Jamster is a company that sells ringtones, wallpapers and games for cell phones. Disney is a company that wants to capitalize on the growing cell phone content market. It’s not particularly surprising that Disney is looking to make a buck any way they can, but it is a little surprising that their brand police didn’t insist on avoiding the juxtaposition of one of Hef’s playmates with their iconic mouse, duck and — what kind of animal is Goofy, anyway?

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
—Winston Churchill

As this CBS article reports, Microsoft wants Wallop to be your new MySpace. They also want you to be their beta tester, so if you’re so inclined, go to the site and send them an email and request an invitation. (Yeah, they’re looking to replicate that Gmail-type buzz, too.)

Whether they gain any traction remains to be seen. We’ll know a year from now. But this part is interesting: “[Wallop] is a rich media flash-based user interface with a simple and clean aesthetic.” And this: “Mods created by world-class designers are available to purchase and enhance the look of one’s comments, blogs or site.”

So we’re talking a clean, snazzy look for users, with plugins and upgrades costing anywhere from 99 cents to about four bucks. And Flash developers are invited to create plugins they can upload and sell at a price they determine with, no doubt, some revenue sharing (hence the “innovative business model” they talk about on their home page).

On paper, it all sounds interesting, and Redmond can put all kinds of marketing muscle behind getting the word out. But Wallop’s success or failure will fall on whether that first impression for users (sorry, but here’s why they named it that) packs enough of a wallop. Getting in the door and getting started and getting to a place where what you’re creating looks cool and it’s easy to tell your friends — all that needs to be very quick and easy and engaging and intuitive.

If they answer my request for a beta account, I’ll let you know.

“We’ve reached the too-much-information age, but we really haven’t reached the communication age.”

Jared Sandberg’s article in the Wall Street Journal about the “harrowing burden” of email at work would be worth reading if only for that pithy quote, but it’s worth it for the whole piece.

This is pretty good. Now if they could only figure out how to teach that skill to all too many newspaper readers, hyperactive talk radio hosts, political pundits and voters, we’d be taking a step in the right direction.