Mythbusters Adam on Education Issues

Posted on September 5, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized |

Busy Mythbusters week, in addition to the following, Savage also backpedaled on the whole “credit card company lawyers threatened us about doing anything on RFID security” story.

Irrespective of the RFID story, his comments on science education are very good.

When Jamie Hyneman and I speak at teacher conventions, we always draw a grateful crowd. They tell us Thursday mornings are productive because students see us doing hands-on science Wednesday nights on our show MythBusters, and they want to talk about it. These teachers are so dedicated, but they have difficulty teaching for the standardized tests they’re given with the budgets they’re not given. It’s one reason the U.S. is falling behind other countries in science: By 2010, Asia will have 90 percent of the world’s Ph.D. scientists and engineers. We’re not teachers, but our show has taught us a lot about how to get people interested in science. Here are three humble suggestions that might help reinvigorate American science education.

[From Mythbusters Adam on Education Issues – Importance of Education - Popular Mechanics]

Office 2.0

Posted on September 4, 2008
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I agree with Sam, less vibration but would add that there was still a lot of mass. The companies are familiar names and what I found interesting is that there was less talk about technical and application solutions, more focus on sales and marketing challenges. This is not a new sector anymore, these are growth companies that are looking to scale.

Also, customers were a welcome addition to the program. Lot’s of case study and customer interviews.

C’mon Bitch, Sue Me!

Posted on September 4, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized |

Brilliant. It is flabbergasting that the State of California asserts copyright over material that is the fruit of public taxpayer dollars… and on top of that, is information that represents required knowledge for select segments of the market. This is an interesting article about a guy that has a lot of support behind his activities.

California’s building codes, plumbing standards and criminal laws can be found online.

But if you want to download and save those laws to your computer, forget it.

The state claims copyright to those laws. It dictates how you can access and distribute them — and therefore how much you’ll have to pay for print or digital copies.

[From He’s giving you access, one document at a time | PressDemocrat.com | The Press Democrat | Santa Rosa, CA]

Gannett Acquires Majority Stake in CareerBuilder

Posted on September 3, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized |

This is really interesting because Gannett is not part of the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium which syndicates Hotjobs content to member newspapers, well over 400 newspapers who are co-branding Hotjobs content. Gannett along with a handful of the other big media companies setup a shared ad network and are angling to take on information services syndication across newspaper sites which in effect compete with what Yahoo is doing with the Newspaper Consortium and CareerBuilder would be a cornerstone of that effort.

Gannett, Tribune, and McClatchy have co-owned CareerBuilder so the actual transaction side of this deal is ho-hum, if anything it appears simply to be a case of Tribune raising some cash.

Gannett (NYSE: GCI) has acquired an additional 10 percent stake in CareerBuilder from the troubled Tribune for $135 million. That gives Gannett a 50.8 percent controlling interest in the online jobs site. Tribune, which has been trying to find ways to turn around its financial and debt woes, now owns 30.8 percent of CareerBuilder.

[From Gannett Pays Tribune $135 Million To Acquire Majority Stake In CareerBuilder | paidContent.org]

Chrome Not Yet a Platform

Posted on September 2, 2008
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This is perhaps the biggest exposed flank that Google has with Chrome:

Extensions could be a critical weakness. Google doesn’t have a great track record for bringing out the community to participate in its projects, and without the extensive plug-in catalog that Firefox has collected, Chrome won’t displace it.

[From Chrome: Nice, But Not a “Killer” Browser Just Yet - GigaOM]

Platforms are declared all the time, but it is only in the few that we see legitimate community supported platforms as evidenced by extensive third party add-ons and extensions. Firefox is just such a platform.

In the end it may matter little to the mass market because while I don’t have any statistics on the rate of extension/plug-in uptake in firefox, I can’t imagine it’s a large percentage of the overall user base. But that number could in fact be significant and just as the act of downloading and installing a new browser did not dramatically limit Firefox, the act of extending Firefox with a plug in may be more common than I am allowing and in that case Google will have a challenge if they are interoperating with Firefox extensions.

I won’t switch to Safari even though it is faster than Firefox by a wide margin because I can’t take my extensions and plug-ins with me. Here’s my list of must-have extensions and plug ins:

I am also using a really neat extension from Outwit to extract data from web pages, like HTML tables into Excel, links and feeds, and source code.

The End of Bell Labs

Posted on September 2, 2008
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Yeah they will still be doing things but Bell Labs not doing basic research just isn’t Bell Labs…

Alcatel-Lucent, the parent company of Bell Labs, is pulling out of basic science, material physics and semiconductor research and will instead be focusing on more immediately marketable areas such as networking, high-speed electronics, wireless, nanotechnology and software.

[From Bell Labs Kills Fundamental Physics Research | Gadget Lab from Wired.com]

Back to Business

Posted on September 2, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized |

Summer is over… I took my son to first day of school today and the hustle and bustle of not only school but also traffic reminded me that the long slow month of August is history. I was out on vacation last week but today is back to business.

While I have been writing more about public policy and non-tech items I find interesting these last few months, I have not be totally ignoring the tech world either; I simply found little exciting or interesting in tech these last few months.

This is not surprising and indeed it fits with a consistent pattern of 5′ish years of innovation followed by 3′ish years of digestion. So what does that historical pattern suggest about our immediate future? Probably nothing more than what we are seeing right now, which is less enthusiasm for the new “new” and much more attention being paid to making work what we already have.

With that in mind, what are the big challenges that are facing the tech world? Here’s my list, which I will reserve the right to modify after more thought on the subject:

  1. Economic uncertainty: Clearly this is a factor with tech being no less insulated than any other business sector. Across the board people are impacted by energy costs, consumer products inflation, food prices, and job market uncertainty, strongly so for unskilled labor and students. All of these factors conspire to constrict the flow of capital for business creation, as well as restrict corporate budgets for projects deemed more speculative than predictable.
  2. Advertising market chaos: The low value being attached to online advertising and social network campaigns is going to remain a key issue for companies relying on advertising for their business model.
  3. Enterprise plaque: Despite the inroads that SaaS companies have made into enterprise accounts, the fact remains that the entrenchment that the MISO (Microsoft/IBM/SAP/Oracle) has means there is little structural change in that market. The poor marketplace performance of SAP’s BBD demonstrates that traditional enterprise companies can’t easily straddle a market with two business models that feature different economics, delivery, support, and sales processes. This reality will dissuade other companies from attempting this hat trick, and because few companies will take the tough steps to remake themselves beyond the imagery of a SaaS business, well it’s more of the same on premise world we have been living in.
  4. SaaS economics: Speaking of SaaS, the economics of that business model is increasingly coming under scrutiny. Salesforce’s stock has been in a tailspin since last week amid concerns about slowing growth, but that’s only half of the issue. The simple fact of the matter is that CRM not only is experiencing a slowdown in growth, they also aren’t making a lot of money… the irony is that Salesforce is having a great year from a revenue standpoint, their revenue per employee is a right up their with SAP but the other side of that coin is that their net income per employee is pretty grim. I’m not singling out Salesforce for criticism, but they are a good proxy for the overall health of the SaaS market and right now it’s looking a lot more like the telecom market with high churn rates and and corresponding sales and marketing expenses that take a big bit out of the bottom line.
  5. New markets: BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) have been collectively the gleam in the eye of many software executives for the last 15 years. The reality is that each market has it’s own challenges to success but in general it’s a tough nut to crack and a very expensive strategy. The irony is that two enormous markets in terms of spend often get ignored even though the prospects for success are much more predictable, I am referring to Japan and the EU.
  6. Grab bag: Distribution challenges for consumer applications remain, even with Facebook… carriers still have way too much control over mobile platforms, despite the inroads the iPhone has made… broadband penetration is good but speeds are way too low… regulatory policy at the federal and state levels isn’t disruptive to the status quo and intellectual property law badly needs a makeover.

Wednesday Night Poll

Posted on August 27, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized |

Hysteria: Great, Now Whole Foods Is Making You Broke And Fat

Posted on August 26, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized |

Let’s have a means test based on the consumer’s weight and body fat index to determine not only how much salad they can buy but also what kind of dressing they get, if any. Uh yeah, personally I think we should simply stop trying to tell people how to live their lives.

The New York Sun says that salad and prepared food bars (at Whole Foods, for example) are making you fat. Why? Supposedly, the containers they give you are huge and lead you to unwittingly buy “supersized” portions of food for lunch.

[From Hysteria: Great, Now Whole Foods Is Making You Broke And Fat]

On a related note, California’s government hasn’t passed a budget (due by law on July 1) yet but they did have time to take up the pressing issue of hybrid vehicles not making enough noise so that vision and hearing impaired people can hear them coming. Before anyone jumps in and comments about how this is really an important issue, please consider that I am not unsympathetic to the hearing and visually impaired, in fact I was on the board of directors for the Vista Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired up until a few years ago, but are these the real priorities we should be setting as a society… salad bars and cars that don’t make enough noise?

Widgets at the DNC

Posted on August 25, 2008
Filed Under NewsGator, NewsGatorWidgets |

Even though I am officially on vacation this week, I did want to blog about some cool stuff we are doing at the DNC in NewsGator’s hometown this week. The Big Tent stuff is getting some great coverage, and our widget is aggregating feeds from a whole bunch of blogs that are covering the event. Check it out, install it, follow the activities.

You might be interested to know that the Big Tent Widget consolidates feeds from nearly 200 bloggers, new media journalists and nonprofit leaders credentialed for the Big Tent, the 9,000 square-foot new media center hosted by Progress Now, Daily Kos, the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, and is sponsored by Digg, Google, NewsGator, and others.

[From Two Innovative, New Widgets Are Launched Widgets Provide Dynamic Blog/Qik Content from DNC: NewsGator Widget Blog]

Secondly, I am really excited to hook up with the team at Qik to offer a video widget featuring their user generated mobile streaming video right from the convention floor and surrounding activities. The two offerings can be summed up as a true “pros vs. joes” with professionally published blogger content, as well as the semi-pro stuff as well, and the user generated video that is aggregated from anyone using Qik who is in Denver.

What’s next? Just aggregating content is useful but I’d like to see us layer in our related content tools to offer a more semantic take on the content offered up with other non-linked content that is similar in subject and possibly even with sentiment analysis thrown in. Maybe dynamic persistent search on any key entity extracted from a post. We’re just scratching the surface with what is capable with these widgets and the back end platform services. Stay tuned.

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