Google Notebook: They blew it on this one – just stinking blew it. It’s not that Evernote does it better. Evernote is a big box. But Google Notebook had the potential to be similar to what Zuckerman at Facebook talked of creating with the new messaging system, except different. Not all content belongs in separated “documents” or in a primarily communicative device like Gmail. Add social features to Google Notebook, the ability to share notes, give admin/ownership of notes, integrate Google chat/IM/video with notes, and you have a social notebook – a killer app. The mobile version of that would be dynamite. With Facebook, the stream keeps scrolling and you’ll never really get it back. With Google Docs, it’s static and rigid. But give people a chance to retain and store information, but in as social a way as Facebook, and you not only have a social network, you have a far better note storage and note taking system. Imagine, I’m in a high school class taking notes on my netbook, into Google Notes. Someone gets there late, missed what was said, or was awakened by a loud noise – I right click and share the note, and add a chat to them saying “Here, this is what she said, doofus. Stay awake. ” The other guy, who has a webcam on his netbook, clicks his postage stamp-sized avatar to turn on video, just long enough to convey a gesture normally considered rude – but we’re friends.

Google Buzz: You can’t just build it and expect people to come. You have to add value in a way that no one else does. Buzz doesn’t do that yet. Integration with Gmail is not, in itself, sufficient added value. But Buzz does have the potential to become something pretty darned great. Integrate it with Google Offers, and integrate Offers with Adwords, Places, and Analytics. Now you have a *social* version of Yelp or Merchant Circle with Groupon and Adwords on steroids! It works like this: Reviews about business aren’t just stuck on a web site – a business Places page, as a relatively dull, old-fashioned, static stream – they are, by definition, “Buzz”. Think Zendesk and GetSatisfaction too – especially the latter. Business owners scramble to respond to discomfort in Twitter or Facebook – but what if they could respond to reviews in Buzz/Places with attempts to resolve the issue – like they do in Facebook or Twitter, except they’re responding to the types of reviews we see in Places as though they were support requests in GetSatisfaction. It’s part of a stream, leaving businesses an opportunity for the stream to be pushed down with glowing relief and excitement as business owners correct a situation or go over and above to add value. The Buzz is a stream that business doesn’t currently have in one place – and that, integrated with Adwords and Google Offers (imagine I solve a problem by giving an Offers voucher) is added value that no one else really has. And this darned sure beats “Like”ing a business’s Facebook page. Like isn’t content – certainly not rich content. It doesn’t tell you anything, except this many people hit a button. It’s one reason Facebook’s business pages are the least travelled part of the network. For business, Buzz could be a Facebook killer, if Google wanted it to.

Google Offers: For that matter, Offers needs to be thoroughly integrated with Adwords and Google Sites. Google Sites hasn’t been much of a success for a variety of reasons. But if you can write stellar ad copy for coupons & vouchers, which is what Google does for Offers clients, you can repurpose that ad copy as small ad content and extended web site content. Google as copywriter not only ensures you’re getting great marketing, if they’re as good at it as Groupon (I don’t use Groupon’s and Living Social’s technique, but I am a fan of their marketing copy writing), but if they get the Google search analytics people involved, you also get stellar search optimization on that copy. Virtually put me out of business, that would. Not really – I’d adapt. Google, want to dominate the new SEO – front-end SEO? Then take heed – you can virtually own that piece of it, the search engine optimization and the search engine itself, by doing Offers the right way.

Google Sites: Really a mistake not to have this fully a part of Blogger. The distinction between dynamic blogs and static web sites has been replaced by new web sites. New web sites are hybrids – static content (sure you need an About page and a Contact page and some core static content (Who I am, What I do, Where I do it, Why I’m different, etc.) but you also need frequently updated content. It’s a mistake to maintain the old myth of static sites being effective, by keeping Google Sites separate from Blogger, while Google’s own search engine results tell the real tale. Combine, remix, and you’ve got a WordPress killer folks. Integrated with adwords, analytics, feedburner, our remixed Buzz, and our resurrected and remixed Google Notes right from the start, with Google Offers copy writers available to help businesses, and you have one hell of an everything killer.

Larry, read this stuff and do something about it! That’s my take, Google. I hope you’re listening. As a devoted member of the Google nation, Google apostle, and Google freaknatic, I only want what’s best for the world – a Google that gets more by giving us more. What other form of government offers that high an exchange? Seriously, Larry – call me.

[image from Gearlog]

I never went through the debacle of Vista. In Vista, they blocked using dual video cards unless they were the exact same brand, revision, interface, everything – no variations – they had to be homogenous. That made no sense, since most motherboards only came with one regular video card (AGP) slot. Also, at the rate new video cards were coming out, you just couldn’t keep up with the revisions – if one of your cards died, you had to buy two new ones. Windows 7 promised to bring back use of multiple “heterogenous” video cards.

It hasn’t worked out that way, though, for most of us, because the two big card manufacturers have created a new type of driver to be compatible with Windows 7 and, while Microsoft may technically allow heterogenous cards again, those new drivers don’t. Try putting two entirely different ATI cards in a box, and it’s a fistfight between the two.

Combine that with the stupid practice of bios/motherboard manufacturers not allowing onboard video to work simultaneously with a standalone card, and there’s not much in the way of a solution. I’ve gotten two different manufacturer’s cards (NVIDIA and ATI card) to work beside each other, sort of, but the secondary card always crashes with too much video, and it’s too slow to be of practical use. I even tried the same model of ATI card but with a different interface, with worse results. Practically speaking, for most people, two video cards in Windows7 is hopeless. If I weren’t getting the benefits of 64-bit, I’d be back to XP.

Enter Plugable. Plugable makes a line of USB adapters that allow a third monitor to run off of the primary video card. That’s right, one card and I’m running three monitors now. It’s stable and fast. That could not be said for doing it the way Microsoft says will work. There are other USB/VGA adapters (Best Buy has one on the shelf that’s utter garbage), but they’re often slow or won’t even let you boot. The Plugable device uses the best-in-class DisplayLink chip, powered by the DisplayLink driver. They make different models – some support DVI, some different maximum resolutions – I’m happy enough with the lowest resolution one for VGA at 1440×900. Windows 7 located the latest driver automatically via Windows Update – no need to use the CD.

The nice thing about this is that I’m not worried if I give my third monitor something to do, it could crash what I’m doing in the other two – always a problem, before. I hope Plugable and DisplayLink will keep improving these devices, so we’re not at the mercy of video card makers, motherboard/bios makers and, most of all, Microsoft, to simply get some work done.

Update 12/5/10: If you want Netflix and full screen Youtube on the monitor connected to Plugable, set to 32-but instead of 16-bit in display settings. Works great! They even have an “optimize for video” setting.

Update 12/6/10: Get the latest driver directly from the DisplayLink web site – they’re constantly improving. Minor issue with the monitor not waking when power saving mode turned it off was resolved by simply getting the latest driver.

I’d been writing a blog about work ever since the mortgage crash, when I was laid off from a real-estate related position (along with scores of others), and I eventually realized the best security I could find came from selling my own services, because I knew I could guarantee quality, etc. But security also comes from having multiple irons in the fire – diversifying income sources, just like you do investments. So besides starting my own company, I hooked up with Free Agent Source in California.

With FAS, I sort of immediately grasped the concept that a lot of contractors out there enjoy a lot of freedom too, and get to explore their talents, but don’t want to run their own shop. In fact, some are probably already doing too *much* paperwork, etc, with expense reports, weird tax filings, and so on. The 1099 contractors can have their hands full, if they’re doing the corporate formalities right, dotting all the i’s, etc.

FAS basically says, “Look, you contract professionals keep going after contracts, we’ll provide benefits (health, 401K, etc.), and a back office (even do your expense report billing, etc.), and we’ll let you run your payroll through us, for a modest and transparent cut, but you get to go out at night, or kick back, and not worry about corporate formalities or paperwork. Plus you get to bid on corp to corp contracts, because that’s what you’re toting behind you when you interview – so it opens up more doors with corps that don’t want the exposure of 1099 contracting, the hassle of staffing agencies, or the risk of traditional employment.

On the HR and Hiring Manager (or Project Team) side, you can hire with confidence, for any term. You and the contractor are negotiating the pay (contractors set their own rates or fees, etc.). And you get a way to put people to work without carrying benefits, bearing the risk, or worrying about what happens at project end. It’s clean, effective, and it works. Companies can even use the recruiter or agent of their choice to find talent, if they like. And the relationship with FAS is effectively invisible.

Traditional employees who might find themselves out in a slow job market, competing with everyone else on Monster or Career Builder, can now go after work, instead of jobs. Normally, they’ve got no inroad to the kind of positions picked up by experienced contractors. But with a corp to corp contract, and all their benefits taken care of, new kinds of work situations are open to them. It’s sort of like the inside track to the stuff that’s still working. Project teams are hiring, companies are picking up talent on a contract basis, and there’s probably no better time to get in, either as a Free Agent (what Free Agent Source calls their talent) or a Client of FAS (grabbing the cream of the crop while the market is down – like any investor – only investing in talent).

So, I told you up front that I work with Free Agent Source, and yeah this is kind of a puff piece, if you like. But if you’re in California (we’ll be in your state soon enough, if you’re not), and you think this is as cool as I do, I encourage you to visit www.FreeAgentSource.com and watch a webinar, or contact FAS for a free consultation on how we can benefit you as a Free Agent or your company that might want to place Free Agents. If you’re a recruiter, we’d love to hear from you, also.

Google is an Apple Killer: Really, you see, all Google needs to do is finish the OS (they don’t have to make laptops like Mac, because Google OS will work on anything), and they have essentially become the Apple killer. Microsoft isn’t even part of that conversation, except in enterprise. Bing is a joke, as are Windows 7 Mobile Phones, and half a dozen other reverse-engineered Borg monstrosities that Redmond has ‘innovated’. The recent partnership with Facebook is going to poison both Borganizations as much as it helps either of them. I think it was the last thing on earth Zuckerberg should have done, but it fits the profile. If Google gets this last suit behind them and re-envisions social media, this should get fun very quickly. Where is Apple on this? iTunes just isn’t Youtube, though they represent Apple and Google’s respective best in class social media sites. If Google thinks through Buzz vs. Facebook, and goes one better, we’ve got it made. Let’s hope they pair with Twitter in the next go – there’s a lot of promise there – Linkedin too.

Design isn’t Enough: So what will Apple will do, when Google takes their edge away, and they’re facing Google and Microsoft with little to offer but what they’ve already taught us about design (admittedly, very nice stuff), which can be emulated by 3rd parties once Google OS is fully available past this draft 2.5 stage. Microsoft will never abandon the Borg look and feel until they’re too irrelevant to social computing to matter. Look at Kindle, though. Companies are starting to get the power of design. Nook is dead – they went Walmart on us – come on, guys! Really? But if Google books was paired with an e-paper Android Reader…  you realize Google Books is about to start selling book editions, right? In general, though: design + open source any-platform any-device OS + we can search anything (even images and spoken words) and cross reference with anything else = triumph. I want to read historical fiction on a dedicated device or any device with roving historical Google maps and superimposed satellite imagery of battlefields, that I can book a flight to go visit, and get a photo of me on the ground to add to the stream for the next reader (if he has that feature enabled). Why not?

Sculpting Future Business Accordingly: Now, if you and I could figure a way to pair your company with Google in a unique way… i.e. how would your company look if sculpted along with the concept of ubiquitous all-powerful search and/or with a promiscuous all-compatible on-anything OS, of which Android is the current basis?  Google was smart, you know – they started out with small machines and then scaled up, versus everyone else who did it the other way around. Android will one day run desktop versions, in some format or incarnation, regardless of what it’s called. The world is the cloud and the cloud is the world – the OS and search must exist in the ether of experience. So how could your company unite with technology, including the new technology of social interaction itself, in a way that has to do with absolutely free OS on any machine or absolutely ubiquitous search of any type imaginable, enhanced by the fact that search spreads ubiquitously to any machine by means of promiscuous OS proliferation? Haven’t thought about it? Maybe you should. It might make all the difference.

This is Your Life on Google: One day, you do realize of course, you’ll search your fridge with a Google screen on the outside. It will tell you what you can make with what you have, or offer to locate merchants and delivery to bring you what you’re missing, set up recurring payments, tell you how your health is doing based on what you eat over time, recommend changes to your diet, tell you how many you can feed at the upcoming dinner it pulled from your Google Calendar, suggest alternate dishes and complimentary side-dishes and deserts, enhanced by your ingredient list (you will scan bar codes as you put items in the fridge – google will always know). It will suggest who should bring what, by sharing (if your Google Contacts have enabled sharing) some of what it knows based on their refrigerator contents. Maybe Steve should bring the punch, since he has 2-day old Seven-Up and some orange juice, and Chris should bring the salad, because that head of lettuce in his fridge will turn in a few days. You can say text, phone, or e-mail all to forward these recommendations for confirmation. It will also factor in total calories when making these suggestions. It will even tell you when you’ve had few enough calories that you can open the freezer and pull out that Fudgesicle, or “No, not today – you’re already over by 50 and it’s only noon, but you can order the Weight Watchers dreamsicle alternative if you want – it can be there in 4 hrs from Schwann truck if you order before 2pm”. Don’t like that, it’ll tell you where the nearest one is located, at what store (just 4 blocks East at the Walgreens), how many are in stock, at what price, and how many calories you’d burn by walking or biking there, instead of taking the car. You can disable Google Health integration (yes, the service exists) for an amoral eating lifestyle, or delete or mute (just during game days) any of these types of suggestions if you prefer to eat without Google’s helpful voice (yes, the fridge can talk, text, phone, e-mail, or put the output to your TV where you’re sitting down with that bowl of chips by this time). Google Home knows what room you’re in, if you’ve enabled that feature. After all, you watch your kids when they’re home early from (or for) school on your Google Video account, right? Yes, Google knows who ate the last piece of pumpkin pie. Check your privacy settings, guys. And by the way, it’ll say, “take water on your jaunt down to the store – your intake today is too low – you’ve had too much caffeine from that Arizona iced tea you had in the can with the extra 16% free” (yes, it knows you put it back in the fridge empty). That’s just the start w. the fridge. I can go on all day long, if you can. But Google will also be in your washing machine, your shower, your toilet (order more bran?), your alarm clock… TV is just a start. Google will help you manage your household, be waiting for you when you get to work, plot a traffic resistant trip home and alert you as you shut down that “if you stay at work 20 more minutes, you’ll get home at exactly the same time by missing rush hour – do nothing to continue shutting down or ESC to cancel”. As you get to the car, it’ll remind you of the milk and mention the store on the 2nd exit off the highway (remember that dinner your Google Calendar says you’re planning?), oh and they have that Fudgesicle you wanted from yesterday. Good news, the employee cafeteria reported to your corporate health plan, which discloses to you all data in your personal file to which you’ve previously opted in, by synchronizing with Google Health, that you are well below your optimal calorie intake at this point, and after all, your spouse has plotted a low calorie meal for dinner (you’re having baked whitefish) – you can snack with confidence – just watch the marshmallow pie at that upcoming dinner – Steve’s not bringing what you asked him to. Disable future updates from Steve? The song from that video you favorited during lunch hour is on the radio, at 91.7. Wave to the car on your left – he’s listening to it too, and he’s got his playlist set to public. Or don’t look – he’s sent out 217 friend requests, all to people of your gender who share playlist favorites (congrats for enabling the spam profiling feature – a new version comes out next month with added protection). By the way, oil change is coming up, shall Google pencil it into your calendar for Thursday? Your company calendar indicates it’s closing shop early that day to reconfigure the cubicles, and they won’t be open Monday – your alarm clock at home as already been updated. By the way, the kids have been playing Final Fantasy 15 for 2.25 hours continuously, which exceeds the weekday limit you’ve applied, and their class Google Calendar indicates an exam tomorrow, as well as a due book report – thanks for using Google School Connect. Song complete, return to previous station? Last chance to get that milk before you get home – convenience store 3 blocks up on your right – 23% more expensive that last passed option. Cancel – your spouse just purchased at same location (probably because he ate that pie) – wave to him as you pass by – you’re getting home from work first. Consumer news flash – Microsoft just announced they are abandoning support for seven of your devices – three will lose technical support within 12 months. Say “enable” to enable price watch and alerts for Google-powered devices during the same time period. As I say, one could go on…. and I think you’d better invest in Google – at least in terms of envisioning business, work, and an indexed life in a Googlified world.

Items that (by means of extrapolation) inspired this piece, or have been noticed since:

• Steve Jobs
• OS independence
• Google Impact
• Redmond Turmoil
• Child-Driven Education (video)
• Jobs on Flash
• Jobs Flash Isn’t Coming
• Adobe Moves On
• Apple loves Microsoft
• Apple gives up Multitouch
• Quantified Self (video)

PS. A core difference, I think, between Google and alternatives (e.g. Apple, Microsoft, Facebook) is that Google is philosophy driven, and the others are personality driven. An idea can be tested against reality – a personality simply can’t be subjected to the market in the same way. There’s a sense in which a personality, itself, can’t be wrong, and yet it can guide a company in the same way that ideas can. Fundamentally, ideas are humble – they’re always willing to be corrected in an agile way, if the people that hold them are NOT loyal to them in the way they are often asked to be loyal to a personality. The difference between the companies is, fundamentally, a difference in the culture of work that prevails in the context of each organization.

Current episodes and segments include:

If you’re thinking about new ways to work, creative employment, or how to work and be free (at the same time), I’d encourage you to subscribe to the [ Free Agent Source ] channel – and not just because you get me or I’m affiliated with FAS. We’re talking about these things precisely because it’s something we’re deeply interested in. It’s these ideas that are the inspiration for our individual and joint endeavours.

The conversation isn’t just among two people, either. We’d really like your comments, feedback, questions, and discussion on the videos. Youtube is great that way – it lets you respond, not just passively watch. We don’t guarantee a personalized answer to every comment, but we’re certain to at least read what you write.

So I got a first generation Nook, and loved it. Loved (past tense) because I sold it again. I’d easily take another one. They’re great. I’ll tell you why I sold it shortly, but here’s what I loved:

• It does EPUB – get books from the library, or right off Project Gutenberg – it’s a nice open-source format for e-books
• It handles PDFs very well. If you’re reading documents (even Gutenberg has some PDFs, like Silvanus’ book on Calculus – to preserve the equations), I found it superb for this.
• It pulls Google Books. So I’m reading a book that refers to another book, like something from Upton Sinclair, so I yank Sinclair’s book off of Google Books and begin reading it too. What a nice deal. That’s the only value I can see for 3G, actually – the ability to do that anywhere.
• It has WiFi,  and I didn’t bother buying a 3G. I never found the need for 3G. If I’m that far away from a wireless connection, I’ve already got the books I need – I spend more time reading than purchasing or ‘browsing’. 3G, to me, is a gimmick to ensure people can buy instantly from anywhere – it benefits the store, not me. And it’s only good for buying books – don’t think E-readers let you surf the web for free on 3G – they don’t. But WiFi has been handy – not because I’m going to web browse – it’s just not a good device for that – it’s not really built for it – just like the epaper phone we reviewed (Motorola F3) does text messages, but you really don’t want to. Bring a netbook if you want browsing – this is a single purpose device and hopefully will learn to be prouder of it. Wireless is strong. I can quickly enable airplane mode to keep battery use to a minimum. Then it automatically finds previously selected WIFI points in seconds. It’s really best for syncing down books I purchased online, and then being turned off again.
• The fonts are nice – I can get a nice big typeface in a nice, readable sans-serif, to go without glasses.
• It remembers my spots. I can jump out of a book, do other things, then press “current reading” and it takes me right back. I can switch books, read a while, then go back to the previous book, and it remembers my place in both, any, or all. It does this even after power off/on.
• The microSD card slot helped. I found the clip that holds the card in to be a bit dodgy. They should have done a better job there (they seem to think people will drop an SD card in once, and forget about it, not switch it out a lot – why that assumption?). They should have just made a simple slot with no clip, to load a card easily from the outside without having to take the back off . Goofy. Sony beats them in this area. But there’s a place for SD – that beats Kindle.
• It’s just damned handy as a device. This goes for any e-reader, one assumes, that isn’t overly annoying in some way (e.g. screen glare on non-ePaper models). If your primary goal is to get reading ASAP, there’s nothing wrong with the Nook.
• By the way, I don’t really understand why people insist on getting “covers” for these things anyway. It’s like putting a book cover on a book – it *comes* with a cover. The Nook isn’t showing it’s guts, so why? I hear people saying it’s to “protect” it. From what? I suppose if you get enough cushion, it’s good for dropping it, but if you’re carrying it in a briefcase or something, isn’t that cover enough? I want something air-light to hold, not to bulk it up with armor, and have to bend a cover around backwards. I’d like to see some drop-kick tests on the Nook and the Kindle. With the Motorola F3, another e-paper device, you could throw it out of a plane and just about not worry – no cover needed. On the other hand, I once knocked an entire laptop off a desk, by catching the charger cord with my leg, so I suppose.
• The stats – 16-bit or 8-bit, how many megahertz, how much RAM, just don’t matter much to me. I’m looking at one book at a time and so are you. So just because it’s what those guys at the kiosk think is important, doesn’t mean it is.

So why did I sell the Nook and what did I get in its place? Well, I sold it very reluctantly. Frankly, I loved it. But I wanted the latest generation Kindle (3) in graphite, and was willing to give up a couple of features to get it. I’m still waiting for it to arrive, though, so I’m reading a paperback  in the meantime. The Nook helped restore my love of books in general. Here’s why I went for Kindle 3:

• Compatibility doesn’t matter – Kindle will always be around. You could focus on the ostensibly superior compatibility of Sony or Nook (both do EPUB format e-books, and both take SD cards), over Kindle’s proprietary e-book format and no card slot. Kindle, however, is more like Apple. Instead of striving to be compatible, it sets a standard with which others will strive to be compatible. It’s a proprietary format, technically, but it’s just a similarly cross-platform MOBI format with a special header added, and Kindle also reads ordinary MOBI format (so you can easily download books from Project Gutenberg, for example) without any conversion. So where Nook and Sony reach for compatibility with traditional libraries (EPUB format), Kindle reaches for compatibility with online archives (like Gutenberg) with MOBI format, and leaves libraries alone for now – possibly a prescient move. Where Nook seems to beat Kindle for real is direct access to Google Books, but you can easily download the PDF of the same book from Google and put it on your Kindle, just like you have to with Sony. Yes, so Kindle also reads PDFs, just like all of the e-readers. Better, though, if you want your PDFs to flow, you can convert them (free or for a dime, depending on how easy you want it) to make them “flowable” for easier reading and resizable fonts. There are free, third-party applications that will simply convert a PDF to MOBI, though, which is how I prefer to do it, and then you can just drop it on the Kindle via USB or e-mail it to your Kindle if you prefer. While I think Kindle may eventually support EPUB, simply because it’s the standard that traditional libraries have chosen, I think they were wise to focus on online archives that are accessible to everyone first, and set their own standard – it’s not common for large collections of e-books to be available at libraries yet, and selections vary widely by locale. Early adopters have some, but not a huge collection. The reason is the libraries have to purchase e-books just like regular books and they check out just like regular books (two people can’t check out the same copy at the same time). The only difference is that the book automatically returns itself when your time is up (though I think there’s online renewal available on some library sites). I expect libraries will remain conservative (at least in terms of funding e-books) for some time yet. Funds are limited, paper books are still in wide circulation, yielding no need to acquire older books in e-format, and people are already treating e-books like mp3′s on iTunes – purchasing new books in droves and skipping the library shuffle, not that libraries aren’t valuable – I think one day, they’ll be rediscovered as the savers’ source of e-books. Meanwhile, though, Google Books will make all the difference in old books, by making as many available as possible, as soon as the copyright expires or the owners give consent. The full text ones are already downloadable as PDFs and therefore readable on any e-reader. Then there’s the force of precedent being set by Netflix – currently streaming a percentage of their DVDs over the net, but working to eliminate sending out DVDs altogether and make *all* movies streaming – no more environmental impact from making DVDs, shipping them, no more paper, etc. It may be hard to imagine that books, the last bastions of paper, which draw much of their self-definition from the medium itself (authors are aware that how something falls on a page affects the reader in ways that flowable text cannot), will go the same route, taking the remaining big magazines and newspapers with them. At that point, keep in mind, either Kindle will read EPUB, or everything will be available in MOBI/Kindle. Besides, how long are you going to keep your device? You could wait years for the compatibility issue to be resolved, while the rest of us are reading contentedly – we’ll all be getting later model e-readers years from now anyway. 5-years from now, you’ll be using a different one than the one you purchase today, and the old one will have a simple hack that opens it up to freeware you can install to read anything, if you just like the old device. It’s not like in the days of VHS/Betamax where machines still costed more than $1000 several years later, and content from one wouldn’t physically fit the other – digital changes things. These things work themselves out in mere seasons, now. Amazon even gave away Kindles for a while – the device isn’t the point – the content is. Sorry to your Blueray guys, but regular DVDs will be around for ages and ages, and everything will play them. Worried about your library being stuck in the wrong format? No, there will always be both EPUB and MOBI readers, and you’ll be able to get them on any device. Your books are safe, at least for your lifetime, and then there will be a gazillion converters that will batch-convert them to whatever is the latest format, and  makers of that new device will give you the utility free to motivate you “upgrading”. You needn’t fear. That worry is like saying PDFs aren’t a safe way to keep your documents, because of Kindle’s format, or Google Docs, or Word. Besides, converters for all these formats abound – it just isn’t a big deal, anymore – the early days of computers were different – nothing reads Wordstar, anymore, but this isn’t like that. Read now, or wait until everyone’s in the pool. I’d rather be reading.
• While I like the Google Android OS on the Nook, because I love Google, and it has already been widely hacked (jailbroken) to open it up to run nearly any Android applications, also spawning a custom-Nook version of many Android apps to make user experience even better, Android actually slows the device down a bit – e-readers just don’t (currently) have the resources to run Android full tilt. Notably, page turns are a bit slower on the Nook. I really didn’t find that much of a problem – a minute annoyance. I developed a timing for turning pages as I read the last sentence or two on a page. But Kindle’s OS is proprietary, if faster. A lot of us want Kindle to open their operating system so we can install our own software. First thing I’d install is an EPUB reader, of course, so I can read both major formats as well as PDF, then a Twitter client. In its defense, though, Amazon has jumped out there to offer sharing passages in social media like Twitter and Facebook. Remember, the device isn’t the point. It hasn’t been, since the PC got more powerful, even fully bloated with poor maintenance and the garbage most users allow on their machines. Current PCs are more powerful than the average user can keep up with or bog down, assuming the OS is clean – Windows 7 sure has some hiccups in this department. We’re not counting gamers here – they will always push for faster everything. But business users only need so much, after which it’s just posturing. Kick the tires, ask what brand it is (like that matters anymore), throw out some words like Pentium and “quad core”, refer to the newest (=best?) version of something – like Word 2013 – sure, there will be one. But it doesn’t matter. The guy with Windows 2000 and Word 2000 is typing out the same document as the guy with Windows 7 and Office 2010 (and the former’s document is readable by more people in more places). Since the device isn’t the point anymore, it’s just what you do with it (yep, size no longer matters – we’re all huge), what a lot of us really want is for Amazon to separate the OS, the software, and the device (like Google has done with Google Docs), by simply opening up their operating system. I think the situation will evolve, as it did for Apple/Mac (there was a time,  you couldn’t run anything on an Apple that didn’t come from Apple, and they’d sue you if you tried). Kindle will learn from the history, and do it better and, before long, you’ll have options, of some kind, on Kindle. But maybe (and this is heresy to the rest of the PC crowd, unless they’re running Linux instead of Windows, which incidentally comes from the same UNIX parentage as the Mac OS) – maybe having a completely open system is not the only way to drive development as far and fast as possible. Linux is really doing well, especially since Ubuntu became a game changer – it’s almost, almost there – so close – but Apple can just jump up and do things, and not wait for a guy in his garage to build a better WIFI or sound driver. Maybe Kindle keeping it partly closed (and you can read into this an argument for social democracy over pure laissez-faire if you want to), will take us farther, in better time, than just saying “here’s another device, go ahead and create stuff for it” like you do with a PC and a Linux install. Maybe the monopoly with a gazillion garage software writers can’t push a thing as far or fast as a company that says, no we’ll limit access, but we’ll strive to be better than the competition, not bribe our way to hegemony. Maybe, in fact, letting it be the uber-hackers, the guys that break the thing apart anyway, restrictions be damned, and build anyway, face some challenges to do so, will result in better innovation than just tossing the key up in the air, like AOL did when it let all its users out onto the net in 1994 and SPAM was the greatest resulting innovation, among other things. It’s hard to say if Kindle staying more closed is better – I think they have to open some – but if they manage to be Apple-smart while being Intel-smart on price break point, I think they’ll trounce everything. And what matters here is not what’s rated most highly by someone else (you have your own mind, don’t you), or who sells more (Chevy sells more than Mazda, Subaru, and Mini, but it’s not a better-built car), but who drives innovation farther and faster. Don’t be a herd person who looks for sales numbers to decide what to buy – look at what it means, and buy vision, or you’ll end up with another borg device in your hand some day, trying to figure out how to update your virus signatures.
• The Amazon store is unparalleled. They are the original online big box store, but they don’t really act like a big box. They’ve got heart. They’re more like Costco than Walmart. Frankly, there’s just nothing like Amazon – they’re a trend-setter, not follower. And I think the quality of the online store is at least as important as the quality of the device. B&N or Borders or Sony won’t ruin your day with their e-store, but amazon will make your year. Anything major, from toaster to t-shirt, I buy from amazon, unless I’m getting it used, closeout, or mom and pop (E-bay, Etsy, and I really like morethanalive.com). User experience is subjective, as is what you value about a device or the software that runs on it, but I think they’ve got the right idea with the amazon.com aesthetic. They’ve picked up on the social media vibe earlier than most, too, which is smart.
• Aesthetics of the device itself is something, however, that Apple brought to technology devices in a big way, and Kindle is keeping the tone. Apple kicks a substantial share of Microsoft’s easily found butt for many reasons, all of which amount to stubbornness, obtuseness, pride, and lack of imagination on the part of Microsoft, but one of the ways that”s easiest to spot is the Apple aesthetic, feeling like something you’d hold on the Starship Enterprise, versus the Borg-like quality of a PC – especially infected with (er… installed, that’s the word we want – with Windows installed). I benefit, personally, from using a PC, because on a budget, you can run down the street with my box, and I’ll have built another one by the time the Doberman is starting on your other arm. I’ve got parts in the closet, or I can just rip them out of any machine. Borg. “We are compatible, and you *will* be assimilated.” Yeah, but the Borg ain’t exactly the girl you want to take to the prom. It’s a geek chick who’s been in a wreck and got Robocopped. She’ll bring in your mail, but she kind of gets twitchy and blue-screens once in a while. No, Microsoft has a purely cerebral aesthetic, an authoritarian one, and of course emphasizes compatibility (she ‘gets around’ in other words, and has the viruses to prove it) and she’s not immune to everyone in their garage throwing together a spare program like something out of Johnny Mnemonic or a really bad demo tape, but that’s because they enslaved Intel, and bilked most of the creative types out of their copyrights, and so on. And they still managed to suck – now that takes doing – they can’t even *steal* greatness. OK, moving on, PC users, we all know it sucks and we use it anyway. Google is the Gandalf galloping over the crest of the hill at first light to kick some Orc ass out in Redmond (to you non-Geeks, that means Google is good, Microsoft is bad). Google made the document virtual. It made everything ‘web’, separating more than ever the document from the device – it made documents work on anything. Google and Amazon are doing more to beat the crap out of the Microsoft model than anyone. Ubuntu, Netflix, and some others are putting up a good show, too. And the result is, we expect a damned good online experience with our devices, and the devices themselves are therefore less important, so then we aren’t willing to put up with klunky Borg guts anymore – we want to hold something that’s a bit Bauhaus, a bit Frank Lloyd Wright, a bit John Ruskin and William Morris. We want a little elegance and simplicity and *pleasure* in how a device looks and feels. Apple and Amazon are saying that design is important, design shouldn’t suck, design is aesthetic – they’re saying that users of devices aren’t extensions of those devices – users of devices are whole people – devices don’t just exist in the mind or the specifications, they exist in the eye and the hand and in our space – the device augments me, not the other way around. Not top-down, adjust for us – the all-wise makers of your OS, and if you get stuck just look up common fixes for “ERROR_LOG_APPENDED_FLUSH_FAILED 6647 (0x19F7)” or click here to report the error to those diligent researchers in Redmond that get another laugh every time the bell dings over Gates’ desk that means some poor user somewhere hollered from one tin can to another across some wax string and thinks the phone company is listening and will get right on that connection problem – that’s not how we want to live. We want beauty in our technology. I think Kindle is second only to Mac in delivering it. The Mac’s cube computer is in a major museum, I’d like to see the Kindle go next.
• The store is dead. At least, as originally envisioned, it is. Don’t get me wrong – the shop isn’t dead, just the store is. Blockbuster knows it. They’re peeing themselves and will be twitching their last soon – the disease is fatal. Barnes and Noble is the book version of Blockbuster. Yes, as a big box store, if you set aside a love for mom and pop shops, or you live in one of those sprawling roadside suburbs and small towns that have sold your small businesses into subjection just so you can get a Super-Walmart and a drive-through Starbucks (tithes and offerings, baby – but to whose god?), it’s not the most horrible place on earth. I won’t go there, as long as mom and pop are still open, but at least, if I do, I’m not dodging diapers in the parking lot, or listening to someone on a cell phone in line at the counter talk about how she hit her man with a hammer last night, oh girl, or watching some 30-year old father in hip hop baggies scrape his tattoo sores and piercings with his kid in the other arm. Walmart – it would be theatre, if so many people weren’t really like that – as it is, it’s just freaking scary like a George Romero film – “they’re coming to eat you, Margaret”. Anyway, I do think it’s a very exciting feature, in theory, that you can take your Nook into any Barnes and Noble and read ANY e-book they have for an hour. I like the social opportunities that makes me envision – a group of us deciding to sample a book a week and talk about it – how fun. But, in practice, B&N isn’t a very social place. Yeah, you get the twenty-something date crowd, and students huddled over their standardized texts, and the line of fat kids with parents buying them the Venti frap with extra syrup, extra caffeine, extra whip, but it’s not particularly social – not like Powells in Portland, where a feature like 1hr previews would kick ass. And also, you can download a sample of any e-book online anyway. So why go to the store to get it? They’re busy building Nook kiosks in there that promise to let you plug in and download books, but you can download books from anywhere. What they really are is little sales desks, like you find in an AT&T store, trying to sell you Nooks and Nook accessories. But again, just buy them online, if you want them. Use your Nook to buy your Nook accessories – it’s got a crude web browser. The atmosphere is starting to sound even less social: stop in to your  local AT&T cell phone joint – does it make you want to spread out and chat about philosophy with your friends over over-roasted espresso? It makes me feel like I’ve been sent to Hell, and all my minutes there roll over. Stores are dead. Amazon, Netflix – these guys get it. And Google should be getting the credit for driving the nail in the coffin of ‘stores’, who with Google Docs made documents share-able, social, collaborative entities on the internet (leading to video and e-books – think Youtube then Netflix, Google Books then Amazon – OK, so Google bought Youtube and Writely, the original Google Docs, but they made a mountain out of the vibe), instead of the arcane and not-very-human model of documents as device-possessions that you store, backup, and timeout while sending as attachments (Microsoft’s rubric of compatible but not collaborative, ubiquitous but not social, send-able and control-oriented but not share-able and cooperative) . Give me a store, and I’d rather have a search engine. Give me a shop, OK, then I’ll go sit down and take along my device that does Kindle, Netflix, and Google/Youtube/Google Docs, and I’ll have that espresso, if you make it with better beans and don’t bombard me with “kiosks”. Kiss your kiosks goodbye – they’re the pulpits of an outdated religion pandering for loose change in the back of the pews  – even the Geeks are starting to follow the crowd (they always follow) – the crowd that strangely, in it’s completely disinterested self-interest, has sense enough to recognize the amenities of the Enterprise Lounge fits better than the Borg charging station – if you’re still human anyway – that is, if the crowd doesn’t spend all its time listening to geeks. That’s the point, technology is normal now. And that too is killing the store. When’s the last time you walked into a store and bought a song in mp3 format? Have you ever?

So look, I think the Nook is a good purchase, and a great device, for years to come. I’ve no qualms with purchasing another one, and owning it, and using it, and reading with it. If you’re buying it to read, then buy it and read, and don’t worry about the other stuff. It’s likely that I won’t have my Kindle3 in five years and you won’t have your Nook either. The technology you use now is either optimum, or you need to optimize it, if you can. But for me, I made primarily a philosophical choice. It’s the same reason I bought a very small car. I’m trading a little comfort, and my payments are more than the gas on the one I traded in, but I was also buying an outlook on life. I guess I’m kind of a philosophical consumer. Philosophy isn’t enough of a reason for most people, I think, to care whether it’s a Nook or a Kindle on which they’re reading their Jane Austen or the latest bestseller. In terms of every day use, you won’t notice or care. I’m just describing my reasons, what I think is happening to the industry, and why I think beauty and non-geeky reasons are great reasons to make your own choice of device.

When my coffee shop closes, if it’s late, and I still want to work, I’ve been going to Borders. It’s a good place to buy notebooks and drink some passable coffee (if you avoid the “cold brewed” concoction that often sits in a pitcher for days, which they water down in your glass because it’s concentrated). There are enough electrical outlets, and they’re open ’til 11.

There are often the usual annoyances – the bitchy, older small businessman broadcasting his toughness and independence (vestige of the John Wayne era) for all to hear: “I told her that if she was going to… and if he does that, I’ll tell him…”, the gaggle of reading group types making sure they set up right in the center, so we all can benefit from the sharing (and cackling), the single guy who discovered religion or politics just yesterday and is lecturing the tolerating girlfriend about it (pro or con) with the passion of a zealot and the conviction of a sage, or just mix and match – put the single guy on the phone, and give the older one the political megaphone, and make the gaggle a screaming child who says he’s in charge and the parent that let’s him make sure we all know it. Add in the weird musical selections over the PA – one evening some guy is singing a gospel “thank you, Jesus” and the next it’s a bluesy “I’m burning in Hell”. I kid you not, those were the two most recent times I went. But in some ways, it’s still tolerable with a good set of earplugs.

They’re serious about running you out at 11pm. That sucks, but I get it – it’s a labor cost thing. So why the wall of shame?

Seattle’s Best plays a big role. Borders used to have good coffee – coffee good enough to be missed. Even in Seattle, no one drinks Seattle’s Best. But it’s really the policies of the cafe that suck. Look in the forums for the guy that ordered no ice and they filled his glass half full, because that’s the same amount of liquid. Wow. It’s not every cafe, but it’s not none of them, either. Tonight I ordered an espresso, and it was $1.80. I asked if it had gone up, and they said they have to charge for a small drink. In the past, they could charge what they charge just for a shot (because that’s what I ordered). Not anymore – “it’s corporate”, the gal explains. That’s an interesting premise – file that away. So a double shot is $1.95, if that gives you an idea (is that a large drink?). But yep, it’s even decanted as a small drink – no espresso cup – they put it in a small drink cup, way down at the bottom. Imagine – an espresso that’ll take a lid. If it’s a small, hot drink, though, shouldn’t it work the same way as the guy w. the ice? Fill it up, or you owe me the rest. I didn’t make a point of this at the counter, but it only seems fair.

The real straw came when they killed the internet at a few minutes before 11:00. I had just written a lot of crucial material, and hitting save on my cloud document no longer worked. No warning – just bam, you’re screwed. When I asked a passing clerk about it, he said they shut down the internet automatically at 11:00. When I pointed out that it’s not 11:00 yet, he held his hands wide and said there’s nothing he can do about it. Wow again. If I had just been told that the most valuable objects possible in the world (ideas written down) – at least that valuable to someone – were hanging in limbo, and an evening’s work (how’s that for value?) was getting lost because someone decided to to set the wifi to trip off before closing time, I’d go back and flip the switch so the file could be saved. Yes, it’s that easy. But no, there’s nothing he can do. I’m getting that “it’s corporate” vibe, but he didn’t actually say it.

So I go to the manager on duty, and tell her I really can’t regard the place as a cool venue anymore. I tell her about the ice, the espresso, and the internet, and how it has made me reticent to consider them an acceptable place to return even with the notebooks, the coffee, and the many outlets. It’s that serious to me – I’m losing an evening’s work. Wow a third time: what ensues is a list of reasons why I’m wrong, and how much trouble it is that I am raising these concerns. She says everyone has a fill line on their cups – that’s just how every coffee shop does it – I just don’t understand how iced coffee drinks work, because (she tells me) Borders didn’t have iced coffee before Seattle’s Best. They did, actually, and it was excellent. I tell her I just came from a coffee shop, one of many I patronize, and they’re happy to omit ice on a cold drink. “That’s an independent coffee shop,” she says. “This is corporate”. Again that premise. The file on that notion is getting fat.

The internet she blames on the ISP – they “have no control over Verizon outages”. I tell her what the clerk says about the automatic cutoff, so she says she’ll go back and flip the wifi back on long enough for me to save my file (so it’s not Verizon, after all). But great – I might just change my mind about the place – that’s what I’m looking for – simple fix, and I’m out of their hair. But no, she can’t leave it at that. She launches into telling me that I should have come to her sooner. So I’m wrong again. Wrong about ice, wrong about the internet, wrong about not getting to her sooner (it’s now 11:01pm – I discovered the dead internet at 10:58 as I was saving the file to go home – I tell her this, she still says I should have come immediately). She explains they cut off the internet because some people like to try to stay until 11:15. Imagine, customers who like the place so much, they try to stay there. In fact, she tells me, they’re closed now, and they’re trying to leave, and this is posing a real burden on her. So, I can save my file, but I should acknowledge that the system really makes sense as it is, and be extremely grateful with my sip of coffee in an oversized cup and my work hanging in the balance as I tried to leave on time. In the end, I tell her the list of reasons why I’m inconveniencing her, don’t understand how things work, and am complaining in the wrong way, is growing really long. I’m thinking, at this point, I’ll drive home with the laptop open and hit save when I hit a signal.

I am indeed an inconvenience, she says – she’s trying to go home, and that I’m making her evening difficult. I think,actually, and I’m not trying to be bitchy, that this is what “it’s corporate” means – it means I am there for her convenience, not the other way around. I can rectify that, of course, as I see that what I really have to pay for my file is capitulation – I have to accept cubicle wisdom – things are what they are because they’re corporate and corporate is immune from correction – I tell her not to bother with flipping the wifi. I’m now trying to leave, but no – she still can’t let it go – she needs to believe – and she needs *me* to believe. She gets in a few parting shots that I won’t bore you with further with though to portray it accurately, you had to experience at least some tedium (besides, they’re just more things I’m doing wrong and should do better, more that I don’t grasp – it’s corporate, after all – inscrutable, I guess that means, more of how my complaining procedure is incorrect). At the door, I ask who were supervisor is, because I figure I’ll send him the link to this review (I didn’t – I try not to be personally vindictive), and she wonders why I’d want to trouble him with these things (I’m so much trouble) and finish up a Friday evening with a complaint. My evening isn’t finished, I assure her (for one thing, I’ve got work to go try and save – good thing I had that small drink… er… espresso). That’s it, isn’t it – “it’s corporate” means they think we all tuck ourselves in when they turn out the lights? Our lives are over for the day, because their business is closed. The file is getting creepier.

So, wall of shame. And not because I want to get limp revenge on Borders. And I certainly don’t want to get individual people there in trouble, which is why I’m not naming them, and not actually going to that manager – corporate stores like this don’t learn or create learning for others – they punish people when you complain, instead of making them better. Those complaints are too much of an inconvenience, after all. It’s really just futile unless you’re trying to hurt someone for whom this is all there is in the world of work (like kicking a cripple), or unless it’s really worth the price of admission to go that far to analyze and understand how people in that kind of work milieu think.

That’s the biggest shame – that these folks are trained to regard consumer unhappiness as burdensome, a thing to be refuted and argued against rather than repaired with thinking outside the nametag – the need to defend and prop up corporate-ish-ness and make sure the customer knows he’s wrong – that “corporate” simply can’t be wrong in the same way – it’s above the person – it’s a self-justifying mechanism – a thing is so, and is rightly so, because “it’s corporate” – “there’s nothing we can do”.

I might indeed be wrong, I might be. The guy w. the half full cup might be wrong. But how would they know? Are we wrong just because they want to do things a certain way and our asking for it to be different is an inconvenience? What’s troubling is that they’re right about the independent vs. corporate thing, which they all seem to have down, including the guy that says “there’s nothing I can do” (translation: I have no empowerment in my job – I exist in a world of absolutes that cannot be changed). The gal that explains the price gouge: “it’s corporate” (pricing isn’t about rationally sensible to you, it’s about what works for us). And their manager, finally: “that’s an independent store, we’re corporate” (She’s right, of course – the independent person, right down to the lowly part time counter clerk, at any independent coffee shop I’ve patronized in the last 15 years would have imagined what it’s like to be in a customer’s shoes and would have said “That sucks to lose an important file, here let me flip the wifi if all you need is to hit the save button. Then we’ll get you on your way.”).  It would have been shameful for an employee at any independent coffee shop to think, live with, let alone say the words “there’s nothing I can do”. They just don’t want to work in a place like that – it’s why they’re not at Blockbuster.

The internet thing is stupid, sure – it’s like turning off the lights while someone is still reading 5-minutes before closing, or locking the bathroom so they can’t let out they’re espresso 5-minutes before they get on the road. It’s just dumb. 11:00 should not mean 10:55. Close 5-minutes earlier, if you want. If I know that’s coming, I’ll shut down then. Did I mention that there were several announcements over the P.A. system to the effect that the store closes at 11:00? Nothing said, “but at 10:55, we turn out the lights!” Spooky, but kind of fun if you just announce it. But come on, it’s more like a restaurant than the post office.

The coffee thing, well you can always work around stuff like that in a corporate store – they’re never quite clever enough to prevent all frugality (which seems to be the real moral crime in one of those places). You just learn to do things like order a double espresso, add twice as much half and half and some honey, and then ask them to fill your “small drink” cup with ice (ice is free, isn’t it?), after which you lid it and shake. I feel like Jack Nicholson trying to order a sandwich in Five Easy Pieces. “What do you mean I can’t get toast, you have sandwiches, you have bread don’t you?”

But the whole, ‘we’ll flip the switch rather than lost you, but you complained in the wrong way, and we’re not really wrong, you’re wrong – about everything, and we hate getting feedback like this – we only want positive feedback – because we’re a corporate store’ – all the way out the door – that’s really the “corporate” mentality writ large – and that’s almost worth a nights work to write off. There’s only one right kind of feedback in a corporate store, because there’s only one reason for things: “we’re corporate” – and that’s why I don’t complain to the GM – because there’s only one response in a setting like that – the patronizing “sorry you had a bad experience, that shouldn’t have happened” and then someone gets punished – not for a rational reason – they don’t get trained – they get punished – for one cause – “it’s corporate”. But it doesn’t change.

Sure I always knew that Borders was corporate. And yeah, I’m picky and all, and yeah – for those of you who avoid conflict like gonorrhea – I could have just let it go or adapted. But I *want* to interact with the world of other people’s work, too – even big box work. I *want* to engage it, even if it’s an unwinnable cause, because it fuels my own understanding of work. I suppose the first step to breaking free is understanding there’s a problem. Sure, you’ve gotta get beyond that, but it’s never really good to lose touch with the problem. As a colleague of mine says, “We’ll watch them, we’ll learn from them, and we won’t run our businesses the way they do.” I always smile and nod and say, “And that’s why we’ll outdo them with fewer resources. That’s why we’ll succeed where they fail.” So I admit, I’m not exactly the quiet type who just sinks his chin and goes off looking at his feet. Especially not after abiding by the rules, and still being unable to save a night’s work. That’s raping me, in my book. But it does provide an opportunity (I’ve got to get something out of it) to think about what those two pregnant words (“it’s corporate”) mean to people. What is it they think they are saying? I don’t know if you caught it, but they also think that my Friday ends when their store’s Friday ends. At 10:55. What does that say about the lens a corporate store uses to understand its clientelle?

1. Job boards are like singles bars – some people never keep that promised date. Ever realize that it was just a tease, that he or she is never going to call, or return your call? It’s amazing how many applications are filled out and quickly responded to, only to find that the applicant doesn’t really want the job after all. Why’d they bother? you might ask. Exactly – that fake phone number handed out in the hotel’s evening lounge might have been just to be polite, but hanging out verifiable contact information and then treating the contact like a call from a bill collector is just weird. Still, if Twitter has taught us anything, it’s that large numbers of people will do the weird thing, and the savvy – the businesses that thrive will figure out why, and respond to it. Personally, I think there needs to be a “no, I’m serious, I really want to have your children” feature on online job applications – something that specifically motivates people NOT to just check the box to be thorough. Are there any job boards that charge you for putting in an application? What about peer review – the same kind of effect you get from mistreating bidders and sellers on Ebay – a series of questions and answers after the engagement for both parties – yes, this employer contacted me in a timely manner (hold those corporations accountable for collecting resumes for months before they actually intend to hire) and indeed, this applicant responded to our response. You could even automate response tracking, so there is no chance of missed connections. But as things are, it’s like people who google for hair stylists. My wife is a hair stylist, and half the people that find her on Google and make an appointment don’t show, don’t call, and don’t return a call asking if they’re running late. Crass, trash people, in my book – worthless slobs who deserve to have their time disrespected by waiting with lousy magazines in Supercuts. But job applicants… you’d think… nope. Same people. The exact same people. Hi, I’d like to work for your company, I’ll be right back (and you never hear from them again). The truth is that an overwhelming number of job seekers in the US believe, even in a down job market with significant unemployment, that jobs will always be limitless – that you can burn contacts, blow off appointments, and still be in pretty good shape when you go looking again. Jobs, in the US, are effectively commoditized. So how do we adjust? I think the only answer, until electronic mechanisms for tracking get better, is to not take applications seriously until they show up at an initial screening. Most office places do that with a phone call anyway, these days. If you don’t make the screening appointment, it’s like you never applied. We give you one freebie – the application is tease – the screening is put up or get lost time.

2.  A lot of people are trolling the bottom, pitching anything that moves. Blanket cut and paste responses from India (yes, most of them are from India) “Hello, I’m confident that I can do any task if you select me for your position.” Not reading the posting (it says apply on the website, and they e-mail you an attached resume). The shotgun approach (getting the same resume that every posting got today).You can’t really avoid this, of course, but I think the answer is the same as for people that read the posting and apply correctly, and then vanish. Except that instead of screening (do you really want to risk that people who clone their efforts for everyone will actually move forward with an application?), you do pre-screening. Make every applicant do something unique, like sum up the position you’ve outlined – a kind of employment CAPTCHA (the place on most forms where you type in the letters/numbers you see to make sure you’re not a spammer).

3. Conventionality limits vision – the paradox of the jaded. Dinner and a movie? You have nice hair. That just doesn’t work for us. Our particular posting is for a unique kind of working arrangement, but we’re open to almost any position in any industry. The job boards, though, are rife with scams and gimmicks – attempts to rope people into sales gigs they won’t like, “business opportunities”, recruiters, and resume services aimed at separating out of work people from their last savings. Job seekers are understandably reticent to respond to anything new. The drawback of being jaded, of course, is that opportunities are missed. There’s no substitute for actually understanding what you’re rejecting or pursuing, but it’s easier to stay in the middle of the aisle and go down the well plowed path. In short, most job seekers aren’t bulls, ready to find new pastures – they’re cows who won’t do it until the pastures aren’t new – until the bull does it, and they seem him do it. This is good for bulls – they get to fill their bellies with the best, first – bulls always do that – they’re never scrounging, because they’re constantly exploring. So that’s great for employers if we’re targeting bulls – differentiate ourselves properly from the scam artists, and give them the things bulls need to hear (like we’re not going to charge you anything or pitch you – call us and we’ll explain – ditch us if you don’t like it). If you want the cows, they’ll eventually follow the bulls anyway. If you want the cows now, though, at the start, you have to come up with creative ways to get the message across right when they encounter that posting. A link to a Youtube video can do wonders. We did webinars, and they were great, but going forward I see the instantaneous value of videos being the first point of contact – the webinar is for those who want to go forward after that. Most job boards haven’t wised up yet to letting you embed videos in a posting.

4. Get beyond job boards alone. The singles bar may be part of the repertoire, but the search pattern has to be wider. Along these lines, job boards, on the whole, haven’t caught on to a lot of things. One marked us as spam right away – why? We didn’t fit a pattern they understood. That was Ebay’s jobs. You’re not conventional? End of discussion. Job posting options are inflexible, as well. There’s no way to list something like our openings – any job, any industry – nope, you’re required to pick one (accountant, project manager, IT professional). Sure, there’s often an ‘other’, but that gets you slotted into the oblivion that people check last. Why isn’t there a category like “any/all” – because it doesn’t account for how most people are working these days. Likewise, there’s often a selection of traditional employer, recruiter, staffing agency – but what if you’re none of these? A simple fill-in-the-blank option would correct these deficiencies in any pulldown. This seems to mean that, to really get sufficient airplay to attract job seekers, unconventional employers still need their own job openings page (as antiquated as that setup is), coupled with effective use of other media, including social media and PR to get their message out.

5. Unconventional seekers ARE reading between the lines. Be genuine and exceptional, and you’ll attract genuine and exceptional people. Despite all of the above problems, people get through, genuine people seeking genuine work relationships. What was interesting to me was not so much the number of false positives, nor even the size of the response (we’d like a lot more – or at least more that at least keep up the back and forth from application to interview request), but it’s that the ones that did get through were exactly the kind of people we were seeking – meaning we did it, basically, right. We gave the correct impression, said the correct things, and got a response from the correct audience. And out of those who responded, we learned that there are a lot of unconventional job seekers, in unconventional positions, who are interested in working outside the lines. Some want flexible work situations – in terms of hours. Some want a different pay arrangement. Some want to moonlight. Some want a different way to work in their current capacity. And these folks are looking, listening, and responding precisely to people like us who are trying to connect with them. I should say, incidentally, that I am one of the founders of Free Agent Source, and that’s the company seeking people interested in contract work in any field, any industry – or to adjust their work relationship, or their employment offerings (for companies), to reap the benefits of contract positions.

I’m pretty sure we’ll be using job boards again, and we’ll continue using the other media sources that work for us, especially as we  grow. In the meantime, it’s the processes of first contact, screening, and next steps that need to be refined. As job boards get smarter, which I hope our company will help inspire, we’ll get more mileage out of them. In the meantime, we adjust. The perfect match(es) are out there.

The clothing company, Anvil, offers lines of organic clothing that perform a similar function. They reduce the impact of the our consumption upon the world, transforming it in way that minimizes depletion of energy. The result is clothing of extraordinary workmanship that carries in it the symbolism of the company’s name – the anvil.

I recently bought some organic cotton t-shirts from Anvil. I love these shirts. One of them seemed to be off a bit, so I wrote the company. They immediately offered to send me another shirt. In short, the company is not only doing good in the world, it’s doing right by its customers.

So we think they’re good people to do business with – you can strike a stylish pose by purchasing Anvil Organic Cotton T-shirts on [amazon.com].

Someone said, ‘if you don’t write it down, it never happened’. That’s my life. But my life is also photocopying years’ old piles of napkins and post-its at staples, so I can scan them in, or pulling out less portable but dirt cheap notebooks, like the bound composition books that go for a dollar or less, ripping pages out, and scanning those. Those are great for studying Greek. They’re great for pursuing a subject. Not for what I need them for right now. Filofax (or Daytimer)? I switched off of that when I became so online with my business and writing that my google calendar is my daily friend. My office is my home, and I work in the virtual world, so I’m not carrying my Filofax to meetings anymore. I’d rather carry a netbook, and use many different kinds of online documents for work – calendar, docs, spreadsheets, e-mail, etc. And then there’s social media. A filofax isn’t social – it doesn’t collaborate. You have to offload it into something else to do that.

When I look at a moleskine, the miser in me says ‘too expensive, decadent, not sustainable’. But then I haven’t looked for knock offs. The moleskine is flexible in its cover. That’s huge. You get a kind of subtle portability off of a soft, flexible cover that doesn’t come from a hardback lined blank book, which is cheaper. The ribbon marker is hugely important. You might think it wouldn’t be, but it just is. The size is crazy important. The smallest bit too big, and it’s not going with you just when you need it. The smallest bit too small, and you won’t use it. Moleskine size variations are wonderful. It’s not that you might not find a blackberry useful, for instance, but it’s not useful for every kind of writing activity. The moleskine is very netbook like, as a paper object. It says ‘write in me’, not ‘play games on me, set me to vibrate, play with me on a subway’. Also, I could throw 10 moleskines into a manila envelope if I needed to move them – a moleskine doesn’t beg to be offloaded/scanned – it’s made to keep a record of your thoughts in between its covers and nowhere else. The kind of thoughts that either become something else in a different venue (like a book or blog) or aren’t meant to be shared – only used.

And if it’s used for what it’s designed for, it won’t be offloaded in that way. It’s designed for hashing up ideas that will take a different form elsewhere – at least that’s my take on it. You write out that bit of insight that must go into a book, but it’s not the book. So you don’t have to rip out the pages, and it’s actually kind of nice to think you could go back to your notes somewhere, and peruse or research them. Because it’s not a napkin or back of a business card or sheet of paper in my leather covered folio lined pad cover, it doesn’t pressure you to do something with it immediately, or threaten to pile up and become a fortress you have to demolish. It never becomes clutter – and filling it doesn’t make it an idea brick – something that you never really revisit that just takes up space in a file cabinet.

A moleskine says fill me, I can save these ideas for you as long as you like. I’ll be here. You might even enjoy flipping through me and reading me, even before you’re ready to use some of them. It’s OK, you can open up. Tell me. I’m a moleskine.

So I’m looking at this as a piece of technology, and I want it. B&N has them when I walk into the store, which is where I’m absorbing this out of the corner of my eye, not looking directly at them. But I need what they can do, and don’t have an alternative. I need a place to form ideas – ideas that won’t form unless I’m writing them in order to form them. It’s not a diary or a journal – it’s an idea clarifier and extractor.

Thing is – no matter how much you wish it, you just don’t always have an electronic device, and an idea won’t always come to you when you can use the device, and the idea won’t always stick around while you turn on and log in to the device, or while you’re fiddling with it. And then, importanly, where is the idea? It’s a file among many files, it might sit as an attachment among e-mails about your vacation or your dog or your day at the office. It doesn’t have a context that gives it the life of an idea. It needs to sit among other ideas in an idea context. It needs to live in a place that you visit to get your ideas back, review think, think about them and have more, and not just become a digitized, numbered file.

There’s something else. Nothing reads like a paper book. When I want to cram a bucket load of knowledge into me, I don’t want to use PDFs. I don’t want to scroll. There’s something about the rapidity and flexibility with which you can scan a physical page, and flip back and forth, mark something, etc. that no device, no device, can match. There’s something that tactile touch against the edges of paper won’t approach until someone loads up a truly leather-like flexible netbook-like cover with 250 individual e-paper pages (until the monitor is a series of paper thin physical windows), and gives you a stylus, and adds a ribbon marker. There’s something about the tactile communication with a book that can’t be improved upon, I think, or won’t be for a very long time. And this is coming from someone who loves his e-books, has an e-book reader (Nook), uses a netbook, and likes technology.

In the same way, for writing, for getting down an idea extremely fast, stream of consciousness, even a tablet and stylus can’t match paper of exactly the right size, width, situated in relation with other paper in a cover. Again – a moleskine. Handwriting recognition is really cool, but no matter how fast it gets, it’s not the same. Even with virtual lines on the virtual page, texture and tactile relationships to paper are so innately human, so grounded in the physical universe, that I think it’s safe to say that some ideas beg to be let onto paper, to dance at the end of a flowing, liquid, ink-pen, to receive pressure as part of their mental construction, so that the flow out of the ink actually helps shape the idea, to receive tactile inflection – gesture, before they’ll allow themselves to be dressed up for the digitized ball. I think that even the act of holding a pen in hand changes and contributes to the type and character and subtle dimensions of thoughts we have, in a way that’s perhaps not better than, but certainly different than hovering over a keyboard. I think one way with touching my chin and cheek in a thinker’s gesture, and another way when I’m typing – I just do – the inflection is different enough to change what I’ll say and how I’ll say it. I point this out as someone with a militantly paperless office who sees his computers as an extension of himself. Moleskine.

I’m looking at [alternatives] now to see if anything is more affordable, but if I have to get them off amazon.com at $10/each, that’s what I’ll do. A bundle of 5 will last a while. Alternatives would have to meet the subtle criteria for integrity (internal consistency), aesthetic feng shui, and the elements of tactile genius that make up a moleskine. Someone with a sense of what I’m talking about will have to have made them, or else just done a good job of copying. But I see genuine moleskines in my future, too. There’s no substitute for being able to grab another one of the shelf and keep going.