Marketing Canapes

Pondering trimming My Neighborhood

nobody@vox.com(Marketing Canapes) — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 14:21:32 -0700

Marketing Canapes was developed as an evolution of an emailed newsletter, I've always been an advocate of being able to communicate in two directions. One of the limitations in placing Marketing Canapes here was that people would have to join VOX to be able to reply to a post. Fortunately, that is a freebie. Not an ideal situation, but doable. I have posted before about moving Marketing Canapes elsewhere so anyone can access it and make comments. That is still on the table.

In looking over the short Black PR post and reply, I have noticed that there are those on VOX who have no problem going to a blog and posting while restricting that blogger from being able to view their blog and posts (if there are any at all). I'm not picking on Ivana - I think her comment was a good one - but if you are going to make comments on my blog, then afford me the courtesy of opening your blog to me so I have the same privilege. Otherwise it can degenerate into a blind where someone can take potshots at other bloggers and hide behind privacy settings.

Another similar situation arises when a commentator comes in and and all you reach on the other side is a commercially-oriented blog with token or non-existent public postings. They are designed for one-way communications.

Consequently, I am considering removing all these one-way VOX sites from my neighborhood.

If you want to talk to me and my neighborhood and post on my blog, then open yours up to me.

I am wondering how the rest of my neighborhood feels about this matter.

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RSS aggregators report

nobody@vox.com(Marketing Canapes) — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 01:36:48 -0700

Well, I am still not posting regularly because I am bouncing back and forth between using Bloglines and Newsgator. Well, this is my analysis.

I started with one aggregator a long time ago. It was unusable under any circumstance. I switched to Bloglines until some minor annoyances - like feeds I have marked keep on loading in the background until they finsh. Bloglines shouild terminate that feed to the user when they tell Bloglines to mark it read. Period. There is no, NO excuse for their not being able to do so. Specifically, Lifehacker and a couple of others, but Lifehacker was singularly the most annoying.

Then I switched to Newsgator based upon a lot of recommendations running around the web. It was given a number one position by more than a few reviewers. BALDERDASH! It is SLOOOOOOOOOOOOW, so slow, it makes maple syrup creeping down a maple tree trunk on a cold winter's day look like an Olympic sprint champion. I can load a text only blog's full text postings faster with Bloglines than I could load the same blog's capsules on Newsgator.

I also like Bloglines ability to open another feed in another tab or window - something you cannot do with Newsgator. This may be in the works of the new beta, but that loaded so slooooow it made regular Newsgator look like that same sprinter.

Well, I am back with Bloglines for the interim. The search continues.

Maybe I can download enough stuff so I can find something interesting to post although there were so many posts in the 178 I am monitoring, I just marked them all read. Onward!

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User manual wrapped

nobody@vox.com(Marketing Canapes) — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 00:52:43 -0700

For quite awhile, I have been involved with an inventor whose product should make our shores in late August. I can hardly wait to get one of the units to use. Anyway, about a week back, I contacted the gentleman to see how things were going. He told me he was under the gun to get the user's manual/instructions to the manufacturing plant. I guess they will do the printing right there.

In any event, he had forgotten that I offered my help in working the document over and I asked him to forward the file. Thank heavens the bulk of it was graphics. It was 6.5 megs in size. I spent a real solid night working it over and sending it back. It should be in China.

I'll have more on the Behmore 1600 home coffee roaster when it arrives. My small flid bed roaster is starting to make noises and I've done what hacking I can to keep it going. That reminds me, time to do a few small batches in the am - perhaps some Kenyan.

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Bottled water redux

nobody@vox.com(Marketing Canapes) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 01:42:04 -0700

A few posts below I wrote about Fiji water and the transportation and costs of getting that bottled water to you the consumer. I also have mentioned that in taste test after taste test, New York City tap water beats out bottled water again and again and again.

Now we can add to all that, the enormous costs involved in bottled water. Go to Buzz Feed and take a look at the links and those links links. If you are green at heart, you will no longer purchase bottled water. I know I will not. I use a local water store, previously mentioned where I cna get water at 30 cents a gallon folks, and I bet it will beat out every bottled water you can find on the shelf. I use it only for making coffee, oatmeal and rice. pasta is plain old filtered tap water.

Get greener, quit buying bottled water or have the bottled water companies got you on the hook and following them around mindlessly?

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A tale of two "brands"

nobody@vox.com(Marketing Canapes) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 01:08:47 -0700

As is pointed out by Fast Company, China does not really have it's own global brand. As close as they come is Lenovo, the name given to IBM's PCs that a Chinese company bought. So, the only "brand" China has is the ubiquitous "Made in China" branding that equates to cheap and disposable. Made in China = Cheap and Disposable and now because of the fiascos previously posted about, unsafe at any cost.

FC notes that Reuters has indicated the rise of a new generic brand: "China Free." This "counterbrand" implies that the undafe ingredients have been removed from the supply chain.

A tale of two brands: if China does not mind its ps and qs, China Free will put a real kink in the juggernaut's economic progress.

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China does not need to invade the USA to win a war

nobody@vox.com(Marketing Canapes) — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 18:42:03 -0700

All they have to do is keep sending dangerous products to the US for us to kill ourselves with. If you think that anti-freeze in toothpaste and lead-based paint on toy trains is it, are you ever in for an eye-opening session on Who Sucks. With a list like that, only morons would buy any Chinese-made product in the first iteration of its existence. Of course, the real question is how we can get Al Queda to buy and use these products on themselves!

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Drinking bottled water

nobody@vox.com(Marketing Canapes) — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 01:56:01 -0700

I used to be a dyed-in-the-wool user of bottled water and Fiji was my favorite of all, although it was usually a bit more expensive that the others on the shelf - with good reason it turns out. This article has, perhaps, one of the best summaries of the industry that I have seen. If you happen to have tasted San Diego's water, you would understand a lot of the affinity for bottled water. Now days, I buy my water from a local water store (The Water Lady) in a 2.5 gallon re-usable bottle. I use that water daily for brewing coffee and in anything that water plays an important part - like rice. At 30 cents a gallon, it is far cheaper than any of the stuff that is locally available - barring those quarter a gallon dispensers that are outside most grocery and liquor stores.

The Water Lady uses several techniques with her water - the standard RO and ultra-violet exposure, yada, yada. She may still challenge you to bring in your water and directly compare it to hers (although I haven't checked up on that in years) and I took in a bottle of Fiji. Oh well, Fiji did look really great in the bottle - but that was the bottle, but to the taste, it was not worth its hyper-priced premium of the time. One thing I do like about her store is that when you are cycling past, you can fill up the standard cycling water bottles free - well at least a couple of them. I wouldn't want anyone going by with dozens stuffed in every nook and cranny of their lycra togs expecting to fill all.

Now, if memory serves, Consumer's Report used to run a tasting test of several bottled waters against a standard - NYC muni tap water, and time and time again, the tap water came out on top, sooooooo, if that holds true today, all you New Yorkers who are drinking bottled water are pissing your money down the toilet - but hey, what else is new?

But, here is the real question on my mind - children's dental health? Most muni water sources are treated with some type of fluoride that is supposed to be beneficial to teeth - please no conspiracy theories here, and my question is with so many young children now drinking water without the fluoride treatments, will the once-a-year dental cleaning and treatment be enough to stave off a dental epidemic in the future?

Time will tell.

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Bogged down

nobody@vox.com(Marketing Canapes) — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 03:08:55 -0700

I have been scanning almost 300 different blogs in looking for ideas, information and posts to make or refer to. That means about 1,500 messages a day. That is time consuming, even were I on broadband (coming soon). I have been spending a good part of my online day today (yesterday) trimming that list. I am about halfway through the RSS feed list and I am dumping abut 30% of those blogs. Some because they haven't generated anything really interesting, some because their content is derived from sources I also read, and some for miscellaneous other reasons. I'll start posting regularly once I have this task finished. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

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Is anyone home?

nobody@vox.com(Marketing Canapes) — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 02:50:51 -0700

The implications of the Paris Hilton interview left me astounded. In the 30-second soundbite I heard she used about half the known cliches in the English language. I can fully well understand someone going to sleep on her despite paying a cool million for the "privilege" of the interview. My first thought was, "what an air-head," but then realized that would be an insult to all the legitimate airheads of the world. Rich? you bet! Good looking? Likewise. But is anyone home?

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China will be the next King of the Mountain

nobody@vox.com(Marketing Canapes) — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 02:15:50 -0700

This is not a matter of "if," only of "when" this will happen. Economic data coming from McKinsey (via Research Briefs) predicts a growing and vibrant economy with increasing wealth for Chinese citizens. One they reach a critical point, their mass-driven economy will race right past the US like we are standing still.

So, what is our government doing about this? Certainly not talking about it. Certainly not making plans to do something meaningful. All the Washington yokels want to do is divert attention with such bogus things as illegal immigration - something very easy to sell to the masses who are used to being led around by their collective noses. By the time they wake up and smell the coffee, they will be working for CHinese firms.

So, start learning Chinese and make sure your kids and grandkids start speaking Chinese at a very young age.

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