My brother sent me (and others) a link to a blog today via e-mail. He didn’t refer to it as a blog, just sent the link along, saying it was a good view of what’s going on with troops in Iraq. It’s a totally different type of blog than I’m used to reading, but still fascinating and encouraging to see the blog format, and the individual expression it allows, getting more mainstream.
Tide Incorporates Activism Software in its Marketing
So, I did this story for today about the Tide Coldwater challenge, specifically mentioning a map where P&G tracks viral e-mail forwarding of their messaging, in a “six degrees of separation” sort of way.
Turns out the technology to build the map is called
ForwardTrack and was created by by Eyebeam R&D as online activism software. Eyebeam has made its code available to the community in an open source fashion, hoping to help fuel online activism. (It’s been employed here, here and here.) Wonder if P&G made a donation or contributed anything before employing the code for marketing purposes.
Of course, P&G is couching its whole marketing effort in environmentalist terms, saying washing in cold water helps save energy — needless to say a very important concern in these times of global warming.
Matt Sez Everyone’s a Direct Marketer
Blogging at Google
We should have known this (a new Google employee blogging candidly — including negatively — about the company and his experiences) wouldn’t last. We’ve seen it a few times now. Criticize your company, reveal “inside dope,” etc. and you’re probably lucky if it’s just your blog (and not your job) that disappears. Battelle has more.
UPDATE: Google Blogoscoped has the story of Mark Jen’s return to blogging, and a comparison between the new (edited) content and the old. Mostly, he just took out financial-related info. That portion of the blog had raised red flags with me, too, when I first read it. Not surprised Google felt the same, being a public company and all.
Online News Comeback
Nice to know that the NY Times thinks Internet News Sites Are Back in Vogue (reg required).
Do you smoke?
Before all of this Blogger/spamming mess, I had been a bit quiet. That was because the dominant thing going on in my life sucked up all of my attention. My 72-year-old father was admitted to the hospital last week with a case of pneumonia, brought on by and complicated by a diagnosis of COPD — chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. COPD is basically a winning combination of chronic bronchitis and emphysema. And when I say winning, I mean that if you’ve got it, it’s eventually going to win the fight for your life.
It’s probably not necessary to mention that my dad was a smoker. I say was because there’s some reason to hope that he’ll kick his two-pack-a-day habit now that he’s had this health scare. At the moment, he’s got 2 grandchildren and more on the way. You’d think he’d have plenty of incentive to quit, if only to spend a little more time getting to know them. My brother told me a touching story the other day. When my dad came down with pneumonia, my brother asked his 3-year-old daughter to include grandpa in her nightly prayers, telling her he wasn’t feeling well. Her response? Totally unprompted she said, "Grandpas cough a lot." It’d be wonderful if she got to spend enough time with him to develop more substantive memories than that one.
All this to encourage those of my friends out there who smoke to think seriously about quitting. No one I know (you know who you are!) seems to be that heavy a smoker. You may think that means you don’t need to quit. The way I see it, it means it’s the best time to quit — because maybe you can before too much damage is done.
As for my dad, we’re still trying to determine if he’s going to have to be on oxygen 24/7 the rest of his life. We’ve had to arrange for someone to move into a little cabin on his property. She’ll take care of him, make sure he’s taking his treatments and call an ambulance if things get too bad. He’s actually doing really well, and while it makes me happy, it also worries me. What if he starts smoking again?
UPDATE: Just heard Johnny Carson died of emphysema over the weekend. (Chervokas on Carson.)