Marketing Strategy | Content | Social Media
If you scroll down (or up if I have posted a lot lately), you will see a web widget for last.fm. I recently added this to share my music habits with the world. It tracks played music from both my ipod and my computer. I don’t know what I think of it yet.
Here’s an article reviewing all the main players in the Social Music space. I just found this, so I haven’t even read it to see if last.fm is what I should be using.
There was a recent article in the New Yorker, and some response in the press, including the Washington Post, about the tv show 24. I watched this for the first 2 seasons, but have not seen it since. It is now in its sixth season. Apparently, it has gotten very popular, especially among right-wing hawks in the government.
According to the article, military brass from West Point visited the set of the show and asked the shows producers to tone down the torture. Since the show is based on the “ticking bomb” scenario, the idea that unless the good guys can get the info right now, the bomb will explode, the only way to get that information is to use torture. And no surprise, they always get the information.
Well, the West Point cadets are trying to rationalize this fictional approach to prisoner information gathering, and its total success, with some of the suggestions being offered by the military. One example is helping a prisoner write a postcard to his family. I am not surprise they are confused by our recommended methods, but people who are the top in their classes, this is West Point, remember, are having trouble distinguishing between a tv and their training? The solution for this is not to talk to the producers of the show. The probably need to check their admission process.
Meg and I took a trip to Charlotte, and we didn’t take the kids. It was nice to get away by ourselves. We planned to take the train, and make an excursion out of the trip. I planned a picnic dinner for the train ride down Friday night.
One of the problems with train travel is that Amtrak does not have priority on the rails. We arrived the Burlington station about 10 minutes before our 6:00 train. We were told that the train would be leaving at 7:45. It got hung up south of Richmond, as it had to make way for the freight trains that owned the tracks.
We ate our picnic dinner in the train station. I bought way too much food for two people, but it’s always nice to have variety. With no apologies to Tom Wolfe, we had southwestern turkey, black forest ham, genoa salami, Vermont cheddar cheese, goat cheese, a mini-baguette, ciabatta bread, red pepper pesto, cookies and bottled water.
After dinner and several games of Gin Rummy, the train finally arrived at 8:45. Some of the people on the train, which was now nearly 3 hours late, had been on the train since 7:00 in the morning when they left New York. This was not an excursion train. These were people who did not have another way to travel.
We were supposed meet friends in Uptown Charlotte when we got in, but we cancelled those plans since we were delayed so long. By the time we checked into our hotel, it was so late that we barely had time to go to the hotel bar for a drink and some chicken wings.
We slept late, which is a rarity in our lives, the next morning. After breakfast we went to Discovery Place, a science museum that is fun both with and without children. The visits happen at different speeds. While we were at the jelly bean exhibit, I bit into a jelly bean to do a tast experiment and a crown on my tooth came off. When I told Peter what had happen, he told me I was no longer king because I lost my crown.
Discovery Place has an IMAX Theater and we saw Hurricane on the Bayou, a movie made by the same people who made the Everest IMAX movie. They started making a movie about the erosion of the wetlands in the Louisiana delta and its effect on potential hurricanes. While they were in production, Katrina joined the party. They scrambled to get a crew to New Orleans in the aftermath of the storm. As harrowing as the pictures of the flood were on tv, they were unbelievable in IMAX. The devastation was too much.
We also went to the Mint Museum of Craft and Design. There were lots of very cool artwork on display, including a series of Mayberry sculptures commenting on modern issues, and a major exhibit on a German glass scultor, Ann Wolf.
Before boarding the train for our return Saturday evening, we stopped off at an Irish pub, RiRa, for a pint and bangers and mash for me and fish and chips for Meg.
According to Peter, and confirmed online, the Guinness World Record for most Valentines received by a guinea pig is 206. A three-year-old guinea pig named Sooty, who lives in Wales, received the cards from as far away as New Zealand in 2005.
Peter made 2 Valentines Cards for his guinea pig and said Dazzle only has 205 more to go until he breaks the World Record. Grace gave him 4 more, so he is well on his way.
About 2,700 applicants for fall 2007 admission to Carolina were notified mistakenly on Jan. 23 that they had been accepted. In fact, decisions on these applications have not been made, and the students were not expecting decisions until March 31.
The Office of Undergraduate Admissions said two simultaneous human errors involving e-mail messages were to blame. Its staff began apologizing to applicants the next day.
“We are still mortified that this happened,” admissions Director Steve Farmer said Thursday, nearly two days after the error. “I hate that it happened. We try to make sure the candidates under our care are treated fairly and humanely, and it’s heartbreaking in this case there were 2,700 students we’ve failed.”
from USA Today:
Multitasking viewers start before the game ends: As the fourth quarter was winding down last year, the 22 Super Bowl advertisers with major websites already were drawing 782,679 visitors a minute, according to Akamai Technologies, an Internet traffic specialty firm.
And here’s a link to USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Section
I just started using tags this week. This is a new feature in the latest version of Blogger, but I hadn’t used it before. By my tagging posts, a reader can click the tag to create a thread on a single topic and read it. This is a great way to follow my thoughts about monkeys or bologna.
I just discovered a new comic strip, What the Duck (www.whattheduck.net). It is about a duck who is a photographer. Very funny, especially if you’ve ever been involved in a photoshoot.
I just received an email with the “Stormy Worm” and it was not caught by Earthlink filters. The Subject Line was Wrapped Up and it contained the attachment postcard.exe. Since I preview all my email in Webmail before downloading, I was not in danger of downloading this. I am concerned that it slipped by Earthlink’s defenses.
Read about it here.