Not one to shy away from blatant, crass commercialism (what commercial voice talent would?), I have been Simpsonized for your viewing pleasure.

The home of the Whopper® has sponsored this little device that supposedly takes a picture you submit and reproduces it in the style of a Simpson cartoon.

The movie employees voice actors so I suppose their is some connection to this blog.

Well, they got the hair right.

Tags: character voices, commentary, marketing, peter o'connell, silliness, technology, voice actors, voiceover // 1 Comment »

Editor’s Note: In the daily observation of life around him, the author occasionally feels the need to point out ridiculously inane behavior and general thoughtlessness. These are called “Rants” and this is one of those times.

Some thoughts while flying in one of these crazy small Embraer Regional Jets over the Great Lakes on my way home.

• Iowa has very, very nice people. I’d never been before and while I don’t know that I’d want to live there (or that they’d want me to) people are real salt of the earth folks. That is a tremendous asset to any city and lacking in many cities.

• The downtown Marriott in Des Moines is very customer friendly. All Marriotts are not this way (they’re not awful mind you just sometimes not outgoing) and the Des Moines team was great.

• Tall people are really treated unfairly on regional jets. I’m short so I do fine but if you’re like 5’ 10″ or taller, you are uncomfortable from the minute you get on the plane until you get off. Somebody needs to be more equitable in their plane designs.

• This does NOT mean I want the prop planes back. I’ve been told the only reason those planes still fly commercially is to protect the pilots who only have prop plane certification. If this is true, that’s dumb. Whether or not it’s true, just get rid of the props and buy some regional jets with better head room.

• Men should not wear sandals in airports or on planes. Feet on anyone are not their most attractive body part but on men, as I’ve come to unwittingly notice, feet are especially unattractive and sandals only exacerbate the problem, not improve it. Toe nail control for men seems to be impossible and the unfortunate among us that are seated near you are disgusted. Cover your feet with sneakers or dress shoes when you fly.

• The above is not an endorsement of wearing socks with sandals (no matter how old you are). It is, to be clear, an indictment of any man wearing sandals anywhere but at a beach or pool and, depending on toe nail control, possibly not even then.

• Staying with the feet topic, when gentlemen you do act egregiously enough to wear sandals on a plane that does not give you the right to in any way remove your sandals to let your feet “breath“. Nor to rest any part of your bare, smelly, gnarly toed feet on the arm rest of the passenger in front of you (Mr. disgusting sonavafabitch in 12A).

• The above also is directed at Mr. No Socks Loafer wearer. Once uncovered, your feet are equally repugnant even though you had sense enough to wear a normal shoe

• An individual bag of cashews does not cost $3.00 anywhere but at 33,000 feet altitude. This asinine pricing is not to cover the rising cost of fuel (which is very inexpensive in Iowa, by the way) nor is it to cover the crazy high union employee wages. It IS so that the airlines can make a $2.75 profit. You and your cashews can blow it out your fuselage.

• And stop bitching about my portable electronic devices. If a laptop, a cell phone or an i-pod can bring down your plane, then you’ve built a crappy plane. Start again cause I’ve got work to do and you’re keeping me from it.

• I’ve been flying commercially since I was about 7 years old and flying used to be special. My parents would put us in jacket and tie. No one looked like they just rolled outta bed. While not advocating formality when flying today, can we at least create a rule about showering? Please?!

Happy trails!

Tags: commentary, rants // 2 Comments »

I’ve always felt two of the toughest jobs in all of broadcasting were that of a news reporter/anchor and a play-by-play announcer/sportscaster.

While anchors and reports have their slow news days when they can phone it in, they always have to be prepared to report credible, accurately and succinctly on a breaking story as it happens. As soon as they “say it” the audience hears it. That’s pressure!

Play-by-play announcers are like news reporters on speed. They have to follow the action right in front of everyone and be immediately insightful in their analysis before the next play begins. And fans are never shy about their opinions.

One of the finest examples I ever witnessed of a news anchor/sports reporter was during the 1989 World Series and the earthquake that took place there. Al Michaels, who spent three years in San Francisco as an announcer for the San Francisco Giants, was nominated for an Emmy Award for news broadcasting after giving an eyewitness account of the aftermath of the earthquake at Candlestick Park. I think he should have won.

But as a pure sportscaster, someone who turned play-by-play into an art form, I don’t know if I like anybody as much as Vin Scully. I think he’s been the voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers since baseball was created and he’s awesome at it.

This week, the Dodger’s play their arch rivals the San Francisco Giants…note worthy because it may be the location where Barry Bonds ties and or breaks Hank Aaron’s all time home run record.

The controversy regarding Bonds aside, for the purposes of this blog, Scully’s opportunity to possibly call the swing that ties or breaks the record is uniquely important because it was Scully who broadcast the homerun call when Aaron broke the record 33 years ago.

Kudos to the New York Times’ reporter Lee Jenkins for this timely and interesting article about Vin Scully

Tags: blogs, commentary, narrations, radio, tv, voiceover // 2 Comments »

I’ve often thought that if employees at a company replaced their own name with the name of the company where they currently worked, the employee would treat customers in a totally different way (more better even ;). I think that’s especially important in the increasing virtual business world we all work within, where we buy things from telephone operators, not from stores.

The following story I’ll share now took place today. It involved me and Sage, a software provider who makes the contact management software ACT!

This story is for exposition purposes only, offering my first hand account as a long time ACT! customer (including many upgraded versions and even securing corporate licenses for some of my marketing clients). It’s not written in anger or with a desire for vindication but it’s certainly meant as an example of how easy it is to sabotage a customer relationship if it’s not “your” name on the door.

I have a Treo 650 phone on which I often run my business (voiceover is a very mobile profession…always has been). When I bought the phone, I made a separate decision to also upgrade my contact management system so I bought ACT! 2006.

The purchase of ACT! 2006 was a disappointment in that to get questions about the software answered after 14 days, I’d have to buy a service agreement. I did because it is not easy software to use even having used past versions. After I got my some of my initial questions answered, I never used that service again. I wanted to manage my business, not my software. Oh well, live and learn, right?

At the time of the ACT! 2006 purchase I did not buy the ACT for Palm OS (might not have even been available at the time, come to think about it) which is software that would much of the functionality look and feel of the ACT! 2006 to be integrated on to my Treo 650. As you can imagine, that would be a great convenience.

When I had a Palm Pilot (another hand held contact management device, sans phone and internet like the Treo 650 has now) I had used a similar ACT for Palm software and I liked it very much. So I decided today that I was ready to buy the new ACT for Palm OS.

There was a catch though. My Treo 650 is almost three years old and I may be upgrading that phone to a Treo 700 or 750. I needed to make sure this version of ACT for Palm OS software would work in a newer Treo phones…I did not want to buy another version of ACT for Palm OS software if I did buy a new phone.

Buying Experience #1
So with that in mind, I called ACT! The first sales representative to whom I explained all this advised me of two things very clearly:

1. The current version of ACT for Palm OS would work on my current phone and the newer Treo versions
2. I had already purchased ACT for Palm OS.

Number two was quite a surprise to me I told her and she sent me over to customer service so that I could find out where my ACT for Palm OS software went…it certainly didn’t arrive in my mail.

Buying Experience #2
Customer service said she didn’t know what the other operator was talking about as no such purchase appeared on my record. She sent me back to sales so that I could buy ACT! for Palm OS software. The wait on hold was longer than with the first call to the sales department but eventually I had…

Buying Experience #3
This sales representative confirmed that:

1. I hadn’t purchased ACT! for Palm OS software
2. This current version of ACT! for Palm OS software would NOT work in the newer versions of the Treo phones

He further added that ACT! would be coming out with an upgraded version of the ACT! for Palm OS software that WOULD work in the newer Treo phones in the next four months.

I appreciated that update and asked if I did purchase the ACT! for Palm OS software today, would I be given the free upgrade to the version for newer Treos since I didn’t want to spend twice for basically the same software with minor tweaks for the newer Treos. He said he understood that logic and needed to check on that with “a manager”.

He came back on the line having spoken to his manager to advise me that he really wasn’t sure when the newer version would come out, he said he had only heard that “four month” time frame and nothing official had come out from ACT! so no, I would not be getting the free upgrade.

Big yellow flag for me!

Not having had such a great experience to this point on this call and because my original ACT! 2006 software purchase (and service agreement fiasco) came flooding back to me, I did not buy.

I don’t know if I should ever buy from them. I was a disciple of their software for years…Goldmine or Outlook or anything else couldn’t match ACT! Now I don’t think I could in good conscience direct someone to ACT! based on my most recent experiences.

I’ll leave it to you to tell me whether I am wise to avoid this company in the future, if I am over reacting or if this is just the way business is headed and I am expect too much regarding good service anymore. Right now, I think ACT! blew it with me.

Tags: commentary, marketing, technology // 4 Comments »

I’m not sure how this all works….whether it’s God, the cosmos, Guardian Angels or if someone is following me around with a microphone. But it seems as soon as a topic of interest comes up in my life or I think I have an understanding of something, some how I gain new insight or information from a totally unconnected source. It’s weird; here’s what happened.

This weekend my wife (or as David Feherty refers to his wife in his columns “She Who Must Be Obeyed”) and I got to talking about Etch-A-Sketches. The knobby drawing device many of us had as kids (I think we were talking about toy options for our child). She mentioned what a useless toy that was because she could never draw anything worthwhile on it. I wholeheartedly agreed as I couldn’t draw much on it either. So we agreed we’d never buy one of those useless Etch-A-Sketches.

(Stand by for a lesson in social media. Count the connections and also see how new connections are made. It’s a fun game with no height requirement )

Fast forward to today’s early morning review of the Google Reader and I pop in on Mitch Joel’s blog on Podcamp Singapore (that guy does all the cool stuff). In Mitch’s article, he referenced a blog by Andy Nulman entitled POW! Right Between the Eyes (which is as great a title for a blog as I have come across…content to match.) On Andy’s blog he writes about an Etch-A-Sketch artist who really knows how to turn those knobs.

OK, so “She Who Must Be Obeyed” and I were not so much wrong, it turns out, just both terribly Etch-A-Sketch challenged. The talented artists who create on their red canvas are really terrific! We’re still going to hold off on getting the Etch-A-Sketch because while she has proven to be a great artist in the Crayola world, the baby is clearly at a genetic disadvantage on the Etch-A-Sketch front.

Tags: blogs, commentary, media, silliness // 2 Comments »

I was doing some internet searches (and of course by now I’ve forgotten what I was searching for) but I saw a link to David Letterman’s web site. I’ve been a huge Letterman fan since I first saw him on Late Night With David Letterman. I remember the very first skit with him in it that hooked me. It was David Letterman teaching Jerry Garcia how to play “Proud Mary” on the guitar (sorry, I couldn’t find a clip).

So I rarely pass up a chance to visit Dave’s site since I don’t have the stamina to stay up late anymore. Well in a clip that I think may be airing tonight because I hadn’t seen any news on it earlier today, Drew Carey announces that he is to be the new host of The Price Is Right, replacing Bob Barker who’d been hosting the show since 1776 (“Ben Franklin! Come on Down!”)

This clip is great for a number of reasons in my opinion. The story seems very real and when the band strikes up TPIR theme song, Drew seems honestly thrilled and I share that happiness with him (although I won’t be enjoying his likely enormous paycheck).

I don’t know who I thought should be the host. OK, I really didn’t care except for one nominee I’d heard of (thank goodness THAT didn’t happen). But now I’m very happy for Drew Carey. Cleveland rocks!

Tags: commentary, media, tv, voice actors // Comments Off on for drew…the price is right