Obligatory quote: “Cherish your yesterdays, dream your tomorrows but live your todays.”

Thank you, Phillip Vandervoort. ;-)

And so we get to the order of business. I would like to thank 3/4th of my address book for sending me chain mails ‘which they usually don’t do but hey you never know’, so in the past year:

• I’ve won at least 7 big lottery tickets, who’ve apparently gotten my e-mail address because some friend enroled me. Party invitations will follow as soon as the cash comes in!
• About 150 times, my hotmail account would have been deleted unless I would forward an email to all people in my address list, for which Bill Gates (who is still giving away his fortune) then would donate 1 cent per email I’d receive back, and I have received MANY!!!
• I have accumulated 3000 years of bad karma and have died about 50 times for all the e-mails my spam catcher actually caught and thus they never reached me, unfortunately. So I could not take the appropriate actions.

So, given that last fact I need to spend my fortune fast ! But:

• I donated a lot of money to the poor litte Amy Bruce, a young girl with a Nigerian bank account who has been in the hospital for over 7000 times (which is really bad, especially since the girl still remains 8 years old, even since the first email was sent out in 1995)
• I didn’t receive the free Nokia cell phone yet which I was supposed to have had because I would be the next winner if I would put my name and email address on that list and send it to 25 friends, but I haven’t given up hope yet!
• I did enter my name amongst 3000 others on a petition to save the starving and nearly extincted shaven red-blue scaled yellow-feathered night owl, so I contributed to the protection and safe-keeping of nature and such.
• I have learned that the recipe for TRUE LOVE (combined from 3 emails) is in fact to write a boy’s/girl’s name on a piece of paper, think really hard about him/her whilst scratching your butt when holding your breath and then running up and down the stairs 7 times on your bare feet after a walk through the grass filled with morning dew. AND I expect this true love to call me the day after tomorrow at exactly 12.45 PM CET.
• I have received at least 18 poems of the Dalai Lama, and by reading them aloud 7 times in a row each, that should kind of bring me guaranteed luck for the next 3752 years (which would compensate with the 3000 years of bad karma accumulated and mentioned above)
• I have ordered 3 backup hard disks to cover the potential virus damage of the trojan horse that none of the known virus scanners could see but (combined from 5 emails) that is only text based with one image of a naked lady and would delete my entire C: drive while playing Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway To Heaven’ during a tilted screen as if Titanic would sink, as soon as the email would open.

So, I think it was a good year, and I expect 2008 to be at least as good. And by the way:

IF YOU DO NOT COPY-PASTE THIS BLOGPOST WITH YOUR LEFT HAND IN AN E-MAIL IN THE NEXT 10 SECONDS AND SEND IT TO AT LEAST 8500 PEOPLE, A GIANT DINOSAUR FROM SPACE IS GOING TO EAT YOUR FAMILY TOMORROW AT 5.30 PM SHARP, NO MATTER WHAT TIMEZONE YOU ARE IN.

Just so you know.

.
Thanks for the idea, Arns. It made me feel better, just like you promised.

Then very recently, somebody said: hey did you know the tags on Spock for your name are [list of all tags here, going up to 30 tags], and that just pisses me off. If I choose not to be on a network, by which law has this network the right to add me and to add tags to my name? Seriously, this is becoming a dangerous precedent. I’d like to compare it with the telemarketing lists of companies that call you to ask for your valued opinion or to offer you an extremely exceptional product. This is wrong. Very wrong.

It appears to me, Spock scraped my linked-in profile and added every word of my work history as a tag. Not only do I think linked-in needs to file a complaint about this, because Spock is leeching on their network, I also think that Spock is violating my privacy by taking data from a site I enrolled to, who specifically promised to take care of my data very well. Spock breaks this promise by nicking my data.

To me, this ties the knot for social networking. Screw it. I’ve had enough. I’m going to make everything private and send emails to every service I did not sign up for that holds my data, to kindly ask them to remove it. Other than that, I think the time calls to have an organization of some sort where you can enlist, a little bit like we have the Robinson list for emails and marketing actions. If you’re on that list, nobody is entitled to add you to their service unless they have specific approval.

Which then brings me to another thing I’m kind of bothered about. I use social networks to add people I know, with experience in a certain field, so I can contact them when I need to. Facebook is ruining this for me. Last time I logged in, I had vampire invitations, zombie invitations, snowball fight requests, pillow fight requests and so on. As much as that seems funny, it’s totally useless and a waste of time. Other than the fact that most of the applications then ask you to invite all your friends to join, which I definitely don’t want to seeing the professional nature of some relationships, I still have my serious doubts about the sense it all has to make. Is social networking really all about recruiting a zombie army? About converting people to vampires? To me it isn’t. And I’m tired of it. I will kick out any entertaining application on Facebook and strip it down to a minimum, because the day this thing turns loco, I don’t want to bomb people I respect with a load of crap.

Today, when you look around, social networking is all about entertainment. The level of seriousness and of trust has dropped to the likes of an average show in NBC or Fox. Now people make lists of best friends, and when they did that, they invite you to compete to become bestest friend. And if you’re on the bestest friends list, you can go through a selection process and become part of an entourage… Jeez. I have better things to do. If you want to connect with me, you know where to find me. If you want to add me, sure give me a reason and I will add you. If you want to send me a private message with a question, go ahead and I’ll answer. But please leave me alone with all the other sideshows and gadgets. Really.

1. My graduation paper that got awarded with a ‘bachelor award of excellence’ in Flanders was actually written in 3 hours because I had forgotten the due date and was only remembered of it because a fellow student had changed his nickname on MSN into ‘f*cking paper, I hate you’. So I asked him what was up and he said he had been working on it all night because it was due at 1 PM. At that time it was 11 AM. I handed in mine at 3 PM (had to take the train to school etc) – The paper was supposed to be around 20 pages and I had to put in over 10 pages worth of screenshots to make it. And still people thought it was good. Hah.
2. When I was still young and innocent, I’ve been an altar boy for several years in the church in my street, until the priest caught me eating all the Hosts before the service and also because I kind of lost interest in the entire ‘church thing’. It was pretty cool to ring the bell too early or too late though, because that really annoyed the priest and the entire church was looking at you in a ‘when the hell is he going to hit the gong’ kind of way. Sheer power :)
3. I was a loner during elementary school and I bought off friendship with candy. During lunch recess we got to play soccer, and I always had to be the goalie because I was a little more fat than the other guys of my class. They were also playing in local youth teams so I never got to play ‘in the field’. Then we got to the finale of the inter-class competetion and we ended up taking penalties. All the wizzkids missed their shot, or it got blocked by the goalie. Then, because we ran out of ‘pro’ players, I finally had the chance to actually try to make a goal. I kicked the ball right under the cross of the goal and all of the sudden I was everyone’s friend, at least for the next week. Then I got back to being the goalie because no one else wanted to do it.
4. I loved to draw and doodle when I was in high school and did some graffiti work back in the days, mostly on bridges or electricity cabins next to railways. I used the skill to write the names of the girls and boys in my class in some fancy urban style and they loved it. It made me less of a loner. I had a few anarchistic, anti-establishment friends when I was about 15 or so, but I needed a look-out for a nightly job and invited them to come along. I planned do to a nice piece of futuristic city-scapes, but all they wanted to do was spray things like ‘fuck the state’ and ‘imperialistic whores’. I started bombing the wall, but since the punks were smoking and drinking and spraying themselves, they failed to keep an eye open for possible witnesses. Then the cops arrived and we had to flee on our bikes, into the night. I never cycled so fast in my life. I bet at that time I could’ve beaten Lance Armstrong or so. Anyway, I never got caught because I was still sober. The two punks got arrested and they really wanted to tell my name to the cops, but they didn’t know it. Hah. Hard to tell on someone if you don’t have a name. The two punks had to pay for the repainting of the bridge, and four months later when it was done, I put a nice new piece over the fresh white walls. Felt great.
5. I played classical guitar for over 6 years, finished my classes of music theory and all that, but stopped going to the music school because I never got to play on an electrical guitar like the guys from Metallica, which was why I started studying guitar in the first place.

Bonus, because I got four sticks:

1. I participated in the Belgian Championship of 1995 for the “Magic: The Gathering” fantasy card game. I ended up with the last ten.
2. My dad and me are bee keepers. Every summer we harvest honey from them. It just fascinates me how they live, what they do and I can spend hours just sitting in front of the boxes, watching the bees fly in and out.

Hmm. Who should I pass this on to? Kris? Oh, no you just got it. Most of the other bloggers I know or read have already been tagged with this in one way or the other, or they’re not into personal things on their blogs. I’ll just ask it out in the open. Whoever wants this stick, drop a line in the comments and I’ll link you here.

Update:
First stick goes to Grapplica | second stick goes to Darren Straight

“A cargo container that apparently fell from a ship washed up on the Outer Banks of North Carolina on Thursday and spilled thousands of bags of Doritos brand tortilla chips on the beach. People collected the chips, which were apparently still fresh due to their airtight packaging. It was unknown which ship had lost the cargo or to what port it was bound.”

(source:Pilot.com)

Pictures by Donna Barnett

Visit Climatecrisis.net for more info | download the .pdf
The trailer has been posted to YouTube

Over the last two days, Google and YouTube executives have compiled an extensive list of ways to integrate the two features. There’s now plans to soon incorporate YouTube videos into Google search results, and to make YouTube part of Google’s AdSense advertising feature, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.”

Says Coolz0r: Good, at least the videos will start loading now and no longer slow down the blog. Oh no, wait…

“YouTube founder Chad Hurley, during the same call, said that it was Google’s “revolutionary ad program that inspired us.” Plus, he added, “we wanted to remain independent. By working with Google, that’s still the case.”

Says Coolz0r: Damn. At least make Google host the videos… for the love of blogs and loading time…

Google to buy YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.

Says Coolz0r: stock isn’t going to put butter on the bread, but okay. Let’s hope the AdSense brings in enough. Oh wait. There are hundreds of videos that violate the terms… hmm. A round of user-banning is coming up. The delete button is going to need replacement. Anybody knows a factory that produces ‘delete’ buttons? Major client coming up… :)

Is Google now responsible for all the illegal content? If so: lawyers, aim your arrows!

$1.65 billion. $1.65 billion. (I had to type it twice to fully comprehend.)

I thought YouTube was estimated on $1 billion. Did Battelle know? Even he thought $1 billion was way too much. Now it’s 65% more. Looks like the GOOG guys are trying to get rid of their stock. How much is there left to give away anyway?

Ah well. Good luck, YouTube, and congrats Google.

*continues living*

Less than three months after launching its quasi-social-networking site aimed at teens, Wal-Mart has shut down the Hub. [...] “The Hub” was designed by Wal-Mart to allow teens to “express their individuality” but it screened all the content, informed parents when their children joined and forbade users to e-mail one another. [...] In August, the site attracted 91,000 unique visitors, according to ComScore Networks. Social-networking giant MySpace.com garnered 55.8 million unique visitors the same month.

Okay. So let’s put it in perspective: there are quite some cars out there, but I think there’s one missing especially for teens, namely mine. So I create a car, but it has no doors so you have to crawl in the way I tell you to. If you turn on the radio, I’ll make sure your parents know what station you tune in to, for how long and what music you listened to. You can only pick up people who have an RFID chip that unlocks the window, otherwise they won’t get in the car. For evey friend that enters to drive along, I’ll contact your parents and inform them who you picked up, where you picked them up and how long they rode with you. See how stupid that sounds? Yet still, WallMart thought it would work. I guess not.

From the start people have been saying that the WallMart approach isn’t the right approach. Teens don’t want you to talk to their parents about what they do online and who they know. It’s the reason the internet is so popular. You can be whoever you want, talk to whoever you want to talk and block anyone you don’t like. Why would anyone want to give up that freedom, when it’s only a click away?

He said he’d been a soldier in Iraq, and showed me the metal tags he wore around his neck. He said he was a Stealth Fighter pilot, but was sent to Iraq to fly another type of plane because he had to deliver goods. Apparently, one way or the other, he got shot somewhere last week and was on his way home. The bullet normally would’ve hit him in the shoulder, but he was wearing a backpack and the bullet got diverted by an object he had put away in the small pockets attached to the girdle you wear the backpack with, so it ended up above his heart. He spoke South African and English and said he had a house in Cape Town, although he was in the US Air Force. He also said why he wanted to go to the building of the Red Cross. In Baghdad he and his buddies found a fifteen year old girl who spoke English fluently. She said she had been abducted by her father three years before and that she had been forced to stay in Iraq. They’ve turned over the girl to the Red Cross, and today she would be in Brussels. So, since he was here too he wanted to go visit her. One of the next few days the girl will be reunited with her mother.

The soldier also said he had to get to the Red Cross headquarters to pick up some money, so he could go home. Because the man obviously had a lot of pain (he showed me the wound, which was the first time ever I saw a bullet wound, and it looked really serious) I figured he wasn’t going to make it to the Red Cross building on foot, or that it would take him a really long time and a lot of pain. He had no money. So, I went to the cash machine and withdrew some money. Then I took him to a taxi, explained the driver where he had to take the man, paid in advance and went back to the meeting place where Tom in the meanwhile was steadily disturbing traffic. So, instead of donating to Greenpeace this year, this was my contribution to a better world. … And actually, I’m feeling quite satisfied. Good luck, stranger!

Wisdom on a coffee cup.

At night, or on the train to and from work, I read feeds. I don’t always want to, but I know that if I want to keep up with “what’s new”, I have to. Last night I didn’t feel like reading much, but when I finally went to bed, I realised that I had been reading for over four hours. I felt tired, but also satisfied, because I know more than when I did before I started reading. Even though I didn’t want to read in the first place.

It’s funny people have this kind of behavior. Today I read an article on Kinetic Ideas, and Wendy blogged about the exact same feelings I’ve been having. It felt good to know that I wasn’t alone. She put things in the exact same way I think about them and connects it to marketing:

Last night, I went for a run.

Did I want to go for a run?

No, not really. I wasn’t in the mood. I wanted to sit on my couch and read a book. But I went anyway because exercise is a non-negotiable activity. I know if I want to stay fit and healthy, that I have to exercise.

In the same way, marketing is a non-negotiable activity for the well-being and longevity of your business. Will you want to do it? Not always.

But do it anyway. A long-term commitment to marketing is the best way to keep your company “fit.”

Very often you find yourself doing things you don’t really want to do, but you do them anyway. The metaphor of the drops and the bucket seems quite in its place here. It’s the total amount of small drops that eventually fill up the bucket. It’s the small amount of data that you collect every time you read something that forms your total knowledge archive in your head. It’s the things you blog, even if you don’t really feel like blogging, but you do it anyway because in the end, you just know it’s all worth it. It’s the things you do, that you can’t explain if someone asks you about it. Those things are the ‘just because’ answers to people who ask you why. They are non-negotiable. You know why you do it, and people who think like you understand. To others they seem useless, but those others do not always see ‘the picture’ the way you see it.

Faces4Lebanon.org seeks to demonstrate the solidarity of people with Lebanon and the Lebanese people. Millions of people around the world are calling for an immediate halt of all acts of aggression against Lebanon, and the humanitarian catastrophe that is worsening everyday.
Faces4Lebanon.org aims to spread the words of millions who want to send a message to the world that they are against all acts of violence and aggression. By publishing your photo on Faces4Lebanon.org, you will contribute to the buzz we want to create globally and attract as much media attention as possible in a highly civilized and unique manner. Furthermore, your contribution will document the world’s solidarity with Lebanon and the widespread infuriation from this aggression on Lebanon.

Stop the madness! War isn’t the answer! It never is!

via Houtlust

A friend of mine is a senior designer for MTFR, he’s a Flasher. He’s magic. He got hired by the Germaine agency to create the new IKEA mini-site, which he did with great class (Well, actually Germaine hired MTFR). The look and feel, the transitions, they’re awesome and as smooth as a baby’s behind. I’ve been sending the URL around in our agency five minutes after the site launched, about nine days ago.

So what is the site about? IKEA has a new campaign out, which translates as ‘Live Now’. It’s a site that ‘protests’ against the high expectations we need to fulfill, the stressy days we live through and the fastness of the culture we live in.

Let’s run through the site and discuss what we see:

After the ‘welcome’ message we can see 7 boxes. Starting on the right the first one we see is ‘Stressvrije Oplossingen’ (Stress-Free Solutions), which is in fact a dressed-up ‘links’ page to product planners from IKEA such as their Kitchen Planner tool, the PAX Planner (where you can design your own dressing or closet), and so on. Nothing new here, just links to online services.

Next box is ‘Kaartje Zenden’ (Send an e-card), where you can send a digital piece of cardboard to your friends by using one of the six templates. Some of the slogans are average, others are more amusing, that’s just a matter of taste. The entire point is to spread the word to your friends/colleagues/etc about the Leefnu.be website. Nothing new here either.

Next box is ‘Test Nu’ (Test Now), where the visitor is presented with some questions and is invited to indicate his level of agreeing or disagreeing by sliding a paperclip over a ruler-ribbon. It’s just a basic test with 14 questions and the end result is an analysis of ‘the factors that are keeping you from enjoying your life’. Slick design, basic questions. Afterwards you can have a detailed analysis sent to you by submitting some personal details, if you want that.

Fourth box is the ‘Antistress Manifest’, the promotional blah-blah from IKEA where they explain why they think life is moving too fast, and how they picture the stress-free life they cherish so deeply. The five points in the manifesto are just marketing the product benefits of IKEA, so nothing new here either. It’s the obligatory sales pitch, dressed up in a nice text.

The 5th box is labeled ‘Relax’. Clicking the box triggers a full-screen black pop-up with a looped audio file of ‘the sound of waves crashing on the beach’. It’s the ‘Zen’ part of the site, however playing it on my laptop, the sound reminded me of standing next to a highway in the rain with a car that passes by every once in a while. Some seagulls would have been nice. I like the idea though. Probably need better speakers for this.

The sixth box is the ‘tips’ box. It’s a brief list of tips to make your everyday life a bit less stressy. Visitors are invited to click a link and send an email with their own tips. It’s not sure what’ll happen to them, they do not seem to become enclosed in the list. Perhaps in a later phase, as promised on the site.

The seventh box is a link to the ‘blog’. This is causing quite a stir in the Flemish blogosphere, because some people seem to take it personally. I think it’s quite silly to compare a simple campaign-blog to ‘the’ list Scoble and Israel put up in Naked Conversations. It’s ridiculous. Saying that ‘IKEA blogs’ and that they’ve started a corporate blog is wrong.

First of all you could have made that up by seeing the URL. If IKEA was starting a corporate blog, they would have done it on their main URL, not in a ‘/blog’ of a campaign site. If you can’t see the difference between a promo-site and a corporate blog, you’re obviously not into marketing. Yeah, I’ve seen the blog too, and yeah, the only thing showing is a list of selected press articles that relate to the general topic of the campaign. People are invited to share their opinion and discuss the articles. They’re not blogposts. Yeah, the engine is WordPress, because that’s the easiest way to set up a discussion platform on a short notice. Maybe there wasn’t a budget to start coding their own engine, and sure as hell, there wasn’t any time. What did you expect them to do? Start a wiki? Set up a forum? All this for a campaign that will run roughly a month?

I would have done exactly the same, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Okay, they use the word ‘blog’. Big deal. That’s how people call a website that lists articles and has a commenting function for feedback. They clearly state on the landing page in the campaign site (which you have to pass before you enter the blog) that they only ‘gather existing articles from the press’ about things that relate to the campaign, and that they invite visitors to drop a comment about them. They don’t say: “welcome to IKEA’s official corporate blog”. There’s nothing wrong with using WordPress to start up a discussion platform. Some people are getting over-excited from reading the word ‘blog’, and they think they know all about it. It’s like something snaps in their head when it turns out some agency ‘dares to use WordPress’ and publishes content they stole/copied/(paid for?) from the press. No, it’s not because you run a campaign ‘discussion platform’ (to not use the word ‘blog’) that you have to set up a quest for in-house bloggers. As you might have noticed, IKEA has a lot of floor-staff who run around like ants in the store, helping customers. They don’t have time to blog. And no, appointing a fulltime blogger for a temporary local campaign site isn’t the answer either.

Really.

Disclaimer: I bought an IKEA table once, but it didn’t last long, and the closet I have put together with my brother-in-law came with crooked doors.

From Jason Kottke:

In case you’re not that good at recognizing flags and you’ve been off the world for the last decades: Israel, the US and the UK are standing alone in the right frame. That’s a sign.

There’s a lot more cursing and shouting I would like to do. Really. But I’m not going to get into this. I just hope common sense wins this fight. If the war proceeds for much longer, I’ll definitely start a wicked rant about it. But seriously. I’m pissed off because of this entire situation. And you don’t want to read me ranting when I’m pissed off. Trust me.

“…by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube’s (and its successor’s) business… in any media formats and through any media channels.”

What kind of content provider would agree to this, except for those who didn’t know? So if YouTube strikes a deal with a record company and they happen to like your tune, but not your face, they can sell your song to the record company so they can use it for a more ‘marketable’ face. Hmm. What are these guys thinking?

Another thing I want to note in the sideline: I’ve said it a few times already, YouTube speaks with two faces. As long as they benefit from the success of a clip, they won’t remove it. Even if it is against the law and legislation. The most recent thing is that video clip from Zidane’s headbutt. You really think any of the users that uploaded it paid for the rights? No. But have you got any idea what TV companies needed to pay to be able to broadcast footage from the World Cup? Millions, if not billions of dollars, euros or whatever. Seriously. Even The Times linked to the famous clip, and there are dozens of versions available, most of them are mixed with some copyrighted tune, for which no rights have been paid either. Have you seen YouTube taking these down? No. Because they benefit from the success. They can use the stats and say: hey we’ve got 100 million videos served a day. Sure. But if you only count the genuine home-made videos, how much is there left to brag with?

I can’t wait to see how they’ll ever gather the nerve to set things straight, instead of deleting an account here or there. They can cover their ass with stupid lines like: you can’t upload this or that, but in the end they keep providing the service, and actively allow for copyrighted content to become popular. Don’t tell me they don’t notice a clip that pulls millions of hits. Sure they see it. But as long as nobody complains, they’ll allow it to happen. And that’s going to cost them, sooner or later.

If they’d start removing all the clips with ’stolen music’, which means: clips with an entire song in them, and all the clips that have TV-content, they’ll not only lose more than half of their content, they’ll use a lot of users as well. And that would make them far less popular and successful than they are now.

Update:

Jennifer Nielsen, Marketing Manager for YouTube, writes:

To clarify, YouTube never intended to sell, and never obtained any rights to sell, any User Submissions on CD or other physical media. The sentence you quoted was intended to enable YouTube to syndicate all or part of our website through third party websites (including to enable our embed functionality), in mobile contexts, and similar types of syndication. (…) The sentences that were omitted in the paragraph quoted are [italicized] below in context:

For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions. However, by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube’s (and its successor’s) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the YouTube Website a non-exclusive license to access your User Submissions through the Website, and to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Website and under these Terms of Service. The foregoing license granted by you terminates once you remove or delete a User Submission from the YouTube Website.

Which makes it better and understandable.

This week’s update on PostSecret features some nice entries, I picked these two to post here:

Order the book | See the site

Related PostSecret Thingies on Marketing Thoughts:

P&G’s PostSecret Duplicate
PostSecret in USA Today
PostSecret Update
Dark Humor And Confessions

1. attackr
2. backlinkr
3. bananahammr
4. bananr
5. bashr
6. befittr
7. beggr
8. bettr
9. blogr
10. bloggr
11. blufr
12. bookmarkr
13. boomr
14. bringr
15. browsr
16. bubblr
17. bullshitr
18. calcr
19. cleanr
20. coastr
21. colr
22. colrpickr
23. contactr
24. craprr
25. cyclr
26. delivr
27. designr
28. dialr
29. dotcomr
30. drivr
31. educatr
32. empressr
33. extortr
34. fastr
35. favr
36. feedblendr
37. feedmailr
38. feedr
39. findr
40. flagr
41. flickr
42. frappr
43. frimr
44. gabbr
45. gadgetr
46. gickr
47. gpokr
48. grabbr
49. grazr
50. greenr
51. groupr
52. gtalkr
53. happycodr
54. hitchhikr
55. hungrr
56. idgettr
57. isolatr
58. lingr
59. listr
60. loggr
61. lookr
62. mappr
63. messagr
64. mmmzr
65. moviemappr
66. musiclovr
67. nabbr
68. notifyr
69. numbr
70. phrasr
71. phonebackr
72. photocastr
73. pissr
74. plannr
75. posr
76. preloadr
77. razr
78. refferrr
79. rendr
80. reportr
81. resizr
82. retrievr
83. ripplrr
84. runnr aka (rnnr)
85. scanr
86. searchr
87. seeqr
88. skinnyr
89. smartr
90. smllr
91. snipplr
92. socializr
93. soonr
94. spillr
95. splashr
96. sponsr
97. stalkr
98. strikr
99. swipr
100. taggr
101. talkr
102. tickr
103. touristr
104. trackbackr
105. treadr
106. trezr
107. twttr
108. viewr
109. waggr
110. wankr
111. wankr (I kid you not, there’s two of them)
112. webcastr
113. waymarkr
114. websnapr
115. weekendr
116. wishlistr
117. workr
118. wrickr
119. zapr
120. zooomr

If you know of any others, feel free to drop’m in the comments.

To those start-ups that haven’t decided on a name yet: do something with an ‘A’, so you’ll end up on top of the list. It’s good for your own visibility. Anyone who makes a list will rank you high. It’ll be the only way to make a difference in the r, r, r-world.

Update [07-01-2006]: I think this is about the most complete ‘r’ archive on the web today! Thanks to everyone who helped me complete the list!

Update [08-22-2006]: 100th name added!

It would be great if I could sign up ‘for real’ at i-merge (where I work now, as a student) in July and still be graduated, instead of having to wait until the end of August or the beginning of September. So I sent an email to the exam council and asked if I could redo the test in June. I didn’t hear from them for a while, and I figured it’d be an August kind of thing.

Well today at at 4 PM while I was at work, I received a phone call and they said I could redo the exam. Saturday morning at 9 AM. That’s 36 hours from now, not counting any sleep. The book for this subject (governmental communication) is 280 pages. The course is about 80 or 90 pages. Ummm.

On the one hand I like it if they try to help me graduate in June instead of in August. Really. On the other hand I think they should’ve called me sooner.

This kind of means the blogging will be low. I’ll post something in the morning, and something when I take a break. I’ll be back on full speed somewhere on Saturday.

See, the Web 2.0 is based on user contributions, and as it tries to be a mirror of real life, it happens to be reflecting nothing but junk. I saw this initiative pop-up a little while ago, and decided to tune in again to see if it was starting to work. And no. It’s not working. I browsed to Brussels which has at this time 72 posters. At first I thought: “Great!” but the second look made me realize once more that without a decent moderation, you can’t trust people to seriously contribute. I count 3 actual parties on 72 items. The rest are ads for SMS chatting, cams, dating or puzzle sites. That’s just too bad, because under normal self-regulating circumstances, this initiative could actually work. Then I went to check out other countries like Spain and Russia, and even Germany. Spain is still empty, but Russia has some nitwit’s posters that lead to a Dutch site. Germany has ads for some Japanese delivery service… boy oh boy. There’s work to be done here. How hard can it be to not screw up good things on the web?

Description from the gallery:

This is C.H. Long, a 39-year-old foreman at the JA ranch in the Texas panhandle, a place described as “320,000 acres of nothing much.” Once a week, Long would ride into town for a store-bought shave and a milk shake. Maybe he’d take in a movie if a western was playing. He said things like, “If it weren’t for a good horse, a woman would be the sweetest thing in the world.” He rolled his own smokes. When the cowboy’s face and story appeared in LIFE in 1949, advertising exec Leo Burnett had an inspiration. The company Philip Morris, which had introduced Marlboro as a woman’s cigarette in 1924, was seeking a new image for the brand, and the Marlboro Man based on Long boosted Marlboro to the top of the worldwide cigarette market.

All it takes is one good idea. I’m not going to lobby for the tobacco industry, but Leo Burnett made a brilliant decision when he thought this would save the brand. Look where the brand is now, and look at it’s image… all of that because of a simple farmer and a keen marketeer with one good idea.

Check out the rest of the pictures