Wednesday, June 30, 2010

What's in a name?

There are a number of words that we speak which are completely unintelligible if they are removed from their original context. For example, a recent post of mine used the acronym "RSM," while noting that it could stand for a variety of things, including the Russian School of Mathematics and Remote Site Management. In my case, I was referring to the California community of Rancho Santa Margarita.

In the same way, names of people can often be confusing when taken out of context. While there are people who have very unique names, there are some names that are more common than we can imagine. I could use a particular name with one audience, and they would know exactly who I was talking about. I could use that same name with an entirely separate audience, and they would also know exactly who I was talking about - even though I would be talking about an entirely different person.

Here are a few examples, starting with PaintPRO:

Robert “Rob” Scoble has been named vice president, sales and marketing at Hyde Tools Inc. Scoble’s responsibilities include oversight of the sale and marketing of paint, drywall, wallcovering and other hand tools sold worldwide through retailers, distributors and catalogs.

Scoble comes to Hyde Tools with a strong background in business development and operational improvement programs. As senior vice president and COO for a $70 million privately held company, he increased revenues and operating income and was responsible for functional management and 1,300 employees. He has also taken one corporation through a classic turnaround that included a major branding initiative, “quick-fixed” the operating income of an acquired organization, merged business units, reversed declining sales, increased sales and reengineered strategic business units.


Or how about this biography from the RIS Consulting Group web page?

John Sculley, Vice President & Managing Director

At RIS Consulting Group since 1995, John Sculley designs and leads all RIS advisory, research and change management projects for corporate relocation programs and related services. He was formerly a vice president at a major relocation management company and at an international consulting firm, specializing in corporate location decisions and economic development. He was also executive director/CEO of a major Connecticut not-for-profit. He is the recipient of the Certified Relocation Professional designation (1990), the Meritorious Service Award (1997) and the President’s Award (2006) from the Worldwide Employee Relocation Council. He currently serves on the ERC’s national Task Force on Mobility Procurement and on the Board of Directors for the New England Relocation Association. A graduate of Bucknell University, John lives in New Milford, Connecticut. He and wife Mary have three daughters and a grandson.


Now I'm sure that someone or another has walked up to the Hyde Tools guy and asked him about FriendFeed. And I bet that the RIS consultant has been asked about his favorite computer, or his favorite soft drink.

But I shudder to think of the questions that this guy is asked:

John M. Bredehoft
Partner

John is a partner in the Labor and Employment Law Practice Group of Kaufman & Canoles. His practice emphasizes litigation and litigation-avoidance strategies, and regularly includes discrimination and harassment matters, executive contracts, trade secret and computer crime cases, and advice and litigation on covenants restricting post-employment competition.


So if anyone wonders why I sometimes use my middle initial on my online writing...it's to spare this guy some grief.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

(empo-tymshft) The importance of a timeframe

Who is the best NBA basketball team?

Seems like a simple question, right?

Inasmuch as I live in the Los Angeles area, you can guess what the answer to that question is around here. Since the Lakers won the championship for the 2009-2010 season, they are clearly the best team in basketball.

However, the results in any one year are partially attributable to luck. What if Player X had never been injured? What if Player Y didn't happen to make that critical shot in a critical game?

OK, the Lakers fans will respond, let's look at the last three years. During that period, the Lakers were clearly the dominant team.

Excuse me for a moment, but I think I hear a dissenting view from the woman in the green shirt.

"Has there been any team who has won 17 championships? Yes, one - the Boston Celtics. And we won all 17 of our championships in the same city, in the same league. We don't have to count Minneapolis wins or BAA championships in our total."

Of course, the Boston Celtics of 1957 differed tremendously from the Boston Celtics of 2008. The arena was different, the players were different, the game was different. Is it reasonable to look at a period spanning a half-century or more?

What about the last twenty years, Chicago Bulls fans will argue? (6 Bulls championships, 5 Lakers championships, 4 San Antonio Spurs championships.)

Until the Lakers' recent resurgence, the Spurs could lay claim to being the dominant team of the decade.

And until the Lakers' recent resurgence, there was another claimant to the throne - "whatever team Shaquille O'Neal is on." (3 championships with the Lakers, one with the Miami Heat.)

So you can see that definitions of a problem can be significantly impacted by the time scale that is used to analyze the problem. I can guarantee that the results of a three coin toss test will be dramatically different than the results of a 1,000 coin toss test.

Now one can argue that you should use a time scale that is most relevant to the problem that you wish to solve, but as we have seen, relevance is open to interpretation.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to finish writing this Best Blog Post Ever.

Monday, June 28, 2010

My Accord (and Camry) is American made

Years and years ago, I knew some people who worked for a Michigan Congressman from the Detroit area. The Congressman, who naturally wanted to represent his constituents, was obviously interested in promoting "buy American" programs when it came to cars.

That Congressman has long since retired, but I wonder if he'd still support the same program today. You see, the Michigan-based automotive companies are no longer the leaders in U.S.-based car manufacturing, according to Business 360 and cars.com. From the latter:

Cars.com's American-Made Index rates vehicles built and bought in the U.S. Factors include sales, where the car's parts come from and whether the car is assembled in the U.S. We disqualify models with a domestic parts content rating below 75 percent, models built exclusively outside the U.S. or models soon to be discontinued without a U.S.-built successor....

The Toyota Camry, which dethroned the Ford F-150 pickup in last year's AMI, remains at the top for 2010. But the No. 2 model, Honda's strong-selling Accord, surged unexpectedly. Since the AMI's 2006 inception, we've scrutinized two generations of Accords. In the past, Honda sold few imported Accords to U.S. buyers — "a percentage below 10 percent for many years," spokesman Ed Miller said — but the Accord spent several years with its domestic parts percentage in the 60s. That's not the case this year. With all Accords sold in the U.S. now assembled in either Ohio or Alabama, the Accord's 75 percent domestic content and strong sales came close to unseating Toyota for first place.


A Ford spokesman referred to "more global sourcing" as the reason for the change in the F-150's domestic content figure, which has now dropped below the 75% level.

For the record, there are three Toyotas, two Fords, two Hondas, one Chevrolet, one Dodger, and one Jeep on the top ten list.

But it does make you wonder - what is an American car? And with global sourcing, how do you keep track of the American-ness of a car from year to year?

The world manufacturing giant

I ran across this item a few days ago. It begins as follows:

When I saw this story from CNNMoney.com’s Chris Isidor (“China close to catching U.S. in manufacturing”), my first thought was this:

The U.S. still makes things?


Yup. This is what Isidor said:

China's manufacturing base is much more dependent on cheaper goods in such sectors as textiles, apparel, appliances, as well as certain commodities. Textile, apparel and appliances together make up 25% of Chinese manufacturing, compared to 13% in the United States.

The U.S. manufacturing base is well ahead in fields such as aircraft, special industrial machinery and medical and scientific equipment and media-related industries, including software.

For the Jung at heart, another personality classification system

If you've been around business for a while, you've probably run across Myers-Briggs, the whole Mars-Venus thing, or some other type of personality classification system. The underlying concept of these systems, when applied to business, is as follows:
  1. Your behavior can be classified as falling into one (or more) groups.

  2. The behavior of others (customers, competitors, whoever) can also be classified.

  3. Your relationships with these others are governed by your respective classifications, some of which are more compatible than others.

This line of study can be traced back to the work of Carl Jung, who probably never envisioned that his work would eventually be adopted by Type A businessmen trying to get ahead. (Types A and B, incidentally, are a post-Jung concept.)

So anyways, my job change resulted in my rejoining the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP), and I recently attended my first APMP meeting in ten years. This meeting of the Southern California chapter was conducted via webinar at locations throughout the Southland, and our presenter also dialed in remotely, from Colorado. Dr. Charles Pellerin has developed a personality classification system of his own. Pellerin's story picks up around 1990:

In 1990, the world discovered that NASA's crown jewel, the Hubble Space Telescope was useless because of a flawed mirror. The author mounted the daring space repair mission that fixed the telescope. Hubble is now in its 15th year of productive scientific research with more than 3,500 technical publications. NASA awarded him a second Outstanding Leadership Medal, an honor bestowed on less than 50 people (including astronauts) in NASA's History.

In the long term, however, the important question was WHY the mirror was flawed. In an attempt to avoid a second Hubble, Pellerin set out to find out what went wrong.

He looked back at other failed NASA missions, such as the Challenger explosion, and he found a common ingredient to each failure: the “normalization of deviance.” For some reason, errors were not only accepted, but they were standard operating procedure. Pellerin dug deeper and determined that a “flawed social context” was the root of this problem.

With Hubble, the social context that existed between NASA and its contractors discouraged contractors from reporting problems.


Continuing to explore the topic, both in academia and with his own consulting firm, Pellerin created his model:

The 4-D System aligns with Carl Jung's theory of personality development (1905). He posited that we build our personalities on our innate (present at birth) preferences for deciding and the information we use to decide.

Pellerin derived four categories:

"Green" for Cultivating personality foundations -- as in growing, developing people

"Yellow" for Including personality foundations -- the color association is unfortunately unfavorable -- lacking the courage to stand into conflict (We ran out of core colors identifying the other three personalities.)

"Blue" for Visioning personality foundations -- as in blue sky thinking

"Orange" for Directing personality foundations -- as the way our sun directs (organizes) the movement of the planets in our solar system


During his talk to the APMP Socal chapter, Dr. Pellerin spent some time on some examples in which the customer and the bidder were of opposite color types. If I may butcher one of his examples, let's say that a government agency is soliciting bids for the study of a "visionary" topic. Furthermore, let's say that the proposal team assigned to the bid is a results-oriented, practical ("directing") group of people who perceive that the agency's vision is completely impractical.

In addition to violating the "customer is always right" rule, such a proposal team will, in Pellerin's view, be predisposed by personality to lose the bid. Rather than affirming the customer's vision, the proposal team will be naturally inclined to demonstrate a better way to the customer - a message that the customer ultimately does not want to hear.

This is just a small part of what Dr. Pellerin discussed during our 90 minute meeting. Much more information can be found at his website, http://www.4-dsystems.com/, and in his book, How NASA Builds Teams (affiliate link below).

Thursday, June 24, 2010

How geeky can you get? @rsmfoodgeek takes the cake.

I run online with a somewhat technical crowd, and all of us manifest some geekiness in some form or another. Or probably a variety of forms; how many people used a DEC PDP-11/70 to manage their college radio show playlists?

But I just discovered that one of my Facebook friends takes geekiness to a whole new level.

Meet foodgeek, whose diary (blog) can be found here, and whose Twitter account (@rsmfoodgeek) can be found here. For those who don't live in southern California, "rsm" stands for Rancho Santa Margarita, although Wikipedia notes that it can also stand for Removable Storage Manager, Resource Standard Metrics, Remote Site Management, Response Surface Methodology, Route Switch Module, and the Russian School of Mathematics (which is not in Russia).

On her blog, she calls herself Geekus Maximus - not only because of her intense interest in baking, but because when she's not baking, she works as a systems engineer. Presumably she does not confuse the two:

Workflow for Biometric Submission to State System

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Process biometric samples to extract feature data.
3. Knead the dough throughly.
4. Check for required descriptors; do not allow screen to advance until mandatory descriptors are correctly entered.
5. Generously add raisins to the dough.
6. Format submission in ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2007 format.
7. Bake until brown.
8. Transmit submission to state system in accordance with CJIS WAN security guidelines.
9. Let cool for ten minutes, then enjoy!


As you can probably tell by my fake workflow above, I know next to nothing about baking. For those who want to know more, check foodgeek's blog - sample post: Pane al Cioccolato - Italian Chocolate Bread, which includes technical terms such as "Biga Naturale." You see, ALL geeks have their own special terminology...

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

A not-so-wonderful airline credit card offer

Chris Brogan has written an Open Letter to the Hotel Industry in which he observed, in part:

Hotels: stop charging me stupid prices for water. Stop it. We all know it’s silly. Just don’t do it. HIDE THE CHARGE SOMEWHERE ELSE.

I replied:

Business hotels serve customers who often fly to the business hotels via airplane. If an airline will charge you for a soft drink, a snack, and the privilege of carrying your bag on to the airplane, then a hotel is naturally going to follow suit.

Not too long after reading Brogan's post, I picked up my snail mail and received THIS INCREDIBLE OFFER from a major airline, based in the southeastern United States, whose name rhymes with "smelta":

[Airline] and American Express invite you to experience the Gold [airline] Credit Card and our new benefit - first checked bag free for up to nine people in your reservation, every [airline] flight.

So, if I'm following this right, the airline is offering me the privilege of checking a bag for free. All I have to do is sign up for the credit card, pay the annual fee, pay the interest rate, etcetera.

Unfortunately for the airline, I can still remember the good old days in which all airlines, including "smelta," allowed you to check a bag for free WITHOUT HAVING TO SIGN UP FOR A CREDIT CARD. (Airfarewatchdog tracks bag fees, including those airlines who still don't charge any.)

I wonder if I can use the credit card to pay for the pay toilets that airlines might install in the future. (Yes, airline pay toilets were considered at one point.)

Sorry, this "wonderful offer" leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And don't forget what Jason Kottke previously shared (H/T me):

The airlines that added the most fees (for food, to check bags) in the past few months saw their revenues decline the most.

Stack stack stack stack stack stack stack

Although it's highly unlikely that I'll be attending Oracle OpenWorld this year, I did attend the conference for several years in a row, and therefore have heard more of my share of presentations that included the word "stack." As I've mentioned before, the concept of a "stack" is a model that shows how a variety of technical offerings work with each other. As Oracle has acquired companies over the last few years, it has been able to offer a much bigger stack consisting of only Oracle products. With the acquisition of Sun, Oracle is now able to offer a stack that ranges from hardware to operating systems to databases to middleware to applications.

Now I don't attend a lot of other vendor conferences, so I've been primarily exposed to Oracle's marketing message. However, Oracle isn't the only one with the "my stack is bigger than your stack" message. David Vellante speaks of two companies who have followed an approach similar to Oracle's:

IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) has always invested in various segments of technology and owns lots of IP (e.g., semiconductors, servers, storage, software, services). Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) also has been aggressively acquiring IP and expanding beyond printers for the better part of a decade.

But there are other ways to skin a stack:

Different competitors are taking different approaches to the stack. Each has a choice to vertically integrate throughout the stack or virtually integrate through partnerships....

Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), for example, has primarily stayed focused on its software stack for the enterprise, choosing to partner with hardware companies such as Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) and HP. Intel for its part is focused on hardware generally and semiconductors in particular, attempting to be the microprocessor "arms dealers" for enterprise and consumer markets.


Some would argue that the drawback of Microsoft's approach is that you don't have any control over the portions of the stack that you do not own. If Hewlett Packard were to suddenly decide that its future lay with an "HP Linux" of some sort, Microsoft would lose a significant chunk of its business. Oracle, on the other hand, can guarantee that it will keep the Sun server business.

Well, as long as Sun servers are around. Despite the high-stackers' loud pronouncements of wonderful synergies, some IT executives see huge risks in putting all of your eggs in one basket. For these people, a partnership with Microsoft helps to guarantee that they can, for example, do business with multiple hardware vendors with no problem.

For another part of the battle - virtual stacks - read Vellante's article.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

(empo-tuulwey) (empo-tymshft) The power of a boat anchor - my view on the "desktops are dead" debate

Steven Hodson wrote a post which brought a whole debate to my attention - a debate about the decidedly un-sexy desktop computer, an unglamorous "boat anchor" compared to the other personal computing devices out there.

Hodson first referred to a Slate post called "Flight of the Desktops." The central thesis of this article is that desktop sales are not only declining - something that everyone acknowledges, and which is supported by predictions of US sales of computers through 2015 - but that the newer form factors (including iPad-like tablets), as well as the cloud, will pretty much wipe out any reason for having a desktop.

Hodson then referred to the counterpoint article, Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins' "Hold Your Horses, Slate, Desktops Can't Fly!" Allow me to quote from Hopkins' first point:

First and foremost, they’re cheap. Up until the existence of the netbook a few years ago, there was no cheaper way to get access to, well, everything from your home without buying a desktop PC. We in the tech bubble often forget that price is a factor in most people’s technology purchase decision making.

And remember the statistics that Slate cited? They were US-centric statistics. And the factors that influence sales in the United States (and Hodson's Canada) do not influence other countries. Witness this May post from nyakpo.com:

There are many other countries around the globe where you can get it in the near future, but Africa…? No, forget it. Not even Apple’s Steve Jobs can tell you when its newest classic toy will be available for sale in Africa.

As an aside, it should be noted that even if Apple were to make the iPad available in Africa, it would be difficult to buy:

When Apple asked for pre-orders for iPad in April after its US launch, it was a request clearly understood outside Africa. And that is because it involved the use of credit cards on the Internet, a well-run postal system where deliveries are made to residential addresses, and an unquestionable ability to afford.

FIFA has been criticised recently because many soccer fans across Africa could not get to buy tickets for the matches in South Africa. The reason? Most of the tickets were being sold over the Internet.

So Apple’s pre-order request over Internet would have been meaningless in most places in Africa, because credit cards are very much a novelty, the Internet is painfully slow and residential addresses are practically non-existent. Many streets, where they exist, are nameless. The sight of a postal worker on a motorbike, or in a car, delivering letters and parcels to homes is mostly unknown.


But an even bigger concern is the price. As the article notes, "The iPad costs an absolute minimum of $499 US dollars. Fancy that for a continent whose inhabitants are so poor that one popular business module is to set up organisations to help it beg the rest of the world for aid."

Now Steven Hodson is not under the illusion that everyone can easily spend $500 on an iPad, or $2,000 on an iPhone. So he doesn't think that the desktop will die. But he does think that it will transform:

However a true distributed home server or home computer is still a little way off, but once we have true 1 gigabyte wireless, even if only internally, and we can remove the wires still connecting things like our monitors, then we will start to really see innovation within the home. At this point we will actually be able to have what Bill Gates termed as the disappearing desktop that will power our digital homes.

Again, however, you're going to see these improvements in Canada and the United States before you see them in, say, South Africa.

And Hodson, while noting that desktop computers are used in both homes and offices, doesn't really look at the office component. And offices are a different beast altogether. Now I'll grant that virtual computing may offer some technical and financial advantages to offices that might hasten the disappearance of the desktop from the corporate world, but I'll bet that there will still be a number of businesses - primarily small businesses - for which the desktop will not only be a viable platform, but a necessary platform. "Whether you like it or not," there are some companies that are scared to death of the idea of their employees lugging laptops all over the place, or plugging into the cloud from anywhere. To enhance both logical and physical security, these companies would prefer that some - or all - employees use a computer that doesn't move. This is perceived as something that is easier to manage. And perception is reality.

So I guess that if I were to choose sides, I'd side with Hopkins on this one. But in a sense, all three of them are right. Desktop sales are declining, and the "desktop" is going to morph into something new in SOME situations. But the desktop itself will survive.

Think about what a desktop is. It's a motherboard, enclosed in a case, with a monitor. Contrast this with the laptop/netbook/tablet/smartphone, which all consist of a motherboard, enclosed in a case, with a monitor. Or how about your cable or satellite TV and its accompanying set-top box? Yup, a motherboard, enclosed in a case, with a monitor.

It's relatively easy to build a desktop - in fact, the case for a desktop is easier to build than the cases for some other personal computers. So even if the market for desktop computers is relatively small, they're easy enough to build to ensure that they'll still be a viable form factor.

P.S. to those who know me - in one of the previous paragraphs, I initially misspelled "morph" - as "morpho." Luckily I caught this before I put this post on the print rack.

Monday, June 21, 2010

(empo-caallii) The power of self-identification, in a musical sense

Heads up to music lovers who also saw my earlier post The power of self-identification - my view on how we present ourselves.

In the same way that people present themselves, companies obviously present themselves, and their brands.

When you walk into Disney's California Adventure, you hear a variety of music that can be described as "California music."

But exactly what is "California music"?

If you're a reader of my Empoprise-MU music blog, you already know that I asked that very question earlier today.

What you may not know is that this is the first post in a projected series of posts that examines California music, its various definitions, and its various practitioners, such as Lawrence Welk. Yeah, Lawrence Welk. Even though he didn't have a bushy bushy blond hairdo, he's a major figure in the evolution of California music.

I'll be talking about Welk, and selected other people, in the Empoprise-MU music blog over the next few days. If you want to find these posts as they appear scan for posts in the Empoprise-MU music blog with the "empo-caallii" label.

You may note that this post itself, even though it's not in the music blog, uses that same label. In the future, if I talk about a business issue that is specific to California, I'll apply this label for easy reference.

The power of self-identification - my view on how we present ourselves

Over the weekend, I received a notification that someone had replied to my comment on the Doodiepants post McDonald’s Website just for People with Darker Skin – 365Black.com. Actually, the person hadn't replied to MY comment, but what the hey. Note that my comment was written after my own post on the topic.

So anyways, there I was at Doodiepants, and I saw a reference to another post - Barack Obama is Not Black. While the post includes some excellent points, and also discusses the "One Drop Rule," the post ignores one critical point - Obama identifies himself as Black.

This is just one example of the many ways in which we self-identify ourselves. Let me cite some others.

When I attend a conference, I often end up getting a name tag. Now I could put "Johnny" on my name tag, even though there are only a few people (some relatives on my father's side) who call me Johnny. In fact, I could put "Jack" on my name tag, even though no one has ever called me Jack. Or I could call myself "J.E." Or "Fred." Or "Martha."

Or take this popular example, exemplified in this Twitter account. The bio reads "Web Marketing SEM, SEO, SMO, PR 2.0 & VMO Professional." The Twitter handle is @socialmedia2O (that's the letter "O" at the end). The Twitter name? "Social Media Expert."

And sometimes we may identify ourselves differently to different people at different times. I already cited an example of someone who self-identified as a person interested in MSN Train Simulator. I continued:

That review was written on March 27, 2001. Time has passed, and the MSN Train Simulator Fan Site no longer exists. Interestingly enough, the reviewer actually joined Microsoft as an employee a couple of years later, then eventually left and worked for some other tech firms. I can't recall him ever saying anything about trains, although it turns out that he did write about trains in general, and Train Simulator in particular, in a 2007 post in his blog. (Yeah, he's a blogger, although he spends more time on FriendFeed.)

Well, I wrote that particular post in April 2009. A few months later, Mr. Train Simulator Guy, who had previously self-identified as a FriendFeed fanboi, quit actively participating in FriendFeed after the Facebook acquisition.

So look at what I've already shared about this one person. There are people who think of him as the train simulator guy. Others think of him as an ex-Microsoft guy. Others remember him as a FriendFeed champion (or a former FriendFeed champion). They only know certain aspects of his life, and not others - naked conversationalist, Muslim blogger, whatever.

But it's all a matter of presentation. Whether you're Barack Obama the black man, Jack Bredehoft the blogger, SEO SEO SEO the social media expert, or Alex Scoble's brother, you often have a good deal of control regarding how you present yourself, and how others perceive you. While I'll grant that others can impose their perceptions on you (Dan Quayle and Joe Biden are examples of this), there are instances in which you can exercise some level of control.

And yeah, yeah, I should get my own domain name...

Friday, June 18, 2010

Transpostiion

I recently read a reference to "mulit-user" and immediately thought of Billy Ray Cyrus (in his "Achy Breaky Heart" days).

I laughed...until I remembered that in one of my former jobs, I wrote manuals for a line of products with names beginning with "multi." I'm sure I transposed the i and the t more than once in those days.

And I also remembered my notorious misspelling "qualtiy" - which appeared in a process document.

It's enough to make your hair stand on end.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Do you like television first down lines and vuvuzela blockers?

Watching an event on television is just like being there.

Uh, no.

If you are watching an event via television, the television producers do various things to enhance the experience for viewers.

One innovation - which I'm personally STILL miffed about - is the superimposed first down lines that are added to (American) football games. If you're at the stadium, of course, no such lines appear - you need to look for the first down markers on the sidelines. Television viewers, however, see this bright line that indicates where the offense has to cross to get a first down. Unfortunately, television viewers can't turn the danged lines off.

Let me cite another, possibly less controversial example. One thing that is getting a lot of press at this year's World Cup - even more than the orange miniskirts - are the wonderful vuvuzela noisemakers that fans are bringing to the games. As the BBC notes, it is loud:

The incessant drone of vuvuzelas blown from start to finish of a World Cup football match can reach 130 decibels - louder than a referee's whistle or a chainsaw at full rip.

The BBC notes that while stadium attendees can revel in the atmosphere, television viewers and radio listeners can't hear the announcers over the blare.

There are those who claim that they can produce vuvuzela-less audio. But Professor Trevor Cox, interviewed by the BBC, says that this could be a bit tricky.

"I'm looking at its wave patterns and there are at least six very strong harmonics in there. It would sound really horrible to notch these out - if one coincides with the vowel sound e, you won't be able to hear the -es in the commentary. It would sound unnatural."

However, apparently the vuvuzela noise can be reduced somewhat, even if it can't be blocked.

Now one can certainly argue that a vuvuzela-reduced World Cup, a first down-enhanced American football game, or even the common baseball view over the pitcher's shoulder are not the "real" game.

However, even if you eliminated all of these technical enhancements, all the announcers, and everything else, you still wouldn't get the "real" game. Humans have a much wider angle of vision than most video cameras, and even a wide-angle view (such as that found via IMAX, or via Disney's "Soarin' Over California") has a tinge of unreality to it.

Given these limitations, one can either opt for an experience that is as close to the real one as possible, or opt for an enhanced experience that takes the medium, and the audience's expectations, into account.

And if you want to use a vuvuzela while watching a Ted Turner colorized film, that's your choice.

If you build it, will they come?

Dave Winer is conducting an interesting experiment.

A few days ago, Winer wrote a post that discussed a meetup. Sharp-eyed readers may have noticed a plus sign next to this paragraph:

Then our guest, Richard Ziade, took the floor and told the story of Readability and showed us some iPad apps for reading content. He gave us background on what Safari is doing that goes beyond what today's Readability does. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

If you click on that plus sign, new text appears.



Apple is not just borrowing ideas from Readability, what they've included in Safari is Readability.

They've done something that will probably be controversial. If a story has continuation pages, Safari allows you to go through them without first seeing the page with its ads, and then asking to have it made "readable." At least that's my understanding. I have to get the new Safari and check it out.

Rich has a lot of ideas that go beyond what Readability does now, and luckily they dovetail with some of my thoughts on where blogging software can go, and ideas I've heard from others.

BTW, the text you're reading is a milestone. This is the first blog post that has the ability to hide sub-text. This makes it possible for me to add detail to a piece that not every reader might need, without creating a new web page (which I never have time for anyway). I'm going to do a write-up of the feature shortly.


I missed this particular feature (for reasons that will become clear shortly), and so did many others. So Winer wrote another post to highlight what he had just done. The post, entitled "New feature: Blog post sub-text!" opened as follows:

Note: If you're reading this on the Home page or the RSS feed you won't see the plus signs. Go to the story page to get the full effect.

Since I usually read Winer's blog via an RSS reader, the effect was lost on me. But Winer didn't stop at version 1.0, he offered an improvement that allowed the sub-text to be available to RSS readers, also. However, Winer noted:

Of course there aren't any apps that read this format, yet. It's always that way. When I first came out with the predecessor to RSS, no one read it. But eventually someone did, and then a lot of people, etc etc. That may not happen here, but then again, it might. Don't count it out.

Now I tend to approach things from a business, rather than a technical, perspective. From my view of things, one would start with a customer problem - for example, "How can I provide content to both the casual reader and the reader who prefers a deep dive?" From that perspective, Winer's sub-text idea is one of several ideas that could solve the problem.

The fallacy of my approach is that it only accounts for cases in which the question is asked. What if no one thinks to ask the question?

I've written another blog post that talks about Steve Jobs. That post mentions the 3 1/2" floppy drive that Apple brought to the masses. No one was asking for a 3 1/2" floppy disk. The 5 1/4" floppy disk was just fine. But Jobs went ahead and added it anyway. Here's how Jobs summed up the whole episode, as part of a discussion of Flash technology:

Apple is a company that doesn’t have the resources that everyone else has. We choose what tech horses to ride, we look for tech that has a future and is headed up. Different pieces of tech go in cycles…they have summer and then they go to the grave. We have a history of doing this. The 3 1/2 floppy. We made that popular. We got rid of the floppy altogether in the first iMac.

Jobs provided some other examples, then said:

And when we do this, sometimes people call us crazy. Sometimes you have to pick the right horses.

Now it should be noted that Winer is not DISCONTINUING a feature, but adding one - something that is less controversial (though not without controversy of its own). So if the feature never takes off, the only potential loser is Winer, who invested time in something that nobody wanted.

There is no one best system for creating technological advances. I've been involved in projects where the best SEI CMM-derived processes were used to envision, specify, design, create, and test a wonderfull application. I've also been involved in projects where someone threw something together over a weekend. Both systems work.

Without trying to pigeonhole sub-text into one process or another, let's look at what Winer did. First - well, to tell the truth, I don't know what he did first. At some point, however, he wrote the meetup post and tested his feature. He then publicly announced the feature in a follow-up post. This was followed by discussion in the comments, and several other posts (most of which I haven't linked to) in which Winer received feedback and in which Winer and others discussed possible use cases for the feature. This led, among other things, to Winer's new implementation for RSS readers.

Of course this isn't enterprise bullet-proof software that you'd give to your grandmother, and perhaps other development methods may be appropriate for health records management software, but it's certainly a fun ride.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Has Ingres raised the stakes of the game?

This blog has looked at how gaming can be applied to enterprises, primarily from a user interface and functionality perspective. However, I just ran across something that looked at enterprise applications of gaming technologies from the processing perspective.

And I didn't read about this one in the Oracle AppsLab blog.

Oracle competitor Ingres is promoting a new application called Ingres VectorWise. Ingres is saying the following:

Ingres VectorWise is the next generation of analytic database technology. Ingres VectorWise unlocks the power of modern commodity CPUs with a revolutionary database engine that leverages vector-based processing and on-chip memory to provide dramatic 10x - 70x performance gains over other databases.

When Charles Babcock wrote about this in InformationWeek, he characterized the VectorWise advance as follows:

Ingres has launched a new kind of analytics database system, Ingres VectorWise, that it says cuts in half the time needed to process complex queries. It does so by understanding and exploiting the capabilities of the latest generation of computer chips in a manner similar to the game software.

Specifically:

[VectorWise] takes advantage of the parallel processing capabilities built into the latest generation of commodity, x86 architecture chips....

VectorWise taps the chips' ability to process an instruction along with multiple streams of data, called Single Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD), and Streaming SIMD Extensions, which allows the processing of SIMD-type instructions with greater parallelism, according to an Ingres/Intel joint white paper. In doing so, the new system, can process 1,000 rows at a time where an OLTP database would process one.

Game machines take advantage of this array processing and parallel processing in order to show the complex backgrounds and vivid scene interactions that is their lifeblood. But relational databases that were borne in the late 1970s and early 1980s haven't previously taken advantage of the capability....


Interestingly enough, one of the sources (from the year 2000) that discussed SIMD architectures specifies two chips that were using it: Motorola's MPC7400 (used in Apple Macintosh computers such as the PowerBook G4) and the chip used in Sony's PlayStation 2.

But are VectorWise's claims real? In May, Tony Bain thought so:

And I have started hearing feedback, and it is good. Very good. While Ingres Vectorwise isn’t fully baked yet, I have heard it is producing astounding performance results in early testing. In one case I heard of [less than] 10TB real life production comparison test and Ingres Vectorwise smoked everything else they had tested. And they have tested a lot of different market leading analytical platforms.

If you're interested in VectorWise (which is a different entity from Ingres), be sure to read its account of the scientific origins of VectorWise.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

(empo-utoobd) Spending time in Steve Jobs' Flash-less Utopia

I can't really share the complete details of this, but suffice it to say that as a result of a recent Adobe security advisory, one of the computers to which I have access did not have Flash support for a week.

According to Steve Jobs, I didn't lose anything. Here are some excerpts from his "Thoughts on Flash":

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.


But what about, if I may borrow a term from Apple, "the rest of us"? In my case, my entertainment choices were significantly decreased.

I rarely watch television any more, and consume my entertainment via reading or via the radio. And frankly, even my listening to "the radio" is often online listening. As an example, Lakers games are broadcast on ESPN's Los Angeles, California radio station (KSPN, AM 710), which is all well and good during the day, but after dark the signal is pretty fuzzy in the Inland Empire, which I live. When I'm in the car, I listen to Lakers games on KSPA. When I'm not, I go to one of ESPN's websites to hear the games...

...which are streamed in Flash. So I couldn't listen to the Finals games on my computer during that one-week period.

Or to World Cup games, which ESPN broadcasts.

In my case, YouTube was out of the question also - which put a damper on my attempts to view Chris Brogan's new "Man on the Go" travel blog. Perhaps the iPad user can play YouTube, but it wasn't working on my computer. As you know, I'm fond of sharing YouTube videos via my Empoprise-MU music blog (here's a recent example). Perhaps you noticed that I didn't share any during the last week. Now you know why; if I can't play them, why share them?

Perhaps my lack of activity in the music blog adversely impacted my analytics. But if it did, I couldn't tell, because Google Analytics also uses Flash, so I couldn't see my analytics or even select time periods to view.

Over the decades, Jobs has been notorious for making design decisions that run the risk of penalizing his customers. For example, the original Macs did not come with a standard 5 1/4" floppy disk drive, but instead came with the newfangled 3 1/2" floppy disk drive (well, if you can refer to a 3 1/2" disk as "floppy"). In this case, Jobs ended up setting an industry-wise standard...well, at least until the floppy disk itself disappeared.

Will Jobs win his current battle against Flash? Time will tell.

The Crime? Marketing. The result? Bruises and a foreign relations issue

Perhaps you saw my earlier post in which FIFA ejected 36 women from the World Cup stands and detained them for three hours for questioning - because of a suspicion that they were marketing Bavaria Beer at an event sponsored by competitor Budweiser.

The marketing tactic? Orange miniskirts.

Well, DutchNews.nl has an update. First, it turns out that FIFA's suspicions were correct.

[T]he appearance of the girls turned out...to be a publicity stunt by the brewing group, news website nu.nl reports.

Second, there are allegations of mistreatment during police custody:

'We were very harshly dealt with by Fifa officials,' spokeswoman for the girls Barbara Catelein said. 'Some of the girls are covered with bruises. This is not an innocent campaign any more.'

Third, the Netherlands Foreign Ministry is now involved (even though only 3 of the 36 women were Dutch):

The foreign ministry has asked the South African authorities to explain why 36 girls wearing orange dresses were forcibly removed from the stadium after yesterday's World Cup match between the Netherlands and Denmark in Johannesburg, Nos tv reports.

Now, if I want to adhere to strict journalistic standards, it is imperative that I direct my readers to pictures of the miniskirts themselves - for journalistic reasons, of course. And I found such pictures on a Dutch website. This page, which is in Dutch, also contains a link to a Dutch blog post which also includes pictures of the babes. The title of the blog post is in Dutch; could someone tell me what the Dutch phrase "Fuk FIFA" means in English?

But wait...there's more (in the Queen's English):

An orange mini-dress costing under 10 euros was today at the centre of the storm over ITV football pundit Robbie Earle's sacking.

'The Dutchy dress' was worn by the 36 women ejected from yesterday's Holland v Denmark match....

Members of the widely photographed group were found to still have tickets in their possession and it is understood they were part of Earle's allocation.


Well, let's hope that Earle got some...beer for those tickets.

The Crime? Marketing.

Sometimes, if you engage in marketing, you can be accused of bad taste.

But sometimes, if you engage in marketing, you can be detained by the police.

Seriously.

A GROUP of 36 young Dutch fans in orange miniskirts were detained for several hours at Soccer City stadium for wearing outfits designed by a Dutch beer company, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The dresses were sold with Bavaria Beer packs in the Netherlands in the run-up to the World Cup, but football governing body Fifa accused the young women of staging an ambush marketing campaign, The Star said.


Why would FIFA care?

Budweiser, an official sponsor, is the only beer company allowed to advertise within the stadiums. Fifa fiercely protects its marketing interests, which are a major cash spinner for the organisation.

Now I've heard of fiercely protecting marketing interests, but even Apple wouldn't call the police on you...whoops, I guess they would (as Jason Chen can attest).

Now if this truly is a Bavaria Beer-sponsored campaign, perhaps they can regroup. Instead of using orange miniskirts, maybe they can use orange-covered vuvuzelas (the noisemakers that FIFA says are OK).

Jimmy Dean and other Founders Turned Spokesmodels

The passing of Jimmy Dean over the weekend has got me thinking about the longevity, or lack thereof, of founders with the companies that they founded.

In rare cases, one of the company's founders who helps the small company grow actually has the skills to stick with the company even after it has grown. Bill Gates is the obvious example here of someone who could head a small company and a large one.

If you don't know "Big Bad John," you may know Jimmy Dean from his namesake sausages. Dean started the company in 1969, running it for 15 years until it was acquired by Consolidated Foods (now Sara Lee) in 1984.

When a company is intimately identified with its founder, you often want to keep the founder around for marketing purposes. After Harlan Sanders sold Kentucky Fried Chicken, he continued to appear in commercials until his death - in fact, an animated Harlan Sanders appears in KFC commercials today, almost 30 years after Sanders died.

As time passed, however, Jimmy Dean the man became less and less associated with Jimmy Dean the product. They say that nobody doesn't like Sara Lee, but by January 2004, Dean appeared to be an exception:

Country singer Jimmy Dean said Sara Lee has dropped him as spokesman for the sausage company he founded.

The 75-year-old native of Plainview, Texas, said the maker of food, apparel and household products told him he no longer meets the company's marketing needs.

A spokeswoman for Sara Lee said the company chose not to renew Dean's contract in May because the "brand was going in a new direction'' that demanded a shift in marketing.


Now one can certainly say that tastes change, and sausage is certainly a more controversial food than it was in the 1980s, or the 1960s. But Jimmy Dean without Jimmy Dean still sounds a little odd. By 2009, ADweek agreed:

The spot's vignette is hilarious as the "sun" copes with a solar system beset by mid-morning slump -- Mars sinking to the floor, another planet collapsing onto a table, etc. After confessing that they didn't have their Jimmy Dean breakfast this morning, the planets dig into some Jimmy Dean Croissant Sandwiches (filled with sausage, egg and cheese), and cosmic order is restored.

Uh, yeah. But the reviewer noted:

[M]aybe it's just a sense that there isn't anything intrinsically Jimmy Dean-ish about the spots, which could as easily (or, indeed, more easily) be built around a number of other breakfast foods.

However, despite the presence of a slew of brands (Ball Park, Hillshire Farm, Sara Lee itself, etc., etc., etc.) on its roster, Sara Lee took a moment to express its deepest corporate sentiments:

"All of us at the Sara Lee Corporation are deeply saddened by the loss of such an iconic figure,” said Daryl Gormley, vice president breakfast and snacking, Sara Lee North America Retail. “His legacy extends far beyond his development of the Jimmy Dean sausage brand and he will be missed by millions. We extend our deepest sympathies to Mr. Dean's family and loved ones and we will keep them in our thoughts during this difficult time."

One founder turned spokesmodel who had a happier experience with his creation was the late Dave Thomas of Wendy's fame. Thomas' biography notes that Thomas (who learned much from the aforementioned Harlan Sanders) opened his first Wendy's restaurant in 1969. He ended his day-to-day involvement with the company in 1982, but came back in a way in 1991 (again, from his corporate biography:

In early 1989, Dave agreed to appear in a few Wendy’s commercials. During his nearly 13-year run (and 800+ commercials) as Wendy’s spokesman, Americans came to love him for his downto-earth, homey style. This campaign made Dave one of the nation’s most recognizable spokesmen.

This commercial run only ended because of Thomas' death in 2002. It's safe to say that Wendy's has a higher regard for Thomas than Sara Lee has for Jimmy Dean.

Incidentally, a more detailed corporate history of Wendy's can be found here.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Another argument for deputy mayors in Foursquare

Earlier this month, I wrote a post about the advantages of Foursquare recognizing more than one person per Foursquare location.

I just discovered another reason for Foursquare to recognize more than one person per location. Eater.com links to a Starbucks Gossip post with the title Is it fair that the "mayor of Starbucks" on Foursquare is a Starbucks employee?

Ordinarily this wouldn't be an issue, but Starbucks is currently running a promotion in which the mayor gets a buck off of a Frappucino, and the fact that the mayor holds the position at this (undisclosed) location means that non-employee customers are ineligible for this particular discount.

There are a variety of views in the comments (including comments on the worth of location-based services themselves), but what it boils down to is that there is a possibility that some segment of Starbucks' customer base perceives that this is "unfair," and may have negative feelings toward the company as a result. (On the other hand, it should be noted that employees can also be customers of their own establishments when they're not on the clock, and that some customers visit more often than employees.)

There are two potential ways to fix this issue:

  • Starbucks could adopt the policy, often used by radio stations, saying that employees are not eligible for these types of company promotions.

  • Foursquare could implement a leaderboard as I previously suggested.

  • Starbucks could give the reward to anyone on the leaderboard - or in the first x positions on the leaderboard - who is eligible to receive the award.

Thoughts?

Friday, June 11, 2010

Use data mining to YOUR advantage

Whether you're talking about Facebook, or Twitter, or Google, or whoever, the one common thread is that these companies are desperately looking for ways to make money off of all of the data that they collect from us. Many of the controversies that are erupting around the web boil down to this single issue. We provide data, and the services collect it. What are they going to do with it?

In a sense, we may feel helpless about this. "Mark Zuckerberg is taking all my data!" we whine.

But we have to remember one thing - we are the ones who are providing the data. This simple truth provides power.

Sometimes we will agree with our wise corporate benefactors and shout things like "Go Lakers!" for their benefit.

But sometimes we take control. Take a look at this Foursquare checkin:

This place sucks, bit gotta pick up my love. (@ GEICO) http://4sq.com/ahX1vP

Or this one:

The iced coffee sucks but it's still great (@ Brooklyn Fire Proof East) http://4sq.com/7V137e

Or this one:

Omg what happened? Quiznos sucks now (@ Quiznos Sub) http://4sq.com/276KeD

To see countless similar examples, just scan through the results of http://twitter.com/#search?q=4sq.com%20sucks. (The "4sq.com" is a handy way to find Foursquare check-ins.)

Unlike more organized movements, in which a bunch of people adopt a hashtag to protest something or another, all of the examples above are pure individual points of frustration.

And they're all getting pumped right into the data mines.

Of course there are other things that you can do to the data mines which probably aren't recommended - pumping in false information, or pumping in libelous information. And even if what you add to the data mine is absolutely truthful, there's always the chance that someone may try to suppress it. However, the same Googles, Facebooks, and Twitters that are trying to make money off of your data have a vested interest in preserving it - if I find out that one data mine censors information while a second one doesn't, aren't I more likely to rely on the second data mine?

So remember to use these companies' information-gathering to your advantage, and make sure that they gather the information that YOU want them to gather.

(empo-tuulwey) I guess you can call it net neutrality

Back in March, Jake Kuramoto wrote a post that discussed the factors that contributed to an outstanding software application. Kuramoto argued that a software developer needs to balance simplicity, purpose, and incentive to make an application truly useful. He cited an example:

Facebook used to be simple, but as it’s become increasingly complex, they have relied on increases in the other areas, i.e. stronger incentive and purpose. You first joined to be connected to people, and that purpose only gets stronger as more people join. Plus, you’ve been posting photos and adding social artifacts for so long that quitting becomes a big disincentive.

I immediately began to take that formula (I referred to it as "Kuramoto's Equation") and applied it to some unsavory areas.

In April, I wrote a post entitled Misusing Kuramoto's Equation to Develop Social Engineering Strategies for Identity Theft. Specifically, I evaluated a case in which someone posed as a census worker to obtain someone's date of birth and Social Security Number. In the process, the fake census worker "old the victim that she was required by Title 12 of the federal government to provide him with that information and that it was against the law to refuse to provide such information."

I wrote:

The strategy is certainly simple - the "census worker" shows up at your door and makes the whole process easy. The purpose - to complete the census - is obvious. And there is a clear incentive - if you cooperate with the "census worker," then you will be complying with the so-called Title 12 legal requirements.

I cited a couple of other examples:

If the low-level employee provides the password so that the executive can read his/her email, then the low-level employee gets to keep his/her job.

If you provide your bank account information and a small payment to the brother in law of the deceased Minister of Finance in a remote African country, then you will receive millions of dollars.


In case it's not obvious, I should emphasize that this is NOT what Jake Kuramoto had in mind in his original post.

Kuramoto himself later looked at the topic of bad uses of tools, in his post entitled I Hate Phishing. This is what he said:

I’m really not sure why the PayPal phishing email I saw today irritated me so much. I think it’s because the phishers are using fear as a motivator, e.g. the phrase “in order to prevent the use of the banking system in terrorist and other illegal activity,” which loosely translates to “if you don’t update your PayPal information, the terrorists win.”

It’s one thing to run a 419 scam that plays on greed, but I loathe the manipulation of fear or kindness in schemes like this.


Jake and I had an online conversation about this beginning here. Perhaps it's just an issue of semantics between Jake and myself, but Jake is clearly distressed about his original positive concept being applied to negative things.

So, in deference to Jake, I will henceforth only use the phrase "Kuramoto's Equation" when talking about positive findings of simplicity, purpose, and incentive. (Although the Liszkiewiczs of the world may not regard Farmville as a positive thing.) When talking about NEGATIVE applications of the simplicity/purpose/incentive (or disincentive) formula, I will instead refer to Bredehoft's Corollary.

Basically, this is a reminder that ANY technological advance may be used for either good or evil. The same airplane that allows me to meet friends all over the world can fly into a building and kill thousands of people. That wonderful application that lets you anonymous praise people can also be used to anonymously abuse them. The mouse that helps me to write these words of wisdom in the Empoprise-BI business blog can also give me carpal tunnel syndrome.

The important thing to remember is that in most cases (some would argue ALL cases) the technology itself is not evil - only the way in which we apply it is evil.

I've previously noted a couple of examples of people joking engaging in the "blame Facebook" game. But some people are not joking, and are convinced that the service itself is evil by design. Mother Jones:

"There is something seriously wrong with their business ethics," says Thomas Baekdal, "when they even contemplate publishing content that was previously marked private."

Ya think? As near as I can tell, Facebook's business model is to periodically chip away at privacy settings, wait for the inevitable blowup, maybe give up a little bit of what they changed, and then wait for the fuss to blow over. Then six months later do it all over again. Rinse and repeat. Slowly but surely, they'll be able to monetize every last bit of our lives and we'll all be so tired we won't even care. Or even notice.


On the other end of the political spectrum, I figured that I'd search for an extreme conservative Christian group who claims that Facebook is a Satanic tool, managed by the supercomputer in Brussels, and that Facebook credits are the "mark of the beast" cited in Revelation. I searched...but I found an August 30 invitation to a "Mark of the Beast" sermon, a discussion on the Mark of the Beast, and a separate discussion of the Mark.

All of these are on Facebook.

Either Satan has already infiltrated the believers' ranks and duped us into using this evil software...or perhaps the software itself is neutral.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Who is David Gokhshtein?

Wow.

After I finished writing yet another post about Foursquare, I viewed it in the blog to make sure it looked OK. That's when I noticed the ad that my ad provider (sort of rhymes with "frugal") served up.



Apparently I'm not the only one who figures that online mentions of Foursquare are a good thing. It appears that David Gokhshtein is targeting his "hire me" ad to appear on websites that mention Foursquare.

Now I'm not allowed to click on my own ads, so I had to use other methods to learn who David Gokhshtein is.

It turns out that the ad is a tool to promote Your Lane Media. Here's what it's about:

Your Lane Media, founded by David E. Gokhshtein, is an Internet Marketing company dedicated to bringing your vision to life. It is comprised of a team of experts who have a wide and concrete background in internet marketing and web design. Our company offers a variety of services, each of which are mastered by professionals. We possess the tools and skills required to make a business grow and succeed. Dealing with companies that range from every day moms and pops shops to big corporations, looking to advertise their products and services via the Internet, Your Lane Media has what it takes to stay ahead of its competition. We work rapidly, efficiently and professionally.

Among the services provided is search engine optimization:

Commonly people who seek specific products and services are more likely to click on and browse through the first links that appear on the page. Our team of experts will work to transfer your link from the bottom of the page to the top, and make sure that your site appears frequently in comparison to all the other links that are listed on the pages of the major search engines mentioned above. Our team works vigorously to ensure that your site will generate more traffic and attract new and potential long term clients.

Presumably Gokhshtein can make the argument "Do you want people interested in Foursquare to go to Foursquare's site, or to some other site?"

Your Lane Media has issued this press release:

Newly Launched Internet Marketing Company Your Lane Media Helps Businesses Thrive

Your Lane Media is an Internet Marketing company dedicated to turning a vision into perfection. The company specializes in Web Design & Development, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Press Releases, Mobile Application Development and much more. The main goal of Your Lane Media is to work with the client to ensure that their business is a success.

Brooklyn, NY (PRWEB) June 9, 2010 -- Your Lane Media would like to announce its Grand Opening. It is an internet marketing company dedicated to expanding any business through the virtual world of the internet. The company is comprised of a team of experts trained to utilize their many skills and tools of the internet, marketing, and artistic talent and applying it to the necessary steps of advancing any business.

Many people might wonder what differentiates Your Lane Media from other media companies. The answer to that is that Your Lane Media provides immaculate services with affordable prices for a variety of business' big or small looking to expand and market their products on the world wide web.

The team at Your Lane Media, works with the client to turn their vision into reality by applying the tools and knowledge along with the vision, style, and demands of the client to produce the type of results they seek.

Your Lane Media specializes in Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Web Design and Development, Social Media, Press Releases, and obile Application Development. Trust the team at Your Lane Media to further advance your business and achieve the results you desire.

With the mention of this article you will receive a 20% discount off any services provided by Your Lane Media. Good until 7-31-2010.

# # #


Unfortunately, I didn't ask the question "Who is Your Lane Media?" I asked the question "Who is David Gokhshtein?" And here's what else I found.

According to his modeling page, he has a 36" bust and speaks Russian and Japanese.

As of 2008, he campaigned for Facebook president on a platform of keeping the old Facebook alive. Presumably he's not a fan of Bret Taylor.

His Twitter page @pagautogroup shows that he likes location-based service...Booyah.

Still haven't found his Foursquare account yet.

Will my Foursquare Foursquare Foursquare mentions come back to haunt me?

If anyone were to ask me, I would claim that I am a completely independent blogger, not slavishly following whatever others in the blogosphere were talking about. If I want to talk about esoteric topics, I'll do so. And if I happen to talk about popular topics, it's only because I'm interested in them, not because I'm following the pack.

My claims are complete bull.

Every time that I check my analytics and see that my most popular posts from the past few months have to do with Foursquare, this leads me - at least subconsciously, if not blatantly - to write more about Foursquare. I mean, my early June post about Foursquare's Lakers and Celtics badges continues to get traffic, as do my January and May posts on the mayor position in Foursquare. It stands to reason that more of the same will result in more eyeballs to my Empoprise-BI business blog, and what's wrong with that?

But I've seen two things that suggest that this strategy may backfire.

One of these was found via a post on Foursquare's own blog. It turns out that The Onion has paid attention to Foursquare. This is what they said (except for the naughty bits):

NEW YORK—While millions of young, tech-savvy professionals already use services like Facebook and Twitter to keep in constant touch with friends, a new social networking platform called Foursquare has recently taken the oh, [expletive deleted], can't some other desperate news outlet cover this crap instead?

Launched last year, Foursquare is unique in that it not only allows users to broadcast their whereabouts, but also offers a number of built-in incentives, including some innovative new crap The New York Times surely has a throbbing...


And we'll leave it right there, but suffice it to say that the Onion definitely captures the inevitable boredom which greets every announcement of the shiniest, newest toy.

Adena Schutzberg isn't necessarily as funny as the writers of The Onion, but she feels the same way, especially after reading mind-numbing press release after press release about this company or that company partnering with Foursquare. By the time the Six Flags press release (you can find it here) came out, Schutzberg was tired.

I've not ever used Foursquare and I'm bored of these announcements of new games and prizes.

Why? Is it because essentially all the promotions are "the same"? That the partners do not interest? That I'm not "competitive?"


Presumably others are getting tired of repeated Foursquare mentions also, in which case one of two things will happen:
  • Interest in Foursquare will peak and then swiftly dissipate faster than a packet of Pop Rocks, or Milli Vanilli's career.

  • Interest in Foursquare will continue to bubble, and then an event (similar to the Oprah-Ashton-Twitter event) will occur which will make Foursquare REALLY popular - so popular that your grandmother will use it.

So which way is it going to go? Is Foursquare about to jump the shark? Or is it about to really take off?

(empo-tymshft) On Tetrox

In a previous post I included a small reference to Tetrox. Let me - carefully - explain what Tetrox is.

Back in the mid-1970s I attended several Boy Scout camps near Goshen, Virginia. Since we were living in tents and cooking over a campfire, we needed a way to clean our cooking utensils. The Boy Scouts helpfully provided us with a product called Tetrox, along with this warning - if you ingested Tetrox, it would...um...clean YOU out.

During my first trip to scout camp as an 11 year old, I became convinced that I had gotten Tetrox poisoning. Lord Baden-Powell would not have been proud to know that I started crying.

The adults were trying to figure out what I was crying.

"I HAVE TETROX POISONING!" I blubbered.

"He's probably been eating a lot of fruit," said one adult.

"Maybe he's homesick," said another.

"I'M HOMESICK!" I blubbered.

Eventually I calmed down, but you can be sure that the name "Tetrox" stuck in my mind, even if I never truly ingested the stuff.

Now I never went to the famous Philmont Scout Camp in New Mexico (although I passed by it last summer on my cross-country train trip), but Tetrox was apparently popular there also. Daniel P. Bestul described it for people who weren't familiar with it.

Specifically, an industrial strength detergent. Back in the day of cooking over an open fire, crews mixed up a paste of the Tetrox powder and water, and smeared it on the outside of the cooking pots. The paste cooked up to a nice, crusty shell that cleaned off relatively easily.

Ingesting a very small amount would do an equally good job of cleaning out your gastro-intestinal system, hence the "Tetrox Trots"


Dr. Bob Klein told a Tetrox-related story:

In one of the more ridiculous occurences of my first Phil-trek ('72), one of our Crew members tetroxed himself to get off the trail, so he could go back to Basecamp and play cards with all the other members of "F" Troop. My Advisor was not a happy camper....

Actually, he was unsuccessful, having added only enough to make his canteen a little foamy. And the taste was apparently so lousy he couldn't stand to complete the dirty deed after all. He got some extra sessions in the latrines, and a lot closer supervision from our Advisor than he wanted, but other than that his misery continued unabated.


Dr. Klein shared a link to a material safety data sheet (PDF) for Tetrox, including the line "May cause stomach distress, nausea or vomiting."

The implication is that Boy Scouts aren't using Tetrox any more, and if I'm reading Bestul correctly, even open campfires seem to have gone away. I found an article about a possible E. coli outbreak at Goshen in 2008, which, while noting that contaminated meat was the suspected culprit, also mentioned:

Some Scouts at Goshen cook their own food, but Scout officials said they increased supervision over cooking after the start of the outbreak.

Hmm...only some Scouts cook their own food? Back in the 1970s we all did.

The article also describes how the outbreak was discovered:

Scout officials learned that at least two more campers who attended Goshen last week were also showing symptoms of the bacterial infection, which include bloody diarrhea, vomiting and nausea.

Now, are they sure it was the meat?

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

A cast of thousands - the Adobe Acrobat credits

When I complete a proposal, I like to take the time to thank the people who contributed in some way to the proposal. Sometimes this will amount to a few dozen people (although I always manage to miss someone) throughout the company.

Similarly, when I was a product manager, I had contributions from dozens of people to a product release.

And I thought that was a lot, until I had to see whether my version of Adobe Acrobat was affected by the recently-announced security vulnerability. In the process of checking this, I found the list of credits for Adobe Acrobat 9.3.2. It's a rather long list. And it doesn't even include the key grip and the gaffer.

Engineering: Shashank Agarwal, Manu Aggarwal, Shilpi Aggarwal, Ram Bhushan Agrawal, Shad Ahmad, Adam Altman, Alex Alvarez, Jason Alward, Antoine Amanieux, Paul C. Anderson, Joe Andolina, Dylan Ashe, Sarika Atri, Aleksandr Avseyev, Anima Bais, Gangadhar Bathula, Jean-Roch Beausoleil, Narinder Beri, Neha Bhayana, Carole Bonche, Mark Brooks, Shradha Budhiraja, Hai Bui, Michael Burke, Darren Burns, Stefan Cameron, Adam Castrucci, Jui-Ting Chen, Wing Man Cheng, Ken Chiu, Priyank Choudhury, Jean-Philippe Ciman, Myriam Cisse, Aaron Cody, Philippe Cohen, Richard Cohn, David Collins, Craig Conner, Helene Corbin, Matt Crosby, Hemant Dabral, Subhash Daga, Steve Dakin, Satya Das, Isabelle De Galzain, Priyamvad Ravindra Deshmukh, Heather Devine, Richard Devitt, Anmol Dhawan, Mark Donohoe, Jill Douglas, Chet Drarvik, Darrell Dykstra, Maurice Fisher, Martin Fox, Eman Fu, Shawn Gaither, Shinjani Gaur, Gary Gilchrist, Brad Glover, Andres Gonzalez, Srini Gowthaman, John Green, Jonathan Green, Henry Guan, Rajan Gupta, Shyam Gupta, Yash Gupta, James Hall, John Hanson, Matthew Hardy, Brian Havlin, Vivek Hebbar, Bruce Hodge, Kevin Hogan, Matthew Homer, David Hwu, Paul Imeson, Freddy Jensen, Ken Joye, Chirag Juneja, Alex Kalaidjian, Marc Kaufman, Nishant Kaushik, Tom Keller, Varun Khaneja, Tae Ho Kim, Satoshi Komiyama, Chika Kono, Tim Kukulski, Divij Kumar, Nikhil Kumar, Sushil Kumar, Uday Kurkure, Charlene Land, Grayson Lang, Srivani Lanka, Genevieve Laroche, Glenn Larson, Mike Laursen, Stephanie Legault, Luc Leroy, Mark Leyden, Eric Lievre, Alison Love, Bruno Louisgrand, Ryan MacConnell, Peter MacLeod, Don Mah, Felix Manchec, Amit Manocha, Krystof Marchwica, Dejan Markovic, Stephane Mathon, Anatole Matveief, Rob McAfee, Liz McQuarrie, Ashutosh Mehra, Paul Michniewicz, Romil Mittal, Ramneek Modgil, Alex Mohr, John Morris, Sandip Nath, Terry O'Donnell, Allan Padgett, Dmitriy Paley, Aditya Kumar Pandey, Krishna Kumar Pandey, Vince Parsons, Cedric Patriarca, Peter Peng, Thierry Perrin, Jason Pittenger, Jim Poje, Charan Raj, David Rees, Richard Relph, Justin Reynolds, Pierre Rigobello, Ben Rogers, Robert Rollins, Leonard Rosenthol, Angshuman Rudra, Sakshi Sachdev, Dave Sawyer, Craig Schamp, Jeremy Seeba, Martin Senecal, Peter Seo, Benjamin Sergeant, Neha Seth, Rudi Sherry, Scott Shields, Chuck Shnider, Randy Silvia, Arjun Singh, Damanjit Singh, Pradeep Kumar Singh, Alex Smith, Howard Smith, Chris Solc, Bruce Spath Jr., Jacob Stolin, Jason Szeto, Jiaming Tao, Mike Tardif, Isak Tenenboym, Steve Tibbett, Aditya Vaish, Vincent Varennes, Igor Vaynshteyn, Eric Vinchon, Le Vu, Gene Wang, Bryan Wei, Larry Weinberg, Tim Wiegman, Anna Liza Wong, Martin Yip, Jean Young, Jeff Young, Guanshan Yu, Lijie Yu, Haiqing Zhang, Willa Zhang

Quality Engineering: Atul Agarwal, Disha Agarwal, Shivani Agarwal, Amit Kumar Agrawal, Nimisha Agrawal, Richa Aggarwal, Javed Akhtar, Rahul Anand, Nitin Bansal, Lee Baumgardner, Ibrahim Bayaa, Gary Beardsley, Jason Beique, Rahul Bhardwaj, Bicky Bhullar, Pahup Bilala, Heather Bogle, Wayne Brant, Jeff Canepa, Mamatha Channapatna, Jaemin Choi, Sky Stephen Chung, Joshua Corey, Bertrand Courtemanche, Pete De Vasto, Junwu Deng, Atanu Dhar, Sanjay Dhiman, Denise Doucet-Davies, Tong Duan, Galina Dubrovin, Thom Dunlevy Jr., Andrey Efremov, Robert Feisel, Oana Floares, Andra Folks, Paul Foster, Yoko Fukuda, William Gan, Anthony Gates, Erik Gibson, Alex Grossman, Anurag Gupta, Mayank. Gupta., Robert Hache, Kaitlyn Hanrahan, Ribeka Hayashi, Kirsten Hays, Paul Herrin, Mike Hicks, Johnson Ho, Myla Hum, Nik Jabin, Derek Johnson, Murali Kaduru, Robert Kagramanov, Natalya Kagramanova, Pratap Kantipudi, Mohd. Kashif, Sharad Katiyar, Ismeet Kaur Makkar, Vikas Kaushal, David Kelly, Aparna Khan, Shahab Khan, Raj Khanna, Yachna Khare, Michael Kirby, Mariko Komae, Christa Kovac, Sanika Kulshreshtha, Albina Kuzmina, Lucia Lao, Derek Lau, Perry Lee, Hong Li, Jay Li, June Liu, Annie Mac, Tejasvita Madan, Steven Madwin, Sundeep Maithani, Renato Maschion, Laura Meyers, Vicky Miao, Steven Mielich, David Millman, Ashish Mishra., Suchit Mishra, Svetlana Monogarova, Carlos Moreno, Carey Ann Mullins, Snigdha Nandan, Elise Nguyen, Alex Nisevich, Yuriko Nishitani, Brendan Nolan, Rishi Oberoi, Sachin Oberoi, Vaibhav Padlikar, Jocelyne Pae, Manish Pali, Laurent Paonessa, Hye Joon Park, Tanya Parkhomovsky, Shivali Pawar, Valeriy Perunov, Matthew Plumstead, Blair Powell, Fabio Quintanilla, Kazi Rahman, Svetlana Ravkin, Seth Reilly, William-Andres Gallego Rendon, Jason Reuer, Rufina Roytman, Anjali Rudrakshi, Ernest Ruppenthal, Tak Saito, Cheryl Salamone, Abhijit Sarkar, Olga Satchouk, Diaa Sayed, Samuel Schalley, Meenu Sharma, Ravish Sharma, Norm Shaw, Saket Sidana, Pankhri Singhai, Rohit Singhal, Jean-Philippe Siroux, Deepak Kumar Sisodia, Steve Small, Scott Snyder, Kavita Soni, Abhilasha Srivastava, Abhishek Srivastava, Amboo Srivastava, Mila Stadlin, Chaya Sudindrakumar, Jin-Ki Suk, Pooky Supthaweesuk, Lawrence Tam, Shalini Taneja, Shiao-Chen Tang, Himanshu Tawde, Anupam Tayal, Mark Tezak, Jyh-Jiun Tseng, Jagriti Uppal, Kavitha Vedantam, Sathyanarayanan Viswanathan, Claudia Vo, Margarita Voskoboynik, Jennifer Vu, Ofer Wallach, Sue Xu, Akinori Jay Yamamoto, Mark Yang, Steven Yen, Evan Waterman, Tom Watson, Jason Wu, Adele Zhou

Engineering Management: Steve Adams, Anup., Chris Arkenberg, Arun Anantharaman, Kamlesh Bahedia, Mike Bessuille, Sujata Bopardikar, John Briere, John Brinkman, Jean-Luc Brocard, Jean Brousseau, Dave Burris-Brown, Anamika Chadha, Viraj Chatterjee, Alex Choy, Lisa Choy, Francois Chretien, Greg Christopher Jr., Alain Cordier, Clark Donahue, Christophe Dumoulin, Chi-Jen Fang, Shirley Foreman, Anupam Garg, Tim Gladden, Robert Goldberg, Kirk Gould, Nathan Graham, Shawn Greenberg, Vishal Grover, Didier Guillaud, Avinash Kumar Gupta, Naresh Gupta, Barbara Hedman, Dominic Hung, Amy Jaeger, Gaurav Jain, Richard Jensen, Frances Jim, Dennis Kauffman, Hitomi Kudo, Ravindra Kuruneru, Sandra Lee-Doersam, Bennett Leeds, Dan Lesage, Philip Levy, Gladys Liu, Rajiv Mangla, Mike Matsumoto, Krista McCredie, Steve McShurley, David Mendels, David Miller, Abhigyan Modi, Steve Monroe, Claude Morris, Amar Mukherjee, Mukul., Chuck Myers IV, David Nikkel, Tim Oey, Kim Ortiz, Mike Ossesia, Ajay Pande, Roberto Perelman, Manju Pillai, Ganesh Sahai, Dina Sakahara, Joe Sanfilippo, K.L. Seh, Bill Shapiro, Rajeev Sharma, Sheri Shipe, Peter Smith, Tupper Snook, Galileo Solorzano, Hisami Spector, Tomoko Taki, Frederic Thevenet, Judith Toombs, Lily Tran, Amit Vats, R Sai Venkatesh, Kumar Vora, Dave Welch, Pat Wibbeler, Tim Winkler, Mike Wirth, Karen Woodmansee, Les Woolsey, Bob Wulff, Shan Shan Xia, Andrew Yarborough, Phil Ydens, Koichi Yoshimura, Roger Younge

Product Management: Ken Anderson, Carlos Araya, Vipul Bansal, Rick Brown, Michael Folkers, Chris French, Sanjoy Ghosh, Steve Gottwals, Sudha Iyer, Mark Manca, Peter McColgan, Jeff Moran, Aman Deep Nagpal, Steve Snell, Jeff Stanier, David Stromfeld, Randy Swineford, Pierre Tager, Lionel Vieilly, Jess Walker III, Amy Wang

Product Marketing: Alex Amado, Stephanie Baartz-Bowman, Rak Bhalla, John Clark, Lori DeFurio, Chris Drost-Hansen, Christine Ek, Joel Geraci, Ali Hanyaloglu, Lori Kassuba, John Landwehr, Kenny Lee, Kevin M. Lynch, Marion Melani, Mitch Nelson, Jack Oyharcabal, Akiko Yamamoto, Aline Yu, Laurel Zane

Acrobat Administration: Claire Allen, Eloise Coltin, Pooja Chugh, Karissa Digini, Julie Ford, Karin Jurcevich, Nohemy Chavez Kaludi

Globalization: Ilie-Marian Ana, Catalin Buzoiu, Amrita Chakrabarti, Monica Fogarasi, Richard Geraghty, Rob Jaworski, Gary Jing, Neeraj Kumar, Kaho Lo, John Nguyen, Morten Nilsen, Mihai Nita, Dragos Onac, Namrata Parmar, Vikash Prasad, Karin Richer, Jeff Rueppel, Ankush Sharma, Stefan-Emil Toader, Milind Wanjari, Margaret Wong, Zhongping Yan

Prerelease Programs: Deepak Garg, Ashu Mittal, Ashish Mishra, Mansi Grover, Harpreet Singh

Experience Design: Dan Cooney, Marissa Dulaney, Scott Garsed-Donnelly, Matt Hamlin, Cable Hicks, Andrew Lin, Liang-Cheng Lin, Amy Poling, Marie Scanlon, Craig Scull, Neha Talesara, David Valiulis, Daniel Walsh

Additional Engineering: Sunil Agrawal, Dan Brotsky, Xie Fang, Ken Feuerman, Sourabh Goel, Oliver Goldman, Jim Hebert, William Ie, Dov Isaacs, Akshat Jain, Himanshu Jindal, Andrew Kirkpatrick, Prathibhanu Kumar, Venky Kumar, David Lenoe, Larry MacLennan, Ian Melven, Gaurav Modi, Alex Mohr, Jeffrey Mott, Greg Pisocky, Jim Pravetz, Zhigang Qi, Ramesh Rathour, Craig Rublee, Andrei Sheretov, Joe Steele, Harish Suvarna, Daniel Taborga, Dipti Thakkar, Mike Tilburg, James Toland

Additional Quality Engineering: Akshat Bhargava, Sandip Bumtariya, Juan Gutierrez, Hema Nagireddi, Hongchau Tran

Additional Engineering Management: Malay Sankar Barik, Paul Betlem, Jennifer Chang, Connie Chin, Ed Costello, Carl Dockhorn, Aditya Falodiya, Naveen Goel, Arno Gourdol, Masa Hokari, Ajay Jain, Sandeep Kashyap, Jim King, Erick Lee, Bill McCoy, Colm McKeon, Antonia Mora, Tom Muller, Raman Nagpal, Noela Nakos, Mike Parker, Leandro Reis, Edward Rowe, Mike Scrutton, Cheryl Shimamoto, Ed Taft, Hemant Virmani, Jonathan Wall, Eric Wilde, Jose Wong

Additional Product, Marketing, and Business Management: Jane Brady, Alice Chin, Juan-Carlos Colosso, John Cristofano, Peter Hanisch, Juergen Hauser, Chris Hohman, Andrew Kirkpatrick, Lonn Lorenz, Dirk Meyer, Adil Munshi, Mihir Nanavati, Luis Polanco, Mathias Siegel, Sharon Swan, Cynthia Tillo, Alan Williams

CORE TECHNOLOGY

Core Tech Management: Digby Horner, Frits Habermann, Ranjit Desai, Erik Boe, Parminder Singh, Carol Staub, Kathy Huffman, Christina Patchell, Alan Johnson

Architecture: Paul Holland, Sohrab Amirghodsi, Maki Aoki, Chip Brown, Ioana Danciu,
Rich Dermer, Gordon Dow, Jeff Herrin, Bruce Kaskel, Pat Lewis

Adobe Graphics Manager: Dalia Ackner, Steve Brooks, Prasun Choudhury, Dan Clark,
Cynthia Lau, Alex Parenteau, Stephan Yhann

Adobe Graphics Manager - Printing and PDF Generation: Christopher Butler, Rik Cabanier, Scott Chai, Rick Rocheleau, Tim Roth

Adobe Metadata (XMP): Frank Biederich, Alan Lillich, Frank Nocke, Hartmut
Warncke, Joerg Ehrlich, Samy Makki, Stefan Makswit, Jane Bond

XML Technology: Perry Caro, Chris Deighan, Allan Bradley, John Mostrom, Dan
Garrison, Hiromi Watanabe

AMT and AUM: Randy McFarland, Kevin Stewart, Anil Bhavnani, Rodney
Smith, Reggie Adkins, Steve Balo, Mark Bennett, Wei Cheng, John Fieber, Leo Liu, Vivek Misra, Mike Orr, Rohit Paliwal, Rob Russell, Matt Shafer, Michael Worobec, Kevin Yang, Sandeep Handa, Sanjeev Biswas, Pradeep Cyril Ekka, Ravi Prakash Singh, Muru Palaniappan, Chris Paduan

Color Management: Lars Borg, Peter Constable, Ken Kameda, Manish Kulkarni

Core Type: Vida Amani, Azita Mostafavi, Michiharu Ariza, Dave Arnold, Terry Dowling, Judy Lee, Sairus Patel, Tim Wojtaszek

Sangam: Rahul Gupta, Shivani Gupta, Surendra Sachdeva.

PDFL: Anubhav Mukherjee, Bigyan Ankur Mukherjee, Mohit Kalra, Praveen Kumar Goyal, Protonu Basu, Saurabh Sharma, Sunil Kishor Pathak, Taru Kumar Trehan, Vipul Jain.

Jpeg2000: Puneet Kumar Garg.

MPS: Gurpreet Singh, Vamsi Narla, Vinay Nahata.

Scripting Components: Elizabeth Smith, Michael Daumling, Mark Francis, Bernd
Paradies, Patrick Wollek, Ron de los Santos, Elba Sobrino

Quality Engineering: Li Wha Chen, Vivek Adlakha, Rekha Agarwal, Kevin Cheng, Jeff Jiao, Patryce
Farrell, Rani Mahapatra, Ahmad Niketeghad, Eleanor Wong, Vivek Agrawal, Vishnu Kumar, Abhishek Jain, Ankur Agarwal, Tarun Behari Agrawal, Neetu Bansal,
Vivek Bhide, Manpreet Singh Brar, Mike Baxley, Tim Beauchamp, Michael Boldt, Jeff
Broiles, Tom Burbage, Tushar Chandra, Hui Chen, Reena Chawla, Nikhil Dua, Steve
Fransen, Aya Ivtsan, Amit Jain, Tushar Jain, Mosum Gaba, Pradeep Kumar, Hemant
Kumar, Vineet Kumar Garg, Jeff Gehman, Shelley Gooch, Caroll Guertin, Ankit Gupta,
Kashyap Jogi, Vikas Kamate, Satish Kumar, Margaret Lem, Richard Li, Chung-Yee
Liew, Wendy Luo, Doug McBride, Vivien Moses, Jay Kumar Murari, Reema Nagpal,
Mohit Narula, Mina Nishimura, Chang-Min Pak, Suraj Ranjan, Deanna Quinones,
Srinivas Peri, Jon Reid, Tom Sackett, Tom Semple, Chandan Singh Manirup Sinha,
Noriko Takahashi, Kiyotaka Taki, John Townsend, P S Unnikrishnan, Rick Wayne,
Omar Wilson, Yan Zhang, Lilian Zhuo, Yan Zhou, Ming Zhao, Hailong Zhao, Qiyi Yang, Wei Wang, Mingjun Zhang, Marcel Bulanon

Admins: Kristen Kelln, Trisha Kelly, Mary Rourke

Legal: Curtis Arnold, Mindy Laponis, Rachel Liu, David Nix, James Oh, Jennifer Ruehr, Lynsey Sayers, Ann Sellier, Birgit Young

Visual Design: Daniel Ambrosius, Gesine Grewoldt, Ryan Hicks, Nicole Krohn, Isabele Landthaler, Bob Murata, Robyn Orr, Bettina Reinemann

Adobe Systems Japan: Akiko Fukue, Rie Ajiki, Yuki Kambara, Mayuka Kawakami, Yukio Kawamata, Noriko Kawashima, Yoshiuki Koakutsu, Mikako Mizukami, Mieko Ogura, Tsuyuki Shiono, Yoriko Suzuki, Kaori Yonezawa

Adobe Systems China: Kaimeng Huang, Yajie Ma, Amanda Wang, Fei Wang, Yuelin Yan, Lichuan Yang, Cynthia Yu, Robin Zhang, Yinghong Zhang, Ziliang Zhang, Angela Zhao, Liang Zhao, Helin Zheng

Type: Nicole Bok, Masataka Hattori, David Lemon, Ken Lunde, Ernest March, Ryoko Nishizuka, Thomas Phinney, Read Roberts, Robert Slimbach, Christopher Slye, Miguel Sousa, Taro Yamamoto

Core Services Globalization: Claire Barrault, Kevin Herman, Sonia Oliveira, Alison Strahan

Acrobat and Reader Customer Care: Rezal Allam, Gordon Barker, Jacques Bertrand, Alister Black, Ana Carrier, David Chamberlin, Steve Cordero, Ksenija Curcic-Vukovic, Simon Haringa, Michael Jantzen, Mayuka Kawakami , Andrew Tai Kedzierski, Bjorn Kjellsson, Etienne La, Patrick Leckey, Markus Marenbach, Thomas Migot, Norihiro Nakamura , Olaf Pohlmann, Carlos Guerrero Romero, Louise Soeder, Malcolm Thomson, Philipp Taprogge, Dean Verbrugghe, Timothy Willcocks, Sofiane Zairi, Henk Zeelenberg

Learning Resources: Andrew Ajemian, Maryann Amado, Mary Ann Brand, Drew Brazil, Diane Catt, Erich Champion, Debbie Chu, Freda Cook, Dean Dapkus, JoAnn Davis, Bob Fischer, Carol Franger, Neil Harward, Geneva Holloway, Joan Huang, Kim Isola, Diana Joseph, Kathy Lavigne, Paul Maccan, Scott MacDonald, Ghislaine Maisonneuve, Alex Mitchell, James Neiman, Antonio Padial, Aleatha Parker-Wood, Tasmina Patel, Nancy Raiken, Puny Sen, Mohamed Shoukry, Pat Solon, Susan Staker, Kathy Stone, Kevin Susco, Anne Szabla, Ginette Thibault, Erick Vera, Joan Vermeulen

Information Technology: Hemant Kumar Arora, Ian Day, Fergus Hammond, Shamus Henson, Den Jones, Tommy Khuu, Vivek Malik, John Mockett, Kirk Pollack, Rose Seng, Mosby Simmons, Gloria Swanson, Keith Thygerson, Alok Vij, Venkatesh Yadav

Packaging and Manufacturing: Mercedes Aguilar, Felicity Alvarez, Leticia Avila, Conor Carton, Tim Cobb, Paul Cohen, Mary Cusick, Jason Decker, Mark Eaglin, Denise Ellett, Daisy Freitas, Briana Gaines, Marla Gamboa, Jessica Gilson, Deb Hancock, Diana Harwood, Stephanie Heng, Maria Jeronimo, Trish Jessen, Beverly King, Van Lee, Yeng Kar Lim, Trish London, Tricia Macadaeg., Jacque Mahan, Erika Majewski, Ruth Manson, Linda Mitchell, Chris Moehrke, Lily Nguyen, Katie O'Neill, Thea Owen, Janie Paredes, Scott Perry, Cecilia Ramos, Monica Sainz, Ed Saler, Sheafe Smith, Sandra Stoecker, Suzanne Von Briesen, Gloria Williamson, Carolyn Young

Production Quality Engineering: Kaushik Agarwala, Areeb Ahmad, Anil Ahuja, Matt Baskett, Jason Blazick, Brenda Burden, Mary Gordon, Anh Lam, Charles Lasseter, Matthew Laun, Thomas Lin, Carson Lynch, Sounav Maikap, Jin Pae, Jason Prozora-Plien, E Ramalingam, Binny Sachdeva, Sanjay Singh, Mark Stevenson, Robert Wilson, Suying Yang

Adobe.com Web Team: Andy Anderson, Dawn Burrows, Yuko Chapman, Sarala Chekuri, Karen Cook, Vu Dinh, Daniel Dresser, John Falcon, Kevin Favro, Shirley Law, Lily Lee, Robelle Mancilla, Yukari Minoda, Belinda Nambooze, Ted Pierson, Vijaya Ramachandran, Todd Rosenberger, Soumalya Sengupta, Soumya Shankar, Jonathan Snyder, Jessica Virk, William West, Yoseif Whiteson, Lisa Wieland, Peter Yee