The purposes of surveys - Safelite repair, Safelite replace, Safelite sell

When you do business with a company, you are sometimes asked to complete a survey about your experience. Often it becomes very clear how this survey is used. Has a service provider ever said this to you?

Thank you for using BigCo's Widget Cleaning Service. In two days, you will receive a survey and will be asked to rate my performance. I hope that you give me an extremely high rating as your service provider.

Survey results are often used for employee compensation and bonuses, as you can guess. But they are also used for other purposes.

Last Friday morning I was driving down the freeway to work and found myself behind a truck that was spitting out some gravel. On Friday afternoon, I noticed a nice big crack in the lower left corner of my windshield.

Before I got a chance to ask Jimmy Voitel for his recommendation, I called my auto insurance company to find out their procedures. I didn't know if they had a preferred provider, but if they did, I assumed that it would be some company that I had never heard of, and probably not a company that appears to spend its entire budget on advertising.

When I called my insurance company, they emphasized that I could use any service provider that I wished, but that they would be happy to set me up with - Safelite.

Another Jim Bakker "I was wrong" moment for me. Yes, I'm admittedly suspicious of companies that seem to advertise all over the place, but in this case it appears that my insurance provider was happy to recommend them. Perhaps Safelite has agreed to standard rates that are beneficial to the insurance company, but on the other hand an insurance company isn't going to recommend a service provider that does shoddy work, since it would require more effort for the insurance company itself to keep the customer happy.

So I set up an appointment with Safelite, and the technician did the work (even taking the trouble to transfer a parking sticker from the old windshield to the new).

Oh, and the technician said that I'd be receiving an email survey that would only take a couple of minutes to complete, and it would be nice if I completed it.

I received the survey, and as expected, Safelite asked a number of questions about their service. Did the technician perform the work to your satisfaction? Was our telephone staff helpful? That sort of thing.

But at the end of the survey, there was a slightly different question.

Yes, surveys can be used for multiple purposes. Remember that people with cars are not the only customers of Safelite; insurance companies are also customers. Obviously Safelite will use this data - if it's positive - in its dealings with the insurance companies. They'll probably say something like this:

96.7 percent of all survey respondents say that Safelite windshield repair and replacement is an important feature of their VroomVroom Auto Insurance policy. Now you want to keep your customers happy, don't you? So you'll keep recommending us, won't you?

When you construct a survey for your business, take the opportunity to include questions that provide data for all segments of your business. Which reminds me of the final question that I saw:

Now I work with a bunch of writers, and when I shared this question with them, one of them pointed out that the question didn't ask about making a POSITIVE difference. For example, I could certainly make a difference working for Safelite, but it wouldn't be a good one.

Whoops, sorry! I dropped your new windshield before I installed it. Here, let me gather up the pieces for you, since you already paid for it. And here's some duct tape to attach the pieces together if you want to try to put it in yourself. I certainly can't do it.

Are benefits benefits? (The Mary Kay car)

Many companies provide their employees with a variety of benefits. These benefits may be valuable to different people...or they may not be.

Probably the item that is most associated with Mary Kay is the pink cars that some Mary Kay sales directors receive. Hey, it's Valentines Day - let's talk about pink cars.

There are a number of stories like this one:

Nancy Butler, a Mary Kay independent sales director, was getting her 11th free car from the company for being a team builder and high sales.

She calls it her “trophy on wheels.”

Butler, 60, is one of more than 120,000 independent sales force members with Mary Kay to qualify or re-qualify for the Mary Kay Career Car Program since it started in 1969.

Mary Kay sets certain levels of production a consultant or sales director must reach in order to receive a vehicle for a two-year span. The type of vehicle they’re eligible for varies depending on what goal they reach.

Now I believe that it's obvious to all that Mary Kay doesn't just give the cars away - you have to work for them. But there are people who are decidedly not fans of Mary Kay, and they let you know about some of the fine print:

If you manage to reach that level, you will be rewarded with the USE of a Pink Cadillac. That's right: the use of it. It isn't yours. The Pink Cadillac is leased to you by the company for two years.

Here's the most important part: The amount you pay in lease payment to Mary Kay Corp. each month depends on...you guessed it...how much Mary Kay products your team has ordered from the company that month. If your team orders enough, you don't have a lease payment that month. But if you fall short, you will have to make a lease payment to the company, and that payment is on a graduated scale based on the amount of product your team ordered.

BOTTOM LINE: There are no "free cars" in Mary Kay and the lease on a Mary Kay car can be much more expensive than getting your own car lease -- in many ways.

As the previous quote illustrates, a sales director's compensation depends upon the production of those working under him/her (there are male Mary Kay consultants). Ideally, a sales director's underlings are totally committed to Mary Kay. But sometimes, there will be Mary Kay workers who read things like How to Drive Your Mary Kay Sales Director Nuts. Here's one suggestion:

Tell her how much you love your new car. You may think that directors looooooooooove their “free” cars in Mary Kay. They certainly talk a big story like they do. But really – Chevrolet Malibu? Please. Gush to your SD about how you really couldn’t decide between the luxury of a Lexus or the great mileage of a Prius. So many choices! You’re so glad you got to test-drive them all, then pick the one you really wanted.

Incidentally, thanks to Steven Streight for sharing the link to the Pink Truth website.

Why you need both form AND function; Steven Reed vs. Rachael Ray

I know my strengths, and I know my weaknesses. When you talk about form vs. function, I'm pretty good on the function part, but perhaps not so good on the form part. Because I recognize this, I need to constantly remind myself to pay attention to form.

One could argue that function is all that is needed. If you convey the important information, it doesn't really matter if you've prettied it up or not.

I'm going to illustrate this by talking about something in which I am decidedly not an expert - cooking shows. (Although by the end of this illustration, perhaps I'm a better cooking expert than I thought.)

Let's take a look at two very similar cooking shows. Both cooks are in a kitchen. Both cooks are preparing a derivative of Mexican food. Both dishes serve a large number of people. Both cooking show segments last about three minutes.

However, there are several differences between the shows.

• The first cooking show is targeted toward people who enjoy cooking and want to spend time in the kitchen. The second cooking show is targeted toward students at Weber State University, who presumably want to just make a meal and be done with it.
• The first cooking show provides no information on the cost of the ingredients. The second cooking show provides specific information on this topic.

Now there are several other differences between the first and the second cooking shows.





For the moment, ignore the fact that the first cook, Rachael Ray, is using an oven and freshly prepared foods, and the second cook, Steven Weber, is heating canned food in a microwave.

Do you notice one other significant difference between the two?

Ray is able to speak in an engaging way. Reed, to put it kindly, is not an extremely riveting speaker.

Those of us who prefer function to form might think that this doesn't make a difference. But take a moment and imagine what it would sound like if Rachael Ray were making the chili and cheese nacho dip in the microwave. Ray could actually make it sound interesting. Here's what I think it would sound like:

Hey Weber Wildcats!

OK, so let's say that it's Saturday night and you're going to have a bunch of people together in the dorm or at the frat house. What are you gonna make? Well, if you're pressed for time, why don't you just make some chili cheese dip in the microwave?

Just open up the can of chili and put it in a microwave safe bowl - you see the bowls that are NOT warped from the heat? Those are the microwave safe bowls.

OK, and then you open the cheese dip, pop them both in the microwave...

Now I don't know if your Weber State professors have told you this, but when things come out the microwave, they're hot! Yes, I know that college students should know this, but after a few brewskis you sometimes forget.

OK, let's open the chips, and now you're ready to PARTY!

Imagine Ray smiling and saying all of this in her rapid speaking style, without the hemming and hawing, and with a smile on her face. She's conveying the same information that Steven Reed did - she isn't adding cilantro or deep frying the chips or anything like that. But even though she's conveying the same information (the function), she's doing it in a style (the form) that is much more riveting.

That is why Rachael Ray is on national television and Steven Reed is not. But Reed doesn't have to worry - he has a steady day job.

Christopher Dorner, and why there are no universal ethics

As much as we like, we are unsuccessful when we try to set up standards of ethics that apply to all people on earth.

We have tried this from a religious perspective. My religious group recognizes the Apostle's Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed, as well the Bible as a number of other documents that have been collected in a document called the Book of Concord. But these cannot serve as a universal ethical standard when different people recognize other documents - the Doctrine and Covenants, the Koran, the Humanist Manifesto, whatever.

We have tried this from a governmental perspective. The United Nations has a document called The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But is there any person or any government that agrees with every article of this Declaration? And what does it mean to agree? Article 3 reads "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." Who is "everyone"? Bradley Manning? Christopher Dorner? (We'll return to him later.) An unborn child?

And we have tried this from a business perspective. Apple and Facebook and Google and Twitter have established rules about what you can do online on their services. Your employer probably has a handbook that says what you can or cannot do as an employee. All of these ethical guidelines differ.

Despite these attempts, there is no universally recognized standard of ethics. A picture of a man, woman, and six children may be entirely acceptable in Rome or Salt Lake City, but it may be considered extremely offensive in Beijing.

In the United States, we try to get around this by talking about something called "community standards." This recognizes that different parts of the country may have different cultural perspectives. Guin, Alabama is different than Dearborn, Michigan, which is different than West Hollywood, California.

But we can't even establish standards for a community.

A document has been made public today. This document includes the following statement (names redacted by the publisher, KTLA television):

Never allow a LAPPL union attorney to be a retired LAPD Captain,(XXXX). He doesn’t work for you, your interest, or your name. He works for the department, period. His job is to protect the department from civil lawsuits being filed and their best interest which is the almighty dollar. His loyalty is to the department, not his client. Even when he knowingly knows your innocent and the BOR also knows your innocent after XXXX stated on videotape that he was kicked and XXXX attorney confessed to the BOR off the record that she kicked XXXX.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants-TJ. This quote is not directed toward the US government which I fully support 100%. This is toward the LAPD who can not monitor itself. The consent decree should not have been lifted, ever.

I know your TTP’s, (techniques, tactics, and procedures). Any threat assessments you generate will be useless. This is simple, I know your TTP’s and PPR’s. I will mitigate any of your attempts at preservation. ORM is my friend. I will mitigate all risks, threats and hazards. I assure you that Incident Command Posts will be target rich environments. KMA-367 license plate frames are great target indicators and make target selection even easier.

I will conduct DA operations to destroy, exploit and seize designated targets. If unsuccessful or unable to meet objectives in these initial small-scale offensive actions, I will reassess my BDA and re-attack until objectives are met. I have nothing to lose. My personal casualty means nothing. Just alike AAF’s, ACM’s, and AIF’s, you can not prevail against an enemy combatant who has no fear of death. An enemy who embraces death is a lose, lose situation for their enemy combatants.

The author, the aforementioned Christopher Dorner, has advanced his ethical theory, which basically states that because of the wrongs done to him by a variety of people, including the LAPPL union attorney who was a retired LAPD captain, Dorner is now entitled to "advance justice" by adopting Jefferson's statement to refresh the tree of liberty.

Because of Dorner's ethical outlook, Monica Quan and Keith Lawrence were shot dead on Sunday. Why? Because Quan was the daughter of the LAPPL union attorney who was unsuccessful in preventing Dorner from losing his job at the LAPD.

Some of you will say that Dorner's actions were clearly unethical. You condemn them. I condemn them. The student bodies at Concordia University Irvine, Cal State Fullerton, and the University of Southern California condemn them.

But are they universally condemned?

How many "Christopher Dorner is a hero" groups have been set up on Facebook? He's already receiving support in a comment on a Google+ thread.

When was the last time you sung along to the song "Cop Killer"? Hmm...

When was the last time you sung along to the song "I Shot The Sheriff"?

Now I will grant that there is a significant difference between singing "I shot the sheriff" and actually doing it. But is it ethically acceptable to sing about shooting sheriffs?

There's no universal agreement on that.

More evidence that systems are silos

We can claim all day that we develop unified computer systems, but in reality you have one person developing one computer system, and another person developing another computer system.

And sometimes they don't exactly agree.

At 6:29 this morning, I received an email from a credit card company. (I'll refer to the company as BigCardCo.) The title of the email was "Account Alert: A Payment was Received." The email said that BigCardCo had received my $xx.yy payment, and included the following sentence:

Please remember that it can take up to 24 hours for your account to reflect this payment.

You can probably guess what email I received at 11:11 this morning from BigCardCo.

Yep - "Account Alert: Your Payment Reminder." Specifically, my payment due date is fast approaching, and I need to pay $xx.yy to BigCardCo.

And because BigCardCo cares, the following question appeared at the bottom of the email:

Was this e-mail helpful?

What is being starred in those search results?

There is a sad story tonight about a young woman who has disappeared. The woman, Elisa Lam, was last seen at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. Since I had not heard of this particular hotel, I performed a Google search for the hotel. As usually occurs, the top of the search results included related advertisements.

Now I have no objection to ads, especially when they convey information that is of interest to me. And in this case, the ads did convey something. I wasn't sure exactly what type of hotel the Cecil Hotel was, but if the hotel has such high star ratings, then it must be a pretty good hotel.

Then I scrolled past the ads and down to the search results themselves, and found something interesting.

Now that's odd. When I get down to the actual search results, the Cecil Hotel appears to have much lower ratings.

And if you take a careful look, you'll see that hotels.com appears in both the ads and in the search results. In the ad, the Cecil Hotel appears to have a five star rating. But in the search results, the hotel has a 2 1/2 star rating.

I wondered if the ad linked to a different hotels.com page than the search result, but it turns out that both links go to http://www.hotels.com/ho213312/cecil-hotel-los-angeles-united-states/. And that page lists a two star rating, which is closer to the search result than to the ad.

Then I looked at the ad a little more closely. If you also look at the ad, you'll notice this text next to the five star result:

209 reviews for hotels.com

So that five star rating isn't for the Cecil Hotel, but for hotels.com.

A little misleading, don't you think?

We probably won't entertain ourselves

Their show gets real high ratings, they think they have a hit.
There might even be a spinoff, but they're not sure 'bout that.
The quote above is taken from the Talking Heads song "Found a Job" (full lyrics here). The song, written in the late 1970s, describes a couple who tire of watching television on the three networks, and end up creating their own content for their own entertainment.

The lyrics, obviously were written a long time ago. Cable television was in its infancy. Even over-the-air television was still waiting for a fourth network - something that would not happen for several years.

And, of course, it would be decades before YouTube would appear - a computer service that would literally allow people to create their own content.

But do they?

Yes, I know that YouTube is reputed to be the home of people making stupid videos. And yes, you have the occasional "numa numa" or whatever - a video made by an ordinary person that somehow catches fire.

But what are people really watching on YouTube?

If my experience is any indication, 99% of all content viewed on YouTube falls into two categories:

• Content uploaded by major media companies.
• Content uploaded by people who stole it from major media companies.

Let's face it - despite all of the new technologies, such as YouTube and Twitter, the majority of people continue to be content consumers rather than content providers.

And no matter how easy content creation systems become, this will continue to be the case.

Other things that tech people shouldn't wear to bars

There's a lot of controversy in the tech world today because of a comment that a Baltimore bar owner made on his Facebook page. Perhaps you've missed this little bit of news, but I'll catch you up on the story that YOU WON'T FIND ANYWHERE ELSE. (Hint, hint.)

The Babe Ruth Bar is a very popular bar in downtown Baltimore, and on Monday, bar co-owner Tom Lauper wrote the following:

Last night around 9:45 two people walked into the bar. Looked me square in the eye, and acting as if everything was normal they ordered beers.. Oh did I mention they wear wearing San Francisco 49ers jerseys! In public! In A Baltimore BAR!

This prompted a long-ish article in The Verge (known as the Beatles of tech journalism). New Verge columnist Greg Sandoval wrote the following:

Two people wearing San Francisco 49ers jerseys walk into a bar.

...

Nope, that's the whole joke.

Don't get me wrong: I'm as excited about the 49ers as the next Silicon Valley nerd, but I'm not so sure the rest of the world is going to love their arrival.

Sandoval interviewed Lauper, who not only spoke about the jersey incident, but also spoke about three people in a corner of the bar (and one person participating from another location) who were arguing whether Jerry Rice or Randy Moss was the greatest wide receiver of all time.

Needless to say, some Silicon Valley residents were not pleased with the Babe Ruth Bar or with The Verge. One in particular said:

Where do you get off deriding customers for the clothing that they choose to wear in your establishment? Don't forget that there are a lot of influential people, especially in the tech world, who admire the San Francisco 49ers. If you're going to ridicule 49ers fans - and what would prompt you to do this? - then I am going to use my influence to inform my followers of your backward policies. Don't be surprised if 49ers fans choose to visit other bars when they are in Baltimore.

Local football player Joe Flacco, sporting an "I am Elite, Just Like Johnny Unitas" t-shirt, had no comment. Randy Moss had a comment, but he always has a comment; go find it on CNET if you're really interested.

Sometimes it's OK to be a Luddite (Shotwell's vs. Scoble)

Depending upon your point of view, you consider Luddites either as backward people who resist inevitable change, or forward-thinking people who cherish the reality of the old days. Sometimes you can hold both opinions at once - I'm sure that there are a lot of people who adopt the latest tech gadgets, but at the same time condemn Barry Bonds, Lance Armstrong, and the like for applying technical innovations in their fields. (If HGH were invented by Silicon Valley, the tech press would fall all over themselves promoting it.)

Well, over the last few days, a single message on Facebook has spawned an article in The Atlantic. The message, posted by the San Francisco bar Shotwell's, read as follows:

Last night around 9:45 two people walked into the bar. Looked me square in the eye, and acting as if everything was normal they ordered beers.. Oh did I mention they were wearing Google Glasses! In public! In A BAR!

Atlantic reporter Alexis Madrigal quoted Shotwell's co-owner Tom Madonna:

"When you buy a new phone, it's in your pocket, but this, you're wearing something on your face. Anyone that cares what they look like is not gonna wear Google glasses. That's my opinion," Madonna said. "If you are super nerdy and you like to show off that you're in tech and smart and all those things, I can see you probably wearing Google Glasses, but you are probably in a bubble or ... new. We've all heard all this stuff. Like, this guy moved to SF and he comes to the bar. He's from Scottsdale and he's using all these [tech] words. I had to stop him. I said, 'You sound interesting and different in Phoenix, but you sound boring here. You are cliche.'"...

"In Brooklyn, you don't see people put their phones on the tables. They have it in their pockets. That is the culture of San Franaciso. It's so pervasive, it just dones't seem weird. It seems *normal* to them to walk into a bar with Google Glasses, even though everyone's smirking at them," Madonna continued.

Everyone? "Ok, maybe a couple people were jealous," he admitted.

Enter Robert Scoble, who has commented on the original Facebook post and elsewhere, making two points. First, Shotwell's shouldn't be making fun of its clients. Second, Scoble will use his influence to steer people away from Shotwell's. Here's part of what Scoble said in a Quora thread:

[S]oon I'll be directed to the best bars by the Google Glass and if the bartender doesn't like me wearing them I'll change the review so that people get guided to go somewhere else!

So, if you are a bartender, you better watch out. Those of us who will be wearing Google Glass are often influencers, rich, and willing to change OUR behavior when it comes to spending our money, time, attention. Hint: I tip well and drink a lot of expensive Scotch (although I'm trying to cut down, which the Glass will help me with too).

Scoble did make other points about how we do need some common understanding about how such technologies are used. But it's safe to say that Shotwell's has dropped way down on his favorite list of bars.

But in a world in which 6 BILLION people are NOT on Facebook, is the Google Glasses-loving demographic truly that influential? Here's part of what I said (in response to Robert Scoble) in that same Quora thread:

Every business, whether physical or virtual, has a target market and caters to a particular clientele. And every business sets up rules. Shotwell's is clearly catering to a market that wants old-fashioned interaction, rather than people wearing Google Glasses....

One problem encountered by anyone (including me) who writes about tech is the assumption that everyone is just like us. And this also leads to the related view, that those people who are not like us are not as good as we are. For example, when Google+ was first introduced, there were a whole bunch of animated GIFs that showed Google+ beating Facebook up. Why? Because, in the eyes of the GIF creators, Facebook users were complete morons. And who knows what the GIF creators would think about the six billion people who don't use Facebook.

I'll cite another example; I can't remember if I've blogged about this before. Many people think of Footloose as a fictional movie from back in the 1980s. Well, if you come to the present day, in 2013, you can find Liberty Christian Academy in Guin, Alabama. Their policies include the following:

The school, therefore, requires each student...whether at home, school, or elsewhere...

1.to refrain from swearing, attendance at movie theaters, indecent language, smoking, drinking, alcoholic beverages, the abuse of drugs, gambling, dancing, involvement in rock music, touching or over familiarity with the opposite sex.

Yes, students at Liberty Christian Academy cannot dance. Not that they'd know about the movie Footloose, since they can't go to theaters either.

Now while I personally disagree with some aspects of Liberty's policies, including their policies on dancing, I recognize that there are a significant number of people in the United States who hold those views. And if parents want to send their kids there, I'm not going to run around and condemn them for it.

And similarly, I'm not going to condemn Shotwell's for laughing at people who wear Google Glasses.

Because at the end of the day, there are more Mark Maddoxes (Maddox is the pastor of the church that sponsors Liberty Christian Academy) than Robert Scobles.

P.S. Scoble replied to a comment that I made in the original Facebook thread:

John E. Bredehoft then make it an official policy "wearables not allowed here" kind of sign. Lots of businesses get ahead by making it clear who isn't welcome inside. But it sure doesn't seem like a good business strategy to me, especially in a city where so many tech elite live and spend money.

When "we care" rings hollow (My CHELSEA Welch post)

6:20 PM - AT EMPOPRISES, WE TRULY CARE ABOUT ALL OF OUR READERS, IN PARTICULAR SHAWN ROSSI WHO NOTED THAT THE ORIGINAL POST TITLE REFERRED TO "CRYSTAL" WELCH, NOT "CHELSEA" WELCH. BUT IN OUR VIEW, PEOPLE WHO GET ALL UPTIGHT ABOUT PROPER NAMES AND STUFF NEED TO GET A LIFE.

This weekend's tempest in a teapot concerns a particular restaurant check, which has been seen in imgur, Reddit, the Consumerist, and probably about everywhere else by now.

The short version: Pastor goes to a franchised Applebee's with a large party. Pastor receives automatic 18% gratuity on bill, based upon size of party. Pastor writes "I give God 10% why do you get 18" on bill. A waitress who wasn't working that table takes a picture of the bill, neglecting to remove personally identifying information from the bill. The picture causes a sensation on Reddit. The waitress is fired.

That's the part of the story that I already knew. But according to an R.L. Stollar story shared by Shawn Rossi, there's more. Much more. Rossi referred to this as "the next social media textbook example," and she's correct.

Here's a bit of what Stollar said:

Applebee’s fired the waitress in question, named Chelsea Welch. This created a fury of rage on the Internet, with social media users taking to their weapons of choice and lambasting away, thousands at a time, against the restaurant’s decisions. Numerous “Boycott Applebee’s” groups sprung up on Facebook, along with “Rehire Chelsea Welch” and other similar groups. Applebee’s website has a “What’s the Buzz” widget, that shows what people are saying on Twitter about the company. It’s been non-stop attacks, all publicly displayed on Applebee’s own page...

Stollar then talked specifically about what was happening at Applebee's own Facebook page. Go here for all of the details; I'm just going to concentrate on one little part of this.

It seems that whenever a company has to deliver bad news, it always prefaces it with a statement about how much the company cares about things. And the Stollar post documents plenty of examples from Applebee's. Here are a few:

We wish this situation hadn't happened. Our Guests' personal information - including their meal check - and neither Applebee's nor its franchisees have a right to share this information publicly. We value our Guests' trust above all else. Our franchisee has apologized to the Guest and has taken disciplinary action with the Team Member for violating their Guest's right to privacy.

Even with the nice-sounding preface "we wish this situation hadn't happened," this statement did not satisfy the mob, and resulted in thousands of negative comments on its own. Eventually, Applebee's added its own comment to the thread, which read in part as follows:

Please let us assure you that Applebee's and every one of our franchisees values our hard working team members and the amazing job they do serving our guests. We recognize the extraordinary effort required and the tremendous contribution they make, and appreciate your recognition and support of our colleagues.

At the same time, as we know you will agree, the guests who visit Applebee's -- people like you -- expect and deserve to be treated with professionalism and care in everything we do. That is a universal standard in the hospitality business. That includes respecting and protecting the privacy of every guest, which is why our franchisees who own and operate Applebee's have strict policies to protect personal information -- even guest's names....

So now we get the first of many examples (you'll see more below) of the "We value our team members, BUT" comments. Amazingly, even though Applebee's truly stated how much they cared about their employees, for some odd reason the mob of commenters was not impressed. So the negative comments kept on coming. At that point, someone at Applebee's took to responding to individual comments - with the same text. And that text itself was a beauty.

We can understand why you are upset. But the details circulating about this story do not represent all the facts....

But the mob kept coming, even though Applebee's said that they understood. Multiple times. Eventually the Applebee's commenter moved away from canned responses and wrote individual responses - using the same formula.

Hi James I'm really sorry your upset. will you please read the comment we posted above yours....

I can understand that TL. You should know though that the server was not stiffed....

Sorry you feel that way. If you knew me or we were face to face you'd know how much I care. No one's asking me to comment at 5 am in the morning. I am because I care, we care. I totally understand why you're upset and hate that I can't fix it.

But the best comment came some time later...presumably after some people had gotten some sleep:

As a company that relies on literally hundreds of thousands of incredibly hard working Team Members, we can assure you that we and our franchisees value and support them and their efforts. However this unfortunate situation has nothing to do with work....

Again, the same formula - we care about our workers, but this worker was a moron.

But keep on reading that message. Remember the first statement that Applebee's wrote, about how important their Guests are, and how they apologized to the Guest whose identify was revealed? Well, after several thousand comments, it appears that the Guest was a moron too:

Please note that we are also not excusing the Guest's behavior in this matter and the unacceptable comment she wrote on the receipt, which is offensive to us and all our hard working team members....

The thing that gets to me about this whole episode is that Applebee's messages are twice as long as they should have been.

Yes, I know that the cardinal rule of customer support is that when a customer is mad, you need to start your response by demonstrating your empathy with the customer. Let the customer know that you care.

As far as I'm concerned, however, that cardinal rule falls apart when the words that follow directly contradict that original empathy statement. In fact, if I can sum up all of the Applebee's statements above, my summary would sound like this:

We really really care about your feelings, but we fired Chelsea Welch anyway despite your feelings. In other words, your feelings suck.

In this case, the statement of empathy sounds like a lie.

So, with the benefit of hindsight, how would I have handled it? Perhaps a different type of empathy would have been in order. Instead of saying contradictory things about how our employees are important but if they screw up, they're gone (according to Welch, her posting of personally identifying information was unintentional), what about THIS type of empathy?

We at Applebee's know that you would be horrified if your bill were publicly posted without your permission. When this happened to the pastor - a customer just like you - our franchisee fired the jerk who did it.

None of this "we truly care about our team members" stuff. You see, everyone ended up identifying with the employee. Why not encourage the mob to identify with the customer?

Just a thought.

Which reminds me - now that Facebook has this new search facility, I'd better see if I've liked Applebee's. I'll have to remove that like.

The only commercial I want to see on Sunday - and I don't know if Letterman will do it

Hey! It's 2013! Time to look back at a 2011 blog post.

First there was the 2007 ad with David Letterman and Oprah Winfrey.

Then there was the 2010 ad with Dave, Oprah, and Jay Leno.

The 2007 spot aired after a 2005 reconciliation between Letterman and Winfrey, while the 2010 spot aired during the midst of the Conan-Jay moves at NBC which had elicited comment from Letterman.

As I started thinking about the upcoming Super Bowl, I began wondering - would this be the time for a foursome, with Conan invited to the party?

But as I looked into it further, I realized that this was not to be - at least in 2011.

Why? Because CBS, where Letterman's show airs, did not have the rights to the 2011 Super Bowl.

NBC had the rights to the 2012 Super Bowl, but for Leno to tape a similar ad would require Leno to be creative.

Back in that 2011 post, I did note:

But CBS has the Super Bowl rights in 2013. Now there's a commercial to look forward to...assuming that Letterman is still at CBS in 2013.

Well, Letterman hasn't lost his job, and it turns out that CBS really wants a Letterman promo on Sunday:

In a quick remark...at a CBS media event about the network's Super Bowl plans, CBS CEO Leslie Moonves strongly hinted that Mr. Letterman may once again serve in a Super Bowl slot. Securing the wee-hours comedian's services, however, has previously proved to be "a pretty tall order," Mr. Moonves said then. "Whether we can pull it off we don't know yet."

If you have not seen Letterman's previous ads, Ad Age explains their appeal:

Part of the appeal of the Letterman work is its easy feel. Each shows Mr. Letterman sitting on a couch watching football. The surprise comes after viewers discover who is sharing the sofa. In a time when so many Super Bowl ads are previewed endlessly in the weeks before the Big Game, the CBS promos have provided nice curve balls, showing feuding personalities putting aside their differences to enjoy the simple pleasures of watching a big sports event.

But who would join Letterman on the couch? Conan O'Brien, subject of much discussion back in 2011, is old news today. (Yes, Conan is still on the air, although I don't know if his show airs in Finland yet.) Ad Age tosses out names such as Paris Hilton or Sarah Palin, but neither of those people are topical either. Even Robert "Joe" Halderman (the guy who blackmailed Letterman and led to the revelations which could have cost Letterman his job) is old news.

Well, there is one person who would make for an attention-getting commercial. A person who has been the subject of Letterman's wit in the past. Someone who just resigned from her government job today, and therefore has no pressing commitments.

Yes, Hillary Clinton. And yes, Letterman has joked about her over the years. Here's one:

"Hillary Clinton is going to be secretary of State in the Obama Administration. Well, political insiders are now saying that Barack and Hillary actually have a good working relationship, but they don't have a close personal relationship. No, wait a minute, that's Hill and Bill."

However, it's doubtful that my dream of Clinton on Letterman's couch could come to pass. The spot would have to be taped in advance, and because no one could predict when John Kerry would be confirmed as Secretary of State, Clinton wouldn't be able to shoot up to New York for a quick taping.

So if Letterman does appear, I'm not sure who could appear on the couch that would grab our attention.

Well, I can think of one other name - Johnny Carson. Hey, if Tupac Shakur can appear in holographic form, Carson could.

When "lowest price technically acceptable" is acceptable

There are a number of ways in which a Federal government agency - or a state government agency, or a private firm - can evaluate a competitive procurement. One of these methods is referred to as "lowest price, technically acceptacle."

Last year, Bob Lohfeld was asked for his advice on how to steer a procurement officer away from using LPTA as the evaluation criteria.

The capture manager and the government program manager wanted to avoid an price shootout, but the contracting shop wouldn’t agree.

Lohfeld offered five suggestions. You can find all five of them here; I'm going to share the fifth of the five suggestions.

5. Is there a record of failed contract performance?

Can you find evidence of similar service contracts awarded using LPTA evaluation criteria where the contract was either terminated for poor performance or substantially modified to grant price relief to the lowest priced offer? There is much speculation that the inappropriate use of LPTA criteria will ultimately result in contracts with unacceptable performance. If you can document some of these instances, it will strengthen your argument to avoid the LPTA approach.

Lohfeld speaks of "speculation." Can one find documented evidence that LPTA leads to failed contract performance?

No. Perhaps it does at times, but doesn't at other times. It all depends upon what is being procured, as this article from Ray Bjorklund at Deltek notes.

For routine and non-complex services, products and product integration and maintenance, LPTA is frequently one of the best methods for choosing a contractor, largely because LPTA adds useful decision-making dimensions beyond price. However, for complex services or new services that cannot be well defined, LPTA is rarely a suitable source selection method.

Bjorklund gives an example:

LPTA applied to a contract for a brain trauma study may not be the best choice. On the other hand, selection of a landscape maintenance contractor can be expedited with an LPTA source selection method.

Of course, now all of the low-cost brain trauma study outfits will refuse to buy Deltek's services...

Medical tourism - coming to your town?

I was searching for the misspelling "penhandle" and ran across a page that (at least currently) includes this misspelling. This page, created by the University of Alabama at Birmingham, not only includes the word "penhandle," but also includes the words "eventhough," "internatiional," and airlines such as "America Airlines" and "Contiental Airlines."

However, the people reading that particular page may not have noticed.

This page was intended for foreigners coming to the United States (preferably to the University of Alabama at Birmingham) for medical procedures - otherwise known as "medical tourists."

I had certainly heard of medical tourism before. If you fly America Airlines or Contiental Airlines - whoops, I mean American Airlines and Continental Airlines - you'll see ads in their magazines that speak of U.S. medical facilities that cater to foreigners. It works the other way around also - many Americans go to other countries for medical procedures. Some of these Americans are very rich and seek the best (or most private) treatments; others are very poor and seek services that they can't afford in this country.

I didn't realize that the University of Alabama at Birmingham catered to foreign clientele. A family member was associated with the University in the 1970s, but I don't know if he performed operations for rich Brazilians. However, UAB is listed at an online medical tourism website.

Over 100 U.S. facilities are listed at that website. To my surprise, I found a listing for San Antonio Community Hospital in Upland, California. As you can guess from the name, this hospital caters to the local community; I couldn't see rich Brazilians flying to Ontario Airport and seeking services at that hospital. But the hospital apparently caters to this clientele:

If you do not speak English, or if you have a hearing or speech impairment, you may have interpretation services provided for you at no extra charge. Tell the person helping you that you need an interpreter. A list of languages for which assistance may be obtained is available in all departments of the Hospital.

San Antonio Community Hospital doesn't provide all of the procedures available in Birmingham, but they do offer a number of procedures such as heart surgery, chemotherapy, and treatment for brain tumors.

Perhaps YOUR local hospital is trying to secure business from patients in other countries. It's certainly an area for possible growth.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Physical, Virtual, or Mixed Meetings

I've been thinking about physical, virtual, and mixed physical/virtual meetings, based upon my experience in three areas:

• As an employee of a multi-national company.
• As a member of a professional organization serving (in my case) all of California.
• As a volunteer with a service organization serving (in my case) all of southern California.

Each of these three organizations needs to gather people together for meetings of various types.

• The service organization has three gatherings per year with the population that is being serviced. These are physical meetings in which people come from all over southern California and gather in a single location.
• The service organization also has to train its volunteers - not only in southern California, but all across the country. These training events are webinars.
• The professional organization has an annual training event. This is a physical meeting, generally held at Disney's Grand Californian Hotel in Anaheim. (People who have to travel a long distance to attend the meeting stay at the hotel.)
• The professional organization has at least three other events per year. These are hybrid physical/virtual meetings; while the meeting itself is a webinar, some people choose to gather in a few locations throughout California to attend the meeting together.
• As you may expect, the company has a lot of meetings spanning all types (physical, virtual, mixed). There are a number of mixed meetings, in which people gather at a few central locations to participate. Sometimes it's beneficial for people to travel to one of the meeting locations, rather than participating virtually.

So how do you decide whether a particular meeting should be physical, virtual, or mixed? Let me provide a couple of examples.

EXAMPLE ONE: WHEN THE CONNECTED GENERATION ISN'T

The volunteer organization that I referenced is Youth for Understanding (YFU), which (among other things) arranges for non-U.S. teenagers to spend a semester or a year with a host family in the United States. The experience of an exchange student in a foreign country follows certain patterns, and YFU arranges for the three meetings per year to address the concerns of the students when they first arrive in the United States, when they've spent several months in the United States, and when they are about to return home.

Now obviously it's quite possible for such a meeting to be virtual. Teenagers tend to be more used to online chat, Skype, Hangouts, and so forth. And since the kids are in homes from San Diego to Bakersfield, a virtual meeting would be easier to organize than one in which people have to drive 100 or more miles to get together.

But would a virtual meeting be any fun?

Let's face it - a group of teenagers is not necessarily looking forward to hearing about U.S. State Department regulations and parental regulations for an entire day. Part of the reason that these teenagers get together is to hang out with each other. They have two things in common: first, they are all foreigners in a strange country, and second, they are eager to meet new people. (This is why they go on an exchange in the first place.)

So in this particular case, it makes sense to get everyone together.

EXAMPLE TWO: WHEN THE CONNECTED COMPANY ISN'T

Over the years, I've worked in several organizational structures, including companies with single office locations, companies with multiple office locations (including one case in which a subsidiary's office was down the street from the corporate office), a multi-national based in the United States, and a multi-national based in France.

The U.S.-based multinational was Motorola (before it split into two companies), based in Schaumburg, Illinois. At one time, the head of our division within Motorola arranged for a one-day demonstration of all of the division's products. The demonstration was to be held in an auditorium in Schaumburg, but was to be accessible via videoconference to locations across the country. I was one of the presenters. Now I guess that I could have given my portion of the presentation from Anaheim, but I didn't - I flew to Schaumburg.

Why?

There were several reasons, but probably the most important reason was this - Schaumburg was where the action was. I can't recall the specifics, but I believe that the majority of the presenters were from Schaumburg. The head of the division was based in Schaumburg. Schaumburg had a nice auditorium from which the presentation could be given; our facility in California didn't have an auditorium. And even if it did, all sorts of arrangements would need to be made to support broadcasting from multiple locations; it would be easier to broadcast from one location and send the video everywhere else.

At the end of the day, it made perfect sense to spend the money to fly me across the country, put me in a hotel room for the night, and have me give my presentation in Schaumburg.

So I gave the presentation and went home. I'm not going to share my speculation on the results of my presentation in this blog post, but if you ever meet me in person, take a moment to ask me what happened after I gave my presentation in Schaumburg.

Am I crazy, or is Twitter a poor substitute for blogging?

(Yes, I realize that "and" may be more appropriate than "or" in the post title.)

I have been blogging since 2003 - not a long time by Dave Winer standards, but still significant - and I continue to blog today. Others do not. Spencer Rascoff has offered one explanation:

But now that Twitter is part of my daily routine, I blog less.

Rascoff lists four advantages of Twitter over blogs. Item 2 (shorter posts) is primarily a matter of style - for me, 140 characters is TOO short for anything that I want to say. Item 3 (less friction) is definitely true - it's obviously easier to write and distribute a tweet than it is to write and distribute a blog post. Item 4 (more interaction) is again a matter of style - while I tend to interact in longer-form comments (such as Google+ threads and the forthcoming nested Facebook threads), it is obviously possible to engage in a conversation on Twitter (even if, in my personal opinion, Twitter is a poor tool for engagement - others have better success at it).

You'll note that I skipped over Rascoff's item 1.

Bigger audience. I now have 40,000 followers on Twitter. I have never looked at the readership on my blogs, but I'm sure it's much less than that.

As far as I'm concerned, this is a mistake in logic. Let me explain.

Now I have far fewer followers on Twitter - the number of people following the @empoprises Twitter account is a little over 1,500 - but I do not make the mistake of saying that I have an "audience" of 1,500. I don't even have a potential audience of 1,500.

First, there's a chance that some of my followers are bots. Bots don't care what I write, and are never going to engage me in two-way conversation. They'll just spout off their bot stuff in a single direction.

Second, even the accounts with real people may not really be following me - some are following me and never looking at my feed again, hoping that I will follow them and look at their own feeds. These people are just like bots - they're using Twitter as a one-way communication method and don't care what comes back.

Third, let's move down to the group that are following me and, for whatever bizarre reason, are interested in what I say. These people are following their own 1,500 people, or 10,000 people, or 1,000,000 people. So let's say that @phildel (yeah, her) goes to her Twitter feed and reads everything that everyone said in the last 15 minutes. If I last tweeted 20 minutes ago - or 2 days ago - she will never see my tweet.

(Yes, you could theoretically read everything in your stream, but I learned way back in the FriendFeed days that this is impossible.)

So when I share a link to this post on Twitter, or when I share it to my Empoprises Public Community on Google+ and then re-share it to my personal feed, I am under no illusion that every one of my Twitter/Google+ followers/friends will see it.

This applies to other distribution methods as well. Don't bother to direct message me via Twitter - I check my DMs every few months. Sure, I may have x people still reading my blogs in an RSS feed, but who checks their RSS feeds nowadays? I have email subscribers also, but who reads email? I guess I could theoretically send my blog posts to people via snail mail, but people get so much junk mail that those would probably be tossed also.

So at the end of the day, just because x people potentially have access to your content via a particular medium, that doesn't necessarily mean that your audience consists of x people. Your audience is lower - possibly much lower.

Specifically concerning Twitter - while there may be valid reasons for certain people (with a certain conversational style) to use Twitter as their primary social media platform, the number of Twitter followers is NOT one of those reasons.

Now I just have to boil this down to 140 characters or less...

More on the OpenDyslexic font (yes, I do the Jim Bakker "I was wrong" routine again)

Remember my Monday post about the OpenDyslexic font? You know, the one entitled "Reading heavy-weighted bottoms"? (This was a reference to the characteristics of the font.)

Remember what I said in the post?

In addition to font downloads, the OpenDyslexic people even offer a custom web browser. Unfortunately, it's only available for devices that begin with the letter "i."

While that particular web browser may only be available for iDevices, my sentence is imprecise enough to give a different impression about OpenDyslexic's availability. A person named Abelardo - yeah, THAT Abelardo - offered a clarification:

Nope. Not true. It's a typeface. It's available anywhere you can shove it. I've only had time to create iOS apps that include it, but there are others, like InstaFetch that include it for Android.

And in this world of questionable sources, Abelardo offered this additional comment:

source: I made it. o_O

Yes, third-party applications are incorporating OpenDyslexic. The Examiner lists some of them:

Free downloads for Safari and Chrome browser extensions and several Apps (WordSmith, Instapaper, Instafetch, Steel's Run, Dox on Box, openWeb, Clicker 6) are available on Open-Dyslexic’s download page.

And if you want to install the font on your own Windows computer, serif.com (yeah, serif - heh) tells you know.

As Jim Bakker said, I was wrong.

Again.

What would James say? Atari US files for bankruptcy

In a recent post in my Empoprise-IE Inland Empire blog, I talked about an Upland, California business called James Games, which has apparently bucked the negative trend exhibited by an entire industry. Although I didn't mention it, the fortunes of video game arcades mirrored the up and down trajectory of a company called Atari. Atari took off in the early 1970s, and video game arcades mushroomed. But things changed within a few short years, as this Guardian post chronicles:

The company was sold to Warner Bros in 1976, but the failure of later consoles, as well as the Atari ST home computer, saw the legend passed between a succession of different owners. In 2000 it was bought by French publisher Infogrames, which changed its name to Atari....

Well, now the US subsidiary Atari wants to break from the French parent Atari.

In one way or another, the brand will probably survive. Some brands are killed after mergers - when was the last time you heard anyone at Wells Fargo mention Charles Crocker? - but the Atari brand is strong enough to live on.

Take note, Hostess fans.

Reading heavy-weighted bottoms - the OpenDyslexic font

At the AppsLab, Mark Vilrokx has written about a font that has been designed for readability by people with dyslexia.

The font, OpenDyslexic, is described here. And this is what it looks like.

In addition to font downloads, the OpenDyslexic people even offer a custom web browser. Unfortunately, it's only available for devices that begin with the letter "i."

My product packaging rant

Most products cannot be sold as-is. If I want some Hamburger Helper, I can't go to the store with a scoop and just scoop some up. (At least until Winco and other grocers sell Hamburger Helper in the same way that they sell cereal and flour.) So in most cases, the product has to be placed in some type of packaging. The packaging serves two purposes - to protect the product, and to market the product. I'm not going to touch upon the marketing aspects of product packaging here, but the protection aspect is often a little askew.

When was the last time you bought an inkjet printer cartridge? Depending upon your manufacturer, you probably received some type of envelope that allowed you to recycle the old cartridge that you were replacing. Why? Because Company X is environmentally friendly, and Company X cares.

Sure they do. In order to get to the cartridge and the envelope, you usually have to go through a ton of plastic. After you get out your scissors, knife, or blowtorch and penetrate all of the layers of protective packaging, your "environmentally friendly" printer cartridge is revealed to have been surrounded by several metric tons of waste. Try taking THAT to Staples for a credit.

But this is just part of the story about protective packaging.

[A NOTE TO MY 1970S ALLERGIST, DR. SABRI. IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE READING THIS BLOG POST, PLEASE DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPHS. I KNOW WHAT YOU TOLD US, AND I KNOW THAT YOUR ADVICE WAS SOUND. YES, I KNOW. BUT SOMETIMES A MAN'S GOTTA DO WHAT A MAN'S GOTTA DO.]

I bought some nasal spray one morning this week, after suffering with a cold for several days and having a mad desire to be able to breathe. The plan was to drive to the store, buy the nasal spray, walk to my car, use the nasal spray while in the car, and drive to work.

There was only one minor problem. When I got to the car and opened the nasal spray package, the bottle was wrapped with a chastity belt tighter than the ones that the Westboro Baptist Church teenage girls wear when they're within 10 miles of a U.S. military facility.

So I had to drive to work, hack at the bottle with my scissors for several minutes (without cutting my fingers), and then finally open the package and use the nasal spray.

What's really disturbing is that I, a reasonably healthy individual, had problems opening the nasal spray bottle. What if an 80 year old person caught the flu this winter and bought some nasal spray at the corner drug store? How long would it take that person to open the bottle?

In fact, if you have elderly relatives, you may want to give them a call today and ask them if they have any packages that they haven't been able to open. They would appreciate it.

Going to the other end of the age spectrum, this is what the Arbolog said:

Leapfrog Learn N Groove Maracas: 5 minutes. Slice through five separate pieces of transparent tape. Open box. Slide out cardboard insert. Undo four separate twist ties. Remove plastic wrapped advertising booklet. Remove plastic grommet / brackets from twist ties. Unthread twist ties from maracas. Remove small plastic tab from battery cover of toy. Turn on. Hand toy to child.

This prompted the following reaction from the author:

Jesus H Christ on a cracker.

More here.

It's enough to make you want to chew some Orbit gum to relieve your frustrations. Or perhaps not:

Yowzer...so, to recount, there's plastic, then paper, then more paper housing 14 little pieces of chewing gum. It is, by all accounts, a beautiful package. The question is, is it necessary?

Obviously I should have stuck to crackers, since that's what Jesus H Christ sits on. Well, you know where this is going:

The plastic envelope around each set of crackers is all but impossible to open cleanly, and you can forget about it being “resealable”. Once open, you have to resort to a plastic bag to prevent the crackers from going stale in a hurry.

Perhaps Tad Donaghe's beloved robots could be designed to open our packages for us. Jesus H Christ knows that we're not doing a good job at it.

Is Facebook Graph Search useful, or a toy?

While I was working on The Letter That Will Hopefully Ship Soon, Mark Zuckerberg and a few friends talked about something called Facebook Graph Search.

So, of course I went to Facebook to find out about it.

That didn't work.

Eventually, I found what I wanted. (Thank you Google News.) And eventually I found what I was looking for on Facebook also - not via Facebook itself, but from people such as Susan Beebe, Mark Krynsky, and Robert Scoble who were sharing stuff on their own. Scoble especially was sharing numerous examples of searches.

I was even able to launch a graph search of my own, even though I'm not part of the beta program yet. (Although I do have an Ingress invite, nyah nyah nyah.) If you go to https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch, you can click on the words "Try a Search." Via this amazing facility, I discovered that my wife lives in Ontario, California - the same city in which I live! (Who knew?)

As I mentioned above, Robert Scoble (who does not live in the same city as Alex Scoble) was posting screen shots of various searches. Which of Scoble's friends like particular bands? And there was this one:

Look at all the TV shows liked by various groups.

Fascinating!

Presumably he didn't dig down deep enough to see my TV tastes, which are few (sports and the "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" show).

The one search that seemed to be useful was a search of restaurants (or other businesses) liked by your friends. Investors agree - Yelp's stock price tanked 8% after the announcement. The theory is that if you can easily see what your Facebook friends like, why bother to go to Yelp?

But I'm not quite ready to condemn Yelp to the Enron heap, or to sell my Google stock. Yes, search facilities that take Facebook's massive amount of data into account are nice, but there are several cautions.

• First, Facebook Graph Search is currently in closed beta. I've submitted a request to join the beta via the link I shared above, but it will presumably be some time - weeks, months - before I can even try the beta version. And it will be longer than that before all Facebook users have a non-beta version of Graph Search.
• Second, you need to remember that Facebook Graph Search won't provide the thoughts of all of your friends. Remember that billions of people, including some of your close friends, are not on Facebook. (If you believe the more rabid Google+ users, Facebook is to them a ghost town. Catch the irony.) Even for those friends on Facebook, some of them may tighten their privacy controls, meaning that you'll never know that your father listens to the Berlin song "Sex."
• Third, ask yourself this question - how many times are you dying to know which frozen yogurt places are preferred by your friends? Yes, word-of-mouth is much more powerful than paid advertising - shh, don't tell Facebook's advertisers this - but other facilities, such as Yelp, provide much more detailed information on an establishment that can be yielded via a single "Like" (or "+1") button.

For me, the second point is pretty powerful. There are many people who will not join Facebook for whatever reason, and the existence of Graph Search is not necessarily going to drive those people to join (or rejoin) Facebook. Anti-Facebook zealots can be divided into several camps, including the "I value my privacy" camp or the "I don't want to waste my time on the computer" camp. Those people aren't going to show up on anyone's graph - Facebook's, Google's, or the Social Security Administration's.

(Yes, various governmental entities will get into the big data game also. Then things will really get fun.)

Are some things best left outside the stack? (Oracle's off-site response to Java vulnerabilities)

In the past, I've talked about Oracle's long-standing strategy (and this is truly a strategy, not a tactic) to provide the entire "stack" of services for its enterprise users, ranging from hardware to vertical applications to everything in between. With such a strategy, one would think that Oracle would do the same internally. It's interesting to note that in at least one recent instance, Oracle chose non-Oracle avenues to release critical Oracle information.

Much digital ink has been spilled over security vulnerabilities in Java, which received renewed focus when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security began discussing them.

Solution

Disable Java in web browsers

This and previous Java vulnerabilities have been widely targeted by attackers, and new Java vulnerabilities are likely to be discovered. To defend against this and future Java vulnerabilities, consider disabling Java in web browsers until adequate updates are available.

Obviously, when a national government agency tells people to quit using your product, it's not a good thing.

Oracle acquired the rights to Java as part of the Sun acquisition, so many in the industry were wondering when or how Oracle would respond. Would the response come on Oracle's Java page? If it's there, it's deeply buried; I couldn't find it.

I did, however, find a response from Oracle on Twitter.

Oracle aware of flaw in #Java SW integrated w/ web browsers. Flaw limited to JDK7. Fix available shortly. Read more: http://on.fb.me/HVR2m

As you can probably guess by the "fb" initials in the URL, the "read more" link does not to back to oracle.com. Instead, it goes to an item on the Oracle page on Facebook.

Oracle is aware of a flaw in Java software integrated with web browsers. The flaw is limited to JDK7. It does not exist in other releases of Java, and does not affect Java applications directly installed and running on servers, desktops, laptops, and other devices. A fix will be available shortly

It's odd to think that an important Oracle announcement was not made at oracle.com, but at twitter.com and facebook.com. There are two possible explanations for this.

One explanation is that you don't want to put negative news on your own website. Perhaps this is anecdotal, but in many cases when a company has negative news to report, the news is not placed on the "press" section of its own website, but is instead directly released to various publications. Thus, the negative mention of a flaw in Java is shuttled off of oracle.com, and is instead placed in other locations.

The second explanation - the one that doesn't make Oracle look as bad - is that people often don't pay attention to company websites any more. Perhaps it's my Reed education, but if I want to find out about CAIR, I go to CAIR's website, and if I want to find out about Oracle, I go to Oracle's website. But many people, including some companies, have a dramatically different view. Some companies almost beg you to go to other websites - "See our Facebook page for more details!" Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest are supposedly where the action is, so people flock there rather than going to the boring company.com web address.

Either way, the message that is being sent is that if you want to find out important information about Oracle, don't go to oracle.com. Go to a third party...

In defense of ugly suburbia

Larry Rosenthal shared a Mike Elgan share of a Ken Layne post. Layne's post is entitled "Is San Francisco The Brooklyn To Silicon Valley's Unbuilt Manhattan?"

Layne begins by looking at today's Silicon Valley. And he doesn't like it.

As disappointed visitors and new employees discover, Silicon Valley is a dull and ugly landscape of low-rise stucco office parks and immense traffic-clogged boulevards. The fancy restaurants are in strip malls, like you'd find in Arizona or something. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go.

And that just won't do. We need to start a relief effort for the poor coder, creating the latest add-on to Twitter, and who is condemned to live in...A TRACT HOUSE. Sure, people in (shudder) Arizona or in Ontario, California or in Iowa or Ohio or whatever can live in tract houses...but not in Silicon Valley.

[T]he areas around and in between the tech giants of Silicon Valley are mostly ready to be razed and rebuilt. There are miles and miles of half-empty retail space, hideous 1970s' two-story apartment complexes, most of it lacking the basic human infrastructure of public transportation, playgrounds, bicycle and running and walking paths, outdoor cafes and blocks loaded with bars and late-night restaurants. This is where the new metropolis must be built, in this unloved but sunny valley.

Of course, it is also necessary to link this new metropolis to San Francisco.

California Route 82, the one-time king's highway...could be a new corridor of high-rise apartments and HQs and restaurants and museums filling in the long gaps between downtown San Jose and Apple/Google/HP/Yahoo/Intel and Stanford University and San Francisco. With local light rail at street level and express trains overhead or underground, the whole route could be lined with native-landscaped sidewalks dotted with pocket parks and filled on both sides with ground-floor retail, farmers markets and nightlife districts around every station.

Mike Elgan is all for it.

We should bulldoze the strip-malls, office parks and track houses of Silicon Valley, and built in its place giant skyscrapers -- a futuristic Manhattan.

Manhattan appears to be the model. The assertion is that San Francisco is NOT Manhattan, but that Silicon Valley could become a futuristic Manhattan. It's a wonder that no one referred to Manhattan 2.0.

However, there are several critical differences between Manhattan 1.0 and Manhattan 2.0.

First, Manhattan 1.0 is small - and it's even smaller when you realize that people talking about "Manhattan" exclude much of Manhattan Island from the mix. (More on this later.) The entirety of Manhattan (including the uncool parts) is only 22.7 square miles. The city of San Jose alone covers 174 square miles. I think - the source that provided this number also stated that San Jose has a population of 1,000,684,600. But even if San Jose doesn't have as many people as the nation of India, it's clear that Silicon Valley is much larger than the cool parts of Manhattan, so it's hard to envision a metropolis at Layne's scale.

Second, there's another difference between Manhattan and Manhattan 2.0 - something that Larry Rosenthal notes.

psst.. what made NYC great... WAS all the small shitty places full of immigrants who built its chaotic merged culture... anyhow... enjoy the dome Logan.

(If you don't know who Logan is, see this.)

Let me name a few Manhattan neighborhoods, and you can tell me how many of them remind you of a futuristic city with high-rise apartments and restaurants and museums. Harlem. Times Square. Hell's Kitchen. The Bowery. The Lower East Side.

I haven't spent an extensive amount of time in New York, but I've spent enough time there to know that the city isn't a series of gleaming spires. My one recollection of the Washington Square area of Greenwich Village was the guys wandering around asking, "Smoke? Smoke?" And when my dad and I took the New York subway during another visit, my dad was disgusted with the graffiti, and I was elated that we didn't run into any trouble. (Hey, Manhattan 2.0 people - are you going to pull Caltrain out and put the New York City subway in?)

Oh, and there's a third difference. Manhattan 1.0 took centuries to become the area that it is. You're not going to build a Manhattan 2.0 in the space of a few years - especially when you consider that the state of California is pretty much bankrupt. Exactly who is going to fund all of this massive development?

But if you really want to look Manhattan to see how it is a hotbed of tech, look at a technology company that's even older than Silicon Valley pioneer Hewlett Packard. Yes, I'm talking about IBM.

Except that IBM isn't based in Manhattan.

It's based in Armonk.

Out in the suburbs, off of Interstate 684.

No wonder we had a mortgage crisis - the lenders are clueless

I received a notice in the mail today. It's one of these "official notification" thingies with "Postmaster: Deliver to Addressee Only" but with the caveat "This is not a Government document."

Once I opened the thing, I found out that the Residential Finance Corporation of Columbus, Ohio had pre-qualified me for a loan of up to $238,000 under Fannie Mae's Home Affordable Refinance Program. I just have to call Residential Finance Corporation at their 877 number before January 27, 2013 to see if I qualify.

Many of you are yawning right now and wondering why I'm bothering to blog about something that you've been receiving for years.

Here's why I'm blogging about it: the notice was sent to my business address.

Yes, Residential Finance Corporation has offered a Fannie Mae HOME loan to a two-story BUSINESS building holding hundreds of people, smack dab in the middle of a business/industrial area.

Obviously if I called the 877 number, the loan offer would be retracted in about two seconds. I wouldn't get past the question "How long have you owned your home?" If I answered "Well, I've been in this cubicle since the fall of 2009," that would end the Fannie Mae process right there.

But I wonder why the Residential Finance Corporation didn't even bother to check that they were offering a home loan to a residential address.

How did they get my name and address? Probably from a corporate credit card (thanks, Corporate Credit Card Companies). Perhaps from some business-related mailing list. But regardless, they grabbed the data, said that the property was eligible for a home loan - AND NEVER CHECKED THE PROPERTY.

No wonder we had a home loan crisis a few years ago. Perhaps in 2007 this loan would have been approved.

In a larger sense, it makes you wonder how many business solicitations are sent out to ridiculous addresses - and phone numbers.

"I'm going to try the new telemarketing pitch on this prospective client. Her name is Jenny. Her phone number is 867-5309."

Today's bad spam story

One of the posts in my tymshft blog received a comment that was awaiting my moderation. The comment, which linked to some Holly Valance website, began as follows:

Thank you for every other excellent article.

So is the spammer saying that all of my other tymshft posts are great, but this one is terrible?

But before I rejected it and reported it as spam, I captured the remainder of the text for posterity's sake.

The place else may anyone get that kind of info in such a perfect way of writing? I’ve a presentation next week, and I’m at the look for such info.

Dear spammer, hope your presentation went well. Tell Holly I said hi, and that I realize that the mention of Holly Valance in a post will have the same result as my mentions of plumbing. Hang on...

P.S. I do not mean to anger legitimate Holly Valance fans, just the spammers. So if you are legimitately searching for information on Ms. Valance, I will provide you with one fact - her father's nickname is Rake.

Reminder to staffing services companies - you provide staff

Happy new year! I never did finish my retrospective for 2012, but right now I have to launch right into 2013.

Sean P.O. MacCath-Moran just received an email from a recruiter. The email includes includes at least four different fonts, two colors, and odd size changes (even in the middle of a sentence).

The content itself isn't much better. Here's an excerpt (using a single font style):

Our records show that you have past or current experience with skills fitting a current opening with our Direct End Client. Please be aware that our database has searched out your resume, so please accept my apologies if this requirement does not match your current or preferred job profile or location preference.

Surprisingly, MacCath-Moran did not respond positively to the highly personalized and detailed request from the recruiter. Read his Google+ post to see his comments, including his theories about why he was approached so unprofessionally.

But I got curious and wondered what the recruiting company - Sun Technologies - said about the quality staff that it could provide to companies. I figured that would be good for a laugh. Maybe the website would say that they carefully screen all candidates; of course, we know that careful screening consists of finding every living organism within a 5,000 mile radius with a resume that matches at least one key word.

So I went to Sun Technologies' About page. And this is what I found:

Sun Technologies® has been a trusted provider of Information Technology services and resources since 1996. We built a worldwide organization that specializes in IT and engineering services. Sun Technologies® offloads the burden and costs associated with finding and cultivating the right knowledge capital for implementing IT solutions.

Yes. They said "right knowledge capital."

And Sun Technologies went on, talking about "a CMMI Level 3 conforming process" and "many flexible engagement models" (for the companies) and more stuff.

Now CMMI Level 3 processes and flexible engagement models are not problems in and of themselves.

The problem is that the entire write-up - save for the aforementioned reference to "right knowledge capital" and a subsequent reference to "talent resources" - never actually talked about the PEOPLE that were going to be loosed in your Fortune 500 company. How does Sun Technologies find its candidates? Are they qualified? Why are Sun Technologies' candidates better than candidates offered by other firms?

This got me thinking. Years and years ago, I was placed in a company by another firm - then known as Kimtech, now known as Kimco Technology Group. I contracted via Kimtech for over a year and was finally hired by the company itself - as was another person.

So what does Kimco Technology Group think about its "knowledge capital" and "talent resources"? This is what Kimco says:

Kimco recruiting specialists draw on an extensive database of experienced, tested and carefully screened candidates with specific technical qualifications. It's because of our industry-specific focus, expertise, and connections that we can offer our candidates highly desirable positions that might not otherwise be readily available. We don't just place our candidates in a position and walk away. We take the time to get to know their specific personality and goals, find positions that best match, and help them be better prepared to find the best possible position available.

Now I should note that I have not worked for Kimco in over fifteen years, and there is a chance that the company no longer meets these high standards.

But at least Kimco's focus is in the right place. Yes, they have processes - but they also pay attention to the actual people that they find and place via these processes.

Kimco is not alone. I am aware of other staffing firms that take the time to work with their candidates to make sure that they are placed in contracts that benefit both the candidate and the company.

Unfortunately, Sun Technologies also is not alone. I have heard other stories of people who were contacted by recruiters based upon the flimsiest details - one person was contacted because of a technical skill the person had last used almost a decade ago, in a different state than the state in which the job opportunity was located.

Bad ad placement

Found these ads in the middle of this security article.

With those brief descriptions, next to that text, I wonder how many people clicked on the links.

Empoprise-BI in April 2012 - Yeah

For those who are just joining the fun, I'm hopping on the 2012 bandwagon and looking at my previous posts in the Empoprise-BI business blog, taking one post from each month, and highlighting it. I've already looked at posts from January 2012, February 2012, and March 2012, so now it's time to look at April.

My last post ended up being rather long. This post will be shorter.

For April, I chose to look back at the post Why a talking lamb is more impressive than a high Klout score.

I could quote extensively from the post, but I'm not going to do that.

I could analyze the post, but I'm not going to do that.

I'm just going to share this.

Empoprise-BI in March 2012 - I was right about Mark Walter...or was I?

Yes, I'm looking at some posts I wrote in the past year. I've already looked at January and February, so now it's time for March.

For a change, rather than looking at a post that suddenly caught my fancy, I'm going to look at a post that caught the fancy of a lot of other people.

You see, while people were concentrating on certain members of the Los Angeles Dodger's new ownership team, I was heading right to the top. In the end, the person who runs a business is the person with the money, and in the Dodgers' ownership group, the money was held by Mark Walter.

So, back in March, I asked the question Who is prospective Dodgers controlling partner Mark R. Walter? ("Prospective" because when I wrote the post, the ownership change was still going through the approval process.)

There wasn't a lot of information available about Walter at the time, so I ended up looking at the Guggenheim website. One quote caught my eye:

“We put our clients and our relationships first, ahead of the firm’s interests.”

~CEO Mark Walter

After the penny-pinching that became evident in the latter years of the Frank McCourt era, I observed:

Good news for a baseball fan.

But now that several months have elapsed since the new regime took over, we can ask ourselves whether the team is headed in the right direction.

Walter and the Dodgers certainly spent money in 2012 - most notably when the team acquired Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, and an injured Carl Crawford. In late August, it looked like Gonzalez and Beckett could help propel the Dodgers to the postseason.

They didn't.

The Dodgers' 86-76 record wasn't enough to get them into postseason play, although it was slightly better than the 82-79 record from 2011, McCourt's last year. And it was better than the 80-82 record from 2010.

But what can we expect in 2013? I think we can expect that Mark Walter and the Dodgers will spend money. But will that be enough to bring a win to Chavez Ravine?

Empoprise-BI in February 2012 - Only I can mention Mel Brooks and Syrian security in the same post

OK, let's move on with my end of year retrospective. I already covered January 2012, so let's move on to February.

To select a post to highlight for February, I consulted analytics, SEO optimization techniques, and industry trends, and then selected the post with the weirdest title.

That post had the title Mel Brooks provides IT security for Syrian officials. When I read that title, I asked myself, "What was I thinking?"

Well, it turns out that Anonymous hacked a number of online accounts of Syrian officials.

And some of them used the password "12345."

If you don't get the reference, read the post.