The good part is that it’s one of the fewest sites, besides Mashable, conglomerating the info found on sites and analysing the content, friendly interface, although at time, can be quite a kick-back, as some of the user-driven functions haven’t been quite polished.

The down-part is that it doesn’t integrate any social network or other online publishing tools, yet.

But let’s hope for the best!

Mr. May is attempting to re-shape the aesthetic concept of elegance historically and anachronistically and begins the exposition with a simple definition of what elegance is: “Something is elegant if it is two things at once: unusually simple and surprisingly powerful” – an all encompassing definition based mainly on the power of adjectives the author deemed necessary to use to justify the theory.

Furthermore, Mr. May goes on with a further clarification of the matter at hand:

“Elegant ideas—products, services, performances, strategies, whatever—all have some degree of these four elements: symmetry, seduction, subtraction, and sustainability”.

Now that part puzzled me a bit. Would it mean that everything meeting these criteria might be ‘awarded’ the absolute value of elegance? I was really curious and started thinking about possible examples. But Mr May was faster than me. He used 3 examples of elegance (I believe it was in “ideas and strategies”)

1. Toyota (that being his favourite example of utmost elegance) – as it turns out, Mr May happens to be on Toyota’s payroll ‘advising’ their specialists on design matters (let’s not pull out the market share reports of the newly launched cars).
2. In ‘N Out Burger – for those in the unknown, this a “freakishly popular hamburger chain that started in Los Angeles a half century ago” ( I won’t bother discussing the elegance of a fast-food chain)
3. First Direct, a British Bank – apparently being rewarded this quality because they don’t have branches (what if all banks became elegant?!)

And as our world is built elegantly symmetric, the author gives examples of lack of taste – the flag carrier of the ship being no other than … Microsoft Word (yes, you read correctly, not Windows, not even the whole application suite, but only part of it) – we all hope Mr Gates’ designers will hear of this and turn MS Word into a more seductive and symmetrical product.

And the bogus goes on.

First conclusion: despite the fact that Mr. May seems to be a keen adept of simplicity, the only way he can describe his ideas and explain concepts is through superfluous adjectives.

Second conclusion: basing one’s idiosyncrasy on certain theories does not grant validity to the theory (quoting Zen does not make the article more valuable).

Third conclusion: always do what you know, i.e. if you’re a marketer, then don’t define aesthetics.

The article features a study conducted among some big market players, such as IBM, SAP, GE, Unilever, L’Oréal etc.

Their main points were 3:

1.  In times of uncertainty, a company’s duty is to show they’re stable and reliable (SAP model)
2.  Others, such as Unilever or L’Oréal are keen on increasing their market share
3.  Or simply re-position a brand through added value (the Made in America theme).

The Agency reported significant budget increases to support their spending in the new fiscal year – all this based on a forecast with leading numbers from last year’s results (for example, Schawk, a US company, reported only 16% drop in sales in last quarter as opposed to 22% in the previous one).

Results are to be expected in the light of the new spending, but what it would be interesting is to see their course on the market and their further developments.

Google, for instance, hired a veteran, a prominent figure in the business and NGO world, Larry Brilliant, to lead the company’s policy on social responsibility and

But as a former NGO activist, I wonder: Is this good, something to be put forward and supported, or this actually is a shift in responsibility, very cleverly disguised, from governments and/or local authorities to money-making organisations?

Or is this in fact ‘dust in the eyes’ from corporations to draw the attention away from their other misdeeds? As a journalist from The Economist put it, “an ever expanding army of NGOs stands ready to do a battle with multinational companies at the slightest sign of misbehaviour”.

People may call me a cynical when faced with such positive changes, but I believe in the old saying,”the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.
Let’s wait and see!