11.01.2011
NGC Blog
(Editor’s Note: Welcome to a new feature on NGC Communication’s official blog. These are a collection of unedited/random tidbits and nuggets straight from the minds of our staff. We thought starting it on 1/11/11 was a cool idea and plan to keep in going for another thousand years when that date sequence hits again. Hope you enjoy. If you have something to share with us, by all means post a comment. We would love to hear from you.)
TV By the Numbers
The Tostitos BCS National Championship Game between Auburn and Oregon attracted the top overnight metered cable television rating ever on Monday. The game drew a 16.1 overnight rating in its first year on ESPN. That’s 12 percent less than the 18.2 rating Fox drew last year. ESPN is available in 15 percent fewer homes.
It is higher than the 14.4 rating ESPN drew for a Monday Night Football game last year between New England and New Orleans. That was the previous high. It is also higher than the 2008 and 2005 BCS title games.The game drew a 67.0 rating in Birmingham, Ala., and a 37.5 in Portland, Ore. — the home markets of the two teams. It also did well in Nashville (28.8), New Orleans (28.6) and Knoxville (27.7). The game also drew 619.000 unique viewers on ESPN3.com — the highest viewed college football game on the broadband service. It’s fourth all-time behind three FIFA World Cup broadcasts.
Ratings represent the percentage of all homes with televisions tuned into a program. Overnight ratings measure the country’s largest markets. Source: ESPN
Red Hat Stays in Raleigh
Red Hat will keep its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, N.C. and add more than 500 jobs in the next five years, officials said Monday. Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) plans to invest $109 million in its new headquarters, which will be between 300,000 and 400,000 square feet. Red Hat is the maker of Linux OS, in case you didn’t know. Source: WRAL.com
A Vegas Misadventure
A good friend and his wife have been stranded in Las Vegas for the last few days due to winter weather in the southeast. I suppose there are worse places to be stranded, although I hear he is almost of our underwear.
Strange Language
Why is Food pronounced “fuuuude” and Good pronounced “guh-de?” They are spelled the same.
iWant One
Verizon, the preferred carrier of NGC Communications, will offer the iPhone starting Feb. 10. Sign us up!
Have a good week.
NGC Team
05.02.2010
NGC Blog
We at NGC must first apologize to all our wonderful readers and visitors to this site.
Over the last month or so, NGC’s Blog has been inundated with spam and bogus comments that has flooded our inboxes with annoying spam. We thought we could get away with not using anti-spam filtering and anti-pingbacks, but we were wrong.
So, in order for us to keep writing more, we have to spend less time moderating and deleting these fake comments. With that being said, we have installed ReCaptcha protection on all of our comment pages for each post in order to prevent spambots and other intruders from messing up a good thing.
I know this additional step can be annoying and that reading the little crooked letters in the ReCaptcha box can be annoying. We hope our loyal readers and contributors understand this necessary step and this doesn’t prevent you from providing all your wonderful feedback.
We would love to hear from you and maybe a good story regarding spam. Lately, we have a few as well.
Take care,
NGC Team
01.02.2010
NGC Blog
We are month into a new year, full of new terminologies, new strategies and new thinking. What will be disruptive this year? What will be the next innovative idea or visionary product that will change our lives in 2010? If you haven’t noticed, there are three, perhaps four, overused buzzwords in this first paragraph alone.
Have you seen the IBM commercial with Innovation Man? If you haven’t, look out for it, because it is fantastic. The main protagonist in the spot is dressed up like a superhero and all he talks about is innovation (a big buzzword for 2009). At the end of the commercial, he asks an employee in drill sergeant fashion what innovation means, and the worker exclaims, “I don’t know.”
Stop talking and start doing – the commercial concludes. It really sums up where we are at right now in business.
The secret to success in 2010 is collaboration. Building relationships and working together is critical to increased profit margins and market share. If you are one of the millions right now exclaiming, “I don’t know” when it comes to innovation, take a look around you and see where you can plug in with someone else and solve the problem together.
Don’t be a waffle! Waffles are square and have little boxes throughout the favorite breakfast treat. Don’t live in your little squares trying to fix each individual problem. Thinking like a spaghetti noodle will be more beneficial. One individual spaghetti noodle touches so much on the plate. It works with all the other noodles to make a complete and balanced meal. Some noodles are shorter and some are longer, but as a whole – as a team – they make a delicious treat at dinner time. Don’t forget the sauce.
The point today is to use buzzwords to your advantage and to work as a team. Although waffles are delicious, spaghetti is much healthier to your success in 2010.
14.01.2010
NGC Blog
Have you ever made a mistake? Of course, we all have. But, have you ever done something so terrible that you wanted to cry?
This weekend I took upon myself to do some home improvements – or should I say un-improvements.
Normally, I’m pretty talented in this capacity as honey-do dude and capable of fixing and building just about anything around the house.
My wife and I recently had some ceramic tile installed in our bathrooms. It looks awesome and is a huge improvement to the space. The expert who assisted in the project recommended putting down sealant to prevent the tile and grout from cracking over time. I agreed and went to the store to pick up the necessary product to make it happen.
Apparently, I picked up the wrong product.
When I put down the sealant, nothing on the instructions indicated that it would dry hot pink. Yes, hot pink.
Our beautiful new bathroom floor looked like someone threw up Pepto Bismal all over it.
Now, I consider myself a pretty tough dude, but I was so upset that little tears trickled down my face. All I could do was stand there and sulk over what I had done. My wife, on the other hand, was fantastic. She was more focused on fixing the problem instead of worrying about the actual problem or what it would mean to the future of our home.
Her reaction is what prompted my economic epiphany.
I thought about the challenges we all currently face with our economy as well as the problems associated with the pink nightmare that used to be my bathroom. Metaphorically speaking, our economic struggles are very similar.
I managed to create a serious problem in less than 30 minutes without breaking a sweat. It took almost 10 hours to fix it. But, you know what; I fixed it – complete with sore knees, aching back and a slight buzz from the fumes of the sealant remover.
My point is that everyone who wants to succeed in this country will need to stop being in such a huff about the situation we are in and start using a little elbow grease (and maybe some hydrochloric acid) to help clean it up.
I am not standing on the soapbox or trying to be insensitive about the hard times many of you face, because I ‘m right there with you. However, if we can look at our economic woes as a problem that can be fixed with hard work instead of just talking about it all the time, maybe the light at the end of the tunnel becomes more visible. Maybe we start sleeping better at night. Maybe our children have a brighter future.
The clock is ticking. And, based on my new experience, the longer the problem sits, the worse it gets and the harder it is to correct it. And, no one wants to see our beloved red, white and blue stained pink.
