Is Apple the new Evil Empire? Closed system, war on Flash, treating iPhone developers like crap and suing everyone in sight.
Kind of evil…
Author: fish1964
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iCarly
Danielle’s favorite show is now iCarly. While I really liked her old favorite, Phineas and Ferb, iCarly is also good. The premise is that Carly, a 15 year old girl, does a web show with her best friend Sam (Samantha) and her other friend Freddy doing the tech work. Their web show (in the show) is very popular.
Carly lives with her older brother Spencer (a lot older). He is an artist so he’s both wacky and around a lot. Apparently her father is in the military and is away and the two of them live in a surprisingly large apartment in Seattle (what is it with TV apartments being way outside the occupant’s income? – see Friends). Aside from the fact that a 15 year old (and her friends) is left to herself for way too much time, the show is pretty harmless and definitely funny.
We record it on our DVR. Danielle would watch it 20 times a day if we let her.
There’s one show where they ask their viewers to send in videos of good dancing. They are expecting a few people to send in videos, but they get like a thousand videos. They try to watch them all and of course fall asleep trying. Then each of them has a funny dream involving crazy dancing. Danielle loves this episode and watches it a lot (since we have it recorded – honestly, do kids understand that we used to have to watch TV at a certain time?).
I only mention this for one reason. What is up with the ads that Nickelodeon shows for iCarly? Danielle is 7, but I understand that older kids like the show. It probably works into early high school. And I guess parents must watch as well (I obviously do).
Because one of the common sponsors is Nationwide insurance. Yeah, Danielle likes that ad. There are also some feminine hygiene ads that I thankfully have not had to explain yet (and yes, I’ll be using the “talk to your mother” approach).
But this particular episode has an ad for a cosmetic surgery place (I guess this is NYC only). Seriously? We are advertising breast reductions and liposuction for pre-teens? Since we watch this episode all the time, this ad repeats all the time. I can’t hit fast forward fast enough.
I can’t handle ads when she’s seven. What am I going to do when she’s a teenager?
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Schools and the City
It’s time to think about pre-schools for Victoria. The challenges are a bit different this time around, but no less daunting.
To recap, for those who haven’t read this blog for years, or those with non-elephantine memories:
We are not zoned for a great school in Brooklyn. With Danielle we worked really hard to get her into a good pre-school that feeds into a school that goes through high school. There are three such schools in our neighborhood.
- Packer: Hyper competitive, excellent academics. When we went for a preschool interview they had third graders in blazers acting as perfect ushers. It was both impressive and a bit spooky.
- Brooklyn Friends: A Quaker school (you don’t have to be Quaker to attend) that emphasizes community (‘cause their Quakers). Not as good academics as Packer, but very warm and good.
- St. Ann’s: This is the more artsy, innovative one. You get some famous Manhattan folk’s kids here.
They are all hard to get into. It took two tries, but Danielle got accepted to Brooklyn Friends. Packer was my wife’s first choice, but I’ve grown really fond of Brooklyn Friends and I think it’s an excellent fit for Danielle.
Now that Victoria is ready for preschool, to some extent the pressure is off. As a sibling she can get into Brooklyn Friends.
The issue right now is whether we can afford two kids in Brooklyn Friends. Three day preschool starts at $15K, five days is $19K. Danielle in first grade costs $28K. It’s ridiculous.
It makes the suburbs look attractive. Sure, in a good Westchester suburb with nice schools we’d pay $20-25K in property taxes. But that would cover both kids in school.
We’ve just started a business so things are tight. So our decision for next fall was easy. Victoria can go to the public pre-school. It’s a pretty good pre-school, though the later grades get dicey. We know we can get Victoria in Brooklyn Friends for kindergarten or first grade so we can wait to see if we can afford it. Paying $19K for pre-school is just ridiculous.
The added complication is that our nanny, Maggie, brings her daughter, Mia, to work with her. Mia is also ready for preschool. Ideally they would go to preschool together. So public preschool makes sense there. The only tricky thing is that Maggie lives in Queens, not Brooklyn. So I had to write a letter saying that she works at our address with her daughter and needs Mia to attend school in Brooklyn. I had to have the letter notarized and sent to the Board of Education along with Mia’s preschool application. We’ll know in about a month if that worked.
In an ideal world, business picks up. Starting in fall of 2011 Victoria moves to Brooklyn Friends. My wife quits her job. Maggie no longer works for us (that will be a sad day, they are like family, but with both kids in school there’s no need for a full time nanny).
In a less than ideal world, business does not pick up. We cannot have Danielle in private school and Victoria in public school. That is wrong on so many levels. So then we have the big decision. We either move to the suburbs (we’re city people) or we play tricks to get into a better public school so Danielle and Victoria can go to the same school.
My wife’s best friend lives a block and a half away and is zoned for a different and better school. She lives in both floors of a duplex. She has offered to put my wife’s name on one of the leases and a utility bill. That would let up apply to the better school by claiming to live there. I love where we live, so that’s my preferred option right now.
These are the sorts of things you think about living in the city with kids…
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Why me?
There’s an odd phenomenon when I walk down the street. On a crowded street in Brooklyn, or pretty much anywhere, if someone needs directions they invariably ask me.
At first I thought I was just imagining it. But then I started paying closer attention. There’s no denying it. The number of people who ask me for directions is statistically improbable. Even Danielle has noticed it. She started asking me, “why does everyone ask you?”.
This morning on the way home from taking Danielle to school, two more people asked me for directions. Even when travelling in a city I don’t know, people ask me (I’m obviously not very helpful).
I guess I’m just the quintessential non threatening white guy…
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AdWords
We recently started advertising OrigamiRisk with Google AdWords. Nothing much, just an experiment to see how it drives traffic. If you aren’t familiar with AdWords, this is what puts a “sponsored link” next to your search results. The most fascinating thing about AdWords is the data. Google is great with data. And since you only pay if a user actually clicks on the ad, the costs are not much (and if you are paying a lot it’s because your ad is working).
You can create multiple text versions of your ad. Google will automatically detect which one is getting more clicks and show that one more often.
You can let you ad run and later Google will suggest other keywords that you might want to include in your ad. And Google will show you exactly how many searches you might get per month with that keyword. And how much competition there is to advertise.
The most fascinating part about it is the whole algorithm for how it works. Every time Google displays ads it is running a mini auction. Every advertiser has specified how much they will pay for a keyword ad. Or you can let Google optimize your bid to the auction (and your budget). Then with a combination of the auction price and what Google views as your “quality score” (Google doesn’t want to be serving up ads that aren’t relevant) your ad will get placed higher or lower depending.
I’m not sold on the “content network” though. You can advertise on Google search and you can include their “content network”. The content network includes web sites, blogs and gmail. But you have less control because Google is just trying to detect relevance. I recently turned off the content network because none of the sites really seemed relevant. We are in such a niche market.
And one of the best things you can track is a “conversion”. That means that the ad actually got someone to click where you want. So if we are trying to get people to sign up for a free demo, we can track if a user who clicked on our ad actually went to the demo page.
It’s quite fascinating, but again the best part is the data. I know how many times each of our ads was displayed for each keyword and how many times someone clicked on it. And based on the data I can modify the campaign on the fly.
Kind of fun actually…
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A Chilly Vacation
Well, no one ever promised balmy weather in February, even in Florida. We took a quick trip to visit my wife’s brother in Orlando and friends in Palm Beach last week.
Obviously we booked the trip well before a weather forecast was available.
We arrived Thursday night to temperatures in the low 50s. Friday was all rain and never got out of the 50s (Chuck E. Cheese, here we come). Saturday was supposed to be sunny, so that was our day for the Magic Kingdom.
When we got there it was a hardly magical 45 degrees.
People were in winter coats, hats and gloves. It would have been comical if it wasn’t so frickin’ cold. The sun did come out and warm us up, but it still didn’t get above 55. But Danielle got to ride Space Mountain and that was the most important thing (Tori loved the Dumbo ride).
On Sunday we headed south to Palm Beach. It was still chilly so our friends (this is Danielle’s best friend’s family) wanted to go to Wannado City. I had never heard of this place. It’s a mock mini city inside a huge mall. You pay your admission and the kids get a “bank account” of 150 Wongas (the fake currency used in Wannado City). They can go to various places in the city and either spend their Wongas or do “jobs” and earn Wongas.
It’s an interesting concept. I’m not sure it totally works, but the kids had fun and they weren’t cold.
Finally, the next day it warmed up. It actually hit 70. So we stayed at our friend’s house with their pool.
Did I mention that our friend is an investment banker? A very successful investment banker? With the crazy bonus and all that? They live a block and a half away from us in Brooklyn. And they aren’t pretentious at all. You wouldn’t even know how much money they have.
Until you saw their house in North Palm Springs.
I don’t think I actually saw all the rooms. It’s a $10 million dollar place. Simply spectacular. And the pool was heated, so even the next two days when it got cool again, the kids had plenty of fun in the water.
But talk about how the other half lives…
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Manning and Favre
Peyton Manning’s legacy took a bit of a hit in the Super Bowl. He’s back to being a great quarterback who isn’t always great in the big game. As I was thinking about how quarterbacks rank, I saw many similarities between Manning and Favre.
They are completely different quarterbacks of course. Manning, the cerebral one. Favre, the gunslinger. But both will have amazing careers setting all kinds of records. Both are clear Hall of Famers.
And so far, both are in the “only one Super Bowl” category of great quarterbacks. Hell, they both threw critical interceptions late in the game to the same guy in the playoffs this year.
I’m big fans of both of them. But unless Peyton comes back and wins another Super Bowl, he’s not in the Montana category, no matter how many records he breaks.
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Apple to Flash: Drop Dead
Everyone is talking about the iPad. Some people love it, some people are underwhelmed. Regardless of what you think, it’s a big deal.
But here’s my side story. Apple is trying to kill Flash.
It was one thing when you were talking about the iPhone. Not having Flash support was an annoyance but not a big deal. But now you are talking about a device that Apple says is “the best way to surf the web”.
The best way to surf the web does not support Flash.
Now there are a lot of issues with Flash. Search engines generally can’t handle them well, so Flash is discouraged for many web sites. Also HTML5 may ultimately push out proprietary solutions like Flash. But in many cases it works very well.
Imagine you have a Flash heavy site. Anyone who buys an iPad can’t use it. That is likely to be a decent sized audience. What do you do?
Hearing the pre-hype for the Apple tablet, I started thinking, “hmm, our family computer is ancient. This might do the trick”. But Danielle has been sick the last few days. She goes to the computer and goes straight to nickjr.com. Where she plays games. Flash games.
She also plays games on my wife’s iPhone, so despite losing nickjr.com, she would probably like the iPad. And I think that is exactly what Apple is counting on.
Bye Flash, nice knowing you…
Steve Fischer's Random Blog 