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Installing Wordpress Locally on OSX - just what I needed.
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Very cool - a little script that will pull in County Code/Name, Region/State, City, Postal Code, Lat and Long. Except it got my zip wrong ;)
From the monthly archives:
August 2008
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I’m a big Jon Stewart fan - from his days on Fox with The Jon Stewart Show to The Daily Show.
I bring this up, because I have a friend at Comedy Central, who was quick to tell me when The Daily Show went online - with full episodes! That’s not new now, of course - they’ve had them up awhile. Colbert followed suit. Even South Park has episodes online now.
The TV is dying. Torrents reign supreme.
Roughly ten minutes after any show, it’s online in HD. South Park. Family Guy. News. Olympics. You can PVR, DVR, all you want - but someone else did you the favor of ripping out the commercials and delivering an HD copy to the masses. Sometimes they’ll brand a logo on the screen, but as more and more “groups” are doing it, it’s just a tagline on the download.
These shows - quasi-political (because they tout themselves on a comedy channel - you remember that right? He basically said “you suck” to their face, and they criticized his “news reporting” - to which he responded, in my words:
I’m a comedian, you dickheads. I’m on Comedy Central. YOU ARE ON A LEGIT NEWS CHANNEL.
View it, enjoy for yourselves.
The point of all this is - why aren’t more shows doing this?
The rough beginnings of TV online.
We’ve got Hulu.com - it’s even got movies! It’s also legit. Netflix also streams movies - if you’re on a windows PC and agree to their DRM laden player.
We’ve got SurfTheChannel.com - which I’m not sure of its legality. I think they’re basically skirting around by not hosting anything. It’s all on video hosting sites instead.
LegalMovies.Tv - I haven’t looked into this at all in terms of legality. They stream EVERYTHING - screeners, cams, rips - so my only guess is internationalization?
Enjoy last night’s Daily Show online - for free. This is the point of it all - stuff that helps inform a topic (politics) that so many people treat very disdainfully. They make it fun to know and learn.
Form your own opinions.
Never take it from one source. Never believe those idiotic emails that claim Obama is Osama, or McCain is Hitler. Whenever they say “I checked Snopes!” - check it again. Don’t believe those emails without researching it for yourself. I’ve gotten so many emails that are full of inaccuracies and “selected text” laid out of context.
I’m hoping for a record turn out. I’m not going to make the claims that it will be - I think it should be - but time will tell.
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I figure at some point I'll play with Drupal.
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So a big hub-bub ’round these parts of Columbus was Nationwide hiring Shawn Morton to do social media strategy.
(Disclaimer: I used to work at Nationwide, I still have friends there, and I’m writing this because I want to!)
Social Media for an Insurance/Finances company?
Damn straight. I loved the idea. It’s forcing a big company to become more involved with its people. It’s bringing the corporate in touch with the civilians. It means instead of commercials of cheesy actors saying how “I got a great rate from Nationwide” it’s the twittersphere all-a-twittering about “I got some great info from Nationwide.com” or maybe “check out Nationwide’s hilarious new commercial.”
But all these little things aren’t what I want to focus on.
Corporate Responsibility and Transparency
Certainly you always stumble on advertising articles talking about the new campaigns - but usually it seems that’s where it stops. Company A has started a microsite, check it out at… or Company B is giving away X if you do Y, pass it on.
But sometimes, just sometimes, the company wants people to talk about it. And as David Griner points out, sometimes companies fuck up so utterly and completely what could’ve been a good review of their product.
David writes:
Over on the J-Walk Blog, John Walkenbach seemed plenty happy to have received a free bottle of a liquor called VeeV — “the world’s first Acai spirit.” Before even trying it, John wrote about the product, ran a picture of the bottle and promised to do some “live VeeV blogging” (ie, blogging under the influence).
Home run for the VeeV marketing folks, right?
Hey VeeV, I’m available for test marketing! Send free shit my way!
How’d they screw up? How COULD you screw up? I mean, maybe they’re worried they’ll be portrayed as the drink of alcoholics if someone “live blogs” drunk.
Apparently, John blogging drunk about VeeV, but the marketing agency of VeeV - Maverick Digital - put a little comment (as Bob no less) talking about about how awesome it is in pure marketing speak - which rather pissed John off.
Right, that’s what Griner said.
Right - people hate it when you try to act like you’re some random schmo (in this case, Bob) with a genuine opinion. Which brings me back to Nationwide…
Sanjaya-ize yo’self, fool!
That’s right. Sanjaya-ize Yourself - in the spirit of Elf Yourself you can upload a shot of yourself and make yourself like Sanjaya of American Idol fame. Haven’t you heard of it yet? It’s being shown in targeted markets - smart move! They identified a certain niche and targeted them with a celebrity that appeals to them.
And my point is?
Vader Sanjaya-ized. I totally stole this from Shawn.
This simple entry on the fan board for Sanjaya:
Just wanted to let everyone know that Sanjaya will be premiering his new TV commercial for Nationwide Insurance at Branch (226 E 54th St) in Manhattan on Wednesday, August 20th at 6PM.
The event is closed to the public; however, you still may be able to catch a glimpse of Sanjaya.
If you’re outside the NYC area, you can check out the new commercial on Nationwide.com (http://nationwide.com/about-us/featured-ads.jsp) and on our YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/NWInsurance) starting on Wednesday evening.
And for those who want to try on Sanjaya’s own unique style, you can check out our Sanjaya-ize Yourself widget starting Wednesday evening as well.
BTW, I am part of the team at Nationwide that is putting together the event and the Sanjaya-ize Yourself widget, so please let me know if you have any questions or comments. We look forward to hearing what you all think.
See that last part? Here, in case you missed it, I added some bold to it for you:
BTW, I am part of the team at Nationwide that is putting together the event and the Sanjaya-ize Yourself widget, so please let me know if you have any questions or comments. We look forward to hearing what you all think.
See what Shawn aka sMoRTy71 did differently? FULL DISCLOSURE OF HIS INVOLVEMENT. No bullshit, no clever white lies. He appealed to their fans, made sure they knew who he was and that he was totally pimping out his product.
That , my friends, is how you do social media right.
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So I was reading Mashable on 4 Questions For Early Adopters… and it made me think about all those people that rushed to get an iPhone. No doubt, you may have seen the various articles depicting reasons to avoid it like the plague - you know, Apple is hipster, you’re just buying hype, Steve Jobs is a hypocrite, Apple is the new Microsoft, Apple wouldn’t let me upgrade my 1st gen iPhone that I got on opening day, etc. etc.
Early Adopters Get Screwed.
Like Bill Hicks said before me - there is no joke here whatsover. Early adopters get screwed. You buy first generation products, you get first generation screw-ups, defects, and get to PAY to do QA work!
I know people who’ve canceled their contracts to get an iPhone (paying the UNGODLY termination fee), people who upgraded just to get the iPhone, people who got the iPhone JUST BECAUSE it’s an Apple product, and people who think that running one application at a time is an awesome “feature.”
I want an iPhone.
There is nothing wrong with wanting. It’s a cool, snazzy little device. It’s overpriced, it’s bogged down to the point of getting the most use out of it requires you to hack it. They’ve got a million and one cool applications. BUT!
Always a butt. A sexy, curvacious… wait, wrong post.
I do not want something that I can’t do what I want with it after spending a few hundred dollars on it. When the iPhone becomes basically a mini-PC (Android?) that allows me to run google maps AND a little application that tells me what food/entertainment is near here - I’ll be all over it. But until then, I’ll stick with Verizon and probably getting a blackberry curve (or maybe the LG Dare? - oh wait, there isn’t an SDK to play with) - oh wait! Blackberry Thunder should be arriving!
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