P.S. -We had to change the venue last minute, see above!

What companies rarely realize, however, is that astroturfing is a myth, one which I’ve never heard of working to do anything except unravel companies’ reputations (see: Sony, Wal-Mart, and many, many more). Astroturfing is a concept that’s easily sold to gullible businesses (like Motorola) who are desperate for new, out-of-the-box ways to “engage with consumers” (i.e. get people to buy their products). But the truth is this: quality will always out. The internet itself has done more to ensure people are well informed than any single consumer advocacy group, and any idea that might spread virally is inherently too worthy and kinetic to funnel from a small, clumsy, group of phony commenter-consumer-bloggers.

Someone should let the folks over at DEI Worldwide, Inc., know this though, as they’re the ones behind Motorola’s assault. The IPs associated with the comments (and numerous others) came from 64.60.150.178, an address belonging to DEI, a marketing company which specializes in “engaging consumers online,” and which counts among its clients — you guessed it — Motorola.

Now, are you ready for the real kicker in all this? Remember how I mentioned Wal-Mart, which was astroturfed by PR mega-firm Edelman back in 2006? At the time, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) issued a release, stating:

“the lack of disclosure… is a violation of WOMMA’s Code of Ethics, which requires honesty and full disclosure in all marketer-sponsored communications. … Such transgressions… are of grave concern to WOMMA, which has led the fight for high ethical standards in word of mouth marketing and social media. Our Ethics Code sets clear guidelines for disclosure by marketers.”

That’s certainly an interesting position, considering the fact that DEI Worldwide’s CEO, David Reis, is a power-player in the marketing world and one of the co-founders of WOMMA. I’ll let that sink in for a minute.

Surely in the spirit of honesty and full disclosure, Reis appears to have posted his personal contact information online, should you have any misgivings about companies misleading consumers in their marketing efforts. (Reis also claims to be a black belt, so if you spot me with a black eye, you know who did it!)

It’s fortuitous timing, though, because that during my last visit in November I was profiled by On The Inside, which just went live this month. It’s probably way more detail than anyone really wants about me and my relationship with The City (still, thanks Thomas!), but the idea is to get a window into one’s relationship with New York through the recommendation of some off the beaten track spots. Some of mine that made it in are: Barcade, Otafuku, the MoMA Design Store, and May Wah.

Wow, there I am with my pal Michi (well, her eyes anyway) in a John Waters movie afterall, laughing at jokes about John’s gold Comme des Garçons boots. Damn, good eye Sam Moody! If you do get a chance to check out This Filthy Life, I definitely do recommend it. I forgot how good it is!

But as if that horrible situation wasn’t enough, then BenQ touched the 9/11-nerve today. I wrote a possibly too-personal rant (perhaps because I lived in Manhattan on 9/11), which I’m glad I turned over to Pete. His much more metered and silver-tongued writeup can be found here. Needless to say, I’m ready for this week to be over.

Yeah, when gloating it’s probably better never than late, but even though it’s been a couple days since we hit #1 on Technorati I’m still glowing a bit. I can’t help myself. Engadget’s just become such an unbelievable brand, and it never ceases to amaze me how well people seem to connect with what we’re doing. Anyway, to anyone who’s ever linked to us, supported us, even visited the site, thanks and thanks again.

New York was plenty fun, albeit busy busy with meetings (and moving my things out of my old apartment — thanks AOL!). It was very disorienting being back — especially after so many years of going east to west — but so wonderful seeing the crew again. It’s amazing how familial this company is, how tight knit and close, totally unlike anything I’ve ever been a part of. And, of course, seeing Pete and Jill was especially great. She was even kind enough to take a few shots of Pete and I for iTunes; a little more finessing and I have a feeling I can get ‘em to return to SF.

Well, I guess this is it. I’m at JFK with Devo — we’re about to get on a plane to San Francisco, who knows when we’ll be back. My last five years here have been a whirlwind, absolutely amazing. I got here in early 2001 with $400 to my name, no job, a handful of friends, and not the faintest idea of how I was going to make it. New York has left an indelible impression on me, there’s no doubt about it; while I could wax poetic about this city’s stark, rough urban beauty and its austere historical mystique, there’s no need. What I’ll miss most is all my absolutely wonderful friends (some of whom took me for one last trip to the Lemon Ice King of Corona last night — see my photostream). It’s not goodbye though, it’s see you real soon.

I am sincerely humbled that my pals Michi and Emily are throwing me a going away party this Friday, and additionally humbled by the awesome invite Michi made (number and address erased to protect the innocent!). How wonderful are they? Anywho, shoot me an email or something if you’re gonna try and make it, I’ll get you in touch with the event’s fantabulous coordinators.

Man, it’s been a few weeks, hasn’t it? Well, they’ve been busy. E3 was crazy, hellish, and fun; somehow Paul, Joystiq, and I all managed to make it out alive, which is a real bonus consider the fact that for a few nights there I thought I might keel over from exhaustion. Interviewing Shigeru Miyamoto was absolutely wonderful — totally got to tick that one off from my 100 things to do before I die list. Afterward V and I drove up to NorCal; a week after I came back, Engadget’s Senior Editor and my good friend Marc Perton made his planned departure to his awesome new job (though I see he hasn’t yet written about it on his blog, so I won’t spoil the surprise as to where that is). We’ve also brought on a bunch of amazing new writers in the great summer blogger hunt of ’06 (whose names you’ll be seeing a lot more of on Engadget in the coming weeks). So yeah, things have been busy around the office.

See, I told you lots of crazy stuff was going down at work; at home, too. Yes, the rumors are true, I’m moving my ass out to San Francisco. Why? No, it’s not some Web 2.0 renaissance thing; chalk it up to five long years (and a few days) spent in New York, the coming deadly humid global-warming-enhanced summer, the certain charms of a particular lady, and the ever constant pressure from the fam to move closer to home (that’d be SoCal). I may yet come back to the Big Apple, we’ll see, but I’ve been wanting to get out of New York for the past couple of years now, so it seems like it’s time. And yes, I’ll still be the Managing Editor of Engadget. Date: June 16th. See you on the west side! I’ll miss you New York, and New York peeps!

My old friend Dave just pinged me to let me know he got a copy of Paper‘s Beautiful People issue*, which means it must be nearing April. He sent some shots of the mag, and I’ll be honest: nothing on Cass Bird, who’s obviously an amazing photographer, but I’m not really feeling the photo the photo’s growing on me. Ah well, it’s still fun and at least I was wearing an Alexander McQueen suit with my fav tshirt, which my lady gave to me. I’m kind of simultaneously stoked about and dreading the Beautiful People party next month, though, so we’ll see how that goes. Either way, it’s definitely an honor to be a “beautiful person,” and to be recognized by Paper for doing our thing.

* free with pairs of pants at Urban Outfitters, apparently.

It’s not as cold back here as I’d feared, but it’s certainly just as uninviting as I thought it would be. I managed to sleep the whole flight back, but I have a feeling I won’t catch my stride again until I get back next week from Austin (Pete and I will be headed over for SXSW Interactive). Engadget’s up for a couple of Bloggies, so wish me luck!

Has anyone actually tried using Craigslist (in New York) to find a place in recent memory? Once every few months I go on to check out the market, see whether I’m still paying a good price for my apartment, what’s available, etc. But the amount of spam in the classifieds is unbelievable, and the amount of broker spam in the apartment listings is outstanding and increasingly notorious. In order to see the apartments in my neighborhood (Williamsburg) that are actually in my neighborhood (and don’t just show up with mentions of “near Williamsburg” or “East Williamsburg”) my search strings end up containing something close to ten arguments, and even then the results are shaky. So what’s Craigslist got to do to clean up their service? Well, they’re a notoriously laissez faire company, so why not decentralize the task of removing the spam and killing the spammers? Craigslist free classifieds should go Wiki.

In the current system, the user flags questionable entries from within the listing, and supposedly enough flags get called to the attention of the CL staff. This system fails because users often recognize spam before clicking on an entry, so they’re required to look at spam in order to flag it; there’s also no way to flag spam directly from search results. Further more, users do not get any sense of feedback by participating in an anonymous spam-voting system. When it’s spam, you want to kill it dead right then and there, or else you don’t want to waste your time. So how do you get rid of the spam? Let users kill postings, it’s that simple!

Yes, I realize that to start, the Craigslist system would suffer an enormous shock. Brokers would start attacking other brokers to as to get a better lock on a neighborhood, angry ex-roommates would take down listings after getting kicked out, etc. But this problem is easily solved with volunteer trusted admin moderators (ala the Wiki model), user-registration for posting free classifieds, and a simple trust-you-but-track-you system. Suppose that with this system, in order to post an entry on Craigslist classifieds you must first register. You’re forced to read the site guidelines about spamming before proceeding, etc., and once you post, your user name and some information (like your IP address, and what it’s been up to lately) would be public. This way, when you start misbehaving, by making additions or subtractions to the listings, your user and/or IP can be banned.

For example, a broker/roommate/owner wants to list an apartment/room/sublet. They register with CL, and post their listing. In this listing their user name is displayed as a link, and when one clicks through their IP address transaction logs from the CL Wiki database are displayed. If they’re caught unjustly killing other listings or recognized as a spammer, they are banned. If their listings look too similar to another user’s listings (i.e. they are suspected of spoofing with multiple accounts) they can be banned and have their email addresses or, if necessary, IP addresses banned. Perhaps even other unique information from the post, like the name of the broker’s company, their telephone number, etc. can be added to a filter list so anyone who later trys to post a classified with said banned-broker’s phone number in it gets denied. Of course, all of the above circumstances are extreme examples, but they need to be addressed in order to give this sytem weight.

Yes, I realize the anonymity of Craigslist is one of its appeals. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not proposing we take that anonymity away from CL users, but if you’re going to participate in the free classifieds on Craigslist’s community boards, you should be held under public scrutiny if you’re caught spamming. End of story. Just like any other community-oriented space, perhaps it’s time to let the community start taking care of keeping things clean and orderly. For all our sakes I hope CL gets their act together and lets us clean up their mess.

Yup, it’s snowing here alright. And here I was thinking that we were gonna get off (relatively) scot free this year, then boom, we’re hit with over 27 inches of snow (which apparently beat the New York record of 26.4 inches in December of ’47, the most snow since the city started keeping track way back in 1869). How’d we celebrate? Well, Michi, Roman and I went and had a Mexican brunch, snowball fight, and walked the totally deserted snowed-in streets to Settepani for cupcakes and treats (on flickr). I know there are thousands of people stranded at the airports, thousands working to clear the roads right this very moment, and that supposedly for every foot of snow that falls, New York has to pay approximately a million dollars to clean it up. But you know what? It’s still beautiful.

Reason number 230,401 to live in New York: 40 gallon trashcans half-filled with piping hot chicken noodle soup put out with the garbage for collection, still steaming and making a swath of 12th street smell like a sick day spent at home with the mom.

Figured it might be nice to ring in the new year with the first from my forthcoming GREETINGS FROM WILLIAMSBURG postcard series (inspired by Mike + Em). Happy new year Robby Nordy, wherever you are.

[Image via NYT]

It’s of only temporary novelty to see new buildings constantly go up; in the last four or so years of living on and off in my neighborhood, I’ve seen literally dozens of buildings go up within just a few blocks. There is currently one in construction next door, and another directly behind my apartment. From my roof you can see seven or more of the dozens of buildings being constructed within a few blocks. Click on to see more pictures of them improving the neighborhood.

P.S. Lots of new pictures today, including long belated photos of a long belated trip to the new MOMA with Dan.

Next door’s new back yard would be pretty awesome if it wasn’t all concrete.

Next door. (Ok, two doors down, if you want to get technical.)

The building next door to that.

Behind the apartment, this one’s been in construction since spring.

Two blocks up, next door to my old building (which was just constructed, and sat across buildings in front and behind that had were under construction and had just been built, respectively).

Two blocks up, one over, this one’s gonna be decent.

Two blocks south.