Opoprtunities for further investigation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PasadenaNow can do that easily.

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

In which I talk about blogging styles

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

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

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

And here's number two:

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

lowering...saturation of...colors

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

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

Ur entire blog changed. Your doing music marketing now?

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

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

Hi! Who are you?

Phones and time from @glenc @itafroma @akiva

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

Campbell himself offered a comment:

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

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

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

Here's an excerpt:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time keeps on slippin'...

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

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

It had.

IncredibleDisplay's Ronnie James Deodorant:



rocker725's Dio Deodorant:



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But another page on the same website states:

OUR MANAGEMENT TEAM

Mike McFarland - sole director and officer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or is it?

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

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

In his post, Louis Gray made a similar point:

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

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

And the Android phones aren't phones either.

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

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

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

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

Or is he?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, right.

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

Where's Wisk Detergent? CVS.

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

(21) dja says:

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

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

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

So I left comment 22 at the original post:

(22) John E. Bredehoft says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can take it to the bank.

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

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

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

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

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

For the Los Angeles Clippers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the sixteenth minute - Brian Maupin and Michael Hanscom

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

iPhone.

Evo.

Best Buy.

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

But what of Maupin?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whether you like it or not - a business post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

Farrell went on to say:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

Third off...the phone sucks.

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

And boy, do they pay a premium:

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

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

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

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

Why did you change the name of the company?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When is a scam not a scam?

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

Dear Company Owner,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abdou echoed a similar comment:

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

There's a similar comment from Another Distinguished Persona:

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

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

But is he?

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

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

But is this a crime?

Before you answer this question, consider the following facts.

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

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

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

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

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

PAL Director
SPO Patti Morgan

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

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

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

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

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

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

What's in a name?

There are a number of words that we speak which are completely unintelligible if they are removed from their original context. For example, a recent post of mine used the acronym "RSM," while noting that it could stand for a variety of things, including the Russian School of Mathematics and Remote Site Management. In my case, I was referring to the California community of Rancho Santa Margarita.

In the same way, names of people can often be confusing when taken out of context. While there are people who have very unique names, there are some names that are more common than we can imagine. I could use a particular name with one audience, and they would know exactly who I was talking about. I could use that same name with an entirely separate audience, and they would also know exactly who I was talking about - even though I would be talking about an entirely different person.

Here are a few examples, starting with PaintPRO:

Robert “Rob” Scoble has been named vice president, sales and marketing at Hyde Tools Inc. Scoble’s responsibilities include oversight of the sale and marketing of paint, drywall, wallcovering and other hand tools sold worldwide through retailers, distributors and catalogs.

Scoble comes to Hyde Tools with a strong background in business development and operational improvement programs. As senior vice president and COO for a $70 million privately held company, he increased revenues and operating income and was responsible for functional management and 1,300 employees. He has also taken one corporation through a classic turnaround that included a major branding initiative, “quick-fixed” the operating income of an acquired organization, merged business units, reversed declining sales, increased sales and reengineered strategic business units.

Or how about this biography from the RIS Consulting Group web page?

John Sculley, Vice President & Managing Director

At RIS Consulting Group since 1995, John Sculley designs and leads all RIS advisory, research and change management projects for corporate relocation programs and related services. He was formerly a vice president at a major relocation management company and at an international consulting firm, specializing in corporate location decisions and economic development. He was also executive director/CEO of a major Connecticut not-for-profit. He is the recipient of the Certified Relocation Professional designation (1990), the Meritorious Service Award (1997) and the President’s Award (2006) from the Worldwide Employee Relocation Council. He currently serves on the ERC’s national Task Force on Mobility Procurement and on the Board of Directors for the New England Relocation Association. A graduate of Bucknell University, John lives in New Milford, Connecticut. He and wife Mary have three daughters and a grandson.

Now I'm sure that someone or another has walked up to the Hyde Tools guy and asked him about FriendFeed. And I bet that the RIS consultant has been asked about his favorite computer, or his favorite soft drink.

But I shudder to think of the questions that this guy is asked:

John M. Bredehoft
Partner

John is a partner in the Labor and Employment Law Practice Group of Kaufman & Canoles. His practice emphasizes litigation and litigation-avoidance strategies, and regularly includes discrimination and harassment matters, executive contracts, trade secret and computer crime cases, and advice and litigation on covenants restricting post-employment competition.

So if anyone wonders why I sometimes use my middle initial on my online writing...it's to spare this guy some grief.

(empo-tymshft) The importance of a timeframe

Who is the best NBA basketball team?

Seems like a simple question, right?

Inasmuch as I live in the Los Angeles area, you can guess what the answer to that question is around here. Since the Lakers won the championship for the 2009-2010 season, they are clearly the best team in basketball.

However, the results in any one year are partially attributable to luck. What if Player X had never been injured? What if Player Y didn't happen to make that critical shot in a critical game?

OK, the Lakers fans will respond, let's look at the last three years. During that period, the Lakers were clearly the dominant team.

Excuse me for a moment, but I think I hear a dissenting view from the woman in the green shirt.

"Has there been any team who has won 17 championships? Yes, one - the Boston Celtics. And we won all 17 of our championships in the same city, in the same league. We don't have to count Minneapolis wins or BAA championships in our total."

Of course, the Boston Celtics of 1957 differed tremendously from the Boston Celtics of 2008. The arena was different, the players were different, the game was different. Is it reasonable to look at a period spanning a half-century or more?

What about the last twenty years, Chicago Bulls fans will argue? (6 Bulls championships, 5 Lakers championships, 4 San Antonio Spurs championships.)

Until the Lakers' recent resurgence, the Spurs could lay claim to being the dominant team of the decade.

And until the Lakers' recent resurgence, there was another claimant to the throne - "whatever team Shaquille O'Neal is on." (3 championships with the Lakers, one with the Miami Heat.)

So you can see that definitions of a problem can be significantly impacted by the time scale that is used to analyze the problem. I can guarantee that the results of a three coin toss test will be dramatically different than the results of a 1,000 coin toss test.

Now one can argue that you should use a time scale that is most relevant to the problem that you wish to solve, but as we have seen, relevance is open to interpretation.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to finish writing this Best Blog Post Ever.

My Accord (and Camry) is American made

Years and years ago, I knew some people who worked for a Michigan Congressman from the Detroit area. The Congressman, who naturally wanted to represent his constituents, was obviously interested in promoting "buy American" programs when it came to cars.

That Congressman has long since retired, but I wonder if he'd still support the same program today. You see, the Michigan-based automotive companies are no longer the leaders in U.S.-based car manufacturing, according to Business 360 and cars.com. From the latter:

Cars.com's American-Made Index rates vehicles built and bought in the U.S. Factors include sales, where the car's parts come from and whether the car is assembled in the U.S. We disqualify models with a domestic parts content rating below 75 percent, models built exclusively outside the U.S. or models soon to be discontinued without a U.S.-built successor....

The Toyota Camry, which dethroned the Ford F-150 pickup in last year's AMI, remains at the top for 2010. But the No. 2 model, Honda's strong-selling Accord, surged unexpectedly. Since the AMI's 2006 inception, we've scrutinized two generations of Accords. In the past, Honda sold few imported Accords to U.S. buyers — "a percentage below 10 percent for many years," spokesman Ed Miller said — but the Accord spent several years with its domestic parts percentage in the 60s. That's not the case this year. With all Accords sold in the U.S. now assembled in either Ohio or Alabama, the Accord's 75 percent domestic content and strong sales came close to unseating Toyota for first place.

A Ford spokesman referred to "more global sourcing" as the reason for the change in the F-150's domestic content figure, which has now dropped below the 75% level.

For the record, there are three Toyotas, two Fords, two Hondas, one Chevrolet, one Dodger, and one Jeep on the top ten list.

But it does make you wonder - what is an American car? And with global sourcing, how do you keep track of the American-ness of a car from year to year?

The world manufacturing giant

I ran across this item a few days ago. It begins as follows:

When I saw this story from CNNMoney.com’s Chris Isidor (“China close to catching U.S. in manufacturing”), my first thought was this:

The U.S. still makes things?

Yup. This is what Isidor said:

China's manufacturing base is much more dependent on cheaper goods in such sectors as textiles, apparel, appliances, as well as certain commodities. Textile, apparel and appliances together make up 25% of Chinese manufacturing, compared to 13% in the United States.

The U.S. manufacturing base is well ahead in fields such as aircraft, special industrial machinery and medical and scientific equipment and media-related industries, including software.

For the Jung at heart, another personality classification system

If you've been around business for a while, you've probably run across Myers-Briggs, the whole Mars-Venus thing, or some other type of personality classification system. The underlying concept of these systems, when applied to business, is as follows:

1. Your behavior can be classified as falling into one (or more) groups.


2. The behavior of others (customers, competitors, whoever) can also be classified.


3. Your relationships with these others are governed by your respective classifications, some of which are more compatible than others.

This line of study can be traced back to the work of Carl Jung, who probably never envisioned that his work would eventually be adopted by Type A businessmen trying to get ahead. (Types A and B, incidentally, are a post-Jung concept.)

So anyways, my job change resulted in my rejoining the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP), and I recently attended my first APMP meeting in ten years. This meeting of the Southern California chapter was conducted via webinar at locations throughout the Southland, and our presenter also dialed in remotely, from Colorado. Dr. Charles Pellerin has developed a personality classification system of his own. Pellerin's story picks up around 1990:

In 1990, the world discovered that NASA's crown jewel, the Hubble Space Telescope was useless because of a flawed mirror. The author mounted the daring space repair mission that fixed the telescope. Hubble is now in its 15th year of productive scientific research with more than 3,500 technical publications. NASA awarded him a second Outstanding Leadership Medal, an honor bestowed on less than 50 people (including astronauts) in NASA's History.

In the long term, however, the important question was WHY the mirror was flawed. In an attempt to avoid a second Hubble, Pellerin set out to find out what went wrong.

He looked back at other failed NASA missions, such as the Challenger explosion, and he found a common ingredient to each failure: the “normalization of deviance.” For some reason, errors were not only accepted, but they were standard operating procedure. Pellerin dug deeper and determined that a “flawed social context” was the root of this problem.

With Hubble, the social context that existed between NASA and its contractors discouraged contractors from reporting problems.

Continuing to explore the topic, both in academia and with his own consulting firm, Pellerin created his model:

The 4-D System aligns with Carl Jung's theory of personality development (1905). He posited that we build our personalities on our innate (present at birth) preferences for deciding and the information we use to decide.

Pellerin derived four categories:

"Green" for Cultivating personality foundations -- as in growing, developing people

"Yellow" for Including personality foundations -- the color association is unfortunately unfavorable -- lacking the courage to stand into conflict (We ran out of core colors identifying the other three personalities.)

"Blue" for Visioning personality foundations -- as in blue sky thinking

"Orange" for Directing personality foundations -- as the way our sun directs (organizes) the movement of the planets in our solar system

During his talk to the APMP Socal chapter, Dr. Pellerin spent some time on some examples in which the customer and the bidder were of opposite color types. If I may butcher one of his examples, let's say that a government agency is soliciting bids for the study of a "visionary" topic. Furthermore, let's say that the proposal team assigned to the bid is a results-oriented, practical ("directing") group of people who perceive that the agency's vision is completely impractical.

In addition to violating the "customer is always right" rule, such a proposal team will, in Pellerin's view, be predisposed by personality to lose the bid. Rather than affirming the customer's vision, the proposal team will be naturally inclined to demonstrate a better way to the customer - a message that the customer ultimately does not want to hear.

This is just a small part of what Dr. Pellerin discussed during our 90 minute meeting. Much more information can be found at his website, http://www.4-dsystems.com/, and in his book, How NASA Builds Teams (affiliate link below).

How geeky can you get? @rsmfoodgeek takes the cake.

I run online with a somewhat technical crowd, and all of us manifest some geekiness in some form or another. Or probably a variety of forms; how many people used a DEC PDP-11/70 to manage their college radio show playlists?

But I just discovered that one of my Facebook friends takes geekiness to a whole new level.

Meet foodgeek, whose diary (blog) can be found here, and whose Twitter account (@rsmfoodgeek) can be found here. For those who don't live in southern California, "rsm" stands for Rancho Santa Margarita, although Wikipedia notes that it can also stand for Removable Storage Manager, Resource Standard Metrics, Remote Site Management, Response Surface Methodology, Route Switch Module, and the Russian School of Mathematics (which is not in Russia).

On her blog, she calls herself Geekus Maximus - not only because of her intense interest in baking, but because when she's not baking, she works as a systems engineer. Presumably she does not confuse the two:

Workflow for Biometric Submission to State System

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Process biometric samples to extract feature data.
3. Knead the dough throughly.
4. Check for required descriptors; do not allow screen to advance until mandatory descriptors are correctly entered.
5. Generously add raisins to the dough.
6. Format submission in ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2007 format.
7. Bake until brown.
8. Transmit submission to state system in accordance with CJIS WAN security guidelines.
9. Let cool for ten minutes, then enjoy!

As you can probably tell by my fake workflow above, I know next to nothing about baking. For those who want to know more, check foodgeek's blog - sample post: Pane al Cioccolato - Italian Chocolate Bread, which includes technical terms such as "Biga Naturale." You see, ALL geeks have their own special terminology...