Category: Interesting Reading

All politics are personal

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

TechRepublican points to this pretty cool video about the continued significance of social networking:

The importance of online engagement is nothing new to businesses and politicians – at least, it shouldn’t be.  Still, even those who appreciate the power of this communication don’t seem to grasp the underlying principles.

One set of stats stood out from this video: while only 14% of people polled trust advertisements, 78% trust recommendations from friends.  Those aren’t necessarily Facebook friends, either; the more technology becomes integrated in our lives, the more it exposes our human nature.  We trust people we know more than those we don’t know.  Political strategists from the nineteenth century understood the need for voters to hear from local party leaders, and no substitute has ever worked.

Speaking at an event in Richmond, Va. last weekend, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe summed up what that means for the campaigns of the future:

Plouffe said the campaign was built using the Internet to engage voters in volunteering, contributing money and “sharing the message” amongst themselves. Connecting these people — not only to the campaign but to each other — helped them build trust with prospective voters they engaged both online and face-to-face.

“There is a lack of trust — in government, in business leaders, in academic leaders, even in faith leaders,” Plouffe said. But, he said, “People trust each other.”

Forget about local – all politics are personal, and always has been.

Santa Clara County is your new Mom!

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

I know: it doesn’t seem fair.

All the kids in the other counties get a toy with their Happy Meal.  But you live in Santa Clara County, and Santa Clara County says you aren’t allowed to have toys with your fast food.

This is important.  After all, some foods aren’t good for you if eaten in excess, and someone has to be there to tell you to stop.  Who else is going to to that?  Your parents?  With kid’s meal toys out of the picture, there’s nothing that draws kids into these fast food restaurants.  Well, other than the fact that the food tastes really good to a kid.

Those other counties may seem “way cooler” now, but wait a few years and you’ll see that Santa Clara County really did know what was best for you all along.

(Unless you run a fast food franchise close to one of Santa Clara’s county borders and are looking to get any business on a Saturday afternoon.  Then you’re screwed.)

Screwing strippers

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

At the end of last week, The Daily Caller published a two-part, uh, exposé on court-mandated reforms to the exotic dancer trade in my adopted home state of Massachusetts.   It’s relevant because a recent court ruling mandated that strippers could no longer consider themselves “independent contractors,” and instead must be full-time employees of a club.

(At press time, there’s no word on how this affects “amateur night.”)

Massachusetts law is designed to carefully scrutinize independent contractors – even if they keep their clothes on – to make sure businesses aren’t getting away with something.  The reasoning is that most workers would prefer to be full-time employees instead.

But it turns out, that isn’t always true.  Independent contractor status allowed strippers to work multiple clubs, set their own pricing for things like lap dances, write off commuting expenses, and – most important – pocket much of the money they received from customers, save for what they would pay in taxes.  Strippers are now guaranteed a nightly payout – an assurance they did not enjoy as independent contractors.  Previously, though, an astute practitioner of the burlesque could use the aforementioned freedoms to earn a much bigger payout, without having to share every single tossed their way with the owners of the runways.

As it turns out, the most successful strippers are the ones that are best at math.  Oddly enough, that was never an answer back in school when people asked when they’d have to use algebra.

The  Massachusetts Stripper Story isn’t about women removing their clothes.  (It may, however, be why the story gets read.)   This is about laws meant to protect workers – laws like compulsory unionism, minimum wage, and overtime – that actually limit workers’ ability to work.  Limiting things like independent contractor status really limit employee innovation and entrepreneurship – the ability to find a market for your skill and make money off it.  It has potential implications, for instance, for freelance writers.

With national employment in the state it’s in, workers need flexibility to make as much money as possible.  Creative thinking like that should be rewarded.

(Lest anyone think this is a partisan story because Massachusetts Democrats were behind the independent contractor ruling, Republicans apparently have their own issues with punishing strippers.)

The Road Behind

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Bill Gates penned The Road Ahead as a vision of where online communications would head in the next 10-15 years.  And he wrote it in 1995 – in fact, when it was released as an audiobook you could actually get it on cassette.

Some of Gates’s predictions, which sounded far-fetched a decade and a half ago, have come to fruition.  Shopping online, for instance, is now accepted as a secure and dependable way to do business.  Services like Yelp make it easy to check out what others think of restaurants.  Movies and video entertainment are available on-demand, and the TV screen is becoming indistinguishable from the computer screen.

This came to mind today not only because I recently re-read the book, but also because Wired reports that one of Gates’s predictions is coming closer to fruition: a personal device Gates calls the “wallet PC.”

Gates’s concept of the “wallet PC” is a truly personal computer, but goes beyond most smartphones – essentially, a credit card, phone, netbook, driver’s license, and GPS all rolled into one.  Services like PayPal and Square, combined with increasingly sophisticated phones and, perhaps most importantly, faster wireless connections, make shopping in the real world look more and more like shopping online – literally exchanging money by pointing and clicking.

One piece of irony of The Road Ahead is that Microsoft was not the driver for the realization of many of Gates’s predictions – and in fact, many Microsoft competitors made advancements that he foresaw.  Apple’s iPhone paved the way for “wallet PCs”; Gates’s often-stated idea that information would become the currency of the 21st century is today embodied by Google’s mission.  That these developments were made by others doesn’t make Gates any less visionary.

Hey! iTunes! Leave our tracks alone!

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

If you’re buying Pink Floyd tracks online, you’ll have to buy the whole album, thanks to a ruling handed down this week in the band’s legal dispute against EMI.

The music media landscape is changing, and while bands like OK Go have proved masterful at taking advantage, there’s something to be said about Pink Floyd’s insistence that their music is sold the way it was made. (Ironically enough, OK Go had to fight EMI to execute their vision of social promotion.)

This is an artistic decision, not a business decision.  Albums like Dark Side of the Moon and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band are built differently than today’s albums, which are often a collection of singles.  Those albums are like movies – while isolated parts might be enjoyable, they only really make sense when taken as a whole.  Today’s music might be more akin to a episodes of a TV show – enjoyable and self-contained in smaller pieces.

The decision won’t help Pink Floyd sell music.  But that’s not the point.

Rove, Rove, Rove your boat

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Despite some stirrings on the right, there’s nothing wrong with Matt Lauer’s interview with Karl Rove, part of which aired yesterday morning.  The Today Show host was a bit combative, but journalists are supposed to be that way when talking with political figures.  (And sparring with a Republican is at least better than recycling the same five stories every morning and pretending like something is new.)

Matt Lewis had Rove on his podcast yesterday and came at the interview from a different angle.  If you are a politics junkie, it’s a good interview to listen to.  (For instance, Rove shares a hilarious story of a then-college-aged Lee Atwater’s first meeting with George H.W. Bush.)  It’s definitely worth a listen.

31 and forever young

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Last year, I celebrated my 30th birthday with a list of 30 lessons I had learned in 30 years on the planet, which I got a lot of good feedback for.  For 31, I only have one thing to share.

One advantage of having an early March birthday is that if you are a baseball fan, the Spring Training games are starting right now.  I am something of a baseball fan, so I’ve been reading up about the Yankees in Florida.  But a piece of news from the San Francisco Giants camp made me smile this week, when pitcher Tim Lincecum met the Mariners’ Ken Griffey Jr.:

It happened in the visitor’s clubhouse at Peoria Stadium, as Lincecum discussed his one-inning start against the Mariners. Griffey budged into a group of reporters and extended his hand.

“Lincy, what’s up?” Griffey said. “Just wanted to say hi.”

Then, as soon as he appeared, Griffey was gone, skipping out of enemy territory. “Nice meeting you!” Lincecum called out to him. He looked dazed and awed.

“Wow, he just came over here,” Lincecum said. “What were we talking about?”

The most obvious part of the story is Lincecum’s reaction.  Tim Lincecum has won the last two Cy Young awards and is among the best pitchers in baseball, if not the very best.  He signed a $23 million contract this winter and, when he becomes a free agent in a few years, will sign much bigger contract (if he stays healthy).  And when he met one of the players he grew up idolizing, he became 10 again.  Lincecum unwittingly reminds us that we shouldn’t let the responsibilities that we take on as we grow older keep us from enjoying the things that make us feel like a kid again.

But there’s another side to this.

By making the short trip from one clubhouse to another – a miniscule effort – Griffey made Lincecum’s day.  And as he shook the pitcher’s hand, surely a part of Griffey flashed back to the mid-90’s as well, when he was a skinny young kid himself with a sweet lefty swing saving the Seattle Mariners franchise.

The point is that being young at heart isn’t something you have to wait for – opportunities are created, not made.  Just make sure to grab ’em when you see ’em.

Hulu learns content is still king

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The decision by Viacom to pull its content from Hulu – while still keeping that content online – shows exactly why Hulu is the #2 site for online video.

As Tech Crunch reported, a key factor was the share of the ad revenue – Viacom makes more money by selling ads for video content on its own websites because it doesn’t have to split that money.  At the same time, Viacom can still make clips of its shows sharable and embeddable.

It brings to light a significant problem for Hulu: what value do they really add as a third party service?

Hulu was born because founding parents Fox and NBC were rightly worried about their content being ripped off and posted on YouTube – and because they realized that online video was an entertainment medium that they needed to embrace in some way.  The Simpsons, SNL, Heroes, Family Guy, and other shows from those networks made it on the site, along with content from their cable and feature film properties.  Other media companies, like ABC/Disney and Viacom, signed on as well.

The reason Hulu has always played second fiddle to YouTube is in a distinct difference in their business model.  While Hulu has always been about the content, YouTube has served as the infrastructure for the advent of web video.  In the days before YouTube, putting video online meant thinking about managing huge files and possible paying exorbitant hosting fees.  YouTube’s value to the content provider was allowing people who otherwise could not have done so to share video – whether that meant a cat falling off a bed or an independent short film.

Hulu’s value proposition to its content provider partners appears to be the ability to give them space on a high-traffic website.  But like YouTube and any other online video site, traffic comes because of content.  In reality, high traffic numbers are content providers’ value to Hulu, rather than the other way around.

This doesn’t mean the end of Hulu, of course – after all, the site was started by content providers.  But it may mean that, eventually, NBC/Universal and Fox find that they are the only ones left on the playground.

The loss of an American icon – literally

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

MTV will make a small but significant change in its logo.  The M, the T, and of course the V will remain, but the channel will no longer include the words “music television” underneath.   Those of us nostalgic for the early glory days – when one could actually catch the video for Glory Days on MTV – may complain about the death of music television, but will we really miss it?

When MTV first launched, shows like Yo MTV Raps and Headbanger’s Ball acted like radio on television – giving audiences a way to expand their music horizons and generating crossover appeal.  As videos evolved, they became more involved and independent of the music they presented – short films set to music.  There was always a reason to tune into MTV and watch hours of music programming: either you might find something new to listen to, or eventually you’re going to see your favorite funny or interesting mini-movie featuring some cool music.

Finding new music you like can be done on internet radio stations like Pandora.  And if you really want to see music videos, YouTube or a plethora of other sites can serve that purpose.  Music television has been erased not only from MTV’s logo, but from television.  It’s a wise programming move – an extended block of music videos just isn’t useful programming anymore, unless it’s overnight or early morning.  You can’t get money for nothing.

All that being said, there are some of us who latched onto our favorite bands, in part, because of interesting and innovative videos… like these: