A Taste of America

You should be cynical when it comes to a company peddling sugar water, but I haven't felt such an emotional connection to a commercial in a long time. As a non-American living in non-America, I find this commercial humanizes the USA. Maybe they aren't an Anglo gun crazy war mongering nation. Maybe. By the way, my favourite cola is Diet Big 8.

 

 

 

 

Last century I spent a month touring the USA by bus. I highly recommend it. It really is a geographically diverse country. Some of the people are OK to.  ;-)

 

 

If you don't have the time to visit all of America just yet, start with New York City, my favourite American city.

 

Moncton's Fashion Magazine: Pink Blitz

Moncton, New Brunswick, has a fashion magazine. Moncton. New Brunswick.

I'm not from Moncton. I've been here the latter part of a decade. My first impression of Moncton: people are fat and fashion does not exist. But now there is a fashion magazine. In Moncton, where half the active population works in a call centre and the other half works in a warehouse (that's a slight exaggeration, as there are services to support those workers, and 2 universities, 3 if you count Mount Allison in Sackville). 

What makes this Pink Blitz magazine "different" is that it features all sorts of models (and all sorts of fashion?). Frankly, I don't understand Pink Blitz. But I'm not part of the target audience. Still, to see New Brunswick locations featured in a fashion magazine is pretty cool, if a tad bewildering. 

Look at this photo in Edmundston, New Brunswick. The paper mill, the Trans-Canada Highway, the Madawaska river. The hills in the distance are part of the Appalachians, in Maine. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? A perfect spot for a fashion shoot! In the winter, obviously. Miami Beach, eat my shorts (since it is cold in January here in New Brunswick and I really don't need them) ! By the way, Madawaska Maine, across the Saint John River from Edmundston, is the most northern point of US highway 1. Miami is on the southern end (the highway's most southern point is in Key West, Florida). 

The lovely unnamed model on Page 64 of the January issue of Pink Blitz cleverly hides the paper mill (I think it is now closed).

Pink Blitz:

http://www.pinkblitz.com/

I don't know if there is an actual paper version, but certainly someone put a lot of time and effort creating something could be an actual paper magazine.

Here is the URL for the online Flash required magazine. You can also Google Pink Blitz. Pink Blitz Magazine has got good page ranking, that's half the battle. ;-)

Pink Blitz Magazine (Sadly, not iOS (iPad/iPhone) compatible): 

http://www.joomag.com/magazine/mag/0724185001388529260

For publishers inspired by Pink Blitz, please be advised that Southern New Brunswick doesn't yet have an alpine skiing, surfing or luxury lifestyle magazine. Just saying.

:-)

Hat tip for the 411 on Pink Blitz goes to plus size model Sunny Shine of Moncton.  

  

Paywall Or Not, Advertisers Are Being Fleeced

Conflict of interest disclaimer: this blog generates about $80 a year in advertising revenue.

Lazy Greedy Ad Agencies

Many Canadian households have digital video recorders and most have the Internet. So why do companies still pay premium dollars for TV and newsprint ads? Part of the problem is laziness on the part of ad agencies. Buying a full page ad in the local newspaper is easy and expensive. If you get payed on commission based on a percentage of the advertising dollars spent, there is an obvious incentive for big buys. At the other end of the spectrum, buying radio ads is cheap and time consuming. From an advertising agency point of view, its a no brainer.

Confidence

Internet advertising has the additional issue of confidence. Not only is real fraud a problem, but the potential for fraud is there. As an advertiser, chances are you won't even see your Internet ad. As a car dealership owner, there has to be some reassurance involved in hearing your spot on the radio and looking for your ad in the morning paper. Even if customers don't show up, you know the ad was there, and at least one person saw and heard it. On the Internet, there are Russian bots, Chinese cheap labour, slide shows and video auto-play. 

Influence

Journalists know who pays their salary. Presumably they read their own newspaper and occasionally watch their own shows. I've been to a couple of talk show recordings, and they actually play the ads in the studio, even thought the show is recorded! Advertisers are probably not getting their money's worth if they are trying to influence content producers via TV and print ads, but perhaps that plays into the value assigned to those forms of advertising.

Pandering to advertisers on the Internet is quite difficult. Not only are the ads you see here, for example, different based on your physical location, they are also affected by the device (mobile vs. full site) and your browsing history. And they are automatically generated! I could bash Canadian Tire all I want and Canadian Tire could still have ads on this blog. That's not to say companies don't use online advertising to punish "bad" content. Digital Home, for example, was apparently boycotted by Rogers after the site owner complained about their digital TV compression rates.

Cost

TV and newsprint ads can actually seem cheap. The problem is nobody measures the number of people who saw the ad. They just measure if people are watching the show or reading the paper. Newspapers have vastly different rates based on the location of the ad, so there is at least the acknowledged implication that most people don't read the newspaper cover to cover. TV and newspapers also extract a premium because some people actually seek out advertising. When I had a dvr, for example, I'd press play whenever an Apple commercial appeared. And people look in their local paper for sales on anything from furniture to peanut butter.

When you advertise online, you might have to fork over 30 cents to get someone to click on a link to your furniture site. That might seem steep if you are under the delusional assumption that a high percentage of newspaper readers will see your ad and that DVR owners are too lazy to press fast forward.

Advertising Works, Probably

Hershey, the milk chocolate company, used to depend on word of mouth. Now they make their chocolate in Mexico, use milk powder and sell quite a bit of dark chocolate. Oh, and they advertise, alot. Even if advertising does work, at the very least it is more art than science. In most companies, dealing with advertising agencies is the responsibility of the marketing department. Marketing departments are generally populated by people who are bad at science, math and creativity. They are like illiterate lawyers. We'd replace them, but we are to busy doing stuff that is actually useful. However, as a business owner or been counter, advertising online is an easy way to cut costs and increase profits, even if the advertising agency you hire has to work for a change. 

-GEICO | GEICO Commercials

-j.mp/news2013

-j.mp/tvcan

-Superbowl Online

Truthiness: Obama is Kenyan and Gawker is Too Rich

I'd like to thank Gawker for providing this funny clip (somehow
viewable in Canada) of Colbert explaining the silly election season
and the appeals to the fringe vote.

Two questions:
-How does Gawker get permission to post this (if they do)?
-How do they make their money (I don't see any advertising)?

In Canada, you can watch the entire Colbert report on CTV, Comedy
Network and their respective web sites. In the USA on Comedy Central
channel and, I think, Hulu.

Best Article Ever

Call your stockbroker tomorrow and buy shares of the Daily Mail and General Trust. The masses have arrived on the Internet, and that company is taking full advantage.

The Daily Mail was Britain's first daily newspaper aimed at the newly literate "lower-middle class market. (Wikipedia)

 Staying true to its origins, this article is pure gold. Note that I'm not normally drawn to the lifestyle section of newspapers, but the thumbnail for that article was hard to resist. Obviously, at some point people will get tired of articles about pretty women. Right? :)

Some newspapers are dying a slow death, others have adjusted to the new realities.

Breaking News Urgent Alert: iPad Only Newspaper The Daily is Dead at Age 1

Today, The Daily exclusive iPad newspaper, I call it the exclusinewsipadapp (but it hasn't caught on), was found dead. Cause of death unknown but self inflicted wounds aren't ruled out. There was plenty of blood and gore and even a NFL football reference.

The logic behind the birth of the iPad exclusive newspaper (exclusinewsipadapp) "The Daily", was this: Why publish your electronic newspaper on the Internet, accessible by hundreds of millions (are we at billions yet?) of computers and devices, when you can restrict your content to one product?

Well, just like every other news organisation, The Daily has now created an iPhone app. You could read regular online newspapers with iPhone/ipod touch, but it does require pinching. Too lazy to pinch? There is an app for that.

After the geewiz wears off on your iPad, the logic of an app version of the news stops making sense. Fine if you fly or subway alot and have the organizational skills to download new content before your trip, but if you have Internet access, why bother with old news? Webpages look great on an iPad (or any other tablet). And we aren't stupid, we know the content in The Daily can be found in the web versions of Newscorp papers.  

Obviously iPad owners on planes were too much of a niche for Fox's Newscorp (and advertisers) and the iPhone beckoned. The problem for The Daily is there are plenty of iPhone news apps out there (because they make sense, kind of).

I'd like to point out that this blog is 100% web and iOS (iPad and iPhone) compatible. It even works on Blackberry! If you are going to fly on one of those airlines without wifi, print the pages you are interested in. When you get back online, the ads will be different, but it is very important that you click on the ads, otherwise that would be stealing. And if you crossed state lines it is a federal offence. Bring extra copies for the passengers in first class (I need richer readers). Anybody with Parkinsons or twitchy fingers would be ideal. But make sure you scare them into reading the online version (because, once again, you are stealing and in direct and indirect violation of the digital millennial copyright act if you read a paper version of this blog and don't click on one of my ads. If none of the ads interest you, then download Mad Men from iTunes (or subscribe to AMC) and we'll call it even. 

Anderson Cooper Likes to Giggle

Anderson Cooper is no longer good enough for prime time on CNN, so as his carrear sprirals out of control into a housewife only audience, he likes to giggle (not that there is anything wrong with that).

Exibit A:


Exibit B:


Girls and their seducing pussywillows at the dyngus festival is what made Cooper laugh in the second video (he is a flaming homosexual, not that there is anything wrong with that).

BellAliant Ad Men Fail At Advertising

Looking for Geneviève Sabourin's New York Post cover (for falling for Alec Baldwin), I came across this ad for BellAliant. Very few people watch Mad Men. Trying to get people to fork over $133 a month for fibre optics, by linking it to a show few people are fans of, is, in my mind, a complete advertising failure.

Worse, if you are a fan of Mad Men, the link of the ad just brings you the regular BellAliant website. No mention of Mad Men or how fibre optics will get you "more" of it.

The answer, of course, is you can (presumably) watch Mad Men on demand with BellAliant's Fibre Op. You could do that with Rogers and Eastlink cable, but you can't with Bell's satellite or BellAliant's IPTV.

So there it is Mad Men fans. The exact same quantity of show as on cable, but more expensive. Even Don Draper would have trouble selling that. 

Don't Mention the M Word

An Over the Air Reality TV Check for Sun's Michelle Thomson

You'd have trouble finding anything in this Sun August 16th Michelle Thomson article, Rabbit Ears Going Way of Dodo,  that is factually correct. What is scary is that nobody caught it. Not enough men in the newsroom?

As of this week, I can get Global TV in clear, pristine HD, using a rabbit ear antenna. I had to dig my antenna out of storage as analog over the air TV is way too fuzzy in my basement Moncton apartment. But over the air digital TV, at least for the Global Maritimes channel, is perfect. CTV and SRC will be available in Moncton by the end of August. 

The fact is, folks in Edmonton have plenty of over the air (OTA) digital TV options. Yes, using standard rabbit ears...

 

Rabbit ears are set to join the Walkman, VCR and record player in the ranks of endangered household items. 
And that's costing Edmontonians big bucks to keep up with the trends as they're being forced to upgrade their TVs in preparation for a sweeping digital transition.
Rabbit ears — the double-pronged, upward rising antennas popular among the elderly and the frugal — are set to become extinct as the CRTC prepares to make digital cable mandatory in the Edmonton market.

The double-pronged antenna is perfectly fine for capturing digital TV signals, especially in an urban setting like Edmonton.

The CRTC is forcing most Canadian television stations to broadcast in digital in major Canadian cities, starting Aug. 31.

Actually true!

That means those receiving stations through rabbit ears or outdoor antennas will no longer be able to get service.

False!  In fact, you need an antenna to get digital over the air (OTA) TV. If do use an antenna, and your TV doesn't have an ATSC tuner (found in most HD TVs), you will need a $30 converter box (to convert the signal from digital to analog). 

 
If they want to keep tuning into their favourite shows, they will have to get a cable box, digital converter or new TV. The cost will depend on the cable package.

Well, no! If you have an antenna and a $30 converter box, you won't be forking over anything to the cable company! 

Lorne Konelsky, who's selling a pair of rabbit ears on Kijiji, said, "They're an antique now. Those things are over 25 years old."

They can last an other 25 years.

 

 
Konelsky recently found the gadget while helping clear out the house of his son's mother-in-law. She used them until she moved into a seniors home, he said. They're for sale for $5. 
The ad's been static for months and just a few calls of inquiry have come in — mostly from people wanting to know what they are.
Until recently, married mom of three, Tena Trefz, used rabbit ears to catch the news and cartoons with the family. The two channels it provided was all she needed until a few months ago, when the family switched to cable.
"To us, it was a luxury. We never had it before," she said. "We didn't really feel the need for cable. We just decided to get it for fun." 
Those being forced to make the switch have a right to be annoyed, she added. 
"Now it's just being forced on people, (and) they have to switch. If you're getting two or three channels and that's all you really need, you might not want to pay for cable." 
The matriarch of another Edmonton-area family said they're shelling out thousands to upgrade their TV systems in advance of the digital switch.
Tracy — who didn't want her last name used — said she and her Lacombe clan had been using rabbit ears up until a few weeks ago.
But when they moved into a new home, they decided to sign on to cable, and upgrade all their TVs in the process. 
"We're splurging. We're going big. It'll be thousands." 
While she might have otherwise been irked by the change, Tracy said the household move helped change the tone. 
"It would have normally been a headache," she said. "But because this is a happy move, this is exciting." 
While CRTC change will take effect Aug. 31, some stations have received a deadline extension.

Well, it could be a headache if you are on the fringe of the analog coverage area and you had a high tolerance for snowy screen. Because digital, it works or it doesn't. But for everybody else trying to get overt the air TV, unless you have and ATSC TV, all it requires is a $30 purchase.

By the way, the US went thru this 2 years ago... Although SUN Media wasn't there to misinform.

News International Implodes Because of Women

Phone hacking is hacking for women. And as we all know, newspapers have been taken over by women. Gross generalization? Sure, whatever. :)

Here is what smarter people are saying on the subject of women (and men) journalists using their phone hacking skills (Media Talk Podcast, MP3).

Ruth Ellen, The Mona Lisa of Our Time

1 photo.

How does a politician, no less a photogenic one that took Internet
Marketing as part of her Marketing Diploma at Kingston's Saint
Lawrence College, have a grand total of 1 picture of herself on the
Internet?

To date, she has granted a grand total of 1 interview. And it was by
phone! Today she also made and an audio recording, in French this
time, that was auto-called to Berthier-Meskinongé- residents. Not a
YouTube video, a voice auto-call!

No Facebook, YouTube, Myspace, Twitter, Blogger, nothing. Her online
presence must have been (is?) completely anonymous. Quite remarkable
for a 27 year old. Granted, maybe working in a bar, you, gasp, don't
need the Internet!

PS. Yes, this entire post was so I could show off my iPad apps. :)

Visit New Brunswick!

Escape this:



Catch the wave:



But take your time

NY Times Pay-Wall Workaround

Introduction

The NY Times paywall has been quite lucrative... for me. Traffic to my advertising supported blog tripled after posting instructions to my little paywall hack. I posted a couple of links in Twitter, using a clever url shortner, http://j.mp/nytpaywall , but I shouldn't have bothered, as the vast majority of traffic came in via Google. Visitors came in from all over, including from the Associated Press and the US Senate.

The New York Times spent 40 million dollars on the paywall. I'm posting these new paywall hacking/workaround instructions while in bed in my underwear, using my TV (note the shaky mouse in the screen capture: I'm using a remote control trackball !).

To my dismay, I read a comment in a forum where someone, after reading my last post, didn't understand the instructions (sympathy goes out to Ronald Reagan). So here is my second try (also advertiser supported).

A picture is worth a thousand words. But for the visual impaired out there, here is what you do:

Paywall Tearing Down Instructions

URL: Uniform Resource Locator (website address). 

 You highlight the text after the .html in the url (also known as website address), and you press "delete" or "backspace", your choice. When, and if, you get to page 2 of an article, you delete the part of the url after page=2 .

Other NY Times Paywall Hacking Options

If this is still too complicated for you, then your job probably doesn't pay enough to house you, never mind paying for a New York City online newspaper. So here is what you can do:

-Read the NY Times in multiple browsers.

-Read the NY Times on multiple Internet devices (PS3, Nintendo, iPad, spare computer, work computer, iPod touch, iPhone, Android Phone, etc...)

-Delete cookies.

-Copy the title of the article into Google (or Bing, or Ask.com, etc...). This will only give you page 1 of the article, but it is a useful method if you don't have access to a keyboard to press "delete" using my method.

-Right click on the article and select "view source". As an added benefit, you may passively learn hypertext mark-up language. 

-Use complicated plug-ins and add-ons like NYT Clean that have unintended consequences.

-Access the NY Times online via Twitter feeds like Free Unnamed News  (Hat Tip to Gizmodo Australia).

-Subscribe to the Sunday edition of the NY Times (and have it delivered to a New York address); the Sunday edition subscription includes the entire week of the online, smartphone and iPad versions of the NY Times.  

Brega itself was impossible to reach on Wednesday.

Tisk tisk to the Aljazeera Live blog for pretending that 17,000 articles said that Brega itself was impossible to reach on Wednesday. As you know, you need to put "quotes" when searching a sentence in Google. But I do give them credit for reminding their competition that Brega was indeed reachable. However, I'm pretty sure "by us" was implied.

I also give credit to the live blog for writing around the clock. The updates aren't always that frequent, but at least they are around the clock. The Guardian posters go to sleep for 10 hours every day.

Hillary Clinton still blames Canada for 9/11. However, the horribly misinformed US Secretary of State thinks you should be watching Aljazeera, not CNN. 

Metropolis on iPad, Body Under Ground

In 1995, I used to take the subway from my mountain top highrise all
the way to downtown Montreal just to sip good coffee and browse fancy
magazines.

Now I just browse them on my fancy iPad... while drinking instant
coffee and without leaving my Moncton basement apartment.

The 2010 version of me wins, right? :)

The UK Loved the Big Brother TV Show (Media Talk)

Big fan of The Guardian's Media Talk about UK media. (Latest episode: http://bit.ly/MediaTalk2010-06-10 (MP3)). The UK is so similar, and yet completely different!

Other media podcasts:

-The Media Show (BBC iPlayer pop-up), iTunes Canada.
-NPR, On the Media (iTunes Canada link) (Latest show (MP3) is extremely good)

Any other suggestions (in English or French) ?

Americans love Crystal and Charline of Windows 7 ads

Americans love Crystal and Charline of Windows 7 ads

I previously posted that someone in the US Senate was curious about "Charline", the charming young French women in the I'm a PC and Windows 7 was my idea ad set in front of a Paris café. However, Senate staff aren't the only ones. My post about Crystal and Charline is by far the most popular since my iPod touch tv out post in 2007. Traffic to my blog as at least tippled. Most of the Charline and Crystal traffic arrive via Google. Here are the Windows 7 Google searches landing on my blog in the last 23 hours: 

-charline windows 7 girl

-french windows 7 girl is hot

-charline windows 7 aired in us

-crystal hot girl windows commercial

-who is the french hottie charlene on the microsoft ccommercial

-windows 7 commercial my idea french

-charline windows commercial

-french girl windows 7 commercial

-crystal from windows 7 commercial

-windows 7 french actress

-windows 7 is my idea commercial in french (IP Address: The Economist)

-who plays crystal in the windows 7 advertisement

-charline actress windows commercial

-windows 7 charline

-crystal from windows 7 commercial

-crystal microsoft advert actress

-crystal windows 7 girl

-microsoft commercial windows 7 crystal

-chrystal windows 7 taxi

-crystal windows 7 actress

-windows 7 same actress french english crystal

-who plays crystal in the windows 7 advertisement

-charline actress windows commercial

-windows 7 charline

-who is the girl in microsoft taxi ad i'm a pc

-charline i'm a pc

-windows 7 commercial charlene (IP Address: University of Michigan Medical Center (MCIT))

-what is the name of the french woman in the windows 7 commercial? (IP Address: AAA of Michigan)

-altavistagoogle for french commercial for microsoft 7

-microsoft commercial french girl

-who is the french woman in the windows 7 commercial

-commercial for microsoft 7 french speaking

-charlene windows 7 commercial

-windows 7 commercial charline

-crystal windows 7 actress

-windows 7 charline

-windows 7 commercial actress british crystal

-french girl microsoft ad

-french windows 7 girl charline

-french actress in microsoft commercial (IP Address: Army Information Systems Command)

-windows 7 commercial girl charline

-french girl in microsoft windows 7 commercial

-windows 7 charline

-windows 7 commercial, french girl

-crystal "windows 7" actress

-windows 7 charline subtitles

-charlene windows 7 ad

-windows 7 my idea commercial actresses

-charline windows 7

-crystal in windows 7 commercial

-charline, windows 7 commercial

-windows 7 reenactment british girl commercial

-my idea charline

-charline windows 7 french

-french girl microsoft commercial

-crystal microsoft commercial actress

-windows 7 charline

-crystal microsoft commercial actress

-windows 7 charline

-windows 7 charline

-charlene windows 7 was my idea

-windows 7 really british and french?

-window 7 taxi cab girl

-charlene windows 7 commercial

-british girl in microsoft commercial

-charline windows 7

-windows seven commercial actress french one

-crystal windows 7 actress

-french girl windows 7

-french charlene pc commercial

-"windows 7 commercial" london

-windows 7 charline

-model in the windows 7 reenactment in taxi

-"windows 7 commercial" london

-windows 7 charline

-who plays crystal in the microsoft ad

-crystal windows 7 actress

Watch a Podcast On a PS3

Problem: you want to watch podcasts on your PS3 as easely as you do
with your iPhone/iPod touch.
Solution: Google Reader or MyYahoo. Use a computer to set this up.

To use Yahoo, find the podcast subcription feed/RSS/XML on the web
site associated with your podcast. Or search for it using Yahoo: the
word podcast plus the name of your desired podcast usually does the
trick. Some pages have an "add to myYahoo" widget, others will make
you right click on the feed icon and select copy. Remember, you want
the podcast feed, not a text version/feed of the web site.




After clicking on "add content" at the top of your MyYahoo page, click
on "add rss feed", and paste the link you copied. Done.

The links to the
podcasts (aka videos) should now appear in your page. Often, the
videos will be in a .m4v format. That will often leave your computer,
and Windows Media, clueless. But your PS3 knows that .m4v it is just
an iTunes friendly extention for an .mpg file (also known as MP4).
Same idea with Google Reader. Login to Gmail, click on the reader
link. Paste the streams or put keywords so Google can help you locate
the right feed.
When you load your MyYahoo or Google Reader page on your PS3, you can
press the x button on the video link to watch it immediatly.
This might not work so well, in wich Case, press the square button,
select "file" and then "save target as". You can dowload the file in
the background of your PS3. Meaning you can surf, or do pretty much
anything elese with your PS3 while you dowload the file.
The file will be listed under the Network icon while it downloads.
When it is done, it will be listed under the videos icon.

Advertising is the Cornerstone of Democracy

Disclaimer: I watched 22 hours of Mad Men this Summer.

To those of you who don't advertise on your blog, I understand: You are rich and don't need the money. Seriously, probably not worth your time and effort. You need serious traffic to get a return on the time investment it takes to set up and maintain advertising on your blog.

However, the time effort isn't that big. Once you have entered the code into you into you blog template and set up you account for direct deposit, you can basically forget about it (assuming you don't change your blog template or your bank account).

Rather than discuss how many children you have saved with your Unicef donations thanks the money you have earned (tax free if you deduct your costs such as Internet access), lets ponder the advertising dollars you have redirected. Unless you blog is about pets, you are presumably redirecting adverting away from things like newspapers. Newspapers are dying you know (as are the paper mills that supply them). Thousands of people are losing their jobs because of you. Think about it.

Worse, with newspapers dead, who will be out there making sure the Sarah Palins of this world aren't making stuff up? Think about it.

On the other hand, if you don't advertise on your blog, perhaps you are stealing eyeballs away from newspapers. Making newspaper advertising less effective and making billboards and urinal posters that much more valuable. For example, have you noticed that Bell and Rogers both use billboard and transit advertising, a lot!

Anyway, I've been using Twitter over the last few months (advertising free), so this post has gone way beyond my attention span. So please complete this post by entering coherent comments.

Thanks,

Altavistagoogle.