According to MSN, Connie Chung’s serenade to Maury Povich (her husband and ex-co host) is the most popular video clip being downloaded on the web. In the last 24 hours, the phrase “Chung Sings” has received approximately 1600 searches on Google. After the Saturday show finale aired, by the following Tuesday more than 413,000 people had viewed the clip on YouTube. This is twice the number of viewers of the original show

Chung sang to her husband on Saturday’s finale of MSNBC’s Weekends with Maury & Connie. Chung sang a version of Bob Hope’s old theme song Thanks for the Memories.

The clip features Connie Chung singing in a lounge style complete with candles and a grand piano in a Marilyn Monroe-like dress.

I guess Chung is “standing by her man” even after the $100 sexual harassment suit filed on Povich back in April.

Jossip Blog sarcastically uses Chung’s singing performance as an opportunity to justify MSNBC’s managerial decisions.

“It’s programming like this that confuses us even more on how former MSNBC president Rick Kaplan was let go.”

AlterNet Blog gives Connie some credit

“When a person is able to make a complete a** of themselves I can’t help but have a little respect.”

Now I see why they call videos like this viral. Cough..cough.

Resources

http://www.andpop.com/article/6224

Britney Spears’ new nanny’s name is now public knowledge. Spears hired 28-year-old Perry Taylor, a former lacrosse coach, to look after her and K-Fed’s infant son Sean Preston. Spears fired her former nanny after Sean Preston fell from his high chair and hit his head earlier this year.

The new nanny choice has regained popular interest and search volume in the male form of a paid chidcare taker, a manny.
According to TheManny.com’s faq section, a manny, simply put, is “a man who works as a nanny.”

Another interesting manny-related question, when did people start using the expression “manny?”

“Use of this portmanteau word by domestic employment agencies – and consequently the press – dates back to at least 1986. It’s unclear who coined the term, which can now be read and heard internationally. “

The Yarn & Garden blog mentioned that their was a poll on CNN’s website asking people if they would hire a manny. She was pro-manny.

“I voted yes, but was surprised to see I was in the minority (only 43% said they would.) I’m not sure why, but people don’t trust men around their kids I guess.”

What do you think?

Resources
www.TheManny.com
www.SfGate.com

Okay, so technically it’s not official yet, but I figured I’d go ahead and put it out there. Everyone’s talking about it, but no one wants to be the guy who jinxed us; let me be that guy. Let’s face it; even if the Dallas Maverick’s don’t sweep the Heat, this series is clearly over. After the worst playoff performance of his career, Shaquille O’Neal and Dwayne Wade and the Miami Heat looked like they had no answer for Dallas, and clearly they had no answer for Jerry Stackhouse and the Mavericks 39 bench points. Deflated, dejected, demoralized; call it whatever you want but the Heat have cooled off and while they do have home court for game 3 tonight these next two are merely a formality. Prepare David Stern for your worst nightmare to come true, because the way I see it in two days you’ll be handing Mark Cuban and the 2006 NBA World Champion Dallas Mavericks the Trophy. Oh, and you can quote me on that one.

Nike has recently re-released the Air Max family. I've been shopping for a new pair of running shoes for a while. I was ready to settle for a cheap pair of sneakers when these caught my eye. My dad wore these same shoes when I was a kid. Always a sucker for sentiment, I had to try them on.

I was sharing a bit of my nostalgia with the saleswoman, so she asked a co-worker which year these were originally released. He said, "Eighty-three. Wait - no, ninety-one. They're ninety-ones." I won't get into the details, but I couldn't have been older than eight when I my dad purchased these. Which means they had to have come out before 1988. I wasn't going to contest until I noticed the in-soul of the shoe lists the airmax family and each shoe's respective release year. Mine are from 1987. That's right - I bought'em and I'm lovin'em.

I still didn't contest the year because they defintiely didn't care. However, if you dig this kind of stuff like I do, you can read all about it at nikeid.nike.com. The website lists them at $90, but I got them for $80 at Champs. Don't bother with the Nike outlet stores - I went to two and they didn't have them. Oh yeah - I guess I didn't mention I saw them at Champs about a month ago, decided $90 was too expensive, dreamed about them for a few weeks, looked for a pair of comparable (albeit less expensive) shoes and finally caved when they didn't have the cheapies in my size. My wife also let me get them as long as I understood I was borrowing against Father's Day. Thanks Baby!

Today I stumbled upon a mildly entertaining viral marketing campaign that is getting some massive search volume with the terms monk e-mail and e mail monk. The Monk e-mail campaign is sponsored by the second most well-known online job board, Careerbuilder.com.

Have you ever wanted to dress up your own monkey? Better yet, have you ever wanted to dress up your own monkey and have him deliver a lip-synched recorded personal message for you via email? If you are like me, I hadn’t ever really thought about it much until now. After playing with it for a bit, I can see how inner-office monk e-mails could get out of hand. The branding might even lead people to surf Careerbuilder.com at work. Bad monkey!

Mike from The Solano Systems blog has some personal monk e-mail setting recommendations.

“Using the text-to-speech feature with the “Paul” voice, combined with thuggish and crass language, can result in quite a hilarious outcome. The voice synthesis is quite good too!”

Each monk e-mail can be a unique message and image with a choice of three types of monkeys, six types of headgear for your monkey, five different outfits, four styles of glasses, and other modifications. You have the choice of using a pre-recorded message, text to speech, record by phone, or record by microphone on your computer.

You can find monk e-mail here: http://www.careerbuilder.com/monk-e-mail/

Googletestad, also known as Google monitor query,, has been treading in the top 500 search terms since August of last year. This term is capturing 35,000 searches a day from Google combined with smaller search engines, and 9,000 a day from Yahoo. Web marketers (SEOs & SEMs) use tools such as Wordtracker and Digitalpoint.com’s Keyword Suggestion Tool to show them the top searches and subjects buzzing on the net. By not following the normal, easier-to-recognize search cycle, publicity/news = search insurgence for key names & subjects, many web marketers are scratching their heads and wondering what in the world googletestad means and why, by Google’s name, is it so popular. I considered some theories, polled some other curious bloggers, and decided to hold my own investigative googletestad search. Here are some questions I explored and clues I discovered on my journey.

Speculations & Assumptions

Is Googlestad a soon-to-be beta-released program in Google Labs like Google Trends and Google Spreadsheets?

Blogger GoYaMi speculates that Googletestad is not a single word, but three.

“It would appear that Googletestad actually stands for Google’s Test Ad, and is used to test their AdWords system in the live production environment.”

Although not as alluring as my theory, this explanation makes more sense. I searched further for more answers.

Buzzle.com’s Ryan Springfield provided some more insite.

“At first, some thought that it might be a kind of automated software that might help you improve your ranking on some keywords. Software called Googletestad simply is inexistent.”

After reading a few blogs and finding no concrete answers, I searched for googletestad myself.

As with other sponsored ads, it also appears like this:

When the pay-per-click Google ad is clicked on, it leads to a Google search with the key phrase family safe in the query box.

This last experiment left me with even more questions. All theories are still inconclusive to why the search volume for googletestad is so high. Maybe it follows the Paris Hilton phenomenon. At this point, this term is famous for being famous.

Resources

http://goyami.corante.com/archives/2005/08/02/googletestad_what_is_it.php
http://www.good-as-gold.org/index.php?entry=entry060302-092150