Everything you know is wrong. Caribe?

Upon reading Steve Johnson's post about the need to localize messages in local markets, I thought back to the popular Chevy Nova story. I vaguely remember hearing that the story wasn't true, and checked to see what snopes.com said about it.

The truth is that the Chevrolet Nova's name didn't significantly affect its sales: it sold well in both its primary Spanish-language markets, Mexico and Venezuela. (Its Venezuelan sales figures actually surpassed GM's expectations.)

Yet sites such as anvari.org haven't gotten the message:

When General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova in South America, it was apparently unaware that "no va" means "it won't go." After the company figured out why it wasn't selling any cars, it renamed the car in its Spanish markets to the Caribe.

The Caribe, incidentally, was a Volkswagen car. (The Chevrolet Caribe was a 1966 model related to the Impala, not the Nova, which was released several years before the Nova was introduced into Latin America.)

Now that we know what a phone isn't, what isn't a bike or a backpack?

I talk about phones a lot on this blog. You know, the things that have a cord attached to the wall and have the round twirly thing that you use to contact people?

OK, phones have changed a bit since I was a kid.

But at least a bike is the same as it was before, right? No. All Points Blog discusses an Apple patent application that changes things a bit:

The application for a smart bike reads like a description of a connected bike computer; that is, it collects the same data many inexpensive bike computers capture, but can share it among devices.

Well, we still have the backpack. You can't really change that. Oh yes you can:

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley developed a backpack that uses a combination of lasers, cameras, and location-sensing equipment to map out rooms and corridors inside buildings.

OK, it's time for me to adopt a new way to invent things. You may have heard of my previous way to invent things, which is to take ANY food, precede it with the word "fried," and follow it with the words "on a stick." (For example, fried asparagus on a stick.)

So my new way to invent things is to take any object, take an adjective that seemingly has nothing to do with the object, and put the two together. Examples include computing telephone, networked bicycle, and map-generating backpack. Additional examples include encrypted pencil, anti-tuberculosis lightbulb, and libertarian collie.

Once you've put your two words together, contact a patent attorney, make sure Oracle isn't already laying claim to your idea, and start picking out your Rolls Royce.

Your professional football stadium Rolls Royce.

Esteemed Lending Services won't lend you money to get Viriliteas

If you go to http://wemarket4u.net/esteemed/index.html, you'll find the website for Esteemed Lending Services, which advertises:

A loan for every situation. Guaranteed.

Welcome to Esteemed Lending, where we guarantee a loan to fit every situation. Our qualified loan specialists have been helping people just like you find the best interest rates and loan terms possible for your unique situation. We will guide you every step of the way to get you the loan you need. You can lower your current payments on your mortgage, refinance existing debt, and even get extra cash to pay for unexpected expenses.

Interestingly enough, they have a typo toward the end of their statement.

Even if you've been turned down by other lenders because of a less than perfect credit history, we can helop.

But if you click on any of the page's links - to find out about the site's privacy policy, to get more information, or to apply for a loan - you'll discover something very interesting about Esteemed Lending Services.

I won't give the secret away, but the same organization that set up the Esteemed Lending Services website has also set up several other sites:

FatFoe, which lets you kiss your dieting days goodbye.

Glucobate, something for diabetics that offers the healing aromatics of muskmelon.

Sundae Station, a work-at-home opportunity that's advertised as a ticket to sweet profits.

Two sites (age-specific) for Viriliteas.

And while these sites are relatively new, the efforts are not; the organization that set up the Viriliteas website registered the Viriliteas trademark back in 2001.

But while Viriliteas (the plural) was trademarked, apparently the organization never got around to trademarking the singular. You can find Virilitea (described as "virile for men") at the Ceder Biotea website. They are a Malaysian supplier of dehydrated bulk ingredients to Japan, Korea, and Europe.

Oh, and there's a ViriliTEA in New Zealand:

ViriliTEA
'There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by unfolding his powers' Erich Fromm Ingredients: North Indian teas blended to create a strong breakfast tea.

Capacity: 100gm

Price: NZ$16.90

Can we generalize an average Muslim consumer?

Generalization is good and bad. On the one hand, it allows an easier response to identifiable segments of the population. On the other hand, the generalization may end up being too general, potentially alienating your target audience.

I haven't really explored the so-called Muslim market segment in this blog before, other than a post in Islamic banking. But I personally wonder if you can lump someone from remotest Saudi Arabia, someone from Indonesia, and someone from Detroit into the same market segment. But perhaps I'm wrong. Marsha Weinstein:

“Muslim consumerism” is thus hardly an oxymoron; why single it out? The consumer behavior of Muslims worldwide is like Western consumer behavior -- especially online -- but exceptional in its extensive use of the Internet for Islamic goods.

Today’s Muslims are young, tech-savvy dotcom aspirants: 50 percent of America’s 1.5 million Muslims are under age 39, and 75 percent of the Middle East’s are under 35.

Young Muslims animatedly blog about iPhone apps that wake them in time for early morning fajr prayers and point them toward Mecca, no matter where in the world they are.

Weinstein also discussed eSoouk, an online site which describes itself as follows:

Alhumdulilah! All praise is due to Allah (SWT) who has allowed this project to blossom and become a reality in the blessed month of Dhil-Hajj 2008!

We thought you might like to know a bit more of what we’re all about!

Originally founded in April 2006, esoouk.com started as a vision and an intention for the Muslim community, to unite and connect Muslim people, businesses, buyers and sellers all under one roof and to improve the economic conditions of the Muslim community at large by establishing the Islamic trading principles of Honesty, Integrity, Mutual understanding and Trust.

This is our intention, and Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala will only reward people for what they intended, and we pray Allah (SWT) accepts from us the good from this website and forgives us for any bad from this website. We are not perfect nor do we claim to be, we are human beings just like you, so we ask if you see anything on this site un-Islamic or you feel you have not been treated fairly we ask you to contact us so we can Inshaa'Allah resolve the issue together for the sake of Allah (SWT).

(I discussed some of the Muslim business ethical principles in my prior post.)

Now perhaps people in Taliban-dominated areas aren't rushing out to buy from these sites, or from Western companies such as Nestle who have adapted their processes so that halal foods can be provided.

But maybe there is a commonality of sorts between the shoppers in some portions of the Muslim world. Despite their different national backgrounds, there are some commonalities between them that support a unified marketing approach.

But I'm waiting to see what happens when the "Muslim market" tries to influence school textbook publishing. California and Texas won't be able to tolerate the competition.

P.S. Also see the comments to this CNN post. Sample:

Shama Ahmed
August 11th, 2010 10:19 am ET

With Muslims having more opportunity of a better education their understanding of the Islam religion is also growing. Muslims are an integral part of the financial system as the Muslim consumer is a big market. Having products that adhere to Islamic values are very important as these will be more attractive to the Muslim consumer. This is quite noticeable with the growth of Islamic Banks and also many none Islamic Banks have products to suit the Muslim customer. There is also the ever growing businesses of restaurants, clothe shops, book store, which are catering to Muslim needs such as halal food, modest fashionable clothes, literature and art.

Rethinking the feed workflow - when the so-called "friendfeed" gets to my real friends

Back on April 3, 2008, I wrote a post in my mrontemp blog entitled How I Publish. The post illustrated how things that I did on one online service would show up in another online service - for example, how something that I shared on del.icio.us would end up on both FriendFeed and MyBlogLog.

The post is hopelessly out of date, but rather than redoing the entire workflow, I'll simply sum it up as follows: stuff that I do on a lot of services ends up on FriendFeed, and from there it goes from FriendFeed to Facebook. (Incidentally, this doesn't included Amplify, which I joined last weekend.)

Why? Because that's the way that I set up a lot of stuff a couple of years ago. Technically I could have all of these services go directly to Facebook, but I really haven't wanted to re-engineer all of that as long as FriendFeed remained a viable service. To do it right, I would not only have to set up last.fm, my blogs, and everything else to go to Facebook, but I would also have to set up things so that when these services hit FriendFeed, they didn't result in duplicate entries in Facebook. (I try to minimize cases in which any of my feeds include duplicate information.)

The drawback of my approach is that when all of my stuff hits Facebook, it all appears as coming from FriendFeed - which it did, but this ignores the fact that some items come from Google Reader, some from Twitter, some from last.fm, some from Blogger, some natively from FriendFeed itself, etc. The result can look something like this:



When someone views this feed, even if they're technically savvy, the results can be somewhat confusing. And if you're not familiar with how certain services work, they can be downright maddening.

For example, take the first item in the picture - the one that begins with "(The inspiration for Jesse Stay's post on the topic.) Fwd: Hmmmm. Fight!" followed by a TechCrunch link, followed by an ff.im link. A knowledgeable FriendFeed user will figure out that I found something on someone's feed on FriendFeed (in this case, it was an item in Louis Gray's feed), reshared it to my own feed, and added a parenthetical statement of my own. (If you're not familiar with FriendFeed, but are familiar with Twitter, think of it as a retweet on steroids.)

The third item in the picture is probably even more confusing. It came from Twitter, but I didn't write it. My FriendFeed page includes a search for all tweets that include my Twitter name @empoprises - the search found a particular tweet from Derrick Jefferson which was in response to something that I had written. (He was looking for some in Louisiana who could cut a black man's hair; I referred him to a barber in southern California, the place where he used to live.)

This confusion about the origin of various items is compounded by the fact that they often appear out of context - especially since my sharing activities on all my various online services can sometimes border on the eccentric. This is part of the FriendFeed culture itself; people there are accustomed to navigating around FriendFeed and Google Reader and Google Buzz and this service and that service, carrying conversations from one service to another, and generally treating the entire World Wide Web like a good plate of spaghetti.

I didn't really think of the ramifications of this, but once all of this stuff hits Facebook, it can get mightily confusing. Once someone saw something that I had shared in Google Reader (which sent it to FriendFeed, which sent it to Facebook) and assumed that I had written it. After all, it appeared in my Facebook thing as just another thing from FriendFeed; doesn't that mean that I wrote it? I can't blame the person for that.

But I didn't really think about it a lot until the end of Sunday School, when someone (I'll call him "Bill") approached me. He and I are friends on Facebook, and obviously we go to the same church, and we also have a business relationship. After Sunday school, he approached me and noted that he was often confused about all of the things that show up on my Facebook feed. I mentioned at the time that most of that stuff comes from FriendFeed, but it wasn't until later that I realized that the "all FriendFeed" appearance of everything can lead to natural confusion.

So perhaps I should rethink my workflow, since Facebook is obviously going to be around a lot longer than FriendFeed will. I don't know if I'll just feed all of the services into Facebook directly so that people can tell a Google Reader item from a last.fm item (and then somehow making changes so that those same things don't get echoed into Facebook from FriendFeed). Or perhaps I'll do something else. This will help reduce the confusion of my real-life friends - the ones that I physically see several times a month.

Again I mean no disrespect to my FriendFeed friends, but I haven't met most of them in real life. (Derrick Jefferson happens to be an exception to the rule; I met him at a FriendFeed meetup a year and a half ago.) But as wonderful as my online friends are, there are things that "Bill" and other real-life friends know that my FriendFeed friends do not know.

For example, this post is a scheduled post, written in advance, which will appear in my blog (and on FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, etc.) on Tuesday at 5:15 pm. This post was NOT being written on Tuesday at 5:14 pm, and in fact it would be impossible for me to write this post on Tuesday at 5:14 pm and post it on Tuesday at 5:15 pm.

My friend "Bill" knows why I couldn't write this post at 5:14 pm on Tuesday.

Most of my FriendFeed friends don't.

(More later.)

P.S. As mentioned above, this post was written in advance of its Tuesday publication date...and was also written in advance of FriendFeed's Monday night outage. Depending upon the seriousness of the outage, perhaps my reconfiguration may need to be accelerated...

(empo-plaaybizz) Sleep is death - the "fight club" of games

I joined Amplify over the weekend, but currently am reading it more than posting to it. I found this item from Kol Tregaskes, which led me to a Randy Smith blog post which asks, "When Is A Game Not A Game"? When I play Starfleet Commander or Sudoku, I play within a defined set of rules. An Atlas can't overpower 5 Ares, and I can't place 9 one's in a row. Smith describes another reality:

The only strange thing about this talking wolf is the high quality of its conversation. “I could shoot you, you know,” I threaten the wolf, having already established that my daughter might still be alive inside its belly. That wasn’t picked from a dialogue menu; I typed it in. Without missing a beat, the wolf responds, “I’m afraid you’ll have to.” Sentient characters and interactive dialogue have been common this entire play session. Impressed? The game’s responses are driven by game designer Jason Rohrer.

Yes, I do mean that he designed this game, Sleep Is Death, but I also mean that he’s controlling the world I’m exploring and typing in the responses for each character I speak to. It’s through the magic of this ‘man behind the curtain’ solution that Sleep Is Death is easily able to bring players to places few videogames are capable of, meaningfully exploring stories about family, euthanasia and coming of age, to name a few.

This is nothing new, at least for those of us who played Dungeons & Dragons in the 1970s. For those who never played the game, a Dungeonmaster would set up the initial world in which the players roamed, but the Dungeonmaster could always interject a level of personal control, or change things around to meet the situation of the players. And until computer artificial intelligence becomes much better, and games learn much more about the people who play them, the personal touch of a game "master" will provide a much richer experience than something that was programmed by a staff of people.

Now games such as baseball, basketball, and football (whatever flavor) have entire books of rules. A simplified rule set can be frightening, but it can also be liberating. I'm not a movie person, but I'm well aware that "Fight Club" has few rules:

Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club! Third rule of Fight Club: if someone yells "stop!", goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule: only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule: one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule: the fights are bare knuckle. No shirt, no shoes, no weapons. Seventh rule: fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule: if this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight.

Compared to the rules for other games, that's nothing. And while it's a stretch to apply it to Microsoft's attempted takeover of Yahoo in 2008, there are certainly some possibilities to use "fight club"-like tactics to score a business knockout.

More details about Rohrer's game can be found at http://www.sleepisdeath.net/.

The varying definitions of "real-time"

Each of us may say that a particular event occurs in "real-time." However, the meaning of that term can vary by the person, and by who is speaking.

I'll give you an example from my biometrics background. Back in the 1990s, my employer was known as an automated fingerprint identification systems company. I was working in proposals back then, and we'd often talk about our "real-time" technology that allowed searches to come back in just minutes, rather than taking hours or days. Despite what television may show you, fingerprint matching can be a complex process, and the ability at the time to measure searches in minutes rather than hours was something that was revolutionary.

But then our company acquired several other companies and/or divisions, including a CAD company. Now when I refer to "CAD," I'm talking about computer-aided dispatch, or a system which assigns police, fire, or ambulance personnel to a particular location in response to a particular need.

I can't imagine what our new co-workers were thinking when we ran around talking about responses in minutes. If CAD systems took minutes to respond, people would die.

Of course, there are often speed improvements which allow you to do things more quickly, and one of those improvements has been claimed for DNA analysis. Again, if you see a TV show in which a forensic analyst gets DNA results back in a few seconds, treat it as science fiction. Even if you ignore the fact that many DNA labs have huge backlogs, it takes time to analyze the DNA samples and reach conclusions.

According to Forensic Magazine, someone has reduced this analysis time:

A new system developed by researchers from the Forensic Science Service uses an instrument loaded with a DNA processing cartridge to speed the DNA analysis. Using this system, the entire process from taking the sample from a suspect, to database compatible DNA profile production can be achieved in less than 4 hours.

However, this is only part of the equation:

"If the full impact of these new technologies is to be gained, the rapid delivery of chemistry must be supported by a capability to submit and compare the DNA profile in near real time. Currently neither the CODIS database, nor the UK National DNA database have the capability to support rapid chemistry protocols."

Whenever you decide to speed up a process, you need to look at all of the steps in the process. Once I was looking at a particular process, and identified a modification to a particular step which would result in a drastic reduction in time...for that particular step. However, the net effect on the overall process was negligible.

P.S. You'll want to stay tuned to this blog today. In about twelve hours you'll see a (previously scheduled) post that talks about the possibility of my changing my personal workflow so that items from various feeds, rather than going to FriendFeed BEFORE going to Facebook, would instead go directly to Facebook. For the record this (previously scheduled) post was primarily written BEFORE FriendFeed went down on Monday evening.

Sex and the (Filipino call center) city - the side effects of outsourcing

I'm working on a post for my Empoprise-IE Inland Empire blog which will talk about the outsourcing of Hilton Hotel call center jobs from Hemet (and other locations) to the Philippines. Normally when people talk about outsourcing, the first country that comes to mind is India. But other countries are trying to dethrone India from its outsourcing lead - some on the basis of cost, and some on other issues.

The Philippine IT Offshore Network (PITON) trumpets the advantages of its home country:

As a former US protectorate for more than five decades, the Philippines is known to possess the closest cultural affinity to the US among all offshore destinations. The country’s schooling, legal, medical as well as business system and processes have been adopted from or patterned after the US system. A recent Gartner research report on “Outsourcing Opportunities to the Philippines” emphasized on the fact that “US customers consistently cite cross-cultural differences as one of the biggest hurdles when engaging with Indian-based firms. With regard to working with Filipinos, this issue is rarely cited. The ability of Filipinos to work with Americans and assimilate to their professional environment, as well as their interpersonal norms of behavior and organizational culture, is often praised by US enterprises.”...

“American” English is the official language in the Philippines making it the world’s third largest English-speaking country. English is the medium of instruction from primary up to post-secondary levels....

The Philippines possesses a considerably large, highly educated and extremely skilled workforce. With an annual output of approximately 400,000 graduates the country is well positioned to support its exponentially growing BPO industry. The literacy rate in the Philippines with over 94% ranks as the second highest in Asia....

And as outsourcing booms in the Philippines, other changes are happening there:

[E]ntire 24/7 service industries -- including convenience stores, bars and fast-food restaurants -- have sprung up around the new office towers to serve the needs of the booming sector.

However there are concerns about the way the industry is reshaping young adult society, as well as the pressures the workers face as they remotely help customers and clients on the other side of the world.

The odd hours, irate clients, tedious workloads and performance demands often drive staff -- particularly call centre workers -- to early burnout.

And perhaps you're among the irate clients that the call center workers encounter.

Cici said one of the hardest parts of call centre work was simply dealing with customers angry at having to speak with someone on the other side of the world.

"One customer said: 'I don't wanna talk to you. I want to talk to an American'... I cried," Cici said.

And apparently when you live, breathe, and eat work, you also...um..."sleep" work.

Both Cici and Pau said they had heard similar stories in the call centre office they used to work at, which have beds in rest areas for exhausted staff.

"Our sleeping quarters were for both sexes. Some of my friends told me that there were certain things that happened there," Cici said.

As early as 2009, companies were reported to be taking steps to prevent this.

Stricter dress codes for women are required to make sure that none of them will wear revealing and indecent outfits when reporting for work. The temperature inside the offices is set couple of centigrade lower than usual to make employees wear jackets, therefore covering up exposed skin.

Hidden cameras and CCTVs are also installed around the premises, especially on the areas where employees were caught having sex. These areas include sleeping quarters, fire exits, parking lots and conference rooms.

Why was this necessary?

The social profile of the employees working for call centers is one of the biggest factors of the increasing incidence of sex in call centers. Majority of the employees are young, ranging from 20-30 years old. Most of them are single and a fair lot of them are fresh graduates. People in this age range are at the height of sexual exploration, and working with people with the same age and liberal attitude can lead to bold experimentations with their co-workers right in the office premises.

The financial capabilities of the call center employees are also seen as another major factor. The big salaries allow many of these workers to live away from their parents and do practically everything they want. This exhilarating feeling of freedom makes them adventurous enough to commit forbidden sex in the workplace.

And either because of the workload or because of the extracurricular activities, the call center workers are apparently exhausted. This singer couldn't even stand up to sing his call center song.



[SEPTEMBER 18, 2010: MORE INFORMATION ON THIS TOPIC HERE.]

(empo-plaaybizz) Owen Van Natta plays around

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zynga.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• an evangelistic attitude


• a high-quality message


• one or more tools to spread the message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Google makes Larry Ellison pray for judgment

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

SOURCE: Oracle Corporation

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

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

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

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

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

Contact Info

Karen Tillman
Oracle
+1.650.607.0326

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

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

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

Similar claims are made about several other patents, including:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PRAYER FOR RELIEF

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

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

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

Do you work for your employer, or your customer?

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

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

This is the response that he received:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you work for your employer, or your customer?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TWITTER @XBOXSUPPORT CUSTOMER SERVICE SCRIPT VERSION 13.412

Step 420.

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

Unfortunately, @XboxSupport stuck with the old script:

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

Stay answered the question, and volunteered additional information:

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

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

TWITTER @XBOXSUPPORT CUSTOMER SERVICE SCRIPT VERSION 13.412

Step 421.

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

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

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

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

Did Microsoft outsource its Xbox customer support to Apple?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We'll see what happens.

Multi-tasking on the boob tube

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why the AOL model is re-emerging

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I know some tourism ads exaggerate, but this is ridiculous

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

[Picture source, license]

Thoughts on my new netbook

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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