John Inman

Red Robin Must Start Marketing Aggressively Again

Apparently they are listening. I got a mailer just the other day. It said Red-Robin and had a picture of a hamburger. No coupon. No new menu item, no announcement of happy hour or holiday hours or catering or anything.

Threw it in the trash. Their burgers aren't special enough to warrant 9 bucks. The fries aren't good enough to desire all you can eat. Their specialty drinks aren't unique enough to pony up for.

There's nothing to tell your friends to try when you leave. "You've got to try a hamburger. It's amazing. It's got cheese on it."

About 80% of new-vehicle dealers applied to take part in the "cash-for-clunkers" program, and strong public interest means the $1B slated for the program might get used up quickly.

Gotta agree with Maelstrom. I don't know a single person who drives a car eligible for Cash for Clunkers. My parents have a Tahoe with 220,000 miles and it's not even eligible.

Apple Is Still Giving Its Competitors Headaches

Formally should be formerly. feel free to delete.

A Simple Solution to the Micropayments Problem?

The problem might be with credit card companies. If it cost more to run the transaction than the transaction itself, is it really worth it?

A sign of healing? For much of the past year, even the largest companies found it difficult - if not impossible - to raise fresh money. Now the floodgates are open: May is already the busiest month ever for share offerings, and buyers are lapping it up.

Conspiracy theory time: the gov't knew that corporations didn't have the capital to make it through the long-lasting downturn, so they pumped up the market so companies could do stock offerings to recapitalize, without having to go back to the gov't for a bailout.

:)

A liberal interpretation of 'local': "You know the locavore phenomenon is having an impact when the corporations begin co-opting it."

Ford has been doing this in Louisville. We have 2 ford plants, so I guess it fits.

$200 Oil Is Coming While We Waste a Perfectly Good Crisis (Part 3)

I know people will drive their cars to a bikeway on weekends for exercise and it won't really be a true alternative transportation, but ideally a bikeway would reduce dependence on foreign oil.

I'm from Louisville KY. So I'm a homer.

Let struggling newspapers operate as nonprofits, Sen. Benjamin Cardin proposes. "The business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy." Newspaper stocks spiked on the news.

So no op-eds criticizing policy or polticians? This is a horrible idea. It's not a government run newspaper, but it's the next best thing, a government censored newspaper.

Duke coach to Pres.: "... as much as I respect what he's doing, really, the economy is something that he should focus on, probably more than the brackets."

It's not like Obama's manning the white house staff pool with hourly updates.

Has Blockbuster Busted?

BB needs to buy MovieCube, update the machines so they are not so slow and take on Redbox.

How You Can Invest in the Pickens Plan

What about Wind Turbine Syndrome? www.windturbinesyndrom.../

Is it legit?

Apple: Fraying at the Edges?

Search the apple forums for WIFI issues. What solved my WIFI problems was that my hard-drive crashed and when the Apple store reinstalled Leopard they installed 10.5.1. Haven't had connectivity problems since then, but I also refuse to update Leopard. The only other thing that bugged me about my Macbook was that the Apple store didn't explain or apologize for my hard drive crash.

I don't hate my Mac or anything, but I'll probably just go Windows next time.

Retailers Beware: Amazon Launches SMS Buying Service

they need software to use the cell phone camera as a bar code scanner. then no description would be necessary and you wouldn't mistype the isbn.