Social Action Book of the Hump Club I’m constantly blown away by the ways the Web keeps making the world smaller. Here’s a new favorite: Though The Camel Bookmobile (HarperCollins, April 2007) is a novel, the camel-borne library actually exists. It operates in Kenya’s isolated Northeastern Province near the unstable border with Somalia. It brings books to a semi-nomadic people who live […] Written by David Berkowitz February 28, 2007November 26, 2020
Columns The Hidden Value of a Link Is PayPerPost evil? Sure. I can get on board with that. Though it’s a flawed hypothesis, a lot of my column this week tries to explore why. It actually does have parallels in other media, and there are even some blog advertising campaigns enlisting bloggers themselves that tapped into the real power of community, but […] Written by David Berkowitz February 27, 2007November 26, 2020
Media Behind the Interview: Quoting Smart Friends I don’t normally post links to when I’m quoted in the press (seems a little pretentious, even for me), yet it can be fun going behind the scenes of an interview sometimes. A quote on Google’s personalized search results in Direct Magazine is a great opportunity: For another thing, optimizing for the possible variations in […] Written by David Berkowitz February 26, 2007November 26, 2020
Media My Media Consumption Diet Jeremiah Owyang started a meme. I’m now doing my part to spread it. How Dawkinsian. Based on Jeremiah’s original post, here’s my own media consumption diet, ranked from those I consume most to the occasional midnight snack: Web: I get most of my news this way, though not that much entertainment. I read a bunch […] Written by David Berkowitz February 23, 2007November 26, 2020
Games Up Up and a Wii Finally, I had a chance to play the Wii at a friend’s place this week. Wow. And I only played the sports games that came with the system. I started off playing boxing, which was alright, but then it got really involved. Batting practice blew me away; I had to bend my knees and step […] Written by David Berkowitz February 23, 2007November 26, 2020
Uncategorized Fun Health Search Game: Disease Jeopardy I’m overdue to write about health search again, but I’ve been compiling notes on the subject and have been briefed by some of the most companies in the space the past few months. This week, I’ve met with Healthline, which has the new Symptom Search. There’s a fun game you can play: type in a […] Written by David Berkowitz February 22, 2007November 26, 2020
Fun Best Bio Ever When reading up on the upcoming NBC show The Black Donnellys, I found this blog that mentions someone’s celebrity connections to a star of both Donnellys and The Office. That led me to a Wikipedia link for Office star Mindy Kaling, who plays Ryan the Temp’s fling Kelly. This line from the bio is one […] Written by David Berkowitz February 21, 2007November 26, 2020
Columns Optimizing For One Or 12 Trillion This column ran last week, but I just realized I forgot to post it – hence the double-header this week. You can also find this at MediaPost; it continues in the extended entry here. Personalized search as now gone mainstream, thanks to Google. What’s a marketer to do about it? I can sum up the […] Written by David Berkowitz February 21, 2007November 26, 2020
Columns Imagining a Web Where Links Don't Matter Originally published in MediaPost; it continues in the extended entry. Content is SO 2006, as far as search engine optimization goes. Everywhere I turn, the SEO discussions center on linking and link development. The appreciation of the value for inbound links to a marketer or publisher’s site is one of the reasons why there’s […] Written by David Berkowitz February 20, 2007November 26, 2020
Social Action The Giving Tree Goes to Niger Courtesy of TechCrunch, I just did one of those things online that I never had any intention of doing before but seemed like a good idea in this ‘World is Flat’ environment: I bought a tree in Niger. No, I can’t plot Niger on a map (I could at least get it on the right […] Written by David Berkowitz February 19, 2007November 26, 2020
