Empathy is a strange thing. Someone with empathy can read in a lot from someone from what they write on an IRC channel.  But someone short in empathy can meet someone, read what they write, and still not have any idea what makes that person tick. Learning you lack empathy is an important first step to trying to develop it.  I know because for most of my life, I lacked empathy.

Developing empathy is critical to success in business. It's absolutely critical in managing a company and it's important in marketing and sales.  In managing people, trying to learn what motivates them is important. In the last month or two, we've started even giving our people personality tests. Kind of a empathy cheat sheet in order to better meet their needs. But no test can substitute for empathy. It is something I've worked on for the past few years to get better at.

One way to determine whether you're strong in the empathy department is being have to meet someone or read what they've written and get a "rough" idea of what makes them tick. On another thread, a user came on and grossly misjudged what type of person I am.

He argued I was a particular personality profile called INTJ. He said that the following description probably "fits me to a letter".

loner, more interested in intellectual pursuits than relationships or family, not very altruistic, not very complimentary, would rather be friendless than jobless, observer, values solitude, perfectionist, detached, private, not much fun, hidden, skeptical, does not like most people, socially uncomfortable, not physically affectionate, unhappy, does not talk about feelings, hard to impress, analytical, likes esoteric things, pessimistic, not spontaneous, discontented, guarded, does not think they are weird but others do, responsible, insensitive to the misfortunes of others, orderly, clean, organized, familiar with darkside, does not value organized religion, suspicious of others, lonely, rarely shows anger, punctual, finisher, prepared

Favored Careers
scientist, dictator, forensic anthropologist, systems analyst, philosopher, nuclear engineer, political analyst, researcher, statistician, scholar, research scientist, computer scientist, software designer, curator, computer programmer, aerospace engineer, electrical engineer, paleontologist, english professor, philosophy professor, chemical engineer, epidemiologist, forensic scientist, museum curator, research assistant, mechanic, astronomer, figher pilot, librarian, systems administrator, neurosurgeon, book editor, biotechnology, archeologist, lab tech, bookstore owner

Now, before I tell you what I actually came up with on said personality test, how many people, even if you've not met me, but have been around me in the "virtual" sense for some time would agree that the above description fits me? I suspect not many.

I don't have infinite faith in personality profiles. But I do find them to be pretty accurate. Here is the profile I matched after taking the test: ENTJ:

decisive, fearless, planner, thrill seeker, engaged, social, comfortable around others, image conscious, likes to be center of attention, adventurous, outgoing, emotionally stable, leader, ambitious, hard working, dominant, prepared, hates to be bored, confident, opinionated, analytical, prepares for worst case scenarios, organized, orderly, clean, driven, resourceful, finishes most things they start, achieving, risk taker, desires fame/acclaim, image focused, perfectionist, driven

Favored careers:

marketing specialist, government employee, lawyer, developer, political scientist, bounty hunter, international relations specialist, software designer, systems analyst, business manager, entertainment lawyer, foreign service officer, strategist, project manager, advertising executive, cia agent, marketing manager, geneticist, private investigator, administrator, business analyst, politician, management consultant, producer, financial advisor, entrepreneur, genetics researcher, cardiologist, professor, fbi agent

This is what the test came up with after I took it.  But does any of this really come as a shock? Favored careers: Developer, Political Scientist, Software Designer, Business Manager, Marketing Manager, Entrepreneur.  A little bit better than "Philosophy Professor"? Or "Museum Curator"?

I am not arguing that one profile is better than another -- just that one matches my personality dramatically closer.   The thought provoking part is how someone could be so certain of their personality profile guess of me and yet be so completely wrong? That's a problematic combination - missing social empathy with dogged certainty. 

Even without the benefit of strong empathy, if someone wanted to get an idea of what kind of person I am (or am not) my articles make some things clear -- I'm married. I have kids. I like having kids. I like being around people. I like interacting with people. I'm not very private (I run a freaking blog site for crying out loud). So how someone, even without meeting me, could possibly conclude that I'm the "INTJ" profile is astounding.

Empathy is an important trait. If you observe other people and try to understand their motivations, their concerns, and their goals it does make it easier to be successful in interacting with them.  My own track record in that area is spotty. Being an eNTj profile has its downsides.  As a business skill, especially in medium to large companies (or in sales and marketing) empathy is very crucial to success. 

So if you find yourself not having a lot of empathy, work on it.  Next to personal self-discipline, empathy is the most important element for career success.

The said that Afghanistan would be a quagmire. They were wrong.  They said that invading Iraq would cause an "unrelenting wave of terrorists attacks on US soil" they were wrong.  They said that an invasion of Iraq would cost "half a million civilian deaths" they were wrong.

And most recently that the US was losing the hearts and minds of Iraqis. That turn-out in the the Iraqi election would be low because people didn't have faith in the system.  And they were wrong again.

72% of Iraqi's came out to vote.  That's far higher, as a percentage, than the number of Americans who came out to vote in the last election. You remember that recent American election? The one where you should "vote for die"? That we had to vote to get the "smirking chimp" and his "Haliburton paid cronies" out of office? Perhaps if those who have such great fear of "the chimp" had managed to have a 72% turn-out they could have indeed gotten a President Kerry who, even now, would be setting up a time-table to torn and flee from Iraq.

The people whose motto seems to be "When danger reared its ugly head we bravely turned and fled" really have a fundamental issue they need to work through.  They need to have faith in humanity.  In each of these cases the believe that we or those we support are inhuman monsters or, at best, are incapable of success. 

I didn't know for certainty that Iraqis would come out and vote.  I had been so fed the propaganda that Iraqi's wouldn't go to the polls because of intimidation. That many were boycotting the polls. That violence would make it a blood bath (there were 12 deaths from violence -- about the same number who died due to the aborted suicide in California last week).  So I had some misgivings.

But 72%! Holy cow that's a real affirmation that the Iraqi people want democracy. That they want self-determination.  Perhaps...Perhaps the doomsayers will finally see the light and have a little faith that maybe..just maybe the Iraqi people want freedom.  Ah, now I'm being naive..

I wrote in this article about my fear that the Democrats were going to drive themselves to extinction due to its inability to encourage its extremists to find a different party to belong to.

A new user called JTurnas responded:

Now for some advice to you Draginol. Anyone running a business shouldn't post public political opinions. Its only going to cost you big in sales. Those liberals have credit cards, just like the moderates, its only logical they will take their money elsewhere. You don't see political signs on a McDonalds, or a CompUSA, or a any other business do you? You don't see Bill Gates out on blog sites telling people that liberals are morons, do you? The average consumer can't tell you the political leanings of most all companies, and their CEOs. Theres a reason for this, and the reason is, its bad business. Think about that next time you post patronizing and insulting blogs about people you disagree with politcally. Remember, this is coming from a Moderate Conservative, before you even think about labeling me a bleeding heart liberal. You'd figure someone that proclaims themself to be "All Knowing" would have figured this out by now.

A pretty ballsy comment coming from someone who was obviously new to the site (and arrogant enough to "give advice" despite not having looked around the site very long).

Ignoring the fact that I've been writing politically-oriented articles here for the past 3 years. Ignoring that our company's revenue has steadily increased for those same past years. Ignoring that actually many CEOs are quite outspoken on their politics. Ignoring that the company I work for has people of all kinds of different political views. Ignoring that our company doesn't contribute to any political parties or groups. Ignoring that me having a blog is not analogous to having a political sign on the front of our building or company's website, let's assume his argument is true.

Let's assume that some number of people greater than 0 read my articles, find out where I work and decide not to purchase products or services from our company because of those opinions. 

The first problem I have with that attitude is that it assumes that because I've chosen to start my own business to create products and services and employ people that I somehow must limit my extra-work activities because it may hurt said company.
This assumes that "the company" is the be all end all reason for that person to exist. It assumes that CEOs have no life outside their work and all must be secondary to the needs of "the company".

The second problem is that it assumes that there are a lot of people who make purchasing decisions based on the political ideologies of CEOs. This is something quite different from celebrities who seem quite willing to shove their whacked out views on people. It's different because celebrities get media coverage for their ideologies because they're celebrities. The celebrity IS the product/service. By contrast, people read what I write mostly because of the content of what I write.

Most people reading this have no idea what my day job is. Nor do they care.  Lots of people do know where I work but most of them don't care either.

That I'm pro-choice on the abortion issue doesn't affect the quality of the artificial intelligence in our games. That I favor US foreign policy in Iraq doesn't affect the quality of visual styles I work on. That I favor personal accounts for Social Security doesn't impact the quality of our desktop enhancement software. In other words, my political opinions are totally disconnected with what I do. Moreover, anyone playing the one game that my political views might affect, The Political Machine, can tell you the game didn't favor either candidate.

It's not a freedom of speech thing. I'm not going to complain that my rights are being infringed simply because someone thinks I shouldn't write political blogs because someone will choose not to buy products or services from my employer. But it's a damn presumptuous assertion though.

So let me be clear: Anyone who makes purchasing decisions based on the political beliefs of an executive or founder of a company when the product or service is totally unrelated to those political beliefs is a moron. Only a moron would choose not to buy the best quality/priced car because their CEO maintains a blog where he write liberal or conservative essays. And frankly, I don't want a moron as a customer anyway.

Moreover, my job is a means to an end. It is not the ends unto itself. I work so that I can provide for my family. So even if my blogs caused a measurable amount of lost business, I wouldn't stop writing because I write for myself. I enjoy writing and I'll be damned if I'd stop writing about what I want to simply because it affects the bottom line at my job. I write on my own time. And as the principle stock holder at said job, I'm going to do what I want to do in my free time. Period.

I'd rather make less money and do what I want to do in my spare time than be a slave of the corporation.

Glenn Reynolds had a very interesting discussion with regards to how the Democrats should deal with their kooks:

You rightly point out that we liberals must do our best to shout down, disassociate ourselves, do everything we can to make ourselves no longer the party of Michael Moore, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, et al.

And as you noted, the Right does do a better job of quieting its 'idiotarians'. The only problem is, they essentially do it with the "bribes and promises" approach. Jerry Falwell, even when muzzled, knows that to some degree he and the people he represents will get a hearing from the White House and congress, the American seats of power.

On the left, we are a minority in all branches of government. How can we cast off the extremists if we have nothing to offer to placate them, nothing to drive them away with? It makes it harder to easily dismiss them, and as we get drawn into a serious debate with them (which we'd handily win), the Republicans will simply say, "Look, the Democrats can't even stop their circular firing squad, how can they run the country?" and we'll lose more seats in Congress.

I'm with the College Dems at my school, and the reactionary extremism is so thick you could cut it with a knife. What's the solution for people like me? What *can* we do? Casting out the extremists seems an awful lot like putting salt on a bird's tail.

You've got a big pulpit. Help show us Dems how to make a party that's sane, but doesn't believe that America is a Christian nation or homosexuality is a sin or that all the poor are poor because they deserve it.

Well, I don't believe any of those three things -- I don't even think this is a "pulpit!" -- but I confess that I don't know how to save the Dems. I think that the "silent majority" -- those genuine moderate Democrats/Liberals that I keep hearing about, but don't hear a lot from on the national stage -- needs to realize the damage that the kooks do -- as the Republicans figured out -- and quit regarding extremism as evidence of "commitment" or "passion." I tried to sketch something like that alternate approach here, but though it's not hard to imagine, I think it would be hard for the Democrats to do.

I do think, though, that many people (me included) would cheer the Democrats for trying to make those changes, and while there might be a little bit of sniping from Republicans, that sniping would actually help the Democrats by calling attention to what was going on.

The alternative is for the Democratic party to get smaller as it gets angrier, and angrier as it gets smaller, until it just doesn't matter anymore. At some point the Republican Party will then likely split into a social-conservative wing and a libertarian wing, and I can join the latter, I guess. I'm not ready to call the Democrats the new Whigs, but it's not impossible for me to imagine.

The question is, will the Democrats be willing to do to Ted Kennedy, for his remarks on the war, what Republicans did to Trent Lott, for his remarks on Strom Thurmond and the 1948 election?

 

I agree. The Democrats seem to have learned nothing from the election. Its outspoken elements seem loonier and loonier and that drives more people to become Republicans.  At some point, the Republican party will end up splitting up and you'll have the Social Conservative party and a Libertarian Republican party or something.  I too would be in the latter.

I'm writing this from 35,000 feet over Chicago. It's incredibly clear out tonight so I can see all of Chicago it seems like and it is quite a site. And I say that as someone who travels regularly.

So this past week I went on the media tour.  In this case, a media tour is where I and our marketing goddess (Cordelia) fly out to visit the magazines to show them what we're doing in the hopes they'll cover us. 

On the games side, getting coverage is always a challenge. It gets a bit better each year though. In the old days, we could visit and those that showed up still rarely covered what we had.  That's partially because our games usually really looked like suck until the last couple months before release when we actually added..you know..the graphics.

When we wrote The Political Machine, we switched to a different system where we essentially now "skin" our games.  So we can have stand-in graphics but it's trivially easy now to update the graphics as we improve them so we now can have "near final" graphics much earlier.  This is thanks to DesktopX Pro.  This is a case where I'm glad we haven't gotten too much coverage on DesktopX because it's really been a major competitive advantage (for instance, I doubt even Blizzard has a DesktopX-level product for its user interface development).  Our games use read in the Pro-generated DesktopX objects and the Direct3D engine then does its magic.

But it went well.  IGN and Gamespot put up previews pretty early which was really cool. When visiting Computer Gaming World they told us that The Political Machine had been nominated as best strategy game of 2004. We lost to The Sims but still, that was incredibly cool.  At the risk of being politically incorrect (no pun intended), CGW was the one game magazine that really played The Political Machine.  I still think it's the best game we've ever made (better than GalCiv) as a game.  I'd lik to make a board game of it.

The non-games such as that of Object Desktop usually go pretty well.  Though for whatever reason, whenever I visit PC World, my machine starts to get flakey and things start to crash.  That's always a tense moment "Uh, well, this gives me a chance to show you BootSkin which changes yer uh, Windows XP boot screen..."  Seriously, happens every time I go there. My theory is that my ThinkPad gets jealous of their ThinkPads.

One thing that made my day was that on the way back, I used Blog Navigator to download for off-line reading my favorite websites with RSS feeds.  One of which is Penny-Arcade.  So as I'm on the plane here reading the articles I saw that Tycho wrote about GalCiv 2. Totally cool and thanks!

Well, we've crossed lake Michigan. Amazing how fast that goes when you're on a plane.  I can see Benton Harbor below me now. Time to sign off.

I'm on the plane to San Francisco as I write this. A few moments ago, one of the passengers became seriously ill. Apparently he's going to be okay, at least well enough to make it to our final destination.

But the vent got me thinking, the new Airbus 380 mega plane simply isn't viable. It's going to lose to the new offerings from Boeing.  Here's why:

The more people you pack onto a plane, the greater the odds that something will happen with one of them that requires the entire plane to make an emergency landing.  You put 500+ people on a plane and you increase the odds of passengers having their plans disrupted over an emergency.

There is also the problem of boarding. It takes a very long time to board a plane. One of the reasons I dread flying is because of the monumental waste of time involved.  If my flight is at 1pm. I get there at noon. And typically the plane doesn't leave the ground until 1:45pm.  Bigger planes compound that by increasing the boarding time. And boarding time increases non-linearly as you add passengers.

There are other issues involved as well such as bigger planes are less flexible (you have to use them on very busy routes).

Boeing's strategy of having smaller planes I think is the way to go.

Don't let it be said that I don't tell the truth when it comes to looking at the customization market.  In the battle of widgets, Konfabulator is kicking DesktopX's butt.

But as a Konfabulator fan, I can live with that.  It's a superb program with a really top notch team.  It deserves success a lot more than say some company that cranks out a $20 program that patches a byte of memory on a bundled Windows system file.

Though in the larger scheme of things, widgets have not panned out as being quite as big of a deal (at this point) as we had hoped. No customization app, of any kind, has gotten Konfabulator's attention in the mainstream media. But the download counts just aren't there. Konfabulator widgets get typically 2k downloads. And mind you, this is wiping the floor with everyone else. I.e. 10X what DesktopX widgets are getting which in turn gets more than the others we can measure.  By contrast, a decent WindowBlinds skin can expect 20k users to download it.

So putting aside the problem with widgets in general, let's go back to why DesktopX is losing the battle of widgets.

#1 Stardock has failed at marketing DesktopX effectively.  I mean at a very basic level - getting the program into the hands of columnists, editors, etc.  Robert X. Cringely, who wrote about Konfabulator, had never heard of DesktopX and he's about as much of an industrial insider as you can get (he made "Triumph of the Nerds" and wrote "Accidental Empires"). 

So before people arm-chair quarterback DesktopX product management, the fact is, unless people who write about software get the program to use in the first place, they won't have the opportunity to complain about any documentation faults or that the widgets aren't sexy enough or that the website is too confusing or that the UI is confusing or whatever. 

#2 DesktopX's biggest strength is its biggest marketing disadvantage. To USE Konfabulator you just load it up and start loading widgets and they work great. Very simple.  Want to create a widget? Well... very different thing. You do it outside the program using text editors and put things together by pixel. 

By contrast, in DesktopX, the content creation portion is part of the program. It's easy to create and modify stuff.

So how is this a disadvantage? First: It makes DesktopX seem more complicated than it is.  Second: It means even the most casual, unskilled skinner can crank out yet another weather widget and upload it.

#3 DesktopX's breadth works against it.  DesktopX isn't mostly used for widgets. It's used for DESKTOPS.  In the past month, only ONE DesktopX related item showed up in the top 50. It was MediaCenter desktop. 

In fact, the most popular DesktopX object got more downloads than the top DesktopX widget. And unfortunatley that brings up our next problem.

#4 Objects and widgets confuse people. At some point we may have to put more guidlines on uploading.  DesktopX objects are supposed to be basically glorified icons and such. If there's functionality involved, they should be widgets.  But the whole thing is vague and confusing thus splitting the commuinty up further. There's no easy solution to this because having objects is the only thing that keeps the widget library, already filled with a gazillion weather widgets, from also having a gazillion little animated icon type things.

#5 DesktopX does not include a full fledged suite of consistent looking widgets.  There is the core set. But despite the great work Paul (Mormegil) did on these, I don't think they're as good as the Konfabulator defaults and there aren't as many.  There needs to be some more "themes" of DesktopX widgets.

#6 DesktopX lacks a motivated development community. The docs for DesktopX are good. I'm sorry but anyone complaining about DesktopX development docs isn't someone I'm going to take very seriously.  I've had years of experience looking at this stuff and DX's docs are quite good.  Any strong skinning community needs at least 12 active content creators.  DesktopX has perhaps 5.  Konfabulator has around 16 regular authors.  Stardock needs to find a way to get more peple to make interesting stuff for DesktopX. 

Given that it is much much easier to create widgets for DesktopX, one has to ask, why was the UPS widget done for Konfab first when it would have been much easier to do under DesktopX?  The DX community just isn't organized or motivated.

These 6 things are the main problems I see with DesktopX.

Stardock, at some point, is going ot have to decide whether it should focus on trying to sell DesktopX or sell DesktopX generated content.  Aquarium Desktop and Natural Desktop are both made with DesktopX. They've made tens of thousands of dollars in revenue. 

So if Stardock continues to fail to encourage the community to create DesktopX content, then the other possibility would be to sell premium content developed by Stardock or Stardock partners.  After all, are people really buying Konfab or DesktopX because of the idea of widgets or because they want to put cool looking mini programs on their desktop?   If it's the latter, why not just sell users the actual widgets in stand alone form and start looking at DesktopX itself as more of a SkinStudio type platform for developers?

So over the coming months, Stardock is going to have to decide how it can address the 6 issues i mentioned above (for starters) or it's going to have to change the rules and go a different direction (i.e. have a DesktopX run-time that's purely for users and a DesktopX Builder for those who want to create stuff).

 

 

Gamespot has a terrific preview of Galactic Civilizations II.  They also have some exclusive screenshots of the current internal build along with the new 3 minute or so trailer for the game.

Check it out!

Check out this exquisite preview of Galactic Civilizations at IGN.  They have the trailer and some exclusive screenshots as well!

LIVONIA, Mich. Jan. 25, 2005--Software developer Stardock Corp. released WindowBlinds 4.5 today. WindowBlinds is a program that enables users to change the look and feel of Microsoft Windows by changing the title bars, push buttons, radio buttons, scrollbars, Start bar, and other elements of the Windows user interface by applying system wide themes known as "skins".

Windows XP includes a single visual style known as "Windows XP Style". By installing WindowBlinds, users can add thousands of other visual styles that are freely available on websites such as WinCustomize.com.

Software companies such as Microsoft have used WindowBlinds to release additional visual styles such as their XBOX visual style. PC Manufacturers such as Alienware have used WindowBlinds to create a branded Alienware look and feel for their PCs. Millions of consumers have used WindowBlinds to make Windows look like an alternative operating system, their favorite holiday season, their latest computer game, or something tailored just for them.

WindowBlinds 4.5 includes the new ability to change the color of visual styles through hue shifting along with modifying the brightness and saturation of the visual style. It also includes the ability to have alpha blended Start menus and standard menus which enable users to have semi-transparent pieces to those parts of Windows XP and eliminates the "jagged" look around the edges of the interface.

WindowBlinds is a free download at www.windowblinds.net. Consumers can purchase the enhanced version of WindowBlinds for $19.95 which adds the ability to skin more elements of the Windows user interface and can skin even non-theme aware applications.  Users can also get the enhanced version of WindowBlinds by purchasing Object Desktop ($49.95) which is Stardock's suite of desktop enhancements. It can be found at www.objectdesktop.com.

About Stardock:
Stardock is a Windows software developer located in Southeastern Michigan. It is the world's leading developer of Windows enhancement utilities. Its software is used by corporations and consumers alike who wish to customize their Windows environment to match their particular needs. Stardock also develops games such as the award-winning Galactic Civilizations and the political strategy game The Political Machine. Its home page is www.stardock.com.

   WindowBlinds 4.5
   Free Download / $19.95 for enhanced version or $49.95 at part of Object Desktop
   WindowBlinds home page: http://www.windowblinds.net
   Requires: Windows 98, ME, 2000, or XP. (Windows XP recommended).