Back from the Blog Expo

It took seeing the new Geico commercial to remind me that I have an xtranormal account, which is a great tool, even the free version. In this little movie, Drew is back from Vegas, reporting to his supervisor on what he "took away" from the blogging and new media conference.

Geeky Blogger Minutiae

If you use Google's Blogger service, you may have noticed that your favicon has been replaced by the Blogger orange "B" icon in the address bar.


To get your icon back, just take the code that points to your favicon (in my case, the image is hosted at photobucket) and move it down under the close of the script tag
and it will be returned to the way you like it.

Tropical Canadian Bucket o' Heaven

A Mock Pay-Per-Post Ridiculously Laden with Keywords for a Product I've Fallen For

Wow! I just tried some raw, Organic, natural, unfiltered, wild honey on a slice of whole wheat toast this morning, and I have to say, this is the most delicious thing since I don't know what!

It comes from Tropical Traditions, a company with headquarters in Wisconsin. Now, I know it's sort of funny to name yourself "Tropical" when you live in Wisconsin, but that's not the point. The point is: this premium raw, natural, unfiltered, wild honey is really, really good. What's more, it makes you feel all special and better because it's Organic, with a capital "O," and that means you are on the cutting edge of coolness if you eat it.

I was interested to learn the story of where and how Tropical Traditions gets their raw, natural, unfiltered, wild honey. Tropical Traditions Organic Raw Honey comes from the frontier areas of Canada, of all places, and is only harvested during a 6-week period in the summer. Tropical Traditions is the exclusive source of this premium raw, natural, unfiltered, wild honey in the U.S. Did you know that most commercial honeys available on the market today come from bee farms, where the bees are controlled within a certain area and get their pollen from usually only one kind of flower? That can't be good, can it? That's not how they do it at Tropical Traditions. They place their hives in unpopulated areas, free from traffic and cigarette smoke, so as not to taint the premium raw, natural, Organic, unfiltered, wild honey.

Try some, and I think you’ll agree that there is no finer premium raw, natural, unfiltered, wild honey in North America! Raw, Organic, Canadian honey, available exclusively in the US through Tropical Traditions.

You can buy it by the jar, the 15-lb pail or the 60-lb pail! That's a lot of premium raw, natural, unfiltered, wild honey! Yum!

(I am serious. It's damned good stuff.)

This post mocks the shameless and hopefully-soon-dead business model of Pay Per Post, a Web 2.0 scam of the first order, previously slammed here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Not Another Dead Ad Blog!

One of my favorite (in this case: favourite) ad bloggers, Fish & Chimps, has apparently called it quits. I'm hoping he goes the Copyranter route and rises from the grave.

Said the author behind UK-based Chimp Media Monitoring,

Advertising's not funny any more. Or I've had a cooliostomy and lost my sense of humour. My mojo has gone. Don't get upset. It's only a fucking blog. Out.

Not so fast, Chimp. You need this space. It needs you. Cooliostomy? C'mon! Who comes up with that kinda stuff?

Image stolen from Dead Monkey Theatre.

The Corporate Blog Challenge

Click for bigger, printable, stealable version.



Having assisted companies in setting up and administering blogs, I know it’s challenging to convince them of the need to be transparent, less stodgy and a little “uncorporate” if they want to (get ready) “maximize their presence in the social media space.” Most of the blogs I helped get established are miserable failures now because the companies either a) gave up on frequent posting or b) only wanted to be rah-rah vehicles, self-promoting and basically devoid of personality. The authors also weren’t going out to other blogs, boards and forums and making relevant comments that directed readers back to them.

I recently visited the corporate blog of a worldwide company. It is well-designed, has many expert authors and frequent postings. (One author has over 800 posts.) They’ve employed all the appropriate tag mechanisms and social media link widgets. They incorporate plenty of text links, images and the navigation is intuitive. But nothing is happening interactively. I am hard pressed to find a single comment on the entire blog. There is no “two-way” happening. The posts read more like little articles and they appear to have been sterilized. I’m starting to wonder if the blog is merely search engine fodder, because clearly, there’s no “conversation” going on. Comments are also monitored heavily, which is generally expected of a corporate blog, but I submitted an (somewhat) innocuous comment last Friday and it has yet to appear, perhaps because it was (somewhat) humorous and not in keeping with this corporation’s communications guidelines.

Corporate guidelines should be relaxed to a degree if you’re going to get any interaction from your company's blog. For legal reasons, you can’t have your authors going off on rants like a private blogger is free to do, but at the same time you should allow your authors (and commenters) the ability to speak with some candor.

The corporate blog I visited has a 150 word paragraph of fine print above the comment box. It's full of legalese, with phrases like “collect, process, use,” “personally identifiable information,” “worldwide in perpetuity,” and “without notice to you and without compensation.”

I mean, c’mon. I just want to comment. But this is one example of why corporate America is having a hard time getting a handle on “Web 2.0.” (Kill me if I ever use that term again.) In the interest of sales and marketing (and in the interest of covering their asses legally) they’ve pretty much killed the conversation.

One Year, 365 Posts

One year ago today I started this blog. This post is #365. Where's My Jetpack? has almost become a part time job volunteer position. It was started out of frustration with not being able to write anything fun at my job. (Go ahead, write 40 pages about predictive and statistical analytics software and tell me you had fun doing it.) I suppose I'll keep it going, unless someone out there has an actual paying job that let's me write like this.















On this anniversary, I will add a new feature to the sidebar called "Open Mic Night" in which I will open myself up to ridicule, scorn and derision by posting homemade recordings every so often. At worst, I make you cringe, requiring an aural palate cleansing using your favorite music. At best, I quit my day job and go on tour with the White Stripes.

Fred is Dead

Not literally, but he laid his blog to rest yesterday. It was a sad day for ad blogging, as Fred often posted amusing insights about more than just ads and the ad world. The author will live on at Hands Across the Porch and No Joe Girls, among other places.

I found Freelance Fred through George Parker, which is basically how the incestuous blog world works. You hit a link on one blog's comments or sidebar and find another blogger who posts stuff you like to read. Fred went out in style, buying a 20 oz steak at an Atlanta area strip club and reviewing it for his readers.