Photo by Alex Garcia / Chicago Tribune

Apparently Chicago has its very own, Steve Irwin! When a 3-foot alligator—yes, I know Steve hunted crocs—was cruising the waters of the Chicago river, who showed up to catch it? None other than, Alligator Bob.

I’m not sure if this is the same Alligator Bob who owns a custom leather shop in Lake Villa, IL, but if it is, he has certainly received some great marketing lately. Even the BBC is talking about him.

This is social marketing at its finest and a great example of how even a part-time hobby can pay huge dividends at the right moment.

I work with a few people who have Motorola Droid phones. They mentioned this past week that they just received updates that allow them to view websites that contain Flash.

If I were Motorola, I would run an ad campaign making fun of Apple talking about browsing the whole internet on the iPhone even though it doesn’t support Flash. Show someone using an iPhone to visit sites that have Flash installed and talk about how magical the pages look. At least some sites such as video.nytimes.com try to make the emptiness look pretty instead of showing the troubling missing plugin icon.

After showing the Apple experience, I would show someone visiting the same sites on a Droid, where everything actually works. You could end the commercial with something like, “Apple wishes… Droid Does.” Just a thought.

Better do it fast before all the web developers abandon Flash for HTML5 and everyone jailbreaks their iPhones!

I just read an article about Jennifer Knapp. While most people will likely choose to write about her coming out and saying she is gay, I was drawn more to a different comment she made.

On page 4 of the article she talked about, “critically thinking fans who are trying to sort out their lives as Christians as best they know how.”

She then went on to say, “…they’re still seeking to be Christians but not always measuring up to the marketed idea of who they should be.”

The fact that she said critically thinking Christians are not always measuring up to a marketing idea is either an indictment against critically thinking Christians, our culture, or a marketing idea.

I would say that many Christians in our culture would like to think of themselves as critical thinkers, when really all they’ve done is bought into some sort of marketing. In America, our culture is marketing. How many people are busy, building their personal brand on Facebook or Twitter? (Yes, I’m one of them.)

I think there has been a major social shift within our culture as well as in the Christian community in the past 15 years. It used to be that Christians were viewed as hypocrites who wanted everyone to think their lives were perfect when they really weren’t. Many were also viewed as judgmental and a pain to be around. During this time the church was almost counter-cultural. There wasn’t really much of an outreach mentality from the church, more a “join us or burn” mentality.

Fast-forward to today, where there seems to be a huge push toward keeping it real. I am amazed by how open people are today about their shortcomings and failures. This would be an incredible thing if people took an honest look at these shortcomings and were motivated to change, but all too often there seems to be a sort of apathy; like admitting failure is some sort of redemption.

Today, a large number of Christians pride themselves on how well they understand our culture. They can quote every episode of The Office, House or 24. They’ve seen all the latest movies, know the difference between a Grande and a Venti at Starbucks, and care about the environment.

They are so well educated on culture, but ask them about their faith and they’ll say they aren’t really qualified to get into a “theological argument.” They think of their faith as something personal between them and God.

Both the hypocritical Christians of 15 years ago and the free-spirit Christians of today are essentially the same. The hypocrites didn’t know how to deal with their inadequacies and failures so they hid them. The free-spirits also don’t know how to deal with their failures so they are always telling people about them and feel good when they find out so many other people are struggling with the same stuff. “At least we’re not alone!”

Too many people in this country are living for some sort of image. We like to call it the American Dream and it means different things to different people. Have you thought about what you’re living for? Are you happy with the direction you’re headed?

I’ve talked to so many people who know they’re on the wrong road in life, but instead of changing direction or changing strategy, they continue to forge ahead hoping for some magical iPad experience that will somehow change everything. The same thing is true on a larger scale as well.

Have you thought about the direction of the company you work for? Is it an organization that says it has it all together while its customers say differently? Perhaps your company knows its weaknesses, but just doesn’t seem to have the motivation to do anything about them.

Maybe you freelance or own your own business and things are tough. What is your identity? I’m not talking about your brand. Your brand is the image you portray, but your identity is who you are.

Too many individuals and companies try to build their identity on their brand, when it should be the other way around. The thing is, your identity eventually finds a way to proclaim itself to the world, with or without you knowing.

I love the definition that says integrity is who you are when no one is looking. Integrity is a lost art, and there is no better time than today to bring it back. How will you make a difference in how you live and how you work? How will your identity change your brand?

I read an open letter from Steve Jobs today about why Apple isn’t going to allow Flash on the iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone. I thought I would write a response.

1. “Open”: True, Flash products are 100% proprietary. So what? You don’t have to use Flash. But if someone wants to spend the money to develop in Flash, they should be able to. If HTML5, CSS and JavaScript are as great as Steve Jobs says they are, they will eventually win out over Flash. Unfortunately, every web developer knows that web standards aren’t really true standards, but recommendations that not every browser follows. And even when every browser follows, they tend to have different implementations. The good thing about products such as Flash and Silverlight is that they display the same in every browser and their plugins are free.
2. “Full Web”: Adobe’s statement is true. Jobs completely ignores this and chooses instead to focus on what Adobe didn’t say. So what if almost all of the video is available in H.264? The point is, a lot of sites still use Flash instead of H.264 and Apple isn’t going to support Flash. Plus, something Jobs doesn’t mention is that H.264 is not the standard. He wants it to become the standard, but it remains to be seen if patent issues could pose a big problem for this even happening. Jobs doesn’t refute the “whole web” statement, he just doesn’t think it is that important.
3. Reliability, Security and Performance: This is true, but you face these same issues even without Flash. First, you will always have programmers who write horrible code that causes frequent crashes. I’ve used several iPhone Apps that crash all the time, and I simply made the decision to uninstall them. I remember when iTunes first became available on Windows and how horribly it ran. I decided to uninstall it until they released a version that ran better. Imagine what it would have been like if Microsoft had decided to not allow anyone to install iTunes anymore.  Second, browsers are constantly discovering security holes—yes, even Safari—and regularly release patches to close them. Even without Flash, you still have security issues that need to be fixed, just in the browser itself instead of a plugin.
4. Battery Life: This is also true, but Jobs is speaking only in regards to video. He doesn’t mention using Flash to create Apps. In regards to the Web, if people want better battery life, they can always avoid sites that contain Flash, or simply disable Flash in the browser, but it should be their choice to do so, not Apple’s.
5. Touch: Jobs states that if developers need to rewrite their websites to use touch, why not use HTML5, CSS and JavaScript instead. Jobs assumes that a Flash developer understands HTML5, CSS and JavaScript and that they will have to completely rewrite their sites in order to support touch. In reality, most developers will find it easier to just add touch functionality—available in Flash 10.1—than to completely scrap all their earlier work and rewrite everything in HTML5, CSS and JavaScript and then have to test it across multiple browsers.
6. Platform: Jobs says this is the most important reason, but I think he misses the point here more than any other place. Why shouldn’t a developer be able to develop on another platform such as Flash or .NET? If their platform is slow to adopt new enhancements it is a developer issue, not an end-user issue. There is no guarantee that someone developing on the Apple platform will use new enhancements when they are released. Plus, both Flash and .NET have plenty of open-source communities full of people willing to pick up the slack and develop libraries and tools that take advantage of enhancements even if Adobe and Microsoft don’t.

Jobs concludes by saying, “New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future…”

Jobs makes an assumption that HTML5 will win, but has no concrete proof to support this claim other than he would like to see it happen. And as I mentioned before, even if it does win, it will be a recommendation, not a standard.

Also, why should Adobe completely change its business just because Steve Jobs thinks something is great? If HTML5 is really that amazing, Adobe and Flash will lose, not because they people aren’t allowed to use it anymore, but because developers will start using better tools.

In the end, the real battle will not be between Adobe and Apple. It will be between Apple and the people who are trying to decide whether to buy from Apple or from another company. To this point, people feel that Apple offers enough benefits to justify buying from them in spite of what they are lacking. Only time will tell if this continues. Let the games begin!

I went to a meeting yesterday where they were talking about some of the changes in SharePoint 2010. Two things really stood out to me, and neither of them had much to do with SharePoint.

The first thing was when the presenter was describing how often company website structures model their business hierarchy instead of focusing on what the customer wants.

A gentleman towards the front of the room raised his hand and asked, “This is true, but how do we convince our management to structure our site differently?”

The second thing caught my attention when the presenter reached his, “what’s in it for me” section and talked about how long it would take to recoup your investment in SharePoint.

Why did someone have to ask how to convince his management that their site should focus on their customers?Why was the highlight of the presentation about how soon you could make your money back?

It could be that many businesses only care about profit. In essence, they pimp their products and services without ever really caring about their customers. As long as the are making money they are happy, even if their customers are quietly waiting for an opportunity to escape.

Why is it that so many companies have to be convinced to talk to their customers and actually listen to what they have to say? When I mentioned this as a solution to the website question there were chuckles throughout the room. It seems so simple, yet everyone recognized that this is a problem all too common.

Now let’s assume that the people attending the presentation were from companies who really wanted to connect better with their customers and employees within their business. Assume that they were looking for an effective way to organize information and collaborate on projects.

Everyone in that room already knew that SharePoint carries a hefty price tag. The issue at hand wasn’t whether they could afford it because they wouldn’t have wasted the time hearing about it otherwise. The issue was whether SharePoint is worth the price.

Red flags always go up when someone ends a presentation trying to justify price because it basically overshadows all of the benefits already presented.

Why not affirm the price at the beginning of the presentation and let the benefits justify the cost? If your customers decide it’s not worth it, you can always lower the price or make a better product.

I had an interesting conversation at work yesterday. A lot of news was coming out about the new Windows Phone 7 Series operating system and someone mentioned that they were surprised that we won’t start seeing the phones until around the end of this year.

“Doesn’t that give competitors a chance to copy what they are doing?”

I said that I didn’t think so and gave my reasoning, which caused another employee to accuse me of being an Apple commercial. Not exactly. My thoughts aren’t so much about Apple as they are about creativity and copycats.

No one can deny the impact the iPhone has had on the mobile phone market. Apple came in and set a new standard and soon afterward everyone tried to copy what they had done.

Companies began to say, “Now everyone is going to want touch phones. We’d better start making touch phones or we’ll be left behind.”

So what did they start doing? They started making touch phones. And what better way to push a touch phone to market quickly than to make an iPhone knock-off. After all, they seem to know what they’re doing.

Unfortunately, just because something looks like something else, doesn’t make it as good as something else. It’s like a guy who can’t get the hot girl, so he settles for a robot girl. She may look just as good, but the wiring is off.

Apple has put a lot of time, effort, and shall we say, love, into making the iPhone relevant. You can’t copy that unless you are willing to put in the time. Amazingly, Microsoft has done that.

They didn’t set out to copy the iPhone OS. They built their own thing from the ground up. Personally, I was glad to see it. Seth Godin talks about this concept a lot in his new book and I agree with him. There are too many companies making cheap and quick knockoffs instead of striving to make rare art.

After spending years in the museum observing, it looks like Microsoft finally decided to finally pick up a brush and start painting.

I just posted a review of Seth Godin’s new book on Amazon, but thought I would also post it here with a few extra thoughts.

I, like several others people, donated some money to a charity and was able to read an early release of this book. Seth is a brilliant and creative marketer. Why send your book to a bunch of critics who often have unpredictable taste when you can send it to your fans instead? 

It is no surprise that there are so many 4 and 5 star reviews for this book since most of these reviews are from people who received an early release of the book, just as I did, and are likely already fans of Seth. Plus, by requesting something in return—a donation to a charity—he was able to better ensure that these people would actually read the book since they had already had an investment in it. I checked the Amazon reviews of the book the day it was released, and already there were around 100 five-star reviews compared with a few four-stars, one three-star and one one-star.

Not only this, but these people are likely already Linchpins themselves and are going to be very receptive to this book because they already have a connection. It’s always exciting to read a book and say, “Wow, that’s me!” or “So that’s why I think that way.” I think this book does a decent job of encouraging people who are already Linchpins—people who are the glue that holds a society or company together by their creativity, adaptability and generous spirit—to continue to do what they are doing. I’m not sure that anyone else, other than someone teetering on the edge, would find the book near as riveting.

What I Liked

The first third of the book is really good. I flew through it and found it very inspirational. If you are already a Linchpin, you will probably love this part of the book. He tells you that you are a genius, discusses how American society has been built on cheap replaceable labor, and explains the mindset of Linchpins and why they are better able to survive and flourish during difficult times.

I thought he had some great examples of people who go out of their way to show generosity and integrity. It certainly made me take more notice of these types of people in the world around me and appreciate them more.

I also liked his reference to Steve Jobs saying, “Real artists ship.” It is great to see people who are able to fight through adversity and actually deliver a product or service rather than just wishing they could.

What I Disliked

About midway through the book he began talking about your lizard brain and the resistance. Maybe I’m fueling the resistance by saying this, but I guess that is what keeps this from being a one-sided critique. Seth basically divides the brain into two parts, the lizard brain or limbic system, which is all about survival, fear, anger and resistance, and your creative brain or cerebrum, which is, as Seth puts it, the newest and most sophisticated part of our brain that is always overruled by the other parts.

Throughout the book, Seth encourages you to completely ignore your lizard brain and focus on the creative, artistic part instead. He makes it seem like one part of your brain is evil and the other part is heroic. If the cerebrum is so much more advanced and sophisticated, why is it so easily defeated?

I prefer to think in terms of each part of your brain having a purpose and dedicated function. Think of it like career specialties. A mechanic may be a brilliant mechanic who knows everything there is to know about cars, but ask him to do brain surgery and you are going to have some issues. It doesn’t mean he is stupid, it just means he is out of his specialty.

The same thing is true of your brain. Fear can be an extremely good motivator and when channeled in the right way, it can actually stimulate creativity. However, if allowed to completely take over it can be paralyzing. The same thing applies to the creative side of your brain. If all you do is sit around in brainstorming sessions, you may come up with some incredible ideas, but you’ll never actually accomplish anything.

The right boundaries and constraints actually fuel creativity. Have you ever been to a really good concert? Great bands are very creative, but they know when to use their creativity. Imagine going to a concert where everyone decided to show off all their skills at the same time. You might think it was interesting for about five minutes, but after a couple hours you would probably start throwing things.

Regardless of whether you agree with Seths thinking or not, toward the end of the book, he laments the NO FEAR motto as, “either disingenuous or stupid.” To be fair, I think he is talking about recognizing your fear and managing it, but after his tone earlier in the book it comes across almost contradictory.

Much of the latter parts of the book make it seem as if Seth is trying to be convincing, but either not certain of the best way to do it, or else uncertain of what he really thinks himself. For instance, in one place he says, “None of us knows the absolute truth, of course, but the goal is to approach a situation with the least possible bias.” Not ten pages later, he talks about people ignoring the truth by deciding to stay in their homes during a hurricane—easy to say in hindsight with the New Orleans tragedy, but what about before then?

He also tells a story of how no passengers wanted to ride home with him in a rental car instead of remaining on a delayed flight and assumes that most of the people wanted to have a reason to blame the airline for their situation instead of themselves. In reality, these people made a choice—just as he did—but it wasn’t the choice he wanted them to make so therefore they must be wrong. After all, he knew the truth of the situation and they didn’t.

Conclusion

I know it may not seem like it from this review, but I actually have a lot of respect for Seth and have found a lot of his writing to be very insightful and inspirational. If you are already a dedicated person and worker, you will probably find the first part of this book very encouraging. If your only reason for existence is to make a lot of money or just go to work, collect a paycheck, and go play, I doubt this book will change your outlook on life.

Seth does practice what he preaches. He’s been working on this book for over 10 years and he finally shipped! I think the timing may have been dictated more by the current state of our society rather than his understanding of how to communicate and inspire the remedy.

I love it when the United States Postal Service delivers mail in a plastic bag with “We Care” printed on it. I always have to laugh because it’s like they are trying to distract me from the fact that they just completely mutilated my mail.

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” To be fair, they add an apology note below the caption, but it still seems out of place.

My personal favorite was the time I found tire tracks on my mail. But hey, at least they care. Good stuff.

I was glad to see that AT&T finally dropped their lawsuit against Verizon although I did find the whole thing pretty entertaining. It seemed to me that the suit felt a lot like when a basketball team loses a game and then whines about the refs. Let’s face it. You weren’t good enough. Accept it, move on, get better.

At least now AT&T is hitting back with some new commercials, but they still lack the punch of Verizon’s commercials. So you can surf the net and talk on the phone at the same time. Who wants to surf the net when it is the slooow Edge network?

I would be much more impressed if AT&T just updated their network.

The other day a coworker mentioned that he would buy an iPhone if he didn’t have to work with AT&T. He had a bad experience with them and doesn’t care how great the iPhone is if buying one means dealing with AT&T.

AT&T has obviously spent a ton of money on their image—polished logo, defined color scheme, consistent television and print advertising, a website, etc. They have worked really hard to make sure they look like they are the best at what they do.

So why isn’t my friend impressed? Didn’t he see the commercials? Hasn’t he seen the polished marketing promises? Doesn’t he like their logo?

Too many companies think looking good is all that really matters. As long as they look trustworthy then they must be trustworthy. As long as they look competent and friendly, then they must be competent and friendly.

The problem with this is that people bring their experiences into their perception of your brand. If I know nothing about your company, all of the polished marketing might have the desired effect on me. However, one negative experience can suddenly change that look completely because I will be reminded of that negative experience every time I see anything about your company.

A good image may bring in some new clients, but it takes having a good company to be able to keep them. Add these two elements together and you can have a great brand. The world is in need of more great brands.