Organized Individualists

Mama, they took my Kodachrome away. And Kodak too.

2012-01-04T18:56:00.001-07:00

Eastman Kodak Co. is preparing to seek bankruptcy protection in the coming weeks, people familiar with the matter said, a move that would cap a stunning comedown for a company that once ranked among America's corporate titans.
The 131-year-old company is still making last-ditch efforts to sell off some of its patent portfolio and could avoid Chapter 11 if it succeeds, one of the people said. But the company has started making preparations for a filing in case those efforts fail, including talking to banks about some $1 billion in financing to keep it afloat during bankruptcy proceedings, the people said.

The lesson to corporate America couldn't be clearer: Adapt or die.

Life During Wartime

2012-01-04T06:47:00.001-07:00

Anyone who's worked in a dysfunctional organization can sympathize:

"Organizations that succeed -- especially in wartime -- do so by ensuring that bad news gets to the top. Eisenhower made a big point of that in World War Two. The Vietnamese made a big point of it when they were fighting us. The suppression of bad news and the concealment of failure are the hallmarks of dysfunctional organizations."

If I don't know about a problem, I can't fix it.

The Fab Five

2011-11-17T19:03:00.000-07:00

Simple, elegant, useful, brilliant.

Kim Goodwin’s 5 Essential Questions for Great Design

What is the user trying to accomplish?
What does the user need to know to accomplish their goal?
How should the user feel as they accomplish it?
How does the current design (or alternative) currently make them feel?
What did they do to accomplish it?

Je blog, donc je suís

2011-11-14T19:37:00.003-07:00

It's hard to believe that in 2011, some businesses still don't get why blogging is an essential part of their online presence.

It just is. Deal with it.

Having a blog and updating it frequently with stories and anecdotes relevant to your industry tells potential customers that you are an expert. If they are using a search engine to find you, they have other options. You want to stand out from this crowd.

If you can write a few posts that are very informative, charming, funny, witty, etc. your readers will put you in front of other readers, who become followers, who could become customers.

Again, you should write posts targeting your customers. They are the ones that will be hitting up your shopping cart and calling about services, not Google. However, you still need to make sure you are optimizing your blog for search engines. This means using this valuable space for keyword rich content. Since you’re already writing about your industry, it isn’t hard to relate it directly to your business and a specific keyword you want the search engines to notice.

"Marketing is about listening."

2011-10-28T22:47:00.003-07:00

Stuck at the bottom of an article on why working in marketing sucks (note to current boss: I'm actually really happy with what I'm doing right now, and I mean that 100%), there's this little nugget on what we weasel-y marketing types need in a boss.

"...upper management should work with the C-suite to completely align the company’s goals with the customer’s needs. Marketing is about listening. (emphasis mine) As Kristin Zhivago, President, Zhivago Management Partners, said at B2B Summit 2011, 'Current customers will teach you how to sell to new customers.' The C-suite doesn’t always get immersed in what customers are thinking and saying. So, it’s up to marketing to listen and translate those messages."

Good marketing isn't about pushing out a message that nobody wants to hear. Good marketing is listening to what people are asking for, and then exceeding that perceived need.

The day the future began

2011-10-05T22:46:00.002-07:00

Steve, we'll miss in ways we can't even imagine.

The choice quote happens at 52:50: “You have to start with the customer experience and then work backward to the technology. You can’t start out with the technology and then figure out how to try to sell it.”

The SQL Sequel

2011-10-05T14:19:00.002-07:00

I am not a programmer. However, at some point or another in building most sites, I have to build and test site that require a database connection. I had been using YourSQL to make up for my lacking the programming gene, but that application is dead and doesn't work beyond OS 10.3.

For years, I had to stumble around in user-unfriendly systems like PHPMyAdmin, trying to unravel which table held what table...

... and then I discovered SequelPro. Simple, elegant, clean, it's the SQL client for people like myself who hate to write SQL.

Flipping off the funnel

2011-09-29T07:46:00.002-07:00

I am not a Seth Godin devotee, for the most part. Maybe it's 'cause his ideas have become so commonplace in online marketing that I take him for granted or maybe it's 'cause the direct marketer in me says "Well, that's nice, but show me the numbers!", but I did enjoying "Flipping the Funnel", his eBook on creating brand advocates within your customer base.

However, in order to flip the funnel, one must HAVE a customer funnel in the first place.

In our recent study, we uncovered some pretty shocking statistics that indicate marketers resist the adoption of new, critical best practices in funnel optimization, inhibiting their success to win over the modern B2B buyer. For example:

68 % of study participants have not identified their Sales and Marketing funnel
61 % send all leads directly to Sales; however, only 27 % of those leads will be qualified
79 % have not established lead scoring
65 % have not established lead nurturing

If you have a sales funnel, congratulations, you're WAY ahead of the curve.

The quality goes in before the name goes on.

2011-09-12T10:28:00.002-07:00

Jon Gruber has a fascinating insight as to why Apple is Apple.

Design is largely about making choices. The PC hardware market has historically focused on three factors: low prices, tech specs, and configurability. Configurability is another way of saying that you, the buyer, get a bigger say in the design of your computer. (Bright points out, for example, that Lenovo gives you the option of choosing which Wi-Fi adaptor goes into your laptop.) Apple offers far fewer configurations. Thus MacBooks are, to most minds, subjectively better-designed — but objectively, they’re more designed. Apple makes more of the choices than do PC makers.

That lack of expandability and options frustrates Windows user who are used to the Burger King school of PC design, but the side effect of this is that, in the words of my wife, they just work.

A footnote to the SteveNote

2011-08-24T20:15:00.002-07:00

Now that Steve Jobs has moved on as iCEO, I wish him the best, and hope that the cancer that has dogged him as of late will continue to decline.

But oh, how I'll miss the SteveNote addresses at MacWorld. A SteveNote wasn't just a product launch, it was a part pilgrimage, part celebration, part Sunday morning worship at the Triple Rock Church. It was a gathering of the faithful to hear a message from our High Priest.

Gonna miss it. I'll still buy Apple products, of course (heck, I bought a IIci and a Lombard, so my sanity has been in question for quite some time now), but it will be out of duty and not out of love.

Thanks for the memories, Steve. Thanks for saving Apple when no one else could.

Planning to fail

2011-08-19T06:44:00.002-07:00

Strategy isn't a goal, it isn't a business plan. Strategy is how you deal with reality. And in the past 14 years, nobody's done it better than Apple.

"So if you really want to be like Apple, drop the fluff- filled vision statements and magical wishes. Pretend your company’s existence is at stake, coldly evaluate the environment, and make choices. Stop thinking of strategy as meaningless verbiage or financial goals and treat it as a serious design challenge."

Useful

2011-08-11T09:53:00.002-07:00

VERY useful.

Social is a lightweight plugin for WordPress that handles a lot of the heavy lifting of making your blog seamlessly integrate with Facebook and Twitter. Through the use of a proxy application, you can associate your Twitter and Facebook accounts with your blog and its users. Once you publish a new post, you can then choose to automatically broadcast a message to any accounts authenticated with the overall blog or your current logged-in user.

Well done, Mailchimp, well done.

A time for heroes, a time for workers

2011-07-21T19:31:00.002-07:00

As of today, NASA is out of the manned space flight business. Astronauts were my heroes growing up, I read of their exploits like previous generations read of pioneer aviators or intrepid explorers. Astronauts were both of those, in a sense, and much more. They were our knights in shining armour, strapped on to rocket-powered steeds riding forth to do battle against The Evil Empire.

"Is that a man?"

"Yer damn right it is."

The time for heroes is over. Now it's time to get to work.

The odds of ads

2011-07-07T11:52:00.001-07:00

"It is 112.5 times more likely that you will sign up for and complete Navy SEAL Training than click on a banner ad."

And based on the ROI from the campaigns I've ran, that sounds about right.

Playing by the new rules

2011-07-05T17:22:00.003-07:00

Jan Klier succinctly sums up the new consumerism:

"So what is replacing all this? Mainly consumers demanding experiences rather than products, a high degree of customization, real-time, a value chain that is controlled by the brands end to end, micro-marketing, and the store as part of the brand.

In other words, selling has gone from companies pushing their products to consumers making commitments to a brand. The deer now have guns, and they're flexing their trigger fingers.

Happy Memorial Day

2011-05-30T12:58:00.001-07:00

I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer,

The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."

The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,

I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:

O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";

But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play,

The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,

O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,

They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;

They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,

But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside";

But it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide,

The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,

O it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep

Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;

An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit

Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.

Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"

But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,

The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,

O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,

But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;

An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,

Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;

While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind",

But it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind,

There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,

O it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:

We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.

Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face

The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"

But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;

An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;

An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!

- Rudyard Kipling

One last journey into space

2011-05-25T21:02:00.003-07:00

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent lifting mind I have trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
- Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

- "High Flight"

- Photo of the shuttle Endeavour courtesy of NASA

Business. Rules.

2011-05-02T17:17:00.002-07:00

Jeff Jarvis has a great list of rules for new media. He wrote them for newspapers, but they're applicable to any business that wants to prosper online.

RULES FOR BUSINESS MODELS

* Tradition is not a business model. The past is no longer a reliable guide to future success.

* “Should” is not a business model. You can say that people “should” pay for your product but they will only if they find value in it.

* “I want to” is not a business model. My entrepreneurial students often start with what they want to do. I tell them, no one — except possibly their mothers — gives a damn what they *want* to do.

* Virtue is not a business model. Just because you do good does not mean you deserve to be paid for it.

* Business models are not made of entitlements and emotions. They are made of hard economics. Money has no heart.

* Begging is not a business model. It’s lazy to think that foundations and contributions can solve news’ problems. There isn’t enough money there. (Foundation friend to provide figures here.)

* There is no free lunch. Government money comes with strings.

* No one cares what you spent. Arguing that news costs a lot is irrelevant to the market.

* The only thing that matters to the market is value. What is your service worth to the public?

* Value is determined by need. What problem do you solve?

* Disruption is the law of the jungle and the internet. If someone can do what you do cheaper, better, faster, they will.

* Disrupt thyself. So find your weak underbelly before someone else discovers it. Or find someone else’s.

* The bottom line matters more than the top line. Plan for profitability over revenue, sustainability over size.

And our poop don't stink, either.

2011-04-25T10:16:00.002-07:00

Mac users are better educated, more social, and our taste in french fries is better than PC users.

And we're also MUCH more modest than other computer users.

Just ask us, we'll tell you how humble we are.

Cloudburst

2011-04-21T12:41:00.002-07:00

This is why I don't trust the cloud.

A disruption at one of Amazon's datacenters has led to service disruptions in the company's EC2 or Elastic Cloud computing service. The outage, which started at Starting at 1:41 a.m. PDT, in turn brought down major websites such as Reddit and Foursquare.

Amazon's EC2 service allows business to rent processing time on Amazon's computers, which is useful for sites that need a lot of processing power. The disruption seriously affected sites that are constantly working through a lot of data. Dynamic sites like Hootsuite and Quora that are constantly processing new data are down completely.

The cloud is useful and cheap and flexible and it is also entirely out of your control. There's nothing inherently wrong with distributed computing, it's that there's no real Plan B if things go all pear-shaped on you.

Use the cloud and use it well, but be prepared for it to fail you when you need it the most.

Copywrongs, righted

2011-04-18T15:29:00.002-07:00

Yes, Virginia, there is a fair use clause.

"Righthaven is neither the owner nor exclusive holder of any rights in the copyrighted work underlying this lawsuit. As such, Righthaven has suffered no injury or other cognizable harm required for it to have standing’’ to sue, said one of the filings by attorneys Marc J. Randazza and J. Malcolm DeVoy IV.

"Indeed, the agreement makes it abundantly clear that Righthaven actually has no rights in the copyrights it claims,’’ the filing said.

For non-attorneys wondering why the copyright assignment issue is so important, Randazza and DeVoy explained it this way in a court filing in another Righthaven case: Providing Righthaven only rights to sue isn’t a procedure intended by the federal Copyright Act.

"Righthaven’s practices create a secondary commodities market for copyrights, or exclusive subsidiary rights in copyrights, to be used only in suing others who may have valid defenses, but cannot afford to raise them — or engage counsel whatsoever," they said in a case where they and New York copyright attorney Ron Coleman represent the Media Bloggers Association.

Righthaven, co-owned by Las Vegas attorney Steven Gibson and an affiliate of Stephens Media, since March 2010 has filed 264 lawsuits in federal courts in Nevada, Colorado and South Carolina over Review-Journal and Denver Post material.

They said Righthaven perpetrated upon the court a "sham’’ and a "fraud’’ hundreds of times in its lawsuits by claiming in the lawsuits that Righthaven "owns’’ the copyrighted stories, photos and graphics it sues over, and has exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute them, when in fact its contract with Stephens Media says Stephens Media retains those rights.

I'm no big fan of remix culture: I much prefer original works of art/journalism to someone lifting content from someone else and claiming it as their own.

However, we need to take a long, hard look at how copyright is used and abused in our society. What once began as a way for artists and publishers to maintain control of and profit from their works has taken on a life of its own, leading to abuses like Righthaven, copyrighted DNA, and software (aka math) patents. Innovation comes from risk-taking, and if you can't take risks in society today without a posse of lawyers.

Information (and creativity) wants to be free.

Keep the main thing the main thing

2011-04-13T15:38:00.002-07:00

Pepsi's social media efforts have fallen a bit flat.

The idea behind the program was that you, the consumer, got to engage with Pepsi by voting for the "Refresh" projects you deemed most worthy. There were also other opportunities to engage through an enormous online effort -- Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, website, blogs. Millions of dollars were also spent in what might be called "traditional advertising in support of social media."

Skeptics have been eagerly awaiting a report card on this initiative as it is the first real test case for a major brand implementing a massive transfer of marketing resources from traditional advertising to social media.

The results are now in. It has been a disaster.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Pepsi-Cola and Diet Pepsi had each lost about 5% of their market share in the past year.
If my calculations are correct, for the Pepsi-Cola brand alone this represents a loss of over $350 million. For both brands, the loss is probably something in the neighborhood of 400 million to half-a-billion dollars.
For the first time ever Pepsi-Cola has dropped from its traditional position as the number two soft drink in America to number three (behind Diet Coke.)
In 2010, Pepsi's market share erosion accelerated by 8 times compared to the previous year.

The Refresh Project accomplished everything a social media program is expected to: Over 80 million votes were registered; almost 3.5 million "likes" on the Pepsi Facebook page; almost 60,000 Twitter followers. The only thing it failed to do was sell Pepsi.

That's because the point of the "Refresh" project was to make people associate Pepsi with all these do-gooder projects, not sell Pepsi products.

Now there's nothing wrong with giving away corporate money to worthy causes, (heck, a good portion of my current salary relies on companies doing just that), but the purpose of Pepsi isn't to be another Carnegie Foundation, the purpose of Pepsi is to sell fizzy sugar water.

I like companies that know they're not just about the bottom line, but a company that neglects the bottom line for a higher purpose (ANY higher purpose) isn't a company that's in business for very long, and it's a company that soon realizes that bankruptcy DEFINITELY doesn't save the world.

They REALLY don't get it.

2011-03-31T20:56:00.002-07:00

Wow. Just... wow.

Narrowing the theatrical window, four Hollywood studios and DirecTV will launch a pricey premium VOD service at the end of April, followed swiftly by Comcast and VUDU. Consumers will be able to see a movie 60 days after its release in theaters. The movies will be available for 48 hours for $29.99.

Mere words cannot express how moronic this idea is. 1998 called, and they want their digital media plan back. The studios think that we will pay 3-4 times the price of a ticket in a movie theater, just to watch the movies we didn't go to when they where in theatrical release.

As Daedalus said to Icarus, "Good luck with that".

Selling Has Always Been Social

2011-03-21T09:35:00.002-07:00

A fantastic article for people who don't "get" social media.

In the past few years, while sales has mostly ignored the social media revolution, the marketing and customer service functions have led the way in adopting and demonstrating the power of social media in engaging customers, especially as part of the social CRM movement.

What has taken sales so long to catch up, and what now needs to be done?

I've set up blogs/Facebook pages/Twitter feeds for a few friends who have small businesses, and my advice to them has been simple: Online marketing is a conversation, and conversations have ebb and flow. Sometimes you listen, sometimes you talk. Sometimes you ask for favours, and sometimes, people ask you for favours. It's a conversation, not a sales pitch. In fact, the best sales pitches are the ones that don't seem like a sales pitch, and the best salespeople are the ones who use their personality and social skills to establish trust with their customers, no matter the medium.

Pay attention to what's being said, let the customer tell you what they want, and then fill that need. Works offline, and it works online as well.

Fire your TV

2011-03-18T11:16:00.002-07:00

The opening shot has rang out in NetFlix's war on cable TV.

The rumors are true, instead of simply offering old content from others, Netflix is jumping back into the content business by licensing David Fincher's upcoming drama House of Cards for Watch Instantly streaming in the US and Canada before it airs anywhere else, or has even been produced.

With more people watching NetFlix than most pay cable channels, this was only a matter of time. There is a brief window here for cable channels and cable providers to push for a la carte programming in order to avoid being crushed by the NetFlix/Hulu juggernaut that is headed their way, but they'll have to move quickly if they want to survive. To borrow a phrase from online antiquity, TV content streamed by the internet sees locked-in channel selection as damage and routes around it.

The real real you

2011-03-07T10:18:00.002-07:00

Robert Scoble has a nice reminder that on the web, authenticity = authority.

Where did my authenticity come from? I knew that REAL change comes from people putting their necks on the line. I couldn’t remember a time when an anonymous person really enacted change in, well, anything.

I post quasi-anonymously on a local/national political weblog and I've been fiercely guarding the firewall I've put up between the political persona I've created on the weblog and the rest of my online life.

That may change.

Shuttle run

2011-02-27T22:01:00.003-07:00

I remember following Apollo-Soyuz with the rapt attention of a young, space-mad boy.

I remember the long, frustrating wait for the Space Shuttle program to take shape.

I remember the excitement of watching Enterprise touch down.

I remember watching Columbia lift off for the very first time.

I remember when they took the picture that started this post.

I remember where I was on the morning of January 28, 1986.

I remember when they fixed the Hubble.

I remember where I was on the morning on February 1, 2003.

And now, these memories will soon be all I have. The era of the Space Shuttle will soon end, and the era of private spaceflight will be upon us. We've gone from moonshots being the lead story on the nightly news to tourists in space flying Virgin Galactic.

While I am all in favour of opening up space to as many people as possible, space exploration is losing its romance, its sense of adventure.

The man in me applauds the privatization of space. The little boy in me still wants it to be wonderful.

Blogging as geology

2011-02-16T11:10:00.003-07:00

I like the metaphor that this article uses.

Blogs are volcanoes: They bring new content to the surface. That content spreads all over a website, and that new content allows for new opportunities for messaging and revenue, in much the same way that volcanoes created Hawai'i.

Want your site to be a paradise? Blog.

Automatic for the People

2011-01-28T09:09:00.002-07:00

More people are streaming movies to the TV's/computers with NetFlix than watching them on Starz and Showtime, and they're second only to HBO.

That crunching sound you hear is the ground shifting under the feet of Hollywood.

How soon until we see major producers/directors eschew the big studios and create movies that go straight to NetFlix?

Chemical stain

2011-01-20T11:04:00.002-07:00

I have a love/hate relationship with the darkroom. I spent a HECK of a lot of time in the darkroom when I was a photo assistant, burning and dodging and spotting and bleaching, and there's a certain feeling of craftsmanship (craftwomanship?) that comes with creating a photo by hand, something that's lacking in the point and click world of Photoshop and inkjets.

But I don't miss the hours and hours of time required to kick out custom prints from the same negative. I don't miss inhaling more chemicals than Keith Richards, and I don't miss the monk-like seclusion of the darkroom, either. Give me a nice workspace and a 24" monitor any day.

What Google hath wrought

2010-12-19T21:02:00.003-07:00

Internet advertising has passed newspapers and is now the #2 ad medium after TV. In fifteen years we've gone from nervous breakdowns about banner ads to online advertising dominating the market. Who knows what the next 15 years will bring?

Big Ballmer is watching you

2010-11-16T11:57:00.002-07:00

If you think the strip searches by the TSA are invasive, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Privacy advocates are sounding alarms over recent comments that Microsoft’s Xbox CFO Dennis Durkin made concerning the advertising potential the Kinect has by being able to peer into your home, and see what you and your family and friends are all about.

Presumably the system could also be used to get age, race and gender data from whoever is in the room, and though I doubt the system is advanced enough to recognize specific brand labels that might be laying around, it’s not far fetched to think that could happen eventually.

The marketing side of me just *drools* at getting demographic data like this, but the decent human being side of me recoils at the thought. Hopefully there are enough decent human beings at Microsoft to stop this idea in it's tracks.

Un-PC

2010-11-04T09:41:00.003-07:00

Is the PC (even in laptop form) dead? Are smartphones the new personal computer?

Maybe.

It's always with you: You've heard the saying, "The best camera is the one you have with you"? The same is true for PCs, and in this case, it's your smartphone. (Ignore for a moment the fact that your smartphone is often the camera you've got with you, too.) Most of us don't have the physical endurance to lug a laptop around everywhere we go, and even if we did, pulling it out every time you want to check your email is a pain most of us aren't willing to endure.

And the other bullet points in the article are just as interesting.

I've been using Macs since, well, The Mac, and I've been using laptops since my ol' pen-based, 486-driven Compaq. While I do lurves me my MacBook Pro, the fact is, aside from processing images for the web and some design/presentation apps like Dreamweaver and Keynote, 90% of what I do with my MacBook can be done an iPhone, and 99% of it can be done on an iPad.

5 years from now, we'll look at the desktop PC as a kind of personal media/file server, and laptops as an iPad with a keyboard.

A pair o' dime shift

2010-09-23T11:08:00.005-07:00

Don waxes rapturously over the camera capabilities of his iPhone.

I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, I think the iPhone and other similar smartphones represent a fundamental shift in how we take, process and distribute photos.

Consider how things were back in the pre-digital dark ages.

Film was exposed
Film was developed and possibly altered by either the photographer or a lab
Photos were distributed by mailing prints, viewing chromes, half-tone printing, etc.

In the recent past, things were very similar

Photos were captured on a camera
Photos were chosen, cropped and possibly altered on a computer
Photos were distributed by email, CD, printing, flash drive, etc.

Today, with a smartphone, there are no second and third steps: The phone is camera, production and distribution all in one. We can capture a five megapixel image, adjust contrast, exposure and a host of other options right on our phone, and then upload it to Flickr, Facebook or Twitter for all the world to see, no intermediary devices are needed. Photographers shouldn't worry about a world like this, it's the people who distribute photos that will see the most changes when every photographer has a production house in their hip pocket.

What could possibly go wrong?

2010-09-21T09:09:00.002-07:00

Ok, let's say you're a journeyman photographer who's been toiling away taking pictures for over 20 years, and all of a sudden, an ultra-hip modern band wants a Polaroid from model test taken back in the 80's as the cover art for their new album.

But there's a problem: You don't have a model release for the girl in the shot. What do you do?

Fake the release, of course. I mean, it's a twenty year test shot. Nobody will ever know, right?

Wrong.

This one will DEFINITELY be interesting to watch.

Steve Jobs is Cool

2010-09-14T09:07:00.003-07:00

And by cool, I mean totally sweet. *Explainer

Just when you thought Apple CEO Steve Jobs couldn’t get more badass? According to SPA!, Bloomberg and about 10,000 nerds on Twitter, Jobs was stopped at the Kansai International Airport near Osaka in July for carrying, yes, ninja stars.

Memo to Apple employees: Better think twice before leaving a prototype iPhone in a beer garden: Your boss is now a ninja.

The country of you

2010-09-04T08:53:00.005-07:00

One of the first things I run into when building a website for someone who's never had one before is explaining the difference between setting up a server and building a website.

"Your server is your physical location," I tell them. "Think of it as the plot of land you bought to set up your store. To the county or state, it's Division so-and-so, Plot such-and-such, but nobody uses that for a business address, they use 124 E. Nowhere Lane. Same thing with website: The IP address of your site may be 10.0.0.1, but the way people find you is by going to www.yourstoreonline.com."

People get this, as it takes the tangible and extends it into the realm of the intangible. Which is why I like this description of how social media works with your existing website. (Courtesy of Don on Twitter).

The basic idea was that instead of always trying to use social sites to bring the web to you, you should see social media as a way to bring your brand to the web outside your site.

The theory breaks down to three concepts.

Home Bases are places online that you own like a website.
Outposts are places you don’t own, but where you can build and maintain an online presence
Passports are credentials for being able to get into outposts.

I like the term "embassies" and "home countries" rather than "outposts" and "home bases" as social media sites are a small microcosm of your site on another organization's home country, and just like an embassy they serve as an ambassador to your main site inside another culture. Also, just like the real world, if you make your home country unfriendly to visitors, your overseas embassies won't be much help if you want people to visit your country.

D+D Reborn

2010-08-26T09:28:00.002-07:00

Citadel and Iron Wind, take note, this will also work with an iPad.

(i)Pawn is a game of sorts that works with a series of little figures on tokens that actually interact with the touchscreen itself. Most of the time, you need actual flesh to interact with the iPhone's screen, but these figures are also capacitive, so the app running on the device not only knows when and where you've placed these figures down but also which figures are touching, and so on.

Historical painting

2010-07-20T21:11:00.003-07:00

Apple has donated the source code to MacPaint to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

MacPaint was the program that made me fall in love with the Mac, more than the GUI, more than MacWrite.

I, of course, blame Hertzfeld.

In order to save our client, we were forced to destroy him

2010-07-13T21:49:00.004-07:00

Who's less ethical than a music industry executive?

Lawyers for the music industry, of course.

The RIAA paid Holmes Roberts & Owen $9,364,901 in 2008, Jenner & Block more than $7,000,000, and Cravath Swain & Moore $1.25 million, to pursue its "copyright infringement" claims, in order to recover a mere $391,000.

I'm in the wrong line of work.

This can't end well

2010-07-09T11:25:00.002-07:00

Microsoft has opened up the Windows 7 source code to the KGB's successor agency, the FSB.

Whether or not the FSB is also seeking our reset button technology is unclear.

Dust in translation

2010-07-01T22:24:00.002-07:00

Oh. Heck. Yes.

Courtesy of A Photo Editor.

This dovetails nicely with this quote from Richard Dyson, the vacuum cleaner guy:

"The agency business just isn't working for me. I don't want to talk to account planners, and account managers and these other assorted suits. I need to talk to the 'creatives' directly, and explain to them what I am trying to achieve. But they won't come to meetings because they are 'creative.'

"And the fact is that they are not creative at all. They are doing the very worst thing you can do, which is to sit staring at a drawing board trying to come up with an idea out of nowhere. You need dialogue to create."

The price of doing business

2010-06-25T19:54:00.002-07:00

A good portion of the British Government has no clue if their websites are effectively reaching their audience or not.

Around 16% of government departments did not know how their own websites were being used by tax payers, and almost a quarter were not aware of the running costs, according to the COI report.

Very few companies have any idea of why they have a website, they just know they need one, so it's not surprising government is the same way.

Websites don't exist in a vacuum: They need a reason to exist that is measurable and actionable. It can be something as simple as a contact form submission or something complex as Amazon.com, but without a reason WHY, there's no reason for a website at all.

Camera, lens, film.... Lego?

2010-06-10T10:17:00.002-07:00

Famous photographs, redone in Lego.

Cash up back

2010-06-01T11:05:00.004-07:00

The Internets seem a tad outraged over the cost of AT&T's iPhone insurance plan.

But.

What if it's a way for AT&T to make up for revenue lost from opening up the $15/mo, 250mb data plan that the iPad uses to iPhone users as well?

For someone like me who relies on their iPhone to be their spare brain, the 250mb plan makes little sense, but for someone who uses an iPhone for voice and text and only occasionally surfs the web outside of their home WiFi spot, that extra little savings could tip them in favour of an iPhone over a regular 3G phone.

All in the same boat together

2010-05-26T19:27:00.002-07:00

Given that:

PC users get frustrated when their ~~worthless pieces of crap~~ PC's get loaded up with adware, broken drivers and all kinds of performance-crushing issues and...
The same problems tend to happen to everyone all over the globe,

... it's a wonder no one ever thought of this before Soluto did: Crowdsourced PC performance software.

Soluto harnesses the power of the crowd to learn which actions really eliminate frustrations and improve user experience, and leverages this user wisdom for the benefit of all PC users.

A good idea and a much-needed product.

Atlantis, home

2010-05-26T15:31:00.002-07:00

I'm a space fan. Have been since I watched the Apollo 11 moon landing on my parent's TV when I was a wee, wee lad. I corrected my first-grade teacher on what the Gemini missions were about, gobbled up every mention of Skylab I could find in the media of the day, waited and waited and WAITED for the Space Shuttle program to finally start, and I was happy as a clam when they named the first shuttle "Enterprise". I remember exactly where I was when I heard that Challenger had blown up (Left hand turn lane on northbound Mill Ave, waiting to turn onto Southern). I still can't believe we have two rovers chugging along on Mars, and I'd love to have one of my sons fly a mission to there someday (and maybe take a trip up to orbit myself).

But we're reaching the end of an era: The space shuttle Atlantis landed today, marking the end of her time in space and the first of the shuttles to retire. Here's hoping there are more companies like SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace willing to follow the path created by NASA.

A nation is only as big as it's dreams, and there is no bigger dream than the conquest of space.

"Apparel is too utilitarian for copyright protection"

2010-05-26T07:39:00.001-07:00

Some thought-provoking stuff here, looking at intellectual property and the lack of copyright in the fashion world.

The straight and narrow

2010-05-09T11:21:00.003-07:00

Stopped by to shoot the breeze with Don last week, and we got to talking about the current state of photography and photography tools. We are both in love with our iPhones: Don likes Hipstamatic, I like Tilt/Shift Generator. Both of us agree that forcing ourselves to constrain our vision to work within iPhone does wonders for our shooting, because it makes us think about how we're going to get a shot out of what we have on hand.

One of the biggest mistakes a lot of beginning photogs make is equating more equipment with better photos. While there is definitely a place in photography for packing a location truck full of lights and cameras, the fact is, that process is identical to shooting with an cameraphone: You see the shot you want, and you take it with the camera you have.

When I was a full-time photog, my favourite camera wasn't my Nikons or the Hassies or the Sinar, it was my Olympus XA, a bare-bones (but well-built) compact 35mm camera. It had a great 35mm f2.8 Zuiko Lens, rangefinder focusing and aperture-priority exposure, and it was so small I could carry all the time.

I agree 100% with Chase Jarvis: The best camera is the one you have with you.

Finders, peepers

2010-04-19T11:24:00.002-07:00

Somewhere in Cupertino, a soon-to-be-former Apple employee is packing his things and making sure his affairs are in order, trying to stay one step ahead of Steve Jobs' elite team of iHitmen, because letting a prototype of the new iPhone in a bar fall into the hands of Gizmodo is something Steve will not tolerate.

Hey, I think I know this guy!

2010-04-16T12:49:00.000-07:00

"I don’t know what I want until I know what the final product looks like. So, I would like you to create 5 fully functional websites so I can decide then pay you for one of those."

- Clients From Hell

Gone fishin'

2010-04-12T14:18:00.002-07:00

News Item #1: 15 year old boy first to check into Foursquare from The North Pole.

Fifteen-year-old Parker Liautaud will forever be remembered as the first person to legitimately check in at the North Pole and unlock the Last Degree badge on Foursquare.

News Item #2: 15 year old boy has his home broken into while at The North Pole.

I understand the idea behind foursquare and other location services: It'd be darn handy for people at multi-day events or in school to keep tabs on each other, and that's a good and useful thing. However, I think there's some major privacy concerns with the service and that's what is stopping me from using it or any other such doodad. You can't undo what's been posted on the internets, and keeping your cards close to your chest is always a good idea, no matter what the game.

Crowdsourced

2010-04-09T10:31:00.002-07:00

You have a blog. A popular blog (so right away, you know I'm not talking about this blog). A popular blog with an active community of commenters. That gets a lot of traffic. And also gets a lot of spam in the comments.

So what do you do to get rid of the spam?

Sic your commenters on the spammer, of course.

Brilliant.

It seemed like a great idea, right up to the point where it went horribly wrong

2010-03-24T20:31:00.005-07:00

Sending an email to introduce your P.R. firm to the newest member of one of the web's most influential tech websites: Good.

Leaving in the text in the email about how you're going to present yourself to her: Bad.

Subject: RE: Maybe we pitch her on [REMOVED]

Worth a shot. Keep it short and sweet and go with more of the social network aspect. I’m sure you can use the typical techcrunch email format.

From: PR Flack #1
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 10:11 AM
To: PR Flack #2
Subject: Maybe we pitch her on [REMOVED]

I’ve been mulling how to get them on Tech Crunch for some time, and I’m guessing she’s a West Coaster so maybe [REMOVED] will do a video with her. She clearly gets the financial end of things coming from Forbes. Definitely worth a shot in my opinion.

Whoops.

What have you done for me lately?

2010-03-12T09:15:00.003-07:00

The first time I saw this ad on Facebook, I half-expected it to link to Huhcorp.

A marketing agency that's going to save the world?

Well, cool. It's great that they've got "the world" as their client, but if that's their attitude, I want nothing to do with them. I don't want a marketing agency that'll save the world (that's Al Gore's job. Just ask him, he'll tell you it's so), I want a marketing agency that'll save my company/organization. If I want to save the world, I'll put money into things like micro-enterprise and appropriate technology and let my marketing agency do the job I pay them to do.

Forty may have a problem with over-promising and under-delivering here. How does one go about doing a SWOT analysis on saving the world, anyways? ("Strengths: The World. Threats: Everything else.") And when they do save the world, who are they going to bill for the job? Will they take a check?

P.S. According to their Facebook ads, "Kim Stearns" is just one in a series of "Marketing Directors" at Forty who are all young, hip and attractive. Amazing how that works...

Pervasive permissiveness

2010-03-08T09:46:00.003-07:00

Security guards were the bane of my existence when I was a full-time photog: I'd set up a shot on a sidewalk out in front of some corporate headquarters (an absolutely legal thing to do) and within five minutes some clod with a badge and a radio would wander by asking what I was up to.

I'd politely explain that I was taking a picture, and they'd start asking questions about who I cleared this with and do I have a business card and we'll just see about all this then, and it's gotten even worse since I left the biz. Garry Winogrand would be on the no-fly list if he were around today...

When it comes to taking pictures, it's better to ask for forgiveness then try to get permission. This is NOT true of online marketing, however, as Google is finding out the hard way.

Sure enough, when I clicked on the Buzz icon in my account I saw that Google had manufactured a list of followers for me, and a list of people to follow, all based on names in my inbox. Some of those names represented friends of mine, who I didn’t mind sharing information with — but some certainly weren’t friends.

Then it hit me: I’d just been opted-in to a social network without my permission.

Google’s big misstep is a great reminder for other marketers: Social media and email work because they represent permission-based marketing channels.

Seth Godin said it, I believe it, that settles it.

Do not press the button marked "Do Not Press"

2010-03-02T12:23:00.002-07:00

No, really, don't press it.

"The vulnerability exists in the way that VBScript interacts with Windows Help files when using Internet Explorer," read the advisory. "If a malicious Web site displayed a specially crafted dialog box and a user pressed the F1 key, arbitrary code could be executed in the security context of the currently logged-on user."

I'm not that down on Microsoft for this. XP is, after all, a ten-year old OS, so things like this will take longer to patch than for, say, Windows 7. But what makes Windows good, the interaction between the OS and Office, is what allows this to happen.

The DH-4 of today

2010-02-23T09:22:00.002-07:00

Affordable air travel started with the federal government handing out contracts to haul airmail to private companies using surplus WW1 airplanes.

Flash-forward 90 years, and the federal government is handing out contracts to private companies to haul supplies to the International Space Station.

Why go to space? Cheap power, cheap metals, and because, well, it's there, and somebody else is going to go there eventually, why not us?

What a long strange clip it's been

2010-02-17T13:56:00.002-07:00

20 years of Photoshop.

I jumped in around v2.0, and I can completely understand this comment about version 4.0,

"Loyal users of Photoshop were not amused with the redesign, the common question from the community being 'Why did you break Photoshop?'."

Yeah, but on the other hand, we got adjustment layers and macros and that was very, very nice.

Think that PDF email attachment is safe to open?

2010-02-17T09:26:00.001-07:00

Think again.

"PDF exploits are usually the first ones attempted by attackers," said Mary Landesman, a ScanSafe senior security researcher, referring to the multi-exploit hammering that hackers typically give visitors to malicious Web sites. "Attackers are choosing PDFs for a reason. It's not random. They're establishing a preference for Reader exploits."

This is a tad scary for me, as I tend to trust PDF's over Microsoft Office documents (and don't EVEN try to send me a .exe file). The important takeaway here is: Don't open any attachments you didn't know were coming to you. Period.

Tech Support Barbie

2010-02-16T10:26:00.001-07:00

No, really.

Head. Wall. Bang. Repeat.

2010-02-09T11:30:00.003-07:00

Further proof that the music industry still doesn't get it.

"According to the report, Warner CEO Edgar Bronfman, Jr. claims that the pricing increase has been a "net positive" for the company as it sees the music download business maturing, but acknowledges that raising music prices 30% during a recession may not have been a smart move." (emphasis mine)

And there's today's entry in the Understatement Hall of Fame. Pricing is a measure of value to the customer, and the music industry has a (very) inflated sense of their own self-worth. How much is Beyonce's latest album worth to me? Jack and squat. But, say, a remastered version of Kind of Blue, with video interviews and behind-the-scenes photos, all wrapped up in one nice digital package? Lots.

There's a game on as well?

2010-02-07T09:56:00.002-07:00

Let's face it: A significant amount of people will judge The Super Bowl not on the quality of the football, but on the quality of the ads. ComputerWorld has listed of 10 of the better tech-related Super Bowl ads, but for my money, this EDS ad is still the best (so far).

AT&T makes the right call

2010-02-04T09:20:00.003-07:00

... and opens up the Slingplayer mobile app to stream TV over 3G.

Between this and finally allowing VoIP over 3G, AT&T is making a play to become the leading wireless mobile data provider. The mobile companies may hate it, as this means they'll be losing their cash cow of restrictive wireless calling plans, but wireless data is the future of the mobile phone industry. The iPhone's ability to download Google maps or keep my email current from anywhere there's a signal is as valuable to me as it's ability to make a phone call, and the mobile phone company that gives people the wireless data pipe they want/need with as few restrictions as possible will be the leader in the mobile industry for years to come.

Cringley on the iPad

2010-01-28T13:21:00.003-07:00

"It feels like another Segway, which sure hasn’t changed the way people move on the Earth."

As much as I'd like to disagree with him, I can't. The fact is, the iPad does a lot of nice things, but it doesn't do any one thing really, really well. It doesn't have the iPod Touch's portability, the expandability and computing power of a MacBook and lacks a phone (ok, it does have Skype, but still...) so it isn't an iPhone.

But what does seem interesting, though, is that it has a built-in version of iWork, and with the always-on-anywhere functionality of MobileMe, it comes pretty close to my idea of the data-centric computer: Type up a document on your iPad, send it to the cloud (or sync it with your main computer) and work on what you want, when you want to, at least if you're in 3G range or at a WiFi hotspot.

Wal-Max?

2010-01-12T15:27:00.003-07:00

Wal-Mart may become to wireless what they are to retail.

...the gist of a rumor coming out of AndroidGuys today that says Sprint is working on a deal with Walmart to install WiMAX cells on all (yes, all) of its locations, a move that would give it a significant boost in national coverage while presumably lowering infrastructure costs significantly.

Wal-Mart revolutionized retail by lowering distribution costs and dramatically improving logistics. Why not do the same with the overpriced and under-serviced wireless industry?

Apple and Google and the web vs...

2010-01-11T12:10:00.002-07:00

Robert Scoble is partially right: The mobile workspace battle currently isn't between Apple's iPhone and Google's Android platform, it's between platforms that are web and developer friendly and platforms that aren't.

Apple and Google’s devices are all web friendly. They are easy to use to pull up information from the web. But most of the world’s phones aren’t that way. Go to any cell phone store and try pulling up a web browser on them. Google and Apple’s products make it simple. Most of the others make it very hard, and even if you succeed you probably have trouble navigating the web, or are faced with a dinky small screen.

It’s worse than that if you compare app platforms. At CES last week I met an exec at Research In Motion, the folks that make the Blackberry. He bragged to me that they were building their own Twitter and Facebook clients. I didn’t get the bragging and asked him “so I guess you aren’t trying to build a platform, then?” I explained to him that if you build your own apps that signals to your third-party developers that you want them to go away and work on something else because you’re demonstrating that you’re very willing to take the best opportunities away from them.

However, as evidenced by Windows Mobile quick disappearance, the war between web-friendly devices and everyone else will be won by Apple and Google, but who will win the war after that?

Virtual Estate

2010-01-06T14:29:00.003-07:00

Behold, the most valuable space on the internets.

Google's running ads for Chrome and the Nexus on it's home page now. Whatever happened to all the crass capitalism popping up only on the results page, and how long will it be before Google.com ends up looking like another AOL?

Reef-er Madness

2010-01-05T12:07:00.002-07:00

Dave Winer has an interesting idea: Technology as a coral reef.

"Scattered throughout tropical seas are coral reefs that started when a ship sank and sea creatures made it their home. Then the predators of those creatures started hanging out, and their predators, all the way up the food chain. Eventually, if the ocean climate was right, a coral reef would appear, much larger than the wrecked ship that started it all."

I like this metaphor because it easily explains the eco-system of applications that spring up around a given product. Windows has many apps out there to keep it secure and stable, the iPod has spawned countless other companies to support it, and the eco-system of Amazon.com ranges from IMDB to cloud computing to affiliate marketing to warehousing services for everyone.

I just know that something good is 'bout to happen

2009-12-30T19:58:00.003-07:00

Apple is hosting a major media event in San Francisco on January 26th, and will most likely be (finally) announcing a new tablet computer.

Can't. Wait.

I lurves me my iPhone, but this could be a game-changer for the entire computer industry.

And now here's the Utah Saints to sing the title of today's post.

The bar is now raised

2009-12-23T13:26:00.002-07:00

I lurves me my iPhone, but if these are truly the specs for the new Google phone, I am intrigued.

512MB RAM, 512MB ROM, included 4GB microSD card, expandable to 32GB
5 megapixel camera with LED flash and mechanical autofocus
3.7″ WVGA AMOLED screen — in other words, as big as the Droid and brighter
Worldwide GSM/EDGE, but 3G only on T-Mobile in the US (supports 2100, 1700 and 900 frequencies, meaning Europe should be covered)
1GHz Qualcomm chip — if accurate, that would make the Nexus One one of the fastest — if not the fastest — smartphones on the market.
Wi-Fi A/B//G/N
Bluetooth 2.1
GPS
Accelerometer

A 5.2 megapixel camera with flash and autofocus in a PHONE? Nikon, Canon, etc. better get on the ball and start making some co-branding deals with Nokia, etc, if they ever want to sell a consumer camera again.

The honest spammer

2009-12-23T11:32:00.002-07:00

Caution: Do Not Try This At Home

So what happens if you send out a spam-like email promising someone $10,000 dollars, and then follow it up with an actual briefcase full of cash? An interesting social experiment, that's what.

I just hope this doesn't result in 22,000 emails in my inbox promising me the exact same thing.

You deserve a break today

2009-12-18T12:26:00.002-07:00

So get your laptop and get on your way to McDonald's (wifi).

Beginning in mid-January, McDonald's restaurants nationwide will remove the fee for Wi-Fi Internet access, instantly becoming one of the largest providers of free access in the country.

McDonald's customers have 'consistently asked for' free Wi-Fi, a company official says, and research shows it'd prompt them to spend more on food.

About 11,000 of the more than 13,000 U.S. locations will offer free Wi-Fi under an arrangement with Dallas-based AT&T Inc., said David Groom, chief information officer for McDonald's USA.

Why? Here's why.

But (McDonald's CIO) Groom said McDonald's research showed consumers would spend more on food and drink if they did not have to pay to surf the Web.

Now if only they'd get some food and drink worth consuming..

All the news that's fresh to print

2009-12-09T09:51:00.003-07:00

Why does Google love Examiner.com?

Fresh content, and lots of it.

"It's not a trick," says (Examiner.com CEO Rick) Blair. "We have almost 25,000 writers posting 3,000 original articles per day." Examiners take seminars on writing headlines, writing in the third person and making full use of social media, all of which are Google manna. But Blair thinks it's mostly the scale of the operation that makes Examiner.com articles so attractive to search engines, from which more than half of the site's traffic comes. That is, by stocking the lake with so many fish every day Examiner.com increases the chances the Google trawlers will haul one of theirs up.

Defend the brand

2009-12-09T08:28:00.003-07:00

Google is going after work-at-home scammers that are using its name to rope in the dupes.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based Google provided other names users should be wary of: Google Adwork, Google ATM, Google Biz Kit, Google Cash, Earn Google Cash Kit, Google Fortune, Google Marketing Kit, Google Profits, The Home Business Kit for Google, Google StartUp Kit, and Google Works.

More power to them.

In case you've been off the internet for the past year, these scams offer a substantial work-from-home salary from Google, but what they are really doing is asking for money up front for the most basic training in using Google Adwords.

Any hack that uses duct tape is, by default, a good hack

2009-12-02T11:16:00.003-07:00

And a hack that uses duct tape and an iPhone is twice as good.

People won't talk to you if they don't like you

2009-12-02T10:49:00.002-07:00

Durh. (via Don)

If marketers need a concrete example that social media can't cure their ills, look no further than college football's Bowl Championship Series. Two weeks ago, the BCS took to Facebook and Twitter and was immediately pummeled by thousands of angry college-football fans. The BCS learned quickly that if your product is hated, social media might not be the place for you.

Social media is a conversation, and if you've ticked off someone lately, they'll let you know. The BCS has a great opportunity to learn from Dell's example and listen to your customers. I'd be willing to be that it's not that people hate the BCS in and of itself, it's that their current ranking system still rewards pre-season polls and their utter refusal to implement an end-of-season playoff is what's got people upset.

It's not your organization/business, it's what you do (or don't do) that gets people worked up.

How to write for new media

2009-11-28T18:56:00.002-07:00

Michael Arrington gets it (as well he should)

One of my favorite habits of journalists is that they refuse to state an opinion. Instead, they find a source to say whatever it is they want said and then quote them. And when I say “favorite,” what I really mean is that I hate it.

The story the journalist writes has the look of objectivity but really it’s just the same as if the journalist wrote what she or he meant, directly, in the first place. A gold star journalist will then find a “balancing” quote from someone else, often the person or entity being attacked. “When did you stop beating your wife,” etc.

I prefer to just skip all that nonsense and get right to the meat of a matter. And most of my favorite bloggers do the same. None of us have the audacity to think that we are your only news source. You can find other opinions elsewhere, and judge them on their merits, too.

To quote W. Eugene Smith, be subjective, but be objective about your subjectivity.

Head. Wall. Bang. Repeat.

2009-11-22T21:07:00.003-07:00

Rupert Murdoch doesn't get it. I mean really, really, doesn't get it. And for that matter, neither does Microsoft.

Rupert Murdoch’s crusade to blame Google for the failing newspaper business model continues today, as it emerges that News Corp has conducted talks with Microsoft about de-indexing the company’s sites from Google and (presumably) being paid to include them in Bing instead.

All this does is ensure that News Corp will be excluded from the conversation, driving less traffic to their sites and making them even more irrelevant.

Jeff Jarvis, on the other hand, does get it, and has the numbers on his side as well.

The new media economy is an economy of abundance and not scarcity. Information and opinion can be had from any one of a million websites and we, the consumer, are the ones who assign the relevance and do the contextualizing for our lives. Newspapers and magazines have done a horrible job adapting to this new reality and are now paying the price for it.

The deer now have guns. We, the consumers of news, can now shoot back, and the newspapers that will thrive in this environment will be the ones who figure out how to get into the ammunition business.

It's not the camera

2009-11-20T16:15:00.001-07:00

... it's the skill (or lack thereof) of the photographer.

So true.

2009-11-20T13:29:00.002-07:00

It's a tad (alright, more than a tad) geeky. But for those who get it, it's hilarious.

Went camping this weekend...

2009-10-25T17:41:00.004-07:00

... and Chase Jarvis is right: The best camera is the one you have with you (in this case, my iPhone).

Windows 7 Launches today

2009-10-22T15:08:00.002-07:00

And the countdown for Windows 8 ("This time it'll work right, we promise!") has begun.

View Camera simulation? Yep, there's an app for that.

2009-10-16T09:14:00.002-07:00

The iPhone is rapidly turning into a photographer's best friend. (iTunes link).

Makes sense. Picture-taking these days is a two-step process: You take the photos with your camera and then work on them with your computer.

Why not combine the two processes into one single device? True, you won't get professional-level results of it (for now) because of processor and imager constraints, but how long will that last given the pace of chip development?

Permission marketing FAIL

2009-10-15T15:00:00.001-07:00

Memo to Toyota: Opting in for email doesn't mean setting up a campaign that makes your customers worry about whether they're being stalked by a madman from Great Britain.

It's the data, stupid

2009-10-15T12:34:00.002-07:00

Computers aren't valuable as objects, they're valuable because of what they can do with data.

Period. Full stop.

A computer without data is utterly worthless: It doesn't even make a good boat anchor, and when your data moves to the cloud, it's the cloud that becomes valuable and not the device that's used to access it.

Unless, of course, that data can only be accessed by one device, like the Sidekick. Then you have two points of failure. You can't get to your data from your Sidekick, and you can't get to your data from any other device. Your data is not your own anymore, it belongs to the cloud.

Heaven help you if the cloud fails you.

Streisand was never this skinny

2009-10-08T12:17:00.003-07:00

The Streisand Effect: When your unreasonable demand comes back to haunt you.

And Ralph Lauren is finding out just how bad it can get.

What are the odds that because of this notoriety (and that outrageously stupid Photoshop), Ralph Lauren will go out of their way to make sure their 2010 Fall Campaign will feature real, normal-sized models?

Out to lunch

2009-10-05T12:33:00.002-07:00

Gourmet Magazine goes Tango-Uniform.

This is somewhat of a surprise, but then again, no. Magazines are suffering thru the same transition that's killing off newspapers by the dozen, so seeing big name periodicals go buhbye should surprise us, no matter what the medium.

How to win friends and gain retweets

2009-09-27T17:30:00.001-07:00

If you're got something to say, say it without semicolons. And say it on Friday at 4pm.

Pick your poison

2009-09-22T10:47:00.001-07:00

Cash machine

2009-09-15T13:48:00.002-07:00

Facebook has achieved what so many Web 2.0 startups have failed to do: They have positive cash flow.

Lesson to be learned here? Rupert Murdoch jumped the gun and spent a gazillion dollars for MySpace, which made a profit (barely) a few years ago but is now getting clobbered by Facebook, and the last payment from Google is looming for MySpace. Can MySpace be profitable without Google's cash? I doubt it.

Sometimes, it's good to be #2.

The missing thing

2009-09-08T13:56:00.001-07:00

Everyone's chattering about what Apple will roll out tomorrow, but one of the things I've not heard anyone talk about is support for Flash in the iPhone/iTouch.

Now that Nintendo has updated the Wii with a new version of Flash Lite, maybe Apple will be next to join the party.

Money shot

2009-09-07T10:32:00.003-07:00

Annie Leibowitz is in a world of financial hurt, and to make matters worse, she's getting sued for plagiarism.

An Italian photographer is suing celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz, claiming that she used his pictures without gaining his permission.

The photographer, Paolo Pizzetti, claims that Leibovitz used pictures that he had taken in Rome and Venice and used them in a coffee company's 2009 calender, passing them off as her own work.

Proving yet again that there are shooters who are good at photography and shooters who are good at business, but rare is the shooter who is good at both.

Another nail in the heart

2009-08-26T20:41:00.002-07:00

Jeff Jarvis continues to document the slow, painful death of print journalism. I used to spend hours devouring all the sections of the newspaper, now I have NetVibes and dozens of RSS feeds.

And yes, the title is a Squeeze reference.

Revenue Stream

2009-08-17T11:32:00.002-07:00

Take a MacBook, a digital camera, a cheap inkjet printer and some Ikea shower curtains, and what do you have?

A DIY photobooth for wedding guests.

How many event shooters and wedding photographers could benefit from doing this themselves (and charging a modest (or immodest) fee) rather than having a guest/attendee show up and do it for them?

C. Ignore it until it goes away

2009-08-07T14:59:00.002-07:00

"Hollywood studios are split over Redbox, the $1-per-night DVD rental kiosk company: They could supply it with cheap wholesale discs and ride its massive growth, or starve it in the hopes of preserving higher-priced purchases."

The question isn't whether $1 rentals will starve purchases, the question is how long will $1 rentals of physical products last once other available options become more widespread.

Choosing between cheap DVD rentals or higher-priced DVD sales in today's world is like choosing between Maxell XLIIS or TDK SA in 1992: A change was coming that would make such choices completely irrelevant.

Searching for bias

2009-08-06T11:21:00.002-07:00

Uh-oh, Microsoft, not a good way to build confidence in your newly-revamped search engine.

A search on Bing for the phrase, "Why is Windows so expensive?" returned this as the top link....
"Why are Macs so expensive."
That's right. You're not hallucinating. That was the top response on Bing to a question about the price of Windows.

I was tempted for a few weeks to use Bing as a backup to Google results, but not anymore.

The straw that broke the carrier's back

2009-08-01T13:52:00.002-07:00

Does Apple/AT&T's rejection of Google voice signify the beginning of the end of mobile phone service as we know it?

Maybe.

I don't use Google Voice, but I do love me my iPhone. With the FCC looking into this, it could finally cut the subsidized phone/expensive service model we're looked into here and open up the mobile phone world to real competition.

Monetize the Audience, not the Content

2009-07-31T13:32:00.002-07:00

Nicely put.

When you play by Google's rules, it's the links that count, and what makes those links important is who is reading the linked content.

This is nothing new. The print version of the Wall Street Journal has high ad rates because it has a desirable audience that stretches around the world. Why not turn your daily readers into something that creates value for your organization, rather than just use them to sell more and more adspace?

An application in search of a solution

2009-07-31T10:10:00.002-07:00

45% of advertisers believe in Twitter, 69% of consumers don't get it.

Sounds about right. I like Twitter and do use it, but it's not for everybody: After all, most people don't blog, either, so the chances of Twitter becoming as ubiquitous as SMS are pretty slim.

But, as a means to hit a narrow market of digital nomads or as way to get breaking news before anyone else, Twitter's future is looking pretty good.