While fireworks, patriotic songs and barbecuing have long been staples of the Independence Day holiday, competitive eating is relatively new to the scene. In case you don’t know much about the sport, didn’t see Joey Chestnut stun perennial favorite Takeru Kobayashi (the Michael Jordan of eating competitions) last year, or didn’t realize how dangerous it was, Slate has reprinted an article on competitive eating injuries here.

Have a great holiday weekend.

- Posted by Daniel Welch

Forrester Research recently published a study after reviewing 90 B2B blogs and found that they were, well “dull, drab and don’t stimulate discussion.” More than half “simply regurgitated press releases or other already-public news,” Forrester said.

Key line from Ben Worthen at the Wall Street Journal: “In order to make a blog lively, a business has to offer visitors something more - musings from an executive, insight into how a product decision was made, something funny.”

Forrester is right. A blog can be a great way to help establish a relationship with internal and external audiences, including customers. But to do this, a business needs to make an attempt at being interesting.

- Posted by Daniel Welch

The Wall Street Journal broke the news over the weekend that Wal-Mart plans to change its logo, including removing its clumsy hyphen. You can see the new logo in the link here. With Target putting so much pressure on the retailing giant, it will be interesting to see what else they try to spruce up their pretty boring image. I’m not sure about that starburst in the new logo, though - it looks like someone put an asterisk next to the name.

The company’s long-time critic, Wal-Mart Watch, is not happy, possibly because they’re going to have to remove the hyphen from their name as well. But mostly they seem upset about the burnt orange.

- Posted by Daniel Welch

Five months after we wrote about the most depressing day of the year, the same researcher tells us that June 20 was the happiest day of the year (statistically speaking). We apologize to have missed it. In any case, I hope two Fridays ago was a very happy day for you.

One of the more fascinating - and important - debates in green energy today is the tension between the alternative energy business community and environmental community surrounding the impact of new technologies on land. With all the hyperbole tossed around in the media about how great these technologies are, the often underplayed story is the unintended consequences they have. Ethanol is a great example: Hailed as recently as a year ago as the perfect replacement to fossil fuels (which would get us off of foreign oil and make American farmers rich), it is now associated with the scourge of rising food prices, food shortages in many parts of the world, deforestation of the rain forest (which ironically contributes to the global warming ethanol seeks to address), and adverse impacts on croplands.

A great piece from this morning in the Times crystallizes this tension in the booming solar energy industry, where - particularly in the western U.S. - scores of companies have applied for leases of public land. But now the Bureau of Land Management has called for a freeze on all such applications until the government can study the impact on native ecosystems.

It sounds like the oil and gas industry, doesn’t it? Industry advocates worry the freeze may blunt the upward momentum the industry has shown in the last couple of years. Some environmentalists applaud the government’s pause to study a development that could surpass a million acres. But as alternative energy increasingly becomes big business, this debate will play out over and over again, and in everything from solar to wind to biofuels. The outcome of this argument likely will shed some light on our competing national priorities, much like the current national conversation on offshore drilling that has dominated political headlines for the last week.

- Posted by Daniel Welch

Jimmy Carter is much remembered - and sometimes ridiculed - for wearing a sweater on TV and telling Americans to turn their thermostats down. There’s nothing new to report on that - that’s just a little piece of trivia I was reminded of after reading Denver’s plans to raise thermostats four degrees this summer, announced today. This applies to seven government buildings in the city, where the mayor generously advised men to lose the ties whenever they can. He also asked businesses to join in the fun.

Which they should. We all know: it’s the humidity, not the heat.

Here is a good piece on the effects of being a little less aggressive with the air conditioning, from Time’s Joe Klein. One of them is a 4 percent savings for each degree you raise your thermostat in the summer.

- Posted by Daniel Welch

Either the opinions of oil company execs are as volatile as the stock market (which saw the Dow drop 350 points today), or the industry doesn’t think much of proposed rules to govern gas and oil operations in the state. Six months after an industry survey ranked Colorado the No. 1 place in the world for investing in and exploring for oil and natural gas, the state tumbled all the way down to No. 52 (out of 81 locations) - reminiscent of Apollo Creed’s ranking after losing to Rocky Balboa in their much-anticipated rematch.

In case any Coloradans are smarting about this freefall, an architecture firm ranked Denver as the eighth-best city in the country for cool buildings. Kudos to the firm, New York-based RMJM Hillier, for capitalizing on every media person’s best friend - the top 10 list - to get its name out in some national news today. Easy publicity for them.

- Posted by Daniel Welch

For the dozen or so people who didn’t get their fill of presidential campaign debates so far this year, there is actually a pretty cool one this weekend. Representatives for the Obama and McCain campaigns will debate on Twitter, moderated by Ana Marie Cox, a political blogger for Time. Here is information on the Twitter profiles you should follow to catch the debate.

Speaking of presidential politics, they’re going after Facebook pretty hard, too, as reported by the Times.

It’s going to be very interesting to watch LinkedIn in the coming months. The popular business social networking site announced a $53 million cash infusion today, mostly from Bain Capital. The site is now valued at $1 billion, almost double what News Corp. paid for MySpace a few years ago, but far short of the staggering $15 billion at which Facebook has been pegged.

LinkedIn has 23 million members (far short of Facebook and MySpace, each with 115 million), but says it is already profitable - due in large part to alternative sources of revenue to online ads, which Facebook and MySpace have yet to harness to their revenue-generating potential.

LinkedIn’s signature is its no-nonsense, no frills approach to networking, and its simple offering: allowing people to search for and link to other people.

But now the site is moving strategy toward additional features like Company Groups, where users from a company can gather in a private forum. With this and other additional features, the site may have some growing pains integrating more corporate-y elements in its distinctive grassroots and democratic model.

- Posted by Daniel Welch

Updating the previous post, some enterprising marketers are taking advantage of the airline industry’s problems - but what does it say about airline folks that the hotels beat them to the punch?

- Posted by Daniel Welch

Each week in the last several months, it seems, one of the major airlines has made an announcement on new fees - charging for second checked bags, meals, etc. I understand why they’re doing this: The economics with today’s energy prices are untenable.

But with United’s news from today that it will begin charging $15 for a first checked bag, I couldn’t help but think there’s great PR potential for the airline that comes up with a campaign and a snappy slogan telling people they refuse to nickel and dime their customers. Fares may go up 10 percent across the board, but we won’t insult you by charging a fee to eat or check a bag.

Of course, with the way the operators move their fees in tandem (with one brave first-mover edging out on the branch and waiting for the air cover of others following), this will be challenging. But the upside is that you can position yourself as the upfront and honest carrier - the price you see is the price you get.

- Posted by Daniel Welch

At the risk of making this an all-Dilbert, all-the-time blog (which it will not be, so that risk is negligible), I couldn’t help but shed some light on what we PR folks really do in messaging and media training sessions.

Many people who love numbers and statistics get a fair amount of mileage out of Google Trends. It can be a fantastic tool for illustrating in graphical form how frequently search terms are sought in Google.

The tool was always frustrating, however, because it didn’t supply numbers - so you had to eyeball the graph and guess at the relationship between various search terms.

Starting today, Google is supplying numbers - or, at least some of them. While they’re not offering raw numbers of search terms, you can now download a spreadsheet that shows relative search frequency - to use a made-up example, that “Coke” is searched for twice as much “Pepsi,” for instance.

- Posted by Daniel Welch

If you’re like me and you’re wondering where all the negative news about Wal-Mart has gone, here’s a clue: Two of the largest organizations built to pressure, embarrass and pester the retail giant have started - gasp - collaborating with the company instead. In fact, even the company’s infamous and top-secret “war room” dedicated solely to dealing with these PR attacks has been dismantled in recent months.

What’s next - McCain and Obama hitting the campaign trail together? Gadzooks!

- Posted by Daniel Welch

Slate has long been one of the best-written and most readable online magazines out there. For all the hand-wringing, financial losses and staff cuts at traditional publications in the last decade, Slate has proven that well-done journalism can survive - or even thrive - on the Internet, with triple the readership in the last six years (to 6.5 million monthly visitors). Slate’s success is a result of its commitment to finding great journalists and allowing them more leeway than traditional pubs - with a clever blend of news, commentary and humor that the mainstream media can’t or won’t deliver.

Today, news that Slate’s owner, the Washington Post Co., is committing to replicate Slate’s success, with longtime editor Jacob Weisberg heading up the newly formed Slate Group. Look for a brand extensions and a fair amount of innovation from this group, which has managed the transition from News 2.0 more effectively than nearly everyone else in the MSM.

- Posted by Daniel Welch

We’ll be writing more on this topic and related topics soon, but this is great news for Colorado. Yes, 50 “green collar” jobs is a nice addition, but a big name like Siemens has its own value. And, as this type of news continues to roll in, references like Gov. Ritter’s from today on Colorado’s “New Energy” economy are increasingly becoming more meaningful.

UPDATE: More good info here.

- Posted by Daniel Welch

According to the well-known theory of Hemline Economics, hemlines in women’s fashion rise in times of economic growth, and fall in recessions.

But could this indicator be replaced by Spam Theory? As food prices spiral (up 4 percent in the last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the steepest increase in 18 years), Spam, the inexpensive and much-ridiculed lunch meat alternative, is selling: up more than 10 percent this spring over the same time last year. As the “Are we?/Are we not?” recession talk continues, maybe we should just keep a close eye on Spam sales.

- Posted by Daniel Welch

As we’ve said before, we’re committed to remaining apolitical on this blog, and this post has no slant from the political left or right. But I have to say, I’m disappointed in Dunkin’ Donuts for tucking tail on its Rachael Ray ad promoting iced coffee.

Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin this week raised the issue that Ray wore a scarf (pictured in the link above) that somewhat resembled a kaffiyeh, or traditional Arab headdress, and made a leap in logic that it carries some symbolic weight associated with terrorism.

Rather than laugh off this hair-brained assertion - taken to its logical conclusion, that the coffee and doughnut chain is conspiring with the popular TV chef in promoting some sort of caffeinated jihad - Dunkin’ pulled the ad, explaining that the scarf was not a political statement - just paisley.

Come on, Dunkin’ Donuts. You paid good money to develop that ad. Stand up for yourself. Don’t allow yourself to be bullied by some random and crazy idea. I mean, what screams Americana more than Rachael Ray, iced coffee and Dunkin’ Donuts??

- Posted by Daniel Welch

BusinessWeek tackles blogs and social media this week, which in and of itself is nothing too new or interesting. But Stephen Baker and Heather Green came up with a compelling twist - they updated a cover story from three years ago - found here - and created a new story that includes many of the pervasive tools (like YouTube, Twitter, etc.) that weren’t around or popular just three short years ago.

The most interesting piece in the special report might be on IBM’s embrace of social networking tools - and its use of Many Eyes, a fascinating site that allows anyone to upload any kind of data and organize it visually.

- Posted by Daniel Welch