#108
give me one more day -
i can work a little more
the leap year pressure!
Links: Texas Primaries Edition
So rather than make this all political with my opinions and such, I thought I would just throw out some good links on the upcoming Democratic primaries in Texas. As big a state as this is, it tends to stay under the national radar when it’s not having its vast ranch lands cleared by a vacationing George Bush. Yet when something does happen, the inevitable deluge of articles begins trying to reason out just how this state manages to exist when everything is so…big.
New York Times
The New York Times is first up with its article titled Pieces of Texas Turn Primary Into a Puzzle - an article that’s amusing enough simply for betraying Northerners’ utter confusion about the Lone Star State. The rest of the world seems to be coming to terms with what locals have known for quite some time: Texas is weird. Quote:
In a 1968 essay, Larry McMurtry wrote that Texas was divided but “not yet fragmented to a degree that would raise difficulties for the novelist.” Forty years later, you could sympathize with the writer, but you should feel really sorry for the presidential candidate, trying to make sense of a state as large as New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Carolina combined, and probably even more diverse.
Electoral-Vote.com
Next up is a great article from everyone’s favorite computer-scientist-turned-pundit election website, Electoral-Vote.com. In the news posting from today, Mr. Tanenbaum makes a few good points on the Texas primary system and how absolutely confusing it really is. He starts by writing that because of the way Texas divides its delegates for the voting portion of its election, it’s unlikely either candidate will pick up a substantial lead. He thinks we will see at most a 15 delegate spread.
Beyond his concerns about the delegate spread, he also thinks that very few people will actually attend the caucus portion of the election. I think his point about the caucuses is the most interesting, in large part because so few Texans understand their own primary system. This may have much to do with the fact that Texas has voted mostly Republican for so long that people have simply forgotten about how the Democratic primaries work. Most likely, however, only the die-hard voters will attend the caucuses on the evening of the 4th. For those who do attend, 90% of them will be attending for the first and almost certainly the last time for quite a few elections to come.
Houston Chronicle
Last up is an article from the Houston Chronicle titled In Democratic primary, expect a GOP turnout that confirms what a lot of people from around here already know but what for some reason seems to be a complete surprise to people elsewhere: Republicans really hate Hillary Clinton. What’s more, a good chunk of them may be voting for Obama in the Democratic primary simply because they absolutely don’t want Hillary to even possibly think about winning the election. How many Republicans? As many as 15 percent of them! That’s an awful lot of Republican voters, and a good chunk of them will vote for McCain in November.
Various Outdoor Photos
There are a number of photos in my collection that I’ve taken over the past year but never shared. Here are a few that were all taken in the great outdoors. The black and white photo was taken in Muir Woods. The photo of the dam and the crane were both taken at Espada Dam. The purple bird and the lagoon photo both came from Disney’s Animal Kingdom. And the photo of the rock road came from a trail near my apartment here in San Antonio.
Yahoo! and Microsoft Merger
I haven’t written anything about the Yahoo!/Microsoft deal yet, but this post on TechCrunch sums up some of the problems nicely.
In short, Yahoo! still has some very popular properties, and this is one of the reasons Microsoft feels like the two companies are a match. They can place ads on Yahoo!’s popular sites. Yet the question remains: can Microsoft retain the profitability of these properties given a very ugly and difficult merger? Internet companies are driven by the talent of their people, and without the right leaders providing vision for product, design, or engineering, Internet products can get really stagnant really fast. There’s some stickiness to some of Yahoo!’s products, like Flickr and mail, but customers will switch if they think their platform is dead or dying.
If this gets ugly, both Microsoft and Yahoo! will have a hard time retaining talent. That’s good for competitors, but bad for this deal and the shareholders of both companies. Ultimately, the lesson here is that hostile takeovers of Internet companies are really, really hard because the valuable assets are mostly intellectual and talent related. Microsoft may prove this wrong, but somehow I doubt it.
Random Links
Two random links for your enjoyment:
- Cookthink lets you find recipes by cuisine, mood, ingredient, and a whole lot of other things. For example, plugging in “Vegetarian” and then clicking “Mood” followed by “Scrumptious” brings up a delicious looking recipe for Lemon Quinoa With Asparagus and Feta. The site seems really easy to use and a like a fun way to discover new recipes.
- Website Grader is a free tool for web developers that creates an easy to read report about how search engine optimized a page really is. Website Grader was created by HubSpot, an outstanding internet marketing company with some really great ideas and products. Their marketing blog is also excellent.
AdJack
David Boland, who graduated with me in my MBA class at Cornell, just launched a really interesting new business called AdJack. David’s site lets you watch advertisements in exchange for a chance to win a cash prize, all while letting you rate the ads you like and dislike. Each time you watch an ad, you get a random number. Watch six ads, get six numbers, and be entered into a lottery with a $100,000 prize.
David’s a great guy and he’s been working on this project for over a year. And if you’re not the type to be impressed by an entrepreneur starting a new business, then you should also know that prior to business school Dave was an F-18 fighter pilot instructor for the US Marines!
I love my iPhone/Car
Being both an iPhone owner and an Audi owner, I absolutely love Apple’s new commercial titled “Cars.”
Consequently, I also think the Audi Superbowl commercial was the best of the night. I wonder if I can use my iPhone to find the best deal on a $118,000 Audi R8?
Sunsets
Three sunset photos. I took the first one from the Marin Headlands overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The second was taken from the Mission Trail in San Antonio near the Espada Dam. The third was taken right outside my apartment complex.
Texas Plates
The State of Texas is holding an online vote to pick its new license plate design. Go ahead and vote now, I’ll wait.
Texas is updating its plates because they’ve run out of digits. There are six digits on the current Texas plate, and a typical license plate can include letters and numbers, but no vowels. Given this, it seems like we’re going to run out of possible numbers by the end of the year.
A post about the new plates wouldn’t be any fun without some snarky commentary about the proposed designs, so here goes:
Called “Traditional Texas”, this plate is simple, generic, and utterly bland. This plate seems exciting with the giant red TEXAS at the top that lets nobody mistake the home state of the car holding it, but beyond that the design is just uninspiring. Even the Lone Star at the bottom is terrible. In a state where Aggies like to set things on fire for fun, cattle go wandering through city streets to celebrate livestock shows, and barbecue is a religion, I would hardly call our traditions dull. So why such a dull plate?
“Natural Texas” celebrates the beauty and grandeur of the state, and while the design is certainly pretty it has no place on a car. Texans are not a bunch of flower children, and even California would be embarrassed by this plate. Of course, a reasonable Californian would also tell you that it just looks bad, too. Nobody goes around looking closely at license plates, which means that if the layout is so subtle that it requires close inspection, it’s just bad design. This tragedy befell the previous Texas license plate design (prior to the current incarnation) that had some kind of shooting star thing in the middle that looked like a sailboat from afar. It was a dreadful plate that should be totally forgotten. With this plate, people driving behind Texas cars will wonder why we have a thing for off center pastels, while anyone who looks closely will think we’re a bunch of Thomas Kinkade fanatics. Thumbs down either way.
“Lone Star Texas” is almost as bad as Natural Texas, but with more color and less landscape, it manages to scrape by. The single Lone Star at the top seems to hang on like an after thought, but I suspect it really exists to break up the swath of garish red and blue that would otherwise dominate the layout. The white Texas is nice, and the script font at the bottom seems iconically Texan. I’m not sure what I think of the photographic layout and I really do wonder if we’re going to get sick of seeing the same uninspiring snapshot for the next several years. Ultimately this plate offends me the least, which is why I voted for it.
“New Texas” is bad, bad, bad, bad. The font for the Texas at the top looks like something that would adorn a print ad for a Las Vegas hotel, while that stupid yellow star from Traditional Texas lurks in the background. I’m not sure why I hate that star, but I think it has to do with the pretentious 3D look and the horrible yellow color. Yellow has no place on license plates. You heard me New Jersey! What’s worse is that this plate highlights Texas cities, which is fine and all, but we’re not really a state full of cities. Now we have several, including some of the biggest in the country, but anyone who’s ever driven between them would realize that Texas is a state with a whole lot of nothing. So with this plate, are we trying to inspire ourselves to pave over the rest of the state, erect a few million square miles of strip malls, and conquer our emptiness? Or are we telling outsiders that so long as they avoid driving west of I35, this is a happening place?
You can have the option to keep your existing plate, which the State has labeled “My Texas.” Quite honestly, this plate is just too cluttered. The cowboy at the bottom is interesting, but oil wells like these haven’t existed in a long time. For a plate that advertises Texas as the Lone Star State, there sure are a lot of really tiny stars all over the place. The moon doesn’t strike me as a particularly Texan icon, and the truth is that the moon has actually been known to appear in such non-Texan locations as Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and Massachusetts. And of course, the last time a Space Shuttle landed here, it didn’t work out so well. About the only thing going for this plate is the color (blue is nice) and the seven stars behind the shuttle that were added after the Columbia accident.
Do More, Sell Less
Last time I wrote about HEB, I mentioned how their recent renovation added a much needed bulk food section. However the rest of their renovation has been less spectacular, and in an attempt to stay relevant compared to Wal-Mart and Target, HEB has started selling products such as electronics, furniture, and even sporting goods in some of their stores. These super HEBs, rebranded as HEB Plus, are probably 60% traditional grocery store and 40% something else.
The surprising part of the HEB Plus concept is how HEB has backtracked away from their earlier attempts at differentiating from their competitors. Their wildly successful Central Market concept took grocery shopping upscale in a way that trickled down to many of their other stores. When I lived in Austin several years ago, the HEB in my neighborhood featured many higher quality foods that were also found in the Central Market down the street. While the HEB Plus formalizes some of that upscale panache by carrying more premium goods, expanding out of groceries and into electronics is the wrong thing for HEB to do.
The key here is strategic focus. Organizations that focus on their competencies and do what they do well are stronger than those who thoughtlessly diversify. Consider Wegmans, who when faced with competition from Wal-Mart managed to take their stores further upscale, focus on great customer service, and even position their own store brand as a satisfactory alternative to regular national brands. All of this allowed them to avoid pricing pressure, even with their discount store branded products. Wegmans knows food and groceries, and their strategy has really paid off. They have loyal customers and very happy employees (they were #3 in the Fortune Best Places to Work list and have been on the list every year since it started).
HEB would argue that because they know grocery retail they know appliance retail, but I’m skeptical. Wal-Mart’s entry into the grocery market has not been an easy one, and if anything they’ve had to learn the hard way how different the two retail models really are. But Wal-Mart is making money off of their grocery department, and they have the capacity to invest until they finally get the formula right.
HEB is a regional grocer, and while they are successful in their market, they aren’t Wal-Mart. They too will have to invest to get non-grocery retail right, but without the resources of Wal-Mart, their lack of focus will likely cost them more than it will ever make in long-term returns.