Living in close quarters with a fellow, Vancouver blogger, aka my wife[miss604], we tend to get the same spam. Take the Matchstick stuff for example. We both got that email and have slick, mobile phones at no charge. And then there is email from this guy, who shall remain nameless.

Hey There,

My name is —– and I’m a Vancouverite trying to get more involved in the
local blogging community.

My blog is —————- and I blog about what I’m passionate about,
Reality TV, Politics and Vancouver, an odd combination, but it seems to work
fairly well, at least so far. I update everyday and usually multiple times, so
my blog isn’t going to get stale anytime soon.

Anyways, as I’m trying to get into the Vancouver blogging scene I was
wondering if there would be anyway to get my site added onto your Blogroll? I
would, of course, be more than happy to add Audihertz to my blogroll as well.

Thanks for taking the time out to read this, let me know if you have any
questions for me. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Rebecca got the same email, with a minor change, of course.

Hey There,

My name is —– and I’m a Vancouverite trying to get more involved in the
local blogging community.

My blog is —————- and I blog about what I’m passionate about,
Reality TV, Politics and Vancouver, an odd combination, but it seems to work
fairly well, at least so far. I update everyday and usually multiple times, so
my blog isn’t going to get stale anytime soon.

Anyways, as I’m trying to get into the Vancouver blogging scene I was
wondering if there would be anyway to get my site added onto your Blogroll? I
would, of course, be more than happy to add Miss 604 to my blogroll as well.

Thanks for taking the time out to read this, let me know if you have any
questions for me. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Now, please don’t think I’m trying to be a snob here because yesterday, the same dude emailed me with this thing about free coffee from Starbucks. Certainly enough, Rebecca got the same thing in her inbox. Yes, I’m all about free stuff. However, I never responded after the first email, but it was something I was considering. I’m thinking twice now that I’ve been told that there is a way to get free coffee by clicking on some link in an email that takes me to said dude’s site.

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines “spam”[m-w] as “unsolicited usually commercial e-mail sent to a large number of addresses.” Two people, meaning Rebecca and I, isn’t really a “large number,” but I would have to put this solicitation on the spam side of the fence. And if the guy actually read our blogs, he’d know that she gets a lot more traffic than I do, at least in terms of comments. Our writing is different from each other and is not an important topic to get into right now.

I’ve always found that blogger etiquette is to check out other people’s sites, read them, comment on posts, and create an interactive relationship in that manner. This method makes me tend to believe that this guy might be one of those poser blogs. Just a way to get you there to click on the Google Ads which litter his site. Even if you’re not, then this is the impression that you have given me.

“And for the future? You came on a little strong.“

Rebecca is the one that made this discovery after getting her very own Nokia 6682 through the buzz marketing campaign by Matchstick. The cellphone will take a series of six pictures at a time when in sequence mode. I tried it out while having dinner on Robson Street and made it into an animated gif.

This is actually a group of two sequences. I know that you can make movies just as well, but I wanted to at least show the phone’s ability to capture images like this. It struck me as being a cool feature. If you want to see the sequence again, just click on the pic.

As I said before, I am one of those Vancouver bloggers that got a free, Nokia 6682 cellphone to use, abuse, and write about. The hope is that you come through my blog, catch a “buzz” over it, and wander into your local retailer to throw some cash down on this piece of hardware.

Let me be completely and totally honest. Getting a high priced cellphone for free is freakin’ sweet. When this offer came my way, I fought over the legitimacy of such an offer, and Rebecca echoed the warning bells of anything looking this good must have some sort of catch.

Well, what is the catch? None really. There is nothing that you sign your life away for. You do have to give Matchstick, the company behind this marketing campaign, your contact info. That put up more flags for both me and Rebecca, but let’s be clear about the fact that we’re married. Giving our info to a marketing company screams phone calls in the middle of dinner for weeks to come.

Once the phone arrives in your mailbox, it’s yours. They just hope that you’ll blog about it. Additional to the phone, I received a Bluetooth headset, 512Mb memory card, and a stereo headset. The phone actually came with a pair of headphones, but they’re black. The other pair that was sent along with the phone was white so one could fit in with the trendy, white earbud wearing iPod masses.

There is some follow up that comes with the deal though. I made it very clear to Matchstick that I wanted all forms of contact to come through email, and if they needed to speak with me directly, then I would call them. In fact, I talked to them today upon receiving an email from them last week. The conversation was just to see if I had any questions about the phone and stories about using the phone itself. I did have a handful of technical questions for them, but they’re just a marketing company. I’ll hit those details in another post later.

The other follow up that I have to look for is an online survey. Quantative data that they want to collect about me using the phone. Makes sense, right? I’ve filled out numerous surveys in my life in the hopes of getting something free in return. If you send me something free first, then you bet your ass that I’ll do that survey.

So how do I feel about doing this? There is a part of my soul that feels like there is some selling out going on here, but I like being some one who can be apart of reviewing a product and actually do it with some honesty. Like I said, I’ll get into more of those details later, but it’s not the absolutely, greatest phone that beats out anything else out there that you could buy. It’s also far from being the worst.

I really do like this concept of “buzz marketing”. Word of mouth. That’s what this is. It’s not over paid actors telling you that they use this phone, it’s the best, and you should, too. I’m just a guy who blogs among the community of other bloggers with connections to the city of Vancouver.

In fact, did you listen to the last episode of my podcast? I had a chance to meet a fellow blogger who got the same deal, and it was quite possibly some of the best content to come from the podcast yet, even if it did promote a product. But ask yourself, would you rather listen to us wise crack about this Nokia or have some high paid actor or actress speak at you? It feels good to know that there are people out there trying to break from the static model mass media uses for advertising.

Back to the topic of Matchstick and this whole concept of getting a free phone for blogging, I like being apart of the effort. I’ve read about some people being annoyed by their tactics as well as some people being sour that they weren’t picked. It’s a unique opportunity to be apart of, and I think I just got lucky. And if you want to see some of the pictures I’m taking with the phone, check out this set on Flickr.

Last night at the meetup, I ran into another Vancouver blogger that got the Matchstick deal that I did, so perhaps it is time that I get around to mentioning a little bit more about this Nokia 6682 that I’m starting to like more and more everyday. I promised myself to never own another brick again, but this thing has me thinking twice.

Seriously, giving me stuff for free makes me think twice about a lot of things. Have a new, Apple laptop you want me to try out? How about some recording equipment? Digital audio devices? Anyone?

Anyhow, here’s three pictures I took last night with the Nokia. Click on them to see the full image. All three are being uploaded and posted without any altering, so what you see is what the phone takes.

I think what I’m going to do is pass this off to Rebecca some time soon and let her play with it some more. She also talks on the phone a hell of a lot more than I do, so there might be some advantage to her giving a second opinon about it.

Just weeks before Matchstick contacted me, Rebecca and I signed a new contract with Rogers in a plan that got us new Motorola v710′s for each of us. I’m still out on a verdict, but the Nokia feels better in my hand, even though I’ve been a flip phone fan for some time now. I hope to post comparison pics of the camera of both phones, as well as my digital camera. The best part is that both the Motorola and the Nokia have Bluetooth, which play very nicely with my Powerbook.

I’ve been watching various Vancouver bloggers talk about getting contacted by Matchstick for a few months now.  For those not aware, they are a marketing company wishing to have bloggers to use the Nokia 6682 in the hopes that they’ll post about the phone.  Buzz marketing is what they call it, and posting about it on blogs is really just a cheap form of advertising.

I got my phone on Friday of last week and spent a portion of this afternoon with Rebecca getting it all setup.  It’s nifty, but that’s all about it for now.  Will be posting more about the phone plus the entire process soon.