Category: Personal (Page 32 of 48)
You gotta wonder how a TV company can make this kind of blunder…According to the BBC:
New Zealand rugby fans watching a regular sports programme found themselves viewing hardcore pornography instead on Sunday afternoon.
Four minutes of pornography interrupted sports coverage on the Prime Television channel, after what a spokesman described as a distribution mix up.
The pornographic footage was meant for an adult pay-per-view channel. Instead, it found its way onto a regular free-to-air programme called "Grassroots Rugby".
Rival television channels reported that some viewers were angry about the broadcast, which may have been seen by children.
And yes, I am fully aware that when I run for public office someday, some crackpot reporter will Google my name and the word "pornography" and momentarily think he hit the jackpot…
Here’s a debate some friends and I stumbled into. We were looking for ways that a bad economy could help us correct behaviors that lead to better long-term decisions. For example, if gas is expensive, we start looking at alternative sources of energy, or public transportation.
So in an economy where it costs us more money to drive places, where we have less money for disposable income, and more expensive food costs, we will have to change some spending habits. The question became, will we get healthier.
One argument is that with ridiculous gas prices, I’m more likely to walk to the stores that I need to buy things from. I may start walking to the bus stop and riding it to work. With less disposable income, the average American group of friends might skip a movie or night at the bar to go shoot hoops at the park, thinking that the $100 they would spend together on beers could be used more wisely.
But I can see the flip side as well. Depressed people may skip a night meeting up with friends in order to buy a $5 bottle of wine and never leave their couch. The $8 a pound they spent on turkey could be replaced with $.25 Top Ramen and $1.99 bologna. People could take an attitude of “This sucks, I’m going to sit at home and sulk.”
So I don’t know. I’d like to think that people will move to more urban centers, congregate at parks and places of shared interest, walk and bike places they normally drive, and feel like when all else that they can’t control fails, they can at least take care of themselves. Thoughts?
I suppose we all should have seen something like this coming. With nearly every key executive who is not named Yang fleeing the sinking ship formerly known as Yahoo, a few enterprising young folks put togteher this web site to make it easier to write your resignation letter. Ah, must be good times down there.
Down the road it will be fasicnating to review the complete company history of Yahoo, and analyze their strategic decisions. Can you think of any other company that had such a specacular rise and (possible) fall in just a 15-20 year period?
Nothing brilliant to comment on this week, though there’s a ton of odd unrelated stuff going on. Here are a few things that made me stop and take note:
- Here’s my friend Dan from Manchester making his national television debut on America’s Got Talent.
- I really have to go back and figure out how Nick Licata gets elected to Seattle City Council. I’m beginning to think that moderates and conservatives simply don’t vote in Seattle. Either that, or there’s some weird transition that anyone who is moderate or conservative bolts for the Eastside as soon as they can.
- For all the talk about Erik Bedard not speaking to the press, maybe with all his millions Larry Holmes can find a speechwriter, or at least someone who will keep him on some sort of consistent train of thought. This could literally be a SNL skit.
- The U.S. Embassy told Americans living abroad: "Be Wary of Soccer-Crazed Germans." No word if the Germans responded by warning their people to stay away from stadiums in Detroit, Cleveland and New York, just as a general rule.
- After months of hearing about how U.S. elementary, high scools and colleges are sub-standard, the graduate programs get blasted with this report from Business Week. Apparently there was actually a Web site up for years that claimed to give people answers to the GMAT. Yes, Years. As in, for years the guys at GMAT never thought to Google "How to cheat on the GMAT" in order to fix the problem. Note to MBA grads – there may be job openings at GMAT soon.
- After the purging of the Mariner front office this week, someone asked me an interesting question. If all decisions had been left to the Wisdom of Crowds approach where fans could vote on all matters, could they really have done any worse than Bavasi. In 4.5 years, he’s the only person I’ve ever seen where you look upon the body of work and see no success in the past, no success in the present, and no hope for success in the future. How hard to you have to try to take an 90+ win season in 2003, and decimate the major league and minor league talent without replacing it with much in return?
- And of course, today could be the day that we find out for sure that our millionaires and legistalors all got out-hustled by an Oklahoma oil guy.
What a fun week.
This comes to us from the Stanwood division of Andy Boyer.com.
This is what happens when your marketing team doesn’t check things out with the legal team. Or maybe they couldn’t reach the lawyers, since the whole legal team was in court trying to make sure the Seattle based Marketing team would be out of a job in a few weeks….
No, not those 7 words. But in memory of Carlin’s passing, I want to relay a funny quote I heard today. When asked how he wanted to be rememberred when he died, George replied, "Gee, he was just here a minute ago…"
What did I do before mini-feeds? I can’t remember….
I don’t think Sergei Brin or Jeff Zuckerberg ever envisioned their companies could be used together like this…
Would-be revellers are using satellite images on the internet to find houses with swimming pools – and then turning up uninvited for an impromptu dip.The craze involves using the Google Earth programme, which provides high-quality aerial photos of Britain and other countries. Once a target is chosen, the organisers use social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo to arrange to meet, say police.
I promise, if the Seattle Sounders do something like try to move to Oklahoma City, or spend $117 million on players I wouldn’t add to a Fantasy baseball team, I’ll complain about it. But as long as they keep doing things that impress me as a marketing professional, I’m going to keep sharing how impressed I am.
This week, I went through the pleasurable and fun process of selecting my 2009 season ticket package. In comparison, I’ve completely given up on using Ticketmaster.com due to its inflexibility and 75% Convenience charge. It’s amazing that you can’t choose your seats on that site, but instead are held hostage to a weak algorithm that supposedly gives you "Best Available" in a certain section. Plus, I honestly don’t understand how I can order 5 books from Amazon Marketplace from 5 different people and pay like $15.00 total in shipping, but if I try to use Ticketmaster to buy 4 concert tickets, they want to charge something like $50 just to print out a couple of ducats and stick them at will call. Why? Are my tickets taking a limo from TM HQ to the arena? Is the paper laced with gold? What could command $50 in service charges? Anyway, now I just take the time to go to the stadium, pick out seats I want and leave happy.
But I digress.
The Sounders experience was as close to "Anti-Ticketmaster" as I can find. Even if you don’t care about soccer, I encourage you to go through the process at 
http://tickets.soundersfc.com/ . Choose whether you want to sit or stand during the game. Or if you want to be in a section that sings or not. Take a virtual tour of every row in every section. It’s a very fan friendly experience, and trust me, the fans appreciate it.
Let me know if you have found any other ticket places with convenient tools such as this.