I’m Back. My apologies for the hiatus, but I had the good fortune to have two Thanksgivings this past week – with my family, in Colorado, last weekend and with my girlfriend’s family, here in Connecticut, at the normal time. And I had the bad fortune to come down with the crud somewhere along the way. The blog was a distant fifth: behind family, eating, wheezing and running around

I’ve got page rank. It took a couple of months and the old page on the Radio Community Server still out ranks the new, but Ideoplex has made it to the first page of my vanity google. I was beginning to worry that I had broken an unwritten rule by duplicating my post archives.

I’ve always been a bit ambivalent about comments. I’d much rather see remarks posted on someone’s weblog. But as of yesterday, I have changed my mind – the grand niece of Ethelyn Parkinson left a comment on my post: Today I am a Beta Tester. That title was inspired by Today I am a Ham by Ms. Parkinson, a favorite book from my childhood. I’m sorry to learn that she passed away in 1999. While I never did become a ham, I was inspired to learn morse code. I’ll be visiting my brother in Denver this weekend, I think that I’ll read it while I’m there.

I believe in the power of personalization. I think that we’ve all seen it work in the real world. But I’m not sure that I’ve ever really see it work online. I’m beginning to believe that software is trying too hard – trying too hard to reach a grand conclusion from insufficient data and trying too hard to unify a mass of conflicting data. And I’m beginning to wonder if the answer lies in personas not personalization.

Do successful sales people actually remember all their customers as individuals, or do they internalize a set of personas that are associated with their customers? I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s much closer to the latter than the former. And that reconstructing automated processes to leverage buying personas would be a win.

Let’s take a look at some of my reading habits. I’m a big fan of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe and Alexander Kent’s Bolitho. Doesn’t affinity matching apply to genres as well as titles? I would think that there is a good chance that a fan of napoleonic military fiction would also be a fan of contemporary military fiction (Harold Coyle, Larry Bond), military science fiction (David Weber’s Harrington), and fantasy military fiction (Eric Flint and David Drake’s Belisarius). But I don’t recall seeing any evidence of that in my Amazon recommendations.

Of course, that’s quite a bit more work. Since it requires real domain knowledge, it’s not something that you’ll be able to buy from your local software vendor any time soon. And the margin on book sales might not justify the investment. But if you’re a small book seller being forced out of business by the big boys, there may be an opportunity there.

Dana Blankenhorn notes that the basic Amazon search box [is] nearly useless when searching for an author. I’ve had that experience as well. I think that somewhere along the way Amazon became a merchandiser rather than a book seller. And that everything became a SKU rather than a title.

Amazon seems to have forgotten that the difference between the hardback, paperback, and audio versions of a book is much less significant than the difference between different books. When I search for an author, I’m primarily interested in the titles not the formats. I want the results ordered by the date in which they were written, not published. If it’s part of a series, then I may want the titles ordered by their position in the series.

And Amazon’s preoccupation with merchandise is a window of opportunity for competitors. Series have become a dominant form in bookselling, but Amazon uses Listmania to fill that role. Reviews play a major role in promoting book sales, but Amazon reviews are too easily gamed. It’s not going to be easy, but I think you can get inside Amazon’s decision cycle and compete for the book buyers dollar.

20 Nov: In the comments, Dana points to the url for book-only searches. That handles the multiple format question, but doesn’t address my series issue.

It was nice to have Jake the Snake back under center for a 37-8 victory over the Chargers. After limping to a 1-3 record without him, the Broncos remain in position to make the playoffs. The Chiefs should still win the AFC West. And between the Titans and the Colts, one should win the AFC South and the other should get a wild card. Right now, it looks like a race between the Broncos and the Dolphins for the last playoff spot.

Yesterday, Stanford got pasted by Oregon State 43-3. But despite their sad performance this year, they can still qualify for a bowl game with wins over Cal and Notre Dame. Cal laid a big hurt on Washington 54-7 and can qualify for a bowl game with a win over Stanford. Which makes next week’s Big Game a must win game for both teams.

It’s rare to have a Big Game that means something these days. More often than not, the Big Game is an attempt to rescue a miserable season by one [if not both] of the participants. But both teams are clinging to the hope for a bowl game at the end of the season. Even if it’s only the Insight.com bowl, it’s still a bowl game. And the extra practice time that comes with the game can make a difference in how the team comes out of the gate next year.

So here’s to the 2003 Big Game.

Annie Taylor Lebel, a cartoonist at Full Tilt Features, is concerned about how to generate an income via [RSS] syndication. I think that Annie is too quick to dismiss the inclusion of advertising in the RSS feed. After all, I found her question via Lockergnome’s RSS Resource – and the Lockergnome RSS feeds carry advertising.

But there are definitely some problems to overcome. I’m a believer in advertising via RSS, but I also believe that you need to manage your ratio of ads to content. Fortunately, Full Tilt has multiple cartoonists and could group several strips together to maintain a good ad/content ratio. And maybe I’m an idealist, but I wouldn’t be concerned about competition from the likes of tapestry. I think they can be reasoned with – once you provide an alternative.

I’d try a few alternatives: an ad supported feed with up to date strips from multiple cartoonists, an ad supported feed with weekly delivery of a single strip, and a subscription feed. The objective is to provide a good enough feed with advertising for the frugal and a reasonably priced alternative for the advertising adverse.

I plan to take advantage of the impending number portability hoopla to change my cell phone service. I’m currently with Sprint – my problem is that the coverage around home is spotty and it recently seems to have gotten worse. The leading contenders are Verizon and AT&T. Consumer Reports seems to like Verizon, but AT&T has more aggresive pricing on phones. Feel free to comment if you have experience with either service in Fairfield County, CT or New York City.

A people hire A people, B people hire C people. Always strive for the most excellence. Never be scared to work with people who are smarter than you. Never be scared to let others be smarter than you.

While true enough, don’t jump to the conclusion to never hire B players. In a successful team, the sum is greater than the total of the parts. And that invariably requires a number of B players supporting the A players by building solid foundations underneath ground breaking A player initiatives.

I’ve always felt that while a company needs to try to be world class at something, it shouldn’t try to be world class at everything. Because once you get past your 1 or 2 core competencies, it’s not cost effective to be the best. Few companies can endure the inner politics generated by multiple groups all striving to be the best and lead the company. And turnover in the losing groups can be disastrous.

Yes, you need A players leading all your groups. But some of those leaders must commit to playing supporting roles and building groups that are just good enough to get the job done. That’s going to require a lot of B players. Just make sure to be alert in weeding out the C players.

Wow, I wonder what genius was responsible for this? I’m a believer in selling to your existing customer base. But I think that the idea is to make your existing customers better customers, not to annoy them until they hate your guts. I just hope that there is enough backlash to make this a textbook case in what not to do. [via MarketingWonk]

13 November: It looks like Belkin has seen the error of it’s ways. A firmware upgrade will be available on 17 November that eliminates the redirect.