A life cut too short…in memory of Justin Whitaker

A call from my youngest brother Jason the other day left me in tears. A sweet voice trying to be strong as he gave me the news of one his best friends passing. Days of visiting Justin in the hospital, holding his hand, and talking to him…came to an end. His funeral today, and expected crowd of over 4000 people…he touched so many lives, even mine.

Justin Whitaker, passed from non-Hodgkin’s T-cell lymphoma, an aggressive form of cancer that attacks the immune system at the age of 18. For the last several years he had been in and out of the hospital…everyone hoping and holding on for good news that he was getting better. Fundraiser after fundraiser the community pulled together to raise money, its truly amazing what these people, including my family, have done to support and help out Justin and his father.

As I began talking to Jason, I found myself searching for the right words, the best words to try and help him cope. But there are no right words, there is no reason that you can justify why this happened to such an amazing kid. Time I told him, it will just take time. Always remember him for the great person he was, the times you shared on the baseball field, and his strength.

The following night under the lights, the varsity baseball team gathered around Jason as he said, ” Play for Justin tonight.”

washington post article

Justin Whitaker

Becky the Add-on Queen

BeckBlogic you are the add on queen!  Thanks for the inside info on translator, what a great tool to have on our blogs, I am going to download now!  Tell your son Jack I said thanks too!

I also am going to look into adding on feedburner, technorati “fave this blog” and the social media bookmarking and sharing application.    Maybe it will help to raise the number of clicks on my blog…

Thanks!!!

Comments on Corporate Blogging

Hi Rosie! Great minds think alike! I would definitely be interested in getting a group together to discuss corporate blogging further. It seems like there are many pros and cons to having a corp. blog -when do you know if it is right for your company? And honestly…and you probably agree, I am use to having a new idea and implementing it myself or with the people on my pr/marketing team…corporate blogging is something that I do not necessarily feel comfortable just handling on my own…I definitely feel it would have to be a collaborative effort… and with that come more challenges!

mintymusings said 2 months ago:

Rosie,
Great real-life example… proving that you have to do blogging right or don’t even try. Doing it wrong can be disastrous. And I like Colleen’s idea of talking corporate blogging. I would love to institute a blog at work, but I really think I’d have to do some convincing.

Reply to thread »

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Naked Conversations by ckittell

Rosie said 2 months ago:

Colleen, I had such a similar response to our reading. In fact, I said almost exactly what you did using different words. Maybe throughout the course of the semester we can form a brainstorming group that can tackle the issue of how to introduce the idea of corporate blogging to a generation of marketing professionals who grew up (me included) feeling the need to control all information in order to be good at their jobs. Check out my blog on the reading: http://www.rosemaryheiss.com. It’s funny how similar our thoughts are.

Online Campaigning

In my experience, some of the best marketing strategies and campaigns were those that veered off the intended course and created something more than what you had expected. They mold into something a little different, and in this case It sounds like the Dean campaign on-line did just that, exceeding the initial expectations and creating and changing the way political campaigns now gain support and financial backing. With politics not being my niche, I gathered that the Dean campaign also brought about the idea of doing more than just raising money. As Garance Franke-Ruta mentions in The American Prospect article, Dean Machine, “Through the Meetups, Dean is creating community, stimulating political discourse, building the rough outlines of a movement and expanding the public sphere — all while creating a mechanism to position himself to compete in at least the first few primaries. It’s great strategy. Even more importantly, it’s great politics.” Are the candidates of the presidential campaign, Clinton, Obama, and McCain using Meetup.com?

This on-line community that the Dean Campaign created seemed to also allow people to act in real time, and form the campaign side, it allowed them to track results quickly. Probably very different than waiting for the newspaper and television to create this kind of community, buzz, and results. I thought the Bat Ad with the clocks that says “Grassroots never sleeps” fit well here, as you could really participate at any time from any place.

My other favorite Bat Ad was the Halloween themed ads that said ” Bush Frights Me, Frighten Bush Back.

Are the strategies of the Dean campaign on-line, the same strategies that Obama is using in his on-line campaign, that has proven to be very successful? What is he doing differently?

Iraq War & Web 2.0

To be honest, this weeks assignment of researching the war in Iraq on the web was a good reminder of how lucky we are to be in this country, and regardless of our thoughts on the war, I think we should always support the troops who are over fighting for our safety and our freedom to just live everyday as we always have. I sometimes feel like I am somewhat unaffected by the war, I don’t have any family or good friends that I know over fighting…and I think that makes the war seem very distant for me…as it is not or has not directly effected my life as it has others. But reading some of these blogs of soldiers and watching videos on Youtube, really brought the war to the forefront for me this week. There were so many videos surrounding the war, the troops, I spent hours watching videos. Each capturing something different, but honest.

Web 2.0 has allowed these thousands and thousands of stories that are unbiased and real to surface. Soldiers, citizens, journalists are able to express the reality of the war and the conditions through blogging, and Youtube. More importantly it’s being documented in real time, and directly from the source. The details are often graphic and raw, but this allows the public to take the facts and form their own opinion, not have the opinion already made for them and presented like much of the news we get in mass media today. It was interesting to read through the best military blogs. One of my favorite blogs was SpouseBUZZ, a blog where wives, family members, and friends come together to share stories about their loved ones who have been deployed and the realities of their lives now. They talk about issues that they are all probably facing…for example summer ideas for their kids, because there is only one parent at home when the kids dont have school. The benefits of blogs like this seem huge for the exchange of ideas and support.

The question was posed about blogging being used to rally veterans to oppose the war, and if this was a good thing or not. I actually found this video on Youtube from a Veteran who is speaking out in opposition of the war. I don’t know if I think this is good or bad, part of me thinks that this expression and sharing is what allows these veterans to keep living, they feel they have a duty to tell the truth about what really goes on out there.

Iraq War Veteran Speaks Out

Having this much access to the front line paints a much more graphic picture, a confusing picture, but one that is based on the facts from the true stories of the soldiers, that you can interpret for yourself. This is more real than any other media we have access to, so for that it is good. But where is the line drawn for some of these explicit videos that are posted, I know I watched a few that I thought could have crossed that line.

Global Voices

This website has such an eclectic feel to it. There is so much information being exchanged, that I just wanted to write a few of my thoughts on Mobile Web & Global Voice Online. The tag cloud is a brilliant way to navigate this site and follow by topic. I thought the comments on Obama and how other foreigners are viewing the United States and the campaign brings different insight and opinion from what we hear in our daily news. Another interesting story was how the food prices in Japan are going up -interesting to see the parallels across countries. I think this site is a great resource, in addition to CNN and the NYTimes, one we should tune into every now and then to see what is going on in the world.

Culture & Blogging

I found Scoble’s research in Chapter 8 of Naked Conversations to be one of the most interesting topics in blogging thus far. When you think of blogging, even starting your own blog, you think of words like, cheap, easy, no rules…etc. Before reading this chapter and really thinking about blogging on a global level, I figured everyone everywhere was blogging just as much if not more as we are in the United States, but it seems that is not the case. Cultures, values, and governments have kept certain countries from even engaging in blogging, such as Ireland or Germany where their nature is to keep things to themselves, unlike the outspoken French or American way of life. I also would have thought the Asian Countries would be ahead of the game just because they are so tech savvy, but that is not the case with countries like China.

But regardless of the culture there are still similarities among why companies and people are blogging, which mostly centers around customer feedback, criticism, new ideas, and sales.

Did anyone else find it ironic that on pg 127, there was an example of how China’s government erased Mao’s blog because of a joke he posted on April Fools Day 2005…which is exactly 3 years ago today!  This reading was planned very well!

Wikiscanner

For the Wikiscanner Report, I took a closer look at the Google page, which resulted in some very interesting findings.

 

What are they changing?  As I scanned edit by edit, the changes ranged from spelling mistakes & grammatical changes to vandalism. There were financial edits that were made to better represent the company, and date edits such as replacing “recently” with the actual date “June, 21, 2005,” for more accuracy. There was a debate between labeling Google as Google, Inc or Google, LTD…which is currently Google, Inc. Obviously the most interesting edits were those of vandalism that I came across and could actually see highlighted. Here are some listed below, but there were many more I discovered and some were very inappropriate.
1. As of march 2006, google has announced that it will be officially taking over the world. Additionally, Google has also recently formed a partnership with [[Sun Microsystems]] to help share
2. Poop
3. U Suck
4. COW COW COW COW COW COW COW COW COW COW COW COW COW COW ………………………………………………                                   5. Google is a big Scammer in U.S. It’s ADWORD and ADSENSE programs require the participant to pay US$50 for exmaination fee and run the ADWORD with US1000 per month expenditure in order to qualify for passing the scam examination and get the phony professional certifcate.”’
6. The Google Corporation is a large evil Company bent on takimg over the world

Why are the editing? What does this mean?   Overall I think the edits were making the Google page more accurate, providing real facts in numbers, dates, and information, for example there was a line that compared Google Maps to Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, and this was edited to say that Google Earth should actually be the comparison to Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, not Maps. There were a ton of links added in as edits also, for example there was a link added for Google Watch. As I mentioned above, there was a ton of vandalism, which I guess is expected for a company with so many competitors and users. International edits saying that uk.ask.com was better than Google. Oh, and there was a discussion over the correct wording for the phrase “Don”t Be Evil!”

How often?   These changes were made every other minute, day, week…there was a total of close to 3000 edits on the wikiscanner, but all of the edits in the wikiscanner were mainly from 2005 and 2006, why is that? Why did it not have the most recent edits shown? I then went to the Google page in wikipedia and looked at the history, which showed recent edits, and there was an additional 500+. Is there a benchmark for how many edits is considered normal for an article in wikipedia?

Who is editing?  I found that there was a range of edits from individuals obviously trying to vandalize the Google article to university IP addresses, to communication company IP address, such as Comcast, Road Runner, Verizon…etc. There were also a lot of international IP addresses from Hong Kong, China, and the UK. And then I am sure a majority of edits were from within Google as well.

Are the abiding by the rules?  There are definitely contributors editing and breaking some of the articles policies, such as:

• Be polite
• Assume good faith
• No personal attacks
• Neutral point of view

The Vandalism alone breaks all of these rules and there was a ton of vandalism!

Wikipedia Contribution

I admit that I was intimidated with our project to contribute to Wikipedia this week. I found myself searching for a subject or topic where my thoughts would warrant something worthy of contributing. I went back and forth, searching around and around, until I finally found the perfect contribution. A very good friend of mine, Bryson Spinner, an American football player, a former high school and college star who is still trying to play in the NFL, did not have an article in wikipedia. He is mentioned in other entries, but again had nothing about himself. Spinner has been in large publications such as USA Today and The Washington Post, to smaller college publications like the Cavalier Daily. He is also a topic among sports bloggers on the web.

I know one of the guidelines of wikipedia is to not add your friends, but given his career, and knowing the history behind his career I thought he should be a part of the wikipedia project, and recognized much like his former football colleges.

Creating the entry was challenging, you really have to make sure you reference what you are adding and stick to the truth, to the facts, when contributing. But then again, that is the great thing about edits! I probably would have never made a contribution to wikipedia had I not been forced to dive into it for class. In the end I found that its not so scary after all!

Virtual Life & Games

There were enough games to keep me playing all day, and when your unemployed you can do just that…but I had to stop myself! Out of the few games I played, I thought Cake Mania had an interesting concept about starting your own bakery and making the right items for your clientele, you have an amount each day that you need to reach, and its all based on how fast you can make the cakes, but the right cakes for your customers. Speedy Bubbles was boring, kind of like pinball, and my personal favorite, Dress Up Hillary was the most entertaining, but again I don’t think there was much of a message behind dressing her up! If you paste this wardrobe code (see below) into the wardrobe code box, you can see the outfit I put her in for the baseball game!

{f:1,mc:_level0.character_mc},{d:1009,c:shoes,y:353.55,x:36.75,mc:shoes004},
{d:3011,c:shirt,y:110.05,x:23.15,mc:shirt006},{d:5013,c:hat,y:76.1,x:73.75,mc:hat002},
{d:4011,c:glasses,y:113.5,x:44.45,mc:glasses009},{d:4012,c:glasses,y:77.1,x:103,mc:glasses008},
{d:4013,c:glasses,y:66.2,x:38.6,mc:glasses007},{d:5014,c:hat,y:63.2,x:89.7,mc:hat004},
{f:3,mc:_level0.background_mc},{d:4014,c:glasses,y:37.55,x:45.15,mc:glasses001},
{d:3012,c:shirt,y:172.3,x:71.95,mc:shirt005}

The range in choices of games out there is just amazing, for example Xtreme Xmas Shopping, and Cold Stone Creamery, which is trying to teach portion control! WOW!

I found the podcast of the journalist from BuisnessWeek to be more interesting than the article, because actually hearing him speak about his experience in Second Life came across differently then the article. You could tell he had not bought into the game and concept completely. Which I think it is very realistic, this whole idea of real life in a game is weird to me. I don’t know what it would take for me to get sucked into something like this, as I am not a gaming type. I was surprised to hear that there were tangible things to gain from this game, like $$$. The one avatar has $250,000 that she could cash out, and that is all she does for a living….play this game, are you kidding! (maybe I should broaden my job search to include Second Life). It was also mentioned that Coke was getting involved in Second Life, some big advertisers are having a presence in this game which means that it must be leaving an impression on someone.