These strangeres appeared when I did an image search for Cloud Computing Unicorn Zen

Thanks to some serendipitous luck, yours truly kindly received one of the 60,000 computers Google has produced for their Cr-48 Chome Notebook Pilot Program. This little act of corporate charity been enough to inspire me to write more regularly about stuff I like to do. I assume Google is watching everything I do, and hope that their engineers flip the webcam on only when I’m fully clothed.

The Cr48 is feather light on processing power, storage capacity, and weight. It lacks moving parts. It’s a Cloud Computing terminal for storing and retrieving information from the Web and gliding through the etheral networks of the Internet.

There are already members of the pilot that have peered into its gleaming, simplified insides. There are geniuses who have swapped out the operating system to flip its brain from one corporate master to another. There are without doubt lots of people in the pilot program who can and will gleefully modify, destroy, resurrect and transform these devices, and will probably continue to do so. The only shocking thing will be if someone out there does NOT find a novel, sideways use for one of their prototype device.

That someone won’t be me, by the way. I have no interest in trying any of the above, either. All I want to do is use it.

And I mean USE it. I want to see if I can use it to talk to servers, do some light programming, write, make pictures and above all work on this website with it. I’m a person who loves to communicate and create with this medium as quickly as I can.

So the question becomes, does this little device makes it better, faster, slower, harder, or just plain different to do this kind of work?

To do this kind of work with zeal means learning a certain amount of craft. I’m not a talented developer like Mr. Ben Ringold, the man behind Sleuth, but I’ve learned how to hack my way through databases and computer code. I’m not a network engineer, but I’ve learned to work with servers. I’m not a creative genius like Mr. Jason Forbes, but do love to work with graphics software and make things work. My contributions to the world are mostly as a thinker, behind-the-scenes rabble rouser, goad and organizer. That’s the space where I try to take things like project management, writing, deal-making and the Zen of media production and apply enough zeal to create something akin to digital art.

So, my little contribution to the Pilot Program is going to center around 4 slightly technical questions (depending of course on your point of view) to answer a bigger question. Namely, can I manage effdot.com better, worse, or about the same with this effervescent piece of technology? And will doing so get me moving again on this site?

Current Phase: Phase 2 and I just started! Read on to find out why!

Overview

This is a simple project to answer whether I can fully manage effdot.com with this Cr48. An overall objective is to get back on the horse with regular updates on this site. Naturally, other opinions about the utility of this device and cloud computing will arise from this effort.

Goals

1. Manage a Linux Server
2. Update some graphics
3. Upgrade this Blog
4. Move this website to a new server
5. Write weekly about this project and with opinions on the device

When the project is over, I should have some articles about Cloud Computing, using the Cr48, and if all goes well hopefully an upgraded site living on a new server.

Project Phases

There are three phases of this project.

Phase 1: Hacking Away

This phase is all about getting to know the device, by documenting its quirks and the things I like. There are many applications and extensions available for Chrome OS (including some neat media based ones from Marvel and Sports Illustrated). The device itself also works has its own quirks, via the buttonless touchpad that comes with it. I figure that it will take a few weeks to learn the device and find apps that I like to use with it to help me accomplish the goals.

Phase 1 closes the moment I figure out how to connect with my server with this and do some light maintenance. That means I need to find a terminal application that works with Chrome OS.

EDIT: Shocker, this didn’t take as long as I thought it would. Click to Parting Thoughts to find out why!

Phase 2: Doing Fun Stuff

The main thing here is to create some simple graphics for use here, created solely with the netbook. There are a lot of graphics programs available, so this is both about discovering graphics software and settling on a program that’s easy and fun to use.

The bigger task here is to do an upgrade of this blog only using the device. Since this is a WordPress site, in theory this could be done via the admin system. There are some tasks that I want to accomplish that require some actual code updates, however. To accomplish this, I need to find an IDE or editor that will allow me to work directly on code. While I could work through the terminal, the idea is to find easier, faster, lighter ways to do this kind of work.

As soon as I settle on some graphics tools and get the site upgrade finished, it’s time to move on.

Phase 3: Move It!

I have a few apps running on the server that powers this site. The server powering this stuff is more than I need, however. The goal here is to find a cheaper cloud or virtual server option, and move the server to a new home using the Cr48. That work may be accomplished via the terminal only, although the goal will still be to find some Chrome OS option.

When the site is moved to its new house, Phase 3 is complete!

Success Metrics

Each phase has a Success Metric, defined by the phases outlined above.

Phase 1

This phase is successful if …
• … the question of whether a terminal application that can use Chrome OS is settled
• … a decision can be made about whether use feels smooth and natural

Phase 2

This phase is successful if …
• … 3 graphics programs are found, used, and judged on their utility
• … 3 or more cloud based IDE or text-editor programs are used to try and update this site
• … this site ends up with an upgrade

Phase 3

This phase is successful if …
• … a new server is found and the site is moved using this device as the medium
• … a subjective answer about whether it was easier or harder to do is made

The most important goal, and the one that will help me define overall success, is whether there’s at least one Life in the Cloud entry each week.

Parting Thoughts …

I'm a pretty good typist, but everyone makes a lucky mistake now and again.

Phase 1 ended earlier than planned because it turned out the task that I thought would be a bit of a challenge, namely finding a terminal app, was incredibly easy, thanks to my dumb luck. It turns out the cr48 already has a terminal app built into it. I found it by accident when I tried to open a new browser tab with a ctrl-t and hit ctrl+alt+t by mistake. Doing so opened up the terminal.

Creating a connection via ssh is pretty easy. Once the terminal is started, type this at the command prompt, replacing username and host.server with your username and server name …

$ ssh username host.server

… and that’s it. I got in, did my bit of business, exited the device, then exited the terminal. While not the most robust client, it helped me quickly do what I needed to do. Being able to use some keyboard shortcuts to get to a terminal is pretty cool.

When I outlined the project, I thought that I would have to do a big search to find a terminal application. It never occurred to me that the people who conceived this would’ve built one right into the device. In hindsight, it seems obvious. This device is built by passionate software engineers, working for a smart company, who have probably needed to quickly get to a terminal. Duh, of course one would be built right inside!

So, Phase I ended early because of clumsy typing.

Click here if you jumped ahead to this section and would like to go back to where you started.

If you follow this project’s progress, I hope you find it interesting. If you found this entry during a search for Cr48 information, but don’t have your own and would like one, you might as well try applying for one. That’s all I did.

With that, Phase 1 is done. On to Phase 2!

Life in the Cloud project updates are posted every Monday at 10.30am ET.

This came up in an image search for 'Flash' and 'Apple'.

There are many articles and blog posts about the brewing fight between Apple and Adobe over flash. There’s usually one of two takes on the subject. The first is about why Adobe or Apple are in the right about the fight. The second is a discussion about the technical merits of HTML 5 video, Flash video, and the like.

None of this really matters to the bulk of digital media professionals, though. In fact, the only thing that really matters is what the consequences of this fight mean to the people who have to make the blogs, the websites, the applications, and more for all the users out there who don’t care about who “wins” in this latest iteration of web wars.

The short version: If you’re running video on the web, make flash websites, have existing legacy flash sites, and more, be prepared to build a different version of your site for these other platforms. If this concept feels familiar, it is. It’s the latest iteration of broadband vs. dial-up websites, Windows Vs. Quicktime Vs. Real, Mobile Vs. Web, and more. In 12 to 18 months, there may be another ‘battle’ over standards, formats, and the like, and this current ‘battle’ will have likely been settled for a short time. In the interim, though, be ready for some early 2000 style web chaos.

The long version: A lot of this is really about Mobile Video and how it’s monetized

Ultimately, I’m convinced that this fight is really about video on the web. If you are running video on the web, you are basically one of two types of publisher. You either earn (or seek to earn) money from the video content directly, or from ads placed before, during, after and around a video.

If your goal is a direct sale of some kind, more than likely you are trying to reach as many people as possible with a high quality version of your video. Maybe the end goal is a DVD sale. Or a sale through iTunes. Or a sale through your own website. All three of these scenarios transfer a file from your business to another computer for that other person to use at will. We can skip the worry about file transfers, caching, etc, because most users can’t or won’t bother to get those files, assuming that the player codec didn’t just scrub them to begin with.

File formats and how they are played on a client browser or desktop are an important consideration. Go back to 2001. 9 years ago, trying to decide what format to play your video in, on what players, was a major consideration. Is this formatted in Real? Windows Media? QuickTime? Do we create video versions of all the formats, at lots of different sizes, or just a few?

In the end, you had lots of files of varying quality.

Fast forward a few years. Adobe Flash, going back to its roots in a sense, introduces their own video format. For a brief time, flash video is ubiquitous. YouTube would not exist without Flash video. Hulu would also not exist without Flash video. There’s a brief window where worrying about what type of video you’re serving is halted.

Sort of. While web publishers had semi-settled on Flash Video as a pseudostandard (, Mobile video had a different standard, .3gp, that is supported but not widely implemented in the United States. Apple is just one of many handset makers that don’t support Flash 10 (although, granted, some of them support Flash Lite).

The big advantage of Flash Video was the (relatively speaking) easy programmability. You could use the platform to make add banners. You could program a video player for pre-roll, post-roll and ad insertions. All kinds of neat tricks were possible with the platform.

However, the ubiquity of streaming, ad-based video is in direct competition with a pay-per-use model. In other words, why would a consumer buy a video file if you can watch it for ‘free’ on a website somewhere? In a way, it’s like a web version of arguments over home video versus broadcast video, cable vs. movies, and more.

In other words, Adobe Vs. Apple? For most of the professionals out there, the only stake in the fire is choosing the direction to spend resources in developing our new offerings.

Advice for anyone doing Video on the web: Unless you really need your own platform to serve ads, use a 3rd party offering like YouTube, Vimeo or Brightcove to serve your video. If you do need your own platform, tread carefully, because the developers are all about to party like it’s 1999.

And keep an eye out for what google does. A company that size, that wants open standards for everything, just may get their way in the end. Which will make all of these skirmishes seem silly a few years down the line.

This is from an article about book trailers, which I'm not sure is the best idea, but it's a neat picture.

I love to read. I am often indifferent about whether I am reading paper or words on a screen. If I am reading a book, it often doesn’t matter to me whether the book is on paper or on a screen.

For some people this distinction is important. They may only want a paper book or an electronic book. Lots of smart people are seeing a future where more people will want to read electronic books instead of paper books.

But the thing to remember is that books, whether they are printed as pixels or ink or even cuneiform on stone, are still something people want to read. We like to read. As a species, we are wired and cultured to read. More on that in another blog post.

So, people still want to read books. Books will still need to be published. People will keep writing and reading them. Books, as a cultural information format, aren’t going anywhere.

The question isn’t whether books, or the publishing of books, will disappear. The question is what format the manufacture and distribution of books will take in the coming years.

Or, to put it another way, what would have gotten me to purchase the book I just bought on O’Reily’s website at the bookstore?

It’s in 2 parts. What I imagine a smart book store of the present would look like, and what one in the future may be.

Dream Book Store of the Present

1. Expert opinions
Even Barnes and Noble know that their floor people need to understand their subjects in order to offer alternates to customers when the book they want is unavailable. Smart stores leverage their expertise to engender trust in their customers. It’s one of the reasons why those recommended book lists in a store both appeal to me and turn me off.

They appeal to my sense of the different. Here are some strangers who like these titles, maybe I will to. But, because they are strangers, I may be wary of their opinions. I am the type of person who tends to take advice, though, and those lists are often a relief from what can sometimes feel like an endless row of material to sort. Plus, if I’m returning to the store, getting to know the people there, the lists become warmer and more valuable over time.

It’s the value of librarians. A great librarian can help you wade, sift and sort through all of that material to help you find what you need. Humans, when it comes to books, are always going to be a smarter search engine than Google, at least in our lifetime. This is because of context. Face to face communication provides a context that typed, electronic communication can’t supply. Web communication can do amazing things, but it can’t substitute for human interaction of the face-to-face variety.

We need experts to help us save time. The more expert you are in your subject, the more time you can save another person. And time is fast becoming our only true limiting factor.

So, I like the stores that offer opinions to help me find what I need, or what I didn’t know I wanted. The big chain approach doesn’t work for me, because I don’t trust the expertise of the people in the store.

2. Do what you do better than anyone else
I think a wise book store understands a simple distinction when it comes to selling product. Namely that the sale is the end result of understanding a customer’s need and fulfilling it. Most people want to find the right book. Experts help them do that. Volume isn’t the path to what is, ultimately, the quest for a quality experience.

In other words, if you’re going to sell coffee, make it great. Don’t rely on a brand, build some expertise! We will grab that Starbucks because we trust the name, for the most part. But we will trust your store if you put effort into a truly quality experience. I don’t trust what I’m getting at a big chain any more, because it feels like a bad salad bar when I’m looking for a cafe.

So, these are both a little vague. But they point to what I think could be a future model that leverages the idea of expertise.

Dream Book Store of the Future

1. Affiliate sales
This is going to sound crazy, but I think it may be possible for a smart, physical book store to sell electronic books. How?

Affiliate sales. In theory, a book store with its own wifi connection could point users to a page of their book recommendations, including a check out process that would allow the customer to purchase directly on their mobile device. In other words, you could offer wifi service that points a user away from amazon.com, bn.com, etc. to a page of your own choosing, that then allows a user to purchase through your page to one of those sites. The start page could be the homepage of the store’s website, or even a custom page, with a reader list that sends people off to make a purchase, with a percentage going to the store.

You could even find a use for object hyperlinking in such a scenario (think QR codes, Microsoft Tag, etc..). Imagine the expert list of recommendations for a book store. “Debbie recommends ‘Presentation Zen.’ There’s no shelf space at present for ‘Presentation Zen.’ Next to the recommendation is a QR code, Tag, whatever. A quick snapshop with a phone, and voila, off the user goes to make a purchase.

Or, to an in house, electronic inventory. If a person purchases a file, the question is really what kind of file copy are they buying? Either way, a store could also manage their own electronic inventory.

B&N has started this with their Nook program, albeit with limited success. In fact, their experience points to a danger for a closed loop model for a retailer.

In other words, it’s rare that a store would only shelve books of only one size and shape. Why try to do the same with an ereader?

On this point, another potential advantage of this idea is experimental shelf space. Suppose that your store can only hold a certain amount of books, and that there is a focus on young adult literature. Suppose then that a member of your staff is an expert on Nature Books. In order to leverage the expertise of the nature book lover, you would need to shelve nature books, thereby incurring a cost in shelf space and inventory.

BUT, if you had wifi, or even a kiosk, that allowed an affiliate sale to Nature Books recommended by your resident nature book lover, suddenly, that expertise is monetized, without incurring either cost. In other words, an electronic shelf has incredible flexibility to leverage expertise.

There are, however, two catches with this scenario. The biggest one being, suppose that a user with a mobile device decides to opt OUT of connecting to your store’s wifi, consequently bypassing your store page, etc.. Well, nothing to be done about this, and I’m not even sure that’s a real concern. In other words, if a person is going to browse your store and not buy anything, it won’t matter if there’s wifi or no wifi. Offering the wifi and expert opinions is simply a way to encourage people to buy through you, and a way to leverage one of the store’s key assets (namely, their expertise in books for purchase).

The service could be free or paid for. If it’s free, then this is because the store sees a value in lingering customers. Coffee shops tend to offer free wifi if they want people hanging around, buying scones all day. Coffee shops that offer PAID wifi (like Starbucks) tend to do this as a way to make sure that people who are hanging around the shop all day are paying SOMETHING for taking up space.

2. Provide quality bound books for people that love paper
There are still many people that want books made of paper. They love the way they look on a shelf. They have the space for them. My bet is that they will tend to want paper copies, but probably editions of higher quality and status value.

To put it another way, the only books on my shelf are gifts or books that don’t have electronic versions. But for several of my friends, larger libraries filled with beautiful editions are common.

The thing we have in common is that we all love to read, and all need advice on what we should get. Theatre still exists in the age of movies and television. Radio too. In many parts of the world, books remain the best way to move information between people. The books, even the physical ones, aren’t going anywhere for a while. And even when they do, there will still be people who want the physical books. The question will then become, are you offering a great experience for those people as well?

Last Dance

I don’t think there is anything truly revolutionary in this post. In fact, I would say that my observations are rather plain, and obvious.

This is exactly my point. The only new idea up there is affiliate sales. Everything else is all about leveraging the expertise of the people in the space to the maximum benefit of the customers.

This is simply because, while I know that the WAY we buy, sell and share book (and knowledge) is changing rapidly, the way in which we share them isn’t likely to change as much, or as quickly.

The thing that people now and in the future will have in common is a desire to read books, no matter what the format.

The question is simply how to provide the experiences on a way that makes the most sense for people now and the people in the future.

The article that this picture originally comes from has more footnotes than mine, check it out

I was working on an update to this site recently, and found myself stuck on a php problem. When you get stuck on a problem, if you’re anything like me you want an answer sooner rather than later.

I started with google. After some searching there, I went to wordpress to find a plugin, or maybe something in the codex to help me solve the issue. From there, I went broader and looked for php and mysql issues that could help me explain what was happening. Finally, I decided that I needed expertise beyond the unstrucured answers I was finding. I was also ready to pay for an answer.

Some people might turn to experts exchange, or a trusted friend to find the answer. I have a DIY personality, so my next stop was Amazon.com to look for books on the subject in which I was interested.

Once I found the books, I looked for electronic versions. Finding none, I then went to my google map to find the nearest bookstore. Borders and Barnes and Noble were both nearby, so I checked their websites for prices. Barnes and Noble was the winner, so I headed in to grab the book, read up, and (hopefully) solve the problem.

However, the book I thought was in the store was unavailable. I decided to ask the customer service person, on an off chance, if they knew any other good books on the subject. They knew where the materials were on the shelf, but beyond that had no opinion on php or mysql. Still, why should they? Open source software guides for project managers with a hacker mentality is a pretty narrow subject area. I looked online a little more, then decided to keep hacking away and skip making any kind of purchase.

I ended up doing what I should have done in the first place; namely, go to the o’reily website and read an ebook.

But, it made me think about my experience as a customer at that big book store. And truly, I can’t think of a time I have ever gone into a chain book store and gotten a sense of any kind of subject matter expertise in the last ten years.

I will admit that the above quest for knowledge is a little obsessive. However, I think that within that excessive speed searching session there is a pattern of behavior that shows a few important things when it comes to books.

1. I have been trained to have low expectations of expertise at chain stores
Large chains have thin volumes that have to support local, regional, and often national operations. One place to trim coat is via salary, by creating operations that can allow, in theory, your employee to do whatever narrow job the owners think it is they should do. Why hire an expensive chef when a line cook wih no training can slap frozen meat on a counter? This is not to disparage the people working at these places. We all need to work, after all. Rather, it’s to point to what these chains consider their core value proposition, and to point out that they may have trained the public too well in the process.

2. The utility of a big box store to a consumer is volume and discounts
I looked extensively online for answers before even thinking of buying a book. Once I had decided to buy a book, I prepared myself by researching online before I set foot in the store. I knew that, while a store might have the book that contained the knowledge I needed, it would be highly unlikely that anyone there would be enough of a subject matter expert to point me in the direction of a useful text to help me with my php and mysql problem. In other words, the staff at Barnes and Noble could only point me to a volume, stack, or section that might have the material I would find useful, but they had no other opinion on the material. I already knew this because every customer experience I have ever had at their store indicates this to me. They are there to push widgets. Having an opinion about the widget itself is secondary, and depending on what they do at the store, not part of their job description. Like, if you’re a cashier, and there’s only 2 people in the store, it’s probably pretty likely that you’re not required to know much about the books. For the folks in the store, all of the books in which I was interested were simply commodities that either satisfied my purchase desire, or not. Beyond helping me find a book that was shelved wrong, there isn’t much more to offer to a customer at such a store in my experience. Either they have the book at a cheap price, ready for me to grab now, or they don’t.

3. If there was an expert available at the point of purchase to suggest an alternate, I will probably buy the book
O’reily is an expert in computer books. They are also a publisher, which means that I take their expertise with a grain of salt. They will grant me access to their knowledge, but not to anyone else’s knowledge. So, it is a limited expert opinion. But, and here’s the thing, it was enough expertise that I was willing to complete a sale with them.

4. Barnes and Noble looked like a pit stop at a mall instead of the warehouse of expert knowledge that I needed
I almost bought a cafe latte and a scone, but I hesitated. Looking at the offerings, I thought, man, if these guys are only good at shoving massive product at me, what’s in that scone? I didn’t trust anything in the store, aside from the prices and quantities. Price and quantity are not good measures for buying food. So, pass on all of it. Except for the bathroom.

5. Electronic books are designed for volumes, discounts, and speed of purchase
I think this is worth remembering. I went to O’Reily in the end because they had more product, of higher quality and expertise, at a lower price, in greater quantities than Barnes and Noble. I could have purchased my book on Amazon.com, or B&N, and even had a physical copy shipped to me. Or, I could go to O’Reily and get the information instantly. The big chains have trained me to expect volume, discounts, and speed. If someone else does what they do better and faster, then of course I’m going to go shop there. In a sense, it’s like the stores built their own demise by not being fast enough.

This post probably sounds a little hopeless for book sellers. Maybe it is. I’m also willing to admit that my Maurice Moss like tendencies make me a strange shopper.

But to me, this isn’t hopeless for book sellers, book makers, or anyone. Because in the end, I still bought a book. In fact, I was very close to buying a physical book.

What could’ve made me buy that physical book? The answers are contained in the situational analysis above. I’ll save my silver-lined answers until Thursday.

Can you make heads or tails out of this EP cover?

The whole discussion reminded me of the 1960s and rock music.

In the 50s, the last gasps of the Silent Generation found Rock-and-Roll. These were the kids who were too young for World War II, to either enlist or comprehend what was happening, who found this strange, wonderful music that spoke to them. Their younger siblings, the Baby Boom Generation, came of age during the 60s.

The Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers were both generations who appreciated a little good-old-fashioned musical rebellion. This love of Rock Music, coupled with the size of their generation, were as intrinsic to the socioeconomic upheavels, demographic shifts, and massive social upheavels that the times demanded.

The behavior of the Baby Boomer’s was incomprehensible to their parents. The term ‘generation gap’ was coined in the 60s, and referred to differences between children and their parents. Typically these differences were around culture, fashion, politics, and attitudes. The size of the Baby Boom generation made their choices matter in a way that America hadn’t seen before.

Thus, the end of the story of the 60s is that the Baby Boom Generation changed the world, irrevocably, from what it was before.

Fast forward to today. The Baby Boomers have been used to thinking of themselves as the young rebels, in charge of the gates of culture. But now, younger Barbarians have stormed the gates and are forcing another round of massive social change, demographic shifts, and rapid change to our cultural values.

The place where this shift is made manifest isn’t a concert anymore. It’s in a strange, ephemeral commons where Social Media users live and collaborate.

Social Media is not Rock and Roll in the sense of sexiness, drugs, stars, or even similar as a cultural form. The reason Social Media is the new Rock and Roll is the sheer incomprehensibility of these cultural touch stones to previous generations. Twitter is incomprehensible to a lot of people. So is Facebook. Googling sort of makes sense to almost anyone. Even people of an older generation who claim to understand these tools, often try to harness them in ways that are, frankly, baffling to people of a younger generation (I’m thinking of YOU Coca-Cola, and your Coke Zero campaign!).

To put it another way, our time now is all about the difference between the remote control and the keyboard.

I’m a Generation X kid. I’m right between the two, born just long ago enough that I know the previous generation really well, but just soon enough that I had a computer as a child. And from my vantage point, I can see very clearly that all of the kids born between 1976 and 2000 are the Digital Generation, and are on the cusp of something grand.

Kind of interested to see what happens next.

FYI: I’m going back to a regular ThinkPiece posting schedule, Tuesdays and Thursdays. For anyone reading out there.

If SUB POP was a person it would be looking at 30 by now.

I read a post on The New Sleekness about the Publishing Industry that reminded me of the story of Sub Pop, as I know it.

In the early 80s, Bruce Pavitt was a college student who really loved music. He also needed college credits. Searching for a way marry the two, he took action and created a ‘zine dedicated to American independent music. Thus was born “Subterranean Pop”, a Washington State journal of all things musical, regional, and awesome. Readers of the ‘zine knew that what they read in the pages would introduce them to music they wouldn’t have found otherwise and that they would likely enjoy. There were 9 issues of the ‘zine produced. By the time Pavitt joined local music newspaper ‘The Rocket’ in 1986 with his column ‘Sub Pop U.S.A.’, he was well-versed in the world that he loved and was gaining street cred with other musicphiles.

In 1986, that love turned into their first record, the legendary Sub Pop 100 LP. Soon after, Green River choose Sub Pop as their label to release their first album. Enter John Poneman with some money, enter Soundgarden, enter years of struggle, enter Nirvana in 1988 with “Love Buzz” and you can probably remember or find the rest of the story yourself. By 1992, a ‘zine from Olympia, Washington written by a music-lover who wanted college credit for something he liked doing had become a cultural phenomnon that entered the word ‘grunge’ into our lexicon and convinced people that dirty flannel shirts were worth $70 for a few years. There was also, and continues to be, a lot of great music found and distributed by this company.

What are the lessons that can be learned from the story of SUB POP?

1. Building a Meaningful Brand Matters
SUB POP built a regional reputation over the course of a decade as a distinctive voice with clear expertise in American Music. Around the world, people who saw the SUB POP label knew that it meant quality, awesome music, and something different from anything else you would find on a shelf. It meant Seattle, guitars, and beautiful noise. It was the opposite of a do-everything clearing house. The name became short hand for their fans, and other music lovers, for what matters in music.

2. Loving what you do Matters
No matter what you may say about them, one thing that cannot be denied is that Bruce Pavitt and John Poneman loved music. They loved it so much they bet their futures on it in the late 80s. This passion helped drive them to their later success.

3. Margins matter
In a way, Pavitt and Poneman were risk-averse in a very special sense. They only produced what they could pay for. They made album runs based on what they could sell. They had thin margins, thinner warehouses, and (using the cache they had built up over a few years), were able to translate this into more capital, to create more sales, in order to grow a new market organically. In a sense, this is just smart business. In another, it’s a model that MBAs should read up about if they want to understand an entertainment industry context for JIT inventory.

4. Expertise Matters
We have 24 hours in a day. Of those, we spend 4-8 asleep. We work another 6-12 hours. So, that only leaves 4-14 hours/day that people can devote to finding new things, learning new things, and figuring out what they want. Brands are a form of shorthand for people with busy lives. Good brands are something reliable that people can depend on. In the latter part of the 20th century, people who loved music knew that they could rely on SUB POP to present them with the best rock talent they could find in the Northwest. In fact, through their changes, buyouts and more, it’s still one of the things that SUB POP does well.

As an outsider to publishing, watching ebooks emerge, wondering if book stores are going to be around, I think I have a sense of what could happen. And I think that companies like SUB POP have the lessons that matter to what’s coming next. There are still lessons to be learned from how they helped build the Seattle music scene into what we remember and what it is today.

On this last point, I’m still working on a comprehensive presentation about it, and hope to have it finished before the apocolypse.

And as always, I’m glad to hear differing opinions on why I’m so utterly wrong.

This about.com article tells non-profits not to spam.

Email can be stressful. Left unmanaged, it’s the never ending junk mail pile. Imagine every email in your inbox as a piece of paper. If you have a few hundred or thousand in there, it looks like a nightmare. Imagine if that was your desk. People walk by, see your inbox stacked with a thousand sheets, you would get nods of sympathy. Worse, if you’ve got other people who are depending on answers from you, they know not to rely on you if you’ve got an inbox that looks like that.

Years before I started doing this, I decided what that I wanted a more productive, lower stress day. For me, it started with “Becoming an Email Ninja“ by Merlin Mann. That, coupled with healthy regular doses of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done”  got me to the dull, quiet email management system I have now – a welcome change to the situation that preceded it.

For anyone interested, here’s a cut-to-the-chase down and dirty explanation of how I’m doing this.

The Down and Dirty Approach

My inbox is sorted in reverse chronological order, so that the earliest items are at the top. I use a basic action/reaction task management and filing system. There’s only three tasks …

1. Decide
2. Do
3. Do it again ‘til Done

Decide

I check my inbox as things come in, then decide what to do with it (in no particular order).

• Read It.
• Trash it.
• Respond to it.
• Do something complicated.
• File it.

I then decide if the action is going to take me less than 1 minute to do (again, thank you David Allen!).

Do

Sometimes, all you need to do is read an email. If it’s going to take you less than a minute to read, then do it! Then you can either Trash it or File it.

If it’s spam, sales offers, anything that is just junk that got past the spam filter, I treat it just like junk mail from home and send it to the trash! Technically I recycle it, but the idea is the same. Junk mail is trash, so Trash it!

I respond to everything that needs a response. Maybe someone just needs an acknowledgement. Maybe they need an approval. Either way, if it’s going to take me less than a minute to do either, great, out the door, done! Then I can Trash it or File it.

I need to do something complicated, that means it will take me more than a minute to do. I acknowledge the email to let the person know I’m on it, then place it in the @Action folder as an unread item. This, along with some task ticklers, reminds me that I’ve got to do something here. If it’s deadline driven, I’ll drop an item in my calendar, too.

So, wow, look at that. The email is nice and sorted into something useful, so it’s time to …

Do it again ‘til Done

I go through this loop for each email until the inbox is down to zero. Surprisingly, it often takes very little time, sometimes less than 5 minutes a day, to do this.

The key is the @Actions folder. This is a way for me to externalize my memory for bigger, less immediate tasks than the one I’m working on. A lot of the day, I only need to check that @Actions folder. So, my email ends up being this little, easy-to-deal-with trickle for the most part, except for some key items that I can fit into the rest of the day.

I check the @Actions folder as I complete things, often once every 1-2 hours.

Processing an Unruly Inbox

After a long absence or vacation, I find my clean, zero inbox has a few hundred things in it. When that happens, I immediately sort the inbox by Sender then go about attacking it. A lot of times, there are some senders that all require the same action (Trash it!) so I just do it. There are others that just forward you material to read, etc.. Same rules apply.

These systems are one of the reasons why it’s never been a challenge to keep on top of my email. Read up on David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” and Merlin Mann’s “InBox Zero”, then give it a shot yourself!

I pulled this from a blog about a church on the web.

You’re at a meeting with a colleague, or drinks with friends, or at one of those conferences where there’s lots of whiteboards and headsets. Your colleague, client or friend is nervous. They know that they’re behind. They need reassurance. They are willing to buy a drink for anyone that can help. Free drinks are at stake.

Another friend, or colleague, or maybe a competitor steps up to calm them down. Your frenemy says, “What you need to do is think a little more Web 2.0.” Or words to that effect.

When you hear the term Web 2.0 you have one mission. Nip it in the bud. At best, Web 2.0 will steer the conversation in the wrong direction. At worst, Web 2.0 will take your friend down the wrong path as they think about what they need to do. Worse yet, you’ll watch as that person who just dropped a smoke bomb walks away with that free drink that should be yours!

Web 2.0 Needs to die

Web 2.0.

We love acronyms in the computer world, probably because they act both as handy mnemonic devices for decluttering our overinformed brains and have the feeling of insider jargon (thus making the person who uses the term an arbiter of geekcred). Some of those acronyms mean something. 3G (aka 3rd Generation) refers directly to the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 (IMT-2000) standard. The standard covers development of mobile communication technology for GSM EDGE, UMTS, CDMA2000, DECT and WiMAX protocols. It’s all about wireless communication, video, and all sorts of neat things. 3G was defined in 1999, and represents a true milestone in the development of cellular data networks as defined by a respected, collective entity in the celluar industry.

Web 2.0, though, is not an acronym. It’s also not a milestone. It’s a term that was coined in 1999 by Darcy DiNucci in her piece, “Fragmented Future.” Web 2.0 was this kind of urconcept, a way of talking about the vagaries of browser development coupled with the natural evolution of what people on the ground were doing as they morphed sites from static web pages into dynamic web applications of varying complexity. It’s the kind of term that hits those geekcred jargon points and gets people in the know to nod along.

Web 2.0 comes back in 2003-2004, with O’Reilly Seminars and articles talking about certain Web technologies with vague standards applied. Not exactly what Darcy DiNucci was talking about.

Now, in 2010, it’s come to mean some vagueness about blogs, joining the conversation, having a clean design with white space, etc.. Ask anyone who works in Information Technologies (Designer, Project Manager, Producer, whatever your title) what Web 2.0 means and chances are you will either get:

1. different vague answers that sound specific
2. the truth

And the truth is, Web 2.0 doesn’t mean anything. Until there’s an industry wide definition, milestones, and some actual technical reality behind the term, it’s just smoke and mirrors. When a term means everything to everyone and nothing to no one, then it’s a smokescreen and a conversation killer.

So when you hear, “Web 2.0,” challenge it! Ask the person saying it to define what they mean. If Web 2.0 flew from someone’s mouth before something meaningful was asked or answered, then it’s time to change the course of the conversation to something meaningful…

• Who is your audience?
• What do they want to do?
• What does your brand represent to them?
• How do you want to come across to these people?

These are the important questions and they all have answers. If your partner, agency, or helpful friends can’t answer them or can only say vague things like, “You need to be more Web 2.0,” then that’s the real problem.

And at that point, you should set a meeting to talk it over the very next day, first thing in the morning.

Then stop the shop talk, have a drink, and relax. And get everyone to take the pledge, “I vow to avoid using Web 2.0 in Twenty-Ten.”

This is from an unrelated Media Bistro article.

You’re at a lunch, or with a client, or out somewhere talking digital stuff with your own universe of digerati. Your client, your colleague, or maybe even you, suddenly find words like these spilling out of your mouth. “We want this site to go viral.” Inside, you want to die a little. Outside, you can see people nodding along. That’s a sign of trouble right there.

The point of this isn’t to make fun of anyone for not being hip or knowledgeable enough about terms. Just that, using these particular terms in 2010 doesn’t mean anything, and unnecessarily clouds what could be an interesting discussion.

Viral Marketing

When we say we want something to go viral, what we’re really saying is that we want our Widget (whether that’s a website, banner ad, trailer, text message, whatever) to reach as many people as possible as quickly as possible. Viral implies computer virus, as if just making something into easy-to-spread digital content is enough. It’s not and never will be.

As a digital worker person, I’ve used this, said it to clients, to friends, a lot of different people. Marketers especially want this magic bullet, as if making a promotion digital will somehow automatically make it compelling, and therefore increase reach.

The truth is, viral marketing is a pseudo-computer-scientific way of saying, “Electronic word of mouth.” It means you’ve got something that can take advantage of digital spaces, and let your audience spread messages to their friends and friends of friends in lots of different digital places more quickly. Instead of watching a trend take shape over months, it takes place over days, sometimes hours, depending on how connected your audience is. It’s great that we work in a medium that makes this possible, but there’s a catch.

No matter how digital your delivery is, the message still needs to be compelling. If the message isn’t compelling, you’ll never get people to talk about your Widget no matter how ‘viral’ you made it.

And if someone says they’ve cracked a magic formula for making their message compelling 100% of the time, well, there’s this bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to show you that can be yours for a discount …

The point? People tell their friends about interesting things. Viral marketing doesn’t mean anything. Figuring out how to craft a compelling message that will register with your audience, that’s everything.

I'm not in Congress anymore.

AT&T has finally admitted that they know their 3G is bad by asking the FCC, “Can we ditch landline service?” Of course, this doesn’t mean that they are letting the public in on the idea that they are a data access provider. On the contrary, they will continue to operate under the idea that they are selling apples to people.

We’re so used to buying product that we tend to appreciate costs when they are presented to us in those terms. What I mean is, we’re used to buying apples, and if an item is presented to us as an apple, we’ll say, “How much is that apple?” Then the apple-seller says, “This apple costs this much.” And then we buy the apple.

But digital things aren’t really things, and they definitely aren’t apples.

When we see a digital object, whether it’s a movie, an article, a cartoon, if we see it on a screen, it’s presented to us in such a way that it looks like a physical object.

Like, to most of us, a DVD is this round disk you stick in a player with a movie on it. A book is this bound paper item with text in it. They are not the same thing. We pay different prices for them accordingly.

Did you ever see The Matrix? In the sturm und drang epic conclusion, Neo is able to see the world around him. It’s all constructed of bits of green computer code. The same is true for digital content. When we see it as an object, a DVD looks like an object, the same for a book as well. But when we’re watching that movie on a computer or reading that so-called ‘ebook’ on our screen, we’re seeing the computer’s representation of that object. Underneath, it’s all bits of green computer code.

Phone calls, broadband TV, text messages, ebooks … underneath it’s all just bits of green computer code. So, why do we pay different rates for the transmission of those bits? It’s because we all still tend to think of each digital item as a separate kind of object.

To put it another way, all of that digital stuff is made of the same thing. If digital objects were made of water (instead of green matrix letters), we would think it’s really weird to pay different rates for a glass of water over a pitcher of water at from the tap at home.

Anyway, we’ll see if this latest move will help AT&T in their quest to charge different rates for the same water in the pipe. Because after all the Internet is still just a series of tubes.