Archive for: March, 2008

Parting Thought on @SorenDayton

Mar 20 2008 Published by under Craziness

After I posted my last note on this, and was getting ready for bed, I had another thought. We have actually now set a more dangerous precedent than I originally realized.

When politicians screw up and bang interns under a desk, for instance, we give them a free pass and say, “It’s his private life. We should not even care.” Unless they break the law, we excuse any stupid act committed in private.

With Soren’s suspension, we have now said that same standard does not apply to the politician’s staff. A personal thought that had nothing to do with McCain that he shared using a private account, has now been judged as worse than a secretarial BJ. It really is sad.

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More Chatter About @Sorendayton

Mar 20 2008 Published by under Craziness, Elections, Free Speech, John McCain, Operatives, Pandering, Politics, Technology, The Internet

Matt Lewis has a good post up at Townhall on the Soren Dayton flap. He takes McCain to task for his overreaction (which is fair). He also takes McCain to task for imposing limits on political combat.

Still, reprimanding him may cause future McCain operatives to think twice before doing their job. Is McCain recommending a sort of “limited war” in which the enemy can shoot at us, but we can’t shoot back?

Standing on principle is a good value, but so is supporting your subordinates and so is loyalty. It takes political courage to stand up for your team — even if it may cost you politically. Is McCain too concerned about wanting to come across as a nice guy?

The bigger point, and one I think that’s been lost in this, is that Soren was using his personal accounts in a personal communication. Unlike the Amanda Marcotte dust up, Soren was not hired as a spokesperson for the campaign and simultaneously promoting himself and his personal ideological agenda.

He didn’t use a campaign e-mail address to send the link to the video. He didn’t even use a McCain sponsored twitter account. He used his own personal accounts to share a thought with people he felt were friends about online politics – a field he happens to have both expertise in and familiarity with.

This was not like the Samantha Power incident where an adviser (albeit an unpaid one) was speaking with a reporter. This isn’t closer to the cases of Linda Olsen and Judy Rose who were fired for forwarding the “Obama is a Muslim” e-mail. While it was never clear to me whether the women in that case used official campaign addresses or their personal accounts, the material they sent was untrue and potentially slanderous.

Soren’s incident has none of that. The material in the video was predominantly Obama, his wife, and his pastor. Granted the video contains footage of Olympic athletes and Malcolm X that it should not have. The statements of Michelle Obama and Jeremiah Wright are more damaging without all that.

But again, Soren did not create the video. The message was not sent from the campaign systems. It was a personal note. He was not a spokesman, he was a private citizen working on a public campaign and using a personal address.

One thing about this incident sends a chill down my spine. Many people are afraid to run for public office because they fear the rectal probe that is our electoral process. They fear the media scrutiny and the potential that some past indiscretion – no matter how small – will make them a public spectacle.

Do political operatives now have to fear that their private communication will become tomorrow’s news story? Do the people that give selflessly in political campaigns have to dread every workday wondering if they will be the campaign’s latest black eye?

How many e-mails did you send today that, taken out of context and publicized on the news, could be an embarrassment to you or your employer? How many of your personal notes contain jokes about the office, your company’s competitors or some other matter best kept private?

If we have rewritten the political rules so every piece of personal communication sent by campaign staff is now fodder for political advantage, we will further degrade our political process.

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Ridiculous Ideas Never Die

Mar 20 2008 Published by under Business, Craziness, Marketing, Stuck On Stupid, Technology, The Internet

About 8 years ago, a company called Digital Convergence Corporation had the idea to place bar codes in magazine ads. When you scanned the bar code using a CueCat, your browser would automagically go to a website where you could get additional information. This was welcomed with a huge yawn by people who realized that typing a url was actually less work than picking up the CueCat, pointing it at said bar code, getting it to read, and then waiting for the browser to respond. Honestly, how many people digest magazines when they’re sitting at the desktop anyway? If you could turn my toilet into a scanner/smart terminal, maybe I’d pass the occasional magazine in front of it.

To nobody’s surprise, Digital Convergence eventually failed and most thought the CueCat was lost to the annals of goofy technology history.

Apparently, however, there are still people who think this is a pretty neat idea – not the least of them is Microsoft.

Microsoft’s new multicolor bar code will enable the inclusion of more data in the code itself, as well as the ability for consumers to interact with it by scanning the code with webcams and, eventually, cell phones with color cameras.

Of course, Microsoft’s new bar code was developed to aid in anti-piracy efforts, not advertisers. That hasn’t stopped still other companies from trying to fill the CueCat void.

Enter MyClick

MyClick allows consumers to instantly access exciting promotional opportunities and discounts, and provide ROI feedback, simply by taking aim and shooting at special images on ads and products with their mobile device cameras.

That’s from an e-mail I received from MyClick earlier today. The message touts MyClick’s ultra-cool new offering. From their website, here’s how it works.

Visitors simply log onto www.myclick.hk with their mobile phones and download the MyClick software. Upon taking a photo of the MyClick framed Carnival logo at the MyClick game booth next to the Giant Wheel in the Carnival, attractive prizes including PS3, xBox, Vista gifts and Go Cart race cash coupons are just one click away.

Now I can hear you saying two things to yourself. First, “why would I want to go through that process just to get some goofy prize or a coupon?” Most of MyClick’s clients are advertisers like Lipton, Pepsi and Pizza Hut, and most of their efforts so far have been coupon delivery. They somehow have convinced themselves that I will install an application on my phone specifically to get MORE useless coupons delivered to me.

That brings me to your second question – “Isn’t this even worse than the CueCat example given that it’s just as difficult to install/use, but less useful ultimately because I could currently achieve the same thing with short codes and standard text messages?”

Well, yes, that’s right. First you have to download their app, then you have to take a picture of the add, then you have to wait for the image to be processed and get the response back. The MyClick folks should be commended for the fact that they took a really unappealing process (read magazine, grab goofy cat looking scanner, aim at magazine, wait for browser) and made it even more complicated.

Pizza Hut could just as easily have put a tag on their posters that said, “Send ‘High Five!’ to 55555 to get a coupon or win a prize.” It requires no download and very little time to complete.

All of this just goes to show that a really bad idea is still a really bad idea when applied to different platforms.

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Where’s The Deer At?

Mar 20 2008 Published by under Craziness, Hunting, Technology, The Internet

A few years ago, I had never even been hunting. My wife’s family has a big annual hunting trip, and I was asked to go along. It seemed a good way to get to know her dad – who has never exactly warmed to the idea that I stole his daughter. So I said yes.

It’s now become sort of a weird obsession. I’m currently awaiting the draw results for an elk tag and an antelope tag, and this year hope to add bow and muzzleloader hunting to my list of skills. I’m really psyched.

When Micah Sifry sent the following twitter, I had to check it out.

A deer is blogging its position straight to a Google Map. OMG: http://tinyurl.com/2mxzpc

Thor the DeerThe deer in question is “Thor”. Thor is a study animal in a project run by Bryn Athyn College. While the project page is somewhat lacking for details on the project, it would seem the fine folks at Bryn Athyn seem to be doing two things simultaneously.

First, they’re looking at the movement patterns of three deer – including Thor.

Second, they seem to be signing a death warrant for poor Thor.

Now I am not, by any stretch, condoning the poaching of Thor. Poachers have a special place reserved in hell next to cab drivers and Elliott Spitzer. However, I acknowledge the reality of the world. Giving a nice buck like that a name, a picture and a way to tell exactly where he is, just begs for some poacher to go after him. If you make it that easy for someone to take a quick drive, whip out a bow or rifle, and go home with a really big deer, someone is going to do it.

This deer is a nice wide 7-8 point deer in the photo. Given deer have shed their antlers by now, it’s likely this is an old photo and Thor is likely wider, with more, bigger points now. You might as well make him where a collar of bells and light him with follow spots.

I appreciate the efforts of the Bryn Athyn College folks to educate us on the behavior patterns of deer. However, I think their eagerness to use new technology to demonstrate their work is going to result in someone collecting their test animal.

For more on Thor’s movement, see the map below.


View Larger Map

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Did Obama Overreach On Race

Mar 18 2008 Published by under Miscellany

By elevating the discussion of his relationship with Rev. Wright into a larger discussion of race relations, Obama runs a real risk. The speech today could change the frame so people begin to examine Wright’s words as those of a lone black man raging against the machine. On the other hand, they could be viewed, especially by white America, as evidence of a much more radical view.

As I’m sitting in the Minneapolis airport watching CNN coverage of the speech, I hear some talking head say Obama has done a good job by challenging us to think – something politicians don’t usually do. However, that assumes race relations are something people want to confront intellectually. I’m not sure they are.

People generally discuss race in charged terms, as Wright did. Affirmative action is rarely debated on merit but is typically framed in conversations as one race or the other using the levers of power to its advantage. Rare is the discussion of the root cause of the issue except to acknowledge the historical background.

I think Obama may have done better by sticking to his first defense and putting this down as the charged language of one man who had been through a lot rather than making it an ideology cut on racial lines.

How many people, in the wake of 9/11, adopted similarly charged language to address our attackers. ‘Nuke them til they glow’ and ‘make the Middle East a parking lot’ were popular phrases for those discussing Muslims.

Now juxtapose that anger to a man who had seen the worst of the civil rights movement. Add to it a healthy degree of lingering historical anger. Give it voice through a man staring at a church full of parishioners who have to deal with such issues daily. You begin to understand the anger of THAT man. (Sorry for the caps, bold and italics not available on my BB)

Apply it more generally, however, and you may alienate caucasians who really don’t want to come to terms with that level of hostility aimed at them. You also leave an opening for Hillary’s people to create a whisper campaign that you are a closet radical race warrior.

Suddenly, it becomes easier for people to perceive you as some sort of Manchurian candidate – but not in a "he’s secretly a Muslim terrorist" way. Instead, the perceived threat becomes much more real: Elect him, and we’ll spend 4-8 years in open race warfare.

Time will tell if Obama overreached on this one. His support among caucasians should have been climbing. If in PA he suddenly takes a huge step backward, I think this increased racial tension may be the reason.

(Note: this was submitted via Utterz and my Blackberry. Typos are virtually guaranteed.)
Mobile post sent by MichaelTurk using Utterz.  Replies.

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