Read Rework

By pdo | Published: May 26, 2010

Read Rework.  I’ve told six people about this book today.  I bought the book Tuesday afternoon, started reading it on the bus, went to the Cubs game, read some more at home afterward, and finished it this morning.  It’s that good.

It’s a dead-simple take on the business world written by 37signals founders Jason Fried and David Hansson.  Why is it good?  Well, they mention the genius of Gordon Ramsay’s trim menu and they abhor meetings.  If you need a daily fix, read their Signal vs. Noise blog.

And if you’re like me and you want even more, check out their earlier book, Getting Real, online (note: there’s some overlap with Rework).  Some great tidbits:

Posted in Business | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Easy Implementation of Google Web Fonts

By pdo | Published: May 21, 2010

This week Google announced their new web font directory.  Instead of relying on users to have special fonts or resorting to using images, Google makes font replacement super easy with their new open source tool.  I’ve had moderate luck with sIFR in the past, but I like Google’s solution better.  I implemented it on my website this morning, and it couldn’t have been easier.

  1. Add this line of code to the HEAD of your HTML page.  Be sure to grab the code appropriate to the font you want.  This example uses Droid Sans.
  2. Reference the font name in the font stack wherever you want to use the Google web font (ex: font-family: ‘Droid Sans’, Verdana …).  In my case, I applied it to the entire page.

The only thing I don’t like is the font shift when the page loads for the first time.  This plagues all replacement techniques, but Google’s caches well and doesn’t seem to affect subsequent visits.  In my experience, the sIFR solution shifts on every page load which is a deal-breaker.

Helvetica pixels
Creative Commons License photo credit: Sunfox

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Posted in The Google | Tagged , | Leave a comment

CONFIRMED: iPads Are For The Elderly

By pdo | Published: May 20, 2010

An elderly California woman walks into an Apple store.  She’s never owned a computer but has saved up $600 for an iPad.  The grandmother pulls out a wad of cash and the cashier says:

‘Sorry, we don’t take cash [for iPads].’

Apple, come on!  This is the iPad’s core market — cater to them.  Read more here.

Posted in Business | Tagged , | Leave a comment

5 Business Lessons From Kitchen Nightmares and Gordon Ramsay

By pdo | Published: May 16, 2010

I love Fox’s Kitchen Nightmares because of its insight into humanity.  Yeah, it’s fun to watch shows about food, but Gordon Ramsay’s show is about so much more than that. He’s not just a chef — he’s a psychologist.  He needs to break people from their instinctive path and get them to change.  He needs to convince them that they can respond to their failure and turn it into a success.  His lessons are valuable to all business owners that face challenges.

end of the night
Creative Commons License photo credit: brooklyn

Embrace Change

Convincing an owner that the business needs to change is usually step one.  There has never been an episode where Gordon is flabbergasted that the place is unsuccessful.   It’s never a surprise; there’s always a reason (usually plural).  But the owners tend to fear change because they incorrectly evaluate the risks and rewards.  Gordon has to convince them that prolonged mediocrity will not lead to success.   The owner must change paths to succeed.

Stay Detached

Gordon is able to provide insight for the same reason that consultants are able to provide it to other businesses — they’re both detached.  They are unencumbered by the distractions of history and see a failing business very simply.  If you want to save the cost of a consultant, you can do this yourself.  Avoid the delusion of past success and look at things simply: a restaurant works by selling food for more than it costs to produce.  It’s that simple.  It’s a single equation.  Now build from there.  Are people willing to pay for the current food?  Are there enough of these people?  Etc.

Continually Evaluate Your Assumptions

If you’re not detached, you’ll likely jump to a different set of conclusions than if you are able to stay detached.  One owner switched to cheaper steaks to save money … but they didn’t taste as good so fewer customers were willing to pay for them.  Another put his chef on too high of a pedestal … and the chef was running the place into the ground.  These types of conclusions are tremendously dangerous, but they’re sometimes needed for expediency.  As a business owner, you can’t labor over each decision you’re faced with, but when things get tough, you need to evaluate your old decisions.

Focus On The Basics

Thanks to the FDA, there’s one thing a restaurant has to be: clean.  If you fail at that, it doesn’t matter how great everything else is, because you will be shut down.  What are the absolute basics of your business?  Are you a landscaper with dull lawnmower blades?  When it’s time to rebuild, this is where you need to start.  The goal of all businesses is to sell something for more than it costs you to produce.  Make sure you have all the tools you need to do so.

Consider The Menu

Gordon always changes the menu — and he always makes it shorter.  When faced with failure, the instinct of many is to try to do more — more dishes, more options, more choices.  This never works.  Gordon refocuses restaurants so that they can excel at single things instead of fail at many things.  This is oftentimes the most significant change, but it’s the most difficult to make because it involves the restaurant’s identity.  Should the pasta place evolve into a steakhouse because there’s less competition?  Maybe it should.  Should the ethnic restaurant embrace more modern dishes and techniques that are more approachable to patrons but don’t follow grandma’s recipe?  Maybe it should.  What’s on your menu?  Get rid of what’s not working and focus on what is.

Do you watch Kitchen Nightmares for the same reason?  Have I missed any good lessons?  Leave me a note in the comments.

Posted in Business | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Google Needs Frank Gehry To Topple Apple

By pdo | Published: May 12, 2010

Google needs one thing to topple Apple: Frank Gehry (or some other modern architect).

Here’s why:

As a sales story, the Google’s Nexus One was not a success.  It just isn’t selling much (full disclosure: I have one).  And while sales numbers were probably not the primary reason Google built the thing, there’s a lot to learn from the experiment.

Android phones are selling very well.  The current best selling Android device is the Motorola Droid on Verizon (I like the cheaper, keyboard-free Droid Eris and the new HTC Incredible).  The Droid’s ad campaign made the phone cool.  You can pull it out in a bar, and the person next to you will know what it is and hopefully be of the opposite sex and hopefully want to sleep with you.  That’s what good advertising campaigns accomplish … more or less. The Nexus One’s online-only campaign didn’t accomplish this on the same scale as the Droid’s television campaign.

But as advertising campaigns, both have been tremendously nerdy.  They have focused on specs and megapixels and functionality.  The next campaign  needs to focus on Apple’s stronghold: design.  Which brings us to Frank.

Apple customers (at least all the Apple customers I know) think of themselves as design aficionados.  They get hot dreaming about Herman Miller chairs and concrete and steel architecture.  Their phone is an extension of their design sensibilities — like the mock turtlenecks they all wear.  Google needs to exploit this motivator as well.  It’s not just about features.

Picture this: Frank Gehry sitting in his sweeping stainless steel bandshell in Chicago’s Millennium Park.  He says something like this: “Open design is the best design.  A designer must allow others to participate in his sculpture — to play symphonies in his space.  And only by peeling back layers of distraction and excess,  can we can appreciate true elegance.  I’m Frank Gehry, and I use Android.”

DSCN6125
Creative Commons License photo credit: Sweet One

It’s an attack on all things Apple without being an explicit attack on Apple (unlike the Droid’s “iDon’t” campaign).  And it will give the person next to you at the bar a reason to recognize your phone and want to sleep with you.

Posted in The Google | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Trix Are For Kids; iPads Are For Old Men

By pdo | Published: May 9, 2010

For a few months now, the old men of the media world have been telling us that the iPad is going to save newspapers and revolutionize media.  Turns out, unsurprisingly, that these old men are the same people that have bought the thing (via Mashable).

The public pitch was that the iPad was going to be so wildly awesome that people wouldn’t be able to get their wallets out fast enough to buy content to run on it.  Newspapers were going to become so engaging and interactive that nobody would dream of reading one on PAPER.

Fire
Creative Commons License photo credit: patrickeasters

But to believe that you had to believe this: there’s a huge un-tapped market of readers out there that are buying neither computers nor newspapers.  They’re sitting around all day, maybe staring at the TV, fearful of computers — but with the means to buy one — in need of a device to fit their needs.  Their needs being a super-newspaper with pictures and videos and text all rolled into a 2-pound package.  This person is my grandfather.  His eyes get tired, so he would love to listen to the paper read to him.  His vision is going, so it’d be great to be able to zoom in on the text.  He’s terrified of computers.  But he’ll never buy an iPad.

The reality is that the iPad is too expensive for the younger reader.  Especially if that younger reader already owns a laptop.  It’s a duplicative device.  It does nothing new for the entire population of computer savvy buyers.  NY Times on my iPad?  I’ll go to the website.  There’s no reason to justify the expense.  It’s a toy.

And as a toy, it’s pretty neat.  But it’s no revolution.  It’s no iPhone.  It’s the Nexus One.  Google’s Nexus One was never about selling a lot of phones, it was about Google getting direct customer feedback and positioning itself as the anti-Apple.  Don’t want the walled garden of Apple and AT&T?  Buy the Google phone unlocked, use it anywhere.  Google needed to enter the mobile market.  Apple needed to enter the tablet market.

Nearly nobody under 30 has an iPad.  It’s a toy for rich men, right now.  And as the old men of the world march towards their funerals, they’ll have their iPads to help them stay informed.  No, the iPad isn’t going to save newspapers.  But it may prolong their lives while we prolong the lives of their customers.

Posted in Media | Tagged | 6 Comments

Warren Is Right Again

By pdo | Published: April 25, 2010

Thanks to 37signals for posting a great quote from Warren Buffett (via Venture Beat).

We would rather suffer the visible costs of a few bad decisions than incur the many invisible costs that come from decisions made too slowly – or not at all – because of a stifling bureaucracy. — Warren Buffett

Lesson #2 from the Veature Beat article is to admit mistakes and move on.  And you can’t move on if you can’t move.  It’s certainly easy to say, but it’s oftentimes tremendously difficult to do in many organizations.  Cheers to Warren for calling attention to the value of being agile and able to respond to mistakes quickly.

Posted in Business | Tagged | Leave a comment

Six Reasons Why The Next iPhone Was Intentionally Leaked By Apple

By pdo | Published: April 24, 2010

An iPhone walks into a bar. Bartender says, “Sorry, we don’t serve iPhones.” iPhone says, “iPhone? I’m an i-leaked-a-phone-for-publicity-because-Google-is-getting-all-the-press-and-the-ipad-kinda-sucks phone.”

Iphone Dead End
Creative Commons License photo credit: magic_quote

The story is just too far fetched.  A drunk drops his phone, won’t return any calls, then the phone finds its way to Gizmodo.  Bullshit.  Here’s why:

  1. Apple’s iPad buzz is dead and it needed to get back in the headlines.  There was a lot of hype before everybody tried the thing out, but that’s gone.  It’s a big iPod Touch.  We all realize that.  Sure, a lot of suckers bought it, but the revolution didn’t come.  But perhaps that’s because we’re not sitting close enough to the WiFi.
  2. The iPhone allure is dying.  Apple’s products attempt to be luxury, high-end devices (so Apple can charge more).  That gimmick doesn’t work when everybody has one.  If the iPhone is supposed to be the phone of the savvy and successful, you can’t put it in the hands of a Domino’s delivery driver.
  3. The iPhone OS 4 announcement fell flat.  Wallpapers and multi-tasking?  That’s so Android 2.1.  Get with it, Apple.  When it was first released, the iPhone was a revolutionary device, but since then the updates have been incremental and boring.  Mostly because …
  4. Apple can’t compete with HTC, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, etc. all at once.  They competition is just putting phones out too fast for Apple to respond.  Every phone starting with the Motorola Droid has had better specs than the iPhone 3Gs.  Hell, Verizon’s HTC Droid Eris is just as good and $0.01 on Amazon.  HTC alone has released a half-dozen phones in the last few months, all of them more impressive than the 3Gs, and Apple has announced nothing except wallpapers and fake multi-task.  Apple just can’t keep up because …
  5. The burden of the closed system is starting to crush Apple.  The backlash is mounting and it’s just not going to work out in their favor (just like last time when Apple tried this fight with Windows).  Jobs can say that he’s keeping the walls around iTunes to keep out the porn, but that’s a lie.  The walls are up so that Apple makes more money.  And it’s not just the phone and the OS that are strangling Apple.
  6. It’s the network.  A T&T has taken too many hits  for it to recover.  It’s bloodied and wounded and Apple can’t afford to be tied to it any longer, but because AT&T subsidies are so lucrative, Apple has overstayed its welcome and screwed its customers in its own self interest.  The customer base is ripe for rebellion.

So, long story short, Google Android is catching up.  Their growth rate is phenomenal (their market share more than doubled from 11/09-02/10).  The phones running Android are impressive and feature-rich and are found on Verizon’s huge and Sprint’s super-fast networks.  On top of that, they are cheaper.  Price, flexibility, and choice are all stacked against Apple.  They’ve lost this battle before, and their leaked phone ploy shows they realize that they’re losing it again.

Posted in Business, Media, The Google | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

How Your Office Kills Productivity With Interruptions And Distractions

By pdo | Published: April 6, 2010

I’m a fan of the virtual office and passive communication.  Here, Jason Fried of 37signals agrees.

  • On long hours: “It’s not because there’s 50 hours of work to do, it’s because you don’t work at work anymore.”
  • “If you want to get things done, you have to get rid of the interruptions.”
  • “Managers are the biggest problems because their whole world is built around interruptions.”
  • “[Interruptions are an] arrogant move … [they communicate] whatever I have to ask you is more important than what you’re doing.”
Posted in Business | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Mediaite.com – Who Are They And What Are They Doing?

By pdo | Published: March 30, 2010

Introduction

Mediaite.com is the new kid on the block. If you read their marketing literature, it sounds like they’re going after Gawker’s demographic – the media-savvy world, with maybe a little less snark. I took a closer look. Here’s what I found.

Traffic

First off, they’re doing something right. Maybe it’s the Dan Abrams connection, maybe they’re hitting a niche, but their traffic growth is impressive.  Check out their stats on Compete.com:

Mediaite on Compete

What They Say

Here’s what on their about page: “Mediaite is the site for news, information and smart opinions about print, online and broadcast media, offering original and immediate assessments of the latest news as it breaks.”

Then there’s this gimmick: “Mediaite’s ‘Power Grid’ objectively ranks media professionals across a dozen categories based on their real-time relevance. Power Grid rankings rely on an array of metrics, including anything and everything from circulation to Twitter followers to Google buzz depending on the category.”  Snooze.

So, it sounds like they write about the media and they have some chart of power.  Seems pretty focused … maybe a little boring.  Is that what’s on the site?

What’s Published

What do they cover? Here are the stories they ran from 3/23 – 3/24 organized by category (I pulled the headlines from my daily newsletter):

Sports:

  • Woody Johnson Reflects On Death Of His Daughter, Casey Johnson
  • Online Statistics Guru: Computers Are The Sports Reporters Of The Future

Gossip:

  • WATCH: Kelly Cutrone Gives Cheslea Handler Bag Of Vibrators
  • Erin Andrews Effect? Dancing With The Stars Premieres To Huge Ratings
  • (Link to sister site, Styleite) Russian Vogue Dedicates Entire Issue To Naomi Campbell
  • (Link to sister site, Styleite) NYT Photographer Bill Cunningham Readies For His Close-Up
  • (Link to sister site, Styleite) Kelly Osbourne Becomes A Dr. Phil Special Contributor

Politics:

  • VP Joe Biden And Sen. Scott Brown Have A Lunch Date
  • Oh The Irony: Only The Republicans Can Now Save The Public Option
  • Michael Steele Wants To Bring Nancy Pelosi’s “Iron-Fisted Reign” To An End
  • John Boehner’s “No You Can’t” Gets The Inevitable Will.I.Am Remix
  • George W. Bush Wipes Hand On Bill Clinton’s Shirt, After Meeting Haitians
  • Neugebauer: Overwhelmingly Good Responses From ‘Baby Killer’ Remark
  • GOP Compares Health Care Bill To Armageddon; Massive “Debt Asteroid”
  • Daily Obsession: Nancy Pelosi’s Big, Hard Gavel
  • Bush Administration Catches Friendly Fire From Republican Darrell Issa
  • Past Is Prologue: Ronald Reagan On Medicare In 1961…Sound Familiar?
  • Rudy Giuliani Tries To Talk Health Care, Mostly Endorses Torturing War Criminals
  • President Obama Signs Historic Health Care Bill (VIDEO)

Politics in the Media:

  • Rachel Maddow: Are Tea Partiers Using HCR As An Excuse To Get Violent?
  • James Cameron Calls Glenn Beck A “F*cking A**Hole”
  • Scott Brown Seeks Donations For Senate Run Against…Rachel Maddow?
  • Obama Talks About Overseas Childhood, Tickle Fights In Indonesian TV Interview
  • Stephen Baldwin Calls President Obama A Liar on Larry King Live

Just Media, kinda:

  • John King’s Slow Debut, Keith Olbermann’s Big Night Back
  • Bill O’Reilly Talks Rather, Safer, Beck And More During YES Interview
  • F-Bomb Round-Up: How The Media Quoted The Unquotable, Joe Biden
  • Inside the White House Press Corps: Progressive Talk Radio Host Bill Press
  • Huckabee, Geraldo Go Live Saturday Night, Have Top Shows
  • And Now There’s A Big F*cking Website
  • Glenn Beck Explains That He Does, In Fact, Love Jesus

Analysis

In practice, Mediaite appears to be the Huffington Post with a media angle instead of a liberal angle.  It’s a political site for the media-minded.  Even the media stories have a political flavor — O’Reilly, the White House Press Corps, Beck, Biden — it’s all political!

Not to say it’s not genius.  They had five slow months before they exploded.  The internet is a great venue for political content and it’s trending towards a future where there’s a website for every palate.  The media-centric political demographic must have been an un-tapped market that took a few months to find.  Instead of reading Gawker and Huff Po, people can now read Mediaite.  Genius.

Posted in Media | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments