Ramblings & ephemera

What Google’s book settlement means

Image via Wikipedia

From Robert Darnton’s “Google & the Future of Books” (The New York Review of Books: 12 February 2009):
As the Enlightenment faded in the early nineteenth century, professionalization set in. You can follow the process by comparing the Encyclopédie of Diderot, which organized knowledge into an organic whole dominated by the faculty of reason, [...]

7 tools of propaganda

From Roger Ebert’s “The O’Reilly Procedure” (Roger Ebert’s Journal: 14 June 2009):
The seven propaganda devices include:

Name calling — giving something a bad label to make the audience reject it without examining the evidence;
Glittering generalities — the opposite of name calling;
Card stacking — the selective use of facts and half-truths;
Bandwagon — appeals to the desire, common [...]

Newspapers are doomed

From Jeff Sigmund’s “Newspaper Web Site Audience Increases More Than Ten Percent In First Quarter To 73.3 Million Visitors” (Newspaper Association of America: 23 April 2009):
Newspaper Web sites attracted more than 73.3 million monthly unique visitors on average (43.6 percent of all Internet users) in the first quarter of 2009, a record number that reflects [...]

Criminal goods & service sold on the black market

From Ellen Messmer’s “Symantec takes cybercrime snapshot with ‘Underground Economy’ report” (Network World: 24 November 2008):
The “Underground Economy” report [from Symantec] contains a snapshot of online criminal activity observed from July 2007 to June 2008 by a Symantec team monitoring activities in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and Web-based forums where stolen goods are advertised. Symantec [...]

Now that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has switched to the Web …

From William Yardley and Richard Pérez-Peña’s “Seattle Paper Shifts Entirely to the Web” (The New York Times: 16 March 2009):

The P-I, as it is called, will resemble a local Huffington Post more than a traditional newspaper, with a news staff of about 20 people rather than the 165 it had, and a site with mostly [...]

Why do Marlboros have red tips?

From Allen Abel And Madeleine Czigler’s “Tangerine trees and marmalade skies” (National Post: 24 June 2008):
… it was [marketing sage & Chicago scientist Louis Cheskin] who turned Marlboro cigarettes from a woman’s brand — originally red-tipped to hide lipstick smears — into the cowboy-themed cancer sticks of universal renown.

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What in our brains invest memories [...]

Protected: FCUK, a special trademarked logo

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

An analysis of Google’s technology, 2005

From Stephen E. Arnold’s The Google Legacy: How Google’s Internet Search is Transforming Application Software (Infonortics: September 2005):

The figure Google’s Fusion: Hardware and Software Engineering shows that Google’s technology framework has two areas of activity. There is the software engineering effort that focuses on PageRank and other applications. Software engineering, as used here, [...]

An analysis of splogs: spam blogs

From Charles C. Mann’s “Spam + Blogs = Trouble” (Wired: September 2006):
Some 56 percent of active English-language blogs are spam, according to a study released in May by Tim Finin, a researcher at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and two of his students. “The blogosphere is growing fast,” Finin says. “But the splogosphere is [...]

If concerts bring money in for the music biz, what happens when concerts get smaller?

From Jillian Cohen’s “The Show Must Go On” (The American: March/April 2008):

You can’t steal a concert. You can’t download the band—or the sweaty fans in the front row, or the merch guy, or the sound tech—to your laptop to take with you. Concerts are not like albums—easy to burn, copy, and give to your friends. [...]

Why brands are declining

From Brian Gibbs’ letter printed in Wired (January 2005):
The explanation that the decline of brands is due to competition, informed consumers, and constant innovation is insufficient. There’s another factor wreaking havoc. Over the years, brands have lost their meaning because advertising campaigns developed by creative types have been clever and witty, but often not relevant.
Once, [...]

Sneaky advertising

I bought a mug that has no handles on it at all. I noticed that the accompanying slip of paper said, “Most Copco travel mugs are intended for right or left hand use.” Well, yes, if there are no handles, that would make sense. It goes on, “If your mug is handled, the lid is [...]

The diamond scam

From The Atlantic’s “Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?” (February 1982):
The diamond invention – the creation of the idea that diamonds are rare and valuable, and are essential signs of esteem – is a relatively recent development in the history of the diamond trade. Until the late nineteenth century, diamonds were found only [...]

Google ad advice

From “Google Adsense Tips, Tricks, and Secrets“:
While every website is different, Google has published some heat maps showing the optimal locations. No surprise that the best spots are middle of the page and left hand side. …
Google has also has published a list of the highest performing ad sizes:

336×280 large rectangle
300×250 inline rectangle
160×600 wide skyscraper

Related [...]

Oh, so that’s why #8

Ford Motor Co. did a study trying to answer the question: who reads/views Ford ads? The #1 group: people who just bought a Ford. Why? Validation.

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Why brands are declining
Some numbers about General Motors
Newspapers are doomed
Bruce Schneier on wholesale, constant surveillance
An analysis of splogs: spam blogs