Frickingenius

Mr. Poo (a life story written in real time)

2011-08-25T23:28:00.000-07:00

I was born at a young age in a small 50,000 watt radio station, next to the coke machine.

My mother was a jazz singer and my father played the sax.

Together they made the beautiful music that was me.

I suckled on 45s (and the occasional 78, yes, I am that old), and my first words were, "spin it!"

When I'd cry, dad would put me on a turntable and spin me until I'd either settle down or upchuck. Good times.

One night they went home and forgot me in the studio, and even though I was only 2 7/12ths years old, I started the very first late night romance radio call in show, called "whole lotta poop in the night,"

It was an instant success, imitated poorly around the country by other toddlers who didn't understand the irony of "poop" and therefore bespoiled many a otherwise perfectly good turntables.

This lead to my late night TV show, called "Whole lotta poo in the night, " the "p" having been censored out by standards and practices who felt it was obscene, or at the very least, vulgar and kinda stinky sounding.

So Hollywood here I came, and at the young-ish age of 4 8/12ths I was already a fixture at industry parties.

For years, people thought the white on my lip was actually milk.

But, in reality, my coke habit was reeking havoc with my life, I was burning through my millions and my nostrils. Then, sadly, at the age of 5 3/12ths (I didn't know it then, but it was the same as 5 1/4), I was a has-been.

Shunned by the very industry that had pushed my pram to the top.

Lying by my kiddie pool, tanned and toned, but no longer loved.

It was at this point my parents stepped back into the picture. Of course, I'd sued them for custody of myself and won, so they were no longer my legal guardians, but somehow love overcame all, and they moved into my guest house and raised me as if I was a small wolf.

Feeding me their table scraps and telling me to go out and chase rabbits on the 101.

Needless to say, it was an idyllic existence.

But that all would be shattered on my 7 1/8th birthday. Yes, I celebrated 8 birthdays a year, as in accordance with the wikkan ways I'd discovered while chasing a rat in Griffith park.

I came home one day to find my father and mother gone. Disappeared. Along with all their clothes and everything in my bank account.

They had left me to adopt a Korean baby pop star, "Ooodles So!" who had her own hit show in the southern half of Korea and had licensed her likeness into troll dolls.

But now, old enough to take care of myself and catch my own dinner with my own teeth, I forged out into the wilds of Hollywood, determined to regain the stardom that had once been mine.

I started on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. Yes, I was young, but I was eager to please.

10 years later there I was, back on top, my own TV show called "Poo!"

I played "Nathanial Poo," a Ukrainian immigrant who had come to Hollywood to be a singing sensation, only to find that he was better suited to being a chauffeur for a child star named Ooodles So!

I know how that sounds, but I was canny when I created and produced this show--I chose Oodles knowing of her complete lack of English skills, as well as her complete lack of modesty, would lead her to be silent and in a constant state of semi-undress.

That left my character, "Mr. Poo" (the one English phrase she learned how to say") to have almost all the dialog on the show.

The story revolved around Oodles, a former child star, looking for fame again, and me, Mr. Poo, and my wacky schemes to get her back into show business.

These included such wacky things as having her win the wet-t-shirt modeling contest at a gay bar, her playing a mermaid in a wet t-shirt, and her finally getting a singing gig, only to have to sing it in a torrential downpour, which of course made her t-shirt wet.

As you can well imagine, the show was an international sensation, and there was no place on earth I could go and not be called "Mr. Poo!"

Even in the wilds of African, the villagers with their sad little 9" black and white Zenith TVs would come running when I was on safari, "Poo Poo!" they'd cry.

Now, as so often happens, fame is fleeting, and so was Mr. Poo.

One season we were on top, the next, canceled, though this was mostly do to Ooodle's unfortunate run in with the law after she tried to steal her wardrobe from a porn shoot.

At first our ratings skyrocketed, but soon people were titillated by something else, in this case the little boy who played the voice of Linus of Charlie brown, who was arrested for running a prostitution ring called "Lucy's Place."

But now, at the ripe old age of 18, I figured I was finished in the biz, and would take my untold millions and use them to follow my real dream of a dude ranch for stunted teens.

So I opened the first in what soon became a successful string of "Poo-d ranches" and off we went.

Slow children from across the globe flocked to my poo-d ranches to ride horses, fish, and occasionally be used as organ donors.

I sold the poo-d ranch chain to Berkshire Hathaway.

It was time for some R&R. Now in a committed relationship with Ooodles, our first move was to ship my parents back to Milwaukee where they could be put out to pasture with their own little acting school for children.

I'd been learning Korean, which I initially did only because I was tired of charades, but little did I know it would lead to an entirely new career as a star in the heavenly firmament of South Korea!

And that's the end of this chapter--but don't worry, they'll be more poo to you!

Half asleep and all hopped up on Nasonex

2011-05-01T20:06:00.000-07:00

I was at Taco Bell (yes, I like Taco Bell, though their weird new taco in a taco makes no sense to me, it's a crispy taco inside a soft tortilla with beans and some cheese-like substance--that just seems like overkill).

I noticed an elderly gentleman use his handkerchief to open the door and thought, "that's smart" except that when he goes to blow his nose he'll get door germs? Unless he only uses the inside to blow his nose. Personally, I could never use a handkerchief because it just seemed gross. Except I liked that they could be monogrammed. Still, not enough motivation to get past the grossness.

Anyway, I was there and one of the doors was clearly broken and had a big arrow taped on it, pointing to the other door. I knew as soon as I saw it that it meant "use the other door," but then, I'm quick that way.

One after another, people would come up, try to use the left door (first, why not the right?) and it wouldn't work. And they'd keep tugging at it, as if that would help. Then they looked around, helpless, like the place was locked--except, there were people inside! How would they get in for their weird-ass twin-taco? Yes, there was another entrance but that was like 20 feet away, so just... keep... tugging...

The best was the people who were inside, who'd tug and tug, as if they were going to be unable to leave the restaurant, trapped forever in a morass of refried beans.

When I got closer to the door I saw a new notice that talked about shellfish allergies, and it was near the arrow, so perhaps people thought that the arrow meant that people with shellfish allergies should use the other door, as if this one was somehow contaminated with the essence of shrimp. No, that can't be it, I'm not convinced they could read--hell, they couldn't even decipher the meaning of an arrow!

This did make me frightened to eat there, simply because I didn't want to eat anywhere they were eating lest it mean I was like them. But then I know what arrows mean, which immediately sets me apart as some kind of genius. Relatively speaking.

I felt better when, for the very first time, the guy at the register had a name tag that said, "Manager/Co-owner". Really? It was co-owned by a real human being? I'd actually never thought of that, I thought they were all just sticky tentacles of PepsiCo (ooh, I was looking at their brands and now I want caramel corn--speaking of which, Safeway was selling small bags of "kettle corn" from a bay area company called Gold Rush, and I'd really wanted some caramel corn but didn't want something that sugary and sticky--well, this Gold Rush kettle korn is fantastic--it's like salty popcorn with a touch of sweet, not that heavy high-fructose corn syrup coating on the boxed caramel corn things--I highly recommend this: http://www.goldrushpopcorn.com

Oh, Lord, I don't even know what I'm writing, I'm half asleep from allergies and only think I'm lucid because of the Nasonex which goes straight to your brain and convinces you that you are making sense. I know I will read this in a few months, when allergy season is over, and realize it was a mistake to post it. But I can't help myself now. I'm clicking on "Publish Post," because it's a pretty orange button. Pretty. Orange. Button. Press.

Why I'll ONLY buy Apple

2011-03-27T21:57:00.000-07:00

I'll start with the bottom line: Apple did the right thing by me today. My 3 year AppleCare policy expired a month ago, and right after my iMac started crashing. It didn't seem like a coincidence and I was disappointed and annoyed. Because I use the excellent Time Machine backup program, I had backups of my data, so it's not like I lost anything, but the timing felt as if it was designed to happen right after the warranty expired.

I thought I needed a new hard disk, so I called the local apple store to get a quote. They wouldn't give me one over the phone and wanted me to schlep in my computer. iMacs aren't big, but they are heavy enough, and it was raining and I didn't really want to, but they said I could have an appointment at the "Genius Bar" today, so I took it.

I dragged my computer in (when I got there they told me that they are happy to carry your computer to and from your car!), and waited about 20 minutes. Then I was greeted by Lee who plugged my computer in and ran a bunch of tests, and announced my hard disk was fine, but I probably needed a new power supply, which cost $69... and a new logic board which cost $400, and $40 labor... which brought it up to $500.

I was stunned. I said, "My AppleCare plan just expired last month..." hoping I could get some kind of discount, and he said, "I know, that's why we'll do this at no cost to you."

WHAT?

That's right. My plan had expired and Apple (by giving the power to please to their Genius, Lee) was still doing the work for free. He explained that those are the two most expensive parts and when the power supply has problems it can affect the logic board, so might as well replace it now as well. And then both will only have 90 day warranties after that, so I should make sure it's working right so if there's another problem it'll be fixed under warranty again. Thank you, Lee.

That was, of course, the right thing to do. It's just so surprising when companies do the right thing now I was stunned. Yes, it'll take a week to get the part and do the work. But I have a Macbook I can use in the mean time, and the idea of not having to spend $500 to fix a computer that was just out of warranty made me so giddy I almost spent the $500 on an iPad2 (and still might!)

The whole experience--from the ease of buying it in the first place (when they let me sit there for four hours to use the computer to make sure I liked it), ease of setting it up and using it, excellent beautiful interface and technical support, the store itself where you can take classes for free (I actually learned a lot of tricks in a one hour iphoto class), the ability to go into any Apple Store anywhere and use it as if it was an Internet Cafe... And now this.

It's like being a member of a really nice club where they want to make sure you're happy. What? A company that actually wants to make sure you are happy and taken care of? Doesn't sound like something an MBA matrix would calculate, but the value is priceless.

So--my next computer will be an Apple. And my next phone, too (I debated between Android and iPhone, but given this level of service and support, there's just no contest). And, for the first time in almost 30 years, I am loyal to a computer brand. And recommend you be, too.

----

I've been using personal computers since 1983. During those 28 years I've had at least 12 computers, so the average life expectancy has been less than three years. I started with CP/M KayPro computers (they were portable, the size of a sewing machine, and only weighed 29 pounds!) and went through the IBM PC/XT/AT, 286, 386, 486, and various Pentiums. Until three years ago, I didn't use Apple computers.

Part of the reason I never got into the original Mac is because it was expensive, and in the following years, Apple's were usually about twice as expensive as Windows-based PCs. I also thought the Mac OS was brilliant in some ways, closed in others. I didn't really like Windows, but it got the job done and there was a lot of software for it. And, because it was harder, I got to write a number of books about how to get things done using it--I wrote the first book about DTP (Desktop Publishing, a term rarely used anymore) on the PC.

I say all this to explain that I'm not a life-long Apple fanboy, and until now I haven't even been "loyal" to any particular computer brand.

Now I am.

I switched to Mac just over three years ago, because of Windows Vista. I wasn't going to use it. It was slow and buggy and Windows computers were big and noisy. The iMac I bought was exactly the same price as a similarly equipped PC, but was quieter, more beautiful (as all Apple hardware is), and I could still run Windows XP on it so that I could use the few great Windows apps I use--especially Xara for graphic design--can't be beat by any Mac program).

Once I switched I immediately saw the advantages of OS/X, based on the time tested Unix. I didn't have to worry about all the technical details I had to constantly worry about under Windows. IT JUST WORKED. And worked beautifully.

And it did, for three years. I always buy extended warranties on computers and they've always paid for themselves. In the case of AppleCare, This $99 warranty also gave me three years of excellent, free technical support by phone. The amazing part was that I hardly needed it, but the few times I did, it was thorough and got the job done. I also got two replacement mice, as the little scroll ball tends to get gunked up after a while, and when cleaning wouldn't fix it, Apple Fed Ex'd me new mice--for free.

Two weeks before the warranty was over, the computer just turned off. Then it started taking a long time to boot up. Up to 10 minutes. While google searches give you a ton of useful information on how to handle this stuff on the mac, a 90 minute call to AppleCare tech support walked me through it all.

TIP: At least once a month start up by holding down Command (clover)-S. You'll see a black screen with white text. This is Unix, which underlies the Mac OS.

There's a prompt that shows you /sbin/fsck -fy

Type it and press return.

This checks your hard disk for errors. If it finds and fixes them, run it again. If it doesn't find any errors, just type "reboot" to restart your computer.

So far the only complaint I have about the Mac OS is that I think it should be doing this automatically by itself. Maybe even once a month, when you turn it on it could say, "Please wait while I do a check of your hard disk, just to make sure it's in tip top shape..." or something.

So--I learned how to do this, and run disk utility, and then everything was fine. Until I went out of town, and my wife was using the computer and it just shut off, after which it wouldn't start up. Now out of AppleCare, she couldn't call tech support, so she used Googled it and went through the fsck stuff and disk utility and still nothing.

So she ended up reformatting the hard disk, which can be necessary when things get messed up, and when I got back I used TimeMachine to restore my files (and then I had to re-install OS/X as well). Which was all fine and good until the hard disk started making "woo woo" noises and I was pretty sure it was going to die--which is when I called the Apple store.

So, while I wish the computer just didn't have a problem, the average life expectancy of a computer is around 3 years, and mine was just over 3 years old. And, quite amazingly, Apple did the right thing by me. And, in doing so, they made me a customer for life.

Walt's Early Efforts - Proto Mickey Mouse

2011-02-28T15:42:00.000-08:00

What's GOD got to do with it?

2011-02-19T16:13:00.000-08:00

I've never believed in some old man on a throne looking down on us.

That's not my idea of God.

My idea of God is the energy of the universe, which has patterns--and the patterns we create ourselves.

We can put out positive energy, or negative energy. We can be attracted to positive or negative energy. Sometimes what we thought was positive energy turns out to be negative, sometimes the other way around. Out view point is too small for us to be able to see.

Energy never dies, it just changes form. So our energy on this planet doesn't just stop when we die, it moves onto something else.

When I almost died, 11 years ago now, I took a 100 hour Qi Gong class in San Francisco. At one point we were all laying on our backs on the floor, humming, and that's when I really did have an out of body experience.

The room disappeared. My body disappeared. Everything was light and energy. Everyone in the room was part of this shimmering lake of energy. It wasn't a dream, it's how it was. Maybe it's how it always is if we can see past our bodies and physical world. It gave me great hope that there is a place where we really feel part of the energy and each other (something I do feel here, occasionally, but so often feel separate). And when I couldn't get out of bed, and my organs were shutting down, I remembered that place, and I wasn't afraid.

There are clearly higher powers at work than our own little desires, but somehow we fit together in them, like cells in a larger creature.

At one time God was the fearful, vengeful God (clearly, look how hard life is!). Then God was the kind, loving God, except when he wasn't. And so often a "he"?

When I was 12, I thought that life was a cosmic summer camp--you got to come here and spend time playing, feeling home sick, lonely, swimming, eating, washing dishes, getting bug bites and poison oak, singing, and then you left. Still not a bad description, actually.

I love the song "from a distance" written by Julie Gold because to me it explained the question of why a conscious God would allow suffering to happen, because from a distance it all looks good. Perhaps this is a very Jewish way to look at it, but a lot of people responded to it.

From a distance the world looks blue and green,

and the snow-capped mountains white.

From a distance the ocean meets the stream,

and the eagle takes to flight.

From a distance, there is harmony,

and it echoes through the land.

It's the voice of hope, it's the voice of peace,

it's the voice of every man.

From a distance we all have enough,

and no one is in need.

And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease,

no hungry mouths to feed.

From a distance we are instruments

marching in a common band.

Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace.

They're the songs of every man.

God is watching us. God is watching us.

God is watching us from a distance.

From a distance you look like my friend,

even though we are at war.

From a distance I just cannot comprehend

what all this fighting is for.

From a distance there is harmony,

and it echoes through the land.

And it's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves,

it's the heart of every man.

It's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves.

This is the song of every man.

And God is watching us, God is watching us,

God is watching us from a distance.

Oh, God is watching us, God is watching.

God is watching us from a distance

====

I'm not convinced that God is actually watching at all, but it's more likely that we're all part of the energy that some people call God.

Mac OS X help BASICS

2011-02-11T17:46:00.000-08:00

First--I think the Mac OS X is a GREAT operating system. I used Windows for many years and while it gets the job done, it could be messy and difficult to deal with.

Mac support is so phenomenally good, it is well worth any additional cost of the Mac (and applecare, which was only like $99 for three years and has already replaced my mouse twice).

There's rarely a wait on hold, the support people are knowledgeable and wait on the phone with you until the problem is solved. And, of course, even after your warranty expires, you can always go into any Apple store and get free help at the Genius bar. I don't know of any other company that makes anything that has customer support this thorough, efficient, and friendly. If anyone wonders why Apple's doing so well, it comes down to customer experience--design and support of their products.

If your Mac starts running slow (or won't start at all) here are the basic things you need to know to help make it right.

So, today my mac took about 10 minute to boot. I knew that wasn't right.

A few weeks ago instead of the apple at startup it gave me a folder with a ? but when I rebooted it was OK. It's frozen twice since then, never done that before.

So I called Apple support, got a great guy, Rodney, in Indiana (thanks Rodney!).

Apparently, at some point, the Mac didn't shut down correctly. And while this is usually OK, it can obviously cause disk problems, and it doesn't automatically do chkdsk on startup! So it can get worse, which it did.

Now, great as I think OSX is, I do think if the computer wasn't shut down correctly it should tell you and run normal diagnostics. But it doesn't.

WARNING--THESE INSTRUCTIONS ARE FOR PEOPLE WITH COMPUTER EXPERIENCE WHO FEEL COMFORTABLE WORKING UNDER THE SUFACE OF THE MAC: You do all these things at your own risk. I take no responsibility for these instructions. If you are the least bit unsure, call apple and do this on the phone with them.

So I learned how to reboot in UNIX mode (Command-S while booting) and how to run a command line program to check the disk:

When you see the # command prompt, type /sbin/fsck –fy (“fsck” is a file system consistency check utility) and hit Return. Now sit back and wait while the software works to find and fix any file system problems. This could take 15 minutes or so—or even longer if things are really messed up—so be patient.

If and when you see the message “File System was modified,” repeat the step above again, and again, until you finally, hopefully, see a message saying, “no problems were found.” (It can take several runs of this).

When it's done, type

reboot

and hit Return again.

Then we put in the Mac Snow Leopard CD and booted from it:

Hold down the C key this time as the Mac starts up. If you’re running OS 10.4 or later go to \Applications\Utilities\Disk Utility, select your hard drive in the left-hand pane and click Repair Disk on the First Aid tab. If no disk errors are reported, click Repair Disk Permissions. When that process is done, restart your Mac.

So--if you are having any speed issues with your mac, do those things to clean it up, because as Rodney told me, it can get much worse if you don't.

(Really, shouldn't it be checking itself--I mean, it does actually check during boot, and when the records were wrong that's what took so much time, but it never told me or offered to fix it itself, which it clearly should do).

===

More Mac Tips

If the fan on your Mac or Macbook runs continuously

you'll reset smc

unplug. Remove battery

Hold power button for 5 seconds.

Release. Restart

---

zap the pram

turn on and immediately old down COMMAND OPTION PR

3 chimes, let up

===

The "fair" workplace: Ownership, control, recognition and reward

2011-02-11T00:07:00.000-08:00

My friend, Bruce Eckel, write an interesting piece that has a recommendation on how to make workplaces more fair--everybody is paid the same hourly rate, and whoever works more hours, makes more money. You can read it here:

http://www.reinventing-business.com/2011/02/autonomy-vs-fairness.html

I know Bruce, and I know he's trying to "Reinvent Business" (that's also the name of his blog), but this is one of those ideas that sounds OK, until you think about it, and then it's kind of infuriating.

The sheer number of hours you spend isn't indicative as to the level of work you've put in, or the value of your input.

When I work with clients, I explain I charge $x per hour, and what they get is X number of hours--PLUS 30 YEARS EXPERIENCE.

You could come up with an idea in 15 seconds, based on your 30 years of experience and continued study and research, that 10,000 hours of teamwork might not find. Does that mean you're paid for 15 seconds--and are penalized because of your experience and inspiration?

Bruce says "It solves the "what am I worth and am I worth more than you" issue" but I don't see how. In fact, it feels so unfair it would put me off immediately and make me think my ideas would be more valued elsewhere. Because, frankly, in organizations, some people's contributions are "more valuable to the organization" than others. That doesn't mean they're more valuable as human beings, but that their contributions are in this particular case.

Or, an I then supposed to pretend that my 15 second synthesis of 30 years knowledge really took me 100 hours, and even then, will I think it's fair if the entire company is based on the product I create, yet I only get paid for 100 hours?

Then there's the point of people who don't fit in. Bruce posits that those people will realize they don't fit in and move on. But you've set up a system whereby they know they'll get paid for their posted hours, so maybe they don't like it, but they stick around for the money. Since this is already one of the reasons many people feel suck and stay in the jobs they're already in, based on human history, this is clearly not effective.

Fairness IS important, but if, at the end of the quarter, I feel strongly that someone else hasn't been productive (they've just been playing corporate games and talking big and not really contributing or producing), then I'm certainly not going to want to split the profits evenly with them. That would make me furious. And if someone doesn't fit in, and won't leave on their own, who decides that they go? Is it a democratic voting process? That sounds fair, but it can quickly devolve into alliances and political backstabbing ala "Survivor" on TV--the tribe has spoken.

We already see organizations that work against their own self-interest for these personal, often petty reasons. Even huge corporations can fire the top rated talent (Olbermann at msNBC) because he won't play their game. He's hugely valuable to them, yet for personal and political reasons they let him go--and this is in a publicly held corporations where they're supposedly responsible for actions that affect their shareholders.

I wish the solution was as simple as what Bruce proposes, but it's far more complicated than that--just that way that individuals sense "fairness" is more complicated that than.

I think the basic issue with his theory is that it's like communism. "...in a communist society, there is no centralized government - there is a collective ownership of property and the organization of labor for the common advantage of all members." It sounds great on paper--always does. Yes--we're all equal--hooray! Except, it inevitably turns into a situation where some people have control and more than others, and the others feel less rewarded and less reason to contribute and then things start to fall apart.

What Bruce is describing is really socialism, again, sounds great on paper, but so far, only works in the form of Democrat Socialism: "A socialist society is a social structure organized on the basis of relatively equal power-relations, self-management, dispersed decision-making (adhocracy) and a reduction or elimination of hierarchical and bureaucratic forms of administration and governance; the extent of which varies in different types of socialism. This ranges from the establishment of cooperative management structures in the economy to the abolition of all hierarchical structures in favor of free association."

And while I believe in Democratic socialism, and believe in social justice, I also believe in human nature, and know it's at odds with pure socialism.

I think the issues here are OWNERSHIP, CONTROL and RECOGNITION/REWARD. You want people to own their contribution, their part in the process. But ownership comes with strings--attachment, and ego, "This is MINE," but it's not just yours it's shared, but you think it's yours and you control it and so does somebody else.

And there's always going to be contention over who's job is more important--the IDEA vs the IMPLEMENTATION.

I can have an idea, but I need other people to implement it. Without my idea, there'd be nothing to implement (or sell). It sounds "chicken and egg," but I guess because I'm an "idea guy" I feel that without the idea, you have nothing. The idea is what sells (if it's developed properly). You can have a bunch of smart tactical and strategic people, but if they don't have a central idea, they still have nothing.

But the implementation can take a lot more time than the idea-- so does that mean the people who do the implementing make more hourly wages than the person who thought it up?

Part of feeling useful is getting recognized and rewarded for your work. Even when you're work is purely pro-bono, your reward can be the recognition. One reason communism fails is because people are not rewarded for their work. If you don't have a deep personal sense of accomplishment, than after a while you think, "What's the point?" And everybody needs positive reinforcement, recognition and reward for a job well done.

At some point--the contributions of some people are going to be more important to a project than the contribution of others. How do you FAIRLY compensate for that if everyone is getting paid the same, and the people with the ideas are working fewer hours? That's inherently unfair.

What might work better is actual shared ownership--everyone having a vested interest in the organization. But whoever starts the organization, whoever has the initial ideas, is still going to want--and probably deserve--a bigger piece of the pie.

Wizarding ain't all it's cracked up to be

2010-12-11T19:24:00.000-08:00

Hello dear muggle friends.

Daniel has kindly invited me, Harry Potter to be his guest blogger for the day. Personally I suspect it's mostly laziness on his part, but anyway I'm thrilled to have some excuse to access the internet (otherwise we Wizards aren't allowed to use it or the Ministry gets on our asses--what's with that anyway?)

As I write, this, I am on a broomstick, flying from Hogwarts. It's a cold clear night, so it's a good thing I'm wearing my hoodie jumper. Ron is somewhere behind me, I hear him complaining because a seagull just hit him in the face, which has only been recorded once before, to Fabio on a roller coaster (an object lesson in the danger of having too much hair).

I'm flying to London--but really, it's foggy and cold and now I'm wondering why I didn't just take a flue or find a portkey. I mean, really, I'm a freaking wizard, and this broom has no seat--who designed these things, it's digging into my... I wonder if I'll ever be able to have a little wizard or witch after riding this so much. That's why most quiddich players end up adopting Romanian refugees.

What is nice is that my magic pen can write while I'm flying--holy shit my feet are cold, and I've lost all feeling in my feet, and left buttock. For some reason I can feel my right buttock and wish I couldn't, as the damned broomstick seems to have splinters. So much for the FireBolt 3000, I clearly need version 2.3 of the firmware.

OK, I can see Big Ben--always the thing we see when we're descending down into London.

Why does this all feel not unlike the Peter Pan ride at Disneyland? Only freaking colder and with splinters? I am NOT amused.

OK, here I am at 12 Grimmauld place at last. And, of course, it's not here. That always freaks me out. OK, a few waves of my wand, and felisitus visibilitus, there it is... looking as cold and dark as ever.

Honestly, Muggles perfected central heating a century ago, and we're still fiddling with fireplaces and elves. And Kreacher is a total SOB. I don't care what anybody says about 7 years bad luck, I'd like to bitch slap him.

OK, I've got to go and see if I can get feeling back in my feet, and left buttock, as well as... hold on... accacio splinters... HOLY SHIT! That hurt. All right, I'm going to have to have Kreacher remove the splinters, he'll love that.

And why can't wizards simply stay at the W hotel, I mean, it's got a big W right there in the name, central heating, bath tubs that don't require elves to drag buckets of once warm water, and clean white fluffy towels--the towels here must be 100 years old and the last time I used one I first had to use my thumbnail to remove a dozen lesser Snorkacks, it's just gross.

What I wouldn't give for a chef's salad. We never get salads. And my fricking wand can't create food. Why is that? Magic can make everything but food? Who came up with these rules? I might take the Night bus to Taco Bell.

Sigh.

Love, Harry

Acting - Humans vs. Robots

2010-09-17T17:38:00.000-07:00

I've come to feel there are two types of actors: Human and robot. The robot actors aren't just confined to Pirates of the Caribbean, either. They "act" among us.

Attentive and reactive are two things a good actor should embody.

If you listen and are react, you're alive as an actor. If you memorize your part, your inflections and movements, then you'll always be the same, which isn't living, it's mechanical.

Robot actors program themselves into patterns which are nearly impossible to reprogram, no matter what you do.

When filming a scene, I realized the other actor was really a robot. It didn't matter what I did, she always did exactly the same thing over and over.

So finally, in the middle of the scene, I kicked her. If someone had kicked me I would have been shocked, looked at them, said, "WTF are you doing?" or "What's your problem?" or even, "You're right, I deserved that." But she just went on as if nothing had happened. No reaction. No life.

When you're acting, you should be free of technicalities. Yes, they're always there--you have to know your lines so well you don't have to think about them, hit your marks, work within the frame and light... but you need to be able to forget them.

For me, the key is to really know your character so well you hear their voice in your head (not your own). It's like learning another language--for a while you translate it all back into your native language, and then once you know it well enough, you just think in the new language. Once you know your character well enough, you are thinking in his or her language, his or her thoughts--not your own.

For me it helps to write an extensive backstory from the time they were a child--that's how I approach it, but everyone is different. I like to know the character's entire life, so I can start thinking in their voice instead of mine.

If you are thinking as the character, and your lines are now second nature, then you're free to look and listen to the other actors and react. They say acting is about reacting, that's an old cliche--but it's also true. You are reacting to what's happening in the scene, to your character's desires, to other character's actions. Then you don't have to "do something" you just ARE.

Every take (or performance) will be a little different because no two moments are the same. Sometimes when shooting a film you may feel wildly different in a take--and you can go with it, knowing that the director can decide if it works or not. If he doesn't, he or she can guide you in another direction. But if it does--it can surprise everyone, including yourself, with it's honesty and realness.

I recently co-wrote a film called Pushing Boundaries. As the writer I saw the characters and scenes in my head. I had to view it all--all the characters, situations, story arc, pace, flow..

As an actor, I only had to see through the eyes of my character--and when I did, I didn't see the same thing I did as a writer. In fact, I felt the scenes entirely differently, because my character, in that situation, just plain felt it differently than I expected. In both cases, the way my character felt worked within the words of the script, I didn't need to say, "My character doesn't want to say that," (though sometimes if that's deeply felt, it's fine), I said the same lines, but felt differently--and it worked.

Because I didn't have robotic pre-conceived notions about how the part had to be played (even though I wrote it!), I was free to let the character be who he was--not who I thought he was. It's a very different thing and an amazingly freeing place to be.

I know all actors have their own ways of approaching things. Some feel it necessary to plan every little thing: at this point I look to the right, then I raise my left arm and blink twice... and while that may work for them, it's hard to work with if you're acting with them, because they give you nothing alive.

And they put themselves in a dangerous position--because they're assuming that the other actors in the scene are going to act the way they see it in their head--they're overstepping their role by trying to direct everyone to fit in with what they plan to do.

It's like acting with an Audioanimatronic figure from Disneyland.

Robots also don't give other actors the freedom to do different things in different takes or on different nights. When something unexpected happens, they can blow a fuse.

So even if you are a robot actor, your programming needs to be adjustable to whatever happens on the set, or on-stage. Otherwise, you're like a Captain Jack Sparrow robot from Pirates of the Caribbean who may unexpectedly find themselves in the middle of the "Carousel of Progress," and being entirely out of place, doesn't know how to do anything but repeat what they've always done.

Then again, this is a real lesson for life, isn't it? Situations change. People do unexpected things. You can fight against it and try to do what you've always done and see if it will somehow work out as it always worked out (which it can't possibly because you're the only thing that hasn't changed).

Or, you can be attentive to what's happening--look and listen--and react to it. That's the only way to actually survive in the world, isn't it? So, at least in my mind, it's also the only way for your character to survive in whatever world they find themselves.

iPhone 4, perfection, but cold

2010-06-30T02:51:00.000-07:00

Saw the new iphone 4 today.

It's impressive--just two sheets of glass and a stainless steel surround. Not a fastener in sight.

Flat.

Hard.

Cold.

I didn't love it.

I think the flaw in Apple's "elegant minimal design" is that it lacks personality. It's incredible industrial design and construction--so far ahead of what the competition is doing in terms of design because the others all have all these little pieces and screws and the iPhone is like it's some kind of alien slab or glass. In that way, it is "magical" as Jobs repeatedly called it.

But--in a way--it does feel alien. I didn't feel any emotional connection with it.

I know, it's a device, it doesn't have emotions, but it didn't feel great in my hand (the way the Palm Pre actually does with it's pebble-like roundness).

Thinking it's "Impressive" isn't the same as having an emotional connection

Now, clearly, Apple's already sold like a million or more of the new phone, and if you want your alien slab it's the only real option. Apple is clearly designing "frames for data" but I feel that at some point there's going to be a reaction to this. It's already partly here in cases--people buying cases for the iphone, warm leather, funky zebra pattern, or rhinestone encrusted, or simple silicone skins that feel good.

I think the real breakthrough will be when Apple can take their incredibly elegant designs and give them a personality other than of cold modern architecture. There's warm modern architecture, too.

And the best modern architecture feels good and fits the occupants. The worst modern architecture expects people to fit into it, which they rarely do with much success.

People are animals--we need things we can relate to, things that feel good in our hands.

And, as I wrote when I was interviewed for Gizmodo (with Bruce Stirling, the Fake Steve Jobs, and Yves Behar, who then came out with a watch seemingly inspired by my Reveal watch... hmmm) I think it'll go towards individualization. Companies always talk about people "showing their personality" though their devices, but that means choosing the color or sometimes some pattern that's really like a skin. Now there are even cases that let you design your own graphics. But what if you could choose your shape?

So--no iphone for me, at least not right now.

Why? I was impressed, but I wasn't moved.

The Beginning of the Future, the 1939 World's Fair and how it got many "predictions" right

2010-04-30T18:07:00.000-07:00

The 1939 world's fair is my favorite--the "beginning of the future."

And, in a way it was. On one hand, WWII was starting. On another hand, this fair introduced the idea of corporations with pavilions even bigger and more enticing than the country pavilions. That hadn't happened before.

And, of course, it was a progenitor to Disneyland, and all the "sponsored by Monsanto or Dow or GE!" corporate propaganda that we bought so willingly as kids. These companies were bringing us our future, these companies were good.

The fair also established the machine age aesthetic, streamline art deco, and this whole sci-fi idea of how the world would look.

The 1964 fair wasn't nearly so influential because, as the article said, technology had caught up with it--though there was still that elusive PicturePhone, which had a connection from the NY fair to Disneyland--I remember that. And the promise that we'd all have them in 1968... then 1970... And when they finally did arrive, for corporate customers, they cost like $18 a minute--in the 70s!

And now it's free, with Skype (even on iPhones with wifi).

The trouble is that the future is SO much harder to predict now. The GM exhibit actually got a lot of things right--like the US highway system (which of course they were lobbying for mercilessly, and buying up the LA Red Car trolley system and turning them into freeways).

But now--who can really predict 20 years from now? I suspect housing will look basically the same--there's too much housing stock to change, and the newest thing is highrise city living again, with floor to ceiling windows (and $1,500 to $5,500 a month maintenance fees). Hopefully housing will be retrofitted with solar (look at this innovative approach: http://solarivy.com/ ), perhaps fuel cells, and more efficient water and power usage. Cars: there'll be a lot more all-electric--though it has to be generated somewhere! The web: 3D immersive--or implants? Cell phones: 3D immersive or implants :)

I guess history has always rested on one little thing which can then change everything--unexpected things like vaccines (what if there's one for cancer or heart disease?), or the web--few people see them coming.

I'd like to see a "futurama" web site where people can post their views of the future--everyone from scientists to artists to inventors in their garage, doctors, chefs... That would be a really interesting site.

1939 world's fair in pictures:

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/04/gallery-1939-worlds-fair

More photos of the fair from Life magazine

http://www.life.com/image/first/in-gallery/41782/future-vision-ny-worlds-fair-1939

iPad portends future of computing for the REST OF US

2010-04-01T15:50:00.000-07:00

Now that the iPad is finally coming to market, there's a lot of debate about who it's for, and even if it has a place in the market.

My view is that it's for content consumers--which is most people. And that with some artfully designed accessories, it will also be a notebook replacement for lightweight content creation (meaning not video or or heavy-duty graphic design where the files are too big and processing too intensive.

The iPad is the first (but won't be the only) device that represents a big shift away from standard PC's/Notebooks. The iPhone proved what I've been saying for years--most people don't need a computer, they just wanted email, pics, light WP and accounting and a few key apps that now also include watching video. The iPad is the next wave of that--distilling computing down to what people really need.

I believe the wireless keyboards are going to sell well for the iPad, because then it can both be the nice thing you carry around to view email and pics and movies and stuff, and with the keyboard, it becomes much more like a traditional notebook.

What's still needed is a combination porfolio case with a built-in FABRIC keyboard. Fabric keyboards already exist, they're soft and flexible, and could be easily embedded right into the folding cover. Currently they tend to be made of silicone, but I've seen fabric keyboards which were actually made of fabric--with the keys embroidered on and the contacts between layers of a fabric like felt.

Then you can use it two ways--one just as a pad, another as a more notebook-like thing, with the case doing double-duty.

Most people don't create content on their computers.

Those who do will keep their notebooks and desktops. Those who mostly consume content, will use much smaller, lighter, simpler, cheaper devices.

Palm Prē Plus - a debate from Facebook

2010-03-21T00:20:00.000-07:00

I'm trying something new--can I simply copy a FaceBook conversation and move it to Blogger? Next--I feel strongly that people are just followers when it comes to phones and are afraid to try something new that may very well be better.

I have a soft spot for Palm--I've used a Treo for years. The Palm Prē Plus's "WebOS" is all online--it multitasks, merges contacts from gmail, facebook, everything is online. Very cool. $30 on Amazon from Verizon.

Palm Pre Plus Review

g4tv.com

If you love Verizon service and the Palm Web OS, then check out the Palm Pre Plus with its...

Fri at 4:12pm · Comment · · Share

Steve Schultz

Awesome - I'm sold. Not happy with my latest Bberry Curve (feels cheaper than the previous model), but with the Prē Plus, I can have a mobile hot spot ala MiFi...

Fri at 4:27pm ·

Howard Harris

But what happens when Palm goes belly up this year?

Fri at 6:07pm ·

Howard Harris

http://www.techmeme.com/100319/p58#a100319p58 Palm on its way to 0 stock value

Fri at 8:10pm ·

Steve Schultz

@Howard - Thanks for the tip!

Fri at 8:20pm ·

Daniel Will-Harris

@steve - don't listen to @Howard, he's my brother and he uses a Windows Mobile phone (so what does he know? :) Palm has a great product.

Fri at 10:50pm ·

Howard Harris

Oh, so you are going to play the insanity argument, good thing that we all inherited it. At least Microsoft will be here in 12 months.

Yesterday at 6:00am ·

Daniel Will-Harris

My big brother is right, it's too dangerous for me to play the insanity card, what with genetics and all :) I will leave it at that--you can safely ignore us both!

10 hours ago ·

Steve Schultz

Actually, were I to buy stock, I'd heed Howard's warning. But, as I'm replacing a business phone, I think it's worth the $30 gamble, as we're on Verizon. The mobile hotspot feature alone is worth that much to me. If the phone craps out on me down the road, I'll just replace it with something else; we have our phones insured.

9 hours ago ·

Daniel Will-Harris

I agree about not buying the stock, but I don't buy stock because it's no longer based on the real value of a company, it's all based on invented "expectations."

I agree about the phone, though--it's beautifully designed and great tech (you know, they charge you extra for the mobile hot-spot thing--just as if you had one of their little mobile hot spot devices--a friend of mine has one and they work great--they just cost $40 a month for 250MB of data).

It's just sad that in this market--as in every other market--people can be such sheep.

I agree the iPhone is astounding technology and beautiful design, but it shouldn't be the only major choice.

I can see the appeal of Android, being all Googly and all--and more importantly open source. But so far, the whole Nexus One direct sales pitch doesn't really work--maybe when there's more competition.

I'll also say (and risk the ire of all my crackberried friends) that I think Blackberries have horrible design, terrible screens, hideous unreadable on-screen fonts, and mostly they take people out of the real world and suck them into their "I'm so important I must get my email every second" mindset. I don't understand why they're so popular.

Few people need "push" email--really, how important are you that you need all your spam to send you a little tone so you much check it like a Pavlovian dog?

And a trackball? Really? Not a touch screen? That's just cheesy and a poor interface. Palm has had touch-screens since day 1.

Yet I even see young people who want them and don't get it. iPhone? Sure. Andoid? Yes. Prē--of course. But Blackberry? Unless you're a corporate drone who needs full time access to Microsoft Exchange, then no.

The Palm smart phones were so ahead of their time and are still so well designed (even the older ones, like the Treo and Centro) that they put the Blackberry to shame.

2 seconds ago

MBA vs. MRW (Master of the Real World)

2010-01-28T17:24:00.000-08:00

Bruce Eckel writes an interesting piece about MBAs, and this is my reply:

George W. Bush had an MBA. Perhaps that's all that needs to be said.

I'll preface this with the disclaimer that I'm sure there are brilliant people out there who have MBAs and have found their education to be invaluable. I just have never personally worked with one.

Re: FexEd, I love this FedEx commercial because it echos my experiences--if somebody has an MBA they haven't been taught to figure it out, they've been taught to spend $120,000 to learn how to do something. Watch this hilarious Fed Ex commercial.

In my experience at two corporations, MBA's are not taught creative thinking. They all seem to be taught to draw a square with four quadrants, in which anything can be mapped. This looks very official and tends to mean absolutely nothing and generate no insights other than, "That looks very official, don't it?"(Every single MBA I've ever worked with, no matter where they went to school, has drawn this same grid, every single one, and in no case has it ever been useful).

Every new MBA who would appear, highly touted ("She has an MBA from Stanford... Harvard... Wharton...) would either 1) have no real world experience at all and even their theoretical knowledge was dated or just useless, or 2) come in as a VP from somewhere else, where they also somehow managed to get by endlessly drawing their chart without ever having to reach real connections or results--all they did was play management games.

In one example, an MBA/Former VP at Oracle came into a company that sold software to mostly individual and small business clients. Coming from Oracle, she had no experience with this market at all.

She proceeded to spend over $80,000 on a "magalog" marketing project, a small mailer that was ostensibly a magazine but was really a catalog, hence the ungainly name.

All the content was supplied by the online magazine I created and edited, so the content portion of the budget was nothing. Where the $80K went is a mystery (though I'm sure the postage cost a lot).

In the end, her $80K project brought in 14 orders, which means it cost $5,700 per sale for each $400 box of software, which, even an MBA should be able to figure out meant a less of $5,300 per unit. If you're an MBA I'll wait for you to draw that into the square chart. Got it? Bad, huh?

Clearly flush with success, she left soon after, for a better job at a bigger company, her MBA as shiny and Stanfordy as ever.

For me, educational "credentials" are meaningless. They only say somebody made it through a school, was able to pay for it somehow and pass the tests. It doesn't really mean they've learned or are good at what they do.

Yes, it looks impressive to go into a doctor's office and see their diploma from Harvard Medical school. But it's their real-world experience that I care about. How many patients have they seen? How many have they diagnosed (correctly?).
Going to school does not make you a master of anything. Doing whatever it is, repeatedly and correctly in the real world does.

iPad - are you too jaded to appreciate it? Or maybe you just don't remember the past so you can't see the future...

2010-01-28T15:10:00.000-08:00

I was thinking more about the iPad, and how utterly spectacular and "magical" (as Jobs does call it, from Arthur C. Clarke's 1961 quote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.") it would have seemed just a few years ago--before the iPhone.

I have to say that the iPhone was the first device I saw that seemed utterly fantastic and futuristic--in its simplicity (it could be anything), and interface. How could all that computing power fit into that thin, flat piece of steel and glass.

Think back to the KayPro computers, which had 1/250,000th of the memory and weighed 25 times more. That wasn't very long ago. Think back to the first laptop computers, the Data General One (we had one in the office). It weighed almost 10 pounds and had a black and white screen that was almost unreadable.

(I'll take an aside to Clive Sinclair's Cambridge Z88, from 1988, which had up to 3.5MB of ram which kept its memory even with no power, a built in word processor, spread sheet and database and it's remarkable silent rubber keyboard and an only 8-line readable LCD display. It weighed just under 2 lbs - and when you think that this was just at the end of the KayPro's lifespan, it was a remarkable achievement--I had one and loved it--and you could move files back and forth to a PC by serial cable. I really don't know why it didn't take off--except that IBM-DOS and the IBM PC were just starting to take root and build the religion of compatibility, and this was only compatible with itself.)

Now, the combination of its power, multi-touch interface, wireless and 3G (which is AT&T for $15 or $30 a month access), and incredible sleekness--now it surpasses props from sci-fi movies.

And yet people are like, "It doesn't have flash, I can't watch Hulu!" (and this is a weakness of the iPhone, too, and sooner or later Jobs is going to have to give in about this--because surely the hardware can handle flash.)

I just read the best explanation why the iphone and ipad don't support Flash--to force you to buy videos through iTunes! That's the kind of mistake that will eventually bite them in the ass, though, because it's not thinking about the customer first. And even though the Apple world has always been based on control (do it our way--then everyone is consistent) which some people complain is dictatorial and limits choice (it does, and in a weird 1984 slogan way, actually does lead to freedom from the mess that takes place under Windows!).

But in this area, the "profits first" view, as opposed to their design which really is "people first" is the one place where Jobs is working against Apple's own true best interests by being too controlling--though Apple's entire universe has always been based on "everything is our way" control, so it's not exactly surprising). Along this same line, it's hard to believe that Apple is blocking Google apps, while at the same time using Google Maps as their default, and most iPhone users have GMail accounts, too. To me, this kind of fighting reeks of insecurity, and it's odd that a company as strong in true innovation, design, service and value as Apple is insecure--even if Google is a powerful rival. Look at it this way--Google has services Apple needs. Apple doesn't have services Google needs. Maybe that's what makes Apple insecure, but at the same time, it's what should make them more conciliatory.

Then again, Apple now has over 200 retail stores and did over 15 BILLION dollars in revenue just the last quarter of 2009! So clearly Job's insecurities are paying off, big time!

Then there are the more esoteric geek complaints--"It doesn't have the ability to read my mind," or "they forgot to include a feature that feeds my cat." Both of which may arrive in the form of apps next week!

In a way it's really sad that people are no longer thrilled by new technology that actually is amazing. They yawn and go, "Yeah, I was expecting this" as if they really have the imagination to have expected it (unlike some of us and our notebook/wifi-blue-snow dreams :) Hell--even I didn't expect this. I was still thinking buttons!

And for some people buttons are necessary, and the optional $70 keyboard/stand will give them buttons, turning this into a netbook with a huge touch screen. (To be jaded and critical about the keyboard/stand, it doesn't appear to fold completely flat which makes it harder to carry with you--though again, it's 1.0 and I've seen concepts for leather cases with built-in keyboards with real keys, and something like that would be entirely possible from Apple, if it wasn't nixed for religious reasons.

Finally--despite any weaknesses in Apple's closed culture, or any features lacking from a pretty miraculous piece of brand new 1.0 hardware, Apple's real strength is customer experience and service. I've been around the computer world long enough to remember the first company that really offered this level of customer service. It wasn't Apple. It was WordPerfect. They had a toll-free number and free lifetime support, and they spent more on customer service than any other company--it was the biggest part of their budget. Their software wasn't particularly well-designed (though it was well built and reliable). But what people couldn't figure out, they could call for free and have explained to them. And you knew, if you bought WordPerfect, you would be taken care of. I always thought there was a religious basis in this, WordPerfect being based in Utah and owned and run mostly by Mormons. Whatever the basis--it worked, only falling apart when DOS gave way to Windows and they didn't want to move to it--so their move was bad and buggy, and if you don't have a platform to run on, then what's the point?

While Microsoft spent many years whining about "Innovation," and even had a huge R&D department doing blue sky work--what ended up in customers hands has rarely been innovative. For reasons I don't know, the few innovations that managed to leak out of their system also managed to somehow be overlooked and disappear after a few versions. At one point they did have some smart UI features, tested in out of the way products like Publisher (which used descriptive cursors to help you understand what was going on). Yet MS's management style of regularly moving managers to areas they knew nothing about, in the name of "fresh eyes" backfired, and only lead to managers who didn't understand the areas they were moved into.

Yet Apple, for all their "invented here" mentality (they're offices are even on "infinite loop drive--what does that say!), has always treated customers as well as any luxury brand. What you touch, from when you enter the store to when you open the package, to what you feel every day when you touch the keyboard to what you see when you look at the screen--everything is designed. It doesn't just happen. It isn't just a random assemblage of cheap parts. It's all custom, elegant, beautiful, function. The design is as fine as anything Bang and Olufsen designs--yet is reasonably priced.

Speaking of price, Apples have always been more expensive, and I used to complain about it. Now I see that Apple products, even being a bit more expensive, provide so much value that in the end they cost less--they don't waste your time and drive you crazy the way cheaper Windows-based computers do. And while they aren't 100% trouble-free, because nothing is, they do have superb, friendly telephone support--and now a large network of stores, staffed by enthusiastic, knowledgeable Apple Geeks ("Geniuses" they like to call them :) so you don't have to go far to get answers. That's invaluable.

Let's compare this with Google, which has brilliantly designed products that lead the world in simplicity and usefulness--yet almost no technical support--and what there is, is well hidden. Google, being all webby, expects their customers to help each other, and they do--but it's not the same. And I recently read an article about the new Google Nexus One Phone, which, at $529, is more expensive than an iPad, and it has no phone number for tech support. If you buy it through T-Mobile, the phone company must support it (as they do with all handsets they sell--with varying degrees of usefulness), but Google hasn't yet figured out the customer support angle--which is integral too Apple's design--and success.

All this comes together in the iPad--a remarkable device that others will criticize and copy at the same time. And until another company copies Apple's customer experience and customer service, they came come out with Kindles and Zunes and Nexuses and whatever, and still not copy the core of what makes Apple great--which is how Apple makes you feel when you buy one, use one, and need help with one.

You don't have to buy an iPad to appreciate it, either. I have an iMac and a MacBook (this after 20 years of using Windows, which only makes me appreciate the Mac more), so I don't really need one. But the next time I'm looking at notebook computers, I will certainly consider an iPad (especially if they add a camera--because then what an amazing portable teleconfercing machine it will be).

In the mean time--if you're not blown away by the iPad, then you don't remember the past, so you can't realize you're looking into the future.

A good, free, flash player for MP3s from DivShare

2009-12-25T00:11:00.000-08:00

Above: "Breakin' up is hard to do," by The MarinTones quartet.

Simple to use, simple to embed--just paste code they give you right into blogger or your web site. You can use up to 5GB of space for free. http://www.divshare.com

AT&T SUCKS - Fraudulent Charges

2009-11-06T01:36:00.000-08:00

OK, so a few months ago I praised AT&T wireless for some good customer service.

Now I have to blast them for doing something SO wrong that it really borders on criminal.

AT&T, the latest mobile phone company in the world can't tell the time.

It's true. They are unaware that Daylight Saving Time ended last Sunday at 3am.

I know because I use a GoPhone prepaid plan. It costs $3 a day to talk as much as I want. That works perfectly for me because then I can spend under $40 and not worry about how long I talk (I clearly don't use it everyday, they have a new $60 unlimited plan for that).

If you place even one voice call in a day, you are charged the daily rate. This also applies to their $1 a day, 10 cents a minute plan.

Days start at midnight, and end at midnight.

Unless, you're AT&T, and because you're still on Daylight Saving Time, while the rest of the country is not, your day begins at 11pm.

This mean that they are not only shortchanging customers for 1 hour a day (which would be relatively minor), they are charging people for entire days they don't use.

So, let's get this straight--AT&T doesn't know DST has ended? Is that even possible? I know that the end date of DSL changed, but how hard is it to program a new date in their computer?

I wonder how many billions they will take in illegally this way!

So, I called, spend a half hour on the phone while they talked to some tech department--and apparently they knew about it (maybe they figured it out after 956,000 people called to complain), and they're "working on it."

OK, so they know it's a problem. Obviously they should issue refunds. But no. It has to be fixed, then they can send out refunds--if you remember that you're owed one, because then the onus is on you, and not them. I insisted they have somebody call me, but it's been five days and nobody has, I haven't seen a refund for the fraudulent charge, and in fact, it's still a problem because I got charged again Friday night at 11pm.

It's Friday--almost a week after Daylight Saving Time ended. AT&T's clocks are still off by an hour. They are still charging people at 11pm for a new day--which they might not use, because it should start at midnight.

I ask again--how many billions will they earn fraudulently from this "error" and who, if anyone, will ever receive a refund? You certainly won't unless you have a half hour to spend complaining about it. If you earn more than $6 an hour then it really isn't worth your time--but it's the principal of the thing!

And it gets worse--today they also charged me twice for my 200 message package.

They sent me a text message saying my text message package was expiring, and to reply with the letters RNW and they'd renew.

I did.

Nothing happened. No confirmation. No new message package.

Since I was in traffic I decided I'd call because I had nothing else to do for the next 30 minutes. This time I reached one of the most unhelpful customer support people I've ever encountered.

"No, you don't have any new message plans--it's not in the system, we didn't get your text. you need to go back into the IVR (luckily, I knew what an IVR was--Interactive Voice Response--which means the automated system that doesn't require an operator to do things), and order the plan there."

I asked, "So, you're sure I won't be charged twice for this, or get two orders, I only want one package."

"Yes, I'm sure." he said.

"Could you check on the fraudulent charge I received on Monday?" I asked.

"Yes, there's a note here that somebody will call you when the refund is issued." he said.

"When will that be? I mean, it's been five days, shouldn't I have gotten the refund?" I asked, incredulous.

"It could take any amount of time," he said, unhelpfully.

"I have now spend about an hour on this and I want a bigger credit than $3 for my time." I sighed.

"They'll give you a $3 credit," he said, as if this at all responded to what I said (in the past, they have given me bigger credits when they screw up).

And then, after offering no help, and, in fact, giving me misinformation, the representative said, "After this you'll get an email asking you to rate my performance, I hope you'll give me a 5."

I said, "Well, no offense, but you haven't fixed the problem, so I can't give you a 5, the best I can give you is a 3."

"I really wish you would give me a 5," he said, sadly.

I was shocked. this guy didn't do a good job, then wanted to guilt my into giving him a good rating. Perhaps he's not getting good ratings because he's not doing a good job!"

Even so, I said, "Fine, I'll give you a five," but it was a lie--I wasn't going to.

Of course, I also never received a questionnaire about it, so AT&T struck out again.

I called the IVR, ordered 200 messages and had $4.99 deducted from my account.

Then, later, when I was fraudulently charged at 11pm, I noticed that somehow my balance was $5 less than it should be (actually $8 less with the $3 a day charge I shouldn't have be charged). I called 611 and found out I now had 600 SMS messages in my account, which means that AT&T did in fact, give me two orders of 200 messages (I already had 200 in there, but they expire every 30 days--clever of them, huh?)

So now I'd paid almost $10 for SMS messages I only wanted $5 worth of. And I'll have to spend another 30 minutes on the phone, but this time I can complain about $8 worth of bad charges--which makes my hourly rate shoot up to $16 a hour!

AT&T is getting to be like health insurance companies--their service is predicated on the idea that you won't bother to complain when they do something wrong--because it takes too long and is too hard.

With insurance companies, sometimes you start to think, "Well, maybe I'll just pay the $500 myself--even if I can't afford it, because I can't get through to them and it's making me feel sick to my stomach."

Now, though AT&T is playing with much lower figures, they're also making sure it's not worth your while to complain.

That's wrong. Do they not make enough money giving actual service so they now have to charge fraudulently? There's no excuse for this. None.

Oh--and in case you have a GoPhone and want to try to talk to a real person, you call, wait for them to give you your balance, then press 4. Then you can say "REPRESENTATIVE" and they will connect you--unless they're closed (and they close early)

====

P.S. I've learned that the way to get people to read a complaint blog is to add the word "sucks" after the company name. People seem to search for this, as in my posting "Sears sucks." So if you want to complain in blogger, make sure you have "sucks" in your title!

===

FOLLOW UP: 11/6/09 - Still no refund of payment. Was escalated to a supervisor who was surly and rude from the start, as if I was wasting his time pointing out AT&T's own errors. He then said, "Look, you received two calls on Tuesday so we were right to charge you." Well, first, they weren't right to charge me at 11pm, since they couldn't have magically known I'd get calls later, next--I didn't receive or answer any calls on Tuesday because I don't get cell phone service in my house and I was home--and my own phone's call log shows no calls at all on Tuesday. Those calls weren't there when I called AT&T support on Monday--how did they magically appear? And from numbers I've never heard of. And numbers that, if I call them, give me no name, just an automated voice listing their numbers. Who's behind those calls, AT&T?

Before I was just pissed. Now I'm genuinely angry because of the rudeness of AT&T Talahassee Manager Ryan Jones. I'm sorry, but that was extremely poor customer service--he was argumentative from the start--even though it's a known issue that persists.

"Your account needs to be reset" he told me--whatever that means. "It doesn't happen instantly." Really, it's computerized but it's not instant, OK, how long does it take? "It should be done by 9pm tonight." Really? Why could no one else tell me this? And what happens if I'm charged at 11pm again? "Just call customer service..." Right, as if I haven't now spent over an hour following up on $11. I'm sorry, my time is worth more than that AT&T, and so, I imagine, is the time of your customer service representatives! So AT&T's incompetence (and or malfeasance) is stealing from me and wasting their own money! What a great business plan! Screw your customers--and yourself!

Seriously--what is wrong with AT&T and why can't they get their act together?

I guess it's time to move to T-mobile, the other major US GSM cell phone provider.

====

FOLLOW UP - 11/10/09 - I'm not sure how AT&T knew I was unhappy with their service (I did tweet to @ATT but they never asked for my phone number), but an agent called me and offered me a refund for all my SMS payments, and two days of access fees. No arguing, no acting like I was a criminal for wanting them to do the right thing--they just did the right thing.

That's great, and now I can stop looking for another cell phone carrier.

She was nice as she could be, and I got my $11 back--which, while hardly making up for the time I wasted, at least showed AT&T could get it right.

My question is--why did it take weeks and talking to so many people before one of them was allowed to provide actual customer service? I don't blame the representatives (though Ryan Jones' attitude was abysmal), I still blame AT&T for not providing either the right training, or the authority for their representatives to actually solve customer problems--problems that AT&T admitted they had.

All I can say is that the cell phone market is one of the few left in the corporate world with strong competition, and this is driving prices down, as we see with more and more "unlimited" packages for $50 (or in AT&T's case--$60) a month.

And, AT&T, a fruit basket or gift certificate to Sees candy would also go a long way to customer satisfaction. Laugh if you want, but cell phone providers spend hundreds of dollars to get a single customer--then once they have you, they don't spend money to keep you. Does that make sense?

The Lost Symbol and new Dirty Words

2009-10-18T17:07:00.000-07:00

The "Astonishing" Lost Symbol
and the death of amazing and shocking

I've been reading Dan Brown's latest "The Lost Symbol." Well, first, it was obviously ripped off from my 1999 story "The Lost Codes" which you can read here, http://www.will-harris.com/write/fiction.htm

Almost every other page in Brown's book uses the word, "Astonishing." Every time I see that word I cringe. Come on, the view of Washington DC at night is NOT astonishing, it could be dazzling, spectacular, grand, even awe-inspiring... but I don't believe anybody would be astonished by it, other than natives who'd been brought over blindfolded and never seen electric lights before.

Nor are the many rooms in the sub basement of the Capitol building "astonishing." They could be multitudinous, surprising, shocking, confusing, so many other things but again, unless you've never been in a big building, and even if you grew up on a farm, I don't think a hallway is going to astonish you.

A lot of this blame goes to the editors, who could have said, "Hey, Dan--let's retire the word "astonishing" or reserve it for something that the readers might actually find astonishing, such as the hero having been dropped from a helicopter so that his asshole is astonishingly penetrated by the top of the Washington monument--that would, indeed, be astonishing (as well as painful, unlikely, and hilarious).

What bothers me about this is that the word "amazing" is already so overused it can't be used for anything that is, in fact, truly amazing. To try to counter this, things that are really and truly surprising must now be "amazing amazing," which means that they're not just everyday amazing, they're twice as amazing. Unfortunately, that still belittles a word that used to mean you would react with your mouth agog and store in amazement!

We don't have any truly shocking swear words left.

I didn't say, "fuck" until I was 18, and even then when I said it, it was a big deal. Now, I did say "shit" a lot, and my mother says when I was 4 and another kid tried to beat up my brother I called the kid an "asshole," but even so, "fuck" was a big fucking deal.

The nice thing about Fuck is that it's pretty much universal. I used Google Translate to translate fuck--and it's the same in so many languages that you can easily go almost anywhere in the world and say "fuck" and people will know what you mean (at least in the swear word sense).

So what word can you use today to really shock somebody? "Motherfucking cocksucker" is both an oxymoron (if you're a motherfucker chances are only about 10% that you're also going to be a cocksucker), and prosaic.

What's more, everybody's father was a motherfucker, except for perhaps Michael Jackson's kids. Or in vitro babies. So what's the big deal?

Call somebody a dick. So what. Dick Cheney is a total dick and nobody cares. Call somebody a douche or douchebag--what are you, 12?

BITCH used to be a terrible thing to call a woman--now even teen boys call each other bitches. (Tip: if you're going to call somebody a bitch, it's much better to call them a "little bitch" because then they're not even good enough to be a big bitch :)

Here's a list of pejorative terms the urban dictionary suggested:

douchebag asshole douche bag bag dick loser idiot ass tool bitch cunt jerk pussy vagina stupid dumbass fuck moron lame douchebaggery prick shit whore doosh cock penis jackass slut sex annoying d-bag fucker fucktard twat asshat bro dickhead emo bastard douch dumb noob fool nerd

Of all these, my new favorite is "fucktard" because it's nicely offensive on several levels.

It's not politically correct to call people a "fag" or "faggot" unless you are both gay, which is like any minority group being able to use a bad term within their own group, but is then horrified when someone outside their group uses it--which to me says that if you don't want anybody to say it, don't say it yourself.

"Cunt" is still pretty raw and offensive--in the US, though in the UK it's no big deal. And, if you say something like "Ann Coulter is a cunt," everybody replied, "well, of course."

I guess it's time for somebody to make up a swear word so offensive, so horrible that everybody is shocked to say it unless something happens like they lose a finger in a tragic golfing accident.

OK, the word is "Vitut!"

Short. Simple. Lets you spit it out as you say it. It's just Fuck in Finnish but that's kind of fun. OK, so it's two syllables and ideally should only be one. So try either

VIT!

or

TUT!

and see what happens!

And if you have suggestions for filthy new swear words, leave them in the comments!

Magellan GPS Review: newer, but NOT always better

2009-10-08T00:38:00.000-07:00

I have had a Magellan 3225 for over a year and love it. A friend wanted to buy my old one and I wanted traffic service on a new one, so I bought the 1475t at Costco for $180 because it included lifetime free traffic service (as opposed to other models that charge $60 a year for traffic). I will be returning the 1475t to Costco (which, thankfully, accepts returns on opened items).

While the 1475 is an improvement in terms of speed (very fast startup and response, super-fast routing, the ability to see the various proposed routes, predictive city names means less typing, and of course, free traffic service to help route you around traffic jams. All very useful.

Unfortunately, the new model has several basic problems that make it far less useful than the previous one--in fact, these limitations make the unit unacceptable for me.

1) The voice is not as good as it was on the 3225. It's the same voice, but it sounds choppier, mushier. And when it goes from canned text to text-to-speech (street names), it's not only quieter but the TTS is so mushy it's almost unintelligible--basically worthless unless you look at the screen. Its really poor--as if the GPS voice suddenly got marbles--and cotton in its mouth. There's really no excuse for this, given the new unit's increased processing power--especially considering that the older model's TTS was very clear.

2) The power plug is on the bottom. Some people have complained it's too close to the bracket. My complaint is that it means you MUST use a bracket or mount. I don't want a visible mount because in large cities this encourages car break-in, as thieves look for GPS to steal

I have a silicone mat that holds the GPS in place--and this worked perfectly with the 3225 that has the power plug on the side. But with the 1475's power plug on the bottom, there's no way for the unit to sit flat! This combined with the larger size means it also doesn't fit in my car. (Speaking of larger--the wider screen really didn't seem very valuable--when you drive, you are going "up" on almost all GPS, so a taller screen might make sense, but a wider one didn't seem more useful to me).

3) The touch-screen requires that I use my fingernail to get it to respond properly. I noticed that with the demo model in the store, but thought that was just because it had been overused. But my brand new GPS had the same thing--a touch with the fingertip often got no response, so I had to use my fingernail. This makes it harder to use--and I'm not sure how the screen will wear over time. Again, the touch-screen on the previous generation just worked better!

4) The traffic feature (the main reason I bought it), has yet to work. It's always "acquiring signal" and never managed to acquire it. Perhaps I wasn't close enough to a road that was covered by the system (though I was only about two miles from the 101 freeway), but even so, it should be able to get a signal so it can give me an accurate time for the route, shouldn't it? And yes, I have the proper traffic cable, which came with the unit as advertised.

And, despite the unit's super-fast (instantaneous, really) routing, it took as long, as if not longer, to find the satellites as my old unit did--in fact, up to two minutes (this is in a rural location, starting out in a garage, and it's fast enough so that even when I was in LA I'd just turn it on, let it "warm up" and go).

I also have quibbles about the interface--the screen space taken for the large +/- buttons at the bottom could be better used showing useful information--like all the data that's crammed into the lower left corner and requires repeated presses to see. I don't need the GPS to tell me my speed, my car has a speedometer for that purpose. If the GPS would tell me when I was speeding, then I could see the use of that function (Garmin shows your current speed--under the posted speed limit--OK, that's useful), otherwise, it's superfluous.

I'd like to be able to see the distance remaining and ETA together, but I can't, because giant +/- buttons I will never use while driving are taking that space. Plus, the poor mush-mouth voice calls ETA simply "TA" - why?

When I press on the top line to hear the next maneuver, it sometimes gives me the one touch menu--I don't want that, but the design makes it difficult to get the right result on a click.

Finally, a complaint about Magellan's routing (and all routing systems can create odd routes, this includes Google Maps and Garmin GPSs as well). With Magellan, sometimes they get a route in their head and won't let go. And if I miss a cutoff or take a different street, instead of simply rerouting, their route of choice is often, "When possible, make a legal u-turn."

I can understand if this is the ONLY navigation option, but a GPS's job is to get me from where I am to where I want to go--so if where I am isn't where it thought I should be--it should figure it out, not insist I make a u-turn and go back where it wanted me to be.

Recently with my older model, construction blocked a route, and the GPS kept insisting I make a U-turn back to the road that was now impassable. That wasn't helpful. (If I hadn't been mad at the GPS I would have remembered I could have used the "detour" function to get me around the mess).

Instead, I had to drive miles out of my way before it stopped telling me to turn around--something that wouldn't have helped! To credit the 1475, it's so fast that it quickly finds a new route--but still only after first wanting me to pull a u-ey.

Last but not least, a question about traffic service. I don't understand why this unit has lifetime free traffic reception (if it could actually receive it, as mine couldn't), whereas models such as the 3250 (which have the form factor and voice I prefer) require a $60 a year subscription for the same data? I'm sorry, but that sounds like price gouging--if the service can be offered for free on some units, why does it cost so much on others?

This unit is really fine--and if the traffic feature is important to you then it's a great value at Costco (which should have it through the xmas season 2009--though it's at their stores and isn't available online).

It's just that I hope each new generation of a device is better than the last, that it's learned from customer feedback and the creativity of industrial- and interface designers. In this case, while some of the interface is much slicker and it's much faster, it doesn't necessarily make it much--if any better. That's not improvement, that's just change.

BOTTOM LINE: Overall the 1465t has many worthwhile features and it's tremendous speed is noteworthy. It's too bad that poor plug placement and a hard-to-understand voice get in the way--since both the voice and plug were well done on their previous generation. I will be buying a Magellan Maestro 3250 which costs just $109 on Amazon

Hey, Google, Hire Me!

2009-09-18T18:44:00.001-07:00

I want to work for Google.

Why? Because they are making the things I use most often, and one of my skills is to take available things and make the most of them. That's what I did in the early years of PC's (as one of the writers of "The Personal Computer Book"), in the early years of DTP (as the author of the very first book about Desktop Publishing on a PC, Desktop Publishing with Style), in the early years of the web and web building (with www.efuse.com - "the friendly place to learn how to build a better web site").

Google could really use something like efuse.com (even though efuse is almost 10 years old it still has lots of timeless useful information that people should know to make their web site more effective and attractive).

Schmoogle would show people how to use all of Google's many offerings together.

If I could actually speak to somebody at Google (are you listening, Googlers?), I would pitch them the idea that what Google is building is the online equivalent of what Xerox did 25 years ago with the Star--creating an integrated environment for information.

Not just a search engine, or just word processor or just email or just graphics, or even just advertising--but all of them mixed freely together (and the upcoming Google Wave looks like it's a move in that direction).

I would create a scenario where someone did virtually all their work via Google--through Android, chrome, research, gmail, docs, photos, news, maps, blogging, photo albums, video, web building, e-commerce... these are the current google offerings.

I'd also explain, as nicely as I could, that all need to work better together--specifically, you can have an Android phone and gmail and google docs and picasaweb and groups and blogs and you have to do SIX or MORE searches to find things on all of them. Why is there not one overall search for YOUR google account? One search that shows me results from my phone, gmail, docs, and photos? That's pretty brain-dead basic, ain't it?

Perhaps Google wants fewer people to know about the breadth of their Googleverse - since everyone else, including MS, are so far behind them, and Adobe, which seems to have tried with their flash-based online word processor, also seems to view online stuff as an afterthought to $600 boxed software.

Even so, it still amazes me how many things people don't know about what you can do with good (and online in general). Even a simple "tip of the day" email would be a handy thing.

Then again, maybe I could just teach improv classes to the engineers to get them to think outside the box :)

:D

Mozy Sucks

2009-09-08T02:13:00.001-07:00

I have once again been taught that powerful and annoying lesson that you get what you pay for.

I have a LOT of data on my computer--years of design work and graphics. Almost 200GB of it.

And I'm religious about backups, because I don't want to lose any of it. I used to use disks (so archaic I don't even have drives that will read them anymore!), tapes (awful, no drivers for old readers), CDs (don't hold much), DVDs (hold more but still not that much), Flash drives (hold more, fast, but not good long-term)...

And then I discovered online backup. I actually reviewed them for cnet.com. At first the idea of backing up my private data over the web to some server somewhere didn't feel right.

Then, as the systems used heavy encryption, it felt fine--and also made me feel better to know my backups were off-site, sometimes duplicated at two sites, sometimes inside one of the James Bond mountains.

Connection Online Backup, which is housed in one of those high-security mountains, was what I used on my Windows PC for years. It was fast, smart (only backing up changes), reliable, and reasonable--about $15 a month for 10GB. But 10GB just wasn't enough and as I needed more space, the cost became prohibitive.

I tried Mozy for Windows but it was brutally slow, took over my computer and made everything else virtually stop, so I uninstalled it.

When I moved to the Mac, I started using software called JungleDisk that uses Amazon's S3 server systems to store your encrypted data. Amazon has a huge infrastructure and smartly decided to start renting out disk space and other features and I felt like they'd have great reliability. The JungleDisk software is well designed, easy to use, also only backs up changes, runs really fast (even my first backup of over 100GB took only about a week), and you can access your backed up files through the Finder as if they were on a normal drive--as well as accessing them remotely through a web site if you so choose.

Amazon's backup rates are quite reasonable (15¢ per gigabyte), so my monthly fee was $15. Jungledisk the software itself was free--though you could buy it for $10 to get support, which I did because it's good and well worth it.

Despite this, I was lured to once again try Mozy because it advertised "unlimited backup for $4.95" - Saving $10 a month sounded good, so I installed Mozy...

That was six months ago. It took over five months to back up my data.

Let me say that again--it took over five months to back up my data.

As I said, I have a lot of data, but even so, five months? OK, so that's only $25, but it's five months during which time if I wasn't also using JungleDisk I wouldn't have a real backup.

And then it started to get fun--because once it finally backed up everything, it stopped backing up new things. It tried, but it always gave me a "connectionerror1." Support would tell me "you need the new version" and I'd download and install the new version and I'd get the same error message.

This has gone on for over a month. One day it was magically again able to backup, but that was a fluke, it stopped again. I've been emailing back and forth to support, almost daily, for over a month--six weeks, really. They're very nice but they never solve the problem.

I exported a 75MB log file for them to view. They did, and then they told me to downgrade to a previous version (when I had the previous version they told me to upgrade to the newer one). They explained this probably wouldn't work but they wanted to see the log file.

I'll be generous and say it must work for somebody--maybe people with very few files. Maybe their mistake is selling it for "unlimited" backup when it's really only good at about 2GB which you can get for free. But if you don't have many files, then get the free version and leave it at that.

It finally came to a head when I wanted to back up a file. I'd saved a newer file over an older one by mistake. OK, no big deal, that's why I backup. So I went to restore, I waited several hours--oh, that's right, let me repeat it, I WAITED SEVERAL HOURS FOR THE RESTORE TO LOAD, AND THEN IT FAILED. Others report waiting over two weeks for their files to be ready to restore--and that's when the software did work. That's unacceptable.

So--Mozy, the backup system, won't backup, and perhaps even worse, it won't restore.

That, my friends, is not a value even at $5 a month. That is, in fact, a total waste of time, CPU and bandwidth.

I wish I was alone about this--but do a web search for "Mozy Sucks" and you'll see windows and Mac users who have had the same issues--ConnectionError1, it won't restore.

BUT DON'T PAY FOR MOZY. As cheap as it is, it's not worth it.

I have had all good luck using www.JungleDisk.com - first under Windows, then on the Mac (where I can still access all the Windows files I backed up).

----

Update, 9/18/09 - It's been 9 days since I got a nice email from Devin at Decho, the company that owns Mozy. He offered to help me, and has been working with engineers... and I decided to give Mozy one last chance.

But it's now been 20 days since Mozy was able to back up my files. 20 days without a backup? That's totally unacceptable. As well as, apparently, unexplainable!

Devin worked with the developers to change something on the backend of my account and hoped that would solve the problem--but I don't understand what kind of changes should be necessary to my account to make it simply connect as it has connected and should connect every day.

I'm not be facetious, I am asking as someone who has beta tested software and worked with software companies for over 25 years--why something so basic as getting and maintaining a connection is so difficult for Mozy.

After all this, how can I possibly trust Mozy to backup regularly? And another reason I want to uninstall Mozy now and be done with all this is that I'm also tired of the extra time it takes to boot my Mac because of whatever Mozy is doing, and the way Mozy slows down my computer when it's looking at my files for changes... and it takes it well over an hour to get ready to do a backup, then tells me it can't--wasted time, bandwidth and energy.

I've given them until start of day, Tuesday, to make Mozy work. If they can't, then I will uninstall it and nicely request a refund of all the money I've spent. It would be nice if they could also do something to compensate me for my lost time and bandwidth... something like an iPhone or Palm Prē would be acceptable.

---

Monday afternoon I got a call with several people from Mozy. They got it to work. Hooray! And while I still cannot restore using the app, I was able to restore online and it only took a few minutes--I selected the files, then received an email when they were ready to download. On the Mac they're downloaded as a disk image that has the files in their original folders.

So, it is possible for Mozy to work (and ever since it's worked without connection errors). That said, it still does suck up a lot of processing power and time during startup (it seems to add at least 45 seconds to startup time), and after all I've been through it's hard to trust it.

I will give it a chance and see.

If you have a problem--write a blog post that says "Mozy Sucks" and I'm sure Devin will find it and help you. Otherwise, support probably won't be able to. That's not a good way to handle support, but if you're having trouble, at least somebody at Mozy is looking for squeaky wheels.

Intel Processors - Nonsensical nonemclature

2009-09-07T15:55:00.000-07:00

A friend needs a new computer. I consider myself an expert at computers, having worked with them for almost 30 years.

So I go looking at the various models. In the past, you'd look at the processor speed to know how fast the computer was going to be. Not anymore. Now there's processor speed, and number of cores and all sorts of other things.

There are Celerons (the oldest and slowest slowest because they have features disabled) and Pentiums (next slowest), and Centrinos (which can be either single or dual core--go figure that one out).

Then, just to make things fun, there's the Core 2 Solo, which means it only has one core even though the name says Core 2.

Now we get to the Centrino2, which actually does have two cores and is faster than the two core Centrino, and the "Centrino Technology" which is somehow different from the other Centrinos though the site doesn't explain how, and then the most ubiquitous Core2 Duo which at least has some logic, as it does, in fact, contain two cores.

But the last batch is only four stars, and if you want five stars you have to go to the Core 2 Duo Extreme (naturally better, as anything "extreme" must be), then once again we have Core 2 Duo Technology which is five star even though the humble Core 2 Duo processor itself was only listed as four (makes no sense, don't even try).

Then we have the Core 2 Quad, which of course has 4 cores even though it's called "Core 2" but at least the "quad" is a tip off.

One would naturally assume that 4 cores are better than 2, just as 2 were better than 1, but the intel site somehow never really tells you which one is faster. Perhaps they aren't sure, but I'm guessing they're just not saying as it makes the shopping experience that much more mysterious and therefore exciting, not to mention satisfying.

Who thought this was a good idea? Was it Intel who wanted to market a whole bunch of old processors but name Centrino so it sounded like Celeron so people would still buy the old Celerons and think they were Centrinos? Does Intel think it's a good idea for people to buy slower processors such as a "Core 2 Solo" and then complain they aren't very fast?

Did computer manufacturers think this was smart, to sell a product to people who then complain it's not fast--which doesn't make anyone look good?

What's more--they're all missing a really basic point--people pay more for faster computers. But they have to really know they're faster. They like to know that when they pay $400 more for a 2.4GHz processor it means it's faster than a 2.0.

But now with the names and cores and caches and FSB (front side bus--not something the site ever explains), well, it's just all gotten so complicated that few if anyone really know what it means.

I'm guessing that's exactly the point--to bring unnecessary complexity back to the process to make shoppers feel dumb, so they are happy to believe whatever a teenage salesperson tells them is best.

In reality, what it does is once again bring everything back to price--which is increasingly bringing more shopping to netbooks that they can buy for around $300.

Eventually, even netbooks will go away and people will use mobile phone devices with bigger screens and keyboards (iPhone, Palm Pre) and fewer people will want much less need a Core2CenturionSoloQuad whatever.

So, it would be in Intel's best interest, not to mention everybody else's, if they just made all this stuff make sense. If they can't do it using a complex 5 star system in a flash-based chart, then there's a problem--and Intel, we have a problem.

What AT&T did right

2009-08-31T16:02:00.001-07:00

I am critical of poor customer service, so I also have to point out when it's good, and AT&T wireless has done things right--twice.

I use a pre-paid plan because my office is at home and I generally only need my cell phone two or three times a week. I bought a new Palm Treo 650 (great keyboard, great phone--I've been using it like a mini-computer long before there was an iPhone) on eBay for just over $100. Then I inserted an AT&T GoPhone SIM card, and voila, a cell phone for as little as $8 a month with no contract. Cost: $1 a day when I used it, plus 10¢ a minute. I also buy 200 text messages for $5 so I don't pay the normally exorbitant price of 20¢ per message

Recently AT&T introduced a new $3 a day plan--with unlimited minutes. You pay $3 on a day when you use your phone, then you can call as much as you want. Because my days are long, I generally need more than 30 minutes, so it's worth it not to have to even think about how long I'm on the phone, or be annoyed if I'm on hold for 20 minutes because now it doesn't cost me $2.

Today their customer service did something very right. My wife had an old phone number she rarely used with almost $50 worth of credit on it. She rarely used her phone, but you do need to add $10 a month, so it added up. Occasionally I'd take her really lousy free Motorola phone and use it just to try to burn off some minutes, but it was annoying not to have my address book and of course people only called my number, not hers, so it didn't work for incoming calls.

The battery on her phone died--which meant that a new battery would cost as much as a new phone (more, since you can often get even pre-paid phones for free, or around $10). I'd bought a Tracfone to travel to Durango Colorado where there's no AT&T service. Tracfone (as I've written about previously), was inexpensive and after some fiddling, worked fine both in California and Colorado.

When I got back I gave my wife this phone and its remaining minutes, and I had to figure out what to do with the money in her GoPhone account. I could always put her SIM in my old Treo 600 (which I keep as a backup), but instead, I called AT&T customer service.

I asked if I could transfer credit from one GoPhone to another. The answer was, "No, our system won't do that."

The operator was polite, but there was just no way on her computer to do it.

I asked her, nicely, if she could ask her supervisor if it was possible. I thought the answer would be no and I'd have to hassle with the old phone till I used up the credit.

But to my surprise and delight, the operator came back on saying "We value your business as an AT&T customer..." (which I have been for almost 10 years) and the supervisor was able to transfer the balance to my phone! I was told they could only do this once (because I can see why they don't want to do it all the time), but in this case, once was enough.

At no time did I have to get mad or threaten to leave AT&T entirely, I just asked, nicely, and then asked nicely for a supervisor.

This is how service should be. Yes, it could have been better if the first operator was able to handle it, but since it's not a normal request or operation, I can understand it, and was just happy they were able to do it--because now I can make much better use of the money in the prepaid account.

So--good work AT&T. I know some people are pissed off because they can't use the prepaid account for the iPhone (and that AT&T changed the data plans so there's no unlimited prepaid which used to cost $20). I do think people should be able to use whatever kind of plan they want once they own their phone, but until I have an iPhone (or a Palm Prē), AT&T's OK with me.

FUTURE TECHNOLOGY PREDICTION ALERT!

2009-08-15T01:47:00.001-07:00

Every once in a while I like to look into the future and report back. In the past, I have been uncanny in my ability to imagine technology including laptop computers (this was even before there were PCs), touch-screens and voice-recognition.

Here is my prognostication, dated August 15, 2009:

The future of computers:

Smart Phones that wirelessly pair with eyeglasses (either sun-glasses or prescription) that show you a virtual big-screen, which can either be an overlay to reality, or block out reality and just show you the screen (better for watching videos and movies--which can easily be 3D).

The glasses have external cameras and sensors so they can track the movement of your hands as you "touch" and manipulate things on the virtual screens, as well as being able to track the outside world, recognize things and places and give you expanded information about them (for example, it can remind you of names and information on people you meet through facial recognition--

"Name: Astrid Smith-Jones. She is a nurse/stripper. You slept with her in Cabo. You were both very drunk. The next day you kept calling her Amy.

NOTE: Ask her about her cat, "Mr. Stinky" and she will get so involved she won't talk about Cabo or you calling her Amy.

ALERT: FaceBook Status--she is in a relationship with Patricia Jones-Smithe. Her mobile is set to block all communication from us.

EMOTIONAL ALERT: Her smile is fake and her voice sounds stressed. She is not happy to see you again.

ESCAPE: Astrid has always been afraid of the swine flu. Mention you've been having symptoms."

Or something like that :)

Tracfone, pay as you go as cheap as it gets

2009-08-14T02:35:00.000-07:00

I don't like mobile phone contracts. I don't have one and don't want one. It's a big reason why I don't have an iphone or a Palm Prē. So I use an AT&T pay as you go plan, with a Palm Treo 650 I bought new on eBay (I have to say I love the phone, it has a great keyboard and lets me actually write on it, and I have big chunks of my brain in it--also voice recordings).

I'm going to visit my sister in Durango Colorado. The last time I went there I landed, turned on my cell phone, and got "no service." Huh? The AT&T coverage map said there was service... but it was for some rate plans, and not pay as you go. Oh.

I don't talk on my phone for hours a day, but I still have gotten used to having it in case I want to call and find out something, or in case somebody I know wants to call me. And it was quite frustrating not to have it--especially just for the occasional text message.

So I called Radio Shack in Durango and asked them what pay as you go phone was best and they said the Tracfone is what they sold the most of and it worked best because it could use so many different networks, AT&T, Verizon, Alltell...

I called Tracfone and talked to two different operators--there was no wait time, they both gave me the same information, and they were both pleasant and helpful, so the service seemed good.

I went to the tracfone site, read about it, saw there was no signup fee, and bought a phone for $19.95, which included a "free double minutes for life" card for $10 so minutes would cost half of what they otherwise would (down to about 7.5¢ a minute).

I bought it, shipping was free, it was sent Fed Ex third day and arrived today.

The phone is an LG200C which isn't cutting age by any means, but is surprisingly refined for what is essentially a $10 cell phone. Since it's pay as you go, I don't have a contract that really pays for the phone--that was the price. It's small, light, handsome in a rounded black stone kind of way. It has a color screen, soft rubbery keys that feel good, a speakerphone, voice dialing, T9 predictive text entry for SMS (that works quite well), even a world clock and a restaurant tip calculator!

It also came with excellent colorful documentation that is simply and clearly written in both English and Spanish, and big bold slips of paper that explain the steps you need to take to activate the phone.

I chose to activate it online because then you get free minutes. It took a lot of minutes to activate online.

There's a long string of numbers I have to enter into the phone to activate it.

First, there's a serial number (you have to enter it repeatedly on the tracfone site, just your phone number won't do, and in this case, I didn't have a phone number yet). It's 18 numbers long.

I should say I hate typing long strings of numbers when I register software and I'll never understand why the numbers have to be SO long. 18 numbers means you're into the quadrillions and surely they haven't sold that many phones.

It gives me 27 numbers new numbers to enter, the phone said it was invalid, the web site said, "Type the numbers again." I did, the phone said, "Accepted."

Nice, I think I'm done.

Then 16 more numbers appear. I have to enter them too. Accepted. OK!

Then another 14 numbers to enter. Accepted. OK.

Then another 27 numbers. Invalid. Retype. Accepted. OK.

Then another 24 numbers! Invalid. Retype. Accepted. OK!

THEN 10 MORE! Accepted. OK.

OK, really, was it really, really necessary to make me type 126 numbers (if you don't count the times I had to type them twice)? Really? What could possibly necessitate that? Clearly the system is sending some kind of secret message to the phone, like "this is your phone number and this is your rate plan" but I don't understand why this information couldn't be sent to the phone wirelessly--it being a cell phone and all.

You can activate it over the phone, but then you get no free minutes, I assume because you waste their operators time as they read you 126 numbers...

It could and should be simpler.

Despite this, I was glad because it was able to work immediately, and gave me 20 minutes of free airtime in exchange for typing 126 characters. I had worried that I'd be out of range and it wouldn't work and I'd have to go to into San Rafael with my laptop and find some free wifi and do all this to get the phone to work, and I didn't.

Because my phone is activated for Durango, Colorado, uses the Verizon network (Tracfone uses all the major networks so you can roam anywhere in the US, but the "local" network for the phone is the city you sign up for, in this case it was Durango, which was Verizon). Once I knew that, I was able to send a text message to it from email using the phone number @vtext.com. It worked, and charged .3 units for a text message (meaning anywhere from 2.5¢ to 10¢ depending on how much I ended up paying for minutes--and this is where it gets dicey).

Like all cell phone plans, the more minutes you buy, the less they cost per minute. With Tracfone they expire in 30 days if you only buy 30 minutes, and the more minutes you buy, the longer they last. This is, I guess, to ensure that you are paying at least $10 a month. That's about average, with AT&T you're paying at least $9 a month.

Tracfone's big advantage in terms of pricing is that there's no daily fee. AT&T charges between $1 and $3 (the $3 is for unlimited calling, and if you call more than 20 minutes a day it's by far the best deal and what I switched to on my main cell phone--I just wish it would work in Durango, but it won't!). There is an AT&T plan that has no daily fee if you pay 25¢ a minute, and in a way it's comparable to the Tracfone's highest rate of 30¢, though you can get double minutes and cheaper minutes by buying more.

I tried to buy minutes online, but the web site's credit card processing was down (most of the site was down, it also couldn't sell phones--so something was seriously wrong).

But--right now my Tracfone is lying to me and charging me double.

When I bought it, it said it was "one rate" which meant there was no roaming in the US.

Yet when I turn it on here at home, it has service (amazing, since Verizon says we don't have service here but it's quite good in fact), and it says ROAMING which charges 2 units per minute. Units cost as much as 30 cents, but I bought a "double minutes for life" card with my phone ($10, normally $45), and if I buy 60 minutes I end up paying 7.5 cents per minute, which is quite reasonable as there's no daily fee. Except that it will cost 15 cents a minute while roaming (which, actually, is still cheaper than AT&T's 25¢ a minute rate).

Still, I'm not happy, because it said it had no roaming fee when I bought it, and now it's charging me.

So, I will call them when they're open and ask about this--I even found the page that says it's single rate and made a PDF. If it's single rate, then I'll bring it back home have it as a spare/backup phone.

If not I'll leave it in Durango so that anyone visiting my sister can use it and add their own minutes (you can buy minute cards at supermarkets and 7-11's or online.

So, that's the saga to this point. Some good (the hardware and the fact that it works). Some not (126 characters to activate and the roaming error).

More info to come...

Next morning--I've tried calling and so far it's been impossible to get a live human being on the phone. As I said, before I bought the phone I called service and got someone without a wait. Now there seems to be no option for this, as if I purchased the phone in the Twilight Zone and the rules are different in the real world.

It's one of those wonderful systems where, if you do manage to get through several layers of a phone tree, and find support (4) and find the option for "all other questions (5) the system conveniently hangs up on you. Three times. Enough for you to give up.

But I don't give up, so I kept trying and now I'm on hold and we'll see if the estimated wait tie of 5 minutes is accurate, and if the system manages to hang up on me before then.

OK, look, I understand that I bought a cheap-ass phone and I bought it just for that reason. I can't expect to get first-class support (to AT&T's credit, it's easy to speak to an operator).

Wait, "your call is very important to us, please continue to hold until a next customer service representative is able to take your call. remember having your phone charged and your serial number will help us serve you better."

OK, so this tells me that other people who buy cheap-ass phones get confused when the phone won't turn on and don't realized the battery might be dead. Same people who don't understand when their computer doesn't turn on when it's not plugged in. OK.

And there's that mysterious serial number again, which seems to be the passport to all things Tracfone. I've got it right here, and I wrote it in down in case I lose the card, in which case I'd surely be lost in the system.

OK, I've gotten through to a lovely women in Bangalore. Lately I've gotten the best phone service from Indian call centers--people who are polite and patient and never make me feel like I'm an idiot.

She's taken my info and placed a service ticket that will take three business days (and if I don't get a reply it's on me to call them back).

As long as I was on the phone I checked to make sure the "double minute" card that I bought as part of the package was in the system. Since I wasn't supposed to be charged for roaming, I figured I also might not get the double minutes.

Well, sure enough, it's not in the system.

I've now been talking with support for 30 minutes. They're unable to get into the tracfone.com web site to verify that my phone is really single rate, no roaming. I understand, because last night the tracfone site wasn't working and wouldn't accept any zip code as valid. I was able to get in sideways through Google, and today I can get in but the phone isn't listed (because I'm no longer in the Twilight Zone!).

I am looking at a Motorola flip phone with bluetooth and a camera which is now $5 more than what I paid for mine. I would be annoyed except I haven't liked any Moto phone I've had, and this LG is nice. This phone, too, has the double minutes for life card, and the details say it's single rate--so its equivalent to the deal I got.

Now I'm mad. I'm missing lunch! It's in the oven getting hard. This is NOT convenient!

OK, once again I am learning that all-important lesson of "you get what you pay for" and "cheap crap can end up costing more than good stuff." Sigh.

The nice support person put me on hold (because she couldn't log into the public site), and I waited on hold for 5 minutes, then was disconnected. I tried to call back. It was busy. Again. Busy.

Again--my estimated hold time was 5 minutes. After 40 minutes on hold (this is why I have a speakerphone), and at least 40 repeititons of "your call is very important to us, please continue to hold until a next customer service representative is able to take your call. remember having your phone charged and your serial number will help us serve you better." I gave up and called again. Estimated wait time, 5 minutes.

This is really boring, I know! But the point is--I didn't get what I paid for. I didn't get a phone that has no roaming. I didn't get double minutes. And I have to straighten this out before I use the phone. So now it's taken me about two hours... so far, and they've yet to get it right.

Oh--and a note about hold music--this isn't the worst I've heard, it's a kind of semi-Ottmar Leibert guitar and piano but it's generic and after 40 minutes of it I am starting to want to slap someone--hard.

So, I was on endless hold, and now I called and got a rep in 4 minutes. And this one knew my case, said I was right and it shouldn't roam, and got the double minutes working in no time.

So, as with everyone else, it all comes down to who you talk to.

I'll report how it works when I travel, and if it ever stops roaming!

OK, an outcome already, via email.

" Upon further review with your account, it appears that the activation
zip code that you used was 81302 which is located in Durango, Colorado.
Please be informated that you will be still be charged 1 unit per minute
rate eventhough the phone displays "Roaming" in the main screen."

Yes, I activated it for Durango, because that's where I had to make sure it worked. So the answer is to simply ignore what the phone is telling me. Oh. I'll have to check and see if 1 minute is really counted as one minute.

I have to say, it's taken a LOT of time to get all this straightened out. I hope there are people who simply buy one of these at a convenience store and enter their 126 characters and away they go! That hasn't been the case for me--but if the phone now works properly, and charges me properly, then I may use this regularly. I'm sure you're breathless with anticipation to know how that turns out, so I'll keep you posted!

===

Update--the phone works great, in Colorado and California. But refilling it has been problematic every time I've done it. the first time, I didn't have the phone turned on, so it never updated it and didn't know it had new minutes or a new expiration date.

30 minutes on the phone waiting for support--and they tell me it doesn't matter what the phone says, I have the minutes and the new date. But I don't believe this--the phone could shut off and just not work, so they give me another 36 numbers to enter and then, voila, it now knows the correct total.

Second refill--

I got two tracfone promos for the fone--both said, "Get 20 minutes free when you ad 60 minutes, and both had the same promo code. 62627.

It didn't work online and gave the error message "The Promotional Code you entered is not valid for your current phone. " but didn't say why.

So I called and tried to order online--but it gives you nowhere to enter a promo code.

So I spoke to an operator (#4 of course), and waited for 22 minutes, after which the operator told me the code wasn't valid--because I'd used it before.

Huh? I just got the text message offer today--I got the email four days ago--I haven't used it since then.

No, I used it three months ago.

But...

Why'd I get this promo in two different places? Well, the computers sending out the promos aren't connected to the system that tells them whether they're valid or not, so in the future I should just call tracfone when I get a promo code to see if it's really valid.

WTF?

So, I wasted more than 20 minutes only to find out I can't get the 20 minutes they promised me in two places, because I'd used this offer before--though nowhere in either ad did it say, "Only valid once, if you've used this before ignore this because it won't work."

So it's basically false advertising--offering a discount which isn't available.

That's crap.

The phone is still a good value, but in this day and age there's no excuse for sending out promo codes that aren't valid, and so it smacks of bait and switch and pisses me off.

And--you have to be prepared to spend time every time you refill to make sure that the phone got updated properly, and be prepared to wait for 20 minutes on hold to talk to someone who can straighten it it. It's a lot of wasted time.

Steve Ballmer is the Dick Cheney of Microsoft

2009-08-08T18:13:00.000-07:00

This is so hideous it's hard to watch, which of course means you must watch it!

Ballmer is the main reason Microsoft is dying and will live on as only a small fraction of what it once was (if it isn't simply bought up by Google in a few years for a laugh).

He comes across like a bad football coach who's on a bad losing streak and is having a major breakdown. And that's on a good day. Who on earth wears a sweat-soaked shirt like that?

I think the only logical conclusion is that he's insane, though the other option is that he's just so insanely clueless that he seems insane.

Focus on the customer through design and emotion

2009-07-26T19:09:00.000-07:00

In response to: http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=263424

Bruce Eckel suggests it's time to create a new kind of business, one where money isn't the bottom line. I agree, but don't think most businesses are ready to face the fact that focusing on the money alone will only ever get them into trouble.

I've seen, first hand, how when the people running a company start focusing only on money and stock price, they stop focusing on customers, products and experiences and create an unsustainable situation doomed to failure.

GM, and the American automakers, are prime examples of what happens when your focus and goal is money, not customer satisfaction--after a while you end up with neither.

At one point, GM made far more money 1) in international currency trades, and 2) finance charges), then it did on cars or trucks. Because of this, the cars were less important--and because engineered and even designed, by accountants. The much maligned and unarguably ugly Pontiac Aztek was a perfect example of this. The concept vehicle, (follow the links to see other concept cars--beautiful, inventive vehicles never built because the genius MBA accountants got in the way) shown at auto shows, was the very first "crossover," years ahead of the competition. It was also a unique--and good-looking vehicle, with waterproof seats and a floor you could hose out (shades of the Honda Element, which you can't really hose).

Yet massive cost-cutting and constraints to build it as cheap as possible created what was really a Frankenstein of cars--a little piece of this, a little part of that... which, when bolted together, looked about as friendly as Frankenstein--horrifying, really.

If GM has followed the good ideas of their designer, they would have had a huge head start over the competition, and a really cool, useful vehicle that might have been a huge hit with the young and active set. Instead, they followed the accountants right into bankruptcy.

The most recent and blatant example of this was Daimler bought Chrysler, and promptly insisted that they cut the budget for car interiors by 50%. In doing so, they ensured that the car interiors would look and feel like crap (ugly, slightly sticky gray plastic, anyone? Even the new Dodge Challenger--which looks pretty much like the old one from the 70s, has an interior that's so cheap and ugly (and it looks even worse in person!) you would be forgiven for thinking it was meant for the cheapest car on the road--not a premium-pony-car.

Compare this with Ford's latest Mustang interior that looks and feels great,

People spend a lot more time in a car, than admiring the exterior design, the cars felt bad and sold poorly.

On the other end of the spectrum, GM finally realized the importance of interior design (why did it take them 90 years? I don't know--they did have some nifty interiors in the 50s and 60s but in the 70s things went downhill and started looking like slightly melted plastic).

GM's newest interiors, such as the Chevy Malibu, Cadillac CTS, and the brand-new, leather wrapped and ambient lit dash of the Buick LaCrosse rival those on cars costing over $120,000 (I preferred the Chevy Malibu interior to that of the Maserati Quattroporte. All those cars look good on the outside, too--distinctive and modern as opposed to relentlessly bland Toyota design, or Honda's oddly dyslexic design language.

Perhaps once GM was forced to sell off GMAC (their financing arm), and they didn't have the money to play with in international monetary markets, they realized they had to once again focus on cars.

Aha--so this means something besides money can be measured? Perhaps design? Emotional appeal? Well, in the end it's once again measured in dollars--as buyers put their money where their mouth is and buy these cars.

There's more than design, of course, as GM has to persuade people that it's learned it's lesson and it's building cars that are more desirable, beautiful, and reliable, than the competition (since Cadillac and Buick have topped the JD Powers reliability indexes for the past few years--even surpassing Lexus, there are facts--and then there's still the gap between the reality and the perception.

The important reminder here is that. measurable profits come from customers, and customers buy our goods and services based on the most basic Reptilian brain inner monologue of "What's in it for me."

WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME

Science says it can be easily measured using demographics, and I agree some of it can. But human emotions are unpredictable (much as science would like to say they can predict everything--as if they can magically see into the future--which, of course, if they could, there would be no recessions, right?), and so once again we're back to the combination of art and science, intuition and fact that, in the end, is what makes things sell, or not.

Once again, if science and demographics had all the answers, then all cars would sell well, all movies would be hits, and all companies would be successful.

You can't measure intuition, except once it's out in the market and people respond to it.

Google Chrome - The last nail in Microsoft's coffin

2009-07-11T21:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=262565

My friend Bruce Eckel writes an excellent (and entertaining) piece Very good metaphors and writing.

In 2002 I emailed him saying that I thought Google would make a small Google/OS device [read: netbook]." It seemed like the obvious solution to me as Google made the web the real OS.

Fewer people actually need Windows--they aren't using software that needs it. There are programs, like Google's own Picasa and SketchUp, that run under Windows, but there's no reason they can't run under the browser.

As mobile phones and devices get smaller, more powerful, and more conveniently designed, fewer people even need PC-like computers anymore. I know people who have an iphone and that's all. If you have an Eye-Fi wifi-SD card in your digital camera, then your camera itself uploads photos to Picasa, Flicker, Kodak Gallery or whatever photo sharing service you use--again, you don't need a computer.

Most people want email, digital photos, social networking/FaceBook/Twitter, banking blogging, and perhaps some light word processing and maybe a spreadsheet now and then. All these can be done using online services--no computer-side software required.

If the Chrome OS is small and simple, and, for a final nail in the coffin, they could work with VMware or another a company such as CodeWeavers that already have products that let you run popular Windows applications--and games--without Windows!

Let's say Google either buys, or gets a special license to this Windows-free software and gives it away for free.

Hmmm. Then you have the best of both worlds. A cheaper computer because you're not licensing Windows, one that's simpler and more reliable, and one that can even run some Windows apps and games! And more and more games are moving online, being built in Flash, so people can run those through their Chrome browser.

Another interesting thing will happen--people will see it's better and easier without Windows.

I teach computer classes at the local library, mostly to older people with limited computer experience, which is great because then I have to explain things to them, and in the process, it becomes clear how much makes no sense at all.

One perfect example of this is Microsoft Word--always too complex, then they started moving and hiding menu items which only made it more difficult to learn (because people learn by placement as much as by words or icons).

One of my students had MS Word at home and wanted to know how to do something basic--every time it ran it now insisted on making all her text blue and she didn't know why. She could have somehow saved the normal style (not easy to do, but if it's set to save automatically, then tough luck), or she could have accidentally clicked on the TRK line and it was doing revision marking but of course doesn't say it's doing it and if you don't even know such a feature exists, then the text is just blue.

I pulled up MS Word 2007, which is what the library has. It had a completely different interface from previous versions.

Now, on one hand that could be good--they did a kind of "MS Publisher" baby-interface where they stick the most common formatting commands out on toolbars so you can see it. OK, that's good-in theory.

But in the process, they had to do more hiding--this time of entire menus. Gone. Disappeared. No longer on the menu bar. So instead of being able to say, "Choose Format/Fonts" you now have to explain how to use the menus or where to find it on the toolbars--which themselves can get turned off or move.

This makes it difficult to teach, difficult to learn (other than the most basic things which are exposed, because the other features are hidden), then there's a hell of trying to do tech support for someone using Word, because there are so many versions, each so different from the previous one that you can't simply say, "Click on Format, then font," or--failing that, go to help and type "font color," and then have Word's help show you the menu (there's no reason help can't interact like this--it does on the Mac).

So I said to her, "Look at this other word processor," and I showed her Google Docs. Very simple. Fewer choices, to be sure, but also much more straightforward and all right out in the open--no magic moving or disappearing menu items and just one simple toolbar with basic formatting commands.

She was so relieved that it's what she wanted to use. And, it's what I use myself, despite having several versions of Word.

I do use Word when I need to format a book already written in Word--I use it like a DTP program (albeit one that does crappy justification.) It has powerful, if arcane (and inconsistent) formatting features. Though often when I have to go in and make corrections on a book I've already formatted things will move, mysteriously and without reason, page lengths will change, even entire book lengths will change. This is very bad--and if it happens to me, a person who knows all the ins and outs of formatting, styles, and image anchoring, then it will happen to everyone.

But few people need to format books, and simple books can still be written in Word, then uploaded to print on demand services that format them for you.

I predict that Google's Android and Chrome will eventually merge (they're both built off a Linux kernel), as phones and mobile devices get more powerful), and there won't be many flavors of Chrome the way there are stupidly multiple flavors of Windows.

First, let's not forget about Windows Mobile, which doesn't really run Windows apps, Starter (for netbooks, I love MS's description, "Windows 7 Starter makes small notebook PCs easier to use because it puts less between you and what you
want to do—less waiting, less clicking, less hassle connecting to networks." As opposed to, what, Windows Home Premium, Windows Professional or Windows Ultimate that put more between you and what you do? Well, obviously, since that's what Microsoft themselves are telling us!

And Ultimate? Here's how MS describes it, "Windows 7 Ultimate is the most versatile and powerful edition of Windows 7. It combines remarkable ease-of-use with the entertainment features of Home Premium and the business capabilities of Professional,including the ability to run many Windows XP productivity programs in Windows XP Mode. "

OK, if Ultimate is so good, why don't they just sell it and the smaller Netbook version, called Windows Mini? "Fools give you reasons, wise men never try."

The next step? Google gives away their netbooks. They've got a nice big GOOGLE logo on the outside, and they may even have a special LCD windows inside that shows context sensitive ads all the time--no matter what site you're on. Just touch that ad-LCD and you get a new Chrome window onto that site. Buy something there and Google gets an affiliate fee, and it doesn't take long for your free computer to have paid for itself.

Or--instead of buying a GoogleBook (which also doubles as a Kindle book reader), you can get it for $20 a month. Gee, that sounds cheap--of course it does WiFi, perhaps it even does free EVDO or 3G. And like wireless phones, you can get a new one free every two years. Sounds better than buying one that's going to be obsolete in two years anyway, right?

Meanwhile, MS is trying to sell software alone. Everyone else is selling hardware and software together: Apple, Blackberry, Palm, Google... It won't take long for Dell and HP to decide they need to sell a Dell/GoogleBook or an GoogleBook by HP, or a HPGoogle... Windows will be relegated to big desktop machines that are already being outsold by laptops, which are already massively outsold by cell phones and mobile devices.

Now, I'm not saying Windows is going away soon--Microsoft still has too much market share right now. But just remember previous software companies that were invincible at one time, Lotus, WordPerfect, Ashton-Tate... they're history.

And unless Microsoft keeps up, it will be, too. They can't keep up playing the game they always had, in "we have to protect Windows at all cost."

They will have to join the web world where the rule is, "We have to make our customers happy at all costs." Do that and you have loyal clients. Don't, and you have people who are more than happy to find a better, cheaper, simpler way to do what they need to do. It's called "competition." At long last coming to a computer near you.

The Future of Publishing

2009-04-25T15:10:00.000-07:00

My friend and wonderful author, Christopher Meeks, wrote a blog on what book publishing industry experts say about the future of publishing. This is my response, with a link to his response to my response at the end.

I will just say I disagree with some of what the editors said.

Book publishing is remarkably slow to change.

I remember back when DTP came in, and I wanted to write a book about it--publishers should have been interested, a new, less expensive, more efficient way to produce books. None of them were. It was new. It was different. It was untested. Their printers said it was a fad. Truly.

Walsh said, "Self-publishing will not bring you literary success. Books are still a brick-and-mortar industry. That is, books are still mostly sold out of stores. There are too many books, so why should a book reviewer review a book not in a bookstore?"

Louisa Ermelino, who is Publisher Weekly's director of reviews, said, "You can't self-publish and go through normal channels. Publisher's Weekly doesn't review self-published books. We can only review one in ten books from publishers as it is. There are too many books. We are sent a thousand books a week for possible review. Each week, we review one hundred."

That's how it is TODAY. But we also see that newspapers are folding. Publisher's Weekly is interested in booksellers (and librarians) because THEY ARE THEIR SUBSCRIBERS!

Of course they don't care about your book if it isn't in a store. And independent bookstores are a quickly dying breed. There are the chains (and fewer than there use to be, remember B. Dalton? Waldenbooks?) and there are a few local stores run by booklovers. How many books do the indies really move? They are for bibliophiles, which is wonderful, but they aren't mass market.

Do you know the biggest booksellers in the country now: WalMart and Costco. The publisher of my friend's book had to present the books and covers to those two giant chains. They had to approve it or it was back to the drawing board. Are those stores bookstores? Um, no. Do you get in through Publisher's weekly? Not necessarily.

Also, notice the name: PUBLISHERS weekly. Not authors. That's the key. They don't care about authors, even authors who are self-publishers.

That's self-serving, which is fine but to pronounced it as "this is the way it is and always will be" is ludicrous.

Look at TV guide, once the largest-circulation magazine in the USA. Then, it couldn't keep up with too many TV channels and areas and cable systems, and now it's listings are secondary to entertainment news crap, and the magazine is almost dead. Pundits would have thought, "More TV, so they're more powerful," but the opposite happened.

If Publishers weekly doesn't keep up with good books, "self published" (and they say it like it's a dirty work--the other little publisher they mention is fine because it's not "self publishing," that's BS), then Publishers Weekly is going to become Publisher's Monthly or never.

The name of the game now is totally MARKETING. Yet major publishing houses expect their authors to do it, unless their authors have previous best-sellers (sometimes even then), or a TV show! My friend got a good advance for her latest book, which was even a sequel to her previous book. She got enough of an advance to live on for two years, so it has to be something.

Yet they are doing NO marketing. No support. No tour. Not even Satellite interviews. They sent her a big book about all the stuff she needs to do--start a blog, contact radio stations--all herself, all without help. And no, they don't even provide a list of contacts at radio stations and stuff. It's INSANE.

And these are the people who are saying that self-publishing isn't valid? Why? all the publishers are doing in this case is designing and printing the book, and by virtue of being in their catalog it MAY get in a bookstores. That's bull shit.

Anybody can get a book printed and bound. Those who find a good designer (the way Chris hired me at www.Will-Harris.com), can get a book that is as well designed as anything from a major publisher (in fact, both the design and printing may be better, because more care is taken on their individual book).

The industry is going to break apart when some really savvy writer, a 21st century Peter McWilliams (oh, wait, he was a famous and successful self-publisher, oh, well, there goes that theory that it can't work...) is sells his liver to pay for his mortgage and gets on Oprah, and then his book shoots up the chart. He's gotten into Amazon, so they have the book, and bookstores don't. Hmmm. People download it instantly to Kindle and there's word of mouth. Hmmm.

So anyway, listening to the current batch of editors and reviewers telling everybody that THEY are the gatekeepers is like listening to Dick Cheney telling us we're NOT heading the wrong direction (after his eight disastrous years--and let's look at the publishing businesses record of profitability and success).

If the boyfriend of someone one Oprah's staff just fell in love with my friend Chris' book, Brightest Moon, and they handed it to their partner and they handed it to someone else at Harpo... it's possible that a self-published book could get on Oprah, and once you've been blessed by Oprah you have a guaranteed best-seller.

Now, the chances of that are small, but the chance of ANY book by a not-already-famous author becoming a best-seller is like being hit by lightning. It's rare. It happens.

The publishing world is going to change. No matter what people are saying to try to make themselves seem indispensable and keep their own jobs. iphones become iBooks or people just let their ipod nano read the book to them.

And through it all--writers write.

Here is Chris' part II

And an addendum from me after talking with other published authors--some of whom have written for major media and have big agents.

===

The current publishing model is, like many newspapers, not sustainable. Publishers lose money on MOST books, make it in a few (though they usually don't know which few, surprise, surprise, it's the ones they promote, which are usually from people who already have name recognition).

Well, if that's the case, then why do those people even need big publishers, other than they handle the details? How long before The William Morris Endeavor Agency (now WME) is going to turn their book division into a publishing unit? Before they just ship the PDFs off to Lightning Source, make them returnable, and use their in-house marketing people to send the authors on tours and get them on TV?

Really--why bother with a publisher, who then only pays 10% at most, when WME could get 50%, keep 20% off the top, and the author is still 3x ahead.

And if it isn't an agency (and I predict it will be, since they're so into packaging), then it could be a PR agency--they can do the same thing. They can get it into Publisher's Weekly. They can get it reviewed on Amazon in droves using social media and word of mouth.

All they need is ONE hit book this way for others to come to them. And these 21st century "publishers" will be different than the 19th and 20th century ones, because they will know that their job is not so much about finding or working with authors, it's about promoting the hell out of them. And how will people get into these new publishers? One way will be money, self-publishing, plain and simple. It won't be cheap--likely I'll be an investment the size of a car, but when they can get you seen and heard in this increasingly noisy world, it'll be worth it.

Of course, publishing will always be stratified, those who have name brands and those who don't. Those who are sleeping with their agent/publisher and those who aren't. Those who look good on TV and those who don't.

But it hasn't been about "literary merit" since the days when a single book lover owned and ran the house--those names are still on the publishing houses but now the people at the top are accountants.

If the seat belt fit, you must sit

2009-04-15T12:24:00.000-07:00

United Airlines is joining Southwest in making a policy that says "Airport ticket counters and gates to be extra vigilant beginning Wednesday for passengers they deem to be overweight."

XXXXL passengers (who really need more than one seat) must pay for two seats. On Southwest, if there's an empty seat on the flight, and they can move that passenger there, the second ticket is refunded. No such word about United.

The problem here is the line, "for passengers they deem to be overweight."

THEY DEEM TO BE OVERWEIGHT?

By what standards?

By the insurance chart standards, in which case it's MOST travelers?

By their own anorexic standards that anyone over a size 0 or a suit size 36 is a pig?

There's a simple solution to this: If the seat belt fit, then you must sit.

If you need a seat belt extender (and there's no shame in that, it's just a fact--and face it, if you need one you know it, and probably have one in your carry on), then chances are you also need a seat extender.

But there has to be clear rules about this, it cannot simply be at the discretion of the gate agent, otherwise there's going to be a whole lotta bitch-slapping going on.

Bad design at a design conference

2009-04-03T20:13:00.000-07:00

I recently stumbled onto a design conference called Gravity Free. It looked interesting, because it wasn't just about graphic design, it was about all design, and it was a small conference where you could meet the people presenting and get to know more people (the point of actually bothering to go to a conference these days is all about meeting people, you can do everything else online).

They have an official hotel for the event--the James in Chicago. It's a fancy hotel in the modernist way, which means it's so fancy it doesn't really have to look fancy, it can be very minimal, even a little cold, but that's good for designers who are afraid of anything that might even remotely be considered fussy.

So I go to their web site, http://www.jameshotels.com/ and am mortified by the web design. It's not ugly, but it's so unusable.

First, the type is tiny. I don't understand web sites with tiny text. I don't know who they think are visiting their web pages, eagles?

I assume it's because whoever they have designing these sites are in their early 20s and can still read microscopic text. What they seem to forget is that most of the people who can pay over $300 a night for a hotel room are no longer in their 20's, and are probably at the age where they have reading glasses, which means that microscopic screen type is going to be next to unreadable, and certainly uncomfortable and annoying.

But wait--it gets worse. They have set this type in GRAY. OK, here's another thing I don't understand (and I see it in a lot of blog templates, too).

Who decided that gray text was better than black? Is there really a point to this, other than making the text harder to read? You NEED the contrast between the white or light colored background and the BLACK text. You physically and mentally NEED THIS CONTRAST.

But light gray text is too close in color to the background, and it's STUPIDLY HARD TO READ.

It's fine for a word or two, such as in blogger, where a single line below this box says, "Draft Autosaved at 8:18 PM" - That's fine, that's one little info-line.

But setting any kind of body text in gray, whether it's in print or online is STUPID, STUPID, STUPID, and more than that it's also RUDE, THOUGHTLESS, and IDIOTIC.

And yet--it's also common. Though I don't know why, except that the designers are themselves stupid, rude, thoughtless and idiotic. Oh, that must be the explanation as I can see no others. Maybe they think it "looks cool" or something stupid like that, but it doesn't look cooler than black (think of the black turtle neck designer uniform!), and it's hard to read. So stop it, you imbeciles!

Wait, loving kindness, I have to remember that and remember that even stupid designers are people, too, and surely have their reasons for making things frustratingly hard to read. OK. I'm calmer now.

Now I want to see a room. There should be a link called "rooms" or "accommodations" (since that's a more expensive word). Right? All hotel web sites have this. Right? Wrong! There's a big green button to make my reservation "carbon neutral" which is very, very thoughtful and good and I applaud them for that, but where is the link to see the rooms?

There's no link to rooms. I look around. I look again. I read everything. Finally I just start clicking on everything that might be a link.

Oh--Oh, of course, I have to click on the name of the hotel again--the hotel whose site I'm already on. Now when I click it I get more tiny little navigation buttons--these are inside boxes which make them even harder to read--good for you, designers, constantly striving for more ways to make your site illegible!

I click on "rooms and amenities" which shows me a large photo of a woman in bed reading the paper with her shoes on the floor where someone is going to trip on them, while a man in the background appears to be peeing. The tagline says, "luxury redefined" and they aren't kidding!

Now I click on "overview" which takes me to the page I am already on. So I try again and click on "rooms" which takes me to even smaller gray type.

Now I can finally click on the different room types to see pictures, but remember, all this was so well hidden from the home page that I only found it by accident, and because I was really, really, trying hard.

Now there's some good photography of the rooms that takes an abnormally long time to load. These aren't big pictures, flash could be loading them in the background, but no, each time I click I wait 7 seconds while I watch a circular spinning thing (which I will learn is part of the temporal vortex that seems to be one of the most unique features of this establishment).

Now I try to book a room. The 6 pixel high gray type in the boxes is literally unreadable! I try to use the browser's own keystrokes to make the fonts bigger, but when they are, important parts of the form disappear so the form is unusable.

On the Mac, if you set the options right, you can zoom in on any screen by holding down the Control key and scrolling your mouse wheel away from you.

But should I HAVE to do that, just to read the teeny tiny gray type that I must read to choose the proper location, date and other info? Of course not.

Then we have the pop-up calendar, also with small gray type. The real problem here is that the navigation controls to go to the next month aren't where they should be, by the month name, they're below it, next to the day, which indicates they're going to take me to the next day. And they're so freaking small and gray that once again I can't tell what they do and I just have to click and guess.

And then we have the mother of all idiot calendar errors, which I see all too often. So I choose a check in date of October 23, 2009. The check out date the site shows, April 5, 2009. Wow--apparently the hotel sits directly atop a rift in the time/space continuum, or some kind of wormhole that allows you to check out months before you check in. I want to go there! Just imagine, every year you check in, and then check out earlier that year. You never grow older, you just keep going back in time, each time knowing more about the future, able to invest more wisely so that you can, presumably, have enough money to afford to check into the hotel yet again--and, after a few years, simply buy it (and fix their web site!)

Why can't the site be smart enough to update the check-out date? Why can't the calendar? But no, I have to remember where the "next month" button was through the unreadable gray tiny type and click click click click click click to get there. Unnecessary, dumb.

So now it's time to see if there's a room! The excitement mounts.

Some hideous, useless, fit-inducing flash graphic spins around on the top of the page, for no apparent reason.

Now we have orange type on a tan background--which might possibly even harder to read than the gray type.

All I can figure is that they ran out of black pixels. Yes, that must be it. Oddly, I never run out of black pixels myself. And the next time any of you thinks about setting any type in gray, or a color (unless it's a link), then please drop me a note and I will instantly, and at my own expense, email you a whole passel-o-black pixels for you to use any way you'd like. Free! No obligation! Though I do recommend you use them for black type, because if you just use them for useless spinning black shapes at the top of the page I will be sorely disappointed in you, and probably blog about it.

Wait--did they actually waste their few remaining black pixels on that black spinning thing? It's still spinning. After 20 minutes. It's spinning. I click on it. It does nothing. Bravo! What a wonderful piece of ironic post-modern design! How witty! How the hell did they get this job?

Now we can, at last, get to the ludicrous pricing scheme, which has nothing to do with the web designers. I can't blame them for the "best available rate" being $50 more than the rate just above it, called "20 PCT discount" which I assume means, "The economy sucks and everyone has cut prices by 15-20% but we can't say that, we just say it's some kind of magical temporary discount we can easily eliminate as soon as people start spending money again." OK, I get that. But then don't call the $50 more rate "best available" because obviously it's not, and it just makes you look that much dumber.

But probably not as dumb as the web design, which shows a slew of prices for the 385 square foot guest room in many different packages that include parking, or dining (my favorite is the one that touts a $50 credit at the steakhouse, and then, not surprisingly, costs $50 more than the one without the credit--wow, what a value!)

But what you can't see, without scrolling down, which you probably won't even notice (I didn't!), is that there are other, larger, more expensive rooms (that hopefully also can take advantage of the time/space thing).

These go all the way up to the penthouse (haven't you always wanted to stay in one of those, or a Presidential suite kind of thing, only without having to pay, for one night, what your mortgage costs?). These rates range from the 20 PCT one of $2,000 a night, to the "best available" at $2,500, to breakfast included (you'd think that at 25 bills they could throw in a couple of eggs and toast, but no), so the one that includes breakfast is $2,510. Breakfast for $10! What a value! though they don't say what the breakfast is, so maybe it's just a package of saltines and some Tang.

OMG, the black shape is still spinning--and I've just realized it must be part of the time machine they use, and that, like Superman, it can reverse the rotation of the earth, thereby going back in time--but it is small, so it only moves the guest rooms back in time.

But wait--if they go back in time, shouldn't they pay me? I mean, I haven't really spent the night, so I shouldn't have to pay. In fact, I have made it possible for them to charge people for 6 months for doing the same thing!

So, just for fun, I click on "book now!" seems obvious enough. Except it pops up another screen that asks me if I want to put this in my shopping cart or finalize the booking. Of course I choose "Finalize" because I can't wait to do this whole time-travel thing.

The result is that it takes me back to where I was, with no apparent change in anything--because, I have just figured out, the black spinning thing has taken me back in time to before I've clicked the button, so it hasn't registered.

I'll click it again, and this time I don't get the screen I got before, I get the page I should have gotten the first time I clicked the button (this time I must have used up all the black spinning energy so I had no choice but to venture into the future--drat!)

Oh wait, black spinny thing is at it again on top of this new page. What a relief.

Now I'm confronted with a page with more tiny orange text on a tan background, and a bunch of boxes to type in--boxes that look too small but are not, because the type in the boxes is too small, so it's hard to read what I've just typed.

Oh, no, the type I've typed into the boxes is black! How did they let that happen! Maybe the black spinner has taken them back in time so they could read my blog post and change it before I got to this page, but perhaps not, because there's still mostly orange text on the page. Too bad.

The black spinning thing is now making me nauseous (I'd heard that time travel could provoke a kind of temporal motion sickness, and I guess it's true). So I was unable to complete my booking, because the web site was making me sick.

I'm sure the hotel is lovely. The home page twice says it was voted one of Travel and Leisure magazine's best hotels. But I have just given them a new award: Worst hotel web site! Congratulations!

Now they can go back in time, make their site usable, and then, through the paradox of time, this blog post will completely disappear! I can't wait!

Wheat Thins "Artisan" crackers are HIDEOUS

2009-03-23T00:02:00.001-07:00

So, today I tried a new nosh. BIG MISTAKE.

So I tried to complain about it online (as it's Sunday and the company's phone lines aren't open).

Why is there no Contact Us link on the nabisco.com site?

Why is there no category for CRACKERS in this the Kraft.com's comment subject line? Everything else, no crackers. What do they call those $4-$5 boxes of crispy wheat-based things they're selling on an entire aisle? Why can't they call them that on their web site?

Or maybe they simply don't want to hear about how AWFUL the new Wheat Thin Artisan crackers are?

Because they are AWFUL.

I bought a box because I love wheat thins and I love Vermont cheddar and I figured they'd be a good mix. I read the ingredients, it didn't have anything artificial or heinous in it. And no, despite the "artisan" name, I didn't expect them to be made in small batches by monks. Of course, they shouldn't even be bastardizing the term "Artisan" it's just wrong, and I shouldn't have supported them by buying a box, even at the "crack-er dealer introductory price" of $1.99, but I did. And boy am I sorry.

These crackers literally TASTE BAD and LEAVE A BAD AFTERTASTE.

I love crackers of all kinds and have eaten some that weren't great, but these are the first I've ever eaten that were downright bad. What on earth is going on with these things? Yes, I taste wheat thin and I taste cheese and then I taste something like sour milk and cottage cheese gone bad--I mean, these things SUCK.

Lest you think I am a food snob--obviously if I was I wouldn't have bought these, there are REAL artisan crackers around (for spectacularly good ones, try http://www.regionalbest.com/vendor/castletoncrackers/ or www.almondina.com). And just earlier today I had some "TGIF Cheese Pizza Chips" and was shocked that they were actually good)--so I can eat junk food with the best of them.

I do wonder if perhaps if I subsisted on a diet of nothing but "nothing natural added" Cheetos, which now have some kind of weird onion garlic flavor because, why, cheese flavor wasn't good enough? Perhaps then I'd find these so-called cheese crackers a tasty and "sophisticated" step up from day-glo yellow fingers.

But no, there is something seriously wrong with Nabisco's new Wheat Thins Artisan crackers. And there's something seriously wrong with a company that releases a product that tastes like this--and somehow thinks they taste good.

Finally--the inability to easily contact Kraft or Nabisco about this has left another bad taste in my mouth.

Gross.

AVOID THESE HIDEOUS CRACKERS JUST AS YOU WOULD AVOID SPOILED DAIRY PRODUCTS.

(P.S. Kraft replied to my email with an apology, which was right, but then said perhaps the crackers had been stored wrong and went bag. Huh? Have you ever actually had a box of crackers that "went bad"? Stale, maybe. No longer crisp, sure. But ones that went from tasting good to tasting like that bad smell you sometimes get in your refrigerator when you accidentally let something grow in the back? I think not. Sorry, Nabisco, These crackers are just disgustingly awful.)

(P.P.S. for incredible delicious, superior, light, crispy, and truly artisan crackers, try Castleton crackers--they are incredibly good, some of the best crackers I've ever tasted. If you like fine cheese, then of course you will want fine crackers like these! Buy them online here: http://www.regionalbest.com/vendor/castletoncrackers/

Nosh 'n Nap

2009-03-20T17:51:00.000-07:00

Not long ago I realized my favorite pastimes are napping and noshing (snacking). Not necessarily in that order. In fact, not in that order at all, because it takes a lot longer to nap than to eat, at least if you're doing it right.

Now, I can already sense your judgmental attitude, you're thinking (but trying not to show it on your face), "Those aren't hobbies, those are vices, gluttony and sloth."

All I have to say that to that is, 1) you're not very good at hiding your disgust, are you? 2) you could benefit from a few lessons in tact, 3) So, what your hobbies are so much better than mine? and 3), wait, I'm on 4) What business is it of yours?

There, now that I've put you in your place I'll continue and explain to you why everything you think is wrong, or at least everything you're thinking about me is misguided or shortsighted, or just a general microcosm of your own stupidity.

Wait, I take that back because I'm sounding too much like you and I will use what I learned from reading "10 Steps to a new Tactful You," by Dr. Gloria Anderson-Cooper.
I will always remember her words of wisdom on page 10 (I stopped reading there, that was all I needed yet it was still well worth the trip to the library to pick it up however briefly), which I will quote here without her permission:

"Never say anything you wouldn't want to hear said to yourself, unless, of course, someone else has already been a bitch, in which case, all bets are off."

Words to live by.

OK, so I forgive you and you forgive me (though you still look judgmental, either that or it's just a bad Botox job and you can't move your face, that's so often the problem these days, especially for my readers living in the greater Los Angeles area), and we can continue on.

...

Wait, I just had to get some cashews and take a little snooze. I mean, it takes a lot out of me to imagine your disapproving and or frozen face and all.

So, Back to eating and napping. I feel the need to defend myself and have a little red licorice.

All I have to say is, "What could be more natural than eating and napping?" Ha! You can't argue with that, can you?

In fact, what I am doing in my constant pursuit for napping and noshing excellence is a Zen-like pursuit of the "Now" and my almost monk-like devotion to these most sacred of arts.

You see, by doing this I am preparing for the inevitable--the afterlife. Perhaps by the time i'm around, say 82, I will have so totally mastered the art of the napnosh that I will nosh on some chedder and saltines, fall blissfully into a well-earned nap, and then never wake up--at least not in this world.

When I re-awaken it will be in a new plane of existence, one where the ultimate in enlightenment is possible. This, of course, is the ability to nosh while napping--something only a few aboriginal people have ever managed on our planet and they never reveal their secrets to the so-called civilized world because as soon as they see us they become seduced by cell phones and candy bars. Can't blame them.

So, now I can see by your somehow moved expression that you are realizing how wrong you were to be judgmental and even hostile (though I chalked that up to jealousy so I didn't mention it).

Now you can see the beauty of my approach to life, understand that there is nothing more natural, or a better way to experience life on this chaotic and tasty planet than to nosh 'n nap.

If I had the least bit of motivation I would immediately franchise this into a chain of "Napateria's" called "Nosh 'n Nap" with the name set in some kind of retro script face and set in...

Sorry, I had to have some dried cherries because they reminded me of the color I'd set the type in.

Yawn.

This has been an awful lot of typing now. And I've been sitting up the whole time. I need to get someone over to set up wifi so I can write in bed with my MacBook and a bowl of chocolate chips.

I can hardly keep my eyes open now. It's time for some "closed-eye, open-mind, unconscious meditation" during which I'll dream about pizza. Heavenly!

When someone steals your work... make it work for you

2009-03-17T13:16:00.001-07:00

When people plagiarize my work (as people OFTEN do with this piece), the first thing I do is send a NICE email. In many cases, especially with bloggers, they don't realize that there's anything wrong with copying somebody else's work. In these days of "sampling" and "mashups" a lot of people don't understand the concept of "intellectual property."

So, I try to explain it to them.

First--I thank them for liking my work enough to re-post it.

Then--I explain that this is my work and I use it to draw visitors to my site which helps me get design work.

When I explain it clearly, simply, without anger, they understand.

I give them specific instructions for what I want them to do

1) Shorten the quote (I even give them suggestions so they can just copy and paste)

2) Include my name as the author.

3) link to the original article so their readers can read the complete piece (and download the accompanying PDF).

Being kind and reasonable to start is a good route, because it helps people who don't understand, and if they did know what they were doing, it can make them feel bad for stealing my work!

When you do this, you keep the value of the quote and link which is valuable.

So far this has always worked when I could contact people. In one case it was on an abandoned site at a university. I contacted the IT department, explained the problem, and they removed the old page.

I also design watches (http://www.projects-us.com/html/mystery-watches.html ) and I noticed one day that someone had taken my design and turned it into a computer widget--same exact design. Again, I could have gotten mad and tried to sue, or I could email the person, thank them for liking my work, and get them to include my copyright, as well as links to where the watch can be purchased - so their copying then become positive marketing.

===

As for lawsuits--they're expensive and almost always cost far more than you'll ever get--so if you can learn to negotiate and find a win-win solution that's better.

Some years ago I discovered a full chapter of one of my books (Typestyle: how to choose and use type on a personal computer) reprinted as an article in a national magazine. 80% of the article was my chapter.

I contacted the publication, found out who the EDITOR was and talked to him about it, sending him my original text so he could see.

His solution was to offer me work with the magazine--which I took, which lead to more work which lead to my getting a great job to start a magazine myself. All that wouldn't have happened if someone hadn't stolen my work--and I hadn't followed up in a reasonable, rational way. Here's the story: http://www.schmoozeletter.com/schmoozeletter/html/32.html

So--my advice is to try to find a way to make a bad situation into a good one. It can and does work.

LITTLE LUXURIES for Economic Depression Fatigue

2009-03-09T00:31:00.000-07:00

"Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging things to grow." --Thornton Wilder

We're all in this together. And we have to keep spreading our money around in this financial ecosystem. Otherwise, the financial drought will come back and hit us where we live.

Now--shopaholics are going do some major suffering as "retail therapy" has derailed.
But I firmly believe that once the fatigue of this sets in, people will want to buy themselves "little luxuries" that bring joy--and also help keep money flowing around the world--without which, we're all in even more trouble.

What's a "little luxury?" Well, it's relative, and depends on your income or lack thereof.

The less expensive, the less guilt--and more pleasure.

It could be something that captures your fancy for a few bucks from a thrift store. Just a little something "new to you" that makes you feel good. Just enough for you to feel like you were able to get something nice.

It might also be something good to eat--whether it's an unbeatable $2 hamburger from In-n-Out, or a surprisingly good $2 frozen entree from Safeway (I recommend their "Safeway Select" brand in the black box).

Or something from a local artist--something that will make you happy every day you look at it. I have some things like that, like a large elephant made from sheet metal--it seemed extravagant at the time, but every day I see it, every day it makes me smile--and now it seems to pay me with happiness.

And remember your locally owned restaurants--you know the local place you love. Well, treat yourself to dinner there once in a while-- or they won't be there in a year or two when you have that craving.

Little Luxuries are pleasures you can enjoy without guilt.

===

For people lucky enough to still have a regular paycheck, it could be something bigger, like a very cool new watch (I recommend one of these I designed myself) - seriously, for just around $100 you can have something beautiful--and practical--on your wrist to enjoy every day.

For something like 5 cents a day you could have something new, unique, special, fun and useful to wear every day for 5 years.

You can afford that!

So, instead of us all freezing up and saying, "I'm never buying anything again," we can, instead, buy thoughtfully, buy selectively, buy something that 1) we will truly enjoy rather than "just have" and 2) something that supports an artist, designer, craftsperson, entrepreneur, chef, restaurant or charitable group (like the Goodwill or Salvation Army).

When we do this, we keep the joy in life, we become less fearful, and we do a little bit to help grease the wheels of the world, especially for those people who make the world a more beautiful and interesting place.

STOP THE MUSIC (on web sites)

2009-03-07T21:07:00.001-08:00

I just went to a site for Swedish Glass and was treated to something that sounded like Philip Glass.

I didn't bother looking for the little speaker icon to turn it off--I simply closed the window and found another glass company's web site. They lost me. Why?

I LOATHE web sites that play music without my asking.

I DESPISE them.

I listen to my own music--I don't want someone else's mixing with it just because I went to their web page.

Then all it does is mix with the music I'm playing and create a hellish cacophony of noise.

STOP IT!

I always don't want to hear you or even a trained voice over actor telling me about your company. I don't want to hear it. I will close your site if I do.

If you have music or a spiel you want me to hear, give me a button and let me choose it.

BUT DON'T THROW AURAL POLLUTION INTO MY OFFICE just because you can.

I will hate your web site and leave and not come back.

I also open a lot of windows in tabs. I hold down the control or Apple cloverleaf and click on links to open then in tabs--in the background. That way I can open a lot of sites I want to see without going back and forth. When one--or worse, more of these sites starting spewing music--then I have to go through each tab and try to figure out which one is pissing me off--and sometimes I just have to close them one by one to see. That's very, very, very bad web design. Very very very bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. OK, now I'm being like Oprah and repeating the same thing three times, but it really makes me mad.

----

Now--Music is a wonderful thing, and it does have its place on some web sites and helps create emotion and color your experience. But really, it should never start blaring through my speakers without my being asked. It just shouldn't.

There is an exception--If I go to a musicians web site--then I WANT to hear your music, or I wouldn't be going. Even then you want to make your controls very clear (sometimes they're hidden or cutsified to the point where I can't figure them out and just have to close the window).

The same can be true for sites for movies--a movie's soundtrack is such an important part of the film that if it starts playing to set the mood, then I'm not surprised. Even so, a splash intro page that comes up BEFORE the music starts playing is always appreciated.

But on any other kind of site--music should NOT start blaring just because I went to your site to look at your product or service, that's inexcusable.

PC's get prettier, but it's only skin deep

2009-02-26T01:21:00.000-08:00

I went to BestBuy today and was amazed at the assortment, and low price of Windows Vista laptops--not just netbooks, full featured notebooks with 4GB of RAM for $699.

And almost all significantly "less expensive" (to buy--not necessarily to use and own) than the Mac.

I was also surprised at how interesting the design of these machines has become--they're not just gray plastic boxes now, one from HP was all chrome, inside and out, another had curved edges and intriguingly textures, cool designs.

Interestingly, though, all these designs, which exciting, were busy, and contrasted with the Mac book's utter simplicity, a totally different direction. This kind of simplicity is more difficult to achieve because it leaves no room to hide gaps and errors, the way more complex designs to.

The only company that tried to go simple was Sony, and some of their designs were obvious copies, yet the materials weren't nearly as good (they have an iMac-like machine with a similar-looking keyboard, but instead of being solid aluminum it's all just silver plastic).

This is interesting, because just two years ago the prices of Macs had gotten almost parity--with my educational discount my iMac was the same price as a similarly equipped Dell. There were some higher end PC notebooks that were as expensive, if not more, than the Mac's, including, of course, several Sony's.

But overall PC prices have fallen more, and Mac prices haven't., and PC makers have finally figured out that design sells (it's taken them long enough, one of the chromy HP's now even had a HP logo on the top of the case that glows--like the Apple logo always has).

The trouble with all the PC's is that they run Vista! I do wonder if Windows 7, if they're really going to call it that, and not something like "Windows Clearview!" will actually work better, or if they'll just do what they do and say things like. "It looks 500 times faster!" while referring to something loading, but not actual total loading time.

What I have to admit is that I really didn't realize how different the Mac "experience" was, and that it wasn't just about the design of the computers (which is lovely) or the interface of the software (also lovely) but the way Apple thinks about the user every step of the way, and Microsoft thinks about themselves every step of the way, which then forces PC makers to pretty much do the same.

This means that while a Mac may cost more to buy, in the end it will cost less to use--because you will spend far less (if any!) time simply trying to get it work! You'll spend no time worrying about and dealing with viruses. And the software itself will run so much faster than over the life of the computer, an average of three years, the Mac will have paid for itself many times over as opposed to the PC.

So in the Apple universe, the customer is king, while in the Windows universe, the customer is a necessary evil :)

Support me!

2009-02-08T12:15:00.000-08:00

It's really never clear to me what MS thinks it's doing, or who it's doing it for.

The "enterprise" seems to be the main zone, because they like the huge chunks of change from so many seats at once. They're not into retail, really, because they just want to license and have other companies handle support.

And I think the very fact that they don't handle their own support is a key problem, because then they also don't hear constant complaints about the same stuff over and over.

Apple's support is in house and always has been part of the experience. They track what people complain about, have trouble with, ask for. That's how their software really reflects what people want and need in everyday life.

WordPerfect used to have the best support in the biz, and even if their software wasn't the best it didn't matter, because they were there, 24/7, toll free, to answer your questions and get it to work!

I tried to get NetObjects to have real people behind the products, real people who could answer questions (this was pre all the forums where fans do that now). But people in the company, reading board and answering phones. Yes, they had tech support, but it was an afterthought, and after 30 days it was expensive. And--real people ARE expensive, but they are worth it! Why?

Because machines can't answer all our questions about machines. Try as they might with FAQs and help systems, machines can't understand what people don't understand about them.

Software and even hardware could be free if you charged people only for support plans! That's what people need--someone to ask to get things to work!

ONE MORE REASON TO HATE WINDOWS (the worm, the worm!)

2009-01-31T18:15:00.001-08:00

My wife's Toshiba laptop computer got that worm that's going around. Something like 3 million computers got it in a single day, then 15 million--all over the world. All running Windows.

Let's see, 15 million infected Windows computers. 0 infected Macs. Hmm. I wonder if that's statistically significant? I wonder if it might eventually lead to people deciding Windows is too much trouble and Microsoft's demise?

I've read countless articles and listened to a NYTimes podcast, and not a single one explains how you catch--or prevent catching this. Supposedly if you have Windows auto update on and are all patched up, then you're safe, but her computer has it on, had the latest updates, and still got it. 'Splan that, Steve Ballmer!

Most people are getting this through networks, but my wife's not on a network (well, other than the InterNet!).

So how did she get it? Though a web site? Though an attachment (the only ones she's downloaded are RTF and PDF (WTF?), both of which I know can be malicious but neither of which have been mentioned in this.

And, the articles I've read said that the anti-virus programs couldn't detect this one, at least not initially (they seem to be able to now).

At one point her computer simply stopped working--you couldn't click on anything.

If I wanted to simply re-install Windows over the old installation, of course the software that comes iwth the computer can't just be an XP disk, no, because you might use it for something else (like a coaster!), so instead it's a setup disk which must wipe away everything to leave your computer showroom fresh, which is lovely, if you don't need any of your data. And, better yet, nowhere in the software or the documentation or online is there any explanation of exactly what this software does--does it wipe your disk, is there a way to reinstall windows and keep your data? There's no way to know.

First, I took out the battery and unplugged the computer and left it off for five minutes.

Unplugging a computer is a very old-school trick, but something I've always believed in--you have to show them who's boss. In this case, as long as the battery was in, something could be stuck in memory. I know, techies laugh at this, but having something completely off, for several minutes at least, really does make a difference.

Then I basically beat Windows into submission. I held down the shift key while windows was starting to the point where the explorer crashed, then re-started, then I could at least access it.

Then I hooked up a USB hard disk and backed up ALL her files (though now I'm concerned because it says the worm can be spread from USB sticks--though it seems to be from their "autorun" feature, and a USB hard drive doesn't have this. I'm also worried because I used my camera's 8GB SD card in a USB stick to load software onto her computer so I wonder if that'll now infect my camera. IT'S INSANE!

I have wiped that SD card, there's nothing on it (at least that I could see either on a PC or Mac) so it's probably fine--and I just formatted it on the camera to make sure it's totally clear. Even so, IT'S INSANE.

Then it took THREE different spyware search programs to find it all. the first (Malware) did nothing! The second (SuperAntiSpyware!) did one pass that took an hour and found a lot of stuff, deleted it and restarted. then it had to update it's virus listings, do it all again and restart again.

Then I installed Avast anti-virus, (bless them), which did another hour long scan--this one in DOS before Windows booted, so it could delete files that the other ones couldn't delete. Amazingly, Avast is free for personal use, and, it doesn't seem to have slowed things down the way Norton always did.

But this is freaking insane. People aren't sure exactly where the worm comes from, how you get it, or how to completely protect yourself.

After things were working I cleared out all TEMP files, both IE's and Windows, and I went into IE and set the security to the highest level. We don't use IE, but other things do, so the security setting seemed important.

Then I went to make sure that Windows was up to date using Windows Update--and because it uses an Active-X control, it wouldn't work if IE was set to high security.

So Micorsoft's own autoupdate feature won't work if you set their own browser to high security. Why? because the high security setting basically ensures that nothing will work. Yes, that'll keep you safe... except, um, it doesn't.

Supposedly if you are sure to use Windows update and keep it updated, then MS had a patch for this--but her computer was updated automatically and had the latest stuff and still got it!

And, of course, the most important update Windows Update has to get is the "Genuine Windows Advantage!" of course, we all know who's advantage that program is serving, and it's not the user's.

MICROSOFT'S IDEA OF SECURITY IS LIKE A CAR MAKER WHO DECIDED THE ONLY WAY TO MAKE SURE PEOPLE AREN'T INJURED IN THEIR CAR IS TO MAKE SURE THEIR CAR WON'T RUN!

There's famously funny analogy about "if Microsoft made cars..." that I didn't write but include below.

So I literally spent ALL DAY getting her computer back and running--and felt GRATEFUL that I was able to do it, and didn't have to pay hundreds of dollars to someone else to do it, which most people probably have to.

And there's no guarantee that the worm or virus isn't now just lying dormant, to pop up at some later time and turn the computer into a bot--that's what security experts are concerned about. I think it's gone, but is it?

How has Microsoft been allowed to get away with such SHODDY WORK for SO LONG.

The amount of productivity that has been lost because of MS's incompetence and disregard for users is so huge that I wonder if everyone just switched away from Windows right now if the current economic crisis would be resolved. Corporate profits wold rise, more people could be hired...

of course, the learning curve would require too much time, so apparently it's better to stick with what works--even if it doesn't.

IF MICROSOFT MADE CARS:

1. For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and drive on.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn, would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought "Car95" or "CarNT." But then you would have to buy more seats.
6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five per cent of the roads.
7. The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single "general car default" warning light.
8. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
9. The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.
10. Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grab hold of the radio antenna.
11. MS would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a MS subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, MS would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.
12. Everytime MS introduced a new model car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
13. You'd press the "start" button to shut off the engine.

Why doesn't Windows just work like the Mac does?

2009-01-13T02:21:00.001-08:00

First I have to say I find it amazing that computers work as well as they do. Then again, I find it amazing that electricity and light bulbs work!

But--the less I use Windows, the less tolerant I am of all the crap it puts people through, and how tolerant people are of the crap, because they think it must be their own fault.

All the anti-virus software is only necessary because Windows, even "secure vista" is so full of holes that it's an open invitation to hackers. Norton conflicts with many things--even installing software. But it's better than McAfee which itself is so insecure that the only time I ever got a computer virus was when I was running a completely up to date version of McAfee--total and complete worthless crap software.

In my last few months of a Windows machine, I finally uninstalled Norton. My computer ran TWICE as fast, really. Norton was either working so hard, or so badly designed ,or both, that it made my computer almost unusable.

As long as you have some sense about web sites and attachments (and gmail helps, since it has a good virus scanner), then you don't need that stuff. Yes, Windows viruses can appear in so many ways, including web pages that look real and just say you need a new version of flash--which of course you want to install. So you can be smart and still get a virus. But shouldn't Windows be smart enough to avoid that?

Instead, it's "security" consists of boxes that tell you, "Are you sure?" as if you, the normal user, can really be sure if something is safe? Again, they're making it your problem, taking your time, and really not protecting you, just annoying you.

===

My recent experience with two digital videos cameras, my sister's and niece's, were perfect examples of what's wrong with Windows. Sis's is Sony. It's nice hardware, as Sony always is--though I never buy sony anymore because in my experience they cost more and break faster.

Anyway, They take it to Mongolia (see http://skyhorse.com/sky/html/mongolian_leather_project.html for a slide show I made for them in Picasa--software for Windows and Mac from Google) and take hours of movies. Then they want me to edit them down to a short little film.

Should be easy, right? Should just be able to drop the files into Windows Movie Maker, which is a good-enough good copy of iMovie. Right?

Wrong. SONY uses MPG2, which is an older format. MPG4 is the new one, but Sony doesn't use it for some reason.

Windows movie maker, and windows media player, don't handle MPG2, or even have codecs that can be downloaded. So they can show the video, but won't play the sound. I did a google search and there are only like 17,000 people asking "why doesn't my sound play?"

On Windows. Which has a majority of the market. It doesn't support a basic form of MPG which is 10 years old. Why not?

And why doesn't Sony simply ship a codec? Nope, instead, they ship a total piece of shit software program that took three hours to import the videos from the camera (I downloaded them from the camera, as if it was a USB drive, in five minutes on the Mac). then the software took ALL NIGHT to "analyze" the videos. What is that? Not sure, it makes a few useless thumbnails.

Then once all that is done, it doesn't really work and tries to do the overnight thing repeatedly, even though it's already done it. Then it still doesn't show the thumbnails.

And what does this Sony software do besides waste time? Nothing, really. Except play the movies with sound.

Instead, they could have shipped a simple codec for Windows Media player and the movie editor. But no.

So now I want to edit, how do I do that? First, spend a few hours doing research. Then find some tools, a few of them for free. These will convert SONY's old format to MPG4, which Windows Movie Maker will accept. Except that converting a three minute video takes 15 minutes. And they have 312 videos. And there's no batch mode. Oh holy mother.

Let's compare this with the Mac side.

You plug in the camera. The Mac says, "Oh, look, it's a camera, and a disk drive--here are the files." you drag them to your mac, which takes 5 minutes instead of 90. Now, to be fair, if you double click you get picture without sound--but at least Quicktime will tell you that for $19 you can buy QT pro which has MPG2 support.

And--iMovie supports MPG2 natively, so you don't need filters or conversions, you can simply edit your movie.

How hard is that?

Why couldn't MS do this?

Why couldn't Sony do this?

===

My niece's camera is a JVC. So hard to connect to a PC that her husband simply wanted to just buy a new camera rather than try to figure it out. Oh.

It takes me about 15 minutes to figure out, so you know it's hard, and then it works as a USB drive and moving the files is easy.

But these are also a weird-ass format of MPG that Windows Media doesn't recognize, and JVC also neglects to supply codecs. They do, however, supply some half-assed editing software. So I install it, or try. It fails the first time. I uninstall what it installed. I restart. It fails to install the second time. I uninstall and restart.

It installs the third time, only this time when it runs it insists on finding some piece of gallery software that somehow wasn't included on the CD, and it won't run without it--unless you hit cancel three times.

So, to run it, we start it, hit cancel three times fast, then run it. I am not kidding. Why the hell should you have to hit cancel three times to get software to run because it shipped without some vital pieces? Why wouldn't it simply install properly?

On the Mac installation is usually as simple as dragging a program to the applications folder. No fancy install process. No fancy uninstall process (though Microsoft apps all have messy complicated installs and uninstalls, because they must be necessary, right?)

So, if you're like my nephew-in-law, it's just too hard to figure this out. And you feel stupid, which you may well be, but in fact, the whole system and setup and format is so insultingly and unecessarily complex that even when you're smart it's hard.

That's just wrong. It's wrong to pay $800 for a camera that makes files you can't edit--and not tell you this. Instead, they say they have windows software, and do, but the software won't install or won't work, or doesn't really do anything. It makes no sense. It wouldn't be hard to make it right, but they've jumped through hoops to make it wrong.

Meanwhile, on the Mac...

When I first got my Mac I would spend time trying to figure out how it was doing things, where file were, what I'd have to do to make it work. Then I realized I didn't need to know any of that, because it was working correctly and would do what was necessary without me having to be smart enough to make it work.

This kind of user-centered design seems futuristic to Windows users, and is an everyday reality to Mac users.

And the only program I've had problems with on the Mac? Microsoft Word. It's true. All the trouble of the Windows version translated annoyingly to the Mac. Great job, MS!

Now MS is trying to say "Windows vista isn't as horrible as everybody says." That's their big glowing statement. And "Windows 7 will actually work!" Except, like Bush, they've said the same stuff for so long, and it's been either wrong or a lie for so long, why should anyone believe them now?

They've lowered the productivity of computer users around the world. Instead of "innovation" that they've claimed, they've held back the design improvements of computer software for a generation.

Apple has made plenty of mistakes. And I used to think their closed systems were arrogant. But, in fact, when it comes to computers, it makes sense for hardware and software to work together. It makes sense, at least, when the company actually cares about the people who use their computers (not just weird corporate IT guys), cares about designing beautiful products, cares about supporting customers in stunningly good ways (go to an Apple store or call Apple support to see--you get actual help, and in the stores you can get both support and training).

And on the Mac stuff tends to just work, as if by magic, but really, by design.

I'm sold, completely. They've won me over and shown me, over and over again, why people who use Apple's are fans, not just users.

GOING POSTAL: USPS.com click 'n ship tips for Mac

2008-12-19T21:58:00.001-08:00

(First, to be fair, the post office has gotten a lot faster and more reliable in the past few years)

But--while reither rain nor sleet nor dark of night can stop the US Post Office... a simple Apple Macintosh can.

If you use a Mac and you've tried to use their Click 'n Ship system, you can see how badly they've screwed up on something that could and should not only be simple, but simpler on the Mac than under Windows.

Click-n-ship (what is this with the 'n, the 50's?) is a great idea--you can create a standardized label online that the postal equipment can read automatically, therefore helping your mail get delivered--faster (and with more certainty).

It prints labels with a standard font (Arial) and machine-readable bar-codes in just exactly the format the Post Office wants. Make it easier on them, and you have a better chance of your mail getting delivered.

You used to be able to print a label and pay for postage at the post office, but apparently this was TOO convenient (and I suspect too much mail got through, sans postage), and now you have to pay for postage before you can print your label.

The trouble with this is that the system can charge you for your postage even when your label won't print. This happened to me in August. I tried to print the label, but it wouldn't print, because the post office doesn't give Mac users simple directions:

TIP FOR MAC USERS AT USPS: When it asks if you want to open or save the PDF file of the label it's going to print, ALWAYS CHOOSE SAVE and always make sure the filename ends in .PDF.

If the USPS site just ended the file in PDF it would work right but they don't, so if you choose "open" it won't open and won't print and you may get charged for postage you haven't used.

My complaint is that the post office charged me twice for one package--and now keeps insisting I pay for this same package again. They charged me, I said it didn't print. The site said, "OK, we've canceled it, try again," I figured out how to save and rename the file, then print it, then I was charged for postage twice, now I'm being hounded to pay for it a third time. I refuse and keep sending emails to USPS customer support and keep getting back boilerplate that looks like it was sent without being touched by human hands, eyes or brains.

So, anyway, the bottom line here is that you can use the USPS Click-n-ship with the Mac, just SAVE and RENAME the PDF, then print it, then click on "yes, this printed OK" so you're charged. Otherwise, you may be charged without it ever printing correctly!

COMEDY IMPROV - Kinda Like That!

2008-12-09T20:15:00.000-08:00

Kinda Like That is a comedy improv show that follows the therapy group of former child-star Ricky Ray Silver. We see the stories of the members through their own eyes (I know, it's very, very exciting)

THIS SHOW IS FUNNY--WATCH IT!

I created, produced, and appear in the show with a cast of hilariously talented actors. These people are really and truly great, and better than SNL.

It's also SO much better than that stupid Lisa Kudrow therapy improv show that could have copied us since I had the idea first! (there's probably ad for her show on the right--don't watch it, it blows and is paid for by Lexus because she was on Friends--ug!)

I'm being all Googly and putting the show online in beta. This basically means it's done but I want people to look at it and let me know if there are any glaring errors anywhere, and if so I can change them before I say "Now I shall release it on an unsuspecting world (ha ha ha ha ha)!"

And, of course, so YOU CAN WATCH IT AND LAUGH and TELL YOUR FRIENDS.

GO THERE NOW!

(why are you still reading this--go! Go now! Go here http://lolchemedia.com/)

Oh, for goodness sake, you're still reading. Can you not take a hint? http://lolchemedia.com/

There.

I'm not telling you again.

I'm not.

OK, here it is again:

Kinda Like That! If you don't go now then I'm done with you.

I mean, really. Do I have to spell it out for you. Fine, it's spelled out below. Just click already.

Kinda Like That!

Daylight Saving time does NOT save Daylight!

2008-11-01T18:39:00.001-07:00

Every year, twice a year in fact, I ask, "WHAT IS THE POINT OF DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME?"

People have been taught that it's good for farmers. This makes no sense. It does not actually give them more daylight during which their crop can grow, it just changes the clock.

"Well, we don't want farmer's starting in the dark, or kids going to school in the dark," they say, but they don't say that those same people will end up working or going home in the dark because they've made it dark earlier!

It already gets dark earlier in the fall, so why does this stupid system make it get dark even earlier?

If it was the opposite, to even out the "time" when the sun set, I'd understand it. If they just left it alone, as I'm sure God or whoever intended, I'd love that. But this twice a year messing with the clock is pointless, annoying and stupid.

Oh, and it makes traffic a mess. For a week after it happens, people are so surprised it's dark they forget how to drive in their hysteria to get home before it gets dark--as if they've never seen the dark before.

If people want it to be light earlier--get up earlier. If they want it to be dark later, get up earlier.

But don't force everybody else to have it get dark at 5pm just because you want it to be light early. Some of us don't want it light early. Some of us would like it to get dark at 6pm when it would have gotten dark if you hadn't fiddled with it.

Some of us hate that in the summer it gets dark at 9:30pm, and in the winter 5pm. That's too much of a gap. If they didn't mess with the clock it'd get dark at 8:30 and 6, that's tolerable because--gee--it's NATURAL!!!

If we really wanted to save the energy consumption associated with lighting, then we'd have year-long daylight saving time. The clock would ALWAYS be an hour later than it otherwise would be.

According to the State of California's own web site, " California asked for federal "approval" to move to a "year-round" Daylight Saving Time in 2001-2002 because of its energy crisis." (An energy-crisis made up by Enron to blackmail the state into giving them 10 billion dollars more--remember that, remember that the head of Enron was best friends with Bush? Ah, memories, light the corners of my mind--don't forget when it's time to vote!)

Of course, the whole idea that it saves energy is debatable. The California web site says, " One of the biggest reasons we change our clocks to Daylight Saving Time (DST) is that it reportedly saves electricity. Newer studies are being done to see if that long-held reason is true." Really--so we say it says energy because somebody told us that, but, gee, studies by the National Bureau of Standards find that isn't true.

According to Wikipedia: "Robertson Davies, detected "the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves", and wags have dubbed it "Daylight Slaving Time""

So--it's time we stopped fooling with time! Leave the clock again. Down with Daylight Saving. Imagine the time we'll actually save not having to change all those clocks...

California should secede from the Union before Alaska does!

2008-10-14T21:06:00.000-07:00

Long before we all heard that Sarah Palin wanted Alaska to secede from the union (country first!), I called for California's secession.

Look--California is the 7th largest economy in the world, most of our federal tax goes to Alaska and North Dakota, and the feds keep stepping on our medical marijuana laws! I really don't see the point of them.

I also think the states of Washington and Oregon should come along with us--though we'd still have to be called California because of the strong global brand equity (besides, nobody outside of the US has ever heard of Oregon, and at least 50% of the people in the US have never heard of it either, and let's not forget there's already a Washington DC so having two is just confusing).

California has plenty of military contractors, so we don't need the US military which is now mostly all in Iraq anyway. Yes, we're in debt now, but not as bad as the USA, and come on, this is California, we could pass the plate in Beverly Hills and raise enough to keep the state going for a year. I'm sure tom Cruise would be happy to donate a few hundred million--think of the publicity value!

California grows most of the food--so we will make a fortune off the rest of the 47 states (46 is Alaska breaks off and becomes part of the USSR... oh, that doesn't exist anymore, well, it's not like anybody will notice).

California has the golden gate bridge and the Hollywood sign, two things in every American movie, so most people around the world consider California to BE the USA. What we don't have, we can easily copy enough in Anaheim. Disney can build a "USA" park so people don't have to bother with places like NY. And Las Vegas isn't far and they have NY there already.

We will build a train from Tijuana to Vancouver just to make it easier for anyone visiting and for those Canadians wanting to live in Mexico.

I think we should give Nevada a favored nation status, just to piss off places like Texas. And of course, Mexico and Canada will be like they were--no passport needed. Just travel freely in our own form of CaFTA.

Oh--while I'm on the subject of Mexico--my other grand plan is to move the entire state of Israel to Baja California. The Israeli's could afford to buy Baja in its entirety, even move the most important sites like the wailing wall and dome of the rock there, lock, stock and dueling religions.

Then the state of Israel will finally be safe, and also conveniently located to California for shopping and waxing (yet another reason for the train).

Israel could afford to do this for the cost of their year defense budget, and then California could hire Israel for some truly kick-ass security.

The only thing--we can't have Arnold as our president. It's just too stupid and reminiscent of Reagan. Warren Beatty would be fine, though.

Get a REAL life (dump the BlackBerry, iPod and iPhone)

2008-10-11T00:24:00.000-07:00

I've always said that reality is overrated. So I've gotten good at diving into my imagination, any time, any place, and making up better stories than I'm seeing or feeling. Or, failing that, falling asleep.

But lately I've come to realize that, like it or not, there is a place for reality in our lives, and that our constant self-soothing distraction from it is part of the reason things are falling apart.

I could say this goes back to the transistor radio, when people could carry music with them in a small, cheap form. Then they could listen to other people's music instead of the music of the world, or their own mind. Or before that--paper back books, that made it easier and more affordable to get lost in a book, anywhere.

But they were minor compared with the Walkman, which was minor compared to the iPod. And even the iPod paled in comparison with the BlackBerry, iPhone, and new video iPods which require all your attention--and even call out for it constantly.

The BlackBerry is a horrible corporatization of the mind. Many people are given them by employers so they can be kept on a leash, 24-7.

And BlackBerry people often seem to think that they are so vital, so indispensable to the world that they cannot even turn them off while they sleep (and the health effects of all that radio wave energy is yet another issue).

The iPhone is offensive in this way, too, cutting you off from reality--or at least the world around you--and adds more visual distractions.

Some people say cell phones were the main thing that started to take people in public places into their own private spaces. That's true, but while talking you can still see around you (though it's been proven that most people can't really see and hear at the same time--one always takes priority--which is why singers often rehearse with their eyes closed so they're not distracted by anything visual and can concentrate entirely on the sound.)

With the BlackBerry and iPhone you're looking and listening and immersed in this little device and unaware of the rest of the world and I think that's quite damaging, socially, personally.

I started to feel this recently, so I put my theory to the test--on myself.

I bought the $20 unlimited data package for my Treo this month, because I was out a lot and I wanted to see how useful I'd actually find it.

I HATE it. Loathe it. I'm on the internet enough at home, and I don't need to sever my relationship with the outside world to stare at a tiny glowing screen. I will not buy another data package.

I'll add that I'm fine with SMS and text messaging--those are brief interruptions and outside connections and they're fine--and also very handy, "I'm running late," "thanks for lunch," they're a modern-day thank you note.

But I'm even more glad I don't have an iPhone or even an iPod--I don't want to be shut out from the sounds of the world, either. I often turn the radio off in my car because I want to hear the sounds the car makes, or the wind, the birds--sounds of the world!

Sure, I turn it on when I want to stop hearing traffic or better yet, stop thinking, which is what I think a lot of people do, but we now have so many things to schlep around with us to distract us from ourselves that it's as if some people are already SIMs, living corporally in the world of air, but doing so unconsciously, their minds being fed intra-aurally by other people's sounds. I find it sad and disturbing.

So much for my rant. I'll put it on blogger so I can fill other people's minds with my thoughts :)

Who needs Microsoft?

2008-08-08T01:38:00.000-07:00

MojaveExperiment.com

That's Microsoft's latest sad attempt to try to get people to buy Windows Vista, an operating system that requires twice as much computer horsepower to work at half the speed. It makes no sense. It copies some pretty features from the Mac, but doesn't deliver the same kind of smooth, speedy experience.

It is, in current lingo, EPIC FAIL.

That's not good.

Word of mouth was so bad people stayed away in droves. Ordering new computers with the old XP operating system as long as they could.

Microsoft's marketing geniuses had an idea. It's basically the old Folgers Coffee Crystals TV commercial. People fancy restaurant are served instant coffee, then are surprised because it tasted so good. Well, it tasted good because they were in an expensive restaurant and assumed it would.

So now they let people vent about Vista, which they do. It's weird that the opening of this site is people telling their word-of-mouth horror stories about Vista. It's slow. It's buggy. It crashes. They come out and say it.

Of course, they then try to disprove it, but there must be a reason the word-of-mouth is so bad.

Then they demo certain Vista features and people are impressed and say they'd buy it.

Seeing a demo of software is not the same as using it.

I've worked in the software biz, and Demos are the best way to show off software, because you show what you think works best, in the way you think will be most impressive. "Look how easy!" "Look how fast!"

It's the real software in action, but the actions it's doing are only the ones you've cherry picked because they are like the icing on the cake.

You don't show people boot up time, or file load time, or anything where they have to wait. You don't show people commands that are buried, hard to find, or clumsily implemented.

In short--you show them the software you want to show them--and nothing else.

And if you are good at software demos, you can make even the worst software look good.

Which is precisely what they did here.

"Many said they would have rated it higher but they wanted more time to play with it." Well, they can say that, but the truth is if they'd had more time, they would have rated it the way their terrible word-of-mouth friends did.

In the case of demos, seeing isn't believing, because as soon as you get your hands on it and try to do work, then you're outside the magic "demo bubble" and you find yourself waiting, confused, angry, waiting, wondering why on earth something as simple as opening a web page is taking so freakishly long on a brand new computer (yes, that's been my experience with Vista). What is the OS doing that is taking so long, just to open a web page? This was on a fast broadband connection and it was still slow.

What is Vista doing, and why am I sitting there waiting for it? Why would this be twice as fast in XP and even faster on the Mac. I'm not asking Vista to do something complicated. Opening a web page is very, very basic. Yet it's also very, very slow.

It's pathetic.

One of the great taste studies is when people prefer Pepsi over Coke based on a tiny sample because Pepsi is sweeter. But when drinking a whole can, they prefer Coke because Pepsi's sweet taste becomes overwhelming. But people made decisions based on the little sip.

So these people have been given a demo "sip" of Vista, which does look much sweeter than XP, but if they had to sit down and use it, they'd hate it as much as everyone who already told them they hate it!

If you click on the "facts" page, you're taking to a page that's inexplicably set as a graphic, a GIF file, rather than text. Why is that? So google can't index it? So bloggers can't easily copy and paste their "facts" to show how weak they are?

http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/facts/

Wow, Vista's 60% less likely to be infected with a virus. Wow, they only left a hole 40% wide. Good job!

If you read the fine print--and it's really fine, you'll see that less than half of Vista users are satisfied. That's not a good number, is it? They manage to add this to the number who are very satisfied (43%) and come up with a 89% satisfaction rating--I am not sure how that math works, but doesn't sound right.

I can clearly see where the billions in R&D has gone. Drugs.

I'll hand it to the advertising agency who did this, trying to turn negatives into positives. It's clever, and will work for people who don't know any better. Of course, those who don't know any better would have bought it anyway, and will never quite be able to get it to work right. So what does it matter.

But Microsoft is saying, "We can't fix the software, but perhaps we can fix the perception of the software."

Microsoft is where the Detroit automakers were in the 70's. Making money selling crap, and in selling crap they're ruining their reputation.

It took Detroit 20 years to figure this out and start building better cars. Detroit now builds some of the best cars in the world (really).

Unfortunately, all those years of selling crap means the perception is they still make crap. If you don't believe me, then you already see the power of perception.

You can't change the overall perception of products through manipulation. You can only change it by making better products. And it takes a long time to get customers to forget your crap.

So first Microsoft has to stop putting out crap. And it would be nice if it would also price it fairly for a change.

Then it can get real word of mouth, and even then, it will take years for customers to get over their hated of Vista, and by association, Microsoft.

It can be done. I'd buy a Chevy Malibu, HHR, Pontiac Solstice, Cadillac CTS, XLR, or a Ford Mustang, Escape Hybrid, even a Jeep Patriot. Those are all American cars.

But I won't buy Windows Vista or Microsoft office. I don't need to. I can buy a Mac (and did), I can use Google Docs, or Adobe Buzzword, both good, easy, and free online word processing programs.

Who needs Microsoft?

I don't. You probably don't, either.

Mobile Me - Doomed from the Logo down

2008-07-24T23:29:00.000-07:00

First, I have to say I'm a recent convert to all things Apple. They've always been beautiful, and with OS/X they also got far better than Windows, and I switched.

Apple's design is always elegant and exquisite, from the smallest piece of printed material, to the their web site to their OS icons and screens.

And then came the cute-ish Mobile Me cloud logo with (gasp!) script lettering. The only other script face I can remember ever used on an Apple was the very first Mac's originally "Hello" that appeared on-screen in advertisements. That was to show that the machine could do graphics, something other computers at the time usually couldn't. that made a point.

But the new MobileMe script looks so overtly cutesy it could have been found on a package of diapers--meaning, disposable.

In short, the Mobile Me logo just didn't look Apple.

Even the very first Macintosh logos, still with the very 1970's disco Rainbow Apple, even those used a classic typeface, Garamond, customized for them.

The newer "Look how serious and elegant I am," black apple uses a simple sans serif, Myriad.

But the fluffy Mobile Me logo used Myriad, and a "just a little too happy" Me handwritten, badly.

I personally know at least two calligrapher/type designers who could have given the word "me" some personality here (Jill Bell leaps instantly to mind), instead of making it look childish at best or like the dreaded "Windows ME" at worst (as seen in this shocking comparison from Paul Thurott's winsupersite.com:

E-gads! It makes me think St. Jobs is actually sick again after all (I hope not and am sending him good healing vibes right now), because I can't imagine him ever approving this, ever.

As soon as I saw it I thought, "that's not very Apple," and then of course, the roll out has been a complete disaster, not working, people not being able to send or receive mail, people losing the mail they already had (see David Pogue's NYT article).

So it's interesting to see how a lack of attention, from the very start, showed a lack of attention all the way through.

Not very Apple.

SEARS SUCKS, here's why!

2008-06-17T15:33:00.000-07:00

When I grew up, Sears was the only place to buy an appliance.

Now I will never buy another appliance, or anything else from them.

Why? Because my refrigerator has been a problem from the beginning and got so bad last month I couldn't open the freezer door--all the while it was leaking water on my kitchen floor.

So I called for service--I have service contract and everything. And they said they could be there in, oh, three weeks. Three weeks with no freezer and water on the floor.

That's not service, that's neglect.

I called again, hoping to find someone reasonable, but I didn't. In fact, every time they tried to transfer to someone who "might" help they hung up on me. Every single time.

Two days, and more than two hours of hold time later, I somehow finally got to a manager who said she could give me the number where I could talk to a technician.

It's a very secret number apparently nobody else in the Service Department knew, or felt they could divulge.

HERE IT IS: 800-473-7247
(note: this number may not work by the time you call it, but hey give it a try!)

Once there a tech said he couldn't send anyone out earlier (apparently this wasn't considered serious enough), but he said I could move the refrigerator, unplug it, let it defrost, then clean it out and restart it.

Now--remember--this is a supposedly "frost free" freezer by Amana, but it has consistently built up ice fast enough to replace what's being lost by glaciers. Every few weeks I have to turn it off and pry out a piece of ice two inches thick--always fun for the entire family.

Now, since I couldn't open the door to turn it off, I did have to drag the refrigerator forward (why don't they come with easy-slide feet?) unplug it, and wait, and wait, and wait... almost 24 hours, before the freezer would open and I could go through the whole mini-glacier removal routine.

Now--I will admit to having made four crucial mistakes

I should have turned off and defrosted the freezer before it got stuck shut. This model has the freezer on the bottom in a slide-out basket, and it's very poorly designed, so that the sliders can get full of ice and become immobile. Perhaps the designers didn't realize that the freezer would be cold or that ice might accumulate. I hope the designers have not moved on to Boeing.
I should have called for service before I really needed it--and showed the tech that the freezer is flawed and isn't defrosting.
I should have just let the tech come out even though there's no problem, just so I could waste more of my time on their defective appliance.
I should have kept my cool (or been frozen) when I called and was confronted with an agent so incredibly stupid that if I was there in person I would have been forced to bitch slap her, perhaps repeatedly.

So, I called to cancel the appointment. I said I took care of it and her immediate response was, "Then you've voided the warranty."

WTF? I mean really, WTF?

I explained that no actual repair had been done, it just needed to be moved, unplugged, defrosted, and cleaned, and that's what I did.

She repeated--"If anyone other than our techs worked on it then you voided your warranty."

Now, instead of saying, "Like the warranty was worth anything," or, more nicely, "You don't seem to understand, please listen to what I'm saying. Nobody repaired the refrigerator, I just defrosted it," I LOST IT.

After three weeks of this, an immobile freezer, a wet kitchen floor, and no help from the Sears, to be confronted with the loss of whatever warranty I had now made me so livid I started screaming in the phone.

Now--I know this isn't good, and I've never before yelled at a service person on the phone or in person--because I know it's not their fault if the system won't allow them to do what's right.

But in this case, the telephone agent WAS at fault, she had decided I'd voided my warranty, she repeatedly told me that she was putting it in my record, and she refused to listen to my description of the highly technical service I performed--namely a defrost.

So I yelled, and yelled, and yelled, so much so that I'm hoarse now. I don't remember what I said other than something like, "If you void the warranty I'm going to have a seizure," when of course what I really wanted to say but somehow retained enough control to avoid saying was something more like, "If you void my warranty I will hunt you down and treat you like one of Dick Cheney's hunting buddies."

When I was done screaming, amazingly, she was still on the line, which leads me to believe she was either 1) a cyborg, or more likely, 2) a sociopath with no understanding of other people's pain (think George W. Bush). I insisted she connect me with her manager.

And--amazingly, she did, and even more amazingly, I was not disconnected, though I was on hold for so long I figured they were just tormenting me and they'd hang up at any time, or I would get tired of waiting and hang up (I almost did).

Finally the manager answered, I explained it all to him, I apologized for yelling but explained why. He calmly said, "That wouldn't void your warranty," like--DUH--but did note that she'd written it on my permanent record.

I insisted that he personally excise it, which he said he did (though I didn't believe him--I thought he was probably writing, "THIS CUSTOMER IS SERIOUSLY PSYCHOTIC AND PERHAPS DANGEROUS, when sending a tech to his residence CARRY A TASER, BRO!"

Other than un-voiding my warranty, he could do nothing for me. Not offer a refund, or a coupon for something polyester from the men's department, or a Craftsman Drill or anything.

So my hours and weeks of fuss, and my own personal time and effort were not recognized at all. In fact, I just barely avoided being voided!

Once I hung up, I remembered I was trying to do them a favor by not wasting their tech's time--instead, I wasted mine. And my breath.

Now I was too mad not to do something else, so I found a boilerplate email Sears sent after my first complaint, with a customer service number.

I called this and said I needed to complain about the repair service and she was going to connect me to them, and I had to beg her not to--they're not help, they don't listen, please, I need to speak to someone in customer service.

So I was connected to a southern women who must have the patience of a saint, because her job is, apparently, to listen to irate customers complaining about how they've been abused, and then to say, "I'm so sorry this happened," while still offering no kind of help at all. What an awful job that must be.

She did tell me that the service call was still scheduled (so neither the sociopath-idiot who voided my warranty or her manager canceled it, which is the only reason I called!), so she canceled it.

I asked if there was any kind of compensation, to which she said No, then she said, "Did you lose food in the process?" Well, of course, food defrosted, milk spoiled, all that. So now she connected me with yet another Southern Woman, this one not so nice because it was her job to say, "Here's why you don't qualify" (it's clearly a finely tuned system--finely tuned to avoid doing anything).

She explained to me that the service department had been downsized.

I explained to her that, oddly, my service contract fee had not been lowered to reflect the downsizing.

She didn't laugh, or even find this ironic.

She said that the only way for me to get reimbursed (up to $250 per year per contract) was to make a list at the time and then give that list to the technician when they arrived.

WTF?

That's right, my now canceled service call was necessary to be reimbursed, but it was canceled (not that I'd have known I could get compensation because it took only two hours and four people to reach someone who'd let me in on that secret).

I asked her if she thought it was a good use of the downsized technician pool to have one drive out to my house for the sole purpose of collecting a list of spoiled food, and she said "that's the way we do it," as if this was an answer.

So--now I will have to schedule another service call, wait another three weeks, and stay home so a tech can come and pick up a list.

And, I can remember NEVER TO BUY ANYTHING ELSE FROM SEARS--EVER.

I can guess how Sears went to hell in a broken freezer.

It's when they were bought by bankrupt K-mart. That's right. K-Mart was in bankruptcy yet still managed to buy the much larger Sears. Made no sense to me but it was one of those, "We're such smart financial guys we can turn negative numbers into positives-at least for us, everyone else can go f-themselves, we only care about money" moves.

So, now SEARS SUCKS. K-Mart has always sucked.

And my only remaining question is--where DO you buy appliances? Will BestBuy suck (they have been fine for me so far, but I've never needed service). Will they stay in business or go the way of GoodGuys and CompUSA?

Perhaps local appliance stores will come back to life, given the total incompetence Sears. Perhaps this is a good thing.

One more thing--this refrigerator has never been good. I used to swear by Amana but now I just swear at it.

First, when the refrigerator arrived, it was damaged, and the installer said, "If you just keep it we'll give you $50" (wow--what a savings on a $900 refrigerator that has arrived defective). When I said "no" they brought a new one.

Even so, I've had problems with the new one building up ice in the freezer.

And, come on, why is the design of refrigerators so freaking bad? It's not like they haven't had decades to think about it. When I was growing up my friend had this great refrigerator where all the shelves were like a lazy Susan--you simply turned them around. Nothing ever got stuck in the back for eternity.

Yet despite ever deeper door shelves for milk and condiments, the basic interior design of most refrigerators hasn't changed much in 40 years. They're still just big metal coffins that get cold.

Some now have three doors so more cold air can leak out. Really expensive ones have glass doors so you can stare at your food deciding what you want without letting the cold air out. And some masquerade as drawers and just slide out (until their little sliders freeze, in which case you have to figure out how to unplug a built-in--don't ask me, or Sears, how).

But why is that they shelves tend to be hard to adjust, that even when you do there are always things too tall to fit into the fridge without actually removing a shelf, or laying said item on its side?

Why are they so deep that stuff gets lost in the back? Why, even if you have newfangled shelves that slide out, are they so poorly designed that things fall off the back when you slide, encouraging to leave bad enough alone?

There must be a better way. Maybe James Dyson can re imagine the refrigerator.

Update: If you're having trouble with Sears or any other company try going to twitter and posting "Sears sucks" or whatever the company name is. Many companies now have customer service people trolling Twitter to find complains, and I've had more success there than anywhere else, but unfortunately the key us to put "sucks" at the end of their name, because that's what they're searching for!

How Microsoft should spend their $44 billion - PAY USERS

2008-05-05T22:13:00.000-07:00

"10 cents a search, that's what they pay me..."

(First, a note to Microsoft--these are really good ideas. They will work. I shouldn't be giving them to you for free, but having worked with Microsoft in the past, I know they will never do this, so I'm safe to put it online where perhaps Google can read it and do it).

Why is Microsoft buying Yahoo? Fear of Google (certainly). Market share (probably)? To buy their users (partly)? Brand (why)?

Microsoft has dumped billions into MSN and look what they've got? They clearly need help. But help doesn't have to mean buying Yahoo, just because they have a lot of users.

In a Web 2.0 world, help can and should come from the users themselves.

You can do a lot with 44 billion--I know!

In the days when AOL was big, they were spending, on average, $400 to get a new customer. Remember the endless CD's they'd send you in the mail? Free trials. It added up, but they bought themselves what was, at one time, the largest online community.

Today, wireless phone companies are spending, on average, $300 to get a new customer.

So how many customers could MS get with $40 billion? Did I hear 100 million? That would be pretty good.

So how do they buy the customers?

Well, rather than send crap in the mail, why not be direct, why not just PAY USERS FOR CLICKS.

It turns the Google model where advertiser's pay per click on its head.

Everything you do on LIVE.COM pays the user. (BTW: "Live.com" is such a great domain, better than Yahoo, but MS has failed to market it, which doesn't bode well, does it) .

Here's how it works!

First off, you get $10 to sign up (Google did this with checkout, they gave you $10 off the first time you used it).

How about 10 cents a search! Then, 25 cents to log in. 5 cents to send an email (that has a live.com ad at the bottom. Max $1 a day, $30 a month or something. Money is put right into an online debt card from MasterCard, Visa, Amex or Discover (all of whom are happy to play along). Everything's electronic and online. You could even do what I did with a recent debit card I got from test driving a car--pay myself on PayPal--so you have the cash).

The trick is to get people to sign up--and come back, every day--as a matter of routine. Paying them for everything they do does this. Look up something on a map? Get a dime. Get directions. A nickel. Print them out, a nickel.

Just like google ads, there's a daily cap to what you can earn, but if you can get people to come in and send 20 emails a day, or to use you first for maps because they're going to make money, then you're going to get people used to using your service.

Next radical move--pay people to click on ads.

Now, advertisers won't like this at first, so here's what you do:

Offer advertisers an extra 10% added on for free. That 10% is given to pay-users-to-click ads. Since they're targeted (rather than Yahoo's ads, which are just always flashing ads for mortgages and online schools and dating--regardless of what you're doing), they're going to get targeted customers to click on ads they wouldn't have otherwise (but now we;re getting 10-25 cents to click!).

Aflter a while advertisers will discover they're getting new leads and gee, that 10% free might just be the best part.

Everybody wins. MS gets market share and people who use them as a matter of daily routine. People get cash for using MS services. Advertisers get new leads.

What MS needs in terms of services: email and photo/video sharing. Those are the two gigantic things. Live email is not bad, it's better than hotmail which sucks. But they need targeted ads, ala Gmail.

Photo sharing, I don't know what MS has there at all. That's probably because they also need to spend a few million dollars making Live usable. Don't hide options under the Windows logo, thinking everyone has been trained like monkey to click on it. Unless you pay them to click on it, in which case, they will be trained like monkeys.

And name the stuff something we can understand. They have "Gallery" which isn't about photos at all, it's gadgets or something, it's not clear. They have "spaces" which I guess are blogs, but who knows? My guess is just about nobody.

They should spend 20-50 million to buy an existing picture sharing services such as shutterfly. It works, the bugs are out, it's connected to printing which also generates income (though wait--free pictures when you sign up, even free postage--get people to use the service).

Maps, they already have a very good mapping service.

MS really should have an online office suite but I can't see them doing that for fear that it would undermine Office, which it would. But they could do it and make it subscription (I think Google Docs will be subscription eventually, there are no ads there, but I think it'll also be something like $20 a year, which is well worth it).

I went to "Office Live" thinking it would be an office suite, but once again, it's something I don't quite understand--maybe it's web marketing. It's not clear. Oh, I can create a web site and buy ads. How, in this or any universe, should this be called "Office" when Microsoft Office has always been productivity tools like a word processor and spread sheet?

Even paying people they are going to have to stop being so freaking clueless when it comes to naming. You can't take a brand name like "Office" (so original in the first place) and suddenly make it about domain names and ads. It makes absolutely no sense and it undermines your brand.

What are they smoking in Redmond? Maybe it's just Ballmer's after shave which is making them too dizzy to think clearly.

I remember reading that Microsoft said they were working on their online office suite stuff, but I think that was vaporware, a threat to someone else who was actually doing it, because threats are easier than action. Adobe's new Buzzword, a flash-based word processor, is excellent. Moving in on Microsoft's territory. There are other web-based office suites that are quite good. MS--just buy one and start paying people to use it--25 cents to create a new document, 10 cents to print it, 10 cents to turn it into a blog posting...

They should also buy some Groups, Blogs, Calendar... from startups or experienced sites. There are so many of them out there, just itching to be bought. I don't want to to give them too many good ideas, but www.weebly.com is the best online web building system I've ever seen, better than Google's "Pages" (not a good name there, either!).

Microsoft then needs to do about a billion dollars in marketing, online--viral videos, on TV, in magazines and newspapers, all over the place. Once the word gets out that they're paying, it'll go viral--the world will know in well under an hour, so their billion dollar ad budget won't even be necessary and can be used paying users.

So let's say they spend $20 billion this way. They simply cannot lose. They will eclipse Yahoo at half the cost, and pose a real threat to Google, until Google starts paying users to sign up, log in, send emails, etc. which they might do.

And then who wins? Everybody.

So, throw everything on its head. Pay users, instead of them paying you. And the result is a massive increase in people paying you to reach the people you're paying.

Of course, this is just the basic idea. If you want details you're gonna have to pay me.
(originally posted 2/5/08, updated 5/8/08)

UPDATE 5/22/08 - MS IS paying... (did they read this?)

They ARE now paying users--but only if you buy something through a Live.com search. Read more...

Moving from Windows to iMac (vm good, parallels bad)

2008-05-01T19:11:00.001-07:00

I've used computer since before the Mac, Windows, even before DOS.

My first computer was in 1983. It was a "portable" KayPro computer the size of a sewing machine, in a 30 pound blue/green aluminum case, it was portable because it had a handle! It ran an operating system called CP/M. It had two "floppy" drives with 5.15" disks the size of small dinner plates. Each held a whopping 180K (not megabytes, K). The computer had a huge 64K of RAM. Again, K, not MB or GB. And it did word processing, spell checking, file management, and 300 baud (that's .3K!), all one one disk. I loved it.

I went from there to MS-DOS and IBM-PC's. I saw the original Apple II, and the $10,000 Apple Lisa. I saw the first "notebook" computer, and used the 7th laser printer made. I saw the fabled Xerox Star computer that was the model for the Mac graphical operating system (and Windows, too)

I chose DOS computers, then Windows, because I thought Apple's were overpriced (they were), over-hyped (they were) and were not "the computer for the rest of us," as they claimed, because "the rest of us" couldn't afford one!

The first version of Windows was horrible, useless. The first Mac was very cute but not very useful. So I watched them both evolve.

I chose Windows because I believed you could do desktop publishing with Windows (and I wrote the first book about DTP under Windows). Windows was a good choice for me because 90% of computer users used it, so when I wrote about it, I was writing to most people.

I used Windows for almost 20 years--while I thought it was truly better in terms of speed, efficiency, cost.

But I'm not loyal to software or hardware (only people).

And when my computer was getting too old and slow I had a choice--I could buy yet another computer with Windows--something big and loud using Windows XP... and then Vista came out. Windows Vista, a version 1.0 of a Microsoft product? Nope, I knew enough about V1 software to ever use a V1 operating system again.

Plus, Windows Vista ran at half the speed of XP without offering enough new to make it worthwhile.

And Windows computers tend to be big and loud--I wanted a quiet computer. My first KayPro was silent--no fan. My most recent Dell had fans like a 747--hit by rocks. I had to replace the powerpack twice, by myself, because every time it started to sound like a blender, twice.

I wanted something quiet. Fast. I thought about a custom-built PC, but when they proved to be more expensive than an iMac with an intel chip that would run Windows, I started to think about an iMac.

I'd go into the Apple store and play with the computers for hours. Apple is very smart about its stores. All the computers are connected to the web, and the salespeople there will let you use a computer all day long if you want--the more you use it, the more you appreciate it. They are confident about their product and it shows.

OS/X Leopard is beautifully designed. It's fast. It's easy. Unlike Windows where I constantly had to figure out how things worked for the computer, on the Mac I just thought about what I wanted to do and I could relax and let the computer figure out how to do it. That's how it should work.

I thought about it for 18 months, suffering with my old PC the whole time rather than move. But finally my old computer got too bad, so I ordered an iMac. And Parallels to run Windows.

The iMac arrived, beautifully packaged, and from the start the "experience" was good--it was easy to unpack. It was effortless to set up. It worked right out the box.

It's beautiful. Apple stuff always is. For years I managed to ignore it, but the iMac, with it's single, sleek stainless steel stand and screen, and it's futuristically flat and beautiful stainless steel keyboard--it's just a pleasure to look at.

I plugged in a USB drive I'd copied my Windows files onto, then copied them onto the Mac. OS/X's spotlight feature indexed them and I can find what I'm looking for out of literally hundreds of thousands of files. One day spotlight stopped for a half hour to index, but that's the only time I've ever seen it do that. Otherwise it just works. Under Windows I'd use various programs to index and find files and they would literally take days to index at the start, hours a day after that, and they would find slowly and inaccurately (even google desktop software).

So everything was going great. Then I installed Parallels Desktop software to run my Windows programs. Why do I need Windows programs? Because I use two graphics programs under Windows you can't get on the Mac!

One is Xara (www.xara.com) which is absolutely the best graphics program ever written. Photoshop and Illustrator are great programs, very powerful, but Xara is so streamlined, so fast, that I can do things in it in a fraction of the time (and steps) that would take in either of the CS programs. Xara is great for the web, it's great for print. It anti-aliases everything in real time, it has incredible transparency features and text handling. It exports directly to PDF/X, the industry standard for printing. Now it can even export fully functional web sites. Here's some of my work, all done using Xara.

The other program I still use is NetObjects Fusion, a web building program that automates many web building tasks. It's all drag and drop and WYSIWYG and I still think it's great software. I also know it inside and out, can build slick sites quickly in it (here's my web portfolio).

Parallels was the first software to let you run Windows programs on the Intel-based Mac. It got a lot of hype and helped people move from Windows to the Mac.

The other choice was "Boot Camp," Apple's own software that let you boot up your Mac as a Windows computer, or a Mac computer, your choice. So you could have all the speed (and beauty!) of the new Mac hardware, or you could run it as a Mac.

But Parallels promised to let you have your Windows and Mac it, too. So I bought it. And tried to install it.

It didn't install right from the start. And the documentation was long, badly designed, poorly printed, and highly technical. I'm technical but I didn't want to have to deal with that. But I did have to deal with that.

I finally got it installed after a couple of attempted, then had to install Windows, which also froze twice, and then twice more to install the SP2 update.

Once installed Parallels crashed. And crashed. And crashed. Copying files using the Windows explorer made it crash. Saving files in Xara made it crash. Clearly something was wrong.

So I uninstalled, then reinstalled it all over again. And it worked just as badly. And it was slow.

But I just kept throwing good time and money after bad and tried to get Parallels to work.

Then one day it just wouldn't start. It said my windows disk was in use by another program (it wasn't). It said it was locked (it wasn't). Parallels email tech support and I went back and forth for days. I'd go into terminal mode (accessing OS/X's underlying Unix core), and give it commands and send results... and it still wouldn't work.

Then support had me do something which let Parallels start, but now it had lost all my programs--and all my data and wanted me to reinstall windows.

That was too much. I downloaded a copy of VMware Fusion a 30-day free trial.

It installed perfectly. It automatically installed Windows for me. It ran perfectly--and FAST (that's because it can use the complete dual core processor, rather than just a single core as Parallels does).

It's never crashed. I can suspend Windows and come right back where I started. I can have windows programs in their own windows just like Mac programs and drag and drop between them. All of which Parallels promised, but only VMware delivered.

So now with the iMac and VMware Fusion, I have the best of both worlds.

Minding the Mint

2008-03-06T20:45:00.001-08:00

If you want to see a financial web service done right, hop on over to www.Mint.com

This smart web service integrates all your web-based finances in one place--bank accounts, credit cards, debit cards.

You can see all the details in one place, and not only does it give you a simple total of your credits and debits across these various banks/cards/sites, it also categorizes your spending and gives you groovy pie charts showing how much of your spending is on home vs food vs entertainment (or whatever categories you choose).

It also does something I've never seen before, it lets you compare your spending with the average spending in your area, or the country.

It does all this smoothly, securely, and for free. How is it free? Because after analyzing your finances they can recommend ways for your to save money--meaning cards or accounts you can apply for with lower or higher rates (lower for cards, higher for banks, naturally). You don't have to take them up on any of these offers for the service to continue to be free, but it's also interesting to see these choices.

Is this a violation of privacy? Mint says, "Using Mint does NOT require any personally identifying information, leaving you as anonymous as you would like to be." Like everything else about Mint, they present the information simply, quickly and clearly. They even provide an educational blog.

So--here's a web service that provides a real, clear, useful service and then proceeds to do everything right. So it is possible.

The Revolution is micropayments

2008-02-27T16:07:00.000-08:00

I had a long talk today with Dax Cunningham, the COO of RevolutionMoney, the company behind the Revolution Card and Money Exchange that I had problems with.

Our conversation was off the record so I won't discuss details, but I can say

They're listening.
They're doing something about it.
Once they get it working, they may have something revolutionary. (Note: the "when" is a big deal--I've received over a dozen comments from other people who've had the same bad experience I have--and continue to have it, so Revolution Money's service issues are not unique to me, and not yet solved).

The "revolutionary" part is that they're trying to redefine how credit cards work, including the fee structure that banks charge.

What this means to you and me (which, as of yet isn't mentioned on their web site), is that this will lead to the ability to finally have micropayment on the web.

Why do you want micropayments? Right now, credit card companies tend to charge at least 25 cents per transaction, plus at least 2%. That means if you want to sell something for 10 cents, you will lose 15 cents. If you sell it for $1, the credit card has cost you %27.

This antiquated fee structure has held back content and the movement of money on the web for a long time.

Imagine that a publication or writer you like charged nothing to read their material, but had a simple way for you to volenteer to pay 1 or 5 or 10 cents if you really liked and article and found it useful. It would be like a tip at a restaurant, if you found their content valuable, then you would give them a little something.

If the material is interesting enough, then many people giving a little will add up to a reasonable amount for the writer or publication.

It's an entirely new model for content.

In the past you would have subscribe to a publication (which so far hasn't worked well on the web), or endure a lot of ads so the advertisers support the content (that does work on the web).

Would you pay a little for an article you liked a lot?

I have--with Wikipedia. They have links on their pages so you can donate, and I find Wikipedia so useful, almost every single day, that it's worth it for me to donate to them on a regular basis. I think of it like a subscription, only I can choose the subscription fee.

Or perhaps you just want to send money to a friend. It could and should be as easy as sending an email.

I like and use PayPal. It's simplicity has allowed me to sell my fonts and books on the web. I'm grateful for that. They've also made life simpler for millions of people who use eBay (the company that now owns them). And while I understand that they have to charge you a fee when someone pays you using a credit card, they really shouldn't charge when someone sends you money from funds that are already in their PayPal account. That kind of money transfer should be free because it doesn't incur credit card processing fees.

So competition is good, and right now there's almost no competition for PayPal.

Which brings us back to Revolution Money. They've figured out how to make the deals to get the banks to go along with their new fee structure. And that, alone, could be revolutionary.

They're offering to let you send and receive money (from the funds in your account) for free. That's how it should be. If they can make it work, then PayPal may have to follow suit. That's good for everybody.

The trouble is that it doesn't work yet. And yet, they aren't saying they're in Alpha (which they seem to be), or beta (which would be pushing it), they act as if they are up and running, and they are clearly not.

This shows a real lack of understanding in terms of customer relation, word of mouth, and the very basic tenets of branding--the experience.

Revolution Money just has to find someone who can look at their offerings entirely from the customer's point of view (and notice I don't say "user" I always say "customer").

When you or I go to a web site, our first question, conscious or not is "What's in it for me." That's human nature--more than that, it's animal nature. You can read more about this in my SchmoozeLetter.

OK, so the Revolution is off to a rocky start. They jumped the gun by teaming up with buy.com and offering $50. Now they have to earn back the trust of people like me who had bad initial experiences.

But so far, given their customer service department telling many people that they're the only one with the problem--it's clear that they're not really facing the problem, much less working to correct it. Until they do, they are dead.

I doubt that the COO can personally call everyone and say he's sorry like he did with me, and explain what they're doing. But the fact that he took the time to do it at all shows they have good intentions, and hopefully their road will be paved with more than just that--it will be paved with their good actions.

Start the Revolution Card without me, V2

2008-02-27T01:35:00.000-08:00

After all the trouble I had with the Revolution Card, and Revolution Money Exchange, I emailed everyone at the company I could find. From their customer service, to their corporate office.

Even so, I was surprised to actually get a response, and from the COO, Douglas Cunningham. And this smart move would have swayed me to try them again, if their customer service office hadn't screwed up, royally, by sending out an email with 137 people in the TO field, so we could all harvest each other's email addresses... in a financial email. Ug. Then they send out another, recalling the first. Ug ug.

Here's the email exchange:

From: Dax Cunningham, (email address removed)
Mr. Will-Harris I am the COO of Revolution Money and your email was brought to my attention last night. The experience that you have communicated to us is embarrassing to all of us. My email to you is not intended as any form of excuse but is a sincere apology for us wasting your time. I appreciate your taking time to outline the issues so that we can ensure that your experience is not replicated for other customers. We are working to address all of your points immediately. While I do not have all of the long-term answers to your issues at this point, I am available to discuss if you would like to speak.

Hi, Dax:

First--I have great respect for COO's who actually read customer complaints and respond to them personally. Thank you.

Next--I have done much professional beta testing in the past, enough to know that not all customers will have all the problems I had, but that I encountered a kind of a "perfect storm" of problems.

Yet today the problems continue, problems that really should not be possible.

At 1:38pm I received an email from Revolution Money Exchange. saying my account was activated.

Then at 2:49 I received one with the subject of "Recall: Your RevolutionMoneyExchange Account has been Activated!"

I later realized that both emails were sent to 137 other people, all in the TO field, exposing all our email addresses to each other, spammers and phishers (this list follows my sig at the end of the email--and they were sent by customerservice@revolutionmoneyexchange.com and came from "exchserver.gratiscard.com" so it wasn't phishing).

I have never received a recall message outside of intra-corporate email, and even there it's ridiculous since people have already read the email.

But worse, far worse, was that now TWO emails were sent to 137 people, all in the TO field, all able to see and save each other's addresses. That's a security risk, and I have to ask why your system would even allow more than one address in the TO field. This is another indication of a seriously flawed system.

One hundred and thirty seven email addresses--in this one message alone. Was this an isolated message, or were there others?

Unfortunately, this proves that my experience is not isolated.

After all this, do you think customers should consider it prudent to trust RevolutionMoney with their private bank information? (Also, when signingup for RME it didn't allow me to opt-out, as it did for the revolution card, and that must be fixed, too).

Actually, I don't have to worry about my bank information, because so far I've been unable to enter it on your web site! When I logged and tried to click on the link to continue the process the link lead nowhere. Even on IE. (And if your site isn't going to work on Firefox--and why not?--then it at least needs to warn people who are trying to use it).

I'm being quite sincere when I say I don't know what to say at this point other than perhaps your service should be listed as "alpha" and customers should be offered a lot more than $25 (and more than $50 for the card) for the time they spend debugging.

I think your premise is great--a peer to peer payment service without the fees that PayPal imposes. That could be huge--if you can make it work.

But right now, I've personally wasted a lot of time. I missed out getting the GPS I wanted on Buy.com because I thought I'd do it with your card, and by the time all this happened the item was gone (that counts as my own mistake but is still annoying).

Please cancel my RME account immediately, as I will not share my bank account info in such an insecure environment. I'm now sorry I even shared my email address and would like it all removed from your system.

Please also cancel my revolution card account, as the service I've received so far does not bode well for actually using it (and, to be honest, your web site didn't make it's advantages clear--all my credit cards are embossed, why is non-embossed better? Why is a pin such a big improvement? As a customer the only compelling feature RC offered me was $50). I'm being quite honest here.

If you feel my comments have been worth $75 you can feel free to send the money to my PayPalor Google Checkout accounts, both of which have worked flawlessly for me.

I hope your other customers will not have to go through the frustration and loss of privacy that I have endured.

Please let me know if I can provide any other feedback that would be useful to you.

DwH

I'm the Bermuda Triangle (or "maybe it's just me...")

2008-02-26T18:32:00.000-08:00

I'm starting to think that I'm the problem.

When I used to do a lot of beta testing (the kind with software, before Google started to claim everyone one of its services were in "beta"), I billed myself as the "Bermuda Triangle of Software."

And it was mostly true--I could find bugs no one else could. Problems that were glaringly obvious to me had never been reported before. It's not like they were really obscure, I was doing most basic things, but even so, I was the only one to find the problem.

So maybe that's what is happening now. First the rotten Revolution card (which sent me an email today saying I was approved, then another that was empty other than the subject line which read, "RECALL" like I was some corporate schmuck and you could just say, "Oh, that dirty joke I sent, pretend you never read it."

Then I ordered a new iMac. I have been promising myself I would do that for about 18 months. Honestly. My Windows machine gets slower by the nanosecond, and Vista would be even slower, still. Plus, no one in their right mind wants to use a V1 version of anything Microsoft has ever shipped.

So I decide to move to the Mac which 1) has better hardware that's beautiful and quiet, 2) has better support, 24 hours a day, rather than hardware support that blames the software and software that blames the hardware, and 3) could still run Windows, freshly installed so it would be OK until I used it too much, at which point I'd just reinstall it.

I ordered. It was all fine. I printed my receipt and saved it.

The order is on hold waiting for the Time Capsule (the wifi router/hard disk/backup device) to ship.

Two days later I got an email from Apple saying my credit card wouldn't approve the transaction. Somehow, my credit card was very smart (how often does that happen). Because somehow, magically, the order I placed, printed and saved for one computer, one AppleCare, 1 Parallels and a Time Capsule had transmogrified into 2 computers, 2 Apple Cares and the rest of the stuff. The credit card rejected it because it's really a debit card and this was over the daily limit (so it wasn't really smart, it was just really practical in this case).

I'm not sure where in the process Apple decided that if I wanted one iMac that I'd enjoy two even better. The nice customer support people on the phone (who were truly nice and good, as opposed to those at the Revolution Card who sounded like they were prison guards and I was a perp) said she didn't know either.

So I placed yet another order, printed and saved it and hoped for the best. And this time it was approved by my debit card because it was only one computer.

I get one email saying the Apple Care card is being rushed to be, Fed Ex Ground. Which will be nice, except that I won't have a Mac yet, so it won't do much use. The Time Capsule is supposed to ship by the end of the month

Then I get an email from Apple and on the surface it seems nice.

It said that the price of the iMac had been lowered and even though I'd already ordered them, they were going to give me the lower price.

That's absolutely brilliant and builds loyalty instantly. It also means that Apple's first screwup has now saved me $200, so things look good.

But then I ask myself, "Why has the price dropped?" and I read that new Macs (mac books at least) are being introduced next Tuesday, and I think, "If they introduce a new iMac next Tuesday and it has the matte screen I've wanted I'm going to scream." Then I think, "No, better than screaming, I'll simply drive the unopened box to the Apple store 45 minutes away and make them give me the new one."

So it'll all be fine one way or another. And sooner or later it will all arrive.

But I do have to ask myself, "Is it this way for everybody, or am I special?"

I tend to think it's this way for everybody.

Start the Revolution Card without me

2008-02-24T14:31:00.000-08:00

In my previous post, I suggested that Microsoft should pay users to use their service. Now a new credit card, called the Revolution Card, is doing just that. I got an email through Buy.com offering me $50 to sign up for this card.

Google had previously given me $10 for using Google Checkout on buy.com, and since I shop and buy and like their prices and service, I thought this would be legit. Otherwise I never would have signed up for some unknown card. I did a Google search, I looked at their site, I saw that Steve Case (AOL) started the service, so again, it sounded legit.

I wanted to buy a GPS for the car, $50 sounded handy, so I signed up.

And so far not a single thing has gone right. Not one.
That's worse than getting it right at least half the time.
That's a stunningly bad track record.

I was told I'd be approved instantly (as I have been with other cards), yet at the end of the process it said it would send me something in the mail. Huh? That's not instant. No reason why. Since I'd signed up to get that instant $50 to buy something on buy.com, already the system failed.

If it had worked, then I'd have gone, "I like this card, I'll use it elsewhere" (at the few places it's accepted). But it didn't work.

I was done.

Then they offered me another $25.

I just had to sign up for their MoneyExchange service. It sounds quite good--like PayPal with no fees. Great, I thought, I'd try it.

But again, the process didn't work. It took all my private info (only this time wouldn't let me opt out of sharing it with other companies), then sent me an email telling me to click on a link to accept my $25. Only that didn't work.

So I called support who told me there were four emails and this was only the first and the first wouldn't work. WTF? I mean, really, WTF?

How am I supposed to magically know there are more coming and NOT to follow the directions they've given me in the first email?

Oh--and if you use Gmail, you might never get the emails. They don't go to spam, they just don't show up. Huh? I've never had that happen. Getting into Spam is understandable, but also avoidable. But not showing up? My mail also goes through my domain, and it didn't show up there, either but they had no excuse for that.

And that's all they had, excuses. I shouldn't have clicked on the email they sent. Maybe the email they will send in two days won't arrive. I should have gotten an error but didn't.

Oh--and their support line, while open seven days a week, is only open until 7pm Eastern, that's not even 5pm pacific.

The web is 24 hours a day. Their support isn't. I often buy things late at night--why would I use their service which would make me wait to call on their hours instead of mine?

I called their tech support, and the guy I talked to was calm and nice, but was clearly annoyed me with, because I must be doing something wrong. He'd tell me something, I'd say, "That's not what happened," and he'd reply, "If you keep interrupting me then I can't help you."

I wasn't interrupting, I was explaining that what he was telling me had nothing to do with what I was telling him!

I know the service is new, it says it's in Beta (as so many things do these days, even once they're clearly up and running). But this isn't beta. This is more like PRE-alpha. It should not have been released in this form because it just doesn't work--and worse than that, it doesn't tell you what's going on.

That would be the simplest thing to fix--a real error message (even in FireFox!). An email that says, "Here's what happened and why you have to wait," or "Thanks for signing up, it'll now take two days and we'll send you another email, if you use Gmail and don't hear from us, call us at ..."

Just tell people what's going on. That should be the easy part.

But the Revolution Card and Money Exchange services failed on every level, from basic communication to high tech.

I sent this the following email, which, according to the customer service rep on the phone, will just go to him. So I also sent it to their parent company. I'll let you know if I ever get a response from anyone (and if it can be received by Gmail, or my domain mail or even my telephone.

==================================

UPDATE: IT GETS BETTER (OR WORSE)

Today they sent me an email saying I was approved (but it had no PIN number that was necessary to use it).

THEN they send an email with the subject RECALL: You're account had been approved.

RECALL? Who does that? What, it's like "REDO" or something? Are they eight years old? You can't recall an email you've sent.

I replied, "You've got to be kidding me."

They have not responded... what a surprise.

My friend Pauline said, "Now for the identity theft and the experience will be complete."

I hope not. But if it happens I'll know where it came from, the annoyed customer service agent!"

Read more about this.

UPDATE #2:

The COO emailed, then called me and they have good intentions, and more importantly, good ideas. We'll see if they can make them work.

===================================

Signing up for the Revolution Card and MoneyExchange has been one of the worst brand experiences I've ever encountered.

Nothing has worked correctly. I haven't received emails or errors messages.

After a long call today with a very nice and calm representative, he said that the error message wouldn't show in FireFox.

WHAT?

So I went to IE, logged in and tried to complete the Account Registration process and NOTHING HAPPENED. In IE. No error, no nothing.

Here's the link it gave me, (link removed)

I've been in the computer press and worked in computer companies since the early 1980s. I've been working on the web with IBM, Microsoft, Xerox, Corel since the 90s.

It should not be an ordeal to sign up. yet this was.

If there are limitations such as sending to gmail (and I got one email there, so why not another--and the emails all go to my domain first and weren't there, either), then SPELL IT OUT, on the WEB PAGE if you can't send an email.

If it doesn't work in FireFox, SAY SO.

I know this is a beta, but FireFox support is SO BASIC that not to have it is nothing short of absurd.

Sending one email that won't work because I need another in two business days is astoundingly bad design. You could send one that says, "we're processing your registration, we'll have it in about 2 business days," that would be fine.

But don't send one instructing the user to do something they can't do until they receive another in two days they don't know is coming!

this is totally illogical and makes no sense.

On the revolution card side, I applied, didn't get an error, was just told to wait for the mail.

This after being told in the come-on offer that it would be instant.

I can get approved for any credit card I want, instantly.

What's more, I never received a follow-up email telling me it would take 7-10 days or whatever.

The bottom line is that NOTHING HAS WORKED RIGHT. Nothing.

When I called I was told support closed at 6 or 7 eastern time. Not 24 hour? That's not good support.

Why should I stop using my Amex or MasterCard or PayPal debit card, all of which have 24 hour service and actually work, for a card where nothing has worked and I can't get support?

Where's the value proposition here?

In my case, the value was being told I'd get $50 for signing up for the card and $25 for the money exchange.

But frankly, it hasn't been worth even $75 to go through this experience. And should I somehow be approved by your application process that's apparently more rigorous than any other in the world, I will use the $75 you have offered me to help pay for the time I've wasted.

Blogging at last... who cares....

2008-02-04T20:19:00.001-08:00

I've been writing on the web since 1995 (ooh, impressive!).

I've been writing on this planet since 1967 (wow, really impressive, you must be friggin ancient, man).

I have an online email newsletter called the SchmoozeLetter that goes to over 30,000 subscribers but those are stories, not blogs.

I want my writing to be more polished and less "blog vomit."

See--I've never written the kind of blog where I just sit down and type whatever is on my mind at the moment without thinking or editing. I always have to work it and turn it into a story.

I rarely read "diary" blogs by people who list everything they eat, or basically write an online journal. I'm sure some of them are quite interesting, but a lot of them are just pointless rambling. As you might think this is.

I have several blogs, political, ideas, something else I forget, oh, yes a movie I acted in a few years ago (where I blogged while I was being filmed--I don't know if that's ever happened before or since), an movie I acted in just last year! I I keep a journal during every movie I make but then I don't seem to find or make time to put it online.

I also keep a very long, wordy private journal and that's probably all the writing I need. But there's so much whining like, "It's 3am, why am I still awake? Why don't I go to sleep earlier? Why do I keep doing this to myself?" and "Where did the day go? I don't understand it. I got nothing done. Can't remember what I did today..."

There are entires like that seemingly daily for the past 9 years :)

Of course, it could be a very Warhol-eque blog, with the same entry every single day...

I have kept a journal for over 20 years. My sister-in-law gave me a really nice leather calendar book thing and I started writing in it (in small, now illegible type). So once computers came along I started to type my journal so I might be able to read it in later years, which is all fine and good but I didn't print it all out and now some of it is on floppy disks I can no longer read. So much for that. Clearly I need to get in the habit of printing my journals, something that should be easy now with print on demand places like LuLu.

But that takes effort, and just posting to a blog doesn't, or at least takes a lot less.

But I've decided, just this very day, that I'm going to start a blog.

I did add something to my political blog today, and I particularly liked the line, "Reagan Playbook of Presidential Platitudes." But that was there and this is here.

So I'll write about how I find elections frustrating. The people I like most often don't win. That's annoying. OK, it pisses me off. Why can't I get my way when it comes to candidates?

Aren't I smarter than most people? Or, don't I at least think I am smarter--while at the same time feeling as if I don't?

This is kind of going nowhere, which may explain why I haven't kept a daily blog in the past.

Sigh.

Size bigots - Health is more than skin deep

2008-02-01T01:05:00.000-08:00

I have always been what I like to call "larger than life."

Even at my smallest, I've been bigger than most.

This is my normal.

I walk. I do martial arts. I'm active.

So frankly, I'm tired of people connecting size with health. I'm not "huge" but if you look at those insurance company charts I am much larger than they say I should be. I say bosh.

When I was younger, being bigger was somewhat rare. Now, frankly, it's the norm, though many self-appointed "size bigots" are telling us we have an epidemic of fat on our hands (or, more accurately, our stomachs and everywhere else).

I say dogs come in all different shapes and sizes, and so do people.

They want to tell us that being larger is going to kill you--but they conveniently forget that you're not going to escape death no matter what size you are.

They counter with, "You're going to die sooner!" but don't bother to say how long, which is generally at most one or two years less. And that's failing other genetic conditions (not to mention accidents, like falling off your bike or getting hit by a car while jogging).

"You're more likely to have a heart attack" they scream--not also mentioning how big a part genetics plays, and how even the most lean and "fit" runners, like Jim Fixx, can die at 52 while such larger than life personalities like James Beard, who ate fresh bread slathered with butter lived to a ripe old age of 81.

As long as I've been alive there's been discrimination against fat people. It's the only politically correct for of discrimination there is.

As as science continues to find that size is as much about genetics as it is about diet and exercise, "Food Nazis" continue to say that fat people are just not trying, they're lazy, they're eating too many French fries. And mostly--they just don't care enough to "take care of themselves." They seem to think that willpower alone can completely overcome your genetic background. It can't.

Bullshit. You heard me. And if you didn't, I'll repeat it--Bullshit.

You can be big and exercise. You can be trim and sit on the sofa all day. Size is no indicator of health or fitness.

Last week I was filming a commercial with some models turned actors, very attractive and "fit." I played a crazy dentist working on their teeth with a pair of rusty pliers.

Between takes, one of the actors casually mentioned to me how she hated Disneyland because, in her own words, "There were too many fat people there, it made me uncomfortable, all those people who didn't care about their health."

I wondered if this person had eyes, because I was sitting there, not exactly svelte myself. I couldn't help myself, I said, "I'm not exactly thin, and I'm healthy," to which she replied in an offhand way that was totally believable, perhaps only because of her acting skills, "Oh, you're fine."

And I am fine, thank you. And people who are even bigger than me may very well be fine, too, while the trim or even buff personal on the next treadmill might have a history of heart disease, might be an alcoholic, drug addict, or self-destructive--but you just see someone who "cares about themselves." Looks can be deceiving.

And if you go by looks alone, health is only skin deep.

A second actor told me how he walked nine blocks from the subway to his job, and exclaimed, "That's why I'm so thin!" I replied, "It might have something to do with genes" to which he replied that his parents were always skinny. I commended him on his excellent choice of parents.

My parents gave me many genetic gifts. Being thin was not one of them. That doesn't mean I don't care. It means I was born this way.

Xerox's new logo

2008-01-08T22:21:00.000-08:00

Xerox's new logo tells the world, "We still know how to copy" even when it comes to our logo!

It's the AT&T-ing of Xerox.

AT&T used to be all caps. Now it's all lower case and "soft."

AT&T's globe used to be flat, now it's all hip 3D.

And why does the ball/x seem so familiar, oh, that's right, look at the xbox 360 x/ball.

Apparently now old brands can be given new life (it's so easy!) simply by making them lowercase and fake 3D.

This new cliche is as pointless as the previous "web" cliche of the swoosh around the name (now so cheap and devoid of value some web sites sell them pre-designed).

The new Xerox logo doesn't even suggest what they do. At least Landor's pixelated X suggested going from analog to the digital.

The new logo just suggests going from meaningful to pointless.

Then again, if they're copying logos, then it does suggest they're still in the copier business...

RightsAgent Verification

Pitching: "It's like Charlie's Angels but with Lesbians!"

2006-07-29T19:26:00.000-07:00

Place: A book signing for a book about getting your book published. A small town bookstore where aspiring authors had no more than 60 seconds to pitch one book idea.

I’d brought three. Each was a page long and would take about three minutes to tell. Not gonna work.

The book being signed and sold was a real-world explanation of what to do at each stage of the game. The authors had a much better pitch—which they memorized and recited in unison but which I did not memorize so can’t repeat here.

The authors, a married couple, consisted of a tiny woman in very large eyeglasses, long wavy brown hair, a red sweater, green polka dot skirt, and purposely mismatched orange socks (she has a whole company that sells mismatched socks for girls). She is also a literary agent which has been very helpful to her own writing career, and the career of her husband, described forthwith:

Imagine a tall, lanky man with more silver hair than I’ve ever seen on a man—almost as if he had curlers in it. It’s hard to see his face because the hair is busy bouncing and reflecting light. I envy his hair. But his face is smoothly craggy with lines deep enough to hide M&M’s. He was clearly “dressing as an author,” wearing a casual version of Tom Wolfe—white canvas pants and jacket, but not going so far as a stand-up collar which would look ridiculous in Marin.

I can't fault him for wearing a costume--I always wear one to important meetings. I can take me an hour to choose between four costumes, each of which says something slightly different. I'm used to dressing as a designer, which means all black, but in my case, with a colorful shirt to show I have a sense of humor and don't come across like so many pretentious designers. That's what I wore today--nice, but not too nice, and with a battered brown briefcase so it didn't match (I would be drummed out of designer circles if I didn't carry a black one) that showed I was a serious working writer.

Back to the author in white: He is (and this is such a great resume it reads like fiction) is a former gigolo (now the subject for one of his books), an actor in commercials with a one man show, a former emcee at Chippendales the male strip club (not surprisingly, the subject of another book), soda jerk, and marriage counselor. Now he’s a writer, editor and coach who helps authors perform better in interviews, on talk shows, and, if they have extremely good Karma, Oprah (insert oohing voices here).

They start their spiel: in brief—the book business has become all too like the movie business. You need high-concept. "Gone with the Wind meets Animal House" kind of elevator pitches. That’s not a good one but they had stuff kind of like that, but more believable, and best if it involves something topical, like “Rhett Butler meets Condi Rice,” that sort of thing, but, of course, better.

Onto the pitch: You have to be able to explain your book in one annoying line, and then in “detail” well under 1 minute (30 seconds is better).

Then, of course, once you find an agent, and a publisher, and the book gets published, you (not the publisher, God forbid!) have to figure out ways to sell it. Sounds a lot like self-publishing with a lot of other people standing between you and readers. Of course, those other people can, occasionally, get many more readers for you than you could have gotten for yourself, which is why you, as a writer, bother.

Now it was time for the audience to pitch. There was a big crowd in this small room—25 people—more people than chairs. Before the event I asked people about their books and was surprised some were actually here to listen rather than to talk.

But something happened when they asked for volunteers. People who had prepared nothing and didn’t consider themselves writers jumped up to tell their stores, and told them surprisingly well.

The first guy, who was dressed like he’d just come back from fixing his garage door, stood up and told a story about two humans who end up in heaven looking for Jesus, but he’s... wait, it’s not fair for me to tell his story.

It was a good pitch with no preparation, and me sitting there was three sheets of paper, wondering what I was going to say.

After each pitch, the couple would give a critique—always very nice, and tell people they needed more of a hook, or statistics, or how to tie it into the current “zeitgeist.”

Zeitgeist was a very big thing with them—it really helped if the subject matter was already floating around in the news or Oprah or somewhere as this makes it easier to sell to publishers who think you might then have a shot at appearing on Oprah, or, if your book involves abuse or the least bit intellectual, NPR.

Next up was another unprepared person who gave an impassioned pitch about... I forget. She was lively and good but I just don’t remember what her book was about, probably because I was too involved thinking about my own.

And so it went, person after person who had no plan on speaking getting up and pitching—and doing credible jobs! I wondered why, with my experience, I’d prepared, and especially prepared completely wrong.

Did I mention that this was a competition? The winner got a 30 minute consultation with the important literary agent, which of course might lead them to getting the important literary agent.

I decided to wait until right after someone who gave a really awful pitch. And there he was. Button down and jeans, another full head of hair (damn him!), cowboy boots and belt. He read from a typed piece of paper in a tone so low and boring that 60 seconds seemed like 60 minutes.

His story, which had a very bad long title that could easily be shortened into a very good short one, involved a young man at the turn of the century, working in manufacturing and the tough yet surprisingly gentle way he learned to be a man amidst the machines. They called it “A River Runs Through It meets...Monster Garage” no, that's not right, something involving machines, again, I was concentrating on my pitch, which I would volunteer to do next. The man asked the cowboy, “Do you have a good head shot, I don’t mean a cheesy Polaroid, I mean a professional photo? You need to get one because you’re kind of like Sebastian Junger—a good writer but also good-looking guy, they plaster his picture on the back of his books and sell as many copies for the picture as for as the story.” (Somehow I remember that verbatim.)

I was next. While sitting there, listening or not to the previous pitches, an idea came to me, or, more fitting for the book I was pitching, was told to me—by my “ghost” who said I should introduce him.

I got up to pitch A ghost in the living room (which I have been trying to figure out and write for many years but have yet to get a handle on).

I told the title, and a new subtitle, “A true ghost story,” which got a lot of response, and added, “I first saw him during a near-death experience" which had the right level of drama, excitement and promise of “the other side.”

I decided before the pitch to integrate the ghost story with my actual “near death experience” story and used the line “This is the story of how getting to know this ghost helped bring me back to life.”

Then—in a flash of inter-dimensional genius (not necessarily mine), I said, “And he’s standing right, here, waving. Say hello everybody,” which got them all laughing.

And from then on I must have been hilarious because I remember the audience laughing—but—being totally in the moment I am not sure exactly what I did.

I said, “I’m not quite a medium because I’m still somewhat raw,” but he’s insisting that I read the book introduction he wrote:

“I’m going to tell you the meaning of life. Naturally, I’m not going to tell you until around page 236, or why would you bother to read pages 1 through 235, but rest assured, I’m going to tell you, and you’re going to feel a whole lot better. (P. S.: Don’t bother turning to page 236, that would be too easy, and besides, I lied about the page number. But not about the secret of life.)”

Then I skipped to the end:

As you read along you will wonder: Who’s the ghost? Is the protagonist going to live or die? If he dies will he become a ghost? Are there really ghosts? If so, what are they? Are there any ghosts in my life? How can I see and hear them? What can I learn from my ghosts? Can they help me communicate with animals? And, of course, what’s the meaning of life?

And that was that—well under a minute, high-energy, and apparently a good performance because the audience applauded and both author/experts loved it. Mr. Hair stood silently for a second, then said, “Wow. Excellent. I can’t think of a single thing to change.” The woman said, “That was great. I loved the way you took a subject that you clearly believe in and are passionate about, but told it in a funny way so that even skeptics could enjoy it.”

They decided my book was “Many Lives, Many Masters, meets Ghost” (honestly, this is what they told me).

There were a few more pitches, one grandmother had a searing story about the underworld of dog fighting and one boy’s struggle to grow up into a man amidst the violence. How did she come up with this?

While they were off deliberating, I thought the grandmother with the dog fights was going to win. She told the story so well.

I came with no expectations of winning. Maybe I would. Maybe I wouldn’t. I’d just have to see how things went.

Then they went off to deliberate and came back about a minute later to announce...

And the winner is... the boring but good-looking guy with the coming of age story. Turns out the head of the literary agency is a sucker for coming of age stories and they thought he’d love this. They didn’t say who came in second, but the man kept asking people if they knew the grandma with the dog fight/boy coming of age story... I sensed a theme.

I did my best, that’s what mattered. I always say if someone does their best and doesn’t win, then it’s better than if they’ve won but didn’t do their best. I believe it, as convenient as it sounds at the moment.

I waited around until they’d signed all their books and answered questions, then I gave the Hair a copy of My Wife & Times (with my business card stuck in) and asked the woman, “May I have one minute of your time to pitch two ideas?”

She liked my glasses, so she said yes.

I first launched into a pitch for “Wallet Reading, your personality in your pocket... It’s like palm reading but with wallets, the content and placement tells a lot about who you are, and this is fun to do at parties because you really get to know people. Can I see your wallet?” She said yes. I said, “Then you’re not from New York,” to which she replied, “Dead wrong, I’m from Manhattan,” to which I could only say, “But you’re not there now! People in Manhattan won’t give you their wallet because they’re afraid you’ll steal it.”

I went through her bright pink wallet which had three big slots, everything crammed together, her license in the very center of the credit cards. I said that she had an unusual number of layers to her, and interests, and that her priorities changed over time. Money wasn’t her motivator, and it was kept separate from the rest of her life...” and somehow I never quite finished because I wanted to get to book 2.

Book 2 is so good I can't tell you about it lest it leak into the Zeitgeist without my having leaked it. Let's just say it appeals to people in all walks of life and deals with things every person on the planet is interested in. It's a sure-fire smash-hit blockbuster.

When I was done she first said the wallet book was too hard of a sell—you had to explain it, and since it wasn’t part of the zeitgeist people wouldn’t get it. She said I should write an article about it first (clearly in the New Yorker) and see if it gains traction. Yeah, I’ll get right on that.

But She and her husband both agreed that Book 2 had a hook and was something totally new. She gave me her card and said, “talk to me more about this book.”

So I didn’t win but I did make a contact. And on the way out, at least six people wanted to talk to me about my ghost story, one woman who’s a college professor and actually taught a class about women in ghost stories, another who’d had the ghost of a pharmacist in her house and had it exorcised, and another who’d felt a ghost while spending the night at an old house...

Now—clearly, people are interested in ghost stories. I didn’t think about it as such, but they’re as old as time. And a modern ghost story would, just judging from this small group, but of interest. The people all told me, “I want to read your book!”

That sounds awfully zeitgeisty to me.

It was interesting but exhausting. I went home, pleased with my performance, and a little sad at what had become of publishing. If I’d wanted to come up with pitches like, “It’s like Charlie’s Angels but with three lesbians—which adds a hot love triangle, see?” then I’d have stayed in LA. “Imagine the shower scenes!” Or Hollywood. “And they’ll all ride motorcycles so they can wear a lot of leather. “Hollywood and Vine.”

Or, next time, I'll saunter in and tell about my coming of age in the world of small town show biz, performing for groups of plastered morticians and inebriated anesthesiologists. How I learned how to be a man--and apply makeup. And all this before my bar mitzvah! It’ll break your heart.

Sell us on the future

2006-03-30T18:23:00.000-08:00

You've probably read about GM's problems--losing 10 billion dollars just last year (you'd think it would be hard to lose that much in one year, but the US Government loses that much in much less time--and it seems like they don't even keep track of where it went). GM knows where it went. A lot of it went to health care costs (something their foreign competition doesn't have), and some of it went to advertising which clearly didn't work.

I think GM's real failing in this case was marketing, since their products have been improving steadily for the page 20 years, especially the last 10. GM is still the #1 US car maker, but Toyota is hot on their heels.

While sexy car design can save a company (Chrysler is a good example of this, first with the PT Cruiser, then the Chrysler 300), it's not like almost #1 car maker, Toyota, has been building beautiful or sexy cars. In the past Toyota designs ranged from boring to strange with a few stops at "outright ugly" along the way.

Toyota's designs are getting much better now that they have design offices around the world, like the one in California, but few of their cars are what I'd call elegant and refined. Lexus, quiet reliable but exceptionally dull, has only recently started to put out attractive cars. Their new IS 250 and 350 are the best looking Lexuses ever--and they've done it by bearing a very strong resemblance to certain recent Pontiacs! Pontiac, by the way, is owned by GM. Most people don't know that GM owns Chevy, Pontiac, Buick, Saturn, Saab, GMC, Hummer and Cadillac.

So GM has some good cars--but GM didn't know how to sell them. That seems odd for a company that has been in business as long as they have, but for many years their cars sold themselves because there wasn't nearly as much competition as there is now.

So GM dealerships became run down and icky places to go with salespeople who made you feel uncomfortable (Saturn helped with it's no-nonsense pricing, something that's widely being accepted--because where else in the modern retail shopping world do you go into a store and have to haggle over price?). GM's previous pricing was ridiculous--too high with too many special offers. Now it's more straightforward--here's the price you pay. Good.

GM also didn't realize they needed to make up for the crap they sold during the 70's and 80's, and prove to people they could trust their products like they did with the Japanese. They ran a few "we're sorry ads" which I thought were great, but they seemed embarrassed by and they stopped running them. They never bothered to run ads saying "We're reliable!" which, unless you're buying a gorgeous sexy car, is what most people care about.

Instead, GM spent over $30 billion dollars in the past 10 years, and now GM is worth 10 billion dollars. What's wrong with this picture? Clearly their marketing wasn't working, their dealerships weren't working...

And yes, they had product problems--but I contend that they would have been competitive if their marketing and sales had worked.

Now, interestingly, another corporate giant is following in GM's path. That company is MS--Microsoft. MS's marketing and sales have always been unattractive, condescending, seemingly written by programmers who don't care about people. When they're tried to be friendly, they've told you how they would help you become GM. Not appealing, or truly persuasive, but it worked because they had power and momentum.

Contrast it with Apple who could sell underpowered, overpriced computers as fast as it could make them (to a very narrow part of the market--but even so, they were and are doing it profitably).

Which all goes back to how marketing can save a company, or, I contend, save the world.

The only problem is that marketing is an art not a science, it's really hard, very few people know how to do it, and even those who do can't do it 100% of the time, and sometimes not even 50% of the time.

As long as we're not going to have a smart president, then we could at least use one that's brilliant at marketing. Somehow Reagan managed this despite (or perhaps because of) being semi-senile.

But most of today's world leaders, starting with Bush, don't seem to know, much less care what they're selling. And unfortunately, marketing can't be made up of lies--because once people realize that they're not true, everything you've said is suspect, all your promises are empty, and your ability to market is gone.

How much longer can the US spend 10 billion dollars a month on bad marketing (namely an unpopular and successful war) before we have spent trillians and are worth nothing?

GM. MS. USA? Let's hope somewhere there is a brilliant marketer with a plan to sell us on the future.

My carry on got carried off

2006-01-13T00:43:00.000-08:00

2006-01-09T19:30:00.000-08:00

Technology
is merely mankind's method
of mimicking the metaphysical.

But we must take care
to keep technology from distracting us
from the true metaphysics we seek.

Technology forms a cloud of psychic static around us that blinds us from feeling and seeing other worlds. Rather than enlightening us, it merely dazzles us, stimulates us, distracts us.

The trick is to remember to turn it off now and then.

Refugees from Fantasyland (Podcast)

2005-12-09T19:48:00.000-08:00

The Dark Marketing Arts

2005-02-11T15:21:00.000-08:00

Every few months or years I come to the brilliant conclusion that writing is about the enjoyment of writing, not the finding of agents or selling of books or making of money or adoration of fans.

And since that's the case, there's nothing to stop anyone from enjoying the process of writing. The problem comes when you want and expect other things to happen with your writing, like having other people read it, and hopefully enjoy it.

The web has made it possible for anybody to put their writing on the web. It doesn't mean that anyone else will read it, but it's there, it's available, and in some cases that's enough.

But... (and this is a big but)

Literature, art, philosophy, even science are now wrapped so tightly inside of marketing, that sometimes it's hard to tell them apart. Marketing is the great art of our times, and it's just as mysterious as writing, art, philosophy, and even science because it's essentially all three. It has the same goals--to make people feel (and possibly even think). But, being an applied art, the end goal isn't to feel or think about the world or the human condition, but to want, fear, worry, feel and generally feel inadequate.

That's the sad part--it's the perversion of all these arts. I'm not saying there aren't pure arts anymore, there are, but few people care about them (though few people ever really did--or could afford to). But except for the Dark Ages, when the church used these same arts to control the masses, it hasn't been done as well, thoroughly, and blindingly.

I honestly believe we've entered the corporate dark ages. The Church was the all-knowing IBM of its time. Now even IBM is small potatoes compared to the multi-national (as the church was) corporations that are paying brilliant people to churn out brilliant art with the one goal of selling. Of course, that was the Church's goal, too, selling their fear-based beliefs--do what we tell you or go to hell you sinner. That's a pretty convincing tagline.

That doesn't mean marketing can't be beautiful. Target's ads are true video art. People enjoyed the Super bowl ads more than the game itself.

It also doesn't mean true art is dead--there are some movies and music and books with a positive or thought-provoking messages.

But even those--even the best of the true art, must be sold, and to do so, it has to be wrapping, and sometimes obscured by the dark marketing arts.

Microsoft’s Longhorn: promises, promises

2005-02-10T18:46:00.000-08:00

Microsoft is showing some impressive theoretical demos for their next operationg system, currently code-named Longhorn.

Microsoft "does good demo." It always has.

I remember when IE 3 or 4 came out--they had a big launch in San Francisco, taking over a gigantic pier building.

Inside, they had partners like the wall street journal and other big companies all there to say how this was going to change the way everything worked on the web--how IE could be used as the basis for all these incredible applications.

and the applications were, in fact, dramatic, exciting, and beautiful to look at--ages ahead of the mostly static HTML of the time (and to be fair, at the time I felt IE was better than Netscape, so I bought into this).

The trouble is that none of those apps actually appeared on the web. Whether it was compatibility or bandwidth or all the active-X development and plug-ins required, it just never took off.

And now everything they're showing can be created using a Flash App, and even then, most sites aren't doing it that way, because it's difficult to develop.

Their demo features "one click application installation" which sounds great and also sounds like a virtual black hole for viruses, spyware and other crap. They say they'll eliminate that because everything will need to be digitally signed (including fonts--time to buy all new ones!), but this poses problems of its own.

What if YOU make an app, and you sign it. Great, it's signed. I guess I could be sure it was signed by you, but what if you sent it to a potential client--they don't know who you are, they accept it, it's signed! And then it turns out to be a signed virus?

Yes, they say it's secure, but remember this is the company that in order to make outlook more secure simply disallows you to receive many types of files, just plain rejects them, useful for not.

The app they show looks like it could be a flash app--today, and a flash app would run on Windows, Mac, Linux... Imagine if Google built this same app, in Flash, using Gmail, googlemaps, even private google groups as a discussion area.

But they don't want that. They want you to buy into Longhorn, hook, line and sinker. Once you're in it, you're stuck in it, like digital quicksand. That's the point.

All the mapping stuff they show could be available through gmail--because Google bought a mapping company.

The demo intones, "Avalon's vector graphics and transparent overlays..." as if this is something new and magical--yet Flash has it today, for any platform it runs on.

Oh--and the "startup" mapping company, "Keyhole" which is featured in the demo, the one Microsoft calls state of the art, a model for applications of its kind--it's owned by Google. (On a sidenote, while Keyhole's software is fun, I don't find it as well done as the TerraExplorer satellite-photo based fly-over software. )

Don't forget--the key to what they're showing is Longhorn's ability to accept, concentrate and coordinate all that data. And yet Google's stated mission at buying Keyhole is "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Google is certainly in a better position to organize the world's data.

What's interesting is that none of this is truly new. I keep remembering the Xerox Star system I saw in the mid-1980s. It was a fully graphic GUI, but more than that--every app was integrated. Drawings and charts could be dropped into word processing, so could contact info. Word processing could be dropped into world-wide email, everything was connected. This was almost 20 years ago.

The trick to all this is getting people to actually use it--and the trick to that is making it useable. Microsoft keeps adding more and more features to Office, features used by fewer and fewer people. Most people don't even use styles or revision marking/tracking in word--two really basic features, so why should they start using super-advanced features that have totally new and alien concepts? Maybe kids will learn this, but adults won't (I've taught enough adults to know this).

Microsoft has not shown that they can make these features understandable, accessible, and useable. They have shown they can just throw them at users--or, better yet, HIDE them when they're not used, meaning they'll never be used. Microsoft assumes that everybody is like they are, that they'll understand and appreciate these concepts.

They forget that most people think it's easier just to send an email than to figure out how to integrate information in some app. Their focus is getting increasingly narrow, they're speaking to smaller and smaller groups.

And nothing they've said or done looks as if it couldn't be done in some other way, say in Linux, using similar techniques but in a non-proprietary way (which is important, since you want this stuff to work across devices, on handhelds and phones--not all of which will have 1 gig of memory so they can run Longhorn).

Microsoft has created their own little universe, a communist country where everything works together because they created it. It's kind of like the old Apple world, and even Apple has moved towards a more open approach, with their Unix-based OSX (that's not to say they aren't still deeply proprietary, because they are, but they are at least built on a more universal foundation).

Finally, Microsoft talking about security is like George Bush talking about it--it's never meant anything in the past, so why should the future be different? I have no reason to trust that they're serious about it, or that they can deliver it.

It's fun to see their theoretical demos. It's just not realistic to believe that they are the best, much less only company to deliver all this.

TV via PC

2005-02-04T17:54:00.000-08:00

Frankly, I’m surprised more TV isn’t available directly over the web—bypassing the difficult and expensive entry into satellite or cable—it’s very hard for entertainment “channels” to get themselves onto those systems, very political, too (like the way AOL/Time Warmer shut Disney out of their cable system for a while).

Web-based delivery would have NO such restrictions—just bandwidth issues which are clearly less of an issue lately. You could start a channel that would have instant, world-wide distribution.

Why aren’t they doing this?

Why doesn’t CBS show all it’s shows on the web as well? Part of the reason is probably union-based, that writers, actors, and other unions don’t have contracts for web-based distribution (though they may have “and all other mediums not yet invented” clauses).

But CBS could show the same ads (or even more ads, if they were displayed in a separate window next to the content—taken away if you subscribed...).

The same producers who are selling the first season of Alias on DVD could offer it on-demand through the web (like on MovieLink and the other on-demand movie site).

I think that as computers get more closely tied to TVs, as wireless networks let you broadcast from your PC to your TV, we may see more of this happening.

We are only now starting to see what I predicted 10 years ago, which was “Press the blue butto nto buy Katie Kouric’s Blazer,” where there are so many product placements on shows, and networks have realized they can sell directly from the shows. I’ve heard NBC is leading the way, since they also have a shopping channel and matching web site, so they could offer a limited number of “Grace’s harem pants,” from epsiode 315 of Will & Grace, and you could order either through their site, or through the phone. There’s so much money to be made this way it’ll make 60 second ads look like pocket change.

Thinking is hard. FEELING is EASY

2005-01-22T13:33:00.000-08:00

Thinking is hard. FEELING is EASY

The Democrats' mistake in recent years has been so simple they keey overlooking it, even as the Republicans polish their marketing skills:

You CAN'T make people THINK.

But you CAN make them FEEL.

The Democrats try to persuade people through facts. Figures. Logic. They tell people to think about what's best for them. It just doesn't work.

Meanwhile, Republicans come right out and tell people: facts don't matter, ignore the numbers, logic is for "intellectuals." Their message is always simple: FEEL. FEAR. HATE. EASY.

Republican marketers have been pressing the right buttons in an almost Speilbergian way. It works.

So always remember:

* You CAN'T make people THINK.
* But you CAN make them FEEL.

(from my Polarized Politics blog)