skittles

Skittles-sorting machine separates the rainbow

Van Halen's tour contract once famously included a clause that a bowl of M&Ms was to be provided backstage with all the brown ones removed. Such a feat would be a lot easier to achieve today using a device like the Skittles Sorting Machine.

The Skittles Sorting Machine does exactly what it sounds like. Pour Skittles into a funnel at the top and wait as the machine patiently evaluates each one and delivers it into a bowl with like colors. Once done, you can taste the individual colors of the rainbow.

The machine is even more impressive when you learn maker Brian Egenriether fabricated many of the parts from epoxy, pulled the funnel from a hummingbird feeder, and poached additional parts from a telescope.… Read more

The 404 1,021: Where we're laced with Cinavia (podcast)

Stupid Andy sits in the guest seat and he has a bone to pick with Cinavia today. I'm warning you that this discussion is technically the first time we've nerded out about DRM systems so hard, but it's relevant in terms of resale, personal file backups, and the rumor that the next PlayStation console won't allow used games.… Read more

The conversation wars

Modernista did it. Skittles did it. And now the world’s hottest advertising firm, Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CPB), has done it, too: the NY outfit has re-launched its corporate web site as a conversational social hub that curates what is being said about CPB rather than staging what CPB has to say. Some may scoff at this move and denigrate it as “sooooo six months ago,” but I agree with Paul Isakson when he heralds the influence of the new CPB site on the rest of the industry as potentially paradigm-shifting.

The demarcation line here runs between pioneer and early … Read more

Skittles - the end of the homepage (as we know it)?

Branding (and all branding is online branding these days) is changing at a rapid pace. Gone are the days of message control, and the only way to still manage your brand is to not manage it.

Here’s the latest and very bold example: The masterfood brand Skittles launched something quite radical yesterday that many marketers had thought about but didn’t have the guts to actually do - the "Interweb." Yesterday Skittles' home page was reduced to a Skittles logo over-layed above a Twitter search for the word Skittles. Today it overlays their Facebook page.

This is … Read more

Seagate FreeAgent Go external hard drives taste the rainbow

We loved the Editors' Choice winning Seagate FreeAgent Go external hard drive for its modern design and inexpensive cost per gigabyte, so we're even happier to report that they now come in a wider variety of colors. Just in time for the holiday season, Seagate just announced 10 exclusive shades: think pink, ruby red, solar orange, spring green, forest green, royal blue, sky blue, champagne gold, titanium silver, and tuxedo black. They're available online in 250GB ($120), 320GB ($150), and 500GB ($200) capacities.

To sweeten the deal, if you buy or receive a FreeAgent Go from November 28 … Read more