buzznovation

A very sad day...

On February 22, my friend Tom LeVine called as he was driving in San Jose headed to Ojai, California. Tom was the CEO of Pop!Tech and one of my dearest and most wonderful friends in my life. Tom had had a series of meetings in Silicon Valley, and was headed to Ojai to see his parents. Tom talked about how well the meetings had gone, and mentioned in passing that he had eaten sushi the night before (sushi being his favorite dish), and said that it must have been bad sushi, but as he said, when he got to Ojai, his mother would tuck him in and feed him some chicken soup, and life would be good again .

 

Saturday night, 57 days later, Tom died of Glioblastoma at age 56.

 

He died quietly, surrounded by women who loved him, his wife Valerie, his mother Joyce and his sister Lizabeth. His wonderful children Chloe and Remy were also at his bedside.

 

When I was first told of the diagnosis, I did some quick research, only to learn that if the diagnosis was correct, that Tom had won the lottery, only the wrong one. I waited anxiously for a confirmation that the diagnosis was incorrect only to learn that it was. Only 2-3 cases exist per 100,000 people in America.

 

Then I learned that Tom was being moved home, as there was nothing more that could be done.

 

 I immediately made plans to go to his home in Maine to see him.

 

The morning I arrived, Tom was lying in a hospital bed. He was very frail, but when he learned that I had arrived, he reached up and hugged me. Moments later, a mechanic arrived to change his hospital bed. I realized that Tom would need to be moved. And then I realized that my purpose in life was to be there at that moment, to carefully lift my friend, first to move him to a day bed, and then to gently move him back.

 

Over the course of the next five days I spent about 15 hours at his bed side, and during that time it seemed that perhaps he was conscious of my presence for perhaps 30 minutes. By the second day I was Maine, the women in his life, his wife, mother and sister, had completely taken over. And he was surrounded by loving women. The image I will forever have in mind is that of Christ being taken down from the cross, and bathed and prepared for burial by the women in his life.

 

On another day, when I arrived to sit at his bedside, his mother told him I was there. He spoke, and told his mother about our friendship, and of a wonderful time we had had, and then drifted off. I told him that I loved him, and I am sure he heard me.

 

It was as if he was saying good bye to me, as he was not conscious again while I was there.

 

Each day since I have prayed for Tom, I have prayed for those caring for him.

 

This morning, which was cold, gray, and raining, I awoke thinking about Tom.  Moments later I got a call from Tom's great friend Alex Hyman telling me of Tom's death. We spoke briefly, sharing stories of our times Tom.

 

In our lives, we have regrets, as for my time with Tom, I have but one. We had planned to go skiing this winter, and we didn't.  In my mind and in my dreams, Tom will be flying down the best of God’s mountains, And one day we will meet up and ski together.

 

Each day I will miss him, I will miss our time together, our conversations, laughing and talking. My only regret will be that we didn’t have even more fun.

 

One of the persons that I wrote to about Tom, wrote me back, “Life is precious, and time is short…” 

 

Amen.

The Productivity Software Subscription Model...some thoughts on...

For a number of years we have been selling a version of ActiveWords that we call the ActiveWords for the Enterprise. The price is basically $30 per seat per year. We have a fair number of customers, and would always like to have more.

We carefully outline the difference between the two versions. We provide more tools for this version, and try to make sure that enterprises understand why this is a better tool for them. I know our logic has always been that building a subscription base business would be better for everyone, for us and for our customers. This type of model would allow us to have steady cash flow, and at the same time insure that the customer always has the latest version of what we are building.

I was just reading an article in the online version of the WSJ related to Microsoft’s “Albany” offering by which Microsoft plans to allow for a subscription based version of Office. It will be interesting to see what is included in the offering. There is no mention in the article as to the pricing, etc.

When I gave a talk at the Office 2.0 conference last fall, my thesis was that unless offerings like this offer more than what is typically offered, I am not sure what the incentive is for the software buyer. There are a lot of very smart people at Microsoft, and it will be interesting to see what direction they go. Their success will provide guidance for those of us who would like to see this model succeed.

When I have talked to a number of our customers, most are very reluctant to use on-line versions of productivity type applications. Their logic being that if they have say 30 employees, and one computer is down, then they have a problem, but if the network is down, particularly when it is running network applications, they have 30 problems, and their employees begin to doubt the thinking of leadership, and things unravel from their.

All have told me that that would wait a couple of years before ever adopting these kinds of tools.

It should be interesting to see what happens as these types of tools are introduced by Microsoft, Google and others.

 

Your name/face in lights, e.g. MindManager to the rescue...

 My wonderful pals at Mindjet, asked me a while back to write about their product. I did as I think it is a brilliant product, and they have kindly “published” my take on MindManager.

MindManager is a great piece of software. I use it all the time, and yet think that I have only touched the surface.

I would make using MindManager a requirement for anyone in college, and then in business.

Just seeing a MindMap, and having the visual presentation of your ideas on a single page, to me is a wonderful idea.

 

A book you should read, "The Dip"

My pal Ernie the Attorney recently pointed me to a very interesting little, e.g. as in 90 page book. It is by Seth Godin, and he has a blog about the book here!

I spent about an hour reading it at the book store the other day, but plan to go back an buy it. The book is about the art of “intelligent quitting” and understanding that “smart people know when to quit”, which is an art that I have never come close to mastering. I have always chosen to stick with ideas, projects, companies, clients and people until the end, and on occasion I would say the “bitter” end.

There was one quote that stuck with me, e.g. on page 64, Godin writes:

“Never quit something with great long term potential because you can’t  deal the with stress of the moment.”

What I need to figure out is to how to better understand what does or doesn’t have great long term potential, as I think Godin is exactly right, and a lesson that we all need to learn.

 

Scripting ActiveWords and GMail...

While our scripting language is hardly dazzling, it is quite good, and allows people to script simple, yet albeit powerful things. Earlier today I got an E-Mail from one of our users in Argentina. He told me had three different Gmail accounts that he had to check all the time. He wanted to know how to use ActiveWords to login instantly. I told him how I thought he should do it, and whammo about 2 hours later he wrote me back and said that following script work perfectly.

<"http://mail.google.com"><WAIT FOR WINDOW:TITLE=Email from Google:TIMEOUT=10>username<TAB>password<ENTER>

I just tested it, and it does work perfectly.  Such a simple thing, but just more painful than it should be.

I am always fascinated by the ActiveWords community. I tell people that ActiveWords appeals to smart people who want to get things done, and they truly are all over the world.

The E-Mails that make my day, and fan the Mac owners ire...

Yesterday we got an E-Mail from one of our great customers, e.g. Dorlene Kaplan. It is the kind of E-Mail that makes my day!

“After a frustrating six weeks I gave the iMac to my husband and bought a new ThinkPad. I'm thrilled to have ActiveWords back. Without it I'm in slow motion.

Thank you again for your terrific product.

Dorlene”

Thank you Dorlene..we need a million more customers like you!

We would love to build a Mac version of ActiveWords someday, and while it is on the list of things we would like to do, there are a lot of other things ahead of it, including our big idea

 

Thoughts as to a name...

A very dear friend of mine, Tom LeVine, the CEO of Pop!Tech is extremely ill. He has been diagnosed with brain cancer. This morning I was speaking with another close friend of Tom’s, and in our conversation, we realized how powerless we all are at times like this.

What we did conclude we would do is to try to find the very best neuro-oncologist in Boston, and failing that at other key medical centers in the country. We would like to ultimately forward any names to Tom’s family so that they can consult with that person.

So, if you are reading this, and have the ability to reach out in your network of friends for name, please do so and let me know via E-Mail.

In the meantime, please keep Tom, his wife Valerie and his family in your prayers and thoughts.

ActiveWords, scripting and memory management...

I am using the fastest Vista machine that I have ever used or seen. It is a 24” iMac with 3 gigs of Ram running Vista in Bootcamp. It really is a dazzling piece of hardware. Brilliant screen, lightning fast, and while the keyboard is not my favorite, I have gotten used to it.

I have noticed that memory management is not what I would like it to be so I have learned to close and exit from web sites and applications that are not required for what I am working on.

What has worked incredibly well is to script closing these various screens with two or three keystrokes, hence…using ActiveWords and typing say…

wcn.. <Close Window>n results in a window being closed and nothing being saved.

wcy.. <Close Window>y results in something being saved.

But in a funny way the real deal is to script closing either Windows Desktop Search events and web site pages.

In that case the script..

tj.. <CTRL>w</CTRL> closes the present window.

So far this logic seems to work great, very few memory management issues, and no unnecessary stuff cluttering the virtual desktop.

Why wcn,wcy, or tj…no clue, as they just made semantic sense to me.

Try them and others and tell me what you think, and if you script anything cool, let me know.

Alltop...or a truly brilliant idea...

A day ago, I saw that my gifted friend Guy Kawasaki had announced Alltop. Because we have enjoyed a very cordial relationship since 2000, e.g. Garage.com, Bootcamp for Entrepenuers, ( when he told me that we needed to build ActiveWords for the Mac.  and as I was a fan of his before that. I have watched, read and thought a lot about what Guy does, says and thinks about.

Guy graciously participated in a interview project that I have been working on last Fall during which the conversation we had was more fun than the perhaps ultimate work product.

I told Guy in the course of the interview that I would find some skates, take him out on the ice and teach him a bit about hockey.

But back to the idea of Alltop. Alltop is like the mother of all RSS aggregators. Where you don’t have to aggregate anything. If there is something comparable I am not aware of it, and while I would love to see something even better, I think for the moment, Guy and his team have created a new standard.

I have read and come to believe that the next phase of the web is about discovery and not about search. Google won this round of search, and it doesn’t matter that they did as I ignore their ads. Google is nothing more to me than better slightly better plumbing.

But with Alltop I find myself in a new world. One where I am discovering stuff that I didn’t know existed. One where I am looking at a dashboard, a control panel, a means by which I can suddenly navigate a world with navigation points both familiar and unfamiliar. One where I am discovering ideas and headlines, writers and topics, that I both knew and yet never knew existed.

Alltop for the web is a bit like the World Wide Telescope for the sky.

A whole new way of looking at ideas that may have been there before, but you never knew they existed, or perhaps never had them quite in focus.

Dazzling..great stuff…very worth taking a lot of time to stop and discover.

Sunday at the movies..or "There Will Be Blood"...

After springing ahead, and getting up pre-dawn to give a friend a ride to the airport, I was invited to go to the movies with my friend Doug. He suggested that we see “There Will Be Blood”. I had not seen it, and I have not been a big Daniel Day Lewis fan, but he is some actor in this movie, e.g. winning the Academy Award as the best actor.

There was a period in my life when I thought I would go to graduate school in American History. I was really interested in the period  from 1880-1917, e.g. a bit post the Civil War to the start of WWI.

The author of the book from which the movie is derived, e.g. Upton Sinclair was a very prolific writer during this time period. Sinclair was a pretty remarkable character. I read a number of his books, and recall writing a paper on him.

It is one of those movies that I think you need to see in a theater, because there are some really stunning visuals. As much a fan as I am of HDTV, I am not sure that this movie translates. But who knows…

And as a footnote, take a look at this piece by Anthony Arthur, it does a great job of putting the movie in a better literary context.