BlogSat

Being jetlagged means I get to delight in really bad late night TV. Favorite comments today morning. From an infomercial: "Websites never sleep so they're always making money for you" From the same infomercial: "Starting a business is as simple as sending an email." "I hate Google": from a sitcom where protagonist's date finds out something unflattering about him using a pretty decent search engine

Back from a personally important, eventful and happy vacation. :) But I'll re-start bloggin with a rant! I was really annoyed by the sheer incompetence of the marketing team of a certain large consumer electronics company at CES. Imagine a high-profile presentation, thousands of people watching and you demo your latest technology. The demo is well-choreographed with your CEO on stage and two "users" of your technology talking about how the technology has improved their lives. One "user" shows a video of her infant daughter, talks about her hometown, how the technology is so impressive and has made her world a better place. The "users" are really polished and demo is very clearly canned, but still impressive. Applause all around. If it had ended there, I'd have been fine with it. Except that it didn't. A couple of hours later, I strolled over to the CES booth of the same company to show a demo of one of their technologies to a colleague. I imagi...

Its a pity I missed this because I had to work instead.:( It would help plan stuff if CEOs advertised their talks properly. Y'know like "Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast featuring a performance by the Flight of the Conchords, that awesomely quirky show on HBO"

Another awards ceremony , except the winners here are the"favorite" companies/products of readers of four leading techblogs. I see why everyone is doing this, but still think its silly if this succeeds in the long-run: - The blogs' motivations are clear: they're growing and trying to diversify (conferences, events etc.) and this is part of it. With the sponsors and tickets, they will turn a profit on it, while raising their collective profiles further. - The companies motivations are clear: at least the winners: everyone likes the free marketing. - The audience: .... people like awards ceremonies? people like comparing things? Products should be reviewed and critiqued, and companies should be rewarded on the stock-market. This feel-good award-fest (while it may be fun) is questionable in value at best. Awards for the best CEO? Best business model? c'mon! And what the hell are the acceptance speeches going to be like? Are there people going to be there that actual...

I love coming across simple, non-intuitive results. I just got back from CES in Las Vegas (more on that later..if I get to it!) and learned what I thought was a fascinating piece of information from a cab driver. His take: he actually made less money during the busy CES period, unlike my natural assumption that the busy convention period may be great for business. The reasoning: the crowd and the traffic jams it resulted in meant a journey that would take 10-15 mins was now taking 45 mins. So even though there were in theory more rides available, it took 3 times as long to complete a single, so net-net he believed he was doing fewer rides (and less money) during the day.

My opinion of myself is falling quickly.:) I'm watching this movie right now! I think I'm enjoying the setting more than anything else. Sandra Bullock is wearing a " University of Chicago " T-shirt and just crossed Wacker Dr .....now she's walking under the EL ,.... Sigh..nostalgia.:

Unsurprisingly the media reports YouTube stats went up during the holidays. (Note: I neither confirm nor deny:)) Here's what I'm worried about though, I did watch more YouTube than usual during the holidays, but I spent at least two orders of magnitude more time on Hulu