Have you ever had a problem with a huge company that tries to “make you go away” by stonewalling and ignoring you? That’s what Charles Schwab has been trying to do since it sold me auction rate securities in 2008 on the day before markets froze. They had to have known when they took the order that these things weren’t liquid and safe, the two reasons they sold them to me in the first place. They were happy to take the order then…but today they, alone among retail brokers, have refused to make good on the ARSs they sold to conservative investors like me.

I have been using this blog (see my previous posts) and the interest of reporters to make my displeasure public.

Beth Healy of the Boston Globe missed the irony of Massachusetts residents lending the state money for the Big Dig and not being able to get it back by pointing out that the state “saved” money by not calling the notes.  Healy asserts, “…regulators say they’ve done all they can to help.”

Uh, no, not quite. I’ve never received a single response to repeated inquires to the governor, the secretary of state, the attorney general, my local representative and, above all, the source of these ARSs, the treasurer’s office. Why the silence? Simple: it would be too embarrassing for the politically ambitious Treasurer Cahill to force Schwab to settle. And no state department is going to make another department look bad. AG Coakley can get headlines for pursing fraud from just about any company. Why expose the shady dealings the state itself engages in?

Still, Schwab hated that Globe story enough to send me a letter terminating my accounts. No problem, guys, I was happy to leave.

So, you might think, why not complain to the SEC and to Wall Street’s “self-regulator,” the Financial Industry Regulatory Agency (FINRA)? I have, of course. In 2008 I filed complaints with both agencies. How’d that work out?

Just as you might expect. We all know how well the SEC has done at protecting people from Madoff, Stanford and CDOs. With so many larger fish to pry off the hook, paying no attention at all to individual investors stuck in ARSs is a natch.

And FINRA, known as Wall Street’s favorite regulator, actually contributed its former boss, Mary Schapiro, to the helm of the SEC. Miraculously, after years of doing nothing to protect the little guy at FINRA, Ms. Schapiro apparently grew a pair just in time for her confirmation hearings. Just saying you are for strong consumer protection is, I guess, enough to assure congressional committees you should run an agency we now know was dysfunctional.

Still, FINRA — like Schwab — is listening to the political discourse and is maybe (finally) rubbed a little raw by the attention their abject failures have generated. When Jed Horowitz of Investment News wrote about the lack of action in New York’s suit against Schwab, something must have clicked at FINRA headquarters.

A week or so after Horowitz’s article, I got a call from FINRA. I assume the timing wasn’t accidental. They probably hoped to convince me to shut up, at least for another year or two until they find a way to exonerate Schwab or the whole thing blows over.

They wanted me to know they were “actively engaged” and they’d “made progress.” They couldn’t say what, if anything, they actually plan to do. Or when, if ever, they plan to do whatever they decide they are going to do.

While Congress debates partially re-regulating Wall Street, the simple fact is that the entire industry is morally bankrupt and the interests of the country have been repeatedly subjugated to the greed of the industry. Worse, regulators, such as they are, are victims of “regulatory capture.” Even if FINRA wasn’t designed as Schwab’s concubine, it has willingly become one. Schwab asks, FINRA dances.

Well, the political battle of the (still young) century is over. And, despite the ugly fear mongering of the Republicans — and the very sad racial and homophobic epithets tossed at members of Congress this weekend during the final debate by “Tea Party” activists — the country has shown some political spine and done the right thing.

You’d expect me to have been, like the crazies on the right, apoplectic about the proposed changes to health care. Simply, I am a winner in the current system. I actually have a choice of excellent, affordable group coverage for me and my family through either my wife’s employer or mine.

My taxes will go up: I will have to pay Medicare taxes on unearned income. We won’t get a dime in government subsidies to buy insurance. Because we live in Massachusetts, I suspect the Cadillac tax will eventually hit us as well.

So, why am I pleased at the prospect of real, fundamental, systemic change in health care? Two simple reasons. First, even as a winner in the current system, I can tell you it’s broken, busted, kaput and will bankrupt us. Check this out: I went to see a doctor in my network. Six weeks later, I was checking claims online for another reason and noticed the insurance company had paid thousands for an office surgical procedure I didn’t have on that date. I called the insurance company who wanted me to have to call the doctor’s office and get them to fix it. Sorry, but I took the time to try and fix it by calling the insurance company, who effectively admitted to me that there’s so much waste and confusion in the system that unless I personally undertook to fix it, it would cost them more than they could recover to do it themselves.

Second, anything can happen. Today, I am winner. Tomorrow, I could be destitute. I am willing to pay more now to make sure that when and if the bottom of my life falls out, I could still get medical help. It just seems so basic, so fundamental to life in a civilized country that I am astonished it took 100 years and (probably) will destroy the Obama presidency. One thing I am certain of: without this reform, if the worst were to happen, it would easy to die indigent — a terrible way to go after a lifetime of work and taxes.

Bottom line, this was about fairness to people.

It’s no secret I’m angry at Charles Schwab (here and here). And they don’t like me back. In fact, they’ve “fired me,” sending me a letter terminating my accounts with them in February. (What was it, guys? The blog posts? The Boston Globe story? Did I offend you by insisting that you send me written terms for the “loan” you wanted me to take on these bonds? No matter…when the state of New York whoops your ass in court, you’re still gonna have to settle with me.)

Let’s review: Schwab sold me Massachusetts auction-rate securities underwritten by Goldman Sachs, promising safety and liquidity, but never sent me a single document that described the bonds as ARSs, much less described the auction process and the possibility of them becoming illiquid. Then it sat by while the auctions tanked in 2008 and instead of settling, blamed everyone else for their lies and deceptions.

Worse, when Goldman Sachs settled with its customers who bought these ARSs directly from them, Schwab — alone among downstream sellers — decided not to do the right thing for its customers. They were “not responsible.” They were “just the middle man.” Instead, Schwab decided to manufacture a pile of principles (or what’s really just a pile of you-know-what) that’s convenient for their bottom line.

So you can imagine I search for every bit of news about New York State Attorney General Mario Cuomo’s suit against Schwab and try to follow its progress closely.

And just a week or so ago, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York crushed Schwab’s legal hopes of moving the NY AG’s suit to a federal court. I’ll bet the legal team’s dreams that the judge would move the case to federal court went something like this: “Let’s go for a Bush-era appointee on the Federal bench. You know, a business-friendly Bushie who believes caveat emptor means ‘go ahead and steal from the rubes and we’ll cover for you.’ We gotta shop around, because that NY AG has got us by the you-know-whats with the Martin Act and those recordings of us lying to customers. Unless we can turn this into a case about something other than what we actually did, we’re gonna lose.”

Interestingly, the judge’s decision was based on a fascinating legal concept going back to the Constitution: “diversity of citizenship.” As the linked explanation notes, the framers were concerned about bias when a state court heard a case made up solely of its citizens who sued solely citizens of other states. IOW, if people in Massachusetts could sue in Mass. court those carpet-baggin’ brokers from California, what Mass. judge wouldn’t favor folks from his or her own state?

Well, my former friends at Charles Schwab, your arguments against remand to state court apparently didn’t cut too much mustard with the feds. You’re right back in state court, the AG’s home field. And there I hope you’ll get the shellacking you so richly deserve for treating me and other small-fry investors like lemons to be squeezed dry.

As the judge who remanded the case back to state court wrote in the decision (a full copy of which is attached below):

“[T]he purpose of seeking this wide-ranging relief is not merely to vindicate the interests of a few private parties. Rather, it is to take a step toward eliminating fraudulent and deceptive business practices in the marketplace…The State’s goal of securing an honest marketplace in which to transact business is a quasi-sovereign interest. It is completely understandable that a state should…seek to prevent the recurrence of harmful conduct in the future and to remedy the damage it has caused in the past.

Here’s the ad she’s running ad nauseum:

Each time I see it, it rings less and less true, based on my direct experience.

The claims about getting “$1B back from banks” conveniently leave out the fact that the Mass. AG’s office left thousands of small-fry holders of ARSs high and dry in the Commonwealth’s settlement with the banks. She got her press conference announcing a settlement…freeing the AG, the Treasurer’s Office and the banks to get back to business as usual. And the claims of accountability don’t match up with the fact that nobody from her office has ever returned my calls or a letter about this in nearly two years.

Madame Attorney General, isn’t it time, as you say in your ads, that you or someone in your office responds to retail customers’ frozen ARSs? (On the off chance you didn’t see my letter from December, 2008, I’ve attached it to this post.) Isn’t it time for you to stop claiming you’re for the little guy when your office cut deals with Goldman Sachs and UBS that left us out in the cold?

There’s at least one voter in the Commonwealth who knows what the AG’s brand of accountability will mean.

And, no, I am not a Republican.

How embarrassed must HP be with QA being done by a white person and a black person in front of a retail display of the product?

I love to eat. I can’t cook. Even microwaved Velveeta on Ritz is well beyond my gastronomic capabilities. I am quite content to sit at home all day Sunday, watch football all day and consume embarrassingly large quantities of things the FDA has no labeling standards for.

Still, I have a lot of respect for “foodie” culture, which prizes organic, sustainable and locally-produced food. So, I am very pleased to recommend a new blog, http://www.seasonalfeast.com, written by my colleague, Sonal Rajan (get it…”See Sonal feast?”) which is off to a great start with mouth-watering new recipes for things I could only dream of being able to make.

So, Sonal, any time you wanna freeze some of that stuff for me for the next Patriots home game…

Well, growing a business ethically continues to defy Bank of America. First, it duped shareholders by concealing girnormous losses at Merrill-Lynch last year — then it agreed to paying ML’s brokers astronomical bonuses, all apparently in exchange for an extra $50B in TARP funding.

Next, it pissed off a Federal judge who wouldn’t let BofA off the hook for the ML debacle. The judge simply refused to approve a sweetheart settlement.

Now, its CEO is leaving early…much to the relief of taxpayers, shareholders and John Thain (who’s looking for a new office to redecorate for millions of dollars). And, worst of all from BofA’s perspective, slamming credit card customers is going to be much harder next year because Congress passed new, long-overdue credit card regulations.

So, I guess it’s no surprise that BofA’s marketing is as ham-handed and tin-eared as the rest of the company. Consider this: the well-known WalletBlog has taken Bank of America to task for misleading customers and congressmen on credit card charges. First, Bank of America said it wouldn’t increase fees; then it announced it will. When WalletBlog pointed this out, they got a call from BofA corporate communications, trying to explain how a fee increase isn’t a fee increase by using Clintonesque parsing of words like “pricing.”

OK, so I don’t begrudge a PR type arguing strict meanings with bloggers; they have lawyers who can assure them that the plain meaning of their promise to not raise fees — what normal people understand — doesn’t count…that it’s OK to write a letter to legislators that sounds like a commitment, then decide to do what they really want to: fleece people.

But what shows how completely off the planet BofA is…how tin-eared they are…is their request to WalletBlog to lay off:

Naturally, at the end of our call, Bank of America asked that we stop circulating our blog post from last week. But we’re going to hold off on that until they provide the public with some clearer answers. The more digging we do, the more it seems like Bank of America should be taken to task. And it’s possible that we’ve just cracked the surface.

Anyone with half a day’s experience in press relations knows you never ask a writer, blogger or journalist to retract a story in the absence of factual errors. It’s guaranteed to produce exactly what this did: a mention of your arrogance along with an enhanced determination to keep the story going.

Would BofA have asked the Wall Street Journal to recall copies of the paper with a story it didn’t like? How about asking MSNBC to stop talking about a story like this? No…it’s only because the fool who called WalletBlog thinks less of new media — that it can be more easily controlled — that he or she asked WalletBlog to quash the story. It’s emblematic of problems not just in the risk management side of BofA, but throughout the entire bank.

My message to the WalletBlog: keep it up and don’t ever consider retracting something because some corp comm hack who thinks you’re unimportant asks you to leave them alone.

Dear Chairman Steele,

Last November, I made a $25 contribution to your party’s candidate. I also made a $25 contribution to the Obama campaign. Then, I wasn’t sure who would have been the better president.

Now, after months and months of non-stop invective from you and your party against President Obama, I am sure I did the right thing in voting for Obama.

Let me get something off my chest: when I gave you my contribution I asked you not to send me email…not to call me at home…not to keep sending me the vile propaganda and lies via snail mail that you are now sending at least twice a week. (We’ll get the the “survey” I’ve attached to this post in just a minute). I made the same request of the Obama campaign. They honored my request; you and your party of naysayers and obstructionists have not.

Instead, you keep sending me items like the “survey” I’ve scanned in and attached to this post. Maybe you thought that you could make wild claims like the one that the current administration is issuing “radical environmental regulations based on unproven theories and the demands of out of-touch left wing extremists.” Or maybe that some misguided Republicans might be pleased that your politicians “…have successfully blocked or amended many of their most radical proposals” while proposing and contributing nothing to the debate.

I get it…I really do. Negative works. Calling everyone names…calling their mothers nasty names…works better than actually governing…being a loyal opposition…contributing to the greater weal. Instead, for your party everything the other party does is wrong; only you can solve problems like Wall Street’s greed, a war based on lies and a sunken economy. Oh…I forgot. For those, we have Republicans to thank. As President Bush said, “Mission accomplished.”

I hope everyone reading this post takes a look at the “survey” you sent me. C’mon…do you think your voters are idiots? These questions are one-sided and are like waving the red flag at a bull. All you want is money…and if you piss people off at government…make them feel it’s working against them, so much the better for you and your power-hungry Senators (and so much the worst for us).

It’s too hard to pick the most egregious of the 19 questions on this “survey.” Clearly, you don’t give a damn about what people think…you just want them to read this, get angry and send you money. Still, what’s the point of a question like #16 (Are you in favor of the federal government taking a permanent ownership stake in the nation’s largest banks)? Aren’t Citibank and AIG dying to pay back TARP funds so they can get back to ripping off investors without government oversight? Didn’t the taxpayers line Goldman Sachs’ pockets with credit-default swap payments via AIG’s bailout? Isn’t it enough for you that Wall Street is too big to fail while the rest of us aren’t?

Seriously, Chairman Steele, if you want people to consider Republicans to be capable of running the country, start by working with the current administration to fix the problems we have. Next, admit to the failed policies of eight years of the Bush administration…including torture, warmongering and being asleep at the economic switch.

And please, please stop sending me twice-weekly appeals for money disguised as the worst kind of pandering direct mail.

Yup, I am back to some tried-and-true marketing tactics: poke the opponent in the eye using humor and rely on the power of community. What is new this time is how effective social media has been in helping create buzz about this stunt before we even pull it off.

If you are in SF next week, please do join us at the party. Remember to bring along photos and/or videos of the stunt for the competition.

Update October 21, 2009: It was a massive success. Check out the hi-jinks here

Well, this is one of those times when the government acts and you get to chose your reaction. On the one hand, the emergence of the ‘net as the definitive source of reviews for everything from software to celery has become a bonanza for the shills of the world who review products for filthy lucre and who pretend or obscure that they’ve been bought.

On the other hand, while advertising isn’t a protected form of free speech, it’s sad that we need government intervention limiting speech to prevent these people from preying on grandma’s Google search for cookie dough.

Into this fray steps the FTC with new rules to take effect in December, 2009. (I’ve attached a PDF of the new rules to this post for your convenience.)

You can see the rules struggling to keep up with new and social media. That, in itself, is an interesting commentary on how technological innovation always outstrips government’s ability to keep pace, much less anticipate the impact of technological change. Consider this heavily parsed defintiion from the rules:

An advertiser’s lack of control over the specific statement made via these new forms of consumer-generated media would not automatically disqualify that statement from being deemed an “endorsement” within the meaning of the Guides….Thus, a consumer who purchases a product with his or her own money and praises it on a personal blog or on an electronic message board will not be deemed to be providing an endorsement.

In contrast, postings by a blogger who is paid to speak about an advertiser’s product will be covered by the Guides, regardless of whether the blogger is paid directly by the marketer itself or by a third party on behalf of the marketer.

…For example, a blogger could receive merchandise from a marketer with a request to review it, but with no compensation paid other than the value of the product itself. In this situation, whether or not any positive statement the blogger posts would be deemed an “endorsement” within the meaning of the Guides would depend on, among other things, the value of that product, and on whether the blogger routinely receives such requests.

You all clear on that now?

Now it seems that the best the new chairman of General Telephone and Motors, Ed Whitacre, brings to the mix is a reprieve of the desperation move Lee Iococca made when Chrysler emerged from one of its routine trips through bankruptcy court. Let’s take a look at the embarrassing result of Whitacre’s reported directive to create a massive new taxpayer-funded marketing program to get back market share. If this represents the best marketing the “new” GM can muster, I want my $60 billion back.

The real question is, what if you really did want to take advantage of this “guarantee” to drive, say a new-generation Corsica…er…Malibu or you have forgotten that the F-platform Camaros competed with Yugos in the cellar of the quality ratings and you wanted a new one. What if a retread executive from, of all places, AT&T, convinced you that you really could get your money back if you didn’t like the bucket of bolts the polyester clad, red-faced liar at the local dealer sold you? What would that be like?

It would be something like this and this:

• You have to keep the thing at least 30 days — get this, called the “vesting period.” Amused yet? Yeah, they think they’re building equity with you during this period
• You don’t get back those noxious “fees” GM’s dealers charge you to process paperwork (hey…maybe restaurants will start charging separately for the water they wash dishes in and the paper they write the check on)
• Did you take a loan to buy your new lemon? The interest is — you got it — on your nickel
• No leases need apply
• What do you actually have to do to return the thing? Simple: return it to the dealer — who’s absolutely going to want to see you — and fill out a bunch of paperwork, including “any…documentation GM or the Administrator may reasonably request.”

Bottom line, GM is right back where it was…misleading people instead of building cars people want. As I once heard someone say, same circus, different clowns.

9/ 16 update: You gotta read…and I mean you gotta read TTAC’s post that details the dealers’ terms and conditions on this program. Check out #7. Dealers now have an incentive to sell you the car for close to MSRP…then buy it back at 67% (2009 models) or 74% of MSRP (2010 models), pocket the bogus fees they tacked on to the original sale, pocket another $1000 for their trouble, then resell the car your kid vomited on the carpet in and which you used to pull parking meters up and in which the upholstery was an ashtray to the next dupe for as much as the floor salesman can extract.

Geez…if this is GM insisting that its dealers treat customers better, I’d hate to see what’d happen if they declared open season on Grandma.

Drivers on the Pike have long been deserving of the appellation “Masshole” — you can’t believe what I’ve seen people doing.

They eat, they sing, they use bedpans, they trim their nails…heck, they even paint their nails, they throw things at you, they drive winter “beatahs” so they can dare you to slam into them when they cut you off at 90MPH to get onto 128.

But nothing has scared me more in the last few years than watching Betty in her Hummer SUT and Bob in his Escalade texting. They text with one hand…they text with both hands. They take cell phone photos of themselves cutting people off, then they text the pix to family members with a “woot.”  They text while they are painting their nails.

Now, finally, there’s a YouTube video for them, that should be required viewing before being issued a Fast Lane transponder:

It felt so good to unload two weeks ago on Charles Schwab for lying about the safety and liquidity of auction-rate securities they sold me. Blogging as catharsis is underrated, especially if you have as much tied up as I do in these now illiquid ARSs. As I pointed out in my previous post, just about every other firm else has settled, but not Schwab. No, they blame everyone else — the underwriters, the customers and, now, even the New York attorney general.

Today, the big news is that the New York State Attorney General is making good on the threat to file suit. This welcome but not-unexpected turn of events gives me not only another chance to vent against Schwab, but also for the first time to document that I wasn’t the only customer they lied to.

Today, the Wall Street Journal has published excerpts of what the lies the brokers told customers. Check out some of what they told people:

Customer from Massapequa, N.Y. Customer: “You know, I’m not trying to make a ton of money. I just want to play it safe.”
Broker: “Understood.” …
Broker: “When you go to get out of this, even though you tell the rep sell it that means you want to stop the auction. The hardest part of this auction is getting into it. That is the tough part. Getting out of it is easy as just selling.”

Customer from Seaford, N.Y. Customer: “I can just get out every 7 days?”
Broker: “That’s right.”
Customer: “I can just give you 7 days and don’t renew and you put the money back in my account?”
Broker: “That’s correct.”

Customer from Remsenburg, N.Y. Customer: “It is some kind of short term muni-based piece of paper used as an alternative to [a] money market.”.
Customer: “So that is better than what I am getting?”
Broker: “Yeah, yeah. It is better than saving in the money market at the moment.”
Broker: “You pick up about 50 to 60 basis points over what you would get in a money market, and what you are giving up is next day liquidity.
Customer: “OK. I can adjust it by $100k amounts every week?”
Broker: “In terms of if you wanna get out?”
Customer: “Yeah.”
Broker: “Yeah.”
Customer: “I’ll know a week ahead of time if I wanna make a big investment.”

Customer from New Hyde Park, N.Y.
Broker: “And it’ll roll over monthly unless you call me and say, ‘Hey [Broker], don’t roll it over anymore.’”
Customer: “Oh, I see. OK.”
Broker: “And then next month I’ll stop the auction and all the cash will come back to your account.”
Customer: “OK, [Broker], thank you.”

Customer — location unidentified Customer: “Well I need the liquidity because I may buy a house soon.
Broker: “I see.”
Customer: “I sold my house and this is money that’s just there temporarily.”
Broker: “instead of looking for the highest yield, I would personally look at the highest security. And that would be my second thing. And probably periodic auction rate securities. That would work better than any bond mutual funds for you. That’s my humble opinion.”
Customer: “OK. And it would be safer?”
Broker: “It would be much, much safer, for sure.”

Assurances like these are what lead me to invest money. Schwab brokers delivered these same lies to me.

What’s Schwab’s response to this news? Well, they issued a press release this morning, saying, in essence, “Not our fault…not our problem…all those customers we talked to about safety and liquidity can schove it. We ain’t schettleing.”

The short version of a long story is that Charles Schwab sold me auction-rate securities, promising liquidity, then stonewalled me when the market disappeared for the ARSs. Meanwhile, every other firm on the planet — and I mean every one – made their clients whole. Goldman Sachs, the auction agent for the ARSs I bought: settled. Fidelity: settled. BofA: settled. TD Ameritrade (late of zero-doc mortgage loan fame): settled.

You can only imagine the lengths I’ve gone to to try to bring this to the attention of regulators. I’ve spoken to regulators in Massachusetts (the issuer of the ARS I bought, the proceeds of which were used to finance the Big Dig), Illinois, and last summer, New York.

I’ve written letters…called representatives…filed complaints with FINRA (famous for being the securities industry’s favorite regulator and the former home of the new SEC chairman. Buy lots of empty mattresses as long as these people are protecting you).

I clearly remember the conversation I had with the NY AG’s office last year. They “got it” but when nothing happened for months, I assumed that office, like all the others I had implored, had moved on to more newsworthy pursuits. Like compensation at AIG and why Lehman Brothers’ collapse was good for the candle-making industry.

Then, finally — finally! – last week, the New York State Attorney General — from among all the attorneys general in the country who were beating their chests about protecting investors last year — sent Charles Schwab a demand letter (attached below).

Charles Schlemeil had convinced themselves they hadn’t lied…they hadn’t stolen my money…that it was those nasty Wall Street firms who were at fault when the ARS auctions tanked. “We’re not the bad guys,” they claimed. “We just sold these things ‘downstream.’ We don’t have anything at all to apologize for or make good on.” Schwab stood on principle! It was a victim, too!

Principle, shminsciple. Now that the NY AG is onto them, they’re talking about how much it’ll cost them to hold off the litigation and whether or not that’s a better deal for them than paying up. This was always a calculation of cost and until now it simply cost those bozos-in-$900-suits less to stonewall than to pay up. When nobody appeared to care, it was easy to argue principle.

Yes, I’m upset that I can’t get to my money…that Schwab lied to me…that talking to Chuck turned out to be talking to a wall. That Schwab is full of schit when it comes to doing the right thing — what everyone else did — for their clients.  But mostly, I was unhappy that in the face of such obvious avarice and fraud, none of the responsible regulators did anything about it. One nastygram like this was all I was looking for…and now that my home state AG has sent it, it’s only a matter of time until Charles Schwab capitulates.

But until then, I am anticipating the pound of flesh the NY AG will extract from Schwab and grateful to my fellow Noo Yawkers for stickin’ with it for us little guys.

Well, I’ve just read a blog post from zug.com called “The Verizon Prank” in which John Hargrave risks big dogs and angry neighbors to make a point I wish more people were concerned about: lax privacy controls. Maybe we have the beginning of a new meme: Hargrave standing outside Verizon’s CEO’s home with the amp on 11 yelling, “Can you hear me NOW??”

My kids often ask why I object to signing pin pads at checkout lines. Simple, I tell them. Would you like to have your signature digitized and placed on orders for everything from stocks to cellphones? Wouldn’t care for that, they say.

But that fuzzy “privacy stuff” is protected, they protest. We live in public on Facebook and Twitter (and I don’t?)…we don’t worry about privacy.

The upbrading from my kids helps the confused cashier who thinks I am a nut and who can’t restart the transaction…yes, the pimply dude will say, your kid is right. Trust [TJMaxx, Wal-Mart, Exxon, Sears, L.L. Bean, the corner spa, the library] to protect your information. Like your lovely daughter there (lascivious glances at my tender young kids!), I trust [Gulf Oil, Toyota, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Charles Schwab, the IRS] with anything they want to store about me.

Not me. I remain very skeptical. And, after you finish laughing your ass off at this video, you should become more skeptical, too.

On the off-chance you haven’t heard about amazon.com erasing Orwell novels from Kindle users’ devices, here’s the coverage from nytimes.com.

You really have to congratulate amazon.com for creating new levels of nested metaphor. My Room 101 isn’t rats: it’s DRM.

Coffee lovers often talk about the “blend” — a mystical combination of the beans, the roasting and the infusion of hot water that delivers whatever it is coffee addicts see in their poison. (I just see mud.)

In high tech marketing, the “blend” is everything. You gotta have creativity… you gotta have authenticity…and given that small tech startups are either a) a completely new idea and/or b) trying to unseat titans, you gotta have balls to make your point. Big ones.

And my friends at currensee.com have ‘em. Watch this video. In just 1:02, you get it all in the blend. The beans (what currensee.com is), the roasting (it’s a social network for currency traders) and the infusion of…well…tush into the blend. If you don’t smile — and then head right over to the site — it’s definitely your problem.

My hat’s off to Dave and Michelle for ignoring all the reasons marketers come up with not to stand out and delivering their message (make more money trading money with a group) with a liberal dose of authenticity and humor.

Now…don’t spend too long replaying the end of this video, even if nobody’s watching you.

This is going to be a short and badly written blog post. It’s devoid of content. It has no theme. It really won’t make that much sense.

I’m trying to expunge a serious case of writer’s block by — what else — writing about it. And I’ve been cursed at the worst possible moment.

I need to write several press releases and can’t. I need to edit collateral. I can’t. I want to update several web pages. I’d better not. I composed a PowerPoint for an analyst this morning. It stinks.

A colleague I was talking with said I needed a “rest.” I’m not sure if she means I’m over the hill or tired. No matter. I’m not fit to write about it.

But at least I know what caused this blockage (if not how long it’ll last). I was searching for images today and came across the most revolting blog post of all time. If this doesn’t “stop you up” then nothing will.

This is post is for all my colleagues in the marketing biz. I want to tell you that we collectively destroyed email.

What did we do that was truly stupid?

Simple: we have so overdone email that now it’s useless for all of us. Have you noticed that no matter what you do — text or HTML, links at the top or bottom, a great discount offer or the promise of everlasting life — your response rates have gone down? Have you noticed that no matter what “marketing automation” system you track email with that since 2005 your response rates have declined from whole percentage points to basis points today? (A basis point is 1/100th of a percentage point. They’re used to track minute changes in bond rates.)

Marketing programs that decline this precipitously this quickly do so only because we have completely overwhelmed consumers and they can’t take it any more. They’re the ultimate marketing failure: one hand clapping in an empty auditorium.

We don’t seem to remember how resistant we all were at first. We didn’t believe you could sell lumps of coal via email blasts. “Our audience doesn’t have email…and won’t ever get email.” Remember that? But, of course, that 55-year-old CFO and that aircraft mechanic and that Mom at home with stinky diapers all got email. So, what did we do?

First, those of us in big companies spent too much on email (because you can’t help yourself and you were afraid of missing the boat), driving CPMs out of reach. Next, we “institutionalized” email…added people whose only job is to generate email blasts. We linked it to our CRM systems…we became “email experts.”

Because we’d spent real money on people and systems, we needed to measure what we were doing. So, of course, we needed “infrastructure” like Eloqua, Vertical Response and Constant Contact to manage it all. And the (physical) direct mail industry needed a place to go because we had previously crapped up direct mail, so guess where they went…with all their “direct marketing science” and purportedly effective techniques.

Having built a hugely expensive house of cards around email, we forgot one thing: anyone can send email because the Internet made it essentially free. While we were adding cost to email and being profligate to boot, the spammers discovered that basis points of response can impact US dollar flows into Nigeria. We encouraged the spammers, actually gave them the idea, while they laughed at us for “systematizing” it and making it a “core marketing practice.” Any fool can write a good email and find 10K people to send it to. Between us and the spammers, there’s not an iota of tolerance left in anyone for more email pitches.

Worse, the customer service people decided email — along with out-sourcing call centers to India — would be the ideal way to reduce costs (and, incidentally, ensure that artificial measurements of responsiveness replace actually talking to customers).

Now, we have all the people, tools and expense…and it’s all worthless. Pay-per-click and search-engine-optimization are now nearly ruined as marketing programs as well. (Is anyone paying less per conversion?) And that same weak, lemming-herding instinct is all over social media (which already has enough corporate Twitter feeds to tempt a new generation of spammers).

Creativity still counts. Someone will think of something clever soon…and then have to stand back and watch the masses of marketing experts foul it up as well.

After over three years of blogging, I am officially nonplussed.

But I gotta say, this video has four minutes of the most spectacular drifting I have ever seen. “Oooo!,” you’ll say when you see Ken Block smash the fluorescent lights. “Whoa!,” you’ll shout when he slams the driver’s rear wheel into the water balloon in the hand of a dummy (which is seated comfortably in a folding chair). And you’ll be outta your seat when your see Block slam out of a doorway and drift clockwise to within inches of the edge of a dock.

(But what’s up with the paint-ball stuff? Does the shooter celebrate because he hit the car or because he just lives to shoot again?)

This might not rise to the level of an Internet meme, but it’s pretty close.

(Oh, and you can skip the last few minutes…unless, of course, you wanna see the clothes.)

My good friend Chris Williams, CEO of Vuuch, emailed me the other day and said that I really had to talk with Josh Mings of solidsmack.com. I just got off the phone with Josh, and I can say is, “Thanks, Chris, for connecting us up.”

See, Chris is a “true believer” in community — when he ran Seemage, we went to the community with a better idea about product documentation. And even though Seemage was a small little company with a big idea, the fact that we used community to start a discussion about those ideas simply blew competitors away. Right Hemisphere is still trying to figure out what happened to them, long after Seemage went onto greater glory in DS’s 3DVIA world. It was a complete demonstration of the power of community to give a good idea its due in the marketplace.

So, when Chris said Josh was doing some cool things on his blog, I took notice.

Lately, I’ve been worrying that the same thing is going to happen with the idea of community that happened with email, search and PPC: as less talented corporate marketing types get their hands on it, they’ll muck it up for the rest of us. If you think this hasn’t happened, take a look at your junk mail folder. It’s full of webinar invites three weeks in advance (because those idiots can’t get an email closer to the actual event) and Twitter feeds that read like data sheets.

But then, after a short conversation with Josh (who’s got a cold and still made time to talk with me), my confidence was restored. There will always be room for truly authentic voices and communities to coalesce around those voices. The ‘Net is big — and getting bigger — but great blogs like SolidSmack will still rise to the top of the heap.

That’s why I am so pumped that my buddy Chris and Josh have connected in the real world. Josh has reviewed Vuuch. Chris is talking with Josh to learn more about how to present another new idea to a new community…and these two guys really know how to put it together in a way that works for people…no crap…no slickness…just the real, authentic thing, amplified by the Internet’s ability to make time and distance disappear.

 

I just love The Consumerist blog. It’s snarky, fun and to-the-point. But it worried me no end when Consumer Reports bought it. You know, the people who have the temerity to “accept no advertising” but who continue to sell useless “car price information.” These are the people who hawk their magazine shamelessly while being among the very few magazines or newspapers left in the world that do not publish their editorial contacts’ email addresses. CR is happy to tell you what to do. Just don’t bother trying to contact them or, perish the thought, criticize them in any way. (Just ask Bose about that.)

So, when they bought a blog that actually understood the concept of community, I was scared that we’d start seeing the monthly preaching and supercilious editorial content (right next to ads for CR‘s overpriced “gift annuity”) that I’ve loved-hated  in the magazine since I was 12. After all, their blogs on consumerreports.org mirror perfectly the printed book’s preachy, holier-than-thou tone. If this was their idea of gettin’ jiggy with the ‘Net, I wasn’t buying it. I thought The Consumerist  would instantly become The Bloviatist.

But I was wrong.

Proof? You say you want proof? Just follow this link. The Consumerist is holding a public vote for the worst company in America. And the two contestants are Citibank and Ticketmaster.  No question for me there. Ticketmaster is the extortionist of the entertainment industry. Their business practices should be legal only in Tehran.

It’s not like it wasn’t close. Tomorrow — April 27, 2009 — is “Alex’s Freedom from Citibank Day.” It’s the day my last CD matures with these…uh…”bankers.” It’s the day that, if my 15 written and phoned requests, blood and DNA samples do the trick, Citibank will cut me a check for my money and mail it to me because that’s the only way they can get it to me. That, despite the fact they were able to transfer the money into the account to buy the CD. It’s the Bank of Kafka — your money goes in…government money goes in…and Gregor Samsa comes out.

But, given that Tickermaster charges a “convenience fee” for what can only be convenient for their bottom line, it’s nolo contendere for my vote. As I wrote this, it was Ticketmaster taking the “prize” 70% to 30%. Go vote…for Ticketmaster. Then, tomorrow, call Citibank and close your accounts there (if you can).

Good on, ya, Consumerist. I hope CR continues to let you live.

All right, so it’s been over a month since I last posted.

I’ve been busy at work and, well, I must say nothing has pissed me off enough to blog.

Still, I care about having a personal blog and keeping it active. The question then becomes: what to say when you are (temporarily) speechless. Writing blog posts takes practice. If you stop for too long, you lose it. I don’t wanna lose it. This blog is a useful way to keep the digital pencil sharp.

Then it struck me: write the kind of post people who really don’t have anything to say write as their best efforts. Just some blog drivel. The internal dialog began:

“Ah, ha! So nothing you’ve ever written on your blog has been dull, witless or banal, eh?”

“I didn’t mean that…how arrogant do you think I am? I just meant that it would be OK for once to write about something nobody could possibly give a shit about just to keep the blog alive and keep the blogging juices flowing.”

“Sure…what you really mean is what you label ‘ordinary’ is what you secretly hope readers of the blog will find humorous, or at least interesting. It’s a head-fake, ain’t it?

“Well, there was once this sitcom that was ostensibly about nothing in particular…”

“And you want to write the blog post equivalent, eh? All under the guise of ‘nothing to say’.”

“You betcha. Wait until all those comments come flowing in…you’ll see.”

So after all that…this blog post is about the fact that I’ve resumed drinking soda after swearing off it since January, 2007. I had a can of the elixir of modern life: Diet Dr. Pepper with my birthday cake yesterday.

Aren’t you thrilled for me? Stay tuned for the blog post wherein I describe what it’s like to drive a BMW M3.

When you get a credit card statement, do you ever read all the legalese on the back of the pages with the I-owe-a-fortune-amounts? I’ll bet many people don’t, despite the imploring of many consumer advocates.

Consumer Reports, in particular, practically harangues readers to be aware of the ability of credit card companies to change terms and conditions as they wish.

So, when I got a 12-page statement from American Express this month full of amendments to the credit card agreement, I decided to give it a read. One thing stuck out, in a section entitled “Telephone Communications.” Check out what I am agreeing to should I use the card after April 2, 2009 (all emphasis is mine):

You authorize us to call or send a text message to you at any number you give us or from which you call us, including mobile phones. You authorize us to make such calls using automatic telephone dialing systems for … offers of American Express products and services... You agree to pay any fees or charges you incur for incoming calls or text messages from us without reimbursement.

You can read the whole section in the PDF attached to this post. As I read it, American Express is saying:

• The heck with Federal and state do-not-call lists. If you call them for any reason — say you are checking a charge — they get to call you back at that number for anything they like, including marketing purposes
• If you make the mistake of calling them from your cell phone, you can expect them to call you back on the cell phone whenever they like. And you pay for the airtime. I know people have lots of minutes, but do you like burning them up while listening to a pitch for American Express’s latest high-cost credit product?

It’s pretty interesting how American Express has slipped the marketing permissions — a sort of default re-opt-in for people who have explicitly opted out — into the middle of a section ostensibly about security and account protection. While I don’t think anyone would object to getting a call about potential fraud, I, for one do not want American Express to feel free to call me on any number their ANI system sees me calling from. It’s bad enough that they use ANI to identify me when I call from home. (Did you realize that even if you have the phone company block outgoing Caller-ID for all your calls, an 800 number you dial still gets the number? After all, they’re paying for the call.)

What bothers me most about this is this is precisely the kind of thing that makes people really resent big companies. American Express wants to become a bank — get its piece of TARP. Then it wants to use loopholes to get around telemarking regulations and privacy opt-outs. Otherwise, how will they sell us checking accounts and CD’s?

No wonder there’s distrust of businesses…when you get your attorneys to slip something like this into an agreement, using “business logic” to rationalize it, you only put customers on the other side of a bright line…one they will pressure politicians to ensure business cannot cross.

Maybe it’s your health care insurer manipulating your out-of-network health care claim reimbursements to increase their profits.

Remember last fall when you signed up for the significantly more expensive plan that lets you choose a doctor out-of-network? You thought you were being smart.

Instead, it turns out you’re being screwed. Your extra premiums are finding their way into the pockets of the same insurer who buys TV ads with happy, young, healthy mothers and fathers in the park playing Upsie with their cute, giggling babies. Not a care in the world, presumably, because they’re covered…but it’s really a picture of ignorant bliss because when that baby needs a specialist, that couple’ll have to sell the Chevy and walk to appointments to pay the doctor’s bill.

Check out this report from the New York State Attorney General on how insurance companies are screwing their policyholders on out-of-network reimbursements. It’ll make you sick (just be damn sure you don’t go out-of-network to see a doctor).

For me, this is just another example of the unrestricted greed that nearly 30 years of Reaganism (“government is bad…unrestricted markets are good”) has generated and the incalculable damage it has done to our society. If a business can figure out a way to screw you — and better yet, legally do it in the dark like United Healthcare did with the cost database it uses to reimburse policyholders — well, that’s just normal, right?

Everywhere you look, we’ve been  cheated. Big Business is totally out-of-control. The financial system has collapsed — and taken our security with it. Even our ideals were trashed mercilessly by a government that lied to us all.

But, oh boy, watch out. This country has had mega-pendulum-political-swings in the past (the Progressive Era, the New Deal). If there are more people out there who think like me (and you bet there are), politicians had better get the message and get some stuff done (health care, re-regulation of the business and financial worlds, a sane foreign policy). And they better get it done now.

I was channel surfing recently (no mean feat on a Verizon FIOS system), and paused briefly on Animal Planet’s Whale Wars. I was instantly riveted…but not because of what the show is ostensibly about.

Briefly, it’s a cinema verité recounting of the struggle between environmental radicals and the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean. The self-styled “sea shepherds” aren’t letter-writing activists. They’re true amateur anarchists who favor “direct action,” placing themselves in danger to save whales from the Japanese whom they believe are illegally killing whales.

For their part, the Japanese are clearly hiding behind a combination of doubleplusgood international agreements (which allow a limited catch of whales for “research”) and lax enforcement of environmental policies by other governments. At $1M per whale and a permitted catch in the thousands, this is a big business and the research claim is patently bogus.

It makes for a great plot for a reality show. But while all the critical reviews of the show have focused on the action, the question of who’s right and who’s wrong in this struggle (the producers clearly favor the environmentalists) is less gripping for me than watching a cult leader in action.

The real centerpiece of the show is Captain Paul Watson (always referred to as “Captain”). This is a man who has pissed off his home country of Canada and lead them to criticize him individually like nobody I’ve ever seen (here and here). Imagine a national government calling you out like this! He co-founded Greenpeace (something he writes extensively about with apparent pride), yet was drummed out for being, apparently, uncontrollable.

But the real drama in Whale Wars — and something I think was unintentionally documented in the video — is how Watson creates, develops and promotes his cult of direct action. In short, we’re watching a Jim Jones or maybe a Hitler at work.

Watson clearly uses people as grist for his “mission.” A cook damages a propeller on the helicopter. Watson then publicly asks him to illegally board one of the Japanese vessels to “make up for the helicopter.” After 36 hours being held as a prisoner on the Japanese boat, the cook is returned to the welcome of the entire crew. The camera catches Watson at the moment the cook is back on board saying that he won’t go down on deck to welcome the cook back…instead one of the staff “priests” Watson has on board should bring the poor Aussie up to see him on the bridge. Upon being lead to see Watson, the cook is immediately placed on sat phone with the media in order to extract maximum press value from the incident. Not once do we hear Watson commend the cook for his foolish bravery.

To up the ante, later Watson proposes an all-female team to board a Japanese vessel. This goes awry, and in the process one woman shatters her pelvis. Ladies, how’d you like to have a shattered pelvis on a boat in Antarctica weeks from port with your only company being zealots on a mission? Not once do we see Watson demonstrating any concern for the woman. Only for the “mission.” We do, however, see him pissed off at the amateurs’ ineptness in carrying out his plans.

Watson, in true cult style, is also isolated from the volunteer crew — the raw meat — by a layer of officers on the boat who transmit both his orders and his message. They reveal themselves to be sycophants of the worst type, and when the original doctor on board raises questions about the dangers of boarding parties, he is quickly purged for a more pliant medic.

Are you fascinated yet? I am telling you, this TV show isn’t about whales. It’s Introduction to the Psychology of Cults 101. It demonstrates how in the crucible of a complex environmental issue a charismatic leader can, using classic techniques of isolation (what’s more isolated than a boat at sea for three months?) shape, implore, shame and motivate people into doing his bidding. Chat ‘em up, get ‘em to do what you want, no matter how dangerous, call the press, dock the boat, send ‘em home and do it again next year.

For me, the proof of all this is on the Sea Shepherd website. I noticed that on the show every time Watson was shown in his cabin, he was on a computer. After reading the website, I am convinced that he’s writing and posting much of the news on the site himself. And the site is really a paean to Watson, penned by Watson, who always refers to himself in the third person.

I am reading Ian Kershaw’s massive Hitler: A Biography, in which Kershaw documents exactly how Hitler — unable to have normal relationships with anyone save his mother — uses people in the most expedient, opportunistic way possible to achieve his ideological objectives. And, on a much smaller scale (but maybe just as dangerously?), that’s how Watson uses the people on his boat.

I’ve never seen a more fascinating television show…it isn’t about whales at all. It’s about a whale of a demagogue.

It is with great pleasure and pride that I turn over my blog, temporarily, to my daughter Rebecca so she can publish her humorous poem, The Germ Soldier. If you’ve ever seen a middle-schooler with a runny nose, you’ll relate to her art.

The Germ Soldier
By Becca Neihaus

They spread like throwing sand,
Since little boys don’t wash their hands.

They are invisible by my eye,
Some say they might be shy,
Though that’s a lie.

Armed with Purell I stand,
Ready to attack and distinguish germs where they land.

Desks and tables covered like bees in a hive,
When I am done, they will not be alive.
Thoroughly I spray,
To make all germs fade gray.

Once they disappear,
All is clear.

A passion for stopping germs,
Is never done out of term.
I do it everyday,
Making sure they all go away.

Really quickly:

• I’m eatin’ turkey — a lot of turkey
• I’ve updated to WP 2.6.5 and still can’t get the blog to work with podPress 8.8 despite all the posts about how to do so and the “no revisions” plugin. Damn, this is tiresome. When will Automattic realize they are killing bloggers with these incompatibilities. I heard Matt on the WordPress podcast just brush the whole thing off — these are developers with their heads in the wrong place.
• I’m writing this with Zoundry Raven — a Windows Live Writer competitor (if free software can be competitive in the real sense of that word). We’ll see. Setting up FTP for the images was, as always, the “trick.” But I am not so sure the UI is all that much difference from the WP editor. Lots of unlabeled icons in the toolbar that look just like the WP icons (a good thing since once you know one you know them all), but overall I am not sure what it adds to the mix — other than the ability to run off a thumb drive. That might be nice if you want to blog from, say, one of those open-sewer computers they offer at public libraries.
• Chris is makin’ might good progress over at his blog, but discovering it’s a lot of work.

This is one of those posts where I had so many metaphors going through my head as I wrote it that I’m gonna list the ’em for you before I write the post because even I can’t keep ‘em straight. And who wants to miss a good metaphor?

1. Vieux Boulogne is the world’s stinkiest cheese
2. Durian is the world’s stinkiest fruit
3. Both smell like shit
4. I need to demonstrate what trackbacks are to a friend
5. If you are a big, French software company, stop trying to pretend you understand social media

OK, now back to the post.

One of my colleagues is trying his hand at blogging. He’s also trying to harness the power of social media in the PLM (product line management) space. His blog is sort of a stealth thing, to see what the community thinks of his plan. In a recent post, (metaphor #4) he takes Dassault Systèmes to task for launching a blog with a license agreement — and credits me for encouraging them to blog. Chris also says that www.3dvia.com is “up and running” — though it looks like the same useless, ham-handed attempt at community it was in late 2007 (#5).

But the DS blog (#4 again) is, ahem, a stinker (metaphors #1 or #2, depending on your cultural linage, combined with #3.)

It’s the “standard” corporate blog (#5) — saying nothing, written by professional writers, devoid of personality, expectorating corporate propaganda without a point of view, destined for the dust-bin of the blogosphere….except that DS will assign 30 people to it and it will still be smelling like [pick one: durian or Vieux Boulogne] in five years (#1, #,2 and #3 — a trifecta — or for you, Chris, a hat trick).

I suspect that they got together in a big all-day meeting in Suresnes and decided that after www.3dmojo.com (#4 again, plus a little #5) , they needed a “real” blog. The Internet and PR people probably liked the idea; the brands probably said nothing in the room, while heaping derision on it among themselves.

What DS got on their blog is plenty of smell…and very little else.

This morning, I was searching for blog posts about Gartner research and came across this one from David Scott really tucking it to Gartner for their lack of authenticity in social networking.

It’s no big surprise that David thinks they’re inept. If there’s a firm on the planet that has fewer bona fides in social networking than Gartner, I haven’t found it. I wouldn’t be surprised if their analysts talking about social networking and social networking companies were last working on an update to the wave on MVS/TSO, the “social network” for mainframe COBOL programmers.

Gartner talking about social media is like me going to a 20-sumthin’ nightclub in a Speedo. (I’m middle-aged and need to lose a few pounds…so there’s your image.)

They have nothing to contribute — except to the social media software vendors who wait in vain for Garnter to bless them and their space (all the while charging them outrageous fees for “access” and conferences in which Gartner pontificates to the 50 sleepy clients they’ve attracted for a junket).

I can’t claim to be on top of every social media happening out there. But I can assure you that whatever self-possessed, supercilious prognostication that Gartner social media analysts make (.9 probability) will impress only their very-late-adopter client community who themselves will never, ever really get it.

I’ve been way too busy to blog.

But today, while my kid was drilling analogies in preparation for the SSAT, the blog muse struck.

It’s Sunday, and I’ve just reviewed my retirement account statements from September 30. That was bad enough. But with the miracle of Quicken, I was able to see specifically the carnage wrought by the market meltdown of the last two weeks since 9/30. Going from bad to cataclysmic has wiped out years of parsimony, leaving my personal financial situation questionable. We’ve often heard the stories of people “wiped out” in the Depression of the 1930′s. Could that be happening here?

Then, on a happier note I searched on “UMA” because I’d just gotten a BlackBerry that switches from the cell network to Wi-Fi. I think this is amazing because seamlessly switching from one protocol to another is no mean trick.

Clicking around, I found this story on college students preferring Wi-Fi to beer.

Sorry, but no. I remember college without Wi-Fi. The only thing we preferred to beer was women. And since I founded a failed Wi-Fi hotspot company in early 2002, I know how popular beer remains with respect to being…uh…”online.”

Now the only question is, if you can’t afford beer or the college loans it takes to get that free dorm-room Wi-Fi, does this absolutely guarantee an Obama victory next month, just as Roosevelt was swept in after the Hoover administration’s market-based dogma ruined the economy? (Sounds just like the current Bush administration, doesn’t it?)

And, if it’s Obama (oh yeah, it’s gonna be Obama), does he drink beer? Hillary did…that’s why I liked her.

Now you get the SSAT-level analogy that politics is to beer as poverty is to Wi-Fi, right?

I’ve been a rabid Randy Newman fan since I was in college. When I was a student producer in the mid-1970′s at WBUR, I tried desperately (and unsuccessfully) to get Newman to interview on a show I produced called Around the Hub. It wasn’t so much that I thought Newman was of interest to the audience, it was more an attempt to fulfill a personal obsession. 

Newman is a musical genius the world seems to remember only for Short People, a song so unrepresentative of Newman’s work that its enduring popularity must be an unending annoyance for him. (Just today, the guys in the office were talking about loading up iPods…they talked about Led Zeppelin, Heart and Eric Clapton. Short People came up, too. What a shame.)

Anyway, Newman records albums so infrequently that it’s a major event in my life when a new one is released. If Newman is pissed off that the current justices on Supreme Court will outlive him (as he sings in the blistering A Few Words in Defense of Our Country), I am none too happy with Newman himself for not trying harder to satiate the few fans he has. He claims in a video documentary that he has 80,000 fans — down from 200,000 — and none of us are attractive looking.

I remain awestruck by Newman’s early work, especially 12 Songs, Sail Away and Good Old Boys. The recordings from the 80s and 90s, topped off by Bad Love didn’t seem as sharp or as even to me as the early albums. Now, the question I am thinking about is whether the new album finds Newman back in form. The short answer is, I don’t yet know.

But there’s no rush. Given that we might have as long as a decade to evaluate it, what’s the hurry? I mean, I’d love to have more Newman music to consider, so Randy, how about a new album in two or three years? After all, you said on your website that this only took eight to 10 weeks to write and another eight to 10 to record.

So, it’s not me I am worried about. It’s the rest of you who didn’t find Newman in your formative years. You guys, in your 30s and 40s, you’ve got several decades of savoring this music to catch up on. Unless you get started right away — savoring an album a decade — you’ll never get to Harps and Angels.

I’m more worried about your inability to catch up with the rest of us than about the fact that I’ll probably be dead before the next Newman album.

 

With all the news lately about the fundamental flaws in DNS and the fact that my digital life is on my laptop, I decided to take a few hours today to reconfigure my router to use OpenDNS and to encrypt the whole drive in my laptop using TrueCrypt.

After months of listening to Leo and Steve tell me how great these services were, I was feeling like someone who refuses to get the religion he’s supposed to if I didn’t try ‘em out.

Changing your router to use OpenDNS is plain, dead, dumb simple: you simply change two IP addresses in your router’s configuration. The OpenDNS IP addresses are on every page of their website. Can’t miss it. Total time to implement: 10 minutes.

The decision to use TrueCrypt was a little more involved: I run Vista Ultimate which offers BitLocker whole-disk encryption. So you’d naturally assume that the built-in encryption would be better. But after hearing that Steve Gibson’s Windows XP machine was actually faster after using TrueCrypt, I decided to try this amazing open source product. TrueCrypt doesn’t feel like open source…it’s exceptionally well documented and has the fit-and-finish of a commercial product.

Total time to setup for whole disk encryption on my ThinkPad T60p with an Hitachi Travelstar 200GB 7200rpm drive? 15 minutes, including the burning of a backup CD-ROM. Encryption itself took three hours.

I did have one problem, which was easily solved. I couldn’t hibernate the machine (which Vista isn’t really happy to do anymore anyway, but which is sort of the ultimate test for a whole-disk encryption program) until I deleted the previous hibernation file and allowed Vista to recreate it on the TrueCrypt-encrypted volume.

I didn’t see this in a couple of searches online, so hopefully if anyone searches for “TrueCrypt Vista hibernation file” they’ll find this post and give it a try.

Now, I can’t even “feel” the encryption…my laptop performs as before. My Vista performance base score was 4.3 before and after the whole disk was encrypted.

In short, for a computer user today, the tools to significantly increase your personal security are easy-to-use, free and astonishingly good.

I’ve been reading Consumer Reports since I was a teenager.  Without a doubt, they the most authoritative consumer product testers. And they know it.

I’ve always been amused by their combination of geeky testing regimens and their 1930′s-derived Socalist practices (purchasing a subscritption to the magazine makes you a “member” of Consumer’s Union and eligble to vote for their directors).

But they’ve always been both supercilious and self-righteous. For years, they claimed “no advertising” but gleefully pumped their (now-made-useless-by-the-Internet) car pricing “service.” Finally, after years of duplicity, they changed their claim to make an exception for their own ads without blinking an eye.

But when they decide they don’t like something, look out. They’ve tortured Suzuki (who deserved it) and Bose (who didn’t). CR was the earliest — and most smug — detractor of SUVs.

Unlike almost any major American news outlet today, their masthead contains zero, none, nada email addresses for readers’ responses. Alone among American journalists, CR doesn’t need to hear from anybody. Even the blog post I am about to blast doesn’t take trackbacks…their bubble is complete.

On now to a piece of advice I read tonight in CR’s auto blog. Tony Giorgianni’s mostly banal post on getting the most from a new car (offering wisdom like RTFM and “get winter mats”) also offers the surreal advice that new car owners should “Change a tire. It’s…a good idea to do a trial run with the jack and spare tire…”

Now I don’t know what planet Tony and CR’s editors are on, but I absolutely guarantee that nobody…and I mean no one…is going to test changing a tire. It’s so ridiculous that only CR could give this advice with a straight-laced face.

You betcha, Tony. When I get my next new car, I’ll suck down a large dose of fish oil and prune juice, then run right out and practice changing tires.

Update: As of the day after I posted a comment with a link to this post on Consumer Report’s original post, they haven’t approved my comment. Sure, they could argue I am trolling for traffic. But I’m not, and I don’t think they really believe that either. They’re just keeping the membrane impenetrable.

Last weekend, I attended PodCamp Boston. It was incredible. And there are two things I learned. First, my fellow vps of marketing in Boston, who at their networking event three days before Podcamp Boston indicated they’d never heard of this major event happening in their backyard, will remain with their heads totally stuck in the sand.

Second, even I haven’t gone all the way. This blog’s URL was www.alexneihaus.com, representing my old-style Internet persona.

Now, as the more observant of you will notice, we are at www.yobyot.com. (Toyboy spelled backwards.)

What’s the difference? At PodCamp, people signed their badges with their Twitter handles. I’d been dabbling in Twitter — not quite getting it — until PodCamp, when I met people who tweeted they’d met me while we were talking. The number of people I follow and those following me exploded (relatively…I am still building contacts there).

So, the only right thing to do is to lose the web 1.0 persona and become all I can be.

@I @am @now @yobyot

This is a post about product liability. Or, more accurately my fury at Whirlpool for making it nearly impossible to lift their refrigerators without slicing off your fingers.

Short version: we’re renovating the kitchen. Today, stainless steel appliances are all the rage. This despite the fact that they collect fingerprints, dent easily and cost more. Still, we do what we’re told by the kitchenistas and we dutifully bought a stainless steel fridge.

Through a series of mishaps, it turned out that the general contractor, the tile guy and I ended up having to lift this 600 pound beast up the three stairs to my front door and then into the kitchen to install it.

I was on the left side of this thing, trying to lift it up on the count of three. “One….two…three!” Bob shouted and we all heaved up and towards the door. I had my shoulder against the bottom and my left hand under the left side.

On step two, I looked down and was gushing blood. The damn stainless steel cabinet’s un-smoothed-off bottom edge had sliced deeply into three fingers of my left hand. It was painless (then) and so I was sorta detached from all the blood literally pouring from my left hand. (I am left handed by the way).

We finally got the behemoth into place, and as I was taking off the last of the shipping material, I considered whether or not to tilt the monster back and wipe the blood off the bottom edge that had so nearly severed my fingers. “Nah,” I thought. “Let the next owner mix his or her DNA with mine.” (Don’t anyone tell Tricia I left a souvenir on her now stained stainless steel cabinet. This is our secret.)

Today, as I sit at work and try my level best to type emails and collateral, I’ve considered calling a torts attorney (aka an ambulance chaser) and suing Whirlpool. It’s idle, but appealing, thinking (the cuts will heal). But one or two more steps, and I think the first use of the fridge would have been to chill my severed digits in preparation for surgical reattachment.

Had that happened, I’d have had a whole new career: torturing Whirlpool through the court system.

Years and years and years ago (OK, I’m feeling Boomer today), I was involved in the sale of a GUI-based application to the phone company. They resisted and resisted, despite our (and, unsurprisingly, Microsoft’s) ever-more-urgent importuning. We kept telling the executives that this was the future, it was the way they had to go and, damn it, you really need to get into the mid-1980s. They wanted to stay with character-based apps, but as the phone company used to regularly do (at least when I was with IBM), they did what we told them to do.

Such were the GUI wars.

But I didn’t realize that the war had ended…that we had “won”…until one Sunday in the early 1990s. I was, as I was wont to do, red-faced and furious on a Sunday afternoon at the amazing ineptness of the New England Patriots, who if I remember correctly, were losing 5000 to 0 to the Dolphins, when a Dodge Ram commercial interrupted the carnage. That commercial’s visual metaphor was a GUI. I realized that what was once “never going to happen” had now happened so completely, so permanently, that people didn’t even remember when they didn’t use and understand GUIs. It had crossed from a technological feature to a cultural idiom.

I’m not talking about Crossing the Chasm-style adoption. Instead, I am talking about how resistant everyone seems to be to something after which they are not only passive to it, they have amnesia about what life, or technology, or sports, or anything was like before they adopted whatever it is they’ve adopted en masse. It’s like we’re dogs: we live only in the moment.

So it is with podcasting. Nobody believes podcasting will ever be a mass medium. Nobody believes it can change the world. Pshaw! Phooey! Feh! All podcasting can be is a niche thing for techies.

Well, they didn’t spend Sunday afternoon with my college-age daughter and me. Returning from dropping my other kid off at summer camp, Sarah whipped out her iPod, plugged it into the car and said, “Dad, wanna hear my nursing podcasts?”

“Nursing podcasts? I didn’t know you were into podcasts!”

“Sure, Dad. [You helplessly out-of-tune old fart]. I listen to a bunch of ‘em.”

It was an instant replay of the Dodge Ram commercial. This new medium, which software company clients as recently as 2006 were insisting was irrelevant, to which nobody paid any attention, had reached its final destination: a fait accompli. And nobody remembers a time when they thought podcasting was a waste of electrons, spent for the enjoyment of social misfits.

Instead, podcasting, is, and always was, an excellent way to reach specific audiences. It’s part of every nutritionally well-balanced software company’s marketing strategy. Podcasts are the best way to reach your audiences….and they always have been.

The way people seem to be acting about this — without any connection to the previous reality — is gonna put a whole bunch of singing fat ladies out of business. After all, if nothing’s changed, who needs ‘em to signal a transition?

Let me say right off the bat that I know that I really should get over it. I should stop being so competitive that I am willing to blast former business competitors for things that no longer matter to me (or the descendants of the original competition).

But I can’t help it. It’s just part of me. I still like to throw an occasional lighted one at Microsoft (I’m still brooding over the 1990′s battle between Notes and Exchange) or Autodesk (we got a blessed divorce in 2002).

Today, it’s Right Hemisphere’s turn. These are the guys who took government money from New Zealand, then took money from SAP, undoubtedly turning their cap table into a cross between the Auckland and Walldorf phone books, then called themselves a startup and hired a marketing team whose first apparent deliverable to the marketplace in 2007 was an 18-page glossy brochure. (Now, I know some people love brochures, but they are both expensive and passe. Ask RH how many of those are sitting in boxes collecting dust in the marketing group’s area at HQ.)

When I was with Seemage, we never really considered RH much of a competitor, what with their message being….well, what exactly was their message? Can’t seem to remember it. Think it had something to do with Adobe, then SAP, then servers all over the place. OTOH, at Seemage it was simple: we were about CAD reuse on the desktop without the heavy costs of PLM.

OK, so what’s the proximate cause of this screed? After all, Seemage is gone…and I’m no longer consulting for Dassault. In a word, it’s RH’s new “blog.” After a couple of years, it looks like RH finally wants to try to grasp the power of community….by copying the old Seemage formula of an in-your-face blog.

At Seemage we had 3dmojo.com. And for a while, it was all we had. But we poured our hearts out. And it was an incredibly effective way for a great product (and a pretty damn good company, IMHO) to get noticed. No fancy stuff…just a direct conversation with the 3D CAD community, who listened intently (and who still do).

We said what we meant and we weren’t afraid to say practically anything (a representative sample is here), as long as we passionately believed in it. A sales rep crashed a competitive trade show using an iPod to show what was then called Seemage (now 3DVIA Composer). It was such a success that we started a podcast that goes on today. Traffic built because we had something to say that was intelligible and cogent.

So, now imagine you are RH. You’ve got questions: your brochure is gathering dust…people come to the seminars at the Capital Grille for the steak, not the software…and little ole Seemage went on to greater glory inside DS. What was the magic about them? Ah ha! It had to be their blog. Gotta git me one of them! Voila: deep3d.com.

A more banal corporate blog I don’t think I’ve ever seen. They have nothing to say. Rehashes of trade shows from the vp of marketing. An SE kowtowing to Adobe Flex (big surprise there). The CEO reprising their SAP deals. (I’m beginning to feel the warm excitement of SAP as a new target…check out the stunt we pulled at SAPPHIRE.)

In short, the reason people who are imitated don’t usually feel flattered by the imitator is that, by definition, imitations lack inspiration. Go ahead, RH: paint a happy face on your toy blog. The only thing apt about it is that the name is somewhat onomatopoeic: this blog is going deep6d very quickly.

 

When I first bought my 330i with the notorious iDrive (which, by the way, is very, very cool), I was stuck by the fact that the car seemed to be less a mechanical device than a digital one with wheels. That impression has only been confirmed over the last three years as the car has needed just three oils changes but half a dozen reprogrammings. When the car is reprogrammed, it takes the dealer more than a day and, if it crashes, not only does it have to be restarted, but the frakkin’ car (what am I going to do when Battlestar Galactica ends??) won’t even start until the entire image is properly downloaded. OK, I gotta admit I think that’s kinda cool, especially when the dealer does it on his nickel and you get a BMW loaner to drive for two days.

But that isn’t what’s pissed me off. What gets my goat is that for the last three years, each reprogramming has added new functionality. The dealer doesn’t know what’s in the new release of E90 software. BMW keeps it a secret. They seem to see this as service and not as a benefit to owners. We upgrade our computers, why doesn’t BMW encourage us to update our cars?

Want some examples? Here’s partial list of functionality that’s been added to my car over the several reprogrammings it has had:

• MP3 was added to the CD player
• Color schemes in the graphics display were changed
• iDrive performance was improved
• A new automatic ventilation program was added to the climate control
• New commands were added to the voice control system
• Mileage has improved by about 3%

So, what am I bitching about? Simple: if I didn’t have these things done under warranty repairs, I’d have never received them. Dealers won’t upgrade the car on request; you have to have a warranty problem. Plus, they have no idea what’s in these updates; they simply apply them when instructed to solve a problem — even a problem that has nothing to do with the lack of functionality provided in the updates. BMW never makes the list of enhancements public. My question is: why?

Think of the revenue stream from upgrades from people who own a 2006 model which, when produced, didn’t have a timer to start the ventilation system on hot days, but which through the magic of software can be made to have it. (This actually happened in my last update and I had to download a manual for a 2007 model to figure out how it works!)

I know why BMW is the best brand in the world. But nothing’s perfect…I suspect it’s more than a little German to keep adding functionality to older products but keep it a secret. Oracle, IBM and Microsoft people: sleep well tonight. BMW isn’t about to steal your maintenance agreements.

OK, so this isn’t going to be the most scintillating post I’ve written. Even I — (in)famous for the bitchin’, blastin’ blog post — need a little banality break now and then.

The motivation to blog this morning is that I’ve written this post and uploaded it from an Acela train stopped in New Haven on the way to a business meeting in NYC. I’ve got my ThinkPad plugged in and my Internet connection going over an incredibly slow (but serviceable) T-Mobile Internet sharing connection on my cell phone. (Why it’s taken T-Mobile until now to launch 3G is beyond me. And the 3G network they are launching uses trash spectrum nobody else in the world is using.)

Back to the post…I remember when a stop in New Haven on a Northeast Corridor train necessitated a switch from electricity to diesel. I remember when you couldn’t hold a cup of coffee on the train because the rails didn’t understand parallel. I also remember when “on time arrival” meant “sometime on the scheduled day.” And, the general condition of the car I am sitting in isn’t terrible, as far as public accommodations in the US go. So things are improved. And the Acela, for all its problems, really does beat an airplane ride for a Midtown meeting.

But does this train — after all the investment and tax money — compare to the Shinkansen or the Inter-City Express or even the TGV? In a word, nope. No matter how much train buffs (a subculture I brushed up against when I was technology manager for the now-defunct Boston & Maine RR) wish it could be, this train isn’t even close. The cars are a little too run down. The service is a little too infrequent (why not Acela trains every 30 minutes in the morning and evening?).

But the major problem? It’s a number: 3:16. That’s the published time from Route 128 to Penn Station. Even the Big Dig has been completed (at an astonishing cost and loss of life). But Amtrak’s promise of a 2:30 trip from Boston to New York hasn’t been realized…and I doubt it ever will.

It’s a metaphor for the decline of American technology and capability. If ever there was a train route in the continental US that could support high-speed traffic, this is it. What a shame.

After Revit was purchased by Autodesk in 2002, I spent a grand total of a few months there. I’ve not written much publicly about my experiences there because they have a reputation for long institutional memories. I am sure that this post isn’t going to make them love me any more than they already don’t.

Before Autodesk bought Revit, I always wondered about the apparent favorable bias among the CAD press towards them. In my time in the industry, they were pushing their boots into customers’ and partners’ heads (something I suspect they’re still pretty good at) but portions of the CAD press always seemed to give them a bye. Truth be told, there were some CAD journalists who hated them unreasonably, but by and large, they got a pass.

Still, the “professional” CAD press was careful to hide it. Very careful. But it was there. In an incident that blew up on Autodesk, a letter that Revit sent to ADT consultants ended up in the hands of a journalist who told me Autodesk’s PR department had faxed it to him. They were simply reprinting whatever they were sent by Autodesk.

But now, and for the first time, we got ‘em. Dead to rights. Check out this quote from Deelip Mendez, one of the arrivistes in the CAD press, a blogger who would have little traffic if not for the fact that Ralph and Roopinder have been promoting his blog:

But I know that Autodesk Marketing is the best there is and when they say something, I listen and wonder.

This comes in a long, unfocused post in which Deelip tries hard to make something out of nothing between Dassault and SolidWorks. But there it is: the slavish, unthinking bias that Autodesk is…wait for it…a thought leader. And that that leadership comes from…squeeze your eyes shut in case you are blinded by the revelation…the marketing department.

In being so overt, Deelip has blown everyone’s cover, the thin veneer of independence that has been carefully nurtured for a long time. The CAD world is a small place…there’re only so many vendors to bill. Between dissing startups as irrelevant (they said that about both Revit and Seemage) and kowtowing to ADSK’s marketing department, it must get monotonous drinking the same flavor of Kool-Aid all the time.

 

At work, we use Clicky web analytics to supplement our web statistics. It’s a great service, and Sean at Clicky has always answered my questions quickly and personally. In short, they’re exactly the kind of people you want to work with.

So, I can imagine how furious he must have been when he had to deal with Linksys "technical" support on a blown switch.

You can read the story here, but the real point is that Sean got smart: he used his blog and his knowledge of SEO to make damn sure Linksys will pay and pay. Just check out the searches Sean posts. If I were looking for a switch, I’d search for exactly these terms and walk, no make that run, away from this particular switch.

The moral: not only is blogging the ultimate version of Consumer Reports (minus the holier-than-thou-1930′s Socialist slant), but the sweet, sweet satisfaction of really stickin’ it to mega-roadblocks like Linksys delivers catharsis and helps others.

Right on, Sean. And thanks for the warning, though I wish you had some Netgear stuff to trash. I want them to suffer, too, but my blog isn’t as well trafficked.

You know all those commercials Verizon is running with a young boy talking about “30db hot” and in which, in open-mouth wonderment, he seems to be awash in light? Well, fudgedaboutit, at least when it comes to multiple HD video on demand streams and high-speed Internet.

Not many people realize that FiOS uses a hybrid system for video. It uses both QAM (what we think of as “normal” cable) for much of its programming. But for VOD, it’s IPTV. IPTV data streams are delivered via the Actiontec routers that Verizon requires customers to use because these routers have a network interface module, or NIM, that bridges IEEE 802.3 Ethernet as we know it to the set-top boxes. The set-top boxes are connected by coax cable, of course, and a standard called MoCA (multimedia over COAX) enables them to receive IPTV. It might surprise people to know that FiOS set-top boxes get an IP address from the router just like computers do. To try to make sure that the VOD video streams do not detract from subscribers’ Internet connections, the router implements QOS for the the IPTV video streams.

Complex? You bet. And it all worked great until VZ started offering HDTV VOD.

Tonight, for the first time, I had two HDTV streams going and it killed my Internet connection. I called VZ and the first thing the guy tried to make me do was factory-reset the router. When I objected, he told me that “hundreds of customers watch multiple HTDV VOD streams while getting full bandwidth from Internet connections.” Because I insisted, he agreed to consult with a video expert.

A few minutes later, he came back on the line and admitted that FiOS can’t support more than one simultaneous HDTV video on demand stream. He didn’t blame the router. Astonishingly, he blamed the ATM switches in the central office. (ATM is old, old, old, and I can’t believe VZ implemented it in FiOS…they can’t seem to help themselves. Billions to build a new network, but they’re still using protocols from the 70s in it.)

Bottom line: when you get FiOS you get fiber, all right. But you don’t get the ability to really use its capacity. In fact, it’s easy to overwhelm it.

I know I’ve been very lax about blogging here because launching a whole new category of enterprise application development software is taking up all my time.

Still, I am compelled to stop for a moment and give WordPress2.5 maximum love for being a killer upgrade. Installation was a snap, and the single problem I had with uploading images was taken care of with one Google search.

In a word, awesome. Those VCs funding Joomla and Drupal are going to wish they’d never written the check.

In one of the worst examples of misandry posing as journalism I’ve read in many, many moons, Lori Gottleib writes in The Atlantic that women should just “settle” for men they don’t necessarily love in order to get married.

Guys, you gotta read this article. Initially, you get the feeling that you are being given a peek inside the most mysterious organ on the planet: the romantic pathways of an American woman’s brain. Gottleib writes in a “let’s just dish” style that I imagine will resonate with women. That tone lets you feel like you are about to be enlightened about what’s really going on inside as women deal with the tough balances of marriage, family and work. You keep hoping that Gottleib will recognize the real value of marriage: the roles fathers can play in their children’s lives.

But it’s not to be. Turns out this all about Gottleib. Her penis-and-a-paycheck feminism turns out to be simple narcissism and personal regret at single motherhood posing as “don’t make the mistake I made” pseudo-advice. Check this out:

My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go.

Uh, “infrastructure??” Is that some kind of new term for a human male?

Using that all-important cultural touchstone, the sitcom, as a reference point, Gottleib declares, “So what if Will and Grace weren’t having sex with each other? How many long-married couples are having much sex anyway?” Uh, sorry, Lori. If you knew much about men, this wouldn’t be a question.

Gottleib goes on and on and on and on about…herself. Her son, someone that should’ve figured prominently in the logic for settling, gets short shrift:

Even women who settle but end up divorced might be in a better position than those of us who became mothers on our own, because many ex-wives get both child-support payments and a free night off when the kids go to Dad’s house for a sleepover. Never-married moms don’t get the night off. At the end of the evening, we rush home to pay the babysitter, make any houseguest tiptoe around and speak in a hushed voice, then wake up at 6 a.m. at the first cries of “Mommy!”

It’s all so disingenuous. At the end of the day, this article devalues men and objectifies them in ways no male writer could ever hope to get away with when discussing women. It’s a damn shame The Atlantic is so important a magazine. Someone might actually believe this tripe.

I’ve been busy working on my third totally new web site in less than a year — and that doesn’t count the sites I simply helped update.

The one thing I’ve learned: no matter what technology you use, whether you use a CMS or you code the thing by hand, it’s an astonishingly complex and costly thing to create a commercial web site.

Everything — and I mean everything — is like riding on blocks. If your site looks good in Internet Explorer, it doesn’t in Firefox. If you try to avoid JavaScript, you can’t do squat for the user. The best-intentioned UI conventions become mush as you shoe-horn the content into them. Just proofreading the site requires the patience of Job and the skill of a novelist.

Worse, you can’t please everyone. So knowing how to please most people becomes the standard, and figuring that out before you have weeks of analytics to look at is more black art than science.

I think the solution is radical simplification. Set an arbitrary limit on the number of pages. 10, 15, whatever. Make the content fit the bucket you’ve created. Use a blog (how’d you guess we’d come back to that?) for everything else. People want fresh…a blog is fresh. You want to change your message on a dime, focus visitors’ attention on something? A blog does it.

Doing a standard corporate web site is like being run over by square wheels. The only thing that’ll round those wheels off is a complete departure from what corporate web sites have become.  And even I am not crazy enough to try that yet.

So, crush me with those edges…

Well, check out this case study.

On Saturday, I blasted TIAA-CREF. Today, they’re all over this blog. And I’ve got the stats to prove it.

Here’s a a screen grab of activity from today (Monday, 2/4) from Clicky.  Almost an hour from a single IP address! (This may represent several users as I presume TIAA-CREF has routers and firewalls that share their public IPs.) And, there are multiple visits from multiple TIAA-CREF IPs that add up to more 90 minutes of time on this blog. That’s a long time for visitors to spend on a blog, even in aggregate.

Wonder who is at this IP address?

 

Yup, it’s proof positive of the power of blogging. Was it more forceful to blog about the Orwellian language in the price increase letter or should I have talked to a customer service representative by phone? Which do you think got more attention?

I hate obfuscation. This week, TIAA-CREF sent my wife the letter I’ve attached to this post as a PDF. It’s unsigned, unaddressed and clearly written by an attorney…but the marketing guys got into the act as well.

The letter is a notice of a price increase….but it never says TIAA-CREF is raising prices. It only says that “estimated expenses will increase by eight to ten basis points.”

Check out this copy:

The revised estimated expenses also reflect costs unanticipated at the time of the original estimate in the prospectuses, including expenses associated with operating two platforms to serve institutional retirement plans pending completion of plan conversions to the new platform and costs associated with processing delays and delays in realizing anticipated savings.

In other words, we have to raise prices because we have duplicate computer systems, neither of which serve you, the individual investor. We screwed up merging them, and not only didn’t we save the money we thought we would, we have to spend more. You get to pay for it. 

OK, I get it. This wealthy company, ostensibly dedicated to teachers, professors, nurses and other non-profit employees and hiding behind noble ideas like serving the ”greater good” and leveraging “the power of .org,” can’t simply say “we’re raising prices.”

Instead we get a long, apologetic argument about better service to “institutional clients,” (sales) visits to campuses, and a quote from Forbes backing up that when you call these people, they’re happy to sell you more overpriced investments. We also get some nice footnotes where the name should be of a human being taking responsibility for the price increase.

(I didn’t attach the expense ratios, but ranging from .48% to .905%, I hope many of the company’s customers will realize that there are far less expensive options available.)

A song that’s in high rotation on my iPod these days is the lovely duet Please Read the Letter from the unlikely pairing of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss (yes, I know: heavy metal and bluegrass…who’d have thunk it? Go ahead and blow 89 cents on the song. You’ll love it).

TIAA-CREF’s marketing and legal people should listen carefully to some of the song’s lyrics:

…A fool could read the signs
Maybe baby
You’d better check between the lines
Please read the letter,
I wrote it in my sleep
With help and consultation from
The angels of the deep…

After over a year of consulting, I’ve taken on a new role with Active Endpoints which returns me to my roots in application development. For many years before I went into marketing, I developed applications using what was then considered leading-edge technology.

What amazes me is that leading-edge developers today face the same problems as I did then: there’s too much “stuff” to conquer, too many technologies to integrate and too many piece parts to put together with duct tape.

Active Endpoints has created a new category of app dev software, what we call a visual orchestration system, or VOS. You can read more about it in a press release we issued today…there’s a lot more to come from us on this topic. (Those of you who know me aren’t surprised to hear that, I would assume.)

Anyway, I think this company can change — indeed revolutionize — the way applications are developed by helping the industry think large — as in programming in the large. This is in complete contrast to the way people think today, which is all about devolving problems to their smallest units to make them solvable, then trying after the fact to put them together in some coherent way. Any of you who have ever tried to build something from a kit knows how impossible this can be.

Given the size of the problem and the amazing technology Active Endpoints offers, once I got the chance to join I found it irresistible.

There’s a very entertaining series on one of my favorites blogs, TTAC, entitled “General Motors death watch“. I am sure they are much hated at GM, but, frankly, I think the bloggers there have been evenhanded. GM has been a mess so long, I can now officially be excused for buying a new, manual three-speed Chevy Vega in 1973. (I paid $2300 for it, courtesy of Nixon-era price controls.) Still, I think TTAC has been waiting for rigor mortis so long, it can’t see that GM is already a carcass.

Lately, the auto press has been falling all over itself to praise GM’s new cars, especially the interior fit and finish of models like the Enclave and the CTS. Interior fit and finish is especially important to me because, after all, you sit in the thing for three to five years and every flaw eventually becomes something you stare at and wonder, “How could they let that out of the factory?”

I checked out an Enclave in the showroom; the panels in the exact center of the dash under the analog clock were misaligned. I didn’t bother to test drive it, knowing that misaligned panel would drive me crazy. Now, I’ve taken to peeking through the windows of parked Enclaves to see if it was just a sample defect. Nope. They’re all like that.

This week, curiosity got the better of me and I test drove a $50K ’08 Cadillac CTS with four-wheel drive and the direct-injection engine. The showroom unit had a terribly misaligned panel where the front passenger’s knee rests against the transmission tunnel. Defect just on that one? Guess again. A different unit, the one I drove, had the same problem. Now I have another GM model to stare at in parking lots. The fit and finish in that car was no better than an 80′s Corsica, despite all the press fawning over stitched leather and the stupid Viagra-enhanced navigation screen. (The latter gives itself an erection every time you push a button on the dash. Reminds me of one of those pump-kits that promise…uh…lengthening).

I have no freakin’ idea at all what these press guys are smoking. If an average car nut like me can see this stuff in seconds, why don’t they?

Still, the promises of resurrection from GM management continue. Yesterday, GM told analysts it’s going to be profitable in a couple of years. That reminds me of the kind of wishful talk that accompanied Roger Smith’s attempt to “take on the Japanese” in the 90′s. At the end all he could offer was a “a used Buick.”

Please forgive my non sequitur in the title of this post. But I think it’ll make sense as you read on.

I’ve been raving lately about what a transformational device my new iPod touch is. And I’ve been struggling to put into words exactly what’s why that’s so. At first, I wasn’t convinced that it was so much different from my 5th generation iPod, which I still use daily.

Then I took the iPod touch on vacation with me and discovered that the Safari browser was compatible with Outlook Web Access 2007. And that I actually enjoyed watching videos on YouTube. And that the flicking and pinching stuff I thought was the equivalent of tofu — as in real men use mice to navigate — is the first significant UI innovation in at least a decade.

Then I started reading on the Internet about the upcoming 1.1.3 software update. Monday, Apple announced this was free for iPhone users, but would cost iPod touch users $20. Apparently, Apple has decided that the iPod touch is really a handheld — not just a music device. Ergo, bug fixes are free but enhancements are not. I know that lots of people will whine about this…and I gotta admit I wasn’t too happy having just spent $400 on the device.

But, man oh man, is it worth it! I suspect the iPhone people got this upgrade for free because they are AT&T’s prisoner for two years, and food is included in the jail stay. But for those of us who own our iPod touches outright and have to decide to pay or not, I must say I am not looking for $20 back.

The mail client is astonishing…Google Maps is amazing. This is the first device I have ever owned where a setup mode itself is entertaining (the icons wiggle when you are configuring dock pages).

But for all of the amazing new features and the value, there are two things that bother me: first, Apple really should have made this one free. The device has only been in the market since September, 2007. I’ll bet a lot of people got theirs over the holidays, like I did. It leaves a small aftertaste to have to pony up 5% of the price to get the thing to do what it should’ve at first customer ship.

Second, am I the only one who worries that the Google-masters-of-the-universe-who-control-all-our-searches-and-all-galactic-advertising have figured out a new way to extend their monopoly? This is, I think, the first time anyone is paying for a system with Google Maps. (I downloaded an excellent new version that uses cell towers for location onto my Windows Mobile 6 device last week for free.) Google Maps is a killer app…it’s one of the things that makes the iPod touch a transformational device. I wonder if all the “free” stuff people have become accustomed to was really nothing more than a very long term trial.

I am very late to the Chocolate Rain phenomenon. In case you are one of the remaining 50 people who don’t know about Tay Zonday’s famous (>13M views!) music video, I’ve embedded the YouTube video below. Be sure you also watch the related videos, including the Chad Vader spoof and Tay’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Back the to main purpose of this post: it’s time to bash the purported “weight loss” drug Alli again. Last summer, I both railed against and sympathized with the marketers of this “miracle drug.” I empathized with the plight of marketers who have to market a drug that, uh, “soils” your clothes with….here it comes…an ugly chocolate rain as it works. Then, I whined about those same marketers minimizing these effects on people.

Then, last week, I was in a Wal-Mart and was stopped dead in my tracks by the display captured in the cell phone photo above. Look at the bottom of the retail display. It says, “can you commit to this?” Cleanly designed and mostly white brochures that match the nice white packaging of the “starter kit” of Alli on the display explain that low-fat foods reduce, the…yes, I am going to say it again…”chocolate rain effects.”

The pun on commitment to achieving a diet goal strikes me as the most cynical marketing I’ve ever seen. It’s not about commitment to low-fat diets…it’s about commitment to a drug that makes you produce a nasty chocolate drizzle. After all, if you can commit to a low-fat diet, what the heck do you need Alli for?

And, yes, I find the minimalist, white graphic design of the packaging and the brochures offensive as well. This product, which in truth, makes you slightly ill by interfering with your ability to absorb fat, should be in a black box with big FDA warnings, or at least a very dark brown that matches the real value of Alli itself.

But on the iPod touch with that screen (there’s no other way to describe the quality of the iPod touch’s display) it’s as if the device, Wi-Fi and YouTube combine into a completely new medium.

I was searching for music videos, looking for alternate versions of classic music videos from Devo and Fatboy Slim, and came across this gem.

It doesn’t matter if you are a Fatboy Slim fan or not: this never-officially-released video is a spectacular combination of editing and timing. Check out the slow-motion at 2:10 and the Tommy-esque finale in which Angie leads hula-hooping acolytes, some of whom you almost expect to break out into a chorus of We’re Not Gonna Take It.

I emailed the star of the video,  Angie Mackman, and asked her for the back story about why this wasn’t released. Long story short, it seems a competition for the video had to go to a juggler for some reason. The official video for this song is also great, but there’s something about this version that is less contrived and, well, cooler than the very-strictly-cut-to-the-downbeat juggling video.

I wanted to make sure that readers of this blog check out an exciting new voice. My pals at Enigma have started blogging, and I think that their first post (at least the first post I didn’t write) is pretty compelling.

Clearly, I am involved in setting up their blogging efforts, but today when Joy and I were working on her post, I can tell you, I just sat back and watched it happen.

The blogging world is liberating for many software companies because it allows them to (finally!) express their raison d’etre directly, succinctly and forcefully. You can hear it in what Joy wrote today, and I hope there’s lots more to come from my new pals at Enigma.

One of my favorite New Wave tunes was New Toy by Lene Lovich which contained the memorable chorus “I want a new toy, Oh ay oh!” OK, so poetry it ain’t. But we loved dancing to it at Spit on Lansdowne Street.

Anyway, that chorus comes to mind tonight because I have just (finally!) upgraded my blog to WordPress 2.3.1 and installed a cool, new widget-capable theme. I love WordPress. Oh ay oh.

Oh, and by the way, I got an iPod touch, too.

“I’ve got to have it all until I’m complete…
I want a new toy (oh ay oh), to keep my head expanding…
I want a new toy (oh ay oh), nothing too demanding…”

Here, in case you need an 80s flashback, is a link to a YouTube recording of this memorable song.

Tonight, after a long day at work, for fun, I turned to an issue of Auto Week that I’d been saving to read up on the new Aston-Martin DBS. The only Aston-Martin I’ll ever come close to is the silver DB9 that some show-off uses as a daily driver (in the freakin’ snow!) to drop his sixth-grader off at my daughter’s school.

Yes, I have lusted after another man’s car. But nevermore. Look carefully at this photo. The driver’s side of the grill is misaligned. In the printed magazine, this is even more noticeable than in this online photo.

Yes, the press can go on for thousands of words about whether this car is a GT or a sports car, how it compares with Ferraris and how cool it was in Casino Royale. But not me….$256,000 seems a little rich to spend on a car whose marketing people would let this photo into the wild.

Whew…what a relief!

After reading this piece about being “Googley” in The Atlantic, I wondered if in fact the nakedly aggressive technology company was a thing of the past. I disagree with Joshua Green’s unsubstantiated assertions that we’re totally transitioning to the cloud and that Google doesn’t intend to do evil, but he does make a point that the tactics Microsoft used to crush everyone else aren’t as apparent as they used to be. What a shame, eh? It was a lot more fun in the 1990′s. I sure as hell learned a lot about how to be crushed when Microsoft destroyed us at Lotus.

I believe that if you are a start-up or small company and you aren’t dripping with testosterone in the marketplace, you lose. You lose because you cannot compete with the 600-pound gorillas in your space who can afford to be the nice guy. You need to get your message out, loud and hard. Otherwise, your secret sauce will go down the drain.

I was searching recently for a hosting company to host a vBulletin forum I am creating for a client, and came across Bluehost, which was mentioned favorably in some forums. 1and1, which I’ve been using for several years is just a disaster. Big, German, slow, rigid, German, insecure, German, ossified, German, I’d grown tired of never getting an answer to any question and being blamed 100% of the time there was a problem.

Come to discover that the CEO of Bluehost, Matt Heaton, has got the exact take-no-prisoners attitude I have been missing lately. Here, on winning, and even better (and more sneeringly) here on Microsoft, Matt has got the exact “stuff” going on in his company to win in a very competitive market.

And, by the way, his company backs up the bluster with good service and pricing.

OK, I am not sure if it’s a scam or not, but I am totally blown away by the Perfect Woman Project.

It certainly looks real…but of course it might be a huge scam of one kind or another. Whatever it is, it’s a fascinating idea. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of "submissions" yet. But all submissions are apparently reviewed by whomever is behind this and posted into categories like "sincere", "mean" and "dirty."

Some posters have tried faux erudite and are posting "poetry." I guess they think the site’s offer to "make a total transformation" into the winner’s "perfect woman" is real enough (or they are horny enough) to try blog-post-romance to win this thing.

Whatever…it’s a lot more clever than anything I’ve seen elsewhere lately, and I’d love to know who’s behind it.

I’m in the middle of an exhausting business trip to France. As anyone who’s been on these slogs knows, the hotel is your haven…a necessary place to be able to kick back and sleep off the long days and stress.

And wouldn’t you think that a Hilton next to the Eiffel Tower in downtown Paris that costs €450 a night would provide that?

Ah…wrong. I’m sitting here baking waiting for the tech to come turn off the heat and while I was hot, I wrote this nastygram to Hilton on its website. Now, I am going to post it here without further comment in hopes that unlike the travel websites, this review will get more search engine exposure from being a stand-alone blog post.

Take my advice: save your company’s money and stay elsewhere.

I am shocked at the condition and facilities at this property.

At €450 a night one would expect to be able to turn the heat on or off in your room. Instead, you are either baking or freezing because the heat cannot be controlled by the guest. A tech has to be called to do it.

There is no gym. The bathroom smells. The furniture is dinged. There is no voicemail for guests. The Wi-Fi charges are outrageous. Reception doesn’t answer the phone. The public areas are worn and shoddy.

Old style energy-saving CFL lamps that warm up — like oil lamps from the 1900s — are used in the room. This place is too cheap to even update to instant-on CFL lamps. The Honors lounge was freezing cold for three days in a row. There are no snacks in it after 9pm but it doesn’t close until 10:30pm. The breakfast in the lounge is poor quality.

I might be traveling to Paris often. I will never, ever stay here again. What a complete rip-off.

Last Friday, I attended a conference sponsored by BU on the legal implications of new media.

What a snore.

Distinguished bloviating attorneys showed how smart they are by (choose one or all):

• Creating long-winded "hypotheticals" about topics from liberty to copyright
• Convincing the audience none of them had ever read a blog, much less written one, or
• Proposing incremental approaches (this largely from an attorney linked to the EFF!) to fixing a completely broken IP legal framework.

Even the keynote speaker, Markos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos, failed to break any ground with his oh-so-predictable this-generation-will-crash-the-barricades rhetoric. I guess I am getting old when I somewhat agree with the supercilious comments at my lunch table that Mr. Moulitsas will mellow with age. (BTW, Kos, I agree with your politics, but not the drama you wrap it up in.)

On the one hand, the fact that the establishment is talking about new media is interesting, but it reminds me of party scenes in TV sitcoms where the young kids do those nasty dances. All the kids in the audience snicker at the lack of authenticity…how tragically unhip the writers were.

Nice try, BU, but next time, just send everyone over to PodCamp Boston.

Remember the Star Trek episode entitled “The Trouble with Tribbles“? Remember how the furry creatures ingratiate themselves with the crew, then multiply so rapidly they nearly overtake the ship?

FiOS TV is like a tribble. With apologies to Dr. McCoy, FiOS TV is born pregnant with problems.

I spent most of 2006 and part of 2007 negotiating with Verizon to bring their cable service to Southborough, MA. I’ve never blogged about their negotiating tactics, which defined mendacity, because I believed strongly that competition would be good for the residents of the Town and if I went public, it would piss them off and we’d end up with no agreement.

Finally, in May of 2007, after a public hearing in which VZ execs promised great service and technology, we agreed on a franchise and VZ began offering FiOS TV in town.

I had high hopes for the system. I had been an early FiOS customer for voice and Internet and both had been rock solid. In particular, the Internet connection was fast and extraordinarily reliable (if a little too nanny-fied; VZ blocks port 80 on dynamic IPs and in the early days of FiOS VZ insisted on pretending it was DSL by requiring routers to support PPPoE to connect).

But TV has been an unrelenting disaster. There are three intersecting areas that combine to make FiOS TV unremittingly infuriating.

First, billing. The bills are really from three separate companies: voice, data and TV. Errors compound each other and take months to resolve. Representatives misrepresent available options and pricing (resulting in VZ insisting that I am their prisoner now for two years when I am certain I only agreed to a one-year package deal).

How’s this for a nightmare? To get back the Internet speed I was promised on the one-year-deal-that-morphed-into-a-two-year-deal generated a $139 disconnection charge. If you can make sense of a VZ bundled bill, please let me know. I think you’re a genius.

Next, technology. During the licensing process, we specifically asked VZ about their technology (see this “issuing authority report” and a memo from me to the committee complaining about their non-answers).

Now, I know why they obfuscated. They have the most fiendishly complex system imaginable. It could have only been designed by a former monopoly. You could only love this system if you think Soviet design and engineering was underrated.

They use several different “optical network interfaces” or ONTs to connect the network to your home. Older ones, like mine, bring 802.3 Ethernet into your home along with coax cable and twisted-pair voice. Newer ones bring only coax into the home along with voice.

In either case, you MUST bridge the cable and Ethernet networks using a bridge called a network interface module because their set-top boxes speak coax for programming and IPTV for on-demand using a protocol called MoCA. And the set-top boxes use plain old IP for the interactive guide.

(Lost yet? Stay tuned for when we talk about service.)

How do they ever get this mess installed? They give their installers a multi-function router containing so many functions I can’t remember them all. But for fun, let’s see what I can remember off the top of my head.

This thing is an Ethernet switch, a router with a DHCP server, a firewall, a wireless access point using 801.11g set to default to insecure WEP connections, a NIM to bridge the coax and Ethernet networks, among other things. It tries to connect to the VZ network as a DHCP client or as a PPPoE client. And, best of all, it has an back-door open port to allow VZ to completely mess it up for you with updates you don’t expect. You cannot use your own equipment, precluding the possibility of putting a VPN or more effective firewall on your network.

Oh, and when you are watching on-demand movies, getting blasted with 20Mbits of IPTV content while you simultaneously surf your 5M/20M Internet connection, you can watch this consumer-grade device almost smoke.

VZ network designers tried to hide their network technology mashup by cramming so many functions into a single box that you almost pity the electrons consumed in this overmatched device.

But the real prize for Rube Goldberg-ness goes to the Motorola HD DVRs and the interactive program guide. VZ had the time and money to send customers beautiful marketing brochures touting the new features of a IPG they downloaded over the summer. But apparently, they didn’t have the time to test the software. The Internet is alive with people suffering problems with this software, and I’ve been bitten worst than most.

That brings me to the last issue: service. No human being can service a system this complex. That means that everyone at VZ involved in servicing this mess is simply guessing. Nobody, apparently, has a clue. Through bitter experience (and some serious reading of the dslreports.com forums), I have a better picture in my head of what’s going on than the poor shlumps who have to deal with customers.

Once VZ upgraded the guide, my DVR starting hanging. I called about this, and was told they’d ship me a replacement. It never arrived. Then I called again. They sent a guy out. He threw rocks at the people who said they’d ship one, replaced mine and left.

Thing still hangs, refuses to record, deletes recordings, etc. etc. Called on a Friday night. Service guy — obviously hacking the problem — factory resets the device remotely. Now, it can’t even tune a channel. Dead HDTV on NFL opening weekend.

Third guy comes Monday to replace the box for a third time and tells me it’s the “levels”. (Old phone guys miss copper with its certainty of volts and ohms.) Box promptly hangs.

Guy calls me today to tell me they think it’s the IMG software (Really?) and a fix will be out “soon”.

On the positive side, VZ techs speak English well and are polite. These guys (and the one hot-looking woman they sent) are not grease-monkeys. They’ve just not been trained. Who could be?

VZ is birthing tribbles at a Malthusian rate.

Those of you who know me well know that on one topic I have been completely consistent: for years I’ve considered Microsoft the ultimate market bully who simply assimilated (or copied) any technology or company it wanted to. To this day, the blood feud between IBM and Microsoft on the messaging and desktop application battle front continues. Why else would IBM revive the Lotus Symphony brand?

But today I discovered Windows Live Writer (in which I am composing this blog post), and I have to admit that it’s the most impressive application I’ve seen from Microsoft in ages. Even more, I have become a big fan of Vista and even have a warm spot for Office 2007 (even though the context sensitive help in Office is broken).

Microsoft seems to have entered a stage in its history which reminds me of IBM software in the 70s and 80s: exceptionally well-designed and documented software that has increasingly accepted (without “embracing and extending”) open standards. The one flaw both share is complexity.

Whether this happened as a result of its near-death brush with regulators (also an IBM parallel) or if it was inevitable isn’t important. Today, Microsoft is producing some seriously great stuff.

Who’s today’s new dominant bully? My vote goes to Google, which has all the attributes of Microsoft at its worst: a belief that everything in the world will go its way and an astonishing disregard for customers. (Just try getting Google support on the phone. It’s nearly impossible.)

I was in the new Natick Collection Apple store tonight. (Yes, the “Natick Collection” is just a mall — but to be tragically hip it had to become a “collection”.)

The place was mobbed and we finally got a chance to try the new iPods.  I immediately went for an 80GB iPod Classic to compare it to the 5th gen 80GB model I currently have.

My first impression was that Cover Flow made the thing very slow. Yes’s Owner of a Lonely Heart was loaded on this unit and while I listened to it, I rapidly pressed the center button. As any iPod owner knows, pressing the center button while you play a song takes you through a loop of additional play functions, like skipping back and forth or changing the rating of the song. I was doing this to see if Apple added any new functions to the loop. They did — the ability to shift in and out of shuffle mode.

But what blew me away is that if you press the button rapidly while the song is playing, the music stutters. I couldn’t believe it…I tried every iPod Classic in the store and they all did it.

Apple is now in its baroque period: constantly guilding the lilly with pretty stuff while the basic technological content slips. The fact they shipped the device like this is proof positive that Apple is cruising on design and brand, and that the technological core of brilliant innovation they used to combine with imagination has begun to wane.

As Porky Pig says,  ”Th-th-th-th-th-that’s all, folks, for the iPod.”

You know how sometimes an institution comes so close to getting it, but then stops short? If it’s the US government, you kinda wanna scream a little, don’t you?

Case in point: the Securities and Exchange Commission. There’s a credit meltdown going on these days, and I was using EDGAR to check up on my broker’s claims of safety in certain bonds. Somehow — I don’t quite remember how — I stumbled across the SEC’s podcast.

Guess what? sec.gov has been at it for a while (the feed has episodes from May, 2005), the content is great and the production vales ain’t bad. You might be thinking, “Hey, they get it.” (Actually, I was thinking, “The SEC gets it better than some of my clients, for whom podcasting is still like motorized vehicles are to Amish folks.)

They got so tantalizingly close: they make a podcast, they put up an RSS feed (I have clients today for whom podcasting means, “Record something and post it on the website”) and they’ve stuck with it. I can even forgive Uncle Sam for burying it somewhere obscure on their website.

But, at the end of the day, they ran outta steam: they failed to list the podcast in iTunes. They’ve guaranteed themselves obscurity.

I’ll bet the iTunes selection staff would’ve been happy to feature it. (I dream of having a podcast featured in the iTunes store!) Putting the sec.gov podcast into every (free!) podcasting directory was a no-brainer.., an easy, logical end-step they clearly could’ve done. After all, they clearly understand most of the rest of what makes a podcast a podcast.

So, no cigar for Uncle SEC. Too bad, I would’ve digged a geek government.

I’ve written here before about the almost religious feelings I have about WordPress (here and here)…and about the amazing community it has spawned. It was a big disappointment for me that I wasn’t able to attend WordCamp last month. As a consolation, PodCamp Boston 2 is coming up and I can’t wait.

One of the most famous voices in the WordPress world is Lorelle VanFossen. Ms. VanFossen is gaining the kind of well-deserved fame that an original in a new medium deserves. Lately, she’s been getting attention from the mainstream press for her stand on content theft (and more recently on nytimes.com, registration required).

Lorelle, I couldn’t agree more. It pisses me off, too. Especially since you are a working author, I completely agree that it’s like stealing food from your mouth.

But, I have to say one thing about Lorelle on WordPress: sometimes I find it incomprehensible. There’s so much content, I am overwhelmed. And for some reason, I can’t grok the organization of this blog. It all seems like one long stream of text. I have trouble telling one post from another. Sometimes, it’s such a sea of links (all admittedly useful) that I lose all context about the actual post. And it may be picky, but since we read English left to right, I think it adds cognitive dissonance to have a left-hand column in the way of the post content.

However, I sure do appreciate the presbyoia-friendly font on Lorelle’s blog.

I expect to be told I’m an idiot and worse. But, at least my idiot mind will make it impossible for me to steal content from Lorelle.

Though I am not a native Bostonian, I have some experience with authentic Boston accents.

My lovely wife can occasionally be unintelligible (“Alex, have you seen the sizzzahs?”). To wile away traffic-jam time, I sit in the car and mimic Tom Finneran. Finneran, a WRKO talk-show radio host, former Massachusetts legislative big-wig and (unsurprisingly) a plea-bargained felon, has an amazingly real Boston accent, one you can hear in every word.

You know that you can hear the real thing, even if you can’t imitate it, when your ears bleed listening to Matt Damon in The Departed. This actor’s attempt is among the worst fake Boston accents I’ve ever heard, and a complete embarrassment to everyone in Chelsea, Malden and Lynn, not to mention Southie itself.

Anyway, when I first heard about CAPTCHAs, I thought it was a killer pun: someone from CMU must have had a Boston background. Maybe so, but really it means something else entirely, and only sounds like it was invented in a drunken episode at the Black Rose.

I manage a bunch of blogs that have been increasingly become the victim of comment spam, usually from China and always complimentary. I now realize that dude in Guangdong who reads my posts mutliple times and always says, “Good post” isn’t really into my content. Naivety mixed with ego had me manually marking these as spam just in case there was a real gem from somewhere in the Middle Kingdom.

The volume has gotten so large that it’s been driving me crazier than Matt Damon’s inability to banish the letter “R” from his spoken English.

Enter reCAPTCHA. An easy way (there’s a simple WordPress plug-in) to stop the comment spam and build a digital library. Can’t beat it. Took five minutes to implement on all the blogs I manage.

Now, it’s off to the Cape and them lobstah rolls.

I am well-known to be car crazy. And BMW is well-known as one of the most desirable brands in the world. So, it’s no surprise I draw many lessons from them and try to apply them to high-technology marketing in general. Trust me, this brand has enthusiasts (“a community” in Web 2.0-speak) to die for.

What the marketing whizzes who will ”teach” you how to have a brand like BMW don’t get is the flawless head-fake BMW’s marketing machine routinely executes by producing the exact kind of propaganda their hard-core community wants to consume while at the same time officially ignoring that community.

Two examples. First, this document describes in numbing detail the innovations and design philosophy of the then-new 2006 BMW 3 Series. Ostensibly, it’s for internal use only. But this document “leaked” into the enthusiast community and how many times do you think I, for example, have read this document? (Answer: too many. Most obscure thing I learned? That the interior door pulls for the left and right front doors are different, a point BMW makes to stress that real design takes into account things like the location of the window switches. Now, go look in your car. Are the pulls mirror images of each other? Hmmmm?)

How many times do you think other enthusiasts have read it? Now think about how many times its target audience — salespeople in BMW dealerships — read it. Brilliant marketing: write something “exclusive” for an audience that could care less, but make sure it gets out — as a leak — to the people who really care.

Today, the BMW world community is all a-titter…just freakin’ shakin’…with excitement over the new M3 (pictured above from the BMW USA web site in “European trim”…another nod to the dreams and aspirations of hard-core BMWphiles).

How to keep the excitement at fever pitch? Simple: issue a 93-page press kit on the car. Make sure it leaks so the enthusiast sites can post it. Fill it with an rich mix of over-the-top hyperbole (“…the BMW M3 has ranked alone as the epitome of ultimate dynamism derived directly from motorsport, a car offering powerful and superior aesthetics, as well as a truly incomparable driving experience…”) and ennui-inducing technical detail (“…electronically controlled power screwdrivers [are used] on all critical bolted connections…”). Then, in the most brilliant move possible, delay introducing the product into your largest market until the propaganda has generated intense longing in the community. The link above is for the UK introduction. Convenient, ain’t it?, that the US and UK markets share a common (OK, nearly mutually-intelligible) language.

I don’t have the words to describe how astonishingly successful BMW is at managing (or is it ”manipulating”?) its community. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go re-read all 93-pages…

While everyone else was drooling over the iPhone, I knew to stay away. I suspected a consumer disaster of epic proportions when Apple, rightly famous for its brilliant products and exquisite marketing, collided in the marketplace with AT&T, one of the worst consumer vendors in the history of Earth.

Cellular One…no AT&T Wireless…no Cingular…no AT&T has been the target of repeated customer lawsuits (here and here) and has done just about everything it can do to customers from over-selling Digital One Rate in the late 1990′s to consistently scoring at the bottom of Consumer Reports subscriber surveys.

In fairness, none of the cell companies are very good. But the prize for being the worst for the longest and consistently treating customers like dirt goes to whatever-they-are-calling-themselves-today AT&T.

When Apple, the control freak of the consumer electronics biz, made the rounds of carriers to see which would allow it to control the user experience (this is from Wall Street Journal stories that you need a subscription to read), only AT&T signed up and in return got an exclusive for the iPhone.

I’ll bet you Steve Jobs and Apple are regretting that decision. It’s been a mess, with the ‘Net exploding with horror stories around activation and porting numbers from other carriers. AT&T and Apple are both minimizing the impact publicly, saying that it’s only a few customers.

I know how I’d feel if I’d just made a $2000 commitment to the iPhone — $600 plus 24 months of service at a minimum of $60 — and I was in the “2%” having problems. (Get this, even if you are an AT&T customer you must still activate for two more years. Talk about extending the sentence!)

C’mon…we all know when they’re saying “we had an unexpected surge” or “we’ll clear it up soon” it means it’s outta control. Can we really believe that AT&T didn’t know how many iPhones would be in the stores on June 29th? That they couldn’t have sized their systems to prepare for that number?

The thing is, this must be amazingly painful inside Apple. I feel for them. They tried to keep control of the experience, but they aren’t a cell phone operator…they just really don’t know how to screw customers.

AT&T has sure taught Apple something about control this week. It’s one lesson I hope Apple doesn’t take to heart.

(Photo courtesy of J. Star, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike)

OK, so I know that what you blog about is a more-or-less semi-permanent record of you. Plus, I have clients who read this blog. And I might be just a little more over the top than usual with this post, but there’s a real marketing problem with a new product and I think the marketer’s response to that problem is…uh…interesting.

Have you heard of Alli, the new over-the-counter medication for weight loss? It’s a low-dose version of orlistat, a drug that prevents the absorption of fat. That can lead to weight loss for those taking the drug.

The problem with orlistat is that fat that doesn’t get absorbed…it…uh…passes, if you know what I mean. This can potentially create an oily mess.

Imagine being the marketing people for Alli: you want to sell this thing in big, big numbers, but it has this indelicate side effect. And you have to disclose it.

What’s the solution? To them it must have seemed easy: make a helpful recommendation about how to deal with the heartbreak of panty-rear oily streaks.

On www.myalli.com, there’s a “treatment effects” page with this chirpy sounding suggestion for working people on Alli:

Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it’s probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work

Now, I have to tell you that any product that pretty much insures users will need to cover up the product’s nasty effects with dark clothes or even keep a supply of adult diapers nearby has a serious marketing problem. And this kind of copy makes it even worse.

Anybody who reads about Alli in the newspaper or looks at the packaging is sure to hear about this side-effect. Why make it worse with a “helpful” suggestion? Isn’t Alli targeted at adults, who presumably know what the implications of this side effect are?

To my ears, this over-the-top effort to be helpful backfires, and does so badly. Far from being useful, it just simply makes the product sound so revolting that I suspect millions will be put off.

This is a simple case of the marketing people just saying too much and overreaching to be “helpful”.

I apologize for the knowledge-base-like title of this post, but I did it in hopes the search engines will index it and save some other poor shlub the four months of effort it took me to get my iPod to synch with my HP Pavilion desktop.

In case you found this post after months and months of searching for others who have the problem that under Vista iTunes slows to a crawl and will say “syncing iPod” for three days or more without actually doing anything and can’t wait to read my more detailed tale of wow, here’s the link to what you need.

Now, back to my tech support catharsis. I upgraded to Vista from XP on my Pentium D 3Ghz machine right after Vista shipped. Everything worked but the iPod. When I connected it, it would hang. The rest of the system was fine.

OK, I figured, Apple wasn’t supporting iTunes on Vista. So, I’ll wait.

Then, both Apple and Microsoft started fixing the problems. Plus, this same iPod connected and synched flawlessly on my ThinkPad running Vista. If you can get a ThinkPad running Vista to synch with your iPod…well you get the idea.

So, I swapped cables on the HP. I uninstalled and reinstalled iTunes and QuickTime dozens of times. Finally, I wiped the hard disk and reinstalled Vista cold on the theory that the XP upgrade left vestigial shmutz that messed up iTunes.

Nothing — and I mean nothing — worked. Calls to Apple had them scratching their heads as well. Search after search on every search engine with every combination of search terms I could think of produced nothing of use. One thing years of technical trouble-shooting has taught me is that you rarely discover a new problem yourself. Especially after four months, someone had to have had this problem. But just wasn’t yielding to my attempts to find even a small clue.

Finally, in an act of desperation, I connected an old 2G FireWire iPod to the HP and it worked perfectly.

Voila! It must be the USB ports, right? Right. But where do you get updated USB drivers for Vista? Actually, you don’t. You get updated .INF files for the chipset in your computer (if it’s an Intel chipset on the motherboard) that tell Windows Vista how to configure the USB ports. Apparently, the .INF files that ship with Vista aren’t compatible with this motherboard’s chipset and the Apple iPod. Imagine that: the installed configuration of the OS (remember, I installed from scratch) doesn’t have compatible configuration files for the USB drivers…at least for this motherboard and chipset combo.

Every other USB  device appeared to work perfectly, with the exception of the speaker mute button on my HP USB keyboard. That fact made this problem even more devilishly hard.

So, there’s my tale of woe for the Internet community in hopes it helps somebody. If you have an HP Pavilion with an Intel chipset and iTunes won’t synch with your USB iPod, update the .inf files.

Unlike many members of Red Sox Nation, I don’t wear it on my sleeve.

But my infatuation with the Olde Town Team goes back to my days as a BU student living in Kenmore Square, watching the ’75 World Series on TV with the sound turned down and the windows open in Myles Standish where we could hear the crowd a second or two before we saw the play on TV. With my eyes open, I can still see the ’86 series running away through Bill Buckner’s legs.

After college, I put up with the detritus of the Nation when I lived on Park Drive in the days before Fenway Park prohibited beer sales after the 7th inning. Lemme tell ya, if you can still love the Red Sox after what I put up with from the Nation — from vomit on my door step and on my car to guys from Southie terrorizing my girlfriend — you’ve got a lifetime, paid-up membership in the Nation.

So, there’s no need to explain how I felt in 2004.

But I couldn’t understand it…I just couldn’t grok it. C’mon, we all know the curse couldn’t just disappear like that. And what about 2007? As I write this, the Red Sox are 11 and a half ahead of the Orioles and are playing .700 baseball. The Yankees are in a last place tie in the AL East. Something had to have happend to the curse. It had to be lying in wait for what I feared would be a reappearance that would damn the team for all eternity.

But I couldn’t explain why the curse was dormant until today, when I read in the Wall Street Journal that John Henry’s investment business is on the rocks. Some of his investment funds are down as much as 38%. Merrill Lynch just pulled $600M from his firm.

I’ve always liked John Henry for what he’s done for the team. But I had no idea how selfless he really was: he’s absorbed the curse for all of us. He’s going to be penniless soon…well, not completely broke…courtesy of the curse, which has apparently left the team and infected the owner.

Hey, John! Thanks 600 million times over! BTW, if I were you, I’d get outta the investment biz right away. That curse is the real thing. 87 years is a long, long time to under perform the market. Still, the quicker you go broke, the faster Red Sox Nation will be celebrating the Red Sox replacing the Yankees as the new dynasty in the AL East.

If the title doesn’t make it clear that I’m upset, let me start by saying that an article I’ve just read on nytimes.com (registration required) has me neck-vein-throbbing apoplectic. (It’s my blog, and I’ll use 50¢ words if I want to, 50¢ words if I want to.)

In short, I don’t understand how the marketing people responsible for shaping the heads of psychiatrists to prescribe off-label uses of dangerous, highly-toxic drugs like Risperdal, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Abilify and Geodon for adolescents can freakin’ sleep at night.

Hey, I am a marketing guy, and I try everyday to get people to try to use the products I market in novel ways.

But nothing I market turns adolescents’ muscles into grotesque knots. What I market has been tested, in contrast to these drugs, none of which have
been tested on adolescents. And nothing I market is based on pure voodoo, camouflaged by 400 years of Western intellectual thought that has made psychiatry a “science” because we’re just too damn civilized to admit that the guy in the white coat is just the local shaman.

On the face of it, a doctor who prescribes an off-label use for a dangerous drug to kids is simply guessing. Hedge it anyway you want, but that’s what it is…a freakin’ guess. Sure, they can veneer it with plenty of pseudo-scientific talk, but the bottom line is they’re playing “20 questions” with your kids’ lives.

Why do they do it? It’s because the village diviners have no value unless they medicate (since they haven’t got a clue of what else to do). They do it because parents demand it (it makes them feel like they’re accomplishing something in the treatment of their children). They do it because the FDA lets them do it. (Consumer Reports says in its June 2007 issue that something like 21% of all drugs are prescribed for off-label uses.)

But mostly, they do it because the marketers at the pharmas tell them to.

Check out this quote from the article. This guy thinks it’s his “science” that convinces him to give kids prescription stimulants related to amphetamines. But we know it’s J&J’s marketing dollars, sent to him by marketing managers whose marketing logic is Mengele-esque:

Ten years ago, Dr. Realmuto [a University of Minnesota psychiatrist] helped conduct a study of Concerta, an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder drug marketed by Johnson & Johnson, which also makes Risperdal. When Concerta was approved, the company hired him to lecture about it.

He said he gives marketing lectures for several reasons.

“To the extent that a drug is useful, I want to be seen as a leader in my specialty and that I was involved in a scientific study,” he said.

The money is nice, too, he said. Dr. Realmuto’s university salary is $196,310.

“Academics don’t get paid very much,” he said. “If I was an entertainer, I think I would certainly do a lot better.”

Folks, save your kids from these very dangerous marketing people. Remember that your doctor has been bought and paid for. Snake-oil kills.

Mid-April! So metaphor rich: the Boston Marathon…tax season in the US…EMI and Apple Corps have settled their disputes.

What’s a blogger to do with all this? Easy: cram it all into a rant about Google.

You will advertise your product or service on Google. You will allow your competitors to bid against you for the sole purpose of increasing revenue for Google. You will take whatever Google believes is your rightful SEO position and you will never really know how it was determined (after all, they’ve read Kafka, too).

Finally, and most importantly, you will advertise like it was a marathon until you (or your budget) drops dead from exhaustion.

George said it best:

Let me tell you how it will be
There’s one for you, nineteen for me
‘Cause I’m the taxman
Yeah, I’m the taxman

So there, I’ve crammed it all into one more-or-less coherent rant about Google. What’d you think?

To the surprising large number of people who’ve emailed, called, IM’ed and otherwise let me know that you’re wondering why I haven’t posted lately, I offer as a short interlude this post with its “a picture tells a 1000 words” explanation.”

This is like the overly-long intermissions in 1960′s film musicals like My Fair Lady and West Side Story. Go get some popcorn, take a constitutional and I’ll be back shortly, brimming with fire about something or other.

First, I hope this racy image won’t have the MPAA giving my blog an R rating…but it was such a cool graphic I couldn’t help myself.

Well…ahem…back to the post at hand.

I’ve been taking some…uh…commentary from both friends and business associates about my apparent infatuation with all things blog and podcast, but especially about all things WordPress. You know, comments like “It’s OK to stop ranting about this now” and “Here comes the blogger.”

Mostly I smile and take it in stride because I know what they don’t: there’s a subculture around WordPress that is worldwide, massive and far more rabid that I could ever be.

It’s simple. WordPress is just too cool to ignore. Consider: a multi-user content management system easy enough for non-techies to author in and which middling geeks can setup and maintain for…uh…zero dollars.

But it’s not just that the system is so rich. It’s that there’s this amazing community that supports and enhances it. It’s the whole subculture that makes it so engrossing.

And what’s always amazed me about technical subcultures is their binary nature. Once you stumble onto (or into) them, being involved is like driving a fast car on the track. It consumes you a little.

The other side is that if you aren’t “in it,” not only does the subculture not exist at all for you, but you are likely to swear the subculture can’t exist. If someone twists your arm and forces you to look, the binary off state makes you minimize the value of the subculture (“Who reads blogs? I don’t know anyone important who reads them.” “Nobody’s making any money from blogging.” “My customers are pizza delivery people.” “Blog, schmog.”).

Today, two things happened that made it clear to me I’m clearly in the on state with the WordPress subculture.

First, I found the WordPress podcast. No surprise here…I loved it. This is a high-quality, authentic podcast about the subculture. It’s proof positive this thing has gotten bigger than outsiders can see.

Then, tonight, I had a long email thread with a plugin developer whose plugin isn’t working for me. Lemme tell you, Microsoft and IBM can’t support a product better than this or at lower cost. This guy is doing it for the community…for the subculture…because he likes it and he knows how important it is.

So, all I can say is, it’s good enough for me.

I’ve been Turkmen-bashing Apple here a lot (just read the most hilarious obit for Saparmurat Niyazov) for not yet having released a Vista-compatible iTunes. I can’t decide if it’s out of what I suspect is pique at Microsoft having shipped an OS that’s so Mac-like or, more probably, if it’s being a big, slow and unresponsive conglomerate that’s cruising more on astonishing marketing than satisfying customers.

Lest it be said I never have a nice word for Apple (as is often said about me and Microsoft, to whom I will shortly return to bashing like Niyazov’s beloved melons dropped off a roof), I gotta say my new 80GB iPod’s audio quality simply blows me away.

I have two kids. A teenager and a tween. As you might imagine, they are hard on iPods, destroying an average of one every 18 months. That’s OK, because the stinkin’ batteries don’t last that long anyway.

(Roger Greene, for whom I used to work at Ipswitch, is apparently as inveterate a heat-seeker as I am. When he upgraded years ago to, I think, a 4G iPod, he asked me if I wanted his 20GB 1G unit. Even though I already had a 10GB 1G iPod, I was glad to have the spare unit – my kids had already started eating iPods. Today, neither his nor my 1G iPod can last the two minutes it takes to play The Doors’ Hello, I Love You. And the $15 Apple sent me to make up for the short battery life buys about 4% of the 5.5G 80GB iPod. Thanks so much, Apple. At least you could honestly assert every successive iPod had better battery life than the previous generation.)

In what is probably a self-serving justification for satisfying my toy habit, the way it works here is that the kids get my latest iPod as a hand-me-down when they kill one of theirs. I get the new one. (-:

This time, I was really worried about passing along my 60GB 5G black iPod video when Becca came home and said:

“Dad, the iPod broke.”

“You mean you dropped it? Treated it like a bookmark between your 500 page history and math books in your backpack?”

“C’mon, Dad! Do you have to be so annoying? It just broke.”

The audio quality of that 5G iPod was superior, delivering vastly better performance than Bill Machrone heard on the 4G iPod. If you are willing to make slightly larger MP3′s using LAME’s VBR mode (I use 320 kbps as the maximum bit rate) and something like EAC (troublesome as it is to use) to really get them bits off the disc cleanly, you can produce MP3′s I defy you to differentiate from the uncompressed WAV file. With my Sennheiser PX100 phones, the 60GB iPod sounded sublime. Sure…purists will complain about “artifacts” and other inventions normal people cannot hear. But with this unit, there were times I would be running and would have to stop dead just to listen to the music. It was just that sublime.

But I am happy to report that the 5.5G 80GB unit I bought to replace the 60GB unit I gave my kid sounds even better. I wonder if the improvement is due to better decoding. But increasingly, I have come to think that the 5.5G unit sounds so good because Apple reduced noise in the amplifier.

Unlike nearly every MP3 player I’ve heard, this 5.5G unit says completely silent as you crank up the volume in phones with no program material. No hiss, no pops. Just silence. When used with the Logic7 audio system (13 speakers, 450 watts) in my car, the sound is simply astonishing.

This thing is so good it’s almost worth the price Apple makes me pay for a scratch-seeking, astonishingly fragile, non Vista-compatible MP3 player.

</Turkmen-apple-bashi>

Hello…Apple? Could you please please pretty please ship the freakin’ update of iTunes for Windows Vista?

I know – I just know – you have the thing finished. After all, if nearly everybody else could have their products somewhat ready for Vista, couldn’t you? I mean you own the whole MP3 marketplace, right? Surely someone on the iTunes team had access to MSDN and copies of Vista since frikin’ November, when it shipped to businesses.

You’re just waiting to inflict suffering on Vista early adopters, right? I don’t care if it’s spite or callousness. You’ve had your fun. Now, you gotta get over it, move on and ship the damn thing.

Seriously, you’ve made the point: Vista is hard to upgrade to. But is it really necessary to make the point by killing my iPod? I can’t sync pictures (I left the darn computer on overnight), music and podcasts syncing is a mess and takes forever. My library is a disaster. If you can ship a fix to play iTunes store purchases, you can ship the whole thing.

C’mon now…you’ve made the point? How about acting like you like the customers who bought iPods to use with Windows.

Just when you think you’ve outgrown all sense of fashion, peer pressure and have resigned yourself to your own middle-aged individuality, along comes a jolting reminder than your cohort’s tastes may change, but the pressure to conform doesn’t.

I was scanning a newsletter for a client and ran across this amazing story: BMW owners love HDTV’s. Then I downloaded the entire report and discovered that I am doing precisely what I am being told to do by the marketing machines of several technology and automotive companies.

I took comfort in that. At least if I am not original, I am cooperative.

A cold that I brought back from Europe resulted this week in a cough nasty enough to remind me of the incessant hacking, phlegm-ing and general mucous-ness of a smoker I once had the misfortune to sit across from. Yech.

But in the “better living through chemistry” department: my doctor gave me a prescription to retard the near disgorging of my lungs through my throat: a codeine-laced “cough syrup.” Man, when you pick up this stuff at the pharmacy, they look at you like you’re some time-machined refugee from an 18^th century opium den. I couldn’t figure out why…until I took one tiny little teaspoon full.

Maybe I am just easily intoxicated. But this stuff not only stopped my urge to cough – it took me off the planet. To a planet where nobody coughs…nobody speaks…and nobody can hear the colors in your mind.

People who know me know I’m not a big drinker…and drugs never appealed to me. So maybe it’s just low tolerance, but as soon as I finish this post (delayed for hours by hacking my brains out)…there’s a spoonful calling me.

I know that in the torrent of comment, wailing and teeth-gnashing the blogosphere, podosphere and ipodo-universe will generate about Steve Job’s comments on digital-rights management, my little post here will live in obscurity. Still, I can’t help myself: I’m blue in the face with envy…Envy of Apple’s marketing brilliance. And the power they have to call the kettle black.

Face it, this diatribe is as self-serving, as blind to reality, as any piece of propaganda written during the Cultural Revolution. Apple doesn’t give a damn — not a freakin’ blob of spittle — about “openness” or “accessibility.”

But, by putting the onus on the record companies for the big, bad DRM Apple is “forced” to use (against its will!), they neatly avoid the real issue: they’d rather die than open iPod to anyone.

But the world will applaud Jobs for taking this stance. Apple has neatly deflected the fact that its near monopoly of digital music players and downloads gives it market power it refuses to use. And by smearing everyone from Microsoft to the big record companies, Apple brilliantly panders to the conventional wisdom while adding luster to its brand.

Man, these guys are good…really, really good. I only wish I could stop feeling like Winston Smith.

Every now and then, even the best of us does really stupid stuff. Thursday, February 1 was my day.

I was headed home from Paris after a good set of meetings…all I had to do was get to the airport on time.

We were booked on Air France 332, leaving CDG at 1:15pm. The instructions said the check-in deadline was 12:15pm. I’ve even got proof. Here’s a snippet from the itinerary:

1:15 PM Paris, Charles de Gaulle (CDG) – France – Terminal 2E
Deadline for check-in : 12:15 PM
3:00 PM Boston, Logan Intl (BOS) MA – Usa

So, when does stuff run on time in France? Apparently only when the taxi you ordered for 10am shows up at 11:05am when you have to get from the Eiffel Tower to CDG in 70 minutes. We saw the taxi arrive just as we were running to the Metro to take the train.

It took us exactly 73 minutes…we arrived breathless at the gate at 12:18pm and were denied boarding. Worse, we were told that the real deadline was 11am…that the reservation system was wrong. Who knew?

That 3 minute miss cost me another 24 hours in Paris…and the searing crticism of my client who pronounced the whole episode “bush league.”

Ouch. Frickin’ mega OUCH.

I pride myself on being a wizened world-traveler. Though this was the first time I’ve missed a plane in over 20 years, it still makes you feel stupid.

The next day the check-in agents appeared to have pity on us. The plane wasn’t full and they put us upstairs (AF has economy-class seats upstairs on its 747-400s. That quiet, spacious upper deck is usually business class on other airlines.) I had a whole row to myself…and 7 hours 45 minutes of time to consider how expensive three minutes can be.

If you even lightly press the “talk technology” button on Alex, you are more than likely going to get a lot of gushing from me about WordPress.

Since I first found WordPress 2.0 in the early summer, I’ve been amazed at what I, last a developer 15 years ago, could do with this industrial-strength, multi-user content management and publishing system.

It’s so astonishingly simple in concept…so amazingly easy to implement that I’ve had great success in getting people to use it. And, as a further testament to its ease of use, I’ve even seen what can charitably be described as low- to no-talent geeks convince themselves they’re the next Torvalds because of the instant feeling of success one gets using WordPress.

But now, even when I thought it couldn’t get any better, along comes WordPress 2.1. Following the instructions for upgrading took about an hour (much of that spent backing up files). After that, everything worked perfectly.

This is my first post in WordPress 2.1 and I’ve already fallen in love even though I’ve only been using it for about 10 minutes.

When you’ve been around software as long as I have there are a couple of ways that you can tell right away when something “has it.” In WordPress 2.1, those indications are all over the product. From the fact that it upgrades more easily than any complex publishing system has a right to, to the small stuff like a “last saved” indicator in the editor and subtle yet massive improvements in the UI that don’t make the user re-learn anything, WordPress 2.1 might be the most impressive and accessible achievement the open-source community has created.

Matt and the team: congratulations, and thank you very much.

Wow! Is this Internet thing powerful or what?

Over the Xmas holiday, a well-known security expert and professor in New Zealand named Peter Gutman wrote and posted on the ‘net a scathing critique of Windows Vista’s new DRM technology.

Now, it’s nearly impossible for you to go anywhere on the ‘Net without seeing people podcast and blog about it.

Wait…hold on…wait! Before you decide you would rather die than read an expose of Vista security, consider Gutman’s “Executive Executive summary”:

The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.

The entire paper is full of such pithy, outraged writing, and I highly recommend it to you.

But I am struck by two things…beyond my outrage at the allegations Gutman makes.

First, this is another example of the overriding importance of the ‘net. People from the CAD community, the security community and a bazillion other communities have begun fervent discussions of this paper. Normally, these communities are somewhat isolated from each other. But when something like this “breaks out” into general discussion among communities, it’s a beautiful thing to watch and so much more powerful.

Second…and here’s where I can’t help myself…I just love it when MSFT gets whacked. I know they’ve tried hard to reform themselves. I know they aren’t the overarching power broker they once were. And I know there are lots of hard-working and bright people in Microsoft. Still, they deserve it.

Microsoft is a leader in an industry where strong, undiluted ideas come right at them. They can’t plead innocence. But they have a consistent habit of being tone deaf.

I’m sorry that it makes me gleeful that they’re getting whacked. But it amuses me to watch a company that built a monopoly on the back of an open, ubiquitous platform clumsily close that platform and pay the price at the hands of multiple online communities.

I am seriously bent out of shape by an editorial entitled “Franchise Freedom” that I read in the January 2, 2007 edition of the Wall Street Journal.

I can’t link to the editorial here, because even the Journal’s red-meat-Republican opinions are locked behind a subscription site. (How very web-centric…how very authentic it makes me think they are when they report on the Internet. See?…I’m so upset I am “side-ranting.”)

What’s got me so fired up are the unfounded, baseless accusations printed in the editorial to add emphasis to the Journal’s support of the smoke-filled-room FCC action to “deregulate” the cable TV franchising process.

Fortunately, nobody believes this FCC gift to the regional Bells will stand.

So, enter the WSJ…defender of mega-telcos against people like me. I am apparently “beholden” to the cable industry. (I may be infamous elsewhere, but I absolutely guarantee you nobody in Charter Communications in Worcester knows who I am.)

I and my hard-working colleagues on the Southborough Cable TV Committee have been, apparently, “shaking down” Verzion for things like service to our whole town, requests to interconnect their system with the existing system for public programming and a fair level of support for continuing that programming.

I’m incensed. (Duh!) I wrote the Journal a letter, which met with complete silence. I’ve copied it here, mostly for catharsis.

Last year, you may remember that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia got upset for being caught giving a gesture in public that conveys precisely how I feel about the Journal’s editorial. Since Justice Scalia is a favorite of the Journal’s opinion editors, I though I’d send them an “alito” of my own. Maybe they understand that better.

Here’s the letter I sent the Journal:

Dear Sir and/or Madame:

Usually, your more strident opinions roll off my back easily.

But reading Franchise Freedom (WSJ, January 2. 2007) felt more like being stabbed in the back. As a member of a “so-called” local franchising authority, I vehemently reject the accusation that anyone is “shaking down” the competitive cable applicant in my Town. Further, nobody I know working in the largely volunteer cable franchising authorities in Massachusetts cities and towns is doing anything “at the behest of the cable industry.” It’s wrong of you to assert that is the case and an insult to many of the good people working on these issues at the local level. Painting us with the brush of corruption is facile…and dead wrong.

On the contrary, the Bells have used their resources and power at the Federal and state regulatory and legislative levels to seek expedited entry to the cable business while simultaneously dragging their heels and bemoaning their fate at the lands of local officials. They simply placed multiple bets…and the FCC rolled their number. Meanwhile, they just sat pat. The irony is that with local authorities – like my Town — who have consistently expressed a desire for rapid negotiations and which want vigorous cable competition, the imperious Bells have slow-rolled us while seeking a better regulatory deal.

What the FCC’s decision has done is to introduce chaos to the franchising process, ultimately delaying cable competition by ensuring legal challenges and injecting uncertainty into the process. Disrupting 40 years of well-established process does not accelerate government. It paralyzes it, and for far longer than more comprehensively thought-out deregulation would have. This was bad public policy…and a not-so-subtle parting gift from the Republicans to the Bells.

You have reflexively sided with the Bells, impugning not just the entire cable industry (an easy target, I must admit) but also scores of well-intentioned and civic-minded people who have until now effectively managed local cable franchising. The system does need improvement – and both Democrat FCC Commissioners said as much during hearings – but that change cannot come by transferring public assets to the Bells.

Thank you.

Alex Neihaus

Oooooh, Mama! There’s some serious fur flying in the blogosphere.

You all know I am a car junkie. And you all know I am a blog junkie. I satisfy both cravings with a healthy dose of car blogs and forums, with my favorite being The Truth About Cars.

This blog has it all: killer writing, a sense of humor and the balls to tell it like it is. In contrast to the rest of the pablum I consume about cars, these guys (apparently) could care less what the traditional car press thinks of them. These guys are nobody’s sycophants.

OTOH, I’ve admired GM for its early adoption of the blogosphere, if not for its pitiful products. For a company that just doesn’t get it on the product or marketing side, I’ve thought they’ve shown at least passing glimmers of “getting it” on their Fastlane blog.

GM had a podcast that, for a while, was cute. It featured this PR woman with the most nasal Midwestern twang I’ve ever heard who fawned over the GM execs she was able to get on the phone. When they got Corvette engineers to talk into their low-production-value podcasts (these podcasts are like GM interiors), you understood the meaning of unctuousness. But it was early corporate grokking of the blogosphere for 2005…and it was way inventive for GM.

Once, Lutz himself gave what I still think is a compelling description (about 2/3 of the way into this podcast) of why the blogosphere required authenticity and corporate involvement. I agree that the blogosphere is way to even the tables, even when across the table from you is Chubba Cheddar-cheese who’s never seen a press junket he didn’t like.

Still, GM management is responsible for destroying an American industrial icon through inexplicable and inexpressible hubris. And I’ve wondered why Lutz has never been culpable for this. He’s been there long enough. He’s delivered his own Aztek (or two).

But now…but now…it’s gotten really hot in the kitchen. The Truth About Cars is personally blasting Lutz, in its long-running (and sadly poignant) GM Death Watch over Lutz’s inchoate rant about CAFE.

If you like cars, you gotta read both posts, along with all the comments. If you don’t like cars, you still gotta read the posts and comments.

It’s all there: all the tragedy of GM’s arrogance, the unmasking of Lutz as just-another-cog-in-the-machine-of-GM-destruction, the astonishing balls of TTAC to write and post what it did, the car community going nutz over these posts.

I’m never going to need to watch another female mud-wrestling contest as long as these beeatches keep this up.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve never been a Microsoft fan. I’ve considered their products derivative and their business practices despicable. Office was a response to Lotus SmartSuite and Outlook has always been stuck at Notes Release 3 in terms of user interface. Meanwhile, Microsoft to this day is still trying to kill what remains of the Notes/Domino customer base despite the fact that the remaining base is simply IBM customers who will never ever convert to Exchange.

But, I am completely and totally blown away by the blogging support in Microsoft Word 2007. I’m writing this post in Word 2007…and the support for my blog – from uploading graphics to category support – is superior. Finally…finally…they’ve nailed something inventive. Now, you can comfortably write and edit posts in Word, the de facto standard word processor.

This ain’t just pigs flying for me…it’s freakin’ flying frogs. (If you’ve never had the opportunity to make a kid giggle while reading Tuesday by David Wiesner go out right now buy the book and find a three to five year old to read it to. )

A bit of background: I’ve been worried about Office 2007 for quite some time. I’m an expert user of Office and the idea of the ribbon bothers me. For example, I actually rely on customized toolbars. Except for Outlook 2007, that capability has been removed in Office 2007. Also, there’s a lot of eye candy in Office 2007. I’m no neo-Luddite, but I actually worried about losing my expertise or, worse, having to essentially re-learn all the tricks I rely on every day. From Shift-F7 in Word to open the thesaurus to Ctrl-1 in Excel to format a cell, I simply didn’t want to have to change.

So, just to see how bad it would be (after all, if Microsoft says you want to use their new suite, it’s less an invitation than a command. Eventually, you pretty much have to do as you’re told when it comes to what Microsoft wants from you.), I set up a WinXP virtual machine and downloaded the 60-day trial of Office 2007 Professional.

And though I expected to be truly pissed off at the ribbon, the loss of desktop real estate and what I suspected would be poor performance, I am actually blown away. For me, blogging support in Word means that my clients as well as I can write more “comfortably” than ever. RSS support in Outlook is my other I’ve-been-using-it-for-two-hours new feature.

Bottom line: Microsoft often gets criticism for not offering compelling features for upgrades of Office. That’s why I have a client still on Office 97. But this time, Microsoft is getting my (ouch!) $300 for a shiny new copy of Office 2007.

Many pundits who review software are saying that Microsoft has "caught up" with Firefox in Internet Explorer 7 (here and here, among others).

I beg to differ. Since the mid-1990s, what Microsoft has done — time after time — is deliver pale imitations of others' UI inventions. Have you ever used the View menu in Outlook? Of course not…because it's a bad imitation of Notes release 3's view menu, which Lotus dumped in about 1996.

Have you seen Office 2007? This is the first release in which Microsoft has done it all itself, having abandoned the "common user access" design metaphor it ripped off from IBM during the 1980s joint venture. (Historical note: the menu system and windows graphic controls descended from an IBM product called GDDM, which lead to OS/2 Presentation Manager. In fact, Microsoft used to actually distributed the IBM Common User Access manuals with Windows 3.1 SDK's.)

Office 2007 is a complete mess. The eye candy gets in the way of anything you want to do, reduces screen real estate for the actual work to near nothing and doesn't make life any easier for novices. That's what you get when Microsoft tries to "innovate." And as for Vista, well…I don't use a Mac, but even I can see they've copied Tiger.

Tonight a single difference between IE7 and Firefox 2.0 crystallized this for me.

You can almost hear the design discussion in Microsoft during the IE7 planning meetings: "We gotta get us some tabbed browsing. It's killing us to not have it. Put it in…now."

So, you end up with IE7's "interpretation" of tabbed browsing, which includes a close box (the red "x") on each tab. 

What happens if you accidentally hit that close button? I have, and I'll bet thousands of others have in a rush to get somewhere else on the screen in a hurry. In IE7, you've lost that tab. It's gone. You gotta open a new window and reload the page.

In Firefox — which admittedly didn't have the close box until Firefox 2.0 — the developers have really innovated. You can undo the close. Check out these two images from the context menu (right click menu) of each browser:

See the "undo close tab" selection? Click this, and a new tab is opened and the last page is reloaded. True innovation from the open-source Firefox folks.

Here's the equivalent context menu from IE7:

A pale imitation, to be sure. Just enough for Microsoft to obscure, once again, true innovation by delivering "just enough" to say they have the thing they couldn't invent themselves.

OK, you say, nobody uses context menus and nobody ever undoes an accidental close.

Maybe (though I found it and used it). But my point is about innovation.

Microsoft just doesn't have any. 

Sometimes, the combination of a new medium (podcasting, in this case the video version of it some people call vlogging) with politics and journalism produces something very, very special.

Alive in Baghdad is an impressive example. I won't go on here about what it means…or how it affected me. That's for you to discover for yourself. Please…click on the link right now…watch the videos, read the blog entries.

Then, please send Brian Conley a contribution and spread the world about this project. These guys are famous inside the podcasting world. But they deserve to be heard and seen by a much wider audience. 

Pretty picture, ain't it?

Actually, it's what's happening to this blog, despite my good intentions. What we rail about over on the corporate blog and in our podcast — the orphaned blog — is beginning to happen here.

I've got a million excuses, some of them pretty darn good. I'm blogging like a maniac for clients, AgencyNext's blog is really getting traction and needs attention, my life is busy and full.

But it's bull. Like the kid above who needs to stop making excuses for all the candy, if I wanted to make this blog bigger, I would and I could.

I'm sad.

Lotus Notes — which played a huge role in my career — has been vanquished more or less completely by Microsoft (though they won't stop attacking until the carcass has dessicated into dust). And its (formerly) thought-provoking leadership has apparently come down with an early case of Alzheimer's, is lost and looks like those poor bastards sleeping on the grates in Copley Square next to the Boston Public Library.

What's set me off? This completely trite, pedestrian, and useless bromide of "etiquette" when using instant messaging. Was this supposed to be some kind of post-Foley joke? You know, here's all the stuff he should have done, like remembering to "introduce yourself." Or remembering to "act professionally."

C'mon, this stuff isn't fit for the unsold ad space in an in-flight magazine on Outer Zambian Airways. Or maybe the execs at IBM/Lotus are casting their eyes enviously on the Boston Globe's Sunday business etiquette column. You know…"Mr. Notes says flossing your teeth while emailing is tres rude."

What happened? Why have they given up even the appearance of having one competitive brain cell rubbing against the other?

It's simple: all the good minds have moved on. That's what's left…manners lessons from IBM execs for the collaboration challenged.

I remember reciting the Humpty-Dumpty rhyme for my kids. I know a lot of revisionist people think these nursery rhymes have a violent streak to them. But in this case, it's a pretty good message: break it, and you can't put it back together again.

I wonder if there's an equivalent message for non-English speaking kids. Maybe so…maybe not. But I would assume that whatever their background, people get the message somewhere along the way: at some point, you just can't say, "ooppsss…sorry about that" and pretend it never happened.

What's this got to do with anything? Simple…putting the eggshell pieces together only reminds people that you broke the egg.

If you make a promise — in business or in life — then renege on it, it doesn't matter what you do to try and make it up after the fact. The egg is done gone and broke.

I’m in love…with WordPress.

Since late July, I’ve been using this amazing system to produce blogs. What blows me away is that this system has all the features of industrial-strength commercial software.

Having been in the software biz since the 70s, I never thought I’d ever be able to say that about an open-source, GPL-licensed product. And trust me, WordPress is a real product in every sense of the word as I’ve heard it used in my software experience.

What’s so astonishing to me is that no matter what task I’ve needed it to do in the last 90 days, there’s been either a way to do it in the base product or a plug-in that did it and which we could install and use in minutes.

The plug-in that has just totally blown me away this week is Podpress. This is a simply astonish piece of functionality that turns WordPress into the most amazing podcast feed imaginable. Total time to install and customize: about 30 minutes.

Today, with zero training in PHP (and very little HTML background to boot), I was able to customize a template in WordPress. Though the finer points of CSS and browser incompatibility continue to drive me wild with frustration, for a curious hobbyist, there’s nothing else like it on the Internet. With WordPress and a run-of-the-mill ISP hosting account (1and1 has a great one for $3/month), you can achieve a level of muti-user content management and publishing unheard of for hundreds of thousands of dollars just a few years ago.

I style myself as a geek snob, knowing what’s good and what ain’t in tech. I haven’t got the words to describe how amazing WordPress is. 

My Google searching skills must be off…way off. I'd been trying for days to find an authoritative recommendation for when to switch from summer (actually All-Season) tires to snow tires.

I just couldn't find anything other than the usual forum drivel. But then Tire Rack sent me instructions with the new winter tires I ordered and voila! An answer!

Seems that once the air temperature stays consistently below 45F, it's time to switch the tires. Apparently — and I liked this logic — the compounds on winter tires stay softer at lower temperatures. Becoming more rigid is what makes summer and All-Season tires less effective in the snow. But, if you put winter tires on too early, they're so soft they just melt away.

Lest you think I have hit rock bottom on blogging ideas, I want to tell you that I actually find this scintillating. No excuses…I'm into tire tech. Far from being lowly pieces of rubber, my flirtations with track days have taught me that very little is more important than the tires.

So, now you know. And, admit it…just to yourself…don't you feel at least a little smarter?

Dear Mr. or Ms. Someone-who-knows-better,

I owe you an apology. I didn't approve your comment of August 27th in reply to my post of July 21 until today because it ended up in the spam bucket (imagine that!) and I didn't see it until today. Sorry about that.

It's my policy to allow all comments unless they are clearly spam or in poor taste. I don't want you to think that I deliberately censored your freedom of expression, even when you're using that freedom to trash me from behind the cover of a fake email address and spoofed Internet address.

I don't consider your rant in poor taste…honestly. I think you have some unresolved issues, but you have the right to say whatever you like about me. Even on my blog, on my nickel. It's clear we have met, or worked together, or maybe even shared a meal or two. Who knows? Who cares?

What's clear, though, is that you took personally something I said on July 21 …a full month later. How could that be? What makes you think it's addressed to you or anyone in particular? Are we cutting a little too close to the bone somehow? Did you recognize something in you that made you see red? Are you so sure it's about you?

Being just a little self-centered there, don't you think? I wouldn't want this to veer off into into something really pathological. So, calm down…we're all good, you and me (whoever you are).

Oh, by the way, if you have anything else you'd like to say, go ahead…this blog is open…I'll just spend more time looking in the trash folder. Promise.

Today, I learned a lot about complacency . Not mine (though I'll bet I'm guilty more than just occasionally). This time, it's the complacency of someone else, which makes it a lot easier to see.

In the business world, that "I've got it covered, don't worry" attitude sometimes goes along with being in an established company. You think you can squash the "bugs", the little guys…just flit them away simply because you are who you are, or because you work in the firm you do or because you have some money in the bank.

That's an underestimation organizations and individuals can live to regret. And, believe me, the penalty for being smug is usually directly proportional to the level of complacency. The more you are sure you don't have a problem, the more likely you are to be stunned.

I found this astonishing podcast the other day, and I have to tell you, it's may be the best podcast I've heard in a long time. Right, you say….a podcast on English grammar?

I run three miles every morning. Because I am not a natural athlete and at 6am my body is…shall we say…reluctant, my iPod is my motivator to do something I really don't like. I need the aural stimulation. Most days, it's Led Zeppelin or equivalent that does the trick.

So, how could a podcast about English grammar be a must-listen at dawn? Simple: it's fascinating. I write (a lot) and Grammar Girl gives me what I want to know about doing it better. She sounds young, but reminds me of Mrs. Kendall, my 5th grade English teacher (would you believe I was in 5th grade in 1965? Some readers of this blog believe that's too old to be useful).

That old lady (she was ancient in 1965) drilled us hard. And I know I wasn't the only kid to come out of that class in Jacksonville, Fla. able to make a subject and verb agree in number.

And, OK, I'll admit it: I find the odd rules and irregularities of English grammar as intricate and pleasurable as fans do who live in online virtual environments and who spend years in role-playing games. I love knowing what's correct, what isn't and how to string a sentence together. And Grammar Girl is helping me do it better.

There are very, very few podcasts like that. (My other must-listen is, of course, Security Now!.)

So, even though the guys in the office (that would be you, Sterling and Dave) were merciless and full of ridicule, I'm a big fan of Grammar Girl. You should be, too.

I take a lot of guff from people about my obsession with cars. In particular, I am currently getting no pity — none – for lusting after a new car. Not this one (it's a coupe)…but the one rumored to follow later in '07: a 335i sedan. 

I gotta have one in this color.

Why? It's not the twin-turbocharged 300hp engine. Nope, don't care about about the paddle shifters (though it does mean that I can even buy the car because we have to have an automatic).

Nah, what I want, what's gonna cost me — big time — are the real time traffic reports in the navigation system. Got a navi on my current 330i. But like a real geek, I gotta buy a whole new car just to get a software upgrade.

Isn't there something I can take to control this? 

Like Lady Macbeth, Germany once again is trying — mechanistically, naturally — to deal with its criminal past. This time it turns out that a famous author signed up for the Waffen-SS. And just like it ever was, Germany’s celebrated Günter Grass turns out to have the same damn’d spot Lady Macbeth tried hard to, but couldn’t, wash away.

This review of Grass’s autobiography by a UK author comes closest — at least for a while — to assessing the contradictions of an old man whose memory is claimed to be failing, who refers to the nasty, racist Grass as “he” and the kinder, gentler, purged-of-his-guilt older Grass as “I.”

But to call the autobiography of a closet criminal “entertaining” and to ponder uncritically the impact of the new German cultural lie “we were victims, too” misses the fundamental point: this culture was and remains deeply disingenuous.

Europeans like to think they know all about Americans and American culture. I’ve had cabbies in Amsterdam describe Southern fundamentalists to me. I’ve had French from Corsica tell me everything I wanted to know about my home town, New York City. The rest of the world “knows” us because they purchase our popular culture.

But they don’t know us. Ours is a society deeply divided over things like the war in Iraq and domestic social policies. But do our authors hide their war service? Do they spend a lifetime covering up their complicity, only to minimize it when it’s revealed? Not a chance.

Only in Europe, in the heart of the beast, in Germany, could a cultural icon turn out to be so guilty.

This new demonstration of an old German flaw coincides with a book I am reading. As part of her summer’s reading, my younger daughter read Dry Tears. She asked me to read it as well. Herr Grass and your fellow countrymen: the truth is right there in the words of an 11-year-old girl. Stop washing your hands till they bleed. The skin rubs off, but the guilt remains.

Sometimes the synchronicity of it all blows me away.

First, I was really excited to discover a completely new, wonderful word: susurrus, which means "a whispering or rustling sound". I saw it it, in of all places, in an editorial today in the Wall Street Journal decrying the public whipping Sir Paul McCartney and his wife are giving each other in their big-time divorce.

That got me to thinking about how corrosive divorce is, as several people and families close to me are dealing with the catastrophe of divorce right now, today. 

Then, I got to thinking about how sururrations of lies, deceit and misdirection were evident early on in a recent personal experience. But you can't hear susurrus when you're inside busting your butt and the waves of mendacity are rolling in on the tide.

Yeah, I know that's a long-winded, OED-over-maxed way of saying, "you can't hear a leaf falling in the forest when you're in downtown traffic." But I am certain some of you reading this know exactly what I mean and to whom it's directed.

And then I was looking for a graphic about gossip (which is usually susurrated). Came across this beauty on Wikipedia which was perfect in its early Soviet anger and matched the Russian theme of another blog post I wrote today over on www.agencynext.com.

It's all too synchronous. 

Good question, isn't it? This is the view from the place we rented for a family vacation this week on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.

The weather has been a 10. The water is cold. (This is freakin' New England, for sure.)

And a lot happened. I'm not sure how to sum it all up. 

Daddy's Junkie Music ripped off my kid. She worked all summer to buy a used keyboard from them. They sold it to her with a power supply that would've fried the keyboard. We discovered it and fixed it with a trip to Radio Shack. (Doesn't it depress you when you shop in a rural mall on vacation?)

Growing old: my kid also worked on college essays. This might be the last (or next to last) family vacation.

My younger kid alternated between math drills, swimming (she's officially categorized as a "flying fish" after her earlier two weeks on the Lake at summer camp) and making sure we ate a lot of ice cream.

She also drove a motorized vehicle for the first time at a go-kart place. Crashing three times pissed off the staff, but, hey, it was a safe place to give a 10 year old the controls.

My wife spent the week looking ravishing in the summer sun and spending long hours with me on the deck you see above reading. (I finally got through The DaVinci Code. What bullshit. What pandering. The sacred feminine? C'mon, this was a book that mixed bad religion and homeopathic doses of sex for titillation.)

Finally, tonight as the sun set in downtown Wolfeboro and we sat on the dock eating dinner in the glorious late summer, I realized the difference between Disney and the real world.

At Disney, everything conspires to make the predictable happen. In the real world, when everything is absolutely, unimpeachablly perfect, nothing could conspire to make it so. It simply happens. You're there, you're in the moment, and you gotta make sure you see it when it happens.

I've been cartharisizing here lately about my own apparent naivete.

But today, I want to rant about something else: those who profess integrity but define it by their own standards. You know, the ones who think nothing of copping a little free music from the 'Net or making promises they have no intention of keeping.

They're hard to read at first because they really don't think they've done anything wrong. Only later, when they're exposed do you experience the full force of the contradiction: they're mendacious by most objective measures, in fact by any measure, except their own. 

But the reality is that when you're an lying asshole, you're simply a lying asshole. Protest all you want, get all the sycophants who need you to help nestle you in a cloud, but you're still a lying asshole.

Damn! I feel better.

So, I recently asked someone what my good qualities were, and he said loyalty was one of them.

Did believing that I was loyal make any difference in this relationship? Apparently not, as I think today's image aptly describes what happened.

It's gotten me to thinking that loyalty (apart from that you express to your family and bonded friends) is sorely misplaced in the larger world.

Yeah, yeah. I know I am freakin' naive.

If you are interested in marketing for technology companies, head on over to my colleague Sterling Hager's latest observations on what's real in the world of making your product famous. 

Sure, Mel. Send us roses, crank up the defensive PR and get a lot of sympathy for your "struggle" with alcoholism.

But we all know that the desperation to blame your disease is only a cover for the reality that you're a closet bigot.

Funny thing about alcohol: with vino comes veritas.

Please do get well. Treat the disease; then maybe you can attack that bigotry as a sober guy. Meanwhile, spare us the phony contrition.

Last Monday, my partner and I had to visit a client in NYC.

Can't take the shuttle; the tunnel will kill you before you get to the airport.

So, for the first time ever, I decided to take the Acela from Route 128 to Penn Station in NYC because Penn Station is just five minutes' walk from the clients' office.

So, what does one do today when you book tickets? You book online, right? And while you're booking the tickets, when you come to the "enter promotional code" entry, you open a new window and search Google for "amtrak and discount."

It takes about five seconds to find the best discount. Here I found a code for 25% off. Bam! In goes the code and off come the bucks. Round trip BOS-NYC for about $125. Can't beat it. I'm happy, and thinking that if the train is nice, this might be the new thing.

But — and this is what I just can't believe — when I got to the station to pick up the tickets, the clerk balked, saying "there's been some abuse of H570." (He gave me the tickets anyway.)

Now, Amtrak really has to be tone deaf to think that if it sends its frequent prisoners a discount coupon it isn't going to be widely discussed by the inmates. And that those forums will get crawled. And that I would find it in a heartbeat.

Where did Amtrak think the emails would go?

Worse, their idiot marketers not only tried to put the genie back in the bottle, they asked their poor clerks to do it for them.  What is the clerk going to do, except piss off customers who have already bought and paid for discounted tickets?

You end up getting on the train all bent out of shape after having been confronted by the clerk, who really could care less but who has been ordered to police something I suspect they really don't understand.

After all this, the ride wasn't too bad (except for the conductor wearing an Amtrak uniform who when asked a question said, "I don't know. Ask Amtrak. I just punch the tickets."). But it sure doesn't make me want to ride the train again. I'm seeing H570 in my nightmares now. 

Sorry, Shakespeare. But this phrase from Hamlet comes to mind as I've been reflecting on the nature of false modesty.

Actually, I've learned quite a lot about this particular affliction from up close, personal contact with it. And what I've finally realized (maybe a little late) is that someone that "doth protest too much" is really masking a naked, ugly, overwhelming arrogance.

False modesty is an especially effective mask for arrogance. In cultures where arrogance is both endemic and therefore taboo, false modesty is the cover up. With false modesty, a guilt-ridden society can appear reformed while endorsing culturally impermissible arrogance.

False modesty is the sedative for arrogance's cutting blade. False modesty trades on apparent sincerity, lulling victims into an early trust. Once sedated, the cutting can begin. Then, the sudden personality bait-and-switch reveals penetrating aggression. Like a snake that paralyzes the prey before eating it, false modesty transfixes people.

The unmasked lie only makes the aggression worse. You end up recoiling at two things. The lie of false modesty itself. And worse, you are repulsed with embarrassment at the arrogance laid bare.

Now, when I hear people deny expertise they clearly want, my guard will be up. Way up.

I was reading Scoble's post about Ford's attempts to use the blogosphere to help them overcome the fact that their cars just plain stink.

So, OK, it's all right with me if Scoble decides to hawk Ford PR's blog, and it's professionally-produced-to-look-verite documentary (which is too slick to be real, too manipulative to be credible and which defines sycophant, as all the "heavy discussion" in the room revolves around the senior exec).

But what's not OK is how Ford responds to the New York Times lambasting they took last weekend: 

"We here at FordBoldMoves.com understand exactly what social media is and how important the 'social' part of that phrase will be going forward."

You know, I love Led Zeppelin, and I do a mean air guitar on "Whole Lotta Love." But it doesn't make a single note come out of thin air.

And Ford — so dumb as to cancel the only cars they have high loyalty with, the somnolent Town Car — can wave its arms all it wants about understanding online communities, but they'll never, ever get it.

I've worked in these giant corporations. And they do sit around their desks trying to be hip, and cool, and blog-y. But they never really want to be other than what they were before: successful on their own terms. Understanding social media means not being corporate. It means having something really interesting to say. It means being able to "take it." Does anyone really believe Ford can take it? If so, why is their blog registration only?

IBM tried this with OS/2. First they had the "OS/2 Fiesta Bowl" in which college football players got tackled on OS/2 logos painted on the field. Then they tried "OS/2 Ambassadors" which was the early 1990's version of community.

IBM ultimately gave up on the attempt to grasp community and on a product nobody wanted. Ford will do the same thing when the coolsters on their marketing staff have had their fill of trying to follow the directions from the 64-pound box of Madison Ave. brand "Whipped Internet Community Mix."

Mr. Fields: build cars people want, build them well. Let your engineers talk, not your PR people who so very much want to make you feel good about Ford (and who, apparently, are succeeding despite the real downward spiral your company is in).

Stop trying pretending to know something about community; it only makes you look even more pitiful, like Grandma in a mini-skirt and knee-high boots.

Some people go to the beach on hot Saturdays in July. They pack the family in the minivan, load up on sunscreen and fight for a parking spot at Signing Beach or Horseneck Beach. Some give up and spend the day in Revere standing in line at Kelly's for too much roast beef and an order of fries large enough to add five pounds to people who normally have a tapeworm in their stomachs.

Not me. I prefer to spend my day Autocrossing with the Boston Chapter of the BMW Car Club of America. 

In case you aren't familiar with AutoX, it's a form of racing in which you navigate a devilish course of parking cones as fast as you can. It's your car — and your driving skills — against the clock. Believe me, it's not as easy as you might think.

What I love about it is that it allows you safely test the limits of your skill. All you can hit is a cone. Better still, you don't have to be hard core about it, though many people are. The hard core types range from those with an extra set of racing wheels and tires to people who trailer in non-street-legal AutoX cars.

Me? I just add air to my tires, make sure the lug nuts are tight and drive my daily driver — yeah, that one with the automatic transmission — right onto the course. Nobody cares. This is competitive within classes, but very friendly.

So, I've done this before with an S2000. But this is the first time I've AutoX'ed my E90.

More significantly, it was the first time my 17-year-old daughter had ever been to an AutoX.

And not only was it fun, but it illustrated a point to her that I could have never made as clear in words or other example: people who drive like fools on the street are, in fact, fools.

AutoX is about speed, of course, but it's more about control of speed. My daughter sat in the car during my runs and came away knowing two important things. First, there's never a chance, never ever, to drive like you do in an AutoX on public roads. Second, the skills you learn in AutoX are directly transferable to the street: you lean to quickly yield, avoid or detour around the pre-pubescent Massholes on the roads in their Mustangs and Camaros who obviously have a right foot but nothing connected to it.

People here in eastern Massachusetts are just plain revolted today with our government's inability to build public infrastructure that's safe. Note that I am not even asking for on-time or reasonably on budget. Just safe.

This isn't the first time in my lifetime that Massholes in government have taken the Commonwealth to the cleaners. Sharp local minds will remember the construction scandal of the 1970's constructing UMass buildings, of which the New York Times said, in part, 

Corruption in state and local government in Massachusetts was so pervasive in the 1960's and  1970's" that it became ''a way of life,'' a special state investigating commission concluded today after two and a half years of study. In one of the most sweeping indictments ever made of the conduct of a state government, the commission said that bribery, extortion, tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions and the laundering of money to disguise its origins were commonplace and that ''there is a tacit understanding between public servants and private professionals that this is how business is done in Massachusetts.'' The Special Commission Concerning State and County Buildings, set up in
1978 after the state's worst corruption scandal, said in its 2,500-page report that blame could not be narrowed down to a handful of individuals. 'Broad and Pervasive Pattern' ''It was not a matter of a few crooks, some bad apples which spoil the lot,'' the commission said. ''The pattern is too broad and pervasive for that easy excuse. At those crucial points where money and power came together the system has been rotten.''

What astonishes me now is that even after the largest public works project in US history, the astonishing cost overruns, the delays in the project (they redesigned "scheme Z" in the stinkin' middle of the project), the graft, the waste, the self-aggrandizing politicians, people are getting killed while fingers get pointed.

Tonight at dinner, my wife said she'd only go to an appointment in town next week if she could avoid the tunnels. That's what $14 billion buys in Crush-achusetts.

I think it's pretty darn cool that even with the explosion of the blogosphere a new blog, even one put up primarily for venting, can get some attention.

But, it's been two days since my last post, and I am now able to say why. I was in the hospital for a test. All's well, fortunately, but the "preparation" for this test is worse than the test itself. Sunday night I amused myself by setting up this blog. But Monday and Tuesday, I just felt too sick to do anything with it.

In fact, it wasn't until this afternoon (Wednesday), that I felt like my former self. And that feeling – of being back-  in and of itself made my day. My wife, my kids, even the wackos at Honda who won't fix a clear warranty issue were beautiful to me today. So, happiness really is a warm johnnie.

But…back to the main theme: how I left the bits uptown. (C'mon, surely some of you get it by now…it's as clear as White)
When you get to this point (does it have a name? Middle age? Wisdom? Reversion to adolescence?) you can feel stuck. Stuck big time. Family, bills, obligations…choices you made inadvertently decades ago that seemed so innocuous are now opening that johnnie to the ice cold wind of failure.

In short, you tend to keep doing what you were no matter what. Even if the world is telling you that you suck at it. "It's all I know." "It's part of me."

Since this is a G-rated blog, all I can say is "hooey."

I've already begun a new (really, ancillary) career. This time, it's something that I will be integral to. And that's the most important thing: if you aren't integral, you're disposable.And you can be disposed of by any other integral because, simply, you aren't.

I'm not whining about job security. Instead, in the kind of work I do — used to do — commitment wasn't enough. You have to cater to the whims and egos of integrals. Bottom line, I really suck at that.
Mea culpa.

OK, am I showing red, pouting lips in my first post because I really, really want people to read my blog?

Uh, no. Not quite.

It’s because you make the “whew” sound (a bilabial fricative) when you are about to jump off a cliff… or you are about to do what I’ve done: change careers late.

Very late.

After years and years of being a geek, after which I decided it was a young person’s game followed by years and years of being a tech marketing guy, I’ve decided that my true love is PR.

So, I’ve joined up with Sterling Hager (you know who he is) and after a summer vacation, we are going to make Think-Brain scream-loud for clients who want what I am calling “Agency Next.”

There will be more about Agency Next soon. But right now, the simple declaration of doing this — even though there’s nobody reading — has me thinking about the difference between American culture and some Asian, especially Chinese cultures.

In China, and especially in business there, age equals wisdom. In the US, age equals expense. In the former, older people like me are presumed to have much more to offer in business. Here, in many tech startups, guys like me as seen as pure expense.

So, the scary thing — the thing I that makes me say “whew” all the time as I contemplate this exciting new adventure — is will clients understand the value? Or, are they so overcompensating with puny, cryptic little Google ads that they can’t grasp the value of steady, experienced hands managing their presence in the world?

We’ll soon see.