Oprah Gives Entire Studio Audience New Pontiac G6s

WOW.

This is not only an amazing (and very expensive) publicity event, but also an amazing charitable gesture. Snippet from the news story:

CHICAGO (AP) - Talk show host Oprah Winfrey celebrated the premiere of her 19th season Monday by surprising each of her 276 audience members with a new car.

"We're calling this our wildest dream season, because this year on the Oprah show, no dream is too wild, no surprise too impossible to pull off," Winfrey said.

Read the entire AP story here.

The audience members for the show were chosen because they had written Oprah about their need for a new car.

This is one of those stories (and they're not many of them these days) that makes you feel good. Bravo, Oprah and General Motors for creating a media event that also did some real good for 276 people and families.

-aB

Value of a TiVo Just Plummeted For Me

What good is a TiVo if recorded programs are weighed down by significant restrictions preventing consumers from watching saved content?

Both ReplayTV and TiVo have agreed to significant replay restrictions on recorded content, thanks to the lawyers in Hollywood. A story in the San Jose Mercury News discusses the agreement. Snippet:

The makers of TiVo and ReplayTV digital video recorders have agreed to limit how long consumers can keep pay-for-view movies stored on future versions of the VCR-like devices.

The new technology also will allow Hollywood movie studios and broadcasters to regulate how often movies purchased through pay-for-view services can be watched. Digital video recorders that recognize these new copy restrictions will begin appearing in the spring of 2005. But it could be years before entertainment companies begin to take advantage of the technology, according to ReplayTV President Bernie Sepaniak.

Read the full story here.

Geek News Central predicts the demise of these DVR companies within two years.

TiVo, what are you thinking? You were finally on the right track, as this article in this month's Business 2.0 magazine explained. First you took off the ability for users to skip through commercials, now you're agreeing to restrictions limiting the one thing consumers purchase your appliance for - to "time shift" and be able to watch programming on their schedule.

Hollywood (much like the RIAA) forgets that honest consumers had none of these restrictions back in the days of cassette tapes and VCRs. And they seemed to be able to make a decent profit back then, didn't they?

Sigh, and I wanted a TiVo Series 2. Makes me reconsider...

-aB

McOrder Predictor

I was in a McDonald's in Pittsburgh over the weekend and noticed that, behind the counter over next to the drive-thru window was a television monitor showing the approach to the drive-thru lane and menuboard.

Cool, I thought. I guess that they can look at that and see if they're about to be busy with cars lining up.

Little did I realize that the camera and monitor are part of a much more complex order and traffic prediction system, as outlined in this MSNBC.com story that I came across today. Snippet:

Do you want fries with that? Never mind, we already know. A Pittsburgh startup, HyperActive Technologies Inc., is testing technology at area fast-food restaurants designed to give kitchen workers a good indication of what customers want before the hungry souls even get close enough to place an order.

Very cool stuff. Notice that the article didn't mention scanning license plates and cross-referencing with previous orders from that vehicle. Come on, you know they're doing it...

-aB

Politically Correct Wheaties Snubbs Hamm

General Mills, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to be "globally politically correct" and not include Paul Hamm, the first American to win the men's all-around Olympic gold medal for gymnastics, on its series of U.S. Olympic champion Wheaties cereal boxes. Bad PR move. Very bad. Snippet of the Reuters story:

General Mills Inc, the maker of Wheaties cereal, announced on Monday three U.S. Olympic champions will appear on millions of its iconic orange cereal boxes - but Hamm was not among them.

For those of you who didn't watch the Olympics, (and according to NBC, there weren't many of you - ratings rocked and NBC/Universal made a killing), a scoring error caused one of the biggest controversies of this year's summer games, and a gymnastics ruling body (not the Olympic ruling body) asked Hamm to return his gold medal, so that it could be given to South Korean bronze medalist Yang Tae-Young. Bad PR move there as well, but that's another rant entirely.

It's not Hamm's responsibility to return the medal. He didn't do anything wrong. He accepted the medal that was awarded to him. The gymnastic ruling committee (which seems to be about as ethical and credible as the figure skating ruling committee - remember that fiasco two years ago?) should petition the Olympic ruling committee(s) to give another gold to Yang Tae-Young. They can do something about it, not Hamm.

Back to General Mills...

Why are Wheaties and General Mills getting into this controversy? An American company, with an American cereal product that has displayed gold medalists on its "Breakdast of Champions" box cover for 80 years doesn't want to upset South Korea? Why snub Hamm? Spin control at General Mills has already begun. Snippet:

"We feel pretty good that they were among the top performances, and they include a broad cross-section of sports" at the just-concluded Olympics, General Mills spokesman Greg Zimprich said.

Here's the funny thing - the "Contact Us" link on the bottom of the Weaties.com web site home page don't seem to be working (at least tonight at 1:00am). Go ahead, try it: http://www.generalmills.com/corporate/comments/.

Read the entire Reuters story here. Read General Mill's press release here.

-aB

Differences In Blogs & Message Boards

As blogs continue to get more mainstream, they're being compared more and more to message boards, an information structure that's celebrating its 25th year of existence.

Lee Lefever discusses the difference in a very informative article and equally informative table at CommonCraft.com. There's also some discussion of the article and topic at PR Opinions and Media Guerrilla.

-aB

Internet Turns 35, Mid-Life Crisis Eminent

Thirty-five years ago this week, several UCLA grad students hooked up two computers in a small data network that would ultimately become the Internet. Snippet:

Thirty-five years after computer scientists at UCLA linked two bulky computers using a 15-foot gray cable, testing a new way for exchanging data over networks, what would ultimately become the Internet remains a work in progress.

Stephen Crocker and Vinton Cerf were among the graduate students who joined UCLA professor Len Kleinrock in an engineering lab on Sept. 2, 1969, as bits of meaningless test data flowed silently between the two computers. By January, three other "nodes" joined the fledgling network.

Read the whole AP story here at MyWay.com.

-aB

Go to Duke, Get a Free iPod

Duke University is giving all incoming freshmen an iPod. The kit includes a 20 gig iPod, voice recording attachment and gift certificate for song downloads at a special Duke-only Apple iTunes online store.

The iPod is also engraved with the Duke crest and comes pre-loaded with some content, like a message from the university president and the Duke fight song. Bet those files will be top downloads on Kazaa within the week.

This a heck of a lot better than the free tube of toothpaste, poster and Vols mousepad I got when arriving at the University of Tennessee back in 1994. Of course, UT tuition wasn't $37,555 either.

-aB

ChangeThis.com Is Blog Roll Worthy

Two days ago I told you about ChangeThis.com, a Web site that packages smart thinking from smart people, all in easily-digestible manifesto form.

Smart guy Seth Godin is attributed with the idea behind this web site, smart guy Guy Kawasaki had a manifesto a few days ago, and today Mr. Smart Guy himself Tom Peters shares his 60 TIBs (This I Believe) thoughts.

Many of the thoughts in Tom's manifesto share the themes and feel of three of his books from 1999, The Project50, The Brand You50 and The Professional Service Firm50. And I would be remiss in not mentioning Tom's latest book, Re-imagine!, one of my favorite marketing/biz books of the year.

ChangeThis.com is now permanently ensconced on Gump's Blog Roll, on the right. Gee, it looks so gosh darn pretty there.

-aB

Meet George Jetson. He's Tailgating You.

Flying cars are only 10-20 years away, according to this story in BusinessWeek.

No more pulling over to the side of the road to figure out where you took the wrong left turn...

Thanks to Alan for the article link.

-aB

Mixing Bloggers & Advertisers

Sooner or later, blogs and advertisers are going to merge. Yeah, it probably won't be a pretty wedding or honeymoon, but the marriage is gotta happen. It's a shotgun wedding, whether we like it or not.

A Wired article today talks about a new site and company, Blogversations.com that is looking to team up bloggers and advertisers. The blogosphere has spoken. They're not happy.

[BEGIN RANT]

I see two camps of blogs: 1)Blogging for dollars blogs and 2)Blogging for hobby blogs. Blogging for hobby is great, and is an exciting, fast-growing phenomenon. They're virtual diaries into the conscious minds of other people. Great stuff. Great to write (it's therapeutic), great to read. But not a business people can turn into a livelihood.

For the "blogging for dollars" to work, there has to be a sustainable business model. Time and time again, the Internet has demonstrated that the "paying subscriber model" doesn't work for online content (other than porn). People aren't going to pay to read blogs. Period. Sorry, but it's true.

That leaves advertising-supported blogs, a strategy that Blogversations.com is trying to own. And the blogosphere is up in arms: But what about the purity and sanctity of blogs? Won't bloggers be manipulated to write about things or say things or do things, just because an advertiser is dangling dollar bills in front of them?

HELLO! Welcome to Pollyanna-ville. Population: YOU. On an internet (notice the lowercase "i" by the way) full of spam, misleading ad banners, Google-bombing and the like, our little pure and clean blogging corner of the universe won't stay this way forever. The marketers are knocking on the door. Do we let them in, or just wait until they bulldoze our back fence during the night? If there is money to be had, the marketers (myself included in this group) will find a way to make it.

So, that being said, Blogversations.com doesn't seem to be acknowledging what I think is the most important part of the advertsing-supported blogging issue - FULL DISCLOSURE. I want to know if a particular blog is being supported by a particular advertiser. Just let me know. If the content on the site is informative, interesting and compelling, I'll continue to read it whether it's sponsored or not. Crappy content? You can forget about it, whether someone paid for the trash or not.

Media work on two models, subscriber-sponsored (like HBO and Consumer Reports) and ad-supported (like freaking everything else in the world). We're not going to pay to read blogs, so that means we're going to have to find a way to deal with advertisers.

[END RANT]

That's my 0.02.

-aB

Smart Thinking at ChangeThis.com

I'm not quite sure how Seth Godin is involved with this project, but a new marketing/communications-oriented op-ed manifesto site has launched at ChangeThis.com.

The first manifesto is from Big Thinker Guy Kawasaki, fresh from completing his new book about how to start-up a start-up.

Check the site out. I'll be reading more of it this week, determining if ChangeThis.com is Blog Roll-Worthy.

-aB

Are You a Trendspotter? Get Your Fix Here...

If you like living on the bleeding edge of the fashion/lifestyle trends, then DailyCandy.com is for you.

The site is targeted to women 25-35 and provides localized content on trends in NYC, LA, Chicago and San Francisco. There's also a section for "Kids" and one for unfortunate souls who don't live in one of those happenin' four cities.

Here's a snippet from the "About Us" section of the site:

DailyCandy is the ultimate source for the latest need-to-know information about fashion, food and fun. It's like getting an e-mail from your clever, unpredictable and totally in-the-know best friend who always has the scoop on everything.

DailyCandy is the brainchild of Dany Levy, self-admitted sugar junkie and an expert on getting the scoop. Her work has appeared in New York Magazine, The New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Elle and Time Out New York. Few people are as qualified to deliver your DailyCandy. Just ask her dentist, who has a lovely estate in East Hampton thanks to her 14 cavities.

Nice site for getting to know what's hot with the female 25-35 demo.

-aB

iTrip + iPod + Soldering Iron = Pirate Radio!

Got an iTrip? Think that the quality of the signal sucks? Me, too.

This story at Engadget talks about some fun you can have with your iTrip, a soldering iron and some goodies from your local Radio Shack.

Obviously, this voids the iTrip warranty and will probably get you tracked by some suits from the FCC in a unmarked black panel van with lots of antennas.

I could care less about broadcasting my own radio station. I just want the iTrip to broadcast a decent signal to my car's radio!

-aB

BugMeNot.com Back Online

Web site registration avoider site BugMeNot.com is back online, after being taken down by it's previous Web hosting provider. Snippet:

BugMeNot.com, a site that helps web users get around website registration roadblocks, is back up after disappearing for several days because of server hosting issues.

In an e-mail late Friday afternoon, the site's creator -- an Australian who has refused to disclose his identity for fear of legal repercussions - wrote, "Bugmenot went down because our host pulled the plug inexplicably. I'm guessing external pressure."

Read the entire story from Wired here.

-aB

Wired Magazine: Don't Capitalize internet

Wired magazine announces today that internet, web and net should no longer be capitalized. They're changing their style guide to reflect this change. Snippet:

Effective with this sentence, Wired News will no longer capitalize the "I" in internet.

At the same time, Web becomes web and Net becomes net.

Why? The simple answer is because there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words. Actually, there never was.

The article goes on to explain that other recently-developed media, like television and radio aren't capitalized, so internet should not be as well.

Well, this is going to take some getting used to. The one biggie that the article doesn't cover is whether web site is still two words or one.

Read the full article here.

-aB

Blogvertising?

This Wired story claims that the very popular blog Fark.com may be taking payment for submissions. Snippet:

Fark.com, one of the most popular blogs on the Net, has been accused of selling out - joining a growing list of new-media outfits willing to bend old-media rules.

According to a veteran new-media publisher, Fark has been selling preferential placement of story links without informing its readers.

Jason Calacanis, publisher of several rival Weblogs Inc. blogs, claims Fark offered him highly placed links to his sites in return for several hundred dollars.

Will this "payola" become a trend? It's certainly not a new issue, with traditional journalism having dealt with the advertsing vs. journalism challenge for decades. A book that I read a month or so ago, Backstory: Inside the Business of News by Ken Auletta discusses how the issue has created serious controversy in the newsroom at the Los Angeles Times.

This is going to be interesting...

-aB

"Maria Sharapova" Tops Yahoo! Search Rankings

For those of you who aren't aware, Yahoo! provides their Yahoo! Buzz Index, showing a summary of the previous week's top 20 searches.

Google also provides a free weekly report, showing the "search patterns, trends and surprises according to Google." It's called the Google Zeitgeist, and it's updated weekly with statistics on what were the most popular searches the previous week.

If you read it, you'd know that "Spongebob" is the #1 search on Google among children. Mmmm, just thinking about crabby patties makes me hungry...

Interesting, free stats for buzz marketing gurus. Add to that the free data you can glean from the Pew Internet & American Life Project as well as Nielsen//Netratings and you too can be an Internet professional!

Did I just give away all of my secrets? Damn.

-aB

Slamming Airlines Favorite Topic of Blogs...

Seems that I am not the only person who enjoys ranting about airlines on blogs. Tom Peters posted this rant about airline travel on his site just two days ago.

His main point? Airlines just need to tell the truth. I'll drink to that, and add another thought: Airlines need to tell the truth and manage passengers' expectations.

Read Tom Peter's rant here.

-aB

Visual Representation Of Top News

These News Maps things are pretty cool. They're a visual representation of what stories and topics are top news at any given time.

The technology has been developed by The Hive Group and is implemented on the Web site NewsIsFree.com. The tool allows you to see what topics are hot in many different online publications by rolling over the main "hive" image, but also allows you to "zoom in" to any topic or article and see the specific coverage. Cool.

-aB

The Balkanization of Online Media

Well, it seems as though columnist Adam L. Penenberg of Wired agrees with me on the ridiculousness of online registration for online media, specifically online newspapers. Snippet:

By putting their advertisers' interests above their readers', news sites risk alienating their core customers. Without us, there wouldn't be any advertisers to appease. There's no law that says we have to tell them the truth about ourselves, and news is news: I can get it from any number of sources on the Net.

I discussed my displeasure about this issue last month here on GumpRants. In that post I mentioned one of my favorite tools, www.BugMeNot.com. It's a great tool, so I will mention it again.

Here's a link to the full column on Wired.

-aB