Web 2.Ouch - sense-surround vest for video games

What do sick people, prisoners, elders, and geeks have in common? Apparently the need to get prodded.

Now there is a special vest designed to let players of video games feel the punches, slams, pokes, and various other body blows that come at them during games.

Apparently the vest was designed without the virtual contact sports market in mind. In fact initially the vest marketed as a remote diagnostics tool for physicians. In other words, to:

"...give medical exams via the Internet to prisoners, the elderly, those in rural communities and other isolated people."

The medical version of the vest is more sophisticated, enabling doctors sitting at their computers to prod, poke and press patients' bodies from afar and get feedback on what they are virtually feeling, according to Ombrellaro.

I suppose the vest now has a dual use: It can beat the crap out of the gamer geeks, and then let doctors remotely diagnose their broken ribs.

What a mashup!

So, let's say you have this 100+member blog you want to move...

Alright here's the deal. I own blogsisters.com. I have hosting that I'm not using that was tied to another domain that I let expire on purpose. I would like to re-set-up Blog Sisters (don't think we can physically move a blogspot.com hosted blog?) on either wordpress or typepad.

Tell me, which platform will be able to support hundreds of members with posting privileges, and will be easy enough for all to use? Blogger has a niche in the group blogging thing--one of the things it's done right from the get go. I suppose I could start a new blogger blog and just host it myself, but part of me thinks it would be good to give the old homestead a REAL makeover. Kind of like those double-wides you see being hauled down the highway.

Thoughts, ideas, etc. are welcome.

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technorati tags: Blog Sisters, Blogger, Blogging, Wordpress, Typepad, social media, group blogging, community, women, tech, PR, advertising, business, web 2.0
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scared me there for a minute

Stowe reported that Corante lost their domain -- it's true that the once busy hub of opinion has had a hard time rising above the NOISE TIDE of 2.0 opinion holders, especially with the spammers help. But I hope they keep it going. Let's not do away so easily with the relics that helped start this party.

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so I never saw Bwana.TV before

I like it. I like the way he talks about blogging in this video - it's a good overview on blogging -- Informative without hyperbole. Nice. Thanks to the Pirillos for the link via twitter to the Halo 3 related contest that brought me to Bwana.TV.

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an order of business.

there is an important poll on the sidebar. if you haven't taken it yet, you really should as your career -- nay your LIFE -- may depend on it.

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ok so are comments working now?

just checking.

Here's the Thing

This isn't the be all end all blog design. No sirreeee. I had gotten so many emails that my blog was hanging (mostly IE users, finally including my own husband) that I decided to bare-bones it and build from there.

Allied turns 6 in a couple of weeks. There are lots of things in life I have a hard time believing. That's one of them.

P.S. PLEASE let me know if the page is loading better (or loading at all for some of you) now that I took off some of the more questionable elements. We'll see what I can get back on without compromising the speediness and general UserGeneratedFriendliness of this here blog.

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HEY - let's learn about cookies!

Guess whose kid is explaining Cookies to grownups? I'll give you one hint: baden.

The video is part of a de-mystifying cookies contest, so go over and give Mari some star-and-comment love. BYOM - bring your own milk. :-)

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technorati tags: Cookie Crumbles Contest, Berkman Center, Video, Social Media, PR,Advertising, Business, Blogging, Internet, Vlogging, Baden Baden, Mari, Cockney, E-Learning,Mommy Blogging, Paris Calling
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Dumbest Product Marketing Move of 2007 - Tampax CARDBOARD

Okay, maybe you're not a woman. But you don't have to be a female rocket scientist to figure out that the advertising you've seen recently on T.V. for Tampax Cardboard (yes, you heard right) is a very dumb example of branding for many so reasons, two of them quite obvious:

1) Tampax applicators have been cardboard for at least the 30 years I've been using them.

2) When I make my list of words that evoke feelings of comfort, absorption, and security, cardboard is way down at the bottom of that list.

I think Tampax might have gotten a clue that the new Cardboard campaign is going over like a lead brick (possibly the only material lower on my comfort list than cardboard).

If you look at the google cached images from the Tampax site, you'll see a couple product images with the new "cardboard" theme, and some images with the word cardboard. But when you click on them, the images magically transform to Tampax's Pearl branding (aaah, pearls).

Business should be wary when Great Marketing Minds invade the conference room suggesting that a re-branding or branding upgrade will help "move the needle" in terms of product sales.

Especially if they come in using the word "Cardboard."

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technorati tags: Tampax, Tampax Cardboard, Product Marketing, Marketing, Advertising, PR, Tech, Not Social Networks, Old School, Branding, Business, Bloopers

Mania is highly underrated

loling all over myself.

However, before I could fully parse the semantic pathways that were opening up before me -- even as the lanes of traffic were shutting down -- some chick comes on and says that horses have always been a part of the American way of life. "We rode into battle on them," she says. "We used them to deliver the mail..."

You know that Beatles song where they go "...found my way upstairs and had a smoke and somebody spoke and I went into a dream" and then they go AHHHH-AH-AH-AH, AH-AH-AH, AH-AH AHHHHHHHHHH.... Like that? Well, that's what happened to me. Except for the smoke part. Or the stairs, as I was, if you will recall, driving at the time.

And I thought to myself, the view through the windshield going as fuzzy as a Penthouse centerfold, well that's right! While I'd never given it much thought before now, who ever heard of the cavalry arriving just in the nick of time on cows? Or some hapless postman pushing through rain and sleet and dark of night on cowback?

When you think about it, there are a lot of things to think about.

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social marketing - contest mashup

Cool idea for a contest pointed out over at Blog Nation. Leave it to those smart Canadians to think up an interactive where's waldo hunt to promote a book, called The Frozen Thames, by Helen Humphreys. Questfortheicefox.com details the contest, which mashes up GoogleMyMaps and Facebook for a virtual treasure hunt that will award the winner a $2,000 travel voucher.

I took an interactive approach to book reading when I started Gonzo Engaged in 2001 to chronicle my reading of Gonzo Marketing, which turned into an interactive discussion with me, the author, and other readers. That was in the days before social networks, back when ebooks were the big news in the book department. It will be interesting to see other ways social networks can bring books to life in the virtual dimension.

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technorati tags: Facebook, Social Networks, Marketing, Advertising, PR, Promotions, The Frozen Thames, Gonzo Marketing, Web 2.0, Tech, Literature

Frank's Waxes Auto

No, not that kind of wax, THIS kind of wax.

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This City Just Doesn't Get It

Southern Metroginormous cities like Atlanta, which a few decades ago were towns without millions draining resources like mosquitoes at a blood mobile, have a hard time grasping when it's time to DO something about a problem. Atlanta public officials are famous for letting problems fester and grow from annoyances into crises before they even think about dealing with them.

Hence our dire situation in Georgia currently, and in Atlanta specifically: We're gonna run out of water.

"Most large metropolitan areas have systems in place where they try to be better managers of the resource than that," said Don Wilhite, who founded the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and has been involved in drought responses for at least three decades.

I'm sure most do. But not here. We're still sending water down to Florida, into some areas where no outside watering restrictions exist (we've had those restrictions here in metro Atlanta for years).

Howdy Florida neighbors! Mind if we drive down and visit your showers?

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Is that a T.V. station in your pocket...

or are you just happy to see me?

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Library d’insanité d’esprit permanent

"One of the most comprehensive libraries of psycho-social material available today."
--Publisher's Weekly

"Caveat emptor, sailor."
--RB

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technorati tags: web 2.0, social media, gonzo marketing, cooking with gas, psychology, psychosis, neurosis, delusions of grandeur, real or imagined, borderline, tri-polar, spirituality, brutality, cluetrain, pootrain, new age, healing, panic disorder, ativan, xanax, SSRI, psycho-social, cultural abyss, books
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