[Note: been having my own problems with links within my blog leading to these "blocks" not sure why yet.]

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Hosting a website, nay, a secure website is not the easiest thing to keep up-to-date. I work with a variety of Google products everyday and sometimes I will need to use another computer that will not have my Google Accounts bookmark in the toolbar. So, like any naturally lazy Internet person, I will type in the website’s name into the search bar. In this case, I did a search for google accounts in order to get https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount.

When I click on the first link to go to Google Accounts, it seems Google has a problem (for the past few days now with a secure connection failing) with an invalid security certificate:

Whoops!

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Regardless of where you stand on the issues, Barack Obama’s speech at Invesco Stadium for the Democratic Convention was extremely well done. Here’s the beginning clip, but it really should be seen in full:

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Io9 playfully asks its users What Should a Star Trek Move Require?

• A Technical Disaster Aboard The Enterprise
• A Sultry Alien Woman Who Wants To Learn About This Thing Humans Call Love
• Klingons
• Doctor McCoy Dispenses Some Non-Medical Advice

My choice? Following the actual Star Trek canon! For example: where it does not take less than a week to get to Chronos or where humans do not meet the Ferengi before the Enterprise-D.

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I talked briefly before about how NBC’s coverage of the opening ceremonies was done very badly with cutting to commercials and by trying to limit worldwide Internet coverage before NBC would show it within the US. However, the coverage of the competition during the 2008 Beijing Olympics has been very well laid covered and with a large amount of information for people who know little about China.

With each competition, NBC has been talking with many of the athletes and giving background on who they are and what they need without being too boring, too annoying, or too simplistic–a remarkable achievement when most of the media nowadays tries to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

What has me amazed is how positive the coverage has been for China and the Beijing Olympics in general. This may be the result of being gracious to the country hosting the games or due to the earthquake that China suffered. There have been many stories about China and what you can find there along with the history of China and even the interaction of China and the US. Some of these topics have covered:

• Chinese cuisine (both good and strange)
• Chinese Acupuncture
• Nixon going to China
• Kite flying
• Chinese athlete training programs
• Beijing’s monuments and parks
• Etc

What has made it particularly well-done is that they actually brought in journalists to stay and work within a foreign country and provide on-the-ground reports about the country, something that has been in dire need for those interested in international affairs.

Lastly, even many of the commercials have been geared towards China and the Olympics, providing very relevant ads that I think play very well to the audience watching. These relevant ads do far better when I actually enjoy watching them because they are interesting! Many of these ads have been very memorable including the Beijing Olympics Mummy dual TV commercial.

Budweiser, GE, and some Canadian apparel HBC(?)

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You know someone has had way too much free time on their hand to create this Barack Obama rick roll video:

Then again, it could be clever political advertising for the Internet generation. At least Obama knows how to use the Internet, much less use a computer compared to McCain.

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The media (particularly the American Media such as NBC) still does not understand that the Internet generation does not want to sit and wait a full day to know what has happened in the Beijing Olympics. And we certainly do not want them to cut to commercial in the middle of the fracking opening ceremonies (incidently, this is why soccer is a horrible sport to watch on TV in the US, they cut to commercial, a goal is scored, and we completely miss it).

So, what happens when the mainstream media tries to control online content (such as Viacomm and Youtube)? This:

NBC’s decision to delay broadcasting the opening ceremonies by 12 hours sent people across the country to their computers to poke holes in NBC’s technological wall — by finding newsfeeds on foreign broadcasters’ Web sites and by watching clips of the ceremonies on YouTube and other sites.

In response, NBC sent frantic requests to Web sites, asking them to take down the illicit clips and restrict authorized video to host countries. As the four-hour ceremony progressed, a game of digital whack-a-mole took place. Network executives tried to regulate leaks on the Web and shut down unauthorized video, while viewers deftly traded new links on blogs and on the Twitter site, redirecting one another to coverage from, say, Germany, or a site with a grainy Spanish-language video stream.

As the first Summer Games of the broadband age commenced in China, old network habits have never seemed so archaic — or so irrelevant.

To borrow from Eyes East, this is Olympics 2.0, so stop trying to limit us, we will find ways around what you do.

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TrendsSpotting has a very nice PowerPoint presentation of the online market of China. It is rather introductory, but if you are just starting to get into the Chinese online market, has some very pertinent information to see:

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As unique as you may think on a company creating a mind-gaming device, another company Emotiv Systems, based in SF, has one of their own devices (called EPOC) to come out in late 2008 (hopefully in time for the Hanukkah season). The New York Times even talked about them in June 2008:

A new headset system picks up electrical activity from the brain, as well as from facial muscles and other spots, and translates it into on-screen commands. This lets players vanquish villains not with a click, but with a thought.

[...]

The system doesn’t just lift boulders. It can also detect some of a player’s facial expressions and emotional responses: smile, frown or wink, for instance, and an avatar on screen can do so, too. Grow bored during a battle, and the system can detect ennui and supply a few dragons, or change the music. The device tracks a total of about 30 responses.

This system looks far more advanced than the Neural Impulse Actuator and far easier to learn to use, I may have to change my mind on buying the other one and wait the extra few months and pay a little more (twice the price), but it comes with a game and a far simpler system to input with the computer.

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If you are in marketing, or ever want to know what marketing is like, then you should get a feeling for it by watching the below video.

Now, for myself in SEO, it is not nearly as bad since we do not do the creative work all the time and most clients do not have a large understanding of SEO, so oftentimes it is difficult for them to suggest a lot of changes to make our lives harder… thankfully.

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Facebook has come up with what I believe is a very creative way to get more information about their ads by allowing Facebook users to judge their own Facebook ads. They use thumbs up and thumbs down at the bottom of the ad, and then lets you provide a reason for your vote with options. Here is one example of what this new ad looks like:

When you thumb down, you get the following options:

• Misleading
• Offensive
• Pornographic
• Uninteresting
• Irrelevant
• Repetitive
• Other

When you thumb up, you get these options:

• Interesting
• Relevant to me
• Good offer
• Other

If Facebook has not patented these ad styles, I highly expect to see this style of ad feedback coming to many ads in the near future, and thereby rendering them useless as people begin to ignore them as they become too common.

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