Bowling for Eyeballs

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Everyone knows that in the American South, football is a big deal. This year my undergrad alma mater had a perfect season with zero losses. It was the first time in nearly 20 years they didn’t have a winning season. Thankfully for Mississippi football diehards, these things are cyclical: Mississippi State and Ole Miss had good seasons without the shadow of Southern Miss to contend with. While I have no special love for their program, it’s worth pointing out that people in Mississippi probably care more about Ole Miss and their team than any other. It’s the “Howard Stern syndrome” in that probably more than half the population of the state roots for them. The other half watches them play just as dutifully, only they hope they get the snot beaten out of them. It’s the nature of the in-state football rivalries. I suspect it works the same across the nation.

On Saturday, January 5, Ole Miss made their first bowl appearance in a few years in the BBVA Compass Bowl. It was a really big deal for them with their new coach showing immediately that he could turn the program around. Huzzah to them for the improved season, too, but I can’t bring myself to watch Ole Miss play because of the previously mentioned in-state rivalries. I went out with some friends instead and had a great time. When I got home, I thought I would check and see if they managed to be Mississippi’s bowl winners this season after Mississippi State’s loss in December.

Having worked for WLBT, the Jackson-area’s top station, I went to their site first. Owned by Raycom, the site was recently rebranded from wlbt.com to msnewsnow.com. They feature sections on the local newscasts promoting “web extra” stories, even though this telegraphs to everyone that they are simply stories not big enough to make the news. While I haven’t done anything more than anecdotal research, I can say that none of these stories I saw promoted on the news were actually from Mississippi. This means they are devoting special attention on the home page away from local news for some reason. My best guess is the stories are from other Raycom stations. If this isn’t the case, they are simply teaching people not to turn to their website for local news with no upside for the station or company.

Let’s take a look at their “above the fold” page from the wee hours of Sunday morning after this bowl game in which every Mississippian was interested in the outcome:

Without scrolling, the only football game you would think was happening of interest to anyone was the BCS Championship. While Alabama was playing in that game, I don’t think they are as important to Mississippians as Ole Miss. Not finding the answer immediately led to an exercise of seeing which site got it right. From this point forward we will assume that any omissions like this are a problem with underpaid/undertrained web producers and not a systemic problem with the news outlet’s web architecture.

My next stop was at Jacson’s historical number two television station, WJTV, owned by Media General. Here’s what I saw there:

They score an A in providing information to the end-user in my opinion. The information is there with the score–no scrolling; no hunting; no clicking. They leave a lot of interaction on the table by not using the story as a way to draw you deeper into the site. There is much less content on their site obviously, but that’s not the topic of this post.

Next, I visited WAPT‘s site, the station owned by the Hearst Corporation:

While the site is cleaner, it’s still a failing grade for them. First, and off topic, they feature a truly horrible picture to accompany their headline. Was there no image to pull from the whole story with things in focus? There are three other chances in their “lead stories” area, but they miss them all.

With Jackson’s three television news outlets covered, I decided to toss Gannett‘s Clarion Ledger newspaper site into the mix. They reformatted their site to the Gannett standard a couple of years ago. Let’s take a look:

Another A+ as they not only let you know who won, they have a picture of the coach and the trophy. They also have several stories built around the game to give you more information and insight into the big game. It’s the sort of behavior that consultants teach TV news outlets, but if the owners of Mississippi’s stations push for this, it doesn’t carry over to their web coverage. I’ll single out WLBT for special criticism, too, as the “web extra” category is simply begging to have a photographer go to a bar and record people watching the game. A straight, video-only piece with fan reaction is perfect here. It’s an opportunity missed for two stations. WJTV and the Clarion Ledger both give you what you need, but only the newspaper’s website offers a chance to dig deeper.


4G Arrives

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One major negative living in a rural area is lack of access to broadband. There were several things that were supposed to happen to fix this situation. First, as of December 31, 2007, everyone in the Bellsouth service area was supposed to have DSL as per the Bellsouth/AT&T merger agreement. We’re a day shy of five years passed that deadline, but there is no DSL here, nor is there any indication there ever will be. Even using backdoor channels to talk to people in charge of DSL for the state reveals there are no plans to ever offer DSL to us even though there is a telephone box just a couple of miles away that could service us.

For the longest time, there was no cell service here either. Finally in 2008, AT&T stuck equipment on a tower that has line of sight visibility from us. It worked great, although only at EDGE speeds, until August 2011 when AT&T removed their stuff from the tower recreating a cellular hole here. In the investigation of that, we found that Verizon had 3G service here. After my brother’s family switched to a local mobile provider, all of us followed suit. That company only had 2G CDMA service, but by March of 2012, they updated the tower to 3G, although it was very weak considering we can see the tower with the naked eye. Verizon’s 3G had a similarly weak appearing signal, but it was much better quality.

All Bellsouth/AT&T ever offered here was dialup. In 1998, it wasn’t bad, although it was only ever about 26KBs, about half what modems should have been able to do at the time. Over the next decade, that service got worse and worse finally ending up being a bits per second service instead of kilobits. My dad had hoped DSL would arrive eventually, but mom got tired of waiting and pressured him to sign up for Wildblue’s satellite internet. It was certainly better, although amazingly expensive. Mom was satisfied, and with the launch of their new satellite a year ago and the introduction of the Excede service, the speed has been nothing short of revolutionary. The problem with it is that once a month, usually when there is no one home, the entirety of our month’s allotment of internet is completely used. If we’re on the 25GB package, it uses 24GB. If we’re on the 15GB package, it uses 13GB. This usually happens in the first three or four days of the month. We’ve complained and had our situation escalated by their customer service. That process took a week and hours on the phone with them. Someone was supposed to call us after investigating and let us know what was going on within a week of the last call, but it’s been nearly eight weeks. No one has called or emailed, but the situation continues.

I read earlier in the month that Verizon planned to upgrade their entire network to 4G by the end of 2013. As I have a 4G device that works on their network, I was pretty happy with the 3G service they offered here. The fact that within a year, more or less, that service would be upgraded was pretty exciting.

At some point on December 28, Verizon turned on 4G equipment on that same cell tower that we see from the patio. Now there is a full 4G signal. No more of the partial 3G from them. The provider we use for cell phones says 4G is coming, but they don’t yet list our area on their update page, so it’s reasonable to assume that it will be at least months before they offer 4G. I’ve respected Verizon’s commitment to their network, though, and certainly don’t mind the monthly fee I’m paying for data on the device I use on their network. While their customer service isn’t the best, at least they have a compelling service to sell.

Thanks, Verizon, for the great Christmas/New Year present!


Sales and Merchandising

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David DeMartini is the head of EA’s Origin digital distribution service. At this year’s E3, he gave a few comments on Valve’s Steam digital distribution service, the 800 pound gorilla in the field. Steam is known for having sales on games. These sales have been a source of criticism. The criticism centers around the idea that people will not buy games for their full retail price–that they’d wait for one of the big sales and only purchase the game at a generous discount. Discounting elicits different responses from different game developers. Most developers find the sales useful as a promotional vehicle for their titles. These titles typically move a lot of copies during Steam sales, but DeMartini thinks it damages the health of the intellectual property:

“We won’t be doing that. Obviously they think it’s the right thing to do after a certain amount of time. I just think it cheapens your intellectual property.”

“I know both sides of it, I understand it. If you want to sell a whole bunch of units, that is certainly a way to do that, to sell a whole bunch of stuff at a low price. The game makers work incredibly hard to make this intellectual property, and we’re not trying to be Target. We’re trying to be Nordstrom.”

A month later, Valve responded to the “Nordstrom” comment. Valve’s Jason Holtman commented:

“Ask our partners,” he said. “Ask the large to the small and see what they think about that. Putting it all in the bucket of, it’s all about the discounts, I don’t think that’s everything about it.”

“Discounts serve a lot of functions. Highlighting serves a lot of functions. The qualities of the games serve a lot of functions. Everything we’ve seen, PC games and IP and all those franchises are more valuable today than they were four or five years ago.”

“Discounting is one small function of what we do. It’s one small function of our market and our store. It certainly doesn’t seem to be anything that cheapens IP.”

Anyone who has worked in retail knows there is more to selling things than cheapening prices. Elastic prices certainly help, but real merchandising comes from placement of items. Grocery stores know how placement works. Companies pay for better placement on supermarket shelves with eye level having the highest premium. Steam offers a premium experience, but I would be shocked if games that appear on Steam’s front area, the area you see when you go to the website or launch the program, don’t have at least some kind of increased revenue sharing with Valve if not outright paying for that placement and the promotion that comes with it. Promotion is the other key value to Steam’s publishers/developers. If a publisher/developer is having a sale, but your game is placed near theirs on the home page, it’s a win for you as your game’s exposure is increased. Steam has been instrumental in exposing smaller games like Audiosurf. Games like Audiosurf have also participated in other promotions Steam has launched like last year’s potato collecting madness. That madness led directly into the launching of Portal 2, one of Valve’s own titles, sharing some of the launch promotion with independent developers. These independent developers are often strong supporters of Steam sales. Supporters also include the game buying public who visits the site regularly to see what new games are on sale generating purchasing opportunities for other titles in Steam’s main area which strengthens their position as the leading digital distribution service.


ICTs

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It’s funny how things will categorize themselves in your life.  Last week, I had a great dinner with another American.  Among the topics of conversation were education and ICTs.  We both noted that some people think technology is a way to bridge the gap in schools.  Our conversation veered in another direction before I got to note that money spent on technology is not always well spent, but based on the rest of the conversation, I think my friend agrees.  I did talk about the much lamented Hazlehurst School District, and how the students there are missing out on so much that even if they all had access to the latest technology in the classroom, it probably wouldn’t make a difference.

The next morning while reading through the news, the New York Times backed up my thinking with this article.  In it, they noted how poorer students tended to end up wasting time with technology instead of harnessing the tech to do educational-type things.  They mentioned a couple of problems being that the usually working class parents didn’t have enough knowledge to properly manage their children’s online habits.  Also, poorer students are more under the influence of the media as they see more of it than their more affluent peers.  The article noted,

… “access is not a panacea,” said Danah Boyd, a senior researcher at Microsoft. “Not only does it not solve problems, it mirrors and magnifies existing problems we’ve been ignoring.”

Later the same day this article appeared in my RSS reader.  Here we see technologists and development practitioners pushing technology as a solution.  Technology is a solution, but only if you know the question to which it is the answer.  The young girl who mentions using her phone to record lectures is a great example.  In my experience she is the exception rather than the rule.  In the classrooms in which I worked in the developing world, mobiles were used for playing games and listening to music usually during class.  Of course this experiences were in middle income countries.  Somehow I doubt that makes much difference in the end.

Ultimately development practitioners need to carefully evaluate the claims technologists make.  They also should insure that proper education accompanies any technological “gifts.”  If the parents aren’t included in technology education, how can they do their jobs as parents?  It would be the exact situation these parents in the USA face.


42

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42.  We all know it’s the secret of life, the universe and everything.  Sometimes the stars align just right…sometimes things work so that at any given time it means much more.  Today is one of those times.

It was on this day 42 years ago that my parents were married.  They’ve done a lot together in those years.  They built a house.  They raised a family.  They worked as hard as they could to give their children a solid platform from which to launch their own lives.

Most of all, they made it work.  I’m sure it hasn’t always been easy.  There are times of mutterings and grumblings from either (or both) of them.  For whatever reason they made it work.  They never saw a problem that was so big that it would tear asunder what God had put together.

Congratulations on 42, mom and dad!

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