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It's no shame to admit that I am a bit of a blogwatcher. Of my Google Reader feed, three sites are webcomics (or comic commentary - a shout out to the Curmudgeon!), three sites are "humour", and four are in the miscellaneous bin: an Edmonton foodie blog, Seth Godin's marketing insights, a guy annotating the d...

Brands are updated all the time. Logos, taglines and visual identities are tweaked almost every time there is a new head honcho in the marketing department. Follow the McDonald's evolution over a few decades, or even Michael Jackson's. (Too soon?)

However, a complete renovation - a rebranding - happens only in the direst of days. When the associations of the current brand are so plagued with baggage or bereft of support, a rebranding is sometimes the only way to reboot the ...

I live in Edmonton, Canada - it's a metropolis with upwards of a million people living in its greater urban area, but pretty small potatoes compared to cities to the south. That suits me just fine. I've lived here nearly all my life, my family is nearby and I get the satisfaction of being a somewhat larger fish swimming in a smaller pool.

However, living in northern climes has coloured my perspective in ways that I can't imagine.

An uncle with a home in F...

Stephen Harper is a scrapper. The guy cut his teeth on the bloody fields of the Reform grassroots revolution and worked his way to power in the pugilistic role of underdog opposition within the sphere of the then all-powerful Liberals. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is the purest incarnation of partisan politics. The fact that he can't abandon the role to serve the larger benefit of the country should take no one by surprise.

The machine he has built is simply a purer refine...

Pump Up The Volume has arrived.

This 1990 classic starred Christian Slater and a then-unknown Samantha Mathis, as a pair of improbably elderly high school students engaged in ham radio anti-authoritarian hijinks. I loved it. Don't judge me. Slater broadcast sedition on the FM band to an increasing number of listeners...

You're holding an event or you have reached a significant milestone, and you figure that the media would be interested. You wrote a media release (or hired me to do so) and suddenly, the phone rings! A reporter under a time crunch (they are all under a time crunch) wants to ask you a few questions to flesh out the story.

What do you do?

Remember that there are always a few minutes to collect your thoughts before you agree to an interview. An "I'm busy rig...

I have a business idea I'd like to run by you. How much would you or your company pay to catch up with social networking? I'm talking a business case for why you should (or shouldn't) embrace social media, then setting you up with the best platforms for your needs: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, p...

I'll be posting the occasional link here, when someone else's opinion will express mine far better than I could. One of daveberta's posts was such a find. The former editor of Insight Into Government, Ric Vivone, is publishing a book of essays on Klein-era politics in Alberta. I am completely in agreement with Cournoyer that I can't wait for this book to hit the shelves!

I disco...

So I live in Alberta, which means that every once in a while some provincial-level politics are going to seep into this blog. Case in point: the Wildrose Alliance.

All of a sudden, the blogosphere is all abuzz about this fringe of rightist wackos who couldn't get enough face time among the PCs. (FYI: there are usually several "righter than PC" parties running in Alberta, and most get soundly trounced.) This one had a little...

All right, so I have taken some design courses and have built a number of websites myself. However, in order to get my new site up and running as quickly as possible, I decided to try out some of the online site builder options.

My first attempt was with HostPapa and SohoLaunch. Friends had told me they had great tools, but Soho wouldn't work for me and I ended up chewing the carpet in f...