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This is the personal blog of John F. Morton. It's where I talk about the stuff that interests me. Primarily technology, marketing and pop culture. If you are looking for my portfolio of work, visit johnfmorton.com. Thanks for stopping by!
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Filtered by Category: News
Two More Links To Make Your Internet Experience Complete
Opinions are like blogs, everybody’s got one. But some blogs are better than others, so I thought I’d share a couple that you might not know about. The first is focused on the ad business, the second is a thoughtful perspective on our culture. Both are worth checking out.
Ad Aged—Will Madison Avenue Become Detroit? by George Tannenbaum, as you might guess, is the advertising focused blog. I worked for George for a couple years and he’s filled with insightful and entertaining observations on the state of the advertising industry plus the state of the rest of the world. Luckily, he now shares them with the blogosphere. Check out “Daily dumbness update” for a good example of his take on the state of advertising. You can tap directly into his POV on Ad Aged every morning.
Chock-A-Blog, by the one-named author “Tom” is a little bit technology, a little bit entertainment industry, a little bit marketing, and, well, a little bit of everything else that catches Tom’s eye. It’s updated sporadically, but there is a new entry you can be sure it’s always well-written. Chock-A-Blog is where I learned about TXT of the Living Dead, the latest version of Night of the Living Dead as recreated by SMS messages. It also had a nice perspective on the end of the writer’s strike with “What to expect when you’re expecting an end to the writers’ strike”. Add to that a critique of the critiques of the new New Museum. Very varied topics, but informative. Be sure to give Chock-A-Blog a try.
Advertising • Blogging • Internet • Marketing • News • Technology • (0) Comments • Permalink
YouTubification of Election 2008, Example #2
Back in January 2007 I did a post here I called The YouTubified Election of 2008. Back then, there was a video from an anonymous source that was an attack ad, modeled after Apple’s 1984 ad, against Hillary Clinton. It didn’t spell doom for the Clinton team, but I thought we’d see more user generated videos for this election. I’ll be the first to admit this prediction didn’t come through great insight. Viral video is an obvious trend. I just find it interesting to see how it’s being used in the election.
Hillary did try to do a viral video parody of the Soprano’s finalle, but it fell flat, so I didn’t mention it here.
Today a friend told me about an inspirational video he’d seen on YouTube for the Obama campaign. Although I’m more in the Clinton camp than the Obama camp, I enjoyed the video. It feels like it has the “right stuff” to make it to viral video stardom. Check it out below.
If You’re a Verizon Wireless Customer, Your Privacy Is In Question.
How private is your private life when it comes to Verizon Wireless? If you have not specifically “opted out” of giving away your information, what you do with your phone is for sale. What kind of information is Verizon Wireless selling? According to Ars Technica, the “data on the calls you make and receive and the services that you may make use of” and “the features of your phone and its capabilities.” (Read the full article here.)
Verizon Wireless has been contacting its customers via mail to inform them of their intent to share CPNI data with “our affiliates, agents and parent companies (including Vodafone) and their subsidiaries.” The company says that customers who do not want their CPNI data shared need to call 1-800-333-9956 to “opt-out.” Upon dialing the opt-out number, Verizon customers will be prompted for their phone number, billing ZIP code, and last four digits of their Social Security Numbers (in the case of businesses, their Employer ID numbers).
Failure to opt out will be interpreted by Verizon Wireless as “consent” the company’s data-sharing practices.
This type of opted-in sharing of personal information isn’t limited to Verizon Wireless. If you read over your agreement with your credit card company, you’ll probably find a similar situation. Your privacy is yours only is you claim it in the modern age.
If you have another mobile carrier, don’t assume you are protected against this type of activity. No matter which company handles your mobile service, it’s probably worth a call to them to protect your personal information.
How Turning Off JavaScript Changes Advertising
I’ve mentioned the danger of browsing the web with JavaScript turned on before. (See the previous post here.) I encouraged you to turn off your JavaScript in that post.
To review, why exactly is JavaScript dangerous? I’ll quote a recent article I read. “The fact that JavaScript can be used… to capture keystrokes or upload files should be cause for concern and reason to disable JavaScript whenever possible.” Basically, having JavaScript “always on” allows anyone who posts a web page to the internet to run code on your computer when you visit their site or even someone else’s site that has a reference to the original site. I know of a person at my office who recently had the log in to her MySpace page stolen through a JavaScript-based phishing attack.
How does the growing awareness of the dangers of JavaScript effect us as advertisers? Just like I’m encouraging you to do here, I think fewer people will be using it in an “always on” state in the future. Since the ad industry makes great use of JavaScript — to serve ads, to track visits to our sites, to start a Flash movie, and more — we need to adapt.
Try installing NoScript and simply go surfing around the web. You’ll notice many few ads, probably no pop-ups, and no advertising page take overs. I’d bet you’ll see much less Flash animation in general too. Some of the best micro sites we see out there simply show a blank screen if you don’t have JavaScript turned on. That can and should be addressed when we build sites for clients. (See what Pigs Anonymous, one of my sites, looks like if you have JavaScript turned off by clicking the thumbnail image in this paragraph.)
Another problem we’ll run into is how we show the effectiveness of our campaigns without JavaScript. Much of the code counting visitors to sites is JavaScript based, like the popular Google Analytics. Suddenly the success of your next campaign is in question simply because we haven’t been able to count users correctly. That’s assuming we were able to get them to see it at all without JavaScript.
The solution to many of these JavaScript problems can be addresses with the concept of progressive enhancement in the web design process. Basically, you write a basic page that gets better automatically, based on the abilities the user has enabled on his or her web browser. I’ll write more about this in a later post, but for more than preview, check out DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model by Jeremy Keith, which I wrote about here.
Not convinced of the problem with JavaScript? Read the following articles.
- Internet Explorer 7 Is Still Not Safe Enough - PC World
- Ongoing interest in Javascript issues - Internet Storm Center
- Tips for Protecting the Home Computer - New York Times
- 10-Step Security - PC World
I sent a different version of this post as an email to my friends at work. If you end up reading it twice, my apologies. 
Internet Radio May Be History On May 15.
Click the banner above to visit SaveNetRadio.org. The RIAA has managed to increase the fees internet radio must pay to an extent that most experts don’t believe any internet radio station can stay in business. These are fees over-the-air stations don’t pay at all. You can kiss the brilliant Pandora service goodbye if this doesn’t get changed.