2015 Jan 1

Kodak's Hail Mary

I always get a kick when a long-storied company which is in decline tries to hook onto the latest, hottest market, thinking, "we will get into this market, and with our amazing brand, we will knock it out of the park!" This is the business equivalent of a Hail Mary pass... while throwing it off to the sides and into the stands, rather than down the field towards the goal line.

2014 Dec 31

ReCAPTCHA 2.0

In the first half of this year, I noted that ReCAPTCHA was a lot like the "TSA of the Web" - an annoyance that is sometimes necessary to keep bad actors out and good (or, in the case of ReCAPTCHA, "real") actors in. I also noted that Google, itself, had publicized that it had broken ReCAPTCHA, rather than wait for someone else to do so. In that respect, ReCAPTCHA was lot more like the TSA - weak, broken, but good "

2014 Dec 30

Whence Bitcoin

Bitcoin - and its focused leveragors and imitators like Ripple - have gained a lot of press and traction. The question that I keep coming back to is, what are they good for? I do not mean this in a cynical sense, but in a literal, "what is the best use case" sense? The answers I keep coming back to are two, and only two: Person to person payments International transfers I am, for now, ignoring the "

2014 Dec 29

Where Real and Cyber Warfare Meet

Probably the biggest story of the last few weeks has been the hack of Sony Pictures by North Korea (or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea / DPRK, naming convention courtesy of George Orwell). While hacks happen all of the time, this one is particularly notable for several reasons: It was directed by a state actor. The US Government officially responded and "named and shamed" the state actor, thus forcing itself to respond.

2014 Dec 24

The Safe as a Web Server

Safes. They are big, heavy, and make us feel, well, "safe" about our valuables stored inside. Historically, safes were controlled by a series of complex gears that only the correct series, or "combination", of dials would open. I loved the illustrations for gears and other mechanical devices in David Macaulay's "New Way Things Work". Digital safes, whether the professional variety of the home variety, were created largely for convenience. They are faster to open, easier to share (and change) codes, and required less physical space for all of the gears.

2014 Dec 23

The JPMC Breach Wasn't About Systems; It Was About People

According to a New York Times article, the major JPMorgan Chase (JPMC) breach was due to a single entry point: a single server in its vast array of servers, one that either has access to confidential data or acts as a gateway to the internal systems, was not fully patched. Does one patch really matter? It depends on what that patch is. A "patch" probably is not the right word for this.

2014 Dec 19

Timezones, Expats and Doctors

A friend of mine, an extremely talented pulmonary specialist, recently moved to Israel. Like many other expats who like living in one place but working in another, he is commuting. Unlike many others, he is telecommuting.... 6-9,000 miles. Through an interesting arrangement, my friend is working for a company that provides remote Intensive Care Unit (ICU) oversight during the night shift in US hospitals. My friend does a long shift during relatively normal working hours - for him - watching many monitors in his home office, as well as having voice conversations via phone and Skype with health staff in the ICU.

2014 Dec 18

Will a CISO Board Delta Airlines?

The Internet has been abuzz with the discovery by Dani Grant, a writer at BuzzFeed, that she had found an easy way to explore - and print, and use - lots of boarding passes from Delta, even those for other people and other airlines. When you ask for your mobile boarding pass, Delta sends you a URL to click and view your boarding pass QR code as well as all of the "

2014 Dec 17

The Hard Thing About Building Platforms

Most products and online services today revolve around four basic actions a user does with valuable data: create read update delete For example, if you are managing a customer in Salesforce.com, you are likely to create a new customer record, read it before the next time you call, update it with details of the call, or delete it if it is no longer relevant. In true techie fashion, these have become known by their acronym as CRUD activities.

2014 Dec 15

Never Fight Your Customers

Message to Keurig: never fight your customers. Where did this come from? You, Mr. or Ms. Entrepreneur, have worked hard, built up a successful business, maybe even sold it out to a larger firm because they saw how much it could be worth with their capital and market strength. Whatever stage of your business, there are 2 prime rules for continued success and growth. Cash is King - but we all knew that.