Stumax.com

(UPDATE 8/24/10: I'm posting to a new site now: The Machine That Goes Ping. I'm also in the process of revamping and updating The New Big. See you there!)

I don't intend to blog much here for the foreseeable future. I'm lucky enough to have several exciting projects to work on right now, and that just doesn't leave me much time for personal blogging. I may occasionally post a little tidbit here from time to time, but most of my attention is currently focussed elsewhere: To wit:

• I'm currently blogging at the Seattle Podcasting Network. I've like the stuff this group is doing. Our monthly meetings are fun and lively, and I think we're building a great resource at SeattlePodcasting.net.
• I'm also on the planning committee for Seattle Mind Camp, a twice-yearly gathering of geeks. I'm going to be blogging at SeattleMind.com, as well as helping to get our ducks in a row in time for our April 29th event.
• My wife and I have also been working to get Seattle Real Estate Talk going again after a few-month hiatus. There's not much on there now, but we're working with some new folks to get a regular roster of content to post, both podcasts and text posts. One bit of learning from that venture has been about the energy commitment in the early part of a project. It's like having a full time job, which would be easy if we didn't already have full time jobs.
• I spend whatever spare minutes I have maintaining The Louverture Project. The wiki has really grown by leaps and bounds lately, thanks to some energetic contributors.
• I've also got another project in the works that I hope to be able to announce soon.

I'm busy.

This blog has served me well, but I can no longer serve it well. I might occasionally write a post or two at The Sufferable Ass. I started that blog in order to learn Wordpress, and to experiment with a replacement to Stumax.com. Unfortunately, having a different blog doesn't make time magically appear, so posting there has been and will probably remain light.

Thanks to everyone who has dropped by over the years that this blog has been up and running. This has been an incredibly educational and rewarding experience, and I hope to see you all elsewhere in the blogosphere.

Until next time...

Ego alert: Dave Taylor was kind enough to include my comments as part of a blog post on del.icio.us, the hella cool social bookmarking service. I think the article turned out to be a good intro to the service. There are also some insightful comments about the difficulties with del.icio.us, so be sure to read down a ways.

"Interview With Experts: What's so cool about del.icio.us?" from The Intuitive Life Business Blog:

UPDATE: Del.icio.us has been bought by Yahoo! This is great news for site creator Joshua Schachter, and even better news for me, because the article I mentioned above has now been linked on both the Yahoo! Search Blog and Slashdot. I even got a name mention on Slashdot. How cool is that?

This blog is dying. This is as apparent to me as it is to anyone who may be reading it. Frankly, I'll be surprised if anyone reads this. In fact, why are you still looking here? Don't you have better blogs to be paying your valuable attention to?

Frankly, I haven't been able to figure out what to do with Stumax.com. Del.icio.us has taken over the burden of keeping all the random links I come across, so I don't feel the need to track them here so much. I'm spending energy on Seattle Real Estate Talk, The Louverture Project, and a new venture with Lloyd. On top of a full-time job and the recently completed efforts for Seattle Mind Camp (which was a lot of fun, and, I think, something of a success), I'm just not finding a lot of spare time to write.

Nor am I really sure what to write about here. This blog has been an interesting learning experience, but it became something that didn't quite look like me. I vented a lot about politics and society and stuff -- which is certainly part of what I think about -- but I never really felt that I matched in this blog the voice I feel I really have -- the sardonic, silly, irreverent sense of humor that I prefer to display in my best hours. Plus, my attention and interests wax and wane often enough that this place never really looked cohesive to me.

So, huh. What to do?

Well, I think the blog will stay around for a while, but it needs a re-invention, and that's something I just don't have time or energy to contemplate right now. In the meantime, I've discovered this cool new site called SuprGlu. SuprGlu attempts to combine a user's efforts from a variety of sources on a single page. So, my del.icio.us bookmarks, Flickr photos, 43 Things things, and my various blogs' posts all show up in a single feed. So until and unless I get motivated to reconstruct Stumax.com in my image and likeness, the best way to keep up with me is on this page at SuprGlu. (And here's the RSS feed, if you're so inclined.)

(By the by, this SuprGlu thing manages to take a step towards an idea I've been thinking a lot about recently: the idea of "inventory." There are lots of places on the web and elsewhere where one can put one's data (if one wishes), but it can be hard to remember where it all is, or to keep others apprised of its whereabouts. Not all of my friends are very technically inclined, so telling them to check out my Flickr feed or Del.icio.us bookmarks -- on top of all the other URLs I've given them -- is kind of pointless. They simply won't track them.

Well, okay, so that's it from here for now. I'll probably add a post here on occasion. Or more often. Or less. Who knows? But I'm still active online, and I wanted you to know where to find me.

Don Adams, TV's Maxwell Smart, is still alive and planning a new series starring the dim-witted secret agent.

Would you believe... that Don has a slight cough, but still plans to appear at a fan event on Friday?

How about a wave from his hospital window?

No? Sigh.

RIP Don Adams.

Lloyd has flattered me beyond words by making me the subject of his fourth podcast. Thanks, Lloyd. I enjoyed the hell out of our conversation.

I am lucky enough to have met Robert A. Moog, the engineer who changed the world with his eponymous synthesizers. I was 12 years old, or thereabouts, attending a kind of science and technology camp at Western Carolina University. Bob Moog lived in nearby Asheville, and invited our class to his house for a tour of his workshop. I was too young to appreciate who I was meeting at the time, but Moog's enthusiasm and love for technology and music won me over, and I certainly have never forgot -- nor ever will forget -- the time spent in his presence.

I had spent most of my first week at camp playing with a sound generator. The thing was a monster and looked and worked like an old telephone switch board. To get the sound, you would use patch cables to hook up different tone generators, and then tweak the switches and dials to get the desired effect. The process was crude and cumbersome, and the output wasn't impressive by any means, but to a curious young geek it was an absorbing pursuit. Little did I know that I would soon meet the man who had consigned beasts like this to the scrap heap, and had enabled a generation of musicians to explore and extend music in ways no one had dreamed possible.

I remember Moog as kind, gracious, funny, and charming, We toured his workspace, oohing and aahing over vintage synthesizers and getting a sneak peek at a Fairlight CMI, a powerful new type of computerized synth with dual 8-bit processors and a green monochrome screen. I think that he and I talked about my adventures with the beast back at the college, but I can't be sure that I wasn't merely tongue-tied and shy.

I do remember that Moog was gregarious and garrulous, conducting the tour himself with an unmistakable enthusiasm for his work. We ended up sitting on his porch eating cookies and drinking lemonade while his wife showed off some treasured memorabilia, including some early albums recorded with Moog synthesizers.

Bob Moog died Sunday of a brain tumor at his home in Asheville. He was 71. His inventions paved the way for the kind of creative tools that I take for granted today. His work enabled and inspired the musicians that wrote the soundtrack to my youth. And, personally, he was a really cool guy. May he rest in peace and be ever remembered.

Technorati Tags: Moog, Music, Remembrance

So I left a brief comment at Lloyd's coffee blog pleading with him to never buy anything from Best Buy. He asked, of course, the obvious follow-up: "Why not?" Since "Because" just didn't seem to quite capture the nuances of my objections to that foul retailer, I thought I'd take a moment to explain my position.

Now, I'm well aware that one can Google the word "hate" AND [any store or service provider] and find blog posts, forum rants, and even whole websites full of venom. But Best Buy seems to work diligently at finding new and ever-stupider ways to lower the bar of customer service.

Take the guy who got arrested when he tried to pay an installation charge in $2 bills (see here, too). And did you know that the company is being sued by the Ohio State Attorney General's office for hundreds of reports of "unfair and deceptive acts," such as repackaging used goods as new, and failing to honor rebates and extended service contracts?

Mistakes happen, right? Well, actually, Best Buy has openly declared their desire to weed out unprofitable customers (whom they call "devils" -- how charming!) from profitable customers, or "angels." Best Buy seems to think that customers who take advantage of specials, rebates, and loss-leaders are stealing from the company. Moreover, to weed out the riff-raff, Best Buy secretly collects data on customer shopping habits and uses that data to discourage repeat visits. Best Buy wants to identify their best consumers and treat the rest of us as second-class citizens. Fine. Please yourselves. But don't expect your attitude to make me want to do business with you.

My frustration with Best Buy goes way back. They opened their first store in Orlando in the mid-90s, and from the beginning I had trouble just finding prices on the things I wanted to buy. There were no prices on the boxes, and the shelf labels were maintained haphazardly. The seemingly perpetual problem with maintaining appropriate staffing levels meant that I wasted gobs of time just trying to determine whether I was going to buy something from them or not. When I could get someone's attention, they were rude or abrupt. From the high-decibel noise assault to the disorganized shelves to the surly staff, the whole place exuded an air of cynicism and disdain for the customers that was beyond the pale, and I have seen the same pattern repeated consistently in each Best Buy I've entered. My reaction was no doubt due in part to working 50-60 hours a week in the hospitality industry at companies who set the standard for good customer service. I'm well aware that there's a better way to behave as a retailer and it isn't hard. It just takes determination and effort. Pissing off your consumers is simply not acceptable.

Look, nobody deserves to get ripped off -- Best Buy included. But most retailers take the approach that customers are basically honest. Those are the companies I want to deal with. I don't want to give my money to any company that doesn't even seem willing to pretend to make their customers -- not their profits -- the most important element of their business. My money and my time are valuable, and if Best Buy doesn't want to treat me with respect, they don't get to have me as a customer.

If you need more reasons to hate Best Buy, head over to BestBuySux.org. They've kept an archive of comments - both pro and con - about the retailer since 1999.

Technorati Tags: customerservice, rants

John F. Kennedy:
"We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth."

Technorati Tags: Art, Quotes

Short review: Must love bombs.

Extended review: Must love sitting in the movie theatre gnawing your fingers off. This movie was so bad... by end of the opening credits I wanted to leave. By the half-way mark, I was hoping that Sam Peckinpah would make a guest appearance as director so that everyone of the characters -- including the extras... and the dogs -- would die in a slow-motion ballet of gunfire. Then I hoped that Sadaam Hussein would make a guest directing appearance and that he would actually gas the cast.

We left the movie theatre about an hour ago, but the cinema staff can't leave yet because they have to wait for the movie to stop sucking.

If you think about going to see this movie, consider disemboweling yourself with a dull spoon instead. It'll be less painful and more rewarding.

Technorati Tags: moviesthatsuck

Gnomedex was amazing, and Saturday was a particularly rewarding day. Take Julie Leung's talk, for starters. She inspired me to do more than think of my blog as a place to dump text. I want to learn to treat this space with more respect, thought, and care.

At lunch, I sat next to Eric Rice, who talked about how blogs are failing him; this was a revelation. Blogs are conversations, truly, and the problem of how to manage your reader's experience, how to direct them and give them a structure for understanding your content when they may be stepping into the middle of a conversation... this problem is no small thing.

Evelyn Rodriguez was sitting next to Eric, and she and I ended up in an extended and wide ranging conversation which touched on a lot of ideas and feelings that I haven't thought about for a while: the work of Joseph Campbell, following your passion, answering the call, bringing heart and soul and humanity back into business... Evelyn taught me about the Jonah complex, and the concept of post-traumatic growth. We talked far past lunch and I ended up missing at least two conference sessions, but I wouldn't have traded our time for anything. I have seen Evelyn's name many times in several of the blogs I really like, and I had not taken the time to sample her writing. I'm just digging in now, and finding how much this incredible person has to offer.

Adam Curry's keynote touched on similar themes, on the idea that what the new technology is enabling is for people to express their passion, to bypass TV and radio's "hitmaker syndrome" and to become a place where people can advocate for the things they love. He called on users and developers to keep pushing, to try on each other's perspectives and work together to get this new media revolution in full swing.

The whole weekend was about passion, in the end. Gnomedex 5.0 was full of people who are passionate about what they do. They are unwilling to accept the status quo. They need to move things forward, to make a change in the world, to evolve.

The most incredible thing was how... for the most part... ego-less the whole place seemed. The attendees seemed to revel in each others' presence. They wanted to learn from each other, and they wanted to share what they knew without restriction, as if they realized that the only way they could grow as individuals was to grow as a community.

Perhaps I'm romanticizing things a bit. I'm still being rocked by the waves of energy, still swirling in that whirlpool of motion, so perhaps I'm not entirely clear-headed, but there's no doubt that something amazing happened this weekend. I bumped into Jeff Barr on the way to my car on Saturday night. He's got a million times more juice in the community that I do, and he was buzzing as much as I was. He said, "No matter what you do, what these other guys in the room are doing is 20 times cooler." Everyone seemed to feel that respect and awe for each other.

For me, personally, this weekend was a significant experience. About a year ago, I blogged about a post that Hugh MacLeod wrote. In it, Hugh said, "the old ways are dead, and you need people around you who concur." Back then, I wrote that "people who think the world is changing surround themselves with people who think the world is changing... these people change the world."

I've been searching ever since that day to find the people who concur that the old ways are dead. Wonder of wonders, I found them at Gnomedex.

Awesome!

Chris Pirillo has a great logo for Gnomedex. It's a cartoon caricature of his face, and I'm looking at it all day on the big banner hanging next to the speakers.

Thing is, it's got a big Registered Trademark logo under it. What up with that, Chris? Why won't you release your face under Creative Commons? Let us share and remix your face.

Come on. Even Microsoft is doing it.

Julie Leung just gave a very powerful talk about the social and personal aspects of blogging. I haven't read her blog before, but now I'm very much looking forward to digging in.

One of the real poignant things that came to me while watching her presentation is the dichotomy between the cold, technical side of computers and technology and the warm, aesthetic things that are possible with this technology. Blogs to me are like grass growing through cracks in the concrete. It's the deep human need for expression coming through in everything humans do.

Hobie Swan from Mindjet is demonstrating his visual outlining program. It looks wicked cool. The Mac version (and the Mac tablet?) can't come soon enough for me.

Your front page has to have a Download button, screen shots, and two sentences that tell people why they have to have this software right now!

And make it sexy. A sexy website, a sexy logo.

And listen to your audience -- your actual audience, your end users.

And communicate -- through a blog or whatever.

And don't want to buy a Porsche.

Interesting. Dan Gilmore's suggesting making videos of community theatre and making them available on Bit Torrent. He suggests that they may find a much bigger audience than would otherwise be there. What a cool idea.

Asa Dotzler (roughly): Given the choice between hearing what Ford Motor Company has to say about its product and what a million Ford customers have to say, I think people will opt to hear what the million customers have to say.

Doug Kaye made the point that iTunes is going to start launching to 100,000,000 podcast listeners. Dave Winer is arguing that we shouldn't be interested in getting into the mainstream or hitting a large number of listeners, as if that would validate what we're doing.

To me, RSS, the net, the web... all this stuff is roads & rails. If you don't have enough roads and enough rails, you don't have enough traffic to drive business. You can't carry your content anywhere.

Popularity is a reflection of the extent of the infrastructure you've created. The bigger the infrastructure, the more stuff can happen.

It's roads and rails, baby. Let's build roads and rails.

Dean's Hachamovitch from MS. Coupla good laughs early. Good work. Like the artist's rendering of Microsoft's campus (it's the Death Start II). Funny ha-ha. Maybe Microsoft understands how they're viewed in the world and have a healthy sense of humor about it. Maybe. Maybe it just kind of looks that way.

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We're the first public audience to see IE 7. First impressions: it looks a lot like Firefox. Of course, it's not finished yet. Things will move around. Really, how original can you get with a browser?

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So IE can automatically sniff RSS and view it in the browser. Their RSS view looks EXACTLY like Safari's. Hmmmm...

Maybe I'm being a little unfair, but what these guys are talking isn't that big a deal. I'm doing the same stuff on the Mac and I'm doing it now, not at the end of 2006.

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So here's the key insight from Microsoft. All applications should natively understand what a "subscription" means and know how to deal with it. I think this is right on. Downloading will be done at the platform level, meaning applications will make a call to the built-in downloading service to get feeds, enclosures, etc. Applications will dip into this pool, or stream, of data. To the user, it's a seamless experience. Very cool.

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There's a little hostility towards the MS guys from the crowd, particularly from one Mac guy. I don't think contention is the right tactic to engage the MS guy, but there is a little bit of an attitude that's being presented by MS that they're doing something really cool and forward-thinking, when it looks to many of us that they're really just catching up. I think the hostility might be coming from the attitude that they're telling us something new.

Here's the problem: Microsoft looks like they're not really aware of what state of the art technology looks like. They look like they're behind the curve. They'd be better off, in my opinion, acknowledging what's already available to bleeding edge techno-nerds, and start explaining how they're going to make it bigger, better, and available to more folks.

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MS will be making their RSS extension specs available under Creative Commons. Very, very cool.

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Note to Dean, if, as you said, you're interested in starting conversations, you're going to have to participate in them, not shut down people who are poking at you. You look defensive. Not that I'd want to be up there in your place, but you have to recognize that the hostility is part of the conversation. You can't just pretend it will go away. You have to listen deeply, figure out what people are hostile about, and respond to that. You're shutting people down, but you need these folks, at the end of the day, to work with you.

Microsoft has a PR problem. In terms of how they're presenting themselves to their public, they're trotting out these scrubbed, clean-cut, Disney-esque, passive-agressive pretty boys to sell their products (and I think that this is kind of they way they act in the world -- clean cut, coy, but they might just pull a fast one on you.) What they need is a fighter, a passionate advocate. Someone who thrives in the hostility, can see the other side, and can really engage.

They need to clone Scoble.

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Steve Rubel says, "This is Embrace and Extend Lite (tm)." In other words, it's a good start, but we're not convinced.