The iTampon jokes are flying. This is to be expected, but it does not mean that iPad is a bad name. Not for Apple, it isn’t. Apple can make this work just fine.
Marketing 201: if you’re a small company, your product name will be defined by language. But if you’re a huge company (or a government,) language can be redefined by your product name.
-Howard Tayler, Blógünder Schlock, 1/27
A man is going to stride up a stage today and - with the world hanging on his every word - map out our nation’s economic future.
Unfortunately, that man won’t be Barack Obama. If recent past is precedent, the president’s passed his speechifying prime.
…you know, let’s ditch the pending comparison (as it’s been explored enough to be tortured).
Instead, I’ll assume…
By the end of this year, tablets of all types will have a less than 1% market share, with 3 million to 4 million units shipping, Endpoint Technologies analyst Roger Kay predicts. “But Apple could blow that forecast out of the water,” he says.
-Baig, USA Today, 1/27
Something has caused Ron Artest to develop plantar fasciitis in both feet, and Lakers CoachPhil Jackson believes that something might be the shoes his small forward wears…
“I’ve called his shoes concrete boots for about the last month,” Jackson said. “Those shoes look like they are made for the Hudson River. But he stays with them and he gets his feet worked on. But he does not move really quickly. He looks like he’s clogging around out there.”
Artest endorses a shoe by a Chinese company called Peak Shoes, as do Dallas’ Jason Kidd and Houston’s Shane Battier.
Turner, Los Angeles Times, 1/25
The minutiae of the law seems to frustrate business owners more than residents, who, three weeks into the new rule, are resigned to toting around backpacks, bright green recyclable Giant Food bags or paying the levy. But some still aren’t used to it. “It’s very aggravating,” said Rosa McNair, 80 years old, as she walked out of Target with a five-cent plastic bag. “What are you going to do, carry all your boxes on the bus?”
Murray, Wall Street Journal, 1/25
O’Brien’s last night as host of “The Tonight Show” drew a preliminary rating of 7.0, which translates to about 8 million households. But more impressive, he scored a 4.8 rating in the key demographic of viewers 18 to 49, one of the highest scores for any show at any time of night on network TV this year.
By comparison, Jay Leno’s so-called last show as host of the “The Tonight Show” earned a final household rating of 8.8, topping O’Brien by about 2 million households. But O’Brien did better with young viewers, as Leno’s “finale” scored only a 3.4 rating in that group.
-Zurawik, Baltimore Sun, 1/23
Mr. Obama has asked his former campaign manager, David Plouffe, to oversee House, Senate and governor’s races to stave off a hemorrhage of seats in the fall. The president ordered a review of the Democratic political operation — from the White House to party committees — after last week’s Republican victory in the Massachusetts Senate race, aides said.
-Zeleny/Baker, New York Times, 1/24
Martha Coakley lost a Senate seat because she was tone-deaf, her campaign failed on messaging, and pollsters had bad numbers…or so the story goes. However, Coakley’s defeat - which effectively froze health care legislation and plunged Democrats into immediate despair - could be the best thing to happen to the party long-term.
A joke among us health care types:
There are two kinds of people - those that don’t understand health reform, and those who don’t know they don’t understand health reform.
I was put on the health reform beat about a year ago - almost to the day - and steadily fell into a routine in pursuit of The Story. Wedging into crowded committee hearings. Mining my reporter friends or buddies on the Hill for tidbits. Sitting in my dark office, illuminated only by the computer’s glow, the click-click of the keyboard marking the time.
Read more…
The humorous conflation of late-night comics, comic book heroes, and The Sims fills my belly with laughter.
If only these guys did the health reform debate, too!
Watts devised a clever way to simulate the effect. He and his collaborator, Matthew Salganik, created a music-downloading Web site. They uploaded 48 songs by unknown bands and got people to log in to the site, listen to the songs, then rate and download them. Users could see one another’s rankings, and they were influenced in roughly the same way self-fulfilling prophecies are supposed to work.
That meant some tunes could become hits — and others duds — partly because of social pressure.
-Clive Thompson, Wired, December 2009
