Pat Yourself on the Back, Internet!

There's something about the Internet. (See also: interwebs)

Yes, it's true that there are plenty of bad, evil things on the Internet. (See also: trolls, Nigerian Prince scams, dog's speaking English)

But at the same time there can exist a great force of good; a place where destruction, ridicule, and trolling just simply don't happen.

You can look at three recent examples of this.

Golden Ted
First up, the homeless man with the "Golden Voice." When his story hit the interpipes immediately the people got to working and now Ted Williams has another chance at making his life right. Huge kudos to the redditors of Reddit for pushing this story.

Red Cross: #gettngslizzerd.
This was an interesting, easily overlooked story. Gloria Huang, a Social Media specialist with the Red Cross, mistakenly tweeted on Red Cross' twitter account instead of her own, shout out to Hootsuite. Despite the "rogue tweet" getting removed by Red Cross, Michael Hayek from Dogfish Head Brewery took it upon himself to rally Dogfish Head beer fans and create a donation campaign for the Red Cross built off of the #gettngslizzerd hashtag.



No Red Cross parody twitter accounts rose from this, just a lot of people hearing the call to action from a beloved brand and doing what they could to make light of a simple, permissions error. Red Cross got donations, Dogfish Head got brand recognition, and Hootsuite even sent everybody some coozies!

Not bad, Internet.

RoboCop Comes Home (or Take that Mayor Bing, the People want Murphy)
Dead or alive, you're coming to Detroit (RoboCop Statue). What started as a tweet to Detroit's current mayor, Dave Bing, has ended in RoboCop (formally known as Officer Alex Murphy) returning to the streets in statue form. The collective Internet saw this tweet, saw Mayor Bing's response that there were no plans to erect a RoboCop statue and hopped into action by using popular crowd-funding site, Kickstarter.com. Surprise, surprise, they raised the money they needed to make this dream a reality. To see them actually build it, well that's a whole 'nother story.

And although I don't agree with the following revamp to the "Spirit of Detroit" statue, it does look kinda cool.



Just goes to show you; there are people on the Internet who dare to care and will help at a drop of hat for a cause they feel is cool, entertaining, or just the right thing to do.

So pat yourself on the back, Internet. You done good.

Also, tough call on which way of the spectrum this falls:



Sean Sutherland Associate Account Executive/Anti-Troll Troll

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Intern Sweatshop: RockMelt May Potentially Rock My Internet, Hopefully

RockMelt (yeah, it's an awful name) is a new browser based on Chrome that integrates social networking, chat and news right into your browsing.

It. Looks. Awesome.

Let's be honest, some of us have too many programs running on our computer. I, for one, am a big news/social network nut and can have five or six programs running at a time. RSS feed readers, chat clients, Twitter clients, link sharing apps, the kitchen sink: it's too much. I've tried moving it all online, using web apps for everything so I can do it all from my Internet browser. Good idea, but now I perpetually have five or six browser tabs open. This predicament is why I was very excited when RockMelt was announced yesterday.

You can check Twitter, share links and get feed updates without visiting any of those sites. It might finally be the all in one Internet workflow I have always dreamt cautious dreams about. Disclaimer: I am a bit weary of having things popping up right in my browser. With my present setup, I can ignore the tabs I have open or just close them if I need to focus. RockMelt might prove to be information overload. Techcrunch put it bluntly.

The other forseeable downside is privacy. Having all our social networks tied right into our browser could be the next step toward ol' Zuckerbug tracking literally everything we do. The implications are a bit creepy. Google and Facebook already tailor ads to your search terms and interests, respectively. Imagine if Facebook started sending you chat messages based on the sites you visited yesterday? Yeah, not cool.

Though I am a bit guarded in my excitement, I am definitely excited to try RockMelt. Downloading the browser is still invite only, so I'll have to wait for my potential social network salvation for now. Until then, check the intro video and let me know if you're as intruiged as I am.



Kyle Sacks, Future Early Adopters Anoymous Member/Intern

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Sprint does Web 2-point-DOH!

(Click to blow your freakin' mind. Or to enlarge. Whichever comes first.)

Sprint's out with a new site to promote their mobile broadband product. They attempt to show users how awesome the web is by doing their best to shoehorn every time-sucking thing on the web into one page.

Who knew a bunch of tiled widgets could capture the enormity of the Internet? Despite having a noticeable and unfortunate lack of porn, the site managed to lure me into spending some time tinkering around with it, rather than playing with my kid, feeding him, or changing his 3 pound diaper.

Pretty clever concept. Engaging execution.

Even if they did rip off the idea from that episode of "The Simpsons" where Homer makes his own web page.

Yeah. Don't pretend you don't know which one I'm talking about, fanboy.

(Thanks to Wisey over at The Digestif for the Twitter tip.)

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Friday Ad Haiku: The Memo

I entered college in the mid 90s, when the Internet was the newest big thing, when people still searched the World Wide Web with engines like Alta Vista and Magellan, when Yahoo was just another new kid on the block, and people had actually heard of Netscape. So by the time I entered the workforce, post-millennium, most businesses had Internet and email at every desk, and working in promotions and field sales, I successfully avoided an office job for many years. The other day, though, it occurred to me that in my time here at Renegade I've received many company-wide emails, but never a memo. This made me realize that the Internet, the wonderful tool we use to steal music and chuckle at so many lol-cats, killed off the long-time staple of office communiqué--the memo. So for the nostalgic office workers among you:

Your Friday Ad Haiku: The Memo

Now you are email.

Mother nature will not miss.

My inbox so full.

Gone and unnoticed,

Like a fart in a sulfur

Mine. I blame Al Gore.

--Captain Awesome, Copywriter

Last week on the Friday 5-7-5: Image

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