Have a look at the the contextual ads on the homepage and the actual article page for the Suiciding Billionaires. Oh dear.

It's worse for the actual article page. The orange banner started with "What would you do if you had more time"

Note for all brands. I don't want my banner shown on anything related to death. ie suicide, dogs killing kids, war etc etc. It's just too much of a minefield.

I guess publishers will lose ad revenue and have to settle for a "happy news site"

On a side note: Also why can I only comment on certain news articles on news.com.au.

Howard calling shotgun to Obama's place = OK,
Babysitters Dog kills little girl = OK,
Guy with pants down on ski lift (very front page worthy) = OK
but suiciding billionaires = NO and
a driver arrested speeding and wanking (again front page worthy) = NO

D&AD has released a bunch of their President's Lectures for free online. You used to have to be a pom and drink weak lager to see these, but no more.

A few are on Digital Advertising, a few are on other sectors of design and advertising.

Here, Nik Roope from Poke talks about judging the Digital Installations category:

How the hell did that get in? - Digital Installations from D&AD on Vimeo.

Paul Isakson has come out as the person behind the Don Draper Twitter feed. It wasn't AMC after all. Although it seems he is handing over the account to them now. I wonder if they will continue the story. I feel it might have lost some of it's allure now that we know the true story behind it.

This type of extension into the social web won't work with every show or character but I can see this working again. It's the perfect medium for TV shows as a film doesn't have that prolonged interest. Will Smith Twittering from NY about the I Am Legend prequel for a year wont cut it. But characters filling in the gaps between episodes is fine.

If you've ever read the comments in any moderately popular YouTube clip, you'll be forgiven for losing a bit of faith in human intelligence.

So its quite interesting to read the issues discussed here.

In particular, they talk about the process of disemvoweling. Which is basically a way to censor stupid/rude/nonsensical comments in online communities. The offending comments aren't removed, but the vowels in the sentence string are.

More on disemvoweling here.

This doesn't seem to be a brand new technique, but one that seems like a happy medium between draconian heavyhandedness and a laissez faire free-for-all in online spaces.