Sunday, July 03, 2005

4PM Eastern: Arrived safely at the beach in North Carolina. (!) 

Insert standard disclaimer here. 

If you want to say something to Podchef, stick it in your... 

Replay Radio has become a podcatcher. And even better, I'm their featured podcaster today. Hey thanks for the love. I was a Replay user for a while, couldn't get it to run conflict-free on my laptop. It's great to see them support podcasting, it's a perfect fit for their users. 

BTW, these posts come to you from the Flying J truck stop just south of the North Carolina border in South Carolina, USA. They have pretty good wifi, not great. I couldn't connect in the coffee shop, but am able to from my car. And it's not free, $20 per month. Not too expensive either. (And I didn't mind getting out of the coffee shop, they let people smoke in restaurants here. Yukkers!) 

Morning Coffee Notes 

Back before MCN was a podcast, it was a blog post. I'd wake up with ideas, brew a pot of coffee, and go to the computer and transcribe. Today I return to the tradition.

Yesterday's podcast was about a tech CEO whose customer was "wrong" because he posted about a problem with the company on his blog. Read Jeff Jarvis's history with Dell for a clue about this. It's an echo of my trouble with Compaq, in 1999, which I called cruel and unusual punishment. "Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, check this out. You have less to fear from Sun, Netscape or AOL. Your worst enemy is in the corridors of Redmond. Go set up one of your own boxes. Do it all yourself. Your eyes will open."

I had similar experience with Dell, that led me to Compaq, and led Compaq to the dumpster, and surely will lead Dell there too, eventually.

Every company, not just tech companies, needs to have a presence in the blogging world, someone whose feet are planted both in the network outside the organization as well as inside. This is where the NY Times missed the boat with Daniel Okrent, they hired someone who could talk inside, but didn't act as a conduit for perspectives coming from outside (which is most of the world, even if it doesn't seem so from inside).

Only Microsoft and perhaps Yahoo have this. Even Google can't be accessed over the web, and definitely not Apple. Jobs's personal image is based on scarcity. Rather than listen to blogs, he tries to shut them down. To win on a bigger level, Apple will need a counterpart, someone from and in the blogging world, whose image is based on ubiquity not scarcity, like Scoble for Microsoft. Everywhere you turn, there's the Energizer Bunny, saying you're right, we suck, but we're trying to do better. Eventually he wears people down, especially people inside Microsoft, who then try the medicine Dr Scoble prescribes, and finds it not only tastes good, but it works. Of course Apple has such an alter ego to balance Jobs's, his name is Woz, but he's from a previous generation, and they don't listen to him any more than they listen to you or me.

A friend of a friend who works at Apple says they're aiming to be the next Dell. If Apple succeeds at overtaking Dell, and we see no reason why they shouldn't, their operating system may still dazzle, but users will fume. Until another Dell emerges, run by a kid from a dorm room, a kid from the 21st century, not one from the 20th.