...for marketing purposes, that is.
Feb 01, 2007
What happens when you try to commit viral advertising using electronics placed randomly in urban settings? Boston thinks they may be terrorist bombs and closes bridges and universities.
The devices, promoting an adult cartoon, contained blinking lights that bore the image of an extraterrestrial brandishing the middle finger. After officials mistook the devices for something more nefarious, network TV pundits spent hours pondering which America-hating zealot may have planted them.
This comes straight from the department of You Can’t Make This Stuff Up, (Apparently) Unlimited.
But which is scarier: the fact that Boston virtually shut down, or the fact that these devices have been in place for months in several other major urban areas?
Turner said the devices had been been in place for up to three weeks in nine cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta and San Francisco. While Turner apologized profusely for the mix-up we are reminded of the adage that there’s no such thing as bad press.
Somewhere on the eastern seaboard of North America, bomb-sniffers are sitting over their liquid lunch, muttering truculently: “How was I supposed to know? It didn’t look like one of my kids’ video games… Jee-yay-suz. I’ll bet they don’t pay us any overtime, either.”
Keywords: | social commentary | marketing |
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Everyone on da intarwebs is in need of a cookie and a nap.
Dec 20, 2006
Originally, I was going to do a bit on basic accessibility and usability. I changed my mind as I was reading others' tales of overload, stress, burnout, and plain old lethargy — other T13ers, Holidailies participants, even the other sites I read.
While it's easy to put this down to exhaustion following NaNoWriMo, NaBlaBleeBloWhatever (I know it has a name, I just can't remember it), Holidailies, and the holiday-season prep, people can — and do — burn out at any time during the year. They burn out because they just can't think of anything scintillating to write; or because they can't even think of anything new to write; or they're tired of messing with their current blogging software that won't do what they want it to; or they're not getting comments so why continue; or what have you.
Everybody goes through this. This is normal. But there are some ways to avoid this, or put it off, or at least make the doldrums less severe and of shorter duration:
Round 72::8 — Thirteen Tips for Avoiding Burnout
- Make the site a welcoming place to visit. By that, I don't mean make it look like the idealized grandma's kitchen (unless you truly love that look and want that look, in which case go for it!) I mean, make your site easy to read, easy to navigate, and easy to add comments or share with other people. Whether you want your design theme to be Americana-comfort or art-nouveau, site visitors should know how to find things to read (or download, or purchase) and how to use all the features of your site. When people know how to contribute, they're more likely to do so.
- Don't overload the plate. Have you ever been to a party, or someone's house, where you're asked if you'd like some coffee? Tea? A biscuit? A sandwich? Lemonade? Milk? Muffins? Some candy? At some point, you cross the line from being able to say “No, thank you, not right now” to thinking “When can I leave...!” If a web page shows dozens of links, moving pictures, videos, music clips, glitteries, *and* text at visitors all at once, the visitors can get overwhelmed. They may miss your content because they only saw all the other stuff. Know when to say “enough is enough”
- Be polite to your visitors. Make sure that your type is not illegibly tiny, that your pictures won't make a dial-up user's connection hang, that your music has a clearly-marked way to turn it off, that your comments don't absolutely require that people have some type of membership to leave any kind of comment, and that your text is relatively readable.
- ...and on the flip side, this is your site. You don't want to not speak your mind on your site, or not post something because you think that a few people won't absolutely love whatever-it-is. It's your site, it's your opinion, it's your thing to like or not like. Sure, for everyone out there who loves snowflake graphics (just using my site as a noncontroversial example) there's going to be dozens of people who can take it or leave it and a few who mentally roll their eyes and say, “Oh. Another one.”
- Write about anything that interests you. It can change from day to day. You can write about privacy legislature one day and post photos of your pets the next. You can tell people about what your kids did in temple last week, segue directly into a mini-rant about the evils of thoughtless consumerism, and finish off with your thoughts on the latest computer game. Just make sure that whatever you write about, do it in such a way that you'd want to read the piece.
- Don't write about things for which you aren't truly enthusiastic. This, too, will come across in your writing. (This doesn't mean don't accept money to post your opinions on consumer goods. But if you're joining one of the paid-blogging services (aka sponsored blogging) and then posting about a product or service that you would never have a desire to use, then either 1) your post will be lackluster and people will be able to tell; or 2) if you're a writer of any quality, you can probably get a job writing ad copy — and those pay better.)
- Spend time reading other peoples' sites (or media sites). The best writers read at least as much as they write. When you read something you enjoy, an idea gets started in your own brain: maybe it's a different take on a similar subject. You just never know.
- Take breaks every now and then. (Remember, the more experiences you have, the more blogfodder you'll have.)
- If you write factual or informing posts, make sure to state things as clearly as you can. Link back to your source-articles (so that if, later on, one of those source-articles is discredited you can revise what you wrote.) This also has the effect of giving those who disagree with your viewpoint, an alternate target. Perhaps they'll rage about what they consider poor legislation, or a public figure acting without thinking, rather than simply slag on your opinion.
- Do not post in the heat of anger. Good rarely comes of such things. (For one, I may think faster than I can type...and I'll end up with horrid grammar.) In addition, if you must attack-write, attack ideas rather than people. Why? 1) Ideas can't have their feelings hurt; and 2) ideas don't carry out flame wars.
- Don't put anything out there that you wouldn't want a potential boss, a potential suitor, or a potential friend to read. If it's published on the Internet, it will still be around ten years from now...and even blogging under a pseudonym won't conceal who you are. People can check the Wayback archives, domain owner records, and comments on other sites. Your chosen topics and syntax can even provide clues to your identity. Know this, and don't post anything thoughtless or mean-spirited that can come back and cause someone pain — because chances are good that it will do just that. (Later edit: here's an interesting article on Yahoo about this very subject.)
- If you're not having fun, on some level...why are you maintaining a blog?
- Always keep backups of your site. This can be harder to do, if you're using a free service like Blogspot/Blogger/LiveJournal/GreatestJournal/et al. But then, if that free service fails you don't lose your years of hard work. Sure there may be a lot of digital dandruff in there...but there's probably also a lot of irreplaceable memory-posts, too. (Tip: if this ever happens to you, go through Google IMMEDIATELY and view the cached copies of your old site pages, then save those pages to your hard drive. It takes a lot of time, and you might not be able to get everything back; but it's better than having nothing. Google cache will be easiest to stripmine for two to four months following the “death” of your site. After that, things may get a bit more difficult.)
I'll be posting a list next week; but since some of you may not, happy holidays to all and I'll hope to see you all in 2007!
Links to other T13 posts
Keywords: | writing | Thursday | site traffic | memes | Holidailies |
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It seemed like such a good idea at the time.
Dec 17, 2006
Arizona Senator John McCain has proposed legislature which, ostensibly, would help law enforcement officials track online sexual predators.
On the surface, this sounds all well and good, even an excellent idea. Just about every society agrees with the statement that sexual predation is a bad thing, and sexual predation of children is an extremely bad thing. The implementation of the proposed legislation, however, is a bit worrisome. The definition of the sites responsible for purging material, and the data that must be retained, is more than a bit vague, while the penalties are fairly draconian.
Any web site that allows user participation (blogs, forums, chat rooms) and which collects user data would be required to submit reports of aggregate user activity, retain data, and allow that data to be searched on demand of US federal officials. All such sites would also be required to report any offensive behavior on their site, and retain all data relating to the circumstances for six months. Internet service providers — including hosting companies, so including me — are already required to do this. This new legislation would extend that responsibility to any site that could be considered a social networking site: blogs; forums; tag boards requiring registration; anything that allows user participation and requires membership to participate.
Text taken from Think Progress:
– Commercial websites and personal blogs “would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000.”
– Internet service providers (ISPs) are already required to issue such reports, but under McCain’s legislation, bloggers with comment sections may face “even stiffer penalties” than ISPs.
— Social networking sites will be forced to take “effective measures” — such as deleting user profiles — to remove any website that is “associated” with a sex offender. Sites may include not only Facebook and MySpace, but also Amazon.com, which permits author profiles and personal lists, and blogs like DailyKos, which allows users to sign up for personal diaries.
This would apply to sites that allowed membership, whether those sites require payment for the membership or not.
As I said previously, this initially sounds like a very good idea, and one that almost everyone can agree with on the surface: stop online sexual predation and online sexual abuse of minors. However, how far will this law go? What requirements will be placed upon site owners? And, again, what’s the definition of obscenity? According to CNet, a man in Alabama has been indicted and accused of being a child pornographer. There is no evidence that he has ever taken photos of unclothed minors. The accusation of child pornography came about because of the argument that his models “struck poses that were illegally provocative” (full text here). I have not seen the photos in question; and if anecdotal evidence is accurate there is plenty of “borderline” activity happening in the world of teen modelling. However, the definition of obscenity has always been a moving target, defined by community standards. Now, with the changing sociopolitical climate in the US, and the growing recognition of online communities as communities in and of themselves, it’s not inconceivable that one day sites which host discussions about family planning and lifestyle options, religious and philosophical debates, even the screaming matches and flame wars may be forced to close their doors because the owners are either unable to keep up with the cost of educating themselves about online obscenity and reporting requirements, but because the topics themselves are declared obscene.
Note: there was a comment made on another site that calls out Declan McCullagh for inaccurately relaying information about legislative proposals. This does not negate the fact that such a law would place a burden on individual site owners when the ones who need to be removing content that breaks the law are the ones who are already legally required to do so: communities like MySpace, LiveJournal, Blogger/Blogspot, Facebook, and their ilk; web hosting providers; and internet service providers. The fact that a site allows a user to create a profile page or a list of life goals should not automatically make the owners of all such sites responsible for policing content.
Keywords: | technology | laws | Holidailies |
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Consumers loathe digital rights management! In other news, the sky is up.
Dec 12, 2006
And can we have a great big gigantic WTF
“There's a problem here. CD sales have fallen 20 per cent over five years. The message here is not that CD sales are coming back, the ability to obtain pirated music is now so widespread the DRM looks to consumers more like a problem than a benefit.”
Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff (read more)
Ya think?!??!????!!!!!!!
The music industry has spent time trying to force consumers to cling to old distribution methods when they damn well should have been hopping on the digital-distribution bandwagon much faster, much earlier, and much more smoothly.
Instead, now they look like a gaggle of obstructionary fossils. Instead of freaking out that consumers were pissed about paying $15 for CDs with one or two songs they liked, the music labels should have figured out more ways to let consumers buy exactly the music they wanted, when they wanted.
It's possible there's still time to turn it around. It's possible that the music labels can get their heads out of the sand (or their backsides) and start routinely providing consumers with ways to pay how the consumers choose (per song, per month, or a funded incremental account). It would take some retraining; but if they provide a quality experience and are genuinely responsive to what consumers want, it's possible that piracy won't be as widespread as they phear.
On the other hand, keep going on this lame-ass track, and more of us will eventually decide to download things like BitTorrent and check out songs before we buy them...only to find that it wasn't what we wanted after all.
Related entry: Didn’t I pay for that already?
Keywords: | digital rights management | consumer rights |
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Musings on the recent ban on transfats in New York eateries.
Dec 09, 2006
The New York City Board of Health voted unanimously yesterday to require the city’s roughly 20,000 restaurants to stop cooking with trans fats, making New York the first major U.S. city to adopt such a ban.
Yep. Really.
Trans fats are chemically-modified food ingredients, long used as substitutes for saturated fats (which are found in foods like whole milk, butter, cream, and the like.) Trans fats have a longer shelf life than saturated fats. Trans fats have also, like saturated fats, been squarely linked to heart disease. [For the curious, trans fats are also known by the term “partially hydrogenated vegetable oils” — so be aware of what you’re eating.]
I love me some good baked things, with real butter and whole milk. I love a good pasta with creamy cheese sauce. Cheese sauce is officially a condiment, at least in my kitchen. I love rich desserts, too: Waldorf-Astoria cake (aka red cake, aka red velvet cake) with creamy white icing; cheesecake; chocolate cremes and caramels. (And snickerdoodles. And the recently-discovered eggnog snickerdoodles.) These things do not a healthy diet make. But I *know* this. I don’t eat these things every day; and I don’t eat them to excess. [Well...occasionally. Usually during the winter holidays.] But you know what? It’s my choice to eat these things. I didn’t like it when well-meaning relatives tried to dictate what, and how much, I would eat when I was a small child. My advanced age has not made me any more fond of having my menu determined for me.
I agree with the second part of the law, which requires restaurants (particularly fast-food restaurants) to prominently post caloric values for the foods they serve. McDonald’s whole “healthy choices” chicken sandwiches campaign is an exercise in misdirection. Those chicken sandwiches can have as many, if not more, calories than the fast-food giant’s burgers (yes, Virginia, even the grilled chicken sandwiches.) If consumers knew how many calories they were consuming with each meal, they might be a little less inclined to get the fast foods as frequently, or in the large quantities many now purchase. But...how does a government body, at any level, come to the conclusion that its job includes policing its citizen’s food choices?
I believe that New York, along with many US cities, has banned smoking in public places. I can see the logic in this because of the effects of secondhand smoke on others, even on those who have never smoked. But...trans fats in foods...unless trans fats make someone extremely and instantly gassy, the secondhand effects are a bit less direct. One argument made is that since trans fats significantly increase the possibility of, and severity of, heart disease, having a large percentage of the population on a diet that runs down their heart health means that as these people fall ill and require care (including angioplasty, artificial hearts, and other similar measures) consumers pay the cost in increased costs for health services. It’s a very chaos-math argument: a man in the boroughs eats a Triple Bypass Burger with Poutine Fries and Lil’ Jimmy’s parents can’t buy him new school clothes that year because they have to pay their increased health insurance rates. Not only is that argument a bit shaky — there are several methods that should be used to lower the cost of acquiring, and of providing, health services — but the other question is, just how far will this be taken? At what poing does the state stop carrying and tell the individual, Okay, from now on you need to walk for yourself? And the individual takes responsibility for their actions?
Just how far might this food-regulation go?
More..!
Keywords: | laws | health | consumer rights | alternate history |
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Seasonal snickerdoodles.
Dec 07, 2006
Yesterday, Leanne posted this recipe for eggnog cookies:
1 c. butter softened to room temp.
1 c. sugar
1/2 tsp. nutmeg/cinnamon or 1/4 tsp each
1 c. eggnog!
1 tsp. baking soda
4 c. flour
Beat butter & sugar until it’s creamy.
Add spices, Eggnog & baking soda to butter & sugar, blend well.
Add flour 2 cups at a time, mix (with mixer) until combined.
Spoon onto nonstick cookie sheet, dip a cup in sugar (holiday colored sugar, sugar/cinnamon, sugar/nutmeg, your call), smoosh the dough a little - don’t flatten them.
Bake at 375 for right around 11 minutes, when you can see the bottom edges are golden brown.
Hey wait...is this essentially snickerdoodles made with eggnog? STELLAR!!!
I love snickerdoodles. My dad loves snickerdoodles. And my mom hates eggnog. (She can easily scarf through these quickly, and has a love-hate relationship with my holiday baking: she loves eating it, but doesn’t like the weight gain.)
Keywords: | Holidailies | food |
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