Technically Speaking

Everything pretty much sucks online these days. It’s the same garbage recycled 25 times over and I still get PR stuff from all sorts of places and people. I know, not one of the big dog blogs, but yes, people still beg me to write about the product that has already been done but done better.

Finally today, someone that actually matters or rather something that matters contacted me. The company is a startup out of San Diego (my #1 favorite city) and is called Collarfree. They are currently running a contest that taps into what does really matter in the next few months - the 2008 general election for the President of the United States.

The contest they are running is called “Keep Politics Positive” which is an oxymoron, but I hope that people realize the days of dirt slinging politics is old news. No one is interested in that anymore. I think it’s great that a t-shirt startup came up with a positive spin on the election.

The contest format is simple. Graphic designers from around the world submit stylish, pro-candidate t-shirt designs into Collar Free’s voting system on a daily basis. The public votes on their favorite shirts for either Obama or McCain. The shirts are then ranked and displayed based on their win percentage, calculated by totaling the positive votes for each design.

This is a leading a trend among online communities called “Crowd Sourcing,” which is the concept of bringing together a large group of people to create a product. Collar Free posts competitions for designers from around the world and allows the public and consumers to select the products they love most. This innovative design process increases demand, reduces risk, and engages customers, in part because shoppers and designers find it fun.

This company is based out of San Diego, CA and was founded in April 2008 by Jimmy Hendricks and Patrick Dillon.

Technically Speaking, I’m so glad that there are startups that are actually doing worthwhile cool stuff still out there. I wish these guys luck and hopefully they can leverage past the 2008 election and have a successful run.