Archive for January, 2007
Greenwashing
Over at the Boston Globe’s Business Filter blog, Maura Welch has a piece on “greenwashing.” Maura links to PSFK for an explanation:
‘Greenwash’ is a pejorative term that some environmentalists and critics use to describe the activity of brands and corporations that portray a positive public image of putatively environmentally unsound practices. Greenwashing can take many [...]
Web4 - the Creepy Web?
I’m still not happy about the “Web 2.0″ buzzword, and Seth Godin is talking about Web4! No matter, I’ve always been buzzword-resistant.
So what is Web4? Here are some of Seth’s examples.
I’m typing an email to someone, and we’re brainstorming about doing a business development deal with Apple. A little window pops up and lets me know [...]
Collateral that Sales Really Uses
This has probably happened to you: you create a new data sheet or brochure or mini-site. Maybe it’s for the hot new product, maybe it’s a long-awaited refresh of existing content. You’ve gotten all the input from everybody - the product managers, the industry marketing specialists, and so on. Everybody agrees on who the target customer is. Everyone [...]
Get a Life
On Monday, over on The Boston Filter, Maura Welch posted on a send-up of Second Life that’s making the rounds. It’s called called Get A First Life, and it’s a priceless send up. Not much to it, but what’s there is great. Some gems:
Your world. Sorry about that.
Go outside. Membership is free.
First life is a [...]
The Ever-Shiny Apple
Wouldn’t you love to have the kind of devoted customers Apple has? On ZDNet, Larry Dignan wonders if the company’s recent behavior will dampen the enthusiasm for them among their devotees:
Perhaps these practices are just capitalism at work. Perhaps we shouldn’t hold Apple to higher standards. Perhaps none of this matters to Apple fans. But take the [...]
How Yahoo Lost the Sponsored Search Market
Why is Google so far ahead of Yahoo in sponsored search (they’ve got about 70% of the market)? This Wired News article looks into the tortured history of sponsored search at Yahoo, and it’s not a pretty story. (Interesting reading, though.)
What’s frustrating for advertisers, of course, is that their search engine gets a lot of traffic, and their [...]
A Thing of Astonishing Beauty and Grace
After all the Office 2007 talk going around, I decided it was time to have a look at OpenOffice, the open source alternative to Microsoft. And during the installation, I gasped when this dialog box appeared:
It was a gasp of happy surprise. Look at that! Instead of making changes to how my PC works, it [...]
Suits and Geeks
Via podcast from WAMU in Washington, DC: the Kojo Nnamdi show looks at “Suits vs. Geeks,” with guests Mindy Zetlin and Bill Pfleging, co-authors of The Geek Gap: Why Business and Technology Professionals Don’t Understand Each Other and Why They Need Each Other to Survive.
It’s an interesting discussion, particularly because Nnamdi’s a great host. (Anyone from WAMU out there? [...]
Whatever
Having found that what’s in my wallet included a large number of credit cards that I never use, I decided to cancel some of them. Wad of plastic in hand, I started dialing around, and was pleasantly surprised at how simple it was to unload. Yes, I did have to suffer some time in the [...]
Office Upgrade Agita Ahead
Everything I’ve read about the new Microsoft Office 2007 makes it sound like a good program - what we can only wish it had been in the past. Of course, there’s nothing about it that sounds like it will make it any easier to do the things I use office for - writing, spreadsheets, and presentations. Mainly, it sounds [...]
