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"We wanted to see what it takes to blow 850 million bucks. It’s just a foolish tragedy." —Randy Ataide, explaining why he attended the bankruptcy auction of Internet grocer Webvan Group Inc. in October. "Is being annoyed by pop-up ads any different from ring around the collar in Wisk commercials? Annoying advertising has its place in the pantheon of advertising. And by the way, it seems to work." JOB PERKS OF THE NEW, NEW ECONOMY Robert Half once said work is “uninspiring, unappreciated, and underpaid...unless you’re out of it.” An e-mail now making the rounds suggests that being unemployed has its advantages, such as:
HOW DO I PRINT MY VOICE MAIL? A Web site devoted to geeks (rinkworks.com/stupid) has some fun quoting the confused computer users they run into: Customer: “I don’t have a computer at home. Is the Internet available in book form?” Customer: “I’d like a mouse mat, please.” Tech Support: “What kind of computer do you have?”
Here is a list of headlines being circulated about what we might read in the year 2050:
IN THE LAPTOP OF LUXURY MSN.co.uk, the Microsoft-owned Web network in Britain, plans to wire an outdoor park bench in the Suffolk town of St. Edmundsbury, near where King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215. The wiring will give laptop computer users access to the Internet. John Wayman, the mayor, calls it a “classic coming together of old and new.” IGNOMINIOUS PRIZE WINNERS The 2001 Ig Nobel (get it?) Prize winners recently were honored during a gala ceremony, according to one of those e-mails floating around the Web. Among the whimsical winners were: MEDICINE: Peter Barss of McGill University for his impactful medical report “Injuries Due to Falling Coconuts.” PHYSICS: David Schmidt of University of Massachusetts for his partial solution to the question of why shower curtains billow inward. LITERATURE: John Richards of Boston, England, founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society, for his efforts to protect, promote, and defend the differences between plural and possessive. PUBLIC HEALTH: Chittaranjan Andrade and B.S. Srihari of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India, for their probing medical discovery that nose picking is a common activity among adolescents. PLAY BALL! Bob Bowman, president and chief executive of Major League Baseball Advanced Media—the interactive media wing of the big leagues—has a job a fan would die for. He is paid to think up the same kinds of ideas about covering sports that the average Joe does after a few beers with his baseball buddies, and then he gets to tell his people, “Go do it!” They have built one of pro sports’ most entertaining Web sites, www.MLB.com, which offers stats, live audio, video highlights, chat, auctions, you name it. They did it by making some smart bets, especially on how the availability of high-speed, broadband connections to the Internet will change how people use that medium. Bowman shrugs off his success. “We didn’t have to spend $3 trillion to establish a brand name,” he says. But there is more to it than that. So Context, looking for insight on broadband, asked Bowman to step up to the plate and take a few swings.
BOB BOWMAN: The most important thing we have learned is that it’s still very early: The Internet may be in the first inning, as many people say, but streaming audio and video probably haven’t even started the game. They may not even be taking their warm-up pitches. Still, we had between 100,000 and 125,000 people subscribe to our audio and video feeds last season. That’s more than twice the number from the year before, even though we started charging $9.95 a season. Our budget was for 62,000 subscribers last season and then for 90,000 this coming season, so we’ve airmailed our budget. And the upside is massive. Just in the U.S., nine million homes and almost 30 million businesses have broadband. The workplace is very important to us because baseball, unlike football, is a weekday activity, too. I don’t want to tell every boss to check to see if employees are on our site, but I hope many of them are checking in during the workday. CONTEXT: Do you see television and the Internet converging into a single medium? BOWMAN: I don’t. I think that when people watch TV, they’re on the couch and relaxing, talking to their spouses, reading the newspaper. That doesn’t mean people won’t sometimes watch TV on computers, or play with their computers when they’re in front of the TV, but I think the TV and the Internet are different activities. We don’t think we’re in competition with TV. We don’t need to have people on our site every minute of every day in order to be successful. We’re just trying to make the TV broadcasts better. The other thing is that, today, everyone has a cellphone, and, when push comes to shove, that’s the way you reach people. Anybody who is trying to condense their content for a cellphone will never get it as good as TV or radio. But for people on the go, it’s nice to be able to get a quick update on what’s going on. CONTEXT: How will your site evolve? BOWMAN: We’re going to try to be everything baseball. That means covering the major leagues, the minor leagues, the instructional leagues, spring training, the Latin leagues. In general, I think you are going to find more deeply specialized sites, like ours, appearing on the Web. CONTEXT: What would your customer’s ideal MLB.com experience look like? BOWMAN: A subscriber listens to or watches his favorite team live, gets up-to-date stats, zeroes in on the manager if he’s arguing with the umpire. He checks last night’s archived games or gets a customized highlights package. He may get a bulletin that says: The Brewers are up with the bases juiced in Seattle right now; click here to tune in. Need fantasy league updates? Need tickets to a game? Click here, click there. If you’re reading a story about Randy Johnson, and you want to buy his jersey, click here. The goal is to let everyone personalize his experience on the site.
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Extended vacations;