Xolotech

SkyDrive and the Windows 8 Music App

2012-12-26T15:43:00.001-06:00

Here is the problem:

Your music library is on SkyDrive and the Windows 8 Music App does not see or manage all of your music – especially songs and albums in M4A format.

I found this when using my brand new Microsoft Surface R/T device. The Music application reported hundreds of songs under: “Unknown Artist”. When I scanned the titles in the folder I recognized almost all of the list and quickly figured out something was wrong. Also, the whole idea of putting your music on SkyDrive is to have it available on my multiple computers, my Windows 8 Smartphone, and my Xbox (which will soon be connected to my home audio system).

The basic issue is that the Music application does not recognize many M4A files and might have trouble with some WMA files as well. The M4A file type is primarily associated with 'MPEG-4 Audio Layer'. This format is also known as Apple Lossless, Apple Lossless Encoder, or ALE. It is a new codec designed to provide lossless encoding in less storage space.

How many items does the Music application show on your “Unknown Artist” list?

Just a few, or hundreds? Since the conversion process is one-by-one, you may need to set aside some time if the list is long. I was able to resolve all 600+ songs in about 3 hours (while writing these notes). All you need to do is convert files M4A files to MP3 format, and repost to SkyDrive.

And, here is how to do it (all of the images can be clicked for a larger view):

Download and install Format Converter X from the Windows App Store (you may also want the SkyDrive Client - which is a plug-in for Explorer).
Convert non-MP3 files to MP3 – I did this using a fairly powerful laptop with dual monitors so that I could manage the Windows 8 applications and use the desktop version of Windows Explorer. Working on a small screen or on a tablet will take a lot more time.

Open the Format Converter X application (read and approve licensing)
Click the blue “To MP3” tile
Navigate (Go Up) to your music library
Click the tile for the Artist - which brings up the album(s)
Click the tile for the Album – which brings up the song(s) Click Select All (or click to select individually)
Click “Open” in the bottom right corner, which will open the Format Converter X user interface.
Verify the “From” song and file type
Verify the “To” file type, Quality (I set all of mine to high) and path. I set mine to the local Music library on my laptop, but you can point the converted files to a specific directory. Since I had so many to convert it was easier for me to drag and drop the converted files into their final location, rather than editing the location, artist, and for each entry.
Click the Convert button, or right-click and Convert All. Format Converter X will do the conversion, and provide a pop-up message when complete. Individual songs take seconds, and an entire album just a couple of minutes.
If you chose the SkyDrive folder for the artist and album, you can simply open the music app and verify that the songs arrived (you may have to wait for the sync process).
If you directed Format Converter X to send the files to your local music file, then select, drag and drop the songs into the proper SkyDrive folder.

Upload to SkyDrive (simple Drag and Drop from Windows Explorer view)

Select Artist folders from My Music (local copy)
Drag and Drop to the correct artist and album folder on SkyDrive

Allow SkyDrive to Sync
Open the Music App and allow the Music App to Sync - you can actually watch the albums as they load.
Verify your MP3 files have completed the SYNC process (Green check mark)
Look for music that is still under “Unknown Artist” – These are likely WMA or M4A files that have not been converted, or that have not been deleted from the Album folder.
In Windows Explorer - Highlight and delete (or Move off of SkyDrive) the M4A, WMA or other file formats (to save space). Most MP3 files are 20-25% smaller than WMA files, so you get more songs stored in exchange for the lesser sound quality. If you prefer the higher bit rates, or plan to use Media Player, I would suggest dropping the non-MP3 files back onto your local drive or to an USB drive.

What to look for during the process:

What size is the MP3 file? (1 bit = fail, 500-900 bits = fail)
Green check mark = Done with Sync
Blue swirl = Waiting to Sync
Red "X" = Problem (I ran out of space using WMA/M4A formats)
You can correct spelling mistakes from the Explorer window

If you have no "Unknown Artist" you are done! Don't be surprised if there are a few stragglers. Many of my Punk Imports and some of the compilation CDs just will not pull META data. But if you are listening to mainstream recent works, you'll be just fine. Album art is still a bit rough, but I'm only missing a couple from 34 albums, and most of the albums with compilations display album art for the individual songs.

For the old-timers in the crowd (or for those that like the excellent sound quality from a CD)-

How to load new music from a CD:

Insert the CD into the disk drive
Rip the CD to MP3 format (choose highest bit-rate for best sound)

You can Rip a second time for other formats (WMA, etc.)
Use “Move” command to transfer the album from local folder to SkyDrive

Or, Drag and Drop from Windows Explorer to SkyDrive

Wait for SkyDrive to sync
Open Music App
Wait for Music App to sync

Ok, so this fix is not fast, but it is pretty easy, and when you are done, your music will all be in one accessible place, in one (or two) formats. Not quite Nirvana, maybe Manic Nirvana.

~Xolo

GasBuddy... Get the App, get Gas

2012-03-05T19:44:00.000-06:00

Smart reports on the 10 Things Gas Stations Won't Tell You:

"You can t actually buy gas online, but Web resources can help you find the cheapest fill-up in town. Among them, GasPriceWatch.com and GasWatch.info help people track pump prices. But the most comprehensive of the bunch is GasBuddy.com, which includes a network of 174 local sites, complete with maps and message boards that tally gas price by ZIP code. People are frustrated by the variation in the price of gas, says GasBuddy.com cofounder Jason Toews, and they are using the Internet to take control."

"It has worked wonders for Sue Foust. Every day, as she passes roughly 10 stations on her commute across Tucson, Ariz., Foust makes a mental note of their prices, then posts them on TucsonGasPrices.com, a local affiliate of GasBuddy.com. Then every four days or so, when she needs to fill up, she checks the prices others have posted in her area. It turned out the Shell station she used to frequent is one of the most expensive in the city. Now she fills up elsewhere. I really do feel like I m saving money, she says."

I have used both the Android and iOS versions of GasBuddy - both are free. The feature set is sparse - basic sorting by prices and proximity. At $3 a gallon I might not pay much attention, but at $4 a gallon, I'm going to take 2 minutes to save some money.

Bottom Line
In Round Rock, Texas the price variation might be as high as 25 cents per gallon, or about $3.50 per 14 gallon tank... enough to buy a gallon of milk, or to feel less guilty at Starbucks.

Get the app, get gas.

~Xolo

Rogers Diffusion of Innovation and YELP

2012-03-04T17:43:00.001-06:00

YELP has a simple mission statement "Our purpose: To connect people with great local businesses". The business model works because YELP users value the opinions of strangers.

Rogers describes five phases in the Innovation-Decision process: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, confirmation, (Rogers, Everett M. Diffusion of Innovations. 5th ed. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003, pages 169-216). Rogers states several disclaimers: that some people may describe more than the five phases that he uses, that the phases may have overlap, and the the time within any phase might stretch to years. He is clear that they are sequential.

For a business, the number of phases and overlap may not be as crucial as the conversion from decision to implementation (essentially the steps to secure a new customer). And, of course, for a business that relies on repeat customers, the critical confirmation phase cannot be ignored.

I have previously written about YELP in my Macrotots blog "Why YELP? Three Austin Restaurants Close, More on the Way?". My relocation to Seattle (Redmond to be more precise) has let to a new appreciation of YELP and especially their "monocle" tool.

Rogers argues that information can be communicated via mass-media and via interpersonal communication. While the phases may start (knowledge) with mass-media exposure most will not move to subsequent phases without some interpersonal input. (p. 199 Table 5-1 is a fantastic resource).

The early adopter, the person that runs to every new venue, restaurant and has all the latest gizmos, does not depend as heavily on this input. In fact, they exist one step behind the inventor and fit Rogers' definition of an innovator. As opinion leaders and trendsetters, they pave the road for early majority (fast-followers). Their feedback, both to the business, for re-invention, and to the public, drive the diffusion curve (from innovators to early majority then to late majority)

Responsive businesses will incorporate suggestions from the early adopters in order to improve (reinvent) their offerings for the mainstream.

Why YELP?
YELP has a business model that supports the feedback loop as it consolidates the interpersonal data that can help a business improve their adoption rate -- accelerating the awareness, decision and implementation steps.

Where Rogers studied communities of similar adopters (generally, farmers that knew each other) the internet has changed the dynamics. Reviews on YELP and Amazon and other sites act as an opinion catalyst. Reviewers can provide unusual perspective ranging from the general (I love all "widget co" products) to the specific (the on/off button on the "widget co 3000" is too small). This provides a treasure trove of data points for the consumer.

Opinions are like....
I am not an innovator, and usually not an early adopter. The opinions of strangers count to me - much more than the mass media or company sponsored media. Rogers moves step by step through the Innovation-Decision process. It is clear that YELP provides a platform that moves the consumer from mass media input to interpersonal input.

Bottom Line
Is it possible that Groupon (as a example of an knowledge stage mass-media play) may fizzle out as the interpersonal reviews on Amazon and YELP flourish? Will Groupon struggle because most of us, by definition, are not innovators, or even early adopters?

~Xolo

Mob Rule and The Perfect Democracy

2012-02-10T15:46:00.000-06:00

Ben O'Neill writes "Worship of the Mob" in the Daily Mises January 30, 2012:

"It doesn't really bother anyone who accepts mob rule as a desirable form of social organization. The reason is that democrats never regard existing democracy as their preferred political system — they regard it only as a transitory state to a democratic utopia in which the elected leaders will agree totally with their own values and social-political views. Mises has observed that "the critics of the capitalistic order always seem to believe that the socialistic system of their dreams will do precisely what they think correct."[2]

Hence, when people talk about the importance of democracy, it is never democracy as it has ever actually functioned, with the politicians that have actually been elected, and the policies that have actually been implemented. It is always democracy as people imagine it will operate once they succeed in electing "the right people" — by which they mean, people who agree almost completely with their own views, and who are consistent and incorruptible in their implementation of the resulting policies. This is what allows an intelligent group of people to espouse mob rule as a desirable principle, even as they simultaneously commit acts that brand them as criminals worthy of imprisonment under the very social system they maintain."

Where Does this Apply?
In the current circumstance it seems to make a simple leap to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Movement. OWS appears to be an intangible organization with varying demands, and a bad temper - basically the definition of a mob.

What is a mob?

1. A large disorderly crowd or throng
2. The mass of common people; the populace
3. Informal, An organized gang of criminals; a crime syndicate
4. An indiscriminate or loosely associated group of persons or things

Cass Sunstein writes in "Infotopia" about the "Surprising Failure of of Deliberating Groups". I would not immediately classify a mob as a deliberating group. But an interesting ingredient for high-performance groups is independence of the individuals. Of course, all of our individual failures, recognized and unrecognized biases, basic ignorance and our willingness to follow the outspoken few can lead to disastrous decisions. Sunstein also points to a failure of elective representatives to make better decisions - based on the normal frailties of every individual and compounded by the impact of constituents (lobbying groups) with big money.

Is a caucus a mob?
When a vote is abstracted from pure democracy (1 person 1 vote) to a caucus it is assumed that the caucus will make a better decision. The same abstraction to the Electoral College is supposed to create results that are both fairer and safer. Caucus members are supposed to be engaged with the current issues and the strengths and weaknesses of a particular candidate - so they should be able to make good decisions. Sunstein provides nuance arguments posited in "The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations" by New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki. But both have to have blinders on to ignore important challenges to the thesis that groups are better at decision making.

While is temping to see OWS and a caucus as widely differing in their ability to make decisions, it is a short leap to a wrong conclusion.

Which do you trust: a Mob or a Bureaucracy?
Bureaucracy can (and does) cause destruction in two forms: intended and unintended. Does the team or group dynamic of "Group Think" or self-censorship make for good decisions? Plenty of military intervention examples exist - so let's try "Weapons of Mass Destruction" as a simple phrase to illustrate the point. Does a small group of experts make better decisions? I think the Federal Reserve Board is a good place to start a discussion.

So, are you Liberal or Conservative... or Libertarian? Or, American?

Clint Eastwood and the Super Bowl Half-time Speech

"I’ve seen a lot of tough eras, a lot of downturns in my life. And, times when we didn’t understand each other. It seems like we’ve lost our heart at times. When the fog of division, discord, and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead.But after those trials, we all rallied around what was right, and acted as one. Because that’s what we do. We find a way through tough times, and if we can’t find a way, then we’ll make one."

Bottom Line:

We have been polarized by a government that feeds on big money donors. The politicians win by polarization, the media wins by polarization, and the mob (eventually) wins by polarization.

We just need a few good people to make a few mostly-correct decisions, to help us find our way.

~Xolo

Self-Promotion for Introverts - Aaaargh!

2012-01-22T19:00:00.001-06:00

Let's say that I read "Self-Promotion for Introverts" by an Nancy Ancowitz. And, let just say that it took a bit of perseverance to get past the first hundred pages. Bit by bit Ancowitz weaves a reasonable strategy for getting ahead as an introvert.

First, Disclaimers

I'm an introvert, I score deep into the "I" of Myers-Briggs. Second, I have work with plenty of managerial extroverts, as a project manager leading teams of developer and engineering introverts. "Self-Promotion" is not a skill that I have on the top of my resume. Third, I only settled into my "OK, I get the point" appreciation of this work on page 213 where Susan Cain garners a couple pages of coverage. Susan Cain blogs "Quiet: The Power of Introverts" and Tweets as @SusanCain.

Do You Focus on Your Strengths?
While reading Ancowitz I was reflecting on Cain. A subtle but important difference in style is that Cain seems more comfortable as an introvert and writes from a position of confidence, strength and authenticity.

One of my deep felt values is to value the effort of a team. When my team kicks-butt and takes names I make sure to push them forward on the stage. To me that is leadership. When my teams miss, or fail, the I shove them to the back and try to deflect the heat. Remember, my managers are extrovert, and my team is introvert. Self-promotion is not the same as leadership.

Do You Focus on Your Weaknesses?
Ancowitz coaches the introvert to jump out of their comfort zone, to consider actions wildly outside of their "box". Chapter 3 is where the reader is encouraged to "Pick the activities you like best -- or find the least objectionable". Where planning, designing, contemplating are identified as most comfortable, pod-casting, and quirky elevator speeches (p. 134) are clearly a high hurdle. Being an introvert does not automatically make you a good writer. If only Chapter 3 "Your Game Plan" was presented a little later in the book as the culmination of all of the other exercises in the book.

Recently, I had lunch with a nice-looking female friend that joined a high tech company from a non-high tech background. She mentioned that the engineers were really geeky. When walking towards her in the hallway they try to look as far down and away from her as possible. So of course, she says "hello" to all of them. A building full of introverts - successful introverts.

A Republican from San Francisco?
I moved to Columbus, OH after nearly 30 years growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area. By chance I was invited to see a speech where Arnold Schwarzenegger was to introduce George Bush. Standing in line outside the Nationwide Arena, and eavesdropping on a few conversations, it was very clear that I wasn't a "real" Republican. At any moment I felt like they would pull me aside, ask me to show my gun and Bible, then confiscate my ticket as an impostor.

I wonder if an introvert from NYC is the same distance from the standard definition of "introvert" as is a Republican from San Francisco?

Bottom Line:
What is it that drives women with straight hair want curly hair, and vice versa?

Would an author offering suggestions to Extroverts encourage them to spend time meditating, reading, and spending quality time sitting quietly with their spouse?

If Ancowitz feels that the starting point for this conversation is "the staggering bias against introversion", even though we are "roughly half the population" maybe this is a straight/curly philosophical debate. And a final nit: if your work can quote conversations with Chita Rivera, Bill Clinton, Warren Buffet, (and plenty of other high-powered people), then leave out the "let's call this friend, 'Steve'...". If "Steve" doesn't want to be identified, use another example.

In the meantime, I'll work to make my box a little larger, and wait for the Jan 24th release of Susan Cain's "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking".

~Xolo
P.S. The correct answer to straight/curly: a third-party with an agenda.

Winning at Work - You Own Your Career

2012-01-20T20:39:00.004-06:00

The title for Ken Blanchard's "Helping People Win at Work: A Business Philosophy Called 'Don't Mark My Paper, Help Me Get a A'" is more than a mouthful. Unfortunately it left me feeling less than satiated.

Looking at the current WD 40 company profile on Yahoo Finance shows a total of 334 employees. Blanchard does a terrific job describing the processes and techniques that WD 40 employ:

Partnering to help virtually everyone succeed
Agreeing on what to evaluate and how to evaluate it
Coaching via Situational Leadership (r) II
Building a tribe, not just a team

A modern corporate mantra is that "you own your career".
That is, HR are less involved with career tracking, professional development and career development. Job families may have elaborate descriptions of the tasks, skills, and training required for each level but every employee is being asked to do more, to "stretch". Employees are asked to plan their personal development amid a business environment that shifts frequently, leadership and managerial rotation, projects that fail despite strong effort, and the basic politics of the organization.

Where Blanchard feels everyone should be able to be managed or coached to an "A" and that the standard distribution curve should not apply to individual reviews. This is widely different than the circumstances most employees will experience. The corporate HR argument is to boil down the distribution curve to simply A, B, or (get rid of this employee) C.

"Helping People Win at Work" is a prescription that may very well work with companies of a few hundred employees. But I found the suggestions to be slightly saccharin. Further, the book seemed to tell nearly identical stories from two view points - the second half of the book introducing a certain deja-vu feeling. Of course, there were differences, but is it really worth the time to do a compare/contrast within a single work? The authors should have co-written each chapter to reduce the redundancy and sharpen their arguments.

The reviews on Amazon praise the work, suggesting that it is a great work for managers to read. I would make the opposite argument.

Employees need to read this work. They need to take charge of their personal development plans. They need to create their own "test" and then grade it themselves. Is your organization chart stable? What happens if your VP, Director or Manager changes mid-year? What happens if they change several times mid-year? Are you taking on challenging projects and delivering -- does that merit a "C"? As teams change, as projects change and as roles and responsibilities change, is it possible that an employee might have an "off year"?

Who is the best bowler on the team?

We had a departmental outing to a bowling alley. As a bowler prepared for his/her turn, they read a 3x5 card with instructions. "Use your opposite hand". "Bowl between your legs". "Bowl from one knee". "Replace player #3 on the opposite team". Of course, chaos ensued (the process was a disaster) and the scores (outcomes) were meaningless.

After the first "game", teams were settled and we bowled like normal, rational teams (standard processes) - scores went up.

Who is the best bowler?
The one that has the best score in a standard process?
How do you study for, or pass a badly randomized test?

Bottom Line:

This work was recently offered as a free download on the Amazon Kindle. After location 773 of 1648 the material feels repetitive. Skip the remainder of the book and read "The One Minute Manager". If you are a manager, consider the prescriptions. If you are an employee, understand that most managers and most company cultures are not (and will never be) as sweet as Blanchard dreams. You own your career, and there is no final exam, only perpetual tests.

~Xolo

The Data Diet - Taxing the Rain

2012-01-20T13:27:00.000-06:00

Kelli B. Grant writes an article "The Smartphone Data Diet: Ways to cut back usage to keep wireless bills from tipping the scales." on SmartMoney.com.

"Death, taxes and increases in your cellular bill are all things we can count on," says Brad Spirrison, managing editor for app review site Appolicious.

The SmartMoney recommendations are sound:

Hunt for Wi-Fi
Go off-grid (turn off apps)
Save video for bigger screens
Choose a less data-hungry phone
Set a limit
Monitor family use

Not that rising rates based on consumption was hard to predict. Xolotech posted on this very topic Taxing the Rain in July, 2011.

My Toshiba Thrive forces me to hunt for Wi-Fi
The "Hunt for Wi-Fi" is the emerging problem. I don't carry a smartphone. In fact, my phone doesn't even have a camera. And for those that feel the urge to snicker, my phone bill last year was under $120 + tax - including the phone. My "dumb-phone" allows me to neatly ignore most of the tips above.

However, at the end of last year I started to notice that some airports are only allowing free Wi-Fi for 30 or 45 minutes. Usually this is fine, but when your flight is cancelled or delayed this time limit is crippling.

Real World Example
In December I was travelling from SEATAC to AUS. and the plane had mechanical issues. Nearly four hours of mechanical issues. I always carry power, and have plenty of music and books on the Thrive. But the loss of email was harsh (texting on a dumb-phone is emotionally painful).

Bottom Line:
As vendors push everything to mobile, consumers will continue to drive consumption and rates will continue to rise. Free Wi-Fi will evolve towards the airport model: free as a courtesy (15-30 minutes), but not free for normal consumption. Kelli Grant gives a good push in the right direction: we all need to start a data diet or at least we should prepare for the trade off between higher costs and data-starvation.

~Xolo

microMarketing Big - Small, Small - Big

2012-01-19T00:14:00.003-06:00

Greg Verdino has a great storytelling style that really makes "microMarketing" work.

Quick Tip:
Go to Amazon and use the "Look Inside" feature to read the Preface. Verdino lays out his premise, disclaims the idea of "the next big thing", and cautions the reader to understand the concepts rather than focusing on the technology or platform.

If the preface doesn't convince you to spend time with the rest of the book you have only invested a few minutes.

And you should be questioning any role that you have in Social Media.

microMarketing triggered many reflections about missed opportunities. A quote from Peter Drucker - updated by Shiv Singh made me sad and reflective (p. 168). As a consumer I could feel my teeth clench during the overview of Henry Posner's role at B&H Photo (p. 100). A concise set of stats about publishing (p. 182) forces me to reconsider my goals.

First, the Past
There are not many days of my life that I can recall where my life changed. Not that many times that I knew exactly where I was and what I was doing. Sure, the Loma Prieta earthquake, the Oakland Hills fires, 9-11, my wedding day, the birth of my two kids... those are easy.

In February 2007 its snowed in Texas. Actually, it snowed, then froze. I wasn't in Texas - I was in Columbus, OH on my way to Austin Bergstrom airport and San Antonio for an interview with Avenue A|Razorfish. Flights cancelled, dream job interview cancelled, an EPIC FAIL.

Funny thing, two weeks later I'm on a plane to Austin. Overnight stay in a hotel, 8 interviews in 6 hours, and back to the airport. The job offer got to Columbus before I landed. A job with Dell Computer.

Singh's quote "the purpose of business is to create a customer who creates customers" was not part of my job description. My teams were tasked with delivering software solutions deep in the bowels of the order management application, tax applications and compliance. I have no regrets about working at Dell, but Avenue A|Razorfish was off the hook, never to be re-caught.

Now, the Present
Last June I made a small purchase on Amazon from Jabra - a Halo Bluetooth wireless headset. I cannot talk on the phone without walking, pacing, and gesturing. Over time, the single button on the right ear cup has come loose. Not "falling off" loose, just loose enough to rattle when my head moves. This really conflicts with my need to walk, pace, and gesture - since these are rattle inducing activities. If I am forced to sit, I have a perfectly good Plantronics 655 USB headset.

Verdino spends several pages describing the awesome evolution of customer service that Henry Posner infused into B&H Photo. My teeth clenched when comparing the simple, high touch, B&H Photo story with the 180 degree absence of dialogue from Jabra. I'm more than 1 week beyond a simple question - submitted via an online form because an 800#, chat session or email address were not readily discovered.

The Question: Is the Rattle Under Warranty?
Heck, I'm OK with a "no, it is not" answer. I just want an answer. If I'm not important enough for a simple answer, I'll be sure to shop with providers that are willing to be open, honest and communicative with me. A "no" would have been just fine.

Soon, the Future
I am going to summarize a pretty large "chunk" from page 182:

Books in print: 1.2 million
Average book sales: 500 copies
Percentage of books selling over 5000 copies: 2%
Percentage of books selling less than 100 copies: 79%

Verdino balances these statistics, sobering statistics for an aspiring writer (which probably extends to singers, artists, etc.), by recounting the story of J.C. Hutchins and his effort to market "7th Son".

Where I struggle with microMarketing is my poor attempt to wrap a model around the premise. Does sand-pile modeling and the unseen network of connections apply? Does Rogers Diffusion of Innovation apply? What causes viral-ality? Can a video, quote, info-snipet, chunk of content move all the way across Rogers' curve, become widely recognized, then forgotten nearly as fast? Is that modern social media? At what point does our ability to lend attention to the myriad chunks of information does it all become noise? Can you apply hard work to accomplish a little bit of luck, or is cosmic-karma waiting for the lucky few?

Reading is Not a Passive Activity
Greg Verdino does and excellent job executing his book. In each chapter several small stories are presented, then woven together to bind his premise. Most of the stories are familiar memes of social networking and social marketing. More than anything, Verdino's style allowed me to have a quiet inner-dialogue. He allowed me to match his stories to stories of my own. Verdino forces me to think, ponder, and reconsider - exactly what I think a good book should do - and exactly what I feel that Twitter just cannot.

Bottom Line:
Read the Preface, then read the book, then read your tea leaves. Any recounting of success - after the fact - has pitfalls. Verdino reveals the past, highlights the current lessons and provides the engaged reader with solid pointers towards future success.

Zappos Hacked, Secure Your Passwords

2012-01-16T13:31:00.003-06:00

Sean Gallagher of Ars Technica reports: "Zappos gets hacked, resets customers' passwords".

On January 15, online retailer Zappos alerted customers to a security breach. In an e-mail to employees, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh said that a hacker had compromised one of the company's servers in Kentucky. As a result, the intruder was able to gain access to internal networks. While no credit card data or passwords were exposed in the attack—both were stored in encrypted form—the attack did expose other personal information—including names, shipping and billing addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses.

Over 24 million customer accounts were affected in the breach. As a precaution, Zappos has expired all customers' passwords, and alerted customers that they should change passwords on other sites that are similar to their old one on Zappos." [Emphasis added]

Admit it... you use the same user name and password at multiple sites... Zappos includes a note to warn their users because the hackers will try the same user name and passwords on multiple sites.

How many sites have you stored/saved personal identifying information using the same User and password combination?

Consider a Password Management Tool:
I use a tool called LastPass. It syncs across multiple platforms - I use it on Windows, Android and iPhone. It is encrypted locally and at the service. It allows the user to set a password strength for randomly generated passwords. And, because I only have to remember a single password, I feel confident to let it manage my accounts. LastPass is not perfect - it is clunky on my Android tablet - forcing a lot of Copy/Past operations, but it works for me.

Bottom Line:
Personal information should never be considered safe when it is online. Using the same user name and password combination exposes you to big risks. Consider a Password Management tool - Mashable provides a survey of 5 Password Management Tools , and get more secure.

~Xolo

eTrolls: The Persistent Idiot

2012-01-15T18:40:00.000-06:00

Patrick O'Keefe has 54 Amazon reviews for his work "Managing Online forums". 51 rate the book at 5 stars and the other three reviews are not substantial enough to diminish the work.

O'Keefe provides a sweeping survey of the most common problems, shows examples, and provides very tangible remedies (including templates).

After skimming the entire book, I returned to deep dive and take notes on Chapter 3 "Developing Guidelines" and Chapter 6 "Banning Users and Dealing with Chaos". These 50 pages should be required reading for all Social Media experts. For the small blogger that just wants some discipline and control - these 50 pages are all you need to read.

Most blogs will never grow a community larger enough to have dedicated staff to deal with eTrolls. The ability to spot spam, "Introtisements and Adverquestions" (page 165), and other miscreants is very important to even the smallest community manager.

Your site, community and content must be managed, or the eTrolls will manage it for you!

The MarketWatch Example:
MarketWatch provides an excellent forum for posts about money, finance and other economic topics. Their boards are frequently attacked by eTrolls - typically with obvious posts trying to sell retail goods. But they also suffer from "Persistent Idiots" (page 203). Not only are these users right about every opinion they post, but they are willing to provide correction to every other post in your community. A frequent problem is that some eTrolls may have enough "tenure" or points, or other community standing - that it is difficult to neutralize their acidic influence. In my opinion MarketWatch needs to assign this book to their Forum Moderators, then employ more of the strategies espoused by O'Keefe.

O'Keefe calls the forum manager to create guidelines, manage users to those guidelines, then factually (and ruthlessly) starve the eTrolls.

Bottom Line:
"Managing Online Forums" is about managing your customer dialogue. Abdication of this critical role to the eTrolls is a sure route to failure.

Marketing to the Social Web - Book Review

2012-01-12T22:54:00.001-06:00

Larry Weber captures several important themes in his 2007 book "Marketing to the Social Web". If the modern reader looks past some of the antiquated (in web time) companies and abstracts the essential ideas, this book still provides excellent insight into best practices for Understanding the Landscape of he Social Web (Chapters 1-4), Building Your Own Customer Community (Chapters 5-11) and Making Use of the four Online Conduit Strategies (Chapters 12-16). This is a professional discussion for large businesses.

Chapter 13 and Chapter 16 cover the "conduits" of Blogging and Social Networks. Five years after the the book was published it is clear that Weber was ahead of the curve with his recognition of these two conduits. After all, much of this work cites developments at MySpace and Friendster.

For those willing to ignore the references, the core ideas are as sound today as they were in 2007. For those willing to translate, the lessons of the early failures are readily reflected in the successes of Facebook and Google+ and might be leveraged into new solutions. Weber's rules for Employees that blog (pages 177,178) is ground-zero for most company compliance guidelines.

Best observation: "Brand is a Conversation"

Bottom Line:
Probably not worth the full cover price, but a used copy or a library copy makes for simulating reading.

~Tot1

Experiential Representation. Are We There Yet?

2012-01-09T21:13:00.002-06:00

Kevin Depew of Miyanville discusses the passing of a linear news cycle in his recurring post "5 Things You Need to Know".

"Newspapers are a form of linear storytelling. There is a crisply constructed uniform pattern to the content, which is why the rumored "death" of the newspaper is both startling and uncomfortable, especially for those of us who have grown up with newspapers and this form of storytelling.

"That's why I've been thinking quite a bit about comments Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt made a couple of weeks ago to the Newspaper Association of America.

"I love newspapers. I love of reading them -- that when you’re finished, you’re done, and you know what’s going on."

"Indeed. Newspapers and the "news cycle" remain trapped in the linear world of manufacturing-based economies, time tables, clocks, and schedules. It's comforting to pick up the "news" and read it to completion. But this is not how we are increasingly experiencing the world. Further, I would argue that newspapers are but one small battleground of a larger war being fought over the very nature of experiential representation. Ultimately, I expect the non-linear to win at the expense of what we might now call "comfort media"; the newspaper, the televised newscast, almost all programmed "slots" for information and entertainment.

"A release from that world will be (already is in fact) painful but ultimately bullish. Even now there are economic efficiencies and ideas that remain locked in a world of scheduled and pre-programmed activities that are like vestigial organs, adapted and evolved for an economy that no longer exists.

The linear world is familiar and comfortable. Where Eric Schmidt errs is that the news is never done - the reader is charged with "understanding" the content. The continued fragmentation of the linear world will eventually become more and more uncomfortable. We can only watch CNN Headline News for so long before we change to CNN for the rest of the story. (I only use that as an example, CNN is not on my trusted media list).

Why should we mourn the loss of the mediocre? Why should we mourn the inevitable thinning of the ranks? Kirk Bohls of the Austin-American Statesman made an interesting observation on Twitter.

How many bowl games are needed to spotlight the best teams in the country?

The answer is not 70.

How many restaurants have you been in that should have been closed a long time ago; departments stores, other businesses?

Larry Downs of Forbes describes "Why Best Buy is Going out of Business...Gradually." Is the slow death of poor performance a reason to be sad? And, contrary to Best Buy's responses, I would bet with Downs.

We had a dog that was very old and very sick. She couldn't get over the threshold of the sliding glass door to get to the back yard. The veterinarian says "we have drugs that can keep your dog alive for several more years". We decided that was not a good choice.

Bottom Line:
History will still be written, and news will still be delivered in a strong linear pattern. Quantity is not the same as quality. Yelp, Amazon (see my review of Paul Krugman's book at Amazon), and many other sites allow you to post your reviews:

Post your comments - drive out the bad players
Post your comments - reward the good players

~Xolo
Are we there yet? No, not by a long shot.

Mashable: 5 Minute Guide to Social Media Job

2011-12-20T12:33:00.001-06:00

Mashable posted 5-Minute Guide to Getting a Job in Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]. The most important recommendation is "Be Familiar With the Need-to-Know Programs", specifically a collection of the everyday tools required to create content. The ability to produce Social Media content from the ground up - actually creating a blog, editing content and images, and trouble shooting HTML cannot be underestimated.

Example from Real-Life:
One of the people I follow on Twitter had a WordPress problem. Text was displaying around the banner image, and it was unclear what was causing the problem. End users, those that blog via a GUI or other interface, may not be comfortable working directly with HTML. If you want to be the expert, you need to understand various GUIs and the underlying HTML.

To solve the text problem - I navigated to the page, right-click, view page source and then scanned for problems. In this case and URL pointing to an image had wrapped and broken the ALT text. While it was obvious in the HTML, the GUI was probably not providing enough information. The hardest part of the solution was describing what actions the user needed to take in the GUI to resolve the problem in the HTML.

Bottom Line:
The last recommendation in the Mashable article puts your best foot forward: "Help a Business Out Pro Bono". Share your knowledge skills and expertise with your friends, learn about engagement, negotiation and problem resolution. Technology will continue to change, managing relationships and meeting your commitments will set you apart.

~Xolo

The Netbook is Dead... Long live the...

2011-12-15T18:39:00.002-06:00

TechCrunch reports: Dell kills the mini-10.

"Dell is reportedly shifting focus away from the inexpensive notebooks. A company spokesperson confirmed with The Verge that the product line is indeed finished and Dell doesn't have plans to release products on future Intel platforms. Instead, Dell will focus on “thin and powerful” notebooks, a not so subtle nod towards ultrabooks even though that description can fit a few of the company’s current notebook lines."

A Day (Year) Late and a Dollar Short

In September of 2010 I worked up a beautiful chapter arguing against the Netbook (of any flavor). The rest of the work was caught in turbulence as different free applications became paid applications and mergers and acquisitions clutched many good apps into the bosom of the tech empress. Good ideas are few and far between - and are fleeting.

Bottom Line:
The Netbook was destined to be squeezed out by the smart phone and cheaper laptops. The Mini-10 and the Streak suffered from excellent market differentiation - for a market that perished before the products could gain traction.

Now, let's see if Intel and the commodity (under $500) laptop producers can scale down to compete with the tablets.

~Xolo

OccupyWallStreet OWS Utopia and Scarce Resources

2011-11-03T08:50:00.000-05:00

Mises.org sets the stage in thier article Two's Company: The Basics of Property

"Let us hear David Hume describe such a condition, in which

"...nature has bestowed on the human race such profuse ABUNDANCE of all EXTERNAL conveniences, that, without any uncertainty in the event, without any care or industry on our part, every individual finds himself fully provided with whatever his most voracious appetites can want, or luxurious imagination wish or desire.

"Hume went on to suppose that in this situation every person's natural beauty is such that he has no desire for adornment, that the weather is so mild that he has no need for clothing, that all around him wild plants bear in abundance the most delectable food and natural springs spill out in profusion the most delicious beverages."

"Hume argued that in such a paradise, the human conventions of property and justice would be entirely useless:

"For what purpose make a partition of goods, where every one has already more than enough? Why give rise to property, where there cannot possibly be any injury? Why call this object MINE, when upon the seizing of it by another, I need but stretch out my hand to possess myself to what is equally valuable? Justice, in that case, being totally useless, would be an idle ceremonial."

Do we have Global Surplus?
If the world has a growing population of ~7 billion, no sane person would answer "yes". So how does this example apply?

Imagine growing up in a time of great surplus, like the 1980s and 1990s in America. Food, shelter, recreation, all provided by Mom and Dad in the greatest utopia imaginable, the middle class american home. Everything "free", everything easy, everything provided by somebody else. Student loans just happen to be the first real expense in their life - a harsh yoke to the government ox cart.

By contrast, the Arab Spring is about the oppressed class (slaves by many measures) rising up against their masters.

OccupyWallStreet (OWS) Does Have a Message: Property rights are bad, give us your stuff.

It is the same message that OWS rebuffs when the homeless (those evil homeless moochers) announce, "we are hungry and we want OWS food". The OWS menu provides a clue to the surplus: "organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep’s-milk-cheese salad" (cite: FoxNews Article).

While OWS strains under the restrictions of sanitation, fire safety and public decency, I am sure that no other OWS protesters in the world enjoy such luxurious meals.

Error of the 53%
The 53% seem to think that logic and reason will convert the OWS mob. Nothing is further from the truth. If the 53% want to work three jobs while going to school and raising their kids, the OWS mob is willing to harvest the fruits of the 53% labor. Will the 53% wake up to the challenge?

Bottom Line:
Ignore the cacophony of unfocused leadership and unfocused messages. When the conductor arrives and taps his baton, the OWS orchestra will come together in a form that we will all recognize.

Xolo

Diffusion of Innovations - Social Media Impact

2011-11-02T11:46:00.004-05:00

New comments about Rogers' Diffusion of innovations (Wikipedia)

"Within the rate of adoption there is a point at which an innovation reaches critical mass. This is a point in time within the adoption curve that enough individuals have adopted an innovation in order that the continued adoption of the innovation is self-sustaining. In describing how an innovation reaches critical mass, Rogers outlines several strategies in order to help an innovation reach this stage. These strategies are: have an innovation adopted by a highly respected individual within a social network, creating an instinctive desire for a specific innovation. Inject an innovation into a group of individuals who would readily use an innovation, and provide positive reactions and benefits for early adopters of an innovation."

"The rate of adoption of interactive media such as email, telephones, fax, and teleconferenceing often displays a distinctive quality that we here call critical mass... The interactive quality of new communication technologies create interdependence among the adopters in a system." Diffusion of Innovations, 5th Edition By Everett M. Rogers (p.343)

Two Ideas Deserving Emphasis

Can innovation occur without the profit motive?
Can Social Media make and break the adoption cycle?

Communication is Key

First, rural sociology from 50 years ago is not a likely place to discover cutting edge discussions of change driven by technological innovation. But, with minor substitutions of SMS (texting), Blogging, and Social Networking (ie. Facebook, Twitter, et. al.) the relevance of Rogers' observations is still true. Adoption is driven by communication from innovators to early adopters to the average user until critical mass is achieved.

Modern social media is touted as the fast lane to business success as product and service differentiation for the individual consumer takes focus. In fact, social media itself is migrating along its' own adoption curve with innovators and early adopters looking for the the proper influence to push Social Media into critical mass. Advertising and marketing represent the displaced innovations - Social media proponents claiming that neither are able to effectively engage the customer.

But, what if...
But, what if the innovator is not profit motivated? Does the Rogers' Curve accurately represent adoption of free or very low cost (subsidized) goods and services? An example is the adoption of free internet based email services and free News via the internet. If there is no cost to adopt, does the curve apply?

Worse, what if profit is the only motivation? Does the Kim Kardashian narcissistic model of influence - driven solely by the need for profit and providing nothing of substance to society (beyond comic relief) break the Rogers' curve? Is there a nuance to the Kutcher model or the Oprah model?

Even worse, what if the modern consumer thinks everything should be free, that the producers of whatever product or service do not deserve compensation?

Do the recent examples of Netflix attempting to change their product offering and fees and the example of Bank of America changing the fee structure of debit card processing lend good examples for this discussion? Neither company provided an improvement in their offerings, only a change in pricing. Airlines charged for bags before (it was buried in the ticket price), but now catch scorn for being (more) transparent on their prices. Newspapers charged for their content, then gave it away for free, and are now faced with creating a pay model that will keep them from extinction.

How does business react when that same communication channel, that key group of influential early-adopters turn against your product or service? Rogers' model is driven by farmers' economic choice to become more efficient and more profitable. Without that catalyst, the profit motive, why would anyone be concerned about crop-yields or delivering the news, or handling baggage? How do you take intellectual property and distribute it free without regard to the content creator?

How do companies avoid the social media firestorm when prices change from free to anything else? And, what happens when a company loses the ability to manage their margins and profits (like Netflix) due to consumer backlash, or government mandates? Is a hyper-efficient social media an ally? See Austin Business Journal for an example.

Bottom Line: More Questions Than Answers

If personal networks are powerful enough to drive adoption to critical mass, are they just as efficient at imploding the critical mass?
Does the Government have a role in Innovation and driving adoption, or is it exempt from the curve? Does exemption create other problems?
Finally, does the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement as a leaderless and agenda-less entity create a new dynamic, or is it simply awaiting the evolution from the innovator category to early-adopter category?

Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation creates a framework for discussion that is as relevant today as it was 50 years ago. Now to find people with the motivation for exploration.

Xolo.

OWS - The Euthanasia of the Saver - More on Currency

2011-10-27T10:37:00.000-05:00

Robert Hibbs chimes in with a timely review of Keynesian thought in The Euthanasia of the Saver | The Beacon:

"In chapter 24 of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes laid out his screwball idea that capital might soon become, or be made to become, no longer scarce; hence no payment would have to be made to induce people to save, and that condition would be splendid inasmuch as it would entail the “euthanasia of the rentier.” This stuff really must be seen to be believed; here is the meat of Keynes’s discussion in his own words:"

Quoting Keynes:

"Now, though this state of affairs would be quite compatible with some measure of individualism, yet it would mean the euthanasia of the rentier, and, consequently, the euthanasia of the cumulative oppressive power of the capitalist to exploit the scarcity-value of capital. Interest today rewards no genuine sacrifice, any more than does the rent of land. The owner of capital can obtain interest because capital is scarce, just as the owner of land can obtain rent because land is scarce. But whilst there may be intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of land, there are no intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of capital. An intrinsic reason for such scarcity, in the sense of a genuine sacrifice which could only be called forth by the offer of a reward in the shape of interest, would not exist, in the long run, except in the event of the individual propensity to consume proving to be of such a character that net saving in conditions of full employment comes to an end before capital has become sufficiently abundant. But even so, it will still be possible for communal saving through the agency of the State to be maintained at a level which will allow the growth of capital up to the point where it ceases to be scarce.

"I see, therefore, the rentier aspect of capitalism as a transitional phase which will disappear when it has done its work. And with the disappearance of its rentier aspect much else in it besides will suffer a sea-change. It will be, moreover, a great advantage of the order of events which I am advocating, that the euthanasia of the rentier, of the functionless investor, will be nothing sudden, merely a gradual but prolonged continuance of what we have seen recently in Great Britain, and will need no revolution. [pp. 375-76]"

Should we economically-bomb ourselves back to the stone age?
If currency (credit and capital) are the lifeblood of Capitalism - is currency needed when Capitalism dies? What is the next best economic model to follow (Euro-Socialism?)

What is the correct leadership framework for a data-centric economy and how would you recognize that leadership?
"Influencers"? "Klout score"? "Followers"? "Committee Meetings Decisions"? "Mash-Up output"? "Crowd-Sourced Imagineering" "Team Ideation"?

Bottom Line:
I do not want my surgeon to have a high Klout score, I want my surgeon to be an expert, with plenty of education and experience. I am willing to pay for those skills (assets).

~Xolo
I'm still not sold on the imminent demise of currency or capitalism or the ability of OWS to precipitate either. See: Minyanville article by Conor Sen

OWS - Occupy Wall Street - The End of Money and Free Museum Visits

2011-10-27T09:58:00.001-05:00

Conor Sen of Minyanville gives a new view of a possible OWS output:

Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Museums' Anti MoMa Protests, And The End Of Money As We Know It | Data As Currency | Museum Of Modern Art Protests | Business News | Minyanville.com

"Is the notion of "data as currency" so absurd? We've been paying for products with data for years. Just ask Google (GOOG), Facebook, and LinkedIn (LNKD). Up until now we as consumers have mostly been giving this data away for free, letting companies use it for their own economic gain with very few consequences in cases of abuse (hey, look, there's Facebook squirming over in the corner). This will surely change in the years to come.

"But that's part of what our societal angst and Occupy Wall Street are about -- intangible goods and data are rising in value and power while the pillars of the last century, money and credit, are fading in importance. Policymakers are fighting this because they don't understand the changes that are occurring, and would consider them inane just as the 1920s-era central bankers would guffaw if you told them the world's monetary system would function for decades without a physical commodity-backing currency. This promises to be an incredibly volatile and challenging period, but one that I believe will ultimately be a huge boon for those outside the financial elite.

"It'll be a great time to be an influencer in the world of people and data -- and increasingly a less-great time to be Mr. Burns."

I think Conor makes a fatal leap of faith in his analysis. Many companies that have benefited from giving away data (free or very cheap) have struggled with ways to monetize or raise rates on the data. Somehow Netflix did not make the short list that was presented above. The rise in the importance of data does not diminish the need for currency.

As far as MOMA entrance fees:
Art is a luxury that is enabled by economic surplus. You don't spend time painting on the cave wall if you are hungry. You shouldn't spend time in MOMA if you can't afford it.

Bottom Line:
Data is critical for business success, but currency - capital and credit, and the people and institutions that control it, are not going away.

After all, I can state a fact (data) "I am hungry", and that does not make food magically appear...

~Xolo
(yet).

OWS Occupy Wall Street Kitchen Slowdown

2011-10-27T08:45:00.000-05:00

Occupy Wall Street kitchen slowdown targets squatters - NYPOST.com:

"The Occupy Wall Street volunteer kitchen staff launched a “counter” revolution yesterday -- because they’re angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for “professional homeless” people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters.

For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep’s-milk-cheese salad.

They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day."

Prediction:
OWS will fail because protesting about stuff is hard without organic chicken and sheep's-milk-cheese salad. Oh, and the weather changed in Austin, so OWS-Austin is already in decline (the temperature dropped below 70 degrees - which is too cold for the flip-flop and t-shirt crowd).

Question:
So, it's OK to redistribute from the wealthy (1%) to the 99% as long as you can exclude vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders???

~Xolo
Is it OK for one freeloader to hate another freeloader?

OWS - Occupy Austin "We are the 99%, 98%, 97%..."

2011-10-27T07:47:00.001-05:00

Austin Business Journal, Date: Thursday, October 27, 2011, 7:03am CDT
Occupy Austin protest numbers shrink - Austin Business Journal:

"The Occupy Austin movement began nearly three weeks ago and the number of protesters at Austin City Hall are beginning to drop.

Taxpayers are paying overtime for police and extra cleaning costs for grounds while the occupiers who are left depend on food and water donations."

The weather is changing rapidly from mid to high 80s all the way down to the mid-60s!

Is it hard to be dedicated to a non-specific movement with non-specific goals and non-specific leadership?

~Xolo
Starve the beast.

Toshiba Thrive Road Trip

2011-10-21T15:08:00.004-05:00

My recent road trip was the first where I left my Dell laptop at home and took my Toshiba Thrive instead.

Advantages

The weight difference was amazing. Lighter than my Dell E6400, the Thrive also let me shed the laptop bag and all of the bits and pieces inside. The only accessories that made the trip were a power cord and a couple of stylus. It certainly made TSA screening, storage, and access better on the trip. The Thrive went everywhere with me... the laptop might have stayed in the hotel room on coffee runs and quick errands.

Disadvantages/User Error

The biggest problems were due to user error (that would be me). Since the Thrive offers easy access to data on SD cards I keep most of my music on a 2GB card. This keeps my drive space free and lets me manage my music from my home workstation. Multiple SD cards are simple and easy to use.

Of course, if you leave your SD cards at home… (oops).

I do have some music on the internal drive so all was not lost. And, as far as the cloud based Google and Amazon music solutions – they really don’t work without internet connectivity.

The second issue was my failure to carry an HDMI cable. My hotel room had a beautiful LCD TV with a perfectly accessible HDMI port. No cable – no big screen movies. The hotel did supply a standard VGA/VGA cable - but VGA is about the only adapter missing on the Thrive This is one of the few places where the laptop would have worked better.

Android has an irritating behavior when connecting to new Wi-Fi networks. The Thrive would see and connect to new networks, but would not allow data transfers. A simple reboot resolved the issue every single time, but who wants to reboot every time they add a new network? The good news is that it does “remember” networks very well, so the second and third re-connects do not require the reboot.

The Thrive offers the ability to disconnect from Wi-Fi at the same interval as the sleep function for the screen saver (in my case – 2 minutes). I had a "Guest Login" that forced me to re-enter my password with each reconnect. It was one of those system generated, complex passwords like “G91xe47#9G” —which is the equivalent of the expletive I muttered each time I had to retype the password.

Finally, the Firefox browser for Android Gingerbread (3.x) does not allow the viewing of Amazon Prime movies. Ok, the base Android browser does, but why is the Flash plugin for Firefox so lame? And, until Wednesday the 19th, Netflix was not available for Gingerbread. I arrived home to Round Rock to find it in the Android Store… just a couple of days late.

Lessons Learned

Carry an HDMI cable (Amazon has a huge selection under $10).
Make sure to have SD cards (music and/or videos) because Wi-Fi is not quite everywhere. Example: my hotel room charges for internet access were $14.95 a day. I could have skipped that charge entirely with a little more planning. Also, 2-3 hours on a plane is perfect A/V time.
Make sure to download Kindle books, or other cloud based media that you want to read or access.

So, a little learning curve for the user… and the Thrive proved to be a great travel companion.

~Xolo

Praising the One Percent, 1%, OccupyWallStreet in Wrong Place

2011-10-21T09:53:00.001-05:00

George Riesman writing in the Mises Daily,
"In Praise of the Capitalist 1 Percent"

"...all of us, 100 percent of us, benefit from the wealth of the hated capitalists. We benefit without ourselves being capitalists, or being capitalists to any great extent. The protesters are literally kept alive on the foundation of the wealth of the capitalists they hate. As just indicated, the oil fields and pipelines of the hated Exxon corporation provide the fuel that powers the tractors and trucks that are essential to the production and delivery of the food the protesters eat. The protesters and all other haters of capitalists hate the foundations of their own existence."

He continues:

"Capitalism — laissez-faire capitalism — is the ideal economic system. It is the embodiment of individual freedom and the pursuit of material self-interest. Its result is the progressive rise in the material well-being of all, manifested in lengthening life spans and ever-improving standards of living.

"The economic stagnation and decline, the problems of mass unemployment and growing poverty experienced in the United States in recent years, are the result of violations of individual freedom and the pursuit of material self-interest. The government has enmeshed the economic system in a growing web of paralyzing rules and regulations that prohibit the production of goods and services that people want, while compelling the production of goods and services they don't want, and making the production of virtually everything more and more expensive than it needs to be. For example, prohibitions on the production of atomic power, oil, coal, and natural gas, make the cost of energy higher and in the face of less energy available for use in production, require the performance of more human labor to produce any given quantity of goods. This results in fewer goods being available to remunerate the performance of any given quantity of labor.

"Uncontrolled government spending and its accompanying budget deficits and borrowing, along with the income, estate, and capital gains taxes, all levied on funds that otherwise would have been heavily saved and invested, drain capital from the economic system. They thus serve to prevent the increase in both the supply of goods and the demand for labor that more capital in the hands of business would have made possible. They have now gone far enough to have begun actually to reduce the supply of capital in the economic system in comparison with the past."

Bottom Line:
The 1% is the US Government. The protesters like the media spotlight of New York. Rather than OccupyWallStreet they really should be OccupyWashingtonDC where a few hundred people wield significantly more power.

Xolo
Yes, economics is hard. Being ignorant or stupid takes much less skill.

Student Loan Debts Crush an Entire Generation, Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-20T15:02:00.000-05:00

Alex Pareene makes the following observation on Salon.com in an article titled "Student Loan Debts Crush an Entire Generation".

"Some people have noticed that “student loan debt” comes up a lot among the Wall Street Occupiers and the members of the 99 percent movement. Often, older people, who either attended school when tuition was reasonable, or who didn’t attend college at all in an era when a high school diploma was enough of a qualification for a stable, middle-class career, tend to think this is all the entitled whining of spoiled kids. They don’t understand that these kids accepted a home mortgage worth of debt before they ever even had a regular income, based on phony promises, and that the debt is inescapable, regardless of life circumstances or ability to pay.

"Thanks to the horrific 2005 bankruptcy bill, one of the most nakedly venal modern examples of Congress serving the interests of the rentiers and creditors over the vast majority, debtors cannot discharge student loans through bankruptcy. The government is shielded from the risk, and creditors are licensed to collect by almost any means they deem necessary, giving no one in charge any real incentive (beyond basic human decency) to fix the situation.

"In other words, this is unprecedentedly awful for an entire generation of young people just entering adulthood."

Pareene identifies most of the list of OWS culprits: Congress, Banks, For-Profit Colleges. He omits, for some unknown reason, public and private Universities and the students that take on the debt.

There are many symptoms to the problem. But at the root... Government price supports are generally created to benefit their supporters (supporters of the government official that is). And, whenever the government guaranties a price the product will be over-produced. This rule applies universally to corn, or milk, or cheese, or houses, or college classrooms.

NPR asks the question "Why is College So Expensive?".

"If you are a veteran of a public university, the jump in tuition at your alma mater might be downright jaw-dropping. Tuition at the University of California, Berkeley, was about $700 a year back in the 1970s. Today, U.C. Berkeley students have to fork over around $15,000 per year. That's a 2,000 percent increase.

"There's a simple explanation, according to Sandy Baum, who teaches at George Washington University. "States are paying less of the cost than they used to," Baum says. She adds that as state budgets shrink, the students' share of paying for education goes up.

Competing for Talent

"Berkeley's tuition increase is unusually large, but most public schools, which educate 80 percent of all college students, have seen dramatic increases. Private schools don't rely on state subsidies, and their prices have gone up more slowly in recent years. But they are still rising faster than inflation.

"In the past decade, tuition and fees at public four‑year colleges and universities increased at an average rate of 5.6% per year beyond the rate of general inflation. Costs at private schools, adjusted for inflation, have actually decreased."

Bottom Line:
Myth: Gaining a College degree is a ticket to the good life.

The Government has morphed from direct subsidizer of schools, to primary lender -- with no escape clause for the borrower. The government has been managing the ability for students to pay the price, but not the cost. How gracious of our government to remove the banks from the Student Loan process - why cut-in a middle man on such a sweet deal?

This Faustian bargain has a very high cost:
Handcuffs created by government, supplied by banks, slapped on by the Universities... subjugating those that voluntarily take on the handcuffs, the yoke, the chains and shackles of student debt. Voila, the creation of a voluntarily indentured class.

Xolo
More on the Occupy Wall Street - Student Loan discussion (Link and Link)

New Media Literacy Requires Critical Thought

2011-10-14T09:41:00.000-05:00

Josh Cantone on Mashable discusses Why New Media Literacy Is Vital for Quality Journalism:

"In today’s media-saturated world, the concept of literacy is again changing. According to [Nichole] Pinkard, kids in school today may not be considered literate in the future if they don’t fundamentally understand new forms of media — things like blogs, Twitter and streaming video.

"To be truly literate, though, you also need to be able to think critically about media, discern fact from fiction, news from opinion, trusted from untrustworthy. These issues have always been thorny, but the explosion of self-publishing has only made media literacy more vital to the preservation of our democratic society."

Salisbury University has a quick summary of "7 Critical Reading Strategies".

Of course, the Xolotech blog as part of the "new media" would be remiss if it didn't point the reader to: Adler, M. J., & Van Doren, C. (1972). How to Read A Book (Revised Edition (August 15, 1972) ed.). Touchstone. The New Yorker: It shows concretely how the serious work of proper reading may be accomplished and how much it may yield in the way of instruction and delight.

Bottom Line:
The availability of information, in whatever media format, does not relieve the reader or viewer from using their brain.

~Xolo
Miles Monroe: My brain! It's my second favorite organ. ~Woody Allen, Sleeper

OccupyWallStreet, Student Loans, and Nontrepreneurism

2011-10-12T11:12:00.000-05:00

ABC News Reports: Student Loan Payments Cripple Borrowers

"We work with our customers experiencing financial difficulty to find ways to help them remain successful," said Patricia Christel of Sallie Mae. "This can involve switching to a different payment plan and a review of their financial situation to see whether they could be eligible for a temporary period of lower or no payments."

Taking a break from payments via deferment or switching to a longer payment schedule could result in paying much more in the long run in interest.

"It doesn't make any sense when people don't care what the car costs, they only care what the payment is," said Jones about many of the options borrowers have to lower their monthly payments. "But so many people are desperate they will do whatever they can do."

"Bottom line is that we want to hear from our customers and work with them to find a way for them to be successful," said Christel. "Nobody wins — not the customer, not future students who depend on student loans for access to college, not the school and not the lender — if someone defaults.""

SmartMoney discusses the aftermath: For Student Borrowers, a Hard Truth:

"What many people may not realize, however, when taking out a student loan is just how different it is from other kinds of debt. Credit-card debt, for example, can be wiped out in bankruptcy. Mortgages can be discharged through foreclosure.

For borrowers with crippling student loan debt, financial failure offers no such fresh start. The loan still must be paid off, and often with new collection costs tacked on, making it much more expensive than before. On top of that, up to 25% of a person's wages can be deducted until the loan is paid back in full. (Private lenders must get court approval for wage garnishment and the amount they can take varies.)

With federal loans, the government can also keep your federal and state income tax refunds, intercept future lottery winnings and withhold part of your Social Security payments. "Defaulting can be completely devastating to a family's finances and sense of well being," says Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org and Fastweb.com."

[Author note: broken into 3 paragraphs for readability, emphasis added.]

Finally a quote from Peter Reilly at Forbes.com about an OccupyWallStreet example:

"A typical, although on the extreme end, grievance is from someone who went $150,000 in debt to obtain a masters degree in Minority Womens Studies. She received an excellent education and is now extemely frustrated that no one is willing to hire her based on the important things that she has learned. Now some even among the 99ers, who have posted, would put the blame for that squarely on her shoulders..."

Bottom Line:
Just say "Maybe" to student loan forgiveness. Nontrepreneurism Part 2 and Nontrepreneurism Part 2a

Just say NO to Nontrepreneurism (Part 1), Warren Nontrpreneurism
(See also: Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and the Plugerville Example)

Just say YES to Entrepreneurism

~Xolo
P.S. Yes, there are options to avoid Student Loans entirely. See: UT Tuition and Checked Baggage, and 10 Most Affordable Colleges.