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Let's Get Virtual

At one time or another, we all thought about what it would be like to be someone else. This vicarious fantasizing is based on the absolute certainty that Tony Romo's life is more interesting than yours.

This daydream of winning an NFL game with an 80-yard pass with 22-seconds left to play or dating Hollywood starlets who may or may not know how to spell N-F-L is perfectly understandable. However, this whole fantasy thing has gotten a lot more organized.

We're talking virtual worlds where we can experience the thrill of victory and the agony of rejection without leaving the safe confines of our computer terminal. And it's moved way past the Dungeons and Dragon crowd when Second Life has tens of millions of consumers traveling on "islands" paid for by Coca-Cola and IBM.

This One's a Yawner

Some of the functions of the human body are enigmas wrapped in conundrums. For example, what causes that mind-numbing pain of brain freeze when you eat ice cream too fast? What causes hiccups? Why do we yawn...especially if we see someone else yawn?

These are weighty subjects and you deserve some answers. Pronto!

I don't care how sophisticated you might think you are, at some point in time, you yawn. It might be behind closed doors, or you might try and stifle it by keeping your mouth closed while you cheeks strain to let that baby out, but you yawn. We all do.

Hula Hoopla and More!

Some of the best times I have ever had occurred when I was involved in the development of new products for kids. There's nothing more fun than conducting some primary "research," (usually sitting on the floor) with several 5 or 6 year olds and getting their thoughts on what would be fun to play with. The only thing that tops this is actually making the thing that they suggested; showing it to some other kids then having them dig it.

Some of the products that I worked on were winners but there were lots of duds that seemed like winners at the time that we foolishly decided to make them. It's very difficult to predict what a kid will enjoy playing with. If you're a kid reading this, you know what I mean. You guys are much tougher than adults. Adults are fairly logical, sensible, mature and boring. And kids...well...kids are diabolically brilliant. And they do not suffer fools well.

There was one team of toy and game developers that for some reason always seemed to know what millions of kids would pester Mom and Dad to buy. This duo was Richard Knerr and Arthur Melin and they were the most successful toy inventors in history. They started a little company, maybe you've heard of it...called Wham-O!

2007 Vid Biz Boffo !!!

It's not unusual for Variety magazine to get all hyperventilated about some news flash in the entertainment business. After all, the movie and TV industries have all of the subtlety of Lindsey Lohan behind the wheel. However, the screaming headlines on January 17th were low-key compared to their impact on Tinseltown.

"The Video Game Biz Has an Epic 2007...Revenues up 43% to nearly $18 Billion."

Holy Halo 3! Those are some big numbers!