April 2010
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VRM meets CRM
CRM Magazine has devoted much of its May 2010 issue, including its cover and lead stories, to VRM and the growing power of individual customers, within which VRM is one vector. Naturally, Cluetrain is also covered, since it pointed in this same direction, long ago. This is an impressive move on the part of the… Continue reading
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I was overheard to have said…
Here is a well-done write-up of what I said in an interview by Lee Rainie yesterday here at FutureWeb in Raleigh. Having a fun time. Continue reading
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A happy beginning to the new WQXR story
Last July I explained Why WQXR is better off as a public radio station. One hundred and twelve comments followed, the last posted in January of this year. Far as I know, that’s a record for this blog. Background: when WQXR, which had been New York City’s landmark classical music station since the Roosevelt Hoover… Continue reading
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The teachings of failure
We’ve seen this movie: the one where a big company takes over a whole market ecosystem. There was IBM with mainframes, Microsoft with operating systems, Apple with pocket music players (and now apps for phones and tablets). But there’s another movie too. That’s the one where the big company fails. IBM did that with PCs.… Continue reading
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Write and Wrong
When Gizmodo reported on the next-generation iPhone that had come into its hands, I was as curious as the next geek about what they’d found. But I didn’t think the ends justified the means. The story begins, You are looking at Apple’s next iPhone. It was found lost in a bar in Redwood City, camouflaged to look… Continue reading
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Dissing Vulcan
Phoebe Kilgour, a Dickinson College junior, said the trip taught her about how a country prepares for a natural phenomenon. “I learned that something that seemed insignificant at the time, like a volcano erupting, can have a huge impact on local travel,” she said, “especially when you’re stuck on an island.” That’s the last paragraph… Continue reading
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The Unbearable Lightness of Branding
Lots of trackbacks (or pingbacks) are spam, and I don’t approve them for the comments section. But some pass the first sniff test, and some are interesting enough to warrant a reply. That’s what happened with the post “To be (a brand) or not to be (a brand)”, at a blog called Daily Breaking News… Continue reading
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How Infrastructure Learns
I’ll be giving a talk by the title above, at 4pm in the conference room of the Berkman Center, 23 Everett Street in Cambridge. The occasion is the regular bi-weekly meeting of our Infrastructure Group — an informal collection of folks interested in the topic. The group was gathered by Christian Sandvig, an authority on the… Continue reading
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Brands are Bull
At 11:30pm on April 22, 1978 Saturday Night Live opened with Paul Schaffer, made up to look like music promoter Don Kirshner (whose show ran in most markets right after SNL). What followed was a lesson in branding that we’re still learning. Here’s how it looks in the show’s transcript (sorry, the original isn’t on… Continue reading
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An appeal for open cameras
David Siegel, author of the excellent new book Pull, shares with me an abiding frustration with all major camera makers — especially the Big Two: Canon and Nikon: they’re silos. They require lenses that work only on their cameras and nobody else’s. In Vendor Lock-in FAIL David runs down the particulars. An excerpt: If you… Continue reading
“Stephen Lewis”, cameras, Canon, David Siegel, EOS 30D, EOS 5D, film, Nikon, Photography, Sigma, Sony, Tamron, Zeiss -
March Madness and Radio’s Future
March Madness for me this year was a double treat. First, my team, the Duke Blue Devils, won the championship. (Though my heart went out to Butler, which came within inches of winning at the buzzer on a half-court shot.) Second, I got to follow the Devils, and North Carolina Basketball in general, on WDNC.… Continue reading
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Beyond the iPad
I was just interviewed for a BBC television feature that will run around the same time the iPad is launched. I’ll be a talking head, basically. For what it’s worth, here’s what I provided as background for where I’d be coming from in the interview: The iPad will arrive in the market with an advantage… Continue reading
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Borg’s Woods News
I just learned by Eric Martindale’s comment to my Borg’s Woods post in February that the March 13 storm knocked down many of the trees in the old growth urban forest that was our neighborhood playground when I was a kid. For more here’s a post in the NJUrbanForest blog, and here are some pictures… Continue reading