Aug 31

spiderman-sadIf you haven’t heard yet, it looks like Disney will be buying Marvel Entertainment. This is pretty damned scary as Disney has a long history of abusing their talent, and making all around dick moves as a company. I thought about writing a long diatribe about how this news both enrages and depresses me, but I decided instead to share with you the IM conversation a friend and I had upon hearing the sad sad news.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , ,

Jul 6

wii-fat-t-shirtGame Politics reported on an article on an extremely small fitness website that suggested that warning  labels linking video games to obesity be placed on each game’s packaging. I have two problems with this story.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , ,

Jun 12

godaddy

Have you ever gone to your favorite blog only to find that the author had written a glowing endorsement for a substandard product? There’s a good chance the author was paid for that article. It’s called word-of-mouth marketing, and thanks to the “wild west” nature of the internet, a lot of companies have been getting away with it for some time now. Behind closed doors, companies will often approach popular bloggers and offer cash or products in exchange for the blogger making some mention of the product (positive or negative) on their site. Unfortunately, many bloggers don’t have the decency to make any mention of the fact that they were paid for the post. The FTC has finally decided to step in on this issue. They plan to have paid blog posts governed by the truth in advertising guidelines they have set forth which would require the blogger to make it clear that they have been paid for their post. While I agree witht he FTC in principle, I want to see the fine print.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , ,