Dylan Hunter

War

They’ll want to play this one all day!

war

Setup: 20×40 grid with both ends of the grid open. Place a set of cones about 3 feet apart in the middle of both ends. These are your goals. After you have set up the field, divide your players into two equal teams.

The teams line up outside the grid opposite each other. Assign each player a number.

The coach starts the game by tossing the ball inside the grid and calling a number.

The players of that number from each team run into the field of play and try to score through the opposite goal.

If you want to emphasise close control, make it a condition that a goal can only be scored if they have control of the ball and be no more than two steps away from it when the ball crosses the line. If they do not have control or are more than two steps away from the ball, the goal does not count.

Alternatively, you can encourage quick shooting by allowing the children to shoot as soon as they get a sight of goal.

Defending techniques, (closing down, positioning between the attacker and the goal, not ‘diving in’), can also be emphasised and reinforced in this fun 1 v 1.

If the ball goes out of the grid, throw another ball in to keep the game flowing. Try throwing it in high so your kids can practice controlling a bouncing ball.

Once a player scores, award that team 1 point. First team to score, say, three points wins.

After players are back into position call out another number.

To make the game more interesting, call out a second number while the first pair are playing. Now you have a 2 v 2 team situation. Now you can focus on defensive techniques, communication, quick passing and running off the ball.

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You can add an element of conditioning if the children have to run right round the marked out area when their number is called, entering the field of play through the opposite goal.
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Ensure both teams stand in the goalmouths while they wait for you to call out a number!

Trick or Treat

This simple dribbling drill was suggested by Ivan Mann, a coaching colleague from the soccercoach-l mailing list. It also makes a good warm up exercise for younger children.

Set Up and Execution

Make a square with pretty small sides - players line up on each side. Put an adult in the middle of each side (that means four adults) holding a dozen or so flat cones (you could use anything else similar size and shape). 50 cones or 50 slips of construction paper will do.

On a go signal, players dribble across the square, stop the ball with a foot on it, say “Trick or Treat”, take a cone from an adult, turn the ball, dribble back across, take a cone, etc. When all the cones are gone, who has the most?

This requires dribbling at speed, avoiding the clump in the middle, controlling the ball around an opponent, but minimal coordination holding the cones.

After a few rounds dribble across the square, dribble around the coach, and then stop the ball, say “Trick or treat,” etc. Or place the adults randomly in the square, moving at a walking pace. This makes them keep their heads up and look for the target (i.e. the adult)

Hot potato

Objectives: communication, goalkeeping, movement, decision-making, passing, receiving, fun.

Age range: 6+

Number of children: 10+

Equipment: enough cones to mark out the grid, 8 or 10 footballs, coloured bibs.

Set up: Mark out a 40×30 grid with two target areas as shown in the diagram. Place 8 or 10 footballs in one target area. Put one player in each target area.

Target area

Target area

The basic game

Set your players a problem to solve – how can you get the footballs from one target area to the other as quickly as possible?

I suggest that you have just two rules: every player must touch every ball as it is transferred to the other target area and there can only be one ball in play at a time.

Now watch how they achieve their task. How do they communicate? Who are the leaders?

Ask them: “how can you do this more quickly?” “Is it quicker to take up static positions and throw the ball rather than pass it to each with your feet?” “Why?”

Conditions

If you prefer, you can direct your players by setting conditions such as:

* Use hands only (a good starting point for younger players)
* You cannot run with the ball
* You can only run N paces

Don’t forget to rotate the target players with the outfield players.

Progression 1: Introduce an element of competition.

Keep one player in each target area and split the remainder into two teams wearing coloured bibs. Start by sharing the grid as shown below.

Target area

team 1

team 2

1

2

1

2

1

2

1

2

Target area

The two teams now compete with each other to get a specified number of footballs from one target area to the other as quickly as they can. Keep the same basic rules, i.e., only one ball in play for each time at a time and every player must touch the ball. Introduce other conditions as required.

Progression 2: The two teams now play a netball (i.e., not allowed to run with the ball) or basketball (can run with the ball) game. They score a point by successfully passing the ball to a target player.

Progression 3: The next step is for the two teams to play soccer in the grid. They score a point by making a completed pass to one or either of the target players.
Summary

These soccer coaching activities, when combined with a suitable warm up and cool down, are a good way to improve your players decision making, passing, receiving and communication skills. The simplicity of the games makes them particularly suitable for younger players.

youth soccer coaching

Explode!

easy and fun soccer coaching drill designed to improve dribbling skills

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This game requires every player to have a football.
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You should have as many cones as players

Set up: The cones are placed an equal distance away from the circle, say 10-20 yards, depending on age of players

To start with I have the players dribble inside a circle (usually just using the inside circle of the field). The circle is primarily used so the players will keep their head up while dribbling in a confined space.

My instructions inside the circle will include “pull backs”, “outside of foot dribble” and so forth. Anything to keep their head up while dribbling.

After about a minute of dribbling I will yell the word “explode”. At this time, the players will then explode from the circle to find a cone to dribble to, turn around, and then come back to the circle. The key here is that no two players can go around the same cone, so they have to find another cone if somebody is already ahead of them. I (the coach) stand in centre of the circle and first one back to slap my hand wins.

Other rules I have in place are when players come back to circle they must have control of the ball and stop it in front of me and then slap my hand (I learned this after doing this drill and having the balls fly all over the place because they did not have control of the ball coming back into the circle). It is competitive and can be treated as a fitness drill.

You can also do the drill by how many times each player has come back to the circle to slap hands for a two minute time period.

Looks like a nice one for U6:

Egg Hunt

Have more balls than players. Have the players line-up across one end of the field. Take their balls and spread them out around the field, these are the eggs. At the other end of the field is a goal called the “basket”. Blow the whistle and turn them loose. The object of the game is to get all the “eggs” in the basket as quickly as possible. They are all on the same team, and aren’t allowed to take a ball away from another player. Time them to see how fast they can accomplish the task.

The kids really like this game. The more balls (eggs) the better. You should see them score, and turn right around and go back for more balls.

Data on the Entertainment Industry/ Music Albums Segment

Week ending September 25, 2005 US, Home and Work

An amusing mini-romp through some of those legal jewels embedded deep within the standard EULA. I liked Claria’s - to paraphrase: “I’m a scumbag, and am going to send back all kinds of nasty stuff, and you have no right to know what kind of stuff I’m going to send back, nor do you have the right to do anything about it…”

Funny stuff, especially for an app that no one, but no one, actually would _choose_ to install on their own, unbundled, un-”quietly mixed into the fine print of an installer,” un-ActiveX installed, etc., etc.

Too bad, too, from what I know, they’ve developed some pretty neat user profiling technology that could be used to make lots of folks very happy if applied to Search, eComm, etc., (i.e. similar technology is used to determine which result an SE should actually display to you, as opposed to your neighbor, to try to figure out what you mean when you pop in those 2 nigh-unto random words) - instead, it’s used to piss people off.

A search engine based on was the topic of my big Business Plan while at Babson, and still have not just great faith, but believe in the import of, as Search continues to mature - i.e. there’s not nearly enough being done to modify non-ad-related content to pay attention to what _I_ actually want - and yes, Local does get a bit further toward this, so it’ll be what I, and several million other people in MA might find relevant, but, guess what, for many items, I’m going to be a lot closer to folks in NJ, where I grew up, on others, closer to folks in NH or ME, where I vacation, on others closer to folks in Alaska, where someday I still hope to go, or folks who travel to the Himalayas, etc., etc.

I know _very_ well how tough it is to make these kinds of associations, as well as to update, determine when to re-assess which component groups we belong in, etc., but that doesn’t mean that it’s not an extremely important problem to work on, not just for the business opportunity, (though there is plenty of that) but for the good of us all. And yes, we’ll have to work through / around some the FUD that’s been inspired by the Scumbags, but we’ll get there - especially in societies that pride themselves on the value of the individual, to have Search reaching for anything less will always leave the prize unclaimed, and the opportunity to be surpassed, self-evident.

Just wanted to relay a superb story about a job very well done by Amazon. A couple of weeks ago, in an attempt to let me get more of my thoughts out,* poked around a bit, saw some great reviews on the most recent version of Dragon’s /ScanSoft’s / Nuance’s Naturally Speaking, and, after seeing the Preferred version on Amazon for $120 after rebate, (really wanted the Pro version, but come on, $600+ - did they hire somebody from MS to do their pricing?) plopped down the credit card and *phoosh*, 5 days later had my hands on a bright new copy of Dragon. Installed,** and was off to the races.

Inside the box was the rebate form, which said that this wasn’t a periodic rebate to try to push product toward the end of the year / in prep for the next version launching next summer, as I thought, but was really just an upgrade rebate, so applicable to, at most, maybe 1 in 10 of the folks who might see. Short version, after complaining to Amazon about how misleading I thought this was, (and yes, it apparently is shown similarly on CompUSA and several others, so it’s not an Amazon-only thing) without an ounce of complaint, etc., their customer support rep decided to take the hit for the $50 schuyster from ScanSoft even when I hadn’t asked them to, and in so doing, cemented themselves as an excellent example of the kind of business practices we all should have, (listening to their customers, empowering their workers to make the calls, and going above and beyond what’s being asked, knowing that the long-term value of the customer relationship is worth _much_ more than a single point-in-time issue, so make it go away - they’re not all the way up there with L.L. Bean - they’d have to offer to take back any book after you’d read it for years and years, no questions asked to get there, or at least have switched the way that it’s listed on their site for everyone else, (i.e. it’s still included here as part of the standard price - but, for me, I’m very happy, and they deserve a solid “Atta Boy!”

Snippets from the text of the incredibly short (again, right on target) email exchange is below:

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<snip>

Thank you for writing to us at Amazon.com.

First, I would like to convey to you my sincere apologies for any inconvenience you may have experienced with your order.

I understand your concern over the rebate which is only available to a small subset of the population.

Customer satisfaction is my priority. In an effort to compensate for the rebate I have requested a refund of $50.

This refund should be issued to your credit card within the next 2 to 3 business days. We will send you another e-mail to let you know when it has been completed. You may also view refunds by
clicking the “Your Account” link at the top of our web site, then clicking “Go!” next to “open and recently shipped orders.” Completed refunds appear at the bottom of an individual order’s summary page.

In addition to our large selection, one of the benefits we’d like to offer our customers is convenience, and I realise that we have not met that standard in this case. I hope that you will give us another opportunity to prove the quality of our service to you in the future.

I hope this solution is satisfactory. Once again I apologize for such an inconvenience.

Thank you for shopping at Amazon.com.

<snip>

Best regards,

Rupal Mehta
Amazon.com Customer Service
http://www.amazon.com

<snip>
>
> COMMENTS: Just wanted to send along a note as to how disappointed I
> was by your inclusion of ScanSoft’s upgrade rebate, which is only available
> to a small subset of the population, rather than being available to all, as
> part of the mainline price displayed for this item. When I purchased this
> product, I was expecting to eventually pay $120 for it, which is probably
> the most this was worth to me.
>
> From a legal perspective, I’m sure you guys are more than covered, but
> from a customer loyalty perspective, I think it misleading to include these
> kind of heavily restricted rebates as part of what you suggest is the true
> cost of the item, (is the equivalent of listing the MS Office full edition
> for the price of the upgrade one - it’s just not the same).
>
> In the past, I have had nothing but good things to say about my
> experiences with you guys, and not going to make a huge issue about this
> one, (i.e. I’m just going to suck it up as having been beaten out of $50)
> but wanted to let you know that by including this rebate in the
> regularly-suggested price, I’m afraid this feeling of having been
> schystered out of $50 I just wasn’t planning on having to spend really
> leaves a bad taste in my mouth in doing business with you, (and I’m sure
> I’m not alone in this of the people who purchased this) and next time, I’m
> going to have to think twice as to how comfortable I’m going to be in
> purchasing from you, (and yes, I could certainly do while reading the
> legalisms of this, that and the other, but you know what, I just want to
> buy something from someone that I feel comfortable isn’t going to make me
> waste my time jerking around with legalisms - there is a strong value to me
> of buying from folks who do “what’s right,” not just “what’s legal.”
> Thanks, Dylan

<snip>

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* Am sure I’m not alone in losing _so_ much that I once knew / experienced, for the simple reason that, quite frankly, typing is a pain in the butt and inefficient - talking is _much_ better, but can’t afford to have a perma-secretary transcribing my every thought!

** And to hopefully save others even the $120, honestly, even after several hours of reading training docs, it still only works sufficiently to be a curiousity, not as a real interface - come on, Folks, I know voice recognition is hard, but for even recognition of a single individual to be as hit-and-miss as this is after all that time blathering Dilbert and 3001: The Final Odyssey, (or whatever) there’s _no way_ that “Beta” shouldn’t be stamped all over that thing, (I don’t care if it’s Version 8, it’s just not good enough to call itself a finished product). Also, as relates specifically to this issue, I know there are some ridiculous shelving fees being charged at the SKU level by retailers, but sorry, an Upgrade-only price, (which is really what this turned out to be) is a different product, different SKU, not a rebate!

For all of us who’ve had to deal with the Chinese Government in relation to content on the Internet and the freedom of information when considering expanding into China, an excellent reminder of the face on our calls when we accede…

Will let the eloquence of the writer speak for itself.

I know I am hardly the first blogger to deal with this situation, but wanted to send along a nice, positive “may you roast upon a firey spit” to our friends working with Online Poker and Phentermine, (there, you got your one mention, and no, you’re not getting the links). Now piss off, (and yes, I know perfectly well that not only is there not a chance in hell that these folks are actually listening, but even less of a chance of them actually heeding me, but sometimes a good “shaking your fist at the sky” is important, nonetheless - keeps you strong on why you don’t want to engage in these kinds of business practices when confronted with folks who keep pushing to swim deeper and deeper toward the darkness! )

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For those of you who don’t know what comment spam is, there are some seriously scummy companies - they used to work with porn, where they used to try game my index on ATW.com* all the time - but apparently have found online gaming and prescriptions at least as profitable - out there who build bots to find blogs, and then submit random, utterly unrelated crap as comments to those blogs, which include their links, trying first and foremost to build up their Google PageRank** numbers, as well as hoping to get the maybe one in ten thousand folks who might actually click on to find out what this random non-sequitor is all about to actually engage.

For those blogs / forums that are unmoderated, these links go up, and if Google / Yahoo, etc., haven’t yet detected their most recent bit of random crap, (i.e. they change IP’s, emails, text, doorway pages, etc. all the time, and am sure have gotten smart enough to ensure that the true IP’s are entirely masked, and the ones they submit are sufficiently randomized so as to make it more difficult to connect) for at least a point in time, they get to profit from the connectivity calculations to boost their ranks within the algorithmic portion of these search engines, thereby attracting more extremely cheap leads, (though Teoma, in using their more “segmented only to the query” version of connectivity should at least isolate these idiots to fighting back and forth to only their own sewers).

Is forever the anti-spam / porn / spyware economic problem - there is much more profit for the companies doing this than there is for the companies trying to resist, (where usually doing a better job in dealing with is only a cost***). And so long as this remains the case, (which’ll be nigh unto forever) we’ll have to deal with, and lose the economic value of the time spent in all of us dealing with, (i.e. how much cash could we all generate in the same amount of time it takes us to moderate our blogs / forums to make these things go away and go away and go away…. And yes, I know WordPress 1.5+ has some method of decreasing comment spam, but afraid I haven’t yet been able to get my webhost to upgrade me beyond 1.0.x even after repeated requests - and yes, this indeed may turn out to be enough of an issue for me to move webhosts - or, via the extreme power of inertia - it may not! )
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* Have I told you how much it hurts my heart every time I have to type the link to ATW anymore? What’s there is nothing more than a tired shell - my Old Girl, as a distinct entity, with its own advantages and disadvantages is long since gone, (though at least adding nicely to Yahoo). It’s as sad as when Disney bought Go.com, gutted it, refused to do any work to keep it up, refused to sell it, (I tried! ) and killed it through neglect, (and that wasn’t nearly as interesting a search engine) as happened with:

AV, (I almost never used, but I’m sure I’m far from alone in missing them having their full boolean advanced search - some things are important just to _be_ - as something in the World - even if only 4 people on the planet actually use - this is one of them), as happened with

Hotbot, as happened with

Northern Light, (one of my old personal favorites on the relevance front - from a business model perspective, were clearly always one of the weirdest), as happened with

….,

but as will unfortunately never happen with MSN even though looking at the mistakes that they continue to make that all of us already went through and solved years ago, it probably should, (but MS has to remain MS, and do it their own way - their focus has always been on how things can be best for them, rather than how they can be best for the consumer, and luckily, they have more than enough cash to continue to totally not care, and there are more than enough people whose most important market trait is inertia).

** And yes, I’m well-aware that Google doesn’t actually use PageRank, the algorithm, anymore. Am referring to the PageRank _concept_ - i.e. weighted link popularity to approximate concepts of authority, which I’m sure they’ll always use in one way or another, (if only to keep a tight, well-understood PR message). And if you’re _seriously_ picking these kind of nits, am sure there are plenty of other folks who would be much better foils for random, senseless and otherwise unproductive argument, (i.e. I never understood the point of debating, either).

*** Even for the anti-spyware guys, who do get comped specifically to fight, they get comped to remove stuff, and if that means wiping out a whole mess of false positives, who cares? They don’t get paid to work hard on parsing the nice ones from the nasties, they get paid to make things go away, plain and simple, with the specific exception of never tagging Google or Yahoo since the bad PR would kill them, regardless of the practices of their apps - i.e. did you know that if you have the PageRank button active on your Google toolbar, (which is the default condition) that they’re watching literally every single site that you, your husband, your wife, your children, go to, (though I suppose if your child is an early-pubescent, it might be a good thing to scare him a bit about people watching what he’s watching! )? Did you know further that both Google and Yahoo update their toolbars to do whatever they’ve chosen to do without your knowledge or consent? This stuff certainly scares the bejesus out of me!

For those of you who know me, you know how much my wife and children mean to me - how much joy they bring into my heart every day, (yes, even when my wife is driving me nuts! ) how much I truly feel honored to have them with me in my life, (was funny, yesterday when I stopped in at the grocery store for something quick at lunchtime, the checkout girl said “I’m not used to seeing you without your girls - you don’t look right…” - she made me smile - and yes, she was right, I don’t look right without them! ).

My most recent bit of amusement came this morning while I was driving my younger daughter, Erin, (3 1/2) to her school. While waiting for my elder daughter, Katie’s, (5 1/2) bus this morning, the kids were on Nick Jr watching LazyTown videos - if you haven’t watched, you really should - it’s an excellent show, with really good messages on nutrition and exercise, (he says from sitting in a cushy chair by the fire inside a Panera - a highly recommended work environment, btw - free Wifi, all the coffee you can drink, made fresh for you, and some mighty tasty goodies! ). And, of course, as almost always happens, the songs got stuck in our heads, so we were singing “La-C-Scouts,” (the show comes from Iceland, so both Sportacus - who really is stunning with his flips, pushups, standing on one hand on a soccer ball, etc - I couldn’t do _any_ of that, even when I was in tip-top shape! - and Robbie Rotten have Icelandic accents - a “z” becomes an “s,” a “u” becomes an “o,” etc. - I love listening to accents, and having worked for a Norwegian company for 2 yrs, this kind of feels like “old home!” ). And when Erin was singing “sluggish,” she sang it as “sloggish,” which gave me quite a good laugh - my elder daughter has gotten a bit of a Dominican accent when she speaks Spanish, since her teacher was from the Dominican Republic, and my younger is definitely starting to have a bit of an Icelandic one on some of her words! Good for them - I’ve always loved languages and accents, am glad that they’re developing, as well, (’course, the elder one won’t take corrections, so horse is “cabaejo,” rather than “cabaeyo,” so soon, if Erin follows suit, I may have to start referring to her as “Helga!” ).

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BTW, for the Nick Jr folks, (pitched to the woman in charge of in March / April, but can’t remember her name, and didn’t put her in my Contacts folder) - very simple enhancement to your site if you don’t want people pirating your content - if you’re dying to remove content from the main area where it’s accessed, (in this case, the video player, and, come on, it’s time to broaden out to include Firefox!) please make sure to provide an accessible archive somewhere - the kids love to watch videos on Nick Jr,* and it breaks their heart, and thus ours, to have to say “I know you liked watching Stephanie singing “Bing Bang,” or Robbie Rotten doing “You are a Pirate,” (thank you for bringing back this morning!) but I’m afraid we can’t anymore, it’s not there…. And you make a tech-savvy parent have to say “no” to their child for something that stupid, look for downloads of VirtualDub to start to rise to take make _your_ ability to disappoint _our_ children go away, (trust me, the _last_ thing good parents need is additional assistance in saying “no” to our children!) - hence the problem with many of these stupid DRM systems - when DRM is combined with poor choices, especially when young children are involved, you’re just _begging_ to turn folks into pirates, (”Yar Har, Fiddle-dee-dee”). And the pressure for this to happen didn’t need to be there - foolish choice, with fairly well-foreseeable negative consequences, (to both the site and the brands).

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* Even with those crap forced ads that you can’t skip by after 5 videos in the last couple of weeks - bogus, just bogus - I know you’re comped only on rev from the site, rather than the effect the site has as a branding tool to keep getting us all to purchase more Dora Live tickets, or Maya & Miguel Backpacks, etc., and that’s a bit of big-company foolishness, but come on, if you’re going to do a forced interrupt ad, you should at least be able to skip by, if you want to - there’ll _still_ be plenty of ads shown, you’ll still have facilitated an additional series of nags to us parents to buy this or that, etc. - online is supposed to be Interactive, which means User-Controlled, but back to our above story….)

I’m hardly an anti-javascript zealot, (in fact, there are many times where I’ve been a strong proponent, and am definitely interested in where AJAX could go) but I do have to say I definitely find it highly irritating that when I go to a new website without javascript activated, I either get absolutely nothing, some random jumble of text, and/or can’t navigate at all. Come on, folks, javascript is supposed to _enhance_ the experience, not preclude it! And yes, as a user, given the horrible extent to which companies, (even ones with great brands) have abused javascript for use with pop-ups/-unders, it is definitely a wise idea to start with it turned off, and only enable for trusted sources!

If you’re one of the folks who went over to Firefox primarily to get away from the pop-up hell that is IE, (and/or because you believe that no one company should have the level of hegemony that MS has commanded for quite some time, especially not with the business practices that are all too tempting for any monopolist, but especially MS) you will have noticed that in the last few months, as our new friend has started getting some very strong browser penetration numbers, that some folks have started breaking through Firefox’s higher resistance to pop-ups, etc.

To get back the browsing environment that we got Firefox for in the first place, I _strongly_ recommend installing the NoScript extension, which defaults javascript off, but when you go onto a new site with javascript, it will pop a small band on the bottom of the browser to let you know that the site has javascript. You can then either choose to enable for that site either permanently or temporarily, and pretty much be back off to the races. Although a bit of a pain in the beginning, you do get used to it after a bit, and once you start seeing all the entities that are trying to do things to your computer without your knowledge/consent, you’ll never even think about browsing without it, (i.e. did you know that Sourceforge, the core of Open Source, no less, drops Tacoda tracking cookies on you when you go that site - come on, of all the sites that cater to some of the most psychotic online privacy proponents, SourceForge doing this?!).

Now, I actually understand and believe in the value of behavioral analysis, (both for search, where I first tried even before working on Alltheweb,* and now in advertising, though in the latter case, I honestly do find myself somewhat conflicted on the issue of tracking cookies - btw, in case you couldn’t guess, I also have y cookie settings set to prompt me before anything happens! ) but on a personal level, I do find myself feeling quite irritated when things happen to my PC that I didn’t _specifically_ ask to have happen, and since I’ve installed NoScript, and now seeing how many companies are trying to do all kinds of questionable things, I would _always_ suggest going to Firefox, installing NoScript, setting cookies to ionly be set by the given site, and then to have the site ask you whether it’s ok to cookie you.

I definitely _do_ wish NoScript would modify from being whitelist-only to providing a blacklist option based on popularity of folks submitting sites to be blacklisted to them, but having worked on similar technologies in a failed attempt to pull off a Safe Search version of ATW for Pax I know how this can quickly blossom into a _huge_ pain in the tail for even firms getting paid good money to solve, forget about random folks contributing personal time and effort to help out, (thank you, Giorgio!!! ).

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* Was the basis for the search engine I designed while in B-School @ Babson. Yes, for those who have poked around a bit, that’s the “better version of Direct Hit before Direct Hit existed.” Taught me several very important lessons:

1) If you believe strongly enough in the value of something, don’t let yourself be dissuaded even if authority figures you respect tell you what you’re proposing is irrational / impossible. Heck, if you think about it, there’s nothing rational about Search in the first place: making not just one, but multiple copies of all the knowledge and experience of the entire planet? Most people don’t even think about how utterly insane that is, so when was any web search concept ever rational?

2) Even for highly-capital intensive ventures, (of which, Search is definitely one) you can’t allow yourself to abandon a good idea because you’re not going to get funded. Now, back in ‘97-’99, when I was going to B-School, that was the proscription:

A. Business Plan
B. Management Team**
C. VC Funding
D. GO!

Now, in ‘05, Search is definitely coming back, so yes, there are at least the glimmers of hope, where 3 yrs ago, we were all trying to figure out how to “re-cast” Search on our resumes, since there were certainly no Search companies hiring, (at least here in the Greater Boston Area) and since there was a truly sick and disgusting semi-triumphant attitude to see those crushed in the post-Bubble fall, (i.e. early 30’s VP’s). And yes, there were many of us who _were_ jack-asses, (much of the Lycos staff coming immediately to mind - hated their partners, hated each other, bragged about so-and-so having been “shit-canned” after 6 months, the median lifetime of a Lycos person back then) but there were many of us who loved the Internet for the chance to do something extraordinary, to actually have an impact on the companies we were working for, rather than just being a random cog, and yes, for sure, to make enough in doing so both to make secure lives for our families, and to ensure that we could do it again a couple of years down the road when the funding sources told us we were out of our minds yet again, (i.e. do you honestly believe that Google could have become what it is today if it had tried to launch in the funding climate post-2000? As I said, though, am definitely pleased to see interest in Search coming back up - you’ll still have to bootstrap hard, and probably be able to make a go of it for a good 12-18 mths or so, which’ll be nigh unto a killer for many of us, but it’s still infinitely better than it was, but the question on Google post-2000 still stands…). Well, at least some folks are still living the Dream, and for the rest of us, Hope dawns again!! - And this time, there _will_ be a liquidity event before the financial markets choose to crush us again, and forget B2B - yes, it’s a very easy way to get good a good bunch of cash / traffic at one shot, but the very protracted last recession should have shown us all that corporations do _not_ behave rationally to their environment, refusing to invest even as the consumer economy remained very strong. B2C - takes longer, may need to be funded from some B2B endeavors while corporations remain “positive,” but so long as you’re providing a product / service that has value, individuals _will_ continue to consume, and you _will_ be able to survive through the down times. Businesses, as now well-established largely-economically-irrational actors will not.

Whew! Enough random catharsis for today, time to get back to productive uses - I have my own company to try to bootstrap for now, and prospecting’s not getting done while I sit here babbling about ancient history!

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** ‘Course, “Management Team” was always probably the hardest of those steps, especially during the up times, as anyone who was willing to shelf his idea, where he’s the CEO, for yours, where you are, probably wasn’t good enough to be on your Team, if you really wanted those “A-players” that everyone’s always spouting about. Still a huge issue for anyone who looks back into their history and sees tens / hundreds of millions, if not billions, in value fail to have been created by the companies that these folks were a part of, (i.e. how much are the folks from Excite, Lycos, AV, as well as me still kicking themselves in the tail on a nigh-unto daily basis? Ah well, get up, dust oneself off and move on, but yes, when the bills come due each month, and you’re still playing with mail float while trying to scrape by, as opposed to working on something that people the world over will truly appreciate, and which is thus truly joyful to work on, it does get hard….)

More of interest. What would certainly be an interesting additional cross would be including which online newspaper sites require registration / payment for access to their online properties, (which is a truly horrible idea, IMHO - I know there’s both the reality and the potential for very significant cannibalism of their offline business, which is currently more profitable, but come on, we’ve all managed to figure out one way or another how to make a nice living online, and to turn folks who would otherwise be interested in what you have to say, but would not actually go out and purchase a newspaper - I can’t tell you the last time I held a physical paper in my hands! - anyway, enough tangent for now, sorry, as I said, my mind lives in perma-tangent! )

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Hometown News Holds Online Newspaper Readers

A new report from Nielsen//NetRatings and eMarketer indicates that that readers in almost every city in the top 10 local markets have been loyal to their top hometown paper. Local newspapers claimed an average of 19% of the local Internet readership, and held the top spot among the city’s online readers for online newspaper sites. The exception was Philadelphia, in which online readers favored USA Today over the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Washington Post managed to reach about 30% of its local market, followed closely by the Boston Globe (28.3%) and the Atlanta Journal Constitution (26.4%).

Local Market Reach (%) of Top Newspaper Web Sites in Top 10 US Metro Areas, July 2005

Newspaper

Local Market Reach

Washington Post

30.1%

Boston Globe

28.3

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

26.4

NY Times

21.9

Chicago Tribune

21.9

Seattle Times

16.7

Dallas News

15.9

LA Times

15.4

SF Chronicle

13.9

USA Today

9.6

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, Sept. 2005

On a national level, the New York Times, USA Today and the Washington Post captured the greatest number of Internet users.

National Market Reach (%) of Top Newspaper Web Sites in Top 10 US Metro Markets, July 2005

Newspaper

National Market Reach

Washington Post

5.7%

Boston Globe

2.4

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

1.4

NY Times

9.3

Chicago Tribune

1.9

Seattle Times

1.5

Dallas News

0.8

LA Times

3.1

SF Chronicle

2.5

USA Today

7.1

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, Sept. 2005

And, according to eMarketer, US newspapers will reach online revenues of $2.26 billion in 2008.

Online Revenues of US Newspapers

Revenue ($xBillion)

2004

$1.03

2005

1.40

2006

1.71

2007

1.91

2008

2.26

Source: eMarketer, Aug 2005

JUPITERRESEARCH FORECASTS LOCAL ONLINE AD SPENDING TO REACH $5.3 BILLION IN 2010; CLASSIFIEDS CONTINUE TO DOMINATE TOTAL

“….Pay-per-click doesn’t make a lot of sense if you don’t value your site as a source of leads. Pay-per-call technologies have promise, but face uncertain growth.

“A JupiterResearch/Virtus executive survey of advertisers who typically use Yellow Pages found that about 30% of the executives surveyed were interested in pay-per-call, but over 40% said they were ‘very uninterested.’”

——–

Very interesting… As most of the Search World is looking hard at trying to steal Yellow Pages business, Jupiter, of all companies - the “mad puffers to the stars,” (i.e. always take a Jupiter opinion and drop it by 4x to even approach what might be reality! ) is suggesting some still fairly strong resistance to.

‘Course, won’t be the first time there’s been strong resistance to what’s been tried, but it will definitely be interesting to think about how to apply / modify / re-think the search business model around these smaller, largely non-web-based merchants, who are:

- Not used to having large marketing budgets

- Not used to doing a lot of work formally tracking and reviewing individual marketing campaigns

- Not looking to bring on additional staff to do this kind of thing, and don’t want to / can’t afford to allocate the time themselves to do*

- Are used to a fair degree of persistence to their marketing, (hey, the Yellow Pages may not generate a ton of leads, but it’s out there all year long, you pay once, and you’re done)

It’s certainly very interesting to think about how to pull off, as what this screams for is a) managed services, (i.e. offering outsourced campaign mgmt) as well as probably a much better tie in to direct sales, (i.e. CPA, rather than CPC / CPC-variant pricing).

On the first, there are plenty of folks who will counter-scream “Scalability! Services are inherently not a scalable business model,” (to which they’re certainly semi-right, at least - interestingly enough, since no one’s willing to pay for services on the Web, no one actually wants to render them rather than the absolute minimus required to generate eComm / Ad Rev cash with whatever flavor additions there are for the given site).

On the second, would suggest that a to a CPA model would be a much easier sell, which really should be little other than a pricing model switch to translate CPC to CPA @ parity cost / revenue, but that does cause problems on the B2B side with most sites that display search-related ads, in that many tend to have already extant algorithms in place to choose and display ads @ query time from particular vendors based on how much those ads will pay on a Net Bid Value basis, (a composite of multiple CPC’s) which puts some solid friction in place.

‘Course, if you have your own B2C site…. (will regale you with tales of early FAST / Alltheweb.com and the B2B vs. B2C debates - one of which led to $100M in value, the other multi-billions - some other time…. )

———–

* Hey, I’m in the process of starting up my next business, and even with a strong Online Marketing portion to my background, you know what? _I_ don’t have time to allocate to running PPC campaigns, and I know precisely how to do it, and do it well - and if someone who has lived and breathed online marketing, and knows all the great things it can do, won’t allocate the time for now to include in my start up, (i.e. I need my time to do other things for now to just get the business to live) what do you think are the odds that someone who isn’t as clear / convinced as to the value of will allocate his highly finite time to do? - BTW, for anyone who is interested, there are a couple of companies that I’ve come across that do a nice job to outsource this to where you can just give them an idea of what your product is, and they’ll figure out keywords, which ad networks to use, etc. to optimize - not cheap, but if you’re a small shop, could be a good thing to start with, and then if you do really well, and want to drop cost by bringing it inhouse, etc., you can do it then - they are Inceptor here in MA, and Adapt out on the Left Coast) .

Got a ping from Matt Brown, one of the co-founders of an interesting IPTV company, NubaTV, a few days ago looking for some feedback.

First, strong kudos to Matt for doing his homework, picking some folks based on profiles from MediaPost, and then contacting to see about building up both some early interest, as well as getting some good early feedback before going broader - very well done.

Some snippits from for any other IPTV folks who might come across:

——————–

“Image quality was definitely nice - certainly no degredation in signal, etc. during the stream, (you’ll, of course, know more about whether the bandwidth expenses to enable make it at all practical). Am presuming that the inability for me to navigate the stream, (i.e. to skip forward or go back) is a limitation of your thing being in beta, rather than a structural choice, (if the latter, would suggest you re-think as am pretty sure that kind of functionality will be considered “minimum required,” unless you’re trying to use this lack of control to try to fit into some of the broadcasting exceptions to the ridiculous world of content licensing, akin to Mercora for audio, in which case, check in with your lawyers - there _must_ be some way of enabling at least partial control).

“Since you’re obviously low on content, why not open it up to folks to upload their own creations, (akin to Atomfilms / Flickr for video, etc.)? Should give you a nice method of getting some viral distro, garnering some free press, etc., all of which should put you in a much more powerful negotiating position if you still want to approach the more classic content holders, (i.e. King World, etc.).

“Once you get at least a decent amount of content on, you’ll hopefully at least get folks to keep your player on their computer as a curiousity for at least a little bit, (for me, I uninstalled - I don’t keep anything on my computer that I don’t have a compelling reason for, especially something that I have to pop a hole into my firewall for - call it the ‘I have no idea what info this thing is sending back without my knowledge’ fear - and without the content, I yanked).”

Boy, do I wish that MediaPost would get their URL’s right!

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Friday, October 14, 2005
Online Personals Destinations, Demographics, Advertisers and Ad Types

A deeper look behind the Online Personals destinations including demographics, advertisers, ad types and sizes

Data below focuses on the Web Media Industry/ Personals Segment

Week ending September 4, 2005 US, Home and Work

Note: Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance reporting data reflects advertising activity served on pages accessible via the World Wide Web and not within AOL’s proprietary service.

More from our friends over @ MediaPost’s Center for Media Research. For those not specifically focusing on health at the moment, I found the ad size population breakdowns particularly interesting and useful for business modeling, if we presume approximate parity between health and other verticals, (not perfect, of course, but fine for estimation purposes, and you can’t beat the price! ).

So that this doesn’t fall into the huge vat of random stats that never get used will have to extract some of this info, (and the below about Small Business) into a much more stable and useable MR section of the site, but not now!

P.S. Really wish WordPress had an easy way of populating tables when doing blog entries, without requiring me to enter HTML tags. Certainly can, (and probably will soon) but is certainly a pain in the butt, and runs counter to my current premise of “get in, get out and move on”….
————————————————–
Health, Fitness & Nutrition Sites, User Demographics, Advertisers and Ad Technology

A deeper look at Health, Fitness & Nutrition Sites including advertisers and ad types.

Top 10 Online Health, Fitness & Nutrition Destinations
Week ending August 28, 2005 US, Home and Work

Brand or Channel

Unique Audience (000)

Active Reach (%)

WebMD

3,181

2.53

Weight Watchers

1,195

0.95

Yahoo! Health

1,133

0.9

About Health and Fitness

1,011

0.81

MSN Health

900

0.72

Medco

794

0.63

AOL Health

711

0.57

drugstore.com

698

0.56

eDiets

612

0.49

Walgreens

569

0.45

Source: Nielsen/NetRatings

Demographic Data for Health, Fitness & Nutrition Category
Month of July 2005 US, Home and Work

Category

Target

Unique Audience (000)

Unique Audience
Composition (%)

Total

50,920

100

Male

22,607

44.4

Female

28,313

55.6

Age

2 - 11

611

1.2

12 - 17

2,346

4.61

18 - 24

2,345

4.6

25 - 34

6,491

12.75

35 - 49

18,299

35.94

45+

27,586

54.18

55+

14,222

27.93

65+

4,951

9.72

HH Income

$ 0 - 24999

3,069

6.03

$ 25000 - 49999

11,436

22.46

$ 50000 - 74999

13,799

27.1

$ 75000 - 99999

9,613

18.88

$ 100000 - 149999

7,679

15.08

$ 150000+

4,404

8.65

No Response

920

1.81

Source: Nielsen/Netratings

Data on the Health Industry
Week ending August 28, 2005 US, Home and Work

Top 20 Advertisers

Company

Impressions (000)

Share of all Impressions

Weight Watchers International, Inc.

116,058

20.5%

eDiets.com, Inc.

61,731

10.9%

Sepracor, Inc.

46,010

8.1%

Novartis AG

40,763

7.2%

Oxonia Insurance Group, Inc.

26,412

4.7%

Bayer Corporation

25,049

4.4%

Waterfront Media, Inc.

16,751

3.0%

GlaxoSmithKline

16,686

2.9%

Medical Hair Restoration

15,727

2.8%

Kaiser Permanente

14,291

2.5%

TAP Pharmaceutical Products Inc.

12,885

2.3%

Merck & Co., Inc.

11,202

2.0%

Spencer Forrest

10,590

1.9%

Pfizer, Inc.

10,372

1.8%

ALZA Corporation

9,598

1.7%

FEI Women’s Health

8,456

1.5%

AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP

8,139

1.4%

Wyeth Corporation

5,726

1.0%

Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association

5,669

1.0%

Metropolitan Jewish Health System

4,843

0.9%

Total

565,798

100.0%

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance

Top Ad Sizes

Dimensions

Impressions (000)

Share of all Impressions

Leaderboard (728×90)

194,575

34.4%

Wide Skyscraper (160×600)

100,077

17.7%

Medium Rectangle (300×250)

78,197

13.8%

Non-Standard Dimension

63,482

11.2%

Skyscraper (180×150)

38,043

6.7%

Full Banner (468×60)

20,506

3.6%

Button #2 (120×60)

15,823

2.8%

Vertical Banner (120×240)

15,643

2.8%

Rectangle (180×150)

11,496

2.0%

Button #1 (120×90)

8,845

1.6%

Half Banner (234×60)

7,169

1.3%

Large Rectangle (336×280)

4,076

0.7%

Unspecified

2,706

0.5%

Square Button (125×125)

2,270

0.4%

Micro Bar (88×31)

1,380

0.2%

Square (250×250)

1,292

0.2%

Vertical Rectangle (240×400)

231

0.0%

Total

565,811

100.0%

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance

Ad Delivery Types

Ad Delivery

Impressions (000)

Share of all Impressions

Inline

560,492

99.1%

Pop-Under

2,852

0.5%

Pop-Up

1,870

0.3%

Interstitial

370

0.1%

Floating/Overlay

229

0.0%

Total

565,813

100.0%

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance

Note: Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance reporting data reflects advertising activity served on pages accessible via the World Wide Web and not within AOL’s proprietary service.

All email communications that are sent from your company should have either or both of a link that auto-unsubscribes you just by clicking on it, (if you have multiple email newsletters, etc., you should have 2 - one for “all emails,” one for “this one”) or by just by sending a quick reply with nothing, or at worst an “Unsubscribe” in the subject line. There’s no excuse for pissing me, the reader, off by having me login to your email system, (are you kidding - if I don’t want to hear from you, why the heck would I bother to remember a login for your system?!?). Afraid EMC gets the Golden Turkey for screwing this up today!

Can’t seem to get an URL for this - is from an email newsletter that I subscribe to - MediaPost’s Center for Media Research, which though sometimes a bit odd, does have some nice info to keep track of for future use.

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Thursday, October 6, 2005
Small Business Feels Stronger With Web Site

The impending release of the Interland Summer 2005 Business Barometer, a measure of small business online activity, shows how the leaders of U.S. small- and medium-sized businesses feel on issues important to them. The nationwide survey of 780 small-business leaders of organizations with 500 or fewer employees found that seventy-two percent of the respondents have a business Web site, with Industry declared as 33% business services, 20% personal services, 19% retail, 17% non-profit and 11% manufacturing.

With regard to the perceived value of their website:

* 78% of respondents said their company was healthier - had a competitive advantage or stronger economic footing - because of their Web site
* 76% also identified their Web site as a tool that helps generate business leads
* 57%of those with Web sites said they generate monthly revenue through online purchases or offline purchases that were influenced by their Web site
* 53% of small businesses with Web sites say the role it plays in the business is primarily to provide company credibility
* 54%, of respondents measure Web site success by customer and prospect comments, followed by site traffic (48%)

When asked to define the role of the Web site in their business:

* 14% rely heavily on the website to make sales goals
* 19% say it is a tool that helps up lower costs
* 15% declare it is most powerful marketing tool we have is our website
* 53% feel the Web site provides our company credibility
* 29% say the website provides a critical building block for developing products/services
* 23% are unsure that it provides any significant value

The response to monthly revenue generated by the Web site shows that:

* 21% say none of their monthly revenue is generated by their site
* 32% say less than 10%
* 10% say 10% to 20%
* 9% say 21% to 50%
* 3% say 51% to 75%
* 2% say 76% to 99%
* 22% are uncertain

Web site success is measured in a variety of ways:

* 54% use customer/prospect comments about the site
* 24% use online sales as the criteria
* 36% say ales leads
* 48% consider site activity/traffic/number of visitors the important factor
* 21% cite efficiency of internal business processes (i.e., faster payment processing, fewer phone calls)

Having A Web Site Means Different Things To Different People
(% Of Respondents)

Website Benefit

Very important

Important

Somewhat unimportant

Very unimportant

Having an online identity

55%

30

9

6

Conducting online transactions

24

29

24

22

Executing online promotions

22

32

28

19

Enabling online interactivity

29

34

23

13

Source: Interland Summer 2005 Business Barometer

For more information about this study, go here.

An excellent article on passion, and on eating your own dog food!

http://www.softwaresalesjobs.com/index-wrap.jsp?u=o/newsletter/articles/con-article163.jsp

BTW - have always allowed commentary to stand in the way of blogging - i.e. sometimes I just want to do the equivalent of bookmarking something I found intriguing while working on something else, but am trying to remain focused on the initial activity, (more than challenge enough for me, trust me! ). So, trying something new - upon occasion, if I find something that I think I’ll want to keep track of for later use, but don’t have the time to write up something formal, will just pop it in real quick here, and then may come back to comment on later, (or, may not! Afraid I’m still not a huge fan of the central time aspect of blogging to remain in the creation / building of a project / knowledge base - Wiki’s seem to me to be much better tools in this regard, and Jotspot is one of my current favorites, (link to Joe Kraus’ podcast presentation intro’ing it to come…)