Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

From today's Microsoft Windows Vista release:

“Companies we’ve talked to are looking at driving major revenue increases, improved responsiveness to customers, and improved sales team win rates with the 2007 Microsoft Office system,” said Ken Edwards, vice president of Capgemini. “The early adopters have realized cost savings through process workflow automation, easier access to information, improved collaboration with colleagues, and lower costs of compliance. It’s all about creating better customer connections and empowering your people at less cost and with greater effectiveness.”

Really? A new word processor and spreadsheet and suddenly sales team win rates are increasing?Perhaps it's time to fire a few of the salespeople if a new version of Excel made the difference. And I'm not sure how a new version of Office creates better customer connections and empowers your people at less cost, just to use a couple of the standard marketing benefit phrases. It seems that you've already paid more just to upgrade.

It's just another operating system, and another office suite.Despite what Mr. Ballmer says, these are not "game changing" products. It's just the equivalent of a new baseball bat and glove.

Om Malik mentions Nortel's reverse stock split:

First it was Ciena, and now Nortel is doing a reverse split, hoping to add some respectability to their stock price. The beleaguered telecom equipment maker which has been constantly resetting itself since the telecom bust, is going for 1-for-10 reverse split. The current share price is about $2.15, and after the split, the price will be $21.50 a share. The total share count will decline from around 4.34 billion to about 505 million shares.

I worked for Nortel a few years agoand it didn't appear to be a well run company then, but at the height of the boom it could do no wrong. But since then it can only do wrong. From executives benefitting immensely even while they constantly delay financials and restate earnings, it must be time to put the company out of its misery.

As a shareholder who bought the stock at $20 only to see it fall as low as a dollar, it's clear to me that the company just doesn't have a clue. And it's also clear that the interests of shareholders are the least of their concerns.

If you're downloading Bleezer now, you're going to get Version 0.9.7. Don't let the subtle version change mislead you - there are a lot of changes, which I'll document in the next day or so.

It's taken a few months to get here, but I've been using it for a couple of months myself. It provides for WYSIWYG editing. If you include an image from your local disk it will automatically be uploaded to your blog host. There is better support for categories, including multiple selection.

There are a lot of changes. There are probably a couple of outstanding issues as well, which you should feel free to report via email to bleezer@larryborsato.com. And there are more things planned.

Enjoy!

It's Thanksgiving and like millions of New Yorkers we watched the Macy's Parade this morning, though we watched it from the comfort of a hotel room with friends at 54th and Broadway. Then we had lunch at The View, the rotating restaurant at the top of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.

A bit wet, but a great day. Happy Thanksgiving!

I rarely bump into anyone famous regardless of where I'm travelling. But last night Eugene Levy was on my flight, and actually bumped into us when we were boarding.

And then today I literally walked into Joan and Melissa Rivers. Ok, we're talking B-list celebrities, but it's still unusual for me.

I guess if you stick a few million people onto an island the size of Manhattan the odds go up.

I'm waiting at the airport in Toronto to catch an Air Canada flight to New York which was supposed to depart at 6:15 pm. We were here early enough to get exit row seats.

At 6:00 pm the agent said that there would be a half hour delay because of a ground problem at Laguardia. A few minutes later she announced that they were boarding and they might arrive a little earlier than they thought.

A few minutes later she announced that the flight was cancelled, and everyone could line up to have their boarding passes swapped for an 8:30 pm flight.

When I went up there I was told that there were only a few seats left on the 8:30 flight and it became fairly obvious to those of us in line that Air Canada just didn't want to bother to fly two flights into Laguardia when they could make do with one. So what if they inconvenienced a few customers.

When I asked for their Customer Service number to complain I was told by an agent named Anne that I could "write to Mr. Milton". I commented that he probably wouldn't care about my problem, and she said "no he wouldn't."

It's great to know as a customer that when you purchase a seat on a flight expecting in good faith that the flight will actually run, that you can't in fact depend on that. Even better to know that the people who run the airline don't really care about the customer. And best of all that the customer service line folks know the airline doesn't care about you, and they don't really care about you either.

There was no apology given. Just a "take it or leave it"attitude.

It's unfortunate that this is the kind of thing that passes for customer service on "Canada's airline". I guess that explains why airlines like WestJet are doing so well.

And to think the only reason I didn't fly out of Buffalo this time for one quarter of the price was because I thought that Toronto would be faster.

My mistake. And one I won't make again.

Now it would be nice if someone from Air Canada would even consider commenting. But I won't hold my breath.

Update: So we finally get on the plane an they announce thatto make up for our inconvenience bar service will be free on the flight. So when the flight attendant finally gets to me I asked for two drinks, only to be told that it's one drink per customer. I explained that free means free, and the flight attendant told me that they didn't mean that. They meant to say one drink per customer. Once again, it's not their problem.

I'm travelling tomorrow on Air Canada on a flight that departs at 6:15 pm. Today I received an email inviting me to use their Web Checkin service:

You can now use Web Check-in up to 24 hours prior to departure every time you travel. Print your boarding pass, select your seat, stand-by for an earlier flight or upgrades if eligible.

So when did I receive the email? 7:03 pm tonight, about 23 hours and 15 minutes before my flight, which is unfortunately less that their 24 hour rule.

Good idea. Bad execution.

I went to a local restaurant in Waterloo - the Huether Hotel - last night to grab some takeout food for my wife for dinner. I ordered the Ultimate Alfredo for $14.50, which seemed a bit high for a place which is basically a pub with food. The waitress placed my order without comment.

About 15 minutes later, the food arrived and the waitress gave me the bill. Lo and behold, the restaurant had added a "takeout charge" of 50 cents to the bill. Of course that became part of the meal cost, so I was also forced to pay tax on the takeout charge.

So for freeing a table for other customers and eliminating the cost of serving me in the restaurantI was made to pay 50 cents on top of the cost of my meal. Obviously this is a restaurant that does not want takeout customers.

I'm happy to oblige. I told the manager on the way out that such a charge was ridiculous and I wouldn't be back. Sadly, he didn't even bother to apologize or even acknowledge my concern.

He got his 50 cents. But he just lost untold future business, because I didn't just tell 10 people - I blogged it.

Motorola's motivation for helping fight AIDS in Africa became clear this week in comments made by Ron Garriques, chief of the handset division:

The audience had earlier laughed uncomfortably when Mr. Garriques was describing Motorola's red cellphones, a portion of whose profits are donated to help fight AIDS in Africa. Customers who are alive, he explained, "can be future customers."

Via Techdirt.

The solution to the perceived problem of global warming could be a simple one.

Increase pollution:

Air pollution may be just the thing to fight global warming, some scientists say.

Prominent scientists, among them a Nobel laureate, said a layer of pollution deliberately spewed into the atmosphere could act as a "shade" from the sun's rays and help cool the planet.

So perhaps humans actually caused the problem not by carbon dioxide emission, but by cleaning up pollution.

I have a problem with my digital cable television. My provider is Rogers, a Canadian telecommunications company.

They have several numbers on their bill for different services, so I call the Rogers Cable 24 Hour repair service - 1-800-738-7891. But I don't get the 24 hour cable repair service. They have an interactive voice response system and I am asked to tell them if I am calling about internet, wireless, phone, or cable service. Then I am led on a merry chase through several phone prompts, including entering my phone number, as they've clearly never heard of call display and incoming number capture.

In fact, no matter which specific Rogers number you call you are led through the same phone prompts, which are clearly their for their convenience, and not mine. They want to make sure that I don't waste the time of a real person. Or perhaps they hope that I'll just get tired and give up. And I know they don't care because the first think I do every time I call them is complain about the frustration of trying to get through their system. They always apologize but nothing ever changes.

This is a company clearly that doesn't care about me as a customer. But they don't really have any competition, so they really don't have to. They exist in a market space essentially protected by the government. By law Canadian residents cannot purchase cable or satellite service from anyone ouside the country.

It is companies like this that fear competition the most because they won't be able to fight a decent service. I can imagine a day when I can get my television via the internet and I can deal with companies that actually want my business.

Microsoft released the Zune player this week to widespread yawning. The reviews I've seen have said it is pretty much as good as the iPod. But it certainly isn't an iPod killer. And the battery life is much worse that the iPod.

In typical Microsoft fashion it's a pretty basic1.0 model. To show that Microsoft just doesn't understand hardware they are actually telling people that future models will have more features. So why bother to buy now?

It only works with Windows XP. No Mac support. And not even Windows Vista.

I'll be sticking with the iPod thanks. The choice of criminals everywhere.

Think you can't make a difference? Think again.

A little over three years ago, as a result of some appalling decisions, a friend of mine was unhappy with the caliber of politicians in municipal office in our town, as well as the fact that they were often acclaimed. He decided that he would attempt to recruit more candidates, and run debates so that citizens could get to know the candidates and what they stood for. He recruited about ten people including me into a group called the Voter Support Committee, a group with no political bias, but a desire to inform.

For the municipal elections three years ago, on a shoestring budget, we put together a website and a series of debates. Citizens came in droves and got informed. They turfed all of the incumbents, electing all new councillors. And the Voter Support Committee gained some credibility.

So three years later, for this election, we did it all over again. Sponsors were more than willing to fund us and help us out. Out debates were run even more smoothly, often attracting more people than televised debates put on by the local paper. Coverage in the local paper of the debates was excellent. There were excellent candidates, no acclaimations, and people were again informed.In fact, our debates gave one mayoral candidate the chance to shine, and she won.

Last night the council went from all male to 50% male/50% female, with a few upsets. Because people got a chance to know the candidates, and to ask them questions that were important to them.

Because of one person. Because one person can make a difference.

According to Doug Morris, chairman of Universal Music, I'm a criminal:

Yesterday, Microsoft agreed to share revenue from Zune sales with record labels and artists. Forcing the issue was Universal Music Group, which at deadline is the only label named in the program. UMG refused to license its music to the Zune unless it could receive a percentage of each device sold, in addition to standard music licensing fees for downloads and subscriptions.

"These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it," UMG chairman/CEO Doug Morris says. "So it's time to get paid for it."

Well Mr. Morris, I'm sorry to tell you this, but I purchased every bit of music on my iPod. I've never stolen a thing. You got paid for my music.

However, I'd like you, and all of the artists on your label, to know that I will never purchase another item from Universal Music. And I urge all music fans to do the same.Don't license your music. It doesn't matter to me. I'll just buy something else instead.

You won't get another dime from me unless you pry it from my cold dead hands.

Via Boing Boing.

If you own a Macbook as I do then you'll want this handy collection of freeware.

Tip of the hat to Lifehacker.

It wasn't until I read Ross Mayfield's comments on the New York Times Web 3.0 article that I realized the silliness of this piece:

In Flickr, for example, users “tag” photos, making it simple to identify images in ways that have eluded scientists in the past.

“With Flickr you can find images that a computer could never find,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, head of research at Yahoo. “Something that defied us for 50 years suddenly became trivial. It wouldn’t have become trivial without the Web.

Flickr doesn't help you find a thing. It is the work of users who tagged the photos that lets you find them. If Web 3.0 depends entirely on the work of users, without any ability to infer meaning, then it won't be machines doing the work.

Something that defied us for 50 years? What? Asking users to add metadata?But asking the users to do the work is so Web 2.0.

Web 3.0 comes along:

Web 2.0, which describes the ability to seamlessly connect applications (like geographic mapping) and services (like photo-sharing) over the Internet, has in recent months become the focus of dot-com-style hype in Silicon Valley. But commercial interest in Web 3.0 — or the “semantic Web,” for the idea of adding meaning — is only now emerging.

And the hype cycle starts anew - on the front page of the New York Times no less.

I look forward to the idea of extracting meaning from the web, but I believe that a lot of the old HTML web may prove to be difficult to extract meaning from. But microformats hold a lot of promise for the future.

Today I went into Zellers, a Canadian discount department store, which looks a lot like a poorer cousin to Target with lower quality merchandise and higher prices. Zellers is a division of the Hudson's Bay Company, Canada's oldest store, which is now owned by an American.

There inside the front door beside the shopping carts, which were locked up, was this sign:

VALUED CUSTOMERS

Please note that our shopping carts require a dollar deposit. The dollar will be returned to you when you return the cart.

Translation:

We value you. We just don't trust you.

I didn't have a dollar, so they just lost any purchases I might have made. I wonder how many other people made the same decision as a result of the inconvenience?

I can understand their desire not to lose carts. But this is approximately the same logic as running a self serve cafeteria and charging for the trays. You want to make the shopping experience as simple as possible for customers. You don't want to start throwing up roadblocks the moment they enter your store.

I currently live in the town of Waterloo, Canada, which has a modest high technology sector including RIM, makers of the BlackBerry. Local politicians like to refer to the area as Canada's knowledge capital.

It isn't.

But that isn't intended to be a negative comment. We're up against a city of five or so million people like Toronto, or Ottawa, home of Nortel Networks, which has spawned numerous startups. An area of 500,000 people just can't compete with that. I understand that you want to set the bar high, but unreasonable expectations are hard to meet.

Waterloo Region does not meet the criteria for a technology center. It is not a big city. It isn't near a large body of water. The weather isn't always beautiful. It is not a huge cultural capital. It does not have a vast selection of restaurants. And don't even get me started on the lack of a decent Mexican restaurant.

And still it succeeds despite those issues.

What is rarely mentioned is that research from a single place, the University of Waterloo, has created a technology powerhouse that makes people around the world aware of this relatively tiny place. And as a result of that success we have groups like the Perimiter Institute, CIGI, and the Institute for Quantum Computing.

A recent article in the local paper The Record (which will probably be behind the firewall by the time you read this) suggests that research spending in the region is average. So what. An arbitrary measure such as the amount spent on local companies for R&D is a poor measure of what the region has been able to accomplish, especially when the area is still dominated by public sector groups and insurance and manufacturing companies.

What the area needs to focus on is how far they've come and how fast. It is the accelerated pace of change that makes Waterloo a success. It isn't about how much you have. It's all about how fast you get there, and how much faster you'll get there in the future. It's about your ability to change, and to deal with that change.

I went to university in Waterloo. Later we moved away, eventually to Boston. We moved back a couple of years go to a very, very different Waterloo. A more "grown up" Waterloo, with a few growing pains, but still getting better.

Let Toronto or Ottawa be the knowledge capital of Canada. That implies a perch from which they can fall.I'd rather be the folks they're always looking over their shoulder at and worrying about. I'd rather be the center of constant change and growth, always being more than people expect of you. Being more than they think you can be.

Fifteen years ago I worked with a company that was going to revolutionize the office environment by making it paperless. We would scan everything and store only digital copies that could be searched and extracted as needed. Your office could be paper free, with attendant savings in paper and storage costs.

In fact, every company I've worked with since then has used the same "reduce paper and save paper and storage costs" as part of its value proposition. But the truth is that people feel more comfortable when they have a paper copy readily accessible in a filing cabinet somewhere.

This truism is proven by a recent study by Statistics Canada:

The arrival of the personal computer gave much talk to the "paperless office". However, between 1983 and 2003, consumption of paper for printing and writing alone more than doubled, according to the study, entitled "Our lives in digital times".

In addition, professional travel has most likely increased during a period when the Internet and videoconferencing technology were taking-off, while e-commerce sales do not justify fears about the demise of traditional retail.

Now personally I've been virtually paperless for years, keeping only copies of receipts and invoices I need for tax purposes. Everything else I capture on my trusty Macbook, which is always nearby. I do keep a notebook in which I jot down the occasional thing that I want to remember. But I rarely print anything and don't keep vast files of things.

And I must admit that the government has improved as well, allowing electronic filing in several instances. But it doesn't seem that we'll become a paperless society anytime soon.

Thanks to wireless technology I am currently sitting in a restaurant having a glass of wine while blogging. And while the wine is infinitely preferable to the laptop, I do occasionally sit and think about how far we've come from the days when I needed to plug into a phone jack to connect to the net.

Or even worse, the time before the internet.

Now I can browse the web wherever I happen to be. Or I can just choose to be disconected and enjoy life in realtime. Which I'm going to do right now.

Last night at about 5 pm a friend Skyped me to ask if I knew a Flash expert. I'm not sure where in the world or in what time zone he happened to be at the time.

I do happen to know a good Flash guy; he lives around the corner from me. So I emailed him and asked if he was interested. A few minutes later my cell phone rang. It was the Flash guy calling from Chicago to let me know that he was.

So minutes later I emailed introductions to the two gentlemen and left them to negotiate.

Elapsed time: 30 minutes from request to fulfillment. And nary an HR person or recruiter in sight.

And yet the local high tech companies complain that there are no good people in town, and they take months to hire. So which model would you prefer?

A new study indicates that jet lag shortens the lives of older mice:

If flying to London throws off your body clock for a few days, be happy you're not a rodent. According to a new study, elderly mice die earlier if they're exposed to time shifts that replicate the effects of jet lag.

Fortunately older mice tend to stay close to home and don't really travel all that often.But if you are an older mouse reading this and happen to be travelling you should keep this in mind.

I've noticed that when somebody start pushing really hard to sell people on something, there are often many flaws inherent in the product. I'll just call it the "Used Car Salesman Rule".

And in the past week the global warming hype has gone into overdrive with the release of the Stern Report, suggesting that global warming could result in an economic cost of $9 trillion.

Now that is a pretty standard marketing tactic. Pick the worst possible situations and calculate the maximum potential threat in economic terms, then tell the customer that by buying your solution they can save themselves that money. Only it is almost never true in a sales situation, and it probably isn't true now either. The truth is that in the best case scenario it could result in no economic loss. The secret word is always the word "could".

And of course, these reports always suggest that the majority of scientists agree that humans burning fossil fuels are the primary cause of global warming, which is patently untrue. Please show me the notarized document stating that fact, signed by any kind of majority of scientists who have actually done any research on the subject.

So it is refreshing to read an article that tries to get at the truth, though I realize that suggesting that global warming might not be true means I must be in the employ of an oil company. At any rate, The Telegraph has an excellent article that debunks a lot of the hype:

So to the scare. First, the UN implies that carbon dioxide ended the last four ice ages. It displays two 450,000-year graphs: a sawtooth curve of temperature and a sawtooth of airborne CO2 that's scaled to look similar. Usually, similar curves are superimposed for comparison. The UN didn't do that. If it had, the truth would have shown: the changes in temperature preceded the changes in CO2 levels.

Next, the UN abolished the medieval warm period (the global warming at the end of the First Millennium AD). In 1995, David Deming, a geoscientist at the University of Oklahoma, had written an article reconstructing 150 years of North American temperatures from borehole data. He later wrote: "With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. One of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said: 'We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.' "

So they did. The UN's second assessment report, in 1996, showed a 1,000-year graph demonstrating that temperature in the Middle Ages was warmer than today. But the 2001 report contained a new graph showing no medieval warm period. It wrongly concluded that the 20th century was the warmest for 1,000 years. The graph looked like an ice hockey-stick.

Of course if you've already made your mind up you won't care about it. Just keep in mind that I'm not saying that the earth's climate isn't changing; I'm just saying that I'd actually like to understand what the cause is and whether or not we can do anything about it. But if you want to read it you can get the whole report here.

When I was a kid we actually ate SPAM, the canned meat product from Hormel. Gourmet it wasn't, but it was a decent meal. The internet brought a new, and very unpleasant, kind of spam - in the form of unwanted email. And it now seems to me anyway that spam comprises the bulk of email that I receive.

My spam filter is quite good, so there are literally hundreds of messages each day that I don't have to see. But there are some that get through, the most common lately being stock scams promotions. Now really, if you have to fool me into getting a message about a stock, how stupid would I have to be to actually invest in it?

Other spam makes absolutely no sense to me. This for example:

Hi iamjustsendingthisleter. How are you ? Call me. load their

I don't get it. There is no ad, no reason at all. What could the point be?

And lately I seem to be getting a whole bunch of undeliverable mail. Someone has obviously forged the sender address to be a made up email address purportedly from me, ostensibly to send someone else spam.

Does this really generate revenue? Do people actually pay to get their message out this way? To waste my time? To comsume huge amounts of bandwidth for no useful purpose?

There are those that advocate capital punishment for spammers. I think we should just sentence them to a lifetime of receiving spam themselves.

Open and unfettered access to the internet allowed incredible new applications like music sharing, blogging and video to be created. Those applications make the internet more valuable, and as a result the telecom companies that provide the pipes want a bigger share of the pie, a pie that was created in spite of them.

If they had taken the "charge by the megabyte" approachat the dawn of the internet, there just wouldn't be an internet today. We wouldn't have possibly the greatest advance in communications ever seen in our lifetime. And many telecom companies would simply no longer exist.

But just because the internet is now immensely popular doesn't give the telecoms a license to make excessive profits, and to control what people can and can't do on the internet. Perhaps it is time that internet access becomes a public utility, to ensure fair access for all.

Where I live, there actually was a joint venture between the local electric utilities to create a fiber and wireless access provider - Atria Networks.They were in the process of extending access across the city, while local politicians trumpeted the intelligent city they were building. And it was an excellent story.

Until last week that is, when they announced the sale of Atria to Birch Hill Equity Partners. Now Birch Hill Equity Partners will continue the provision of free services to the libraries and some other groups, but they aren't committed to building a better network in our town, so I'm concerned about the future of this network as well.

Actually it would seem to me that these regional networks are nothing but a thorn in the side of larger telecoms, and can imagine that Birch Hill will eventually sell out to Bell. We'll have to see just what happens.