Golden Gate Bridge Toll Flaw

Yesterday, I drove over the Golden Gate Bridge and discovered a small chink in its armor.

As I approached the southbound tollbooth I noticed that there were no cash payment lanes and my rental car wasn't equipped with a FasTrak transponder. After driving through the tollbooth, I wondered if the car rental company would receive my bill for the delinquent toll and then tack on a $20 administration fee.


The rental car rep at the San Francisco Airport explained that the new toll system required me to pay the toll on the FasTrak website using the license plate number of my rental car. If I paid within 48 hours the toll bill wouldn't be sent out. It turns out there's a key flaw in this system since I couldn't pay for a specific trip over the bridge. On the website, when I entered my credit card info and selected an effective date, I'd have to agree to pay for 30 days worth of trips.

I called the FasTrak customer support number and they could only narrow my payment down to yesterday and today, not a specific trip or amount, which means I may end up paying for other people's trips across the bridge in the car that I rented. The rental car service rep told me that 800 cars were reserved on the day that I picked up my vehicle so it's reasonably possible I may end up paying for more than my share. We shall see.

Mundane Military Intelligence

James Bond doing mundane things.

In the military, intelligence is information that can be exploited to accomplish a mission.

In the spy world, the NSA monitors signals intelligence while the CIA collects human intelligence.

In the movies, spies are people performing clandestine cloak and dagger operations.

In reality, gathering intelligence is very mundane.

In the Marines, part of our mission planning included a briefing from the S-2 (intelligence officer). For training missions, this briefing was usually just a real world weather report along with notional info about the simulated enemy.

Overseas, where real world intel is collected, this process can be very basic. It starts with documenting weather, roads, and attitudes regarding the climate (political, economic, social, military, etc). From there, it extends to monitoring places where attacks against the U.S. or our interests can be launched.

Monitoring North Korea's military forces may seem obvious given our heightened state of alert, lately. But, most of the time, intelligence gathering can be routine and almost passively collected. Trust me, it's not a James Bond mission to document cyber cafes where international phishing attacks are launched from in developing countries.

Of course, collecting the data is easy, it's processing it, to figure out what it means, takes time.

Goodies At My Door

Telephoto lens coffee mug and emergency radio/charger.

Two goodies showed up at my front door, today.

The first item was a zoom lens travel coffee mug. It's a simple, yet neat looking, 12 oz mug that resembles a SLR zoom lens. As soon as I opened it and washed it out I took it for a spin at my local Starbucks with a Tall Caffè Americano where the cashier mentioned that she'd seen this mug on Pinterest. She liked it so much that, after asking me a few questions about it, she wrote down the name of the company where I bought it.

When I returned home from Starbucks a thank you gift for my donation to KPBS had arrived. It's called a Microlink FR160, but I'm not sure what category it really falls into other than emergency preparedness. At first glance, it looks like an AM/FM radio that can also tune in the weather band (NOAA) along with a built in LED flashlight. But when you look at it closer, you can see that it has built in solar panels and a hand crank to charge its internal batteries.

Even better is the fact that the hand crank can be used to charge your cell phone or other USB devices (in theory). I tried it with my iPhone 5 and a warning kept popping up, "Charging is not supported with this accessory."

I'm guessing that the power it puts out is too dirty for delicate solid-state devices. I'll try one of these as a buffer and report back.

Don't Enter Unnecessary Markets

1 Infinite Loop

Since the turn of the century, Apple has had a history of not entering many markets, unnecessarily. Unless they can put a "dent in the universe," they'd prefer to leave well enough alone. But, that's not always the case. Apple knows how to experiment and "fail fast." Most recently, they tried to displace Google Maps with their own mapping app. It was a noble attempt and Apple will continue to improve it, but a key point is if they hadn't entered this market, no one would have been critical of them. Google Maps is a great product as it stands, now. How do you beat Street View?

Apple has made minor marketing missteps like this before such as the introduction of the Cube computer (a thing of beauty), iTunes Ping social network (it only lasted two years), or Find My Friends (meh, it just never caught on since it's a creepy "pull" location based social networking experience compared to the "push" feature of Foursquare and Facebook Check In). In these cases, not too much was lost by Apple and the latter two apps teach us that Apple should probably not enter the social networking market. As a matter of fact, they've been categorized as the "anti-social company" due to their secrecy regarding their products, strategy, and stock.

One area that Apple has done modestly well, but hasn't yet dented the universe, is in TV and broadcasting. Steve Jobs referred to their current Apple TV solution as a hobby while they refine their go-to-market strategy. Investors feel that Apple is overdue to enter a new market, either by way of television or an iWatch. One thing that Apple has always been good at, under Steve's leadership, was to say, "No!" until a product was ideal and ready for the masses; and, lately, Apple certainly doesn't seem to be rushing any products out the door.

Apple: Think Fundamental

Many investors have been hurt by Apple stock's fall from grace as it nears its 52 week lows. There have been calls on Apple to buy back stock, split, or issue a dividend to help prop it up. But, Apple's fundamental thinking transcends form over substance and not to a fault.

It's one thing to speak these ideals yet it's another thing to stick to your guns when your stock price is tanking while investors are suing and screaming. But, whose long term interests do the shareholders have in mind? Every shareholder could chose to not be a shareholder tomorrow but Apple cannot choose to not be Apple tomorrow.

I'm an investor in Apple with a key chunk of my net worth tied to the company. But, paying dividends and buying back stock are things that Warren Buffet does since he's a finance guy. Increasing share price is not what Apple's about at a fundamental level.

"Give us your money! Pay us a dividend," demanded the investors not too long ago. So, here we are less than a year later and now these same investors are calling for more money. Let's not forget that, in a publicly traded company, none of the money invested in the stock market actually goes to the corporation. For Apple, that ended with their IPO in 1980.

Apple usually forgoes form over substance. As one of the biggest corporations in the world, they have no written mission statement. Save your corporate mission statements for non-profits where they really matter. Apple has no "department of innovation." All of these fundamentals are in their DNA. Propping up stock price is not.

Virtually every dollar of Apple's $137B in cash and investments is reflected in a dollar's value in the company's stock price. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is shortsighted. You don't make money by buying stock, it's the selling where the money is made. Apple buying back its own stock is merely a gesture symbolizing that the company feels the stock is undervalued. Yes, it decreases the supply of the stock but Apple will never have an opportunity to sell back those shares when the stock price increases.

Apple really is a different type of company. When I first started working there I initially thought that it was about design. And I don't just mean industrial design - I saw beautiful design in everything: software, user interfaces, internal hardware that no one would ever see, etc. I also realized that design wasn't just how it looked, but how it worked. However, it took me a little while to figure out Apple's DNA because I initially worked in a services division that sold into the enterprise. That was two strikes against me since Apple is a hardware company which markets to the consumer. There aren't many Apple software or services that don't directly support their hardware.

If you think Apple needs to pay its shareholders more money by increasing its dividend or by buying back more stock then ask yourself, "What Apple's motivation for not doing that?" As much as I'd like to see Apple increase its dividend or buy by its stock in order to increase its share price in the short term, I know that's not what the company is about.

Apple is about one thing: best possible user experience. And that user is the customer, not the employee or the investor. Apple's metric for this isn't click throughs, page views, or market share; rather, it's unit sales – with a nice margin which is the best of business models. If you build it right then they will come and stay.

Future Prediction
At the end of the day, Apple's investors simply feel helpless as they watch the stock price drop. What these investors really want, even more than a cash payout, is to see Apple enter and dominate a new market. I predict, if Apple gets their way, that the next market will be TV and broadcasting where viewers could unbundle their cable TV packages and, say, subscribe to individual channels via an Apple TV or iOS app. After all, this is exactly that Apple did with the iTunes store.

Wouldn't it be nice (not to mention disruptive) to pick and choose which TV channels you pay for? Imagine subscribing to your local news channel, CNBC, and Spike while forgoing the weekend morning's plethora of informercials and QVC? Seriously, why am I paying my cable company to show me get-rich-quick schemes and instant weight-loss programs?

Getting a Library Card at the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Main Reading Room (LoC file photo)

Last weekend, I took a trip to the Library of Congress to get a library card and checkout a book. While this might sound impressive, it's really a fast and simple process. It only took about 10 minutes from walking in the door until I had my library card in hand. The best part is that I didn't need any reservations, etc. – most any American citizen would have the same experience.

My newly issued Library of Congress library card.

Getting my library card only required three quick steps. After signing in and showing my driver's license I was given a single page paper form which I filled out by hand and then entered the same info into a computer. The final step was to have my photo taken and my card issued. 

Once I had my card in hand, I proceeded to the Main Reading Room to find some books on Rear Admiral Grace Hopper. A very helpful librarian looked up RDML Hopper and told me that books about her were in the Adams Building. She said that I could request the books to be delivered to me in the Main Reading Room, which would take about 90 minutes, or I could just walk over the the Adams building, across the street, and check them out there.

Adams Reading Room: Checkout slip and book in hand.

I chose to walk over to the Adams building, but not before taking a gander through the Main Reading Room. Throughout most of high school, I worked as a page in my local public library which I really enjoyed, especially since the Web hadn't been invented then.

At the Adams Reading Room, I simply filled out a slip of paper and I had my book in hand within 10 minutes.

Since it was a Saturday morning, the Library was fairly empty, so keep that in mind if you ever intend to pay a visit. I probably gained 10 to 15 IQ points just by visiting.

Everyone's a Leader

At the top of the list of leadership traits is, "set the example." This was drilled into us at the Naval Academy and in the Marines. While no one is perfect, how often someone sets a proper example is a good indicator of their character. This applies to both good and bad examples.

Every person sets an example that others will follow. Think of it as a meme. It usually happens without us realizing it. This is one reason most of us speed on the highway, even when we're not in a rush. Since most everyone else is speeding, we just follow their example and hope we don't get caught.

Case in Point
One personal example of bad leadership I once set, which could have seriously injured or killed two kids, happened when I went for a run with a friend. We stopped at a red light in a crosswalk of a six lane road with a 55 MPH speed limit and a center divide. We looked to our left and noticed that no traffic was coming so we started to cross with the intention of waiting on the center divide until it was safe to go the rest of the way. Unbeknownst to us, there were two kids, about eight or ten years old, on bicycles, just behind us. As we started to run in the crosswalk against the red light, the two kids followed our lead not knowing that we intended to stop at the center divide. Since they were on bikes, they overtook us and continued beyond the center divide into traffic where a couple cars had to jam on their breaks to avoid hitting the kids. One of those vehicles was a police car. While the kids ended up not being struck, my friend and I received an appropriate tongue lashing from the police officer about setting a bad example which has stuck with me to this day.

Even though I was no longer on active duty in the Marines when crossing that six lane road, I still should have set a good example. Actions will always speak louder than words.

Better TV UX

At this very moment, I should be watching March Madness. Instead, I'm blogging because I can't figure out how to operate my former college roommate's TV. There's nothing special about his TV other than the fact that it's not my own and I'm a guest in his house. All TV systems, nowadays, have a learning curve and I am stuck with "Channel not available," because I pressed the wrong button on one of the remote controls.

There's been much speculation about Apple entering the TV set and broadcasting market. Apple doesn't like to enter a new market unless they can put a serious dent in the universe. This was true for the Apple ][, Macintosh, iTunes Store, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Apple likes to start with nearly 100% market share and then, as competitors copy to keep up, they move into new areas.

One year ago, I speculated how an Apple TV broadcasting system might work by giving consumers the choice of subscribing only to the stations they wanted instead of paying for package deals. But that's just the broadcasting side of the equation. TVs could use some simplification now that they've become so complex.

After just a couple minutes of fiddling with my buddy's TV I gave up for fear of doing some undoable damage. But, it really shouldn't be this difficult when it comes to turning on and tuning in a TV. There has to be a simple and intuitive way, at least when it comes to the basics.

It took my buddy less than 30 seconds to fix the problem as he remarked, "You got into cable hell since it's not your TV."

Data vs. Information

Theory

Binary representation of this blog post title.

I recently heard someone ask, "What's the difference between data and information?"

I immediately recalled when this question was answered for me in a computer science textbook for a course I was taking at prep school:

"Information is processed data."

Simple! I wish Wikipedia could summarize it like that.

Practice
Record the outside temperature for a year and you have data. Analyze the data to conclude that summers are hot and winters are cold and you now have information.

In business, the trick is to take technical data and process it into salient marketing points.

The first iPod had 5 GBs of storage (data) which is 1,000 songs (information) in your pocket.

Of course, one person's information is another person's data.

Outliners vs. Hyperlinking

Dave,

When you and I had lunch at Carnegie Deli I confessed my ignorance about understanding the full benefits of outliners.

Now that I've read your How-To page, I immediately think of news… that is, a list of headlines where the story details can be expanded. But, upon deeper thought, I realize that current news websites will take you to a different page when clicking on a headline (hyperlinking) which seems to be a better user experience.

While I see coding environments, such as Xcode, Eclipse, etc, as a type of outline it seems that this outliner functionality is already built into these tools.

So, my question – rather, my limitation – is in seeing a concrete example of where outliners would be more practical over hyperlinking? Perhaps Disqus or reddit?

Cheers,
Joe

PS - BTW, the functionality of your outliner on the How-To page seems to work flawlessly.