The Thicket

Best $50 ever spent on professional development

One of our benefits at work is an annual stipend for professional development via subscriptions, training, and seminars and conferences.  I was listening to a few of the recent episodes of This Week in Tech, MacBreak Weekly, and This Week in Media and heard the hosts talking about the new summer program at PixelCorps -- total cost $50.  That's right, I said $50US.  You get a ton of coursework and access to software that would costs thousands more to purchase outright.  This is practically an impulse buy and easily fits into our stipend.  If your company doesn't have an educational stipend, then just shave off 12 or so Venti Caramel Macchiatos and you're there. 

A feed is a feed is a feed is a...

No, really.  It is.  I'm fairly amazed to see how few organizations use their RSS feed as the primary means for distribution for all their content (not just blog posts or podcasts or even video).  Stick anything and everything in there, like this XLR8R feed in my iTunes.  This turns iTunes into a PDF catching utility.  So, go ahead.  Use and abuse your RSS feed.

SeaWorld Welcomes Park Visitor Pics on New Site

I'm breaking my general guideline to not talk about clients on the Thicket, but I have to say how much fun it's been to witness the community respond over the last three weeks to the SeaWorld outreach to have consumers become part of the new SeaWorld.com site .  Those who submit photos that are selected for the site will get a family pass to SeaWorld.  While the site will launch with some professionally taken photos, there will be an increasing amount of consumer generated images and commentary powering the site.  The response has been terrific in terms of the daily number of images being submitted and the commentary they've been submitting too.   

Which Candidates Want to Be Your Friend?

If the U.S. presidential election is based on how many friends you have on YouTube, John Edwards becomes "43"

A candidate having a YouTube page is like saying humans breath air, but a quick survey of some candidates YouTube pages shows they don't have many friends and most have none.  Hardly a scientific exercise but I am constantly amazed how long it takes these campaign teams to understand what could be the most cost effective tools they could have. 

Unofficial U.S. Presidential Candidates YouTube Friends Rankings

1. John Edwards  - 37 Friends

2. Mitt Romney - 3 Friends

3. [TIE]  Barack Obama - 0 Friends

3. [TIE] John McCain - 0 Friends

3. [TIE] Hillary Clinton - 0 Friends

Political Correctness in the Realm of Turalyon

I never thought I'd be longing to have the birds and bees conversation with my son, but getting this notice about his inappropriate naming of a character in World of Warcraft has me there. 

The name selected for this character has been deemed as inappropriate for the World of Warcraft by the In-Game Support staff of Blizzard Entertainment. Upon your next log-in, you will be prompted to select a new character name.

For further information, please view the World of Warcraft Naming Policy and Terms of Use Agreement: (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01722p) and (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/termsofuse.shtml).

Regards,

Ekrikanix
Game Master
Blizzard Entertainment
www.worldofwarcraft.com

There's more stuff about terms of service but you get the idea.  Well, Mr. Ekrikanix the Game Master.  Thank goodness I had YouTube around so we could watch this great 1980s PSA from the Department of Health Education and Welfare.  Better parenting through keywords. 

Dave & Matt Interview the Brains Behind Bum Rush the Charts

How could an indie band and a collection of bloggers and podcasters break one song into the Top 100 on iTunes?  Porter Novelli's Matt Snodgrass and Dave Kawalec sit down with Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff, C.C. Chapman and Christopher Penn to talk about the podcasting experiment Bum Rush the Charts.

Click here to listen (28:41)

Finally Joosted - Thank You, C.C.!

C.C. rocks, literally.