Gotta love minor league baseball…
The Portland Beavers baseball team is feeling the heat of the Oregon State Beavers. Nothing official, but when you think of baseball in Oregon your first thought is the two time defending national champion Oregon State baseball team. When you think of a team named the Beavers that plays baseball, your first thought is the two time defending national champion Oregon State baseball team.
I guess the owner of the minor league team in Portland, named the Beavers is sick of this and is letting the fans vote on what the new name of the team should be. It’s been narrowed down to five and it appears the fans get to decide from there. Not a bad promotion, especially to help with always being confused with the amazing university to the south. Here’s the problem though, all the names are horrible.
- Portland Beavers (keep the same name)
- Portland Green Sox (because Portland is a bicycle friendly, flex car driving, energy saving, recycling-crazy, Ralph Nader-loving place [their words not mine, but they are true])
- Sockeyes (A tough name, a tough fish. Really. Is a sockeye that tough? Is it that tough of a name?)
- Thorns (Playing on the City of Roses thing here. Interesting that they also say “or like razor-sharpened cleats on Ty Cobb’s shoes as he slid into home.” Ty Cobb was one of the dirtiest players to have ever played the game, is that really what you want to associate your team with?)
- Wet Sox (Because obviously it rains alot in Portland and Sox is a traditional baseball name)
Wow, tough choices there. I love minor league baseball because the owners can try everything to create fan interest. Crazy promotions, give aways, contests, etc. The problem is, those usually last one night, not for years to come.
Business Idea: Personalized Podcasts
I wanted to go for a run today, but the biggestfactor in me choosing not to run, was what I had on my ipod. I like listening to my music on the bus or when I’m walking around downtown. When I have to run for 25 to 45 minutes though, I need something new, something I’m not familiar with. Then it hit me…
What if I could get the news on my iPod each morning before I wanted to run. What if I could get the right ammount of information on there, so that I don’t have to miss out on the last 10 minutes of the news when I get home and want to get ready. Here’s the idea:
You create a network of news tidbits. You break the news down into as small as segments as you can ie, news about each different sports team is broken down into 30 second clips and therefore rather than having to listen to 2 minutes worth of information I don’t care about, I just choose which teams or sports I want to hear about. The same can be done with weather, local news, world news, business news, really anything. The information is then broken down into very specific 15 second- to 1 minute clips and you select which items you want downloaded, and how long you want the podcast to be. The program then selects the items you want and creates a news station that is just for you and only has the news you want on it.
Each morning the podcast is automatically downloaded to your iPod and all you have to do is grab your iPod and run!
Who knows you could even include some encouragement on there from sponsored partners. Also, I bet you could play ads to help with the revenue. People would put up with some ads, just as long as it wasn’t more than say 30 seconds per 10 minutes or so. Plus the web portal where you select your news can have ads. Maybe you could charge a small fee as well. The details can be worked out later. For now, who wants to help me build this? :)
The FBI is asking for help and you say no?
Yesterday a report that the FBI has released the pictures of two men who it wants to talk to was news here in Seattle. The men were behaving suspiciously on one of the local ferries and there were two pictures of them. The FBI did not give any details to the appearance of the men, it only released the pictures and asked for help identifying the two men.
It was in the blogs and on the news last night. This morning though, neither paper ran the pictures of the men. The PI said that they would not run the pictures because of civil liberties and privacy issues and the Times said nothing about it (from what I have seen). Am I missing something here? The FBI needs help identifying two men who were acting suspicious on what some people have called a very high risk potential target in the Seattle area. The paper won’t show the picture because
But running a photograph of two men who may as easily be tourists from Texas as terrorists from the Mideast with a story that makes them out to be persons of interest in a terrorism investigation seems problematic, to say the least.
Yea, the men could be from anywhere. Yes, they may be up to nothing. Yes, the FBI doesn’t often do this. But, come on are you not reporting this David McCumber because you just want to cover the story when something goes horribly wrong? Sunken ferries probably sells more than two photos of people that the FBI wants to talk to.
Here’s his explanation on why the PI is not running the pictures.
[Update] Thanks for Aaron pointing out that the article (with pictures) is now on the Seattle Times websites front page. I haven’t looked at either papers print copy today. The P-I is still standing by its choice not to show the pictures.
VMware’s huge mistake….
They’re a company that allows you to run more than one operating system on a computer and they went public two days ago. Everybody was talking about them yesterday because of their HUGE IPO, or at least the over 100% growth of their stock in the first day (from $22 to $51). As pointed out by Venture Beat this was a HUGE mistake by VMware. Yes, I’m sure they appreciate the money they raised in the IPO, but if they would have doubled their IPO price and people still would have bought and they would have made an additional $750 million! That would have put more money in the peoples hands who made the company what it was two days ago and less in the people who are looking for them to continue to grow down the road. Whoops!
FEEDJIT
See that little widget to the right that says where people are coming from or where they left to? Yea, that’s a new widget called FEEDJIT. It was created in 10.5 hours by Mark Maunder who sent out an email to me (on a group list) that talked about his experience creating it. So far it looks like a fun widget, and the fact that it went from idea to product in that short of a time is just amazing. I love hearing stories of people that just go for their ideas.
For people like myself this widget is great, because I can install it myself and I don’t have to do anything more than cut and paste. No signup, no double checking if it works, just past and publish and you’re good to go.
Nice work Mark.
About Otis
I live in Seattle, Washington. I am passionate about working with and interacting with others. My work experience includes marketing, account management, and sales.
I am a huge sports fan who on top of cheering for my favorite teams (Go Beavs!) also appreciates coaching strategy, as well as the marketing behind teams, players, and events.
Personally, I enjoys exploring new cities and areas (particularly small towns) and getting outside and playing.