Connecting the dots ...
When I read the Army was preparing for 4 more years in Iraq, my first though was: Vietnam.
But I don’t even have to say it, a GOP Senator just voiced the same ….
Update (8/28) The Vietnamization of Bush’s Vacation (NY Times)
Tags: Iraq, Vietnam, 4 More Years, Bush, Politics
It must be my twisted mind again … I always link two seemingly unrelated events / articles together.
Jeff Nolan asks why SF Supervisors decided to ban a historical monument, the USS Iowa from becoming a permanent exhibit in San Francisco.
Quite a coincidence that just today the Chronicle is lamenting on why Bush does not ever visit San Francisco. No, I don’t like the President, and could not care less whether he comes this way, but, hey, it’s a bit hyppocratical to whine about it while the City slaps not just the government, but the nation’s history in the face.
The President of the United States should not single out only one major city and boycott it, no matter what it’s political leaning is. Likewise, the battleship that participated in World War II, as well as Korea is a monument that should be displayed for our kids to see and learn about, no matter what the current policies of the Pentagon are.
Perhaps not every aspect of our lives should be driven by politics and partisanship…
Update (8/21) Apparenly I am not that twisted … Jeff Jarvis came to the same conclusion.
Update 2 (2/21):
Quote of the week – Jerry Sandoval
Technorati Tags: Politics, San Francisco, Bay Area, Bush, USS Iowa
Tags: Bush, Politics, Humor, Lance Armstrong, Sport
(Updated)
While some are still wondering, I have the answer: Google to acquire the World in a cash/stock transaction … details undisclosed … the only information known a this time is that they need a little more petty cash for the transaction.
(Those who doubt the seriousness of this news are reminded the Microsoft to Acquire the Catholic Church “news” from the 90’s.)
Update (2/4): Ha! I’m not alone: Google to Acquire World
Update (3/29): The Googlers are refilling the warchest. Now we know it’s definitely happening. 
Google Needs Another $2 Billion Because…It must want to buy something
Tags: Google, Microsoft, GOOG, MSFT, Acquisition, Stock Market, Secondary Offering
(Updates at bottom)
Guerilla Product Marketing Principles from Charlie Wood’s Moonwatcher (via Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed):
“Version 1 of a product should crawl. This means it should do the bare minimum to be recognizable as what it’s intended to be. If it’s supposed to be a foo, and someone could look at version 1 and say, “That’s a foo,” you’re done. Ship it.
Version 2 should walk. This is where you add enough functionality that the product is useful in day-to-day life. This is not the time for polish. Basically, it’s just adding the things that most people insisted should have been in version 1, because without them, they said, the product is completely useless. They were wrong then, but they’re right now.
Version 3 should run. This is where the product hits its stride. What it does it should do well. It should be comfortable to use. It should be strong, polished, and effective.
Version 4 should fly. This is where the, “Oh man, wouldn’t it be awesome if…” features get added. This is where you start implementing things that aren’t necessarily useful now, but have a lot of possibility. “
I’m sorry, I just don’t buy it. The product, that is. Having been in cash-strapped startups myself, I understand the need to hit the market fast, and start generating revenue… but I am a Customer, too, and as such am sick of non-working products. It’s frustrating to waste time installing, learning the damn thing when it’s really just a Beta! Give it to someone who signed up as Beta-tester, not to me, a Customer.
“Give me what I want or I am out of here” – says Seth Godin. In our case it means: Uninstall, don’t look back until 2 releases later. Quite a way to build a happy customer base.
Update (8/31): “When a Beta Isn’t Enough” by David Beisel is worth reading.
Update (11/20) : “Web 2.0: Web of Beta”
Tags: Software, Product Management, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Disservice, Software Testing, Beta
IceRocket owner Mark Cuban has warned Blogspot bloggers that their blogs may soon be excluded from IceRocket and other search engines due to their domain being overwhelmed by spam blogs. (via the Search Engine Journal and the Blog Herald)
He says: “Blogger is by far the worst offender. Google seems to be working hard to adjust their relevancy indexes to exclude splog from having influence on search rankings, but they don’t seem to be doing anything more than removing reported splogs (spam blogs). Kind of like going after the zombies one at a time with a shovel.”
I doubt exclusion of a major service is the right way to fight spam. In fact if this becomes a trend, i.e. IceRocket, Technorati, Bloglines, BlogPulse … etc. will boycott the Blogspot domain, wouldn’t that force Google to accelerate either by development or acquisition it’s plans to “own” the blog search space rather than see it’s bloggers flock away?
On the other hand, how important is it for Google to maintain Blogger as a free service? Any individual blogger can afford a symbolic price, say $3 /month which would still add up to significant cost to spammers who create blogs by the thousands automatically. An even better option may be to slap them with a one-time blog creation fee.
It may be less elegant .. geeky … whatever.. .but when technology fails, why not use economic means to fight spam?
Update (8/17): Frank has created a site called Splog Reporter where anyone can flag Splog/Clog. Frank, will Rel 2.0 be a bookmarklet (“this is splog”) that pre-populates the fields? 
Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Blog Spam, Spam, Technorati, IceRocket, BlogSpot, Google
I must have a twisted mind .. reading Seth Godin’s story about a 90-year-old lady (I figured she must be around that having been a bank customer for 70 years) in the bank reminds me of an article about infants caught up in the “no-fly” confusion… hm… what do the nice old lady and the babies have in common? They are victims of mindless, clueless “due process”.
The lady in Seth’s story (read it!) has been a customer at her bank for 70 years, comes in every week, sees the same teller for 20 years, yet has her signature checked against a master signature card every single time. If the same old lady goes to a corner grocery store (that is if there’s one left in her neighborhood…) I am sure she gets a very personal treatment and perhaps could have her purchases ‘added to the tab’ to be paid once a month, like in ‘good old times’ – but that’s because the small business owner can actually THINK and make his/her own decisions, do what makes sense and keeps the customer happy… apparently all the bank teller cares about is to follow due process.
Ingrid Sanden’s 1-year-old daughter was stopped in Phoenix before boarding a flight home to Washington at Thanksgiving. Sarah Zapolsky and her husband had a similar experience last month while departing from Dulles International Airport outside Washington. An airline ticket agent told them their 11-month-old son was on the government ‘No-Fly” list. According to the article 89 children , 14 of which were under the age 2 have been stopped as “suspicious”. Now, for sanity’s sake let’s assume the TSA agents did not quite believe the infants were terrorists … they still went through the full process, getting passports faxed, background checks.. etc, before releasing the children – the followed ‘due process’.
‘Due Process’ kills what makes us Homo Sapiens: Thinking.
Tags: bureaucracy, due process, cluelessness, no-fly, tsa
I don’t normally quote someone else’s post unless I have something to add, but this is just plain simply hilarious:
Jeffy descends into retail Hell and returns bearing wisdom.
(Btw., I did find my bluetooth headset on he Net. Got rid of it since..)
(updated)
Today for the first time I filled her up with $3 gas … no, really, $2.997 only…
Today is also the first day drivers of certain hybrids can apply for the sticker that allows them to use the carpool lanes on California higways even if they drive alone.
This cute (?) / ugly (?) little thingie is getting more and more of a viable option:
One caviat: the law limits the number of special stickers at 75,000.
So far 57,000 hybrid vehicles have been sold in California. The race is on…
Update (11/28) Busines Week: “The status vehicle of choice at the Googleplex is the Toyota Prius hybrid, which both co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page drive. Google even offers employees a $5,000 credit for buying an environmentally friendly hybrid car.“
Update 2 (12/03) This is interesting, less than half hybrid owners applied for the privilage of driving in the carpool lane.
Tags: Prius, Toyota Prius, Hybrids, Carpool, California, Gas Prices, Google
Publisher / Editor of CloudAve and Enterprise Irregulars.
I do most of my business blogging there, with occasional asides here. More...
Recent Comments