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Poison Pen Collection
,----[ Quote ]
| This is going to be a list of big publisher shills. Those are people who take
| their marching orders from big companies but pretend to be independent
| experts.
`----
http://slashdot.org/~twitter/journal/206959
Association for Competitive Technology
,----[ Quote ]
| The Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) was a group that was founded
| in 1998 in response to the anti-trust action against Microsoft then taking
| place in the United States. (The groups websi
| The initial version of the groups website, which was first indexed in October
| 1999, stated that "as a grassroots information technology trade association,
| ACT is working to preserve the freedom to achieve, compete and innovate."
| (The group's orignial office address was 1225 Eye St. NW, Suite 500,
| Washington, DC, 20005.
| te is no longer active and the last archived version of its website dates
| from July 2007, so the group now appears to be defunct).
|
| [...]
|
| * Jonathan Zuck, Founder President 1999-2007
| * Steve DelBianco, Vice President for Public Policy 1999-2007
| * Morgan W. Reed, Vice President for Public Affairs 1999-2007
| * Mark Blafkin, Vice President for Public Affairs -2007
| * Braden Cox, Research and Policy Counsel - 2007
| * Melissa Moskal, Director of Membership -2007
| * Allison May Rosen 1999-
`----
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Association_for_Competitive_Technology
http://www.microturfs.org/
Recent:
Corn Farmers Against Google?
,----[ Quote ]
| Only if they're planting in AstroTurf
|
| [...]
|
| How do you know the organization, and the op-ed, weren't created by LawMedia
| Group at the behest of some well-funded clients? If they did their jobs
| right, you don't know.
|
| Some of them have left digital fingerprints here and there, though, says
| Declan McCullagh, in a blockbuster of a report exposing the intellectual
| whoredom offered for various important issues. Shortly after Microsoft hired
| LawMedia, for example, legislators, national agencies, and news outlets
| received pointed complaints from coalitions of farmers, rural voters, and
| geeky Latinos about how Google's advertising deal with Yahoo would wreck
| everything.
|
| [...]
|
| Don't call them a PR firm or a lobbying firm though, Law Media – which has a
| ton of lawyers working for them too—is a "public affairs firm" specializing
| in producing "remarkable coalitions" for anything one might need a coalition
| for.
`----
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/08/14/corn-farmers-against-google
SC34 meeting next week: yet another stuffed committee?
,----[ Quote ]
| Next week on Monday and Tuesday there will be an SC34 meeting, where the
| maintenance of the inexistant DIS29500 specification will be discussed.
| Surprise, half of the seats will be occupied by Microsoft and ECMA:
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|
| Adam Farquhar (Ecma)
| Alex Brown (UK)
| Benjamin Henrion (BE)
| Brett Roberts (NZ)
| Dave Welsh (US)
| Doug Mahugh (Ecma)
| Francis Cave (GB)
| Isabelle Valet-Harper (Ecma)
| Istvan Sebestyen (Ecma)
| Jasper Hedegaard Bojsen (DK)
| Jean Paoli (Ecma)
| Jean Stride (GB)
| Jesper Lund Stocholm (DK)
| Jirka Kosek (CZ)
| Keld Simonsen (NO)
| Ken Holman (CA)
| Kimmo Bergius (FI)
| Manu Setälä (FI)
| Michiel Leenaars (NL)
| Murata Makoto (JP)
| Patrick Durusau (US)
| Pia Elleby Lange (DK)
| Rex Jaeschke (Ecma)
| Shahzad Rana (NO)
| Wemba Opota (CI)
`----
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-75107/sc34-meeting-next-week:yet-another-stuffed-committee
China's Online Persuaders
,----[ Quote ]
| China's webspace is infamous for censorship, but increasingly, public
| relations firms there are helping their clients "manage" online
| conversations. China-based firms such as Daqi, Chinese Web Union and
| CIC "charge $500 - $25,000 monthly to monitor postings and squelch negative
| information or to create positive buzz," reports BusinessWeek.
`----
http://www.prwatch.org/node/7451
Now Hiring - Astroturfer, apply at Microsoft
,----[ Quote ]
| Evidently, a "Senior Marketing Manager" has the responsibility of:
|
| * "assisting in defining and driving core marketing initiatives – most
| specifically online & offline community-building"
| * "further the dialogue on the value of the Microsoft platform to open
| source audiences"
| * "be a cornerstone for a global thought leadership website and will be
| regularly featured in industry press around the world"
| * "act as a visible external evangelist for Microsoft"
|
| Wow! That's all direct quotes from the job description. It is so blatant, I'm
| beginning to wonder if it's some kind of joke. Particularly the 'evangelist'
| line.
|
| Kind of like the famous Halloween documents, this posting really tips
| Microsoft's hand and shows us exactly what they're thinking. After all the
| smoke and mirrors over the deals with Linux distros Suse, Linspire, Xandross,
| and Turbo Linux, this shows that those distros were in fact acquired in order
| to be killed. It's not Linux that Microsoft wants, it's the customers.
`----
http://penguinpetes.com/b2evo/index.php?title=now_hiring_astroturfer_apply_at_microsof&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
Related:
Microsoft sets spinners on court verdict
,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft may have lost in court, but it quickly tried to win the war of
| media reaction via organisations like CompTIA, the Computing Technology
| Industry Association and ACT (the Association for Competitive Technology)
| which both intervened in court on its side.
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/17/reaction_microsoft_verdict/
Microsoft Pays $200 for Mentioning Its Tools
,----[ Quote ]
| If you're a professor and you mention Microsoft programming tools in a
| scholarly presentation -- in fact, even if you just use the tools --
| Microsoft will send you a check for $200.
`----
http://chronicle.com/data/articles.dir/art-44.dir/issue-33.dir/33a03001.htm
The Best Enthusiasm Money Can Buy
,----[ Quote ]
| We might think that spending several hundreds of millions of dollars every
| year on commercial speech would be just about enough to allow any company
| to "tell its story" to the public. But we would not be Microsoft, who the Los
| Angeles Times revealed was gearing up a multi-million dollar public relations
| campaign which included planting ersatz letters to the editor in major
| national newspapers. The goal: to create the appearance, if not the reality,
| of "grassroots" support for the company.
|
| "Spontaneous" testimonials penned by hired guns may not be an entirely novel
| idea in the surreal world of public relations, but Microsoft's response to
| having been caught in the act of committing such a crass act was certainly
| uncommon. At first, the company denied their intentions to actually implement
| such a plan. Then, a few days later, company spokespersons announced a new
| spin: Microsoft has a perfect right to engage in public opinion manipulation
| campaigns, if that's what it takes to "tell its story."
|
| Now, what exactly was that story, again?
`----
http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departments/dirtytricks.shtml
Microsoft pays star writers to recite slogan
,----[ Quote ]
| The stodgy old media industry has a rule that newspaper reporters, and TV
| news hosts, shouldn't trade on their public trust to endorse products.
`----
http://valleywag.com/tech/federated-media/microsoft-pays-star-writers-to-recite-slogan-271485.php
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