Dementia In NFL Players

Some N.F.L players are paying a high price for the glitz, glamour (and in some cases) and big payday of playing American football. More reports are leaking out about the debilitating health of retired players. The latest highlights two players affected with dementia. They are 2 of 20 known, with an estimated 60 or 80 more unknown.

If I knew that the NFL was making such a fuss about church groups gathering together to watch the Big Game so they could support their retired players, I'd be sympathetic.

Add to del.icio.us

Starbucks: I Smell Just Fine

A very unhappy Starbucks customer takes Howard Schultz to task in Time magazine. I enjoyed the well-crafted commentary, but wonder where this person lives. In parts of San Francisco, there's a Starbucks on every corner. Maybe the real estate is too rich where Bill works, so the company can't afford to buy the space. Or maybe no one's willing to sell to them?

Anyhoo, I've used Starbucks to jump on wifi, and think it's fine. Of course, I've not done it where there isn't enough seating. Still, I think it's great they have it. Why would I want Starbucks to stop offering wifi? I know I can always count on a speedy internet at a great price when I've traveling state-side.

The NFL (Death) Spiral?

Nwz Chik has a post on how the NFL is trying to trademark "the Big Game" as a phrase. Oh brother: this is the latest effort by the NFL to shoot their brand in the foot. First they told church groups they couldn't have Super Bowl parties because the big group would show up as one person watching when it might actually be 101. The blogosphere slammed the NFL for that bright move.

And now this. In the San Francisco Bay Area, "the Big Game" refers to the annual contest between Stanford University and U.C. Berkeley (Cal). I'm betting that lots of you out there have your own Big Game.

So I have to ask: Has the NFL had too many concussions? Where is their competition? Arena football? Is that why they've gone into testosterone overdrive? Where the heck else can advertisers go to reach the football-watching demographic? What is the viable option to advertising in the Super Bowl?

I’ve seen perfectly good teams blow themselves up. My team, the San Francisco 49ers, is a good example. And they did it in one season – or should I say, in one off-season. (Did you see Jeff Garcia step up in Philadelphia?) Now let's see how quickly the NFL can do the same, following this new game plan. Should we call this the East Coast offensive-defense? Sounds a mess to me.

Good On Verizon

I just read about Mary Ellen Bates' experience with Verizon, and I was very pleased! I just suggested to my mom that she get a Verizon or Sprint wireless card. She's leaning toward Verizon, and I sure hope she has a great experience too.

Add to del.icio.us

Starbucks: I Can Only Say Wow

My family took me to Circus Circus in Reno for my birthday. There is a little coffee stop (it's not even a coffee shop) where they "proudly serve Starbucks coffee." But what we got was a travesty. In fact, it was so bad, that we went back to talk with the workers.

When we got home, I wrote a letter to Starbucks corporate. What I got back was (a) a very nice email from a senior customer service representative; (b) a 30-minute call from the Starbucks manager responsible for Reno; and (c) a letter from that same customer representative with a few free "Coffees on us" coupons.

The one message that ran clearly through all of these communications was quite simple and powerful: we care that you contacted us, we thank you for your loyalty to our brand, and contact us again if you ever have such an experience.

Papillon Cafe is a local coffee shop that I frequent all the time. Owned by Brenda and Tom, they have created a wonderful community feel to Papillon - which just around the corner from a Starbucks. I sometimes go there when I want something I can't get from Papillon. And of course, Starbucks becomes my "third space" - other office - when I'm about town.

Papillon has my coffee consumer's heart - but Starbucks just earned some of that heart too.

Rock on, Starbucks.

Those Pesky Offers

You know those subscription offers magazines that come on a postcard size piece of paper? I just opened my latest Wired magazine and, like I always do, thumbed through and pulled them all out. I've been doing this for a long, long time. Do you remember Omni magazine? (Yes, despite previous posts, I do like Wikipedia, I just don't want kids thinking it's the only truth out there.) It was the precursor to Wired, and covered science fact, the paranormal, and more.

Anyway. One day, I called Omni and complained that I'd had to pull out 11 -11! - subscription offers and I thought that was just way too many. Shortly after that, Omni stopped publishing. Wired only had five, but I can't help but feel that so many has an air of desperation about it. What's the perfect number of these things?

Fork in the Road: Citizendium from Wikipedia

A few months ago, I wrote about Jimmy Wales wanting to burn Wikipedia to CDs and distribute them to kids in developing countries. While a worthy thought, I was and am concerned that poor kids are going to get poorly vetted information that they will take as fact. There's a reason why colleges and high schools are banning the use of Wikipedia as a source for papers.

Citzendium plans to fix this with a different model of open source knowledge. Fast Company has a nice, concise explanation of Citzendium's objectives.

(On an aside, Slashdot reports that Jimmy Wales has stepped down as Chair of the board; Wikipedia confirms it.)

May I Introduce Ms. Dewey?

Oh, oh, oh, too, too, too wunnerful: I was introduced to Ms. Dewey by a DCWW Web Women post. Ms. Dewey is a flash-powered, smart alek interface to the world of search. Ms. Dewy must be named after the dewey decimal classification system (which, yes, is alive and well). Never mind the search results, with which some people seem to have a problem. Or the fact that the results are sorta hard to read. At this point in the experiment, let's just enjoy the show. Visit Ms. Dewey, then get the inside dish from David Ewalt of Digital Download on this Microsoft Live project.

"Automatic Renewal"

I've always seen "automatic renewal" as a service provider saying to me, "We're not sure if our product is all that great *in the long run* so we're going to hedge our bets here a bit. Therefore, we will put the responsibility on you, dear customer, to take action to stop payment and we hope you'll forget, be too busy, etc. to stop it."

In truth, when the service I am receiving is awesome, I the consumer don't think twice about stopping a service. Indeed, just the opposite occurs: I make sure that I have no interruption of service.

New York Times Pre-Roll Ads

I've noticed in the last month or so that the New York Times has begun inserting ads between the blurb of a story and the actual article. In other words, when you click on a link to go to a story, occasionally an ad is fed between the link and the article.

What I've also found is that about 1 out of every 3 times my Firefox browser gets hung up and I have to hit the back button (reload doesn't work). (I have my browser set to not show ads. ) So I contacted the Times to ask whether a subscription to their TimesSelect product would eliminate these ads. (Yes, I'd pay $30/year to get rid of those things, along with the other benefits of TimesSelect.) After filling in the form, selecting 'Other' as the problem I was having, this is the email I received in response:

Subject: NYTimes Other

We regret the inconvenience you experienced accessing our Web site.

There are a few possible reasons why you were asked to log in to our Web site, the most probable being that the 'cookie' that stored your saved sign-in information on your computer expired or was deleted. Reminder: You must accept cookies from NYTimes.com in order to go beyond the log-in screen.

1. If you remember your Member ID and password:
For the quickest solution, please go directly to the following web address (URL) to log out of The New York Times on the Web: www.nytimes.com/logout

Then click on the link to "Log in."

Now on the page that follows, look at the right part of your screen for the section marked LOG IN NOW and enter your Member ID and password.

Next, click on the LOG IN button to submit your request.

2. If you have forgotten your Member ID and/or password for the quickest way to gain access to our site please visit:
www.nytimes.com/forgot

Or, if you wish, you may reply to this message (include the e-mail address that you originally registered with, please) and we will reset the password for you. To speed things up, please write "Reset Password" in the Subject line of your e-mail message.

Thanks for your interest in NYTimes.com.
Regards,
NYTimes.com
Customer Service
www.nytimes.com/help

After the salutation and first sentence, I wanted to look over my shoulder to see if they were talking to me, because clearly this email did not address my question.

However, several hours later I received this email:

Thank you for writing to The New York Times on the Web.

You will still see normal ads on our Web site, but as a TimesSelect subscriber, you will not see any "intrusive" advertising

while you are accessing our TimesSelect content or features. If you go from a TimesSelect column to a regular news article

on NYTimes.com, you might encounter an advertisement that is more intrusive, such as a pop-up ad. We do limit this type

of advertisement to one per Web browser session.

We hope this helps. Please let us know if you have further questions or concerns.

Regards,

NYTimes.com

Customer Service

www.nytimes.com/help

I thought, "That's more like it," though of course I wasn't happy with the response. It seems that if I'm going to pay $49.95 "automatically renewed" every year I ought to be able to avoid intrusive advertising.