Ed Kohler’s Comments

• Feb 17th, 2014 @ 10:59am

  This is a common ratings tactic

  on EA: You Can Only Rate Our Dungeon Keeper App If you Give It A Perfect Rating
  It's not surprising that a game company knows how to game their ratings. But, they're far from alone in using this tactic. It's also used for gaming Yelp and other review directories by sending up follow-up surveys where positive responders are asked to publish their comments at sites like Yelp while the others are thanks for their feedback (and hopefully given follow-up about their less than idea experience).
• Feb 6th, 2011 @ 2:46pm

  Re: Switch to opt-in

  on Yellow Pages Companies Team Up To Offer Opt-Out
  The easy way to avoid over-delivery without having any negative impact on small businesses would be to switch to an opt-in system. That way, people who really plan to use the books would receive them and the rest of us wouldn't have to waste our time and tax dollars cleaning up the yellow pages industry's litter.
• Oct 11th, 2010 @ 7:40pm

  It's more than the query

  on Is Passing Query String Data In Referral URLs A Privacy Violation?
  Using Google Analytics or pretty much any stats program or log file analyzer, a motivated web analyst can tie the query to the IP address, geolocation, browser type, computer OS, etc. It does narrow things down quite a bit when the query volume is narrow. For advertising purposes, people don't need that level of specificity, but the tools definitely provide for it.
• Oct 5th, 2010 @ 5:02pm

  Execution gets a nod

  on The Difference Between Ideas And Execution -- And What's Missing From 'The Social Network'
  One scene where execution gets a nod in the film was when Zuckerberg tears into his CFO for freezing the bank account. He explains that Facebook never goes down, which is one of the factors that is contributing to its success.
• Aug 27th, 2010 @ 7:21am

  (untitled comment) (as Ed)

  on Why Does The NY Times Rely So Often On Single Anecdote Trend Pieces Not Supported By The Data?
  I think many of these pieces are riffing off PR pitches where the story is finished before it's started. The "journalist" gets a fresh quote or two that support the reworked press release, and done.
  
  Try running this search on Google if you want to see how common this type of story is:
  
  site:nytimes.com "small but growing trend"
  
  It's certainly not limited to technology. Fashion, dining, travel, etc., all suffer from similar press release regurgitation reporting.
• Aug 6th, 2010 @ 2:30pm

  Craigslist Should Offer Law Enforcement Training

  on Political Campaign Against Craigslist Ratchets Up
  I wonder if Craigslist has ever considered offering law enforcement training on how to effectively use the site to track illegal activity in their cities?
• Nov 23rd, 2009 @ 4:29pm

  (untitled comment)

  on Dear PR People: If Your Exec Has A Comment, Our Comments Are Open
  Mike, this is an excellent post that PR people and the people they represent should take very seriously. They're losing in the court of public opinion if they take conversations offline rather than responding with authentic, rational arguments to the points raised by reasonable bloggers like yourself.