Apr

23

Idea for New Obama Strategy: Follow the Money

Filed Under Politics | Leave a Comment

Open Letter to the Obama Campaign:

After a disappointing ten point loss in Pennsylvania and a lackluster speech this evening, I believe that Senator Obama needs a new strategy to simplify his message and present it in a way that everyone can understand the difference between his candidacy and Senator Clintons. Two points he needs to make:

  1. The economy is bad, lost jobs, weak dollar, huge national debt and mortgage crisis that is affecting the financial markets.
  2. The war is bad, people dying, reducing our ability to get Bin Laden and costing us billions of dollars that could have been used to solve (or would have prevented financial crisis) instead these billions go to large corporations.

Politicians have been manipulating the american people with fear tactics to keep our attention away from these two issues, but the fact remains that we are where we are because of special interests in politics.

Explain in no uncertain terms that the fundamental issue with our government is that in order to get elected and stay elected that you need to raise millions of dollars to run your campaign. The easiest way to get access to this kind of money is to use the lobbyists to find/organize campaign donors. Because of this the politicians that take this special interest money must then act to the benefit of the special interest or risk losing that donation for their next campaign. 

The DIFFERENCE between Obama and Clinton is not lapel pins or nuances of the healthcare plan, but where the money to run her campaign came from and how that will affect her judgement to do something right for the american people or something that benefits the campaign donor.  Because Obama has a donation base of 20MM people, large corporations will not have any special influence on an Obama presidency, and hopefully the clear mandate that he will be elected on will allow him to enact sweeping campaign finance reform as well.

Finally, make the connection that once we take the large corporate money out of politics, there will be no reason/benefit for legislators on either side of the aisle (with the exception of corruption) to enact laws that benefit corporations over the general people. That freedom will then allow the government to fix healthcare, education, the mortgage crisis and yes even the war.

So simply follow the money. It is unfortunate but people need a common enemy, the enemy in this case should be Large Corporations that take jobs out of the country and who pour money into lobbyists and special interests in order to bias the tax code and other laws/policies. Tell people in detail how the money of politics effects legislation (really tell people how bad it is). The best part about this, is that the same arguments will also work against McCain, so in essence you will be showcasing to Democrats that may have doubts about Obama’s electability a blueprint to beat McCain in the fall. 

I know that Obama has been talking about these issues, but he speaks of them at a 50,000 foot level. He needs to connect the dots (follow the money issue to the individuals pocket) and show how big business is the enemy we need to be paying attention to.

Eddie

p.s. One more thing, either get rid of the Teleprompter or practice it more, your starting to come off a little robotic.

 

 

Apr

18

Did I do enough?

Filed Under Travel, Trends | 3 Comments

This post chronicles my recent efforts to help a woman who was sitting next to me on an international flight who fell for a new scheme targeting older single women. The post is a little long, but I think it is important to tell this story in its entirety to ensure that others don’t fall for these cons in the future.

I flew over to the UK last Sunday on business, I was only staying one day in London and then going on to Brussels. Thankfully, my company pays for business class seats on international flights, and this was no exception. In business class, the people you sit next to are usually (as the name implies) other frequent flying business travelers who are not paying for their own ticket and in general pretty savvy about travel.

Therefore, I was a little surprised when I got to my seat and saw that the woman sitting next to me was prominently wearing a badge that identified her as an airline employee. She wasn’t in uniform though, her badge was hanging from a heart shaped brooch which was attached to a conservative, black embroidered jacket. It didn’t look comfortable or stylish and was definitely not something you would want to travel in (it looked like she was in her church clothes). She was in her late forties or early fifties, a little overweight and had the speech patterns & mannerisms of a typical Midwest rural/suburban housewife. She was travelling alone though, which meant she was probably divorced late in life with limited job skills and landed on her feet as a flight attendant.

This woman had intense interest in my unpacking routine (computer, magazines, iPod, etc.), to the point where it unnerved me a bit, like she was judging me. I know that everyone sizes up the person who they are going to be sitting next to for seven hours, but its usually more discreet. A little light banter as I was organizing my seat confirmed that she was a flight attendant who was flying standby in order to visit London for a few days. I quickly settled down into the seat and made myself busy: checked my voicemail, made some last minute phone calls, and finally pulled out my blackberry to get a twitter fix before they closed the boarding door.

As I was scrolling through messages, she turned to me and said “Is this your first time?”

The difference in our ages and her body language told me that this was not flirtatious banter, but a sincere question. I was slightly put out that she hadn’t picked up on my whole frequent traveler vibe, so in the most casual tone I could muster I said “no, no, I have been over to Europe many times,” then casually went back to twitter without asking her if it was her first time. I just assumed it wasn’t, since she was a flight attendant.

After a short period of time, I could sense her still staring at me, so I turned to look and she blurted out “AREN’T YOU SO EXCITED!” When my eyes met hers I could genuinely see the excitement in her face, she was the proverbial kid in a candy store, wide-eyed and grinning ear to ear. This was not a typical world traveling flight attendant.

I had the sudden realization that she wasn’t judging me, but instead just living for the moment and taking in the whole experience of flying for the first time in business class: free mimosas, noise cancelling headsets and everyone sending email on their Blackberry. When this dawned on me, I immediately dropped any pretence of savvy aloofness that I was trying to portray and started a conversation with (lets call her Betty). Betty and I exchanged some pleasantries and then she proceeded to pepper me with questions about London, non-stop, for 90 minutes. Here is an abbreviated list:

“Do they have different money over there?”
“Are there a lot of single people over there?”
“Do they dress funny?”
“I heard that they drive on the other side of the road.”
“I think it would be exciting to marry someone from another country.”
“Big Ben, what’s that? Is that near the parly-mint house?”
“What do they do there? Can you go in?” (in reference to Buckingham Palace)
“Why do their police officers wear funny clothes?”
“I really like their accents over there.”
“What happens when you marry someone from another country, where do you live?”
“It is safe there, right? I heard that the police officers don’t even carry guns.”
“Do they really have vaults or safes where they keep money?” (I thought she was referring to hotel safes at first)
“How much money do people make over there?”
“I really want to go to a pub, but I hear they drink warm beer”
“I think it would be exciting to move to another country, don’t you?”
“What type of music do they listen to over there?”
“What is a subway? Is that the same as ‘The Tube’, and what is the Underground?”
“My friend met someone from London on the Internet.”
“I heard that you shouldn’t wear bright colors over there because people will know that you are a tourist.”
“How much does a beer cost over there?”
“Can I open a bank account over there?”

I started to say “Why… ” but then my spidey-sense just went off like a fire alarm.

  1. She asked some questions that told me that she was completely naïve about life outside the Midwest.
  2. She had asked a lot of questions that she already had an answer for, just to verify what she had heard.
  3. She didn’t really have a plan of what she was going to see or do while in London.
  4. She had asked many, many money related questions. (more than what’s above)
  5. She asked a lot of questions about the possibility of getting married to a Londoner and the consequences of that.
  6. Then bank account question…

I asked “Betty, have you ever received an email from someone who needs your help to get access to a large amount of money?”

She had an astonished look on her face for a long 5-10 seconds, then she recovered and after a considered pause she said “Yes, but not me, it was my friend, I told her that I would check him out for her since I was coming over.”

I nodded, then paused myself for a good five minutes (longer than I should have), while I was weighing the pros and cons on interjecting myself into this situation. I finally decided that I couldn’t in good conscious just let her walk off the plane into the perpetrators hands; I needed to convince her not to do this. The problem was that she told me it was her ‘friend’ and I decided to let her save face in that regard. Due to the deception, I had to craft what I said and the questions I asked without announcing the fact that I knew it was really Betty that was in the center of this. It took quite a bit of time before we got to the heart of the matter.

The long and short of it was that her ‘friend’ had received a series of emails from someone she met on a dating site. The gentleman in question was self-described as a middle-aged divorcee who attended church and had a 12 year-old daughter. He apparently had a good deal of money locked up in a vault that was in both his and his wife’s name. Coincidentally his wife’s name was also Betty, and since they had gotten so close (via email), he proffered that maybe if they got married she would be able to present herself as the estranged wife in order to access the money. The two of them could then live happily ever-after in the UK, where the policemen wear funny hats, the people talk with funny accents and you pay for things with funny looking money.

Betty was very, very sweet, but for sake of completeness I must point out that she was conversing with me on the same level as my daughter (when my daughter was 8); and although she was a flight attendant, she only worked for a small regional airline and traveled to places like Milwaukee, Buffalo and North Carolina. She had never been to New York or Chicago let alone out of the country. After a while she warmed up to the possibility that this guy wasn’t on the up and up, but thought that she could manage the situation by agreeing to only meet him in a public place. She rationalized that if he turned out to be fictitious or if he asked for money she could walk away, and what did she have to lose?

In order build some credibility I resorted to my own little white lie, telling her I was a computer security expert, and relayed details of some 419 scams that I have read about. It took me the better part of two hours to convince her that she should absolutely not attempt to meet this guy under any circumstance. I also told her to have her ‘friend’ end all email and voice communication with this person. To reassure myself that she would be okay, I verified that she was staying at a reputable bed and breakfast, gave her my Rick Steve’s London guide, and helped her pick out what sights to see for the three days that she was in the city (I wanted to make sure that she didn’t have any down time). After we got off the plane I helped her buy her tickets (train from Gatwick and & 3-Day Zone-1 travel card) and get through customs. After she spoke to the customs agent she told me that they asked her a bunch of questions:

“Where are you staying?”
“Are you meeting anyone here?”
“What’s the purpose of your visit?”

All typical customs questions, but she wondered if “they knew.” When I saw her off on the express to Victoria Terminal, she gave me her assurance that she would not attempt to meet this guy, and I took her at her word.

However, it is now Friday and I am on the flight back to the States, the seat next to me is eerily empty. Betty was not coming back on this flight (she was planning to go back Wednesday or Thursday, but the empty seat next to me makes me wonder what happened. Did she take my advice? Was there more I could have done? I obviously couldn’t follow her around London, but should I have alerted the authorities? Did I do enough? I hope I did, what do you think?

Apr

14

My Hope Was Dashed – Part II

Filed Under Gadgets | 2 Comments

I was finally able to complete my review of the Dash Navigator GPS, because the customer service team at Dash was kind enough to send me out a replacement device two days after I managed to make the first one useless.

Dash Express GPS

Since the time of that first post, Jason Calacanis mentioned on his blog that he thought the Dash was going to be the best product of 2008. I agree that it has the potential to be the best product of the year, but I think that it falls short in several areas; so much so that I am debating on whether or not to return to my TomTom 700 until they upgrade the software.

In many ways the Dash reminds me of myself in Jr. High School; I can still hear principal Zimmerman telling my Mom that I was not living up to my potential, and that greatness was within my reach if I were to just apply myself. I wish I had the guts at the time to point out that principal Z was not taking the world by storm either, and that the whole principal gig was (in my opinion) just a way to work out his latent homosexual and sadomasochistic tendencies (he kept six wooden paddles in his office and often had a line of boys outside his door waiting to be disciplined). The Dash (like 14yo Eddie) has boundless potential, but the current implementation leaves something to be desired.

On the potential front, the Dash combines a portable (dashboard or windshield mount) touch screen GPS unit with a built-in wifi and cellular radio networking capabilities. This means that as long as you are in range of a cell-tower that your dash can send and receive data via the tubes. Dash has used these capabilities to deliver some innovative features:

  1. Web Search. In the same way that Google Maps on my blackberry will allow me to search Google for addresses and display them on a map, Dash will let you search Yahoo while you’re in the car for the nearest Borders or Starbucks. (no more searching on my phone and then re-typing the address into my GPS).
  2. Real Traffic. Since all the Dash units are networked they can upload recent data about their speed to a central server in order to alert other drivers to traffic delays. Actual road conditions can then be used to choose the fastest route and provide more accurate ETA to the driver.
  3. Send to GPS. The network connectivity can be used to send an individual address, lists of addresses or searches from the my.dash.net website to your GPS so you don’t have to spend time manually typing in the addresses or searches on the touch screen.
  4. Updates. Network connectivity also means that my Dash can dial home to receive software updates and map updates can be pushed down so your map is always up to date (theoretically). In practice I found that the map is less up to date than my recently updated TomTom 700 North America map.

That’s it? That’s all you could do with this? Let me see if I can come up with a few ideas on how to use this:

  1. Show me other dash users who are near me, or at least show me where my friends/family are.
  2. Allow me to point out where a radar trap is, so I can alert other drivers.
  3. Allow me to send sms or email to my GPS and have it read the message out loud. (can anyone say twitter radio)
  4. Um, how about a satellite or ground level view of my destination (my phone can do that).
  5. Track my driving and let me look at it on a map or download the mileage for expense reporting.
  6. Send a “meet me here” message to my friends, or an SOS message to 911
  7. Call/msg the phone associated with my destination and let them know I am going to be late because of traffic.
  8. Send my reminder or to do list to the device and let me check it off as I am running my errands
  9. Allow me to get rid of the yearly subscription fee (and the cost of the device) by allowing it to be an ad platform for local businesses. Even send digital coupons to the device.
  10. Send a text message with an address to the device.

[Gratuitous pleas for comments: What do you think, how could this combination of technologies be used?]

I genuinely like the hardware for the most part, the screen is large and easy to read, the mounting arm works very well and comes with parts to extend its reach if necessary, and the GPS receiver was excellent. However, there are some minor hardware issues that I found:

  • It is somewhat oddly shaped (it looks like an upside down “L” from the side) and can’t stand up on its own. Why not put the “L” on the bottom so you can set it on the dashboard?
  • On the top of the unit there is a speaker and two buttons (volume and menu), and every time I go to grab the unit, I end up accidentally clicking the volume button.
  • The device has no microphone (for voice commands or to measure ambient noise), so the volume either has to be set annoyingly loud at slow speeds or inaudible at high speeds.
  • The device has a mini USB port, but it doesn’t act as a storage device when you connect it to a computer, instead it creates an IP network (it is a linux based device so I suspect that you can connect to the console via SSH through the link, but I haven’t tried).
  • The cigarette lighter power cord can’t connect to the Dash unit itself, it connects to the mounting arm, which is good because you can remove the GPS without disconnecting the power. However, this also means that if you want to take your dash with you in a rental car you need to bring the mounting arm with you (kind of annoying to pack that).

Software

The hardware issues are more annoyances that anything else, but the software limitations are much more serious. To start with, all of the navigation on the Dash is address based; this means that you can’t navigate anywhere that doesn’t have an address (or to an address you might not know). Why not allow me to find a place on a map and send the lat/long to the device as a way point? This also means that even if you know that the geocoding for a particular address is incorrect, you can’t change it, the software doesn’t even allow you to save or mark your current location (major downside for me).

Another major software issue for me is the lack of information while driving. The austere display only shows distance to next turn, my car icon, a small compass, and one of the following: current time, ETA, distance to destination (you have to touch the screen to toggle through the three choices, which I think is a safety issue). Don’t get me wrong, I love simple clean design, and I am sure that for many people this will meet their needs, but god-damn-it I am a gadget freak and a geek, and the GPS is my cockpit HUD. Why would you not allow me some options to add information to the display? This GPS is designed to help me navigate around traffic, 90% of the time I will know where I am going, what I want to see on the screen is a stream of data so I feel like a pilot. Here are things that are missing off of my display:

  • How fast am I driving (yes I have a speedometer, but I like to see it in my HUD).
  • Compass heading in degrees
  • Altitude
  • Time to destination
  • Distance to destination / ETA / Current Time (at the same time)
  • How good is my satellite fix or how many satellites am I fixed to.

Routing is another area that has potential, but needs work. When you initially plot a destination address the Dash provides you with up to three possible routes and shows the distance and estimated time for each route. I like this feature, but the number of route choices is often one, and when there are multiple routes shown there they often overlap each other to a high degree. I would like the ability to tell the dash to avoid a particular highway or to drive through a city on my way somewhere. That brings up another annoyance, there are no waypoints, all navigation is point to point.

The reliance on the Dash to recognize that you need to be rerouted is troublesome. If you are confronted with a road closure, there is no way to prompt the Dash around it. You just need to start driving in a random direction and wait till it re-routes you, and even in that case it might tell you to make a u-turn and go back the way you came.

The minimalist interface extends to all aspects of the UI, and there are very few configurable options. For example, there is no preference to set what speed you typically drive on what type of road (I drive 75-80 on the freeway, so the routing should be biased more heavily toward freeway travel). I applaud the designer’s choice to keep the UI simple, but that doesn’t mean that you eliminate configuration, just bury the stuff that you think most users would not want to tinker under the “geek menu.”

I know that this review is almost entirely negative, but I had such high expectations for the device that I was utterly devastated when I discovered that it was crippled by its software. Since I already sunk $500 into the device and service plan, I will try to keep using it in hopes that one day I will get a software update that addresses some of the key problems. Until then I would recommend that you wait and see what some of the other players in this space do with similar technology.

Apr

12

Is voicemail spam a new trend?

Filed Under Trends | 5 Comments

I received a call while I was on the road last night that I twittered about. The interesting thing about this VM was that is was an obvious spam message. The caller “Judy” said that she noticed that I was searching on “money-making” opportunities on the internet and that I needed to go out to www.thebestonlinesystem.com immediately to take advantage of the opportunity before it was gone. If you don’t believe me listen to it yourself.

I always get unwanted phone solicitations after trade-shows, but this is the first time I have ever received a phone call where the call to action was to visit a website.  I can imagine that the convergence of cheap programmable VOIP solutions and affiliate marketing programs will make this type of advertising common place, or maybe it already is and I am just behind the curve: http://mashable.com/2008/04/01/pingercast/

Apr

8

Are my thoughts noteworthy?

Filed Under Gadgets, writing | 2 Comments

Remember the Seinfeld episode where Elaine had a limited supply of contraceptive sponges, and she had to judge whether or not her date was “Sponge Worthy”?

I was browsing through a writers store and came across a Rhodia Meeting Book; essentially it is an orange spiral-bound notebook with preprinted pages to capture meeting notes that costs $20 Dollars (yes I said TWENTY).

I love notebooks and I am always on the look out for cool new ones, so I didn’t even look at the price assuming it would be in the $8-12 range. When I brought it up to the counter and it was rung up, I did a double-take at the total, but I was too embarrassed to put my AMEX back in my pocket.  The store clerk noticed my flinch and gave me a holier than thou look, so I bought two (that taught him a lesson).

I am a little worried now that using this notebook might constrain my creativity. Every time I go to write something in it, will I stop and judge whether or not my thought at the moment is “Note Worthy”?  Only time will tell, but for safety I think I will slip a few pages of loose leaf paper in the back of the notebook, just in case.

Apr

7

My Hope Was Dashed

Filed Under Gadgets | 2 Comments

I have used quite a few different GPS devices over the past 10 years, but last week I purchased what I thought was going to be the holy grail of my quest for the perfect GPS: The Dash Express

The Dash is a car mounted GPS that includes wifi and cellular network access so it is always connected to the internet. This means that I can send addresses to my Dash from a web page or search yahoo for an address while I am in the car, but the killer app for the Dash is traffic…

As I drive the Dash collects data on how fast I am going and uploads it so other Dash user can tell what routes are congested and what routes are clear. The device can use these real time updates to intelligently calculate the fastest route. This has limitless potential and will surely be the coolest gadget I own, someday.

The problem is that I was only 30 min into a four day road trip, and being the geek that I am I wanted to try out every menu item on my new gadget. The third menu I tried was “re-align touch screen.” During the setup process I was never prompted to align the touch screen, so naturally this peaked my curiosity.

The process was straight forward: display cross hair on screen, touch the cross hair, rinse repeat four times. Unfortunately, I tried doing this while driving. The result was that I accidentally double touched the third cross hair, resulting in the device recording a touch in the bottom left corner for a cross hair in the bottom right. The result of this mis-alignment means it is now near impossible to navigate the user interface. Touching the bottom right of the screen does nothing and touching the bottom left presses buttons on the far right. As you would expect, the closer the touches get to the top of the screen the more accurate it gets. Essentially I am using a triangle touch pad to navigate a rectangular screen.

In this condition I can only click on user interface controls that are at the top-half of the screen and in the bottom-right corner. I tried to get back into the screen re-alignment menu, but the confirmation button was in the lower left part of the screen and I couldn’t get to it. I then tried to use the “restore to factory settings” menu.; after four attempts I was able to get past the two confirmation screens and the device restarted itself. When it came back online it had wiped itself of my address book and all of my saved searches, but it did not reset the touch-screen alignment! A quick call to customer service confirmed that my device was now us less. On a high note, the Dash customer service rep was very good and offered to send a replacement device to me in two days, but that means I will have to postpone my full review of the Dash until my next road trip and I will be forced to use google maps on my blackberry for navigation in the mean time.

Apr

6

Am I a racist?

Filed Under Politics | 8 Comments

As I mentioned previously, I have been supporting Obama for president since reading Audacity of Hope. However, after seeing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright videos that have been circulating on cable TV and YouTube, I started to question Sen. Obama’s judgment and the veracity of what he wrote in his book. I can’t say that my feelings were strong enough to change my decision to vote for Obama, but I began to consider that he might not be electable.

Not for a moment did I ever consider that Rev. Wright was anything other than the angry black man preaching villainy and hate that the media portrayed him as. Today, however, I came across this video that shows one of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons in context. Based on the viewing of this video, I came to two conclusions:

  1. Rev. Write is an intelligent and thoughtful pastor who is trying to inform and enlighten his congregation in a positive and constructive way.
  2. I am a racist.

I reached the conclusion that I am racist because I am not gullible person and I have always been skeptical of the media and their need to sensationalize issues, so I should have taken all of the Rev. Write coverage with a grain of salt (but I didn’t). It so easily fit into my narrow world view of what a black minister in Chicago would be preaching that I accepted the validity of it without question. Being a middle-aged white man living in Cincinnati with no first hand experience with the black church (or any church for that matter) I should have deferred judgment and sought more information, but instead I judged Rev. Write’s character and I questioned Sen. Obama’s judgment. I should have been looking in the mirror assessing my own prejudices and evaluating my own contribution to society.

After lifting the veil of my racism and seeing the sermon in context, I was a little frustrated that Obama has not defended his pastor in more uncertain terms, or at least pointed out the issue of context to media outlets. However, after thinking through the politics of the situation, I don’t believe it is possible for Obama to defend those comments without destroying his campaign. The simple fact is that most people will never see the full sermons in context and any defense of the statements would undoubtedly provide the tools necessary for his opponents to portray him as sympathetic to the out-of-context statements.

This latent racism that lies just below the surface of even the most progressive of us has not only forced Barack to distance himself and his family from Rev. Write, but has also permanently stained the reputation of a patriotic, eloquent and compassionate man.

Rev. Jeremiah Write, I am sorry to have pre-judged you, and I would be honored to know you in any context.