The Bing Blog

Sun Valley’s epitaph

2009-07-15T19:14:19Z

There were no big deals. There weren’t even very many interesting conversations. The frustration of the media who cover the event was palpable. There was so little information and activity, in fact, that there wasn’t even much for them to make up. They hate that.

The two biggest items to emerge were that everybody liked to talk about Twitter but nobody could figure out whether it had a business model, including the guy who runs it… and that Warren Buffett looks terrific on the golf course, where he was paired with Bill Gates.

That’s what the business universe has come to at this point. Gates and Buffett playing golf. Nobody doing anything much else.

One final aspect of the conference is most intriguing, however. A pal of mine who was there made this observation: “You know,” he said, “about half of the people there were out of a job.” He then rattled off the names of about half a dozen megalithic players who dominated the Jurrasic era before our current ice age descended. You know them. You read about them for decades. None of them are working. All of them were present just as if they were still masters of their various universes.

I’m not going to mention their names because even in limbo they are more powerful than actual, working executives, far fewer of whom, it appears, now have the time to attend this particular once-seminal event.

The L-shaped breakfast

2009-07-14T14:42:45Z

I went to my favorite business restaurant this morning for breakfast. It was relatively full. “Business looks good,” I said to Steve, who runs the room.

“It’s weird,” he said. “Breakfast is good. Lunch is hanging in there okay. It’s hard to justify staying open for dinner when you get six people the whole night.”

I had a cup of coffee. Before long, my companion showed up. Then, after a while, our third guy, her colleague, materialized, too. The 7/8ths rule applied, as it always does at breakfast. Seven parts chitchat. One part business. It went fine. Just because the recovery is in the flat part of the L doesn’t mean you can’t sell stuff. It just has to be better, faster and a little bit cheaper right now is all.

The check came. We all looked at it sitting mutely in the middle of the table. “How’s your T&E going?” she said to her buddy across the linen divide, just by way of making conversation, you know. “I’m over,” he said.

“I came in under for the year, but only because I didn’t do anything between January and March for obvious reasons,” she added. Those months coincided with a massive reorganization of her company, a fact known to all of us around the table. ”The worst part of the whole thing is sitting there with somebody you’re taking out, and terrified that they may order an appetizer,” she said.

“I take all my people out to the Hamburger Shack,” he replied with great professional gravity. ”I just tell them, hey, if you want to have lunch, that’s where we’re going. I tried to move to the new panini place across the street for a little while but it kicked me up over the $40 limit.”

“Last week I went out with somebody and I figured what the hell, and we both had appetizers and everything,” she said rather wistfully.

Good Lord, I thought. I picked up the check. It wasn’t that much. Breakfast, you know. One course and you’re out.

Spectacular product failure of the month

2009-07-13T15:01:50Z

You may have noticed that as our quality of technology improves, things work less. For instance, I have an LG phone that quite stupidly has no input for a headset. Perhaps it’s not stupidity or their part or mine. Perhaps it was just optimism and irrational belief in Bluetooth. Whatever. That faith was ill-founded in this case. The Bluetooth never really worked. The phone goes from two bars to dead in a matter of minutes. I’m getting a new one this week. So it goes.

I’m sure you have your own stories of crashes, intermittent meltdowns, inexplicable corruptions in underlying code, abrupt failures of exciting, leading-edge hardware over time. But you rarely run into a product that immediately, spectacularly, flamboyantly, doesn’t do what it was supposed to do right out of the box. You have to take your hat off to that kind of thing, really. There’s something pure about it.

So yesterday morning I was in San Francisco airport. They have a very good store there called Techshowcase. It’s what you think it is. Headphones. Protective gear for IPods, IPhones, laptops. Cables up the yinyang. Nice sales people who always say, “No problem,” when you say, “Thank you.”

Last year I purchased a cable/plug thang for my Macbook Pro there, so that I could keep my battery charged in flight. It looked simple. Plug the unit into the cigarette-lighter outlet in the seat. Plug the regular Mac power cable into the unit. Presto. Worked for a while. Then it didn’t. Turns out that it wasn’t the proper voltage for a Mac. Okay, they should have told me when I bought it, but I think they didn’t know either and honestly, no harm, no foul, we tried. Time to try again.

This time I asked specifically: What do you have to power a Mac in flight? And there it was — the Cobra Microport. Elegant little leather carrying case. Mac compatibility promised on the packaging. Equally simple. Plug the Cobra into the seat, plug the Mac into the Cobra. What could go wrong?

I got to my seat with that wonderful sense of anticipation that precedes the first use of any new piece of technology, no matter how simple. We got to 10,000 feet. The little bell went off that signals the point where electrical items can be turned on. The Captain made the announcement to that effect.

I unwrapped my little Cobra Microport. How neat, I thought. A cigarette-lighter style plug. A cable. A little box with two inputs, a USB port, and a fuse. I carefully plugged the cigarette lighter plug into the provided cable. I respectfully introduced the other end of the cable into the jack on the Cobra Microport. I then plugged the unit into the DC jack in the seat. In short succession, the following things happened:

There was a loud popping sound;
There was a large puff of smoke;
A dramatic blue light flashed from the Cobra Microport;
An acrid scent of burning rubber and metal rose about me;
The little box glowed with the intensity of the blaze that raged within it;
The Power light, which had shone a friendly green for about two seconds, turned red.
That was that.

I had a car once that lost its transmission on the Mass Pike. Just dropped right out of it. Vehicle had only 6000 miles on it. That was disappointing, not to mention dangerous. I’ve had milk that was sour right out of the carton. I even had a blender that threw Margarita mix all over my kitchen once. But I’ve never had an piece of electronics quite literally explode the moment I plugged it in. Once I realized that my seat was not going melt with me in it, I have to say it was kind of funny, actually.

Of course, my computer ran out somewhere over St. Louis and I had to watch the movie. Race to Witch Mountain. Not bad, especially with the sound off.

This morning I begin the next phase of this interesting tale. The documentation on the Cobra Microport says I should send the object in and wait four to six weeks while they repair it. I don’t think so. I mean, we’ll just see about that.

How about you? Got any similar tales to tell? If so, start your engines. That is, if they do start. These days you never know.

Is Bing good for Bing?

2009-07-09T18:53:26Z

I’ll be honest with you. I have mixed feelings now about this whole Bing thing. David Pogue in the New York Times gives Bing The Search Engine a nice little writeup in the paper today, saying that “in many ways, Bing is better.”

A few months ago, that would have been about me. Now it’s not. It’s about this other guy. I’m happy for him and all that. But what good is that doing for all the other Bings who used to be the Bings that people thought about when they thought about Bings?

My friends have said that this whole hyper-awareness of anything Bing will be a positive thing for this particular Bing. And it’s true… there are more of you commenting on my thoughts here in this space. The only problem is, your comments aren’t about anything germane to any other subject than Bing The Search Engine, which from now on I think I’ll just call BingTSE, or perhaps Bingtsey, for short. Your comments tend to be things like, “I hate the threading,” or “there are certain aspects of its algorithm I like.”

That’s very interesting, I am sure. But not to me. I mean, what does it do for me personally? Like you, that’s essentially first, second and third on the list of what I care about.

Most depressing to me, the original Bing, is what’s happened on Google. I feared it would be this way, and those fears have been realized. Before Bingtsey came along, if you searched “Bing” it was all about me and Bing Crosby. There was also a Chinese doctor who got his share of hits, and when Steve Bing acted up in some way he was there too. Now the whole front page is about boring stuff pertaining to Bingtsey and his pals. I don’t mean it’s boring in itself, but since it doesn’t pertain to me, Bing, it is ipso facto less interesting than anything that does.

More importantly, it doesn’t help my brand one bit.

I am somewhat mollified by a couple of things. First, I remember that little paper clip that Microsoft (MSFT) tried to introduce into our Windows universe a few years ago. He died. What was his name? Bob? Ned? Fred? Ed? Nobody misses him, in any event. Second, I never bet against Google. True, they are right now showing lack of competitive acumen by allowing their Bing search results to be dominated by their rival. But in the end, will Bingtsey oust the Goog (GOOG)? In other words, I know that I’m going to be around until they drag me kicking and screaming onto the obit page. Can we say the same for Bingtsey?

It’s just possible, in short, that in the end I may well be the last Bing standing. Time will tell. Meanwhile, I’m ready for Chrome. Perhaps you are too. I wonder what the guys who make the real, shiny stuff are feeling about it right about now.

Relatively exciting news from all over

2009-07-09T04:50:27Z

President Obamawent to Russia and did a lot of interesting things, none of which was covered by the Russian media. No TV. No Radio. No Obama for the Russkies.

The top company in the world is an oil company, Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.B). Also the #2 company. Also the #4 company. Also the #5 company. Wal-Mart (WMT) somehow managed to sandwich itself in there as #3, but it’s only a matter of time before all the top companies in the world are selling a product that will one day disappear. One analyst blithely tied the slightly decreasing price of oil to the uptick in unemployment, tacitly verifying my long-held belief that our entire economy is tied to a string whose other end is somewhere far away and very hot and sandy, and I’m not talking about Texas.

The market is very nervous because it feels like all the green shoots have fallen off and the whole fruit seems a little bumpier and less tender than it should. Just as it convinced itself that everything was getting better a month or two ago, it has now scared its little self into a tremblicious state and is now in the process of sticking its tiny head back into its shell until it can’t see it’s own shadow anymore.

Michael Jackson’s mother doesn’t like the fact that the estate is in the hands of two lawyers, neither of which are her. One of them is the guy who helped Michael squirrel away the Beatle’s music library from Paul McCartney. The problem for Mrs. Jackson is that there is reportedly a clause in the will that says if she challenges the document and loses, she must forfeit her bequest, which comes to 40% of whatever is left after the promoters, relatives, banks, agents and assorted advisors, doctors, parasites and other friends of Michael make their claim. There seems to be a fight brewing between those who want the Michael Jackson museum to be at Neverland (the corporation that owns half of it and recently tried to auction off his memorabilia) and the more convenient site for tourists of Las Vegas (the promotion company that mounted the 50-event London concert tour that arguably drove him to his death). On the bright side, as long as this nonsense goes on a significant chunk of the world population doesn’t have to think about what Wall Street is doing for minutes at a time.

The moguls are in Sun Valley again. It’s a little bit reduced in circumstances right now, because the debt and equity people are walking around in adult diapers should an actual deal materialize.

Google (GOOG) is going to launch an operating system next year to compete with Windows, following Microsoft’s (MSFT) majestic launch of Bing the Search Engine, which goes after Google. Competition in the software business! What next?

Seventy-one percent of all young people plan to look for a new job when the downturn is over. Let’s hope they’re not out of the demo by then.

And that seems to be that, unless you want to start talking about Afghanistan. This L-Shaped recovery is kind of a bore, don’tcha think?

Why I’m missing the Jackson memorial

2009-07-07T14:52:43Z

First of all, I wasn’t on the mailing list. So I didn’t get the chance to go to the parking lot in downtown LA to get my wrist band. If you don’t have a wrist band, you’re not going to be able to get past the cordon near the Staples Center (SPLS). The tragic thing is that I am in LA right now, and could have been there if somebody had gotten me my wristband. But they didn’t.

I also don’t think that the $100,000 price tag for the ticket on EBay (EBAY) is that compelling. In better times, maybe. But the New York Times keeps running stories every day now about various things that are going to “threaten the recovery.” One day it’s this, next day it’s that. Oil prices. Unemployment. Every day something else is going to threaten the recovery. The green shoots are shot, apparently. So I don’t think I’m going to be splurging for something that costs $100,000, even something as worthwhile as the Jackson memorial concert.

Frankly, as exciting as the whole Death of Michael Jackson marketing event has been, I’m getting a little tired of it, and it hasn’t even been on the racks that long. They’re already rolling out old interviews with his mother, for instance. And how many “Jackson insiders” can there be? Not to mention his father, who is a real buzzkill as far as I’m concerned. I just feel sad about it, and not the kind of sad that makes me want to spend money.

Most critical, I think, to the entire strategic plan of the thing, is the fact that they may have timed the big event in the Staples Center one or two days too late. This may not have been the planning team’s fault, of course. They had to get all the big entertainers that loved Michael so much to clear their schedules and make it to LA in time to do some pre-publicity.

I’m not trying to be overly negative about the job they’re doing, though. In an event like this, nobody is really in charge. We all kind of contribute to play things out while a variety of parties stand by the action to see where the money is going to land. This one is delivering on its potential better than most, maybe because we have some great examples to work from. Elvis, for instance, timed his death perfectly, and is arguably more successful in death than he would have been in what was left of his sorry life. Contrariwise, back in 1980 Yoko completely blew the whole assassination of her husband John. I bet she didn’t make a nickel. All those mourners gathered near the apartment building where he died? How was that monetized?

The Jackson people are doing a whole lot better. He has all the top songs on the Billboard charts and this event should start off another great chapter in his career, one that’s significantly more profitable, in the end, than the upcoming 50 concerts in London would have been, and a lot less fatal to his image.

10 Ways to Ease Back In After Vacation

2009-07-06T14:03:53Z

1. Don’t do too much.

2. Take it a little easy at first.

3. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

4. Don’t worry. Be happy.

5. Stay hydrated.

6. Only see people you don’t have to.

7. Put off for tomorrow what you should do today.

8. Have a nice piece of fruit.

9. Knock off early.

10.

Au revoir for now

2009-06-19T14:51:39Z

As you may have guessed from yesterday’s post, I am at this very moment trying to tear myself away from life as I know it and suspend operations for a while.

True, the world will not stop while I do. Ned and Ted and Len and Edna and Clarissa and Elizabeth and Otto will still need things immediately. The Flute Reamer Division will still have those transition issues. Bob may need a speech or two. The IR department will still worry about its upcoming presentation in Bophutswana. But all that will have to go on without me, I most dearly hope.

Yes, I will have my BlackBerry. I will do my best to look at it only twice a day. The rest of the time it will be in a drawer. I find this better than imagining the thousands of idiotic e-mails and perhaps 10 important ones that will be piling up during the interregnum.

And yes, a few people will know where I am, my assistant Beverly being the most important. It will be up to her to figure out what’s worth bothering me for. She is aware of Bing’s Law, which, as you may remember, states that every minute of work on a vacation requires one full hour for the re-establishment of proper mental equilibrium. Thus, a ten minute conference call demands a full 10 hours of recovery time. Longer than that? You do the math.

I will, of course, have my little laptop with me, so who knows. Maybe I’ll drop you a line now and then. In any event, I’ll see you all after the 4th. Don’t work too hard while I’m away, okay?

10 things you can do to prepare for vacation

2009-06-18T14:58:09Z

1. Send a memo to Bob, asking him if it’s okay for you to take two whole weeks together, and informing him of the date and perhaps asking whether it fits with his vacation plans. This will not only serve the function of informing him of your potential non-presence and coordinating it with his own, but also remind him that he, too, will be taking some time off and that others might be entitled to some also.

2. Inform your colleagues and, if you are a manager of some sort, your reportees that you will be away, telling them when, and making sure that your functions are covered during your absence. If any important subordinates were planning to take the same time, and it would destroy your peace of mind while you are away if they did so, simply tell them that they’re out of luck. Establishing a bona fide vacation is a war. There are going to be casualties, one of which should not be your vacation.

3. Make sure you have your passport up to date, if you are traveling abroad. Once you ascertain that all is in order, make sure to drop the fact that you have done so to Bob, employing a breezy and informative style that let’s him know that your vacation is proceeding according to plan and that you’re happy about it and hope he shares that happiness, seeing how he’s so tuned in to other people’s feelings and all.

4. Make sure that your electronics work at the location to which you are going. Cell phones are not as important as BlackBerrys. This is not because you will be doing e-mails all the time or that you wish to be reachable 24-7, but because by doing half an hour of messaging first thing in the morning and at the end of the day, you will be avoiding the nightmare of returning to 8,756 e-mails in your inbox, some of which were marked URGENT! even though you put up an away message. After you have done this, by the way, you may observe to Bob in an offhand way how incredible it is that BlackBerrys work in the mountains of Wyoming.

5. Get any shots that you require if you are going to places like Belize, which has bugs as big as footballs, and jungles that sport diseases that haven’t been invented in humans yet. Don’t forget to complain that those inoculations hurt within earshot of Bob.

6. One week before your vacation, take a look at your schedule. People will have stuffed it with things to do for the two weeks you are planning to be away. There is no logical reason why this happens, but it does. “What’s this meeting with Beanie and Cecil doing on my calendar?” you may ask the person who put it there. “I’m going to be away, as I told you sixteen times already.” To which they will reply, “You’re going away? Really?” In all cases, set about clearing your time and delegating the important stuff to other people.

7. If you are a manager, a few days before your departure call in each of your key people and once again inquire what they are planning to do during your absence. At least one will mention that he or she was planning to be away, in spite of the fact that you have ensured that nobody was going to be doing so. There is no logical reason why this happens, but it does. Be kind to this person, because they are likely to be a future boss and you have to be careful how you treat people when they’re on the way up, because they may be the ones who are treating you on the way down. But do make sure that your ducks are in order for your time away, which means that they are all present and accounted for. Don’t forget to complain to Bob about how hard it is to do this.

8. Wednesday before your last Friday, Bob will inform you of an important meeting/project that will have to be done “next week.” This is a critical moment. Fools and wimps will in a trembling voice remind Bob of their vacation plans, but promise to be “reachable” when necessary. Do not do this. Executive amnesia is a form of authoritarian terrorism that must be fought. “Bob,” you may say as calmly and inoffensively as possible, “As I told you several times, I’m out next week and the week after.” Bob will look confused and hurt. He may even lightly question your loyalty or dedication. That’s all right. A display of spine is seldom out of place in what we do. Of course, if the corporation is being sold, or you are about to be named to a big new position, all bets may be off. Organizations can spoil the best of plans and often do. But 99.99% of the time, the ability to disregard other people’s needs is pure executive brain flatulence. Manage it.

9. On Friday morning, as you begin the process of packing up to leave, a host, a myriad, a phalanx of problems, challenges and effluvia will fly up and hit you in the face. In some cases, this will be just bad luck and you will have to work your head off to get rid of them. Sometimes it will be other people’s anxieties surfacing in the knowledge that you are actually not going to be there, a notion that is making them freak out. You may soothe them by telling them quietly that you will be on BlackBerry now and then, but that if they bother you with little stuff you will rip off their noses when you return. Make sure your desk is clear. Leave an away message on your e-mail. Say goodbye to your colleagues and thank them for covering your butt while you’re away. Then wait for the inevitable phone call.

10. At 5:45 in the evening of the day you are leaving the office for the last time in the next couple of weeks, Bob will call. It will be about nothing. You will laugh and scratch for a while. He will mention that he’s looking forward to the weekend. You will say NOTHING about your vacation, but allow how you can’t wait to get out of the office either. Then, as you are wrapping up this pleasant conversation, Bob will say, “So, I’ll see you Monday, then.” Breathe. Let the silence grow between you on the phone line. “Bob,” you may then say, but that is all. Nine times out of ten, that will be enough. “Oh, right,” Bob will reply after some time, very sad, very hurt, a tiny puppy being abandoned by its owner, “You’re flaking out for a couple of weeks.” To which you may say, “Right.” He will then wish you bon voyage, and probably tell you all about his vacation plans. The one time out of ten that he gives you a hard time? What can I say. Do what you have to do. The guy’s a madman. But even madmen need limits, maybe more than other people, even.

Now… breaking your desire to stay in touch while you’re away? That’s another story.

When do you tell your boss?

2009-06-16T15:48:18Z

There have been several kerfluffles around my office recently, all revolving around the same issue: What do you tell your boss and when? This would seem to be a simple question, but it’s not. First, it depends on the boss. Some guys (and in that category I, as always, include women guys) want to know nothing until it rears up and bites them in the butt, and then you should have told them. Others want to know what color tie or scarf you’re planning to wear next Thursday. And the target moves. On Monday, Chet may want to know everything. On Tuesday, you can’t rouse him from his slumber.

So what’s a poor employee to do? Take this quiz and see how sensitive you are. How you score may determine whether or not you have a future.

1. You have a big party coming up and you’re trying to decide what canapes to serve. Do you tell the boss?

a. No, that’s ridiculous.

b. Of course! She likes to know every little detail!

c. Not really, except I make sure to have those little empanadas she likes so much.

2. You’re going on vacation next month. Do you tell the boss?

a. No. My life is my own!

b. Of course. He likes to know every detail.

c. I’m going to check the dates to make sure it coincides with his vacation as much as possible, but in the end I’m going to do what I have to do, making sure that he and his assistant know what my plans are.

3. You’re going to have a meeting with a bunch of people about something that may or may not happen sometime in the future. Do you tell the boss?

a. No! I’ll tell him about it when he needs to know.

b. Of course. I don’t floss without telling him everything.

c. Yeah, I’ll shoot him an e-mail, just an FYI. Some people are attending who may mention it to him and then he’ll feel like he’s out of the loop. He hates that.

4. Your division is about to make a big deal with another company. It’s going to be announced next Tuesday. Do you tell the boss?

a. I’ll tell her Tuesday morning. You know, give her a “heads-up.”

b. I’ll tell her about the whole thing right now, before we even talk to Law and Public Relations. She’s going to want to go over this thing from top to bottom!

c. I’ll get all the moving pieces started, and then dial her in, probably on Friday. That will give her the weekend to go over the paper and think about what we might have missed.

5. You’re getting a divorce. Your life is a shambles. Do you tell the boss?

a. Definitely! He’ll feel really sorry for me!

b. I’ll mope around until he asks me what’s wrong. Then I’ll tell him everything. For a LONG time.

c. I’ll mention it. Since it’s not about him, he’ll have limited interest in it, but he ought to know in case I flake out a little bit in the coming months.

SCORING: Score yourself 1 point for every a. answer, which is a low score because you’re a really stinky communicator and a bad employee. Score yourself 2 points for every b. answer, because while you’re a suckup, you’re erring on the right side by reaching out and trying to make your boss aware of things. You’re likely to be a pretty big pain in the a**, though. Keep that in mind. Score yourself 3 points for every c. answer, because you’re clearly trying to address the issue with subtlety and modulation. You may not get it right every time, but you’re trying to play it a situation at a time and neither tell too much or too little. So good for you.

As always, the higher you score, the higher your score. Give yourself a point for trying. Trying counts.

I love to watch

2009-06-15T14:22:41Z

My Friday post about the digital transition seems to have flushed a bunch of anti-TV folks out of their weedy, book-lined dens. This has stimulated my urge to defend perhaps the oldest friend I have in the world. This isn’t the first time. I live in a community where people at parties talk about how much they like that new program that’s on the air now: Friends. “Did you see Friends the other night?” they will inquire. To which I reply, “No, I’ve been awake for the last couple of years.” Equally daunting is the type who admits shamefacedly, “I do catch an episode of Antique Road Show now and then. Can’t help it. Guilty pleasure.” Worst of all, in my opinion, are the people who strip their children of social awareness and all chance of popularity by denying them the American right to watch the programming of their choice. “We do allow little Tiffany the occasional Sesame Street. But only when I’m hyperstressed,” one mother told me not long ago.

Did you know that in spite of the Internet, in spite of Hulu, in spite of YouTube and ITunes and all that jazz, the average time spent watching television in this nation is slightly on the rise? Horrors?! No way. Television is our common language, our history, our heritage. Of course most of it stinks. It always has. You think that when the common groundling went to the theater in Shakespeare’s day all that was on the stage was Shakespeare? Do most books remind you of Hemmingway or Sedaris? How about music? Lots of Mozarts and Mathers around? A medium can’t be defined by its worst examples. You have to look to the best. And during my lifetime, the great unifying cultural events have always taken place inand around the television set. Let’s look at them briefly. I’m afraid it has to be brief, because the TV has destroyed my attention span. What were we talking about again? Oh, yes. Shows that have rocked my world. You may remember some or none:

Wonderama: A variety show featuring Terrytoons, early cartoons that may now be found on YouTube. They’re terrible. We all loved them.
Winky Dink: An early atrocity in which children were encouraged to draw with crayons on the television set.
Soupy Sales: A very funny schtick meister who played with puppets. He came to ruin, at least for a while, when he instructed his audience to go to their parents’ wallets, remove the pictures of either George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, I can’t remember, and mail them in. Kids did so. Parents were upset.
The Rifleman: Not as popular as Gunsmoke, the story of a single dad who set things right with a really cool gun.
Have Gun Will Travel: A vigilante in black. Used to watch it with my dad.
77 Sunset Strip: The coolest show of its day; three private eyes in slick, Sinatra-era LA. A character named Cookie had a lot of hair, that he combed into a modified ducktail. So did we.
Mannix: One of the many Quinn Martin productions that neatly divided themselves into acts, usually with an epilogue. Usually about a detective or other law-enforcement type. After a lot of talk and sneaking around, always ended with a very brief action sequence in an underground parking lot.
MTM: As hard as it may be to believe, America used to gather — all generations — on Saturday night, to watch the CBS lineup that included The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Bob Newhart, some other stuff I can’t recall. We weren’t always sober, but we thought it was pretty funny stuff.
Masterpiece Theater: I particularly liked the one about Henry the Eighth, who is now disporting himself once again on Showtime. Also terrific was the grand guignol excess of I, Claudius. Derek Jacobi made a stammer and a limp look like the trappings of power.
Fawlty Towers: The ultimate extension of the Monty Python spirit that for a brief time graced us.
Seinfeld: Still crazy after all these years in syndication.
CSI: I watch a lot of procedurals. Everybody underestimates not only the intricate plotting over huge story arcs, but also the differences between examples of the genre, which may be our most potent one at this point in time, including the great Law & Order franchise and a host of others.

That’s just a very short list. These days I catch most of the shows I’ve liked whenever I can. I also love House, which is one of the best television programs not only of our day but of any other, and do admit to catching the reality make-over program, What Not To Wear, whenever I fly on JetBlue. I don’t watch Gossip Girl, of course, which is only an indication of how out of it I’m starting to get. And I will always decline to give a flying photon about Jon & Kate, even if he did cheat on her on her birthday.

I also read books, by the way, and do a number of non-digital activities. Personally, I think blogs rot your brain a whole lot worse than anything else, except perhaps for aggregators.

You’re gonna love the digital transition

2009-06-12T13:16:32Z

Today we all become digital. Thanks to Congress, which passed a law mandating this transition a few years ago, all analog life in these United States will cease and everything will be transformed from waves and particles into bits and bytes. Anybody who doesn’t have a converter to make him or herself into a digital entity will simply disappear off the face of the earth.

We’ve had plenty of warning time on this. In fact, the transition was supposed to take place over the winter, but it was clear that millions of Luddites, the clueless elderly and the occasional disassociated feeb had failed to heed the clarion call of progress and were in danger of fritzing out when the moment arrived. Mr. Obama quite rightly put off the moment until today, when fewer people are necessary to keep things running, this being the summer.

The move to digital was considered necessary by the massive Internet and telecommunications powerhouses like Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Verizon (VZ) and even Yahoo (YHOO), which wants to take all the bandwidth associated with formerly analog commerce and exploit it in some way they have yet to explain. Their lobbies were bigger than anybody else’s, and better furnished, too. So the eventual outcome of the debate was never in doubt.

For most Americans, the transition will go smoothly. Those who have heeded Klaatu will have either already purchased a personal digital converter to be implanted in the soft tissue behind their ears or made some arrangement with their local cable company to rent one. Those who have not? It’s been nice knowing you.

Don’t mess with the Goog

2009-06-10T14:46:36Z

I got a real start this morning when I turned on my BlackBerry and glanced down my daily bloggery. The third headline at PaidContent.org made my heart seize up in my chest. “Google’s Schmidt rips Bing,” it said.

“Good Lord,” I said. “What have I done now.”

The idea that Mr. Schmidt was mad at me curdled my blood. You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. You don’t spit into the wind. You don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger. And you don’t mess around with Goog (GOOG).

I haven’t read the story yet, so I’m still in the dark about what I might have done to get ripped in this fashion. I’m a faithful Googler. I spend hours a night cruising YouTube for tiny tidbits of video arcana. Some of my friends even work for the place. And I’ve never said a bad thing about Sergey, Larry or Eric. I’ve heard they’re all very nice guys, and that Google is a terrific place in which to work. They let you bring your dogs to the office, I think. And some significant percentage of your time can be spent investigating your own mental vapors. I like that. Of course, I’ve been doing that for years, but it’s nice to see it’s been institutionalized someplace finally.

So I fail to see why Google is mad at me. Perhaps you can enlighten me. As far as I’m concerned, they’re okay. I’m okay. Can’t we all just get along?

Hey, Bing! This is Bing! Good start, babe!

2009-06-09T18:49:48Z

Comscore, which measures these things, put out a press release today that indicates that my brother, Bing the Search Engine, is off to a pretty good start. This, I have to feel, is at least in part due to the tremendous public relations push that I gave Baby Bing on the day it was born. Here’s what Comscore had to say, in part:

Bing Off to a Good Start in First Week of Search Activity…

RESTON, VA, June 9, 2009 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a preliminary study of the performance of Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, during the first week of its public launch. The results of the analysis show a substantial improvement in Microsoft’s position in the search market in the days following Bing’s introduction…

The data shows that last year, average daily Microsoft (MSFT) searcher penetration (!) was 13.8% of the home/work/university marketplace. This year it was up to 15.5%, a 1.7 point change. Similarly, last year the Company’s share of search results pages was 9.1%; this year, after my little buddy reared its bald little head, it was up to 11.1% market share. That’s two points of growth, however you do the math.

“These initial data suggest that Microsoft Bing has generated early interest, resulting in a spike in search engagement and an immediate term improvement to Microsoft’s position in the search market,” said Mike Hurt, comScore senior vice president. “… it appears that it is off to a good start.”

I am also happy to report that I, Bing, have also shown gratifying results too, as reported by Bingscore, which I operate to generate data of use to me. In my executive summary of June information, I note that fully 2.4% of those now on the site are new visitors who arrived here out of confusion with the Other Bing. That’s okay. They are welcome here bigtime. We Bings take growth where we can find it.

I’m still waiting for that box of stogies, though. I wonder if Microsoft sent them UPS Ground. That’s as slow as dial up, you know.

Work or Life? You choose.

2009-06-08T13:54:03Z

A lot of you were pretty tough on Ryan, the trader who will probably work like a galley slave until either retires at the age of 40 or keels over at 50. I may have even jumped to some conclusions myself. It’s amazing, on the other hand, what a little knowledge about the reality of a situation can do to moderate the whole judgmental thing. This most wise and tough-minded comment on the subject comes from Cliff Tan of Sarasota, Florida. “I can’t speak for “Ryan” because I have never been a trader,” he writes, “but I’ve worked around enough of them that perhaps this post will reduce some of the heat and shed a little more light.”

“Ryan’s” workday is not really a matter of individual choice for him, as many respondents seem to think. As a trader he simply must be at his desk early enough to prepare for the trading day ahead and will finish whenever the market finishes. He sounds like he’s on the mortgage desk so maybe the first deals in New York get started around 7am and is really going by 8am. Getting there by 6:30am might actually be cutting it close. In other markets (e.g., foreign exchange) I knew traders who were at their desk by the time “Ryan” boarded his train.

And you need to get a couple of hours’ jump on the markets because there’s a lot to read. All the overnight news/events that might affect trading that day, of course. But also – if you’re part of a global book that gets passed into your timezone – you need to know any special events that occurred as part of overnight trading. Your salespeople might have some special deals that need to be done that day, and you need to think about how to execute that. Your investment bankers might have a new structure for which you are expected to provide trading support, and you need to have a razor-sharp idea of how much this stuff they’re peddling is really worth.

And once the trading day really gets started, how are you going to leave? Because usually except for lunch you are on the “dealer” (interactive chat) with your counterparts at other banks, your salespeople call over with new stuff they need to do for their clients (either they’re told or they’ve cajoled somebody to trade an existing position for some reason), you’re on the phone with some of the bigger clients talking about the markets and giving them your thoughts about what they want to do, you need to read the news and events that occur during your day, you might be talking to the “quants” who maintain the pricing models which help determine the right values (you think) of the various credit tranches you’re trading, you might even have a model or two of your own you need to tweak, occasionally you will read some research coming out of your own credit research team or from another bank which someone has forwarded to you. Oh, and you need to make sure you pass the right information to the middle and back offices so your trades are recorded correctly (which determines your P/L, profit/loss, which determines your year-end bonus), and that you pass your book onto the next timezone accurately…

I’m with Bing in that there seems to be quite a bit of Jerry-Springer like quality in some of the posts here. I’m reasonably certain work-life balance has come up before in the “Ryan” household and while I can certainly understand how some fathers throw away their families in the name of work, I think the ethos and common sense of an earlier generation – that you don’t snap to judgment about how another man is raising his children, e.g. – might be far more appropriate.

Good stuff, huh? Thanks, Cliff. Although it’s pretty depressing, frankly. Thank goodness that there’s a ton of work going on in the Human Resources profession on what’s called work life initiatives. If you Bing! (or of course Google (GOOG)) the phrase “work life initiatives,” all kinds of gooey stuff about workshops and seminars and white papers pops up, exploring the upside of, say, a mandatory four day work week, or how a person can be at their post for twelve or fourteen hours a day and, you know, still have a family, friends, and non work-related bad habits. How? By establishing a proper work life balance, of course.

For executives, this can be a godsend, as is made clear by a really funny post from Tim, who is in Tokyo, which is only fitting. Japan invented this problem. Perhaps they’ll be on the cutting edge of solving it, at least for the very top salarymen. Tim writes:

I used to work for Merrill (MER) in Tokyo and they had the fabled work life balance initiative, which means that us grunts got to continue working weekends and sometimes 24 hours straight, while the managers flew around to run marathons or take care of their soccer clubs or other pursuits like taking university courses. Overall there was work life balance but somewhat skewed, we worked like dogs and the mangers had a nice life. No wonder the place self destructed.

Personally, I kind of like that balance. As a manager, I mean. You work. I have a life. Nothing wrong with that.

America’s next top reality show?

2009-06-05T15:27:43Z

It’s clear I’m in the wrong business. With everything else that’s going on in the world, any stroll past a magazine stand will tell you that the majority of public interest continues to focus on Jon & Kate. Why to any of bother to focus on anything else? That’s where the money is, clearly.

Yet one day, as impossible as it may seem, the fascinating situation surrounding two of television’s hottest reality stars will be over. Jon & Kate will have exploded into a ball of flaming chicken fat. Their kids will, I am sure, all be tabloid material of their own. And the great, suppurating maw of popular entertainment will be in need of new heros willing to let it all hang out for Mother.

I mean to get into the action next time around. So I’ve studied the situation, both as a professional and as a consumer of anything that will engage my dwindling attention span. And having looked deeply into the landscape, I believe I have come up with the quintessential next steps in the march of time. Two programs I think could really make it and push the envelope until it squeals. I’m looking for investors. Tell me which one you want to get in on.

1. Married Until We Got To Them picks up where Jon & Kate leaves off, takes what was wildly popular about that program and jettisons the rest. Gone are the kids. Gone is everything but the weekly update on how two people are going about the business of tearing their marriage apart with infidelity, betrayal, violence, drunkeness and, if it’s on cable, as much nudity as possible, all financed by the willing couple’s weekly stipend from the production company. In later weeks, an added element could be introduced — other miscreant pairs prepared to strip themselves bare (sometimes literally) for the notoriety and money. Couples could compete for a prize awarded to the one that can fall apart fastest. Or possibly even engage in interesting new configurations, depending on the daypart in which the program airs.

To date, all reality programs have provided a framework for the display of human frailty, a plot contrivance of some sort. This program completely dispenses with that and simply cuts to the chase. Cheap to produce. Almost writes itself. Hard to see how it could fail.

Second, and possibly even more interesting, is a show I’m calling So You’re Too Fat To Dance? A mix of several genres, this one puts it all together for pure, guilty pleasure. Contestants join the show when still very adipose, pleasant people who really can’t dance very well at all. They try, but they for the most part fail to accomplish the complicated choreography outlined for them by the show’s panel of showbiz sadists. Over the 16 weeks, contestants are put through a grueling regime of diet and exercise in which they lose tons of weight very quickly, putting their health at risk while at the same time making themselves far more flexible, pliant and capable of graceful dives, sweeps and fancy footwork. By the end of the series, we have a few people who punished themselves enough to make the grade and dance off with the prize, and probably a lot more who fell by the wayside, panting. Part make-over, part weight loss, part exercise in pure humiliation, I think this show will have it all.

That’s only the first two that I’m currently working on, although a third is taking shape in my mind, something about a worldwide hunt for the money stolen by Bernie Madoff, kind of a cross between The Amazing Race and Treasure Hunt with Stubby Kaye.

Clearly, however, the upside here is huge. With the ascension of a couple who has nothing to offer but their misery, a new barrier has apparently been broken down. When a new door like that opens, it doesn’t take a genius to know that opportunity may well lie on the other side of the transom. Those interested in an investment that’s certainly as solid as any other may drop me a line.

Salaryman

2009-06-05T14:21:07Z

We all have to work for a living. The question is how much. On the short end of the scale there are immensely successful and wealthy business executives who consider being available by BlackBerry and cell to be work. “He’s traveling,” their assistants will say, or, if they’re on the west coast, “I don’t have him right now. Can he get back to you?” I think of Stan O’Neal, the former head of Merrill Lynch, out on the golf course jotting jocular notes to himself on his scorecard while Rome burned.

On the other end of the labor vector are the salarymen of Japan. They rise before dawn, squeeze themselves into their suits, train cars and subways, hit their tiny desks for whatever circumscribed thing it is they do for fourteen or fifteen hours, take the night train home, snoozing on the long ride back to their crowded suburb, grab some fish and noodles before hitting the hay, rise again a few hours later to start the whole thing over again. They live that way for decades, and then they retire, unless they die of karoshi, which mean “death from overwork.” It’s a word that exists only in Japanese. So far.

I was having a chat with this guy I know. I’ll call him Ryan. He’s a trader at a big financial institution. It was about 7:00 in the evening, and we found ourselves elbow-to-elbow at a local watering hole. We knew each other from someplace neither of us could remember. But that slight association required us to talk a little.

Ryan’s moving out to the suburbs this month after years in the City. His wife wants more room. His kids need a yard. There are two of them, which represents $50,000 per year in tuition, and that’s before they hit grade school. After that, it’s more. In Connecticut, the schools are free. Plus, when you own a house, all you pay is your mortgage, as opposed to his former co-op, where they tack on a monthly maintenance fee of nearly $2000 on top of your mortgage. So he’s moving. I asked him if he was looking forward to it.

“We have a lot more space,” he said. I noticed he was sort of unshaven and there were bags under his eyes. “That’s what I’ll be thinking about when I’m on the 4:30 train.”

“You get to leave work at 4:30?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “4:30 AM.” This kind of floored me. I pictured Ryan pulling on his socks in the dead of night, his two kids placidly drooling into their pillows, his wife trying to stay asleep while he rummaged about in the dark before dawn, day after day.

“What train do you take home?” I asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “The 6:20 usually.” I looked at him. I didn’t know what to say. “I’m a trader,” he said, as if it explained something to me. “I have to be at my desk at 6:30 AM. Also a few months ago they laid off a whole bunch of people during the big crunch. Then all the refinancing action started happening and we were short staffed. There are a lot of people around at my office at, like, 1:00 in the morning.”

In my mind’s eye, I saw Ryan, sleeping on the train going in, sleeping on the train going home. Dragging his butt to a late dinner when his kids had already gone to bed. Hauling his tired body up the stairs for five hours of sleep before the alarm rang again at 3:30, so early it woke the birds before their time.

“I’ve been doing something like this for years,” he added. Then he looked at his watch. “I gotta go,” he said. “I have six minutes to make my train.” And he went, rushing to sit with all the other busy business people. Among them these days are many Japanese, most of them, I believe, headed for Crestwood and Scarsdale. They remain in the States for a few years and then are shipped back to the home office, which wants to make sure they don’t get too soft over here.

Good News: Twitter will know where you are!

2009-06-02T13:37:13Z

Silicon Alley Insider is reportingthat very soon Twitter will be able to deliver the precise geographical location of every twit who’s tweeting. It makes sense. Many people tweet from implements that have some GPS feature built in. It’s not hard to see how the right software could deliver precise whereabouts of each individual twitterer. This information might not be evident to recipients of the precious information that Lenny is about to take a shower. But Twitter Central will know.

I don’t know about you, but that seems to me to be one less reason to tweet. I think this places me well outside the digital mainstream. Most people on the leading edge of personal communications don’t appear to care. We already have cell phones that can tell anybody with the proper equipment where we are and we don’t think much of it. Now there will be a private company with high book value and absolutely no earnings that will be able to market our locations as well.

Proof of this attitudinal shift may be seen in the jolly tone of Dan Frommer’s report in the Alley. He writes:

Twitter has already built a great service to track what people are saying in real-time. But knowing where they’re saying it could be even more valuable. So as Twitter continues to build out its product, adding location data to tweets will be an important move.

The good news is that Twitter seems to be moving in that direction. For instance, the company has recently hired a new member for its platform team with a background in location services: Ryan Sarver, who most recently worked at Boston-based Skyhook Wireless. That’s the company whose wi-fi-based location service powers Apple’s iPod touch and helps out on the iPhone, among other gadgets.

Funny, isn’t it? One man’s paranoid nightmare is another man’s exciting new development.

A response from Microsoft

2009-05-29T17:09:25Z

Yesterday I offered what I believe was a surprisingly mature, incredibly modulated response to the Microsoft (MSFT) announcement that it was appropriating my brand with its new search engine: Bing. In response to my moderate outrage, the internet lit up like a roman candle. Quite a few fine outlets either simply re-ran my news release or had their own thoughts on the subject. Here are some of my favorites:

The Big Money, which got picked up on Reuters…

… Wired

… TechCrunch

… The Daily Beast

… and even the august Wall Street Journal.

If you read the comments that attend these postings, it’s clear that some people got it and some really didn’t. A bunch of technoids compared me with Spike Lee, who sued Spike TV when it changed its name from whatever it used to be. Others scolded me for forgetting to mention Bing Crosby, although they might have been kidding. One group that DID get it, I’m a little sorry to say, is the gang over at Microsoft Search. They replied to my polite onslaught as follows:

A Letter to Bing

Dear Bing (the Author),

We couldn’t help sit up and take notice of your offer of services from one Bing to another. We were moderately surprised and mildly excited. As you might have guessed, today is quite a big day for us. Even so, we dropped everything when we saw your press release this morning. After an emergency meeting (three people were invited, all declined), we’ve decided to take you up on your offer. We’re not certain what exactly this would involve. We’re not certain it would pay much (nothing, actually) but we look forward to starting a dialogue and hope we can work together soon. Let’s do lunch. In the meantime we are sending you a case of moderately priced cigars.

Your pals,

Bing.com

It’s clear I’ve got them on the ropes.

Bing vs. Bing!

2009-05-28T16:26:15Z

Today Microsoft announced it would be launching a new search engine that will compete with Yahoo and Google in the vast hunt for search bucks. In an incredible act of branding sagacity, they announced that the name of the new search engine will be: Bing.

In response to this, today I have issued the following news release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BING VS. BING

LONG-TIME FORTUNE COLUMNIST AND BEST-SELLING AUTHOR STANLEY BING CONDEMNS “BRAND INTRUSION” BY NEW MICROSOFT SEARCH ENGINE, ALSO TO BE NAMED “BING”

OFFERS SERVICES TO NEW ENTITY FOR “ANY REASONABLE OFFER”

NEW YORK, MAY 28, 2009 – Stanley Bing, FORTUNE Magazine columnist and best-selling author, today expressed “moderate outrage” at the branding of the new search engine to be offered by Microsoft, also to be called Bing. At the same time, Bing the Author took the unusual step of offering an initial olive branch to Bing the Search Engine, proposing that the two powerful brands merge into one for which Mr. Bing could be the logo, corporate symbol and spokesman, to the extent that it fits in with his other duties.

“This is an unprecedented case of brand intrusion by one of the most powerful and wealthy corporations in the world,” said Bing the Author, as opposed to Bing the Search Engine, which, unlike Mr. Bing himself, cannot be called for comment because it is not a person. “At the same time, I believe I can propose a solution to this problem that with work to the benefit of both Bings, me and the other one,” he added.

Mr. Bing (the Author) issued these statements in reaction to the announcement, made today by Microsoft at the D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif, that the software giant is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing, the search engine it hopes will help it grab a bigger slice of the online ad market. This huge campaign will be conducted by JWT, the massive advertising agency, and is viewed by many to be an attack on the market position of Google, long the search engine leader. Little notice has been taken to date, however, of the serious implications for Mr. Bing or, for that matter, any other Bings, which Mr. Bing made clear he doesn’t care about.

“For nearly 25 years, I have jealously guarded the value of my brand,” Bing (the original) continued. “For several years, it was threatened by the enormous reputation of Rudolf Bing, the fictional presence of Chandler Bing and the high-profile persona of Stephen Bing. This, however, is the worst challenge the Bing Brand has faced to date, particularly in regards to my search engine optimization positioning.”

In conjunction with these statements, Mr. Bing has offered to open discussions with Bing the Search Engine and its representatives to iron out differences and challenges to each respective brand. “I think we’re a lot more powerful together than we are apart,” he added. “At least I’m pretty sure I am.”

Bing (Stanley) indicated that the shape and specific nature of the merged branding opportunities have yet to be hammered out, but that he is available from the second week in June onward, for the most part, and would be willing to consider “any reasonable offer” for his services, or simply to provide no services, if that’s what seems best.

Mr. Bing began his column in FORTUNE in 1995. Prior to that, he was at Esquire Magazine for 11 years, where he built a considerable following. He is also the author of numerous books and is the host of a popular Web destination on CNNMoney.com and writes regularly for Huffingtonpost.com. He has been cultivating the Bing brand since 1983.

Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975. It has been establishing the Bing brand for about seventeen minutes.

Contact: Stanley Bing
bingblog@gmail.com

I will only add that I absolutely no intention of initiating any form of legal action against Bing (the Search Engine) unless he/it feels it would be mutually beneficial for us to do so. And that I do look forward to being massively well-optimized on my new friend.