Christmas shopping: Let’s say one knows exactly what one wants to purchase and it’s a fairly mainstream item, say, a DVD of a season of TV shows or a popular electronics device. Is there a reason to drive across town to purchase that item at a physical store when you can do it online in less than five minutes and get free shipping and know that it will be delivered by the time you need it? Am I missing something? Besides, the store’s employees know less about the product than an 8-year-old with Google can discover in 30 seconds. Oh, and did I mention the part about backing into a car in the parking lot of the store?

Andrew’s predictions for 10,000 BC (using Matt McAlister’s prediction generator): Andrew, commenting on my earlier post, shared his hilarious predictions for 10,000 BC that were generated by using Matt’s plug-and-play dotcom prediction generator with a few tweaks.

Here are Andrew’s predictions for 10,000 BC:

Last year I made several predictions that now seem ridiculously clothes-wearing. But a few ideas were pretty close. I’ve got a feeling that 10,000 will be a big year, and here are some of the reasons why:

1. A Mesopotamian startup is going to open our eyes to some new ways that Wheel can influence culture. Cave Paintings will pick up on this and run several cover stories on the founders.

2. Og will be in the spotlight for his decision to support Cities 2.0. This will upset Ug, and the scrollosphere will react slowly. The noise will quiet before the end of the year and it will all be forgotten soon after the shock.

3. Fire will see their stock skyrocket after their Cooked Food business starts taking off. We’ve seen it coming for a while now, but 10,000 BC will be the year it really kicks into gear.

4. Either Cook Your Food or Clothes will seek to expand their Cows-As-A-Medium-of-Exchange business by acquiring Domesticated Animals. Plow will be overlooked in the process, and they will see a management shakeout later in the year.

5. One of the big leaders in the Hunting and Gathering industry will wake up to the opportunity in the Agriculture and the Cities 2.0 trends. After months of speculation, they will make a key acquisition that will shake up the landscape for years to come.

Technorati Tags: humor

Funny: Prediction flow chart for geek gifts.

Technorati Tags: humor

Polyhedron with two parallel opposite faces: Dylan Stableford at Folio: is reporting that the under-new-ownership business media company, Primedia Business, is changing its name to Prism Business Media Inc. It used to be called Intertec. Come to think of it, that would have been a good new name.

Technorati Tags: B2B, magazines

Inside joke: There’s a very funny satirical jab (yet only to Nashvillians who are aware of the history of Nashville media) at the John Sigenthaler Wikipedia controversy in this week’s Fabricator column in the Nashville Scene. It makes me realize once more that while the “Sigenthaler” story has become a national story (due initially and primarily to John Sigenthaler’s campaign to make it so), it’s also a very Nashville story, as well.

Technorati Tags: humor, nashville, wikipedia

My fill-in-the-blanks dotcom predictions for 2006: You, too, can fill in the blanks on Matt McAlister’s “Dotcom Prediction Generator” and have your very-own predictions.

Here’s what turned up when I plugged in some words. (For those following at home: these are not really my predictions, however, there are one or two that sound intriguing):

Just to make this clear to someone who may not quite understand what this is. Those are not actually my predictioins, rather they are the result of me plugging in random words on Matt’s humorous “prediction generator.” Okay.

Why I doubt stories that depend on statistics (continued): A steady thread on this weblog regards my warning that statistics in the hands of reporters are an impediment to insight and understanding. Numbers can be made to tell (either out of ignorance or cunning) whatever story a storyteller wants to tell. Newsweek/Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson examines how this “disconnect” is displayed in the ways the story of the America’s economy is told by the White House on one side, and its detractors on the other.

(Warning I: Republicans will hate this column as it primarily focuses on why Bush shouldn’t be credited with anything good happening in the economy. Warning II: Democrats will hate this column because it doesn’t focus on how, despite the economy being robust by historical measures, it doesn’t place enough blame on Bush for any of the economy’s obvious imperfections.)

Quote:

Economic performance (now good) and economic psychology (now mediocre) have, to some extent, become disconnected. Why? One reason is that Americans have developed perfectionist standards. We expect total prosperity and are disappointed by anything less. There should be no doubts or deficiencies. Today’s include high energy prices, high health care costs, Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath and a possible real estate “bubble.”

Personal disclosure: No matter what the topic (politics, world events, sports, business, family issues), I believe the following: Things are never as bad as they seem. Nor as good. (I’m sure there’s an “ism” name for this, but I prefer not being labeled with designer name philosophies.)

Related: The WSJ.com “numbers guy” breaks down the numbers being cited to measure the impact of New York’s transit strike.

Technorati Tags: economy

News from the world of Brand Rex: I was saddened to learn that a 55-year old company in Miami, Fla., named Rex Art is shutting its doors.

Quote:

Rex Art, in business for 55 years and once one of the largest art supply retailers in the southeast, will close the store on Christmas Eve. For good.

When I saw that item, I thought I was going to have to alert Rex Sorgatz and start a protest or something. However, I am happy to report the rest of the story:

Luckily, most of Rex Art’s 15 employees will keep their jobs. That’s because Lonny, 37, and Katrina, 34, will continue to run their Internet business, www.rexart.com.

(rexblog flashback: Brand Rex)

Update: Rex Sorgatz just sent me this link to his Flickr set of Rex signs. I’m inspired. Look for the flickr tag “rexbrand” coming soon.

The speed of press release: I am not one of those who say “the press release is dead.” I do think the role of the press release has changed radically. And, frankly, I’m not sure if press releases were ever what those who issue them believe them to be (something the press will actually use) or as bad as those who receive them believe them to be (something that is not news because every other media outlet has the same information). Press releases have become a legal document for publicly traded companies: something that must be issued to codify an announcement. Something like a “legal notice.” Perhaps this is the reason they sound like they are written by lawyers instead of by someone who can actually communicate.

I say all this because I just saw where Staci at PaidContent.org posted a link to TimeWarner’s official press release regarding the Google - AOL deal. It was just issued yesterday. Didn’t this happen (in blog time) months ago? Or maybe it was just last week and seems like months ago. It’s strange to see that it is just now be “press released.”

Google readies ‘phase 2′ of print ads project: (From MediaPost Publications):

“Google is wrapping up first phase of its print-media buying test and is about to launch “phase two” of the beta program in which Google purchases print ad inventory from consumer and business magazines to extend the reach of its online advertisers.”

I am beginning to feel as if I’ve blogged this particular ad topic ad nauseum. My opinion: For publishers of magazines, this is good. I still believe what I started saying in August when this first was announced and as recently as a couple of weeks ago: I view their experiment with serving as an independent advertising broker for small space ads appearing in print magazines as an opportunity for magazines, not a threat. Rather than a situation like Craigslist where newspaper classifieds have dried up as a result of the introduction of a new free, force, this new Google experiment brings in advertisers to the magazine that would likely have not appeared.

With this program, Google is not a competitor, but is serving as advertising sales agent for the small-space advertising that appears in “marketplace” or classified sections of magazines. There are telemarketing agencies that serve the magazine industry who should feel threatened by this move, perhaps. However, this is case where even those telemarketing firms should be able to display how they offer publishers a better (for narrowly focused, perhaps) service than Google, anyway. In the reports of this program, Google is said to be “purchasing” the ad pages. In the future (and perhaps it’s that way now, it is just being misinterpreted by reporters), I predict the business relationship between Google and the publishers will be one in which the transaction should be described in a way where the “advertisers” are purchasing advertising and Google is serving as broker.

Again, I think this is good for all involved. That is, except for the agencies that specialize in selling classified advertising for magazines. And they have time to respond by defining their role and niche more clearly to their clients.

Technorati Tags: advertising, google, magazines

Professor Gillmor: Dan Gillmor is putting together a nonprofit Center for Citizen Media. The goals are to study, encourage and help enable the emergent grassroots media sphere, with a major focus on citizen journalism. It is associated with UC, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard. Congratulations.