ChasNote

A Rube Goldberg machine in a commercial certainly isn’t a novel idea (see Honda’s), but I give Cadbury credit for delivering one that fails.

Amen, Brian. Read more at Gravitational Mass Media

.Charlie Chan at the Race Track movies

Full story at Searchblog.

This is my first mobile post. Next time I’ll throw in some content!

Among RealSimple’s Best Blogs are four of my favorites (and FM partners):

In Parenting: Cool Mom Picks and ParentHacks.

In Cooking: StartCooking.

In Organizing and Personal Productivity: 43Folders.

Congrats!

TechCrunch reports on two advertising networks for independent blog authors, first Sam Sethi’s BlogNation and then BlogCharm, both apparently stiffing their publisher partners. In the case of BlogNation, former US editor Oliver Starr published an open letter in which he includes IM transcripts in which Sam Sethi confirms payments have been wired; Starr says this turned out to be a lie. The situation at BlogCharm is arguably worse. Member sites aren’t being paid, and it’s not even clear who owns and operates the firm (from TechCrunch):

“Ownership of the site isn’t immediately clear. BlogCharm has a powered by Blog Explosion badge on it, there are no contact details aside from an online form located on Blogexplosion and the registration details for the site are hidden by a private proxy service. Blog Explosion on the other hand is registered to West Hollywood based Live Universe and sits on the same server as BlogCharm so it would be reasonable to suggest that Live Universe may well be the owner of both sites. Having said that BlogCharm (along with Blog Explosion) has changed hands at least once, having sold in June 2006 for a reported ’six figure’ sum, then at least according to the BlogExplosion forums, someone called Chris was tasked with ‘fixing’ BlogExplosion (and we’d presume the other related sites) in November this year. Whether Chris is a new owner or simply an employee given management of the site was not detailed, indeed there was no details other than a name and a promise to fix the mess. Live Universe was founded by Brad Greenspan, best known as one of the founders of MySpace and in more recent years for his opposition to News Corps acquisition of MySpace. Live Universe runs sites including LiveVideo.com, a top 1000 site online (according to Alexa), BlinkYou.com, Lyrics Download and acquired Flurl.com in October 2006.”

Eight days ago Graffiti Wall enabled comments for their users, with HP as the launch sponsor. So far 40,000 comments have been submitted (an average of 5,000 per day) under HP’s “What Do You Have to Say?” tagline and logo.

A few years ago, CNET launched an RSS product called Newsburst — partly as a special service to its most loyal news-junkie readers, and partly to convert those readers from search-click-and-leave readers into opt-in subscribers. The downside of creating a deeper relationship with readers is the crow your brand must eat if and when you discontinue the service, as CNET did earlier this week. Here’s an excerpt of the email sent to subscribers.

In my earlier piece on leading paid-content publishers investing in free, ad-supported content, I left out the most successful ad-free publisher of them all: Consumer Reports.

To be clear, there are no plans to change course over there. According to the NY Times, it has 3 million online subscribers at $26 a year, the same rate it charges print subscribers. Annual revenues are $208 million (including a few smaller publications too) with an operating margin of $28 million — not bad, especially considering it’s a non-profit.

Conversational marketing isn’t just for websites anymore! From Reuters:

“A high-priced food fight has erupted in New York, with the owner of a high-end eatery seeking revenge on the city’s top food critic, who dished out a brutal review complaining of rubbery pork and limp lettuce.
The spat is playing out in the newspapers, with restaurant titan Jeffrey Chodorow buying a defensive full-page ad in The New York Times after its food critic, Frank Bruni, trashed Chodorow’s Kobe Club with a rare rating of ‘no stars.’”