Mirko Kaminski, the owner of the Hamburg agency Achtung!, tells off "Company X" and explains why he refuses to pitch for free. The potential client wanted a free concept, of course, but without having to provide a brief of any sort, and without specifying a budget in the event of a successful win. Apparently, the request came from a larger company. Kaminski never says the name, but speaks in the video of a "board" on the client side, so there are other agencies in Germany right now who I am sure have guessed exactly what company this is.

The must have app for all creatives is here: t-minuscountdown.com will help you keep track of all awards entry deadlines, ever. There's even a screensaver too.

T-Minus is a calendar to keep track of awards deadlines so you'll never forget to run or submit your work. This short film tells you everything you need to know.

Produced with Saint / RKCR/Y&R & B-Reel. Fun and useful, I like it a lot.

How lovely tatt.ly is, full of too clever by half designs for design-minded-kids and kids at heart. And people who love everything that spoofs pantone, obviously. Each tatt.ly is $5 , and you can get all of them for $35 too.

Tetris block sticky notes for the art director/designer who is also a geek (ie: ME! and yeah, loads of people like me). Ben Ambrose designed these little blocks of loverly, and you can fetch them for £7.50 at Suck.uk.com

Of course there is, and since it's over ten years old it can be legitimately classed as 'retro', which means it can automatically be classed as cool, which means we can feel justified in producing these cool, retro, block sticky notes. Where is more apt to note down reminders than elements of old video games rendered in pale yellow paper - evoking memories from your youth while jogging your memory to buy some milk and/or call your nan.

As part of the 30th Birthday Celebrations for Canada’s Wonderland, artists at Tantrum Design created “Starlight Spectacular”, a vibrant display of stunning visuals that bring an entire mountain to life.

“Starlight Spectacular is wowing our guests and is being called one of our best shows in our 30 year history.” Says Dave Phillips, Vice President, Marketing & Sales at Canada’s Wonderland. “It’s the perfect way to finish off a great day of thrilling rides and water park fun.”

Gideon Amichay, executive creative director of Shalmor Avnon Amichay / Y&R Interactive, has a 9/11 project brewing in his free time called "it's been ten years".

He wants to bring together animators from all over the world to honor the upcoming 10th anniversary of 9/11. The project is in collaboration with ANIBOOM, the virtual animation studio, and will be shown on both web and TV once completed. If you're interested in joining the project see aniboom studios site for details.

This is a not-for-profit effort. Any proceeds generated by screenings on television or other media will be donated to the Twin Towers Orphan Fund and the Tuesday’s Children organization.

Dutch design crew Sam van Veluw and Rogier Martens a.k.a Andeboom have invented the "P-tree", a portable urinal unit that can hang off any tree. They're currently all over the Roskilde festival in Denmark, because at festivals people will urinate against trees no matter what. Might as well sort them a target. It's funny how the Dutch excel at temporary urinal solutions designs, as I recall the first FUD (female urination device) I saw came out of Holland, now there's she wees and go-girls and who knows what else. You don't need to buy gadgets though, you need to master "the arc" s'all.

This neat slideshow from The Social Practice highlights the trends seen in cannes 2011, in other words the stuff you will want to have grown out of if you want to stay one step ahead of the competition before next Cannes. Obviously social media is playing a big role, but what's also apparent is that storytelling is the real key. Here's to the future.

Aw, sweet. I guess I'm not the only one who misses Columbo/Peter Falk (so much I had to make a post in his characters voice), so does Peugeot who sends him off with this homage.

The ad says; for sale xxx miles etc - grand sentimental value. (I don't know French so if anyone wants to make an exact translation, be my guest)

Tom Albrighton at abc copywriting has put up a well researched piece explaining all the faults he sees in crowdsourcing. Beyond the obvious "can we do the font from that one, the headline from that one, and the picture from that one?" thing we've all run into when we present three pieces to more than five people.

Thanks to social media and the web, the ritual of presenting options to the client has mutated into a monstrous and dangerous new form: completely crowdsourced creative.

Here's a fun way to spruce up those stupid sound-barrier "walls" around drab offices everywhere. Get your own Twitter-poster, based on twitter username or hashtag at Betternouveau.com. My poster based on my username even managed to get the words "Dabitch ... is... Back" in there nicely. Yeah, I'm buying that. Seems so appropriate today.

Quick get the interns away from the official twitter accounts! The twitter accounts are very powerful megaphones in your brands voice these days.

When Wired reported : "Duke Nukem’s PR Threatens To Punish Sites That Run Negative Reviews" the web and media went nuts. The bad tweet read: "Too many went too far with their reviews … we r reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn’t based on today’s venom."

Ha! Seems we have lots of creative local bus ads recently, like the one in Luleå which made me laugh yesterday.

This one was spotted in Aarhus, Denmark. It reads: Go ahead and overtake - we also make gravestones signed filips.dk, the local stonecutters.

Obviously not as hilarious as the "I ❤ DP" shirts , but this dry humor still made me smile. It's a bus ad for the local paper, pointing out that "the bus is going that-a-way". Ho-kay, thanks for clearing that up. Tagline: Norbottens Kuriren - we know Luleå

Cooper Stevenson at the School of communication Arts 2.0 wanders down the path of Ogilvy and French bemoaning the death of long copy. Today, copy is merely headlines, palatable information, a catchy phrase, a witticism...

Spotted over at Workthatmatters we find the stern warning : "Remember not to text at the Alamo", and at Yahoo : "Texas movie theater makes an example (and a PSA) of a texting audience member".

Look. Cadbury's and Fallon really want you to like their Charity Shoppe ad, not only have they released several music versions, now they've released the "making of". Since they created a giant sized charity shoppe and stuck dancers in oversized clothes, the making of video is in many ways more fun than the ads. The directing team Megaforce are hanging out in an oversized couch doing the interview! Bliss!

The most recent sound-version is set to "Whoomp there it is"

The other day, when my way too cool for school teenage niece asked me if I liked Urban Outfitters, I bit my tongue not to roll into a Badland tirade. I do love the store, you can get all kinds of crap-you-never-knew-you-totally-needed there (fashions? Not so much), but I have seen this sort of thing play out too often.

We find the collection of women+product ads at "Sälj grej med tjej" hilarious and sad (sell stuff with babe), even if fake ads like the 2006 meme Breyers "lickable" spoof ad has snuck in there.

There seems to be a slight retro-revival with a new twist to the students wanting your attention right now. The Young Lions winning team are selling the "media space" of their thank you speech in Cannes, which is new, but also relying on the traditional 'Ebay-auction' to spread the idea (and hopefully sell).

Hire Christine has fallen in love with the red internetbutton of yore, and if you click, click, click, click, click it you can see her portfolio. Eventually. This is very cute.

Ulrike Schulz takes on the "I'm sorry" photograph meme, and has people fill a tumblr account with "Hire Ulrike" photos of themselves instead. #HireUlrike is an account executive, and has made this film to boot. She's looking for her dream job in the London ad scene. She's got it all, even her own hashtag.