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Monday, December 5, 2005

Froogle Spam?

Brian Smith of the Comparison Engines blog takes a look at Froogle spam. The first result for iPod Nano is what looks to be an affiliate page... I saw a strange pagead2.googlesyndication.com URL loading in my Firefox, even though I didn’t spot any AdSense around. This was the URL (the top page for [iPod Nano] in Froogle):

www.videoipodplayer.com/store/ product_info.php?cPath=1_2&products_id=3

This page briefly redirects to SedoParking.com when you click on its first link, and after that you land at Apple.com. But why does it show Googlesyndication.com when going from VideoIPodPlayert over to Apple?

[Thanks Miel.]

Get a Free BBS: The Documentary Movie

I supported Jason Scott’s new documentary on text adventures Get Lamp by pre-ordering it (I’ll get it if it gets finished, which these “support pre-orders” will help to make come true). Along with the pre-order I’d get Jason’s BBS documentary DVDs, but since I already own those I wanted to pass them on here as a freebie, and Jason is nice enough to hold back delivery. To get your BBS documentary, just comment here telling me why you’d think you might like the BBS movie and leave your email, and by tomorrow I’ll play lottery among all those who gave a good reason.

Queen and 50 Cents Mashup

This was on Boing Boing already, but it’s too hilarious and cool not to link to it: a mashup of 50 Cents and Queen.

Swatch Commercials are Good Offline, Broken Online

I saw the recent Swatch commercials on TV and they’re quite nice. It’s a two part spot; in one, you can see a whole lot of what seem to be Chinese people getting on tables, chairs and such and then jumping down at the same time... thus causing a woman from a western country who sits in the bathtub to have the resulting quake shatter her bathwater. The other spot is the same in reverse, showing western people getting up objects to then jump down in synchronicity, and what seems to be an Asian monk finds the leafs of his cherry tree emptied as a result. Of course this is a fun visualization of the saying that would all Chinese jump at the same time, the earth would leave its orbit, and it illustrates the kind of synchronicity that can be achieved by watches.

Now I went to Swatch.com and found it impossible to watch the videos, let alone download them. But if you want to have a viral video, you absolutely must expose the URL in easy fashion to allow people to link to it – or give them a chance to host it on their own servers. (And if you can afford it, the video should be available in MPG, WMV, MOV and so on, with at least 1 high-quality download.) The Flash site did one thing right – it devoted a whole “top level microsite” on Swatch.com to the commercials, replacing all other content (which can still be reached via an “About Swatch” link). The first thing it did wrong was to then say “Skip it?” because this button didn’t at all explain whether or not I would skip the videos I wanted to see by clicking it. But more importantly, the streaming was completely broken for me, and I had to reload several times because false menus were overlaying and such, before I gave up as the videos just didn’t fully load. Is this the second Swatch messes up after they gave us “internet time"?

Does anyone have a link to just the Swatch videos, by the way? (And why don’t we have an internet time yet, anyway?)

Update: Ah, there they are! Thanks to the smart forum poster. Clip 1 (Asian people jumping), Clip 2 (Western people jumping).

Google Maps Risk Game Cease and Desisted

The Google Maps Risk Game – a mashup of Google’s mapping API and the board game of Risk – has been C&D’d by the Risk manufacturer Hasbro, the site’s creator says. As Cory Doctorow puts it when mashups are sued... are people who play the Google Maps Risk game online really less likely to buy the official Risk game? The site’s creator, in the meantime, removed his game of Risk and is now asking for new game suggestions “that won’t draw out the lawyers.” [Thanks Miel.]

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