by cameron | Jun 5, 2008 | science, Uncategorized
From the “Just-Cuz-We-Say-We’re-Going-To-Do-Something-Doesn’t-Mean-We-Will” department:
The Center for Science in the Public Interest points out that ExxonMobil has just announced “for the second consecutive year” that it is cutting funding to groups which promote skepticism about global warming. The groups that are supposedly being cut off include the Capital Research Center, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Frontiers of Freedom Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute, and the Institute for Energy Research. However, CSPI points out, “Each group continued to receive Exxon funding in 2007 after the company’s first announcement that it would discontinue the payments. Exxon did not immediately return calls seeking comment on how serious it was in following through on its plans.”
(Source: Integrity in Science Watch, June 2, 2008 via PRWatch.org)
It’s easy to companies to make a big splash, put out some advertising, put out a press release, but how often do they actually follow through? And who holds them responsible when they don’t? Perhaps we need more people like Stephen Mayne, who buy shares in these companies, and then rock up to their Annual General Meeting with a video camera to ask the hard questions.
by cameron | Jun 4, 2008 | Uncategorized
Here’s something I learned this morning – how to quickly set up a Gmail filter to delete multiple annoying messages. This may not be news to most of you but as it was a new discovery for me, I thought I’d share it.
Find Annoying Messages – you know those ones that you find yourself deleting day after day after day from the same people? Some of them will be from mailing lists you signed up for when you decided you really were doing to take your diet seriously – this time, I mean it, I really, really mean it – until you re-discovered the delights of the Timus Tamus.
Check Annoying Messages – Of course you can open up the emails and click on the link to unsubscribe yourself from the mailing list, but this is much quicker. Until today I didn’t realize I could filter multiple messages at once.
The you tell Gmail you want to “Filter Messages Like These”:
Gmail creates an “OR” boolean filter which you can then tell it to delete.
So from then on, I hope, Gmail will automatically delete (or you could tell it to mark them as read and archive them, just in case you might want to read them later) all future emails from any of those addresses.
Okay… only 549 more messages to deal with this morning before I deserve an espresso….
by cameron | Jun 3, 2008 | Uncategorized
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8x14cLGh5o&w=425&h=355]
Thanks to thomasrdotorg for the link! He suggested that if I had a daughter, this is what she’d be like.
by cameron | May 9, 2008 | Uncategorized
How do you get a dozen of the top online personalities in Australia to talk about your product?
Here’s one recent example of very clever marketing.
A couple of weeks ago, I participated in one of the more interesting online social networking / marketing projects I’ve seen in recent years – Project Vino.
Put together by wine podcaster Hugo Sharp, it involved about a dozen Australian Twitterers who were all sent the same three bottles of wine from Kirrihill. At 7pm on April 30th, we all jumped on Twitter, opened our bottles, and then drank them. Some of us were very sensible about it, tasting and then spitting. Others were… ahem… guzzlers. Hugo was on Twitter, walking us through how to properly taste the wine, what to eat with it, etc.
But I was on Yahoo Live Video with @jjprojects and @duncanriley and @kahunagirl and @ceibner and @bronwen and @m0nty and @spigrrl and others, chatting, drinking, debating religion, philosophy, ummm… you name it.
I ended up QUITE drunk but the good news is that I was only a few meters from my bedroom – and I didn’t need to drive.
Now I’m no great expert on wine, but I really enjoyed all three bottles from Kirrihill Wines
* Companions Cabernet Merlot ‘06
* Companions Shiraz Viognier ‘06
* Tempranillo Garnacha ‘07
I especially liked the Cab Merlot but the Shiraz was the group favourite I think.
As an experiment in online buzz-building, I think it was a pretty huge success.
Think about it: most of the dozen people who were drinking, sorry, TASTING, have 1000+ followers on Twitter. And all night we were talking about the event on Twitter, talking about the wine vendor, etc.
In addition, many of us are relatively prominent bloggers and we wrote about it, like I’m doing here.
Duncan wrote about it on TechCrunch, the #1 tech blog in the world. And he also threw some video up on YouTube which is now ranked in the top five on Google for searched on “Kirrihill”. What’s that worth???
You can check out the number of times “Kirrihill” has been mentioned on Twitter.
I learned a lot about wine tasting, Kirrihill Wines and new approaches to using Twitter and Yahoo Live Video (which I’d never even heard of before). A great night. Thanks Hugo!!
by cameron | May 8, 2008 | Uncategorized
I just signed this online campaign being run by GetUp! to stop lobbyists from the BAD energy companies (oil, coal, etc) subverting the Federal Budget’s investments to clean up Australia. You should to. Only take a couple of seconds. They are trying to get 15,000 votes and they currently have about 4700.
