I mean, if a company that manages money for a living, doesn’t know how to manage money, then reallly, what chance do any of us have? Here’s a stock chart you don’t want to see in your portfolio…
Category: Business (Page 18 of 24)
Think about this. As long as Wyoming has been a state, it hasn’t mattered one iota what happened in their caucus. Heck, a caucus was simply a reason to get together in March and have a few beers and celebrate the coming spring.
It’s not a knock against them, it’s just nature. Being Wyoming, they couldn’t risk having a caucus in the middle of a January blizzard. And since barely anyone lives there, no candidates were coming to visit anyway. So they put some guy named "Joe" or "Steve" or "Sam" or something in charge of making sure ballots got printed. And Joe or Steve or Sam had to call a bunch of buddies, or just the same people from 4 years ago, and find a few houses willing to throw a few caucuses.
But not this year. All of a sudden, Wyoming’s 12 little delegates matter. And now you have a whole bunch of guys named Jack or Jim or something calling Joe saying, "Uh, I only have room in my living room for 12 people. On the latest evite, it says 237 people are coming…"
As my friend described it, it’s like being the kid in school who forgot about his science project, grabbed 5 leaves from outside and taped them to construction paper, only to find out everyone has to present in front of a live televised audience, and Hannah Montana and LeBron James are the judges.
Look at Texas, where the Democratic Party had weeks to see that there would be a huge turnout. Yet you have the biggest mess ever imagined, a caucus that people compared to a rodeo. You think those guys are the only ones who are going to be stuck with their pants caught in their lassos?
I mean, pretend you volunteered up to run your kid’s Little League tournament, and then 6 months later you find out the other teams will be from Iraq, Dubai, Pakistan, Iran, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia and the US teams will be coached by Brad Pitt, Bono, Rosie O’Donnel, David Duke and Louis Farrakhan. It’s not your fault. You aren’t prepared for this. It just is what it is.
So pity the poor guy running the Wyoming Caucus. And make sure you tune in.
The sad story concerning the absolute theft of the Sonics from Seattle by Oklahoma oilmen has gotten almost no publicity to date. Considering we are the city that launched Amazon, Starbucks, Microsoft, RealNetworks, Cranium and Pearl Jam, you would think collectively we might have the phone number of one PR person in town.
But amazingly, for the most part, no one outside of Seattle seems to take note of a very simple story:
- In 2006, Oklahoma guys buy team that’s been in Seattle for 41 years A team that plays in a 17,000 seat arena, in the middle of downtown, that was renovated 10 years ago.
- New owners demand $500 Million new arena from taxpayers, an arena that would cost more than the 70,000 seat football stadium and 47,000 seat retractable roof baseball stadium.
- City tells Oklahoma City guys to stick it.
- Oklahoma guys claim they can’t be successful in Seattle and announce they have remarkably found a city willing to take the team – in Oklahoma City.
- Local Billionaires who were asleep at the switch in 2006 say they will buy team to keep it in Seattle.
- Oklahoma guys, who now have Kevin Durant and six 1st round draft picks in the next 3 years, tell the local Billionaires to stick it.
- David Stern looks at Seattle fans, and tells them to stick it. Then stick it again for good measure.
- Everyone acknowldges the only question is whether they leave in 2008 or 2010.
Thankfully, one national reporter has taken up the cause. And the amazing thing is, he is the Sports Guy, Bill Simmons, as influential as any writer in sports today. His letterbag column is a must read, and carries with it the potential that NBA fans from across teh country could tell David Stern, "Hey, this isn’t right. I support the Pistons, but damn if I’m going to support a league that will let some oil baron rape and plunder a 41 year old legacy."
So please, read Bill Simmons. Send an email to thank Bill Simmons. Join the Bill Simmons Facebook Group. Send the Bill Simmons column on to your friends. Blog about Bill Simmons. Because this Bostonian has emrged as the only sportswriter who seems to care that the Sonics belong in Seattle.
Net Neutrality is a term that isn’t sexy enough to get the iTunes, MySpace and Facebook crowds excited. But thankfully, we have a bunch of watchdog technologists keeping a close eye on this.
In a nutshell, as I understand it, Comcast and other Internet Service Providers want to control how fast certain web sites can deliver content. Think about Web site content as a car. Right now, every car has access to every super wide highway, and there are no speed limits. But if Comcast and its friends get their way, they would get to decide which cars get to drive on super highways, and which ones have to drive on pothole filled dirt roads. They argue this would allow them to control piracy.
But most others argue that its a way for them to effectively shut down blogs and alternative media. For example, my blog could be stuck on their "dirt road" list and take 2 minutes to load, effectively stopping anyone from reading it. They could charge millions o fdollars for super highway access, and only the major media outlets and super corporations would be able to deliver content quickly. It would be impossible to launch a small web business, because your site would take much longer than the established ones.
Since most people don’t follow this too closely, most people don’t really think it’s a big deal. So here’s evidence that it is INDEED a big deal.
How big are the stakes in the so-called network neutrality debate now raging before Congress and federal regulators?
Consider this: One side in the debate actually went to the trouble of hiring people off the street to pack a Federal Communications Commission meeting yesterday—and effectively keep some of its opponents out of the room.
Broadband giant
Comcast—the subject of the F.C.C. hearing on network neutrality at the Harvard Law School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts—acknowledged that it did exactly that….
Be sure to read the whole article on Portfolio.com. Very shady, very corrupt, and an indicator of the lengths Comcast and others will go to control what web sites you have access to.
A few months ago I was at Blog World Expo in Las Vegas, and I was amazed at the cult icon status some of the influential bloggers had achieved. It was really quite cool to see these bloggers in person, and to see them interact with their readers.
So now we see the rise of a new web startup based on this phonomenon. You have your tech moguls like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. You have your giants without household name recognition like Larry Ellison, Sergei Brin and Jerry Yang. And then you have your web celebrities who are really only famous inside the Web 2.0 community. And darnit, these guys deserve press as well.
This is the theory behind Pop17.com a webcast dedicated to the semi-stars of Web land. So if you have your Andy Warhol 15 minutes of tech fame scorecard, you can now add the hosts and writers of this webcast to the list of semi-celebrities who all of us in this alternative world love. Please someone create, "The making of Pop17.com – Behind the Show."
I have a feeling political marketing is going to dominate AndyBoyer.com for the next few months. There are a lot of interesting comparisons between business and political marketing. So please allow me to indulge myself by discussing an issue that I don’t know if anyone else has even noticed.
Have you ever asked yourself, on a primary night, how are all the candidates able to be seen live on Cable News Networks? Wouldn’t they all want to go on about 30 minutes before the late news, in order to get their sound bites on, but also have East Coast and West Coast Audiences watch live. Plus, the networks need to know when they are going on, so they know when to run their commercials.
So, how do they decide? How does all this get communicated? Are there simply gentleman’s rules that everyone follows? Maybe the winners get the choice time slots? But how do you choose if you split the primaries up for grabs that night?
So for the sake of the rest of this article, let’s assume that every night the Communications Directors talk to each other and decide what time each candidate will go live. And then they communicate the time and order to the networks.
Here’s the odd thing I’ve noticed, and I don;t know where to place the blame. The last few weeks, Senator Obama has taken the last slot, usually starting a little before 10:40 ET. But he is the ONLY candidate I have seen that does not wait for the candidate before him to finish. Just as the candidate rolls toward his conclusion, Obama comes on his stage across town. Then the news networks switch over to Obama, and we miss the conclusion.
So who’s fault is this? Are the other candidates running long to try to derail Obama? Or is Obama coming on stage early to derail other candidates? Or is this just a silly coincidence? Keep a watch next week and let me know what you think.
(Disclosure: I have not publicly supported Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. This question comes from an unbiased political point of view.)
A new web site launched today and was mentioned by CNN.com. The site is called DelegateHub.com. Now, at first glance this site appears to be a neutral, non-partisan site in which questions about the delegate process can be answered. But if you look at the writing,it is a blatant attempt at the Clinton Campaign to twist your perception of the delegate process. The site claims to provide "Facts" not "Myths" about the delegate process. Here are some "facts" it mentions.
1) The first fact is fairly tame and may lead you to believe the whole article is unbiased. "Fact: The Democratic Party chooses its delegates in three ways: 1) through primaries where millions vote; 2) through caucuses where thousands vote; and 3) it gives a role to elected leaders and other party activists in the process." However, read it carefully and you’ll see specific language was included to strip the caucus process of some of its legitimacy. "Millions vote in primaries, thousands vote in caucuses." Nowhere does it mention that Obama basically sweeps caucuses. That line is designed to show you that Caucus delegates are unrepresentative of the election process.
2) "FACT: Neither candidate can secure the nomination without automatic delegates." There are 4,049 total delgates, of which about 3,200 come from state primaries and caucuses. Obama has 1158 of the 2174 (Clinton has 1016). So technically, Obama could mathematically sweep 867 out of the remaining 1100 or so. So, this is unlikey, but not a true fact. Another werid part of this statement is the claim, "These delegates represent nearly half of the 2,208 delegate votes needed for the nomination." CNN says you need 2,025, not 2,208. And 2,025 seems to be the right math.
3) FACT: Automatic delegates are expected to exercise their best judgment in the interests of the nation and the Democratic Party. This seemes accurate, bu tmeans, "They don’t have to, and shouldn’t, listen to their constituents."
4) FACT: Florida and Michigan should count, both in the interest of fundamental fairness and honoring the spirit of the Democrats’ 50-state strategy. Now, this is no more a fact than me saying I think it’s going to rain today. This is like when you are playing kickball and a car drives up, so you yell "Time Out." But the kicker doesnt hear you and pops it in the air and you catch it. Then you claim the time out didn’t really count. This is even more shady. All the candidates adhered to the Democrats’ wacky decision to punish Florida and Michigan and not seat their delegates. Now that Clinton "won" those states (no one else was even on the Michigan ballot) her campaign wants to take away the punishment. Just plain slimy if you ask me. A revote could be fair, but simply counting votes based on a race only one person participated in seems wrong.
5) "The race is currently a virtual tie, with the campaigns now separated by a small handful of delegates, barely 1% of all the delegates to the Democratic Convention." Obama today leads 1319 – 1250, a margin of 69 delegates. True, 40 delegates make up 1% of all delegates. That is one way to look at the numbers. Another way to look at the numbers is that Obama has 51.3% of votes between them compared to Clinton’s 48.7%, which is a 2.6% spread. And another way to look at the numbers is to only count the "Pledged" delegates – the ones from the primaries and caucses (aka the non-Super Delegates.) In that race, Obama has 53.3% and Clinton has 46.7%, a spead of 6.6%.
Why do I care? Because this kind of marketing seems non-genuine. It feels a lot like a web page Mortgage companies put up in order to generate leads. Or maybeit reminds me of web sites that sell "How to Get Rich" books. So I’m curious if I’m over-sensitive, or if this carefully spun web site makes anyone else just a little uncomfortable.
In the very early days of PC Casual games, you had to buy everything you wanted to try. But once the internet hit, and you could try out demo versions of the games for free, the market absolutely exploded.
Well, I think we’ve finally reached that moment in Mobile Games, thanks to our friends at Movaya. Here is their latest release:
The Movaya team is excited to announce the beta release of Movaya TryNBuy: the first off-deck, cross-carrier try-before-you-buy system for mobile game sales in the US.
Movaya TryNBuy is a patent pending licensing system that allows consumers to download games over-the-air to their mobile devices and try games on their handset. Upon purchase, the games are unlocked.
Try-before-you-buy was a major driver in the huge growth of casual games on the desktop and now Movaya is bringing this to the mobile marketplace.
Movaya TryNBuy is configurable on multiple levels including length of play, and number of plays.
Movaya TryNBuy is now available online at www.bustedthumbs.com and will be rolled out to Movaya’s publisher and merchant network over the coming weeks.
To get more information on Movaya TryNBuy, please visit our website.
So, I would love to go into detail about the NFL Experience, a giant travelling tradeshow attached to Super Bowl 42. And so I slogged out the 30 miles to God forsaken Glendale to file a report at 1:00pm on Friday.
However, much to my chagrin, the NFL didn’t have an experience for the public from 1:00 to 3:00pm. During those hour, it’s only experience is for season ticket holders and special guests. Since I had already burned a half day and $10 in parking, I gamely decided to see what else the NFL had for me.
Unfortunately, the only experience I was allowed, was Westgate Center.
Now I need to properly frame Glendale Stadium. And I think the best way to do this is to weave in a popular conspiracy theory. You see, 10 years ago there was this giant expanse of desert wasteland far west of Phoenix. The conspiracy theory is that a bunch of rich guys bought up this worthless property. Then, for some unexplained reason, a highway was built through this wasteland, a giant loop that ran around Phoenix, from I-10, all the way around the city and back to I-10 on the other side. Shortly thereafter, legislators decided all this open land with this convenient highway would be an ideal place for a new sports stadium. And since the stadium was so far removed from ANYTHING, the natural solution was to build a hockey arena as well, and build up the property around the stadium with hotels, bars, restaurants, condos and shops.So if you google Glendale, what you will see is 2 huge stadiums, a shopping mall, and then acres of empty land in all directions. Desert wasteland which is now worth a fortune.
But I digress.
Now I’m out amongst the cacti and my only option is to go hang out by the shopping mall and hope for the best. To be fair, Westgate is pretty cool if you are looking for a place to grab food and drink before a game. All the standard chain bars are there (Margaritaville, Bar Louie, Fox Sports, etc….)
But this really re-iterated the point that at Super Bowl Weekend, you need VIP or Insider Status if you want to do anything cool. Sure, they have parkinglot exhibits and stuff liek that, but without any kind of priority access, you are really getting about 10% of the total experience. That’s not a lament or complaint, just a realization. And now that I think about it, I kind of remember things like the NBA and MLB All-Star Game being the same way (but I had the access then, so I didn’t care…)
So, no great report from NFL Experience. I heard secondhand stories that it was crowded, there was no food and the exhibits were so so. So, i probably lucked out.
For years, we have all been hearing how Mobile Video would soon breakthrough and become a major part of our media consumption habits. And yet, for most of us, it’s rarely or ever something we use. So the question is, "Why aren’t we adopting Mobile Video at the rates we’re expected to?"
Last night at dinner some friends and I surmised the following, and I wonder if you agree. Mobile Video is a "Supply-Side" product. Some of the most powerful brands and industries – Mobile Carriers, Broadcasters, Sports Leagues, Ad Agencies and Media Distributors – would absolutely love if we were never disconnected from highly visual mediums where ads can be placed, or content can be charged for. There is a wealth, or excess supply, of content out there, and the only thing holding back their revenues is our ability to escape from that content. So of course, they look at us and say, "When Andy leaves his Living Room, we need a way that he can keep watching TV."
But very few of us look at our phone – which is our telecommunications device – and say, "Damn, it sucks that I can’t watch TV on this." Now, I have a high DEMAND for a phone that I can take with me wherever I go. I have similar high DEMAND for Text Messaging, a car that runs, laptops I can take anywhere, online services I can use to order anything, and hundreds of other things that I can’t make it through the week without.
But television on my phone? I don’t really demand that. I understand it’s available. I think it’s cool that it’s available. But I can’t think of a reason that I would demand it be available.
And I think that is the crux of the mobile video problem. The marketing campaigns are awesome. The technology is cool. I trust the people bringing it to me. And I love the shows that are available. But those are all supply issues. Until there’s a demand scenario that makes sense for me, I think it will continue to languish.
And so, as we head toward potential Web 2.0 bubbledom and a possible recession, I’m putting all companies into these two categories. Which companies are trying to create their own market out of an excess supply of something, and which companies are providing products and services that fill an already establish demand? I think the demand side companies will survive whatever economic blip we run into.