When I was in high school, Denny’s was the place to go after a concert. My friends and I would recount the night’s adventures over cigarettes, coffee, and 24-7 breakfast.  It was the premiere late-night hang-out for the under-21 crowd, especially after concerts. Before everyone had cell phones, email and IM, this was how and where word got around.

Technology makes it a lot easier to share our experiences now, but Denny’s still holds a special place in the culture of touring bands and their fans. And this summer, Denny’s is fully embracing its after-hours reputation for “feeding bands and music fans since 1953” by adopting up-and-coming bands.

While the website serves as its hub, Denny’s All Nighter make-over extends to the chain’s restaurants, beyond the rock-star crafted menu items mentioned above. According to USA Today, “from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., alternative rock will replace the middle-of-the-road music now piped in. Instead of black pants and collared shirts, wait staff will wear jeans and T-shirts during these hours.

“The chain also is launching two late-night-only menus. One is a value menu with items such as nacho cheese fries for $3.99. The other is a "shareable" menu, with seasoned kettle chips, mini-burgers and $7 Sweet Ride Nachos — tortilla chips in cinnamon sugar, fruit, hot fudge and whipped cream.”

In a move to lure late-night snackers from the competition and keep the proverbial party going, Denny’s is taking some risks here. But it’s encouraging to see a brand take advantage of digital media to reach an audience that broadcast can’t connect with in the same way. Denny’s the brand has found new ways to be useful to bands and fans. Ways that are unique to Denny’s. That rocks.

Well, the top ten as chosen by Veronica Belmont, in an interview with the social network watchers at Mashable.

1. Brightkite
2. Dropbox
3. Pownce
4. Remember The Milk
   
5. Friendfeed
6. Rupture
7. Trulia
8. Downforeveryoneorjustme.com
9. Qik
10. Seesmic 

I'll let you read Mashable's post to see Belmont's reasons for selecting each application - while I set myself a reminder to check this list again in six months to see what panned out and what simply was panned.

Anyone tried any of these apps yet? Other suggestions that didn't make the list?
Post a comment and/or link for us. Thanks.

We employ logos, taglines and positioning statements to help define brands a certain way. It’s what we do. Brands, however, are defined by more than these. Brands are ideas, and associations of ideas, existing entirely within people’s heads.We are all consumers, and thus we each define the brands we experience in our own right.

This is the premise behind Brand Tags. This site invites you to help define a randomly selected brand by "tagging" it with the first word or phrase that pops into your head. The results are fascinating, and displayed as tag clouds. (For those unfamiliar with tag clouds, size matters: the larger the font, the more popular the tag.)

You might be surprised by some of the tags attributed to the dozens of popular brands listed on Brand Tags. Especially when you start to compare competing brands' attributes. You get a lot more context than you would from a mere GoogleFight. For example, compare the tag clouds of McDonald's and Burger King. See how BMW fares in relation to Mercedes. Or compare AT&T with T-Mobile and Verizon. You can't help but start to feel the passion you have for these brands, one way or the other.

No one knows why we dream, but some scientists suggest that dreams are our brain’s way of making necessary emotional connections to new pieces of information. In other words, dreaming consolidates your recent experiences. As one scientist put it: “Dreams let you consolidate and integrate your experiences, without conflict with other input from real life. Dreaming is like saying, ‘I’m going home, disconnecting the phone, nobody talk to me. I have to do work.’”

Isolated from waking experiences, dreams can do their job.

Isolation Studies is a series by Chicago artist Chuck Jones based on similar insight. Other "isolated clip" pieces, dubbed “supercuts”, represent a new meme in which “some obsessive-compulsive superfan collects every phrase/action/cliche from an episode (or entire series) of their favorite show/film/game into a single massive video montage.”

Supercuts can be as absurd as dreams. Just as your dreams (based on your experiences) make the most sense to you, supercuts might be more entertaining if you’ve seen the episode or film from which they’re taken. Regardless, these consolidations of larger works demonstrate an interesting way to make new associations with old, familiar experiences. I think they could inspire some absurd-but-entertaining ideas for our line of work, too.

Here are just a few of the hundreds of supercuts in circulation (some are safer for work than others).

• Turbo Boosts from Knight Rider
• Sawyer's nicknames for other Lost characters
• Pauses and silences from His Girl Friday
• All the times Steve Jobs says "boom" during his keynote addresses