Category: Random

Dave Winer: The Cross Continental Commute [physical and psychological]

2005-04-25 / / 0 Comments

Dave Winer discusses waking up and facing East, not West, to see the ocean. [here]

Conceptually, I am still having difficulty with the idea that the ocean is East of me. For all of my life, it has been West. I grew up in British Columbia, lived on Vancouver Island and the Bay Area, and until 2003, my world faced West across the Pacific.

Now it faces East, and like so many other things, it is not a comfortable feeling. Perhaps it is time to try and get a job in the UK; at least there, my psychic underpinning would be stronger…and the Ocean would be to the West.

And Dave, what’s more disturbing is doing the complete I-90 commute in less than six hours: Logan to Seattle. I have done that a couple of times now, and it still weirds me out.

China: Zombie Army Rising

2005-04-21 / / 0 Comments

And no, the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee is not meeting!

Looks like the rising number of computers in China has lead to a large number of Zombie attacks from this fine nation. [here]

If you have checked your logs lately, this should be as surprising as The Gropenfuhrer taking steroids.

Brand Management: Apple?

2005-04-01 / / 2 Comments

SeattleDuck is up again today with this post on brand management [here]

This goes directly to the heart of the somewhat loosely constructed (ok, when I read it this morning, it had the logical consistency of a drunken llama) rant on Apple and brand management.

I agree with Kevin:

The emotional power of your brand CANNOT be decided in a meeting or a planning doc. Those are wasted words. They may provide a goal and guidance how to get there, but true brand power has always resided with two parties: your customers and your employees that interact with them.

Apple, turn your employees and the fanatics loose! They kept you alive in the times of darkness; let them lead herald your brand from the ramparts.
Let them develop BRAND LUST for you.

Apple Bloggers Sent Underground By Overzealous Legal Department?

2005-03-31 / / 2 Comments

The title should give you some idea about what the post is about. And before you flame me, realize that I know there are a great number of dedicated Apple Bloggers out there. The concept driving this post is something that has been tickling the back of my brain for a week now: the lack of and silence from bloggers who work directly for Apple.

John Moore of Brand Autopsy comments on Guy Kawasaki, the Evangelists’ Evangelist, stating that he is tired of defending Apple. [here]

Apple has micromanged their branding and corporate message to such a degree that they cannot, will not, tolerate ANY deviation from the company line. By anyone. Including the hordes of excited, motivated, and deicated Apple Fanatics.
Apple, currently you have the cool factor on your side. I have become a victim of your message: I LUST for (not want, not desire, but LUST for) a Powerbook.

However, as lust is want to do, it may cool when the sun rises and all is exposed in the true light.

So Apple, how do you want your fanatics to speak of you? As the company with the cool tech who puts the chill into even the most firebrand brand evangelist? Or the company that encourages, motivates and invigorates the discussion and dissemination by their brand evangelists, no matter who they are?

If you work at Apple and you are reading this, which answer do you see coming out of the Marketing Department?

Mmmm…let’s call our customers dinosaurs!

2005-03-19 / / 2 Comments

The Site! The Site! OMG! The site is even more insulting! Bring on the firing squad!
HERE! [Flash Link – NO LONGER WORKS]

I agree with this post: The team that created the Microsoft Dinosaur campaign need “to be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes”. [here]

The campaign is insulting. The campaign does not inform. The campaign makes me feel that I work for a backward company (even if it is in the Fortune 100).
And the campaign is greedy. Microsoft is no longer making any money from those Office 97 and 2000 licenses, so it has to figure out how to keep the gravy train flowing. Problem is…can you make any of these already heavily bloated apps better?

Yes, I know that there are great new features, blah, blah, blah. Don’t care. Don’t Need them.

And OpenOffice is only 80MB to download for free. And it generates PDFs on the fly without an add-on piece of software.

Hmmmm…the emperor has no clothes.

Blogging synchronicity strikes again. Read this little gem about 30 seconds after I completed the original post. Pretty much nails the state of Microsoft’s cash cows.

And this from someone on a MSFT blog.

Tamiani Trail Synchonicity

2005-03-18 / / 2 Comments

I cashed in the last of my Triple B bonds
Bought a double-wide on the Tamiani Trail
I parked it right outside the reservation
Fifteen minutes from the Collier County Jail
And the SEC is far behind
Down in the swamp with the gators and flamingos
A long way from Liechtenstein
I’m a junk bond king playing Seminole Bingo
Well, the SEC is far behind
Down in the swamp with the gators and flamingos
A long way from Liechtenstein
I’m a junk bond king playing Seminole Bingo
Seminole Bingo

Warren Zevon

I was listening to this song while reading this.

You don’t often have a synchronistic experience involving the Tamiani Trail. And after reading the post, and listening to the song, I can almost feel the swamp surrounding me as I wade through the primeval much searching for my lost dabber, absorbing the desperate failure in the eyes of the bingo zombies and other refugees and outcasts from the Great Society.

In the interests of fairness…

2005-03-04 / / 0 Comments

A response to the FEC chairman’s C|Net interview, which I commented on yesterday.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press Contact: Mark Glaze
202-271-0982

Statement of the Campaign Legal Center

Setting the Record Straight: There is No FEC Threat to the Internet
Washington, D.C. — In a recent interview with CNET, Federal Election Commissioner Brad Smith claimed that as a result of new campaign laws and and a recent court decision, online news organizations and bloggers may soon wake up to find their activities regulated by government bureaucrats. That would indeed be troubling, if it were true. Fortunately, Mr. Smith – an avowed opponent of most campaign finance regulation – is simply wrong.

The issue the FEC – and the courts – are grappling with is how to deal with online political ads by candidates and parties, and with paid advertising that is coordinated with those groups. As the Internet becomes a vital new force in politics, we are simply going through a natural transition as we work out how, and when, to apply longstanding campaign finance principles – designed to fight corruption – to political expenditures on the Web. Mr. Smith has advocated an extreme position that politicians, parties and outside groups can pay for Internet advertising with “soft money” – unlimited, unregulated checks from corporations, labor unions and wealthy individuals. A federal court rightly rejected that position, saying that the new ban on soft money in our elections obviously applies to Internet advertising, too.

These laws are decidedly NOT aimed at online press, commentary or blogs, and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 was carefully drafted to exclude them. The FEC has now been asked to initiate a rulemaking to work out how to deal with different kinds of Internet political expenditures, and there will be plenty of opportunity for public commentary. The Commission’s duty then will be to distinguish candidate and party expenditures, and coordinated independent expenditures, on the Internet (which should be subject to campaign finance law like any other expenditures) from activity by bloggers, Internet news services and citizens acting on their own that should remain unregulated, free and robust.

Mr. Smith’s comments are obviously designed to instigate a cyberspace furor to pressure Congress to reverse the court decision requiring that paid political ads on the Internet should be treated like any other paid advertisements. Mr. Smith has a right to try to win converts to his anti-regulatory philosophy, but he has an obligation to present the issues fairly and forthrightly, and his comments to CNET fail both tests.

For more information on why the sky is not falling, see a chapter on the history of the FEC regulation and deregulation of the Internet by Trevor Potter, former FEC Chairman and president of the Campaign Legal Center, in the Brookings InstitutionÂ’s New Campaign Finance Sourcebook at http://www.brookings.edu/dybdocroot/gs/cf/sourcebk01/InternetChap9.pdf

For the relevant court decision, please check out the Campaign Legal Center’s website at http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/attachment.html/Opinion.pdf?id=1257

For information on the future FEC rulemaking, see the agencyÂ’s website at www.fec.gov.

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