How come we still don’t have a standard for e-books and web pages that represents a page-like unit of text so that it’s easier to reference where one is in an electronic text no matter the font size?

Why doesn’t WordPress auto-de-dupe the tags that are only off by a misspelling, shortening of a word, or the use of hyphens?

Why doesn’t every e-mail program (web or client-based) have an option where you can add tags to and file to a folder to an e-mail you are sending right before you hit the send button?

Why are tables of contents in e-books so lame?

Why do content management systems still spit out incomprehensible URLs?

How come stories on newspaper websites don’t thread over time? (or at least: why are the “suggest” or “related” features on newspaper websites so often incomplete or irrelevant?)

How come you don’t get both a “last saved” and a “last edited” timestamp that’s easy to view on all OSes with files of any type that displays in the same way across operating systems?

Why don’t people add metadata to PDF files, like ever? (even people who should know better)

I don’t know for sure. Perhaps it’s that technology, especially search, makes allowances for us. Perhaps it’s that there are no consequences to the lack of speed and piling up of un-indexed or un-easily-searched image files and documents and e-mails. Perhaps metadata doesn’t have the right branding*. Perhaps we simply don’t expect the same sense and consistency across products that we do from, say, prescriptions or ingredients labels. We just don’t have the same expectations for electronic files that we have for physical objects.

Of course, when augmented reality — when the internet of things — really takes off, well, we’re going to be singing the blues with much more feeling if everyday users (and the companies that sell to them) don’t embrace the smart use of metadata.

*Maybe we need a metadata button (like an rss button or the x that means “close this window”) that displays metadata when clicked

The other options are to do what we essentially have now — video ads in anything streaming (game, Hulu app, whatever) and basically print ads in anything to be read (like a magazine app). The problem there is that all you can capture is mindshare, which is no improvement over what print and television already offered — but with, usually, a much smaller audience.

It seems to me that the most nonobtrusive but still effective way to go about this is to provide a discrete button during a video ad or on a static ad that consumers can click that triggers an action that doesn’t jerk them out of their experience. How could this be done?

One thing Hulu does is pop up a fairly non-intrusive dialog  during its commercials that asks “Is this ad relevant to you?” and provides a “yes” and “no” button. It’s non-intrusive because it shows up in the frame rather across the “screen” itself. I suggest a modification of this that provides a simple “more” text button or perhaps an icon (that hopefully gains traction and becomes universal) that is displayed discreetly in the frame around the video or static/Flash animation ad. When clicked (or more likely touched since this is really intended to work with tablet apps), an action is triggered that takes place in the background. This could be everything from send you a link in an e-mail or text message to bookmark the site to Delicious to add an item to Google reader. Ideally, the platform for this call to action would be able to thread itself through most of the apps and would customizable by the user. The user him or herself could choose what the action is, thus setting the zone where he or she is willing to receive more information or coupons or a request to sign up for a mailing list of like a page on a social media site.

I also suggest that the follow up to the call of action, the thing that is triggered by touching the “more” button be heavy on the informational side of things. Advertisers can deliver the emotion in the ad. If consumers are interested, then the next step is to provide them with something that allows them to indicate that interest without jerking them out of the immersive experience, the app that they are currently in. Add in (depending on the app and advertiser) location awareness and a build up of consumer preference information, and I think you have an effective advertising platform that consumers will be more willing to engage with.

On the other hand, Wikipedia is excellent for persistent content over time. Entries get updated, refined and fleshed out. Changes to the page are tracked and made available to the casual reader. But the problem with Wikipedia is that it’s only an encyclopedia. It’s tone and scope is focused on factual, relevant content.

And finally, scholarship, as it is made available in academic journals, and public intellectualism, as it is made available in magazines and newspapers, can often be great and producing polished work and work that is in conversation with others in the field. But you often have to slog through a lot in order to get to what you find interesting and conversations get off track and some of it is just too specialized.

So here’s what I want: a way to read a persistent, focused conversation on specialized topics I’m interested in undertaken by people I trust, admire, tolerate, hate or whatever but at least am willing to listen to that is set up in such a way to occur over days, months, years. I’m still mulling over what form this might take. More later when things have fully coalesced.

1. The Cook’s Country Cookbook I received for father’s day (or was it my birthday?) last year contains a recipe for Whoopie Pies.
2. The latest Penzey’s Spices catalog contains a recipe for Whoopie Pies (and a photo of one on the front cover).
3. The latest issue of Costco’s magazine for its members contains a recipe for Whoopie Pies.

Of course, the New York Times beat me to the punch back in March 2009. But based on the evidence above, it now appears to have solidly trickled down in to the middlebrow. So if you are one of the countless people who opened up a cupcake shop in the past four years, you better add this to the menu. And if you are having a cutesy trendy wedding this summer, you might want to switch out the cupcakes for Whoopie Pies. Or not — I mean, once it hits Costco’s magazine, the trend is rather played out.

Let’s see. Red Velvet Cake has already had a run and Boston Cream Pie is doing well too so I’m going to call it now — the next major American dessert trend is going to be the rehabilitation of Baked Alaska, which I believe has already happened on the fine dining scene, but as far as I know has yet to make it seriously mainstream. Or maybe it’ll be icebox cake.

Now, this may simply may be my own idiosyncratic needs. And certainly they are informed by the fact of my daily bus commute and the fact that I live in an apartment with a wife and daughter (and so have no “room of my own” so-to-speak). But here are the two things that I would require of a serious writing device:

A. Easy, quick data input for when ideas are flowing (brainstorming) and/or I’m in the zone (writing) that can happen in a variety of environments and even without the need for a flat surface.

B. Easy mark up of drafts, including the ability to quickly move chunks of text around.

Now I know the whole point of the iPad is supposed to be that one only needs a finger and the device (with the addition of a bluetooth or docked keyboard when needed), but I think some extra hardware accessories would be very useful when paired with a tablet computer.

Here’s what they are:

1. A thumb keyboard: yes, I know this sounds dumb and retrograde, but the problem with a blue tooth keyboard is that you need a flat space to put it down on. I don’t have that on the bus. A thumb keyboard, say similar to a Blackberry keyboard, but I’d be open to other configurations, connected via bluetooth to a tablet means that you could have the tablet nearby, but not need it be all the way out and still go to town with the writing. Heck, I’d be willing to give up QWERTY in a second and learn a new alphabet input system for the right device. For those late night flashes of inspiration. For when you want to stand and pace. For, as I mention, the bus or the plane, this would be a great, easy way to download what’s going on in your mind. One key wakes up the tablet and opens up a blank document. The rest is just sheer input.
2. A pen/pencil stylus for editing. Yes, one could theoretically use a finger. But the ergonomics of that suck, imo. Plus you can’t get quite as fine tuned as you need. A stylus that felt in the hand like a good pen or pencil coupled with software that recognizes editor’s marks and has provisions for adding annotations/comments and selecting and moving around chunks of text would be awesome. Think about how much more efficient and clear you’d be as an editor if you could interact with drafts in this way instead of either using Word’s or Adobe Acrobat’s horrible mark up systems or (as many editors still do) printing the document out and going over it on paper (thus requiring duplicate data entry).
3. A dictation device. Possibly a microphone you hold in your hand or even one of those silly bluetooth ear devices. I write well when I walk. If I could walk with while carrying something that’s easy to hold and that I could speak in to as thoughts came to me and that could record a half hour or more worth of data and then connect wirelessly to a tablet and transcribe and transcribe well, I’d be in heaven, especially if I can then use the pencil stylus to edit the results.

I’m open to other solutions. But really, although multi-touch on a tablet solves many UI issues (I’ve never been fond of using a computer mouse), I still don’t see a vast improvement for those of us who focus on writing and editing. Give me the above, however, and a tablet is all I would need.

Salt

We’re cutting back on salt.

A really good and healthy thing going on with food right now is that people are using less salt. We want to be a part of this. Going forward we will continue to sell reasonably priced generic salts of the earth and sea, but we will no longer be selling the higher priced specialty salts. I feel things have gotten to the point where the specialty salts are glamorizing the use of salt and, with that, encouraging people to use more of it. I have also found that along with the marketing of specialty salt had come a great deal of misinformation, including claims that some salts don’t affect your health like others do. This is just not true and not something we want to be part of. Salt is salt, it really is, and it taste no different no matter where it comes from.

With our belief that cooking comes from caring for those around you we feel part of that is caring for the well-being of the people we cook for. We all have our own relationship with salt and I respect that, but as a cook and a business I feel so much better about working to cut back on the use of salt rather than encouraging the use of more. I hope this makes sense to you.

Bill

This is found on page 43 of the most recent catalog. Just below it are the catalog items for Kosher Style Flake Salt and Pacific Sea Salt. And certain seasoned salts (Shallot Salt, for example) are still available. But the Fleur de Sel and other “gourmet” salts are not. I have no idea whether or not this will increase sales or buy loyalty with customers. In fact, some people are grousing about it on Chowhound.  And I must have missed it in an earlier catalog because here’s an Eat Wisconsin post from last November about it (it’s not favorable).

So because it irritated a few people, was Bill Penzey having a point of view on salt a branding mistake? I don’t think so. Penzey’s has always presented itself as a folksy company. The catalog features recipes (plus anecdotes) from customers. These invariably focus on middle America folks who want a better-than-supermarket quality spice and mostly engage in down home cooking. Just the kind of people to be worried about salt and appreciate the folksy tone and concern displayed in Bill’s note. The gourmet market is all about trends, and it’s clear that Penzey’s is in it for the long haul and wants to sell to a broader market even if that means alienating a few foodies. And that means that taking a stance against trendiness and for health is completely consistent with the brand and strengthens rather than weakens it. That’s the power of having and expressing a point of view.

Language learning takes place best in an immersive environment that can be entered consistently and provides a variety of ways to gain spoken, written and reading comprehension competencies. A tablet would be a great way to present video, audio, photos, words, quizzes, etc. Yes, that’s all content that is currently available through websties and software on desktops and laptops and smartphones. But I do think that a tablet form, that allows one to interact in a comfortable, casual setting and requires touch feedback (rather than the mouse or track pad) and has a bright, well-designed screen and an app-driven interface presents enough improvements and enticements and sensory experiences to really make language learning much better.

I love being a generalist. I enjoy having a wide variety of projects and relationships, and I work well with all types of people — IT professionals, reporters and editors, faculty and students, graphic designers, etc. It’s fun. But it also means that it’s difficult to keep up in any in depth way with all the skills one needs to keep sharp in order to act effectively. I feel that I have enough knowledge of analytics/seo, web programming and layout/graphic design to contribute to and even manage projects featuring in-house experts or outside vendors. But what happens when, as is increasingly the case in the world of smaller budgets, you have to DIY?

So here’s my question — one that I will explore and attempt to answer for myself over the next few months — what other skills do I add to my generalist set? I’m assuming that to be an effective PR/marketing generalist one should already be a good writer, editor, proofreader and public speaker: basically an overall effective communicator. One should also be somewhat capable of traditional skills: parsing market research, facilitating a focus group, art directing a photo shoot, interviewing senior management and faculty and students, staging a press conference, basic photography and image editing, basic html, etc.

But what else? Here’s what I’m looking at right now:

1. Web analytics. Yeah, I can do the basics of Google analytics, but right now it’s all mainly surface metrics.
2. Photography. I’m an okay photographer. I can frame a shot and crop and color correct it. But I have yet to master the real mark of an expert — lighting.
3. Videography. Both behind and in front of the camera. Editing. Both quick on the fly, low-res stuff for YouTube and more polished work.
4. Advanced programming. I need to get better at CSS, for sure, but I wonder if PR folks need to know more about programming, especially app programming. Not necessarily enough to do all the work — this is an area where you need a specialist — but enough to be able to create help plan the concept, develop features, not get ripped off, etc.

As I look at these four areas, I’m struck by how much the younger generation has some of these skills — at least the basics — natively. I consider myself a digital native, but I cut my teeth on an Apple IIe. As much as I enjoy social media, my core love is blogging (yeah, I’m a Gen Xer). And while I can do photography and video, it’s not native to me the way it is to people in their teens and twenties. Perhaps there’s no need to worry about all this — I’m one of those who firmly believes that core of PR is to tell stories authentically, artfully and in the modes and media the audiences you care about prefer. But I’m going to do an inventory of my skills and the needs of my college over the next month or so and figure out where I need to go more in depth. Any suggestions of what to focus on and how to go about it are very welcome.

More importantly, it raise all sorts of issues about community boundaries, institutional coercion and the agenda of the persons writing (or editing, or approving) copy with the use of the institutional we. For although it may be intended to appear inclusive, the we is always connected to a verb or a state of being and objects and noun and verb phrases and all those things that attempt to define who belongs or more often the actions and attitudes of those who do or don’t belong.

I don’t know for sure how to get around it. I personally rely much too heavily on “the College” in my writing for work and ‘I’ in my own writing. But it seems to me that that “we” needs to be made more explicit at times and/or that managers and administrators or going to need to be more willing to use first person singular and speak for themselves because in the world of social media everybody is speaking about the institution and speaking as themselves in relation to it.

Hulu: I would like a smarter queue that tracks what I have already seen. It’s great that you can subscribe to shows and when new episodes get loaded on to Hulu, they pop in your queue. But because episodes sometimes get taken down (after I have seen them) and then put back up (for example, to drum up excitement for the start of a new season), the queue oftens clogged with episodes of a show that I have already viewed on Hulu. I want an option to only show ones I haven’t viewed already — and for re-uploads to recognize that I saw them on the first go round.

Netflix: I would like a queue that’s just like the current queue but is for tracking purposes only, and I want to be able to subscribe to actors, directors, writers, studios, awards lists, certain critics picks, sub-genres and sub-sub-genres and when something new is acquired by Netflix that features the keywords and  individuals I’ve subscribed to, I want those titles to appear at the top of that tracking queue.**

Gmail: I love Gmail. I’m one of those who immediately took to thread conversations and tags instead of folders.  There is one feature I’d like though: the ability to tag an e-mail before (or as you go to) send it.

Google Docs: Yes, you can export Google Docs in a variety of formats, but there are occassions where I like to simply publish a Doc. For those instances I’d like to be able to have the option of auto-pagination (and be able to specify how many paragraphs or words for each page).

Twitter: I know this is supposed to be on the way, but, imo, the ability to RT from the web interface can’t happen soon enough. Yes, I use Tweetdeck and Hootsuite fairly often, but sometimes the web interface it just easiest to use, and I’d like to be able to easily retweet from it.

YouTube: I want 20 minute video uploads. Some better metrics tools (and even integration with Google Analytics) would be nice too.

Flock: I want it to open faster.

Flickr: I want the ability to batch organize sets and collections without going in to Flickr’s Ajax (sometimes browser resource heavy) Organizer e.g. just using titles of everything without thumbnails and the drag and drop feature — a light version, I guess, of the Flickr Organizer.

GoodReads: I want the ability to easily order titles on  shelves (both drag and drop and enter number) and the ability to select multiple shelves and only show the titles that match all the selected shelves.

*Facebook is the Big Exception, but I’m not going to go in to all that in what is intended to be a light, quick post.

**I also want Linux supported Netflix On Demand, but that’s not a feature  improvement, per se.