Daily Archives: 26/06/2008

Invite Your Friends to Play the Life Changing Box And You’ll Drink Their Milkshake

I don’t know if you know this, but anyone you invite who wins wins your the same prize, too. Be sure to Invite Your Friends,” http://apps.facebook.com/lifechangingbox/invite

For example, if I were eligible, which I am not because I work for Lowe, and I invited you and a box with a 52″ LCD Full HD Sharp AQUOS opened while you were holding the box, you would win one TV and I would also win.

So, in addition to touching boxes, inviting your friends to join using the link below is a way to expand your 24/day touches with 20 more/day.

Unfortunately, Facebook limits the number of people you can invite to 20/day, but I invite 20 more people every day, which increases my chances, were I actually able to win (drats).

So, this is what you should be doing every day:

1) Play the game and touch boxes 24 times/day
http://apps.facebook.com/lifechangingbox/play

2) Invite your friends, up to 20 friends/day
http://apps.facebook.com/lifechangingbox/invite

If you have any questions, please let me know! Good luck and happy touching and happy inviting!

People as a Whole are Indeed Stupid

I try to follow Anthony Citrano‘s blog, Cosmic Tap, but had fallen behind. I have to reblog his article, Reminder: People Are Stupid. I have always considered this to be true (see Wisdumb of Crowds: SAVE THE WHALES), but always need as much affirmation as possible, and Mr. Citrano give me all the ammo I need — but we do agree on one thing:

“I don’t think everyone is stupid – I just think the average American is too distracted or preoccupied or apathetic to pay attention to the stuff that some of us feel is important.”

Here’s the whole article, Reminder: People Are Stupid:

Whenever I hear about a poll telling me what a group of Americans think, I generally write it off. Now, folks, I don’t think everyone is stupid – I just think the average American is too distracted or preoccupied or apathetic to pay attention to the stuff that some of us feel is important.

Today, the press is all over the CBS/NYT poll that shows 81% of Americans feel the nation is “on the wrong track.” I agree with those Americans, but probably wouldn’t share their reasoning. What didn’t get as much attention was the recent “News IQ” poll by Pew Internet Life that drilled down a bit to explore what we know about things like our society, our government, and the war being fought with our dollars and our permission. I was pleasantly surprised at how relatively well people did.

Some highlights:

Only 28% of respondents know approximately how many Americans have died in Iraq (and Pew notes that this is an all-time low and “awareness is dropping”).

70% knew Condi Rice is Secretary of State

62% could identify “Sunni” as the branch of Islam fighting the Shia in Iraq

56% knew McCain was from Arizona

40% knew Howard Dean chairs the DNC

35% knew Ben Bernanke chairs the Federal Reserve

Of course, these were phone interviews of 1000 people who were willing to sit through a phone trivia test, and who were given four multiple choice answers from which to choose. I frankly find the results impressive, but I’ll bet if they had conducted the same survey outside a Wal-Mart in middle America without the benefit of “multiple choice”, the numbers would have been much, much worse.

This Twitter is Temporarily Disabled

Not only do I want to harpoon the Twitter Whale but I also want to take out the Twitter Bird with a Red Ryder BB Gun!

Someone Harpoon the Twitter Whale!

I love Twitter, I do, but I have been suffering through this blurb and this graphic for hours now — the hated and reviled Twitter Whale-with-Birds!:

Twitter is over capacity.

Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again.

QIK Rocks My Nokia N95 8GB and My World

I am now beginning to rock my Nokia N95 8GB with some pretty cool stuff, all recommended from my friends online and also in person at BlogPotomac, in the case of QIK.

QIK – An amazing little app that is free and I have downloaded and installed that allows me to stream live video from my phone directly to my QIK profile. What is even cooler is that QIK is tied into cross-posting to other spaces, such as directly to my YouTube profile as well, so all I have to do is do the recording and it goes to both places. When I am recording, it is actually streamed live directly to either my profile page or to an embed, see below:

Unfortunately, something happened to my AT&T 3G SIM when I added voice and now I have to suffer EDGE, which is appalling to use with QIK — God, it is so painful!

I am going to get that sorted today, hopefully. However, if you do have EDGE, you can still use it, but it won’t be live so much as just recorded and then uploaded over time to your profiles.I give QIK.com full marks — it is the sort of thing that allows me to gloat when I am around those insufferable iPhone users.

52″ & 32″ Full HD LCD Sharp Aquos TVs Already Coughed Up By the Life Changing Box

I don’t know where you have been, but if you’re not touching the Life Changing Box, you’re missing out on all sorts of opportunities to win killer televisions, rocking trips to Japan and New York, lots and lots of consumer electronics and prizes valued from $400-$14,000. Add the Life Changing Box game to your Facebook profile and then touch the Life Changing Box up to 24-times-a-day! That’s it! Oh, and check out the Life Changing Box Group and Life Changing Box Page. Here’s our winners so far — there are 8 more boxes that are still closed and will be opening soon!

Congratulations to Christian Jolicoeur of Farmington Senior High School who has won our second prize, a 52″ Full HD LCD Sharp Aquos TV!

Congratulations to Marcus Baskerville of Sacramento, California, who has won our first prize, a 32″ Full HD LCD Sharp Aquos TV!

The Gun Ban Struck Down in Washington, DC

Fresh off the wire and directly from the Supreme Court, Via the Chicago Tribune:

“The Supreme Court says individuals have a right to own guns, and so has struck down a handgun ban in Washington, D.C.”

desert eagle The Gun Ban Struck Down in Washington, DC

“Chicago’s handgun ban has lasted for more than a quarter-century, but it’s under threat after the Supreme Court on Thursday decided that Washington D.C.’s law against handgun ownership is unconstitutional.”

Google Ad Planner: Unanswered questions, but what a deal

So Google launched Ad Planner yesterday at an Advertising Research Foundation event in New York City. Ad Planner is an online analytical tool that gives advertisers deep information on which sites their targeted audience is visiting. Designed to make media buying more efficient, it puts Google in direct competition with comScore and Nielsen Online. A key difference here is that Ad Planner is free.

Ad Planner allows users to enter demographics of target audiences along with potential sites on which to advertise into its system. The system then, presumably through data gleaned from web servers, will then spit out sites that an advertiser should consider for a media plan. It would seem that it is an easy to use, inexpensive system to use.

Subscription fees from survey based services such as comScore and Nielsen can be exorbitant. This further democratizes the web.

But free can come with a cost and that’s what others are worried about.

Google, in this capacity, may not be acting as an independently-owned third party delivering unbiased information. There’s always a chance that the system may be tweaked to produce results that favor Google-owned property. And, and the launch yesterday, Google product manager told a questioner that Google will get its data from a “fusion” of different data sources. A follow up question as to whether or not Google will accept external audits was left unanswered.

That’s not a great sign. But Google is now powerful enough that they can get away with not answering that while it brings in users. Users like, quite frankly, me.

Thus is the nature of the web.

Chris Abraham

Because the Medium is the Message