An ornament stuffed with cake sprinkles | photo by Alan Sailer

I stumbled across this photo gallery on Flickr of photographer Alan Sailer, who appears to favor shots of various objects captured mid-explosion after hit with a bullet. First of all, just the technical skill and timing required to achieve such shots is amazing. But the real fascination for me is how the different materials react – fruit splits open with a weird symmetry, ornaments shatter, and jello looks like a colored wave from one of those old Juicy Fruit commercials.

View the gallery here.

Last week President Obama introduced two economic recovery program logos: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and The Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (Tiger).

So what do you think about these logos?

Are you on the fence as to whether or not social media can help build your brand?

Check out mashable.com’s 5 Twitter tactics for building a stellar brand.

Twitter is growing at an exponential rate. Besides news organizations using Twitter, now the police department has tapped into it to communicate quickly with the public. Check out CNNs latest article on the Police and Twitter.

One way of combining a good dose of creative thinking and technology is to provide something useful to your audience. Nike Plus did a good job of this with their running shoes. They created a cool online application that runners could download data from their shoes to track their mileage, pace, and calories burned. Runners can also map future goals and progress online. This is just one example of how companies are moving towards spending marketing dollars wisely to create something user centered verses simply waving their flag.

Since its deput, runners have logged 100 million miles worldwide and the company’s global running-shoe sales are up from $8 billion (fiscal year ending May 2006) to $9.7 billion (fiscal year ending May 2008), a 21% increase. Proof positive that when creative, strategy and technology are appropriately combined, it can pay big dividends.

I am amazed with the complexity of how toy manufacturers use the Internet to market their wares and with the sophistication of children’s web sites. Corporate America should be forewarned. Kids are growing up with high expectations and will be acutely aware of who is communicating with them, effectively, and on their terms.

iCarly.com
iCarly is a TV show about a teenage girl who runs a popular web site and her life as a kid. There is a real web site, iCarly.com that touts the aspects of the show and has some features and content simialar to the fictitious site. If there were an actual site as the one portrayed on the show, it would be pretty darn good. The format of the site and skits produced are in line with what is successful online today: comedy, live video, social media. The show also deals with the issues of running a web site:  visitor counts, technical issues, promotion and sponsorship. They don’t sell a product other than the iCarly brand, which is enough, but they do educate kids on the Internet. Excellent show.

Lego.com
This is the granddaddy of all kids sites with full-blown sites dedicated to each product line. It has a robust online community where kids can create their own web page, have friends and post text and a gallery of pictures of their Lego creations complete with a rating system.

You can download the Lego Digital Designer application that allows you to build anything you want out of a library of Lego parts – all shown in 3-dimentional perspective. Then you can purchase the pieces used in your creation, ala cart, from Lego. In just a few weeks you can build your creation at home using the real parts and diagram downloaded from their site. Awesome!

There are Shockwave games and videos that create storylines which in turn promote the creative use of their products: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Bionicals and Mars Mission. This content supercharges kids’ imaginations and creates want for Lego merchandise. Brilliantly done.

Webkinz.com
Purchasing one of these little cuddlies is your child’s ticket into their virtual world. Each Webkinz comes with a code that is registered on the site. Like Lego.com, Weknis.com has a strong social media presence and character developing content to immerse kids into the world of Webkins while constantly and subtly selling merchandise. This company portrays its web site as something that is exclusive, creating interest and need to buy a Webkins to belong. Powerful persuasion, don’t you think?

Nick.com
As the primary web presence for Nickelodeon TV, Nick.com contains everything that is Nickelodeon. My favorite section is the games. Nick uses games to immerse young fans into the show’s story and characters enhancing the bond between them. It’s very effective.

Toonami Jetstream
This was a super cool site designed by Japanese web geniuses to show videos for the Cartoon Network and featured many anime offerings such as Pokemon. It has been recently replaced by http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/video/, which is nothing close to Toonami’s outstanding design, but Cartoon Network is well aware of the need to have episodes of their shows online for young viewers to access and almost every cartoon has unique content just for the web.

These are a few examples. The bar is set high. Kid’s sites are cool. So come on corporate America, keep up with these companies that focus on kids, or you won’t be able to impress your future consumers online.