everwas

a blog by Ian Kennedy

Category: Current Events

  • Marqui’s “Blogosphere Program”

    Internetnews.com writes that Marqui is paying bloggers ($800/month) to mention their product:

    We put no limits on what these paid bloggers can say about Marqui; we only require a badge on their site, a weekly mention of our product and a URL link in the body of their blog.  For their own integrity factor, if they want some sort of disclaimer on their blog, they’re more than welcome to acknowledge that we are paying them to blog with a frame, background, language, etc.

    If bloggers paid by Marqui want to do more, whether offering criticism about our products and services or adding their personal endorsement, we welcome it. Criticism is helpful
    in our development process and it is always better to be talked about than not.

    This of course sparked a lively debate in the blogosphere to which they say:

    Complete transparency (sic) is mandatory

    The idea of paying bloggers is a controversial one, as it challenges some of the sacred cows of the journalistic publishing business. When we first started talking about this idea, an energetic exchange between people with traditional publishing backgrounds and bloggers erupted on the Web.

    If Marqui can support these debates, helping the business community to better understand how to harness the power of the network — which is exactly what our products and services are designed to help them do successfully — we believe our sponsorships will pay huge dividends.

    It will be interesting to see how the model will play out for them. It will certainly generate content around their URL and increase the Pagerank of their site over time, then it’s successful. After the hubbub around the ethics of this tactic dies down, they will hopefully get good product feedback this way as well. It’d be great if they provided a list of the 15 bloggers they have chosen as I’d like to read what they are saying about Marqui.

    Another fun way to “game” the search engine rankings is what P&G Japan did with their trackback contest. They asked people to post stories about their run ins with tough stains and then trackback to their site for laundry detergent. I think they gave out prizes for every 100th trackback or something but the result was that many websites are now pointing to this page so that it’s become a top ranked page for those searching on tough stains and detergent – exactly what they were after!

  • Tokyo Storm Drains

    This has absolutely nothing to do with media, technology, or finance but hey, it’s the holidays and these images are absolutely stunning. Pointed out by a colleague of mine who has a knack to uncovering all that’s weird and wonderful, these photos of a Tokyo sewer system are nested in a larger site that details the engineering behind a large public works project.

    Just goes to show, that well engineered public works projects can be both functional and beautiful.

  • SuperDeluxe is the Best in Asia

    Our friends over at Klein Dytham architecture have made Time Magazine’s Best of Asia list as a cool spot to hang out and catch the pulse of the avant-garde scene in Tokyo. Located in what looks like an old auto body shop in Azabu, SuperDeluxe has turned into the modern day equivalent of a Merry Prankster’s workshop; there’s always something interesting going on.

    Hooray and congrats to you all! For a list of the latest events (the planned one anyway) check out the SuperDeluxe website.

  • White Rabbit

    White Rabbit

    Now I know where Jefferson Airplane gets their inspiration for their song, Chinese candy!

  • Tim O’Reilly on Web 2.0

    Richard of  Read/Write Web interviews Tim O’Reilly on the idea of Web 2.0 which, since the conference, has become the codeword for the web as a platform meme. Here’s Tim on RSS:

    I mean it’s the classic example of Clayton Christensen’s innovator’s dilemma. When HTML came out everybody said “Hey this is so crude, you can’t build rich interfaces like
    you can on a PC – it’ll never work”. Well it did something that people wanted, it kind of grew more and more popular, became more and more powerful, people figured out ways to
    extend it. Yes a lot of those extensions were kludges, but HTML really took over the world. And I think RSS is very much on the same track. It started out doing a fairly simple job, people found more and more creative things to do with it, and hack by hack it
    has become more powerful, more useful, more important. And I don’t think the story is over yet.

  • Fresh Fish

    We made our way up to the 99 Ranch Market, in El Cerrito for a spot of shopping. The market is part of a larger complex which, once you enter the doors, transports you to what could be any mall in Hong Kong. Tanks of live fish, crabs, lobster, oysters, clams, even a white catfish which Tyler spotted, it’s all there.

    We loaded up on good rice, oxtail, frozen squid, enoki mushrooms, Japanese sweet potatoes, persimmons, all sorts of good stuff that you can’t find at your local Safeway.

    Later that evening, we went to Oakland for pizza and a movie at the Grand Lake Theatre with the neighbors.

  • Tivo Sells Out?

    The LA Times reports that Tivo will now insert advertiser logos onto the screen when you fast forward through commercials. PVRBlog says:

    Now, I haven’t seen any actual demos of it in action, and this comment from earlier today claims to be from a TiVo employee and says it’ll be tasteful and unobtrusive, but I have a feeling this is a bad precedent and it’ll get uglier as companies pay more for the primo space.

    Debate rages as to whether these new ads will remain tasteful and unobtrusive as the other things Tivo has done or if this is the first step towards selling out screen real estate until we get the mish-mash of banners that is the Comcast’s Digital Cable interface of today. Then again, it looks like Comcast and Microsoft are up to something that will change their whole TV viewing experience as well and it looks to be for the better.

    Tivo or Comcast – which would you choose?

  • Guessing what you’re after

    I just downloaded Firefox 1.0 this morning and with my Noia theme there’s a big blue lollipop thing right next to the address bar. Hover text says, "Type a location in the address field, then click Go"

    It looks like it’s using the Google "I’m feeling Lucky" result which I stayed away from because of the labeling ("feeling lucky? nah, I’m here doing research!"). Once I tried it though, I was amazed at how many times it found exactly what I was looking for.

  • Naked Stowaway

    I’ve never needed to catch a flight this badly.

    A Canadian man, angry that he was refused a plane ticket to Australia at Los Angeles International Airport, stripped naked, sprinted across the tarmac and climbed into the wheel well of a moving jumbo jet, officials said.

    Nude intruder hitches ride on moving jet at LAX