The Revision

I own John Sculley's autobiography, and I recall that it included a statement along the lines of "marketing is theater."

Certainly you can get a lot of press out of holding an event with a capital E, and Sculley's former employer isn't the only one who knows this. Just a few days ago LeBron James, who has been scrutinized for months over his basketball future, participated in a prime time event commonly referred to as The Decision.

Now Sculley's former employer is getting into the act. All Things Digital:

Apple (AAPL) is holding an invitation-only press conference Friday July 16 at its Cupertino headquarters. In an e-mailed invitation the company offered few details beyond the event’s topic: the iPhone 4.

No more details were provided, but speculation is certainly running rampant, given how Apple iPhone 4 news has dominated the tech press since...well, for about as long as LeBron James news has dominated the sports press. Even I'm writing about the iPhone 4, most recently here.

Now some might fault Apple for holding an invitation-only press conference. However, as I noted:

...frankly just about ALL press conferences these days are invitation-only. I can't think of the last time that a business leader or politician opened themselves up to questions from ANYBODY.

The reason is obvious. If Steve Jobs or Steve Ballmer or Barack Obama or Sarah Palin or whoever literally opened up the floor to EVERYONE - Helen Thomas, Sacha Baron Cohen, me - then there's a greater chance that the questioning may result in an Incorrect Answer. Now I don't know who was invited to this Apple event and who wasn't, but you can bet that Apple - just like any other entity about to be subjected to questioning - is going to make every effort to make sure that the questioners behave nicely. Perhaps there will be nice munchies. Perhaps there will be pulsating music.

And you can bet there's going to be mystery. Any leaks regarding the contents of the prepared statement will be pursued by the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team. Any Apple executive who visits a yogurt shop will be in disguise.

As a result, there's going to be a lot of speculation over the next few days. I could go ahead and speculate myself, since my guesses will be just as uninformed as everyone else's guesses. Maybe Woz will do a dance routine. I don't know.

Steven Hodson has referred to a statement from Microsoft's Michael Turner comparing the iPhone 4 to Windows Vista. And it took months, if not years, for the Vista furor to die down. So don't expect the iPhone 4 issues to be forgotten by Saturday.

I am curious, however - if Apple announces some modification to the phone, will it be referred to as "The Revision"?

Opoprtunities to question the Washington Post

A couple of comments in the Daily Kos are of interest. Here's the first:

Why stop there? Why not outsource journalism to India or Mexico? You can get a thousand chinese who scan police blotters and press releases and twitter and facebook all over the US and write stories about it for a fraction of the price of a US journalist.

And the second:

Maybe you thought you were kidding? It's been done.

The second commenter referred to Pasadena Now's use of Indians to report local events in Pasadena. (See my most recent post on this.)

But they were commenting on a Daily Kos story about how the Washington Post is trying to get original content from bloggers:

You may remember this from a few months ago -- the Washington Post wanted to create a network of local bloggers to provide content for the Washington Post. It was an unpaid gig, but bloggers would offer up a couple of paragraphs on the Post website, and readers could click through to the blogger's site to read the rest of the piece.

Well, it hasn't turned out that way....

In short, the Post has created a "workflow plan" requiring the bloggers to be on call on certain dates to provide original content, it's encouraging them to do original reporting, and it's even begun assigning stories to them.

Whatever you may say about James Macpherson, at least he PAYS his reporters.

And Macpherson would have a sharp enough eye to catch this item in the first comment:

Is jounalism something that is so simple, that ANYONE could do it? Really? Scabs for journalism?

Well, perhaps jounalism isn't that simple. You need a Macpherson or someone to check for misspellings. I know.

How do we make decisions?

Jesse Stay recently wrote a post entitled Name a Better Phone. This post can be examined on a variety of levels, including the applicability of a phone to a person's particular needs. Jesse's post itself briefly discusses this.

At the same time my experience may be different than yours. You may need something cheaper. You may not need a camera. You may just need the phone features. All these factors go into the purchase of a cell phone.

Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins looked at this in much more detail. (H/T Louis Gray.)

Jesse, and many others who are defending Apple, contend that “the thing that people aren't realizing is that the definition of "phone" has changed for most of
society. For those buying these types of devices they're not looking for just a phone.”

Jesse went on to say that “It's stupid to not recommend it solely on phone functionality.”

I disagree with that statement strongly, as do the global usage numbers for mobile phones. The definition of phone has changed for a minority of society. Most people still use a phone for texting and calls -something for which a smartphone is not required (otherwise, we wouldn't call them smartphones, but phones, since no one would own a "dumb" phone).
Ask yourself: who reads Consumer Reports? Certainly not us, the early adopters.

It's people like my dad who read it religiously before making a purchase. People who use phones to, you know, make phone calls with.

While these thoughts align with some other things that have appeared here in the Empoprise-BI business blog, I want to focus upon another part of Jesse's post - namely, the METHOD that he used to make his phone decision.

Partialities aside, when you rate phones, as a whole, feature-by-feature, side-by-side with the other phones that I own, the iPhone 4 still outperforms them, hands down. Even Consumer Reports confirms that. The iPhone 4 takes better pictures than my Evo. It takes better video. The iPhone 4 has so much better screen quality than my Evo. I can edit my movies on my iPhone 4. The iPhone 4 lasts at least 3 times as long in battery life than my HTC Evo. The iPhone 4 has a better, more consistent application experience than my Evo. There’s simply no comparison on those features. The iPhone beats the Evo in user experience and simplicity (My 2 year old has issues with the Evo – he has no problem with my iPhone). It has better parental controls. It has a much smaller, easier-to-hold form factor. It has FaceTime, and before you say the Evo has apps that do that, the Evo has not integrated it into its Operating System and phone book, and that’s a huge difference.

Forget about the specifics here. What Stay did was to choose two products, list a number of attributes, and compare each product on the basis of the listed attributes. Actually, Stay wasn't the first person to do this; Consumer Reports initially did it, as Stay notes.

Now this sounds like a reasonable and superior way to do things. Set your evaluation criteria, take the two (or more) products and evaluate them against the criteria, and then let the superior solution just pop out of the process at the end. Now perhaps people can argue about the weighting of the various criteria (Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins' dad might assign a higher rating to "voice call quality" than Jesse Stay would), but there's no quibbling with the process.

Or is there?

Let's face it - we live in a world in which many people are deciding to use a particular web hosting service (or, conservely, to NOT use a particular web hosting service) because of a hot female race car driver. I'm not sure where Consumer Reports would put THAT on its charts.

And, conversely, we seem to use these non-logical methods for the bigger decisions. David Maister:

Michael Lovaglia, (a professor at the University of Iowa) proposed Lovaglia’s Law: The more important the outcome of a decision, the more people will resist using evidence to make it.

Maister continues:

I have always been fascinated by the fact that (in spite of what they teach us in school) logic, reason, rationality and sensible analysis seem to play so little part in human affairs – at the office, in our home lives, and elsewhere.

It sometimes seems as if, for all of us, nearly all the time, rhetoric triumphs over reason, personality over substance, politics over merits, neuroses over facts.

I’m not saying this as a complaint. I’m saying that it’s a more accurate critique of human affairs than the misleading interpretation we sometimes fool ourselves with – that our smarts (logic, reason and rationality) are what drive the world.

Bearing this in mind, I wonder how many of us are making decisions on the iPhone 4 based upon objective criteria (either "The iPhone 4 has a better feature set" or "The iPhone 4 performs poorly in the one feature that is really important to me"), and how many of us are making iPhone 4 decisions based upon other factors (Apple is cool, Apple is evil, Steve Jobs steals body parts from deserving people, Woz is a good dancer)?

Cutting your udder to spite your face

It's no secret that I'm not a big fan of most cost-cutting measures. While they look good on paper, they don't necessarily help the company to actually perform better, in part due to their negative effect on company morale.

But I think I've seen a cost-cutting measure that defies belief. Guess what an agricultural college is selling? Its cows.

The fields and long red barns at the University of Vermont will soon house fewer cows as low milk prices, high costs and budget cuts have forced the university to sell its herd....

The sales are taking place despite growing enrollment in agriculture programs. The herds are mainly used for faculty research.

Now there's an economic justification for the move:

The University of Vermont plans to sell its 255 Holsteins and have faculty do their work on private farms that could be paid $20,000 a year for three years, said Tom Vogelmann, dean of UVM's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The farmers would benefit from the added income, while researchers would have access to more cows, possibly in more modern facilities.

Of course, perhaps the students may end up bypassing the University of Vermont altogether, and just getting a job at the private farms instead.

On a bruised apple

While Louis Gray and Robert Scoble are debating the relative merits of iPhones vs. Android phones (see previous post), there's a lot of discussion about Consumer Reports' refusal to recommend the iPhone 4 because of antenna problems. (See Jesse Stay's views on the matter.) But whether you're talking about Apple's reaction to the iPhone 4 antenna discussion, or Steve Jobs' attitude toward porn, or the merits and demerits of the Gizmodo police raid, it's clear that an image of Apple is emerging in some quarters...and it's not a pretty image.

For example, take the memo that eSarcasm magically found: a memo from Apple's Tim Cook. Before I quote from the memo, let me present eSarcasm's standard disclaimer:

The story you're about to read is not (entirely) true. It is, however, more accurate than most things on network television.

With that, let's look at the memo. The memo that Dan Tynan - I mean Tim Cook wrote is so funny because it reflects what a lot of people are thinking. Excerpts:

* There is no problem with the iPhone 4′s antenna. There is no problem with the iPhone 4′s antenna. There is no problem with the iPhone 4′s antenna. Are we all clear on that?

* Remember, at Apple we do not “hold press conferences,” we “host special events.” Anyone caught using the phrase “press conference” will find themselves interviewing over at Bebo.

* If any reporters manage to penetrate our anti-journalist shields and ask about alleged problems with the iPhone 4′s reception, please refer them directly to Randall Stephenson at AT&T. You know the drill.

More here.

Why there probably won't be a "CSI Orono"

I work in the biometric industry, and one of the things that we talk about a lot is something called "the CSI effect." I'm not at this year's IAI conference in Spokane, but I bet it's being discussed up there this week.

Basically, "the CSI effect" is an assumption by a layperson that everything that you see on TV shows is the exact truth. Taking my specialty of automated fingerprint identification systems as an example, someone who watches TV might assume that once a crime scene (latent) fingerprint is captured, you just scan it right into the system, wait thirty seconds, and watch a big ol' "HIT" message display on your computer screen. If they can do it that fast on TV, they can certainly do it that fast in real life, can't they?

But it goes well beyond that. Not only can someone assume that all of these forensic technologies are very quick, one may also assume that any crime scene investigator can call upon any of these technologies at any time, for any case. Thus when the real court cases arrive, the jurors are left wondering why the police didn't run DNA tests on the purse left by the jaywalker. After all, they'd run that test on TV.

So let's say that you see one of these shows on TV and decide that you want to go to school and major in forensics so that you can do things just like the TV stars do. If you go to the University of Maine at Orono and take a class from Irv Kornfield, you'll be in for a bit of a shock.

Kornfield has taught a wildly popular course on forensic science since 2003. While any number of crime scene investigation television dramas may pique students’ interest in the course, Kornfield quickly replaces slow-motion camera shots with cold, hard science. In fact, the first assignment of the year is to watch one of these shows and record the absurdities.

“I disabuse them of the notion that they can become crime scene investigators,” as no such position exists in the real world, Kornfield said.

And he has another surprise for his students.

Despite what the television shows depict, one of the main messages Kornfield wants his students to take home is that DNA evidence is only a piece of the puzzle when solving a crime.

“On its own, DNA is insufficient to decide if someone is guilty or innocent,” Kornfield said.

And Kornfield also shares something that I've known for over 15 years.

“In general, the people who commit crimes are not very smart.”

Hey, if they WERE smart, no company could make money selling automated fingerprint identification systems, could they?

(H/T Forensic Magazine. And let me make it explicitly clear for FCC disclosure purposes that I am employed by an automated fingerprint identification systems vendor.)

Yeah, but does Robbie Joyner have a blog?

I subscribe to a lot of shared feeds via Google Reader, and there was a particular item in my feed that had been shared by a bunch of people, including Rob Diana, Louis Gray, and Jesse Stay.

But before I talk about that item, I want to explain who Robbie Joyner is. From the entry in the Kevin and Bean Glossary:

Kevin’s neighbor as a child. Whenever the show interviews somebody who accomplished something at a young age, Kevin invariably pipes up that “When I was [that age] I was still throwing rocks at my neighbor Robbie Joyner.”

But Kevin did OK for himself (well, other than that little murder thing), despite the fact that he was (or so he claims) an underachiever at a young age.

The item that Diana, Gray, and Stay shared was written by Marshall Kirkpatrick, and it is entitled How To Quit Your Day Job & Become a Professional Tech Blogger. Kirkpatrick is someone who quit his day job and became a professional tech blogger. This is (part of) what he said:

Not so long ago, I was working at a convenience store, selling candy, soda, beer and lottery tickets. I had just graduated with an undergrad degree in political science and I discovered the world of blogging, RSS, etc. in the last few months I was in school. My plan was to do consulting for nonprofit organizations about how to use these new tools for research and promotion, but I had to pay the bills – thus the convenience store gig. Maybe you have a better job than that now – but I still think this is good advice.

After mentioning some things that he did (one of which I'll come back to a little later), Kirkpatrick wrote:

In blogging I tried to add unique value to conversations and I tried to do a good job at important little projects I started. Both Barb [Dybwad] and Marnie [Webb] ended up hiring me to write for them at Netsquared and at AOL’s Social Software Weblog, within just a few months of our having met face to face. Once I had both those gigs, I quit the day job at the convenience store.

Networking, projects, commenting...Kirkpatrick did all that stuff, as well as starting his own blog. The "How To" post links to the first blog post that Kirkpatrick wrote - one that described the goals of "Marshall's Web Tool Blog." Here's part of that first post:

What I intend to do is start a consulting and training business in the use of new web tools. Tools like...

* RSS - content syndication, push and pull
* Search - including automated search, metasearch and other search tools
* Blogs - easy web publishing
* Wikis - collaborative knowledge development
* Social bookmarking - popular cataloging of online content
* Podcasting - radio on demand/ MP3 content mixed with RSS syndication
* And anything else that's exciting and useful!

Read the rest here.

Kirkpatrick's first post was written on March 23, 2005. Let me share another post with you, written by someone else. This post appeared on October 14, 2003:

Why did synthetica start with fake bluegrass sounds? Why not? This is the Ontario Empoblog, or the blog for Ontario Emperor, which has nothing and everything to do with Canada, New Mexico, and Texas, but also California, which is a location in California. It exists in cyberspace, which is also synthetic.

The Ontario Empoblog may or may not touch on a variety of subjects, including music, poetry, poker, the supposed familial relationship between Brian Eno and Slim Whitman, the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop (1,121 - I checked), various comments about frogs, and the nature of nature.

Yes, people, I have been blogging longer than Marshall Kirkpatrick, since I wrote this post about a year and a half before Kirkpatrick wrote his first post. Now you'll note that Kirkpatrick's post is much more serious than my post, but THAT'S not the reason why Marshall Kirkpatrick is now a co-editor at ReadWriteWeb while I am the super-duper Senior Editor of Empoprises.

No, the reason why Kirkpatrick has been much more successful than me is because he has been more focused on his goals. For example:

[T]he Social Software Weblog one was where I had the best opportunity for visibility in the larger tech blogging world. The pay there was miserable, it was something like $4 or $5 per post, I don’t remember. I worked that job as hard as I could, though, writing 3 to 5 posts a day. I also had another job writing as a subcontractor for an international currency speculation blog, writing 6 posts about currency speculation every weekday before 9am PST. That was nuts. So I was writing about 10 posts a day, of various lengths and about different topics, at three different places.

Forget for the moment that he was willing to take the low pay; just look at the sheer number of posts that he wrote. Now I'll confess that I'm writing this post on a Saturday afternoon, and I've written a couple of other posts on this Saturday, when I've had a little bit of time to do so. But would I be willing to wake up very early in the morning and write six posts about currency speculation? Probably not.

So I'm not as dedicated as Marshall Kirkpatrick, and despite my 1 1/2 year head start, I'm not as experienced as Kirkpatrick. But I can look at what I have done.

In the nearly seven years that I've been blogging, I've created a number of blogs, publicized a solution to a technical issue regarding the Motorola Q, made one of Robert Scoble's top lists (under my old Ontario Emperor pseudonym), wrote a blog post about Shel Israel's departure from FastCompany that became part of a huge multi-pronged conversation about said departure (links here), wrote a number of things about Oracle OpenWorld that were covered by Oracle itself, and became the leading online authority about former sportscaster Tracy Simers (list of links here).

But those aren't necessarily the things that excite me about my time blogging. I still love the Annie Jacobsen parody I wrote in July 2004, the fake David Byrne/Laurie Anderson collaboration I discussed in November 2003, my August 2006 re-evaluation of I Chronicles 20, and my December 2006 share of the "Gerald Ford was eaten by wolves" sketch.

And yes, I have addressed the whole Brian Eno-Slim Whitman thingie on occasion.

And as for Robbie Joyner, I don't know what happened to him. Maybe he became a major league catcher.

Block-Head (business)

Today I used our corporate instant messaging software to discuss Oracle Technology Network's efforts to demonstrate the depth of Oracle's stack.

In other words, I talked about playing with building blocks.

Block-Head (music)

Opoprtunities for further investigation

In the course of reading and responding to an eSarcasm post on 12 unintentionally dirty headlines, I had the chance to revisit a February 14, 2009 post and a follow-up post from February 19, 2009 on PasadenaNow's use of Indians to provide local content. Here's a recent example of PasadenaNow content, compiled "from staff reports":

Pasadena’s incoming police chief Phil Sanchez was sworn in Monday night in the courtyard at Pasadena City Hall before a crowd of law enforcement, city officials and community members.

Sanchez, 53, succeeds Bernard Melekian, who retired last November. Like Melekian, Sanchez formerly served with the Santa Monica Police Department, where he was the deputy chief of police.

“Phil Sanchez has a strong background in police management and a reputation as a leader who is sensitive to community issues,” Pasadena City Manager Michael J. Beck said last month when announcing Sanchez’s selection. “I am confident he will be well-received in the Pasadena community and the Pasadena Police Department.”

Sanchez says he intends to begin working right away with Pasadena Police Department personnel while becoming actively involved in the community.

Now it's not possible to identify whether the "staff" who compiled this article were all-Indian, all-American, or a mixture of the two. Why not? Because it's possible to write an article with this level of detail (I only printed a small excerpt) without ever having set foot in Pasadena.

Now perhaps some will complain that PasadenaNow got all of its information from a press release. Well, take a look at what the real journalists do.

Take this L.A. Now article from the Los Angeles Times...or, "from the metro staff of the Los Angeles Times and KTLA 5 News / Fox 5 San Diego." The article, which talks about vandalism at Michael Jackson's grave, includes this paragraph:

Photographs posted on the celebrity website TMZ.com showed the messages, including “Miss you sweet angel!” and “Keep the dream alive.”

(Incidentally, Forest Lawn is cleaning the graffiti up - this obviously isn't Jim Morrison's grave.)

But look at what the so-called "real journalists" do - in cooperation with two television stations, a newspaper article relies on a website as a primary source of information.

PasadenaNow can do that easily.

P.S. In case you noticed something wrong with the title of this post, do your research.

In which I talk about blogging styles

For better or worse, writers often develop a distinctive style that is easy to recognize. For example, Dave Barry often uses the phrase "I am not making this up."

Writers who are not as well-known as Dave Barry often have their own distinctive writing styles. If you've read Robert Scoble, you know that he has a very distinctive writing style. And if you've read Steven Hodson, you know that he has a different, but distinctive writing style. As a test, let's see if you can tell the two of them apart. Here's number one:

Currently, [Whole Foods] gives a free bottle of water on a first check-in -- a very welcome freebie during this heat wave. Last week, the offer was a free product on a 10th check-in. This is really taking advantage of the Foursquare platform -- a great way to use a location-based service to drive a lot of repeat store visitation with minimal investment. I can't wait to see where Foursquare takes this a year from now as its user base grows, as the marketing elements of the platform become more robust, and as marketers and agencies get more familiar and creative with its capabilities.

And here's number two:

What is it with tech people? For the fourth time this month I've been to a totally inappropriate venue for an industry function.

The strangest thing is how organisers keep picking expensive, fashionable bars. All of this is fine if the organisers are paying. However it's a usually a pay bar so it's the guests who pay for the organiser's bad choices....

But the kicker was the bar was a disused bank vault. Perfect for demonstrating wireless broadband applications.

Alas, dear readers, I have played a trick on you. Neither Scoble nor Hodson wrote the items that I just quoted. The first item, the one that enthused about Foursquare and how it can work with businesses, was actually written by Dave Morgan. I encourage you to read the entire post, especially if you - like Dave Morgan and myself - were former members of the Radio Shack Battery Club.

The second item, which promoted practicality at corporate events and even spelled "organisers" in the wrong (i.e. non-American) way, was written by someone called Cranky Tech. I don't think that Hodson makes a habit of going to industry functions anyway.

However, my trick does illustrate the point. There are people such as Robert Scoble and Dave Morgan who are enthusiastic about ways in which new technologies can be applied to businesses, and there are people such as Steven Hodson and Cranky Tech (and Loren Feldman) who caution that practical business applications come first, and that fluff is a waste of time. But even within these groupings, you can tell one from another. Steven Hodson, for example, doesn't do puppet shows like Loren Feldman does.



And if you really want to scratch the bottom of the barrel, you get down to me and my writing style - and yes, I have one. One distinctive style element that I've used for years is to bold and italicize long stretches of quoted material. In fact, when I switched my blogging identity from "Ontario Emperor" to "John E. Bredehoft," one of my former readers (I think it was Shawn Zehnder Lea if I remember correctly) could immediately recognize me because of my distinctive quoting style.

And, of course, I'm fond of "In which I..." blog post titles, such as In which I lose Louis Gray's "feeling betrayed" challenge and In which I drop color saturation and lomography. The latter post, incidentally, includes a very brief quote from an e-mail, the quote being in "blogger Associated Press" style:

lowering...saturation of...colors

And while I haven't successfully persuaded the entire world to lower its color saturation, I have managed to maintain a consistent blogging style.

Alas, it may be a little TOO consistent. My four Empoprises blogs use the same Blogger template, and therefore look VERY similar to the casual reader, and even the not-so-casual reader. Caroline (@thevixy) addressed this comment to me on FriendFeed:

Ur entire blog changed. Your doing music marketing now?

Apparently Caroline had never seen my Empoprise-MU music blog before, happened upon it, and thought that I had changed all of the content on THIS blog (the business blog).

So it appears that I do have to do a LITTLE surgery on my blogs to make them more business-y or music-y or Inland-y or Buzztimey as the case may be. Add to the Empoprises to-do list, along with my project to adopt the personae of much more popular bloggers - or at least their stereotypes.

Hi! Who are you?

Phones and time from @glenc @itafroma @akiva

Perhaps you saw my Sunday post, which mused on the changes between the phone of 1950 and the phone of 2010. Based in part upon Glen Campbell's post "The iPhone is not a phone,", I wondered conversely if the iPhone WAS a phone and all those old things that were stuck to walls were not phones.

Campbell himself offered a comment:

It's useful to look at it from either direction, isn't it? The larger problem is that language doesn't keep up with technology. A "book" that I read on my iPhone's Kindle App is exceedingly remote from that which first rolled off Gutenberg's press, though they have, at least metaphorically, much in common. No one likes to use the term "personal digital assistant" any more, though that's perhaps the closest term we have for it.

So I guess that Campbell and I can both agree that definitions of items can change over time.

But then Mark Trapp shared an item from the Daily Galaxy that cast even that assumption in doubt. The Daily Galaxy article was entitled Is Time Disappearing from the Universe?

Here's an excerpt:

Scientists previously have measured the light from distant exploding stars to show that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. They assumed that these supernovae are spreading apart faster as the universe ages. Physicists also assumed that a kind of anti-gravitational force must be driving the galaxies apart, and started to call this unidentified force "dark energy".

However, Professor José Senovilla, Marc Mars and Raül Vera of the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, and University of Salamanca, Spain have proposed an alternate thesis:

They propose that there is no such thing as dark energy at all, and we’re looking at things backwards. Senovilla proposes that we have been fooled into thinking the expansion of the universe is accelerating, when in reality, time itself is slowing down. At an everyday level, the change would not be perceptible. However, it would be obvious from cosmic scale measurements tracking the course of the universe over billions of years. The change would be infinitesimally slow from a human perspective....

The team's proposal, published in the journal Physical Review D, dismisses dark energy as fiction. Instead, Senovilla says, the appearance of acceleration is caused by time itself gradually slowing down, like a clock with a run-down battery.

So, in essence, the idea that things will continue to change over time is itself in doubt.

However, the...um...timeframe for this change is pretty long, so I'm not really worried about it just yet. In fact, I was reminded of a conversation that I had decades ago with Bob Hunt on a similar topic. We were discussing some scientific theory about the end of the universe. When Bob realized that the scientists thought that the end of the universe would occur in billions of years, rather than millions of years, he said, "Whew!"

I should also note that Akiva Moskovitz also contributed to the FriendFeed discussion on Mark Trapp's share. Akiva supplemented the theory from the Spanish universities with a comment from the famed Dr. Steve Miller (and subsequently cited by Dr. Seal Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel:

Time keeps on slippin'...

Ronnie James Deodorant and Other Smelly Subjects (DigiScents, Upstream Biosciences)

Early one morning, a bad marketing thought popped into my brain. Before tweeting it, I thought I'd check and see if the bad marketing thought had popped into the brains of anyone else.

It had.

IncredibleDisplay's Ronnie James Deodorant:



rocker725's Dio Deodorant:



Now these are parodies, not real products. Luckily for us, the content creators didn't couple their concepts with this real product, which was announced in 1999:

With the DigiScents technology, content developers will be able to add customized scents to enhance the user experience, motivate sales, and more. For instance, a shopper visiting a scent-enhanced cosmetics Web site could sample the newest perfumes; a travel Web site could add the scent of the ocean to promote a Caribbean vacation package; a game player could solve an interactive murder mystery using scented clues. DigiScents' technology includes both software and hardware components.

Later, when compiling its list of the 10 worst products of the decade, CNET put this idea into context.

In the heady days of the dot-com boom, heady scents threatened to take over the Internet. Imagine not only being assaulted by horrible MIDI files and pop-up ads but also the wafting aromas of the Web.

The product, eventually called iSmell, didn't come out in 1999, and I'm not sure that it was ever formally released. But that didn't stop DigiScents company co-founder Joel Lloyd Bellenson from describing the product's potential impact to Wired:

Scentography promises a vast extension of sensory space, with profound implications. "We've lost touch, as a species, with our sense of smell," Bellenson says, speaking so rapidly that his words run together. "Like, our noses are not on the ground anymore, because we don't have to hunt for food. Scent became an art perpetuated by the big fragrance houses in Europe, and the average person was not empowered. You cannot create a new smell, communicate about it, talk about it. But now we can change that! Our mission is to make scent accessible to everyone! We're giving back to humanity our ability to communicate using scent!"

But humanity apparently didn't take the gift, and iSmell was a stinker that now turns up on bad product lists.

If only they had gotten a heavy metal star to promote it.

P.S. Where are they now? Unfortunately, Ronnie James Dio is no longer with us, having passed away on May 16.

Joel Lloyd Bellenson and Dexster L. Smith moved on to Upstream.

Upstream Biosciences Inc. is a biotechnology company, founded in 2004. We discover, develop, and license genetic based diagnostics for cancer susceptibility and drug response. Our proprietary data mining pipeline enables us to locate and analyze genetic variations in the regions of DNA ‘upstream’ of the gene, the ‘gene switches,’ which control the quantities and timing of expression of the genes and proteins important to disease and drug response.

Our initial candidate genetic predisposition markers are targeted against liver, prostate, ovarian and thyroid cancer with a market potential of over one billion dollars and can complement existing detection tests.

Upstream’s proprietary data mining pipeline and assay generate candidate genetic biomarkers.

But another page on the same website states:

OUR MANAGEMENT TEAM

Mike McFarland - sole director and officer

So what happened? Bellenson did sign the last SEC quarterly filing for the company on August 31, 2009 - a filing that documented a number of financial issues with the firm, including the statement that they owed over $500,000 to three company officers.

A December 2009 Form 8-K tells what happened next:

Following the continued downturn, low cash reserves, no available financing, and the commencement of litigation with TCF Ventures, our company was left with two available options. The first option was to restructure our company, including a change of its management and board of directors, and the second option was bankruptcy. As bankruptcy would effectively prevent our shareholders from realizing any value in our company, the board agreed to restructure our company. As a result, and following a write-down of the pharmaceutical business operated by Pacific Pharma, our wholly-owned subsidiary, we entered into the Asset Sale Agreement to transfer such assets as described below under the heading “Asset Sale Agreement”. Joel Bellenson and Dexster Smith then agreed to enter into return to treasury agreements and cancel the remaining stock held by them to treasury for no consideration. The entire board of directors and management resigned but not before appointing Mike McFarland as sole director and officer of our company.

Of course, these things can happen when you choose NOT to play it safe. The potential drawbacks are big, but the potential reward is also big. You could become the new singer in an established band and meet great success. Or, you could be involved with a couple of potentially lucrative companies and meet great failure.

(empo-tymshft) The iPhone *is* a phone - those old things attached to the wall are *not* phones

When I was growing up, a phone was something that was tied to a wall.

While this is still true for some people today, for many of us a phone is often something that you carry on your belt or in your purse.

Or is it?

Louis Gray and Robert Scoble have been having a friendly weekend battle over phone platforms. Gray, although an admirer of Steve Jobs, has decided to move toward the Android platform. Scoble, on the other hand, has stuck with Apple's iPhone platform. In the course of his post on the topic, Scoble mentioned the following:

I hate AT&T’s quality, but I don’t hate it enough to leave. I didn’t really understand that, but then I started keeping track of how often I use voice. On my phone I only use voice about 5% of the time I use my iPhone. Almost all the rest of the time I’m using it for Twitter, to read news, to interact with apps, to play games, to Facetime with my sons/wife, etc. In non-voice parts of using the iPhone AT&T’s lack of quality of service doesn’t matter at all. Most of the time I’m doing those kinds of things I’m on wifi anyway. To gain better voice quality, which I only use about 5% of the time, I’d have to give up a better experience on the web and in apps, which just isn’t acceptable to me.

In his post, Louis Gray made a similar point:

Most, thanks to my derogatory comments against AT&T (rightly deserved, I may add), thought I switched from my AT&T-fed iPhone to my Sprint contract on the HTC EVO and new HTC Hero because of the many frequent issues with the carrier. This is not true. Yes, AT&T has been dramatically underdelivering in terms of quality and functionality, but this did not drive me away from Apple as much as the lack of choice did. Not even the announcement of an imminent offering of a Verizon iPhone could have kept me on Apple.

But we have to hand it to Glen Campbell to say the one thing that Gray and Scoble implied, but didn't explicitly say. After reading about their experiences and thinking about his own, Glen Campbell wrote his own post. The title? "The iPhone is not a phone."

And the Android phones aren't phones either.

Even my not-so-smart env3 isn't a "phone" in the classic sense of the term. Sure, I use my phone for voice more than 5% of the time, but often I use it for things that I couldn't even have dreamed of back in the 1970s. I've already mentioned how I used it to find Wisk detergent.

I have another example. On Sunday afternoon I was meeting someone for dinner at a Japanese restaurant. The person that I was meeting obviously wanted to know where he was supposed to go. He called me (yes, via voice) on my cell phone to ask the name and address of the restaurant, and I told him that I'd call him back in a few minutes.

As it turned out, I didn't know the name and address of the restaurant either. All that I knew was that the restaurant was in Victoria Gardens, across the street from the AMC theater. (It turns out that this was the wrong restaurant, but that's another story.) After my voice call ended, I started my mobile web browser, went to mobile Google Maps, and typed "Japanese 91739" into the search box. That search gave me TWO Japanese restaurants on North Mainstreet, so I had to perform another search to find where the AMC theater was, and therefore figure out which of the two restaurants was actually across the street from the theater.

Sounds like something else to me. In essence, Glen Campbell is right when he says that the iPhone (or whatever) is not a phone.

Or is he?

Maybe those things that are still tied to the wall aren't phones. Perhaps they're voice communication devices, and NOT phones.

As technology evolves, the definitions of items can change. The thing that we thought of as a "computer" around 1950 is vastly different than most things that are called a "computer" in 2010. In fact, a valid argument can be made that the 1950 era item is not a computer because it doesn't have a pointing device, web access, or a reasonable amount of internal storage.

Similarly, the "television" of 1950 is vastly different than the "television" of 2010. Again, someone could argue that a cabinet in which the screen takes up a small portion of the entire device isn't really a television. Especially since it doesn't show color images or support connections to a satellite system.

So perhaps we can argue that Ma Bell's standard leased item is NOT a phone. Not only are you unable to transfer Ma Bell's data to another system - it doesn't even have any data for you to transfer to another system! And its input system is severely deficient - any REAL phone would at least allow you to enter letters such as A, B, and C. (And to tell the difference between an "A" and a "B.")

So perhaps Glen is wrong, and the iPhone IS a phone. Some of us just have a stunted understanding of what a "phone" is.

Liberté, Egalité and ...a TechCrunch Summer Pitch Battle?

I just ran across an announcement from the European side of TechCrunch.

As we’re postponing The Europas Awards for tech companies in Europe until after the Summer...we’re instead holding an event we’re calling “TechCrunch Summer Pitch Battle”.

It is on July 14 in London, 6.30pm at the new coworking space for startups, TechHub, Ground Floor, 76-80 City Rd, right by Old Street tube station.

Now when I saw that announcement, something immediately occurred to me.

Perhaps I should point out that my company is owned by a French company.

Do you see what I see? If you don't, let me tell you about another event that will be taking place on the same day, one Chunnel away:

France's national holiday commemorates the storming of the Bastille at the start of the French Revolution. Crowds line the Champs-Elysées for a military parade led by the President, and Parisians party until dawn as fireworks explode over the Trocadéro....

[T]he big parade on the Champs-Elysées sees jets fly in formation as top military brass march from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde. Bringing up the rear and receiving the loudest applause are the fire brigade, perhaps suffering from a hangover or two. It's wise to arrive early if you want to get a good view.

The partying continues all day and later thousands of people come together again at the Champ-de-Mars to watch the fireworks at the Trocadéro. On top of all that, most bars and clubs stage their own celebrations, so take your pick. If you're not in Paris, don't worry: every single village in France has their own dance, with champagne, fireworks, street fun and lots more. Everyone should take in at least one Bastille Day in their lives.

Unless, of course, you would prefer to go to a TechCrunch event in London.

Yeah, right.

I'd like to know what Loic Le Meur thinks of this, especially considering Michael Arrington's love of all things European.

Where's Wisk Detergent? CVS.

My not-so-smart phone, coupled with about.com, just proved to be very helpful.

My wife is a follower of Mary Hunt (we actually met Hunt at a lecture a couple of years ago), and was trying to find some Wisk Detergent to use as an ingredient in a cleaner publicized in one of Hunt's publications. She hadn't seen any Wisk previously, so we made a point of going to Wal-Mart to see if they had it. We figured that Wal-Mart would have a broad enough selection.

Unfortunately, the Wal-Mart in Upland, California didn't have Wisk.

Because we've been paying for Internet access on my not-so-smart phone, my wife figured that she'd put it to use and told me to search for information on Wisk.

I used mobile Google search and found a few results, including mentions that Wisk could be bought online at Amazon and CVS.



But I skipped those results in favor of a page entitled Where's Wisk Detergent? This page, written by Mary Marlowe Leverette at about.com, appeared to have a promising title.

Unfortunately, Mary didn't have a good answer to the question:

I wish I could tell you. Since my blog post on May 31 about Wisk 2x Ultra HE., I have been getting e-mails from southern Louisiana to Mesa, Arizona asking where to find Wisk. You can purchase Wisk online but I know that you want to find it locally. So, I've been trying to help.

Leverette tried contacting the PR firm for Wisk, as well as its manufacturer (Sun Products Company), but had no success.

On my phone, I kept on reading the page and began to look at the comments. If you are a blogger who doesn't believe in comments, you should change your tune. Interaction with your readers can often enhance the original post that you wrote. And that was true in this case.

The first thing that I learned from the comments was that Leverette wasn't the only person who couldn't find Wisk. Other people noted that they were having problems finding the product. But as I scrolled down, I found comment 21:

(21) dja says:

I am also very fond of Wisk detergent. Found this product listed on the CVS/Pharmacy site (formally Long’s Drugs. Will look for it the next time I am in the store. Hopeful in California!

Now I live in California, and there are two CVS pharmacies within a couple of miles of the Upland Wal-Mart. So we got in the car, drove to one of them (the Euclid & Foothill location, if you're curious), and found this super-duper 2X magical Wisk that my wife wanted.

Incidentally, in my initial phone search, I missed comment 5, which linked to Leverette's follow-up post, which mentioned Wisk availability at CVS stores on the EAST coast. However, it turns out that comment 21 provided information that was more specific to my case as a West Coast shopper. (And, on my phone, the information in comment 21 happened to be more accessible.)

So I left comment 22 at the original post:

(22) John E. Bredehoft says:

A big thank you to dja! We were in a Wal-Mart this morning in an unsuccessful attempt to find Wisk. My wife asked me to search on my not-so-smart phone, and I happened upon this page. We drove over to the CVS at Foothill & Euclid in Upland, California, and found Wisk detergent (both the 2X Ultra HE and another kind). I’m not sure about availability in other parts of the country, or even at other CVS stores, but at least it appears that it IS possible to find Wisk in a store.

I hope that this information proves helpful to someone - not only those who are fanatical about Wisk Detergent, but also those who are wondering whether comments can add value to a blog. They do.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to work on an upcoming post in my Empoprise-BI business blog - one about a former member of Black Sabbath. Rock on, Wisk lovers.

In which I lose Louis Gray's "feeling betrayed" challenge

I live in the Pacific time zone, and I timed my drive home Thursday evening so that I would be in my car at 6:00 pm, radio tuned to the Los Angeles ESPN radio station. I wanted to hear THE DECISION.

At 6:05 pm (according to my Google Voice logs), I received a phone call from a co-worker. Obviously not a basketball fan.

At 6:09 pm, I was off the phone, and the ESPN talking heads were still talking.

So anyways, eventually Jim Gray began talking to LeBron James and we all heard THE DECISION. James, with a heavy heart, decided to leave his home state Cleveland Cavaliers to seek a championship with the Miami Heat.

Thousands of miles away from Greenwich, Connecticut, Louis Gray began to draw a parallel with an event that occurred suddenly, last summer.

The first person to write a blog post of 400 words or more explaining how LeBron going to Miami was like FriendFeed going to Facebook... wins. P.S. We [the FriendFeed community] are Cleveland in this story. :)

The first person who entered the contest was Johnny Worthington, who did not meet Gray's 400-word minimum length.

The winner of the contest was Eric @ CStechcast, who met the length requirement.

Well, the post that you are reading - even if it had been written BEFORE Eric's - would not have won Gray's contest. Not because it's too short - I have a talent for being verbose - but because in my mind, the parallels between the two events are not quite perfect.

Oh, sure, there are some parallels between the two - most noticeably a feeling a betrayal by the spurned party. However, I believe that Cleveland's feeling of betrayal goes far beyond that felt by some FriendFeeders. Tony Bruno has shared an open letter to Cavaliers fans from majority owner Dan Gilbert - and, to put it mildly, he is not wishing James well.

As you now know, our former hero, who grew up in the very region that he deserted this evening, is no longer a Cleveland Cavalier.

This was announced with a several day, narcissistic, self-promotional build-up culminating with a national TV special of his "decision" unlike anything ever "witnessed" in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment.

Gilbert already lost me at that point, not only because of the tone that he took when discussing someone who worked for him for seven years, but also because of his "liberal" use of "quotes" for no apparent "purpose" - something that makes him look like an illiterate "fool."

Anyway, Gilbert continued slamming James by name, and then brought out the big guns:

In the meantime, I want to make one statement to you tonight:

"I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER ‘KING’ WINS ONE"

You can take it to the bank.

Uh, sure - the Bernie Madoff bank? While people are questioning whether the three-headed Heat can compete against the Lakers, at least it's in the realm of possibility to think that they could. I don't think anyone expects Cleveland to triumph over the Lakers next year - or even to make it to the Eastern Conference finals.

But back to FriendFeed. The problem that I have with Gray's analogy is that there is a major difference between the two.

When LeBron James goes to Miami, he will put on short pants, hold a round ball, sometimes pass it to other players, sometimes shoot it through a hoop. While there will be subtle differences between the way he played in Cleveland vs. the way he will play in Miami, James will pretty much be doing the same thing.

Not so with the ex-FriendFeeders. Take Bret Taylor, Facebook's new Chief Technology Officer. Not only is he responsible for managing the technologies that are used by hundreds of millions of people, but there is also a need to make sure that Facebook technologies play well with a variety of third party applications from different companies. Sure FriendFeed had to play nicely with dozens of services, but FriendFeed didn't have to integrate with complex apps such as Farmville.

In essence, we're talking about tasks that are orders of magnitude above anything that these people encountered at their former company. To draw the basketball analogy, it would be as if the future star of the Miami Heat had previously been a benchwarmer.

For the Los Angeles Clippers.

So I guess I've pretty much lost Louis Gray's contest. Now we'll see if the Miami Heat will lose the NBA Championship next year.

And no, although I live in the Los Angeles area, I'm not ready to anoint the Lakers as three-peat champions just yet.

For one thing, the Lakers often demonstrate a tendency to play down to the level of their competition, so the fact that the Suns and Jazz have been weakened doesn't really matter much.

For another thing, the term "three-peat" was coined by...current Cleveland Cavaliers coach Byron Scott. And, of course, the term has been trademarked by...current Miami Heat team president Pat Riley.

DDACTS - It isn't just business that can use location-based information

With all of the hoopla about Foursquare et al, we sometimes forget that location-based information isn't only useful in driving traffic to your frozen yogurt shop.

In January 2010, the (U.S.) National Institute of Justice published Volume 2, Issue 3 of its Geography and Public Safety bulletin. The abstract, and a link to the bulletin itself, can be found here.

The key acronym in this issue is DDACTS, which stands for Data-Driven Approaches to Crime and Traffic Safety. Now my specific job doesn't get into this area, but our law enforcement customers are certainly interested in the topic. The abstract notes:

[T]he Data-Driven Approaches to Crime and Traffic Safety (DDACTS) initiative...is helping law enforcement executives deploy resources more efficiently and effectively. This initiative was developed through a partnership between National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the National Institute of Justice. DDACTS emphasizes using geographic mapping to locate crime and traffic hot spots and target these areas with highly visible traffic enforcement.

Examples from Maryland, Louisiana, and Tennessee are detailed in the issue. This NIJ page notes that four other locations (in California, Nevada, New York, and Vermont) are trying the approach.

On the sixteenth minute - Brian Maupin and Michael Hanscom

If the name Brian Maupin doesn't immediately ring a bell, perhaps you'll realize who he is when I mention a few other words.

iPhone.

Evo.

Best Buy.

Yes, Maupin is the person who, as I write this, is suspended from his job at Best Buy because of a variety of videos that he posted - some of which mentioned Best Buy, some of which didn't. I recently cited the most famous of his videos as an example of how people (and businesses) sometimes ignore facts that don't fit their preconceptions.

But what of Maupin?

He has a Twitter account (@beemop) and tweeted the following yesterday:

Again, haven't heard anything from Best Buy since the suspension. Not sure what the whole Monday thing is about.

"The whole Monday thing" is a reference to a quote attributed to Best Buy spokesman Justin Barber, but since the quote appeared in an Associated Press article, I don't want to endanger my life savings by quoting it here.

So Maupin is in a sort of limbo at this time, job-wise, although obviously he can continue to create things artistically. And he has time to reflect:

YouTube fame is kind of like “interviewed on the local news fame,” I think, in that for the first day or two you’re calling everyone and saying “hey did you see me!” and then not much more than a week later it’s old news and something else is happening. I imagine next week some lucky guy with a video of his buddy failing a backflip off a moving car will experience what I’m going though now.

This comment was posted at his "Also Coin Operated" comic web site, which has seen a huge surge in traffic. Hey, when you're an internet sensation, items related to your dog see a huge surge in traffic.

But time will pass, the notoriety will fade, and Maupin will continue to work (somewhere) and (maybe) create videos and (maybe) create comics. Then what happens?

For an illustration of this, I go to my favorite "fifteen minutes" person, someone who was also Dooced. Not Dooce, but Michael Hanscom. I heard about his story at the time, and I continued to mention Hanscom in my blog (at that time, the Ontario Empoblog), but most of the mentions had nothing to do with his Macintosh photographs, but with other stuff he did. See this February 2004 post about Howard Dean, this September 2004 post about Pat Robertson, and this September 2005 post about Katrina. Now I'll admit that I did also mention him in other posts about people fired from jobs, such as my August 2004 post about Joyce "Troutgirl" Park.

But I continued to read Hanscom because he continued to do interesting stuff. (As it turns out, because of the many changes that resulted when I created Empoprises, Hanscom fell off my radar, but I've reintroduced his blog to my feeds now.) And he continues to write interesting stuff - see his May post Driving is a Privilege, Not a Right.

So will we read Maupin after his fifteen minutes of fame are up? There's a fighting chance that we will. He seems to have a good head on his shoulders (even if I had a slight problem with some of the language issues in the iPhone video), so if you want to continue to monitor him, check:

http://acocomic.com/
http://www.beemop.com/
http://twitter.com/beemop
http://www.bestbuy.com/ (maybe)

It's interesting to note that Yahoo Finance lists Amazon as a major competitor to Best Buy. Think Maupin would fit in at Woot?

Whether you like it or not - a business post

I recently shared an article via Google Reader. The article was about Sarah Palin, and her attempt to move the tea partiers away from cutting defense spending. From Google Reader, the share made it to FriendFeed, and from FriendFeed, the share made it to Facebook. Once it arrived at Facebook, it caught the attention of one of my high school classmates - one who is definitely not a tea partier. The classmate commented:

I'm surprised anyone is still paying attention to anything she says. Go away, Sarah.

Yet, despite the classmate's wishes, there are still a lot of people who pay attention to Sarah Palin.

And Palin is only one example. If you look at the other end of the political spectrum, the title of this post incorporates a rather famous quotation from San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom. What happened before the statement, and after, originated with Newsom's reaction to George W. Bush's 2004 State of the Union address.

"This is 2004, we're in the middle of two wars, we've got global warming, we have the health care crisis, and this guy is talking about abstinence and steroid abuse and marriage? In the State of the Union?" Newsom said. "I mean, don't get me wrong, sure, I'm for abstinence, steroids are wrong, I don't like drugs. But I'm not sure I'd put it in my damn State of the Union. And then he ends this speech, the crescendo of the speech is Defense of Marriage."

Within a month of Bush's speech, Newsom's city was performing same-sex marriages. This resulted in a court challenge that was decided in favor of same-sex marriages. After the Supreme Court victory, Newsom gave a speech:

"As California goes, so goes the rest of the nation. It's inevitable. This door's wide open now. It's going to happen, whether you like it or not."

The statement, with Newsom's enthusiastic phrasing, made headlines - as part of the "Yes on 8" campaign to ban same-sex marriages. All of us in California saw this commercial repeatedly:



As a result, Gavin Newsom was about as unpopular in some quarters as Sarah Palin is in some other quarters. In fact, Charles Lemos' thoughts on Newsom errily echo my high school classmate's thoughts on Palin:

Frankly, it's time that Gavin Newsom goes away, runs his wine business, raises his daughter and seeks massive amounts of therapy.

But Newsom will be on the ballot in November as the candidate for Lieutenant Governor...whether you like it or not.

But what do Sarah Palin and Gavin Newsom have to do with business?

Well, in the same way that people put blinders on in politics and hope that something will go away, people in the business world often do the same. As do some consumers. WARNING TO BEST BUY EMPLOYEES: YOU ARE PROBABLY NOT ALLOWED TO WATCH THIS VIDEO. Oh, and the video does have a language warning.



While some people, and some companies, may not care for this video, it does point out a basic truth that when we make decisions, we sometimes filter out information that is in direct opposition to the decision that we have already made. Or we elevate certain types of information for no good reason whatsoever. Take stock market behavior:

The stock market contains various kinds of information that can provide guidance as to the future yield of shares. An important question is which information and analyses investors use when they make investment decisions. "A common strategy is to observe what others do and follow the herd," says Maria Andersson....

[Study] results show that there is a strong tendency to put trust in the majority being right and to disregard minorities. This result applies irrespective of whether the majority has performed well or not. Minorities on the other hand have no influence even if their point of view is correct.

Paul B. Farrell notes that we seem to want it this way:

Investors would prefer drifting along in a perpetual bull market fantasyland. Even when things go south, as they are now [2009], we try desperately to deny reality, dreaming of a quick bottom, new bull, dreaming bullish fantasies in a deepening bear market. Why? We want to be lied to. We've become wimps. We sit passively on the sidelines, letting our "leaders" lie to us, brainwashing us into whatever they want us to think.

Farrell went on to say:

In early 2009 BusinessWeek and Kiplinger's reported on lies fed to us last year as the meltdown spread: Bernanke, "I don't anticipate any serious [failures] among large internationally active banks." ... Barney Frank, "Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are fundamentally sound" ... Madoff, "In today's regulatory environment it's virtually impossible to violate the rules" ... Barron's, "Home prices about to bottom" ... Ken Fisher, "This year will end in the plus column ... so keep buying." ... Worth, "Emerging markets are the global investors' safe haven." ... Cramer, "Bye-bye bear market, say hello to the bull." ... and in late 2008 even Kiplinger's said, "Stock investors should 'beat the rush to the banks."

But excluding Madoff from the equation, were Bernanke, Frank, Cramer, et al lying to us, or lying to themselves?

My high school classmate would love a world in which Sarah Palin returned to Alaska, ignored and forgotten. California conservatives would love a world in which Gavin Newsom stayed out of Sacramento...and out of San Francisco. (Maybe he could move to Wasilla and become mayor there.) iPhone fanbois and fangurls would love an Android-free world. Investors would love a bear-free world.

But the world is not as nice and neat as we would like it to be. When we make business decisions, we need to make sure that we are armed with ALL relevant information...not just the information that makes us feel good.

(empo-tymshft) Not everyone chases shiny new toys - the benefits of leasing your home phone

Empoprises strives to correct errors when found, and therefore I am obligated to correct something that I wrote in December 2009. This is not necessarily a correction of content, but is more of a correction of an underlying assumption.

This is what I said (after reading a Dave Winer post):

I'm about [Dave Winer's] age, and I remember those phones also. When my parents and I moved into a house, the phone was already there, attached to the wall. And Dave's right - those phones were sturdier than the phones that we have today.

Now I'm not questioning the statement about the sturdiness of Ma Bell phones. I am, however, questioning the underlying assumption that Ma Bell phones were only available in the past.

You see, you can still lease a Ma Bell phone today, just like to did in the old days. And yes, I said "lease." Just go to QLT Consumer Lease Services.



Now you may have noticed that the person pictured on the web page is not necessarily someone who goes to Hannah Montana concerts. This is intentional. There is a large group of people who spend decades leasing their phones from Ma Bell, and apparently a portion of them still prefer the lease model. Why?

What's the main reason our customers lease from us? Peace of mind. You can count on us for superior service, exceptional convenience and reliable quality.

Let's face it - the alternatives to QLT are a huge hassle. First off, you have to choose where you're going to get your phone. In the old days you'd go to one place for your phone - now you have to decide whether you're going to go to Wal-Mart or Target or this store or that store or whatever and it gets way too confusing.

Second off, you actually have to buy the phone. Now that doesn't seem to be a problem in and of itself, but what happens if someone goes wrong with the phone, or you can't figure out something about the phone? Perhaps you call a phone number (which is pretty hard if your phone isn't working) and you end up talking to someone on the other side of the world - if you're lucky. Or perhaps you have to go to the Internet, and that can be really really confusing (it was hard enough to figure out those AOL keywords, and now you have to go to slash slash something dot com and you just get told to update your flash).

Third off...the phone sucks.

So when someone like QLT comes along and offers peace of mind, superior service, exceptional convenience, and reliable quality, people are willing to pay a premium for this.

And boy, do they pay a premium:

It's expensive to lease! A standard old-time rotary dial phone can cost $53.00 to $65.00 per year.

And if you lease for ten years...or twenty years...or thirty years...that can add up.

But for a particular set of customers, the price is well worth it to have things taken care of for you, with a high quality phone.

And this market is clearly sensitive to change. In fact, if you visit QLT Consumer Lease Service's Frequently Asked Questions page, the first question doesn't have to do with the leasing process or phone refurbishment or anything like that. The number one question is:

Why did you change the name of the company?

It sounds like a silly question, but it isn't. If you're trying to offer folks a level of service that they got in earlier years, it doesn't bode well for you to call yourself something different. However, QLT had no choice, since today's AT&T is vastly different from the pre-breakup AT&T, and is even vastly different from the post-breakup AT&T. In fact, the phone leasing business isn't even part of AT&T:

The lease business had operated under a brand license since 1996, when it was spun off with the formation of Lucent Technologies. At that time, Lucent Technologies licensed the prior name for the business to continue to use the name our customers were familiar with. However, after nearly 12 years and subsequent changes in ownership, it now makes sense to change the name. All parties have agreed to not renew the brand license.

The answers to some of the other questions are very interesting, and clearly show how this particular market is being addressed. Some samples:

When you call our Lease Customer Helpline, you are calling our representatives in Miami, Florida and you receive products from our repair and distribution facility in Fort Worth, Texas....

You can continue to reach us by calling our toll-free Lease Customer Helpline at 1 (800) 555-8111. Or you may contact us through our web site here. Lastly, if you would like to send us a note, you can mail it to:

* QLT Consumer Lease Services
* P.O. Box 26403
* Miami, FL 33102-6043

I can just picture someone sitting at a desk and taking out a pen (black or blue-black ink, please) and composing a note to the kind folks at QLT. But if I were that person, I'd leave off those extra four numbers at the end of the zip code; it seems odd that the ZIP+4 is "6043" while the P.O. box ends in "6403." That's progress, I guess.

But the good thing about those nice people at QLT is that they understand when people talk about things like "long cords."

One of the benefits of leasing from QLT Consumer Lease Services is that you may replace accessories for the leased product – even long cords – at no additional charge! You may also replace cordless batteries and antennas, and answering machine tapes for the leased products. Call our Lease Customer Helpline and we'll make arrangements to send the accessories to your home or office – at no additional charge.

Now it's in the interest of QLT to keep their customers leasing phones until...well, you know. Therefore, they offer a number of additional programs to benefit their target market.

If you decide to end your lease, we can send you a pre-paid return mailer which can be dropped off at any United Parcel location or post office. Call our Lease Customer Helpline to request a return mailer. Please consider what you will be losing if you decide to return your leased equipment. You will be responsible for paying for any repair or replacement costs for your own phone, should the need arise, and you will be missing out on the great savings associated with the Lease Rewards Program, up to a 60% discount on prescriptions drugs, a 20% to 60% discount on vision care, a 25% to 50% savings on vitamins, and 10% to 20% savings on hearing care!

For some people, ending a lease is just not worth it. Can they be faulted for that?

(Stuff) your dad tweets - putting family information in Twitter profiles

When I was looking at Twitter profiles today, I observed that a lot of people in business made a point of saying that they were a husband and/or father. When I shared my observation on FriendFeed, I received some feedback from Caroline (@thevixy) regarding the reasons.

fatherhood. family life.. gives the consumer a feeling that they are investing in a stable "portfolio" something they can relate to , WHERE AS the constant playboy.. at 35-45 is not stable. not someone you would take seriously.

someone could make the distinction that the family man keeps regular sleeping hours. were as the bachelor. might be up drinking or partying and sleeping with different women..every night , some people may not find the trait desirable.

This raised a question in my head - which Twitter users are more apt to advertise themselves as husbands and/or fathers? I therefore conducted a completely unscientific survey (yup, I did a Google search).

The first profile that came up, that of @ThomRainer, was for the president and CEO of Lifeway Christian Resources. There's no doubt that the stability mentioned by Caroline is important to his target market. (Although it's interesting to note that many Christians, including myself, believe that neither Jesus nor Paul were husbands or fathers.) In a similar vein, @mikepfs is a self-declared "Father,Christian, Conservative , Tech Geek #TCOT."

Outside of the religious and political realms, it seems that a lot of authors declare themselves to be husbands and/or fathers. @joelcomm, @kentbeck, @essdogg (although he's the author of a book for grooms), and @shoemoney all fit into this category.

Non-author husbands and/or fathers include developer @dimensionmedia, musician @richpalmer, actor @ryan_phillippe, and work-at-home @shirlandc69.

Among my circle, it's interesting to note that neither @louisgray nor @scobleizer mention their fatherhood on their Twitter profiles. Not that they aren't proud of their kids - Louis shares pictures of his twins online, and (as I've previously noted) Scoble's work as Mr. Train Simulator was actually a joint effort with his then 6-year old son. Yet when each of these people wrote their Twitter profile text, they chose to mention other things.

For the record, my Twitter profile doesn't mention that I'm a father. Why not? First, let's see what my profile does say:

# Bio John E. Bredehoft account for Empoprises vertical information services (business, music, Inland Empire, NTN Buzztime)

In my view, my status as a father does not directly affect the four subject areas that Empoprises covers. Now perhaps if my music blog focused on children's music, I'd think differently.

It's interesting to compare Twitter profiles with resumes, since if you use your Twitter account for business, the profile functions as a resume of sorts. And for resumes, you often don't talk about being a husband or father:

Marital Status doesn't need to be included in today's CV, although for specific jobs it can be helpful to be up-front about this. For instance, if the job you're applying for involves unsociable hours or lots of travel, stating that you are single could be advantageous. This may not seem fair on the grounds of discrimination, but it's as well to be realistic about the concerns that might rightly or wrongly be in the employer's mind.

On the other hand, it might not be appropriate to compare resumes and Twitter profiles, since you complete a resume when you want to work for someone else, and many (but not all) of the Twitter profiles that I cited are for people who are working for themselves (or, in the cases of Scoble and Gray, for people who work for others yet also actively maintain an independent personal presence).

So, if you have a Twitter account, do you include personal details such as your marital status? Why or why not?

When is a scam not a scam?

I sit one room away from our departmental fax machine, and I was amused when we received a fax from Presidential Who's Who that began as follows:

Dear Company Owner,

It is my pleasure to inform you that on June 7, 2010 your information was reviewed and accepted for inclusion in the 2011 edition.

As I commented on FriendFeed, I was impressed by the depth of said review.

When Kenton Smith mentioned receiving repeated emails from Presidential Who's Who, I began checking them out. Their website, http://www.presidentialwhoswho.org/, begins its sales pitch as follows:

This could be the discovery that propels your career to a level that exceeds your wildest dreams! Presidential Who’s Who members commonly enjoy the empyrean results that come from tapping into high-end resources. The Presidential Who's Who organization is a leader in the recognition of excellence in business and professional arenas. Each year we review thousands of profiles and present the cream of the crop in our annual directory titled, Presidential Who’s Who Among Business and Professional Achievers. Only those who meet our high standards of performance and leadership in their field are granted membership and issued a copy of this coveted publication.

The fax that we received was signed by "MarkAnthony McGuiness," Chief Operations Officer. So I started searching for mentions of his name, and noticed a trend in some of the comments. For example, Bob Ramos wrote the following:

I also got the fax but did not respond because I realized it was a con. But, the unfortunate thing is that since they send these out in a mass faxing, some poor souls will actually send in their money. These folks should be prosecuted.

Abdou echoed a similar comment:

I contacted the NY Chamber of Commerce to report this practiceand I will ask anybody to do the same bc hate junk fax.

There's a similar comment from Another Distinguished Persona:

Sending my invitation on to the FCC to investigate this junk fax and Mr. Mark Anthony McGuiness.

Note that all three of these people, and probably countless others, believe that McGuiness is guilty of a lack of ethics, or perhaps even of criminal activity.

But is he?

Regarding the issue of unsolicited faxes, it should be noted that the bottom of the fax included the ability to call a phone number and enter your ten digit fax number to be removed from future faxings.

So now we're down to the issue of whether the offer itself warrants criminal prosecution. In essence, the fax tells you that your name has been accepted for inclusion, but the fax (and the website) do NOT tell you that if you actually want to see the book that includes your name, you need to pay hundreds of dollars (or over $1,000 in some cases). And once they get you on the phone, they will do whatever they can to get some amount of money from you, if only a couple of hundred bucks.

But is this a crime?

Before you answer this question, consider the following facts.

I am aware of a company in northern California that sells a product called the "iPhone." If you haven't heard of this product, it is a mobile phone with advanced smartphone capabilities. You can buy these phones for as little as $99 (the current price for an 8 GB iPhone 3G).

Of course, if you buy that phone, it won't work. You see, you also have to buy phone service, including (in the United States) a data plan (at least $15/month), a voice plan (at least $40/month), and a text plan (at least $5/month). So you're looking at monthly fees of at least $60/month, and possibly as much as $115/month or more ($135 or more if you want tethering). Oh, and you'll be charged these fees every month for a minimum of 24 months, which means that your so-called $99 phone could cost you over $3,000.

So how many people have reported Apple and AT&T to their local Chamber of Commerce, Better Business Bureau, or their local police department?

Perhaps Presidential Who's Who is not the best use of one's money, but I don't think that you can necessarily assume that it is criminal. Although the Titusville, Florida Police Department has published some information about the firm:

PAL Director recognized with prestigous award
Wednesday, January 16, 2008

PAL Director
SPO Patti Morgan

The Titusville Police Department’s PAL Director, Senior Officer Patty Morgan has been nominated for a national award and selected as a Presidential Who’s Who.

Presidential Who’s Who recognizes and selects key executives, professionals and organizations in all disciplines and industries for outstanding business and professional achievements. The recognition is shared by those who have reached a distinguished level of success in their chosen profession. The nomination was conducted through research submitted by Dunn & Bradley for review and inclusion in a prestigious 2008 edition of a national volume kept in the Library of Congress.

Senior Officer Morgan submitted to a telephone interview on October 2, 2007 and was then asked to submit a picture of herself along with her resume for final review.

On January 15, 2008 Senior Officer Morgan received a telephone call from Mark Anthony McGuinness, Chief Operations Officer, and Frank Ciaccio, CEO, in Long Island City, New York and informed her that she was a recipient of the Presidential Who’s Who among Business and Professional Achievers for 2008 with inclusion in the national volume (book). Senior Officer Morgan will be receiving a plaque in the mail. Her name, picture and biography will be listed under an area of expertise in the 2008 book that is due out in March.

Now let's say that you just spent an unpleasant half hour on the phone with Mr. McGuiness, and you become so incensed that you march down to your local police department...in Titusville. You're going to look pretty stupid when the clerk tells you that not only was no crime committed, but that you obviously aren't a quality individual like Senior Officer Morgan, who (for whatever reason) saw some value in the Presidential Who's Who service offering.

So before you run about demanding jail time for someone, make sure that they actually committed a crime.