Video here. (Thanks to David Isenberg for the link.) [Tags: keither_olberman torture politics]

Here’s a video of Gore criticizing the new Bush proposal to militarize space.

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Coming back to the US from Toronto, you clear customs and immigration in the Toronto airport. Tonight, all the US passport holders were all standing in one line — maybe 20 of us — when an Immigration person told us to split into two parallel lines to take advantage of the two open desks. The guy who was seventh in line now became the first in the new line, taking the next 7 or 8 people behind him. But, because our new leader was a fair and wise leader, he let the next six people on the original line go ahead of us. Only when the woman who had been ahead of him had been served did he go through Immigration.

I thought this was so cool it was practically Canadian! [Tags: politeness americans canada toronto line_integrity]

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In a couple of hours I’ll be the lunchtime presenter at the Canadian Marketing Association meeting in Toronto. I started out thinking I’d give a version of the marketing presentation I gave in Maastricht last week, but that one was pegged by the organizers around Cluetrain. This one I seem to have given the title “Marketing in the Age of the Miscellaneous.” So I spent the morning (6am-11am) rewriting. Since I’m running out of time to rewrite, this seems to be the outline of what I’ll be saying:

The digital world is blowing apart our traditional structures. This gives us the opportunity to put it together in ways that are more thoroughly ours.

An example of how marketing is not ours and is in fact hostile to our interests.

Marketing’s 100 Years War against its customers:

(Cluetrain stuff:) We’ve confused building a business with building a fort. The walls try to control customers/employees/partners by controllling the flow of information. But the Net has knocked those walls down.

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association refreshingly puts ethics first. But ultimately it’s about influencing conversations, which puts WOM marketers’ interests at least a little out of alignment with those conversations. I therefore have mixed feelings about it.

A first step towards engaging in market conversations: Blog. Or at least keep your hands off of blogs.

What blogging isn’t: About cats. Journalism. About individuals in isolation. Simplicity. You the marketer

So, P2P is undoing the century of broadcast. But the change is deeper, molecular.

Three orders of order: Things, paper metadata about those things, and when content and metadata are all digital. The third (miscellaneous) order changes the relationship of what’s ours and what’s theirs. (Yes, after 100 years of war, it’s us vs. them.)

We’re of course generating our content. But we’re also organizing our way. In physical stores, the owner of the merchandise also own its organization. In the miscellaneous order, we own the organization. See Del.icio.us . And, by fortunate chance, the top post at Del.icio.us today is about a product, Dove.

This doesn’t just let us focus on what we want. In the third order, metadata beats data. We go to Expedia instead of the American Airlines site, and we go to Kayak.com instead of Expedia. The miscellaneous pulls apart stores.

We’re also now getting to own authority. E.g., Wikipedia. Not only are Fort Business’ walls down, but businesses now are the last people we’ll trust about their products…unless they establish that they’re on our side. CraigsList is on our side. Google is. (We can fight about this later.)

Can marketing be on our side? How?

[Tags: marketing cluetrain]

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David Isenberg reviews Bill Moyers’ program on keeping the Net open. Makes me especially sorry to have missed it, but David points it online. [Tags: net_neutrality david_isenberg bill_moyers ]

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I am slowly being driven nuts. Thunderbird today decided not to display html-based messages as html. I know it recognizes them as html because I set Options > Display to give html mesages a distinctive background. But it ignores all the formatting stuff, including tables, and just shows a string of text.

I didn’t intentionally make any changes. Nor can I find info on how to change it back to the way it was. Any suggestions? TIA.

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According to Media Post, according to the Media Audit, “affluent working women with family incomes of $75,000 or more are growing in number and 94.3 percent access the Internet during an average month.” The news release quotes the president of International Demographics:

“The percentage of working women that spent at least 430 minutes a week on the Internet (heavy users) jumped from 48.6 percent in 2004 to 50.8 percent in 2005,” says Jordan. “Heavy use of radio, television, newspapers and direct mail all declined within this group.”

I’m guessing that that jump is within the margin of error. Nevertheless, why the focus on affluent women? Again, I’m just guessing, but: “From 2004 to 2005 the percent of affluent working women making five or more purchases on the Internet increased from 54.1 percent to 56.6 percent. The percent making 12 or more purchases in the same years increased from 30.0 percent to 32.2.”

Frank Paynter pulls together in a prophet’s voice women and men writing about the Amish shootings as not just a crime against a pacific community but as a crime against women. He cites Jessica at Feministing, Echidne and Bob Herbert behind the pay wall (but outed here). A commenter points to Suzanne Reisman at Blogher and her update.

Karen Schneider, who may or may not be an affluent woman but who observes that “The question about one HDMI connector or two on the big-screen TV can seem pretty small when you’re serving up a hot meal to someone whose life is stuffed into a 12×12 locker,” points out in the comments section of a John Battelle post that, if we are to believe the list of invitees, Web 2.0 is a guy thing. [Tags: women karen_schneider frank_paynter amish marketing]

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Another blow against candor. Story here. (Thanks to Richard Hamilton for the link.)

(Completely coincidentally, I’m in Toronto for a day to talk to the Canadian Marketing Association.) [Tags: blogging politics canada]

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From SavetheInternet.com:

Bill Moyers’ show airs at 9 p.m. in most cities (check local listings). Immediately following the East Coast broadcast, PBS.org will host a live Internet debate between Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott and phone industry flack Mike McCurry.

To join the debate, go here.

Unfortunately, I’m going to be on a plane and will miss the show,. But, I read an interview with Moyers that makes it sound like he’s in a deep state of getting it. Go Bill Moyers! [Tags: bill_moyers net_neutrality ]

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Today in the lovely summer resort of Chatham, as I went for a run between 7:10 and 7:43am, all the vehicles that passed me on the road were pickup trucks. [Tags: chatham]

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Global Voices rounds up the reaction of Iraqi bloggers to the Lancet‘s article claiming 650,000 deaths due to the violence in Iraq… [Tags: iraq global_voices gv ]

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