Ken Schafer

Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die

Technology Review offers us Bruce Sterling's "Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die":

"Technologies die rather routinely—seen a Conestoga covered wagon lately?—but it’s rare for them to be singled out and righteously put to death. Some technologies, however, are so blatantly obnoxious that the human race would rejoice if they were obliterated. A wise society would honor its young technical innovators for services rendered in annihilating obsolete technologies that are the dangerous hangovers of previous, less advanced generations. Let me offer some candidates."

Slow School because "We've Got Google"

Following up on Jon Udell's "Mechanical Memory" post, I submit this quote from deep in a Globe And Mail article on Slow Schooling:

"U.S. developmental psychologists Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek's book Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn -- And Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less hits bookstores next week. Prof. Golinkoff, who has spent her career understanding how the human brain works, decried the 'roadrunner society' that tells parents to accelerate children's brain development.

Some earlier research has been misinterpreted, she added, to produce the notion that 'if you don't pour it in by the first three years, your kid is doomed. Your kid will never see Harvard.' This idea that children must be constantly at work, she said, is folly: 'We don't need people who can spit back facts. We've got Google.'"

Jon Udell: Mechanical memory

Jon Udell: Mechanical Memory:

"We all like to joke, nowadays, about how Google has become humanity's collective memory, and we're properly grateful not to have to remember a lot of things that we know we can just look up. We've gone through this before, of course. Pre-Gutenberg, we routinely memorized vast amounts of verse. Then we learned to offload chunks of memory to print. Now we're learning to offload a whole lot more memory to the Net. I'm not saying I'd have it otherwise, but sometimes I wonder about the tradeoffs we're making."

Do-Not-Call Listing Remains Up in Air After Day of Twists

New York Times: Do-Not-Call Listing Remains Up in Air After Day of Twists:

"The second ruling, issued today by Judge Edward W. Nottingham of Federal District Court in Denver, threw a more effective obstacle in the way of the list on the ground that it discriminates against for-profit businesses; the registry program still allows political and charitable solicitation calls to be made. Judge Nottingham ruled that by exempting the nonprofit solicitors from the registry, the F.T.C. 'has imposed a content-based limitation on what the consumer may ban from his home.'

He added that 'the mechanism purportedly created by the F.T.C. to effectuate consumer choice instead influences consumer choice, thereby entangling the government in deciding what speech consumers may hear.' The burden on commercial speech was significant enough, the judge ruled, 'to amount to a government restriction implicating the First Amendment.'

Because the ruling came on broad constitutional grounds the program's future will probably not be settled in Congress, but in the courts."

House Votes to Reinstate 'Do Not Call' List

Reuters: House Votes to Reinstate 'Do Not Call' List:

"Congress moved quickly on Thursday to reinstate a popular 'do-not-call' telemarketing list that millions had signed up for before it was blocked by a U.S court two days ago.

The House of Representatives voted 412-8 to give the Federal Trade Commission authority to run the national 'do not call' registry of phone numbers, which telemarketers would be prohibited to call. The Senate was expected to vote on a nearly identical measure later in the afternoon."

Best Customers Advocate

Best Customers Advocate:

"My name is Bruce Kasanoff, and I recently introduced a new service where I spend 30-60 minutes (their choice) talking to one of your best customers. As an objective and independent expert on business relationships, my role is to learn how they really feel about your services."

Always On - We're Not A Blog

Always On: The Blogger Revolt!:

"The bottom line as I see it is the original blogging community represents the early-adopters of a movement that will eventually radicalize the entire media industry. Some time off in the future, if major media brands do not open up their content to more participation, readers will just not trust them, and they will go elsewhere."

Anthony Perkins faces his critics and makes a good case that Always On can work, whatever it is.

Globe And Mail Article On RSS

Globe And Mail: Will RSS kill the e-mail newsletter?:

"What does RSS mean to the content-rich e-newsletter industry? About three months ago, Ken Schafer, president of the Toronto-based Internet consultancy Schafer Group and a founder of The Association for Internet Marketing and Sales (AIMS), simultaneously launched an e-newsletter and added an RSS feed to his company's blog. Though it's difficult to determine exactly how many RSS users subscribe to a feed -- marketers cite this as one of the few limitations of the system -- he estimates that there are about 10 times as many people viewing his feed as the e-newsletter.

Mr. Schafer credits the concept behind RSS with the popularity of the program among his subscribers. '[RSS] feeds give the control back to the reader.'

As Internet content publishers, both Mr. Pirillo and Mr. Schafer believe that RSS could replace the need for e-newsletters.

'It gives us everything we wanted from e-mail newsletters, and everything spam has taken away,' Mr. Schafer says. 'I would be surprised if in three years there are any e-newsletters left.'"

Red Herring Reappears

Welcome back Red Herring

(via paidcontent.org)

Seth's "Four Paths" In Web Design

Seth's Blog: Helping Jack with web design:

"You only have four paths:

1. get someone to buy something right now
2. get someone to give you their email address so you can build a relationship
3. get someone to tell a friend
4. get someone to go to another page on your site."

Path Number 2 is the basis of most of Seth's ground-breaking work on permission and viral marketing. But with the increasing pressure on e-mail as a commercial channel (spam filters, viruses, low-response, overload, consumer awareness of privacy and identity theft), I'm not sure that this is still a top priority.

It would be easy to say that Path 2 should be "get someone to subscribe to your feed so you can build a relationship." Unfortunately RSS Feeds are not yet ready for prime-time so we're stuck at this point.

I wonder what happens to Permission and Viral marketing when everyone things that giving their e-mail address is the path to more spam and just stops filling in those boxes?

Seth Godin on Do-Not-Call mess

Seth's Blog: The DMA steps in it again:

"More important, the Do Not Call list is the single best thing to happen to direct marketing since the invention of the catalog. Here's a government-financed way of figuring out in advance who's going to hang up on you."

Startups Offer RSS Services

Editor & Publisher: Startups Offer Online Publishing Alternatives:

"RSS publishing is in its infancy, and only a small minority of technologists and publishers currently view it as a viable alternative to e-mail delivery of content. But that could change in the coming years, as a new wave of entrepreneurs grabs hold of the concept. The new applications and services being created are designed to overcome the shortcomings of current RSS publishing solutions, and offer a spam-proof publishing channel.

If this pans out, RSS content publishing could in time become as important as e-mail and Web publishing."

The article spotlights some start-ups basing their services on RSS. The products look a bit old-school compared to something fairly earth-shattering like allconsuming.net, but still, good luck to them - the more the merrier.

Michael Moore responds to the wacko attackos

Michael Moore.com: Michael Moore responds to the wacko attackos:

"One thing you get used to when you're in what's called 'the public eye' is reading the humorous fiction that others like to write about you. For instance, I have read in quite respectable and trustworthy publications that a) I'm a college graduate (I'm not), b) I was a factory worker (I quit the first day), and c) I have two brothers (I have none). Newsweek wrote that I live in a penthouse on Central Park West (I live above a Baby Gap store, and not on any park), and the Internet Movie Database once listed me as the director of the Elvis movie, 'Blue Hawaii' ( I was 6 at the time the film was made, but I was quite skilled in directing my sisters in building me a snowman). Lately, my favorite mistake is the one many reviewers made crediting the cartoon in 'Bowling for Columbine' as being the work of the 'South Park' creators. It isn't. I wrote it and my buddy Harold Moss's animation studio drew it."

Michael Moore gives a great example of using the net to clarify and support positions you've taken in other media. He does a good job of debunking many of his critics and only occasionally slips into name calling himself. It would have been nice if a few more of his facts had been backed up by links to official web sites.

(via bb)

Court Finds F.T.C. Exceeded Authority on Do-Not-Call List

New York Times: Court Finds F.T.C. Exceeded Authority on Do-Not-Call List:

"In a victory for telemarketers, a federal judge in Oklahoma has ruled that the Federal Trade Commission overstepped its authority in creating a national do-not-call telephone registry, which was to have gone into effect on Oct. 1."

OceanStore Project

OceanStore Project:

"OceanStore is a global persistent data store designed to scale to billions of users. It provides a consistent, highly-available, and durable storage utility atop an infrastructure comprised of untrusted servers."

There was a moderately interesting story on PlanetLab in MIT's Technology Review that pointed me to this very interesting project. The goal of the project is to create "storage in the sky" - a service that would allow you to store/back-up all of your digital life onto a network of well-encrypted, loosely organized servers around the planet.

I'm going to watch this one.

Google Tests Local Search

CNET News.com: Google tests local search:

"Like many Google experiments, the new function may or may not be widely incorporated into the company's well-loved search engine, but Google has hinted at its ambitions for geographically targeted search in the past. Local search and advertising is also pegged in the financial community as a massive opportunity for major portals and search providers."

You can also try the live Google Search By Location. So you can now find Indian Restaurants in New York, NY.

Dalton's Blog - How Not To Blog Your Way To Victory

There is of course much talk in the US about blogging politicians. Ontario is having an election October 2, 2003 and I was a bit disheartened to see how Dalton McGinty, leader of the opposition Liberal party, is blogging on "Dalton's blog"

Here is a stirring excerpt from one of the four posts since the blog went live in May:

"Most nights, there's a rally. Tonight, there was a dose of reality.

With the campaign ads on the air now, reporters ask me if the attack ads bother me.

What I heard today, in Sarnia and Wallaceburg and Walkerton, bothered me a lot more."

(via BonaSource's excellent user experience review of the three major party sites.)

More On The Hitler Scans

Words of Waldman: Hitler Scans Archive:

"I've taken the scans down. But I think they need an official online home. Here's the mail I sent to Isobel McKenzie Price..."

Wired News: Old Hitler Article Stirs Debate:

"A fawning 1938 article by Homes & Gardens magazine about Hitler's Bavarian mountain retreat remains widely available on the Web, even after the discoverer and original poster of the article took it off his site when the magazine demanded its removal."

Viruses, Spammers, and Your OS

CNET News.com: System alert: You've got worms:

"Some media reports suggest that a few of the present crop of viruses differ from those that infected computer systems in the past. One difference, they say, is that these bugs can capture e-mail addresses as well as IP addresses that can later be used to generate massive amounts of spam. How real is that concern? While it's tempting to wonder whether the latest viruses are being unleashed with a profit motive--and the goal of using computers to send spam--most people agree that it's unlikely."

This is a good opinion piece on viruses, with particular attention being paid to whether spammers are behind recent attacks (unlikely) and if moving to a non-Windows OS makes sense (yes, unless everyone else does too).

Cloudmark Rating System

I've used Cloudmark's SpamNet since it was in early beta. I think it is one of the best anti-spam products out there. In a typical day I get about 150 spam messages and SpamNet removes all but 3 or 4 of these. I don't have a spam problem anymore.

Well, as a consumer I don't have a spam problem. But as someone who sends e-mail newsletters to people who have subscribed at my site, it is a very big problem.

Over aggressive spam filters continually block legitimate e-mail communications, primarily newsletters and other corporate communications which can look "spammy" even if they are not.

In fact, the only problem I've had with Cloudmark is that it traps a fair number of legitimate newsletters I've signed up for as spam. This happens because Cloudmark users "vote" on whether messages are spam or not and Cloudmark then uses Bayesian filters to block similar messages from other users' inboxes. This works well until a bunch of people decide that news.com's newsletters aren't worth reading and they "block" them.

Cloudmark got one step closer to the perfect solution this week when it introduced the Cloudmark Rating System which is effectively a global whitelisting process to avoid the blocking of mailings from people who are willing to identify themselves.

Here's the press release.:

"The breakthrough email reputation system solves the industry-wide problem of false positives, or good email getting caught in spam filters. In the race to stop spam, false positives are crippling email as a viable way to do business. Ferris Research estimates the cost of false positives to businesses could be as high as $3.5 billion. Consumers, legitimate e-mailers and ISPs are all becoming collateral damage in the war against spam."

This is good news. Now if only we could get everyone to switch to Cloudmark we'd have this problem licked!

Paul's Boutique Samples and References List

There are many wonderful and industrious people on the Internet. Some of them are Beastie Boys fans.

(via bb)

Cookies In RSS Feeds

This post to Corante by Dana Blankenhorn includes an image from the Motorola site. Dana used it to illustrate his article about their new Microsoft Window's Mobile-based cell phone.

But the image was cookied by Motorola. When I opened the post in FeedDemon I got a cookie warning. This leads me to think that cookies are acceptable in at least some versions of RSS.

I'd be interested in knowing if people are starting to see cookies as a way of tracking RSS readership, much like they are used in e-mail newsletters. Since each feed is not unique, I guess that "single pixel gifs" or "web bugs" are not an effective tracking tool in this channel.

The Globe and Mail on dugg.ca

For more on dugg.ca, see The Globe and Mail's "Fast-food king tries a different taste test" article.

dugg.ca

People are starting to talk about the subliminal ads in the recent McDonald's Canada TV ads.

During the ad you will notice the URL dugg.ca. The URL is carved into a bench in one scene, a licence plate on the grand prize a few times, and a subliminal insert in other shots.

This might be something that McDonald's is doing (as suggested by Marketing Wonk in their McDonald's Has Lost Its Mind post).

Or it may be more along the lines of Vicker's vote2day.com offline to online effectiveness campaign last year (which was absolutely brilliant by the way).

dugg.ca is registered to The Marketing Store.

Meme Alert: RDIAENG

Major web buzz is building on this:

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. ceehiro."

Check out languagehat.com for some of the most insightful discussion.

(via Joi and bb)

Seth and I Do The Technorati Dance

Seth Godin was nice enough to drop by this page a few days ago.

How do I know? FeedDemon and Technorati.

I subscribe to Seth's Blog and read his feed using FeedDemon. Seth most likely subscribes to an RSS Feed from Technorati that tells him whenever someone posts something pointing to his site.

A few days ago I posted about Seth and just below it I provided some perspective on RSS as a marketing tool. When Seth followed my link to see what I said about him, he read my RSS post and pointed his readers to my post:

"It's a tricky topic, but I'm going to start taking us through it over the next few weeks. Ken Schafer's Blog is way ahead of me."

And so Seth and I complete the Technorati two-step as I (one of Seth's humble readers) am told to go visit my own site.

Note that, unlike a mailing list, I can't "see" that Seth came and I don't know if he has now subscribed to my RSS feed because you don't get a subscriber list when you publish RSS. The only way I'll know if Seth does subscribe is if he responds, say to the "Don't Call It RSS" post below.

BUT, what are the chances that Seth would have subscribed to my newsletter had I posted my thoughts in that format instead?

Church of the Customer: Rip Van Record, Part II

Church of the Customer: Rip Van Record, Part II:

"Obviously, the Internet is the best channel to share knowledge; when intellectual capital is shared with multiple online networks, it can spread quickly to others who naturally gravitate toward it. (We call this 'Napsterizing your knowledge.') Sharing knowledge is not the end-game; it's the marketing. The next level is finding value that enthusiasts will pay for. Like Bowie says, performing will become exponentially more important for musicians. We would add that maintaining strong relationships with fans -- their customers -- has never been more important for artists than it is today."

Don't Call It RSS

In reading Sam Ruby's RSS presentation to Seybold I was once again struck by the variety of standards, non-standards, and standards-in-waiting that get generically lumped together as "RSS" in a non-technical setting.

My concern is that "RSS" is too cryptic, unintuitive, and inaccurate to encompass all we mean by "RSS". And I'm also looking for an over-arching metaphor that can be used to describe aspects and things related to "RSS".

Let's look at e-mail as a starting point in developing a "grand metaphor" for "RSS".

The term "e-mail" means "electronic mail" an easily understood metaphor devoid of acronyms. Once a user grasps the basic metaphor, all the accompanying metaphors are self-evident.

So a new user quickly learns that:

"It's mail, but on your computer. Instead of typing a letter then printing and mailing it, you just send it from your computer outbox to the other person's computer inbox over the Internet. The Internet acts as the printer, the envelope and postal service."

The mail metaphor is all-encompassing of the technology. Almost everything related to e-mail uses metaphorical equivalents from physical mail - "inbox", "message", "check your mailbox", "you've got mail", "cc", "newsletter subscribers", etc. We use a flying envelope as its symbol without a second thought. Acronyms are buried in administrative settings.

Imagine if instead of using this grand metaphor e-mail had instead been commonly referred to by the underlying technical specifications (as RSS is):

"It's a POP2/SMTP reader. You use it to download POP3 or IMAP feeds from a remote server and compose SMTP replies that a recipient can read using their POP2/SMTP reader. Oh yeah, no one uses POP2 but that's still what it's called because that was the original standard people used."

What we need is an grand metaphor for everything related to all aspects of this:

"The process by which a publisher provides recurring content that people can read via applications that automatically check for new content from all publishers the reader chooses to monitor."

Right now we talk about "RSS", "Syndication", "Feeds", "Channels", "Subscriptions", "Publish and Subscribe", "Readers", "Aggregators", "NewReaders", etc. None of these terms provide the over-arching metaphor I think we need to really move RSS past the tipping point with average users.

A global RSS metaphor would have to:

1. Clearly capture the essence of the process defined above.

2. Provide "sub-metaphors" for all processes, people and things related to the global metaphor, and do so consistently. (i.e. no mixed metaphors)

3. Be easy for non-industry types to understand, explain, spell, and remember.

4. Should not overlap with metaphors already used online. (I don't think you can have multiple metaphors in the same medium, but that may be open for debate)

5. Should not get over-extended and tacky.

What might this grand metaphor be?

Discuss

Sam Ruby’s RSS in Depth presentation from Seybold

For those looking for a more technical understanding of the different flavours of RSS, a trip to Sam Ruby’s RSS in Depth presentation from Seybold is worthwhile.

Making Sense of AdSense... Et Al.

ClickZ: Making Sense of AdSense... Et Al.:

"Search engine marketing (SEM) and publishing content intersect, now that Google and Overture have entered into contextual publishing of keyword-based ad listings. This column considers matters from both the publisher and marketer perspectives."

Groups push ad-tracking standard

CNET News.com: Groups push ad-tracking standard:

"The standard, called the Ad-ID platform, is a Web-based method for coding any type of ad linked to a digital delivery system, such as interactive TV or on-demand cable. Under Ad-ID, all advertisements get a 12-digit unique identifier that's used to track them from creation to distribution. The identifier lets an ad agency and a distributor share data and lets ads be linked to analysis such as demographic data on people to whom the ads have been delivered."

At Home With Hitler

Tom Coates has posted scans of an old British Home and Gardens magazine the includes a feature called "Hitler's Mountain Home".

Because the article is written in gushing "better homes" language and is oblivious to the world war Herr Hitler will start less than a year after the article first appeared, it provides some unintendedly hilarious copy (if anything about Hitler can be called hilarious):

"The Fuhrer is his own decorator, designer, and furnisher, as well as architect. He is constantly enlarging the place, building new guest annexes, and arranging in these his favourite antiques - chiefly German furniture of the eighteenth century, or which agents in Munich are on the look out.

It is a mistake to suppose that week-end guest are all, or even mainly State officials..."

(via Joi Ito)

RSS: A Medium for Marketers

ClickZ: RSS: A Medium for Marketers:

"Online publishers have swarmed to RSS. It's a medium marketers cannot ignore. Can you move 100 percent of your e-mail list to RSS overnight? No. But if you are concerned about false positives, are serious about opt-in, and have content your customers or prospects want, take a look at RSS. The barriers to entry are low, and the potential return is high."

When will ClickZ offer an RSS Feed? The newsletters that I've subscribed for a while that don't offer an RSS feed suddenly feel very old fashioned. I kind of feel like I did during the early days of the web when I decided I didn't care about companies and products that didn't have web sites.

Seth's Blog: Lesson from yesterday's seminar

Seth's Blog: Lesson from yesterday's seminar:

"He didn’t know. He just wanted to make it better. “I haven’t updated it in a few years. How do I make it better?” He was looking for tactics, then he was going to invent a strategy to match. After a few seconds, he realized exactly what he was saying. Of course our tactics wouldn’t solve his problem because he didn’t know what his problem was!"

It still amazes me that most sites are built and maintained without any sense of why or to what end they even exist.

Feeding Ads Through Feeds

Lockergnome's RSS Resource: Feeding Ads Through Feeds

The conversation around RSS Marketing is heating up quickly.

A few quick observations:

1. It's nice to think that everyone will make rich useful content free to all users unencumbered by ads to support the production of that rich useful content, but it is unlikely that we live in that world. Most people like to get a cheque from someone at some time for their efforts. People do things for non-monetary reasons, but businesses don’t. Individuals may blog and provide RSS feeds for reasons other than money, but in the long-run, companies won't.

1. Publishers will need to decide if they want to use RSS as a notification or a delivery system.

2. If you use RSS as a notification system, there is no need to advertise directly within the RSS feed. The goal of the feed is to compel readers to click through to the site for details. Once on the site the publisher can execute their revenue model - paid or ad-based as if the reader had come to the site through other channels. My guess is that many marketers will be compelled to insert out of context, irrelevant ads into feeds and those efforts will fail. I'd also suggest that for most businesses, this is where they want to concentrate their efforts. How can you use RSS to drive traffic to your site?

3. If you use RSS as a delivery system, you need to figure out why you are doing so. I see a few options:

a) To generate revenue directly from the RSS feed. You could send ads or "ad-like" content to users but you'd want to be very careful about clearly explaining the value to the reader and keeping reader-benefit at the top of your mind whenever you "feed the feed." My guess is this will be the hardest category to figure out, but also the most profitable for those that get it right.

b) To create awareness of your product, service, stance on an issue, expertise, etc. so that the reader will take a future action. I blog and support an RSS feed so that people are aware of my company's best practices services. I am therefore quite happy to provide all my content via the feed because the reading of the content by an interested audience meets my goals.

c) To charge for the content delivered. I don't know enough about the technical and business issues around charging for RSS feeds to comment on this at this time.

This conversation is just starting but my sense is that it is moving much quicker than it did when we first thought of marketing via e-mail. Let's hope we learn from past experience.

Global Rich List

I just discovered the Global Rich List via Wired. I love the concept and the site, but I did feel compelled to send them this constructive criticism:

Hi there,

I love the site and the message behind it. Well done!

Three small suggestions:

1. The site design is fantastic, but the background image of stacks of money is visually very distracting. It made my eyes "buzz" all over the place. It also makes it look at first glance like it will be an anti-money screed (looking like old socialist "money bags" imagery). I'd suggest removing the image and going with a white background or a light shade of grey.

2. The graph of global income doesn't seem to make sense. The axis labeled "billion people" seems to imply that six billion people's income is right off the chart it is so high. I know that's not what you meant, but that chart says that.

3. The "spread the word" banner seems to have the message backwards. Promoting "I'm the richest" doesn't seem to be what you want to have people talking about, rather you want them to think about the fact that "There are 5,280,616,966 people poorer than me".

Good luck with the project! I'd add links to CARE in the US and Canada to really boost giving!

Camera phones changing the definition of picture-worthy

Japan Media Review: Camera phones changing the definition of picture-worthy:

"Unlike the traditional camera, the camera phone is an intimate and ubiquitous presence that invites a new kind of personal awareness, a persistent alertness to the visually newsworthy that makes amateur photojournalists out of its users."

(via Smart Mobs)

P2P group: We'll pay girl's RIAA bill

CNET News.com: "P2P group: We'll pay girl's RIAA bill"

"P2P United, a peer-to-peer industry trade group that includes Grokster, StreamCast Networks, Limewire and other file-trading software companies, said Wednesday it had offered to reimburse Brianna Lahara and her mother's payment to the Recording Industry Association of America. Lahara's mother agreed Tuesday to settle copyright infringement charges on behalf of her daughter."

Brianna could end up making a few dollars for a college education if this keeps up!

The RIAA Are Dicks. We Apologize.

"The RIAA Are Dicks. We Apologize."

"In any good community, people take care of each other. If someone is robbed, people put in what they can to help them out. Therefore, I am planning to raise $2,000 for this girl (the cost of her settlement), because I think she's been robbed by the RIAA. Other folks tend to agree with me."

First Spotting of "ALT Tag Ads"

I just saw a new ad format that I haven't come across before. I'm not sure if there is a technical name for this, but here's what happens and how to experience it.

1. Go to Designtechnica Reviews Sony VAIO TR1A Review. Scoll down to the body of the review.

2. Wait about 20 seconds. See those double-underlined links? They're ads:

3. Hoovering over the link shows an "ALT Tag Ad" (I guess), and clicking takes you to the advertised site.

While I guess I'd give this technique points for being in context, I'd have to deduct those very same points for deviousness as I'm not sure that users would expect ads in the middle of a review for a different product. Maybe the site has a clear description of their editorial policy and an explaination of these links, but I didn't see it.

Has anyone seen this before? Is it a formal ad product provided by a third party? What are they called?

Blogs and RSS Better Than TV?

Editor & Publisher: It's Time to Blog Hard News on Your Site:

"The great thing about the blog concept for breaking news is that it puts online news organizations on the same speed footing as television. You could even argue that this model outdoes TV news, because a news Web site can publish a new bit of information instantly. TV news operations can do that too, but it's impractical to interrupt non-news regular programming for all but the most urgent of headlines. The Web doesn't have that limitation."

The entire article is really great - Steve Outing clearly gets it. I also found the "Letters" section at the bottom of the page worth reading as it provides several responses to Steve's popular article on RSS replacing E-mail Newsletters.

Concept Car Cruises Information Highway

Globetechnology: Concept car cruises information highway:

"Baka Trak-IT, a wireless company, has stuffed a concept car built by Daimler Chrysler with the latest in wireless technology, including wide-area and local wireless networks (Wi-Fi), and called it the Baka Wireless Freedom Smart Car."

No More Blogger Pro

I just got an e-mail from Evan Williams:

Hi there. Evan Williams here, co-founder of Pyra/Blogger.

I wanted to give you a heads-up about something we're announcing
shortly: We're no longer offering Blogger Pro as a separate product
and we're folding most of the features into regular (free) Blogger.

It's sad but true. (Except it's not really that sad.)

Don't worry - nothing you paid for is going away. And while you won't be
charged, your subscription is still valid. You will continue to have
access to features like RSS and post-via-email that are still not
in the free version. You'll also have priority support from our
expanded team and new support system: http://help.blogger.com .

More importantly, I want to stress that we couldn't have gotten to
where we are today without you. Pro subscribers helped keep us going
as a struggling start-up, when servers and bandwidth were at an
extreme premium. We wanted to keep basic Blogger free, but we needed
to start charging in order to keep the lights on. So we built new
things that would appeal to some Blogger users (namely, you).

Thanks to supportive people like yourself, this plan allowed us to
grow and build a better service -- and, eventually, get us to much
more stable ground. We're eternally grateful, and I hope you were
happy with the relationship, as well.

Today, as you may know, Blogger's situation is much different.
For one thing, we're part of Google. (If you missed that announcement,
check the FAQ).
Google has lots of computers and bandwidth. And Google believes blogs
are important and good for the web.

This is a good thing.

So we're in the fortunate position of being able to give back to our
users. Specifically, we want give all of you who paid for Pro,
a Blogger hoodie as a way of saying thanks. Just go to
[url] by October 1, 2003 to claim yours.

We feel this move will be good for all Blogger users, and we're
excited about the many new things we have in the pipeline. Stay tuned.

Thanks again,
Ev.

That's got to be one of the nicest e-mail messages I've received. In fact, when I started using blogger, I loved it so much I felt compelled to sign up for the Pro version specifically so that those guys would get a bit of cash to keep the thing going. Being thanked felt really good.

IBM's "If Linux Were A Person" Ads

Fascinating ad campaign currently running all over the web for Linux (by IBM). You should watch the ad on their site:

"If Linux were a person, he would be growing, fast. Taught by the best. Gaining wisdom beyond his years. And sharing. He would be in business, education, government and homes. He would be a nine-year-old boy changing the world."

The spot has some cameo appearances by Coach John R. Wooden, Sylvia Nasar, Penny Marshall and Muhammad Ali.

Executives Can See Problems Beyond File-Sharing

New York Times: Executives Can See Problems Beyond File-Sharing

The article provides a good overview of all the problems the music industry is facing these days - most of them self-induced, but nevertheless, painful.

Web Sites That Crash

The Register: Web Sites That Crash:

"Nine out of ten people have been forced to abandon an online transaction because the application failed before completion."

AOL Reports On Broadband Behavior

AlwaysOn: Broadband Behavior: I Want My Info Now!:

"Tenure online has a profound impact on behavior. The longer you’re online, the more your behavior changes, the more you adapt, the more likely you are to be in an always-on environment and the more likely that will accelerate the change in your behavior. According to a UCLA study that AOL participated in, 50% of online users in the United States have been online for four years or more; 27% six years or more. That is a line of demarcation. Behavior starts to really change after four years. Our research says that tenure and an always-on environment go hand in hand. The environment mirrors the tenure effect, and they both affect user behavior."

Sad State of E-mail Newsletters

I found this particularly sad. My copy of PaidContent's e-mail newsletter today included this disclaimer at the top: "I have made some deliberate mis-spellings, for obvious reasons."

Here is the e-mailed version of an article:

Here is the web version:

Note 1: Even the LINKS were misspelled in the newsletter making them useless.

Note 2: The RSS Feed from PaidContent is based on the newsletter so even if you read the feed instead of the newsletter (I read the feed), you still get the typos and wrong links.

I'd suggest that we all just spell things the way they are supposed to be spelled, and say what we want to say, damn the poorly thought-out spam filters.

Colors Found in Nature and Interface Design

Boxes and Arrows: Natural Selections: Colors Found in Nature and Interface Design:

"From complex web applications to informative “brochure-ware” sites, naturally occurring color combinations have the potential to distinguish (by helping create a more memorable website), guide (by allowing users to focus on interactions), engage (by making page layouts comfortable and more inviting), and inspire (by offering new ideas for color selection)."

The article offers some great ideas on getting out of the "techno-colour" rut. I particularly liked that the author used compelling photography as the foundation for a naturalistic colour scheme. To a certain extent this is cribbing colours from photographers instead of graphic artists because the photographer is still deciding on what is photographed and how. Still, this technique should be very useful.

Up2Speed Changes Name to MarketingWonk

MarketingWonk: We Screwed the Pooch: Up2Speed Changes Name to MarketingWonk:

"Top 10 Reasons Why MarketingFix.com Changed Its Name to Up2Speed.com, Only to Change It Again a Few Weeks Later to MarketingWonk.com"

Truth in advertising.