Typographic maps are all the rage these days. Instead of drawing well-defined boundary lines, you substitute words or names, and the landscape shows up on its own. Nancy McCabe’s maps, Charteis Graphein, are the latest addition to the genre. McCabe uses area names—oceans, countries, cities—for the letterpressed maps.
You can them in two varieties. The first is clean and simple, as shown below.
The second is a custom water-colored version (like up top). You can choose the colors if you like.
Comedian Gilbert Gottfried has been sacked by employer Aflac, for whom he was a spokesperson, for making at least two jokes about the recent tragic events in Japan.
Gottfried, whose voice served as that of the Aflac duck, isn’t known for either tact or good timing; he famously made a 9/11 joke just three weeks after 9/11 happened. And the comedian’s Twitter stream is replete with jokes that some might describe as tasteless or insensitive.
In fact, this type of humor is so much a part of Gottfried’s persona that we wonder exactly what Aflac expected might happen in a situation like this.
The offending tweets have been deleted from Gottfried’s Twitter account, but they included the following one-liners:
“Japan called me. They said ‘maybe those jokes are a hit in the U.S., but over here, they’re all sinking.’”
“I was talking to my Japanese real estate agent. I said ‘is there a school in this area.’ She said ‘not now, but just wait.’”
Although the jokes were deleted, Gottfried followed them up with the statement, “I was born without a censor button. My mouth and now e-mail will continue to get me into trouble.”
We’ve been covering the situation in Japan since the tsunami began destroying both lives and property, and we are strongly interested in promoting the safety and recovery of the Japanese people and state. There is no question that Gilbert Gottfried’s statements on Twitter were deeply insensitive — but then again, Gottfried’s humor has never centered around the delicate treatment of controversial subjects.
If Aflac, which is the top foreign insurance company in Japan and which gets 75% of its revenue from that market, was concerned about courtesy in public communication, it probably should not have hired Gottfried as a spokesperson in the first place.
In the comments, let us know what you think of Gottfried’s jokes — and Aflac’s response.
Former CareerBuilder founder and CEO Rob McGovern launched Jobfox in 2004 as a job profile site in which individuals could search through job openings displayed on the site’s boards. But the site was tough for recruiters to actively use because they had to comb through profiles of potential applicants. Today, Jobfox is unveiling a new version of the site that hopes to solve this problem. Essentially Jobfox allows corporate recruiters and headhunters to create private hiring networks. Job seekers can create a profile on the site and join corporate networks for companies they are interested in working for.
Jobfox says that the virtue of using its network vs LinkedIn for job seeking is that it is completely focused on job seekers and recruiters as opposed to socializing or sharing content. Because to connections made between job seekers and recruiters are confidential and not published on the network, it also ensures user privacy.
And the site will actually connect with LinkedIn and Facebook to alert you of your friends that work at the companies you want to work at, and it pulls in data from Twitter and company HR sites to alert seekers of job openings not displayed anywhere else.
Members can also “boost” friends or colleagues for jobs and earn financial incentives if the connection results in a hire. It’s important to note that Jobfox focuses exclusively on salaried jobs as opposed to hourly positions or freelance opportunities. Currently, 7,000 companies are represented on the site and roughly 140,000 jobs are advertised per month on the site.
While LinkedIn has also become a popular destination for job seekers, there is certainly room for a number of players in the social recruiting space. What LinkedIn has in it’s favor, however, is a massive userbase (which is nearing 100 million). But considering McGovern’s prior experience in the online job market, Jobfox is definitely worth a look.
When first launching your own website, it can be troubling deciding how to handle the first few weeks. This is generally a time when your website may not be ready to go live online but you own the domain name and branding rights.
In these scenarios a properly designed coming soon page can affect the culture of your site tenfold. Visitors to your website have the option of reading a bit about your company and possibly opting into an e-mail newsletter. I’ll be sharing a few techniques below to consider when first building your website’s home page.
The Launch is Coming
After purchasing your domain it’s great to have options regarding the direction your visitors will flow on internal pages. Keep them moving around your brand and accessing content you can offer – this all builds towards more sales and a greater membership base.
Keep building the hype for your product even well before launch! The hype is what keeps people coming back for more. Talk up your site into the next universe – “this is the coolest and most explosive launch to date!”
If possible include vectors or imagery to display your point. If you have a type of mascot or logo it’s best to display this prominently towards the heading of the page. Brands are memorable and the more your visitors can recognize your brand with the graphics or logos you created the quicker your website will spread.
Market like Crazy!
One of the fastest way to build word about your new launch is by manipulating the power of social media. There are hundreds of social news and social networking sites offering users to share links with their followers. This system of self-publishing has given rise to a syndicate of Internet marketers all across the globe.
Marketing is a powerful force which drives the blood behind any organization. If you can garner thousands of visitors onto your coming soon page you stand a greater chance of survival post-launch. Advocate and share your link around on forums and similar bulletin boards. Even e-mailing enthused bloggers for a quick review of your app can help to build up the buzz.
When drafting your Coming Soon page you’ll want to be ready to handle as much traffic as possible. This means you want to re-direct these visitors into another profile or portion of your website where they may continue actions.
Building a Following
Simply the most common form of inadvertent growth is through e-mail campaigns. If you can craft a fancy-looking signup form, visitors are more than happy to enter their e-mail address for instant updates.
You may notice how powerful e-mail marketing has become in our current world. Although there are hundreds of billions of addresses out there, the few which are checked on a daily basis consist of the biggest global market to date. This means it’s a lot easier to bring visitors back who found your site 3 or 4 months prior to official launch.
The beauty of an e-mail list is how uniform things can be. There is no strict set of guidelines for how often you must update or what your e-mails will conform to look like. Newsletters are often smaller messages with branding graphics and a collection of the most recent news. Under this guise you may also infiltrate your social media profile links such as Twitter or Facebook.
Clearly Reflect your Goals
It may be easy to get carried away in the design process and lose sight of what’s really important. When crafting page elements you should ensure each focal point on the page offers some type of merit.
The bottom line comes down to how effective your landing page can convert. A coming soon page is truly nothing more than a display for building hype on a new website launch. If you can display graphics or possibly a list of what you can offer your visitors odds are strong you’ll see a much higher rate of registration or opt-ins.
Visitors are always interested in the next big thing. Problem is they aren’t going digging for it, so you’ve got to drop the information right into their laps. For example Twitterrific has some fantastic branding for their mobile iOS app and could certainly garner a crowd behind their vector tweetie bird characters.
Leave Room for Information
It can be a fun process filling your coming soon page with graphics and vectors galore. However, as covered before, information is the key to growth. The Internet has been created off building new ideas and sharing information with one-another.
When a visitor is landing on your coming soon page and contemplating giving your their e-mail address they’d prefer to be persuaded into it. A fancy design can get the wheels greased, but ultimately if you aren’t offering a grade-A product then interest will fade quickly.
You may want to offer a few beta accounts for testers of the app before it’s released. This trickle-down strategy can also work well for a new blog theme or social network based in a specific niche. This has the twofold effect of weeding out any bugs in the system and also providing real user feedback. This can then be openly shared via your landing page to build credibility and trust within your visitors.
Push the boundaries of innovative and figure out what will work best for you. Not all websites are created equally, and this is especially true of new brands. Launching your own can be a daunting task. But in taking one step at a time you’ll eventually build a very stable company infrastructure and one memorable website brand.
Former CareerBuilder founder and CEO 
