When flyers were distributed offering cash for organs, Johannesburg, and the country, were in instant uproar. It turned out to be a brilliant marketing stunt, for which the creative agency’s craven corporate bosses immediately apologised. Shame on them. My column on the subject, Ogilvy should grow a spine, made the front page of the new Freakonomics blog, which gave me warm fuzzies for days.

Here are two pre-Christmas columns that might be of interest, one serious, and one less so.

The serious one is about the Regulation of Interception of Communications Act, or RICA (it’s easy! it’s free!), as the happy mobile operator adverts put it. It’s not some freebie, some bonus. It’s a dangerous and costly exercise that makes communication more expensive, and more vulnerable to an overbearing state.

But it’s Christmas. And what would Christmas be without its thoroughly tacky, plastic commercialisation? Who am I to attack it? Instead, here’s a defence of Boney M in supermarkets.

Enjoy, and to all, I wish you a joyful, relaxed Christmas and an entertaining, wealthy 2010.

Hi all. It’s been over a year, and I keep getting asked when (or if) I’ll ever get around to blogging again. The answer is: I’m not blogging, but I am writing. This gives me little reason to blog and some good reasons not to.

Most Thursdays (and occasionally at other times) you can find a column on technology or telecommunications at ITWeb. Every Tuesday, my column on politics, economics and (anti-)environmentalism is published at the phoenix that rose from the ashes of Branko Brkic’s dearly departed Maverick magazine: The Daily Maverick. I also still write a monthly column for Brainstorm magazine, where the then-editor Brkic first convinced me to write opinion, and where current editor Samantha Perry continues to tolerate my invariably overdue mutterings.

Here’s what I’ve been up to since I stopped blogging, written while The Daily Maverick was still in pre-launch beta testing: Going cold turkey.

Since its launch, I’ve taken up one of my favourite cudgels: Too late to cool it? This week I penned a piece on the temerity of leftwingers who claim to oppose fascism: The irony of the left. I have many ideas lined up to fuel future arguments, so keep an eye on The Daily Maverick. Moreover, it is home to an eclectic group of brilliant reporters, photographers, analysts, commentators and columnists who offer some of the finest reading matter available on the South African internet. It is a pleasure and an honour to be published alongside them.

Elsewhere, this rant on power plugs for Brainstorm magazine elicited some vigorous nodding from readers, many of whom, unsurprisingly, share my pain.

Though a promising challenger has recently appeared (here’s to you, Duncan McLeod), ITWeb has for 15 years been the backbone and daily staple of the South African tech and telecoms scene. Among my recent ITWeb columns are an opinion about which commenters appeared to miss the point somewhat: Sure, fund the SABC with tax, an argument about who might be producing primary reporting in the future: Reviving the leisured classes, and a story about a man, The chief incompetence officer, which may yet have repercussions.

Discussion of or comments on my columns are best posted on the publishers’ respective sites, not only because they buy my bread and beer, but also because I’m more likely to read and respond there. I’ll post alerts of new articles and columns over here, however, so the many friends (and enemies) I’ve made here can follow me wherever I write. Speaking of following, I’m @IvoVegter.

Of course, the archives remain intact, and contain some 218 041 words in 520 posts, with 1 331 comments. Some of the topics I tackled, or responses I promised (but never wrote) will no doubt surface again on ITWeb, in Brainstorm or on The Daily Maverick.

Thank you all for reading and, most importantly, arguing with me. You’ve been a whetstone for my blade: sharpening my arguments, but innocent of how rashly I wield them. You rock — dangerous communists included.

Finally, a Facebook group that achieved something! Hundreds of thousands of irate Facebook users made the company back down on telling everyone else what you bought on partner websites — an idea it sprung on users without warning, and without even the ability to opt out of the scheme. The article quotes Chamath Palihapitiya, a vice president at the company:

“Whenever we innovate and create great new experiences and new features, if they are not well understood at the outset, one thing we need to do is give people an opportunity to interact with them,” Palihapitiya was quoted as saying.

“After a while, they fall in love with them.”

Apparently they didn’t. But I can see how they would. Once enough of my friends know I shop for eczema cream, collect bondage accoutrement and just bought a book on living with a heroin addict, I’m sure I’ll come to love the idea.

Prats.

I’m increasingly pleased about having left Facebook. A couple of weeks ago I posted about advertising that appears in your news stream, cannily disguised to look like a photo update from a friend. Now, things are getting even murkier.

A guy named Joe discovered that not only were his purchases on Facebook partner sites like Overstock and Yelp being tracked, but they were being posted to his news stream. He didn’t opt in, and claims (justifiably, it would seem) not to have been given a clear and unambiguous way to opt out.

An AP story shows the implicit dangers of embarrassment and worse of this feature, which Facebook dubs “Beacon”. One guy discovered what his girlfriend had bought him as a present. Another found his movie ticket purchases displayed to his friends. The article not only shows how tricksey the feature is, but also notes that users cannot withdraw completely from the programme, but merely decrease the frequency of the relevant items in their news feeds. (Just like my account at Facebook is merely inactive, and cannot be deleted.)

This feature is remarkably offensive. “Hey, everyone, Jimmy bought some lube! Do you want some?” Or more realistically, as one source in the AP story says, “What if you bought a book on Amazon called ‘Coping with AIDS’ and that got published to every single one of your friends?”

Joe asks, plaintively: “Facebook, it is not OK to collect information about me from other sites. Please stop.”

Sorry, Joe. You agreed:

Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service … in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience. … We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, Facebook Platform developers and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile.

However, not being able to opt out of this offensive feature is contrary to Facebook’s own privacy policy, which states: “And you control the users with whom you share that information through the privacy settings on the My Privacy page.”

Turns out the privacy policy and terms of use are there to bind users, not Facebook. It also turns out, as I discovered when I wanted my account deleted, that once you agree, you can never revoke any permissions you gave Facebook. Not even when circumstances — such as Facebook’s shareholding — change. They own you and the lemons you buy. Forever.

Update: Duncan McLeod has published a Financial Times article on the subject on his website.

The rot has begun. Scarcely has Microsoft bought its slice of Facebook (over which I left), than advertising is starting to appear. Right there in the news stream; a large, glaring advertisement. This is what it looks like:

A few things are notable. Unlike the Facebook Flyers, which appear on the left-hand-side, very visible but without wasting space needed for the news stream, and unlike Google-style text ads, which are non-intrusive and take up little space, this advertisement appears slap bang in the news stream, where interesting updates from friends vie for screen real-estate even on a very large screen. I’d guess on a typical notebook screen or a mobile device it would take up a good proportion of the visible screen space.

It is disguised as a real update, as if a friend just posted some new photos. That’s devious and offensive. Magazines (credible magazines, at least), decline advertisements that attempt to appear like regular editorial, since this hurts the integrity of the publication. I were in charge of Facebook advertising, an advert that looks like a legitimate update would be declined.

It appears to be completely untargeted. Credit reports comprise one of the biggest categories of online spam. What next? Pump-and-dump share schemes? Invitations from hot babes looking for money, honey?

It is true that some other social networks — including Orkut in particular — suffer from spam problems, especially in group discussion forums. This is something they will have to combat if they intend capitalising on the discontent created by Microsoft/Facebook deal. But at least they don’t (as far as I’m aware) condone the spam. At least they don’t place the spam themselves, where it clogs up an already-cluttered news stream.

In all ways, this particular Facebook advertisement is offensive and sends a clear message of where Facebook is going: more clutter, more noise, less signal, less usefulness. It lacks even the minimal redeeming quality — unintentional humour about Yahoo! spam filtering — of this inviting offer I recently received:

Comparative and competitive advertising is, generally speaking, prohibited in South Africa, by laws on the use of trade marks, unlawful competition, and by the Advertising Standards Authority code. Even parody is, in itself, no defence. Yet some of the best, most clever, and most memorable advertising is often comparative.

The classic case in South Africa, from the early 1990s (if memory serves) is the response by BMW to an advertisement by Mercedes-Benz. The latter was shown on the famous Chapman’s Peak route along the Cape Town coast, whence it left the road and plunged down the cliff. The driver survived, attesting to the safety standards of Mercedes. BMW responded with an advert showing its car along the same route, negotiating it safely. The payoff line was, “Beats the bends”. It was pulled after only a short run, but after many years remains both a well-remembered advertisement and a well-known media catchphrase.

The impact of competitive advertising on price, in particular, would be substantially beneficial to consumers. I’m often mystified by price advertising, since I often don’t have a point of reference that determines whether a price is good or bad. At best, I have a vague idea about which shops are more or less expensive.

I’ll grant that if competitive or comparative advertising is permitted, recourse should be both swift and punitive should the advertiser make demonstrably false claims about their competitor.

All rational arguments aside, however, the sequence below — not new, but made after the 2006 Car of the Year award — makes as eloquent a case as any for competitive advertising.

Since everyone except me is at the iWeek conference in Johannesburg, I thought I’d post another amusing video for their clandestine entertainment. This is one I haven’t seen before. Excellent animation, great spoof:

Sadly, the industrial spies at Cherryflava have reason to believe a new onslaught is due this summer.

If you’ve ever bought replacement ink for inkjet printers, you’ll recognise what a magnificent idea this is. Granted, you need to, ehm, hack the printer just a little, as GM demonstrates with this very cool trade show advert for Jeep: