Bnpositive's Blog

I stumbled across this site after a friend sent me a link to a specific page hosted on the site. The page hosted was about “The Noid” that I’m sure most of us remember from our childhood. “The Noid” was a mascot for Domino’s pizza in the 80′s. My specific interest in “The Noid” was that my cousin helped design the original or worked with the person that did. Can’t remember exactly.

Anyway, this website is a compliment to a book that has been written entitled “Television Without Pity: 752 Things We Love to Hate (and Hate to Love) About TV“. The website is a collection of 26 excerpts from the book that are chosen by one for each letter of the alphabet.

So, if you’re interested in little bits of pop-culture trivia like: David Hasslehoff, Trading Spaces, or the long ago mini-series “V”, this is the place for you.

Can you believe it? Google is now capitalized and valued at more than half the value of Microsoft. On the one hand I can believe that the potential for Google to continue making serious cash is huge. If you ever doubt it, just think about what Google really makes money from, advertising. Okay, got that image in your head? Now think back to the movie “Minority Report” with Tom Cruise, remember all the advertising? It was everywhere. That folks is what the future of Google could end up becoming.

Right now Google’s just got internet advertising and starting to expand into some print and radio advertising options, plenty of room to expand into the mainstream advertising areas we’re already familiar with around us.

Source: Google worth more than half a Microsoft on Scobleizer

Received a holiday e-mail from Xbox and this little note was attached.

Tune into ESPN® Monday Night Football December 4th and catch the worldwide debut of a new Halo 3 teaser with never-before-revealed information! Make sure you set your recording device of preference in case of any unexpected bathroom breaks.

My question though, will Halo 3 only be available on Xbox 360? I think I’ve heard that answer before but I can’t remember for sure.

Google is really pushing their Google Checkout option and have partnered with Buy.com with a strong and very visible promotion.

Google Checkout is still nowhere near the popularity of PayPal, but promotions like this with large and great vendors like Buy.com will continue to spread their name and acceptance across the web.

I’m a little late to the game on this announcement but I’ve been buried for the past week in a variety of other things going on in my little world. I’ve just now had a chance to read a little about this after a friend of mine shared with me his post on the subject.

Yahoo and Microsoft have now joined Google in the new format standard, Sitemaps. Many sites use sitemaps as a quick way of getting indexed by Google fast, and now that Microsoft and Yahoo have joined the craze, indexing will never have been easier. The beauty of sitemaps lies in simplicity. Simply create a sitemap once, then it updates in line with your new pages and the search engines index you speedy quick. What does this mean? Well, like I said, speedy indexing of dynamic pages and their static conuterparts alike. All a Sitemap is, is just a simple XML file, meaning that even a novice can create a sitemap, and the benefits are instantly available and noticable.

The article at Profy.com goes on to talk about the response in the industry to this type of standard being established. More information, better organized and more quickly available for everyone to benefit from. It sounds like a win-win-win for me.

It’s too bad we couldn’t get other companies or even these same three to agree on other standards that would benefit everyone’s customers.

Source: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Partner at Profy.com

This week has been an interesting one to say the least. Unless your a resident of Indianapolis, and specifically in Perry Township, you may not be aware of the drama that’s developed this week in our school system.

The quick synopsis is that 4 school board members have railroaded the other three members and have voted to put our award winning school superintendent on administrative leave. My wife has become deeply involved in our son’s school and the PTA. Through some developments for his school, we become acutely aware of some of the behaviours and actions of our school board as we pushed for renewing the Edison School’s contract for our school.

In a complete shock to the township, these four board members completed their task and are now pursuing and investigation and ultimate firing of our superintendent. As this surprise agenda item was added to the regularly scheduled school board meeting this past Monday night, hundreds of parents and teachers attended showing their support for what our superintendent has done for the township. I ended up speaking to the board. They didn’t allow comments from the community to be expressed before vote and didn’t allow the other three board members to table the motion so additional time could be used to gather details and information from the other four board members. But after the vote, I spoke along with many other parents, teachers and educators and expressed our frustration and astonishment at the actions of the board.

From that moment, our home phone has rung off the hook, our e-mail accounts have been filled, I’ve developed a website that’s gotten significant attention in the community, all showing support and appreciation for what we’re trying to do to assist our schools. We’ve even received some ambiguous threats from a single individual via e-mail.

It’s been tiring and exciting at the same time. Stay tuned for more information. If you’ve got any ties to Perry Township or Indianapolis, I encourage you to?help us increase awareness as much as possible.

I’ve been using Gmail now for so long I’ve never had the need to setup another e-mail account with them. Well that need changed this morning and I went to do just that. I was presented with the following prompt:

I understand that Gmail now has mobile functionality and that’s a great feature, but why would your invitation process force users to provide their cell phone numbers just to receive an invite? Is Google working on another service tied to cell phone numbers, I don’t know, like advertising?

With the recent departure of Jon Miller, AOL CEO, Jason Calacanis has quickly announced his departure as well from the AOL and his own Weblogs, Inc.

Calacanis is a what I would call a chain-entrepreneur, it won’t be long before he’ll be moving forward again and building something of significance that we’ll all be talking about again soon.

Various blogosphere coverage here:

Jason Calacanis resigns from AOL on Syntagma Media

Jason Calacanis Says Adios to AOL on TechCrunch

AOL: Changing of the guard on Mark Evan’s Blog

My mom just alerted our family to a scam she just experienced, but foiled for the perpetrator. An FYI, be on the alert if you get something similar. I couldn’t be more proud of my mom either, she handled this perfectly! She’s a smart one!

Out of curiosity since you didn’t know who Charles Davis is at 800-829-7750, I called the number (since they already had our number – and I didn’t give him your number this morning when he asked for it; I just said “he’s moved and I don’t have his phone number”).? Anyway, a lady answered “Hello” when I called, which I found rather unusual.? I asked, “Who is this?” and she said, “Just a minute” and put me on hold.? Then a man answered and said his name was Lou Hudson.? I asked him for the name of the business and he refused to give me one, asking me my name.? I wouldn’t give him my name but told him I was returning a call.? I asked 3-4 times for a business name and he said, “If you’ll give me your account number, I can help you.”? I said, “If I don’t know what business it is, how could I give you an account number?!”? Again I asked him for the name of the business and when he wouldn’t give me a name, I said, “It must not be a legitimate business. I will report this.”? Then I hung up and Googled the phone number.? This is the website:? http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff71505.htm

Beware!? He doesn’t have your phone number, but this is definitely a scam team!

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of the U.S. involvement in Iraq, here’s a sobering statistic.
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There has been a monthly average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theatre of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2,112 deaths.
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That gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers.
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The firearm death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000 persons?? for the same period.
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That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. Capital than you are in Iraq.
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Conclusion: The U.S. should pull out of Washington

I received this from a family member and thought it was too “on target” to not share.

YouTube is entering an agreement with the National Hockey League to distribute game footage through their website.

YouTube, whose $1.65 billion purchase by Internet search leader Google Inc. closed on Tuesday, said its users would now be able to watch daily clips of two-to-five minutes in length from the NHL for the 2006-2007 season starting this month.

I’ve never been a hockey fan, stemming from growing up in the upper south and going to a really small high school. The looks like a great move for YouTube, and hopefully it will be the catalyst for them expanding to other sports. I’d specifically be interested in footage from sports that will never get major TV coverage.

YouTube said it is already in talks with other sports bodies for similar offering.

The following is the key to the deal in my opinion and will be how YouTube will continue to sign additional content creators in exchange for policing illegal copies of their own content.

Under the deal, YouTube technology will help identify and remove illegally posted NHL clips as well as share revenue from advertising placed next to the content. The NHL will also have its own dedicated Web channel on the site.

I’m not saying I’m wanting to watch the professional turtle wrangling or anything, but what I would like to do is catch some footage and highlights from my college alma mater games. ESPN and FoxSports will continue to cover major sporting events and these types of offerings should impact them at all, aside from my diluting the total amount of viewers that are stuck with whatever they decide to push to our little screens.

These are the types of developments that will continue to push the IPTV/Long Tail theory behind the future of entertainment.

Source: YouTube in Web video deal with NHL

Apple places an order for 12 million units from a Taiwanese manufacturer. I’m not sure what the normal phone order is, but that doesn’t sound like much to me for something that Apple is going to be releasing. However, there could be something said for a little inflated supply and demand to make a product even that much more “cool”.

Source: Apple placed an order for 12 million iPhones according to Reports