Cover girl

Model Veronica Varekova is upset about Maxim magzine using her photo on their cover. Maxim licensed the photo from Corbis Outline for use in their magazine but did not have Ms. Varekova’s permission to use it on the cover. Veronica has consistently turned down covers of men’s magazines, and is upset Maxim put her on the cover without telling her.

I am a Maxim subscriber, and when I recieved this month’s magazine I knew something funny was up with the article on Veronica Varekova. Anyone familiar with Maxim knows that they typically do a large interview with their cover girls, generally several pages of Q&A. The article on Veronica had about 5 quotes scattered through the layout. No Q&A and the same content was repeated twice in the article. It was fairly obvious that either Veronica was really dull (which is doubtful since she’s trilingual and has two degrees) or she never actually did a photo shoot/interview with Maxim.

My guess is this is all a publicity stunt for Maxim. They figure the ‘exposure’ will be worth the lawsuit.

Podcaster goes pro

My favorite podcasterBrian from Coverville has decided to take his act pro.

He is now creating podcasts for the Denver Post. I encourage you to go give him a listen.

UPDATE: The Post didn’t get the links up for the rest of the week, so Brian posted them on the Coverville site.

Selling Out

There’s an interesting article over on the Whitespace blog about the changes to TechCrunch and his inclusion of way too many advertisements. The post is quite critical of the new design, and accuses TechCrunch of being greedy.

This is an interesting topic, I’ve seen articles with a similar tone several times this week, probably due to the 200+ point hit the DOW took. Everyone’s concerned that this web 2.0 nonsense is a bubble and greedy people are going to cause a crash.

This whole topic is very similar to a conversation I had last night. As an NFL fan, we were discussing the offseason player movements, specifically guys like Edgerin James and Antwaan Randle El. Both high profile players have caught a lot of flack for leaving thier teams. Thing is, how do you turn down $30 million dollar contracts? Football is a sport where your career could end tomorrow in a car crash or during a tackle. Who can blame guys like James and Randel El for selling out, especially in Antwaan’s case where he has already won a Super Bowl ring with Pittsburgh. As a fan I would love to see guys stay with a team, but as a person I understand how difficult it would be to turn down a big contract like that.

Blogs are currently a similar phenomenon. Web 2.0, $20,000 monthly ad revenue and all of they hype are probably not going to last forever. If you can make money, you better do it. If it’s out there on the table, guys like TechCrunch would be foolish not to pick it up.

Beer and Popcorn

Nextnc has an article about the decline of movie attendance in the US. One of the tactics theatre are using to pull people back in is to serve alcoholic beverages. Now here is an idea who’s time has come. Having beer in a movie theatre should send attendence through the roof. Think about it, now, when your significant other asks you to take her to see that romantic comedy what she’s really offering is her services as a DD. How much better is the latest Lindsay Lohan, Kate Hudson or Jessica Simpson movie going to be when you have 3 or 4 Buds in you?

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Bob, I don’t drink. How does this help me”. The other great benefit of having alcohol in the theater is the entertainment value of the drunks. Currently I rarely go to the theater. Who wants to pay $9.00 to go see poor acting, a poor plot and have to listen to some schub behind you yammer for two hours. I can get that for free at my brother-in-law’s HOME theater. Once the beer in the theater is widely available, a few well placed popcorn tosses will be enough to start a cinematic brawl.

This wll make a great mastercard commercial

Movie – $10
Beer – $14
Getting hauled away by the cops while your whole family watches – Priceless

It just makes me happy to see the movie industry do something. Instead of addressing real problems like poor quality films, high prices (both at the ticket counter and the concession stands), cheesey commercials (that I just paid $10 to watch) and noisy theaters they focus on things like beer and wine or reserved seating. How inventive of them.

Coming soon to your home town – the Internet

Seems like local businesses are finally waking up to the realities of the Internet and if local media doesn’t wake up too they are going to be left in the dust. This is something I’ve personally expected for the last year, ever since I setup my Greeley Search directory. Local businesses have been losing market share to companies that are doing business on the Internet. With Google (and now MSN and Yahoo’s) reasonable priced keyword ads advertising to local customers has become much more attainable to the small business.

This is good news, but local media outlets better step up to the plate or this will be just another area where big companies like Google will dominate.