Is G-Mail Real?

John Markoff's article in the New York Times, Google to Roll Out E-Mail Service bears the date of April 1, 2004. While the content in general is true on most counts, it was the final four paragraphs that made me wonder if the date published is significant. ;^)

As for G-Mail -- It's not on this nifty page, yet. You could find an open source version of one sort of gmail here, though.

Happy April!
Would they really?

Tech Eye for the Ad Guy?

The New York Times, in its article Leisure Pursuits of Today's Young Man by John Schwartz, has added yet more empirical support to the notion that customer behavior is in the middle of a period of fundamental and radical change.

Citing the number of men ages 18 to 24 with Internet access at 75%, the article points out that, although a number of factors render exact statistical comparison unreliable, increased Web use could be to blame for decreased TV viewership in this demographic group. Men in this age group are hanging out Online, playing games with friends, sharing files and tunes, downloading porn, and generally using the Web as a major tool in their lives.

Well, duh.

Even while spinning the news that TV viewership in this group was down again by implying that the blame should be on the boys' bladders, the traditional ad industry had to find it still more difficult than usual to deny that these numbers actually mean something. As the Times noted:

The television industry was shaken last October when the ratings from Nielsen Media Research showed that a huge part of a highly prized slice of the American population was watching less television. As the fall TV season began, viewership among men from 18 to 34 fell 12 percent compared with the year before, Nielsen reported. And for the youngest group of adult men, those 18 to 24, the decline was a steeper 20 percent.

In a world where fortunes are made and lost over the evanescent jitterings of fractions of audience share, the Nielsen announcement was the equivalent of a nuclear strike, a smallpox outbreak and a bad hair day all rolled into one.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/29/technology/29guy.html)

Do you think it would really ruin their day on Madison Avenue to learn what portion of those men are tempering their TV time with TIVO?

Change demands relevance and value. The Ad Guy and the Tech Guy need to find out where the Customer Guy hangs out these days.

And now, back to marketing - For the rest of the century

Also, from the technology section of the washingtonpost.com site, comes good news for companies with deep pockets and sought-after domain names.

A dozen unnamed companies have already taken advantage of Network Solutions' offer to register domain names for 100 years, for just $1,000 each. Network Solutions is positioning the service to appeal to the about 550,000 of its 4.5 million customers it has identified as "power users."

This might seem like a high price to the majority of Network Solutions customers (and, based strictly on multiplying current rates by 100, it is.) But, for companies like Microsoft and the Washington Post, both of which suffered outages due to domain registration renewal glitches, it seems a small outlay to virtually guarantee ownership of their domains into the next century. Network Solutions has not named the twelve companies who have signed up so far.

Of course, this offer begs the question of whether domain names will even be something our progeny will find necessary, as well as the consideration of the consequences should Network Solutions cease to exist. Technically, Network Solutions registers the domain for ten years at a time, and will automatically renew it at the end of each decade.

Some quoted in the article questioned whether such a move is ethical, given that no one who signs the contract will be around in 100 years to make sure the service is still provided. Even so, companies that depend on their domain names for branding may find it easy to justify the outlay, since the cost is less than one ad and downtime from a forgotten renewal could add up to far more.

Word for Word

From the transcript of yesterday's 9/11 commission hearing, as found on washingtonpost.com:

At the commission hearings (see the complete transcript of yesterday's testimony) , Clarke was interrogated about his formerly anonymous briefing by former Illinois governor James R. Thompson, a Republican member of the commission.

"THOMPSON: Mr. Clarke, in this background briefing . . . you intended to mislead the press, did you not?

"CLARKE: No. I think there is a very fine line that anyone who's been in the White House, in any administration, can tell you about. And that is when you are special assistant to the president and you're asked to explain something that is potentially embarrassing to the administration, because the administration didn't do enough or didn't do it in a timely manner and is taking political heat for it, as was the case there, you have a choice. Actually, I think you have three choices. You can resign rather than do it. I chose not to do that. Second choice is . . . .

"THOMPSON: Why was that, Mr. Clarke? You finally resigned because you were frustrated.

"CLARKE: I was, at that time, at the request of the president, preparing a national strategy to defend America's cyberspace, something which I thought then and think now is vitally important. I thought that completing that strategy was a lot more important than whether or not I had to provide emphasis in one place or other while discussing the facts on this particular news story.

"The second choice one has, Governor, is whether or not to say things that are untruthful. And no one in the Bush White House asked me to say things that were untruthful, and I would not have said them.

"In any event, the third choice that one has is to put the best face you can for the administration on the facts as they were, and that is what I did.

"I think that is what most people in the White House in any administration do when they're asked to explain something that is embarrassing to the administration.

"THOMPSON: But you will admit that what you said in August of 2002 is inconsistent with what you say in your book?

"CLARKE: No, I don't think it's inconsistent at all. I think, as I said in your last round of questioning, Governor, that it's really a matter here of emphasis and tone. I mean, what you're suggesting, perhaps, is that as special assistant to the president of the United States when asked to give a press backgrounder I should spend my time in that press backgrounder criticizing him. I think that's somewhat of an unrealistic thing to expect.

"THOMPSON: Well, what it suggests to me is that there is one standard of candor and morality for White House special assistants and another standard of candor and morality for the rest of America.

"CLARKE: I don't get that. . . . I don't think it's a question of morality at all. I think it's a question of politics.

"THOMPSON: Well, I. . . . "

(And here Thompson has to pause to wait for the victims of the relatives in the gallery to stop applauding.)
"THOMPSON: I'm not a Washington insider. I've never been a special assistant in the White House. I'm from the Midwest. So I think I'll leave it there."
------------

I'm from the Midwest, too, but the way Clarke handled the situation sounds less than scurrilous to me....

New Synonym for Scurrilous - Telling the Truth When Others Won't

Just in time to make the morning news, Condoleeza Rice has come up with some old e-mail messages (the "unclassified portions") that are supposed to be a rebuttal to the eloquent and candid testimony provided by thirty-year intelligence veteran Richard Clarke at yesterday's session of the 9/11 commission.

CNN.com is reporting that Rice has called Clarke's testimony a "scurrilous" acusation," since it implied that in ignoring warnings of a domestic attack using commercial aircraft, Bush Jr. was not attentive to the terrorist threat.

It's no wonder Rice would accuse Clarke of "expressing offensive reproach," since I'm sure she is offended by the honest approach that Clarke used in both personally apologizing for and in reproaching the Bush administration's lack of attention to the threats identified by Clarke and his team.

Despite warnings presented by Clarke, and others in Washington, including the committee chaired by Gary Hart, others in the Bush administration "couldn't imagine" that planes could be used to attack the WTC. Come on folks, how stupid do you think the American people are? Tom Clancy even wrote a novel about a similar threat. Why is it that folks in this administration have such long memories about Clarke's role in the letting them know about this threat, but "can't recall" so many other details of those days prior to the attacks?

Rice's desperate attempt to cover her tail comes despite bi-partisan acknowledgement that Clarke is an extremely dedicated and knowledgeable staffer, who's thirty years of public service has spanned four administrations. Clarke was not only aware of the threat and proposed measures to combat it that fell on deaf ears, but was among the first in Washington to warn of the potential threat of cyber-terror, a threat that has yet to be addressed.

Rice, who can't be bothered to show up for these hearings, sounds as arrogant as Rumsfeld did yesterday when he noted that "the Senate can be a problem." Ironically, she describes Clarke as the arrogant one.

For once, today, it was refreshing to hear from someone in the administration who had the cojones to apologize to the American people, and particularly to the families of those killed in the attacks instead of concentrating on covering his behind.

By the way, just because the Bush administration couldn't be bothered with intelligence gathered during the Clinton administration, doesn't mean it didn't exist.

Arrogance is calling reporters to your office to hear negative assertions and name calling from a woman who couldn't even show up for the hearings. What Rice called Clarke's arrogance was really courage. The courage to admit that the Bush administration dropped the ball and the integrity to admit it and apologize for it.