Advice of the day: Stop waiting for your ship to come in (illustration)

Posted on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 by Rex Hammock

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Apple, China and the Curse of Living in Interesting Times

Posted on Sunday, January 22, 2012 by Rex Hammock

[Note: Not that this blog has a topic, but if it did, this post is way off it. I apologize to those who have figured out this blog's topic and I promise I'll get back to it right after I post this foray into the topic of international trade, manufacturing and globalism -- a topic that I was  surprised to discover that I can only write about while watching six hours straight of NFL conference championship games.]

According to Chinese lore (or something sounding like Chinese lore), there are three phrases that seem like well-wishing toasts, but are actually a three-part “Chinese Curse.” The three are, in increasing severity:

  • “May you live in interesting times.”
  • “May you come to the attention of important people.”
  • “May you find what you are looking for.”

You can find several versions of the wording of these toasts/curses, but you get the idea and the irony: Things that seem positive and enticing tend to have some inevitable, hidden costs or unintended consequence.

Today, the New York Times had a front page story that examined the way in which Apple Inc. works with Chinese companies (the primary focus was Foxconn) that have (1) Revolutionized the supply chain and manufacturing process and  (2) Have lots of skilled employees who are willing to work and live in a relationship with their employer that is much like serving in the military, including living in barracks and sleeping in bunks.

If you read the article pre-disposed to a flat world globalized point-of-view, you’ll marvel at how the Chinese government has put into place a system that has trained a vast army of engineers who can work at private companies (owned or financed by the government, but “private”) with an incredibly flexible work flow and the  management finesse super chops necessary to solve any manufacturing challenge within 24 hours.

Read it with the point-of-view that the adjective “Red” should come right after the adjective “Communist” before anytime you say the word “China” and you’d think the China-way is lipstick on a pig that looks like a West Virginia coal-mine company-town in the 1930s. And you’ll wonder where the part is about how bureaucratic and bloated the Chinese government is.

The reactions to the story (and there are lots) that follow the “flexible China is going to bury us” narrative, seem written by pundits who are convinced that China is on an inevitable course to world economic domination (like where Japan was heading in the early 1990s when Michael Creighton wrote the book, Rising Sun that ends, if I recall correctly, with a rogue Japanese airline pilot flying a 747 into the U.S. Capitol during a State of the Union Address — oh, wait, no, I’m sorry; that was Tom Clancy’s “the Japanese are going to dominate the world’s economy” novel, Debt of Honor. )

I feel bad for those who have to write with the “China is winning” point of view, as it is challenging for writers like Sarah Lacy and others who are in the “wow, China!” camp. She is burdened with the requirement of having to bury, somewhere in her Times-reaction essay titled, “Why China Wins,” this caveat: “…take away the emotion of workers rights and patriotism for a moment….”

Huh? Take away the emotion of workers rights? How can you take away the foundation on which the entire system is built? Such a quote reminds me of the old line, “Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

But there you have the essence of the Chinese Curse — actually applied to China: They are “living in interesting times, finding the attention of important people (Steve Jobs) and are getting what they want.”

So what is the curse? The reality of China is not just the anecdotes of today’s NYT story. It is also the type of reality that bogs down American companies in red-tape and ownership restrictions when they don’t have the clout of Apple. It’s the reality of internet censorship (and every other type of censorship) far beyond anything an American can comprehend. China’s treatment of workers is probably progressive compared to its treatment of the environment or its treatment of entire races of people — Should I mention Tibet?

But we’re all grownups here, so I’ll admit it. Just like the ambiguity I have to face in all facets of living, I’ll accept that we live in a large inter-dependent world that, despite the beliefs of a lot of folks in America, we don’t control.

Frankly, even when I am opposed philosophically to the way China is, or the way it treats its people, I realize and accept the fact that I benefit in all sorts of ways from how China works. So do you. So does the New York Times and anyone who is spending today slamming the system.

And I do know this. China is an amazing place. It’s people are amazing. Its resources are vast. I don’t believe they are evil. I don’t believe they are my enemy. I may not like their lack of a first-world point-of-view or policies. But I’d rather be partnering with them on how to make better and cheaper gizmos, than competing with them on who can make the bigger and more accurate intercontinental missiles like we did with the USSR during the Cold War.

We may not agree on how people should be treated, but I’m convinced that it’s a good thing to have the type of trading relationship we have with China. Making iPhones with China is a good thing.

I hope, however, that one day soon we arrive at that point where our relationship with China is uninteresting (as in, the opposite of the “Chinese Curse”).

 

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Inst@Review: iBook Author isn’t just an ebook authoring tool

Posted on Thursday, January 19, 2012 by Rex Hammock

[Note: Shortly after I posted this, I edited it to remove a rant I had that I've since discovered was misinformed. I've explained it at the bottom of the post.]

Apple introduced an incredible product today called iBooks Author.

Apple describes the product this way, “iBooks Author is an amazing new app that allows anyone to create beautiful Multi-Touch textbooks — and just about any other kind of book — for iPad. With galleries, video, interactive diagrams, 3D objects, and more, these books bring content to life in ways the printed page never could.”

Now, it may be strange to some of the 12 people who read this blog that I’d be saying that an eBook authoring tool that does anything beyond making text more book-like and readable is “incredible” as I’m on record many times as saying how little I like things called books or magazines that are crammed with interactive goo-gahs. And I’ve written that book and magazine publishers have wasted their time on developing such interactive apps and calling them magazines or books. (Ironically, I wasn’t writing that about Apple, but about the Kindle Fire and Amazon’s aggressive push into children’s books.)

But I’ve also written that when apps are not called “books” or “magazines” or when the interactive goo-gahs help explain or entertain or add-to a story or the experience, I’m gung-ho.

I know I’m going to confuse some people (Reader #8), so maybe I should just say this simply: iBooks Author is not merely an ebook authoring tool. Indeed, it could have been easily called iGames Author or iInteractive Presentation Author or iInteractive Training Author or (here’s the take-away part) iApps Author.

Let me point you back a few weeks to my recap of predictions for 2011 in which I explained why I was wrong about a my prediction that, “Apple will mashup features of Keynote and iMovie and create a program called iAnimator.”

I take it back. I was only wrong about being wrong. iBook Author is what I was talking about. (As is, the software from some Apple alumni who don’t mess with the ebook metaphor, called Tumult Hype.)

iBook Author is a recognition of what I’ve been trying to express for over a year (and is one of the wish-list platforms of Hammock Labs): If you start with the suite of tools that creative-oriented (designers, illustrators, audio-types, film-makers, web-developers, etc.) Mac users already understand: Keynote, iMovie, GarageBand — and then, you start tweaking the methaphors and beef up the animation tools so that creating interactive experiences in HTML5 is the technical outcome (great content is the non-technical objective), you’ve developed a platform that is going to make Adobe squirm and free the results of a lot of content creation from the web (as in, websites can easily be morphed into offline, iPad native apps, as well).

If you are a power-user of Keynote or any of the Apple iWork or iLife products, iBooks Author will look familiar (I’m looking at it now). Right now, however, everything about it says, “this is a tool for creating text books.”

That is a trojan horse! (The ancient Troy kind, not the computer virus kind.)

That’s sort of what Apple did when they first came out with the iTunes Store. Recall it: It was a means to buy and organize record-label music (and, oh, you could put all that other music you had just lying around your computer on the desktop software version of iTunes).

Only later, did iTunes become a massive commerce marketplace for the distribution of paid and free software apps and video and podcasts and university lectures and streaming TV shows and movies that you can view on your TV.

And only later, did Apple realize they could tweak the metaphors of Garageband to be a podcasting tool. And only later, did they realize that Keynote is an incredibly popular web development and app prototyping platform. (Or do they even realize that now?)

So, today, there’s a Trojan horse product called iBooks Author. And for a while, you will think it’s about creating text books and, no doubt, interactive books that few people will care about reading. The whole textbook and interactive book thing may succeed or not — Apple doesn’t bat a thousand on business verticals, but the one they’ve competed in best is the education market, so it’s a good place for them to start.

But if you step back and see that this is actually an App creation platform that is going to allow you to create things that look a whole lot like something that you don’t think of as a book, but more like a videogame or sales presentation or whatever app you can dream of, you’ll start seeing how the iBook Author is more than textbooks, or books.

This is just the beginning. Watch this space.

Note: Shortly after first posting this, I removed a section that complained about Apple only allowing iBook Author projects to be distributed via the iBook Store. I can show you in the Apple user instructions where I found that, but I’d rather just say I was wrong and leave it at that. Bottomline, there is a way to distribute iBooks with the interactive goo-gahs to users without going through the iBooks Store. It’s a bit clunky, but I’m sure it will get easier. The document has to be free, which is fine, as my complaint was focused on such free documents.

Later: This post can give you an idea of what I was ranting about earlier. Although, I believe his beef is a bit broader than mine.

Later: Let me note the following for the record: It is difficult to locate the how-to directions for sending someone an iBooks Author created document via email. I couldn’t find it on the Apple.com support site, however, it is on the Help Center that’s associated with the program, itself. Here are the directions, just in case I forget them:

Note: You have to use the  Apple OSX Mail application for this to work

  • With the book open, choose Share > Send via Mail, and choose an option from the submenu:
    • iBooks Author for Mac: Creates an iBooks Author document (with the extension .iba). Your recipient needs to have iBooks Author installed to open the file.
    • iBooks for iPad: Creates an iBooks document (with the extension .ibooks). Your recipient can open the book by tapping the file in Mail on an iPad, or by importing the file into iTunes (by dragging it to the iTunes window) and then using iTunes to sync the book to an iPad. The recipient must have the iBooks app and iOS 5 on his or her iPad.
    • PDF: Creates a PDF document (with the extension .pdf). Hyperlinks work in the resulting PDF, but other interactive media, such as movies and 3D objects, might not work as expected.
  • A new mail message opens with the version of your book attached.
  • Edit the email message and click Send.

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Scott Adams on IP theft: “It feels like a compliment”

Posted on Thursday, January 19, 2012 by Rex Hammock

Recently on Twitter, I confessed a personal concern with my growing realization that the only economist who makes any sense to me is not actually an economist, but is Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip.

I’ve never been much of a reader of newspaper comics (even those online), so I’ve never been much of a fan of Dilbert. (I do have a personal Dilbert spotter who forwards me links whenever the strip makes fun of something that might be, uh, like me.)

While Dilbert, the comic strip, may be off my radar screen, I am very much a fan of Scott Adams’ blog at Dilbert.com. I don’t always agree with what he writes there, but even then, I appreciate the logical and witty, approach he takes in presenting his points of view.

Yesterday, he wrote one of the more sane and rational pieces I’ve read on SOPA and the impact of the internet on intellectual property rights. As Adams is a person whose signifiant wealth has come from intellectual property he created that generates revenues from Dilbert licensed products — revenues equivalent to that of a mid-sized third-world country — I thought his blog post is worth more consideration than, say, another post on this topic from a mere theorist like me.

Here’s a quote from it:

I have one of the most widely stolen intellectual properties in the history of the world. Emotionally, I’m okay with that. It feels like a compliment. Financially, I have no idea if piracy has hurt me in any meaningful way. I made the decision years ago to make Dilbert available on the Internet, including the entire archive. To the surprise of most observers, sales of Dilbert to traditional newspapers continued to grow briskly.

Bottom line: As a creator, my bias is in favor of protecting intellectual property. But in my specific case, SOPA probably wouldn’t have any impact on my life or income.

Scott Adams could easily do the math in a way that would suggest that every un-authorized use of a Dilbert image is piracy and theft. No doubt, he could use the same types of fake-math the music and movie companies use when making up statistics related to “piracy.”

But the creator of Dilbert is too smart for that.

Note: I’ll be writing more later about my “final” thoughts on SOPA and PIPA (including an explanation of what I mean by the word “final”).

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Evangelicals, Catholics & Politics

Posted on Monday, January 16, 2012 by Rex Hammock

JFK, as presidential candidate, addressing Houston Ministerial Association, September 12, 1960.

Over the weekend, a group of politically-active evangelical leaders gathered in Texas to determine who they would jointly support among the candidates seeking the GOP presidential nomination. According to reports, the two finalists were Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. From those choices, the evangelical leaders decided to endorse Rick Santorum, despite knowing his chances of beating front-runner Mitt Romney are a long-shot, at best.

Hearing about this gathering of ministers in Texas reminded me of a bit of presidential election trivia involving a gathering of protestant ministers (mostly Southern Baptists) in Houston to hear a speech delivered by Preisdential candidate John F. Kennedy in 1960 (Note: While, yes, I was alive at the time, I learned about it from books read many years later). For several reasons, the 1960 speech has been judged by historians as one of the most important of Kennedy’s career.  For example, on the website of the JFK Presidential Library’s section titled Historic Speeches, the speech he delivered that day is listed second.

Here is some context for that 1960 speech provided by the JFK Library:

“Anti-Catholic prejudice, the fear that a Catholic president would “take orders” from the Pope, insured Smith’s defeat. John F. Kennedy quickly discovered that many Americans were still worried that a young Catholic candidate for president would be under the influence of the Catholic Church and that the nation would ultimately be run by the pope in Rome rather than the president in Washington. Some Americans vowed not to support John F. Kennedy for the presidency for this reason. Fear of a government unduly influenced by religious interests was real and seen as a distinct liability for this Catholic candidate. John F. Kennedy finally decided to try to defeat the issue by meeting it head-on, and on September 12, 1960, he spoke before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in Houston, Texas.”

It is truly an incredible speech, and I encourage you to read it all. But here’s an especially significant quote in light of the weekend gathering of evangelical leaders who met to endorse a candidate for the GOP nomination:

“I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end; where all men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind; and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.”

I don’t know what’s more amazing. That a half-century after Kennedy narrowly squeaked into office by holding on to electoral college votes from some deep-south Southern Baptist states (four years later, they were the only states LBJ lost), a group of evangelical ministers in Texas would gather together to practice bloc-voting and partisan politics. Or that, in some strange and beautifully ironic (miraculous?) way, the evangelical leaders passed-over Rick Perry, a member of an independent evangelical congregation and Ron Paul, a Baptist, to choose between pledging their bloc-support to Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich,* both of whom are Catholics. And then choose Santorum. Apparently, being governed by the Vatican doesn’t seem to scare evangelicals anymore.

But stick around for the real show, the one that will require those evangelical leaders to endorse a Mormon. My prediction is this: Not going to happen.

*Frankly, Newt Gingrich would have been near impossible for the group to support as they may believe while God can forgive certain sins, they don’t have to. And Gingrich has some doozies.

[Update: Despite the focus of news coverage of the gathering being "evangelicals," apparently there were also 'Conservative Catholic activists' taking part, as well. And, despite me not being able to follow exactly what went on, apparently there was an attempt to reenact the Reformation during the meeting.]

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SOPA & PIPA Update: How the entertainment industry is losing the narrative

Posted on Saturday, January 14, 2012 by Rex Hammock

This is war between two ideologies that don't have the time nor desire to sing together Kumbaya while holding hands and trying to come up with a way to help the entertainment industry legislate away reality -- even when it means turning their fans into felons.

I think people who say, “I don’t like to say ‘I told you so, but…’” are precisely the kind of people who like to say, “I told you so.” So I’ll try this another way: I don’t like being that guy who can’t wait to say, “I told you so,” but sometimes, no matter how hard I try, I just can’t help myself.

Last week, after a meeting with my congressman to discuss the legislation I oppose (and he co-sponsors) that is known as SOPA, I wrote a long post in which I included my prediction (or, more precisely, my hunch) for what would happen to the legislation.

Here’s an excerpt from that post that included my hunch:

I came away from the meeting thinking (however, this is a very personal opinion that was not stated or implied by anyone) that as SOPA’s critics turn up the heat (and the general population has seen nothing yet as to what type of heat its opponents can apply to demonstrate what some of the obvious unintended consequences could be if SOPA became law), members of Congress will look for ways to make SOPA go away, while appearing to make it look like they are doing something. Already, the bill’s sponsors have watered it down considerably from its original form. Water it down enough and it may as well be one of those Congressional proclamations declaring “National Anti-Piracy Week.”

Today, (I first saw it reported on the website arstechnica), the White House did one of those “smoke signals” things regarding SOPA (and its Senate twin sister, PIPA) when “three senior White House officials wrote that the administration ‘will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.’”

And yesterday, also as reported by arstechnica, after the users of Reddit displayed how they could raise $15,000 in 48-hours for an anti-SOPA candidate for congress, there is a growing number of Senators and Representatives who are asking for their leadership (from both parties) to give them cover by not bringing up the legislation for any types of votes that will put them on record as being for, or against, SOPA.

Seeing White House policy people and members of congress head for cover is a clear indication that we’ll be one day celebrating National Anti-Piracy Week instead of turning over policing the internet to Time-Warner.

However, let me be emphatic:  I’m not declaring victory, nor should anyone else on the anti-SOPA side. 

One of the points that I made during my meeting with my congressman — a point that he dismissed — was that issues like SOPA end up having only two narratives — and the entertainment industry had control of the early narrative, but ultimately would lose. My congressman disagreed, saying there are many narratives on an issue as complex as this. As it was a group meeting and I was trying to be polite, I didn’t say, “This is not a complex issue, this is a war over whether or not the entertainment industry should control the internet — and by the time it’s over, nothing more nuanced than that will matter.”

The entertainment industry’s (and the coalition it has been able to enlist) narrative is this: “Piracy, piracy, piracy.” After first being caught flat-footed and far behind, the internet industry (and the coalition it has been able to enlist — for example, everyone who uses the internet who doesn’t work in the entertainment industry*) is this: “Censorship, censorship, censorship.”

Despite the desire of my congressman to turn the SOPA debate into a graduate seminar on intellectual property, this is war between two ideologies that don’t have the time nor desire to sing together Kumbaya while holding hands and trying to come up with a way to help the entertainment industry legislate away reality — even when it means turning their fans into felons.

Nor is there time for those of us who have spent the past decade actually experiencing what reality-changing benefits come from an internet that’s truly open (even more open than many of the tech companies against SOPA want it to be), to delve into the nuanced and intellectual arguments that would take apart the entertainment industry’s lies (although, this post on Freakonomics.com is a good place to start).

So “no-censorship” is the narrative of the anti-SOPA side (my side).

Of course the entertainment industry knows this isn’t just about piracy. Of course the tech industry knows this isn’t just about censorship.

But those are the narratives. And in the end, anti-censorship will win.

Frankly, I wish the anti-SOPA narrative was something more along the lines of an anti-corporate-controlled internet, but I doubt Google and Facebook would go there.

And I wish that songwriters in Nashville and elsewhere would recognize they are being dupes of the record companies and music publishers and performance-rights groups by agreeing to be their poster-children on this issue.

But none of that will happen, so Happy Anti-Piracy Week.

*Slightly exaggerated even though I know pro-censorship** advocates won’t get it.
**Those who call 14-year-old fans of Taylor Swift “pirates”

Non-pirated Bumper music available at Amazon MP3: Kumbaya, performed by Joan Baez

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Introducing a new type of RexBlog post: Rexplanations

Posted on Saturday, January 14, 2012 by Rex Hammock

For a long time, as a service to the 12 readers of this blog, I’ve wanted to start using the label “Explanation” on certain types of expository RexBlog posts. That way, I can refer back to them whenever that topic recurs. So I created what WordPress calls a “category” and thought to myself, “hey, you’re a branding kind of guy,” so I changed the category name to “Rexplanation” and slapped together the accompanying graphic. This is my first officially labeled Rexplanation as I needed a post to explain what they are. By the way, I have an even better idea for organizing such contextual content (note to self: do a Rexplanation for the term “contextual content”) but it’s called “a wiki” and I’ve got too many projects happening now to tackle that one. If you’d like to see a list of Rexplanations, you can find one at the URL, http://www.rexblog.com/category/Rexplanation. (Note to people who read this when I first post it: There won’t be a list at that category link, as this is the first and only post I will have written using that category tag.)

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The frightening future of the entertainment industry

Posted on Monday, January 9, 2012 by Rex Hammock

In light of last week’s posts  about the entertainment industry’s effort to enact the legislation called SOPA (here and here), I saw a couple of items early this morning that reminded me that much of the reason that industry wants to out-legislate what it can’t out-innovate is the frightening future they face. And I’m not referring to the intellectual property they own being pirated. I’m talking about the way in which the talent that creates that intellectual property is, more and more, going to jump ship (to continue the pirate metaphor) from companies that attempt to hold on to business models created in the age of I Love Lucy.

Here are the items: First, an article in this week’s New Yorker about YouTube developing new “channel” relationships with content companies — a strategy that is laying the groundwork for original programming from artists, online news organizations and others who can provide a  steady stream of content appealing to a niche audience. According to the author of the article, when the studios and others wouldn’t work with YouTube for existing content (ala Netflix), YouTube developed a strategy to provide creators of programming access to unlimited airtime, rather than the scarce airtime provided them by traditional network and cable channels.

“But what’s the big deal?” you might ask. People are still going to want to watch programming on their big HD TVs and for that, you need cable and networks and the quality they can provide — not YouTube (he said, rhetorically).

Well, according to a worldwide study by Accenture released today, the number of consumers who watch broadcast or cable television in a typical week plunged to 48% in 2011 from 71% in 2009. Accenture says TV is losing ground to other devices – mobile phones, laptops and tablets. (And besides, you can stream video onto those HD TVs in dozens of ways, whenever you want the big-screen experience.)

Bottomline: When it comes to what video programming and distribution will become in the next decade and beyond, we’re about where network TV was when I Love Lucy debuted.

It’s a scary time for the entertainment industry. No wonder they’d like to put off the future as long as they can.

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If you start now, you can be ready for the Country Music Half-Marathon

Posted on Monday, January 9, 2012 by Rex Hammock

This is a shout-out for an event that takes place in Nashville every April, the St. Jude Country Music Marathon and 1/2 Marathon. This year, the event is on Saturday, April 28, and there will be 30,000+ participants in the two races.

I’m bringing this up today because it’s about 16 weeks until April 28. That’s time enough for you to start training for the half marathon, even if you’re not a runner (or, in my case, the world’s slowest jogger). I’m not saying it’s time enough for you to become an elite runner. I’m merely saying, there’s time for you to train enough to complete a 13.1 mile half-marathon between now and April 28.

I’m also bringing it up because I know there are some half marathoners from around the country who have heard about the Country Music Marathon — and I wanted to let you know that what you’ve heard is true: It’s a great event. (I’m addressing this to half-marathoners, as I figure marathoners have already planned out their year and, to be honest, I’m not sure they know what town they are in after about mile 21. )

As this is a part of the Rock ‘n Roll Marathon Series, there are about 40 bands along the route of the race. And the route of the half marathon is laid out in a way that provides a participant with a perfect site-seeing run (or, jog). It passes by or through nearly every major landmark people from around the country associate with Nashville: Music Row, the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Ryman Auditorium and Vanderbilt University.

The only iffy thing about the Country Music Marathon is the weather. That part of April in Nashville can be ideal (it was three four years ago, the last time I “ran” in it) or it can be a disaster: last year in 2010, there were tornado-strength winds and torrential rain and the previous year (2009), the temperature was well into the 80s by the time many of the slower runners were into the heart of the route. (Last year, the weather was great [see comments].)

This year, I plan to be in good enough shape to handle any condition — but I have lots of miles to go before getting there. But there’s plenty of time for me to do that — and for you to, also. (Okay, I started around Thanksgiving, just to be sure.)

I won’t be blogging about my preparation very often, but about once a month, I’ll report how it’s going. And while I’m a user of a “social training” service (runkeeper.com), I don’t use the social part for sharing my training publicly — except with my daughter, who will be running the marathon and is the captain of the Hammock family team.

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Why I love Tim Tebow

Posted on Sunday, January 8, 2012 by Rex Hammock

First off, if you knew my orange-and-blue-blooded 80-something mother-in-law whose Florida car-tag is like, “Go U Gators,” you’d know that, while she loves me, she’d disown me if I publicly wrote anything negative about Tim Tebow.

True story: When Tebow was quarterback at Florida, my wife and I happened to be with my mother-in-law in Maine. The only place she could view Gator football was a sports bar 15-miles away. Even though it was one of those early-season games that Florida won by 50-or-so points, my mother-in-law got decked out in her orange-and-blue and headed to the sports bar to watch the game. By the fourth quarter, she was the only person left in the bar. (I feel bad telling that story, as I should have accompanied her.)

However, my mother-in-law and the giant Tim Tebow poster on the side of her refrigerator are not why I love Tebow.

And no, it has nothing to do with how great a human being he may be or how he’s a devout religious person. As I’ve said on this blog many times before, my admiration for athletes is strictly limited to what they do within the boundry lines of their sport.

No, the reason I love Tim Tebow is the same reason I loved the movie Moneyball. Specifically, the scenes that included the scouts sitting around the conference room table explaining how great baseball players look or the beauty of their swing or how they handle themselves. But, as the movie and book revealed — and what made them such a great book and movie, the experts who were depending on their “feelings” about some existential aspect of the player were wrong.

The reason I love Tebow is that I’ve heard for two years an endless parade of experts explain why he’s not worthy enough to be an NFL quarterback. I’ve never quite followed the reasons other than the same kind of blasts that Steve McNair used to receive: that you can’t succeed as an NFL quarterback by running. That he’s not a good passer. That he was good at Florida because he was surrounded by great talent. Or that, well, he was too big or too slow or too strong or didn’t think like an NFL quarterback.

The experts (ranging from radio sports talk-show hosts to NFL greats like Boomer Esiason), have seemed precisely like those Moneyball baseball scouts.  They have been near rabid in declaring him unfit to be an NFL quarterback.

So the reason I love Tebow has nothing to do with how great a person he may be off the field (but, even though I don’t care about that, I hope he doesn’t crash and burn in that department).

No, the reason I like him is the same reason I like every feel-good sports movie ever made: For at least this season, when he got on the big stage today, the first round of the AFC playoffs, the place he was going to display just how right the experts were,  he not only kicked the ass of the Pittsburg Steelers — he kicked the ass of all the pundits who have declared him unworthy.

How can you not love that?

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Inst@Review: Tailor, Tinker, ZZZZ, zzzzz

Posted on Friday, January 6, 2012 by Rex Hammock

Apologies to the person from the UK who is one of the 12 readers of this blog, but many years ago, I discovered that, for me, the perfect cure for insomnia is listening to the World Service of the BBC.  As their newsreaders are speaking english (at least I assume they are), there’s enough understandable words being strung together to take my mind off whatever may be keeping me awake. Yet the Ambienic timbre of their voices and their monotonous delivery of random news from obscure corners of the globe all work together in a magical way to knock me out within five minutes of tuning in to their stream.

I say all that to explain that my inability to fully review the movie Tailor, Tinker, etc., is due to my BBC sleep training and that the movie is near continuous Lunesta-laced dialog delivered in the same flat monotones that make the BBC World News a miracle insomnia treatment for me.

However, I’ll give the movie 2 stars as I left the theater feeling extremely refreshed.

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What my congressman, a SOPA sponsor, told me

Posted on Friday, January 6, 2012 by Rex Hammock

Yesterday, I wrote about a meeting I attended with my congressman and friend, Jim Cooper.

I shared in that post my opinion of the legislation known popularly (and unpopularly) as SOPA. In short, I oppose the legislation and view it as nothing more than an attempt by the entertainment industry to out-regulate what they can’t out-innovate. I also believe that by fighting battles on the field of copyright and intellectual property law and by using the term “piracy” to label activities that may not only  be legal, but be beneficial to the copyright holder, we are in a place where a lot of bandwidth is being directed at trying to convince the other side(s) (no matter what side you’re on) rather than finding ways to evolve our understanding of what the internet is and what its potential can be.

Yesterday, I wrote that Jim Cooper is a very smart and intellectually curious individual. I appreciate, also, that he believes big problems can be broken down into parts so that they can be better understood. I agree with that approach, as well.

He suggested that those of us around the table probably agree on 95% of what’s in the legislation. I have no reason to believe his statistic is correct or in-correct, but I agree there’s probably a lot of fluff included in the legislation, most of which is designed to bury the contentious parts. (I also believe what I just said was a snide way to say, I agree with him.)

I also agree with the most important take-away and challenge Jim Cooper provided the group. In essence (I wasn’t taking notes), he said, “This is Nashville. We have the music industry here. We have a lot of talented technology people here. We should try to work together to address the issues we don’t agree on here. If there’s a way to solve the issues by working together, then Nashville should be where that happens.”

While I’m not quite sure we have the tech chops in Nashville equivalent to the music chops here, I do know that inside and outside those Nashville music companies that are endorsing SOPA are lots of extremely smart tech people who understand what their executives don’t. I know there are lots of creative, entrepreneurial and tech-savvy students and recent graduates from schools like Belmont’s music business program and Vanderbilt’s engineering and business schools who completely comprehend all the facets and nuances of the issues, musically and technically and business(ly?). And I know that if there are good alternatives to crappy technology (say, the MP3), then people who care about music (say, customers and fans) are willing to pay for it if they understand the value.

So, what Jim Cooper said perhaps should be listened to by those in Nashville who want to embrace the reality of the internet today and look for ways to innovate rather than legislate wherever possible.

Perhaps someone should write a song about this.

(Illustration: Polar bears having a snowball fight. It’s a Nashville thing.)

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What I told my congressman, a sponsor of SOPA

Posted on Thursday, January 5, 2012 by Rex Hammock

[See follow-up post: "What my congressman, a sponsor of SOPA, told me"]

This morning I attended a meeting with my congressman and longtime friend, Jim Cooper. The small gathering was one of two he held today to hear from people who have let him know they support or oppose legislation that’s known popularly by its acronym, SOPA. As with any legislation, the name of HR 3261 was christened by its original sponsors who titled it officially, “The Stop Online Piracy Act to promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes.”

As I think all of us apple-pie eating Americans can agree on the prosperity through property part, it’s the and for other purposes that is now generating enough controversy to cause members of congress to reach out to people they may think can provide various points of view on the legislation.

There were about eight or so of us in the meeting this morning (there was another meeting at 1:00 p.m.). As this is Nashville, the music industry was represented. There was a successful song-writer representing the songwriters association and a senior executive from a music company who still claims the company is a small startup, despite its current status as a financial juggernaut thanks to its embrace of a business model that would not have been possible before the advent of the internet — an irony apparently missed by the company.

As (and this may surprise you) there are other industries in Nashville that have nothing to do with music, other groups and points of view were represented. The Nashville Technology Council’s new CEO was there and a couple of developers who were well-versed on the evils of SOPA. I was there because I happened to mention SOPA in passing to Jim during a Thanksgiving Day gathering we both attended. (Note to self: Don’t do that again.) At the time, I knew little (nothing) about SOPA, except for my long-held theory that I should be against anything that is jointly supported by a consortium of unions, big corporations and the entertainment industry. (Like I said, it’s a theory.)

It didn’t surprise me that Jim is a sponsor of SOPA. If I were a congressman representing Nashville, it would be hard for me not to support legislation backed by every company that has a big building along the two streets in Nashville that comprise our most famous landmark avenue: Music Row.

What’s more, when the objectives of the legislation are listed, it would be hard for anyone who gets goose-bumps whenever they see the American flag waving in the breeze to be against it. However, as David Carr explains in a column earlier this week in the New York Times, “The bill has exposed a growing fracture between technology and entertainment companies. Digitally oriented companies see SOPA as dangerous and potentially destructive to the open Web and a step toward the kind of intrusive Internet regulation that has made China a global villain to citizens of the Web.”

(For a great bibliography of writings for, and against, SOPA, the reference section of the SOPA Wikipedia article will provide you with several hours of reading enjoyment covering all sides of the issue.)

My friend, Jim Cooper, is very, very smart (as in, Rhodes Scholar smart) and, frankly, if you didn’t know better, you’d think he is a university professor (which he is) and not a politician. I like him a lot and have supported him since he first ran for Congress when we were both in our 20s. Our children grew up together. He is intellectually curious and has a commitment to congressional reform that even Larry Lessig, as reported by Cory Doctorow, recognizes as genuine and forward-thinking. (I hope that’s enough of a caveat before the word “but.”)

But currently, he’s wrong on SOPA. While he explained today that sponsorship of the legislation is not necessarily a commitment to vote for it, the  shading of language in that explanation is the type of nuance that encourages cynicism among citizens who may not be schooled on how one can “sponsor” something but not support it.

Jim represents a congressional district with more songwriters per-capita than any place on earth. (I made up that stat, but feel free to use it and say you read it on the internet.) The backers of SOPA in Nashville have brilliantly positioned songwriters as the poster children in their fight for SOPA. (If Pew Research had a survey about songwriters, no doubt they would rank right below soldiers and firemen as the people we most want to give a hug of thanks to.)

This morning’s SOPA meeting was, at least to me, an encouraging airing of the issues that alarm those who are against SOPA (like me) and those who support it. There was passion in the room, but no rancor.

I came away from the meeting thinking (however, this is a very personal opinion that was not stated or implied by anyone) that as SOPA’s critics turn up the heat (and the general population has seen nothing yet as to what type of heat its opponents can apply to demonstrate what some of the obvious unintended consequences could be if SOPA became law), members of Congress will look for ways to make SOPA go away, while appearing to make it look like they are doing something. Already, the bill’s sponsors have watered it down considerably from its original form. Water it down enough and it may as well be one of those Congressional proclamations declaring “National Anti-Piracy Week.”

Source: Distrust, Discontent, Anger and Partisan Rancor (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1569/trust-in-government-distrust-discontent-anger-partisan-ranco

The biggest challenge that will face SOPA when awareness of it spreads from the geek community to a broader audience of internet users is this: SOPA is currently a bill with so many hypotheticals and economic theories swirling around it, no one can honestly say what the outcome will be if it is enacted. And (going back to my earlier-stated theory), those theories are provided by big business, unions and the entertainment industry.* Now, if you take a look at the chart accompanying this paragraph (if you’re reading this on my blog), you can see the relative levels of trust Americans place in different institutions, according to a Pew Research survey about 18 months ago. In other words, this legislation comes from a consortium of the institutions who Americans inherently distrust the most (except bankers).

That said, the entertainment industry is doing a great job of humanizing SOPA by focusing on protecting songwriters (have I mentioned how much I love songwriters?) who have been the biggest losers in the shift away from physical music to digital (especially in Nashville). I’ll admit, however, when I hear songwriters complain of their plight, it sounds just like former reporters from newspapers who have had their world change also (but for some reason, we don’t love them as much as we do songwriters).

SOPA is, in my opinion, nothing more than an attempt to wrap the word piracy around the preservation of a business model that has left the building. The entertainment industry should seek ways to work with their fans to help them understand the ramifications of piracy  (and to find ways to give a bigger share of their revenues to songwriters). However, the entertainment industry seems more interested in turning their fans into convicts and the internet into something that can help bring back their good old days.

Lots of musicians in Nashville have figured the internet out. They are making it work for them.

They have figured out that obscurity is worse than piracy.

They don’t view people who love their music as the enemy.

*Later: This post from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the groups leading the fight against SOPA, explores some of the specious stats regarding the negative impact on jobs caused by piracy. For example, the film industry claims piracy has caused the loss in jobs that is greater than the entire number of jobs in the industry before piracy. While I’m always hesitant to believe anyone’s self-serving statistics, my point in this post is to underscore the fact that the entertainment industry’s statistics are as believable as Disney Studios fairy tales.

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Predictions 2012: The year we all stop being panic junkies and other wishful thinking

Posted on Monday, January 2, 2012 by Rex Hammock

So here we are. The beginning of a new year. That means I need to predict some stuff that I think will happen in 2012. (I think I read that once in the official bloggers’ user manual.) For whatever reason, here are some thoughts, predictions and wishful thinking.:

Technology

If you can’t code by the end of 2012, you’ll be a 98-lb. weaking and everyone will laugh at you behind your back. All the cool people are signing up for this: CodeYear.com. Other tech things: For like the 5th year in a row, I’ll predict that GetGlue takes off, however, it won’t really take off, but it will continue to grow. Services like Twitter (perhaps you’ve heard of that mobile message-relay management service), but for small, private groups (say, your family or your business associates), will hit your radar. See: GroupMe.com, recently purchased by Skype or Glassboard.com, started by my friend, Nick Bradbury and Brent Simmons, all-stars from the early days of blogging and RSS hackery.

Business & marketing

Long a topic of great concern and interest among some of the deepest thinkers on the web, the role of customer (user, supporter, member, et al) will grow into a big deal in the real world during 2012. This won’t be about all the things big companies are doing to collect and manipulate customer data (that’s been covered ad nauseum for years). This will be an awareness of things being developed so that customers can collect and use the same type of data to give measurable balance to both sides of any commercial interaction. If technology can be used to bring down governments, can’t it be used to even the data-collection and leverage the playing field between customers and big corporations, between any institution and its grass-roots supporters or membership?  The IPO of Facebook will be the focus of a discussion of the value of relationships vs. products and we will hear lots of laments from the pioneers of online community over what has been built on the foundation they laid. (The laments will be deserved.) The IPO of Facebook will be a milestone, however, not the finish line. As we learn more and more how certain companies view us as hamsters in their cages, we will start to think more-and-more about how our role as customers should evolve. (But again, others started thinking about this long, long ago.) That topic will be explored in a book by one of the Cluetrain Manifesto authors, Doc Searls, that will be published in May, The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge. Like I said, this is not a new topic for a lot of people — but it is a very new topic for the vast majority of people who think Facebook is the Internet.

Culture

People will start growing tired of being panic junkies, so they’ll  do one or both of two things: 1. Stop listening to panic-pushers. 2. Seek self-treatment for their panic addiction. Here’s my theory: One doesn’t necessarily have to be optimistic to make it through challenging times. However, if one responds to challenges with panic, failure is a sure bet. Some form of plodding realism, moving through challenges rather than away from them, is the only way I know that works. Yet we live in an era when lots of people seem to be panic junkies. Perhaps to the point where they seek out not-just real panics, but also crave artificial panics, like when you buy a ticket for a ride on a roller-coaster. Fox News and the New York Times are equally at fault for dishing out news in the form of outlier-anecdotes about new diseases or some obscure regulation that make the exception appear to be the norm. There are no longer mere storms — there are killer-storms. The word crisis is applied to anything that can be scrawled across the bottom of a TV screen. Perhaps this is more a wish than a prediction, but at some point, we’ve got to stop puffing on this panic. I’m voting that 2012 be the year this starts.

Elections & Policy

I could have written this a year ago, but here goes: Mitt Romney gets the GOP nomination. A well-funded conservative runs as an independent who will love the publicity without the possibility of actually being elected. (My guess: Sarah Palin.)  Obama is re-elected by carrying Massachusetts. The Republicans lose a few seats in the House, but remain the majority. Republicans gain the majority in the Senate, but nothing near the 60 seats needed to actually control the Senate. And even if the Republicans gain 60, we’ll discover that 60 Republicans doesn’t mean 60 conservatives. We will continue to have, in the Senate, a form of coalition law-making. In other words, don’t look for grid-lock to go away anytime soon. The Supreme Court will rule that mandated health insurance is not un-constitutional. What is called Obama-care will roll out and we will discover it is both worse than and better than we imagined. The worst parts will be addressed. Life will go on. Social Security will become the nation’s most critical issue until lawmakers decide to raise the retirement age and look for some rich people hiding behind trees that can be taxed for the rest of the balancing act necessary. [Note: I am merely predicting the above, not endorsing them.]

Nashville

The Predators will make it past the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The Titans make the playoffs (2012-13 season). Nashville continues to move up a few notches in the eyes of non-Nashvillian trend-trackers. Nashvillians start explaining to out of town friends that a city that attracts waves of people who dream of being either healthcare entrepreneurs or professional banjo pickers — or both — can’t be replicated.

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Perfectionism Schmerfectionism

Posted on Friday, December 30, 2011 by Rex Hammock

One of the things we were led to believe in 2011 was a myth about Steve Jobs being a perfectionist. This myth was given a free pass by everyone from The New Yorker on down.

In reality, his perfectionism, while noted and admired on this blog countless times, was highly selective and limited only to those items, like the shapes of screws and the desire to have no buttons, that captured Jobs’ imagination.

Other things at Apple were not subject to his selective perfectionism.

Take the iOS-to-USB sync cable. Please.

I’m thinking the  Sync Cable Team is to Apple what the Delta Tau Chis are to fraternity row on Animal House. Steve obviously did not care what went on there. Heck, they could have been dropping acid, for all he cared. At least that’s my theory.

How else can one explain why, after manufacturing these cables for a decade, Apple still hasn’t perfected a means to produce them in a way that will make them last longer than a few months without become frayed and cracked?

I currently have three cables that all look like the one pictured above. Well, not exactly like the one above. The one above is the only one I’ve added some duct tape to.

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