Junk Email of the Day: And if you want a uni­corn, CLICK HERE

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I like junk emails that fol­low proper gram­mar and spelling rules.

Are you fed up with size of your man­hood? Do you feel in­ad­e­quate around women and in­deed other guys?

In every man’s mind there is a want to en­large his pe­nis. Many search out ways to do this and some­times it works and some­times not.

Men equate a larger pe­nis as be­ing more at­trac­tive and im­pres­sive to the op­po­site sex. But they don’t al­ways know if in­creas­ing their size will de­crease or in­crease the plea­sure they de­rive from sex­ual intercourse.

Do you want a big thick pe­nis? Well if you do then you may be search­ing for nat­ural pe­nis male en­large­ment pill that has no side ef­fect for you, here you go CLICK HERE

Do you want a nice winged horse? Well if you do you may be search­ing for a unicorn, here you go CLICK HERE.

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Reasons Why I May Be Single: Early 20th Century Edition

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I love vin­tage ads. They cer­tainly didn’t beat around the bush back then. They told you, in very frank and ex­plicit terms, why you needed to buy this prod­uct — you were too fat, you were too ugly, you were sin­gle!

In these times of sub­lim­i­nal mes­sag­ing, where the misog­yny be­hind an ad is hid­den in sub­text and “art”, it’s kind of re­fresh­ing to look at ad­ver­tis­ing from yes­ter­year. At least they told you what was wrong with you - to your face.

So when some­one asks me, “Why are you sin­gle?”, I can choose from many pos­si­ble rea­sons, thanks to vin­tage advertising.

1. I smell.

2. I‘m con­sti­pated.

3. I‘m smart.

4. I smell.

5. I sleep around.

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If you can’t say any­thing nice…then just shut up

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Earlier this week, my friend Catherine posted a Tweet about her mother’s new web­site. It was a ges­ture from a lov­ing and proud daugh­ter — this was her mother’s first foray into so­cial net­work­ing and Catherine wanted to give the web­site a lit­tle ex­po­sure. The re­sponses from Catherine’s fol­low­ers on Twitter and Facebook were wel­com­ing, kind and gracious.

I re­mem­ber how ner­vous I was when I pub­lished by first blog post. Unlike post­ing a note on Facebook, it was out there for the whole world to read and com­ment on. I over­came my fears be­cause: a) I had con­fi­dence in my writ­ing skills; b) I have a thick skin that makes me im­per­vi­ous to trolls; and c) I had a great net­work of friends and col­leagues that sup­ported and guided me.

But if you’re a 60-year-old woman who lives in a small town and is un­fa­mil­iar with so­cial net­work­ing, start­ing a web­site can be a daunt­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. It cer­tainly doesn’t help when your first ef­forts get slammed by a stranger.

The fol­low­ing is an email sent to Catherine’s mom that same evening.

From: pete@xxxxxxxx.ca
Subject: Hi Helen.
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2009

First, I know am prob­a­bly go­ing to re­gret this. I just know I will. My apolo­gies up front!

It gen­er­ally hap­pens when I poke my nose in where it does not belong.

Ok, that be­ing over with — here is the scoop.

Your daugh­ter whom I have never met, but see on that stu­pid thing called Twitter some­time, just an­nounced that your NEW web­site was up and running.

GOOD FOR YOU!!!

Well, I went and had a peak.

Here is where I will start to re­gret all this …

First, my back­ground is on­line. I have built well-over 1000 sites. They (who ever the heck they are) say I am an ex­pert in this stuff and have been on­line from day one, in truth
well be­fore the web was in­vented. I am also a writer and a pho­tog­ra­pher and a musician.

I am happy you have a site. We should all have sites.

However, and I am not sure how to put this, yours is horrible.

I am sorry, I am not try­ing to be rude.

And I am not talk­ing about look and feel or de­sign al­though it is not as good as you de­serve — there are sim­ply things that have been done in­cor­rectly and will more than likely di­min­ish your brand.

Here have a look …

http://​www​.xxxxxxx​.ca/​h​e​l​e​n​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​h​tml

I did this in 10 min­utes. I used a sim­ple tem­plate I had sit­ting around — there are a lot of tem­plates just like this. http://​www​.styleshout​.com/​f​r​e​e​-​t​e​m​p​l​a​t​e​s​.​p​h​p​?​p​a​g​e=1

I am not sug­gest­ing you use what I have done. There are prob­a­bly dozens you would like better.

This site is built prop­erly. Meaning peo­ple can nav­i­gate through it and it will be found buy search en­gines and a bunch of other stuff I will not bore you with.

I tried to get hold of your daugh­ter to see if I could get her to bridge this — but she did not get the mes­sage (the Twitter thing is use­less at con­tact­ing peo­ple — prob­a­bly a good thing)

Anyway — please ac­cept this mes­sage in the spirit it is intended.

Your daugh­ter seems like a great Gal and more­over you seem pretty amaz­ing your­self. You need a bet­ter on­line presence.

I just hate see­ing peo­ple do what I con­sider is the wrong thing.

And if you want this work I did — I will hap­pily com­plete it of course — this was 10 min­utes work so I would add your gallery and what is miss­ing. It is no charge.

Cheers

Pete

[Business con­tact in­for­ma­tion re­moved.]

I can’t even be­gin to list all the things that are so wrong with this email. I won’t go into the ob­vi­ous, but here are a few that stand out:

1. The un­so­licited sales pitch. Yes, this was a sales pitch, al­beit a very poor one. I don’t care how care­fully you choose your words or try to be friendly, when you list your CV and of­fer your help at “no charge”, you are sell­ing some­thing. If you are truly in­ter­ested in help­ing some­one, with no self­ish mo­tives, then start a con­ver­sa­tion. Don’t be a spambot.

2. The ca­sual tone of the email. Pete has never met Catherine or her mother, yet he thinks it is per­fectly okay to speak to and about them as if they’re friends. And don’t get me started on the “great GAL” comment.

3. It’s never a good idea to in­sult the per­son you are try­ing to help/sell to. Hard to get buy-in from a per­son whose web­site you de­scribe as “hor­ri­ble”. Hint: look up “fi­nesse” in the dictionary.

4. Was he that anx­ious to tell Helen how “hor­ri­ble” her site was that he couldn’t wait one day to hear back from Catherine? Despite its lim­i­ta­tions, Twitter IS a good way of con­tact­ing peo­ple you don’t know. Just don’t ex­pect an in­stant re­sponse if they don’t know you per­son­ally. (And if you think it’s a “stu­pid thing”, then maybe you shouldn’t be on it.)

5. Just be­cause you call your­self an ex­pert, doesn’t mean you are one. “I just hate see­ing peo­ple do what I con­sider is the wrong thing.” Pete should have taken the time to find out the pur­pose of the web­site be­fore mak­ing this ar­bi­trary call. The site is clean and easy to nav­i­gate; it’s a fo­rum to show­case her work to friends and col­leagues. What is so “wrong” with that?

6. If you think you are be­ing rude, and if you think you’ll re­gret what you say, then don’t say it. Stating it up­front in your email does not mit­i­gate the dam­age that will follow.

To the un­fa­mil­iar and unini­ti­ated, the Internet can be quite in­tim­i­dat­ing. Some of us put aside our fears and dive right in. Others pre­fer to dip their toes in to get a feel for the tem­per­a­ture — let’s in­vite them in, and not push them un­der the water.

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Podcamp Toronto 2009

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I had the plea­sure of at­tend­ing Podcamp Toronto this past week­end. Over 600 peo­ple con­verged at the Rogers Communications Centre at Ryerson to lis­ten to their peers talk about new me­dia, so­cial net­work­ing sites, blog­ging and pod­cast­ing (natch). The two-day “un­con­fer­ence” was free, thanks to its many spon­sors, and of­fered a venue to for so­cial me­dia pros and am­a­teurs alike to min­gle, net­work and learn from each other.

It was a great way to meet new peo­ple who share my in­ter­est in so­cial net­work­ing tools. I was also able to meet the real live peo­ple be­hind the small Twitter avatars I see every day. And I learned some­thing new at every ses­sion I attended. 

I won’t bore you with minute de­tails of what was dis­cussed at Podcamp (af­fec­tion­ately known by its hash­tag #pcTO09); all ses­sions were recorded and will be posted on the Podcamp Toronto wiki (http://​pod​camp​toronto​.pb​wiki​.com/). I urge you to lis­ten to each ses­sion — every speaker is pas­sion­ate about their topic and the fun is in lis­ten­ing to them reach out to their au­di­ences and share their knowledge.

Thanks and con­grats to the or­ga­niz­ers of this event!

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Ugh, I just got my [in­sert eu­phemism here].

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Stumbled upon this lit­tle item on the Brand Week website:

Procter & Gamble’s Tampax brand an­nounced the launch of MonthlyGiftClub on teen and tween Web com­mu­nity Stardoll to pro­mote prod­ucts for that time of the month. 

Taking its cues from a tra­di­tion in TV ads — in which women are shown wear­ing white cloth­ing as a vi­sual cue that a brand’s san­i­tary prod­ucts are safe and ab­sorbent — Stardoll club mem­bers will re­ceive vir­tual ver­sions of white swim­suits, dresses and other frocks when the club meets cer­tain mem­ber­ship mile­stones, such as 10,000 or 50,000 mem­bers. The ef­fort specif­i­cally pro­motes Tampax Pearl, which has a Leak Guard fea­ture that pur­ports to help women “out­smart Mother Nature” so they can feel con­fi­dent wear­ing white.

Aside from the swag, Stardoll vis­i­tors can win prizes by cre­at­ing vir­tual sum­mer scenes, and they can re­ceive free sam­ples of Tampax prod­ucts by click­ing on an icon and en­ter­ing their per­sonal information.

As some of you know, I wrote a post in May about Always’ “Happy Period” brand­ing. Well, it seems the folks at Proctor and Gamble con­tinue to in­sist that the time of the month should be wel­comed — nay, cel­e­brated! “Monthly gift”? Does it come wrapped in a neat lit­tle bow, too?

This time, they’ve cre­ated a Second Life-type net­work­ing site where tween girls can cre­ate their own avatar and in­ter­act with each other in the vir­tual world (when they re­ceive their monthly gift, I presume). And in white clothes! I don’t know what re­al­ity these mar­ket­ing ge­niuses live in, but who wears white dur­ing a visit from their Aunt Flo? Every woman I know has ex­pe­ri­enced an “ac­ci­dent” in­volv­ing the Curse and white pants/skirt/shorts. The em­bar­rass­ment has been seared into our memories; I have a hard time even buy­ing white pants, let alone wear­ing them.

Virtual sum­mer scenes? How about one where your avatar ties a sweater around the waist­band of her white shorts be­fore run­ning home be­cause, oops, her pe­riod came ear­lier than ex­pected? (True story.) Or, your avatar is lay­ing on her vir­tual couch with a vir­tual heat­ing pad on her belly, gulp­ing down vir­tual Advil (hey Wyeth - found a prod­uct place­ment op­por­tu­nity for you) while her friends are frol­ick­ing at the vir­tual pool?

While I ap­plaud P&G’s foray into so­cial net­work­ing, I not sure this was the way to do it. Is it re­ally nec­es­sary? P&G en­joys a healthy mar­ket share due to its two old­est and largest brands in fem­i­nine hygiene, Always and Tampax. It also has a cap­tive audience; like toi­let paper, its prod­ucts are a ne­ces­sity. All we, the con­sumers, ask for are qual­ity goods that do the job. Period. (Sorry, couldn’t re­sist.) We don’t need colour­ful pack­ag­ing. We don’t want con­de­scend­ing cam­paigns. Is it any won­der I switched to o.b. (aside from re­duc­ing the amount of plas­tic ap­pli­ca­tors in our landfills)?

I could be sneaky, log in to Stardoll as pose as a 13-year-old girl to find out more (and cre­ate a lit­tle havoc). But I’m too hon­est for my own good, so I de­cided to just blog about it.

I imag­ine my avatar would look some­thing like this:

Look - she's wearing white!

Look out! She’s wear­ing white!

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