Look who’s rooting for Hillary: more follow-up

Rush, you fat, lying, felonious, drug-abusing sack of…well, whatever: your “Operation Chaos” fell flat.

Your suggestion to your Dittoheads that they vote for Hillary just to prolong the Democratic party’s internecine fight is disrespectful and truly un-American.  Your flippant blowhardness is an insult to past and present American military, both alive and dead.  It doesn’t matter that your plot couldn’t stand up even if you slipped it the Viagra you purchased under your doctor’s name (did you ever explain why you flew to the Dominican Republic with a suitcase of of Vitamin V?  It reduces jet lag in hamsters, so it will work just fine for for a weasel like you); you’ve shown your disdain for the privilege and responsibility of casting a thoughtful vote.  Is there no limit to your sense of self-importance?

Millions of people have died protecting America and our liberties, including all citizens’ right to vote.  Voting with a secret ballot is one of our key freedoms (although you’ll notice there’s a concerted effort by the labor union lobby to banish the secret ballot with the introduction of “card check” union authorization: see http://www.unionfacts.com/articles/cardCheck.cfm for details.  And you thought I was a tree-hugger?  Hah!)

I suppose we shouldn’t expect any more from this clown.  Remember when Rush mocked Michael J. Fox on-air, by all reports one of the nicest people in Hollywood, for exaggerating his Parkinson’s Disease symptoms?  Even though Rush apologized for his ad hominem attack, he salted the wound by linking Fox’s non-partisan support of stem cell research as a move calling for a “Republican defeat”.  What’s next in the Limbaugh Book of Medicine-painless dentristy?  Bloodletting?

One of the key principles in effective negotiations is focusing on the facts of the problem and not the parties.  It appears Rush Limbaugh never let a fact get in his way, unlike Bill O’Reilly, who could care less about truth in the first place.  Apparently, neither is smart enough to argue the conservative position on its merits.

We deserve better.

What’s in a name? Microsoft, learn from IBM!

“Google” is a takeoff on “googol”, the noun representing the number 10ˆ(100) (ten to the hundreth power).  Just think of it as “1″ followed by 100 zeros and you’ll be close enough.  The takeaway is that a catchy name, like “Google”, has a huge consumer value because it can slip into our lexicon and become a generic noun and/or verb.  Need to copy a document?  You xerox it…but don’t say that at Xerox, ’cause they’ll be pissed.  Johnson & Johnson’s “Band-Aid” and Kimberly-Clark’s “Kleenex” are other common product names that have become part of our language, much to the dismay of IP lawyers everywhere.

“Live Search”…it’s a slick product and Microsoft has some Big Brains working on it (that would be a fun team to work on).  But the name sucks-MSFT needs to come up with a catchy name.  I’m surprised it’s not called “SearchPoint” (think PowerPoint and SharePoint) but even that isn’t a great name.

Microsoft could take a lesson-just one-from IBM.  Those of us in the midrange community have surgically-implanted neck braces so we can withstand IBM’s whiplash-inducing and totally pointless name changes to The Platform Formerly Known As The AS/400.  Even Sean Combs look to IBM for guidance every time he changes his handle!  Microsoft needs to come up with a catchy new name for the Live Search engine, a name that’s two (or fewer) syllables, capable of being a verb, and with an available URL.  No, not Yahoo!, thanks, but Mine.com appears to be available for a price (domain-squatting: what a business model!).  Oh, wait-the antitrust lawyers in Redmond will put the kibosh on this one for sure.

Microsoft does a fine job of naming initiatives and prerelease products (e.g., Longhorn, Orcas).  Speaking of names: “Bob”…well, that was a great concept but the hardware wasn’t up to it.  It’s time to for some serious consumer marketing and to come up with a people-friendly name for Live Search.

Microsoft has a huge investment in the “Live” brand and Live Search is an integral component.  I’m not suggesting diluting the brand; I am suggesting the search engine itself needs to have a friendly name that could be the center of an effective advertising campaign.

When I’m sitting in some seminar and somebody mentions “googling” something, I (just to be contrary and to suck up to the Microsofties) say, “Oh, you mean Live Search it?”  The MSFT gang murmurs their gratitude but “Live Search it” is a mouthful: it doesn’t flow.

There’s one other little thing.  You don’t have to check, but the kindergarten-colored Google logo is often whimsically stylized to reflect a holiday or an event.  Nerf wars in the halls notwithstanding, I think slight dose of graphic pizazz on search.live.com would help enormously. 

Those of you with bad memories of one (well, several) of my hallucination-inducing web sites (all of which were of garage-band quality) are probably staggering to the medicine cabinet in “Live Search” of anti-laughing-hysterics drugs at the thought of me suggesting a professionally designed web page needs pizazz.  But I’m considering it as a consumer, not as a producer, and my eye would like to be tickled.  Let’s entertain and inform (and advertise) with the New-Name-Not-Selected-Yet Microsoft search engine.

So, let’s come up with a catchy name and let’s advertise the hell out of it; I suggest a parody of the Mac-versus-PC ads with Google as the target.  The buzz would be priceless and the results would pay off throughout Live.com