Nike Starts NYC Scavenger Hunt via SMS

On Friday, Nike's Operation 6453 begins. It's a scavenger hunt set in New York City that combines SMS short codes with an on-foot search for 16 poster locations throughout the city. Entrants must send a blank SMS to short code... continue reading »

Study: Marketers Suffer 'Moral Myopia'

A University of Texas professor interviewed many marketing executives and found them to be largely amoral and reluctant to even talk about moral implications their work may involve. More than 50 ad execs were interviewed at 29 agencies. The professor... continue reading »

Lawyers: Can-Spam Threatens Viral Marketing

Two lawyers wrote a longish review of the legal issues surrounding the issue of whether or not viral marketing efforts - where, presumably, viewers take messages and pass them along to friends via email - fall afoul of the Can-Spam... continue reading »

Overture, Google Give Tips for Paid Listings

Representatives from both Google and Overture at a recent catalog marketer conference gave sets of tips to improve rankings on paid search lists. They include ensuring that the landing page is indexed in the relevant search engine and making sure... continue reading »

Tax Bill Allows Locals to Discriminate Against Net

eBay tried to rally support against a federal bill that would streamline sales taxes from cities, states and counties. Right now these taxes go mostly uncollected, as it remains practically impossible for jurisdictions to get their citizens to submit payments... continue reading »

Microsoft Bounces Mouse for Fox

Microsoft has been gunning hard for the sports market on MSN, offering to pay higher fees for Major League Baseball, and now dumping its three-year ESPN relationship to integrate more closely with FoxSports. Disney, owner of ESPN, described the parting... continue reading »

Hotel Sites Abysmal in Study

Hotel sites are getting lots of Looky Lous, but few people booking rooms. A new Rush Report study by iPerceptions and Hospitality eBusiness Strategies showed that only a third of hotel site users intend to use the web for booking. The... continue reading »

U.K. Firms Ignorant of Own Spam Law

Research revealed that five out of six British businesses remain in the dark about the U.K.'s recently passed anti-spam measures. Clearswift found that the precious few business officials aware of the laws thought them woefully inadequate, with 92 percent... continue reading »

Student Project Shows Rapid Web Spread of Ideas

A Brandeis University senior tried to quantify how an idea - called "memes" by the pompous - spreads across the net via blogs. He seeded a few and watched it take off, quickly becoming one of the fastest spreading links... continue reading »

Orkut Database Hacked into Open (But Nicely Displayed)

Social network Orkut apparently had a major security breech, allowing a programmer to create an application that lets people type in a name to find a map of that person's connected friends across the U.S. The information seems a little... continue reading »

Gmail Gets So-So Review

ClickZ's Rebecca Lieb reviews Gmail, and it ain't all pretty. The constrained viewing window breaks some HTML newsletters, and worst of all, it won't allow for neat forwarding of HTML email. Flaws and all, it seems to be an inevitability,... continue reading »