Biznass
March 24, 2007
The Wow Is NOW, Mother******s!
That's right, I am now running Vista on my home PC -- and I live to tell about it Against my better judgment and in the face of general skepticism from a number of folks, I went a little loony last night and installed Windows Vista on the new home computer. This had been the plan for a while (and by "a while" I mean since my old computer died and I came up with my "buy a new computer" plan), but I finally got my act together this week (and by "this week" I mean "Friday after work"). The good news is that Vista is now alive and running on my PC. Granted, I just bought this machine and it has healthy specs (dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM, nifty graphics card), but still, I'm almost a little surprised. The bad news is that it wasn't exactly easy to get...
Posted by thatkid at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
March 19, 2007
Gmail Gives You Wings?
This is definitely the first Google display ad I've ever seen; it must be some sort of mistake Given the fact that the G-Unit is clocking along with a market cap in the rather exclusive neighborhood of $140 billion, with annual sales in the $12 billion range (and growing), and that those $12 billion (and thus, that $140 billion) are amassed in ten-cent increments that arrive only when people click on ads, you'd think that the folks at Google would be pretty talented at figuring out which sorts of ads are going to make people click. Not that they have to worry about advertising, mind you. That they've built this juggernaut with little to no media spending says a lot about (a) how sweet their search engine is, (b) their genius in re: PR (in which they've achieved an Ipod-esque level of simpatico with the press and analyst community), and...
Posted by thatkid at 11:27 AM | Comments (2)
February 25, 2007
PES 2007 Release Review Meeting Summary
See below for a leaked transcript from the Konami corporation's game development division; I did the translation from the Japanese myself! The following is the transcript of the final release review meeting for Pro Evolution Soccer 2007 (the artist formerly known as "Winning Eleven Soccer") on Xbox 360. The speakers are the product manager ("ProdMgr") and the development lead ("DevLead") for Pro Evolution Soccer. The Konami Corporation has not authorized the release of this document, but I thought it was important to share it: ProdMgr: Good to see everyone this morning. Do we have the call set up? Yes? Hello? Oh. Hi. Yes, we're here. About to get started. So. Right. Let's begin. The release date is coming soon, and our last progress update made a lot of people anxious. Where are we with the latest build? DevLead: Yeah, we're almost there. ProdMgr: Okay. So what does almost there mean?...
Posted by thatkid at 8:26 PM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2007
Failure To Deliver? Or Flowers That Disappear?
Why I won't ever be ordering flowers from FTD.com again. Ever. Again. File this one under "Grumble comma grumble." So you figure that a nationwide network of florists complete with a major e-commerce presence and a heavy Valentine's Day marketing push would be able to deliver flowers in New York City if you give them two days lead time? Right? If they're sending me e-mails with attractive offers and they have a well-recognized brand name and they're telling me they can make me a hero on Valentine's Day, you think they could sort it out? I can understand if it was some fly-by-night organization or if I needed some sort of exotic and/ or rare flowers, or even if I had called them the morning of Valentine's Day. That raises the degree of difficulty somewhat. Fair enough. But two days notice for roses? That should be well within their capabilities....
Posted by thatkid at 12:23 PM | Comments (2)
October 1, 2006
I Hate DirecTV
All I wanted to do was give them three hundred bones for pro football; is that so hard? Today would have been a lovely day for the NFL Sunday Ticket. I've been out of town for over a week, pretty desperate for a good night's sleep, and definitely well behind in my housekeeping and/ or mail-opening (or at least mail-piling) duties. I knew I was looking forward to a Sunday of getting my act together, and I knew that pro football would be blaring from my television throughout. No trips to the sports bar or other nonsense for me this Sunday; I needed to be home. In another version of today, said television would have been blaring with up to nine NFL games in high definition through the NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV. Instead, I've got two games, and only one in HD. Which is fine, but far from optimal....
Posted by thatkid at 12:32 PM | Comments (1)
September 12, 2006
The Wisdom Of Twenty-Something Slacker Fratboys
Why the Sports Guy is my favorite online community By the second quarter of last night's Raiders-Chargers beatdown on Monday Night Football, my buddies and I had pretty much given up on the game (sort of like the Raiders!) in favor of a vigil on Art Shell closeups. That is, we were spellbound by the shots of Art Shell on the sidelines, solemnly staring across the field and, most importantly, not saying a word. The camera kept cutting the Shell, and Shell wouldn't move his lips. Not a mumble into the headset. Not a whisper to an assistant. Nothing. Just staring. We couldn't believe it! Mostly because we had read The Sports Guy's NFL picks column that weekend in which he (or at least one of his readers, but more on that in a bit) had predicted exactly this -- that Art Shell would stand silent on the sidelines throughout...
Posted by thatkid at 11:56 PM | Comments (1)
April 2, 2006
Does The Warranty Cover "Looking Crappy"?
Just when I was about to get excited about innovation in basketball design For the avoidance of doubt and in the interests of full disclosure, I tend to be something of a sucker for innovative and/ or colorful product design and/ or packaging. That is, if you wrap your product in some shiny colors (or, even better, put those shiny colors on the product itself), there's a pretty good chance I'm going to buy it. There. It's out in the open. (Though if you've met me in the past ten years, all of the above is completely obvious, almost to an awkward degree.) So it should come as no surprise that as soon as I saw this fancy new adidas basketball (in the adidas store on Houston Street in New York), I knew I would buy it. I mean, I needed a basketball anyway, and if someone was going to...
Posted by thatkid at 11:57 PM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2006
It's The Act Of Purchasing That Counts
Just because retail therapy works (every time) doesn't make me a bad person For a wide variety of reasons, I was feeling a little bummed out on Sunday afternoon. By 3 pm, I just really wasn't feeling it. I didn't really have much of a plan for the rest of the day, and while I was happy to have some time to myself -- especially on such a clear and sunny day -- I still felt a little anxious. Sure, I could futz around, take some photos of junk food, maybe work on my imaginary soccer team(s), but was that really going to be enough? That's when I decided that I was, in fact, worth it. I was going to buy something. Something marvelous! I got on the walkie talkie with a buddy, and within minutes we'd hatched a plan to facilitate some emergency money-spending. Maybe it was the uncommon...
Posted by thatkid at 10:37 PM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2006
Shaking My Fist At Gmail
Little Google e-mail reading robots, why have you forsaken me? My big plan for last Tuesday was that I was going to watch the Barcelona - Chelsea UEFA Champion's League match on tape delay on ESPN2. As all seven longtime readers can attest, Barca - Chelsea Champions League ties have a long and storied history here at thatkidinthecorner (Shouting at the TV, Continental Edition, March 2005). Despite being "in C@L at work" instead of "in Amsterdam at some bar" I remained determined to enjoy the game. The game would be live on the Left Coast starting at 11:45 am. Normally it would be broadcast live on ESPN2, but due to the World Baseball Classic, the game would be shown on tape delay at 9:30 pm PST. (Broadcast simultaneously on the East Coast at 12:30 am -- yikes, certainly a much tougher time to watch!) My goal for the afternoon would...
Posted by thatkid at 8:02 PM | Comments (0)
March 7, 2006
Hot Teen Amateurs
The virtuous circle of narcissism and voyeurism that explains why blogs and user-generated content aren't getting any smaller Hearing that someone doesn't read blogs is, for me, akin to hearing that someone doesn't drink coffee. That is, I can imagine how one could lead a perfectly acceptable and fulfilling life in the developed world in 2006 without drinking coffee, I just don't know why one would. Sure, you'll get by just fine without coffee, but if the option is (so readily) available and cost-effective, why not just treat yourself? Same deal with the blogs -- I mean, you're not really missing anything by not scanning blogs, but there's a lot of good stuff there, stuff that's certainly worth adding to your rotation. I don't mean to sound like the haughty "I can't believe you're still living in the Dark Ages" tech geek. If anything, we're long through the looking glass...
Posted by thatkid at 9:19 PM | Comments (2)
November 8, 2005
Industry Conferences: Not Just For Cheating On Your Spouse!
A Boondoggle By Any Other Name It had been a few years since I had attended a trade show. I feel confident reporting that very little has changed since I last attended one. Still, this one was a lot more digestible than some of the ones I'd been to in recent years (publishing and/ or character licensing shows aren't all that). Assorted observations and/ or quick hits: With Your Mouth Closed Next Time: cheers to the dude sitting in the row behind me during Tuesday's session on Word-of-Mouth marketing for unapolgetically snoring through a solid 20 minutes of the panel disucssion. Hilarious. People keep throwing these positively withering looks my way, to which I could only offer a "Hey, I ain't the one who's snoring" shrug. Poor dude. WebClickMoneyTechFrog.com: I guess I had forgotten just how poorly named tech startups are. Walking through the exhibition space I was reminded that...
Posted by thatkid at 4:25 PM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2005
A Higher Power Will Read Your Admissions Essay
A Higher Education! So I'm watching the Notre Dame - USC game. Good stuff. I'm enjoying it. They go to commercial, I go to my laptop and check the Penn State - Michigan score. As I'm clicking around, I hear some very solemn and/ or pious organ-and-choir music. I glance up at the TV. And this is what I see: A young girl enters a church. She lights some candles and kneels in front of said candles. Ostensibly begins to pray. Cut. (What the heck is all this about?) Same girl enters a church, more candles, more kneeling, more prayers. Cut. (Hmm, this doesn't look like the sort of ad I usually see during the football TV show...I just hope it isn't...you know.) Girl in front of a suburban house, mailbox in foreground. She opens the mailbox, removes an envelope. Close up of envelope (NOOOOO! It is what I thought!...
Posted by thatkid at 3:05 PM | Comments (1)
October 11, 2005
I Heart The Girl In The Moon
The Goddess of Beer -- and America! So I hate to play into the hands of some annoying "Director of Permission Marketing"-type person from some goofy international drinks comglomerate, but I really, really can't say enough about that new Miller High Life commercial. I love it. I love The Girl In The Moon. It's really awesome. You should check it out. (Here's a link to it. Link away, and write about it on your blogs. If enough of us write about it on our blogs, then maybe someone will do a podcast about it. And if enough people do The Girl In The Moon podcasts, pretty soon we'll have a viral marketing phenomena and there will be many powerpoints and ad industry journalists singing its praises!) Still, just because we're aware of the marketing trick doesn't mean it didn't work perfectly. There's Miller High Life in my fridge. I didn't...
Posted by thatkid at 9:50 AM | Comments (6)
September 21, 2005
Three Things I Jet About Blue
In which I relate the details of an extremely positive air-travel experience. Implicit in my decision to move to the Pacific Northwest was the acknowledgment that there would be a lot of airplanes in my future. If I wanted to see my people(s), be it for a holiday, a wedding, a weekend, etc/ et al, I knew well in advance of my move that such adventures would require that I cram myself into an airplane seat and wait patiently for five and a half hours. Time on airplanes was just part of the total cost of ownership of my move. Between coming out to find an apartment, the move itself, and another trip back east for [reasons unstated], I had already done the trip three (3) times in the past two months. I would not say I had a fantastic airplane experience in any of these cases. They weren't awful,...
Posted by thatkid at 10:36 PM | Comments (2)
September 7, 2005
GTA: Business Trip
In which I recognize a major U.S. city from a video game (and subsequently imagine throttling my cab into oncoming traffic). Headed to San Francisco for a day trip last week -- tiptoe in, tiptoe out, like a cat, one might say. The travel was incident-free, the meeting was interesting (and mercifully painless for the rookie) and the general situation very agreeable. All in all, it was a cool little trip. Without tipping my hand too much, am I allowed to admit things like "I recognized buildings and geography from the back seat of my cab because of my fondness for GTA: San Andreas?" The road in question is apparently a pretty major one (Embarcadero) and in the game I really enjoyed using it as a test track for pulling into oncoming traffic at high speeds. I'd been to San Francisco a bunch of times. Seen tons of photos of...
Posted by thatkid at 9:42 PM | Comments (0)
April 26, 2005
Chelsea USA?
Five (Sort Of) Big Ideas to Market Chelsea Football Club in the United States As promised in an earlier posting, things were a bit busy the past week with the class-related assignments. Luckily for me, I was able to shape some of my assignments such that I could actually write about topics I found interesting (instead of, say, doing another freakin case analysis). The following is an abridged and edited version of one of said assignments.... Despite efforts in recent years from global soccer giants Real Madrid, Manchester United, and Barcelona to establish a significant brand presence in the United States market, no foreign soccer club (or domestic club, for that matter) has claimed the title of Soccer's Coolest/ Most Iconic Team. Whereas the average European knows very little about baseball, he/ she will likely be able to conjure up the name "New York Yankees" if asked to name an...
Posted by thatkid at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)
April 8, 2005
Memo To New Yorkers Looking for MSG Network
You mean all I had to do was travel to Cancun? In the midst of a lovely little jaunt to Mexico. Weather is great, beach is lovely, life is good. Even played an ill-fated round of golf yesterday, which I managed to enjoy even as I lost, AHEM, seven golf balls. (In my defense, the course boasted a lot of water hazards. Also, I´m not very good at golf.) Anyhoo, I was at a cocktail party last night at one of the hotels here in Cancun. Lovely party -- everyone had a blast. As the party was winding down, the hotel staff arrived to clean up a bit and return the room to ready-for-public-consumption status. Turns out the room hosting the cocktail party doubled as a sports bar (I guess the pool tables should have tipped me off? I dunno.). So this one dude is walking around the room turning...
Posted by thatkid at 9:48 AM | Comments (0)
February 25, 2005
Paris Hilton = Best Internet Marketer Ever?
strong>The SSW as an unappreciated online promotional genius? My my, that Paris Hilton sure is an exciting celebrity! Just weeks after her decidedly underwhelming turn as the host of SNL (one which might have actually been career-limiting for other celebrities), Paris forced her way back to the top of the celeb-tabloid media metaverse (and even into the "real" media as well!) when one of her personal communication devices was hacked and her celebrity-filled address book was posted all over The Electric Internet. "I don't know why this stuff always happens to me," Paris shrugged to the AP. Let's assume for a minute that Paris doesn't have anything to do with this. In which case, she's just the sort of irresponsible airhead who routinely loses wallets, keys, cell phones, etc etc. We all know the type, and given the outputs of her recorded conversations with people holding microphones near her pie-hole,...
Posted by thatkid at 3:40 PM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2005
We Can't Protect This House!
Nike does battle with Under Armour in its Nike Pro(tm) campaign I imagine there must be nothing quite like the experience of being a start-up company that, following years of struggle and sweat to bring a successful product to market, finds their idea co-opted by their largest and most powerful competitor. You're at once both elated (Check it out! Our idea really was good! We're legit!) and horrified (Holy crud! Now that they took our cool idea, we're toast!). Such was the lot of Under Armour last Sunday when Nike unveiled the launch campaign for its Nike Pro line of apparel. (Or should I pander even more obediently to the Nike marketing department and use the adjective "performance" in front of apparel?) Started by a former University of Maryland football player in 1996, Under Armour has forged a product line and brand around the principle of high technology/ high performance...
Posted by thatkid at 4:05 PM | Comments (0)
January 9, 2005
The Wisdom of Cliques
In which we explore the collective intelligence of the folks who pass through my apartment James Surowiecki's nifty new book The Wisdom of Crowds (buy it here) opens with the story of the 1906 West of England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition. Among the featured attractions at the exhibition was a contest where visitors could wager on the weight of an ox; the contestant with the guess closest to the actual weight of the ox would win a prize. In attendance at the Exhibition was an eighty-five-year-old scientist named Francis Galton, who wanted to use the guesses from the contest to prove some points about the intrinsic failings of democracy; specifically, he wanted to show that the average contestant didn't know very much at all. Galton was then as shocked as anyone to discover that the average contestant's guess (that is, the arithmetic mean of all 787 guesses) was 1,197...
Posted by thatkid at 8:33 PM | Comments (0)
December 25, 2004
The True (Non-Denominational) Meaning of Christmas
'Tis the season for giving, but Q4 retail sales are aight! Though certainly the consensus pick for "Greeting That Manages to Convey All the Warmth and Bonhomie of the Christmas/ Hanukkah/ Kwanzaa Season Without Risking Offending Someone's Conception of God" there's just something so empty about deploying "Happy Holidays" during the month of December. So wishy-washy. So non-committal. So cowardly. Though we must certainly tip our hats to the folks at The O.C. and Virgin Mobile for their respective "Chrismukkah" and "Chrismuhanukwanzukah" gags in re: this topic, our general cultural unease about the potential shame of using a religiously insensitive holiday greeting really seems to miss the point of the holidays. It's not that our holidays don't have significant religious traditions behind them, or that our culture hasn't co-opted these religious holidays into a more general humanist milieu of Caring/ Sharing/ Giving, but to focus on the religious (and even...
Posted by thatkid at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2004
Sharing Is For Losers
McDonald's teaches us how to not share In the wake of increasing criticisms of the, ahem, chicken content of its signature Chicken McNugget product (which is euphemistically spun as "target[ing] a population that is consuming more white-meat chicken"), McDonald's last spring introduced Chicken Selects -- an all-white-and-breast-meat chicken tender designed to serve as the premium alternative to McNuggets. They're bigger than McNuggets, made from better ingredients, and have cooler dipping sauces ("Tangy Low-fat Honey Mustard, Spicy Buffalo or Creamy Ranch"). Sounds yummy. Supporting the Chicken Selects product launch are a series of TV spots that depict hip-looking twentysomethings (the target market for these spots) munching Chicken Selects in an array of lonely corporate settings (otherwise empty cubicles and offices) while rehearsing the speech they will undoubtedly have to give when an acquaintance or co-worker dares ask them to share one of said Chicken Selects. The gag is that the twentysomethings...
Posted by thatkid at 5:46 PM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2004
Ads I Never See On MY Fantasy Page
Look at that -- ad targeting isn't just a myth! Turns out that In Touch Weekly is buying inventory with Yahoo! Fantasy Sports (see above) -- cleverly making sure that if women are going to try to make nice with their boyfriends by playing (along with) fantasy football, they'll at least consume appropriate and exciting advertising messages. Talk about one-to-one marketing! This would be a lot less funny if the owner of said fantasy team wasn't also actually a sometime In Touch reader. Look at how well Yahoo! and other Internet content providers understand each and every one of their users! In gratitude, we should all make a point of clicking on many many banner ads, pop-up windows, contextual marketing links, and the other sundry logos and glyphs that are currently keeping 99% of the content on the Internet delightfully free. Let us all thank that Internet for all that...
Posted by thatkid at 2:34 PM | Comments (0)
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