Sharing Your Love for Animals, One Bite at a Time

If you are looking at the picture above and thinking to yourself, "what does a box of cereal have to do with software," then you might need to spend more time looking at life the way George Carlin did. Carlin, who passed away yesterday, built a career of pointing out the amusing side of stupidity and the ironies of life in our times. I imagine that the box of cereal pictured above would have made an all-too-easy target for his barbed wit. Wish you were still here to toss out one last rant, George.

While walking through the grocery store yesterday I came across a box of this product. Made by Kellogg's, and promoted by / cross-marketed with the cable TV station Animal Planet, "Wild Animal Crunch" comes with a variety of covers. I saw ones picturing sea lions (not seals because of the presence of external ear flaps) as well as polar bears but apparently there also ones featuring meerkats and panda bears.

What I found fascinating about this was the combination of both the name of the product as well as the picture shown. I'll allow that the sarcastic smart aleck demographic probably isn't one that Kellogg's was targeting for this product, but nevertheless, I can't be the first consumer to see this and think that this might be a subject of future marketing classes on how not to market your product, much some of the urban legends surrounding the sale of Gerber baby food in locations in Africa.

Keeping this in mind, I read the box and found it increasingly hilarious to read things such as, "Naturally and artificially flavored and vanilla-chocolate whole grain cereal" (what, wild animals need to be sweetened to be doused in milk and eaten with a spoon?), "A good source of fiber" (presumably because they didn't remove any cute, fuzzy hair prior to processing), and my personal favorite, "Share your love for animals" (by eating them, evidently). I have to think that somewhere the folks who came up with the "People Eating Tasty Animals" take on the acronym PETA are licking their chops at the prospect of following through on this last exhortation by passing the box around the breakfast table.

I'm also curious about how Kellogg's chose the 4 animals that grace the cover of its boxes - apparently they feel that their target market finds the idea of eating something with cute, fuzzy animals appealing. At first blush, it would seem that those who would be most likely to respond to this marketing would be:

1. Meerkats - Animal Planet show hosts and cameramen tired of just idly sitting back while "nature takes its course"
   
2. Panda bears - Vegetarians. Panda eat an exclusive diet of bamboo, after all.
3. Polar bears - Oil company executives.
4. Sea lions - Killer whales (bit of a niche market, but Kellogg's should have this one cornered with this master-stroke of product and positioning)
   

I gave it some thought and came up with some other wild animals that might help them expand their market segments a bit:

1. Bald eagles - Eat this cereal if you are patriotic. Don't and you're a terrorist.
2. Tapeworms - "The more you eat, the less you weigh." Offers the possibility of some cross-promotional opportunities with GNC and CBS's Survivor TV show.
   
3. Sea sponges - Yes, sponges are animals. The biologists out there will be all over this one for the geek quotient alone.
   
4. Dung beetles - Anyone willing to eat a cereal with one of these cuddly guys on the front would eat pencil shavings, which brings me to my final comment...
   

Regarding the taste of Wild Animal Crunch - Kellogg's should look into some better tasting animals. The sea lion variety was a bit like a bad cup of cafeteria coffee - not enough flavor as I ate it but plenty of sweetish residue left in my mouth that I kept tasting for the next half hour even after vigorous toothbrushing. The poor flavor yet distinctive texture conjured up all sort of unpleasant thoughts about what part of the sea lion lent itself to staying crunchy in soy milk. Perhaps the Panda bear will provide redemption for Kellogg's self-anointed role as wild animal breakfast gourmet. I'm practically vegetarian anyway.

SOA What I'm Saying Is, Data Access Matters

You may be wondering what the picture at right has to do with the subject of this blog entry. The answer: nothing. It's just a humorous photo that made me smile this morning. I mean, how often do you see kids these days pantomiming Snidely Whiplash?

Anyway, on to the real reason for this entry: shameless self-promotion. My article, Solving Data Access Problems in SOA Environments, has been published by ITarchitect, a UK-based online publication. It has also been published in print in ITarchitect's, sister publication, VSJ. The article covers much of the same ground as the presentation that I gave at the MySQL 2008 Conference & Expo (the one that I blogged about last month). Basically, if you are looking for more explanation wrapped around the slides in my presentation, then this the article to read. I am also told that insomniacs can also find something of value from reading my article. Essentially, if you are software architect who can't sleep, my article should be considered required reading.

Perhaps an even better article on the same subject can be found at SOAWorld Magazine. Here we see a smart gentleman named John Goodson writing on the subject of Best Practices for SOA: Building a Data Services Layer. What makes him so smart you ask? Well, short of reading the article and figuring out why for yourself, you can always fall back on the fact that he has managed to keep me gainfully employed - in my world, that counts for something (even if it doesn't exactly make me an unbiased reviewer). ^_^



Technorati Tags | | data+access data+services data+services+layer SOA John+Goodson

Oyez, Oyez! New Entities Supported by DataDirect

The image of the herald is one that pervades Western culture. The Biblical image of the archangel Gabriel announcing the forthcoming births of both John the Baptist and Jesus is one that Christians are very familiar with.

I'm not much of a herald. I'm hardly angelic, and I don't own a horn much less own one. I think I would have made a great town crier, though. I've been told that my voice carries - over cube walls, through doors, down hallways, across vast expanses, etc. I'm reasonably sure that being told that I have a voice with such a unique gift for being heard above the din of an office setting is a compliment. Isn't it?

All of this self-analysis brings me to the reason for my post today: my self-appointed role as town crier for news and announcements of interest to my loyal readers. To you, my faithful minions, I thrice toll my bell of harkening and lift my voice to loudly proclaim:

DataDirect to Support ADO.NET Entity Framework for Oracle Data Sources

Admittedly, this announcement is anti-climatic, for those of you who read this posting on the Microsoft blog last week, but it does bear repeating. There is a lot of interest right now among developers in the ease-of-use of LINQ and the productivity of the Entity Data Model. <marketing hat> Our announcement is meant to reaffirm that LINQ-based and Entity Data Model-based applications will experience the same unique benefits of using DataDirect's Connect for ADO.NET providers for relational database access as ones built to use current technologies such as DAAB. </marketing hat> (Sorry for that segueway, but you know I've got to give a shout out to now and again in order to pay the bills ^_^)

While this is hardly earth-shattering news or something with the weightiness of, say, a royal proclamation, it is one that we're proud to make because it's a signal of where our products are headed...sort of like a graduation announcement. It's enough to make a tough guy like me misty-eyed and emotional - it's like I'm witnessing a precocious little tyke growing up right before my eyes! *sniffle*

That's all for now. I'm off to hum a few bars to warm up for my daily auditory assault of my co-workers. Your comments and feedback are welcome so long as it doesn't compete with the "11" setting of volume knob of my strident self-important braying.




Technorati Tags | | ADO.NET DAAB Entities Entity+Framework LINQ Microsoft Oracle

Three Shouts: Virtualization, Data Services, and Beer

With apologies to Tears for Fears, it's time for me to shout (not a RickRoll) about a few items that I think deserve some attention.

First and foremost, my esteemed colleague Mike Johnson has written an excellent article entitled The Importance of Data Connectivity to Virtualization. Rather than being a tribute to a cleverly written play by Oscar Wilde, Mike's article presents the case for choosing high quality data connectivity components in order to maximize an investment in virtualization.

Second, if you haven't yet signed up to attend Data Services World, I would recommend you get off of your duff and do so. The conference, scheduled for June 24, 3008 at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, features a keynote delivered by John Goodson, an industry luminary in data connectivity and someone that I report up to. Anyone interested in learning more about data services should attend as John is as excellent a speaker as he is a generous boss. ^_^

Third, and finally, I'd like to call attention to beer that I had recently, a 2007 Abyss from Deschutes Brewery out of Bend Oregon. For any of you who like your beer strong, dark, and complex, I would strongly recommend you find a bottle of this delicious Imperial Stout to try. If you don't - feel free to ship me another bottle so I can enjoy this beer all over again. Slàinte!



Technorati Tags | | data+services John+Goodson Mike+Johnson virtualization