John Moore posts charts “comparing the attributes of both George Bush and John Kerry to well-known brands”:

“Mapping Bush and Kerry to well-known product and corporate brands reveals how each candidate is viewed and suggests brand strategies each can employ to potentially sway the critical undecided voter group.”

Click on the title and check it out.

Judith Meskill links to Monster.com’s “online community of professionals”.

A quote from Dina Mehta’s blog:

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” - Carl Jung

BFD reader Lisa Kious kindly pointed me to the letters to the editor regarding the recently announced poverty summit. I love what Gary Zwick of Solon is saying:

Congratulations to The Plain Dealer and other me dia outlets in Cleveland. After several years of regurgitating various lists detailing what a bad place Cleveland is to live, they’ve finally convinced me. I give up. While it’s too late for me and my wife (we’re here for the duration), we are counseling both of our children, both of whom are attending schools outside of Ohio, not to come back. Apparently, this is not a good place to be, for any reason. And even if this is counterintuitive, perception is reality… And now we learn that Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell is calling on a group of 40 community leaders to address the poverty issue. While the makeup of the group is as yet unknown, I suspect that we all know most of the people who will be on the list: the usual suspects… This town has a vibrant small business community and a first- class middle-market professional community. Many of these people are ready, willing and able to be part of the solution, without any personal or monetary agendas other than to make Cleveland a better place to work and live. But there will not be, nor has there ever been, a place at the table for us.

How can we stop parents from telling their children to move away and not come back? How can we engage the Mayor to invite unusual suspects to participate? If the table is too small, can we loose the table and bring more chairs?

That got me thinking about Open Space Technology. Remember Canadian Tables? I think it’s time to turn the tables on edge and use them for something other than to keep people apart.

Via Boing Boing via Joi Ito:

A post on an indymedia website says activist Joshua Kinberg — inventor of a wireless, bike-mounted, dot-matrix printer for spraying protest messages in the street — was arrested yesterday at the RNC in NYC… Kinberg’s invention allows users to spray messages transmitted to the bike-printer by way of the ‘Net or SMS. They’re painted in a water-soluble chalk solution that washes away with water (not spray-paint, as misreported elsewhere).

Make sure you click through for the pic and Joi’s comments. Good stuff.

Anthony is linking to BFD. How do I know? I check Technorati about once a week. Anyway Bizz Bang Buzz is a great title for a blawg “covering news and information relevant to entrepreneurs, executives and others interested in business and technology”. I’m subscribing to the atom feed and blogrolling it as well.

Particularly Denise Polverine, who had the article fixed quickly and posted the link in the comments.

Article/puff piece on residential living in downtown Cleveland. The great piece was in the “Forum” section, by PD technology writer and blogger Chris Seper. This piece has some great recommendations for encouraging people to live downtown — well it would if the whole damn piece was on the site. For some reason — presumably a technical glitch — most of the article is not online. I disagree with some of the larger recommendations (foreclosing the East Bank of the Flats for condos), but the smaller livability issues are more doable and practical (cheap parking permits for residents). There are plenty of other things that could be done, but this is a good starting point for ideas. Sadly, I doubt the city will actually try them.

Here’s what Chris said:

Casinos don’t make communities. Nestled in Cleveland’s downtown, where developers would build casinos and convention centers, new families are growing, college graduates are settling into their first apartments and jet-setting yuppies are sipping mojitos in downtown bars. Some want to invigorate the downtown by adding new buildings. What it really needs is more feet in the street - both coming from the growing number of apartments filling the landscape and from cash-flush customers patronizing downtown businesses. No One Big Idea is going to make downtown Cleveland hum. I lived in the city’s Warehouse District for two years and realized that small ideas must be stacked to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with grand innovations. The city needs everything from pizza to new party centers to get itself going. And everyone - from politicians to property managers - can pitch in. The following list may not be completely realistic. But consider these ideas for a few moments; they could squirt some verve into a downtown in need of bodies, life and community…

Mmmm. Sipping mojitos in downtown bars. I’ll let you know if it’s really like that. By the way, the emphasis is mine.