Link Round-Up: The ‘Link Round-Ups are Back’ Edition

In this site’s past, I would periodically post ‘link round-ups’. As my blogging habits changed, I stopped doing this.

Lately, I’ve been so busy that I’ve had less time to devise fully-formed blog posts in my head. As such, I’m going to occasionally lean on the link round-up crutch. Also, I get pitched much more stuff these days, and some of it seems noteworthy. I might have more to say about these topics, but I don’t have time to say it.

Standardized testing fail – This Wall Street Journal article received a lot of attention on the web last week. I’m unsure about the validity of its arguments, but fresh perspectives on education are always welcome. It reminded of of this great half-hour talk by Malcolm Gladwell, which apparently draws from his forthcoming book. He would, I gather, strongly disagree with the WSJ piece.

TravelMob launch – TravelMob just launched, which seems to be a group travel planning site–a bit like TripHub. Julie used the latter for a holiday last year, and sung its praises. I suspect there’s a market for planning aids of this sort. A web design note: they should host their blog on their own domain, to enjoy increased SEO benefits.

Kickin’ it EE style – Friends Hop Studios and Boxcar Marketing are sponsoring the Expression Engine Roadshow, in Vancouver on September 26. It’s at Havana, where the old theatre company Julie and I managed used to perform. I know almost nothing about Expression Engine, except that it seems to inspire Applesque ardor among its users.

Allergies and Tide – Jason writes to point to this message thread on Tide’s marketing micro-site MyTalkingStain.com (launched with this slightly-amusing Super Bowl ad). I can’t access it at the moment, but he notes that “P&G has (seemingly) ignored but a decent number of people are coming across it when trying to determine why they’re breaking out in rashes from new detergent”. Assuming the site hasn’t been permanently removed, I’ll be curious to see how (and if) Tide responds to these consumer concerns.

Mini client plug – DreamBank has commissioned a 60-second video commercial from the AdHack community. The winning ad gets CAN $1000. If you can make the video in a day, that’s pretty good money.