Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

The price of a barrel of light, sweet crude oil is almost $95.

Inventories fluctutate, as do currencies. But the real supply of oil and the world conditions affecting it haven't really changed in quite some time.

This is all about trading, and has nothing to do with the real value of an actual commodity.

So what changed? And why the seemingly sudden leap?

I've managed to get a little image select and update AJAX thing happening in a new Facebook application I'm writing. It's amazing how little information is available in this area. But then again, the platform is only five months old.

If every person that bought a new car was forced to buy Michelin tires - with no choice in the matter - then Michelin's quarterly numbers would look pretty good. The same thing would happen for Duracell if every new new battery-powered device came exclusively with their batteries.

So why are folks like Mathew Ingram surprised that Microsoft had a good quarter with 88 million copies of Vista sold? I went to look at new PCs recently until I realized that I would have no choice but to get Windows Vista on that PC. There wasn't the slightest concern for my needs - it was Vista or nothing.

And those computers came with a particular version of Vista. If I wanted more functionality then I could pay more to upgrade or to buy a whole new copy. Then I'm faced with having to getting update drivers (if they even exist) for my other equipment. And having features turned off if I do something Microsoft doesn't like with MY computer.Perhaps that is why they've been forced to provide a downgrade path back to XP, but only if you paid for a "better" version.

Microsoft simply used its monopoly power to force retailers to buy 88 million copies of their product. And then they raked in the money.

If I was Microsoft, I'd be concerned about the fact that Mac shipments have grown 34% year over year.Because that means that something is driving people to change platforms completely. I switched two years ago, and I can't imagine ever going back.

Back on April 30th I agreed with Seth Godin's prediction that Apple would sell 2 million units in 2007, though I was a bit concerned given the June launch. It seems that wasn't too much of a concern given that as of September 29, Apple has sold 1.4 million iPhones doubling Steve Jobs own prediction and still has three months to go.

TechCrunch rants about Epson's new website complete with social features that tell you which printer suits your personality - because that's how I choose my printer. Actually I'm surprised that Epson still exists. Of course this may be the last gasp. But my favorite quote was this: Fire the consultants, stop trying to be a conversational marketer and just get back to the basics.Or build a Facebook application. Now that would be cool.

Because it seems that everybody needs a Facebook application these days. In fact, I think that soon my mom will have her own Facebook app.

There are certainly situations where you can use an app to drive awareness of your product or service. StartupNorth describes this very nicely, suggesting that you use Facebook as a conduit:

The opportunity is for you to extract a feature from your real business, and provide that feature as a Facebook Application. You can then try to link users through to your real website. If you are building something worthwhile, they will come there with you and you can focus on turning them in to real customers.

Building a business is pretty difficult when you are dependent completely on someone else and they make all the rules. Better that you should use the marketing power of a tool like Facebook, yet maintain control of the end experience for your customers.

Facebook announced the F8 platform this past May 25th - my wife's birthday by the way. I started working with it right away; desktop applications at first and then web-based apps. In fact, I posted back on June 19th about the difficulties I had with login for desktop apps. I just didn't think you should have to go to a browser to login. So I've created a few applications for Facebook. It wasn't all that difficult considering that I've been writing code for over 30 years, and it is after all just another API.

So the platform is five months old, and I've been working with it and building appsfor it for that entire five months.

Yet today a company that was talking to me about writing a Facebook application sent me an email today telling me that they were looking for someone with more experience. I'm not exactly sure how you can have more than five months experience with a five month old platform.

That is honestly the first time in my life that someone has ever told me that I don't have enough experience. Virtually every company I work with is interested in execution and delivery, as opposed to experience. And if I don't deliver, they don't pay me, regardless of how much experience I have or don't have.

If banks gave mortgages based on your experience buying houses the nobody would ever get their first house.

If VCs funded entrepreneurs based on their experience starting companies, then few new companies would ever be created.

A great programmer with no experience will figure out how to get the job done. But there are all kinds of people with plenty of experience who never accomplish anything great. After all, the day after Facebook announced the platform there were people with no experience at all managing to use the platform just fine. The web moves fast; you either figure it out or you get left behind. The Facebook platform changes too, so experience may be meaningless by the next week.

So who does your company value more? People with experience, or people who get the job done no matter what?

I know who I'd hire.

Fortunately for me most people I deal with are more concerned with execution and delivery.They don't want to get left behind.

Sadly, this just seems to be the tip of a much more endemic situation I've noticed, but I'll have to leave that for a later and much longer post.

Tonight's episode of CSI is a rerun. October 25th, about six weeks in to the season, and I'm seeing reruns already. Sure I know that World Series is on, but CSI is the only rerun tonight.

I couldn't resist quoting this headline from Good Morning Silicon Valley, if for no better reason than the fact that my wife's name is Bea:

Dearest BEA, my passion for you knows no bounds. Until Sunday. Love, Larry.

When I worked in Santa Clara she always found it entertaining to drive by the company that bears her name.I've even gotten free t-shirts from BEA at trade shows just for showing mail with my wife's name on it.

I just saw on the Buffalo Evening News on WKBW that Irv Weinstein, the perennial station anchorman when I was a kid, is alive and well and living in Irvine, CA.

I watched Irv on the nightly news every night when I was a kid, and I actually met him back in 1979 when we were on the news that evening as part of a scavenger hunt.

Doc Searls notes that he just doesn't have the time to deal with all of the Facebook notifications that he gets:

Anyway, lif’e’s too short, and this list of stuff is too long. If you’re waiting for me to respond to a poke or an invitation,or a burp or any of that other stuff, don’t hold your breath. Or take offense. I’ve got, forgive me, better things to do.

Feeling that it would be rude to cancel the notifications, I instead just ignore them.I already keep my email in Thunderbird, and I'm in no rush to start biting chumps.

I'll be at StartupCampWaterloo at the Accelerator Centre in Waterloo tomorrow (Tuesday) night from 6:00-9:00 pm. The official blurb looks like this:

StartupCamp Waterloo is a chance to demo your startup idea and get help, feedback, and advice on business-critical questions such as: Have I got my target market right? How can I fund my idea? How can I scale my idea?

The audience will include successful local startup founders, and there will be an opening presentation from Albert Lai, [www.simplyalbert.com]. You will also have the opportunity to meet other people who are thinking about a startup.

StartupCamp is informal, discussion-oriented, and participatory. Every participant is encouraged to give a short demo of their idea. You're welcome to come if you don't have an idea to demo, but active participation in the questions and discussions is expected from everyone.

Where: Waterloo Accelerator Centre, 295 Hagey Blvd, Waterloo

When: 6-9pm, October 23, 2007

I'll be there because it's just a great chance to hang out with a bunch of smart, entertaining people with great ideas, and to incite some excellent discussions. Not to mention the pizza and Coffee Crisp candy bars.

If you're wondering where all the cool stuff is happening in Waterloo, this is it.

Canadians have been told for years how great their socialized "free" healthcare system is; that it is the envy of the rest of the world. The truth is somewhat different though.

My wife is actually the only member of our family who has a family doctor. He doctor won't see my sons and I because we don't make enough appointments with her.

In fact, she requires my wife to make a different appointment for every health concern. She won't discuss more than one thing at an appointment. She also will not gove my wife more than a single month's prescription, even for drugs that she needs to be on every day. She instead insists that my wife make another appointment every month just to renew the prescription.

Last week my wife had surgery and she is not allowed to drive or really go too far for two weeks. Her doctor is fully aware of this. Yet to renew a prescription for a drug that she must take every day, her doctor insisted that she come in for an appointment, against the advice of her surgeon. Fortunately the pharmacy knows her and they gave her a seven day advance on that medicine.

This doctor has done other things that border not only on the questionable, but also the unethical.

Now you might suggest that we simply find another doctor. But that isn't how it works in Canada. Where we live, and area with a population of around half a million people, there are about 20,000 without family doctors. Few doctors are taking on new patients, and those that do often will not take on someone with pre-existing health conditions. So if you have a doctor, no matter how bad, you really can't risk jeopardizing that.

Imagine a situation where you are receiving poor healthcare, but you can't complain or do anything about it, because the only other option is no healthcare. You can't even complain about unethical situations for the same reason. Bad doctors are protected by the mere fact that they are just slightly better than no doctor at all.

Of course we don't have to imagine it; we live it every day.

You could be forgiven if you, as I, thought that global warming or climate change was a scientific challenge. Yet in his statement upon being awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the IPCC, Al Gore had this to say:

“The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity,” Gore’s statement said. “ It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.”

Not a political issue. Not even a mention of a scientific issue. It's a moral and spiritual challenge. So if you believe that climate change is man-made, then you are good. If you don't believe, then you are evil.

Sounds a bit more like a religion actually.

I was reading the article Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus the other day in the New York Times, and parts of it sounded quite familiar. The article uses the mistaken belief that high-fat diets cause heart disease to explain an "informational cascade", where groups are prone to reaching mistaken conclusions, or consensus.

Does this sound familiar?

The scientists, despite their impressive credentials, were accused of bias because some of them had done research financed by the food industry. And so the informational cascade morphed into what the economist Timur Kuran calls a reputational cascade, in which it becomes a career risk for dissidents to question the popular wisdom.

With skeptical scientists ostracized, the public debate and research agenda became dominated by the fat-is-bad school. Later the National Institutes of Health would hold a “consensus conference” that concluded there was “no doubt” that low-fat diets “will afford significant protection against coronary heart disease” for every American over the age of 2. The American Cancer Society and the surgeon general recommended a low-fat diet to prevent cancer.

But when the theories were tested in clinical trials, the evidence kept turning up negative.

What if we substitute global warming for high fat diets? Might it look something like this?

The scientists, despite their impressive credentials, were accused of bias because some of them had done research financed by the energy industry. And so the informational cascade morphed into what the economist Timur Kuran calls a reputational cascade, in which it becomes a career risk for dissidents to question the popular wisdom.

With skeptical scientists ostracized, the public debate and research agenda became dominated by the man-made global warming school. Later the IPCC would hold a “consensus conference” that concluded there was “no doubt” that humans were causing global warming. The IPCC recommended reductions in carbin emissions.

But when the theories were tested in trials, the evidence kept turning up negative.

Yes, that's where I've heard it before. And that turned out to be a false consensus, even though it was perpetuated by numerous experts:

Mr. Taubes told me he especially admired the iconoclasm of Dr. Edward H. Ahrens Jr., a lipids researcher who spoke out against the McGovern committee’s report. Mr. McGovern subsequently asked him at a hearing to reconcile his skepticism with a survey showing that the low-fat recommendations were endorsed by 92 percent of “the world’s leading doctors.” [emphasis mine]

Yet that 92 percent of the worlds leading doctors turned out to be wrong.

My favorite part of the article is the final two paragraphs:

“Senator McGovern, I recognize the disadvantage of being in the minority,” Dr. Ahrens replied. Then he pointed out that most of the doctors in the survey were relying on secondhand knowledge because they didn’t work in this field themselves.

“This is a matter,” he continued, “of such enormous social, economic and medical importance that it must be evaluated with our eyes completely open. Thus I would hate to see this issue settled by anything that smacks of a Gallup poll.” Or a cascade.

Werecognize that we have mistakenly achieved false consensus in the past, and we understand the reason we made that mistake. Yet we can't possibly admit that this might be happening again. Instead we seem to think that it is ok to accept the consensus. And to punish those that wish to think for themselves.

This post at productmarketing caught my attention:

Hertz has offered me the honor of joining their frequent renter program. For only $450, I can get a car whenever I want. Huh? Don't I already get that? I have never been unable to rent a car... from Hertz, Enterprise, Avis, or everyone else! Oh, and preferred parking. Nice. (Actually, now that I mention it, it seems that they have been parking my rental car as far away as possible. Maybe they're softening me up for this ludicrous offer.)

I agree. It is a ludicrous offer. But it got me thinking, why would someone want to charge their best customers a fee for better service?

These are the customers that you expect to spend the most money on your products.Why not create a frequent renter program that emulates those of the airlines; if you rent enough then you automatically attain prestige, elite, or super-elite statuses, and the extra special services that go along with them.

It would be great too if the highest volume renters received something special for themselves. A discount rate certainly benefits the companies they work for, but travel can be tedious, and something like a free car upgrade makes the trip much more pleasant for the travellers themselves.

You don't build loyalty by allowing your best customers to buy the service they should already be getting; you build it by rewarding them for their patronage.

I've read about institutions blocking Facebook, but I've never experienced it - until today that is.

My wife had some surgery today at Grand River Hospital in Kitchener, Ontario.When I came up to visit she was still quite drowsy, so I was overjoyed to find that they had a free WiFi network, which is so very rare in this area. So while she sleeps I can work.

However, the hospital blocks Facebook, and I'm writing a Facebook application, so I'm pretty much out of luck.

What surprises me most though is that all I see is busy people working and moving all around the place. When exactly does the hospital expect that they would sit around using Facebook?

I swear, if I hear the expression "Let's grab the low hanging fruit" just one more time I'm going to explode. This and other expression haunt my thoughts of the thousands upon thousands of conference calls I've been on. Sometimes you wonder what these people are actually thinking, if they are at all.

For all of you who have ever suffered through this, Joe the Peacock captures the moment perfectly:

IF YOU SAY "Drink the Kool-Aid" ONE MORE GODDAMN TIME, I'M GOING TO BURST THROUGH THE WALL AT YOUR OFFICE, KILL YOU IN A VERY UNSIGHTLY AND BLOODY WAY, AND THEN SCREAM "Oh, YEAH!"

Via Valleywag.

Paul Graham of Y Combinator has expanded on a keynote presentation to provide a detailed view of the future of web startups:

There's a pattern that we see over and over in technology. Initially there's some kind of device that's very expensive and custom made in small quantities. Then someone figures out a way to make them much more cheaply, and orders of magnitude more get built. And that allows them to be used in ways that would have been inconceivable before. [...] Now as well as being produced by startups, this pattern is happening to startups. It's so cheap to start web startups that orders of magnitudes more will be started. And if the pattern holds true, that should cause dramatic changes.

It costs virtually nothing to start a startup these days.And Rick Segal has already mentioned how easy it is for a university professor and a couple of bright students to throw something cool together for next to nothing - and beat the big guys to the punch.

Paul breaks it down into ten factors:

Cross posted at the Communitech Blog.

It seems that Sony has changed it's position on copying music:

Pariser [head of litigation for Sony BMG] has a very broad definition of "stealing." When questioned by Richard Gabriel, lead counsel for the record labels, Pariser suggested that what millions of music fans do is actually theft. The dirty deed? Ripping your own CDs or downloading songs you already own.

Gabriel asked if it was wrong for consumers to make copies of music which they have purchased, even just one copy. Pariser replied, "When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Making "a copy" of a purchased song is just "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy'," she said.

That makes me a criminal, even though though I ripped the CDs I had purchased and put them away in a box, never to be used again.That probably makes every iPod owner a criminal as well even though they, like me, legally purchased the music they are listening to.

Of course that stands in direct contradiction to what they told the Supreme Court not so long ago:

MR. VERRILLI: I disagree with that, Your Honor. Certainly not — I don't think there's any empirical evidence to suggest, with respect to any of the things that Your Honor just identified — and let me pick out the iPod as one, because it's the most current example, I guess. From the moment that device was introduced, it was obvious that there were very significant lawful commercial uses for it. And let me clarify something I think is unclear from the amicus briefs. The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it's been on their Website for some time now, that it's perfectly lawful to take a CD that you've purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod. There is a very, very significant lawful commercial use for that device, going forward. [emphasis mine]

It's nice to know that Sony's lawyers are so... flexible.

Marc Andreessen has a funny take on Steve Ballmer's comments about Facebook yesterday:

Via the UK Times:

"I think these things [social networks] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people," Mr. Ballmer told Times Online yesterday.

Ballmer subsequently added:

"I think these things [talking motion pictures] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people."

"I think these things [televisions] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people."

It's a bit odd that the company that wanted to put a personal computer in ever home would think that people might actually want to use them to share information. Other than Word and Excel documents that is.

As I spend this week at Entrepreneur Week and events like BarCampWaterloo I'm noticing a disconnect.

At BarCampWaterloo most people had their laptops open, blogging, twittering, and checking email, yet were fully involved in the conversation.They just had multiple information channels going simultaneously.

At the EntrepreneurWeek events, I'm one of the rare people with a laptop open. Some people have devices like BlackBerries, and I guess they feel that having email access means that they are connected. But with the multiple flows of information available now, email just isn't enough.

As we move forward into the always on, always connected world, it makes me feel very comfortable that there are people around me who get it, and who realize the collaborative power of these tools.

I've been watching TBS (Turner Broadcasting System) for almost 20 years now. For me, it is one of the best known brands on television, and a station my family has turned to frequently for great entertainment in the form of sitcoms, movies, and creative new show.

Some idiot has decided to throw that powerful brand away and call it PeachtreeTV. The website even looks worse, and far more boring.

What are these people thinking? What possesses someone to throw away years of work creating a brand?

And just think - they probably paid a consultant a fortune for this.

This is the screen you never want to see when you are attempting to use a WiFi connection.

I was at the Accelerator Centre this morning for an Entrepreneur Week presentation and trying to work with the WiFi connection when suddenly my Twitter connection failed. When I tried to establish a connection this is the screen I got.

The WiFi is password protected and I had given the password to somebody else so that they could work as well. Unfortunately the WiFi does not allow duplicate userids, but rather than disallow the second user it just kicked me out without warning.

So I just went for a coffee at Williams to finish my posting. The WiFi there is pretty much open the laptop and go. Actually it amazes me that the WiFi coverage in this area is so poor, especially around the universities where it would seem that free internet would encourage collaboration and a work-everywhere kind of mentality.

I read about FriendFeed in today's New York Times:

FriendFeed users can see what their friends are reading, listening to or viewing on the Web as a continuous stream of notifications. This stream can appear on a personal Web page or in a module on the user’s customized page on Facebook or Google.

The system does not require the installation of software, but it does require the friends to participate.The system can track people’s activities on a variety of Web sites, ranging from collaborative news filtering sites like Digg and Slashdot to music services like Last.fm and video and photo services like YouTube and Flickr.

Since my friends and I use every conceivable online service, I thought this would be incredibly useful. As usual, it turned out to be a private beta. Usually I assume it to be a waste of time, but I entered my email address anyway. And it what seemed to be record time - virtually minutes later - Bret Taylor of FriendFeed sent me an invite, so I signed up.

I have an account on virtually every service they monitor, so I added my accounts - a very simple process.And within a couple of hours my feed was full of stuff that I had posted or tweeted.

This is pretty slick. Everything I do online aggregated in one place, and available as a feed for my newsreader. Once my friend have signed up for this as well I can keep track of everything they do online. I only had one question. How do I follow my multiple blogs?

I walked in to an Entrepreneur Week event today, only to have several people tell me how funny it was that I would carry a wireless router with me.

I had showed up at BarCamp on the weekend only to find that there was no working WiFi. Because I've been in this situation before, I always carry a router, just in case. It always gets a laugh, but I always have working WiFi.

Just like the Boy Scouts of America always say, Be Prepared.

I have a 100 foot extension cord and power bar in my trunk too, because you just never know.

A friend of mine has often referred to Canada as the India of North America. A bit blunt, but his point was basically that the low value of the dollar made it very cheap and therefore attractive to do techology R&D in Canada. However, now that the dollar is at parity, that advantage is gone, so perhaps there is no reason for U.S. companies to do business in Canada anymore. Mark Evans agrees:

With the Canadian dollar at par with the U.S. dollar, Canada’s biggest competitive edge has now disappeared. Canadian R&D operations are no longer inexpensive, which will cause U.S. companies to think twice about whether it makes sense to do R&D north of the border.

Sure, we have really smart people and a federal government happy to give a 20% tax credit on all R&D costs but a robust Canadian dollar make these pluses less relevant. Without the low dollar as a sales and marketing tool, places such as India, Ireland, China and the U.S. will star to look more appealing.

I grew up on the border. We usually shopped in the U.S. because of the better selection there and the lower prices, even with a higher dollar. Now with the dollar at parity, border towns are realizing that it is better and cheaper to shop in the U.S. for pretty much everything, which will kill the local businesses.

Once you get far enough away from the border, that problem disappears. The technology sector is global; it doesn't have the benefit distance.