Archive for August, 2008
Early death predicted!
Thursday, August 21st, 2008Chris Anderson and the wrong tail of energy security
Monday, August 18th, 2008Chris Anderson is on such the wrong track about energy security.
He does get the idea of reducing Vehicle Miles Traveled. Anything we can do to reduce the miles that need to be traveled to accomplish a task will lead to energy security and independence.
Man, oh, man …but…everything else…. thumbs down…..
- EU’s policy on GMO was driven by the choice of its *people* (as in a democracy lets its people decide). Or does Chris now believe that you should not be allowed to decide what kinds of food you eat?
- Africa doesn’t want GMO because they don’t want to have to pay Monsanto to grow crops that African farmers have grown for centuries. African farmers like most indigenous farmers save seed from one crop to start the next. GMO seed from Monsanto means that those farmers have to pay for the privilege of what they have done for free for generations. In a case in Canada — a farmer was accused by Monsanto of ’stealing’ their corn seed because the GMO Monsanto corn had cross-pollinated with his corn stock. Whether or not you believe the defendant farmer is immaterial. Why would Africans be stupid enough to make let Monsanto, et.al. control their food supply?
- Africa is the original source for barley (13 or so subspecies). Coming in with a GMO pollutes the seed stock. To see what I mean just google for “GMO Corn pollution”.
- Blaming environmentalists for the lack of LNG terminals is just wrong. Most people don’t want to have an LNG terminal anywhere near them because if an LNG tanker is ever successfully attacked (and its already been attempted) everyone with waterside property will be crispy. There is a reason the Coast Guard establishes a 2 mile security zone in front, 1 mile behind, and 500 yards on either side of an LNG ship.
- Natural Gas is another fossil fuel that is running out. Its prices are going up for the same reason that oil in general is going up … increased demand.
- Corn prices have shot up because the US has decided that it would be a good idea to burn our food in our cars in the form of ethanol rather than eat it.
- Our agriculture is a very fossil fuel intensive endeavor. Fertilizers are made from fossil fuels. Farmers use fossil fuel hungry tractors and equipment. The food is grown thousand of miles away from where it is consumed. And lastly, meat production is even more intensive as it takes all that fossil fuel in the form of corn and then feeds it to cattle. So we should not be surprised that fossil fuel prices sky-rocketing results in high food prices.
- Nuclear — No nuclear power plants are being built because the economics simply are not there. Nuclear power plants come in only one size — extra large. Power companies are trying to adjust their production with the demand. A nuclear power plant is a decade-long bet on a huge increase in demand. This is a very dangerous bet that no sane energy executive will make. California has shown that it is possible to reduce per-capita energy consumption without severe noticeable economic issues. California has been doing this for decades (even before the Enron fiasco). So an energy executive has got to decide today that in 2018 electrical demand is going to be so high that any advances in solar, wind, geothermal + any advances in energy efficiency is going to justify an all-or-nothing bet on a nuclear power plant.
- Nuclear — any nuclear power plant needs an enriched power source. More nuclear power plants means more incentive for other less stable nations to decide they want their own nuclear power plant — which of course makes it easier for nuclear fuel to fall into the wrong hands. Do you think it is a great idea for nuclear technology to be spread everywhere?
- Nuclear — There really isn’t that much uranium in the world. And as this article explains most uranium comes from …. other countries. So once again our energy security would be out of our control!
High-Speed Rail and the “Reason” Foundation.
Sunday, August 17th, 2008Here is what the “Reason” Foundation says about High Speed Rail:
If you don’t want to read the whole thing:
- a Highway project in Massachusetts ended up cost more money than planned for — as we all know highway projects always cost way too much.
- the US can’t get off its ass and build anything faster than the Acela. (at a time when the French have tested a train that could beat a plane flying the JFK-LAX route)
- the California HSR route is longer than the Acela line and somehow that means the percentage market capture should be smaller — because as we all know people take High-Speed Rail to get to their neighbor’s house or their kitchen.
- Apparently the species of homo sapiens (homo sillius?) that lives in the US is different than the species living in Japan and Europe — so therefore anything that other species does does not apply to homo sillius.
- High-Speed Rail apparently is supposed to compete against Greyhound on a price basis and against planes based on time. I didn’t realize that the business bus traveler was such an important target market.
- All that stuff in the latest Star Trek movie — you know …. those cool transporters that instantly zap you from place to place … are already in place. Those transporters will be used to instantly zap you out of your house, past airport security to your airline seat. Travelers will not have to arrive at the airport 2 hours before their flight. At the other end, the transporters will get travelers from LAX to where they really want to be. This will keep that airline flight of 80 min time competitive with a 150min HSR trip. The bad news is that sometimes TSA regulations result in you arriving unclothed because TSA needs to send your clothes for “extra screening”. Hospital gowns will be provided while you are waiting for your clothes to catch up. Remember the adage to deal with stage fright “Imagine your audience is wearing no clothes?” well now you will not have to imagine…
- Businesses survive by satisfying the “homo consumius” species. politicians survive by satisfying the “homo votius” species. Once again, new subspecies that our high school textbooks sadly have failed to document.
- Bonds are a bad idea. investment is a bad idea.
Seth Godin is wrong, n00bies are everyone.
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008Boy when Seth Godin gets it wrong he really gets it wrong. Seth postulates that people should be willing to ignore n00b (new) customers or decide that some people are not a good customer fit for a product because they don’t “get it right”.
Seth is saying this because he wants to make sure that people don’t “bake the magic” of the product out in attempt to dumb down the product for the noobies.
Seth makes a key, common, fatal error. He assumes the product has to be the same for everyone.
Seth offers a few strawman arguments like “should symphonies have applause signs” or “not obvious what to do when you walk into a church for the first time”. Completely ridiculous statements that miss how society has evolved to handle n00bies in precisely these situations. A n00bie at the symphony or church looks around and sees what others are doing and they follow the lead of the crowd around them. If others are clapping after a masterful solo performance, the musically clueless claps as well – and learns to pay closer attention to the soloist. In the Roman Catholic church, a Protestant will learn to make the sign of the cross and kneel in the right places.
What great products need are what society uses in real world situations. Someone who spots the new people and offers to introduce to help them out. Microsoft’s bob was a lame version of this concept, but the principle remains a good one.
Think about the mental rewards of having pieces of the product reveal themselves to expert users. Rather than show everything all at once, hid the advanced features. Make it hard to find the advanced features. Keep the advanced features, even the link to the advanced features hidden. Make a little icon over in the corner unobtrusive for the new user. But as the new user becomes experienced, have that icon brighten and become more obvious.
The user gets curious and clicks on it. The service or program then reveals cool new features or expert settings options. All of a sudden, the user is in the in-crowd. They know something about the product that their friends don’t. They now feel special. They get to call up their friends and say “hey go to the second step and click on that little square.” or “move the mouse to the lower right”.. Whatever it is it doesn’t matter. Your users will now go on a easter egg hunt using your product. They will be actively incentivized to really become fans. They will go on message boards spreading the word about how to get to cool new features.
Think Easter Eggs not RTFM.
Remember most people are comfortably mediocre (intermediate uses) with your product. They start off as n00bies and they can easily transition to mediocre. But they have no iterest or desire to become experts. Their bonus is not determined by being an expert in the program or service.
The hard part isn’t getting n00bies to intermediate. The hard part is making them want to be experts.
Make your customers want to become experts — don’t turn them away when they are n00bies.
I used to work at LinkedIn. At the time I was there, one of the hardest problems they had was they did not know how to spot when a user would go from a few connections to thousands — or would always stay at a few connections.
Similarly you do not know who is going to be your future power users.