Anti-Theft System Locks ME Out More Than Car Thieves

My Corvette has been in and out of the shop recently due to a problem with the anti-theft system. Last time I had to bring my car in, I broke down at the train station because of a defect that caused the anti-theft system to lock the steering column. The techs at Hustedt Chevrolet supposedly performed the service, which was covered by a recall no one told me about. The latest problem has made it impossible to start the car with a key. I can pop-start it if I happen to be on a hill, but I can't get the starter to engage. Ramp Chevrolet tells me it's due to the anti-theft system again. It's at least three hours' worth of work to take apart the dash and get to the electrical short that needs to be addressed. Fun, fun, fun.

Makes me wonder whether Hustedt screwed up the recall work.

RSS and How It Saves Time

A while back, I switched my default browser to Firefox. I also downloaded all sorts of plugin goodness for the browser, with Sage among them. I used to use NewsGator to read feeds through Outlook. Truth be told, though, it was a pain in the ass. I'd much rather have a reader incorporated into my browser, which is precisely how Sage handles things.

My daily web stops include about 20 online content publications covering news and opinion in politics, marketing and technology. There are also a number of blogs I read regularly. I would spend a good deal of time during the day going to each site individually, checking for updates and reading up on the latest posts. Sage is saving me a good deal of time in that regard. Whenever I want to check for updates, I simply click one button in my browser and within a few seconds know which sites have updated and which haven't. From there, Sage lets me browse the content feeds in a stripped-down manner, without bandwidth-hogging "just for show" graphics. What used to take me an hour during lunch now takes about 20 minutes.

What's more, I'm learning about new stories more often and visiting the sites more often as well. So my consumption of these sites has increased while the time taken to consume them has decreased. Ain't technology great?

Sage also has a great little feature in its "Discover Feeds" button. Simply visit a site that syndicates via RSS, click on the button, and Sage finds all the feeds from that site, presenting them in a menu format so that you can pick the ones you would like to subscribe to.

Setting up Sage properly has saved me a lot of time. Check it out if you're looking for a simple, easy-to-use feed reader.

Are We Reaching Saturation Point with Trade Shows Again?

Here we go again... Advertising Week (September 26th through September 30th in NYC) will present some interesting choices/challenges for those of us on the online side of the business. Mediapost will be hosting its OMMA East conference at the Marriott Marquis on the 27th and 28th. Additionally, iMedia is hosting its Brand Summit the 25th through the 28th in Coronado, CA. On top of that, the IAB and AdWeek are hosting the Mixx Conference and Expo (and awards) on the 26th and 27th at the Millennium Broadway.

So if you're in this industry, hard choices have to be made for that particular week. I do hope, however, that we don't make the mistake we made several years ago when we exceeded the saturation point for industry trade shows and everyone got their asses kicked. Used to be that when you went to just one of these shows, you were pretty much assured that most of your industry buddies and bigwigs were going to be there. Now it looks like everybody's going to be splitting up and attending different events.

At least we'll all probably be going to the same post-event parties. :-)

PR vs. Advertising, Round 1

You know, this story kinda tweaks me a bit. I don't want to belittle the contributions of folks like Steve Rubel at CooperKatz or Ketchum's new effort in the "personalized media" space, but since when do advertising agencies need to start specialized divisions to adequately leverage blogs and community sites? There's already a department at ad agencies that can deal with this - it's called the online marketing department.

The blog networks have agency-represented advertisers. Some agencies (like mine, for instance) are going directly to blog publishers to cut deals. It doesn't require a specialized division, and I think Mediapost's implication that it does is kind of silly.