Business & Community Update - February 2008

I will be providing regular updates in an effort to give valuable community and industry information to assist keeping clients, associates, friends and family informed on topics of timely interest.

Here's the link to February 2008's Email Newsletter.

Email managment and archiving is handled by Constant Contact.

Hooperpalooza 2008

I attended Hooperpalooza 2008 last night, the 44th birthday party of the wildly popular St Pete Times columnist Ernest Hooper. I met Ernest through a friend about a month ago and gave him a website for his birthday, http://www.hooperpalooza.com/.

The party was at Four Green Fields in South Tampa and had a mix of Tampa socialites, personalities and elected officials.

Sprint... No Longer with Nextel?

According to, this Washington Post article, Sprint Nextel may be writing of up to $31 billion related to the 2005 merger with Nextel Communications.

If taken in full, the write-off would eradicate all of the "goodwill," or the premium Sprint paid for assets related to the deal.

Wow, that has to hurt!

"Most people agree that the Nextel acquisition has been a disaster for Sprint, and I think that taking the charge just reinforces that perception," Watts said. "They had a much harder time integrating the Nextel network than they anticipated."

No matter how they attempt to distance themselves from the Nextel name I don't think there is much goodwill left in the Sprint name after this.

Many times when those of us with AT&T or Verizon Wireless drop a call with someone we assume they are a Sprint subscriber. Reviving the Sprint name could be as challenging as doing the same for the Pinto.

Spam Update 2008

I regularly have clients contact me in regards to controling spam and unfortunatly the answers I find never seems to get any better.

Unfortunately as business users of email with our email addresses posted on our websites it almost always seems to be a losing battle. The biggest challenge is the tighter you try to make the spam filter the more risk you run of missing an important business email that was mistakenly trapped as spam.

Barracuda Networks Releases Annual Spam Report
At Nearly 95 Percent of Email, Spam Now Rated Worst Form of Junk Advertisinghttp://www.barracudanetworks.com/ns/news_and_events/index.php?nid=232

Study: 95 percent of all e-mail sent in 2007 was spam
CNet commentary on the above press release that might be an easier read.
http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9831556-16.html

The following Forbes article from last year is a pretty easy read and highlights the profitability that keeps spams going. This one focuses on the specific stock market schemes that I am sure you have seen yourself in the past.

Why The SEC Can't Stop Spam
http://www.forbes.com/2007/03/08/sec-spam-stock-tech-security-cx_ll_0308spam.html

Update: Hillsborough County CAC - January 25, 2008

We re-elected Anthony Arena and Jim Mills as chair and vice chair for the coming year and approved with one modification all 12 Budget Review Subcommittee recommendations to be presented to the BOCC.

Our speaker this month was Paula Harvey, Division Director of Planning and Zoning Services who discussed with us the County's Comprehensive Plan Amendatory Process.

Sprint Prediction: Correct

A full six months, a holiday shopping season and a new year have come and gone since predicting that "Dreams" and subsequent ads created by two time Adweek U.S. Agency of the Year, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, would do little to improve Sprint's business situation.

According to this Reuters article that prediction was correct.

Sprint Nextel Corp reported deeper than expected subscriber losses on Friday and said it would cut about 4,000 jobs, raising fears of a slowdown in the U.S. wireless industry, and its stock dropped nearly 25 percent.

I think the reference to a slowdown in the industry is overly dramatic considering the 683,000 subscribers lost by the company did not give up cell phones; they mostly went to AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

I do have to add that I have enjoyed the campaign and think creatively, Goodby did everything they could do.

Last April I wondered if a creative campaign could help a company that customers love to hate. Unlike HP where the campaign reinforced good feelings this campaign had way too much of an uphill climb.

I'll take my digital box a bit early

According to the this St Pete Times editorial and details in this Times article, Hillsborough County has sold out to Bright House Networks by striking a deal instead of suing them for moving the access channels to a higher tier.

The cities of St. Petersburg and Tampa are spending tax payer dollars to fight a change that will be federally mandated to change on February 17, 2009.

How do you rationalize that as responsible spending?

Furthermore the change has actually increased access to government by also providing The Florida Channel on 623 which previously was not available.

While I don't agree with the County using the $150,000 to promote county government, we are getting something in a situation we don't have to be given anything and not wasting money on a legal battle that would be lost anyway.

I think the free advertising would be better utilized if granted to local non profits. The non profit community would be able to use that exposure to help generate more private support instead of depending so heavily on government subsidy.