Alan Is Good

Lately I’ve noticed a few updates and notables to some of my previous posts.  None truly warrant an entire new post on the matter, so I’ll just jot them down here in this update post.  It’ll be like those reality shows on VH1, where they have the “Reunion Special” and everyone gets together for 15 more minutes of drama.

The Darker Side of Google Latitude

I wrote about the dark effects of this new app, but I didn’t consider the lighter side!  Yesterday TechCrunch wrote about a San Francisco woman whose purse was stolen, with her iPhone inside.  Sure enough, she was a Google Latitude user.  She called her sister who had access to see her location at all times, and they were able to track down the criminal, arrest him and get the purse back.   Check out this CBS video covering the story.  Epic!  Turn on your Google Latitude function and let a family member have constant updates to your location.  You never know!

The Fate of The Facebook Relationship Status

Facebook has since changed the layout of their front page, and for a time I thought this nullified my relationship status posts.  It seemed like the only way to check on relationship status was to actually visit a person’s page, which so few of us do on a regular basis.  Then I realized that the relationship updates do show up in the Highlights box on the right side of the page!  In my personal life, I found it in me to hit the “Like” button for a recently ended relationship of a long time friend.  It also put the status update at the top of the highlights list for the week.  

Additionally, with the “Comment” option on these relationship updates, I’ve been seeing more and more threads unfold from them.  So far they have all been light hearted, fun comments, like ‘ooo,’ or ‘who’s the lucky gal?” but I have yet to see snarky or vindictive ones.  My appreciation for my friend’s breakup probably falls under that category, but I’ve made several justifications internally for why I did it.  

Skittles Tastes the Fail Boat

Skittles is again using the Twitter Search results for “Skittles” as their homepage at Skittles.com.  At this point who knows what their strategy is.  They have the age filter, but no word filters or anything.  It’s like they just said, “Umm, I dunno.  Put the Twitter results up again, I guess.”

Cisco Fatty and Social Media Censorship

Many bloggers wrote the standard ‘this is why you should watch what you say on Twitter,’ or the ‘how to lose your job via Twitter’ postings, but I didn’t really see anyone take my stance.  My stance – you know, the one that was featured on Brazen Careerist and was one of the most popular posts of the week!  The only other update to this post was that horrible cisco fatty video on YouTube.  Very high chance of being offended, even higher chance of chuckling hysterically.

TIME Magazine’s Most Influential Person of . . . LOLwut? 

The voting for this is still going on, but it’s all for naught.  4Chan’s founder, moot, is ahead by an astronomical amount.  Here’s the latest tally, from TIME’s website: 

Of course, it doesn’t end there.  Just to show the world the power of the Anonymous, they also went ahead and strategically voted up the rest of the top 21 such that they acrostically spelled out MARBLECAKE, ALSO THE GAME.  Do you see it?  The phrase means nothing, really.  It’s another meme that’s lulzy.  Just the muscles of the Anonymous being flexed for the entire world to see.  The day that a viral campaign or digital PR effort is somehow supported by the Anonymous is the day that the marketers responsible for the campaign become quite wealthy.  

No Further Updates

This concludes the VH1 reunion special “AlanIsGood Blog Posts.”  See you next season.  And by next season, I mean tomorrow.

In honor of a conversation and joke between @m3rkvry and myself about newspapers’ failing business model and the success of online ads and publications.  

To Peter Parker: upload your snapshots to Flickr and TwitPic, and see if you can get some photosharing site advertisements on your blog.  Good luck!

Citrus Soda Wars: The Beginning

Coca-Cola is number one in the soda universe, but they don’t sweep PepsiCo in every category.  At no point in history has Coca-Cola ever had a serious chance of competing with Mountain Dew, PepsiCo’s yellow citrus soda.  Mello Yello was released in 1979 to compete with Dew, but never quite made the impact needed to register on the radar.  Despite some success in the South, Mello Yello was plagued with a bad case of ‘always the bridesmaid, never the bride.’  

A Surge Ahead

In 1996, Coca-Cola began promoting their answer to Pepsi’s Mountain Dew – it was a yellow-green soda by the name of Surge.  I’ll always remember the day that Surge came to my middle school and offered every student one free 12 oz. bottle.  I hoarded more than 12 bottles of Surge that day using the coupons of others and from those who sipped and hated the soda.  For a time, things were good. More »