A year ago, I wrote about how podcasting’s underlying technology biases really, really small audiences. Audiences of 1.
This morning, listening to the latest Evil Genius Chronicles, Dave asked how small the audience size has to be before I (you/we) stop.
Turns out, my number is 1.
Good to know.
I caught the same article Dave did this morning at the CP Blotter and didn’t think anything of it.
Thankfully, Dave did a little poking around and found the “three of every four dollars in profit” is not on all of Target profit, but rather on the 15% increase in profits in a single quarter.
What does that mean in numbers? Hypothetically. Let’s say a company has a year’s profit of just under a $1 million ($998,675 to be exact), 15% quarterly profit increase might look something like this:
Q1 – $200,000
Q2 – $230,000
Q3 – $264,500
Q4 – $304,175
Now let’s compare the two numbers;
(City Pages) 75% of Q1 to Q4 profits: $749,006
(Business Week) 75% of Q3 to Q4 increase: $29,756
That’s a discrepancy of $719,250.
That’s not just a big difference – that’s bad, deceptive, and misleading journalism.
BTW – if you want to crunch the actual numbers yourself, here’s Targets 8K filing. If you’re wondering, Target’s 2006Q1 earnings were $886 million.
In the interests of incremental deadlines, I’ve added this project to the list of demos at the upcoming MinneDemo.
Back from a week’s vacation, tanned, rested, and ready. A lot has happened, and this morning I put a few more wheels in motion. Lots of smaller things that have been sitting on the To Do list for way too long.
The road construction outside the home office is mostly over – enough so I’m contemplating moving the office out of doors.
As part of today’s productivity purge, I’ve kicked off a new project. One I’ve been tossing around for far too long – and like the things above, on the To Do List for far too long.
That said, this project has an arbitrary 82-day deadline. Tick. Tock.
Here’s what I’m happy to share about the project at this point: it’s a Ruby-on-Rails app and one of the major goals is to test the recurring themes of the Work Better blog.
More will be revealed as the deadline draws near.
Came back from vacation with 2 Sunday papers on my doorstep. Inspiring a real good conversation Sunday afternoon with my sister, Kari. She’s just that bit younger than me that newspapers don’t exist in her world. She doesn’t read them and she was nice enough to listen to me vent.
As always, the writing in the Strib isn’t fantastic – I even read this week’s cover story (laws destroying local meth production encouraged importation from Mexico), though not much more. If the stories don’t read like simplistic editorial they read like thinly veiled advertisements – wrapped in obvious advertisements.
For all the effort it takes to publish and deliver the paper to me on a weekly basis – sure seems like it’d have a much higher cover price than $1.75 – (it costs me that to move the paper from the front step to the recycling bin).
What if the Strib wasn’t 99.9% ad subsidized? Would I pay $10-20 / week to have the Star Tribune delivered with amazing writing? Writing you’d pick up on a Wednesday to re-read, or continue reading. Writing that provided complexity, calls to action, analysis, and recognized that the newspaper itself is simply one piece of my information resources.
As I’m imagining this world where the Minneapolis Star Tribune is more like the Harvard Business Review, Kari picks up a stack of coupons Jen clipped earlier.
$0.55 here, $0.60 there, another $0.20, eventually enough to cover the paltry cover price.
Is this all I should be expecting from the Strib? Cause, even the St. Anthony Bulletin‘s writer makes the police log an entertaining read…and that’s a free paper…free like public radio is free.
One of the primary reasons we headed to Chicago last week – aside from friends, family, and Millennium Park – was a couple of food items we last found there.
Grocery store after grocery store. No luck.
Thankfully, the Mister Mustard is available at Amazon.
We’re heading back north in the morning after a few days in Chicago. Huge thanks to the Dihiansan’s for a very enjoyable backyard dinner earlier in the week and the Smith‘s this evening. On both counts it’s great to see kids older than Cooper, where they’re at as people and how Cooper interacts with them. Not to mention a good adult conversation. Thank you both for sharing your lives with us – if only for an evening.
We spent this afternoon at Millennium Park – and I have to say, the bean, er – Cloud Gate is far cooler up close than the pictures depict. The sculpture needs dozens of people underneath it all searching for their reflections. By contrast, I wasn’t as impressed with the Spitting fountains. No, it didn’t spit while we were watching it. Sure, the fountains were nice as a public bathing pool and they did alleviate some of the inherent urban oppressiveness. But.
We walked up and down Michigan Avenue – always a good walk. Especially when you have no particular destination. Through it all – Cooper had a fantastic time. Laughing, giggling, making new friends, watching the storefronts and cars go by. He’s definitely more city mouse than country mouse.
Things we missed about Chicagoland that came right back; Joy Yee’s bubble teas, Giordano’s stuffed pizza, Lake Michigan.
Things we didn’t miss about Chicagoland that came right back; traffic, and the hour it takes to get anywhere.
Extra special thanks to Jen’s uncle for hosting us and a congrats out to Capital K for his engagement. Looks like we’ll be back next year ’bout this time.
On Friday, I received an email from Apple’s iTunes Podcasting team that they’re changing the categories in the iTunes directory. So, I updated the WP-iPodcatter plugin to reflect these changes.
Like their removal of item-level categorization, I’m not crazy about these changes.
Then again, iTunes is a pretty worthless interface for finding podcasts, and these category revisions only make the problem worse. While doing nothing to eliminate podcasters gaming their placement with; -, –>, :: , ‘, ‘”, “”””””””””””””””””.
All podcast directories have a similar problem – trying to be the Yahoo of podcasts (hierarchical directory) rather than the Google (really good filtering). If you’re looking for good podcasts – I recommend AmigoFish or a regular web search (Google, Yahoo, etc) with “podcast” added at the end.
As expected, the contractor that bought our old place is now selling the lot. If you were interested in the location, but not so much the house itself. It is now a blank canvas. Build as you wish.
Reminds me of scene from the Chevy Chase classic Fletch Lives (which, coincidentally, I saw at the now boarded-up theater in the Village):
Fletch: [flirting] Hey Betty, how about lunch at the In N’ Out Burger?
Betty Dilworth: [disgusted] No.
Fletch: Okay, forget the burger, how about just the In N’ Out?
[she sneers at him]
Fletch: Ok, how about just the In?