It's been a while since I've posted on my VOX slot, so I figured my recent snowkiting trip to Skyline Ridge, Utah makes for a good excuse to get another post up. Yep, Lil' Pinot and I took off for two days of skiing/snowboarding at Park City, then headed 2 hrs south of Salt Lake to Skyline Ridge, home of backcountry...snowshoeing, snowboarding, skiiing, snowmobiling, and what we went there for, snowkiting...yee-ha!
Yes, it was totally fun...
Both Lil' Pinot & I had a blast. She also got to do some insane snowshoeing where she'd take off for nearly two hours and summit the surrounding mountains. Snowkiting is similar to kitesurfing except your legs take a bit more abuse given that the snow pack is harder than water. Definitely a fun ride though.
I was just visiting my friend Patti's VOX blog and as I glanced down to the Google AdSense ads at the bottom of the page I noticed they were all for kitesurfing gear or kitesurfing related. As I reviewed Patti's page, there's nothing to suggest a contextual match to kitesurfing, but on my profile and page on the other hand, there's plenty of stuff of that ilk. Hmmm...
Now, I know Google doesn't allow for passing along what words to target against, so it makes me very curious to understand how this came to be. The context of the ads was determined by my pages though these were not present or visible on the pages where I was. Me thinks VOX is doing funny business ;-) I also think it's the right thing to be trying so more power to them, but I wonder how they're doing this. Something to ponder...
OK, so I’m getting a kick out of seeing how the Valleywag is covering the Tribe story now, with absolutely no mention of their July 3rd rumor piece (so much for truth and journalism 
). No recanting or exposure of their so-called “tipster”. I guess
Valleywag is really going for a more tabloid journalism approach,
figuring that if they throw enough rumors up on a wall some are bound
to be true. Also funny is Mike Arrington’s approach to this story
on TechCrunch, with total reticense, wondering why Mark Pincus didn’t
respond to him in an hour as promised. Me thinks Mike head is getting
too big and forgot how he blew Tribe off on several occasions even
after asking to be contacted, but hey that was then and this is now,
and now he’s a big shot with cover stories of how rich he is in business publications.
Should be fun to keep up with this story as the speculation should run wild. It’s also interesting to see how little people actually have known about what was going on inside of Tribe. Even the first 9 comments (I’m the 10th, heh-heh-heh) below the TechCrunch piece really miss the boat, but it does provide some insight into a readership that thinks its well connected because they read that publication, really are out of the loop. Funny.
Be careful what you read out there, ’cause even reliable sources aren’t often very reliable. Remember those rumors about NBC buying Tribe (here, here and here), well it looks like things aren’t always what they seem (or what they get reported in the blogosphere). Mark Pincus (co-founder and Chairman of Tribe) blogs on Tribe about the latest change in the company’s status in an unofficial post. Really makes you wonder who you can trust when all of these reports keep up the pretense of “reliable sources” as a mainstay for saying things that are far from happening. We need a way to bring on a demerits system when reported rumors are found to be false.
The timing for this news of course couldn’t be better since Tribe is experiencing a jump in traffic as preparations for the upcoming Burning Man event always brings that group back home to Tribe to discuss their plans, their rides to the event, their chosen fashions and their joy to be getting together soon. Hopefully Tribe will once again be able to be home to this very passionate and artistic group of people with lots of love in their hearts.
One thing is for sure, Mark and the remaining crew at Tribe will have their hands full making lots of changes and undoing lots of mistakes for the past year. Good luck to all of them.
Just testing out the ability to post while being mobile. Right now I'm walkin' up the stairs back to my office to see if this works...I guess that qualifies as mobile blogging, right?
I'm really digging what I'm finding throughout this service but it's gonna be a real pain to blog in two different places. I hope the VOX team manages to create another module type or the ability to import RSS into the main blog section. That would be the balls!!!
This is pretty cool and Kevin has been busting his butt enough to deserve this recognition. I'm really psyched to have a chance to help him out at this stage of Tailrank's growth.
OK, so here we go, getting started with VOX after having been very kindly invited by Patti Beadles from the team over at SixApart. I've been procrastinating playing with this, but it's nice to see SixApart realize the dream that some of us once held for Tribe. Their implementation of this service is clean and really seems to come together nicely. I'm gonna look forward to playing with this over time and keeping up with where it goes.
Recent Comments
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Patty said:
Hi...and welcome to Vox! I just wanted to reply to your post to say that that we are indeed experimenting... read more
on Vox doing behavioral/contextual advertising? -
Patti said:
Corporate tool is my favorite so far. read more
on The Revolution of the Ants will be blogged -
Patti said:
ROCK AND ROLL!I'm totally stoked by this. read more
on The Revolution of the Ants will NOT be televised -
P-Air said:
OK, I reposted my comment to a feedback message. Hoping for a happy experience ;-) read more
on VOX needs an RSS feed import feature
Good to see the VOX team investigating and trying new things out. That's how it ought to be. I guess... read more
on Vox doing behavioral/contextual advertising?