Thinking aloud

At work, we use Clicky web analytics to supplement our web statistics. It’s a great service, and Sean at Clicky has always answered my questions quickly and personally. In short, they’re exactly the kind of people you want to work with.

So, I can imagine how furious he must have been when he had to deal with Linksys "technical" support on a blown switch.

You can read the story here, but the real point is that Sean got smart: he used his blog and his knowledge of SEO to make damn sure Linksys will pay and pay. Just check out the searches Sean posts. If I were looking for a switch, I’d search for exactly these terms and walk, no make that run, away from this particular switch.

The moral: not only is blogging the ultimate version of Consumer Reports (minus the holier-than-thou-1930’s Socialist slant), but the sweet, sweet satisfaction of really stickin’ it to mega-roadblocks like Linksys delivers catharsis and helps others.

Right on, Sean. And thanks for the warning, though I wish you had some Netgear stuff to trash. I want them to suffer, too, but my blog isn’t as well trafficked.

You know all those commercials Verizon is running with a young boy talking about “30db hot” and in which, in open-mouth wonderment, he seems to be awash in light? Well, fudgedaboutit, at least when it comes to multiple HD video on demand streams and high-speed Internet.

Not many people realize that FiOS uses a hybrid system for video. It uses both QAM (what we think of as “normal” cable) for much of its programming. But for VOD, it’s IPTV. IPTV data streams are delivered via the Actiontec routers that Verizon requires customers to use because these routers have a network interface module, or NIM, that bridges IEEE 802.3 Ethernet as we know it to the set-top boxes. The set-top boxes are connected by coax cable, of course, and a standard called MoCA (multimedia over COAX) enables them to receive IPTV. It might surprise people to know that FiOS set-top boxes get an IP address from the router just like computers do. To try to make sure that the VOD video streams do not detract from subscribers’ Internet connections, the router implements QOS for the the IPTV video streams.

Complex? You bet. And it all worked great until VZ started offering HDTV VOD.

Tonight, for the first time, I had two HDTV streams going and it killed my Internet connection. I called VZ and the first thing the guy tried to make me do was factory-reset the router. When I objected, he told me that “hundreds of customers watch multiple HTDV VOD streams while getting full bandwidth from Internet connections.” Because I insisted, he agreed to consult with a video expert.

A few minutes later, he came back on the line and admitted that FiOS can’t support more than one simultaneous HDTV video on demand stream. He didn’t blame the router. Astonishingly, he blamed the ATM switches in the central office. (ATM is old, old, old, and I can’t believe VZ implemented it in FiOS…they can’t seem to help themselves. Billions to build a new network, but they’re still using protocols from the 70s in it.)

Bottom line: when you get FiOS you get fiber, all right. But you don’t get the ability to really use its capacity. In fact, it’s easy to overwhelm it.

Ha ha! You’ve been Rickrolled!

I know I’ve been very lax about blogging here because launching a whole new category of enterprise application development software is taking up all my time.

Still, I am compelled to stop for a moment and give WordPress2.5 maximum love for being a killer upgrade. Installation was a snap, and the single problem I had with uploading images was taken care of with one Google search.

In a word, awesome. Those VCs funding Joomla and Drupal are going to wish they’d never written the check.

In one of the worst examples of misandry posing as journalism I’ve read in many, many moons, Lori Gottleib writes in The Atlantic that women should just “settle” for men they don’t necessarily love in order to get married.

Guys, you gotta read this article. Initially, you get the feeling that you are being given a peek inside the most mysterious organ on the planet: the romantic pathways of an American woman’s brain. Gottleib writes in a “let’s just dish” style that I imagine will resonate with women. That tone lets you feel like you are about to be enlightened about what’s really going on inside as women deal with the tough balances of marriage, family and work. You keep hoping that Gottleib will recognize the real value of marriage: the roles fathers can play in their children’s lives.

But it’s not to be. Turns out this all about Gottleib. Her penis-and-a-paycheck feminism turns out to be simple narcissism and personal regret at single motherhood posing as “don’t make the mistake I made” pseudo-advice. Check this out:

My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go.

Uh, “infrastructure??” Is that some kind of new term for a human male?

Using that all-important cultural touchstone, the sitcom, as a reference point, Gottleib declares, “So what if Will and Grace weren’t having sex with each other? How many long-married couples are having much sex anyway?” Uh, sorry, Lori. If you knew much about men, this wouldn’t be a question.

Gottleib goes on and on and on and on about…herself. Her son, someone that should’ve figured prominently in the logic for settling, gets short shrift:

Even women who settle but end up divorced might be in a better position than those of us who became mothers on our own, because many ex-wives get both child-support payments and a free night off when the kids go to Dad’s house for a sleepover. Never-married moms don’t get the night off. At the end of the evening, we rush home to pay the babysitter, make any houseguest tiptoe around and speak in a hushed voice, then wake up at 6 a.m. at the first cries of “Mommy!”

It’s all so disingenuous. At the end of the day, this article devalues men and objectifies them in ways no male writer could ever hope to get away with when discussing women. It’s a damn shame The Atlantic is so important a magazine. Someone might actually believe this tripe.

I’ve been busy working on my third totally new web site in less than a year — and that doesn’t count the sites I simply helped update.

The one thing I’ve learned: no matter what technology you use, whether you use a CMS or you code the thing by hand, it’s an astonishingly complex and costly thing to create a commercial web site.

Everything — and I mean everything — is like riding on blocks. If your site looks good in Internet Explorer, it doesn’t in Firefox. If you try to avoid JavaScript, you can’t do squat for the user. The best-intentioned UI conventions become mush as you shoe-horn the content into them. Just proofreading the site requires the patience of Job and the skill of a novelist.

Worse, you can’t please everyone. So knowing how to please most people becomes the standard, and figuring that out before you have weeks of analytics to look at is more black art than science.

I think the solution is radical simplification. Set an arbitrary limit on the number of pages. 10, 15, whatever. Make the content fit the bucket you’ve created. Use a blog (how’d you guess we’d come back to that?) for everything else. People want fresh…a blog is fresh. You want to change your message on a dime, focus visitors’ attention on something? A blog does it.

Doing a standard corporate web site is like being run over by square wheels. The only thing that’ll round those wheels off is a complete departure from what corporate web sites have become.  And even I am not crazy enough to try that yet.

So, crush me with those edges…

Have you ever wondered if your blog reaches the people you hope it will? People beyond the immediate friends, family and business acquaintances that you are primarily blogging for? Have you heard people say that blogging is a flash in the pan…something that influences nobody…that has no impact? Are you one of my former blogging clients wondering why you should continue doing this now that our consulting engagement is over?

Well, check out this case study.

On Saturday, I blasted TIAA-CREF. Today, they’re all over this blog. And I’ve got the stats to prove it.

Here’s a a screen grab of activity from today (Monday, 2/4) from Clicky.  Almost an hour from a single IP address! (This may represent several users as I presume TIAA-CREF has routers and firewalls that share their public IPs.) And, there are multiple visits from multiple TIAA-CREF IPs that add up to more 90 minutes of time on this blog. That’s a long time for visitors to spend on a blog, even in aggregate.

Wonder who is at this IP address?

Yup, it’s proof positive of the power of blogging. Was it more forceful to blog about the Orwellian language in the price increase letter or should I have talked to a customer service representative by phone? Which do you think got more attention?

I hate obfuscation. This week, TIAA-CREF sent my wife the letter I’ve attached to this post as a PDF. It’s unsigned, unaddressed and clearly written by an attorney…but the marketing guys got into the act as well.

The letter is a notice of a price increase….but it never says TIAA-CREF is raising prices. It only says that “estimated expenses will increase by eight to ten basis points.”

Check out this copy:

The revised estimated expenses also reflect costs unanticipated at the time of the original estimate in the prospectuses, including expenses associated with operating two platforms to serve institutional retirement plans pending completion of plan conversions to the new platform and costs associated with processing delays and delays in realizing anticipated savings.

In other words, we have to raise prices because we have duplicate computer systems, neither of which serve you, the individual investor. We screwed up merging them, and not only didn’t we save the money we thought we would, we have to spend more. You get to pay for it. 

OK, I get it. This wealthy company, ostensibly dedicated to teachers, professors, nurses and other non-profit employees and hiding behind noble ideas like serving the ”greater good” and leveraging “the power of .org,” can’t simply say “we’re raising prices.”

Instead we get a long, apologetic argument about better service to “institutional clients,” (sales) visits to campuses, and a quote from Forbes backing up that when you call these people, they’re happy to sell you more overpriced investments. We also get some nice footnotes where the name should be of a human being taking responsibility for the price increase.

(I didn’t attach the expense ratios, but ranging from .48% to .905%, I hope many of the company’s customers will realize that there are far less expensive options available.)

A song that’s in high rotation on my iPod these days is the lovely duet Please Read the Letter from the unlikely pairing of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss (yes, I know: heavy metal and bluegrass…who’d have thunk it? Go ahead and blow 89 cents on the song. You’ll love it).

TIAA-CREF’s marketing and legal people should listen carefully to some of the song’s lyrics:

…A fool could read the signs
Maybe baby
You’d better check between the lines
Please read the letter,
I wrote it in my sleep
With help and consultation from
The angels of the deep…

 TIAA-CREF to customers: please read the letter (if you can): Download (167)

After over a year of consulting, I’ve taken on a new role with Active Endpoints which returns me to my roots in application development. For many years before I went into marketing, I developed applications using what was then considered leading-edge technology.

What amazes me is that leading-edge developers today face the same problems as I did then: there’s too much “stuff” to conquer, too many technologies to integrate and too many piece parts to put together with duct tape.

Active Endpoints has created a new category of app dev software, what we call a visual orchestration system, or VOS. You can read more about it in a press release we issued today…there’s a lot more to come from us on this topic. (Those of you who know me aren’t surprised to hear that, I would assume.)

Anyway, I think this company can change — indeed revolutionize — the way applications are developed by helping the industry think large — as in programming in the large. This is in complete contrast to the way people think today, which is all about devolving problems to their smallest units to make them solvable, then trying after the fact to put them together in some coherent way. Any of you who have ever tried to build something from a kit knows how impossible this can be.

Given the size of the problem and the amazing technology Active Endpoints offers, once I got the chance to join I found it irresistible.

There’s a very entertaining series on one of my favorites blogs, TTAC, entitled “General Motors death watch“. I am sure they are much hated at GM, but, frankly, I think the bloggers there have been evenhanded. GM has been a mess so long, I can now officially be excused for buying a new, manual three-speed Chevy Vega in 1973. (I paid $2300 for it, courtesy of Nixon-era price controls.) Still, I think TTAC has been waiting for rigor mortis so long, it can’t see that GM is already a carcass.

Lately, the auto press has been falling all over itself to praise GM’s new cars, especially the interior fit and finish of models like the Enclave and the CTS. Interior fit and finish is especially important to me because, after all, you sit in the thing for three to five years and every flaw eventually becomes something you stare at and wonder, “How could they let that out of the factory?”

I checked out an Enclave in the showroom; the panels in the exact center of the dash under the analog clock were misaligned. I didn’t bother to test drive it, knowing that misaligned panel would drive me crazy. Now, I’ve taken to peeking through the windows of parked Enclaves to see if it was just a sample defect. Nope. They’re all like that.

This week, curiosity got the better of me and I test drove a $50K ‘08 Cadillac CTS with four-wheel drive and the direct-injection engine. The showroom unit had a terribly misaligned panel where the front passenger’s knee rests against the transmission tunnel. Defect just on that one? Guess again. A different unit, the one I drove, had the same problem. Now I have another GM model to stare at in parking lots. The fit and finish in that car was no better than an 80’s Corsica, despite all the press fawning over stitched leather and the stupid Viagra-enhanced navigation screen. (The latter gives itself an erection every time you push a button on the dash. Reminds me of one of those pump-kits that promise…uh…lengthening).

I have no freakin’ idea at all what these press guys are smoking. If an average car nut like me can see this stuff in seconds, why don’t they?

Still, the promises of resurrection from GM management continue. Yesterday, GM told analysts it’s going to be profitable in a couple of years. That reminds me of the kind of wishful talk that accompanied Roger Smith’s attempt to “take on the Japanese” in the 90’s. At the end all he could offer was a “a used Buick.”