It’s amazing how many new frankenwords have been created based on the word “blog.” I ran across these two on KDPaine’s PR Measurement Blog: Blogatorials, which are apparently poor corporate blog efforts that are really advertorials; Bloglebrities, or the people who try to gather “link love” the way celebrities gather magazine covers. And you know [...]
Monthly Archives: August 2007
Support research to cure IBD
Most of us find it far too easy to gain weight. Son#2 has the opposite problem; he struggles to gain or maintain weight, because he has Crohn’s Disease. This form of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) affects the digestive system and causes the intestinal tissue to become inflamed, form sores and bleed easily. The nutrients from [...]
Good thing writing is “easy”
I confess to taking a moment today to bask in the glow of a compliment about an online newsletter article I just submitted. However, it reminded me of something once asked of me: “So, are you only as good as your last article/newsletter?” (This was many years ago, when I worked on a weekly newsletter [...]
How governments communicate
I’ve been filing Goods & Services Tax returns with the Canadian government without incident since 1991, so I was alarmed to receive a “Statement of Arrears” from Canada Revenue Agency. A closer look revealed that the document was an apparently new type of acknowledgement that the agency had received my payment. At the bottom, I [...]
Newspapers aren’t dead yet
Son #1 was absolutely stunned this morning when I read to him a piece that one of his favourite bands was going to be playing in Toronto in October. His shock came from the fact that the newspaper scooped the Internet. That’s right, he had not yet heard of the concert online. Newspapers everywhere are [...]
Misleading ads
I booked tickets to take my mother to see Menopause Out Loud, a musical about, what else, menopause, that I’ve heard is hilarious. An ad in the Toronto Star promised “all tickets $39.95 each! August shows only! Good for all seats!” While you could book tickets online or by phone, I noticed online there was [...]
Amusing spam
Feeling battered today after returning from Montreal last night — going there took five hours, coming home took seven, because the highway had been closed for many, many hours after an accident. Although the section was opened by the time we got there, you’d never know it from the traffic. But I digress. I wanted [...]
Words I enjoyed
Ran across some amusing words this week: Whale client: From MarketingSherpa‘s tale of how a small company reeled in a big client, “How CPG marketer’s guerrilla campaign landed coveted space on Whole Foods’ shelves.” (Free access for a limited time.) Frankenquote: From writer Matthew Stibbe‘s advice about improving news releases. “Don’t frankenquote. This is my [...]
Customer service – really!
I’ve been the first to complain about customer DISservice, so let me give credit when it’s due: The Bay (or should I say HBC) did right by this customer. My latest statement came in showing $10.20 due. It was an odd amount and I thought, “What on earth did I buy for $10?” Nothing, as [...]
Random thoughts on a sunny day
Jakob Nielsen’s latest Alertbox mentions how important it is for PDAs to work on all platforms “that are used by any decent percentage of your customers,” otherwise “you are throwing away too many customers.” I wish more web site designers would recognize that not everyone uses Explorer to access the Internet. I usually use Firefox [...]
