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Cool Cell Phone Uses

A few good uses of cellphone technology:

1. Reaching out to younger people to increase voter participating...

From News.com:

Music for America, a nonprofit advocacy for young-voter registration, will kick off a text-messaging campaign this June at concerts around the country...

...participating musicians will call on concertgoers with cell phones to get registered by punching in a word designated by the musicians and then sending it off using a short numerical code. Fans will receive a reply asking them to send their name and address to receive voter registration forms. They'll get an SMS (Short Message Service) reminder to vote on Election Day.

2. The London Borough of Lambeth is piloting a new email and SMS reminder service that will send a series of regular emails and text messages reminding users of deadlines for electoral registration, postal vote registration and election day voting. Read more from Textually.org.

3. Fox creates a new interactive game for cell phones inspired by 24, its hit television show:

From the BBC:

Taking the popular TV show, 24, and squeezing it into a mobile phone game sounds like a daunting task.

But as with so many big names from the world of TV and film, this is exactly what has happened to the real-time action series.

24 is making the leap from being a TV show to a game franchise of its own. Game versions for the main consoles are on their way.

Bad, Yahoo, Bad

This last weekend, I decided to purchase a song on Yahoo! Music and put it on my iPod.  (Yes... I now know you can't do this.) The experience turned out to be one problem and disappointment after another.  I had no idea what this was going to involve... 

When you sign up for Yahoo! Music, you need to get the "music engine."  This was expected (I have signed up for iTunes and MSN Music, so I realize that this is part of the process).  But, when all was said and done, I got a few extras added to my computer: Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Mail and a Yahoo! Toolbar.  And, the kicker... Yahoo! suddenly became my default home page.  Bad, Yahoo, Bad! I probably should have paid more attention to options being presented to me when I started the sign up process. Overall, it would have been better to opt-in to all of these extra items than to have to customize the installation by excluding all of these irrelevant additions.

In the end, I found out that Yahoo! Music downloads are not compatible with iTunes/iPod.  To Yahoo's credit, iTunes downloads are compatible with Yahoo!.  But, seeing that I listen to my music on an iPod, this wasn't helpful to me.  Once again, I should have been paying more attention. 

My guess is that there are a lot of disappointed Yahoo! Music users.   

Downloadable Teachable Moments

The UN World Food Programme is teaching youngsters about the complexities of delivering food and supplies to refugees via a downloadable game.  The game was released last Spring on Yahoo Games, but Wired News just wrote about it this week.  Three million people have downloaded it. It's a good article.  Here is a little taste...

The roar of the chopper blasts through my headphones. Frantically clicking the mouse, I adjust my aim for the wind speed and fire my payload: a pallet stacked high with bags of rice.

What -- you were expecting a cruise missile?

With no guns to fire and no cars to steal, you would think that Food Force wouldn't be a very popular video game in today's market. But after it launched on Yahoo Games last spring, it quickly became the most popular free game on the site, racking up 1 million downloads over the first two months.

Created by the United Nations World Food Programme, Food Force is made up of six stages, each one built around a certain aspect of the emergency food program's operations.

The entire game takes about 30 minutes to play.

Visit the Food Force site for more info.

This is a creative way to explain a complex issue.  According to the article, the UN got the idea from a similar game created by the U.S. Army. Will we see more of these "edutainment" games in the future?  The cost may be prohibitive, especially for Non-profits. So, it will likely need to prove itself before you see NGOs moving into this space. Of course, there are alternatives.  Games like this could be created in Flash.  The challenge would be to make them as compelling as this one created by the UN.

Snapshot of NGOs online

A new study has been released that analyzes online activism, fundraising and messaging based on data from 15 national nonprofit organizations as well as data from Convio, GetActive Software, and Kintera. (Full disclosure: My employer, Amnesty International, participated in the study.)

Here are some of the findings:

• Nonprofits raised 40 percent more money online in 2005 than in 2004
• Open-rates declined from 30 percent in 2003-2004 to 26 percent in 2004-2005
• Nonprofits with larger online budgets had better online programs
• Over a quarter of all email addresses on nonprofit email lists "go bad" each year
• Only six percent of email subscribers on nonprofit email lists have made a donation online

Read more: eNonprofit Benchmarks Study

Blogs Matter

Mainstream media (MSM) still matters, at least on the Web. The latest Technorati "State of the Blogsphere" report shows that 100,000s of blogs continue to link to news stories on major news sites.  The big winner is the New York Times followed by CNN and the Washington Post. If your strategy involves driving traffic to your site, getting mentioned in the MSM can help bring your message to the blogsphere.  Certainly, there are many other reasons to working with MSM, but this is likely one reason that most media directors are not thinking about.  One day, "integrated communications" will really mean integrated. :-) But, not yet, so forward this new report on to your media relations folks.

Of course, the report has lots more to tell.  The real news from this latest report is the growing importance of blogs themselves. 

"Continuing down the attention curve, blogs take a more and more significant position as the economics of the mainstream publishing models make it cost prohibitive to build many nice sites and media."

So, don't forget blogger relations as well.

Superbowl ads the talk of the blogsphere

Bloggers had a lot to say about this year's Superbowl ads, according to "Word of Super Bowl Ads Travel the Web," on ClickZ. But, the article goes on to report on the real story: all the missed opportunities.

"Few of the ads involved consumers in any way. It's surprising against the backdrop of companies wanting to start blogs," said [Pete] Blackshaw [of Intelliseek]. "The ads were created by traditional advertising [departments]."

Blackshaw gave the example of Gillette, which debuted a campaign for the new Fusion razor during the big game, but lacked Web elements to engage its target audience. "I thought Gillette missed some really big opportunities," he said. "It's heavily targeted toward one of the most active segments online."

It seems that if you had enough money to run an ad during the Superbowl, you probably could have/should have spent a little bit of time and money on a Web component. Oh, well. Maybe next time. 

Podcasting isn't always cheap and easy

Podfading: A short-lived podcast...

Podcasting has drawn thousands on the premise that anyone can create an audio program, build an audience online and even vault to stardom. Less celebrated is the fact that untold numbers of shows just wink out just as suddenly as they started.

The phenomenon has earned its own label, "podfading," coined by podcaster Scott Fletcher in February 2005 when he gave up on two podcasts of his own.

The next time someone comes to you with a podcast idea, have them read this article first. :-)

Read the article on Wired News, "Podfading Takes Its Toll."

AOL to Retain Enhanced White List

Here is the latest from DM News on AOL's recent announcement that it will start charging companies and organizations to guarantee delivery of their emails:

"The Enhanced Whitelist is going to remain a useful tool. People who are on today will continue to use [its] privileges and benefits," AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham told DM News on Friday.

It was originally reported that AOL's Enhanced Whitelist would be shut down in June.

Read the article: "AOL's About-Face Surprises E-Mailers."

Improve Your Email Program

EmailLab offers 10 email marketing "Must Dos." I agree with all of them.

New Fee Coming for Email Marketers

Both AOL and Yahoo plan to introduce fees for businesses and organizations that want to deliver email to AOL and Yahoo subscribers without first going through spam filters.  We can all thank spammers for helping us get to this point. No doubt, other providers will follow quickly.  (Of course, Hotmail already uses the "Bonded Sender," but that is not a cost per mail program.)

According to an article on ClickZ, AOL's current "Enhanced Whitelist program" will be phased out entirely by the end of June.

Steve Ruble at Micro Persuasion, has this to say:

"That's all folks. The door has officially closed on email marketing. Maybe this will drive more companies to start up opt-in RSS feeds and blogs that facilitate dialogue."

Here are a few stories on this:

"AOL to Implement E-mail Certification Program," from ClickZ.
"Postage is due for companies sending e-mail," from News.com/NYT
"AOL to charge fee as way to cut spam," from USA Today.
"Plan to charge businesses for e-mail triggers outcry," from CNN Money.

UPDATE: DM News is reporting that AOL will continue to offer its Enhanced Whitelist service.