Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

I'm going to make a prediction that gas prices will go up to $1.11 per liter this weekend. That's about $4.50 a gallon. Given the current price of $0.99 per liter ($3.96 per gallon), that's an increase of over 12%.

How can I make such a prediction you ask?

Well for one thing, it's a long weekend, and gas prices always increase before a long weekend. Oops, I forgot that oil companies would say that prices are just getting back to normal after a small price war.

Oh yeah, I also noticed about an hour ago that the gas station near my home had raised its price to $1.11.3 per liter ($4.45 per gallon).

Of course that's for regular 89 octane gas. 91 octane will set you back about $1.21 per liter ($4.84 per gallon), and premium will really hurt at about $1.31 per liter ($5.24 per gallon).

... is technology disruption. Or likely any other kind of disruption.

Jeff Jarvis is looking for disruptive possibilities:

I’m at a session on Newspaper Next, an American Press Institute project to try to bring innovation to newspapers. They’re working with Clay Christensen, change guru, and started projects with various newspapers about such things as getting ads from smaller businesses; creating a one-stop resource for mothers; developing an organizational structure for innovation; increasing readership; getting broader audiences...

But Clay Christensen isn't really a change guru, he's a change historian.He has made a career out of helping us understand disruption that has already happened, which is useful, but I'm not sure he's show an aptitude for predicting it. And while you may be able to recognize a disruptive technology by knowing their history, I don't think you can learn how to create disruptions by knowing the history.

Jeff gives a graphic example:

I said to Gray that the project seems to be trying to move a big, old barge five degrees when we need to blow up the barge and pick up the pieces and build new boats.

Newspapers are stuck in the model of gathering, editing, and delivering information to a shrinking group of people who want it. And each paper applies their particular cultural bias or viewpoint to that information.

Imagine instead if newspapers aggregated everything about a particular story in one place - news reports, eyewitness reports, blogs, press releases, etc. - and then assigned some sort of weighting to it - confirmed, unconfirmed, opinion, hearsay, government release, etc. - and just kept adding to that archive as long as the story was relevant. You could see all potential views and reports on particular story, and derive your own views based on that information.

That would kill a lot of the value of Google or Yahoo! News. It would also mean that fewer newspapers were necessary. But it would let people have the information needed to make up their own minds, free of the bias that newspapers claim not to have.

And just think of the potential side business of reader polls based on what they are reading (and possibly voting for online). There could even be a television reality show - America's Top Headline.

No sooner does Seth write an excellent list of things marketers (and anyone really) should know about salespeople, than productmarketing uses it as an excuse to deliver veiled insults toward salespeople:

Yet... it often seems that sales people respect their own skills and no one else's.

True, sales people can't tell you when they'll close a deal but many (not all) expect developers to report exactly what minute the next release will be available and want sales tools before they're ready.

Though I'm sure this is not the case and the writer is just trying to make a point, it would seem at first glance that the writer has a bad history with salespeople.

I've worked in sales, but I've also worked in product management, marketing, and development. I've even written code, and had to deliver projects on schedule. And I've learned that good salespeople have respect for everyone's skills, but like anything, that respect must earned. Good salespeople understand the value of good contacts in every department so that they have a good understanding of all facets of a sale, including getting the product built and delivered to the customer, and supporting that ongoing relationship.

Salespeople also have to provide weekly reports to their management about their progress, and they do have to make educated guesses as to when a deal will close, based on rigid rules in many cases (i.e. meeting with economic buyers, etc.). But while the process of software development is entirely under the control of your company in terms of scheduling and resource demand, a sale is generally driven by people on the buyer side, based on the their requirements and their timelines. Smart salespeople mitigate those risks, but it is a lot harder for them to close a sale than it is for you to drop a feature.

And many times, even if you drop a feature, they will still close the deal.

The relationship between sales and other departments will often be difficult, but Seth makes a great first step, because understanding the other person's problems and motivations always makes it easier to work with them. Besides, companies don't grow too fast without any sales, so I always make my best effort to help close the sale by understanding the drivers, which often helps to minimize the work required for all of us.

The Lord of the Rings - the musical - is closing its run in Toronto on September 3, not quite reaching the six month mark since its opening late last March. And it's all because of the critics:

Canadians just don't get it. That was the bitter message from English theatre producer Kevin Wallace as he announced that The Lord of the Rings will close in Toronto Sept. 3, quashing hopes that the $28-million musical would single-handedly revive a tourism market suffering from a powerful Canadian dollar and high gas prices on one hand, and American security fears on the other.

Yesterday, a defensive Mr. Wallace used a candid press conference at the Princess of Wales Theatre to retort to the Canadian and American critics who disliked the show, blaming them for its truncated Toronto run.

Actually a number of things are blamed, but no allowance is made for the possibility that it was, as the critics said, bad theatre. Movies that have been soundly panned by critics often do well despite that, driven by viewer word of mouth in their support. If word of mouth from those who saw the music couldn't overcome the comments of critics, that on its own says a lot.

Really though, a musical Lord of the Rings? What were they thinking? Spamalot, it's not.

It's astounding how quickly the idea of net neutrality - the idea that all bits are created equal and should be treated as such - was spun as a demand for government regulation of the internet. And it was spun that way by telecom carriers, the very folks who make their revenue courtesy of government regulations. Yet suddenly they didn't want any regulation.

They were concerned that they wouldn't be able to afford to provide us even more bandwidth if they couldn't charge companies more for their internet bandwidth; sometimes even for bandwidth the companies are already paying for.

They likened differential or priority services to the US Postal Service. After all, it costs more to deliver a first class letter, doesn't it? But the US Postal Service is a monopoly; they guarantee delivery, and they control the entire end to end transaction. And they actually provide a different service for a different price.

But telecommunications doesn't work like that. It's more like a water pipe, and the carrier only controls a piece of the pipe. But they want to charge different prices depending on who is using the pipe. Can you imagine if your city started to look at every drop of water, and charged you a different price for carrying your water than it did for a large company in your town? What if they charged a special surcharge for companies that sold water to fill your pool?

So why is it acceptable to look at bits and charge a special surcharge to VoIP companies whose phone calls are flowing over the pipe?

We're talking about a pipe. Clearly you should charge for consumption, but why does it matter what you use the water for? Or the bits?

Just like Mitch Radcliffe says:

Farewell, open networks and open standards. Soon every packet will be subject to inspection and surcharges based on what it carries and who sent it or where it is going.

The reason the internet has become as useful as it is, is because it doesn't discriminate. As soon as it starts to discriminate, it loses its value. So telecom carriers will see a huge undeserved surge in profits. And then internet use will start to die, and those profits will dry up. And I promise that we will never see the carriers' promised increase in bandwidth, but in a year or two will will hear that the internet just isn't generating enough revenue to add that promised capacity - again.

But the profits they generate will allow them to fight any competition, because competition will just be overcharged to death. But there will never be another Google or Yahoo! because as soon as a new company's traffic starts to climb so will the surcharges.And you can say good bye to YouTube. But the telecom companies will roll out plenty of radical new services. Like voice mail or call display, probably the last radical new services they rolled out.

The funny thing is that no matter what you pay, you still don't get a guarantee of anything because nobody owns the internet end to end. Except in the U.S., where it looks like the government is about to hand the keys to the carriers. I guess it just proves what P.T.Barnum said. Maybe sometimes you can fool all of the people.

A group of clinical nutrition researchers, concerned that people were focusing too much on only one or two causes of obesity, came up with a list of 10 more. My favorite is number 4 - Decreased smoking (Smoking reduces weight. Americans smoke much less than they used to.)

So if you smoke, you may get cancer, which can kill you. If you stop smoking, you may get obese, which can kill you. You can't win either way. (Ok, unless you also exercise or eat less.)

But the "Cruel Joke of Nature" award goes to number 9 - Obesity linked to fertility. Perhaps obese people are more fertile, and we're genetically predisposed to getting bigger.

Of course if global warming actually increases, we'll just sweat the pounds off. Eventually nature will achieve a balance. (Ed. Note to people with no sense of humor: The preceding comment was intended to be humorous.)

Most mornings when I am at home I will stop by a coffee shop, Williams Coffee Pub, near my home. They are a Starbucks wannabe kind of place, with similar prices, but not so good coffee. But... they offer free WiFi. So I find it a nice place to work first thing in the morning given that I would have to pay to use Starbucks WiFi.

Sadly though, their WiFI service doesn't work all that well, and this morning it wasn't working at all. So I left and went somewhere else for coffee.

I can't really say much since the service is gratis, but the lesson here is if you're going to promise a service, make darn sure you can actually provide the service - whether it is free or not. In some cases it may be the sole reason the customer decided to buy from you.

If you're feeling guilty about the damage you are doing to the environment, for as little as $57 you can make that guilt go away:

WHEN Anne Pashby moved to Baltimore last year, she was dismayed by the complexity of recycling in her new city.

"I can never get it right about which day is paper versus cardboard versus cans," said Ms. Pashby, 38, a human resources manager. "So I've given up on it."

But she wasn't ready to give up on the environment. Looking for an easier way to make her life greener, she tried a "carbon calculator" at the Web site of the Conservation Fund (conservationfund.org). She learned that the events of her everyday life, like driving the car, heating her home or taking plane trips, produced about 14 tons a year of carbon emissions, or "carbon footprint." The Conservation Fund, a nonprofit group in Arlington, Va., offered to neutralize that amount for $57, by planting 11 trees in the lower Mississippi Valley - enough to remove 14 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. She happily complied.

There are many groups that will happily take your money to make you feel better, ostensibly to invest in clean energy or similar projects. And some are even makin a profit doing it:

ACCOUNTABILITY may be especially important in the for-profit arena. NativeEnergy, TerraPass and others profit by buying and then reselling green tags and other investments.

Soinstead of actually doing something about the environment - Ms. Pashby can't be bothered to figure out how recycling works - at least you can assuage your guilt with some cash.

And if you are concerned about your ensuring that your dinner isn't treated badly before it gets to you, people are looking out for you too:

This month Whole Foods announced that it would no longer sell live lobsters, saying that keeping them in crammed tanks for long periods doesn't demonstrate a proper concern for animal welfare. The Chicago City Council recently outlawed the sale of foie gras to protest the force-feeding of the ducks and geese that yield it. California passed a similar law, which doesn't take effect until 2012, and other states and cities are considering such measures

Prior to discontinuing the sale of lobsters, Whole Foods had created habitats, with separate tubes for each lobster.

According to Ed Bott, it seems that future Windows Genuine Advantage (Windows Genuine Disadvantage?) upgrades may disable Windows - yes the whole operating system. And Microsoft isn't denying it at all.

Given the state of some of these upgrades, I can imagine the day when an upgrade comes out and Windows - in corporate production environments - just stops working. I'll still be working away on my Powerbook.

I wish I could say I was amazed by the arrogance of Microsoft - that their concerns override yours, and they can shut you down if they damn well please -but I'm less and less surprised every day.

Oddly, the official Microsoft announcement mentions nothing about this. And there seems to be a lack of Microsoft bloggers expounding on the subject.

The discussion of the day is that podcasting is an inefficient way to take in information, unless you are commuting. Of course plenty of people commute, so perhaps you could build a business around podcasting for commuters, except for the massive inconvenience involved.

In order to listen to podcasts, you'd have to find items that interested you, subscribe to them, download them to your personal music player, connect the player to the car audio system, select the program you want to listen to while driving, and listen. And then select another program. And hope that you have plenty of shows that interest you.

If only somebody would put together a network of podcasters, organize their shows into some sort of schedule, and then create some way to download the podcasts wirelessly. Hmmm, that sounds familiar. Sort of like radio.

People talk about podcasting as if it is some amazing new technology, forgetting that we've had radio and books on tape for decades. The only difference is that we store the thing in a digital file now. And of course, using the internet as a medium allows anybody to create a show with unlimited reach. But just because you can do it doesn't mean people will want to listen.

So let's assume that you are targeting commuters. The key is to provide something that I want to listen to on an ongoing basis, and the podcasts I've listened to so far are just not keeping my interest that well. And it needs to be a lot more convenient to get shows - and it will need to be wireless so that I can get what I want easily without using a PC.

The real danger for podcasting companies is that when someone figures out right content to attract a mass audience, good old-fashioned broadcasters, who already know this business and have plenty of cash, will be more than happy to jump in to commercialize it. They understand that it isn't some cool technology for geeks; it's just another demographic.

Is it the end of the line for Barbie dolls?

Today, a radical idea is being proposed: Kill her. Dead. End of brand. Los Angeles Times columnist Pat Morrison is writing Barbie's obit.

"So let's all have a go at Barbie," Morrison wrote. "Give up on the re-re-reinvention. Take out Barbie at the top of her game. With a big, dramatic exit, Mattel could actually make a killing out of killing Barbie."

From today's New York Times:

Legg Mason, the money manager in Baltimore, gave its chief, Raymond A. Mason, 70, a pay package worth more than $35 million for the fiscal year that ended March 31. Mr. Mason, who has run Legg for 25 years, received $14.5 million in cash, and options that the company valued at $21.2 million.

Legg's board granted the options "to provide a meaningful incentive for Mr. Mason to remain fully engaged and focused on the success of the company," according to Legg's proxy statement. To collect them, he must stay on until July 19, 2007.

Imagine $35 million to provide the incentive to work for a single year. Yet there are so many people who manage to find the incentive to remain engaged, for a lot less.

Do you really want someone who can't find a "meaningful incentive" to "remain fully engaged and focused on the success of the company" unless you pay them an exhorbitant salary?

I had an infuriating discussion tonight with someone who was impressed that a group of "freedom fighters" were able to use American planes to attack the United States, the country with the biggest weapons, on 9/11. They also felt that in choosing to have Canada stay in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Harper was just doing as he was told to by George Bush.

I'm just not sure that people who intentionally attack about 3000 civilianswith the intention of killing them should be referred to as freedom fighters. And I'm not sure how continuing military action started by the previous government, no friends of the U.S., is suddenly doing what President Bush wants.

And then I read this (via smalldeadanimals):

From the point of view of the left, (union hacks, Euro-elite, mini-Moore extremists, MSM elitists, socialist utopians, KOS kids, and progressives) Iraq MUST FAIL. In order to be proven correct, in order to save their ideology, in order to put America in her place, Iraq as a country must not succeed, and terrorism must win in Iraq. If terrorism wanes and falls to a background threat, then the neo-cons, and the pragmatic leaders like prime ministers Blair and Howard, and G. W. Bush, and the coalition partners, will have been proven right. And, the doomsday preachings of the left will have been all for naught, not to mention that the religion of the United Nations will have taken a hit.

I guess that there are some people who can apologize for anything done by terrorists, as long as it has the added benefit of hurting the U.S. I am reminded of a line by Annette Bening from the movie The American President:

How do you deal with someone who claims to love America, while clearly hating Americans?

Thomas Greeme at The Register has finally realized the truth about Net Neutrality:

I had thought the reason we don't get HD movies on the internet had something to do with greedy control freaks within the entertainment cartels who have yet to figure out how to charge us for online content according to a pay-per-use scheme. But apparently, it's because there isn't a special pipe carrying movies, for which we can pay extra. Apparently, the movies will begin to flow as soon as the pipe is laid and the valve opened.

And he has this animated cartoon to thank, provided by an astroturf a grassroots organization called Hands Off The Internet, that wants you to know the dangers of Net Neutrality. And they are worried that Net Neutrality may kill you:

It won't be long before high bandwidth consuming video spam will be competing for available network capacity with mission-critical or life-saving data. For example, doctors are experimenting with using remote video feeds and robotic surgical tools to operate at a distance - why prohibit telemedicine application providers from purchasing priority in the network over the latest annoying antihistamine ad?

To our knowledge this is the first time someone has pointed out just how exceedingly dangerous these misguided so-called Net neutrality proposals would be. Having seen what havoc Mother Nature can wreak, we would be foolish to do anything that hinders our responses.

Yes if we allow Net Neutrality to happen doctors won't be able to save our lives, and we won't be able to respond to natural disasters. And we know that telecom companies would never try to take advantage of a bad situation like that.

If only we could find some way to help these poor telecom companies to provide the kinds of service that they want to, to keep us out of danger. Perhaps a special "Save Your Local Carrier" fund - $200 billion or so ought to do it.

Your very life may depend on it. Once the carriers have set aside 80% of their bandwidth for their own use, they'll need every penny to make sure that the last 80% is available to the highest bidder for emergencies.

I had a property assessment hearing this week, and it brought home the truism that information is power.

I moved to Canada about four years ago, and every year the market value of my house is assessed by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation, a provincial body who essentially have a monopoly on the business. More on that later.

The first year I was assessed it was actually more than I paid for the house. When I filed a complaint the assessor called and explained that the entire street was over assessed. The average assessment for the street had increased by roughly 10%; with the correction my assessment had only increased by about 5%.

My next assessment showed a 17% increase, again with a average of 10% for street. I filed a complaint again. Same assessor, same story, so he lowered it to a mere 11% increase.

This year my assessment jumped 14.5%, this time with a street average of 9%.

Starting to see a pattern?

It sure seems that I am being punished for proving thatmy assessment was too high. I should note that even though the street assessment was too high, no assessments are ever corrected downward. And this time, a different assessor. A new assessor. She comes to my house a mere three weeks before my hearing, looks at it, and tells me she can't understand why it would increase so much higher than every other house, so they will likely lower it.

One week before the hearing she calls and tells me that there is no way she can lower it; it is assessed just fine thank you very much, and I just don't understand the assessment process.

One day before my hearing another person calls to ask me if I need any more information. I'm allowed to have some "comparables". He also explains that I just don't understand how assessment works.

So I get to my hearing, and I realize exactly how assessment works. I am forced to defend myself and my point of view against an organization that has controls all of the information about all of the houses in my area, what they sold for, and what they are assessed for. All of that information, paid for with my tax dollars. They are even paid to be there while I am not. I am allowed to have a little bit of their information, if I know what to ask for.

I have one piece of useful information - the price of a house that sold a few months ago for much less than the assessed value, just across the street from me. This is market value after all. They tell me that one house proves nothing about the market, but then they starquizzing me about houses listed for sale. What does "asking price" for houses that have not yet sold have to do with anything?

Given my limited information I believe I made a compelling argument, but we'll have to wait and see.

Imagine trying to win an argument when you have none of the information, but the other side has it all. And you paid for them to have it. Unlike the U.S., where information paid for with public money is... well, public, here in Canada that information belongs to a company that holds a monopoly lock on the business.

And there's more. A company called Teranet, through an agreement with the province of Ontario, controls land registry and real estate information, also paid for by my tax dollars.

Information, and control of it, should be free to the public that paid for it. It shouldn't be generating revenue for a select few that have been generously granted to it. And it certainly shouldn't be used with impunity against those same citizens that paid for it.

A country is only as free as its public information.

Mark Evans loves Slingbox, and thinks that it would be a great addition to any home:

I used to think the Slingbox was a no-brainer for road warriors and people able to watch TV at work but the more I see it used, the more I think it's a relatively inexpensive (one-time expense of $170 to $250) tool to give you even more control over how, when and where you watch TV. For anyone who spends a few thousand dollars on a big-screen TV, why not spend a few more bucks on a nice-to-have feature.

All television channels in Canada must be approved by the government in order to protect Canadian culture, so there is no HBO for Canadians. They have their own MTV, and TV Land Canada plays shows that I can't imagine Canadians ever watched. And Canadians are not allowed to see Super Bowl commercials - the event must be simulcast on a Canadian channel with the same old Canadian commercials.It is even illegal to subscribe to an American satellite network in Canada.

So I can see a huge market for Slingboxes located in other countries. I don't have one yet, but if I did I would put it in Los Angeles or Boston, so that I could watch local television there. Which leads me to wonder if, when Slingbox starts to take off, will Canada make it illegal to protect their culture (or more likely to protect the Canadian cable and satellite companies).

In fact, I wonder if American cable companies would consider selling services to me over the internet. I could buy a cable package from them, delivered via Slingbox. Surely there's no law against that... yet.

Zoli Erdos asked "Would You Rather Be First to Market or Better?". He doesn't really answer the question though:

The list could go on, but I think the point is clear: there is no land-grab in software. "First mover advantage" is significant in some areas - like Kevin's Digg, since it depends on a network effect - but in others the second or third player to the market may just execute better. (Btw, second to the market does not mean copycat, since anyone will likely recognize that developing these products takes some time, so parallel efforts are going on at different companies - but timing is beyond the point here anyway).

I understand the value of being first, but really, does "better" matter?Once you are "good enough", as long as you don't fall behind, you should be fine.

Microsoft didn't get as big as it did by building better products. There are plenty of products that work better. And they were never first.

Apple's iPod isn't better than any other MP3 player. And they weren't first either.

"Better" is relative, and it certainly isn't enough by itself to make people switch.

To read Nick Carr you would think that the concept of plagiarism began with the internet. He sounds genuinely surprised that students would cut and paste from the internet, as if this had never happened before the internet existed. Yet I can clearly remember copying information from books and encyclopedias long before people had even heard of the web.

Back then we weren't constantly threatened with legal action if we copied a page from a book. But we also know enough to add a footnote or a bibliography entry for proper attribution.

Nick points out that it isn't about "cut and paste", but about "understanding". Though I would content that students understand no less now than they did then. They merely take the most expedient route to get their assignments completed. He quotes Mark Cuban:

"In the past, you had to memorize knowledge because there was a cost to finding it. Now, what can't you find in 30 seconds or less? We live an open-book-test life that requires a completely different skill set."

We now have ready access to more information than we have ever had before. Yet we still feel it necessary for students to simply accumulate facts. The example he quotes of a paper on Jesse Owens for a 5th grade class is a typical assignment. Once kids would have gone to the library and read a couple of books, quoting relevant information; now they do the same thing via the internet. Do we really expect the student to come away with substantial knowledge and understanding of Jesse Owens? Do we expect that understanding to be greater possibly because the student copied the information by hand? And of what value is information about Jesse Owens 20 years later?

Isn't it the goal of the educational system to teach students to be lifelong learners, rather than to be accumulators of information? When I need to know something today, it is the expediency of finding that information when I need it that is important. I may not remember it later, but I can get it again easily enough.

It isn't even the understanding of a particular fact that is important, but the ability to aggregate information and make sense of it, when you need to. That's the skill we need, and the skill we should be teaching.

Though it isn't the kind of thing you bring up in polite company, I've often though that if western nations were a little less moral about killing terrorists, let's say willing to set off a few suicide bombers themselves, then terrorism itself wouldn't be quite as effective as it is. Terrorists depend on our view of the sanctity of life, combined with our tolerance of others.

Many including the media seem to apologize on behalf of terrorists, suggesting that they are merely fighting with the only tools at their disposal. Yet their intend targets are frequently civilians rather than the military, but that doesn't seem to change the opinions of the apologists. But let a Western nation accidentally kill one or two people, and the hue and cry goes on for days, surely boosting the morale and drive of the terrorists.

How can accidental death be the same as intentional killing? How can anyone justify such an irrational double standard?

Update: It seems that Andrew over at Bound By Gravity is thinking along the same lines:

Thus, from the perspective of the media, yet another atrocity by the Islamist terrorists in Iraq, while certainly revolting, is not surprising enough to justify wall-to-wall coverage for days. However, you can be sure that if an American soldier did something even a fraction as bad it would be in the limelight.

Upperdate: Mark Steyn (via smalldeadanimals) has some similarly interesting thoughts:

That, by the way, is the one point of similarity between the jihad and conventional terrorist movements like the IRA or ETA. Terror groups persist because of a lack of confidence on the part of their targets: The IRA, for example, calculated correctly that the British had the capability to smash them totally but not the will. So they knew that while they could never win militarily, they also could never be defeated. The Islamists have figured similarly. The only difference is that most terrorist wars are highly localized. We now have the first truly global terrorist insurgency because the Islamists view the whole world the way the IRA view the bogs of Fermanagh: They want it, and they've calculated that our entire civilization lacks the will to see them off.

Uppestdate: Captain's Quarters has something to say about the Taliban using women and children as human shields:

This has two purposes for the Taliban. First, it keeps Western forces from firing on them, as they know that Coalition troops will try to protect civilians where possible. Secondly as just as importantly from a strategic point of view, any women and children killed in the battle will almost certainly be blamed on the Western forces by the Western media. It allows the Taliban to continue their propaganda blitz against the West, one in which the media has unwittingly (in most cases) found themselves a pawn to the Islamists.

Mike Urlocker was a bit skeptical of a survey David Pogue noted, where a majority of BlackBerry users indicated that the device either gave them more time with their family (40%) or at least didn't take away from time spent with their family currently (48%). Only a small percentage (12%) suggested that their family time was decreased.

Mike undertook his own study, and found the act of responding more telling that the response:

Never mind for now what people said for now; Look at what they did:

• 32% responded on the weekend;
• More than 20% replied within two hours;
• 6% replied while on a holiday or at vacation spots.
• 14% replied Monday morning.

Philippe Meert, a product designer from Belgium, apparently has trouble pouring cereal from the box into a bowl. So he created the Cerealtop, a plastic cover that goes on top of a cereal box and channels the cereal through a spout. It sells for over $6 in Belgium, and will sell for about $4 in the U.S.

Mr. Meert is certainly inventive, but just because you can do something doesn't mean you always should. I've been pouring cereal for quite some time and I have yet to experience the kind of catastrophe that would drive me to purchase a plastic lid for my disposable cereal box. I am far more likely to put my cereal into Tupperware to keep it fresh longer, which also provides a spout.

The New York Times doesn't make that observation, but they do bring up a concern about the five second rule:

AMERICANS certainly love their cold cereal, having spent $6.2 billion on it last year. One challenge for Mr. Meert and his distributor, however, will be to persuade consumers to forget about the so-called five-second rule, the shaky premise that spilled food remains edible if it is retrieved within five seconds of being dropped on table or floor. Serving early-morning cereal may be prone to error, but that does not necessarily mean that much of it goes to waste.

The Holiday Inn I stay at on Historic Route 66 when I visit Monrovia, CA has has a very friendly and helpful staff. When you're there for two weeks at a time you come to depend on them. They are among the best staff of any hotel I've stayed at, and they treat me like one of the family. They even have a free sushi buffet on Tuesday nights which is much nicer that going to a restaurant alone.

This particular hotel is closing at the end of July for three months of renovations, to open under another banner.In the lobby there are beautiful artist's renderings of what the new building will look like. But they haven't told the staff what will be happening to them yet.

It seems to me that the company has decided that a pretty building is more important than an excellent staff. The building is certainly nice, but it is just a place to spend a few hours, mostly asleep. It is the staff that make it the kind of place that you want to stay at - to provide you an excellent experience.

I sincerely hope that the company figures this out before they let an excellent staff slip away, especially when we all know that good people are hard to find. Because I won't be a returning guest just because they have a new building.I'll only be returning because the staff makes me feel comfortable, and my stay most pleasant.

I'm glad somebody - Jeremy Wagstaff in this case - finally said this:

Here’s an interesting statistic, in the light of Scoble’s departure from Microsoft (no direct connection, I promise, but it does raise issues about whether corporates really like blogging): 7.1% of companies have fired an employee for violating blog or message board policies.

If Robert Scoble wasn't already well known I doubt that Microsoft would have tolerated him. Bloggers are anathema to companies than want to control their message rigidly. I expect that they weren't too happy about someone saying exactly what they thought, ever if it "put a more human face" on Microsoft.

Personally I've never worked with a company that would pay for me to travel wherever I wanted to. They have travel budgets after all. Rick Segal had a great post on how companies can encourage bloggers, but as I commented on his post, the VC in him would likely still want costs controlled unless it was generating revenue. Did Scoble generate an increase in revenue at Microsoft? Perhaps enough to pay for his costs, but not likely a substantial increase.

Certainly people would comment on the huge increase in positive marketing bloggers bring. Yet I would argue that he increased his personal brand a lot more than that of Microsoft's, at Microsoft's expense. Tara Hunt is another example, having increased her personal brand much more that the Riya brand, with some suggesting that this ended with her being fired.

So is they aren't really having much revenue or marketing impact for a company, why would a company be interested in the risk of having employees blog? Certainly there seem to be very few corporate bloggers left. Jonathan Schwartz doesn't count; he's the CEO/President and can pretty much do what he wants, but will also be corporately cautious about the message he sends. Niall Kennedy was well known before he went to Microsoft, so he can't really be considered a corporate blogger, but instead just happens to be a blogger who works at Microsoft.

I'm certainly happy to be proven wrong, but I believe that companies really don't want employees to blog, no matter what they claim about their desire for openness. The desire for control is just too great. And in their eyes the perceived benefits probably don't seem to justify the risks.

Robert may have opened up a window into Microsoft for a lot of people, providing information that they otherwise couldn't get. And Microsoft let him. But the sad thing is that it shouldn't have taken a blogger to provide information the company should have already been making freely available, but chose not to.

In Robert's case blogging merely corrected a problem of poor information flow. Will that flow of information now stop?

If you don't write software this probably won't matter to you, but this single line encapsulates the problem of Microsoft being a big company with lots of things going on, where the left hand doesn't necessarily know what the right hand is doing:

C1189: #error: WINDOWS.h already included. MFC apps must not #include windows.h

Now this wouldn't be a big deal except for the fact that I am not using MFC. I am trying to use a Windows common control, which needs afxcmn.h, which yields that error. If I remove the control definition then I get duplicate libraries, which persist even if I specifically ignore them.

Yet though this is clearly a common error as a Google search would indicate, Microsoft provides no solution to the problem, other than some MSDN posts which recommend rearranging the order of the include files, which does not seem to work for me.

"We're seeing an extremely active level of activity."

Bart Braverman of Microsoft had that comment regarding a high infection rate in Windows PCs scanned by Microsoft.The original USA Today article was headlined "Microsoft finds 60% infection rate in PCs", but the online version corrects the math, lowing the numbers substantially, but they do not indicate a new percentage and it is unclear how they arrived at the original figure or what the new one would be.

I picked up the new Carl Hiaasen book - Hoot - today at Borders in Pasadena for $8.95. Glancing at the price I happened to notice that the price in Canada was $13.95. Now that doesn't really seem to be that odd, until you consider that fact that right now there is a difference of about 10% between the dollar in the U.S. and Canada.

$13.95 is a difference of over 50% versus the U.S. cover price of $8.95. A tidy little unearned profit, no effort required.

Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, speaking at the University of Pittsburgh:

"On the subway in New York, there is a train that runs the full length of Manhattan and out to Brooklyn, called the A Train. ... On that train, there's a stretch between 59th and 125th streets without any stops. ... Nine-and-a-half minutes of uninterrupted time. ... We hired actors to pose as a passenger in trouble on the train. One of them would enter the carriage, start to wobble, grab onto the hand rail, and then keel over. ... We watched while the majority of people hesitated, looked around, then looked away. ... Make no mistake: Doing nothing is a choice in itself. And surprisingly, that choice gets more likely as the size of the group grows. That's the lesson of nine-and-a-half minutes — not much time, but enough not to act, or enough to do something that matters, to extend a human touch, change another person's life. ... You can choose to act right in your own backyard, in small, meaningful ways. This was my nine-and-a-half minutes with you. I hope I've used it well. Congratulations."

From USA Today.

Salman Rushdie, speaking at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale:

"Right and wrong, good and evil, are not determined by power, or by adherence to this or that interest group. The struggle to know how to act for the best is a struggle that never ceases. Don't follow leaders: look out, instead, for the oddballs who insist on marching out of step."

From USA Today.

I've seen a number of comments today about Google's lack of focus. But I've only seen one that notes that Microsoft seems to have a lack of focus too.

Don Dodge points out that people have mentioned a lack of focus problem at Microsoft:

Microsoft is not immune to the complaints of lack of focus. David Morgenstern at eWeek says "Watch Microsoft's Shift". The editorial basically claims that Microsoft is moving away from enterprise software and into SaaS, Software as a Service, consumer content, and Internet advertising.

Is Microsoft bringing out a new operating system? A new Office suite? Software as a service? Web search? Advertising services?

Microsoft has two revenue streams - Windows and Office - and they are cannibalizing both as people are likely holding off on purchasing decisions until the new products are available. And there are no new revenue streams from all of the other things they are working on yet.

So what is Microsoft doing? Chasing Google, who people seem to think has no plan.

Google generates constant buzz, and there is no such thing as bad press. And no matter what Microsoft seems to do, they just can't get a break. Taken as a marketing strategy alone, Google wins hands down.

Rick Segal points to a commentary by Nicole Simon about the fact that software developers focus on the American market rather that providing country-specific solution:

Normal people for example don't care what one website says about a product, they still want the clue on paper or in their television ad. They will buy (and therefor before be exposed to) what their friends talk about. And if you go out of the Valley and even the US, you will probably find that people in other countries do care about so different things, you don't even think about. One reason they do? Because they don't get to know at all about 'your product'.

[...]

Oh and in case you cared: Germany has about 82 million inhibitants, as well as other countries around it speaking German. We do have money too.

It's easy to say that software developers focus on the American market, or that the valley is an echo chamber, but when you have limited resources you tend to develop in a language that you know (a la Flick), or for the majority language of users. According to statistics, that majority language is currently English with over 30% of internet users. The next most popular is Chinese, with only 13%. German is fifth with under 6%. So they best potential audience for sales is those who speak English.

Generally most companies do not localize their software or provide language-specific versions until they have already achieved some sales success because it takes time and money to do so, if only for correct translation. They also need to account for the overhead of support in various countries, both in terms of language and hours of coverage.

A company with home-court advantage in a company like Germany will always be more successful in their own country, but they will have a hard time beating a French company in France, or an American company in the U.S. So in many cases that may limit them to being a niche player globally.

Even those in the U.S. suffer as a result of this. I would love to have the newest Japanese phones with their incredible features, but I am stuck with the basic phones sold here. Though I do drive an Audi, a fine German automobile. Fortunately driving, unlike software, is not highly language-dependent.

Building custom language versions of some software products means that they might not even be around to talk about in the first place. It's better to get something out to the market as soon as possible so that you can start to improve on it.

It's good to see that priorities on college campuses haven't really changed much, based on a survey of the Top 5 'In' Things On Campus in USA Today:

	Spring 2005	Spring 2006
iPods	59%	73%
Drinking beer	72%	71%
Facebook.com	NA	71%
Drinking other alcohol	65%	67%
Text messaging	59%	66%

Source: Spring 2006 Lifestyle & Media Study, Student Monitor

Tom Harris of the National Post refutes - skewers actually - Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth:

Gore's credibility is damaged early in the film when he tells the audience that, by simply looking at Antarctic ice cores with the naked eye, one can see when the American Clean Air Act was passed. Dr. Ian Clark, professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Ottawa (U of O) responds, "This is pure fantasy unless the reporter is able to detect parts per billion changes to chemicals in ice."

It gets better as renowned scientists correct numerous points in the film, proving that all scientists do not agree on the subject:

In their open letter to the Prime Minister in April, 61 of the world's leading experts modestly expressed their understanding of the science: "The study of global climate change is an 'emerging science,' one that is perhaps the most complex ever tackled. It may be many years yet before we properly understand the Earth's climate system."

John Markoff thinks that Google Spreadsheet attacks Microsoft. Nick Carr thinks it complements Excel. Everyone is talking about it. Yes, so am I, but my point is a bit simpler.

I don't think that Google is trying to compete with Microsoft. People that use Excel are not going to suddenly switch. And the kind of companies with IT departments that buy softwarelike Office won't suddenly stop. But Google Spreadsheets will satisfy a large number of people who would never buy a spreadsheet program, as well as small business users the see the value of collaborating cheaply in a Software-As-A-Service model. A free service.

Yet it amazes me that nobody sees the enterprise value of the Google Spreadsheet. I don't meant at Google, but behind the firewall of a corporation. Microsoft has has to add security tools to ensure that you can turn off copy, save, and print on documents. The Google Spreadsheet behind your firewall offers the ability to collaborate, yet completely control the data.

Companies would have the security and control of a pseudo-mainframe environment while employees seemed to have the flexibility of a PC environment.

Imagine one day that instead of buying software such as Microsoft Office, you just purchase a few Google Office Appliances and drop them into your offices. Instant office applications with built-in collaboration, with near-zero administration cost. And searchable access to all of your documents and your communications so that you never lose anything.

Yesterday Quiznos had a full page ad in USA Today with a coupon for one of their new Flatbread Chopped Salads for free. Unfortunately the coupon was only good for the first 50 people who showed up after 2:00 pm.

Now if the goal of a coupon is to attract people I have to wonder how many people eat lunch at 2:00 pm. And how many people would bother, assuming that there would already be 50 people in front of them? At the Quiznos near me they needn't have worried. I've never seen more than one or two people in the place.

I'd love to know how well the campaign worked.

My VAIO PC popped up a Sony customer satisfaction survey today, so I decided to take a look just to see what it was about. Unfortunately it merely confirmed everything bad that I have seen about Sony.

First it ignored my default browser - Firefox - and popped up in Internet Explorer. Then it told me that by filling out the survey I was eligible to win a Sony digital camera, though it would be my responsibilty to fill complete and sign Publicity and Liability Releases. And all taxes, fees, and surcharges, though they were unspecified, were my responsibility.

The best part among all of the things Sony was not responsible for was this note:

If, for any reason, the Sweepstakes is not capable of running as planned, including without limitation infection by computer virus, bugs, tampering, unauthorized intervention, fraud, technical failures, or any other causes beyond the control of Sony which corrupt or affect the administration, security, fairness, integrity or proper conduct of this Sweepstakes, Sony reserves the right at its sole discretion to cancel, terminate, modify or suspend the Sweepstakes.

Since Sony was responsible for anything at all, even actually awarding a prize, I decided I wasn't responsible for filling out the surve