The Full 8 minute video can be seen HERE It is definitely worth a view. It reminds me of what Micheal Scott might have done if he had Steve Jobs’ money.

Gizmodo was one of the first to show it, citing NetworkWorld as the original source. Now they have found a blog post for a filmaker that worked on the project, Michael Markman. Markman gives a detailed account of the events leading up to making the film, most of it uninteresting, until he gets to talking about pitching the idea to Jobs:

“Mike talked to us in general terms about marketing strategy. He said that in 1984, Macintosh had established a beach head in businesses, but had very little penetration so far compared to IBM. In the coming year, however, with new products coming on line—including a laser printer, a revolutionary plug-and-play network architecture (AppleTalk), a file server, new software, and ways to bridge into existing IBM networks, Mac would move in from the beach.

“If you know Apple history, you’ll know that some of those products didn’t make it to market on time. AppleTalk and the LaserWriter were the few that shipped. The rest of what was termed “The Macintosh Office” was announced, but were not ready for the market. In 1985, Mac sales stalled. Apple went into crisis. Steve into exile—until 1997. Mike Murray moved on to Microsoft where he became VP of HR. Image Stream folded as Apple contracted, and I hired on at Apple.

“But as Glenn and I sat in Mike’s office, we had no clue that Mike’s strategy rested on some unrealistic development schedules.

“As Glenn and I listened to Mike [Murray, head of Mac marketing] talk about beach head and market penetration, and as we watched him draw on his white board, the parallels to the landings at Normandy seemed obvious. I think Glenn was first to connect 1984 to 1944. And the idea clicked in almost immediately.

“Given the way Steve had positioned Apple against IBM, it just seemed to fit. Glenn, Mike, and I began brainstorming right there in the office. Ideas came tumbling out. IBM had Charlie Chaplin for P.C. advertising. And, it turns out that Charlie Chaplin not only had a Hitler-like mustache, he had actually done a Hitler sendup in The Great Dictator. We’d show oppressed workers liberated by the brave forces of Macintosh. We got so excited by the idea that Mike wanted to rush right in and pitch to Steve.

“I called Chris in L.A. to outline what we were thinking. War movie. Stock footage from the D-day landings. Chaplin as Adenoid Hynkel hanging on the wall. Mac marketing team in cameo roles. And the topper: Steve as FDR…

“Glenn, Mike, and I marched into Steve’s office to give him the pitch. Pretty much the way I outlined it in the previous paragraph. Steve’s eyes were sparkling through it all. By the time I got to, “and you as FDR,” I had made the sale. In the binary universe of Steve Jobs, something is either a zero or a one. This was a one. Instantly. Definitively.”

So basically, the only reason this worked as a pitch is because of Steve Job’s immense love for himself, and the desire to see himself like the fearless leader FDR was. Makes sense.

"I’d be happy if that happened and someone wrote about it," Rubin is quoted as saying. "With openness comes less secrets."

Considering all the hubbub about the iPhone/Gizmodo incident (which even led to the police seizing Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s computers from his home while he was not even there), Rubin’s response is a well-placed jab.

In fact, that’s not the only jab at Apple Rubin took in the interview. Stone writes, that he even "seemed to compared [sic] Apple to North Korea." On the general public caring about mobile software being open or a walled garden like Apple’s, Rubin is quoted, "When they can’t have something, people do care. Look at the way politics work. I just don’t want to live in North Korea."

There’s no question that Google and Apple are becoming much fiercer rivals. It’s always fun to look at the jabs each takes at the other. Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently painted Android as all but the red light district of mobile operating systems.

It makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Less people will complete a doctorate as will complete a four year undergraduate degree. Less people will compete a four year degree as will graduate high school. Less education usually means less reading and less reading leads to a lower level of reading comprehension. If the words and sentences you use are too complex a number of people who might otherwise appreciate what you have to say may have trouble following how you’re saying it.

Blogging is a conversation and in order to have a meaningful conversation both sides need to have the ability to understand each other. You could be turning away readers by making it too difficult for them to read and follow what you have to say.

How do you know what level of education is likely needed to understand your writing? Enter the Gunning fog index.

What is the Gunning Fog Index?

The Gunning fog index is a simple test developed by Robert Gunning in the 1950s. The Wikipedia page on the other side of the previous link, lists the algorithm for calculating the index as:

1. Take a full passage that is around 100 words (do not omit any sentences).
2. Find the average sentence length (divide the number of words by the number of sentences).
3. Count words with three or more syllables (complex words), not including proper nouns (for example, Djibouti), compound words, or common suffixes such as -es, -ed, or -ing as a syllable, or familiar jargon.
4. Add the average sentence length and the percentage of complex words (ex., +13.37%, not simply + 0.1337)
5. Multiply the result by 0.4

which leads to the following formula:

The number you get at the end should be the average level of education a person needs to understand the passage in question. A Gunning fog index of 12 correlates to a high school senior.

The formula isn’t perfect. Words like “everyone,” “popular,” and “average” are considered complex words, because each has three syllables. I doubt many would stumble over those words or require having a high level of education to comprehend them. Still if you use them your Gunning fog index goes up. Some passages with a high index are rather easy to read and you can write a passage with a low index that is much more complex than the index would say it should be.

Overall the Gunning fog index does seem like a reasonable indication of how difficult a passage is to comprehend.

The Gunning Fog Index for the Technorati Top 20

I thought it would be interesting to calculate the Gunning fog index for some of the most widely read blogs and see how much schooling we need to understand them. I grabbed the list of popular blogs from Technorati, found three paragraphs from recent blog posts that were about 100 words each (75-125 words), and manually counted words, sentences, and complex words. Then I ran the calculation and took the average of the three paragraphs and called it the Gunning fog index for each blog.

I’d hardly call what I did scientific. Three recent paragraphs is not enough to characterize the writing of an entire blog and I have to admit counting complex words isn’t as easy as you’d think. There’s a little bit of play in some words that use the suffixes mentioned in the list above. A couple of words here or there does affect the calculation, though probably not too significantly. Were I test the same passages again in a few months the numbers below could easily differ somewhat. However, I don’t think the index in generally is meant to be highly scientific. It comes across more as a reasonable approximation of how difficult a piece of writing is to comprehend.

If you count the number of blogs below you’ll notice there aren’t 20. A few of the top blogs didn’t have passages of text long enough to test as they mostly relied on images for their posts. If anything that only adds to the argument that to be read more you need to stay away from complex writing.

I could have continued with blogs further down the popular list, but the manual calculations got tiring and I wasn’t bright enough to search for an online calculator like the ones below.

http://simbon.madpage.com/Fog/
http://www.online-utility.org/english/readability_test_and_improve.jsp
http://www.editcentral.com/gwt/com.editcentral.EC/EC.html

If anything the indexes I calculated will be a little bit high. Whenever I wasn’t sure if a word was considered complex I generally counted it. I also compared a few of my calculations with the calculators above and saw the same thing. My numbers are perhaps a half an integer on the high side based on the calculators and my own sense of how I ran the numbers.

• Engadget – 15.34
• Gizmodo – 10.91
• Techcrunch – 8.58
• BoingBoing – 10.13
• Huffington Post – 10.49
• Lifehacker – 12.10
• ars technica – 14.97
• Beppe Grillo’s Blog – 10.17
• Mashable – 15.30
• TMZ – 9.89
• Seth Godin – 9.32
• ReadWriteWeb – 13.52
• ProBlogger – 13.90
• Google Blog – 15.42
• Treehugger – 12.80
• Smashing Magazine -12.06

The average Gunning fog index for all of the above blogs was 12.18, or the equivalent of a high school senior. Going in I expected the number would be lower. I was surprised to see numbers over 15 and some of the individual passages I checked were as high as 18 or 19. I’m not sure how much weight you’d want to put on these numbers, but I can say it was easier to read the paragraphs that had lower indexes than it was reading those with higher indexes.

Across the board it’s very common for writing that is meant for the general public to have an index around 11 or 12, with technology related content having indexes up to 15. The numbers above would agree.

I couldn’t calculate the Gunning fog for all the above blogs without being curious about my own blog. Taking three paragraphs from recent posts here resulted in a Gunning fog index of 10.38. I guess 10th graders and above are welcome.

Conclusion

Aside from the conclusion that I need to look for online calculators before spending the time to make manual calculations what does any of the above prove? Mostly if backs up the initial thought at the beginning of this post. If you want your blog to be more accessible and more widely read you need to write simply, or at least you need not to write too complex.

Whether it shows or not I am usually conscious of the words I’m using here. I will rewrite a few things to make them simpler and I try not use big words when they aren’t necessary. I may not be the most popular blogger and I may not have the largest audience, but I haven’t had many people tell me they couldn’t understand what’s written here. People may not agree with me or enjoy what I have to say, but at least they understand what I’m trying to get across.

If your blog is going to attract and hold a larger audience it’s going to do that based on the ideas you have to share and how far those ideas can spread. Before your ideas can spread across the web they need to be understood so you may want to think about the Gunning fog index and periodically check to see how easy or hard it might be to follow your writing.

Maybe your target market or your blogging voice calls for more complex writing, but odds are you’re looking to write at a level that can be understood by a high school junior or senior or in my case a high school sophomore.

If anyone wants to run numbers on some of the blogs above for comparison let me know. I’d be interested in seeing what you come up with and there’s at least a link in it from me to you. If you want to share the Gunning fog of your blog either try the manual calculation or use one of the calculators above. The calculator is easier, but having to read through the passages to count the words, sentences, and complex words will give you a better understanding of how the index works.

What’s your Gunning fog index? How much education do I need to read your blog?

Comments

"Anonymity is the enemy, whether it’s online or walking around a trade show with a clicker in your pocket."

I vehemently disagree with Seth’s statement.  Here’s why.

Seth’s viewpoint of "anonymity is the enemy" only works if one is secure: physically, financially and emotionally.  Unfortunately, there are still many, many people in the world where that is not the case.  Here are three:

• Whisteblowers
• Political Dissidents
• Victims of violent or family crime

For any of those groups, anonymity is the means through which they can effect change.

In some cases, for those groups, anonymity is the thing that’s keeping them alive, literally.  On that note, I want to make a shout out to the TOR Project.  The TOR site says:

"Hundreds of thousands of people around the world use Tor for a wide variety of reasons: journalists and bloggers, human rights workers, law enforcement officers, soldiers, corporations, citizens of repressive regimes, and just ordinary citizens. See the Who Uses Tor? page for examples of typical Tor users. See the overview page for a more detailed explanation of what Tor does, why this diversity of users is important, and how Tor works."

What Gizmodo did was a social hack, not unlike a flashmob or Santarchy. 

It was not a crime, as Seth called it. 

If someone turning off a TV is a crime to get up in arms about where you live, consider yourself very, very fortunate.

Comments

– “Are we so easy to manipulate that all it takes for us to decide that a product is worth writing about or purchasing are some out-of-work strippers in skimpy outfits handing out 64MB thumb drives? Yes!”

– “Cheesy fake game shows? Yes, that’ll make me take your company seriously. Magicians? Wow, I an optimistic about your company’s potential in the CE marketplace.”

– “We get suckered in to covering CES like it’s the second coming every year; we brought something like 14 people this time around. For what? So we can cover stuff we normally would pass on in hopes that we can get it up three minutes before Engadget.”

– “You can’t walk five feet on the show floor without hearing some horrible line of moronic marketing speak come out of the mouth of an overly perky 5-foot-tall PR girl in a pantsuit, and it makes me want to stab myself in the ears.”

I would imagine there are dozens — perhaps even hundreds — of bloggers and journalists who went through the Sodom and Gomorrah that is CES and are thinking exactly the same things as Frucci. Well said, Adam.

Comments

As you see the monthly uniques for the big mainstream media sites listed, you may ask yourself about the company in red, Gawker Media. While you may be unfamiliar with Gawker within the context of being an independent blogging company, I’m willing to bet you have heard or read some of blogs it produces, including GizModo, ValleyWag, and a laundry list of others.

What is especially interesting about these findings is just how well Gawker is measuring up to these mainstream media sites. As the Alley Insider pointed out: “Gawker Media’s 14 titles are already drawing more than 70% of Washington Post’s traffic.” – yet another demonstration of the rising influence of blogs and the pressure blogs are placing on mainstream media.

Comments

Tag:

And so far, only readers of Gizmodo and Engadget are treated to a correction.

Every publication, no matter how careful, makes mistakes. It’s part of the business. Traditionally, newspapers like to bury them a few pages in, placing corrections in a bottom corner somewhere.

But at least they’re there. This incident, though, is more of a case of piggybacking gone awry. Not that piggybacking isn’t standard fare in the news industry. It is, and it happens with the best of publications. Compare these two articles, for instance.

See, happens all the time.

Credit for unraveling the Nissan paint mystery goes to Darius at YoungGoGetter.com, who painstakingly traced the "news" back to its origin after receiving comment from Nissan that they’d only heard of the new technology.

Sure enough, it was one misinterpreted and slightly altered sentence at NextEnergyNews that started it all:

This revolutionary new paramagnetic paint is a technical wonder and is viewed by Nissan and other auto companies as an amazing innovation that would draw huge traffic to dealerships and will make it easier for consumers to get the exact option level they want on a car without the sacrifice of their favorite color.

Which, by the time it reached Wired, became:

Nissan Developing Color-Changing Auto Paint

With similar so-far uncorrected variations at Daily Tech and MobileMag.com.

But what’s most humorous about Darius’s investigative blogging is the publications’ use of the same image of a Nissan car with only the colors altered. Your choice: black, white and red; black and red; silver and black; or green and black.

More time was spent fiddling with the image than actually researching the blog posts, it appears.

So what’s the moral to this humorous tale? Darius nails it:

Bloggers and readers should do more to research the facts and original sources before jumping to the publish button. How else will we establish blogging as a credible, journalistic endeavor?

Yes, indeed. The salty, veteran journalists out there are laughing their butts off.

Hong Kong’s Broadband Is How Fast?

Gizmodo was quick to point out that Verizon will deliver 5 Mbps to customers for $40 per month, and up to 30 Mbps for $180 per month.

But in Hong Kong, according to a City Telecom press release, 5 Mbps isn’t even an option. Or even 10, because they’ve just discontinued their 10 Mbps offering, making the 25 Mbps the entry (basic) package.

How much is that? The release doesn’t say, but if you’d like to try the 100 Mbps service (boy would we!), it’ll about $48.50. Not fast enough? (Huh? Couldn’t fathom that kind of speed.) CTEL can upgrade you to 200 Mbps for $88.

Still too slow?

I know, your mind’s melting, right?

How about 1 Gbps for $215?

So, how do you feel about paying $180 per month for that blistering 30 Mbps now? Yeah, kinda figured. Maybe we should ask for our $200 billion back, eh? 

MySpace Turns Away Australian Mobile Users

People are, after all, taking note of the development.  “MySpace has blocked Australians from accessing the new mobile phone version of its site in order to protect its exclusive and probably lucrative partnership deal with Optus,” reported The Sydney Morning Herald, a major national newspaper.  “The move effectively blocks Australians who are not Optus mobile customers from accessing MySpace on their handsets.”

But in terms of an outcry, there’s been virtually nothing.  Most onlookers are simply wondering why MySpace, which isn’t doing so well in the struggle against Facebook, would turn away anyone.  Want a taste of Australia’s attitude towards the social network?  Before the launch of MySpace’s mobile version, a Gizmodo Australia headline stated, “MySpace Mobile is Coming; MySpace Still a Horrible Site.”

As for Australians who don’t feel that way . . .  Unless MySpace is gaining some serious money through its arrangement with Optus, annoying an already shrinking fan base isn’t the smartest course of action.  In this case, “exclusive” could wind up meaning “empty.”

He’s absolutely right! (I’ve been saying that a lot today — I’m in a very agreeable mood).

The thing is I’ve been keeping my own “A list.” I judge 772 feeds (which represents thousands of blogs since some of my feeds, like Microsoft’s feed, has more than 3,000 bloggers on one feed).

I judged 35,609 items in the past 30 days, according to Google Reader. Out of all those items I shared 1,094 items with you.

To get onto my feed reader you’ve gotta do something better than the average blog. You’ve gotta bring the best of tech through my feed reader. If you don’t I unsubscribe and I go somewhere else.

Out of all those feeds Google Reader keeps track of the top 35 feeds. This is the new A list and DARE IS ON IT.

See, he better watch attacking the A list tech bloggers because he now is one.

I think that’s called a “looping flame.” Where you intended damage to happen somewhere else but it came back to focus on you. Ouch.

1. Mashable

2. Read/Write Web

3. TechCrunch

4. Media 2.0 Workgroup

5. digg

6. Sun bloggers

7. Gizmodo

8. ZDNet blogs

9. Planet Intertwingly (a bunch of bloggers show up here, including Dare).

10. All Facebook

11. MSDN Blogs

12. digg/Technology

13. The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

14. RSS Feed for Lifehacker

15. GigaOM Network

16. VentureBeat

17. Chuqui 3.0

18. VentureBeat Wire

19. Y Combinator Startup News

20. Engadget

21. TechNet Blogs

22. Digital Backcountry – Ryan Stewart’s Flash Platform Blog

23. JD on EP

24. Google Operating System

25. A Welsh View

26. dzone.com: latest front page

27. All Things Digital

28. Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life

29. Valleywag

30. Googlified

31. Ryan’s shared items in Google Reader

32. rexblog: Rex Hammock’s Weblog

33. Metaversed – Business and Technology News from the Metaverse

34. Business 2.0 Beta Blogs

35. CrunchGear

Anyway, I threw an answer to Dare up on my Kyte.tv channel as well.

Comments