Yesterday, Amazon announced the launch of it’s wireless book and news reader. It’s targeted to travelers, which makes sense, since it sucks to read a paper on a plane, and no one wants a receipt or handful of loose change after purchasing a magazine at the airport. This isn’t the first wireless/electronic reader to be launched, but perhaps one will break through as a must-have in the next few years.

Brendon Keenan at Resource Interactive contributed to this effort from Pantene Pro-V: the goal of 1 million inches of hair to assist women who experience hair loss due to cancer treatment. Certainly a worthy cause and money well-spent, a place more brands should be. And it beats seeing a 30 second spot with an effeminate hairdresser talk about why you’ll get more bounce and volume.

View it here: http://www.beautifullengths.com/en_US/index_home.jsp

Behold, the Post Office of the Future. A pleasing retail experience; open space, free wi-fi, leather chairs and work stations for the small business owner.  Clear signage, open layout. Much better than waiting in an informal line at FedEx and paying too much.

Today I’m in Argo Tea Cafe, which has 5 Chicagoland locations. They offer free refills, though it’s not widely publicized. Last time a Starbucks barista gave someone a free refill, Howard Schultz had their legs broken.

Chicago has one of the highest urban concentrations of Starbucks, and I never thought many mom & pop or traditional places could survive. I myself love their coffee (black, no frills). Dunkin’ Donuts is planning more expansion into Chicago with it’s newer focus on coffee promotion. But there are a growing number of traditional coffee and tea shops in Chicago, and business is good. I’m sitting in one right now, on a leather couch, Radiohead is playing,  on free wi-fi, and art for sale is hanging on exposed brick walls. It’s extremely spacious and chill. Sure the coffee isn’t quite as good…but it’s still a B+. How funny that there’s actually room in this market–while Starbucks focuses on branded entertainment, and Dunkin airs commercials mocking their “French/Italian” drink sizes.

Saw some web chatter on the prophetic commercials AT&T made in 1993, predicting various technologies that would become available. While AT&T produced none of them (hah!), they’re still fun to watch. Since I have a steel trap memory and watched too much TV as a kid, I actually remember one or two of the spots. I would also like to point out that some of the features in Total Recall have been realized; let’s hope that none of the ones from Minority Report do the same.

Chicago’s main alternative rock station has been bombarded with requests for the song “Mad World”, a remix of the Tears For Fears song featured in the commercial for X-Box 360’s Gears of War. The song was certainly an interesting choice for a war game, and I’m curious why the song had such a strong connection with viewers.

I have to disagree with the stellar KC folk over at American Copywriter on their recent dismay at the tie-in Happy Feet has with the Flu Facts website. Sure, it might seem a bit too much to partner with Roche on a site promoting flu shots for kids. But I don’t think encouraging flu shots is a bad thing, and I think this is a wisely placed media target.

As The Economist noted in an article on Chicago earlier this year, the city’s growth is attributed to increased Hispanic immigration. AT&T’s ubiquitous deathstar ad campaign is one of many out-of-home spots featured in Spanish.

Interesting NY Times read on an artist who painted self-portraits following his Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 1995. Beautiful, fascinating and sad.