Fresh Vision Media LLC

Yahoo to Microsoft… pound sand!

Eric Odom — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 14:32:14 +0000

Yesterday I found myself chatting with a former Microsoft programmer while here in Nashville and it was quite an eye opening discussion. I won’t drop a name because, well, because he only recently departed Microsoft. For obvious reasons this particular individual is not in position to be publicly speaking out against the company structure or internal business issues.

Our discussion was two fold… 1) I wanted to know his thoughts on the possible Microsoft purchase of Yahoo. 2) I wanted an insider opinion on Microsoft and its constant shortcomings.

1)It’s being reported in the Wall Street Journal that Yahoo has replied to the Microsoft offer saying it “substantially undervalues” the company. This is interesting to me because I don’t see a lot of companies lining up to make offers for Yahoo. And if Yahoo does end up selling at the current offer price, doesn’t that say to investors that Yahoo is indeed undervalued?

When I asked the former Microsft employee what he first thought when he heard of the offer, he said “I’m still kicking myself for not immediately buying Yahoo stock.” According to him, Microsoft is very serious about the deal and in his opinion Microsoft will eventually cut a deal for the company.

2)I brought up the success of open source, specifically Linux, Open Office, Firefox, Gimp, and other software that I use, and asked how Microsoft planned to address it. “Will Microsoft continue marketing overpriced products that already exist in the open source realm?”

I found his answer somewhat astounding. According to him, Microsoft has no interest in competing with open source for the individual consumer. Apparently, Microsoft is planning on shifting a LOT of its focus towards small business.

This to me is absurd. If Google and Open Office are both offering office suite products for free, why on earth would a small business pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars to be locked in to the Microsoft vortex? It makes no sense to me.

Then the discussion of innovation came up. Specifically, “why is Microsoft stuff in ‘me too” mode?” For example, every time Firefox comes out with a new feature… IE tries to follow along. When Apple cranks out a state of the art, innovative media device, guess who tries to follow along? I mean, am I the only one who remembers the Zune?

So, in the end I’m glad Yahoo has replied to Microsoft they they have. And I hope with everything in me they stick to their guns. While I believe Google needs strong competition and no one is currently providing it, a company like Microsoft would absolutely ruin Yahoo.

This is all my opinion of course…

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Lot’s of travel lately

Eric Odom — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 14:27:25 +0000

Chicago to Washington DC, back to Chicago, then to Nashville, back to Chicago, then off to Lansing Michigan.

This how my itinerary reads from February 6th through February17th.

I’m only 28 years old, but this kind of roaming around isn’t as easy as it was back when I was circling the globe. I remember flying from Auckland New Zealand to Fiji, then to Seoul Korea with a final destination of Reno, NV (stopping in San Francisco), all within 55 hours.

Now I travel for a week straight and I feel like I’m coming down off of a two month caffeine binge.

It sucks when you start feeling old…

Random Posts

CPAC coverage over at ConservaBlogs.com

Eric Odom — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 22:06:21 +0000

I was planning on posting here at FVM for CPAC, but as it turns out finding time to actually post is a bit more difficult that I had originally thought. With this in mind, I’m trying to streamline the blogging efforts and keep it all in one place.

That being said… keep an eye on ConservaBlogs.com for CPAC updates.

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The O’Hare nightmare…

Eric Odom — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 03:45:59 +0000

My previous post pointed out the fact that I was on my way to O’Hare for a flight to DC, and that I assumed I would have issues getting out of the airport in the middle of a near blizzard.

Sure enough… I did.

It all started yesterday when my 2:00 PM United Airlines reservation was bumped to an earlier departure. Then, when I tried to check in online, I found out the second flight had been canceled.

Two down… third time should be a charm right?

Wrong.

This morning when I FINALLY got to the airport (took forever to hail a cab and then sludge through snowy messy Chicago traffic), I was told upon check in that my THIRD flight had been canceled.

I was then booked on UAL flight 610 leaving at 11:00 AM. (more…)

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Off to CPAC…

Eric Odom — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:46:23 +0000

I’m getting ready to make my way to O’Hare International Airport, so the chances are high that I’m about to deal with canceled flights and the O’Hare nightmare that Chicagoans have become all too familiar with. If for some odd reason everything goes well, I’ll be in Washington D.C. tonight.

Tomorrow morning kicks off CPAC 2008, and I’ve been privileged to have a seat on “Bloggers Row”. I’ll be blogging CPAC here at Fresh Vision Media, over at ConservaBlogs.com, as well as the Sam Adams Alliance blog.

CPAC this year should be VERY interesting… especially after our “non-super” Tuesday finished out with McCain in the lead. As I understand it, McCain, Romney, Paul and Huckabee will be speaking, as well as President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

Being on Bloggers Row will give me a superb chance to meet a LOT of people at CPAC, so I’ll do my best to take pictures and post about it as often as possible.

Stay tuned!

CPAC BLOGGERS ROW 2008

Ace O’Spades
Alarming News
Atlas Shrugs
Bluey Blog
Captain’s Quarters
Conservatives with an Attitude!
Fausta’s Blog
FreedomWorks
Gay Patriot
Girl on the Right
HotAir.com
Hugh Hewitt
Human Events
Little Miss Attila
Mary Katherine Ham
Matt Sanchez
Musclehead Revolution
My Man Mitt
Newsbusters
Outside the Beltway
Politico
Reasoned Audacity
Red State
Riehl World View
Right Wing News
Sam Adams Alliance
Save the GOP
The American Mind
The Autonomist
Truth Laid Bear

-Eric Odom

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Flickr users express anger over Microsoft bid for Yahoo

Eric Odom — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 18:13:01 +0000

And so it begins…

A small but vocal minority on Flickr are already staging online protests at the prospect of a Microsoft takeover. Flickr is one of several popular Web 2.0 websites owned by Yahoo that loyal users fear will suffer under Microsoft ownership.

As soon as the news hit the wires that Microsoft is proposing a $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo, Flickr users began posting anti-Microsoft images, satirical “Flickr Live” logos and announcing they will abandon Flickr if it falls into Microsoft hands, fearing such a move would mark the beginning of the end.

In light of this, I’ve decided to post a collection of the rebellious images here. Each image links to the actual image page on Flickr. (more…)

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Arena Magazine powered by Wordpress

Eric Odom — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:35:00 +0000

Without question… the growth of Wordpress is in no way slowing down. In fact, the reach of Wordpress grows leaps and bounds with each new day.

Thanks to the heads up over on the Wordpress Publishers blog, I see that Arena Magazine is now powered by Wordpress.

Arena Magazine, from what I understand, is a fairly well known brand with a decent sized following. It’s encouraging to see a large scale site such as Arena not only embrace Wordpress, but in doing so embrace open source software.

Arena isn’t the first, of course. Just days ago the Wordpress Publishers blog linked to Revista, another online magazine site powered by Wordpress.

I think this is a positive move for both sites, and I look forward to seeing others begin shifting in this direction as well.

As Wordpress advances and becomes much more like a full scale CMS, us users will be able to do a lot more with the software and many more doors will open up.

Good stuff!

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Wordpress Video Tutorials

Eric Odom — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:47:32 +0000

Now that I’ve figured out how to record my actions on screen, I plan on creating a few simple video tutorials for blogging and various other projects I’m involved in.

I probably won’t be able to start these until the second week of February because I’ll be in DC all of next week. But it should be a lot of fun once I get them flowing.

But, in the mean time you can find a plethora of Wordpress video tutorials over at iThemes. Most of the videos are fairly basic, but they’re well done and helpful for anyone just starting to dabble with self hosted Wordpress blogs.

Check back for my own version of these videos, which should start coming in mid-February.

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Couple quick Winter wallpapers…

Eric Odom — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:32:16 +0000

I came across a cool “Wintery” Linux wallpaper today and figured I would post up the full size image… along with a few others while I was at it.

And if you’re an Ubuntu fan… check out my Linux Ubuntu Wallpaper collection (sorry the formatting is messed up on those posts. I changed the theme of the site and it screwed everything up… working on fixing it)

Enjoy!

Click here for full size of the above image (more…)

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One of my first websites… 2004

Eric Odom — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:39:35 +0000

My post about the internet in 1996 got me thinking and prompted me to take a look at my own websites from five years ago. Until now I didn’t realize how long I’ve been doing this. Sure, many have been doing it for a lot longer, but for me five years of being self employed, at least part time, has been quite a run.

My first website went live in late 2003. It was at Backpackerdeals.com, but for some reason Archive.org has nothing previous to February of 2004 and even then the cache seems to be missing.

Anyway, the site was an affiliate site for student travelers. It was a lot of fun, and the site made a few bucks. More importantly, it helped me learn what NOT to do and opened up a lot of doors for my internet marketing career.

My main mistake with Backpackerdeals.com was that I knew nothing about code when I started it so I used an out of the box solution. Which, at the time, was complete crap. After a few months I began to learn a bit about code and felt backed in to a corner with the site builder.

In the summer of 2004 I launched two more student travel websites. Backpackearth.com and Traveljive.com. I’ve since sold both sites, and it looks like the new owner took the content and parked the domains. But the two sites made me quite a bit of money from 2004 until early 2007.

This is Archive’s cache of TravelJive in the summer of 2004.

As you can see… it’s quite laughable. But in those days it was quite popular. On average, any given day in 2005 would result in about 600 unique visits. Backpackearth.com was doing MUCH better!

In 2004 the main source of revenue was Google Adsense. I was getting decent checks every month and it felt worth the effort. In 2005 Google Adsense started paying so low that it was almost insulting, so I yanked Adsense in favor of the new Yahoo Overture network. Overture paid more per click, but was still somewhat lacking.

This is when I entered the text link market. Yes, I was one of those… (more…)