Advertising Fail

One of the things I love about the TV guide that comes in the Sunday paper is the adverts – from Home stair lifts, to commerative plates with pictures of dogs, to spurious ‘dietary supplements’ they represent a world of tat.

But every now and then there’s one that takes the cake. Stand up “Your Baby Can Read” for your award for sheer advertising crapness

Apologies for the quality of the photo

The text is pretty standard for this kind of ad  – but where these guys really take the lead is in their ” As Recommended by Parents, Teachers and Doctors” section

As the text is a little blurry let me spell it out for you. Firstly we have a blurb from someone called “Angelo” about his experience with the program. Then Dr Ann Singer chimes in with

“This program is a fantastic early childhood development tool for helping babies and young children maximise their natural learning abilities”

Obviously this is the ‘Doctor’s” recommendation.

Let’s look at Dr Singer’s qualifications

• BDS (Hons) (Sydney)
• MSc (Perio) (London)
• LDS (Vic)
• MDSc (Ortho) (Melbourne)

That’s right – She’s a dentist.

And we all know how expert dentists are in the field of early childhood development.

Fantastic review of two new blackberries and a G1

Stephen Fry, as well as being a noted actor, writer and raconteur is a bona fide gadget freak (Seriously – he made a film celebrating 25 years of GNU Happy Birthday to GNU)

He has recently reviewed the Blackberry Bold and Storm, and the GI It’s a fantastic review describing the Storm’s keyboard thusly

Watching someone writing an email on a Storm is like watching an antelope trying to open a packet of cigarettes.a

and anyone who has every travelled with more than one electronic device with empathise with the photo of his hotel room desk.

Do yourself a favour – Read it

WTF?!

I’ve had a cough for a couple of weeks now. Finally got test results back from the lab. I have whooping cough. Because we didn’t catch it early enough* I’ll probably have it for about three months.

Growing up I read a number of stories where children with whooping cough were sent to the countryside to convalesce once they were there they had all sorts of fantastic adventures.

The reality is a lot less fun.

*I actually went to the doctor in the first week I had the cough because I knew someone I work with had been diagnosed with whooping cough – but she wasn’t convinced and then the lab took forever to do the test – so by the time the results were back – too late.

Blogging for work

One of the MDs came to me yesterday and said

“What do you think about adding a blog to our website? I mean are blogs a good idea – or are they just a passing fad.”

Given I’ve been blogging off and on for about 5 years I did suggest I was the wrong person to ask about whether it was a fad. However, I could see some real benefits to having a corporate blog, it would give us an opportunity to create new content for the site regularly – without it necessarily having to conform with a “news item’ style. It’s one of the ways to really emphasise that in a traditionally very staid market we take a modern approach.

So we had a chat about it and the decision was that we’d try a bit of skunk-works project where we’d start the blog, and then see how we went with regular updates and the like before we made a big song and dance about it.

I guess the next thing will be getting them on twitter.

Gillard would beat Turnbull if election held today…

Leaving aside the slight derogartory “even” this story is bad news for the conservatives, and good news for argumentative, opinionated left-wing, feminist lawyers.

Whose ranks I hope to join  – being already able to tick 4 out of the 5 boxes…

(edited to correct the spelling of Turnbull’s name)