My Comments for "Dear Malcolm: Why So Threatened?"

Here are my comments for Chris Anderson's piece on Epicenter. "Dear Malcolm: Why So Threatened?" I hardly think Malcolm Gladwell is threatened by Chris Anderson, by the way.

I agree. You’ve found the new model. But I do worry about quality. Part-time writers blogging in their spare time will not have the time (or perhaps the talent, but most certainly the time) to crank out the quality of content we’re used to in paid publications.

A more relevant example of the future of high quality journalism is talkingpointsmemo.com or politico.com.

Also, I still believe in some sort of micropayment model for the future. iTunes has that figured out for music, movies, tv shows, and iPhone apps. Just get my payment information once, then charge me small amounts without transaction screens. I don’t think I’d pay per article, but a couple of bucks a month, for quality like The New Yorker or The New York Times, would work. It’s still a lot less money for most of those publications though.

Comments for Jon Gruber's "Apple’s Secrecy" on www.daringfireball.net

Jon Gruber posted an interesting piece about the NY Times and Apple's secrecy. You can read it here: http://daringfireball.net/2009/06/apples_secrecy.

Mr. Gruber does not post comments on his blog. If he did, here's mine.

You seem to be connecting Apple's success with their penchant for secrecy with the following conclusion:

Yes, Apple is far more secretive than most companies, but they’re also far more successful. Measured by profit and revenue and growth, wouldn’t it make more sense to argue that most companies should act more like Apple, rather than the other way around?

I don't think it's possible to credit Apple's secrecy with their success. Don't get be wrong, I'm a big fan of Apple. I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro. I'm listening to The Style Council on my iPhone. Until recently, I owned a large amount of Apple stock. It's a great company from top to bottom. Great products, great people.

But I do think that Apple's secrecy about Steve Jobs' health has not helped. It's created a huge amount of ambiguity about succession at Apple, especially with regard to their long-term product direction, which my gut tells me is where Steve Jobs adds the most value. Sure, he can be gone for six months and the company does not miss a beat. But without him, I doubt the company's ability to create that next great thing we all want in three years, or five years. I also doubt Apple's ability to stay focused and simple.

Here's a mini-example. The 13-inch MacBook Pro. Why did it start as a MacBook and then become a MacBook Pro? As a MacBook it not fit in with the rest of the line in look - plastic, colored bodies. It was more clearly a Pro in look and not in power, aluminum body. And then they switched it to a Pro. This is confusing. Something you'd see at Dell or Acer, not Apple. It revealed a lack of product discipline that's rare for Apple.

Without Steve Jobs, I would fear that after two-years or so, we'd start to see this lack of discipline that we see at other companies, too many products, confusing names and features.

Don't Confuse Great Graphic Design with a Great User Experience

Unsubscribe is a Must Have in Your E-mail Newsletter

If I can't unsubscribe from your e-mail newsletter, then I just hit
the "report spam" button. If too many people do this, your company
ends up on a blacklist. The unsubscribe link must do just that,
unsubscribe me from that message. No logging in. No changing settings.
No tricking me to subscribe to more of your spam.

My Comments for "Who Will Ombud The Ombudsman?"

Here's my response to a snarky piece nit-picking the "My Personal Credit Crisis" by Edmund Andrews. http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/05/who-will-ombud-the-ombudsman.html You can call my response, "Who's nit-picking the nit-pickers?" What's your point? That Andrews wrote an article about his foolishness, but he left out some of his foolishness? This is what writing is all about. It's about making choices. If he had included the details you want included, the story would not have changed a bit. And as far as covering the economy, how is this any different from a poor athlete working as a sportswriter? Writing about and doing are different. Finally, I don't think he included his wife on the mortgage application because they were not married at the time, a fact I picked up from reading the article.

Our Towns - Think a T-Shirt Can't Change Your Life? A Skeptic Thinks Again - NYTimes.com

Very funny article about the power of parody on the Amazon Community
reviews. A guy wrote a funny review of a bad wolf t-shirt and 700
others joined in the fun. And the tshirt became a best seller.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/nyregion/25towns.html

Joe Ranft
joe@joeranft.com
617 640-4785
http://twitter.com/jranft

The Apple Takeover of the NY Times is Brilliant

This is the first time I've reloaded a Web page to watch an ad again.
I love when the two photos for the Hair Academy ad join in.

Sign that the economy is not doing so great

South Station in Boston is advertising South Station in Boston. Dude, I'm already here. What else do you want me to do? I guess Apple and Pepsi aren't lining up to hang banners.

Thoughts on the All Things D Voices Kerfuffle

I've been following the back and forth between "All Things D" and a
few bloggers about the way "All Things D" treats excerpts in their
"Voices" section, and I don't think their recent changes help much. It
still seems to me that Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal are
trying for SEO and revenue on the backs of smaller bloggers.

Look at the byline. It lists the bloggers publication, but does not
link to it.

Also when you click on the headline, you stay within Voices, on a page
that only contains the excerpt from the blog. Why not take the reader
at this point to the blog?

The result is two instances for All Things D to sell ads and get SEO
from these excerpts. This is wrong.

Harvard Business Review on Innovators

I had an interesting conversation yesterday at the Creative Good Customer Experience Council on the emerging Innovator role in many organizations, and I recalled a Podcast that ended up on my iPod last year. In searching for it, I found these links to Harvard Business Review articles and two podcasts on the topic. Article: Finding and Grooming Breakthrough Innovators Article: Middle Manager as Innovator Podcast: On Design Thinking Podcast: Finding and Grooming Top Innovators