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	Phil's Blogservations Wednesday, June 30, 2004 Posted by philgomes 2:12 PM Just One Of Those Days Just One Of Those Days This is for all of you who have ever felt the need to tell someone "Yeah... Stuff is just blowing up." Imagine being the guy who ran this fireworks company (WMV). Link via Spundae's General BS message board. Posted by philgomes 10:41 AM Office Space Wars Office Space Wars You owe it to yourself to waste some bandwidth and download this parody (WMV). Thanks to John Paczkowski at Good Morning Silicon Valley. Tuesday, June 29, 2004 Posted by philgomes 6:00 PM Bogus Bill Gates Blog Bogus Bill Gates Blog The first post is hilarious. Posted by philgomes 9:53 AM "And I Do My Little Turn On The Catwalk..." "And I Do My Little Turn On The Catwalk..." My roommate is selling his hanging fireplace on Craig's List. I got conscripted into modeling it. Don't worry. I'm not giving up the PR gig. Friday, June 25, 2004 Posted by philgomes 12:43 PM Web Marketing Gone Horribly Wrong Web Marketing Gone Horribly Wrong So... For my birthday, my buddy Richard made arrangements to have The Englander save a room for me and about four dozen best friends and family. He suggested I send out an Evite to the victims... uhhh... I mean "guests." More than one invitee has commented on Evite's odd choice of advertising: The circled ads offer the "Perfect Present For The Party Girl: A Happy Birthday Call From Barbie." Whu-whu-WHAT!?!? According to one invitee: Count me in. I love that the ad on your evite is for "A Happy Birthday Call from Barbie". It's the "Perfect Present for the Party Girl". I suddenly know what I'm getting you for your b-day! I'm still trying to figure out who Evite thinks they're marketing to or through here. At first, I thought the Evite system was punishing me for not completely filling out my profile. Fine, so I listed myself as male. No dice. I flushed the cache and hit reload. Barbie persists. This all reminds me of these famous anecdotes of online marketing. Posted by philgomes 11:16 AM No, CMP Isn't Blocking Google News No, CMP Isn't Blocking Google News People were quick to jump on CMP Media for allegedly blocking Google News' spiders, but the whole mess appears to have been a scripting error. A comment to Techdirt says: Hi folks, My name is Brad Shimmin. I'm the EIC online for Network Computing, and I can tell you that at no point have we ever considered blocking incoming links from Google. We're still investigating the situation, but we believe the blocking mechanism we have had in place for some time (stopping competitors who reproduce our content) went astray. Like [the anonymous commenter] above, I haven't run into any links from Google that are being blocked currently, so I imagine this was a momentary glitch most likely originating in the data center. As Mike Azzara, our VP/Group Director of Internet Business, has said: For the record, no referral from any Google site should see any blocking page at all, ever. Posted by philgomes 10:17 AM Gates To Blog? Gates To Blog? In a potential development that is likely to set open source advocates, Scott McNealy, and Gates-haters worldwide all a-twitter, it is rumored that Microsoft's Bill Gates might start a blog. As I pointed out during a panel I was on, Microsoft's Robert Scoble, though his blog, has humanized Microsoft in a way that its multi-million-dollar PR budget could not hope to match. Maybe his boss is listening. From the article: Microsoft spokesman Mark Murray would not confirm the story [from ZD's Mary Jo Foley], but left open the possibility, saying, "Bill would love to do his own blog at some point in the future, time permitting." ...and lawyers permitting... and Waggoner-Edstrom permitting... and investor relations permitting... and the DoJ permitting... and Melissa Gates permitting... and... Via the most excellent Steve Rubel. Wednesday, June 23, 2004 Posted by philgomes 5:57 PM Analyst Uses Blog For Timely PR Analyst Uses Blog For Timely PR I don't know if this is the first time it's been done by an analyst (probably not), but it's the first time I've seen it, anyway. Jupiter's Avi Greengart saw an article about Sprint deploying EV-DO technology and posted an invitation for journalists to call for a "juicy quote." Personally, I'd rather he posted his opinion — or at least the light under the door for same — rather than drop his bait in the journalistic pond. Nevertheless, it'll be interesting to see if he gets any bites. Friday, June 18, 2004 Posted by philgomes 11:38 AM A-Ha Moment Of The Year To-Date A-Ha Moment Of The Year To-Date I think I just finished up my first successful pitch for a client that was performed exclusively over Yahoo! Instant Messenger. Cool... Posted by philgomes 10:44 AM Maybe If They Re-Read A Wrinkle In Time? Maybe If They Re-Read A Wrinkle In Time? In the post "Blinx 2 PR Copywriters Bad at Science," Gizmodo points out a problem with the claim that Blinx 2 is the first "5-D" game. Developers, I've said it before, and I'll say it again: marketing and physics do not mix. Combine them at your peril. Indeed. Doing so is tricky, since most people with engineering degrees are, well, in engineering. This somewhat ties into Gomes' Fifth Law Of Technology Public Relations: "The company's most defensible platform comes from the engineering-up, not the corner-offices-down." Yes, one of these days, I'll post all of The Laws. I've been writing a paper on it, on-and-off, and I hope to publish it here as a PDF at some point. I have a rigorous process for graduating everyday, professionally anecdotal observations into "laws" and, thus, I'm up to a dozen in a little more than eight years. More news as it develops. Thursday, June 17, 2004 Posted by philgomes 12:18 PM Ray Charles Ray Charles I was incredibly bummed when I heard that Ray Charles died. Fortunately, I got to see him in 2000 when he played the Paramount Theater in Oakland, Calif. When I visited Portugal, he was playing at the Estoril Casino. Price of admission was $250. I got an electric guitar instead. The Wall Street Journal has a great eulogy. Katey... You still have my four Ray Charles CDs and I really want them back now! Wednesday, June 16, 2004 Posted by philgomes 9:55 AM Bono: Singer, Humanitarian, Venture Capitalist Bono: Singer, Humanitarian, Venture Capitalist [Phil explosively spits coffee onto laptop LCD screen in surprise.] Ummm... What? Posted by philgomes 9:27 AM "Now This Is Spin..." "Now This Is Spin..." Jane, the "Dryden" of "Dryden Marketing Group," wrote the above when she forwarded me this NYT piece by way of the IHT late last night. You'd like to think that the article she references might have been written by The Onion or The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. Nope. All true. The Vatican said Tuesday that fewer witches were burned at the stake and fewer heretics tortured into conversion during the dark centuries of the Inquisition than is generally believed, but it also sought renewed forgiveness for sins committed by Roman Catholics in the name of church doctrine. ...and... They said the numbers were relatively modest and countered what they described as a widespread misconception about the extent of Inquisition violence. Of course, like all PR claims, this needs data. I mean... What's "relatively modest?" What's the percentage of actual number of witches/heretics tortured versus the previous figure? Has the definition of "torture" changed in the interim? After all, the Geneva Convention wouldn't be ratified for another seven-plus centuries after the Inquisition began. Kind of reminds me of the story of the aircraft manual that described a plane crash as an "involuntary conversion." (More aviation-related weirdness.) Tuesday, June 15, 2004 Posted by philgomes 10:19 AM Richard Rides The Segway Richard Rides The Segway Here's my best friend Richard riding the Segway Human Transport. What the picture doesn't show is that the Segway comes with a ventriloquist add-on that yells "Look! There's Carmen Electra!" in order to distract your buddies from the fact that, well, you're riding a Segway. Read my own Segway tale of woe from November 2002, which is more like a "tale of WOAH!" Posted by philgomes 1:20 AM The Dark Science Of Company Naming The Dark Science Of Company Naming A VP at a startup client once told me "Don't ever beat yourself up searching for the perfect name for your company. You'll never find the perfect name, but you'll be able to identify all the bad ones. You're better off settling for 'good.'" I heard echoes of his advice in this Red Herring piece, outlining a ten-step process. Of particular interest is the related histogram. Personally, I've always felt that some of the "good" examples listed were actually kind of lame. Thursday, June 10, 2004 Posted by philgomes 3:50 PM The (In)Famous HBS Class Of 1979 The (In)Famous HBS Class Of 1979 Dan Bricklin points to an article from the Boston Globe about the noteworthy 1979 graduating class from Harvard Business School. (I won't bother linking to the article, 'cause it goes behind a costwall soon.) Bricklin, noteworthy himself for inventing the spreadsheet, also walked with: ...US Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, who left the corporate world to run the Peace Corps and later United Way of America...Clayton Christensen (Innovator's Dilemma), Meg Whitman (eBay), George McMillan (local firm CMGI), Jeff Skilling (Enron), John Thain (president of Goldman Sachs and now chief executive cleaning up the NYSE), Mary Cunningham (Bendix), Ron Sargent (Staples), Jim Bender (Aware), and Charlie Cuneo and Lisa Churchville (two local people). He didn't have room for many others, including my sectionmates John Lynch who is running for New Hampshire Governor, Chuck Bunch (PPG), and Charles Ward (Lazard). The list goes on and on. Posted by philgomes 1:07 PM Google News Hacked? Google News Hacked? I hate people who screw up our online ecosystem, but it looks like someone just did this incredible hack. At the very least, there must have been some kind of odd bug at Google. As of 10:30 a.m. PDT or so, this is what you'd see on Google News if you searched for, say, "Biden," as in Senator Joe Biden (D) from Delaware. The circled headline, nominally attributed to the Chicago Sun-Times, instead linked to a site called "e.thePeople." The headline reads "Sens. Durbin & Biden Slam ashcroft!" Whu? The editorial (not a news piece from the Sun-Times or anyplace else you've heard of) then outlines an exchange between Ashcroft, Durbin, and Biden. Originally observed — or brought to my attention, at any rate — by this blog, which I'm not entirely sure how I initially discovered, but it's a pretty entertaining source/destination/route for quality meme-spreading. Tuesday, June 01, 2004 Posted by philgomes 2:07 PM Sony Leaves PDA Market Sony Leaves PDA Market I just caught this news that Sony is getting out of the PDA market. No more new Clié handhelds. Jupiter's Michael Gartenberg also offers some analysis. So, as far as I'm concerned, this means I should get a deal on the UX-50 that I was coveting at Circuit City in Hayward the other day. One can hope... 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. 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