Friday, December 10, 2004

King Google

BuzzMachine ] "King Google

Via TechCrunch, here’s a good PPT outlining the continued primacy of Google across its various products and lines of business:"

All about Google
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: google strategy)

Thursday, December 9, 2004

Manic Depression and Communication Ecology

Time is the independent variable.
Job one is to get a story for time.
A story for time gives the sense of power.
It is only a sense because you can't control the end of your time.

But you can control time while you are alive.
You can make more time.
You can take yourself out of time.
The trick is the balance between the two.

Time is a thought construct to describe when events happen.
If more events happen, it seems like time slows down.
If less events happen, it seems like time slows down.
To earn a living or just stay alive, you have to invest your time.

The manic slows time by making a lot of events happen.
The depressive slows time by making no events happen.
The healthier person doesn't think that much about time.
The do stuff, and time takes care of itself.

If you work in a mass market activity space, you sell blocks of 8 hours.
If you have power to control time on the job, you tend to be happy.
If you don't have power to control time on the job, you tend to be unhappy.
Having the power to control time tends to make people happy.

Some children grow up in a safe predictable family activity space.
Some children grow up in unsafe, unpredictable family activity space.
In either case, they innovate behavior to feel power and control of time.
Sometimes their innovation works for the rest of the lives.
Sometimes not so much.

If you work in a GoogleMart activity space, you sell little chunks of time.
You control when and how much time you are going to sell.
That leaves a lot more time to control for other things.
The downside is that there are alot more decisions to make about investing time.

Making decisions produces stress.
In an unpredictable world, the chances of doing the wrong thing is scary.
The more predictable the world, the less fear.
The less fear, the easier to do stuff with a minimum collateral damage.

So . . .
Has anyone ever done a study of manic depression focusing on their sense of time?
Has anyone ever done a study of manic depression focusing on their sense of power?
Has anyone ever done a study of manic depression focusing on their sense of fear?

Then . . .
To manage manic depression articulate their sense of long term time
To manage manic depression articulate their sense of real power.
To manage manic depression mitigate what is making them afraid.

Here's what Jimi Hendrix said about it:


The lyrics:
Manic depression is touching my soul
I know what I want but I just dont know
How to, go about gettin it
Feeling sweet feeling,
Drops from my fingers, fingers
Manic depression is catchin my soul

Woman so weary, the sweet cause in vain
You make love, you break love
Its all the same
When its, when its over, mama
Music, sweet music
I wish I could caress, caress, caress
Manic depression is a frustrating mess

Well, I think Ill go turn myself off,
And go on down
All the way down
Really aint no use in me hanging around
In your kinda scene

Music, sweet music
I wish I could caress, caress, caress
Manic depression is a frustrating mess

Here's another take 2008:


Notice the similarity to this one:

Information Overload, with no time to process
.

Googlezon in words

The advantage of words is that it's a faster way to transfer information. Rich media is fine for other stuff. But if you want to know "what's the story?" fast, words are much better. If you want to get the whole story, that requires mulling. Mulling takes time no matter what media you use. You can pitch the movie, or that breakthrough business idea, in an elevator. Making the movie or making a business is a different thing . . . dr druck

From wikipedia:
The plot consists of a series of real life events from 1989 to 2004, and going through a series of hypothetical events through 2014.

The first sentence of the running commentary echoes the opening words of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way."[1]

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web.

In 1994, Amazon.com is launched. It is a store that sells everything, personalized for its users, that can even offer suggestions.

In 1998, Google is unleashed by two Stanford University students, promising a faster, more effective way to search.

In 1999, Blogger is founded. Google comes out with Google News, a service unique in that it requires no human intervention.

In 2002, Friendster is released.

In 2003, Google buys Blogger.

In 2004, the rise of Gmail gives competition to Microsoft's Hotmail. Microsoft's Newsbotster comes as a response to Google News. Picasa and A9 are also released this year. In August, Google goes public, acquires Keyhole (now Google Earth), a company that maps the world, and begins digitizing and indexing world libraries. Reason Magazine sends its subscribers satellite photos of their homes, with information tailored to them inside.

From this point EPIC passes into the realm of fiction.

In 2005, Microsoft buys Friendster in response to Google's action. Apple Computer comes out with WifiPod, which allows users to "send and receive messages on the go". Then, Google unveils the Google Grid, a universal platform offering an unlimited amount of space and bandwidth that can be used to store anything. It allows users to manage their information two ways: store it privately or publish it to the entire grid.

In 2007, Microsoft Newsbotster, a social news network, ranks and sorts news. It allows everyone to comment on what they see.

In 2008, Google and Amazon merge to form Googlezon. Google supplies Google Grid, Amazon supplies their personalized recommendations. Googlezon is a system that automatically searches all content sources and splices together stories to cater to the interests of each individual user.

When explaining how Googlezon profiles its users, the identification card of a man named Winston Smith appears on screen. Smith is the main character in George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which a dystopian society is ruled by a media-distorting government.[2] The photograph on the identification card depicts Robin Sloan.

In 2010, the news wars rage between Microsoft and Googlezon. These "News Wars of 2010" are notable in that they involve no actual news organizations.

In 2011, the slumbering Fourth Estate awakens to make its first and final stand. The New York Times sues Googlezon, "claiming the fact-stripping robots are a violation of copyright law", but the Supreme Court rules in favor of Googlezon.

In 2014, Googlezon unleashes EPIC, the Evolving Personalized Information Construct, which pays users to contribute any information they know into a central grid, allowing the system to automatically create news tailored to individuals, entirely without journalists. The word "EPIC" is an amalgam of three fundamental physical and mathematical constants; e (Euler's number), pi (π) and c (the speed of light in a vacuum). These are depicted in the shadow of the EPIC logo.

EPIC stores and categorizes not only news, but the demographics, political beliefs, and consumption habits of every user. At its best, EPIC is "a summary of the world — deeper, broader and more nuanced than anything ever available before ... but at its worst, and for too many, EPIC is merely a collection of trivia, much of it untrue." EPIC is so popular that it triggers the downfall of the New York Times, which goes offline and becomes "a print newsletter for the elite and the elderly."

The narration ends with the statement: "Perhaps there was another way."

Sunday, December 5, 2004

If I Were a Printer . . . Part 2

If I were a Printer, I would raise my prices.
Actually I would raise my List prices and then discount as appropriate.
It's Google-Mart rules. "You pays your money and takes your choice."

Consider the airlines.
Before a plane leaves, the selling price is X.
Once the plane takes off there is no selling price. The value disappears.
The closer it gets to taking off, the lower the selling price.
If you can schedule a seat way ahead, the price is X-2A.
If you can bundle a lot of seats and buy them at the same time, the price is X-4A.

The rich traveler wants to fly first class. He doesn't really look at price.
The business traveler wants the trip now. He doesn't want the inconvenience of planning ahead. He pays X.
The tourist would rather invest his time and save money. He pays X- A. If he invests time searching the web, he pays X-2A.
The tour operator makes his money buying wholesale. He pays X-4A.

In every case, the airline wins.
That's why they have a computer that calculates how many seats to leave available for business travelers, tourists and tour operators.

Once Print is a commodity there is no room to raise prices.The good news is that it's finally possible to charge for the real values we deliver. Time to delivery. Project management.

Everybody wants time. They will happily trade money for time.
Everybody needs project management. It gives them more time to do the other 1000 things they have to do. They will trade money for time.

So . . .I would set list prices for a Y day delivery. First class.
Then list prices for Y+5 day delivery. Tourist class.
Then list prices for Y+? delivery. Stand by.
Then I would give discounts to people who are willing to trade time for money. Then I would give discounts to people who bundle work. Then I would give discounts to some new customers . . . maybe and only as appropriate.

Then I would use those discounts to build communities of clients.
As in "You qualify for the 15% discount, because ...blah. blah. blah"
Then I would go to my regular customers and tell them we were raising prices by 20% but they get a 20% discount for being good customers.
Then I would give customers Frequent Printing Points...that they could trade for cheap stuff that I could buy for peanuts. Or I would buy Frequent Flyer Points wholesale, and give them to my customers as a benefit of giving me work. Then I would encourage all my customers to use credit cards, then I would double the Miles they get from the credit card companies.

Meanwhile, I would get my plant manager to tell me exactly what press time is available and exactly when, for two months out.
He will push back and say " But I don't know what I have coming in."
I would say "When is this job going to hit the press."
He would say, " I don't know, because blah.blah.blah..."
I would say, "Find out."
He would say, "I can't"
I would say "hmmmmmm..."
Then I would find a new plant manager.

After I hired the new plant manager, I would say " What slots do we have available for the next two months?"
He would say "a,b,c ... blah,blah,blah."
Then I would tell my sales manager to sell a and b and c.
He would say "Huh?"
I would say "the price for a-tmw. is X-4A. And the price for b-next week is X-3A, and the price for c-next month is X-4A or whatever works." The deal is that if the buyer reserves and then screws up, they pay a cancellation fee.
Then I would say, "Make sure those time slots are filled."
Then I would comp the sales manager based on filled press time.

If his team fills press time according to the rules, he wins. If not, then not so much.
Too much open press time?
I would say "Hmmmmmmm"
Then I would ask "Why?"
Then I would hear "blah,blah,blah" from everyone in the shop.
Then I would go to everyone in the shop and ask "Why?"
I would say "Hmmmmmm."

You can fill in the rest.

I would stop wasting time on return on investment, ROI.
I would focus on return on time, ROT. Thanks Dr Joe.

If I couldn't build, educate or find a "plant manager" and a "sales manager" that could do the job, I would consider either selling to one of the big guys and let them worry about it or take my marbles and go home. I could find better ways to invest my time.

More about Selling, instead of giving away Project Management, at another time. That will probably be If I were a Printer Part 3 or 4.

More?
If I were a Printer Part 1