Koo’s Corner

Today we’re going to try something different. Lots of blogs vent, mock, and throw stones at whatever topic comes into their sights that warrant the mean spirited energy to blast. I try to avoid that….but not today.

Its Wednesday night, and the only day of the year that has no professional sporting games. This irks me greatly in combination with a lot of other thigns, so for this one day I am going to break from tradition and just be a complainiing, whining asshole. Below are some things that really grind my gears.

The now resoloved writer’s strike:

Yeah its over, but its affects are being felt this summer. When the strike started in late fall, production shut down on the majority of television shows. Other shows that were scheduled to start shooting, were delayed months as the strike dragged on. Since the culmination of the NHL and NBA playoffs, its been pretty rough with my favorite shows on hiatus or recently retired. The novelty of Ice Road Truckers is wearing off, Penn and Teller’s Bullshit is only weekly (just discovered and love it), and I find myself watching nostalgic looks at history like the drug years and I love the Seventies on VH1.

Gone for now are the likes of Entourage, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Flight of the Conchords, The Office, Lost, The Hills (shutup), and South Park.

Gone for good are personal favorites Sopranos, Rob and Big, and The Wire.

Maybe its that my new apartment does not have an on screen guide, but the combined affect of all of the above shows being out of season or wrapped for good is making me lose my mind.

Yahoo email

Lately, I have been getting a lot of error messages when trying to open various emails in my account. Emails that are spam get into my inbox at a high rate. Even emails with the word “spam” in the title seem to not trigger any flags for the spam filter. What’s even worse though is that reply emails, emails from long time acquaintances, and mailings that I have opted in for go to the spam folder at a high frequency. Every day I have to go “fishing” for lost emails, and I only noticed the need in the last couple of months and fret over what emails I never saw because of the schottiness of Yahoo email. Gmail is much much better and Yahoo deciding to give @ymail email addresses is not going to be of any help.

Etrade.

Not sure if its Etrade of the SEC, but I just opened an account with them and wanted to buy some stock in Jet Blue last Friday. I have had accounts with Etrade in the past and currently have a checking account with them and wanted to take advantage of the really low price dip in Jet Blue. Unfortunately I got the error message below even though the money in the account was started with Etrade checking money.

I have had to sit on the sidelines watching Jet Blue’s stock go up around 20% in the last 3 days. What kind of BS rule is this?

Its a tough time for me right now. The all star break serves as the roughest time of the year for the sports fan. The day after the all stay game, is actually the only day of the year with not a single professional sports game.

Anyways I wanted to bring light to what I view as a sports broadcasting tragedy. No I am not talking about Billy Packer leaving CBS, Bryan Gumbel’s horrible announcing, or Joe Buck in general. Rather the fact that Fox has held the rights to all the BCS games, minus the Rose Bowl, over the last 2 years. However the contract is up for negotiations this fall, with ABC and Fox both vying for the rights.

In my opinion Fox does an inferior job covering these huge games. All the way around (editing, commentary, in studio analysis, camera angles, replays, graphics) its just not as good as ABC and the broadcasts really suffer.

I decided to poll some large and knowledgable fan bases on their preference.

Click below to see image full size

The above graphic has reduced the text but the totals are 86% prefer ABC (95 votes) with 13% preferring Fox (15 votes).

I ran the poll again on another site but this time reversed the options with Fox being the top option on the form. The results were pretty much the same with 84% preferring ABC.

The point of all of this, was to prove my hypothesis that the college football die hards prefer ABC by more than a 4-1 ratio. I’ll spare you the pretty stinging comments blasting Fox.

Even the ABC BCS logo is better than the amateur looking Fox logo

With ratings down over the last 2 years and a clear preference for ABC, the BCS would be wise to take a lesser or equal offer to switch back to ABC. Fox has no college football games all year which hurts the marketing, commentator knowledge, and production quality of their broadcasts. It was believed that Fox was going to make a run at broadcasting some regular season games, but nothing has happened other than the butchering of some of the year’s biggest games.

I’ll be tracking this closely, simply because I love applauding smart decisions and blasting stupid ones.

Saw a handful of nice contenders for commercial of the week, but was really impressed with a nicely executed series of ads hyping NCAA Fotball 09’s pending release (tomorrow).

College football fans are the most passionate and crazed of all the major American sports. If you didn’t know that, that’s ok. If you disagree you are an idiot.

It is because of this that an abnormal % of older college sports fans play NCAA. It’s just another outlet to addiction that is college football.

The first commercial below cashes in on this fevered amount of anticipation for the upcoming season with the first real authentic taste of college football. Its visually compelling and exciting. I am sure fans of all fanbases will watch it all the way through regardless if they are gamer, just so they can get a just a virtual taste of the year to come and also make sure their team is featured in 1 highlight (too much love for Florida and Penn State in this one).

However there are also 2 other great commercials that do a TREMENDOUS harnessing interest from the internet community at large. One features Christian Lander, author of Stuff White People Like, talking about his love for the game. While most people wouldn’t be able to recognize him, his appearance is huge a eye catcher for the millions of people who do. The last commercial below is just ok, but gets love because it has a one second snippit of popular youtube superstar Bubb Rubb saying Woo Woo. Bub

CFB Pageantry

Christian Lander

Bubb Rub makes a cameo “Woo Woo”

Initial Bubb Rubb claim to fame…Oakland Whistle Tips…

Although I usually refrain from blogging much on the weekends, there was a significant amount of news involving what I consider the three most influential Silicon Valley companies. Below is a recap

Yahoo- Yahoo rejected a radically new proposal from Microsoft. Yahoo was given 24 hours to accept the deal, which was not for the entire company but rather just the search component of Yahoo. The offer also asked for the current Board of Directors and executive team to be replaced by new teams led by investor Carl Ichan.

The real news is in Yahoo’s rejection. Yahoo implied that a could deal be reached for the entire company. While this does sound like foreplay for a potential merger, the rejection also included some jabs at Microsoft.

“adding that the requirement to replace the board and executive team is absurd and irresponsible given the complexity of the deal.” per tech crunch.

2008 has had a lot of interesting squareoffs with Obama vs Clinton, Microsoft vs Yahoo, Rodriguez vs West Virgina and Favre vs the Packers now looming. At this point with all the ill will between the two companies, I think this has become a pissing match that Microsoft has the will and resources to win. Its a war of attrition between two tech giants and its sad to see them looking so feeble in full view of the public. I think in the end, investor pressure from Icahn and other key investors will broker a deal sometime in the next month or so.

Apple- Apple, known for their execution of product launches, ran into a snag releasing the new 3G iphone. Unlike last year, new Iphones, needs to be activated within the store. Phones were unable to be activated with issues with the Itunes server causing the first several waves of Apple fanboys to come away empty handed. Just imagine you waiting in line for 1-3 days only to come away empty handed. Luckily though, the product is going over well and Apple is continued to meet demand through the weekend at most locations. Below is a video of a line for the phone in Mission Viejo.

Google- Last year, a popular rumor was that Google would release their own mobile phone. Speculation died down as Google announced their Android mobile phone operating system. However there is now a new wave of speculation around the tech blogosphere that Google may indeed looking to release a mobile phone within the next year. While reports are conflicting, its something to keep an eye out as Google has yet to to take their superior web know how and engenierring excellence and apply it to a hardware device.

Really didn’t see much in ways of commercials this week. This was most likely because I haven’t been watching as much television of late.

However this commercial caught my eye. The Most Interesting Man in the World campaign has broadened Dos Equis brand awareness. The commercial below builds you up, but gives you a short and sweet ending that warrants a chuckle or at least a grin. I also think the slogan “Stay Thirsy my Friend is Effective”

Awhile back I read an article about how Sony has lost 3 billion dollars on the PS3 (2.16 billion in 2006, 1.16 billion in 2007). The artile does point out that losing money on gaming hardware is actually normal (money made on software) and PS3 sales have been better in 2008.

Regardless of what the bottom line says, the PS3 will end up being a huge cash cow for Sony. Why you ask?

Royalties, blu ray royalties.

I blogged pretty extensively about the HD format war between HD DVD and  Blu Ray and accurately predicted their demise and subsequent surrender. So while accountants and Wall street throw stones at Sony for bleeding money, you have to consider that the PS3 was essentially the biggest difference maker in the format war.

With blu ray prevailing, the Blu Ray consortuim (1/3 of IP believed to belong to Sony) can sit back and collect money as the technology is slowly adopted. CNET has a great article about the royalties Sony will be seeing.

The article points out that hardware manufacturers had to pay $15-$20 in royalties to install DVD drives in computers, dvd players, cameras, etc. But for every player in the market came dozens or sometimes even hundreds of DVD disks. Royalties for the disks ranged from 7 cents to 4 cents over the years.

While Sony will only get about a 1/3 of these hardware and disk royalties, Blu Ray via the PS3 is entrenched to replace DVD in terms of consumer adoption sometime in the next 3-6 years. Its going to take time but as more shelf space at Blockbuster, Best Buy, Circuit City, push Blu Ray Players, and the the Blu Ray drive begins shipping in new computers, its only matter of time until Sony dwarfs their loss with substantial profits.

The past 24 hours have been eventful in terms of player movement for the NBA and MLB.

NBA: Former Clipper, Elton Brand has signed with the Philadelphis 76ers. Also heading East is Warriors Backup Mickael Pietrus, who will be heading to the Orlando Magic.

First thought is that its a bummer the Warriors lost Davis, Pietrus, and are going to not pickup Brand.

Second thought, is that we’re seeing a legitimate power shift in the NBA. 10 years ago Shaq went from the Eastern conference to the Western in the same year the Spurs managed to get the Tim Duncan with the first pick overall. Since thenthe Lakers and Spurs have dominated the NBA. With Allen Iverson, Tracy McGrady, Greg Oden, and Kevin Durant also heading to the West, it looked as if this trend was only going to continue.

However since last year’s draft, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, Elton Brand, Shawn Marion, Derek Rose, and Michael Beasley have made their way to the Eastern conference.  It will be interesting to see if the East can leverage this influx of power to become the more dominant conference.

MLB: Typically most years, the big trades happen in the week before the trade deadline. However this year we’ve seen two huge trades go down before the All Star Break. The Chicago Cubs picked up Rich Harden and Chad Gaudin from the A’s while the Brewers snatched up current East Bay resident CC Sabathia.

First reaction as an A’s fan is that we didn’t get enough in this trade. I was a Gaudin fan and speculate that the team felt they owed him a change of scenery after being removed from the rotation. Harden is fantastic when healthy and I just didn’t think the 4 players in return warranted the move. Hopefully the team keeps winning regardless that Bobby Crosby, Frank Thomas, and Eric Chavez are on the DL and that their number one starter has been traded.

Harden and Sabathia’s move west is another interesting trend where NL pitching is surpassing their AL counter parts. With Santana going to the NL, the emergences of Tim Linsecum and Edelsin Volquez, the additions of Harden and Sabathia, to go along with Jake Peavy and Brandon Webb, it seems the NL may no be the premier pitcher’s league.

The Monday after a long weekend is always somewhat more depressing than your average Monday. Hopefully this will start you off on the right foot. At least you’re not distraught as Mr. Peter Givens below.

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With the sport’s world in a somewhat of a dead time in between now and the fall, some of my fellow Bucknuts community members started a topic on favorite youtube videos.

Below are a couple I had not seen before.

Bugatti Veyron vs Euro Fighter Typhoon

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The Website is Down also known as sales guy vs web dude

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.

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