The folks at Yahoo - who own Flickr - have asked a few of their Flickr users for permission to turn their kitty photos into emoticons for the Yahoo Messenger.

Here's a link to some of the results: Yahoo Messenger blog

Here's a reaction from one of the photographers (I have reason to know she's thrilled):

Tunie is Famous!! "Talk to the Paw" Emoticat™ Icon released today!

This is an interesting twist on CGM - pull consumer-generated media from your user base (it helps if your user base is photographers :-) rather than waiting for it to be pushed to you, and meet the consumer half-way (in this case by providing illustration talent). Wonder if they did this with any other classes of photo, or is it just cat pix?
Apparently this is to support a chat environment called Emoticats - more here.

Here's where to get the Yahoo chat client.

Thanks to Rob Webber for this one:
CNN has this AP writeup on the growth of online ordering for the pizza business - focusing on Papa John's, but also mentioning Domino's and Pizza Hut.

Amazingly, Papa John's has made $1 Billion in sales online:

The nation's third-largest pizza delivery chain trumpeted the $1 billion milestone Wednesday, noting that its U.S. online sales have been growing at an average clip of more than 50 percent per year. In 2001, the chain's online sales totaled $20.4 million. Last year, its online sales approached $400 million.

"It took us seven years to reach our first billion in online sales, and at our current pace and growth rate it will take us less than three years to hit our next billion," said Jim Ensign, vice president of marketing communications at Papa John's.

CNN Piece

We covered Domino's BFD Builder earlier, and the current Pizza Hut offering is here.
But an upcoming advance from Pizza Hut in particular looks worth watching:

Pizza Hut, the nation's biggest pizza chain, also allows customers to order via text messaging and mobile Web. The unit of Yum Brands Inc. soon will unveil a new method for ordering pizzas, dubbed "Pizza Hut Shortcut," that it says will be the fastest in the industry. Customers will be able to download a "widget" onto their computers that will let them place their favorite pizza orders with just one click.

Fixmyphotos is a site that allows you to upload photos for retouching, at low rates. The work is apparently done at least in part by human operators, and the turnaround is 48 hrs.
They're in testing on their updated services, and Guy Kawasaki has instructions on how to try out the service (requires you to use Internet Explorer, unfortunately)
Guy's write-up - how to test the site

Drupal, our favorite CMS (it powers this blog) has a new hi-profile case study - the Sony/BMG MyPlay site.

From the case study:

Myplay.com is a redesign and re-branding of Sony's Musicbox site which showcases SonyBMG's artists, providing free access to their videos, music and photos. Users can create lists of their favorite artists as well as review their music and embed widgets of their favorite artist's content into other sites.

This case study's particularly good, in that it details how various site features were accomplished in Drupal. Well worth a quick read.

Case study on Drupal.org

New Sony site

Fun & games at becomeanmm.com: first, create a character for yourself. Mine's above.

Now, how long till can I use this little guy as my Second Life avatar??
Once you've created a character, you can use M&M partner Zazzle's service to put it on hats, shirts, etc.
The M&M site also includes a fairly basic World (pseudo-virtual - just a bunch of images you can click on, no real navigation or experience); and a couple of Flash games (couldn't get these to work on my visit).

Also fun is the ability to insert your character into a little Flash movie:

Link

Crowne Plaza have opened up a reservation system for their virtual conference rooms in Second Life. The reservations page looks more or less like any hotel reservation page... but it's not entirely clear whether they're charging for the use of the rooms. More info when I get a chance to check it out in-world.

Link

Of course, they avoid saying "snail mail" - but these folks offer to turn your email into an actual (physical, like you can hold in your hand) letter.

It wasn't that long ago that "mail" meant the physical kind by default, instead of the other way 'round...

Anyhow, cloud-computing (i.e. having your data and services reside somewhere "out there" rather than on your desk) gives birth to its antidote here - a service that pulls stuff (correspondence in this case) out of the cloud and delivers it into the hands of non-cloud-connected recipients.

The truly mind-bending part is that firing up a lot of technology at both ends and the middle is perceived as easier than getting out a pen, paper, stamp and envelope (where'd I put those stamps...?)
Link

Thanks to Boing Boing for this one:
AirPower Wiki has up-to-date info on where to plug in your laptop at various airports.
If you don't have access to a lounge (I use AA's Ambassador) or there just isn't one (like at Bradley, which I use regularly), it's great to know where you can get power.
Begs the question - why is WiFi so much easier to deal with than simple electricity?

Link

As computing becomes more cloud-like, so security becomes more difficult...


Here's a great bit from thebadapples.info:


Apparently if you use a browser to access your iDisk, there's no way to log out. That means the next user on that system can just go to your browser's History section and get right into your account. (Personally I just mount the iDisk on the local desktop, then dismount it when I'm done, but I wonder if there's an issue with that as well...)

So this is just a friendly reminder to anyone with a .mac account to be careful when checking your account on someone else's computer, especially a public one! If you do check it on someone's non-Mac, then make sure you have the ability to successfully clear the browser's history and cache. And go to apple.com/feedback and tell them that a company advertising above-average security should have simple security devices like "log out" in place!

Most disturbingly, Apple seem to have deleted discussion of this from their forums: according to this Slashdot post,

[P]odcaster Klaatu (of thebadapples.info) posted this on the discussion.apple.com site, only to have his post removed by Apple.

thebadapples.info

Worthwhile article from the Times on the tension between online computing and the desktop model.

Clearly the graphics industry will lag behind a little in moving everything online, mostly for bandwidth reasons - but that move is afoot as well.

Quote:

The growing confrontation between Google and Microsoft promises to be an epic business battle. It is likely to shape the prosperity and progress of both companies, and also inform how consumers and corporations work, shop, communicate and go about their digital lives. Google sees all of this happening on remote servers in faraway data centers, accessible over the Web by an array of wired and wireless devices — a setup known as cloud computing. Microsoft sees a Web future as well, but one whose center of gravity remains firmly tethered to its desktop PC software. Therein lies the conflict.

Link