Stop making sense

I pointed my browser to Unmediated.org today, and saw a nifty addition to that gathering place for offbeat and tech and media news. It is a black rectangular box that announces headlines for two dozen or so recent postings — so the visitor can scan and click to pieces of interest instead of having to scoll down to see what’s up. I wish I knew how to grab a screen shot and post it, but in a word-picture it reminds me of those giant train schedules I’ve seen in stations back east or in Europe. Thanks to the Unmediators for making the reading easier, and perhaps this is a trick you’ll want to copy as well.

Your tax dollars at work? Now come reports that Congress is poised to investigate the economies of virtual worlds to figure out how to tax them. Here’s a feature article on the phenomenon written by a colleague at the San Francisco Chronicle. Some time ago I wrote a piece that looked at these virtual economies.

The Apprentice meets Animal House? MediaPost reports that Microsoft is using teams of business school students to create advertising campaigns to promote its local search function. These user-generated ad campaigns will begin airing on MTV’s broadband channel starting Wednesday night says the article, addig that “the winners will be flown to Redmond to interview for marketing internships with Microsoft.” In another snippet the article quotes MTV exec Stephen Friedman as saying the student teams will focus on delivering Microsoft’s message to their own demographic and university. “You have the target market doing the marketing for the company,” he said.

Bloggers of the world, unite: Two interesting tidbits from Poynter. One is a parable about how the Swedish press was finally forced to credit a blogger for breaking what came to be a big political scandal there, and 11 commandments for creating a successful blogs.