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How do you recover from this?

Every day the recall of pet food expands:

Another brand of pet food is being recalled amid contamination fears.

Purina says a limited amount of the food contains a wheat gluten from China that was found to be contaminated with a chemical found in plastics and pesticides.

Late yesterday, a dry cat food was added to the list of recalled items for the first time. Hill's Pet Nutrition said its Prescription Diet m/d Feline dry food also included the tainted wheat gluten.

Menu Foods, the manufacturer of these pet food brands, seems unable to catch a break as the news gets worse every day. And their web page isn't very helpful. If you don't know enough to click on the words "RECALL INFORMATION I" - the only words on the page - then you get nothing. No suggestion of any kind that the company is even concerned or sympathetic about the situation, unless you read pretty far into their press releases.

So how does the company recover from this? They can lay blame on suppliers all they want, but they have clearly lost the public's trust.

The CEO says the product is safe:

“Our products are safe. We continue to engage in the highest levels of monitoring and testing in the pet food industry. These tests will be expanded as a result of this experience,” said Henderson.

At this point would you believe him?

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Blogging rules.

Elisa Camahort, whose posts I never miss, commenting on the cyberbullying that has been happening lately to folks like Kathy Sierra, had this to say:

I don't believe we can institute an enforceable blogger code of conduct that is applied to all bloggers across all subject matters. I don't believe we should even try.

I do believe that each blogger and site owner should set policies and practices in place that refuse to accommodate or tolerate cyberabuse. I believe each blog or site owner is entitled to draw their own lines and enforce them. It's your web site, you can delete crap if you want to.

I agree completely. A code of conduct would never work.People that can't be bothered to obey actual laws aren't going to follow some simple code of conduct. And yes, each blog is allowed to set their own rules.

Elisa also suggests what is unacceptable:

I personally believe we should always draw the line at hate speech, sexual harassment and threatening speech. Even if we don't think the troll will actually act on those threats. The potential for action is not the point.

I agree with her thoughts, however this is part of the joy and the pain of free speech. I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. Those who espouse hate speech, or threaten, or harass other, they demean themselves. They are the equivalent of the people on the Jerry Springer show. It is sad that they feel it necessary to act in this way.

The best solution would be to eliminate anonymity from comments so that everyone knows who is actually making these comments, if that is even possible. But every blogger certainly has the write to limit such comments if they choose.

That said, I'll never understand the kind of people who make these personal attacks.

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A good customer service example.

I never hesitate to complain the poor customer service I get from Rogers, my cell phone provider. So it is only fair that I comment on an example of excellent customer service on their part.

Last month I signed my son up online for a $10 text messaging plan. He sends about 2000 messages per month. When I got my bill I noticed that he was not on a plan, and he had a bill of $118 for text messages.

I called Rogers and got to a customer service representative. I explained the situation and he immediately offered to credit my account for $118. I said that he should go ahead and charge me the $10 I would have paid for the plan, and he thanked me for my honesty.

I only had to spend about five minutes on the phone and would up completely satisfied with a very reasonable solution. The representative asked me if he had resolved the call to my satisfaction, and I said that this had been my most pleasant conversation with Rogers ever.

One simple exchange like this goes a long way toward redeeming my impression of the company.

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Why newspapers matter.

A number of tech bloggers would have you believe that newspapers are dead. Many think that bloggers and citizen journalism will fill the void.

The top stories on Techmeme are about Kathy Sierra or transparency at Microsoft. Important stories to be sure, but not to most Americans.

The top stories at the New York Times are about the war in Iraq and how it affects Americans. Arguably more important stories for the average American.

Newspaper editors make judgements on the basis of what they believe their readers want to know. Bloggers make judgements on the basis of what they themselves want to know, which necessarily limits their audience.

Newspapers provide a wider perspective that is still in high demand.

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Creating fear. Selling newspapers.

The headline two days ago in my local paper, The Record, was:

Region on Nuke Waste List

Yesterday, on page B6 of the Local section, was a article stating that no decision had been made yet.

And today the editorial said that just because the region was on a list didn't mean anything would actually happen with nuclear waste in the region.

So essentially, even though the paper knew that there was no real issue, they chose to hype a headline to create some fear and reaction, and to sell some newspapers.

Was one headline really worth losing credibility over?

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Parents still matter.

If you read the media in Canada there would seem to be popular support for a universal daycare program. Proponents of such a program frequently point to a Statistics Canada study that indicated that day care was better than parents. Rarely do those people note that the actual study placed conditions on that statement:

A study released yesterday by Statistics Canada claims that "children who are enrolled in early childhood programs and day-care centres appear to get a head start in school over youngsters who stay at home with a parent." The study says that the effect was noted only until the first grade and not thereafter. Improvements of day care over parent care were reported in reading, writing, mathematics and overall achievement. The findings are highly suspect firstly since they coincide perfectly with the current Liberal government push for universal day care.

While the study claims to have controlled for education of the child's mother and the income of the household, it did not take into account the reading that any stay-at-home parents gave to their children. Moreover the results for the stay-at-home parents are accompanied in the study by the phrase, "These estimates should be used with caution due to small sample sizes."

Today the New York Timespublished the results of a much more comprehensive study:

A much-anticipated report from the largest and longest-running study of American child care has found that keeping a preschooler in a day care center for a year or more increased the likelihood that the child would become disruptive in class — and that the effect persisted through the sixth grade.

The effect was slight, and well within the normal range for healthy children, the researchers found. And as expected, parents’ guidance and their genes had by far the strongest influence on how children behaved.

So parents do still matter.Daycare supporters seem to suggest that only daycare workers are capable of raising children; that parents shouldn't be trusted with the task. Yet before day care existed people did this every day. I didn't attend day care and I'm ok. My kids didn't attend day care and they appear to have turned out fine.

There will always be people who shouldn't be parents. On the whole though, parents are always the best ones to raise their own children.The suggestion that universal day care will somehow be better than parents in every care is just ridiculous.

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Why are text messages marked up 7314%?

The Consumerist asks why text messages are marked up 7314%:

Verizon and other cellphone companies mark up the cost of text messages by at least 7314% when compared to their rates for data transfer services.

[...]

Bytes are bytes. What makes a text-message byte so much more valuable than a straightup data byte?

What is even more interesting is the fact that text messages, or SMS messages, are actually carried as the payload in SS7 switching messages that are being sent anyway as a necessity of the phone service, so there is actually no incremental cost at all to the carriers when text messages are sent.

Yet we still pay 10-15 cents to send a 160 character text message.

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That should hold the spam.

One of the first email accounts I created was my Yahoo! mail account, which I've had for as long as the service existed - almost 10 years now. But after a while it just became inundated with spam. So I haven't used it other than to clear out the spam for a few years now.

Yahoo! is now announcing that starting in May users will have unlimited storage. Unfortunately it's too late to keep me using Yahoo! Mail and just means more spam for me to delete.

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Save the environment. Buy a Hummer.

Okay, not exactly. But if this article can be believed, the Hummer is more environmentally friendly than the Toyota Prius:

Through a study by CNW Marketing called “Dust to Dust,” the total combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle. The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.

The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it.

Wow! With 100,000 miles on my car, I guess I would be buying my secondPrius. That doesn't sound very friendly. And what would be done to dispose of the used batteries on the old one?

Found via Roger L. Simon.

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Don't count newspapers out yet.

The hot topic on the net today is, once again, the imminent demise of newspapers, with added hyperbole.

Robert Scoble thinks that they are dead already:

On November 18, 2005, I told San Jose State’s Journalism school that my son would never subscribe to, nor read, a newspaper.

In sincerely hope his son is smarter than he is. He might never subscribe, but to assume that he would never read a newspaper is to ignore a valuable source of information. Does he assume his son would never read a book either?Tim O'Reilly got his start in book publishing after all.

Don Dodge is a bit more insightful:

As hard as it is to build a start-up company from nothing, it is even harder to kill a giant business. IBM, Ford, Goodyear, and many other American business icons are not the giants they once were but they are still players. New leaders will emerge. Music, video, news, and software is not dead, but history tells us the entrenched market leaders will not survive even though there is plenty of time to make the necessary changes. It is just the natural order of life and business.

Mathew Ingram, who writes for a newspaper, notes that people tend to focus on the "print" part rather that the business part:

To me, part of the problem is that everyone focuses on the “paper” part of the word “newspaper,” which to me is the least important part of the term. There’s no question that the paper part of the business is decreasing in importance, and news may no longer be primarily distributed on smashed-up trees. Does that change the nature of the business? Definitely.

But it doesn’t mean newspaper companies have to die — it just means they need to evolve.

Newspapers are experts at gathering and disseminating information, and over the years they have established credentials and credibility that others do not have. And let's not forget the fact that a lot of the information people distribute and comment on originated with newspapers.

I get my news from the net, but I still subscribe to the local paper for local news. My kids don't subscribe, but they do occasionally buy and read a newspaper. But there isn't enough to engage them there, and I think that people don't understand the value of newspapers until they are raising families and things like local sports become important to them. Everyone saves the first story or photo of their kid on a sports team.

Doc Searls has the best suggestions of all for saving newspapers. The first and best suggestion is this one:

1) Stop giving away the news and charging for the olds. Okay, give away the news, if you have to, on your website. There's advertising money there. But please, open up the archives. Stop putting tomorrow's fishwrap behind paywalls. (Dean Landsman was the first to call this a "fishwrap fee".) Writers hate it. Readers hate it. Worst of all, Google and Yahoo and Technorati and Icerocket and all your other search engines ignore it. Today we see the networked world through search engines. Hiding your archives behind a paywall makes your part of the world completely invisilble. If you open the archives, and make them crawlable by search engine spiders, your authority in your commmunity will increase immeasurably.

My local newspaper, The Record, does this.They are giving away today's news, but I can't link to an old article (beyond today) because they are behind a pay wall. So I can't even point potential readers to their website. And believe me, even if you were a paying subscriber the search is so bad you would never find the article anyway. And they don't get the sharing and linking concept of blogging either; their blogs carry this warning:

Distribution and transmission or republication of any material is stricly (sic) prohibited without the prior written permission of The Record.

Newspapers aren't dead but they're going to have to rethink their business if they want to survive. And I expect that many won't.

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RIAA versus The People.

There is an entire blog devoted to the stupid things the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) does to its customers in the name of fostering "a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality".

You could be forgiven for thinking that the RIAA acts on behalf of artists and composers, but they don't. Their members are record companies, who themselves rarely have the best interests of an artist at heart. I can't imagine that any artist believes that threatening customers with legal action is a way to increase business.

There's even a website promoting a boycott of the RIAA.

Via Boing Boing.

Update: It seems that The Head Lemur is on the same wavelength as I am here.

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Losing local news coverage.

Tim O"Reilly has heard that the San Francisco Chronicle is in trouble, and Shelley Powers notes the fact that the real problem is that of local news coverage:

Dan doesn't think local news coverage is important, as compared to national and international news. I think, in a way, this is symptomatic of where much of the failure of 'citizen journalism' arises, because if weblogs would be good for anything, it would be local coverage. Especially since local coverage is also the area being cut by so many publications, such as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

[...]

It's the 'quiet' stories we're losing in the rush to get eyeballs. The small stories, the local stories, the stories that explore more than expose; inform rather than titillate. These quiet stories are those that weblogs could capture, but webloggers, excuse me, citizen journalists, see themselves as the next Edward R. Murrow and disdain such small stuff.

My local paper provides absolutely no value for me except for local news, opinion, and events. Everything else comes from wire services and I can get that information from any other paper or online. If the local paper stops covering local news then I will cancel my subscription immediately.

Local news is critically important, and is the reason why most local papers exist. Otherwise we would all just be reading the New York Times.

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Rethinking my American Girl Place purchases.

My wife collects dolls and shops at American Girl Place. We've bought gifts for our goddaughter there. But I'm rethinking that based on what seems to be an incredibly stupid customer service mistake concerning a little girl.

From The Consumerist:

American Girl Place Mocks 6 Year-Old For Having A Doll From Target, Refuses To Style The Doll's Hair

This story is just heartbreaking. We feel really, really bad for this little girl. Etta saved all her money and purchased a pretty doll from Target named Gracie. When she was invited by her friend to bring her doll to American Girl Place for a "doll hairstyle" she was thrilled...until the stylist chided her for not having a "real" doll and refused her business.

I understand that American Girl Place is in business to make money, and they make plenty. But they are also in the business of creating fantasies for little girls (and big ones). They shattered that image for this little girl, certainly losing her as a future customer. And for what? Because she hadn't bought one of their overpriced dolls? They would have still gotten their $20 styling fee.

Of course the saddest part of the article is the comments from the other moms:

One mom just smiled and said "Well, American Girl Dolls aren't for everyone, you know." A sentence cleverly crafted to make Etta feel like someone cared about her but also to be aware that she really didn't belong there in your fancy store with the other, richer, better girls. How compassionate!

Well that just isn't the kind of store that I want to deal with. I think I'll start shopping at Target.

Just a suggestion to the folks at American Girl Place, but this is probably something you want to fix quickly.

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Government rationed healthcare.

This video demonstrates what happens when a government bureaucracy decides who gets healthcare and who doesn't.

Via Fighting for Taxpayers.

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It all boils down to the same thing.

I currently live in Ontario, Canada, where property market value assessments are done every year for municipal tax purposes. In the past four years my assessments have increased by 10% in the first three years and almost 15% last year. Their has been a massive outcry about these increases, to the point that the provincial government froze assessments for two years.

Yesterday they announced that beginning in 2009 (if they are re-elected of course) assessments would only happen every four years, and increases would be phased in gradually over that time.So I suppose now I'll see a 40% increase in my four year assessment, but I'll only have to pay a 10% increase annually. That just doesn't seem like much of an improvement.

Of course a decrease will be applied immediately, though I'm not sure if anyone has actually every seen a decrease.

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16 things it takes 50 years to learn.

Some things it take most of us 50 years to learn:

8. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."

10. If there really is a God who created the entire universe with all of its glories, and he decides to deliver a message to humanity, he will NOT use as his messenger a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle or in some cases, really bad make-up too.

Read the whole thing.

Via Digg.

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Me too. Me too.

Everybody but Google announced today that they will launch a video site to compete with Google:

News Corporation and NBC Universal will launch the largest Internet video distribution network ever assembled with the most sought-after content from television and film, it was announced today by Jeff Zucker, President and Chief Executive Officer, NBC Universal and Peter Chernin, President and Chief Operating Officer, News Corporation. The video-rich site will debut this summer with thousands of hours of full-length programming, movies and clips, representing premium content from at least a dozen networks and two major film studios.

“This is a game changer for Internet video,” said Peter Chernin, President and Chief Operating Officer of News Corporation. “We’ll have access to just about the entire U.S. Internet audience at launch. And for the first time, consumers will get what they want -- professionally produced video delivered on the sites where they live. We’re excited about the potential for this alliance and we’re looking forward to working with any content provider or distributor who wants to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity.”

So let's see if I've got this straight. If Google hosts the video for free with their ads, then that is bad. If somebody else hosts it with their ads, then it is a game changer for internet video?

All of these companies are going to just give away their content? Oh yeah, I forgot the "ad supported" part. Will I have to watch 15 minutes of commercials for every hour of video? I already have a television thanks. And TiVo, so I'm already recording what I want too.

I guess we'll have to wait to see what happens.

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The rest of the story.

Mark Evans suggests that a Symantec report indicates that in terms of patches and patch development time, Windows is better than Mac:

If you’re looking for a way to rile the Mac-ites, suggesting that Windows is more secure than Mac is a sure-fire way to do it. Symantec claims, however, this is true after completing a research report that found that Windows had the fewest number of patches and the shortest average patch development time of the five operating systems it monitored last year.

There is more to the story though.

There were indeed 43 Mac OS X patches versus 39 for Microsoft. And it did take Apple longer on average to patch them. However, only 1 Mac OS X vulnerability was considered high severity, versus 12 for Microsoft. And the report does make this point:

With the exception of Microsoft, all vendors were affected by longer turnarounds for patches for third-party components that are distributed with each operating system. Upon examining the sample set of vulnerabilities during this period, Symantec has observed that vulnerabilities with longer patch development times generally affected third-party components.

So all in all, the two operating systems come out fairly close, especially given the much higher installed base of Windows, as well as its higher profile as a target of hackers.

Of course that isn't really why people think the Mac is better. It all comes down to the user experience. Mac users rarely notice the vulnerabilities, while Windows users frequently experience pain as a result of a vulnerability.

I'm a Mac user. It just works. When I install new software I don't have problems like incompatible dlls. It just works. That's easy to do when you have fewer users and fewer choices of software.

Funny thing though. Once you become a Mac user you suddenly become aMac evangelist as well. That never happened when I used Windows. For some reason you just get the feeling that Apple cares about you as a customer. I always felt that Microsoft just wanted my wallet.

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Comments are back!

After way too long comments are back on thanks to Jay Allen's Comment Challenge Movable Type plugin.

We'll see how well it works in combatting comment spam over the next few days.

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Small-scale electricity producers.

Al Gore thinks that small-scale electricity producers will replace large coal-burning power plants:

Gore advised lawmakers to cut carbon dioxide and other warming gases 90 percent by 2050 to avoid a crisis. Doing that, he said, will require a ban on any new coal-burning power plants—a major source of industrial carbon dioxide—that lack state-of-the-art controls to capture the gases.

He said he foresees a revolution in small-scale electricity producers for replacing coal, likening the development to what the Internet has done for the exchange of information.

As far as I know there are only a few ways to product electricity; controlling water flow, burning coal or natural gas, wind turbines, and solar power. Wind and solar power are not that efficient yet, and water flow requires a flowing water source. So how does Mr. Gore think that these small-scale producers will create electricity without also creating CO2? And how will they be more efficient than the large scale plants? Or as dependable?

Why is it that every global warming solution results in us turning back the clock and losing some of what we've gained over the years?

Tip of the hat to Cafe Hayek.

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The Canadian Way?

From Andrew Coyne:

Our politics now revolves entirely around trying to pry money out of each other, region by region, interest by interest, household by household. We know all the tricks: screaming, pouting, whining, threatening. And we hire people who are especially good at it to do it for us.

That's what we expect our political leaders to do. That's what the chief executives of our largest corporations mostly do. Union leaders, farm reps, lobbyists, strategists, consultants of all kind -- it's a vast industry of special pleading, a money-go-round in which we attempt the mathematically impossible -- to redistribute income from everyone to everyone -- each thinking he can make the other pay for his subsidies and never noticing that he's paying, in his turn, for someone else's.

All we want to know about our members of parliament is: have they brought home the bacon? All we want to know about our province's place in the federation is: is it profitable? We are a country that is entirely without shame.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't always that way. When I was a kid there was still a concept of personal responsibility. Now it's always somebody else's problem.

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Giving away money.

Venture capital investment in Web 2.0 startups more than doubled in 2006 over 2005. Is that because VCs see value being created in these businesses, or because they have money to spend and are jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon because it's there? And because given the low startup costs, there just aren't that many Web 2.0 companies that will take VC money?

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Who would you miss?

Brand Autopsy asks if Chili's, Subaru, or Sears went out of business tomorrow, would any of us care?

Does Sears provide such a unique product and customer experience that we would be saddened if it didn’t exist? Does Sears treat its employees so astonishingly well that those workers would not be able to find another employer to treat them as well? Does Sears forge such unfailing emotional connections with its customers that they would fail to find another retailer that could forge just as strong an emotional bond?

Who would you miss?

I'm hard pressed to think of even one company that I would seriously miss if they ceased to exist tomorrow. I enjoy going to Starbucks, but I suppose I could find another similar coffee place. I drive an Audi, but I suppose if they closed up shop I would just switch to something like an Infiniti.

The kind of places I really enjoy and would miss are not franchises of large companies. They are one of a kind uniques places that provide a very different experience for customers. Local places like Kimball's in Westford, MA, Angie's Kitchen in Waterloo, Canada, or Harvest Moon in St. Jacobs, Canada. Places that provide something out of the ordinary, whether it be service or just atmosphere, as opposed to the interchangeable sameness of larger organizations.

After all, people go to EdDebevic's to be insulted by a gum-chewing, bubble-popping waitress because it is part of a great and memorable experience. Do you remember anything about your last trip to Sears?

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Works on my machine.

For years I worked in software companies that eschewed formal quality assurance, instead using the "Works on My Machine" Certification Program. You'd be amazed at just how much development time we saved.

Of course I don't remember the stats on customer support calls or repeat customers, but I'm sure they weren't affected in the least.

Tip of the hat to Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror.

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When inspiration meets passion.

Seth Godin defines Mashup:

When a DJ takes two records and melds and mixes them into something new, that's a mashup. When an Obama supporter takes a twenty year old commercial and splices it with some campaign footage, that's a mashup too. Online services can be mashups as well, like the Google search box on the bottom of this page.

A mashup is more than just the end result though. It is what happens when inspiration is combined with passion.It is the ultimate compliment. It means that you have affected your audience to the point that they become involved; they willfully volunteer their time and skills to build something unique.

I don't understand why anyone (for example record companies) would ever fight something like this.At the least it promotes the root ideas. At its best it inspires others.

A mashup is truly greater than the sum of its parts. The people that create mashups are your ultimate fans. Now that you have a way to recognize them you should reward them and encourage others.

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I remember when Palm was cool.

Over a decade ago I spent around $500 to buy my first Palm Pilot. I travelled a lot and it was a great way to keep track of contacts and appointments, as well as providing a little bit of entertainment. Palm sold millions upon millions of the units.

Over time I used it less and less as other devices came along to provide the same functionality. My cell phone and my iPod do everything my Palm used to. Palm was passed by.

They've had a rough time lately as Om Malik notes:

The days of Palm Inc. remaining an independent company are numbered. The once promising and fast growing handheld device maker is likely to be acquired by Nokia, Motorola, or a private equity firm, reports Unstrung. The deal could be announced as soon as Thursday, and some heavyweight buyout funds are in running.

To repeat the obvious, Palm’s current state of affairs is a result of haphazard management practices and a sad tale of a company that got whiplashed by the rapid technological changes that rewarded scale more than innovation.

A good lesson to learn for any company that assumes its current good fortune will last forever.

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Since when is profit evil?

I've lately noticed that the term "for profit" is being equated to being evil. The government and media in Canada constantly intone that non-profit healthcare and childcare are vastly superior to those that generate profits. The government actually suggests that non-profit healthcare is a Canadian value.

Yet comparisons are dubious at best. All childcare facilities must follows the same provincial standards, and salaries must be comparable or they wouldn't be able to retain staff. But non-profit organizations are eligible for grants that for-profit institutions are not.

The same is true of healthcare. Though a non-profit hospital can run a deficit expecting the government to bail them out, while a private hospital could not.

This all seems to stem from some arbitrary unproven belief that non-profit groups care, while for-profit organizations do not, merely because they chase profits at all cost. This ignores the obvious fact that the for-profits have more reason to be efficient, yet must also provide service that is at least good enough to keep customers coming back in a competitive environment. The fact that they do have customers proves that they are achieving this goal.

Before we decide that profits are evil it would be good to keep in mind that profit-generating companies are the economic engine of a country. They create jobs, pay taxes and enable their employees to do so also. If it weren't for those jobs then there would need for childcare, non-profit or otherwise.And if it weren't for those taxes there wouldn't be free healthcare in Canada either.

Profit is good. And companies that seek a profit aren't automatically bad.

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We care. And we prove it.

Southwest Airlines cares so much about their customers that they have a "chief apology officer":

But no airline accepts blame quite like Southwest Airlines, which employs Fred Taylor Jr. in a job that could be called chief apology officer.

His formal title is senior manager of proactive customer communications. But Mr. Taylor — 37, rail thin and mildly compulsive, by his own admission — spends his 12-hour work days finding out how Southwest disappointed its customers and then firing off homespun letters of apology.

[...]

He composes about 180 letters a year explaining what went wrong on particular flights and, with about 110 passengers per flight, he mails off roughly 20,000 mea culpas. Each one bears his direct phone line. [Emphasis mine]

Contrast this with my most recent problem with my internet/mobile phone provider, when I was told that the VP of Customer Service does not have a direct phone number or email address.But they were happy to give me the postal address so I could write my internet service provider a letter, obviously missing the irony.

Acknowledging a problem and offering an apology requires little effort, but makes a huge impact on a customer, probably be cause we hear it so infrequently. Doing it proactively is phenomenal.

Blatantly telling a customer that you can't be bothered to hear their problems is just stupid, and indicative of a market where there isn't enough competition. Companies that don't care about their customers don't deserve to have any.

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Canadian values.

From George Smitherman, Ontario's Minister of Health, in today's National Post:

"I will never support the outsourcing of those knee surgeries to any private, for-profit-motivated organization," George Smitherman, Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, said. "Our government fundamentally believes that the public health care system, the not-for profit public health care system, is the best expression of Canadian values."

The article indicates that the wait time for a knee replacement in Ontario is 307 days, though the target is 182 days.

Wait time is defined as follows:

A wait time is the amount of time you have to wait for a procedure. Your wait is measured from the time your procedure is booked until the time you receive it. If you need several procedures for your condition, each one can have its own wait time.

A wait of almost a year for a single knee replacement. It's a bit rude rude to invoke "Canadian values" as an excuse to make people wait in pain for treatment that they could easily receive through perfectly legal and approved means. Though it is almost impossible to determine in the current system, the cost might actually be less too.

Isn't it possible that Canadian values could occasionally include compromise?

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Be different.

What do you do that makes you stand out? That makes you different than anyone else?

I know the cashiers in my supermarket by name. I know the folks who serve me coffee in the morning by name. I just try to treat people the way I'd want to be treated. And they always return the favor.

I start conversations in elevators too. And I listen to people. I make it a point to listen.

It's amazing how little it really takes to be different. And more memorable as a result.

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I'm a Thrill Seeker.

From Seth Godin:

Thrill seekers love growth. They most enjoy a day where they try something that was difficult, or--even better--said to be impossible, and then pull it off. Thrill seekers are great salespeople because they view every encounter as a chance to break some sort of record or have an interaction that is memorable.

Fear avoiders hate change. They want the world to stay just the way it is. They're happy being mediocre, because being mediocre means less threat/fear/change. They resent being pushed into the unknown, because the unknown is a scary place.

Thrill seekers also tend to outgrow their companies because those companies tend to stagnate as Seth notes:

How do explain why so many organizations get big and then just stop? Stop innovating, stop pushing, stop inventing...

I've never really given it a lot of thought, but I always found the impossible task far more interesting.I've always found high pressure situations more fun. I like to make a big impact, and leave a great impression.

So what are you?

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Protecting culture.

The aforementioned National Post article on cell phone costs contains this interesting quote about protecting Canadian culture:

In other words, Canadian content doesn't need to be protected, he says, because someone will create it if there is an appetite for it.

Canada is a highly protectionist country, often using the argument that restrictions on foreign ownership are necessary to protect Canadian culture. For example no foreign company can own a majority of a bookstore, lest culture be endangered.

There are subsidies in abundance for Canadian television, movies, books, and art, that tell uniquely Canadian stories (or give jobs in the television/film industry to Canadians).

Beyond successful shows like Corner Gas, perhaps there isn't actually an appetite for it.

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Why Canada's cell phone usage lags.

I've mentioned the much higher cell phone costs in Canada versus the United States before. Now others are starting to look at this problem as well.

Michael Geist mentions it:

A study released last week noted that Canadians pay significantly higher wireless fees, particularly for high-end users, as compared to consumers in the United States. Emboldened by limited competition, providers have not hesitated to pad their prices by adding the deceptive "system access fee." Contrary to popular belief, the fee, which adds nearly $100 per year to every wireless phone bill (MTS Mobility in Manitoba just increased its system access fee to $107.40 per year), is not a government-mandated charge but rather a slick method of camouflaging higher prices.

And the National Post has an article about it too:

In the developed world, Canada fares poorly in several key telecommunications measures. It has some of the highest cellphone rates in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, reflected in its poor uptake ranking. Among the 30 OECD nations, only Mexico has fewer mobile subscribers.

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The Great Global Warming Swindle.

Rob Hyndman, a lawyer/blogger friend of mind who is also trying to make sense of all of the information about global warming, sent me a link to this UK Channel 4 documentary entitled The Great Global Warming Swindle over at Little Green Footballs.

Rob also noted that one of the scientists quoted in the documentary has stated that he was completely misrepresented.

Still, the amount of conflicting information seems to suggest that the concensus that is often claimed doesn't really exist.

Update: Wizbang notes that some scientists who are questioning manmade global warming are receiving death threats.

Scientists who questioned mankind's impact on climate change have received death threats and claim to have been shunned by the scientific community.

They say the debate on global warming has been "hijacked" by a powerful alliance of politicians, scientists and environmentalists who have stifled all questioning about the true environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions.

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Piracy is a crime.

Everytime I pop in a DVD that I paid good money for I am forced to watch an unskippable warning that making illegal copies of this DVD is a crime. If you have purchased the DVD then what is the likelihood that you are going to illegally copy it? So why force me to watch the warning every time?

If I am going to pirate the thing I probably won't even pay for the first copy. The ironic thing is that if they did then the pirated DVD would also have the warning on it.

Thanks to the Head Lemur for reminding me just how much this drives me crazy. He has a great post complete with graphic on that very topic. Why do companies go out of their way to punish their customers?

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Liveblogging BarCamp Waterloo

We're having a great time at BarCamp Waterloo. After a great lunch of pizza, chips, candy bars, and soda, Alex explained the joys of dry curing ham. Clearly an excellent camping topic, even if we aren't really camping.

Here's everybody around the table at the Accelerator Centre.

Alex explains how he dry cures ham.

Alex's butcher weighs the ham.