On the afternoon of July 13, Revolution Strategy accepted a softball challenge from the HMCS Brunswicker. The competition was tough and reputations were on the line.

Revolution, sporting some fierce eye black and chewing on nature’s best flavoured sunflower seeds, fought to the bitter end losing by a measly 1 run which is pretty great considering our team of 10 consisted of a couple of “never played before”, a handful of “haven’t played since junior high school”, and 3 professional “play-ball-four-times-a-week” players.

(I might add that the HMCS Brunswicker plays some variation of a sport weekly and have had the opportunity to play softball this season a few times so they should have buried us…and in case you missed in my opening paragraph, they won by a MEASILY 1 run.)

Highlights of the game – Kay breaking out her superior pitching skills (aw yeah!), Laura not only making bat-to-ball contact, and not only making it on base, but scoring a crucial run, not to mention Kylie’s bases empty grand slam WOO HOO! All supported by Kayte’s amazing catching skills - surely some of the best from that day.

Good times were had by all! Never fear, the famed Revolution softball team will be making a stop to softball fields near you to sign “hot off the press” softball cards.

~Kay & Kayte

“The question was how can broke economies lend money to other broke economies who haven’t got any money because they can’t pay back the money the broke economy lent to the other broke economy and shouldn’t have lent it to them in the first place because the broke economy can’t pay it back.”

“Very well done! You’ve Lost a Million Dollars.”

Twitter finally started selling something today. It’s called ‘Promoted Tweets’, and what the first phase means is that some Tweets will be paid to appear at the top of some search results pages. This would be similar to paying Google to appear the top of search results.

It’s launching initially with just Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony, and Starbucks, but I expect a self serve option like Google Ads or Facebook ads will follow not far behind.

More details will be released later today.

Twitter’s blog post on the subject.

The Museum of Modern Art’s department of Architecture and Design has acquired the @ symbol - a 1971 work by Ray Tomlinson. This article offers an interesting discussion on the symbol’s origins, meanings and relevance in today’s world.

Seth Godin had a great piece today on companies that don’t react fast enough to a changing marketplace. Really what he’s discussing in his examples, at least, is a changing platform for delivery of either applications or content.

In terms of the clients that I advise on being online every day, mostly Atlantic Canadian businesses, the biggest platform change happening right now is the shift to mobile, or more accurately what I call the pervasive web–ways to interact with web based technologies on an array of ever present devices and screen sizes. I’d argue that companies with websites and an online presence who aren’t seriously considering what they can be delivering to clients on mobile platforms are falling behind.

The pervasive web isn’t something we need to worry about for the next 6 months or a year. It’s here now. Social sites like Facebook and Twitter are seeing more users from mobile devices than from the traditional desktop based web right now.

Progress Magazine has a created a website about their initiative to recognize the best employers in Atlantic Canada. The deadline for applying is this Friday, February 5th.

We didn’t have a hand in the creation of there website or the initiative, but we definitely know some clients who are great employers.

So did you hear? MLA for Fredericton-Nashwaaksis TJ Burke is officially a supah-staaah. He’s on TMZ. I mean if that’s the not the big-time, what is?

Here’s how a guy from Freddy-beach goes viral:

A week ago, American Idol broadcasted an audition by 62 year-old Larry Platt, who wowed audiences with his original ditty: Pants on the Ground. You can view it in all its glory on YouTube. The best part was Simon saying: “I have an ‘orrible feeling that song could be a hit.” Since then - millions of hits on YouTube.

Sun Jan 24, after making a comment in the Legislature about Opposition Leader David Alward’s CBC interview regarding NB Power, TJ hits YouTube and goes global. Since then he’s got almost 40,000 hits and 50 comments.

Mon Jan 25, TMZ posted the video on their site: “‘Pants on the Ground’ Used in Political Attack” As of today, there are 53 comments associated with their posting.

Tues Jan 26, CBC news posted the following article on their website: “Rapping MLA an Internet Sensation”

So how did TJ go viral? What did he do right?

1. He was topical - right now everyone is trying to put the words “Pants on the Ground” into a sentence to get big laughs. Don’t deny it, you know it’s true.

2. He was timely - stuff like this has a very short life cycle. You gotta get in and get out - fast.

3. He was unexpected - um, politicians just don’t do that sort of stuff.

4. He was gutsy - funny is hard.

The above points are four of the eight “Factors for Goin’ Viral”. The more factors you’ve got, the bigger you go.  Can you figure out what the remaining four are?

We’ve all seen the images and stories emerging from Haiti in the last couple of days. This is just a quick blog post to encourage you to donate to Red Cross Canada’s relief efforts.

Donate Now

Even the most successful writers still come up with some real groaners. The Telegraph drew up a list of Dan Brown’s twenty worst sentences (he’s the author of The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons).

For a taste, here’s number 18:

“18. The Da Vinci Code, chapter 4: He could taste the familiar tang of museum air - an arid, deionized essence that carried a faint hint of carbon - the product of industrial, coal-filter dehumidifiers that ran around the clock to counteract the corrosive carbon dioxide exhaled by visitors. Ah, that familiar tang of deionised essence.”

It’s a total hoot. You should check it out.