Andy Boyer

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Category: Personal (Page 43 of 48)

A Moment of Silence for Bill Walsh

July 30, 2007 /

At a time when the sports leagues are under seige from drugs, gambling and violence, the loss of one of the really "Good and Decent Guys" in the game seems to hurt a lot more.

However, the other way to look at the death of Bill Walsh today, is that sports fans, especially football fans, have a chance to recollect and reminisce about a football genius that was both intellectual and classy.  

It’s hard to imagine Bill Walsh ever leading a team who’s star players flirted with the law, or engaged in all out illegal behavior.  You think of "Walsh’s guys" – Montana, Rice, Craig, Lott, Clark, Young, etc….guys you couldn’t root against even when you were supporting another team.

Over the weekend, babeball inducted two of their own high-class players into their Hall of Fame – Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn. When reading the Sunday features about these two gentlemen of the game, it was difficult not to make mental comparisons to the players today that would fill their shoes.  Besides someone like Ichiro and Craig Biggio, it’s hard to imagine who will be grabbing the torch.

But back to football – where the Walsh legacy will live on thanks to the long list of Bill’s apprentices who went on to long coaching careers in the NFL.  Perhaps more and more of these coaches will remember back to lessons Walsh taught, choosing players who love football and achievment, and see that long-term financial rewards come from being good people and players at the same time.   Maybe the fans will start to look to Lindsay, Paris and other Hollywood convicts for their crime fix, and revert back to admiration of the players who excel on the field and serve as good role models without trying to.

If there’s anything the loss of Bill Walsh this week can remind us, it’s that good guys win lots of games.  And fans spend a lot of money to watch teams win games.  Maybe losing one good guy this week will help teams and players look to character as an imprtant trait, and we’ll soon be able to look back at last week as the low point in professional sports, the point where things actually turned around. 

New Music From the Editors

July 27, 2007 /

I’m ashamed to admit that I’m a month behind the release of a new CD from one of my favorite bands, the Editors.  If you haven’t heard of them, definitely give them a listen.  The new CD, "An End Has a Start," continues their dramatic, heavy, yet oddly upbeat sound.  A pretty unique band, so I hope you’ll give them a listen on Rhapsody or your favorite streaming service.

I got hooked after seeing them in Manchester in Fall 2005, playing to a PACKED house.  Then they went and played 7 straight sold out nights in London.  Definitely worth a checking out if you like live music.

The Eventual Death of the Airport Magazine Stand

July 24, 2007 /

Maybe I’m not the average consumer, but I find about 85% of my purchases of magazines and books come during the hour I’m kicking my heels at the airport waiting to get on a plane.  Especially if I know it’s going to be a long flight, I know my laptop will be of limited use, and I won’t have internet anyway. 

Now, this glaring market inefficiency is being solved by Qantas, and one can only assume it will be the first in a long line of dominos to fall.

From Slashdot:

"Australian international airline Qantas has just announced in-flight broadband will be available across all classes in its new fleet of A380s. Also on offer will be laptop power in economy and internet access in the seat-back entertainment system. They are retrofitting existing 747s with elements of the technology, and providing several ports for passengers with more expensive tickets. It would also allow recharging of USB-powered devices. The Ethernet port is for laptops that don’t have wireless, or for people who simply prefer an Ethernet connection over WiFi.

No word yet on whethere any sites will be deemed "inappropriate" for viewing.  But the ability to plug in and read anything pretty much eliminates your need to buy magazines, portable DVD players, books, or other heavy items that add to your carry-on bag. So, sell your Hudeson News and W.H. Smith stock…

Site to Avoid

July 23, 2007 /

It makes me sick when companies are so successful at being sleezy, that they can afford to advertise in Google Mail, and have a high enough conversion rate that the venture is profitable.

I hesitate to give the url, of my latest nnoyance, because they are probably good enough marketers that they’ll receive a ping and then launch some kid of attack on me.  So, here it is, but you can’t cllick on it.  http://your fortune revealed [dot].com.  You have to actually copy and paste this in and remove the spaces. 

These guys are pretty high on the scumbag meter.  Unsuspecting people will enter their cell phone number and start getting texts, which they will start paying for if they aren’t careful and take action.

I click on a lot of links in Google Mail to see what works from a marketing perspective.  Frankly, Gmail is starting to take on a more Hotmail-like feel with the continual ads for shady thing like this.  It’s too bad that Gmail doesn’t have some sort of "customer filter" where we could choose to block ads from disreputable companies.  Or, if a company gets enough block requests, their CPC should rise.   Ad based email programs work if the ads are unobtrusive, or even better, relevant.  When they are scams, they just turn people to other email programs.

Rant over, I hope this campaign fails.  I for one, will click on the ad every time I see it, so they pay the $.25 over and over again but never get a conversion. 

The Latest Time Killer

July 23, 2007 /

I’ve been doing a lot of blog surfing lately, looking for political sites that should be linking to MyElectionChoices.com (tip: you all should).

One of the political sites I ran across derailed me for the better part of an hour with a referral to this addicting little game: Desktop Tower Defense.

My top score is in the 1300 range, around level 28.  Those damn black things start going nuts around level 25, then the flying thingys start bringing down the house.  Definitely worth checking out. 

Everyone who has ever complained about an NBA ref…..may be right

July 20, 2007 /

So, it turns out that a few million NBA fans may have been right all along.  All of the compaining about NBA officials making ridiculous foul calls to affect a game, might be actually true.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2943095

So, how big a deal is this? I think the most important question is, "Is there only one ref involved?" It seems impossible that one guy could bemixed up in this, doesn’t it?  And it seems further unlikely that the mob launched this idea in 2006. There’s a real possibility that this goes back 10-20 years, with 1-10 refs per year.  I mean, why not?

And how does the NBA address Mark Cuban now?   If this guy did any important games that the Mavericks were involved with, Cuban has every right to be suspicious.

Bottom line – the technology is around now where millions of fans are a more reliable barometer of whether a player or ref is doing his job well.  The fans may need to have a bigger play inhow we police these things. 

Launch of MyElectionChoices.com

July 9, 2007 /

MyElectionChoices.com%20logo.gifAfter a few weeks of tinkering, we’ve launched the 1.0 version of MyElectionChoices.com.  The site will continue to evolve, but in its current form, visitors get to choose topics they care about in regards to the 2008 Presidential Election, then select positions they agree with from various candidates. 

At the end of answering a few topics, visitors then find out which Presidential Candidates they share political views with.  Since we have statements from 17 candidates, there’s bound to be a couple people that you’ve never heard of.

There are still plenty of improvements to be made, but give it a whirl and let me know what you think.  There’s a Groups option at the end to make it easy to invite others and compare how certain groups compare aggregately to National Averages.  And there’s a survey at the end as well that will help us shape the constant revisions.

Feeding America’s Forgotten People

July 5, 2007 /

I’m on the East Coast this week visiting relatives and friends, and doing a little work along the way.  Watching all the July 4th fireworks makes it easy to think about who the "Average American" is. 

Now, in the tech world, it’s easy to forget that the Average American does not have a 130 IQ and make $100k a year.  In fact, most of the young admins and marketing coordinators in these places probably don’t even map to the needs and wants of the "Average American." 

I took a bunch of trains and subways this week, seeing people, and recalibrating my own view of who this Avg American is.  You see a lot of tourists, janitors, cab drivers, and unemployed folks in inner city neighborhoods if you walk a few streets from most train stations and subway stops.

But then today I helped my Aunt deliver lunch to 12 houses, since she is a Meals on Wheels volunteer.  These really are the people you forget about, for the simple reason that you have no way to ever see them.

I didn’t know what to expect as I walked to the front door of recipient #1, who my little card said was a 85 year old with a bad heart.  His door was unlocked and he gratefully commanded me to come in his house and set the lunch next to him.  The TV was on, and the house showed signs of a residence that doesn’t get cleaned very often.  And he was genuinely gracious in his thanks for the meal.  

Other stops during teh day switched between being more or less depressing.  There was a 50ish gentleman who easily weighed 500+ pounds, and I was left to speculate why his mattress and box spring was in his living room.  There was the 70 year old with Parkinsons who seemed physically well-off, but showed the signs of mental struggles, and I tried to figure out why there was a bath tub in his hallway.  Two people failed to answer the door, and I stood with feelings of paranoia and dread that someone was laying on the other side of the door calling for help, but I could not hear.

The whole trip took a couple of hours, and obviously jarred my brain enough that I decided to use space in a marketing and technology blog to discuss it.  So, I guess to attach it to the overall theme, I should say that when we think of who "The Average American" is, we need to make sure we calibrate the scale to keep in mind the people we never see – the poor, the sick, the homebound, the old, the people in mental institutions and the rest of those tucked away in corners of the city where we don’t go.  This "average" person is not a cell phone toting, broadband user sporting an ipod and ripping mp3’s from TorrentBox.

And in case you have 2 hours a month which you are looking to fill up with something rewarding and thought provoking, here’s a link to Meals on Wheels.

Inspiration from an Unlikely Millionaire

June 28, 2007 /

If you had an Internet connection at work in 2000 or 2001, one of your colleagues forwarded you a link to HotorNot.com.  You played with it for somewhere between 5 minutes and 8 hours, helplessly clicking on the neverending stream of pictures of people who wanted you to judge how good looking they were.

About 1% of this crowd probably wondered if the founders were making any money, or if they simply launched the site for fun.  Well it turns out they were making GOBS of money.  Giant trucks were backing up and dumping bars of platinum into their backyard.  In a nutshell, it proved that a simple idea, at the right time, with the right people, was infinitely more powerful, satisfying and worthwile than simply attending weekly staff meetings.

Well, if you read techCrunch you probably already wandered over to this blog post from the CEO of HotorNot. If you have ever considered running off and starting your own idea, here are some wise words to help get you moving in that direction.

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