buzznovation

Making mistakes...

I have made lots of mistakes, some bigger than others, some I have learned something from making them, and others I wonder if learned anything.

But this morning I was scanning the N.Y. Times, and came upon this article, e.g.  TV Showman, Once Exiled, Returns With Video Site TV Showman,

What leaped out at me were some pretty interesting quotes:

“Stephen Chao — who was fired from a top position at the News Corporation after, in separate incidents, hiring a male stripper to disrobe at a company meeting and nearly drowning Rupert Murdoch’s dog at a party — plans to announce on Wednesday the formation of a Web video company that he hopes to build into an educational alternative to YouTube.”

and..

“Mr. Chao is an expert at getting attention, but it will be difficult to top some of his previous stunts. Once, during a party at Mr. Murdoch’s home, Mr. Chao nearly drowned his host’s purebred puppy after throwing it in a swimming pool to see if it could swim. Mr. Chao then had to jump into the pool, while in a business suit, to save it.”

and…

“But a fiery relationship with Mr. Diller, the head of the network, overshadowed that experience. The two executives had a hard time living down an incident when both were at Fox in which Mr. Diller hurled a videocassette at Mr. Chao with such intensity that it created a hole in the wall. Mr. Chao framed that section of the wall.”

and …

“What made him want to return to the public eye?

“You can’t spend all your life surfing,” he said.”

So, having never met Chao, it might be fun to meet a guy who embarrassed Dick Cheney, almost drowned Murdoch’s dog, had Barry Diller try to sink a videocassette in his head, and then spent time being a surf bum, and now wants to be a Web 2.0 star.

Is this a great country or what!

ActiveWords Scripting, or investing 5 minutes to save lots of minutes..

I just wrote a dynamite script using ActiveWords, as I so often find myself sending “urls” off to people.

<ALT>d</ALT><CTRL>c</CTRL><nem><TAB:5>

<CTRL>v</CTRL><SHIFT><TAB:4>

So, assuming you are at a webpage, this script does the following:

<ALT>d</ALT> goes to the address line

<CTRL>c</CTRL> copies whatever is in the address line

<nem> is an ActiveWord that uses our Outlook agent to create a “new E-Mail message”, http://www.activewords.com/plusapplications.html 

<New Outlook Email><icon:o|a>

which is inclduded in our Outlook agent e.g.

<TAB:5> tabs down 5 lines into the body of the email

<CTRL>v</CTRL> pastes the whatever is in the address line into the body of the E-Mail

<SHIFT><TAB:4> takes me back to the “to” line in Outlook so that I can address the E-Mail.

Copy and paste it into the “action” field in the scripting part of ActiveWords add wizard.

I call it “neml”

Seems to work great for me. I have used it a dozen times in the last day.

Try it and tell me what you think.

Thoughts on holidays past...

I was cleaning up some left over details from the holidays and found myself talking to a friend about how grateful I was that the Christmas holiday was well over. (Even thought my mother used to leave the tree and lights up until Valentine’s day.)

I mentioned that in recent years I found Christmas to be depressing, noting how different Christmas was as an adult as compared to the incredibly fond memories when I was a child.

My friend suggested a different reason, e.g.

“Maybe at that time of year (Christmas) we simply have more time to reflect on those things that would otherwise not bother us…”

While I am not sure that I totally agree, his thought resonated with me.

What would Jack do...

I have been a fan of Jack Nicholson for a long time. Great actor, obviously an interesting guy, and someone who has had a a great career and a great ride so to speak. I found myself reading an interview of Nicholson the the day that was more than a little interesting. There was one outstanding quote which I have repeated below. The context of the quote was in response to a question related to how we should best face our fears.

“You start off today and every day by trying to overcome fear with clarity. If you have clarity, it’ll give a position of power, the ability to act on your best instincts. …. Where there’s clarity, there is no choice. Where there’s choice, there’s misery. “

Jack Nicholson, “Men’s Journal” Page 74, January 2008

Not sure that I agree that choice always equals misery, as there have been times when I have had multiple choices, all pretty good.

But when faced with real dilemmas, his ideas related to “clarity” ring true with me.

Journalism vs. Theater....or Facebook on 60 Minutes...

I was busy last night, so set the DVR to record 60 Minutes. I just finished watching the segment on Facebook. I have to admit that I haven’t been much of a fan of Leslie Stahl for sometime. And in this segment she was way, way out of her area of expertise.

But the really amusing part was Stahl’s interview with my friend Kara Swisher relative to Facebook. I have nothing but the highest respect for Kara. (Disclaimer…I value Kara as a friend and especially appreciate the quality of her work, her thinking and her writing!)

That said, after the Facebook piece, and watching the brief clips of Stahl and Kara, I wrote Kara a note and suggested that she needed to apply for Stahl’s job, as she, e.g. Kara would have done a vastly better job with the subject matter than Stahl did.

I got a note back from Kara, citing me to her blog, and the longer parts of the interview that she did with Stahl. After watching the additional “footage”, I am even more convinced that if “60 Minutes” is going to do pieces on technology, they need to hire Kara, and leave Ms. Stahl back on the East coast to focus on softer news.

Fine Dining with Mobile Devices

My pal Linda Stone has written a very interesting blog post over on the Huffington Post, e.g. Fine Dining with Mobile Devices.

I am a big fan of Linda and have talked to her over her wonderful kitchen island about her theories on “cpa” e.g. Continuous Partial Attention.

I don’t just think, I know she is on to something.

Last night I was at a lovely dinner party and I realized that I had set my iPhone out on the table. I think my justification was that there was one person who had been invited, who was late, and I wanted to be sure not to miss a call as to directions, etc.

I easily could have put the phone away, but instead left it out, just in case I didn’t miss something. Who knows what that something might be.

And while I doubt that it didn’t distract me from the conversation at the table, now that I think about it, I was a bit of a jerk not to put the phone in my coat pocket, turn it off, and just enjoy the good friends and good conversation at the table.

I know that Linda is working on turning her ideas into a great book. When it’s published I am sure it will be a best seller, and I will be an early buyer.

 

Live from CES

CES is remarkable! Truly overwhelming! However as I walk the floor, I find myself trying to find the small companies that have very clever technology that solve real problems that I have, and then I assume that if have them, then others have them.

Last night at the Showstoppers Event, which is a gotta go to part of CES I had an excellent conversation with the team from Simulscribe. Their product does a very simple and yet very powerful task, e.g. covert Voice-Mail on my cell phone to text and then E-Mailing me the text.

I have used a variation of this product with CallWave on another number that I have, but since I can’t port my key phone number to CallWave, I couldn’t use this kind of functionality on the really important number I have.

So…here’s the scene! CES is a madhouse. Way too noisy to hear your phone particularly if it is in your jeans pocket. Then when you have a moment you note that you have missed three calls.

But…no problema… the calls are all in your E-Mail in your phone via Simulscribe. And when I looked at the three calls, there was one missed word in the three calls. Remarkable!

What a great service! Something the phone companies should have offered years ago.