Thoughts on Car Pool Lanes:

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Yesterday, while heading home from work, I noticed a gigantic, jacked up full sized pickup truck bouncing down the I-405 south car pool lane, trying to herd it between the lines. I was thinking why should a mess like that be in the car pool lanes, then it hit me, the solution.

I don't know how it works where you live, but the carpool lanes here in the greater Seattle area are an absolute disaster.

The traffic here is horrible and the car pool lanes are not helping a whit. Indeed many times trying to drive south near Renton traffic is bumper to bumper stopped and the car pool lane is virtually empty. The car pool lanes here actually make driving considerably more dangerous.

I am assuming the main intent is to convince people during rush hour traffic to carpool so that there are less cars on the road. So now un-employed house wives use the carpool lanes to go shopping during rush hour in their monstrous SUV's, and take a three year-old child with them to be legal. This does not get cars off the road. Also many carpool lanes here were literally 24 hours a day, the lions' share of the time they sat empty while working folk commuted to work at 5:30 am, what a screaming waste!
It is so bad here that Tim Eyman recently had a referendum on the ballot to entirely dispose of them!
Here is the solution I am confidant you will agree it is elegant.
Change the car pool lanes to ECO-LANES!
They will only be used by vehicles that get 30 miles to the gallon or more. A sticker would be purchased to affix somewhere that is clearly visible. I have noticed that virtually all the huge SUV's cruising the carpool lanes have heavily tinted windows, who knows how many people or legal drivers might actually be in there? The police would have to pull them over just to check!
Of course this solution would not only help with traffic, it would help to minimize buying foreign oil, it would help in the department of global warming as well! The more I think about it, the better the solution works.

Current situation: Car pool lanes are being used by people carrying individuals who are not legal drivers, who are not commuting to work, the intention it being abused. Cars used in the car pool lane are often three time the size and weight, and burn three times the gas of a commuter car.

Proposed Solution: Make the Eco Lanes about real improvement of; traffic, fuel use, carbon emission, pollution, safety, and wasting the very limited resources we have!

How can Twitter turn a buck?

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How can Twitter turn a buck?

We keep hearing stories about maybe Twitter will be sold, and nothing happens. We hear about revenue models but nothing happens. The idea that keeps getting kicked around is advertising ala Google, and yet there doesn't seem to be any concrete idea how to make it work and nothing happens. To me this is a failure.

I feel just treading water in the rapid breakneck social media world is the very definition of failure. How big a failure? Big. Jolie O'Dell says it is one of the "Top ten failures of 2009" http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_failures_of_2009.php I agree. The promise was so great and the growth so fast to not make a major move of some kind really saps the momentum. Can you feel the slowing of the Twitter momentum? Yeah I can too.

We can talk about MySpace and how it went from 60% to some 30% of the market in one year and now will lose some hundreds of millions of dollars. In my opinion something like a social media service once tainted as being undesirable and un-cool is almost un-repairable. I don't think we will be able to re-cool MySpace. We can talk about all the little Twitter copycats too.
http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/news/2007/05/twitter_clones

So what to do?
I find the downtime and lack of service or "Fail Whale" the most disturbing aspect of Twitter. It was funny at first, now I wonder if there is any plan at all to move on this and get the infrastructure fixed. I know this costs money.

How to make money? I would look at the users and grade them. We have all seen the studies that a fairly small percentage of people do 90% of the tweeting I would charge these people. A formula should be utilized which considers the amount of tweets, the number of followers, and the value therein. Personally I would pay a small fee, say $10 a year for better service. I would rather deal with this than cheesy advertising. Whatever you decide Twitter hurry up! You are running out of time.

What the Hell does that Woman want for Christmas?

What the hell does that woman want for Christmas?

Are men and woman different in what they like to get for Christmas, or presents in general? Sure they are, and you know they are, but sometimes slip up in the thinking anyway. Have you ever heard a woman say this, "I don't want anything that plugs in"? Think about that while I make an all encompassing statement;" If you buy her something to wear, that she really wants, you will rarely go wrong".

Think about this in the most round terms. Women wear perfume and virtually all woman want a exotic scent they think as their own. Woman like jewelry. If you have the means, every woman should have diamond earrings and a pearl necklace as classic pieces of jewelry, these can vary in price wildly of course. Women like clothes and if you can latch onto a jacket, dress or shoes she really likes, she will be most happy and also appreciate the effort you have taken to notice what she likes and admires in dressing style. This includes purses of course and if she is a business woman that travels, a nice briefcase or laptop case is part of the package. Cell phones are considered a necessity by most women and a nice I-phone or blackberry could be very handy and help her stay organized and save time.

In broader terms when a woman gets in her car she wears it, I am not suggesting you buy her a new car for Christmas, but it follows with this whole "wearing" concept. In the same way a day at a spa for pampering is something she is seen in, it is something she puts on, a facial etc. A new kitchen, or just new paint, is part of her ensemble. Men rarely care all that much the color of the kitchen wall. You metro-sexual, Architectural Digest magazine readers, I am not speaking to you.
Contrast this with most standard issue, heterosexual men, they want toys.

Things that plug in are fine. If you give a man who woodworks a nice table saw he doesn't think of it as a tool to work with, he sees it as a toy to play with. If you buy him a nice pistol, he doesn't think "oh now I can protect my family", he thinks "ah this is going to make noise, make the other boys jealous, feel nice in my hands, and be fun to play with". A car can be seen as a status symbol by both men and women but guys oftentimes will want to "thrash" a 4x4, dirt bike, maybe even a pontoon boat through rapids, and make no mistake they are playing with their big toys out in the world's sandbox. If you are looking cheap, many men like a video game that caters to their interests, if they like racing maybe a racing game, if they like sitting around and drinking beer, maybe a Wii so they will move occasionally, their skin won't graft with the recliner vinyl.

Men rarely want clothes for gifts, clothes are something required by law to wear in public, you cannot play with clothes.

If you give someone money it says "I don't know you that well, and I don't want to work very hard at this whole gift thingy". If you give them a gym membership it says "god I wish you would clean up your fat-ass act'! If you give them a vacuum cleaner it says "yes the house is dirty and this kills two birds with one stone..right"? If you get them a book or CD it says " here this was cheap, easy to buy, easy to wrap and it technically fulfills the minimum gift requirement". if you buy someone booze it means "hey this is the minimum gift and also I can share it, and I need a shot right now". If you get someone some type of subscription it means "I want to piss you off for the next YEAR"! If you send them a fruit cake or one of those boxes full of sausage, cheese and crackers it means "secretly I hate you and want to poison you". If you give a nephew or grandchild a drum set or puppy it means "HA! you thought my revenge would never arrive and now here it is"!
Homemade gifts? Ahh..it depends of course but the hook is the gift receiver feels obligated to keep it. A book or ugly sweater (unless you knitted it),they can ditch and say they lost it. If you paint them a picture that is 20"x30" and they really hate it but know you put a lot of work into it? Ahh...tough, a Jerry Seinfeld episode of a mess.

Christmas is basically for kids IMHO, but I told my wife today she was" the equivalent of a hard-headed five year old girl". She said "and you are like a 13 year old boy". I said "so I am older than you", she said "yes but boys are more immature so divide by two and there you are". There we are indeed.