RIP, George Carlin

I'm going to miss George Carlin. I don't want to launch into a First Amendment rant here and get into why "Seven Dirty Words" was so important.  Other bloggers are going to have at that all day.

I'll just say that I thought he was amazingly funny, even when he was ranting more than he was joking.  I still quote from a lot of his routines.  Just the other day I used a line from his "Germs" routine when talking about why my immune system does such a great job keeping me from getting sick.

The Comedy Gold album and a few other classic routines have taken up residence on my iPod and there they'll stay.

Hyperlinked Society Book Now on Amazon

So, a while back I attended something called the Hyperlinked Society Conference at The Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.  Lots of heavy-hitters were there - Martin Nisenholtz from the NY Times, Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia, David Weinberger, etc.  Basically, the conference was all about understanding how digital linking affects our society.  It was really interesting for me, because clearly I was there to represent the point of view of digital marketers and advertisers, but I was an Internet guy long before I was a marketing guy.  It felt strange to have to represent that point of view among a bunch of people who probably hate Internet ads.  Anyway, I digress... Some time later, Joe Turow, who chaired the conference, asked me to write a chapter for a book based on the content of the conference.  So I wrote something called "How Hyperlinks Ought to Change the Advertising Business" and it made it into the book (right after the chapter written by Martin Nisenholtz).

So, would all eight of my regular blog readers mind swinging by Amazon and ordering a copy?  Thanks.

Found!

I got some responses from posting requests for help finding my first WMO column.  I had thought to dig through the Wayback Machine, but I kept getting broken links.  Somehow, though, both Brad Berens and Josh Messinger managed to find the link and send it to me.  Thanks, guys! Here it is: http://web.archive.org/web/19990508125949/http://www.searchz.com/wmo/033198.shtml

Milestone Coming Up

I just realized I have a milestone coming up.  But I need your help. On March 31, 2008, I'll celebrate the 10-year anniversary of my online media column.  The first column I ever wrote for a site other than my own was about defining ad views and it appeared in "Who's Marketing Online?" on March 31, 1998.  I was recruited to write for WMO by Charlie Sayers, and then the site was quickly bought by ClickZ (announcement on the old O-A list here).

So the writing has spanned 10 years, with columns appearing weekly first in WMO, then ClickZ, then Mediapost and now iMedia Connection. Here's my problem...  I can't seem to find a copy of that first column anywhere.  Here's a column that used to link to it, but the link is dead now.

Maybe somebody from ClickZ will read this and be able to dig it up.  Or maybe it exists somewhere in the deepest recesses of the Intarwebs.  I'm sure I've got it on an old hard drive somewhere, but my patience for playing the IDE cable bingo is pretty much nil.

Help!