Thanks to a heads up from the Association for Downloadable Media I read a great article by Jim Meskauskas, iMedia Connection. He writes about media planning and buying and this one is titled, “Your outdated planning process and how to fix it.” He gets right to the point in the subtitle:
The way audiences use media has changed, but agencies’ planning processes have not. Here’s how marketers need to adapt for the platform-independent future of media consumption.
Platform independent media consumption. Interesting term we’re hearing more of lately. The old platforms are not working so well. Look at what’s happening with newspapers. So what does he think of today’s media buyers and planners?
Today, media planners and buyers still focus on determining the right platform for carrying messages, the currency for placing that message and the metrics for determining the success or failure of that platform. The audiences that planners and buyers wish to reach, however, do not think of their media consumption this way. Thus, much of the planning landscape is being neglected by the discipline’s practitioners. They end up measuring the potential of a platform rather than the content associated with an ad message. In short, planners and buyers are measuring forests without knowing anything about the trees that are in them.
He also has an interesting new way to define what we have been calling podcasting.
Portcasting
“Portcasting” is the term I use for what in the past would have been called podcasting. Because the near-future of media usage is based on its portability, “port” is the operative descriptor for the media being “cast.”
It’s a good read and I appreciate your thoughts on it. If you’re in the agency business consider this last excerpt:
If they hope to maintain relevance in the coming years, agencies must find a way to address the meaning of platform-independent content and the need for real cumulative media effectiveness measures across platforms.
I think some of this will be included in my social media breakout session at the upcoming NAMA conference.
Besides the new 
Some of the vaccines are single dose, some require more than one injection – and most are designed for healthy pigs over the age of 3-4 weeks. A number of studies have been done on the vaccines available and what producers can expect when using them. Some of those studies were presented at the 
Dr. Paul Yeske with the Swine Vet Center in Minnesota talked about the effect of different PCV2 vaccine protocols on weaned pig performance to slaughter weight. “We learned that the vaccination for PCVAD is effective no matter which vaccine they use,” Yeske said. The main difference they found was that the single dose vaccines resulted in less treatments overall for the animals. “Certainly anytime we can reduce labor is helpful for producers.”
Dr. Joel Nerem with Minnesota’s Pipestone Veterinary Clinic compared the efficacy of a couple of different vaccines on the market, and once again found very little significant difference between them. “What we found was that the one dose CircoFLEX at weaning was equivalent to the two-dose product we were on,” Dr. Nerem said. But a big difference they did find was in mortality, “The CircoFLEX was the only treatment that was statistically different from controls.”
Porcine circovirus type 2 – better known in the swine world as PCV2 – has become increasingly important for hog producers to control through the use of vaccines. 
After just getting home I saw that my copy of the Jeff Jarvis book, 
The Dixie Deer Classic will end tomorrow but I won’t be here. I finished up my work with the Drive Green Tractor Utility Show this afternoon. 
Anyway, I found an article at the Poynter Institute titled, “
After a busy week of tests and projects, I finally headed out of Brookings to start SDSU’s Spring Break. While I’m not headed to Cancun like a lot of my classmates, I have a week of fun things planned to do, both work and play. While I was on my way home yesterday, I stopped at Schlagel Farms to work on a story about their century old farm. Here is owner of the homestead, Mona Schlagel, at the original site near Raymond, S.D.
Established in 1899, the 160 acres of this plot was established during the Homestead Act. The Homestead Act allowed for a pioneer to own the land they settled on after five years if they built a house on it, plowed the land, dug up a well and actually lived there. The Schlagel family traveled from Illinois to South Dakota to pursue a new life, and in 1906, the homestead was finally theirs. Since then, this plot of land has continued to stay in the Schlagel family. In 2008, they were recognized at the South Dakota State Fair for their century farm.
Who would have thought that an aviation museum would be a good venue for a party? But the 
One of the very cool things was a great place for kids to play while the adults mingled. They even got their own special menu of pizza and chicken nuggets!