In a shocking insider-account called BRANDWASHED: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy (September 20, Crown Business), Martin Lindstrom, the New York Times bestselling author of Buyology, exposes the very latest and most sophisticated techniques that even the most trusted companies are using to learn everything about you-and get you to buy.

Demonstrating how much things have advanced since Vance Packard’s bestselling classic The Hidden Persuaders a half century ago, BRANDWASHED exposes the lengths marketers will go to exploit guilt, sex, insecurity, nostalgia and more to prey upon our fears and desires:

• How marketers are reaching younger and younger children; Studies show babies recognize brands by 18 months, and can hear and remember ad jingles from the womb.
• How companies secretly mine our digital footprints for the most intimate details of our private lives in order to target us with ads perfectly tailored to our psychological profiles.
• What market Justin Bieber is actually aimed at (hint: not teens)
• Surprising results of an fMRI study uncovering what heterosexual men really think about when confronted with sexually provocative advertising. (Hint: not their girlfriends).
• How certain brands purposely make their products chemically addictive
• How retailers capitalize on panic over viruses, weather events and food contamination scares (Guess where the $402 million market for hand sanitizers came from?)
• How grocery brands create an illusion of freshness for products on the shelves for months
• How Muzak gets programmed differently throughout the day to subconsciously persuade us to buy based on our mood

Not satisfied with research alone, Lindstrom embarked on two extreme experiments to test his findings. First, he went on a brand detox and committed to not buying a single new brand for a year until he couldn’t stand it any longer. Next, he hired a family for four weeks to prove to us how much we should beware the most powerful persuader of all: our friends and neighbors.

Martin Lindstrom, chairman and founder of Buyology, Inc. was named one of the World’s 100 Most Influential people of 2009 by Time magazine. Among the world’s foremost marketers, Lindstrom advises top executives at companies such as McDonald’s, Procter & Gamble, and Microsoft. His most recent book, Buyology, was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal and a USA Today “Pick of the Year.” He appears regularly on “The Today Show,” CNBC and ABC.

Yet, if I’m lucky client chooses only one from the many. The rest of the kids don’t get any love, they are tossed away as if they weren’t good enough to represent a business, not fit enough for the world. This is unfair. These abandoned ideas deserve better.

Hence, the idea for Stock Logos was born.

I want to give these great ideas a second chance in the world. I want to put them up for adoption, so they can find a loving home with a business that appreciates their creativity.

Other times, I have ideas for logos, but I don’t have clients for them. Occasionally I even sketch them out and show them to my friends just for fun. These ideas also go into a hidden folder on my hard drive. Yet, they could’ve been used by a start-up and could potentially be a lead for new clients for me if there was a way to find the right company that needs this particular idea.

StockLogos.com is a site where designers can upload their logos and clients can browse for ideas they like for their business.

Naturally the question arises if it is a good idea to sell logos off the shelf. Does it not break the required briefing and communication between client and designer to guarantee a tailor made identity for the business?

On the surface this may seem so, but StockLogos.com was designed to make sure the communication between designer remains. When the client buys a stock logo he’s offered to contact the designer of the logo for customization and further work on the identity.

StockLogos.com is essentially an alternative interface to let designers and clients meet. The sale of the logo is just the first step in a new client-designer relationship. The browsing of the logos by client mimics the real world scenario when client does research looking through company logos to formulate in his mind what he wants and designers promoting themselves by showing their portfolios to clients.

For designers StockLogos.com on one hand offers a new way to generate revenue on existing ideas and newly designed concepts and most importantly a new channel to meet new clients to bring about new business.

For clients StockLogos.com offers a new way to find the logo of their liking and the designer who can be a long term partner for their start-up business needs.

If the client can’t find the logo of his liking because of his unique situation he can post a brief on the site. Designers can work against these briefs and offer their up designs to the client. The beauty of the system is that any logos not bought by the client who posted the brief will remain in the library until a new client comes along who finds your design to be a perfect match.

StockLogos.com allows the designer to set the price of their logo between $50 and $500. The site and designer splits the sale price 50/50. StockLogos.com doesn’t take a cut on any business following the logo sale.

Check out some of the logos uploaded by freelancers and design studios to get an idea of what we’re looking for from you.

Designer contact information is kept private to protect your identity if you want to separate your public business from your participation on StockLogos.com. Designer contact information is only revealed to clients who made a purchase.

We’re excited to see where this project leads. We’re hoping you will find it a good revenue generator for your business.

The success of the projects depends on your participation so we’re eager to hear your concern, ideas and suggestions on how we can make the site work better for you!

I’m sure we’ve all been in a situation where someone’s waiting on a file, but for any number of reasons including large file size, email just isn’t a viable solution. In this case, I usually just toss it on the server and email the expecting party a link where they can download the massive file. Simple enough, but if you’re server is like mine, at any given time it’s always at near-capacity. So, what to do (aside from actually cleaning out the server, of-course)?

Well, the good news is that there are several free, web-based services who offer to upload and deliver these large files in short order. And a few actually do so with out much hassle.

We’ve selected six of these services and compared them based on similar criteria. For each, we registered (if necessary), timed the upload of the same 50 MB, CMYK tiff file, and then timed each download. Other considerations were limits to file size, relative ease of use and whether it was possible to notify multiple recipients of the file’s availability from their site. I also included the results from my personal server, via FTP just out of curiosity (see Speed Report graphic).

I also should note that these test were performed on a Macintosh G4, v10.4.8, with a 1.8 Ghz processor, 1.12 GB RAM, with an Ethernet-to-DSL internet connection. We also used Safari for these tests, so your mileage may vary depending on your configuration. Also, no other internet activity was going on while these tests were being performed, so the results should be fairly indicative of optimum performance for each service.

In order of personal preference:

TRANSFERBIGFILES.com

Although the upload system failed three times with Safari, I switched over to Firefox and it worked beautifully. Transferbigfiles.com has an intuitive interface with handy help links as well as many more upload options than the rest. You can send multiple files to multiple recipients, include a message with your file, password protect the file, send using your own name and a feature that I especially liked, the option to receive confirmation of successful download. The transfer was flawless and they never asked me for my personal information to just upload and download the file. Their presentation left a bit to be desired, but for functionality, the extra options and allowing me to keep my email to myself, transferbigfiles.com gets my top vote.

YOUSENDIT.com

Running a close second, is yousendit.com. They’ve been around awhile and I should admit that I’ve used them many times in the past. Before you can use their services, you must register with your name and email. They instantaneously email you a link which verifies that you’re human and logs you in. Transferring a file is a 3-step process of entering the recipient email(s), choosing the file, and clicking “send.” The site is also well done and intuitive. Confirmation of successful upload is sent to you and a file availability email is sent to the recipient(s). Even though they made me register, the presentation and execution was flawless.

MYFABRIK.com

This one’s the artsy one of the bunch, and maybe that’s what landed them in third place. They have a graphical interface that’s fairly intuitive, but it took me a second or two to realize I was following protocol. At the very least, some textual info on the buttons would help out in this respect. Basically, you click the file upload button, locate the file on your drive and click “upload.” After the file uploads, you get a “confirm you’re human” page with a graphical image of random, and case-sensitive numbers and letters. Once you type this code into the field, you get a successful upload confirmation and are asked to copy and paste the provided download link into an email to the recipient. Again, I had trouble here because the graphical image of the code looks like an extruded wireframe, and the characters are difficult to read. On my second attempt, I finally got the download link and it was smooth sailing after that.

DROPLOAD.com

Dropload is fairly straightforward. They do require registration but after that, I was uploading in mere moments. The interface also leaves much to be desired, but I do dig their logo of a descending package tied to a parachute. I didn’t see a way to upload to multiple recipients and there was no obvious mention of file size limitations. This lack of info caused a bit of hesitation, but the site worked as advertised and with one of the shortest download times of the bunch. Did I mention that the logo was cute?

SENDTHISFILE.com

They allow upload of files up to 2GB! Sound appealing? Well, keep reading. Sendthisfile.com does require registration, verification and log-in which again, is fairly painless. However it took slightly over an hour to upload our 50 MB file! Imagine 2 GB… you do the math. Under the upload status bar, there’s a notice in red letters: “Your FREE account is throttled based on the total usage each month. Your upload speed is reset monthly.” Let’s just hope that they throttle it “upwards.” Because, with the previously-mentioned contenders vying for your file transfer business, and with upload speeds like this, sendthisfile.com may want to reconsider this policy. Just a suggestion.

FILES.EOCFU.com

I should mention right off that this one’s still in beta. I know this to be true for a couple of reasons. First, because It says so in a big starburst on their logo. And secondly because I managed to “stumble” into their directory of all the files that had been uploaded through their service. Wait… let me explain. When you visit the site, you have three options: Choose File, Upload and Reset. So, I chose my file and clicked “upload.” The transfer began, complete with a detailed status list and status bar. Upon successful upload, a listing of uploaded files (just the one) was presented as a link. Not knowing what to do next, I clicked it and the tif image began loading in the browser window. I then clicked “back,” selected the link and copied it. I opened a new browser window and pasted the link, which was the relative link to the file. Out of curiosity, I deleted the filename from the URL and there I was. Looking at every file anyone had uploaded. Oops! No… Nothing of interest really, so I went back to the link and did the “Download linked file.” thing.

Summary

Of the services reviewed, transferbigfiles.com and yousendit.com are the two that I’d recommend. They each have more options than the rest, both are free and they work equally well. The only question as to which one you use may depend on if you want to create a user account or not. If not, transferbigfiles.com is your best bet. I’ll continue to use yousendit.com as well because I already have an account there. I also will mention that a couple of days after I signed up with yousendit.com, they offered an account upgrade to one of their paid membership plans for free, which I was more than happy to accept.

Each service did what they said they’d do. Transfer a large file for free. Some just did it a bit better than others and some with a bit more elegance and security in-mind. In today’s digital world, it’s easy to see the value of these services. Not to mention another reason to put-off cleaning out the server.

Terry Thornhill
e-zign design group

http://www.digg.com/software/Heavy-weight_file_emailing_solutions_reviewed