Archive for the 'Observations & Culture' Category

Wil shares his somewhat tongue-in-cheek philosophical ruminations on the erosion of mystery from modern life via communication technology on a guest posting for VIDBLOG.

Crowd-sourcing is being utilized again by our advertisers, this time for the next great Heinz commercial. (more…)

Apparently, the placing of mysterious electronic devices at major transportation hubs is cause for concern. Go figure.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070511/ap_on_re_us/suspicious_devices

What a boon for these guys, I’m sure. As the saying goes, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”, even if Turner is a short a little cash for legal fees. But what about Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens? Sounds like a bit of scapegoat-ism going down… Hopefully the bonus covers it.

We called it over a year before 9/11: http://headlines.mod7.com/?y=2000&m=05&d=16. Check out all the new old mod7 headlines for this month: http://headlines.mod7.com/.

This article demonstrates that telemarketers are more than just passive nuisances: a “…former employee, who was laid off by the company several weeks ago, alleges that Epixtar’s telemarketers use a variety of techniques — including altering taped telephone calls — to prove that customers agreed to charges.”

Those bastards!

If you’re quick on your feet, you might fight back on your own terms: http://howtoprankatelemarketer.ytmnd.com/

Or, you can just be a pain and turn their tactics against them. From the anti-telemarketing counterscript:

Telemarketers make use of a telescript - a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer. It is this imbalance, most of all, that makes telemarketing successful. The EGBG Counterscript attempts to redress that balance… [more]