We’ve just started--really just started--a social media push at work and I’m still ironing out the kinks. For Twitter I decided to follow a number of industry publications and some of the larger businesses but am purposely ignoring competitors (other manufacturers). One of our competitors is now following us. When I say competitor, I mean direct competitor in one of our biggest product families.

They have manufacturing in the city as us, they make the same kinds of equipment as us, they sell in the same markets to the same people, and they have much the same goals as us. We are a young company and we’re looking up at a lot of higher cost, more established competition--these guys, on the other hand, have us in their sites.

What should I do? Ignore them? Block them? Unless someone can offer a compelling argument as to why I should do so, I can’t imagine following them.

Thoughts?

Louder than my normal midnight musical offerings, the The Raveonettes’ “Beat City” has a kind of has a My Bloody Valentine meets early sixties pop thing going on (which might also explain this little ditty). Mostly, though, it’s a bit of noisy fun.

Suddenly Skype seems so much less necessary.

Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer’s microphone and speakers. But until now, this required both people to be at their computers, signed into Gmail at the same time. Given that most of us don’t spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, “wouldn’t it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones?”

Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail.

Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates. We worked hard to make these rates really cheap (see comparison table) with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan—and many more countries—for as little as $0.02 per minute.

I’ve set it up, I’ve tried it, and I love it. Works beautifully.

I already use Google voice for all of my international calls--the rates are pretty reasonable--but the fact that it ties into my Google Voice account is a nice bonus. The only significant negative with Google Voice--and it is a significant negative--is that I have missed a few incoming calls. Apparently there are a few carriers who refuse to acknowledge the existence of Google Voice. Since I use this for business, again I say: this is a significant negative.

Sadly, it doesn’t even block the salesman who has called me about fifteen times since last Thursday. I gave him an hour of my life on Friday, listened to his pitch, and told him that I didn’t have the budget or the inclination to buy right now; I even told him he should call back toward the end of September when I was looking over the marketing plan and the budget for next year.

Funny enough, I really was going to consider a trial run with his product, but the constant calling after I told him to leave me alone until I had a chance to look at next year’s budget has solved that particular problem. There is no way that I am buying from him.

Let this be a lesson to any of you in sales: don’t harass the prospect and don’t talk yourself out of a sale.

I do wonder what they’ll be charging for it next year, though. If it is a reasonable annual fee, I’ll be happy to add that onto my Google tab (along with my added storage and those international calls).

Read the rest.

Update: Just going through my bills right now and looked at my cell phone bill and there was one international call. A few days ago I called one of our partners in Australia and chatted for a grand total 8 minutes. The charge for that 8 minutes? $29.12. That same call in Google Voice would have cost $1.12.

Still trying to wrap my head around a $29.12 call that lasted only 8 minutes.

This wouldn’t surprise me in the least:

Despite Steve Jobs’ recent claim that the iBookstore has taken 22 percent of the US e-book market, some authors still report significantly higher sales volume on the Kindle. Author J. A. Konrath has published more than three dozen books on both platforms, with Kindle sales averaging 200 e-books every day. On the iBookstore, however, sales have only reached approximately 100 each month.

First, understand that this encompasses not only the

While I really enjoy the iBook in-app purchase process, I like the interface better, and I like the store. That said, Amazon’s Kindle--the application--has a lot of advantages. First and foremost: the Kindle app runs on multiple platforms--its reach is far greater than iBooks. It also had a good head start in the war for peoples’ ebook dollars along with some nifty features. The Kindle also has a far better selection.

Apple’s iBooks might or might not catch up in the sales department and, honestly, I don’t really care. As long as competition gives me better prices and wider selection along, I’ll be a happy boy.

Unfortunately, neither of them has many of the books that I look for and I continue to spend most of my book dollars at Barnes and Noble and Borders. Similarly, I would happily push nearly all of my magazine purchases to the iPad if the magazines I want were available, but the grand majority of the publications I read simply aren’t available.

I am becoming convinced that the biggest thing standing in the way of wider adoption electronic publications is this: availability. I am a heavy reader with a monthly habit of between $150 and $250 spent on magazines and books and I would prefer to move that to electronic delivery if I could. I wonder when the publishers will catch up with me?

Read the rest.

Apple’s strict no-nipple policy in relation to apps sold through the iTunes store is probably a smart decision. If not for that, my guess is that wandering through the app store would feel something like wandering the Vegas Strip. Everywhere you turn, some guy is pushing a little sheet urging you to partake in Becky’s Big Boobieporium.

I have nothing against porn in a general sense, but I really hate it when porn gets all pushy.

Which is why I’m not particularly uptight about the G-rated version of Playboy for the iPad, but, then, I also don’t get the point. Do people really read it for the articles? Are those articles really that good? Or do they need a giant pair of fake, airbrushed bosoms to keep them afloat? I honestly wouldn’t know since I never read it for the articles. I was always in it for the photography.

For cranky folk who will decry Apple’s censorship, I say: if you need porn on your iDevice, then use the browser. Even better, you could buy an Android-based device--Google really does have the porn advantage.

Read the story.

Britain’s Q magazine--one of a handful of music magazines that I still read regularly--published a sort of musical overview of the last decade that, of course, incorporates a look at the political events that shaped these years. Predictably, my opinions weren’t well-represented. In fact, reading music journalists writing about the musings of rock stars on some of the weightiest issues of our times isn’t likely to wake any slumbering brain cells. It is rarely interesting, it is even more rarely insightful, and it is close to never useful to any larger debate.

Witness, for instance, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong’s take on Obamacare:

Obama’s healthcare plan was too confusing. It should have been: if you want healthcare and you can’t afford it, the government can help you out.

There’s a nuanced view of health care that neither seems to have any understanding of what assistance was in place for the poor before Obamacare nor of any of the practical issues of how to properly administer any healthcare plan. Deep thought is not this man’s strongest suit.

Of course, if he had simply said that I wouldn’t be writing this post. That’s a very tame grade of dumb. What is more impressive is the full-on weapons grade dumb that he exhibits when asked this by Q’s interviewer, “If you went for a beer with Bush, do you think he’d turn out to be quite a nice guy?”

Billie Joe’s answer is, well, inflammatory.

If I was going for a beer with him, hopefully I’d have a gun on me also.

What a ridiculous, silly little man.

If you’re inclined to read the interview, you can find it on page 61 of the January, 2010 issue. Why, yes, I am a little behind on some of my reading. Why do you ask?

Update: Having read the magazine, I find a very specific trend to be intriguing. Of all of the interviews in the issue, when the musicians were asked about the best and worst of the decade, those who went political answered almost unanimously.

Worst of the decade was President Bush. Which seems a tremendous hyperbole when you consider the global economic meltdown, the terrifying natural disasters, and the rise of Real Housewives of Wherever.

Best of the decade was President Obama. Which seems just as tremendously premature. I imagine, though, that his actual job performance won’t be changing their minds.

And precisely none of them mentioned Osama bin Laden, terrorists, or the 9/11 attack. Defining the “worst” thing of a decade is always difficult, but here’s the thing: no matter what you think of former President Bush, he did not go into office intending to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. If anything, he had sounded during his first campaign, like a mild isolationist. The worst thing of this past decade could very easily be that thing that precipitated the wars that no one really wanted: the terrorist attacks that murdered thousands of innocents. Not just terrorist attacks in the US, but around the world.

I find it mind-boggling that not one of the people interviewed noticed that the worst “thing” of the decade was the surge in deadly, radical Muslim terrorists working hard to destabilize governments around the world.

I truly love music, but these are not serious people.

This, reported by KTVB.com, is simply unacceptable.

Strangers are stepping up to help the widow of a north Idaho veteran who received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Vernon Baker died at his St. Maries home in July and will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1941, served and was wounded in World War II. Vernon was 90 years old.

But Baker’s wife of the last 17 years, Heidy Baker, can’t afford to attend the burial of her own husband’s ashes.

I will be donating to the cause. No CMH winner should ever go to his final resting place in Arlington without his family in attendance. I would feel ashamed if his service meant that little to us.

Read more about Vernon Baker here.

I will work to find information about donating after I’ve left work today. I will post details as they are available.

In the Republican primary for the 7th Congressional District, Ryan Frazier won over Lang Sias. I look forward to doing everything I can to help Frazier win this race--I have complete faith and confidence in the man to represent us well. From the moment I met him a few years ago, while he was running here locally, I knew that he had the potential to be a big player at a much higher level.

It won’t be an easy fight against incumbent Ed Perlmutter, but it is a winnable race.

Read the rest. If you live in the area, consider signing up to help Frazier win this seat; he is a thoughtful and accomplished conservative and the kind of person who I will be proud to have represent us.

Lendale White signed with the Broncos, which doesn’t sit entirely well considering his personal issues and the fact that he can’t even play the first quarter of the season.

Doom is injured and the Broncos don’t seem to be talking about it. Which makes me nervous since it give the impression that this might be something serious.

It would appear that the football gods are still cranky with the Broncos. Which is surprising since you would think that Tim Tebow’s mere presence would ensure the favor of the football gods.

I was going to lead this story with something like this: “I found myself wondering if they had been inspired by So You Think You Can Dance.” Then I realized that it doesn’t really fit my mood right now; not that there isn’t room for humor, but that it isn’t how I want to see this story today. So, instead, this:

I continue to insist that I not only can judge other cultures, but I must judge them so that we maintain a clear-eyed understanding of what distinguishes us from them. We’re told we aren’t supposed to judge and we aren’t supposed to think in terms of us and them--I know this because, like the rest of you, it has been hammered into me from the time I was a child.

It just isn’t done. The problem is that what we were taught is wrong. It is vital for us to be honest and open about other cultures in the world--not in deifying or demonizing those cultures, but in being earnestly critical in the same way that I hope we consider our own culture and politics. With that said, imagine what I think about the culture that gives us a news story like this:

A group of young Muslim men have been publicly flogged in Sudan after they were convicted of wearing women’s clothes and make-up.

The court said the 19 men had broken Sudan’s strict public morality codes.

Police arrested them at a party where they were found dancing “in a womanly fashion”, the judge said.

We need to judge because we need to constantly remind ourselves of what it is that we value as a society and what it took to create something as grand and diverse as the United States of America.

Read the rest.

One find’s oneself wondering if Coach McDaniels finds himself missing one Mr. Hillis right about now...

Just sayin’...

Kidding aside, here’s hoping that Buckhalter and Moreno heal up well (and soon). And Tim Tebow watchers might want to take a look at that second link, too.

Football. I love football.

I think President Obama is confused on the precise meaning of the word “dignity.” if Rangel resigns now, forced out by questions of ethics, the correct term would be “shame.”

For what it’s worth.

Read the rest.

My wife and I laugh and mock when Hollywood types pat themselves on the back for their bravery. They choose a role designed to get them critical applause and an Oscar and they tell us how brave they have been by, say, playing the role of a gay man confronting bigots, for example. There is nothing brave in that and their well-practiced gravitas and denunciation of the straw men that they build up in the movies are just an extension of the make-believe worlds in which they live and work.

That isn’t to deny artistic merit or even to say that there aren’t truly meaningful movies or is it to say that all of their words are playacting; it’s merely to note that there isn’t much bravery required to cash big checks, denounce racism, and collect awards.

Bravery is something else entirely. If you want bravery, then look to the cover of the latest Time magazine and you will see the face of a brave woman.

Our cover image this week is powerful, shocking and disturbing. It is a portrait of Aisha, a shy 18-year-old Afghan woman who was sentenced by a Taliban commander to have her nose and ears cut off for fleeing her abusive in-laws. Aisha posed for the picture and says she wants the world to see the effect a Taliban resurgence would have on the women of Afghanistan…

If I ever seem proud of my own bravery--or overly proud at my small accomplishments--someone slap me and point me back to this young woman.

Read the rest. Beware: it is, very honestly, a disturbing image.

I, of course, reference this story only because I kind of missing using the damned, evil headline every once in a while.

Enjoy.

A malicious Android Market app has reportedly been downloaded by millions of users, according to mobile security firm Lookout. The app, developed by Jackeey Wallpaper, offers a variety of wallpapers including branded content such as My Little Pony and Star Wars.

Aside from providing backgrounds, the utility quietly collects personal information such as SIM card numbers, text messages, subscriber identification, and voicemail passwords.

Must see if darling wife has this installed on her Droid…

Read the story.

Ahmadinejad, aside being amazingly hard to pronounce correctly, is picking a fight with an octopus.

For some reason.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian leader, says Paul the Octopus, the sea creature that correctly predicted the outcome of World Cup games, is a symbol of all that is wrong with the western world.

He claims that the octopus is a symbol of decadence and decay among “his enemies”.

I’ve been known to insist that Michael Moore, microwavable pork rinds, and America Has Talent are all symbols of decadence, decay, and exceptionally bad taste in the West, but Paul the Octopus just seems like harmless fun.

Maybe Mahmoud sees something in Paul the Octopus that has eluded me, but I think the answer is more simple that that: Ahmadinejad has gone all Oliver Stone on us and slipped a little further down the slope to outright insanity.

Read the story.

From the Denver Post’s blog this morning, we find that Tom Trancredo is getting ready to launch a third party candidacy.

Tancredo’s fixation on illegal immigration has sometimes reminded me of the Westboro Baptist Church’s obsession with gay folks: unhealthy and wrongheaded. Listening to him over the years--and, if you life in Colorado and vote somewhere on the right side of the divide, you’ll have been forced to listen to Tancredo regularly--it seems that there isn’t anything that can’t be blamed on the border-jumpers. Now, he doesn’t take it to the same place as those idiots from WBC, he doesn’t carry signs that say things like “God kills wetbacks” or anything like that, but, like those folks, Tancredo’s mind just seems to naturally drift toward that topic.

Personally, I think he would be a tremendous bore at a dinner party. He’d be that guy who followed you around, talking constantly about things that you showed even the vaguest, polite interest in, and scaring off all the pretty girls. I hate that guy. This is why Tancredo has never been invited to a Blogger Bash.

I’ve never had a problem with a guest worker program, although I’m a “enforce first, reform later” kind of a guy, so I’m not opposed to politicians who want to find ways to enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders. It’s just that he never seemed to have much else--aside from the occasional bellicose comments about waging war against our Muslim enemies--that defined him in the public eye. Illegal immigration is the issue that has defined his public service; and the one note that he sings on the subject gets pretty tiring over time.

I say this by way of noting that, damn, I’m tired of Tancredo and his almost Britney-esque need for public attention. Like the guy at that party, he just keeps following us around, constantly talking, smugly happy that he’s still got an audience, and entirely convinced that he’s changing the world. In fact, what he is managing most to do is alienate the people who should be naturally drawn to him. The guy at the party is pretty, though, and that’s where you find the difference: Tancredo is going to bring the damage.

After threatening the Colorado GOP last week, Tancredo made good on his threat this week: if the Republican candidates for the Governor’s office didn’t leave the race under the conditions that Tancredo had set, he was going to run as a third party candidate and punish them for not bowing to his pressure.

“I will officially announce at noon that I will seek the nomination of the constitution party,” Tancredo told The Denver Post.

The Littleton Republican must file some papers with the Colorado Secretary of State and register as a member of the American Constitution Party, but then “he’s ready to go,” raising money, disclosing his platform and launching a website that is already put together.

Tancredo gave Republican candidates Scott McInnis and Dan Maes an ultimatum last week: Promise to get out of the race after the primary if polls showed the winner lagging behind Democrat John Hickenlooper or else he would get in as a third-party candidate.

He has the right to run in this race, but he has no chance of winning and little chance of bringing Colorado GOP in line with all of his opinions. What he does have a chance of doing is acting as a spoiler for the race; he’ll have an opportunity to put in some a lot off effort to help re-elect Hickenlooper. And he has a decent chance of succeeding--his entry will make it much harder for the GOP candidate to win. What galls is that Tancredo’s success doesn’t leave us with a third party governor or more conservative governance in Colorado; it leaves us with Hickenlooper, a center left guy who doesn’t cross much ideological territory with Tancredo. Instead of supporting positive change, even though it didn’t perfectly fit the borders of his own preferred candidate (at all times, that candidate would be himself), he chose to support the Democrat’s candidate.

I imagine that Hickenlooper is sporting a big smile today.

Tancredo decided last week that he would hold the Colorado GOP hostage to his whims and this week he decided that his whims were to hurt the party, hurt the candidates, hurt conservatives, and hurt the people of Colorado by helping to re-elect Hickenlooper.

Tancredo, you ignorant slut. Instead of finding a way to help us, you’ve found a way to hurt us.

Read the rest.

I learn this morning that our president is a person of pallor.

“I can’t say that the president is fully behind me, I would hope that he is…I would love to talk to him,” Sherrod said on “GMA.”

“He is not someone who has experienced what I have experienced through life, being a person of color. He might need to hear some of what I could say to him,” she told me. “I don’t know if that would guide him in a way that he deals with others like me, but I at least would like to have the opportunity to talk to him about it.”

Rev. Wright is going to be cranky when he finds out.

Read the rest.

An aside: I really take issue with her hyper-racialized view of the world. The tone really bugs me.

Shirley Sherrod should not have been fired. This from Stephen Spruiell at National Review Online tells the story:

I’d encourage you to watch the video for yourself, but the summary version is as follows: After experiencing some hard-core white racism in the segregated South (her father was murdered by white men who were never convicted), Sherrod made a commitment to help black southerners in bad situations. “When I made that commitment,” she said, “I was making that commitment to black people and to black people only. But you know, God will show you things… you realize that the struggle is really about poor people.” She then proceeded to tell the story featured in the clip that Breitbart published (he says he received the clip in its edited form). A white farmer came to her for help, and because she perceived him to be like the others, she fobbed him off on a white lawyer — “his own kind.” But the lawyer didn’t help the farmer, and that is what led Sherrod to revise her previous biases against whites and to resolve to assist all economically distressed farmers, white or black, who came to her for help.

Love me some Breitbart, but here’s the thing: gotcha journalism (and we bloggers are wildly susceptible to this kind of thinking) leaves you open to this kind of thing. When you do your best to catch someone screwing up--showing weakness or hypocrisy--you aren’t actually engaging their ideas. There’s nothing wrong with exposing bad behavior--in fact, we have an obligation to do just that--but we should do it while critically considering the context and the evidence. The things that were said by the left during the Bush years were often the worst sort of gotcha journalism and, like her or loathe her, the treatment of Sarah Palin has often ignored her thoughts in favor of digging for personal attacks.

Ms. Sherrod wasn’t treated well by anyone in this situation. As easy as it is to view bureaucrats as sort of inhuman, the truth is that the loss of her job and the comments about her character could have serious repercussions in her life. It’s something she didn’t deserve.

Sherrod shouldn’t have been fired (and certainly shouldn’t have been fired before the context was considered) and she is owed an apology by everyone who ran with the story. Earlier today, the NAACP referred to this as a teachable moment and I agree. The lessons we need to learn are about how we handle political differences these days and how we handle racial politics these days. It’s not a very pretty lesson at all.

View the video here.

Update: You might also want to consider what the Anchoress has to say on the subject.

I’ve tried to ignore them, but there’s like a critical mass of Mel Gibson content out there that makes it hard to miss the audio that is being released. And, boy, he’s a mess. There is a scary, out-of-control quality to his anger and he comes across as entirely unhinged.

I don’t feel entirely comfortable listening to other peoples’ fights. It’s like being in a restaurant while the couple in the both next to you is having an argument--I don’t want to know who has done what to whom and I don’t want to see that raw emotion thrown out for everyone to see. It makes me squirm a little and it’s hard to escape the feeling that Oksana Grigorieva is baiting him and poking at him to get the response that she wants. It isn’t pleasant listening and her apparent manipulation doesn’t forgive his threats of violence (and, potentially, real acts of violence) and vicious words.

Here’s the thing: Mel sounds like he’s one bad movie review away from killing someone. I’m not sure if it would be himself or someone else, but if all of those snippets of audio are genuine, then he should be spending some quality time with mental health professionals.

One thing is very clear: the Mel Gibson as public construct isn’t much like Mel Gibson the real person. As we’ve seen more and more of the real Gibson over the last few years, it’s become increasingly hard to find something to like about the guy.

Resurrectionsong isn’t TMZ, but this link will take you to that star-stalking site of celebrity obsessives. I almost feel dirty just for linking to them. Or if that seems like a link to far, here’s one to Fox where you can listen to some of the audio.

Mel Gibson professes hate for black folks and thinks that Jews are behind all the bad things that happen in the world. In Clintonland, this just means that Mel is making a run public office?

Well, that’s a surprise.