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The French around Perpignan are a tad bit cheeky. Back in days of yore, they were actually part of Catalonia, or more specifically, Marca Hispanica. These days, they are most assuredly part of France. The French stamped out every remnant of what was old Catalonia and it has been such for a long time, so no new re-emergence of Catalan pride has sprung up (unlike Spain) until now.       No, you won't really hear Catalan being spoken in the streets. You won't see things double-signed on the road, except when heading south towards Spain. You won't even see Girona spelled in the Catalan [correct] way, with the French spelling it, Gerone, because, well... they can. But you will see Catalan flags. You'll see the red n' gold on buses as well. You'll also see it in stores, like we did in Auchan. It's weird and it makes it seem like there is some new rising of Catalan culture.       But what is it, really? Quite simply, it's a marketing gimmick. Yes, there are a few people in the Perpignan area that can truly call themselves Catalan and can even speak the language, but the truth of the matter is that all of this is to cater to Catalan tourists. Let me emphasize that that's Catalan and not Spanish tourists. As I noted in the Auchan article, there are a lot of donkey stickers, meaning Catalans, on the cars in this area. For those who don't know, Catalonia is quite a wealthy area overall, which is part of the reason the Spanish government will do everything they can to never let them secede.       So, these businesses and areas near the border with Catalonia are smart enough to market themselves to one of their main audiences. After all, who in the hell goes to Perpignan for a summer holiday? No one, that's who. Who goes there to shop? Catalans and uh, some French too of course...

In honor of our political race yesterday, I would like to present the, iJam. No, it is not that i-jam like we'd say it in English, but actually, iJam with the 'h' sound for the 'j' in Spanish because it is from Spain. For those who don't know, jamón is basically Spanish ham. Sometimes those uninformed compare it to prosciutto, but that's dead flat out wrong since prosciutto is not only Italian, but nothing like jamón.       I have officially begun my descent in to Spanish transformation as upon leaving Spain at the end of summer last year, I began to pine for jamón. It is extremely hard to get in the US (inversely prosciutto is quite easy to get making it suspiciously inferior to jamón.) Maybe it's for the better as I'd just eat it all the time if it was here and get fat(ter). Anyways, because of this, I found iJam site to be incredibly funny as it spoofs Apple and jamón and does it very well.       This rather brilliant advertising firm in Spain called, Shacketon put the whole thing together with little other reason it seems than to have a laugh. Obviously they want to start up some kind of viral marketing to draw attention to themselves, which I'm more than happy to point their way. I saw it when it was still just in Spanish which caused a good deal of the jokes to be lost on me until Number One Fan did some translation. I was even ready to translate the whole thing out in this post so that it could be shared, when lo and behold they put English subtitles on the demonstration video you see a link to from the home page in the lower left. Good stuff. Check it out. If you're ever in Spain, don't taste the jamón unless you want to be hooked.

I've seen this time and again from both personal experience as well as watching friends who work in web design go through it. You come up with a good design and it really works well. People are in to it and then just before it gets deployed, the marketing department says something to the effect of, "Oh, but we need to have ads in there!"       I've never quite figured out why these things don't get thought of much more in advance, but I've found that there is a reason ads look out of place on sites: they're an afterthought. I think it comes from the general scope of marketing in that they don't seem to be able to think big picture (in my experience) and that is really ironically, their biggest job. Web designers are then forced in to a position of having to take these things in to account or just not giving a damn about what happens to their design after they hand it off. I try to find a mix of these two paths and it's worked well generally.       To illustrate this, I point you to CitySearch San Francisco which was redesigned in the last few months. I never cared much for this site before, but I found the new design very appealing. I say 'found' because the first time I was looking at it, I liked it and then the last thing to load was some banner ad on the top from an ad server that was, as usual, slow to load. This then pushed the whole design down and had a blocky, crappy element on the top of the page that mangled everything. It was sad really, because this ad was the same ad that appeared within the page. Let me state that I'm not completely against ads, they just need to be more subtle. When you see something like a banner ad on the top or to the side (like in SF Gate), we've all become conditioned to the point where we ignore it because we've been seeing these buggers for over 10 years now. An ad within the content looks more like content and is something that you're likely to click on. Ever wonder why Google has been so successful with AdWords? This is why.       Beyond eliminating ads from a site altogether, a site like Diablo Magazine is a little bit better done. While this is a publication with next to no content and mostly ads, it's obvious that they were planning to have ads in the final layout, unlike Citysearch. Of course, I have to criticize those colored buttons on the left of the page, because yes, they do stand out, but in an obvious marketing way that shows no loyalty to the original design which is actually quite nice when you ignore that.       The ultimate joke in all of this is that a lot of us are seeing less of these ads these days. People using Firefox with Adblock installed as an extension don't see any of these ads. I suspect that as time goes on, the entire way that the web is making money will have to be re-evaluated because tacking ads and other sham-looking things in to a site are short-term solutions to making the web profitable.       I might add that below, I have included some simple instructions on how to make the Citysearch design work better that their marketing people might be able to understand.

For those that don't take the East Bay Bart line, you're really missing out on a laughable billboard you see right when you come out of the tunnel from 19th street in Oakland. Basically, it's for this company called "Harris Ranch" and it has a boy (the son I would assume) with a sign that says, "We're hungry", and then a guy (the father I would assume) with a sign that says, "Come home soon", and then a girl (the daughter I would assume) with a sign that says, "Bring Harris Ranch".       At first glance it seems rather innocent. But seeing as how I've seen it every day for the last couple of months, I've had way more time than I ever wanted to have to think about it and as I did, I realized that it's rather typical of marketing currently, in that ever since Bush took office, there has been a reversion back to the roll of the woman as the homemaker. What I find particularly annoying about this is that her dumb ass husband is sitting there basically waiting to starve because he's unable to cook or do anything useful except write signs for Harris Ranch.       Further reading in to this would point to the fact that the woman is also the one with the job. The husband is sitting there, not looking like he just got off of work, but rather lounging around like a loser. And then I suppose that this is all really sad because the behavior of these two adults is being passed on in the exact same gender roles to their children.       Like I said, I've had way too much time to read in to this and I find it a revolting advertisement. But, I think what could make it better would be to lose the son, because he's a dopey, whiny little brat that I despised when I first saw this. Then, swap out the father for the mother. That way, if you're going to stick with traditional gender roles, at least the father is working while the mother tends home. Or better yet, keep it in sync with the Bay Area and give her a look that says, she just got off of work and can't be bothered to cook dinner, so pick up some of this Harris Ranch crap (which is now available in seven states, woo hoo.) That would be the best ad for this area. No one cooks. They only buy prepared food and they have one precocious kid who is going to grow up to be an attention whore.       Okay, so it's obvious I need to cut my Bart commute out of my life and thankfully, this will happen at the end of next week. Then, no more Harris Ranch and the musings of how in addition to not being able to make anything here anymore, we outsource dinner as well.

Well, maybe not so brilliant as I can remember the words on this billboard alongside the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, but I can't remember the company that put it up. Whatever the case, it was genius in a pure form.       Basically, all it said was, "Somewhere, someone is playing bongo drums." or something to that effect as I can't remember the exact wording. But what's awesome is that to me, this means that yes, someone is playing bongo drums (see yesterday's post) and I hate them. I want to get as far away from them as possible and thus want to travel. To those who do like bongos and the degenerates that can't bang out a rhythm to save their bearded, soap-avoiding skins, this is a welcome call to travel where these folks are.       Superb. You read it as you feel it should be, but have the same reaction--travel and thus the travel website makes money by walking the middle line. It's like what politicians do, but smarter.