Shake Well Before Use is going through some Movable Type changes. Apologies for filling up your RSS reader!

I'll be joining the forces with the fabulous team at Adrants and the ad:tech blog to provide coverage of the upcoming ad:tech conference in San Francisco, April 15-17.

General housekeeping of where else to find me:

• arielwaldman.com - My new blog that has more about myself and social media consulting.
• Engadget (Movie Gadget Friday columns!)
• Twitter, Pownce, and Upcoming

Oh, and I'll most likely be lobbycon-ing the Web 2.0 Expo in SF from April 22-25 with a few out-of-towners.

Update: The agency who created the site and Garnier appear to have been unaware of any activity executed by PayPerPost. The campaign itself is a cute spoof site, but didn't have the intention of marketing without transparency. Adrants is currently investigating who was behind the PayPerPost marketing.

We're begrudgingly posting this to out Garnier's lame attempts at viral marketing and potentially another blogging blunder from PayPerPost (though, we're sure they're smiling at the idea of getting any buzz):

Shake Well Before Use received an email from deanaburke@gmail.com:
"Hey- So I saw this video on youtube- I guess Garnier pulled sponsorship of this show, the harry situation, b/c it was too sexed up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQGOZaG0kOg -deana"
Of course, any attempts to Google this email address fail.

The YouTube video shows a supposed Garnier employee telling viewers not to go to http://theharrysituation.com in a very *wink wink* manner.

The Harry Situation site is a horrid attempt at a spoof site, not naming what networks, lawyers, etc. they were working with, but somehow managing to spill out the fill name of "Ganier Frucits" at any chance. A quick WhoIS lookup gives a vague address and another un-Google-able Gmail address.

Googling the name of "Todd Gruyere" only pulls up a handful of sites where you can post for free on (mostly free blog ranking sites). The sites that do contain blurbs about the situation, are all written in a similar style with the same facts on each blurb. Interestingly, these blog posts only link to "The Harry Situation", almost always twice in one blog post, and usually one of the links is a TinyURL (not surprisingly, various blogs are linking to the same TinyURLs, but somehow not to each other, nor to where they obtained this information from), something that isn't used often for blog links.

On this particular blog post, the site is again, linked to twice (with 2 TinyURLs). One of which is supposed to go to Todd's "blog", but when you click on the link, it (surprise!) takes you to an image of the "show" hosted on PayPerPost. Also, "interestingly", the same name of the image is used on the Harry Situation blog, only this time appropriately hosted on the site. Other blogs that host the post load PayPerPost data when you visit them.

Our investigative conclusion? Not only has PayPerPost Garnier (and potentially associated ad agencies) attempted to "game" bloggers, by somehow believing that they will link to anything without credentials, but it seems that they are incredibly insatiable in making themselves and any blogger associated with them become an evil empire of ridiculousness.

Dear PayPerPost, PayPerPost bloggers, and PayPerPost clients (possibly, but not yet confirmed, Garnier), please stop lying your way to links. It's pathetic and disrespectful.

Update: Adpuppet researches Deana Burke further.

Update 2: The content creator (Kirt) left a few comments below. It appears that Kirt and Garnier were unaware of the PayPerPost efforts.

Best Buy has never been a popular brand amongst bloggers with all the buzz around their Geek Squad stealing porn. Recently, LaughingSquid received a cease and desist letter from the ruffled retailers for coverage of Improv Everywhere's trademark intrusion apparel. Apparently, Best Buy viewed blogs as promotion, rather than an authentic news source. Contrary to many Consumerist reports of bad customer service, LaughingSquid was pleasantly surprised with an apology letter and follow-up call from their PR department. However, despite the "front-of-the-house" apology, other departments within Best Buy is aggressively trying to shut down the blog, sending a DMCA notice to LaughingSquid's data center.

Update: The C&D letter was misclassified as a DMCA notice. More updates likely to come from Twitter.

[img via Scott Beale/LaughingSquid]

The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. Pictured: A business that puts out to let you in.

[via]

Previously: Literally, A Web Log

Hugh Macleod of Gapingvoid was lovely as always this past week in London and dedicated a cartoon to Shake Well Before Use! Tomorrow's agenda for Shake Well Before Use: TechCrunch40. More to come!

Mashable recently posted a Wordpress plugin that needs far more coverage than it's getting. The Douchebag Plugin allows for you to visually tag your commenting trolls with an official douchebag icon. Certainly the Gawker and Weblogs, Inc. networks could make good use of this. Even better, would be a community-generated douchebag icon, when specific commenters are consistently complained about. Unfortunately, Shake Well Before Use operates off of Movable Type, but there's always other ways of publicly calling out dbags.

Passive Aggressive Notes

Shake Well Before Use celebrates its first blogiversary today (one year ago: Check out my guns). Quite a bit has changed in a year, and only for the better. While I typically don't make personal posts, a blogiversary is the perfect excuse for it (and for cupcakes!). With that, there are even more changes happening right now that I wanted to share.

After 8 solid years at VML, an interactive WPP agency, I am resigning as Digital Insights Analyst to pursue social media insights consulting. During my time at VML, I had the opportunity to work with a variety of truly amazing people from whom I learned a lot.

I'm currently in the process of relocating from Kansas City to San Francisco. You can also find me in different places across the web. I'm currently writing for Engadget and Suicide Girls, discussing the intersections between advertising, sex and technology. I may also be popping up in your inbox from time to time, as I recently started working with the wonderful team at Pownce to help assist them with support issues and requests. Shake Well Before Use will continue to be my main home within the vast blogosphere and will continue to grow. Check out the updated About section for more information. I look forward to another year of change and new experiences. In the meantime, I'm celebrating with a chocolate cupcake.

Like this ad for the British Heart Foundation suggests, Shake Well Before Use has been taking care of getting healthy this last and current week. While we could only wish getting healthy involved a daily serving(s) of sex and swimming, it has meant that posting has been a little on the light side lately, but will return once the thermometer stops telling us what we already know. In the meantime, keep updated via Twitter so as not to miss nuggets of essential knowledge like this.

McDonald's recently hired six "Quality Correspondent" Mommy bloggers to report to the "world at large" about McDonald's various facilities. An obvious attempt to build some positive brand buzz for McDonald's, which some of the blogosphere will undoubtedly groan at. Aside from the usual blogosphere tantrum over brand blogging, there are a few aspects that should be questioned. One of the most forefront being that the six Mommy "bloggers" don't appear operate blogs on their own. Picking out Virgin Marys to the blogosphere under the umbrella of a buzz-building site most definitely skews how the six will report back. As with most n00bs, we all at some time battled ourselves over self-censorship. Given that situation on top of blogging specifically for the brand you're supposed to be reporting on and not having an audience of your own outside of it definitely creates a highly skewed scenario. Sure, McDonald's can claim that blogging is not journalism in this instance and that they aren't telling the Moms what to say, but that's also like turning down a third-party survey in favor of paying off for an internally-conducted one. A better approach? Tap into existing influential and authoritative Mom blogs (like Dooce, 5 minutes for mom, and Everyday Mommy) that already have experience as a blogger outside of the brand.

Debonair Magazine recently released its "Best Food Blogs"awards. Fourteen delicious daily reads were picked for a variety of culinary categories, including "Best Food Porn" and "Best Eco-Friendly Food Blog" among others.

"When working in an office, I found it incredibly difficult to inconspicuously ruffle through The New York Times and read an 800-word restaurant review or try to hide my stacks of Saveur and Gourmet. Thankfully, a good food blog offers quick snippets of information that can easily be read between conference calls. "

The amuse bouche of blogs are below:
101cookbooks.com
amateurgoumet.com
chezpim.typepad.com
chocolateandzucchini.com
chowhound.com
davidlebovitz.com
eater.com
ethicurean.com
midtownlunch.com
nordjus.co.uk/en
restaurantgirl.com
shewhoeats.com
tastespotting.com
travelerslunchbox.com

[image via: chocolate cupcake stuffed with ginger caramel, frosted with mango ganache, and topped with a mango-ginger won ton]

Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration is a recently published book that explores and interviews bloggers and geek girls. Looking into the intimate nature of the internet, the 80 interviewed reveal how they intertwine sex and their computer screen into their lives and lifestyles. Wired's interview with the author, Audacia Ray, states, "women have wide-ranging sexual interests and are savvy enough to figure out how to harness technology to pursue our erotic desires". Technology truly is a turn on.

[via]

Quite aware that posting has been on the light side as of late, I'll be traveling to New York this week to attend the first Future of Online Advertising conference. The schedule is sure to be hectic, as my last attendance was back in November for ad:tech New York. New conferences can always be hit or miss, but it's always the people you meet that matter. The line-up for June 7-8 includes panelists from Blog Ads, Feedburner, Wired, Google, Microsoft, Digg, blip.tv, and the infamous PayPerPost.

As always, drop me a line if you'll be in the vicinity or have any recommended sights for June 7-10.

Love or hate Twitter, it is easy to see how it's a valuable resource for real-time brand monitoring. Thousands of users simultaneously (and quite candidly) expressing their good and bad interactions with brands, products, and services. Companies should consider it a virtual focus group of sorts... Only, instead of locking housewives in a room for an hour and feeding them cookies and $50, this is an actively engaged, un-prompted group of thousands.

Perhaps one of the most commonly mentioned categories of brands on Twitter are airlines. Often times you find yourself stuck in an airport with nothing but a phone as your connection to the world. Luckily, Twitter is always available to listen to you vent. This was the case with me about a month ago, when I experienced the most horrid treatment by United/US Airways and "live-twittered" my absolute disgust with them:

-I cant remember the last time i was on a flight that wasnt delayed. Not cool.
-Twitter is my only friend to vent to when im stuck in annoying airport lines.
-Brands should monitor twitter for real time feedback. Us airways would know how much i hate them now.
-I am seriously on the verge of crying. My flight was bumped again due to them accidentally not booking it correctly.
-Then I was yelled at by a United employee for saying it was booked last night even though I kept trying to reassure him I wasn't mad at him
-United and US Airways, go fuck yourselves, seriously... If you make your customer on the verge of crying when she's trying to calm YOU down
-United: "This was booked on a computer, are you familiar with the unreliability of computers?"
- Me: "I work with computers, and no, that's not a valid excuse" Airlines should not be allowed to make the same bullshit excuses as Kinko's.

Anyway, back to Delta. I applaud them for making this brave move (if it is in fact them - Twitter is also known for a ton of fake humor accounts). You can see how easy it is to vent about brands on Twitter, as I don't normally talk about myself on SWBU, but felt compelled to discuss this. It's good to know someone is listening and open to interacting in a medium that is known for constant airline complaints. Other brands should take notice - even if they're too hesitant to participate, they should utilize it as a free form of active listening.

24 hours of Flickr, a "global community event" in documenting Cinco de Mayo kicked off today. Will Flickr soon surpass MySpace in drunken photos?

While in not so sunny Seattle, I didn't want to tease with the hopes of the usual tasty topics, so I've left you a guest blogger to whet your palate until I return next week. While he may not have as many pent up "fantasies" as the last guest blogger, Steve Hall, be sure that he still has a thing or two to show.

Gavin Heaton, based out of Australia, is a contributor to Marketing Profs Daily Fix and also writes at Servant of Chaos. He was one of the few bloggers that began linking to Shake Well Before Use when it first took flight. Leveraging the unlikely, I took Gavin up on his Twitter when my need of a guest blogger came up in conversation. As always, I give guest bloggers free reign and no censorship, so NSFW-softies be warned.

P.S. If you're in Seattle as well, I recommend making paper airplanes and attending Ignite Seattle!. Unfortunately, I'll be on an airplane while you're taping yours together.

Last Friday marked the birthday bash of Hollywood's hated, Perez Hilton. The self-proclaimed queen pissed what's left of his 20's away as he went town, turning the tender age of 29. With bad makeup and blue hair dye, Perez Hilton, lesser known as Mario Lavandeira, danced with divas 'til the early break of dawn in Los Angeles. The birthday debauchery seemed to be a success with guest appearances from Paris Hilton, John Stamos, Amy Winehouse, Kelly Osbourne, David Spade, and Andy Milonakis. Any celeb that can take Microsoft Paint drawings in stride is always a friend.

The event was sponsored by a slew of brands ready to pick up the bill. Absolut, KY Intrigue, Ginch Gonch and Red Bull were loosened up for liquor and lubrication, while LA bands like Ultraviolet laid down some electro. Other performers stepped up and stripped down, such as burlesque extraordinaire Dita Von Teese with her classy pin-up performance. While documentation of all the debauchery didn't end up defaced with bad handwriting and white dots, we can only hope that the they'll return after some much needed hangover help.

Coolz0r commences another contest, calling for campaigns and links to generate the most comments and trackbacks. While it seemingly could be rigged (hmm, wonder why 15 commenters all use gmail...), the contest a couple weeks ago seemed to be a success. The prize last time was Dragon's Naturally Speaking software. This week, the marketing thoughts blog ups the ante with an ergonomically designed keyboard straight from CeBIT. The Wolf King Warrior Gaming Keypad defines itself as the ultimate gaming weapon, though, by the looks of it, it seems more likely to be the ultimate one-handed typing accessory. The Keypad states, "Perfect for PC Gamers looking for a portable game pad or just looking for more flexibility". Perhaps "just" looking for more flexibility, indeed. Coolz0r's link submission contest ends April 7, so CTRL+V those permalinks over.

Best contextual advertising ever.

Spotted SXSW geek shirts.

As flight delays scroll across screens and text messages taper off, SXSW negates to close its doors, yet gives a swift slap to attendees as it dismounts from Interactive. As stated up front, most of the interaction happens outside of the panels and what happens in SXSW, stays on Flickr. With leftover hand-stamps from nights before, attendees gingerly, yet somehow still enthusiastically dragged their feet into morning panels over the few days. While the main word on the carpeted streets was 'overwhelming', the plethora of things to do and people to see kept the crowd's stamina.

Friday night kicked off with the traditional Break Bread With Brad ceremonial drinkfest and introductions. One would think that after a few drinks, the crowd would begin to tangent off of social technology topics, however with the circulating video bloggers stumbling within the crowd and the lively debates over Technorati and Twitter (which becomes a more flexibly applied verb with a few drinks) the physicality of all the usually online activity takes tangible form.

With Treo and Blackberry ornaments hanging from every messenger bag pocket, and laptops all in a row, it was no longer business or pleasure, personal or professional. Threadless shirts and logo-ed tattoos pwned all. While parties like Dorkbot, Fox Interactive, 8-bit, LAist, Mashup, Blogger, Lifehacker, and SXNW played venue to a meeting of interactive minds, it was the actual interaction that made and continues to make SXSW a unique, sometimes awkward, but always appreciated, online to offline experience.

South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive kicked off on Friday with a panel dedicated to "pop the cherries of the SXSW virgins". The How to Rawk SXSW panel was headed up by a variety of familiar names and faces, including Min Jung Kim (Photobucket), Glenda Bautista (Agendacide), Tantek Çelik (Technorati), Nick Douglas (Look Shiny, formerly Valleywag), Andrew Huff (Gapers Block), Lynne d Johnson (fastcompany), and our friend Tony Pierce (LAist). Sharing swigs out of a bottle of Jack Daniel's the panelists calmed the crowd's expectations.

Overwhelming seems to be the sense on the street about SXSW. With hundreds of panels, speakers, and parties to attend, it's easy to lack time management. Thankfully, the panelists help tell you where to cut out the excess fat from your daily intake. Conferences are known to load up on the junk advertising, and this one is no exception. With his Jack Daniel's swigs well underway, Nick Douglas flipped through the multitude of junk. "Wired is the Cosmo of tech magazines," Douglas stated as he threw another conference magazine handout into the trash pile.

Equipped with hipster glasses and widgets, Tantek Celik educated the audience on how to effectively stalk fellow SXSW attendees. Obviously, with an array of bloggers, educators, and industry experts it can be difficult to manage the inevitable "blogasm". Dodgeball, Consumating, Twitter, and Flickr were all recommendations to keep track of the fire hose of content coming through. "What happens at SXSW, stays on Flickr", Celik grinned. Despite Celik revealing his tool to the audience, there's always secret happenings going on at SXSW that no tools can help you with. Unless of course, they're the tool managing the guest list.

Sidenote: Flickr album of my SXSW photos can be found here.

Yes, I'll be taking to the streets of Austin this week for SXSW. From the looks of it, I should be in good company with a blogasm of sights and people to be seen, heard, and perhaps felt, if we're lucky. I'll also be covering SXSW events and panels for Adrants, so stay tuned for that. Rex at Fimoculous has a great quote on the upcoming debauchery: "Imagine rock stars competing with dot-commers for throwing the best parties. Their weapons are drugs. Then, without any rationale, you'll walk into a room with Will Wheaton, Will Wright, and Will Farrell. ('Was that George Will?'). It's nutty like that."

As always, feel free to drop me a line if you'll be in the vicinity.

In other news: Shedwa's Six published an interview of me today, check it out. Great ongoing interview series.

PC World published The 50 Most Important People on the Web yesterday. While the first 25 are your run-of-the-mill Steve Jobs, Bill Gates (oh wait, he didn't make the list), scroll-bar-savvy predictable content. The remaining 25 are mixed in with various bloggers. A few notables: Scoble (25), Arrington (30), Dave Winer (39), Perez Hilton (41), and Nick Denton (45). But where are the lady bloggers? Oh, that's right, we have Miss Tila Tequila to represent us, dragging her talentless feet in at number 50.

Making way forward for artificial stupidity intelligence, NEC has created a series of blog buddies of the robotic kind to help keep bored and boring bloggers company. The PaPeRo prototype creates multimedia blogs without the need for a whiny, ranting blogger in the equation. By initiating conversation with the blogbot, PaPeRo searches and analyzes relevant images, illustrations and music, before automatically editing and uploading the content to the specified blog. Using text retrieval technology along with other spoken language dictionaries, it won't be long until the PaPeRo asks us to prepare to be assimilated.

Local news reports on the 'dangerous trend' of emo kids, sadly a decade or so late. With their dark clothes and hair covering one eye, it's best to shield your eyes and ears from their angst-ridden art. Before you know it, there will be emo's everywhere! Serving your fries, pouring your coffee, and even helping you in the dressing room of Urban Outfitters - oh, wait.

Best Week Ever asks, "Is there anything funnier than when the local news attempts to tackle "hip" and "now" issues like "blogs" or "emo" music?"

I'm still waiting on the 'emo bloggers' report - 'It's short for web log. But blogging is a trend that has gone to extremes. Their style is whiny, their look is jaded, they earn points by complaining a lot, more points for acting like they don't care, and they hit the jackpot if they attempt to unsubscribe from RSS feeds.'

Up for grabs and gropes, Valleyway posts its 5 hottest lady vloggers for you to vote on. Violet Blue, Gala Darling, Adriana Gascoigne, Casey McKinnon, and Sara Schaefer make the lineup. While I'm admittedly jealous of not being on any geek girl glamor list, these vlogging vixens deserve it. Though there's much love for Violet Blue and her writing, I do find Casey McKinnon to be supercute as well. However, so far Adriana appears to be cat-fighting her way on top, so hopefully Sara likes being on bottom, otherwise she may need to get her hands free to pull out on top.

New words are buzzing around the blogosphere lately. Blogging tends to build bemes (a blog meme, for the unhip and unaware) as well as fat over time. As such, Jason Calcanis intertwined the concepts to create fatblogging. What is fatblogging? While ideally it would be the liveblogging of oral indulgence, it's actually the opposite. Perhaps experiencing some jealously over Wii-Weight-Loss Experiment, bloggers join up and document their weight-loss and exercise each day as well as share thoughts and tips. The lovely Joseph Jaffe and Hugh Macleod have already signed up, so if Hugh's sketches become a little more angry and Jaffe's blog slows down even more, don't be alarmed. If you care to burn off that blogger backfat of yours, Jason invites you to work up a sweat and be part of the movement.