BP hires a PR firm called “Purple Strategies”

No Comments

Hopefully Purple Strategies PR doesn’t allow any more “We care about the small people” fiascos. Interestingly for a PR firm, they have given zero thought to their search engine optimization,

Purple Strategies PR Firm Washington M Street BP Oil

their meta description still has the joomla default tag and their homepage is all Flash… which begs the question -

Are government and big oil contracts so “insiders only” of an environment that they are completely immune to any desired web marketing? It’s almost like they don’t want to be found…hmmm.

One of their principal partners, Alex Castellanos, has done a lot of work for Bush/Cheney and has been called “the new media mastermind of the Republican party.” I’m not saying Bush or Republicans are good or bad, just pointing out how odd it is for a frequent guest on CNN and long-time political insider to have a website that doesn’t seem to want to be found…

Purple Strategies PR website

A frequent guest on CNN

Pssst! Tell them you care about your customers – you know, the small people!

Obama says, “Wow – Asian kids are good at math!”

1 Comment

OK, President Obama didn’t say that (in exact words verbatim) but in what is to be yet another surefire advancement towards the stereotype of Asian guys loving math, this year’s “Mathletes” from the 2010 national math competition (MathCounts) were uhm… you guessed it (even if you were too politically correct to say it out loud) a bunch of Asians. Have mixed feelings about this one…

this pic is from the White House website:

Obama meets 2010 math counts winners at white house

1 Asian guy, 2 Asian guys, 3....

Taco Trucks – consistently effective commercial tweets

No Comments

Taco trucks skirting the law (and local zoning codes) offering delicious Mexican and Mexican/Korean fusion (yes!) foods consistently show effective use of tweets for direct sales. Not many other verticals can say that about twitter usage.

John Sung Kim Blogs about Tacos and Trucks in San Francisco CA

Your truck has how many followers?

What do you guys do again? Something w/ Doctors, right?

No Comments

Quick 2 minute tour explains what the 17 of us here in San Fran have been up to for the past 10 months…

DoctorBase – Dentist & Doctor Reviews from DoctorBase on Vimeo.

More proof small online pubs still matter

No Comments

Gawker breaks iPad security leak news.. gains massive traffic, mainstream cred, and SEO links.

Goatse iPad Security Leak Hackers

Goatse strikes (again)

the-Rich-Jerk Rips People Off… what a jerk!

2 Comments

The new Tom VU of the Internet is “the Rich Jerk.” His best quote is “I’m a jerk, but I don’t care because I’m rich.” I wonder what the bigger conversion trick is – the blonde hanging on his arm or the idea that he says anyone can “make several millions dollars every year on the internet, doing almost nothing.”

That’s right, keep eating those chips while watching day-time TV – your lotto ticket is just one click away!

the rich jerk ripoff report

ripping off hopelessly dumb people all over the country...

DoctorBase now in Google Local’s reviews

1 Comment

I may have missed someone, but this makes us the only non-VC funded company (read: Organic) that has been selected to have their healthcare provider reviews be indexed as part of Google’s local reviews. It’s a huge honor and I’m biased of course – but our reviews are verified, accurate, and come backed by an ethical reviews policy – no doorway pages, no “astro-turfed” reviews, no b.s. And we’re glad both the public and Goog appreciate it. We promise to keep the good karma going strong.

Google medical healthcare reviews

A lot of hard work by our engineers, marketing folk, and doctors!

Montel Williams Pimps Payday Loans

No Comments

Oh, Montel Williams… didn’t you win an Emmy once? If you look at the interest rate on payday loans – it’s pretty much like loan sharking. Except I don’t think Montel would scare anyone if he showed up to your door..

Montel Williams Payday Loans Money Mutual

does anyone remember me from daytime tv?

Dollar Dollar Bill Y’All

No Comments

I recently booked a $24.75 car form Dollar. Upon leaving they charged me $9 for not having the receipt for the gas I filled the tank with (to avoid being charged $6 a gallon) and $15 for an “optionally required insurance charge.” Total cost for a $25 car – $50.

dollar rent a car rip off report

Hey man, I just work here!

Tronix Country offers a “free” laptop (* starting at $29 per week)

No Comments

Tronix country ads are in heavy rotation across news channels such as CNN “the most trusted name in news,” and others. They offer a “free” laptop with easy credit terms, and in small print their disclaimer says “starting at $29 per week.”

Per week? So basically I could just buy a new laptop for what I would pay Tronix Country for about 4 months. Sounds like a steal..

tronix country scam alert con - does it work?

A quick search in the Goog shows other complaints..

It’s trendy to say you’ve been banned by Mormons on Facebook

No Comments

OK, so I have a few mormon friends that may be offended, but I’m going to err on hopes they see the humor in this…

banned in utah facebook ads

Banned in Salt Lake City too?? Really???

Hulu’s video player now allows imbedded playback via external javascript call

No Comments

Loving hulu for archived SNL skits… this feature from hulu allows bloggers to imbed not only their imbedded video player, but allows their search & browse function as well.. try it!

the fleecing of America continues.. on twitter

No Comments

“As Seen on TV” is now following me on twitter… ironic, isn’t it?

Their twitter page has all sorts of offers giving away, in this instance, “$200 of free pizza!” That and a cute girl between the pizzas and you have any geek’s dream come true -

cons on twitter

The new short-con (give-away ____ for your private info) now lives on twitter

These ads are primarily aimed at students and the  ”low-income demographic” (an insulting term used by marketers to describe “blue collar” consumers AKA “the Nascar family”). They sucker folks in with a “free” prize, and then make them continuously opt-in for multiple offers from multiple vendors to claim said prize.

How much is your personal information worth?

Good thing they got that bike lock

No Comments

san francisco bike thieves

at least they left the lock

Ferris Bueller Recreated in Realtime on Twitter

No Comments

Brilliant example of the entertainment & marketing potential of twitter – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off on Twitter.

John Kim Twitter

Ferris Bueller tweets about his day.. off

How Accurate is Poll Data?

No Comments

Poll Data Charts and Data Visualization - John Kim

From informationisbeautiful.com - thx for the link Farid!

Interesting study during election time. Check out the article and see the actual Goog spreadsheet of stats (2005 is the fullest).

Downtown SOMA Parking Rates Increase 30%

No Comments

Now the cheapest parking in downtown is $13 a day. Still a bargain compared to North Beach.

soma parking san francisco john kim

The last vestiges of cheap parking now officially gone.

It’s a tough economy out there. Even for Terminator Series 800 Robots.

No Comments

Twitter Section at SF Giants Baseball Game

No Comments

We sat in the twitter section for last Friday’s San Francisco Giants versus Colorado Rockies MLB game at ATT Park. Not sure what the point in tweeting about the ballgame was since it was on tv, radio, ESPN Mobile, etc. but there you have it.

twitter san francisco giants games

We got everything but the twitter T-shirts that said, "Follow Me!"

twitter baseball game san francisco giants at ATT Park

Someone in row 6 just farted. I'm going to tweet all my followers about it..

Wordpress Wordcamp Conference 2010

No Comments

We went to this year’s Wordpress conference (WordCamp San Francisco) at the new Mission Bay development. * Wordpress is an open source blogging platform this, and many other, blogs are built on.

One of the speakers of this year’s conference was Richard Stallman, father of GNU and the open source software movement. He arrived 30 minutes late, out of breath, and with a bag of props (really).

He then blasted Amazon for the Kindle’s “censorship-capable” backdoor content manager (the same function that allowed Amazon to erase Orwell’s books from units of Kindle owners), only referring to it in his presentation as “the Swinde,” and took a few swipes at Linus Torvalds and pretty much anyone that wanted to make money from selling or licensing software, or as he puts it – “to curb our freedoms.”

Though I don’t agree with all his views, he had good information about the origins of GNU with a funny presentation, and at the end he donned this crazy costume and auctioned off a book for his non-profit – the Free Software Foundation.

Word camp san francisco 2010 mission bay

the Ball & Chain & I at the WordCamp Conference 2010

Wordpress Wordcamp san francisco 2010

Matt from Wordpress (Automattic) showcases what's next for 2010

richard stallman

Taken from Richard's website. I hope he doesn't mind the copyright infringement ;-)

Older Entries