When you consume you are not producing

When you have time at hand and you for example choose to watch a YouTube video you are not writing code, a blog post, filming a video or teaching. And the biggest bummer is, even when you read Paul Graham’s tips on how to start a business or listen to Mitch Joel’s podcast or watch the documentary about how Tim Ferriss learned Yabusame in 4 days, you are not producing. Sure you might learn, get inspired, connect but you are not crushing it. Mind you, I do read Graham, listen to Joel and watched the documentary and it surely was worth it. But I chose learning, inspiration and connection over progress. You just have to know how to choose when progress is needed.

I’ll keep the intro short: PowerBook G4, White MacBook, MacBook Pro, iPhone 3, 3GS, iPods… iPad: for sure!

I actually buy quite some music and TV shows in the iTunes Store. And I wonder: Why is it so, well, 1999? The only thing it seems to remember is my name. Certainly not my previous purchases. If it did, it would tell me at login that there is a new episode of House ready to download. It should do that whether I have a season pass or buy every single episode.
You know which music I buy – why don’t you automatically show me new releases? Why does the Genius feature not work on your end and present me with “you might like to listen to this too.” It doesn’t have to be on my machine, could be in the cloud and thus much faster. I would probably purchase even more…

Do you know what the worst part of buying TV shows at the Store is? The ever-returning Downloads which I can’t delete.
Example: I bought season 1 of West Wing and later got the DVD box set. Obviously, I didn’t need to download all episodes. But that is what the Store intends me to do every time I purchase something. A year later still, because it won’t start downloads in reverse chronological order as it should, but chronologically. To make matter worse, I got How I met your mother Season 4 which had Standard D and HD for one price. I only downloaded one definition yet, but iTunes Store wants me to download the rest.
Which means that every time I buy a new TV show the Store automatically starts downloading old West Wing episodes. To-be-downloaded-items that I can’t permanently delete. Do you really want me to download 20 GBs just to get rid of this?

Still, looking forward to the iPad…
sebastian

Remember, that I was contacted by Channel 7′s Linda James, General Manager, and later John Spencer, Global Business Department after my original post. They assured me that the proceedings I described are not the norm, will not be tolerated and that Tony McGuinness would be terminated. That was that I thought, feeling kind of iffy about the fact that my complaint led to a person losing his job.

Fast forward through emails, phone calls regarding my story to last week when Slovak dentist Tomas Panek contacted me via Facebook, explaining the same story, same dodgy guy, now called Tony Wright, same gold ring, bad teeth, excuse why he was late to the meeting etc.

So it seems, nothing much has changed on Channel 7′s side regarding procedure.

The same goes for a German company who contacted my when Tony visited. They were not utterly convinced by the presentation but went along, although Channel 7 did not provide references on a bogus excuse. The “respected company with 25 years experience” could not handle credit cards for payment although they pressed so hard on quick sale. Anyway, said German company did get a profile produced, but has not heard a peep since. Not business requests, not even a single email on their designated email-address.

I  deleted the comments on the original post after the email exchange with Channel 7 but the current development makes me think this is a two person company. One salesman and a secretary…

Here are the original comments, more stories:

1. Had today a call from Amy too. In this case it was Security Service in Warsaw which was demanded. In contrast to you I was not sceptical and was very impressed by the story she presented and especially the way she did it. I wish I had her sales skills, building so quick a relation via a cold call. So I was ready to meet them but she made the “mistake” to inform me about the 3000 GBP membership deal. I blocked then because we generally don’t pay to be listed in Business directory. Looking at the website later on I came to me that the whole thing is a stunt.

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2. They also call web design companies from Berlin. Same story. I can’t recommend that kind of service. Why should someone pay that much money without any REAL “secure” information on which things you’ll get out of that contract. I told them that we’d be willing to work with a commission based system (e.g. 15% for a real assignment). Of course they didn’t like that.

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3. I was approached today by a guy called Alan, he said he was from C7 (Channel7) and that they where looking for a company to repair cars. I was so sold on the idea i was ready to give them a blank cheque. Then I though I’ll inquire about a few things before I hand over any money. I thought the company might look amazing but this Alan guy might be a con artist. Anyway I was amazed with what I found out, and I caution anyone to do extensive research on any company they are about to do business with.

1) First I called their head office to find out if Alan works for them and indeed he does.

2) I looked on the internet and found nothing of C7, not much on Google, they didn’t even rank in the top 5 pages when i searched for “Channel7″. You might argue that they have to compete with many real channels that broadcast in many countries under then name “Channel7″ but a company of their calibur should at least have been 5 or 6th in the google ranks.

3) They wouldn’t do easy payment options even though they said that they look for the best partners in the business and we should trust them. This surprised me greatly, they said they deal with wealthy people and businesses and only the best will do for them but even though we are the best repair shop in the country they weren’t even willing to give us a free trial of 3-6 months, they wanted the money there and then.

4) He showed me some news papers with full page ads in them that they could have easily edited themselves, i noticed the newspapers where stapled so you couldn’t check the connecting page and make sure it was authentic.

5) He kept insisting that he couldn’t tell me other companies they work for as that would constitute some type of advertising. I kept asking for the name of a single company they done business with and he told me the lamest thing. That telling me would break the data protection act. OMG, i actually believed him then I thought about how anyone can get this information in a “referral” for free just by contacting them. But it seams that they couldn’t give me a single name of a company they work for for legal reasons. But they are a directory that gives out these business names on a daily basis to anyone! Just not me, a guy who is about to pay them £2000 GBP.

The whole thing sounds dodgy to me. Alan said that he couldn’t tell me the name of a single company they’ve done business with. I then told him that even windows sales-men in the UK take you to houses installed windows in. He then got defensive and said that they don’t sell windows and I should shut up and respect him or something. VERY RUDE! He kept trying to shut me up so i would loose my train of though and acted like he missed the point of what I was trying to tell him.

DO NOT TRUST Channel7. They are a bullshit scam company and you could so easily fall for their crap. Why ask someone to pay £2000 for something like a referral system.

Although many of the solutions you have offered are quite superb and make shopping at Amazon fun and special there are three points leave me scratching my head.

- Why is it that I have an account with Amazon.de (since I live in Germany) and one with Amazon.com (for a long time, for the catalogue and now Kindle titles of course), and the two apparently don’t know each other?
Two wishlists and recommendations which are totally messed up, suggesting titles in the German store that I already purchased with the .com account, and the other way round. Shouldn’t the accounts be synced, even merged, at least from a content perspective? Shouldn’t one learn from the other?

- Oh, the recommendation engine. Often lauded as one of the keys to Amazon’s success. However, over the years it has brought me frustration more than once. And I tried to make it smarter by going through pages and pages of suggested titles, too! Example: I told the system that I have read all the Jack Reacher novels, but still it offers me the UK export title for each one. Don’t need them.
Example: One remotely erotic book 6 years ago and I still get recommendations in that area: The system needs to learn better, and that includes forgetting!
Plus the not-synced recommendations from point #1.

- Kindle export: Why do I have to Google this and do it from the web? Shouldn’t me Kindle app simply have a “sent to mail”-feature, sending the highlights to the registered email-address?

Just wondering if other Amazon customers maybe feel the same pains and whether you plan on fixing any of these issues.

Warm regards
Sebastian

However, I highlighted 35 spots in the book with the neat “highlight” feature, I guess I could share those? Unfortunately, if Amazon were to enable a simple “share this quote”-feature, they would violate all kinds of copyright rules. Quite the pickle. What good is the highlight feature then. A quick Google search reveals a Kindle site were I can access my highlights on the web. That is better than nothing I guess.

If I were to publish those though, I guess I would violate all kinds of copyright rules. I could just publish the location of the quote but that would do you no good because of Amazon’s stupid page numbering on the Kindle iPhone app. As soon as we have different formated reading habits, you luck out.

So I guess all that remain to say is that I think if you read one business book a year first of all that’s not enough and I can’t possibly take responsibility for what you choose. However, Linchpin is one of if not Godin’s best book and in a broad sense, not purely marketing.

And here is one quote:

If you’re going to go to all the trouble of learning the song and performing it, then SING IT. Sing it loud and with feeling and like you mean it. Deliver it, don’t just hand it over like a bank teller. When you answer the phone or greet me at your office or come to a meeting or write something, don’t bother if all you’re going to do is do it. Sing it or stay home.

However, not funny is the position Constantin Film is taking here. It is stupid. They actually have something going for them. The meme is huge, loads of videos: here are some. iPad. And not just tech-related. Michael Jackson passing away (Hitler hatd tickets), Take That reunion, Springsteen, you name it. Constantin could have been the one different company in an industry that just doesn’t know where it’s heading, only knowing (claiming) that it is losing money and a lot of it. Why not create an official video pool where the best videos are collected and can be voted on? People enjoy this scene so much that they are creating mash-ups. Let them. Empower them. Be a linchpin!

Note: I put in call with Constantin Films inquiring if they will force to take all other Downfall-mash-ups down but was kindly asked to write an email to legal. Which I did.

UPDATE: Constantin Film kindly asked me to understand that they would not comment on this.

UPDATE 2: Samuel Axom reports on Mashable that indeed YouTube was asked to take down several films and for many of the remaining users will now get a “Content is blocked” message. He also provides a quote from the director of the movie:

Downfall director Oliver Hirschbiegel told New York Magazine that he laughs at the parodies. “You couldn’t get a better compliment as a director,” he said. Unfortunately, Constantin Film’s legal team isn’t as easygoing about it.

From  a gameplay perspective Gowalla moved forward, Foursquare did cosmetics. Sure, Foursquare’s new design is neat, eye-candy and more fun to use the app. The leaderboard is a bit more hidden and I still miss not a weekly but say monthly or “since January 1st” view, but aside from that it is solid.

Gowalla moved forward by thinking about what value one could bring to the place you check-in, something (one might argue) they didn’t have before (as opposed to Foursquare’s tipps). However, the idea of having a kind of shoe box of pictures at a venue, with memories of the people who left the photos there is grand in every sense of the word. This is the first significant improvement. The second step forward is the opportunity to send/attach messages with check-ins. I can’t remember how often I saw somebody check in somewhere and thinking to send a message. But exiting the app, starting up email/twitter/facebook seems to much of a hassle, something the new feature eliminates.

These two new features are very social and I am looking forward to silly photo memes where people photograph themselves under the table at a certain Starbucks or what not. So in my book this round goes to Gowalla.

Here is another, News Report 101:

@Sixtus was of course aware of the meme and created an episode of his own show, Sixtus vs. Lobo, in this way: