I probably should be putting this over on my wife and my personal gaming web log, but oh well. Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and billionaire says he’d be for advertising on NBA uniforms:

Not only would their logo appear on uniforms shown on broadcasts in more than 212 countries, but those logos would appear on replica uniforms sold around the world as well. That is a unique marketing and branding opportunity that ONLY the NBA can offer. The NFL can’t (although they do offer logos on NFL Europe jerseys), MLB can’t, Nascar can’t. No one else can.

As a fan who’s support for the NBA is waning, I have to seriously disagree with this concept. I think it would be a terrible idea to turn NBA uniforms into NASCAR. For one, the price of tickets for NBA games is already out of hand. Two, would advertising proceeds go back into making the games affordable for families to attend? Doubt it.

For these reasons I’d be against advertising on uniforms and even more turned off at the NBA than I already am. Clean up the thugs in the game, lower ticket prices and our family will start going more often. But adding advertising and leaving the characters and prices the same? No thanks.

Cuban normally espouses some pretty good ideas, but in this case he’s looking at it too much from an owner’s point of view and not clearly thinking of the fans — the customers.

Sounds like the flirting in the Apple and Intel camp is about to move into the bedroom.

Apple plans to move lower-end computers such as the Mac Mini to Intel chips in mid-2006 and higher-end models such as the Power Mac in mid-2007, sources said. The announcement is expected Monday at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, at which Chief Executive Steve Jobs is giving the keynote speech.

Someday how about a Windows/Linux/Mac bootup from the same machine? Stranger things have happened …

Officially this will be announced tomorrow, but tonight unofficially I guess, at 9pm PST via Channel 9 we can find out what’s brewing in the Microsoft Office camp that has Scoble calling it “pretty important.” I’m sure his legion of commenters will be speculating when he stops playing musical comment servers.

Curious what it might be though? Could it be a new product in the Office line? Some new powertoys? Another contest? Your guess is as good as mine. I’m going to try and get over there later tonight and find out what’s happening.

Best Buy reminds me a bit of Smiths Home Furnishings and FutureShop (in the US): a retail store that is cool to visit and shop at, but probably won’t stand the test of time. I don’t know if extending credit to people who shouldn’t receive credit, subpar customer service, shoddy pricing or something else will be the downfall, but they definitely invoke passionate reactions from their customers. Stories like this one from Wisconsin, certainly don’t help:

According to the Justice department, Best Buy allegedly violated Wisconsin consumer protection laws by providing misleading representations to Wisconsin customers about rebates, service plans, supplemental magazine subscriptions, exchange policies, restocking fees, gift cards, and reward zone points.

I’ve been sitting on part of this post for awhile, and added to it just now with the Wisconsin lawsuit news. Admittedly, I was a bit surprised by the number of negative comments when I posted about Best Buy before. Apparently in this particular microcosm, by and large MakeYouGoHmm readers do not care for Best Buy.

Some Best Buy practices, as alleged above, seem questionable and I’ve already pointed out that they are not truly the best buy unless you force their hand — and then they will match any retail store price out there. In that particular piece, they didn’t even ask for any documentation proving there was a better deal. Hmm …

However, my post was really more about their Reward Zone, which we have had no problem with to date, but apparently it’s not been so smooth for others. We also joined the Fred Meyer’s Rewards club recently and we received $19 back from the money we spent in their store first quarter 2005.

We’ll gladly get into these store clubs, even if it means they’ll track our purchases, because we don’t care if they know what we’re buying (with our consent). The money is going to be spent anyway, so why not try and get more value out of the money being spent? As you can see from the screenshot above over the last couple years at Best Buy we’ve accumulated nearly one million Reward Zone points as well as receiving $350 USD in certificates. Yeah, we had to spend around ten large to make this $350 back, but if we weren’t signed up for their club instead we would have received a big goose egg. Please choose the better deal.

A few folks see this tracking as some sort of privacy issue, which I suppose if Best Buy knows what video games, movies and other electronics we’re buying from their store — or Fred Meyer knows what type of cheese we buy — than that could be a very tiny, tiny, tiny invasion of our privacy. Really, I don’t see any issue there either. For one, I want these stores to see what kind of customers we are and how much money we’ll spend in their stores if they treat us right. If they treat us like crap, then we’ll vote with our feet and give their competitor the business.

Never say any one customer doesn’t matter. One just never knows how many people that customer knows; it’s the big X factor in marketing. If you strive to take care of that customer, h/she will tell all their friends good things, but if you do the opposite then you can expect negative PR. I live by the 1:20 rule in that it takes 20 good things to be said to equal one bad thing. This is why it’s so important for businesses to get their feet in the door in the blogging world and start working through the positive and negative feedback and follow up with both camps. Quickly. Decisively. Professionally.

Best buy, CompUSA, Fryes, all retail electronics stores that are also online that I’ve seen, frankly, have a terrible online presence in this regard. Sure, many have fancy online stores to buy their wares, but almost nothing in the way of customer interaction. Form based communication is so 1995 it’s not even funny. This is 2005. If these retail operations do not want to go out of business, they need to change with the times.

In closing, our family likes services that point out things we might like, contextual advertising, etc.; we don’t mind being tracked and periodically pitched so long as it is not too intrusive and with our consent.

Maybe some readers can explain the hangup with signing up for reward programs? Nobody forces anybody to sign up for these reward programs. In fact, please don’t signup for these programs, because that will force these companies to make thse programs even more attractive for those of us who do.

I’d like to Share Skype, really I would, but I cannot login. I can login successfully to my Skype account elsewhere at Skype, check my SkypeIN voicemail via logged in Skype account, yadda, yadda, but Share Skype just tells me in red text: “Signing in failed. Please double-check your Skype Name and re-enter your password.”. I submitted a support request to Tech support and hopefully will have an answer soon. I see other people commenting on the Share Skype blog so it could be just an isolated single user thing. Anybody else here having trouble logging in over there? Yes/no?

What is Share Skype? It’s Skype’s first foray into blogging and it’s great to finally see. I must admit I’m a little disappointed they have no trackbacks (seems odd for a company which is so communication-oriented), but at least they have comments, unlike some new blogs popping up.

What would really be cool to see is integration with Instant Messaging inside Skype and the blog. So I could see and read the new posts and then comment directly through the Skype client without having to visit the Share Skype site. Even more cool would be letting me add other RSS feeds to my Skype client. Maybe this is something that can be done with the Skype API? I’ll have to do some more research into this.

The Skype.com site doesn’t say anything yet about Share Skype, so my thanks to the fine people who have already blogged about it, via the Share Skype blogroll: Scoble who sees Len Pryor’s fingerprints on this, Skype Journal’s Bill Campbell feels the “competitive pressure is on” and Andy Abramson loves being listed alongside other blogger luminaries.

I’ve been following Skype since early September 2003. Skype launched on August 29, 2003.

My friend Lestat just shared this with me in the Script School IRC chat: Grocery Store Wars [flash] featuring a cast of spoofed characters like ChewBroccoli, Cuke Skywalker and Darth Tater. Prety long flash video load time, but worth the wait: I laughed. Good, clean fun. Man, we need a humor/satire category here I think. I put this one under customer adventures. I think I’ll never look at broccoli the same way again.

Maybe there are some MakeYouGoHmm readers here that can recommend some organic foods that actually taste good? I do like eating vegetables out of the garden. My head started to spin when I read this definition of organic:

‘Organic’ is a labeling term that denotes products produced under the authority of the Organic Foods Production Act. The principal guidelines for organic production are to use materials and practices that enhance the ecological balance of natural systems and that integrate the parts of the farming system into an ecological whole.

I just searched for an organic retailer in my area (lots of farms around here) and couldn’t find one in a 10 mile radius. Then I tried 20 miles and received one result in Federal Way. No organic stores in Tacoma, WA? No way. The Organic Trade Association’s database must not have used the power of the Farm.

tags: star+wars, spoof, organic

As a developer of software and selling programs on the web, I understand how much it sucks to be ripped off. One of the hotbeds for this illegal activity is the Asia-Pacific region accroding to News from The Associated Press:

Software piracy in the Asia-Pacific region cost manufacturers an estimated $8 billion in 2004, with China, Vietnam and Indonesia among the top five nations flouting intellectual property laws, a global anti-piracy watchdog said Wednesday

With that said, let me add that the actual raw cost of distributing software once it is produced is very small. Most people realize this and some seem to feel (usually those not in the business) that they are being ripped off paying hundreds of dollars for something where it costs a very small amount of money to distribute the actual bits and bytes. The packaging and shipping costs are more expensive than the media.

What isn’t as readily apparent to these people is the time, expense and resources involved in creating and maintaining and upgrading the software. Some projects take months and even years to develop only to produce an end product that retails for $100 or less. The investment and time/resources is then anticipated to be returned when the developers can finally start selling the product. Some people mortgage their future (financially) in the hope that the product they spend time developing will return the investment and allow them to continue work innovating new things or making the existing product even better. Some people spend free time away from their families working on projects which may never even make back the expenses, much less a profit.

In a nutshell, this is how it works for development houses of all sizes. The difference between big and small is, generally speaking, the size of the bank account and talent. A company like Microsoft can afford to dump millions into a project that doesn’t bring back profit, but a small development house may go under if they make something that doesn’t sell back to profit. Even Microsoft, with all it’s money, can’t invest in too many money-losing propositions though or the shareholders will be upset.

For small shops like mine with less than five developers, we have to distribute online. And even when we give away more than 75% of the code we produce, we still have people who steal the code and/or violate the licensing agreements. It’s a cost of doing business.

I buy commercial software, pay for shareware that I use and if I like something that is donationware then I donate. I do believe that most people on this earth are good, honest people and behave similarly.

There are situations where people might have a laptop and desktop machine and share the software between the two computers and most licensing agreements forbid this. I wonder if that type of piracy is as egregious as buying a black market CD (or DVD) in some village in Asia, snagging a bittorrent of the file, checking an fserv in IRC, etc? Then again, theft is theft, so maybe it’s all just different shades of black.

I also strongly believe that the music industry has been raping fans for years. I bought a lot of tapes and then albums and now CDs of the same music. It seems like I just keep buying and rebuying the same media, which is frustrating as a consumer. The same thing is happening with VHS to DVD and … well to the next format whatever it will be.

They want to take away my right to make archival copies and that is wrong. If I buy something, whether it be software, music or movie I should be able to use it for the life of the product or my life. I shouldn’t have to buy the exact same thing again on a different format. Note that buying a paperback book is different than buying an audiobook, I’m not talking about different types of content from the same body of work. I’m talking about the same content on diferent formats.

I believe this consumer abuse, for lack of a better word, has driven more people — some of which would never walk into any store and just steal something off the shelf — to push the gray lines with music piracy, license and copyright infringement. Perhaps it is sort of a vigilante type justice for being taken advantage of in the marketplace.

The problem with this type of vigilante consumer behavior in the software realm is that software is rarely repackaged and resold, videogames being the big exception (how many times has Namco sold and resold PacMan?), simply because it is being improved, retooled and recoded for bigger, better platforms. The little guys out here though like me sure need people to pay for each license or donate if it’s donationware or shareware if it is something they use or the model of sharing on the web starts to break down.

Again, I do believe that most people do the right thing.

It’s too bad that a certain region of the world has a higher concentration of people doing the wrong thing. But it’s equally wrong to characterize everybody from this region as bad people. I have to catch myself sometimes when I get frustrated with certain parts of the world where this type of activity is more widespread. Do you?

Solutions:

For people who make products
Let your customers make an archival copy and be able to use the product for the life of the product or our life, if applicable. Allow us to transfer ownership of that product permanently to someone else (and thus give up our right to use the product any longer). Price your products/services fairly and commiserate to the value and give customers long enough shelf life so that they will not be more compelled or tempted to violate your licensing.

For software consumers
Buy what you use. If you use multiple computers and the license forbids that usage, then buy the extra licenses. If money is tight, and it’s tight for a lot of people, then consider switching to an open source alternative and/or try places like eBay if you need to pick up a legitimate copy at a discount from someone else (watch out for pirated copies even selling on eBay though). Another thought is to talk to the vendor of the program about some sort of discount for multiple computers. If you are using a software or services that have donation boxes, then donate. If you use shareware, then pay the shareware price.

This isn’t fresh news or really a huge surprise or anything, but I was just poking around on my MSN Spaces blog and noticed that the text spans in Safari beneath the side menus. As you expand the browser you just end up with a bunch of dead space. This was done in Safari at 1280 x 960 resolution. Unfortunately I can’t edit the CSS and HTML for my Spaces blog template, so it will continue to remain broken for Safari visitors. This is a good example of the problem with pre-built templates and the inability for blog authors to edit their own templates. Maybe one of the other templates renders better in Safari.

How to tell the mood of your dog and have it sent to you via your cell phone? According to KTF Corp, a South Korean mobile phone operator, they can tell whether your dog is happy or sad and will fulfill this need.

The owner will receive text messages telling them how their pet is feeling, such as “I am happy” or “I am frustrated.”

The article says this service will cost about a dollar: a buck for a bark. The marketing on this one will be a lot of fun for somebody.

Houston, this is a joke. And I laughed: Google Content Blocker

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s advertising for maximum exposure to Web users. Unfortunately, annoying Web content often overwhelms the page, causing many users to become distracted and overlook the ads.

This reminds me of MAD magazine. That was my favorite magazine as a kid. Just checked their official website out for the very first time. I can’t believe I haven’t been here before. The site itself has not come into the internet age very well (not using Zinio for digital subscriptions? Just imagine being able to print out the full color foldable back page, now that would be cool!), but I did get a nostalgic MAD-like chuckle out of some of the messageboard posts like this one from somebody calling himself “Mediocre Man” who thinks his nickname being used in a recent MAD magazine was a violation of his copyright. Fans can subscribe to 14 issues for $16 USD. Nice price, at least.

MAD magazine could appeal to an older and younger audience if it simply started embracing the internet — c’mon Warner Brothers. Currently, they seem like they are trying to stubbornly hold onto an old print magazine model. Not every magazine is good to go digital, but definitely MAD could move forward and do so many cool things with a print and digital edition. Imagine a cool MAD members area (paid) with access to tons of past issue stuff? They could even make money some specialized MAD content to webmasters.

The missed opportunities!