Below is a great interview with Yardbarker CEO and my boss, Pete Vlastelica. A lot of my job entails explaining our company and the value of joining our vertical advertising network. I think I am doing a pretty good job, but nobody does it better than Pete. Check out the video below to get a better feel for the cool things we are doing at Yardbarker.
- Yesterday I commented on Tesla Motor’s big announcement to produce cars in California over New Mexico. Today another big rumor is floating around that Tesla has reached a deal to sell batteries to Mercedez in their efforts to sell electic cars by 2010. With other big name auto companies believed interested in similar deals, one wonders if Tesla’s future may one day be mainly as a battery maker and secondarily a car manufacturer.
Tesla Battery Below
- Yahoo email freaking blows compared to Gmail. Most of the emails in my inbox are spam and a good 25% of non spam emails end up in the spam folder.
Emails I have had to dig out of my spam folder include 2 job offers, a reply email from a friend, a response from an Ohio State professor about a speaking engagement, and notification that I won an African lottery ….kidding.
Gmail on the other hand is pretty much balls on accurate. Yahoo is a crap shoot, and I am thinking of phasing out the account.
- I gave into the temptation to join Twitter tonight. I’ll recap my thoughts in it in a couple of weeks. Feel free to “follow” me at http://twitter.com/bkoo
- Finally wanted to give a look at how sweet Yardbarker is. There are a lot of cool fuctions and things we are doing, but what continues to amaze me is how easy it is for fans to interact with athletes. Below are some schreenshots of some exchanges between me and Chiefs WR Dwayne Bowe and Angels Pitcher John Lackey
Didn’t see any commercial that blew my mind, but did see a teaser while watching television for an upcoming movie. Definitely peeked my interest. Not sure if this is the initial commercial I watched, but it’s suffice for now.
Below is a video of Arnold Schwartzenegger announcing that California has secured Tesla Motor’s new production facility to mass produce electric vehicles. New Mexico was earlier announced as the destination for the facility, but the Governator (big fan and owner of a Tesla) worked hard to come up with an incentive package to get Tesla to reconsider.
Have to say that I am glad Tesla made the decision, as the company’s HQ, funding, and biggest fans are in the Bay Area. This move reinforces California as the epicenter of emerging green technologies and as the state most pro active against Global Warming.
Busy Day, but thought I would post another Hulu clip. From a classic and all time favorite. Yes, that’s Sean Penn..Great movie, great clip, and great start for Cameron Crowe
If you watch ESPN ever so often, then you are well versed in Stephen A Smith. For those who know him, feel free to skip the video below and paragraph below
Stephen A on a typical tirade
Smith came to ESPN in 2005 and was tabbed as a rising star in sports broadcasting with columns with the Philadelphia Inquirer, his own national radio show, his own show “Quite Frankly” on ESPN, as well as appareances on a variety of other ESPN shows. He covered a variety of sports, but his bread and butter was basketball.
There was one problem though, Stephen A Smith earned the repuation “Screaming A Smith” as he always seemed outrage, agitated, and on the verge of major stroke. He bashed anything and everything and the schtick grew thin. Some enjoyed it but most including myself hated him.
Slowly he started coming back to Earth. His radio show and weekly column ended, Quite Frankly got canceled, and ESPN seemed to be limiting his role in NBA coverage. I am sure this didn’t sit well Mr. Smith, but the real dagger came when ESPN removed him from the stage of this past NBA draft and relegated him to interviewing draft picks on the side. Smith had spent the past 2 years as one of key analysts of the draft.
Smith’s demotion and general angry demeanor has been the talk of the sports blogoshpere for quite awhile, but recently I came across the organization known as Stephen A Smith Heckling Society of Gentleman that I wanted to share.
The backstory is short and sweet. A couple of buddies, / loud mouth wise asses (that’s a compliment), attended the 2006 NBA draft and videotaped various exchanges with Stephen A Smith. In particular they poked fun of the fact that Smith ate a copious amount of Cheese Doodles when off camera. Their jeers and impressions of Smith were ridiculously on target and quickly became a viral hit on youtube.
The following year, the same tandem guys (sobriety again in question), returned to the draft and once again jeered Smith. This time they added a new twist by chasing after players, pretending that a on camera sock puppet was Smith. The sock impersonating Smith was actually slapped by Joahkim Noah and was extremely affective and entertaining with numerous cliche sound bites like “I am Stephen A Smith, and everything I say is important” “Quite Frankly….” “HowEVER….”.
Oblivious to internet phenomena mocking him, Smith served up a gem by going on a tirade on his National radio show touting his love of Cheese Doodles. Once again the Stephen A Smith Heckling Society of Gentleman produced another classic youtube video.
With three popular videos produced, the guys once again took to it to mock one of the most annoying sports personality since Dennis Miller. Below are their efforts
All of the above is just another great and comedic example of web2.0/social media’s impact on traditional media. Tired of Smith, the two friends took a silly day at the draft and grew it to an internet phenomen. Smith has been demoted multiple times while the videos above have garnered almost a million views as well acknowledgements by Tony Kornheiser and Kevin Love.
While its hard to say that these videos played a role in Smith’s plight back to earth, social media serves more and more as the first line into emerging trends, opininons, movements, etc. These videos served as the centerpiece of the anti Smith general opinion that has relegated to a second tier ESPN personality. Their popularity only confirmed what most viewers and maybe even the ESPN brass already suspected :
Stephen A Smith needed to be taken down a peg or two and more importantly should seek therapy.
Props to the guys who have made it a priority in their lives to lead this movement. Also good to see they haven’t tried to monetize their viral hit, but have rather decided to plug a very worthy cause.
I am a big fan of Hulu and blogged about it a couple months ago. At a high level, Hulu is a higher resolution Youtube with advertising except all the videos are legal and come from big name media companies so there is no user generated content.You can watch entire movies and television shows with a sparse amount advertising and even have the option to embed them into blogs. The problem is that WordPress.com users like me have had mild success getting these great videos from Hulu.com onto our blogs. Luckily for me 30 minutes of persistence has paid off. I am sure I’ll post a lot of stuff from Hulu to make it look like I blog a lot, but for now here is a scene from Garden State (good 20’s angst movie).Scene below is fist meeting between main characters Andrew and Sam. Props to VodPod for making this happen, although I had to jump through some extra hoops.
A co worker asked me if I wanted to live the blog the NBA Draft for Yardbarker. I jumped at the opportunity as I have never really “live blogged” anything.
I think I did okay, and the Yardbarker community gave me some good marks.
This week’s commercial of the week has aired in multiple shorter incarnations during the Euro Cup. Below is the full 2 minute piece. Its directed by Guy Ritchie of Snatch, Lock Stock, and Madonna fame.
The commercial is uptempo, exciting, tells a story, and has loads of soccer star power. What sets it apart is the soundtrack and the first person camera angle. Very enjoyable.
