Tom Dalton :: Doer of Good

How does Microsoft dominate the world? Are they that much better than everyone else?

No... The brilliance of their strategy lies in its acceptance of their own mediocrity. They succeed because they don't have to be brilliant to succeed. And they are very good, for an average company.

Websites for Composers and Musicians

How about a design and hosting business that specializes in sites for musicians? A service to take recordings and convert them to MP3, to offer PDF samples of sheet music, and build a website around them? I think people would pay for that -- probably an upfront design fee and then a minimal monthly hosting fee.

Steganography

Okay, and this one is less a "business" idea and more just a fun thing I'd like to do: e-Steg.

A standalone, easy-to-use interface to create eBay auctions whose sole purpose is to carry covert messages. With the eBay API and a collection of Java steg classes already available, it just needs someone with the skill and drive to create a front-end and make it work.

I happen to know just such a person... Hee hee...

TruckTalk

Outfit truck drivers with special, hands-free cell phones that allow them to indicate "free" or "not available." Then, while they're driving and on dull stretches of road, they can switch to free and accept incoming calls. They could be tech support, or just companions for lonely people, or offer counseling. It would be a way for them to earn extra money and keep busy.

MazeMove

A game where two or more people can shift rows like in those number-scrambler games, moving tiles in a maze and allowing them to go to different parts of it. They would have to collect various goals through the game and then escape.

Organic Tetris

Just like Tetris, but with higher resolution and organic pieces. Curves, odd shapes, and maybe even separated pieces. Maybe Alphatris? Letters of the alphabet? Or it could be modded. Anything you want! Little people, or animals -- like Noah's Ark! Fit all the animals in the belly of the ark. Whales and squirrels and snakes and cows.

Why don't more businesses offer free ringtones?

My sister just spent $2 for a new ringtone for her cell phone. (It was a song clip.) That got me thinking. If M&Ms were to come up with a catchy line, use it in a funny commercial, and then offer it for download as a ringtone on their site -- people would go and download it.

This would work for almost any company. Especially any that try to appeal to kids, teens, or techno-weenies.

So, here's a business model for you:

Sign up with a couple of drop-shippers who will ship product for you and take a large percentage of your sales. Sign up with a company that will make a website for you and take a small percentage of the sales. Sign up with a marketing company that will promote your website for a small percentage of the sales. Sit back and sip lemonade while the money pours in.

What's the problem with this scenario?

1. The "large" percentage the drop-shippers take will be very large.
2. That large percentage plus the two other percentages will approach 100%

"But," you insist, "that's okay! Even if it's 99.9%, I'm making money without working, and all I have to do is scale up my volume!"

This leads us to the real problem:

3. Nobody will buy from you.

If you're working with a drop-shipper, you are competing with anyone else who wants to work with that same drop-shipper. You are all selling the exact same product, with the exact same level of service, and exact same fulfillment cycle. What can you compete on?

Price.

But you can't compete on price, because you have no margins! And because you are drop-shipping, and buying everything at single-unit prices, anyone who has invested in buying bulk and warehousing their own product will undersell you.

Thomas Monson addressed an audience of students at BYU's Marriott Center, Sunday night.

"Relationships without morality, business without ethics, and wealth without works" were among the trends he decried.

When Ptolemy I, pharaoh of Egypt, said he wanted to learn geometry, Euclid outlined a path for him to learn. The pharoah looked at this plan, complained this it was unseemly and demanded a shortcut. Euclid replied, "There is no royal road to geometry."

1. Choose Friends with Caution
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Decisions of one's friends appear to be a more significant influence on our decisions than parental guidance, or even availability and proximity of options.

2. Plan Your Future with Purpose
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"A man without purpose in life is like a ship without a rudder." Find a purpose and throw all your energy into it!

On the importance of self-control, Monson quoted From Camelot: "We must not let our passions destroy our dreams."

3. Frame Your Life with Faith
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"Dear God, I keep waiting for spring, but it never did come. What's up? Don't forget."

"Dear God, If you made the rule for kids to take out the garbage, please change it."

"Dear God, It's great the way you always get the stars in the right place. Why can't you do that with the moon?"

"Dear God, Thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy."

"Dear God, I read your book, and I like it. I'd like to write one someday with the same kind of stories. Where do you get your ideas?"

Believe in God, and believe in the dignity and potential of his creation, man.

Business idea of the day -- FocusGroup software to let web site owners and designers run ongoing focus-group-style polls on their sites.

Every tenth (or nth) visitor would get a popup window or something -- maybe something like an interstitial page, that invites them to join the focus group. It would have to be branded right, so it didn't look like an ad or fake thing. But then all the visitors who accept could be redirected to a chat room with a moderator who runs the focus group.

Or maybe it could just be a pre-determined set of questions they are presented with.

This technology already exists, but I'm not aware of anyone positioning it and using it specifically for site design. It could also be adapted for advertising or packaging reviews.

One player in this space: goodmind.net, offering "online focus groups" and a site that looks like it could use this service.

Imagine a radio station that learned from you as it played songs. I've always wanted the "Tom Dalton Radio Station" -- and the magical power of the Internet has brought it to me.

http://www.pandora.com/

THE greatest Internet radio site ever created. It grew out of an academic project to identify characteristics of music that tied various songs together. If you like song A, how can we predict if you will like song B?

They stream music at super quality and the interface is as smooth and simple as you could ask for. I'm in love.

I only wish they could find a way to make the business last. I might even consider paying the $36 for a yearly subscription, if I knew they'd be around for a year.

In a recent meeting, we outlined our strategy for a local search feature we wanted to deploy.

"But... That's just like what Google Local does!" came the startled response.

"Yes."

"..."

"So, they think it's worth investing huge amounts of money in. They're going to popularize the concept and create the space. They will even train people how to use the technology! That's fantastic!"

Then came the saddest words I ever heard: "But, we'll be competing with Google. Why even bother?"

I used to feel the same way, actually. I'd come up with an idea I thought was interesting, and start playing with it. I'd churn it over and over, refining it and imagining how I'd implement it. Then I'd go look and find that someone had already done something like it. Disappointed, I'd move on.

Looking back on it, I think I was mostly looking for an excuse not to actually try the idea. But more prominently, I think people generally believe that an idea must be 'disruptive' and totally novel to be worth pursuing.

I don't buy it. In that same meeting, someone else joked, "Might as well compete with Microsoft!"

Bring it on! Look what Apple has done. Look what Novell is! Sure, these companies are not nearly as large as Microsoft. But they're bigger than your company! I would be very happy to be company #4 in a list that included companies like that.

(Now jumping to a related, but different issue...)

Bigger companies have significant advantages in marketing muscle and development resources. But a single, skilled programmer and a clever marketer can respond much more quickly to market forces and bring products to life in weeks and months, not years and (think Longhorn) decades.

I read a report recently that talked about Wal-Mart's drop in efficiency, as it has grown. "Play in your own backyard" was the general idea of the article -- it suggested that most companies lose most of their efficiency as they grown beyond a certain point. Their only competetive advantage at that point is their size.

So why does every company keep pushing for the billion-dollar score? Or trillian, or whatever. Why can't a company simply pick a size it wants to be, then work on being the most efficient, effective company of that size that it can be?

We don't have to be Microsoft. We can live quite happily in the shadow of Google. We can provide productive jobs for employees and a positive, happy working environment. We can create quality products that improve the lives of the people who use them. We can stay efficient and profitable, without pushing everything so hard that individual people start to lose meaning.

Where can a business provide the most real benefit to society and the economy? 'Grabbing a bigger slice of the market' is a zero-sum goal. You can only succeed by hurting others. 'Growing the market' -- sometimes. If you lie, play on negative emotions, or promote bad products, then you're not exactly helping society move along. Sure, it can be profitable. But it's not good. 'Making a better, good product' is what I feel most good about.

So, I ask myself, is the I-Pod good?

Hm. I'll have to think about it.

And what sort of bigot am I? Thinking I know what's GOOD for society. Geesh.

How can you make more people do what you want them to, on your website?

Here are some ideas, ranked in order of effectiveness as measured by Lauren Freedman, CEO of the e-tailing group:

Seasonal promotions: 94 percent
E-mail as merchandising vehicle: 91 percent
Keyword search: 91 percent
Sales or specials: 90 percent
Cross-sells: 84 percent
Free Shipping: 79 percent
What's New: 78 percent
Up-sells: 75 percent
Advanced Search: 70 percent
Affiliate Program: 68 percent

Great stuff. Expect to see this implemented in my company. (Because, as it happens, I'm working on our conversion rate enhancement 'product.')

Unethically, I'm copying verbatim a tiny article from a magazine I read:

"Microsoft stumbled in the ethical minefield of doing business in China last week, admitting it pulled an outspoken Chinese journalist's blog from its MSN Spaces blog-hosting service."

"Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have been criticized for cooperating with Chinese authorities and censoring Chinese-language search results to eliminate keywords such as 'human rights' and 'democracy'."

I'd like to point out that the censorship isn't just for Chinese-language results, though perhaps these companies only censor in Chinese. While I was there (in Beijing for Christmas! what a trip!) I couldn't resist the urge to try a few sensitive searches on my own.

Among others, 'Falun Gong' was apparently a blocked search. Google, Yahoo, and MSN all timed out whenever I did a search for that keyword. Other searches came back just fine, but sensitive words timed out. I even checked for an HTTP response code indicating I'd been denied, but there was nothing.

The Great Firewall does not echo.

So that's a cool story. But my real reason for posting was that I want to remember this topic as a potential issue to discuss in my final paper for my ethics class this semester. Is it unethical for MS to comply with Chinese authorities when doing business in China? Doesn't seem so to me.

So, Tom. What do you do?

Corporate websites are often confusing and ineffective. I help make them work better.

Really? How do you do that?

I help businesses define their goals and measure specific things on their sites, so we can make changes to improve it over time.

Huh! (Nodding.)

A website can be a business' most effective sales channel. But most companies' sites are created by graphic designers or committees of people without specific insight into how to best use the Internet for marketing. For instance, Genetree is a genetic testing company. They had a site with a shopping cart, but it was hard for people to use and the site was confusing. The site didn't sell very many products at all.

I installed SiteCatalyst, a very good site tracking system, to help me see how people were actually using the site. I identified areas where people were leaving the site, and found that the shopping cart had a few specific problems. We redesigned the cart, cleaning up the forms and asking for less information. We rewrote some of the main pages and designed some ads and buttons to make the site easier to follow. We also added new pages for search engines to find and set up an affiliate program for them.

Their website has grown steadily over the last three years, and now it is their main source of sales. It is also the most popular website in the genetic testing industry -- its market share on the search engines is almost twice that of their next competitor.

Woah! Can you do that for me?

Yes. Yes, I can. (Smile.)

In defense of Google, I once spoke up at a meeting and said that since they are a private company, they can run their business however they want. The immediate reply: "They're a public company. They went IPO months ago."

I let it go, but I have since stumbled across a concise explanation of the distinction, which I will post here for my own convenience.

No, Google is a public company. You see there's this obscure institution called the "stock market"...

No, Google offered some shares to be exchanged on a particular market, making them a publically traded company, but they are in fact, a private entity all the same. In this short review of high school level Social Studies, the public sector is the Government, and the private sector is everything else. The unrelated term "publically traded" simply means that there are no buyer restrictions on who may own or trade their stocks. There is such a thing as stocks that are not publically traded as well.

Regardless of the trading of their stock certificates in the marketplace, Google does not gain some new requirement to rank companies/sites according to anyone elses wishes on how they should be ranked.

From a discussion thread on Slashdot, A great place to quickly gather the thoughts of hundreds of people on news and technology.

Smarter spam might serve a valuable purpose: protecting privacy on the Internet. One of the smartest things the RIAA (may their souls rest in eternal torment) has ever done was flooding the P2P networks with 'fake' or corrupted versions of popular songs. Horrible, but brilliant. Once the networks were filled with their fake versions it was very difficult for people to use them.

The same principle could apply to privacy on the net in general. If the net were flooded with fake websites, complete with fake posts and threads, using real people's names, it would make tracking people much more difficult. A company that's been slandered on a couple mesage boards could create a million more message boards -- with good, bad, and indifferent messages. Then they could point to the whole set and say, "All these criticisms are ridiculous!"

If I wanted to change my online persona, I could have a hundred fake Tom Daltons go do things online, so it was impossible to tell what was really me and what was just another digital, false shadow.

Not that I'm convinced that privacy is really the direction the net needs to go. But that's another story another.

A $36 million bond. Zoning and planning. Years of construction work. And finally, yesterday, Provo's high-speed fiber optic network reached my neighborhood.

I can't imagine a candidate more perfect for this new service than me. I mean, c'mon. If you're reading this, you know me. Fiber optic Internet and phone and TV? The future is here! Now!

But there's a catch. The flyer on my door declared, "All of these services are now available for a fraction of what you've been paying for them, through Veracity Communications powered by iProvo." A salesman's phone number was scribbled on it. I prepared to call him by grabbing my most recent telecom bills to compare.

I'm currently paying:
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(Comcast) Limited Basic Cable TV -- $12.62
(Comcast) Internet -- $29.95 ($52.95 minus a $23 discount introduced just before iProvo came...)
(Qwest) Phone -- $32.29 ($20.45 basic service, $11.84 fees)

Total: $76.46
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Veracity's "fraction of the price" package:
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Faster Internet, though the difference between a 1-second load time and a .045-second load time is small
VoIP which requires me to buy a new phone
Cable with more channels, but most that we don't want

Total: $94.94
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April said she'd consider it if the TV lineup included TLC. It doesn't, though. To get that, we'd have to do the $113.94 package. Over a year, that would be almost $500 extra.

That's a fraction, by the way, of 3/2 of what we're currently paying. Their flyer was right.

So, sarcastic humor aside... what does this mean for Provo? If they're not willing to compete with the big boys (the salesman told me they couldn't match what Comcast and Qwest are charging me -- "we don't do that") they had no business getting into the arena. And we just wasted $36 million dollars. That I suppose I'll be paying anyway, since they'll just raise my ultility prices to cover it.

And I was so excited about having fiber optic! Maybe once iProvo goes bankrupt, Comcast will buy their dead lines and upgrade. That'd be cool.

(And I'm not going to get into the predatory tactic of discounting your product when a competitor enters the market -- that's legal, smart, and not a problem because there's still competition from Qwest and MStar and Digis.)

This year, I've been working part-time so I could pursue a master's degree at BYU. An expensive decision, in the short-term, but if I get nothing else out of it, I think the new perspective I have gained on management is worth it. And what is that new perspective, you ask?

Management may not be the unmitigated evil I had previously assumed it to be.

Old Attitude:

Management is, at best, a necessary evil -- keeping the forces of darkness and politics from disrupting all the actual work done by the non-management who keep the company running. Most often, however, it is a bunch of people who don't know what is going on making decisions that don't help anything and then taking the credit for things that go right despite their best efforts. Being in management, by definition, means not contributing anything meaningful to the company and turning almost immediately into bloat and overhead that could be cut from the company without hurting anything at all, and probably actually helping increase profitability tremendously because of the typically inflated salaries associated with Management.

New Attitude:

Management is still probably most often what I've outlined above. But there is a better best case than what I thought before. That better best case involves two things:

1. Managers can help prioritize and make good, long-term decisions as representatives of the other interests and activities of the company

A heads-down, productive worker can do a tremendous amount of good. They are the lifeblood of the company. But the very nature of heads-down-ness is that these workers can't see what everyone else is doing. It's hard to really see how their work fits into the overall plan and direction of the company. (If the company has one, that is, which is another issue altogether.)

In a good company -- that is, one that is more than just a collection of good people, though that collection is an essential part of it -- managers can help workers do more important work better. I have witnessed a transformation as the Research and Development team (which I was ineptly managing previously) has been held accountable for weekly goals and priorities. Without even understanding every activity, our President has helped the team do better work and make everyone else in the company much happier, just by holding a weekly meeting where everyone has to report on what they've done and what they'll have done by next week.

2. Managers can train and create

This is the issue I struggled with even more than the first. Because even if they are effective motivators, all that is doing is getting other people to do the work for you. Deep down inside me, I loathe the attitude of getting others to do the "heavy lifting." Maybe it stems from childhood, and always being the "smart kid" in the group, I dunno. (No time for psychoanalysis!)

But managers can contribute real, significant value on their own, when they have actual expertise in the area they are supposed to be managing. Training people how to do things is possibly the most valuable activity a manager can perform.

Look at it as a choice: I can spend all my time learning and doing things myself, making myself a better and more-productive employee until I'm so great I just glow everywhere I go and everything I touch turns into gold. (Yes, a bit of deliberate sarcasm there. I fully appreciate the enormity of my own arrogance.) Or I can balance my time learning and doing with time training and helping others to do more, better.

Maybe I could phrase it as "if you don't teach anyone to fish, you'll not be able to feed the whole village no matter how good a fisherman you are."

I guess it involves a shift of my own goals. I have always wanted to be the best worker I could. The best employee, the best affiliate program manager, SEO specialist, program developer, marketing analyst, CRE improver, whatever. I thought (and for a time was right to think) that the best thing for the company was for me to develop myself as much as possible. ("Be the best fisherman." It's really a selfish kind of way to look at things.)

But I see that a more important goal for me now is to have our company become the best affiliate program company. The best SEO company. The best CRE company. ("Feed the whole village.") And just making myself the best doer of any of those specific things isn't the best way to accomplish that.

The only way we can really excel at each of those areas is for our employees to become the best at it. That involves a combination of processes and understanding on the part of each employee. And the way to do that is for me to develop good processes, train people, and encourage everyone to see and work towards the real goal.

So What?

So, I need to get over my knee-jerk tendency to do everything myself. That's been my default response for so long, just recognizing that I need to change isn't enough. But being part-time this year forces me to acknowledge that I can't do everything myself. That helps.

I suppose ultimately, the best way to encourage me to do the right thing is to make me responsible for and accountable for the performance of whatever groups and tasks I want to help improve. That starts to sound a lot like management.

Hmm.

When is a personnel decision not personal?

Hiring is inherently personal. We try to be objective about it, of course: resumes, job profiles, degrees and ridiculous job interview questions are all designed to fit people into buckets. Sometimes we're lucky and we can pretend the process works -- people sort themselves out into discrete buckets and then we can just hire the best bucket. But more often, it comes down to a decision between similarly qualified individuals -- who is the "best fit" for the position, the team, and the culture?

I think it's similar on the other end of things as well. When somebody is let go, or downsized, or whatever you want to call it. There are definitely structural reasons for that, sometimes. Purely arbitrary; about as impersonal as could be imagined. A rule like, "Reduce staff by 20%, eliminating the most recent hires." But even a rule like that is based on personal considerations -- how will the layoff affect the remaining employees? What will it do for morale and productivity? What if we lay off the most expensive people, and keep all the newbies?

And sometimes it's not even that clear-cut. Sometimes it's specific people. When a CEO says, "This person has to go." That's a personal decision. But is it wrong?

When I was an LDS missionary in Korea, there were about 200 other missionaries in my mission. All of us were aged 19 to 21. We were organized into zones and districts, with leaders at each of those levels, and then we had a mission president who was an actual, grown-up real person. (As opposed to whatever we were as a bunch of not-yet-grown-up-but-trying-to-be kids.)

Our mission president had to select missionaries to be the district and zone leaders. He had a large area to cover (almost 1/3 of Korea, by area) and he couldn't get around to see us very often. When he could, it was typically for a very short time. Once every three months, we had a 'zone' conference that lasted about four to six hours. In that time, he had to communicate his vision and goals to the zone and district leaders, especially, so they could lead the missionaries in his absence.

The missionaries all noticed fairly soon that most of the zone and district leaders were the athletes, the sports junkies. Some missionaries were very upset about this. (At the time, serving as a 'zone leader' seemed especially lofty and important. We didn't have a good sense of perspective.) I was in the small group of missionaries who defended our president and suggested that perhaps he needed to pick people with whom his personality was largely compatible. He needed to be able to convey complex ideas quickly and know that they would be received as he intended them to.

He was fond of sports metaphors. In a discussion about eating habits, he told me that Darryl Strawberry had colon cancer; I was supposed to be eating more fiber. I stared at him for a minute until he asked me, "Do you know who Darryl Strawberry is?"

I was never selected to be a zone leader.

(I have since read a biography of the former Rookie of the Year and his story is sadder and much more complex than a mere lack of fiber in the diet. But I still understand my old mission president's counsel, and I try to eat good food.) (Though my wife would suggest otherwise.)

Compatible visions and personalities are essential for quick, reliable communication. If you have time and energy, incompatible visions are just fine -- indeed, the debate and analysis that is often prompted by conflicting personalities and goals can be very illuminating. But at a certain level, a leader cannot afford that.

A general whose lieutenants constantly questioned orders until they totally understood and agreed would be unable to lead the army effectively. Business is not the army, of course. But neither is it the Greek agora, the unfettered forum for debate idealized by philosophers who had nothing better to do than stand around and discuss issues endlessly.

And so, back to the point of this all: even a 'personal' decision isn't necessarily wrong, just because it's personal. It's unfortunate, especially when it costs a great employee. And it says a lot about the management style of a company.

But ultimately, even 'personal' decisions can be business decisions, and any extra bitterness is only a waste of energy.

(Which is not to say that I'm not bitter about what prompted this whole post. But that's going to remain unblogged.)

Tom's rule for the day: "Never confront people with their own ignorance."

Let's say someone is in a critical position to do something. Let's further say that said person has no real grasp on what needs to be done, and isn't even approaching understanding any of the foundational pieces of knowledge that would be necessary to understand what needs to be done.

Are you justified in telling that person just how vast his incompetence is?

It won't help. What's the best possible outcome of such a disclosure? That the person would realize the insight of your comment and humbly step aside, allowing someone more qualified to act. Does that ever happen in real life?

Much more likely, the person will become an enemy. Defensive and eager to shift blame -- especially if it can be directed back to you.

The Better Approach is to acknowledge what the person can do and then work with them to help them through the problem. Teach them, if you can, what they need to know. Provide as much help as possible, subtly, without calling it such.

Especially if you're a vendor and they are an employee of your client. :o)

(Note to any clients who may be reading this: I'm not talking about you!)

The dilemma: we run up a large bill each month with the various search engine PPC programs. Those bills can only be paid by credit card, due to the policies of the search engines. Our high-credit-limit card was disappearing and the only replacement card we could use had a much lower credit limit.

The first approach: I called the search engines and tried to get them to switch us to prepaying or invoicing or bank transfers. After many phone calls, applications, negotiations, and pleadings -- nothing.

The brilliant second approach: one of our accountants suggested prepaying the credit card directly, establishing a positive balance there. Then we run as normal, and instead of running up a big negative, we just run our card down to a zero balance.

I can't use the phrase "out-of-the-box" without wanting to kill myself, so I'll just say that was a clever solution to the problem. I hope to keep that idea somewhere in the back of my brain so next time something like this comes up, I can use it again. I love it.

I've had another taste of my own mortality, which is always good for me, I'm sure. A good friend and business associate, the guy who has been with me at 10x longer than anyone else and who is really to credit for the business sense and organization that turned us around and made us a really great company, was basically fired by the Corporate Overlords who purchased us and signed a legally binding contract forbidding them from firing him. This has been a fascinating thing to watch, because they're not even hiring a replacement. I would have assumed -- as I'm sure he assumed -- that he was viewed as basically essential to the company. But he's gone, and we're getting along okay without him. Sure, many good things that would have happened had he remained won't happen. But we're not going to fold tomorrow. And the Overlords aren't really evil; they just value short-term profitability over long-term direction right now.

It's weird to see how quickly something like that can happen. A terrific and valuable employee can suddenly become an expensive liability, when the company shifts to a hard focus on short-term profits. I've assumed -- heh, heh -- that I'm also basically essential to the company. For the moment, they've confirmed that they view me that way as well. But I watched how quickly things changed for our old president, and I have a better sense of how readily that could happen to me.

It's frustrating to know that I'm naive about a thousand million things. I guess that's what experience is for. :o)

If you don't start, you'll never fail.

Ever stood across a desk from a stranger who was making your life miserable when they didn't have to?

'Small people' are those who act small -- who act petty when they need not, or who enforce policies over purposes to bolster their own sense of power. These people are often, sadly, terribly important people in the sense that they have the power to deny you things you need or force you to jump through ridiculous hoops. Bureaucracy is an ideal environment for these people.

Typically, if you talk to these people long enough you can catch them in logical contradictions. Because policies really are meant to help people. When they are enforced poorly, it almost always leads to problems. Once you find a chink, you're ready to go. But what should you do?

Here's the quote I saw (in an entirely different context) that made me want to write about this again: "Always provide the person an avenue to preserve their dignity and self respect."

No matter what you do, remember to build the person you're dealing with! Borrowing a line from retail, "the salesperson/clerk/obstacle/whoever is always right." Help them see how they can be right AND help you at the same time. If you 'defeat' them in a battle of logic, they'll retreat to a shelter of bureaucracy in which they are unassailable and you lose the war. If, instead, you persuade them that you're a friend -- you're in.

In a media management class I took last semester, we had frequent discussion about the FTC and consolidation and monopolies. People spouted lots of opinions based on such assertions as, "the government doesn't allow companies to hurt other companies or drive them out of business!"

I frequently countered that making a better product can really hurt other companies and even drive them out of business. Some students suggested that monopolies are illegal -- again, I countered that monopolies are not illegal, only certain, specific tactics that lead to the formation of monopolies.

Debate raged (politely, for the most part) all semester with few of us becoming any more informed on the actual process underlying the whole issue. How does the government decide when to get involved? What factors does the government look at?

Well, then I ran into this: an actual FTC document outlining their decision process on a merger from back in 2000. Apparently there are actually thousands of these, but I'd never seen one before. It's even meant to be human-readable, so I'd highly recommend checking it out.

If, that is, you care about anti-competitive behavior and government regulation. Which normal people don't care about.

http://www.ftc.gov/os/2000/12/valsparana.htm

A few choice quotes are after the jump, but I really recommend you read the whole thing! It's short and fascinating.

Warning: Long, introspective post coming...

Sometimes people ask me what my job is. Or what's my position with my company. That's increasingly a complex question, but I think the best answer is: "I do whatever needs to be done."

In the last two months, we lost our IT guy and the programmer who had developed one of our key systems. Rather than rehiring those positions, I just sort of took over those duties. So I'm maintaining our email and network and the program that runs one of our services. I'm also still responsible for maintenance on the program I wrote a couple years back that forms the core of our other major service. And the server system it runs on, with the cascading proxies and so forth.

This has been a bad idea, of course, and so I'm working on rehiring both of those positions. I have learned a great deal, though, about those specific areas of our company. I decided to split our internal server into three pieces -- we were running Exchange, our file sharing, and our domain controller all on one box. I outsourced the email to a company that will guarantee uptime and backups, removed the domain controller, and set up a new file sharing computer that's dedicated just to that. So when we get some real IT help back in the company, that person should have a much simpler job.

I'm also the person everybody comes to when they have any other problems. If a client is having a problem, if one of our services isn't working for somebody, if a client asks a tricky question -- I get a visit.

Why did this client just lose all their rankings? Why is this PPC campaign suddenly performing so poorly? How can we write content and optimize a site running this particular, custom CMS? How can we integrate SiteCatalyst into this shopping cart system? What data should this client be tracking to measure the success of this weird type of campaign? How can this client improve their conversion rate?

:o) That's a fun part of my job, actually, because I get to apply the principles I've learned to a lot of different situations and see how they work. It requires a lot of reading and learning and thinking, but then allows a lot of real-world experimenting and testing the things I've learned. Constant refinement. Lots of experience with a wide range of technical and human issues related to marketing and the Internet.

I developed basically (well, literally) all of the services we offer now, so of course I'm the one who understands them best. I built them the way I thought they should run.

And in the meanwhile, I'm also supposed to be researching and developing new products. That piece of my job tends to take a back seat to the more urgent needs. (Franklin Covey is spinning in his grave.) Especially for the last little while, I've been doing a whole lot more maintaining than forging onward. But the industry keeps moving and I've got more than a handful of interesting ideas for us to look at.

So, why the introspection today?

I read about a guy who's getting sued by Microsoft for some very large-scale blackhat SEO, spamming, domain squatting and stuff. He went to BYU and I actually met him once at a conference where I was presenting (ironically, about 'The Right Way to do SEO'). He asked me a couple questions which, in retrospect, fit entirely with what he's been accused of now. I don't usually get upset at people for asking questions, but at the time, he struck me as surprisingly arrogant. (Yes, yes. I know. I'm arrogant, too. But it doesn't surprise me.)

As news broke about this civil suit from Microsoft, this guy posted the following on his blog:

"I'll admit, I've done my share of blackhat stuff online. I continue to do my share of it. As long as it works, I'll continue to do it.

Why do people feel the need to relate an online marketing tactic with ethics or morals. "

This really resonated with me. The guy graduated from BYU and he's a mormon. He's got a family. He does Internet marketing. In at least those (fairly significant) areas, he's just like me.

We've had lots of people suggest that we do some of those things that this guy is getting sued for. We could easily have done them. I've even worked out ways that we could put our own interesting spin on them. But I've spent most of my career here trying to make sure we do everything right, with the belief that if we do our best and do it right, profit will come.

And profit has come. We're doing very well. I've also been able to teach at BYU, I've learned a lot and developed some great systems (software and otherwise), and I've got a new magazine column in the works. I'm going to be done with my Master's degree classes in December.

Basically, the point is, I'm at a point where I can reevaluate and look at new options. Do I want to move somewhere crazy? Do I want a new job? What kind of job would I enjoy? What could I possibly enjoy more than this? (And yet, I have the distinct impression that there must be something I'd enjoy more than this, because I'm really, really tired of... something about this. I don't know what, though.)

Introspection aside, I'm happy. Life is good. Life is very good.

And I'm going to go to work now. :o)

``Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.''

~Napoleon Bonaparte

Work I love?

Great pay?

Great environment?

Which one matters most? I dunno if most people get pick between the three, but I'm pretty much right there. Actually, I get to pick combinations of two of the three. Work I love and great pay with an average environment? Or great pay and a great environment with average work? Or work I love in a great environment with average (trending toward crummy) pay?

Yargh.

I need to make a attempt, I suppose, to answer the questions about 10x Marketing that have been floating around the Utah SEO/tech industry since December. (I realize my personal blog is not exactly 'official', so take this for what it's worth.)

In December of 2006, Innuity decided to move the 10x operations up to Washington. When we first sold 10x to Innuity back in early 2005, it was clear that at some point it would make sense to do that. (Not that we really wanted that to happen -- we live in Utah because we like living in Utah! And 10x was a fantastic place to work!)

The timing of the move was worse than unfortunate, because as with any large corporate shift, lots of people were let go. In December.

Fortunately, Utah has the lowest unemployment rate in the country and just about every 10x'er was bathed in hands-on experience with all sorts of Internet marketing for a wide range of companies. Many have already landed better paying jobs, closer to their homes, with great work environments, and all sorts of good things. (Anybody who hasn't yet, please contact me and let me point you in the direction of some good folks who are still looking for people!)

Up in Washington, staffing and training are the orders of the day. Some of the old 10x'ers are still hanging around here, working to assist in the transition and cover things until Washington is fully up-to-speed on the tools and processes. We'd already been fulfilling all of our small business accounts up there, so for many of the people it's a smaller shift than it could have been.

Innuity plans to continue fulfilling all current accounts and actively searching for new accounts, with the 10x Marketing name and tools and processes and everything, so 10x lives on as nearly identically as possible. There's some pretty exciting things on the horizon.

I've been with 10x Marketing through a lot of ups and downs. During that time, I've gotten married, developed and taught a class at BYU, started a magazine column with Connect, almost completely finished a Master's degree, and visited China. So it feels a little weird to think that 10x Marketing is the only place I've ever really worked. Straight out of college. Through several rounds of layoffs and business model shifts and CEO shifts and industry shifts. Working on virtually every single client that ever worked with 10x Marketing. Typically behind the scenes, but there.

And I'm still here.

Weird.

(See how even this post turns introspective? Blogging is like a black hole, pulling everything inevitably towards navel-gazing. Like a navel ring made of Bose-Einstein Condensate. Anyway, the point should be clear: yes, 10x is moving to Washington. Yes, many people here were laid off. No, 10x Marketing is not going out of business or running away from the fierce Utah competition. Yes, my tendency to ramble on far too long is irritating even to me.)

CALL ONE -- 11:32 AM (from 702-835-0099)

Sales rep: "Is this the owner of import-reviews.com?"
Me: "Yes, it is."
Sales rep: "Well, I can help you get your site in all major search engines within 30 days..."
Me: (Laughing)
Sales rep: "We can submit your site and you'll pay just $.25 per click for traffic..."
Me: (Laughing)
Sales rep: "What exactly does your business do?"
Me: (Slowly stop laughing.) "I do SEO."
Sales rep: "You mean... Search engine optimization? But the site is Import-Reviews..."
Me: "That's a site I'm running on my own, for fun. For practice and experiments and stuff."
Sales rep: "Well, we can help get that site listed in over 200 major search engines..."
Me: "No, thank you. Have a great day."

CALL TWO -- 12:03 PM (from 702-835-0099)

Sales rep: "Is this the owner of import-reviews.com?"
Me: "Yes..."
Sales rep: "Well, I can help you get your site in all major search engines within 30 days..."
Me: "Yes, I just heard all about it from someone else from your company who called me just half an hour ago."
Sales rep: "Great. So you know that we can submit your site and you'll pay just $.25 per click..."
Me: "Yes, and I'm not even remotely interested. How did you get my number? Why are you guys calling me again?"
Sales rep: "Um... All of our information comes from a database of companies. I don't know..."
Me: "Alright. Fine. Thank you. I'm not interested. Goodbye."

MY CALL TO 702-835-0099 -- 12:08 PM

Automated system: "Thank you for calling US Website Builder. For sales, press one. For client support, press two. To be removed from our calling list, press three."
Me: I press three.
Automated system: "Thank you for calling US Website Builder. For sales, press one. For client support, press two. To be removed from our calling list, press three."
Me: I consider how cool it is that the system must just automatically read my caller ID number and delete it from their database. That's really pretty slick!
Automated system: "Thank you for calling US Website Builder. For sales, press one. For client support, press two. To be removed from our calling list, press three."
Me: I press three again. Harder.
Automated system: "Thank you for calling US Website Builder. For sales, press one. For client support, press two. To be removed from our calling list, press three."
Me: I press two. Then one. Then three again. Then hang up.

CALL THREE -- 1:34 PM (Unknown Number)
Sales rep: "Is this the owner of import-reviews.com?"
Me: "Woah."
Sales rep: "Well, I can help you get your site in all major search engines within 30 days..."
Me: "What country are you guys from?"
Sales rep: "We're located in California..."
Me: "This is my third call from you today. All three were unsolicited."
Sales rep: "I'm very sorry, sir. I can remove you from our calling list."
Me: "I realize it's not your fault personally. And it would be good if you could remove me from your calling list."
Sales rep: "I will make a note of this conversation."
Me: "Great. Thank you, have a great day."
Sales rep: "And did you know that we can help get your site listed in over 200 major search engines..."
Me: Click.

RESEARCH AND SPAM, SPAM, SPAM

Because now I'm personally involved. So these guys are listed with the BBB for fifteen complaints (all resolved, of course) and there are a couple reports on RipOffReport.com alleging Misleading sales tactics, poor account management, and deceptive contracts.

But I'm a broad-minded individual. So I went out to see what kind of SEO they're actually doing. It's unbelievably, laughably, textbook bad.

First off, on their actual web design clients, they add their own company name as part of the title tag. So we get sites like "Waterfront Bar and Grill Restaurant USWEBSITEBUILDER.COM." And there's a hidden link embedded with an image map into the footer of the site, pointing back to the USWebsiteBuilder site. Classy stuff.

The best part, though, is the landing pages that get built onto other sites. Check out this one!

http://www.mail-order-brides-blossoms.com/USWEB/

It doesn't look TOO bad, until you click and drag on the page to select all the hidden text. And view source to look at the meta tags. There are hundreds of hidden links on that page. The Meta Keywords tag almost fills up an entire page all by itself.

For just $30 a month, you can be a part of all this?

Tell you what. For $30 a month, I'll just delete your site and get you the same results.

I ran across this quote on the homepage of a photographer's business site:

Spalding Media Services specializes in all forms of photography.

From a marketing standpoint, there's a problem with that. If I'm looking to hire a freelance photographer for a certain project, I want someone who specializes in that particular thing. I don't want a commercial product photographer shooting my wedding day. On the other hand, I don't want a child photographer taking the photo I'll be blowing up to put on a billboard along the freeway.

A general approach -- "I specialize in everything" -- is what you want if you're looking for a job with a company that might reasonably have a broad range of needs. The general approach emphasizes versatility and flexibility, not strength in a particular area. That statement only means "I don't specialize in whatever you're looking for."

If you're looking to sell yourself to clients for specific projects, you need to match those specific projects as well as possible. "But how?" you ask.

The Internet makes it possible. (That should be read in a dramatic, commercial voice-over tone.)

Pick the areas that you really do specialize in. Develop them as subdomains -- weddings.photographername.com. Each subdomain should be a tightly focused site with your strongest examples of that type of work and clear calls to action -- a "contact me" form, or a link to your contact and pricing page. That pricing page should be specific to the subdomain. So somebody who's looking for wedding photos shouldn't see a page that lists your prices for studio shots.

Your main site can carry the general pitch, but only if you're also looking for a job. Otherwise, you should pick your profitable niche and focus most of the main site on that. The main site is also where you could throw in a relevant blog or other content.

If you feel you must cross market -- because maybe the people who are getting married also restore and custom detail Harley Davidsons -- keep it subtle. If they really want to see your other stuff, they'll find it through a link in the main site navigation.

If you're reasonably creative, you can see how these principles would apply to many other situations. If you're not that creative, and you have bags of money, you can hire me to come apply them (and countless other marketing and technology ideas!) to your particular situation. :o)

Quick tip: Next time you need a rental car for three or four days, rent from Hotwire and book it for a week. Weekly rates are much cheaper than 3 or 4 times the standard daily rates, so even though you're paying for a full week, you pay less total.

If you try booking this way direct from the rental company, they'll penalize you when you return the car and make you pay the daily rate plus an 'early return fee.' Boo. When you book from a third party site, the fee is locked and all they can do is not refund you any days you didn't use.

We used this trick on a recent trip to Virginia and saved over $70. Hotwire is my hero.

Okay, so that's not an earth-shaking title. But I'm a reasonably smart guy. I can do basic math. (I can even do advanced, pretty crazy math, sometimes.) I'm familiar with contracts and the concept of compounding interest. So I know that the difference between online mortgage calculators and what people actually end up paying differs by more than it should.

We've recently gone through another round of media sensationalism regarding the 'sub-prime' lending market. Thousands of people foreclosing as their ARM loans started jumping up a point or two and they really shouldn't have qualified even at the lower, initial rate. Was it too easy for them to get the loans? Did predatory lenders sign them up just to get their commissions? (Or, as the media would sometimes lead you to believe -- sign them up to get the home when they have to foreclose? But that's not likely correct, because most of the folks who sign up these loans turn them around and sell them in blocks to larger institutions.)

Of course, the answers to those questions are all yes -- yes, people pushed them into bigger loans than they could afford. Yes, it was too easy for them to get those loans. But the biggest problem is just that people buy into it!

We get pushed towards all kinds of bad things. Pushed towards to much of any good thing, more often. Eat too many Twinkies. Buy on credit. Buy a house bigger than you can afford.

It seems to me that it all extends from the same, basic roots of greed and ignorance.

The particular problem with home mortgages is that the ignorance is especially great. The reams of documentation loan brokers shove at unsuspecting buyers is enough to guarantee that they will never really read or comprehend it all.

This post is sponsored by a company that offers information related to home mortgages and offers the following links: Remortgage and secured loans. A mortgage is a type of secured loan -- any loan where you offer collateral, or something to guarantee the lender that he will get his money back. Credit cards are typically unsecured loans, so the interest rate is higher.

There are tons of places that offer information on loans. What I'd really like to see, though, is one of those places that claims to have banks competing for our loans, and presents a thoroughly user-centric summary of the various offers. I want a web 2.0, interactive summary of the APRs, initial out-of-pocket, monthly payment, total lifetime payment, and penalties or adjustments that could come along the way.

Is that so much to ask?

"Peak performance, every one, every time."

That's the Virginia DMV motto. And when I first walked in, I believed it. A person standing at the door, directing people to the correct area. A large waiting area with powerful ceiling fans to keep it fairly comfortable. Pleasant lighting.

But that's as far as it got. It took us three trips to the DMV to get our new licenses today. And it ALMOST took four, but the final rep took pity on us and stayed late and allowed us to call the dealer where we bought our car and have them fax the sales receipt.

Why would we need to have the sales receipt faxed? We had the title! We had the registration from Utah, the safety and emissions, and proof of insurance!

Ah, but in Virginia, if you've owned the car for less than one year, you have to prove you've paid sales tax on the car.

That little fact is clearly stated on one of the pages of the photocopied documents they handed us. In small print, at the end of a long paragraph about dealer transactions. On the back.

And you are married? So the name on your wife's birth certificate doesn't match that on her driver's license? Ah, well, if you look in the small print at the bottom of a different page, it mentions that if your proof of legal presence documentation doesn't exactly match your proof of identity, you need a chain of identity document. So for those strange cases where somebody got married, they need to bring a marriage certificate as well.

These details were slowly revealed to us over the course of our many trips to the DMV today.

Yes, it's all there, in print, somewhere on the website. But -- I'm an avid reader, and I still couldn't bring myself to read all those irrelevant details to find the few grains of painfully relevant stuff.

So I was thinking about an online paperwork assistant. You select the task you need to do from a list of common tasks. Just moved in to Virginia? Here are the three most common tasks you'll need to do, just click here and they'll all be selected.

Okay. Step one: you'll need to provide a proof of identity. Here are the acceptable docs, select the one you'll be bringing. Your Utah driver's license? Great.

Step two: proof of legal presence. Here are the acceptable docs, select the one you'll be bringing. Oh! I see you're bringing a birth certificate. Is the name on it the same as the one on your Utah license? No? You'll also need to bring a marriage certificate. That okay? Great.

That's all for the driver's license. Set your Utah driver's license, birth certificate, and marriage license aside. You'll need to bring those in.

Now, for your car registration. Do you have a lien on the car? (And click here if you don't know what a lien means!)

Etc.

Wouldn't be that hard to build. If somebody from the Virginia DMV reads this and wants me to put together a nifty web app that walks people through this process, I'm willing to do it. Heck, I'd do it as a public service.

It would take me less time than I spent today trying to get my new license.

How to make money on the Internet?

Start an online book store, then slowly branch out to provide everything in the world. Everything from A to Z, you might say. All you have to do is set up a nationwide series of warehouses and one of the most advanced commerce platforms in the world. Patent a couple pieces of your system. Hire a couple thousand employees, survive the dot-com crash, become a household word.

Boom! Instant wealth.

Or, let's say you're not going to be able to do that. Maybe somebody already has. There's affiliate marketing, self-publishing, brand creation, pay-per-click arbitrage, eBay, web development, spam...

And then there's the really easy way: Payperpost. "The fastest path to tens of dollars on the Internet." (And I'll sell them that phrase if they want to start using it in their advertising!)

If you already have a blog (and if you don't, there's about zero chance you're reading MY blog, but if you are anyway then what's wrong with you? go get a blog!) all you have to do is fill out the Payperpost signup form. About ten minutes of work, ten hours of waiting, and then ten dollars per sponsored post you write.

This very post, strangely enough, is sponsored and takes me one step closer to my Wii. Yay!

Of course, the value to the sponsors on whose behalf Payperpost asks me to write is the links they get. It would be nice to believe that mere buzz is enough, but I think most blogs on the Internet generate as much buzz as mine does -- which is to say, absolutely none.

But I can create a pagerank-passing link as well as anyone, and here comes one now: Payperpost pays you for blog reviews!

In this case, Payperpost is both intermediary and actual sponsor, in an odd, self-referential circle of promotion. The Internet allows for these loops of causality. If you don't believe in time travel, don't think about this too much or it might injure your brain.

The point is, forty dollars. That's how much I've made already. The major world economic powers are trembling, I know. But I'll commit my newfound wealth into their established channels soon enough. Just two hundred and sixty dollars more.

About a month, I think. It's a cool incentive to blog!

I just clicked on a "live support" button on a certain website. I wanted to communicate with their tech support people. A popup window appeared with a large, colored logo:

"RIGHT NOW TECHNOLOGIES!"

In small text below... "Please wait. This could take a few minutes."

PROMISES WE DON'T INTEND TO KEEP!

Is that any way to greet a customer? (Yes, it's certainly one way.)

I guess it's basically impossible for business owners to view their customer interactions from the customer's perspective. A business owner knows the history -- knows how much worse it used to be, perhaps. Or how expensive it was to get what he has. So he cannot see clearly how bad it may still be.

But this wouldn't have been anything more than a passing thought, had I not been clicking the "live support" to share an existing bundle of less-than-glowingly-positive feelings.

I love the Clearplay technology. It's a million miles better than any other filtering system out there. TV Guardian is horrible, the fixed-edit DVD rental or purchase sites lack flexibility and cost too much... Clearplay wins on every front.

But when we went and bought their new player at retail from Target, I found a front on which Clearplay didn't win. Some problems presented themselves at several points in this interaction with Clearplay. Let me share my recent chat transcript with a support rep:

===========================
Eva: Hi, my name is Eva. How may I help you?
Tom: Hey -- just bought the player from Target.
Tom: Want to watch Casino Royale tonight.
Eva: Have you registered your player yet?
Eva: You can still watch the movie regularly, but if you want it filtered you need to register it first.
Tom: But our "free month" costs $8?
Eva: You still get free thirty days, but you have to sign up as a regular member first. Then you get two months for the price of one.
Eva: and you can call within the first thirty days to get a full refund.
Tom: Okay -- that's what I wanted to know. Forcing us to pay $8 to use something we just bought at the store is a bad plan.
Eva: It is supposed to be where you don't pay, but for some reason the glitch in the system has not been fixed yet, and I'm not sure when it will be.
Tom: Okay. We were seriously bummed about that last night. Got all ready to go, and then saw that we have to pay more money.
Tom: And that there's no filter in the box -- the box says it comes with 2000 filters on a USB stick.
Tom: = no good if you want to watch a movie as soon as you get the thing home and set up.
Eva: It says that you get a filter stick with the 2000 plus after you register. It is complimentary for signing up.
Tom: Um... Have you read the box?
Eva: Once you register and are waiting for your filterstick to come in the mail, you can download filters to your own usb stick, or burn them to a cd.
Eva: Yes, I have read the box. Of course I know what it says.
Tom: "FREE and yours to keep just for trying Clearplay: 2000+ filters, 30 days of updates, clearplay USB FilterStik."
Eva: Those are what you get for signing up.
Tom: That's at best an ambiguous way of telling us we'll have to register online and have it mailed to us. Cereal boxes are plainer about the prizes they'll mail out vs. what's in the box.
Eva: If within thirty days you decide you don't like it, you can keep the stick and the library on it.
Eva: Yeah, well complain to my management. I don't like it and I don't think it's fair or honest, but that is how it is.
Tom: I'm sorry -- I'm trying to complain to your management. Don't you relay chat session transcripts to them?
Tom: I certainly have nothing personal against you. I wanted to communicate my dissatisfaction to the company.
Eva: I'd recommend sending an email to adam@clearplay.com
Tom: If there's a disconnect there, that's another issue they ought to address.
Tom: Oh well.
Tom: I'll send an email.
Tom: Thanks for your help -- sorry for the trouble.
Eva: Thank you for contacting us! Please let us know if there is any way that we can improve your ClearPlay experience. You may now close this window.
Eva Has Disconnected
=====================

A little sad.

Two months for the price of one! That's just like "one free month," right? Like a restaurant coupon that says "FREE PIZZA!" and then the waiter tells you that you get that free pizza with any purchase of another pizza. And you and your wife look at each other and wonder what on earth you're going to do with two pizzas.

I'm going to forward my chat transcript to the email address the rep suggested. We'll see if anything happens.

Something should, but companies can't run perfectly. I know. You have to pick your focus.

As a customer, though, I can demand unrealistic levels of perfection. :o) I love being a customer.

I've never seen Johnny Mnemonic -- something about Keanu Reeves and R-rated movies just doesn't appeal to me. But the idea of a data courier is pretty interesting.

And we just got a bunch of letters today that were sent on Friday. So Friday afternoon, somebody dropped this stack of envelopes in a box in California. By 4:00 on Monday, they were in our box here -- clear across the country.

When we moved, a company packed all our stuff in a truck and less than one week later they unloaded it all in our house here.

FedEx overnight. UPS in a few days. Sponsor of this post, Logistics Group International, provides heavy hauling for commercial moves. Like your crates of anvils and pianos. Shipping, shipping.

Asymmetric proximity?

We can move ideas across the world. They can exist in multiple places at the same time. The Internet facilitated that.

Is the global transit infrastructure facilitating fluid reality?

Not until I can ship something and keep it, too.

"Are we allowed to (insert dumb idea here)?"

Do you answer with a policy, or with a principle?

Policy has the advantage, at least initially, of being simpler than principle. For a new employee, to just say "no, you can't do that" takes much less effort than teaching why that might not be a good idea, and when it might be okay. For an organization, policy has the advantage of being enforceable -- a company can protect itself against outside action and internal exploitation with policy.

But over time, policies pile up. A small set of good ideas becomes an unwieldy and often contradictory mess of rules that may make no sense because they lose their context. And a snap policy decision can gloss over subtle distinctions that might justify deviations. When experienced employees who understand the reasoning behind the policies make needed deviations, younger employees inadvertently learn that it's okay to break the rules.

Principles, on the other hand, 'empower' employees in the true sense of the word. And in the long run, that improves organizations. Employees who understand the reasoning behind answers to their questions become able to apply that knowledge to other situations without having to ask for further, specific guidance. Principles do not multiply -- they strengthen and deepen.

"But," the company argues, "our employees won't follow principles properly! We need clearer policy that we can rigidly enforce without being accused of discrimination or selective enforcement or unfairness!"

If your people won't learn and follow principles, you do have a choice -- either become an organization that relies on policy to control all employees, or become an organization that removes poorly performing employees and allows motivated and intelligent employees freedom to act. Before you make that decision, though, it would be wise to look at your own approach to teaching the principles that employees ought to be following. Are you actually teaching those principles well?

Teaching principle is harder than teaching policy. Policy can be taught in Powerpoint. Principle can only be taught in practice, experience, and over time.

But principle is the better path.

How much do you owe?

TV ads always focus on revolving consumer debt. "Do you owe two, three, even as much as five thousand dollars on your credit cards?"

That pales in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of dollars many people owe on their houses. (Or, in certain areas, their tiny condos.) I wonder how many people actually consider that when they think about debt.

I know that I typically think of myself as being debt-free. And I am free from much of the debt that typically plagues people my age -- no student loans, no car payments, no credit card debt. No alimony! That's a nice side benefit of being best friends with my wife. :o) But I still have a monthly payment that could kill me (figuratively speaking only -- I think we've revised those sections of the penal code since the Middle Ages) and I can't easily get out of it.

So there are companies that address the plight of the indebted consumer. The sponsor of this post, UK Personal Loan Store, offers services such as IVA and debt consolidation, which can help people get started on the path to debt-freedom. They also want me to include this link: Bad debt mortgages. I have never heard of a 'bad debt mortgage,' per se, but it sounds awful and it's probably a good thing to get rid of.

Are programs like these the best way to go? Hard for me to say, since I've managed to live inexpensively and never run into serious problems. And I strongly suspect that's the best answer overall -- don't let yourself get into a situation where you need a third party to help!

I'd like to see a little Flash game about the dangers of consumerism and revolving credit. Maybe you're in a store, and you have to dodge the end-caps and premium brands, to get everything you need at the lowest price and avoid impulse buys. And if your character's field-of-vision passes anything, your inherent resistance to temptation is the only thing that can keep you from buying it. Harder levels could be like Best Buy, where everything is a giant, flat-panel TV. Mmm...

Flat panel TV. Only $90 per month for the next eighty years! I can't afford NOT to buy it!

When I hear "file sharing," I think "file stealing." The MPAA has conditioned me well, I suppose. But -- and I say this fully conscious of the seeming sponsorship-fueled hyperbole it sounds like -- there's an online file storage company so good it's *like* I'm stealing... from them!

I dunno. That's painful. (Note to self: rewrite intro. Embarrassingly bad.)

The point is, Driveway.com has a cool file sharing system that you don't even have to register to use. The home page has a file upload box. Click it, pick a file from your computer. It uploads the file and gives you the new URL for the file. Up to 500MB for a file.

Awe-some.

Now, as I said, they're sponsoring this post. But I'd recommend them anyway. (But for the fact that I'm too lazy these days to just write a post for fun.) Temporary, free online storage. The FAQ doesn't answer any of the questions that have frequently occurred to me -- what else are they doing with the files? What info is logged with uploads and downloads? How on Earth do they plan to stay in business more than a week or two? And is the answer to that question related to the first two? (Are they going to be opening a set of content sites in a few weeks, with lots of pictures and documents they magically 'found' on one of their servers?)

So don't use it for anything sensitive. And don't expect the files to hang around for a long time. But for routine gunk that won't fit in email, Driveway's a lot easier than burning a CD and mailing it to somebody!

I bookmarked it, which is the Tom Dalton Seal of Approval. Until they go out of business, they'll be frequent, um, customers of mine. (Frequent servers of mine? Servants? We're reached the edge of the English language! Oh no!)

I was about to return my new USB-based Clearplay DVD player to Target. I opened up the box to drop the DVD player in and out drifted a little, yellow Important Notice. "If you have any questions or problems, please contact ClearPlay directly. DO NOT CONTACT THE STORE WHER