tombiro.com

• On Monday, Derek Powazek said a thing or two about SEO and the people who provide it as a service, professionally and otherwise. On Tuesday afternoon, Danny Sullivan responded with an open letter to Powazek. Since then, Powazek’s published a FAQ on the subject, and Sullivan has responded in kind, and not without a little snark (make sure you read the title). If you’re into search and Web design, etc., this is probably worth your time to check out.
• Polaroid’s back! Well, sort of.
• For those of you interested in cool stories about sports and sports leagues, with a tinge of economics and “what if,” then check out Costa’s recap what ALMOST happened in the NHL almost three decades ago. He’s got more here.
• You tell ‘em, Wil!
• If you haven’t seen the super awesome video floating around social media circles (and beyond), “The Social Media Guru,” I suggest you go watch it.
• Apple has something to say about the reporter $10,000 fee it supposedly cost to create iTunes LPs. [via Engadget]
• Wood IS BACK! Am I the only one sensing a trend in this list?
• I got a 4 out of 10 in this quiz about inventing things we currently take for granted in our day and age. What did you get? [via Kottke]

Here’s today’s batch of Links You Need To Click…

• Gothamist points to some news in the NY Post about Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to “shoeprint” all footwear. Hello, CSI and L&O land!
• Congrats to Allison for finally getting to see Moby in NYC! It’s kinda nice to get to do things that you’ve wanted to for years and years.
• Plax goes to jail. Wonder if he’ll spike the ball on the field after not being touched when his knee was down on his first play in the prison yard.
• Hey look, it’s Microsoft’s Guru Bar!
• You see, I feel all cool as I’m coming to a close of Year 1 for the 365 Days Project on Flickr, and the damn stormtroopers have go to and one-up us all with Stormtroopers 365. [via Kottke]
• Look! Over there! It’s sponsored tweets from celebrities, courtesy of Ad.ly.
• Over at the Voce Nation blog, Chris Thilk asks what marketers would have to do if (shudder!) social media tools weren’t available for their programs, and he wants to hear from you.
• Speaking of Chris Thilk, wonder if he’s seen this juiced-up WALL-E.
• For those of you up for a challenge, Fred Wilson has one for you – as Tumblr.

It’s another edition of things that I’m obnoxious enough to suggest that you really really really wanna click through to.

• On Tuesday, Scott Monty fired a well-deserved shot across the bow of the 50 zillion social media books and experts floating around these days. With a few exceptions, of course. Also, Kottke with a semi-unrelated, yet serendipitously timed post. So what if it was posted two weeks earlier and sitting in my flagged items. It fits.
• I must admit, seeing Katie’s comments about getting started on what is her current blog, way back in 1999, when she was like 14, is quite fun and takes me back. To somewhere in the early 1990’s, and my BBS addiction.
• 4 Awkward Moments In Facebook “Likes” – via Mike.
• You won’t like Chris Thilk when he’s angry, movie studios!!!
• Leave it to Rex to put it down right when it comes to Microsoft’s Browser for the Better campaign. Now, like my randomly rotating in headline says – “If you’re on this site on IE6 then I hate your computer.”
• I’m sorry, but docs asking patients NOT to rate them online? Next thing you know this’ll start showing up on the back of movie or theatre tickets, that you can’t tweet about the show for 24 hours. [via David Weinberger]
• Have I mentioned that I FRAKING LOVE the new Studio MWW site? Seriously. The staff page wins at the Internet. For this morning, at least. Crap, it’s afternoon already. Sorry, guys.

Also, my latest PRWeek column is up, (subscription req’d) and discusses how PR people need to understand the value of working with journalists on stories that might only appear online – and how that’s a good thing.

Man, it sure is easy to batch up stuff and share it with everyone. If more people I knew used something like Google Reader, I’d use that, but this lets me throw some spin on stuff that’s of interest.

• Looking for a solution for people who park all douchey around you? This is probably it, and partially NSFW given its…title. Thanks to my West Coast pal Lauren for throwing me that a few weeks ago.
• Doers. You know, the people who aren’t out there all day talking about all the cool stuff that you COULD be doing, but are doing maybe 1/20th of that, and spending the rest of the time…doing. Seeing a lot more throws their way of late than we used to. Thank goodness.
• Some news showed up that reality show participant Ryan Jenkins had committed suicide, and it appears that there was a bit of a dilemma as to whether or not to “like” the news on Facebook. I “liked” it before I “unliked” it, I must admit.
• Leah Jones makes some good points about ethics in social media consultancy, and whether timing is key in at least one situation currently making the rounds. Interesting debate, to say the least.
• The sheer concept of the Dow Jones indices going up for sale is almost too hard to get my head around, but then I realize that we call something the “Dow Industrials” and I’m able to check out what “industrials” make it up, and feel better.
• Rework is probably my #1 business hate. Except when it’s the new book from the 37signals folks.
• I’ve been sitting on this one since March, and just couldn’t figure out what to do with it. What do you think about online ads having “icons” that when clicked, would tell you what they “knew” about you? Saul Hansell described that scenario in this Bits blog article.
• Given the issues that NFL players continue to get into, I’m not sure that the League’s efforts to sneakily check out what future players, currently in college, are up to on Facebook is going to matter, a few months after word came down that this was going on. Or maybe it’ll only get more intense.
• OMGzors. I totally want one of these cassette tape USB hubs. [via Gizmodo]

Some part of me sits on these until I have something interesting to say, another just feels like there’s SO much good stuff out there that I’m filtering so we can see what sticks or not, rather than that instant-gratification that you get from flagging items in an RSS reader. It’s free and all – too easy for me to just spam the heck out of all of you here. Hopefully these are enjoyable for those of you who actually read this.

As I’m cruising through the old RSS reader on a Sunday afternoon, I’ve got some stuff that is (hopefully) worth your click-through time. Now if only my fantasy baseball team would make the time I put into picking lineups every day worth my time.

• Rex points to an interesting feature that the Silicon Alley Insider sites have begun using, the ability to have posts embedded on other sites in a nifty little window. As most of us bloggers know, the number of people who’ll actually click through to a link and the number who SEE the link are not always the same thing, so this is an interesting way to get around the ‘ol blockquote, and let someone like Henry Blodget actually see how many people are reading his text elsewhere. Or something like that.
• Danny Sullivan has a thing or two to say about the contention from someone at Fox News that SEO is “scamming.” And he couldn’t be more on the mark – and amusing – in the way he does it.
• Max Damage. Say goodbye to the rest of your day. Thanks, Kottke.
• Jeremy Pepper drops dime on hip-hop maven Talib Kweli’s “guidelines” (my words, not Kweli’s) on using Twitter. Great linkage and roundup. Enjoy it, social media “experts.”
• Jenn has founded a little group called “Code She Wrote” for women who are in the NYC-general area who are – you guessed it – into design, gaming, gadgets, and so on. Knowing a few people who would definitely dig on this sorta thing, I thought it wise to pass it along. Go Jenn!
• If *anyone* is surprised by the stats that 45% of employers are not “screening social media profiles” for potential hires, then I’m not even sure what to say. Or maybe I’m just being social media snotty.
• A week or so ago, gruber pointed to something extra awesome, the lowdown on how the iPhone Sudoku Grab app works. Equal parts OMG and WTF, all at the same time.

We’ve got a mixed bag today, which I guess isn’t totally surprising.

• Jay-Z, Rihanna and Kanye hit the streets with the new “Run This Town” video on Thursday.
• Chris Thilk has a word or two for “social media superstars” out there. I’ll certainly second that emotion. Also, this.
• Kottke points to the seemingly awesome idea of the “time-in” for the NFL that the Boston Globe’s Samuel Arbesman wrote about earlier this week.
• As if phishing and crap in your various inboxes wasn’t annoying enough, Mashable’s Adam Ostrow writes about the current stupidity going on with scammers.
• Josh likes Delta. Good for him. I’m not terribly a fan, but they’re better than most. But good for him, I guess, and he makes a solid point.
• Awesome pullquote that gruber posted regarding Steve Ballmer’s iPhone comments from back in early ‘07. *cough*wrong*cough*

Bonus link: Do you think my rice is happy about its current state of affairs?

My latest PRWeek column is now available, and if you’ve got a subscription, you can check it out here. It’s focused on social media policies and how making them look like “limitations” rather than putting realistic positive spin on them is giving them a bad name. I took a lot of my frustrations from Tuesday’s rant about ESPN’s policy and tried to put them to good use.

I’ve put this off a few days, but have finally got a moment to write something coherent and hopefully not rambling… I just wanted to congratulate Chris Thilk on joining the team over at Voce. As some of you may know, I had the odd situation of being able to hire Chris twice, once at AdJab, and once at MWW Group, where he’d left shortly after I did during the summer of ‘08, so it’s kind of strange to actually be writing this. We’ve actually joked since our departure(s) that it was the longest we’d both gone without writing on the same blog together since like 2005 or something, and that’s kinda funny.

In any case, I know Chris is psyched to have joined up with Josh and Mike, and I’m really happy for him. As those guys have both stated on their individual blogs and on the Voce Nation blog, he certainly “walks the walk” more than he “talks the talk,” unlike a significant amount of “experts” in the world of social media these days. And yes, I’m taking a blind potshot here, because it would take me too long to call people out, IMHO.

Chris, like myself, isn’t into doing random-ass social media programs because they’re the flavor of the week / month / minute, and gets the one-to-one conversation while still being able to work hard to scale. It was great for me to work with him on both an office-based and Internet-only kind of level, as that certainly teaches you a lot about how people work, react to things happening halfway across a country, and so on. I know he’ll do a great job for the Voce crew, and it’s really cool to see that he’s taken an awesome step in his career, especially one where he gets to work with some of the highly legit people in the public relations and – and dare I say – social media space. It was a blast having him there to bounce stuff off (something I still do to this day, down to the ‘do i blog this or not?’ questions), and I’d like to say congratulations again, and good luck working with a guy who’s addicted to taking photographs all day. Oh, wait…