Koo’s Corner

Its been awhile since I wrote a Bucknuts article, and I hope that changes real soon. Below is my link to my newest article 10 Questions Facing the Buckeyes. Its getting some great feedback so check it out.

http://bucknuts.com/news/articles/2008/8/6/koo

Below is an excerpt.

5- Will the offense continue to evolve with the likes of Pryor, Saine, and Thomas poised to make an impact?

Despite the somewhat dated national perception that the Buckeyes still employ a conservative vanilla offense, Tressel has done a pretty admirable job adjusting the playbook and play calling to fit the talent makeup of each year

This year may be his biggest test, as Pryor, Saine, and Thomas affectively gives the Buckeyes a trio of playmakers to augment the talent of Chris Wells, Brian Robiskie, and Brian Hartline.

But meshing these players into the offense is easier said than done. Scouting reports will be sure to point out the explosiveness of all three players, so it will be somewhat of a challenge to get them implemented into the offense without tipping off the defense of the Buckeyes’ intentions.

Tressel did a tremendous job rolling out various new packages for Saine last year that presented defenses with difficult match ups. This year, Tressel has his work cut out for him as Pryor and Thomas give the offense unprecedented speed and elusiveness in addition to the budding abilities of Saine.

It will be a work in progress all season, but keep an eye out for how the Buckeyes adjust their offensive philosophy and play calling to capitalize on this year’s unique blend of experience, talent, and raw speed.

I have a lot of great content I want to write, but its going to have to wait…..

I need to move and I need to move asap. My company is planning on moving to the city real soon and my sublet in Alameda is expiring in 10 days.

Complicating this move is my absolute insistence on getting DirectTV wherever I go.

Its absolutely killing the prospects of my search, but I am hellbent on ths requirement. Why you ask?

Because their are few things in life I enjoy more than watching a copious amount of football. And by copious I honestly mean almost all day Saturday and Sunday (2 screens) as well as the Monday Night and Thursday Night games.

The issues is that in my area only Direct TV offers the Big Ten Network, NFL Network, and of course the NFL Sunday Ticket. At least a 1/3 to 1/2 of my football watching that I hold so dear are on these channels making it imperative that I have the system installed wherever I go.

Unfortunately though, not a lot of small units come equipped with the system. Its a simple pleasure in life I would like to continue, but its going to be quit the challenge here on out. The clock is ticking on me and I hope it works out because I can’t imagine life without DirectTV.

I am throwing kind of a changeup for this commercial of the week. I saw a lot good witty new commercials, but this one grabbed my attention the most.

Awhile back I blogged about how long time oilman T Boone Pickens was heading a new initiative to increase wind energy productions. Pickens is now putting political pressure on presidential candidates to embrace a much ambitious plan (labeled the Pickens Plan) which is outlined below.

“exploit the country’s “wind corridor” from the Canadian border to West Texas to produce 20 percent of the country’s electricity.

Transmission lines would be built to transport the power to places in the U.S. where the demand is. The natural gas, now used to fuel power plants, would instead be used as a transportation fuel, which burns cleaner than gasoline and is domestic.”

The commercial is affective in raising awareness in this great concept. While Pickens has had some somewhat dirty/contreversial political past, the plan is legimate and has been embraced whole heartedly by enviromtental groups thus far.

Unlike its competitor, Myspace, Facebook has earned a great reputation for performance, scalability, and uptime. Today, it seems the system is temporarily down causing many of my coworkers to comment on the rarity of such a platform crash for Facebook. I am sure, it will be back up soon but wanted to point out that even the most revered/untouchable IT infrastructure and back end systems aren’t immune to an occasional hiccup.

Update: Facebook is fixed…30 minutes later

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.

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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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

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