Archive for February, 2007

Feb 22 2007

Office 2.0: tools of the trade

Published by Brea under Uncategorized

I found this blog as a comment on Poynter’s E-media Tidbits: My Office 2.0 Setup.

The site lists Web-based programs ranked by which are used everyday, frequently and occasionally.

A collegue recently asked me what del.icio.us was, and I realized the use of Office 2.0 really is still an exclusive group, but it is constantly growing

This is how my Web use overlaps the site’s list:

Daily

GMail
Google homepage
Meebo

Frequently

Google reader
del.icio.us
Flickr

Occasionally

Kinko’s

I guess I really haven’t transitioned to Web 2.0 yet. I wonder what this list will look like in 2008.

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Feb 21 2007

Social-networking seems to fuel reunions, but why?

Published by Brea under Uncategorized

I sort of wonder how high school reunions will be for a generation so entrenched in social-networking Web sites. Another high school friend found me on Facebook this week.

More than 10 people in the past year have found a profile on one of the many social-networking sites I belong to and have discovered I graduated college, work in Stockton and some of them may even visit this page one day all thanks to social-networking. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is a question mark for me.

I run The Record’s MySpace page, and have joined every high school school group in the reader area. Nearly every forum has alumni interested in a reunion. Clearly non-MySpacers aren’t going to find out about this MySpace-spurred reunion, and the organizers already know who has a doctorate degree and who has a G.E.D.; who is a “proud parent”; who is gay, straight or bi; who is single, married or a swinger; who lives below the poverty line and who drives a fancy car.

Who needs a reunion when you can learn so much about people you loved, missed and wish you never met with only a few clicks on Yahoo! or Google?

Intimate information has become low-hanging fruit, and I fall for the frenzy as much as anyone else. You are guilty too, or you wouldn’t have reached the bottom of this blog.

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Feb 19 2007

Dove pushes age, convergence envelope

Published by Brea under advertising, media

Much of my weekend has been spent working on my Web site, feet on ottoman, food when necessary, sunlight streaming from the backyard until it’s dark and television dulling the silence of my house.

But one thing grabbed my attention over and over: Dove (known for it’s popular “White” bar soap) has a television commercial advertising people visit a Web site promoting a line of products aimed at older women.

“Watch what we couldn’t show you on TV, then tell us what you think” is the disclaimer before a commercial of middle-aged women posing nude. The Web commercial could have been any television moisturizer commercial had the women been models and not 40-to-60-year-olds. There were no bare breasts, but it makes me wonder why Dove would spend money on television ads to direct middle-aged women to a niche Web site like doveproage.com. Clearly Dove could have put its commercial on television, had it wanted to. But this is a marketing ploy I haven’t seen much of before.

Does cross-platform advertising for Web sites work? Television stations, radio programs and newspapers all do it — go to our Web site to see photo galleries, video clips and more. But now that commercial advertisers are on the bandwagon, I wonder what is next, especially as political advertising for the presidential election draws near.

Will we see: “Go to joinrudy2008.com to get the dirt on Hillary Clinton we can’t show you on TV”?

As far as Dove goes, I went to the Web site, so it worked for me. And if you’re reading this, you probably did too.

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Feb 18 2007

Web 2.0 = revolution

Published by Brea under Uncategorized

When will it be cool to be anonymous? What is privacy? The questions of the digital revolution are endless.

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Feb 18 2007

All-nighters not just for classes anymore

Published by Brea under Uncategorized

I just got home from a night of revelry with two of my closest friends from Chico State. As you can tell by the time stamp on this post, we had a late night. After getting our groove on at Sacramento dance club Avalon until about 1:30 a.m., we had the brilliant idea to drive to San Francisco and see the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s not as if we are new to California — all three of us were raised in Northern California. We just decided we weren’t ready for the night to end.

Out of all of us, I think I was the most primed for the late night. I’ve been working the “evening shift” at The Record since September, so staying up until 3 or 4 a.m. is nothing new to me. However, crashing for a few hours in the back seat of a sedan and waking up at 7 a.m. parked in the Golden Gate Bridge vista point, is a story worth sharing.

I hope everyone is enjoying their three-day weekend as much as I am.

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