Andy Boyer

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Category: Business (Page 14 of 24)

2 Big Numbers, and How They are Related

September 22, 2008 /

$20 Billion.  $16 Billion.  Two relatively large numbers that may be too hard to comprehend.  So here’s a funny comparison. 

According to Valleywag, the entire newspaper industry is now worth $20 Billion.  I suppose that seems right for a 100-150 year old industry with papers everywhere from New York to Wasilia.

But that number seems kind of small when you figure that Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s cofounders, are worth nearly $16 billion each according to Forbes.  So 2 men who have made it easier to search for online versions of newspaper articles, could essentially buy the entire industry they are destroying.   Does that mean personal fortunes are a tad over inflated?

This Negative Election Has Finally Defeated Me

September 17, 2008 /

Well, it’s happened.  What started as a fantastic 17 person Presidential race, with people sharing new ideas for how to run the country, has turned into a giant mud-slinging session that has left me dis-spirited and ready to move to Croatia to open a coffee stand.

What happnened to this race? We had Bill Richardson’s immigration ideas, Obama’s unifying rallies and Hillary’s messages energizing women.  Giulani and Thompson added star power, Romney was the clean cut businessman with the ability to run the Olympics and a state, while McCain the Maverick was driving the Straight Talk Express.  Even Ron Paul, who people labeled as crazy, at least had an interesting Flat Tax Plan.  Real candidates with real ideas.  

But now, I can’t watch TV or listen to the radio without hearing barking, shrieking, sarcasm and disdain.  No one has any ideas, and everyone has a criticism.  Olberman and Chris Matthews take turns firing shots at Republicans in hopes Obama will dance with them first at the inauguration.  Conservative journalists rail on Obama’s 143 days in US Senate as being unfit to lead.  Media members sitting on the left side of the bench use big words and smarmy sarcasm to imply that anyone who doesn’t agree with them 100% is stupid.  Those on the right  scoff at people and make it clear that anyone who doesn’t know how to climb into the middle class is just useless.

Our whole country is attacking each other and every campaign message is about hate – McCain is too old., Obama too green.  McCain lies, Obama exagerates.  Biden is mean, Palin is crazy.  Then everything that happens must be assigned to someone.  The Financial situation is Bush’s fault, no McCain signed a bill in 1999 that caused this, no Obama’s liberal policies would make it worse, etc…Gas is expensive because we’re in Iraq, no because Democrats won’t let us drill, no because Republicans are beholden to lobbyists in the oil industry….

I’ve been beaten.  The candidates’, pundits’, advisors’ and supporters’  combined message has finally sunk in.  According to what I am hearing from everyone, “Collectively we’re screwed, it’s someone else’s fault, and we’re really going to be screwed worse if you vote for the other guy.”  That’s the message I am getting – please tell me I’m hearing it wrong.  Plus, none of them are explaining to me that they can fix it, they are just explaining to me that the other group can’t.  So I guess that’s the message. Take my money out of the stock market and run.

Oops – too late for that too….Now what?

2 Handy Text Message Tools

September 15, 2008 /

I was down at CTIA in San Francisco last week expecting to be wowed by tons in mobile innovations.  I really thought  I’d be furiously taking notes and have plenty to write about for weeks.  Sadly, I was forced not to publish the trip report I did write and had sent internally to the folks at Spring Creek Group, due to my overall  philosophy of only writing about innovations I like, not complaining about things I don’t get or won’t use.  I figure Techcrunch does enough criticizing for the entire blogosphere, so no reason to be one of the naysayers

So instead of a trip report from the Bay, here are 2 clever text messaging apps that I read about at PCWorld.com and now use fairly regularly

1) Google Calendar SMS Commands  – I use Google Calendar, as part of my slavery to Gootle Mail, Docs, Chat, Analytics and Ad Words.  Instead of having to sync my Blackberry every day, i can simply send a text to GVENT (48368) with the word “day” and I get a full schedule.  If I want tomorrow’s shcedule, I type “nday.”  I immediately receive a text back with my schedule.

2) Diet Watcher – If you’re watching calories, Diet.com can help you keep count. Text any major restaurant chain’s name and menu item to DIET1 (dial 34381) and they’ll send you back the nutrition stats: calories, fat, carbs, and protein.  In case you are curious, a McDonald’s Double Cheeseburger has 440 Calories (23g fat), while a Starbucks Grande Latte has 

Neither of these services are awe-inspiring, but if you want information quickly, they are pretty useful.  And really at the end of the day, “Useful, Easy and Free” beat slick marketing and $60 Million in Series C funding any day of the week.

Geeking Out With Some Google Chrome Commands

September 9, 2008 /

I found a pretty fun little list over at Lifehacker today, in one of the comment threads.  If you are testing out Google Chrome (and you really should be so you can see how Browser War II is going to play out) then these toolbar commands will give you some things to play with.

  • about:memory
  • about:stats
  • about:network
  • about:internets
  • about:histograms
  • about:dns
  • about:cache
  • about:plugins
  • about:version 

Note:  This is as “techy-nerdy” as this blog will ever get.  But some of the commands are pretty cool. Let me know if you find others. 

ADDITION:  Yardloo.com also has a handy list of normal commands that you can use with Windows: 

  • F5 – Refreshes the page
  • Ctrl + F5 – Super-Refresh where the cache is ignored and a total refresh of the page is done
  • Ctrl + D – Bookmarks the currently open page
  • Ctrl + “+” – Increases the text size in the page
  • Ctrl + “-” – Decreases the text size in the page
  • Ctrl + F – Opens a box with the option of find-in-page where one  search for  keyword in the page.
  • Ctrl + U – Opens the source of the page
  • Ctrl + Shift + N – Opens a new window in incognito mode.
  • Ctrl + Shift + Esc – Opens the task manager for the browser
  • Ctrl + Shift + T – Re-open the last closed tab Maximum of last 10 tabs.
  • Ctrl + N – Opens a new windows for your browser
  • Ctrl + T – Opens a new tab in the same window
  • Ctrl + W – Closes the presently open tab
  • Ctrl + F4 – Closes the presently open tab
  • Alt + F4 – Closes the window
  • Alt + home – Opens the default homepage in Google Chrome
  • Ctrl +1 to Ctrl + 8 – The number you press along with the Ctrl key, move to you that number of Tab.
  • Ctrl +9 – Takes you to the last tab in the multiple number of tabs
  • Ctrl + Tab – Switch to the next tab
  • Ctrl + Shift + Tab – Switch to the previous tab
  • Ctrl + B – Option for toggling the bookmarks bar on/off
  • Ctrl + H – Opens the history page
  • Ctrl + J – Opens the downloads window
  • Ctrl + P – Prints the current page open in the browser

 

 

Meanwhile, we think the athletes are real

August 12, 2008 /

So what have we learned about China so far thanks to year’s Olympics.  Well, let’s start with some nuggets from a British paper, The Times of London, in this article.

Let’s set aside all the pre-Olympics Tom Foolery of throwing out journalists, censoring Internet sites, jailing a Japanese television crew in West China, shutting down factories, and trying to magically make the pollution go away.

But in the first week of this Games, we have:

  • Fake fireworks so the TV audience thinks they are seeing something spectacular
  • Lip-syncing of the opening song by a cute 7-year old Chinese girl, because the 7 year old girl who really sang it wans’t “cute” enough.
  • Oscar-style “seat fillers” who sit and watch the preliminary rounds of events, then leave when the ticket holders show up, so it doesn’t look like there are any no-shows.

I’m not exactly sure this is what drove the spirit of the games more than 100 years ago.  So if the games themselves can be fake and manufactured, tell me again why the athletes aren’t allowed to use drugs that enhance their own performance?  Don’t sterioids seem to fit perfectly into this charade?

Qvisory – “Tools for Life”

August 7, 2008 /

I encourage everyone to take a quick trip over to Qvisory.com,.a extremely socially conscious and responsible project headed up by Eileen Quigley, the former head of RealNetworks’ philanthropic arm, RealImpact.

Dubbed, “Tools for life, ” the site helps young people (and old ones too) achieve their work, money and life goals.  Here’s what they said in a recent email:

Our mission is to help young people build their economic future and
gain more control over their lives. Today’s 18 to 34 year-olds face
significant challenges in our evolving economy. We’re providing them
with information and tools to help manage and meet their money, work,
and health goals. And we’re advocating for change to ensure that their
voice is heard in Washington, DC, in board rooms, and in state capitols.

I have long been an advocate of our school system shifting gears and actually teaching things that people need to know – little things like how credit card companies make money, how to fill out tax forms, why interest only mortgages are a bad idea, what happens if you eat fast food and chips every day, etc….So, I think this is a great project.  Check it out and let me know what you think.

LeBron James Wants to Play in Europe? Why the NBA Should Make it Happen

August 7, 2008 /

The caveat:  I think the NBA is kind of boring these days.  I don’t hate basketball, but the NBA just under-achieves in my book.  Now, if you only speak English and have never traveled outside the US, I can understand why the NBA might seem cool. Similarly, if you’ve never been to a city with more than 200,000 people,  I can see why Appleby’s seems like a real culinary treat.  But I’m not here to bash.  I’m here to push forward a ridiculous notion.

Some background: In European soccer, something called UEFA governs European football. Independent leagues in England, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, etc… participate in two European tourneys – the UEFA Cup and Champions League. – which make dump trucks full of money. So in the middle of their regular seasons, Italy’s best teams also play England’s best teams, etc….  It’s pretty cool – and more importantly it makes huge amounts of cash for the teams and leagues.  Now this works for European soccer because there are 3 dominant leagues, 2 or 3 second-tier leagues and about 20 third tier leagues that sneak someone into the later rounds from time to time. 

The ridiculous notion: You could not replicate this in basketball today, because the NBA teams would win almost every game.  But this kind of International tourney could happen in just a few years if some recognizable US players headed to Europe.  Imagine this scenario:

Your favorite team is the New Orleans Hornets.  Towards the end of last season,  with a playoff birth locked up, you had to keep battling to finish in 4th place, and a birth in next season’s Champions League.  You qualified, so several times next season, instead of hosting the Jazz or Bobcats, you are hosting teams from Greece, Spain, Russia or Italy.   Twice per year, the Hornets head out to Europe for a 3-4 game swing.  As a fan, you may even travel with them to Madrid or Rome.

Now to make this happen, a few stars need to be playing for Olympiakos or Moscow or whoever.  If you are a true basketball junkie, what would be better than players and games that you care about playing across the globe starting at 9am your time?  There could literally be basketball on TV morning, noon and night.

The rivalries could be intense.  And because of the extra games, you’d see more players on your own team playing important minutes.  Teams would really have to ration how many minutes they give their old guys versus how many to give their developing players, the same way Ronaldo and Rooney occasionally have to skip Manchester United games.

So if LeBron wants to go to Europe, as this article implies, I think the NBA needs to gather the international basketball powers that be and figure out how to exploit it.  Prop up the Euro leagues and build an international championship that everyone owns a piece of.   Imagine  Lakers vs Moscow – Kobe vs LeBron – in Paris for the World Championship, with a TV audience of 100 million.   That’s real money. 

Big Move in the Scrabulous vs Hasbro Battle

July 31, 2008 /

So, just when you thought Scrabulous was dead…..when you thought they had no letters left to play, the team of Rajat and Jayant came back with “Quartzite” for a Bingo Triple Word Score.

It seemed like the war was over when the guys behind Scrabulous bowed to the legal pressure from Hasbro and pulled their wildly successful application from Facebook.   I stated that I hoped Hasbro would simply pay the guys what the game was worth and buy the application – and the users – from them.

But instead, the tables have been turned and the guys from Hasbro must have the same look as the Seattle City Council Members who were shocked that Clay Bennett was moving the Sonics.

In a Kasparov-ish type move, the Scrabulous guys have relaunched Scrabulous as “Wordscraper.”  Now at first look, the board and the game sucks.  Then you look at the rules, and you see that in Wordscraper, you have the ability to create your own board.  You can create ANY TYPE of board you want.  Maybe you want 20 Triple word score spots.  Or…….maybe you want the board to look just like a real Scrabble board…….In just a few minutes, if I wanted, I could make a board that looked like a real Scrabble board and use that for every game moving forward.

This my friends, is what it looks like when 2 smart guys take a winnable battle against a board room full of people without a creative thought in their head.  Congrats to the Scrabulous – I mean Wordscraper – guys who just played the death blow in this silly Facebook battle vs Hasbro.

Bonanzle Review – “The Best eBay Alternative We’ve Seen”

July 30, 2008 /

Bonanzle, a young and exciting company we recently started working with, just received a fantastic review from Ecommerce-Guide.com.

An alternative to Craiglist and Ebay, Bonanzle is designed to make it easier for people to buy and sell products online.  Given the state and direction of the economy today, any way to make it easier to move used merchandise is positioned to do well.  Some choice quotes from the article:

“You get Bonanzle
— an eBay alternative that is quite simply, the best I’ve seen in my
four years of reviewing and writing about start-up marketplaces aimed
at taking sellers away from eBay.”

The Bonanzle platform was designed in-house from
the ground up, so not only does the site look very different from other
alternative sites, but this is the reason why the tools and features on
this site are so radically different.

The best way to experience Bonanzle is simply to log
on and try it. What you will find is that Harding and his team of
self-titled “action-minded experts” have managed to offer sellers more
features in this one site than any alternative to date, yet keep the
entire site and selling process simple, compact and super-easy to use.

Check out the whole article, and please Digg it or add it to Delicious if you would be so kind.

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