That really, really looks like a virus infiltration attempt. Which is amazing, because although I’ve seen many of those, they always end in a .exe or some such Windows extension. This is the first I’ve seen targeted for Mac.
A quick google reveals that Flip4Mac, which is an actual legit Mac application for viewing Windows Media files, has a vulnerability … but nothing that suggests that there is a virus out there masquerading as Flip4Mac, or Flip4Mac components.
Sounds new. Anyone else seen it yet?
[tags] virus, mac, flip4mac, security, apple, windows, john koetsier [/tags]
Was just checking out Roger van Oech’s site creativethink via a Scoble story and saw this great Kurt Vonnegut quote:
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. . . . He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
Ouch, that hurts! I’ve had that experience myself a few times.
What about you?
[tags] kurt vonnegut, scoble, roger van oech, ignorance, john koetsier [/tags]
I get Perry Marshall’s AdWords/marketing email newsletters. Today’s had a section on entrepreneurs versus wanna-bes that I thought was really, really good:
Wanna-be’s obsess about ideas. Entrepreneurs obsess about implementation.
Wanna-be’s want more web traffic. Enrepreneurs focus on sales conversion.
Wanna-be’s focus on positive thinking. Entrepreneurs plan for multiple contingencies.
Wanna-be’s want to get on TV and get “famous.” Entrepreneurs build their list.
Wanna-be’s seek a perfect plan. Entrepreneurs execute and adjust the plan later.
Wanna-be’s wait for their lucky break. Entrepreneurs engineer four, five, six plans and execute them in tandem, wagering that at least one plan will get traction.
Wanna-be’s fear looking stupid in front of their friends. Entrepreneurs willingly risk making fools of themselves, knowing that long-term success is a good trade for short-term loss of dignity.
Wanna-be’s shield their precious ideas from harsh reality, postponing the verdict of success or failure until ’someday.’ Entrepreneurs expose their ideas to cold reality as soon as reasonably possible.
Wanna-be’s put off practicing basketball until they’ve got Air Jordans. Entrepreneurs practice barefoot behind the garage.
Wanna-be’s believe what they’re told, believe their own assumptions. Entrepreneurs do original research and determine what paths have been already trod.
Wanna-be’s believe they can do anything. Entrepreneurs do what they’re gifted for and delegate the rest.
Wanna-be’s think about the world in terms of COULD and SHOULD. Entrepreneurs think in terms of IS and CAN BE.
To be honest, it’s a great checklist to check up on my own behavior. Am I acting like an entrepreneur or a wanna-be?
[tags] perrry marshall, adwords, entrepreneur, john koetsier [/tags]
Last week I finished up almost a month’s intensive investigation, analysis, synthesis, and creation, and planning.
We have a major product family that needed a huge refresh. The product manager for that line was transferred elsewhere in the company … and I got the file 3 weeks before a executive meeting in which I had to present the plan. Tens of millions of dollars are at stake.
So I had to plow through a ton of data, figure out what was happening with the line, understand it, decide where to take it, plan the new approach, formulate my presentation and style, and sell it to the top stakeholders.
That was an intensely interesting experience, and made me think about the relationship between data, complexity, and the quality of decisions. In honor of Kathy Sierra and her wonderful charts, I fumbled together this graph in 37 seconds or less:
So here’s my back-of-the-envelope theory:
With little data, decisions are a crapshoot. Who knows: might be right, might be wrong.
With lots of data but inadequate synthesis, decisions are even worse. Still might be right and might be wrong, but even more likely than the little data scenario to be fuzzy, unfocused, and confusing.
With even more data but extremely rigorous synthesis (lots of interesting but not ultimately relevant datapoints dying on the cutting room floor) you have the chance – repeat, the chance – to make good decisions that can actually be implemented in a clear, direct, and powerful way.
I’m sure there’s lots of holes in this bathtub analysis: poke away!
OK, my blog is my memory, which means that you, dear reader, get treated to gems like this:
[First Rule of Marketing:] If you want to be interesting, don’t talk about yourself. Amen.
That’s from Hugh at GapingVoid, and when I re-read it today, I wanted to remember it. So I posted it.
Very simple rule, and very simple reason: who likes to be with the person at the party who’s alrways replaying personal movies: did this, did that, went here, went there, my kid this, my kid that, blah blah blah?
Yesterday I bought a new camcorder – the Sony DCR-SR82 with a 60 GB hard drive. Today I shot some video, and tonight I tried to hook it up to my Mac and play in iMovie HD.
No such luck.
Sony wants you to use their proprietary software … which is Windows only
Sony provides a sort of a dock for this camera, which you are then supposed to connect to your computer – there’s no real USB output on this camera
iMovie HD doesn’t recognize that a camcorder is attached, and won’t import any video from it
The Mac finder can see the camera via disk mode, and I can see my movie clips in QuickTime format … but I can’t open them. They’re “muxed,” meaning that the audio and video are mixed together and QuickTime can’t open them
Well, actually QuickTime can open them … if I spring for a $20 plug-in to QuickTime. Hrm … do I look stupid? Shouldn’t QuickTime just come with this needed component in the first time? Isn’t this the zen of Mac we’re talking about here … stuff just works?
This is just wrong. OK, there’s only one course of action:
Return crappy camcorder
Buy new camcorder with better outputs and Mac compatibility
Write nasty blog post about this hassle (check!)
To be completely frank, being on a Mac should mean that I never have to think of or even hear something so esoteric as “muxed video.” That’s what Apple engineers are paid for.
To be completely george, Sony is smoking something powerful if they think I’m going to change my computer to work with their camera. Not bloody likely.
They just lost a customer.
[tags] apple, mac os x, mac, sony, DCR-SR82, incompatible, muxed, iMovie, john koetsier [/tags]
Ever felt like the car salesman was taking you for a test-drive before you even got to touch the car?
I need a new car fairly quickly, and a Mini Cooper S is at the top of my list. Unfortunately, yesterday I had the worst car-shopping experience of my life at Affinity Auto in Vancouver.
[ update Jan 10 2008 ]
See comments at the bottom of this page – there have since been some changes at Affinity which bode well for customer service. BTW, here’s the Mini I did buy …
[ back to regularly-scheduled programming ]
Affinity Auto is obviously a nich car lot … not a dealership, but focusing pretty intently on higher-end vehicles. There were a few BMWs, some Audis, 3-4 Porsches, and a couple of other higher-end vehicles on the lot. And, of course, the Mini – an ‘04 S model with 25K klicks, leather, and a sunroof.
So obviously I was not looking at the higher-end merchandise, and boy was I made aware of that fact. (Which is interesting, considering that I can afford any vehicle on their lot – if I choose to spend that much on a vehicle. I don’t, of course!) It’s amazing what impression you can give with selective attention, delays before answering questions, and so on …
Then the salesman, Cornelis Bobeldijk, wanted to start negotiating price with me before I actually took the car for a test drive! Quite clearly he was wondering if I was his kind of customer.
Eventually I managed to satisfy him – I had driven half an hour to check out this vehicle, and it’s the closest one to what I want available right now in the Vancouver area, so I really wanted to check out the car.
The irony of the matter is that by the time I had finished the test drive I was in no mood at all to do business with this salesperson and this car lot … so that even though the car is just about exactly what I want, I don’t think I’ll even make an offer.
Life is too short to spend with people like that … and there are too many other businesses out there that are courteous and enjoyable to work with to reward one like this for nasty behavior.
[tags] affinity auto, mini cooper s, john koetsier, cornelis bobeldijk, car, shopping, customer service [/tags]
If every page starts to look like this, we’re in big, big trouble.
All those links are fake links – ad links … what I’m going to call adlinks. This particular bit on nonsense is featured on /Film’s Indiana Jones story.
They don’t actually go anywhere that you might think they do, they’re only ads, and they’re either selling something at best barely related to what you’re reading about, or they’re just a way to benefit from adwords arbitrage (insert whatever pay-per-click program you wish, even Microsoft’s).
Plus, they’re too dense, meaning that the value of each individual link is less. And finally, since they bear no relationship to the story/post, they actually inhibit communication.
When you mouse over them, they look like this.
Links are the roads and the currency of the web. When they don’t do what they’re supposed to do, we’re putting potholes in our roads. We’re inflating the currency.
And we’re pissing in our own well.
[tags] adlinks, ads, links, advertising, online, john koetsier [/tags]
I love fortuitous mispellings. Someone at Trendhunter, a social trend-following site, posted the following:
the future solider will be equipped with “intelligent amour, which remains light and flexible until it senses an approaching bullet, then tenses to become bulletproof.”
I like that – intelligent amour. This is ironic on so many levels.
[tags] funny, soldier, armor, amour, mispelling, john koetsier [/tags]
Just because it’s online doesn’t mean it’s new media. I’m declaring war on all old-school media that just happens to be online. It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
What am I talking about? Articles like this one on Apple and music by Joshua Chaffin of the Financial Times. Here’s the paragraph that has me frosted:
The record industry, in particular, has long been frustrated that Apple has reaped most of the profits of the burgeoning online music market through sales of its iPod player. By contrast, they have earned only modest royalties from digital music sales because most of the songs on iPods and other devices result from illegal download.
The problem with the above paragraph is obvious to anyone with half a brain and a reasonable background in technology. Chaffin has uncritically accepted a music industry lie and printed it as fact. He’s participating in propaganda. He’s a lousy, lousy journalist.
Worse, he’s calling me a thief … along with tens of millions of other iPod owners. That burns me up, since I’m very careful to only put music on my iPod that I’ve obtained legally. Some of it is from the iTunes Music Store, most of it is from my CD collection. So in effect, Chaffin is slandering me.
But that’s not why I’m declaring an old-skewl media boycott.
Every piece of writing has things others will disagree with. That’s OK. But online, in new media, it’s now a reasonable expectation that readers can comment on a story. Not on the Financial Times site.
I’m declaring the boycott because Chaffin and the Financial Post don’t allow comments. In other words, I can’t post a comment disputing his facts and assertions. In the new media web 2.0 online world, this is simply unacceptable. It’s outrageous and we need to start recognizing that fact.
Having comments ability ought to be a minimum standard requirement on any website in 2007.
Frankly, this would be a major positive step for FP and writers like Chaffin – purely from their perspective. Why? They’d get a lot smarter, a lot quicker. None of us is as smart as all of us … and comments, properly implemented, can unleash some of that collective intelligence. Errors get pointed out and fixed quickly – which really is in the media organization’s best long-term interests.
So: no more old-skewl media.
And any site that doesn’t blur the traditional publisher/audience role is old-skewl.
Goodbye and good riddance.
[tags] media, ugc, ugm, audience, publisher, web2.0, comments, discussion, financial post, joshua chaffin, apple, music, user-generated content, john koetsier [/tags]
I need a few gifts for co-workers who are really doing an amazing job. I was thinking flowers and a box of fine chocolates. Why do I have to go to two different stores to do that?
Someone should sell both. I think they’d make a killing.
[tags] flowers, chocolate, gift, marketing, business, idea, john koetsier [/tags]
This is marketing from people who have read the Cluetrain. This is marketing from people who give a damn. This is marketing from people who are having fun.
If all advertising was this good you wouldn’t need to skip commercials.
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
I'm a software exec who cares about UX and UI, scours web & social media, lives in Canada, plays hockey, uses a Mac (mostly). Oh, and I blog and speak at conferences.
Ever felt like the car salesman was taking you for a test-drive before you even got to touch the car?
If every page starts to look like this, we’re in big, big trouble.
When you mouse over them, they look like this.
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
