“More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk.” – Bruce Schneier author of Beyond Fear. Seth Godin’s recent Shark Attack! post reminded me of the Bruce Schneier quote above. Schneier’s ITConversation’s interview is a fantastic discussion on risk and decision making. His …
Monthly Archives: June 2005
RSS Feeds to Replace CDs
To this point, musicians need to press bits of plastic (records, CDs) each time they want to share music with their fans. This means, enough music has to be ready to make pressing bits of plastic worth the cost. These bits of plastic are then shipped at an additional cost to stores where hopefully the …
The Difference Between Consumers and Customers
“if any other CEOs of companies who make products I use have a problem with me having a blog, let me know, and I’ll switch to your competitor right away.” – Dave Winer
Saint Paul the Auto Repairman
Record highs today in Minnesota when I pulled over for an en route police car complete with lights and sirens. As I stopped, the tire jumped the curb. I didn’t think anything of it until I couldn’t move after the squad car passed me. Now, I’m stranded yards from one of the busiest intersections in …
CPB – Subsidizing American Culture or Unnecessary Intermediary
Should the CPB continue to receive tax payer dollars? On one hand, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds some of the most well known American culture icons – Sesame Street, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Nightline, among them. Programs and lessons that shaped my childhood and the childhoods of everyone I know. On the other …
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Anonymous Responses Are Useless
One of my current projects has a major survey component. The survey ends with: “If you’d be open to follow up questions, enter your email address below.” There’s about a 60 / 40 split on responses with emails and those without. The responses without email addresses have skipped questions, irrelevant answers, and are generally unusable. …
Customers are Cheaper than Ad Agencies
When people are sharing more and more with each other and strangers, when audiences are splintering, when the relationship between a company and it’s customers is far more measurable, spending millions of dollars on “brand awareness” would seem hilarious – if it wasn’t sad. In other words: “You don’t want the kind of high-production stories …
First Crack 48. Pontooning on the Wisconsin River
Jen and I go pontooning on the Wisconsin River and discuss river etiquette, a floating bar, and do a little fishing. Listen to Pontooning on the Wisconsin River [17 min]
Solving PowerBook Trackpad Dead Zones
For about a week, the half inch on the far left and far right of my Powerbook’s trackpad were completely dead. Basically, it turned my 17″ Powerbook trackpad down to a 12″ Powerbook trackpad. These dead zones caused extremely flakey and erratic cursor behavior not to mention my mental image of the trackpad’s size was …
How can Podcasting Help an Art Museum?
One of the exciting podcasting-related conversations I mentioned in an earlier post was with Brent Gustafson over at the Walker Art Center. We grabbed a coffee at the newly renovated Loring Park Dunn Bros and discussed some podcast-related services the Walker Art Center could offer. As expected, some interesting projects came out of our time …