Mayan Calendar Suffered From Budget Approvals

Producing the Long Count calendar was no easy feat 

Have a nice day!

So here it is people. The real reason so many of us believe our number is up today, December 21, 2012. The date that the Mayan Long Count (Baktun) calendar expires. Are you ready? Answer: They didn't get the funds granted before being conquered by the Spanish.

Seriously. The Mayan Calendar was based on a cyclical count. The longest cycle was 1,872,000 days (or 5125.36 years). That cycle ends today. Now this wasn't in the day when you could walk down to Kinkos and print out 15 million copies of the 5125 year calendar to distribute to all of your Mayan friends. No, indeed. The ancient Mayan calendars we have on record are carved in stone! Think about that. I'll write it again in all-caps for effect. CARVED IN STONE! On the sides of temples. On walls in palaces. You get the picture? Not a cheap undertaking by any means.

Documenting the next Baktun calendar would have required an enormous budget from the Mayan King. A project including armies of stone masons, stone, new buildings to carve them into, iron tools for carving and time. Yes, TIME. Lots and lots of time. And, well... the Mayans thought they had at least a few hundred years left before they needed to start chiseling away in the rock and stone and create the next calendar. But, in that same time period, their armies of men and resources were needed to fight the Spanish. A fight they eventually lost and which subsequently left them adopting (or being forced to adopt) their conqueror's religion and therein, their calendar.

When your peoples are conquered and enslaved your culture typically takes an historical hit with regard to accounting and record-keeping. The fact that no new Baktun or Long Count Calendar was ever created is far from being proof that the world will end today. Imagine if nobody produced the new 2013 Victoria's Secret, Sports Illustrated, Hot Fireman, Warm Puppies or Cute Cats calendars this year. What a panic! No 2013 calendar? Must be the end of the world! Not likely.

It's 9:00 AM here as I write. In 15 hours we'll know for sure. Have a nice day!

Super Kent the Service Guy! To the rescue!

Hey, Bud! You need a door to go with this refrigerator!

How many times has this happened to you? An appliance breaks, you call the service line, and a service technician is booked to arrive "sometime between 8 and 12", only to show up just after lunch around 1 o'clock, and missing the part needed to finish the repair. Sound all too familiar? Well, that's why I feel compelled to share my very non-cliché experience yesterday with Super Kent the Service Guy.

Here's the back-story. The hinge on the door to my pricey, two years old, stainless fridge had gone bad. The bushing on the bottom, which rides on the hinge and handles the balance of the door so that it closes by itself, had come loose. It seems that this little silicon piece screws directly into the plastic frame on the underside of the door. Over time, a stress fracture had appeared in the plastic and the result is that the door would bind when you open or close it, giving a great THUMP! Not healthy for either the door or the hinge. Having gone online and finding the explosion diagram (the picture that shows you all of the parts and numbers) it was evident that there was no replacing the plastic frame and that a new door would be required - to the tune of €400!!!

I was ready for a fight. Phrases like, "design flaw", "factory reject", and "consumer rights", all danced in my head. So, like any good customer, I rang up the service number and booked a time for a tech to come and "have a look at the door".  He would be by on Tuesday "between 8 and 12". So, here's the good part. I'm home yesterday afternoon (Monday) working in my home office, when the phone rings. It's Kent, the service tech. He's in the area and wonders if he could come by a day early and have a look at the door. "Sure", I say. "Come on by. I'm here till four". "Ten minutes", says Kent.

Nine minutes later Kent the service guy is at my door. After accepting a cup of coffee he begins to evaluate my busted hinge (on the door). After Kent quickly and deftly lifts out the door inserts without spilling a drop of milk or dropping an egg, he draws his power-drive and unscrews the door from the hinge. With several small bits of black plastic tumbling onto the floor we concur that the plastic is indeed cracked and that the only solution is a new door. "They're pretty expensive", Kent informs me. Duh! So what next?

Before I could even start to wind up all of my complaints Kent says, "I have a new one out in the truck." and off he goes. Ten minutes later there's a new door hanging, Kent has cleaned up, and we're drinking a quick cup of coffee. "Is that under guarantee?" I ask. "Yeah, no worries." says Kent. (note to self: close mouth)  I signed the service order with great big THANKS! at the bottom.

So there we stand, sipping coffee, talking about all the hi-tech kit going into household appliances like LCD touch screens and M2M communications that let you control your fridge from your mobile phone. It's apparently hard for Super Kent and his colleagues to keep up on everything. It's not about just changing a hose or a water pump any longer; soon these service reps will need to be network technicians as well. They do their best, however and sometimes - even a day early. We wrapped up our chat and Kent was on his way to a family of seven that needed their washing machine fixed. He was of course a day ahead of schedule and had a new machine in the truck.

I haven't named the manufacturer, and that is with reason. I wanted to first and foremost give recognition and credit to Super Kent who saved my day in so many ways. It's the people that are in the trenches and meet the customer every day that build the brand. They are the reputation. They are the growth in a saturated market. I know exactly which brand I will be buying when I need to replace the dryer in a few months. Super Kent the Service Guy should get a commission.

What's next, Burger King? The Liver Smoothie?

Burger King topping off summer with Bacon Sundae

I don't know if this post will be informational, infotational or just incomprehensible, but I feel compelled to write something, anything!

Yesterday I was sliding my finger thru the pages of Flipboard and came across a story that made me turn around and quickly check the calendar to be sure it wasn't April 1st again. Burger King had been revamping it's menu and came up with lots of pork and chicken sandwich offerings as a limited-time summer campaign. One can only hope. But what blew my mind was the addition to their snack/desserts of this odd little treat - the Bacon Sundae.

I'm speechless, nearly. Seriously. Toppings to choose from? Caramel, Strawberry, Fudge, OREO®, M&M'S®, and... BACON! Why not just pour some pork fat right over the top instead? It makes me think of that scene from the Friends episode "The One Where No One's Ready" (season 3 ep.2), where Joey inadvertently drinks Monica's saved glass of fat. Later, when Ross needs to drink the fat in order to prove to Rachel how much he needs her, he mumbles a to himself,  "Just a vanilla milkshake...". It doesn't change the fact that the entire audience groans with disgust as David Schwimmer raises the glass too his lips.

Call me old-fashioned but my bacon is reserved for eggs, beans, and BLT's. And while I've seen lots of flavors of ice-cream, including this wonderful, blue pick-me-upper in Rome, you'd have to push me real hard to try a bacon sundae.

now this is ice cram that lasts

One re-release that lives up to the memories

Paul McCartney, Ram (Remastered) 1971

It's happened to all of us. You know. You were siting around reminiscing with some friends about the "good old days" and all of your musical references started bubbling up. Names of deep tracks start popping up by artists so far out the long tail that the friends around you glaze over with dismay as the signals spark across synapsis in their grey matter triggering wide-eyed "a-ha" moments. Tracks once loved and forgotten and which, after a few more beers, you realized you just had to have again. The next morning you logged onto iTunes or other dubious music download source and downloaded that long-lost gem by Shawn Phillips. Crow, Moxy, Bread, whomever, only to be royally disappointed when your memory far exceeded reality. "What was I thinking?" "How could I have ever been so into this?" 

It's so easy to be disappointed by our memories. This is why I was pleasantly surprised with the new re-release of Paul McCartney's 1971 co-creation "Ram". It was McCartney's second solo effort after The Beatles had officially disbanded and one that was produced with his wife Linda (who shares writing credits and performs backing vocals on most tracks). McCartney has just released the re-master of this album and will continue with more to come. The point was to re-master them for the digital age and digital distribution. I don't know if that's a good thing necessarily, but in this case I can only say that the effect is pure magic to my ears - and my memory.

From the very first strumming chords of that acoustic guitar on , "Too Many People", I'm hooked.

Coldplay and Adele Showing Music Industry How To Emulate Film Distribution

That's right. I said it. Just when we figured the Film and TV business were the dinosaurs in the room - lagging way behind in their understanding the digital business - the music industry is beginning to look more and more like the film industry.  "How's that?" you may ask.

As you may have read in other places, Coldplay, like Adele, will not be bringing their new release Mylo Xyloto to streaming services such as Spotify, Rdio and the like. The official "artistic" reason from Coldplay's side was that the new album is a work that should be experienced from start to finish. Pretty lame excuse since single track downloads would be counter to that principle and the likelihood of a full album listening experience is much higher on streaming. (Unless, of course, they are making it a Full CD download only from iTunes)

While a four-track sampler of Adele's 21 is available on Spotify, that seems to be more timed with the release plan to drive CD and digital sales from iTunes and other  stores. With 21 being the top selling album of the year so far, and Coldplay well positioned to enter in at No.1, there's no need to speculate on the obvious. There is more money to be made by these artists from digital sales than from streaming. Here's the deal. Artists get a fraction of a cent every time a song is streamed vs. around 20 cents per download from iTunes (according to calculations presented in a recent article in Rolling Stone). That's all well and good, and works for the likes of Adele, Coldplay, and a handful of other world-class artists,

My Wishlist For Spotify's"New Direction" Announcement

Spotify announced today that that there will be a global press conference on November 30 with the theme "New Direction". What could that new direction be? Here a wishlist.

1. Up. As in Integrated cloud storage for your own library or library "matching". This would be fantastic and give iTunes Match a major headache. It would also allow Spotify to open up more catalog in more territories and/or fill the gaps from your own local library. Tracks that you have locally that are not available because of territory restrictions in Spotify's agreements, could be matched and made available to you based on your prior "ownership". While I love Spotify this is something they need to implement soon to keep ahead of iTubes and iCloud. I know iCloud doesn't technically "stream" but that's just semantics. It caches and plays a progressive download until that track is finished or you navigate away. Spotify is basically a bit torrent client playing up tracks from many points across the internet. That's what gives it such great performance - and is also why you won't see a browser-based Spotify. (unless some engineers out there have tips on how HTML5, Facebook and Spotify can fit together to make a torrent client)  Likelihood: 3/5

2. Sideways. As in adding video. And not just music videos across the board, but branded artist pages with exclusive preview content. The seeds have been planted as you can see here with this exclusive video from Björk. This becomes a great way for artists to lift themselves above the chatter and get more plays, as well as leveraging the massive social connection via Facebook. This would also make display adverts a new source of revenue in the free service (powered by Facebook?). That is something that's hard to do when people or only listening and not watching. Of course - this assumes they have it all cleared with the labels and publishers. Likelihood: 4/5


3. Inside. Into the arenas in partnership with Live Nation or or other tour promoters. This would fit nicely into the brand page concept and create new revenue streams.

Steve Jobs gave my children's grandmother a voice

My first computer was a Mac.

Winding down my college years I was like most twenty-somethings and looking for something to do with my life - a means to pay rent, stock the fridge, and become part of the professional world. In my case, being in film school meant finding something creative to do. Some old friends from high school and university had gotten together and formed an advertising agency. It wasn't the biggest shop in town (three guys) but they were doing innovative things and taking on printed projects in a very efficient way. They were doing color layout and printing using a new type of desktop computer called a Macintosh (Macintosh SE to be exact). Color documents such as menus, brochures, fliers, were being created using Mac Write and Mac Paint. The program had several fonts to chose from and you could assign color to text and shapes! You could copy/paste text and shift elements around in a desktop graphical interface using a mouse! I'd actually used a mouse before for editing digital audio on DOS machines. I din't like it much as I believed myself to be faster using arrow and command keys rather than clicking and dragging (I got over it). But, Oh! The Mac! There I sat at the dawn of desktop publishing age and didn't even realize the revolution had started.

The journey continued and a couple of years later I had migrated to Photoshop and one of the first AVID Media Composer non-linear editing suites in town - installed on a Mac II. Apple and the Mac had become an integral part of my professional and personal life. I was a fan. But it wasn't until my good friend Erik came home with a PowerBook 500 that I knew I had to start saving up for the next PowerBook model. My very first laptop and own home computer was the PowerBook 5300CE. Infrared file transfer was very cool, and I couldn't wait to get my CompuServe account up and running.

Life after that has included 2 x G4 stationary machines, 2 x Cinema Displays, 2 clam-shell iBooks (lime green), a new iMac, a G4 PowerBook, an intel MacBook Pro, 2 iPods, 1 iPod Nano, 1 iPod Touch and an iPad2. And i loved them all as much as I loved watching Steve Jobs come on stage a couple of times a year and reveal to the world what the next cool tech item was that I would be adding to my shopping list, and how much easier entertainment and communication would be. How much more fun we all could have.

The best testament I can give to the greatness of Steve's vision and dedication to simplicity and elegance is this: My mother, who is into her 80's (sorry, Mom but it's important to the story) began her computer literacy on an iMac in 1998. This was so  we could chat on CompuServe and bounce emails (I live in Stockholm, she is in Denver). She picked it up quickly and as online communication evolved we moved to video via iChat, and Skype. She's now on her second iPhone and not too many weeks ago we had a nice morning/afternoon chat over Facetime on our iPads (yes, my 80+ year-old mother has an iPad2). There we sat. I in my kitchen and Mom sitting up in her bed with morning toast and coffee on the nightstand. Two iPads in hand. My daughters behind me waving to Grandma. Sharing a moment inspired and realized by a catalytic force pushing the boundaries of the tech industry. Technology itself cannot change humanity on its own. Passionate visionaries who believe in the dream are the ones that can bridge the gap between technology and life, and successfully bring it to the masses. They are the ones who "Stay hungry. Stay Foolish".

Thank you, Steve, for innovation so elegant and simple that 80 year-old great grandmothers get it as easily as a four year-old child so that I can open my iPad and just ping her on the other side of the world. I can't help but feel the next 30 years will be much less exciting without you and that I must now make peace with the notion of waiting even longer for the next big thing. You will be missed.

Airplay - Shmairplay! Bose Getting It Right With Bluetooth Streaming

New SoundLink Mobile takes Bluetooth A2DP streaming over Airplay

I like this. I like it so much I may even go and buy one (after listening in-store first, of course). I'm just so happy to see a major audio brand making a 3rd party speaker system without that bloody iDevice dock. I've been using stereo BT headsets for years, even with my old java-based Walkman phones. The headsets that Sony Ericsson were making then, and the ones they have today, were and still are, fantastic. Small barrels about the diameter of a pen, that clip nicely onto your lapel/shirt/bag strap, containing mic, player controls, answer and power buttons and fitted with a standard mini jack for whatever pair of headphones you prefer.

 The beauty of these little devices is that as soon as I get home I jack it into my home stereo and have Spotify from my mobile streaming all around. I know guys who have DJ:d gigs using these and two mobile phones. So why can't I find Bluetooth support in any decent portable kit?

This new SoundLink Mobile by Bose appears to have a great size for taking with you in your carry-on, daytrippin', or compact living. Sure you may miss the advantage of a charger for your iProduct but this is a step in the right direction. I, for one, am tired of Apple's "tired" ecosystem and welcome the change from a major brand like Bose toward filling the gap for all of us music-loving members of the Android community - and every other Bluetooth enabled audio device. Hooray for Bose! Can't wait to listen and buy!

iPhone 4S An Early Holiday Gift For Android Partners

Well THAT was underwhelming to say the least. I'm not quite sure whether to blame Apple or the over-hyped tech media who raised the expectations, but yesterday's Apple announcement left me nonplussed in a big way. What happened? I have a few theories down the page but the main question is, "Where's the iPhone 5?" Where's a new form factor that says "we've done something new in the past 18 months"? It all just fell flat. First came a long recap of everything Apple had already revealed around iOS5, then some updates to the iPod line and then... a souped up iPhone4. Yawn.

Boxed chocolates and blind dates

We've all heard that old line, "It's what's on the inside that counts!"  I got news for you, Tim. That line only applies to boxed chocolates and blind dates! We all know it's used as consolation. When someone has a "great personality". Apple's strength has always been design and usability. Anyone caring enough about the inside specs would know that iPhone has always been sub-par with it's competitors, even feature for feature. Where Apple and iPhone have succeeded, however, is in creating an ecosystem that just works - and keeping the feeding frenzy alive. That requires more than just speed bumps and some voice control. I mean - who uses that anyway? I'm a tech freak and have used voice activated dialing on and off since the mid '90s, but it is certainly not mainstream. Google has had voice integration in Android a good while now and for Apple to be touting SIRI ( a feature of iOS5 - not iPhone4S), a dual-core A5 processor, and an 8 megapixel camera as the big news at this stage, means they are just catching up to where Android devices have been for months. With new and slimmer designs due out for the holiday shopping season, as well as a few more speed bumps by HTC, LG, Samsung and the rest, as well as screen improvements and other features, Google and its Android Army have a good chance to rake in big in the next few months.

Conspiracy theory or broader market strategy?

This just seems so unlike Apple. I hesitate to believe it has anything to do with Steve jobs leaving the building but one can't deny that a new CEO will have a new style and inherit a lot of baggage.

Is the new Facebook the old MySpace? Or will strategic media partnerships make the clutter attractive?

Timeline and modularity create space for Spotify, Netflix, Hulu and others

Well...one thing was accurate. The new ticker on Facebook was an indication of a complete revamp of the screen real estate and therein a new, necessary component of the user experience. It's current redundancy will be replaced by the other components of Timeline, which Zuck revealed yesterday at Facebook's f8 conference (keynote video here). I have to say that, while it sure is a more aesthetically pleasing layout of my social graph, it sure looks like FB is becoming more and more akin to the cluttered, overloaded UX that became the Achilles Heel of MySpace. I mean, I like pushing the boundaries of tech advancement, and the new business models that follow with that, but my feeling (as a user) is that FB is pushing the limits of human nature and information overload (even for the MTV/ADD generations) and that the whole thing could backfire if they aren't careful.

On the other hand I think the new Timeline concept has great potential if they manage to integrate the privacy levels in a thorough and clever way, AND if they make the modularity of it all simple and manageable. Two big elements of this which I think are fantastic are the (long rumored) Spotify and Hulu integration into the ticker. This is obviously step one of the process and even Daniel Ek at Spotify expanded on the development in an interview yesterday - saying there would be a Spotify widget as well like a player app as a module in the Timline view. So, as you can imagine, with a Spotify player, Hulu player (or other video play service), or even your friends' FB Video feed player (oh yes, it will come soon), your Nike training app, and other apps connected by the Social Graph APIs filling up your Timeline view - that annoying Ticker will become your default feed and trigger point for all things social.

Years ago, while I was working with content propositions for a handset manufacturer, one of the most powerful and underused tools we had implemented into the software was the live RSS reader on the standby screen. Now, of course, this is standard social integration via widgets on most smart phones. Facebook has just optimized the ticker experience to make it more complete and I would expect to see this lifted directly over to standby screens by most smart phone makers. One unfortunate side-effect they need to get a handle on is the seeming vaporization of privacy settings around that ticker feed. I'm seeing everything my friends are writing to everyone I don't know. That's not good.

So where do you get the new Timeline view? Right now it's only available in beta to FB app developers so unless you're signed up and have an app in the system it doesn't look like you will be enjoying this just yet. I predict the masses will bitch and moan only to give up. 250 million users will be pissed off and react, but the other 1/2 billion will follow the tail of the animal in front of them on up the trail of social web paradigms and it will all be business as usual in no time. Two things are clear: 1) Facebook has established the hooks to lift media consumption fully into the social engagement experience and now needs to just implement. 2) I wrote about it months ago when Google Music beta was announced, saying they needed to provide APIs to Spotify and others to tie into the cloud storage for my local files. Hasn't happened. And I don't see Google making as much progress as quickly as Facebook has. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said yesterday that during initial meetings with Facebook, Zuckerberg had asked him what his growth target number was. Reed gave Zuckerberg his number and Mark's reply was that for Facebook, success would be reaching that number... x2. Facebook is getting the media aggregators onboard.

Love 'em or hate 'em. Right now Facebook has not just the number of eyeballs but also the number of fingers hovering over the buttons and the hooks to trigger that crowd mentality. Call it "Real Time Serendipity", "Peer Pressure", "Recommendation" or anything similar, but with 750 million users wrapped up in your social web, your worst day is going to be miles ahead of your competition.