Evan Rudowski: Web Transplant

Why Oh Why, Apple of My Eye?

When my Dell laptop finally gave up the ghost, I took the opportunity to switch back to the Mac. I had last used the Mac regularly back in 1993, in grad school at NYU, when it was a vertical box with a grey-toned monochrome monitor and a little smiley computer icon that greeted the user at start-up.

I had never lost my affection for the Mac, but we drifted apart from each other as Windows captured the business user market and I, unfortunately, was a business user. We lost touch, the Mac and I, but I never forgot her.

Recently with the switch to the Intel chip, the Mac had finally become viable for business. And with the advent of Windows Vista, which would have essentially required me to learn a new operating system anyway, I figured I might as well re-learn the best operating system – the Mac, OS X version.

So it was with some amount of delight when my Dell finally died, and after a failed if half-hearted effort to resuscitate it, I marched purposefully to the local Apple reseller (in the process almost slamming headlong into the actor Nicholas Cage, who was walking backwards out of an expensive jewelry shop here in Bath, where he had recently added another fancy home to his collection).

So simple, the Mac – just a few elegant choices to make: white or black (I chose white); MacBook or Pro; size of screen – and soon I was a proud owner. Finally we were reunited. Mac and me, together again. We hadn’t seen each other since grad school, and we had a lot of catching up to do.

But the honeymoon was brief. After a few days of carefree, pleasure, the little warning signs began to appear. The mouse pad button stuck and felt crunchy when I tapped it. The palmrests began to turn yellowish – leading me to question my personal hygiene and sending me off compulsively handwashing throughout the day.

The comma key popped off – quite irritating as I am a major consumer of commas (had it been the tilde key I might not have minded as much).

A crack appeared on the hinge for the screen lid. And then, one evening as I was typing away, I felt a little fluttering beneath my right palm, as if there were a Post-It note slapped down beneath. But it wasn’t a piece of paper; it was actually the plastic casing of my MacBook, which had fractured and a piece of which was now flapping loose.

Things were not going well for the Mac and me. Clearly it was time to receive some tender loving AppleCare. But this was when I finally understood what was happening. Apple, my long lost computer love, now brought back into my eager embrace, was not ready to love me back.

Maybe she had been told too many times how beautiful and sleek she was, but Apple was not ready to hear that she was not so lovely. She coldly turned her back on me. My cries for attention were rebuffed.

An attempt to visit the Genius Bar taught me that true genius was, truly, unattainable. At the Apple Store on Regent Street in London, I was told that walk-ins could not see the Geniuses (somewhat in contradiction to the concept of a bar, as a friend pointed out). I could make an appointment on the web, but no more than 48 hours in advance; but anyway all of the appointments were taken. However, if I tried every hour on the hour, some appointments might become available.

Now it could be argued that I am on the internet a bit too much, but even I am not online enough to keep trying to make a reservation at the Genius Bar every hour until I get one. And besides, I had not made that kind of effort to reserve a booking of any kind since the last time the Grateful Dead rolled into town, and that was far more rewarding.

Calling my local authorized Apple service provider (Farpoint, on Walcot Street in Bath) was no more effective, with every telephone menu option resulting in a recording asking me to leave a number for a callback (come to think of it, I do remember wondering who was ever going to answer the endlessly ringing telephone the last time I was in their shop). Do I need to add that there never was a callback?

Oh Apple, my dear Apple, why hast thou forsaken me?

Finally it was my business partner who hit upon a solution. Having learned by now how to most effectively deploy a loudmouthed American, he suggested that I march into the Apple Store, plop my rapidly decaying MacBook down on the table alongside the shiny showroom models, and insist on staying until my problem was addressed.

Business Partner later claimed he wasn’t serious about this (typical British reticence I think), but being highly susceptible to suggestion I took his advice and soon found myself on the selling floor of the Apple Store on Regent Street, loudly pointing out the multiple visible defects on my MacBook, and attracting the attention of many nearby shoppers (except for the man sleeping, standing up, next to me).

For good effect, I had the AppleDefects.com page, with its frowning-apple parody logo, and its many photos of prematurely decrepit MacBooks remarkably similar to mine, prominently displayed on my screen.

I was being so uncool there in the Apple Store – the coolest retail environment anywhere. These cool young Apple guys in their t-shirts, ready to be so coolly helpful, confronted by a loud, paunchy, middle-aged American in a suit. Man, I was sucking the cool right out of the place.

Needless to say, I soon had my appointment – so next week I will have the privilege of an audience (of up to 20 minutes, I have been forewarned) with a Genius, a cool Genius no doubt, who will sagely diagnose my problem and propose a solution. This solution, I have been further warned, stands a good likelihood of requiring me to leave my MacBook overnight, or even for several days.

It almost makes me feel nostalgic for Dell – a company that was just as uncool as I am, but which would at least send somebody geeky to my premises to fix my computer, leaving me in continued, uninterrupted operation.

Apple will eventually fix my problem, I am sure. But they will take my MacBook from me, and I will miss her, and I will pine for her. I will be left with an aching emptiness. And then after a few days of loneliness, they will return her to me, clean and with a shiny new face, and I will be grateful. I will take her back. And I will still love my MacBook, because I am a forgiving soul and I still want to love her, and I need her. But I will never forget how she broke my heart.

Cannibal Dad

After I had returned from an overnight in London my nearly-five-year-old son crawled into bed with us.

"What did you do in London?" he asked.

"I was at a dinner," I replied.

"Who was with you at the dinner?"

"Well, there were eight people," I told him.

He paused for a moment and then asked, "Why did you eat people?"

Funny. But somewhat disturbing that my son considers it plausible.    

Tags: kids

Content is Free - Just In Time for the Recession

Here's another reason why the people banging the "content is free" drum are barking up the wrong tree: the coming recession.

As Henry Blodget notes, if a recession is on the horizon (and he's compiling the evidence for it) it's bound to hit online advertising. Yet just at the moment when storm clouds are gathering, the "content is free" chorus is clamoring ever more loudly for publishers to drop their subscription services and increase their dependence on advertising.

Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch does some arithmetic on the advertising potential of the Wall Street Journal website should the subscription wall come down, and the results are singularly unimpressive. Based on 10 million website visitors (a number that soon-to-be-owner Rupert Murdoch is throwing around), Schonfeld calculates a potential $60 million in annual revenues for wsj.com. This assumes a fairly robust $25 CPM.

Given that wsj.com already generates an impressive $50 million in annual revenue from subscriptions, a 20 percent increase for throwing open the barn door does not seem fantastic. And if the recession comes, and advertising comes under serious pressure, there could be minimal if any gain. The "content is free" advocates, who think advertising alone will sustain publishers, may be mistaken.

In a recession it would be best if publishers were able to tap into multiple revenue streams -- giving them more than one leg to stand on. Subscription and advertising can work in tandem to strengthen a publisher's revenue base, especially in an adverse climate. So why is the "content is free" chorus singing only one off-key note?

Tags: paidcontent, subscription, wsj.com, content is free

Jeff Jarvis: One-Man Wrecking Crew

What is it about Jeff Jarvis that makes him persist in his crusade to assert that "content is free," against the obvious interest of the publishing community he so clearly loves?

Jarvis frequently argues that publications should drop all charges for their online content and instead open up their websites to unfettered access. He claims that content already is free, and that big publishers need to catch up and accept this. To support his premise he often cites recent examples such as the dropping of the TimesSelect subscription service by The New York Times, and recent musings by Rupert Murdoch that wsj.com may go free as well. Of course, these examples prove the sweeping generalization that "content is free" about as much as the occurrence of an eclipse proves that a dragon lives in the sky and is devouring the sun.

In the case of the Wall Street Journal, there is nothing but speculation (although it may well prove true). In the case of TimesSelect, it was a good business move to go free, because the content was not sufficiently differentiated to justify a subscription fee.

Paid content works when it is unique, exclusive, highly targeted, of measurable value to its audience, and actionable. Opinion columns don't qualify and are indeed better off free. Financial information does qualify and is often charged for -- although financial news is somewhat more of a commodity.

The point is that there is plenty of content that people are willing to pay for because it's valuable to them. At my company, SubHub -- which is focused on providing content owners with multiple ways to monetize their content, including subscription, advertising and e-commerce -- we have put together a list of 250 highly successful paid content websites, and we could have kept going (e-mail me if you want a copy of the list).

Jarvis really seemed to go off the deep end yesterday when he belittled Michael Rooney, the chief revenue officer of The Wall Street Journal, for his reaction to Murdoch's musings. According to Jarvis, "Mr. Rooney" (as he condescendingly addressed him in his best schoolteacher style) lacks a "can-do attitude" for daring to suggest that it might be prudent to think carefully about how to best wean wsj.com away from a spectacularly successful subscription content service that generates $50 million in annual revenue.

Seemingly in Jarvis' view the right approach at wsj.com would be to simply turn subscriptions off and let the chips fall where they may. But let's be clear about one thing. Rupert Murdoch has never owned newspapers for the revenues; he's owned them for the influence. Murdoch's newspapers collectively are loss-making and are subsidized by News Corporation's other, more profitable activities. So if Murdoch does turn off the paid firewall at wsj.com that will probably be his motivation -- to wield the maximum possible influence over his audience.

This says a lot about Rupert Murdoch, but it says little about whether or not content needs to be free.

Considering how much Jarvis has done to encourage publishers to embrace new media, to adapt and survive or even thrive in this new climate, his continual "content is free" drumbeat is perplexing. In order to prosper, publishers should be developing multiple revenue streams, not eliminating them.

To promote the mantra of "content is free" is to recklessly encourage in publishers a greater dependence on advertising as their sole source of revenue. Yet the capabilities of new media make the implementation of multiple revenue streams even easier than ever.

And with the majority of advertising activity moving away from big publishers and into the hands of newer players, such as Google, "content is free" strengthens those who control the advertising and weakens those who are dependent upon it. Under "content is free," big publishers would continue to bear the costs of content production while depending increasingly on others for revenue generation. This is a losing proposition.

Finally, since we know that many content creators are doing very well under the paid content model, what does it say about Jarvis' view of big publishers if he believes they are not capable of creating products that are differentiated enough to tap into these revenue streams?

Of course they are. It takes creativity, innovation and a willingness to break out of old paradigms. If they don't do it, others will.

And Mr. Rooney, if your can-do attitude doesn't cut it at the Wall Street Journal, please give me a call -- we could use someone like you.    

Tags: JeffJarvis, Rupert Murdoch, wsj.com, paid content, content is free

Why I'm Skipping the Almeida This Time

I've had the pleasure of being involved with London's Almeida Theatre for some time now in connection with its "Reach" program for younger entrepreneurs and aspiring patrons of the arts.

At age 43, I'm always glad to be involved with anything that allows me to continue to classify myself as "younger." But even if it were not for this benefit I would still consider it a privilege to be involved with this wonderful theatre, which puts on such quality productions and is run by people who are dedicated, talented, gracious and warm.

The Almeida is one of London's great theatres -- and this is in a city where theatre still often can rise to the level of high art, more often probably than in any other place (and as a native New Yorker, I say this only grudgingly).

Yet in spite of this I'll be skipping the next Almeida Reach event, which features a performance of Caryl Churchill's "Cloud Nine." That's because Churchill, lauded as one of Britain's greatest female playwrights, is a patron and active supporter of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and its calls for a total academic and cultural boycott of Israel.

Heaven knows the Palestinians need good advocates, given that the organisations that purport to advocate for them today are hardly doing a creditable job. But Churchill and others who have joined her on the extreme left cannot be serious in believing that their methods will have any beneficial effect.

The way to bring the parties together in the Middle East is to encourage dialogue. In Israel, as anywhere else, there exists a cross-section of viewpoints and positions across the political spectrum. To take a blanket position of no dialogue stifles all voices -- even the moderate ones who might be in a position to help move toward a solution, if they could be heard. To attempt to delegitimize one side of the conflict only encourages the other side to harden its position, giving it false hope that intransigence will ultimately lead to victory.

Fortunately, for these reasons, more level-headed people have rejected this extreme position. "Boycott, not dialogue" is a discredited strategy and has failed to gain the traction its advocates had hoped. Where reasonable people have considered the issue, they've chosen dialogue over closed-mindedness. They understand that the advocates of boycott have chosen to cast themselves as partisan soldiers and have thus forfeited any claim to fairness or impartiality.

It's particularly ironic that a cultural figure like Caryl Churchill, who owes her livelihood and influence to the willingness of audiences to listen to her with an open mind, is not willing to extend the same courtesy to Israeli intellectual and cultural figures, regardless of their individual views. She is unwilling to distinguish on an individual level, because her goal is to demonize Israel full stop.

In the same way Churchill and her gang might argue that Israel takes indiscriminate, collective action against the Palestinian people, they employ the same tactics against Israeli artists and academics -- the ones most likely to be sympathetic with the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people. Churchill and her comrades are soldiers in a war, and their aim is victory; nuance and subtlety are weaknesses in wartime. And of course, she and her crowd can and do characterize their own belligerence as a necessary response to Israeli power. So by demonizing the Israelis, they claim credibility for their own unjustifiable behavior.

The Almeida should certainly produce Caryl Churchill's work -- it should be judged on its own merits as a work of art, rather than on the politics of its author. But it's too much for me to go and applaud it. And I'm too polite to boo and hiss in this special theatre run by brilliant people.

I hope to be back at the Almedia next time. But for now, Caryl Churchill -- I'm not joining your audience.

We Held a Seance, But Nothing Gay Happened

Police investigating a murder attended a seance in an attempt to find the killer, the BBC reports.

Testifying at the High Court in Edinburgh, a former detective indicated that during the seance officers had held hands, although not in an "affectionate" way.

It's reassuring to know that although police may be dabbling in the occult, they're not being gay about it.

Tags: lawenforcement, occult, homosexuality

Having a Company Voice

Dick Costolo in his "Ask the Wizard" blog has an excellent post today about company voice.

Dick argues that it's a competitive advantage for a company to have a voice and a personality that is visible to its customers. Too many companies work to remove evidence of personality in favor of a blandness that seems less risky. But people enjoy dealing with other people, Dick says, and companies with personality remind customers that there really are real people at the other end of the line.

To me this is also about having company values, values that really say something about how a company intends to behave and how it will treat its customers (and employees). It is easy for a company to have a statement of values to which everyone pays lip service, which are non-controversial and yet somehow seem positive. It is harder for a company to have real values that it lives by even if it seems to cost more or be less efficient as a result. But those kinds of values are the ones people buy into sincerely and which build loyalty and buzz.

What is most difficult for a company, I think, is having those values and applying them consistently across the business and its many activities. If you do a good job of conveying your values, or personality, to customers but then fall short of applying them, the disappointment customers feel is even greater than if you had not articulated the values at all. You have set them up, and then let them down.

In those cases honesty and sincerity are always best -- we meant well, we messed up, we're sorry, we'll try to do better. And then really try -- and let the customer know how you're getting on. Companies, like people, won't always get it right, but customers will forgive a lot if they know you're trying.

Advice for Facebook: Sit Tight

OpenSocial's been getting so much coverage, you'd think it was world-changing. Presidential candidates don't get as much coverage for their initiatives as Google gets when it announces an API. I've heard more about OpenSocial than I have about the recent turmoil in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

OpenSocial won't change much for the end user. Facebook is the leader because it has presented a clean, well-organized environment that leaves users in control. People feel comfortable there and so do their friends. An API isn't going to cause them to go anywhere else.

If anything, OpenSocial may introduce a sameness that makes it harder for one social network to distinguish itself from another. If I can toss a sheep at my friend equally easy on Bebo, MySpace or even LinkedIn, then really what's the difference?

This may be the big OpenSocial time-bomb for its participating companies. Will OpenSocial end up being like the European Union, with standards set from Brussels, blurring the borders and unique identities of the participating nation-states?

Of course, where there are fuzzy borders, there are security challenges. The early reports of privacy hacks make OpenSocial look initially shaky. Facebook's primary asset is the privacy and control it offers to its members, along with its clean interface, and to date this hasn't been visibly compromised.

OpenSocial is great for developers. They can easily build for multiple social networks using one set of protocols. But really, if they need to use a second set of protocols for Facebook, what's the big deal? Facebook has a large enough audience to make this well worthwhile. Don't expect to see anyone soon announcing they are dropping support for the Facebook platform.

Comparisons between Facebook and AOL's old Rainman architecture are misleading. Rainman was complex and cumbersome, and using it required training. It was a proprietary advantage for AOL at a time when the content development tools elsewhere were primitive. It became less relevant when the capabilities of web development tools caught up.

By contrast, Facebook's architecture is so easy that a 13-year-old can write an application after school. This is not a high barrier. Those who attempt to contrast the sunny openness of OpenSocial with the supposed bleak darkness of Facebook's closed architecture are being disingenuous.

It's no surprise that every major social network other than Facebook has piled on to join OpenSocial. They are all so focused on Facebook as their major threat, they would sign up for anything that offered the promise of weakening their powerful rival. Affiliating with OpenSocial is also a great way for a second-tier player to be seen to be joining the big leagues, standing alongside Google and the other big names. Who would pass up that opportunity?

If I were Facebook, I'd like my position right now. With the launch of OpenSocial, it's even more clear that there's Facebook, and everyone else. OpenSocial represents safety in numbers, or circling the wagons perhaps. In either case, Facebook looks strongest. If I were Facebook, I'd remain aloof.

Disclaimer: One of my former bosses at Excite, David Sze, is a venture capital investor in Facebook via his firm, Greylock. One of my other former bosses at Excite, Joe Kraus, leads Google's OpenSocial initiative. I have other friends and colleagues at both companies.
   

Tags: OpenSocial, Facebook, Google

Suspension of Disbelief

Samuel Taylor Coleridge called it the suspension of disbelief -- the willingness of an audience to accept as true the premises of a work of fiction even if they are fantastic or impossible.

Blogging requires a suspension of disbelief as well -- a suspension of disbelief that there will be interest in anything the blogger has to say, or that the blogger will manage to avoid alienating friends, colleagues and strangers with pompous and arrogant pronouncements.

Because I occasionally feel I have something to say, and I am not satisfied doing it solely in the comments areas of other peoples' blogs, I've decided to start my own.

Hopefully I will manage to inform and entertain more than embarrass and alienate. Suspend disbelief for now.

Tags: blogging, Coleridge