Craig Newmark is a Good Guy

The face of Craig Newmark, the founder of Craig's List, is posted on dartboards in many newspaper publishers offices, right next to the down and to the right revenue chart.  Very few newspaper publishers know what to do about the loss of classified advertising revenue.  What they know is that Craig's little company has an up and to the right revenue chart.  Somehow those publishers think that by blowing up Craig their problems will be solved.  

Every unhappy under-performing business needs someone to vilify.  It sure is easier than looking in the mirror to find the problem.

The newspapers efforts to paint Craig Newmark as a pornographer surely emphasize that delusional people have a hard time understanding the extent of their delusion.  We advertise on Craig's list for job postings.  Craig's list is much more effective, and we pay $75 for an add that used to cost us over $600 in the newspaper.  

I know that Craig Newmark is a good person and the service he provides works.  I cannot imagine this ploy accomplishing anything for the newspaper publishers.  If anything it will serve to remind us that it is dangerous to be associated with an industry in decline, particularly one without leadership or good ideas.   

Confidence in Effective Government Regulation

There are too relatvely boring stories in the NY Times today that when taken toghether tell a somewhat interesting tale.

Andrew Pollack's piece titled: Modified Salmon Is Safe, F.D.A. Says and Joe Nocera's take on net neutrality with the title: The Struggle for What We Already Have.

I wonder how many readers really think genetically altered salmion is safe enough to feed their kids.  I guess not many.  The FCC's ability to regulate the internet? -- just as shaky.   And the SEC doesn't do much to build the credibility of federal agencies.

It is a miracle the FAA keeps the planes in the sky.  I suppose the highly visible planes falling from the sky scenario is what makes the price of buying the FAA beyond the reach of the hired guns in Washington.  You can bet they are trying everything they can.

So I for one do not believe that the FDA knows any more about the long term effects of the altered salmon than they do about the long term effects of the growth hormones in our beef.  Best to eat as little of that stuff as possible.

Whether or not the FCC gets some regulations to enforce against Comcast -- I am pretty sure Comcast is going to be managing my network traffic however they want.

Here is another post I did a few weeks ago on net neutrality.

More on Buying American

Here are a few more thoughts on each individual taking responsibility for their share of the trade deficit.  There are three main parts of the trade deficit - exports (things we make that people in other countries buy), imports (things we buy that are made in other countries), and domestic consumption (things we both make and buy).  

Domestic consumption is what I did when I bought a Jeep.  I know there are parts in the Jeep that invariably are made in China, but let's not let get dragged down that rabbit hole just yet.  Domestic consumption is not as good as exporting something, but a lot better than importing something, so if we have to consume, let's consume the things we make.

The argument against domestic consumption for the sake of domestic consumption (or avoiding imports) is that it dulls our competitiveness.  If we all just buy products made in America, because they are made in America, our manufacturers will get soft and lose their edge.  This also happens when domestic consumption is boosted by tariffs or other protectionist measures.

So the main measure of the health of our industries is not the extent to which our products compete for the domestic market, but the extent to which our products compete abroad.  

What about the labor union part of my last post?  The labor unions are better positioned to make a difference in the trade deficit than any other group.  If the unions spend all of their energy holding onto the past -- including onto benefits earned in the past from companies that cannot possibly sustain them -- it will deal American manufacturing a double blow.  Once for holding us back and once for not moving us forward.

Conversely, if the labor unions used their relationships with the workforce and employers to invest more in building the workforce of tomorrow -- we could prevail.  Sure it takes less workers to load a ship with a crane instead of by hand -- but we can afford to pay the crane guy many times the amount a manual laborer would command.  Sure it takes less workers to build a car with robots, but the robot operators and repair people make many times what the old assembly workers got paid.

We could dominate the next century of manufacturing as long as we invest in the right places and the labor unions are the key.

In the end it all boils down to the trade deficit.  We are surviving now because we can finance our trade deficit ($50 Billion per month).  Every time we dig that hole deeper we get weaker, and less likely to be able to continue to finance it.  Let's make products that compete on the world market, and also buy them at home.

Our New Car

After driving my wife's last car into the ground we broke down and bought a new one this week.  Thinking that everyone in our country ought to make purchase decisions with the balance of trade in mind, we committed early to buying an American car.  

After driving all kinds, we settled on a Jeep Liberty.  It is an awesome car, just big enough but not too big.  Just tough enough but not too tough.  

There were a few revelations during the process:

The process at the car dealership (Bellevue Chrystler Jeep) was awesome.  Our salesperson, Joe Langhans took great care of us -- and once we decided to buy -- we were done in under 2 hours -- awesome.  Of course I was prepared for the worst -- but it did not even come close to happening.  I recommend Joe and his dealership highly.

I made a comment during the purchase process that Americans should buy American made cars and the reaction:  Republicans think like that but not Democrats.  Hmmm.  I had never thought about it that way before.  Today Rham Emanuel and our President are getting blasted for saying not very nice things about the UAW and its products.  Maybe a little leadership will bring the D's back to buying our cars.

Just a Picture

Once while getting a new Costco card I was joking around with the person taking my picture.  She said: "Stick out your tongue."  I did.  She took the picture. And we both thought we were pretty funny.  I walked back to the backdrop to take another one and she handed me my new card.  For years after that I had to explain to the Costco check out person how I came to have my tongue sticking out on the card.  It kept things pretty light hearted at the check out stand.

Each time I renew my passport I get more and more serious in the picture.  Getting into or out of a country is somewhat more serious than spending money at Costco, and accordingly requires a more serious photo.  I don't want to know how the friendly people from Homeland Security would respond if I was making a face in my passport photo.

Today I was getting a new card at my athletic club and the nice person in charge gave me the choice of a new picture, or to keep the old one.  The old one was pretty old -- I even had hair.  In fact it was one of my better photo ID pictures.  I was tempted, but in the end opted for a new picture of my more mature self and was mature enough to keep my tongue to myself.  

I have a nicely done, PR type head shot on this blog that was taken about five years ago.  I use it for all kinds of professional stuff and it works just fine.  It has about the right amount of hair, I have a blazer on but no tie -- versatile enough for just about any situation.  I use this picture to represent who I am on Linked In and can't think of a reason to change it.

I have monkeyed around on Facebook with a variety of pictures including one with my dog, one as a kid, and right now that funny looking guy from the old Egghead Software logo.  The addition of pictures to facebook, Linked-in, and now built into Outlook 2010, have changed electronic communication from its formerly faceless self.  

If you have not yet upgraded to Outlook 2010 or if you have, but not hooked up the picture thing, you should really think about it.  Having pictures of everyone who is going to be in a meeting -- right there in the invitation -- is a tremendous help to me as I visualize the meeting in advance.  When some people are attending by conference call -- having their picture in front of me helps me put their comments into context.

This seemingly small thing, the addition of a picture to an electronic communication is a significant and game changing thing.  Any picture is a big help to the humanizing of the communication.  Not knowing whether the communication context will be a Costco, a Homeland Security, a Linked-in, or a Facebook, drives most of us to present ourselves on the serious end of the scale.  No matter which picture you choose, it is a good idea to take a few minutes and think it through.  The face you present in electronic communications makes a big difference -- clearly not just a picture.

I am looking forward to the day when we make the leap to easily deployed live pictures -- aka video conferencing that works.  That will be a game changer too.

Lowering Sales Costs

SoftwareAdvice.com had a great post recently about Oracle's next acquisition.  I encourage you to click through to the piece if for no other reason than to look at the great chart of Oracle acquisitions from PeopleSoft to the present.  

Clearly Oracle knows it is an enterprise computing company.  Selling to the enterprise is difficult and expensive and no one knows how to sell to the enterprise like Oracle.  Detractors often claim that acquisitions are a waste of money, and the recently announced Intel/McAfee deal will certainly add fuel to that fire, but when talking about the enterprise -- the cost of selling and long sales cycles is enough to make sense of many deals.

Ironically, Glen Hodges, President of McAfee until 2006 explains the Intel/McAfee deal with the same lowering the cost of selling angle in this post in the NY Times.  He points out that Intel's excellent channel partner program is underutilized and that the $7.8B price tag for McAfee could make sense just by having more for Intel to push through its highly efficient sales channel.

Now back to one of my favorite rants -- Salesforce.com.  One of the potential acquisition targets for Oracle listed in the SoftwareAdvice.com post is Salesforce.com.  Even Larry Ellison is not that crazy.  True, Salesforce.com proves the point that selling to the enterprise is difficult by spending over 50% of revenue on sales and marketing and combining the Salesforce.com and Oracle sales teams would represent hundreds of millions of dollars of savings.  But Wall Street never seems to notice this fact about Salesforce.com and has priced the stock at 193 times earnings!  In March I thought investors had lost their minds when the P/E was 114!  The industry is still in the low 20s.

Lowering the cost of selling is as important now as ever.  And it is on its way to even more significance as the talk of a double dip surges. 

Waste Wipes Out Stimulus

David Brooks has a good post in the NY Times yesterday where he compares the strategies of the US (big stimulus) and Germany (small stimulus) and the outcome: US not recovering and Germany growing big time.  I would add one thing:  stimulus spent in a wasteful way doesn't do any good.  In fact it does harm because it increases the deficit and debt load.

Germany spent its money and energy stimulating the production of products other countries want like machine tools.  We spend our money and energy propping up failed banks and expanding benefits for the unemployed.  While the comparison of the size of the stimulus is one data point, how it is invested is the other.  

We all should be watching the trade deficit as the most important measure of our success.  It measures how successful we are as a country producing products and services that other countries value enough to buy.  Right now our trade deficit is increasing -- so whatever stimulus money is making it past the bankers is being spent to buy products made elsewhere.

Electronic Pearl Harbor could do 1 trillion dollars damage

If you want a quick and high quality update on the state of cybersecurity you should watch this episode of Ideas In Action.  Thousands of companies have been compromised, our government is spending billions, but are we doing enough?  Do we think there is a real threat?

If foreign governments are gaining access to our computer networks and stealing everything from designs of weapons systems to the formulas for drugs, is it an act of war?

Earlier this year I was at a conference where a cyber crime panel proclaimed that 50% of all credit cards are compromised and the banks know it -- but they don't want to say anything for fear it would destroy the marketplace for credit card services.  These compromised credit card numbers are routinely sold on the black market for 10% of the available balance.  So whoever is buying them plans to use them.  

Just yesterday I wanted to send some iTunes money to my daughter and found that Apple no longer does email iTunes gift cards -- I suspect because of the fraud.  

Many experts are waiting for the cyber crime equivalent of Pearl Harbor to wake up America and bring about the changes necessary to secure our systems from attack.  

We probably should all be thinking more about this.

Expectations and the Uncanny Valley

I find myself lucky to be exposed to the most interesting issues as I work on our RetroDex event.  In particular the intersection of virtual worlds and the real world.  Most recently I came across the subject of the Uncanny Valley on one of my favorite radio shows (podcasts), NPR's On the Media.

The Uncanny Valley is the name animators give to the negative correlation between audience acceptance of their craft as it approaches perfection.  In other words, as viewers we much prefer an animated being that looks animated enough to clearly not be human.  For the last decade or so, technology has enabled the creators of animated beings to enter the Uncanny Valley and render an image so lifelike that it disturbs the audience.  As a result, ever since Dreamworks created the first Shrek movie in 2001, technology ceased to be the limitation and the artists had to intentionally back off on the realism of their creations.

What a wild idea.  We like the way animations approximate the human form and are constantly asking for better and better animations.  But at some point the image generated leaves the realm of great animation and enters the realm of a human with flaws -- and we get nauseous.

There are many ways this translates into business.  One is linked to the common quip "Even the worst day [insert favorite activity here] is better than the best day at the office."  We work hard at CSG to create a great place to work and are making pretty good progress.  However, if we slip into a warped expectations zone like the uncanny valley we will never succeed.  After all work is work and not soaking up the sun on the beach.

The People Have Voted: Wall Street Still Not Safe

In our country government is less powerful than business.  This is probably the most visible in the military industrial complex, but there is evidence that the lobbyists call the shots in other areas as well.  A few months back I wrote in this post that Wall Street would not be regulated until it decided it was in its best interest to be regulated. 

Since then our representatives in Washington passed the financial reform bill in an effort to manage the forces that lead to the last melt down and possibly prevent a repeat.  During July, the very month the legislation passed, individual investors took $15 billion more out of equities than they put in, and so far this year, the total cash flow out of the stock market has been $33 billion.   The people are voting with their wallets and the verdict is that the stock market is not safe for the individual investor - reform legislation or not.  

If you don't know who the sucker is at the poker table -- it is probably you.  A couple more years of this and the Wall Street firms may just start asking for real reforms to reassure the public that the market is regulated and safe.

Intel Wants the Consumer

The grass is definitely greener on the consumer side of the fence in 2010.  Companies that have built their businesses on their ability to sell to the enterprise, or that are a step or two removed from direct access to the consumer, are looking for a the gate through the fence. Increasingly mobile is that gate, and it appears that Intel thinks McAfee is their best shot at getting over there.

It is much more fun as a writer to be negative on announcements like this -- and the business press is having their share of fun with Intel.  Anyone that wants the business press to be positive should remember not to surprise them.  A few good leaks will get some of the journalists onto your side ahead of the announcement.  With the exception of Steve Jobs, who gets to play by a different set of rules, scoop equals page views, page views equals happy writers, happy writers equals "this is a brilliant idea".

Intel depends on the PC makers to get its chips to market and has managed to dominate that business over the years through business tactics that just keep getting them in trouble with the Justice department and the EU.   The top PC makers in the world control over half of the sales of new PCs including HP (18%), Dell (13%), Acer (12%), Lenovo (10%), and Asus and Toshiba tied (5% each).  The industry is on the rebound, up 22% in Q2, so everyone is growing.  However, HP and Dell are growing only slightly, and the other guys are smokin' with growth rates up to 87% (Asus).

The deal to buy McAfee may or may not be a good idea, but it does signal Intel's concern over its traditional route to market, and its corresponding desire to find a new route.  Their best domestic friends are getting pounded by the guys in Asia, and they are increasingly prevented from pulling monopolistic stunts, so I would guess there will be more deals to follow.

Other coverage:  

BusinessWeek

WSJ Digits Blog

Daily Finance

Read Write Web

CNet (for the PC industry numbers)

Events Have Dates

The thing I like the most about events is their concrete connection to a specific date on the calendar.  An event is not an event unless it is actually scheduled for a specific date.  Sure an event can be moved -- but not without considerable pain and public notice.

Little things get accomplished in time for a weekly meeting, medium sized things get accomplished in time for the quarter end, and big things get accomplished in time for events.  The annual sales conference, or the big annual industry trade show, are the Superbowls of business.  Everything somehow ties into those dates.

As time marches relentlessly towards the date of an event, amazing people raise their level of performance to match the challenge and the most incredible things are accomplished.   The next time you really want to get something accomplished -- tie it to an event.

Real Meets Virtual

Yesterday we announced Retrodex, a live event in Seattle to compliment Comdex Virtual in November.  This real world and virtual world story gets more interesting every day and I find new examples regularly.  At what point does the virtual reality GPS display in the car get to be more useful than looking out the real window?  There have been bad weather days on my boat where GPS and Radar became the primary inputs of reality, and pilots have been flying IFR since the 50s.

National Geographic has a short piece running this month on augmented reality - which demonstrates the possibilities of a converged real and virtual experience.  Anyone with a camera equipped Andriod phone can put this type of capability today with Google Goggles.  I for one am looking forward to the day my phone whispers peoples names in my ear as they approach.  

Over the past two years we have virtualized all of our servers at CSG -- cutting the number of physical machines to a tenth of the prior number while increasing availability, uptime, and redundancy.  This very real example of the virtual machine skipping to a place ahead of the real machine in line is yet another example of the many layers of the real meets virtual world.

We all have the opportunity to use these new capabilities to improve our world.  Telemedicine and Distance Learning are just two examples of ways virtualization technologies can be put to practical use improving lives and the world.

We are delighted to be in the middle of this convergence.  In the event you are interested in following this story, you may want to subscribe to the RSS feed of the Retrodex blog, or follow Retrodex on Twitter.

Another Golden Age?

A golden age is rarely appreciated in the present tense.  This could be because a golden age only becomes a golden age once the not fun parts are forgotten, and the memory of the fun parts expanded.  It is unlikely that early pilots and passengers were lamenting the end of the golden age of flight as the FAA was created.

54 years passed between the Wright Brothers first flight in 1904 and the creation of the FAA in 1958.  I doubt any of it was really the golden age.   Just last month the Wall Street Journal had this article on the Golden Age of Flight and how it may not have been so golden.  As someone who has gone through the process of getting a pilot's license, I am quite glad for the 50,000 people who work for the FAA and have experienced first hand how they make flying safer and more efficient.

Two years before the FAA was created, Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act into law. This kicked off what may have been the largest public works project ever:  $25 billion for the construction of over 40,000 miles of interstate highways.  These interstate highways, along with most other roads, in our country are highly regulated, and for good reason.  It does not take much imagination to realize that without standardization of the vehicles, regulation of speed and safety, enforcement of HOV lane use, and regulation of oversize loads, few of us would be able to rely on these highways for safe travel or commerce.

Even with the Federal Highway Administration, some processes associated with the governance of the interstates is cumbersome.  A quick look at the page on Wide Loads reveals that each individual state controls wide loads differently.  Making the moving of a mobile homes across the country quite a project -- even without having to worry about being chased by a tornado.  Making wide loads difficult may in fact be a good thing.

The roads in our country work because everyone drives on the right hand side of the road, cars are generally six feet wide and 15 feet long, weigh under 8,500 pounds, have four whees, bumpers that work and so on.

This brings us to the internet.  As far as I can tell, there is no regulation of the internet at this time.  Any computer connected to the internet can manage traffic any way it wants and any traffic on the internet can do anything it wants.  This works more or less because the internet has many routes from point A to point B and if one route does not work, another one will.  The size and number of the routes is always expanding as more fiber, routers, and computers are brought online every day.  The volume of data being moved on the internet is expanding even faster as we move from a time dominated by text to a time dominated by images, audio, and video.  

The belief that all network owners treat all traffic the same is illogical.  Network owners are free to manage their networks and they most certainly do.  The FCC has no way to know if a preference is given to some of the packets, and even if it did, it has no laws to enforce to ensure that the internet is being administered in a neutral way.  We must by now realize that some regulation is necessary.  In 2006 John Dvorak wrote in PC Mag about the end of the Golden Age of the Internet stating that a combination of factors is bringing the free for all to an end.  Whether or not as cranky as John Dvorak, I suspect even casual users of the internet have experienced the negative impact of either poor or inadequate regulation.

Just this week, Google was widely castigated for its negotiations with Verizon and subsequent recommendations to the government about the regulation of the internet.  They clarified their intentions in this post on Net Neutrality.  I think they are on the right track.  The internet will become regulated at some point and Google, and others in our industry, should use whatever means available to bring about a regulatory structure that works.

Without it, we will have a very real Tragedy of the Commons with everyone driving a wide load truck and no one getting anywhere.

Those of you that are interested in more reading on the topic should check out this post by Doc Searls.

The Scoble Effect

If you think you are a big time tech blogger, google your name plus the word effect.  Good chance you will get nothing.  Then google "the scoble effect" and notice that the every one of the first 10 items are links to articles about the impact Robert Scoble has on the tech industry.  

So in my quest to figure out if Comdex Virtual is going to be anything in November I sent out this tweet yesterday:

@Scobleizer How are you going to cover Comdex -- now that it is virtual?

You probably already know that Robert Scoble gained his big time reputation because he is in the front row with his live audio or video feed running at literally every significant tech event .  Conversely, in the turn about echo chamber that is the tech industry, a tech event is not big time if Robert Scoble is not there.  His answer:  

Hmmm.  UBM has some work to do.

Comdex the Verb

Some would say that the adoption of your brand name as the accepted description of an action, preferrably the action of using your product, is the pinnacle of branding.  Xerox did it, Google did it, Kodak almost did it, although with a Kodak Moment, the brand is really an adjective modifying a moment. 

Sure it could be great if it happens, but an overt effort to make it happen could backfire.  Are we really ever going to say we Binged it?  Trademark lawyers advise companies to do whatever they can to avoid the adoption of their brand name as a generic description of an action -- because at that point protecting the trademark becomes difficult if not impossible. In fact, Xerox did for many years invest heavily to discourage people from using their name as a verb.  What an interesting world we live in.

Comdex is making a comeback this year after six years of dormancy.  Like many technology companies or even the technology industry itself, Comdex had an unbelievable rocket ship ride from 1979 to 2003.  The event topped out at about the same time that the internet bubble reached its peak in 2000 -- with over 200,000 people attending the main event in Las Vegas, plus the organizers staged many other events scattered around the world throughout the year.  At the end Comdex was the show everyone loved to hate -- and there was plenty to hate about fighting it out with a hoard of fellow geeks -- just to get a hotel room or a taxi.  I suppose that during its time as a must attend event, people eventually came to chafe at the must part.

United Business Media bought the carcass of Comdex in 2006 and has elected to bring the event back this year.  The setting is still Las Vegas, but this time it is a virtual Las Vegas.  No lines, no crowds, and much cheaper for everyone.  This virtual (and green) version of Comdex will really be something to watch.  The spectacle of the real Comdex had a way of dominating the tech news.  Strangely, we are 93 days from the virtual event, and the tech media is amazingly silent.  Google it and you get the press releases from March, search on Twitter and you get references to the MCX Comdex commodities exchange, search on valleywag - nothing, search on techcrunch - nothing, digg - nothing, techmeme - nothing.  Even a search for comdex on the UBM site  produces zero results.  Amazingly, a search on techweb -- the event producer -- no results.  (bear in mind that these links are live searches on those sites, so if content has been added after this posting -- search results may vary)

The other UBM company behind the event, Everything Channel, does not have search functionality on its web site, but does list Comdex on its events page. 

Given this media vacuum it would not be accurate to say that the whole industry is waiting to see what happens on November 16th and 17th.  It will be interesting however to see if the popular adaptation of "to Comdex" as a verb is different on November 18th.  

Book Review: The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick

I quit using facebook in May.  I have also written many posts about facebook, and I have also promised not to rant about facebook anymore.  

Count this post as the point in time when I break all of those promises at once.  I have just turned my facebook account back on and will likely start using it again.  It is hard to argue against facebook's performance and usefulness.  

There is a conflict between the natural inclination to add friends (because everyone wants the biggest number of friends possible and nobody wants to be rude and unfriend people) and the simple fact that facebook is the most useful when your friends really are your friends.  Just about all of the anguish about facebook can be traced back to this issue.  David Kirkpatrick makes this point convincingly and I agree that if you want a good facebook experience, only accept friend invitations from people you want to share your personal life with.

Mark Zuckerberg does come off as a very smart, hard working, and self assured person.  Most importantly, he is aware that he has a great deal to learn and he has sought out some of the smartest people in the business and they have agreed to advise him.  From Marc Andreessen to Bill Gates to Steve Jobs, Mark is hanging out with some very smart people.

The book does not mention Donald Rumsfeld, but it would not surprise me if Mr. Zuckerberg has talked to him too.  Our former Secretary of Defense knew that embedded reporters need not be instructed to put a positive spin on the actions of the military units they are embedded with -- because the personal relationships formed during the action take care of that.  Same is true in this case.  The author had very good access to all parts of facebook, and by the time the book was finished, the cool aid had been consumed.  

Balanced account or not, the story is unbelievable.  From 0 to 1,400 employees and 500 million users in five years is a rocket ship ride an author could only dream of and Kirkpatrick does a good job of getting the story down on paper.  The early bidding war at a $1 billion valuation and Mark's ability to resist it -- absolutely a once in a lifetime thing for the author and his subject.

So whether or not you are a facebook fan, user, or detractor: this book is one you should read.  I still do think that facebook will eventually fail, because I think all closed systems will eventually fail.  Accordingly I will continue to invest most of my energy in building an identity outside of facebook.  But there is no denying facebook is useful and will be around for a long time.

One last note: I "read" the book by listening to it on Audible.  Unfortunately the author read it himself.  This is almost always a mistake -- if you can get the printed version -- do so.

Elegant Solutions

Hang around me long enough and invariably we will end up talking about how even seemingly intractable problems have solutions and how those solutions can be simple.  I believe that with the application of enough creativity and brain power an elegant solution will come to the surface.

To me the test for elegant-ness is whether or not experts and the uninitiated both respond by saying: "Wow, what a cool idea!"  I find exposure to elegant solutions to be one of the most inspiring things in life and I do what I can to expose myself to this type of greatness as much as possible.  Here are a few of my favorite examples:

Rotary International Overhead Funding:  All non profits struggle with the same problem:  how much donated money should they use to pay for overhead?  This is one of those double impact things because any money that goes to overhead does not go to the cause -- and also discourages people from donating.  As a long time Rotarian, I am inspired by Rotary International's policy of placing all donations in the bank for three years before spending them, and then using the interest earned to fund overhead.  With this policy, Rotary can truthfully state that 100% of your donation goes to the cause.  

HBS Case of the Slow Elevator:  While it is mostly an urban legend, there is the story of a business school class with the assignment of justifying the installation of faster elevators.  The best answer -- install mirrors in each lobby so the customers will not mind waiting for slow elevators.  

MicroFinance:  Many organizations worldwide have now copied the model established by Grameen Bank to help raise the standard of living of the poorest people on earth.  Simply, loan small amounts to women with a business idea.  It works and Grameen Bank has now loaned over $7 Billion to 8 million people (in 2009 97% of the recipients were women) in over 83,000 villages.  

Gamers Help Science:  As reported in The Economist, Seth Cooper from the University of Washington created Foldit, a computer game that uses non-scientists to do useful scientific work.  He has attracted 57,000 users who donate their time (while playing the engaging game) to do work that the most sophisticated analytical software tools cannot accomplish.  

Wow, what a cool idea!

My Photo Sharing Education

Digital cameras have done a great deal for photography and it is time the web services end of the photo industry get its act together. I take several thousand pictures per year and do what I can to keep them organized.  Here is a short history of the things I have experienced when it comes to taking, sharing, and organizing pictures.

On the Mac:  In around 2003 I went to Macs big time with the thought that if anyone was going to figure this out it would be Apple.  I used all of the Apple tools like iPhoto, iMovie... and was having a great time.  I could sync all of my photos with my big iPod classic in full image mode -- so I had a regularly synced backup too.  All was good.  Then the wheels came off.  I got a new Sanyo Xacti HD video camera -- but the video format was incompatible with the mac.  There were converters, but the quality was terrible.  What is the point of taking HD video if you have to convert it to another format that looks bad?  Shortly after that the hard drive on my Mac G5 desktop failed and I lost all of my pictures.  I could get them back on my iPod -- but the folders (iPhoto's version of tagging) were all gone.  Ouch.  10,000 organized pictures now unorganized.

Windows Photo Gallery:  So I switched to Windows Photo Gallery.  The main reason was that the meta data is in a standard file format and independent of the Windows Photo Gallery software.  So if I ever decided to switch -- all of the work I would do organizing would go along with me.  Also, the organizing by date, the tagging, the integration of video and stills together, and the close integration with Windows Movie Maker -- were all attractive.  It turns out that I had just blown out of iMovie on the Mac because a new version left all of the past versions orphaned -- what was that?!?!

Video Formats:  I am still on Windows Photo Gallery but am not all that happy and am looking for another solution.  I now have a second HD video camera, this one from Sony, and the HD format is different and requires more converting before the video can be used in Windows Photo Gallery or any other software.  Somebody has got to figure this stuff out.  The codec thing is driving me crazy and my Windows machine is giving me the goofy "COM Surrogate has stopped working" error all of the time.  I have no reduced functionality and I cannot figure out what causes this, but I just minimize the error to the toolbar and call it good.  If I"X" it out, it just comes right back but if I minimize it -- it just sits there talking to itself and more or less leaves me alone.  Just a constant reminder of how screwed up computers can be.

Sharing:  I don't share photo's on Facebook because I want to control who sees them.  I am also trying to figure out how to allow my friends to get full image files of my photos.  I like Shutterfly for the private web sites it makes so easily and how the members I invite can add comments or contribute pictures.  But Shutterfly does not have image download.  I am just now trying Picasa -- but without downloading the desktop app -- the functionality is quite bad.  It seems to me that every photo sharing site either wants to you use their photo printing service (Shutterfly; Kodak Gallery...), download their software (Picasa...), or take away control of who sees you photos (Facebook...).  This area of the computer experience is very broken and should present an opportunity to someone.

Microsoft:  It would not surprise me if Microsoft has a solution to this somewhere in the Live thing.  But everytime I sit down to try to figure out what is up with Live I just cannot get my head around it.  I think it is because Microsoft wants you to be all in and therefore integrates hotmail, Messenger, and other things I don't use regularly into one experience and I just cannot figure out how it works.  When I gave it another try today was presented with a friends list (which I don't ever remember setting up, but could have over the years somehow) and they were not really any of my friends.  I could add friends but not remove them, not easily anyway... so that trail is dead too.

So for now I am sharing photos with Picasa.  Someone I invite can get the full image downloaded, but they must install the desktop application first.  

If anyone out there has a better solution -- please save me!

I Bet Mark Hurd Wishes Women Would Get Off the Elevator Too

Harry Truman reportedly would get off an elevator if a woman got on it.  I don't think it was discrimination, but rather he thought it too great a risk to be in a confined space without others around where he would find himself in a he said, she said situation.

Yesterday's widely covered resignation of Mark Hurd from HP due to legations of poor judgement in the context of mixed gender relations demonstrates that some sixty years and several waves of liberations later, the interaction of men and women in the workplace is still complicated and explosive.

As the father two incredible daughters, two individuals that are every bit as capable as any male, my response to the Hurd incident is disappointment.  I am disappointed that one of the best performing CEOs in the tech industry got into this situation, and I am disappointed that my daughters may still have to deal with high profile men that will get off the elevator in fear instead of treating them as equals.

Here is the incendiary part:  that still nameless woman, who when exposed to Mark Hurd's poor judgement did not get off the elevator herself, but instead continued to dig the hole deeper and then file a harassment case -- has participated in setting back the march towards gender equality -- no matter how justified she might be.

Here is some of the coverage in the NY Times and WSJ.