Inside the Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

A Few More Thoughts on Microsoft’s Bing, as Told to the Press

(Image via NYPost.com)

Yesterday I shared some somewhat random thoughts on Microsoft’s new search engine Bing (see the post on The Bing Bang). A lot of these thoughts came up in conversations with the press, some of which were going on while I was still trying to access the latest demos Microsoft was uploading.

Here’s a roundup of a few different thoughts that I shared with the media, in case you’re following this story as well. I’m not sure how well this is going to do for Microsoft’s market share, and the odds are clearly against them as Google’s track record has shown, but everything I’ve seen so far indicates that this is a smart, ambitious effort from Microsoft and they’re putting the consumer experience first.

The press tour:

NY Post: Bing is the Thing

"Even if they really believed this was the Google killer, I think they know enough not to say so," said David Berkowitz, director of emerging media and client strategy for 360i, a digital marketing agency. "That's always the kiss of death for any new search engine."

I just Googled “google killer” (with quotes) and the first page of results includes several mentions of Wolfram Alpha, plus nods to Cuil, Twitter (yes, really), and even Bing. The comparisons are generally overblown, but it’s interesting to see who makes the connection. With Cuil, the founders themselves were guilty of the hype (I blogged about their launch when they made a fuss about having the biggest index). Wolfram Alpha’s founder keeps dismissing it (I covered this previously with some not-so-gratuitous Monty Python references). The Twitter comparison is generally made by journalists latching on to a hot trend (guilty: I wrote about why Google needs Twitter Search). As for Bing, Microsoft’s in a tough place because they’re trying to say how huge this is without setting expectations so high that they’ll eat their hats later.

MediaPost: Microsoft Faces Bing Challenge

Video and image search has been the most impressive improvements. The ability to hover over an image or link to see the content on the connected page will prove valuable. "Microsoft is doing a lot to show improvements in multimedia," says David Berkowitz, director of emerging media and client strategy at 360i. "This is where you will see the most notable changes and clear-cut difference." …

As for the advertising campaign promised to roll out with the new search engine, Berkowitz says, Microsoft will need to do a lot to get consumers excited. The company has seen a couple of hits and misses lately. The Jerry Seinfeld campaign had a lot of people scratching their heads. The price-conscious PC vs. Mac ads demonstrate more finesse.

If you take a close look at the demo reel on decisionengine.com, you’ll see the multimedia results are going in some new directions. Can’t wait to spend some time with that, and video/image search is only getting bigger.

Mediaweek: Microsoft Search Leads to Bing 

David Berkowitz, director of emerging media and client strategy at 360i, is impressed with what he’s seen so far with Bing. “I’m still waiting for the full picture, but this is easily Microsoft’s best search experience to date,” he said. “This is a very serious upgrade.”

Still, Berkowitz injected some caution: “This is what most people have been waiting for from Microsoft for years. But now Google is only more entrenched. For Bing, the presentation is the most obvious change. I’m very curious to see how much more relevant its results are. Relevance is something that you notice only when its not there.”

Microsoft’s marketing plan for Bing -- estimated at $100 million -- may be just as crucial as the product itself, since most Web users don’t seem as dissatisfied with Google’s ability to deliver relevant results as Microsoft might think.

“I’m wondering how much the average consumer is going to be able to tell this is something different,” Berkowitz said. “The ads need to communicate that. If you look at the growth of Google, people only keep relying on it more. If it really stunk, Google wouldn’t be in the position they’re in.”

I’ll let that speak for itself. Microsoft just sent me preview access for Bing, so it’s time to use the real thing. More to come…

 

Technorati Tags: microsoft,bing,decision engine,bing.com

TV Report on the Future of Online Journalism -- from 1981

I don't usually repost stuff from the major blogs -- this one's via TechCrunch -- but this one is too good, and everyone remotely interested in online media needs to watch this. Original source: PopURLs on Twitter.

Online Media Panel - Gotham Media Ventures Breakfast Tackles The Future of News and Information

Earlier, I posted coverage of the traditional media panel from today's Gotham Media Breakfast. Now we get to the online panel coverage.

Overall, I found the traditional media panel more compelling for a number of reasons:

• Times are especially tough for traditional media companies, so it's really great timing to hear their strategies for dealing with this.
• The brands themselves -- New York Times, FT.com, Nightline -- are all powerhouses with long organizational histories to share.
• There was more time in total for the panel since they went first and ran a bit long.
• The last panel was more about tech demos with less time for Q&A, so the first panel had more to say.

That being said, the online panel did have some great insights, from the old media exec who became a tech entrepreneur, Keith McAllister, to the wunderkind who's taking on print publishing behemoths, Jordan Goldman.

My notes from the session are below; most of them are paraphrased but exact quotes are noted.

• Moderator: Tom Goldstein, Professor and Director of Media Studies Program, University of California, Berkeley
• Tristan Harris, CEO, Apture
• Keith McAllister, former CEO, Mochila; former EVP and Managing Editor, CNN
• Andrea Spiegel, Chief Product Officer, TrueSlant.com
• Jordan Goldman, CEO, Unigo

As opposed to the traditional breakfast, this started with pitches and demos.

Image via CrunchBaseHarris: You can always leave publishers and go to Google. Apture helps publishers harness the rest of the web and bring it on their site. [I've used this on my blog, but haven't gotten into it yet. Unlike another plug-in, Zemanta, which I use religiously - both of which I encountered for the first time at Blog World Expo last year, Apture enhancements are done in post-production, once the content's live. I like what it can do, but I'd love to incporate it during the writing/production process."]

Image via CrunchBaseMcAllister: Mochila is attempting to reinvent the content syndication business with an advertising model. They take high quality editorial content and create custom publishing solutions for advertisers, and then can have any online publisher get it for free as they put ads on it. "Online publishing remains the wild, wild west." There are a few exceptions (eg NY Times). With online publishing, it's just a question of how talented and creative you are, and then if you're going for a vertical or scale.

Spiegel: True/Slant's creating a network of contributors - anyone with expertise in a particular area. They get everything they need to create a digital presence. [She's first one to mention Twitter.] A contributor will have a specific perspective. They won't cover sports, but they might have a niche like athletes' wives and girlfriends, or coaches who should be fired. The consumer can then participate. Received funding in June from Forbes Media and Jonathan Miller's Velocity. Now in alpha with 20+ contributors.
Image via CrunchBase
Goldman: While a freshman in college, he launched a college guidebook, "Students Guide to Colleges." After college, he wanted to bring it online with editorial teams, plus a team of unpaid interns who they sent Flip video cameras to. They got 5-10% of students for the target 250 schools. Got 35,000 pieces of content. The site went live in September after 9 months of stealth mode.

Goldstein [I'll try not to mix this up - Goldstein's the moderator, Goldman's the Unigo CEO]: What are your financial models?

Harris; It's free for individual use. There will be a premium version for individuals with more customization. With large publishers like Reuters and Washington Post, they pay a licensing fee per month.

Spiegel: We will be an ad model. Contributors will be credible, distinct voices. Considering rev-share for contributors.

Goldman: It's a mix of advertising and lead generation.

McAllister: Mochila shares revenues with content producers and publishers. The model evolved toward a premium advertising model. For the high end of brand advertising, they want a better kind of ad environment like custom brand environments. "Over the course of the next two years... display ads will start to reach the performance level of search advertising." That changes dynamics and impacts how much online publishers can make.

Due to a lack of time, it went right to audience Q&A from here.

Q: How does Apture rank source authority?

Harris: We're looking for freely licensed content that we can bring into a page. Premium publishers get to put their own content at the top of related search results lists. Meanwhile, when your readers are going to leave your site, they're going to wind up going to Wikipedia anyway.

McAllister: All machine aggregation technologies - none can deal with authority issues in terms of how the question was raised. There's a degree of consumer trust in certain publishers.

Q: Between the two panels, there's a divergence in the treatment of content. With some new media companies, there's more of a sense of news as a commodity. Is that what you're seeing? Or is news a unique resource that should be owned by the producer?

McAllister: I would challenge your premise. News has been a commodity since the Associated Press launched in 1866 and newspapers pooled resources to cover a war. In web publishing, you get machine aggregation sources, and then hybrid sources like Huffington Post. The New York Times has aggressively moved into aggregation. This has always gone on but the web makes it so much easier.

Q: How are you dealing with the recession?

Spiegel: There are two parts. From funding, we redid our budget. We're good to go through at least Q1 of 2010. We feel quite comfortable. The second part is that what's happened with the news industry has been good timing for us. Journalists who are now let go with their severance packages are coming here, so there's great talent.

Goldman: We redid our budget and diversified revenue streams. Largely our content creation is free. When the economy's rough there's an incentive for consumers to use our free site.

McAllister: Like any company we restructured to make sure our financing met our goals. With brand advertising "there's been a flight to quality." What's over is the age of purely ad-supported digital businesses. Look up GlobalPost.com which is an attempt to reinvent the business model for global digital reporting. They have 65 international correspondents covering news for the American audience. Their business model is advertising, paying for premium content, and ecommerce.

Gotham Media Ventures Breakfast Tackles The Future of News and Information - Traditional Media Panel

This morning I attended a breakfast eventfrom Gotham Media Ventures on The Future of News and Information at the Harvard Club in Manhattah. There were two panels and I'll break this up into two posts for readability. My notes are below; most of them are paraphrased but exact quotes are noted.

Update: You can also read complete coverage of the second panel on online media.

First panel: Established media

• Moderator: Andy Nibley, Chairman and CEO, Marsteller
• Martin Nisenholtz, SVP, Digital Operations, The New York Times
• Chrystia Freeland, US Managing Editor, Financial Times
• Tom Bettag, former Executive Producer, Discovery's Koppel Group, ABC News Nightline

Nibley: How does traditional media survive in the digital era? In the current economy, how does anybody survive? To NYT: You haven't been able to fill in the gap with digital revenues. What's the future?
Image by jdlasica via Flickr
Nisenholtz: Part of what we've achieved is to keep providing a service to the readers that extends the fundamental benefits of print into the digital era. Our audience growth is a fundamental pillar of media. "The number of people coming to us has absolutely exploded in print and online." On the word "demise": "The New York Times is far from dead." Fact: people who subscribe for two years have essentially no churn - they die, or they move far away. "You can see a path to viability over the long term." "It begins with the journalism" and that people want and need that journalism on a daily basis.

Nibley: Christian Science Monitor was the first one to give up on print and shift to online focus. There's a big question about how people pay for news.

Freeland: The business question is the central one. She took over the site in 2001, and experienced the tech bubble bursting. FT.com became a pariah. It's a reminder of how far traditional news organizations have come. "We are very digitally savvy. It's not a big deal to break stories online. We do that every day." Of about 500 FT journalists, only around 10 are online-only. The real problem is the "digital quarter" - the advertising with digital is a quarter of what we can get in print. The recession is taking out a lot of newspapers. The real place of stress is in US metro dailies. There used to be a lot of really good ones, and now they're failing. We're going to see failure after failure. But this is positive. "I think the sad truth is that what the internet exposed is an oversupply of quality content." As the supply shrinks, she hopes that the survivors will have more pricing power.

Nibley: What's the future of television news? Traditional network news is slowly eroding.

Bettag: I would argue it's not quite bleak enough for broadcasters to get into the traditional age. Websites are just companion pieces. They're making too much money. A modest proposal: If you took all broadcast producers in a room and shot them all, you'd lose two or three good people. "It's gone way too long without having a wildfire go through, but you have to get out that dead wood to get those new sprigs to grow up." They're making so much money off of advertising that there's a vested interest in keeping people as couch potatoes where you can force advertising down their throats, and in the digital age, that's not going to work.

Nibley: Why don't consumers want to pay for news?

Freeland: "I don't think that's true." They charge for content on FT.com. It's growing and they're charging more. It's been hard because there has been an oversupply. With hundreds of papers giving away their content away for free, it's harder for a more general paper like the New York Times to charge even when the content's better.

Nibley: What about the "digital quarter"?

Nisenholtz: As for oversupply, he grew up in Philly and the Philadelphia Inquirer could charge. Why can't the Inquirer charge for Philly.com? Do you think they can?

Freeland: Sure.

Nisenholtz: There isn't any fact to support that. Classified ads are databases - the lifeblood of local newspapers. "When the internet came along, it didn't create supply for local news. I can't think of a single local news experiment on the web that worked." When you look at what the internet has done for advertising, you have to look carefully. Display advertising in print is not dead. From a category basis, the vast majority of money that has been taken out of display has been in classifieds. "Anytime a response is required from an advertiser, you'll naturally see the internet having a significant effect." Procter & Gamble spends 2% of its money online.

Nibley: "The reason is they're selling soap. It doesn't make economic sense to use the internet to sell soap."

Nisenholtz: The automotive marketplace is going to be decimated by the internet. But not all categories in all media.

Nibley: In the online ad world, search is a large part of it. Will online advertising rise to where display/classified advertising is now (in print), or will print go down to online dollars? I think online CPMs going up and up. I think the rates will come down in newspapers. The pharma industry is basically financing network news now and newspapers.

Freeland: You have to make a distinction between general and niche, and not just for print but for TV. That's what FT is and that's where the ability to charge for content is stronger.

Bettag: Can you get people to pay for news? We're looking at an audience that will pay an enormous mobile phone bill and a huge cable bill. People will pay big money for the monthly rate of information. They'll spend if they think they're getting something that is special. News is so broad. What can we give them that will make their lives better?

Nibley: Our research shows that Millennials don't read. They absorb information with audio and video. It's just a different way.

Audience Q&A

Q: In journalism school, we talked about e-paper. Whatever the future business model is, it depends on the delivery device. Where are we on that?

Nisenholtz: We've done a lot of research on that. Print is a technology. People pay for the technology - it's portable, visceral - there are tremendous benefits. E-paper has the same potential. We've been through three generations of e-reading technologies. We've participated in all of them. "For the first time we're seeing a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel with the Kindle. We are encouraged by the amount of use that it's getting with respect to our products. And people are paying for it. But it's still very, very, very early days. It's too soon to make a generalization about it." Future devices won't be monochrome. Aplle may come out with a larger form touchpad. "You'd have to see an advertising marketplace evolve around it to and that requires scale."

Freeland: "I totally agree... Kindle is incredibly hopeful." If you took newspapers and wiped out print and distribution costs, we would all be incredibly profitable businesses.

Q: I always thought the key to survival in the newspaper business is when you realize you're in the news business, not the newspaper business. What's your take?

Freeland: We can't be commodity journalists anymore. That's a big shift. The second shift: if we have this panel five or ten years from now, we might not know who's the newspaper guy and who's the TV guy. The third thing is we need to interact more with our users.

Q: How do you see video evolving on the web? It's exploded in the past year.

Bettag: I just know it is. The number of people watching televisions is happening faster than anybody knows. Slingbox is a big example. People will pay for it if you're giving them something great. That's where the change is going to come from. iTunes pricing of $1.99 per episode is a lot of money if it's watched by millions of people.

Freeland: The internet has allowed us to get a tiny slice of the TV revenue pie. That pie is so much bigger than the newspaper pie ever was.

* * *

There were lots of questions I wanted to ask. Are there niches beyond finance that work? Niche magazines are folding left and right in seemingly every genre. Do the higher revenues for online video also compensate for the higher costs of producing and delivering it? And what about the "digital quarter" question? I don't think anyone satisfactorily answered that.

Living Room Optimization Gets A New Push

Add this one to your buzzword watch list: Living Room Optimization (LRO): establishing the most visible brand presence on TVs that are connected to the Internet.

The latest LRO entrant: Google. Consider this post on Silicon Alley Insider:

Google... has quietly released a new software app called Google Media Server.

... Right now, it sits on your Windows computer and lets you stream stuff like Picasa photos and YouTube video to your TV -- assuming you have a Sony (SNE) PlayStation 3, a HP (HPQ) television, or a few other gadgets that understand a technology called UPnP, or Universal Plug-and-Play.

The battle for the living room continues, as Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, and Google, among others, all have their barbs in it. Marketers are starting to get there too, with interactive TV trials and in-game advertising on console games. Maybe we need some new acronym for Living Room Marketing, like LiRoMa. Kind of sounds nice, like a drug, or a sedan.

Time's 50 Best Websites: An Inside Look

Full disclosure: my agency, 360i, works with Time.com; as usual in these situations, this post is about something I'd have reviewed here anyway, and I'm providing some insights that go beyond what you'll find on their site.

Today Time.com is launching its 50 Best Websites for 2008 list. There are some personal favorites represented like Kiva, Mint, and Geni (I like four-letter sites), some I think are premature like Search Me, one or two I think would have been more fitting for 2007 or earlier like Yahoo Answers, and a bunch I haven't heard of and will have to check out soon.

Here's a new twist for this year:

Time created a page on Tumblr (to be updated shortly, and regularly throughout today and the days ahead) that it will link to from Time.com, and this page will have a running list of bloggers' picks for A) their favorite site of the Time 50, or B) a site they wish was there but isn't.

Personally, I've been slow to play with Tumblr, but I've seen a lot of great executions there. On that note, I'll share my favorite site that isn't on the Time 50 but should be: Garfield Minus Garfield, coincidentally also a Tumblr blog. My runner up: Kyte, because I mentioned I love those four-letter sites.

So if you have those picks, make them (and heck, link to them in the comments to share the love). If you want any more info, write me at dberkowitz (at) 360i (dot) com and I'll share more.

Firebrand Preview Launches during Advertising Week - Love Coverage

Blogging from the launch of Firebrand, a new media company focused on entertaining ads in multiplatform environment - Web, TV (on Ion), and mobile. Official launch: October 22

Targets Millennials, 30% of US population.

Firebrand: QVC for the MySpace generation, or doing for ads what MTV did for music/music videos.

Bottom line: advertising supported by ads, especially for ecommerce so you can buy right from the ad.

NIce perk for me: Bloggers got new iPod Nanos. I thought they were reaching to give me a press kit. This is much better. Two people next to me were debating whether they'd have media kits on the iPods, and we were skeptical. Sure enough, a couple videos were loaded on, and there's some digital messaging in the menus that say it's from Firebrand. Really well done there from a marketing perspective, which I'm writing as objectively as possible now that you know about the schwag.

Goal for Firebrand: 1 million unique visitors by year's end. Aim to get 4-5 clicks per user per month to monetize site (rough estimate, they need to confirm).

 

Not said at this event:
Very competitive marketplace - notably TBS's VeryFunnyAds, NBC's didja. Advantage for competition: major media companies backing them. Advantage for Firebrand: dedicated focus on making this work in new way cross-platform, heavy integration.

Search, Media, and Marketing - iHollywood

More from iHollywood - a great panel, and hopefully the notes capture a lot of these best practices for search engine marketing.

Search, Media, and Marketing
*Dave Fall, VP Product Mgmt - Search Technology, DoubleClick
*Adam Stewart, Industry Dir - Media & Entertainment, Google
*Dema Zlotin, Founder & VP - Strategic Services, SEMDirector
*Robert Hayes, SVP/GM - Digital Media, Showtime
*Bill Macaitis, VP Online Marketing, Fox Interactive Media
Moderator: James Lamberti - SVP Search & Media, comScore Networks

Notes from the panel (my comments in parentheses):

Google - talking to movie studios about films coming out next May

DoubleClick - betting heavily on search (okay, but Google probably could do the search thing pretty well on its own)

comScore: Search as direct response vehicle - is there more?

Google - did study with Nielsen talking to moviegoers after movies. After TV, word of mouth, people were going to Web for most info about films. In terms of level of influence, online was on par with TV. 1/3 of all moviegoers were searching for films online. Gets to full picture of online driving offline.

Showtime: Branding, awareness, tune-in all important - having results consistently ranking high in natural and paid gives positive effect to brand. Latent effect also there. One goal: subscriber acquisition. Targets lifestyle, behavioral campaign (eg people moving). Some responses happen weeks later. Tracked in many ways, such as through rebate offerings.

SEMDirector: Role of search in buying cycle. Search has best ROI of all forms of media. Search is used for arbitrage - monetize traffic on site, but pay fraction of cost on search engines from paid perspecitve, plus organic traffic is free. Some clients have 60% of traffic to site comes from search.

Showtime: 60% of traffic comes from search

comScore: Average is 30%, but can get up there. Most of value of search happens offline. Q: Can search impact brand awareness?

Google: pay attention to whole ecosystem

comScore: Major lift on brand terms when marketing on non-brand terms - holisitc linkage with  rest of media. Q: ROI of paid search, SEO?

Fox: Aggressive with both. SEO - incredible ROI, especially for long run. Takes a lot of work though. Engineers, designers, editorial - all levels of company must get involved. Both provide great ROI.

comScore: Do you need to do both SEM and SEO?

Showtime: Many shows are generic terms - Weeds, Meadowlands, Dexter (maybe not so much for Tudors) - hard for them to beat Dexter shoes on organic search, so need to plan in advance and must purchase words when news hits.

comScore: Any trends of in-house or using agencies for search?

SEMDirector: More of a shift to in-house. More talent coming on the market (really? - not seeing it). Technologies to measure/manage have evolved.

comScore: What about advanced learnings from search?

Google: Amazing correlation between search volume and box office results (outdated study too, before great tracking). Database of intent.

Fox: Most popular gaming search is "cheats." Created new site for cheats. No advertising. 2  million unique visitors in a year and a half. Revolve content creation strategy around search trends.

Showtime: For 2nd, 3rd seasons - uses past search history as planning process for next campaign, eg around top characters/actors. It can factor in even who gets top billing.

(Expect lots of new features starring Paris Hilton)

SEMDirector: Distinction between company selling laptops and notebooks - they sold notebooks, but changed it to laptops because that's what drove searches.

comScore: What would you recommend newcomer do as forward-thinking use of search?

DoubleClick: Companies organizing around organic/paid with comprehensive campaign are doing much better. Takes some mental toughness to reorganize around copy, IT issues, etc.

Google: Integration into other channels - focus on offline.

SEMDirector: Centralizing Center of Excellence model where core strategy for search is set at senior, central level.

Showtime: Sync with offline campaign, eg commercials syncing with paid search.

comScore: Include awareness offline in planning. Use data understood by whole organization.

NBCU, Blinkx, Yahoo at iHollywood

This was a great session at iHollywood with three really different, really bright folks (full disclosure: I work with one of the panelists and kind of have to say that about him, but I don't need to say that about the other two, and even objectively they were all great). This is all in their words. I'll try to massage some analysis into the next column, since I'll undoubtedly write the next Search Insider on all of this.

In Search of Media
* Marc Esper, VP Search, NBC Universal
* Jyri Kidwell, Entertainment Category Director - Search Marketing, Yahoo
* Federico Grosso, SVP Business Development, Blinkx
Moderator: Michael Stroud, Co-founder & CEO, iHollywood Forum

Q: If you don't focus on search, are you dead in the water?
NBC: Search is more of a browser. Huge traffic driver. Ingrained behavior. Big for offline marketing campaigns. If they're going to a search engine and they get 10 different options, they need to present themselves as the best option. 1/3 of traffic comes from search, on average. Some time ago (before focusing on search), did a search on Yahoo for Olympics - came up #17. "That's unacceptable."

Paid search is a great way to jumpstart it. Also accelerates SEO with blog outreach. 40% of SEO is on-site, 60% off-site (a la linking). Shows tend to rank really well - "Office" ranks better than Microsoft, others

Yahoo: Search is a great tool for after you become aware to find what you're looking for. Awareness process will happen offline though. Search is the next step. Yahoo also plays role in awareness - they drive from awareness, then search, then go online, then they watch the show. They're looking to be a platform to drive awareness.

Q: Role of Search & Discovery
Blinkx: Working with publishers and broadcasters to make sure that whether or not you're searching for something you can still find relevant content. Technology comparable to reading a title of a book vs. the whole book, comparing meta data to the video itself. Now can identify what is written within an image - eg, a street sign.

Q: Can you tell the difference between George Bush and Osama Bin Laden?
Blinkx: Facial recognition is the next step. We're not quite there yet. Speech to text is still relied on heavily.

Yahoo: Difference in types of content. Two groups of searchers after a show - 1) Catch-up searcher missed the episode. Get back to the water cooler. 2) I want to go deeper, engage, talk about passion. Getting into message boards, talking to friends, doing mashups - anything. Not all searches are the same.

Behind the Interview: Quoting Smart Friends

I don't normally post links to when I'm quoted in the press (seems a little pretentious, even for me), yet it can be fun going behind the scenes of an interview sometimes. A quote on Google's personalized search results in Direct Magazine is a great opportunity:

For another thing, optimizing for the possible variations in personalized search is close to mathematically impossible. “I had a friend at UC Berkeley calculate the possible permutations for a search that could have 25 links—a totally arbitrary number-- show up in the ten slots on a Google results page,” Berkowitz says. “The total worked out to about 11.9 trillion possibilities.”

This could have turned out completely differently. The reporter, if he wasn't so kind, could have said, "If Berkowitz brushed up on his fifth grade math skills or knew how to use a scientific calculator, he'd have figured out on his own that this would be 11.9 trillion possibilities." But instead, he let me off the hook and made it sound like I have friends in high places. Indeed, Andrew Marcus, PhD candidate in Berkeley's chemistry department (I'm sure I'm butchering the attribution somehow, so forgive me), was kind enough to check my math, as was colleague Andrew Chang.

For both Andrews, my question on permutations was the easiest math question they answered all year, but the Berkeley reference looked great in print. You can't keep enough Andrews on your speed dial.