Many people enjoyed last post ‘Ads you will never see again’ so I’ve decided to make a short series of posts with old adds and posters. I hope you enjoy it.

Again, amount of racism, chauvinism and explicit sexual context is outstanding. If you think about it, it was just couple of decades ago
and most of today’s people will find it shocking  apart from being funny. Also on many ads you can find early experimenting with subliminal or concealed messages in advertisment.

Enjoy!

Sweet telex operator?

This kid is creepy - Looks like Chucky doll

Sanitary and fits in yourhand!!! Wow!

My did exactly that to my Beetle

Do you believe?

Watch for cactus!

Ancient wisdom

Of course it is NOT obvious

Fun Gun

Put some drugs in to enable cooking function

More doctors smoke camels - take two

how is it that she's happy?

Good old Iver Johnson always ready

I can't see her being 'around' ... can you?

Now this is sense of humour!

I'm sure she's gonna be pleased

Do you see the somke face or is it only me?

French have Mr. Been too!

Who dares to try and post back results?

Are you early? Then get that fur off your face!

Now this gave me some hope

I hope you enjoyed. How many of you would like to see ‘Ads you never see again Take 3′?

SEE ALSO:

‘Ads you will never see again’ >>(original post)

Today around 11:30 Webfusion, Donhost and other providers under the same umbrella experienced major service outage taking down all servers in Leeds Data Centre. Thousands of websites and web services were unavailable for nearly 3h. That includes those of our websites that use Leeds Data Centre servers.

[Update 11/01/2011 23:10] Some websites, as reported by other Webfusions / Donhost clients, took much longer to get back on-line. Clarification is needed here: It took over 3h for the first servers to be seen back on-line however many of them still not fully functional.

Please refer to the comments below for the latest reports from affected users.

Would you guess the reason!? I wouldn’t guess. I would rather think of some natural disaster or something… but not this…

According to Webfusion, contractors testing fire systems in super secured data centre actually triggered the fire system by mistake. This has started all emergency procedures and shooting down the servers one by one in emergency mode to prevent data loss.

I hope that they did not fire the FM200 gas discharge and sprinklers. Well… It seems that super secure data centres that are built like a bunker resistant to any external threads are very vulnerable to internal threads and human beings.

“We have confidence in the system,” Galvin says. “We’ve had no outages of any significant size — and we could not say that before, not with our individual servers or with our earlier cluster. So we’re seeing a two-fold improvement — in reliability and in focus. We don’t have to worry about what the platform can do.” – source  Case Study: Webfusion places trust in reliable storage platform to deliver bullet-proof innovations in web hosting.

Confidence in the system didn’t help at all. Someone is missing the human factor in his calculations. The system might be “Bullet-proof” according to their own case study but certainly stupid-proof it is not. I suppose today was the last day at work for someone. …happens.

Original system status update from Webfusion:

System Outage

Created: 11 January 2011, 13:46

Last Updated: –

We would like to apologise for todays’ system outage, and to explain why this has occurred.

An external third party was carrying out routine maintenance in our data centre, and testing our systems for fire prevention. Unfortunately, due to human error, our fire prevention systems were in fact triggered.

As a result of this, and acting as the system should in the event of a real fire, all of our servers were sent in to a safe mode whereby they went offline.

Safety is our biggest concern, hence the system is configured to react in this way to avoid a major incident and permanent data loss.

We deeply regret any problems this may have caused you, and assure you we are doing our utmost to return to normal service levels as quickly as we possibly can.

If you have, any updates valuable to this article then please share it here and I will update this post accordingly.

We have recently launched a brand new website for Cabinco Ltd.

As mentioned here we are moving away from our own Content Management System towards open source solutions. Cabinco website is based on an open source platform that allows great flexibility and use of modern technologies.

Cabinco.co.uk is an example of our MF Hyper-Connected Website range. This product is intended for business, government and public sector clients that require real time interaction with Social Media. MF Hyper-Connected Website range offers many fully customizable features to interact with you users in the real time.

MF Hyper-Connected Website selected features:

• Modern and attractive design highly focused on efficient content presentation.  The design is individual and unique.
• Features encouraging users to explore the website.
• Open Source platform allowing full control over content publishing.
• Live feeds from Social Networks (client preferred/strategic Social Networks)
• Social Media Sharing
• Opening and set up of Social Network accounts (client preferred/strategic Social Networks)
• Linked Social Media accounts (client preferred/strategic Social Networks)
• Blog – Easy article publishing, ratings, reviews, comments and valuable positive impact on Search Engine Optimization
• Newsletter sign up – Capturing users’ data and creating mailing lists.
• Integrated Google Analytics
• And more…

Selected Features highlights on Cabinco.co.uk:

Featured Content Slider – The website features standard navigation bar however it acts as and additional navigation method. Attention of users visiting the home page is focused the content slider. Slider provides users with fun and easy way to navigate the main content pages. The idea is to provide direct starting path for selected groups of users. This significantly reduces number of clicks to reach relevant content. Slider is not present on content pages and navigation is taken over by the top menu bar as well additional links. Featured content slider can be scrolled with scroll wheel on every mouse having one as alternative to standard click. Content slider is also compatible with touch screen mobile devices (for example iPhone, iPad etc.) for easy content navigation.

Twitter live feed – For displaying latest tweets with call to action. Live feed is connected to Cabinco Twitter account.

Follow buttons – Buttons directly linked to Cabinco profiles on preferred social networks. Users are just one click away to follow you on Twitter, Facebook or any other preferred social networks.

Social Media Sharing – Provides users with tools to share content of the website directly on their Social Network profiles. For example if  Mr X visits your website and finds the content interesting then he can post it to any social network that he has a profile on, simply by clicking [+]share button. Now assuming that Mr. X has 3000 followers on Twitter and 1500 fans on Facebook then your page is being advertised completely free to 4500 people that are very well targeted. If Mr. X has certain number of followers or fans they would always follow Mr. X for a reason. The reason is that Mr. X provides his group of followers with valuable content on certain topics. That means that majority of Mr. X’s followers has been defined and self-selected group. In simple words if Mr. X likes your article then it meant that 4500 of followers can come to your website to read it.

Newsletter – Sign up form to capture user details and create targeted mailing lists to further promote the company and its products and services.

Blog -  Another “must have” feature for companies thinking seriously about their presence on the web. Blog provides necesery tools to publish article, updates and news

Gallery – We have found images of Cabinco sustainable buildings as a very strong selling point. There is nothing more convincing than experience supported by strong portfolio of projects. That is why we have paid much attention to the gallery section. It provides two different ways to display images.

The first one is the main slideshow with pan and zoom effect. It can be maximized to full screen view, list the gallery images, play/pause slideshow, next/previous for manual navigation – all this accessible from auto-hide navigation bar. “Mouse over” displays title and description overlay.

Second gallery is placed below the main slide show. This is simple HTML based gallery and it is been designed to support old browsers like Internet Explorer 6 as well as browsers without or disabled support for Java or Flash. It also supports light box overlay for capable browsers.

To be fully backward compatible Cabinco website serves separate template for users with out-dated/old browsers. The template has less eye candy while still maintaining functionality.

The design is simple and light. Based upon analogous colour scheme with leading – Cabinco Lime Green and supporting – Sky Blue.

I wanted to achieve sort of natural balance between content and graphic elements. The design it there to aid navigation and expose the content. There were couple of designs created for this project. I would love to see this website with one of more funky designs I have mocked up (just in case) because it is more fun for designers to work with funky stuff obviously. On the other hand I know it wouldn’t work well with marketing approach and understanding the audience. – Tomasz Bergiel -designer

Drop us a line to find out how we could improve your business!

New services from Mint Factory Creative Agency

Mint Factory Creative Agency is growing and we have made some important changes in order to keep our services to the highest standards and still provide our clients with cost effective web design and development solutions.

We are  constantly working on improving services we offer. The most important factors for us are: quality and price. We offer exclusively high quality but still being cost effective.

We are changing towards better customer experience

Therefore we clearly see that further investment into Mint Factory Content Management System (MFCMS) will no longer benefit our customers, because it would be too expensive in development compering to Open Source solutions. Many big brands like i.e. Ford, CNN, Samsung and more have been switching to Open Source Systems simply because there is no point of paying for custom made CMS anymore as Open Source platforms are widely supported, stable and professional. Open Source Market has growned over past few years, what made commercial CMS systems obsolete and costly.

With Open Source Systems we will be able to provide you with better:

• Price
• Quality
• Flexibility
• Freedom
• Support
• Functionality
• Technologies
• User experience
• Reliability
• Efficiency

Mint Factory wants to offer more freedom of choice to our customers.  This will allow our clients not to be bonded to Mint Factory and MFCMS only.  In simple words if you would like to change your developer there will be no restricting factor as custom made CMS system.

Also, Mint Factory is now providing customers with new internet marketing solutions, to promote your business online.

New services available are:

• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – Professional pay per Click campaigns in Google AdWords System
  • Marketing research
  • Campaign planning
  • Campaign development
  • Campaign management
  • AdWords Training and consultancy
• Social Media Marketing  (SMM)
  • Social Media Marketing Research
  • Campaign planning
  • Setting up professional accounts
  • Consultancy and training
• “White Hat” Link Building Strategy
  • Research
  • Planning
  • Consultancy
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultancy and audits
• Banner based Marketing / Banner Exchange
• Consultancy
• Design and animation (static and animated banners)

We are constantly improving for you.

If you need more information please contact us on +44(0)8444155521 or via form.

One of our latest clients is Maggie Ogunbanwo who runs a small culinary business called Maggie’s Exotic Foods as well as cafe in Penygroes, North Wales. She got in touch with Mint Factory in order to redesign her logo, create web design and products labels. At first all sounded perfect to us; however I quickly understood that this job would be very demanding.

Very restricted design

Maggie occurred to be one of those clients who are much attached to their long lasting branding. When it came to logo redesign she still wanted to keep the same idea she went for initially many years ago. This approach brought a challenge to me and made the design process very restricted. Maggie wanted to keep all the elements of her existing logo ( image below), so the earth globe, pot, steam and flame needed to stay on the new logo.

The base to start with didn’t give me much of a choice. At first, I was terrified with this a century old logo that was unrelentingly staring at me with those chunky thick lines and odd mixture of colours. When I first saw what I’m going to work with, a big glowing red question mark appeared above my head…

Understanding the client is crucial for the design process

I needed to understand why Maggie believed as much in the existing visual identity of her business, that she wanted to keep it even when redesigning. I got to know Maggie’s Exotic Foods better as well as Maggie herself. I quickly realised that Maggie is a wonderful, warm & welcoming person that is full of passion for food, cooking and people. She likes bright colours especially red and green.

The key elements of Maggie’s Exotic Foods are:

• Home made
• Natural
• Exotic Flavours
• Passion
• Colourful food and spices
• Innovative combination of recipes from around the world
• Experimental
• Fun
• Fresh
• Tasty

In this context the globe and pot started to have more sense to me.

Why not a crest looking logo?

The research was done and I knew there was no way I could create a typography based logo for this project (the kind I like the most). I needed to put together all of the elements (pot, globe, flame & steam) along with a company name.  On top of that, it had to be colourful, welcoming, modern and visualize Maggie’s passion for cooking.

To be honest I didn’t start the design process immediately as I needed to wait for some inspiration. I cannot remember when and why I first thought of creating  clean looking logo for Maggie, but I went for this idea instead. This is how I did.

Web design and labels for Maggie’s Exotic Foods

When logo was in place, we created web design and labels well. Because logo is very busy and colourful, we decided it had to be a key element of all the rest marketing materials. So we made it stand out from the rest of the designs.

web design

labels design

Facebook started to implement changes to the system. After months long bad publicity that Facebook received over their privacy policy and user data handling (Starting back in 2009), FB begun implementation of new rules that applications and games must conform with.

In May 2010, the site was forced to overhaul its privacy settings in response to user concerns.
The moves were welcomed by privacy advocates.

“It is encouraging to see Facebook act on its stated commitment to providing users with simple but real control over their information,” said the US Center for Democracy and Technology. “The changes Facebook announced today represent an important and positive step for the company.” – Source BBC News

According to Bret Taylor on Facebook Blog changes will be made to what data is accessible by third party applications that users can install on their profiles.  Now by default applications and games will be only permitted to access public profile data by default. Users however still will be able to grant permissions for the third parties to access all profile data. The change it mainly intended to clarify what users share with application providers. Application will be obligated to clearly state what data is being shared.

“The majority of people on Facebook actively interact with applications and Facebook-integrated websites every month. In order for these applications and websites to provide social and customized experiences, they need to know a little bit about you. We understand, however, that it’s important that you also have control over what you’re sharing. With this new authorization process, when you log into an application with your Facebook account, the application will only be able to access the public parts of your profile by default. To access the private sections of your profile, the application has to explicitly ask for your permission.” – Source Brat Taylor on Facebook Blog.

I don’t think that will improve users’ privacy on Facebook. This is rather PR action to cool down the Facebook privacy buzz and do nothing significant to improve it. Users’ data is the real value of Facebook and this is where the money is. Facebook is the biggest in the world live market survey tool. If you are a big corporation willing to launch a new product this is where you go first. Ask Facebook what people need or what they talk about etc. So what happens with all that data? Probably it goes on floppy disks and ends up on dusty shelves because no one wants to use it. NOT!  BTW it is usually called statistical data. Remember that Facebook has everything that big industry desire.

“Facebook has indeed changed the nature of privacy on the Internet, in that it actually encourages people to make maximum disclosure of their personal information without regard for the possible consequences,” said Robert Ellis Smith, publisher of Privacy Journal, which since 1974 has tracked the impact of technology and law on privacy.

“Facebook involves lots of young persons who either are not old enough to give meaningful consent or have not had enough life experience to know the consequences.”

The defining initials of our time might be TMI, the text-message shorthand for “too much information.” Over the six years that Facebook has turned its “sharing” service into a global phenomenon approaching a half-billion users, a Nexis search of major newspapers found a 2,000 percent increase in the use of the term “oversharing.”

The hazards of TMI can range from embarrassment and job dismissals to fraud. PleaseRobMe.com, a website that uses Twitter’s search capability, was set up to highlight how people’s willingness to disclose their whereabouts makes their homes vulnerable to burglars. – Source heraldonline.com

One advice – Be wise and manage data you share and be aware of it. Read the privacy policy! Yes, it is boring and small print and it is for a reason – to make you bored with the first paragraph so you would skip straight to “accept and continue” tick box. Once you ticked you state that “I know who is going to be accessing my data, how, for what reason etc.” But in reality accept tick box should be described “I don’t care!” instead.

Then we hear all those voices in media and on the Internet “What they do with our data?” or “They should protect our privacy”. Well, everything is clearly laid out in Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy and other boring write ups that you never read but you always agree with. “I’ll click what you want me to click. Just shut up and give me that Facebook account…” Who would you blame? Facebook or youself?

Are you also becoming a victim of your own “dontcareism”?

Also read on recent PayPal Privacy Policy changes

Over past months Google has struggled to establish on China’s market. This struggle over censorship and licence continues. Not long time ago Google lost its battle against Chinese search engine Baidu that I wrote about in February (Full Story Here).

Since couple of months www.google.cn was redirecting all search queries or rather users to Google.com.hk (Google Hong Kong). This was a temporary solution because Beijing threatened to revoke the company’s license to provide online content in China.

Below news served in China by Reuters. Are they promoting Baidu in this video or I’m wrong?

July 1 (Reuters) – China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday it had no comment on Google’s decision to end automatic rerouting of users to its uncensored Hong Kong search portal, but that all Internet operators had to abide by local laws.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang referred questions about Google to “relevant agencies”, adding only that “Internet operators in China should abide by Chinese laws and regulations.”

Google (GOOG.O) said on Monday it would end automatic redirection of users to its Hong Kong search site as Beijing had expressed displeasure at the practice and would be unwilling to renew its Internet Content Provider licence if it continued. [ID:nN29146978] – Source Reuters

Updated on 01/07/2010 at 16:45

That’s a prospect dreaded by many of our Chinese users, who have been vocal about their desire to keep Google.cn alive. We have therefore been looking at possible alternatives, and instead of automatically redirecting all our users, we have started taking a small percentage of them to a landing page on Google.cn that links to Google.com.hk—where users can conduct web search or continue to use Google.cn services like music and text translate, which we can provide locally without filtering. This approach ensures we stay true to our commitment not to censor our results on Google.cn and gives users access to all of our services from one page.

Over the next few days we’ll end the redirect entirely, taking all our Chinese users to our new landing page—and today we re-submitted our ICP license renewal application based on this approach. – Source Official Google Blog

Updated on 02/07/2010 at 00:55

We use to complain about today’s ads. But this is nothing if you compare it to ethics of early advertisement. That was real hard core. But I assume that worked for certain target groups. Otherwise these ads wouldn’t exist. “Today we use more sophisticated methods” you might say, BUT they are still based on the same rules in many cases. Social Media is an exception. Today companies and brands can no longer exist as something behind the market.  Now it is time for them to go and really talk and listen to their clients for the first time in history. This is a huge change and I hope it is a change for the better.

Papa says it won't hurt us! - Iver Johnson Revolvers

If your husband ever finds out... Chase Sanborn Coffee

How Mother and Baby "Picked Up" - Blatz Beer that benefits young mothers and babies

Subaru GL Coupe - Like spirited woman who yearns...

Marry got to school early... - Sugar got what it takes

The Chef

Want to drop some weight? Get yourself a Jar of Sanitized Tape Worms. No Diet, No Baths, No exercise, No Danger!

Show Her it is a man's world - Van Heusen

More doctors smoke camel than any other cigarette - Look into doctor's eyes for a while

Men Adore Milky White Skin - Golden Peacock Bleach Creme

Gee Mommy you sure enjoy your Marlboro

"Ketchup" Women Can Open

Double Rich Bourbon - Cream of Kentucky

Get a Light with Camel and win Olympics or relieve fatigue after.

Start Cola Earlier

Nothing does it like 7up

Fancy some pork Stuff?

[poll id="3"]

We have got £75 Google AdWords Voucher for new advertisers and obviously we cannot use it because we are not new to AdWords!

Anyway, we decided to give this coupon away to one of our new followers on Twitter or fans on Facebook!

So if you DON”T HAVE GOOGLE ADWORDS ACCOUNT yet, then go on and follow us and free coupon code might be yours . If you are already following us on Twitter, become our fan on Facebook.

On Friday evening (25.06.2010), we will draw one of you and send this free code to the happy winner!

Important Info:

1. Google charge an £5 activation free when creativng a new AdWords Account.
2. Free Coupon Code is valid till June 30th 2010
3. Our mini-disclaimer: If the coupon code for any reason will not work, it is not our fault!
4. Why you need this coupon? here is what Google says:

“Your Google AdWords offer for £75 in free advertising has been extended until June 30th!
We recently sent you a coupon for £75 in advertising with Google AdWords. Don’t miss your chance to create effective and measurable advertising when you combine Google AdWords with Google Analytics. For example, if the average cost-per-click of your AdWords advertisement is 25p, £75 could help bring 300 visitors to your site1. Get more for your business today. Your first £75 in advertising is on us.
New AdWords users can redeem the free £75 coupon now ,or find more information, by going to www.google.co.uk/adwords/analytics (valid until 30/6/10)”

25.06.2010 UPDATE

We now have list of our new ( added from 22^nd June 2010) Facebook Fans & Twitter Followers that will be included in our draw of  £75 Free Coupon Code for Google Pay Per Click Advertisement . If you are not on the list and wish to have chances to win this voucher you can still follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook

Our Followers that entered the draw:

29.06.2010 UPDATE

We have  a winner!

We had to draw twice, because the first person we drew on Friday wasn’t interested. Anyway, we drew again and the voucher went to Winston Crossdale!

Congratulations Winston! Make a good use of it

The draw

This is how we have picked the winner:

First we’ve made the list of people eligible to enter the draw. Those who became our followers last week. Then it was time to the lot. Once we’ve got this done they went to our magic lottery machine operated by Anna’s hand . Finally Anna has been forced to put her hand in to the mouth of that black thingy without having her palm  bitten off. And here it is! The winner!

Stick with us because we will have more free stuff for you!

Yesterday business websites were all about showing off companies, their products and services…Today, firms should use their websites and any other on-line existence to engage people for quick and easy communication.

Real on-line interaction with people’s needs, expectations, complains, ideas…

Video by Phil Guest

Technology is here to support people’s desire for interacting closely with brands. Companies should give the space and right to speak openly. Not only Monday to Friday from  9 to 5 or via contact us forms (nobody likes to wait a week for a reply). But  anytime and anywhere through the Internet:  via website, blog and social media profiles on  Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, My Space ect. People expect companies to be  transparent  and honest. Also they want to be able to connect quickly from where they are at the moment online.

This is not a new trend, but the reality

A website connected with your social media profiles attracts  users much for more than a static one.

Sadly, many small companies (especially in Wales) still have websites that are extremely out-dated:  static and not very well designed .This situation doesn’t do any good for the businesses, clients and the whole economy. There is a demand for stepping ahead. ( I have written about it  in February when was introducing  Mint Factory’s “You Need a Better Website” project)

Our “Hyper-Connected Website” Project

OK, so let’s come back to the point.  I want to introduce here our new project created for those who agree  that lack of innovation in business is like suicide.

Mint Factory wants to help you with making the right decision for stepping forward into web. 2.0 technologies, so we have created “Hyper-Connected Website” project which is to promote the idea of connectivity with the audience and Social Media Marketing (SMM) . Also we give you  30% off vouchers for our services (details in our terms and conditions)

What are your benefits?

• You will get “Hyper-Connected Website”  that connects to your social media profile’s, display feeds and enables sharing
• You will get top quality and outstanding web design that makes an impact and communicates your messages effectively.
• You will get 30% off on our website development services – (see terms and conditions below
• You will get our satisfaction guarantee, that allows you to step back from us without any cost

Subscribe for this offer using the form on the right pannel and you will be entitled to use this voucher till the 15th of July 2010.

Terms and conditions:

• MF Voucher can be used for the following services:
  • Website Development with SEO and web 2.0 technologies in mind. This includes the following functionality/features:
    • CMS – Content Management System
    • Blog
    • Social media profile’s updates feeds
    • Social media sharring features
    • Address book building forms
    • Other Services like: creation of social Media Professional customised profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Linked In , Flicrl,etc

• MF Voucher cannot be used for:
  • design and internet marketing services like:
    • Graphic design,
    • Web design,
    • Flash design,
    • Pay per click campaigns management
    • Ecommerce
    • Hosting

• Offer expires on 15th of July 2010
• The discount is based on a quote we prepare according to your specific requirements

If any questions just drop us a line or give us a ring on 08444 1555 21 (UK Standard rate) or simply comment under this post.

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