word. daily. (march 11, 2010)

Taking the Plunge: Childhood sweethearts, Jeff and Stacey are tying the knot…or taking the plunge, if you will. For their “Save the Dates” they took pictures underwater and the results are H²O-mazing!*

Awesomest Harmonica Ever: Frustrated that your perfect blowing-the-dust-out-of-a-Nintendo-cartridge skill doesn’t come in handy anymore? Well, no more fretting — selling on eBay are NES cartridge harmonicas.

First Position: Sometimes the best ideas are also the simplest.  Check out the minor tweak that Vivianne made to her homemade advertisement for her ballet studio to make it really stand out.

*Editor’s note: we’d like to apologize for using the phrase “H²O-mazing.”

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—Andrew

Beginning next Friday, visitors to the Estee Lauder counter at Bloomingdale’s here in New York will be able to get a free makeover and photo shoot, and can instantly use the branded photo as their social networking profile photos. The photographer will provide the makeover recipient with a hard copy of the photo (with the Estee Lauder logo in the background) and e-mail it to her, so she can instantly upload it to her online profiles.The promotion will also expand to other stores in select major cities.

This is an incredibly genius idea, because everyone wants to look their best in photos, and social networks have become popular among Lauder’s target demographic of middle-aged women, but this will also help draw a younger audience to the makeup counters. This photo could be used on any site from Facebook to Twitter to dating sites like Match.com, spreading the word about Estee Lauder throughout the Internet.

So…anyone up for a trip to Bloomingdale’s? Our photos over on the right side of the page could use a little sprucing up!

—Alyssa

The Digisquad was well-represented in the M Booth pie-eating contest at our company summer party last night — Tom and I both put our dignity on the line for our teams. It was difficult to determine who actually won (although the consensus seems to be that it was Tom), but the clear winners were our colleagues who were laughing hysterically at us. It has been proposed that it become an annual event — hope that means I’m off the hook for next year, though!

—Alyssa

The New York Times ups the ante this week, introducing Gadgetwise, a new blog that will compete with gadget-centric sites like Engadget and Gizmodo.

In the most exciting post of its inaugural week, Gadgetwise reports that Life Magazine’s photo archive is now searchable on Google Images. This is amazing! I used to be obsessed with Life back in the day, and their photography is absolutely unparalleled.

-Elise

Now that Polaroid film has been discontinued, you can make your digital photos look like real Polaroids with Poladroid! Sorry PCs, it’s only for supercool Mac users right now.

—Alyssa