This is the most ridiculous URL I’ve ever seen. And yes, it’s from a government website.

http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/!ut/p/c5/lZC9DoJQDIUfqb1w4eKoFwIEEAZ-hMWgQUJAcCAY3l6MgyzG0i5N-vX0tFDAkn05NXU5NkNfdnCCQj9HRpCmfqwyPMQMXRk4zDRNJiOE7D2xJhJrIbyIC9c2ET3x6eOP2CMcneFeQQ6F-KrYwpfLHsvfhWGsYKhB3lV1eZ0h6f-gOhnldFVb0FG6Kuf0szagdK8GHeX0v-pIN7BBVVmjj7a9SbWb_CozRu0yr8rnC5jKQRk!/dl3/d3/L0lJSklna2tra0EhIS9JTmpBQU15QUJFUkNKS28hLzRGR2dzbzBWdnphOTJBZyEvN19QOE1WVkxUMzFHN0xDMElDRUw5T09UMjBPNS9zYS5yZXRyaWV2ZWNvbnRlbnQ!/?PC_7_P8MVVLT31G7LC0ICEL9OOT20O5005915_contentid=2010%2f09%2f0490.xml&PC_7_P8MVVLT31G7LC0ICEL9OOT20O5005915_parentnav=LATEST_RELEASES&PC_7_P8MVVLT31G7LC0ICEL9OOT20O5005915_navid=NEWS_RELEASE

I cut and paste that monstrosity out of my browser. It’s a link to “Release No. 0490.10” which is actually the announcement of something cool: the winners of the Apps for Healthy Kids competition, a $60,000 contest that has been the flagship of the new Challenge.gov platform.

There must be upper limits on the lengths of URLs, right? Some point where either your browser says “Screw this” or the web server starts sobbing uncontrollably?

Apparently there are, and three years ago Alexei White (then at Nitobi) chased them down.

Let’s say you’re a first-term thirty-something congressman from the mountain west who’s also the type of guy to  tweet out things like “hmmm, maybe if I hold out on supporting DADT repeal, Lada Gaga will call me?” You might also hanker to use your Twitter feed to send some love towards two college guys in New Jersey going for the Guinness World Record in the Longest Continuous Kiss category (hashtag: #mattybobbykiss), or to greet the end of the congressional session with a simple, “woot, woot.”

How do you keep the freedom to tweet with flavor in the button-down world of Washington politics?

I actually cut politicians and other leaders a fair amount of slack on the “horrors! they’re not posting their own tweets!” front. But I hate the way so many end up sounding like a stream of statements that tested above 75% in the latest overnight polling.

So while I give Rep. Polis props for actually clicking the “Tweet” button himself, what really impresses me is that he’s maintaining a genuine, personal voice – and one that’s memorable and charming to boot. That’s getting rare… not just on Twitter, but anywhere else politicians are speaking publicly.

For around $600, you too can have one of the niftiest presentation tools around. And yes, I’m highly, highly aware that the gift-giving season is approaching.

Here’s a great process post on how Scott and Missy create a Basic Instructions comic, using photos, rotoscoping and a few other handy techniques.

If it’s not too mind-blowing, imagine coming up with so much cool new stuff so often that you need an online directory just to help folks find it all.

(Actually, I’m pretty sure Alex would be able to populate something like that pretty quickly.)

Uniqlo does it again with Lucky Counter campaign. The fashion retailer asks people to promote their favorite Uniqlo items via Twitter against price reduction for the said item of – estimating from my experience – 0,01% per tweet.

That’s a pretty nifty twist on the retweet-to-win or retweet-for-a-discount campaign.

Clever and new is welcome. But fundamentally, this is another campaign that relies on people using their activity streams to send someone else’s commercial message. And while that may have some value to some of their followers, to most it will just be an annoyance.

I’m not naive enough to think that retweeting promotions are going away any time soon. The barrier to participation is so low and the incentive for marketers is so strong that we’ll see plenty more.

What I do hope for is this: that enough marketers will also see an opportunity for more meaningful interaction that they’ll devise more conversational promotions – the kind that lead people to lend their voices, and not just their audiences, to a campaign.

[One of] the the tasks that comes up frequently when working with WordPress websites is the need to either move a website, or create a fully functional backup. Since we recently moved all of our BraveNewCode sites to another server, I thought I would do a quick tutorial for anyone wishing to do that same.

Tremendously handy, this – from the makers of the also-very-handy WordTwit and WPtouch.

I love any tutorial that teaches you a little about Linux and MySQL, while making you feel like a command-line ninja. Nicely done, Duane.