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April 6, 2006

'Viral' Chevy contest ads; Veggie diets shed pounds? Md. red-light cameras boost accidents; XP on Macs

Get the geeks to make commercials for you. How cool is that? "Viral marketing" -- get a buzz going on the Web -- is hot, so Chevrolet challenged online vidsters to make commercials for its giant Tahoe SUV. Slick tools and a contest with fun experiences for prizes launched from chevyapprentice.com (because they promoted it on TV's The Apprentice) . Of course, the satirists, pranksters and anti-SUV branch showed up en masse.

You can see the anti-ads at YouTube.

Entrant Eric Gundersen even put up Tuesday's Nightline segment that included a few seconds of an interview with him.

Here's one that's a hoot: tahoe's daddy. ("My Daddy didn’t love me. This is how I compensate.")

NYT: Chevy Tries a Write-Your-Own-Ad Approach, and the Potshots Fly

Mistake or not? Now you've heard of the Tahoe, right? The contest ends April 10.

Sidebar: Mark Glaser (Media Shift) interviews YouTube founder Chad Hurley about the meteoric rise of the viral video clip site: YouTube CEO Hails ‘Birth of a New Clip Culture.’ Glaser, a longtime writer for Online Journalism Review, now blogs for PBS.

Hybrid: Macs: Intel and Windows Inside. News.com does a wrapup of the hybridization buzz: "Boot Camp makes it possible to run Windows XP natively on Intel-based Macs. Will the software bring more people over to the Apple Computer side?"

Vegetarian diets cause major weight loss: This didn't get much play. Press release:

WASHINGTON--A scientific review in April's Nutrition Reviews shows that a vegetarian diet is highly effective for weight loss. Vegetarian populations tend to be slimmer than meat-eaters, and they experience lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and other life-threatening conditions linked to overweight and obesity. The new review, compiling data from 87 previous studies, shows the weight-loss effect does not depend on exercise or calorie-counting, and it occurs at a rate of approximately 1 pound per week.

Rates of obesity in the general population are skyrocketing, while in vegetarians, obesity prevalence ranges from 0 percent to 6 percent, note study authors Susan E. Berkow, Ph.D., C.N.S., and Neal D. Barnard, M.D., of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).

The authors found that the body weight of both male and female vegetarians is, on average, 3 percent to 20 percent lower than that of meat-eaters. Vegetarian and vegan diets have also been put to the test in clinical studies, as the review notes. The best of these clinical studies isolated the effects of diet by keeping exercise constant. The researchers found that a low-fat vegan diet leads to weight loss of about 1 pound per week, even without additional exercise or limits on portion sizes, calories, or carbohydrates.

"Our research reveals that people can enjoy unlimited portions of high-fiber foods such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains to achieve or maintain a healthy body weight without feeling hungry," says Dr. Berkow, the lead author.

"There is evidence that a vegan diet causes an increased calorie burn after meals, meaning plant-based foods are being used more efficiently as fuel for the body, as opposed to being stored as fat," says Dr. Barnard. Insulin sensitivity is increased by a vegan diet, allowing nutrients to more rapidly enter the cells of the body to be converted to heat rather than to fat.

Much more widely spread: Healthy Eggs Hatch Success for Eggland's, in which the chickens are the vegetarians.

Detour works for me: Study: Maryland county's red light cameras net $2.85 million, increase accidents. At Autoblog:

Anne Arundel County in Maryland has been running five red light cameras for five years, during which period they raised a fat $2.85 million in ticket revenue. Unfortunately, a comparison of accident statistics shows that the cameras have increased the rate of accidents.

Immediately after installation, the cameras sparked a 40-percent increase in rear-end collisions, and never looked back, with five-year increases in accident rates far exceeding a 10-percent increase in traffic.

Unfortunately, this is hardly an isolated phenomenon. TheNewspaper.com reports similar results in the state of Georgia, where the city of Duluth's one and only camera is forecast to generate a whopping $1 million next year, at the cost of a 21-percent increase in accidents. A study by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution showed red light cameras were linked to an increase in accidents, injuries and revenues across the state, although there is early indication that the rate of serious accidents in intersections is falling.

Critics charge that cities are at best trading one kind of accident for another, and that the proliferation of traffic cameras is really just a money generator, while advocates maintain that they encourage safer driving.

I imagine mustaches twirling, the villain saying, "We reduce broadside collisions, increase rear-enders and make a million bucks. Net gain, I'd say."

I think they may encourage "safer driving" in the guy facing the ticket, but not necessarily in the guy behind him, caught unawares when the lead car stops short.

There are more creative things machines could do to people who drive past them on red lights...

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 8:56 AM | Permalink

Comments

Posted by: loujosephs on April 6, 2006 10:23 AM

Posted by: loujosephs on April 6, 2006 4:36 PM