Mumbai, June 23: Once upon a time, somewhere in the golden age of Hollywood, a reporter of The New Yorker had the temerity to opine in print something outrageous.
It was perilous, went his argument, for a man who had quit school after the eighth grade to be in charge making films which disseminated so many of ideas to people. Both Gregory Peck and Nunnally Johnson did not share this opinion about the cigar-chomping Darryl F Zanuck who did try half-heartedly to resume his war-interrupted education at the Los Angeles Manual Arts High School in September 1919.
"Just as his contemporary and sometimes friend and colleague Walter Winchell was the first newspaperman to see that the reappropriation of journalese through slang was a form of empowerment (both for the man who wielded the pen and for his readership), Zanuck was the first producer in the sound era to realize that by making films culled from daily tabloid headlines, you could speak to the public in stylized versions of its own speech," writes George F Custen, Professor of Communications, The College of Staten Island in his Twentieth Century's Fox: Darryl F Zanuck and the Culture of Hollywood. hallbiography.com.

P.S.: I wonder what the nameless reporter of The New Yorker would have to say were he to watch some of the handiwork of today's Bollywood, though.
WHAT'S INSIDE GATOR? Out 'pops up' the answer from Harvard. Gator, the pop-up advertising utility much derided as 'spyware' because it aggressively "monitors a user's Web browsing activity and displays relevant advertisements - at times at rival websites." Now, its working has been rigorously examined by Harvard researcher Ben Edelman who says Gator works as follows: "…a Gator server sends a list of ads to the Gator client, based on the domain name of the site visited. In his research, the lists consisted of a series of hyperlinks to Zip files … The Gator client downloads and displays only the ads that jibe with the user's prior actions … which might mean not showing the same ad twice in a row. Gator's ad server appears to ignore other variables sent by the client utility, including locale, ZIP code, user ID and machine ID, and frequently displays ads after users leave a targeted Web site instead of while they're still viewing it." news.com.



LATEST TREND ONLINE. Ads on Infoworld RSS Feed. Got this 'trend spotting' bit [http://contentbiz.blogspot.com/] from Anne Holland's 11 June ContentBlog post which reports "…according to AdWeek's Technology Marketing yesterday Infoworld became the "first" publisher to build ads into its RSS feed." So, finally the RSS Feed is picking up, it would seem. technologymarketing.com.



"PLEASE, SIR, I WANT SOME MORE." Silicon.com launches The Spam Report. As if you haven't been fed enough gruel about spam (my fave rave) in this column, here's an extra special announcement. At silicon.com, you will find Silicon.com's latest pride and joy: an entire channel dedicated to that wonderful stuff. Now that's what Oliver Twist would call way too much of a good thing, right?



DID OLIVER ASK FOR YET MORE? Silicon.com is so obliging. I always enjoy visiting Silicon.com. I'm delighted after my latest visit to their new Web watch channel at silicon.com. Here I found such delectable fare as 'Will's Web Watch: Auctions - bidding farewell to common sense' posted by Will Sturgeon on Friday the 13th (shudder!). silicon.com/analysis. Likewise a spine-tingling tale of how Sex.com was reunited with its rightful owner. silicon.com/news.
NOT IN INDIA. Not for a while at least. I recently read a report from Corzen Inc. who monitor ad spends in the US and elsewhere. They're saying that, 49 percent of the largest 250 US newspapers "now offer Web-only help-wanted advertising". In the 2002 4Q, it used to be 32 per cent, imagine! corzen.com. And, I said to myself this won't happen here in a hurry, thank heavens. There's just isn't the critical mass of Internet users to make it happen so soon. Out there, even the smaller fry are jumping on to the web-only wanted-ad bandwagon. And, what's even more significant, for the employers it means considerably lower cost of hiring because the web ads cost less than the print ads.



WHAT HORROR! NY Times drops weather page like a wet rag. Don't believe me? Go to borowitzreport.com and find out for yourself. Their breaking news of 15 June which reached me a day too late (owing to time difference - no fault of VSNL, I swear) says: "The New York Times, roiled in recent weeks by a shocking journalistic scandal, appeared on the verge of more housecleaning today after top editors admitted discovering 'serious errors' in the Times' weather forecasts." The problem apparently arose last Wednesday. Their "partly sunny" forecast for the New York metropolitan area was belied by the weather which - like the impenitent spoilsport that it is (ask the Mumbai Meteorological Bureau for confirmation) - chose to be "partly cloudy". By the way, I adore their e-mail newsletter's punch line: "Waste Someone's Time: Forward to a Friend."



US SURFERS NOT FOOLED. Government assurance falls on deaf ears. Just a change in the name of the Total Information Awareness program to Terrorist Information Awareness and an assurance that there will be built-in safeguards to prevent intrusion on the US citizens' privacy doesn't seem to be enough. Take a good look at what they're saying about Uncle Sam's skullduggery on the discussion board below the article. zdnet.com.



WHITE LISTS? CUT & PASTE? What's that? Equally vehement is Ronni Rhodes, WBC Imaging, that white lists can solve the spam problem. That's what Marsha Geller had suggested in her 12 June 2003 post. His argument: "…too many consumers don't even know how to 'cut and paste' much less create a white list! Challenge and Response will only cause the people you really want to reach to leave the Internet in droves. You media professionals don't deal with the general public and haven't a clue as to how 'messed up' most computers out there are." mediapost.com.



E-MAIL FILTERS' PET HATES. 4 Subject line elements to shun at all cost. In 'Four Subject Lines to Avoid', Janet Roberts gives us useful tips about subject lines. (1) Avoid exclamation points and question marks. (2) Eschew 'aggressive' verbs, e.g., 'Get', 'Open', 'Download', 'Buy', 'Save', 'Make', 'Take' and 'Respond'. (3) Steer clear of these three pronouns: 'You', 'Your', 'I'. (4) Don't be tempted to use 'Free'. ezine-tips.com.



NEW E-RATINGS. For good parenting - without raving and ranting. Zagat were into publishing guides for restaurants and Broadway shows. Now they've found a more socially relevant use for their technology. They'll henceforth rate movies, TV, music and websites too based on language (content), violence, sexual conduct and adult themes. commomsensemedia.org.



Want to know IT's biggest myths including conspiracy theories, exaggerations and plain old lies? Take a look at silicon.com.



If you're looking for a free-to-use and fairly dependable News Reader, take a look at 40tude Dialog (5.25MB.



Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95. Shareware for corporate and freeware for personal use.) tudogs.com.



If you're a "those-were-the-days" nostalgia freaks, have a look at inkytrails.com where the art of writing letters and making pen pals is being conserved with love and dedication.



That's all for now though there's plenty more out there. Join me again next week, same place.