Starting to realize how much I reveal about my age with this playlist. It’s a good ‘un for the bike too.
Author: Scott (Page 50 of 80)
Don’t be surprised if you see more stuff like this as school administrators realize that rugby is not only a very affordable sport to promote in comparison with other sports, but it’s also relatively safe and full of positive life lessons:
“There’s a new attitude in the house,” Del Valle said. “The girls are taking ownership. Rugby promotes character, trust, loyalty and honor. You represent your program on and off the pitch.
HT: ScrumhalfConnection and RugbyBuzz
Check out the beta of Soluto. It’s a pretty cool idea–it monitors your PC at startup to find out what’s being loaded. After your computer starts, Soluto gives you a report of what was loaded, how long it took to load each program, and give you suggestions on which programs could be removed from your startup routine to not only speed up boot time, but also keep your machine running faster. All suggestions are based on the actions other users have taken with the same programs.
If you are running WordPress, version 3 is out. Some good stuff here like custom post types, which make it pretty much a full fledged CMS, and bulk updates of plugins. Nice.
And finally, here’s a great deal on a 7″ digital photo frame
Chick-fil-A does marketing right.
Thanks to a heads up from CouponKatie, we were treated to a sneak preview of Chik-Fil-A’s new spicy chicken sandwich for lunch yesterday, a week before they plan to make it available on the menu. Ok, that’s great. But they did a great job of marketing this new product. So despite being delicious (it was), they’ve also created a buzz:
- The restaurant had special tables set up (with place settings) for those who had made “reservations” to try the new sandwich. There was also a hostess to take you to your seat and bring you your food. We heard at least two other parties ask our hostess what it was all about–a perfect opportunity for her to tell them all about the new spicy chicken sandwich and that it was not available yet. Manufactured scarcity and creation of a group/tribe!
- Every time an order for a spicy chicken sandwich was ready, someone behind the counter would shout, “Spicy chicken sandwich for (whoever)!” There’s no telling how many people stood in line between the hours of 11:00 and 14:00 yesterday who wished they could also order a spicy chicken sandwich, if only they were special enough.
- Our sandwiches were “upgraded for free” with cheddar jack cheese, tomatoes, and lettuce. I’m sure all of these will not come on the stock sandwich once it’s on the menu, but after you’ve had a “deluxe”, are you really willing to go back? Remember, Elaine had never sat in first class before, but Jerry had. He couldn’t go back to coach, but she could.
So props to Chik-fil-A for creating a good product–it really was good. But what a great marketing job. I hope more companies become savvy to these type tactics. It’s in their best interest, and people with reservations love that kind of treatment. They sometimes even write complimentary blog posts about these experiences–more free marketing!
The Breaking Point for Children in Sports:
The middle ground between letting kids live a sedentary lifestyle and pushing them to the point of injury and psychological distress is pretty wide. I can see where parents at both extremes would point to the opposite extreme for justification, but it’s probably only justification.
Selling free food is now known as “entrepreneurial foraging“. It’s for the ubercool only.
When Walmart carries organic frozen dinners and even your neighbor with the Hummer is touting the environmental efficacy and bonus deliciousness of peaches grown within a 50-mile radius of the neighborhood co-op, foraging represents the next link on the food chain of greener-than-thou eating.
This is sort of like charging panhandlers $2 the morning after a kegger to scavenge for yard beers and empty cans for recycling. In my day, we were just happy they were willing to come by and clean up after us. It was a voluntary symbiotic relationship before the Wall Street Fat Cats got involved.
RecipeChimp is a great idea–give it the ingredients you have available and it will give you back a recipe you can make with those ingrediets. But there’s a catch…
If you were too lazy to go to the store and buy food, you are probably too lazy to type in a bunch of ingredients into your laptop.
It’d be even better if there were an iPhone Android app that let you stand right there in the pantry/fridge and scan the barcodes of the stuff you have.
I will give a shiny quarter to the first person who can point out what is so misleading about the title of this post.
But I may have some competition soon, because Foursquare is on the fast road to becoming the most boring, why-do-I-need-this app around. Ditto for every other location based check in app.
However, I have some ideas that would make these apps way better. I only do solution formulation, not implementation…
1) Allow custom groups
Example: The guys on my rugby team could start a group that allows people to check in to training sessions and matches at the different venues we use. You could even give bonus points for making both weekly training sessions, the match, and the after match social. Tie start times in as well. This would encourage people to not only show up to get their coveted attendance badge, but also to show up on time (big issue with rugby players).
2) Allow people to throw their support behind a mayoral candidate
Example: Let’s say I go to the gym four days a week, but I can’t oust the mayor of the local YMCA because he goes 11 times, five of those being just to shower before work in the morning so he doesn’t have to use his own hot water. It would be cool if I could rally The Missus and a workout partner to throw 1/2 of their check in points towards my campaign. This would encourage people who go to the same venues often to socialize with other people who attend a lot. It would also encourage competing factions, branded t-shirts, and eventually a #4sq civil war.
3) Custom badges
It’s 2010, and there still isn’t a “Mayor of Your Mom” badge. Where are our priorities? Put the community to work building new badges and throw them out on a badge marketplace. Let the usage of the users (they could give negative karma to a badge they don’t like/want) decide which badge getting missions are worthy of surviving.
My friend Jen is a native of the Gulf Coast and was directly involved in mobilizing medical care for people affected by Hurricane Katrina. She’s now spearheading an enormous effort to mobilize individuals to participate in getting the Gulf Coast cleaned up…now!
This is a completely grassroots effort to do something besides waiting on big government bureaucracies or relying on BP to take action by using toxic materials.
There’s a website with more information on possible solutions that can be implemented and information on how you can donate to help purchase non-toxic materials to rapidly devour the oil and turn it into dirt while compensating local fishermen, charter captains, etc. to disperse the cleanup materials.
In addition to donating, please post this on your blog, tweet it, buzz it, Facebook it–whatever it takes to get the word out, especially to those who live on the Gulf Coast and have boots on the ground.
Here’s the email I received from Jen:
Dear Friends,
It’s Friday on Memorial Day Weekend. How hard will the Oil Spill weigh on your mind this weekend? Do something before you leave today!! And share this message with everyone you know, encouraging them to get involved and give – today!
Like the rest of my friends and family on the coast, I’ve never been one to sit and wait for anyone to take care of me. The problem in the wake of the BP oil catastrophe in our Gulf of Mexico, is that no one knows really how to “take care of this”. That stops now. I’m done watching in horror as BP makes a bad situation worse with the toxic dispersant Corexit, destroying and forever altering life as we know, life as the delicate sea creatures in the Gulf know it. And I’m done watching the government, USCG and local officials do their dance around BP, talking a good game but accomplishing very little. I’m done watching images of the marshes and wetlands die, and doing nothing about it.
You can join me. You must join me. This morning my team launched: http://cleanthegulfnow.org/ which is a site dedicated to educating the public with the truth about the oil spill and behind the scenes information BP doesn’t want us to know. We are issuing a call to action to contact your local representative to demand BP stop using Corexit immediately, demand they start buying products we already know work (like the Aabaco product described on the site), and demand that the USCG step aside and allow access for all citizens (including and especially the press) to the damaged site to document and tell us all the truth about the extent of damage.
Finally, and most importantly, we are collecting donations to purchase these nontoxic remedies ourselves and will utilize local, out of work fisherman and charter captains to put the product out along affected coastline. Aabaco can produce product at a daily rate that will cost $150,000 each day to buy all they have. Add shipping and compensation for the fishermen who will be dispersing and my goal is to raise a minimum $500,000/day. Any excess will be used to purchase new products we learn about which are safe and nontoxic as well. Information can be found on the site above. The sooner we start collecting the sooner we can start placing orders and using the product. Our goal is to deploy product JUNE 5.
Please – get involved. We need help on this in multiple ways. The $500,000/day goal is ambitious, but I know we can do it. Call your contacts at gulf coast businesses who are impacted. Call everyone you know. Send this email to everyone you know. If people gave at a rate of $100 each day, we’d only need 5,000 people donating. I know there are FAR more people across our country who would jump at the chance to donate to a cause that went directly to cleaning up the coast.
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/cleanthegulfnow
Finally – share your ideas, questions and thoughts with us. We need you all. Together we are better.
Remember the words of Margaret Mead:
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Thank you all!
Jen
Here’s my buddy Sam on NASA TV talking about the batteries the latest shuttle mission took up to the International Space Station. It’s ok…I zoned out a little when he was giving the dimensions too. I woke up when I heard about the nickel hydrogen cells. But after that it was all “blah blah blah….lasers….blah blah blah….ball bearings”.
Lasers and ball bearings are what basically run the whole shuttle.
Sam’s a super smart guy–the first person I consult whenever I have a battery question or can’t find my charger.
Just kidding you, Sam. As I’ve said before, I’m pretty much in awe of anyone who work in the space program. To me, it’s as if each of them could build a shuttle by hand all by themselves. Hopefully, the fact that both of my readers will now see this video will help propel you to fame!
I’m not exactly sure what people expected the POTUS to do to stop this leaking well. For all I know, he’s not even SCUBA certified–he’s yet to produce that certificate to the public–much less an expert on deep sea drilling. And as far as I know, there’s no government agency with deep sea drilling expertise. But wait for it…I’m sure there will be innumerable people proposing one.
And let’s be fair, I don’t see how Katrina was Bush’s Katrina either.
I’m not sure why so many otherwise reasonable people expect the POTUS to have super-human powers to achieve feats like putting on their cape and airlifting people from a flood or plugging gushing holes at the bottom of the sea with their fingers.
I’m not exactly a fan, but of all the ridiculous promises Obama made and expectations he set, being able to summon the powers of the sea a la Aquaman wasn’t among them. And if he spends the whole weekend going to baseball games and playing golf, that’s three days he won’t be signing legislation that puts future generations on the hook for deficit spending. I’m cool with that.
True, I haven’t seen it yet, but here are a few excerpts from my prepared statements…
“See, I KNEW it!!!! I had that figured out during Season 1”
“Wow, didn’t see that coming.”
“They didn’t answer all of my questions. Of course, every question they answer would just lead to a new question.”
“It wasn’t as bad as the Seinfeld finale, but it wasn’t as good as The Wire’s finale.”
“Finally, I can concentrate on my unanswered questions from The Tudors…I have no idea what’s going to happen on that show.”
“That’s a lot of cheering.”
I may cut that last comment out of my remarks when I deliver them live.
Lost Finale Heads Into The Light – Newscoma writes some of the best Lost summaries/observations around. I’m going to read this…as soon as I get to watch the finale.
How to Tweet Your Way Out of a Job – Hilarious.
After Housing Bust, Builders Dust Off the Boom Machine – Demand is demand, even when it is manufactured out of thin air.
Build Your Own Backyard Fire Pit – Ain’t nothin’ better than your own backyard
Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook – Really only need one. I’m not convinced they are competent enough to protect people’s data even if they wanted to.
18 Week Olympic Distance Training Program – Intermediate –
Can Science Explain the Concept of Heaven? – I was really just looking for a yes or no.
You know how pirates and outlaws who rob stage coaches are romanticized in literature and stories? Is the same thing going to happen with car jackers and smash and grab robbers in the future?
Is there a smarter person in show business than Weird Al Yankovic? He doesn’t even have to come up with original ideas. As long as 7th grade girls are changing favorite pop songs every couple of weeks, there will be 7th grade boys who want to hear parodies of those songs.
These have been troubling me for while, and now the national collective brain trust should have time to work on them.