotters promises you the details. And for some items, the site will even direct you to places where you can spend your cash on those very things.

Based on user contributions and user ratings, the product discoveries shown on Coolspotters are not just taken from sightings in Beverly Hills or during the red carpet stroll had before and after screenings at Cannes, Toronto, Tribeca, Sundance, and elsewhere. Picks from movies and magazines, advertisements, etc., are all presented in kind.

Does all this whet your consumerist appetite? Perhaps less so now than in years past, I’ll venture to guess. A toss salad of economic matters can do that to your wallet. But if you simply harbor an interest for things the famous carry, and as well as the automotive carriages they carry those packages with, Coolspotters does the trick. And just to be thorough, names in the political realm are not beyond users’ purview. A search for Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin brings up quite a few items. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, too.