THIS PAGE IS AN ARCHIVE. GO TO THE HOMEPAGE TO FIND OUT WHAT TO DO NEXT.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. arch emisou panton
	Phil's Blogservations Wednesday, March 31, 2004 Posted by philgomes 2:01 PM Stuff You Didn't Know About Red Bull Stuff You Didn't Know About Red Bull Phil: "He's worse than dead, Jim." Phil: "His brain is gone." Friend: Suck down 3 or so Red Bulls. Phil: The active ingredient in red bull: Taurine. Phil: Taurine is "an amino acid-like compound and a component of bile acids, which are used to help absorb fats and fat-soluble vitamins. Taurine also helps regulate the heart beat, maintain cell membrane stability, and prevent brain cell over-activity." Friend: Brain cell over activity? Who has THAT problem? Phil: Yeah.... I was just wondering the same thing. Monday, March 29, 2004 Posted by philgomes 7:50 PM Writing From Dana Street Roasting Company, Mountain View, Calif. Writing From Dana Street Roasting Company, Mountain View, Calif. I've been told that you can tell the new Secret Service agents from the veterans by their respective answers to the question "Where is the White House?" The former will dutifully say "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue." The latter know better — the "White House" is wherever the president is. Ask yourself "Where is the PR department of [insert client here]? Now you know the answer... This moment, at least. (Update: Thoughtfully corrected by Tim Windsor.) Wednesday, March 24, 2004 Posted by philgomes 11:09 AM Dilemma Dilemma Do you remember that scene in Once Upon A Time In Mexico when Johnny Depp (playing an unhinged CIA agent) said that the slow-roasted pork dish he ate was so incredibly good that he felt he needed to kill the cook in order to restore balance to the world? I just consumed the best French-pressed cup of coffee that I've ever made in my young life. I guess I'm pretty stuck now, huh? Monday, March 22, 2004 Posted by philgomes 9:20 PM Imagine My Shock... Imagine My Shock... So, like I mentioned before, I had been doing some arts/entertainment PR on behalf of Thoth's SF Bay Area Prayformance Tour. One story that came from that experience had an interesting epilogue last week. I received a call this morning from April Chartrand, who booked some of the tour's key venues for Thoth. I was on the phone with a reporter at the time, so I had the call go to voicemail. As it turned out, she had quite a tale to tell. Thoth's first SF gig on the tour was at an art gallery called The Shooting Gallery in the Tenderloin District, which can be a pretty rough area of town, by all accounts. Nice enough place — clean and well-lighted with interesting art on the walls and just the right amount of edgy "grit." Not a lot of room for Thoth to manuever (his work does require a fair amount of space) but more than adequate for everyone's needs. Things were going great — wonderfully, in fact — until after the show. Two drunk miscreants knocked over a pedestal that supported a $5,000 piece of art, destroying the piece. Justin, the gallery owner, flew off the handle. "Everybody out!" he said. "Can't afford to have that happen too many more times!" (Please realize that the miscreants were not alone in their culpability. Two dollars worth of a trip to Ace Hardware — some "L" brackets and screws — and Justin could've prevented this mess. You'd think that a $5,000 piece of work would have been better protected from the average bump or shove. Also, Justin was telling patrons at the door that it was okay to bring in alcohol.) The drunkards scooted out quickly, that is, after taking the time to thank Thoth for his performance. Richard caught them laughing about the whole affair in front of the gallery, right in front of the artist's face. He half-considered kicking their asses, but declined to make a bad situation worse. Because of the damage — which, again, was highly preventable — the gallery owner refused to pay April her cut of the door, which couldn't have been much more than $120 at three bucks a head. Turns out $120 might've been peanuts to the guy. The police not only caught him with the drugs he was selling at the gallery — half-pound of speed, quarter-pound of coke, and 100 hits of ecstasy — but almost $24,000 in cash and a loaded 9mm pistol in his desk. *kazart* On my voicemail, April pointed me to the two articles in the San Francisco Examiner. From the first of them: Narcotics inspectors said that Giarla, a native of Los Angeles, has been dealing dope out of the Larkin Street storefront for at least eight months. He allegedly claimed the drug money helped support his gallery. Of the cash cops confiscated, $2,800 was found in the The Shooting Gallery and another $21,000 in the Potrero Hill loft, police said. Neighbors said that it was disappointing that a business owner who claimed to be uplifting a marginal neighborhood with cutting-edge, creative work would turn out to be a gun-toting drug dealer. "Disappointing," indeed. The Shooting Gallery (a term that, now that I think of it, is a euphemism for a heroin den) appeared at first glance to many as a promising bright spot in an area that most definitely could use all of the entrepreneurial, bootstrapping souls that it can find. A shame that it was just simply putting an artsy, bohemian veneer on the kind of thing that went on — and continues to go on — outside of its doors. Saturday, March 20, 2004 Posted by philgomes 1:52 PM Blogging, Bloggers, And Accountability Blogging, Bloggers, And Accountability Technology Review's blog points to some recent research as to who blogs and how accountable these bloggers feel they are for what they write. First, the demographic stuff: [Bloggers are m]ostly men (63 percent) who are Caucasian (79 percent), between the ages of 21 and 40 (75 percent), have a college or advanced degree (85 percent), and have been blogging for a year or more (67 percent). That’s according to survey results reported recently by Fernanda Viégas, a doctoral student in the Sociable Media Group at the MIT Media Lab. As to libel concerns: Viégas found that most bloggers seem to be wary of slandering, libeling, or even offending someone through their blogs. About 80 percent of respondents said they are either somewhat, very, or extremely liable for what they write in their blogs, and 36 percent said they had experienced that liability first-hand at least once by getting into trouble with friends, family, or the law over something they’d written in their blogs. We'll have to follow this closely, especially in light of the recent John "Men Are From Mars" Gray flap. Posted by philgomes 1:44 PM Rob Enderle On Where Blogging And Big Media Intersect Rob Enderle On Where Blogging And Big Media Intersect Analyst Rob Enderle offers some thoughts about how traditional media and blogging might borrow the best from one another. My sense is the [traditional media] firms got so involved in thinking about other things, like cutting costs, that they lost track of their customers while the bloggers moved in -- much like the open-source folks have moved in -- to fill the gap. Also: ...the news agencies will have to bring in some fresh talent and allow that talent to create a more flexible, responsive organization. They'll need to blend the old with the new, and they'll need to think through the use of the massive technology and information they have at their disposal and find better, faster ways to apply that technology so that valuable perspectives can be created and communicated. Thursday, March 18, 2004 Posted by philgomes 7:04 PM Whew! Whew! Close call. Posted by philgomes 12:14 PM BlogRunner List Updated BlogRunner List Updated I knew there was something about the methodology of the recent BlogRunner list, blogged earlier, that didn't sit quite right with me. Tom Murphy points out that: After a lot of criticism that the index favors bloggers because of the frequency element, they've also released a second index which addresses the balance and favors the reporters. Posted by philgomes 10:48 AM There Is Justice In This World There Is Justice In This World The New York Daily News is reporting that Jayson Blair's book Burning Down My Master's House is getting the sales figures it deserves. Nielsen Bookscan reports the book sold just 1,386 copies through last Sunday, according to yesterday's PW Newsline, an E-mail from Publishers Weekly. The article is careful to point out that Bookscan only looks at 70% of the bookselling market, which excludes the likes of Wal-Mart. Nevertheless, sales of this book amount a rounding error. Wednesday, March 17, 2004 Posted by philgomes 5:20 PM View From My Window View From My Window The Japanese maple (acer palmatum) outside of my window has gone from its Charlie Brown Christmas winter mode to full-on leafy glory. Some recent, related IM chatter, scrubbed for public consumption: Phil: This work-from-home thing really rocks sometimes. Friend: I [expletive]-ing hate you. Posted by philgomes 11:37 AM Quoted In eContent Magazine Quoted In eContent Magazine I'm quoted in Ron Miller's March 2004 eContent story on RSS in the enterprise. RSS has the added benefit of providing a clean, clear way to subscribe and unsubscribe, something that is not always true with email newsletters. Dryden Marketing Group's Gomes says, "RSS is incorruptly opt-in. No one can force an RSS feed down my throat. I'll simply unsubscribe," he says. The RSS model puts the subscriber in complete control of the subscription process. You only subscribe to the feeds you want, then you can unsubscribe by simply deleting the feed in your news aggregator. Tuesday, March 16, 2004 Posted by philgomes 10:31 AM BlogRunner's Top Reporters/Bloggers List BlogRunner's Top Reporters/Bloggers List Didn't have time to analyze the methodology too closely, but BlogRunner has a list of "the most influential reporters and bloggers on the web." As described on the site: This list is generated by counting unique references (links) to articles and posts authored in the last 60 days and mixes bloggers with reporters from traditional media. Monday, March 15, 2004 Posted by philgomes 6:23 PM The Future Is Now: Star Trek In Today's World The Future Is Now: Star Trek In Today's World As someone who did his bachelor's thesis on science fiction film and television, I went into paroxysms of joy when I read Benny Evangelista's very thorough and entertaining article on how Star Trek's "futuristic" technologies influenced today's consumer electronics innovators. In many of the ways that count, these technologies are available today and centuries ahead of time relative to Gene Roddenberry's vision. From the article in the San Francisco Chronicle: Whether it was because they were inspired by the show or because "Star Trek" writers often based science fiction on science fact, today's popular personal technology gadgets resemble or have similar functions to the show's nonworking props. The prime example is the communicators, the portable palm-size transceivers with a flip-up cover-grid antenna that, according to "Star Trek" "technical'' data, had been used "since at least the 2240s.'' Evangelista collaborated with Bernadette Tansey on an article about the Trek devices that we either haven't seen or will never see. For those who are more interested in medical technologies, Tansey wrote a piece that recalls Dr. McCoy's needle-less "hypospray" drug injector and other sickbay tools: Cheesy props or not, "Star Trek's" futuristic sickbay tools presented a captivating vision of what medicine might one day achieve, inspiring legions of fans who later became some of the world's most inventive scientists. And in 2004, many of the high-tech instruments simulated on the "Star Trek" set are a reality, used to treat patients in hospitals and clinics around the world. Posted by philgomes 3:53 PM Stop The Dihydrogen Monoxide Contamination! Stop The Dihydrogen Monoxide Contamination! There are days — not many — but there are days when I don't feel quite so dumb. Here's why. Sunday, March 14, 2004 Posted by philgomes 10:52 PM Play A Chess Master Via Your Cellphone Play A Chess Master Via Your Cellphone If you've checked out my buddy Richard's blog, you've figured out that he's pretty into chess. His most recent post (read: as in within the past week or so) features chess wunderkind Alexandra Kosteniuk. I'm sure the reasons for such a tribute have everything to do with Kosteniuk's chess abilities. *8-) *harrumph* Anyway... So, I surfed over to her site. As it turns out, there's some innovative stuff going on, especially if you're a mobile phone user. At the rate of three moves per week, people all over the world can play a game against Kosteniuk! You can participate by sending your move either by SMS on your GSM mobile phone or on the Internet. The current position will continuously be on the site www.chessmegamatch.com. Your first move (you play white) should be sent before March 11, 10 AM Moscow time. There will be 3 moves per week, each move for the world will be the most frequently proposed one for that move, and the participants (identified with a unique mobile phone number) who sent the selected move are given one point. Apparently, this is based on a system patented by Kosteniuk's father. My only problem with this is that it rewards a herd mentality. (There is a $5,000 prize.) One can reasonably guess that the most proposed move by the masses would be, to a chess master, the most obvious one. I'd be very surprised if the world beat Kosteniuk. The people who win the prize won't be the most innovative players — just the ones who are good enough to anticipate what the collective players might do. Nevertheless, it's a pretty fascinating idea. Posted by philgomes 5:42 PM God Love Good Weather And WiFi God Love Good Weather And WiFi Beast Blog pointed me to a list of free WiFi hotspots in the area. Figuring it was a beautiful day today, I figured that I'd finish up some lecture notes at some outdoor cafe. Thus, here I am at Emeryville's Cuppa Cabana on San Pablo Avenue. (Note that the WiFi here is free with a $4.00 minimum purchase. Fair enough.) I'll tell you... It's great that having to work on the weekend doesn't have to mean that I'm stuck at home. The trick is that you have to find a spot at the outdoor cafe where the shade is just so that your laptop screen doesn't get washed out. Friday, March 12, 2004 Posted by philgomes 12:52 PM Origins Of The Smiley Origins Of The Smiley There's apparently a new book that traces the smiley face's evolution over millennia. In his new book, "A Brief History of the Smile," Yale University's Angus Trumble traces the development of the phenomenon from the stilted masklike expressions in early Greek sculpture to the yellow smiley face and its Internet counterpart. Wednesday, March 10, 2004 Posted by philgomes 9:47 AM Three-Headed Frog Three-Headed Frog This is not for the faint-of-heart. Posted by philgomes 9:41 AM Guaranteed To End Up On GUI Desktops Everywhere Guaranteed To End Up On GUI Desktops Everywhere The latest from the Hubble telescope's look into ultra deep field galaxies. Amazing stuff. Monday, March 08, 2004 Posted by philgomes 8:35 PM Municipal WiFi In The Bay Area Municipal WiFi In The Bay Area Jon Fortt of The Mercury News wrote a brief about a WiFi network in downtown San Jose. The city of San Jose and the Convention and Visitors Bureau have arranged for outdoor access to be available in three locations: Plaza de Cesar Chavez, the Circle of Palms between the Fairmont Hotel and the San Jose Museum of Art, and San Pedro Square. I recently detected a municipal hotspot in downtown Hayward on B Street, but I was unable to sign on. Does anyone know the secret? I also have yet to try the SFLAN, so I'd be interested in learning people's experiences with it. I think I have what I call "WiFi Entitlement Syndrome." I know I'm being completely unreasonable here, but the idea of paying for WiFi irks me for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. Case-in-point: Yesterday, I received a document for review while at a cafe in San Leandro. By the time the four-megabyte document had finished downloading, I no longer had enough time on my paid WiFi connection to send a response saying that I received the document. My message was holed up in my outbox until I got home hours later. Anyway, I'm pretty big on the idea of municipal WiFi. It costs a city government peanuts, relatively speaking, and some stores are already seeing the benefits of free WiFi. In cafes, for example, free WiFi puts paying customers in the seats during off-peak hours — making money where there wasn't any and quickly recouping the fixed costs of the broadband connection and the one-time cost for the gear. Techdirt pointed this out when he gave an analysis of this Dallas Morning News piece. Thursday, March 04, 2004 Posted by philgomes 11:03 PM While You Were Sleeping In High School Geo-History Class... While You Were Sleeping In High School Geo-History Class... ...you might have missed the unit on "exopolitics," described as "the scholarly study of the political implications of the extraterrestrial presence." I can't make this kind of stuff up, people. If you want a really entertaining read, try this paper, entitled "Eisenhower’s 1954 Meeting With Extraterrestrials: The Fiftieth Anniversary of First Contact?" On the night and early hours of February 20-21, 1954, while on a ‘vacation’ to Palm Springs, California, President Dwight Eisenhower went missing and allegedly was taken to Edwards Air force base for a secret meeting. When he showed up the next morning at a church service in Los Angeles, reporters were told that he had to have emergency dental treatment the previous evening and had visited a local dentist. The dentist later appeared at a function that evening and presented as the ‘dentist’ who had treated Eisenhower. The missing night and morning has subsequently fueled rumors that Eisenhower was using the alleged dentist visit as a cover story for an extraordinary event. The event is possibly the most significant that any American President could have conducted: an alleged ‘First Contact’ meeting with extraterrestrials at Edwards Air Force base (previously Muroc Airfield), and the beginning of a series of meetings with different extraterrestrial races that led to a ‘treaty’ that was eventually signed. This astonishing First Contact event, if it occurred, will experience its 50th anniversary on February 20-21, 2004. Posted by philgomes 5:53 PM Cellphone Add-Ons Get Out Of Control Cellphone Add-Ons Get Out Of Control If you want to read some good satire, CommsDesign has an article about the most unusual gimmicky cellphone add-ons unveiled at the recent 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, France. Of course, you can trust it about as far as you could The Onion. Tuesday, March 02, 2004 Posted by philgomes 6:06 PM Oh, My... Oh, My... Oh, My... Oh, My... Oh, My... Oh, My... Working Title Films presents Shaun Of The Dead (Flash). Posted by philgomes 10:45 AM Jupiter's Michael Gartenberg On RSS Jupiter's Michael Gartenberg On RSS I'll admit a small bit of frustration since the new ATOM syndication format came out, effectively forking syndication and confusing some of the aggregation tools I've been using. As Jupiter's Michael Gartenberg reminds us: What the RSS players need to remember is that users don't care about RSS or any other technology. They care about the value of syndicated content. The vendors should heed the words of the head of Black & Decker, who once said that customers don't buy the tool maker's products because they need 1-inch drills; they buy them because they need 1-inch holes. Monday, March 01, 2004 Posted by philgomes 5:04 PM What LotR's Oscars Really Mean What LotR's Oscars Really Mean Just to recap, Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King won the following Oscars: Art direction Costume design Directing Film editing Makeup Music (original score) Best picture Sound mixing Visual effects Adapted screenplay The Academy's tacit message to the actors: "Everything about this movie was perfect...EXCEPT YOU!!!" Okay... That's not entirely fair. Thoth reminded me that the main fault with the Oscars is that there isn't an award for "Best Ensemble," and he's totally right. Even with intimidatingly good, heavy-hitting acting talent like Christopher Lee and Sir Ian McKellen, each actor pulled his or her own equal weight in the film. Posted by philgomes 2:37 PM USB Key As Marketing Delivery Vehicle USB Key As Marketing Delivery Vehicle When USB keychains first came out, flash memory was at a premium. Even relatively dinky 16MB units were on the pricey side. Now, you can't even get a sub-64MB USB key at Fry's anymore. (I tried.) Now, the USB keychain has become the next marketing tchotchky. From the syndicated Knight-Ridder article: When the Toyota carmaker recently promoted its 2004 Lexus RX 330 sports utility vehicle in a U.S. mass mailing, it didn't print up glossy brochures and cram them into bulky envelopes. Instead, it sent out 21,000 digital devices smaller than cigarette lighters. While some recipients may have been confused at first, they surely caught on when the pulled off a plastic cap and found a familiar Universal Serial Bus plug. Sticking the plug into a computer USB port, they gained access to the device and its contents: RX 330 pictures, video clips, interactive demos and more. These things are hot. We recently did a product review program for a Cornice-based USB key that holds 1.5GB for about the cost of a 512MB flash-based unit. There are few things that seem to ignite the imagination more than 1) lots of data, 2) in a small space, for 3) less money. At any rate, I would have never guessed that even the lower-end of this product segment would move from specialty item to marketing freebie so quickly. HOME | OBSESSIONS | FAQ | HEROES | CAREER | BLOG | CONTACT Note that the views expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of Phil's employer, its business partners, its clients, or anyone or anything that doesn't come from Phil.	ABOUT THIS BLOG This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. EMAIL phil[at] philgomes[[dot}]com SYNDICATE Feedburner ARCHIVE YAHOO! IM SKYPE WISH LIST PITCH POLICY MY PHOTOS www.flickr.com Photostream RSS Enter your Email Powered by FeedBlitz COMMENT AND TRACKBACK POLICY Comments and trackbacks are unmoderated, though I will delete the patently offensive ones. Any comments and trackbacks are the opinions of the individual writer of those comments and trackbacks, and not those of Phil Gomes, his employer, its clients, or its business partners. If you have a bone to pick, bug the people who wrote the comment or trackback.