Category: audiocasts

zombie brands – what gives?

On By Rick McIn audiocasts, economicsLeave a comment

Great audiocast on Slate:

tabcan.gifZombie Brands! Why Tab, the Taurus, and so many other failed products are getting resurrected, by Daniel Gross

Ford Taurus. McRib Sandwich. Commodore computer. Indian motorcycles. Dodge Charger. Polaroid cameras.

I thought these products were dead

What gives? Why kill a product only to resurrect it?

Businessspeople and marketers put great store in the concept of brand equity, the set of intangible factors that account for the value of a brand or a product. Even when products fail or are withdrawn from the marketplace, they still retain vestigial brand equity. Some consumers used the product or will recall the name from advertisements.

And given the cluttered marketplace, any advantage helps.

That’s precisely what Ford recognized in slapping the Taurus name on an existing model, the 500. “Consumer awareness of the Taurus name is double the Five Hundred that it’s replacing,” Ford executive Mark Fields said in February when he announced the re-running of the Taurus. The company also noted that even after its retirement, the Taurus “is one of the top three most recognized Ford nameplates, behind only the F-Series and Mustang.” For a corporation not to use such an intangible asset would be wasteful.

Listen to the MP3 audio version of this story here, or sign up for Slate’s free daily podcast on iTunes.

Attack of the zombie brands! – By Daniel Gross – Slate Magazine

A follow-up post: Attack of the Zombie Brands II

music = rap and hip hop dying?

On By Rick McIn audiocasts, musicLeave a comment

An NPR audiocast alerted me to this surprising fact:

According to Billboard, rap and hip-hop album sales are down by more than 40 percent compared with the year 2000. It’s hard to know why the genre is suffering a bigger blow than rock or pop.

Some industry experts say young people are fed up with the violence, degrading imagery and lyrics. Others say the music is just as popular as it ever was, but that fans have found other means to consume the music.

Latino Leadership Circle: Is Hip-Hop Dying or Going Underground?

Canada – cheapest 2GB iPod Nano

On By Rick McIn Apple, audiocasts, music, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Well, a worldwide survey was done based on the latest Apple 2GB iPod Nano in U.S. dollars and found that Brazilians pay the most for an iPod, shelling out $327.71, well above second-placed India at $222.27.

Canada was the cheapest place to buy a Nano at $144.20, while Australia ranked 19th at $172.36, cheaper than Germany ($192.46), France ($205.80), South Korea ($176.17) and China where the machine is manufactured. The U.S. was fourth cheapest at $149.

Price comparison for iPod around the world

book – John Hodgman

On By Rick McIn Apple, audiocasts, books, humour, miscellaneous, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Rockin’ tipped me off to the hilarious John Hodgman book, The Areas of My Expertise.

An Almanac of Complete World Knowledge Compiled with Instructive Annotation and Arranged in Useful Order by Me, John Hodgman, a Professional Writer, in the Areas of My Expertise, which Include: Matters Historical; Matters Literary; Matters Cryptozoological; Hobo Matters; Food, Drink, & Cheese (a Kind of Food); Squirrels & Lobsters & Eels; Haircuts; Utopia; What Will Happen in the Future; and Most Other Subjects; Illustrated with a Reasonable Number of Tables and Figures, and Featuring the Best of “Were You Aware of It?”, John Hodgman’s Long-Running Newspaper Novelty Column of Strange Facts and Oddities of the Bizarre.

The Areas of My Expertise – Wikipedia

Very original.

Actually, I downloaded it for free (email address required) from iTunes as an audio book with accompaniment by frequent collaborator Jonathan Coulton.

The Areas of My Expertise

best interview of 2006 – Eric Schmidt

On By Rick McIn Apple, audiocasts, Google, internetLeave a comment

(If this post looks too long, boring and geeky, instead listen to the 10min audiocast.) If it won’t play on your computer, you can hear the superb interview by clicking a link at it at the bottom of this page.

Not everyone agrees, but for me Eric Schmidt is the person best placed to predict the future of the internet.

He’s the CEO of Google. On the Apple Board of Directors. And capable of almost anything.

From his article in Economist:

Eric.jpgThe internet is much more than a technology—it’s a completely different way of organising our lives. But its success is built on technological superiority: protocols and open standards that are ingenious in their simplicity. Time after time they have trounced rival telecommunications standards that made perfect commercial sense to companies but no practical sense to consumers. …

But what’s surprising is that so many companies are still betting against the net, trying to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions. The past few years have taught us that business models based on controlling consumers or content don’t work. Betting against the net is foolish because you’re betting against human ingenuity and creativity.

Of course this new technology raises profound challenges for many established companies. Skype, an internet telephony business (voice over IP), is as disruptive to the economics of the telecommunications industry as China has been to the global manufacturing sector. But that disruption is only going to intensify.

In 2007 we’ll witness the increasing dominance of open internet standards. As web access via mobile phones grows, these standards will sweep aside the proprietary protocols promoted by individual companies striving for technical monopoly. Today’s desktop software will be overtaken by internet-based services that enable users to choose the document formats, search tools and editing capability that best suit their needs.

…

The fastest-growing parts of the internet all involve direct human interaction. Think about the blogging phenomenon and social networking sites like MySpace in America, Bebo in Britain, Orkut in Brazil, CyWorld in Korea and Mixi in Japan. In 2007 the virtual communities so prevalent in Asia and among students will become mainstream. Political pundits may claim that society is becoming atomised, but online communities are thriving and growing. The internet is helping to satisfy our most fundamental human needs—our desire for knowledge, communication and a sense of belonging.

Trend is not destiny, of course. But as a no-nonsense sports writer once wrote during the depth of America’s Depression, “The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong—but that’s the way to bet.” We’re betting on the internet because we believe that there’s a bull market in imagination online.

The World In 2007 | Dont bet against the internet

review #1 – MacBook

On By Rick McIn Apple, audiocasts, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Still using my old Powerbook as the work horse.

But slowly I’m shifting my iLife to the new MacBook laptop. (iLife is music, audiocasts, photos and video.)

Worst thing about the MacBook?

Some of my old software does not work with the MacBook Intel chip.

Best feature?

The Magsafe power connector.

magsafesmall.jpg

David Pogue, tech columnist at the New York Times, has listed his favorite product features of 2006. This list is all about the small touches on products that really make you think that someone thought about these items before they tried selling them.

One Apple feature made it on the list, and I must agree with the good Mr. Pogue on this one. The Magsafe connector is a marvel of technology. As David points out there is no ‘right side’ on the plug, and it pops out if the cord is jerked instead of dashing your MacBook, or MacBook Pro, on the floor.

Pogue’s Top Ten new product features of 2006 – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

BBC – who stole the Baghdad billions?

On By Rick McIn audiocasts, bad news, government, IslamLeave a comment

Billions of dollars are missing in Iraq.

Where are they?

This 2-part audiocast is a shocker. I’ve listened to it several times.

Iraq has become a vast financial black hole.

Since the war began in 2003, the Americans have spent around $30 billion of their money – and at least $20 billion of Iraq’s own money – in rebuilding the country. But where has it all gone?

Mark Gregory has followed the money trail from Iraq to Washington via a kebab shop in Jordan.

He discovers that there have been allegations of fraud, mismanagement and corruption on such a gigantic scale that much of the money is now untraceable. …

The US-led administration, talking shortly before the return of sovereignty, offered a vision of a country in which the lights worked and clean water flowed from the taps.

But two-and-a-half years after the handover, many Iraqis say their lives are getting worse despite the vast sums allocated for rebuilding.

Mark Gregory explains how profiteering, corruption, bad management and the strength of insurgency have all paid a part in the failure to rebuild Iraq.

BBC results for Baghdad billions

Read a summary on the BBC website: Baghdad’s ‘missing’ billions

mission-accomplished.jpg

nutrition – is corn killing me?

On By Rick McIn audiocasts, books, food, health & fitnessLeave a comment

I’m no wimp when it comes to nutrition.

But with my processed food diet, sounds like I won’t live long enough to read a 400 page book about food: The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

But the Slate.com book review club delivered a terrific audiocast. Stephen Metcalf is a particularly eloquent and articulate reviewer. Listen to that podcast.

For reasons historic and political, corn is used to feed American cattle. Unfortunately a corn diet can kill a cow. Thankfully we have drugs to keep the poor beasts alive until slaughter date. (About 18-months-old, I believe.)

Consider a McDonald’s lunch. Corn feeds the cow that turns into the burgers. Corn is the oil that cooks the fries. And corn syrup sweetens the shakes and the soft drinks. Corn even makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients in Chicken McNuggets.

If you wisely avoid Rotten Ronnie’s, know that a quarter of the products in your grocery store contain corn.

Avoiding corn is as easy as avoiding things made in China.

This cannot last much longer. So much petroleum is needed to keep the corn economy running that the corn economy is not sustainable long-term. Something must change.

New Zealand was held up as a non-corn-based model. They dropped all agricultural subsidies long ago.

Omnivore\'s Dilemma

does TV cause autism?

On By Rick McIn audiocasts, bad news, health & fitness, TVLeave a comment

Sounds crazy?

Child autism rates have been rising over the past few decades. What’s causing it?

autism.jpgGregg Easterbrook paints a pretty convincing argument:

Today, Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of 3.

The researchers studied autism incidence in California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington state. They found that as cable television became common in California and Pennsylvania beginning around 1980, childhood autism rose more in the counties that had cable than in the counties that did not. They further found that in all the Western states, the more time toddlers spent in front of the television, the more likely they were to exhibit symptoms of autism disorders.

TV Really Might Cause Autism – Slate.com

Listen to the Slate.com audiocast.