Tonight was the Mercer Report’s U-Pick-It Best of Show.

I thought the clips that people selected were pretty good:

Rick skinny dipping with Bob Rae

Rick visiting and sleeping over at the PMs house

Knee in My Package 

and a few other good ones from this season.

Also, my colleague in our Toronto office, Michael O’Connor Clarke, recently attended a taping of the Mercer Report and had his ticket signed by Rick for me – thanks Michael.

(lousy quality scan)

A year (or more?) in the making, the Government of Canada has posted on Merx a Draft Standing Offer for Communications Services and is requesting industry feedback by March 12th.

Once in place, all Government of Canada departments and agencies will be able (and encouraged) to access the Standing Offer to procure services in three categories:

1. Strategic Communications and Public Relations
2. Communications Project Management
3. English and French Writing Services

As someone that has responded to countless Federal Government RFPs and RFSOs over the years, this is a very welcome opportunity to provide input into the procurement process.

Also, one master Standing Offer will hopefully eliminate the need to regularly respond to RFPs and RFSOs from all the various departments and agencies.

Download the document from Merx and provide your comments to PWGSC by March 12th.

We (Thornley Fallis) have thoroughly reviewed the document and will be providing a number of comments.

The Ottawa Chapter of the Canadian Public Relations Society, of which my colleague and Capital PR co-author Stephen Heckbert is President, will also be submitting comments.  A meeting for CPRS Ottawa members to provide input into this submission will be held the week of March 5^th to 9^th (date, time, location – to be confirmed).

Ted Demopoulos of Blogging for Business says “3 seconds — that’s how long the average web surfer will spend before they decide to stay or leave. You NEED to make a great first impression!”

I agree.  Sometimes you might even get less than 3 seconds.

Our new websites (launched in late 2006), Thornley Fallis and 76design, and our blogs/podcast Pro PR, Capital PR, Shift+Control, PR Girlz, The Talking Shop and Inside PR have a very clean and consistent look and feel.

The Thornley Fallis website is built around an aggregate feed of all our blogs and podcast.

I think all make a great first impression and we’ve had many compliments.

76design did an excellent job developing and executing the websites, blogs and podcast.  We charge a little more than $25 though

Given the source, I’m not sure whether this is sarcastic or not, but it would appear Frank magazine has published an apology for the content of one of its articles.

Today, Frank apologized to CBC reporter Krista Erickson for a January 31, 2006 article that contained untrue and inaccurate information.

While I’m sure it isn’t the first time, it is definitely a rare occurrence.

You know you’ve had the same anchor for a long time when your current one was part of this report.

Here’s an example of an excellent viral marketing / social media campaign.

More than 25 million people have watched Utah-based Blendtec’s series of ‘Will It Blend?’ videos on YouTube.

To see all the videos, check them out here on YouTube or on the company’s Will it Blend? site.

There’s also the Will It Blend? Blog.

Since debuting in November, the videos have regularly been among the most popular on YouTube, and Blendtec’s sales have quadrupled.

Blendtec’s Total Blender, the one used in the videos, sells for US$400 and the Connoisseur model sells for US$825.

You’d have to do a lot of blending (basically every meal or at least daily) to pay that much for a blender, but the low-cost campaign is definitely very cool and very creative.  No doubt, there are many people out there that will buy the blender just because of the videos. 

It’s tax time.  Well, at least it is for anal people like me that don’t wait until the last possible minute to file.

For the last five years (maybe six), my first step in income tax preparation has been to purchase Quick Tax by Intuit.

Quick Tax works well, so I’ve never bothered to try anything else.  Plus, now you can download it on the web, so no trip to the store required.

Sure, Quick Tax makes it easier for me to complete my return, but it also no doubt makes it a lot easier and much faster for the Canada Revenue Agency to process my return.

So why does it cost me an additional $40 to help the CRA improve their efficiency? I’m already paying thousands in income tax. 

Why doesn’t the CRA run a competition and pay one or more companies to develop each year’s tax prep software and make it available to Canadians for free?

Or why don’t they make the cost of the tax prep software an eligible deduction?

I’m sure they save at least $40 per return when people complete it electronically and use NetFile.

I’ve thought about this each time I’ve handed over my $40 to prepare my income taxes, which then showed me the thousands of dollars my household pays to the government each year.

More infuriating was back a few years ago when I learned, from a contact working there, that CRA employees received tax prep software for free from the companies that develop and produce it.  I don’t know if that still happens, but as I’ve spend $40 per year for the last several years, it doesn’t seem fair. 

David Akin looked at some numbers, made a few calculations and predicts a Conservative Minority Government, if we were to have a Federal Election today that is.

His predicted seat allocation:

1. Conservatives: 121 (net loss of four seats)
2. Liberals: 109 (net gain of eight seats)
3. BQ: 56 (net gain of five seats)
4. NDP: 21 (net loss of eight seats)
5. Independent: 1 (no change)
6. Greens: 0

I think the worst the Conservatives will do is another minority, but we’re going to spend another $400 million of Canadians’ money to find out, aren’t we?

My wife got me the Season 1 and 2 DVDs of HBO Series Entourage for Christmas.  We had watched all the episodes from both seasons by the first week of January.

If you’re a guy and you haven’t seen it, you should check it out.  City TV Toronto has it at 9:00pm and 9:30pm on Tuesdays.  I watched it this week, which prompted this post.

Executive produced by Mark Wahlberg, I think the show is a cool concept and quite funny.

The premise is the day-to-day life of a hot, young actor (Vince Chase) in Hollywood, living with his brother (Johnny Drama) and two childhood friends (Eric and Turtle) from Queens.

Adrian Grenier plays Vincent Chase; Kevin Connolly plays Eric; Kevin Dillon (Matt Dillon’s brother) plays Johnny and Jerry Ferrara plays Turtle.  Jeremy Piven (Cheese from Old School) plays Ari, Vince’s agent.

Stars that have made cameo appearances on Entourage (from my memory) include Val Kilmer, Jessica Alba, Gary Busey, David Faustino (Bud Bundy from Married with Children), Sara Foster, Jimmy Kimmel, Sarah Silverman, Hugh Hefner, Ralph Macchio (the Karate Kid) and Pauly Shore — I’m likely missing a few.

Until a few weeks ago I was using a Linksys Wireless Router for wireless internet connectivity at home.

I found I was having to reset it relatively frequently and I had to un-install / re-install it a few times, so I bought an Apple Airport Express. I’d heard good things about it.

The Airport Express was super easy to set-up and secure.  The Linksys took longer and more effort to set-up, plus I had to call the support line for assistance securing it.

Most importantly, I haven’t had to reset the Airport Express once yet.

The Airport Express is portable and can quickly turn any wired connection wireless.  The latter is particularly handy in meeting rooms where more than one person wants to connect to the web, but there is only one cable.

Lastly, you can connect it to a printer and send documents for printing wirelessly.

Great, easy to use product for $160.