Ishbareaders will remember the sleuthing work that Alex B. did in uncovering the Misleading Water Filter Comparison Chart, which ranks "Aquasana" as number one but hides the fact that it's sponsored by... Aquasana. There's been some back-and-forth between President of Sun Water Systems, maker of the Aquasana water filters, me, and various other folks who feel that Mr. Strand was not being above board.

Yesterday a satisfied Aquasana customer, "Miguel," posted here about his wonderful experience with Aquasana.. "After all, I wanted a water filter that would do the best job, not the one who I thought had the best marketing team," says "Miguel."

Curious, I looked up where "Miguel" was posting from. Hmmm -- his IP is 67.152.98.19 in Fort Worth, TX, home of... Sun Water Systems! And it's the same IP used earlier by.... Charles Strand, President of same!

As Henry David Thoreau said, "Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk." Ladies and gentlemen, we have a Sock Puppet. This from a man who wrote here: "I've always been suspicious of people who make defamatory remarks, but use aliases to do so. If you feel good about what you are saying, why use an Alias..."

You lose! Good day sir!

Update: He wrote again, still claiming to be Miguel, and clearly not understanding what an IP address is. I've closed the thread, since I really have better things to do than argue with a sock puppet about water filtration marketing.

While I appreciate the drugs that are keeping my low-grade flu at bay, I do not need your "Cool Burst Caplets" that taste minty for the two seconds that they are in my mouth. Plus, they turn my tongue blue.

That is all.

"It's not the dead that concern me about Halloween. And it is not the impact of all that sugar on the weight of our kids. No, it's the dead-weight loss, or pointless lost utility of the entire enterprise. That likely has a dollar value that exceeds $1.5 billion annually. American citizens squander more than a billion and a half dollars a year on an economically inefficient holiday."

-- Halloween Is an Economist's Biggest Nightmare

Via Rebecca's Pocket.

Waaay back in 2004, I wondered why the media companies didn't just flood P2P networks with fakes. Of course, they did, and more. MediaDefender is a company that's hired by the likes of HBO and BMG to fight piracy. But they're not merely "flooding the zone" with decoy files. MediaDefender, which apparently can't hire a decent web designer, just had months of internal emails leaked -- to BitTorrent, of course. Petard, hoist, etc. The emails reveal that the company tried to set up its own video sharing site (Miivi.com) for the sole purpose of snagging illegal file-sharers. More on this story over at Ars Technica.

Everywhere I see people with the squarish Fiji Water bottles. I want to collar them and say, "don't you know what the environmental cost is for drinking that stuff?" I mean, bottled water in general is bad. Especially if you live in a place (like, say, the United States of America) where the drinking water is fine to begin with. But shipping water from half-way around the world? Are you kidding me? One guy calculated that 1 liter Bottled Fiji Water uses 26 Liters Water + 1 Kg Fossil Fuel + 1 Pound CO2. Granted those are back-of-the-envelope calculations, and it's on a blog, but he's got the word "pundit" in his URL so it must be true!

Anyway, this Fast Company article is definitely worth reading (via Boing Boing).

The next time you reach for the squarish bottle from seven thousand miles away, think about what you're doing.

*An Ishpoint for the first to identify the film quote in the title.

Rands In Repose: The Laptop Herring. And Blackberries, Treos, etc., one assumes by extension. I'm as guilty of this as the next fellow. A lengthy discussion ensues as to whether a no-laptop rule is a good idea or not. Of course you could always use the powerful anti-meeting spell.

Via 43 Folders

1. Your vote counts most right now! If you voted in prior rounds, thanks! But you'll need to vote again, because it's down to the Final Five organizations. Voting ends this Sunday, August 5th! We're currently in second place, and need every vote we can to win!

2. It's for the children. Education, is you know, our future and stuff.

3. DonorsChoose is a great organization, and not just because I work there. We have a 4 star rating (that's the highest) from Charity Navigator. Amazon.com and Stanford Business School named us America's Most Innovative Charity. The New York Times calls us "the Future of Philanthropy." And did I mention that I work there?

4. You'll get to pick where the million bucks goes. If we win, we'll give out DonorsChoose gift certificates to every Amex cardmember who voted. You'll go onto the DonorsChoose website and use those certificates to fund classroom projects of your choosing, using American Express money. Pretty cool, huh?

5. It's more fun to root for David than Goliath. The current first place project is not only sponsored by Unicef, which has an annual budget of 2.7 billion dollars, but was proposed by Procter & Gamble, which had a net income of 8.7 billion dollars last year. You can read more about P&G's involvement with the Safe Drinking Water project in the New York Times: A Reverse Profit Strategy Faces a Commercial Test:

   Procter is also traveling incognito in the American Express Member’s Project, a Web-based initiative that encourages people to submit ideas for solving a societal problem. . . . Mr. Allgood entered the science and theory behind the Children’s Safe Drinking Water program. But he said that the Member Project’s rules precluded him from naming it, or mentioning Pur or Procter.

   And here's a second NYT article: P.& G. Link in Amex Contest Raises Questions of Fairness. Tomato Nation calls P&G's involvement "hinky".
   

So that's it, then! If you have an American Express card, go vote for DonorsChoose right now! Then tell everyone you know! Ishbadiddle commands you!

Found, rather accidentally and tangentially, on Emily’s personal journal: WorldCat, a collaborative cataloging of library collections. There are arguable snags, of course. I was told, for example, that the closest library where I could find John Knox’s First Book of Discipline was the Newberry Library in Chicago; this, when I know from personal experience that Yale’s Beinecke library has one just three blocks from my office. WorldCat did present me with a low-visibiilty link to Yale's own catalog. In any case, libraries are a great way to save you money and clutter. (One would think this is dog-bites-man news, but best-seller lists suggest otherwise.)

3quarksdaily didn't make my feed cut -- frankly, there's just too much good content there for me to keep up -- but Kerim tipped me to this essay on Florida's use of the Gay Index "to monitor and predict cities that could host profit-generating high-tech industries":

If Florida’s hope is that a large number of gay citizens act as a predictive index for the potential of a city to house high-tech industry, what we’re really talking about is gays as guinea pigs. Florida’s cities are aligned with patterns of habitation within cities, particularly within gentrification arguments. The familiar narrative goes: first the gays move in, then the artists, then the yuppie hipster families, then the middle class. But obviously the gays weren’t first. The narrative implies a certain kind of urban grey-zone as a beginning point, where drug-addicts, non-model minorities, and general undesirables rove the streets, leaving opened fire hydrants, burning garbage bins, and a general gritty cacophony wherever they go. That Florida first equates gays (“the new outsiders”) with immigrants, and then as the precursor to the bohemian influx, demonstrates the role that the homosexual plays in this perverse narrative—bridging the gap between poor ethnics and young artists.

This role is inextricably linked with what French author Guy Hocquenghem terms “the criminalization” of the homosexual—by virtue of being gay, these citizens occupy a curious position of being criminal enough to live in the margins while white enough to make those areas appear safe. And yes, for the most part the gays in these neighborhoods are white—from London’s Vauxhaull (now also part of Brixton), Boston’s South End, and New York’s Chelsea to Chicago’s Boystown and Los Angeles’ West Hollywood. And so the gays are the guinea pigs, sent to the periphery to make it safe for young white artists and café-goers all the way through to middle class families, negotiating color and difference and mediating what is edgy and safe.

Just confirms what I've always said: Gay is the new Black. After all, is there much of a difference between the Metrosexual and the Wigger?

Local publishers McSweeney's are in some financial straits as their distributor went bankrupt, leaving unpaid revenues of $130,000. They're selling a bunch of stuff for cheap, auctioning off some art, etc.

Books I'd recommend: Icelander, reviewed here.

Voyage Along the Horizon, reviewed here.

The Riddle of the Traveling Skull, reviewed here.

Not yet read but on the shelf and very well reviewed: What is the What.

Or, there's always the colossal squid t-shirt. (Colossal modifying squid, not t-shirt.)

Go help! Go buy!

Via Good Magazine.

Especially when big companies do it. Money quote: "waste is really a design flaw."

“We are constantly being asked: Is recycling worth doing on environmental grounds?” says Julian Parfitt, principal analyst at Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a non-profit British company that encourages recycling and develops markets for recycled materials.

Studies that look at the entire life cycle of a particular material can shed light on this question in a particular case, but WRAP decided to take a broader look. It asked the Technical University of Denmark and the Danish Topic Centre on Waste to conduct a review of 55 life-cycle analyses, all of which were selected because of their rigorous methodology. The researchers then looked at more than 200 scenarios, comparing the impact of recycling with that of burying or burning particular types of waste material. They found that in 83% of all scenarios that included recycling, it was indeed better for the environment.

Via The Morning News.

Music Video Business Principles Applied To The Real World

Pepsi: Fine. Look, this television thing doesn't sound too great. What about the internet?

Promotions: No worries there: we have you covered.

Pepsi: [perking up] Ok... good.

Promotions: Yes sir, we have teams working round the clock making sure nobody can get access to your commercial.

Pepsi: That's grea... What?

Via Coudal.

Alex's investigative work last year into the connection between Aquasana and the "review" site WaterFilterComparisons.com takes a new turn: their president wrote back. I ask some further questions about this questionable marketing tactic.

Mr. Coffee-All-Over.

I am totally baffled why you would make a coffee pot that spills coffee every time you pour it.

Granted, I went low-end. I got the $24.99 DR12. (Does that stand for Dribble 12?) I don't expect it to clean itself or adjust the brew strength according to my mood. I don't need it to play MP3 files or keep track of my appointments. I just want it to heat water, drip it through coffee grounds and pour the results into my cup. Am I naive to expect this from your entry-level model?

Cornell researchers sent out résumés and cover letters to real employers for hypothetical job applicants. All had the same credentials, but the packages included subtle cues to indicate that some of the applicants were parents. (For example, a résumé might note that an applicant was an officer in a parent-teacher association.)

The goal was to find out if employers are less likely to pursue an interview if they find out that a candidate is a parent, said Shelley Correll, an associate professor of sociology at Cornell, who helped conduct the study. And the answer was “yes for mothers, no for fathers.” [Link]

Back in bidness school, the conventional wisdom was that cause-related marketing (think Newman's Own) would not command a premium price, but ceteris paribus would influence a buyer to pick the do-gooder item.

A couple of b-school profs proved that wrong. They took a look at eBay purchases for similar items, that did and did not benefit charities: USNews.com: Money: The Price of Charity. They found an average of a 5% premium paid for items sold through Giving Works.

Hat tip to my colleague Amy W..

Water buffalo: Worst possible Christmas present? A complaint that Heifer isn't really matching a single water buffalo purchase with a single donation prompts someone to go out and buy their own water buffalo.

Of course there are worse examples of philanthropic marketing: Red Cross chapter installs fearmongering terror billboard.

To all the dear friends Jay and I were supposed to reunite with in New York this weekend: We're not coming. Jetblue has grounded us.

We just got home from from Oakland International Airport, where after sitting around for several hours we were told that our full flight was canceled because... wait for it... they couldn't find any flight attendants to work it. The desk agent
announced that the plane was there, the pilot was there, but somehow the flight crew had not managed to make it and there was no way to find anyone else anytime soon. (Did they try Craigslist?)

Among bad airline experiences, this was a new one on me. As we waited in line, l got out my laptop and searched Jetblue.com for the next flight we could get on. This being a holiday weekend, there were no available flights tonight, nothing tomorrow and nothing even on Saturday. I remembered that the last time a flight we were on had been canceled, on America West, we had been rebooked for the next morning on another airline. But when we got to the head of the line, it became clear they had nothing like this even remotely in mind. After deepsixing our vacation through poor planning, all they were willing to give us was a refund or a flight credit, the terms of which they could not explain at the time. We were told that, who knows, the company might change its mind tomorrow, but for now, get your luggage and go back where you came from.

Until now I have been a big fan of Jetblue and its cheap nonstop flights between NYC and the Bay Area. It had never occurred to me to that there were any customer benefits to code-sharing, "alliances" or other partnerships between airlines. Not that I have any idea whether such arrangements would have helped in this case. But if incompetent America West can get us moving 14 hours after a cancellation and Jetblue needs 48 hours to do the same, then maybe there are downsides to the Jetblue model that I haven't appreciated before. If we wanted
to be in New York two and a half days from now, we would have taken Amtrak.

My dilettante interest in the Semantic Web has mostly been limited to thinking about making this blog. But recently I've been wondering how I can apply some of these ideas to DonorsChoose. (For a primer on the SemWeb, read Paul Ford's piece and this Wikipedia article.) Specifically, how can we use microformats to increase access to microphilanthropy? (I've been learning more about microformats from microformats.org and its listservs.)

DonorsChoose both gives grants (to teachers) and receives them (from the public). We have thousands of proposals that public school teachers have posted on our site, and individuals can give directly to those projects. Similar microphilanthropy sites include Kiva, Modest Needs, Global Giving, and GiveMeaning. All are essentially philanthropic marketplaces that bring together givers and recipients. And thus all could benefit from opening our data in a way that would make them accessible beyond our own websites.

Picture the following mashup possibilities:

• Phil has just moved to Brooklyn, and wants to get involved with his new community. He enters his address into a Philanthropic Mashup site (made with Yahoo Pipes?) which aggregates local funding needs. He can filter those needs by cost, by type of program, and by demographics of the recipients. He decides to fund a classroom project at DonorsChoose and make a Back-to-Work Grant to a local family through Modest Needs.

• Jennifer has an old computer monitor she wants to donate to a local school. She calls a few schools but no one needs a monitor. She is able to search for local organizations that are seeking computer monitors, and finds a nearby women's shelter that is in need, so gives it there instead.

• Ashley is teaching her fifth grade class about water quality. They go to the Philanthropic Mashup site and find water quality projects all over the world. They decide to raise funds for one of those projects in Burkina Faso, sponsored by Global Giving. Later they follow up by looking for other projects in the same village, and find a Kiva loan for a new small business there.

• John is a programmer in Topeka who wants to help out literacy organizations, a special passion of his. He posts an offer of services his blog, with details of the hours he wants to commit and the types of services he offers. A literacy program in Saskatchewan has need of his skills, and is able to find John through Google because he has marked up his offer with the proper microformats.

• The Bailey Foundation wants to improve its outreach and reach more nonprofits with its Animal population control grants program. It posts data on its grant program (available amount, application deadline, etc.) on its site. An animal shelter that has never heard of the Bailey Foundation is able to find them and get funding for its Spay Day program.

These are the kinds of things that microformats could make possible. We at DonorsChoose have been talking about applying microformats to our proposals (each has its own page) to make them semantic, but none of the existing microformats seem to fit what we're doing. I also recently talked with Tom Williams at GiveMeaning who is also interested. I'm posting this here as what I hope will be part of a larger conversation about microformatting microphilanthropy.

Ideally we would have a microformat "hGive". This would allow organizations that are seeking contributions / in-kind donations / volunteers to use it, as well as organizations/people who are looking to volunteer, donate, etc. (I'm thinking of online volunteer clearinghouses such as New York Cares which exist in most US cities I believe.)

Here are some of the potential parameters:

• direction: seeking or offering?
• medium: cash or items or volunteers?
• cost: (perhaps other pricing data like minimum donation, payment types accepted -- not sure what the standards are for price data among other microformats). Also, loan or grant? (For example, Kiva and ModestNeeds give loans, DonorsChoose and Global Giving give grants). There also could be total cost vs. cost remaining, interest rate data for loans, etc.
• date: for expiration dates, volunteer event dates, application deadline dates, etc. Cf. hCalendar standards.
• demographic: some kind of data about the recipients -- avg income?, number of people the project will serve, etc.
• geotag: where is it?
• guarantor: is there an organization that guarantees this request? This would separate an individual asking for help (I need a loan) from an organization asking for help on behalf of an individual (Modest Needs will provide a loan to the individual whose identity and need they have confirmed).
• keyword tags: ("education," "Shakespeare," "clean water" etc.) The Foundation Center's Foundation Directory has a list of Foundation Fields of Interest which could be the basis for a standard Program Type list.
• description: The executive summary.

I'm sure there are other possibilities / desiderata, especially around volunteer projects (one time vs ongoing, group vs individual, etc) but this is what comes to mind.

If there were an implementable standard, I'm pretty sure I could get DonorsChoose to start using it in the nearish future. And then, of course, Utopia Ensues.

[12:54] thehomelesshelper: hey
[12:55] meverettlane: hello
[12:55] thehomelesshelper: whts up
[12:56] thehomelesshelper: you have a blog?
[12:56] meverettlane: i do. do i know you?
[12:56] thehomelesshelper: nope
[12:56] thehomelesshelper: I wanted to knoiw
[12:56] thehomelesshelper: if you could help promote a good cause
[12:58] meverettlane: how did you find my IM address?
[12:58] thehomelesshelper: yahoo groups
[12:58] thehomelesshelper: see
[12:58] thehomelesshelper: I have a website
[12:58] thehomelesshelper: that helps homeless
[12:59] thehomelesshelper: like basically I collect donations until I reach a large sum then I give it to a homeless person so that it can help them out in a huge way instead of a small way
[12:59] thehomelesshelper: and I make a video of me giving them the money so that everyone else can see how much happiness they have brought by donating
[13:01] thehomelesshelper: just take a look at my site
[13:01] thehomelesshelper: www.thehomelesshelper.com
[13:02] thehomelesshelper: what do you think?
[13:07] thehomelesshelper: im not a scam if thats what your thinking, im just trying to help some homeless people
[13:10] meverettlane: three things:
[13:11] meverettlane: 1) I used to work for an organization that helped the homeless, and I think that large cash disbursements are not the best way to help homeless people.
[13:12] meverettlane: 2) I have my own nonprofit that I work for now, and that's what I encourage my blog's readers to support.
[13:12] meverettlane: 3) i don't like being digitally "chugged."
[13:16] meverettlane: most of the chronically homeless are either mentally ill, or addicted to drugs / alcohol, or both. A big chunk of cash will not help them.
[13:18] meverettlane: if you really want to help someone who is in need, I would suggest www.modestneeds.org

2007 Edition

The Coming Collapse in Housing

Grant has some interesting thoughts on the meaning of Douglas Coupland's endorsement of the Blackberry Pearl:

This Blog Sits at the: Douglas Coupland and the Blackberry Pearl

When Coupland endorses a consumer good, he contradicts his cultural significance. In the process, he extinguishes the part of the credibility that made him a suitable celebrity endorser. This damage to Coupland's celebrity inflicts harm on the Blackberry brand. The "meaning mechanics" of this marketing campaign are ill advised.

Maybe he's endorsing it... ironically.

It can't be much worse than using Janis Joplin's "Mercedes Benz" in an ad for a Mercedes Benz.... Of course, she wasn't around to complain.

One Bank

"In other words, you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning while on your way home from purchasing a winning Lotto ticket with your wife, Jessica Alba, the first lady of the United States."

Richard Roeper on the latest McDonald's contest, via Obscure Store and Reading Room.