Category Archives: personal

$100 Laptops Rock. Bill’s wrong. But the Gates Foundation still rules.

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I was sorry to see Bill Gates bashing MIT’s $100 Laptop project

Gates’ credentials as an advocate for the developing world are unsurpassed, but I’d guess he’s reacting more to the fact this is a Google sponsored project than legitimate concerns about it’s viability.

I love the $100 Laptop Project not so much because it will bring tech to the poor, especially children (though it will do that), but because it will help to rapidly and aggressively break down what I see as the key barrier to development which is the lack of communication and exchange between “them” and “us”.

A dictator’s tyranny or a famine in Nigeria will take on a whole new relevance when THEIR kids are all playing video games and instant messaging with OUR kids.

Bill, you got this one wrong, dawg. But the Gates Foundation remains the world’s most heroic development effort.

Crash beats Brokeback, author’s rant rings hollow, kids still go hungry

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Not a fan of the predictable unrealism of the Best Picture Oscar winner “Crash”, I certainly agree with most of what Annie Proulx says about Crash and its admirers. She wrote the story on which Brokeback Mountain is based and I think she’s suggesting that police racism directed against rich hollywood folks is low on the social priority list of all but the out of touch.

But somehow Proulx’s rant rings hollow as well, failing to note the obvious.  The success of Brokeback also owes much to that same crowd who are so very out of touch with mainstream sensibilities, let alone global sensibilities.

The world is struggling with an overwhelming number of social challenges now. Neither Crash nor Brokeback addressed any of them, as Hollywood only very rarely does. More than 99.9% of the world’s population would place the challenges faced by the sexually conflicted, let along sexually conflicted american cowboys, somewhat lower on their priority list than Annie does.

So, why can’t hollywood produce more REAL films about REAL people facing REAL global challenges? Sometimes they do it but it’s rare. Beyond Borders very nobly tried to tackle hunger and development issues but could not rise above critics and perhaps Angelina Jolie’s screen persona which overshadowed the story. The Killing Fields and Hotel Rwanda brilliantly brought unspeakable tragedies to the big screen. But these films are the total exceptions in a sea of gratuitous sex, violence, and unrealistic stereotypes.

Why can’t all that cleverness, marketing hype, and technology be used in a concerted effort to address the key global challenges of our time – the lack of basic food, water, shelter, health care, and infrastructure in the developing world?

For every Brokeback cowboy there are millions of hungry kids – when are you going to write their story, Annie Proulx?

We should fear diarrhea more than we fear Osama, but we don’t.

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The Agriculture Department is investigating a possible case of mad cow disease, the agency’s chief veterinarian said Saturday….

Worried?   You shouldn’t be.   Not at ALL.   Very close to ZERO.  Why?   Only ONE American has died from Mad Cow and he got it in Britain.  Only about 150 died in Britain years ago from a major outbreak.   DO THE MATH and fire up the BBQ.
I’m now convinced to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty that humans are extremely crappy at mathematics, and even worse at digesting the *implications* of mathematics.    These are not skills evolution selected for aggressively and therefore it’s a daily dose of “Houston, we have a problem!”
We routinely allocate risk improperly, especially as it related to dangerous activities.   For most people the big dangers – and they are fairly substantial – are things like getting into a car (about a hundred people die each day from car accidents), Handling guns (if you include suicide gun deaths this is also close to 100 deaths per day in the USA.

Are You a smoker?   DANGER!  Obese or just Overweight with a BMI over 24.9?  Your DANGER of heart disease and earlier-than-otherwise death is very real.

YET…. I know of few people who worry much, if any, about these real dangers, preferring nonsensical concerns about things like getting struck by lightning, earthquakes, or terrorism.

Terror stats have a tricky caveat in that baselines are very hard to establish. HOWEVER, even if we assumed that the awful toll of 9/11 was to happen globally on a DAILY BASIS, our current terror related expenditures would be better spent on global healthcare if return on our investment was the key metric.  Why?   Because many more people die daily from preventable disease than died on 9/11 from terror.    Diarrhea and Malaria alone kill over 10,000 humans per day – mostly children.  PER DAY!

Mad Cow worries?   Silly – you are more likely to be killed by a perfectly normal cheeseburger’s tendency to raise your chances of heart disease.

Bill, Warren, Carlos, Ingvar, and Lakshmi

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It’s interesting that only the top two of the world’s richest people are household names.
I’d never even heard of the other 3 dudes. From CNN Money

“Hey Slim, can I borrow your truck? Oh, and 157 million dollars for gas?

1 William Gates III United States Washington 50.0 Microsoft 50
2 Warren Buffett United States Nebraska 42.0 Berkshire Hathaway 75
3 Carlos Slim Helu Mexico 30.0 telecom 66
4 Ingvar Kamprad Sweden 28.0 Ikea 79
5 Lakshmi Mittal India 23.5 steel 55

Self Help or Self Ish?

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I’m sure there is some virtuous stuff amidst the current swirl of motivationally spoken self-helping new ageified banter, but I can’t [self] help but think “hey, this is mostly just a license for people to feel comfortable about doing whatever they darn well please”.

At least with much of the bible thumping old time religion there is an undercurrent of helpfulness and broad social responsibility. Also the new and improved and globilized business models are paying more than lip service to the idea that business responsibility goes far beyond profits for shareholders. This includes the big beneficiaries of big biz. One needs look no farther than the Gates Foundation or Google.org or the Omidyar (Ebay founder) efforts with Microloans to see how powerful this new business ethic has become in solving real world problems.

Many new age folks would suggest that there is some form of collective consciousness and that participating at that level does much good for the world. I’m very skeptical. Tell that to the kid in Africa with AIDs or Malaria or no clean water. They’ll (correctly) choose water purification to soul purification, and we should all get that set of priorities straight.

WordPress vs Blogger & thank you Todd

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Thanks to the advice of Todd over at his blog suggesting I change formats, and the fact that Uber Blogger Scoble switched to it I’m going to switch to WordPress blogging very soon. The biggest challenge with blogger is that you can’t categorize the posts which is VERY helpful even as the author looking back to see what you already wrote.

Todd by the way, has one of the best SEO blogs out there. This is because he’s one of the top SEO guys anywhere. He often speaks at conferences about “link building” and is always insightful about complex SEO topics.

Myspace perspectives from Danah Boyd

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Danah Boyd is a social networking researcher who also works at Yahoo. Easily one of the brightest observers in this space though I’m not yet convinced that she is a *wise* observer of these things. I’d read her blog and realized she’d have valuable perspectives on Myspace. Here is a great summary of her perspective, though I’m concerned that there may be a generational issue of “parents have the RIGHT and OBLIGATION to know about those tracking and marketing to their kids (e.g. Myspace.com)” that she can’t see cuz….she’s young and has not yet had the shot ‘o wisdom and insight that comes from having children running around in potentially dangerous environments.

Moderation in all things

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Provocative thought for the day:

Change is coming from the WRONG set of ideas. It’s coming from both the positive and negative “exciting” stuff like wars and conflict, concerts and rich people. Change SHOULD be coming from a careful examination of what is working the middle class mundane lives that most people in the developed world lead – the tried and true stuff. How do we bring this boring but workable stuff to the rest of the world?

*Bringing mediocrity to the world* is going to require great thinking and great innovation – wild and speculative innovation included. I sure like projects like Dean Kamen’s power/water devices which are a great way to make boring mundane but ESSENTIAL change happen in the 3rd world.

…. jeez, he introduced it at the TED conference a few years back… maybe I’m WRONG about TED. If it’s spreading this kind of innovation I’m….WRONG.

FOCUS defines a LOT of the world. What we as people, nations, groups, businesses choose to focus on defines a lot about us.

It’s much easier to focus on big controversies or big positive events than it is to focus on the mundane, daily grind events. YET, it’s our own mundane daily grinds where the stuff is happening that we need to pass along to those for whom the daily grind is …. life threatening.

Joe Bio

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No time to blog today so I think I’ll just post the bio I just sent to the excellent folks handling the Nanjing Search Conference where I’m hoping to speak in March. This way I’ll NEVER lose it!

It’s always funny how you focus in on some things more than others depending on your audience, mood, and other factors. It’s hard to be modest and sound expert and experienced at the same time.

Hmm – maybe I should have added how I fixed my parents sump pump and garage door today just by jiggling them. That’s pretty talented, no?

Joseph R. Hunkins
jhunkins@gmail.com
Age: 46
Residence: Talent, Oregon, USA
541-535-7640 (home/office)
541-324-4800 (cell)

Education:

Masters in Social Sciences. 1990, Coursework in Multimedia, GIS, and Geography.
Southern Oregon State College (Now S.O.University), Ashland, Oregon 97520.

Bachelor of Science. 1981. Majored in Botany and Psychology.
University of Wisconsin at Madison, WI.

Professional Experience 1990-2005.

Coordinated Internet marketing and multiple website development for the Southern Oregon Visitors Association, a large regional tourism promotion group covering seven counties of Oregon and over 14,000 square miles. Developed organic and pay per click search strategies for several websites.

Managed grant and deployment of statewide touch kiosk Internet system for the state of Oregon, a partnership with the Federal Scenic Byways Program, Oregon Department of Transportation, State Tourism, and the Southern Oregon Visitors Association. Developed organic and pay per click search strategies for several websites. Developed the first commercial websites for Crater Lake National Park and Oregon Caves National Monument.

Presented findings of one of the first online Internet conversion studies at the Travel Industry Association of America’s (TIA) national education conference in Vail, Colorado. Has also spoken extensively in Oregon about Internet marketing strategy for the travel sector.

Board member: California Oregon Intelligent Transportation Systems project. Helped review policies and deployments of travel technology (such as road web cams) for the Northern California and Southern Oregon regions.

Winner of Oregon’s Governor’s Award for Innovative Tourism Development for creating the partnership and grant that led to Oregon’s first state travel website “TravelOregon.com”.

Owner: USA3.com. Joe publishes travel information at several regional and national websites he owns using promotion tools including pay per click campaigns and organic search optimization. His largest site is the QuickAid.com Airport Directory which is currently undergoing extensive changes.

Partner in Online Highways LLC. This Florence, Oregon internet publishing company works in conjunction with two of the Pacific Northwest’s leading travel magazines “Northwest Travel” and “Oregon Coast Magazine” to produce one of the most comprehensive online travel resources in the world: “Online Highways” website: http://www.OHWY.com. In addition to approximately ten staff in Florence the project established an Indian owned and managed support office in the state of Kerala India in 2003.

Joe’s work with Online Highways has been primarily in search and company strategy and online advertising development.