Slushpile Links: Hot Pole Vaulters, Ketchup Ads and Cellphone Dieting

Here are a few recent items from my slushpile, the list of stuff I think I might get around to writing about:

* That Explains the Sudden Interest in High School Track and Field: So there's this 18-year-old high school pole vaulter, Allison Stokke. And she's kind of famous on the Internet right now. But not because of her athletic achievements -- you see, there's this picture of her online. And (this is going to be tough to say without sounding creepy) it's kind of hot.

One of the more popular sports blogs featured it, and it sort of grew legs from there, as these things tend to do.

Anyway, the Washington Post has an article about her and how she's trying to deal with her sudden Internet celebrity.

* "The High Price of Creating Free Ads": This New York Times article talks about the costs and complications of getting users to create content for you -- in this case, a Heinz ketchup commercial contest.

Even though getting your users to create commercials for you may seem like a no-brainer for companies, there are a couple of issues, including:

- Someone has to review all the submissions.
- You're still relying on traditional ad and marketing budgets and channels (you got to tell people about your hip-cool ad campaign, right?)
- A lot -- probably even most -- of the submissions... well, they just suck.

BusinessWeek's Blogspotting says that the NYT article kind of misses the point, largely because trying to leverage user-generated content is all about engaging your users/customers (not saving costs), and that you have to have something to leverage first (as in, when was the last time you got really worked up about ketchup?)

* "Cell phone cameras help Japanese lose weight:" This is an AP story about how diet-minded Japanese are using their cellphone cameras "...to send photos of their meals to nutritionists for analysis and recommendations."

Since people are notoriously bad at judging portion sizes and also tend to fib when keeping food diaries, this would take some of the guesswork out of portion control.

(In a related link that was going around earlier in the year, check out this site for photos of what 200 calories looks like.)

I'm going to be talking more about cell phone cameras and moblogging now that I finally have 1. a cellphone camera and 2. a data plan, so consider this an appetizer.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: slushpile, allison stokke, heinz, ugc, cell phone cameras