This has got to be the most ridiculous opt-out page in the history of permission marketing:
First name, last name, job role, department, industry, company name, address, city, state/province, zip/postal code, country, phone, fax, email, and comments.
Unbelievable. Email address and UNSUBSCRIBE is the max expected.
Better yet is a link in the email that includes your email address and automatically takes you to a page that processes the unsubscription and lets you know.
One of the most interesting parts of the Stevenote a couple of days ago was when the VP of something or other for the iPhone division messed up hand-typing something into his iPhone.
I don’t read a ton into that – I’d be a little nervous too, in front of 5000 people and, most particularly, my incredibly demanding, incredibly perfectionist, incredibly seuccessful boss.
But it did start an interesting chain reaction of thoughts in my brain: what if the iPhone keyboard is pure genius not for it’s ease of data entry … but for it’s difficulty?
Let me give some context:
I think the iPhone will not be nearly as fast at text-entry as most hard-button smartphones. You won’t be able to type by feel – you’ll have to be looking all the time. Your fingers won’t develop nearly as much of a kinesthetic knowledge of the letter positioning. Your speed will be way down.
Whoa. Hold up. Not your speed … Jessica’s speed.
Jessica is 17. Jessica texts every hour of every day. Jessica has thumb calluses from texting. Jessica has 50 friends her age who all text. Jessica runs her social life through her phone’s little keys.
iPhone is not for Jessica.
However, if you’re like me … I’d like to do a little more texting, if the user interface didn’t suck big brass monkey balls. But the effort curve is too steep for the small amount of texting that I would do, to get good at it, to do it regularly. So I don’t text. And when I do, it takes forever. iPhone is going to radically speed up the limited amount of texting I do.
iPhone is for me – and for you. (If you’re like me.)
Ringtones rank among the most annoying of modern inconveniences.
Unfortunately, most people apparently need to hear that it is not actually cool to have the Star Wars theme echoing tinnily but noisily from your pocket. And the Hallelujah chorus really was not conceived as a notification that Bob is caling to inquire whether or not your toenails need trimming this evening.
Would it really, really, really be so bad if a phone just actually sounded like a … phone?
Bah. Humbug.
Now I’ll dismount, etc.
Scoble’s interview with the Google program manager:
This is huge … an environment for building applications locally that will sync globally. I can see thousands of major and niche applications for this.
[tags] google, gears, offline, sync, scoble, john koetsier [/tags]I hate Russians.
Not all Russians – just the ones who keep ruining the internet for the rest of us by running half the spam zombies on the planet.
The software that runs this blog (WordPress) notifies me every time I have a new registered user – someone who can post comments, even write posts. A couple times a day, I get a subscriber from Russia.
Every time I do, I know it’s some jerk who’s not reading my posts, not writing comments, and not contributing story. Rather, it’s someone who is going to make Akismet work harder to keep this blog clean of comment spam.
Bah. Humbug.
Perhaps it was better when they were the Evil Empire and we were were allowed to hate them.
[tags] russia, spam, comment spam, zombies, akismet, wordpress, john koetsier [/tags]It’s a great story to be the underdog … but it’s nicer to be the top dog.
Unfortunately, being top dog means being treated like one. Apple is now being hit with intellectual property and patent lawsuits almost weekly. The latest one, from Individual Networks, hits Apple where it hurts: the iTunes/iPod empire.
Individual Network’s complaint accuses Apple’s entire music ecosystem of profiteering from iTunes sales and points to anything which can download copies of that content, including the iPod, as contributing to the reported damage. If won under ideal circumstances, the suit would grant the plaintiff not just royalties for every iTunes song or video sold but also a “reasonable” percentage of the revenue from associated devices such as all iPods. The Apple TV and iPhone may also be subject to a future ruling.
While it’s incredibly annoying that companies that do nothing but dream up squiggles on paper and then get them patented could potentially make billions off of others’ hard work of actually building a real product and a real business, that’s the business/legal world of the USA today.
Welcome to Microsoft’s world, Apple.
[tags] apple, legal, IP, patents, microsoft, john koetsier [/tags]I just received this in my mailbox:
That really, really looks like a virus infiltration attempt. Which is amazing, because although I’ve seen many of those, they always end in a .exe or some such Windows extension. This is the first I’ve seen targeted for Mac.
A quick google reveals that Flip4Mac, which is an actual legit Mac application for viewing Windows Media files, has a vulnerability … but nothing that suggests that there is a virus out there masquerading as Flip4Mac, or Flip4Mac components.
Sounds new. Anyone else seen it yet?
[tags] virus, mac, flip4mac, security, apple, windows, john koetsier [/tags]Yesterday I bought a new camcorder – the Sony DCR-SR82 with a 60 GB hard drive. Today I shot some video, and tonight I tried to hook it up to my Mac and play in iMovie HD.
No such luck.
This is just wrong. OK, there’s only one course of action:
To be completely frank, being on a Mac should mean that I never have to think of or even hear something so esoteric as “muxed video.” That’s what Apple engineers are paid for.
To be completely george, Sony is smoking something powerful if they think I’m going to change my computer to work with their camera. Not bloody likely.
They just lost a customer.
[tags] apple, mac os x, mac, sony, DCR-SR82, incompatible, muxed, iMovie, john koetsier [/tags]
If every page starts to look like this, we’re in big, big trouble.
All those links are fake links – ad links … what I’m going to call adlinks. This particular bit on nonsense is featured on /Film’s Indiana Jones story.
They don’t actually go anywhere that you might think they do, they’re only ads, and they’re either selling something at best barely related to what you’re reading about, or they’re just a way to benefit from adwords arbitrage (insert whatever pay-per-click program you wish, even Microsoft’s).
Plus, they’re too dense, meaning that the value of each individual link is less. And finally, since they bear no relationship to the story/post, they actually inhibit communication.
When you mouse over them, they look like this.
Links are the roads and the currency of the web. When they don’t do what they’re supposed to do, we’re putting potholes in our roads. We’re inflating the currency.
And we’re pissing in our own well.
[tags] adlinks, ads, links, advertising, online, john koetsier [/tags]It appears that there are some downfalls to any centralized service … including an identity management tool:
Having had way too much experience with the negative aspects of the DMCA lately, I was pleasantly surprised to find an article at Plagiarism Today referencing DreamHost’s blog post on Dealing with a DMCA Crook.
I love the fact that DreamHost goes out of its way to be clear that the DMCA can be used with no legal basis:
While the DMCA does offer some major benefits to both copyright holders and web hosts like DreamHost – legal immunity, woo-hoo! – it’s not always used as a force for good. Occasionally, unscrupulous types (and I’m looking at you, Church of Scientology!) will attempt to use the DMCA as a cudgel to take down sites that they don’t like, even when they are clearly in the legal right under copyright law.
Even better is the fact that DreamHost stands up to those attempts:
Liability issues aside, we’re not about to knowingly help someone silence valid criticism by going along with false or overly broad DMCA Notifications.
I’m contrasting that with the treatment I recently received at the hands of my current host, MediaTemple.
There was an obviously non-infringing incident, a person who did not want criticism, and a DMCA takedown. Without doing even the least amount of fact-checking, MediaTemple told me to take down the content within 24 hours, or they’d do it for me.
When I talked to an individual at MediaTemple, I was told that this was corporate policy so that they were not at risk. That’s the legal immunity part.
The bigger risk, though, is that free speech suffers when merely alleging that an incident has occurred is the full and complete basis for censorship … at least in my opinion.
While I can understand MediaTemple not wanting to accept any legal risk whatsoever, I wholeheartedly applaud DreamHost for shouldering their part of the burden of the ongoing fight to keep freedom free.
Kudos to DreamHost!
[tags] dreamhost, mediatemple, dmca, legal, risk, censorship, john koetsier [/tags]One thing that has always irritated me about Adobe’s Acrobat applications is that they are real space hogs. Upon launch, they immediately expand to fill all available space:
Note, that’s all available space – as wide as your monitor will allow. Not, as one might expect, a reasonable size that is commensurate with the size of the document that you’re opening and viewing. To me, this makes Acrobat one on the long list of rude applications.
Annoying!
[tags] acrobat, space hog, PDF, john koetsier [/tags]
Whoa … I see Chris DiBona of Google’s open source program is helping NASA move 120 terabytes of data … all the data that the Hubble space telescope has ever collected.
Now that’s a LOT of data. Very cool. Hope they don’t lose any spare terabytes here or there.
But what’s with this pic? Is it Chris DiBona or Fabio?
This has gotta be a gag shot …
[tags] chris dibona, google, nasa, terabytes, hubble, john koetsier [/tags]March 22 note added:
I’ve been in touch with the owner of Motiono.com and we’ve resolved our differences amicably. The DMCA takedown notice has been removed.
After weeks of pain, agony, and fruitless searches, I finally managed to buy a Wii.
Three weeks ago, actually – I didn’t want to post about it until I had some time to evaluate it – and it’s been great. Although I’ve bought another game (Excite Truck) I’m the only one playing it much so far … the kids (and friends/guests) are all playing the sports games.
The best things about the Wii:
The worst things about the Wii:
In other words, there are lots of good things and very few bad things. Love it, would buy it again.
[tags] wii, fun, family, games, console, john koetsier [/tags]
I am posting this to keep from throwing my laptop across the room.
A project management tool we use called Infowit is set up to force users to choose a new password every couple of months. OK, I can somewhat understand that – there’s a desire for security.
(Never mind the fact that when people have to change their passwords, they’re more likely to write them down so that they remember them, resulting in less security. On the other hand, if people change jobs, eventually they’re locked out of a corporation’s systems by default.)
The annoying thing is that the system will not allow me to choose any normal (i.e., human readable) password. It has to contain characters such as ~!#$%^&*()_+ etc. etc.
The triply annoying thing is that the auto-generated new password the system offers CONTAINS NONE OF THOSE CHARACTERS … and thus, tragi-comically, fails to work.
Sometimes, you can only shake your head wearily (and publish a nasty blog post about some stupid company’s stupidity.)
[tags] infowit, password, security, stupidity, funny, annoying, john koetsier [/tags]This is killing me …
I just saw the story on super-close Google map zooms and checked it out.
All you have to do is:
- Select a location and switch to satellite view
- Zoom in as far as you can, and click “link to this page” at the top right
- Now replace the “z” parameter in the URL with a higher value, e.g. 20, 22, or 23, and wait. Some locations will now show more detailed imagery
When I saw this photo of men standing around a well I couldn’t resist adding a caption. There’s one guy looking straight up:
It’s a super-zoom from the country of Chad, in Africa. And perhaps that is someone who the US government suspected of being in cahoots with Osama or Al Quaeda … which is the only reason why satellite image providers would zoom so close.
More info at Ecrans and Geo-trotter.
[tags] google, maps, zoom, hi mom, chad, africa, john koetsier, funny [/tags]Isn’t tech support grand?
I just upgraded bizhack to WordPress 2.1, so if you notice any odd squirreliness, that’s why.
Better backend Safari compatibility and updated security were the two reasons to upgrade … that and the fact that WP 2.1 is supposed to be a much stingier MySQL user (more optimized, better queries, fewer queries per page).
Plugin compatiblity was my big question mark, and it was a bit of a hassle to get my tag cloud working again. Still looks a little odd (top left column) but I’ll get to that soon enough.
. . .
. . .
Oh, the one other reason to upgrade to 2.1? WordPress now auto-saves your blog posts as you’re writing them. Awesome! No more losing 95% finished posts because I was too dumb to “Save and continue editing.”
[tags] wordpress, upgrade, blogging, john koetsier [/tags]MediaTemple is updating GridServer … the grid computing architecture that this blog and many other sites are running it.
It’s been a long hard road for MT with plenty of problems. In reverse chronological order:
Hopefully this will address all (or at least most) of the outstanding issues, including MySQL latency and just general slowness.
(And btw, yeah, I know that it’s not v. 2.0. But v. 1.2 doesn’t sound nearly as impressive. A point release? Give me a break!)
Here are the details, straight from the MT announcement email:
[tags] mt, mediatemple, gridserver, gs, john koetsier [/tags]Highlights of (GMR v.1.2)
– Core count (800+). After the release of (GMR v.1.2), the combined processor cores in all Clusters will total over 800 and produce massive processing horsepower for customers.
– MySQL GridContainers (in private beta). (mt) Media Temple has completely re-architected the MySQL system on the GRID. This gives each customer their own container server with dedicated resources, an industry first, that’s running an unshared copy of MySQL. Please consult the new “MySQL Container Project Log” to learn more about this new database architecture and to sign up for participation.
Link: http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/category/grid/mysql-container-project/
– Improved Email Functionality. Numerous changes made to the email sub-system including improved email delivery times, resolution of random duplicate emails, virus scanning and improved MailProtect anti-SPAM recognition. An overhaul of the allow-lists envelope sender component, and new sender-verify override feature are also included.
– Improved FTP. Faster FTP connection setups, improved overall transfer rates and large FTP transfers include better connection handling.
– 400% increase in storage performance. The GRID has achieved massive improvements in overall storage performance resulting in faster page load times, script execution, mail delivery, and a plethora of overall system benefits.
– Network Speed Increase. Reconfigured back-end network fabric that utilizes next generation hardware and software to improve speed and reliability of intercommunication between every GRID segment.
– New Clustered DNS. Improves speed of internal name resolution within the GRID which results in overall performance enhancement in applications such as web, email, containers, etc.
– More and more.
– 25% faster control panel access.
– Enhanced CRON system.
– Reworked directory password protection tool.
– New stable kernel releases installed for future enhancements.We hope you that you enjoy the many improvements of (GMR v.1.2). (mt) Media Temple would like to thank all of the users that contributed feedback that lead to these improvements. Our customer’s direct feedback and experiences has been incredibly helpful and our systems are now more powerful and running better with your help. As always, we encourage users to continue telling us what you like, what you don’t like, and what you’d like to see in the future. GMR (v.1.3) is already in development and its release cycle is expected to be much shorter than (GMR v1.1) to (GMR v1.2).
Skype rocks and making group podcasts together could be so easy … if only you could record easily. Here are two apps I’m looking at that will fit the bill.
(Why Skype doesn’t include this option as an extra I’ll have no clue.)
[tags] skype, podcast, mac, record, john koetsier [/tags]Just finished watching the Apple iPhone keynote. What a masterful Jobsian performance.
Random thoughts as I slowly exit the reality distortion field:
Oh, and one more thing. It probably won’t get to Canada for months and months after it launches in the US. Bleh.
[tags] apple, iphone, steve jobs, keynote, john koetsier [/tags]Wow. Wow. Wow.
OK, I’ll bite.
Seth Godin is asking why so few people are using compact fluorescent lightbulbs, even though they have significant environmental benefits.
He’s essentially trying to kickstart a positive environmental meme by asking bloggers everywhere to post on this as well. (Seth’s post is titled “How many bloggers does it take to screw in a lightbulb” – hence the title of this post.)
We use CF bulbs in about half of our light fixtures, but here’s the reason we don’t use them in all:
If you ever, like me, need a way to get all your contacts’ information out of the OS X Address Book strongbox, look no further than Export Address Book.
Does exactly what it says, freely, with minimum fuss and maximum flexibility.
Thank you Dibomedia!
[tags] address book, mac, os x, mail, contacts, john koetsier, Export Address Book [/tags]
Got this from a buddy, who wrote it and sent it tongue-in-cheek to a manager who wanted him to do some unscheduled web development work.
Names and locations have been changed to protect the guilty (and me). Enjoy:
Hi Steve;
Jane mentioned there were a few issues with the McDonald site – we already knew about those, and we can fix them. Obviously the company who built it has no concept of quality control.
Could you clarify the issue with the picture? (We added a missing picture … are there other issues?)
However, before I can proceed with those changes, you should be aware that we have all agreed to follow a much more formal process for project development and change control for all issues affecting web sites, as discussed by the team.
To this, I need to bring a few quick things to your attention before I can proceed:
- You need to submit the request for change to the McDonald site. It should not take too long. You just need to specify an overview of the change, all required materials, expected result of changes, plan for quality control, contact persons, expected delivery date, and a grid of stakeholders that need signoff. You will need to use form PSA-TS-88-ChangeReqest.
- You will also need to fill out parts of form PSA-TS-88-SSI/43, which needs to get sent to our parent company for approval, to ensure the *changes* align with the parent company’s standards.
- Actually, before we proceed with changes, you need to fill out the ENTIRE form PSA-TS-88-SSI/42, since this project hasn’t been properly approved by our parent company regarding minimum style guides. As well, there’s sub-form PSA-TS-88-I/42, to ensure the project meets our internal sytle guides (But I can probobaly help you with that).
- We also should fill out a form PSA-HR-912/3, since we are posting personal information & photos of employees, we need their permission. This is formally required as per HR Director of our parent company, and our policy. We may have to wait until our new HR Directory is in place before we proceed.
- Since we are using a new combined web address, we will need to have signoff on a new registered address (this is to ensure we don’t lose track of all these). I don’t have a form for that yet, but you will need to wait until I do.
- It’s a bit awkward, but I don’t have any resources approved to allocate to maintanece of this site. I’ll need to have a detailed ROI on the change requests, so I can help allocate resources and priorities. I think it’s a form PSA-TS-431. I’ll check. Sorry about that.
- As well, I don’t really have any user requirements document for the site (vision, goals, usability review, etc), so it’s going to be a bit hard to determine the scope of the changes you really want. We’ll have to work on that as well. I’ll send you a template document for your team to fill out.
- We probably have some resources to do a full usability test on the site before it can go totally live. We’ve define a process that you can follow to submit to me, using form PSA-TS-33-GUI.
- Since the site was developed by a 3rd party vendor, we should really have a better understand of their liability for support & mainteance if things are delivered wrong, or not according to specifications. We should have lawyers draw up some formal expectations, using form PSA-TS-88/Vendor as a template.
- Since there are a lot of forms to fill out, to help facilitate management of these forms, we have created a generic ‘Form Request Form,’ from which you can request the other forms you need.
Thanks!
Hope to hear from you soon!
Joseph.
Now that’s how to stonewall requests!
[tags] funny, project management, web development, john koetsier [/tags]Most web2.0 companies struggle with issues of monetization. As I see it, you’ve got about 5 options:
Selling attention requires scale – big scale, because attention is so ephemeral these days people don’t pay much for it. Example: MySpace, Digg, Google.
Selling relationships requires relevance – tight connection to the partnering company. It also helps if the relationship with your clients is a deep one – clients are more likely to follow up on establish a relationship with your partner company if they already have a really good relationship with you. Example: Flickr and Moo (yummy awesome business personal cards).
Selling content requires scale too, but also quality. And, unfortunately, a sales force, which means overhead. Example: BlogBurst.
Selling services requires infrastructure … real value that people can be convinced to pay for, and the demonstrated ability to deliver on them. Example: 37Signals.
Selling products requires meatspace infrastructure. Yuck. Much better to revert to selling relationships and outsourcing the production and transportation of atoms.
[tags] web2.0, monetization, startup, venture, john koetsier [/tags]
