Winter’s Bone

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I heard about this movie Saturday morning at the Coffee Zone and –as luck would have it– it was showing at the Rag Tag Cinema in Columbia. Be surprised if this makes it to the Cineplex.

Seventeen-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) sets out to track down her father, who put their house up for his bail bond and then disappeared. If she fails, Ree and her family will be turned out into the Ozark woods. Challenging her outlaw kin’s code of silence and risking her life, Ree hacks through the lies, evasions and threats offered up by her relatives and begins to piece together the truth.

This synopsis doesn’t begin to capture the subtle layers of this movie. And I don’t have the skill to describe them. The bad guys in this movie make the red necks in Deliverance look charming. They’d deep-fry Tony Soprano’s crew and eat ’em.

Winter’s Bone is based on the novel by Daniel Woodrell and took Best Picture and Best Screenplay at the Sundance Film Festival. Filmed in Missouri but I’m not sure where.

Will iPads replace laptops?

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Dylan and Miles dropped in at the Coffee Zone this morning. They’re high school sophomores in Savannah, Missouri. Dylan brought his new iPad which he purchased with money from his summer job (scanning medical records).

He has a desktop computer (and a Blackberry) but no laptop. I found it interesting that he would go for the iPad instead of a laptop. But not surprising. I think we’ll see this happening more and more. For all the reasons we’ve mentioned here. Price and cool factor topping the list.

Dylan says he plans to take it to class this fall. Would like to know how that works out.

Lots of colleges are exploring ways to bring the iPad into the classroom.

What are they tweeting about your company?

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Co-worker Jeff shares the following story from the road:

On Monday I was flying from St Louis to Milwaukee. My flight was delayed by an hour, which obviously I was frustrated. When I landed in Milwaukee, I went to the Enterprise counter to get my rental car. There was only one person working and 4-5 people waiting in line. When it was my turn, I gave her my info and then was told to sit and that somebody would come and get me in about 20 minutes. I told her that I was running late and that I was actually supposed to pick my car up earlier. She said she was hoping that the 20 minutes was an overestimate. I was steamed. But really I was steamed about the whole travel experience. So I tweeted that I had to wait 20 minutes for my car at Enterprise and why would only one person be working on a Monday, which I assume would be a busy business travel day.

Their person did come and get me within 20 minutes like the counter person had told me. I checked Twitter before I left the rental car garage and I had a mention from Enterprise Cares telling me sorry and asking me to follow her so she could direct message me. She also gave me her name (Elizabeth). I was very impressed by that customer service. So I followed her and immediately I had a direct message from her asking for my contract number and pick up location. I tweeted that I was very impressed with that service and that someone from the company actually acknowledged me and my comments. I sent her my info and explained that my frustration had been compounded by the fact that my flight was delayed. Not sure what will happen but just getting a sorry was good enough for me. By contrast, I tweeted about my AirTran flight being delayed on the way to Milwaukee and on the return flight to St Louis and have heard nothing.

Elizabeth transformed a frustrated customer into a happy customer. She put a human face on a corporation. And Jeff now knows someone at Enterprise he can call (tweet) on if he needs something. Companies large and small are figuring this out. How about yours?

Getting ready for new puppy (Hattie)

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Barb and her brothers and sisters are converging on the perfect white (so far) sand beaches of Destin, Florida for a week of beer, BBQ and bon homme.

Lucy (the Golden Retriever) and I are stock piling old newspapers and cleaning out the kennel in preparation for the newest member of our family. The photo above might or might not be her. Barb will select from the two females in the litter of five when she picks up the pup on her way back from Destin. We haven’t picked a name yet but the list is getting very short.

I mention this, in part, so you can brace yourself for what is sure to be a steady stream of puppy porn.

If you can’t poke me, I don’t have to ignore you

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Mary Elizabeth Williams (Slate.com) has done better with Facebook than I but she’s much better at explaining why she’s ignoring your friend requests:

“When my friend list began to swell to unmanageable proportions, I found it increasingly difficult to weed out the dialogue with people I really liked from the random news from people I had nothing in common with. I relearned that some of them were really obnoxious. I was getting poked and superpoked and invited into mafia wars and invited to become a fan of people and things I was no fan of, all the damn time. As they say on Facebook, I unliked it. I unliked it a lot.”

“In the months since my self-imposed embargo, I’ve noticed how rarely new requests come with so much as two lines of introduction. Socializing is, for many, now a one-click affair — as easy as clicking Add or Accept. When someone does take the time to write a note, whether it’s a pal from the old neighborhood or a random reader, I write back. But I don’t want to collect names on a list like they’re seashells on the beach. So if we should meet at a party and hit it off, let’s have coffee or see a movie sometime. Let’s be friends in real life. And who knows? Maybe if it goes really well, someday, we can even be friends on Facebook.”

This is a thoughtful piece by someone who still likes many of the aspects of being on Facebook.

Steve Jobs’ “High Ground Maneuver”

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A couple of observations on the iPhone antenna story:

  1. Of the dozen or so people I know who have the new phone, not one has had a problem.
  2. Most of the people who are pissing and moaning about this, don’t have an iPhone.

But Steve Jobs had to respond and he did so with what Scott Adams (SGITR*) calls the High Ground Maneuver:

“Apple’s response to the iPhone 4 problem didn’t follow the public relations playbook because Jobs decided to rewrite the playbook. (I pause now to insert the necessary phrase Magnificent Bastard.) If you want to know what genius looks like, study Jobs’ words: “We’re not perfect. Phones are not perfect. We all know that. But we want to make our users happy.”

Jobs changed the entire argument with nineteen words. He was brief. He spoke indisputable truth. And later in his press conference, he offered clear fixes.

Did it work? Check out the media response. There’s lots of talk about whether other smartphones are perfect or not. There’s lots of talk about whether Jobs’ response was the right one. But the central question that was in everyone’s head before the press conference – “Is the iPhone 4 a dud” – has, well, evaporated.”

Mr. Adams predicts Jobs’ response will become the public relations standard for consumer products. Let’s revisit this in 90 days.

*Smartest Guy in the Room

UPDATE: Seems I do know at least one person with the new phone who is having problems. I either forgot or repressed that. See Phil’s comment below.

Tech improves ER care

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It’s the middle of the night and you’re just north of East Jesus, headed to the beach so the kids can play in an oil slick before they’re all gone, and gandma chokes on prune. How do you find the nearest emergency room? According to Telemedicine News, there’s an app for that:

Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Emergency Medicine Network have launched FindER™, a free iPhone application to help users locate the closest emergency room, provide directions, along with additional information all with a touch of the screen.

FindER uses the iPhone’s GPS to quickly direct patients to emergency rooms anywhere in the U.S. FindER is also designed for quick phone calls to both the care center and if necessary used to contact 911 emergency services. Once the symptoms are determined, information is available on specific emergency rooms that can treat the symptoms and the wait times for ERs.

EliteCare 24 hour Emergency Center in Texas has partnered with Healthagen® to promote their emergency center through the iTriage® applications. If help in an emergency is needed, the consumer can download the iPhone or android application or go to www.iTriageHealth.com using any capable smart phone or computer to evaluate symptoms. At that point, iTriage will pinpoint the locations and provide turn-by-turn directions to the closest type of facility needed anywhere in the country.

Helping patients receive live ER wait times via text messages in the middle of an emergency is a new way to reach consumers. To do this, ERTexting in Miami manages a new free 4ER411 system. This new service available in hospitals all over the U.S. enables patients to text their zip code to 4ER411 and then receive their local participating hospital ER wait times.

To help deliver the patient’s medical information directly to a first responder or emergency room physician, Emerging Healthcare Solutions Inc. has a smartphone application under development called “e-911”. The “e-911” App automatically delivers the user’s medical information to first responders or to doctors when 911 is dialed from an iPhone. The “e-911” will first be made available for Apple’s iPhone and after assuring product quality, the e-911 will then be offered through Google’s Android and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry

“The Internet Weakens Authority”

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There are a handful of people I regularly read in an effort to understand what’s happening in the world: Scott Adams, Seth Godin, Clay Shirky, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson and Terry Heaton (I’ve left some out).

In this essay, Mr. Heaton explores what he calls the “second Gutenberg moment” we are experiencing:

“It isn’t technology that’s changing culture as much as it is the ability of people to act on long-held dissatisfaction. People, therefore, are the issue, empowered, connected and, yes, angry people. Nobody’s “in charge” of the revolution underway, but more and more people are realizing that if we’re going to fix what’s wrong, we’re going to have to do it ourselves.”

We’re sure to see some of that in November. And then there’s the question of who controls the knowledge:

“One-directional authority — especially that which is based in deliberately protected knowledge — cannot maintain control for long, once that knowledge is acquired and spread throughout its constituency. All that we know today in terms how we govern our lives will evaporate and be replaced by something very different in the decades to come.”

We see this in every institution: Busines, Religion, Education, Media, Medicine, Finance. I was certainly “guilty” of this when I was a Manager. Deciding what information got passed along and to whom. I still see it every day. But it’s getting harder.

Employees are connected. Nobody is walking around the office leaving memos on people’s desks. Email, Facebook, Twitter, texting… shit, the boss is often the last know something.

I’m confident I’ll be around for the disruptions to come and expect many will be painful, but necessary. I’m looking forward to them.

Gas Station TV

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My first look at GSTV (Gas Station TV) was at a Phillips 66 station on I-55. It probably took me no longer than 3 or 4 minutes to fill up and I guess there really isn’t much to do with that time, so why not. There were these really short sports/weather/news segments with commercial messages between each. Really can’t imagine someone paying for these but they obviously do. I foresee a time when we pay a premium to AVOID being hammered by ads. Ransom Ads.