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The race among some of the biggest online companies to reveal more of the instant opinions and information flooding across the internet in real time has intensified, with Microsoft and Facebook each announcing important initiatives in recent days. The initiatives reflect the broader impact on the internet that is starting to be felt by the soaring popularity of Twitter, the service that lets users broadcast short messages.
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I recently had a twitter conversation with Chris Abraham about driving the appropriate car in this economic downturn. Chris said his 2001 classic and subdued BMW was a “pass”, or “OK” in today’s economy, but I don’t doubt his car was originally purchased to convey the exact image he desired, appropriate to himself and the times.
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Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, post links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.
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“A fascinating read! Security problems existing today on the Internet – spam, malware, spyware, hackers – can be solved by notaries and paralegals with no expertise in technology. We are the key to a worldwide security solution, and we can start independent practices to deploy new identity services. Kussmaul’s book shows how attestation professionals are needed now to administer face-to-face enrollment and identity authentication. This is the most exciting news I’ve had about my profession in years!
links for 2009-07-02
links for 2009-07-01
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Since our inception, we have been focused on blogger relations and blogger outreach. Social media is our bread and butter, not just something we tacked on. Over the last several years, we have prospected over 40,000 bloggers across a wide-variety of
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The Permanent 2-for-1: Buy any one of our themes and get another one, COMPLETELY FREE!
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What Is Scitable? A free science library and personal learning tool brought to you by Nature Publishing Group, the world's leading publisher of science. Scitable currently concentrates ongenetics, the study of evolution, variation, and the rich complexity of living organisms. As you cultivate your understanding of modern genetics on Scitable, you will explore not only what we know about genetics and the ways it impacts our society, but also the data and evidence that supports our knowledge.
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In any case, Chris Abraham has a long post on how Twitter’s hype cycle is BETTER than Second Life’s hype cycle and it’s because – well, because it’s light, and cute, and it’s easy to use. Which is fine, except that if I wanted a light, cute, easy to use version of Second Life I’d restrict it to being a platform where all you could do is post 140 character messages and call it a day. I wouldn’t need a client download to accomplish that.
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In celebration of Mamalois's birthday, 15 family members are off for three weeks in China. This is our communal blog. Join us!
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"Twitter is what Second Life wasn't," marketer Chris Abraham argued recently in Advertising Age, seeking to quell anxiety that the current media hype about Twitter means that it's inevitably destined to suffer the backlash Second Life did in 2007. Unlike…
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Nachdem Chris Abraham am 26.06.2009 noch in seinem Artikel schrieb, dass Twitter genau das sei, was Second Life nicht ist: “Light, Cheap and Open”. Zu deutsch übersetzt, Twitter brauche keine Installation, kostet nix und ist offen für alle. Nunja, klingt auf den ersten Blick ja schon logisch, nur ich weiss ja nicht wie der gute Herr Abraham darauf kommt solche generell total unterschiedlichen Programme miteinander zu vergleichen. Zuviel Kaffee oder so, was solls *g*. Jedenfalls bekommt “Vadder Abraham” nun auch sein Fett weg und zwar von Wagner James Au, Autor auf New World Notes. Denn Wagner holte zum Gegenschlag aus mit seinem Bericht.Denn für ihn ist Second Life das, was Twitter nicht ist: “Unique, sticky & profitable” – Einzigartig, bindend und profitabel!
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"Twitter is what Second Life wasn't," marketer Chris Abraham argued recently in Advertising Age, seeking to quell anxiety that the current media hype about Twitter means that it's inevitably destined to suffer the backlash Second Life did in 2007. Unlike Twitter, Abraham notes, Second Life is not "light, cheap, and open". That is, it requires a large client install, has relatively demanding hardware/broadband specs, and isn't readily interoperable between the web and most other applications.
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Aston Martin has announced a new compact car concept, the Cygnet. Aston calls the car a “luxury commuter concept,” but that wasn’t the biggest surprise in the news release.
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Congratulations! The Your Shot special issue hit newsstands today (June 30). We may have done the editing, writing and design, but you took the pictures—101 of our favorite photographs submitted by readers since Your Shot debuted in March 2006.
How did we pick the pics we picked? There's no magic formula. Personally, I'm drawn to images that make me feel something, be it joy, sorrow, suprise or wonder. So that's how I structured the issue: four chapters, four emotions. The selection process took months, but for photo editor Susan Welchman and I, it was worth every moment.
Our Big List of Prospected Blogs and Bloggers
Since the inception of Abraham Harrison LLC, we have been focused on blogger relations and blogger outreach. Social media is our bread and butter, not just something we tacked on. Over the last several years, we have prospected over 40,000 bloggers across a wide-variety of topics (see below) and over a growing number of languages, including Spanish-speaking, Portuguese-speaking, and Russian-speaking blogs wordwide.
Please scroll down and explore some of the blogger-types we have collected and engage on a daily-basis. Of course, when a client needs something new — such as our upcoming engagement with Russian and Polish bloggers — we’re very efficient and experienced in researching, locating, and harvesting the most appropriate bloggers. (Via Abraham Harrison and Marketing Conversation)
Passionate Response is Why I Love Social Media

- Image via Wikipedia
When I wrote Twitter Is What Second Life Wasn’t: Light, Cheap and Open I was addressing something simple:
“the hype surrounding Twitter may well be hype but isn’t the same sort of hype that Second Life enjoyed 2-3 years ago, and here’s why.”
Well, I forgot how passionate Second Lifers are and so it goes. So it was delicious to discover the 20-or-so comments in response to my recent AdAge DigitalNext article. Here’s the comments through to today (Via Marketing Conversation):
links for 2009-06-30
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George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
links for 2009-06-29
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The Problem: Nameless Bloggers and Commenters. "Hi, I'm Nothing. And No One. Here's what I really think? Very valuable. My opinions are very strong. Want to hear them?" No, sir, I really don't. Who with any character or intelligence would? So why do so many frequent and regular commenters–to this blog and others, in both North America and Europe, legal and non-legal–lack the courage and self-respect to use their real names?
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I was recently in Soroti, eastern Uganda, on phase II of my trip: 4 days working with TPO Uganda, documenting the Goat Project. In the process, my love for this program was deepened. I met with families as their disabled child received a goat for the first time, and ones who had received their goat last year and could speak to the change it caused in their lives. I talked to staff, local officials, health care workers, community leaders, family members, and children, each shockingly honest about the state of disabled children in this corner of the world, and impact and efficacy of the Goat Project. It was fast, and it was whirlwind, but it was very special. I love my work. More soon.
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Martina is 12 years old and she has epilepsy. She wears an emerald green dress, and somehow this child seems to radiate light. She is painfully shy and her cheeks blush crimson as I speak to her. “Yes,” she nods voicelessly, as I ask her simple questions. And when I move to something that requires a true reply, she looks up at me with a bright smile and dancing eyes, still silent, but answering me with a look. “Things are better now.”
Dentist Treats Patients in His Own Firetruck

Dr. Robert Grunstein
I am always amazed when I find stories like this. When I find the sort of story that shows that people like dentists, sadly known for having a high rate of depression and suicide, who are passionate about doing good for those of us who only have Medicaid or who cannot generally afford — or won’t spend for — good dental work. Kudos to Steven Eidman and especially to Dr. Robert Grunstein
May 3, 2009 by Steven Eidman — Dr. Robert Grunstein has always been a car and truck guy. So when he heard that an old municipal fire truck was up for sale (”the holy grail for car guys,” he says), he bought it. The fire truck cost him $5,000; converting it into a mobile dental unit and taking out the water tank set him back $50,000. “It had a new motor and perfect transmission,” Grunstein gushes. It’s the perfect vehicle, he says, for combating the “tsunami of bad teeth.”
links for 2009-06-28
Are Young Americans More Sexually European?
This morning, I fired up my Android G1 and checked my Inbox and found a link to a post on NPR.com, Sex Without Intimacy: No Dating, No Relationships. The premise of the article is that there is no time, in a busy boy or girl’s life, to get stuck in a relationship:
Young people from high school on are so preoccupied with friends, getting an education and establishing themselves, they don’t make time for relationships. New goal: fun, not marriage.
Well, I have had some very strong opinions about this, especially when it comes to girls. In my 2005 opinion, when I wrote Manolo Blahnik Feminism: The Right to Choo’s, I believed that the new “hook up” culture would be a blood bath where women would move forward with the intent of sexual empowerment while men would sit back and lick their lips and take advantage — but I don’t know anymore.
A number of experts accept this relaxed attitude toward sex outside of relationships as a natural consequence of the sexual revolution, women’s growing independence and the availability of modern contraceptives. But Deborah Roffman, who conducts human sexuality workshops for middle- and high-school-age students and their parents, sees that as a distorted view of liberation.
“It’s not a new model. I think most people would probably look back and agree that this has been a more traditionally, or at least stereotypically, male model,” says Roffman. “What I’ve seen over the last few years is girls adopting a more compartmentalized view, and feeling good and empowered by it.”
She’s not convinced that this is a good thing for women, and says that being able to say yes is only one way of looking at freedom. She would feel much better if young men also were developing a greater capacity for intimacy.
Being able to engage in intimate relationships where men and women bring all of themselves to the relationship is the cornerstone of family, Roffman says.
I addressed this in a much less elegant way, which is why I am not Dr. Abraham, in We Men Didn’t Get the Memo, wherein I posit that this “devil may care” attitude towards sex and the hookup could very well result in a Judo flip that puts men too far into the driver’s seat as women need to compete for men because, for men, it is about the path of least resistance to sexual behavior:
As men in such a seller’s market, we don’t have to choose. We can date another willing girl every night. We can push sex much faster than we ever could believe. The three-date rule? Ha! That’s the official rule, but now the first date counts from the night we first met. Oral sex on the first date has sort of become de rigueur — if you want a second date.
Instead of getting control, the Manolo Blahnik
Feminist has relinquished control to us men.
And even worse, this is a very dangerous game. We men are bigger, stronger, and not all of us are so nice. I personally have a lot of experience with women who are survivors — survivors not just of dating or their 20s, but survivors of sexual abuse and rape. [We Men Didn’t Get the Memo]
Well, that was then, this is now. Has it turend out the way I thought? Well, according to recent books like Restless Virgins: Love, Sex, and Survival at a New England Prep School and Oral Sex Is The New Goodnight Kiss, maybe things aren’t as fun, simple, or innocent — girl-friendly — as:
We all attended health class in middle school and high school. We know about condoms and sexually transmitted disease. Sex is fun, and a lot of people would argue that it is a physical need. It’s a healthy activity.
Well, after four years and a year living in Berlin, I intuit that the psycho-sexual culture of America’s youth is becoming way more — but not exactly — European. Not exactly because from what I got from the article is that this new mood of hooking-up is driven by intimacy-avoidance rather than intimacy-seeking. Europeans, and Berliners in particular, are not averse to intimacy. Are you intimacy-averse?
Europeans don’t date — even the Brits don’t date — they hang out in groups, go dancing, drinking, socializing, and sometimes hooking up and having one-night stands; however, the be all and end all of this friendly mixing is not to secure constant sex but to have fun. While we like to think of Europeans as being more open to sex and maybe even more promiscuous, I don’t know how true that is.
My German friend Frank tells me that they find their partners like this:
Well, we hang out together as friends and sometimes when we’re out we dance and drink and sometimes go home together.
Then, when you wake up in the morning, you decide: do I like this — do I like her — or don’t I? If it doesn’t work out, it is considered a one-night-stand, of course, but not with a stranger, with a friend, which is OK in the group.
However, if it does work out, there is a very strong nesting instinct and couples who hook up casually after a night out oftentimes live together, have children, and spend decades together — without all of the bullshit and expectations of the interviewing of dating and the officiation of marriage.
I have a feeling that this is where dating is going in America. And this is not the result of American cynicism or self-destructive behavior, but rather as a continuing evolution away from a “women-as-chattel” culture of marriage to something else. Maybe a gender culture of “separate but equal,” that is less concerned with roles, with expectations, or with God’s Sacraments and more interested in living a life, “fulfilled.”
I don’t fancy this is a response to anything. Why? Well, I was just reading a New York Magazine article called Class of ‘09 that kept reinforcing the discovery that teens and 20-somethings these days really love, trust, and appreciate their parents — consider them friends and even share their musical tastes. Parents as mentors, something that is also a breaking down of traditional structures of family.
That said, could the other side of the double-edged sword be that parents have been doing less parenting and a lot of befriending. Are America’s youth acting out sexually because their parents were too busy? Because their parents were too adoring? Because their parents were terrible role models? Could it be a reflection of their parents’ behavior? Could it be the result of indulgent parenting? Well, I don’t know.
Personally, I think that it is a good thing when kids love their parents and don’t think everything they do is super-uncool and lame, no matter how bad it may be for prime time comedies and sit-coms.
I don’t know how this is all going to shake out. I believe that there is going to be a lot of casualties, both emotionally as well as physically, before it all sorts itself out in the end.
What do you think?
I am going to post both articles below: the one from NPR and the one from my blog
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