Regardless, the plan is to ramp it back up and start letting you into the mind of Steve Manatt again…enter if you dare…

Before you bombard me with requests and lots of money, I should warn you that it takes me an inordinate amount of time to do these things and I charge by the hour. So, if you’re OK with that, I’m too. Just head on over to www.manattweb.com and click the big GET STARTED button and we’ll be in business.

No big announcement would be complete without a few examples of my work. I’ll show two for now just to whet the ole appetite:

This will be some cabinets I build in our office. The top will eventually extend and become a desk and the entire unit will fill one of the walls. It is deep enough to add bookcases above and will also have doors added to the front to conceal the junk…I mean, valuable treasures we need to keep there.

This monster is a wheelchair ramp that we’ll be building in a house for CityFest. I will feature a gate and steps at the end of the first leg of the ramp (v. 2.0) to accommodate able-bodied people. The construction material will be pressure treated dimensional lumber. This project will also feature replacing the front steps and a wheelchair “boardwalk” from the carport to the mailbox as well as some basic landscaping and all around care.

If you’re in Central Arkansas on or after Oct. 2nd, come on by at the corner of Hwy 10 and Russ St. and be sure to bring your gloves and a hammer or two. You won’t be alone as literally thousands of people from the area churches will be out in force that day loving on our cities with the sweat of their brow and the work of their hands.

Do you know how I know? Money. If you would consider just for one second the motivational aspect behind the “debate” – you’ll soon conclude that stirring people up about climate change is just another ponzi scheme orchestrated by environmentalists that have long been frustrated about the lack of credibility they have been able to muster. That lack of credibility has resulted in very little capital investment, which has hampered their ability to advance their cause.

So, they got their heads together and got a spokesman who spent time in the White House, made a movie or two and created a script that everyone read verbatim ad nauseam everywhere from the nightly news to the cartoons on public television. I have my 4 yr. old son telling me about turning off lights to save the planet because Sid the Science kid’s Teacher Susie is preaching it every day from 7:30 – 8:00 am.

And it’s working – government subsidies for alternative energy sources have soared through the roof. We have windmill fields cropping up everywhere and driving people out of their homes due to the 80+ decibel noise each mill creates. We have electric cars that have a range suitable for a trip to the grocery store. We have solar panels that generate enough wattage to recharge your iPhone. All of which can’t make enough sense to consumers to get real funding and consequently have no real incentive to produce any tangible results.

Sorry – didn’t mean to get sidetracked by government spending and lofty goals with no accountability. Anywho – back to climate change.

Fact: the climate does change. The biggest influence on our weather is our sun and a star has a life cycle and goes through patterns of change, which are influence everything from temperature to magnetic pole strength. Do some research sometime on solar flares – fascinating stuff!

Fact: our planet has gone through both warmer and cooler seasons ever since we’ve had the capacity to keep track and, guess what, we’ve been in a warm one.

Fact: most high-profile environmental activists live very wasteful lives. Al Gore has several houses and flies on private jets all over the world. Why not sell some of those houses and give the money to solar panel or energy storage research? BECAUSE HE DOESN’T BELIEVE IT EITHER, but it sure pays well!

Fiction: mankind has the power to influence nature. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see us develop technology to control the weather like on Star Trek. Need rain for the corn crops in the midwest – no problem, I’ll just submit a request to the weather satellite. Wouldn’t that be sweet!

Simply put – human nature is fond of making itself out to be God and to think we can control the system (either destroying or fixing) He put in place is ludicrous and arrogant. It is the oldest lie we’ve ever bought and now, we’re being sold it again. Some of us are able to recognize it for what it is and deny it any place in our lives. Others…well, are buying it hook, line and sinker – even (and perhaps more poignantly) our kids.

Do we need to ramp up the development of energy alternatives to replace a finite resource like oil? Sure. That’s called being prepared. And there is a right way to do it – it’s called Capitalism and using the Free Market Economy to prove your idea has merit rather than work everyone up in a frenzy about how life on this planet is in peril unless we help those who refuse to contribute get a free ride putting up wind farms in our back yard.

I feel a point of clarification might be needed. I am and desire to be a good steward of the resources given to me. So, I turn off lights, use CF bulbs and turn the water off while I brush my teeth – but not because my heart breaks for a polar bear’s habitat melting. I do it because for every watt of electricity and gallon of water I’m punished financially each month when I get my bills.

Don’t be fooled and don’t drink the Kool-Aid. Remember, if you can find anyone benefiting financially from a crisis – resist the urge to call it a crisis. If it was, help would be free and clear and nothing about climate change is free and it is anything but clear…

Where are you? How do you feel about the government getting into the insurance game? Regardless of where you stand, I’m interested more in why you believe what you believe and will challenge your comment openly if you don’t add that in there.

In addition, does this change how you will vote in November based on how your representative voted on the issue? Here is a list of how the votes were cast by state: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2010-165

I’ve been told by a liberal friend that conservatives lack compassion and that is one of the reasons she votes for and supports Democrats. Is compassion bad? Surely not. But the distinction isn’t accurate or fair (and I’ll go into that in another post). On the surface, these federal programs do look to be meeting the needs to people that are hurting the most: the unemployed, the uninsured and the thirsty farmer.

In truth – they rarely accomplish anything that they are touted to do. When Obama and congress decided to pour over $1T into the economy to try to “stimulate” it rather than take a $1T hit on tax revenues by way of tax cuts, the result hasn’t been recovery, just more debt. Where has the stimulus been seen? GM is still in the tank, Wall Street is more unstable than ever and unemployment is still double-digits.

Ask any conservative what the biggest difference between liberals and conservatives is and you’ll hear a very common answer: conservatives desire less government and more personal responsibility. Why? Because there is a fundamental belief that the free-market, capitalist society in America will auto-correct anything that gets askew. Competition spurs innovation, which produces better products/services for less money.

Big government squelches competition because it takes away the accountability needed to keep the players honest and trades it for “stability” and broader access to privileges that have been turned into rights somewhere along the way.

Here’s the progression that liberals are working toward:

• Big government produces services at no or little cost to the consumer
• This entitlement removes the incentive to be creative and work hard
• Private sector cannot compete with a government that doesn’t have to play by the same rules
• The lack of competition has a direct impact on the price of goods/services from the private sector
• People turn to government for intervention
• Government obliges and offers a federal option
• Taxes are increased to pay for it
• Private sector is forced to cut jobs to meet shareholder expectations due to expanded taxes
• Dependence on the government increases for more and more unemployed
• Government programs grow to meet the need
• Personal freedom is removed for the sake of the greater need
• Taxes are raised
• and so on…

That’s not the way this country is supposed to work. Here’s how it should work:

• Private sector produces services at a fair market price
• Innovation allows company A to offer same services at a lower price
• Rest of market responds either with better services or still lower price
• Consumer reaps the benefit of the battle for market share

Or

• Private sector produces services at a fair market price
• Company A decides to try to make more money by raising their price
• Consumers respond by taking business to Company B
• Company B is allowed to use additional revenue to offer better and better services – either by increased features or by lower price
• Company A has to respond by adjusting price or adding features
• Consumers decide who has the best value

You see – in a pure free-market economy, the consumer dictates the rules of the game. For the most part, we don’t have a pure free-market in core services because liberals have seen fit to create crutch programs that looked good on the short, but never took into consideration the effect on the long. And intervention is on the rise and threatens to undo the very thing that makes this country great – reward for hard work, innovation and creativity.

“But Steve, nobody would want something so devastatingly bad – right?” Wrong. If you give a man a fish rather than incent him to learn to fish, you have control over the man because of his dependence. He eventually can’t imagine a world without his daily fish and that is called job security for the fish vendor.

Yes, it comes down to simple security. Liberals want it through making people dependent on their programs, while conservatives want it based on the merit of their ideas and hard work. So, whether you are talking about health care reform or stimulus money, the goal of the current administration and democratic congress is to make us more dependent on the federal government and they will not let anyone or anything – including the Constitution of these United States – stand in their way.

Have you ever heard that if you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, he’ll immediately jump out, but if you put him in the water and then turn the heat on, he’ll stay and literally be cooked alive? It’s time we realize we are the frog and the liberals have been turning up the heat for decades now – it is up to us to change the menu to something other than frog soup. Get involved and call your elected officials and the next time we get a chance to vote, may we look deeper than a catchy campaign slogan and feel-good promises.

Remember, it is more compassionate to teach a man to fish than to make him dependent on anyone or anything.

I DON’T BELIEVE THEM!

I know…shocker, right? What you may not understand are all the reasons. Some probably assume that it is simply because the majority are Democrats and I’m a conservative and the two shall not mix…ever. That assumption, while true, isn’t why I’m writing – I think I can prove it without focusing on politics. It is simple logic and a slight understanding of how business works.

What do we need for more jobs to be created? A simple examination of why jobs are being eliminated should provide us the answers. A company, especially a publicly-traded company, is not owned by the business leadership, but rather by shareholders. People buy stock because they want to see a return (more money) from the money they use to buy the stock.

That return is realized when the company is able to make more money (net revenue) than they expected, which is one component of what drives stock prices up. There are two components to net revenue – profit and loss (income and costs). If a company says that they think they can produce a net revenue of $100K and are able to actually do $105K for a given time period, then people would buy the stock because the current price reflects the anticipated $100K and therefore undervalued and should go up. Make sense? If not, just know that doing what you say you are going to do in the stock market is good, and exceeding it is better.

All that to say is that the owners (shareholders) expect to be making money and therefore expect profits to be at least what you projected. To achieve this, in a recession, the focus gets put on the costs a company incurs. The most expensive line item on a company’s balance sheet is payroll and consequently the place where the biggest impact to the bottom line can be made. Eliminate jobs and you cut costs and directly affect net revenue.

So, if jobs are cut to help companies maintain net revenue and shareholder expectations and we want to stop that trend, what can be done help net revenue. The second largest cost on a company’s ledger is taxes and this is where we get to the meat of the issue. If you receive a paycheck and ever ventured to look at the amount of taxes that are taken out – you’d immediately get red in the face. What you need to know is that is nothing compared to what the business must pay.

There is a tie to payroll taxes and the overall picture for a company – if you have an employee that you hire at $50K, their take-home pay is affected by the taxes that are required to be taken out. A lower tax rate means that an employer might be able to hire the same person for $48K if the tax rates were lower. If you add that up over 1,000 employees, all of a sudden you’ve just found $200K of income that you can put into something else – like new jobs.

So, if you want to create jobs in America, the first place the government should be looking is to lower the federal taxes levied against employers. Decreasing the tax rate means more money stays with the company and can be reinvested immediately to stabilize and grow the business.

But this wasn’t even considered for more than a second in Washington. Reagan implemented this very tactic to successfully bring inflation under control and it has been successfully used time and time again to help stimulate the economy. There’s a proven track record and tons of evidence…so why haven’t we seen this as a proposed solution?

If you really want to know the full reason, read the next post. It is political…so be warned.

The short answer is that job creation, at least where most of us live (private sector), hasn’t been the goal at all. If it was, we would be seeing more money in our pockets each paycheck, which would allow us to go spend it on goods and services and really “stimulate” the economy.

All this to say, any talk about job creation coming out of Washington these days should be interpreted as creating federal jobs to support new programs intended to “fix” our country. Don’t be fooled for another second because now you know.

During our 2 1/2 hour conversation, I found myself using examples from some of the most innovative companies around to help add understanding to some marketing concepts. I thought it would be fun to get these thoughts down on “paper”  and let you take a whack at them.

DISCLAIMER: What I’m about to share in no way tells the entire story about either the company or the product/service in question. In the tech arena in particular, I know more than most about the “whole” story behind these situations, but for obvious reasons chose to pull out small bits and pieces to bring clarity to this particular conversation.

MICROSOFT
We started talking about how to package the different parts of this particular product – whether or not we should tailor the solution to specific audiences and pre-choose the options available. The thinking is that this helps show how all of the product brings value and there is very little irrelevant options, which would in turn increase the perceived value and allow you to customize pricing to fit the situation.

I thought about MS’ Office suite of products. For any given user, they probably use no more than 20% (generous) of the features of Word or Excel or PowerPoint. But if you look at all of the users that use the product, I bet the feature utilization is near 100%. Someone somewhere is using each and every feature in each of the products in Office and are not shy about asking for new features to be included in the next release.

THE POINT: Today’s users want to have both the choice and freedom to use the product according to how they operate. In other words, they want the product to fit them, not having to fit the product and deciding which options ahead of time is too limiting. Tailoring solutions to niche groups is a bad idea for another reason. It’s expensive. Think of the time and energy it takes to bundle, sell and maintain 20 product versions for 20 different user groups versus one large suite of products that get’s 20% utilization per customer, but 100% utilization across all customers.

APPLE (Yes – I’m an equal opportunity geek)
Yesterday’s release of the iPad was another stunning example of why Apple’s stock hasn’t taken a nosedive like everyone else’s. While the product lacks some very key elements, there is no denying the emotional draw to own one from the minute I laid eyes on it. After watching the promo video, I started to scheme about how to pay for it. About an hour later, I came to my senses and wondered how it would really make life better.

In the part of our discussion about what stage of the game to reveal your product, I was reminded of just how polished everything Apple seems to be at launch. They work out the kinks, test the user interfaces and even design packaging BEFORE we ever see it. I’m sure they have a secret society of product testers, but the rumor mill is always buzzing and nobody ever actually knows enough details until Apple wants them to.

There is a healthy amount of paranoia that Apple has learned to integrate into their product development cycle. By being the king of the hill (by most accounts) on product design, the world is ready and waiting to knock Apple off their perch. Apple doesn’t give them much of a chance to get to market with a competitive product because nobody knows what to fight against.

THE POINT: If you believe you have a great product that is unique in the marketplace, don’t show your cards too soon. Gather feedback and do proper product testing and market research, but be smart about it. Underpromise and overdeliver. Tout your strengths and don’t apologize for what’s missing.

ADOBE
At one point, the conversation came around to how to acquire customers – how do you get your foot in the door to a group of people that don’t even know they necessarily need your product? Adobe instantly came to mind. In my opinion, they are the most innovative company out there because they build the tools that everyone else uses to build theirs.

I had a chance to attend their annual geek conference called MAX one year and I was blown away with their vision for the future of their role in the way people communicate, relate and conduct business going forward. They are a crucial key player in making our dreams become a reality with decreasing complexity, time and effort.

And they know it. If you look at the price point of their software, you quickly understand that a serious intent on playing is required to get in the game. They are a premium software company with a premium price. And yet, they offer fully-functional, 30-day trial versions of almost all of their products.

On first glance, that seems risky – what happens if their security measures are hacked and people are able to use their goodies for free? Sure, there are laws that supposedly protect Adobe from that type of behavior, but an examination of any BitTorrent site will tell you nobody’s really worried about Johnny Law knocking on their door.

If you look at it again, it’s brilliant. It’s actually the oldest selling trick in the book. Give them a taste to whet their appetite and for those that can’t live without it, they pony up the big bucks. And once Adobe has them, they do their best to keep them by offering discounts on upgrades to existing customers, software assurance that makes upgrades cost nothing and a vibrant user community that is always doing something very cool.

THE POINT: Whether you are an established market leader or a newbie wanting to gain market share, giving potential customers a way to play with your product with very little risk goes a long way to converting them into paying customers.

DELL
When putting together a product, you obviously need to consider the different components and how they fit together and then how each of the components adds value to the whole. When thinking about how to price the idea last night, I thought about the innovation that Michael Dell brought to the personal computer market back in the day.

At the time, there were really two ways to buy a computer. Either go to a big box store and pull one off the shelf or build it yourself. The former lacked customization and the latter was incredibly complex (at the time). Mr. Dell saw an opportunity and his brainchild completely revolutionized the way we buy computers. First, he didn’t make his product available at retail outlets – online only. Second, he gave the consumer the ability to “build” the perfect computer via Dell’s website without the need for a degree in Computer Science.

Needless to say, it was an instant success. Dell’s influence in the personal (and eventual business) computer marketplace can be seen in every computer manufacturer still alive today – even Apple. People want the ability to customize their purchase to get the biggest bang for their buck and ensure that their purchase meets their individual needs. Dell gave them that ability and now it is a perceived “right” all computer buyers believe they have.

Michael Dell didn’t reinvent the personal computer, just the way people bought them. He gave them choice at an individual component level. Wow!

Big retail stores still sell plenty of pre-built computers because there are plenty of people that just want a computer for Internet access, e-mail and the occasional greeting card. And today, you see Dell computers right there beside the others.

THE POINT: Developing a product delivery plan that is flexible enough to allow savvy users to get exactly what they want is worth the time and energy required to set up the associated flexible pricing plans that go along with it. Having a base product that people can walk up and buy and walk out is very important as some of your customers won’t care enough or have the experience to know what is best. For the rest, customization is what can differentiate you in a way that is completely separate from what problem your product addresses.

SUMMARY
Great ideas need great marketing to thrive. Great marketing needs experience and creativity to be effective. Getting “it” right isn’t easy and you’ll know you’ve been successful when you have made it look easy. Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and Dell have all shaped our lives over and over again and innovation, hard work and perseverance are all hallmarks to their success and legacy.

Learn from the best because you will have plenty of your own challenges to overcome. I like Thomas Edison’s approach to invention:

“I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent….”

Consider the impact to the world before the impact to yourself and the latter will take care of itself.

Thoughts???

SWFObject has been around since October 2004 as a JavaScript method to detect not only the presence of the Flash Player, but minor versions of the Flash Player for feature readiness. Since then, it’s evolution has continued to add features that cover today’s ever-increasing code complexities. To get the SWFOjbect code as well as all other resources for this very useful tool, head over to http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/

As I stated in the overview article, this is my preferred method for Flash detection for the iPhone. This method is used on all of your SWFs and therefore inherently takes care of all detection and alternate content substitutions as part of the solution. In short, it’s simpler.

Obviously, the first thing to do is download the code and get it on your site. There are great instructions on the Google site on how to setup the include files and you also get some demo files that show how your code should look when using either the static or dynamic method.

I used hyper-linked images that looked similar to the Flash content as the alternate content so visually, there wasn’t much missing. Other than that, there isn’t much to it other than following the instructions and choosing the method that suits your content and situation better. There will probably be some trial and error that you’ll need to go through, but given an hour, you should have it just like you want it.

Here’s the JavaScript code on my example site (put inside <head> tag):

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”/Scripts/swfobject.js”></script> //the include JavaScript file
<!–Button 1 Code–>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var flashvars = {};
var params = {};
params.wmode = “transparent”; //sets the SWF file to have a transparent background. Default is “opaque”
var attributes = {};
swfobject.embedSWF(“/assets/multimedia/PTT_Button1.swf”, “myContent1″, “174″, “40″, “9.0.0″, “”,  flashvars, params, attributes);
</script>
<!–Button 2 Code–>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var flashvars = {};
var params = {};
params.wmode = “transparent”;
var attributes = {};
swfobject.embedSWF(“assets/multimedia/PTT_Button2.swf”, “myContent2″, “174″, “40″, “9.0.0″, “”,  flashvars, params, attributes);
</script>

And the associated content code (alternate content defined):

<!–Button 1–>
<div id=”myContent1″><a href=”html/FindTip.asp” style=”padding:4px”><img src=”assets/images/PTT_Button1.jpg” alt=”Defeat the Diaper | Find a Tip” width=”174″ height=”40″ border=”0″></a></div>

<!–Button 2–>
<div id=”myContent2″><a href=”html/GiveTip.asp”><img src=”assets/images/PTT_Button2.jpg” alt=”Defeat the Diaper | Give a Tip” width=”174″ height=”40″ border=”0″></a></div>

Given that, there is one piece of advice I can give:
Make sure you enclose the content you want SWFObject to examine in <div> tags. For those of you that code using tables, don’t try to affect a <td> as the SWFObject’s default behavior is to hide the element and this will destroy the table’s structural integrity and therefore produce undesired results.

For an example of a site that this method has been used, you can go to defeatthediaper.com – my community potty training tip site. I hope this helps and don’t forget to add the <meta> and CSS mods outlined in the overview article.

When you publish your Flash content, you have the option of publishing HTML and in the associated option for HTML publishing, there are several check-boxes related to which version of the Flash Player you want to target and whether or not you want the resultant HTML to check for the presence of the specified version or above. FIG. 1 shows what you would check to get the HTML file that checks for the presence of a version of the Flash Player.

FIG. 1

Provided you check the box shown in the figure and publish your content, you’ll get an HTML file that has the detection code in it. As you examine the code, you’ll see that the detection script looks for a specific minimal version of the Flash Player, not just the presence of the Flash Player. So, the detection script can “fail” for two reasons: 1) An insufficient version or 2) the absence of the Flash Player altogether.

Therefore it is a good practice to include the GetFlashPlayer icon linked to Adobe’s site in case they were sent to this page because of a version problem and not the absence of the Flash Player. I guess you could use the CSS mod outlined in the overview article to hide a <div> tag that includes the icon if you don’t want your iPhone users to see something they can’t act on.

The next step is to copy all of the detection code including the conditions to another HTML page and save it as the site’s default page – typically index.htm or default.htm. From there you can send your users to either the regular home page (successful detection) or an alternate page (failed detection). The alternate page is where you can customize an image-based version of the home page that can be seen by mobile browsers that don’t support the Flash Player as well as explain why they were sent there.

I then went a step further and set a session variable and checked it on every other page on the site that had Flash content so I could either substitute alternate content or hide the Flash content altogether. This has an inherent problem as the session will at some point time out and if the iPhone user closes Safari and comes back, they could be faced with a site that doesn’t know they are a non-Flash user.

To overcome this, you could call a modified version of the Flash Detection script on each of those pages that resets the session variable if the detection fails, but that starts to get pretty cumbersome and is why I eventually went to the SWFObject route. You can read about that method in THIS POST.

To see a site that uses this method, go to www.americanpiepizza.net – a Central Arkansas pizza joint with a killer menu.

Two different strategies were employed and I thought it might be fun to share them. The first is based on a technique I’ve been using for years via simple Flash Player detection. The second, uses SWFObject 2.2 and displays a non-Flash equivalent of my Flash elements for any user without an active Flash Player. Each have their merits; their pros & cons and therefore it is up to you whether or not they fit your situation.

I’ve even found a third that uses Regular Expressions to detect the use of a mobile device and redirect users to alternate pages. I decided to reject this approach because I don’t want to maintain multiple versions of my content for a given percentage of users – especially when there are alternatives for almost all scenarios. If you want to know more about how to detect mobile devices for a variety of platforms  via regex, visit http://detectmobilebrowser.com

Regardless of the method, there are two things you need to do for iPhone users. One is a META tag that needs to be inserted into your pages and the second is a CSS style inserted into your style sheet. Here are some examples:

META | The WIDTH value is whatever width your actual content container happens to be
<meta name = “viewport” content = “width = 960″>

CSS | Because the iPhone uses a full version of Safari, the device type isn’t “handheld” – it is screen, just like your laptop computer. Apple didn’t want their users to get the handheld versions of websites, but rather enjoy the full version of the site. So, adding a new CSS file with the “handheld” designation won’t change the appearance of your site on the iPhone. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t develop a handheld version of your CSS as part of your usability strategy, but it won’t do anything for your iPhone users.

Make this the last entry in your CSS file. As you can see, I’m overriding several styles if the screen width has a maximum width of 480px. Put whatever styles you need in here to make the iPhone version readable.
@media only screen and (max-device-width: 480px) {
body,td,th {
font-size: 12px;
}
.page-content {
line-height: 22px;
padding: 4px;
color:#FFFFFF;
font-size:16px;
}
}

If you’re interested in the Flash Detection method, read THIS POST outlining it. If you’d rather employ the SWFObject method, I’ve covered it in THIS POST.