Pages, remember those? Paper sheets affixed one after the other, covered with various information organized in even more various ways. Those days are over.

Clearly, the modern age of the iPad and Kindle is not one of pages. So Yellow Pages, the well-known telephone and address directory, is changing its logo to reflect substantial changes within its brand.Continue reading...

If you or someone you know is one of the estimated 25.2 million adult Americans who "have trouble" seeing, even with glasses or contact lenses, or are blind or unable to see at all, technology has leaped forward with a visionary app for you. And the branding industry – from makers of digital devices to design and packaging experts – may also be seeing the light as apps are changing the way people shop.

LookTel is an app for the visually impaired and the blind. Combining “artificial vision” software and Smartphone technology, LookTel can scan and identify objects as varied as medicine bottles, money, physical locations, DVD’s and packaged goods. The user points the hand-held device’s camera at an object or place and the response is an audio prompt in common speech.Continue reading...

No surprise – kids between the ages of 2-11 were the fastest growing cohort of mobile and computer screens users over the past five years. Nielsen data reports a 63 percent jump in time spent online for this group since 2005. And both parents and brands are taking notice. Enter KidZui.

KidZui is a web browser built for kids that lets them navigate only to pre-screened and approved web destinations and content. On March 23, KidZui received an additional $4M in Series C funding, bringing the total to date to $14 million.

KidZui 5.0 has taken a digital step forward by enabling an unprecedented online dialogue between kids and their parents. The latest release allows parents' Facebook friends to connect their kids as KidZui friends through "KidConnect." The site now boasts more than 2 million teacher and parent approved kid-safe videos, games, photos, and websites.Continue reading...

Localbacon, a 2009 TechCrunch50 winner, has relaunched as Jibe. The revamped site unveils a private beta site today – and the first 200 users who enter the code “Techcrunch,” will be invited to join. Jibe calls it the first “Employment Networking Platform,” and offers feedback capabilities and transparency new to the job-seeking/recruiting category.

The original site, a job board for college grads, charged 99 cents per job application. The new site still charges for applications, but via a credit system which links to social networks and "broadcasts" a job search across multiple networks. Profiles can be updated, personal messages sent and received, and credits purchased – $5 buys you 500 credits.Continue reading...

Digital invitations take two steps forward and one step back – to a place and time in history where invitations were things of beauty and taste.

Paperless Post is taking on the veteran leader Evite, and others in the category, and returning the art of the invite to personalized stationery – ink and paper online.

Founded by a brother and sister team, both in their twenties, Paperless Post does not accept advertising. James and Alexa Hirschfeld, as though schooled in the Jane Austen era, believe that advertising, in the invitation business, is interference.  “An ad interposes itself in what should be a purely interpersonal communication,” says James.

Paperless Post’s business model is based on digital “stamps.” Twenty stamps are twenty cents apiece – 300 stamps and above, five cents each. One stamp for one invitation. Inserting an envelope liner or photograph requires extra postage.Continue reading...

New media specialists would have brand marketers believe that online video is the only way to go. Who needs television?

But now, writes Stuart Elliott in The New York Times, media usage seems to be coming full circle. He's noticed that marketers who use Web videos "are increasingly doing so along with – rather than in place of – television." He cites such recent examples as Jim Beam bourbon, Bertolli, and the Principal Financial Group.

Typically, a marketer institutes a series of web videos, and then cross-promotes it via television commercials. Elliott says "The pairings of Web video and television reflect a school of thought that the old and new media can coexist and perhaps even benefit from each other." Another media cross-over, says Elliott, is the fact that social media like Facebook and Twitter enable television viewers "to discuss together what they are watching separately."Continue reading...

Google, Intel, and Sony will be bringing Google TV to your living room soon. It’s a partnership made in heaven – as Sony has fought to maintain a competitive advantage and Intel and Google want nothing more than to take their considerable computing sway into the television arena.

The fourth wheel is Logitech, with peripheral device expertise in computer speakers and remote controls. The partnership is focused on delivering transparent technology – enabling web applications with ease of use comparable to channel surfing.

Based on its Android operating system, the technology is powered by Intel’s Atom chips. Google will give access to developers via a toolkit in the hopes of tapping into a wealth of creativity, and having products come to market by summer.Continue reading...

Aliph is to Bluetooth as the hipbone is to the Jawbone… well-connected.  Each year they come to market with a cooler, better designed earpiece. This year it’s the Jawbone ICON for $85. Not only does it come with rubber rings adjustable to any ear size, the packaging is recyclable.

The cool factor has been pushed to borderline as so many of us walk the streets seemingly talking to ourselves. Now you can do it in iconic digerati style.

Inserted directly into the auditory canal, and rotated 60 degrees mouth ward, Jawbone ICON delivers better quality sound consistently, than the more arduous task of actually carrying the phone at head-level. Originally developed for use in tanks and helicopters, the technology cancels out ambient sounds with NoiseAssassin 2.5 technology.Continue reading...