Neven Mrgan’s Tumbl
Missing vowels since before it was cool.

• Segway directions
• Shriner go-kart directions
• Walking and chewing gum directions
• Angry-walking directions
• Clowncar directions, with an algorithm that maximizes your ability to unload fourteen clowns at your destination
• Heartbroken moping to a sad indie song directions
• Just-got-laid strutting directions
• Indiana Jones’ continent-hopping directions
• Jogging for ten minutes before turning around and putting your new Reeboks in the closet never to be seen again directions
• Drunk-driving directions (joke submitted by Dr. Kurt Sullivan of Warren, MI.)
• Lambada directions

Standing in sharp contrast to another piece of corporate communication floated around recently - Penguin CEO’s remarks regarding the iPad - here’s an email sent today by Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, discussing the company’s new push for cloud services:

My goal was to challenge people to look at the cloud more broadly and understand the multidimensional nature of the cloud transformation happening today. Other companies have defined the cloud in a narrow, one-dimensional way. Although these companies provide some interesting components, Microsoft is uniquely delivering on a wide range of cloud capabilities that bring increasingly more value to our customers.

In my speech, I outlined the five dimensions that define the way people use and realize value in the cloud:

- The cloud creates opportunities and responsibilities
- The cloud learns and helps you learn, decide and take action
- The cloud enhances your social and professional interactions
- The cloud wants smarter devices
- The cloud drives server advances that drive the cloud

This view fuels our investments across the entire company, from datacenters to cloud platform technologies to cloud-based development tools and applications. Today, nearly every one of our products has, or is developing, features or services that support the cloud. As I said today, when it comes to the cloud, we are all in. We are all in across every product line we have and across every dimension of the cloud.

Let me put it this way: cloud services are something I’m very interested in, and I’m having a hard time understanding, caring about, or even following this meaningless drivel. On the other hand, Berkshire Hathaway’s awesome annual report does not concern me in the least, and I enjoyed reading it very much.

The tagline for this campaign (which has a home at http://www.microsoft.com/cloud) is “We’re all in.” In poker terms, this means that they are betting everything. That’s either a poor choice of words or a very bold statement.

Update: The Microsoft Cloud website was pulled for some reason.
Update #2: It’s back.

Strong, no-nonsense language from Penguin’s CEO John Makinson:

The iPad represents the first real opportunity to create a paid distribution model that will be attractive to consumers.

We will be embedding audio, video and streaming in to everything we do.

The definition of the book itself is up for grabs.

Asked how he felt about Apple’s 30-percent cut:

This is better than the equivalent print agency model, in which publishers let retailers keep 50 percent.

• The Man in Black is an immortal spirit whose real name is Anagram Nietzsche.
• It turns out, The Numbers are in fact a series of Arabic numerals arranged in ascending order.
• The Smoke Monster is Randy Nations! What do you mean who’s that - Hurley’s manager at Mr. Cluck’s Chicken Shack! Later, Locke’s boss…? So, anyway, do you get it?
• The crash, the island happenings, the flash-forwards, and all other events in the show are a mass hallucination among the travelers of Oceanic Flight 815. The flight was actually delayed and they suffered hallucinogenic food poisoning at Sydney Airport’s Rockin’ Rolls Sushi bar.
• … and then Sayid goes, “We call it… The Aristocrats!”
• The key to the Island’s mystery is the shocking fact that Nikki and Paulo weren’t that bad, come on.
• The Island is a vortex of time/space-bending energy with the power to cause miracles, such as adding another three seasons to a six-season contract if the ratings are good enough, and also it can heal people.
• Senior writer’s note: “Something something Cheeseburger in Paradise.”
• It was all a dream. All of it; you’ve been dreaming your whole life since September 22, 2004.
• While walking angrily through the jungle, Locke stumbles upon Jack and Sawyer who are playing a game of pretend-tennis, without a ball. He humors them for a moment by following the invisible ball with his eyes. Then, he starts hearing the tick-tock of the ball. Tick, Tock. Tick! Tock! Tick! Tock! LOST.

Scott Adams is upset:

“The world has become so complex that simple tasks are nearly impossible.”

(via marco)

Mr. Adams lists four examples of simple things that have been made unusable for him by our modern world’s complexity: service fees on his business checking account, a home video switcher/splitter system, a cellphone upgrade, and consolidating all his insurance policies.

With all due respect to Scott Adams, none of those things is something simple that’s been made complicated. They’re all just complicated.

I’m not arguing that his bank shouldn’t provide frictionless, reasonable service for his business transactions, or that he shouldn’t be able to change his insurance policy; I’m saying that there’s nothing simple about those. The simple way to manage money is to keep cash in a drawer. The simple way to have homeowner’s, auto, and risk insurance is to not have insurance.

It’s a bit like when people complain about how complex contracts and laws are. Or science, for instance. It’s fantastic to find individuals who can explain these issues with clarity and insight, but let’s not kid ourselves: what they’ll be doing is reducing this complexity to manageable levels. The complexity itself will still exist, and it’ll surface as soon as we start wanting to know more and do more.

Banking, for instance, isn’t so complicated - if all you want to do is direct-deposit your paycheck and spend what you have. But add checks, wire transfers, credit cards, loans, cash advances, interest-earning accounts, business accounts, etc. etc. and it’s not so much that modern banking becomes lamentably complicated; it’s that this sort of banking is complicated, because it’s a wholly different thing.

Sorry to make this about the iPad, but I have to: the iPad attempts to simplify computing not by some stroke of magic, but by doing less. You can’t have full multitasking and multiple apps oncscreen at the same time and apps installable from everywhere and compatibility with Mac OS X and a physical keyboard AND simplicity.

The best you can have is a simplicity/complexity mix of the right sort: simple enough to be comfortable, complex enough to be useful. Since few companies have Apple’s restraint and taste, it’s best for us consumers to leave the complexity to the banks and insurance providers and technology companies of the world, and bring the simplicity ourselves: do less, and do the best less you can.