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Thursday, October 13, 2005
OHIF 
| | Well, for some reason I can't post in Friday (today). So I'll put my Friday posts here. The next three below are actually Friday posts. |
Relationships are Relationships
| | What he says about real vs. bullshit relationships is important. We all know what real ones are, although sometimes we need to be reminded. |
| | And we forget what the bullshit ones are, often because we're swimming in marketing BS — much of it claiming "relationships" that are anything but. |
| | Dave takes righteous and correct umbrage at this item here, which posits "brands are relationships" as a corollary to "markets are conversations". Dave explains, |
| | So it was during this kind of an emotional high point, with what seemed, to me, to be a new insight into the causes of the differences between us, that I read a few weblog entries. This one will do as representative sample: |
| | A brand is your relationship with another human being. It is your connection, your lovemark, your hughmark, your cluetrain manifesto, your relationship with life, if you will. |
| | It was the most disheartening thing to read. |
| | I am so sick of marketing and marketers. |
| | Me too. Have been for a long time. In fact, that's why we wrote Cluetrain six years ago. |
| | Of course, Dave doesn't like Cluetrain either, as he's often said. But even if we don't agree that "markets are conversations" (which he calls bullshit) I think we do agree that most marketing is bullshit, and that "branding," no matter how much we rationalize it, still vectors from its origin as a word (and an idea) that Procter & Gamble borrowed from the cattle industry. |
Flattery
| | Yule has a lot of problems with Tom Friedman in general; but I think it's worth pointing out that I got very positive responses to Getting Flat both directly from Tom and from a mutual friend who says Tom was indeed moved by what I wrote, especially on the subject of IQ. |
| | Not sure if that will come to anything (or even if it still applies, six months later). Still, I do appreciate it. |
First cruise report
I never meta logism I didn't like
| | I'm talking with somebody on the phone who just finished talking to Dr. Weinberger, who was overheard to have used the term metasucker. That is, an intermediary sucker. One who organizes other suckers to participate in something no nonsucker would fall for. I'm still laughing, because David referred the caller to me, because I "might want to go." Even the person soliciting me, the admitted metasucker in the middle, is laughing — right now, on the phone, while I'm blogging this. |
| | As a neologism, metasucker right up there with celeprosy. Any guess what that means? It helps if you're from L.A. |
Silo hell
| | My accountant is here and we need to figure out a pile of expenses. Since many of them are on credit cards, I need to get online with the bank. |
| | The cards are branded United Mileage Plus, but are actually from Chase. Before that the bank was FirstUSA, which went through a series of name (and perhaps bank) changes. I lose track. |
| | I spent about an hour trying to get into my account at FirstUSA. After repeated attempts to use my known ID and password, it sent me to New Accounts. Then it told me my ID was already taken. Finally I called the number on the back of my card. She explained that A) FirstUSA is outa here, and Chase is the bank now; and B) the main card on the account had fraud activity on it, so the whole online thing was killed off anyway. Never mind that I could get online and see what the other card was doing long after the fraud on the first (actual, not branded) card was reported. |
| | So I went to the Chase site and walked through the series of forms required (including confuzzing double questions required to recover passwords). Finally I got to this: |
| | System temporarily unavailable (SY111) |
| | We are unable to process your request because the system is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later or click the Contact Us link at the top of the page to find a list of helpful numbers to call. You can also send us a message from your Secure Message Center. |
| | The helpful numbers are no help. I need to sign up online, it seems. So now my accountant is gone, along with all hope of gathering data for expense reports and stuff. |
| | Meanwhile, I've also been looking into changing my Internet service from Cox to Verizon. For High-Speed (home service) Cox is now charging me $49/month for 3Mb down and 300Kb up, with blockages on ports 80 and 25. That's for the home service. I also pay $109/month for Cox Business service, so I can run servers and set up IP addresses on boxes. That delivers worse speeds than the home service: 1.5Mb down and 300Kb up. Plus up to 5 IP addresses, but only if I let then know the MAC address of each device, which is a PITA. |
| | So now Verizon offers a home service for $29/month, at speeds of "up to" 3Mb down and 768Kb up. Cox counters with a "premium" home service of 5Mb down and 512Kb up, for $59/month. Verizon doesn't offer static IP addresses in their business service. Their basic business service is 3M/768K for 39.95/month, and a 'dynamic IP' address. Yet they also say a static IP address for "e-commerce" is available in the "Full service" package" for $59.95/month. I don't want to do e-commerce, but I would like several static IP addresses. The option to "chat live" with a representitive gets to a "TEXT/IMAGE FOR SYSTEM NOT AVAILABLE" message. Other links lead to other dead ends. |
| | I just called Cox's Business service. They still offer the same slow speed both ways for $109, but will give me higher upstream speeds for rates that the guy on the phone admits are "totally out of line." I told him that there are countless home-based businesses out there that need at least symmetical service, and that there's potentially a lot of money in offering higher upstream speeds. He told me he knows that and has been a voice in the wilderness about it, inside the company. "We have nothing but deaf ears around here," he said. |
| | I won't even get into the overall decline in service from Cox. Speeds are fine, but there are often long unexplained delays. Name server, perhaps? Not clear. Or how they've screwed other stuff up in the past, subtracting value that was terrific in the first place. |
| | I'm not sure what I'll do. Right now I'm leaning toward Verizon, a company on which I lose no love at all. |
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