Could your boss do your job?

That's what the new TLC show Now Who's Boss attempts to answer.  I watched the show last weekend; ber amusing to watch the CEO of Loews Hotels try to clean rooms to the satisfaction of a room supervisor and deliver food and food service to the satisfaction of a room service supervisor.  I strongly reccommend that you watch this show if you are in any sort of leadership or executive position.  Consider how much it would cost you to take a couple of days to go out and work with some of your front line employees, to try and do their jobs (sure, it's going to cost you in travel expenses and in time).

Now consider how much it would cost you not to do this.

If you want to be able to lead, you have to be able to follow.  A very small percentage of executives have the kind of real world, start at the bottom experience that allows their employees to know that their boss would never ask them to do something that boss would not do; if the executive/boss does have that kind of background, many times the employees are not aware of it.  So the answer is to get out in the field and show your employees that you are willing to get your hands dirty and willing to (fail miserably at trying to) do their jobs.  Tell your employees about your background.  Even if you have multiple locations, the story of you taking the time to spend time on the front line will spread throughout the organization -- you should watch the reactions on this program.  Also, don't discount the things that you might learn to improve the business; sometimes you are so far removed from the front line that you can't notice cost-savings or revenue producing activities.

This week's episode (which I missed on Wednesday) was about Club Med -- I plan to catch the re-run this weekend.  Next week's episode is about Universal Orlando.

Check it out!

Rewarding Random Acts of Civility

That's what Song Airlines, Delta's low-cost competitor to Jet Blue and -Ted, is doing.  According to this story in the Washington Herald, Song is giving away 5,000 free tickets (tickets are distributed both on planes and from a Song bus that is doing a road tour) valid for travel between Sept. 7 and Nov. 10.  Tickets can be distributed by flight attendants on the planes for "random acts of coolness."  What are random acts of coolness?  From the article:

". . . could be people who might come up and chat about Song . . ."

". . . helping another passenger with a bag . . ."

I could certainly think of giving up my seat so that a couple or family could sit together.  How about not grabbing the back of my seat and catapulting me forward on the way to the bathroom?  Anyway, the certificates are handed out at the flight attendants' discretion.

But before you go flying on Song just to earn a free ticket, you may want to read Seth Godin's description of his experience on Song.  Maybe they need to give free tickets away to keep customers and it's not just a big promotion.

In Appreciation for Your Readership -- An Invitation to Gmail

This is a limited-time offer.

I have one invitation left to send to someone to join Gmail.  Instead of sending it to someone I know, I am offering it to all of you, my readers.  You have from now until 6 PM Pacific time to write a compelling reason for why you think you deserve the invite.  Please write your reason in the Comments of this post, and send me an e-mail with your e-mail address so I can send you the invite if you win.

Have fun.

UPDATE:  Chris O'Donnell wins my last Gmail invitation!  Enjoy, Chris; you should have received you invitation by now to the e-mail address from which you e-mailed me earlier today.  For the rest of you: if I receive more invitations, I will be certain to post a similar sort of contest, but probably for a longer period of time . . . stay tuned.

Seth Godin's Future Assumptions

Seth posts on his assumptions of things that will happen five years from now.  Here's the complete list:

• Hard drive space is free
• Wifi like connections are everywhere
• Connections speeds are 10 to 100 times faster
• Everyone has a digital camera
• Everyone carries a device that is sort of like a laptop, but cheap and tiny
• The number of new products introduced every day is five times greater than now
• Wal-Mart's sales are three times as big
• Any manufactured product that's more than five years old in design sells at commodity pricing
• The retirement age will be five years higher than it is now
• Your current profession will either be gone or totally different

Let me make a few comments:

• Hard drive space almost is free.  Google calculates its per user cost for 1 gig of storage at around $10 (in the volume that they are buying, of course).  I purchased a 120 gig drive to hold all my CD's about 4 months ago; for the same price I paid then, I can get a 240 gig now.  This is not going to take 5 years, give it more like 2.
• WiFi is growing much faster than anyone can imagine.  I sit out on my porch at home and see the SSIDs of about a dozen access points that exist just in my general meighborhood.  Maybe 5 years is relaisitic, but I think it's going to be faster.
• Almost everyone I know already has a digital camera; some of them have it and don't know it because it's built into their phone.  More to the point, in 5 years, everyone will have a camera built into their cellphone that is of the same quality that high-end cameras have right now.  In 5 years there will be a whole new picture sharing and printing ecosystem for doing everything wirelessly with your pictures.
• Connection speeds are already getting faster.  Cable Internet and DSL are constantly upgrading their speeds.  In 5 years, 3G and 4G wireless networks will be fully built out.  Already new computers are shipping with Gigabit ethernet cards and Gigiabit hubs and switches are dropping down to consumer price levels.
• I hope that in 5 years I am carrying something that looks nothing like a laptop.  Hopefully this device will be directed strictly by my voice and performs different functions based on where I am -- assistant everywhere, cellphone addressbook in my car, GPS in my car, addressbook at home and in the office, dictation device, etc.  I hope to be carrying a screen in my wallet that I can fold out into a 15 inch screen that wireless gets data from this device and allows me to use Tablet PC functions for taking notes.
• I think that anything older in design than 2-3 years will be a commodity and that may be conservative considering the introduction rate of new products.

My big last comment: If the last bullet worries you (and it should), go buy yourself a copy of Tom Peters' Re-Imagine!  And your job being totally different or gone in 5 years?  5 years is very conservative.  Know anybody who's job has been off-shored?  What jobs do you honestly think are next for off-shoring.  Re-Invent yourself starting today!

The Best Sentence About the Music Industry

The Big Picture has a post with the absolute best single sentence describing the music industry.  Here it is, complete with it's original links:

We have an industry that is afraid of technology, its senior spokespeople lie to congress, they use Enron-like accounting, they somehow --WHOOPS! -- forget to pay their artists, they are convicted price fixers, at the first sign of any kind of an economic rebound their instinct is to raise prices, they have ignored competitive pressures from other forms of entertainment such as DVDs, they ignore the devastatingly negative effects of radio ownership consolidation to their business model, they engage in all kinds of anti-competitive protectionism, they are unconcerned with the quality of their product, their customers are harried for time and distracted by other interests, their customers see nothing wrong with downloading music for free, some of their biggest stars are hoping the Internet will replace the labels, despite all too many signs that their product is over priced, they refuse to allow market forces to set competitive prices, they have consistently been one of the most mismanaged businesses in history, oh, and they somehow think they are immune from the business cycle.

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with this industry?

Business Quotes I'm Adding to My Collection

Saw some great quotes at this post on An Entrepreneur's Life that I definitely am going to add to my quote collection.  Here's the first one:

“If you can’t describe your strategy in twenty minutes, simply and in plain language, you haven’t got a plan. ‘But,’ people may say, ‘I’ve got a complex strategy. It can’t be reduced to a page.’ That’s nonsense. That’s not a complex strategy. It’s a complex thought about the strategy.”
- Larry Bossidy, Chairman, Honeywell International, in ‘Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done’

What most people tend to not understand is that the Strategic Content, the strategy itself, should only consume about 5% of the effort, time, etc.  The Strategic Process of idenitfying goals and objective, formulating strategy, implementing strategy, and controlling strategy should consumer the other 95%.  I agree with the author of the original post and would argue that anyone should be able to describe their strategy in less than 20 minutes; 20 minutes seems to give too much time for thoughts about the strategy to intrude.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. ” - Leonardo DaVinci

Simplicity, brevity, classic lines can and are, especially now, the ultimate in sophistication.  It seems that a lot of people are just starting to learn this; took quite a long time for DaVinci's thought to break through.  Why is the new Sony media player doomed to not blow the IPod out of the water?  It's just not simple enough.

Blogging = Business Tool

Reuters has this article that quotes Bill Gates essentially saying that blogging is the perfect business tool; I'm still waiting for Gates' personal blog.  From the article:

Gates described to his audience, which included Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell, Carly Fiorina, Barry Diller and other top business executives, how blogs worked and suggested that they could be used as a tool for businesses to communicate with customers.

"It's getting away from the drawbacks of e-mail and the drawbacks of a Web site,' Gates said, "We're progressively getting better and better at it."

One of the nice things that you could do with this story is take it to the person that would make the decision about whether or not you are allowed to blog about work and show it to that person.  You may also want to pick several Microsoft employee blogs as examples of what an employee blog winds up looking like.  Also, find some of the rules that companies are using for their employees and assemble them into a rule set for yourself (you should personally follow Scoble's 21 rules for blogging).

Perhaps I should take my own advice and start a blog about my industry and company.

Bluephone

Engadget cited a new service and hardware feature known as "Bluephone," which is being worked on by British Telecom and Vodafone.  Apparently the new service and hardware will allow you to use your cell phone as your home phone or work phone when you are at work or at home; essentially your phone uses Bluetooth wireless technology to use landline service (i.e., not hit your cellphone bill) at home and at work when close enough to the Bluetooth receiver.  Similar to the Cingular Fastforward service and hardware, but much cooler and much more scalable because the Bluetooth component eliminates manufacturer lock-in (the Cingular service uses a cradle that is only compatible with certain phones).  Be interesting to see when this technology makes it over to the U.S.

Bands for Whom P2P Works

USA Today recently ran this story that details bands for whom P2P file sharing has been a good thing.  From the article:

"I definitely believe that file sharing has helped our business," Guster guitarist Ryan Miller says. "We've sold only a couple hundred thousand copies of each of our last albums. We've never made a cent from our album sales, so we don't really see that money anyway."

Of course, the RIAA is not allowed to ahve a problem with (nor will they "protect") the copyright owners that choose to release their intellectual property willingly on file sharing networks.

Makes me think of something I read in a marketing book once; soemthing to the ffect of: "If you truly believe in your product, you should be willing to give it away for free."

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

That is the title of the book on punctuation that I just finished reading.  I have to say that this book is an astonishingly good book about a subject that most people these days seem to want to avoid (abolish?): punctuation.

Lynne Truss wrote this book for people like me; I see the spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors on signs, in books, in blog posts (including my own), and especially in e-mails.  One note that I have to make is that this book is a British book, so some of the punctuation rules and guidelines within it are contradictory to what I learned in American schools; a perfect example is my use of commas in the sentence prior to this one: the book indicates that it is not to necessaily put the additional comma before the word "and".

I would love to send many of the people from whom I receive e-mails a copy of this book -- some of the stuff I get is truly ugly.  For those of you that use Microsoft Outlook, here's my PSA: You can use Microsoft Word as your e-mail editor!  By using Word, Outlook provides you with both the active spell check and grammar checking functions; Word certainly does not necesarily provide you with the absolute best grammar and punctuation checking, but it certainly prevents misspellings, missed periods and question marks, missed capitalization, and missed full stops in sentences.  As a side note to everyone sending e-mails for business: stop putting emoticons ;) and stupid abbreviations (i.e., GR8) in your e-mails; it is very much not ok!

You are probably wondering why you should read a book on punctuation.  This book is written in a much more entertaining way than other books on grammar and punctuation.  As opposed to many other style guides that are designed for reference, Eats, Shoots & Leaves (it's hard for me to leave out that second comma) was written as a book that can be read cover-to-cover and educate as well as the dryly written textbook-style styleguides.  Furthermore, the book is witty and funny with plenty of relevant real-world examples of how punctuation is ridculously mis-used.  Take the origin of the title of the book:

A panda walks into a cafe.   He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots into the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit.  The panda produces a badly puncuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says, at the door.  "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda.  Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China.  Eats, shoots and leaves."

Get pissed off and mad about punctuation!  Remove those damn emoticons and stupid abbreviations from your e-mails!  Use a semicolon in an e-mail right after you finish reading the chapter on how to use it; chances are people won't notice it's there, but people like me notice when it's not (remeber that sometimes the act of ommission is potentially more dangerous than that of commission).

". . . just remember that ignorance of punctuation can have rather large practical reprecussions in the real world."

Visit the book's website for more real world examples of piss-pour punctuation and other useful information.

Final Review of Blogjet

So I've done my last several posts with Blogjet.  I like the feature set that it has, but it's msissing some key feature that I don't know if I can live without:

• Spell check.  I try to proofread, I really do, but spell check is like my security blanket (especially on long posts).
• Links in the titles.  I like to put links to websites, articles, etc. in the title of my blogs, but I can't seem to do it, no matter what I try.

Those are my 2 main complaints and probably what will keep me from spending the $20 to register it.  To be honest, if I knew spell check was iminent, I could wait for the link feature; I'm just not willing to plunk down the money unless I know the exact spell check timeline.

Fast Company's New Access System

I blogged last week about a new access system on the Fast Company site that allowed you to enter in a code printed in the magazine to see online content before it is released to the general (non-paying) public.  I got my current issue of Fast Company this weekend and flipped through the magazine, not remembering exactly which page I had to look on to find the code; I seemed to remember there was a "6" in the page number.  I finally found the access code on page 16 (surprise, surprise), which did me no real good this weekend because my at-home Internet was not working.

Here are a few ways I can see this code being abused:

• The code appears to be printed the same in every copy of the magzine, so once the code is generally known, there is no real way to track who might be giving out their code.  That being said, I could be worng because I am only basing this assumption on my knowledge of printing and one copy of the magazine.
• Anyone could go into a bookstore, thumb through the magazine, grab the code, and go back and read all the content online without paying.

For both of these situations: Who cares?  Look, the abuse is going to happen to some degree.  However, one of the ways that Fast COmpany became such a great magazine was that people photcopied the great articles and passed them around to all their friends.  The people that received a photocopied article noticed the uniquitous "FAST COMPANY" printing on the bottom of the page and subscribed.  So is access code sharing the new way (and less environmentally damaging way) to share Fast Company articles?  Perhaps it is.

Here's an interesting question for Fast Company to ponder: Do you let me refer people behind your code screen when I blog about your articles?  I would certainly not give out tyour secret code; you are in business to make money and if the code idea sells incremental magazines (and I hope it does), I would never want to have any effect (negatively) on your revenues.  But what if I build buzz about the article, refer someone to read just that article, and by reading just that article that person goes and purchases a whole magazine?

Here's another interesting question for Fast Company: Is the value equation the same for your advertisers if you just provded an online subscription option with nor print subscription?  Would we, as users, have to look at a barrage of ads to ensure that all of your advertisers were getting the same kind of impressions that they are guaranteed in the print version?  I wonder if your advertisers read the Seth Godin article regarding interruption advertising.  Furthermore, I wonder how much per month I would pay for a premium subscription that did not have any interruption advertising at all . . .

For all of you out there: Like any other good thing, if you abuse this great feature that Fast Company has installed, it will surely either go away or become much more of a pain in the ass to use.  Don't go to your local bookstore and steal the code, just pay the $4.95 cover price and consider the code the free prize inside.

 

Starbucks: A very different store

I was at the Starbucks on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica this past Sunday and noticed several interesting changes to the normal Starbucks model:

• They take your order otuside right along the PRomenade and then you go inside to pick up your order.  What I didn't hear was the normal banter (yelling) between the people taking the orders and the people making orders because the Health Department had obviously mandated swinging glass doors be put between the outdoor ordering area and the indoor prep area.  Takes away from some of the "scene".
• They did not write on the cups!  No, I'm not kidding.  Instead they have a fancy new touchscreen computer system that prints the albel with your exact order and name back in the prep area.  Perhaps this is a function of the unique configuration of this particular store, but it was kind of a bummer not to see the doctor's prescription-like scribbles on the back of the cup that somehow manage to generate the perfect beverage of your choice.  Takes away more from the "scene".
• There were Tablet PCs incased in stanless-steel housing on the outdoor counter area from which you could create your own CD that presumably printed out somewhere inside.  I like the Tablet PC and music idea -- very cool.
• On entering the inside of the "coffe shop" (if it could be called that), I found myself standing at the typically small order pick-up area and in the middle of a music shop.  CDs adorned the walls and a bar with Tablet PCs at every stool; what I assumed to be a point of sale system and an array of CD burners were behind the bar.  Sure there were still some tables and chairs, but it wasn't the light cherry trimmed with stainless-steel typically cookie cutter inside of a Starbucks.  What's happened?

One of Starbucks' biggest strategic advantages had been its ability to reinvent and reimagine itself as more than a coffe shop.  Through the addition of various impulse-buy items and the addition of high-speed wireless Internet service, turning Starbucks into a virtual office, Starbucks has not only stayed ahead of the curve, they have set the bar.

So is this the new model for Starbucks locations or is this just a very uniqu location based on numerous factors such as its physical location, the number of tourists, the climate, etc.?  The answer: Only Starbucks really knows.

Shrek's M&M's

What's your guess?  How many Ogre-sized M&M's Milk Chocolate Candies will fill the Grand Canyon?

That's the current M&M's promotion to promote their largeer M&M's.  Pretty interesting for the following reasons:

• There is now enough information publicly available on the Internet to very accurately answer this question.
• Chances are that someone will come up with the correct answer and post it somewhere on the web (maybe even in a blog).
• This could very easily be a puzzle question for a Microsoft interview -- too bad they won't be able to use after the answer is announced (or maybe they should just to figure out what the interviewee's process was for determining the exactly correct answer on the Internet).

When does that expire?

Here's a great post on Business Evolutionist regarding expiration dates.  The author proposes that everything at work receive an expiration date.  What a great idea!  And I love the question the blog post starts out with: "we wouldn't drink from a milk carton without checking for the expiration date first. So why don't we act the same way at work?"

I'm totally on board with this idea!  How great would it be to see an expiration date sticker on the side of your phone or PC so that you know when an upgrade is imminent?  How great would it be to see a policy letter come out with an expiration date?  How scary would it be to you if when you were hired, your employment paperwork included your expiration date?

If employees had expiration dates after which point they literally expired from the organization or had to provide a compelling reason to receive an adjusted date (certainly something that you hope your local grocery store is not doing in the meat department), perhaps people will become more comfortable with the idea of reinventing themselves.  Imagine the phone conversations from prospective employers for someone that expired out of your organization:

New potential employer (NPE): "I'm calling to ask you about John Doe."

You: "Ok."

NPE: "We are curious why he's no longer with your organization."

You: "He expired."

 

The Google Blog

The Google Blog posted a response to all of the posts and things that have been said about it in the media and on other blogs.  Apparently Google (even though Blogger is their product) didn't seem to study blog etiquette prior to embarking on their blog adventure.  To cover themselves, they have now asked everyone to view the Google Blog as a Google Labs project and further to consider it as a "beta" project.

From the blog post:

"In the grand tradition of Google launches, this blog is an experiment. Consider it Googleblog (beta). We're not going to make it entirely first person, because the logical people to write Google blog posts don't always have time to do that. We're not going to make it entirely anonymous because people here have things to say directly to you. And it would be boring as lint if all posts got processed to meet "corporate style." So we'll try different things and see where the pain points are. That's the beauty of a blog -- you can change direction real time to make it work better."

RIAA's shady accounting

Boing Boing has a great post on how the RIAA is cooking its books to make it look like online P2P activities are killing CD sales and destroying profits.

Boing Boing links to this article at Kensei News that has some very interesting and detailed facts about what exactly the RIAA is doing.

From the article:

"- For the first quarter of 2003 Soundscan registered 147,000,000 records sold.

- For the 1st quarter of 2004 Soundscan will report 160,000,000 records sold.

The RIAA reports a sale as a unit SHIPPED to record stores. Whereas Soundscan reports units sold [to the consumer] at the point of purchase. So, you're talking about apples and oranges.

Sure enough, every time the RIAA complains of large drops in "unit sales" it includes international sales, not strictly domestic. Every time it speaks to domestic "losses" it is speaking ONLY of "units shipped in the US" to record stores. It seemed obvious that if the RIAA confined their revenue statistics to the US market alone they may not be able to publish ANY losses in REVENUE at all.

. . . here's an oversimplified example: I shipped 1000 units last year and sold 700 of them. This year I sold 770 units but shipped only 930 units. I shipped 10% less units this year. And this is what the RIAA wants the public to accept as "a loss."

So this article begs the question: Are there real losses from P2P? Who knows?! The RIAA has everything so confused, that is entirely impossible for the public (and maybe even the RIAA) to figure out exactly what's going on.

Here's an idea for the RIAA: take the money that you're spending with attorneys to sue your best customers (all that press you are getting is not good advertising; forget the old adage of "Any press is good press."; what you are getting is very bad press) and spend that money on developing some awesome new artists that have more than one or two good songs on a CD. Take one of the best tracks from one of those new artists' CDs and release it yourselves onto P2P networks a few days before the CD is about to come out to generate buzz.

Blogjet

I'm trying posting today with Blogjet.  Seems to work pretty well.  I do like the fact that it has What You See IS What You Get (WYSIWYG) display window and certainly more text formatting options than the standard Blogger posting interface.  Also, my BlogThis! button on my Google Toolbar hasn't been working for a few days, and the BlogJetThis button seems to be working great, so that's certainly a plus for BlogJet.

Th biggst problm howevr is that there is no spel check funtion.  Grrr.  Not that Blogger's spell check is anything great, but it's better than nothing.

Creating Fanatical Customer Service

There is a great article in this month's Fast Company Magazine about Rackspace, a company that provides back-end servers for companies that outsource their server hardware. Rackspace also provides world-class customer service, which is not something that many people would expect (although it is something that should be expected) from a high technology company.

How do they do it?

From the article:

". . .a few simple rules: Criticizing a customer is a firing offense. Be reliable. No news is not good news--communicate frequently with customers. Look for ways to exceed expectations and make customers say "wow." Remove hassles--make it easy for customers to do business with Rackspace."

Restated:

1. Don't criticize the people that are buying your product.
2. Communicate (a lot) with the people that are buying your product.
3. Don't just try to provide average service, provide excellent service: create "WOW"
4. Make customers want to do business with you (buy your product).

Simple stuff, right? Seems simple, but a lot of it is the soft stuff that is so very hard for companies to pull off. Look at the ratings of any industry segment's competitors; there is always a bottom-rated company and frequently the reason for the poor rating is that company's customer service.

More from the article:

4 Ways Rackspace Creates an Obsessive Service Culture:

1. Measure it. Customer service is reflected in the time it takes to resolve a problem, in the number of customers that renew or expand their business with your company, and in the number of referrals your company gets from existing customers. Rackspace receives 50% of its new business from customer referrals.

2. Pay for it. Rackspace employees' monthly bonuses depend on how well they serve customers. David Bryce, the company's vice president of customer service, is part of the senior executive team, and every job candidate in his division interviews with him, demonstrating the company's commitment to great service.

3. Motivate it. Public recognition of achievement--customer compliments posted on the wall, fanatic signs hanging above the desks of winners of the straightjacket award--gives individual Rackers a status boost among their peers, and something for everyone to aspire to.

4. Enforce it. If you're serious about service, then rudeness to a customer is inexcusable. At the same time, if employees are committed to providing great service, they deserve unconditional management support. This year, three employees left because they didn't "get" Rackspace's service ethic--and one customer was fired for being abusive to Rackspace employees.

These points are the Rackspace magic formula for creating a fanatic customer service department. Does your employees that service customers make a bonus? How familiar are the employees you have servicing customers with the company P&L (an their own division, team, etc. P&L)? Will your company fire its customers for being abusive to its employees?

Read the article for some great examples of how far Rackspace employees will go to service their customers.

At 7:08 PM, Anonymous said...
Psst, Ross... light background, lighter and smallish type. Bad mojo for reading. Design do indeed matter. Nice blog, but my eyes hate you. ;-)

You are absolutely right! I got so obsessed with making the blog technically correct that I didn't really pay attention to the design.

After I received this comment, I went and tried to read my blog and realized how much it sucked from a user experience standpoint. Everything about it was exactly as the comment said:

1. Type was too small. Why did I make the type so small? I have no idea and no good explanation.

2. Colors sucked and the text contrast was horrible. It looked good for the less than 1 second that I looked at the template preview and then I didn't pay attention again. Stupid.

Thanks to the anonymous poster who pointed out my horrible design. Hopefully this new design is better for everyone; it seems to look much better to me. If you don't like it, let me know by leaving a comment, as you can see, I respond to comments pretty quickly.

ITunes Conference Call Transcript

I've seen some references floating around about the ITunes conference call, but was finally able to find the full transcript of the call at The Mac Observer. Funny thing: I downloaded the new version of ITunes when it came out, and found more features that I didn't know about by reading the transcript.

Anyway, one of the most interesting pieces of the transcript comes in the Q&A:

"Steve Jobs: Oh, there's, you know, there's a lot of challenges that we all face together. Let me give you one that's really exciting to us, which is that if you look at a typical music company, less than a third of their music that they have in their vault is actually available for sale. And the reason for that is, is because with traditional CD distribution channels where you have to make a physical object, somebody has to carry the inventory, somebody has to make, you know, rent space to put it on a shelf, they can't get distribution for a lot of their catalogues that's sitting on their vault because it wouldn't sell enough to justify, you know, the record company...the record stores carrying it. And it's getting even worse with the demise of the small individual record store and the tendency of, you know, of Wal-Mart and Best Buy, et cetera, the selection is even narrowing further.

And one of the most exciting things for us is to get the rest of that catalogue, which has not been purchasable, in some cases, for decades, digitally encoded and online on the iTunes Music Store where there is no inventory, where there are no returns, where there is no rent for the shelf space, and make that music available to everybody."

Let's examine the business proposition for the record companies at a high level: The record companies are sitting on inventory that is really not selling with any rapidity at this point. There would have to be some small amount of money spent (i"m guessing it's less than a minimum production run for a series of CDs) to encode the music. This encoding process only has to happen once; they could encode at 384KBPS, 256KBPS, and 128KBPS at the same time to save having to do it again in the future when the price of storage will make it likely that consumers may want higher quality recordings. Once encoded the tracks could then be sold on every music service (not just ITunes); the cost to change the encoding scheme to the proprietary shceme (Itunes' AAC, Sony's ATRAC, Napster's WMA) should be borne by the store.

Umm . . . this seems like a really good idea. Record companies, are you listening? Start releasing your libraries! If you're worried about upfront costs, maybe you make an exclusive deal with ITunes where ITunes pays the upfront encoding costs and retains the exclusive right to sell your library. Believe me, ITunes consumers are lookign to buy your back library.

Marketing Lessons From American Idol

That's the name of the article. Here are the basic ideas:

1. Start with what you know. Better yet, start with what your customers know of you. Continue to advertise in the ways that you always have. Once you make contact with your customers, make sure that they can return the favor. From your traditional marketing methods, whether print ads or commercials, make sure customers can have a way of giving you feedback.

2. Let your customers know you are listening. For your business, if they send you an email, send them one back saying thanks for your time, and your opinion matters to us.

3. Now that you have created a feedback loop with your customers, or what in the industry is known as an open relationship, keep it going until you find out exactly what it is that your customers want.

4. Now that you know exactly what your customers want, make your product to the exact specification of your customers’ requests. Companies that have been doing this for years include Nike, with its design-your-own-shoes-online strategy, and the furniture industry here in good-old Montreal.

Good stuff. Check out the full article (link is in the title).

How many IPods can one person own?

From Style.com:


If you're Karl Lagerfield, head of Fendi, apparently you can own 40 IPods that you scatter around to your different houses around the world in order to accommodate your 60,000 CD collection. Then you specifically design luggage to help you cart a dozen of the IPods around when you travel.

This Wired article has more details.

Flickr

First heard about Flickr here at Seth's Blog, so I decided to sign up for an account and give it a try.

Here are my observations:

1. Sign up is really easy. When you sign up you are choosing a screen name (like AOL instant messenger) that will be used on the Flickr sharing services. Bear that in mind if you are being creative.

2. All of the demographic info (at least at this point) is optional.

3. There is no stand-alone application; everything that Flickr does operates within a web window: photo uploads, viewing permissions, chats and conversations, etc.

4. You do not seem to be able to externally share your Flickr photos outside of the Flickr network. In other words, you cannot upload a photo and assign it an external URL that can be accessed directly.

5. There are different groups of people that you designate into groups. Those groups make up your permission list. It's that simple.

6. You can set up blog integration so that you can blog about photos that you've seen on Flickr. I am assuming that the blog displays the picture (haven't tried it), so maybe I'm wrong about number 4 above.

Conclusion: It's another social networking site, but perhaps it's more useful than some of the others. Imagine having your whole extended family online as part of your trusted group; instead of mailing out photos or even e-mailing, everyone could upload their photos for everyone else to look at and comment on. I don't really know if I want to share my pictures with complete strangers, but that's just me. Certainly worth checking out.

Feedforward

It's the opposite of feedback. Get it? Feedback = things that happened in the past. Feedforward = things that could happen in the future (read "opportunities")

If not, Fast Company Now has a great post regarding feedforward and a link to Marshall Goldsmith's guide to feedforward.

Here's the quick summary of feedforward from Fast Company Now:

1. We can change the future. We can't change the past.
2. It can be more productive to help people be "right," than prove they were "wrong."
3. Feedforward is especially suited to successful people.
4. Feedforward can come from anyone who knows about the task.
5. People do not take feedforward as personally as feedback.
6. Feedback can reinforce personal stereotyping and negative self-fulfilling prophecies.
7. Face it! Most of us hate getting negative feedback, and we don?t like to give it.
8. Feedforward can cover almost all of the same "material" as feedback.
9. Feedforward tends to be much faster and more efficient than feedback.
10. Feedforward can be a useful tool to apply with managers, peers and team members.

You can find the Fast Company article by Marshall Goldsmith here.

SpoofStick

New utility called SpoofStick adds a small window on your browser that lets you know either the root domain or the IP address of the site you are browsing. The basic idea is to prevent "phishing," where you are re-directed to a bogus site.

I've been using it all morning and it seems to work just fine.

50% off Belkin products with no minimum

Reported here on dealnews.com.

To save you reading the article, use a coupon code of 12345. No expiration date was given.

Does design matter?

Emphatically, YES! It matters a whole lot. Here's a great article from Inc.com about product design.

From the article:

". . . for more and more companies--even manufacturing companies with relatively prosaic products--design is becoming extremely important. It can sometimes be the difference between success and failure."

What you should know about how 60 people under 30 think

Great article linked to by Techdirt can be found here on the Canadian version of IT Business.

Some excerpts from the article (note that the survey was of around 60 people under 30 years of age in Canada):

"Cellular providers, brace yourself: They really don't like you. Your customer service is inadequate. Your billing is inaccurate. Calls get dropped. The single factor that makes them stick to the carrier they're with now is the ability to keep their existing phone numbers. "That's not loyalty," remarked one, "that's a trap."

Not much different than here in the US. Why is it that cell phone providers work so hard to get new customers and try very little to keep existing customers? Probably the same reason why the express line at the supermarket rewards people spending the least amount of money (10 items or less), while forcing the person with $300 worth of groceries to stand in line for 15 minutes.

". . . every consumer panelist had a gas station micropayment card, either an Esso Speedpass or a Shell EasyPay tag. And in terms of customer behaviour, it's probably the application that has the most influence, especially when it's 30 below outside. Panelists agreed they go out of their way for a Shell or Esso station, just for the convenience factor. One seemed to yearn for a world in which it was the only way to pay: "If everyone used it," he said, "life would be much simpler."

Wow! That's powerful stuff! By the way, I'm under 30 in the US, I have a Mobil Speedpass and go out of my way to go to Mobil gast station because it's easier.

". . . panelists didn't seem to be terribly worried about the amount of data being collected on them through wireless transactions with regard to spending and travel patterns. "As long as it doesn't interfere with my life," remarked one -- which means no spam or junk mail. I'm loath to say it, but in the trade-off between privacy and convenience, there may be a little more wiggle room than we think."

Marketers, are you listening? You'll get the same reaction from me: track me, data warehouse me, but don't you dare spam or junk mail me without my permission.

"They expect a lot for the money they're paying. Would they pay a five per cent premium to have a personal customer representative assigned to their mobile phone accounts? No."

Yes! I expect a lot of payout for more money. There's more to it, though. I am willing to pay the price for premium products, but not necessarily extra for premium services that ought to be included anyway. Get it?

"A point clearly made repeatedly: Loyalty is not in their vocabulary. At least, so they say."

I don't know if I 100% agree with this. For what I would consider commodity-type items, I do agree; do you pay attention to what brand of milk you buy? However, for premium items, I do stay loyal to brands. Is this the difference between US and Canada?

VOIP and cell seamless switching

According to this article on CNN.com, Motorola is building this capability into its next generation of cell phones.

The article doesn't give much detail on the value proposition for the cell service providers, but here are some of my thoughts:

1. Current cell plans with "nationwide roaming" program your phone with a preferred provider list for geographic areas. In other words, if you have one of the AT&T Wireless nationwide roaming plans, you will not roam onto Cingular's network unless AT&T absolutely provides no signal in that area. Similarly, I think it's safe to assume that a similar type of preferred list could be built into the phone for VOIP -- a TMobile phone should only work on TMobile hotspots unless no TMobile hotspots are available.

2. Data is really the new dollar proposition for cell providers. Accessing the web, reading and sending e-mail, picture mail, sending pictures and videos, watching TV, instant messaging, tethering your computer to your phone to access the Internet etc. are all very data intensive operations. Combine those data operations with wireless hotspot operations, and there is a potential fortune to be made. Currently TMobile offers wireless customers discounts on monthly hotspot service, but the advent of WiFi and cell combined devices should make this operation more seamless (whether charging for data in chunks or with unlimited plans).

3. It would be really nice to be able to use your cell phone at home with your own wireless network. Either the software on the phone is going to have to prevent this, or, probably more likely as the 3G networks come online, the cell companies are hoping that you will be getting your high-speed wireless at home through them.

This will be very interesting to keep an eye on.

Bookfinder4u

Got an e-mail from the creator of this website, so I decided to check it out. Essentially Bookfinder4u is a pricing aggregator specifically tailored to search out the best book prices (couldn't have guessed that from the name, right?).

I tried searches on several business books sitting on my bookshelf and compared prices that I had paid at Amazon to prices that the Bookfinder search engine was returning. In most cases, Bookfinder returned a less expensive price (excluding shipping) than what I had paid for the books.

Here are my only thoughts:

1. I look buying books from stores that I trust: Amazon and 800-CEO-READ. I have accounts set up at both places that make it really easy for me to go through the purchase process.

2. The results that Bookfinder returns normally including the shipping rates for "standard shipping." I'm an inpatient guy and normally have my books delivered next day or two day. There is no choice within the Bookfinder to switch your shipping preference in order to get a more accurate comparison; you must instead visit each individual site and go through the pricing process.

Conclusion: Solid product and useful for those folks that normally take advantage of the Amazon free shipping or normally choose to have their books shipped via regular mail.

Cool new Fast Company feature

You can see it yourself here at the June issue of Fast Company; it's that little blue box in the middle asking for you to submit your access code. While all Fast Company magazines are eventually full y available to everyone online, I always thought it would have been nice to access the articles as soon as they were available online (lots of times I receive my magazine after the articles have become available to the general public) as a paying subscriber, and now I can.

Thanks Fast Company!

New Look for Strategize

Finally had a few minutes to change the Strategize template (sorry to all of you that are using aggregators that got all the millions of republishes I had to go through to tweak everything). Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions on the design (positive and negative are ok).

Note: I am now using the Blogger commenting service, so old comments on old posts do not exist in this re-design.

Ross

Google Blog

It's old news at this point, but Google seems to have officially launched its own blog. However, I get the feeling that this blog is going to be nowhere as cool as what Microsoft's Scoble and various other employees are doing on their blogs. From the looks of things, this blog is simply a corporate voice: well-scrubbed and sanitized for the viewing public, rather than the individual voice of a Google employee.

I certainly hope that I'm wrong, and the the blog winds up being something different, but my hopes are not high.

Of course, Blogger did just go through that massive overhaul, so maybe there's an even cooler internal version that Google employees will soon be using to make their voices heard (after the IPO, I'm guessing).

Tarantino states the movie copying is not that bad

In this post on Techdirt, Quentin Tarantino is referenced talking about how he bought pirated/bootleg films in order to recreate scenes in Kill Bill. Furthermore, the post tells how Tarantino is happy about Kill Bill being pirated in China because it is currently the only distribution source for his movie.

I think we've been here before. Remember all those stories about singers who weren't all that upset about their music being on P2P networks, even though the RIAA claimed that it was those very singers it was trying to protect?

The original article reference by TechDirt can be found here at Yahoo News.

From the article:

""I would be a liar to say across the board 'No piracy'," Tarantino said."

QuickMBA

Unfortunately it's not an accelerated MBA program that you can take online. It is, however, a very useful online business resource. Looking through it, I found a ton of useful information organized under very appropriate topics such as "Accounting," "Management," and "Law."

Certainly worth bookmarking as a resource.

Ripping CD's

I spent a portion of this weekend ripping my extensive CD collection onto an external USB 2.0 hard disk drive. Performing rips of multiple CDs is mind-numbingly boring. For those of you that may embark on a similar process, my advice is to do what I did -- put the computer out of your line of sight (no matter how fast the software encodes from your CD drive, it's still sort of like watching paint dry) and turn up the sound so that you can hear the noise when the software's done encoding.

My particular setup is one of those Sony Vaios with a docking station, an external USB 2.0 Maxtor hard drive, and ITunes for Windows. Everything is really fast -- encoding at about 9.0x. Have yet to encounter many problems with any of my CDs being in the Gracenote database; even most of the live imports I own are showing up, saving me from having to enter the track information in manually.

What's depressing about the process is looking at the hard drive usage once encoded; I have a 120gb drive to fill up, and after 200 songs, I'm only up to about 8gb. Why is that depressing? Because I did rough calculations up front before I bought the hard drive and I know that it is about the right size to hold all of my CDs; that's a long way to go.

I know that there are services that you can send all of your CDs to and they will return all of your CDs plus a hard drive with all the music encoded, but I am in no real rush, so it's no big deal to do it myself while reading or watching TV.

The big payoff is not only being able to fill up my IPod, but also having this computer and hard drive integrated into my home theatre system. I plan on purchasing an LCD television screen that accepts computer signal input so that I can use the computer as well as watch TV. Basically, I plan on just putting the computer on the shelf with all the components and plugging the audio outs from the docking station into my receiver.

Next task after all the CDs are done? Maybe start encoding all the DVDs . . .

Music Plasma

Boing Boing reports on Music Plasma, a new music search engine that graphically displays the relationships between musical artists (kind of looks like that chart in the L Word).

Here's a challenge for the creator of Music Plasma (very cool, by the way): Design the same sort of interface for Technorati.

Blogger redesigned

Boing Boing reports on Blogger's redesign. As a Blogger user, I've checked it out and certainly the UI to the system is much improved. I've decided, at least at this point, not to change the overall site design. Furthermore, although Blogger now has a comments system, I've decided to stick with the one I'm using.

If any of you think that I should change the overall design of my site, let me know. Maybe when I get more time to look at some of the templates I'll look at a design change. I guess the upside is that the design sheets are CSS compatible.

The Off-Shoring Mini-Series

Offshoring: The reality behind the politics is the name of the series on News.com.

I'm not going to quote pieces of all the articles, but the series of 4 are certainly worth checking out if you're interested in the topic.

Little things at LAX

I travel quite a bit through Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). One of the most frustrating things to me is that you cannot buy a chilled soda, water, juice at any of the small shops in any of the concourses. Now you can sometimes overcome this issue by standing in line at one of the small shops like Starbuck's or Burger King and purchasing a water from them, but that is highly inconvenient.

What I want to know is why I can't buy a cold bottle of water at one of the little shops? It is especially frustrating because the water is merchandised in refrigerators . . . it's just that the refrigerator doors have been removed and the refrigerators are unplugged. Perhaps it's the refrigerator thing that irks me the most. Why use search a large merchandising device? Just pull out the fridge (it obviously doesn't work or you're not allowed to use it) and put in some shelves. If you do that, I will have absolutely no expectation that there will be cold water.

I traveled through LAX earlier this week on Southwest and had an idea: If I could find a Southwest ticket for $39 one-way, and I served the most inexpensive bottles of water possible (read Arrowhead), I would have a very low breakeven. I could fill 2 large backpacks with blocks of ice and bottles of water (better yet, I could freeze the water bottles before going to the airport). Once I got into the terminal with my valid boarding pass and ID, I would sell the bottled water for a $2 premium because it was cold.

Here's my even better idea: Use the best bottled water -- Fiji -- if I am going to go to the effort. I know I would pay $8 for a big bottle of ice-cold Fiji water vs. a warm bottle of Aquafina or Arrowhead at one of the stores.

If anyone tries this, let me know how it goes. If I find the time to try it myself, I'll be sure to let all of you know how it goes.

Your Free Prize for buying Free Prize Inside

With the last book, A Purple Cow, you could order 12 packs of the books for the price of 4.

Here, now is the list of SHAMELESS Free Prizes for ordering specific quantities of Free Prize Inside. Highlights from the list:

1 BOOK A free ebook that used to cost money and was a #1 bestseller. (this works on the honor system. Just visit ( Free Prize Inside) and there it is. No need to send me a receipt.

32 BOOKS One seat at a free seminar in my office outside of New York City. The date? June 14th. We start about 10 am and go to about 4. I promise youÂ’ll have a great time.

75 BOOKS A free (private) phone edgecrafting session (which I don't often do, but in a moment of weakness, decided to try). You and your team get an hour with me on the phone, at a mutually agreeable time, to talk about your company, your site, your mission, whatever. (subject line “phone graft”)

Deadline for submitting receipts: May 20. Your mileage may vary.

Happy shopping. recommendend trying 800-CEO-READ if you are looking for a last minute copy of the book that might still have the special packaging.

Good article

It's from someone at Microsoft and is very skewed to the Microsoft OS and a D-Link router, but it's a pretty good primer.

Here it is: Using a Wireless Laptop at Work and at Home

BULLMARKET 2004 :: COMPANIES THAT CAN HELP YOU MAKE THINGS HAPPEN

That's the name of the companion book to Seth Godin's Free Prize Inside. Here's the unfortunate thing: if you haven't ordered Free Prize Inside, you've probably missed out on the great packaging. Here's the great thing: this companion book is awesome and you can preview it for free -- if you like it, make the $21 donation to Room to Read (hey, it's tax deductible). Another free prize -- visit the Free Prize Inside website and download Seth's manual on Powerpoint (yes, it's on your honor) -- I guarantee that it will change your Powerpoint presentations for the better overnight (although I prefer to use Istockphoto for my pictures -- read the guide, you'll see what I'm talking about).

France's RIAA

You may have already seen this, but here's a little bit more.

Last week, Boing Boing: had a post regarding the image below that was the logo used by France's RIAA against P2P users:



Pretty funny, right? Can you imagine the boardroom conversation? "Not only are we going to sue our major consumers, but we should have a logo in which we flip them off."

Even funnier, Boing Boing has this post today with the response logo.

Comcast WiFi spy

It's hard to believe (actually it's really not), but according to this post on Boing Boing, the new WiFi router being sold by Comcast actually allows Comcast to spy on you Internet usage.

From the Boing Boing post:

"the gateway supports a CableHome 1.0 "for the ability to deliver secure, managed services from ComcastÂ’s head-end network to the subscribersÂ’ home network."
Basicallyly, Comcast can detect your VOIP service that competes with its own and shut you down, among other things.

Here's my tip -- buy your own cable modem and your own wireless router (make sure your router is not compatible witCableHomeme 1.0 -- believe me, this will become a differentiating factor).

Earthlink's Scamblocker

Adding to it's powerful arsenal of *-blocker tools, Earthlink has a new product in beta called Scamblocker. Lockergnome probably describes the functionality best in this post.

From Lockergnome:

"Imagine you had a Web browser that said when you typed in a new address, “The Internet site you’re about to visit is known to steal credit-card numbers and use them in unauthorized ways.”

I'd certainly use that. Apparently the application is available from Earthlink right now, although the database is not yet very robust, I'm certainly excited to watch the further development of this product (and the inevitable products that will provide the same functionality).

Google, are you listening? Please add this functionality ASAP to my Google toolbar. Thanks.

Speed up Acrobat Reader

Lockergnome has a great post on Adobe Reader SpeedUp 1.21. Visit their site for the download -- it's freeware and it works! (yes, I tried it myself and you only need to use it once to see a noticeable improvement in boot time)

Automated Southwest check-in

I only mention this because it's the second time it's happened to me twice in exactly the same way:

I was flying out of Oakland airport yesterday on Southwest. My reservation was for a 6:30 PM flight, but our meeting finished early, so I had my assistant call Southwest and change myself and a business associate to a different flight. We arrived at the airport, I went to the automated check-in kiosk, swiped my card, and was told to go to customer service. MY business associate swiped his card and received his boarding pass.

I went to customer service, got my boarding pass by showing my ID (yes, I was on the earlier flight), but the pass printed with the fabulous "SSSSS" designator (for those who may not know, the multiple S designator means an automatic trip to the secondary screening -- take off your shows, get wanded after walking through the hood, and have all of your carryon baggage opened and hand inspected). Yesterday, secondary screening actually wound up being the express lane -- I went through faster than my colleague.

Just out of curiosity, I went back and checked, and found that I had switched my flights in the exact same way almost a month ago, leading to exactly the same result.

Interesting coincidence -- I'm going to try it again the next time I'm there.

Why are some hotel towels so small?

This always frustrates me. I'm not a really big guy -- waist size 33 to be exact. I stayed at a Hilton in Denver and I could hardly get the towels to wrap around my waist. Why is that? Do you think the GM of the hotel has ever showered in one of his own rooms?

I have purchased some pretty cheap towels in college from stores such as Target and none of them were as short as these hideous towels that the Hilton gave me. Furthermore, most of the Hilton towels were so washed out that they were almost abrasive -- even after repeated washings, my Target towels in college never got as stiff and uncomfortable as these Hilton towels. When I say I got towels cheap at Target, I mean that they were only a dollar or two. So it makes me wonder how much Hilton pays for these over-glorified bath mats (I honestly thought the maid had stocked my entire room with bathmats and called to get new towels only to find myself with more of exactly the same towels).

Contrast this with the Loews hotel in San Diego. Loews gives me several towel sizes to choose from, but even the smallest ones go comfortably around my waist (my wife loves the extra huge bath towels that go around your waist almost twice and drape all the way to the floor). Some of you might say that the Loews is more expensive than the Hilton, but that is not always the case; it simply depends on the time of the year.

Maybe next time I'll stay at the Loews in Denver. I know for sure that there won't be a next time at the Hilton (at least not in Denver) -- all over the size of a bath towel.

The little things do make a very, very big difference . . . . and, yes, your customers do notice.

Why you are very smart

According to this post by Seth Godin. Why, might you ask, are you very smart? Because you're reading my blog and Seth's blog, and blogs in general. It's amazing to me (and to Seth) how few people (read executives) know what blogs even are.

Seth also talks about how astounded he is with the negative reaction to Gmail. As I pointed out in my earlier post on Gmail there are a number of pieces of software already reading your e-mail -- spam filters, virus detection, your company's IT guys, the bot that you downloaded, the person that used a computer after you forgot to log out of Hotmail. Even if none of this applies to you, it's really damn easy to read other people's e-mail (and their instant messages, for that matter). Very, very few people use any sort of encryption on their messages.

I've said it before (and will probably say it again after this post) -- if you don't want Google's service to scan your e-mail, don't sign up. Go find another service that will provide you with a free gig of e-mail that wants nothing in return . . . I wish you the best of luck. What's unfortunate is how blown out of proportion Google's ad service has become -- compared to other Internet threats, the Gmail "threat" is very minor and is only a "risk" to someone that opts into using the Gmail service.

As Seth says: "Being smart doesn't matter. Having a blog or doing something technical is irrelevant if you're invisible or seen as a threat by everyone else."

Here's a great question . . .

A note to execs: why do you think speaking is important but blogging isn't? This wonderful question was posed by Scoble and has only received 1 comment on his site in regards to this question.

What if the new "public speaking" is blogging? I saw another post by Scoble today that Sun had published it's blogging guidelines. Strange. No one seems to be publishing public speaking guidelines (although I'm sure that guidelines do exist at some companies). I have to say that it's very interesting to see some of the content that I have heard many executives give in public speeches not be "allowed" in corporate blogging policies (note to you executives giving those speeches: the text of your speeches can end up appearing online, but may not necessarily appear in a "blog").

Google IPO

Yes, I'm late on commenting on this -- I've been out of town.

Anyway,
this is the best post I saw about the Google IPO because it includes key portions of the Google filing.

My favorite quote from the filing:

"We will not shy away from high-risk, high-reward projects because of short term earnings pressure."

How refreshing! What if a lot of other companies followed this basic rule? Imagine how much more competitive the market would become -- the amount of disruptive technology, business practices, etc. would skyrocket.

Perhaps this is the best advice to small companies looking to make it big. It's an old principle, really; commonly known as risk-reward analysis. The higher the risk, generally the higher the reward. It's just that most large corporations have to answer to stockholders, boards, and people that may not have invested in a high risk game.

Women web users

Here's a great article at Worthwhile entitled "Women and the Web." Obviously, the articles is about how women use the web. Not quite so obviously are some of the results; from the article:

"Women indicated that their total time spent on individual activities added up to 38 hours of activity inside a 24-hour day. The Internet has enabled women to multi-task while facing this 38-hour day."

The source article for the post on Worthwhile can be found here.

Trillion$$$$.