Old Ideas in modern times

Why is it that when it comes to the American economy people tend to think that using the same ideas from decades ago will always work?  In 2002 people believed that going to war was going to fix things, because it worked during the great depression.  Then people thought that lowering taxes for rich people would fix things because it worked in the 1980's.  What people seem to overlook is that our economy is in a slump for totally new and complex reasons.

The great depression took place after investors realized that corporations completely lied about how much money they had.  As a result many companies went under overnight, causing mass layoffs, causing even more business to go under due to lack of customers.  The rich had no place to put their money, and there weren't any jobs for anyone else.  World War II came along, causing the government to sell bonds, giving the rich a secure place to stash their money.  The government took that money and used it t build weapons and hire solders, easing the burdens of families across America and pumping money into the economy.

Flash forward to the 1980's.  Banks played fast and loose with investors money, and cash dried up fast in the upper middle class.  People weren't buying common consumer goods as much as they once where, so a new tax code that would allow most upper middle class folks to keep their money seemed right.

But what about today?  The stock market is doing great, and corporations are making more than ever with fewer and fewer employees.  There are currently more millionaires in America that ever before, with more being made ever day.  The government has tried the old tactics that helped struggling economies in the past, but what about looking at the good years?  If we looked hard enough at the best economic eras in America's history, then we would in no small way find clues to solving the problems that we are having today.

Make It Free!!!

With Valve making headline after headline releasing their old games for free, one question comes to mind: Why don't more companies do this?  If a company has games just collecting dust, why not allow the masses full access to experience a little bit of what your company can do?  It seems that the one advantage for valve is that it gets more people using their Steam software, but for other companies it would allow a new generation to experience their older games, and maybe even hook them into franchises that are still alive and kicking.

How to end the war on drugs and illegal immigrants

Right now Americans feel under attack from horror stories coming from Mexico.  Many of these stories come through the war on drug cartels, causing the deaths of tens of thousands of people.  Many other stories comes from illegal immigrants, coming to America committing crimes, and leaning on America's social programs.  Many people feel that the only way to fix this problem is by building a wall along the border, keeping everyone out.  Other people say that opening up the process to become a citizen will allow the government to at least keep track of everyone that comes across the border.

Now what about another option?  What if Mexico became a better place to live?it seems that for a fraction of the cost of building a wall, or overloading our social programs, we could help Mexico  solve a lot of their social problems.  This could be through political reform, helping their people elect politicians with integrity.  Maybe through military action, destroying the drug cartels that have a strangle hold on the entire country, the people there wouldn't feel so desperate to leave.

I don't have all of the answers, but at some point we have to stop being so afraid and face to problem head on.  If America is the greatest country in the world, then if nothing else shouldn't our neighbors be towards the top instead of drifting towards the bottom?

Indie Review #1: The Spoony Experiment

The Spoony Experiment is a collection of movie and game reviews mixed with video blogs. For the most part, watching his videos is like talking to a nerdy friend about movies and video games. The videos are well made, with great production value, and can be hilarious. Some of the reviews are done incredibly creatively, and some are just Spoony sitting in front of a camera talking about a movie that he just saw. Every once in a while he will include his brother, which adds a nice change, and he should do more often. The biggest problem I have content wise is that there is a lack of regular updates, leaving me to completely forget about the site from time to time.

The Delivery:

The website is simple enough, and appears to be running in Word Press. The template is kind of bland, and seems outdated. There are some ads around, one of which always seems to feature a distractingly busty women, but the ad system he uses allows anyone to purchase ad space on his site a month or so at a time, so the ads won’t change too much. There is a menu across the top of each page, with one menu for game reviews, one for movie and TV reviews, and a complete video list that contains content from the other two menu items as well as video logs. On the right of each page there is a content bar, but it is a little convoluted, and it all seems to run together. There is an RSS icon on the side of the screen, but it doesn’t pop out as it is surrounded by other icons.

The video hosting service he uses plays ads before each video, which is smart, but can be annoying if you can only watch half the video in one sitting and the rest later. Below each video there is a share menu, which could be replaced with a simple Facebook like that people can click on without even thinking about it. There is a small description of each video, but the text can have little to nothing to do with the actual video. Each video has a comment section, where you have to login using Facebook twitter etc. to post a comment.

The website features a message board, but it has a different look and feel than the rest of the site. You also have to register to just view the message board, and it uses a separate login system then the comment sections, and you can’t just login with your Facebook account like most new message boards. Once you get into the message board, there is a fairly vibrant community, and it seems like people post several times per hour.

What I would change:

Having a theme that is a little more focused would make it easier to market the site. Marketing the site as say the nerd ambassador: the guy that welcomes new nerds into the nerdy folds, would easily tie all of his content together and make it easy to find a target market.

Longer descriptions under the videos would get Google to like the site a little better. This could include some deep links to related videos within the site, which would also increase search indexing. He should try to get fan sites for things that he is talking about to link to his videos with a quality description surrounding it. Also making it as easy as possible for fans to share videos on Facebook and twitter would add some hits, and it would also expand the channel for delivering new content.

As far as making money goes the name of the game here is CPM, meaning the more viewers the better. I’m sure that the site has a great deal of regular users, but not as many as he could have. If there where regular updates, more than once a week, it would be easier to get people into the habit of returning to the site. I know that he has the Wrestle! Wrestle! Site, and updates it frequently, but that caters to a much smaller market with just as much competition. Content as simple as talking about random episodes of TV shows, things in the news, or whatever. Also some of the videos could also come with an .mp3 file, so people could listen to it on the go. It would also give Spoony a presence in places like the iTunes store, or even give the site its own mobile app where people could stream the audio. This could open him up to new revenue streams from audio advertisements.

The site should also use amazon associates, where he could post a link to the amazon page of the product that he is talking about. He could also create an “astore” where he could suggest other nerdy content for people to check out.

Quick Idea

What is the future of professional sports in America? Will MMA take over boxing? Will soccer ever become popular? Will future sports highlight athleticism or focus more on mental fortitude?

Some Quick Ideas and Some Random Thoughts

Why is there cold brew tea, but not coffee?

Microsoft should make more of the games that come with Windows Multiplayer.

Quick mobile app Idea - why not create software that would allow managers in companies to get instant feedback on tax or accounting benefits of buying cretin products.

Quick Game Idea - Fighting game mmo - allow players to customize their characters by gaining new abilities as they go, but keep it balanced

Why is it that when a hacker group hacks a game console they publish how they did it? It seems like they would get further if the game companies had no idea how they did it.

Why is it always so quiet on public busses? They should play some kind of music so when somebody talks everyone doesn’t just listen to their conversation.

If contractors get their tools stolen a lot, then why not install a gps unit on the really expensive tools?

Why does Apple only use negative advertising now? It might have worked for marketing against Windows Vista, but most people will agree that Windows 7 is clearly superior to Mac OS.

Why do you still need a separate disc to install windows? Why not have the OS create a new partition that can store a clean install of the OS so when you want to start over you don’t need the separate disk.

Homemade DLC

The future of video games lies in digital distribution, or distribution through the internet instead of disks or cartridges. Some people may not like it, and some people may disagree, but I think that for most gamers and most people in the game industry digital distribution is the future of videogames. Companies have already started doing this in the form of DLC or downloadable content. This content allows game developers to add on to games that they have made, and allows gamers to get more out of their games for a small price. Thought this cuts costs for game publishers, the cost for game development would be the same. One way companies could better regain some of their development costs would be by allowing user created content to be sold through their game. For example; the game Fallout 3 is vast, in fact it is so vast that if you just play through the main story line then chances are that you will not see 40% - 60% of the game’s content. If the game’s developer, Bethesda, allowed users to use the game modification tools that they have already released, to make content that can be sold. This way a lot of professional quality additions could be made to their game at no cost to the developer. The best way for this to work would be by using Apple’s app store model, and change people a small fee to use the tools then make them submit their content to then be reviewed by the developer. The content would then be sold and some kind of profit split would happen.

This plan could help developers in more than one way. Not only would it give them practically free DLC, but it just might encourage more people to buy their games. This system could also be used to help small independent game companies to work on a small project that could give them practice and make a little money to fund other projects. The system would also help create future game designers as it would be a lot easier to create new content for another game then it is to create a new game. Overall it would not end up costing much to the developer, especially if they already release the tools and make their own DLC.