Geek Soap Box

Today, in a not-so-random conversation with a person to be named later, I referred to one of my professional strengths as believing in the democratic nature of information.  Basically, what I meant is that, in the past, a few individuals — big media, corporate public relations teams, and the like — controlled nearly all of [...]

It was real-time docudrama like we have never seen before, filled with an incredible volume of hyperbole and enough potential story-lines to populate a small novel.  On live television, the so-called most coveted free agent in all of sports descended from his reclusive mountaintop and informed the world as to what professional basketball franchise had [...]

The sports world is abuzz over the current free agency of basketball superstar LeBron James, arguably the best player in the game since the heyday of some guy named Michael Jordan.  Where will the charismatic and talented young forward known as “King James” spend the prime of his career?  Will he help to rejuvenate a [...]

Blog Maverick: Tax the Hell Out of Wall Street and Give It to Main Street It should always be the natural reaction of any lover of freedom and liberty to be inclined towards opposing any new proposed tax, especially those proffered in the name of the public good.  This blog post from Mark Cuban, though, [...]

Update: The title for this post should be “Let’s Play Two!!” but only the first word is appearing in my browser.  Eh, stupid WordPress.  So, my apologies if it looks like a moron titled this post or left you hanging. Today marks the renewal and rebirth of Spring as no other day can: it’s the [...]

I am pleased to report that my first-ever “foray” — pardon the pun — into the world of podcasting is now live!  Go download “This Week in Media” Episode #173 today and listen to us banter for an hour on advertising addressability and why content is king, live from Transformation 2010 in San Francisco, CA! [...]

Cross-posted at 4A’s Events Blog. Whether you work in the advertising/marketing community, the association world, or anywhere in between, chances are you have been to quite a number of conferences over the years. These conferences are all the same on the surface, to a certain extent. They provide an opportunity to meet and share information/stories [...]

First things first: I owe a tremendous amount of money in unsecured credit card debt.  This total has accumulated incrementally over the years, across any number of individual cards and carriers, and is the result of questionable spending and poor bill management.  This situation is completely my fault; I acknowledge and accept responsibility for such, [...]

One of the most stunning stories to hit the Internet in the past weeks has to be the saga of Newsday, the traditional Long Island newspaper owned and operated by the enigmatic Dolan family. Back in October, the paper took its entire Web presence and placed it behind a subscribers-only firewall available only to area [...]

With over 500 tweets collected and logged into an Excel spreadsheet related to the Cadillac Escalade Hybrid, certain key phrases and reactions become readily apparent.  One simple way to organize and display this data is via a “word cloud” — a randomized visual display of the most-repeated words in any given accumulation of text, with [...]

Let’s face it, our lives are pretty decent, and for that we should consider ourselves blessed.  We in the United States and other nations of the “West” are not torn apart by political strife, genocide, or cataclysmic natural disasters.  For the most part, we all are able to wake up each morning, safe and sound, [...]

Undoubtedly, when I return to the office tomorrow, I’ll hear cries and wailing anguish from the Powers That Be about how they know so much more than I do about Web design, communications, and marketing — despite the fact that I’m the only one with a masters degree (sort of) and a decade of experience [...]

In the interest of full disclosure, “House, MD” could be my favorite television show of all time.  The combination of pithy, sarcastic humor, witty banter, and grave seriousness match my own twisted personality nearly perfectly, and I can easily watch each episode time and again, one after another, without even remotely suffering from boredom or [...]

Newsflash, for those not paying attention: I own and adore desperately my iPhone.  Without it, I feel uncertain and anxious, as if a very part of me has been unplugged from life and I struggle to maintain focus and balance.  It’s utterly ridiculous, but I guess I’m one of the people Strand Consulting is referring [...]

When historians compile a list of New York’s greatest leaders one day, it seems unlikely that our current accidental occupant of the governor’s mansion, will find his name etched into inclusion.  Despite his near blindness, alleged infidelities and drug abuse, David Paterson built himself a steady if unspectacular life as a career politician in one [...]

My work-related e-mail and social media accounts were all a-flutter this morning over AOL’s announcement that it is abandoning it’s traditional running man/triangular logos for something new and fresh. AOL Sunday revealed the new brand identity it will begin using Dec. 10th, when it spins off as a free-standing, publicly traded company from Time Warner. [...]

A few weeks ago, I received an offer from Scott Oser at the College of Association Marketing to participate in a series of Webinars tailored to the novices of the association social media set.  After a great first offering — Intro to Social Media with Deirdre Reid (with me as sidekick/color commentator) — today was [...]

Like my coastal, urban, and enlightened brothers and sisters, I am a proud and loyal Apple Computer aficionado, and my new-found loyalty lies like so many others in my gradual progression from the iPod > iPhone > iMac as I became more familiar with and passionate for the product line.  Just last week, my Windows [...]

(Inspired in large part thanks to a similar post on The Cranky Conservative…) – It’s hard for someone as humble as me to admit it, but turns out I was way ahead of the curve in declaring President Barack Hussein Obama the Anti-Christ: a solid nine percent of the residents of the fine state of [...]

If you are truly interested in developing a top-notch online persona, such as on a blog or via your unique, personal Twitter account, I think the best advice I could ever give you is this: Do as I say, not as I do. Much like an online microcosm of the American Dream itself, the smart [...]

I’m a few days behind on my news, but that really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that has ever read this site with any regularity.  Anyway, I wanted to make a comment on a certain meme that went around Twitter and Facebook this week; a little sweet-sounding, simple, and very effective slogan promoting healthcare [...]

A post in two parts: I remain forever amazed at how little the politically devout actually know about marketing and messaging their platforms to the larger masses.  Without question, politics inspires a certain form of relentless passion in engaged individuals, but that passion often creates a sort of “mandatory call to action: you must agree [...]

Maybe it’s just me wearing my crotchety “things were better back in the old days” hat, but it’s hard to really get into what currently makes up the spectrum of professional wrestling these days.  The characters are no longer “larger than life” and all resemble cookie-cutter variants of one another.  Envision Randy Orton, Cody Rhodes, [...]

This past weekend, I flew back from a brief four-day respite in Miami’s wonderful South Beach, and found myself constantly staring at an advertisement for a company called Carbonfund in my JetBlue’s 37 channels of DirectTV display. Something was just “off” about this message, I kept telling myself, not even factoring in the post-modern hypocritical [...]

Amidst the chaos and unrelenting waves of injuries and shoddy fundamentals that have plagued this 2009 New York Mets season, another character has emerged from the fray.  A galvanizing force that has united the legions of blue and orange fans in their unrelenting hatred for his callous style and enigmatic stranglehold over top team brass. [...]