photo by Noodle93

Do you know the origin of the word cliché? (from a Seth Godin post):

In printing, a cliché was a printing plate cast from movable type. This is also called a stereotype. When letters were set one at a time, it made sense to cast a phrase used repeatedly as a single slug of metal. "Cliché" came to mean such a ready-made phrase. The French word “cliché” comes from the sound made when the matrix is dropped into molten metal to make a printing plate.

Who knew the word came from a sound effect?  Great information for your next party! 

I was thinking about clichés this afternoon – I was listening to the audio book of The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch (fantastic, powerful book – I’ll write more on it later) and he had some quick thoughts on the importance of those well used (perhaps overused) statements often called clichés. 

In his opinion, clichés became overused precisely because they have a powerful meaning – that doesn’t mean you should avoid them, just use them in the right way…especially if you’re talking with kids, because they haven’t heard them before!

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  photo by luckyrob

If you’re looking for success stories of social media, then you should check out Queensland Tourism board’s latest marketing idea.

It’s a contest called The Best Job in the World – basically it’s an open video audition for the newly created ‘Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef’.  This is a 6 month contract (with a salary of $105K Australian plus expenses) and the responsibilities are to share your experience with the world via blog, video and interviews.

The process is closed now, but they received 34,684 applications and they’ve now narrowed it down to the top 50 finalists.  They will interview the final 11 applicants, with the top vote-getter being automatically selected in addition to the 10 finalists they choose.

Check out some of the amazing entries below:

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