I sat and watched the "judge's house" episode of The X Factor last night with my wife. Cheryl's category of 'the girls' was imho the strongest category by far. Any one of them could have made it through to the top three. However, two of Cheryl's choices caused a bit of a stink. Cher Lloyd and Katie Waissel. Both fluffed their audition performance. Both got through. Other singers, most notably Gamu Nhengu and Keri Arrindell, didn't make it.

As the results were being announced, some Twitter users went so far as to accuse Cheryl of racism, picking the two white girls over talented black singers. This is crazy. She picked the two singers that would polarise opinion. And it was a great move.

The idea of the show is to make money. A big chunk of that money is made by persuading people to dial a premium rate number to cast their vote. If people are indifferent about a musician they wont be motivated to pick up the phone. If they love someone they will vote for them. If they hate someone they will vote for someone else to try and vote them out (as a side note I think the ability to vote *against* someone would make the program producers a fortune!). People will love or hate Cher and Katie.

Creating a product that some people hate is fine if other people love it. It doesn't even need to be a 50-50 split. The internet is such a big place that if (and it's a big if) you can get enough exposure, the people who love it will put their hands in their pockets and pay you for your product and still make you good coin.

The people who love your products will go further and tell their friends about it. Assuming an even distribution, they will encounter the same percentage of love/hate in their own circle of contacts. But those who will love it are still there and will still buy it.

Even those who who hate it are your friends. They'll spread their opinions and detractions - but the same percentage will apply to them too and their circle of contacts will contain people who love your product!

There is no such thing as bad publicity. The controversy caused by the decisions made by Cheryl has made it a hot topic of debate both on and off line. The big 'if' problem of exposure just took a big knock.

So stop trying to please everyone; you can't be everyone's girlfriend and it's pointless to try. Focus your efforts on reaching more people who share your views instead of trying to appease your detractors. And if a little controversy can do that without causing you any harm then go for it!

My first programming love was Java. To be entirely honest I don't get why Ruby people (in particular) have so much against it. I guess it's the big bad corporate programming language target du jour.

I'm not saying it's perfect - far from it - being mainly a Ruby programmer these days it is maddeningly verbose. But in my experience all the best programmers I have ever worked with cut their teeth on Java.

But anyway - I came across the above video via @dansumption on Twitter - probably one of the funniest videos I've seen for a long time. Well funniest video about a programming language anyway!

Earlier today I posted a comment on my Twitter profile: http://twitter.com/ashleytowers/status/16922598763

“If you can’t explain your product in one tweet it’s a) Too complicated b) Lacks Focus.”

This turned out to be a bit more controversial than I was expecting, so I signed up to Posterous so I could explore it a bit more.

I see this as the modern elevator pitch. I’m sure you all know what an elevator pitch is – a short description of your product/service/whatever that you could reel off within an elevator journey should you ever find yourself in an elevator with someone influential. In the modern era when attention spans are at an all time low 140 characters should be ample to get the core of your product/service across.

I’m not suggesting a full description of every little feature – but I believe if 140 characters isn’t enough to get across the gist of your project then you won’t have the focus your product needs. This concise definition is your product’s soul – it is the core definition that lets you instinctively know if you should add a feature or not. If a feature doesn’t fit in with or enhance this short definition then it is questionable as to whether it should be added.

The Space Shuttle

“A partially reusable manned space launch and reentry vehicle” 60 characters

Twitter

“A web site that lets people post short update messages and receive updates from others who they find interesting” 112 characters.

The ability to define your product concisely keeps it focused on what matters – Twitter doesn’t need comments, the ability to post longer updates or share photos. They don’t fit in to that core definition – they add weight in the same way adding a bidet to the space shuttle.

I think I may have just figured out where posterous fits in for me. I've had the .co.uk domain name of my name for a while now but never been motivated to get a personal blog set up. Posterous lets me do that without any setting up. Also, it lets me have a place for all of the things I'd like to write about that don't fit in with my main blog over at http://www.usabilityfriction.com

That's all I'm going to write at this stage. I'm uneasy with the email to do your first post and create an account. I'd be irked if it didn't work!