Moral infringement

Princeton's WordNet defines the act of plagiarism as a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work. Different types of this vile misdemeanour can be found here. Am I going gauchely portray the industry professional whose actions led me to this rant? The answer is no. But allow me to try to summarize the event.

Recently, I sent out a (usual, old school) press release with some news about a certain programme our company is running. Just about one week later, a competing agency puts out a press release about its own such program, which it had been preparing for quite some time now. Nothing unusual up to this point.

But - while reading the latter - when I come across a paragraph in which I read the exact same sentence that I wrote a few weeks back, am I supposed to be angry? Or maybe simply flattered by the ingenuity of my storytelling?

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Losing ground

Yes, I've said it, I'm really off track with my blogging. Why is that, you ask? Because I really have found the whole microblogging thing to be quite effective, and much more handy (I'm into mobile a lot).

A lot of very well-known and read bloggers have been pointing towards a sort of shift, former anti-tweeter Stephen wrote about the Twitter effect, and as that network has been gaining momentum, Loic Le Meur popped an interesting question today - namely:

If you had to choose between Twitter and your blog, what would you choose?

The poll currently shows that blogs are winning at an almost 2:1 ratio, but it still makes you wonder, doesn't it? Anyway, there's one thing I know for sure: even though the posts may be a tad shorter, I'll try to keep them flowing at a (relatively) constant rate. Until I really do delete the blog and turn to my ever-growing Twitter page.

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Scandal or no scandal

I recently witnessed (and was involved in) an interesting case of what seems to look like a blog scandal, although I wouldn't exactly call it that.

A few weeks ago, I used my company's blog to post something about McCann PR (our Weber Shandwick affiliated PR agency) looking for an account exec - nothing out of the ordinary just yet, seeing that it's become common practice, and it always pays off.

Somewhere along the way, within a day or two of posting the announcement, we got a trackback and a comment suggesting that before anyone looks into a job opportunity at our company, they should read something first. The blog, which had been started one week prior to this, related a series of events in which our HR department allegedly called in people for a Junior Copywriter position, but by the time they got to the meeting, told them that the position had already been occupied. Then the bloke started giving other examples, and ended up writing a 2-page piece on how crappy and preferential our agency's recruitment process is. Comments from anonymous people quickly followed (they did provide a link in our more visited blog).

Basically, the rant was that our advertising agency (along with the entire industry) is very difficult to get into, and usually, it only works if you know somebody who knows somebody who is told to hire you - an endless cat and mouse game of what (and just how good) connections someone has.

Our reaction came about pretty quickly, from our CEE Creative Director, whom, noticing the blogger's frustration that he hadn't managed to get into our creative department, assured him that only he and the Associate Creative Director are directly responsible for recruiting people in the aforementioned department, and proposed to send out a test - right there, as a comment - and expect an answer on that same blog, to keep everything transparent.

His comment was perceived as extremely arrogant by the blogger, and generated yet another post, in which he (weirdly) did an entire logical analysis of how his question hadn't been answered. And from then on, a series of (tens) of incoherent comments from an apparently large number of people (most of them anonymous, of course), which some of our colleagues eventually picked up and replied to, from time to time.

And last time I checked, they were still wondering why we hadn't provided them with an official response. I guess that regional management figures aren't considered official enough.

This is a case study I'll be properly building - as the aftermath is also interesting. Some said that we shouldn't have even bothered answering, others said that we should have provided a reply on our blog (which would've meant giving them a lot of extra traffic - uncalled for, I'd say), and others said that we were indeed too arrogant and should've been more swift and to the point. Most people, though, said that it was a perfectly normal reaction and that it's important that we pay attention to everyone interested (one way or another) in us.

Somehow, I don't see it as a blog scandal. It was more like a collective rant on a no-name blog (and one blog alone). Objections?

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MacBook Mutiny

For about a year and a half now, I've been solely using Apple's MacBook Pro (15" display, Intel Core Duo 2.16GHz, 2GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9600 Pro) - since I bought it, a couple of updates had been introduced, and I was waiting for the next one, so I could finally change it (after ~350 charge cycles, its battery only lasts ~10mins nowadays - sweet LAPTOP, right?).

And here's what they came out with, last Tuesday. Wow. Penryn and the multi-touch system introduced on last month's MacBook Air. As a confident MBP user, I can't exactly say I'm thrilled... And neither could (almost) everyone else - check out an excerpt from the Engadget coverage:

Aw snap. It finally, really happened... kind of. Apple has just dropped a nasty refresh on its MacBook and MacBook Pro lines [...]

And then they started to ask around what people would like to see in the next MacBook Pro. HDMI, perhaps? Blu-Ray? An SSD option? A better graphics card? Or something revolutionary, such as the premiere implementation of that WUSB technology?

Hallmark Holidays

You do know what the term stands for, right? Funny thing is that rumor has it Valentine's Day was actually invented by this greeting card manufacturer.

I've been witnessing something very interesting with this (obviously) American holiday - Wikipedia says it very well:

In Romania, the traditional holiday for lovers is Dragobete, which is celebrated on February 24. It is named after a character from Romanian folklore who was supposed to be the son of Baba Dochia. Part of his name is the word drag ("dear"), which can also be found in the word dragoste ("love"). In recent years, Romania has also started celebrating Valentine's Day, despite already having Dragobete as a traditional holiday. This has drawn backlash from many groups, reputable persons and institutions^[36] but also nationalist organizations like Noua Dreaptǎ, who condemn Valentine's Day for being superficial, commercialist and imported Western kitsch.

It's true - although we Romanians have a completely authentic alternative for it, we just ignore it, don't we? On Valentine's Day, the city was literally jammed - couples at cafes, movies, restaurants, etc. Advertisers went for it, and have probably had great results this past month. On the 24th? Nothing. A lot of people didn't even know about it.

I don't agree with nationalist organizations (because they're so obsessed with it that they try to translate literally anything and put it into a hilarious context), but the 14th of February is superficial (because every girl out there says she doesn't care about it, yet she throws a fit if she doesn't get any presents), it is commercialist (and you just have to turn your TV on during that week to figure it out) - and it's definitely imported. I think the greater majority of this country's citizens are desperately trying to identify with their apparently better Western friends. Which is just sad.

In the meantime, it's Martisor today (1st of March) - a tradition (designed for women) which is pretty much still working around here - lucky for guys that it's on a Saturday this year. :) Let's observe...