As seen on Experience Manifesto
56% of consumers could not recall a single new product launched in 2004 (despite an increase in advertising)
Top 10 new product launches recalled by consumers (without regard for whether or not they liked the product) were: Glad Press’n Seal (26%), Coca-Cola C2 (24%), Clorox ToiletWand (23%), Apple Mini iPo (21%), Swiffer Sweep Vac (21%.), Gillette’s M3Power Razor (20%), Hershey’s Swoops (19%), Oral-B Brush-Ups (18%), Pepsi? Edge (17%) and Febreze Scentstories (16%)

Nothing here about the influence of actually experiencing the product on the ability to recall, one of the points of my FreshMeat on recalling stuff from the year gone by.

Catalog stores are fascinating for examples of products that acknowledge but do not solve new problems. Dress-a-vac is a case-in-point, a costume to dress up your vacuum cleaner as a Bear, Bunny, Cat or (ironically) Maid. One of these things is not like the other! The implication here is that our closets are so filled with other crap that there’s no room to keep the vacuum clear, so it needs to be kept out (I’ve seen this happen in user research; perhaps because it was just handier to leave it out anyway); but then you have this backstage-looking machine sitting in your lovely frontstage. Their solution is to transform it into something else – a hideous dress-up doll. Requiring many steps; guaranteeing that once it’s dressed, you’ll never vacuum again, and once you vacuum, you’ll never bother with this again. But, interesting. Spotted on Boingboing.

Via JoshRubin: Cool Hunting, this mug collection comes in a range of shades of brown, allowing you to identify and specify your preferred amount of whitening. When the tea (perhaps this would work with coffee as well?) matches the vessel, all is good.

Here’s part of the body of a spam I got today. Bela Lugosi is not dead, and he is sending me spam? Or it some huckstering cow? I have no idea. Weird, and funny. The latest technology in getting past spam filters, no doubt (didn’t work, in my case).

In creeeease your quality of life through Huumaan Grooowth Hoormoooone and Test osssterooone The raapy.

We have fulllly liicenseed m ediicaaal faciiiiliities, all ooordwwwrs are fillled by US Phaaaa rmaciieeees, ffffDaa Apppproveed, and reviiiiewed by Boooard Certiiified Dooooctoraaaa.

Don’t be foooooled by imiiitatiooon prooducts out on the maaaarket. Our prooograms are cliinicallly proven to reeeeduuuuce booody faaaat, increease s eeexuaal perform aaance and reeeduce the efffffects of agiiinnnng. These are not proooducts you can puuuurchase in the stoores, they are only admiinisterrred by liiicenseed doooc Tor’s and p haaaarm aciiiies.

Each of our cllllients willll be in contact with our liiiicensed phyysiicians to determine the best proooogram for them. To receiive more in formaation on our prooograms and theeeeraaaapy please filll out our shooort foooorm and we willll contact you back as soon as we get a chance to reviiiew your suuubmisssion foorm

Somebody pass this along to the folks at Wired’s Jargon Watch.

Google Pause: that momentary shift in context while writing a message when a thought or a question can be expanded upon or answered if you’d just shift to Google for 30 seconds.

Example:

Max, that sounds like a great season ticket package, I’m sure you guys will have fun. I hope it wasn’t too expensive – oh, Google pause. Wow! That’s cheap!

I dunno – it just concerned me that this was the first Frequently Asked Question
Question I’m used to finding my favorite Hungry Jack Pancake Mix based on the color of the box. I’ve noticed the boxes are now all red. How can I find my favorite color?
Answer We’ve updated our graphics to unify the look of our Hungry Jack products. All Hungry Jack products are now in a red box. The colors of the boxes that you are used to seeing are still there. They can now be found in the background color behind the flavor name.

* Orange = Buttermilk Just Add Water
* Yellow = Extra Light & Fluffy Just Add Water
* Red = Buttermilk Add Milk, Oil & Eggs
* Light Blue = Extra Light & Fluffy Add Milk, Oil & Eggs
* Dark Blue = Original Add Milk, Oil & Eggs

Question Has the product formula or quality changed since the packaging is different?
Answer Hungry Jack Pancake Mixes still have the same great taste and quality you’ve come to expect. Addtionally, Hungry Jack Pancake Mixes are now fortified with Calcium & 6 vitamins plus iron.

In Dec ‘04 Wired put out a detailed article about revolutionary thinking in traffic engineering:
Hans Monderman is a traffic engineer who hates traffic signs. Oh, he can put up with the well-placed speed limit placard or a dangerous curve warning on a major highway, but Monderman considers most signs to be not only annoying but downright dangerous. To him, they are an admission of failure, a sign – literally – that a road designer somewhere hasn’t done his job. ‘The trouble with traffic engineers is that when there’s a problem with a road, they always try to add something,’ Monderman says. ‘To my mind, it’s much better to remove things.’

Today, the NYT writes about the same guy..

This story, blogged here on Jan 13 described the reaction to a Valentine’s Day bear that is in a straitjacket. The NYT does their article on it, 9 days later. Nice.

HoustonChronicle.com has a well-written, appropriately tongue-in-cheek article about Norwegians reacting to Jenna Bush’s seeming-devil-invoking hand gesture that was really a Texas Longhorns sign. The coverage of this has been really lame; pointing out that the gesture is similar to a heavy-metal sign in Norway. But even the SF paper ran a picture of a rock concert in San Francisco where people were using the same gesture. But it was an AP story; they left the story unedited, making no reference to the fact that it’s something that happens at every rock concert in this part of the world as well. Yes, the Norwegian press reacted, based on their metal-esque interpretation of the gesture, but the story doesn’t have to have this wild-eyed “in NORWAY, heavy metal fans made this gesture when they enjoyed their loud rock music” as if we’ve never heard of that fascinating and exotic foreign fact.

Tags: concert, culture, devil, gesture, jenna bush, journalism, longhorns, norway, texas

The SF Chronicle points out that IKEA stands for shoddy cheap crap to get when you can’t afford to purchase real furniture. At least in Sweden that’s what it stands for. According to the author, it’s a cheap way to look sophisticated. Perhaps true, but a little short of the more complex truth (but hey, it’s only a quick newspaper column, and this is an even quicker blog entry). But it does tap into this design/style/cost issue that the NYT wrote about earlier this week.

read more from On The House
Thought that your new low-profile, side-by-side fridge with ice and water in the door was as good as it gets? You apparently haven’t seen the refrigerator with a built-in computer monitor. Now, while you’re waiting and filling your glass with ice and water you can check your e-mail or surf the Net. You also can scan your groceries to create a shopping list, order online and have them delivered to your home.

Hel-lo? This has been a concept, and eventually a (poorly-conceived) product for at least seven years. How can these columnists review it as something new?

‘Assault on Precinct 13′ rivals the best police thrillers of the ’70s
‘Assault on Precinct 13′ has the feel, the look and the energy of a really strong crime thriller from the 1970s. This is easy to say, as it’s a remake of a 1976 John Carpenter film of the same name. But this observation comes to you unsullied, from someone who saw it before knowing it’s a remake or seeing the original picture.

This blows me away. How could someone whose is to write about movies not know that this is a remake? Nowhere in the article does he elaborate on this statement. Just seems very very lame.

Titan Probe Drops Into ‘Creme Brulee’-Like Surface
Data sent back by the Huygens space probe from the Saturnian moon Titan show a frozen, orange world shrouded in a methane-rich haze with dark ice rocks dotting a riverbed-like surface the consistency of wet sand, scientists said on Saturday.

Yum?

Abu Ghraib scandal suspect was just “following orders”

The lawyer for a soldier court-martialed for abusing detainees at Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison said Friday his client was just following orders, and that his superiors are those who should be tried. “Our defense is that Specialist (Charles) Graner was following orders,” said Guy Womack, the military policeman’s civilian attorney in the court martial proceedings that started at the Fort Hood army base in Texas Friday.
Critics have pointed out that his defense bore similarities to that of Nazis tried at the Nueremberg war trials, many of whom claimed they were only following orders.

It’s interesting to note that the lawyer said his client was “following orders” but the press have inserted the “just” in a way that makes it appear that Graner or the lawyer used that word.

“I was following orders”
and
“I was just following orders”
are certainly similar, but the latter is one step closer to Nuremberg. It’s amazing what the press can and does do with one simple word.

A friend has a testimonial on his website from someone whose title is Director of Entertainment and Male Action Packaging