And now for this week’s snippets that don’t fit anywhere else.

Kaiser is not on board the HealthTrain, refusing to engage its critics openly about problems with its HealthConnect system and declining to speak on a panel at the Healthcare Blogging Summit. Dmitriy shares an article in Kaiser’s hometown newspaper on this and makes the very good point that Kaiser is turning their refusal to talk into the story itself.

Despite its major marketing push with partners like Apple, Gap and Nike, Bono’s (RED) campaign reported that it raised a total of $11.3 million in contributions in 2006. While that number is nothing to sneeze at, this is just a drop in the bucket for the Global Fund, which has committed $6.6 billion for 460 programs in 136 companies. Considering all the hoopla at the campaign launch, and the tons of advertising and free publicity, it would seem that (RED) is either not living up to its potential or the public is just not impressed.

I tried to leave a comment on Evolusent’s blog, but couldn’t get it to work for me, so I will comment here. They say:

Pleased to see marketers embrace medium, in a fashion that demonstrates their understanding of social marketing. As is the case in Dell’s recent release of IdeaStorm a community driven blog, where customers tell Dell how to make them buy more. More organizations are exploring the merits Web.20 technologies, including internet tv, podcasting, blogs and online communities, as the numbers deliver.

I say, too bad Evolusent doesn’t demonstrate their own understanding of social marketing.

Egyptian blogger Abdelkareem Nabil Soliman was just sentenced to four years in prison for expressing his opinions about the government’s failure to protect the rights of religious minorities and women, as well as other criticisms of Muslim extremism. The 22 year old is the first blogger in Egypt to be prosecuted for the content of his posts. His sentence included three years for inciting hatred of Islam and one year for insulting the president. Reporters without Borders is calling for the UN to deny Egypt’s request to host the Internet Governance Forum in 2009. Knowing the UN, which has a great love for putting repressive governments in charge of human rights issues, and has already let Tunisia, another violator of online freedom, host the World Summit on the Information Society, UN delegations will be wining and dining in Cairo in a couple of years.

A new study found that African American women are less likely than white women to receive well-communicated results of their mammograms, especially when the results were abnormal. A higher proportion either never received the results or misunderstood what they were told, thinking the results were normal, when they were actually abnormal. This shows we can’t just blame health disparities on lack of access to medical care or cultural issues, but we need to make sure that healthcare personnel are trained in effective health communication as well.

I’m feeling koreatired. So, until next week’s Tip Jar…

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The Tip Jar – 2/23/07