Sony sent a customer service survey — I was not a happy customer and wanted them to know.  SONY CUSTOMER SERVICE IS TERRIBLE. Some Questions – On scale 0 to 10. 1. Based on your recent experience with Sony Support, how likely are you to purchase Sony electronics products in the future? Answer: 0, Definitely NOT Based on your recent experience with Sony Support, how likely are you to recommend Sony for electronics products to family, friends or others? Answer: 0, Definitely NOT How would you rate your overall experience with Sony’s Telephone Customer Support, Please select one, with 10 meaning most satisfied Answer: 0, Very Dissatisfied How effective was our interactive phone menu in directing your call to a skilled agent? Please select one, with 10 meaning most effective Answer: 0, Very Ineffective Did you speak with more than one agent? Answer: Yes How many agents did you speak to? Answer: More than 4 Please rate the performance of the last agent you spoke with in each of the following areas: Please select one, with 10 meaning excellent Knowledge – POOR Courtesy – POOR Responsiveness – POOR Was the agent able to provide you the information you needed regarding the repair of your Sony product? – Answer: NO Outsourcing customer service with no path to escalate is a bad practice. Having been responsible for Client Services, this is not only unacceptable, but a road to failure. Somehow, the management or SONY needs to hear and get this fixed, otherwise, it will be too late. They spend millions to build brand and drive sales, and with a poor customer service experience, they can lose it all. Years ago, I was looking at cars. When a salesperson went to get the car, the mechanic in the shop asked if we were looking at a Ford Exporer. We said yes, and he told us that they were really not so good. We left — maybe he was having a bad day…but lost sale in a minute. Message to SONY — Listen, make changes, or you will lose all the brand and good will you have worked so hard to build.

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Greetings and good news, friends! We finished the Life Cube campaign on IndieGoGO, raising over $19,000 (far exceeding our goal of $15,000!!) this year from more than 200 donors. Every dollar will help offset costs of lumber, lights, tools, tickets, generators, fuel, trucks and transportation, and all sorts of other expenses we incur to construct and burn the Cube this year. We’re all so grateful for your ideas, donations and support. I’m amazed at the impact this project has had, and continues to have on those who participate. You can be proud that your donation has joined with others to turn a dream into reality. NOTE to Burners: The Life Cube will be located at 3:05 and 1,500 feet from the Man and will burn Friday, Aug 30 at 10PM. Please send your goals and wishes to thelifecube@gmail.com and I will deposit them into The Life Cube at Burning Man myself, or you can send them via postal mail to: skeeter Artist, The Life Cube Burning Man Camp Titicaca 4:20/Commerce C/O BRCPO Burning Man Gerlach, NV 89412 You have no idea of how meaningful your support has been to me, and to the entire Life Cube team. With huge appreciation, Love, scotte (skeeter on the playa) #indiegogo #art #burningmanart #TheLifeCube #thelifecubeprojectlifecubeproject #ENVISIONTheLifeCube #Cubelifecubelifecubeprojectlifecubelifecubeproject #BM2013 #thelifecubeartprojectatburningman #lifecubeproject #lifecubeproject #wishcube #skeeter #artartatburningmanartatburningmanbm2011bm2012BM2012BurningManburningman2011BurningMan2011artburningman2012burningmanartburningmanburningmanlifecubeskeeterTheLifeCubeThe #cargocult #blackrockcity #lifecube #artburningman #fundraising #lifecube #scottcohen #artatburningman #TheLifeCube #BurningMan

My friend Kim G posted this video (Centraal Station Antwerpen gaat uit zijn dak!) on Facebook. See how more than 200 dancers will be shaking up the station at the sound of the Sound of Music! Imagine if you could pull this off in Grand Central Station in NYC. Antwerp Central goes wild! This is a really good energy video. Antwerpen Centraal gaat uit zijn dak want Op zoek naar Maria komt er aan! Bekijk hier hoe meer dan 200 dansers en danseressen het station op zijn kop zetten op het klanken van de Sound of Music! #redtiemedia #Belgium #TheSoundofMusic #Facebook #NewYorkCity #dance #Kim #AntwerpenCentraalrailwaystation #GrandCentralTerminal #Antwerp

http://jerryradio.com/ – this site offers a nice collection of streamed Dead and Jerry streams. I was liking the AOL Radio, Jam Station — but got tired of the audio commercials (too few, too often, and obnoxious).  The nice thing that I liked about AOL Radio is it got me to listen to new (or new to me) bands. I also am looking for a way to record streams and turn them into files that can be loaded on my MP3 player.  Anyone reading this that can offer a software solution – please ping me.  I did try one — should have blogged which one – but it was not exactly user friendly.

This was sent by my friend Chaz.  All I can say is Oy Vey! Rainier is an enormous test but you can reach the to By GREG JOHNSTON P-I REPORTER Paradise, Mount Rainier National Park — For all its breathtaking beauty, Mount Rainier is a massive creature, a noisy, moving, steaming mass of rock, ice and tectonic energy, and if you want to know it as one who has climbed it, the mountain will take a little piece of you. · Rainier Guides: Park grants access to two more companies · See more photos from the climb You will leave the mountain sore from your toes to your temples, you will feel drained, your feet likely will be blistered and your lungs may feel congested from labored breathing of the thin air at more than 2.7 miles high. This condition might cling to you like a hangover for a day or more. But you’ll look back on it as an epic adventure, as the day you stood on top of the Northwest. Considered an active volcano, Mount Rainier is a dynamic mass of earth and elements that generates its own weather, kills people almost every year and swallows entire airplanes and helicopters — over the decades several have been left on its shoulders to disappear. That’s why the mountain is sprinkled with place names like Cadaver Gap and Disappointment Cleaver. Mike Kane / P-I Climbers head out from Paradise on their way to Camp Muir. Although just the third-highest mountain in the lower 48 states at 14,411 feet, Rainier is the most burdened by ice, with 25 major glaciers covering 34 square miles of its slopes, its crater frosted with wind-sculpted forms, pocked with steam vents and undercut by caves and tunnels. To get up there, you must travel these glaciers and — by any of its 12 main routes — gain 9,000 feet of elevation. Simply put, scaling Rainier is one of the greatest mountaineering challenges in the contiguous U.S. states. At the same time, it’s entirely attainable for those in good physical condition. "As dangerous as Mount Rainier is, it’s not insane to climb it," says Mike Gauthier, the head climbing ranger for Mount Rainier National Park. "You’re not hanging out over thin air dangling from a rope. It’s an exciting, adventurous endeavor. It is an attainable goal, if you put in the training." Certainly you feel a sense of accomplishment standing up there on the icon of everything Washington — along with fatigue and the stress of knowing you have to get back down over the same wicked, sketchy terrain. As our guide Brent Okita says: "Going up is voluntary; coming down isn’t necessarily voluntary." As the peak Rainier climbing season commences in the next week or two, three guide companies will be leading climbers to Rainier’s summit, mostly via the two most popular routes — by way of Disappointment Cleaver on the southeast side and Emmons Glacier on the northeast. The road to Paradise is scheduled to reopen May 5, after repairs of winter storm damage. That also will reopen access to independent climbers, hundreds of whom attempt the summit each year. Mike Kane / P-I Susan Reid and Martin Schmaltz listen to a guide discuss the summit attempt in the bunk house at Camp Muir. About half of the approximately 10,000 people who try each year reach the summit. The rest are turned back by fatigue, altitude sickness, bad weather or accidents. Over the past five years, according to the National Park Service, the guide companies have put about 60 percent of their clients on the summit. The success rate of independent climbers has been about 44 percent. Climbing Mount Rainier is something almost every serious outdoors person in the Northwest wants to do at least once. Especially for a native who hikes and backpacks, it is a quintessential Northwest achievement. "For some people in the region, it’s kind of a pinnacle of backpacking and climbing," says Gauthier. "They see the mountain and something about it inspires them and they realize it’s a somewhat attainable goal if they put in the training. "There’s another class of people who are looking to climb all over the world. Rainier is accessible, they get altitude exposure, glacier experience and gain all these skills they can go on to the Himalayas with, or Alaska, McKinley. It’s a great training experience." I put it off as long as I could, using the perpetual excuse that I needed to get in better shape before considering it. However, in 2006 my life took a stressful digression, and I responded with a steady schedule of the therapy that works best for me: running, hiking and bicycling. When Mike Kane, a young and talented photographer who was at the P-I on a fellowship, asked why I had never climbed the mountain — and if I wanted to — I had run out of excuses. The time had come. Neither of us were trained mountaineers, so we decided to climb with a guide service, and for me there was only one option: Rainier Mountaineering Inc., or RMI. That wasn’t because the other guide services on the mountain were less skilled, but simply for the opportunity to climb with Okita, an acquaintance who happens to be my best friend’s brother-in-law and who I knew had summited Everest in 1991, had climbed Mount McKinley more than a dozen times and Rainier more than 300 times. Mike Kane / P-I Climbers inch their way toward the summit of Mount Rainier just before sunrise. A typical summit trip led by RMI leaves Camp Muir at about 1 a.m. and reaches the top around 8 a.m. I had heard stories about Okita. If Rainier is a real mountain, then Okita is a real mountain man, and his life revolves around that volcano. In winter, he is the assistant director of the Ski Patrol at nearby Crystal Mountain ski area. "It’s my home," he told me later. "I’ve spent 21 years establishing a career on that mountain. I’m rather fond of it. I think I know it pretty well and I love it." That’s about as sentimental as the no-nonsense and soft-spoken Okita gets. He is one of the best guides on the mountain and I wanted him leading us. We purchased RMI’s three-day summit climb program, which is actually a two-day climb preceded by a day of training in the use of an ice ax and crampons (clawlike traction devices that attach to the bottoms of boots), self-arrest, climbing in a rope team, and the techniques of rest-stepping and pressure-breathing. That last item allegedly helps your blood better absorb oxygen at high altitude, although while climbing I suspected our guides urged us to do it just to take our minds off the fact that we were traversing damn steep slopes and gaping, yawning, fearsome crevasses. We had already experienced a little crevasse drama earlier. Most RMI climbs are via the Disappointment Cleaver route, and on the first day of our climb, our party backpacked from Paradise to Camp Muir, a rocky outpost on Cowlitz Cleaver at 10,188 feet. Here a little collection of stone and wooden huts serves as base camp for summit attempts. Not long after we arrived, an Austrian climber, part of an independent party, slipped and fell into a "moat," a crevasse that can form between ice and rock. This one, right at Muir, had been covered by thin ice, which the climber broke though, plunging 20 feet. Led by Okita, a team of guides and rangers rescued the guy, dropping him a helmet and climbing harness, then setting up pickets in the ice and pulling him out with a rope. The climber lost his ice ax but was OK, and I was impressed by the guides’ skill and efficiency. However, it was a vivid illustration of what can happen on Mount Rainier. "That’s what distinguishes Rainier, even from the other volcanoes in Washington," says Okita. "It is quite a bit more glaciated and higher and therefore a bit more serious. You face more of the objective dangers of ice fall and rock fall, coupled with altitude and weather considerations. "Baker and Hood are easy. You’re only going to 10,000 feet. That’s like going to Muir. Baker does have some glaciers. Hood, you have a little bit of steeps and two or three crevasses, but not two or three hundred crevasses." Our day at Muir was short. We arrived in the early afternoon, lounged, ate dinner (RMI provided hot water), and then Okita delivered an hourlong briefing about what to pack, what to expect, the route and schedule. At 6:30 p.m. it was lights out and sleepy time in the small Muir bunkhouse, within which were crammed 24 climbers, coed. Only those who sleep like a bear in December got more than a few winks. People were snoring, passing wind, getting up to relieve themselves, tossing and turning. Who can sleep at 6:30 p.m. anyway? Okita returned and turned on the propane lights at 12:30 A-freaking-M. More hot water was provided, we all ate, drank, pulled on our boots, helmets and headlamps, then headed outside into the dark to put on our crampons and split into four-person rope teams. Under a sky full of brilliant stars we set out, crossing the Cowlitz Glacier and then climbing up and over a rocky ridge, or cleaver, just below Cadaver Gap. At one point I looked back and saw several strings of rope teams snaking up the mountain, defined by their glowing headlamps. Above we could see the lights of independent climbing teams. Mike Kane / P-I Guide Stuart Robertson rest-steps his way up Mount Rainier’s east face soon after sunrise. The spooky stuff started on Ingraham Flats, 1,000 feet above Muir, where the route hopped directly over several narrow but deep crevasses. Nearby were bigger crevasses in Ingraham Glacier — fearsome, gaping, yawning fissures. I was almost happy our vision was confined to the narrow beams of our headlamps. Off in the dark corners were things I really didn’t want to see at that point, such as the Ingraham Icefall and Disappointment Cleaver. Later I would learn that this is the riskiest part of the climb. The route runs directly beneath the ice falls, with dozens of massive, house-size blocks of ice seemingly teetering precariously above you. One of the worst accidents in American mountaineering occurred here in 1981, when a giant ice avalanche buried an RMI guide and 10 climbers. Their bodies were never recovered. Just beyond are two less-than-appealing stretches, an area prone to rockfall known as "the Bowling Alley," which is the approach to the appropriately named Disappointment Cleaver. (After we were off the mountain, I joked with guide Stuart Robertson over beers about the fortuitousness of starting in the dark — maybe it’s best you don’t see that stuff on the way up. "Can you imagine coming out on the flats and someone telling you, ‘You have to go up there, and then there,’ " he said with a chuckle.) Perhaps the hardest part of the climb was Disappointment Cleaver. This is a steep and sketchy, 1,200-vertical-foot crest of loose rock, dust and ash that divides the confluence of Ingraham and Emmons glaciers on Rainier’s east slope. The route twists torturously up this messy ridge, with footing just a little less slippery than a greased hardwood floor covered with ball bearings — and you’re wearing crampons while roped to three other people. As soon as we got onto the cleaver, I knew a slip here could be disastrous. In June 1998, 10 people in two RMI rope teams were descending when they were caught in an avalanche and swept down the lower part of the cleaver, with one fatality. Okita promised that beyond the cleaver, the route was all snow — a 2,200-foot, lung-searing grunt indeed, but no more rock. It was eerie climbing that cleaver in the dark, the spookiness punctuated by heavy breathing, the clang of ice axes and the metallic scraping sound of crampons on rock. But we made it, taking our next-to-last rest break at its top. Here, three climbers decided they could not go on. While one of the guides took the three back to Muir, our rope team took on an extra climber who wanted to push on. I was a little uneasy about this. As Okita had said earlier, a rope team is only as strong as its weakest link. We didn’t know this guy and now our team was five, with more opportunity for human error. But he proved up to the task. As we marched laboriously up the icy slopes, at 12,500 feet we first saw the sunrise, its faint red glow lining a 9,000-foot ceiling of clouds on the eastern horizon. It was a gorgeous sight, but difficult to appreciate while focusing on the climb ahead, and simply trying to breathe. At that altitude just standing up and taking a step saps your breath. The rest of the way was intense but uneventful, and I was surprised when a couple of hours later Okita announced, "We’re here, you made it!" It seemed like we should have a good way still farther to climb, but we stepped into the mountain’s East Crater and that was that. Mike Kane / P-I Jonathon M. Venzie, a lawyer, rests in Rainier’s summit crater. The crater was carpeted with thousands of pointy and peculiarly shaped white ice moguls, with a trail beaten through them to the summit register on its far side. The sun was bright above a puffy quilt of clouds, and in the distance we could see the tops of the neighboring volcanoes: St. Helens, Adams, Hood. I sat and rested, ate a candy bar and drank some water, then walked over to check out the crater’s steaming caves before making my way across the icy bowl to the summit register. Here we still could not breathe easily — literally or figuratively. I knew the way down could be even more perilous than the way up, since fatigue makes a slip more likely. I was surprised later to learn from Gauthier that tunnels and caves cross beneath the crater from one side of the summit to the other. And that there’s an airplane in the ceiling of one of the tunnels. Late in 1990 a Cessna crashed on the summit, was later covered by snow and by spring had melted into the crater ice. "This place is so full of stories," says Gauthier. We didn’t dally, spending just an hour on the summit and then roping back up and beginning the descent. It was warm and sweaty work, winding and twisting down the dusty, rocky cleaver, and scary even walking the route below the Ingraham Icefall in the daylight. You can see these bus-size blocks of ice above, and you know that one day they will fall. You hope it’s not while you’re there. I was running low on water, having consumed more than I thought I would need. When we reached Ingraham Flats under the triangular stone countenance of 11,138-foot Little Tahoma, a remnant volcano, Okita asked if anyone needed water. I gulped mine down and drank some of his. Muir was 45 minutes away and finally I let myself relax. We spent an hour resting, eating, drinking and packing at Muir, then dropped the remaining 4,800 feet to Paradise and the waiting RMI van. There, after the 9,000-foot descent from the summit, I kicked off my boots and saw that I would be losing the big toenail on my left foot. My lungs were congested, and they remained so for a few days. But I felt good, like I had achieved something most people never attempt, and I had seen my native state from an essential perspective. Plus, I knew some frosty, foamy beverages awaited down the road in Ashford. "It is an awesome achievement here in the Northwest, to stand on the highest point in the region," says Gauthier. "It’s a place like nowhere else on the planet really. You can’t help but be inspired." Summit resources ·  "Mount Rainier; A Climbing Guide" by National Park Service climbing ranger Mike Gauthier (Mountaineers, 245 pages, $18.95) is the book you need. Also see Gauthier’s climbing blog at mountrainierclimbing.blogspot.com. ·  Mount Rainier National Park’s climbing pages are full of information — you might want to skip the accident reports until after your climb. They’re at nps.gov/mora. ·  The companies that guide on Rainier have lots of good information and advice on planning and preparing: rmiguides.com, alpineascents.com, mountainguides.com. Training tips Gain elevation — The best way to train for mountain climbing is to climb mountains. They need not be technical climbs, but take alpine hikes that gain serious elevation, and do it at least once a week for two months before your Rainier attempt. Before my climb, I hiked Mailbox Peak, Mount St. Helens, South Navarre Peak, Dog Mountain and hiked to Annette Lake, North Lake (twice), Top Lake and Malachite Lake, plus other hikes with less gain. Some recommend you wear a full pack while training; I carried a heavy day pack. Aerobics — In his climbing guidebook, ranger Mike Gauthier recommends an hour of aerobic exercise at least four times a week, but he is called on to save lives and must be in peak condition at all times. I tried to get four days of serious exercise every week for more than two months before the climb, typically running two or three days for a minimum of 35 minutes, bicycling one day for at least an hour and alpine hiking at least once a week. If you are in poor shape, begin your training four to eight months before the climb. P-I reporter Greg Johnston can be reached at 206-448-8014 or gregjohnston@seattlepi.com.

New Daily Deals Study Finds Red Flags For The Industry – By Laura Hazard Owen Daily deal sites are now a multi-billion-dollar industry, and new sites in an ever increasing number of niches are popping up every day. But a new Rice University study on how businesses fare when they participate in Groupon, LivingSocial, OpenTable, Travelzoo, and BuyWithMe promotions uncovered some bad news for the daily deal industry as a whole. Most businesses don’t feel any loyalty toward a particular daily deal site, and over the next few years, the report concludes, daily deal sites will likely “have to settle for lower shares of revenues from businesses compared to their current levels, and it will be harder and more expensive for them to find viable candidates to fill their pipelines of daily deals.” Here are some findings from the study, which was conducted by Utpal M. Dohlakia, an associate professor of management at Rice University’s business school. —The study surveyed 324 businesses across 23 U.S. markets that participated in daily deal promotions between August 2009 and March 2011. 55.5 percent of those businesses reported making money on the deal, 26.6 percent lost money, and 17.9 percent broke even. —The health, services, and special event industries made out the best: 70 percent of them made money on their promotions. But only 43.6 percent of restaurants surveyed, and 53.7 percent of salons and spas, made money from their promotions. —”Item promotions,” where consumer get a deal on a specific product, service, or bundle (example: 25 percent off a spa service) worked better than “dollar promotions” ($10 for $20 worth of food). 59 percent of “item promotions” were profitable, while 47 percent of “dollar promotions” were profitable. 79 percent of the businesses that ran item promotions said they would run another daily deal; 58 percent of the business running dollar promotions said they would run another deal. —On average, nearly 80 percent of deal users were new customers for the business, but just 35.9 percent of them spent more than the deal’s face value. 19.9 percent returned to the business to make a full-priced purchase. OpenTable does better with repeat customers: 51.9 percent of OpenTable deal users were new customers, and 30 percent of OpenTable deal users came to the restaurant again. —21.7 percent of deal buyers never actually redeemed the deals they purchased. On the one hand, that’s a good thing for the business offering the daily deal: Non-redemption makes the deal more profitable for them. On the other hand, when deal buyers don’t redeem the deal, businesses don’t get the exposure they sought in the first place. The report recommends, “To increase the likelihood of a profitable promotion, businesses should consider offering a daily deal of relatively high face value ($50 or more), with a shallow discount (at most 25% off face value), a short redemption period (three months or less), and place a maximum limit on number of deal vouchers that consumers can buy.” —48.1 percent of businesses surveyed said they would run another daily deal promotion, 19.8 percent said they would not, and 32.1 percent said they weren’t sure. “An industry which is able to convert less than half of the customers who try its service into certain second-time buyers is likely to run into trouble finding enough merchants to sustain itself at some point in the not-too-distant future,” the report notes. —Daily deal sites have not been successful at differentiating themselves from one another. The study found no statistically significant differences between the sites in terms of how profitable or unprofitable their deals turned out to be. —72.8 percent of the businesses surveyed said that they would consider a different daily deal site to run their next promotion. The report’s authors conclude that daily deal sites will have to take smaller revenue cuts (they currently take between 20 and 50 percent) in order to retain merchants and sign up new ones. “I’ve learned a lot and now can see that I can cherry pick who to work with to give me the cut and the percentage off that works for me,” said a bar owner in Los Angeles. source: paidContent #RiceUniversitysbusinessschool #UtpalMDohlakia #LivingSocial #andBuyWithMe #promotions #OpenTable #DailyDealsStudy #Groupon #Travelzoo

Dimestore Media has launched the new Website @ dimestore.com (www.dimestore.com) this week.  I will be notifying friends, updating profiles, blogs, linkedin, facebook, iMEDIA, and sending my contacts in outlook that for the first time in almost 10 years, I am changing my primary email to scottc AT Dimestore.com.   The Web site is not a destination, but just a corporate site for people trying to figure out what I’m up to – or looking me up.  Don’t expect much in the way of information — I am still keeping things pretty close to the vest.  Updates to follow….

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Free To Play – Alternate Revenue Streams for Digital Entertainment Posted by Adrian Crook August 2, 2007 Top 10 Revenue Models for Free To Play Games The following 10 revenue models allow some or all of their associated game or virtual world to be played for free. The ordering is quite unscientific and I’m sure I’ve missed something obvious or messed up a detail. I leave it to the Internet to correct me. 1. Virtual Item Sales A well familiar revenue model first established in Korea and now the dominant model in Asia. Nexon – makers of KartRider, MapleStory, Audition and more – are widely seen as the leaders in this area, doing $230M of gross revenue in 2005 (the most recent year for which they’ve released figures), with 85% of that revenue coming from virtual item sales. Virtual item sales is the practice of allowing users to purchase functional, decorative, or functional & decorative in-game items for use in and out of gameplay. A virtual item system usually uses two currencies – an attention currency (users earn virtual money via in-game activities) and a real money-based currency (users buy virtual money using real money). Typically, 5-15% of users opt for the latter currency and the influx of real world money is what provides the virtual item sales revenue stream. What’s so compelling about virtual item sales is the unlimited ARPU (average revenue per user). According to Daniel James, CEO of Three Rings, some hardcore Puzzle Pirates users have poured more than $10,000 apiece into the game via virtual item purchases. To reach that contribution level via a World of Warcraft-style $15/month subscription would take a user 55 years. While extremely shaky sources peg the overall size of the virtual item sales market at $1.5-2B this year, without an NPD-esque measurement organization there’s no way to verify that number. 2. Subscription Tiers Runescape, the Java MMO from Jagex, is one of the leaders in the tiered subscription space. A tiered subscription model allows users to play the core game for free, but those that desire access to elite weapons or other game content, must pay a small ($5/month) subscription fee. Over 1 million of Runescape’s 6+ million users have opted into the tiered subscription program, grossing $60M annually for Jagex. Dungeon Runners, an NCsoft free to play MMO, offers a similar $5/month subscription package that affords players access to the elite items, a bank and the ability to stack potions. It also gives subscribers server queue priority. 3. Advertising Several different forms of game-related advertising revenue streams have popped up in recent years. Firms such as Massive, IGA and Double Fusion do big business in in-game advertising for clients such as EA, Activision, THQ and Microsoft. Game ad agencies typically serve up static ads (ads that ship with a product and never change) or dynamic (ads that are updated in real time via the net) within game products that are contextually appropriate for advertising (i.e. sports, racing, or contemporary shooters). The size of this conventional in-game advertising market is currently pegged at $100-200M, according to well-placed industry sources. However, the number and quality of games with dynamic advertising enabled is escalating dramatically. So much so that Yankee Group predicts the in-game ad market will reach $732M by 2010. But other, more emergent forms of in-game advertising have been at the forefront of enabling free to play. Examples include: Google Adsense PPC ads (see recent post on Maid Marian, grossing $800K/year from Google Ads alone) Sponsored item sales (Habbo Hotel) In-game video ads (Real Networks) 4. Real Estate or “Land Use Fees“ Second Life is the biggest legitimate player utilizing this revenue model whereby virtual land is sold leased to individuals. Monthly lease fees range from $5 to $195, depending on the size of land in question. Users may also purchase their own island for a one time fee of $1,675 in addition to a monthly fee of $295. Approximately 70% of Second Life’s revenue comes from land sales and maintenance fees. Of course the virtual land ownership revenue model doesn’t come without headache, as the Bragg vs Linden suit has proven. Entropia Universe uses land auctions as a revenue stream, but a recent headline-making $100,000 land sale has been called into question as the successful bidder is an employee of Entropia’s developer, MindArk. 5. Merchandise In what’s become a phenomenon of Furby proportions, Webkinz plush toys and their associated Webkinz World have taken the pre-teen set by storm. Users purchase a $15 Webkinz plush toy at retail and enter a secret code to activate the associated virtual character in Webkinz World. Beyond the retail plush toy purchase, there are no additional fees for playing in Webkinz World. Two million Webkinz toys have been sold since April 2005, with more than 1 million of those users registering their pet online. That’s more than US$20M in retail sales in just 24 months. Products such as Bratz/Be-Bratz are quickly jumping on this bandwagon. Another successful merchandise-based revenue model is collectible card games, or CCGs. Neopets launched a CCG in 2003 and just this week MapleStory became the latest free to play game to go this route, announcing a partnership with Wizards of the Coast. Consumers purchase real-world MapleStory collectible cards that come with codes redeemable for exclusive in-game content in the MapleStory MMORPG. 6. Auctions & Player Trades In June 2005, Sony set up Station Exchange on select Everquest II servers. Station Exchange facilitates player to player trade of in-game items – including the provision of an escrow service – in return for a 10% closing fee as well as listing fees ranging from $1 (items and coins) to $10 (characters). While Station Exchange recorded only $274K in net revenue in its first year of limited release, it was enough for Sony Online President John Smedley to declare it the future of RMT. Read the SOE Station Exchange whitepaper for more. Entropia Universe – a world in which virtual items actually decay with use and require real money to repair or replace – utilizes first party auctions as their primary revenue stream. This means that instead of merely facilitating player to player auctions and taking a cut (a la Station Exchange’s eBay model), Entropia auctions items directly to their players. Entropia items sell for ludicrous sums, with rare weapons auctions closing at $26,000, land auctions for (allegedly) $100,000. The May 2007 auction of five in-game banking licenses brought in $404,000, total. Ironically, Entropia takes no fees for player-to-player auctions. In the wake of this success, watch for third party virtual item auction houses such as Dan Kelly’s Sparter.com to offer developers and publishers a cut to ensure the (exclusive?) cooperation of their products. 7. Expansion Packs The best known example of expansion packs as a primary revenue model is the Arenanet product, Guild Wars. Likened by Richard Garriott to a series of fantasy novels, Guild Wars relies not on monthly subscription fees for its revenue, but on the sale of successive expansion packs for $29.99. The game’s creators argue that the thin-pipe origins of their technology allow their game to be run far more economically than competing titles, enabling this no-subscription free model. Over 3 million people have purchased the previous three Guild Wars products (Guild Wars, Guild Wars: Factions and Guild Wars: Nightfall) with those numbers set to surge again with the release of Guild Wars: Eye of the North on August 31, 2007. 8. Event or Tournament Fees Netamin’s free to play, ad-supported Ulimate Baseball Online uses event fees as an additional revenue stream. UBO’s Pay to Play tournaments cost $5 per player to enter and offer cash prizes up to $4,500. Shot Online, a free to play/virtual item sales golf MMO, also charges users to enter tournaments. Third parties such as Valve’s Tournament.com and Groove Game’s Skillground.com are getting into the pay to play tournament scene as well. These sites charge charging entry fees for game tournaments for games such as Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike. 9. TrialPay At the recent Virtual Goods Summit and again at the Seattle Casual Games Conference, I bumped into representatives from TrialPay. TrialPay is a third party facility that allows customers to pay for products (i.e. games) by trying or buying from advertisers. What this means is that when you go to pay for a casual game or purchase virtual currency, you can instead select from a demographically targeted list of special offers. Trying or buying one of these offers – from merchants such as Avis, Geico, Vonage, etc – allows you to get your game purchase for free, as the offer merchant has paid the game provider for acquiring a new customer on their behalf. TrialPay claims that this allows game developers to earn more per user, as some offers pay game developers upwards of $50 per user (as opposed to the $20 a casual game might normally charge). Someone from TrialPay can jump in and give me a more relevant example of their system’s use in the game space, but all I could find was a casual games company called Dreamquest Games. 10. Donations Clocking in at last on the list is of alternate revenue streams is player donations. Raph Koster recently blogged about meeting up with the Kingdom of Loathing guys at ComicCon in San Diego. Raph reported that while KoL’s revenue is “definitely indie,” their primary revenue stream of player donations is a sustainable one. According to Wired, the donation revenue has allowed creator Zack Johnson to quit his day job and hire six employees to help improve and maintain the product. That’s what Maid Marian founder Gene Endrody would call a “lifestyle business,” but I suspect most of us wouldn’t scoff at it or any of the above revenue models. Source:  FreeToPlay.biz

This was sent by Joel at PT.  ONLINE PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION UNVEILS FIRST-OF-ITS-KIND ONLINE VIDEO ADVERTISING EFFECTIVENESS STUDY ———————————————– Report Provides New Insight into Effective Use of Online Video Advertising, Including the Merits of 30 Sec. Ads, Companion Ads and More NEW YORK, NY — June 6, 2007 — With the continued rise in online video popularity, the Online Publishers Association (OPA) conducted a unique study looking at the key factors driving video advertising success. Frames of Reference: Online Video Advertising, Content and Consumer Behavior exposed consumers to video content and advertising, and captured the attributes that most impact awareness, ad likability, ad relevance, and brand consideration. "With online video firmly entrenched in the mainstream, marketers need to understand what works for driving key advertising metrics," said Pam Horan, OPA president. "Frames of Reference identifies the most important factors — from ad length to the impact of adjacent content — that can improve video advertising effectiveness. In the rapidly evolving world of video, the study is an important step in laying down concrete, high impact techniques for marketers." Frames of Reference further examined how consumers are using online video and their reactions to advertising. Among the key findings are that news is the most popular online video category and that consumers are taking meaningful action in response to video ads. And with growing evidence of how heavily consumers rely on the Internet for researching and buying goods, the study also examined the relative importance of the Internet in the purchase process. The research, which was conducted in partnership with OTX, included surveying and concept testing 1,422 online video users. Ad Effectiveness Using a variety of ads — which featured everything from consumer packaged goods and financial services to airlines and pharmaceuticals — and four ad attributes, 96 combinations were tested for how they impact key advertising and brand metrics. The four ad attributes were: duration (15 v. 30 sec.); placement (pre-roll and post-roll); companion ad (with/without); and, advertising type (original online v. repurposed TV). Details on the impact of each of these attributes on online video advertising and brand metrics are included in the full report, however several of the key findings include: * 30s Top 15s. In two of the four advertising and brand metrics measured, ad length was the leading factor driving lift. And with each, 30 second ads outpaced 15s: ad relevance (30% lift using 30s) and brand consideration (23% lift using 30s). * Quality Content Halo. The study reinforced the notion of a "halo" effect from website video content affinity. If the consumer had a prior brand affinity toward an advertised brand and they liked the adjacent video content, brand consideration jumped 61%. If the consumer’s initial attitude toward the brand was neutral or negative, brand consideration still rose 21% if they liked the video content. * The Role of a Companion. The study found that static companion ads can play a valuable complimentary role. To lift brand awareness the combination of a pre-roll and a companion proved to be most effective. Video Usage and Perceptions The study looked at the most popular video content and, while humorous videos may appear to be omnipresent, Frames of Reference found that the leading video content category is news/current events (14% watch daily). Weather ranks second (11% watch daily), followed by jokes /funny clips (9% watch daily). The study also found that online video advertising is leading to concrete results, especially on media sites. Of the 80% of viewers that have watched a video ad online, 52% have taken some sort of action, whether it’s checking out a website (31%), searching for more info (22%), going into a store (15%), or actually making a purchase (12%). Importantly, visitors to media sites (magazine, newspaper, cable, broadcast and pure-play) demonstrated they were more inclined to take action upon viewing a video ad than visitors to portals and user generated content sites. The Internet & The Purchase Process The study looked at the purchase process, and the results underscored the dominant role of the Internet in every stage. Of consumers who made a purchase in the last month, 48% said the Internet drove initial awareness, 57% said they learned more using the Internet, 55% used the Internet to decide where to buy, and 56% made the final purchase decision using the Internet. Word of Mouth, which also has strong Web components, was second in importance — however the Internet outpaced all others by at least 50%. Horan said, "As consumers work their way through the purchase process, the Internet is far and away the most important media they use. With consumers buying everything from groceries to cars online, the Internet’s importance may seem obvious. But it is truly stunning to see that the Internet is leading every other media by at least 50%." Details of the Frames of Reference study are being presented on the OPA’s annual, eight-city "Eyes on the Internet Tour," which begins in Atlanta on Wednesday June 6. For more information or to register for the free event, visit http://www.online-publishers.org/eyes2007. Each presentation will be followed by a panel discussion among leading marketing, publishing and agency executives. A copy of the final report will be posted on the OPA website (www.online-publishers.org) at the end of the Tour.

New theme for Burning Man 2014 is Caravansary. A combination of “caravan” and “sara” (palace or buildings with closed courts). Inn or resting place for weary travelers along the Silk Road. Caravansary.  According to Jack Rabbit Says (JRS) – The new theme for Burning Man this year will be caravansary. For countless centuries, travelers along the Silk Route crossed paths in caravansaries, a network of oases and sanctuaries that dotted the 4,000-mile road from Europe to East Asia. These bustling caravan stops offered more than just shelter from the desert wilderness; they were vital centers of cultural exchange, bringing together traders, pilgrims, monks, nomads, traveling entertainers, and wild-eyed adventurers from all points of the compass to share their stories around a common fire. #bm2014 #Burningman #brc #silkroad #Caravansary #burningmantheme #jrs