We all have our favorite online marketing blogs, but here are a bunch of free emarketing publications I recommend subscribing to also.  The sign-up form for some of these can get a little lengthy, buy hey, you’re getting a wealth of information and expert advice for absolutely free. Here are the no cost internet marketing magazines I’m currently receiving:

1. Website Magazine.  A must-have for online business professionals – subscribe
2. Deliver: A Magazine for Marketers. Published by the US Post Office. – subscribe
3. DMNews. A direct marketing magazine – subscribe
4. Internet Retailer. A very awesome ecommerce magazine – subscribe
5. Target Marketing.  Another direct marketing magazine – subscribe
6. All About the ROI.  Case studies, expert advice, ecommerce, etc – subscribe

Please let me know if there are other free resources out there.

Rave.  For a certain segment of the in-home entertainment market, myself included, Netflix is reaching cable killer status.  I’ve had a growing dissatisfaction with cable and other such services for some time simply because their offerings do not fit my viewing needs.  In short, I find that cable is plagued by high monthly rates, monopolistic-like market dominance in the form of Comcast (which brings with it a whole other set of gripes), and on-demand programming choices of little interest to me.  Plus, cable is the avenue of the networks, and unless you have an insatiable desire for reality shows, music videos, and Law and Order reruns, then you’re left asking yourself "What about the stuff I want to see?"

My home viewing needs are simple:  1.  I don’t want to pay through the nose to see network programs that don’t appeal to me or the same syndicated TV shows on every channel.  2.  When I’m in the mood for something, I would like to see it.  There really isn’t much more than that to it.

Unlike Comcast, Netflix has caught on to the fact that it really is that simple.  And because Netflix has realized that this basic consumer desire is largely unfulfilled by the giants of the cable industry, they are slowly transitioning from a secondary source of in-home entertainment via their hallmark DVD-by-mail service, to a primary provider of broadband-based on-demand entertainment.

Last year when I subscribed to Netflix, I thought their 2 DVDs at a time for $13.99 plan was a steal, especially since you can keep the DVDs as long as you want without having to be troubled with late fees and because there were no restrictions on the number of rentals you can have per month.  Some time ago, Netflix launched it’s Watch Instantly service which streams movies direct to a user’s browser WITHOUT INCREASING THE MONTHLY PLAN PRICE.  Now, I’m fairly certain this was done in an attempt to gain market share from other companies in the DVD by mail market, namely Blockbuster Online, and it may not last forever, but the added value of this new service to customers is astronomical.  Watch Instantly is an extremely user-friendly system, with a basic point and click interface that gives folks instant viewing gratification.  With 10,000 Watch Instantly titles to choose from, the customer plays the role of a network programmer with the single goal of pleasing oneself.  Unlike, Comcast On-Demand, Netflix actually has stuff in its inventory that I want to see, including a bunch of hit movies and TV shows from a year ago.  If I wanted to watch Heroes: Season 1 right now all I would have to do is click the "Play" button.  Go ahead, dare me to do it.

At this point you may ask yourself "Suppose I give Comcast the ax what am I giving up by going exclusively with Netflix?  Other than the high monthly rates, not much else.  You’d be able to get network shows (including the local news) from NBC and ABC over-the-air in most markets (dig the rabbit ears out of the closet).  But, you’d miss out on seeing first airings of Flavor of Love 3 episodes.  You’d be able to rent many of the same movies shown on premium cable channels like HBO and Showtime for a fraction of the cost, however the ability to view original shows like Weeds would be delayed at least a year.  But if you’re a sports nut, you may not want to cancel your cable just yet.  What about the viewing experience?  Netflix also has a slick piece of hardware (available for $100) that allows customers to stream Watch Instantly movies direct to a TV set without first passing through a computer.  Lastly, from what I’ve seen the steaming quality of Watch Instantly is pretty damn good.

I have a lot of contempt for the American news media, but sometimes that spills over into actual hatred.

Starting on 1/10/08 there were a series of brutal winter storms in southern China.

Here’s a picture of a soldier using a flamethrower to melt ice off of frozen power lines in Yunnan province, which is at about the same latitude as Florida:

The impact:

• 63 deaths as a direct result of the weather
• Over 200,000 sick and injured
• 223,000 homes have been destroyed
• An additional 862,000 homes are damaged
• The city of Chenzhou, with a population of 4.6 million (for reference, Los Angeles has a population of 3.8 million) was without power or water for a week
• In total, 1.8 million people have been evacuated/relocated
• 1.3 million head of livestock have been killed
• 6 million railway passengers total have been stranded during the busiest travel season of the year (chinese new year)
• 4 million hectares (40,000 square km or almost 10 million acres) of food crops destroyed
• 54 billion RMB (7.5 billion US) in economic damage

So, who’s heard more than a passing reference to this? Where’s the reporting?

Natalee Holloway gets drunk and goes missing, and we have weeks of nonstop coverage. Humanitarian disaster in China? nobody cares. No Americans died (unlike, say, the 2004 Tsunami) so whatever.

Edit: Here’s a pretty good article from CNN. Too bad it’s not even on the front page of CNN World.

How I Made My Millions is a neat little show I found on CNBC that profiles successful entrepreneurs. The format of the show is stale as a piece of bread long lost behind the sofa, but what won me over was the tidbits of advice each business owners shared about how to face obstacles to success head-on and the innovative strategies they employed to stand out in the market. Plus, there was the whole destruction thing. Take a look:

SSI Shredding, which I shall deftly describe as a manufacturer of big-ass shredders, was one the companies featured on the most recent episode of Millions. The entire organization is built around chopping stuff into little pieces… anything… just name it.

Now if you’re going to mince things like cars, boats, and refrigerators, then you might as well make a video library and stick it up on YouTube like SSI Shredding has done. Although, I have no evidence of this, I’m sure the following was said at some point by a SSI sales representative to a customer – “So you want a demo of what these babies can do? Just search for us on YouTube” . Now that’s YouTube marketing at its finest, folks.

Given my extensive coverage of Gmail updates (here’s an in-depth recap), I thought it only fair to extend the same top-notch reporting to Yahoo! Mail. Today, I received an email from Yahoo! congratulating me for being selected to participate in a pilot program called Power Mailer. I subscribe to Yahoo’s free email service and I have no idea what I did to deserve this honor.

It appears the only perks that come with my new status among the Yahoo emailers elite club are that I can now send mail up to 20mb in size and I get to jump in front of the novice Yahoo! emailers (who really need it) in line for customer support. What I could use from Yahoo! is free access to their pop3 mail server. But oh well…. You can read more about this exciting program by clicking here.

Looks like Chris Hanson, from To Catch a Predator fame, has taken a break from catching Internet pedophiles to expose those infamous Nigerian scammers. Not familiar with Nigerian cons? The scams are varied, but the scenario usually goes something like this: You post an ad on Craigslist for a high-end laptop and in a day or two you receive a poorly written email from a person promising to buy your merchandise immediately after he gets your $10,000 Western Union money order. Something like that…

Like To Catch a Predator, Chris Hanson’s To Catch an ID Thief exposes Internet criminals by pretending to be a sucker in order to lure them out into the open for us all to see what one of these boneheads looks like. Hanson pulls out all the stops including deploying sophisticated tracking equipment, hidden cameras, and picking the brains of top Internet security analyst. Finally, the Internet strikes back!

So, today on Kotaku, there was this story: China: Chinese Police Like Counter-Strike, which is pretty hilarious. It’s a little article about how cops in Tianjin had a 3-day CS tourney, and they are passing it off as counterterrorism training. Personally, I think they just wanted to have some fun, but whatever. It’s sourced from a People’s Daily online article, which has some pretty good quotes. An amusing read, overall.

So, there’s something I might have mentioned in passing, but hardly worth its own blog post… but then later I was on Digg, and saw this: Chinese Police Like Counter-Strike. The Digg article links to this blog post on a HALO fansite:

http://qskglobal.com/blog/gaming-news/chinese-police-like-counter-strike/

Which copies the Kotaku blog post word for word, excepting one minor edit (which we’ll get to in a minute). It’s an interesting trickle down effect of news. People’s Daily conducts some actual real world journalism, writes an article which gets translated into English, which gets picked up by a gaming blog that summarizes it. Then some other news site republishes Kotaku’s article (they do cite their source, at least) and gets it submitted to Digg, which drives tons of traffic and earns them money through ads.

In its essence, this is a complete cycle of one of the lousier sides of internet journalism, where people make money from other people’s work. In the end though, I’m sure everybody is a little happier. Digg gets used for what it’s for and makes money, QSK makes money, Kotaku is already well known and gets another link to them and makes money, and the whoever wrote the article for People’s Daily sees the fruits of their efforts spread across the internet.

Still, QSK getting the benefit of all the Digg traffic seems a little off to me. Well, ultimately, that’s kind of what the internet is about, anyway.

Final note – there was one minor edit to the QSK version of the Kotaku article, which I found hilarious. At the very end of her article, Maggie Green (the original Kotaku blogger) adds

“Now all they need is an outpost in Second Life to recruit officers, and they’ll be in business.”

Well, I guess HALO fans aren’t necessarily as aware of all the newfangled stuff out there in the series of tubes, so the QSK blogger felt it necessary to add a parenthetical to explain what Second Life was:

“Now all they need is an outpost in Second Life (an online sex rpg) to recruit officers, and they’ll be in business.”

Hilariously true.

I’m currently lounging on my bed and watching this ridiculous VH1 clip show called Celebrity Eye Candy. Like all VH1 programs, Celebrity Eye Candy is produced in the trademark format of the network – hack job editing, psychedelic transition graphics, and a goofy voiceover spouting lame puns. Surprisingly, Eye Candy spares us from the commentary supplied by the customary panel of D-list comedians.

The premise (I feel like I just disrespected the word “premise”) of Eye Candy is to mock famous folks doing socially awkward things. Some of the clips include, but are not limited to: Fabio talking to himself while pumping gas, Tom-Cat dancing stoically at a concert, a sweaty Matthew Perry holding a water bottle post-workout, Cindy Crawford picking her nose, Puff Daddy talking about having a female assistant shave his pubes, and a few montages of celebrities adjusting wedgies or tripping and falling to the ground. As clip after clip of archived footage, no doubt supplied by paparazzi, graffiti-ed my television, I found myself unable to change the channel. Apparently, I was made stupid by that which is already stupid. I can only imagine an Eye Candy producer (who is possibly an unpaid intern), sitting in front of state-of-the-art editing equipment saying things like “You know what would be great here? Where’s that clip of Hallie Berry digging out her wedgie?”

Clearly, VH1 is by no stretch of the imagination a defender of high values, but it certainly should never have been allowed to deteriorate to its current role as this nation’s crack pipe for popular culture. For whatever reason, we Americans love our stars and apparently require a perpetual intravenous drip of celebrity news, a fix VH1 is way too eager to provide. However, even after factoring in America’s insatiable appetite for everything celebrity, I am still unable to mitigate my opinion that Celebrity Eye Candy and other shows of this type are train wrecks with no survivors. Someone needs to put these shows to rest like a dog in need of a kidney transplant. Why is Eye Candy an hour long and Best Week Ever, the closest show that VH1 has to respectable programming, only 30 minutes?

This was just brought to my attention -

From the New York Times (emphasis mine):

Two election workers were convicted of rigging a recount of the 2004 presidential election to avoid a more thorough review. The workers — Jacqueline Maiden, elections coordinator of the Cuyahoga County Elections Board, and Kathleen Dreamer, a ballot manager — were each convicted of a felony count of negligent misconduct of an elections employee. They were also convicted of one misdemeanor count each of failure of elections employees to perform their duty. Prosecutors accused Ms. Maiden and Ms. Dreamer of secretly reviewing selected ballots before a public recount on Dec. 16.

This happened in Ohio, which as you may recall was the pivotal state in 2004 that ended in Bush’s re-election and Kerry’s loss.

Somehow, the fact that a recount for a pivotal county in a heavily contested presidential election was proven to be rigged went largely unreported, relegated to small newswire reports and clippings like this in the major news media. The only detailed reporting on this situation available is from very left-wing publications and blogs that many people assign little to no credibility.