Get Cheap Tickets For Oceanic 815

Awesome! Price-comparison engine Kayak "shows" tickets for the Sydney-LAX Oceanic 815 flight prior to the premier of Lost's sixth and last season. Search for a one-way flight on September 22, 2010 and it will be right there, departing at 2.55pm. Love the "click to see rates" link to Expedia (doesn't do anything, unfortunately).
- via, via

Loose Lips Sink iPad Deals?

So how come McGraw-Hill's logo wasn't up on that Keynote slide of publishing partners that had cut distribution deals with Apple for the iBooks ebook store? Because of this interview by the publisher' CEO?  As an LA Times' blog put it, "Terry McGraw shouldn't be surprised if he wakes up tomorrow with a horse's head in his bed."

(image from Engadget)

Telling A Story With Fantasy Interfaces

Here's a recent quick interview on NPR with Mark Coleran, the designer behind FUI (fictional user interfaces) that have appeared in many well-known movies: "What [a movie character] sees on that monitor looks nothing like what you have on your home computer. That's because it wasn't designed to surf the Internet or do your taxes."

AdLab's earlier coverage of Mark Coleran's work and the subject of FUI, including an academic paper.

Checkmarks vs. Crosses

Seen on a price comparison page of a web design outfit -- why not use green checkmarks instead of red Xs? Xs here are supposed to mean that the feature is available, right?

Avatarize Yourself Until You Are Blue In the Face

Na'vi editor of Pandora's AdLab

I was about to say that this new tie-in from McDonald's will cheer up all those people who got depressed "because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora," but after uploading my own mug shot I'm not so sure.

Anyway,  here are some stats about Euro McD's "Avatarize Yourself" campaign in Europe from the latest Oddcast email update: "Our [18-]country, 7 language deployment has already racked up more than 4mm user sessions in a few weeks, with an average session time of 9 minutes, 45 seconds! One out of four sessions results in sharing via email or social networks, generating almost 1.2mm earned sessions."

Video of Moscow's Billboard Porn Hack [NSFW]

Pics or it didn't happen.

By now, you have probably seen the AP story from Moscow about how a billboard on a highway near Kremlin was hacked to show porn. I also bet you haven't seen any pictures of the hack unless you know your way around the Russian corner of the blogosphere. AdLab to the rescue!  The video (via) is after the jump and is very NSFW.

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How Many People Print Out Articles?

A rare and useful data point: "For a typical news site, about 0.5% of all visitors print out news reports." (Find more stats like this on AdLab)

Coin-Op Newspapers: Popular Content Should Cost More

Here's a thought regarding the New York Times' upcoming metered model:  instead of taxing its most loyal readers, the newspaper might consider charging more for the articles that are in high demand by everyone.  Read on.

Amazon Connects Kindle Prospects With Owners

Love how Amazon helps prospective Kindle customers meet current enthusiastic owners to test-drive the device in person in the absence of physical retail distribution channels. Something Google might consider for its Nexus phone, too.

Google: Ad Zappers Are Good for Advertising

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about how Adblock Plus and the proliferation of other similar technologies wasn't such a bad news for the ad business in the long term: "It’s a case of advertising Darwinism, with the fittest ads surviving at the expense of the most annoying."

Just came across this recent and similar comment by a Googler made about the Adblock Plus extension on Chrome: "There will always be some group of people who want to block ads for personal reasons. But if we do a good job on the advertising side, people won't want to block ads. People will find them actually useful."