Answer Guy Central

You know all those s***** deals the f****** a******* at Goldman Sachs and other sunk-the-economy companies have been making? I have some great news: Goldman Sachs employees aren’t allowed to e-mail about them any more.

OK, in this case, it’s actually terrible news for everybody but Goldman Sachs. But at least the investment bank’s employees will learn to communicate more professionally!

Goldman Sachs has issued an official ban on using profanity in e-mail. If it wasn’t a company suffering from hubris overload I’d approve; there really isn’t any reason to use profanity in anything you write in business communications. It’s a sign of laziness, and you don’t want to be seen as lazy by anyone in your business circles.

But in the case of Goldman Sachs, the loose communications style that’s been in place as a matter of corporate culture has helped the rest of us gain insight into Goldman Sach’s dealings. Let’s be frank; the same laziness that had high-level Goldman Sachs employees using uncensored expletives in written communication made them less likely to cover their tracks as they merrily committed fraud for personal gain.

OK, so I actually approve of the no-profanity edict at Goldman Sachs. It’s possible the the same enforced gentility prohibiting bad language could permeate their overall culture just a tiny bit and short-circuit a dirty deed or two before they happen. But forget Goldman Sachs.

What’s your company’s profanity etiquette policy?

People who know me well enough and do business with me for any period of time will attest to the fact that in casual conversation I use naughty words. And I’ve been known to drop the occasional F-Bomb for intentional effect even with people I barely know (when I know that they business I transact with them will conclude soon after).

And let me be clear: this isn’t about prudishness. There’s not a streak of that in me.

What I’m saying is that when you write something down and send it off into the ether, there is absolutely no reason for it to include profanity. It’s like making sure no pictures of yourself end up on Facebook that could get you in trouble later.

Think about Propriety and Etiquette before you write something: it’s a simple business change.

When I wrote a few weeks ago about Microsoft’s cool new battery technology, I was thinking that the beast from Redmond had headed down a new road. They’re actually giving the technology away under some circumstances, and mundane as it sounds, real changes to the way batteries work are REAL change.

But then I came across a business change at Microsoft that convinced me of something ugly I mentioned last month. Microsoft Is Becoming Irrelevant.

Yesterday, I started using a new portable computer. It’s one of those Netbooks that weighs almost nothing and gives me a whole day’s battery so that when I’m out I can work on a screen and keyboard that are easier to handle than those on my Droid SmartPhone.

Like most netbooks it comes with the Windows 7, which while frustrating to an old computer geek like me is actually a pretty good upgrade. And the fact that it’s Windows 7 Starter Edition is fine; this little computer would be overwhelmed trying to do some of the things that the higher-end versions of Windows 7 can do.

And in playing with this little toy I realized that something we’ve all come to take for granted isn’t possible in Windows 7 Starter Edition. If you use Windows 7 Starter Edition, you can’t change your desktop wallpaper.

Let’s start by being clear: this isn’t really important, right?  And forget libertarian posturing like  “I have the right . . .!”  You don’t.

But here’s the thing that matters: Microsoft didn’t fail to include the ability to change wallpapers in Windows 7 Starter Edition; you can download third-party software that makes it possible. What they’ve done is leave a simple feature that the whole world has come to understand out, and made it a component of a much more complex upgrade that wouldn’t work very well on most of the computers that come with Windows 7 Starter Edition. And suggest you buy that upgrade,

And even that isn’t it.

When I was looking into this issue I came across this page. And I checked: the license for Windows 7 Starter Edition specifically forbids you from changing your desktop wallpaper. Check the link if you like, or if you have a computer running Windows 7 Starter Edition you can see the wording in paragraph 8 of the file C:\Windows\System32\license.rtf.

Business Change takes many forms. I begrudge Microsoft not one cent of any revenues they can generate. But suggesting that people perform an ill-advised software upgrade and going out of their way to point out that something as simple as changing your desktop wallpaper is illegal? Wow.

If you got to this post by reading the description, you’re already nervous about what’s to come. Strap in.

I’ve mentioned before how little Google cares about your data security, and while you could read some of this as a “the sky is falling” rant, it’s nothing of the sort. Fact is, there’s no real security on the Internet, and the issue isn’t that you’re being watched so much as it is that you need to understand how, and have some idea what that means to you so you might protect yourself as best you can.

This week, a new browser plug-in that will keep you up to date on just how often you’re transmitting personal information to Google became available. It’s available here, and works with both Firefox and Chrome.

If you install this software, you’re going to spend an awful lot of time being jarred by flashing and noisy alarms. I suspect that very few people will use it for more than a few hours before they uninstall it, stop browsing the Internet, and hide underneath their beds.

OK, so you’ll just uninstall the software, but you’ll still be horrified. Allow me to repeat: there is no data security on the internet (and) Google is the prime perpetrator of that truth.

So What?

Actually, you can read the “so what?” a couple of different ways:

Say it like a child and it means “this has nothing to do with me; it’s beyond my control, it is what it is“. Fair enough, and ultimately correct; you aren’t going to stop using the Internet, so get used to and accept that information is being gathered about you and your habits.

Or, make a plan. A dear friend recently bought a paper shredder to make sure that her bills and other documents didn’t get used against her when she threw them out, and weeks later she’s still talking about how good using it makes her feel. She happens to be quite old and doesn’t use the Internet, so imagine what she’d think if she read this!

The Computer Answer Guy can help you with your data security. So can PC-VIP and any number of other technology consultants. Or you can do it yourself. But if your meaning for “so what?” isn’t the childish one, you need to do something.

Right Now.

We have a legal system in the USA that’s meant to ensure nobody gets railroaded by a single party with an agenda to fulfill. And while the Internal Revenue Service gets to act as judge, jury, and executioner, most everything that doesn’t involve taxes takes the cooperation of many parties to resolve.

I have a new fear of respect for the Library of Congress.

The folks who previously started archiving the entire stream of drivel scrolling through Twitter have ruled (umm . . . overridden law) that certain portions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act just  don’t count. What was illegal is now . . . not

The new “fair use” exemptions specifically allow a few things that have been happening as a matter of course, including the “jailbreaking” of SmartPhones like the Apple iPhone, and making copies of DVDs under certain conditions.

I approve. Now here’s the thing:

• You may have the right to unlock your iPhone now, making it legal to install software that Apple hasn’t approved. But Apple still has the right to push out software updates that will undo your unlock, potentially breaking your iPhone. And they have the right to void your warranty because you did it.
• You may have the right if you are doing something “non-commercial” and “educational” to copy a DVD or grab a portion of it for use in a presentation, but there’s a reason I put those words in quotes.
• You may have the right to circumvent the software in a piece of hardware designed to stop you from copying software, but I’ll bet that for almost everyone a better idea is just to buy newer software.

Or as Jeff Goldblum’s character famously said in Jurassic Park, “just because you can doesn’t mean you should”.

I’m not making a moral distinction. I can’t given that when my local Blockbuster Video shut down I started feeling pretty good about downloading movies over the Internet. I’m saying that I’m impressed that The Library of Congress had the power to do what they’ve done and have made so obvious a good call and there’s nothing the regular powers-that-be can do about it.

And that’s what business change is. And it’s why The Answer Guy is here.

Welcome back to Chatroulette. We hope you enjoy exposing yourself to strangers across the world one at a time. But we’re going to help police arrest you, because that works for us.

Actually, I like this.

Ever since I mentioned Chatroulette a few months back, my words on how ridiculous Chatroulette is have been a big draw here; we get traffic every day to this post about Chatroulette,  and I suspect the reason is that we were the first to point out the issues with geocoding pictures of naked masturbating people.

Vist Chatroulette.com now and you see this ominous warning:

Welcome to our site. Enjoy your time here.

Warning: Broadcasting inappropriate content to minors is a violation of both US and UN law.
We are actively cooperating with law enforcement agencies.

Yeah, that’s right. It might not have occurred to you when you dropped your pants for all the world to see, but “all the world” includes minors. And exposing yourself to minors is illegal in many places.

Well, as NewTeeVee.com reports, Chatroulette is now cooperating with law enforcement officials who ask for help identifying naked people. And this isn’t a freedom of expression issue, it’s a “what the heck is happening on the Internet?” issue.

Or it’s about business. Chatroulette is a cool enough idea in a “social networking is what the Internet is really about and Chatroulette is a form of social networking” way, but there’s no good way for a small operation to police everything that happens on their site. So let’s let the police do our policing! It’s free, and we look like good guys!

What if your next business change included a way to let others make your change for you?

I Hate Facebook. Oh, I use it,  but I hate it. For me, Facebook is as good an example of how to do absolutely everything the wrong way as you’re ever likely to see.

And now it’s getting worse.

This week, Facebook started experimenting with a new way to present your news feed. Forget the fact that Facebook’s Patent on The News Feed is Ridiculous; the idea itself makes me feel as though I’m missing information, not getting it.

At least I can turn off the news feed and get a chronological information dump of what my friends are up to if that’s what I want . . . right?

Maybe not for much longer. Facebook has started changing your options in this regard. So far it’s just an experiment, but some Facebook users have lost the chronological option. If you’re in the group of people Facebook selects for this little test, your new options become, essentially, Newsfeed One or Newsfeed Two.

Social Networking is supposed to be about YOU AND THE PEOPLE YOU CHOOSE TO BE NETWORKED WITH BEING SOCIAL, isn’t it? Why in the world would you want Facebook to tell you what was important to you and your friends and not have a way to take back control?

And YIKES! Imagine you use a social networking site for business purposes. Just what I want: Facebook dictating the way I manage my business change.

There’s no moral to this story; you have it all, already. And if their history is any prediction of how they’d respond you don’t need to bother telling Facebook how bad an idea this is (although they are claiming they care; weigh in here).

By the way: The Answer Guy is in the process of developing a social networking alternative that . . . I’m not kidding . . . will fix many of the problems at Facebook. I can’t reveal details just yet, but if you drop me a line I’ll make sure you hear about them before anyone else.

Yeah, I went there.

In a world where our communications are getting less and less personal, shorter and shorter, and have been distilled down to a constant stream of all-but-meaningless chatter, I’ve just suggested that the best way to get someone’s attention may be to say . . . less.

The advice isn’t completely out of left field. “Less is More” is an old axiom that we too often forget, instead prattling on because we think that by spitting out as many words as possible we’ll eventually say something that matters. It can work, but I’m reminded of my time at Verizon Communications.

Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon’s CEO, has an open e-mail policy. Seriously; if your send him email from an internal Verizon address it gets to him. There’s one rule, though: keep your message under forty words.

A couple of days ago, Steve Rubel, an SVP at Edelman Public Relations, suggested that we handle all our e-mail that way. Mr. Rubel went much further, though. The idea is that you need to write introductions in your email that are less than fifty characters long, so that when people see your email in their mail client they get an idea about its content and can be piqued enough to actually open it.

My first reaction is “Yikes! Has It actually Come To That?”. But, yeah, it has. In fact, I’ll go a couple of steps further.

• First: your Email SUBJECT has to get the message across. With all respect to Steve Rubel, not everyone even sees that content preview he’s talking about; if your subject doesn’t scream “OPEN ME”, it isn’t getting opened.

Anecdotally, a sub-point of this is that when we send a monthly digest of this web site to people who have asked to receive it, only about twenty percent of what we send out gets opened. AND THAT’S A GOOD RATE. Think about it.

• Second, If you look at the link to Steve Rubel ‘s comments above, you’ll see that it points to his page on Posterous.com. Posterous, although used primarily as an very-easy-to-set-up blogging platform, is most powerful in its ability to let you write something one time and automatically have it show up in many places. As I pointed out last December, the flaw in Posterous is that using it that way requires that you do exactly what Rubel is suggesting now.

To Steve Rubel’s credit, his use of Posterous is about the best I’ve seen. And his advice, sadly, is spot-on. The question is this:

Are You Ready For Real Business Change? And will you Twitterize your e-mail to make it happen?

What’s huge, takes up too much of your time, and delivers a constant stream of information you don’t want?

Facebook.

“The” Social Networking Site accounts for fully one in every fourteen pages viewed on the Internet, and if you use Facebook you’ve noticed that a lot of what it thinks should be important to you just plain isn’t. Yesterday, Facebook decided that since I follow The President of The United States, I’d be interested in Lady Gaga and Megan Fox:

At least I hope Facebook had drawn a connection between Barack Obama, Megan Fox, and Lady Gaga. Somehow, that bothers me just a little bit less than the two celebrities showing up on my home page randomly, or Facebook having accepted money to shill celebrity accounts.

Yes: social networking has now come to whether it’s worse that the President of The United States is a celebrity like Lady Gaga or Megan Fox, or whether Facebook is selling placement in my supposedly-personalized stream of information.

A great idea is getting worse, and worse, and worse. I thought it was bad when Jessica Biel’s placement as the most dangerous celebrity on The Internet was NEWS, but if mass-targeted news is unimportant at least the Internet makes it so you can move on to only the things that are important to you, right?

Hmm . . . I guess that’s wrong.

It’s more important than ever that you maintain laser focus on what’s important to your business. And more and more, social networking is the most important part of marketing. Sadly, though, the original purpose of social networking (you know . . . social networking ?) is disappearing, as “your” pages are co-opted by marketing interests.

Now go out there and friend somebody. And if you can pull it off, President Barack Obama is still a good place to start.

Google thinks your web page is too slow. Maybe the most important business change you can make is convincing everyone’s favorite search engine otherwise.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about a lot of things. I could write a book on the subject . . . and . . . actually I’m in the middle of doing just that. But whether you’ve already addressed the other issues that go into SEO or not, you MUST get your page load times down to an acceptable level.

This point goes in two directions.

First: if your website visitors need to . . . wait . . . for . . . pages . . . to . . . load . . . they’ll leave. The easiest way to handle that is to compress your images. if you look at my post from yesterday, you’ll see a picture I took while on vacation last week. It’s about 1/15th of its original size because I made it that way before posting it. Had I used the original image there would have been a VERY noticeable lag while the page loaded.

Second, and perhaps even more important, is this: Google has started penalizing slow-loading web pages. As with most of their formulas, Google isn’t saying just how much weight page-load times carry in their search engine ranking formulas, but they want your pages to be fast.

While you can’t control what Google does, you can control how you respond. And that’s a business change you need to pay attention to right now.

Are you a victim?

We all fall victim to being a victim from time to time. It’s a “skill” learned as a child; “NOT MY FAULT!!!!!”

When you grow up and put on your big boy pants, you need to drop that line of thinking. The issue isn’t fault, it’s responsibility. And the sooner you start believing that the buck really does stop with you, the happier and more successful you’ll be.

But what about when something happens in business that you just don’t have control over? What’s the right business change for that situation?

Before I went on vacation last week, I came across this post. And I think I know what the author was trying to say (I think!), but ultimately it made me more uncomfortable than anything else.

YOUR development is YOUR responsibility. I hope there’s nobody here who would disagree.

On the other hand, the wording “is not your company’s responsibility” ignores the fact that at many companies employees are compelled to learn whatever is being taught. They can choose to reject the lessons, thereby taking back responsibility for their own futures at an undetermined cost, but the argument is specious; when your employer TAKES responsibility—albeit sometimes against your wishes—the timber of the argument changes . . . and in a big way.

So a better phrasing might be “Your Professional Development is Your Responsibility”, without the unavoidably confrontational matters that inclusion of the “not your company” words imparts.

Here’s my point:

Even when someone else is “in control”, you owe it to yourself, your business, your family, and anyone else you encounter to take responsibility. This might sound like some kind of rah-rah business coaching thing to say, but it goes much deeper. Even when someone else is pulling a string or two, identifying the business change you’re after and then accepting and maintaining responsibility for the parts of things that you can control will pay off . . . and keep you in a place where you can understand the business change issues that are evolving all around you, all the time.

OK, so sure, I spent last week recharging at a beautiful location on the largest lake in New York. I even cleared my head at 70 miles per hour on a bobsled run; I’m relaxed. But whatever your situation is, you need to keep your head where it needs to be.

And that starts with responsibility.

I’ve written about the iPad and it’s likely negative business change a few times. Now it’s official. Unless you own one, the iPad is going to make your life difficult.

I don’t know which of the following two problems is worse, but either way the world’s thus-far-ultimate media consumption device is taking things in a bad direction. Congratulations, Steve Jobs; you may actually become the God you seem to believe your chairmanship of Apple entitles you to be:

1. Buy an iPad. Surf to the Wall Street Journal Web Site, Log in using your paid-for account. Get rejected; you can only read WSJ on an iPad if you use the iPad App, which costs extra even for existing on-line subscribers.
2. Go to Time Magazine’s Web Site. Click on a link. Start reading the article. Find out that you can’t read Time Magazine online unless you use an iPad. Period.

Here’s what I found this morning at this link:

That’s right. Time magazine has a web site. You can get to it using any computer. But you can only use the Time Magazine web site once you get there if you get there using an iPad.

Steve Jobs is paying off the world to do things that work for him, and screw everybody else.

As a business guy, I admire that Apple and Steve Jobs have this power and have figured out how to use it. As someone who sees less and less reason to kill trees to read magazines but doesn’t want an iPad, I’m crazy angry.

This is business change, but it’s not the kind Time Magazine should be practicing. I don’t get to see Rupert Murdoch as the lesser of evils too often, but today I’m happy to play things the way Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation sees things.

Tell Time Magazine that this just isn’t OK.

Do I talk enough about the importance of an effective social networking strategy for your business? Maybe not.

The Onion has posted a video that takes the social networking thing to new levels, while poking fun at Apple, Apple fanboys, and social networking itself. The video has gone viral, which should be all the proof you need of how important understanding social networking and using social media is:

Forget Facebook; you never get to actually meet your peeps, and when you talk at them you can’t control their inclination to walk away.

Here’s what’s funniest about this: The Onion’s video is pure parody and is doing satire about social media in general and both Facebook and Apple in particular. BUT IT WORKS. The video tells a story, gets peoples’ attention, and looks . . . real.

How are you getting peoples’ attention? Does your social media and social networking strategy get the desired results? Are you doing SEO? The Onion does a great job at all that, and you can bet that this video has exposed the generally-fake news source to thousands, if not millions of new users.

The Answer Guy can help you with your SEO efforts. We’ll advise you on Social Networking, too, and get your plan set up and moving.

The rest is up to you. Better get over to an Apple Store early, before all the slots at the Friend Bar are filled up . . .

It’s hard to be in business. It’s even harder to manage business change.

Near Boston, MA, there’s a company doing some very cool stuff. Hubspot is far and away the best one-stop-to-do-it-all Internet hosting and marketing resource I’ve seen, and I’ve looked at plenty.

And I’m going to suggest you stay away from them.

Last September and October, I flirted with moving Answer Guy Central to Hubspot. I spent some money, also spent a bunch of time with their people (great people, by the way). I dug inside the way Hubspot works, and then I ran the other way.

At the time, I promised a review of my experience with Hubspot. When I realized that I’d be beating them up for some pretty complicated reasons I became less than enthusiastic about it and that review slipped, and slipped, and slipped. Than a couple of weeks ago, Ramon Ray of Small Biz Technology asked me what I thought of Hubspot, and I’ve decided I need to clue you in.

As I said, Hubspot is a great tool. Seriously. If you need an all-in-one manage-your-web-site-and-do/manage-your-SEO solution, know nothing about any of those things, AND ARE STARTING FROM SCRATCH, the $250/month price tag is a true bargain.

Almost.

There are two components to my issues with Hubspot. That “almost” is where I’ll start.

Hubspot is a proprietary Content Management System (CMS). If you ever decide to leave Hubspot the amount of work that will be involved in doing so without murdering the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) work you’ve done for however many months or years you’ve used Hubspot will be IMMENSE. So much so that in real terms you’ll be faced with either giving away all your SEO juice (probably the worst thing any internetified business can do), or . . . NOT EVER LEAVING THEM.

While there’s a piece of me that admires a business that can create an environment under which their customers all but have to keep doing business with them, I wouldn’t want to be one of those captive clients, and expect neither you nor anyone you know would, either.

Oh, you can leave Hubspot any time, and they’ll give you the database containing all your information, but the work required to keep your web site functioning would be so large that I don’t believe any small business could actually pull it off. And that assumes the database is “standard”, which the Hubspot folks would not confirm . . . which almost certainly means it isn’t.

Issue #2: The rules at Hubspot are that the $250 plan requires you to let them host both your website and Hubspot’s database and SEO stuff. That’s fine; in fact, it saves you from having to host it elsewhere, so hooray! However: If you already have a web site getting it translated/transferred  to Hubspot is . . . too hard.

Don’t get me wrong; the Hubspot people will do the translation for you, and that’s included in the Hubspot setup fee. And they do a great job. But then there are gotchas that have to do with how the translation REALLY works. For example, if you have them translate a WordPress-based site, you’re going to lose some functionality due to inevitably non-translatable plug-ins. Refer back to what I said above; unless you are starting from scratch, this will become too hard, particularly in an environment like Hubspot that’s so clearly meant for non-technical types.

Get me? The Hubspot tools are great and really do help your SEO efforts, but you’re in forever with no practical way of backing out, and you don’t want in to begin with unless you’re starting from scratch.

Makes me sad, but that’s the story. Hubspot is an amazing tool, and has the potential to make it both easy and inexpensive for you to effect genuine business change.

And I’m imploring you; don’t use it.

I love free things. But sometimes “free” carries a hidden price tag, and then it’s not generally worth it.

If you can get tickets to The Public Theater’s Shakespeare In The Park series, held in New York City’s Central Park for a few weeks every summer, you’re in for a treat. The Public Theater produces great shows, populates them with first-tier stars, and yes, the tickets are free. Seriously. People like Anne Hathaway, Jesse L. Martin, Sam Waterson, Andre Braugher, and even Al Pacino do these shows for free, so regular New Yorkers can spend an evening under the stars watching great theater at the best price of all. It’s spectacular, and it keeps Shakespeare alive. I applaud The Public Theater, The City of New York, and these great talents.

Except you can’t get tickets.

OK, actually, that’s false. You can get tickets, because the Public Theater gives them away each day for that evening’s performance; all you have to do is wait on line. Yes, the lines are long, so you need to really, really want to go, but anyone can get tickets to Shakespeare in The Park. And if that was the end of the story there’d be no story.

But here’s how it works:

Tickets are handed out each day at 1 PM. In the case of a popular show, such as this summer’s The Merchant of Venice, you’re free to get on line at 6AM when Central Park opens, and maybe you’ll get to see Mr. Pacino that evening. I say “maybe” because when I got to Central Park at 6:10 AM yesterday morning there was a line so long that upon doing some quick math and having a conversation with a very pleasant, helpful, and honest Public Theater employee it became apparent that I was there too late.

Trust me for a moment now; this isn’t a sour grapes story, and the ten minutes isn’t the issue, either.

I’m not talking merely about a line of people. The hundreds of New Yorkers who were there before me had . . . been there. And given the number of them that were sleeping on inflated air mattresses in a calm, perfectly organized line ten minutes after it became legal to be in Central Park I can’t believe they hadn’t been there over night.

Again . . . that’s not the story.

Police in New York City are way overworked, and while I’m sure people get thrown out of Central Park for being there between 1 AM and 6 AM, and even ticketed for violating the park curfew, I’m guessing that it’s mostly about protecting the people rather than the park, so when hundreds of people line up for their Shakespeare In The Park Tickets and create an essentially self-protecting group doing no harm and no mischief, it’s likely that the police just . . . leave them alone.

But The Public Theater states very clearly that they escort whatever number of people have gathered by 6AM outside a specific Central Park entrance to the theater site and build the line then. And I simply refuse to believe that the calm, beautifully-organized, bed-and-cooler-wielding group of 900 people that I encountered at 6:10 AM had all gotten there, arranged their belongings and in many cases fallen asleep in the ten minutes prior to my arrival.

In other words, The Public Theater’s method of providing what is ostensibly some of the most amazing customer service you’ve ever seen—and for free—is a lie. What I saw yesterday at 6:10 AM simply could not have gotten there in ten minutes.

Let’s assume that the Public Theater’s goals are to help maintain public safety and reduce their own liability. They could use words like “it’s illegal to be in Central Park before 6 AM, so please don’t do that”. Instead they point out that people really shouldn’t be lined up on the streets of Manhattan overnight at the entrance they’ve specified as the escort point, then they wink when people get there as early at 8PM the previous night. But it’s OK because those people aren’t in Central Park and it’s technically only loitering, not trespassing, to be on the street overnight.

Oh yeah . . . and they pretend they don’t know about the people who are actually camped out in the Central Park.

Let me repeat, this is not a sour grapes story. I’m talking about customer service as a smoke screen, and the need for real business change when your customer service strategy is built on a lie. Lip-service customer service may work for a short time, but it’s a mistake.

By the way: you don’t have to wait on line for your tickets to Shakespeare In The Park. Instead, you can enter a lottery each day. The Public Theater doesn’t say how many tickets are available or guess at what your odds of winning are, but they do give away tickets that way each day, too.

Or at least they claim they do.

What do you do when you’ve fallen from being the most important desktop-computer software company in the world to an also-ran with nothing new of any importance for over a decade?

You try a bunch of things; business change happens to large companies as well as small. Microsoft has tried for years to extend Windows to as many platforms as possible and made good in many, but the big prize, SmartPhones, has eluded them.

• Windows Mobile has been supplanted by Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, fragmented, and put into devices like the Kin phone (dead after just weeks on the market).
• Don’t get me started on Office Online. Google Docs owns. Next Subject
• Umm . . . there is no number three

Well, maybe that’s wrong. It sounds relatively unimportant, but Microsoft has invented something that I’ll bet you’d like to have: a battery that can be inserted any way instead of with the correct polarity determined.

I’m not going to gush about the invention; we’ve all survived until now turning batteries to face the correct way to get them to work. But it’s cool, and just about everyone who makes batteries will be licensing the new technology from Microsoft; in fact, many already have.

Not the business change we were looking for from Microsoft, and over all I still have to see the company as a has-been. But as the press release reveals, it’s . . . kind of cool.

And maybe that—passion—is the place where your next business change should come from.