Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

I'm one of the few people I know who enjoy it when it is hot outside. The past couple of days the temperature has hit about 100 degrees, and about 100% humudity, and I've been out on my bike soaking up that sun. I never complain about the heat. And I only turned on the air conditioning in the evening to allow my family to get a good sleep primarily because the excess humidity makes it a bit uncomfortable.

The weather has been pretty wacky though. A week ago it was so cold that we had to wear jackets. This week we're baking. And then today we were hit with wicked thunderstorms and some tornado activity.

Now I'm sure that some people would tell me that this is all explained by global warming. Of course if we can't predict the weather a week away I'm not really sure we can guess what will happen in 20 or 200 years either. I'm just reminded of the fact that nature is the most unpredictable thing of all, and I don't think we understand near as much about it as we think we do.

Seth Godin posits that most marketing people who think they know a winning campaign or product when they see it, simply don't. He does make possible allowances for a couple of people though:

Perhaps Clive Davis knows a hit song when he hears one, and certainly Giorgio Armani has the magic eye. But, just speaking for myself, I don't have Clive's ears or Giorgio's eyes.

If Clive Davis knows a hit song when he hears one, then why are multi-million dollar marketing campaigns required to turn those songs into hits? And why are fashion shows and ad campaigns required to promote Armani suits if they are hits?

Even when we have proven talent that isn't always enough.Kelly Clarkson won the first American Idol, apparently proving that she had more talent than any other contestant. But it took all of the Idol media attention, and millions of dollars of marketing to keep her records above the general noise level in the music business.

If these people know a hit when they hear one, why did nobody sign the Arctic Monkeys to a record deal?

Why is it that a week of high temperatures in May is clear proof of global warming, when the freezing cold temperatures a week earlier in May get no mention and apparently prove nothing?

And why is it that people talking about greenhouse gases so frequently refer to them as "pollution", when water vapor accounts for up to 70% of the greenhouse effect, and carbon dioxide accounts for up to 26%. Neither of those would constitute pollution.

Today was one of those picture perfect days. We took advantage of the beautiful weather and hung out with some friends. Then I just relaxed outside and read until it got dark. I didn't do much else at all.

You might say I prioritized things.

Harper's Magazine, understanding the concept of free speech, has decided to print the 12 cartoons that caused rioting among Muslims a few months ago.

Indigo Books and Music, the only bookstore chain in Canada, with over 260 stores, has pulled that copy of the magazine because they don't. Their stated reason:

An internal memo obtained by the Globe advised Indigo staff to tell people "the decision was made based on the fact that the content about to be published has been known to ignite demonstrations around the world."

Fortunately they've made the decision that you shouldn't see the magazine for you.

I heard this great line from Matthew McConaughey on a commercial today:

Don't make a straight line crooked.

I guess this just a great way of saying if it ain't broke don't fix it.

The 3% federal excise tax on long-distance imposed in 1898 to help pay for the Spanish-American War will no longer be collected. I guess the war must finally be paid off.

Mark Evans wonders why people are fascinated with the idea of a BlackBerry killer:

My column in the National Post this week is about Motorola's "Q", and the strange obsession people have with the hyping the next Blackberry-killer.

This week it's the BlackBerry killer. Before that it was the obsession with an iPod killer. Microsoft is looking for a Google killer. Years ago they created a Netscape killer.

In every market there is always a winner; a top dog. And there is always a competitor trying to come up something better, as if that will suddenly make people want to switch. It's tough to get people to switch by themselves though. Internet Explorer didn't beat Netscape because people decided it was better. Corporate IT departments just preferred the browser that came free with the operating system and forced people to use it.

The idea of a product "killer" gives marketing staff something to strive for, even though what they are really trying to do is change peoples' minds. And it gives journalists something to write about.

Chris Pirillo has too much stuff to do:

I have too many things I need to do, and I’ve got no time to do ‘em all. I’ve had so many late nights in the past week, it’s not even funny. Didn’t even have a chance to check my email until 11am today! I stayed up last night working on helping the Outlook team, but I still have a few more things I need to tweak in this site’s template...

On the other hand, Robert Scoble is re-evaluating,asking what he should be doing:

Tonight, though, I find I'm questioning everything about my life. Am I doing the right things? Treating people well enough? Doing enough to improve the world?

Nobody really needs to do anything, other than eat and sleep.After that you just have to figure out what is really important to you and do it. Everything you do is a choice.

So many people talk about how busy they are as it is was a badge of honor. I work hard sometimes, other times I volunteer, and yet other times I just relax with a good book. I've been there for all the major events in my family's lives, and we're pretty comfortable, though I won't be retiring tomorrow either.

There are 24 hours in every day, and you alone can decide how to spend them.I just do the stuff I want to do.

Who would have thought that a post about apostrophes would attract two (ok, now three) trackbacks? Though Lynne Truss was able to spend a whole chapter discussion the subject.

Details matter, and ever simple punctuation mistakes stand out glaringly, giving the reader an immediate, and often poor, impression of the writer.

From Jimmy Palmer at the DRM Blog:

If you look up the meaning of trustworthy computing you will find marketing terms such as security, privacy, reliability, and best business practices. Don't believe the hype. It just means that all the DRM now has a pretty ribbon wrapped around it with a good name. The only trust taking place here is between very large companies that want to sell you content, hardware, and software that violates your privacy, artificially inflates prices, and makes it illegal for you to tinker with.

In case the professional version of Windows hasn't been cutting it for you, Microsoft has an even better edition - the Ultimate Edition - of Windows Vista and Office 2007:

The new retail package, which was not part of the Office 2007 lineup announced back in February, will offer nearly all the components available to large businesses in one $679 product. A Microsoft representative said on Thursday that the new entrant in the lineup was "created as a result of customer feedback," but didn't offer more details on its origins.

I can just imagine that conversation:

Customer: Hmmm. We've got the top of the line Professional Windows and Office versions, but I feel that we just need something more.

Microsoft: We can help. We have this new ultimate edition. It has everything you already have, but it costs more. And you can play videos and games just like at home.

Customer: But we already have everything we need. And we don't want our employees playing videos and games. We just remove all of that stuff.

Microsoft: But it's the Ultimate version. You don't want to be a dinosaur do you?

Meanwhile, can somebody explain to me the difference between the current versions of Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional? Other than those merely printed on the license agreement?

I purchased a Sony VAIO PC a couple of months ago, because it had 1 GB of memory and 100 GB of disk space. The PC had become painfully slow so I decided to defragment the hard drive. At that point I discovered something interesting. Apparently for Sony, 87.15 GB is the same thing as 100 GB. Can you say false advertising?

Based on my experience I can highly recommend that you don't buy a PC from Sony.

MSN Spaces is now the largest blogging service with over 100 million unique visitors. But the press release contains another tidbit that nobody commented on.

Apparently approximately 13% of the population of earth visits Microsoft MSN each month:

MSN attracts more than 465 million unique users worldwide per month. With localized versions available globally in 42 markets and 21 languages, MSN is a world leader in delivering compelling programmed content experiences to consumers and online advertising opportunities to businesses worldwide.

Whether or not this number is accurate, one wonders how many of those unique visitors just never changed the default home page in their copy of Internet Explorer.

Given that O'Reilly has trademarked the term "Web 2.0" and has actively begun to threaten others using the term with legal action, I will heretofore be moving to Web 2.1.

After all, everybody know that the .0 release is always full of bugs. I much prefer the .1 version, with most of the problems worked out.

Update: For everyone that is commenting on the "attempt" to trademark the term "Web 2.0", CMP actually has the trademark. You can read all about it here.

Paul Kedrosky points to Steve Jurvetson's summary of a conversation with teens:

All six panelists have iPods and cell phones (50% Motorola, 83% Cingular) and are active computer users (50% Mac). None of them buys ring tones or cell phone applications.

None of them plays mobile videos or listens to music from their cell phone. They primarily use their phones and computers to communicate.

With the computer, multitasking is the norm... with 13 open IM windows, music, email, browser and homework.

With two sons aged 18 and 20 I get pretty much the same impression. Their cell phones and IM are their primary modes of communication, and they typically make plans using IM rather than the phone, which is much more efficient for groups. They have plenty of windows open, working on a number of things simultaneously. One son uses a PC and the other a Mac.

My 20 year old doesn't watch TV; he downloads torrents. He doesn't download ringtones; he copies songs and photos to his phone via Bluetooth.

Both of them still buy CDs as well as downloading songs from the net.They have no plans to watch TV on their phones anytime soon. They text message, and have their email accounts set to forward messages to their phones.

Their friends are pretty much the same.

I live in Waterloo, Canada, a town with modest high technology industry consisting of local companies. Ok, there is RIM... and everyone else. And yesterday one of those others - RSS Solutions - was acquired today by Visiprise of Atlanta, GA.

I had recently heard that one of the founders had left, so I assumed that something like this must be up.

Ephraim Schwartz asks:

What would happen if Microsoft and all of its technology disappeared tomorrow?

Ephraim, I'm typing this post on my Macintosh Powerbook so I personally wouldn't even notice.

Yet it is difficult to answer that question, because you presuppose an addiction to Microsoft technology that only exists because its technology exists currently.

If Microsoft were to cease to exist today, people would merrily work along, probably for years, using the software they already had, since Microsoft wouldn't be there to tell them that it was now obsolete and that they needed to buy the newest version.

If Microsoft had never existed then people would just have some other way of accomplishing the same tasks.They wouldn't be addicted to Microsoft software in the first place.

A better question to ask is:

If Microsoft had never existed would our use of computers be as efficient today?

My uncle used to say that we would have had integrated circuits (and computer chips) twenty years earlier if scientists hadn't wasted twenty years figuring out what transistors did. Is it possible that twenty years of figuring out how to use the many versions of Windows properly actually held us back in developing more useful software?

How much productivity was lost in the writing and rewriting of software to keep up with all of those versions of Windows? How much productivity was lost in the effort by Microsoft to crush competitors, and the effort by those companies not to be crushed? What did customers gain from the fight to crush Netscape? How about the fight to crush Google?

How about this one:

If Microsoft had never existed would we have had a more productive web years earlier? Or has the existence of Microsoft fostered the competition that has driven such advancement?

Let's be fair. Microsoft was the driving force behind standardizing PCs on a single platform - Windows and Office. But since that time they alone have been the greatest driver of upheaval, and problems like viruses and malware, on that platform. They were also the driving force behind my switch to the Macintosh, even though I still use Office. But I could just as easily switch to something else. What I really benefit from is the competition.

Last week Skype announced that all calling within the US and Canada would be free at least until the end of 2006. Unfortunately for me I still had a Skype credit of $12.27, money I paid in good faith for services they are no longer charging for, and all of my calls are within the US and Canada. Now Skype claims that my credit won't expire but it is of no other use to me, at least until the end of 2006. Twelve dollars isn't much but I'm sure I'm not the only user in this situation so Skype is merely using our money for a float.

I sent a note to Skype Customer Support on May 15 asking for my money back but so far I have had no response. As long as they have my money my calls aren't free at all.

A new top level domain suffix, .mobi, opened for registration yesterday and at $140 per trademark name and $45 per generic name annually, Mobile Top Level Domain (the registrar) just won the lottery. The company believes that this domain suffix will guarantee a better experience for users:

If all Web sites created for cellphones adopted the dot-mobi suffix, phone users would know that they would be guaranteed consistent and pleasant experiences when using dot-mobi URLs, says Mr. Edwards of Mobile Top Level Domain.

That is a lot to expect from a mere suffix, but they do have some basic rules:

To make wireless surfing smoother, Mobile Top Level Domain has required Web developers to follow a set of rules. One rule requires dot-mobi sites not to "cause pop-ups or other windows to appear." Another requires developers to "divide (dot-mobi web) pages into usable but limited size portions."

I can see some potential benefit for users but there is a lot more benefit for the companies involved:

Many big companies are backing this initiative because they will all benefit if the dot-mobi suffix takes roots among consumers. Wireless carriers like Vodafone could generate more revenues from data usage. For their part, Google and MSN are looking at advertising on cellphones, which is expected to be more effective than online advertising because the cellphone is perceived as a more personal device.

Will the tools available on the web suddenly change just because they have a new domain name? If companies haven't felt the need to do it right so far, what has changed? Perhaps the real reason that customers don't use the mobile web is because of the dearth of useful applications, and the high cost of using them.

Give customers useful tools and don't charge them through the nose to use them and we might see usage increase. A perfect example is text messaging - easy to use, and cheap. And people use it in droves.

In the process of trying to test comment spam protection on my blog I re-enabled the comments. They hadn't even been on for five minutes when I received my first comment spam. So they're off again now for the time being.

I was trying to explain what I thought the real danger to the mainstream media was, but Jeff Jarvis explains it much more elegantly:

In the future of media, which is now, everybody is a network. In the past, networks were defined by control of content or distribution. But now, you can’t own all distribution and content is controlled where it’s created. So, I wonder, where’s the value and where’s the money in the fully networked world?

Mark Evans contends that the mainstream media isn't in danger of disappearing anytime soon because it is convenient:

Sure, newspaper circulation has arguably been falling for the past 30 years but millions of papers are still being sold every day in Canada and the U.S. Why? Well, you can't really lie on the couch to read an online newspaper or take the sports section into the bathroom for a private moment. As important, newspapers are designed to encourage discovery because you can quickly browse through several sections and read the news items that capture your attention - something difficult to do online even if you are a big Google News fan. From a technology perspective, reading online is apparently about 20% slower than paper, which explains why so many people print stories they really want to read.

Surely there must be more reasons for its existence than just convenience. That would suggest that newpapers will pretty much cease to exist the moment someone perfects e-ink or digital paper. Or the moment people start taking their ultra-mobile PCs to the bathroom with them, if they aren't already.

I don't think that people are referring to the form factor of the paper when they talk about the death of mainstream media. I think they are referring to the system whereby a small group of editors control what the readers see, and the message and tone of the information conveyed. The MSM conveys a particular message, ostensibly reflecting the sentiment of the average reader, though rarely is that the case. The goal of the MSM is to convey that message, repeat that message, allow a limited discussion about the message, and then either continue the message or move on to a new message, on a schedule determined by them.

But today there are ways for the average person to get their message out, to discuss somebody else's message or vociferously disagree with it, or just to say whatever they feel. In addition to the one-to-many relationship or the MSM, people can now have peer-discussions, many-to-many relationships, or just aggregate the thoughts of others on a particular subject of interest.

Where we once assumed the mainstream media to be "the truth", we now know it to be one potential truth, or it may not even be true at all. The ability of others to openly discuss this information hold the potential to get to the complete truth if it exists. But we no longer depend on the MSM to be the sole source of the truth. They have lost our unquestioning trust.

The death of the mainstream media is really hastened by the fact that we increasingly turn to other sources to validate what we see in the mainstream media. The danger for them is that when we look to enough other sources we won't need them anymore.

I miss Trader Joe's. They don't have any locations in Canada, so I have to get my fix while at work in Los Angeles, or while in Boston. And Seth Godin's post about it reminded me:

I was talking with a colleague today about the magic of Trader's. Here's how they make billions:

[...]

2. These customers are big mouths. They sneeze. When they serve something from Trader's they brag about, they tell the story of the store. This drives down advertising costs.

I'm watching "The Day the Earth Stood Still", circa 1951 with Michael Rennie. More accurately I'm out having a nice big latte while TiVo-ing the movie, though I did catch the first half hour.

Now I'm not that old - I was born in the sixties. But life was pretty much the same. No cell phones. If you wanted to get hold of someone and they weren't near a phone that was too bad. No voice mail either. You just called them later. And if it was important you just kept trying until you got hold of them. Efficient global communication consisted of sending a telegram. No internet then.

Klaatu, Michael Rennie's character, has come to Earth to tell the people or the world that if they cause danger to other folks in the universe the planet will have to be destroyed. Predictably the political leaders can't put aside their bickering to listen, so it falls to the scientists to do so. Fifty years later and we really haven't improved one bit with our communication, but we can really cause some excellent destruction now.

In the movie it's safe enough at night for Bobby, roughly 12 years old, to wander out at night. I used to be able to stay out pretty late safely when I was a kid too. But a couple of nights ago a teenager was swarmed and robbed in Waterloo not all that far from where I live, and a couple years ago a little girl was taken off the street a couple of blocks from my house. I'd think twice about wandering around town late at night myself.

Life seemed so much simpler then. People knew how to relax. They didn't spend their lives with cell phones to their ears, or constantly checking their BlackBerrys. Of course I am sitting here typing this so I guess I have my own particular indulgences. But then again, I had breakfast at the farmer's market with my wife and youngest son, took my oldest son out for lunch, and then spread a couple of cubic yards of mulch in the gardens. So an hour on the internet won't kill me.

We've made some good progress and some bad progress. We can communicate and share ideas more efficiently than ever before, though I'd would suggest that maybe we are a bit too connected sometimes. On the other hand we really haven't advanced the concept of peace very much, and we can now kill each other in ever more spectacular ways. And we are seeing incredibly senseless crime. Apart from things like swarmings, I've seen more than one occurrence of people toppling gravestones. I could never have imagined such as thing happening.

Just once in a while it might be nice to visit 1951, even ever so briefly, just to see if it really is better today. Fortunately we are still concentrating on wars on our own planet, as opposed to in space, so at least we don't have to worry about a visit from Klaatu anytime soon.

This week Canada experienced the first female casualty in the history of its military when Capt. Nichola Goddard was killed. I picked up my local paper this morning to read this headline:

Soldier's medal to go to 'widow' husband

My local paper is making a big deal of the fact that her husband will be awarded a medal called the Memorial Cross, "an award previously reserved for widows and mothers." Apparently it is the first time the award has gone to a man.

For my entire life a man whose wife has died was known as a "widower", and I'm sure the paper is aware of that. In light of this death it just seems a very poor message to send.

The Business 2.0 Blog suggests that most Google tools other than search are struggling. Search gets about 80% of the user traffic, and the other products drop drastically from there. But if Search likely sees billions of hits, are the other products really suffering if they see only millions of hits?

The article also neglects to mention the share each Google product has in its market. Perhaps Google Earth gets only 0.22% of Google's traffic, but it is clearly the dominant product in an emerging market and has achieved excellent mindshare. So it would be easy to call it a very successful marketing exercise. And Google Maps and Google Local may see only 0.82% and 0.05% respectively, but that is how my kids and their friend, and myself and my friends, get directions and local information. So it may be on the early adopter side of the curve, but off to an excellent start.

Google is creating and owning markets early on. These markets didn't really even exist before Google got there. It matters little that those markets are small now because they will grow, and Google will grow with them. Sort of like something like RSS, which still only accounts for a very small percentage of traffic compared to the web overall.

Arguing that Google is a one-hit wonder ignores that fact that their seeming competitor, Microsoft, is pretty much a two-hit wonder - Windows and Office. Really, compared to Windows and Office, I'd be surprised if something like Sharepoint is used by more than 0.01% or their users. So should we be declaring Microsoft a failure too?

In resolving my TiVo situation, their call center credited the annual fee that I had changed to my Canadian American Express card. Though the charge and the credit occurred about a week apart, they were for identical amounts in US dollars, and had the same merchant number. But instead of recognizing that, American Express converted the amounts to Canadian dollars and ended up with a five dollar profit, even though no money had actually changed hands.

It took me quite a while to explain the problem to their call center, but they eventually adjusted the charge correctly, as a goodwill gesture they pointed out. I don't think that American Express should be able to profit by arbitaging my charges.

I've been working on a couple of plugins for Windows Media Player in the past little while. When the Windows Media Player 11 beta was leaked the other day I grabbed a copy and I finally got around to trying it today. Unfortunately it doesn't let me add plugins, which pretty much ended the trial.

Uninstalling it wasn't trivial though; it doesn't appear in the "Add/Remove Programs" list. It turns out though that there is an "Updates" checkbox at the top that enables the display of Updates. Windows Media Player 11 is listed under Windows, and can be removed from there.

It looked interesting at first glance, but I guess I'll just have to wait for the next beta.

Ken Camp shares a poignant note about Windows XP and Vista, one that should give potential users pause.'

Seriously, if after years of trying Windows XP still isn't secure, why would anyone believe for a second that Vista will be? And what is "extra security"? A system is either secure or it isn't.

Speaking of TiVo, if you're tired of being held hostage to the whims of network television programmers, then you owe it to yourself to subscribe to TiVo. Just today I saw this:

During its upfront schedule announcement yesterday, ABC confirmed that it is moving the hit drama Grey's Anatomy to Thursday at 9 p.m., putting it up against CBS's CSI and NBC's new drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, writes Media Life. ABC's addition of three new shows to Thursday and the Grey's move marks the network's most aggressive Thursday night lineup in years.

I'll never understand the logic here. Instead of owning a timeslot, all three networks are forced to split viewers, and therefore ad revenue. But that isn't my point at all.

My point is that I don't care. I'll watch what I want to, when I want to, thank you very much.

I had purchased a new 80 hour TiVo DVR a few weeks ago, but I couldn't get it to work properly in my home video system, so I was going to have to return it. But I was also pretty frustrated to find out 2 days after I purchased it that TiVo announced a new dual-tuner DVR with built-in ethernet for just about the same price.

So I called up TiVo and spoke to a very nice receptionist who told me that they would certainly be able to do something for me, and somebody would call me back. Somebody did get back to me, and they told me that there was nothing they could do for me, but I was welcome to purchase the new unit. Of course they don't ship to Canada so getting it was my problem as well. And this person also told me when asked that TiVo had nobody in charge of customer service, and refused to give me any other phone number.

Now I should explain the circumstances here. I currently live in Canada. TiVo does allow Canadian residents to subscribe, but they do not sell DVRs in Canada. So I bought my DVR at Fry's Electronics, about 3000 miles away from where I live. So I had to return the original DVR to Fry's, and get a new DVR, all at my cost. I figured that I had to explain this to someone with a little more clout, so I checked out the TiVo website to find that they have a Vice President of Consumer Marketing, Katie Ho, who is responsible for new customer acquisition and retention.

I guessed at Ms. Ho's email (lo and behold, TiVo doesn't use email or phone either), and sent her a note explaining the situation. Now for someone responsible for customer retention it seems odd that Ms. Ho couldn't be bothered to hit the Reply button on my email. After all, I am an unsatisfied paying customer, having just purchased a new DVR and paid for a full year of service. But apparently I wasn't worth Ms. Ho's time.

Fortunately though, a young lady named Alison did call me from their call center. She offered to handle the change from my current service to new DVR plus service. When I explained the problem of having to ship on box to California and the new box from the US, she also quickly arranged to credit me half the estimated cost of shipping, which I considered very fair. When she had issues with differing shipping and billing credit card addresses, she patiently waited and called back until it was fixed. And they she called me back the next day, a Saturday, to let me know that everything was done. She also apologized for the problems I had experienced, acknowledging that if TiVo actually sold the products in Canada I wouldn't be experiencing these problems.

I was also very fortunate that the Assistant Store Manager at Fry's in the City of Industry in California agreed to take my DVR back via Fedex. They do not do that but he was very gracious and agreed to do it. That's just one of the many reasons I always shop at Fry's.

I now have my TiVo back and am happily TiVoing again. But as a note to the folks at TiVo, when the person responsible for retaining customers couldn't even take the 30 seconds required to reply to my email, I'd certainly be thanking Alison, the young lady who did retain a customer.

Feel free to email if you want to know more. And I promise I will reply.

From Bloomberg today at 9:23 am:

Canada's Dollar Rises for a Second Day as Gold, Oil Increase

May 17 (Bloomberg) -- Canada's dollar rose for a second day as commodities including gold and oil advanced, boosting prospects for growth in the world's eighth-largest economy.

From Bloomberg today at 11:41 am:

Canada's Dollar Falls as Commodities Including Copper Decline

May 17 (Bloomberg) -- Canada's dollar fell as commodities including crude oil and copper declined, limiting prospects for growth in the world's eighth-largest economy.

Other than the headline the articles are pretty much the same, which shows why you should not rely on the headline alone.

Alec Saunders had a bad experience with a Sears product he purchased, and came away surprised at the complete lack of concern on the part of the Sears call center, and comments on their suggestion:

It seems, at least according to Tara, that they’ve lost their way. Tara suggested that Janice write a letter to Lisa Miracle at Sears Canada in Toronto. Apparently Ms. Miracle can intervene. There is no email address online for Ms. Miracle. Tara says to write to the head office at 222 Jarvis Street. I guess we’ll do that.

I'm amazed when I speak with a company regarding a problem and when I ask for the Vice President or Director of Customer Service or someone with similar responsibility, I am told that the company doesn't have one. Even more entertaining is the fact that none of the people in these companies have either an email address or a phone number. And it happens pretty frequently.

Stay tuned for my post on my adventures with TiVo, whose Vice President of Consumer Marketing, responsible for new customer acquisition and retention, doesn't respond to email and, according to their call center, doesn't speak with customers either.

I just saw a Comcast ad that promotes the ability to download a 90 minute movie in just 12 minutes using their broadband service. Now just where would one find 90 minute (feature length) movies to download - legally that is?

Now certainly Warner Brothers will be selling movies online eventually, but is Comcast promoting their service for Bittorrent users too?

The idea of a newspaper completely personalized for me might be appealing at first glance, but how boring would it be to only read those things that interest me, without some facility for throwing random articles my way.

For such a paper to be fun to read on a regular basis, it should occasionally throw in some articles that are diametrically opposed to what interests me.

The New York Times quotes Arianna Huffington on the subject of Net Neutrality:

Proposed legislation that could change the nature of how the Internet operates should be getting a lot more attention, Ms. Huffington wrote. And if it did, it would be instantly squashed.

Why hasn't this happened? It's all in the name, she wrote. "Now, I understand that 'Net Neutrality' is a technical term used to describe the separation of content and network operations, but what political genius decided to run with such a clunky name? The marketing mavens behind the Kerry '04 campaign?"

And the picture painted by the telcos suggests that the danger here is one of government regulation of the internet.

But net neutrality isn't some technical detail, and it isn't about goverment regulation. It's about ensuring the freedom of bits on the internet. So why aren't we calling it "Internet Freedom" or "Freedom of the Internet"? After all, wasn't that what the founding fathers were fighting for?

Via Furdlog.

I was reading the New York Times this morning and I came upon an ad for the Gay Games, a self-described sports and cultural festival coming to Chicago in July. Having never heard of it before I was surprised to find that it was in its seventh year.

Now I never talk about sexual orientation because I figure that people are just people and that doesn't really matter. But I must confess that I find it odd when groups complain that they only want equal treatment, but still find it necessary to promote activities that are limited to their particular interest.

So I did a little research on the Gay Games to see if that was the case. And to their credit I found that apart from the name, their motto of "Participation, Inclusion, Personal Best" is actually true:

The Gay Games are open to anyone. There are no qualifying events, no minimum or maximum requirements, and no mandatory affiliations. The Games are built on the founding principles of Participation, Inclusion, and Personal Best, and promote a supportive environment, free from bigotry, where participants achieve success by their own measure. More than a tournament or cultural program, the Gay Games is a gathering of the international sports and arts community that changes lives, attitudes, and the very nature of competition.

While I still find it strange that somebody feels the need to run an event called the Gay Games, I can understand the history of it. And I can certainly commend them for practicing a spirit of inclusion that they may not always have felt themselves.

Some issues with MPEG-4 audio files have led me to delve into the MPEG-4 spec. What I've found is that you can follow the spec religiously and still have files that aren't playable. Or you can break all kinds of rules and have your files play perfectly.

I've been working with Atomic Parsley and the mp4ff library and I've found files that confuse them both because they make some delicate assumptions that are easily broken.

It's amazing that any of this stuff plays from one device to the next. I've even run across m4a files that play on one type of iPod but not another.

That's the headline I expect to see soon now that Microsoft has introduced a bounty program that pays employees $100 for each bug filed and fixed.

Tip of the hat to Mary Jo Foley at Microsoft Watch.

How many users does it take to be able to say that your product is a success?

Is it 53,652?

Too many companies are targeting an audience of 53,651. That’s how many people subscribe to Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch blog feed.

Or is it 25,001?

Thanks Josh for the outstanding post and putting the gap between the Web 2.0 geeks and Mainstreet USA front and center. Remember - the first 25,000 users are the same dudes (such as me) that play with everything. Oh – and yes – I’ve fallen victim to this also.

Demand tends toward infinity when the service is free, and there are legions of geeks, edge cases, or whatever you want to call them, that will try every little thing once. Unfortunately they'll probably never try it a second or third time. Robert Scoble called this the seven day test. If he was still using something after seven days then he knew it was a good tool.

So when you claim some outrageous number of users, my first question would be:

How many of those users are still using your service consistently after one month? Or even after seven days?

As I mentioned in my previous post, there is a lot of talk about global warming. The predominant thought, or the loudest one, seems to be that we need to spend more money to fight global warming. There are never any specifics such as what particular steps we should be taking, or how much money we should be spending.

We are just always told that we should be doing more and spending more. This refrain seems to be a constant no matter how much is pledged.

So out of curiosity, what does "success" look like in the fight against global warming? Do temperatures need to decrease? Remain stable? Perhaps continue increasing, but less quickly? And over what time period will we measure this?

I've never seen a clear goal articulated in this fight, other than emission reduction targets, which few countries seem able to meet, and developing countries are not bound by. And by the way, spending money to buy emission credits doesn't reduce emissions one tiny little bit.

Exactly how and when will we know we've done the right thing? Or will my grandchildren (and no I don't have any yet) still hear that they must do more?