Yahoo rebrands anew

Before we start on today's post, it is the 40th anniversary of a party that took place in the recreation room of a New York City apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. What makes this party special is that DJ Kool Herc began rapping during an extended break, laying the foundation for hip-hop music. May the hip hop, the hippie, the hippie do the hip-hip-hop, and don't stop for another 40 years. Now that that's out of the way, Yahoo announced on Wednesday that it will unveil a new corporate logo on September 4 - the first such change since the company was founded 18 years ago. The new look will retain the current purple color scheme and its trademark exclamation point. Yodel away, Yahoo fans. "Over the past year, there's been a renewed sense of purpose and progress at Yahoo!, and we want everything we do to reflect this spirit of innovation," Chief Marketing Officer Kathy Savitt wrote in a blog post. "While the company is rapidly evolving, our logo — the essence of our brand — should too." Maybe it is time for Yahoo to get a new logo. But in the meantime, Newmarket could become the first shopping centre in New Zealand to use scenes of virtual shoppers to mask the appearance of empty shops. As one of the country's premier shopping centres, particularly for the fashion trade, annual rents for prime retail locations in Newmarket are around three times those of other suburban locations such as Albany. Rents range from $800 to $1600 per square metre, according to the 2013 Bayleys Retail Property Report. However, Newmarket has also been suffering from a significant amount of vacant space, particularly along the prime retail strip of Broadway, which has left it looking a bit like a smile with a few missing teeth. So the local business association has plans for a hi-tech cosmetic makeover. It plans to wrap the front of vacant shops with pictorial skins, which will be similar to the advertising pictures that are used to cover bus windows. The skins would be an adhesive film which could carry a variety of images.