The middle seat’s not so bad, honest
Attention US Airways passengers:
That aisle seat you requested for your flight will cost you a minimum $5 “choice” seating fee beginning May 7. Same goes for a window seat.
The airline’s Choice Seats program will include the upgrade charge for requesting window or aisle seats for the first few rows in coach and will be prorated for length of flights.
A story that I saw Friday said that for long flights the upgrade could be as much as $30.
US Airways/America West serves Will Rogers World Airport with flights to Phoenix and Las Vegas.
Hope you enjoy that middle seat.
Jim Stafford
Business News Reporter
Winter’s last gasp: Frost on the pumpkin
When I went for a stroll through my neighborhood Sunday afternoon I noticed that about every other house had a sheet in the flower bed or on the porch. It was obvious my neighbors took the weatherman at his word and were prepared for a hard freeze overnight.
I’m not sure what tender plants they were trying to protect, but a bedsheet seemed to be the cover of choice.
So, how cold did it get and for how long?
I got the answer this morning in an e-mail from Mark Hodges, executive director of the Oklahoma Wheat Commission. Hodges forwarded a map from the Oklahoma Mesonet that showed the number of hours below freezing overnight and the lowest temperature at dozens of reporting stations across the state.
According to this map, it appeared that Oklahoma City was below freezing for one hour with a low temp of 30 degrees over night. Not sure we really needed all those blankets in the flower bed after all.
But some other reporting stations showed hours of below freezing temperatures over night. For instance, in northeastern Oklahoma somewhere close to Tahlequah, the temp was below freezing for 10 hours overnight with a low of 25.
Brrr!
Business News Reporter
Color me sad
Iconic American business Crayola is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 64-color Crayon box (with built-in sharpener) — which is great. I love me some Crayons, which by the way, were introduced during an episode of Captain Kangaroo.
What’s not so great is how they’re noting the occasion.
The company is replacing some crayon color names with new names, after consulting with thousands of kids. Sounds great, but we’re way outside the lines with these new names, which give no indication of what color they represent. Here’s a little quiz for you. See if you can match the new names on the left with the designation they replace, on the right. Scroll down for the answers.
New Name Old Name
Giving Tree Screamin’ Green
Super Happy Laser Lemon
Fun in the Sun Wild Tangerine
Bear Hug Beaver
Happy Ever After Turquoise Blue
Famous Hot Magenta
Best Friends Orchid
Awesome Watermelon
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To make it easy to check your answers, each name is already matched with its predecessor. For instance, Giving Tree replaces Screamin’ Green and Super Happy replaces Laser Lemon.
Finally, Crayola reports that the most popular color in the entire rainbow of 64 is (drumroll, please) blue. Case closed.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Coming Soon to Your Cell Phone: Government Text Alerts
Let me ask you a question: Do you want to receive alerts and warnings from the federal government through your cell phone?
Wireless telephones are so pervasive in our society that the government has decided its time to put them to use as a way to communicate with people during times of emergency.
The Federal Communications Commission took the first steps Wednesday that ultimately will result in alerts, warnings and critical information transmitted to cell phone users by the nation’s wireless carriers.
The FCC is establishing what it calls the Commercial Mobile Alert System to provide a way for wireless carriers to transmit warnings and alerts from the government.
Wireless carriers that choose to participate in the system will transmit text-based alerts to their subscribers.
So, what will we get from our government-issued text warnings? Here is what the FCC outlined Wednesday:
Presidential Alerts — national emergency-related alerts delivered to the American public that would preempt any other pending alerts;
Imminent Threat Alerts — alerts with information on emergencies that may pose an imminent risk to people’s lives or well-being; and
Child Abduction Emergency/AMBER Alerts — alerts related to missing or endangered children due to an abduction or runaway situation.
I already receive business alerts text messages from the Wall Street Journal and up-to-the minute Texas Rangers baseball news on my cell phone.
So, the prospect of receiving warnings of danger or emergency situations via text message seems like the next logical step in making use of the technology.
Why don’t they add weather-related text alerts to the wireless network and target them by area code and prefix. That would narrow it down to pretty much to the users home territory.
Would that render obsolete the weather emergency radios such as the one I bought for $25 last weekend?
Jim Stafford
Business News Reporter
Trading faces
A longtime commodities trader demonstrates hand signals used at New York Mercantile Exchange in a flash-driven article from the New York Times. Click the “next” button near the top left to see more gestures, including the classic “hold-your-nose” for trading gasoline and “wipe-your-brow” for heating oil.
NYMEX natural gas traders use gestures to buy and sell.
I was fortunate enough to get a tour of the NYMEX exchange in 2006. The expansive gestures, shouting and general chaos were most concentrated around the crude oil and gasoline trading pits. Meanwhile, a mere handful of platinum traders sat quietly in their nearly vacant trading pit.
I was most impressed by the card-flipping skills of the traders, who write their trades on pieces of card stock that are flipped up to 20 feet to a desk in the center of the pit. There the cards are gathered by someone wearing goggles to protect their eyes from the flying paper and time-stamped. Our tour guide told us that cards that miss the desk result in trades posting late on the massive electronic displays suspended over the trading floor. Traders who miss the mark too often are required to attend card-flipping class.
The open outcry method that has been employed at NYMEX for 150 years may not be the most efficient trading method, but it sure feels like honest capitalism.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Construction Update: Ag Testing Lab
The state Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry building along Lincoln Blvd. is probably attracting a lot of attention these days with the massive appendage that appears to be growing out of its front entrance.
This is a view of the Ag Department’s new $11.3 million testing laboratory that is scheduled to be completed in December. I stopped by this morning and shot a couple of pictures of the new 37,593 square foot structure.
The Ag Department operates its current testing laboratory within its headquarters building, which has limited the types of animal diseases for which its scientists can test, spokesman Jack Carson said. The new lab will greatly expand the menu of testing services the laboratory can provide, he said.
Below is an artist’s conception of how the lab will appear when it is finished.
Jim Stafford
Business News Reporter
Disconnected links
How are your stock-picking skills? What if you don’t know the name of the stock? Here’s a site that lets you decide whether to buy, sell or skip a stock based solely on a chart. See how you can do with a hypothetic $100,000 to invest. I found it to be a bit addictive.
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Microsoft vs. Yahoo! Round 1
If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo! board. The substantial premium reflected in our initial proposal anticipated a friendly transaction with you. If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, that action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal.
We regret to say that your letter mischaracterizes the nature of our discussions with you. We have had constructive conversations together regarding a variety of topics, including integration and regulatory issues. Your comment that we have refused to enter into negotiations to conclude an agreement are particularly curious given we have already rejected your initial proposal, nominally $31 per share at the time, for substantially undervaluing Yahoo! and your suggestions in your letter and the media that you are considering lowering the value of your proposal. Moreover, Steve, you personally attended two of these meetings and could have advanced discussions in any way you saw fit.
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Irony: Mortgage Bankers Association property purchase slammed by housing crisis
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This advertisement placed on billboards in Mexico by Absolut Vodka has upset some Americans, as noted in an LA Times blog.
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Here’s an amusing work-related video produced by an advertising agency. (via)
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South Carolina consumers show up in force for first day of Sunday liquor sales. Wonder how that would play here.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
No (phone) ties that bind
Americans are gradually hanging up their wireline phones for the last time, according to a Harris Interactive survey released last week.
The Harris survey revealed that one in seven (14 percent) U.S. adults now use only cell phones for their telecommunications and that wireless technology is becoming increasingly popular with older Americans. Half of the population that claims to use a cell phone only is age 30 and older, according to the Harris poll.
Here’s how it breaks down from a nationwide survey that Harris conducted between October 2007 and January 2008:
- * Almost nine in 10 adults (89 percent) now carry a cell phone. That’s up from 77 percent in the previous year.
- * Almost eight in 10 adults (79 percent) have a landline telephone, down slightly from 81 percent in 2006.
- * Almost half (49 percent) of adults who use cell phones only is in the 18-29 age group. That’s down from 55 percent of the overall cell phone only group a year ago.
In its report, Harris Interactive said that the declining percentage of young adults who are using only cell phones does not mean that fewer young people are using only cell phones. In fact, 32 percent of all adults age 18 to 29 claim to use cell phones only, up from 26 percent a year ago. The percentage share declined because more older adults are cutting the wires and going totally wireless, Harris reported.
So, with 14 percent of U.S. adults overall who rely only on cell phones, what are the implications? Here are some of the conclusions reached by Harris Interactive:
The rapid adoption rates we are seeing here will likely reshape the entire communications landscape within the next decade. Second, the fact that so many 18 to 29 years are only using cell phones and the Internet has important implications for companies and other organizations that are trying to communicate with this important segment of the population..
Click here to see the entire Harris survey
Jim Stafford
Business News Reporter
Disconnected links
Sonic claims 186,000 drink combinations, but it’s actually a lot more, according to the Wall Street Journal’s “Numbers Guy”. It depends on how you figure it.
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McAfee’s Top 10 spam subject lines received from customers within the last 24 hours. “Hi” is the most subtle of the bunch.
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Sky-high oil prices have revived an old scam.
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Five reasons why the customer is not always right. Sometimes it’s better to fire a customer than fail to support a good employee.
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You may already have seen this spooky demonstration of a virtual person.
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Adobe has launched a free online photo-editing site in beta. It includes 2gb of storage.
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Speaking of beta Web sites, I have 10 invitations to the launch of Evernote, a handy online place to store all types of media. Drop me an e-mail if you’d like to try it out.
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Only on the Internet could you have a discussion as wide-ranging, entertaining and occasionally profane as this one about state desserts. The original post claims that Oklahoma’s state dessert is bizcochito (which isn’t true).
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“Jeopardy” genius Ken Jennings interviews Carlo Panno, a former writer for the game show, who reveals some fascinating behind-the-scenes details of the secretive hit. Here’s Panno’s favorite Jeopardy answer:
I set out to write a non-controversial South Africa category, and a tourist guidebook told me that men’s restrooms were marked “HERE.” I found that amusing, and wrote the clue: OF GO IN OR GO ELSEWHERE, WHAT TO DO IF YOU SEE A RESTROOM MARKED “HERE”
When it played, the first contestant, a woman, said “What is go in?” Nope. Anybody else?
The second contestant, a man, grinned and said “What is go elsewhere?” The grin faded pretty fast when Alex called him wrong.
The third contestant didn’t want any part of it. There were two choices on the board, and they have both been called wrong. No thank you.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Billionaire for Barrack
Barrack Obama is feeling a little heat related to campaign donations delivered by Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser. Obama, who produced a recent television ad touting his policy of not accepting oil company money, has received thousands of dollars “bundled” by Kaiser, head of Tulsa’s Kaiser-Francis Oil, and at least one other independent oilman.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign complained that Obama’s commercial was inaccurate. “It’s unfortunate that Senator Obama is using false advertising to explain why he can be trusted to do something about energy prices,” Clinton Campaign Spokesman Phil Singer said.
The Associated Press expands on the MSNBC report in a “Fact Check” article.
THE FACTS: True enough, Obama does not take money from oil companies. No candidate does. It is illegal for corporations to give money to politicians. Corporations, however, do have political action committees that collect voluntary donations from employees and then donate them to candidates. Obama doesn’t take money from PACs. He also doesn’t take money from lobbyists.
But he does accept money from executives and other employees of oil companies and two of his fundraisers are oil company executives.
Kaiser, also chairman of BOK Financial Corp., parent of Bank of Oklahoma, is Oklahoma’s richest resident with an estimated worth of $11 billion.
I wrote a story last year quoting Kaiser at a quarterly BOK meeting discussing some political matters. Kaiser said he publicly opposed the war in Iraq prior to the action being launched. He also said the best evidence is that global warming is caused by human activity and “we’ve got to do something.”
Much of the Harvard-educated Tulsa resident’s wealth is in a charitable trust to be distributed to various philanthropic efforts, particularly early childhood development.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
