At the heart of Klein’s book was the notion that companies were now focussed on creating brands; products were an afterthought.  Brands, Klein argued, used to be a way of giving everyday products a recognisable face; now they had usurped these products, becoming more important than the products themselves.  Companies which are now permanent fixtures and fittings of our daily landscape came into being.  Behind their pre-eminence, however, lurked something distinctly unsettling: an outsourced supply chain which allowed the companies to focus resources on creating their brands rather than on the products themselves.   Klein dedicates a large chunk of the book to laying bare networks of exploitation on which some of the world’s most ubiquitous and successful products are based.

Klein backs this overarching thesis up with an astonishingly detailed set of research; what stands it aside from other polemics of the time is the painstaking detail of Klein’s case studies – the book took four years of careful field research to write.

That said, all of this is presented in an informal way and with such a paucity of language that the reader never feels bogged down in the figures which line the book.  It begins, in fact, with Klein looking at her own building – owned by the town coat maker – who Klein then links to the book’s thesis as a whole.  Klein approaches her subjects throughout with humanity and objectivity, combining facts with personal stories – whether looking at Nike’s growing influence in American high schools or sweatshop workers in the Philippines – preferring to use the force of facts rather than emotion to press her case.

Klein may now set her sights on different targets: her latest book, Shock Doctrine, won the inaugural Warwick Prize for writing in 2009 for its excoriating analysis of the implementation of the ideas of the Chicago school.  However, No Logo is as insightful and relevant today as ever before and will undoubtedly be revisited by countless readers.

Read more:

• More by this author
• More about Naomi Klein

Hand Modeling, believe it or not you can have a life and be a hand model, and you can make hundreds or thousands a day doing it. Forget the gloves; just take care of your assets well. Hand modeling is perfect for shorter girl who have small hands that are dainty and thin fingers and nice nail color and nail beds.  Size of the nail varies, and hand models are not measured by one standard rule. Hand models are all ethnicities and their hands do not all look alike. Many products and brands from cosmetics, to dish soap use hand models.  I have hand modeled for Macy’s, Bon Appétit, Women’s World Magazine and many others.  How to start: Get photos of your hands, with nail polish, and without, holding products and at ease.  There are modeling agencies that specialize in parts modeling; these are the agencies to target your photos and modeling comp cards to.

Favorite on the job skincare item for hands: LUSH’s Lemony Flutter cuticle cream.

Shoe Modeling, getting your foot in the door as a model can involve your foot! My first modeling job was shoe modeling and most shoe models are not tall giraffes they are shorter. A size 6 or 7 shoe is typically liked in the shoe modeling world. Similar to hand modeling you need to target parts modeling agencies that represent shoe models. Having nice feet, toenails, and pretty ankles can mean over a thousand dollars a day or shooting a shoe ad campaign. I have shoe modeled for Brown Shoe, Marshalls, Easy Spirit, Victoria’s Secret, and many others. Again you do need photos that show your “feet diversity,” so you need photos of your feet in sandals, heels, boots, sneakers, without shoes, toes painted and not.

Favorite on the job skincare item for feet:  OPI, AVOJUICE lotions.

Accessories Modeling, no one ever asks how tall the jewelry model is, and many times she is not that tall. Modeling earrings, rings, and necklaces is something a girl of any height can do. These days there are more handbag designers and accessories designers than ever.  From scarves to belts, to gloves to hats, models in need, and they are not just skyscraper tall and are not just on the runway. Even though I am in my 20’s I am already moisturizing my neck and chest area and shoulders and back.  Your skin is an asset and can get you a modeling job, or not, so if you want to model you can start by taking care of that skin. I use Alba, Nivea and St. Ives lotions for my whole body, and face favorites: Clinique’s Dramatically Different Moisturizing Gel, and Clinique’s Moisture Surge, and LUSH’s Ultralight moisturizer.

Hair modeling, all textures, styles, and colors of hair are welcome. From print campaigns to hair shows, hair modeling can give you a new look and also help to pay your rent.  Also remember many hair models are modeling accessories such as curling irons, extensions, and hair dye.  Next time you buy some shampoo at the drugstore check out the models on the hair color boxes,-that is the type of photo you need to focus on getting. A smile, fresh face, and hair alive and with personality.

To give your hair a boost try the V05 hot oil treatments, which I love, or John Frieda’s Root Awakening conditioner.

Beauty Modeling, put your bright eyes, beautiful lips, and clear complexion to use in modeling for cosmetics. Focus on capturing these assets in your photos and make a modeling comp card. Also I suggest attending the IBS (International Beauty Show) and mingling with the brands and learning as much as you can about what is out there is the world of cosmetics. You will find there is a lot!  Self promotion is key to working as a model when you are not tall, so grab your bootstraps and get your photos, comp card, and portfolio together because height is not everything in modeling if you know how to market what you do have.

Beauty Model must-haves:  Fresh’s Magic Wands Mini Mascara Due, $10, Bare Escentuals bareMinerals SPF 15 powder, Revlon’s ColorStay Ultimate Liquid Lipsticks, Revlon’s Extra Curl Eyelash Curler.

Isobella Jade is an author and model in NYC, she writes daily about the modeling industry from a shorter girl’s perspective at http://petitemodelingtips.blogspot.com/ and her radio show Model Talk; her modeling memoir is called Almost 5’4”.

The ever funny and insightful Charlie Brooker phrased it well in his article this morning, iPad therefore iWant:

Apple excels at taking existing concepts – computers, MP3 players, conceit – and carefully streamlining them into glistening ergonomic chunks of concentrated aspiration. It took the laptop and the coffee table book and created the MacBook. Now it’s taken the MacBook and the iPhone and distilled them into a single device that answers a rhetorical question you weren’t really asking.

Over at MacVideo.tv less rhethorical questions were being asked. In an article entitled Apple iPad: Who’s going to buy it, What’s it for? the blogger terms the tablet ‘The third device you never knew you wanted’. And yet he concedes:

A host of rational, intelligent people will buy the iPad because they know that Apple makes beautiful, desirable things.

Don’t believe me? Read this Tweet from MacFormat’s Chris Phin (one such rational, intelligent person) which perfectly sums up the anticipation the potential of an upcoming Apple product can incite:

“Do I want an iPad as a replacement for my MacBook Pro? No. Do I want one as a replacement for my iPhone? No. Do I want one? Yes.”

The fact is, when it comes to the questions of ‘why buy an iPad’, Apple doesn’t even need to answer, just as they didn’t need to answer with the iPhone. By opening the platform up to third party developers with third party apps, they’ve outsourced the problem to a whole host of hard working entrepreneurs eager to offer a solution.

Time for a confession: I actually held out until last Spring to get an iPhone, admittedly quite late for someone professed to be enthralled by gadgetry.

To begin with, I didn’t really get it. Perhaps it was the name that threw me. When I heard about the iPhone, the first thing I thought was do I need a phone that I can listen to music on and take photos with- given that I already had a camera phone and an iPod with ample storage space?  (Perhaps this is why they went for something non-specific this time around- maybe iPad, invoking notepads and sketchpads was chosen to conjure the idea of playfulness and creativity, whilst iSlate or iTablet could have sounded more prescriptive.)

But the app store changed all that. Did I want a GPS/pedometer/calorie counter with streaming radio and a word processor? Yes. And if it could also play Sonic the Hedgehog and (long defunct) PC game Myst, did that make it even better? What if I could also read books and magazines and RSS feeds on it? And order food and use it as a remote and wireless mouse for my iMac?  Would it make my life more fun and efficient?

Okay, I’m probably slightly over-stating my point. And even if you do take my point, as far as the iPhone goes, it’d be fair to ask that since I now have an iPhone why do I still need an iPad? I don’t know yet. I don’t think anyone does. But I trust that with all those software minds working day and night to think of innovative and creative ways to prize money from my iTunes account that the day will come when I do need an iPad, and it will make me happier and more efficient. How can that be a bad thing?

Read more like this:

• The Future of Publishing
• What Google Insight tells us about Kindle vs iSlate
• iPad: the headlines
• Digital Diary: iPad revealed

I have a vague recollection of my first sketchbook. I think it consisted of a collection of blank paper torn from my mother’s diary. I remember the pages came from the back of the book, so the month must have been December. The torn edges curled slightly, there were small, discoloured holes where the stitching had been, and the paper itself was thin and transparent. I wrote my name on each page as large as I could. Ownership began here. I was about four years old and got a severe telling off, but it was worth it. Later I heard my mother tell a visitor that I loved to rip paper. I was, she stated, a nightmare. My love affair with torn paper continues to this day although it was some time before I understood that destruction is part of creativity. During the years when I used to paint full time I kept dozens of sketchbooks. I had made friends with another, more established artist who had the most wonderful books filled with effortless drawings and strong, confident watercolours. At first I tried to copy her but somehow text always strayed onto my pages, giving them a feel that was, thankfully, entirely my own.

In those days I didn’t travel abroad much and my best sketchbooks were the ones I made on my annual trip to Cornwall. Day after day I would sit on the beach drawing my children as they played. Small children do not stay in one place for long and I learnt to draw quickly, in situ, using whatever came to hand: thin pencils, graphite sticks, pen and black ink. In the margins of the pages I wrote short, acerbic stories about the people with whom I shared the beach. I would fill other pages with found objects, scraps of metal, exquisite slivers of driftwood bleached by the sea, all perfect as collage material. My books were beginning to be objects in themselves; a warehouse of memory distilled from each summer.

Back at home in the dark winter days they were a poignant reminder of my desire to capture the passage of time. Years passed in this way. Then to my dismay the local shop discontinued the darkgreen sketchbooks I used. But I had begun to write anyway, I was busy with other things and had no time to draw. The sketchbooks were consigned to the loft where they remain to this day. I wrote furiously and took to keeping notes for my novels in larger, more impersonal exercise books, or, as more often was the case, on the computer.

One day, soon after my first novel was accepted for publication, I was given a small notebook with a black cover. The paper inside reminded me of the diary I had once destroyed. However, the cover disturbed me. It was too clean, too ordered, too smooth for someone as chaotic as me. So I did the only thing possible. I ripped it off. Instantly I could breathe again. Then I made my own cover. A collage of faded sepia photos, found on foraging expeditions to flea markets: sad faces from unknown pasts.

I was not painting. The novels were taking up every waking moment of my life. My studio had shrunk to a table on the landing, my oils were drying out. And although I missed the mess and smell of paint, the way the hand and eye worked together creating narrative through colour and line, I could not see the use of a sketchbook. I no longer sat dreaming on a Cornish beach. Now my husband and I travelled to Italy, accompanied by whichever reluctant adolescent happened to be around. I took my new, unused notebook with me.

Sitting in a café, hesitantly I began to draw. Almost instantly a story started to take shape. Word and image jostled for attention. Keeping my handwriting as small as possible, I wrote a character piece called ‘The Woman Who Loved Concrete’. Then I drew the woman. Even now, whenever I pick up that particular notebook, I am transported back to the sunlight on the oleander plants and the smell of strong black coffee that filtered through the shutters of the Italian piazza. The switch is instantaneous and needs no further explanation.

Since that first one I have become obsessed all over again by the keeping of notebooks, with their collage of found images, their drawings and the stories that later creep into my novels. They are my precious resources. For in them exists the relationship between work (my novels and paintings) and my personal life. Nowhere else but in these small objects, with their stolen papers and pasted memories, is the connection stronger.

More like this:

• Indie Book of the Month – Brixton Beach
• The Costa Monologues
• Between Fact and Fiction

The basic device will cost $499 (just over £300) in the US and should be available across the world by July.  But what will this new mystical device mean for publishing?

It’ll almost certainly offer us a central point of distribution for e-books – or iBooks as Jobs would have it – a one stop virtual bookshelf.  With the absence of Random House, almost all major world trade publishers have struck a deal with Apple to sell their books in the new iTunes bookstore.  Those that haven’t will surely be scrambling to do so as of today.  This is how Apple would like us to see things: with them as the go-to store for e-books of every description, effectively a cicumlocution of all other e-readers.

But let’s not label it a Kindle-killer just yet.  Some reviewers have lamented that the backlit screen doesn’t come close to emulating the e-ink of Amazon’s competitor product.  That said, it does have a lot more to offer in terms of the general multimedia experience – a point in which the Kindle is sadly lacking.  The new larger screen allows the iPad to present itself as perfect platform for video and games material a point on which Jobs was strangely silent in his speech.

Further, having another big beast alongside Amazon and Google cannot be a bad thing, a point Steve Jobs sought to underline when unveiling the product.  125 million people worldwide have one-click buying with Apple, and this sort of market – even if we reach only a small part of it – has to be a good thing for publishers.  And with the competititve price point – relatively low for one of Apple’s new releases – Apple have sought to place themselves right at the centre of the e-reader market.

Only time will tell whether or not this represents the  publishing industry’s ‘iPod moment’, but Jobs et al have given us the perfect platform from which to experiment in the future,and probably made software developers fantastically happy in the process.

Read more Digital Diary entries:

• Clash of the Techno-Titans: Nexus One versus iSlate
• Time Out’s city guides
• Duck Duck Moose iPhone app
• The Zehnseiten app

iBooks video courtesy of CNET.com

1. iBooks. We heard the figures yesterday: 125 million registered iTunes accounts. This is versus an estimated 1.49 Kindle Users with an estimated 3m by the end of 2010 (true figures unknown as Amazon have chosen not to release them.)

iBooks just makes sense. It follows Law of the Internet #1 – go to where people already are. Don’t build minisites and spend $marketing money to drag them there.

Now I know Kindle users versus iTunes users is not an exact parallel, as I’m sure there are gazillions of people who have Amazon accounts, but in my mind and the minds of many people my age iTunes has become almost synonymous with digital content downloads. Amazon is where I would go to get cheap, physical books, but not traditionally to download mp3s, tv episodes or movies.

2. The price. At the previously rumoured $1000 mark, the iPad would never have been aimed at the mass-market. Cheaper than any recent Mac laptop, and far cheaper than it’s equivelant in terms of weight, the Macbook Air, it seems the iPad has been pitched just right. Had it been released much higher, the device would have been all but irrelevant to the publishing industry.

3. Landscape reading – 2 pages. It’s a simple thing, but it’s amazing how much difference aesthetically this could make. According to David Kaneda:

The reading interface looks very pleasant, using a two-page layout when in landscape mode and one-page when in portrait.

This to me means that the experience of reading on an iPad will be far closer to the traditional experience of reading a book, than even a Sony e-reader or Kindle with their e-ink technology, could achieve.

4. The majority of apps will run on the device. This is great news – although does it spell a bad time for developers who might have had a bonanza holding publishers over a barrel – as the primary way for them to get their content onto an Apple platform?

5. Have some writers shot themselves in the foot? Earlier in the week it was reported that Ian McEwan signed an exclusive deal with Amazon.com to distribute some titles on his backlist in digital form throughout the US. Does the exclusivity of this deal mean he’s locked himself out of the iPad? Or will Amazon books, in the form of the Kindle App for iPhone still be available on the Apple platform? Will people still go to the Kindle app to get their books or straight to the iBooks store?

Although the deal McEwan has struck sees him receiving more than 50% of royalties (which is 50 % more than he would through most traditional publishers) has he locked himself out of a bigger slice of the pie? After all, having 25 % royalties of books that are in front of 125 million eyes might be better than 50 % royalties in front of (an estimated) 1.5m eyes.

Downsides: Not many – except, perhaps, the name, the lack of flash, and the tiny storage that is pretty equivelant to the iPhone (16GBs for the cheapest model, max 64GBs.)

Click here for a pretty humourous take on the iPad’s shortcomings.

Read more like this:

• The Future of Publishing
• What Google Insight tells us about Kindle vs iSlate

Here are the sales figures (as of last week) courtesy of The Sunday Times Bestseller List, for a selection of the top-selling celebrity bios.

It’s Not What You Think by Chris Evans
Last week 4 Weeks on list 14
Sales to date 167,025

My Shit Life So Far by Frankie Boyle
Last week 3 Weeks on list 15
Sales to date 220,015

JLS: Our Story So Far by JLS
Last week 1 Weeks on list 11
Sales to date 132,490

Driven to Distraction by Jeremy Clarkson
Last week 2 Weeks on list 15
Sales to date 244,925

Ooh! What a Lovely Pair by Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly
Last week 5 Weeks on list 16
Sales to date 317,350

The actual stats (skewed slightly by the varying dates of release) puts Ant and Dec out front, followed by Jeremy Clarkson and then Frankie Boyle. Does search interest paint the same picture?

In short, no. Because, not everyone who is interested in something wants to pay money to read about it- especially in hardback (interest does not equal purchasing power – which is why interest in iSlate might not equate to sales, and why, as we’ll see, Google Insight is no help with celeb BB…) The legions of JLS fans, a large section of whom would be what we call ‘tweens’ may not have had the money to buy the book themselves, they may have opted for the CD as a gift. They may have been searching for video clips of JLS with a fervour rarely seen in Clarkson afficianados, regardless of their passion. The gifting factor skews the results slightly too of course. I’m sure that copies of Ant and Dec’s book were bought for many a gran or aunt on the assumption that they liked the cheeky pair, on the basis that it was a non-threatening book, or that they had been seen to chuckle once or twice in front of Saturday night telly. (You can bet the same mistake was not made with Frankie Boyle’s My Sh*t Life So Far.) I’m sure that some Top Gear fans received multiple copies of Clarkson’s book regardless of their actual interest in his life story. But what Google Insight does show is that the editor who bought JLS long before their first album or single was pretty shrewd – gambling on them being more than a flash in the X factor pan. Let’s face it, finding 133,000 twelve year-olds with £15 to spare is no mean feat. So to CBB: if we look at just a selection of the housemates from this year, we can see that their level of interest bears little relevance to their popularity outside – or in – the house.

Google Insight would suggest that of the remaining housemates the clear favourite to win in Swedish DJ Basshunter, known by his friends as Jonas. However, it also suggests that Lady Sovereign is even more interesting to Google users; the same Lady Sovereign who was voted out by the public last Monday.

The actual favourite to win is Dane Bowers at 5/4 with the lowest interest score of these five contestants, followed by Vinnie Jones, at 11/4 with the second lowest interest score. Why is the mostly reliable Google Insight so wrong in this case?

Two things skew the ability for Google Insight to be useful to any would-be gamblers in the case of CBB. Firstly, the way that the cbb voting works, with the housemates nominating before the public get a say, means even the most publicly well liked candidate could be up for eviction whilst the most boring could stay in to the final. Secondly, with internet tv on-demand and youtube so popular, many people will be searching online to catch up on last night’s scandalous activity featuring one or other contestant, rather than because they are a fan.

In fact in this case it seems that Google Insight almost works inversely – so the least interesting contestants become the most likely to win, as they keep their head down, don’t cause waves, and in doing so, quietly court the viewing public’s favour.

Interestingly enough, since it was more a pure talent competition than a popularity comp, like cbb, Google Insight just might have helped you earn a few bucks on the X factor.

As you can see (if you move your cursor over the chart), Olly is very slightly in the lead interest-wise, until one week before the final: Joe overtakes him slightly, then noticeably, and goes on to win. Not that I’d endorse gambling, but maybe worth looking at next time Britain’s Got Talent is on?

More like this:

• What Google Insight can tell us about Kindle vs iSlate

Let me tell you why it’s great. Google Insight measures what people are searching for. So in a way, it’s a really organic guage of people’s interest level in a certain subject.

In my opinion, it’s more reliable than consumer insight surveys since it’s not a measure of what people will admit they are interested in (to themselves, or to a researcher), but of what they are actually interested in. In other words, it counteracts the oldest of consumer research problems – of cognitive dissonance.

The one drawback of Google Insight that comes to mind is that it’s not subtle. It doesn’t, for example, differentiate between people who are interested in the “iSlate” in a vaguely curious way from those who are interested in a ready-to-buy type way. Unless, I suppose you run a search on “buy iSlate” or “iSlate cost”.

Given this morning’s apparently game-changing announcement that Amazon plan to open the Kindle up to third-party apps, I thought I’d take a look to see how the “iSlate” and the “Kindle” stack up in terms of search engine interest.

It seems that, somewhat unsuprisingly, interest in the Kindle last year was charging ahead, probably largely due to the fact that it was actually on sale (i.e. more than a rumour!), and aided by high profile announcements such as the Kindle international launch, and the fact that the Apple tablet had no agreed name. So far, so predictable.

Then finally, January this year, Apple confirms a date and searches for “apple tablet” peak – only a few points less than the Kindle. Add in people searching for “iSlate” and the amount of people interested in the rumoured tablet is far greater than the Kindle. Does this give any indication as to how the iSlate will do?

Certainly Google Insight has proved a good predictor for the sales patterns of the iPhone and the iPod.

As shoutmeloud.com reports,

It took the Apple iPod around 17 quarters to have sold 30 million units whereas it took only 10 quarters for the iPhone.

We can see the steep uplift in iPhone purchasing mirrored by the steep interest rise – interest in “iPhone” appears to take off much quicker than interest in “iPod” (although it is hard to compare this like for like with the level of interest in iPods at their inception – since Google Insight only goes back to 2004.)

Another interesting thing the graph shows us – the steep peaks in iPod interest occur every year at Christmas, suggesting the majority of iPods are given as gifts. Interest in iPhones on the other hand mainly peaks in July 08 – when iPhone 3G was announced – and June 09 – when the 3GS was released.

On first glance, interest in the Kindle seems to work the same way as the iPhone, with peaks at the point of big press releases, but the highest peak yet was at Christmas 2009, which also corresponds with what was probably their biggest sales peak. iPhones are much harder to gift, due to their reliance on contracts or top-ups, but not impossible. If the main purchasers of Kindles are gifters, maybe the Kindle is the iPod of the book world, and the tablet the iPhone?

Following this morning’s apparently game-changing announcement that Amazon will open up their platform to 3rd party app developers, publishers might be tempted to abandon any iPhone plans and diversify, for fear of eggs & basket syndrome. But, before we throw those prototype iphone apps on the fire, lets maybe take a look at one last search chart…

Tomorrow: Can Google analytics predict the winner of Celebrity Big Brother? Am I joking? Come back to find out…

More like this:

• The Future of Publishing
• Long live the Tablet
• HarperCollins Books on the Nintendo DS

Publishers, for obvious reasons, always say their books are astonishingly good, but, just sometimes, they genuinely are. I read Wolf Hall in manuscript in the autumn of 2008, and knew this was one. I hadn’t really known what to expect when I started it, but it was clear within a few pages that this was something not just out of the ordinary but unlike anything else being written today.

So much has now been written about it that it seems pointless to add to it here, but suffice it to say that even the longest and most intelligent review can’t get close to the richness, subtlety and depth of the experience of reading the book itself. But for a short account you can’t do better than John Burnside’s recommendation in the New Statesman’s Books of the Year, who wrote that “to describe Wolf Hall as a historical novel is like calling Moby-Dick a book on fishing and, this year, the Booker judges did get it absolutely right. Mantel is an astonishing writer: a prose stylist who combines absolute precision with a compelling sense of flow, and a marvellously subtle observer of character. Wolf Hall casts a spell that makes us think long and hard about order, law and the workings of power.”

Gratifyingly, the book has done superbly well; coming up to 220,000 copies in hardback in the UK alone. It is easy to say with hindsight that Wolf Hall was always going to be a success, and perhaps it always was; I would have been profoundly surprised, as well as profoundly depressed, if its brilliance wasn’t recognised. But it was, and we are all at Fourth Estate savouring that all-too-rare moment that is, when it comes down to it, why we’re in publishing: when a book that we first read as a word document, and loved, is out there, being read by tens and hundreds of thousands of people.

Read more about Wolf Hall:

• Read an interview with Hilary Mantel
• Hilary Mantel: The Novelist’s Arithmetic
• Watch Hilary Mantel at the Daunt Debates

Keep checking back for more exciting news on Wolf Hall soon.