FatMixx

Was thinking about some product decisions today for our product and my thoughts turned to “What would Apple do?” as they often do with these kind of choices.

It occurred to me that Apple’s insistence on only having one or two models of iPhone in market is less about them knowing better than us about what we want and more about knowing their own capacity for producing excellence. They know what they can pay attention to, so they do just that.

Good guide to keep in mind when trying to decide how many use cases to solve for, or how many features to pack in, or what feedback to listen to. Sometimes the hardest thing is saying no.

Sarah Lacy (now at Pando Daily) got an email from a publishing industry insider, and it’s illuminating. Everyone’s focusing on the sexy line about Amazon trying to kill the industry, but buried at the bottom was this passage:

So rather than [Amazon] getting a 30% of an ebook (with the other 70% being split between the publisher and author), they’ll be getting a 70% cut (with the other 30% going right to the author). Funny thing is that it’s actually better for authors.

Funny thing: that’s why the publishing business needs to change…

(via Daring Fireball)

This line wins today:

Perhaps more people will relate to this: I hate Android for the same reason that Severus Snape hates Harry Potter — the very sight reminds me of something so beautiful, that was taken from me. Except it’s worse. It’s as if Harry Potter has grown up to become Voldemort.

Nicely done, MG Siegler.

There have been a few discussions online about why the other SOPA supporters aren’t being targeted the way GoDaddy has been. I don’t have much to add there, but I agree that GoDaddy is getting far more attention about this than most of the other companies on there.

Boycott GoDaddy if you will (I would), but certainly GoDaddy isn’t a central lobbying force behind this bill. For that, we just need to look at the large number of content companies on the “supporting” list. Thinking about that list, I do have one suggestion that would hit a lot of these companies in a subtle but important way:

Simply cancel your cable or satellite service.

I don’t know if most people realize how important the business of cable/satellite distribution is to the entertainment companies out there, including companies I really love like ESPN or Disney. It’s a key part of the profit picture for most networks. Even over-the-air networks like ABC or Fox try and get cable companies to pay to carry them.

The model is simple: the distributor (e.g. cable or satellite company) pays a fee for anyone that has access to a network. So, my parents, who basically watch 3 Indian channels on their cable service, have ~$4 of their cable bill go to ESPN each month. Die hard liberals have part of their cable bill go to Fox News and Fox News viewers pay for MSNBC. Every cable subscriber helps pay for exorbitant sports salaries. You’re all paying for SOPA lobbying budgets, too.

So, the solution is simple: just stop being a subscriber.

Between Netflix and Hulu (which pay far lower fees to the content providers) and over-the-air broadcasts that a cheap antenna can get you, you’re unlikely to miss out on much television. If you can’t find something there, you can probably buy shows from iTunes and still save money vs. your cable bill. Plus, it’s easier than ever to watch all of this on your big screen TV with inexpensive ($100 or less) boxes available from Roku (my fav), Apple (another fav), Boxee, and more.

Cord cutting, as this is sometimes called, is something all of these companies are watching closely. It’s because it matters to their bottom lines. You’ll save a boatload of money and at the same time really affect the entire ecosystem. You’ll help shift content creation business models to more artist/creative and consumer friendly systems. YouTube is working on getting rights to sporting events, for example. MLB.com has one of the best streaming products around. Other creative people might try what Louis CK did and go direct to consumer, or partner w/ a Netflix or YouTube to distribute their movies.

I’ve been living without cable for about 6 months or so, and it’s been great. The extra money hasn’t hurt, and I still watch just about everything I want to (legally!). I have to wait a few months for some shows to show up on Hulu or Netflix, but really, that’s not a big deal – certainly not worth an extra grand a year in cable bills. For the few that I really can’t wait for, the $40/season pass still saves me a bunch of cash. (telling detail: I have zero active season passes at this moment)

So, do it: Protest SOPA and cancel your cable/satellite service today.

(and apologies to my friends at ESPN – love you guys, but the affiliate business model bites…)

I’ve been using the new iPhone version of the Flipboard app nearly daily. I never really got into the iPad app. Don’t get me wrong: it’s still one of the best executed apps I’ve seen on any OS. That said, I never found it that useful. I never felt like I knew what to expect: most of the time, it duplicated my Twitter client, but not completely. Conversely, their growing partnerships seemed like it was narrowing the content available in the app even as it actually was expanding (since the partners showed up more often).

So, I never was comfortable. This might just be me, as I know lots of people that simply love the app.

The iPhone app has fixed a lot of that with one thing: Cover Stories. Here are a few quick observations about the iPhone app:

• The promise of Cover Stories is to show a “constantly updated selection of interesting articles and photos being shared with you right now.” In that, it simply delivers.
• This is what News.me and Summify should’ve been. Both of those services take a more scheduled approach to summarizing your feeds, daily by default. That’s just not enough for me.
• I sometimes back out too far from a cover story back to the main contents because there’s no obvious visual clue that I’m in the Cover Story stream and not in a story somewhere. I’ll probably get better about knowing where I am, but I’d probably tweak the design to hint that the next “back” will go to the main contents.
• I find the app a little slow to update the cover story stack. I wish it did that first before updating the rest.
• In fact, I kinda wish that Cover Stories was its own standalone app. It’s literally the only thing I use the iPhone app for, and I’d be willing to pay for it.

Good stuff – definitely raising the bar for those of us building apps.

Great article passed on by a friend on Facebook about a little social experiment. It’s long, but worth reading all the way to the end. I loved this little tidbit in there:

The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother’s heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too.

I want my son to keep his knowledge of poetry and music. I hope I can help him be one of those people who stops & listens.

That was a great story and a great read before bed.

From this account by an Occupy protester in LA (who happens to be a writer for Family Guy):

As I watched, the LAPD sliced that canopy tent to shreds, broke the telescoping poles into pieces and scattered the detritus across the park. Note that these were the objects described in subsequent mainstream press reports as “30 tons of garbage” that was “abandoned” by Occupy LA: personal property forcibly stolen from us, destroyed in front of our eyes and then left for maintenance workers to dispose of while we were sent to prison.

Lots of other outrages in the story, but the above struck me as illuminating. I wondered about the garbage numbers reported by city officials at the various protest sites after they were cleared. That much garbage should’ve been visible in the press video/photos before the evictions. Are police within their rights to confiscate all of that property? Not sure. However, calling it garbage seems to be a stretch. You can see what look like tents and possessions getting rolled up in what little footage exists of the NYC cleanup.

Little surprise that they didn’t allow press (even the news choppers) to document much of anything.

One of my (relatively) recent self-revelations is that I don’t have a good temperament for theoretical policy debates.

For example, in the comments of this editorial by Nick Hanauer (and a related Facebook thread), I got into a bit of back and forth (nothing too bad) about the implications of what Hanauer proposes, especially when I got an (virtual) earful of Solyndra and Laffer and confiscatory taxation.

I don’t want to rehash that conversation (feel free to click on over to FB, if that’s open — not sure). I just wanted to say that I care about 2 things in a policy discussion:

1. What’s the problem we’re trying to address, and is it a problem?
2. Will the proposed solution solve the problem? What evidence do we have?
   (2b. What are the externalities/side effects of the proposed solution)

To often, theoretical objections are brought up as a reason why something won’t work when folks are really about disagreeing about #1. For example, read Nick Hanauer’s op-ed, and then consider this:

His op-ed lays out answers to my two questions as follows:

1. High unemployment, shaky business environment caused by a weakening of the middle class.
2. The specific policy proposal, using a 3% surtax on $1mil+ incomes to pay for a payroll tax cut for middle class Americans would put more spending dollars in the hands of millions of Americans.
   (2b. He argues that the rich won’t notice the slight bump, and it should make business better.)

So, honest truth: I’m not convinced that the policy would work (see this or this, for example), but that’s a debate I’d love to have. But that’s a debate about what would be the best bang for the buck, and not about Laffer curves.

(and, IMHO, a national works program building/fixing infrastructure would be better. Studies have shown that direct stimulus to infrastructure projects has the best GDP multiplier for each dollar spent outside of unemployment & food stamps. My current, un-researched idea: Lay or buy up the fiber to homes to make them municipally managed, like roads – Internet, phone, cable still private services, but run over community owned wires. Should lower costs, spur competition, improve service. More on that once I do some research, if I ever have time to… )

I think this review basically puts this book at the top of my Christmas list:

My kids asked me to read the book after the hundredth time I said rap was stupid.

I read the book.

It did not turn me into a fan of rap – nothing will do that. But I do understand the art because it was explained by an artist.

Jay Z explains his life, he “decodes” it – but he doesn’t sugar coat it. He doesn’t use it as an excuse, he simply tells you how he became the man he is. There were times I had to reread passages several times. I came away with a measure of respect for the artist and a better understanding of rap.

It will be interesting to follow him raise his own child – a world away from the one he grew up in.

The review goes on to give the book 3 stars because of some problems the person had with the writing, but if you’re an author, especially one writing what is, essentially, a memoir, what more can you ask for beyond, “I came away with a measure of respect for the artist.”

I was reminded about the book after a tweet from Dave McClure, which I received via Summify. If you’re not using Summify, you really should be.

(I should point out, coincidently, and in testament to how obvious the headline choice is, the Courant chose a similar headline. I started writing this before I saw the Courant article, for the record. )

I had a rather animated conversation with a friend today about CL&P’s performance during this most recent storm. I won’t bore you with the whole thing, but there are a few things I wanted to open up to a broader conversation. At this point, my focus is about how to ensure that people aren’t surprised, frustrated and without power the next time weather happens.

My expectation as a customer is that they have a plan to:

1. … maintain the lines during normal times to minimize potential damage from a weather event.
2. … repair the lines quickly, including how to get additional crews in if necessary
3. … coordinate repairs with town leaders around the state

Reporting about the outage has called into question CL&P’s effectiveness on all three aspects. The Times published an article this weekend calling into question the maintenance budgeting at CL&P and planning. Even better was this anecdote from our own Mayor Slifka in the Courant:

In West Hartford this week, when the electric company was refusing to tell town leaders what streets its crews were going to be working on, officials came up with their own improvised solution. Municipal leaders sent town police over to CL&P’s staging area at Westfarms mall in the evening to ask the crews themselves where they would be heading to work the next day.

This isn’t neurotic small town bureaucrats overreacting. This information is critical during an emergency, when fire and rescue personnel must know what streets are passable. Already, one elderly West Hartford woman without power died in a fire at her home this week.

So what did CL&P do when they found out West Hartford police were tracking down where crews were going to work?

They told their workers not to talk to the cops. Now there’s a company that cares.

The communication issues seem unforgivable. No one has come up with a plausible reason why CL&P couldn’t tell the towns where their crews would be, or in what order they were approaching the work. Either they didn’t have a plan or central coordination, or they put their corporate image above the safety of citizens. That’s basically it.

There’s going to be an investigation into CL&P’s performance, so maybe we’ll find out more about how they stack up to other utilities. Regardless, though, the episode has raised an alternate option that we should consider.

I think it’s time to consider organizing our utilities differently. For example, the way we handle water here in West Hartford is via a public/private corporation. With the MDC, we have pooled together resources with several surrounding towns and cities in order to provide water to our citizens via a non-profit corporation. The city of Norwich has run their own public utility corporation (for profit) for over 100 years. We let governments at all levels maintain roads, airports, and other infrastructure. In my mind, the lines that carry telephone, cable, and Internet (particularly at the local level – the last mile networks) should be like roads – shared, impartially maintained where private companies compete to provide us service. I don’t see why power lines, especially at the local level, should be any different. In all of these cases, you break monopolies, accelerate the competition from private vendors for new products and solutions, and bring accountability closer to the customer. At least the mayor won’t have to send out the police to chat up crews to find out details about the repair efforts.

These seem like good things. There are certainly going to be tradeoffs. Curious how everyone else feels about something like this.

If you’re interested in learning more, the Colin McEnroe show covered this topic today, including a few towns that converted their transmission functions to a public agency or a public/private corporation. I caught part of it this afternoon, looking forward to listening to the rest later tonight (after the Eagles game – Go Eagles!)