smays.com

Seth: "Toxic Employees"

Seth Godin on toxic employees: "Toxic employees are usually afraid, poorly managed and underappreciated. They can rarely be bullied into changing their behavior, often because they themselves are bullies. Managers can hire the non-toxic, re-assign the toxic and be really clear with themselves that they're willing to pay almost any price to keep toxic employees away from everyone else. And if toxic employees appears to be a pattern, my bet is that it's your fault, not the employees."

Been there and done that. I don't want to think about whether or not this was a pattern on my watch. Read the full post.

MSM ink for Destin Florida Podcast

Nice story in the Northwest Florida Daily News about The Destin Florida Podcast. The "voice" of the DFP --25-year-old Harley Van Hyning-- is a waiter at Pompano Joe's, a Destin native (I knew it!) and a recent graduate of the University of West Florida, where he got a degree in public relations and communications.

Harley and his buddy Ted Newkirk expect to eventually build an audience 80 percent out-of-towners and 20 percent locals with the twice-a-month podcast. Sounds like the right mix to me.

Clapton, Crow on Tulsa Time

Thanks to Ann for pointing us to this duet by Sheryl Crow and Eric Clapton at Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival last weekend.

Newspapers beat TV at local video

Lost Remote points us to the latest blog entry from Bill Adee, the associate managing editor for innovation at the Chicago Tribune who wants the paper to be “the main online source of video for Chicagoland users.” And to get there, he says the Tribune has 31 staff photographers with video cameras, and the multimedia team has video cameras.

Again from Lost Remote's Michael Gay: "Let’s be conservative and say that’s 40 video cameras shooting video around Chicago. After working in Chicago, I can tell you with certainty that there is no TV station with that many cameras out on the streets."

Why would any reporter (TV, print, radio) hit the street without a digital camera (and the knowledge to use it)?

Rediscovering songs of John Lennon

Instant Karma (The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur). And even more surprised at how many of the songs/versions I like.

R.E.M., Christina Aguilera, Corrine Bailey Rae, Flaming Lips, Black Eyed Peas, and others. Listening to these interpretations reminded me what a brilliant song writer John Lennon was.

This is the kind of purchase I would never have made before iTunes. I stopped buying CD's a looonnng time ago. For the most part, I had stopped listening to music. The iPod/iTunes has brought me --and a bazillion others-- back.

Shopping for a digital video camera

It's time to replace the Sony camcorder and I welcome suggestions and advice from one and all. Here are the features I think I want:

• Digital. Records to SD or SDHC cards* MPEG4 (H.264)
• Recording time: 30-40 min
• Accepts external mic
• Can mount on tripod
• Smaller the better
• Firewire? Why would I need this if I can just pull the file across to the Mac?

If you know of, or spot a camera with these features, holler at me. I'm open on price if it has all or most of these features.

"How's Your News?"

"How's Your News?" is a documentary film which features a team of five news reporters with mental and physical disabilities. We all met at a summer camp in Massachusetts. To make "How's Your News?" we drove across America in a hand-painted RV, interviewing the people we met along the way."

I haven't seen this film but listened to a segment of This American Life featuring interviews with the people who made it. Barb, let's put this in the Netflix queue.

Page Saver captures web pages as images

I capture screenshots of web pages many times every day. Print Screen... Photoshop... edit... paste...repeat. I can do it pretty fast. But the Page Saver Firefox extension is a much better way.

Save the visible portion of a web page or the entire page to an image in one click. Page Saver's got lots of configurable options, too, like the default filename for the image (with date variables for time-sensitive grabs), customizable keyboard shortcuts and a choice of PNG or JPEG file output format. [Lifehacker]

The Bourne Ultimatum

Just watch the extended trailer of The Bourne Ultimatum, the latest (and final?) installment in the series of spy thrillers starring Matt Damon. Goose bumps. Twice. If this flick is as good as the first two, it will make for one hell of a three-DVD set.

Those of us with EAG (Enhanced Anticipation Gene) are cursed and blessed. Cursed when we flip into Worry Mode... blessed when we have lots of stuff fun stuff just over the horizon. Like this movie, which opens August 3. And William Gibson's Spook Country, a few days later. And a new version of the Mac operating system in October (Will somebody please turn off the nerd alarm?)

Mom! Come quick! Kay's on TV!

Every four years, the national media spotlight burns hot and heavy on Iowa. Never more so than this year. And savvy network reporters frequently call on Radio Iowa News Director Kay Henderson for on-the-ground perspective and insight.

She was part of an 8 minute segment on MSNBC's Hardball Wednesday night. The rest of the show pretty much sucked. Lance Armstrong's non-answers to Chris Matthews questions made Lance sound like the politician he will someday be. But someone at Hardball had the good sense to bring Kay on, so we'll forgive them the rest.

Radio Iowa is a Learfield network and I've worked with her for the past 20 years.

iPhone Confessions: 30 Day Update

In a day or two it will have been 30 days since the iPhone went on sale (CNN reports sales have been disappointing). I popped off an email to Tom Piper, George Kopp and Dave Morris to see if they were still as pleased with their iPhones as they (Tom, George, Dave) were when they first got them. I haven't heard back from Dave yet, but Tom and George filed reports... after the jump.

Scott Adams: The Loser Decision

Another thought-provoking insight from Dilbert's dad:

"It’s an objective fact that life often presents us with choices where the comfortable decision leads nowhere and one that threatens your ego has all the potential in the world. You need a healthy ego to endure the abuse that comes with any sort of success. The trick is to think of your ego as your goofy best friend who lends moral support but doesn’t know shit."

Why is it so easy to look back and spot the "loser decisions" in one's career... but almost impossible to see them as (or before) you are making them?

Who's reading (and who's not)

The Harry Potter buzz reminded me of an earlier post (exactly one year ago today) on American reading habits. That post linked to a bunch of stats on reading habits at ParaPublishing.com, including:

• One-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
• 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
• 42% of college graduates never read another book.
• 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
• 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
• 57% of new books are not read to completion.
• Most readers do not get past page 18 in a book they have purchased.
• Customers 55 and older account for more than one-third of all books bought.

If you can point us to more recent data, leave a comment. I want to believe these stats are wrong but have no reason to doubt them.

Sony Handycam vs. Casio EX-S770

I've often wondered why my video doesn't look as good as other clips I watch on YouTube. I chalked it up to equipment but learned this week that I have not been properly encoding my video before uploading to Google Video or YouTube. I'm hoping that will improve my stuff.

But today I decided to shoot a few minutes (3.5) with my Sony Handycam (DCR-TRV740) for comparison with the little Casio I've been using. I really expected to see a noticeable difference and while the sound was certainly better, I can't say the video was that much improved.

It's quite possible I still don't have my video shit together in terms of encoding but I'll eventually get that figured out. And I guess I'm pleased the the little pocket Casio stacks up so well against the larger Sony camcorder. All of which brings me back to my original fondness for the Casio: it fits in your pocket so it's always with me.

But I'm going to make greater use of the Sony (with tripod and good mic). And if you know how to tweak video for YouTube, I'd love to talk.

Fox News: Ten Best Pet Health Blogs

Dr. Manny Alvarez writes/reports for FoxNews.com. I'll forgive this sin because he had the good judgement to include Dr. T. Everett Mobley's blog ("Your Pet's Best Friend") in his list of favorite pet-related blogs.

If you detect a note of pride it's because a) Everett is friend and Kennett boy and b) I helped him (a little bit) get started blogging. Everett has always been creative and the blog just provided a new outlet. He's a funny guy, a good writer and "your pet's best friend."

Spook Country by William Gibson

I've ordered the new Harry Potter book but I'm not wetting my pants in anticipation. That honor is reserved for Spook Country, the new novel by William Gibson. It comes out August 7th.

This could be a problem if Amazon gets the book to me before I leave for Gnomedex. I don't want to dilute my reading experience with an airplane/hotel read. Do I have the willpower to save the book for my return? We'll see.

Spook Country is Gibson's first novel since Pattern Recognition and you can find brief character descriptions on his website. While you're there, you might enjoy the video interview with the author.

Scott Adams on bullfighting

"I normally value the life of a human being higher than the life of an animal. But I think we’d all agree that the best animal is better than the worst human. Bulls usually mind their own business. All they want to do is eat, poop, and hump anything that moos. ... On the other hoof, a matador is a guy who didn’t have enough people skills to be promoted to serial killer. Honestly, I don’t see how anyone can root for the human in this situation.

I’m delighted when a bull puts a horn up a matador’s sphincter and trots around the arena wearing him like a rapper’s hat."

More on Bull Schadenfreude.

Why I'm posting less frequently

Perhaps I'm just looking for an excuse, but I really think it might be the little Google Reader "Share" box just to the right of this post. As I graze the endless RSS pastures from my Google Reader, one click allows me to share anything I find interesting. Previously, I'd add a line or two and post the link.

A couple of readers have reported they thought the little blue box was just some kind of headline feed. In a sense, it is. And I'm the editor. Why should you care what I think is interesting or noteworthy? I have no idea. But here you are.

We Bleed Maroon

This is a wonderful slideshow produced by Stephen James, a graduate research assistant (in the Turbomachinery Lab!) at Texas A&M University. I mention it because Learfield (the company I work for) has the marketing rights for Texas A&M. I've been urging our senior management to be open to this kind of fan-generated content. To encourage and feature it when possible.

Stephen asked that we mention the images in the video are courtesy of Texas A&M University, and the music is by Granger Smith (from the album "We Bleed Maroon")

20th anniversary of Radio Iowa

Radio Iowa is one of several state radio news networks owned by the company I work for. The first newscast went up "on the bird" on July 1, 1987. So the network is twenty years + 3 weeks old. I dug out the "start-up" file and took a little stroll down memory lane.

In the newsroom that first day: News Director Dennis Sutterer, O. Kay Henderson and Todd Kimm (Kay and Todd are still there, grinding out the news and sports). We leased two tiny rooms from an advertising agency in Des Moines. One for a studio...one for a very snug newsroom.

Planning for the network started in October of 1986. In February of 1987, we mailed our first packet of info to radio stations throughout the state:

"Radio Iowa will be Iowa's first full-service, satellite delivered state news network. Headquartered in Des Moines, Radio Iowa's three person news staff will cover the legislature and state government.

The enclosed packet includes brief descriptions of Radio Iowa programming; a schedule of feed times; affiliattion contract and clearance declaration; and a demo cassette."

There was more, but you get the idea.

In March of '87, Roger Gardner and I started in-station pitches. A few of the stops on that first swing: Bill Wells, KSO, Des Moines; Mark Mennick, WOC, Davenport; Kevin Kelly, WDBQ, Dubuque; Betty Baudler and Rich Fellingham, KASI, Ames; Larry Edwards, WMT, Cedar Rapids; Glenn Olsen, KQWC, Webster City; Mary Quass, KHAK, Cedar Rapids; John Carl, KCOB, Newton; Don Tool, KRNT, Des Moines.

I think we went on the air with 32 affiliates airing our reports.

I solemnly pledge to put a recorder in front of Kay and Todd for an oral history of the network (to date). Watch this space.

Gobler Mercantile Company

My make-over of "KBOA: The Early Years" is far from complete. But I had to share a snippet from one of the pages. A Tribute to a Country Store was written (and self-published) by Virginia B. Branch. It's probably the only history of this small country store that got big. Not Wal-Mart big but something of a phenomenon where I grew up. Here's the paragraph that caught my eye:

"About 1952 television had come to Gobler and each night, out back on the porch of the furniture department, one of these new inventions was displayed for benefit of the general public. It was here that most of Gobler's citizens saw their first TV. A good-sized crowd was on hand every night. There was only one channel at the time so no disagreements could arise as to program choices."

And now it's Tivo, iPods, AppleTV and all the rest. From one channel... to thousands.

Rude question

If you support the war in Iraq, why aren't you over there? That's the rude question Max Blumenthal asked some young Republicans [video]:

"...when I asked these College Repulicans why they were not participating in this historical cause, they immediately went into contortions. Asthma. Bad knees from playing catcher in high school. "Medical reasons." "It's not for me." These were some of the excuses College Republicans offered for why they could not fight them "over there."

Hard to talk the talk when walking the walk can get you killed.

State Fair video contest

David Brazeal (the Man Behind the Curtain at Learfield InterAction) points us to this entry in the Missouri State Fair Video Contest.

"Show us in 60 seconds or less how you are preparing for the State Fair by entering the “Preparing for the Big Show” video contest. Create your work-of-art, then post the video to YouTube with the tag “mostatefair”. The grand prize winner will have his or her video premiered before the Jason Aldean concert opening night of the Fair."

When pros see stuff like this or the summer intern video I posted earlier... I'm sure all they see poorly shot/edited amateur video. When I see these, I think, "Damn, that's clever!" Or funny. Or interesting. And I'm reminded that almost anyone can now play in this sandbox. I love that.

Summer Interns

Our summer interns are packing up and heading back to school. One of their final tasks was to prepare a presentation on what they learned working for Learfield. The interns working in our Dallas office created a Powerpoint presentation which was, I'm sure, very... nice.

The Jeff City crew asked my advice and I told them Powerpoint is for losers. I suggested they produce a video and loned them my camcorder. I forgot to give them a mic so the sound is not all that it might be but their creativity and humor comes through loud and clear. Ladies and gentlemen... Coleman, Corey and Tyler.

Cassette tapes and overnight DVD's

The news division of our company is in the process of launching a new radio network called Living the Country Life. It's part of a joint venture with Meredith Publishing, which created the magazine and TV show (of the same name).

We're producing a series of daily radio features and our affiliate relations guys will attempt to get the new programs on as many stations as possible. Toward that end, we've produced demos, so radio stations can hear what the programs sound like. I'm getting to the point, hang on.

One of the producers popped in this morning and asked how quickly I could create a web page where they could post the demos (MP3 files) for stations to download/listen?

A few years ago, I would have parked the files on an FTP server or cobbled together something in FrontPage. A few more years ago, and we would have been mailing out CD's (or cassette tapes!).

This morning it took about 15 minutes to pull together a nice little blog on Typepad. Our affiliate relations folks can now just email  a link to a prospective affiliate. Such a site could easily become a cornerstone of our affiliate clearance effort. Fast, inexpensive, and no programming skills necessary.

I found a similar application for one our clients.

Children's Trust Fund of Missouri has a 10 minute video on Shaken Baby Syndrome. You can order the DVD (for free, I believe) from their website, but what can you do with it then? Show it to your club or organization, I suppose. But why not make it easy for anyone with a web browser to watch the video.

So I put it up on Google Video and embedded the Flash player on their website and a world-wide audience is now just a click away.

This kind of stuff was damned hard or impossible, just a few years ago. And now, anyone can do this stuff. This is the real power of the web.

Gnomedex 2007

This year's Gnomedex is billed as "The Blogosphere's Conference." Speakers include: Guy Kawasaki, Cali Lewis, one of the JibJab guys, Justin Kan (Justin.tv), Jason Calcanis, and others. If you don't recognize these names, it's unlikely you'd enjoy the conference. But I look forward to it all year. This is my Indy 500/Super Bowl/World Series, minus the crowds (It's a small conference, limited to about 300 attendees.)

For the first four or five years of the conference, I took vacation and paid my own expenses. But the Enlightened Management of Learfield now sees the value of this conference, so it's work related and reimbursed.

Oooh, look! Goosebumps!

Happier Days

I came across the photo below while digging through some office files last week. It appears to have been taken at a Bush-Cheney rally in October of 2000. Not sure who took the photo or where but probably one of our reporters. Given all that has happened since... I find the image haunting.

Vacations not for everyone

I don't much care for what most people would call a "vacation." And --once upon a time-- felt a bit of guilt about it. Barb likes to travel so she and her sister frequently vacation together, so it works.

I discovered last week that I am not alone. The story (Yahoo! News) quoted a couple of people who share my lack of enthusiasm for The Vacation.

Nancy Kirk doesn't consider them worth the effort. So instead of taking vacations, Kirk, 60, who owns an antique quilt and fabric business in Omaha, Neb., works down time into her everyday life -- from taking an afternoon nap if she feels like it to occasionally tacking a day onto a business trip for sightseeing.

Jared Wadley, a senior public relations specialist at the University of Michigan news service in Ann Arbor, said he wasn't interested in vacations even as a child. He not a workaholic, he says, but instead paces himself so that leisure is part of his day-to-day life.

"You have to look at why people take vacations. They want to get away from the office, but I enjoy my work so I don't want to get away from it."

There you go. I have three weeks of paid vacation but struggle to take it all. I think I would much prefer stretching those 21 days out into long weekends. If you add in the naturally occurring three-day-weekends... almost every other week would be a short one. Sound good?

Hide your iPod in a gutted Zune case

Amusing gag site: "You made a smart choice in choosing an iPod. And now you can protect it from theft and still enjoy using it in public with the new Hide-a-Pod anti-theft case.

It’s really very simple. Just tell us what iPod model you want to protect and we provide a gutted and hinged Zune with our custom molded iPod casing adapter."

And they "only use brown Zunes for the maximum anti-theft protection." Ouch.

10th anniversary of blogging

WSJ Online: "We are approaching a decade since the first blogger -- regarded by many to be Jorn Barger -- began his business of hunting and gathering links to items that tickled his fancy, to which he appended some of his own commentary. On Dec. 23, 1997, on his site, Robot Wisdom, Mr. Barger wrote: "I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis," and the Oxford English Dictionary regards this as the primordial root of the word "weblog." [Thanks, Henry]

iPhone buyers have no regrets

Early iPhone owners are happy with their devices. In one of the first surveys of new users, 90% of 200 owners said they were "extremely" or "very" satisfied with their phone. And 85% said they are "extremely" or "very" likely to recommend the device to others. Market researcher Interpret of Santa Monica surveyed 1,000 cellphone users July 6-10. [USA TODAY]

If you --or someone you know-- is NOT happy with their iPhone... drop me a line. I'd love to talk with someone that's had a different experience that those I've encountered so far.

Back to land lines?

In 1981 our company began distributing our (news and ag) programs to radio stations via satellite. It was a big deal at the time because we were the first of the smaller, regional networks to "go satellite." Uplink hardware was damned expensive. Downlink hardware at the radio stations was pretty pricey, too. But much cheaper (in the long run) than all of those point-to-point land lines.

For many years, having a satellite distribution system was a competitive edge. You had to have some way of getting the programming to the radio stations (and their listeners). No FedEx in those days.

In a few weeks, football season will get underway and we'll be distributing play-by-play audio to affiliates of 35 collegiate sports radio networks around the country. Most of those via satellite. But for the first time, we'll use live web streaming to deliver audio to the affiliates of two of our networks (Maine and Montana State).

This is possible because of increased bandwidth; better audio encoding; and a growing acceptance of audio (and video) online. If all goes according to plan, listeners won't even be aware of how the audio gets from the stadium to their radios (or computers).

We could sort of see this coming but it was/is difficult to imagine a time when satellite distribution of audio and video could be replaced by the Internet (or even some Super Internet of the future). But it's getting easier.

So what's it all mean? It seems unlikely your "competitive edge" will be distribution. That's probably been true for some time now. Having the good content will always be important. But if you are not the only source for the content... or the best source for the content... (to be continued).

Children's Trust Fund relaunches website on Typepad

Children's Trust Fund of Missouri is one of our clients and, for the last few months, I've been helping them with a make-over of their website.

Their previous site was classic Web 1.0. It was designed by a company in St. Louis and any changes or updates had to be emailed to the developer who would, in time, make the change. Most of the "current" content was PDF news releases that weren't very "new. The site was hosted on state servers. The CTF guys just were not happy with their site.

I persuaded them to try Typepad and incorporate a blog as their primary content element.

They took the site public at the first of the month and, although still tweaking some of the content, it looks and works great. And the best part... they are now in control. Paula and Alicia know how to add pages, maintain links, and manage the site top to bottom.

Kirk, the executive director, is finding his blogging feet and posting regularly. From his fingers...to the world. Boom.

We've shown them how to use Flickr, Google Calendar and YouTube. And all of this for a fraction of what they paid for their previous site, which simply wasn't meeting their needs.

Helping folks like Kirk, Paula and Alicia tell their story is extremely gratifying. If Web 1.0 was selling fish, Web 2.0 is using great new tools for helping people learn how to fish.

iPhone Confessions: George Kopp (Week One)

George is a serious Techno Boy. He has a geek job with the state for his day job (all Windows) and moonlights on Macs (and some PC's) for love (and a little money).

George knew he'd eventually own an iPhone but thought he could wait awhile. He made the mistake of stopping by the AT&T store (Day Two) for a look-see and wound up springing for the 8 gig model.

George's love-of-all-things-Mac is tempered by his no-bullshit-geek-o-rocity. By that I mean, he expects much from his techno-toys. But once he got the iPhone in his sweaty little hands, it was prom night. I got caught up in that as we talked and had to edit our chat more than I intended. Sorry, George.

Listen/Download: 5:30 MP3

Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and Inactives

A new Forrester report divides the U.S. online population into six groups according to their social participation on the Web.

More than one-fifth of those classified as Creators—those who blog, publish Web sites, upload videos, or participate in other content creation activities—own Macs, while only 12 percent own Dell computers.

The majority of Spectators (they read blogs, watch videos, and listen to podcasts) own Macs while the majority of Inactives (they don’t participate online) own Dells.

Here are the complete results of the Forrester report [via Macworld, via Henry]

I confess to some pride in falling into the "Creator" group.

Scott Adams on Hypnosis

A long, long time ago... a trained therapist used hypnosis to help me cope with some stress issues. Turns out, I'm a very good subject for hypnosis. I did some reading and learned a little about the subject. But you can skip all of that and just read this remarkable post by Scott Adams. Everything you need to know.

"...the best super power that hypnosis gives you is a different world view. Nothing in this life makes sense if you assume people are rational most of the time. Hypnosis teaches you how easily people’s memories and impressions can be altered. And it’s not just the gullible people, it’s all of us. It’s humbling. And it’s the most useful skill I’ve ever learned."

iPhone Confessions: Dave Morris (Week One)

Dave Morris is the voice of great radio stations and television stations, film studios, syndicated shows and more. World wide. I know this because it says so on his website. He's also a blogger (a good one). And a gadget junkie.

He was one of those crazies standing in line the day the iPhone went on sale, so we called him up for a report on Week One.

Unlike some of the others we've chatted with for this series, Dave is not a Mac guy. Windows all the way. But he's only slightly less "gushy" about Apple's latest creation.

Download/Listen: 12 min MP3

DVD: Not Just the Best of Larry Sanders

The Larry Sanders Show was a satirical television sitcom that aired from 1992 to 1998 on HBO, starring stand-up comedian Garry Shandling as vain, neurotic talk show host Larry Sanders. The series was partly inspired by Shandling's stint as a guest host on The Tonight Show.

The Larry Sanders Show is easily one of the best five TV shows of all time (I'm sorry, this is not open for debate). And now I own a DVD with 23 of "the best episodes" of the series as well as eight hours of new stuff. I'm going to try to hoard this like the last baggie of ganja but suspect I'll burn through these in a week or so. This is just one more reason why it's better to be me than you.

Radio's "discarded audience"

WashingtonPost.com: "First the standards vanished from radio, as stations that played lots of Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald went dark. Then over the past couple of years, the oldies format collapsed, and suddenly the sounds of Motown, Elvis and the Beach Boys were hard to find on the radio. Now, even classic rock stations are starting to feel the pressure, as commercial radio strains to find ways to connect with younger listeners who find most of their music online."

AARP is happy to address the frustration that there's "not enough choices on the radio." The organization is finding that its 39 million members are eager for programming they can tap into through the latest technologies. AARP is podcasting, Web streaming and even offering a branded version of Pandora.com. AARP's next wave of audio programming will be "user-created media a la YouTube." [Thanks, Kay]

On speaking differently

"Men who believe they are accomplishing something by speaking, speak in a different way from men who believe speaking is a waste of time." pg.372 of Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

I love this book and and discover new delights every time through it.

NYT: The Road Home

From New York Times editorial: "It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans’ demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened -- the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war.

This country faces a choice. We can go on allowing Mr. Bush to drag out this war without end or purpose. Or we can insist that American troops are withdrawn as quickly and safely as we can manage -- with as much effort as possible to stop the chaos from spreading."

Scott Adams: Rounders vs. Accumulators

"Most people have at least a few big problems in their life. But the vast majority of life’s problems are the little kind. There are two ways to deal with the little problems.

ROUNDERS: This group rounds things off. A problem that’s a two on a scale of one to ten gets rounded to zero. If a rounder has five problems that are all about a two on a scale of one to ten, he’ll tell you he has no problems.

ACCUMULATORS: Accumulators add up all the little problems until they equal one big problem. If an accumulator has five problems that are each a two on a scale of one to ten, that feels like having one problem that’s a ten.

At the end of this thought-provoking post, Mr. Adams gives his readers an assignment: Describe your own job in one sentence. For example: "I help people hate each other." (Divorce Lawyer)

That "in one sentence" part makes it very difficult. The best I could come up with is: "I drive one of the Sunday School buses for the Church of the Web."

Browsing the web on the iPhone

iPhone Warning: If you're tired of hearing about you know what, I understand (I feel the same way about Paris Hilton). So, feel free to take a little break from smays.com until this subsides.

I spend most of my waking hours looking at (or working on) web pages. Usually on a nice  big monitor or the MacBook.

And when mobile devices (cell phones and PDA's) became "web-enabled," I took a look to see how our sites displayed. The Treo, the Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Palm... they all claimed to show you web pages. Sort of. Not a good experience.

Today I checked out a couple of sites on George's iPhone.

When we redesigned Missourinet.com last year, we made an effort to make the design "mobile friendly." And while we weren't thinking iPhone at the time, I'm really pleased with how all of our sites look in the Safari browser. Like the Apple TV ads say, it's the real Internet. I won't even try to describe the navigation experience. Here are larger images of Missourinet.com and smays.com.

A new media model?

"The business of news is changing in ways that reduce traditional
newsroom career opportunities, while opening more options for
journalists who are willing and able to do more than simply report for
someone else's venue. I suspect we'll start seeing some major news
brands morph into alliances between scaled-back in-house newsrooms and
independent, online-focused news and content operations - including
more hyper-local and niche news." [E-Media Tidbits/Poynteronline]

iPhone Confessions: Tom Piper (Week One)

If the hype surrounding the iPhone hasn't subsided yet, it will soon. Then what? Once the new has worn off this Next New Thing, will users still love 'em, or will they --like your mom's cooking-- be taken for granted. Or, worse yet, will the shortcomings (so well chronicled) become annoying and tiresome?

Those are some of the questions I hope to answer with a series of  interviews I'm calling The iPhone Confessions. Brief visits with a few friends who took the iPhone plunge. Are they still gushing at the end of Week One? Or grumbling?

We'll start with a visit with Tom Piper, a looonnnggg time Mac enthusiast and Early Adopter (LTMEEA). He was there when the iPhone was announced and in line to buy one of the first batch. The interview runs about 12 minutes.

Download/Listen: 12 min MP3

Ten Principles for Washington Post Journalism on the Web

Lost Remote points us to this leaked memo from the Washington Post and suggests we replace "The Washington Post" with the name of our news organization... then ask if the principal holds true.

Traditional radio to pay for play?

I knew the music industry was trying to a) gouge serious dollars out of Internet radio stations or b) shut them down... but according to this article at BusinessWeek.com, the music industry is lobbying Congress to get so-called terrestrial radio to pay royalties just like its Web and satellite siblings.

If this gets legs, it could be a big deal. Can't believe the NAB will allow this.

Captive audience

iPhone: The Music Video

This little ditty --by NYT tech writer David Pogue (and friends)-- was posted sometime earlier today and (as I type this) has been viewed 3,772 times. I found it on the digg home page so we can assume it will be seen many more times.

I have to wonder if anyone has felt moved to this kind of hijinx by any previous cell phone? Maybe. I just missed it.

The Dip: Knowing when to quit, and when to stick

"Every new project (or job, or hobby, or company) starts out exciting and fun. Then it gets harder and less fun, until it hits a low point-really hard, and not much fun at all. And then you find yourself asking if the goal is even worth the hassle. Maybe you're in a Dip -- a temporary setback that will get better if you keep pushing. But maybe it's really a Cul-de-Sac, which will never get better, no matter how hard you try.

What really sets superstars apart from everyone else is the ability to escape dead ends quickly, while staying focused and motivated when it really counts.

Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt -- until they commit to beating the right Dip for the right reasons.

Losers, on the other hand, fall into two basic traps. Either they fail to stick out the Dip-they get to the moment of truth and then give up -- or they never even find the right Dip to conquer." [Squidoo]

I don't blame Mr. Godin for wanting to make a buck, but this little "book" (about 70 tiny pages) should have been an eBook. Which I probably would not have bought, so... there you go.

But it brought back some memories.

It only took me about 3 months (in 1970) to decide I did not want to be a lawyer. I quit and I quit early. I then spent about a year as a Postal Inspector before calling it quits. I remember my boss urging me to stick it out.

I'm a Seth fan and found The Dip worth the hour it took to read. A few quotes after the jump.