Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

Kathy Sierra thinks that the marketing department should be creating the user manuals for products as well as the marketing literature:

Why do so many companies treat potential users so much better than existing users? Think about it. The brochure is a thing of beauty, while the user manual is a thing of boredom. The brochure gets the big budget while the manual gets the big index. What if we stopped making the docs we give away for free SO much nicer than the ones the user paid for? What if instead of seducing potential users to buy, we seduced existing users to learn?

But that assumes that companies care about the customer once they've made the sale, and frankly a lot of times that just isn't the case. Cell phone companies are a perfect example. They want to get you to sign up for a two- or three-year locked in agreement, after which they don't give a damn about you. All the special offers go to new customers, while existing customers get nothing.

Enterprise software companies are perfect examples too. They are focused on the big sale, promising whatever it takes to close the deal, even though those promises may never be delivered upon.

So before you can follow Kathy's line of thought you first have to understand is your company actually cares about the customer, or just the potential customer.

When you get right down to it, extended warranties are a symptom of this as well. Rather than build a product that will work and last well at a slightly higher price, manufacturers cheap out on the product, and retailers make a few extra bucks selling an insurance policy - but only to the new customer. Existing customers aren't eligible.

A couple of weeks ago it was CBS that had a sound problem. Tonight it is NBC that is completely dead; just a black screen. Good to see somebody is watching this stuff.

I read voraciously, so fast in fact that I quickly run out of books by my favorite authors. Imagine reading a full novel in every flight; having to carry two for a round trip. So having temporarily run out of other new stuff, I'm re-reading Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, which I first read 10 years ago. I'm not normally a science fiction fan, but it's an entertaining read.

Then Snow Crash seemed to be a visionary view of what the internet might become, especially with new technologies like VRML. But today it seems more a precursor to Second Life. It's impressive that we can create a virtual world, create an economy, and build in it whatever we want.

Yet in the novel, while the Metaverse is a spectacular place, it is the real world that has fallen apart. Are we creating incredible fantasy worlds at the expense of real life?

"On board, they'd have to sedate me."

Tom Byrum, a frequent business traveler, on the possibility of not being allowed to take along a laptop computer and other equipment while flying (from page 2 of today's New York Times Sunday Business section and here)

I travel with two laptops currently, one Powerbook and one Sony Vaio. I need both of those laptops wherever I go, as do most people who carry the things. Since airlines cannot promise with any guarantee of certainty that my checked baggage will arrive when I do - airlines lost 10,000 bags per day in 2005 - there is simply no way that I can check my laptops and be assured of having them when I arrive at my destination. Not having the laptops would mean my trip was complete waste of time, and the chance of losing the laptops would be too much for me to risk. This is likely the same for most business travelers.

The fastest way to kill business travel would be to force flyers to check their laptops, because the risk of potential loss of both productivity and possibly equipment would be too great to take the chance. The cost of flight and the travel time would be a complete waste if I was unable to work when I got there.

On the other hand, this kind of thing is always great for videoconferencing and technologies like Skype.

And global warming is causing the glaciers to grow:

Researchers at Newcastle University looked at temperature trends in the western Himalaya over the past century.

They found warmer winters and cooler summers, combined with more snow and rainfall, could be causing some mountain glaciers to increase in size.

It seems that there must always be some natural impending doom scenario or humans just aren't happy. When I was a kid scientists were fearful of the coming ice age. Twenty five years later it is global warming, apparently cause by humans.

In fact, so desperate to ensure us of the supposed future destruction of the planet, global warming advocates point to everything as proof of global warming. Even that ice age is now interpreted as a precursor of global warming, as are every possible type of weather even anywhere, regardless of the situation. Every heat wave is further proof. And up until now, a cold snap was ignored, but that will probably also now be considered further proof.

Yet anyone who dares to question this is merely shouted down as ignorant, or a shill for energy companies.

The earth's climate is changing to by sure, but this may is likely a cyclic situation. The earth adapts far better than humans ever will. The earth will be just fine, though I can't say the same for the people on it.

My personal belief is that the next impending natural doom scenario is the death of common sense and the loss of rational thought.

Tip of the hat to small dead animals.

No sooner do I mention Weird Al Yankovic than he releases a new song - Don't Download This Song - a humorous jab at the RIAA and their attempt to criminalize the sharing of music.

If only there was some for of micropayment so that you could pay the artist directly for their music and cut out the record companies.

You can also get his parody of James Blunt's song You're Beautiful, entitled You're Pitiful, here. Unfortunately Atlantic Records, Blunt's record company, isn't going to let Weird Al put the song on an album. Fortuntately thanks to the internet you can at least download it.

Tip of the hat to Digital Copyright Canada.

Graham Henderson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, is still concerned that illegal downloading is eating away at record sales, and is concerned for musicians:

And musicians have long considered their music to be like a pension plan, because music retains its value, Mr. Henderson said. Artists can expect to receive revenue from their music for years after they record it - from other bands that cover it, when it appears on soundtracks or when it's being used as a ring tone on a cellular phone.

"I cannot believe the future of music is giving it away."

But discussion of Weird Al Yankovic's record contract suggests that the move to digital downloads is a bad deal for musicians:

If your deal with your record company is like The Alman Brothers, then you're getting something like $315.50 for those same 1,000 songs (83.3 CDs worth). That works out to $0.31 cents per song, instead of the $0.045 on a digital download.

The digital download nets the artist a fraction of what the physical CD gets them. So the record company gets more than they did before, with virtually no manufacturing, inventory, and distribution costs, while the artist gets less.

So Mr. Henderson is fine with the artists virtually giving music away, just not the record companies.

I've been hearing about Snakes On A Plane for months now, so overhyped on the internet that it has become a parody of itself. But a couple of weeks ago it became all too clear the I live in the rarefied atmosphere of that echo chamber that Rick Segal is always talking about.

At a cottage with several friends and relatives I happened to mention SOAP, and the only ones who knew about it were my son and my friend Matt, who like me is a dysfunctional frequent internet addict user. So I explained the story to everyone, and they found it amusing.

But all the hype didn't translate into ticket sales because we all went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest instead. So I guess the lesson is that a well-written and entertaining story wins out over a collection of cliches everytime. And you really shouldn't give people what they say they want.

Tower Records, a chain I've frequented for years, has declared bankruptcy, and there isn't much hope for their brick and mortar stores.

While you can certain purchase anything you want online at places like Amazon.com, there was something very satisfying about browsing the bins, and flipping through the albums. Actually holding the record in your hand was so much different from clicking a checkbox online.

I'm not a smoker - never have been - but I've watched in amazement lately as the rights of smokers are increasingly encroached upon, for any number of reasons. Smoking, which is still legal and from which a great deal of tax revenue is derived, is increasingly lionized to the point where those who do smoke pretty much have nowhere to do so.

It was strange enough when the province of Ontario, Canada, outlawed smoking completely in the workplace, meaning that long distance truckers could no longer smoke in the cabs of their trucks. But now a complaint to the British mdia regulator has led to the removal of scenes in the cartoon "Tom and Jerry" that glorify smoking:

In the first, “Texas Tom”, the hapless cat Tom tries to impress a feline female by rolling a cigarette, lighting it and smoking it with one hand. In the second, “Tennis Chumps”, Tom’s opponent in a match smokes a large cigar.

“The licensee has ... proposed editing any scenes or references in the series where smoking appeared to be condoned, acceptable, glamorized or where it might encourage imitation,” Ofcom said, adding that “Texas Tom” was one such example.

So attacking each other with axes and machetes won't encourage imitation, but smoking a cigarette will.

Robert Scoble notes why negative blogs are more popular than positive ones:

Seshadri PV asks a good question: why don’t the more than 3,100 Microsoft employee blogs get more attention, on balance, than Mini-Microsoft?

Human nature. We like shit disturbers more than we like people who are calm, rational, nice, and who post code on their blogs.

But Robert's blog is more popular than Mini-Microsoft, which refutes that thought.

The truth is that like marketers, most company bloggers tow the company lineon their blogs. The difference with Robert and Mini-Microsoft is that they aren't afraid to challenge the company line: well maybe Mini-Microsoft is a bit. It is that tidbit of unbiased and incisive analysis that readers enjoy, and that is why those blogs, positive or negative, are so widely read.

Code samples and the like are useful to the few that need those code samples, but Robert's or Mini-Microsoft's differing musings about how Microsoft could improve.

By the way Robert, is the deck is indeed stacked against Microsoft, it is they who stacked the deck that way by trying to crush competition in every market, rather than concentrating on building a few really excellent products.Microsoft will eventually get it right, but the resulting casualties are unacceptable.

I sat down to watch a little television last night - Two and a Half Men then How I Met Your Mother between 8:00 and 9:00 pm on the local CBS affiliate, WIVB in Buffalo, NY. Unfortunately there was an audio problem. The sound would be on for a second, the off for three seconds. The problem was only occurring on that channel.

As a bit of research, and because nothing else was on, I left the station on to see how long the problem continued. It went on for the entire hour, commercials and all.

So not only was this a pointless hour for viewers, who would likely have switched to another channel.It also meant that advertisers who had paid for spots during those shows got no value for their money.

What amazed me is that during the full hour, either nobody at the station noticed the problem, or they couldn't be bothered to fix it. Shouldn't somebody be watching these things?

Like Robert Scoble, I'm back on the grid, after a little vacation, and a little time away from home. But I find myself slow in getting back to reading the news, blogs, and other things I typically read.

It was nice to take a break from the constant stream of bad news in the papers. Do they ever print any good news? And it was nice to let the world go by without trying to keep up with every little thing.

There's nothing like working on the deck, with the lake in front of you, and not much else going on at all.

At the cottage we discovered that nobody but Matt and I had heard of the Mentos/Diet Coke experiment. Clearly we live in the echo chamber world of the internet.

So we decided to amaze everyone by performing it at the lake, on the dock, with the setting sun as a backdrop - after consuming a healthy amount of alcohol. You can see the results here.

Don't try this at home kids. Matt ended up covered in soda.

So I'm on vacation, and I haven't opened my laptops in a couple of days. But today I wandered into a little town named Perth in eastern Ontario, Canada, and found a little pub/restaurant named o'reilly's. They weren't open until 11:30, but I sat down on the patio, opened my laptop, found an excellent wireless connection, and started downloading copious quantities of email.

A couple of minutes later a young waitress named Lisa noticed me sitting there and said hello. I mentioned that I was using their internet while I waited and she said no problem. And a few minutes later she brought me out a coffee while I waited. Given such pleasant service, I called the rest of my family and told them to come over for lunch. So now we're sitting here waiting for our food.

So if you happen to be in or near Perth, make sure that you stop by o'reilly's. I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised.