Tony Dungy reported to be resigning as Colts coach - Los Angeles Times

More at Los Angeles Times: “Tony Dungy reportedly will announce today that he is stepping down as coach of the Indianapolis Colts.

The team has called a news conference for 2 p.m. PST.

Various media outlets, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation, say Dungy is ready to call it quits after nearly three decades of NFL and college coaching. He has long indicated an interest in stepping away from the game at some point, in part to devote more time to his Christian ministry.”

Report: Small online news sites more proven than large ones » VentureBeat

Report: Small online news sites more proven than large ones » VentureBeat: “The report uses long tail economics to show how small sites can do well by achieving greater distribution among a niche readership. Because operating costs are so low, these sites can still manage to be successful despite lower rates of advertising revenue. The report describes the revenue model for independent blogs and news sites and it offers, as an example, a news site with 1 million unique visitors a month which generates $1.5 million in annual revenues assuming a $2 CPM (cost per thousand user impressions) rate.”

Pat Quinn: The Man Who Would Replace Blagojevich - TIME

Pat Quinn: The Man Who Would Replace Blagojevich - TIME: “In a state so plagued by cronyism and shady self-dealing that the head of the FBI here didn't hesitate to call Illinois one of the — if not the — most corrupt states in the nation, Lieut. Governor Pat Quinn is considered something of a Goody Two-Shoes. Responsible for slashing the size of the state legislature, he has been booed by legislators on the capitol floor. He keeps a minimal staff and is said to charge $75 a ticket for fundraisers — at a time when entry to most is well into the hundreds if not thousands of dollar”

-- Lets hope Quinn lives up to his billing.

Why Are Newspapers Dying? - O'Reilly Broadcast

Why Are Newspapers Dying? - O'Reilly Broadcast: “The emergence of the Internet proved newspapers' most challenging competitor, and the one that ultimately may have managed to do the newspaper industry in altogether. Most newspapers, from the veritable New York times on down, launched their own websites, reasoning that this was simply another medium in which to publish their own writers, but this viewpoint may have been somewhat shortsighted.

In 2003, the term blog first entered into the modern lexicon, an online editorial or journal written not by professional journalists but by eager amateurs who could publish by overcoming a far smaller barrier to entry - setting up a blogging site. With contemporary tools, the blogger could effectively start producing his or her own "news" within a few hours, and if they happened to be reasonably competent, were willing to invest some time into promotion and consistent in publishing content, they had a good chance to gain more "eyeballs" than professional journalists with thirty years of experience.

As of April, 2008, only three newspapers had a subscriber base in excess of 1,000,000 readers - USA Today (2.3 million), The Wall Street Journal (2.1 million) and the New York Times (1.1 million). Most newspapers average approximately 300,000 subscribers. This of course doesn't reflect total readership numbers - many papers sell a significant proportion of their subscriber levels in newsstand and library sales - but it does provide at least a basic metric for understanding the dynamics of newspaper publishing vs. the web.”

Why Are Newspapers Dying? - O'Reilly Broadcast

Why Are Newspapers Dying? - O'Reilly Broadcast: “The emergence of the Internet proved newspapers' most challenging competitor, and the one that ultimately may have managed to do the newspaper industry in altogether. Most newspapers, from the veritable New York times on down, launched their own websites, reasoning that this was simply another medium in which to publish their own writers, but this viewpoint may have been somewhat shortsighted.

In 2003, the term blog first entered into the modern lexicon, an online editorial or journal written not by professional journalists but by eager amateurs who could publish by overcoming a far smaller barrier to entry - setting up a blogging site. With contemporary tools, the blogger could effectively start producing his or her own "news" within a few hours, and if they happened to be reasonably competent, were willing to invest some time into promotion and consistent in publishing content, they had a good chance to gain more "eyeballs" than professional journalists with thirty years of experience.

As of April, 2008, only three newspapers had a subscriber base in excess of 1,000,000 readers - USA Today (2.3 million), The Wall Street Journal (2.1 million) and the New York Times (1.1 million). Most newspapers average approximately 300,000 subscribers. This of course doesn't reflect total readership numbers - many papers sell a significant proportion of their subscriber levels in newsstand and library sales - but it does provide at least a basic metric for understanding the dynamics of newspaper publishing vs. the web.”

Think Progress Causes Politico To Backpedal On McCain Tax Claims

Wow, it's about time one of the blogs took Politico to task for their occasional pumping up of Senator John McCain's policies as if they support the middle class.  Nothing could be further from the truth, and thank God, Think Progress came through:

Earlier today, ThinkProgress criticized Politico.com for publishing a story that claimed John McCain’s proposed tax cuts for capital gains and dividends would be “aimed directly at the middle class.”

Tonight, Politico published a new story on McCain’s tax cuts that removed the false claim. Instead, the article states that the tax cuts are “designed to lure investors back to the stock market.” Here’s their new story’s lead:

On Bill Clinton and Barack Obama

This is my video blog on the need for Bill Clinton to be part of the Obama for America campaign effort. I feel that Obama can't win without President Clinton's support. But then the Clinton's have some image repair work to do and helping Barack's the best way to do it.

Sports Business Simulations Turns Five Years Old

In 2002, a former aide to The Mayor of Oakland met the head of the University of San Francisco Sport Management department to discuss stadium financing, and the need for a new stadium for the Oakland Baseball. In that meeting, USF Professor Dr. Dan Rascher, PhD, took note of Zenophon "Zennie" Abraham’s web-based simulation game The XFL Simworld, and said "I need that for my class."

When Mr. Abraham finished his second simulator in late October 2002, the Oakland Baseball Simworld, he met again with Mr. Rascher, and Sports Business Simulations (SBS) was born. On January 24th of 2003, SBS became a Delaware Corporation, with seed capital, and based in Oakland.

Now, SBS is about to turn five-years-old.

SBS is the first company who's products are built around the Forio Macro Language (FML) programming language developed by San Francisco-based Forio Business Simulations. "Forio's partners, Michael Bean and Will Glass have been our friends and advisers over the last five years," said Zenophon "Zennie" Abraham, SBS's Co-Founder and CEO.

Abraham says that SBS is an entity unique to the San Francisco Bay Area. "I mean only here can one easily meet people who have the resources, talent, and skill to start an online business like this. The Bay Area culture made SBS possible."

Sports Business Simulation's charge is to build online business Simulations of sports teams and leagues for use in the classroom. For just $15, a student has unlimited use of SBS' simulators for an entire class semester or quarter. SBS products are not designed to replace textbooks, they are developed to enhance the classroom experience.

SBS has two simulators: the XFL Simworld and the Oakland Baseball Simworld, but has plans to add a new simulator based around the fitness industry in one month.

The SBS website itself has expanded dramatically during its five years of growth. In 2003, there were just the simulations. Now, the "sims" as they're called are joined by a network of over 40 blogs, over 100 message boards, a Facebook-style social network, video shows, and pages with links to the offerings of affilate partners, like StubHub.com," said Abraham.

SBS now has an online marketing division because Abraham said too many of his friends wanted articles and videos for their business. "It got so bad I started what we call "SBS-ON" at http://sbson.com. We now have clients in the transportation and real estate industries and are looking to expand. It actually helps us promote our sims."

The SBS sims have been used by many high schools and colleges in America. The Oakland Baseball Simworld has been the focus of numerous academic papers. "What's happened over five years is that the Oakland Sim has developed a kind of cult following. It's a complex online game with over 100 decisions and asks one to run a numerical copy of the behavior of the Oakland Athletics Baseball Organization. It's kind of a sports business fantasy game."


For more information:

510-387-9809
http://www.sportsbusinesssims.com

Hillary Clinton Song Of Choice? "Jack - U - Off" - Wonkette

Oh boy. This is a hoot. I saw this on Wonkette and had to post it in full.

Hill's Campaign Song Revealed!



Good choice, Hill! The American people are tired of the masturbator! Sing along with Hillary!

If your man ain’t no good Come on over 2 my neighborhood
We can jump in the sack and I’ll jack U off
Our Campaign Song [HillaryClinton.com]

Letter To SF Chron's Phil Bronstein - In Ellen Lee's YouTube / CNN Story, "The Man" Is Zennie Abraham

In Ellen Lee's YouTube / CNN Story, "the man" she referred to is me...

Zennie Abraham.

Phil, Ellen knows who I am. We met several times, first through mutual friends at a tech function, then again at Vloggercon where she knows my friend Dina Kaplan of Blip.tv (who reintroduced us) and, where she said she'd call to ask me about Sports Business Simulations and video-blogging.

She never did.

Now, I was one of six blacks out of 300 people in attendance, and live in Oakland.

Then I saw her again -- but said nothing -- at the Vloggies. Then I've been at Web 2.0 and other events. And I continue video-blogging and running my online simulation company.

After following Ellen's request to call her, and hearing nothing back, yet seeing person after white person being presented by her in the SF Chron, I felt there was a problem and did in express this concern to her, but no feedback. Hey, it's a hard subject to adress, but it's something that must be done.

Now, YouTube commissioned me to make a sample video to show the nation how a debate question is to be asked. It's at
http://www.youtube.com/debates

I'm featured promimently in the video -- I'm first and credited. She could have tried to contact me; she did not.

So Ellen writes this, and starts with "a man stands in front of a check cashing center..."

That man is me.

What's the deal Phil? Is Ellen's prejudice against me for whatever reason so great she can't even bring herself to get the real story, let alone explain it even if it involves a Bay Area resident, and particularly someone of color making a mark in Video-Blogging?

This is troubling to me. I hope you agree and investigate this.

Best,

Zennie

London 2012 Olympics Logo Looks Like Swastika

There's a petition going around that calls for the organizers of the London 2012 Olympics to scrap the logo they came up with because they just plain don't like it, and that it will cause epileptic seizures.

Well, when I got my first glance at the logo, I could not get out of my mind how much it looked like the German Swastika. I'm not kidding. The logo has that same four-square-corners rotating around a center look as the Swastika.



Moreover, it looks like someone knew this, and decided to turn the logo so that it was more square than diamond. But what if you turned it so it was more diamond that square?

You think maybe the logo designer was a Neo-Nazi? Look at the picts in this blog and make your own conclusions.