Collateral Damage

 Quoth TechDirt:

According to the short blurb about the study, 40% of people would rather forward an internet gag such as a video or a rambling joke email than tell a joke themselves.

OK, remember one thing: Gallagher and others weren’t funny  long before the internet.

The study, oddly & allegedly, was paid for by a pork pie maker in the UK, Pork Farm Bowyers.

I say odd and alleged because I can find no trace of this study anywhere on the net except one news story.  I was curious as to why a pork pie maker would spend money on this study and so went looking for it. Turns out the company itself doesn’t exist on the web except in a few local news stories.

I smell a well spiced rat.

Yesterday Jim Romenesko was rejected by America’s favorite drug dealer in his attempt to get a Customized Starbucks Card plugging one of his blogs. The card would have said: Check out StarbucksGossip.com. It was nixed because it didn’t conform to the company’s personalization policy, doubtless enforced by a computer program or someone at the bottom of the corporate ladder.

Two things you need to know about the site and Romenesko:

1. The site is pretty damn neutral. StarbucksNews would be a better description. It reports on the latest food items and the latest attitudes from the coffee servers. Romenesko, by all appearances, likes Starbucks. He seems to be at one nearly everyday. (This is what happens when you work by yourself. My local dealer is CafeNation.)
2. He is also proprietor of the MediaNews site at Poynter.org. This site, devoted to news about journalism, is the media’s online watering hole. Everyone reads it. As with any industry-specific news site, it is probably incredibly dull if you aren’t in said industry. (Romenesko’s pay for this site is said to be in the six-figures. It is money well spent.)

It’s not like Romenesko is Someone Not To Be Messed With. He’s just someone who gets a lot of influential readers. He’s more like Someone I Hope I Didn’t Inadvertently Do Something Stupid To. No doubt some of those MediaNews readers wander over to the Starbucks site. No doubt some of them will love a story about big company being dumb.

In case they didn’t think this was a story, the MediaNews types can also read responses from people defending the company’s action.

The policy is reasonable. Don’t take it so personally. Starbucks is trying to protect their brand and that means not allowing any website (whether it’s starbucksgossip.com, poniesandrainbows.com or livehotgirlsxxxxxxxx.com) to use this service to create advertising materials that look as if they were sanctioned and endorsed by Starbucks.

Which would be a feasible defense if a site called CelebrityStarbucks hadn’t got one of the damn cards with its name on it. Personalization, it’s not for the faint-hearted.

(from my other blog, Business&Networking)

MoveOn.org has discovered what some tech companies already knew: Blaming Facebook for something is the quick road to free PR. MoveOn makes the case for Facebook is Bad with the kind of slant and sensational language usually reserved for the promos of local TV news:

Facebook, the social networking site, is violating our privacy. Books, movies, or holiday gifts bought online automatically get shared with everyone you know.

It gets better. Read/WriteWeb says:

MoveOn even blames Facebook for ruining Christmas, including in a press release sent out to the media today quotes from users like this one: “I saw my gf [girlfriend] bought an item I had been saying I wanted…so now part of my Christmas gift has been ruined. Facebook is ruining Christmas!” - Matthew from New York (Why do I have the feeling that Matthew hasn’t had a job that would result in calloused hands?)

In addition to ruining this most commercial of holidays with unwanted information, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has called for all puppies to be beaten to death with stolen candy canes! We should have seen this coming. Just look at this picture from Zuckerberg’s profile. Note that his status reads: “Mark is plotting the destruction of all the Whos down in Whoville.”

This story seems to have caught on with the media & blogosphere because, quelle surprise!, the Facebook protesters are using Facebook to organize! There’s cheap irony and then there’s lame irony. This is the latter.

My deepest objection to this MoveOn screed is that it’s just yelling and posturing and not about having a conversation. Privacy is a very big issue for Facebook et al. And, like so many other issues, it’s too complex to fit on to a bumper sticker. As MoveOn’s organizers well know, slogans make for great demagoguery and lousy conversations.

1) The Smoking Mitten: This innovative design from Tobias Wong utilises a metal ringlet perfectly placed and sized to hold your cigarette in the optimum smoking position.2) Designer Ice Cubes: “It’s ice is supposedly of such a high quality, that it comes in a resealable bag, to keep it fresh and pure in your freezer.“

3) Wooden Cross USB Memory Strap: What would Jesus store? I don’t know but apparently He can only hold 2GB of info. So much for being infinite.

4) CrustaStun: This allegedly more humane way to kill crustaceans lets you put the shelled creature into a shallow bath of brine, close the lid and then VOILA! the critters get an electric current that promises “to produce an instant anesthesia and eventually death.” [Note to self: Insert joke about adoption by the state of Texas here.]

5) A Crayon-branded beverage: I hope they taste better as a liquid than they did when I ate them as a kid.

There’s nothing worse than having to fill a newspaper or broadcast over Thanksgiving weekend. Nothing happens in the US. Well, nothing happens that any beat reporter is covering, which is what the US press means when it says nothing happens. Of course, the US consumer being the US consumer, things happening in the rest of the world aren’t of any interest. Nonetheless the media still must fill all that space with something. This is why every year we get something like:

Preliminary data showed welcome and unexpectedly strong shopping figures for the Black Friday weekend.

This could have been written in 2006 (”The nation’s retailers had a strong start to the holiday shopping season, according to results announced Saturday by a national research group that tracks sales at mall-based stores.“), 2005 (”Steep discounts, enticing rebates and expanded hours drew hordes to the nation’s retailing meccas Friday, and merchants saw hopeful signs that consumer spending will be lively for the holidays.“), 2004 (”In an early sign that buying will be strong this year, Visa USA said Saturday that the total of its credit and debit card transactions was more than $4.1 billion, up 15.5 percent from the same day last year.“), etc.

Just as surely as a Cubs collapse, these stories are followed by stories later in the week and/or month which say

“But the hot streak cooled down over the weekend as stores returned to their regular hours and promotions were scaled back.”

The truth is that Black Friday sales numbers are as accurate as sheep entrails when it comes to predicting the holiday season’s retail sales. The only real news here is that anyone actually pays attention to these numbers.

Bad editor! No latte for you!

1. Indulge your ‘inner’ self with these 24k gold leaf capsules. Digest to increase self-worth. Price: $429
2. Swiss-based DeLafee International SARL announced today their 24 Karat Gold, totally edible, strawberry-flavored Lollipop. Price: $29
3. The JooZoo, this heart-shaped 18K gold and diamond encrusted MP3 player necklace created by Korean company Innobitz. It’s touted as being able to “enhance your pet’s physical health and relieve stress through automatic content responding to various pet behaviors.” Price: $1500 - $2000. But is it compatible with iTunes?

It’s a weird day when “Let them eat cake” starts to sound like the height of sensitivity. Y’know communism is a very bad thing, but it’s not like capitalism doesn’t make it look appealing sometimes.

“At Google, we have a bias in favor of people’s right to free expression. Google is not and should not become the central arbiter of what does and does not appear on the Web. That’s for elected governments and courts to decide.” — Google Director for Israel Meir Brand on why the company they would not censor anti-Semitism from their search results for Israeli searchers.

At this point, it would take a mashup of Wittgenstein, Quantum mechanics and LSD to make sense of Google’s various explanations for what it will and won’t censor and why. The fact that the first sentence is entirely contradicted by the third sentence does not appear to have bothered the speaker one bit.

Google in China, for instance, has censored itself to satisfy authorities in Beijing, restricting searcher access to “sensitive topics” like Taiwan and 1989’s Tiananmen Square massacre. In Germany and Austria, Google removes Nazi content in order to comply with national censorship laws.

Meanwhile, Yahoo — no slouch itself when it comes to splitting linguistic atoms — has decided they’d rather pay than fight. The company settled out of court yesterday with the families of two journalists jailed by after Yahoo gave the Chinese government information about the two men. In Yahoo’s defense — and this ain’t saying much — the company never claimed either that A) You can make money without doing evil or B) Democracy on the web works.

If there’s one thing the Japanese love more than cute little robots, it’s cute little robots that dispense salt, pepper & soy sauce.

via TokyoMango (and yes, it really does say “soy source”)

via R2D2Central

An ignoble end for a noble droid.

It’s cleverly disguised as art criticism over at DarkRoastedBlend.

Here’s the lead:

War has inspired many great artistic moments but how often have artists returned the favor? Once, as far as I can tell. During World War I Modernism descended on Allied naval planners with a bang (sorry about that), turning fleets into the largest painting canvases in the world.

The HMS Mauritania — prepared to disappear into a crowd of Pagliacci imitators.
The idea of painting ships this way was the idea of Norman Wilkinson, a British naval officer and painter. Oddly, this was Wilkinson’s only stab at non-representational art. After the war he went on to a successful painting career, including many wonderful posters for British railway lines.
For all of my UK readers (maybe that’s reader singular, maybe that’s wishful thinking), there’s what looks to be a great show about camouflage at the Imperial War Museum through Sunday. Wish I could go.

Scott Monty gets the humor behind this.

Someone in my LinkedIn network posed the following question: What disciplines should marketers be training within to ensure authenticity? ” … It reminded me of the old George Burns quote: “Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

I now know how I will make my fortune: Faux authenticity classes.

Here’s something to buy while waiting for those tankers full of $100-a-barrel oil to arrive at the refineries:

1) The “Savings Bomb,” which goes on sale in Japan next week, “explodes” and scatters coins if users fail to save for a long time, toy manufacturer TOMY Co Ltd said Thursday.

2) Gobble and MeMe Money monsters are little chatterboxes that make hilarious and naughty comments after they eat up your precious coins and notes. Some thing like, “Money Money Money in my Tummy, Uurp!” in the tune of an Abba song. When you shove coins inside it mouth, it says, “Mmm…Jingle Jingle in my tummy” Not only this, if you don’t put your daily dose of coins, the monster gets frustrated and nags at passersby saying, “You make Gobble/MeMe angry!”

The US version will be named something much scarier, like The Federal Budget or The Heating Bill.

Mr. Orwell! Mr. Orwell! Call for Mr. Orwell!

Meanwhile Google played their hand brilliantly. They unveiled OpenSocial taking the “open” high ground and a lot of wind out of Facebook’s sails (to mix some metaphors!). And with Facebook aligned with the old Evil Empire Microsoft, Google has a chance to recover their “Do not be evil” aura.

If they also take the high road on privacy, they will blow the competition out of the water. They can do this because they can afford to; and their competition cannot afford to. They don’t need to amass lots of information about me to serve relevant ads to me. As long as I keep on searching, Google knows my intentions. Sure they could offer something even more powerful if they track and synthesize all my searches in the last 3 months, but at what cost in terms of spooking and alienating me? For what marginal extra value to an advertiser?

So Google could back the “Do Not Track” legislation and comit to more rigorous restrictions on search history.

I’m guessing the high road doesn’t go into China where “Do Not Track” legislation means you’ve been disappeared.

Or, as my good friends at They Might Be Giants, put it:

We’re in a road movie to Berlin
Can’t drive out the way you drove in
So sneak out this glass of bourbon
And we’ll go

We were once so close to Heaven
Peter came out and gave us medals
Declaring us the nicest of the damned

This was all written before I came across the following column by Duncan Riley at TechCrunch: “Yahoo in China: An Unfair Attack”

For those who missed it, in short Yahoo was attacked by both sides of politics for complying with a request under Chinese law, in China, to provide information on a political dissident.

The rhetoric was raw; San Mateo Democrat Chairman Tom Lantos called Yahoo moral pygmies, and Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., compared Yahoo’s cooperation with the Chinese government to companies that cooperated with Nazi Germany during World War II.

When it comes to China there are very few who will come to the defense of those who deal with the Chinese Government.

Yahoo’s actions might have been in part wrong morally, but legally they have done nothing wrong, and in a global economy this is even more true.

Mr. Riley misses the one point he might have scored here: That a US congressperson using the phrase “moral pygmy” is the height (and depth) of irony. Congress will take no actions to inhibit the flow of goods and money to China. That is what makes them collectively corrupt, even if individually some may be honest.

Unfortunately Mr. Riley’s statement that although Yahoo! was “in part morally wrong” the company was legally obligated to comply turns an interesting contrarian argument into logical nonsense.

How do we define degrees of moral wrongness?

This isn’t exactly a case of the poor man stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family. This is a multinational company placing its profit margin ahead of a person’s life. You can argue that Yahoo has a fiduciary duty to its stockholders not to harm its relationship with the Chinese government. True. This is why companies are run by people. People are supposed to have a sense of proportion and discretion.

Let’s make no doubt that Yahoo’s actions were legally correct — well except for the law that the company appears to have broken here in the US.

That left-wing publication, the Wall Street Journal, reports on what must have been a fascinating meeting between Yahoo’s CEO and general counsel and the wives of two dissidents jailed because of the company’s disclosures.

After Tuesday’s hearing, Messrs. Yang and Callahan met privately with Ms. Gao and Ms. Yu in a room in the offices of the House Committee. According to Ms. Gao, the two apologized profusely for the company’s role in the jailing of Messrs. Shi and Wang, and pledged to put pressure on the Chinese government to release them.

They also discussed a court case in which the women are suing the company, accusing it of breaking several laws, including one which prohibits U.S. companies from assisting in the commission of torture and other human rights abuses in other countries.

So Yahoo was in an impossible situation. No matter what it did it would be breaking someone’s law. Mr. Riley, which law would you have chosen to follow?

I would like to suggest some reading for Mr. Riley. No, not Amnesty International’s report, that would be too easy. How about the State Department’s?

The State Department’s 2006 China human rights and religious freedom reports noted China’s well-documented and continuing abuses of human rights in violation of internationally recognized norms, stemming both from the authorities’ intolerance of dissent and the inadequacy of legal safeguards for basic freedoms. Reported abuses have included arbitrary and lengthy incommunicado detention, forced confessions, torture, and mistreatment of prisoners as well as severe restrictions on freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, religion, privacy, worker rights, and coercive birth limitation.

Then perhaps Mr. Riley could read up on one of my favorite law-breakers: Chiune Sugihara, Japan’s consul to Lithuania during World War II. Mr. Sugihara became a criminal when he did not follow orders from his government and issued transit visas to escaping Jews. Mr. Sugihara was totally wrong legally. Yep.

The latest trend in product naming seems to be just this side of gross.

Example A:

Pissed Off! energy drink was the creation of founders Mike Green and Bill Hoovis. These 80 year old seniors had been extremely active their whole life. The past few years , their energy level was getting very low. At the suggestion of Aileen Rodriguez, a fellow business associate and vice president of Pissed Off Products, Mike and Bill tried a variety of energy drinks to help perk them up. After trying different energy drinks, they found that the existing energy drinks on the market did not help them get revitalized. Mike then said “I’m pissed off! I’ll develop an all natural American energy drink that gives people healthy pissed off energy now.”

The site also has trading cards featuring the whole Pissed Off! family.

Example B:

Momspit - No Rinse Cleanser for Hands & Face
Momspit (inspired by the original) is the universal no-rinse cleanser. It’s not a sanitizer and does not contain any alcohol. In fact, it’s gentle enough to use on your face. Momspit foams for easy application, eliminates dirt and grime, and leaves skin moisturized and yummy smelling. It’s the perfect thing to throw in your purse, place on your desk, or keep in your car. To use: Apply a small amount on hands or face and rub in completely. No rinse needed.

At $18 for 7 oz. MomSpit ain’t cheap, which is surprising given the ubiquity of its manufacturer.

I want a food disinfectant called 5 Second Rule.

Over at Matt Dickman’s Techno/Marketer blog there’s a good conversation going on about blogs v. journalists, journalism v. citizen journalism and other issues.

Matt asked the following questions:

• Can a newspaper include blogger content and have editorial separation?
• Are bloggers and journalists separate anymore?
• If they are, are they bound by the same code of ethics?
• Does paying the bloggers create the conflict of interest?
• Do you think the Plain Dealer would have pulled an editorial piece under pressure from a politician?
• Can traditional newspapers survive against pressure from citizen journalism?
• What if no money had changed hands and the bloggers just contributed? Does that change things?

Well, here’s my soapbox … er answer.

A blog is a medium, not a type of writing. Someone is a blogger because they write in a blog. That writing can be as neutral and as fact-based as what we hope for in other forms of journalism or it can be as opinionated and non-fact-based as it wants. These people appear to have been hired because of their partisan opinions not because they are bloggers. If you substitute the word writer for blogger I find that most of these questions answer themselves.

• Can a newspaper include writer content and have editorial separation?

Yep. They’re called columnists. If reporters choose to include content from blogs then they must disclose information about the blog as they would with any source (”a liberal think-tank” “a company spokesman”)

• Are writers and journalists separate anymore?

Let’s ask if you can you be a writer and not a journalist? Yes. A journalist has to be someone trying to discover and publish facts in as honest and balanced a way as possible. Many writers do this, some are journalists and some are not.

• If they are, are they bound by the same code of ethics?

Are all writers bound by journalism’s code of ethics? No. But if a blog writer wishes to have his or her work considered as journalism then he or she has to do whatever is necessary to disclose all possible conflicts of interest. Just like if I’m trying to get a friend to believe me a product is great I make it clear if I stand to profit from the use or sale of that product.

• Does paying the writers create the conflict of interest?

No. It just means that the paper is treating these people as they would any other contributors. Writers should get paid for their work.

• Do you think the Plain Dealer would have pulled an editorial piece under pressure from a politician?

Maybe, but only if was marked as news and not as opinion. If a piece in the paper is clearly marked as opinion and doesn’t contain libel or slander then no paper worth the name would have pulled the column.

• Can traditional newspapers survive against pressure from citizen journalism?

Does this mean that what newspapers publish is non-citizen journalism? As a journalist, I’ve never seen much difference between these two ideas. One person has a branded venue and was hired to work there because his or her employer thinks he or she has the needed expertise to write for them. A citizen journalist is just a journalist who works without someone else’s brand certification. If the citizen journalist is good enough then in time he or she will become known as a brand of quality. Or, as it is also called, a freelance journalist.

• What if no money had changed hands and the writers just contributed? Does that change things?

No. Newspapers make it clear that they don’t endorse the opinions of people whose writing they run for free (the letters page). They also should make it clear that they don’t endorse or support every opinion that is published when they pay for those opinions.

Are the folks who have written all those stupid stories about “Facebook is destroying the economy” journalists? Not by my standards. Are they bloggers? Not unless one turns to a blog for a lack of perspective. Are they paid reporters? Apparently.

“To boldly be buried as no one has been buried before…”

Eternal Image is a company that seems devoted to helping people get rid of excess cash when they die. When I last checked in, the maker of “brand-name funerary objects” had lines of urns and caskets with Major League Baseball logos and symbols from the Vatican Library. But, as the saying goes, that’s not all …

For the millions of fans on our planet and beyond, our new line of Star Trek urns, caskets, monuments and vaults will be an important discovery indeed. After ten movies and five television series, phrases like “Live long and prosper,” “Resistance is futile” and “Space: the final frontier” have become part of our global vocabulary.

The urn, right, “will feature a bold design reminiscent of the 24th century styling of the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet.” The casket “as been inspired by the popular ‘Photon Torpedo’ design seen in STAR TREK II: The Wrath of Kahn.” (BTW, as someone who has wept through that particular movie more times than he would care to admit, I can tell you that it’s spelled Khan.)

If tacky Trekkie isn’t your way to go, then check out the equal-but-differently tacky line of Precious Moments™ funerary objects. Death, be not un-cute…

Best line from Eternal Image’s mission statement: “We combine the power of brand-names with 21st century materials and composites that won’t rot.” How much more can you ask from a company?