Mind Your Business

People are tweeting and blogging about the latest spat between Amazon.com and Macmillan Books. What exactly is going on? Apparently Amazon has pulled all of Macmillan books from their store over a price dispute. But this is just the result of a much deeper problem. What it really comes down to is the fact that one of these companies doesn't know what business they're in.


A hundred and fifty years ago people didn't buy candles so they could be candle owners. And they didn't buy ice from the ice truck because they wanted frozen water. Consumers wanted light, and consumers wanted cold food, and candle making companies and ice delivery services that didn't understand this fact disappeared when the light bulb and the refrigerator came along.

So what business is Macmillan in? That's an easy question to answer. Macmillan is in the business of printing, distributing, and selling hard copies of books. Macmillan doesn't want Amazon to release their ebooks until the hard copy version has been out for seven months. Printed books are their business. It's the one they have become comfortable with, and it's the one to which they are currently clinging, hoping that the life they now understand will still be here tomorrow.

The problem lies in the fact that readers don't buy books to own wood pulp and ink.

They buy books because they want stories.

Amazon is in the business of connections. They connect people who have stories with people who want stories. They allow almost anybody with a book to put it in their store. But they don't stop there. They also make it so that you can download books from Project Gutenberg. They know that good stories aren't just the new releases, but the classics as well. It's not about selling enough hardback copies to cover the bottom line, it's about providing a rip-roaring good story to somebody who needs the escape.

Amazon isn't perfect, but they do know their business. Publishers who figure it out have a good chance of staying in business.

FitBit

Anybody can review familiar products like the Kindle, beef, or gravity. But I like to review products you may not have heard about. I should mention that I am NOT receiving any compensation for this review, and I've paid full price for the product.

I first heard about FitBit in November of 2008. I ordered two of these units right off the bat, thinking I'd give them to myself and my wife for Christmas. In the order confirmation, the company said, "we cannot guarantee Christmas delivery".

Well, they did in fact miss Christmas, but I didn't care. I decided to just give it to my wife for Valentine’s day.

They missed that holiday as well.

They missed Mother's day, our anniversary, Pioneer Day. Halloween, and Speak Like a Pirate day.

But I still didn't mind; rather than deliver a bad product on time, the company has delivered a great product late.

What the FitBit does is track your steps. They use the same technology as the motions sensors in your Wiimote, for about a 97 percent accuracy.

This is all well and good, but you're saying, 'what is the big deal about tracking steps? Well, I'll tell you, because that is what you do in a review.

What makes this device worth it's $99 sales price is its syncing capabilities. Every time I get within 15 or so feet of my computer, my device logs my steps to the FitBit website. By buying this device, I have access to the website for life--no monthly fees.

I can go to FitBit.com from any computer and see how many steps I've taken, how many calories I've burned, how much time I've spent sedentary and active, and more. In addition to my data, I can invite other people to be my friend. Once they are my friend, I can see their steps taken.

Everybody knows the mathematical formula 2p+(n>1)=F. This formulat states that if you have 2 people, and more than one number, then you have a fight. Or in sissy terms, a competition. (This forumula is related to 2c+1d=r (two cars going to the same destination means a race)).

I can have little mini-competitions with my friends to see who is a healthy, productive member of society, and who is a lazy, good-for-nothing leech. Ok, the site uses nicer terminology that thave, but you get the picture. It's always fun to compete against random people on the internet, right?

The reason I love FitBit so much is because I'm a numbers guy. This device gives me loads of data to track. And just about any time you track data, it affects your behavior.

For example, I've set a goal of hitting 9,000 steps every day. If I'm sitting on the couch at 10:30 PM, and I notice I've only hit 8,500, I hop up and wander around the living room for a while. For me, because I see the data, it makes me want to manipulate the data. Sure, those 500 steps probably only takes care of half a bite of the deep-fried
twinkie I was eating, but the point is that it's 500 steps I wouldn't have taken. I've gone on more random pointless walks in the past week than I have all last month.

The FitBit is ridiculously easy to use. Once a week you have to put it in the docking station overnight to recharge it, but other than that there is no maintenance.

If you've been meaning to get into shape, and you like data, and you have a spare $99, you really should consider the FitBit.

And if you get one, invite me to become your friend. I'm looking for fresh meat. I'll see you on the leader boards.

Kickstarter Fund

I just posted my new year resolutions, and now I'm off doing entirely different things. Why didn't I post that one of my goals was to raise ten thousand dollars for an educational website? Then I could post this, and pat myself on the back. Instead, I'm posting this and wondering if I'm losing my mind.

But this project is too cool to not try to get off the ground. You can visit the kickStarter page by clicking on the image below. The goal of the fundraising is to create a site that will make it easy for schools and organizations to create their own TwHistory project. As Josi Kilpack, Annette Lyon, Carole Warburton, and others can attest, right now it's a bit tricky to make everything work.

So click through and check us out!

Goals for 2010

Ok, usually I'm not one to make resolutions around New Year's Day. I usually just make fun of them because...well, because I'm a stinker.

It's not that I don't set goals, it's just that I do them as I think of them, not at the beginning of the year. But after reading Josi's post, I figure what the heck. I know that none of you are that interested in my goals for 2010, but I figure if I post them here, I might be motivated to actually accomplish them. If I don't accomplish them, you have my complete and full permission to mock me mercilessly come 2011.

• Run a 5k, a 10k, and a half marathon
  
• Start a business, and get at least 10 customers
• Either find an agent, a publisher, or collect 100 rejection letters
• Complete my last two practicums, and finish my comps
• Tweet two historical events
  
• Make a complete fool of myself while I MC at the LDStorymakers

I believe in setting at least one goal that I know I'm going to nail, which is why I included the last one.

Yeast: How I Loathe Thee

I hate yeast. I hate bread. I don't mean I don't like to eat it. I love to eat it. Fresh out of the oven, nutty whole wheat, flaky and crispy. I love it all.

And while I pride myself on being a pretty fantastic cook (I cook 90 percent of our meals when I'm home), I have never been able to make bread. I can't do it.

I'm a follow-the-recipe kind of guy. I don't vary from the recipe. I don't mess with how much corn starch, flour, sugar, etc. Somebody did a lot of scientific research writing that recipe, and I'm not about to substitute white flour with whole wheat flour willy-nilly.

So yesterday I found idiot-proof bread recipe. You don't even have to knead it, for crying out loud. There are only three ingredients, but one of them was yeast--my arch nemesis.

It's a new year, I told myself. I'm a grown man, I told myself. I can do this.

Well, apparently, no I can't.

The first problem came when the recipe said the dough would be shaggy. What in tarnation does that even mean? I know Shaggy from Scooby Doo, but that didn't seem to apply. And shaggy means hairy, but my dough (thankfully) didn't sprout hair. What it did do was look exactly like an albino cow pie, and about the same consistency.

The dough is supposed to raise for 12-18 hours; the longer the better, the article said. So I dutifully waited 18 hours. The dough is supposed to have bubbles, the article said. And it did! Maybe I had finally found the one kind of bread I could make.

What piled out of the bowl was soupy, runny, and still sticky. The jury was out whether or not the dough was shaggy, because the jury didn't know what shaggy meant either. I had followed the recipe to a T, but the dough was still a horrible mess.

I pressed on. I dusted with flour, I covered with plastic, I folded and tried raising it. Two hours later my pile of dough still looked like a cow pie. The article says, "dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger". Mine didn't double at all, and just sticks to your finger. It looks exactly like something that grows in size and takes over the town in one of those movies they used to show late at night, or on Saturday afternoon on the UHF channels back in the 80s. The dough sits there, like a sleeping sentient being. Like a bloated pimple on a whale. It's cooking right now, and it smells delicious, but I know that when it comes out of the oven it's going to be a flat, hard, tasteless pile of crud.

Because that is how all my bread turns out.

I'm going back to cooking bacon. I have a few new recipes to try.

I shake my fists of rage in your direction, Sonny Bono

A few years ago at work our research group put together business cards. We went with a superhero theme, and the cards were really pretty cool.

We were told to pick, among other things, our superpower and our 'arch-nemesis', and this information was placed on our cards. The arch nemesis I chose was the 'Sony-Bono Copyright Term Extension Act'.

I got a lot of strange comments over this, but an article that hit Slashdot today brings sweet vindication. From the article:

"It's nearly the end of 2009. If the 1790 copyright maximum term of 28 years was still in effect, everything that had been published by 1981 would be now be in the public domain — so the original Ultima and God Emperor of Dune and would be available for remixing and mashing up. If the 1909 copyright maximum term of 56 years (if renewed) were still in force, everything published by 1953 would now be in the public domain, freeing The City and the Stars and Forbidden Planet. If the 1976 copyright act term of 75* years (* it's complicated) still applied, everything published by 1934 would now be in the public domain, including Murder on the Orient Express. But thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, nothing in the US will go free until 2018, when 1923 works expire."

How cool would it be to see Steven King do a mashup of Murder on the Orient Express? Many people have enjoyed Pride & Prejudice & Zombies; what if we had a wider variety of books available from which authors could do this kind of mashup?

The Sony-Bono copyright terms extension act (I use the acronym CRAP, even though the letters don't line up, or even relate), the CRAP Act was really put into place because Mickey Mouse was headed for the public domain. Disney lobbied, Sonny Bono delivered, and Mickey stays safely 'protected', as do hundreds of thousands of other works that can't be touched now, thank you very much. All of that creative potential, locked away until 2017.

If an opt-in scheme makes sense anywhere, it’s here. You want to protect Mickey until 3009? Fine, pay a $20 fee every 10 years and renew your copyright/trademark. Don't care if your work makes it into the public domain? Don't do anything.

The CRAP Act protects all of these works until 2017. All of those books, articles, and art locked away from mashups, remixing, and reuse.

I think the founding fathers had it right. They limited copyright to 28 yearsIf you take the total amount of money my publishers and I have made off my books, I’ll bet 75% of it was made in the first three months of the books' release. But if you liked my book, and liked my characters, and thought it would be fun to write some fan fiction, you’d technically be violating the copyright laws (owned by my publisher). If you wanted to do it legally, you’d have to wait until 70 years after I died. Which is too bad; because if you wrote it, I’d like to read it.

It is a fine line, but it is a line nonetheless

I was talking to a friend who mentioned that a company is paying her a certain amount of money each month to say good things about that company. This friend uses some social software as a medium to say these good things. It wasn’t much money, and this friend isn’t being dishonest in what they say, but thinking about this arrangement brought up several issues in my mind.

Things get sticky when it comes to endorsing products. There is a fine line between me giving you my opinion of something, and me being paid to sell you something. You, the reader, should always know the difference. Let’s say I go to a restaurant and I write a review on my blog. That is me giving you an opinion; nothing wrong with that.

Now let’s say the restaurant pays me to place an advertisement on my site. Nothing wrong with that, either.

What is wrong is if the restaurant pays me to say nice things about their food, and I don’t disclose the fact that I’m being paid. Even if my review is honest, it is vital that I disclose that I’m being paid to review the restaurant. Why is this so important? Well, it comes down to trust.

If I don’t disclose that I’m being paid for a review, and you the reader finds out, then there is a loss of trust. This loss is a huge deal. Trust is something that you don’t gain back. If I didn’t disclose advertising dollars, then my readers would forever more wonder if what I was saying was really my opinion, or just something for which I was being paid. My opinions would be worthless, and I would likely lose many, many readers. Why read a site when you don’t know if you’re getting an honest review, or a paid-for pitch?

Even worse are the problems for the restaurant. Every time you hear a review of that restaurant, you will wonder if what is being said is true, or just another sneaky pitch. The restaurant would lose all credibility. There is nothing wrong with advertising, but you can’t do it behind people’s back. They will never forgive you.