Picking Off Jaffe's Clients

Roman Mandrick from KsanLab Company in Moscow left an audio comment for Joe Jaffe about how he and I ran into one another in Crayonville a few weekends ago and sat around chatting with me for a bit. Joe played it on Across The Sound #65, and then joked that I was hanging out on his island to try to pick off clients. Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't, but I'd like to note that I've been to Crayonville about half a dozen times now and have never seen Jaffe there. Maybe a virtual receptionist is in order?

Business Idea of the Day

Yesterday, I saw a segment in my hotel room on Headline News about what happens to the junk the TSA confiscates from flyers.  In several northeast airports, the stuff is shipped to a location in PA, where the junk is catalogued and sold to businesses.  That which doesn't sell at a sort of retail outlet is sold on eBay.  States generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales of your nail clippers, scissors, pocketknives, lighters and other stuff deemed inappropriate for carry-on luggage. It made me think of my jaunt out to iMedia and the security checkpoint at Islip MacArthur Airport.  The security was really tight and a lot of folks were losing personal items.  Folks with liquids needed a Ziploc bag or they were forced to abandon the items.

What if someone opened a franchise business with little rolling carts that could set up next to airport security?  The carts could provide a couple services...  First, they could sell Ziploc bags.  They could also offer shipping of personal items via overnight FedEx or something.

I have some friends that have had to surrender items they'd rather not give up, including heirloom pocketknives and such.  I think quite a few of them, if they had an option, would step out of line and ship forbidden items back to their home or to their destination.

At iMedia

Got to the iMedia Summit yesterday, and am now hanging out with industry colleagues, having fun and catching up. AOL sponsored a cocktail reception and dinner last night, which was quite nice. Here's a pic of Jim Meskauskas, Eric Porres, Kevin Ryan, Jason Burnham and Jonathan Adams from last night's festivities. Today is the media director summit, so we're going to lock ourselves in a room and see if we can hack out some of the issues our industry is facing. I'm here until Wednesday.

Video Games Take Advertising, Still Expensive

Years ago, I wrote a piece for The Online Spin about the ad opportunity in video games.  A couple years later, I wrote another column about it, asking why advertisers weren't capitalizing on the opportunity to underwrite the development of console and PC games as prices continued to increase to $50 and $60 for the more popular titles. Recently, Joystiq asked where the bennies are. There's plenty of in-game placement now, but prices are still climbing, especially for new console titles.  WTF?

Perhaps that's a good question for the game developers.  Are they pocketing the ad revenue as profit and not giving customers a break?  Yep.