2013 Feb 28

Twitter, Facebook and Exhibitionism

Twitter and Facebook both rely, fundamentally, on the same underlying human behaviour: exhibitionism. That might sound a little strange; after all, exhibitionism is usually personified by those oddities we see walking around Times Square in NYC in their underwear, begging the world to look at them. But exhibitionism is part of every human, to a greater or lesser degree. Even the most shy and reticent of individuals gets something of a rush in successfully performing - a presentation, a song, an act, delivering a paper - in a room full of people, and not for naught has the phrase, "

2013 Feb 27

webOS is Palmed Off to LG

So Palm - or what is left of it, i.e. webOS - has been sold yet again. The number of deals around the creator of the handheld market, and, by extension, the smartphone, just keeps growing. First it was PalmPilot, then Palm Inc, then 3Com, then Handspring, then HP, then LG, and I am sure I missed a few in the middle, and reversed some of the order. Word on the street is that LG did not pay much for webOS; we likely know more early in 2014 when annual reports are filed.

2013 Feb 26

Why We Ignore Inanities in Facebook/Twitter But Not in Email

Imagine the following scenario. You are in the middle of your working day, and take a quick break to check in on Facebook or Twitter. Someone posts the following, very common, drivel: "Spent ten minutes waiting for coffee machine at work. #notenoughcaffeine." A small minority of people will have some similar comment or reaction. The overwhelming majority will think, "who cares," ignore it, move on. Now imagine the following. You are in the middle of your working day, and an email, from a friend or colleague (i.

2013 Feb 23

How to Destroy Innovation: Treat Your Most Innovative Employees Like Children

For many years, Yahoo was a poster child for the Internet boom. It was the first successful Internet portal, did a lot of innovative work on the technology front - both server-side and Web browser-side - and hired and gave lots of room to some great people. For example, while Brendan Eich is the father of ECMAScript (the official name for the language known as JavaScript), which enables all of those dynamic applications in your browser, like Gmail and Google Maps, Facebook and Twitter, and many more, the acknowledged guru of JavaScript nowadays is Douglas Crockford, a longtime Yahoo employee.

2013 Feb 12

Video/Audio vs Text - Effectiveness vs. Efficiency

In a previous post, I discussed how audio/video, because of their 1:1 nature, are more "analog" or perhaps "serial" in nature, and thus highly inefficient compared with text/images, which are n:1 and are thus "digital" or "parallel." David Wenner noted that his app, VocalReference, uses audio, video and text to capture customer references, that it is more effective that way. In his words, the world loves video/audio, accept it. In end, we are both right, the key element is the context.

2013 Feb 10

iPad Can Replace a Mac - For Some, Not for All

Cult of Mac, unsurprisingly a Mac-loving Web site, has an article from Feb 5th claiming it is mostly possible to replace your Mac laptop with an iPad, or at least the new iPad 128GB (nicknamed by many the "iPad Pro"). Apple definitely views its future in tablets, and doesn't seem to get too perturbed when Mac sales grow much more slowly than tablets. Most companies try to protect all of its product lines; Apple is famous for being willing to have a product line be cannibalized, as long as it is the one doing the cannibalization.

2013 Feb 7

Why video and audio are analog or serial, and text is digital or parallel

I had the pleasure of participating in an interesting discussion on the value of text vs audio/video on avc.com yesterday. The gist: non-interactive multimedia (audio/video) are a powerful way to get information to consumers (in the sense that they consume information) over the Internet. They are also incredibly inefficient. The last time I converted my old audio tapes and VHS tapes to digital, it took exactly as long as the tape.

2013 Feb 6

Does Wintel Become Windell?

The rumours of an impending deal to take Dell private have finally come to fruition, with a $24.4BN buyout deal. This isn't surprising. Besides the particular challenges Dell faces, ones that are easier to deal with as a private company with longer horizons than placating Wall Street this quarter, the general climate for public companies has become challenging over the last decade. Sarbanes-Oxley, state-level regulation, and a surfeit of lawsuits - companies now get sued for not a drop in share price, adding insult to injury - often make it simply worth being a private company.

2013 Jan 22

The Efficiency of Elections... and All Processes

I am a citizen of three countries - US, Canada, Israel, although with my travel I should get a United Airlines passport as well - all inherited. It has given me insight into various election methods, not only how one is elected - proportional representation vs ridings/districts, parliamentary vs executive branch, government-financed vs private-financed, etc. - but also in how one actually casts a ballot. In the end, whatever your system (assuming it is open and democratic in nature), each citizen needs to make their selection known.

2013 Jan 11

Textbook revolutions - textbooks part 2

In a previous post, we discussed why the textbooks market leads to such consumer frustration. Today, we'll look at what changes we expect. The biggest change in the textbook market, at least according to the press, blogosphere, and public opinion, is digital textbooks. But let's be clear. Digital textbooks alone will not solve this problem. Digital textbooks are more interactive, and lighter, and quicker to deliver. But the high costs, high depreciation rate and planned obsolescence in a captive audience are not due to manufacturing costs and shipping times, but due to textbook control policies by publishers.