Get your fresh hot widgets here

Time to make the donuts and pimp the day job. At Watercooler, we recently launched some sweet FanSection trivia widgets that take all of the great content from our sports apps on Facebook and extends it out to the Web. Here's a look at the one for Texas football:


Get Trivia - Find more at Fan Section

There's a full blog post at the FanSection Blog, and you can check out all of the available widgets at the FanSection Widget Gallery. Enjoy.

In-N-Out just gets it

For those of you that don't live on in California or Arizona, or who have never had the pleasure of visiting an In-N-Out Burger while traveling to one of those states, I feel sorry for you. In-N-Out is nothing less than the best fast food restaurant in the US - bar none.

That's the reason I was so happy to see that Business Week included a fantastic profile of the company in the April 20, 2009 edition of the magazine. The profile is an excerpt of the book entitled In-N-Out Burger: A Behind-the-Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain That Breaks All the Rules.

So what's so great about In-N-Out you ask? First, the chain serves quality food. Seriously, In-N-Out is consistently occupies the top spot on the Sandelman & Associates Quick Track awards list for quality fast food. Second, as the book and BW article explains in detail, In-N-Out actually cares about its employees. In a world where fast food restaurants go through employees as if they have an expiration date, In-N-Out treats it's associates as valued members of the company. And that turns out to be a huge competitive advantage for the company.

While Burger King and McDonald's have to train new employees practically every day because of the high turnover (avg of 1 year tenure), the average tenure for an In-N-Out part-time associate is two years. A lot of that is the higher pay ($2 above minimum wage), but don't discount the qualitative affects of being treated like a part of the team. And it works. I've never been in an In-N-Out and received bad service - EVER. Associates are always ready with a smile and actually appear to be happy to be there. When's the last time you could say that about any other fast food restaurant?

And finally, the company's strategy of picking a few things and doing them better than everyone else just works. The menu has maybe 3-5 items on it so it's operations are significantly simplified compared to the 20 foot wide menu at national chains. The simplified menu leads to shorter orders and less waiting. All of these things leads to a quality visitor experience and are big reasons why you'll almost never hear anyone complain about In-N-Out.

Chuck Norris on Twitter...sort of

Just when you thought the Chuck Norris schtick had played itself out, here comes Chuck on Twitter. No, it's obviously not the real Chuck Norris but that's actually a good thing because let's face it, he's just not that interesting. But the fake Chuck Norris cracks me up. I don't know why I never get tired of gems like this one, but I don't and they provide me endless hours of enjoyment.

In the end, the fake Chuck is going to be infinitely more informative and amusing than any of the real celebrity Twitterers. I rarely understand what the hell Shaq is talking about and Ashton Kutcher just annoys the ever-loving hell out of me. I even have trouble stomaching the self-promoting tech celebrities as they display their guru-ness...when not tweeting about all of the conferences and parties they go to of course. Yes I'm jealous. How are these people gurus andn experts when as far as I can tell they don't actually DO anything. So I think I'll stick with with fake celebrities for now.

Thanks to Joel Postman at Socialized for turning me on to the fake Chuck account. He writes a great blog with some keen insight into social media for those interested and can also be followed on Twitter here.

Why I love sports - Reason #137

Commercials like this one from the Boston Bruins:



For those of you that don't know, the Bruins and the Montreal Canadiens HATE each other. And what's more, they're currently matched up in the first round of the 2009 Stanley Cup playoffs. That is going to be a brutal, bloody grudge match. Almost makes me wish I liked hockey more than I do. Don't get me wrong, it's a great sport but since I already put my wife through football and basketball seasons back to back, there's just no room for hockey. Plus, I grew up in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area long before the Stars set up shop, so hockey is just not something I grew up with.

Whatever the case, the Bruins commercial is a great example of how passionate sports fans are, and how much it means when you're playing your rival. As one of my favorite quotes goes: "Knute Rockne wanted nothing but sore losers. Good losers get in the habit of losing." Amen brother.

It's Twitterific

This video from Current probably does the best job that I've seen when it comes to explaining Twitter...if that's possible. Don't get me wrong, I use Twitter as much as the next guy, but I use it very differently than most people. It's a great tool for the following:

• Networking
• Sharing interesting data
• Sharing interesting articles or info
• Broadcasting blog posts and other info
• Asking questions and getting immediate feedback
• Live blogging events and sometimes TV shows
• Customer support
  
• Getting to know your customers

At the other end of the spectrum, Twitter has ushered in a whole new era of TMI. It's amazing some of the things that people share. From the inane to the shocking, the things I read on Twitter never cease to amaze me. So if you're thinking about tweeting any of the following, stop the madness and walk away from the computer.

• Divorce or other break-ups - yes, I've seen this many times
• What you had for lunch - trust me, no one cares
• What cool person you're meeting or just met - if you're just name-dropping, move on
• What your kids are doing - see point #2
• What your dog/cat/whatever pet is doing - ditto the above

You get the point. So if you have something interesting to share and if you want to have some meaningful conversations, you can follow me on Twitter here.

Writing a book is hard...and time consuming

I've been thinking about writing a book for a while and I finally got off my ass and did something this week. No, I haven't actually started on any sort of manuscript, outline, or research, but I did buy a book on how to write a book. Baby steps.

The first step is to write a proposal to send to various publishers to see if my concept has any legs. The proposal on average is 20-30 pages. Uh, how about I just drop a publisher an email and let them know what I'm thinking first. They can then let me know if it's something that even warrants a proposal. That would certainly give me more confidence in spending the many hours it's going to take to get a proposal out the door.

So for those few of you that read this blog, and the even fewer that care about what my book idea is, I'll give you the 30 second version. There are hundreds of books on the market today that help women deal with fertility issues. Some are funny, others are factual, but almost all of them are targeted at women. I would like to tell the story from a male perspective. Having dealt with the issue for the last 4+ years, I think I have some experiences to share that can educate an entertain. If there's one thing Angela and I have learned over that period of time is that you have to laugh to keep from crying.

So I'm going to give this a shot. My goal is to have the proposal ready to go by the end of May. I'll probably post some excerpts, thoughts and ideas here from time to time. If anyone's reading, feel free to comment and provide feedback.

Relax people, Kal Penn is not dead

Everyone can relax now - Kal Penn, aka Kumar from Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle fame, is not dead. The idiocy of the Joe American never ceases to amaze me and this story is no different. Because Penn's character on the TV show House died on the show, many fans have been searching for information on Penn's own death.

They didn't find anything of course because as I just mentioned, Penn is alive and well. But enough people searched on various "kal penn death" terms that they landed on Google Trends earlier today. Seriously?!

I'm assuming they'll be happy to learn that Mr. Penn is not only still kicking in general, but he'll soon be kicking it in some new digs as the White House. That's right, Mr. Penn is going to Washington. He evidently met President Obama on the campaign trail and expressed an interest in working for the administration. So he's taking a giant paycut to work in a glorified public affairs job. Very admirable, but I'm assuming the cult followings of the Harold and Kumar franchise along with his lengthy role on House gave Kal plenty of financial wiggle room to make this kind of a decision.

The Real World is now anything but

As crazy as it sounds, MTV has renewed The Real World for four more seasons. The announcement came as The Real World: Brooklyn aired it's final episode recently. The 17-year old docudrama is the gift that keeps on giving for MTV - which has abandoned anything to do with music at this point.

But evidently The Real World franchise continues to pay the bills which isn't too surprising considering the low production costs (i.e. free labor). I guess you could say "talent" but wouldn't that be a misnomer? In fact, the most notable costs these days are probably alcohol, food, ER visits, alcohol, and hot-tub cleanup, not necessarily in that order.

The next locale for the show is Cancun and I believe is already being shot. That type of locale pretty much abandons all of original intentions of the show. Now it's nothing but beautiful, and slightly unstable, people getting hammered while wearing as little clothing as possible. That's not all bad I guess, but it's a bastardized version of the original show, The Real World: New York which first aired in 1993 before reality TV was even a genre.

I hate to say it, but my college roommates and I couldn't get enough of the show and the marathons MTV would air. It made for good TV, not only because of the newness of the format, but also because of the vast differences in the people invited to take part: the female rapper, the southern balet dancer, the angry black writer, the aspiring male model, the gay actor, etc, etc. Getting an inside look into how these people would get along was riveting. Now it's just a contest in exhibitionism and attention-getting as the entire cast appears to be auditioning for the next installation of The Real World/Road Rules Challenge or whatever drivel MTV is trying to sell it's young audience. I stopped paying attention after the London show and now only get occasional clips while watching The Soup. Now I just feel more like a rubber-necker trying to get a good look at an car accident.

To get back to it's original intent, I would love to see MTV really challenge itself by choose a grittier locale and seeing how cast members survive on nothing but a living wage. So to put the "real" back in The Real World, here's my top 5 wish list for upcoming seasons:

1. Flint, MI - it doesn't get any more real these days than the crappy MI economy
   
2. Newark, NJ - let's see how much partying is done in the PJs
   
3. Mexico City, Mexico - to hell with Cancun, let's put them in the real Mexico
   
4. Bangalore, India - throw them in a call center and let them deal with pissed off customers all day...now that's keeping it real
5. Odessa, TX - enough with the great cities and beach locales, time to visit a place where you can stand on a milk crate and see for miles

So come on MTV, step up and take a chance.