Posted on July 7, 2009 by Andy Marken
Economists are unanimous that regardless of what governments do it will take time, a lot of time, to rebuild faith in financial institutions and rejuvenate the economy. The sudden realization that the emperor had no clothes and magnitude of the financial crisis is only now being fully addressed. In a knee jerk reaction management is moving [...] [...more]
Posted on June 23, 2009 by Andy Marken
“Have no fear! Doc Savage is here!” – Monk, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975) Admit it. You missed Steve opening WWDC (Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference). You missed him walking out at the end of Phil Schiller’s keynote where Steve walks from behind the curtain and says , “One more thing!” No Show – Despite all [...] [...more]
Posted on June 16, 2009 by Andy Marken
Coming Your Way — We believe that Wolverine was more than “a little” irritated when someone decided to steal a yet-unfinished copy of X-Men Origins ahead of the movie’s opening. He probably wouldn’t have been happy if people would have stolen the movie when it was truly complete but this was Hugh Jackman’s creative work [...] [...more]
Posted on June 9, 2009 by Andy Marken
Technology moves so quickly that almost everyone has analog (tape) and digital video they want to save and enjoy. Even with today’s low-cost, high quality cameras and ubiquitous camphones, the results are usually less than great viewing quality: Unless you’re carrying a bank of photo lights around the video is usually a little on the dark [...] [...more]
Posted on June 2, 2009 by Andy Marken
This year management has enhanced its vocabulary with words and phrases such as downsizing, career regression, fiscal consolidation, asset realignment and negative career development. They were developed by some MBA-types to say that a company, down like the economy and entire industry, had missed its projections, fired people and made cutbacks. There’s a new business climate [...] [...more]
Posted on May 26, 2009 by Andy Marken
“I knew it would come to this.” – Beth Charles, Obsession (2009) Open for Business – Apple wasn’t the first to build a smartphone or the first to offer apps. They were just the first to make them real, real fun/interesting. Offer the right merchandise, the right mood and most people will take the bait. Source [...] [...more]
Posted on May 19, 2009 by Andy Marken
Marketing people have done an outstanding job of convincing senior management: We know the right people We need to launch a product with a big bang We need to do a 1:1 meeting with just the right editors/writers/reviewers We need an editorial tour We need four-five star reviews We did it all for them We carefully spend truckloads of money to convince [...] [...more]
Posted on May 12, 2009 by Andy Marken
“Son derriere noir… c’est formidable!” – Hilary van Doren, Fame 1980, MGM Command Performances – Everyone it would seem loves to perform and be in the spotlight. That is certainly true with the noise that surrounds the “gotta be on” approach people have taken regarding Twitter. Problem is even though thousands join each month, only about [...] [...more]
Posted on May 1, 2009 by Fred Ennis
There are two parts to a newspaper: Content (stories, photos, ads, features, etc.) Mechanics (the newsprint, the typsetting, the printing, bundling, delivery, and of course recycling) The good newspapers spend a lot of money on content, and they spend almost as much – if not more – on the mechanics. The rest of the world has discovered the [...] [...more]
Posted on April 28, 2009 by Andy Marken
The world of new media – widgets and social applications – looks like a beautiful marketing hunting grounds. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Imagine people flocking to Web 2.0 locations where they blog. They upload/download audios/videos of specific interest to them. They congregate at business/special interest web sites to gain information and be entertained. [...] [...more]
Posted on April 21, 2009 by Andy Marken
It came as a rude shock to our son…he was no longer one of the most sought after people on the planet – the hardcore gamer. It dawned on him after watching his sister and Mom play their Wii musical instruments, exercise with the system and do a little Dancing With the Stars. While he and [...] [...more]
Posted on April 15, 2009 by Eric Jacksch
Last week I ran into a project manager from Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu — one of the most popular Linux distributions for desktop and notebook computers. In conversation I mentioned that I’m a huge Ubuntu fan, but I run Windows Vista on my notebook because I can’t live without Microsoft Office and Adobe [...] [...more]
