Median v. Average WWE

My goal in life is to explain standard deviation and the value of it over and over again until I cease to exist. Let us start with median v. average.
Brad Feld is a man of my intellectual liking. This is an old blog posting but .. still funny and interesting.
You Don’t Mean Average, You Mean Median.

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Chief Listening Officer and all that at Sales 2.0 conference

I recently attended the Sales 2.0 conference. My own observations are very aptly described by a recent post by Anneke Seley, Founder and CEO of Phone Works here: Wanted! Help! Chief listening Officer

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Hilariosity (Strangely) of Peloponnesian proportions

This is the funniest thing I have ever read in the context of modern international history of economic crisis.

German politicians are asking the Greeks to sell their islands and/or artifacts in order to mitigate the current Euro and Greece crisis.
First, who would buy them?
Second, can you imagine Parthenon brought to you by Sanyo Electronics or Bharti Airtel?
Second, again, is it true what we want is a Greek island owned by Virgin Airlines?

Here was the Greek Prime Minister's response: “There are more imaginative and effective ways of dealing with the deficit than selling off Greek islands,” Mr. Papandreou said, according to The Financial Times. “We cherish these islands, and selling them would be out of the question. It would not help. It would be a one-off solution, and a viable economy means investing in that economy.”

Read more http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/greece-wont-sell-islands-to-cover-debts/

We need to care about the Greeks and help them with aid to get them out of the Hellenic proportion crisis. If we can solve Iceland's problems, we certainly can exercise similar restraint and implement good EU regulations to help Greece short-term and long-term.

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Apple to compete in the gaming console space?

I've often wondered why Apple doesn't have a standalone gaming system like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft each do. A recent article on Videogamesrepublic.com suggests that Apple may be moving in to the gaming console arena after seeing so much success with web-based applications. Will they be an immediate threat to the "Big 3"? Not likely. Apple's core competency is internal software development, not independent game development.

The full article from Videogamesrepublic.com can be viewed here!

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Serious Gaming with Nobel Laureates

From Nobelprize.org - Serious games and simulations based on the work of Nobel Laureates! You don't have to be a genius to understand the achievements of the Nobel prize winners.

Check out these games and simulations here !

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Bon Voyage Mr. Salinger

Last week, the ultimate icon and influence of twentieth century J.D. Salinger passed away. For most of us from the Gen X minus 1,2,3,10, 20 years, for all practical purposes and given his recluse and agarophobic predicament, Mr. Salinger was in the Dead/Not Dead betting category for quite a few decades now.

However, his writings and the characters in the Glass family with Franny and Zooey and of course Catcher in the Rye influenced us all. The characters live within us. Reading Salinger, as most like me will identify with, is/was a rite of passage that transcended race, gender, geographies, elite or bourgeoisie, class and languages.

As you know, Mr. Salinger dedicated “Franny and Zooey” to William Shawn, where he wrote on the preface,“I urge my editor, mentor and (heaven help him) closest friend, William Shawn, genius domus of The New Yorker, lover of the long shot, protector of the unprolific, defender of the hopelessly flamboyant, most unreasonably modest of born great artist-editors, to accept this pretty skimpy-looking book.” [See reference below.]

We all were William Shawn for that day when we read it.

Reference: Read New York Times Obituary "J. D. Salinger, Literary Recluse, Dies at 91" - http://nyti.ms/cYpe4c

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Domino's gets people talking by telling everyone how crappy their pizza USED to be

Cait Warner of BNET recently talked to Domino's Chief Marketing Officer, Russell J. Weiner, about the radical changes to their pizza and their innovative and self-depreciating marketing campaign.

Until recently, Domino's has used the same pizza recipe for the past 50 years. While their pizza was affordable, it certainly was not considered to be.... good. How do you turn your brand around when that brand is built upon an image of cheap, but bad pizza? How do you convert the doubters who normally aren't even willing to try your product? Domino's answer was to admit that their pizza really sucked.

The full interview with Russell can be read here, from www.bnet.com.

I personally was one of the doubters who was hesitant to order Domino's regardless of how cheap it was. Did I buy in to their marketing strategy and try their new and improved pizza? Yes, I most certainly did. As Domino's promised, their new pizza and far better than their previous product. And it's still pretty cheap.

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