Dave Jenkins

Amazon launched their Amapedia - a wiki of everything they and all their affiliates sell. I am not sure I get it, though. Just because something is wiki, it doesn’t mean I will get all fired up to go scribbling across their empty articles. Why should I fill in their content for them? Why should I help Amazon sell a bunch of books about fruit?

We all contribute to the wikipedia because we feel like we’re contributing to the Greater Good, The Source, The Permanence of Man. Make it in the wikipedia, and you’ve achieved immortality, in a way. My Grandmother made it– good for her. But where’s the feel-good for writing some ad-copy about a watch? Sure enough– the articles in the Amapedia with the strongest (only?) content are the ones about strategy games, computer games, and pop music. In otherwords, products gravitating towards subjective pop-fluff that the kids like to shout about. We have reached the corporate-sanctioned version of “Clapton is God”, where we delude ourselves to think that subjective opinion will battle it out toward some greater truth.

eCommerce _must_ embrace the community. Content must rely on the mass contributions of the customers. The problem is– how to involve the customers to the point where they feel like writing your ad copy for you?

Well, I don’t have one here in my hands, so this is mostly conjecture, but I really am not all that impressed by what I’m reading about theiPhone from Apple. Why not? Because I had a better phone TWO YEARS AGO when I was here in Japan, not to mention the mind-bending stunts the cell phones are doing now here in Tokyo.

Phones are the primary bit if digital candy that everyone has. I know they are the primary bit because the cell phones take up the entire ground floor of the big electronics retailers (BicCamera, Yodobashi, Yamada Denki, etc.). Those retailers would not waste the most valuable real estate if cell phones were not the most profitable, highest volume, highest turnover (most Tokyoites keep cell phones about one year) items. With volume and turnover like this, the only place to compete is on functionality. Japanese mow send mail by _default_ on their cellphones, not their work computers. Young people, especially girls, access mail. photos, the internet, reservations, train schedules, and tunes all via their phones– rarely a desktop or laptop computer.

Wanna do business in Japan? One word for you:

keitai.

I first met Scott in English class when we were freshmen at East High School. He was smart, really really smart. The trick was that he was witty and outgoing and cool on top of being smart. Scott wore black and white wingtipped shoes to school because _he_ thought they were cool, nevermind what anyone else thought. That was Scott– he decided what he wanted to do and went after it will all his guts. The same could be said for his music, skating, schoolage, and girls. Later, at University, Scott pointed out the best looking girl on campus (and she was at the time), and told me he would marry her (we had only met her a few hours earlier). Sure enough, six months later, Scott married her.

Scott saved my soul on more than one occasion. he showed me there is meaning in life– the meaning is living itself. Scott made me watch “The Razor’s Edge” at least twice, until I got it: Life is life– not to be squandered. In this movie, two characters sit in a foxhole in WWI, lamenting the loss of their close friend, who only moments before jumped on top of a grenade to save their lives. In some odd ritual, they listed out the vices of their dead friend, and– through their tears– tell each other that he will not be missed.

Scott lost a battle to cancer last month. He was 38. He likely lived more in those 38 years than many many of us could even hope to do in a hundred years. Scott was brash, smart, quick, and charming. he could cut quick with a comment, but follow up with a trusting support that let others knew he would back them no matter what. Scott was one of my oldest and closest friends.

He will be missed.