Random Brand Thoughts

Below are some random personal brand impressions I have had lately.

Toyota:

I have had a highlander for 8 years and put about 145k on it before I blew the tranny recently. I was kind of expecting 2ook before a major problem like this with a Toyota, so their quality image is a bit tarnished. Customer Service was not impressive either. I will say that a Jeep would probably be on its third transmission by 145k, so its not like Toyota is horrible quality. I bought a new car recently and it was not a Toyota/Lexus.

Bose:

I have never really been a fan of Bose. I used to sell Stereos long, long ago, and was not impressed by Bose when compared to a "real" speaker. The saying went "no highs, no lows, must be Bose". In my new car I had the option of upgrading to a package that included a Bose 277w 10 speaker stereo upgrade, Sirius, CD changer, and Moonroof for about 1.2k more. I figured I would do it even if the Bose did not make it much better. I have to say that I am totally impressed with what Bose can do in a car. The technology they use is ideal for optimizing the sound quality in a small confined area like a car. The system sounds much better than I thought, and better in some ways than the $1,500 upgraded stereo I had in my highlander with much more power.

Sirius:

I got 6 free months with the car, and figured I would not use it much, and definitely not renew it after 6. After just two week, I don't think I have used anything else, and plan on extending it for sure.

Apple:

I love Apple products, though I was a late adopter on the mac and ipod side. I bought a new 24 inch iMac the day they came out earlier this year for work. It had worked out great until it popped off while I was using it the other day and would never boot back up completely. I have never had a PC completely die like that in the 1st year before. So much for mac quality? I have not dealt with their service before, but you basically need to make an appointment to bring it in to an Apple store. So three days later, I lugged the 24" mac into an Apple store and they were able to fix it at the genius bar in about 45 minutes. Software issues I guess.

Microsoft:

I found the first MS commercial with the 6-ish year old Asian girl a bit misleading. She put together a quick slide show, and sent it out to the grandparents or something. It seemed a bit easier to do in the commercial than it actually is, but it was at least plausible the 6 year old could figure it out and do what the commercial showed her doing.

Well now we have this new commercial with the same girl. Except now she is building up a Widows 7 hype presentation by "chance", because she "happened" to see these "happy" words on her daddy's computer screen. The words chosen were obviously hand picked by Microsoft, and the production value and music chosen (though not the pics), make this one completely implausible. So we are left with Microsoft using a lying 6 year old as a shill to sell their latest operating system. Its some pretty sick stuff IMO.

GM

I love me a good marketing campaign, and you can't fault what they are trying to do, but could this one possibly work? You have the new CEO of GM walking around the design studio and saying that he was just as concerned as you might be about the quality of cars at GM. Well, he has taking a quick peek, and it turns out GM cars are the best in the world. May the best car win, and GM it turns out has the best cars. Well let me ask you this, if you have the best cars, why did you literally just go bankrupt? And, if we can be honest enough that you did not have the best cars prior to bankruptcy, are we expected to believe that in just a couple of months you have turned everything around, and are now putting out the best cars in the world? Well good luck with that one. If they pull it off though, this could go down as an important model for re-branding going forward. Just dust off the old Joe Isuzu technique.

RIP DraftMix Part 2

Despite all of the fanboy denials that you can see as a result of my original RIP Draftmix post, Draftmix has in fact officially thrown in the towel on daily/weekly fantasy sports. Checkout their facebook application if you are in to that sort of thing.

Blue Frog Gaming is sorry to announce that Draftmix.com will not be running fantasy football drafts for the 2009-2010 season.

You can check on the BF website for any future updates and to try out our sports related applications on Facebook.

Thank you for your patronage,

Blue Frog Gaming

2009 Blogger Fantasy Football Battle

For 2009 we decided to roll the Blogger Fantasy Football Battle into the Sundays with Dr. Pauly promotion at FantasySportsLive.com. An extra $250 in bonus cash for bloggers only will be added to the existing $500 in bonus cash available to everyone. Last year you could enter both the Blogger Battle and Sundays with Dr. Pauly for $11 each and compete for $1,000 in extra cash. This year you just need to enter the one $11 Sunday's with Dr Pauly league to become eligible for up to $750 in added bonus cash in addition to our standard 91%+ payouts. There were several reasons for the change this year. The blogger battle had become less exclusive in it's second year with more non-bloggers than bloggers competing. There are also a bunch of bloggers who regularly compete in Sunday's with Dr. Pauly, but not in the blogger battle. This way we actually get more bloggers competing for the title, while reducing the work required to run and track both promos. The blogger battle payouts are set up so that bonus cash can be won by entering a SWDP league any weekend. Bloggers can get $75/$50/$25 in bonus cash for the highest weekly score of the series and this can be won in a single weekend. In addition if it is the highest score overall (including non-bloggers) $100/$50/$25 can also be won. A lucky blogger who played just one weekend and nailed the high score would win $175 in bonus cash, and gain entry into the blogger TOC. A bonus cash summary is shown below. See the FSL blog for complete details.

$500 added for all users

$100/$50/$25 - Top three weekly scores of series

$125 - Added to TOC (Beat Pauly's score three straight weeks)

$125 - Added to Super TOC (Win a 5 week series)

$75 - $25 prize for each 5 week series winner.

$250 added for sports or gaming bloggers

$75/$50/$25 - Top three weekly blogger scores of series

$100 - Added to Blogger TOC* ($75 for 1st, $25 for second)

*Bloggers can gain entry into the TOC by having the highest blogger score in a 5 week series, having the highest individual blogger fantasy score during the series, having a top 5 blogger overall fantasy total over the 15 weeks, or by beating Pauly's score for three straight weeks.

Wake Up and Smell the Roses Obama

It is getting pretty interesting watching this train wreck of a presidency. Obama is quite the campaigner, but leadership is not one of his strong points. He is still in campaign mode, but if he does not wake up, he may go down as the worst president in American history. His popularity is dropping off of a cliff, because he is pushing polices and bills that the the vast majority of Americans do not want. Don't you realize that if you ram through unpopular policies, it makes you unpopular? Obama should know better. Lets look at three foolish things that he is currently trying to push through against the will of the American people.

ObamaCare

67% of Americans surveyed do not like this bill, and do not want it to go through. Keep pushing this one at your own peril.

Torture of Terrorists

71% of Americans surveyed support full on torture of terrorists if it will reveal information that saves American lives. I am not talking about water boarding which by the way is still not torture in the U.S.A. (Just cause Obama calls it that does not make it so). If Obama wants to prosecute the interrogators that got actionable intelligence that saved American lives via legally water boarding three high value terrorists, he is simply going to piss off the vast majority of Americans. Obama's initial stance was that no actionable intelligence was obtained, but it is clear now that that is not true, and hundreds if not thousands of American lives were saved. Going after these guys is a huge blow to the CIA which kept us safe for the 8 years since 9/11, and makes America much more vulnerable to a terrorist attack. Obama's stance that he would rather see thousands of innocent Americans die, vs. water boarding a captured terrorist who planned the 9/11 attacks, has got to be one of the worst political calculations ever.

The Afghanistan War

57% of Americans (including me) want the war in Afghanistan to end. Obama really likes the Afghanistan war for some reason, and has already sent in a "surge" of troops with more planned. We went in there originally to displace the Taliban that was allowing Al-Qaeda to train on their lands. This has already happened, and Al-Qaeda has moved on to Pakistan and elsewhere. I am not sure what we are currently trying to accomplish now, or how we will know when the war is won. The whole thing just seems pointless, and it is puzzling that a passivist like Obama continues to push this policy. We could simply pull out right now, and leave behind a bunch of predator drones to drop bombs on the bad guys risk free.