Odiogone - well, Odiogo's still around, but its terms have changed

I don't know how many of you have noticed the "Listen Now" button on the posts in my Blogger blogs. This ability to listen to my posts via computer-generated audio is provided by a service called Odiogo - a service that I've used since 2008.

Sadly for me, and for Odiogo, I have received an e-mail from Odiogo that begins as follows:

August 12, 2013

Important change to the Odiogo service

Dear Odiogo User,

We would like to share with you important information and changes we are making to the Odiogo Service.

When we started the company a few years ago, we were under the belief that our vocalization service would be paid for via embedded pre-roll ads. Unfortunately this did not prove to be the case. The many of brands and agencies we reached out to were skeptical about audio advertising on the web and preferred staying with the traditional banners and web formatted film ads for the videos.

This situation is driving us to shift to a different model which will help us sustain in the market and provide high standards of product and support. Starting September 1, 2013 the Odiogo Service will be made free only to personal, non-profit blogs. All other blogs or sites using Odiogo will have to switch to either the "Plus" or "Pro" plan....

As it turns out, my Blogger blogs do not qualify as non-profit blogs, for the same reason that I chose to wait three months before blogging about my recent service as an alternate juror.

And in my case, it's not worthwhile to pay over $100 per year to continue the service under a paid plan.

I bear no hard feelings toward Odiogo; the company needs to develop a business plan that provides it with revenue. I wish them well in the future, and if you truly do have a non-profit blog, or if your business blog would benefit from audio capabilities, definitely check Odiogo out. (As I write this, the site has not yet been updated to reflect these changes, but check the site later.)

For a demonstration of the service, go to the top of this post and click "Listen Now." Just be sure to do it in the next couple of weeks.

If you can get both traditional and crowdsourced funding, do it (Arkami)

DISCLOSURE: I am employed in the biometrics industry. However, this post does not concern biometrics itself, but business models. And since my employer and its immediate competitors are large multinational firms, this particular company's funding methods are unrelated to those that affect me in my day job.

Arkami is a southern California-based company that is responsible for the myIDkey product. As a small startup, it found that it needed outside funding, and it recently turned to Kickstarter to achieve that funding.

Now the whole Kickstarter funding model is nothing new - if you've heard the commercials from Jim Koch (one of the two heroes of the Empoprise-BI business blog), you know that he started the Boston Beer Company with the help of funding from his "drinking buddies." And you can obviously do this outside of Kickstarter; recently, I participated in a crowdsourced funding campaign. But the whole idea behind Kickstarter and the like is that you ask ordinary people to chip in a few bucks for your project, and you offer them something in return. It could just be a thank you, or it could be something substantial; if you're asking people to fund product development, perhaps a certain contribution will entitle you to the product.

So Arkami started a Kickstarter project to raise $150,000 in development money. Partway through the funding round, Arkami had raised $354,000. By the end of the funding drive, $473,000 had been raised.

Now "social media experts" were probably falling all over themselves, saying that the wisdom of the crowds and collaboration and crowdsourcing and transparency and likes and comments and sharing cat photos were obviously valuable. #SoMe had not only liberated the Middle East (how did that work out?), but was now also bringing cool products to fruition.

However, while $473,000 is certainly impressive, it's not real money.

Arkami just announced that they've received some real money - $1.8 million worth. And they didn't go to the crowds to get it.

ALISO VIEJO, CA – August 13, 2013 – Arkami™, creator of myIDkey™, today announced a $1.8 Million Series A round of financing....

The funding round included investments from Gordon Clemons, McNeel Capital and Mark Swanson as well as a number of other veteran angel investors. The funding will be used to accelerate the development of myIDkey, meet customer demand, and facilitate company growth.

Perhaps the angel investors were impressed with the Kickstarter campaign, but they presumably evaluated many other factors in making their funding decision. Any yahoo can craft something to impress amateur investors, but professional investors want to see something more.

Now, if the myIDkey idea really takes off, then Arkami may eventually turn to another funding source - the one that Facebook pursued not too long ago.

So, the next time that some startup person asks you, "Should I look for angel investors, or should I crowdsource my funding?" your simple answer should be "yes."

(empo-tuulwey) Why Useless PLASTICBOX 1.2 wasn't a...best buy

Well, this tweet from @plasticjesusart is getting a lot of attention.

The Daily Mail explains what happened:

Best Buy stores have been targeted by a prankster who has placed worthless plastic boxes on the shelves complete with authentic labels.

The black boxes have product tags in the style of the American discount electrical giant that read 'Useless PLASTICBOX 1.2' for $99.99.

The labels read: 'Another gadget you don't really need.

'Will not work once you get it home. New model out in 4 weeks. Battery life is too short to be of use.'

The prank is attributed to the person who originally shared the picture, Plastic Jesus. P.J. was quoted in Melrose and Fairfax:

We are sold these gadgets in a way that makes us think that THIS new gadget is THE one. The piece of kit that will transform our lives. How often do we pay out hundreds or thousands of dollars and in-fact the product will not do much of what it is claimed. The frustration these things actually create in out lives is far greater than any possible benefits. It's only once you've purchased the item and you try to set it up and use it, often faced with long phone calls to overseas call centres, speaking to 'help desk' staff who read from scripts and leave us more frustrated.

We all need to make a strong statement to gadget manufacturers and demand products that work and customer support that actually support the customer and not the profit of the companies...

The Melrose and Fairfax writer wondered if any of these sold.

I'd be willing to bet that they didn't - not because everyone immediately realized that it was a prank, but because the Useless PLASTICBOX 1.2 wasn't attractive enough.

Oh, Plastic Jesus tried. These types of devices can only come in two colors - pure black, or pure white. While perhaps a little more drool would come from a tech-weenie's mouth with a white device, black is perfectly acceptable.

But the big problem is the $99.99 price.

It's way too low.

Ideally, to be lusted after, such a device would need a price closer to $1,000 than $100. Perhaps $899 would be good, with a $999 price for the future white PLASTICBOX 1.3.

Certainly for a true luxury good, the price would have to be much higher - in the tens of thousands of dollars, or maybe even in the hundreds of thousands. But you have to remember that the product was placed in Best Buy, and apparently was placed in the GPS aisle at Best Buy. Maybe Plastic Jesus could have commanded a higher price - $5,000 or above - if the product had been placed in the high-end audio equipment section.

But $100 is just too low for the trendies to take notice.

Thanks for Jack C. Crawford for the original share of the Daily Mail article.

Jack Clark is the latest to learn that dissenting opinions will not be tolerated

For all of the babbling that people sputter about government censorship, private restriction of free speech is much more prominent. Remember that private restriction of free speech is NOT a First Amendment issue; businesses can, under many circumstances, restrict what their employees may say. For example, I cannot go out and reveal confidential information about my employer (as long as I'm not revealing a criminal act) and then cry that my First Amendment rights have been violated.

And restrictions against employees can also apply to contractors. For those of you who recall the name Michael Hanscom, he earned his fifteen minutes of fame from taking an unauthorized picture at Microsoft.

But there are two more recent examples.

I'll start with something that happened back in 2010. At the time, Rob Dibble was the host of a radio show on Sirius XM, and he made a comment after Washington Nationals pitching phenom Stephen Strasburg was removed from a game.

"Okay, you throw a pitch, it bothers your arm, and you immediately call out the manager and the trainer?" Dibble said after Strasburg was removed from a game with an apparent arm injury. "Suck it up, kid."

Unfortunately for Dibble, his comment was poorly timed, since it turned out that Strasburg HAD suffered an injury. But it did offer a potential opening for commentary on older vs. newer players, since it is apparent that modern pitchers do not throw as much as they did in Rob Dibble's heyday.

However, a second newsworthy item occurred, since it turned out that Dibble did not only have a job with Sirius XM, but also had a job as a broadcaster with the Washington Nationals. And the Nationals apparently didn't care for the "suck it up" comment - so they fired him.

Perhaps it's not surprising - in many cases, the last broadcast outlet that will tolerate negative comments about a sports team is the broadcast outlet that carries the sports team's broadcast. I don't think that Vin Scully would be fired if he were to say that the Dodgers are terrible, but there are a lot of team media outlets that will fire someone who says something negative about a current player.

Well, what about a former player? Let's look at St. Louis broadcaster - whoops, FORMER St. Louis broadcaster - Jack Clark:

When [Kevin] Slaten said on the air that he long has believed that [Albert] Pujols “has been a juicer,” Clark said, “I know for a fact he was.”

Pujols, of course, is the former St. Louis Cardinal who recently departed the team and joined the L-- A------ Angels of Anaheim. (As you know, I don't use that team name.) Clark is the former Cardinal who was working on the Los Angeles Dodgers staff several years ago, where he made the acquaintance of one Chris Mihlfeld. Clark claimed that Mihlfeld told him that he had "shot up" a promising young ballplayer in the St. Louis organization - and Mihlfeld wasn't talking about Joe Garagiola.

Well, pretty soon after that radio exchange, both Slaten and Clark no longer had jobs.

WGNU sells its weekday airtime to insideSTL Enterprises, which has a variety of employment deals with the hosts. A source said the arrangement with Clark and Slaten did not have them working directly for that company. So technically they couldn’t be fired, simply not allowed to return.

Early Saturday, insideSTL announced it “has terminated its relationship with Jack Clark and Kevin Slaten. As independent contractors, we want to make it clear that the opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the opinions of insideSTL. Also as independent contractors, insideSTL did not have editorial control over the show’s content.’’

Actually, insideSTL DID have editorial control over the show's content, after the fact. You say something that insideSTL doesn't like, then don't come back to work on Monday.

So what happens next? Well, Rob Dibble was able to get a new job after the Nationals fired him - significantly, on a national radio show (rather than a local radio show). And perhaps Jack Clark may find employment at the national level.

Because at the local level, it's becoming more and more obvious that certain opinions will not be tolerated.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to tune in to the local Los Angeles sports radio shows and see which hosts are demanding that the Los Angeles Lakers get rid of Kobe Bryant.

Qualifying bad behavior is an imperfect science - or, the REAL reason why Oprah wasn't served in Bahnhofstrasse

In my previous post about the saleswoman who (reportedly) refused to show Oprah Winfrey a handbag worth tens of thousands of dollars because the saleswoman didn't think Winfrey could afford it, I noted that Winfrey and others have attributed the snub to racism. Whether that was what motivated the saleswoman, many people have assumed it. And Heidi Moore not only accused that racism was involved, but that other things were involved:

No doubt, the details of the incident will be pored over. It has already been attributed to racism, and rightfully so: Oprah's incident tripped a wire that worries many women of color: to be judged negatively and immediately by their race, to be treated as second-class citizens, to be pointed to the things that are not the best, but considered merely "good enough" for you. The best and most expensive, the implication goes, is saved for those with the obvious status markers: well-groomed, accompanied by a wealthy-looking man, and usually, not coincidentally, very thin.

This is what Oprah, and most other women, rarely talk about: the struggle for respect faced by women of color is shared, at times, with another group: women of size, another category to which Oprah belongs.

Perhaps Moore is right, but I argue that it's extremely speculative to conclude that size-ism motivated the Swiss saleswoman. Or that the other things did.

Yes, Oprah is black, and there is certainly a history of discrimination against black people. Now I don't know the ins and outs of Swiss racism, but since everyone tells me that Europeans are so much better than we backward Americans, I am forced to conclude that racism is not a factor.

Yes, Oprah's waist does not look like Barbie's waist, and again there is a history of discrimination against people because of size. However, Bahnhofstrasse caters to rich people, who are commonly called "fat cats." If someone goes shopping on Bahnhofstrasse, I suspect the salespeople aren't really going to care about their guts, but are really going to care about their wallets.

You may have noticed that Heidi Moore also threw another thing in there - Oprah apparently entered the shop alone, and was not accompanied by a male figure. Now, at the risk of sounding like a sexist ugly American, I have to ask - how many men accompany women in handbag shopping excursions? In fact, I bet that $40,000 handbag stores get more sales when the men are not present. Oprah doesn't need Stedman (or whoever) standing over her shoulder, yelling "You're going to pay HOW MUCH for a purse?"

Heidi Moore and others have tried to deduce the reasons why Oprah Winfrey was denied service. However, Moore and almost everyone else who is pontificating on this topic are members, in one way or another, of the Mass Media Empire, governed by the Illuminati from their secret underground bunker below Brussels. And as such, the Mass Media Empire figures are suppressing the real reasons why Winfrey was denied service.

Chief among them is another very identifiable fact about Oprah - not that she is black, or that she is unmarried, or that she is non-anorexic.

I hope you're sitting down for this.

Oprah Winfrey is...AN AMERICAN.

Now consider how the Europeans have thought about Americans for the past decade or so. First, they were all upset about George W. Bush, who was promoting the Patriot Act and war in Afghanistan and Iraq and just generally being an American cowboy like his philosophical uncle Ronald Reagan.

It appeared that Barack Obama was going to change things and make the United States play nice with the rest of the world, but then he up and kills Osama Bin Laden and spies on everyone in the entire world and just generally acts like an American cowboy like his philosophical uncle Lyndon Johnson.

So consider this. You're an Italian-speaking saleswoman in Zurich (the country with many languages), and this person comes in, with an American accent, speaking English. And I bet that the person was acting like an ugly American, throwing her money around and looking at this and that in a big rush.

Hello. I'm going to my friend Tina's wedding and would like to see that handbag, please.

Now that's probably what Oprah said. I look at that statement and find nothing wrong with it. People from other cultures look at that statement and see something entirely different.

In many cultures, you don't just launch into business. Perhaps you go to dinner, meet the family, talk about philosophy, drink coffee together, or whatever. Even in less formal situations, you at least exchange some pleasantries.

But Americans such as Oprah and myself don't necessarily do that. "I want that purse," we'd say. (Or she'd say it, anyway.)

As some of you know, I work in a company that is a subsidiary of a French company, and there has a sprinkling of French nationals working throughout the company. When I went on a business trip to another of our facilities in the U.S., at least two of the French nationals commented on my tendency to eat lunch quickly and be done with it. It's enough to make you realize that when you're in Roman, you'd be better off doing as the Romans do.

And when you're being served by an Italian-speaking woman, take your time.

Qualifying customers is an imperfect science

I help to sell automated fingerprint identification systems for a living. Before we begin to respond to a Request for Proposals from a law enforcement agency or other government agency, one of the things that we must do is ascertain the customer's budget. If the product that the customer wants is worth $10 million, but the customer's budget is less than $100,000, then it would be a waste of our time and the customer's time to try to sell the product. At the end of the day, the customer won't buy it.

Note that there are a number of assumptions in the paragraph above. How do we know that the customer's budget is less than $100,000?

My company obviously isn't the only one that has to make guesses about customers. Let's say that you're a shopkeeper, and you sell handbags. Expensive handbags, retailing in the tens of thousands of dollars. In this case, your market of potential customers is relatively small, and you do not want to waste your time with those who can't afford your product. At the same time, your inventory obviously has a high value, so you take steps to protect it.

When I visited Switzerland in 2000, I visited the famous Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich, a street with some of the most expensive stores in the world. I didn't enter any of them, but apparently an American woman did enter a handbag shop on this street. According to the woman, she wanted to look at a particular handbag priced somewhere between $35,000 and $40,000 (reports vary), but the saleswoman refused to let her look at it, saying that the customer couldn't afford it. The customer politely left the store...and subsequently shared her story with Nancy O'Dell on Entertainment Tonight.

You see, the woman in question WAS able to afford the handbag. I won't tell you the woman's last name, but her first name is Oprah. And Oprah speculated that her race might have been the reason that the saleswoman concluded that she couldn't afford the handbag.

For the record, shop owner Trudie Goetz claims that there must have been a misunderstanding, and that Oprah was allowed to see the handbag in question, and that the saleswoman was not proficient in English. Some aren't buying it:

So as the store owner you: blame the employee, blame the employee's heritage, claim it was all just a "misunderstanding".

Lame.

And even if this WASN'T a case of racism, there's one point to remember:

[Y]ou lost a $40k sale.

H/T to James Russell, who shared the Gawker version of the story.

Foreign purchases of U.S. cloud services - are the storms temporary?

While I realize that 94.6% of you have already determined that this is the most informative item that you will read today, I still have to sell the other 5.4% of you on this obvious fact.

Thus we see the power of statistics. If something can be quantified, then it acquires the veneer of truth. But what is truth? We've discussed this before, when looking at the $775 billion figure for piracy losses. And Ashton Kutcher's figure citing hundreds of thousands of sex slaves in the U.S. And the repeated statements about how Windows is being trounced by MacOS and Linux.

So here's today's questionable statistic. Mitch Wagner linked to a Washington Post article that linked to another Washington Post article that linked to a ComputerWorld UK article that talked about a survey that was conducted by the Cloud Security Alliance. The announced objective of the survey, called the Official CSA Snowden/NSA Patriot Act Survey, was as follows:

During June of 2013, news of a whistleblower, US government contractor Eric Snowden has dominated global headlines. Snowden provided evidence of US government access to information from telecommunications and Internet providers via secret court orders as specified by the Patriot Act. As this news became widespread, it has led to a great deal of debate and soul searching about appropriate access to an individual’s digital information, both within the United States and any other country.

The purpose of this survey is to collect a broad spectrum of CSA member opinions about this news, and to understand how this impacts your attitude about using public cloud providers as well as any other broadly available Internet services. Several questions are specifically intended for either US or non-US citizens, please be aware that you must provide your country of residence to participate.

By the time that ComputerWorld UK reported on the survey, the major news was generated by the respondents who reside outside of the United States:

A Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) survey found that 10% of 207 officials at non-U.S. companies have canceled contracts with U.S. service providers following the revelation of the NSA spy program last month. The alliance, a non-profit organization with over 48,000 individual members, said the survey also found that 56% of non-U.S. respondents are now hesitant to work with any U.S.-based cloud service providers.

Those numbers have been extrapolated, quantified, folded, spindled, and mutilated, and the Washington Post article cited by Mitch Wagner put a dollar figure on the cloud providers' losses - "$21.5 to $35 billion over the next three years."

Needless to say, everyone is focusing on the larger number, and people have concluded, based upon the quantified and therefore true evidence, that the U.S. economy has taken a $35 billion hit because our government is snoop-happy.

Hold on. Let's back up, all the way to the ComputerWorld UK report that discussed the initial survey results.

Yes, the survey did show (if you trust the respondents) that U.S. companies HAVE suffered from cancelled contracts from non-U.S. companies.

How many respondents have cancelled contracts?

Well, ten percent of 207 is 21 (more or less).

So each of those 21 people represents over a billion dollars of lost business each.

"But John," you say, "you do not understand the methodology of surveys. A 10 percent contract cancellation rate among this survey sample can be extrapolated into the general population of non-U.S. companies."

Well, naysayer (you must be part of the 5.4%), I clearly understand the methodology of surveys. So I ask you - is this sample representative? The results were based upon respondents who were motivated to respond to the survey. As far as is known, the only requirements to participate in the survey were (1) the ability to see the Cloud Security Alliance announcement, and (2) a willingness to state one's country of residence. While one would hope that the CSA would not attract spurious survey results, it is certainly within the realm of possibility that one, or ten, or even twenty people could see the survey, yell "BUSH OBAMA SUX," and respond with glee.

And how did the Cloud Security Alliance treat the results of the survey? According to ComputerWorld UK, the response was...surprise:

"The level of skepticism was greater than I expected," said Jim Reavis, co-founder and executive director of the CSA. "I had thought that more people would understand that these activities happen all the time in their countries as well."

This would be highlighted in an incident that happened during the survey period. The survey was conducted between June 25 and July 9. In the middle of that survey period, Bolivian President Evo Morales left Russia on a plane, heading toward Bolivia. There was a suspicion that Edward Snowden might be a stowaway on the plane, so one would expect that the plane might run into some trouble if it entered U.S. airspace while traveling between Russia and Bolivia.

But the plane didn't encounter a problem over U.S. airspace. It encountered a problem over French and Portugese airspace, and was forced to land in Austria, where the plane either was or was not searched, and was allowed to continue to the Canary Islands (Spanish territory) either with or without conditions.

And who was the short-term winner in the brouhaha? Finland:

Finland-based security firm F-Secure, which provides a range of hosted security services has felt some of the ripple effect from the recent disclosures.

"Ever since the PRISM scandal started in June, prospects in Europe, Middle East and Asia, are asking whether the ownership of the company is in U.S. or whether we host customer data in U.S.," said Mikko Hypponen, F-Secure's chief research officer.

"Right now, there are many customers who don't want to buy American -- or to buy from a NATO country in general," Hypponen said. "Then again, there are many customers who don't want to buy Chinese, Russian or Israeli either. In a situation like this, it's good to be a solution provider coming from a fairly neutral country."

But before we immediately conclude that Finnish cloud and security providers will get $35 billion in business, let's wait for some actual results. Although I can't talk about it, I've seen enough surveys over the years that took rosy head in the...um, cloud assumptions and restated them as sure things of multiple billions of business. And, when the next year arrived and the rosy predictions didn't come true, the same survey process was repeated and the multiple billions predictions were moved out a year.

Heck, based upon that type of survey method, California's Ontario International Airport is an economic powerhouse.

Have it your way - in the proposal delivery world, the customer is always right, no matter what

I've stated before that the proposal industry is one industry that has to adhere to deadlines. When a request for proposal (RFP) includes a deadline, you have to adhere to the deadline.

No matter what.

Lohfeld Consulting Group has shared a few proposal delivery horror stories, and I figured that one of them would be of interest to my readers. When you here the story, you'll probably laugh and think that it's an example of the Federal Government lacking common sense, but put yourself in the shoes of the Marine Contracting Officer while you read the beginning of this story.

Fellow Lohfeld Consultant Brooke Crouter had a proposal due on September 12, 2001 on the Marine Corps base at Quantico. The base shut down at about 0930 on September 11. She had to have the duty officer contact the Contracting Officer (CO) to see if the proposal delivery deadline was extended or not. Since the CO didn’t want to extend, there was an issue of how to deliver to a base that was shut down.

Now any adult (i.e. anyone who was around on September 11, 2001) who read that is probably shaking his or her head. But remember that in this case, the governing authority - and the only person whose opinion matters - is the Contracting Officer. If you forget this, then you might as well not try to have any business career, because you have failed to place the customer first.

The Contracting Officer has a job to do, and his or her job is to procure certain items, and to receive and review proposals by September 12 in pursuit of that goal. If you can't get your proposal in on time, that's YOUR problem.

Well, in this case it was Brooke Crouter's problem. And Crouter had to remain flexible throughout the process - which lasted several weeks after the September 12 due date. In the end, Crouter had to tell the customer, "Have it your way" - and that's exactly what the customer did.

Finally, she got a call to show up NLT 1300 at the Burger King outside the back gate. There was a government vehicle parked with the trunk open. You handed off your box and got a receipt. It looked like a very strange drug deal going on.

But the proposal was delivered to the Contracting Officer's satisfaction. Although I'm not sure that the Contracting Officer would have been allowed to receive a side of fries if Crouter had included that in the submission.

Now that is a proposal delivery success story. If you want to read about a proposal delivery failure - including the problems that can occur when a helicopter with no landing rights is used for a proposal delivery - read the original post.

Dear Time Warner and CBS...please do NOT reach an agreement

Dear Time Warner and CBS,

It's happened again, and this time neither of you blinked. According to USA Today, CBS owned-and-operated stations and CBS networks (such as Showtime) are no longer being carried by Time Warner Cable.

This has happened before, and before, of course. A content provider wants money, and a cable/satellite provider doesn't want to pay, so they make all sorts of threats. The content providers airs commercials saying, "Call your cable/satellite provider and tell them that you want to see our programming on your system!" Meanwhile, the cable/satellite providers air commercials saying, "Call your content provider and demand that they allow their shows to be shown on your system!"

And it's happened here. A few days ago, I heard a commercial urging me to call Time Warner. And I'm sure if I listened long enough, I would have heard a commercial urging me to call CBS.

And, Time Warner and CBS, you know what happens next. After you air all of these warring messages, you eventually reach an agreement, and all is forgotten - until Time Warner and Disney get into a fight, or until CBS and Dish Network get into a fight.

The USA Today writer seems to think that you guys will settle your little spat once the summer's over. By the time AFC football and the fall season starts, you guys will buckle down and work out an agreement.

Well, Time Warner and CBS, I hope you don't.

Time Warner, I hope that you keep on fighting and claim that CBS is trying to extort money from you.

And CBS, I hope that you keep on fighting and tell Time Warner to pay what your shows are worth.

Frankly, I hope that CBS programming never appears on Time Warner ever again.

And I hope that these fights spread, so that all of these content providers disappear from all of the cable/satellite providers.

If that happens, then obviously people won't pay for these cable/satellite services any more. And at the same time, the content providers won't get all of that guaranteed revenue that has made them greedy.

Then both the cable/satellite providers and the content providers will really have to fight for my business. Instead of holding these fake crisis wars every few years, they'll have to come up with a new business model - oen that will make it worthwhile for me to watch your shows.

Time Warner, CBS, and everyone else, I want you to pay ME to watch your stuff.

But you'll claim that's unreasonable.

Well, why should I have to pay YOU so that you get the privilege to air commercials in my home? Shouldn't you be paying me so that I will become part of your audience?

I'm waiting.

Cloud applications COULD be highly available...but read the fine print

I had previously stated that it's more risky to depend upon an outside service to host your applications than it is to host your applications yourself.

Of course, I was wrong.

When I host my applications myself, I am dependent upon my own computer software and hardware. My computer software and hardware is not perfect - something that I know well after having a hard drive die on me a few years ago.

Now cloud applications aren't 100% reliable either, but you can design your cloud systems for high availability. If there's a failure of one of the cloud servers, the system would simply switch to another server, with no interruption of service. (Unless things go wrong.)

Of course, it costs money to provide that high availability, and it costs money to keep a system up all the time. And when a company is faced with profit issues...well, they may just cut costs a little bit.

Ask Dave Veffer about this. He's had some intermittent problems accessing Adobe Creative Cloud, the cloud-based replacement for Adobe's former applications that you hosted yourself. Now Adobe's a big company, so you'd think that they'd want to have their applications available. Veffer found otherwise when he had a problem accessing Adobe Creative Cloud, contacted support, and received this message from the support person:

I am sorry to inform that due to maintaince (sic) we are unable to access the applications of Adobe hence it will not be possible for me to fix the issue at this moment.

When Veffer asked how long this maintenance would last, he received this reply:

It will take 2-3 hours.

Well, obviously Adobe isn't promising "five nines" (99.999%) availability for Adobe Creative Cloud. If Adobe were providing 99.999% availability, downtime would be less than six minutes per YEAR. Now perhaps five nines is overkill for an application such as Adobe Creative Cloud, but what level of downtime is reasonable? Veffer was faced with a deadline in two hours when this happened, and it appears that Adobe Creative Cloud won't be available until after the deadline has passed.

What availability does Adobe promise for its cloud products? I was curious about this, so I checked Adobe's terms and found this paragraph, in all caps:

13.1 THE SITE, SERVICES, AND MATERIALS ARE PROVIDED BY ADOBE “AS IS,” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY, OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, QUIET ENJOYMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, ADOBE AND ITS LICENSORS MAKE NO WARRANTY THAT (a) THE SITE, SERVICES OR MATERIALS WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS OR WILL BE CONSTANTLY AVAILABLE, UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE; (b) THE RESULTS THAT MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE USE OF THE SITE, SERVICES, OR MATERIALS WILL BE EFFECTIVE, ACCURATE, OR RELIABLE; (c) THE QUALITY OF THE SITE, SERVICES, OR MATERIALS WILL MEET YOUR EXPECTATIONS; OR THAT (d) ANY ERRORS OR DEFECTS IN THE SITE, SERVICES, OR MATERIALS WILL BE CORRECTED. NO ADVICE OR INFORMATION, WHETHER ORAL OR WRITTEN, OBTAINED BY YOU FROM ADOBE OR THROUGH OR FROM USE OF THE SERVICES SHALL CREATE ANY WARRANTY NOT EXPRESSLY STATED IN THE TERMS.

Now one can understand such terms when you're getting a free service, such as the services provided by Google. But when you're a paying customer of Adobe Creative Cloud, and Adobe isn't even willing to guarantee that the service will be available, that's pretty worrisome.

Information from .@RickHolman on non-compete agreements

After I wrote my post on former WAAY-TV reporter Shea Allen's non-compete clause, I received a series of tweets from Rick Holman. Now I have never heard of Holman before, so I figured I'd check his Twitter profile. Here's the first sentence of that profile:

Indie Author who writes about non-compete agreements.

So, what did Holman share with me?

First, he shared a link to this article about the Halifax Media Group. It's about print, not television, but obviously the same principles apply.

Halifax Media Group is the outfit that recently bought the New York Times Co.'s 16 regional newspapers. Just after it did, Halifax decided to require the papers' employees to sign an extremely onerous non-compete contract if they wanted to stay on the roster.

The contract meant that staffers who left the papers for any reason could not work for any news outlet in a market with a Halifax property for two years. In other words, even if you were fired, you couldn't take a media job in your hometown or any other Halifax city.

Those cities included Gainesville and Sarasota in Florida, Tuscaloosa in Alabama, and Santa Rosa in California. (We'll look at California again a little later in this post.) According to the American Journalism Review, Halifax backed off for the acquired employees, but still wanted to implement this for new employees. Or, as AJR put it:

The tone of the "employee non-solicitation, non-compete and confidentiality agreement" is relentlessly harsh. Halifax's approach makes Bain Capital seem like a socialist collective.

But that isn't the only thing that Rick Holman shared with me. It turns out that an employee signed a five-year two-county non-compete agreement with O'Bannon Publishing Company, and then tried to argue that the agreement was unenforceable because of the lengthy duration. The Indiana Court of Appeals rejected her claim (PDF).

If this topic interests you, then you might want to check into Holman's own story, and what he's doing about it.

P.S. Perhaps you've heard talk of sports figures who would rather work in Texas rather than California because of the different tax structures in the two states. But from Holman's perspective, working in California is infinitely preferable to working in Texas.

Dear Mr. Katz:

I was reading your op-ed piece from Town Hall today and thought I would help you in clearing things up as to why no one is going to move from California to Texas anytime soon. I realize that the LA Times piece did not mention this reason but the reality is that there is only one reason why this the case.

Anyway, the reason no one in California will move to Texas is because of non-compete agreements. If you’re not familiar with them, I can tell you briefly what my non-compete agreement is since it’s pretty standard in the industry. The bottom line is this: I’m an at Will employee and my company can fire me at any time for any reason and I can’t work in the industry for two years.

If this subject is new to you, I can tell you that your brothers and sisters who work at radio stations in different parts of the country are probably familiar with this since lawyers who draw up these non-compete agreements have run amuck in suing employees in your industry no matter how frivolous the lawsuit is....

Taking a stand against Google? Not exactly.

There is a principled way to live, and there is a not principled way to live. (Most of us, myself included, admittedly choose the latter.)

And there is also the option of claiming to live by principles when you do nothing of the sort.

Take anti-Google sentiment. Any large entity - Google, the AARP, the Deadheads - generates its own opposition because of its size. This became apparent when viewing the contents of a recent GigaOM post. The post concerned Google's changes to the Zagat service that it owns; reviewers now have to sign up for Google+ to continue to have reviewing privileges. Or, as GigaOM put it:

Zagat fans received an email this week saying the restaurant rating site will pull the plug on user reviews — unless, that is, they sign up for a Google+ account.

I received a copy of the email by way of a disgruntled friend who harrumphed about the search giant finding another way of “forcing” users onto its unloved social network.

In case you don't know it, there's a really easy way to get a Google+ user riled up. Refer to Google+ as "unloved" or as a "ghost town," and you'll get a lot of angry invective. In fact, whenever a major publication wants to get some page views and "engagement," it simply runs another story about Google+ being a ghost town. It's guaranteed to sucker in the angry comments - works every time!

But in this case, GigaOM didn't only get comments from angry Google+ users; it also got comments from people who are angry at Google.

Here's what Roger L had to say:

Everything Google does seems directed at collecting more info for their ad business, often now making negotiating the web more difficult for users. I remember when Google used to mean the exact opposite.

Roger then helpfully provided his e-mail address:

rogerusher at gmail dot com

Yes, Roger is using a free e-mail service from Google, yet complaining about all the stuff Google is doing for its ad business.

(And yes, I know that I am constantly complaining about my personal YouTube situation. Yet I know that I get what I pay for.)

But Roger L's stance is minor compared to the stance of Expatriate for Jesus, who really let Google have it:

Google is clearly wanting to become big brother. From having their employees have food so that they can work unending hours, to having a gross amount of TVCs (Contractors), Google has a reputation for working their people to the bone and giving a rats ass about any of them. They want everyone under Google+ so that they can have more money.

After more of the same, Expatriate concludes:

Don’t use Google+

It is what George Orwell warned us about.

Now this is a more critical stance than "ads increase navigation difficulty." This is a moral offense against humanity and society. Slavery, capitalism, and mind control. The solution, as an old Apple ad agency would say, would be to take your hammer, smash the Big Brother screen, and refuse to be sucked into Google+. This is how the expatriate would save the country. Jesus would be proud.

Well, until Jesus looked at the link embedded in the Expatriate's comment.

http://expatriate4jesus.blogspot.com/.

Presumably Expat is claiming that the use of "built by slave labor" Blogger to spread the message is merely an application of Luke 16:9. Perhaps...

The pound of Brixton (Reprise)

Since Jesse Stay is talking about bitcoin (as are others), it seemed to be a good time to look at another alternative currency - the Brixton Pound. I first wrote about the Brixton Pound over a year ago. If you were not reading my blog then, let me explain that the Brixton Pound is a hyperlocal currency that can be purchased and used in Brixton.

Obviously, a currency can only be used if both parties in a transaction agree to use it. And while people are discussing the Brixton Pound at the local TedX, that in itself does not guarantee that it can actually be used anywhere.

But in the case of the Brixton pound, it appears that it is gaining traction. The Brixton Pound website's directory page lists dozens upon dozens of businesses that accept the alternative currency.

But that's not enough. Harry Cathead wanted to find other businesses - ones that aren't listed on town websites - who would accept the currency.

I bought B£20 from Morleys department store and went out in search of a dealer who appreciated a sense of community pride. The first guys I ran into just off Atlantic Road said I could get some "food" if I hung around for five minutes, but changed their minds as soon as I grabbed the Brixton Pounds out of my wallet. "No, man, I ain't ever seen that shit round here before. Better go to the shop and change it back." I tried to explain that it was Brixton money – something that does a great deal to support the local economy – but to no avail.

Cathead tried two other dealers, with no better success, and ended up spending his Brixton pounds at a local pub.

Should have used bitcoin. Those bitcoin users have the guvmint.

Former WAAY reporter Shea Allen and non-compete clauses

In case you missed the story, Shea Allen was a reporter for WAAY-TV in Huntsville, Alabama who claims to have been fired for a personal blog post that the station regarded as unprofessional. Excerpt:

2. My best sources are the ones who secretly have a crush on me.


3. I am better live when I have no script and no idea what I'm talking about.

So the next time some social media expert approaches you and raves about transparency and honesty, ask the so-called expert how much good that did Shea Allen. Or former BP CEO Tony Hayward.

Obviously there are a number of issues involved in the Shea Allen case, but one phrase in a Blaze story caught my eye.

Now, she has to figure out how to support her son — a feat that could prove difficult, as Allen claims the station told her that her non-compete clause will prevent her from working for competitors in the area. Despite their alleged refusal to allow her to seek nearby employment, she said they did pledge to provide a reference.

Allen is hoping to get out of her contract and stay in Huntsville, as she contends that her “options are limited” — at least at the moment.

The first thought that came to mind - would an employer truly try to enforce a non-compete clause even if the employer had fired the employee in question? Presumably, if Shea Allen is such a bad reporter that WAAY could no longer use her, wouldn't WAAY be ruining its competitors by letting such a substandard employee work for them?

Well, Allen's contract isn't public record, but an anonymous former insurance agent posted the relevant language of HIS non-compete clause:

"Upon the termination of this agreement for any reason, employee shall neither directly nor indirectly, either herself or in conjunction with any other person or company, initiate or engage in conducting title searches or preparing, issuing, or selling title insurance policies or providing any service which would in any way compete with [name of company] at any location, within a One Hundred mile radius from [town, state]..."

Whether this insurance agent's non-compete clause is enforceable is another matter, and whether Allen's non-compete clause is enforceable is another matter. But these episodes show that you need to read your employment contracts.

The young people in frontier markets - can we see them?

DISCLOSURE: I am a citizen of the United States. When someone says the word "frontier" to me, I think of the American West, or at least the Hollywood version of the American West. If someone says "frontier market" to me, I think of a storekeeper who bursts through the doors of his store, saying to Clint Eastwood, "The bad guys are coming to town!" The storekeeper runs away, leaving an empty chair in front of his store. Clint starts talking to the empty chair, asking it how many bullets he fired and if it (the chair) feels lucky.

OK, I guess I went overboard on that particular illustration.

"Frontier market" has an entirely different meaning to South Korean companies:

Samsung Securities said on July 25 in a research report that the expectations on the "frontier markets" that include African economies have been on the rise.

Forget the self-serving mention of the fact that Samsung Securities says that Samsung Electronics will benefit from these frontier markets. Why are these markets attractive now, when they have not been attractive in the past?

"Since the mid-2000s when most African nations moved toward a more stable political milieu, major African economies have grown in a spectacular fashion. The demography with a mostly young population is also a favorable condition for the continent," the authors added.

Now I don't know if the Korean companies have overcome the payment obstacles that make other companies reluctant to do business in Africa, but if they have, they're going to make a lot of Naira. Or Won. (1 Nigerian Naira is worth a little less than 7 South Korean Won, by the way.)

Contest - rewrite Disney's mission statement!

Even if you know nothing else about sales, you know that customers are important. I thought about this recently while reading a blurb for a particular event (disclosure: I am connected to one of the sponsors), which uses specific language to make potential customers feel good:

...that is why [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] are thrilled to invite you to join us - and an elite group of your peers - for an inspired afternoon...

...[EVENT] is an invitation only Executive Summit that will bring together the intellectual brain trust of the [REDACTED] industry...

Yes, it's corny. Even if I personally believe that I am an elite member of a brain trust, I'm not necessarily an executive. But it makes me feel good when I'm pitched in this way.

Oddly enough, this technique is not universal. Cole Jensen looked at the mission statements of several companies, including Disney.

The Walt Disney Company’s objective is to be one of the world’s leading producers and providers of entertainment and information, using its portfolio of brands to differentiate its content, services and consumer products. The company’s primary financial goals are to maximize earnings and cash flow, and to allocate capital profitability toward growth initiatives that will drive long-term shareholder value.

Oddly enough, the mission statement does not mention any desire to delight the PEOPLE receiving said entertainment and information. This is especially odd because of Disney's fanatical devotion to customer service, especially at its theme parks. But if you were to judge Disney by its mission statement alone, it doesn't care about customers - it only cares about creating differentiated content to keep shareholders happy. While shareholders are extremely important, perhaps one should say HOW to drive that value. What about this?

The Walt Disney Company's objective is to produce a diverse range of entertainment and information that delights and inspires people, thus maximizing earnings, cash flow, and long-term shareholder value.

Perhaps it's because I'm an elite member of a brain trust, but I frankly think that my cut at Disney's mission statement is an improvement on the original. In fact, I think Disney should pay me for rewriting its mission statement. Bob Iger, you can contact me at the "empoprises" account at Gmail to find out where to send my check.

And readers, if you want a check from Bob Iger, add your rewritten Disney mission statement in the comments below, or in your own post.

Is Los Angeles a company town?

There's a local radio commercial that talks about business in Los Angeles as consisting of scripts being delivered. Whenever I hear it, I laugh - partially because I live in the Inland Empire, which is not exactly a hotbed of the entertainment industry, and partially because even if I did live on Sunset, the stereotype certainly doesn't fit the reality.

Or does it?

I thought about anecdotal evidence that I've collected during my time in California.

There was the time that my family contracted with a home service provider, and it turned out that the home service provider had his own reality show.

There was the time that I received a telephone call from someone who purported to be a private investigator. While the fact that she called me on my unlisted number lent credence to her claim of being a P.I., I still wanted to check her out. When I went online, I found her company website, her license number, her participation in a criminal trial of a major entertainment figure, and a press release regarding plans for her own reality show.

There was the time (long ago) that I went with some church friends to a holiday celebration and met their cousin Dorothy, who was a writer. You probably know her better by her initials, "D.C." As far as I know, she hasn't launched her own reality show. Yet.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that Los Angeles is a company town dedicated to entertainment, right?

Well, it's always good to check anecdotal evidence, and I found some September 2011 statistics on Los Angeles area employment. Limiting our scope to the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale Metropolitan Division, total nonfarm employment in September 2011 was 3,776,400. The largest industry? Trade, transportation, and utilities, with 737,300. Second largest? Government, with 553,700. Third is education and health services, with 536,500. While entertainment is not called out, it could conceivably fall under professional and business services (532,400), or perhaps even leisure and hospitality (394,600). However, it's clear that despite its...um...glitter, entertainment is not the leading industry in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale Metropolitan Division.

Or perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps the trade/transportation/utilities industry consists of stunt drivers and set designers, while education/health services includes condom providers (for the Valley entertainment industry) and drug dealers (for the so-called "legitimate" entertainment industry). And government? Well, government consists of a bunch of actors anyway - look at Anthony Weiner's starring movie roles. (You look at them; I'd rather not.)

What the NSA is doing to SECURE your e-mail

From what I understand, the NSA has been mentioned in the news recently. To sum up the story, President Obama, Speaker Boehner, and everyone else believes that it is in our national interest for the government to log every single telephone call, e-mail, text, Pinterest posting, or whatever. More or less. Although perhaps they drew the line at sexting messages.

But that's not all that the NSA is doing regarding e-mail.

I ran across a piece in Homeland Security News Wire that talked about a research paper:

The author of a paper to be presented at the upcoming 2013 International Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, to be held 30 September-4 October in San Diego, has described behavioral, cognitive, and perceptual attributes of e-mail users who are vulnerable to phishing attacks....

Kyung Wha Hong discovered that people who were overconfident, introverted, or women were less able accurately to distinguish between legitimate and phishing e-mails.

I looked up Ms. Hong (who is not the sole author of the paper, but is the lead author), and discovered that phishing is not her primary interest. But when she talked about her interest in phishing, I found out something else:

I'm also currently working as Research Assistant for a project funded by National Security Agency on developing phishing susceptibility profiles and anti-phishing tools.

Did you notice who was funding that particular project? More information is provided in this 2012 press release:

North Carolina State University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Carnegie Mellon University are each receiving an initial $2.5 million in grant funds from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to stimulate the creation of a more scientific basis for the design and analysis of trusted systems....

It is widely understood that critical cyber systems must inspire trust and confidence, protect the privacy and integrity of data resources, and perform reliably.

So, on the one hand, the NSA is working on programs to advance online security science.

On the other hand, the NSA is working on programs that break that same security science.

Now do you see why I'm not worried about a vast government conspiracy in which multiple agencies gang up on the people? Even a single agency can find itself at cross purposes with itself.

Can't rush this

I was visiting a website - I won't link to it here - that included the following text on one of its pages.

We are currently creating content for this section. In order to be able to keep up with our high standards of service, we need a little more time.

The page had a 2009 copyright notice.

(empo-utoobd) YouTube customer service has evolved...slightly...since my account was permanently disabled in 2009

For those of you who missed the original story, a quick recap. Back in 2009, I logged into my Empoprises YouTube account one day and found that it had been "permanently disabled." When I sought more information from Google, I received a canned message with the following information:

We are unable to provide specific detail regarding your account suspension or your video's removal. For more information on our what we consider inappropriate content or conduct while using YouTube, please visit our Community Guidelines and Tips at http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines and our Help Center article at http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=92486.


In other words, your account has been suspended, and we can't tell you why. I awarded a "Customer Service Darwin Award" to Google for that one.

That was several years ago, and the permanent disabling of my YouTube account continues to this day - something that I've discussed in the empo-utoobd post series.

However, a few days ago, I tried my usual couple of times a year login to YouTube - something that was again denied - and noticed a new button that allowed you to appeal your suspension. I clicked it, and a day ago I actually received a response, and finally learned why my YouTube account had been suspended all those years ago.

Hi there,

This account was found in Violation of TOU #4 Section H:
http://www.youtube.com/t/terms

"You agree not to use or launch any automated system, including without limitation, "robots," "spiders," or "offline readers," that accesses the Service in a manner that sends more request messages to the YouTube servers in a given period of time than a human can reasonably produce in the same period by using a conventional on-line web browser. Notwithstanding the foregoing, YouTube grants the operators of public search engines permission to use spiders to copy materials from the site for the sole purpose of and solely to the extent necessary for creating publicly available searchable indices of the materials, but not caches or archives of such materials. YouTube reserves the right to revoke these exceptions either generally or in specific cases. You agree not to collect or harvest any personally identifiable information, including account names, from the Service, nor to use the communication systems provided by the Service (e.g., comments, email) for any commercial solicitation purposes. You agree not to solicit, for commercial purposes, any users of the Service with respect to their Content."

Sincerely,
The YouTube Team

So apparently back in 2009, I launched some sort of automated spider that retrieved tons of data from YouTube. This was news to me, as I noted in my reply to Google:

Well, now it's good to know after all these years why my YouTube account was shut down. When I first inquired about this, I simply received an automated message to read the Terms of Service.

Unfortunately, there's only one teeny tiny issue - I've never used any automated system to access YouTube. And no, I'm not saying this in a Ryan Braun way - I really haven't.

Is there any recourse to get my YouTube account reinstated, or am I presumed guilty of something that I didn't do?

Looking forward to your reply.

Sincerely,
John Bredehoft

If you see this post years after I wrote it, or if you're not a sports enthusiast, I should explain that Ryan Braun is a baseball player who vehemently denied for 18+ months that he violated baseball's drug policy - until yesterday, when he suddenly admitted that he had violated baseball's drug policy. I wanted to make the point that I'm not going to subsequently admit to using some type of automated spider, especially since any attempt of mine to prove that I could even launch an automated spider would be a laughable failure. No, I am not a script kiddie.

As I promised back in 2009, I'll provide any updates on my personal situation. Either this thing is getting very close to being successfully resolved, or it's not.

What about Bob's kitchen cabinet?

Businesspeople often seek advice - sometimes from people in their industry, sometimes from people in their profession, and sometimes from people specifically outside of their industry/profession.

Which brings me to Bob. Bob is not this person's real name, and in this post I have changed a number of facts to protect Bob's identity (and "Bob," if you ever see this message, you'll realize that I had a lot of fun obscuring those facts). I can honestly tell you, however, that Bob is not a proposal manager and does not work in the biometric industry. Bob is active online, however, and I often encounter Bob on one popular social network.

Many of Bob's posts on this network are public and feature discussions of his train ride to work every day, his observations on living in a small town, and his love of the New York Giants. (As a Redskins fan, I manage to tolerate this.)

However, Bob sometimes posts private messages on this network. I don't know how many people receive these messages, but for some inexplicable reason I happen to be one of them. Bob uses these private messages to solicit business advice. For example, Bob may ask a question such as the following:

I'm preparing a draft of an article to submit to a publication in my industry. Three people will be listed as authors of this article. Are there any guidelines regarding which of the authors should be listed first?

Since Bob is probably about ten years old than I am, he understands that private messages are never private, so he doesn't give specific details about the situations (and no, the situation above is NOT one of Bob's situations). However, he does use the private nature of the messages to solicit advice from people that he trusts.

Obviously, you don't need to use a social network to obtain such advice (although a social network admittedly increases the number of people whom you can solicit for advice). Back in the 1970s, people would actually meet with informal advisors face to face.

Since I recently discussed Presidents Truman and Hoover, I might as well bring President Ford into the equation. Ford was a President who often sought the advice of a "kitchen cabinet," including people such as former Nixon adviser Bryce Harlow. In 1975, it was Harlow who bluntly told Ford that the infighting in his Administration had the appearance of "internal anarchy":

Bryce Harlow, a former Nixon adviser, lobbyist and outside adviser to the president, noted the appearance of “internal anarchy” among the Nixon holdovers at the White House and the cabinet, particularly among Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and CIA Director William Colby.

Harlow advised Ford to fire all of them. Ford didn't quite go that far, but by the time he was done, Colby had been replaced by George H.W. Bush, Schlesinger had been replaced by Don Rumsfeld, Kissinger had lost one of his two positions, and Nelson Rockefeller had publicly announced that he would not be a candidate for Vice President in 1976. While some insiders such as Rumsfeld (and Dick Cheney, who became Chief of Staff when Rumsfeld moved) certainly shaped the progress of the changes, it took the outsider Harlow to press Ford into taking action.

Something similar happened several years later, when President Carter, reluctant to give yet another speech on energy, called upon outside advisors:

For more than a week, a veil of secrecy enveloped the proceedings. Dozens of prominent Americans -- members of Congress, governors, labor leaders, academics and clergy -- were summoned to the mountaintop retreat [Camp David] to confer with the beleaguered president. Sitting on the floor taking notes, Carter listened to criticism, much of it scathing, of him and his White House.

Afterwards, Carter, like Ford, was moved to act. But Carter's actions were more dramatic than Ford's.

On July 17, he asked his entire cabinet for their resignations, ultimately accepting those of five who had clashed with the White House the most, including Energy Secretary James Schlesinger and Health, Education and Welfare chief Joseph Califano.

Oddly enough, James Schlesinger lost his job in both Ford's shakeup and Carter's shakeup. No wonder the two Presidents and political enemies became friends after 1980 - they probably regaled themselves with Schlesinger stories.

Returning to my friend Bob, he's never asked his online "kitchen cabinet" for advice about firing someone. But you never know what will happen in the future.

The new guy at the helm - Truman reaches out to Hoover over the objections of his staff

When a company suddenly has a new leader, the new person is usually surrounded by a staff that was appointed by the old leader.

This is often the case with a President of the United States who comes into office after the death of his predecessor. Even after Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale upgraded the workings of the office of the Vice President, there has been tension between the Vice President and the President's direct staff - tension that does not disappear when the President suddenly dies, and the Vice President suddenly has the old President's staff trying to tell him what to do.

Attempts by the Roosevelt staff to control Harry Truman didn't work with Truman.

Of all of the accessions to office due to the death of a President, the accession of Truman certainly had the possibility for the most chaos. Truman had only been Vice President for about three months, whereas Roosevelt (and many of his people) had been in office for over twelve years. Garner, Wallace - what's the name of the new Vice President again? The fact that Truman became President while the country was embroiled in a multi-continental war didn't help things, even though Truman's claim to fame at that point had been his work as a Senator to cut down on wartime fraud and waste.

As I mentioned previously, Carter and Mondale significantly upgraded the office of the Vice President, ensuring that the Vice President was kept in the loop on all Presidential decisions and critical events. That was clearly not the case in 1945, when Truman didn't learn about the Manhattan Project until after he became President. (Senator Truman almost learned about the project in 1943, when he became suspicious about a plant in Minneapolis; however, Secretary of War Stimson told the Senator to butt out.)

By May, Truman was beginning to turn his attention to postwar Europe. It was an important topic, since the activities after World War I pretty much led to World War II. Truman didn't want to blow it again, and one of his concerns was the need to feed people across war-torn Europe. Truman determined that he, as President, needed to consult with an expert on this topic.

Unfortunately for Truman, that expert happened to be a gentleman named Herbert Hoover - someone so disliked by Roosevelt and his staffers that he had effectively been blackballed from the White House since 1933. (Contrast this with today, when President Obama has appeared with two Presidents Bush over the last several weeks.)

Since Truman didn't necessarily trust his staff, he wrote Hoover himself, in a handwritten letter:

The White House
Washington
May 24 '45

/s/My dear Mr. President: --

If you should be in Washington, I would be most happy to talk over the European food situation with you.

Also it would be a pleasure to me to become acquainted with you.

Most sincerely
HARRY S. TRUMAN

Truman aide Eben Ayers described what happened next:

The president said he was going to tell us of something he had done last night on his own -- and we might all throw bricks at him. He said he was in the House, studying the food situation the European food situation -- and he decided to write a note to Herbert Hoover. So he said he wrote one out himself, in longhand, signed it, and mailed it, suggesting he would be glad to see and talk to him sometime.

Steve Early seemed a little upset. He went on to say that during the Roosevelt term Hoover never came to the White House to pay his respects, that he came into and left Washington without ever doing it. He said he, himself, had passed word to Hoover suggesting he come in but he never had done it. None of the others commented on the president's action. Early suggested that perhaps the president might do the same with Landon, defeated Republican candidate in 1936, and Governor Dewey, last year's defeated candidate. The president indicated he might.

Early resigned a few days later (although he would work for Truman in the future). Truman himself reaped the benefit of Hoover's advice and experience on food relief, and many other topics besides. And Boulder Dam's name was changed back to Hoover Dam - while the "do-nothing Congress" initiated the action, Truman signed the resulting bill.

Do you want people to love your brand? In some cases, you need to seek out the boozers and the potheads

If a company and/or brand is perceived as a distant entity, then you may not be all that motivated to buy from that company/brand. But if the company/brand is perceived more positively, then you'll want to get the toilet tissue that Mr. Whipple squeezes.

Of course, if the company/brand makes extensive use of the word "friend," then you may have even warmer feelings toward it.

One industry that frequently uses the word "friend" is the social media industry - a point explored in Loren Feldman's "#SoMe" film (a film that I have previously reviewed). This industry has certainly changed the way that we use the word "friend," and it's undeniable that there are some people who are attached to social media services, and there are some people who are EXTREMELY attached to social media services - despite the fact that some uses of social media services are demonstrably anti-social (as I've previously noted).

So, who will be attracted to social media services, and who will not be attracted?

Four people from the University of Missouri-Columbia and Texas State University explored this question in a paper entitled Loneliness, anxiousness, and substance use as predictors of Facebook use. From the abstract:

This study investigates the relationships between loneliness, anxiousness, alcohol, and marijuana use in the prediction of freshman college students’ connections with others on the social network site Facebook as well as their emotional connectedness to Facebook.

What did they find?

Results showed that anxiousness, alcohol use, and marijuana use predicted emotional attachment to Facebook. Additionally, loneliness and anxiousness, but not alcohol or marijuana use, predicted individuals’ connections with others using Facebook.

Now this probably wouldn't hold true for all industries - I doubt that heavy alcohol users are more inclined to buy Charmin bathroom tissue, although it's probable that marijuana users are more inclined to buy Hostess Twinkies. And there are probably other factors that can be used to predict emotional attachment to Facebook, or to others on Facebook. And the study in question focused upon college freshmen; I doubt those results can be extrapolated to the general population. (I can't picture a 70 year old acid casualty suddenly saying, "I'll open a Facebook account!")

However, this limited study does illustrate that seemingly unrelated factors can be used to predict the success of a product. And since the concept of Facebook originated in a college environment, the results certainly merit interest.

When ads are not complementary to the content

In the ideal world, ads would be so attuned to the material that you are reading, and to your own needs, that you would barely notice them - or, better yet, you would welcome them.

For example, let's say that I'm someone who travels to Vegas a lot, and the National Security Agency - I mean Google - knows this. So, as I'm reading an online article entitled "Things to Do in Las Vegas This Weekend," a Megabus ad appears to the side of the article. As I read the article, I see that there are exciting things to do in Vegas, so I immediately click on the Megabus ad and book my reservation.

We do not live in the ideal world. Often ads, rather than being complementary to the content that you have selected, appear to be in opposition. Using the example above, perhaps my access to the Vegas information would be completely blocked by a singles dating service ad. (I am married.)

Larry Rosenthal recently shared a link to a SiliconValley.com interview with LinkedIn's Deep Nishar. Some day I may discuss the content of that interview, but for now I'm more inclined to talk about the ad that blocked access to part of the article.

And now, this wasn't one of those "you can continue reading the rest of the article if you watch this short ad for a singles site." It was worse.

As it turned out, the ad apparently removed itself a few minutes later, but by that time I had nearly completed writing this post.

Forget citizen journalists - we now have citizen police

As more and more information becomes publicly accessible online, new capabilities become possible. Since I am involved in the biometric industry, I learned (via findBIOMETRICS) of a July 10 press release:

JailBase (http://www.jailbase.com) has developed a mobile app making database searches simpler and easier than ever. Now users armed only with a photo can use facial recognition to query JailBase’s extensive database of mugshots and arrest records and find a match (http://www.jailbase.com/mobile-app/). The mobile app allows the public to search JailBase's millions of arrest records for people who have been arrested in many counties in the United States. Users can be notified when someone they know is booked in jail again. Recent arrests can also be viewed and filtered by gender, race, location, and date.

The current release supports Android phones and tablets. An iPhone and iPad version is planned for release in the 4th quarter of 2013.

In essence, JailBase is taking advantage of information that is publicly available, and combining it with a facial recognition algorithm. There are all sorts of websites that aggregate mugshot photos from different law enforcement agencies. So now, if you take a photo, a facial recognition algorithm, and access to the Jailbase database, you can see the likelihood of a match.

In theory, this means that "citizen police" can now roam the streets and find bad people.

However, there are two very important cautions to note:

First off, just because a person has been arrested does not mean that the person is guilty of a crime. This is something that Jailbase itself makes clear:

Arrest and booking records simply state who, when and why (if available) someone was arrested or booked. It does not imply guilt. An arrested or booked individual is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. What happens in a court of law (for example, when charges are dropped), is outside the scope of JailBase.com and must be researched independently by the user of the site.

Second, no facial recognition system (or any biometric system) is 100% accurate. I don't know how Jailbase presents its facial recognition results, but generally facial recognition systems present pictures of people who may appear similar to the person being searched. That does not necessarily mean that the first person in the list is the person who was searched. In other words, this guy is not a terrorist.

I have no idea how strongly Jailbase presents these two cautions to its users. And even if Jailbase does an excellent job in presenting these cautions, will the users necessarily heed the cautions? Or will someone go running down the street with his or her Android phone, yelling, "I found Charles Manson! I found Charles Manson!"?

Now you probably have equally similar examples from your own industry, in which publicly available information can be used intelligently by the public - or can be used stupidly by the public.

The flip side of selective "living wage" laws

Living wage laws, which mandate wages above the legal minimum wage, are all the rage. Take Washington DC, where a minimum wage law has passed a local legislative hurdle:

Walmart’s efforts Tuesday to deter Washington D.C’s city council from passing a bill that would require certain large retailers to pay their employees at least $12.50 — a significant bump above the city’s minimum wage of $8.25 — didn’t work. Despite the big box company telling lawmakers it’d scrap plans for three stores in the area and take a close look at the three already underway, council members passed the bill by a vote of 8 to 5 yesterday.

Note that the bill only applies to CERTAIN retailers. And no, the city council didn't write a rule that only applied to companies that happen to be based in Bentonville, Arkansas and were founded by people whose last names begin with the letter W. But clearly, some companies are subject to the living wage rule, while some are not:

[A]ny new retail outlet affiliated with a parent company having yearly revenue of $1 billion or more would be subject to the wage requirement, regardless of the size of the store. A draft report mentions Apple and Nike as among the retailers that might be affected. Franchisees and subcontractors, however, would be exempt.

So the easy workaround is for the big companies to pull out and, in some instances, get small businesses to front for them. Thus, an Apple Store would pull out, and a small "DC Insanely Great" store, with a minority investment from Braeburn Capital, would replace it. The businesses of Washington DC, with extensive experience in small business set-asides, can play the game better than anybody. But it probably wouldn't work with a Walmart.

Despite these potential workarounds, some business organizations object to the selective nature of the bill, including Barbara Lang of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce:

Lang said she is especially concerned because the bill would “pit small businesses against large businesses” in the competition for employees. A more worthwhile debate, she said, would consider the merits of raising the District’s minimum wage. “Let’s have that discussion and that debate, rather than be discriminatory toward one part of the business community,” she said.

If you think about it, proponents of a living wage emphasize that such a wage is necessary for someone to survive.

Which leads to the uncomfortable conclusion that the D.C. City Council has determined that Walmart workers deserve to live, while people who work at small independent organic soul food restaurants deserve to die.

And once people realize this, they will decry the efforts of the evil big box firms that are stealing employees from smaller companies. And activists will demand that the city mandate a cap on the wages that big box firms pay, in order to protect the small business owners.

In truth, I'm lying. No such effort will happen, because small independent organic soul food restaurants cannot hire lobbyists. Big businesses can, and big unions can, but small businesses don't have the bucks.

So the small business employees won't get a living wage because they don't deserve it, and (if Walmart proceeds with its threat) big business employees won't get a living wage because there won't be any big businesses in DC. And Walmart could proceed with its threat; after all, Cracker Barrel still refuses to establish restaurants in California and Nevada.

To be continued.

If you're interested in following topics, don't follow people (or, why Shimrit Ben-Yair is not a bad person)

It sounded so innocuous when Google's Shimrit Ben-Yair announced a change to Google+:

Many of the best photos, articles and videos we find online are the ones recommended by friends. So we're making it easier to discover these recommendations in your Google+ stream. Starting today:

- We'll occasionally highlight posts that were +1'd by people in your circles
- And if you +1 a post, we may highlight it to your friends as well

Ben-Yair continued with various tips regarding how to change your Google+ settings if you don't like this feature.

And some people definitely don't like this feature - for two reasons.

First, it exposes people to the things that you like - I mean, +1. (I'm a Facebook user also.) The fear here is that someone will suddenly discover your admiration for Barry Manilow. Well, personally this isn't that much of an issue. Once I +1'ed a Barry Manilow item on Google+, my love for Barry has become part of the public record. If Google+ has made it easier for my friends to discover this, is it really a problem?

But there's the second thing - you are exposed to the things that other people like. And this really bugs some people. For example, one of my online friends presumably follows me on Google+ for my expert analysis on business topics. I suspect that this person was extremely displeased when the person's stream contained an item about Robert Sacre re-signing (as opposed to resigning) with the Lakers - an item that I had +1'ed.

Actually, I don't suspect the person was displeased - I KNOW that person was displeased.

+John E. Bredehoft Please turn off your out-going plus notifications. Here's how: https://plus.google.com/113528453054238816917/posts/HE8rCYeTXyn

Psst - just between us, I reacted to this request to turn off my out-going plus notifications about as well as I do to any "You're doing it wrong" posts. I did, however, restrain myself from liking 100 Barry Manilow items just because.

And now everyone is demanding that Google+ change its behavior. But there's a much simpler way to accomplish the same thing, without requiring a Google code change and without requiring you to change your Google+ settings. And this simple solution is well-known; heck, even I knew about it way back in 2009.

The solution? Don't follow me.

Hear me out - or, better still, here's some of what I wrote back in 2009, when FriendFeed was king and Google+ didn't even exist. First, I start by talking about the problem with following people:

Twitter's content-searching capabilities are admittedly atrocious, but one thing that is really easy to do in Twitter is to follow people. And when you follow people, you get the good with the bad. Perhaps you follow someone on Twitter because they posted an inspiration quote...and then their next 10 tweets are of the "make money fast" variety.

Or perhaps someone followed my Twitter account because they saw a tweet that dealt with feature creep. Little did that poor person know that I also tweet about my college radio experiences, the surviving Gibb brothers, and my aging phone.

Yes, this was 2009, back when I still had the Motorola Q. But you probably don't care about that. So what do you do?

Or perhaps there's a better way - follow by topic rather than person. That way, if you're interested in requirements management, you can see what people said about that specific topic, and ignoring all of their LOLcats stuff. FriendFeed now supports topic searching capabilities.

And now, nearly four years later, Google+ supports topic searching capabilities also. Let's say that you like my posts about Slim Whitman, but don't like anything else that I write. Why not just perform the "Slim Whitman" search in Google+? You can tailor the search to your needs; for example, you can just see what people in your circles are saying about Slim Whitman.

Follow topics, not people, and then you won't have to worry about people who write all sorts of stuff.

Now if you see a share of this post on Google+, don't forget to +1 it...