The Harder They Come
September 29, 2006 | Governance | Life | People & Society
But I'll keep on fighting for the things I want
Though I know that when you're dead you can't
But I'd rather be a free man in my grave
Then living as a puppet or a slave
Garcia has a great version from 1978 in commercial release.
It Will Become Impossible Not to Speak the Truth
September 29, 2006 | Life | People & Society
Scheherazade on blogging (reposted in full):
I got an email from someone today who started blogging because of stumbling across this blog. I wrote back to her, and said this:
I do think that if you blog, honestly, for six months, it will change your life. I'm not sure why, exactly, but it will. I think if you get in the habit of first noticing, then describing, the truth about your life and your reactions to it, it will become impossible not to speak the truth. And when you've made telling the truth and being tuned into your world a habit, you will make changes to things that don't work for you. And so you'll make room for wonder, and you'll become more fully yourself.
Enjoy. I don't think we know what we have to say until we start saying it. And I definitely don't think we know our power until we start being honest and brave in front of other people. I'm still learning how to do that, but this blog is teaching me how, daily.
Thanks Sherry.
In 2006 Congress Passed a Tyrannical Law
September 29, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
I've had a really busy week at work, and now I find that since I took a blogging break the government has gone berserk.
Rafe Colburn: Prisoner of conscience
While some Republicans made a halfhearted show of conscience and Democrats hid in the most craven fashion imaginable, the Bush Administration managed to pass a bill that will enable the government to imprison people for as long as it likes without giving them a day in court, and to torture those prisoners as much as it likes. This law diminishes this country, sullies the values upon which it was founded, and rolls back many centuries of progress in how governments relate to the governed.
NY Times: Rushing Off a Cliff
We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration. They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Brad DeLong: Neighbor, How Stands the Union?
This is bad. Very bad. I can't underscore how bad this is. This is our Fugitive Slave Act, our Sedition Act, our Korematsu. This is a danger to our domestic liberties and a terrifying threat to our national security--for its impact on our international standing and on our alliances may be terrible indeed.
digby: Rouge President
The truth is that there is a rogue presidency and there has been, since January, 2001 (earlier, if you count the stolen election). Certainly, everyone in Washington knows it, but no one dares to admit it. The bill legalizing torture merely enables Congress to pretend they still have some influence over an executive that from day one was governing, not as if they had a mandate, but as if Bush were a dictator. If, for some miracle, the bill didn't pass, every congress-critter knows Bush would keep on torturing.
Better to vote to pass and preserve the appearance of a working American government, the thinking goes. For the very thought that the US government is seriously broken - that the Executive is beyond the control of anyone and everyone in the world - is such a truly awesome and terrifying thought that it can never be publicly acknowledged. If ever it is, if the American crisis gets outed and Congress and the Supremes openly assert that the Executive has run completely amok and is beyond control, the world consequences are staggering. It is the stuff of doomsday novels.
Jon Husband posted a Canadian comment from the digby post:
I am remembering that the aged supporters of Gen. Franco still live in Madrid, still refusing to be civil to their erstwhile opponents on the Left. I think you are looking at decades of incivility or worse, of conflict on class lines, and maybe race and ethnic lines too. You are deep deep shit neighbours. I will wish you the best of luck with all this. We have our own neo-con dinosaurs to be rendered harmless up here. It will occupy my attention for, say, a decade or two. In the meantime, keep the embers glowing. Something will cause all this ugliness to burst into flame. Its just too grotesque to keep hidden forever.
Shame without limits, embarassment without restraint, regrets without number, apologies to the millions killed in your name, and a century of guilt to be worn and worked off. Get on with it.
Autumn
September 25, 2006 | Life | Nature & Environment
Yesterday I stood on the deck and watched the wind blow the leaves off the weak trees. Some of the remaining leaves are turning color, and the nights are crisp and cool. In two weekends my nephew will visit for annual apple picking. The driveway is covered with pine needles. My neighbor mowed the field last week. I need to stake the driveway for snow plowing.
The last time I looked it was July and I was at a concert. Then I blinked and I was at another one with a new friend. Then I blinked again and now it's the end of the summer, autumn is really here, and winter's around the corner. Wow.
En Route
September 25, 2006 | Life
Email banter plus blogging, a deadly blow to productivity. Let's go to lunch.
Welcome to the "Soft Landing"
September 25, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
NY Times (September 25, 2006):
The median price of a previously owned home fell for the first time in 11 years last month, and inventories of unsold homes swelled to levels not seen in more than a decade.
Jason Calacanis (September 24, 2006):
Real estate is a horribly inefficient market and many of the brokers seem to be playing games. Folks are relisting homes all over the place to "reset" the days listed number, and people are not updating their MLS listing with the market down prices. We've been to homes months ago that were shown at 10-25% less than their MLS pages *still* say they are.
Barry Ritholtz (September 15, 2006):
$2.7 trillion in loans will adjust to higher rates in 2006 and 2007. According to Reality Trac, August foreclosures were up 23% over July and 53% over a year ago. Nationally, home prices have not declined on a year-to-year basis since 1933. Recently, however, prices have been dropping in the North East, West and Mid-West.
The Power of Mental Models
September 25, 2006 | Life
My friend Peter Pruyn sent this recently:
The best advice I ever got was from an elephant trainer in the jungle outside Bangalore. I was doing a hike through the jungle as a tourist. I saw these large elephants tethered to a small stake. I asked him, 'How can you keep such a large elephant tied to such a small stake?' He said, 'When the elephants are small, they try to pull out the stake, and they fail. When they grow large, they never try to pull out the stake again.' That parable reminds me that we have to go for what we think we're fully capable of, not limit ourselves by what we've been in the past.
— Paul Vivek, quoted in "The Best Advice I Ever Got," Fortune, March 21, 2005, p. 100.
Best Seminar Chair, 2006
September 23, 2006 | Life | Products & Opportunites | SoL | Travel
I sat in these chairs 32 hours last week. I would not want to work full-time in this chair, but it is, by far, the best seminar or workshop chair I have ever experienced. Very comfortable. They deserve an award for designing a chair that fits the body, and Ford deserves an award for purchasing decent chairs for large group meetings.
The Notio award for Best Seminar Chair, 2006, goes to the arper Pamplona, designed by G.Terin & G.Topan, made in Italy.
Just The Facts
September 21, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
There is a weapons system development effort in every congressional district. [Which weapons system to you want to kill, Senator??]
Of the 350 annual megatons of carbon output that Ford is responsible for, only eight of it comes from car emissions; the rest is from factories.
The NSA joke used to be, "No Such Agency;" now it's "Not Secret Anymore."
Ford is not using the Toyota batteries in their Toyota-technology hybrid cars, because the Toyota batteries use child labor that wouldn't pass Ford's human-rights code. But Ford doesn't publicize this because they would be accused of "greenwashing" their terrible overall carbon footprint.
Nissan executives in Japan are working 17-hour days, which includes six hours of drinking with their colleagues every evening. 55-year old men commonly sob when talking about the pressure with their personal coaches or HR.
General Hayden, formerly head of the NSA, now head of the CIA, was variously described by People Who Should Know as one of the most kind, loving, humanistic, and caring people they had ever met. [Triangulated from four discussions.]
Ford will offer buy-out packages to every single hourly production worker, and every single salaried worker over 50. In the next two years they will cut 40% of their management positions. [Can you spell "ripple effect?"]
Just three years ago Nissan's internal projections assumed an endless supply of oil and stable gas prices.
The Director of Sustainability at Ford spends 50 - 70% of his time educating colleagues. Most people still don't believe climate change is real.
There are 40 million cubicles in American workplaces.
NSA & NPS @ SoL
September 20, 2006 | Governance | People & Society | SoL
I had lengthy conversations today with two interesting people. One is very senior in the National Security Agency, the other is very senior at the Naval Postgraduate School. In both cases I had increased hope that there are people in government who are thinking deeply about long-term issues that I care about, and are trying to make a positive impact. They were not trying to persuade me of anything. It was in the topics, the depth of thinking, the sophistication of approach, their vision, and commitment to their work that made me realize things may not be as bad as they seem. Modulo the current executive branch, of course.
Social Capital
September 19, 2006 | Life | SoL | Travel
I'm at a SoL meeting with about 60 people. About 20 of them are in my consulting convergence group, and we're meeting as a sub-group frequently throughout the four days. The schedule is fairly grueling for white-collar types, mostly 8 AM to 8 or 9 PM every day.
Tonight was the 'open' night, where we can have unscheduled dinner with friends and colleagues. I was exhausted, and was the first one on the 5:45 bus to the hotel. Next to me sat Joanne and Karen, and on the way to the hotel in talking about dinner options I said, "I'm exhausted. I want to walk to the Olive Garden, eat with one or two people, or alone, and do it soon so I can get some sleep." They thought that was a decent idea, and after a 15 minute wash-up we walked over there and broke bread.
We had a lot of good conversation, and when I said George Bush was a war criminal we found out that Karen strongly disagreed—he is a man of faith who believes in democracy and freedom; gag me—but we were able to gracefully move on without too much politics or hard feelings. They were intrigued with my online dating story, and essentially outed the whole marriage story, the public parts anyway, and we had a very open and honest conversation about intimacy and relationships.
On our way out we ran into a table with 12 of our colleagues, and we stopped over to say hello. M.S. briefly surveyed the situation, called me over, pushed his chair out, and pulled me close. He whispered: "Notio, can you tell me how it is that you ended up with the two best-looking women in the entire conference, alone, for dinner?" I said, "I have no idea; it just happened." He replied, "More power to you."
Then I.W. called me over to the end of the table. She and I have had a kind of rocky relationship, because she's been around since the early days of SoL, and her 68 years of Croatian wisdom sometimes annoy my modern sensibilities. But she leaned over to me and said, "Notio, you are very lucky to have your supper with those two women. That is really quite something. Do you that that [x] used to be an actress?" No, I didn't know that. She looked me in the eye, "Well—you enjoy yourself." That whole end of the table was grinning and staring and generally letting their imaginations run wild to my great benefit. We three soon said our goodbyes, and walked back to the hotel, and each went to our respective rooms.
But the unintended social capital of that five minutes saying hello to colleagues will last the rest of the conference, without doubt. Tomorrow night is the party at the Model T museum, and I can already hear it now....
Detroit, Motor City
September 18, 2006 | Life | Nature & Environment | Travel
Arrived at Detroit airport yesterday and called the hotel. "How do I get to you?"
"Okay, you take the south exit of the airport, get onto route blah, go 8.8 miles and take exit blahblah,...." I interrupted: "I'm not renting a car. Is there any public transportation?"
"Oh. Well, I think there are cabs somewhere near the Ground Transportation area." All-righty then. This is the first airport I've ever been to that didn't have a $15 bus that stopped at all the major hotels. Into the cab I got. Half an hour and $36 later I arrived at the hotel.
At the front desk after checking in I asked, "Is there an Appleby's or Chilli's or something around here to eat?" This was Sunday at 8:00 PM, I wasn't looking for a fancy wine list.
"Sure," he says. "Go out of the driveway, take a right. Go to the end of the street, take a left. Go 3 miles and there's a bunch like that right there." I said, "I didn't rent a car—is there anything within walking distance?"
"Oh. Hmm. Well; not sure. Just past that Best Buy I think there's something."
Cue Laurie Anderson: Hey Pal! How do I get to town from here? And he said: Well just take a right where they're going to build that new shopping mall, go straight past where they're going to put in the freeway, take a left at what's going to be the new sports center, and keep going until you hit the place where they're thinking of building that drive-in bank. You can't miss it.
Anyway, here's a guy who knows the restaurants three miles away but doesn't know what's next door?
And then I realized, hello, Notio, you are in Dearborn, MI, on Mercury Drive, just off of Ford Road, about 0.2 miles from the Ford world headquarters. No wonder there's no public transport. And hey, didya notice? There aren't any sidewalks either!
Welcome to Motor City.
Help On The Way
September 16, 2006 | Life
Tell me the cost,
I can pay,
Let me go,
Tell me love is not lost,
Sell everything,
Without love, day to day,
insanity is king
Dialectics
September 15, 2006 | People & Society
Two links from opposite sides of the human condition.
Chris Corrigan and friends have a new website for their Art of Hosting initiative.
Flagrant Disregard offers their Motivator custom poster generator. Example.
Steal an Election with a Diebold Voting Machine
September 15, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
Princeton University scientists produce a video and post it on YouTube, demonstrating how you can hack a Diebold voting machine in less than one minute. They also provide to detailed technical paper.
There are exactly zero computer scientists who think a voting machine can be made unhackable. It's time to vote absentee, in all elections, so that you use a paper ballot. These machines should be illegal, and if you walk up to one you should assume that your vote is being thrown away.
Related: If the US government really cared about fair elections, there would be a federal standard for number of voting machines per capita on a voting district level. That would prevent poor and democratic precincts from, somehow, having far fewer machines available, making those people wait for ten hours, while the rich republican districts have so many machines the lines are only ten minutes.
Be All You Can Be
September 15, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
Billmon has an excellent quote comparison post today. Who knew that in 1776 Edward Gibbon would write a book that so clearly described the state of our military in 2006?
The iPod Suit
September 14, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Products & Opportunites | Technology
From Eleksen, the iPod suit:
The Bagir suit jacket integrates Eleksen’s ElekTex® smart fabric touchpad technology, which transforms a lapel into a five-button electronic control panel. The ElekTex-enabled iPod Suit is both fashionable and functional. The suit is machine-washable and wrinkle-resistant, making it the ideal choice for today’s music-savvy and style conscious business professionals.
My life is now complete.
Quote of the Day
September 14, 2006 | Products & Opportunites | Technology
John Gruber, on Steve Jobs:
Remember his on-stage demo last year [of the Motorola Rokr] iTunes-compatible phone? His contempt for the device was palpable; when he failed to successfully switch from song playback to accept a call, he seemed poised to just toss the thing off-stage and cry out that it was a piece of garbage.
Life of Matt
September 14, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
My friend Matt Bucy leads an interesting life (cf Tip Top Building). He has two blogs—here's a recent excerpt from each:
if i had been with a group of gay men i'm sure there'd have been a lot of cat calling and name calling right back at him. but it was just me and for some reason, i didn't resist him, i just told him the truth. i felt great afterwards. i don't know if it made any difference in his life, but it brought home to me that telling the truth, honoring myself in the face of attack and more importantly respecting and honoring the attacker is a weapon powerful enough to interrupt patterns of violence and hatred.
timberrrr framing at Faerie Camp Destiny:
the magic of timberframing, for me anyway, is the joinery. i've said a couple times to folks when showing them chiselwork: "you're not just whittling away here, you're creating a relationship!" you spend the day, sometimes longer, chipping away at a timber, working your way down to some lines that don't necessarily make any sense to you. you do your best to create the smoothest most accurate work you can, often betrayed by eagerness and impatience. the wood works with you sometimes, against you others. each cut is a new challenge asking you to be present and attentive.
Users GOOD, Groupware BAD
September 12, 2006 | Products & Opportunites | Software
I read this Jamie Zawinski essay last year, but it's worth another look.
The trick you want to accomplish is that when one person is using your software, it suddenly provides value to that person and their entire circle of friends, without the friends having had to do anything at all. Then, later, you pull the friends into the fold: if one of them starts using the software, they become their own hub, and get the benefit they have already witnessed from a distance.
The reason I landed there was because yoga classes are starting all over the Upper Valley, and I thought, It would be monster cool if there were a website where yoga studios could enter their class schedules, and publish them to a centralized (and, natch, localized) calendar where I could view them all together. And it would be even cooler, if that web app could generate iCal-format downloads that I could import into my desktop calendar. Ten seconds later I realized that yoga classes were a specific example of a much more general use-case with very realistic and widespread needs (school sports come immediately to mind, in addition to live music).
What I want: A consumer-grade website where I can "login," and "create," "edit," "delete," "search" or "browse" for one or more "topics" "within X miles" of "zip code," view that in a "list, week, or month-view calendar," "select items of interest," and "generate iCal" (and other standard) format downloads of that selection.
If you know of such a service please tell me so I stop designing it when I have client work to do. Related and useful: hCalendar and other assorted microformats.
Update: Doug asked about standards. Here are the links that probably matter most. I'm sure there are other standards, I'm just taking an open-format Mac-centrc approach.
- CalDAV on Wikipedia.
- CalDAV resources from the OSA Foundation.
- Calconnect consortium.
Kids Don't Use Mail
September 11, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
If you think email marketing is going to work forever, you might want to think again.
Word of the Day
September 11, 2006 | Life
Petoskey Stone:
A Petoskey stone is a rock, often pebble-shaped, that is composed of a fossilized coral, Hexagonaria percarinata. The stones were formed as a result of glaciation, in which sheets of ice plucked stones from the bedrock, grinding off their rough edges and depositing them in the northwestern portion of Michigan's lower peninsula.
The state stone of Michigan!
On Waking Up Fearful
September 11, 2006 | Life
There are, at least, two primary kinds of fear. The first is internal. Say, I'm late on some client work. Generally I can use internal fear as a motivator – I get up wicked early and crank on the to-do list. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed and waste some time mentally spinning with no results, but usually I can get traction at some point and move through it, make progress, and meet the deadline.
The other kind of fear is external. Generally I can recognize and then ignore external fear and just move on.
But sometimes external fear is a lot harder to shake. Say, you're trying to have a graceful mediated divorce, and your wife chooses a lawyer who has a local rep which freaks you out. You hear all the voices, the dozen people now who have sighed, rolled their eyes, and said things about him you don't want to type. Then you find out that the accountants made an error on the 2004 taxes and in addition to the $12,363 you owe for 2005, you owe another $3,000 for 2004. Technically, it's joint debt, with each party having full responsibility for the whole debt, no matter who earned the income. But practically, it's extremely painful, and the last thing you need is an opposing lawyer who is known to play games. Hopefully that lawyer is not also stupid, and sees there's no money here, and wraps this up post haste.
I didn't even want lawyers, I wanted a mediator. The compromise was we'd mediate but Lynne wanted a lawyer to advise her, and at that point I felt exposed and thought I should have one too. So I found a lawyer who has Tibetan prayer flags behind her desk, and she's smart and witty and has a great rep, and I'm getting great advice, especially in the context of trying to have a non-confrontational ending to an introspective and non-angry separation and decision process.
I managed to avoid, in toto, the five-year 9/11 anniversary fear campaign manufactured by the Bush/Cheney Consolidated-Corporate-Media department industry last week (screw you, ABC). But it's hard to tell how much of that propaganda is thriving below the surface in the collective unconscious, and if it's alive and well, whether it would be easy to infiltrate a non-participant like me. In this case I would like to think that my feelings are tied to a global external fear rather than a local external fear, but you just never know.
In any event, the NH law statutes are an interesting read.
Link Roundup
September 10, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
Miscellaneous tabs still open from last week:
Robert Young on the fat belly of the Long Tail.
Kiko threw in the towel and put the company up for sale on eBay. It went for $250K. Tucows explains why they bought the technology.
Another excellent minimalist layout a la Craigslist and Facebook. More good content, too.
Useful: How to Have Better Conversations.
Crony Capitalism at it's Finest
September 8, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Governance | People & Society
Industry Note: The Rot at the Core, Special Disney Crony Capitalism Edition
Of course, neither move - coypright extensions or side payments to politicians in the form of propaganda - are in the least good for the economy, because they destroy more value than they create, through the stifling of potential innovation, competition, and new capital formation. This is crony capitalism at it's finest - we make your propaganda, you protect our assets; this is the kind of anti-capitalism that ends up destroying economies (hi Japan).
Right on.
From the Mailbag
September 8, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
Subject: Get a Diploma without the hassle!
Good day Notio!!Hmm, that might look nice on the wall. OTOH, it's probably a credit card capture-scam, so I wouldn't recommend dialing that number....There are no called for tests, classes, books, or interviews !
Fetch a Bachelors, Masters, MBA, and Doctorate (PhD) diploma.
Have the earnings and approval that comes with a diploma !
No person is passed by
Anonymity ensured
Buzz Us Tonight +1 (270) 818 72 44
Good Anytime
Engrossment's That Are Not Even Their Own
September 7, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society
Excerpt from On the Shortness of Life:
You really must leave the ground and turn your mind's eye upon these things! Now while the blood is hot, we must enter with brisk step upon the better course. In this kind of life there awaits much that is good to know—the love and practice of the virtues, forgetfulness of the passions, knowledge of living and dying, and a life of deep repose.
The condition of all who are engrossed is wretched, but most wretched is the condition of those who labour at engrossments that are not even their own, who regulate their sleep by that of another, their walk by the pace of another, who are under orders in case of the freest things in the world—loving and hating. If these wish to know how short their life is, let them reflect how small a part of it is their own.
—Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Facebook Mini-Review
September 7, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites | Software
Well, I had a demo of Facebook, and it's a very nice web application. [Previously: Attention Metastream. Today: Fred Wilson on the changes (good comments thread).]
(I have removed names from this screenshot.)
It's hard to get a sense of it from the picture, but I can tell that if I were a college student it would be easy to live here and check in frequently and see what my friends are up to and post about my life. There are nine million Facebook users, so they're doing something right.
I also note there is zero "flashy design" on this site. Note the one-color plus black palette, the simple obvious layout, the single ad in the left column, the simple unobtrusive logo in the upper left. It's a beautiful minimalist approach. This has the beneficial side-effect of lowering the server load and bandwidth costs for high-traffic sites.
It seems like the most popular websites either have bad design, or minimal design. You might want to think about that the next time you spend two hours getting the rounded corners just so in your incremental design update. Better to hire a good writer, or to think about your use-cases and user-centric design. As always, design has to support the message and function, not overtake the purpose of the effort. Facebook is a good example of What People Want.
Symbolic Interaction
September 7, 2006 | Life | People & Society
Last night a friend called via cell phone from Michigan between sets at a concert.
Cell phones suck. The microphones pick up a lot of background noise, there are frequently echos on one side or the other, there are subtle time delays that make it hard to tell when someone has stopped speaking, and the mics are so low quality that it's hard to hear the specific words. I end up interpolating and guessing a lot of the time.
Add to this the fact that household wireless phones also suck, for most of the same reasons, and the end result is that you're not getting much human connection via electrons. Immediately I better understood Debord's idea that " the spectacle made relations among people seem like relations among images."
We had a nice symbolic interaction, but not much human connection that wasn't manufactured in my own mind. Gawd, give me some eye contact, some body language, some tone of voice and inflection, some sixth-sensory telepathy—otherwise let's just keep it short and symbolic and not attempt any meaning.
Commodity Fetishism
September 6, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Thanks to Tom Matrullo I am now aware of the term commodity fetishism:
In Marxist theory, commodity fetishism is a state of social relations, said to arise in complex capitalist market systems, in which social relationships are defined by the values that are placed on commodities. The term is introduced in the opening chapter of Karl Marx's main work of political economy, Capital, of 1867. It replaced the Young Marx's theory of alienation.
Georg Lukács based History and Class Consciousness on Marx's notion, developing his own notion of commodity reification as the key obstacle to class consciousness. Lukács's work was a significant influence on later philosophers such as Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard. Debord developed a notion of the spectacle that ran directly parallel to Marx's notion of the commodity; for Debord, the spectacle made relations among people seem like relations among images (and vice versa). In the work of the semiotician Baudrillard, commodity fetishism is deployed to explain subjective feelings towards consumer goods in the "realm of circulation", that is, among consumers. Baudrillard is especially interested in the cultural mystique added to objects by advertising, which encourages consumers to purchase them as aids to the construction of their personal identity.
It doesn't get much better than that on a Wednesday afternoon.
Attention Metastream
September 5, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
I don't yet have access to Facebook, but this TechCrunch review notes the key element in successful web applications:
Facebook clearly gets the idea of an attention metastream, where page views aren’t the currency that matters but rather how effectively the service allows users to communicate. Facebook users will now have a much easier way of staying up to date on what their friends are up to. It may mean less page views for Facebook in the short run as users rarely have to leave their home/admin page to see what’s going on with friends, but if it makes users love Facebook more (is that possible?), it’ll pay off in the end.
Whether for business or pleasure, information, passion, and interaction are key.
Complex Problem Solving
September 5, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce
Very interesting diagram of complex problem solving processes. Mousing over almost anything brings up more depth. Rewards exploration at the expense of obscuring details.
WoW Update
September 5, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites | Software
In June 2005, I wrote about World of Warcraft (WoW):
Conservatively, there was a one-time revenue stream of just under $100 million dollars, and an on-going monthly revenue of just under $26 million (just under $312 million annually). They are opening the game up in China soon, where there are 500,000 players in the open beta period. It's not hard to imagine cumulative revenues of over a billion dollars, or perhaps two.
Today's NY Times brings news that indeed, they are on track for a billion dollars this year:
Less than two years after its introduction, World of Warcraft, made by Blizzard Entertainment, based in Irvine, Calif., is on pace to generate more than $1 billion in revenue this year with almost seven million paying subscribers, who can log into the game and interact with other players. That makes it one of the most lucrative entertainment media properties of any kind. Almost every other subscription online game, including EverQuest II and Star Wars: Galaxies, measures its customers in hundreds of thousands or even just tens of thousands.
The Times also addresses the employee head-count, which I had guessed at 350 a year ago:
Since the game’s introduction in November 2004 the company has expanded to more than 1,800 employees from around 400. Almost all of the additions have been customer-service representatives to handle World of Warcraft players, helping them with both technical advice and billing concerns.
That's $555,555 of recurring annual revenue per employee, for the business modelers out there.
And why do people play this game? First, it's easy for beginners to get started, but it also has a lot to engage long-term players. But the most important aspect can be gleaned from an interview with this 3,000-hour player:
“Think about it: I’m a 33-year-old guy with a 9-to-5 job, a wife and a baby on the way,” Mr. Pinsky said. “I can’t be going out all the time. So what opportunities do I have to not only meet people and make new friends but actually spend time with them on a nightly basis? In WOW I’ve made, like, 50 new friends, some of whom I’ve hung out with in person, and they are of all ages and from all over the place. You don’t get that sitting on the couch watching TV every night like most people.”
People want to be engaged—some might say entertained—and they want to extend their networks. Yochai Benkler might call it social production.
Please make a note of it.
From the Mailbag
September 1, 2006 | Business & Commerce
Here's a hot one, in its entirety:
Dear Friend,
I need a partner for $14 million deal, for more details please contact me immediately .
Thanks, Mike Wilcox.
I'm on it.
