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I've been thinking about failure a lot. My career has some doozies in its wake. I've heard people speak about failures at conferences. The current trend is to tell people failures are okay because they learn from them. I've seen some suggest extremes like encouraging failure. Back in the late 80s, "failure was not an option" and other similar platitudes ruled the business rags. People wanted to be Gordon Geko so bad. I think the discourse is starting to swing back toward allowing no failures. Certainly political discourse is.

Why must everything be either or? This black and white view of the world is killing us all. Failure is relative. Mistakes are not synonymous with failure. So stop equating the two. The "fail" internet meme is really a series of photos and videos pointing out mistakes. Failure is not achieving a set goal. Failure is not falling down in public; that's just embarrassment.

I'm one of those guys who is really hard on myself, more than anybody else will ever be, and I know it. I look back on many past failures and wince at the outcome. Most of my failures were of my own design. That's the hard part to swallow. I believe failure evolves from a series of mistakes. Mistakes are warnings that tell us we are on the path to failure. What we learn from failure is to pay attention to mistakes and learn from them as we go along.

I've failed at start-ups, I've failed with friendships, and I've failed with family. The most important lesson I've learned is that failure is sometimes a choice you make at the time. You may choose to walk away from a situation and cut your losses. For instance, I walked away from a start-up because it was killing me. I over committed and couldn't support my family. I burned bridges and have regret, but I also learned important lessons about what is important to me and my family. I'm not cut out to be self-employed. This was pressure I put on myself because I came from a family who ran a small business. I'm much happier in life now that I've let that go.

Failure is what you make it. You can wallow in it and not get past it. You can leave bad situations and use them to learn and grow. You can give up on a project when you hit diminishing returns to save time, money, and resources. All of these scenarios are forgivable and understandable. Allowing failure in your life can alleviate all sorts of pressure and help you move on to more important things. You just have to give yourself permission to fail here and there.

Another way at looking at it is to reframe what you consider failing to be. For example, if you are in a bad, unhealthy relationship and you break it off, is that a failure or is it you protecting yourself? If you pick the latter, you're growing as a person.

Remember, mistakes are not failure. Failure is relative. And "fail" is a verb. For the love of all that's holy, if you want to mock a mistake, put "oops" on the photo.

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Wife Beater Brand Woman's Shirt

I'll be the first to admit I find sick things funny. I listen to metal music, which is wrapped with sick imagery, usually for the sake of shock value. I get it.

However, Wife Beater brand clothes cross my own arbitrary line of what I can take. Maybe because I'm a victim of childhood abuse myself. But take a look at the picture of the women's shirt to the right. There is something deeply unsettling about women wearing a bloody hand symbol, representing domestic violence. To me that's like Jews wearing swastikas or blacks wearing the KKK symbol. There are some things I can't even laugh at.

Read more from: Geek Meets Girl.

H/T: @chris_oh

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I swear to the best of my memory this is the conversation I had with CapitalOne this morning:

Phone: [Unknown Name, Unknown Number] Ring, Ring

Me (oblivious to caller-ID): Hello

Capital One Rep: [Silence and Clicking]

Me (stupidly): Hello?

Capital One Rep: [More clicking then the sounds of a sweat farm call center in the background] Yes, may I speak with Julie please?

Me: Who is this?

CapitalOne Rep: This is [name removed since I can't remember it] from Capital One.

Me: What is this regarding?

CapitalOne Rep: This is Capital One, I would l like to speak with Julie because I have informary for her.

Me: Infomary?

CapitalOne Rep [now with apparent disgust]: I said information!

Me: Information? Like sales information?

CapitalOne Rep: This is not a sales call.

Me: But you're calling us. It must be a sales call.

CapitalOne Rep: This. Is. Not. A. Sales. Call.

Me. Well, go ahead and remove us from your sales list.

Capital One Rep [taking her balls and going home]: Fine! But she will not get anymore information from us!

Phone: [Click]

Dear CapitalOne "Bank":

My wife was actually available to take a call from you this morning. As it turns out both of us are very interested in any infomary or information you have regarding our accounts. However, it is confusing to us as to what "information" we would need as you have an extensive website we can access for account balances and the latest interest rates you have shoved up our asses. I can only assume the "information" you were calling us about was of such a secret nature and so important  you can't risk making it available on said website.

As to the nature of the information, I would like very much for you to go ahead and send us the off-shore account number via registered mail as I don't trust the phone system these days. We need the account number, the amount you're putting in millions, and the safe word or whatever you guys are calling it these days.

On the other hand, if the "information" you were trying to get to my wife this morning wasn't about the millions you want to deposit in our off-shore land of milk and honey, I can only assume it was a sales call.

Certainly with all of the latest banking shenanigans going on, you wouldn't use the English language as a way to trick somebody into hearing a sales pitch would you? Flat out denying it's a sales call and using "passing along information" left me feeling very duck-flies-at-midnight.  So I heavily recommend you train your sales people to be straightforward when calling or give up this stupid telemarketing shit already. You've already got our 30% interest and deed to our first born. What else could you want from us?

Sincerely,

MK Anderson

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Prototyping by Todd Zaki Warfel

Since I finished reading Prototyping: A Practitioner's Guide by Todd Zaki Warfel, I've been rethinking everything except what color I'm going to paint my house this summer. Specifically I've been mulling the entire concept of requirements, process, and communication among the various groups who collaborate to make products.

Three opposing forces meet in the conference room battlefield regularly: Team SDLC, Team Legacy, and Team That's Not What I meant. Team SDLC has roots entrenched in a theoretical model developed when punch cards gave us joy. The SDLC mindset is based on the fact requirements drive everything. By "requirements" I mean a document of some sort that can either be well-written or, as I've seen of late, an Excel spreadsheet wishlist.

Team Legacy, while similar to Team SDLC, refuses to rethink anything unless it has to do with a variation of the phrase "We've always done it this way." Team Legacy is the enemy of actually getting things done.

Finally, Team That's Not What I Meant is full of people who have no real way to communicate to developers what they want. All they can tell you is after they see it graphically, they complain. When this happens the other two teams remind them dutifully that they did sign off on requirements.

Those of us in the development world who try to avoid any camp and want to actually accomplish something fight the process. That's the simple beauty of prototyping as an alternative to requirements. Todd's book articulated an idea that had been tickling the back of my brain for years: requirements suck. You can dress them up, give them lessons in manners, and even try to make them feel like part of the group, but requirements will always remain a CYA way of making sure everything has a central document to go to when they disagree.

Recently, I've seen firsthand how requirements are used to the advantage of one team over another. If you can suck all of the ego out of any meeting and get people to admit they all work together for a common purpose, you might find out that all the teams are simply having problems communicating. Building prototypes forces people to think more logically about where information comes from, who is putting the design together, and most importantly it communicates to the technical and non-technical alike what the end product will look like.

It's really that simple and I'm ashamed I didn't put this all together before I picked up Todd's book. But sometimes it takes somebody else to water that brain seed to help you see what's really wrong with your processes.  If you are involved in the development process in any way, order a copy of Prototyping from Rosenfeild Media and start getting people on board with rethinking requirements altogether. You might actually get some real work done.

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Kat Rice, who I met briefly at Wordcamp Dallas, posted How to Tell if Your Webmaster is Cheating on You today and it's a topic that is really about disclosure. If you hire outside help for your website, are you getting the whole truth? Go read through her list of red-flag statements that may be signs you're not getting all the facts. I'll get to those in a second.

First I want to hit on the topic of small business and what it means to work in that area as a web vendor. The small business market is brutal. If your only business experience is with Fortune 500 companies and you decide to market your skills to small businesses in your area, get ready for the rack. With no other income, getting $1000 from some small companies is a miracle to behold.

I went out on my own and had my butt handed to me on a paper plate over and over for many reasons. One was a personal illness that I plan on writing about when I find the right way to approach it. But the other reasons are also important. These reasons come back to me when I read articles like Kat's because those half-truths and evasive statements are how small business operates.

Small Business Runs on Fumes and Feelings

I've yet to meet a small business executing a five-year business plan. If they are, they're probably a start-up and I put start-ups in a completely different category of business, even though there is similar behavior. With your experienced corporate eyes, you may know companies will spend seventeen million dollars for a company blog. Why? Nobody really knows but they really do. So when you spend 20 hours writing a proposal for a potential client who wants a sophisticated e-commerce you walk away bewildered when they throw your $11,000 proposal in your face followed by vulgarities. And you thought you'd save them money by using open source frameworks and doing the customization yourself. No they didn't appreciate that either.

Modern small business culture is a product of decades of collective wisdom rooted in the 1950s. Most everything related to marketing is compared to yellow page advertising, much the same way large companies compare everything to television advertising. If you think your customer is progressive and understands the Web, double check. You may find your customer's idea of value is incompatible with reality. Because most of these businesses run such tight margins, $1000 is a lot of money as you're finding out yourself since you've been writing $11,000 proposals. Even if the value is right for your proposal, business owners may feel that's too much and will say things to that will kill one synapse at a time. You may hear, "I spoke with Charlie at church–he works for a bank and even with computers–he thinks $11,000 is way too much. He said just set up a Yahoo store." You may also hear, "My cousin's neighbor has a kid in high school who will do it for nothing." [Editor's note: the kid will also use the site to launch denial of service attacks against his Internet frenimy, Warlock.]

Everybody Is Trying to Find Their Way

Your perception of value will be competing with the perception of value of somebody who is selling hardware or owns a restaurant or is mostly a mechanic. Just as you can't fathom why a brake job is $500, small business owners cannot wrap their brains around what it takes to build a custom website. You can try to explain it, but they will not get it. In Kat's article, she is listing some of the common website sales pitches that have been dumbed down for small business. Rarely do you find an educated small business owner who truly understands that website creation and management has no rules. Every vendor is different and small businesses are really looking for a consultative partner rather than a gee-whiz stenographer.

This is why disclosure is so important. If you cannot sit across from somebody and tell them the whole truth about who you are, then you have no business dealing with small business. Just as you have to get to know your client, they need to get to know you and begin to trust you.

The List

So I'm going to take Kat's list and change it to how these items should be pitched by ethical web vendors.

1. This individual design is just for you. How about this: "I can create a unique design for you, but it will cost more because it takes more time. If you don't mind a site based on existing templates, we can start there, but some cost."
2. The most important thing is design. How about this: "After we figure out how you want to approach the design, the next step is to make sure the message and design work together. This involves making sure colors and graphics don't clash with your message."
3. Everyone charges a monthly fee for upkeep. This one is tricky because some web vendors need to count on monthly fees as a business model and that should be fully disclosed. So try this: "We have our own dedicated server [if true] and it's easier to maintain your site if you host it on our server. In addition, my company charges a monthly retainer of $x because we provide services above and beyond initial site creation. For example, if there is a vulnerability in your site's code, we will fix it. The retainer is a flat rate and we will charge outside of that retainer. Here look at this complete list of services we provide for the monthly retainer. If you don't want that, then when these are necessary, we will bill hourly with advanced notification."
4. SEO costs extra. It's never part of the coding process. The whole SEO thing bugs me.  There are genuine, good people selling SEO services and there are people like, say Superpages, who tell small businesses they need to pay $17,000 a month (true story) to compete in Keller, Texas. Here is how I always answer the SEO questions: "SEO  is something I know about, but I'm not an expert. I can do what I can to optimize your site so SEO is easier as you manage content in the future. However, I can also recommend trusted SEO experts for the future. Also, do not expect that you will be number one on Google for the single word 'hardware'. Please keep that in mind."
5. Your website or social media or email or whatever is the only marketing your company needs. How about this: "Your online presence is part of an overall strategy. I'm not a business management consultant. My expertise lies with website and social media. I do not do public relations or traditional marketing. However, I have several companies I've vetted who I can recommend for that type of work."

Hopefully this is helpful to you if you are going after small business. If so, you will needs a dumpster full of patience and a savings account large enough to help you get established.

Data about Obama's helicopter breached via P2P? | Security – CNET News:

"What appears to be a defense contractor in Bethesda, Md., had a file-sharing program on one of their systems that also contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One," Boback told WPXI.

My children interact with other kids who have a hand out with a harsh sense of entitlement. We call those kids assholes spoiled and avoid them and their parents.  These kids are our apparent future banking leaders.

Banking executives were rewarded for bad decisions, just like the people who handed over the bailout money keep getting elected in spite of their own dysfunctional legacies. There is no greater irony I've witnessed than that of congress lecturing car companies on fiscal responsibility. The only thing worse than that was the pathetic car execs with their fake remorseful faces holding their hands out. Where is John Galt to tell them to get the hell out of his way?

There is apparently some ignorance in human behavior in the media. Fire, hot, burn. No more wood. Put it out.

The idea behind Six Sigma is that every process of a business should be executed with as few errors as possible – the target Six Sigma aims for is 3.4 errors in every 1 million attempts. Now, lots of companies follow silly management philosophies. But Six Sigma takes on religious overtones at G.E. because of its followers fervent belief that it is a universal belief, enforced in every facet of the corporate empire. Even, at one point, according to a (maybe apocryphal) well-told anecdote to comedy writing. Former GE chief executive Jack Welch is said to have once ordered the counting of the number of laughs each episode of NBC's sitcoms.

Funny because it's true.

Now I have to call Adobe Customer Service and beg them to please bestow on me a new serial number.

I'm done with this. I was contacted by somebody from Madcap today. I'm going to give Flare a try. At this point I either switch products or risk a mental health crisis.

Words cannot describe how much I love FrameMaker. I use(d) it to write everything, including mundane office dribble because I love structured documents and Microsoft Word has turned a once usable interface into tabbed hieroglyphics. RoboHELP on the other hand is now just Robohelp and hasn't changed much in years. It's not the best documentation solution, but it beats many others and has some cool features strapped onto it by Macromedia before Adobe ate them too.

Why People Hoard Violent Hostility Before Driving Home

Last August, I noticed that my installed, and perfectly functional, Adobe Technical Communication Suite 1.0 was working fine one day and the next day the serial number stopped working. This was because some update made Adobe Captivate reject my serial number. This happened on both my desktop and my laptop.

I thought I would call Adobe support. Looking back, I now see the folly of my youth and inexperience. I miss the old carefree me who doesn't cook blood-boiling hatred for Adobe's customer support methods and people.

Naturally, the support is in India. I'm okay with Indian support as long as the company they represent actually empowers them to do things. From what I've experienced, Adobe has empowered their Indian call centers to say "no" with various inflections as well as transferring me back and forth between customer service and technical support.  I have been told I need to pay for support. I have been told I need to completely reload all of my Adobe software. I have been told that I should know why my serial number doesn't work.

And Time Flies

Starting in August I called several times to kick-off a mind-numbing cycle of ignorant troubleshooting. My complaint is the serial number stopped working. I upgraded to Tech Comm Suite 1.3, hoping for a new serial number and never received one.  I'm told the old one will work for 1.3, but alas, it's not that easy. Adobe support's response to all of this is to have me uninstall and reinstall everything over and over for the next few months. Seeing how this is a suite of products, I spend more time following "Steve's" broken English instructions than I do getting real work done.

So now it's January 2009. Obama will be sworn in soon. Yet I am not getting Hope or Change from Adobe. We're still going back and forth on the phone. People say they will call me back and never do. I can't even guess as to how many call-backs were promised to me that just didn't happen.

I used to sing Adobe's praises for all to hear. InDesign is my publication designer. Dreamweaver is my prototyping and quick site building workhorse. However, FrameMaker is the ultimate documentation tool for me. Robohelp is a great addon that helps me just give customers what they want.

It's not like I don't want to be an Adobe customer. It's more like they resent that I still live and breath after I buy the product. This particular problem, from what I understand, is not uncommon. Damn that man who keeps calling and whining about his serial number.  Damn him back to FrameMaker 5.5 and don't let him upgrade again, they say.

You Can't Fight City Hall

With every call, I'm polite and I understand that each person at Adobe tech support is special in their own way. I'm sure "Ron", who was kind enough to hang up on me "accidentally" just needs a hug. And there was "Annona" who was very stern in insisting I had to pay for support to fix my serial number.  I don't yell at these people. Special people need a special place so they aren't operating machinery.

If I could affford it, I'd move to MadCap Sofware. They seem to have some interesting products. I would like to try their Robohelp and FrameMaker killers, Flare and Blaze.

But the expense of software conversion for small independents like me is enough to cause marital problems.

I'll stay with Adobe, but I'm angry with their support and I'm more angry that they know their support sucks and they are not taking steps to correct it. Maybe they're jonsing for a future bailout. Who knows.

I just know that after 6 months, I have an unresolved issue with a serial number for a product I've purchased and then upgraded. I've been treated as if I don't matter to Adobe and I can't use the software I purchased.  Thanks Adobe! I can now have a blog post about it.

Over the past year, homeowners have increasingly defaulted on mortgages, which has led to billions of dollars in losses for the pair of government-sponsored enterprises. That trend has also been one of the leading culprits in the deterioration in credit markets that has made it more difficult for companies in general to raise new capital.

Freddie has said it is committed to raising $5.5 billion to help shore up its troubled balance sheet – that is nearly twice the size of Freddie's current market capitalization of about $2.84 billion.

Fannie's (FNM: 4.87, -1.14, -18.96%) market capitalization is about $6.58 billion. Friedman, Billings & Ramsey Co. analyst Paul Miller estimates Fannie needs to raise between $5 billion and $10 billion in new capital.

But the prospect of government help has been one of the greatest hang-ups in efforts to raise capital from other investors.

Fannie and Freddie could raise those funds through non-governmental investors, but the cost would likely be severe in terms of interest or dividend payouts depending on the structure of the capital raise and in terms of dilution to current shareholders, analysts said.

"The cost of capital of this nature is just staggering," said Ladenburg Thalmann Inc. analyst Richard Bove. Fannie and Freddie could likely raise capital, but it would cost them so much during the current downturn in the credit market that it is unattractive, Bove said.

The government didn't bail out Enron (which would have saved us all from the Senate's showboating masquerading as a trial). Companies go out of business every day. I always thought that grim potential was motivation enough for businesses to work at avoiding disaster.

In the above quoted article, notice how the potential of government bailout devalues the company. It's not because a massive safety net of tax dollars motivates companies to do their best to turn a profit. Look at Amtrak.

What makes Fannie and Freddie so special they can't make mistakes and learn from them? Investors know a sour deal when they see it and US government-based endeavors do not turn profits. If there was no bail out and investors did come to the rescue, there would be some changes to turn Fannie and Freddie around. Investors with that kind of capital do not like to lose money.

I've seen my share of T-shirts, everything from ironic to pornographic. In fact, I noticed in Target the other day, they are selling toddler T-shirts that read, "1. I want it. 2. You buy it for me. 3. Any questions?" I thought that was more offensive because of the fact it was for a toddler and it feeds the entitlement culture, but I digress.

"Trendy", as quoted in the article, is referring to a statement on a T-shirt that they knew was controversial. Don't be fooled for second that people at Macy's are this stupid:

The T-shirt, which reads "Brown is the New White," is offensive, according to Hispanic marketing expert Dr. Ed Rincon.

"Macy's doesn't know a whole lot about what Hispanics want in the way of clothing. It also says that Macy's doesn't understand Hispanic culture. More importantly, it says that Macy's doesn't understand the Hispanics that lives in the U.S. and the kinds of products they are looking for," Rincon said.

However, Rincon said some Hispanic customers might enjoy and even purchase the shirt.

Macy's apologized for its decision to sell the shirt, releasing this statement:

"We are constantly looking for unique and differentiated merchandise that will resonate with our customers as hip, current and trendy. We also continue to work in developing business relationships with minority vendors to serve the growing diverse customer base. We apologize if customers have found some of the merchandise offensive and have removed the style that they found objectionable."

As usual, the reporter found an expert, in this case Dr. Rincon, who can defend the company by saying that Macy's people are culturally ignorant. To believe that, you have to believe that Macy's is totally run by white people and they did zero research. A major retailer who carries products without research is also known as "bankrupt" (e.g. Montgomery Wards). Since Macy's is not bankrupt, you can bet they don't carry any products without running them through over-thinking comities who approve the product based on market research and vendor-provided information.

I happen to think this shirt is consciously marketed to a specific group of Hispanics, the ones who came out in droves during the immigration protests and flew Mexican flags. It's not like anybody living in the Dallas area didn't know about immigration protests going on this year. You would have to believe that Macy's employees here don't pay attention to the news. Marketing people always pay attention to the media. That's what they do. They just didn't think it was a big deal. It just so happens somebody somehow routed this story to Fox 4 and they chose to carry it, making it a big deal.

I think the thing that bothers me the most about this is it reveals a dirty little secret of the marketing industry. Marketing could be described as racist. It breaks people into groups based on race, sex, age, and any other way to group people to examine buying habits. This seems benign because people do have a tendency to behave in similar demographic groups. This seems at odds with those who want you to believe that everybody is the same. How companies handle demographic data becomes a fine line between savvy marketing and pure racism.

In the above story, a product that is obviously racist is targeted at a group of people by race. When Macy's says it's "trendy" they really mean "ironic racism". I think we'll see more of this as we continue segment different groups of people and treat them differently based on those groups.

If he tries to appeal, I hope he gets a major dope slap. We can make fun of the judge all we want, but he represents everything wrong with American culture today. I don't know the Chungs, but I'm sure this has not been easy for them. Running a small business is not easy in America. Not only do you have to pay out the ass for taxes, service fees from other vendors, insurance, and a host of other expenses that crop up daily, but you have to worry about stupid people suing you because they have nothing better to do.

It's almost easier to work for a big company. You can get good insurance for not that much, a steady paycheck, and you don't look over your shoulder for somebody serving papers because satisfaction was guaranteed. This is sad because America was built by entrepreneurs and we are systematically choking the life out of small businesses.

Here's the irony: high taxes, over regulation, and the lawsuits that are so devastating to small business are perpetrated by the same kinds of people who also despise large corporations. They are forcing large companies to be larger as they lobby for legislation that punishes small businesses for existing.

Yahoo executives feel "horrible" about political arrests of Internet users in China but believe it's better to operate in that market and cooperate with authorities than not be there at all, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang said Wednesday.

This position is the old "it's just business" excuse reworded to sound sympathetic. Yang comes across as saying that it's a shame they are helping the oppressive Communist government out, but at least they are in the market and making money. His comments come very close to whining about how if Yahoo isn't in that market, Google and Microsoft will have a larger market share. Yeah, well, they are spineless cowards too.

Then Yang pulls a moral equivalence triangulation worthy of a politician running for the Senate.

Internet companies have to deal with regulations that affect their business in other countries as well, even in the U.S., which has the Patriot Act, he said. "There is no 100 percent clean, no matter what country you're talking about."

It's the tired old "the U.S. is not a perfect angel" defense people use when defending oppressive foreign governments. Most Americans don't like everything our government does, but direct comparisons between the U.S. and Chinese governments does nothing to strengthen the argument. In fact, his defense of Yahoo falls apart at that point. It's kind of like a bank robber saying "nobody's perfect" at his trial and expecting to get off.

It's frightening to watch today's business leaders attempt to build an amoral high ground to justify everything they do. You cannot separate morality and ethics from business. Just like everything else, refusing to judge and taking no action is an action all by itself. Yahoo is condoning the arrest of people whose only crime is to seek out information. The reason they are condoning the arrests is because they want a competitive edge in China. What a lousy reason. This is what it's like to not take a stand for or feel anything. The next thing you know, Yahoo will be part of the UN Security Council.

I never knew King since he died before I was born. I can't profess to know what he would think about today's racial discourse. However, if you are objective about history, you know that he personified intelligent, peaceful social change. No one can deny his oratory legacy as well as his ability to lead. You take that image and juxtapose it with today's leadership and their rhetoric and you will find a frightening contrast. Jesse Jackson, who was part of King's entourage, is a good example of somebody who could have been great but chose to use racial rhetoric to shakedown companies and misrepresent the truth for political purposes.

I'd like to write that Martin Luther King would have come unglued with anger at Jackson and the host of black and white politicians who will use race to ignite anger among the voting public. What I can say is that King projected class and his efforts actually produced positive results. He spoke of respect for all people and his words seem to paint a utopian picture of how people should live together. Maybe the world has too many cynics, but it's hard to believe somebody could get by talking like that today. Would King survive the 24 hour news cycle and the relentless media pundit criticism and the tabloid stories about his private life?

.

King's legacy was not just his public presentations and his ability to lead, but also his gift for showing the world a positive way to live. Can we turn down the gansta rap and the frothing political rhetoric and the angry bitterness of the entitlement culture enough to hear Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech with new ears?

Banks must provide customers with convenience, value and service in order to strengthen customer loyalty and stimulate growth, according to a new report from Deloitte's Banking practice. "Particularly in major metropolitan markets, many banks are competing for the same group of customers," says Toby Kilgore, principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP, in a statement. "To be successful, banks must differentiate themselves from the pack by providing a distinctive customer experience that captures customers' hearts and minds. Convenience will help attract new customers, but banks need to provide service and value in order to build loyalty, mitigate attrition and achieve significant top-line growth."

Oh, so customers will go where they are treated well? Who'd have thought that?

Once upon a time, the wooden tongue was restricted to corporate reps, PR mouthpieces and government spinmeisters. But over the last couple of years, there's been a fashion for official websites to reformat as blogs. A corporate website might be consulted once or twice, but a blog invites readers to return for a daily dose of "rolling news" about the product, personality or politician being advertised.

Since people like to read blogs, it's only natural you can take the square peg of blogging and cram in the round business hole. A friend of mine who works for an advertising balloon manufacturer told me his Web master was trying to upsell him on adding a blog to their Web site. The very idea that there was something in the advertising balloon arena to write about every day that would actually appeal to their market and lead to revenue is laughable. Obviously there is no one size fits all to marketing and PR. Blogging is popular, but at the same time, it is a unique phenomenon that can't be bottled like a soft drink.

Small businesses especially need to think about their own Web sites. Blogs are only as good as their content. The content must be edgy and fun to read. Most small business can't afford to have somebody working full time on Web content. And blogs are work–this I know. In addition, many people assume that blog articles for business read like magazine articles. Writing magazine-like articles will only dull the impact of a blog and demonstrates the aforementioned wooden tongue.

Small business owners should seriously plan and consider their Web content since their investment must produce results. A better use of money is in search engine optimization and creative marketing. Leave blogging to individuals and press releases to the businesses. That's the way it should be.

Public perception is increasingly fickle and anybody with enough venom in front of enough cameras can say anything they want and be believed at face value. Today's reporters are too damn lazy to research facts and investigate the motives behind the spewing hatred. Byron York, who is investigating the claims of the film, already found out an interesting piece of information:

BYRON YORK, NATIONAL REVIEW: Well, the story of H&H Hardware didn’t actually happen precisely as it is depicted in the picture. The store did close, but it closed three months before Wal-Mart actually opened its doors. And I talked to Don Hunter, the man you saw in the film there, who founded H&H in 1962, and he said that the coming of Wal-Mart had nothing to do with the decision to close the store.

Like Michael Moore, Robert Greenwald is using images and emotion to try and create a reality to prove a political point. The people interviewed are real, but the timeline is off and the facts aren't quite all there. So this is not really documentary filmmaking as much as it is realistic fiction. The problem is that Wal-Mart feels it has to rely on itself to get the facts out. Byron York works for the The National Review, which causes credibility problems with the left, and he is in an apparent minority when it comes to researching the facts of this film.

Remember Michael Moore sitting next to Jimmy Carter at the Democrat National Convention? Now we have Robert Greenwald getting an endorsement from Ted Kennedy. This is a frightening trend and Wal-Mart is ahead of the curve by creating its own War Room. The PR battles are going to be intense. Wal-Mart has more than just its bottom line to think about. If I was an executive at Wal-Mart, I'd be deeply bothered by the political handling of how I did business. This is a prelude to regulation. When U.S. Senators publicly bad-mouth companies, you know they want to pass laws and make themselves into union heroes.

While the media fawns over this film, remember that Wal-Mart employs 1.5 million people worldwide. The more that Wal-Mart gets negative press and pulled into the left-versus-right political whirlwind, these people will be affected. Wal-Mart has already shown it will close stores rather than deal with unions. They will also have to raise prices to conform to unreasonable regulations, which seems okay to Kennedy. I'm interested in how the War Room will gear up and combat the politics. Somebody has to.

A good friend of mine called me yesterday. He was assaulted at work–physically attacked by another employee. The owner of the company refused to call the police and eventually threatened my friend with termination if he called the police or retained an attorney. He was also told that the attack was between two people and had nothing to do with the business and that he had to cover his own medical expenses. My friend went to the ER and had some injuries that were significant. Today, the owner still maintains none of this is his responsibility and that everybody should shake hands and work together.

Oh, where do I begin with this?

The culture in this small business is toxic at best. Office banter is severe and those with thin skin would not make it more than a day there. Crass sexual humor, racial slurs, and over-the-top insults clog the air. I detected long ago that my friend felt he was defending himself every minute of every day while also having to participate in this environment. Well, as the old expression states: "It's all fun until somebody gets hurt." Somebody is hurt and the company did not fire the aggressor. In addition, the owner did not file a police report and tries to disassociate himself from the violence. Now you can see how such a negative culture existed in the first place.

Corporate America has been taken to the legal woodshed so many times, it's no wonder there is zero tolerance for behavior like that at places like Allstate Insurance, Sears, and SBC. Any well-run company management knows they are there to make money and anybody that is not on board with that is a liability. However, small businesses are a different breed of company. Many of them are managed as if profitability and growth are somebody else's problem and professionalism is something from a magazine. As a customer, I would question my relationship with a company that allows its employees to degrade each other to the point that a fight breaks out. In today's business world, who has time for that crap?

In addition, numerous attorneys have used OSHA as the foundation for defining a safe working environment. In spite of the owner's protests, this altercation happened in his company's facility and only a head made of the densest of wood cannot accept the fact that what employees do on company time in a company facility is his problem. Sweeping this under the rug will not do.

Professionalism is not foreign and it should exist in companies of all sizes and shapes. Small business owners should expect nothing less than the best from their people. They should reward professional, money-making behavior and punish immature, risky behavior.

I'm scratching my head today still wondering why my friend's coworker is still there. I'm also wondering how he will handle this. I told him what I would do in his situation, but I'm not him. The one thing to be learned from this event is to pay attention to where you work.

Small businesses should be run with integrity, professionalism, and pride. If you are working for a small business without those, there are plenty more opportunities out there. Use your own self-respect as a guide to finding the right culture. As for business owners, pay attention to what you let your employees do. You might end up on the wrong side of a lawsuit because you let the culture get out of control.

A just issue brought up by the Hollywood unions this week regarding how the studios sort of forgot to include the actual talent in the profit-sharing when video content is purchased from iTunes (see Unions seek video iPod residuals).

Verrone said he and Connolly immediately realized that they, as well as Directors Guild of America, Screen Actors Guild and WGA East, need to "ensure that this new distribution system is covered by the appropriate formulas in our respective contracts."

WGAW continues to believe that the proper formula is the existing one covering pay television. That entitles writers to 1.2% of the entire producers' gross. DGA has an identical formula, while SAG gets 3.6% and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) gets 5.4%.

It's amazing that the legal snipers at ABC didn't notice the absence of residuals for the creatives before the contracts with Apple were signed. It's likely ABC wanted to see what would happen if they completely ignored it. Can you see some attorney smirking as he says, "What if they don't notice?"

As if.

Hollywood business is different than any other industry. Aside from the entertainment industry, I don't think employees who contribute to products or services get residuals when a product is used. Honestly, I'd love to get a check every time a user manual I wrote is copied. Not too long ago, a friend of mine who worked at a bank where I worked more than ten years ago said they were still using policies and procedures I wrote. Where are my residuals? While I think this approach to income is a little out of touch with the rest of the world, Hollywood does a lot of things right. If you want to know how to run a project, look at how movies are made. Plus writers, actors, and other creatives do get rewarded for their hard work–especially when a project is successful.

Now go to Detroit and look at what's happening to Delphi. Especially in the auto industry, unions have become their own worst enemy. A good roundup of Delphi's woes are summed up in this editorial.

DOMESTIC AUTOMAKERS have had to pay off the UAW for productivity improvements–more automation, flexible job rules and job cuts–which were needed to compete with foreign competitors. This invariably required putting more people on the private dole.

…

This kind of welfare was tolerable when the Big Three automakers dominated the market. But GM, which once claimed 50 percent of the American market, is clinging to about 26 percent today. Even during what is supposed to be an economic recovery, automakers and their suppliers are struggling; GM lost $1.6 billion in the third quarter alone. Ford lost $284 million overall in the third quarter, with its North American auto operations losing $1.3 billion. And both Ford and GM say they plan to cut more factories.

GENERAL MOTORS has a more perilous situation than Social Security. At least that federal program can claim three workers for every retiree. GM has more than three times as many retirees and dependents as it has workers. Delphi's Miller and the Bank of America warn that GM eventually could go bankrupt.

Go read the whole thing. It puts in perspective the out-of-control expectations of unions. Part of this is a cultural problem. Big business has been so demonized in books, movies, and in the press, it's nearly impossible to understand that a company the size of GM, for example, could have real financial problems. The workers see them as this infinite behemoth that will keep feeding them until they pass away during old age. At the same time, many of us in the non-union world have learned the hard way that you cannot count on companies for much more than a paycheck. Benefits are getting cut each year and any kind of retirement I had has been decimated by two layoffs. Retirement, healthcare, and other benefits traditionally provided by employers are actually beginning to strain companies. Unions can strike as much as they want, but eventually the numbers dictate the situation. Delphi filed bankruptcy because the money just isn't there. As for the high cost of healthcare, I'll save that for another article.

Is there a place in the twenty-first century for unions? Of course. However, their relevancy will be determined by how reasonable they will be when the employees are genuinely getting the shaft.

"We wanted to know how far the Internet had gone beyond the simple exchange of information and were extremely surprised," said Bhawani Singh, managing director of consumer research at ACNielsen Europe. "This medium is far bigger than we expected, and it is clear to us that many retailers and marketers are not using it to its full potential."

That is the quote of the day. According to the study the biggest sellers online are books, DVDs, and music–adult content was excluded from the overall study. That leaves millions of products and services online that have yet to be properly marketed. In addition to confirming that Internet users actually do spend money, it exposes how consumers are in sort of a rut.

Right now, if books and movies and music are what most people are comfortable in purchasing, then what does that say about other industries? Even within retail, there seems to be a need for more savvy marketing and product placement. This is not to say that spam or other obnoxious "marketing" is necessary. But I'm not entirely convinced company's have completely bought into e-commerce strategies that work. Just throwing up a shopping cart on a site is not going make sales. What will make sales are:

• Customer comfort with privacy and security
• Values that can't be found in real-world stores
• Unique products or product packages only available on the Web
• Easy return policies
• Enhanced product information and customer reviews

Amazon has it right in many cases. However, they are still using their books and music paradigm. I'm starting to wonder if the online shopping experience needs to be as unique as the products. Can the shopping environment change based on the type of product and even the pricing? The answer is yes it can. But how to pull it off takes time, money, research, and an enormous amount of creativity.

It appears that Krispy Kreme's approach to growth still continues to backfire.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. shares dived as much as 15% Monday after the retailer said that it purchased equity it didn't already own in a Philadelphia franchisee that had filed for bankruptcy protection and owed the company $24.1 million.

….

The company has faced a number of heady issues in the last year, including an SEC investigation into accounting issues related to franchise purchases.

In January, Krispy Kreme forced out Chief Executive Scott Livengood and other senior managers. Cooper, a restructuring artist from Kroll Zolfo Cooper, was retained to clean up the financial issues and put the doughnut maker back on track.

Meanwhile, the company has been facing a number of lawsuits from both shareholders and franchisees.

Krispy Kreme is going to go down in business history as the ultimate example of how to achieve diminishing returns in record time. Krispy Kreme has been analyzed to death. There's no need in talking about the mismanagement, accounting screw-ups, and the overall growth-with-no-direction strategy. So I'll talk about it from the everyman point of view.

If the Krispy Kreme executives would have stepped out of their ivory towers and actually visited some stores, maybe wearing some jeans and a concert t-shirt, they would found early on a cult-like following. I remember standing in line waiting for a hot, fresh, luscious, pillowy circle of delight. One guy I didn't know started talking to me about how he'd drove over an hour to get some Krispy Kreme since there was none where he was.

Jump ahead in the future five years. I can now buy Krispy Kreme at a freakin' gas station. A gas station? Come on! They have them at Target and Krogers. That's just covered in wrong. What once was a special product that people would seek out for the sheer near-sexual pleasure is now as ubiquitous as ballpoint pens.

Didn't these guys go to business school? They had the ultimate in a controlled supply and demand product. They could have throttled back the supply and rode the sugary wave of success for decades.

I knew it was over when the other day, one of my old coworkers, who used to share the Krispy Kreme love with me like some kind of drug, kind of shrugged off Krispy Kreme as nothing special.

Sadly, there can be too much of a good thing–even doughnuts.

The new video iPod, available in black or white, will be able to play video and podcasts. A 30-gigabyte version will sell for $299 and a 60-gigabyte, $399. Extra features on both versions include a clock, a calendar that Jobs said never looked better, a stop watch and a screen lock.

"It's really very beautiful and very thin," Jobs said at the much anticipated news conference.

Apple has been riding high on the success of its iPods, which helped quadruple the company's profits last quarter.

In the last fiscal quarter, the iPod accounted for nearly a third of Apple's revenue; Macintosh computers, Apple's historical core product, accounted for about 44 percent with 1.2 million units sold.

Who wouldn't want to run a company that gets so much coverage over a new product line and people buy just because it's cool? Apple has much to teach the rest of us on how to develop and release products.

Thanks to The Daily Show, I have a show-piece of how not to create a flow chart. They pointed out this insane representation of the FEMA workflow taken directly from the FEMA Web site. If you don't believe it, click the graphic and see a screenshot of the Web site with the graphic in context. It will probably be taken down this week if anybody at FEMA with a brain is paying attention.

I can't say anything anymore than what was said on The Daily Show. However, with the recent negative focus on FEMA recently, stuff like this just gives ammunition to the comedians and the critics alike. FEMA is in the middle of a huge shake up and I think it's time to learn something from all of this.

Michael Brown is the ultimate scapegoat character in the Katrina story. I watched politicians in the hearings a couple of days ago just rip him up and down mercilessly. Then they pretty much gave Kathleen Blanco a pass on her indecision, conflict with Mayor "School Bus" Nagin, and orders to turn away the Red Cross and Salvation Army (see also Experts: Focus on terrorism delays FEMA response to Katrina (hat tip: Cafe Hayek).

"We've tried desperately to rescue 250 people trapped in a Salvation Army facility. They've been trapped in there since the flood came in. Many are on dialysis machines," said Maj. George Hood, national communications secretary for the relief organization.

"Yesterday we rented big fan boats to pull them out and the National Guard would not let us enter the city," he said. The reason: a new plan to evacuate the embattled city grid by grid – and the Salvation Army's facility didn't fall in the right grid that day, Hood said in a telephone interview from Jackson, Miss.

The National Guard was operating under direction of the State of Louisiana–not FEMA.

Lesson one: Things are not fair. Prepare yourself for unfair treatment.

One thing about Michael Brown that bothered me greatly was his exaggerated resume. If you or I falsified our resumes, we'd be booted from any private company. That is grounds for dismissal. Period. That gives all of us a little insight into the fact that Michael Brown is not all he wants you to think he is. But just because he's not a quality person doesn't mean he's in league with Satan. However, since he is a scapegoat, all of his past indiscretions will surface.

Lesson two: In your professional life, do things better and cleaner than others. You don't want somebody finding professional indiscretions and using them against you when it hits the fan. Plus, you'll feel better about yourself.

Okay, we all expect the government to be bureaucratic, slow, and painful to work with. I've heard complaints from private, corporate donors that FEMA requires so much paperwork and processes to be followed, it's hard to give supplies to the relief effort through FEMA. Processes are good when they are used to keep everybody involved coordinated. They are not good when they exist strictly to exist.

Lesson three: Keep things simple. Streamlining processes saves time and money. Continually look for ways to improve processes and remove unnecessary obstacles.

Finally, as we look back at the graphic above, we can see clearly that FEMA's communication problems exist at every level. From the coordination of efforts to the public image they present. There is no excuse for that graphic to exist on their Web site. Plus, there seems to be a lot of he said, she said rhetoric between Brown and Blanco. I don't know how much of the actions taken were documented either in a database, memo form, or in a timeline document. Professional technical communicators exist to document things accurately. Apparently FEMA needs to hire some, at least to review and edit the Web site.

Lesson four: Take communication seriously. Hire professional writers to document processes, actions, and public communication. All of the process improvement in the world will do no good if it's not written down clearly and concisely. It's not about CYA as much as it's about recording the reality.