“Rural Americans are less likely to log on to the internet at home with high-speed internet connections than people living in other parts of the country. By the end of 2005, 24% of adult rural Americans went online at home with high-speed internet connections compared with 39% of adults in urban and suburban areas.”
— Pew Internet & American Life Project of high-speed Internet access in rural America
May I add one of my own? When you send an all-company email, please put the recipients in the BCC field so we don’t have to scroll through 300 names. And please, try to resist the impulse to reply-to-all with something witty like, “I couldn’t agree more.” The reply-to-all button should automatically include something along the lines of “This is a Reply-to-All from a Clueless Ass-Clown” …right at the top of the message.
“When one out of five of everyone you know is listening to music on a portable device packed with hundreds or thousands of songs, commercial-free, what can your station bring them that they can’t self-program better?”
— Mark Ramsey quoting a national study by American Media Services
“SpoofCard calling cards offers you the ability to change what someone sees on their caller ID display when they receive a phone call. SpoofCard offers the ability to select a Male or Female voice when making a call. The feature works in real-time and allows the caller to speak in a normal tone while the person on the other end will hear the changed voice.” So, if you receive a call from a nine-year-old girl talking dirty, it’s me.
Mark Ramsey offers some insight into what’s happening (and is likely to happen) as terrestrial radio rolls out the HD channels (frequencies?).
“It couldn’t be clearer that HD will be a new battlefield where the intent of the broadcaster will be to draw the blood of their competitors. We will try to eat our young. As you evaluate this list as a listener, ask yourself the big question: do you want to buy a new radio?”
Seems like broadcasters have a lot riding on listeners adopting HD. I suppose it’s possible they’ll put some really good formats on the new channels but I’d have to hear it before I’d pop for a new receiver. And I can’t (easily) hear the new stuff …until I buy a new receiver.
Chrysler is the first American manufacture to offer iPod integration on their models. In 2006 over 40% of the cars sold in 2006 will offer iPod integration. They’ve sold over 42 million iPods, over 850 million songs, over 8 million videos. (From Steve Jobs keynote at Macworld via Engadget)
Motorola will soon begin selling Web-enabled cell phones that feature easy access to Google by clicking on a button on the phone’s keypad. Okay, now this makes me want a cell phone.
I’m giving the Firefox browser another try. Every clued-in person I know of and respect uses Firefox (or something other than IE). So I’m gonna give it another shot. I miss is the little “click” sound you get with Internet Explorer. I know it’s stupid, but I like the click.
Update: As is so often the case, Andy had the answer/link. I’m browsing with Firefox, now with the comforting little click. But now my little flickr badge doesn’t seem to be working. Must be a setting that needs to be changed.
A video is part of most of our presentations to universities when bidding on the athletic multimedia rights. I’ve never been at one of the presentations but I’ve seen the videos. Lots of snap, crackle and pop. In a recent presentation, our guys loaded up some video iPods (the sexy black ones) with the pitch video and threw in some highlights (TV and radio); a bunch of still images and anything else they could get their hands on. Very high cool factor. The university folks can’t keep such goodies but they can auction them off for a charitable cause or something. The point is, something magical happens when people get these things in their hands. The ear buds go in and they are in…the…zone.
Speaking of iPods… I was in a meeting with some department heads recently where blogging and podcasting came up as marketing tools. I opined that you really need to have and use an iPod to understand the podcasting phenomenon. The head of the division was running the meeting and told each of the department heads to purchase an iPod and learn how to use it. Smart move.
I just came across the coolest thing while reading the Library Thing blog:
“MothBoard allows you to create simple, private discussion boards for free, and without registration. Boards normally expire in two weeks, but you can extend their life indefinitely.”
I’m gonna try this here at smays.com as soon as I think of the right topic. Unlike complex, threaded forums, MothBoard just goes two deep (topic & reply). No endless replies-to-replies-to-replies. And if there isn’t sufficient interest to keep a topic alive, the board dies. As it should. Neat idea, stay tuned.