In the works

I know stuff hasn’t been up here in a while. It’s not because I’ve burrowed under ground to  create an evil lair from which I will begin to spawn business zombies to slowly but surely raid and take over corporations. That would be fun, though. I’ve actually been working on something new. Something special and shiny like the things that get a monkey’s hand caught in between two bars because they don’t want to let go. Special like that.

In the mean time, here’s a quick bit of link love (why do they call it that? Do links really love?)

Ryan Karpeles makes a great post. He’s a neat guy. Go read his blog!

Fixing your Linkysys WRT55AG Router

I have had my Linksys WRT55AG router for a while now. It’s been a pain in the ass ever since I received it (randomly needing to be hardbooted about once a day or so, etc). One issue that I find especially peculiar, however, was when it stopped working all together. No connection showed up at all! So I began my excursion into fixing it and thankfully succeeded. I thought I would share how in the event someone else has this issue.

Issue 1) Your router is active, shows connections, internet, power, etc. but no actual connection shows up! (note that this for me lead to issue #2).

What to do?
Push in the reset button (with a paper clip) and hold it for 30 seconds. This will reset your firmware to the defaults. Commence resetup as you did the first time.
Issue 2) You have connectivity on your router but cannot access the internet, or, your router, while connected to your cable modem, is randomly rebooting every time your computer establishes a connection to it (ethernet or wireless).

What to do?
Unplug your cable modem from your router and unplug the power from the cable modem. Connect your router physically (via an ethernet cable) to a computer. Access your router’s admin panel by typing in “192.168.1.1″ into the url of either Firefox or Internet Explorer. Type in your username and password (defaults are nothing for the username and “admin” for the password). Then do the following in the admin panel:

• Goto the Setup tab
• Click Mac Address Clone
• Select “Enabled” from the drop down box
• Click “Clone My PC’s MAC”
• Click “Save Settings”

Now once the settings have been saved (you’ll know as you will have been taken back to the admin menu) unplug your router. Now plug your cable modems power back in, and plug the cable modem into your router (which still has no power). Once your cable modem is active again (has all the blinky lighty goodness) plug the power back into your router. Wait for the router to become active and viola. That all should have solved your problem. If not, then I’m not sure what to tell you, it fixed mine.

They can’t know you’re wrong

In almost every business I have worked for, it seems the mentality is always “[the customer/user] can’t know we were wrong.”

Why not?

I mean, maybe I missed something, but why does a company always have to be right? Especially when they’re not.

The kicker for me is that I think admitting you are wrong actually builds the relationship a company has with its customers or users- especially if they already know you’re wrong. It’s OK to admit you made a mistake, just correct it. It’s OK to not anticipate exactly how a feature is used and change it. It’s OK to admit you did something wrong.

We make mistakes. We run companies. Allowing people’s personality and humanness to show isn’t a bad thing.

My Inactivity

I realize I haven’t posted anything for quite a few days. I am still here analyzing, thinking, enjoying, conversing, and unfortunately- mourning. My best friends grandfather, a person I was very close to and would nearly consider my own grandfather, fell ill earlier this week and passed on two days ago. Because of this I have been a bit distracted, not really focusing on the usual entrepreneurial, technological, or business type things and instead residing more in the lull of mundane, mournful activities (as these things go).

Bob, my grandfather who passed away was an amazing man. He worked his whole life and put out his best work. He provided and cared for his family as much as any man could. More than that, he was so caring that others like myself could actually feel close enough to call him grandpa. Looking at my peers and the generations to follow, there will be very few future Bob’s in the world. I know I certainly will not live up to the example he has set.

God bless.

Expect the unexpected

We all recall that pithy phrase our parents or other authoritative figures used to rattle off. It always seemed to be used during those times when something didn’t go quite the way we thought it would and turned out bad. Naturally, we used the logical excuse- we didn’t know it would do that. Whether our parents were calling our bluff as to whether we expected a can of hair spray to explode when combined with fire, sending shrapnel flying everywhere including into a friends thumb, or not, they came back at us with “well, you should expect the unexpected.”

That may have been good advice for general living, but for a marketer, that advice isn’t so hot. Instead, it should be to create the unexpected. Let’s face it, customers certainly don’t expect your company to send a new bouquet of flowers to a different address because you were trying to surprise your girlfriend on valentines day but gave them the wrong address. That’s because customers don’t expect the unexpected, and why should they? We don’t deliver the unexpected.

What if we continuously thought of that phrase in reverse. No, not “unexpected the expect,” but instead “deliver the unexpected.” Yes, it was my fault, but had those flowers been resent to ensure a fantastic valentines day, I would have been telling all my friends about this floral shop.

Is short content long content in disguise?

On the internet, short is king. Every site and creative exhibitionist is in a constant battle to grab hold of the viewers attention. With this, two minute webisodes are the optimal length (or close to it). Blog posts that are shorter are often more successful in attracting readers. Short blogging platforms like Twitter and Jaiku have taken off. Webcomics are a great source of entertainment and have exploded, packing in full experience into a small number of frames. Shorter podcasts are often the ones that receive the most listening. Even more, some podcasts provide a transcript that allows listeners to tune in to precisely the area they want to listen to.

Shorter content is where the web continues to progress, but is short content popular because it’s actually short, or because it helps us discover longer, at-length content?

While I don’t have the exact answer, my hypothesis is that while some are using the condensed, shorter content as a means of scanning over a larger portion of aggregated content, the majority of people are looking to more quickly identify what they like and consume that longer for a greater level of at-length enjoyment.

Webcomics, for example, are short-length pieces of content usually created two to three times a week. Webcomics tend to lend themselves to the quick scanning of multiple webcomic artists and “plots”. It’s the webcomics short length, though, that allows potential viewers to quickly identify which comics they enjoyed consuming the most.

It’s at the point where the comics are chosen that the at-length consumption begins. The new viewer now begins scanning the archives of all the strips created. Thus the short length enjoyment consumption turns into a greater level of at-length enjoyment.

I say it’s a greater level because you can ask any person who has taken the time to read a good book, comic, or TV series and they will tell you they were sad when it ended. In the case of webcomics, the viewer feels this remorse when they get to the most recently created strip. Then the short length cycle of finding a new strip as to acquire a new at-length enjoyment repeats.

An example on the other side of the fence, however, is Twitter. Twitter has become the ’short blogging’ platform. It’s a means to receive short and frequent bursts of enjoyment based upon what you can quickly identify as meaningful to you. Realisticly, however, those who are really using Twitter are likely to be habitually consuming in a somewhat different at-length manner as opposed to a more short-length manner.

Even though the pieces of content are shorter than normal, the frequency with which we consume it is such that we end up consuming it more than we would have had it been more at-length content. Thus what is consumed from Twitter is the aggregation of a portion of short length content whose sum we consume actually creates a longer amount of content, not a shorter.

If corporations talked like your friend

I love it when companies dare to have a personality that isn’t corporate. When they dare to have a personality that is different from what all the other companies sound like. When they’re the company that says “shit” when others say “shoot”. The company that tell it to you straight- “your package was late because my dog died” (Don’t worry, no dogs actually died during the writing of this post. Well, not by my hands anyways). I could go on, but there’s really a simple key here- they sound more human. Redbox does a great job of it, I think.

In fact, 300’s only drawback is that you won’t be able to calm down for a week. You’ll find yourself yelling “I SHALL MOW THE LAWN” the way King Leonidas yells “PREPARE FOR GLORY!” Your neighbors will stare.

Maybe I’m naive, but that to me doesn’t sound like something from my average Joe Corp. This sounds like it could have been an instant message from a friend or something I might read on a friends blog. Redbox sadly doesn’t have a blog, and I couldn’t tell you how they are otherwise. But at least they make an effort on the personality of their voice.

Satisfaction effect

I’ve been analyzing user experiences on websites recently and I’ve come up with a thought. While there are a wide variety of facets to providing a great user experience, one facet in particular stuck out to me. I’m not sure what to call this facet, perhaps a satisfaction effect. Named for the thought that it’s an added effect (or pleasure) after an initial action has taken place.

An example of a satisfaction effect could be the standard, ajax style 5 star rating a lot of sites use. Another would be the resulting ajax effect on Facebook when you post on someones wall. Still another example of this are the sliding motions Apple adds to many of its menu’s. Hopefully you get the idea by now.

While those effects may seem relatively minuscule in terms of adding value to the experience, realistically they may be quite large. Having the satisfaction effect may actually increase activity and stickyness on your site. It’s a reasonable conclusion to draw. If a user enjoys the resulting effect of commenting on someones wall, they are going to be more inclined to do so due to an increased satisfaction. Put more simply, if every time you threw away trash you got a piece of gum, you might be more inclined to throw away trash (unless you don’t like gum… in which case you can get a punch in the teeth. Bet you won’t be throwing away trash anytime soon! See, it still works with my example!).

Two further questions arise here, however.

1) Is there a certain period of time where a satisfaction effect reaches an implied satisfaction level (via the law of diminishing marginal utility)?

2) Based off of #1, in order to maintain the stickyness of your site, would you need to constantly be adding small scale satisfaction effects?