I’ll be launching a Kickstarter project this month. I hope you’ll consider supporting it!

Steve Jobs was ousted from his position with Apple Computer in 1985, too early in my life to pay attention or give much care. Not until his return to the company in 1996, when he rescued the then-flagging company and over the next fifteen years, built it into the corporate juggernaut we know today, did the man fall into my sphere of attention.

It goes without saying at this point that Apple Computer, now Apple Inc., has not seen a successful time without its electric co-founder, Steve Jobs. It remains to be seen how the company will fare without the man, without him to be able to make a dramatic return and save it, should Apple need saving in the future. But the general indication is, at least, that thanks to the strong foundations that Jobs spent his years building and then reinforcing, that won’t be necessary.

Why is that? What is it about Steve Jobs that makes Apple Inc. invincible for the foreseeable future? And what can we learn – or at least, what have I learned – that is worth emulating in my own business?

First, don’t fear failure. When Jobs was ousted from Apple in 1985, he called it devastating at first, but looking back on it, he referred to the process as “freeing.”

“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me,” said Jobs during a commencement address at Stanford University back in 2005. “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

The world will keep turning, even if you don’t succeed. The sun will continue to rise and set, the moon will revolve around the earth, and none of them never need rest on your shoulders. You can turn your failures, however public or private, into an opportunity to do something new, or something better.

Next, there’s the importance of doing your utmost. Obviously this is a lesson that you can learn nearly anywhere, but as a craftsman, in the technology space, there’s no better man to learn from than the guy who’s selling computers at two or three times the price of his competitors, and winning. In talking to Playboy magazine back in 1985, Jobs had this to say:

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

Don’t cut corners. Your quality will suffer, and your customers will be able to tell.

On perseverance, well, that’s important too. In building a business, it’s not a rare thing to come up against adversity. You’re going to struggle. Sometimes, it’s going to hurt.

Jobs says, “There are many moments that are filled with despair and agony, when you have to fire people and cancel things and deal with very difficult situations. That’s when you find out who you are and what your values are.”

And he’s right, you know. This is an easy lesson to get away from, for me, for several reasons. Suffice to say that a big key to both personal growth, and growth in one’s business, is to learn to best analyze the hardship, to learn from it and extract the lessons you need to move forward, better and stronger.

Oh, and one more thing.

I’ve long been aware of mortality – both mine and those around me. But rarely do I have to face it. Of course, that’s not really the point of things in the first place.

“No one wants to die,” said Jobs in that Stanford address. “Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

The point of it is this: Courage. The courage to achieve what you want, the courage to do what you will. When you combine that with a dedication to quality, and a fearlessness when it comes to failure – knowing that you can learn from your mistakes and do better next time – I believe you can achieve a success that you can be proud of.

This is the education that I have taken from Steve Jobs. It may have only started tangentially on an Apple IIe, but it grew to encompass so much more than that little tiny green screen could have possibly done, all those years ago. He died today, at the age of 56. But his legacy lives on, as a business leader, a creative visionary and an entrepreneur whose drive and spirit, we can all learn from.

Thanks, Steve. So long.

Snyder makes several arguments as to why he put the program under fire – and from the earliest periods of his campaign he’s made no secret about his intentions. Snyder has often claimed that incentive programs cause the state to play favorites, and it has been his position that the government shouldn’t be in the business of picking “winners and losers.”

Except by pulling the rug out from under a developing industry, the governor has done exactly that.

Already, Michigan workers are feeling the hurt. Several films that had been slated to be produced in Michigan, including Marvel Entertainment‘s upcoming big-budget blockbuster “The Avengers” have cancelled their shooting appointments in the state, which has in turn shut down all the necessary support staff and ancillary workers that would have had work as a result. With one announcement, Governor Snyder has cost about 1,000 people their jobs.

Since April 2008, Michigan has been offering media creators up to 42% back on their Michigan-based expenditures, on the basis that the money spent would circulate through and help revitalize Michigan’s struggling economy, as well as create fantastic PR for the beleaguered manufacturing state. On Monday, a new Ernst & Young study was released which found that every dollar spent in these tax breaks in the state lead to $6 in economic activity.

About $163 million in incentives were approved for 2010 alone. Considering that the money isn’t paid out until the completion of the project, meaning that Michigan pays nothing up front, that 600% return should be looking pretty good.

Of course, Snyder and his advisors aren’t looking at it that way – critics of the program claim that the incentives cost the state more than the revenue they bring in. Perhaps in a black and white, 1-to-1 ratio of income to expenditure, that may be the case. Michigan’s program is the most generous in the world. However, without taking into account the circulation of the money that’s paid out, and the taxes paid on each transaction that money makes, it’s not the whole picture.

In 2010, the media incentives were responsible in large part for creating 3,860 full time jobs for Michigan residents.

“The caterers, the florists, the furniture providers, event companies, tent companies that were only seasonal, all of a sudden they’re hiring people,” Ken Droz, consultant for Michigan-based Maxsar Studios and formerly of the Michigan Film Office told The Detroit News. “It’s an industry that has tentacles all over the place that you don’t necessarily see, especially on a spreadsheet.”

The study was reportedly presented to Snyder before his budget presentation, but clearly its findings were considered inconsequential. Opponents of the program and the study, like Mackinac Center for Public Policy, claim that the system is altogether flawed.

“We think (Snyder) should go further and eliminate the program wholesale,” said Michael LaFaive, the Mackinac Center’s director of fiscal policy. “Every dollar used to incentify film production is one dollar deprived to entrepreneurs and other people across the state for their own use.”

This however, begs the question. Other people like whom? Like Philippe Martinez, founder and CEO of Maxsar? How about Brad Wardell at Stardock? Maybe the several investors behind Hangar 42 in Grand Rapids? Or Sean Hurwitz at PixoFactor Entertainment in Royal Oak? They’re all entrepreneurs – but of course, that’s just one industry. Mr. Snyder has said nothing about Michigan’s incentives for venture capital and angel investment, which benefits the investment groups Avalon Investments and Ardesta LLC, both of which he founded. I’m sure we’ll hear something about this sooner or later, since the governor is so very interested in creating a “level playing field” and not letting the state pick “winners and losers.”

Here’s the bottom line. Rick Snyder knows business – he would not be the successful guy he is today if he didn’t. But breaking the back of a new and booming industry in a state that sorely needs one or three, is not the way to economic recovery. Any Michigan citizen is well aware of the budget woes facing the state, and the governor is required by law to balance the budget. Certainly Snyder has some tough decisions to make in the coming months, and I for one, appreciate that he has the stones to make them. But this at least, is a move in the wrong direction, and will hurt far more than it will help.

I’m joining my colleagues in the creative media industry in urging Governor Snyder to rethink his plans regarding the incentive program. We’re all aware that it needs tweaking and can use some adjustments, but to cripple the program means crippling an industry sector in its growth stages – and in a state that is itself crippled by unemployment and a deserting population, it’s not something that we can amiably ignore.

More information and ways to take action can be found at www.rickswrong.com.

Update – July 12: According to The Detroit News, Governor Snyder has officially capped the program at $25 million across the board, starting in the upcoming fiscal year beginning this October. Moreover, a project can now be offered lower than the originally promised 42% with no floor mentioned. It will be interesting to see if the state offers anybody anything other than the generally solid percentages offered by other state programs elsewhere. This, the day after Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signs a bill that enhances his own state’s programs, is a clear demonstration that the State of Michigan will only work with the automotive industry.

Maybe we can arrange for them to have a chat at the next Republican Governors Association meeting or something.

For years I’ve purported to be a game guy. I’ve been the chair of the IGDA Detroit chapter for several years, and I own my own company. But when folks ask what games I’ve made, I invariably respond that I’m more on the publishing/production end of things.

I’ve long been of the opinion that a good manager is able to get into the nuts and bolts of whatever his team is doing, because how else will he communicate with them otherwise? I think it holds true in any industry. And to that end I often dabble. I mean, I’ve made games, I make games, personally. But rarely do I actually invite anybody to play them. Generally they’re for the purpose of instruction, or understanding the available tools out there. So I’ve sat down and made stuff in Torque, in XNA, in C# and Unity, but never for distribution purposes.

Lately I’ve come to think that is perhaps a waste of energy and resources, to an extent. After all, why not start something if you’re not going to finish it? And if it’s fun, if people enjoy it, then well – that’s the reason I got into games in the first place. How foolish to have forgotten that!

So this past weekend was the annual Global Game Jam. I didn’t have the time to commit to actually going out to my local site and sitting down in a room with a bunch of folks for the weekend and making a game, but I wanted to participate at least in spirit, and I wanted something to refresh me from the commercial game my company is working on, plus one thing I never got my hands dirty with, I mean really dirty, not just making website interfaces with, is Actionscript.

Through this confluence of situations, I decided that in my spare time this past weekend, I’d make a Flash game.

I have to say I was pretty pleased with my results, by the end of the weekend I’d taught myself some basic Actionscript 2 and built a real basic game. Though it’s already been said in blogs all over in several languages already, it’s worth repeating at least one more time how smoothly things run, how easy it is to learn, and how quickly you can prototype – or even just straight up build – a game in Flash. That is to say, “very.”

In any event, I had a lot of fun doing it, and my batteries are indeed recharged. I didn’t want to leave the game in the basic state it was in, though, so I went back in over the last couple of days and rounded things out, making a more-or-less entire level with top score functionality and a few fun features that I personally have a blast with. Not bad for less than 24 hours worth of work.

In fact I’ve become a little enamored with it, such that I’m considering expanding it out into a full product. I think I’d enjoy it. More than that, I’m debating documenting the process of creating this thing, as I found more folks interested in good tutorials to make their own games in Flash than there were good tutorials. I figure, maybe I can help at least one aspiring developer out.

So like I said, I am changing my policy of keeping tooltests and development practice private as of today. I’d like to invite you readers to come play Northstar-G Flash edition. Keep in mind that it is a work in progress, but I hope you have fun with it!

Play Northstar-G Flash Edition

As part of the analysis of The Jungle’s first $10 billion quarter, the latest earnings statement notes that “Kindle books have now overtaken paperback books as the most popular format on Amazon.com.”

I’m not going to tell anybody to hurl their stock certificates in Random House into the creek, screaming epithets to the sky. Book publishing is by no means going away. But as always, times they are a-changin’. Books are one of the last mediums to democratize. Frankly, it’s about freakin’ time.

TV and movies have been independent for pretty much forever, though certainly websites like YouTube and Vimeo have helped distribute folks’ video creations to the masses, and the plummeting price of increasingly powerful cameras and editing suites help to make those endeavors ever easier. Music has been set free thanks to the Internet as well, and I’m not talking Napster. Any aspiring band can set up a website and make their music available for the cost of a single CD, which anybody can burn at their desk, now. Game developers can distribute their work on the web as well. Journalists can build a blog, develop a media empire of sorts if they like. Just ask Nick Denton or Julian Assange about that one.

So why not books? Why NOT books? Up until devices like the Kindle, Nook or iPad came around, the only method for publishing a book were the traditional routes or via vanity presses that generally cost more to produce than they made for the vast majority of authors.

But with digital books, the several barriers to entry go away. Concerns and scare resources like shelf space and manufacturing costs are gone, and ultimately the biggest concern is quality. The best books can rise to the top, regardless of who they come from. And the idea of the rare book can fall by the wayside as well, since anybody can get a copy of a desired book whenever they want.

Now this doesn’t mean that printed books have to go away. There’ll always be room for printed works, either for wildly popular works and seminal classics, or important books that need to be spread as far and as wide as they can. And in areas that don’t have an infrastructure that can support electronic books, they’ll be even more important.

But e-books have the power to revolutionize, and more importantly, democratize their given medium. Finally books can catch up to their other counterparts in media, and now, nearly 600 years after Gutenberg’s debut of his own printing press is book authorship really open to everybody. Any book can be available to anyone, anytime, anywhere. It’s a change we’d do well to embrace.

The first thing to consider whenever talking about any law regarding the regulation of games is the medium’s First Amendment protection. This was first called into question back in 2002 when a U.S. District Court judge, Stephen Limbaugh, ruled that they did not in fact, deserve such protections. This was overturned in 2003 when the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, citing other unusual works and their First Amendment protections, and the simple fact that video games are a “novel medium” does not negate the right to First Amendment protection.

So fast forward seven years to today. Since that time, several states have tried to pass legislation to restrict the sale of violent games to children, and spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to do so, and each time these states have failed to make it stick. Why is that?

Well, it goes back to the very first thing to consider – games as protected speech under the first amendment. We may not like gory, schlocky, ham-fisted violence carnivals, but we as citizens have every right to produce them. To stop this would require the United States to create an exception in the First Amendment for games, which to date has only been done for porn, which one would be hard-pressed to equate games to porn. After all, if there are no Federal regulations on films, or books, why should games get set up for a metaphorical headshot?

Of course, no law as presented tries to restrict this: That’s true enough, but here is the sticker. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, we are guaranteed that no state may make a law that deprives citizens of our general rights, which we can interpret to include our entrepreneurial freedoms and freedom of enterprise. So logically, no state may enact a law that stops a store from selling unregulated material to whomever they want.

Further, to this point every law proposed suggests that government regulate these sales based on the Entertainment Software Ratings Board’s E through AO rating system. This goes against the Federal code of ethics, in which the government may not endorse a private enterprise. So that’s right out.

With the legal status of the laws or potential laws established, let’s look at the practical side of things.

One wonders how states or districts would enforce such laws, with many police departments stretched thin already, especially here in Detroit. Things aren’t as cushy as they look on Detroit 1-8-7. It’d be a waste of time and resources.

And further, the gaming industry does everything it can to make families aware of the content in the games they buy for their children. The ESRB has websites, pamphlets, point-of-sale documentation, shelf liners, all of which they distribute and are placed in stores to help parents make good decisions for their kids. It doesn’t take a whole lot of time or energy to take a look at what one’s son or daughter is asking after and determine whether it does or if it doesn’t have a place in the home. Of course, if one DID take more time on the subject, it could be a great jumping off point for some rather potent discussions between parent and child, and provide some great opportunities for parents to get involved and create some learning opportunities for kids. Everybody wins in that situation.

The fact of the matter is that legislating against games, whether they be violent or otherwise, is not possible from a legal standpoint. The furor that arises from this issue is the same that showed up when rock music first appeared, or TV and movies actually depicted couples kissing and Rhett Butler told Scarlett that he didn’t give a damn. It’s the same threat to our nation’s “family values” that was posed by Gangster Rap, and that “dilemma” was solved with a sticker.

Certainly there are games out there that kids should – perhaps even must – not be allowed to play. However, the answer to the problem does not lay within creating new laws, and new restrictions on our Constitutionally-declared freedoms. The answer lies in education, and a little bit of dedication and interest on the part of our families. Retailers as well, could do better in observing the ratings suggestions and in many cases – following their own corporate policies by keeping sales within those guidelines. Our legislators however, and our judges, need to keep out of it. They’ve got bigger and better fish to fry.

If you haven’t, then let me elaborate just a little bit.

So it turns out that there’s this magazine called “Cooks Source” who claims to have somewhere between 17,000 and 28,000 readers, publishing in both print and online. In their recent “Pumpkin fest” issue, their staff went ahead and copied an article on medieval apple pies from godecookery.com, a website of interest to medieval (food) enthusiasts. This was done without knowledge or permission of the author, one Monica Gaudio, who posts as illadore on the website Livejournal.com.

When a friend of Monica’s discovered this, she contacted the magazine hoping for an explanation. Thus began an exchange with the publication’s managing editor, Judith Griggs, who finally asked what Monica wanted, anyway. Since she was asked, Monica requested to be paid for her work – at the rate of about ten cents a word, and have it donated to the Columbia School of Journalism, and a printed apology in the magazine.

In response, Ms. Griggs replied that she had been editing magazines for thirty years, and that she knows about copyright laws. She continued onward:

“…honestly Monica, the web is considered “public domain” and you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole article and put someone else’s name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me… ALWAYS for free!”

It’s worth a giggle, to consider this response. Anybody who’s aware of anything with regard to publishing or copyright knows that no, the Internet is not in fact public domain. It is absolutely copyright infringement to take somebody’s material and just slap it up there without permission. Does it happen? Absolutely – and the penalty for that on college campuses and the workplace is strict. Automatic course failure in academia, if not immediate dismissal altogether in both avenues.

Also, “as a professional” Ms. Griggs should know that the article she lifted was illustrating medieval cooking, and demonstrated everything from its sourcing including the antiquated old English spellings. Fortunately for everybody else, you don’t need to be a professional to realize this, all you have to do is just read the article.

Since word on this has gotten out, Cooks Source has been getting absolutely slammed, both on their website – which is buckling under the strain of traffic – and their Facebook page, which is getting a deluge of folks signing up to leave nasty commentary and then signing back off so as to not inflate the number of “Likes” that Cooks Source has. It’s also attracted the attention of the websites Reddit and 4chan, and even author Neil Gaiman and NBC show creator Dan Harmon have been discussing it via Twitter. More than this, Internet users have begun to dig up other instances of alleged plagiarism by Cooks Source, from such sources as NPR, Martha Stewart Living, the Food Network and even Weight Watchers, among several others, which if proven true might bring about bites from bigger jaws than Monica and the Internet might bring to bear.

It’s staggeringly bad judgement on the part of Ms. Griggs, and her barely-there grasp of copyright law will land her in some serious hot water – perhaps forming a base for a batch of foot-in-mouth soup, if you will.

The lesson from this is pretty clear, but more than just “don’t steal,” it’s worth admonishing all writers out there to be vigilant. Protect your work. You never know who’s reading, or who’s writing a fly-by-night ripoff rag.

So the good folks at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have really been on a roll over the last few years, throwing down some serious cash on technology bets which, it seems, have come up big. Two years ago, they kicked off the $100 million iFund, focused solely on businesses developing products for the iPhone, iPod and iPad. This March, they doubled that amount. Now today, Kleiner Perkins got together with Amazon, Facebook and Zynga to announce the new sFund, $250 million focused on social applications.

It’s interesting to note that Google and Yahoo! were not present for this gathering, whatsoever. According to KPCB partner John Doerr, Facebook is the social platform to focus on. “Facebook is it,” he said.

This isn’t saying that Kleiner Perkins is a kingmaker or anything, I’m not saying we’ll be seeing Facebook eclipse Google anytime soon. But it’s been pretty clear over the latter portion of the decade that KPCB seems to know how to pick winners. Other companies that WERE present and are partners in the fund included Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Company, LLC.

The fund has already invested in one company, Cafébots, who announced a $5 million round this morning – it’s not precisely clear what they do, but they claim to be working on a product involved in “Friend Relationship Management.” That sounds pretty social. They expect to have a product ready by the end of the year.

The thing about “social” is that is kind of a nebulous term. Obviously, it means involving other people, but just about anything can involve other people.

Could it be that this is just another tech bubble, like the dot-com bubble of years past? Kleiner Perks put down $250 million saying it isn’t. What do you think? Are you out to grab a piece of that for yourself?