Today, Yahoo! announced the release of Fire Eagle, a service that, according to Search Engine Land, “is intended to be something of a ‘clearinghouse’ or ’switchboard’ for location and help users ‘manage location’ across the internet and on mobile applications.”
Those of you who know what this means, raise your hands. Okay. That’s what I thought. Actually, I’m not blogging about what the service does. I’m blogging about Fire Eagle’s logo. I’m outraged! Yahoo! would infringe on the Tennessee Titans’ famed “flaming thumbtack” logo. While I’m sure that Yahoo!’s designer intentionally meant to make their logo look like a flaming thumbtack and with the Titan’s designer’s, it was just good ol’ dumb luck, I still think consumers may be confused by the remarkably similar flaming thumbtack images.
To protest Yahoo!’s blatant disregard for my home team’s copyrighted logo, I have decided that when I attend Titans games, I will not use Fire Eagle to manage my location across the internet and on mobile applications.
Philipp’s results are so amusing, I thought I’d do another ego search on my name to see what happens. And whoa, the screen-grab below is what I found. While not me, the guy on the left is my friend, Joi Ito. He’s taken my photo a few times, and I his. So, other than him living in Japan and me in Tennessee, I guess I see the relation. As for that photo on the right that accompanies a Nick Bradbury post that mentions me, if it looks like a pregnant man, well, it is. Huh? Oddly, the pregnant man image shows up on a Google Image search for me, as well — thanks to this post related to my annual warning before April Fool’s Day. I guess the April Fool’s joke was one me.
Pardon me while I place two historic firsts in the record.
Early this morning, my wife starts off a conversation with, “I disagree with something you wrote on your blog.”
“When did you start doing that?” I respond.
“Disagreeing with you?”
“No, reading my blog?”
Second, today Gawker placed the phrase “Media and Marketing Guru” in front of my name. (Note to self: Add a side-bar blurb: “A Media & Marketing Guru,” says Gawker.)
You don’t need me to tell you that Seth Godin is a brilliant marketer. He sees marketing lessons in all of life’s journey. And because his lessons about marketing are shared with parable-like simplicity, even people like me can understand them — and be inspired.
Today, he’s having a little fun demonstrating how people will join “tribes” they think are exclusive. If you pre-order his new book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us (due out October 21), you can “join Seth’s new tribe.” But hurry, because, “Membership is numbered, with low numbers getting prestige, first dibs on various assets and bragging rights.”
Wait, I’ve heard of this network before: It’s Melin Mann’s award-winning startup concept, “FlockdUP” — the maverick network for thought-leaders.
Okay, Seth. I’ll play along. Since I would purchase your book anyway, I’m also signing up for your maverick network for marketing thought-leaders — the receipt for my pre-order is in the e-mail.
The Important Part: There are those who preach that print is dead. I’m starting to believe it’s reading that’s dead. I am convinced people don’t read past the first sentence of an email, the first paragraph of a blog post, the headline of a news story, the first 30 characters of a tweet on Twitter. I’m thinking of writing a very long book on this topic, but after the first chapter it will only be greeking.
The Funny Part: I think people look at pictures and love charts — even if they don’t understand them. And video, people really love video. But only if they are how-to videos, videos of someone making a fool of themselves — or of someone else. Or if they are funny videos that allow geeks to laugh at themselves, like these:
I confess: I’m a Kristen Wiig fan. Anything the Saturday Night Live cast-member does cracks me up. I don’t know why, exactly, but her new character, “travel writer Judy Grimes,” is especially funny to me. I guess I’m amused by people who use the equivalent of emoticons in their speech or perhaps it’s her unwillingness to make any declaration without caveat. We all know that person. That and her amazing delivery. I’m not just kidding.
“Officials from the National Weather Service issued a severe weather alert for all basements in Tennessee Tuesday after a deadly new weather phenomenon ravaged scores of residential downstairs areas, leaving every other part of the houses completely untouched. The recently discovered targeted cyclones, known as basement tornadoes, tore through cellars all over the state, killing dozens and injuring hundreds.”
This explains a lot.
(Later: I agree with some Nashville readers who suggest this may not be funny in light of the killer storms that hit our area on Feb. 5. However, I also think if we can’t make fun of them, the tornadoes have won.)
Recently, I wrote about the lost art of campaign jingles. (Actually, the “jingle” is a lost art.) On this morning’s Weekend Edition, Scott Simon interviewed Jim Nayder of “The Annoying Music Show” about some really, really bad presidential campaign songs. Very funny stuff. The audio will be available at approximately 12 noon ET.
(Sidenote: Dear NPR & Chicago Public Radio powers-that-be, It sure would be great if The Annoying Music Show were available via podcast.)
2. By February 28, every event and business-media company in the country will have an “un-conference” division.
3. In June, IDG will announce that the 2009 Macworld Expo is being renamed Macworld UnExpo.
4. In July, Apple’s lawyers will sue several hundred people for using the words pod and camp in the same sentence.
5. In August, there will be a big controversy involving how corporate sponsors have taken over unconferences and how great things were back when unconferences really were unconferences — oh, and another thing, how come there are so few un-white-males attending them?
6. In September, 30,000 trade-show and association executives will attend the First Annual UnConferenceCon and UnTradeshow at Chicago’s McCormick Place.
7. In November, NPR will air a week-long series on the history of Unconferences and leave out Dave Winer because the producer forgets to Google the question, “What is an unconference?”
I have only an inkling of an idea what the friendly folks at National Instruments sell, but I’m thinking my 17-year-old son may one day want to go work there after viewing this:
While I hate to admit that I’m actively trying to avoid all news related to the campaign for President of the United States of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, my oblivion made it extremely entertaining when I checked in over the weekend to discover that Hope, Ark., is a real town and not just a fictionalized Mayberry created by director Jeffrey Tuchman for that documentary at the 1992 Democratic Party Convention. If Hope native Mike Huckabee actually does become President one day, I recommend the military treat Hope like Area 51 — there’s got to be aliens landing there. Mike Huckabee? I thought Ron Paul was supposed to be the Howard Dean of 2008 — when did Huckabee get that role? Like I said, I’ve been actively avoiding the polling-horse-race aspects of the New-Hampshire/Iowa/South Carolina Presidential campaign so I totally missed that Chuck Norris is “willing” Huckabee to be President. Speaking of Ãœbermensch (the German word for “Chuck Norris”), I’m predicting the ad embedded at the right will help spike up the polling numbers of the Nietzsche campaign, despite their unfortunate early choice of “God is Dead” as a slogan.
It’s taken me several days to get around to it, but the “Unaired 1994 Pilot of 24″ spoof created by the folks at CollegeHumor.com is so funny, it hurts. Seeing this makes me agree with Wired.com blogger Nicholas Thompson, who writes: “My guess is that the writers’ strike is going to be a huge boon for (web video).”
And just for the record, what I’m saying here has nothing to do with “user-generated” or “amateur” content. I’m talking about professionals who are working outside the current battle zone between studios and writers. (Writers who I’m sure will soon be called ’scabs’ if their stuff gets too popular.)
Again, just to say this one more time: The video above is not “user-generated,” it’s major league quality geek humor.
Thank you for participating in the new rexblog.com marketing program called “cap-per-post.”
After you saw that I had used an out-dated version of your company’s logo on a post that had nothing to do with your product — I was writing about country music and I thought the word “twang” was a good one to illustrate it — you sent me an e-mail asking if it would be okay to send me some samples of your product with up-to-date logos.
I responded publicly letting you know that I only accept products that are for review purposes, so, therefore it was swell for you to send me some of your chili lime salt for our labs. (In the meantime, some other Nashville bloggers have volunteered to be lab rats on this project.)
However, in addition to the salt for our laboratory experiments, you also sent along a Twang baseball cap. What a coincidence. I was just putting together the final touches on a new rexblog sponsorship program called “cap-per-post.” I haven’t worked out all of the details yet, but it goes something like this: send me a cap and I’ll take a picture of me wearing it and, well, that’s as far as I’ve gotten.
(Sidenote: I hope to work out most of the kinks on this program before appearing on an editorial ethics panel at the Folio: Show next week.)
So, Matt, as the very first participant in the rexblog cap-per-post program, let me thank for you for sending me that cap along with your product samples, including that sweet and sour chili salt that tastes great sprinkled on fruit, popcorn, veggies or meat.
Twangfully yours,
Rex
P.S. For other savvy marketers who would like to participate in the rexblog “cap-per-post” program, just send me a cap (no product samples, please — just a cap) to:
Rex Hammock
Cap-per-post
Hammock Publishing
3322 West End Ave., Ste. 700
Nashville, TN 37203
The New York Times has busted the writer behind the brilliant bit of satire called the Fake Steve Jobs weblog. It’s Forbes senior editor Daniel Lyons. Yes, that Daniel Lyons. The one who wrote the infamous blog-bashing cover story with the screaming head, “Attack of the Blogs,” that was promoted with the sub-head: “Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo.”
Dear Daniel, all is forgiven. I didn’t realize that cover story was written as satire. Duh.
Lyons’ run as Fake Steve is one of the most enjoyable run of blogging I’ve read. His humor was spot-on and, at times, inspired. He lives a continent away from Silicon Valley (in Boston) and, despite endless speculation, has no insider knowledge of Apple. According to the Times, “Mr. Lyons says he has never interviewed Mr. Jobs nor written a story about the company. ‘I have zero sources inside Apple,’ he said. ‘I had to go out and get books and biographies to learn about a lot of the back story.’”
While I regret we’ll no longer get to enjoy Fake Steve with “child-like wander,” his outing did provide him with the opportunity to channel real Dan Lyons with a swipe at bloggers — this time, a swipe at some who deserve all the swipes they get.
“One bright side is that at least I was busted by the Times and not Valleywag. I really, really enjoyed seeing those guys keep guessing wrong. For six months Dr. Evil and Mr. Bigglesworth put their big brains together and couldn’t come up with the answer. Guy from the Times did it in a week. So much for the trope about smarty-pants bloggers disrupting old media. Brilliant. My only regret is that we didn’t get a chance to see Bigglesworth take a few more swings and misses.
Today, Yahoo! announced the release of Fire Eagle, a service that, according to Search Engine Land, “is intended to be something of a ‘clearinghouse’ or ’switchboard’ for location and help users ‘manage location’ across the internet and on mobile applications.”
You don’t need me to tell you that 
Dear Matt Schere, 
