American Airlines announced a new Web site last week with a goal of appealing to female travelers. Instead www.aa.com/women has rankled many a savvy business woman and skeptical blogger alike. American Airlines seems to have stumbled right out of the gate with the choice of lavender–as opposed to their traditional blue–for the site’s color-scheme. The color has since been changed–tag lines such as “Separate but lavender” were arguably not the sort of attention the airline was hoping would spread across the Internet in the wake of their announcement. But their attempt at niche marketing on the Web has so far produced more ire than excitement in the very niche the company is targeting.

In the NY Times article: “Maybe a Lavender Web Site Wasn’t How to Attract Women” one of the female executives quoted asks, “Why does AA feel that female travelers need things explained to them that male travelers don’t? Are we that dumb? That inexperienced in the ways of air travel?” Other remarks in the article and in the blogosphere at large were equally scathing. While some neutral reactions have surfaced, no one appears particularly taken with the new site.

As one blogger on www.blogher.org points out, the airline wants to hear feedback–but the changes she and other female travelers really want require more money than a change in the site’s color scheme or a list of “insider tips” on air travel. An American Airlines representative is quoted on www.blogher.com saying, “We had to start somewhere. There’s more to come.” Until then, I think I will stick to visiting their regular site.

(when video attacks is a recurring feature that exploits the embarrassment of others in a world where everyone and their uncle owns a camcorder)

While this old-school Levi’s ad is far from the work of an amateur with a camcorder, it is safe to say it’s an embarrassment for whatever professionals were responsible. Join our narrator, as he takes the Levi’s “trademark” (how he refers to the walking logo) out for a physcadelic neon hippie-lovin’ stroll to meet some of the cool kids sportin’ the jeans and livin’ the life. Narly!

There is a great story about how BBC ushered the wrong Guy into the newsroom for a live interview on the Apple vs. Apple verdict. Guy Kewney, an Internet download expert, was left in the waiting room as Guy Goma, who was at BBC interviewing for a job, was identified by the receptionist and ushered into the studio.

Check out this Reuters video podcast and start the play by clicking on “guy” at 0:21, and watch this guy’s face 3 seconds later as he realizes he’s not the Guy they think! As the real Guy says in his blog about this moment:

It’s beyond classic: it’s priceless.

Also see the BBC’s follow up news article on their gaffe, which they filed under “Entertainment.”

Check it out on PodZinger.

One of our team members was searching on PodZinger for podcasts that mentioned Social Text CEO and blogger, Ross Mayfield. She found a bunch of entries, but one that stood out was “Talking Portraits Interviews by Tom Parish”.  The text excerpt said that Ross was from “Social Sex” rather than “Social Text”. That adds a whole other level of excitement to enterprise wikis.

The former “Facts of life” star may have found his ultimate role, savior. While his Hollywood stardom has reached a point of singularity, PodZinger has bigger plans for the diminutive former child actor. Entering “Gary Coleman” in the PodZinger search engine returns this audio from a recent Grace Christian Assembly Podcast, “This is my being crucified as a substitutionary atonement for your sins” as “This is my being crucified as a substitute Gary Coleman Pearson” . Probably not worth the sacrifice.

Yesterday, our fearless leader Alex appeared on “Inside the Net,” a podcast by Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur.  In it, they talked about closed captioning and how even those were riddled with errors.  (Check out Inside the Net 16, which features PodZinger, here.)

It reminded me of the classic closed-captioning error on ABC’s 4/23/2003 World News Tonight, which reported in its closed caption feed of Peter Jennings, that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was “in the hospital for the removal of an enlarged prostitute.”  ABC later issued a formal apology to Greenspan.

When Greenspan’s wife, NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell, was asked about her husband’s enlarged prostitute, she said:

 He should be so lucky.

We ran a search today for a demo, and I thought that this result snippet from MSNBC’s “The Situation with Tucker Carlson” was a bit humorous:

More outrage over the bush administration’s decision to allow an arab owned company to manage six of america’s largest sports

So, which are the six: baseball, football, basketball, soccer, hockey, and um, curling?   Of course, this story is about ports, but I found the sports gaffe by our recognizer to be quite funny.  Hm, well, maybe it was funnier at the time.