It’s a busy day, so I thought I’d hit up some six-year-old blog posts and see which links are still alive and interesting. It’s not surprising that the link decay rate is at least 50%. What is shocking is how of the broken links go to mainstream media sites. All links but the last one go to external sites:
Because Tuesday is social change day. Right?
- At BarCamp, Jordan and Joe ran a session called Marketers for a Cause. We split into three groups, and went to work to help three causes: the Union Gospel Mission (Julie and I support them), Kiva (a team was formed), and Hands up for Africa. You can donate to and learn more about the latter cause on Megan’s blog.
- Speaking of Kiva, I’ve already received most of my first Kiva loan back. I’ve loaned $25 of the returned money to Rika Ally Ibrahim, a Tanzanian juice and clothing seller who wants to expand her inventory. Maybe you want to help her (or any of the other worthy folks on Kiva) out, too?
- The Global Election site lets the world mock-vote in any national election. Here’s Canada’s page. I encourage my non-Canadian readers to go forth and vote.
- Traces of Hope is an alternate-reality game being launched by the British Red Cross. I’m both fascinated by and skeptical about ARGs (plus, I have a bit of a crush on ARG guru Jane McGonigal). I suspect that they’re way more effective for social marketing for causes than for corporate promotion. I may write a little section of our book on ARGs, just so I have an excuse to do more research about their efficacy.
- VoteForEnvironment.ca is a side project by Kevin from DeSmogBlog. It evaluates the likely outcome of each riding, and advises you who to vote for if the environment is your number one issue. Currently, there’s no guidance for my riding. If you live in downtown Vancouver, you’re supposed to vote for Hedy Fry. They’ve got a cool Google Maps thingie to help you find your riding.
And to my Jewish readers, let me say “shana tova umetukah”. Or, at least, that’s what Wikipedia says I should say. I was going to go with ‘mazel tov’, but what do I know?
So many inputs, just one output:
- First, a great idea from Springwise (a site I recently discovered when they wrote about DreamBank). IncSpring (no relation to Springwise, and, arg, the brand misspelling rages on unabated) is an online marketplace for unused brands. Back when we did more brand development for clients, we left a ton great design work on the cutting room floor. We could conceivably post some of that work on IncSpring.
- Yet another greatest hits album from Sarah McLachlan. The hugely-popular singer has released just five albums of original material (plus one Christmas album of covers) in twenty years. On the other hand, Wikipedia lists 14 re-releases, ‘b-side’ albums, remixes, live concerts and so forth. As I’ve said before, she is extraordinarily mercantile with her meagre back catalog. Hilariously, Ms. McLachlan’s website claims that the new album features songs “personally selected by Sarah”. Not surprisingly, she chose all her hits.
- Adam Saab is the Green Party candidate for Victoria. Here’s a Facebook page for him, and his MySpace page (he’s apparently also a musician). I looked, but couldn’t find his campaign website. I’m sure he’s pretty busy, but hopefully one is forthcoming. That seems like a priority.
- Zoocasa looks like Canada’s Zillow. I like its functionality a lot, and that’s a fun (if slightly American-sounding) name. I expect they’re focusing on urban regions to start, as I just did a search for Pender Island and its listings were woeful (compare with, say, MLS.ca). I’ve got an email in to them about the comprehensiveness of their listings and when we might expect to see more exhaustive ones.
- MyLifeofTravel emailed me about a contest they’re running. The prize: a trip around the world.
- UPDATE: Via Gillian, I just watched the trailer for The Lucky Ones. Rachel McAdams: hottest Iraq war veteran ever. The trailer feels a bit muddy to me, like it doesn’t know what kind of movie it wants to be. And, speaking of Ms. McLachlan, the trailer features her ballad “I Will Remember You”.
In this site’s past, I would periodically post ‘link round-ups’. As my blogging habits changed, I stopped doing this.
Lately, I’ve been so busy that I’ve had less time to devise fully-formed blog posts in my head. As such, I’m going to occasionally lean on the link round-up crutch. Also, I get pitched much more stuff these days, and some of it seems noteworthy. I might have more to say about these topics, but I don’t have time to say it.
Standardized testing fail - This Wall Street Journal article received a lot of attention on the web last week. I’m unsure about the validity of its arguments, but fresh perspectives on education are always welcome. It reminded of of this great half-hour talk by Malcolm Gladwell, which apparently draws from his forthcoming book. He would, I gather, strongly disagree with the WSJ piece.
TravelMob launch - TravelMob just launched, which seems to be a group travel planning site–a bit like TripHub. Julie used the latter for a holiday last year, and sung its praises. I suspect there’s a market for planning aids of this sort. A web design note: they should host their blog on their own domain, to enjoy increased SEO benefits.
Kickin’ it EE style - Friends Hop Studios and Boxcar Marketing are sponsoring the Expression Engine Roadshow, in Vancouver on September 26. It’s at Havana, where the old theatre company Julie and I managed used to perform. I know almost nothing about Expression Engine, except that it seems to inspire Applesque ardor among its users.
Allergies and Tide - Jason writes to point to this message thread on Tide’s marketing micro-site MyTalkingStain.com (launched with this slightly-amusing Super Bowl ad). I can’t access it at the moment, but he notes that “P&G has (seemingly) ignored but a decent number of people are coming across it when trying to determine why they’re breaking out in rashes from new detergent”. Assuming the site hasn’t been permanently removed, I’ll be curious to see how (and if) Tide responds to these consumer concerns.
Mini client plug - DreamBank has commissioned a 60-second video commercial from the AdHack community. The winning ad gets CAN $1000. If you can make the video in a day, that’s pretty good money.
I’m on the slow road to wellness (go away, neon phlegm, you’re needed elsewhere!). In the meantime, I wanted to mention a few good-cause projects that friends and colleagues are working on:
- Gillian is once again running for our packages. She’s participating in the Underwear Affair (caution, cheesy music ahead), a run- and walkathon for below-the-belt cancers. Think about your privates and make a donation.
- Kris has contributed some prints to the Art of Giving art exhibition and silent auction at the Orb gallery. It’s not a fundraising event per se (the event name seems a tad misleading), but 20% of the proceeds go to charity.
- Joe has assembled a wiki that is “a collection of case studies/examples of nonprofits & social change makers using popular social networks for social change.” A very useful resource if you’re in that space. The wiki is part of Joe’s preparation for the talk he’s giving in Vancouver tomorrow night.
I don’t post these link lists very often, but I’ve got a bunch of tabs I’m keen on closing:
I have many things I’ve been meaning to blog about, and not enough hours in my day. Forgive this big bolus o’ links:
I don’t have a lot to add to these, but they’re all worth mentioning. Your brain will expand by 3.4% if you consume the following essays and videos:
I’ve had a few browser tabs open in over the weekend. They’re topics that don’t necessarily merit a complete post, but I wanted to mention them:
- She’s Geeky is an unconference that “will provide an agenda-free and friendly environment for women who not only care about building technology that is useful for people, but who also want to encourage more women to get involved.” Sounds like a great event. I wouldn’t have positioned this with the ‘geeky’ moniker. I know plenty of women who would be interested in and could contribute this unconference, but would prefer not to self-identify this way.
- October 15th is Blog Action Day, when “bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment.” Hopefully they send me an email to remind me–I’m a very forgetful blogger. Oddly, when I registered my participation, they only asked how many RSS subscribers I had, not how many readers. Obviously plenty of site visitors don’t visit the front page, but my RSS subscribers are only a subset of the daily readers of this site.
- John discovered a new alternative to cremation or burial: “Resomation is an environmentally responsible, non-burn, water based process which sympathetically returns the body to its constituent elements.” Weird, but strangely appealing.
- I didn’t realize how shockingly negligent the American government has been regarding lead poisoning among its population. Has the Canadian government done any better?
- I must find an anonymizing tool which will serve up my IP address as Canadian, so that I can watch Hockey Night in Canada from abroad. Because of licensing issues, the CBC restricts the games to Canadian Internet users.
What with the traveling and the buying and selling of laptops, I’ve accrued a largish set of open browser tabs I’ve been meaning to mention. I need to get that particularly set of web monkeys off my back, so here they are, in yet another list:
- Via the Fast Company blog, Frog Design staffer Ashley Menger devised a new way to think about the garbage we create: for two weeks, “anything that she couldn’t compost, flush or recycle had to be carried or kept within 5 feet at all times”. Other staff members have apparently joined the project.
- Sarah Lane is yet another attractive host of an American tech show that I don’t recognize. All of my American colleagues know their Morgan Webbs from their Cali Lewis’s, but I got nothing. Regardless, Sarah and her husband traveled around the world in 2006, and she kept a blog. Her FAQ is very informative.
- Anne Mullens is a veteran journalist who’s taken on an interesting project this summer–she’s driving a Kabuki pedal cab and blogging about it. She’s an excellent writer, and it’s a great view into that world. She does suffer from a common ailment of professional journalists who try blogging–each post is too long for my tastes.
- Why we do what we do on eBay? I haven’t read it yet, but it comes highly recommended from, uh, somebody.
- Sarah wrote a great column on birth rates in developed nations and the difficult choices that women face around work and family.
- Tim provides some excellent guidelines for Facebook friend and application requests.
- A bunch of movie bloggers got together and built their own list of the top 100 movies of all time. I sense a science-fiction bias in the Force. And why is The Empire Strikes Back ahead of Star Wars?
