(empo-plaaybizz) Owen Van Natta plays around

The last time that I wrote about Owen Van Natta, it concerned the mixed messages that Van Natta and his boss Jon Miller were sending out about MySpace layoffs. On the one hand, Van Natta was telling MySpace employees were "friends and colleagues," and that the round of layoffs was a difficult decision. On the other hand, Van Natta and Miller were telling investors that MySpace was "bloated."

I hadn't followed Van Natta since, but apparently Jon Miller determined a few months later that MySpace was still a little too bloated, and one more layoff was required:

The long-running telenovela that has been MySpace over the years took yet another dramatic turn late today when News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller fired MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta, whom he had hired only nine months ago to turn around the troubled social networking site....

While News Corp. tried to paint the departure as more mutual in its official statement, it was most definitely not, as problems among top execs finally came to a head today....

Sources...noted that Van Natta...had begun to bridle at not being able to select his own execs and at increasing meddling in the MySpace turnaround by Miller.

Like I said, I missed all of this news when it happened in February. But I definitely caught the recent announcement of where Van Natta was landing.

Zynga.

Zynga, the dominant social-gaming company that seems to spend most of its time raising money, has finished up yet another deal: It has officially brought in Web veteran Owen Van Natta, giving him the title “Executive Vice President of Business Operations.”

Following last month’s hire of Allen & Co. vet David Wehner as CFO, the move will be interpreted as yet another signal that Zynga is moving toward a big-money public offering.

Zynga headed for an IPO? A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz can't be pleased.

(empo-tymshft) Books for the haves and the have-nots?

On August 11, I wrote a post in my Empoprise-MU music blog that discussed something called a "record." If you have no idea what a record has to do with music, read the post.

Obviously, the music industry isn't the only one that is dealing with product obsolescence. It may be that a future generation may not know what a "book" is. Or, perhaps Brad McCarty will be right and books will remain. McCarty offered the following prediction:

The saviors of paper and ink publishing will come in two forms: the purists and the poorest.

Now I'm not sure how many true purists there are, but there are certainly poorest - and even if you don't look at the people who can't afford a Kindle or other reading device, you need to look at the people who can't or won't use reading hardware in certain instances.

Devin Coldewey makes another point when noting who actually buys books, or e-books, or whatever:

[T]he buying generations right now were raised on books, and although younger people are adopting e-books and iPads like nobody’s business, a huge amount of spending is done by demographics who still aren’t sure what an iPad is. Rely on it: “old-fashioned” isn’t just a kind of donut, it’s a market hundreds of millions strong, with far more disposable income than hip young bloggers and early adopters. Comfort and willful ignorance may be the enemies of progress, but you ignore them at your peril.

In the same way that a pencil offers some definite advantages over my new netbook (odd term, isn't it?), a real book offers some definite advantages over the new reading media. Until writers create things that cannot be reproduced in a traditional book, it's premature to announce the death of the book.

More on the Jew/Mormon thingie - why evangelism alone does not result in a viral message

Yes, another Sunday post in which I get to talk about religion, sort of, in the Empoprise-BI business blog.

The title of the post probably gives some of you an idea of where I'm going with this. On Friday, Erick Schonfeld posted a video in TechCrunch in which Buzzfeed's Jonah Peretti discussed "five rules for how to make things viral." A lot of attention has been paid to Peretti's fifth rule, which TechCrunch summarized as follows:

5. Be A Mormon, Not A Jew. This one is tongue in cheek. But Mormonism is a growing religion, whereas Judaism is stagnating in terms of population. Why? Mormons are better evangelists. ”The problem with Jews is that they suck at marketing,” says Peretti. ”It’s almost like they don’t want anyone else to be a Jew.” His point is that it is not just the quality of an idea that counts, it is how much effort you put into spreading it.



Needless to say, this caught the attention of Jesse Stay. When Stay isn't trying to get his Xbox to work, he has a day job with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in which he is involved with the church's social media efforts. And as a devout Mormon who served as a missionary, Stay has some observations on how Mormon teachings can also teach general marketing principles:

As a Mormon, I served a mission in Thailand when I was 19 (yes, I speak, read, and write fluent Thai, which I was taught in the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah for 2 months before I left to Thailand). When I was a missionary I was taught to teach a message, follow up on that message, and “build relationships of trust”. As members of the Church we follow Jesus Christ’s direction to “come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men” (Mark 1:16-18 in the New Testament). We love the message we’ve learned, and we feel compelled to share that message. Building relationships is also something we love doing, again, not out of process, but because relationships, to us, are a core of what we believe in.

However, an evangelistic outlook is not enough to create a viral sensation. Stay certainly acknowledges this:

Peretti’s statement is true, but it’s not at all because we teach “marketing” by process – it’s because as Mormons we’ve got a great message to share.

Now I don't want to get into a debate on the value of the Mormon message - for the record, I am neither Jew nor Mormon - but even a complete secularist cannot deny that the Mormon message is attractive to millions of people. If you started a religion which promoted celibacy for all, human sacrifice, and a fanatical devotion to the Dallas Cowboys, no amount of evangelism is going to make that religion popular.

But even a thirst for evangelism and a good message are not enough. You also need tools to spread the message. Stay's post lists the online tools that the LDS church uses to spread its word, and Stay doesn't even talk about the more traditional media that the church uses.

Anyone who has looked at religion in the United States in the 20th century realizes how important radio was to a number of religious bodies. While I have a soft spot in my heart for the nearly 80-year history of The Lutheran Hour, there are numerous religious leaders who used the radio as a tool to evangelize, including Aimee Semple McPherson, Herbert W. Armstrong, Fulton Sheen, and others.

When considering the importance of a tool, perhaps a Mormon-Jew comparison is not appropriate, but a Mormon-Amish comparison is. Let's face it - even if the Amish were inclined to evangelize, their very beliefs which preclude the use of modern technology would make it very difficult for them to evangelize on any large scale. As it turns out, Amish views on evangelism and technology are inter-related:

The Amish feel that Gelassenheit should permeate every facet of their existence, and even be apparent in their material possessions. Consequently, they will only selectively use modern technologies. As seen in the symbols of Gelassenheit, the Amish believe that using lanterns and the buggies typifies their lifestyle of simplicity and modesty. Any technology that does not uphold the Gelassenheit principles is banned from use. Electricity is seen as a connection with the outside world and violates the Amish principle of separation from society. Electricity also promotes the use of household items, such as the television, that allow the outside, "English," values of sloth, luxury, and vanity to infiltrate the household. Automobiles are not often used because they degrade the Gelassenheit principle of a small, close-knit community. The Amish fear, with good reason, that these modern transportation technologies will cause them to spread apart, much like most modern American families. Also, the Amish fear that the automobile will promote competition among themselves. They worry that the car will become a status symbol and promote vanity, which is in direct violation of the Gelassenheit value of modesty. The telephone is banned from the household because, much like the automobile, it promotes a separation of community. Instead of taking a carriage or walking to a friend's house, the Amish feel that they would be tempted to simply stay home and speak on the phone. In order to uphold Gelassenheit, many modern technologies have been banned from regular use.

So if I may paraphrase, the Amish haven't established a Facebook page (this page was not created by Amish people) because this would, in their view, not only diminish the value of direct contact between people, but would also expose them to the negative, sinful influences of the outside world. Do you think that A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz has a negative view of Farmville? Imagine how the Amish feel about it.

So in summary, the essential things for a viral campaign include:

• an evangelistic attitude


• a high-quality message


• one or more tools to spread the message

Without a high-quality message and some tools, no evangelist is ever going to get a message out.

Teen bribes and prototypes in bars? Forget that. This is serious.

Over the past few months, those of us in the blogosphere (and I include myself in this number) have fallen all over ourselves to over-analyze the story of the teen reporter at an online service who solicited an Apple computer as a bribe; or the story of the guy who left an Apple prototype in a bar, which ended up in a police raid on another online reporter's home office. These stories were represented as the end of the world as we know it, and we didn't feel fine about them (although we felt just fine talking about them).

But Robert Diana has shared a Next Web story that is much more serious than the other two tales. The Next Web got its information from the San Jose Mercury News:

A midlevel Apple manager was arrested Friday and accused of accepting more than $1 million in kickbacks from half a dozen Asian suppliers of iPhone and iPod accessories in a federal indictment unsealed and a separate civil suit.

Paul Shin Devine, a global supply manager, and Andrew Ang, of Singapore, were named in a 23-count federal grand jury indictment for wire fraud, money laundering and kickbacks....

The alleged scheme used an elaborate chain of U.S. and foreign bank accounts and one front company to receive payments, the indictment said, and code words like "sample" were used to refer to the payments so that Apple co-workers wouldn't become suspicious.

Devine, 37, of Sunnyvale, is being held by the U.S. Marshals Service, according to the Internal Revenue Service. He could not be reached for comment. IRS Agent Arlette Lee declined to comment on Ang's whereabouts.

OK, it's one thing to get Michael Arrington mad at you, and it's another thing to have a local police unit raid your home...but when you have the IRS refusing to comment on where you've been stashed, that's serious.

Google makes Larry Ellison pray for judgment

When you try to keep track of who's fighting who, sometimes it gets a little murky. Google has been battling Facebook and Apple for supremacy, but now has another fight on its hands, according to this Oracle release from Thursday.

SOURCE: Oracle Corporation

Aug 12, 2010 19:15 ET
Oracle Files Complaint Against Google for Patent and Copyright Infringement

REDWOOD SHORES, CA--(Marketwire - August 12, 2010) - Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) today filed a complaint for patent and copyright infringement against Google, Inc.

"In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle's Java-related intellectual property. This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies for their infringement," said Oracle spokesperson Karen Tillman.

About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company. For more information about Oracle, visit oracle.com.

Trademark
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Contact Info

Karen Tillman
Oracle
+1.650.607.0326

VentureBeat links to Oracle's 12 page filing in United States District Court. The filing alleges specific infringements by Google of certain patents that were previously obtained by Sun Microsystems (now part of Oracle). Here are some excerpts of Oracle's claims:

17. On September, 26, 2000, United States Patent No. 6,125,447, (“the '447 patent”) entitled “Protection Domains To Provide Security In A Computer System” was duly and legally issued to Sun by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Oracle America is the owner of the entire right, title, and interest in and to the '447 patent. A true and correct copy of the '447 patent is attached as Exhibit A to this Complaint.

18. Google actively and knowingly has infringed and is infringing the '447 patent with knowledge of Oracle America’s patent rights and without reasonable basis for believing that Google’s conduct is lawful. Google has also induced and contributed to the infringement of the '447 patent by purchasers, licensees, and users of Android, and is continuing to induce and contribute to the infringement of the '447 patent by purchasers, licensees, and users of Android. Google’s acts of infringement have been and continue to be willful, deliberate, and in reckless disregard of Oracle America’s patent rights. Google is thus liable to Oracle America for infringement of the '447 patent pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 271.

Similar claims are made about several other patents, including:

United States Patent No. 6,192,476, (“the '476 patent”) entitled “Controlling Access To A Resource”

United States Patent No. 5,966,702, (“the '702 patent”) entitled “Method And Apparatus For Preprocessing And Packaging Class Files”

United States Patent No. 7,426,720, (“the '720 patent”) entitled “System And Method For Dynamic Preloading Of Classes Through Memory Space Cloning Of A Master Runtime System Process”

United States Patent No. RE38,104, (“the '104 patent”) entitled “Method And Apparatus For Resolving Data References In Generate Code”

United States Patent No. 6,910,205, (“the '205 patent”) entitled “Interpreting Functions Utilizing A Hybrid Of Virtual And Native Machine Instructions”

United States Patent No. 6,061,520, (“the '520 patent”) entitled “Method And System for Performing Static Initialization”

In addition, Oracle also alleges violation of Java's copyright.

Now I have no real knowledge about the ins and outs of patent and copyright law (I have a passing knowledge of trademark law, but that is not at issue here), and I certainly don't understand the specific technical issues involved. But I do know a little bit about religion, which is why a passage at the end of the complaint is a little fascinating.

PRAYER FOR RELIEF

WHEREFORE, Oracle America prays for judgment as follows...

Now this is obviously some type of legalese that is commonly used, but I have to admit that the whole idea of Larry Ellison praying for judgment does seem to be a little odd.

But if you want a little more background into the phrase, consult...Google Answers.

Do you work for your employer, or your customer?

A thought occurred to me as I continued to mull over Jesse Stay's less-than-optimal experience with @XboxSupport (his post is here; my post is here). My thought can best be illustrated by looking at a Twitter exchange between @Jesse and @XboxSupport. On August 4, Stay asked:

@XboxSupport so how about replacing this one with one of the new Xbox 360s? I'm sick of your replacements just breaking.

This is the response that he received:

@Jesse Sorry, once you return an Xbox, you'll get the same model returned. ^MK

Stay has been criticized for asking this (see two examples), basically because he was asking for something that Microsoft was not obligated to deliver. In this line of thinking, ^MK correctly represented Microsoft's stance on the issue.

But was ^MK supposed to represent Microsoft? Or was ^MK supposed to represent Jesse Stay?

Or let's put it another way. Stay happens to own a business himself, SocialToo. Now SocialToo is not quite as big as Microsoft, but obviously Stay hopes that it will grow. So perhaps the day will arrive when Stay has a staff of 100, including an entire customer support department of his own. Assume for the moment that I'm an angry SocialToo customer, and I call SocialToo customer support and end up speaking to ^MK. (It's a small world, after all.) I then angrily demand:

I have had repeated problems with SocialToo, and I think it's fair that you provide t-shirts for me and my entire family! For free! And send them tonight for arrival at my house tomorrow!

Because ^MK is an experienced customer support rep (he used to work for Microsoft), he calmly responds:

I'm sorry, John, but I can't ship t-shirts for next day delivery. In fact, I'm not able to give t-shirts away.

Now let's ask the question again - is ^MK supposed to be working for Jesse Stay in this instance, or is he supposed to be working for me?

After all, customer support people are supposed to support the customer. And sales representatives are supposed to represent the customer. (Unfortunately I can't tell the story, but I know of one instance in which a sales rep forcefully took the side of a customer in a dispute with one of the sales rep's co-workers. All that I can say is that the co-worker said something EXTREMELY unprofessional to the customer, and the sales rep called the co-worker out on it.)

Yes, the idea is silly and stupid and could render the company bankrupt and destroy employee cohesiveness...but some people advocate this very solution. See this write-up on empowerment:

Empowerment means to give someone power or authority. In a customer support role that could mean allowing front line support providers the ability to make decisions that are exceptions to the rules like offering something to the customer that would not be normal, perhaps a concession if they have had a bad experience. By allowing front line support providers to make some exceptions, it saves valuable time for the customer and the company.

Obviously there is a cost to this, and a danger that empowerment could be abused. How would Microsoft react if Jesse received two Xbox 360s and 100 Windows and Office licenses? How would SocialToo react if my extended family and friends received an entire CafePress wardrobe?

On the other hand, there is a cost to non-empowerment also. When a company wrongs a customer, the customer often talks. Maybe the customer doesn't have a blog that is read by thousands of people, but the customer certainly has a best friend or a few co-workers to whom he or she will vent. Many people buy things because of personal referrals, and many people DON'T buy things because of personal referrals. Have you ever refused to buy something because of a friend's poor experience with the product or the company? How would your purchasing decision have changed if the company had taken care of the friend's problem in the first place?

So let me ask the question of you - and this question applies even if you're NOT in a customer-facing position. (Yeah, Java coders, I'm talking to you.)

Do you work for your employer, or your customer?

(empo-tuulwey) A disagreement between Jesse Stay and the Guinness world record folks on @Xboxsupport

It has been my observation that it's not enough to create a Twitter customer support account for your company and proclaim victory. You need to make sure that the Twitter tool is integrated into your company's entire customer support strategy.

Perhaps I should have said that it's important for your company to actually HAVE a customer support strategy.

If you haven't seen the story of Jesse Stay and @XboxSupport, let me provide a brief recap.

Stay has had numerous problems, and numerous warranty replacements, of his Xbox. When Stay ran into a problem yet again, he tweeted about it. Eventually @XboxSupport found the conversation in Twitter and chimed in.

@Jesse Xbox Phone support and us are different people, but all the same family. Whats the problem you're having with your Xbox? ^MK

Unfortunately, @XboxSupport went right to script, suggesting that Stay use a diagnostic tool that he had already used. Now from the high-level corporate perspective, it makes sense to go through the script to make sure that no stone is left unturned. But on Twitter, working off of a script doesn't play that well.

@XboxSupport I'm tired of troubleshooting. This is the 5th Xbox 360 you've replaced of mine and they all end up w/ red rings of death.

Now this should have sent up a red flag to the Xbox tweeter that perhaps the issue needed to be escalated, and it would be a good time to get off script - or perhaps to get a better script.

TWITTER @XBOXSUPPORT CUSTOMER SERVICE SCRIPT VERSION 13.412

Step 420.

If CUSTOMER states that Microsoft has already provided more than three warranty replacements, go to Special Procedure Gold.

Unfortunately, @XboxSupport stuck with the old script:

@Jesse Are you keeping them in well ventilated areas? ^MK

Stay answered the question, and volunteered additional information:

@XboxSupport yes, it's well ventilated. My Wii doesn't break. Neither does my DVD or other equipment. Only the Xbox 360.

Hmm...I see another customer service script improvement here:

TWITTER @XBOXSUPPORT CUSTOMER SERVICE SCRIPT VERSION 13.412

Step 421.

If CUSTOMER praises a competitor, go to Special Procedure SaveTheAccount.

Note that this procedure is called SaveTheAccount, not DenigrateTheCompetition. That may not work:

@Jesse Neither of those other devices has the same kind of powerful hardware in it. Where is it located? ^MK

Incidentally, let's take a moment to consider the ramifications of this statement. Now I'll grant that the statement was probably not well thought-out - tweets rarely are - but in effect the tweet suggests that the product is so far advanced compared to the competition that it's unreliable. Apparently just the awesomeness of the device is supposed to make consumers feel that problems with the device's reliability just aren't all that important.

Did Microsoft outsource its Xbox customer support to Apple?

Anyway, suffice it to say that at the end of the day, Jesse Stay was one very unsatisfied customer. And Stay happens to be a blogger, and he wrote about his experience. At the time of the post, things weren't so rosy:

When approaching customer support in a public environment, the rules change. You absolutely cannot give any hint that your customers are ever wrong. Take it to DM. Take it to e-mail if you want to do that. Encourage immediately for those customers to e-mail you or call you when it comes to that. Assumptions can never be made, because you can be held liable.

Instead, I got to tell my 26,000 followers, and now a blog post that will go out to more, how frustrated I was with Microsoft, over and over again with them only fueling my fire each and every time. The Twitter XboxSupport account has told me, to their 35,000 followers, that I’m wrong, over and over again. It’s lose-lose, and nobody wins.

But when you have tens of thousands of followers, the script can magically disappear:

Happy to have a Senior rep from @XboxSupport contact me by phone. I'm glad they're listening, and we'll see where this goes.

And the sad part about this? Jesse Stay is up against the Guinness World Record folks.

Less than a year after starting Twitter support, the Xbox Support Elite Tweet Fleet has become a major leg of the Xbox support foundation, pulling in the highest customer satisfaction rates across various support channels.

They must be doing something right; the team recently landed the Guinness World Record for Most Responsive Brand on Twitter.

And what about ^MK (Mitchel), the person who was communicating with Jesse? Well, he provides a lot of support, so maybe this was just the isolated bad day.

We'll see what happens.

Multi-tasking on the boob tube

I don't listen to a lot of long-form podcasts, Ffundercats being (in the past) a notable exception. I just don't have the attention span for hour-long podcasts, no matter how good they are.

But this evening I made an exception to listen to a podcast that I had never heard before - the Braindead TechCast. Specifically, I listened to Episode 123.

At one point in the podcast, Steven Hodson got cranky about the emergence of television sets that include apps. Hodson stated, in his own touchy-feely sort of way, that apps on television sets are not his favorite thing. (His actual statement included the word "hemorrhoids.") If I may paraphrase Hodson, his basic point was that when he watches TV, he uses it as an escape from the insanity of the world around us, and the last thing that he wants to do while watching TV is to check on tweets, see if he has received new e-mails, or find out what the weather's like outside.

It's possible, however, that Hodson's view may become a minority view. Why? Because many of us don't watch TV on TV any more.

I have previously mentioned that our family has a Sony Dash. (I've also mentioned Sony's online customer service, which is apparently better than the customer service of the company that I'll talk about tomorrow in this blog.) Now the Sony Dash allows you to stream items from your Netflix account, which effectively means that you can watch TV without using a TV. Now the Dash has apps; I don't know enough about the Dash to know how easy it is to consult an app while streaming Netflix video, but at the bare minimum your precious apps are just a few clicks away.

Now many people use more powerful devices to watch TV without a TV - basically, your standard computers. If I had the attention span, I could be multi-tasking on my netbook right now, streaming a TV show while checking my tweets or writing this post. And more and more people are "watching TV" this way; although the total numbers are probably underwhelming, presumably more and more people will do this, especially as the cable/satellite providers and suppliers shoot themselves in the foot.

Now I'll grant that the vast majority of people use a TV to watch TV, and the vast majority of people don't even think about checking Twitter while watching TV. However, for more and more people, "TV" will be just one feed of many that is coming into their media consumption device (iPad, computer, TV, whatever). This could potentially have some ramifications regarding the types of shows that are produced, since now TV shows have to compete not only with other TV shows, but with @officialelyse (the whiteboard job resignation hoaxer actress).

Why the AOL model is re-emerging

In a previous post, I ended up referencing AOL to talk about Facebook. It's an instructive reference, since some of the things that Facebook is doing today can best be understood if you know what AOL did in the last millennium.

Broadstuff has talked about the swing up the pendulum in which walled services (AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy) were replaced by the open World Wide Web, which may now be replaced by new walled services such as the Facebook world and the Apple world. Broadstuff referenced an Economist article (available for free) that discussed the end of Wintel, and then made several points, including the following:

Funders - especially early day ones - like Walled Worlds as it looks more like Protected IPR, it makes business cases easier (my Ad sales to my customers on my platforms). Typically the "Open" gambit is used by a large player left out or wanting to enter a closed environment (Think IBM in PCs, Google in Smartphones) or the Random Generoisit of a lare Reserach Budget (DARPA, Mosaic) entering a small market. Apple has shown Walled really works well if the customer actually buys their own iBrick in the Wall, which is the New New strategy in Walled Worlds.

Let's face it - we've spent the last decade-plus trying to figure out how to make money by giving stuff away for free. Apple has taken another direction.

(empo-tymshft) Is your church prepared to use new media?

Connie Reece recently wrote a post entitled Does Your Church Use New Media?. Reece concentrated on two issues - the types of churchgoers who are more apt to use new media, and the parishoner-facing tools (web pages, text messaging, etc.) that are used to interact with people who prefer these methods.

But I'd like to take a step back and look at some of the underlying infrastructure that churches use.

If you've been a member of a particular church for any length of time, you probably have a church directory or two stashed away. The front of the book probably has pictures of various activities going on in your church. The middle of the book has posed pictures of all of the families of the church (although some churches realize that not everyone is part of a multi-member family). The back part of the book includes the address portion, which may look something like this:

JONES, John and Jane
James, Janelle
123 Main St.
Ontario, CA 91761
(909) 555-2626

Twenty or thirty years ago, this is all that you'd have to store about your church members. But things have been changing over the years. Perhaps Janelle's last name isn't Jones. Perhaps Jane's last name isn't Jones.

But the bigger change is the assumption that you can reach the entire family via a single phone number. Some families have a dozen or more phone numbers - the home phone (if the family still has one), personal cell numbers, work numbers, other assorted numbers (I have a Google Voice number), and so forth.

Of course, that assumes that the phone is the best way to reach a person. Families with a dozen phone numbers probably have a dozen e-mail addresses - assuming, of course, that people even read their e-mail. Perhaps you need to text a particular family member, or send that person a message via Facebook or MySpace.

So perhaps there are three dozen or more contact avenues for any particular family. But how many of those do you want to list in a church directory? In my opinion, the primary purpose of a church directory is to allow spammers to hawk stuff to you. A church can take every precaution that it wants, and print whatever message they want to on the directory, but some spammer is going to get a hold of your church directory and put you on a mailing list for inspirational items at an amazing value.

It's essential that the church directory, and the church attendance card/form, and the underlying church software support the myriad of contact options, as well as the particular privacy settings. I admit that I am not familiar with church software, and I assume that some churches have...um...evolved to meet these new needs. Or at least I hope so.

I wouldn't want Connie's pastor to contact her via fax machine.

I know some tourism ads exaggerate, but this is ridiculous

In the process of writing my post on Virtual Brisbane, I encountered a Brisbane tourism page from WorldGuides. Now I have never been to Brisbane, or to Australia, but something about this text struck me as funny.

Brisbane is an important, historic city and Brisbane is overflowing with breathtaking landmarks and monuments, such as Brisbane's Anzac Square, Brisbane City Hall, Story Bridge and Brisbane's striking Parliament House.

And I began wondering if WorldGuides used the same template for every city. I could see it now: "Los Angeles is an important, historic city and Los Angeles is overfloring with breathtaking landmarks and monuments, such as City Hall, the Hollywood sign, and Los Angeles' striking Farmers Market."

As it turns out, my assumption was wrong - something that I easily checked by reading up on Arlington, Virginia.

Famous for being home to the vast Arlington National Cemetery, featuring the grave of famous US president J. F. Kennedy, Arlington lies in the state of Virginia (VA). Standing just a few miles from nearby Washington DC, across the scenic Potomac River, Arlington was once part of the District of Columbia, in the first part of the 19th century.

Also close to Alexandria, Arlington has a distinctive skyline, many impressive places to visit and plenty of sightseeing opportunities for visitors. Arlington is particularly well placed for day trips and excursions, and also offers world-class shopping facilities and countless historical buildings and landmarks.

Now I lived in Arlington for nearly a decade, and I was struck by the tone of some of the statements in the description. Who refers to our 35th President as "J.F."? And is Pentagon City truly a "world-class shopping" facility?

But the one that really struck me was the reference to the "distinctive skyline." A little local history is in order. In 1899, Congress (who exerts significant control over the city of Washington, DC) passed the Heights in Buildings Act which effectively prevented skyscrapers within the District of Columbia's limits. Now Arlington is outside of the District of Columbia (and has been since 1846), but the Pentagon was obviously designed by the same folks that govern construction of buildings in Washington, so the Pentagon didn't become a skyscraper. The only "skyline" worth mentioning in Arlington is in the Rosslyn area, and I don't know that it qualifies as "distinctive" - though it's obviously more distinctive than the DC skyline.



So it appears that tourism ads exaggerate in the same way that real estate ads exaggerate (see my March 2009 post).

But at least WorldGuides didn't talk about the 380 degree view.

[Picture source, license]

Thoughts on my new netbook

I bought an Asus netbook on Friday night. This (I'm typing on it right now) is a Christmas present. No, not an early Christmas present - a late Christmas present. Or I guess you can say it's Christmas in August.

I've wanted a netbook for some time for personal use, primarily because I'm intrigued by the small size. In some respects, the small size is ideal for many of the things that I do online. You don't need a 22" monitor to listen to last.fm or to play Starfleet Commander.

However, as expected, there are some drawbacks to the smaller size (in my case, a maximum screen height of 600 pixels). The biggest problem that I found so far was in Google Reader; I was unable to access my feeds at the bottom left of the screen until I did some zooming.

I'm also trying to teach myself something else - how to use a computer without a mouse. Back in 1984-1985 when I first started using a Macintosh, the mouse was a brand spanking new pointing device. Today, I know someone with a Mac who doesn't even own a mouse. Times change.

The current laptop/netbook pointing mechanism, in which you drag your finger in a rectangular area to move your pointer and then click on areas at the lower left/right corner is probably the best method so far to control a pointer without a mouse. Personally I'd prefer an integrated trackball, but you can't have everything, and this system has the advantage of fewer moving parts.

I actually bought a mini-mouse for the computer which I used last night, but today I'm trying to go mouseless. So far, with help from the arrow keys in the lower right of the keyboard, I've been fairly successful.

One other thing that I decided some time ago regarding my netbook - to complement the low netbook price, I was going to try to use all free software on the computer. I didn't follow through on my additional thoughts of installing Linux on the netbook, or buying a Linux netbook, but two of the first things that I did last night were to remove the supplied antivirus program (in this case Trend Micro) and the Microsoft Office 60 day trial. I downloaded Microsoft's free antivirus program (and the uninstall of Trend Micro went fine, for those of you who saw this post), and plan to download OpenOffice at some point (I've thought about this).

All in all, I'm satisfied that the netbook is delivering what it promised. Obviously I'm not going to write proposals on this thing, but it's certainly good at what it does.

Time to find a playground, as shared by @BJLownie

Sometimes we have bad days. Mark Hurd probably isn't having all that good a day today. Since Hurd isn't a proposal writer, and since he probably doesn't read my Google Reader shares, he probably didn't see this post from The Proposal Guys. The Proposal Guys (and a panda) obviously address their comments to proposal writers, but some of them have more general applicability.

In this post, BJ Lownie quotes from the child of a friend of a friend. The child's father was stuck in traffic, and the child said:

Daddy, you need to calm down. Let’s take a few deep breaths together. Then we can find a playground, you can swing for a while, and we’ll all feel much better.

Well, maybe your Ruby on Rails blog has some equally inspiring item, but this was a good way to start the weekend.

(Picture source, license)

Mark Hurd resigns as head of HP

TechCrunch reports that Mark Hurd has resigned as Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President of Hewlett-Packard.

Reports that he has resigned to join Carly Fiorina's Senate campaign are stupid, unsubstantiated rumors that I started myself.

Sadly, the reason for his resignation (according to the press release) is not a joke:

Hurd's decision was made following an investigation by outside legal counsel and the General Counsel's Office, overseen by the Board, of the facts and circumstances surrounding a claim of sexual harassment against Hurd and HP by a former contractor to HP. The investigation determined there was no violation of HP's sexual harassment policy, but did find violations of HP's Standards of Business Conduct.

You might recall that when David Letterman's extra-marital affairs came to light, there was a possibility the Letterman could have lost his job at CBS because of possible violations of CBS business conduct standards. He didn't, but Mark Hurd did.

The press release notes that CFO/interim CEO Cathie Lesjak has taken herself out of consideration for the permanent CEO position.

Virtual Brisbane for neighborhood planning and other applications

Let's say that you're a builder and that you're going before your local city council to propose a new building. The city council members are obviously going to be concerned about what the building will look like in relation to other buildings in the area.

So you haul out a big picture, done in the finest colored pencils, showing what the building will look like.

Councilman Jones speaks up. "So what will it look like at night?"

Councilwoman Smith interjects. "Could we put some trees on the southeast corner?"

Now if you, Councilman Jones, and Councilwoman Smith happened to live in Brisbane, Australia, the council questions could be answered by use of a new tool.

AnyGeo has shared information about an effort launched by the Brisbane (Australia) City Council called Virtual Brisbane.

Virtual Brisbane is an interactive, computer-generated model of Brisbane’s CBD and inner-five kilometres. It is a spatially-accurate model and has been built from aerial laser scans and imagery to give a high-definition photo finish.

The 3D model will expand to cover the rest of the city.

The Virtual Brisbane model will help Brisbane City Council analyse proposed developments, improving the assessment process.

This video shows some examples of Virtual Brisbane in use, including ways to examine buildings by day or by night, or to modify the landscaping, or to make other changes.



Now the video doesn't show how easy, or how hard, it is to make the various changes. Hopefully day and night are pre-programmed, but how much effort does it take to add a few trees, or to remove a floor (do Australians say "storey"?) from a building.

But it does not that this will help planning decisions to be better communicated to citizens, so that after the council has gone over the plan, it can then show the virtualization to the citizens.

And the video briefly alludes to potential future applications:

Longer term, the model has potential uses for industry, educational institutions and government.

Another obvious use is tourism. Perhaps they could create a multi-player RPG in which people wander around Brisbane and get points for giving vegemite sandwiches to deserving people that they encounter. (Just don't play the flute while you do it.)

P.S. to Ffundercats fans - I found no evidence that Houston, Texas is doing anything similar to what Brisbane, Australia is doing, but Houston does have a facility (Peek a Baby) that not only offers 3-D ultrasounds of your baby-to-be, but also advertises 4-D ultrasounds. They offer several packages, including "The Ultimate Peek":

One 20-30+ min. 2D/3D/4D Ultrasound Session
One DVD of entire session set to music
4 Black & While photos
8 Color 3D photos
15-30 Images on CD with 2-3 video segments
Video files can be viewed on computer and sent to family via the Internet
Ultrasound Report
Gender Determination(if desired)

$225 ( Look on Home Page for Coupon )

However, I don't believe that Peek a Baby offers the ability to change the appearance of your baby. Thankfully.

100% of surveyed respondents loved this post - or, why statistics are meaningless

I guess I'm on a posting trend about hospital emergency room wait times, considering that I've posted about this on Wednesday and Thursday.

The Wednesday post displayed a screen shot from Placentia-Linda Hospital's website; the screen shot showed a current four-minute wait time at the hospital.

The Thursday post talked about the wait times at Scripps Mercy Chula Vista, and how they had decreased to 25 minutes.

So if I think I'm going to get sick, should I go to Placentia? After all, statistics show that I'll be seen 21 minutes more quickly than I would in Chula Vista. And statistics don't lie, do they?

Um, you'd better ask Samuel Clemens about that:

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

(Incidentally, it's uncertain that Disraeli actually said this, but Clemens was a damned liar, and a damned good one.)

When looking at a single statistic in isolation, such as emergency room wait times, there are a number of things that need to be examined. Here are a few examples:

• The two wait time statistics are measured differently. Although we don't know the details of Placentia's measure, it is a measure over a brief period of time. The quoted Chula Vista time was an average, possibly taken over a month, or several months. What would happen if I looked at Placentia's number right after a bunch of AYSO soccer games? Or at 11:00 pm on July 4?


• When you measure an elapsed time, you have to define the start and the end time. What are the start and end times for the Placentia and Chula Vista measurements? Does the time end when the clerk calls you up to the counter? Does it end when a nurse sees you? Does it end when a doctor sees you? Let's face it - if you want to, you could set a target emergency room wait time of 1 second and consistently meet it, provided that you define your start and end times properly.


• I know nothing about the hospital in Chula Vista, but I have gained significant knowledge about the Placentia hospital by driving up Rose Drive, and my extensive knowledge suggests to me that Placentia-Linda is a relatively small hospital.


• But even if two hospitals are of the same size, their locations could easily affect any statistics that are generated. Is one hospital next to an AYSO soccer field? Is one next to an urgent care clinic? Is one in a community where everyone has lost their jobs, and their health care coverage?

As it turned out, my Thursday post contained a supposedly off-topic reference to my alma mater.

I consulted the leading authority on hospital reputations, Yelp. (Hey, I'm a Reed College graduate; U.S. News and World Report is not an option.)

In fact, if you followed the link, you will see that Reed's concerns about U.S. News and World Report's annual college survey (or a similar survey from Money magazine) raise similar objections to the isolated use of numbers.

Reed College has actively questioned the methodology and usefulness of college rankings ever since the magazine's best-colleges list first appeared in 1983, despite the fact that the issue ranked Reed among the top ten national liberal arts colleges. Reed's concern intensified with disclosures in 1994 by the Wall Street Journal about institutions flagrantly manipulating data in order to move up in the rankings in U.S. News and other popular college guides. This led Reed's then-president Steven Koblik to inform the editors of U.S. News that he didn't find their project credible, and that the college would not be returning any of their surveys.

A subsequent president, Colin Diver, provided additional thoughts:

Rankings, he says, are grounded in a "one-size-fits-all" mentality. "They are primarily measures of institutional wealth, reputation, influence, and pedigree. They do not attempt, nor claim, to measure the extent to which knowledge is valued and cultivated" on each campus. Reed doesn’t rank its students. "Why should we participate in a survey that ranks colleges?" he asks.

And anyone who agreed with Reed's approach seemed to have their concerns validated during the first year that Reed refused to participate:

The year the college refused to submit data, the magazine arbitrarily assigned Reed the lowest possible in several categories and relegated the college to the lowest tier in its category, the most precipitous decline in the history of its ratings.

And then:

The following year, responding to widespread criticism of its retribution, the magazine trumpeted Reed in its "best colleges" press release as being new to the "top tier" of national liberal arts schools.

For the record, Reed would prefer not to be in the survey at all, but then U.S. News' survey would be considered incomplete, so the magazine prefers to keep them in there.

And they perform other surveys, including surveys of hospitals and law schools. The latter has not endeared U.S. News and World Report to an American Bar Association committee:

A special committee of the American Bar Association has issued a report criticizing the impact of U.S. News & World Report rankings on law schools. The report says that the magazine's methodology "tends to increase the costs of legal education for students" because colleges are rewarded for spending more, that the rankings "discourage the award of financial aid based upon need" because law schools are rewarded for enrolling more students with high LSAT scores and so will award merit aid, and that for similar reasons "the current methodology tends to reduce incentives to enhance the diversity of the legal profession."

U.S. News and World Report raised objections:

Robert Morse, who leads the college rankings at U.S. News, said that the ABA never contacted the magazine to discuss the rankings, and he offered his own critique of the study. "I think the ABA report is one sided and does not tell the whole story," he said. "The ABA ignores that it's highly likely that there are other factors besides U.S. News behind rising tuitions at law schools, why law schools are offering more merit aid and that some law schools aren't accepting enough at-risk low-LSAT students. In other words, it's easy to blame U.S. News for many of the negative practices at law schools. Law schools and the ABA need to take far more direct responsibility for these trends."

Of course, not everyone agrees with Reed College and the ABA. Take Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana:

It has historically been among the top schools of its size and listed in U.S. News & World Report as one of America’s Best Colleges.

But nearby Kosciusko Community Hospital in Warsaw doesn't display its emergency room wait times. Maybe that's why U.S. News and World Report characterizes the hospital as "average."

(empo-tuulsey) (empo-tymshft) @SuzanDelBene , @TeamReichert , and reaching new voters

I'm going to start this post by getting all of the FCC disclosures out of the way. First, I was a college classmate of Suzan DelBene at Reed College. (Incidentally, I'll have a little more to say about Reed in a future post.) Second, Dave Reichert's former employer (the King County Sheriff's Office) is a current customer of my employer.

If you haven't heard of either DelBene or Reichert, then you probably aren't interested in Windows Mobile products. Or you're not a cop. Or you don't live in western Washington, where they are the apparent front runners in the 8th U.S. Congressional District in the state of Washington's August 17 primary. (Incidentally, this is a "top 2" primary, so DelBene and Reichert are already competing against each other.)

What's interesting is how both of these candidates are using newer technologies to reach the voters.

Back when Dave and Suzan and I were born, the brand spanking new technology was television. The first 1960 U.S. Presidential debate was just one instance in which the power of the new technology became known. However, this raised troubling questions as more telegenic candidates began to emerge. Would some of our prior Presidents, such as FDR and Abraham Lincoln, been viable candidates in a television age?

Well, the Kennedy-Nixon debate occurred 50 years ago, and now DelBene and Reichart are battling it out online. DelBene advertises her presence on four services:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Suzan-Delbene/136326264034?ref=ts
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/40904663@N05/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/SuzanDelBene
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/delbeneforcongress

Reichert has staked his own claims to various parts of the tubes:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dave-Reichert/6699231655
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/teamreichert/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TeamReichert
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/teamreichert

Now the candidates obviously engage in more traditional politicking - Reichert is talking a lot about lawn signs at the moment - but obviously these 21st century technologies are an important part of their communications arsenal.

And perhaps we may eventually find that these new technologies cause a shift in the candidates that we elect, possibly not for the better.

One thing in common between television and the newer technologies is that short is better. Back in the 19th century, politicians may entertain a crowd for hours. Television prefers the soundbite. Twitter and YouTube prefer the shorter conversation. (To my knowledge, neither of the candidates engage in 1-2 hour podcasts. Good.)

One of the previous politicians, even though he would have been a disaster on television, might be ideally suited for the Twitter age. Abraham Lincoln's most famous speech is extremely short - not as short as 140 characters, but certainly in marked contrast to other orations of the time. I could see him tweeting his way through a crisis, though it would be disconcerting to me to see "lol" appended to the end of a Lincoln joke.

After this election is over, we'll have to see how effective the candidates were at using these tools to get their messages out. I believe that both of them realize that these are only tools, and that you need to have a coherent message before you start tweeting or whatever. A tool is not a way of life, and a tool alone won't get you to Capitol Hill.

When reporting about a displayed statistic, look at the statistic!

Joel Garry happened to see my Wednesday post that discussed the Placentia-Linda Hospital website. If you missed this post, it mentioned (among other things) the fact that the hospital is displaying its emergency room wait time on the website (with the caveat, of course, that emergencies are always treated based upon "the magnitude of illness or injury").

Garry referred me to a recent article on emergency room wait times. Specifically, the article looks at ways in which wait times can be reduced, which is particularly difficult when the number of visits to emergency rooms are increasing at a rate of 5-10% per year.

Scripps Mercy Chula Vista decreased its average wait times from 87 to 25 minutes by changing its processes:


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The hospital has dropped the traditional triage nurse who takes medical information, assesses a patient’s situation and whisks critical cases inside while returning non-acute patients to the waiting room. Now, the Scripps Mercy waiting room has become a quick-stop lobby where patients are immediately taken to a “blue side” for true emergencies or to a non-acute “gold side.”

On the blue side, a traditional approach is taken, with one nurse caring for no more than four patients, as required by state law.

The big change is on the gold side, where patients quickly meet with a nurse-and-doctor team to be evaluated. A treatment nurse coordinates any tests or procedures and a discharge nurse handles the final details before the patient heads out the door. Rather than one nurse caring for four patients, each nurse is [assigned] a specific task so patients rotate through more quickly....

And the hospital is doing other things, such as replacing gurneys with recliners. 40 recliners take up the same square footage as 29 gurneys, thus enabling the hospital to service more patients.

But do these changes truly work? I consulted the leading authority on hospital reputations, Yelp. (Hey, I'm a Reed College graduate; U.S. News and World Report is not an option.) Unfortunately, there are no 2010 reviews of Scripps Mercy Chula Vista, but the June 17, 2009 review indicated that something truly needed to be done.

I was here all day and because of a mixup with the nurses, I was here somewhere between 1-2 hours longer than needed. That's ridiculous, no, UNACCEPTABLE when you think about the consequences of a more serious mistake. We are all human but that doesn't make my experience any more unsettling.

Hopefully Scripps Mercy Chula Vista has addressed these issues, although we can't be sure; they don't display their wait times. (Although I question whether that statistic in isolation is truly meaningful; I should return to that topic later.)

Time for some South American psychology

In a previous post, I stated:

In the future, look for me to write a post on South American psychological centers.

Why? Because Yahoo Buzz told me to do so. Or something like that. Or perhaps it was something else.

This apparently is not that popular of a topic, since the one paper that I found on school psychologists in South America was written back in 1987. The abstract is here.

The literature discussing professional practices of school psychology in South America is very meager. This study attempted to identify demographic characteristics of school psychologists in four South American countries, their typical responsibilities, significant problems, and threats that jeopardize the delivery of psychological services within the schools. Questionnaires were completed by informed psychologists in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Venezuela. The results revealed that school psychologists were overwhelmingly female. Most were found to have undergraduate degrees; only in Venezuela did the proportion of school psychologists with graduate degrees exceed that of psychologists with undergraduate degrees. Important differences existed in the number of professional programs available in the countries. High percentages of school psychologists were members of national associations. Respondents from all four countries rated as very important knowledge and skill areas that focused on the academic areas of psychology emphasizing individual differences, intelligence, motivation, professional service, work with the visually and physically impaired, learning disabilities, and parent education. A significant area of stress in all countries was low salaries, and threats to service included lack of research and evaluation, conflicts with competing professional groups, and lack of proper funding. (Differences among the countries are discussed; references and data tables are included.) (NB)

I'm not sure if Wechsler and Oakland concluded that the topic required further study, and if so, whether they were able to get the funding. I hope they were. But it turns out that South American psychological services can often be provided by...non South Americans. For example:

The [Minnesota State University Mankato] Industrial/Organizational Psychology students and faculty will be traveling in mid- to late-May to Ecuador to take part in a service-learning opportunity with the Yachana Technical High School in the Amazon region of Ecuador.

And what psychological assistance will they be providing?

As a part of our service-learning, we are hoping to better the communication between staff members of the Yachana School by providing them with two-way radios.

Better to talk about their feelings, I guess...

When reporting about a website, name the website!

I was getting my hair cut when I picked up the Placentia News-Times, published by the folks that bring you the Orange County Register. Page 3 of the July 29 paper included a story about Placentia-Linda Hospital that began as follows:

A new feature on Placentia-Linda Hospital's website now shows the emergency room's wait time.

The story went on to describe the feature, the steps taken by the parent company (Tenet) to implement the feature, and future plans for the feature.

They just left one thing out of the article.

The article failed to mention the URL for the Placentia-Linda Hospital website.

I figured that this was just an issue with the print edition, so after my hair was cut (I'm looking pretty good now, by the way) I went to a computer and found the online version of the article.

The online version didn't give Placentia-Linda Hospital's website URL either.

That URL, by the way, is http://www.placentialinda.com/. And here's what the new website feature looks like.



However, I will confess that the Placentia News-Times article does have a nice file photo of the entrance to the hospital - something that this blog post has failed to provide.

I guess that's why they're professional journalists and I'm just a mere blogger.

P.S. Ironically, another story by the same writer did include a URL. So I'm not sure why no URL was provided in the Placentia-Linda Hospital article. Perhaps there's ill will between Tenet and the Register after this article. It's interesting that you can get to this article via this Google search:



Ouch.

Context sucks

Various online services provide status messages in a manner that sucks all of the context out of them - hence the title of this post, which is an example of the phenomenon. (Read "sucks" as a noun, not a verb, to get the meaning that I intended.)

Here's another example. Let's say that John Smith joins Facebook. John befriends some people, plays a little Starfleet Commander, and then eventually gets around to filling out his profile. After he does this, all of his friends get the following status update:

John Smith is married.

Now his friends have known about Smith's marriage for years - heck, some of them were probably at the wedding - but I guess the marriage isn't official until Facebook says it is.

Another service that posts confusing status updates is LinkedIn. Now John's wife Susan happens to be on LinkedIn, and she likes to join the various LinkedIn groups. So one day her LinkedIn associates see the following status update from her:

Susan Smith joined the group The Dell Workforce.

Because LinkedIn posts many different types of status updates, there's the possibility that this may be misread. Does this mean that Susan has quit her job at the accounting firm and is now working for Dell? While the status update technically includes the word "group," I know that there's been at least one occasion when I thought that someone had changed jobs, but in fact had only joined some LinkedIn group.

And I'm only talking about the status updates that are auto-generated by the service itself. When users write status updates, they often have to shoehorn the update into a pre-determined number of characters. Anything going to Twitter has to fit within 140 characters, or fewer if you want it to be retweeted.

Add to this the fact that many of these services are world-wide. Someone whose native language is French may misinterpret my English. Hey, someone who lives in Scotland may misinterpret my English.

How do we solve the issue of context-less abbreviated statements floating around in the wild, causing confusion wherever they go?

Oracle OpenWorld Unconference move for 2010?

In the past, whenever I have attended Oracle OpenWorld, there has been some acquisition or another that pours more and more people into Moscone Center and the adjoining hotels.

This year (the first time in several years that I probably won't make it up to San Francisco) it appears that the Sun acquisition, with all of the Java and MySQL folks, has continued this trend. And it looks like there is at least one ramification of this, if I'm reading and interpreting Richard Foote's July 22 blog post correctly. This is (part of) what he said:

Finally, I’ve decided to put my name down for the Oracle Unconference again this year. Partly because it was relatively successful last year when I attempted this in that it generated a number of interesting discussions, partly because it’s in the spirit of the Unconference where unstructured and interactive presentations are the go but mainly because it requires absolutely no preparation on my part whatsoever, I’ve decided to host another question and answer session on all things Oracle Indexes. This is your chance and opportunity to ask those questions on how Oracle indexes work, how they should be used, how they should be maintained, on indexing issues you want to share or solve or dispel or whatever, with a whole bunch of other Oracle professionals. As always, if the questions dry up, no worries, we can spend the rest of the time discussing which of David Bowie’s albums is the most influential ;) Details are:

“Oracle Indexing Q & A With Richard Foote” Tuesday 21 September, 10:00am Hotel Parc 55 Mason Room

The Oracle Unconference is always one those secret little highlights of the whole Oracle OpenWorld event where you often get the opportunity to listen, meet and speak with some great speakers in relatively quiet and intimate (for OOW) surroundings. Always worth checking out the agenda each day.

Now, as a former Oracle OpenWorld Unconference presenter, I immediately noticed that the unconference has apparently moved from Moscone West to the Hotel Parc 55, and that the unconference will apparently have real rooms, with walls up to the ceiling and stuff.

A week after Foote's post, John Hurley posted a link to Oracle OpenWorld 2010 Unconference information. Oddly enough, the page is on the sun.com domain - http://wikis.sun.com/display/JavaOne/Unconferences+at+JavaOne+and+Oracle+Develop+2010.

Hotel Parc 55 is in the Union Square area, a few blocks from the Moscone Center.


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In which I tell incomprehensible jokes (revisiting the "barriers to communication" discussion about jargon)

Last week, Trevor Carpenter tweeted:

God predestined me, before the foundations of the world, to be friends with you Arminians.

This prompted me to reply:

@trevorcarpenter And the Arminians have decided to work really really hard to be friends with you.

I would bet that a pretty high percentage of the people on Twitter who saw our tweets had no idea what we were talking about. If you're interested, there is a Wikipedia article that outlines some of the religious controversies that Trevor and I attempted to encapsulate in 280 characters.

Every discipline, whether it is religion, biometrics, or photowalking, or whatever, tends to develop its own terminology. There are good things and bad things about this. The good thing is that it allows the practitioners of the discipline in question to quickly communicate a concept to another practitioner. For example, if I say "ANSI/NIST" to one of my co-workers, the co-worker will immediately know that I am talking about ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2007. Or perhaps ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2007 and ANSI/NIST-ITL 2-2008.

This points out one of the problems with terminology. Sometimes we don't all agree on what the terms mean. To use a fairly obvious example, people who discuss religion do not all agree on what "God" is. In the example from the previous paragraph, it is sometimes unclear whether a reference to "ANSI/NIST" merely includes the traditional binary version of the interchange standard, or whether the XML standard is also meant to be included. And, of course, outside of the biometrics industry "ANSI/NIST" can mean something completely different.

Another problem with using these terms is that they tend to shut non-practitioners out. In fact, when I previously wrote about this topic in 2009 in my mrontemp blog, I cited an example of jargon which is completely comprehensible to me, but not to most of the billions of people on this planet.

BCA needs ESB support, and since we know this now, we don't need to CCB it in. We can start with FEC and write the appropriate STRQs and MRs to get us to M-11. Of course, we'll follow P_RGP in the SPP to do all this. And of course BCA will need all the ANSI/NIST and EFTS stuff we do - you know, WSQ and all that. But the ADS handles that with no problem, as does the DES, of course.

Now I could explain that entire paragraph, but it would take me a number of paragraphs to do so. In essence, an explanation would be much longer than the original statement, which has the virtue of compactness.

In fact, it's kind of like comparing an XML file to its much smaller binary representation.

That's an ANSI/NIST joke. (Using the broader definition which includes the 2008 definition. Obviously.)

Teens ON Tech - will the Ewee PT help the Segway?

When Louis Gray tweeted about a re-launch of Daniel Brusilovsky's Teens in Tech website, I figured I'd check it out. And I found an interesting post by Jeremy Gofman entitled "Mini Segways Ready For Pre-order In Germany." Technically, however, they aren't strictly Segways, as the article notes:

...you might be interested in the latest product from an underground German company called Ewee. They’ve basically made a poor man’s Segway. It’s “the Segway’s little sister”, and it’s brother was an Atari 2600, and it’s called the Ewee PT (personal transporter)

Gofman linked to the Ewee PT site, which describes the device as "a self balancing electro scooter" (obviously I was reading the English version of the site, not the German version). The Ewee has a 280x200mm footprint, weighs 25 kg, and has a height of 1200mm (or 47 inches on this side of the pond).

The Ewee is sold via Fun Components (which also has an English version of their site) at a cost of 799 Euros (or $1,058.28 when I was at the site). They're taking pre-orders now; the product is scheduled for availability on September 5. I don't know if a US-compatible charger is available for the device, and I have no idea if Fun Components will ship the product to the US, or how much it will cost.

But now I'm wondering if this announcement will give the original Segway a jolt of publicity, and potential sales. As of early 2010 (when the company was sold to a British individual), some segments of the Segway market were doing better than others:

With even the basic Segway i2 priced at $5,350, a Segway rarely could be characterized as an impulse buy. Not surprisingly, dealers said that they've seen sales to consumers drop significantly as the economy has dipped downwards. But commercial sales, mainly to police and private security forces, have helped offset the losses.

So what will happen when the Ewee PT faces off against the original Segway (at least in Germany)? Dvice, while noting that the Ewee PT was easier to get on and off because it is closer to the ground, wasn't sure:

Whether the Ewee is rugged enough for everyday use remains to be seen, and its small wheels will certainly suggest that it's better off indoors....

People may fall in love with the Ewee PT, or perhaps people might decide that they want the original Segway. I auspect that Justin Bieber fans will opt for the original:

and yes that was me riding out of the venue on a segway going thru the Burger King drive thru without security. what? I was hungry! haha

He followed up that tweet with another:

got in a little trouble for that move but had some fun with the fans and got me a whopper. Can u blame me? come on im a teenager. good times

Well, I certainly can't use the "I'm a teenager" line. And that concludes this report about Teens ON Tech.

I wonder if some of those phone transfers to @drainey1 got dropped

Jesse Stay alerted me to a July 30 post that originally appeared in VC in DC in February. The post, by Don Rainey, was entitled "Always, always, always talk to your angry customers." Rainey stated that when he ran companies, his policy was to have any angry customer calls transferred to HIM. Why?

I took those calls for years, and even some many were decidedly uncomfortable, what often surprised me was how much I could learn by listening to angry customers. Over time I identified more employee problems as a result of those calls than I did by any other means.

Rainey gave an example:

An angry customer [was] on the phone with a support person....The customer said, “I spent a lot of money on this product… and it was delivered with a part missing. I need that resolved immediately!”

The employee said, “I understand the problem… but it will take a fair amount of time to resolve. It’s now 4:45 and I get off at 5:00. It will take more than fifteen minutes to resolve this issue; I think it’s best if you called us back tomorrow.”

What happened next?

Another employee overheard the call, stepped in, and had the call transferred to me.

The CEO got someone to ship the part to the customer overnight...and the employee who originally took the call in an unsatisfactory matter got the opportunity to re-enter the job market.

A good story, and Rainey clearly illustrates a point.

But what if the second employee hadn't overheard the conversation? What if the first employee swiftly hung up on the customer, or accidentally "lost" the connection when transferring the call to a supervisor?

While Rainey's "transfer angry callers to me" policy certainly engendered a lot of customer goodwill, no system is perfect. We are not perfect, and even the best employees had a bad day. Take this Regions Bank example, in which a call to a previously helpful person went sour. Sunni Hendrix called Regions Bank regarding an overdraft, and the representative hung up on her. She called back and asked to speak to a manager, and got the same representative. By this time even a call back from a real manager didn't help:

Later a manager by the name of Mary called me and I told her about the women hanging up on me and she couldv'e cared less...no apology or anything.

Eventually Mrs. Hendrix went to a local branch, where someone apologized to her and straightened the whole thing out. However, so much badwill had built up that Mrs. Hendrix still was not satisfied. First, she actually went to the site pissedconsumer.com and posted her complaint. Second, she closed her complaint by saying:

[The original representative] should not be in her current position if this is how she deals with customers. I will pursue this matter until I get an apology from her or someone at that branch.

Apparently no Don Rainey is taking calls from irate Regions Bank customers - and it shows. In a 2008 survey in the southeastern United States, Regions Bank ranked dead last in customer satisfaction.

Unfortunately, I can't really compare Regions Bank's customer service with the customer service at the organizations that employed Rainey, since most of the companies that employed Rainey (Attitude Network, DaVinci Systems, Novell) no longer exist as separate entities. (In fact, even some of the acquiring firms - TheGlobe.com and ON Technology - no longer exist either.) Now some parts of Rainey's firms survive as bits within IBM and Symantec, and even though I don't like Symantec's marketing practices, even I wouldn't characterize Symantec as "dead last," and IBM certainly doesn't deserve that designation.

I hope that there are a few people at those firms who are carrying on Rainey's tradition.

Size matters, or it doesn't - are the new Coke bottles too tall?

I was reading FriendFeed on Sunday when I found this thread started by Katy S. She said, in part:

The new diet coke 2-liter bottles are just enough taller than the old ones that I can't place them upright on the top shelf of my refrigerator.

She also noted that her grocery store moved the 2-liter Coca-Cola products to the top shelf. Perhaps they wouldn't fit on the other shelves?

Katy also noted that others are complaining about this. I found comments on Epinions, Consumerist, the Indian Consumer Complaints Forum, and Rockband.com. The Rock Band comment is from May 2009, so this has been around a while:

I usually store my 2-liters on the shelves in the door of my fridge, but they are too tall for that. They're also too tall for the regular shelves in my fridge if I don't adjust them (which would involve removing all the food in my fridge, taking out my dairy box, and being a general pain in the ass).

In a way this is surprising, because large corporations often engage in all sorts of consumer research before they introduce a product, and you would think that such an inconvenience, even if it only results in relatively few complaints, would stop the product design process dead in its tracks.

In addition, one would think that complaints would result in a Coca-Cola withdrawal of the product. After all, New Coke disappeared fairly quickly.

So why did Coca Coca introduce the "too tall" bottle? I poked around and found a 2008 press release that discussed Coca Cola's reasons:


COCA-COLA PILOTS TWO-LITER VERSION OF ICONIC CONTOUR BOTTLE IN BIRMINGHAM AND CHATTANOOGA

BIRMINGHAM, June 13, 2008 - Coca-Cola North America (CCNA) today announced the pilot of its signature contour bottle in a convenient two-liter size, beginning this week in Birmingham and Chattanooga. These cities were chosen to introduce the new version of the company's most enduring icon because of their longstanding loyalty to Coca-Cola and the strength of their local Coca-Cola bottler, Coca-Cola United.

The new two-liter form of Coca-Cola's iconic package was preferred over the straight wall two-liter bottle overwhelmingly in recent consumer tests* and offers a significant advantage for consumers beyond its classic good looks -- it is also easier to hold and easier to pour. The new Coca-Cola two-liter contour plastic bottle will be available in stores throughout the two cities beginning June 16.

And it turns out that the research people were involved:

Importantly for customers, research conducted by CCNA with consumers suggests that the two-liter contour package has the potential to re-energize sparkling beverage sales in their stores as well.

Because, you see, it appears that the real reason for the new bottle is looks:

"Along with Coca-Cola's one-of-a-kind real cola taste, the iconic shape of the contour bottle is what people love most about the brand. They are both a part of its timeless magic," said Hendrik Steckhan, president and general manager, Sparkling Beverages, Coca-Cola North America. "We want to offer our brands to consumers in a special way that fits their needs for all contemporary beverage occasions. When you enjoy your family meal together, sharing an ice-cold Coke from a contour bottle is just 'the real thing'."

As it turns out, I don't buy two liter Coca-Cola bottles, so I've never encountered this problem myself. Have you run across this issue? Are you working around it?

[Image courtesy The Coca-Cola Company]