This is one of those cases where I really wish I could find a copy of this ad on Youtube. If one of you happens to come across it, please send me link. The ad tries to promote a new channel bundle that represents significant value for subscribers. But seriously, did someone bother to listen or watch it?

So the commercial ends with this guy talking about his bigger package, “Now that I’ve got the bigger package with Starz… my wife is happy, my family’s happy and boy are the neighbors impressed.”

Obviously it was the writers’ intent to make this sound like a Viagra commercial– or that Extends product. But during the daytime hours? And do we all think the ED product commercials are some of the best? I’m not attacking this from the standpoint of a moral viewpoint, though I do question their judgment there. My bigger issue is that it’s just plain tacky.

Remember the old Snickers Batman commercial? Now that was funny stuff. I wish we could more of those. I’ve included it below as a reminder.

Enjoy!

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been reading much about the future of Apple given the fact that Steve Jobs is sick. And after reading yet another one, today, I’ve finally decided to chime in.

Honestly, and I don’t mean any disrespect to Mr. Jobs as I actually admire the man considerably, is the problem isn’t with Jobs retiring. It’s actually with the lack of tech leaders that posses any vision and charisma to lead such a company, or any company for that matter. That’s really the issue.

Most of what occurs in our industry follows the Intel-ish roadmap. Things get quite predictable after a while. Apple, under Steve Jobs, has been quite a different story. Even when they decided to transition from PPC chips to Intel processors, they implemented them in such a way that was rather unique for the industry. Is all of this to the credit of Jobs? I don’t think so. It was probably some tech weenie who came up with the idea of using EFI and instead of a traditional BIOS. And did Jobs develop a more improved battery and charging system? What about the way their new trackpads allow you to pinch your fingers and do other things to rotate, flip and otherwise manipulate pages?

I’m not trying to take anything away from the man. Not by any means. But the simple reality is I don’t buy for a moment that he’s responsible for all the various innovations.

Over the years, having created and run several startups, I have noticed a couple key truths:

1. There is absolutely no shortage of ideas
2. If you listen hard enough, you’ll find there are some really great ideas that come up every now and then
3. Most Many people seem to be divergent thinkers who are incapable of actually getting real development done
4. Driving innovation is about driving the good ideas and weeding out the effects of divergent thinkers
5. Managing the nay-sayers, divergent thinkers, people who need their backs patted, etc. is more than a full-time job
6. The more effective you are, the more you will be labeled a bully or tyrant

Ever notice how many people want to fill the shoes of a guy like Jobs or Gates? Both have had some great people in their organizations. But recognizing the difference between great talent and great leadership can be difficult and misleading. There simply aren’t many companies that have pushed the envelope or defined a market to draw from. And chances are good that the best candidate for the job of replacing Jobs will fail the interview. He’ll be too egotistical, unrealistic, too aggressive, not a people person, etc.

I can remember a few years back when I first interviewed for the job to drive enterprise marketing for Snap Appliance. I did my round of interviews and heard from the VP of Sales how didn’t know what the enterprise was. Yep. That’s why they were interviewing people for the job. I remember my time with the VP of Engineering who proceeded to tell me how we didn’t have the bandwidth to develop the features. Hmm… I didn’t know they’d been defined yet. And the excuses went on. After all was finished, I had my final interview with the CEO who asked me the million dollar question. Here’s the exchange that took place:

CEO: Why should we hire you?

Me: I’m not exactly sure you should.

CEO: Huh? Why do you say that?

Me: Well, I’ve interviewed with all of your staff and one thing is for certain, they all believe that this job is unnecessary because it can’t be done. You can’t move your products up market.

CEO: Well, what do you think you can do to change that?

Me: First of all, I will probably piss off your entire organization. See, I hear all the Nos and Can’ts and I take them as double-dog dares.

CEO: I see. Maybe that’s what we need then.

I lasted in the job for all of three weeks before changing roles to CTO. There was a need for doing more than merely scoping out new features. There was the need for figuring out how to get them into the very tight engineering schedule. And then meant putting in place a rapid prototyping effort. During the process, I took much criticism and ridicule. My schedule estimates were way too aggressive. My ideas were too far fetched. And so on. But I became great friends with the VP of Marketing and the VP of Engineering in the process. We’re still close to this day. And at the end of the day, we had a great acquisition largely due to those far-fetched ideas.

Bringing someone new into the helm of Apple is probably going to mean pissing off a lot of people. Some will feel they were loyal to Jobs and should deserve some credit as a result. Others will feel they were due a promotion. And yet others will feel they should have gotten the job. But the simple reality is that Apple’s future won’t depend on what they did previously with Steve Jobs. It’s going to depend on what they can do in his absence. It’s going to take a strong personality who can hear the good ideas, who can make the tough decisions and live with them and it’s going to take a guy who doesn’t care what everyone else thinks. Can they find a guy like that?

My take is that Apple can very well find a guy like this to drive the company forward. That’s not going to be the problem. The problem is going to be the selection committee. They’re going to look at pedigree. And they will be responsible for killing a great company. Let’s hope they can avoid making that mistake so that we can continue to get great and innovative products from Apple for years to come. And perhaps if we’re lucky, Mr. Jobs will already have a candidate in mind who can leave the critics dumbfounded.

Now, I’ve seen a lot cool apps/attachments to go along with the iPod, which I’ve been a proud owner of since the very first one. The most recent ones, with their increased screen size and increased storage space, make for great business tools. But this has gotta be the neatest business app yet.

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, this isn’t about listening to Drowning Pool’s Bodies, aka proper mood music, although that would probably me my thing. Never been one of those trained killers with the propensity for Classical music. Nope. Not me. I’ve always been a little more intense than that. The greatness behind this little gem is two-fold. First, it has a great little app that takes into account all sorts of environmental information, distance, number of rounds, load, etc. Basically, all the things you’d otherwise have to track in your head when going for the perfect kill shot.

The funny part of this app is that you really can buy it from the iTunes store. The other cool part of this package is the ruggedized case and mounting system. This isn’t just some flimsy Belkin case you’d buy from Target (ha ha ha, couldn’t resist). After all, you’d hate to get to your destination only to find that you have to set down your iPod just to steady your shot. Na ah, you want it so you can view it with your peripheral vision. Right?

Anyway, I saw this and simply thought it was cool. Where I live, I’ve got to deal with foxes eating the chickens and ducks. There have been a few occasions where I’ve seen them in the distance. And we do get cougars too. I’ve been trying to talk the wife into some new firearms and I think I’ve found a good one. For just $6,200, you too can have this really nice M93 Sniper Rifle from Gunbroker.com.

Think she’ll let me have it?

There are a couple of things about stock Wordpress that bug me. When it comes to managing users, I really think they could have done a lot better than to simply track names, nicknames and various IM accounts. What if you’re using WP to front-end a business site and you want to track company name, phone number, address and things like that? I have found a couple of plugins out there that will allow a user to add more information after he has registered, but during the registration process. Seriously, how many of you like to go in afterwards to add more registration information?

The other problem I have experienced has had to deal with restricting certain pages from access unless someone has indeed been registered with my site. Most of the plugins that deal with this function will restrict the entire site from access unless a person has been registered. Now imagine someone coming to your home page and the first link he clicks on is restricted. That can get annoying real fast. And it’s worse when even the home page is also restricted.

So, I wanted to put in place a simple live demo page off my company’s website and wanted to make it registration based without actually affecting all of the other pages on my site. And we determined there was more a little more user information we wanted to capture. Unfortunately, this wasn’t to be had with a single plugin and I really didn’t have the time to modify the Wordpress database to add the additional user fields I wanted to track. I managed to pull this together with three items:

1. The iframe tag: This tag, which is used just like any other html tag set allows you to embed a website into another website. Its attributes work very much like those of the image tag in that you have to designate the src, which is the url of the page you wish to embed. Then you have to declare your height and width. I felt this would be a bit easier to manage than merely having people click on a link to be directed to where the demo software actually resides.
2. The Page Restrict plugin: This is the plugin that I used to very easily require login to view specific WP Pages. Once it’s uploaded and activated, you simply go to the settings page and then click on whatever pages you want to require login for. It’s as simple as that.
3. Register Plus plugin: This is what I used to modify the user registration information, including the additions of some custom fields. A very handy plugin to have if you care about who visits your site. Plus, this plugin provides numerous customizations to the way email notification works as well as provides you the ability to get rid of that Wordpress logo on the registration page and replace it with your own logo. Great stuff!

So, there are obviously better ways for building up such a site. But if you’re using Wordpress as a form of CMS, and you don’t want to spend much time or cash to develop such a solution, this is a good way to go. You can literally be up and running in a matter of a few minutes.

Enjoy!

I was catching up on some of my reading reading and came across a summary of a NY Times article on Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill Church in Seattle. The summary wasn’t necessarily meant to be kind to the pastor, but emphasized a closing point.

Driscoll’s New Calvinism underscores a curious fact: the doctrine of total human depravity has always had a funny way of emboldening, rather than humbling, its adherents.

This quote seemed to resonate with me. A couple of years ago, I got so sick of being around Calvinists for this primary reason. It seemed I had joined a book of the month club where the members constantly prided themselves on their latest read.

Anyway, anyone who knows me well, knows how I feel about the mega church mentality and about marketing to various crowds. Having said that, I actually like some of the messaging in this article, especially about how they are fairly open to the non-Christians. This certainly stands in stark contrast to the Fundamentalist mentality that seeks to keep company with only its own kind; a practice you never saw with Christ who constantly ministered to everyone he came in contact with and who shunned the religious crowd.

To a certain extent, I find this is a bit refreshing. But I also wonder whether or not it’s truly effective too. Is this ministry making a difference? I certainly hope so. The current trend of Christianity in America is rather sickening. So I welcome anything that might have a hint of realism to it. The idea that Christians are to live in a vacuum has to cease and seeker driven churches need to fall by the way side. There is a distinction to be made between the job of the church and the job of the Christian.

In our current age, it seems we may have things a bit confused. Christians don’t want to be evangelists; that’s for the church to do. Churches don’t seem to want to preach the real and full gospel; that’s left for the Christian to elaborate on. We’ve gone too topical with our sermons and there is no real study any more. What passes for studying is a recap of some author’s book, typically from one of John’s– and not the apostle, but rather John MacArthur or John Piper.

We’re superficial at best. And what passes for depth these days is completely devoid of any compassion. I am all for a Christianity that doesn’t try to mask the human frailty by trying to be more pious than is real. This pastor is known as the cussing pastor. I’m not sure that’s the level of reality I would look for. But I’m also sure he’s not the only one who wanted to.

Read the article for yourself and you decide how you feel. You will have to register with the NY Times. But that’s not a bad thing, and it’s free. Enjoy!