The Church of the Customer proposes the following:
Roughly 1% of your site visitors will create content within a democratized community.
This is powerful information. How will you use it?
Monday, May 29, 2006
I'm a whiner too
People have told me that I’m bitter and I usually respond that it’s not a matter of bitterness, rather it’s a frustration with a lack of general excellence. The thing is that this “bitterness” or even better, this “whining” that I do generally causes me to take action.
Mark Cuban is the same way and summarizes up whining very nicely:
Whining is the first step towards change. Its the moment when you realize something is very wrong and that you have to take the initiative to do something about it. Sure, criticism usually comes along with the territory. Who cares ?
People who don't whine are punching bags. They just go about their days, their jobs, their lives, knowing there is nothing they can do to change a darn thing, so why say a word ? They see no reason to whine because they know they are incapable of affecting change.
So you know what? Call me bitter or, better yet, call me a whiner any damn day. And no, you don’t have to do things on the scale of Mark Cuban in order to affect change; just stop being a punching bag.
Google Trends
I’ve been playing around with Google Trends and I’m not sure that the data’s valuable to me, but perhaps I’m not looking at the right terms or perhaps I’m not looking at it in the right frame of mind or perhaps I’m just not ready to be able to use the date. Whatever the case may be, trend data from Google is important (or it will be soon).
My Toshiba M200's display is on the fritz
The other day my company pushed a policy that turned on everyone’s screen saver with password protection after a certain amount of minutes; not a bad security policy if not everyone is using this function. My computer screen entered screen saver mode and then the screen went haywire with vertical colored lines and a loss of horizontal hold to the point that I couldn’t see anything. I did plug in an external monitor to see if the problem was the LCD display or the video card, and the external display acted the same way, so I knew I had either a video card hardware or software issue.
I rebooted the machine, thinking it was a temporary glitch, only to find that the problem had remained and I could hardly see anything when I logged in (I logged in by feel, no because I could see the screen). After trying to change the display properties and not being able to see what I was doing, I called the help desk to see if they could help — the end result was that we were able to find out how to enable remote desktop remotely and I was left to clean up the mess myself from one of the other computers on the network.
For those that have never used Remote Desktop, it’s pretty cool and the little hack above that allows you to remotely turn it on makes it even cooler. I checked the Device Manager and sure enough the nVidia video card hadn’t started and was showing an error code 10. After searching around for the meaning of the error code 10, all I could determine was that it was some sort of BIOS error, which screwed me over because I couldn’t see anything to do BIOS modification and Remote Desktop didn’t display the BIOS screen.
Luckily I was able to download a copy of the Toshiba M200 BIOS update, which included a Flash utility that worked direct from the Windows desktop. I re-flashed the BIOS, and the laptop came right back up with no display problems.
I walked away from the computer once it was working, it went into screensaver mode, and is on the fritz again. This time when I re-flashed the BIOS, the display problem was not fixed, so I guess I need to send it to Toshiba to get it repaired, which sucks.
After some searching, I found that I am not the only one to have this problem, so I’m wondering if anyone out there knows of some sort of other solution that I have not thought of before I ship this off to Toshiba.
Is process really so scary?
I do an awful lot of diagramming when I’m talking to people trying to figure out the underlying process — many times just seeing the bare bones of a process can aid in understanding. Lots of people seem to fear process, especially if a process is clearly defined and modeled. The simple fact of the matter is that there is a fine balance between process and innovation. For example, if you worked at a very innovative, unstructured company, wouldn’t you want the payroll process to be careful modeled and followed so that you received a paycheck every 2 weeks?
Seth Godin shares my views on process:
Process, on the other hand, appears to be for Dummies.
So we bristle when we're asked for our weekly goals sheets, or when the boss wants us to use a database or when the insurance company requires docs to follow data-driven guidelines. We pass up the tenth novel by a successful author... because the process has become too transparent.
And yet, in many cases, process is underrated.
Process is your ace in the hole when your intuition stops working.
If process makes you nervous, it's probably because it threatens your reliance on intuition. Get over it. The best processes leverage your intuition and give it room to thrive.
Please don’t confuse process with rules and corporate mandates even though both of those things may have some small amount to do with process formulation. Remember that, as I said in the first paragraph in this post, there is a fine line between overprocessing and overinuiting (not sure if that’s really a word) — read the last paragraph that I quoted above from Seth again every time you create process.
CEO lies
Guy Kawasaki has posted the Top 16 Lies of CEOs. I especially like these few:
“I wanted to do this, but the board wouldn’t let me.” This is a cop out. A good CEO tells the board what she wants to do. She doesn’t seek permission—forgiveness maybe, but never permission. So this statement means one of two things: the CEO didn’t really try her best to get something approved or the board is losing confidence in the CEO.
“I will gladly step aside when the time comes.” Sure, with a $10 million severance package, who wouldn’t be glad to step aside?
As a bonus, Kawasaki includes these 4 things that we’d all like our CEOs to say:
“I don’t know.”
“Thank you.”
“Do what’s right.”
“It’s my fault.”
Read the whole post.
Talking to people
Hugh over at The Gaping Void sums up advertising pretty succinctly. Seth Godin keyed on the same drawing and points out that you can substitute lots of words (i.e., “customer service”) for “advertising” in the picture above and sums it up by saying/asking:
The next time you get all formal or obfuscatory or snarky, ask a simple question, "If I knew this person and we were eating together in a restaurant, would I speak to them the same way?"
Link — Seth Godin
Link — Gaping Void
USB Touschscreen
Assuming that this product actually makes it to the US, Gizmodo is reporting on a USB-based monitor frame that will allow you to turn any 15” or 17” LCD screen into a touchscreen. Apparently it’s available in June . . . somewhere in the world.
Friday, May 26, 2006
Lots of news about CEO pay
So I was very interested to see this post by Malcolm Gladwell on the subject:
. . . in 1949, the highest paid CEO in America was Charlie Wilson of General Motors, who earned $586,100 in salary, bonus and stock. That's roughly equivalent to what some of the better-compensated CEO's are making today.
But what did Wilson pay in taxes? $430,350.
Times have changed.
Interesting.
Monday, May 22, 2006
Create fake newspaper snippets
Someone sent me one of these fake newspaper snippets, which I thought was really cool. If you visit the link below, you can create your own. Here’s a sample from the site that creates them:
Nielsen reviews blog comments
Steve Rubel shares the results of a Nielsen analysis of blog comments; here are some interesting points:
- The textual size of the commentsphere is 10 to 20% of the blogosphere
- Use of comments is beneficial for ranking blog posts in useful ways
- 80% of the sample posts allowed comments, but only 28% had them
More interesting stats on Rubel’s original post.
Cross-platform web presentations all Ajax'd up
Teamslide takes on other web slideshow service by presenting a service that is fully Ajax-coded, meaning that it is truly cross-platform without having to install anything client-side. Most importantly the service just works with Powerpoint — it adds a button to Powerpoint, you click it, and the software creates a zip file that you upload to Teamslide.
This seems like it would be really good if your company already owns a conference bridge and you don’t need to outsource that part of the service.
Single presenter licenses start at $99.
Lots of speaking tips
the[non]billable hour has compiled a bunch of great speaking tips into a single post — check it out.
Online storage round-up
The Web 2.0 blog has a pretty good round-up of a lot of the online storage providers that includes free and paid services — good place to start if you’re looking for online storage.
Creating talent
The kottke.org tackles talent and conclude:
. . . there's more than one way to be good at something. There's something very encouraging and American about it, this idea that through hard work, you can become proficient and talented at pretty much anything.
Read the whole post; it’s pretty interesting.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
The argument against SWOT
It’s not often that you see strong arguments against business tools, so I was very interested to see a post about the argument against SWOT on Businesspundit. This quote was republished from the Organizations and Markets Blog:
The problem, Makadok explains, is that the relationship between the two drivers of profitability is presented as additive. Thus, in order to earn a high profit, a firm should seek attractive markets and position the firm to have a competitive advantage. However, this "advice is simple, intuitive and wrong" (p.9), because there is an inherent tension between "seeking attractive markets" (thereby advocating a collusion-based approach) and "position to gain competitive advantage" (which implies beating or dominating rivals). In fact, Makadok argues using a simple duopoly model, that the two profitability drivers are likely sub-additive rather than additive.
Ok, I like how the Businesspundit author summarized the paragraph above:
Is SWOT analysis wrong? It depends on your perspective. As a quick analytical tool it's quite useful. As strategic dogma it fails miserably.
The argument against SWOT
It’s not often that you see strong arguments against business tools, so I was very interested to see a post about the argument against SWOT on Businesspundit. This quote was republished from the Organizations and Markets Blog:
The problem, Makadok explains, is that the relationship between the two drivers of profitability is presented as additive. Thus, in order to earn a high profit, a firm should seek attractive markets and position the firm to have a competitive advantage. However, this "advice is simple, intuitive and wrong" (p.9), because there is an inherent tension between "seeking attractive markets" (thereby advocating a collusion-based approach) and "position to gain competitive advantage" (which implies beating or dominating rivals). In fact, Makadok argues using a simple duopoly model, that the two profitability drivers are likely sub-additive rather than additive.
Ok, I like how the Businesspundit author summarized the paragraph above:
Is SWOT analysis wrong? It depends on your perspective. As a quick analytical tool it's quite useful. As strategic dogma it fails miserably.
Nokia announces 770 software upgrade
Nokia announced a 770 software upgrade that will enable the following features that all of us have been waiting for including:
- Google Talk support — another great reason to stick with Google Talk as my primary IM client
- Full screen keyboard that no longer requires the stylus
- Improved memory performance
- Faster access to internet services
- SIP VOIP support
Internet Tablet Talk has full details with screenshots and the full text of the press release from Nokia.
UPDATE: You can sign up here for more information on the 2006 OS release
Sony UX is live on the Sony site
Prices start at $1799.00 for the ready to ship models. Probably the coolest part about this computer is the slide-out keyboard, which is not present on any of the current Origami offerings.
Monday, May 15, 2006
MP3Tunes to work on TiVo?
Om Malik is reporting that MP3Tunes is working towards being accessible with your TiVo. From Michael Robertson, CEO of MP3Tunes:
“If you have a TiVo, you can use it to play high-quality digital music through your home entertainment system, which is what I’ve done with my own music library. I now have my song collection at my second home without the hassle of moving or updating music files - I just turn on my TV.”
This is awesome!
Google Notebook
Screenshots are showing up all over the place, but I saw the post on TechCrunch first, so that’s the one I’m linking to.
This is supposed to launch sometime this week, so keep checking the Notebook URL or look for it to be added to the launch bar at the upper left when you log into Gmail.
Palm announces 700P -- not exclusive to Sprint or Verizon
Full details at the official Palm website. Note that the SD slot still does not support WiFi, a feature that I think many people were hoping for; the phone does, however, have EVDO support.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
What's your ability to say "no"?
Here’s some text from a BMW double-page magazine ad that simply states “NO” on the left side and has this and more text on the right:
The ability to say no to compromise is a rare thing these days. Many companies would like to be able to say it, but so few have the autonomy to actually do it. As an independent company, BMW can say no. No, we will not compromise our ideas. No, we will not do it the way everyone else does it. No, we will not factor designs down to the lowest common denominator. No, we will not sell out to a parent company who will meddle in our affairs and ask us to subject our cars to mass market vanilla-ism.
Are you in the same position to say “no”? If you’re not, how would you change things if you could?
UPDATE: Signal vs. Noise has an article on the same thing with the full article text and a picture of the ad.
iTunes offers PDF subscriptions
I suppose if the touchscreen iPod ever appears, it might not be too hard to envision it is a e-book reader as well.
Example:
Link (Wikinews print edition web version)
Link (Wikinews print edition PDF version on iTunes)
Hat tip to Steve Rubel.
iTunes has Fox shows now
Where’s the super-cool touchscreen iPod so that I can fully enjoy these shows? Both Prison Break and 24 have been added.
Link (note this is an iTunes link)
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
What is the new challenge?
The factory mindset was to get your assignment, finish your assignment, and go home. You’ve done this yourself — you feel you’ve accomplished a lot by clearing out your e-mail inbox, clearing the inbox on your desk, and not having the voicemail light lit on your phone. The problem is that clearing out e-mail, clearing out voicemail, and clearing off your desk are not really your “assignment,” they’re just part of the world that we live in.
Seth Godin offers this advice:
The challenge is NOT to empty your inbox. The challenge is not to get your boss to tell you what to do.
The challenge is to ask a two part question:
What next? What now?
As Seth says, asking the questions is the hard part.
If the customer is always right, what happens when they're wrong?
Seth Godin sums it up succinctly:
If the customer is wrong, they're not your customer any more.
In other words, if it's not worth making the customer right, fire her.
Have you ever had a customer that was wrong? Did you do everything you could to make things right only to find that you couldn’t? Imagine how much time you might have saved if you had simply fired that customer.
Quick Add to Google Calendar straight from Firefox
The title says it all — originally found at this post on TUAW.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Top Ten Marketer Lies
Guy Kawasaki has another top ten list with 12 items on it — 11 & 12 are a “bonus,” and both happen to be my favorite:
11. "The PR firm (ad agency, whatever) that we interviewed really loves what we're doing."Not to put too negative a spin on this, but prostitutes tell customers that they'll love them "a long, long time"--which is about as true as this lie. The severity of this lie depends on what phase of the bubble you're in. If it's a frothy time, then you might have to convince a PR firm to take you on as a client. If it's a down cycle, then getting someone to love you isn't that hard.
12. "We found a rock star to join our marketing team."There's nothing like setting a person up for failure by creating excessive expectations. I've spoken to event managers, and they tell me that rock stars make all kinds of ridiculous demands like painting the backstage walls purple for Prince or punching a hole in a wall so that another performer could walk directly to the stage. Forget the rock star: Hire good, bright people who want to prove themselves, not live off the past.
Read his full post for the top ten.
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