Richard Keith Latman - The Blog

iMagicLab Credibility or My Credibility or Something Like That ;)

I haven't written about the Microworkz days in a while but once again there is some moron on the web writing a bunch of crap about who I am or what iMagicLab is. I guess it goes without saying that when you put yourself out into the media or public eye you have to be prepared to take or shot or two. Those faithful readers of this BLOG know that I've taken more than my share over the past decade and my decisions as a young guy will color who I am forever. As I've written before: Don't judge a person by the way they fall, judge them by the way they get up.

I am actually very proud of the way I learned from my mistakes in life and maybe just for a moment I'd like to get on my soapbox and tell you about a few. Those that have read here for a long time maybe go on to the Obama post, it's much more fun :)

1. iMagicLab or iCarMagic is the exact opposite of Microworkz.com. At Microworkz we billed first for hardware, built the hardware and then tried to deliver. At iMagicLab we spent years building the product FIRST, making sure we could deliver BEFORE we were paid and now our reputation amoung our customers is impeccable. Run iMagicLab with the BBB, with the courts, with whatever forum you wish: A perfect record and a lesson clearly learned.

2. Our business model is pay as you go at iMagicLab and there is never a contract or commitment. Again the point is we promise what we deliver each and every day to our customers: Another lesson learned.

3. iMagicLab employs seasoned professionals across the organization and not the young agressive folks we had at Microworkz.com. Don't get me wrong, our Microworkz staff worked hard every day, but this time I chose people with a track record of success in every department: Do I have to say it again? Lesson learned.

You know, it hit me very hard back in 2000 when then Judge Overstreet said that bankruptcy was for honest debtors and I wasn't being honest. It was not only true (I hid my ex-wife's wedding ring from the court) but it was indicative of who I was at the time. Those words were the proverbial "rock bottom" for me and, like the story goes, there was only one direction I could go. Another lesson learned and it set the stage for the great success that is iMagicLab.

Now, we're not perfect here at iMagicLab and no software ever is. Over the past 5 years we've served tens of thousands of users every day, grown to be one of the largest CRM companies aimed at the automobile retailer and are certainly the technology leader in our field. Our customers are loyal, the team is fanatical and our products speak for themselves.

I got up from my failure and I'm proud to be standing tall... this is the last time I am going to write about the subject. Next? I'm thinking politics....

Obama - Mistake #1 - Already... here we go

Its great to see President Elect Obama aggressively taking on the economy prior to his taking office. Unfortunately, the economic advisory team that he has put together looks more like a semester’s worth of great guest speakers  for an MBA class than an economic advisory team that can truly help him.

There are a lot of great minds on the list.

“Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Laura Tyson, who served as Clinton’s top economic adviser; former Fed Vice Chairman Roger Ferguson; Time Warner Inc. Chairman Richard Parsons; former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman William Donaldson and Xerox Corp. Chief Executive Officer Anne Mulcahy.

Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and Roel Campos, an ex-SEC commissioner, and Warren Buffett are also on the advisory board.”

Notice anything missing ?

Not a single entrepreneur. Yes Warren Buffett started a business, but he will be the first to tell you that he “doesn’t do start ups”. Which means there isn’t a single person advising PE Obama that we know of that knows that its like to start and run a business in this or any economic climate. That’s a huge problem.

If we are going to solve our current economic problems, our President needs to get first hand information on the impact his proposed policies will have on real Joe the Plumbers. People who are 1 person companies living job to job, hoping they get paid on time.  We need to know what the impact of his policies will be on the individually owned Chrysler Dealership in Iowa. The bodego in Manhattan. The mobile phone software startup out of Carnegie Mellon. The event planner in Dallas. The barbershop in LA. The restaurant in Boston.

Entrepreneurs that start and run small businesses will be the propellant in this economy. PE Obama needs to have the counsel of those who will take the real risk inherent in creating companies and jobs. Those who put their money and lives on the line with their business.

Without it, the rules of unintended consequences of any economic policy could hit you in the mouth in ways you never expected. Things like forcing companies from being taxpayers to the underground cash economy, or forcing new hires to be independent contractors to avoid having to pay their insurance or higher matching social security amounts. Your current group has no one with 100pct of their networth on the line. I promise you that the possibility of losing it all will provide a completely different perspective than any of the “knowledge” the esteemed, learned members of his current advisory team offer.

PE Obama, I’m always available to help, but my recommendation would be to randomly go through the new incorporation filings  and ask for volunteers to give feedback. Ask the people who are actually starting new businesses what they need.

Entrepreneurs will lead us out of this mess. Talk to them.

Smart Car Finds Richard Keith Latman - Keeps Him

OK so there is a continuing debate throughout this country about small cars and most notably about hybrids vs smaller engine combustion engine vehicles. I've read all the articles and being as attached to the car business as I am, have just bought a new Smart car to commute back and forth to work in. Why? I hoped you'd ask that:

1. Recyclable. Do I need to say anything else? 98% of this car will never see a landfill or junkyard. Unlike the millions of spent caustic batteries that Toyota will leave INSIDE the landscape in the name of "green" technology, my Smart will melt down into water bottles.

2. Economy. No it doesn't get the best mileage on the planet but it's darn good and much better than almost every other vehicle on the road.

3. Fun. Drive one and you will see what I mean. It's unrefined like a very old motorcycle and just as much fun. The pop comes down with ease, it fits everywhere and although slow, it feels like you have been transported to a simpler World, if only until you get to Starbucks. Anybody remember the Suzuki Samari from the 80's or the early Miata?

4. Carbon Emissions. Gonna shock you here but in America we get our electricity mostly from coal. Now as any of you who have worked in a coal mine recently can attest to: coal is some dirty stuff. It is burned to make your power which just reduces that dirty crap into minute particles and injects it into the atmosphere for the ozone layer to drink like cool aid at a Jim Jones party. I could go on for hours about this and I welcome the comments of any of the coal industry to refute the cancer rates of coal miners but I personally don't want any more of that in the air than need be. I tell you this because the new GM Volt or any of the other pure electric cars just remove one problem and replace it with another. I know, let's build "safe" nuclear power plants like Three Mile Island or Chernobyl to power our cars: that's a great legacy for the kids I'd be proud of.

5. Cost. OK so the Prius gets better mileage but besides being an environmental disaster (ever seen a battery leak acid?) it's more expensive to operate because of the cost of the car itself. The Smart is under $20k and the Toyota can run almost $30,000. We don't know how long the Toyota batteries will last but I'll bet they're around $5K to replace (with the old batteries polluting the ground water). It's not enough to make up the extra 5 miles to the gallon you get, don't be fooled.

Buying a Smart was the obvious choice for today and until the new Honda Fuel Cell vehicles come out, I believe this is correct for tomorrow too. It's the best balance of environmental concerns, cost benefit and fun in the marketplace. No doubt the little two-seater is not for everyone but as a commuter it's hard to beat.

Is there anybody who can beat Google?

Is there anything more fun than sitting around, growing your hair, drinking a Bud while listening to Jethro Tull and pondering how to change the balance of power in the search world and unseat Google ?
Better search ? Too subjective. Better monetization ? After the fact. Better User Interface ? Will we know it when we see it ? A new and different search ? Semantic ? Human powered ? We won't know till we know.

But what about the Google Index, all the websites that are indexed by Google ? What is it worth to be in the Google Index ? What would you, as a website owner require in order to remove your site from the Google Index and no longer be available when someone does a google search ?

It should just be a matter of dollars and cents and sense, shouldn't it ?

How many websites would have to recuse themselves from the Google Index  before Google Search was negatively impacted ?

Mahalo.com thinks it needs to support the 25k most common search terms in order to be successful. What would happen if MicroSoft or Yahoo or a MicroHoo went to the 5 top results for the top 25k searches and paid them to leave the Google Index ?

A theoretical maximum of 125k sites, but with overlap, probably closer to 100k or less, times how much per site on average ?

The math starts to get interesting. At $1,000 per site average times 100k sites, thats only $ 1 Billion Dollars. The distribution would obviously favor the larger sites, so of that billion dollars, would the top 1k sites take 500k each and the remaining 99k split the rest ?

Given the stakes, why stop at $ 1 Billion Dollars ? Would the top 1k most visited sites take a cool $1mm each, plus a committment from MicroSoft or Yahoo to drive traffic through their search engines to more than make up for the lost Google Traffic. After all, once consumers realized that Google no longer had valid search results for the top 25k searchs, that traffic would most likely go to MicroSoft and Yahoo.

And why we are at it, why not require that these 100k sites switch from Googles Publisher Network to Yahoo's or MicroSofts ? It would start to earn back the $1 Billion paid out very quickly.

On top of that, in order to grease the skids even further, why not issue advertising credits to the sites that switched off Google ? Its soft dollars, that would sweeten the pot and drive more traffic.

IN essence, its no different that any other content aggregation play. Its paying for content . But, It would take some big ones to go for it and see if it worked. However, without question, every search engine has some number of core sites, that when removed from its index , destabilizes the value of its search.

The question is how many ? What would it cost to get that number of sites to turn Google off and stay off, and would the traffic created as users switch from Google more than compensate for the cost ?

Or would Google recognize the risk and jump in and offer more to websites to stay ?

Sure would be interesting to find out.

Wow.. what a response

Thank you to everyone who has written to me over the past few weeks! As you can imagine we've been very busy growing iMagicLab (www.imagiclab.com) and I have been getting ready for the release of my first novel (shameless plug). I posted a few new pieces today and I answered about 30 of your messages, I will try to answer the rest soon.

Sorry the site was on password protect for a few days, we had to move it to a different subscription because of the huge volume. We are back, and thrilled to be :) Check out www.latman.com for some new pictures and a completely redesigned imagiclab.com is coming soon.

Happy Holidays to all, and to all a good night.

Keith

Another Microworkz Happy Customer

Hey Keith,

I have just retired the one and only Microworkz computer I bought in 1999. I purchased it for an attorney here at [firm deleted], and he used it right up until about a month ago when he decided to upgrade. The Microworkz computer still worked, zip drive and all. In all that time, I never heard from him once about any problems with the computer. And that is pretty rare in my experience.

Thought you might be interested to hear that.

Craig

Craig Burt | [firm deleted] LLP
SYSTEMS SERVICE DESK SUPERVISOR
DESK: 206-xxx-xxxx
FAX: 206-xxx-xxxx

Open Letter to Steve Jobs: Be Careful

Dear Steve,

As you further embark on your quest to sell a "low-cost reoccurring revenue device that surfs the web and makes money from directing people to Google" (intentional run-on) I suggest you remember the iToaster. Yes, you are bigger than we were, and yes you have vastly more experience in the consumer sector than we did, but the truth is that this model is more than difficult. Just to highlight the similarity in your business plan, especially since we spoke many times about the iToaster, I thought I'd outline some trouble spots for you:

1. Your partner can make or break you. I selected Earthlink to by my conduit to the web and then when they mistreated our customers I moved to AT&T who did even worse. You started with AT&T and, based on my iPhone, it was the worst decision you could have made. Their coverage is spotty, the network is slow and *gasp* the sound of calls is awful. In short, they are making you look bad just like they did us.
2. It's remarkable that your opening screen looks as similar as the one I showed you late in 1999. Forget? Ok take a look below for yourself just in case you forgot the business plan I presented. Do you remember what we discussed about the limits on the model? Needs to be extensible, too limiting in space etc? Guess not, yours is even more limiting that ours and with your history we know how tightly you will control everything.
3. The product needs to be designed for the user intended and the user will not adapt. See this is where the iPod really nailed it and why this device will need to be retooled. It's simple but incomplete and although portions are magically intuitive most of it is just not connected to common sense. Your support calls will go through the roof, eroding profits because you rushed it to market without connecting the dots. It's the same mistake we made with the iToaster but I guess your deep pockets will allow updates: The question is will you poison the goodwill earned from being first to market?
4. 4. Profitability at the expense of usability will hurt. Charging 99 cents for ringtone conversions, not including Exchange support because you want to promote email servers that are paying you and eliminating the GPS and 3G support are all things that move the product into the "great idea" space and out of the "breakthrough product" category. Again, a little common sense on knowing your user base would have helped because this isn't just a click wheel anymore Steve.
5. Premature release (PUN intended) before the sales channel was built was not smart. We announced the iToaster at Microworkz before we had finished the retail sales channel (which was going to be EBGames and AOL) and the attention swamped us. We lost the opportunity to sell full high-priced machines to all those budget customers. What's that Steve? Mac's are only available in a handful of Best Buy and 185 Apple stores? Say you didn't release the iPhone only at AT&T stores and at Apple.com where folks could not touch and feel a real expensive Apple Mac? Say it ain't so...

In any event Steve I wish you the best of luck but I encourage you to study the past while you help engineer the future. Many of the mistakes you have made with the iPhone are fixable but all of us would have expected much more, especially since you and I discussed it 7 years ago. Did watching us fail not help at all? :)

Best,

Keith

And now... the Richard Keith Latman Book!

For the past 30 years my life has been a roller coaster. OK, maybe for the past 41 years my life has been a roller coaster. If you are on this BLOG then you know I am the picture postcard of the "never quit" committee. Now Harper apparently thinks the same thing because this week I was signed to write my first novel.

I always dreamed of writing a book but I never imagined it would be my story that people wanted to read. I suppose it's true that I've managed to push on despite adversity, despite a broken home and a terrible marriage. This is a story of perseverance, a story of fighting against the odds and a story about defeating my own demons. It will be inspirational for those trying to climb up the Corporate ladder and telling about the back room deals that made up the dot com era.

I believe that this will be an amazing read and I hope you will too. Trust me, I won't be filtering the content in the book like I do on this BLOG, it will be the whole story!

Stay tuned...

The End of Microworkz.com Circa 1999

Just a quick post to mark this date: Today I bought a computer for the last person who paid for but did not receive a computer from Microworkz.com. Over the last 7 years I have bought computers each and every month to reimburse the 111 people who actually had orders from Microworkz and didn't receive machines. I was not ordered to do this, started well before the now-ended criminal case and did it just to make things right. Nobody ever accused me of taking a single penny from Microworkz.com customers or engaging in any kind of corporate fraud and regardless what was said by one reporter in Seattle, we tried to break down barriers and make things better for low-income folks. Hindsight being 20/20 I would do a lot differently and when we relaunch Microworkz.com next year I will....

Here's an email I received today from a family I reimbursed 4 months ago:

-----Original Message-----
From: David O'Hare
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 1:22 PM
To: Keith Latman

Subject: Thanks again!

Keith I just wanted you to know how grateful I and my family are for you sending us the new HP computer. 7 years ago, I can't believe how time goes by, I thought you were the Saviour when you offered those machines at $400 when everybody else was selling them for $1500. I know you've gone through a lot for trying to reduce the price of computers and I want you to know that everyone in the United States has benefitted from your actions back then. Your standing up and sending me this machine just proved my faith I had in you back then. Never let anybody say that you are not alright and I am very glad to see you back on top!

God Bless,

Dave

Hey Daisy? You Still Out There?

I have received tons of email regarding the letter I posted from Daisy Mao and I want to thank you all for the support. Funny though, Daisy has not responded even though I've emailed her multiple times trying to make things right. Daisy are you out there?

One email I opened from a brave U.S. Navy man kinda sums up the way most of you seem to feel. I am gratified and hopeful that you all reliese that I have tried for the past 3 years to make as many of you whole as possible. This started long before any criminal charges, it's just what is right. Here's what Daniel had to say:

From: Spragno, Daniel ET1 SLC
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 8:41 PM
To: keith@latman.org
Subject: RE: Old Microworkz Business - Request Settlement

Kieth,

I do just want to say that even though I think bad of you on this.  I also believe that the justice system is jacked.  They should have given you the list of customers that were damaged by this for your discretion to take action alone even if you were not forced into repaying.  I give you credit for not hiding even seven years down the line you come out to face your challenge from the past which is quite noteworthy rather than start up without looking back.  I am only upset because these chains of events in my life make me only look back to how I had money I could have saved for challenging times that I face in present day and I have nothing more to show for it than some old credit card bills that I destroyed in anger because Providian wouldn't dispute the charge while I was stuck at bootcamp during the 60-day dispute period which maybe would have prevented me ever being in this mess with you.  I just wish that the customers were paid before the employees.  But anyways it takes a man to stand up and face the facts.

Daniel