How does it work? When wordle scans your online content, it tracks the most frequently used words (and makes these really big) to the least commonly occurring words. The result is a compelling infographic you can use to see re-occurring themes and keywords in your content. This is great for market research (surveys, interviews) and to gauge sentiment on forums, blogs, twitter streams – wherever content appears! Check out the Wordle gallery for inspiration.

Here are some examples from our website.

Pollenizer.com

Bigger better full size here. From this wordle graph, we can see Pollenzier talks about partners and founders (“co-founders”) and about building businesses that get clicks (“vistors”) and customers (“traffic”) and money in the bank (“results”) because of a unique (“different”) idea.

Our most recent blog entries wordled

Bigger better full size here. What stands out? We like to talk about ourselves (not surpising) but we talk a lot about startups, ideas, business, time and founders.

Try using wordle.net or any other free word cloud tool you find online and instantly learn your business’s keywords and messaging. You could apply this idea to comparing newspaper headlines or political party’s platforms or send your sweetheart a picture message about how you feel. Have fun!

Just discovered: Industrial design magazine and community, Core77. Here are two fun stories tagged under ‘object-culture’ (you get the drift) to give you a taste  of what these guys think about: Early User-Interface Designs and the QWERTY keyboard and I read therefore I roll .

Reading now: Rework by 37 Signals founders Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson and Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur. Just for fun: Fever Of The Bone by Val McDermid (who writes the murder-strewn British TV series, Wire In The Blood).

Skimmed through: Monocle Magazine on start-ups; The Economist (special edition on creativity and innovation in the Tiger and ‘BRIC’ economies), and The Harvard Business Review on leadership in the “age of transparency” and getting caught in the “acceleration trap“.

Listened to: Future Tense on ABC Radio National. Favourite stories included an interview with (author and technology columnist at  The Daily Beast) Douglas Rushkoff about online marketplaces, virtual communities and web businesses; and some contemplative thoughts from ‘radical’ Californian cafe owner Sal Bednarz on why he switches off the cafe’s WiFi when the weekend arrives.

Now, dear reader, it’s your turn.

Sam from Blurb.com next to Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House

It’s fun and challenging working with clients in different time zones, so it is good for the relationship when you can catch up in person. Samantha Howe (pictured) from Blurb visited Sydney in March to spend time with the Pollenizer Blurboz team; attend Blurb sponsored events; and catch-up with Blurb’s partners. I interviewed Samantha Howe, Marketing Account Manager (Global Partnerships and Business Development) for the Pollenizer blog.

What is Blurb?

“Blurb is an online print-on-demand creative publishing platform which enables anyone to creatively express their individuality through a professional coffee-table quality book.”

Who is Blurb for?

“Blurb is for everyone! It’s your content in a printable book form. It is your poetry, your design, your writing, your photography.”

Why is Blurb so cool?

“We never say we’re cool but others do. I think it’s because our platform is creative and accessible and there are no boundaries. Blurb.com has worked hard to remove barriers to making a book. We’re passionate about enabling people to see their work published in a book.”

Blurb.com at 2010 Semi-Permanent Sydney Design Conference

What is Pollenizer doing for Blurb?

“Pollenizer is our eyes, ears and voice in Australia and New Zealand. This means the team is actively ‘seeding’ the market, talking about Blurb.com with cultural and creative influencers and organisations, and creating opportunities for Blurb.com in the marketplace.”

Tell us about the range of books in the Blurb bookstore.

“Blurb.com prints a book every 10 seconds. We have over 40,000 titles in our online bookstore. We see all kinds of books – photographs of dogs in bow ties to artist exhibitions to stunning graphical illustration, photography and brand books.  Everyone uses our platform for different purposes: as a business tool, agency creds book, writing fiction, photo books, fund-raising. Some titles do raise our eyebrows. As long as the content is not illegal there’s a market for it.”

Billy Blue Design School Students at Blurb.com Presentation

What have you been doing while you have been in Australia?

The team and I went to Semi-Permanent Creative Conference in Sydney as a sponsor and exhibitor.We spoke to creative professionals and students about Blurb.com can be used for portfolios, story-telling, brand books and more.

During this week we hang out with Blurb partner Art Whats On; caught up with potential partners; and met with local Blurb Nation designers.

I then flew to Fremantle in WA for the launch of month-long photography festival, Foto Freo, where Blurb was a sponsor and I did Magnum Workshop presentations. While we were in town, we ran a meet up for our WA Blurb bookmakers. Over 80 people squeeze into a small Fremantle bar to talk about book-making, share stories and show-off their books.

Melbourne was the last stop to to visit partner Red Bubble and cool global utility bag brand Crumpler.

Ever wondered how people turn their personal online passions into profit? Todd Selby did it by convincing big businesses to think outside the norm of how they could use his images and popularity to market their products. Listen to how he did it here:

Video courtesy of Fora.tv

We are in Barcelona working at a client site and on the way back to our company apartment, we got a bit distracted talking about software and, as we walked down the stairs at the Plaça de Catalunya station, we realised that we were on the wrong platform. We had gone down to the railway station instead of the metro. We walked upstairs and as we tried to exit through, the ticket validation machines didn’t allow us to get out, it displayed “ticket not validated at entry”. Now, we were getting confused since we had purchased our tickets that morning, we had been able to get in. After a couple of tries, we walked towards the station master and quickly explained to him our situation. He looked at us and immediately took two “exit tickets” out of his pocket and told us “yes, that’s normal, you cannot exit in the same station you entered”.

Exit Ticket

Now, someone must have created that rule, right? Mauricio and I could immediately think of many user stories that would see a client exiting from the same station that they entered and we couldn’t understand under which circumstances you wouldn’t want someone to be able to exit (remember we were using a valid ticket that had been accepted to get in and we had a valid ticket when trying to exit through machines). The most amazing thing is that a decision was made to create an exit ticket, print it, modify the systems to accept it, instead of fixing the system. Why would one put such a restrictive rule onto a user that holds a valid ticket?

Our next step is now to try this exit ticket at other stations. Could this be a master exit ticket that allows us to exit from any station? That would be even more interesting :) If you have any ideas about this system and why it’s this way, I would be very interested in your comment.