There’s always something to howl about.

Month: February 2010 (page 1 of 4)

Mark Steyn: “When Responsibility Doesn’t Pay”

National Review Online:

Think of Greece as California: Every year an irresponsible and corrupt bureaucracy awards itself higher pay and better benefits paid for by an ever-shrinking wealth-generating class. And think of Germany as one of the less profligate, still-just-about-functioning corners of America such as my own state of New Hampshire: Responsibility doesn’t pay. You’ll wind up bailing out anyway. The problem is there are never enough of “the rich” to fund the entitlement state, because in the end it disincentivizes everything from wealth creation to self-reliance to the basic survival instinct, as represented by the fertility rate. In Greece, they’ve run out Greeks, so they’ll stick it to the Germans, like French farmers do. In Germany, the Germans have only been able to afford to subsidize French farming because they stick their defense tab to the Americans. And in America, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are saying we need to paddle faster to catch up with the Greeks and Germans. What could go wrong?

Ubuntu is Ready for Prime Time

I’ve been missing my Bloodhounds!  I reminded myself that arguing about politics is like arguing about religion, so logged in to push up a new post.

About a year ago, I posted that the Android OS was going to free me from Windows (and Office.)  Unfortunately, the g1 was a gigantic POS, so that didn’t happen.  However, in the meantime something fortunate did happen:

I dumped a giant glass of iced tea on my laptop.

During the two weeks of my PC repair, I was forced to move off Outlook and start using the powerful tools that Google provides (free) in their apps products.  End of two weeks, and I was off Outlook entirely.

Zoom forward a few months from that point and I’m bored out of my mind (funny how that happens in a real estate broker’s life during the Nov-Dec months.)  Out of this sheer boredom, I decided to install Ubuntu (linux) on an old PC laptop we had sitting around.

I’m writing this blog post on that machine.  Ubuntu is incredible.  This 5 year old laptop with 512kb of RAM runs faster than my 1.5 year old PC w/ 3gb of RAM and lightning fast processor.  I can’t wait to replace buggy Vista with Ubuntu on my fast machine!

So…I put it to you:  Find an old laptop in your house, download Ubuntu, install it, and give it 2 weeks.  Ubuntu is ready for prime time.  You belong in the cloud, and there’s no reason to be bound to an OS.

I’d love to hear feedback from anyone/everyone willing to give Ubuntu two weeks1!

Dawn In America Part Two

The American People will take Socialism but they won’t take the label  –Upton Sinclair

I believe that the American people will want the label of  “unfettered capitalism” but will not necessarily adopt the economic system.  Americans like government in small doses but they like (and mostly trust) their government.  The morality of the argument for voluntaryism, while sound, will be difficult to adopt.  Those of you, who believe that government is the problem rather than the solution, should never stop saying  “I told you so”  when Statist policies fail but you would do well to remain aware to the fact that Americans like a little bit of government. That is how we can thrive amidst chaos.

Let’s talk about how we might prepare ourselves for the next 20 years:

I don’t believe we’re in a depression nor even a recession nor do think the 1930’s were a depression.  Rather, I believe we’re in the middle of a huge economic shift like the one we experienced in the early part of the 20th century.  The economic decline of the 30s and the current economic decline was a fallout from a shift in technology.  The economic decline of the 1930s was some 25 years after the implementation of the assembly line at Ford Motor Company.  It took that long for the economy to absorb the shift from a mostly agrarian society to a manufacturing society.  It was no easy shift, either.

Critics in the 20’s and 30’s claimed that we couldn’t eat machines but crop yields increased “spectacularly” in the twentieth century.  Domestic food production was so efficient that, despite what Willie Nelson said 25 years ago, American farmers were quite prosperous.  The market rewarded those who improved our lives by moving us along roads, on top of the water, and through the air…faster and cheaper.  Americans wanted to travel because we were already well-fed.

Is it any surprise that the current economic decline happened some 25 years after IBM’s introduction of the PC?  Is this really a “failure of capitalism”, as Van Jones might have you believe, or an unexpected response to the Fed trying to prop Read more

Bleg: What kind of Direct Mail letter works best?

Short bleg to all you BHBers out there. When I was in non-profit fundraising, one of the cardinal rules was that long letters – 12 to 18 page letters – perform better than short fundraising letters.

But I wonder whether the same principle holds true for direct mail letters where you’re selling a service. I send out direct mail letters for my law practice to people who’ve recently been arrested for various alleged offenses. Wonder if I should be sending out longer letters. Right now my letter is two pages…

Any thoughts?

Meet the Third Thing…

[This is an essay I wrote in the mid-1990s, an attempt to explain to libertarians, especially various flavors of devotees of Ayn Rand, why the idea of a minimal state must always fail — just as the minimal state as envisioned in 1789 is failing right now. The argument holds up well, I think — though I am by now less lean-look’d a prophet. It’s just that no one wants to hear it… –GSS]

 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

The first thing to do is laugh, of course.

We stare tragedy right in the face, so close to it we can smell its stale breath, and it is reaching for us.

Everything we say should not, must not, cannot happen — every bit of it does happen. Teenage gang-bangers with AR-15s car-jack Sally Suburbanite and toss her baby out the window. Middle-aged speed freaks imprison their own mothers and force them to write bad checks. One-hundred-thirty-five years after emancipation, people are owned as slaves and the value of their labor is stolen from them. The falcon cannot hear the falconer and Vicky Weaver and 81 Branch Davidians lay slain.

Should not. Must not. Cannot. Does.

And there’s plenty more, of course, and every bit of it is tragic. Except us, for we are tragic Read more

Dawn In America- Part One

Anyone who has read this satirical piece knows that my writing turned macabre this past year.  One weekend, one book,  one article, and one website dramatically changed the way I look at the world and it inhabitants.  It has been painful to watch my political party regress from Bob Taft to Teddy Roosevelt in less than 25 years.  It is crushing to watch REALTORs and mortgage originators cheer for professional slavery rather than to muster up the courage associated with the rugged individualism that made this country great.

It has been said that it’s always darkest before dawn so while it was pitch black this past summer, I remained confident that Morning in America was nigh.  Rick Santelli fired the outburst heard ’round the continent and glimmers of light came by way of tea parties and election upsets.  As the economy sputtered, the previous and current administration acted like looters amidst a blackout but people have caught on to their theft- and they don’t like it.

It’s gonna get a lot darker before the dawn and I’ve never been so optimistic in my life. Here’s why- collectivism is a failed philosophy.  For all its noble efforts,  the unintended consequences of collectivism stifle the indomitable American spirit of reward for creativity, ingenuity, and innovation.  We saw collectivism fail here, here, and most recently here.  Now, the average guy in the street knows it, too.

Remember the Stockdale Paradox and you’ll remain optimistic with a keen eye to the circumstances as they unfold.  Now, hold on to your hat because…

It’s gonna get uglier so be prepared. I think great opportunities will go to the prepared. The day that emerges from the dawn will be so bright you’ll swear that global warming isn’t a hoax.  Here’s how I see the next cuppla years playing out:

  1. Real estate may decline, even more. While the lower end of the market has already declined to utilitarian value, the affordable housing organizations will (finally) attack that which artificially inflates markets; zoning regulations.  Rather than convert old military bases to detention FEMA camps, the impending currency crisis will force the Federal government to Read more

Various thoughts on small business tools

1. Google Voice

I know there’s been some sporadic discussion here about Google Voice: whether it’s useful/wise to use as a business phone number, and about the quality of its transcriptions.

I’ve been very pleased with it in terms of the call routing functionality, and the integration with my Droid and Google Contacts.

The transcriptions, true, are sometimes hit or miss. Lately they’ve been more “hits”. I practice in Raleigh, NC, with its share of both southern and other accents. Yes, certain voicemails turn out to be gibberish when transcribed. Frankly, I don’t know that I’d be much better if I were personally transcribing the voicemail myself, let alone leaving it to the warm embrace of Google’s computer systems!

But here are four of the most recent voicemails I’ve gotten, unedited except for the removal of certain identifying information:

Voicemail 1: My name is [name]. My number is [accurate!]. Once I have a question regarding a limited driving privilege. If you can give me a call back. I’d appreciate it. Thank you.

Voicemail 2: Hey, This Is [name]. I’ll talk to my probation officer and he wants me to give you the number is that you can call him as name is [name]. His number is [accurate!] thanks bye.

Voicemail 3: Hi Damon, Damon, this is [NAME] I was just calling to get a confirmation that you had indeed received my [BADLY TRANSCRIBED NAME OF A FORM] from my insurance agent. If you could please return my call. At [NAME]. Thank you.

Obviously the names are not even transcribed properly, but the rest of it is pretty good. These are short voicemails. Longer voicemails where the subject matter is more complicated tend to be less accurate. But usually Google is able to accurately transcribe the name of the offense/crime the person is calling about. This is a big help in my line of work when you’re sitting in court and wondering whether you need to run out to return the call! A speeding ticket can probably wait. A drug trafficking case… that requires an immediately reply.

2. 1-800 numbers and Read more

A Future By Halves vs. A Future of Have-Nots

Voluntaryism vs Social Democracy

Two quick polls: First, all those who enjoy belonging to a society that provides some minimal safety net for the least among us, please raise your hands… Ahh, I see some hands going up. Very good. Second, all those who occasionally enjoy being forced to do something against their will by threat of a gun, please raise your hands… Right, masochists aside I see no hands raised. Very good. The problem is, you cannot have one without the other. Thus spoke the Voluntaryists.

On Monday night I was invited by fellow Bloodhound Brian Brady to attend a debate entitled Voluntaryism/Market Anarchy vs. Democratic-Socialism held in a little hot bed of thought and cafe called Cafe Libertalia. It was an engaging evening spent listening to the point / counter-point discussion on the very legitimacy of government itself. You can gain a more detailed understanding of Voluntaryism here and of Social Democracy here. (Although if you’re a regular reader of BHB you’ve no doubt gained quite a bit of free-market, Voluntaryism philosophy from our Greek emeritus: Greg Swann.)

I must be honest in admitting that I know quite a bit less about Social Democracy philosophy than I do Voluntaryism, and the debate was of little help. The team on the Social Democracy side presented a less than cogent argument for a society wherein free markets and democracy exist in ever changing ratios, as dictated by the people themselves. When asked, the speakers could not name a single  society where this system currently exists.  When pressed, they admitted that the countries currently attempting it are abysmal failures.  But this did not dissuade them from the idea that it could exist. Their logic – such as it was – stemmed from the idea of pure democracy (one man, one vote) and concluded that the majority would decide which means of production should be left to the free markets and which to the nurturing womb of centralized government. “How can you be against that?” they asked.  “We’re not advocating government take-over; we’re saying Read more

Swanepoel’s Trends Report is not useless. It makes a dandy prop!

Cathy’s listing Friday, a classic North Central Phoenix luxury home. I was shooting interiors for her today, and saw this as a part of her staging:

Building the single-property web site for the home, tonight, I realized that in six months or fewer, I’ll be repurposing content for single-property iPhone/iPad apps, as well. I doubt you will have read anything like that in any repackaged regurgitant from self-styled real estate experts, but it’s where we’re all headed.

CFORMS->Heap + Aweber = Finally, The Perfect Real Estate CRM Smashup?

Heap CRM’s recent announcement that you can now fire off Event templates from an email got me jizzing a little.

Here’s why:

I’ve played a lot with the CForms wordpress plugin and knew that it allowed for 2 interesting things to happen after a form submission.

1. Cforms will show a custom thank you message directly after form submission and this message will take html.
2. Cforms will fire off a custom message to any admin email address of your choosing.

So, starting with the latter…

Knowing that Heap allows a series of events to be scheduled based on some code inserted into an email, I created a CFORM and got to tweaking a custom email message that would be sent to my heap dropbox address for creating a new lead.

You’ll see in the example below that the Subject of the admin email is configured to display the “Name” field entered by the visitor. And the body of the email is configured to include Heap’s code for firing off an event template (along with some other variables, of which there are delightfully many to choose from!)

So in this example, a new lead is created in Heap and a follow up series of events that I’ve pre-configured is kicked off, along with the scheduling of any number of email messages.

The lead could have also been auto assigned to a teammate based on the short code, which might be a nice feature for any broker considering building a multi agent contributor, multi niche focused blogsite. (Imagine embedding a different agent branded cform for on pages created for each neighborhood in your market area. Then consider reaching out to a prospective recruit and promising them that all leads from that page will be routed into the custom CRM solution you’re going to be giving them. [at the whopping cost of an additional $5/month!]

And Then… the Lead Gets Subscribed to an RSS Based Blog Broadcast!

At this point there were already excitement streaks in my undies, but then I realized that I’d also want all of these “leads” to be subscribed to Read more

UVEX missses the Cluetrain

“… learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about “listening to customers.” They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.”The Cluetrain Manifesto, Chapter 1

Until I resigned yesterday, I was a Web marketing consultant for the US distributors of UVEX products for 7 years.

Last week, after the IOC demanded that we remove anything Lindsey Vonn related from the US web site,  I posted a limerick to UVEXsports.com congratulating Lindsey for her downhill win without using her name while simultaneously exposing the IOC’s shameful tactics.

(This is an organization that goes out of its way to menace local pizza joints that use the word “Olympics” in their names. )

By Friday, my rejoinder had been picked up by SlashDot and from there, landed on BigPicture.com (Barry Ritholtz’s blog), which was picked up by USA Today, and just this morning the NY Post ran a blurb (which noted that the post was now gone without explanation).

This, of course, was exactly the reaction I was hoping for and the commercial justification for the post. Easily half of the comments were a variation on “Good for you. Screw the IOC. I never heard of UVEX before, now I will buy your stuff.”

The IOC, apparently, was not pleased.

The saddest part of the reaction from UVEX’s German management (knuckle under and kill the blog) is that it reinforces to the IOC that its strong-arm tactics work.

At the same time, UVEX  rejected an opportunity to  grow their brand by empowering a human being to speak on their behalf in a human voice, which — as Doc Searls and company pointed out in the Cluetrain over a decade ago —  is a powerful way for brands to leverage the Web.

People reacted to that post because we are sick and tired of big business using lawyers to get their way whether or not what they want is legally, morally, or ethically justified. We all know that it doesn’t matter who is right, what matters is who can pay Read more

Now I’m Beginning To Get It – The Missing Brick In The Wall

My favorite Uncle, Fighter Pilot Dick, sent me this video the other day. I was flabbergasted, which is hard to accomplish lately. I then sent it to a couple of folks for whom I hold much respect, to gain their takes. Both of them are fellow Hounds, Brian Brady and Tony Gallegos.

I thought Brian’s most cogent reply to me during a little back and forth emailing, was the following: Note: The link in Brian’s quote was added by me. It goes to the original video. The embedded video here is the same, but has some CNN commentary up front.

I know the FDIC went out of its way to issue a Press Release, denouncing the guys at Thing Big Work Small.  I know those guys fairly well (had a few beers with them at the CAMB convention this summer).  The FDIC denounced the video as “factually incorrect”, a day after it came out…then…

One West Bank, who bought the IndyMac portfolio for $1.55 Billion, earned 1.57 billion in its first year of operation.  Now Jeff, youi’re a bright guy…what kind of bank earns 100% ROI in one year?

This video explains a whole lot, though I suspect I may be late coming to this party. Considering the reply received from Tony, who said he didn’t know the details of the transaction, I’m thinkin’ maybe we’ve all been missing this particular brick in the wall.

Though CNN doesn’t bollix it up too much, the really good stuff starts around 1:45 on the video. Would love to hear your take.

I like dual agency so much that I’m writing a commercial for it — and you can help!

Okay, I don’t like dual agency. The more I’ve thought about it, over the years, the more I see that it cannot possibly done in a manner that it is actually fair to both parties. And that ignores the perceptions of the principals.

The one little bit of glue holding the Rube Goldberg machine of dual agency together is the fact that very few consumers even know what it is. Many times, I have had to explain dual agency to people who were either going through it or had in the past. Not surprisingly, none of them had been fully-informed by their agent about the risks of dual representation — although many of them suddenly understood what had smelled fishy to them.

My argument would be that no fully-informed consumer would embrace dual agency, but there are exceptions: People who want to take unfair advantage of the other party. There is a name for the role you would play in that scenario, as the Realtor: Shill.

Not only is dual agency exceptionally good for cheating one of your clients — normally the buyer — it’s also excellent for leaving the impression in the minds of both buyers and sellers that you yourself are a cheater, a liar and a person of egregiously low character. That’s some first-rate marketing, Jasper!

Here’s my take: As a very easy baby-step on the road to raising your own standards for the benefit of your clients, swearing off dual agency can’t be beaten. There’s a lot more you can and should do, and BloodhoundBlog is full of ideas for raising your standards. But there is nothing else you can do that will communicate to your clients your commitment to putting their interests first as compelling as renouncing dual agency. And no matter what else you might do, if you do not renounce it, you’re still going to look like a snake to anyone who actually understands dual agency.

So as a step toward informing consumers about what is really going on in a dual agency transaction, I thought I would make a commercial about it. The spot would feature a bunch Read more

Stupid poem lands me on SlashDot

I occasionally blog on UVEXsports.com.

Most of my posts were links to stories about Lindsey Vonn, who uses UVEX stuff. We hope famously.

The IOC called and told UVEX to stop using any mention of Mrs Vonn on UVEXsports.com and that included my posts.

Then she won the gold, I congratulated her in thinly disguised verse, SlashDot picked it up and now other blogs are linking to it.

This is known as the Streisand Effect,  and it is one of the coolest things about these here Interwebs. If you love the players but hate the corporate game the Olympics have become, please check it out, leave a comment and send a message to the IOC.

Eric On MicroHoo vs Google

With the announcement today of the fact that the Department of Justice has approved the deal inked last summer between Microsoft and Yahoo, came a flood of e-mail into my inbox this afternoon.

“What does this mean for search?”

“What does it change?”

“Do we need to focus our organic search efforts more on Bing now that they are poised to power the results of Yahoo?”

” Will they be a REAL competitor of Google?”

“How will Google respond…or have they already?”

“How might this play out in the long run?”

Well, the truth of the matter is that I have been studying this on and off since last summer. Ironically, the Microhoo deal was announced while I was on my way to British Columbia to speak at the Real Estate Webmasters conference. The topic continued to be the buzz while I flew on to San Francisco to speak at Home Gain Live Nation. Why is that ironic? Well…I am just now finishing up the details of going to speak at the second HomeGain Nation Live event as well as going to speak on SEO at the RE/MAX convention. Gonna make for some fun times on the panel at HomeGain in the afternoon and some fun conversations at RE/MAX as well. I am stoked for both. But I know that interest will be there and questions will be asked by a lot of folks in the hallways… 😉

So while I have a lot to say about the merger (after all, I am the nerdy “read the patent applications, hiring patterns and etc sort of a search engine enthusiast…hehe), I am going to embargo most all of it until I speak at these events. I will say the following:

1. Competition is good. It inspires innovation and spurs creativity if it is TRULY competitive.
2. Bing has some MAJOR relevance issues with their search results that need to get cleared up.
3. Google has a whopping lead in market share currently will the combination of two non competitors automagically transform them into a competitor?
4. How much leverage does Microsoft’s vast market presence in the PC market give them? Do you Read more