There are probably only 2 products that I have, that I would say I am addicted to. The first being my strong addiction for Lemon Propel (mmm) and second my Apple Iphone.
Today a couple of blog worthy items surfaced about my favorite gadget.
An interesting read as I have a front row seat to this clash between Iphone and corprate wisdom. I work down the road from Apple (literally) and although it may be the most popular phone for employees, all corporately distributed phones remain with Verizon hence not the ATT Iphone. It will interesting to see if this will continue to be our policy as the initial wave of 4 employees with an Iphone after opening weekend has ballooned up to seemingly about 25% of the company.
The other interesting note On the Iphone that surfaced is today is the strong rumor that Apple will begin shipping Iphones in May that run on the faster 3G data network. Currently Iphone’s run on the slower Edge data network meaning web browsing and viewing email can take elongated amount of time. Most other smart phones run on the faster 3G network, thus making Blackberry’s and Palm devices a more attractive option for power users.
The 3G Iphone combined with other enhancements in the works will become a much more viable product for the corporate business market. I think in time I think Apple may look to split the Iphone brand and have a version of the Iphone targeted to a younger more social audience with a more performance orientated Iphone being segmented for the older and corporate audience.
Regardless of what Apple does, I would say its likely I will give them more money at some point. But hey, it still beats a lot of the other items I purchase with my discretionary income.
Before i go into this week’s commercial of the week, I wanted to call attention to the unbelievable amount of ad spending by brokerage houses during this NCAA tourney. It’s so excessive that their frequency almost warrants its own drinking game.
I guess it makes sense as the audience skews to college grads who are more likely to be doing some financial planning in addition to the recent market voliality. However it seems to be a little overkill with numerous ads by AG Edwards, Etrade, Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Hartford, Pacific Life, Principal Financial Group, ING, AIG, Wachovia, Edward Jones, T Rowe Price, and UBS.
Although I was a little turned off by the abundance of financial ads, I did like below New Balance advertisement.
New Balance is not a sexy brand, but makes high quality durable shoes. They have a high level of customer satisfaction and brand loyalty, but tend to avoid glitzy ad campaigns and celebrity endorsers.
The below ad resonates with runners and is engaging enough to keep you watching despite its length.
Update: I have attached a couple more of these smart ads that extend the concept that running is a tumultuous relationship. Glad to see New Balance executing on a well though out ad campaign that embraces the sentiments of so many runners.
“I regret leaving behind my friends and teammates, but I need to stand up for what I know is right. I wore the winged helmet with pride, whether we won or lost, whether things were going well or times were tough.
Michigan football was a family, built on mutual respect and support for each other from Coach Carr on down. We knew it took the entire family, a team effort, and we all worked together. I have great trouble accepting that those family values have eroded in just a few months. That same helmet, that I was raised on and proudly claimed for the last two years, now brings a completely different emotion to me, one that interferes with practicing and playing my best and mentally preparing for what is required.
That I am unable to perform under these circumstances at the level I expect of myself, and my teammates and Michigan fans deserve, is why I have made the decision to leave. To those of you outside the program, the loyal Michigan fans and alumni, I know you will have trouble understanding, but I do want to thank you for your years of support. I wish my teammates the best and will always be proud to have been a part of Michigan football over the past two years.“
Boren joins 2 fellow offensive lineman and quarterback Ryan Mallet as those who have opted to leave Michigan rather then be a part of Rich Rodriguez’s transformation. There are rumbling that Boren is considering Ohio State and Cincinnat.
-It only gets worse for the Wolverines as the local media is beginning to take a look at Michigans’ academic programs for athlets. Mlive, has done an extensive search into the subject and found some alarming trends found below.
Click to enlarage
-It was also a rough day for Astros shortstop Kazuo Matsui. He was placed on the disabled list where his injury was made pubic for all sports fans.
“A slower-than-expected recovery means Matsui could need four weeks to fully recover from surgery to repair an anal fissure, a tear of the skin near the anus that causes bleeding and discomfort.”
- The NCAA tourney tips off again tomorrow. I’ll say West Virginia beats Xavier in a tight game, UCLA pulls away from Western Kentucky late, UNC edges out Wazzou by 10, with Loisville and Tennessee playing the game of the night. I’ll say Tennessee by 3.
I am some what compelled to pick Xavier and Louisville but I’ll stick to my bracket for now.
Here are some mid week thoughts on the world of sports.
- The MLB season kicked off this early morning with the A’s playing the Redsox in…… Japan. This 2 game series will count before both teams fly back to the states to play a couple of exhibition games, before once again starting the regular season. The game started at a 3 AM PT and was an A’s home game despite that Boston has 2 prominent Japenese players.
- Its going to be a rough transition in Ann Arbor for Rich Rodriguez. With the dramatic change in system, I don’t know if Rodriguez will ever get his program back to the stature that the AD and boosters expect it to be. Last week I blogged about Terrelle Pryor selecting Ohio State over the Wolverines, which now leaves Michigan with a pretty barren and bleak QB situation.
Although there has been a lot of rumblings of the Rodriguez regime overhauling the complacent attitude of the team, some Wolverines have not taken to the change so kindly. Starting offensive guard Justin Boren (a Michigan football legacy) has decided to leave the program. Its an extreme rarity to have a starter transfer and one that has been on campus for 2 1/2 years. Boren was in position to be an all conference player but obviously butted heads with the new regime. The more interesting tidbit is that its in the realm of possibility that Boren would transfer to Ohio State. He would not be eligible for a scholarship due to it being an inter conference transfer, but Boren is a Central Ohio native who almost picked the Buckeyes over Michigan. Keep an eye on this as Boren’s brother ,a high school junior looking for a OSU offer, might be the enticing last piece for this recruiting puzzle. If so it would be the first football transfer from Michigan to Ohio State in the history of the rivalry (historians correct me if I am wrong)
- My bracket is doing ok. The games have been fun to watch. UNC is dominating. Can’t wait for Thursday. My Final 4 is in tact so far (Texas, Tennessee, UCLA (apparently the refs and god are a fan of), and Kansas.
- Lastly the 49ers have already butchered this years draft. They in essence traded the 7th pick in the draft for Joe Staley (who has not lived up to the billing thus far) and now have lost their 5th round pick for tampering violations stemming from last year’s courting of Lance Briggs. Even worse the niners will have to flip flop their 3rd round pick with the Bears moving them back from 7th to 12th. The Niners, a proud dynasty in the nineties built on consistent proficiency in the draft, now find themselves sand bagged by a string of incompetent decisions which has essentially already ruined a draft day that is still a month away.
On Friday I anointed the Pontiac Spy Hunter commercial as my commercial of the week. Watching basketball this weekened I have seen another Pontiac Commercial countless times. A couple of my buddies pointed out that for some odd reason it looks like my name is spelled out in what looks like blood under the car when it goes sideways 21 seconds into the advertisement. This commercial plays about 4x a day during the NCAA tourney and is beginning to freak me out.
At my company any customer facing content has to be signed off by a multiple people. I am sure Pontiac is the same, which makes me even more curious why Ben appears under the car. Maybe they or their ad agency will care to comment
Lots of cool commercial have been debuting this week, but I got to show love for this nostalgic Pontiac ad.
Spy hunter was a very popular arcade and Nintendo game in the 80’s. If you are a guy between the ages of 25-40, chances are you probably are at least semi familiar with it.
Looking to hit that same age market, Pontiac has crafted the below commercial. It’s a great concept capitlizing on 80’s nostalgia that is executed really well. My first inclination was to play Spy Hunter and not buy a Pontiac, but in this day and age any commercial that makes a positive impression and is memorable is affective compared to the rest of the advertising riff raff out there.
Today Terrelle Pryor announced that he will join the 2008 Ohio State football recruiting class.
The above video is a lot better than ESPN’s live feed who butchered it by cutting to the annoucement after the cat was out of the bag.
Pryor is the number one rated high school football player in the country. His team won the Pennsylvania state championship in football and just this past weekend won the state basketball championship. Pryor is almost as equally thought of as a basketball player as well. Other accolades include being the US Army All Star game MVP in addition to countless other prestigous player of the year awards.
His recruitment has been followed more intently than any other high school athlete and was only amplified by his last minute decision in early February to extend his recruitment past National Signing day (an extreme rarity).
Through out his recruitment, the experts were nowhere near the truth that Ohio State was never legitimately challenged for Pryor’s services. ESPN’s expert, Tom Luginbill, was completely in the dark with others joining him with off base commentary and predictions.
The truth is that Pryor always leaned towards the Buckeyes and as stated wanted to play within driving distance of his hometown outside of Pittsburgh. So called infatuations with schools outside of the midwest (Michigan, Ohio State, West Virginia, and Penn State) was merely talk.
From the start Pryor leaned towards the Buckeyes and was impressed with Troy Smith’s tenure as a starting QB at OSU. Pryor attended OSU’s camp in the summer and was awed by the facilities, and coaching staff. More importantly he got to meet Smith in addition to a good portion of the already stacked OSU recruiting class.
As the football season unfolded, Pryor became closer and closer with the coaching staff as well as the growing talented 2008 class. Other schools made strong cases, but nobody ever made up any ground on Ohio State. Sure the possibility of starting role as a freshmen was intruiging and spread offense was enticing, but the more Pryor thought about it, being surrounded by top tier talent and a more NFL like offense appealed to him.
No school even stood out as a second place option. WVU was probably in line after the Buckeyes, but that all changed when Rich Rodriguez left for Michigan. Although Oregon was kind of the running (not really despite what anyone thinks), it was now down to Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State. Pryor was rumored to be visiting Penn State during the Ohio State game but canceled citing he didn’t want to be on the Nittany Lion sidelines rooting agaisnt them.
Charlie Batch became an advisor to Pryor and accompanied him on a trip to Michigan. Michigan fans knew midway through the trip that it wasnt going to happen as Pryor look disengaged and uninterested at a Michigan Basketball game. As signing day approached it was clear that Pryor was OSU bound.
Down the home stretch, Penn State made a late push and made overtures to his father and high school head coach who became enamored with the fallen Big Ten powerhouse. With both role models pushing for Penn State, a school he never really considered, Pryor agreed to delay his decision past National Signing Day and promised to make a visit to Penn State.
With basketball season in full swing, Pryor’s cramped schedule prohibited from visiting Penn State. He did however find time to visit Ohio State again with a high school teammate, hoping to persuade him to follow him to Columbus the following year. The weekend Pryor was supposed to visit Penn State, his dad suffered a heart attack keeping him from making the visit.
Pryor let the word out that he was now fully on board with Ohio State and was rumored to make dorm arrangements with fellow recruits for Summer at Ohio State. He opted to wait past basketball season as the state finals would be held on Penn State’s campus where he could take in the campus as promised to his father, while also avoiding a potentially hostile situation with a Penn State friendly crowd.
With the state title in the bag, Pryor ended the suspense and opted for Ohio State ending one of the most suspenseful recruitments of all time. Thousands of articles were written from hundreds of media outlets. Some were off base, some were right on the money, and some were led awry by Pryor himself, his coach, and journalists who just didn’t know any better. In the end he picked the only school that felt right.
In the words of Jim Rome (who i don’t like), the bottom line is ” BOHICA for Michigan and Penn State. BOHICA stands for, Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.”
For years media companies have struggled on how to distribute their content online. Youtube postings were illegal in most cases but had the most traffic while corporate websites like nbc.com and mtv.com gave companies control of the content yet were not built as user friendly web video depositories.
Similar to how Itunes was the pioneering force behind legal music downloads, newly released hulu.com serves as Fox and Universal’s best stab at distributing content online legally.
The website feel is terrific with the actual flash player being very sleek. Currently the programming available is a little meager but we’ll see where this is in a couple of months. About 250 television shows from The Simpsons, The Office, Family Guy, and SNL can be found here. I actually just watched the first 10 minutes of this year’s national championship game on hulu as well (its all downhill from there).
There are a lot of clips of various movies in addition to a small amount of full length movies like Lebowski, The Usual Suspects, and 28 days later.
The catch is that there is advertising sprinkled into the clips. Sometimes you are given the options to watch a movie trailer in front of a full movie opposed to seeing a 15 second commercial every 15 minutes or so.
Hulu has already reached agreements to have video on websites like yahoo, aol, myspace, and MSN. In addition to being redistributed on those sites Hulu has already attracted a who’s who of advertisers including Chili’s, General Motors, Intel, and State Farm.
So next time you find yourself with some time to kill check out hulu.com and see if you can find some more stuff to help you procrastinate.
I definitely am a fan of the site and am eager for wordpress (my blogging software) to add a hulu plugin so I can show hulu content on benkoo.com. The video quality is better than youtube, the videos won’t be taken down, and its a superior web experience opposed to corporate websites. The advertising and trailers are pretty brief and not too obtrusive and the options to share, email, and embed are user friendly. Hopefully in time they will add more content ( I am optimistic they will).
It will be interesting to see how other media companies not involved with Hulu (Sony, Disney, Viacom,) react. They can either jump aboard for a price, build a similar site, or decide to stick with their current web strategies.
I typically don’t highlight Entertainment current events, but felt compelled to do so as a couple of items that seem to be floating under the radar. Below are some interesting items.
- Steve-O from Jackass fame is reportedly being held at a mental health facility as he reportedly sent out suicide emails before Johnny Knockville and others stagd an intervention. Steve-O has commented on the situation from the medical facility on his blog steveo.com. Steve-O has been charged in cocaine possession related to this incident and has admitted to his drug useage in his blog.
- The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Puff Daddy was behind Tupac’s 1994 studio assault that almost cost him his life. Fans of hip hop are familiar with the attack that seeming served as the starting point of the famed rap bi coastal war. Although no sources are named, the LA times stands by the story despite Puff Daddy’s public denouncement of the article.
- A popular new blog (stuffwhitepeoplelike.com) is gaining traction as the newest internet phenomena. The website is a satirical look at stuff white people like and includes items like Sushi, oscar parties, Netflix, Wine, and difficult breakups. I personally found it to be pretty hilarious although somewhat repetitive and overly cynical at times. To read more about stuffwhitepeoplelike either visit the site or check out this news article on its rise to popularity.
Below are some sporadic thoughts on some of the more interesting things going on in the world of sports.
-The Houston Rockets have won 22 games in a row. Today they extended that streak to 22 by beating the highly touted Lakers. Their next game is at first place Boston which is sure to grab some attention away from the upcoming NCAA tournament. The most impressive thing about the streak is that the latter part of it was accomplished without fellow Chinese Icon Yao Ming who is out for the season with a foot injury.
-Before the brackets were announced, I had my Final 4 as Tennessee, Kansas, North Carolina and was contemplating Georgetown and Texas for the other slot. Now that the brackets are out, my final four is Tennessee, Kansas, Texas, and UCLA. I really think UCLA is a vulnerable team yet nobody sticks out in the West bracket as someone who can knock them off. I tried to justify a Uconn upset but couldn’t. UCLA seems to have the most manageable road to the Final Four.
Some potential games I am craving to see that would occur in the first 3 rounds include
Stanford vs Texas
Memphis vs Pitt
Indiana vs UNC
Kansas vs Vanderbilt
USC vs Kansas State
- Number 1 football recruit in the country, Terrelle Pyror, won the basketball state championship at Penn State this weekend. This is significant on a couple of fronts as Pryor is now a state champion in football and basketball. More importantly, Pryor was able to take a look at Penn State’s campus something his dad required of him before approving his collegiate decision. Rewind back 6 weeks ago when Pryor shocked the nation by choosing to extend his recruitment by not signing on National Signing day, yielding to his dad’s advice.
Pryor has now taken that visit and has announced he will decide where he will play sometime this week. The writing on the wall is pretty clear that Pryor will select Ohio State over Penn State, Michigan, and Oregon.
The evidence
- Pryor admitted that Ohio State was his intended choice 6 weeks ago
- Rumor has it that Pryor recently sent flowers to ailing OSU QB coach Joe Daniels
- OSU Committment Devier Posey accepted a recent award for Pryor who could not make the award ceremony.
- Pryor has never stepped foot onto Oregon’s campus and interest in Michigan and Penn State has been deemed unenthusiastic by recruiting experts.
- Pryor’s high school teammate Jordan Hall has now been extended an OSU scholarship offer. Pryor chose to visit Ohio State with Hall 3 weeks ago rather than taking a visit to Oregon or Penn State.
Pending Michigan Academic Investigation?
The Ann Arbor News released their first part in a four part series looking at Michigan athlete academics. Typically known as a first rate academic institution, Michigan has come under fire in the last year for having soft academic standards for athletes. It will be interesting to see what comes out in the coming days and how far the media will run with it.
