Listen up: Recently, I discovered the “View Options” control on the edit menu in iTunes would allow me to display a column that tracks how many times I have listened to each tune. Tonight I sorted my song library by the times=played column and was rather startled by the songs played the most.

So here, for no easily understandable reason, are, what I assume would be the Top Four songs on my “Hit” list.

1. Uncle Pen (Ricky Skaggs) - played 22 times

2. Cuckoo’s Nest (Nickel Creek) - 18

3. Girl from Impanema (Stan Getz) - 18

4. Ariel Ramirez (or, as we call it around here: that song from the VW Toureg commercial) (Richard Buckner) - 17

Go figure.

Google grows: Research guru Gary Price (ResourceShelf) notes that hours before MSN is to launch its new engine and new web index as a beta, “Google has announced a size increase (yet another brilliant marketing move) to their web index. Google’s total page count goes from 4,285,199,774 to 8,058,044,651 web pages. I’m guessing that MSN launches with a number greater than the 4.2 billion.”

Quote:

“Remember, these numbers are primarily for bragging rights and don’t really mean a whole heck of a lot to the searcher. Relevancy is what matters and searchers realize when a database increases in size the chance for higher recall and reduced precision is possible. Don’t forget to factor in (when it comes to web search) the typical query is about 2.8 words in length, most searches don’t use any advanced syntax, and their is no controlled vocabulary. Let’s remember that bigger doesn’t always mean better. In the past Google has included urls they know about but have not crawled in their page totals.:

News from the wrecksblog: The anonymous vaporzine scout just alerted me to next February’s launch of the magazine Collision Repair Product News (CRPN) from Cygnus Business Media.

The magazine will (mail) to 60,000 body shop owners, technicians and PBE distributors. CRPN is the only product-based publication reaching the industry with a complete focus on PBE tools, equipment and supplies. The magazine will be modeled after Professional Tool & Equipment News (PTEN) which is the only publication focused on tools & equipment serving the automotive aftermarket with over 106,000 subscribers.

With the exception of not knowing what PBE tools are, I think I followed most of that.

An unfortunate loss: I live in a red state, but in a blue county. I voted for Bush but I support my U.S. Representative, a Democrat, and I believe our governor, the Democrat Phil Bredesen, is one of the most brilliant politicians and business leaders I have ever witnessed (I don’t know him personally, but have been a fan for a long time…Hey, he’s the guy who helped get the Titans to Nashville.)

Anyway, if Phil Bredesen can’t save TennCare, our state’s decade-old alternative to Medicare, then no one can. Bredesen is an incredibly successful healthcare business entrepreneur whose political savvy has been honed over two amazing terms as mayor of Nashville and what conservatives and liberals agree has been a successful first term as governor. (He balanced a budget his Republican predecessor said was impossible to balance — without imposing an income tax.)

Tenncare, a plan that replaced Medicare with a program that enables “uninsurable Tennesseans” to access coverage was out-of-control from a budget standpoint before Bredesen was elected. He (and his team) conceived and negotiated a solution that (and I don’t follow this closely) appears to a layperson like me a logical, common sense approach that garnered enthusiastic bipartisan support.

Then “advocates” for the status quo started suing the governor. This is where the whole issues starts to break down for me. I have never quite understood why “advocates” of TennCare would follow a course guaranteed to knock 400,000 Tennesseans off of health care coverage. But, apparently they have…and they won’t back off. And so, Bredesen just announced that TennCare will soon be no more.

Update: Glenn Reynolds calls Tenncare a “testbed for HillaryCare.” I’ll have to disagree with that assessment as I was a foot soldier in the fight against HillaryCare and recall vividly that its foundational flaw was a provision that “mandated” employers to provide insurance for employees (remember the famous, “I’m not responsible for every undercapitalized business out there” remark). Tenncare has no such mandate or it would have never been enacted.

Filtered suggestion - read this: Steve Rubel has a new column at iMediaConnection.com. His first installment is a riff based on last month’s long tail article in Wired by Chris Anderson.

Quote:

As blogging becomes more popular, it is now easier for news consumers to find specific niche blog sites that adequately meet their information needs. It doesn’t matter if you’re interested in knitting, gadgets, cars, sports, politics or music, there’s a blogger out there who’s covering it well who can serve as your information filter.”

Custom publishing update - alumni magazines: Great article in the NYT today about a niche of custom magazines (or “branded” magazines), the alumni publication. While the article refers to a list of less than 500 of these magazines, I estimate the number is many times that as even smaller schools publish magazines that may not make the Oxbridge directory. Additionally, both of the high schools I currently have a tight relationship with publish magazines “slicker” that most universities.

Custom publishing update - up in smoke: Keith Kelly reports that the outdoor adventure magazine Unlimited has been cancelled after 12 years by sponsor Philip Morris. Not a bad run.

A shameless plug of an underreported election story: As I have fully disclosed here before, one of the reasons I do not blog heavily about politics is my day job work on behalf of one of our company’s clients, NFIB, the nation’s largest association of small business owners. I have disclosed (even though others have claimed to have “exposed” it) openingly and proudly that Hammock Publishing works closely with NFIB to help them keep their members informed utilizing a wide array of communication strategies, both online and print.

While the rexblog and I am often referred to in terms of “corporate blogging,” I rarely use it in such a self-congratulatory or shamelessly self-promotional way as I’m about to, but I wanted to blog a couple of articles that have appeared in the past few days that point out how successful our client, NFIB, was in last week’s election and what, in a supportive role, we assisted them in doing. (Explanation - as requested by an e-mailer: We provide an extensive array of services to NFIB including producing and helping to manage the content of NFIB.com, publishing MyBusiness magazine, and producing 51 legislative-oriented newsletters, among other things.)

(Warning: As some of the seven readers of this blog reside in blue states, you may not like what you’re about to read.)

First, a November 6 article in the Washington Post by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Thomas B. Edsall reveals that:

One key under-the-radar factor in the Bush and Republican congressional campaigning was an unprecedented effort by the business community to harness the Internet. The Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and other trade groups were aggressive in contacting employees, educating them on pro-business issues and getting them to the polls.

“The effort in this election was truly huge. It was several times bigger and broader than anything done by business before,” said Dirk Van Dongen, president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors and a leader in business get-out-the-vote efforts. “I truly believe it made a difference at the presidential level, at the senatorial level and at the level of the House.”
“I’m always cynical about how much the business community could do,” said Dan Danner, top lobbyist for the NFIB. “But this is a place where we delivered and made an impact.”

The NFIB also sent out millions of postcards, e-mails and faxes, and made telephone calls to members and others to remind small business owners that they could vote early and that they should vote for pro-small business candidates.

And this from a November 6 National Journal (paid subscription required) article by Bara Vaida and Peter H. Stone

Scoring big successes in Senate and House contests on November 2, business and conservative groups cemented their role as key drivers in getting out Republican voters. They surpassed the efforts of labor unions, environmental organizations, and women’s groups to mobilize Democrats. The National Federation of Independent Business, the National Rifle Association, the Business-Industry Political Action Committee, the American Medical Association, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which all had led successful grassroots and get-out-the vote efforts in 2002, were again big winners in the 2004 election.

These five organizations posted the best win-lose records in a National Journal survey of 20 interest groups — 10 representing social conservatives and business interests, and 10 representing unions, and environmental and liberal causes — that made contributions and endorsed congressional candidates across the country. The five least-successful records belonged to groups on the left: EMILY’s List, the Sierra Club, the National Education Association, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the AFL-CIO. “The business trade associations were aggressive, well funded, and took some risks,” said GOP strategist and lobbyist Scott Reed. “They scored well, and that bodes well for their futures as political powerhouses in Washington.”

The election again showed that business is beating labor at its longtime game of getting out the vote. Tactics included promoting candidates on Web sites; soliciting volunteers to work on races; mobilizing voters with mailings, phone calls, faxes, and e-mails; and sending voter-registration materials to members. In addition, said NFIB Senior Vice President of Public Policy Dan Danner, the business community made a significant difference by emphasizing early voting. “That was a big change,” Danner said. “This is a trend that will get bigger.”

Business and conservative groups spent millions on get-out-the-vote communications. For instance, Danner said, the NFIB spent about $8 million in soft money — about 25 percent more than it had in previous election cycles — to contact its 600,000 members nationwide.

Why grocery stores sell magazines: According to a new study from the MPA, magazines are a profitable supermarket product category with high gross margin performance, compared with overall supermarket performance.

Quote:

Magazine gross margin performance is above the gross margin performance level of total store. Once trade allowances are included, a representative adjusted gross margin level for magazines, compared with all supermarket categories, is an estimated 33.6 percent vs. 27.6 percent.

Reminds me of my favorite movie scene of all time, when Steve Martin (Navin Johnson) has an epiphany in The Jerk and says to his boss, “Oh, I get it. It’s a profit deal.”

Underexposure: Corante starts an interview series on the future of digital media by talking with my friend, Jeff Jarvis. I’m glad the bashful buzzmachine is finally able to get his opinions in heard. Seriously, however, it’s a great, must-read, interview.