Oh, it gets better. Neither print or online version offer what you see on the bottom bar of the document: a link for downloading an mp3 recording of the article’s text. How cool is that?

Let me get this straight: Now I can create a new document or take an existing document, embed it — and links for downloading it in any one of multiple document formats — on my blog, and add my $0.02 on it in the blog posting. You, the consumer, can download my document to your PC for viewing and an mp3 recording of the document’s text for your iPod.

My my, the possibilities here.

The rise of YouTube
Video Worth a Thousand Pictures
The Virtual Business Tour
InformationWeek: Firms “must” embrace video

Public speaking guru Bert Decker certainly gets it, as suggested by his recent posts Desktop Video Revolution…

This year 2007 will be the Year of the Video.

…and The Power of Instant Video:

Video compression and the capability of an unknown to make a one minute “film” and have such impact is revolutionary. The revolution has started…Use this tool - influence in new ways.

His latter post cites the so-called “Hillary 1984” video (below) as an example of how a brief video – in this case, just 74 seconds long – can pack a powerful message which spreads virally big-time (more than 2.7 million views at post time).

This is the Year of the Pig on the Chinese calendar. When a YouTube search on “Year of the Pig” produces more than 670 results (as it does at post time), you start thinking that Decker’s “Year of the Video” proclamation might not be so far-fetched.

The Swivel guys do a bang-up job telling their story in the About Us section of their web site. I think too many technology outfits fall short in this area. From the hows (origination of the concept and their revenue model), the whys (their motivation), and the whats (a tour of their new place), to kudos to key external contributors, to a reference to an advisor’s hobby of trumpet-playing advisor, it’s all there – and founders Dimov and Mulloy paint a great picture with their words. But they fall just short of a 10 — I’ll give them a 9 — in this area due to no use of at least one chart in this section to help tell their story.

I see their pricing model is both simple and fair: The service is free if you make your data public, and fee-based if you seek privacy. I suspect that their best market would be SMBs (small to medium-sized businesses), where slimmer budgets and demand for easy-to-use tools would seem a nice fit for a Swivel-like data sharing and exploration solution.

I found importing data and creating a chart a quick and painless process (see my first Swivel chart here). I certainly haven’t pushed the envelope with an extreme volume of data, but suspect that Swivel isn’t really targeting a power user conducting complex analysis and/or using loads of data. I’d guess that their target user is the average spreadsheet-literate person, and there are plenty of them out there.

I’ve been showing charts of all kinds to folks for a couple of decades now. Here’s a sampling of the things I’ve learned, and continually encourage others who create and present charts to consider:
1. What question(s) is(are) your chart answering? Is that the right question?
2. Is your chart title structured like an eye-grabbing newspaper story headline or a stale “Y vs. X”?
3. Do your graphics utilize color, proportion, and minimization (as espoused by the likes of Edward Tufte and Garr Reynolds) to make the data’s message slap-you-in-the-face clear to everyone in your audience?
4. Does your chart incorporate an image to add context and/or emotion to the graph without interfering with its interpretation?

I believe that the majority of creators of charts still lack both awareness and appreciation of the power of chart design in conveying meaning. And it’s usually not their fault – most have not been exposed to training in basic data visualization design techniques, or are not even aware that better ways to present data exist.

Swivel is definitely a wonderful step in the right direction when it comes to sharing data and getting people talking about how to use data to improve products, services, even the world. I hope that, as Swivel evolves, it will somehow provide ways to educate its users on how to design visually provoking displays of actionable data. One way to do that might be to provide some video tutorials on chart design, delivered by one of the founders themselves or external subject matter experts. Another could involve periodic awards (e.g. usage credits, contest prizes) to talented users for those public charts which convey the best combo of, say, meaningful data and chart design.

I look forward to watching the Swivel story unfold.

I really enjoyed Richard’s presentation, and highly recommend it to anyone. However, it could have been even better.

Garr Reynolds, whose post led me to this video, is spot-on with his take on what Richard could have done better:

The single biggest thing that would have improved his presentation is the use of a small remote so that he could keep his eyes on the audience and his hands and eyes off his PowerBook. The addition of a remote is a simple thing, yet it is the one change that makes a huge difference in one’s ability to free themselves from the PC and the podium and connect with the audience.

Many thanks to new startup Swivel for making this chart possible! I will talk more about them on a separate post.

The winner’s curse is Microsoft…It happens when a company is so good at one thing that they win big. But when its time to change, they just can’t stop doing the things that made them so successful in the past that no longer work.
The loser’s curse is when you fail at something so badly that you never want to try it again even if there are other and better ways to do it that may result in a better outcome.

Re-inventing yourself, even when things are going peachy, is the solution to the former. Desire, persistence, and ego subordination seem to be the top prescription for the latter.

Simple, but not easy. Yet absolutely necessary in a competitive, always-evolving environment.

To anyone who, over the past 3 months, has searched for a new post on The Bell Curve Scar (BCS) but found none, I say that I am sorry if I’ve disappointed you. I could blame a number of things, but the honest truth is that I wanted to take a break from blogging, and I took it. Unfortunately, one week away from BCS became one month, and one month became three.

Hopefully, I’ll soon find my own rhythm for blogging. I may create a flurry of new posts in a short span of days or weeks, then take a break. Or maybe I’ll add more time between posts and maintain a consistent pace. Don’t know which path I’ll take at this point — I’ll just follow my gut as I go.

What makes ChaCha so interesting is that it offers two options for searching: a do-it-yourself, search engine-driven approach, and a human guide who assists you via IM chat. Company president Brad Bostic explains:

ChaCha’s search-with-a-guide process connects you to a live person who has knowledge about your particular topic and who knows the best resources on the web for that topic, as well as the right search keywords. The ChaCha guide then sends you highly relevant links via an instant online chat session and follows up to make certain the results are just what you wanted.

Why a human guide? This option addresses a chink in the Google armor that too many (myself included) have grown to accept: Google results are virtually instantaneous, but it can take several minutes [or longer] to find exactly what you want, even more when you’re not sure what you’re looking for. If the Web were a library, Google is the librarian who, if you’re asking the right question in the right way, points you to the correct section or shelf. With a bit of MD-like diagnosis of your search quandary, a ChaCha guide will [hopefully] pull the right book from the shelf and point you to the page you want.

If you’re a guide, you can work as much or as little as you wish, and you’re paid based on how you’re rated by users. In fact, they’re providing an instant-payment system for guides, which could potentially revolutionize how workers are paid in other occupations and companies. One guide recently shared with Wired magazine how this model might work for her:

Say I need to send my daughter to the store to buy $10 worth of groceries, but I have no cash. I sit down and work on ChaCha for a little while, watch the money add up and click ‘Pay Me Now.’ I give her the debit card and a grocery list. Brilliant.

Better web search, and a new way for people from virtually all walks of life to earn extra income. ChaCha may be onto something.

I don’t proclaim “must-read” very often, but was compelled to do so here after reading these words (bold italics are mine):

Across sectors — retailing, brokerage, software, publishing, computers — business models that produced profits for decades have shut down. In most cases managers aren’t sure what the new model will be, but they’re absolutely certain it won’t have a multi-decade lifespan.

We are going through a transition that will interest historians centuries from now. It’s partly a result of globalization, partly the digital revolution and the information-based economy it spawns.

Author Geoffrey Colvin explains what’s driving this transition:

By freeing companies from physical assets, it has made them both more flexible and more vulnerable to competitors.

The digital revolution also makes business more chaotic by shifting information and power toward customers.

I’m well aware of the media’s propensity for hype, but I found it difficult to disagree with Colvin. Some big changes are going down in the world of commerce. Paradoxically, “staying the course” is likely to take you off-course. Seth Godin agrees:

[D]oing what you’re doing now is wacky. Because what you’re doing now is certain to become obsolete, possibly sooner rather than later.

Google appears to have attained one of the holy grails of computer science: a scalable massively parallel architecture that can readily accommodate diverse software.
Google’s core activity remains Web search. Having built a petascale search machine, though, the question naturally arose: What else could it do? Google’s answer: just about anything.

Google’s success stems from more than foresight, ingenuity, and chutzpah. In every era, the winning companies are those that waste what is abundant – as signaled by precipitously declining prices – in order to save what is scarce. Google has been profligate with the surfeits of data storage and backbone bandwidth. Conversely, it has been parsimonious with that most precious of resources, users’ patience.

Of course, wasting what’s abundant comes with a price, as Gilder notes:

If it’s necessary to waste memory and bandwidth to dominate the petascale era, gorging on energy is an inescapable cost of doing business.

According to Ask.com operations VP Dayne Sampson, the five leading search companies are currently running a cumulative total of about 2 million servers. These servers, and the hard drives to which they’re connected, collectively burn about 5 gigawatts of electricity this year — nearly enough to power greater Las Vegas on the hottest day of the year.

Inspiration is like picking up one of those blinky things in a video game that makes you invincible for awhile. You can do anything, go anywhere, and you don’t have to worry about it.
Those blinky things exist in real life too. It may be a picture, or some words, or a sound, or a idea, or a mistake, or a moment. Whatever it is, pick it up and run with it. Run with it like you stole it.
You can’t bottle up inspiration. You can’t put it in a ziplock, toss it in the freezer, and fish it out later. It’s instantly perishable if you don’t eat it while it’s fresh.
On Friday I was inspired by a few things. I swore off the weekend and dove into it. And I got about 2 weeks of work done in 24 hours. Inspiration is a time machine.
Inspiration is a magical thing, a productivity multiplier, a motivator. But it won’t wait for you. Inspiration is a now thing. If it grabs you, grab it right back and put it to work.

Nelson Hoyt reports:
16,000 fans attempting to coax Eric Clapton & Band back for an encore. In a darkened arena, perhaps 100 people holding lit cigarette lighters aloft. Several thousand holding backlit cell phones aloft!

Surely that scene brought a smile to the face of a legendary musician who’s probably seen it all when it comes to audience behavior at concerts.

1. What are the hardest problems in our current business approach - the market issues that we keep struggling with over and over?
2. What’s (surprisingly) easy about our business – the things that are working better than expected?
3. Where’s the parade? What major trends are we trying to get in front of with our business?

What would our business look like if we:

- Stopped trying to do what’s hard,
- Did more of the things that are easy, and
- Made sure we were in front of the biggest parade we can find?

One of the reasons small is so much more important than big is that people who think small have the power and flexibility to do things for their customers.

Tom Peters shares his grief about HP:

HP [has] made its full share of marketplace slips. But its character (HP’s true “core competence”) was our collective bellwether and fog-cutting lighthouse in a raging sea.

[W]ith a resounding thud [on September 28], HP fell from grace—departed the thin ranks of Big Business at its best.

HP hasn’t been “iconic” for a while now, I suppose. But, I contend, until last week, when the former Chairman denied responsibility and several others “took the Fifth,” the certifiable end to a Dynasty of Character & Excellence had not occurred. Thud.