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In our industry, collaboration is put into practice every day. Whether it’s a group of employees working towards a common objective, agencies swapping secrets to execute a campaign, or a community of fans working together to get their favorite actor cast as the next Peter Parker, the idea of coming together to achieve a shared goal is a beautiful thing. But what really gets us at Denuo excited is a new kind of collaboration in which brands directly engage with consumers to create something neither group could do on their own. You may think you’ve heard this pitch before, just with a different label: crowdsourcing. But true collaboration is something different.

There’s a lot of data out there about us. In fact, it’s easy to forget just how much information various companies and organizations (and the Internet in general) know about us. The first page of Reflecteur this week looks at the ways two separate sites used infographics to display a huge amount of information with very different results:

* Where Americans are Moving looks at 2008 IRS data to map county to county moves. It’s your one stop shop to US migratory information and it only takes a few minutes of playing with the maps to realize that there are a lot of stories hidden within this data. Just click on ‘Detroit’.
* Watch a Phone Company Stalk a Customer is, not surprisingly based on the title, far more disturbing. This site maps, via a video, all of the data a phone company in Germany gathered on one of their customers over 6 months. It seems more spy movie thriller than real life.

Travel over to Page 2 for a bit more fun:

Page one features 2 reinventions:

* In an interesting twist to the reimagining world theme we often discuss, Picture Cook takes the stuffy old recipe format and redesigns it with a focus on experimentation. Even if you’re more into the cut-and-dry recipe format, these flowchart-like versions of recipes will look great on your kitchen wall.

* Travel Time Tube reworks the classic London Tube map. A fixture in the design world, this site completely changes the focus of the map from relation to time. Put in two stations and watch it change forms based on routes that take the longest.

Page two looks at two captivating photo collections:

* Ghana- The Electronic Dumping Ground of the World highlights the dark side of technology and electronics. Perhaps the ‘new gadget smell’ isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be?

* Finally, we get a glimpse of a somewhat odd underworld in Taryn Smith’s Contraband. These images showcase 1,000 various items confiscated at JFK airport in New York. Some items make sense, but some…. well you just need to see them to believe it.

Download issue 80 of Reflecteur here!

BBQ sauce stains denigrated inappropriate regions of my jeans, pedicabs ate a chunk out of this week’s lunch money and lines took a toll on my soul (should have used TaskRabbit), while a surplus of Austin food trucks with pun names both further questioned and restored my sanity.

In addition to joining the mostly Asian Wives and their escort for SXSW Interactive, I stayed to indulge in the music portion. With thousands of options for panels, keynotes and bands, I stumbled upon lots of awesome and sprinkles of crap.

7 days in Austin left me with the extremes of Evil and Good, which were equally enlightening. And below is what ultimately stuck amidst the alcohol haze.

Dear Foursquare,

It is today, your  two year anniversary since becoming the belle of the ball at SXSW, that I write you this letter as someone who cares. I used to pull out my phone to check in and it was fun- beating others to it, trying to become mayor, showing off badges, explaining animatedly what you are. Now I’m a bit, well, embarrassed. I find myself checking in surreptitiously for fear of being judged. Just the other night I was at dinner with four other guys who at one time used your service. You should have seen the heaps of scorn thrown my way. “Really? You’re still using Foursqaure?” You would have thought I had pulled out a map and a few quarters for the pay phone the way they mocked. After the teasing and incredulous looks, the next question is always the same:

Why do you still even use it? What’s the point?

It’s a fair question.