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Forever among the crazy ones

Why does Steve Jobs’ death matter to so many people who never met him? For the same reason some ads explode on impact while others whisper off unnoticed. Steve Jobs was relevant. Not in some abstract way, but in ways intimately personal to each of us.

He revolutionized our relationship with music. He gave us phones that were truly smart. He changed how we interact with computers (no matter what those Microsoft weasels say) with the Mac. (Sorry.) Then, in his final masterstroke, Jobs ushered in the post-pc era.

My heart sank when the news reached me. I thought of his family, his company, his ideas not yet realized. Then a smile grew as I watched movie of Steve’s making in my mind’s eye: the moment Michael Plotczyk first set my hand down on a Macintosh mouse in 1984, the Christmas morning Santa delivered my first iPod, the day John and I brought home our first blue iMac, the Mac I used to edit my first video in 1998, and on and on it played.

Then, these words came to mind: “here’s to the crazy ones….” Remember the ad?

I found a version of it which was never aired. It’s voiced by Jobs himself. Watching it, I realized how to make it, with due respect to Steve, insanely great. It’s how I’ll remember his impact on the world. Though we never met, he was the crazy one who mattered to my life.

(Special thanks to Andrew for his fast work in our smokin’ hot Mac editing suite building this.)
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Swinging for the bigs on Cape Cod

An excerpt from my family travel journal. Cape Cod was one of the stops on our thousand-mile New England road trip. Summer league baseball won’t seem relevant to your marketing and advertising, unless you look deeper.

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Every summer, the best college players from across the country come by invitation to play in the Cape Cod Baseball League. I have been reading about the league since a Marc Setty at James Hardie turned me onto the book, The Last Best League: One Summer, One Season, One Dream.

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After returning from an afternoon of vacation beach time on the cape, I settled in to watch The Red Sox hammering the Astros back back home in Houston’s Minute Maid Park. Ironic, eh? But, the clap of a bat and sound of applause outside my window lured me onto the porch. The glow of outfield lights above the treetops behind our hotel confirmed my suspicion: it had to be a Cape Cod League game.

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It was an out-of-body thing: On went my Tevas. Grab the camera. Scamper across the parking lot. Follow the sound and lights. Emerging through a row of Field of Dreams hedges I found the Hyannis Harbor Hawks in the top of the 8th inning against the Wareham Gatemen. The 9-5 score told me the game was pretty much in the bag for Hyannis. The play-by-play announcer, pictured here doing the Internet broadcast, pretty much confirmed that. But, in baseball, as in life, it’s not over till it’s over. So, I stayed for the remaining inning-and-a-half.

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The men pictured here are watching closer than most. They’re professional scouts looking for talent. Chances are some of the players they’re watching will next play in major league baseball.

These are the stakes for the talented young men chosen to spend a summer playing baseball on fields like the one behind our Cape Cod hotel. It’s also proof of what can happen for all of us when we squeeze the trigger and ride the bullet. When in doubt, play ball!

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Eat your heart out, James Bond

James Bond’s Aston Martin. Loaded with super-cool spy stuff, it kept him one step ahead of the bad guys and ever closer to romance. His endless array of gadgets left boys like me dreaming of getting our own. Now I have them, sorta….

My favorite five James Bond tools

Even though I didn’t get the Aston Martin (not yet, anyway), or grab private jet rides for globe-trotting adventure (coach seats are fine for me), I have amassed a set of tools to James Bond my way through my daily challenges.

Ian Flemming died in 1964, just as Bond was becoming a screen franchise. A parade of authors extended the story line (in varying levels of success) after Hollywood exhausted Flemming’s original novels. To celebrate the release of the 23rd post-Flemming Bond novel, “Carte Blanche” by Jeffery Deaver, here are some of my everyday-Bond tools you may find helpful:

Evernote

Powerful information storage that syncs automatically to my phone, iPad, and laptop. Take a note or picture in one place, it’s available in all three. Notes can be assigned a URL you can use to share notes over the web. Evernote is available free, but the paid version offers more storage. You’ll need it soon enough.

Dropbox

It’s Evernote for files. Installed on all three screens (phone/iPad/laptop), Dropbox allows me to store files once and access them anywhere. As with Evernote, I can share them with others over the web. As with Evernote it’s free, but the added storage of the paid version becomes necessary quickly. Worth every penny.

Instapaper

Capture and carry web content to read any time—even when you’re not online. Instapaper works across my three screens and my Kindle. The latest version even optimizes content for the small screen on my phone. It’s a great way to gather research on a topic, though I prefer organizing what ultimately gets used in Evernote.

BC Reader

When receiving a business card, what do you do with it? Business Card Reader quickly scans it into my phone, translates it into a contact form and will even merge it into my contact management program. It can be quirky on the translating and merging, but it’s worth it to be freed of keeping track of all those cards.

Geniuscan

A scanner in your pocket, Geniuscan not only scans a document with my camera’s phone, but it crops it square and enhances it on demand. While no replacement for a quality flatbed scanner, it does the job when there are documents I want to capture and carry.

There’s always more for the sequel

Just as Bond returns, so shall a sequel to this list. Because, I have a collection of brainstorming and creative writing tools I use too. I’ll share those sometime soon. Till then, with all deference to Flemming and Bond, make mine stirred, not shaken. My latte, I mean.

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End of an era, again

Mark Haines

Television news lost something big the day NBC News’ Tim Russert died of a heart attack at 58. Business television lost something bigger with the passing of CNBC’s Mark Haines at 65. Both became giants of their industry, in large part, due to what they didn’t do.

Both were authentic to a fault. They both asked direct questions and hung on to get direct answers for us. It’s said Russert’s interviews could be like talking to a clenched fist. Haines’ interviews, on the other hand, were more of a dry-witted slap-down—but only when deserved.

Tim Russert

Haines’ willful disregard for television’s glamour set him apart visually from the packaged presenters we expect to see. His aww-shucks style, though, couldn’t mask his comprehension of subject. His ability to deliver it to us in terms that bridged the electronic gap made Mark Haines a trusted friend to many who never met him, including me. It’s all equally true of Russert as well.

What’s lost in the passing of these two men highlights the steady erosion of a quality important to television and radio. Compelling content is the byproduct of people speaking directly to us, not down to us; people of standards, who draw a line for principle because doing less would be letting us down. Television seems a little smaller without them. Placing a higher value on trust and respect than on popularity and profits is the stuff of giants, after all.

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