Kawasaki: Home Version

In an exchange that mirrors the blogosphere at large, Guy Kawasaki asks Seth Godin 10 questions, while we get to read along. I thought it would be fun to once again pretend that we’re all part of the blogosphere and give my own answers. Try this at home- it’s fun.

I have to pretend, of course, that I wrote a book about dips. I know some dips, so that should be easy. Here we go.

1) Other than hindsight, how does someone know when it’s time to quit?

When the fun you’re having or reasonably likely to soon have no longer outweighs the effort it takes to do what you thought was going to be fun from the start. Like golf. I played golf for years. I got better for a while, then stopped getting better, then started getting worse. Eventually, it dawned on me that golf was an elitist sport that was unfit for a deep thinker like me, so I took up drinking. It’s pretty much the same cycle, but the clubs are more fun. Later I gave up drinking and started blogging. There are clubs there too, but it takes more than a $5 cover to get in.

2) If I’m in the middle of a dip, how do I know if it’s worth gutting it out to get to the other side?

I generally try to avoid dips. It’s relatively easy to avoid the blatant dips. They generally move in slow packs and attack one at a time, like the bad guys in a movie. It’s harder to avoid the unknowing dip, who is a dip but hasn’t figured it out yet. Avoiding Starbucks is a good start.

3) Is there a place for the intrinsic value of learning a skill – for example, playing hockey or the violin – even though you know you won’t be the best in the world?

Absolutely not. There should only be one hockey player, one restaurant, and one blogger. We’re pretty close on the blogger part.

4) What if the market is not established so there’s no way to know if it even exists and if it’s worth dedicating/rededicating to?

This one is easy. Just put some ads up and give your company a goofy name that is vowel challenged. Next thing you know, Google will buy you for millions.

5) How can a company quit a product and not give the incorrect signal that it’s quitting the market?

See my answer to question 4. If you have ads, you don’t need a product. Products are so old school.

6) What’s more powerful: a short-term pain or long-term gain?

It depends on whether you’re long or short. But neither is a powerful as this.

7) Do most companies quit too early or try too long?

It could be worse. They could quit too long or try too early, like a lot of Web 2.0 companies who put their web pages up the day after they registered their goofy vowel challenged name.

8) Should Microsoft quit the MP3 player market?

Who cares?

9) Should Apple quit the personal computer market?

See my answer to question 8.

10) Should America quit the Iraq War?

Shouldn’t we quit the Korean War first? I don’t know if we should quit the Iraq war or not. But I know that you can’t dump a war like you do a girlfriend or boyfriend. The reject by neglect approach to breaking up with a war didn’t work in Vietnam, and I doubt it would work now. What we need is a decision maker.

Technorati tags: web 2.0, satire

(Text) Size is Everything When It Comes to Start Pages

For years I have used two start pages to organize my internet activities. The Home Place, my hand made page, and My Yahoo. I have tinkered with Netvibes a little as well. But I prefer the tradional My Yahoo look and feel to the Ajaxy look and feel of Netvibes and its newer competitors.

The biggest reason why is text size. My primary monitor is a 24 inch Dell running at 1900 x 1200. Most pages look really good. But the text size on Netvibes is tiny. Less than tiny. Sub-tiny. Until recently, text size on My Yahoo was fine.

But My Yahoo has been moving towards the Ajaxy look over the past year or so. Now the new beta has moved the rest of the way. My Yahoo’s new look is very similar to Netvibes. Including the sub-tiny text size (the clip to the left is the actual size). In fact, thanks to My Yahoo’s decision to run back to the pack, Netvibes has a cleaner, neater look. It’s an easy to implement stock portfolio module away from being the better choice.

But the text sixe problem needs to be fixed.

These applications need to give users a way to permanently set the text size, preferably at the module level. Sure, I can change text size at the browser level, but that makes every other page look too big.

The first one of these applications to give me a way to permanently set text size will become my primary start page. I suspect there are scads of other baby boomers like me who also want and need this feature.

I don’t understand why it doesn’t exist.

Technorati tags: my yahoo, netvibes

Cousins Removed

At dinner the other night, we were trying to figure out what a cousin once removed is. Nobody was even close.

I don’t understand how my cousin’s child and my great uncle’s child can both be my first cousin once removed. Someone want to dumb this down for me?

(via Rob Gale)

Technorati tags: genealogy, cousins

Dove’s Nest

A mother and her babies, in their nest in an oak tree in our yard.

Technorati tags: birds

The New York Times and the Twitter as a Business Thing

The New York Times has an article about Twitter. Before I dive into the substance of the article, let me note that the article is in the Your Money section of the paper. Once again, folks are trying to divine business from cool. This is a problem for two reasons. One, it won’t work. Two, it insults cool. Cool is cool.

The best thing about the article is that it almost explained to me the difference between a friend and a follower. I’m not a read the manual kind of guy, so I still don’t really know the fine points of that distinction.

Scoble gets some much needed coverage, since it’s been at least 15 seconds since we last read about the Michael Jordan of the blogosphere. I mean that in a good way (Scoble is good at the blogging thing, video camera notwithstanding) and a bad way (Jordan so dominated the NBA during his career than lots of fans got bored with it).

I also learned that Twitter was founded by Evan Williams. I suppose George Dickel founded Jaiku. Just kidding.

In the article, Evan sums up what he thinks Twitter should be thustly: “Twitter is best understood as a highly flexible messaging system that swiftly routes messages, composed on a variety of devices, to the people who have elected to receive them in the medium the recipients prefer. It is a technology that encourages a new mode of communication.”

Doesn’t that sound better than a billboard for A-Listers to broadcast a link to their latest blog post? Don’t we have RSS feeds for that?

It also sounds pretty businessly. I agree about the new mode of communication part, but let’s not forget about the cool part.

As we know, some folks don’t like Twitter. Some cat named Bruce Sterling channeled Emily Bronte and came up with this nugget:

Using Twitter for literate communication is about as likely as firing up a CB radio and hearing some guy recite “The Iliad.”

Note to Bruce: I suspect most people who fire up a CB are more into Homer Simpson than Homer the Greek. I suspect most people who fire up Twitter feel the same way. I also think that’s a funny statement coming from a science fiction writer. Twitter doesn’t have to be all PBS to be fun and useful.

It also doesn’t have to be a business, since Evan is a “serial entrepreneur who made his fortune by selling Pyra Labs, the creator of Blogger, a popular blog publishing tool, to Google in 2003.” I didn’t know that, but I’m glad. Since he doesn’t need the money, maybe Twitter will survive the migration of the herd.

Unfortunately, the Web 2.0 stakeholders are still trying to figure out how to make all these hobbies into businesses. The article ends by wondering “whether the service can be made into a sustainable business.”

Who cares. It doesn’t matter.

Technorati tags: twitter

Jimmy Wales on MySpace

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, says that MySpace will fail in a few years, though he does appreciate the momentum behind online communities.

He agrees with me that MySpace pages are ugly, saying that they hurt his eyes. He goes on to say “there’s way too much advertising and they’re not really respecting their own community.” Once again, that sounds a lot like Geocities.

I don’t know if MySpace will die, but I absolutely believe its relevance will diminish over time. It has huge relevance now because it has so much of the young mindshare in this country- mindshare that advertisers covet. Mindshare is ferae naturae, however, and no one can lay claim to it. Just ask AOL.

His comments about MySpace come at the end of an interview about the history of Wikipedia and his new open source search engine project.

Technorati tags: myspace, wikipedia, jimmy wales

Morning Reading: 4/21/07

Amy bought a cool fan. I love retro stuff like that.

I really miss Deadwood. Now comes word that the movies to finish up the stories won’t air until 2008, at the earliest. No BSG in 2007. No Deadwood. At least we get a little Mal Reynolds fix via Drive.

James Kendrick doesn’t like reading one side of a conversation on Twitter. He says it “goes against what makes Twitter so appealing.” Amen. We have the blogosphere for one sided conversations.

I’m not sure, but it looks like Gizmodo makes people audition for the right to post a comment. No problem. When I was a kid most of my buddies wanted to be firemen or policemen when we grew up. Me, I wanted to be a commenter on Gizmodo.

Technorati tags: kents news

The Podcaster that Roared

Dave Winer, who is probably just in a pouty mood since he got dropped from my Twitter list, aims his longbow at Valleywag, all because Valleywag had the gall to say that the podcasting boom is over and Apple won.

Are you kidding me? Nobody won podcasting, because nobody outside of the blogosphere cares a whit about podcasting. Does anyone who doesn’t do a podcast listen to them? There are geometrically more people getting rich by playing in the NBA than there are getting anywhere close to rich by podcasting. And Dave wonders if the VC money will bet on podcasting? Sure, as soon as they take a few street musicians public. Get your Shakin’ Jake Woods bonds here!

Apple won podcasting on the way to claim the bigger mobile audio prize- the same way Sherman won Kennesaw Mountain on the way to Atlanta.

The podcasting boom, such as it was, is over for me. I tried it for a while and actually got some props for the one I did. But the effort/reward ratio for podcasting is about as out of whack as it can be. Fred Wilson, another of my Twitter exiles, tried it and gave it up too, for many of the same reasons. To be worth the effort, a podcast must have a big audience. But it’s harder by far to create a popular podcast than it is to create a popular blog. It’s a recipe for abandonment.

But anyone who doesn’t believe that Apple, via the iPod and its conjoined twin iTunes, has won the battle for the mind of North America (name the movie that quote came from for extra credit) as far as audio to go goes is in denial. I know a lot of people in the real world who use iTunes. I know no one in the real world who regularly listens to podcasts. Yes I know about the northeast and mass transit and commute times and all that. But what percentage of those folks choose a podcast over music?

So what if Dave invented or thinks he invented podcasting. Put all the podcasters on one end of a room and the guy who invented Webkinz on the other end. Set Fred down in the middle and see who he goes to. VCs are great when it comes to cheerleading- it’s the way they seed the fields. But they get a little pickier at harvest time. I bet more revenue has been generated from the sale of those stuffed animals in the last month than has been generated by podcasting in the last year- or maybe ever.

There will always be some popular podcasts, just like there will always be some Tim Duncans and Steve Nashes. But it’s not the place to go looking for an easy buck.

Buying a soon to be retired Webkinz is a much better bet.

Technorati tags: podcasting, apple

Step Away from the Lightsaber

I don’t get this so-called Google World in which a bunch of geeks sit around and watch some other geeks doing some nerdy and/or mundane activity. Is this really the highest and best use for the blogosphere? Is this the way we want to present blogging to the real world? Next we’re going to be dancing around with lightsabers and calling it a documentary.

Do we really want to watch people drive around in their car? Sure, I did it, with a bunch of other geeks, when Scoble took his little road trip. But I found it profoundly boring. More importantly, I don’t see any meaningful use for the permanent webcam beyond what traditional web-casting and YouTube already offer. For one thing, the producers of meaningful content are not going to let some blogger webcast for free what they want others to pay for. The other stuff is just (what’s the opposite of glorified?) home movies.

I’m not dumping on all web-directed video. To the contrary, I like Scoble’s photo shoots with Thomas Hawk. Mostly because I like to hear Thomas talk about photography. But there’s no reason that sort of thing couldn’t be distributed via YouTube. In other words, there’s no need for immediacy that requires us to watch those videos as they happen – or soon thereafter.

If the point is that webcasting your life can be done, fine. So can building a ship in a bottle, but neither of them are edge of your seat entertainment. If the point is that these videos are to TV what podcasts (another geeky endeavor that no one outside of the blogosphere gives a hoot about) are to radio, well I don’t buy it. These video things are much more about the glorification of the people in them than they are about entertaining the people who allegedly watch them.

Here’s the point I’m getting at: if it’s cool and fun, then let it be cool and fun. There’s not one thing wrong with cool and fun. But all the alchemy on Techmeme can’t turn cool and fun into big business. If we want the blogosphere to be taken seriously, we simply can’t act like a glorified home movie is something important or revolutionary. It’s not- and anyone who isn’t in one or hoping to divine gold from one knows that.

It just seems to me that the blogosphere, and particularly that portion of it with an audience, is becoming more tangential every day, when it should be striving to become less tangential.

There are a ton of better things for bloggers to spend their time doing than Trumanizing themselves. It wasn’t all that interesting when Jim Carrey did it.

Put the lightsabers and the webcams down, and go do something useful and interesting.

Technorati tags: blogs, blogging