Brand Noise

SIRIUS Indie Talk Engages The Blogosphere

On Wed., Feb. 6, the morning after Super Tuesday, SIRIUS Satellite Radio will launch Indie Talk (channel 110), a talk radio channel that will serve as an uncensored, unfiltered forum for independent thought and opinion. The channel will feature veteran actor and political maverick Ron Silver. Silver, like Indie Talk, represents the intersection of liberal and conservative, and the intersection of entertainment and politics.

Indie Talk will stay on pace with today's frenzied news cycle by airing "blogcast" news updates every 20 minutes -- reporting the freshest headlines and buzz as it unfolds on the blogs. Additionally, Indie Talk will feature "The Blog Bunker," a cutting-edge roundtable featuring a selection of the over 100 million bloggers around the globe.

Expanding on Social Software Behavior

Google.org's technology project to help save lives in the event of natural disasters or public health threats is set to launch Thursday.

The project, called Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disaster (InSTEDD), is a nonprofit organization that ambitiously aims to help communities around the world use Web and communications technology to identify and warn others of outbreaks like Avian flu or disasters like Hurricane Katrina. That technology, which will include social software Twitter and Facebook, will be used to coordinate rescue responses and help save lives.

"We're not talking about pulling the red phone out of the bottom drawer here," said Eric Rasmussen, president and CEO of InSTEDD and a former adviser to U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense, referring to Twitter and Facebook. "We're talking about using ubiquitous, free software that is repurposed when necessary to fit into a humanitarian need."

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Tools To Energize a Writer

Talk about cultural affinities. Consider this POV in the NY Times where a writer declares her farewell to Microsoft Word. Kudos to those who think ahead of what someone just might need. Used to be that choice meant reverting to a typewriter or pen and Moleskine. Not true anymore.

"Goodbye to Word’s prim rulers, its officious yardsticks, its self-serious formatting toolbar with cryptic abbreviations (ComicSansMS?)...Our redeemer is Scrivener."

Scrivener is the independently produced word-processing program of the aspiring novelist Keith Blount, a Londoner who taught himself code and graphic design and marketing, just to create a software that jibes with the way writers think--encouraging note-taking and outlining and restructuring.

To create art, you need peace and quiet. Not only does Scrivener save like a maniac so you needn’t bother, you also get to drop the curtain on life’s prosaic demands with a feature that makes its users swoon: full screen.

Our personal favorite feature: Mac OS X only (not compatible with Windows). Now how do you like how that feels?

Then, there's also the WriteRoom, the ultimate spartan writing utopia. With WriteRoom, you don’t compose on anything so confining as paper or its facsimile. Instead, you rocket out into the unknown, into profound solitude, and every word of yours becomes the kind of outer-space skywriting that opens “Star Wars.” Black screen. Green letters. (Beautiful!)

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Word of the Day: Mamarazzi

In this world of planning, sometimes you come across things like words that take on a life of their own within your vocabulary. “Mamarazzi,” for instance. My husband thinks the term is mine, but now with Christmas eve less than a week away, it's time for me to come clean. So, for the record, the first time I ever heard “mamarazzi” was during this year’s visit with Santa at Macy’s. (He’s already beat me to the blog on it.) But c’mon, can you think of a more descriptive term? “Mamarazzi” is way more timely than “Soccer Moms.”

(Photo: RougeRouge)

Tribune Takes a YouTube Channel

Tribune Interactive recently launched branded Channels on YouTube for the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel, Chicago’s WGN, LA’s KTLA and NY’s WPIX.
"Our arrangement with YouTube underscores our efforts to leverage our award-winning content and make it more widely available to engage a new group of consumers," said Tim Landon, president of Tribune Interactive.
The question is will Tribune Interactive build enough interaction and mobility around its YouTube presence to beckon a younger generation in. It's not enough to just change the viewing platform.

Tom Green Bubbles Back to TV

Tom Green is taking his late-night talk show from the Internet to television, partnering with Debmar-Mercury to make the show available to stations in January 2008.

The plan is to roll out the show on a handful of stations, mainly in late-night time slots, and then try to grow its footprint. (Tyler Perry’s House of Payne, originally debuted on 10 stations.) "That way we can let the show speak for itself instead of trying to sell a pilot first," said co-president Ira Bernstein.

One recent version of Green’s Internet show drew 20,000 viewers live, but he said about 650,000 clips from the show were seen from YouTube to MySpace or downloaded on iTunes within days.

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Blend With an Agenda

The Blender is back bigger and better than ever in a non-partisan, humorous, and somewhat insightful, interactive presidential poll with a twist...From the creators of the enormously successful "Frog in a Blender" (110 million downloads and still growing!), comes "Blender Poll 2008." The Blender Poll tabulates whom voters are AGAINST. You blend those you disagree with most. It launches the week of October 1st.

This would be really fun with a mobile component...

Dusting Off Old Policies

Reversing course, Verizon Wireless on Thursday said it will allow an abortion rights group to use its mobile network for a sign-up text messaging program.

The announcement came a day after the Basking Ridge, N.J.-based unit of Verizon Communications Inc. said it had denied a request by Naral Pro-Choice America for the program.

''The decision to not allow text messaging on an important, though sensitive, public policy issue was incorrect, and we have fixed the process that led to this isolated incident,'' Verizon Wireless spokesman Jeffrey Nelson said in a statement.

Abortion was among topics barred from mass distribution based on the company's code of content, but noted that the code had been developed ''before text-messaging became a mass-market phenomenon.''

It's the "opt-in" that gets us to the issues that matter to us.

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Here Now...Not For Long

Back in the old days, before YouTube, social networking and e-mail chain letters (1992 or so), pop culture trends dwelled for weeks, even months, in the cultural subconscious before they could be spotted by mainstream observers.

Today, that cycle takes a matter of days, even hours. Witness how a phrase blurted out by one University of Florida student has exploded into a genuine pop culture touchstone.

Andrew Meyer's arrest and tasering by campus security has made him an online star...yet a quick check on Google Hot Trends (a list of most searched terms) shows that Meyer's phrase is no longer on the top 100.

(Note: As of this minute, Wayne Newton's appearance on Dancing With the Stars has brought him to the top of the Google list. Chalk one up for the Baby Boomers!)

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What Works for Some, Overlooks Sneaky Monkeys

Tremor Media and ExpoTV have partnered to create a new advertising vehicle that will leverage the influence of brand ambassadors by embedding user generated product testimonials into ads distributed across Tremor's network.

According to the press release, embedding home made product reviews into ad units enables advertisers to incorporate user generated video into their marketing mix in a way that is safe for their brands by ensuring a positive brand message and experience…Additionally, Videopinions offer advertisers ready-to-use video assets with full usage rights.

All well and good for those brands with consumers who are likely to post reviews in a designated environment. Not all brand ambassadors post reviews where you need them. The natural discourse of reviews involves both sides of the equation. You need the bad reviews to judge the good ones. You can't make a judgement call without context. It's the ones who live under the radar and outside the clipping services that are the sneaky little monkeys...