Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2

Disorienting Shopping

I did some shopping errands this morning, heading to Home Depot, Walmart, and a few other stores. Our local Walmart has recently renovated the store, successfully turning it on its head and confusing many a customer (and store employee as well.)

Most bizarrely, (and I see this at the Home Depot as well) the entry and exit doors are now completely reversed. You enter on the left and exit on the right in each entry way. Watching customers deal with this is like watching a traffic jam. Not only that but in the music and video areas when you take a look at recent releases (not the endcaps) the selections run from left to right. What's up with that?

Sunday Morning Reading

Some Sunday morning reading to share.

Thomas Freidman in the NY Times (newly freed from behind a pay wall) argues that 9/11 is over and we need a president for 9/12. I guess that means all the current candidates should stop running and we should look for someone else.

Brain-eating amoebas? Apparently so.

Peggy Noonan says we shouldn't be afraid to talk to evil doers and those we don't agree with. She chastises those who think we shouldn't talk, like in this week's events. I agree with Peggy. But there's no mileage or ratings  in taking a high road any more.

Looks like Facebook is headed to some form of segregation among your friends, allowing the user to put them into groups like business, school, etc.. I just hope it doesn't stop the very interesting cross-pollinization that is happening between the various walks of my life that tune into my Facebook page.

Fake Steve (yeah, he's still going) talks about Apple's Fresh Start program for those running around with iBricks. Wonder if those guys who named their app iBricker are regretting that choice about now.

Chicago Cubs in the playoffs? Amazing. Massive midwest heartbreak headed our way.

Frito-Lay is trying to take the junk out of junk food. They are now the nations largest buyer of pumpkins. Look for a shortage at your pumpkin stand soon.

AT&T Smack Down

I guess if you can't take the heat, you should just kick your customers out of the kitchen. Looks like that is what AT&T is doing with the new change in its Terms of Service. The new terms in AT&T's contract of adhesion (we can change it any time without notice) state that AT&T can terminate the contract  for conduct that  "tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries."

Be careful out there.

Via BoingBoing

Technorati Tags: AT&T

Ripping a Hole in the What We Know

Yesterday's brilliant post by Doc Searls and all of the news swirling around Apple's iPhone locked vs unlocked stew, got me thinking a bit. Which is always a dangerous scenario.

Even with numerous accounts of user problems it is still far too early to know if Apple's public stance on how to deal with unlocked iPhones, (they'll break it) is going to hold any teeth or not. There are scattered reports of some Apple stores quietly restoring customers iPhones, and there are scattered reports of customers getting the "we told you so" routine. Engadget's summary sounds like early reporting from the front line of a major battle in the brick wars, more than concrete info.

The one thing that is certain about this: the landscape changed a bit in the battle for more user control. Apple may have been within its rights to do what it did. Even so,  that may be in some conflict with what the law allows customers to do, (unlock a phone.) That's an age old story on many levels that has more to do with arrogance on the part of a company, and lemming like behavior on the part of the customer than it does with reality. Salon says if you care about your rights don't buy an iPhone.

Whether or not (we'll never know) it was an intentional strategy on Apple's part when the price drop fiasco hit to then offer a rebate, Jobs and company opened a door and empowered folks to think they have a voice in what goes on. Those voices aren't going to be easily silenced going forward, especially with the latest round of news coming so quickly. One customer has even filed a suit about the whole price drop mess.

No one at Apple (or AT&T) can be happy reading the press and and blogs right now. Trying to clamp down on adding applications and keeping users from doing what they want to do with a device is going to be an ongoing series of losing battles. But while the defenses get thrown up behind one-sided contracts of adhesion, this seems to be heading in the direction of speed limits, and some of the other wonderful absurdities and ironies we live with.

I was talking with a colleague who has an iPhone yesterday. He is deathly afraid to hook it up to iTunes. He hasn't unlocked his phone but he has added some third party apps. He says he is contemplating just leaving what he has on his phone and calling it a day.  The take-away quote from that conversation is telling. He said, "Apple doesn't want me as a customer anymore. They enticed me to buy the razor, but I don't like how it feels when it cuts my throat."

Maybe it took such a high profile product and PR strategy and some very loud backfires to shake things up. I'm hoping the shaking keeps on going. We can all benefit it it does.

Technorati Tags: Apple , iPhone , Steve Jobs

Shadow of the Raven Moving along

A long, grueling, and productive week of rehearsal concluded today on Shadow of the Raven: Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. We've got the show staged, are prepping for a new round of rewrites and attacking some very tricky moments in the show technically and psychologically.

Trying to make the supernatural real is never easy on a stage, especially given our meager budgets, but we're giving it a go. Can't wait for next week to get going again.

Doc Searls and Internet Nirvana

Doc Searls nails it in his post Go From Hell. In talking about marketing, advertising, Axes in Our Heads, and the myopic prism that we seem to view our on-line lives and futures through, he just flat out nails it.

All of us live a business world framed by the controlling ambitions of companies, rather than by the actual wants and needs of customers. Even when we study customer wants and needs, our perspective is anchored on the sell side. We ask “Which company (or product, or service) will serve them best?”, rather than “How can we as customers best express our wants and needs so that any seller can fill them?” The ironic distance between these two perspectives is deep and immense.

Go read the entire post and tell me you don't agree.

Giraffe Fight

Wow. Who knew this way how giraffes fight with one another.

Comcast Customer Service Woes and A Word from Inside

Sumocat has had some real battles with Comcast of late. I'm certainly no stranger to those kind of fights. This article from The Consumerist, which supposedly details a report from a Comcast customer service rep points up the climate I think most folks believe exist in customer service centers and not just with Comcast. Pity.

Gateway Shows Some Style

Interesting. Gateway has rolled out a new desktop computer that follows Apple's all-in-one strategy. It certainly looks sharp, and it will be very interesting to see how it performs once it ships in November.

All the usual sources are carrying this news, but there is some interesting video of this on SlashGear.

Starting Rehearsals With Edgar Allan Poe

We've just started rehearsals on a new play, actually we're calling it a Mystery with Music. My long time collaborator, Steve Przybylski is the author and the composer of Shadow of the Raven, The Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Steve has been cranking all year on this and yesterday we had a read-thru after a week of workshopping.

The beauty and the pain of doing new work is the evolution process as the script keeps changing, but hopefully in a few weeks we'll have something really special. Steve had created a really special world, now my job is to make that world come alive.

Along with this, Wayside Theatre is trying something new on the Internet. We've launched a blog (in addition to our website) where our artists and staff can contribute posts about their process and hopefully give you a glimpse of life backstage at Wayside Theatre. It is in early form, but we hope, that it will help us change the conversation a bit about who we are an who we want to be. That will be a challenge in our area, which, if the rest of the world has is living in Web 2.0, is beginning to discover, Web 0.1. But we're going to give it  shot. Steve has already contributed a few posts about his process an I believe there are more to come.

If you've got the time and interest, check out InsideWayside and let me know what you think Suggestions always welcome.