Personalized marketing

This is really cool. Reason magazine is personalizing their covers with satellite imagery showing the location of the individual subscriber! Imagine the surprise of the subscriber when the magazine shows up. But it spawns an interesting debate between the sanctity of privacy and the power of personalized marketing (for both the economy and the individual). If done right, personalized marketing helps everybody in the chain (“How did they know I was out of toothpaste?! Cool - $1 off!“). If done wrong, it can violate somebody's privacy (“Honey, I swear that ad for Gambler's Anonymous isn't for me!“) or make innacurate assumptions about what they want, filtering out the stuff that they really do want (the “TiVo effect“ - if you watch Happy Gilmore you must be a golf fan, right?).

For other really cool satellite imagery stuff, check this out. Download the trial. Using this software makes you really appreciate the smart client!