Dawn Douglass over on Soflow alerted me to this fascinating video tidbit posted on YouTube. Click here for a 3:55 clip of Winston spokesmen Fred and Barney puffing away like Nathan Thurm.

Two thumbs up to Fighting Splog blogger Splogfighter and others like him or her: Splog Reporter and SplogSpot, for starters. These people are on the front lines of trying to scrape some of the crap off the bottom of the shoe that is the Internet.

Take a look at any of these sites, and you’ll quickly get an understanding of how one slimy individual can create hundreds — and in many cases thousands — of fake blogs in an effort to game Google’s AdSense system.

Splogfighter writes: “I’m witnessing Google more inclined to brush the splog problem under the rug.” Let’s hope that inclination changes soon.

DMNews reports that only four out of 10 Web sites are using metatags properly. That number seems a little low to me. Then again, 10 out of 10 ought to be using metatags. Metatagging’s significance may be less than it once was due to ever-changing search algorithms, but it should be a no-brainer part of developing every site.

Takeaway for marketers: Does your site use metatags? If not, why not?

Like Jennifer Aniston in Office Space, who doesn’t love Kung Fu? And now you can watch Kung Fu (well, nine episodes worth) if you have AOL.

Well maybe.

I have AOL, and I’m intrigued by their IN2TV service. Sounds pretty cool: On the “Vintage TV” channel they have episodes of Kung Fu, Wonder Woman, F Troop, Chico and the Man and Welcome Back Kotter, while over in “Toon Topia” you can get Pinky and the Brain. Sounds like a pretty good recipe for wasting a good part of a Sunday afternoon.

Well, it is, but don’t expect to see any classic television. Expect to be prompted to download and install Media Player 10, and still not be able to see the clips. Expect to be prompted to add an ActiveX plugin and still not be able to see the clips. Expect to access IN2TV either through AOL or the Web, and be greeted with the same error message: “We apologize, this content must be played in the AOL Video player.” But I’m using AOL! I’ve updated my Media Player, installed my plugin, restarted my computer, stood on one foot and wrapped tinfoil around my laptop and I’m still getting your crappy error message!

But son of a gun, they were able to deliver that Intel VIIV commercial every time before the error popped up. There was no problem getting that part of the service working smoothly.

Feh.

Here’s a link to “The Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes Of All Time” over at The Museum of Hoaxes.

Takeaway for marketers: There’s plenty of fodder over there for some cool buzz marketing ideas. No fooling.