Daily Archives: August 13, 2005

Marketers Wrestle with Hard-to-Control Web Content

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Kris Oser describes (Subscription – Ad Age) the influence between advertising and media content:

Is it safe to advertise in places on the Internet that are essentially run by consumers and cannot be controlled? How can they protect themselves and their good names when blog and chat-room users are liable to say and post anything? It’s not just pornography or off-color language that worries them. What if consumers got angry about something involving a marketer’s brand, and their remarks got linked to across the Internet? Maybe advertising in such open spaces is not worth the risk.

emphasis added Dave Winer and Doc Searls offer useful comments.

Oakland A’s in First Place – Brewers are Not

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Bob Sherwin:

Yet other teams have smart players with skill and vision. Tampa Bay has had several first-round draft choices over the years. Texas is loaded with young talent, as are Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and others. But those teams do not get off the ground, while Oakland soars.

Oakland General Manager Billy Beane continues to make it happen. Milwaukee, while, perhaps slowly improving, just is not in the same league, despite a similar small payroll.
Michael Lewis’s Moneyball is a must read for this interested in just how the A’s have been very competitive while the Brewers have not…

Water Wars come to Southeast Wisconsin

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I lived in the western US for a number of years. During this time, I became quite familiar with water shortages and local efforts to address these problems. Living in San Francisco (late 1980’s/early 1990’s), I remember many restaurants stopped serving water with meals (unless one asked – 5+ times). I also recall the mandate that residents restrict their bathing frequency to 3X/week. Fast forward to 2005 and I find that Waukesha, just 55 miles east of Madison, faces significant water problems. Felicity Barringer digs in:

The draw-down of water from the deep aquifer was gradual at first, accelerating in the late 1980’s and throughout the next 15 years. In recent measurements, the water level had dropped about 600 feet. And the deeper the water source, the more likely that it would be contaminated with too much radium, a naturally occurring radioactive element.

A must read, for all water consumers: Cadillac Desert.