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    <title>Toxic Elephant : Tag shills, everything about shills</title>
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    <ttl>40</ttl>
    <description>Don't bury it in your back yard!</description>
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      <title>People Ready</title>
      <description>&lt;p&gt;First, what the hell does Microsoft&amp;#8217;s slogan &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/business/peopleready/default.mspx"&gt;people ready&lt;/a&gt; even mean? The campaign&amp;#8217;s site seems to think it means you need people to run a business. Well, I don&amp;#8217;t see any businesses around run by small rodents, so I guess they&amp;#8217;re right. That&amp;#8217;s &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/mar06/03-16PeopleReadyPR.mspx"&gt;some vision&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;


	&lt;p&gt;So, what&amp;#8217;s this about? Some bloggers got paid for writing &lt;a href="http://peopleready.federatedmedia.net/"&gt;about people ready&lt;/a&gt;, and  people &lt;a href="http://valleywag.com/tech/spokesbloggers/microsoft-pays-star-writers-to-recite-slogan-271485.php"&gt;got upset&lt;/a&gt;.
Now, some defend themselves saying &lt;a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/people_ready.php"&gt;they didn&amp;#8217;t endorse anything&lt;/a&gt;, and some defend themselves saying &lt;a href="http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=409"&gt;of course it&amp;#8217;s an ad box&lt;/a&gt; (whatever an ad box is).&lt;/p&gt;


	&lt;p&gt;Well, I don&amp;#8217;t think &lt;a href="http://www.peoplereadybusiness.federatedmedia.net/archives/70"&gt;this looks like an ad&lt;/a&gt;, and it may not be an endorsement of a Microsoft product, but it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an endorsement of a Microsoft campaign. Oh, and look at the right of the page. It says &amp;#8220;Click here to submit your own People Ready Business story&amp;#8221;. So, that pretty much suggests that the content on the left was also submitted the same way. But of course, it wasn&amp;#8217;t.&lt;/p&gt;


	&lt;p&gt;Luckily, at least one of the entries &lt;a href="http://peopleready.federatedmedia.net/archives/211"&gt;seems to have been written while drunk&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;


	&lt;blockquote&gt;
		&lt;p&gt;People readiness is something only people that are ready for people to be ready can be ready for.&lt;/p&gt;
	&lt;/blockquote&gt;


	&lt;p&gt;All this via &lt;a href="http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/06/24/fm-translation"&gt;Mark&amp;#8217;s translation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;


	&lt;p&gt;Finally, back to the meaning: &amp;#8220;people ready&amp;#8221; means ready for people, right? Just like &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_ready"&gt;HD ready&lt;/a&gt; means ready for HD. Well, sort of anyway. But no, it means the people are ready. &lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/waderockett/243690259/"&gt;See&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;


	&lt;p&gt;Campaign lame.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 25 Jun 2007 20:27:00 +0000</pubDate>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">urn:uuid:ad77694a-f9c8-49ff-9956-8bf45472adda</guid>
      <author>blog@matijs.net (matijs)</author>
      <comments>http://www.matijs.net/blog/2007/06/25/people-ready#comments</comments>
      <category>software</category>
      <category>web</category>
      <category>microsoft</category>
      <category>shills</category>
      <category>blogging</category>
      <category>advertising</category>
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