Monthly Archives: July 2004

100 Black Men of Madison Golf Event

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Johnny Winston emailed:

Please feel free to share this information with all interested persons or
parties –
100 Black Men of Madison, Inc. Golf Outing
On Monday July 26, 2004 The 100 Black Men of Madison, Inc., cordially
invites the public to participate in their 4th Annual Golf Outing at
Cherokee Country Club located at 5000 North Sherman Avenue.
Registration begins at 11:00 a.m. with a shotgun scramble at 12 noon. The
$125 fee includes 18 holes of golf, motorized cart, dinner, prizes and a lot
of fun!
The 100 Black Men of Madison is a non-profit, tax exempt organization.
Participation in this event helps the 100 Black Men of Madison to fund the
organization?s charitable activities in the Dane County area for
underprivileged youth. A free youth golf clinic will be presented to all
registered youth from 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
Walk ups are welcome the day of the event. For more information and to sign
up, please contact Derrick Smith at 608-831-0525.

Used book sales “threaten” the publishing business

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Bob Tedeschi writes:

Is Amazon.com becoming the Napster of the book business?
The analogy may not be far off, say some observers of the used-book industry. Publishers, particularly textbook publishers, have long countered used-book sales by churning out new editions every couple of years. But the Web, particularly sites like Amazon and eBay, have given millions of consumers an easy way to find cheap books – often for under $1 – without paying royalty fees to publishers or authors.
Mass-market publishers are not certain the used-book phenomenon is a problem worth addressing, but others in the industry have already made up their minds.

Maytag Skybox Blog

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Maytag recently introduced a “personal beverage vendor”! Thinking ahead, they have a business blog devoted to the product. (the product is not for me, and has been slammed as a “product for people who can’t get off their ______ and get a cold drink in the kitchen”.
This is another example of the changing advertising and customer relationship game.

Monopolies, Microsoft & Newspapers

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Barry Ritholtz nicely summarizes the monopolist’s modus operandi:

Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop — and because of that, there are certain behaviors they are legally restricted from engaging in (at least, in legal theory). Microsoft should not be able to disadvantage competitors by leveraging that monopoly in a way that restricts competition.
Search is a perfect example: By setting the default to MSN search, and making it extremely awkward to change it, they automatically become one of the top 3 players in that space. What would take any other company billions of dollars to do, they get for, oh, about nothing.

Clearly, in the case of newspapers, protected by the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970, it’s rather simple to create additional print publications, that for others would be expensive. Similarily, they can use this monopoly postion to give away advertising products & content, if necessary, to kill competition (just like Microsoft gave away Internet Explorer, to “cut off Netscape’s air supply“).