Simply Connect

Terence Real's new book has some great things to say about health and keeping connected to people. Maybe this is why meeting all the bloggers in person was so much fun this week.

...In another domain, research on resilience, both physical and mental, reveals that rich authentic connection is one of the most salient factors in continued good health, outweighting such decisive forces as nutrition, exercise, even the absence of smoking. We enter life whole and connected and we operate best when richly attached. Intimacy is our natural state as a species, our birthright. And yet, while the push away from genuine closeness occurs at different points in their development, and in critically different ways, neither boys nor girls are allowed to maintain healthy relatedness for very long. ... Instead of cultivating intimacy, turning nascent aptitudes into mature skills, we teach boys and girls, in complimentary ways, to bury their deepest selves, to stop speaking, or attending to, the truth, to hold in mistrust, or even in disdain, the state of closeness we all, by our natures, most crave... We live in an antirelational, vulnerability-despising culture, one that not only fails to nurture the skills of connection but actively fears them. .

What Sony Did

Yesterday, at our conference Clay Christensen was talking about how Sony put little cheap, crappy, transistor radios in the pockets of kids' bluejeans when rock and roll was new and their parents didn't want them listening to rock and roll or even wearing bluejeans. I remember listening to WABC and Cousin Brucie on a little radio like that. He was talking about competition. He was explaining how Sony sussed out the fact that they were competing against non-consumption. That is, they weren't getting these kids to replace a table top radio like their parents owned. They were getting these kids to buy something they really wanted that they'd never bought before and therefore, they were competing against nothing. Imagine the freedom you have when you are the only guy in the game and you've hit on something someone really wants and will pay you whatever price to own.

Then he talked about voice recognition software and the picture of an administrative assistant on the box, looking thrilled to wear a little headset and use this impossibly clumsy software, which instead of simply typing 80 words per minute with 99% accuracy, she could now learn to talk really SLOWLY and have a 60% accuracy rate and spend lots of time making the software work instead of using something that did work for her.

He said one thing that stuck with me. Maybe you should consider making a product that does something people really need to do and helps them do it easily. Maybe you should sell products people actually need.

Harvard Conference Coverage

My fellow bloggers Dan Gillmor, Denise Howell, Chris Locke, Kevin Mark, Robert Scoble and Dave Winer did such an incredible blogging job of the conference here in Cupertino, I don't know if I can add a thing. Our next conference is in NYC and called "Leaders In Value Creation" on October 16th. Any new yawk bloggers who want to attend, drop me an email.

Deep Bloggery Going Down Here Am I dreaming? Did I die and go to heaven or maybe the Cote D'Azur? On a gorgeous blue sky day, I am sitting on a big stone fountain, lions heads spitting water into a pool next to me as the sun beats down, The Cypress Hotel is very Juan-les-Pins in style and who am I watching ... Rageboy and Dave Winer chatting, Denise Howell, Kevin Marks, Dan Gillmor and Robert Scoble blogging, me soaking up the sun. Actually that was after the lunch break, now I've kidnapped Kevin's iBook, can't keep my hands off it. Microsoft guy talking about something. I'm thinking about this day -- very fun to get all these guys together in person. Best bandwidth there is. And Kevin tells me that Doc's emailed us to say how bummed he is that's he's not with us -- damned straight, we're bummed you're not here too!

Kevin Marks, My Hero!!!

He's sitting right here right next to me blushing and choking as I write. But, really, my Wi-Fi holy grail quest is at an end. All you have to do is fly to Cupertino, walk over to Apple, eat one of the best pizzas you've ever had, drink some great coffee, talk about QuickTime, Douglas Adams, homeschooling, Clarence and Clarisse, go to the Apple Employee Store and drool over everything, buy an Airport, yank myself away from the iBooks which I really am jonsing for, walk back to The Cypress Hotel under a Mediterranean blue heavenly sky, ask Kevin to bring x zillion years of technical expertise along, plug it in and VOILA, we're cooking with gas ... WIRELESS GAS.

We're sitting here listening to the guys set up the room for tomorrow's conference and blogging wireless. Hell, it's almost as much fun as blogging topless!

Harvard Conference Sold Out

Looks like we'll have them hanging from the rafters. A big surge in last minute registrations. Eric, did you hear that? If you're going to Eric's conference in Denver, Digital Identity World, for god's sakes, register today, not three minutes before it starts next week!

I Stand Corrected

Okay, I'm here at 1 Infinite Loop with Kevin Marks -- Apple HQ in Cupertino -- and he's told me the real fish story. "So a lady lands at Boston airport and gets in a cab and says to the driver, 'Take me somewhere I can get scrod!" And the driver says, "I've never heard anyone use the pluperfect participle before!"

Anyway, it the most sunny gorgeous day here and how fun to meet Kevin and (don't tell anyone) take advantage of his employee discount to get a Airport Base Station to call my own. And I can't get my hands off of these iBooks -- oh shit, they are lovely -- and boy would it be easy to plunk down some Yankee dollars and take one home. The company store looks very fun. Wish I could pull up a truck and empty most of the contents into the back of it.

I Got Scrod In Boston

I know there's some old joke about that -- two Boston Brahim ladies going into town to get scrod -- don't remember the rest, but really I got scrod at Legal Seafood's in Logan Airport yesterday and it was terrific. I'm still very thrown off by the fact that I got to the airport with enough time, had a great lunch, had a perfect flight -- yes, thank you United -- and got to SFO on time. Surely something was amiss!

Just joking, but I do expect most travel to get messed up one way or another. Everyone disses the airlines, but United's been great for me on more than one occasion. When my mom was dying of lung cancer in 1997 and I was living in LA and had to bounce between LAX and BOS a lot that year, United was amazingly helpful, flexible and kind. I really appreciated it.

I'd bought a ticket for Friday, September 26. 1997 with an arrival in Boston at 7:30pm and three days before was sitting at home in LA looking out the window and got a flash that I needed to GO right then and there -- not wait until Friday. I threw some clothes in a bag, dashed to LAX and United put me on their next flight to Logan. My mom had taken a turn for the worse that day and actually passed away three days later on Friday, September 26th around 7:30pm. Thanks United counter lady who helped me out and I'll never know your name.

Tough Day To Be Dave

Both David Weinberger and Dave Winer are noticing it's a tough day on Google to be Dave. There oughta be a law. Or at least a dependable algorithm.

Rageboy, Is Sex Necessary?

Of course I refer to the classic text by James Thurber and E.B. White. They solved the mystery long ago. And they can steer you in a more positive direction than your current harem is likely to do.

The sexual revolution began with Man's discovery that he was not attractive to Woman, as such. The lion had his
mane, the peacock his gorgeous plumage, but Man found himself in a three-button sack suit. His masculine
appearance not only failed to excite Woman, but in many cases it only served to bore her. The result was that man
found it necessary to develop attractive personal traits to offset his dull appearance. He learned to say funny
things. He learned to smoke, and blow smoke rings. He learned to earn money. This would have been a solution to
his difficulty, but in the course of making himself attractive to Woman by developing himself mentally, he
inadvertently became so intelligent an animal that he saw how comical the whole situation was. [p. 92]

Their wisdom on marriage, nuptials and that sexy french word "fiancee" exceeds all bounds. And they came up with all of this in 1929 while Freud was still just some guy living in Vienna, visiting America and not finding enough public bathrooms. It was a golden epoch to be sure.

[A man delays marriage because he has] The suspicion that if he waited twenty-four hours, or possibly less, he would likely find
a lady even more ideally suited to his taste than his finacée. Every man entertained such a suspicion. Entertained it royally. He
was greatly strengthened in his belief by the fact that he kept catching a fleeting glimpse of this imaginary person -- in
restaurants, in stores, in trains. To deny the possibility of her existence would be, he felt, to do a grave injustice to her, to himself,
and to his financée. Man's unflinching desire to give himself and everybody else a square deal was the cause of much of his
disturbance. Man had become, you see, a thinking being. He had come to know enough about permutations and combinations to
realize that with millions of . . . females to choose from, the chances of his choosing the ideal mate were almost zero. [pp. 96, 99;
see also Lorenzo Da Ponte: "He who is faithful to one is cruel to the others." Don Giovanni ]

And to hopefully lay to rest the musical question, "Is he really going out with her?" Let me say, "No! No! No! A thousand times No!" All bloggers in the know know that all I ever wanted was to BE Rageboy, not to DO Rageboy. My maidenly virtue now reestablished, can I sell my highly desirable slot on your blogroll on eBay? It should bring a few million Euros, dontcha think?

When Two Syllables Just Won't Do

Ever get so annoyed with someone, just so totally pissed off, that the old tried-and-true two syllable "Screw You" won't do? You need the new improved 4-syllable "Scre-Ew Ya-Ou!" Of course, this works delightfully well with Screw You's big brother Fuck You. Try it, it's a treat in 4 slow syllables. Fu-Uk Ya-Ou!