The Laszlo Letter

Photo / Slide Animation of the Fun Kind

Many of you have thanked me for turning you on to the Blurb digital photo publishing tool. Continuing in that vein, I want to make you aware of a web site called Animoto.

The concept and the execution is really simple. You select a set of digital photos based on some theme and upload them to the Animoto web site. You then select a sound track (classical, jazz, rap, electronica, etc.) to go with the photos. And last, you tell Animoto to create a video combining the photos and music. The process is fun and the results can be awesome.

When finished, you can email a link to the video to anyone. You can also post the video to web sites like this blog. That's exactly what I did with this sample video created from photos taken on a recent trip to Munich.

I'd venture to guess that there are also some commercial uses for this service. For example, if you are a vendor who will be going to a trade show, you could create a pretty compelling video to replace those ugly PowerPoint presentations you may already have.

Give it a try.

Downgrading from Vista to XP

If you recently bought a new PC or laptop, it is likely that it came packaged with the MS Vista operating system. Unfortunately, while Vista may be prettier than XP, it comes with a lot of baggage and some erratic/annoying behavior. Personally, I hate it.

Assuming that you work for a biopharma company, it is also likely that they have not yet switched to Vista and will not support any machine that is running it. So, if you want to do something work related on your Vista machine, you won't be able to get technical support from your employer.

If you are just now in the market for a new PC/laptop, then make sure that it comes pre-loaded with XP and not Vista. You will specifically have to ask for this "downgrade."

If you are in the less enviable position of having a PC with Vista already on it, then you will need to take the somewhat painful step of converting from one OS to another. Luckily, there is a new article in Information Week that will help you prepare for and execute this task. Make sure you set aside a whole morning or afternoon for this, since I don't believe the statement in the article that it should only take a few hours!

USA Presidential Candidate Healthcare Proposals

A Public Service Announcement

Healthcare is a top-of-mind issue for most of us living in the United States. Perhaps it is a lesser issue for those in the 18-29 age group, the segment of the population that is most looking forward to a drastic change in direction for the country. Anyone older, however, is truly concerned about adequate or catastrophic healthcare coverage.

So, how is one to tell how well each of the Presidential candidates have thought about this issue? Luckily, Stephen Beller has taken the time to do such a comparison and it's my intent here to just let you link to it and decide for yourself which candidate offers the "best" solution.

Happy reading!

The Reading List - 1Q 2008

In the era of instant gratification, it is good to remember that it sometimes pays to take a deeper dive into certain subjects. With that in mind, here is a list of books that will be published in the first quarter of 2008.

If you like controversy, February and March are the months for you when the following titles will hit the streets:

• Before You Take that Pill: Why Big Pharma Is Bad for Your Health.
• Values in Medicine: What are We Really Doing to Patients?
• Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs

So, put down that magazine and curl up with a good book.

Will the Internet kill books?

Well NO.

It is more likely that over time we will see electronic publishing becoming the norm with "on demand" printing of entire books moving from the print shop to the book store or your personal computer.

We actually have a pretty good analogy to this in our own industry. That is, the move to electronic submission publishing including electronic delivery and the potential to go to print on an "as needed" basis.

Technology will need to come to the rescue once again and allow these "one off" books to be printed and bound quickly and at a quality equal to what is currently expected by consumers. Some "on demand" printers are already available and can print a single page in a split second in full color. So, you can expect to see them show up at your favorite large book chain fairly soon. I'd say in the next two years. Remember though that I tend to be an optimist and may be off by a year or two.

This leads to an interesting question. Just how many books are we talking about?

According to R.R. Bowker, there were close to 300,000 books published in 2006 in the United States alone. For the entire English-speaking world, the number increases to over 450,000.

The top publishing categories for 2006 in the USA were as follows:

• Fiction 42,000
• Juvenile 29,000
• Sociology/Economics 25,000
• Religion 18,000
• History 14,000
• Science 13,000
• Philosophy/Psychology 13,000
• Medicine 11,000
• Biography 10,000
• Poetry/Drama 10,000
• Arts 9,000
• Business 9,000
• Literature 8,000
• Technology 7,000
• Education 7,000
• Sports/Recreation 6,000
• Computers 5,000

And I have no idea how many times Paris Hilton is mentioned in any of these books. However, it would be interesting to see the breakout by category.

Note: I have rounded the figures up or down to the nearest 1,000. For example, the actual count for computers is 5,498.

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The Real Thanksgiving

First, let me wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving.

This one is my favorite holiday. It's really the only one where the empasis is on friends and family and does not bring with it a host of obligations. You can simply get together with those you love and have a good time.

So, we owe a thanks to the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth back in the 1600's and the Wampanoag native american indian tribe that helped them survive and celebrate their first thanksgiving in Massachusets.

So, if you care to know about how all this happened and its aftermath, read on. Then, if you are really interested, follow this link to find out what separates myth from reality about the Thanksgiving story.

Havidol: Just don't take this too seriously

The October issue of Pharmaceutical Executive came with a supplement entitled "Guide to Branding." Unlike most people, I tend to look at these supplements before relegating them to the trash bin. And so, it was with distinct pleasure that the article on Page 8 led me to the following web site:

                                                          Havidol

Check out the site. Then read the article.

Just don't try to get an Rx for this stuff from your physician!

Forget the prints. Publish a book instead!

Once in a while I like to tell you about something that I find fun, refreshing and useful in my personal life. My Canon XTi digital camera is one of those and you have heard my views on that in the past. Now comes something with a huge WOW factor, the BLURB web site.

Imagine a piece of software that is fun to use and allows you to create a professional (really!) published book that can rival something you would normally buy at Barnes & Noble. I set out to find something like this and actually found it!

Read on...

The case for cocaine reimportation

One of the great benefits of blogging is the freedom to say anything you want. This also means that when you are not censored (i.e. edited) you can end up publishing something really dumb. I'm hoping that this post is not one of those. If it is, I'm sure you'll let me know.

The September 22, 2007 issue of The Economist showed a nice graph of retail cocaine prices (per gram) around the world. So you don't have to go there, here is the list as extracted by me:

• Australia - $250
• Japan - $240
• Norway - $155
• United States - $110
• Britain - $95
• France - $85
• Germany - $80
• Israel - $70
• Canada - $65
• Colombia - $3

These numbers gave me a few business ideas. Read on...

ATM and Credit Card fees during foreign travel

  I took a nice long vacation to Italy last year and learned the hard way that banks can charge you excessive fees on ATM withdrawals and credit card purchases. This is in contrast to what I would normally be charged when using the same services in my native country, the United States.

Here is an example. I used an ATM machine in Genoa, Italy to withdraw €300. The local bank charged me about €2 for this privilege. No problem with that! They are providing me with a useful service and I'm not a regular customer.

When I got home and received my Chase bank statement, I found a separate fee of $12.38. BIG problem with the additional fee!

So, here is the bottom line. If you stay home and withdraw about $400 from an ATM you will be hit with a small ATM fee from the local bank. If you go to another country and do the same, you will still pay the ATM fee and also get hit with a fee of 3% on the total amount you withdrew! The same can happen with any credit card purchases.

Where I come from we would call this a "rip off." In other words, my bank thinks that it's OK to extract whatever they can from my wallet without giving me any commensurate services in return. Consider that the entire transaction is done electronically and the most the bank's computers need to do is look up the exchange rate, calculate the US dollar equivalent from the original Euro amount and make the deduction in my account.

So, I'm outraged. But what can any of us do about this situation? Well, read on...