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.

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.

(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.

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?

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.

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?

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

(empo-tymshft) VDI and thin clients in the 21st century

I've previously noted that there is nothing new under the sun, and that one could argue that a virtual desktop infrastructure, especially when used with thin clients, is similar to the multi-user computers that some of us were using three or four decades ago.

How did we get here? InformationWeek describes some recommended steps for setting up a virtual desktop infrastructure.

If security is of paramount importance, desktop virtualization can bring major, cost-effective improvements. By centralizing desktop resources in a secure data center, it's much easier to keep sensitive information from leaving the organization. Of course, depending on whether you use all thin clients or have some older PCs mixed in, data may still leak out through flash media, removable hard drives, and other peripherals, so standard endpoint security software should still be employed in tandem with VDI.

In addition, thin clients use only a few protocols to make and sustain connections to desktop images in the data center, in contrast with typical desktops that may use hundreds of different protocols, depending on applications. Fewer protocols always equals better security.

I've read the full report that is referenced on this page, and although I can't reprint what InformationWeek said about certain things, I can certainly link to Citrix's comments on Campbell Union High School.

Campbell Union High School District serves seven high schools, 7,500 students, and 650 employees. It supports about 2,500 desktop devices and 17 computer labs—each with a teacher and approximately 35 desktops—and over 100 applications, including Microsoft® Office, Photoshop CS and AutoCAD.

Sounds complex. And it is. And it's expensive.

Campbell Union had a four-year refresh cycle, which meant it had to retire and purchase approximately 500 machines a year. “It cost about $1,100 to replace a physical desktop, and that’s a half a million bucks a year [and] in four years, I’ll have the same problem.” In these difficult budgetary times, this is a large expense for a public school system.

But Campbell Union faced other issues. Because all applications had to be resident on the desktops, it “meant that as the kids move from classroom to classroom, they don’t have the same application from place to place. It also meant that kids in a class had access to applications that maybe they shouldn’t have, which creates distractions.” In addition, having 2,500 individual desktops meant a lot of time spent on maintenance: IT staff traveling to all the desktops to patch and maintain them, which was a logistical and budgetary challenge.

VDI, coupled with thin clients, addressed these issues.

“On a four-year basis, which if you look at the inventory refresh cycle alone, we’re going to save $1.2 million.”...

“We are virtualizing the computer labs,” Kanavel says. “Students can access their programs from home as well as the classroom. They can go class to class and those profiles follow them. This will give students the flexibility to continue work on projects at home as opposed to coming in after school and having to wait for a computer to become available.”

Hey, let's face it - when I was done working on my DEC PDP 11/70 terminal, I couldn't just log in from a Mac in my dorm room. For one thing, the Mac didn't exist yet.

Of course there are perceived drawbacks to such a system - I seriously doubt that many companies would put the last.fm client on their virtual desktops - but from a corporate perspective, the solution is mighty attractive.

Carol Bartz and the Intangibles

In a previous post that compared the accomplishments of Carol Bartz and Mark Zuckerberg, I looked at Bartz from a quantitative perspective - for example, the fact that Yahoo's revenue is much greater than Facebook's.

But there are some non-quantitative factors that are fascinating. I'm just going to look at one of them.

As Loren Feldman has noted, Bartz has extensive business experience. But her initial experiences with 3M were, on the surface, not that spectacular. You see, Bartz joined 3M at a time when television's Mary Tyler Moore show was considered revolutionary because Moore's character was a woman professional at a Minnesota news station. And the fictional Minnesota news station was idealistic, compared to Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing. For one thing, she really stood out:

Bartz joined 3M in 1972 as the only woman professional in a division of 300 men.

3M had to learn some things, and unfortunately, Bartz paid the price.

She was fired during her first week at her first job at 3M because of some scandalous - and erroneous - speculation. The company mistakenly assigned her to share a hotel room with a male colleague during a business trip, she said in "Betting It All." She switched the reservation to a single room, but office rumors flew. The company dismissed her, only to rehire her the next morning.

She survived that episode, but finally quit in frustration four years later, after (in a fairly famous story) someone at 3M made an unfortunate comment.

[Bartz] quit in 1976 after being refused a transfer to headquarters. In an interview with More Magazine, Bartz recalls, "They told me to my face, 'Women don't do these jobs.'” She replied, “I'm out of here,” and she immediately quit.

Well, times have changed. Mary Richards got fired from her TV job, Bartz has made billions for Yahoo and other companies, and no one would dream of putting 3M's Angela S. Lalor and Joaquin Delgado in the same hotel room.

Oh, and a few years ago, John Leo reported about an interesting Post-It Note from 3M:

Until recently, for example, the 3M company put out post-it notes with the printed message: "Men have only two faults: everything they say and everything they do."

Dangerous decentralization

In a previous post, I observed that in the political realm, even so-called grass roots organizations are highly centralized. While such organizations claim to be the voice of the people, in reality the role of the people is to take orders from Beltway-based consultants.

Obviously businesses face similar issues. On the one hand, businesses want to provide a cohesive, common picture - hence, centralization. On the other hand, businesses want to harness the power of their employees to come up with creative solutions - hence, de-centralization.

Jim Clemmer tells of an organization that tried to do both:

We once halted an executive retreat and everybody went home after the group of seven division presidents and corporate staff vice presidents couldn't agree on whether their values were centralization or decentralization. Trying to do both at once was ripping the organization apart. The CEO never could decide which direction he wanted to commit to. He was eventually fired as frustrations and infighting rose while organization performance fell.

Clemmer himself has a clear preference regarding centralization vs. decentralization:

I am an extreme (some might argue dangerous) decentralist. Since I began my management career, I've given people high degrees of autonomy. I've run even small organizations to the point of such inefficient decentralization that people are running their own show. It works.

Clemmer's argument is that decentralization provides positives, and centralization negatives, that aren't necessarily captured by the metrics that many centralized organizations use.

What doesn't show up is the alienation, helplessness, and lack of connections to customers or organizational purpose that centralized bureaucracy often brings. The energy-sapping and passion-destroying effects of efficiencies may save hundreds of thousands of dollars. But traditional accounting systems can't show the hundreds of millions of dollars lost because of lackluster innovation, mediocre customer service, uninspired internal partners, and unformed external partnerships.

Notice that Clemmer is not only looking at things that could conceivably be measured - customer service quality, for example - but also "opportunity cost" types of measures - the strategic alliance that was not made, the product not invented.

Because some of things can't be measured, perhaps the best way to measure the value of decentralized is to find two similar firms - one centralized, one decentralized - and see which one performs better. Unfortunately, Clemmer's article fails to name any specific companies that follow a decentralized model. However, Clemmer's website includes a list of clients who have attended his seminars. While some of these clients are personnel/human resources groups and the like, it's instructive to look at the technology companies that are listed. Now this doesn't mean that the organizations themselves follow Clemmer's advice, but at least someone in the organization is paying lip service to being interested in them.

Advanced Technology Systems
Algorithmics
Aspen Technology
Bell Canada
Canadian Information Processing Society
Canadian Radio Common Carriers Asociation
Co-Operator's Data Services Ltd.
Communitech Technology Association
Entourage Technology Services
IBM
Ironside Technologies
Internet World
J.D. Edwards
Lumonics
Maritime Tel & Tel
Matsushita Electric (Panasonic, Technics, Quasar)
SAP
Sasktel
Software Support Professionals Association
Stentor Canadian Network Management
Sun Micro Systems
Symantec Corporation
Targray Technology
Xerox

Now I'm not familiar with many of these companies, but it's amusing to note that two of them - J.D. Edwards and Sun Micro Systems - are now part of Oracle. And Xerox is probably most famous for letting its technological advances be used by other companies (Apple and Microsoft in particular).

Does anyone know of an example of a firm that is decentralized, and successful?

Hashtag (and service name) of the day - #wherecampsocal

Some item names are perfect from day one, while other item names take a while to grow on you (for example, Moon Unit Zappa). But when I saw (in AnyGeo) a reference to "WhereCamp," I was hooked.

WhereCamp, you see, is for geographic information systems professionals.

The AnyGeo post referred to the upcoming WhereCamp SoCal (hashtag #wherecampsocal). As I write this an exact location (and time) has not been selected, but details should appear at http://www.wherecampsocal.org/ when they are available.

WhereCamps have been held in northern California (April 2010) (Twitter @wherecamp), Quebec (March 2010), and London (March 2010).

I'm waiting to see if WhyCamps begin to spring up. Note that I'm talking about "whycamp," not "why camp," the latter being a question that has been answered in verse:

Have a blast and laugh all day. Then you’ll know the Kanata way. Swim, canoe or shoot a bow and steal the show. Feel free to laugh, but not to frown. You’ll have a blast, just come on down!

Spend a week you’ll understand, why Camp Kanata rules the land. Once you leave we’re sure you’ll miss all of nature’s splendid bliss.

This raises the question - what rhymes with Tetrox?

Bayer and Bayer are now just Bayer

While researching the story of two separate Vince's Spaghetti locations - one in Ontario, California, the other in Torrance, California - I ran across this explanation:

After 25 years of working with the family, Vince and his brothers agreed to go their separate ways; Vince sold his interest in the Ontario location and moved with his wife Louise, daughter Rosemary (affectionately known as DeeDee), and her husband Bill, to the South Bay.

This is from the Torrance side; the Ontario side does not mention it.

As I was thinking of this split, I was reminded of another corporate split - one that occurred under very different circumstances.

I am, in the eyes of some of you, quite elderly. In fact, I am so elderly that when I was growing up, children and adults would use aspirin for pain relief. (And yes, my family did have a horseless carriage.) And one of the leading aspirin brands was Bayer.

Some time later, I ran across some gardening supplies, also from Bayer, but with a different logo.

I knew bits and pieces of the story, but hadn't really looked into the whole thing. But I did know that Bayer AG, a German company founded in 1863, underwent a forced reorganization in 1917:

The effects of the war were devastating. The company lost most of its foreign assets and the export markets - upon which the company's further development depended - remained largely inaccessible. Bayer's Russian subsidiary was expropriated as a result of the Russian Revolution. The company's U.S. assets, including its patents and trademarks, were confiscated in 1917 and auctioned off to its competitors. Sales in 1919 amounted to only two thirds of the 1913 figure.

While the competitors were able to benefit from Bayer's aspirin patent, others who acquired German patents weren't so lucky. The story of the German dye patents is quite interesting:

The German patents, which were confiscated by the U.S. government during the war, could not be duplicated by Du Pont’s chemists. The patents were written in a purposely vague manner with key information omitted. It was apparent that the patents could only be worked by a chemist “skilled in the art”, meaning an experienced German chemist. For many years this obfuscation helped Germany dominate the global dye market and limited U.S. attempts to enter the field.

Back to aspirin. Here in the U.S., the Bayer brand was acquired by Sterling Drug, which eventually became Sterling Winthrop. Therefore, back when I was growing up, Bayer was not manufactured by Bayer.

In fact, I was under the impression that this was where it stood today, and I start writing this post assuming that there were two Bayers, just as there are two Vince's Spaghetti chains. What I didn't realize, however, was that there was another acquisition in 1994.

In 1994, Bayer AG purchased Sterling Winthrop's over the counter drug business from SmithKline Beecham and merged it with Miles Laboratories, thereby reacquiring the U.S. and Canadian trademark rights to "Bayer" and the Bayer cross, as well as the ownership of the Aspirin trademark in Canada.

Unfortunately, by the time that Bayer finally reacquired the U.S. rights to Bayer, aspirin had become old-fashioned, if not downright evil. But one decade's hero is another decade's goat, as this Bayer page shows.

We want to assure you that Bayer Aspirin products do not contain acetaminophen.

Somewhere or another, Friedrich Bayer is smiling.

Originators vs. Mega-improvers - @scobleizer vs. @1938media on Mark Zuckerberg and Carol Bartz

Robert Scoble wrote a Sunday post entitled Why Mark Zuckerberg should have a Carol Bartz moment. Without going into the soap opera details, let's just say that Scoble thinks that Zuckerberg should nor worry about his detractors. (As for Scoble's main point that Zuckerberg should perhaps concentrate on behind the scenes tasks, see my Disqus comment at Scoble's post.)

In the course of his post, Scoble compared Zuckerberg to others in an attempt to put Zuckerberg's achievements into perspective. This is what he said.

1. He has — in less than seven years — created a company that has hired more than 1,000 people. How many other USA companies have hired 1,000 people in Silicon Valley in the past five years?
2. His company has been valued at many billions of dollars.
3. His company has created a platform that supports, among many companies, Zynga, which also has hired 800 employees (it’s only two years old) and my friends are throwing around valuations of billions for Zynga.
4. His company has 500 million people using it around the world and most love it a lot. My wife still is effusive with love over Facebook.

He’s done 100x more in his few years of running Facebook than Carol Bartz has AT ANY COMPANY! In her entire career!

Enter Loren Feldman, who (and again I'll avoid most of the soap opera) is not necessarily Robert Scoble's biggest fan. After reading the post, Feldman tweeted a few items, of which this one is most relevant:

Did Scoble REALLY say Zuck has done more that Bartz?

This prompted me to ask Feldman to flesh out his thoughts.

@1938media What measures would you use to say Bartz has done more than Zuckerberg?

Feldman replied:

@empoprises Dollars earned for her companies, products shipped, years in business, anything else?

Let's look at one of Feldman's points - dollars earned. As it turns out the Wall Street Journal recently looked at this:

By revenue, Facebook has a long way to go to catch up to its more established rivals. The social-networking site earned more than $500 million in revenue in 2009 and is forecasting revenue of more than $1 billion in 2010, according to people familiar with the matter. Yahoo earned $6.5 billion in revenue in 2009, mostly from advertising.

So it's obvious that Bartz today is producing more than Zuckerberg today. And clearly Bartz has the advantage of the "number of years in business" measurement.

But there's one difference that the numbers don't show. Look at Carol Bartz's biography. Kara Swisher links to another Wall Street Journal article, this one from 1992. Before commenting on the new CEO of Autodesk, Bartz, the WSJ writer stated the following:

Though the world's sixth largest PC software company, Autodesk is hardly a household name for a couple of reasons. One is that it dominates a niche: software that allows relatively inexpensive personal computers to produce powerful models for engineers, architects and other professional designers.

The other reason is Autodesk's founding genius, John Walker, a reclusive programmer who doesn't allow the company to distribute his picture or publish it in its annual report. In a rare interview granted for this article, a prickly Mr. Walker insisted that a reporter sit in front of a video camera, declared that Autodesk claimed a copyright on the ensuing discussion and debated the meaning of each question.

Just as Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software supplier, is an extension of the personality of William Gates III, Autodesk is largely a creature of Mr. Walker.

Stanford University notes what happened next, when Bartz ran the show:

During her tenure, the company diversified its product line and grew revenues from $285 million to $1.523 billion in FY06.

However, before Bartz arrived, Autodesk was already making $285 million a year. By definition, Facebook was making $0 a year before Zuckerberg. Again, Bartz's accomplishments at Yahoo will build upon those who have come before her. There are many people - Thomas J. Watson Jr., Thomas J. Watson Sr., Meg Whitman - who have made their employers much stronger, but they were able to start from something that already existed.

Regardless of who actually created Facebook, it's undeniable that Mark Zuckerberg was the one who had the drive to make Facebook a success. In that sense, you can claim that Zuckerberg - along with similar people such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs - created something out of nothing. Compare that to Carol Bartz, the Watsons, Meg Whitman, and others who created something big out of something small.

Which is more important?

If you're an accountant, you'd rather have a mega-improver like Bartz. (For Feldman, who concentrates on the bottom line for his clients, this makes sense.)

If you're a futurist, you'd rather have an originator like Zuckerberg. (Scoble, the admitted shiny new toy lover, is also looking for for businesses and ways in which they can improve - this means looking at brand new stuff.)

Which would you rather have?

Improve Ur Speling Skilz And Ur Garanteed a Job

In the process of writing another post, I ran across this article in which a change to Major League Baseball's Hall of Fame was suggested. The article dates from February.

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) should be ousted from the Baseball Hall of Fame because of his block on extending unemployment benefits, according to a group that advocates for the unemployed.

Now while I believe that any organization can set up their own criteria for "hall of fame" selection, and that any competing organization can set up different criteria, I personally fail to see the relevance of Bunning's vote to his baseball career.

So which advocacy group wanted to can Bunning?

“The most obscene thing he can do is prevent jobless Americans from getting their $350 a week unemployment check,” Rick Sloan, acting executive director of Ur Union of Unemployed, a grass roots organization for unemployed Americans, told The Hill.

Yep, that's Ur Union of Unemployed. With a "ur." This allows them to refer to themselves as U Cubed, but a misspelled group name doesn't necessarily help the image of the unemployed.

So who is this grass-roots organization?

Ur Union of Unemployed, nicknamed UCubed, is a community service project of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM).

Calling this professionally-sponsored group "a grass roots organization" is like calling the Pacific Gas & Electric-sponsored Taxpayers Right to Vote a grass roots group of average taxpayers - taxpayers like Greg Pruett.

Back to Ur Union of Unemployed. There does appear to be a grass root element of the organization - they have set up various cubes, including this cube in the Inland Empire - but like any political organization, there is a question as to whether power flows from the top down to the locals, or from the locals up to the top. Actually, there's no question on this - even so-called "local grass roots" groups take their marching orders from national headquarters.

Who cares what the official voices say? (When other usurp the official authority)

This post talks about Major League Baseball, but the points apply to just about any sports league out there.

The league is the self-appointed keeper of all statistics related to league play. But fans often quibble with those official statistics.

The most recent example is Armando Galarraga's perfect game that wasn't.

An umpire’s tears and admission he blew a call failed to move baseball commissioner Bud Selig to award Armando Galarraga the perfect game he pitched....

Selig said Thursday that Major League Baseball will look at expanded replay and umpiring, but didn’t specifically address umpire Jim Joyce’s botched call Wednesday night that cost Galarraga the perfect game....

A baseball official familiar with the decision confirmed to The Associated Press that the call was not being reversed. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because that element was not included in Selig’s statement.

You can bet that before this is over, a Congressional investigation will be launched - all in an effort to reverse the official Major League Baseball record of perfect games.

My question - why bother?

Just because Major League Baseball says that it is the official arbiter of all statistics doesn't mean that it's true. Anyone can get a hold of the data and make any call that they want. To prove this, I am immediately launching the Empoprises Center of Baseball Statistics.

And the Empoprises Center of Baseball Statistics hereby officially declares that Armando Galarraga pitched a perfect game earlier this week.

And as long as I'm at it, the Empoprises Center of Baseball Statistics officially declares that the record for most home runs hit in a single season is held by Roger Maris.

Now some may argue that the Empoprises Center of Baseball Statistics is not necessarily a reliable source. And frankly, they'd be right. But what if a Bill James or someone else with impressive baseball credentials were to go out and say that they were keeping official statistics...and everybody decided to use THOSE statistics instead of Major League Baseball's statistics?

A silly idea, you might say. There would never be a case in which a third party's decisions would take priority over the decisions of the league.

I will respond in three words - Bowl Championship Series.

The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) is a five-game showcase of college football. It is designed to ensure that the two top-rated teams in the country meet in the national championship game, and to create exciting and competitive matchups among eight other highly regarded teams in four other bowl games.

And the BCS is independent of the entity that supposedly governs college football, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

Of course, what this means is that the U.S. Congress, rather than going after the NCAA, now goes after the BCS. This resulted in this impassioned statement:

In a letter responding to U.S. Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Bowl Championship Series (BCS) Executive Director Bill Hancock today stated his strong belief that decisions about college football should be left to people in higher education.

The press release was artfully worded, by the way. Note that Hancock didn't say that decisions should be left to educators. But I digress.

These sports experiences, of course, can be extrapolated to business in general. If you have problems with the entity that is supposedly governing your industry, set up your own entity. Happens all the time.

(empo-plaaybizz) A mundane application for Evoluce screens

Wow, two natural user interface posts in two weeks! (Here's the previous one.)

I peeked in my Natural User Interface FriendFeed room recently, and saw that there has been a lot of talk about Evoluce. Back on May 7, @multitouch1 tweeted about a video from Evoluce.



As you can see, the Evoluce technology is highly dependent upon hooking to features that are already present in the Windows 7 operating system, as well as various technologies such as Flash and Java. (The product page specifically lists support for Windows 7, Java, XML, and TUOI.)

The product itself is called the Evoluce ONE.

Evoluce ONE

47-inch Multi-touch Full HD LCD Screen

Evoluce ONE is a 47-inch interactive Full HD LCD Screen with true multi-touch and multi-pen (multi-stylus) functionality. Evoluce ONE delivers sharp, bright images for sophisticated multimedia applications ranging from educational teaching and learning environments to medical imaging and interactive gaming.

Engadget has briefly mentioned the technology in English and German posts.

Needless to say, the gaming crowd (which can drive innovation) has weighed in on the screen. My favorite comment:

That guy sucks at Tic-Tac-Toe.

Of course, if you're buying a 47 inch monitor to play Tic-Tac-Toe, you're probably Paris Hilton.

Foursquare enters non-location territory (Go Lakers)

During a Twitter search for information on the Lakers-Celtics game (going on as I type this), I ran across this interesting Foursquare badge:

Celtics - Finals 2010

Stand up! You've unlocked the Celtics badge for showing your Boston pride. Watch the Celtics take on the Lakers in The Finals 2010 on ABC! "Go Celtics!"

Unlocked by M.Fachri on Fri Jun 4, 2010 at 9:29 AM.

Wondering how I could earn the Lakers counterpart, I found this explanation:

Now, if you are a Foursquare user, you can get a new badge just by shouting "Go Lakers" or "Go Celtics." Foursquare will then automatically award you with either the Celtics 2010 badge or the Lakers 2010 badge. Show your support for which ever team you are rooting for by shouting out there names in the Foursquare app for your mobile device.

So I shouted, and earned the badge.

Lakers - Finals 2010

Stand up! You've unlocked the Lakers badge for showing your L.A. pride. Watch the Lakers take on the Celtics in The Finals 2010 on ABC! "Go Lakers!"

Unlocked by John B. on Thu Jun 3, 2010 at 7:34 PM.

Technically this is not a location-based badge, but I'm sure that the folks at Disney are happy with this crowdsourced promotional effort. (Technically, however, Disney is not getting a benefit from me; since the Los Angeles ESPN radio station is hard to pick up in the evening, I'm listening to the game on a local Inland Empire affiliate, KSPA.)