Mario Goes Quilting

Boing Boing has a great post (along with a picture) about a quilt patterned after Nintendo's über-mascot Mario. The cover was made, according to the blog, by overlaying a game screenshot on a Paint Shop grid.

There is a great quote from Marc A. Smith – which is a seven word description of the history of mankind – in Howard Rheingold's book Smart Mobs (p. 31) that encapsulates the emerging thinking that needs to be engendered by corporations that want to include customers on a very personal level: "More people pooling resources in new ways."

Game companies do a great job releasing all the collateral for their products months before the actual box hits the shelves. The reason: encourage people to create communities and products themselves. It's wonderful market research, and it encourages creativity.