Searchles - Video Feed Widget

Testing out a widget from the community news/video aggregator site Searchles.com - with an embedded video player that handles a video playlist. I think the best feature here is the ability to edit the items in the playlist, turning the whole thing into something of a video feed widget. For example - copy this embed code snippet and paste it into your site or blog - boom, you're hosting the same video playlist.

<embed src="http://tv.searchles.com/misc/video_player/main.swf" flashvars="xmlfile=http://www.searchles.com/channels/get_xml/1290" quality="high" bgcolor="#869ca7" width="'450'" height="'366'" name="main" align="middle" play="true" loop="false" quality="high" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed>

Now the cool part - next time BarelyPolitical.com debuts a political music video (Romney Girls, any day now?) I update the playlist and you're the first blog on the block with the latest from the folks who brought you "Crush On Obama."

APEC Presents: Aussie TV Comedy Group "The Chaser"

Comedians are now jumping onto the bandwagon of hilarity that was formerly the province of top Western government officials (Bush referring to APEC as OPEC, calling the Australians Austrians, and almost walking off the stage, literally). This year an Aussie comedy group got through two checkpoints dressed as Osama Bin Laden, bearing ID cards clearly labelled with the word "JOKE" - catapulting them from "a bunch of comedians known only to their Australian viewers and the many politicians they've left red-faced (link)" to a comedy stunt team known around the world.

"A prank by a TV comedy crew has turned into an international incident and it could end up making a laughing stock of the entire [APEC] security machine," was part of the ABC News commentary, just one of the innumerable broadcasts relaying the stunt over the last several days on all manner of media. "$160 million was spent to keep dignitaries safe, and a convoy of actors got within yards of President Bush's hotel."

The story was the fourth-most read article on the BBC website, which carried the headline, "Sydney 'ring of steel' breached."

and this additional high security comedy: Too funny...

The Other Debate '08: Crush On Obama vs "Obama Girl vs Giuliani Girl"

The release is off to a good start - 9AM EST and already over 200 views according to YouTube.

I have to agree with "friendlier" though - a little less old school R&B and something more web/music 2.0 would have been cool. But the video is funny and really good natured. Folks are going to like it. I guess time will tell: the original Crush On Obama is standing at over 2.3 million views right now - let's see if Debate '08 can catch up!

Follow Up

Tuesday July 24 - One week later - here's what we got: The new one received plenty of attention, getting mentions all over the media and viral spheres. Heck, even Frank Rich over at the NY Times lyric-checked it in his regular thrash-the-administration Sunday column.

In one week, it was viewed about 758 thousand times, while the original Crush On Obama received an additional 400 thousand views - combined the videos were viewed almost 3.5 million times.

Obama Girl vs Giuliani Girl in DEBATE '08

After a long wait, the movie release date has arrived. No, not Harry Potter - it's Debate '08, another music video from Barelypolitical.com. Following up the Obama Girl video Crush On Obama, the team at Barelypolitical today released the music video pre-billed as Obama Girl vs Giuliani Girl. Stay tuned, there's more to come...

I Found My Run Mapper - Cool!

Thanks to Ross at Byte.org, I found the right web application to work out great routes for the rest of the running season. Guess they thought of everything, including community and viral spread of course. If you walk, run, bike, or all three (among other modes), you may really enjoy it.

Fastfood and Adsense Irony

Well, here it is, the study we've all contemplated authoring - juxtaposing fastfood ad-agency images vs. the actual product - with the added irony of contextual text ads automatically selected by Google at the top of the page. Proof that Adwords text ads do indeed have a branding effect? Link to the study here.

Cookie-based Data Likely Overstating Uniques by 150% : Comscore

Comscore released a new cookie study that is pretty strong evidence of the further erosion of the ability to use cookies to track anything unique. President/CEO Dr. Magid Abraham says that with 7% of computers accounting for 35% of all cookies "just one set of 'eyeballs' at the site may be counted as 10 or more unique visitors over the course of a month. The result is a highly inflated estimate of unique visitors for sites that rely on cookies to count their audience." This also goes for adserver counts of unique users that were served an ad. One more observation worth noting is that 3rd party cookies are deleted at no higher rate than 1st party cookies - contrary to a prevailing rule of thumb that holds that users who utilize security programs to keep their PCs clean are more likely to find 3rd party cookies invasive and choose to delete them, as opposed to 1st party cookies set directly by a friendly web site. Bottom line, if the methodology was correct, Comscore shows that many web site and ad server logs can exaggerate the audience by a factor as high as 2.5, or an overstatement of 150 percent.

So Much For BuzzMetrics

Rafat Ali accuses Nielsen's new BuzzMetrics research product of being just so much "hooey" - and provides compelling proof. Buzzmetrics is the “advanced text-mining algorithms"-based “filtered blog buzz” research" developed to measure buzz in the blogosphere, to monitor consumer-generated media, and to provide backup for social media consulting. I'll let you know if Nielsen responds - wonder if they bother to measure their own blog buzz? From Rafat's post on the subject: "We’re among the top 25 blogs discussing “Sanjaya”, according to Nielsen BuzzMetrics, the “global measurement standard in consumer-generated media”. Well. Funny they mention that, because we haven’t ever written about Sanjaya. American Idol, yes, Sanjaya, zilch. We’re #21 on the list, above Gizmodo (another site I can guarantee never wrote about Sanj). " He goes on: "So let’s stop with this PR glibness, and let’s start developing better ways to measure this." Link to the post on paidContent.org

Blog Ads Blog Readers Love

B.L. Ochman has a unique skill set. She creates ad campaigns that are so irresistible the target audience has no choice but to participate. This time its women living life in the fast lane, juggling work and family, on behalf of Author Karen Quinn's Wife In The Fast Lane book promotion. Cool thing is, her blog ads promote her online one-liner contest, but her blog ads have developed a following of their own.

And now for the punchline: "The one-liner entries describing women's life in the fast lane experiences fuel the ads on 20 blogs, where click thru rates as high as 1.7% are driving traffic to the contest." Yee Ha

Not Your Father's Napster: Sharing Music With NapsterLinks

Napster released a feature to allow the spread of tunes and (hopefully) the acquisition of subscribers. Here it is in the Plain-Old-HTML version. Also comes in IM/Email and Mini-Player flavors.

Wolvesville - Manuel Barrueco (with Steve Morse). An Improvisation On Etude No.1 by Villa-Lobos

(And, btw, that's one of the worlds sweetest/toughest classical guitarists in an improvised duet with the former lead guitarist of The Dixie Dregs)

Unfortunately, as a viral-driven acquisition tactic, it's so heavily laden with Napster Free Trial up-sell, that much of the fun, let alone the utility, of sharing media has been sucked out. Whether the goal was to leverage viral effects to boost subscriber acquisition, or generate lots of in-bound links, it won't make a dent.

One more thing, depending on your browser settings, you may have to "allow pop-ups from Napster.com" in order to hear the track I've linked to above. I could have posted the Mini-Player right in this blog post, but Blogger doesn't allow javascript functions to run in this, or any, blog.

Blogging At The Speed Of SMS: Twitter Releases An API

I'm sure SMS blogging will soon take its place next to web-based blogging and perhaps one day render it obsolete. SMS blogs have the potential for so much more urgency and immediacy - the universe of applications for sending dispatches from the heart of whatever-scene-you-like (once bloggers realize the potential of severing themselves from the computer) is mind numbing. And now Twitter has released an API to speed the process along. Best Twitter-based application so far? Twittermap.

Portable Storefronts Plus Social Networking Sites Equals Viral Sales

The Canadian tech company Musicane.com is promoting their twist on digital content merchandising - hosting the storage, display and transaction using a player that easily embeds in your blog or social networking web page - cool! But why not expand that to all Ecommerce!

From: MARKET WIRE | Date: September 26, 2006

Musicane (www.musicane.com), an online service that provides content creators and producers with the capability to market, virally distribute and sell digital content directly from their own Web sites, blogs and online social networks, today announced the release of its upgraded online media transaction service offering viral storefronts with e-commerce capability that works anywhere on the web. Fans can easily embed storefronts on their personal spaces.

Breaking News! PR is not three times more effective than advertising, at best it's one to one.

Katie Paine from MeasuresOfSuccess.com reported on a study that puts PR into perspective and makes a whole lot of sense: Breaking News! PR is not three times more effective than advertising, at best it's one to one.: "For years, there’s been a myth out there that there is some sort of multiplier for PR that assumes that PR is x times more effective than advertising. The most frequent number used was three, but for years organizations and their agencies have been multiplying their PR “impressions” by whatever number they chose to indicate how much more effective PR is than Advertising. The only problem is that there has never been or will never be any statistical evidence to support this assumption. Dr. Don Stacks of the University of Miami and David Michaelson proved this initially in 2004 and this morning presented the results of phase 2 of their study at the 4th Annual Summit on Measurement. So just to set the record straight: THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE IN IMPACT BETWEEN PR AND ADVERTIISNG. But this is not necessarily bad news. The study was conducted in shopping malls in five suburban locations around the US. A total of 351 people participated. I won't"

Snakes On A Plane - The Accidental Viral

OK, so there is actually something to say - in pre-release, this movie is a kind of tabula rasa on which people may say, think or create anything they please. Rob Thomas, writing for the Madison WI Capital Times, makes the observation: >> It's a phenomenon that also must have studio heads scratching their heads and wondering how it happened, how a film essentially created its own viral marketing campaign out of thin air, without New Line Cinema having to spend a dollar. And those same studio heads are probably trying to figure out how they can replicate it. But here's the wonderful, frustrating thing about such Internet brush fires like this: You can't start them deliberately. "Snakes" was an accident, something film fans discovered for themselves and figured out how to have a good time with, like an inside joke shared among friends. >> 'Snakes' cult hit before release http://www.madison.com/tct/entertainment/index.php?ntid=78820&ntpid=0

Snakes On A Plane

After you've typed the phrase Snakes On A Plane what is there left to say?

Harnessing User Generated Media in Viral Campaigns: Watch Out For Potholes

As reported by Barry Graubart at Content Matters - Chevy launched a viral campaign relying on users to edit and post their TV commercial based on pre-produced video objects. Given the current user-gen-media environment, where satire and humor is king, I imagine Chevy entertained the notion that perhaps, just perhaps, some users might leverage the opportunity to create something more (or less) than the intended glorification of the Chevy Tahoe. You have until Monday to have at it yourself. >> The good (or bad) news is that, as designed, these commercials have spread virally, as users share their creativity with friends. Unfortunately, most of them do not contain the mom, apple pie and Chevrolet message that might have been originally intended. >> http://www.contentmatters.info/content_matters/2006/04/chevys_viral_ma.html