Chocks Away

As mentioned earlier, time to get back on the road after a quiet few weeks, thanks largely to the summer lull. US this week, Europe next, and thrilled to see I timed this just right to coincide with a global warming protest at Heathrow. Oh, joy.

Challenging quarter ahead of us. Half-way through already, and still having almost all of the target yet to do means we'll once again be very big-deal dependent. Driving those to closure on the schedule we want is always a nail-biting way to run a business, but somehow or another that seems to be the outcome, quarter-in and quarter-out. You'd have thought I would have got used to it by now, but clearly not!

I suppose it's some consolation that sitting on an aeroplane makes you feel like you are contributing, in some small way at least. That, and paying the bill for dinner with the customer, which on this first leg of this trip will end-up being quite large, especially if past behaviour is anything to go by ....

Sugar Water Gold

I'm off to Laguna Seca next Saturday for the Monterey Historics. Last night, I was just checking to make sure the batteries in my flash were working when this hungry chap showed up at the humming bird feeder.

Never really seen the colours come out in quite this way before.

Menace Of The Giant Drink Cans

This problem of rubbish littering the highways and byways of California just keeps getting worse. Managed to catch the above shot after a car had careered into a giant Red Bull aluminium can some careless driver had thrown out of the window.

Despicable, but what's worse is watching the homeless fighting over those empties. Tinnie that size must be worth a few bob, eh? (That's "shillings" for our American readers. Keep up, now.)

My Brain Hurts

Thanks to Jerry (you know who you are) for poking at me on the trepanation thing. It is one of those morbidly fascinating oddities that the complexities of the human psyche throws at medical science, doubtless revealing a lot about subtle ways in which our anxieties and hopes can push us beyond the rational. Or, it's just a bunch of weirdos who want to drill holes in their heads. Whatever. But it does leave a lasting impression once you've heard of it; of course, you can double that impact if you are stupid enough to try it.

There was a fascinating documentary in the UK, that I think is the one referred to in the Wikipedia entry, in which I recall a blond woman describing how she managed to perform the operation on herself using a Black & Decker drill. Oddly enough, they never used it in any subsequent advertising campaigns; can't think why not.

All sorts of benefits are claimed, and yes, there's a web-site you can look at, authored by the bloke who seems to be leading the charge these days for one's bonce having built-in air-conditioning. And it's one strange web-site I have to say, looking like a mashup created by the Masons and L. Ron Hubbard. Take a look, but not after you've had your bedtime cocoa otherwise the sleep man might not come-a-knocking that night.

Everything considered, I think I'll pass. Might send the link to Fake Steve Jobs though - he's into all this sort of metaphysical stuff and it might just trigger the next must-have iPod design: cork-shaped, of course. "Apple - a head full of music"? Hard to beat copy like that.

BA - Beyond Aggravating

Two Things That Suck Mightily

After the summer lull, business travel season looms large once again. Between now and the end of September, and not including domestic travel, I have a week in each of the UK, Japan and Sweden to sort out.

Thinking ahead for once, a while back I booked a visit to Stockholm but on a low-fare, changeable basis. As I feared, I did indeed have to make a change so I called BA last week to move a trip from August to September. Not a hard thing to accomplish you might think, but you'd be wrong.

Three impediments to achieving a simple change were thrown in my way:

1. You can't do this on-line, despite BA's claims to the contrary. No explanation, just a directive to call them. So I did, and promptly incurred a $20 charge for anything handled by an agent, regardless of the fact that their system shortfall made me do it.


2. Thanks to the Byzantine fare codes and associated restrictions, I had to find a set of dates that both had space (only a few seats on each plane have these reduced fares) and were consistent with all the required restrictions (a Saturday night stay to name but one). After 30 minutes of playing pin-the-flight-reservation-on-the-donkey, something worked out, though that's "worked out" in the sense of leaving home Saturday and flying back Thursday, leaving at 7 am and travelling 20 hours to SFO via LHR from ARN.


3. "Ok, sir, now I'll need to pass this to our fares group for them to calculate any additional charges that might be due." Err, say what? Seems their computer system just throws up its hands and sulks in the corner at the concept of actually calculating something, so they send it to the typing pool to deal with instead. "Call back in a week or so sir and we'll let you know." Not even an e-mail notification that the burnt chicken entrails have indicated an answer? Nope. Just keep dialling, and we'll let you know when we're good and ready.

A week later, I duly called. Nope, no news yet. "We're busy." WTF?? So's the rest of the bloody world, in case you hadn't noticed. Called again the next day and finally got an agent willing to actually, you know, help? The answer had come back - hooray! - but it was wrong - oh, good grief. To keep me from going ballistic she phoned-up the fare goblins that live in the basement and had the whole thing sorted in 15 minutes, with the answer of $63 being the final result.

"Oh, plus $20 of course, sir....."

Apple Turnover?

Away from the hype machine that's wrapped around stuff like iPhones, Apple TV etc., life, liberty and the pursuit of revenue goals goes on. Next up on the refresh front at Apple is the iMac.

New models look interesting - certainly from a design point of view - and the pricing isn't too bad either, starting at $1,200. (600 quid - hard to beat that!)

Unsurprisingly, Apple has gone for a "no box" approach, delivering just a keyboard (which can be wireless) and a screen, with the housing for the latter also containing the motherboard and included storage, once again taking the lead in terms of PC industrial design.

On the software side, the thing that looked most interesting to me was the video editing software that deals well with HD, apparently. If this turns out to be for-real then it might tip me over the edge to the point where I feel the need to try one, jumping back to the Apple camp after 17 years. Well, no sense in rushing these things, eh?

Note: in the interests of full disclosure, I just wasted two hours trying to fix a problem with our home Windows PC and got precisely nowhere. Therefore, the above insanity may just be temporary. Or not.

Thar' She Blows?

I'm surely not the first - nor will I be the last - to point out that Silicon Valley seems to be heading back into bubble territory. Just take a moment to look at the number of social networking plays - and their associated exorbitant valuations - that are out there right now, how many video sharing services have sprung up following the YouTube Google exit, and now even the recent ramp-up in studios producing new content that will supposedly drive traffic volumes and create new, stickier sites. In each case, advertising revenues are somehow supposed to be shouldering the burden, often in ways yet to be specified, of either turning a profit or helping to lubricate an exit. And you know what? I just don't buy it anymore.

In terms of my own web usage, Google is the only advertising-driven tool I actively use. I can't remember the last time I clicked on an advertisement I found on any other web site, and I suspect I am not alone in this. Such behaviour, if indeed common, then begs the question, have web-surfers already tuned-out the noise of on-line advertising?

Fairly enough, you could argue that advertisers have for decades spent money on promotions where they have little or no clue as to how effective their efforts really were, and yet they kept spending so little has changed, right? Wrong. The reason for piling onto the web is exactly that it does allow them to close that loop between advertising campaigns and results, creating a true feedback mechanism in the process. Return on advertising dollars, via the tracking of a metric such as click-throughs, on-line purchasing, referrals etc. should be no more than a dashboard away from the advertising managers grasp. Finally, a way to judge advertising effectiveness that works reliably and repeatably, and a chance to concentrate spending where it does the most good.

If this scenario does indeed play out then surely the net effect will be a draining of money from the outlying web properties in any given market in order to enable the concentration of funds towards the main players where the profitable traffic is being found. Indeed, that's already a big part of why the name brands in cyberspace are worth so much. Until now, advertisers have been happy to hedge their bets, spreading the money around in the hope of spreading risk. However, once these new web-based models unequivocably give no hiding place for what dollars are being spent effectively and which ones wasted, what choice will they then have but to spend more wisely and in fewer places?

Here though is the big disconnect: many Valley VC firms are betting that the other properties in the same space will continue to benefit by association, surviving in the long run under the "rising tides float all boats" principle. This is exactly where I think the logic is flawed, revealing to us the pin that may ultimately burst the web 2.0 bubble. (Bubbles, blowing, whales? Yeah, pic choice was tenuous to say the least. Guilty as charged.)

Google will continue to grow; advertising revenues will continue to move from traditional channels onto the web; but not all web destinations are created equal and in the medium term only the real king-pins in any given vertical will survive and prosper. Anyone thinking that the fifth-ranked, copycat video sharing service is, therefore, going to attract a nine-figure exit is likely to be sorely disappointed. Ditto some social networking site dedicated to DIY dentistry or self-trepanation: yup, you know the drill ....

Sigh. It just seems depressing that a no-name, no-hope social networking site can have VCs fawning all over their business plan, clambering over themselves to stuff $1,000 bills into the clothing of the 25 year old entrepreneurs pitching it, while other companies with real products and innovative technology find the going so tough as to struggle to even get an audience.

No one ever said, though, that Silicon Valley was fair, but just once it would be heart-warming if the needle would swing slightly in that direction.

CA Summer

Warm day, so thought I'd post something appropriate. It never cooled off much last night and our house is this stupid design that combines open-plan living with an upstairs main bedroom sitting right underneath the pitched roof. Net of this layout is, therefore, that all the heat from the day rises and makes the upstairs 15 degrees hotter than anywhere else in the house, even with the fan running.

Sex With Road Signs

Yup, that's the heading, and that what's you get here.

Not much to add, really, other than to point out that Sioux Falls should probably be deleted from the top 10 places to take your granny out for a nice quiet drive round the city.

Well, actually, I suppose there is one loose end we should tie up (hmm, might want to re-phrase that): just how does one actually,err, manage it? At least, without a step-ladder, that is, as most traffic signs are quite a way off the ground. And sharp, let's not forget sharp.

Oh, one other question. Is having sex with a "Stop" sign viewed as rape?

View From the Downhill Side

Stretching

After yesterday, I think I just figured something out: the warranty period on yours truly is over. I tweaked my back getting out of the car this morning; got a nosebleed; picked up a splinter which I can't dig out and discovered I have mild tendonitis.

I have a nasty feeling that this is going to play out in the same way that cars do when they pass the magic mile marking the end of "4 years or 50,000 miles": all of a sudden stuff breaks, and fixing it is both painful and expensive. I can therefore confidently predict that the only stretching I'll be able to manage from here on in will be applied to my waistband.