Is it Branding or the Roasting?

photoIf you are a coffee lover like me you probably don’t like the fact that the popularity of coffee has more to do with product branding than the experience of the drink (or the quality of the bean or roasting). Since I’m always thinking of business opportunities on the web (in a grand delusion to escape corporate America) I’ve been intrigued by a few coffee companies (web and local) have used different forms of branding, causes, etc. to take this great commodity and make a decent profit.

Someone recent gave me a bag of this coffee, A Land of a Thousand Hills, which will be brewed tomorrow for me and the wife (and a carafe to take to work friends).  The thing that intrigues me is the work to build a message and niche branding behind the coffee.  I’ve often considered private labeling a local roaster and selling on the web, but haven’t found the right niche.

People love the coffee, but they also love the look of the bag and the story of the coffee.  In this case there is an Environmental, Christian, Help Rwanda Message.  Start helping by buying the coffee.  Most people don’t realize that coffee is what keeps many people in these countries fed.

These guys have a great niche and story… And we’ll see about the quality of the beans tomorrow.

Update: The roast was Italian, and the bean sized varied.  Like a Sumatra the smaller beans were fairly charred.  I expected to taste mostly a roast profile rather than a varietal one (starbucks effect).  The grind had an unusual distinct smell I couldn’t place until I drank it.  To my surprise I didn’t really taste a dark carmel roast flavor but something that tasted like green tea!  I have to say it is the most unusual coffee I’ve had.  Not being a fan of green tea, it’s not my “cup of tea” so to speak. One of my co-workers (with no prompting from me) said, “Is this tea or coffee?” I showed them the beans to dispel their unbelief!  I’ll have to ask my local roaster for some background on Rwandan coffee.  Thanks Therian for sharing some interesting Joe with an interesting message.

Olivetree Bible and the iPhone

I’ve used the OliveTree software for many years (and platforms). The iPhone version started off VERY rough but now they have a great product for this platform. I love the pop-up references when reading Grudem’s Systematic theology!

What I’ve got installed?

  • Several Bibles including NASB (thinking of buying Strongs version)
  • Grudem’s Systematic Theology (Great!)
  • Matthew Henry Commentary
  • Some Lewis and Piper books

If you have an iPhone and want to study the Christian scriptures look no further.

http://www.olivetree.com/

Why Google is Winning

Google is winning because it works.  People like things that “just work”. 

Let’s look at home computers.  They have become more complicated and error prone.  This has to do with Viruses, half-baked software, Microsoft engineering, and too many options on hardware.  Users get frustrated when their IT friend says, “Just buy a new PC from Best Buy”.  The answer is usually upgrade the hardware, wipe the drive, put better virus software on…. But the answer to “just make it work” is get a new PC.  Wonder why a lot of people are trying the Mac?

How about Google?  What “just works”? For an experiment I tried the Yahoo search bar in my browser first for two weeks. After a few searches I usually reverted to Google, and got what I wanted on the first page of results.  Today I’m switching my default search bar back to Google.  Remember “just works”?  Try putting “buy Mark lunch next Friday” in your Google calendar.  Yes, it will figure it out.  Google Calendar “Just works”. 

Rather than wrangling over features and functionality I’ve started just asking the question “Does it just work”?

KDE 4.2 Released

KDE 4.2?  Does it matter to you?

I recently tried KUbuntu live CD (8.10).  After being a KDE fan for a long time I figured it would be great to try the 4.1 version and see how it worked.  

Unfortunately, I found some of the basic things I wanted to do very confusing.  Not impossible, but after trying Ubuntu and seeing the simplicity I love in my Mac I was a bit underwhelmed.  Taking the 4.2 release for a test ride should be interesting.  There has been a lot negative press on the 4.x release – maybe 4.2 will address some of the problems.

Here is one of the big reasons I think KDE 4.2 might matter.  Each release there is a little better support for Windows.  I think a lot of Windows users that are using open source applications would love the opportunity to have a new window manager (a popular thing among us theming geeks for years [Sorry Frank, I know you don’t get this part]).  Ars Technica has a very interesting review / test drive of what worked, and what didn’t.  It’s a very interesting option that I think I’ll go try for myself.  If you are on Windows XP and planning to skip Vista but would like an eye-candy upgrade this might be the free ticket you were looking for.  I’ll add a comment on my results…

Lotus Connections 2.5

LotusSphere 2009 is going on this week in Orlando. I was unable to attend, but I am very excited to see some sneak-peek announcements this morning about the only Lotus product I care about, Lotus Connections.

Picking a base product for any service offering is a lot like jumping on a train. At the end of the day it’s a leap and if you make it, well, you probably got lucky. I’ve been busy working with the 2.0 version of this product and it seems at every turn I’m having “close but no cigar” moments. I’ve found myself adding patchwork to get some of the capabilities and look I want, often saying, “darn it’s so close!”. From what I’ve seen on this blog, the 2.5 version will add many of the things I’ve been hoping for.

It drives me crazy when systems organize information on a web site by functional views rather than usage scenarios. Can you imagine when you went to Facebook if you had to see “Picture updates” then go to another location for “Status Updates”, and then another for “Profile Updates”? You want to see everything happening, and in Facebook that’s called the “News Feed”. Looks like LC 2.5 will be adding that and we can leave behind the individual widgets on Homepage. Unfortunately it looks like the Community pages are still grouped by system, but we can easily write a widget to work off of a custom aggregate feed.

Communities is picking up a lot of much needed functionality from the screenshots. File sharing, Wiki, smells like Quickr. I’m not sure why the two products haven’t merged yet because they are so complimentary. If the Wiki is the Quickr wiki I really hope there will still be an integration plan for Confluence. Confluence is the leader in this space and many people have huge installations they won’t migrate. A simple way to map a community to a Confluence space + some member management would neatly fit the bill. Now that there is widget support I could create a widget for displaying Confluence content (oh, I have one…)

Not much information on the new forum support in Communities. The current forum isn’t really much better than FB and is too light for serious use. It needs to be top-notch. It needs to have Feed support by community, not topic centric.

Profiles is getting a “wall” which I guess in the corporate world will be called “Buzz”. There is a “status” but I wonder how Twitter-like it will be. Seems more like facebook status than twitter. I feed Twitter into FB and use it to update FB but also use it for conversations in twitterland.

Thanks Luis for the sneak peek, we’ll be waiting for a beta version 🙂

Merry Christmas!


The real message of Christmas for me, as a Christian, is the creator becoming part of the creation. The story can be found this time of year in many carols and the treasured, time-honored tales. It’s all based on what we know from history of that culture and what’s recorded in the Scriptures right? Well, not quite. Here’s a video sure to make you laugh and see the real point of an amazing tale. Enjoy Retooning the Nativity.

No Thanks McDonalds, Not Even if it is FREE

mccafe1.jpgMcDonalds is really wanting to get in on the coffee game. How do I know? All the local stores are doing “Free Lattes” all day on Friday. Free? Can you imagine if your local Starbucks had free Lattes? The police would have to direct traffic in front of the stores. We stopped to see if we could get a Redbox movie (with a free code) and getting a FREE Latte seemed right up our alley as Mr. & Mrs. GreatJava. My wife didn’t get much sleep last night, so she ordered a decaf. The clerk responded with “We don’t do decaf lattes”. What? Really? I wondered if what she meant was, “Lady, there is no real coffee in this, and therefore no caffeine”. My wife ordered the beverage which was prepared quickly.

We got in the car and my wife took one sip, which was followed by a “blaaah!”. Keep in mind, my wife is a well-trained coffee snob, so I figured I should try it. I opened the lid to find a few bubbles. Yes, bubbles not foam. It was near white in appearance, and had a faint coffee smell to it. Committed at this point, I take a sip. “Yuk.” Was it the lack of espresso, missing foam, or temperature? Nope, it was just gross. It tasted like someone warmed up some milk, blew a few bubbles in it with a straw, and mixed in a meagerly teaspoon of instant joe. Wow. McDonalds, you spent a lot of money on this product rollout, testing, and free samples. You’ve missed the boat by a mile – I suggest you stick with the burgers and keep your day job.

Great to be in a crowd?

My iMac does this crazy thing where the desktop gets all kinds of “quilted” patterns on the screen. I’ve had it in the store and they can’t find anything. Of course they want to restore the OS and other mess. Isn’t this why I bought a Mac? Turns out tons of people have this problem. I’m just glad it’s a general thing and not my specific computer.

I suspect my next computer will be a small form factor PC with an unbelievable monitor running Ubuntu. The trick is to keep running open source applications or cross platform apps (like MoneyDance).

What’s Wrong with the iPhone?

Apple is what is wrong with the iPhone. Apple tightly controls several aspects of the phone. The software development interfaces don’t allow you to access some of the core data on the phone. This means you won’t find a great replacement calendar in the App Store. In addition, Apple also does not allow programs to run in the background while the phone is off. This means that 3rd party programs can’t trigger your phone to awake if a new IM message appears or you reach a specific GPS coordinate. Forget about taking “Remember the Milk” to a whole new level by alerting the user when they drive by that convenience store on the way home!

If Apple had done a better job at some of the core programs this might not have been as big of an issue. The calendar program is attractive but is very lacking. I’ve listed a few items below:

  • Calendar Entries cannot be emailed. This was a real let down for me.
  • Calendar has almost no settings that can be changed. I’d love a default 15 minute alarm. Wouldn’t you?
  • No task list integration
  • No iCal support for external calendars, this should be simple
  • No OTA calendar synchronization

If there was an open API in this area, and you could convince Apple to put the program on it’s “App Store” there would be an answer overnight.

The second big issue is programs running in the background. Apple might have some good reasons for this but certainly there is a way to provide a hook or some rules to “protect” the platform. Even Windoze Mobile programs could do this (ouch). Let’s say I download a great streaming music program and want to browse the web or read an ebook. Not on the iPhone. Only the Apple iPod program can play music in the background and they don’t support streaming audio!

Apple please don’t forget that the “open market” principles work best on your platform and App Store too!

Buzzwords Can Hurt

You’ve heard the old saying about “Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” right? I think we know that’s not true, but it’s also wrong when it comes to buzzwords in the Enterprise. Want to see your corporate leadership and legal department run to the hills and prepare for war? Say these words together, “social, media, intranet”.

“Social Media” is a buzzword. Essentially social media sites are just web applications that allow people to interact by sharing. The sharing may be in many forms (just a few for example):

• Conversations – Forums, Blogs, Twitter
• Web Site Links – Bookmark sites (delicous), News sites (digg, reddit)
• Documents – Wikipedia, WetPaint, Google Docs
• Personal Information – Linked in, Facebook, MySpace
• Pictures – Flickr, Picassa

So choose your words wisely, especially the buzzwords! Another term your leadership and lawyers might find far more palatable is “employee contributed content”. Enterprise Social Media could be called “Collaboration 2.0 – Employee contributed content that drives knowledge management. Just makes you want to puke and go work for a start-up? Dittos. 🙂