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	Phil's Blogservations Tuesday, March 29, 2005 Posted by philgomes 6:51 PM Bad Rum, Bad Blog, Bad Idea Ya'll... Captain Morgan has a blog. *sigh* By and large, I'm not a fan of "blogs" by fictional characters, save for the God-Dot-Com LiveJournal, which I thought was hilarious when it was still going. You know, I complain about being Creator of the Universe a lot, but it's not really a bad way to make a living. The key is knowing which shortcuts to take. For instance, when I created this one, I used shoddy, inferior materials wherever I could. That's why you'll notice the cheap stuff is real plentiful and the expensive stuff is pretty hard to come by. Plus, I finished the job in 5 days, but creatively filled out the paperwork and charged them for 6. And that last one was at time-and-a-half. And then the real money starts pouring in when it's time to repair what was poorly built in the first place. The only thing I don't like about that is all the snickering I hear when I'm on a call, bent over, trying to fix something. Must be the toolbelt. Anyway... Bacardi (I'm plugging them because their Añejo rum enjoys a consistent presence in my liquor cabinet) could certainly trump this credibility-wise by getting their master distiller or, if applicable, company historian to build a true blog. Then again, it's likely that neither Bacardi's nor Capt. Morgan's audiences are particularly enthralled with the craft of rum-making. The thing is, I'm thinking like a PR-person — building credibility is our stock-in-trade. Advertising, on the other hand, is arguably more concerned with raw awareness, which I suppose this Capt. Morgan site may be accomplishing to some degree, judging from the number of user comments I'm seeing (if they're real at all). Problem: It's credibility that the blogosphere holds at a very high premium. Linkage through Steve. | Monday, March 28, 2005 Posted by philgomes 8:31 PM Molte Grazie! Wow... The Gomes Index made it all the way to Italy! Translates into "Indice Gomes della Felicità Manageriale." And, yes, I had to get someone from the Buon Tempo club to tell me what "mattacchione" meant, as in "Phil Gomes è un mattacchione." | Friday, March 25, 2005 Posted by philgomes 7:15 PM The Gomes Index Hits All-Time Low The Gomes Index Of Executive Happiness, like any true index, bases itself around the public markets. While executives might certainly express that they are pleased during these bank holidays, I treat that almost like after-hours trading and such — interesting to look at sometimes, but not part of the core analysis. Thus, Good Friday means that we can take a look at The Gomes Index a little early in the short week, since folks with market-related jobs (except for Schwab, I'm told) get to take the day off. "Pleased" to do so, I'm sure! Well, you'd think so, anyway. The Gomes Index ends the week at an all-time low of 73.05, which is 30.5% lower than the heady close of the previous week. Last week's highs were, as discussed earlier, bouyed by the CTIA conference. Shocked? You're perhaps wondering why the annual meeting of the National Insulation Association this week in Las Vegas wasn't enough to bring up the index? Afraid it wasn't. In fact, near as I could tell from the limited means available, no one was particularly "pleased" to be there. You'd have thought that asbestos taste-testing was going on over there or something. ("Hey, Grissom! Come take a look at this!") Anyway... Apple Computer was "pleased" to settle with one of the people it was litigating — a recent graduate of North Carolina State University. According to Reuters: "We are pleased that Mr. Steigerwald has taken responsibility for his actions and that we can put this lawsuit behind us." Translation: "Mr. Stiegerwald is a recent college graduate and, therefore, doesn't have enough money to make pursuing a damage claim worthwhile. Besides which, the whole messy jail issue is in the Feds' hands now." Anyway, hopefully things will perk up after the Easter weekend. As for me? Your humble Keeper Of The Index will be spending most of his time in his hometown of San Leandro — a birthday, some brunch, and some BBQ. | Thursday, March 24, 2005 Posted by philgomes 6:58 PM "The Easter Bunny Has Got To Go" This is a brilliant editorial in the tradition of Harlan Ellison during his LA Free Press days. Still, I'm prepared to go out on a limb on this one: The Easter Bunny has got to go. Yes, I know what you're wondering: Why shouldn't the holiest day on the Christian calendar be represented by a 7-foot-tall pink rabbit, who may or may not be wearing a vest? Well, for the same reason that people shouldn't ever marry Charlie Sheen — because it makes no sense. Link found by way of Fark's RSS feed. | Posted by philgomes 2:41 PM WinLauncher I just downloaded and installed WinLauncher for my Palm Tungsten C. I know, I know... It probably makes me way uncool that I spent almost $17 to make my Palm look like a Windows CE device, but I have to hand it to these guys: WinLauncher is great. Much more powerful interface, including customizable desktops with an Outlook-Today-like overlay. Hey... Is anyone using the QuickNews RSS reader? I can't import OPML from my expansion card without having the whole thing crash. | Wednesday, March 23, 2005 Posted by philgomes 6:51 PM EDN Blogs In case you missed them, here are blogs from EDN's Brian Dipert and Maury Wright. | Tuesday, March 22, 2005 Posted by philgomes 5:30 PM Raise Your Lighters In The Air My roommate buys and sells collectibles, books, and antiques. Every so often, truly strange things come through this place — like the universal remote control shaped to look like a bikini pin-up or the oversized Superman vs. Mohammed Ali comic book. But, no... Here's something you don't see every day: A picture disc single of Foreigner's "I Want To Know What Love Is." Yes. Foreigner. Now, thanks to me, you won't get that damned song out of your head. You're welcome. | Monday, March 21, 2005 Posted by philgomes 8:00 PM Dictionary Spam? Deborah Branscum reports some creative spammer pseudonyms that have arrived in her inbox recently. Normally I find spam anything but amusing. But lately I've received a series of missives with engagingly goofy sender names, including: Nepotism L. Warned Schmaltz T. Magistrates (aka victimization@finosa-reality.cz) Unpleasant G. Spherical (aka mongoloids@creations4christ.com) Tonia T. Scud (aka incorrigibly@funkboerse.de) Stagnating F. Conclusive Naturally I still hate spam. Even so I have enjoyed this tiny wink from the spammeister(s) clogging my in-box. Not long after noticing her post, I started noticing that I had been getting dictionary-inspired spams of my own: Husband E. Brainstorm Outshining E. Initialization Foundation O. Luxuriousness Sensual U. Release Lissajous V. Smirk Teleconferences F. Stave Deckhands G. Sextants Anarchists H. Shuddering What's going on? Spammers are combing the thesaurus now? | Sunday, March 20, 2005 Posted by philgomes 1:09 PM "Las cucarachas entran, pero no pueden salir..." Four years of Spanish, and the best that I can muster is a translation of a Roach Motel commercial. Las luces aprenden, pero nadie en casa... | Saturday, March 19, 2005 Posted by philgomes 2:31 PM Behold... The Gomes Index Of Executive Happiness Executive quotes in press releases are kind of an unusual beast. I've always thought so. A cursory examination of these releases shows that a very popular phrase used in these quotes is "we are pleased." While we were at Phase Two Strategies, Madge Miller and I used to get a good chuckle at how often this phrase was used. But then, years later, I had to ask: "Why are these executives so darn 'pleased' all the time? And even during the tech economy's most brutal deceleration? What am I missing? Can I obtain $40 worth of whatever is causing this phenomenon? Is it legal?" Thus, the Gomes Index Of Executive Happiness ("GIEH" or simply "The Gomes Index") was born. Here's how it will work. This index was started on Feb. 23, 2005, based on a five-day average of occurrences of "we are pleased" as transmitted on major press release wires. That number was normalized to 100. Every day since is represented as a moving average of the previous five day's worth of hits in order to smooth out the graph and make it more meaningful. Every so often, just for fun, we'll see how pleased executives have been compared to the last time we looked. Are they "pleased" enough such that investment opportunities are in the offing? Probably not, but we'll still have some fun, oh my gentle readers. Of course, any index carries with it some uncertainty. Here are some possible confounding variables: Seasonality: Likely, earnings season will cause this index to spike. Also, tradeshow season will do its fair share to affect The Gomes Index as well. It's clear, for example, that the index's recent all-time-high of 106.59 is due to a happy CTIA conference in New Orleans. Spin: A company can preannounce bad quarterly earnings and the executive could still be quoted as saying: "We are pleased...that at least marauding aliens from the planet Kersplackia IV didn't land here this fiscal quarter and impregnate the entire secretarial pool." Obviously, an executive isn't going to be happy about a bad earnings announcement and the prospect of angry, pitchfork-weilding shareholders. It could thus be argued that labeling such an announcement a component of The Gomes Index does not reflect the executive's actual mood. Fair enough, but we'll take that as an anticipated x-factor. Synonyms: "We are pleased" can certainly be reworded into "we are very pleased," "we are happy," "we are content," or whatever. Listen, people... I only have the bandwidth to automate the tracking of one lame phrase at a time, so I picked one. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: Dr. Heisenberg once noted, in not so many words, that to measure something is to disturb it and, therefore, one can't presume to get an accurate reading of pretty much anything. This is called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Since it's now public knowledge that press releases using that wishy-washy phrase will now be observed by yours truly, mere knowledge of The Gomes Index's existence might weigh down the Index itself. I don't know about you, but I call that "Mission: Accomplished!!" Operator Error: I may miss a few. Live with it. This is just for fun. So here's the first graph based on The Gomes Index. The average ends the week at 105.09, just a hair off the all-time high but far above the low of 76.35. Again, exuberance surrounding the week's CTIA conference did a lot to raise the average. The red line is the GIEH average. The faint yellow line is a logarithmic trendline. Disclaimer: Anyone who bases stock purchase decisions on The Gomes Index is more than just a little dumb. | Friday, March 18, 2005 Posted by philgomes 6:09 PM Nancee Sobonya's The Gifts Of Grief I met Nancee through my work with Thoth last year. She is a filmmaker and bereavement coordinator at Pathways Hospice. I managed to do a little bit of publicity for her film, The Gifts Of Grief. The film's trailer is available in multiple formats. It's premiering tonight in Oakland, but there will likely be other showings. I've actually seen two cuts of the film and both were incredible. Watch this space for more details. | Posted by philgomes 3:50 PM "This Is Bob... "Bob's been doing well. Very well indeed. "But now Bob might be going to jail. "And, thanks to natural male enhancement from Enzyte, Bob is going to be his cellmate's favorite new pet if he's hauled off to the Big House for alleged mail fraud. "To get your free sample of Enzyte, the solution for natural male enhancement, call..." (Ed. note: Those of you who don't watch any cable TV at all have no idea what I was just making fun of.) | Thursday, March 17, 2005 Posted by philgomes 4:05 PM "We Are Pleased..." Watch this space for more information soon... | Tuesday, March 15, 2005 Posted by philgomes 11:07 AM Specsmanship: The Ostrich Method This eWeek article kind of inspired a wry chuckle. It discusses a Forrester report that casts doubt on the high-end computing capabilities of an upcoming SQL Server database release. Why the lack of performance results? [Forrester Analyst Noel] Yuhanna said that Microsoft isn't able to match the results of its competitors and therefore wants the whole thing to just go away. Thanks to my colleague John Sun for the link. Update: Apparently, some users have disputed this report. | Posted by philgomes 10:32 AM MSN, Yahoo, RSS For those of you who think that content syndication technologies are a CB-radio-like fad among 35-year-old geeks living in Mom's basement, I submit this article. "RSS" is the term that gets thrown around but, at the end of the day, it's all about making content available. It won't be long before people go "RSS what?" — not because the technology has gone away but because content syndication will just kind of melt into everyone's online experience. Yes, you knee-jerk Microsoft-haters: It will even be shoved into the operating system. It's similar to what I heard Walt Mossberg say in a talk at the EDN Innovation Awards dinner last week. (Dryden Marketing Group client Matrix Semiconductor won for Best Digital IC, by the way.) He predicts a time in the not-to-distant future when the phrase "I'm going to go online now" will disappear, owing to the growing ubiquity of speedy, quality data connections. Similarly, the idea of subscribing to news sources via RSS (or whatever) will be something that even the most casual user will simply do. And people still stare at me as if I have a fifth eye when I tell them to pay attention to this kind of thing! | Sunday, March 13, 2005 Posted by philgomes 1:25 PM Digging On Fields Of The Nephilim I forgot just how good Fields Of The Nephilim's Dawnrazor album was. I'm listening to a selection from it right now while tying up some loose ends. I also did a Google search on the band. The official site points to a new album this year. Here are the lyrics to one of my favorite Nephilim songs, "Blue Water." Just move back, stepping outside yourself Feel I'm falling upwards, looking at hell Blue blue... what am I supposed to to? Well, life looks a little hazy looking at myself A sea of green, if you know what I mean Please unleash this animal inside out of my mind Well it's the perspiration that's draining my head Perspiration is draining my head Blue angel in this nightfall It circles and it dawns in this nightfall Constant pain... the constant pain Blue water keeps running Blue, I'm waiting for you Get that electrostatic hotwire And I'm breaking on through It's the perspiration that's draining my head Blue angel in this nightfall It circles, it dawns — we feel the night fall Blue angel will see this night fall | Thursday, March 10, 2005 Posted by philgomes 7:05 PM God Hates Sheep I have proof now. | Wednesday, March 09, 2005 Posted by philgomes 3:24 PM www.astroturfing-for-hire.com I'm not doing this to make fun, but it does underscore how far PR has to go in terms of educating those outside the field about the way its consultants ought to interface with the blogosphere. I received this in my inbox recently: We just finished writing a [software] utility. I was wondering how much you would charge to slashdot us? I explained that this just isn't how it works. For one thing, I'm reminded of this famous case from ZDUK about Microsoft's poll-rigging. And, before you even ask, no I'm never going to tell you the emailer's identity! Again, I'm not doing this to make fun of someone. | Tuesday, March 08, 2005 Posted by philgomes 11:31 AM Phil As A South Park Character Thanks to Mobile PC's Dylan Tweney for the link. | Sunday, March 06, 2005 Posted by philgomes 5:48 PM Pogue On PR Honesty I want to hear more examples of stories like this one. Basically, NYT's David Pogue reviewed a "real turkey" of a device from Olympus. As he talked with the Olympus agency representative, that rep — while stressing the product's features — also was honest in that this device certainly had "room for improvement." I hope Pogue's request that Olympus not jump on the PR rep helps to keep that rep out of hot water. Anyway... Yeah... I want to hear more stories like this one, if anyone's got them. I've got a few, but I guess it'll take some time to write them in a form that won't identify the parties involved. ;) | Saturday, March 05, 2005 Posted by philgomes 7:15 PM Corporate Blogs, Comments, Etc. First off, bravo to Julie Farris of Scalix for engaging in the blog-borne conversation in a way that was honest and compatible with how the blogosphere works. There's an awful lot to react to here, so bear with me. Before I begin... I've often found it kind of funny that I'm often seen as one of those maverick PR folks who march headlong into the battlefield of corporate communications with "Blogs" emblazoned on my shield. This obviously comes from the fact that I've been writing and speaking about this topic for some time, including an all-too-long period wherein acknowledging blogs' very existence and their incalculable potential for influence got you laughed out of your agency's conference room. (This is part-and-parcel a result of the pervasive "That's-nice-but-how-does-it- get-me-into-tomorrow's-Wall-Street-Journal?" myopia.) The truth of the matter is that — within the group of communications professionals that have strong ideas and opinions about how blogs, blogging, and corporate communications intersect — I'm probably one of the more centrist of the lot. Stripping away the term's political connotations, you could even say that my views are "conservative" in this regard. So... The ZD blog post by David Berlind, rightly praising Ms. Farris' approach, pulls out this common observation: Public relations personnel cringe at the idea of executives diving into the blogosphere and mixing it up with the press and end users. Maybe that's because of how the blogosphere prevents them from interceding when an executive is about to say something that shouldn't be said. Personally, I think it makes both the executives and the company seem more open and approachable. I've observed throughout my career that new technologies and forms of communication are nearly always seen as a threat or nuisance by PR professionals. (More under "Learning By Listening" in chapter four of Dan Gillmor's We The Media, describing an early incident in my career.) This is often followed by these mad scrambles to be the first agency seen as the marketing masters of that same technology. This often yields some ill-considered and embarrassing results. For my part, I believe that blogosphere participation should be viewed as an opportunity for corporate communications professionals. That said, I also believe that all opportunities, off- and online, need to be carefully managed. Public relations and investor relations folks have responsibility for ensuring that a company's message is not only compelling, but consistent. Openness and approachability are, of course, key to any organization's relationship with the press and analyst communities, as well as the groups that they influence in turn. If communications policies aren't in place and a company's executives and employees just kind of post willy-nilly — regardless of whether they think they're doing a good thing for the company — consistency is lost and the PR or IR person is not doing the job. (Can you imagine using "But we were just trying to be open and approachable" as your excuse to the SEC when your company's blog postings, comments, and regulatory filings just don't seem to jibe? I hate to harsh your mellow, but that's what could be at stake.) All too often, I observe that a number of the blog-aware folks in the profession get so caught up in trying to be more blog-savvy than the next guy that they forget that they have a primary obligation to those who sign their checks. This means that, yes, communications need to be managed, a term that runs pretty contrary to the whole blogging ethic. This brings us to a debate that I frequently have with many PR folks: whether a corporate blog should even have the comments feature turned on. Mr. Berlind writes: Sun president and COO Jonathan Schwartz for example has a blog, but he doesn't take comments. And, really, why should he? The blogerati must love to ding blogs that don't have comments activated — especially the rare corporate ones that are, frankly, making a big enough leap as it is right now. Some PR folks who want to ingratiate themselves with this rarified group uncritically agree with this position, almost out of a need to say "look-I'm-just-as-hip-and-with-it-as-you." In doing so, such PR people forget a large part of what they're being paid to do — manage communications. While I believe this question of allowing comments should be addressed on a case-by-case basis with a clear analysis of risks-versus-rewards, I generally discourage it for the following reasons: Honestly... Do you or your organization have the time or resources to police against increasingly sophisticated "comment spam" operations? Throughout my own career, for example, most of my clients have been engineering-focused enterprises rather than marketing-focused. A dollar of funding or revenue is more likely to be invested in a mass spectrometer than in marketing, making the latter a resource to be preciously conserved. Creating the impression of openness and approachability can be accomplished through other means as well. Is allowing comments on your corporate blog the best — or even a good — way to do so, given the aforementioned risk and resource concerns? Would you ever hand your competitors a platform to espouse their views? That's what turning those comments on, in essence, provides. Would you hand them the mic at your press conference, or would you tell them to schedule their own? This leads me to the fact that... ...it's really easy to make your own blog. If you don't like how a competitor is shaping the conversation on its blog, your company should make its own. The notion of what I've come to call "comment entitlement" kind of reminds me of the arguments surrounding the so-called "Fairness Doctrine," a decades-old FCC idea that sought to enforce equal coverage of all significant views about an issue in any given broadcast. (This is above-and-beyond the very necessary "equal time" and "personal attack" rules.) Among the Doctrine's opponents, journalists rightly fought it as a First Amendment issue, saying that it's not the government's job to enforce "fairness." The Fairness Doctrine fell into disuse around 1985, though contemporary legislators will occassionally try to revive it. One of the true beauties of the First Amendment is that it's so thorough that it even defends peoples' right to completely miss the point. The Doctrine's contemporary supporters forget that the environment that created it changed dramatically over time. The Fairness Doctrine made sense when broadcasting was young and there were scant few stations occupying scarce spectrum. Post-1980s (and especially now) scarcity is no longer an issue thanks to more intelligent frequency allocation (and the technologies that enable it), cable, satellite TV, the Internet, and so on. These days, it's hard to imagine someone like Bill O'Reilly credibly demanding time on Al Franken's show, or vice-versa, in the interests of "equal time." Similarly, the fact that Jonathan Schwartz doesn't allow comments on his blog is immaterial. Blogging is free and is becoming increasingly democratized. If someone wants an online voice and possesses a relatively medium-to-low degree of technical know-now, that person's opinion can be heard or, at the very least, published. Why should Schwartz hand you a mic when you've got several makes and models of mics in front of you, already plugged in? Trackbacks, it could be argued, provide a compromise that most people can live with. I do mostly agree with this statement, which precedes the comment about Schwartz: Just that sort of open invitation says something about a person's belief in what they are saying and willingess to engage--unfortunately, it's a rarity in our business. Absolutely right. An honest blog comment, an executive blog (especially a comment-enabled one), is an incredibly gutsy move — just like the earlier examples of handing over the mic to a competitor at the press conference. Then again, I don't think that Schwartz necessarily demonstrates a lacking in his convictions by not allowing comments. I'm sure that Mr. Berlind didn't mean to imply that, but that's certainly how it came out. (Waitaminnit... This just hit me... Is it actually possible to pick two easier targets within a tech blog: PR people and Sun Microsystems?) Where I believe activating comments makes the most sense is in a forum where the playing field is relatively level (like a tech publisher's blog) and where the relative merits of the comments are rated or judged by a community-governed system (like Slashdot and SLASH-based blogs). As to the former case...That's a whole 'nother kettle o' fish, because a publisher has other motivations for allowing comments besides being good blogging citizens. After all, the degree to which a community is built via these blog comments directly affects pageviews and, by extension, advertising revenue. As a devout capitalist, I'm certainly not faulting them for this, but we have to be completely clear as to any company's motivation for making its website user-writeable, which is what allowing comments effectively does. In reading this over, I guess that the ZD post (and my reaction) has shifted topics: from vendors-commenting-on-blogs to vendors-allowing-comments-on-their-own. Again, in either case, PR firms and corporate communications departments need to look at both the resource, risk, and reward factors and then create policies that reflect those realities. In the presumed absence of such a policy, I wouldn't be surprised if Ms. Farris or the Scalix PR department sent out a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do email to all employees. Managing communications... THAT'S THE @#$%& JOB, PEOPLE! So, in closing, I don't allow comments on this blog. My own case-by-case analysis tells me its a bad idea and I have no idea how Scoble keeps up with reading his comments and over a thousand RSS feeds. However, I encourage you to write your own reactions or start your own blog. Make me change my mind! Update: Michael Gartenberg, separately, says that folks ask Jupiter about turning on the comments in analysts' blogs. | Posted by philgomes 1:08 PM Karen's Replicator Thanks to Mitch Wagner, who pointed me to this great utility called Karen's Replicator. It's a tool that allows you to schedule complete and incremental backups. I was all ready to seek out a commercial version or use the somewhat clunky XP backup utility, so this was a welcome introduction. TigerDirect had a special on $20 (with rebate) hard drive enclosures, so I ordered one. I shoehorned an old 40GB hard disk into it as soon as the TigerDirect package arrived. With some tutelage from Tim Tuck ("The Hardest Working Man In Tech"), I got me a dirt-cheap FireWire drive. | Friday, March 04, 2005 Posted by philgomes 9:22 PM Weekend, Family, Music Been crunching on a number of projects, which is why you haven't heard much from me. In any case, I'm off to have dinner with my cousin Paul. Then we're going to see A Band Called Pain. I saw them open up for one of my guitar heroes George Lynch and they were great. Now I know why Billy Steel likes them so much. I'm so metal, it hurts... Funny thing is that I've been listening to jazz, classical, and goth here in the office. I guess my musical palette is thus cleansed. More crunchin' on the weekend, with the possibility of doing a Mandrake install for a friend. Watch this space for information on a unique documentary that will debut later this month in Oakland. | Tuesday, March 01, 2005 Posted by philgomes 9:58 AM Lower-Tech Hack To A Low-Tech Problem My particleboard desk isn't all that good at pulling away heat buildup from my laptop, as it turns out. I was doing some mad 3D gaming one night. As I suspected it might, my laptop's fan was going full-tilt. Next thing I knew, the laptop completely shut down. Odd. Rinse. Repeat. Same thing after just a few minutes. Turns out there's some kind of fail-safe in this thing. If the heat buildup reaches a high enough level, the laptop shuts down. I searched around my desk and I found this half-used dental floss container. (Don't ask me how it got there.) It turned out it was the perfect size to wedge under the back of my laptop. Almost as if it were made for the task. This allows more air to circulate underneath the laptop, as you can see here: As a result, my laptop has run more silently ever since. I'm sure that I'd be able to get a battery-life boost as well, were I not plugged into the wall. There also appears to be an ergonomic benefit from angling the keyboard like this. I'm probably going to invest in something a little less "MacGyver," though. I was just looking at this doodad on TigerDirect. (Photo Credit: Brian Faust) | 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's demented imagination. Hell, to be perfectly honest, even Phil disagrees with what he thinks sometimes. This site has virtually no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Clicking on a link doesn't automatically send a 1/2-cent donation to UNICEF. You can't buy, sell, auction, swap, find a date, win friends, influence people, cross the chasm, or decode the human genome using this site. You won't get free email. You won't win a PalmOne Treo or a Playstation2. This site will not end world hunger, foster peace in the Middle East, help you smell better, teach you how to swing dance, or move the global economy from petroleum to hydrogen fuels. You'll learn a lot about this site's master, though, which amounts to a haphazard collection of strange and useless facts that pretty much won't help you at all.	ABOUT THIS BLOG This is the blog of Phil Gomes, VP with Edelman Digital and senior advisor to the Society for New Communications Research. This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. Phil currently resides in Chicago, IL. EMAIL phil[at] philgomes.com View my page on PROpenMic 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.