As the Fed Ex cup comes to an end this week, it got me to thinking how much technology has changed golf. We talk all the time how technology has changed our lives, but in the golf world, technology has drastically changed the landscape. Back in the Nicklaus-Palmer-Player era, they had Woods as in Driver, 3-wood and 5-wood and they had steel shafts. All of the club heads were blades, which means to you and I, that they had a smaller area on the club face to smack the ball. Oh and the ball was wound with rubberbands. Take the courses that they played on back then, a lot of which are still used in tournaments today, and how difficult they are or were then, and you can really appreciate how good those 3 in particular were.

Ok now lets fast forward to 2007. We have entered the hybrid era. Carbon graphite shafts, large club heads, square grooves, screws to change the direction of the ball flight, different lofted clubs, specialty clubs, rescue clubs, utility clubs, hex-dimpled golf balls, soft balls, hard covered balls, plastic spikes, brush tees, Gore-tex clothing,  computer video analysis of your swing, 380 yard drives….etc. etc. etc. etc…

OK so you get the point. It’s amazing how much technology has affected golf when one thinks about it. To the extent that a lot of “old school” golf courses with storied pasts, i.e. Augusta National, have opted to alter their once immaculate and pristine and untouchable courses so that todays modern player has to think and work their way around the course like the old guard did.

Technology aside, golf does still come down to how mentally flexible you can be, given the myriad number of shots that you will be presented with in a round. No manner of computer aided whatever is going to help you get up and down out of a pot bunker at St. Andrews. You still have to make contact with the ball in the rough.  Your Dry-fit shirt and your soft spikes will keep you cool and comfy and looking good, but you still have to swing the club.

Remember it’s the surgeon, not the surgeons tools and equipment. Technology will continue to alter and change the face of golf, but at the end of the day, when you’re standing over a 7 foot putt to win the hole, the skins and the match, the only thing you can really rely on, is a pure stroke and nothing else.

Tuesday, September 11 at 05:00 am CT by Bob Sullivan

Most savvy consumers would never do business with an unfamiliar company without first running a quick Internet background check. Ten seconds on Google can ward off months of irritation. Negative reviews and news stories about companies are easy to find, and can persuade a buyer to beware. But that strategy might not always work. Companies are now hiring search engine optimization firms to fight back against their Google-given reputations. Recently, Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, was the target of one such “make the negative story disappear” campaign. DONE! SEO (search engine optimization) is a Manhattan Beach, Calif., company that says it can improve any company’s search engine results ranking. But on its “search engine reputation management” page, it promises quite a bit more, saying it can make negative stories and comments go away. “Our Search Engine Reputation Management strategy is very simple: Displace — push down — the negative listings with favorable ones and ones that you can control or influence,” it says. “DONE! SEO helps make sure that your company and key executives are being portrayed favorably online by burying the negatives and maintaining a positive online image.” The DONE! SEO Web site lists six particularly troublesome “problem sites.” Among them is ConsumerWebWatch.org, the Internet arm of Consumers Union. “Having a listing on ConsumerWebWatch.org that shows up on the first page of Google for a search for your company name can be devastating to your business,” it says. ConsumerWebWatch director Beau Brendler was not amused when he found the site. “Trying to make a buck by burying legitimate information that consumers can use to make a decision, that’s a problem,” Brendler said. “If everybody games the system, then search engines will become not much more than yellow pages.” Officials from DONE! SEO counter that they aren’t trying to bury legitimate information. Their main concern is the proliferation of user-generated review sites like RipOffReport.com or My3Cents.com that allow consumers to anonymously leave nasty comments about companies. “There are particularly mean-spirited bloggers,” who can ruin a company’s reputation with one well-placed negative posting, said Ben Padnos, CEO of DONE! SEO. “We’re trying to level the playing field.” Webloyalty at center of controversy? It appears ConsumerWebWatch ended up in DONE! SEO’s sights when the company was hired by Internet marketing firm WebLoyalty.com. Two years ago, ConsumerWebWatch published an investigation of Webloyalty that accused the firm of using misleading tactics to sign up customers and charge a monthly subscription fee to their credit cards. Webloyalty spokeswoman Beth Kitchener declined to comment for this report. In the WebWatch article, the firm denied it had engaged in improper behavior. It’s not clear how well Done! SEO’s tactics work. The unfavorable ConsumerWebWatch story still appears as the third link in Google and Yahoo results in a search for Webloyalty. But on MSN’s Live Search, the WebWatch story doesn’t appear until the third page of listings. Padnos confirmed that Webloyalty was a client, but refused to discuss the WebWatch article or anything else about the work his company did on its behalf. He also declined to explain in detail the tactics used to enhance a company’s search engine results. In general, though, he said it involves creating a network of Web sites using different domains owned by the company and making sure that many other sites link to the network. “They have real, credible content, updated often,” he said. “The content is really important. We are trying to play by the rules of the game from the search engines.” Like Facebook pictures, only worse Reputation management, long only in the purview of gigantic multinational corporations, is now a new Internet buzzword. College students interested in getting a decent job are instructed to avoid any and all cameras during parties, lest a less-than-flattering photograph end up on Facebook and, ultimately, in a human-resources file. Individuals can sign up with firms with names like Reputation Defender to whisk personal attacks off search engine pages (For a great read on this service, see this piece by Forbes magazine.) But gaming the system to push company reviews — including investigative journalism — out of sight on the Internet takes reputation management to a new level. For its part, Google says reputation management is acceptable as long as companies avoid other Web no-nos, like spam. “There’s nothing wrong with this in and of itself,” said a Google spokeswoman who asked not to be identified. “As far as being within our webmaster guidelines, it’s the same as any other web content. If you use spammy and manipulative techniques to get this positive content to rank highly, we may take action on it. But if you can write content or have content written about yourself and have it be interesting and compelling so that people link to it, it may indeed be relevant for searches on your name or business and may be a valid search result, above the negative content.” And Padnos defends the practice of driving down Web posts written by individual consumers. “In a lot of cases people take so much glee in negativity,” he said. “Every business has something along the way with a customer … but with anonymity (people) can post anything they want and really tarnish a company.” The battle between public relations firms and journalists is hardly new, but Brendler is worried that reputation management might tip the scales the wrong way. “I sympathize with businesses that have to confront this issue,” he said. “The state of user reviews on the Web is not pretty. There are people who give a hotel a bad review because they don’t like color of the drapes, for example. … But my concern is that there are other organizations and other journalists who do legitimate research, and as a result of these algorithms the relevance of their work decreases. It’s hard enough for consumers to make decisions and find information

So Britney Spears  was on the VMA’s last night and suffice it to say, it was interesting. So this morning as I’m reading about the fallout from this memorable performance, it got me to thinking. Since Britney has arrived on the scene, the only thing that has changed more, has been technology. So lets take a look back at the timeline and see who wins the award for evolving and changing the most.

In January 1999, Britney released her first studio album …Baby One More Time. Around this time Apple releases the PowerMac G4. In December of that year, she wins four Billboard Music Awards, including Female Artist of the Year. A month later, she took home the Favorite Pop/Rock New Artist award at the American Music Awards.

We give the edge to Britney.

In 2000 Britney releases her studio album Oops!… I Did It Again. Featuring the single which debuted at number one in the U.S., selling 1,319,193 units during its first week of sales, the record for any female artist. But Microsoft Officially launches  Windows 2000.  So I think it’s a push at this point

But…That same year,

Edge goes to….Technology

But wait!

2000 also saw Spears launch her first world tour, the Oops!… I Did It Again World Tour. During the tour, she made a stop in New York for the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. As part of her performance, she ripped off a black suit to reveal a provocative nude-colored and crystal-adorned outfit that generated mucho controversy. She finished the year with two more Billboard Music Awards and two Grammy nominations for Oops!… I Did It Again in the categories of Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

With that knowledge in hand, the edge goes to… Britney

2001 was a big year for technology, so there’s no possible way Britney could win…Or could she?  In 2001 Apple Computer released the now famous iPod as well as the Mac OS X and Microsoft releases Windows XP and Xbox. So it was a monstrous year for technological advances. However…

In 2001 Spears released her third studio album Britney in November 2001. It had a successful debut at number one in the U.S., selling 745,744 units during its first week, surpassing Michael Jackson’s album Invincible.

Michael Jackson, notwithstanding, we have to give the edge to… Technology

In 2002 Britney’s career success was highlighted by Forbes, as Spears was ranked the world’s most powerful celebrity in 2002. Also that year at the MTV Video Music Awards, Spears appeared with Christina Aguilera performing the song “Like a Virgin”, and was later joined by Madonna. Spears locked lips with Madonna in a highly-publicized kiss… Based on the kiss we have to give the nod to Britney and won’t even bother with technology for 2002. Oh, we almost forgot, Spears had her first starring role in the film, Crossroads that year as well.

Edge… Britney

2003 Gives us the creation of Weblog and syndication format Atom. and the Human Genome Project is successfully completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to 99.99% accuracy. Oh and that year also brought us the Computer worm called “The Blaster “which infected thousands of computers worldwide, … 
 

Ok so we’re reaching in 2003, but what was Britney up to? November 2003 saw the release of Spears’s fourth studio album, In the Zone. In the Zone topped the U.S. charts in its debut week, selling over 609,000 copies. This made Spears the only female in music history to have her first four studio albums debut at number one… Guess that means that 2003 was her year too.

Edge? Spears

In 2004 Mozilla Firefox 1.0 was released, which became Microsofts’ biggest browser competitor since Netscape Navigator. The Computer Worm My Doom is considered to be the fastest worm ever to infect the internet and Software giants Oracle  and PeopleSoft merge. Now thats big stuff! But in 2004 Britney Spears announced via her website she would be taking another career break in order to start a family. She takes lots of breaks…

So Spears married childhood friend Jason Allen Alexander. The marriage lasted fifty-five hours, ending with an annulment which stated that Spears “lacked understanding of her actions to the extent that she was incapable of agreeing to marriage because before entering into the marriage the Plaintiff and Defendant did not know each other’s likes and dislikes, each others’ desires to have or not have children, and each other’s desires as to State of residency”.

Months after the  Vegas incident, Spears embarked on The Onyx Hotel Tour which was cancelled in June, after Spears injured her knee during the filming of the video for the single “Outrageous”. Spears reportedly became involved in the Kabbalah Centre in September 2004 through her friendship with Madonna. But that didn’t last. 2004 also saw the release of her first greatest hits collection, Greatest Hits: My Prerogative. The album debuted at number four on the U.S. charts. Impressive for most but not Brit. Spears began a relationship with Kevin Federline and in July 2004, announced her engagement three months after they met.  On the night of September 18, 2004, Spears married Federline in a surprise, non-denominational ceremony on October 6 2004.

We’re skipping over a lot and merely trying to hit the high notes here, so bare with us, but nevertheless we are going to have to give 2004 to Britney. She had a lot going on that year.

Ahh 2005, Spears gave birth to her first child,  released her next Elizabeth Arden fragrance, Fantasy, in September of 2005, and released a remix album, B In The Mix: The Remixes. The album contained remixes of Spears’s biggest hits.

In 2005 Microsoft releases the Xbox 360 gaming console in North America.  Apple Computer releases Mac OS X v10.4 for the Apple Macintosh, AMD starts shipping their first dual-core 64-bit desktop processor, the Athlon 64 X2. Microsoft announces their next consumer operating system, Windows Vista, to be released in early 2007.

Edge to…. A tie

In 2006 Apple Computer introduces the MacBook Pro, their first Intel-based, dual-core mobile computer, as well as an Intel-based iMac; and Intel introduces the Core 2 processors, marking the retirement of Intel’s Pentium brand name. Also in 2006 The one billionth song is purchased from Apple iTunes.  But Britney…

In May 2006, she announced her second pregnancy with an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman. Spears appeared on Dateline NBC the next month to discuss tabloid rumors about an impending divorce, and motherhood. She addressed an incident which occurred in February 2006 when photos revealed her driving with her son unrestrained in her lap. The month following the televised interview, Spears posed nude for the August 2006 cover of Harper’s Bazaar.

Also in 06′, Spears gave birth to her second son and She files for divorce from Federline  citing irreconcilable differences and asking for both physical and legal custody of their two children. Oh, and in  2006, Spears launched Curious: In Control as a limited edition fragrance. 2006 also saw the release of another perfume: Midnight Fantasy.

Sorry technology, Britney wins again.

And here we are at 2007…

Microsoft Corporation launches Windows Vista more than 5 years after their last major, new operating system, Windows XP, was released….

and Britney in succession, goes to rehab, shows her kibbles and bit, shaves her head, and wows the VMA audience.

Edge goes to Britney.

In summation lets just say, that technology needs to be more proactive if it wants to stay with Britney Spears in newsmaking items. It’s clearly evident that Britney refuses to rest on her laurels and is constantly trying to redefine her space. Technology? You need to do more.