Microsoft and AMD sent out a pile of very expensive (yet trashy looking) laptops to a number of bloggers over the past week. We were told we could keep them – now after a day of minor outrage by some people they are emailing us back with the following request that we not keep them after all! And to think, I almost smashed mine in the middle of the street 10 minutes into trying to use it! I did figure out some of the basics after awhile, but it’s still nothing life changing. Ok, so obviously I’m being a bit snotty here and am in a position of ridiculous privilege to get one of these things for free – I just don’t think it’s anything to get your knickers in a twist about given the state of the world.

My point is: the PR backpedal here is just silly. The original email read” “you are welcome to send the machine back to us after you are done playing with it, or you can give it away to your community, or you can hold onto it for as long as you’d like.” Now this follow up:

Marshall,

No good deed goes unpunished, right? You may have seen that other bloggers got review machines as well. Some of that coverage was not factual. As you write your review I just wanted to emphasize that this is a review pc. I strongly recommend you disclose that we sent you this machine for review, and I hope you give your honest opinions. Just to make sure there is no misunderstanding of our intentions I’m going to ask that you either give the pc away or send it back when you no longer need it for product reviews.

Thanks for your understanding, and happy reviewing,

Aaron ***

Ha ha ha – the snazzy laptop I got in the mail from Microsoft yesterday was the only way I was ever going to use Vista anyway. And I’m certainly never going to take a laptop with a stupid looking Ferrari logo on the front anywhere but home and my cube at work.

The computer itself doesn’t retail for $2k plus for nothing – it’s fast. Windows is so annoying and (to me, a Mac user) so counter-intuitive, that I’d never buy a Windows machine. My partner won’t touch the thing. I’m going to set it up to look pretty, take incoming news as if it was the 2nd half of a super large monitor and work on my Mac. Not that I’m super happy with the crash-happy, Flash-hating Macbook I have either. (That said, Parallels is a great program for testing Windows only applications.) See also oops – no new podcasts caught by iTunes for a week.

Ultimately all these companies are probably a lot like cell phone providers. Which is the least ugly one in the room? I wouldn’t chose at all if I didn’t have to.

I can’t believe they are telling me not to keep it now. What kind of blogosphere reaction were they expecting?

From IT Facts today
“Advertising on newspaper Web sites rose nearly 35% in Q1 2006 from Q1 2005, while print ad revenue rose 0.3%, Newspaper Association of America reported.”

Here comes the giant BUT

“Combined print and online advertising revenue rose 1.8% to $11.1 bln in Q1 2006, with spending for print ads accounting for $10.5 bln.”

So what we don’t have here are stats about ad revenue lost by print into the evil clutched of the online world. One way or the other the importance of print to advertisers remains clear. Perhaps the real moral of the story is that most advertisers are still not taking online media as seriously as it ought to be taken? I’m sure there are a thousand thoughts you could think based on the above handful of facts – I just thought readers here might like to see them.

Joan Stewart at the Publicity Hound blog wrote today about a mother/child yoga DVD that needs help with online marketing. The DVD producer ends her request for advice with the following:

“But in order to do that, we need to be out there! I’ve sent press releases, done a local news guest segment, gotten reviews, created an interactive website, have product placed in a few specialty stores, done expos, etc.

“But I need that Big Thing. What am I missing? What’s one huge thing that might put us on the map? Please help, Hounds.”

I watched the DVD trailer, and it is pretty neat. So I posted the following comment on Joan’s blog. Anyone have any thoughts on the question or this advice?

Not to rain on the parade, but some people contend that the new social media emerging (like blogs) is not at all about the Big Thing – but rather the aggregate result of lots of small things. That said, this vid has a great trailer! You might consider putting it on YouTube, engaging some yoga and mama bloggers in conversation (see, for example http://technorati.com/blogs/motherhood ) and offering them the short code snippet that will allow your video to be shown on their site. Trying to get bloggers to cover your product can be difficult, but the bottom line is reading their blogs before hand and really engaging with them. Beyond that, I’ve bookmarked the best resources I’ve found for pitching bloggers for coverage at http://del.icio.us/marshallkirkpatrick/pitchingbloggers

Good luck!

One thing I didn’t think to write at the time is that I would make sure to set up search feeds for references to the video and make sure to respond to any coverage. I would not set up search feeds for terms like “mother and baby Yoga” because making a commercial pitch any time anything related is blogged about would be in poor taste.

Technorati Tags: promotion, video, YouTube, yoga, bloggers

Mike Sansone, whose blog I’m happy to find, has made a nice post on how to create your own item to include at the end of each post in your RSS feed – a FeedFlare for Feedburner actually. Very nice. He figured it out so that he could add a “make a donation” link for the RSS feed for Interplast.

In depth instructions are also available on the Feedburner site.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
RSS, FeedFlare, Feedburner

Very cool looking online asynchronous event going on over at Tech Soup today, all about how nonprofits can use social networking applications like Friendster, Tribe,
Linked in, My Space, Gather.com, and Frappr in a profesional context. Some pretty prominent people will be there from some of these social networking service providers. Full details after the jump.
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Update: See also this story on Dutch UNICEF AdWords activities.

Couldn’t help but notice after doing a Google search for Amnesty these paid results:

You’ll notice that the political right has got its grips on this one. I think this is a way underutilized means of promotion, especially by small radical organizations. You get your links on these lists by chosing keywords, bidding on a price-per-click and setting a maximum daily expenditure. It doesn’t have to be expensive. Here’s where you do it.

Check out this dismal example, paid results for “immigrant rights”. There’s only one paid result. That means that if you bid anything – you’re going to be at least the number 2 result on the right had side of the page in search results for “immigrant rights.”

More, better and stranger after the jump.
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Wow, with one day left in the bidding, 5 ad spots on Rocket Boom are currently going for $16,000. Am I understanding correctly, though, that they’ve set a base (reserve) price that’s even higher than this? Sheesh I don’t understand money.

Update: I just followed that link again and it’s up to $30,000 now! And it says the reserve is still not met!