CROX: imitations, misspelling and abbreviations

Claudia took a picture of an Italian shop selling (fake?)  Crocs shoes (if you don’t know what I am speaking about, here the link to Crocs website) .

shop in Tuscany selling Crox / Crocs

To what level it is just a misspelling?
How do subtle differences in brand naming prevent objects to be “fakes”?
and – as Chipchase could say: Hmm, what makes a fake a fake?

From a user perspective, what are the elements that facilitate the “conversion” to a buyer through the purchase funnel?

Also, CROX is the ticker name for the Crocs company: how do abbreviations change the essence of a brand?

footprints

yellow footprints on a sidewalk - Brick lane

White footprints - bethnal green road

300 meters (approx) separate these 2 pictures. 4 feet in pairs of 2 for each case (plus a ghost foot?). The first one is in the middle of a sidewalk, and it doesn’t have (apparently) any functional meaning. It’s therefore even more significant. Second picture has been taken in front of an ATM machine (you can see feet of somebody using it).

They share similarities, but they surprise for how different they are: in one case they mark somebody’s steps (maybe jumping, or playing) while in another case they strongly recommend one’s position (as they give indications on how to queue). They both invite people replicating the position, but while in one case they just foster playful movements, while in the other they create empty spaces.

Moreover, I have the impression that the second picture is also creating a gender barrier: these are clearly men’s soles.

and Internet of cats, flowers and trees

Cat: the explorer

Weekend often means going out and visiting exhibitions, especially when London has such a wonderful weather (rain, clouds and all the best the English Summer has to offer, as you may have seen at Wimbledon and Silverstone).

I went to the RCA show just to discover that the Tower bridge is not the only “non-human” twittering in these days: Andy Broomfiled has created not 1, but 3 twitters for a flower, a tree and a cat (image above). Twitters are automatically updated thankx to a “blog bot” platform, by using data coming from sensors attached to animals / objects. I hope he won’t be upset if I use his words:

Blog Bot Platform is an open source system which I have developed for creating Different types of Blogging objects. Turning Simple experiences into online encounters. These bots ‘tweet’ to their experiences to micro blogging services. I am interested in how people react when they encounter these Blogjects invading their web 2.0 space.

what happens when the cat passes on the Tower Bridge, then?