Monthly Archive for January, 2003

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Cluetrain – the web is a conversation

Published on January 12, 2003 in leadership + management. 3 Comments

Apple is truly letting its developers and managers move closer and closer to the ‘cluetrain‘ model that Doc, Chris, and David popularized a few years ago (when others said they were stupid and unknowledgeable idiots that couldn’t do any real work or produce anything worth keeping). Apple seems to be encouraging their developers and mangers to ‘talk’ to the public via the internet. This is a large move away from the way Apple seemed to be moving back in the late 90′s when they pulled developer team recognition out of all software (for the uniformed, Apple used to include a ‘thanks’ to developers or at least a list of those that worked on a software project in the about screen of all of their software… heck, they even had all of their employees signatures molded into the case of some of their original hardware).

Examples:

Dave Hyatt

Ken Bereskin

Anyone know of any others?

this post was the inspiration for this post

It’s a conversation.

XpertWeb and Managerial Capitalism

Published on January 12, 2003 in design + dev, leadership + management and small business. 0 Comments

Go read Would You Really Follow a Manager into Battle?

If you feel there’s an insatiable force sucking up your energy and your children’s future, it’s Managerial Capitalism.

The key to Managerial Capitalism is a shortage of capital, not its abundance. This view requires an inversion in how we think of economic eras.

I personally had to tune out the slams on Bush, but still appreciate the lesson on Managerial Capitalism… it’s nice to expand one’s brain a bit now and then.

…society has always been based on the ownership of productive assets by those who are skilled in commandeering others’ productivity.

It’s also a good introduction to why XpertWeb exists… looks cool.

Gloaming – such a great word

Published on January 12, 2003 in life stories. 4 Comments

Gloaming is today’s word of the day.

Anyone hear it before? It’s quite an important word in the history of our national sport of baseball.

10 points to the person that can tell everyone why. Leave a comment or blog it on your own weblog with a link to this post.

Esther’s Follies and A Tuna Christmas

Published on January 12, 2003 in life stories. 0 Comments

I love dark hair On Friday, I took the wife out with a bunch of friends. We went to Esther’s Follies, a great little comedy show in Austin. It’s on the corner of 6th and Red River in downtown.

Before the show went to eat at Stubb’s Bar-b-que just up the street, then walked over to Esther’s Follies. We arrived at 9, about an hour before the show started. I’d reserved 12 tickets, and we were joined by some late comers so our party jumped up to about 16 people. It was the wife’s first time to the show, and she really enjoyed it. We had a great time. The show focuses on the local comminuty to drive their laughs…

If you ever get a chance to come to Austin, and have a couple of hours to spare on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night, drop by Esther’s Follies, but bring a grin because you’re gonna love the show.

On Sunday, we went to the Paramount Theater, a stately old theatre built in 1915 on Congress Ave, to watch A Tuna Christmas which is a fantastically hilarious look at Christmas in a mythical small town in East Texas. This two man show looks at all aspects of small town life in the racially slanted environment of East Texas. It’s quite funny and definitely worth the price of a ticket if you get a chance to catch it as it tours the country (I know that A Greater Tuna has shown in New York, and will be in Charlotte, North Carolina in February/March and the Wilshire LA in May. It does require some knowledge of Texas to get all of the jokes though).

favicon? what is a favicon?

Published on January 12, 2003 in macintosh. 5 Comments

What is a favicon?

It’s a little 16×16 pixel icon that shows up next to a ‘favorite’ or ‘bookmark’ or the web address in various web browsers. There’s some good information here if you need more info.

(Welcome to the same web-world that most web surfers have been in for a while Safari users).

New Laptop at Work — Dell Latitude 610

Published on January 11, 2003 in windows. 2 Comments

I got a new Dell Latitude 610 yesterday. It’s running Windows XP (which I’m finding I actually like using compared to all the other Windows variants I’ve used in the past.) I like Windows 2000, but hate all the other Windows environments I’ve ever used. None were ever nearly as elegant as the Mac OS. I haven’t really played with it, as I got it at the end of the day on Friday, but it’s a nice machine and looks like it’ll suit my needs more than the old Dell Latitude LS I was given the first day of my job (which is like a 4 year old model I think).

Nice machine Dell…

Sales Management Tips — Tips on sales management from those doing the work

Published on January 11, 2003 in leadership + management and sales and selling. 0 Comments

I got the XPLANE|EXTRA! email newsletter today, and was surprised to read the title “How to manage the disorganized sales manager” especially after the request for ‘sales manager links‘ earlier in the week from a colleague.

The XPLANE newsletter includes links to two ‘visual xplanations’ which are quite good at getting the point across about disorganized sales managers and what can cause them to be disorganized, as well as how to fix the problems (some what).

It also includes a reference to this article in the Columbus Ohio BizJournal. The article give these 24.5 tips:

1. Structure a fair compensation package that is commission-based.

2. Give them the tools to sell with.

3. Equip them with 21st century technology.

4. Have the best company in the world.

5. Have an inside team of people that does not fight with or resent salespeople.

6. Be the best boss in the world.

7. Have a manager who is a better salesperson than anyone on your team.

8. Reward sales with money.

9. Acknowledge achievement.

10. Recognize achievement in front of others.

11. Have incentives and contests to keep it competitive.

12. Reward repeat business.

13. Reward referrals.

14. Reward business taken from others (accounts from the competition).

15. Reward testimonials received.

16. Have regular sales meetings.

17. Have regular sales training.

18. Have regular personal-development training.

19. Set realistic and achievable goals with them.

20. Every six months, ask your sales team what you need to do to help them make more sales.

21. Have them print out sales reports every week by prospect status.

22. Don’t talk trash behind their backs.

23. Reprimand in private.

24. Encourage them.

24.5 Don’t let them run you.

Go read the article… you won’t be sorry. Great tips for sales managers (if you’re a sales person, go print it out and slip it into your manager’s inbox).

Sales and Sales Management Links

Published on January 10, 2003 in leadership + management and sales and selling. 3 Comments

Stepanka A colleague on a mailing list I participate in today asked me for “any sales websites, online newsletters, or training (people or companies) for sales managers” that I could recommend.

I honestly haven’t ever found any ‘great’ sales (or sales management) related websites (thus the reason I started writing about sales) and have generally been frustated by some that are out there.

Here are a few ‘sales’ related sites that I want to check out again when I have a little more time in the future:

SalesLinks.com (which btw, doesn’t work with Mozilla’s pop-up blocker this link is useful)

PeopleSuccess.com

SellingPower.com (generally sucks, but better than nothing)

SalesandMarketing.com

KnowThis.com -> Selling

I also might look at buying this book later… maybe…

I’d highly recommend anyone looking for sales tips read The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino also. Highly.

Lastly, I always read FastCompany (in print) as well as online when I have time, and Business2.0. I read the WSJ from time to time, when it suits me… Anyone else have any ‘sales’ related reads that are good?

On Safari

Published on January 9, 2003 in macintosh. 4 Comments

Rahr... on Safari baby. (Couldn’t help the title of this post, sorry).

I downloaded Safari yesterday from Apple. I couldn’t help, and at only 3.5 MB or so, the download size really wasn’t unbearable on dialup (whereas Mozilla by comparison weighs in at around 17 MB I think for Mac OS X).

Let me first say that after about 30 seconds without tabbed browsing, I gave up, quit the application and relaunched Mozilla…

That being said, I’m not totally averse to using Safari someday in the future, just not now (for me). Mark Pilgrim has posted a quite lengthy (and developer focused) post on Safari’s current limitations. Mark also has a page where he’s archiving Safari ‘test cases’ for other developers (and Apple I’d presume).

One must also read John Gruber’s initial thoughts on Safari.

Mena Trott has chimed in with her thoughts on Safari, while this diatribe on CodePoetry offers great visuals of Safari in the real world. Matt Haughey has posted his initial thoughts as well.

A MacSlash reader has posted a story that includes a link to an email sent by Don Melton, Apple’s Safari Manager, to the KDE Managers that Apple is looking to work with the KHTML open-source developers, and that the Development Team at Apple includes the guy behind Chimera, which means (to me at least) that tabbed browsing might someday work its way into Safari (which would help me make the transition to it easier, as it is blazingly fast). Don also sent an email containing Apple’s changelog to KHTML. Also, Dave Hyatt, one of the developers for Safari, is posting updates on his weblog about fixes to Safari problems noted by other webloggers.

I’m sure that there are more ‘thoughts’ on Safari out there on the web, I just haven’t read them yet… I’ll come back to it when they announce ‘tabbed browsing has been added’ if they do that.

Get people to think

Published on January 8, 2003 in leadership + management. 0 Comments

“If everyone is thinking alike then somebody isn’t thinking.” — George S. Patton

Keep that in mind in your meetings…

New Apple Stuff — MWSF 2003

Published on January 7, 2003 in macintosh. 0 Comments

I think I was about 50/50 on my Apple predictions. I missed the new Powerbooks by a long shot and honestly had no idea they were coming out… I think I got the Airport 802.11g thing pretty closely nailed… even if I didn’t print it. I knew about the iLife bundle coming out, and appreciate that there is an iLife Up-To-Date program for people that buy a computer today that doesn’t actually include the bundle, but still wish we could join an Apple Up-to-date subscription plan that was a quarterly update program… $59.99/year? I’d buy it and wouldn’t think twice about it.

If you missed the announcements and want a quick text-heavy, graphics-light recap, I’d recommend this version of the announcements from Tidbits. (Adam’s team always does a great job in their summaries).

Marketing 101 for the women

Published on January 7, 2003 in marketing + advertising. 4 Comments

From an email a friend forwarded to me:

You see a handsome guy at a party. You go up to him and say, “I’m fantastic in bed.”

– That’s Direct Marketing.

You’re at a party with a bunch of friends and see a handsome guy. One of your friends goes up to him and pointing at you says, “She’s fantastic in bed.”

– That’s Advertising.

You see a handsome guy at a party. You go up to him and get his telephone number. The next day you call and say, “Hi, I’m fantastic in bed.”

– That’s Telemarketing.

You’re at a party and see a handsome guy. You get up and straighten your dress. You walk up to him and pour him a drink. You say, “May I,” and reach up to straighten his tie, brushing your breast lightly against his arm, and then say, “By the way, I’m fantastic in bed.”

– That’s Public Relations.

You’re at a party and see a handsome guy. He walks up to you and says, “I hear you’re fantastic in bed.”

– That’s Brand Recognition.

You’re at a party and see a handsome guy. You talk him into going home with your friend.

– That’s a Sales Rep.

Your friend can’t satisfy him so he calls you.

– That’s Tech Support.

You’re on your way to a party when you realize that there could be handsome men in all of these houses that you’re passing. You climb onto the roof of one of the houses and shout, at the top of your lungs, “I’m fantastic in bed!”

– That’s Spam.

Inconceivably

Published on January 6, 2003 in life stories. 4 Comments

Awestruck

That’s all I have to say about that.

Why Small Businesses Need Websites

Published on January 6, 2003 in design + dev, marketing + advertising, sales and selling and small business. 0 Comments

Britney - I still love her... Adam Kalsey has a good article on why small businesses need websites. I’ve never really paid close attention to the ‘local’ market until here recently as I’m traditionally a national advertising sales person, but my new job has forced me into focusing on the local market, and one of the objections I’m hearing to ‘local online advertising’ is ‘well, my company doesn’t even have a website.’

Kalsey talks about a pipe company that makes custom pipes and gets the majority of its business through referrals. I’ve heard the argument before that company owners (especially industrial manufacturing types) don’t think their customers will look for real solutions on the internet and I think those are the worst arguments I’ve ever heard.

My wife is an engineer, and she searches for information on the internet all the time. Granted she’s younger than the majority of people in her field, but I’d argue that her impression of a company is just as important, if not more so, than her superiors, because she’s the one putting specs in the plans. If she really likes a product, she’ll fight to get it specified in the plans. Now this won’t happen just because of a webiste, but it would happen because of plentiful information behind a product that she was looking at.

For example, on Friday she was worried that dinner was going to be too expensive at a restaurant I was taking her too, until she downloaded the menu and read the history of the local restaurant, after which she was extremely excited to go. That could have been a product or vendor she was researching for a project she was designing… who knows.

Or take for example the fact that I’m unhappy with my dry-cleaner. I’d love to know where to take my clothes other than the current sham artists I take them too, but I don’t pass any other establishments on the way to work, and when I do see them, I’m usually too busy to stop in and get to know the folks running the competitors… It’d be helpful to be able to research things like when they run their specials, and what the normal prices are, and if they can do alterations in-house.

Local businesses need websites, and if I were them, I’d start looking at investing in them while prices are depressed. A simple on shouldn’t cost you more than $1000 to set up and $50/month to maintain. A more robust solution can run into the tens of thousands sure, but I’m thinking that the old ‘rules’ of internet development pricing are pretty much gone, because they just didn’t stand up in the ‘cold winter’ of the past few months of dot-com bust reality.

So, if you own a small business and want a well build affordable website that does the job you want it to do, I’d easily recommend Kalsey Consulting, the Fuzzy Group, Andy Meadows, or any other number of small developers out there. (I know of plenty more if you need a good dev company, just leave me a comment and I’ll email you a list of good references).

Also, if you need marketing advice, as one of my colleagues behind MarketingFix.

The best college football game ever televised

Published on January 6, 2003 in life stories. 1 Comment

I agree (with Bill) that the Ohio State win over Miami was a great game. In fact, I’d go so far as calling in the ‘best college football game ever televised’.

We watched it from the very crowded second floor of the downtown Austin Fox and the Hound, which I’d recommend to anyone wanting a great place to watch a football game without your friends with babies interupting the flow of beer.

An Offer

Published on January 6, 2003 in life stories. 0 Comments

Town Lake -- Austin, TX Our realtor called today. She sounded very excited when I answered the phone. The wife and I were in the middle of a quick walk along Town Lake (I think that’s the lake we were on) which is really just the dammed up part of the Colorado River that flows through downtown Austin. The dog was enjoying smelling the guano (which is the proper name for bat shit) from under the Congress Ave. Bridge when the phone rang.

It seems than a couple that saw our house earlier in the week and was interested made an offer on another house, but it was too low for those home owners to even entertain, and since they really liked our house best, they’ve now made an offer in our house. (Their mom is paying for the house and she liked the one they made the first offer on — must be nice, huh?)

Anyways, so they made an offer on our house but it was about $15,000 off the asking price (which is a lot when you consider that we’re only listing it for $175,000 — yes, nice houses are that cheap in Fort Worth, TX, especially out near the edge of town). Sort of pissed me off that they were trying to really lowball us like that. The house is 2 years old and is a wonderful house… we put a lot of extras into it and it has no problems. We are asking a very reasonable price… just enough to get out from under it – we won’t make any money at 175, but they lowballed us anyways, and our realtor recommended we counter-offer at $172,500, which is ‘just enough to say we’re willing to sell the house, but not enough to give it away too easily.’

So that’s what we did.

It’s exciting… especially when you consider that we like to think of our house as one of the better ones on the street and the average time on the market for homes in our old neighborhood has been streching 75 days and ours has only been on the market for a month, tops.

Oh well, I’m not going to get too excited till we have a closing date, but this could be just the thing we need to get our shit together to buy a great house here in Austin. I love this town.

Investigating Sales Management Solutions – SalesForce.com

Published on January 4, 2003 in leadership + management and sales and selling. 1 Comment

Amanda, Again... So, I’ve been struggling with a completely manual sales CRM solution at work for about a month now, and I’m seeing a lot of inefficiency that could be greatly improved with something that helped tie all of the sales persons, clients, and the whole process together.

I’ve been trying to find time to investigate SalesForce.com‘s solutions as well as others, but I really haven’t had a lot of time (too much to do always, isn’t there?)

Right now, our online ad sales force consists of three sales people (including me as a manager) and one ad trafficker, so the SalesForce Team solution looks good at $1000/year for up to 5 seats, its ‘offerings’ seem like so much less than the Professional Edition when you look at them side by side. And then, when I consider the size of our overall organization, I start wanting to look into the Enterprise Edition, just because I know I might need to know answers to questions about scalability. Lastly, it looks like there is an Offline Edition to support outside sales opportunities if I read the information correctly. The sad thought about all of this is that it would make so much sense for us to also use the Billing Edition to completely tie everything together, but then I realize (to myself) that our billing department is completely manual accounting and that’s a serious deterrent to the whole idea of improving efficiency.

Maybe I’ll push the idea a little bit at work and see what the boss thinks sometime in the near future. I’m so used to having help managing the sales process with some sort of computerized tool, and I think after the initial training process, it would greatly improve the performance of our sales force.

I’m thinking I’ll be signing the team up for the free 30 day trial shortly.

Flattery – LinkMonger and Apple.com visitors

Published on January 4, 2003 in life stories. 1 Comment

Its fun to see ‘inluminent/weblog’ in the top links from LinkMonger even if it’s silly, or only thanks to 43 ‘clicks’ from their readers (as of this posting).

More fun, is to see that the last person to show up in my ‘referers’ coming from the LinkMonger website’s IP address resolves back to Apple.com. Now that’s funny… the real question is whether or not that person was working or just fucking off at work while surfing over to this site.

Hi Apple employees.

Apple to charge for iApp upgrades

Published on January 4, 2003 in macintosh. 0 Comments

Ok, so c|net says so, and I’ve heard so from other sources (didn’t want to give it away myself):

Apple will be charging for upgrades to ‘some’ iApp upgrades in the future…

the pricepoint will likely be $50 for ‘all’ upgrades … I don’t know if that’ll be for the download prices, or for a CD-ROM version that comes out quarterly (which I’d likely pay for while I’m on dialup honestly) as I’ve said before.

Again, it’s just an idea, but the whole ‘pay for upgrades’ thing will go over like a lead weight, in my opinion. (We pay more for Apple computer’s because the value is there in the built in free applications, not just because they’re better computers… It’s really hard to compete with some of the $200 Windows and Lindows based PCs that are out there – especially when anyone can install Linux on them or learn to use Windows if they have to).

Weblog Networking – The Bloggies

Published on January 3, 2003 in life stories. 3 Comments

Hmmm… Looks like this might be fun to attend: The Bloggies will be presented at SXSW Interactive, which takes place in Austin this year in March. Think you’re weblog’s got the right stuff? Go nominate yourself, or if you think this weblog’s good enough, go nominate it. I think I’ll attend the awards ceremony just for some networking…

Wanna Buy a Weblog?

Published on January 2, 2003 in marketing + advertising, publishing + content and small business. 2 Comments

I’m quoting a partner of mine here:

Rafat Ali of PaidContent.org speculates on blogs getting acquired by mainstream media in 2003, suggesting that MarketingFix (which I help produce) is ripe for eMarketer to buy. Not a bad idea, in my opinion…

– Rick Bruner

Sounds like a good idea to me too, but we’ve got so much to add to MarketingFix still…

Thanks for the flattery though Rafat.

2003 MWSF Apple Predictions Revised

Published on January 2, 2003 in macintosh. 3 Comments

Ok, my Apple Predictions post from earlier this morning, needs a little revision. I just talked to some of my sources…

It looks like all we’ll really see out of Apple at MWSF is some softare updates, maybe an iApp bundle (that they’re actually going to charge money for) and an upgrade to Airport (think 802.11g or some other flavor).

No hardware updates, no new monitors, no new iMacs, iBooks or anything else of real substance. The word is that Apple might come out with some of these things later in the quarter, but not at MacWorld San Francisco.

The reasons I’ve been given focus around the fact that there’s just too much inventory in the channels for Apple to introduce anything right now that’ll overshadow what’s currently in the market.

Sorry…

How to Get your Resume Read – a few tips

Published on January 2, 2003 in small business. 1 Comment

Butt As a follow up to my latest “On Looking for a Job” post, I followed a link to this article on getting your resume read via a link through Keith Devens’s weblog.

If I can add a few tips/techinques:

1. Instead of submitting your resume via a webform or monster.com, call the company in question and ask the receptionist who you should mail the resume to. Ask for the name and mailing address. Don’t ask for the phone number yet… Mail the resume with a good cover letter, and then call three or four days later to follow up. That’s when you ask for the person you were told to mail the resume to… don’t say anything to the receptionist about why you’re calling unless they ask, just say “Yes, [Insert your name here], calling for [Insert whomever you mailed the resume to's name here]” and be ready to get put through to them.

2. Send a follow up letter after you call to talk to this person (with a second resume) that’s hiring. Especially if you don’t get through to them. The idea is to get them to call you for an interview. Remember, thoughtout this time, you’re just trying to get an interview, not the job. Use that as your pivot point:

“Ma’am, I’m very interested in having a conversation about this position,” is your selling line. You’ve got to sell the fact that its worth it for her to spend an hour with you.

3. If after two weeks you still haven’t her back from the hiring person, and you’re still interested in getting the job, send a personal note. Buy some decent stationary (it doesn’t need to be imprinted with your name, but should be professional looking… all one color, generally white or beige) and send a one or two paragraph note thanking your subject for taking the time to consider your resume. Explain that you still think you’re a good candidate for the job, but that you understand that they’ve probably been swamped under resumes. Say that you’d appreciate an interview if they still don’t think they’ve found the perfect fit, and that ‘having the conversation’ would be profitable for them.

As Scott pointed out in a comment from my last post, getting your resume to the hiring manager is not the hurdle most people face in today’s economy.

Look for a post on ‘networking’ soon.

Must Read: 10 Google Myths

Published on January 2, 2003 in design + dev, marketing + advertising and publishing + content. 1 Comment

Top 10 Google Myths Revealed, by Chris Beasley, is a must read for anyone doing web development work where search engine ranking is important.

1. The Higher Your Google PageRank (PR), the Higher You’ll be in the Search Results Listing

2. The Google Toolbar will List Your Actual PageRank

3. PageRank is a Value Based on the Number of Incoming Links to Your Site

4. Searching for Incoming Links on Google Using “link:” will Show you all Your Backwards Links

5. Being Listed in the Open Directory Project Gives you a Special PageRank Bonus

6. Being Listed in Yahoo! Gives you a Special PageRank Bonus

7. Google Uses Meta Tags to Rank Your Site

8. Google Will Not Index Dynamic Pages

9. Google Will Not List Your Site, or Penalize it, if you use Popups

10. Google will Penalize you if You’re Linked to by a Link Farm

The article is a great primer on Google and Google’s PankRank.

Custom Tag Buttons in MT Entry Screen

Published on January 2, 2003 in Moveable Type. 0 Comments

Add Custom Buttons to the MarketingFix Entry interface for easier ‘blockquoting’

Apple Predictions for 2003 (and MWSF)

Published on January 2, 2003 in macintosh. 1 Comment

Miss Anderson, nice shirt Macworld has put together 12 opinions from some heavy hitters in the market on what Apple’s going to come out with next year, as well as general Mac market trends.

RailHeadDesign says to expect mainly software updates at MacWorld San Francisco, possibly some small hardware updates, and maybe a Bluetooth capable piece of hardware from Apple (think PDA or something similar) just to help push the tech. Also, look for the possibility of a 19″ LCD screen from Apple.

SpyMac seems to think most of the MWSF product announcements will be common sense announcements.

As with previous shows that have introduced tame speed bumps and software upgrades, the lack of exciting leaks preceding the upcoming expo does not necessarily point to an extra extravagant affair.

More likely, the general consensus is correct to assume iMac updates and value-priced eMacs (See next week’s story).

The iApps have been due for a refresh for months, and key technologies — such as Bluetooth and Rendezvous — are ripe for implementation.

Nope, no new Power Macs or PowerBooks. Inside sources aside, common sense is all that is needed for the majority of predictions for this year’s show.

But there’s always a few surprises.

ThinkSecret says that Apple has taken delivery of faster IBM G3 chips which means a possible speed bump on iBooks again, and has published an excellent article on Powerschool (and what not to do in business).

Interestingly enough, AppleInsider hasn’t published anything new since November…

The other rumor sites all say the same thing too, basically… as usual.

QuickLink Mobile Kit for my iBook

Published on January 2, 2003 in macintosh. 1 Comment

This QuickLink Mobile Kit for Mac OS X looks pretty damned awesome, and it supports my Sony Ericson T68i on AT&T’s network, so that means I can actually use something to easily use my cell phone to get on the internet. This might come in hady some day when I’m on the road. Best of all, it includes the USB cable for the phone…

I’m asking for this for my birthday, I think.

Spaceward Ho!

Published on January 1, 2003 in macintosh. 1 Comment

I haven’t played Spaceward Ho! in years, but this truly was one of the most fun strategy games I’ve ever played, and looks pretty good under OS X from the screenshots I’ve seen.

I’ll have to order the newest version soon… just too much fun from back in the day. I didn’t even know it was still under development.

An iPod Demonstration

Published on January 1, 2003 in life stories and macintosh. 1 Comment

Gorgeous Blue Last night, the wife and I went over to a friend’s house to ring in the new year. The friend’s husband is a Mac guy, and a photographer in his life outside of work. He’s very good and has been taking pictures (mainly portraits) professionally for a while now.

He’s also a gadget guy, and wants to buy an MP3 Player. He’s been eyeing a Rio MP3 player, mainly because of its size and the price tag, but I told him that he was an idiot if he didn’t buy an iPod… even if he only got a 5GB version due to price.

You see, he owns a Quicksilver PowerMac, a flat-screen LCD monitor and loves OS X, so I can’t fathom how he’d not truly enjoy owning an iPod. Especially since he uses a Mac at home, and at work, and with iSync and the built in functionality of the iPod to serve as a FireWire Hard Drive, he’d truly be set for a long time with an iPod over just about any other MP3 player out there.

He wasn’t convinced.

He was truly concerned about the iPod’s size, as he owns a Other World Computing Firewire Hard Drive (which is built using an IBM 2.5″ HD) that uses an enclosure that’s pretty big considering how compact an iPod is. He assumed that an iPod was as big as this OWC drive, and couldn’t imagine carrying so large an MP3 player to the gym.

So, I took a second to walk out to the car to get the iPod.

I brought it inside, and hooked it up to his PowerMac and showed him how easy it was to use… then I dumped 768 songs onto his machine using iPodMaster or some other such software. (He was gracious.)

That’s all it took. 15 minutes with an iPod and he was convinced.

I told his wife the real question wasn’t whether he should get an iPod or a Rio MP3 player, but rather whether or not he needed an MP3 player at all…

I left it up to them to make the decision themselves…

Segway ranting…

Published on January 1, 2003 in stuff. 5 Comments

Now Steven’s post on the Segway is just too funny:

John Robb: “Everyone who rides a Segway, wants to own a Segway.”

There has been a lot of Segway stuff showing up in the blogging community (and elsewhere) lately. The consensus seems to be that it’s a truly wonderful thingy indeed.

I wrote about my Segway experience back in October. I won’t deny that the technology is very cool, but I can’t say the experience left me wanting one.

Which is strange. Because if it’s shiny, and it’s new, I usually want it bad. So, why not the Segway?

Well, my earlier blog entry pretty much says it all. For distances less than a couple of miles, I’d rather walk (I need the exercise!). For longer distances, I have a car (or a bike, if I ever get around to re-learning how to ride. They say you never forget how. Don’t believe the lies.) This pretty much takes care of my transportation needs. I don’t really even have environmental guilt, which is popular here in Oregon. By my estimates, I drive substantially less than 5,000 miles a year.

There are something like 5 or 6 folks in our office building who all decided to jump in and buy Segways at the same time, and I see them riding down the street or the hallway on a fairly frequent basis. To put in perspective what I’m about to say, please understand that I am a geek. I was picked on all through school, picked last for every horrible P.E. game, etc, etc, but when I see these guys on their Segways, I want to push them off and steal their lunch money.

I’m not even kidding — the simple addition of a Segway turns what would otherwise be a single dork into an entire chess team on wheels. And if it can stir up this type of sentiment in a fellow geek, imagine what the baseball cap guys will want to do to you. I’m having horrible mental images of two high school quarterbacks throwing an 80 pound Segway back and forth over some guy’s head, chanting “You want your Segway? Come and get it! Come and get it!”

What the Segway community needs to do immediately, if it is to survive, is to cop a more “macho” image. Borrow a page from the Harley Davidson folks, and throw on a leather jacket. Liberally apply flame decals to your Segway. Find a way to make the Stirling engine extremely loud.

I am telling you all this as a friend. Act now, before the other side develops some sort of self-balancing wedgie machine.

On the other hand, maybe I’m just jealous.

BTW, this is my first post using the newest NewNewsWire Pro Beta from Brent Simmons (you rock Brent).