Return of General Motors as golf sponsorer

Cadillac and the PGA Tour announced a six–year sponsorship deal Monday, the latest step by General Motors) in its emergence from bankruptcy protection.

Last year, the automaker ended its half–century run as sponsor of the Buick Open golf tournament near Flint, Mich., as it cut expenses while under bankruptcy court protection. Buick ended a nine–year endorsement deal with golf superstar Tiger Woods in 2008.

Big B advertises Kerala shopping festival after earlier snub

Nearly a year after the CPI-M central leadership shot down a proposal to make Amitabh Bachchan brand ambassador of Kerala tourism, the Bollywood icon is the star of a commercial advertising a state sponsored shopping festival.

The advertisement to mark the inaugural of the fourth edition of the 46-day Grand Kerala Shopping Festival (GKSF) includes a scene from military thriller Kandahar, starring Bachchan and Malayalam superstar Mohanlal.

Priety Zinta to promote tourism in Himachal Pradesh

Film actress Preity Zinta would be Himachal Pradesh's brand ambassador for promoting tourism, Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal announced here on Tuesday.


"Preity Zinta would motivate world-renowned personalities and entrepreneurs to visit and invest in high-end tourism the state. She has agreed in principle to act as a brand ambassador for tourism," Dhumal told reporters.

Preity has even agreed to work for environment awareness in the state, he said. Preity, who belonged to the hill state, did her graduation from Shimla's St. Bede's, India's oldest all-women

Google Picks Rosa Parks Over World AIDS Day, World Still Spinning

Google paid tribute to Rosa Parks today with an illustration of a group of multi-shaded children running off a school bus, showing just how far we've come in only 55 years (can you believe it?). Fifty-five years ago today, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a white passenger, leading to her arrest that started the 381-day boycott of the Montgomery, Alabama bus line, changing history forever.
Heroic doesn't even begin to describe this woman's actions. And it's wonderful that Google would honor her with the most sacred of all technological symbols: the Google Doodle.
The Google logo, which is what millions of folks see every day when they start up their Internet, has been the topic of much discussion, the stuff a techie geek's dreams are made of. But some are crying foul over this particular Doodle. Well, it's because Google seems to have paid no attention World AIDS Day. Alas, not a single red ribbon appears anywhere on the Google homepage. No mention of AIDS of any kind!
But guess who did?

Vinsura Vineyards launches new brand identity

Nashik-based Vinsura Vineyards has launched a new brand identity with a new logo. The new logo has been designed by Ahmedabad-based Ignite Mudra. The new logo portrays a grape leaf with ‘VINSURA VINEYARDS’ mentioned under the logo. According to the company release, the grape leaf symbolises plenty – celebration of life. The golden yellow colour of the leaf, an integral part of the brand, depicts richness, quality and maturity.

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These are the icons of Microsoft Office applications. Whats funda behind these icons?

 

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How doodling evolved at Google

Google doodlers are a small team of artists who create the decorative logos for the company's home page, images that celebrate events as varied as the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man and the 70th birthday of John Lennon to the invention of the bar code and the landing of the Mars rover.

It all started with Dennis Hwang, who grew up in Korea and came to the United States in middle school, not speaking a word of English. After doodling his way through school, Hwang graduated from Stanford with degrees in art and computer science. In 2000, working as an intern, Hwang was asked by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to do a doodle for Bastille Day.

Hwang realized, "Something that used to be frowned upon -- my drawing -- turned out to be my greatest asset."

Page and Brin had started the doodle tradition in the summer of 1998 as a way to alert users they were "out of office," at the Burning Man festival. In case the site crashed, they wanted users to know why no one at Google was answering the phone. Using clip art, Page and Brin created a small stickman figure placed behind the second "O" in Google.

"Larry and Sergey had done some of these themselves," Hwang said of the first doodles. "And they used freelance artists. The doodles didn't have any consistency, and they covered mainly the big U.S. holidays. So when I joined, we started a slightly more formal process and looked at how to have more fun with it."

He continued: "Since early on, our users have been very passionate about the doodles. In April 2003, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the understanding of DNA. I created something I thought was pretty aesthetically exciting and proudly posted it. Within minutes, I started to get e-mails from around the world, with scientists saying this is not a double helix. It was a couple of pixels off in terms of the crossover point."

Hwang, now a webmaster at Google who continues to consult with the doodle team, believes that the Google home page, in essence, is the face of the company. "I think when users see the face changing to reflect the holidays and occasions they too are celebrating with their families, it gives them a connection and reminds them there are people working hard behind the scenes."

Google "Chief Doodler" Micheal Lopez leads a small team of doodlers who create variations on the Google logo to mark anniversaries of various events around the world

Bunny is the New Survival-key for Playboy

Profits from Playboy's licensing division continue to grow at a much stronger pace that the older, more traditional parts of its business.
A quick glance at the $27 million loss posted by Playboy Enterprises Inc. in the third quarter might make some think it’s time for Hef to downgrade to cotton pajamas. But analysts think the company known for its iconic founder, Hugh Hefner, is closer than it appears to a silky smooth future.

The major charge that sunk Playboy’s bottom line in the quarter ending Sept. 30 was a $22.3 million impairment write-down of the value of its television division.

The Chicago-based company has struggled to cope with heightened competition from the Internet since the start of the century. At the end of 2008, Christie Hefner, the boss’s daughter and 20-year CEO of the company, declared it was time for change and stepped down. Current chief Scott Flanders took the reins of the biggest name in adult entertainment in the summer of 2009 and quickly decided that the company’s greatest asset had changed. The universally known bunny logo had eclipsed the flagship magazine that made the company famous. Since then Flanders has taken major steps to transform Playboy from a media company into a brand licensor.
Playboy's iconic bunny logo is now the driving force behind the company's future.

Discovery Channel dives into fiction

The Discovery Channel announced this week that it will enter the world of graphic novels.
A series of graphic novels aimed at the youth market (ages 9 and above) are now in development, and the first is scheduled to make its debut next month. Silver Dragon Books, an all-ages imprint of Zenescope Comics, will produce the books. Zenescope co-founder Joe Brusha explains how his company helped Discovery branch out into graphic novels.

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