Halloween, what have you done to these poor children? Yes it is cute to see little firefighters and princesses in their parents arms as they chaperone older children around the neighborhood. But baby toupees? Donald Trump baby toupees, no less? I mean, this is stupid. Unfortunately it’s stupid like a fox.

For those of you who don’t recognize the typeface and layout, that’s the Drudge Report. Oh ya, the marketing lesson in all of this is if you come up with an idea dumb enough you can be assured to get press. Even worse, the press release for the site wants people putting these things on their kids for more than Halloween.

“The infant hairpieces are perfect gifts for baby showers, birthday parties, play groups, costume parties, Halloween, and more.”

And while the company says the wigs are to “show that while parenting can be a great responsibility, it can also be a source of endless amusement,” this fits right in with a 3-year-old boy buying a convertible on eBay and some dumb punk getting busted for selling pot on Craigslist. It must be Friday.

Seriously? I think this lady just realized she didn’t want a pink car, but according to CNET,

Jack Neal briefly became the proud owner of a pink convertible car after he managed to buy it for 9,000 pounds ($17,000) on the Internet despite being only 3 years old.
Jack’s mother told the BBC that she had left her password for the eBay auction site in her computer, and her son used the “Buy It Now” option to complete the purchase.

The seller agreed to relist the car and not push it on Jack and his mother. Scarier than 3 year olds buying things online is the fact that there are currently 25 pink cars for sale on eBay motors in the UK. eBay America? Only 6. Score one for us.

In the interest of lightening up your Friday we share this story from today’s LA Times. It seems one Eugene Church saw the benefits of eCommerce and decided to expand his business online. The only problem is his business was selling “high-grade marijuana.” Church posted an ad on Craigslist advertising his wares and was met by Sheriff’s deputies when he showed up in Agoura Hills. The story closes out with this gem of a quote from Sheriff’s Capt. Ron Nelson,

We catch the dumb ones.

They certainly do.

The New York Times runs an article every week under the theme, “Online Shopper.” This week’s article is titled A Jacket’s Not a Jacket When It’s a Sweater, See? Previous weeks have included 8-Year-Old Finds Her Inner Child about the author’s daughter finding a doll online and Make Me a Sharapova, O Racket From the Web about, well the headline says it all. (Registration is required)

So Silicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag runs an amusing post today “Why is this in the tech section, volume 1: The Online Shopper.” These are not articles that focus on the technology of the ecommerce experience, but instead focus on the author’s experience finding a particular item on the Internet. After admitting that it is a great column (I agree) Valleywag hypothesizes,

Maybe it’s an awkward play at getting more women to read this section (”Women like fashion, right? Add some fashion!”)

This was something I had wondered all summer; until today that is. Then I realized that even though the article is included in the Technology section of the Times online, it is really located in the Fashion & Style section. I guess it’s an awkward play at getting more men to read the Fashion & Style section. A play that worked, as I read the article every week to see how the author approaches online retail. Touché, Times, touché.

While shopping magazines and blogs have been around for awhile, my interest was sparked in the latter after seeing products from two different clients on the men’s gear blog uncrate. The wet lamp from GENERATE and the mobile rotary phone from Spark Fun Electronics (previously mentioned in the New York Times) were both featured in the last couple of weeks on the “No. 1 buyer’s guide for men.” That’s their quote, not mine.

I’m not sure if GENERATE and Spark Fun suggested these products or were simply the unknowing recipients of praise. What I do know is that free publicity is always good and as customer review sites and social shopping networks get bigger people will want sources that just TELL THEM what is new and cool. These sites have highly specific demographics and advertising on sites specific to your customer base can be a great source of sales. What do you think about shopping blogs?

Google recently launched Google Trends, a service that allows you to “see what the world is searching for.” Google shows off how one might compare skiing to surfing *yawn*. With a bit of work, however, we found some results that were a little more… revealing…

Sex
Sex doesn’t have too many ebbs and flows, it has pretty much remained insanely popular throughout the history of time. What is interesting though is what city is most interested in sex. San Francisco? New York? Try Cairo followed by Chennai and Delhi, both in India. Seems the desert sun has that effect on people… or is it repression? Moving on…

Al Qaida
Hmm… where is that Osama Bin Laden guy… maybe start with Rabat Morocco?! The city absolutely blows away (pun intended) the competition when it comes to having a propensity for Al Qaida searches. We’d say that sort of interest goes beyond morbid curiosity.

Torture
Man we HATE losing. Unfortunately, when it comes to torture we’re not quite as good as the Italian mafia. Our message to the US government: don’t settle for the silver medal just yet. You might not know much but you do know torture. Let’s get that trophy!! U S A! U S A!

WMD
We might’ve been to quick to come down on this administration. If anyone has claimed our government has given up its search for WMDs, you need look no further than Google Trends. Washington is still a hub of WMD search activity, though one look at the line graph and you’ll realize their enthusiasm is losing steam. Maybe they’ve moved onto other things (see: torture)

Chuck Norris vs. Jack Bauer
Finally, we all know Chuck would take Jack in a no-holds-barred cage match, but he also absolutely destroys him in web mind-share… even though it’s all in Poland.

If you find more interesting searches, let us hear them. We know there are still some tasty nuggets remaining.

We hinted at it a few weeks ago and now our redesign/rebrand of the Zend Framework site is live! Though this is a partial launch (the manual redesign should launch shortly) we are thrilled about this contribution to the Framework Project. Today we’ll give you the backstory and over the next week I will highlight some of the details and thinking that was involved with this project.

The Backstory
About a month ago, Roy attended the Southern California Linux Expo and came back thrilled at the idea of the Zend Framework for PHP. We use PHP almost exclusively and loved the idea of finally having a robust framework the whole community could get behind. We took a close look at the framework site and realized this would soon be the PHP framework everyone was craving.

However, we also felt the framework site had failed to convey the potential of this product. The framework needed better branding and clearer messaging to reach out beyond the PHP community. If you had put the current framework site up next to the Ruby on Rails site, it was obvious who was doing a better job of selling their framework. There is a whole audience of web designers/entrepreneurs fixated on the idea that new and exciting web applications are built using Ruby on Rails. The truth, however, is far from this perceived reality and yet Ruby continues to have a huge mindshare amongst the “web 2.0″ crowd.

So, we contacted Zend and expressed our ideas and intentions regarding the site. Before we knew it, the redesign/rebrand was approved. Over the next few weeks we worked together with Zend to implement a new brand and site design that, beyond having a more contemporary aesthetic, clearly conveys the excitement and community growing around the framework.

In the coming days we will discuss the redesign in more detail and also post an interview with the good people at Zend regarding this framework, the rebrand, and their caffeine beverage of choice.

Wired Magazine this month has a fascinating section devoted to gaming. As exciting as the Web 2.0 world of user generated content is, it simply pales in comparison to what’s going on in the world of video games. Beyond user generated content, game designers allow players to change and manipulate the very laws of the virtual worlds they create. The complexity of these virtual gaming environments is so robust that some have actual economies, with GDPs, exchange rates to real currency, inflation, etc.

In one instance a man bought a space resort within a multiplayer game called Project Entropia. The price tag…$100,000! Yes, for VIRTUAL property. The real kicker however is that it might actually be a sound investment. He plans on renting out virtual condos, storefronts, and tickets to events within his virtual arena. According to his optimistic calculations, his space station could net $2.4 million/year! How’s that for investment property?

Thank you all for a fantastic birthday cakefest. It’s not every day someone is confronted with their own mortality in the presence of so much luscious cake. Though we had a poor showing on the apple pie, I feel like we can rally tomorrow and tackle this shortcoming head on. Let’s set some goals, get real, and eat that scrumptious bastard (it’s in the fridge, top shelf under the paper plate).

Oh yeah, i added the photos from the festivities to our photo album.

A quick overview of ten popular PHP Frameworks from PHPit.

Evaluated are: Zend Framework, CakePHP, Symfony Project, Seagull Framework, WACT, Prado, PHP on TRAX, ZooP Framework, eZ Components, CodeIgniter

Our favorite is the Zend Framework (we may be biased, however. Big announcement coming soon).