About Authentec

While many people are concentrating on other ramifications of the Apple-Authentec deal (the Times of India entitled its piece Apple buys Samsung's mobile security supplier AuthenTec for $356m), I am more interested in the biometric portion of the deal.

Authentec has been around since 1998 and has been a public company since 2007. It is best known for its fingerprint sensors for personal computers and mobile devices, which provide a level of fingerprint biometric security to those devices. It's not necessarily to the level used by the FBI and other large-scale organizations, but you usually don't need that level of biometric quality on your computer or phone.

Before the Apple deal was revealed, Authentec talk was centered around this recent deal:

Alcatel-Lucent (euronext paris and nyse:ALU), and AuthenTec are jointly supporting Portugal Telecom (PT) in the launch of 'Meo Go!'. The new Meo Go! service enables subscribers of Portugal Telecom - the largest communications service provider in Portugal - to use their smartphones and tablets to access content that was previously confined to their TVs and PCs, including 60 live TV channels and video-on-demand.

The Meo Go! service is available to subscribers using Android, Apple iOS and Windows-based smartphones and other mobile devices, and includes features to ensure secure delivery and smooth playback of a variety of different video content formats.

As you can see from the press release excerpt, Authentec works with a variety of technology players, including Apple and its competitors (fierce competitors in some cases).

If the deal is approved, Apple can do one of two things. It can either treat Authentec as a semi-separate entity that provides its products to all vendors, or it can concentrate on integrating the Authentec product line into Apple products only. The SEC filing, written from the perspective of Authentec, doesn't say what will happen, since Authentec does not know what Apple will do with the company once it owns it. And Apple isn't telling.

PROJECT BRYCE INVESTOR Q&A

1. What was announced today?

Apple and AuthenTec have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Apple will acquire AuthenTec for $8.00 per share. Certain information regarding the transaction can be found in the Form 8-K filed by AuthenTec with the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 27 and additional details will be provided in the proxy statement AuthenTec will file with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

2. Why is Apple buying AuthenTec?

AuthenTec cannot comment on Apple’s intentions.

3. As a shareholder of AuthenTec, what will I receive?

Each shareholder of AuthenTec will receive $8.00 for each share of AuthenTec stock that they own, which represents a 56.9% premium to AuthenTec’s closing share price on the day prior to the announcement of the acquisition.

4. What will happen to AuthenTec’s existing businesses?

Apple will implement its plans for AuthenTec’s businesses after the transaction closes.

5. What will happen to AuthenTec’s employees?

AuthenTec cannot speak to Apple’s intentions. In any event, we do not expect any public comment on future plans with respect to employees.

6. When do you expect the acquisition to close?

The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval and AuthenTec shareholder approval. Subject to satisfaction of those conditions, we expect the merger to close in the third calendar quarter of this year.

7. Are there any closing conditions?

The deal includes customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval and AuthenTec shareholder approval. Please refer to the merger agreement attached as an exhibit to the Form 8-K filed by AuthenTec with the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 27.

8. What regulatory approvals are needed?

The acquisition is subject to review under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act and certain foreign antitrust laws. Additional details will be provided in the proxy statement AuthenTec will file with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

9. What does this acquisition mean for existing AuthenTec customers?

AuthenTec’s current customers are encouraged to reach out to their sales representative at AuthenTec. We cannot comment on Apple’s future plans for AuthenTec’s business.

10. Did AuthenTec hire an investment banker? If so who?

AuthenTec engaged Piper Jaffray & Company.

11. Will management be hired by Apple?

AuthenTec cannot speak to Apple’s intentions. In any event, we do not expect any public comment on future plans with respect to employees.

Universities are businesses too

I stand before the graduatating class of Nonexistent University. As you leave these hallowed halls, I trust that you will remember the valuable lessons that you learned here. I could speak of the love of learning that you have received at this institution, or I could speak of the value of the pursuit of knowledge. But I will not speak about that.

I could speak about the non-academic aspects of your time at this university. The long talks at two in the morning. The wild parties. That night in that co-ed's room that you thought that no one knew about. But I will not speak about that.

Because, as you leave these hallowed halls, you will learn what is important. And it's not knowledge that's important, and it's not the college experience that's important.

What's important is that this university has to make money, however it can.

Down the road, you may have heard that there's a little bit of controversy over at Penn State University. Many are claiming that Penn State abrogated its educational responsibility by covering up a child abuse scandal. But I have to tell you, there's no money to be made from a child abuse scandal. And even today, the threat to Penn State isn't from the loss of $60 million in fines. The threat to Penn State is that alumni may quit donating to the university. And that would be more damaging than anything the NCAA could ever do.

But you tell me that Penn State doesn't have any standards. You tell me that Nonexistent University doesn't have any standards. Turn to the Ivy League, you say. OK, I will:

Brown University, eager to shed its label as one of the weakest schools in the Ivy League, bolstered its reputation by recruiting kids with famous parents. While celebrities don't often contribute financially, they generate invaluable publicity....

Brown raised its profile by enrolling children or stepchildren of politicians and celebrities, including two presidents, three Democratic presidential nominees, two Beatles and seven Academy Award winners. A particularly controversial case was the son of Hollywood superagent Michael Ovitz, whose application sparked a debate within Brown.

Celebrity students generally lag behind their classmates in academic honors. But their prominence -- and that of their parents -- helped transform Brown into a top destination for students with a creative or artistic bent. Brown accepted just 13.8% of applicants for this year's freshman class, the lowest percentage in its history, as the number of applications rose sharply. Its endowment has risen from 29th nationwide in 1980 ($123 million) to 26th in 2005 ($1.6 billion), although it remains the lowest in the Ivy League.

Now some may argue that a school should be measured by the number of Rhodes Scholars, but we all know that a school should be measured by something far more important - its endowment. And in that regard, Brown University is a smashing success.

Now that my speech is over, please line up to receive your diplomas, along with the first of many letters that you will receive from the alumni organization. I would stay with you, but I have to leave - I have a lunch with Christopher Ovitz and his father Michael.

Theater Security Theater

After reading my post about post-mortems, James Ulvog offered a comment on the security/terror aspects of the post. Ulvog began as follows:

Bruce Schneier calls this security theater. It feels good but is worthless for risk reduction.

Since the shootings in Aurora occurred in a theater, I guess it's appropriate to say that we're engaging in theater security theater now.

In Washington, the Homeland Security Department held a conference call with officials from the commercial, entertainment and shopping mall industries to discuss what security measures they could take to prevent something like this from happening again.

Think about it. It sounds nice, but how can you prevent something like this from happening again? You can - but at a tremendous cost.

But don't worry - actions are being taken.

AMC Theatres, the nation's second-largest theater chain, with more than 300 movie houses, said it will not allow people to wear costumes or face-covering masks into its theaters.

Well, AMC just killed its "Rocky Horror" showings.

And those who are honest admit that these are not necessarily security measures per se.

The New York Police Department said was posting officers at about 40 theaters around the city that were showing the film. The increased security was a precaution against potential copycat shooters, and also meant to reassure moviegoers.

"We're doing this to raise the comfort level," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. "We'd certainly encourage everybody to go about their business."

Frankly, the posting of a police officer outside a movie theater is more effective than a costume ban, but Commissioner Kelly even admits that this is just a reassurance.

And what did Bruce Schneier himself post in the aftermath of the shootings? Nothing. (Frankly, restraint is refreshing, as opposed to those who are posting multiple stories from every angle, to the revulsion of Loren Feldman.) Schneier has, of course, written about security theater in the past. I encourage you to read this article on the topic. I'll confine myself to quoting one excerpt which relates to the post-mortem topic that I raised earlier:

Security is both a feeling and a reality. The propensity for security theater comes from the interplay between the public and its leaders. When people are scared, they need something done that will make them feel safe, even if it doesn't truly make them safer. Politicians naturally want to do something in response to crisis, even if that something doesn't make any sense.

Often, this "something" is directly related to the details of a recent event: we confiscate liquids, screen shoes, and ban box cutters on aeroplanes. But it's not the target and tactics of the last attack that are important, but the next attack. These measures are only effective if we happen to guess what the next terrorists are planning. If we spend billions defending our rail systems, and the terrorists bomb a shopping mall instead, we've wasted our money. If we concentrate airport security on screening shoes and confiscating liquids, and the terrorists hide explosives in their brassieres and use solids, we've wasted our money. Terrorists don't care what they blow up and it shouldn't be our goal merely to force the terrorists to make a minor change in their tactics or targets.

Our penchant for movie plots blinds us to the broader threats. And security theater consumes resources that could better be spent elsewhere.

I encourage you, however, to read the entire article.

What's wrong with post-mortems

Several weeks ago, three of us engaged in an informal post-mortem on a recent proposal. One of the participants, who has extensive experience with our company but is relatively new to the bid process, questioned why we were referring to this as a post-mortem. To him, that implied that our proposal to the customer was dead on arrival.

Whether you refer to it as a post-mortem or a post-partum, there is usually some type of "lessons learned" exercise after a project completes.

Or after an event occurs.

I turned on my car radio late Friday morning. About eleven hours had elapsed since the tragic shootings in Aurora, Colorado, and a so-called security expert was talking about the lessons learned from the tragedy. To him, the chief lesson learned was that we need more security at movie theaters.

I switched the station in disgust.

Why? Because a "lessons learned" exercise often takes incidents from an individual project or event and blows them up out of proportion.

Thousands upon thousands of movies are viewed in theaters every day. Heck, there were probably thousands of theater showings of the new Batman movie on Friday, July 20. Of all of those thousands upon thousands of movie presentations, how many resulted in multiple deaths? Exactly one. So does that mean that we MUST suddenly increase security at all movie theaters?

Now I don't discount the fact that theaters can be crowded areas and could be targets for someone intent on doing harm. But movie theaters are clearly not the only crowded areas.

Of course, this isn't the first time that a single isolated event has resulted in a "lessons learned" exercise with far-reaching consequences. One guy (Richard Reid) unsuccessfully tries to down a plane with shoes, and all of a sudden, millions of plane travelers are taking off their shoes while going through airport security.

Looking at the business world, how many times have you had a particular "once in a lifetime" issue with a particular project, and all of a sudden you find that all future projects require a check to make sure that "once in a lifetime" issue never happens again?

John, before you can ship this proposal, you need to go through this 115 item checklist to make sure that we can ship it. First, have you ensured that the customer is not on a U.S. State Department blacklist?

THE CUSTOMER IS A CALIFORNIA COUNTY. IT IS NOT ON A STATE DEPARTMENT BLACKLIST.

Fine, let's move to item 2. Have you ensured that all export licenses have been obtained?

THE CUSTOMER IS A CALIFORNIA COUNTY. AN EXPORT LICENSE IS NOT REQUIRED. HEY, CAN WE SKIP OVER THESE FOREIGN ENTITY QUESTIONS? THEY DON'T APPLY HERE.

I'm sorry, we can't waive these questions. They're mandatory because of the problem with the foreign shipment several years ago.

YOU REALIZE THAT MOST OF OUR BUSINESS TODAY IS IN THE UNITED STATES, AND NOT TO FOREIGN COUNTRIES?

Let's continue. Has the proposal been translated into the customer's native language?

Yes, I believe that a "lessons learned" exercise can be valuable. But when deriving lessons learned, you have to consider the probability of that particular item occurring in the future. There is a cost associated with every action, and if we suddenly go through great effort to put metal detectors at every movie theater...the criminals will simply go to the smoothie shop next door.

But if you insist that no cost is too great to protect people from harm...then you'd better ban songs about roller coasters. Just to be safe, you know.

Will Al Franken's next television gig be on the Food Network?

In the process of researching some items regarding Minnesota Senator Al Franken (his subcommittee recently held a hearing on facial recognition), I noticed a "Breakfast with Al" link on his Senate website. I was curious about this, since it is regrettably risky for any member of Congress to meet with his or her constituents. However, these breakfasts are held in Franken's Senate office, which means that you have to go through a lot of security to get there.

On the Breakfast with Al page, the Senator spends a lot of time talking about...breakfast:

We serve real Mahnomin porridge made with wild rice that we bring in from White Earth Reservation. It's a native Minnesota dish that was first created by the voyageurs. The wild rice is cooked with cream, berries, and nuts. It's become a big hit here in the office; our guests like it so much they keep asking for the recipe. I would like to add a special thank you to Mitch Omer and his staff at Hell's Kitchen in Minneapolis for allowing us to use their Mahnomin Porridge recipe, which you can find below.

Now I ask you - did Senator Humphrey or Senator Mondale ever serve porridge to their constituents?

To get the recipe, go to Senator Franken's website. The Senator also provides this "fun fact":

While the great city and county of Mahnomen, Minnesota are spelled with an "e," the Mahnomin porridge we serve at breakfast is traditionally spelled with an "i".

P.S. I guess that Senators Feinstein and Boxer can hawk this stuff. Recipe not provided. Remember, this is California - we don't want Apple or Google to say that someone stole the recipe.

You can look at anything in our store...just don't look with your camera

If you believe the more starry-eyed soldiers in the Revolution of Social Media, any visit to any business should be a social experience. New, modern 21st century businesses want to communicate with their customers via all existing social channels, according to the starry-eyed. Check in with Foursquare or other services! Review on Yelp or other services! Tweet about your experiences! Take pictures via Marissa's new favorite image website, Flickr, or her old favorite image website, Picasa! And -

Uh, what's that?

Put the camera down?

What sign on the front door?

You see, your typical meat loaf store will do anything for social media love, but it won't do that picture thing. And sometimes, they really mean it. Penny Shelton:

My husband and I were visiting Paris last spring. We saw a McDonald’s and wanted to take a picture of the menu board to show my six-year-old grandson. I knew he’d get a kick out of seeing how different it appeared from a McDonald’s in the United States....

She grabbed me by my arm and jacket and threw my back against the open door, all the while grabbing at different parts of my coat with one hand and pinning me there with another. Within seconds another woman appeared at the scene and put her arm across my chest.

Now this is not unique to McDonald's, or to France. (DISCLOSURE: I am employed by a company that is owned by a French firm.) If you scroll through the comments, you'll see mentions of India, Greece, Latvia, Portugal, Spain, and Hungary, as well as Burger King and Starbucks. And I'm sure that Thomas Hawk can tell you some stories about places here in the United States that frown on picture-taking.

But here the starry-eyed will say that McDonald's, Burger King, et al are DOING IT WRONG and DON'T GET IT. Then the starry-eyed will claim that real 21st century companies understand transparency and publicity and all of that.

If you believe this is true, I suggest that you perform this simple test.

First, find a store (grocery or retail) that is demonstrably social media aware - one that demands that you check in before they'll even let you in the door.

Second, walk into that store with your favorite cool smartphone.

Third, proceed to take a picture of every single item that is for sale - and be sure to prominently feature the price tags in every picture that you take.

After about 10-15 minutes of this, even the most "aware" company will politely ask you to leave - if you're lucky. If you're not so lucky, they'll grab your arms and jacket and throw you out, possibly damaging your preciously cool smartphone in the process.

Why? Because, as Paul Brocklehurst noted in this Google+ thread, it is legally permissible for a business to set reasonable rules on its own property. If a business says "no photography," then no photography.

Of course, there's a potential difference between what is legally binding and what is good business. One could argue that while a private business has the legal right to restrict photography, it is not necessarily a good business practice. Customers would never patronize (or matronize) such an "old school" business.

But does any business - or any person - behave as transparently as we picture-takers would like? Take Jennifer Ringley. Even before she disappeared from the Internet, did the JenniCam woman ever post her tax returns? And don't forget how Julian Assange reacted when Swedish police reports about his alleged crimes were...um...leaked.

So next time you're taking pictures in a WalMart or Whole Foods, don't be surprised if the store manager follows you home...and starts taking pictures in your house. Your Facebook friends will love to see all the McDonald's wrappers...

Credit cards, light bulbs, and vending machine availability

When Brock Hatfield shared my earlier tymshft post on the reasons for the Netflix/Pinterest/Instagram/etc. outage, Hatfield (who, coincidentally, works at IBM, one of the companies that I've referenced regarding causes of disasters) commented on the nature of decision-making. Specifically, Hatfield noted that there have been instances in which IT has recommended a particular course of action, but management has rejected the recommendation for cost reasons.

I'm not claiming that IT is always right - there are cases in which business rationale outweighs a technical recommendation - but there are certainly times when penny-pinching is not advised.

Hatfield shared a link to a Tumblr blog that documents such failures. One case stood out in my mind. At an (unnamed) remote IT support facility employing 1,300 people, the facility itself - presumably providing critical IT services - was down.

But the credit card-equipped vending machines were still running.

Why were the (presumably) non-critical vending machines up while the (presumably) critical IT facility itself was down? Perhaps it had to do with the credit cards. Credit card providers want to make sure that transactions can be accepted all the time, so maybe the vending machine was engineered in such a way to meet the credit card company's high availability requirements.

Regardless of the reason, it's obviously a troubling sign when an IT support facility offers worse availability than a vending machine.

But while I was trying to locate the facility where this occurred, I happened to run across another vending machine story that is troubling in its own way. FacilitiesNet shared this wonderfully inspiring success story from Grubb & Ellis:

Remove light bulbs from all vending machines as an energy-savings initiative. Each machine with the lighting removed was posted with a notice that the machine was in operating condition and the light bulbs had been removed to reduce electric energy consumption.

Removing the lights reduces electric usage that is non-essential to facility operations and ensures that the facility is not paying for a portion of the electricity provided to a vending service to operate privately owned equipment.

Finally, it aligns the facility department with broader efforts to be environmentally conscious.

— James Vetter, vice president, accountÊmanager for Grubb & Ellis Management Services

But before Grubb & Ellis Management Services pats itself on the back for being green, let's look at what just happened.

First, you had to pay people to go to every vending machine and remove the light bulbs.

Second, you had to pay people to post the sign on every vending machine.

Even if you still have cost savings after doing all that, there are two other factors to consider.

First off, how do the people in the facility feel when they come up on a blacked-out vending machine? Does this inspire them to do their best work?

Second off, how do the people associated with the vending machine feel? Take Coca-Cola, for example. Coca-Cola takes great pride in its branding, from the shape of the bottle to the colors in its logo. How would Coca-Cola feel if you dimmed that bright red color?

And however much you saved pennies by removing those light bulbs, it might not make a lot of difference in the end. James Vetter's cost-saving tip was published in October 2009. As noted above, Vetter was working for Grubb & Ellis in 2009. Guess which facility Vetter was supporting?

According to his public LinkedIn profile, Vetter was at General Motors during this period. You'd have to have pulled a lot of lightbulbs to keep General Motors from sliding into bankruptcy court. And Vetter's activities weren't the only nickel and dime efforts by General Motors during this period:

The drive to pinch pennies came two weeks ago, says David Green, president of United Auto Workers Local 1714 in Lordstown, Ohio, when the plant there was told workers could no longer work overtime. Workers decided to cancel a bake sale they hold each year for the Toys For Tots program because GM wouldn't let some line workers earn pay while working at the sale as it has done in the past.

Robert Lutz has been very critical of General Motors' past efficiency drives - but ironically, he thinks that things were fine in 2008:

When Bob Lutz got into the auto business in the early 1960s, CEOs knew that if you captured the public’s imagination with innovative car design and top quality craftsmanship, the money would follow. The “car guys” held sway, and GM dominated with bold, creative leadership and iconic brands like Cadillac, Buick, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, GMC, and Chevrolet.

But then GM’s leadership began to put their faith in numbers and spreadsheets. Determined to eliminate the “waste” and “personality worship” of the bygone creative leaders, and maximize profitability, management got too smart for its own good. With the bean counters firmly in charge, carmakers, and much of American industry, lost their single-minded focus on product excellence and their competitive advantage. Decline soon followed.

In 2001, General Motors hired Lutz out of retirement with a mandate to save the company by making great cars again. As vice chairman, he launched a war against the penny-pinching number-crunchers who ran the company by the bottom line, and reinstated a focus on creativity, design, and cars and trucks that would satisfy GM customers.

After emerging from bankruptcy in 2009, GM is finally back on track thanks in part to its embrace of Lutz’s philosophy, with acclaimed new models like the Chevrolet Volt, Cadillac CTS, Chevrolet Equinox, and Buick LaCrosse.

Regardless of what actually happened in the months before bankruptcy, by 2011, efficiency expert James Vetter was managing facilities at Walgreens. I don't know why Vetter left GM. Perhaps Lutz chased him away. Perhaps Vetter saw a lightbulb in a Walgreens aisle and...um...got an idea.

Sometimes we get so distracted by trivial matters that we ignore more important issues.

Today's "I was wrong" - Netflix, Amazon, and availability

Earlier this morning, I wrote a post in my tymshft blog entitled Amazon cloud failure – non-tech CAUSE, but tech REASON. This post, a follow-up to an earlier tymshft post entitled The decidedly non-tech reasons for computer system failures, dug into the Friday night failure of several Amazon-hosted services, including Pinterest, Instagram, and Netflix. The immediate cause was the weather, but weather alone cannot bring down a system.

In this morning's tymshft post, I opined:

Does Netflix require five nines availability? Well, that depends upon its users. I’d be willing to bet that most Netflix users haven’t thought about five nines availability. In the pre-Netflix days, back when people used to congregate in buildings called “movie theaters,” we didn’t necessarily think about five nines availability either.

In addition, I don’t know if Amazon promised five nines to Netflix and the other companies. My bet is that they didn’t promise it. My guess is that Amazon offered a higher availability option to the companies, and the companies rejected the offer for price reasons, sticking with a lower availability level. What could go wrong?

Well, the blogger could go wrong, that's what could go wrong. My assumption that Netflix hadn't purchased high availability was incorrect, according to Data Center Knowledge:

The latest outage was unusual in that that it affected Netflix, a marquee customer for Amazon Web Services that is known to spread its resources across multiple AWS availability zones, a strategy that allows cloud users to route around problems at a single data center. Netflix has remained online through past AWS outages affecting a single availability zone.

Forbes provided a little more detail, including a tweet from Netflix's Adrian Cockcroft:

What’s interesting is Netflix seems to have the multi-region redundancy built in, but ran into issues with Elastic Load Balancing, which is the portion of Amazon’s service that tells web page requests which servers to get them from, connecting user requests to functioning instances. Or at least that’s what this tweet from Adrian Cockcroft seems to imply:

@jakeludington @wh1t3rabbit lost instances
in one zone, but lost ELB traffic routing to the zones that were
working… gradually coming back

— adrian cockcroft
(@adrianco) June 30,
2012

So it appears that Netflix took a number of steps to ensure high availability to its customers - but something still went wrong here. Netflix is presumably looking at the issue right now, and may or may not reveal what it finds (it may choose not to reveal this because doing so could benefit Netflix's competitors).

Regardless, my tymshft post had an erroneous assumption.

Jane, the robots, and medical privacy

This is a rough account of a story that's been taking place for over a year.

Jane (not her real name) was a mother with a then 11-year-old daughter. One day Jane went to the emergency room in severe pain, which turned out to be pain in her left ovary. Ultrasounds were performed, and a total hysterectomy was recommended. Medical personnel from St. Rita's Medical Center told Jane about a procedure called robotic hysterectomy, which allowed more precision than a hysterectomy performed using older non-robotic methods. Jane consented to the procedure, and apparently the procedure went well - so well, in fact, that a conversation like this subsequently happened.

"Jane, this is Wanda at St. Rita's. How are you doing?"

"Great, Wanda!"

"That's good to hear, Jane. I'm glad that St. Rita's robotic surgery worked well for you."

"It certainly did, Wanda."

"I'm glad you feel that way, Jane. Um, Jane - St. Rita's would like to tell your story. We wouldn't include specific details, of course, but we wanted to let other people know about the robotic surgery procedures that we can perform, and how they can help patients to recover more quickly."

"What would I have to do?"

"Nothing. We'd just need to take a picture of you, and we'll take care of the rest."

"Now this wouldn't go into detail about the nature of my surgery, would it?"

"Of course not, Jane."

Now perhaps some of this is open to debate, but at least some of these events took place. Jane's picture was taken, and St. Rita's shared Jane's story - including Jane's real name and the age of her daughter - in a page 3 ad in the May 21, 2011 edition of the Delphos Herald.

But wait - there's more! They ran a billboard also. The billboard didn't include Jane's name, but it did include her picture along with a quote attributed to her:

Robotic hysterectomy was my answer.

That billboard and quote caught the eye of Steven Hodson, who shared it in a WinExtra post.

I did some more digging, and shared more of the story (with an angle on future medical procedures) in a post in my tymshft blog.

That tymshft post resulted in the following comment from "Zion":

This woman on the billboard is my sister in law. She never said that quote, it was created by St. Rita’s. In fact she’s likely going to sue them over the quote and over telling the entire world about the hysterectomy. The only thing she had agreed to have the billboard say was that robotic surgery worked for her, not the specifics about the type of procedure.

Now most of you realize that many of the quotes in advertisements and press releases were never actually said by the people who supposedly said them. The quotes are usually written by a marketing person, and go to the person who actually said them for approval. If Zion is correct, Jane never approved the quote, and never approved use of the word "hysterectomy" in any part of St. Rita's marketing campaign.

Now St. Rita's may claim otherwise, and may even be able to point to a signed contract in which Jane gave her consent to all of this.

But the whole episode shows that there is a wide range of practices regarding medical privacy. On the one hand, United States medical personnel are under stringent privacy restrictions - so stringent that my wife cannot find out medical details about me unless I give specific consent.

On the other hand, everyone in Ohio knows about Jane's uterus. And she's not smiling.

Oh-oh! The pound of Brixton

No, this is not a post in my Empoprise-MU music blog. This is a post in which I ask the question, What is money?

At the end of the day, money is an item (a piece of paper, a piece of metal, an ear of corn, or perhaps even a virtual currency) that is assigned a particular value by two people who use it in exchange. Perhaps this definition is not technically correct, but the key part here is that two people agree upon the value of the money.

I live in a place where three hundred million people (or most of them, anyway), agree that the United States Dollar has a particular value. Even people outside of the United States assign a value to our dollar.

There are currencies that are issued by other governments. Some are convertible to other currencies, while some are not.

And then there are currencies that are not issued by any government at all. The chief example of this is gold. (A question to companies that sell gold - if gold is so valuable, and its value is expected to skyrocket if Obama or Romney or Marilyn Manson becomes President - anyway, if it's going to appreciate in value so much, then why are you so willing to sell it to me?)

And then there is a currency issued by the B£ Community Interest Company called the Brixton pound. Let me tell you about it:

To begin using the B£ all you need to do is:

Exchange pounds sterling for B£s at issuing points
Spend B£s with participating businesses (instead of sterling or in part-payment)
Ask for B£s in your change
Accept B£s yourself if you trade in Brixton
Ask your staff or suppliers if they will accept (part) payment in B£s
Give B£s as gifts or to pay for informal activities, e.g. baby-sitting
… and keep them circulating!

The idea is a "locals-only" concept of having people in Brixton do business with other people in Brixton. But there's no reason why the Brixton Pound couldn't be adopted by people elsewhere, such as in Ontario, California.

At the time I wrote this post, there was one establishment that allowed you to change Brixton pounds back into pounds sterling. This helps people accept the currency. Of course, if you prefer pictures of David Bowie to pictures of the Queen, you'll keep the Brixton stuff.

The short-term answer to the question of why I was wrong about Microsoft Surface

On Tuesday afternoon, I published a post in my tymshft blog entitled "The death of real operating systems, continued (and why I was wrong about Microsoft Surface)." While much of the post discussed the changes that have occurred in operating systems since the early 1980s, I opened the post by admitting that I was "100% incorrect" about Microsoft's Monday announcement:

Last week, when rumors started flying that Microsoft was planning to release a tablet that it manufactured itself, I ventured the opinion that they would do no such thing. Why not? Because Microsoft, unlike Apple, depends upon relations with hardware suppliers. I figured that Microsoft would concentrate on getting the operating system right, and then would help Hewlett Packard, Dell, Asus, and the other hardware manufacturers to come up with the best tablets out there.

Then, on Monday afternoon (California time), Steve Ballmer began his presentation...[O]nce Ballmer started talking about Microsoft’s thirty years of hardware experience, I knew that my prediction was 100% incorrect.

When anyone makes an incorrect prediction, my primary interest isn't in laughing at the person who made the bad prediction. What interests me are the factors that led the predictor to share the errant prediction, and the factors that caused something else to happen instead.

So why did Microsoft build its own tablet? Steven Hodson covered this in a FortyTwoTimes post entitled Microsoft Finds Its Balls. A brief excerpt (language warning):

Even though, for all of its history up until this point, Microsoft has maintained, for the most part, a hands-off approach when it came to the hardware side of the computer business it is an attitude that has constantly come back to bite them on the ass....

After all there is no getting around the fact that OEMs operated on slim profit margins and as a result had no qualms about using hardware that was very often just barely able to meet any requirements that Microsoft set for Windows, or their other software, to run on. Then on top of that we were forced into bundling hell with software trials of all kinds being stuffed into the machines creating a frankly shitty user experience.

What about my argument (and the arguments of others) that this could endanger Microsoft's relationship with its OEMs? Hodson had some words about that also:

One of the standard arguments that is always used when it comes to why Microsoft shouldn’t get into the hardware business is because they could potentially turn away their OEM partners that they need in order to sell their Windows operating system.

If this was proved wrong anywhere it is with the success of the Xbox, even though they did have a really rough first generation with the console, and to a lesser degree with Windows Phone. With the Xbox Microsoft ‘designed and engineered’ the complete experience and with Windows Phone they set the phone hardware requirements in stone.

With the imminent launch of Windows 8, and the effort t o bring about their vision of a cohesive ecosystem Microsoft has a lot riding on their efforts and especially when it comes to the tablet. The last thing the company needs is another decade of bad user experience because of OEMs.

We saw this hard stance when it was reported that HTC wouldn’t be getting any licenses for Windows 8 when it comes to their tablets.

Hodson goes on to state:

Personally I have absolutely no sympathy for the OEMs as they are only reaping what they have sown after years of treating consumers as nothing more than cash cows.

Yet while this isn't as drastic a shift for Microsoft than I thought it was a few days ago, it's certainly a shift nevertheless. We'll have to see how consumers - and enterprises - react to Microsoft Surface.

And if the OEMs believe that they could do a better job than Microsoft (or Apple), then perhaps they'll create an earth-shattering Linux tablet that will make both the iPad and Surface seem obsolete.

Why I don't wear a dress to work

Laura Lepisto is getting two new dresses.

Ordinarily the news of a woman getting two new dresses is (at least to us men) fairly inconsequential. The only thing less inconsequential would be the news that the woman is getting two new pairs of shoes.

However, Lepisto is a figure skater, and although she no longer competes, she still performs in public exhibitions. Therefore, she posted a picture on her official Facebook fan page of her visit to Biancaneve, the new shop of her dressmaker. (If you look at the picture, you may recognize one other famous Finnish figure skater, by the way.)

In some ways, figure skating is an atypical sport. It certainly requires significant athletic ability, skill, and strength. But at the same time, there is a great emphasis on presentation. What music shall I play? What dress shall I wear?

One of my first thoughts upon seeing the photo and dwelling on this was, "Cristiano Ronaldo doesn't have someone make special kits for him."

It only took me a few seconds to realize why.

Ronaldo, unlike Lepisto and Kiira Korpi, plays in a team sport. When Ronaldo plays for Real Madrid or for Portual, he has to wear the same kit as his teammates. When LeBron James plays for the Miami Heat, he has to wear the same uniform as his teammates. Figure skaters compete individually or in pairs, and have no such restrictions.

The same distinction exists in business. While there are some people who are sole proprietors, many people work for companies, or run companies. And if you're in a company, you have to work as a team. If a 1970s IBM mainframe salesman were to report to work in a tie-dye shirt, he would be frowned upon, to put it mildly.

Even if you are a sole proprietor, your range of self-expression is limited. Many sole proprietors consult for other companies as consultants or temporary workers, and are therefore expected to follow the norms of the company where they work - a lesson that Michael Hanscom learned all too well. For those who have forgotten the story:

“Okay, here’s the first question. Is this page,” and here he turned his monitor towards me, letting me see my “Even Microsoft wants G5s” post from last Thursday, “hosted on any Microsoft computer? Or is it on your own?”

“It’s on mine. Well, it’s on a hosted site that I pay for, but no, it’s not on anything of Microsoft’s.”

“Good. That means that as it’s your site on your own server, you have the right to say anything you want. Unfortunately, Microsoft has the right to decide that because of what you said, you’re no longer welcome on the Microsoft campus.”

And before you criticize Microsoft, see what Hanscom himself said immediately after his firing. And Hanscom, incidentally, is doing just fine.

But this and similar incidents only prove that unless you have the talent and capability to survive completely on your own, without depending upon others, you're going to have to live up to a "dress code" - not only in dress, but in actions.

Who gets credit? The Israeli-Spanish-Israeli Robocop World Cup Facial Recognition glasses

[DISCLAIMER: I AM AN EMPLOYEE OF A BIOMETRICS FIRM.]

By way of introduction, I remember a "field trip" that I took when I was in the MBA program at Cal State Fullerton in the late 1980s. One day we visited two Toyota facilities in southern California - a manufacturing plant, and a corporate office. The one thing that I remember from that day were the differing stories that we got from the two locations. A manager at the manufacturing plant clearly stated that Toyota was an American company - a statement that makes sense, since Toyota was obviously manufacturing in the U.S. But by the time we got to corporate headquarters, the people there were saying that Toyota was "of course" a Japanese company.

In truth, Toyota is a Japanese company when it's in its interest, and an American company when that's in its interest. As a California employee of a Virginia-based subsidiary of a French company (with critical functions based in Texas), I know this all too well.

Which brings us to the Robocop glasses.

I thought that I had written about the World Cup Robocop glasses in the Empoprise-BI business blog, but it turns out that the only time I wrote about the World Cup in this blog, I talked about alcohol.

So let's go back to this story in Dvorak Uncensored from April 2011.

Brazilian police will use futuristic ‘Robocop-style’ glasses fitted with facial recognition equipment to identify and root out troublemakers at the 2014 World Cup.

Since I work in the biometrics industry, there were a couple of statements that caught my eye:

The system can compare biometric data at 46,000 points on a face....

The camera will generally be used to scan faces in crowds up to 50 metres (164ft) away but can be adjusted, if searching for a specific target, to recognise faces as far as 12 miles away.

I was wondering which company provided the technology for this, but I was unable to discover this at the time. The only thing that I found was in this Brazilian article:

Segundo o major Agostini, atualmente o equipamento é oferecido por um representante de uma empresa de Israel.

However, the name of the Israeli company itself was not identified.

I recently went to search for more information on this, and I ran across this item:

A small, young Spanish company, Ex-Sight, sells a leading edge technology for facial recognition that will be used by Brazilian police during the 2014 World Cup.

Well, even if I couldn't find out about the Israeli company, at least I could find out about the Spanish company that's working with them. So I went to Ex-Sight's website and actually found the hardware that the Brazilians were using, complete with the Robocop look.

The name of this Spanish product? xEye Yoav.

Huh?

Now I took four years of Spanish in junior high and high school in Virginia (and I still have a connection with Virginia - my employer is headquartered there), and perhaps my Texan and Cuban teachers missed some vocabulary, but I don't recall learning the Spanish word "Yoav."

I dug deeper:

Ex-Sight.Com LTD
Etgar 2 Tirat Carmel 39032, Israel 39032
Tel: +972-777-841262
E-Mail: Sales@Ex-Sight.Com

World Wide Distributors:

Brasil
ABEX
175 175 - Ramal dos Menezes Street
São Paulo - SP São Paulo City,
Zip Code 02469-000 Brazil
Tel.: 55 -11- 2236 1422
Fax.: 55 -11- 2236 6789
Email: Maciel@ex-sight.com

SPAIN
Mr.Elazar Lozano Vidal
Ex-Sight España, C/ Ponent, 5 Alicante
Telf: 635654933 | Fax: 966873300
Mob: 628720760
Email: elazar@ex-sight.com

So it became clear what happened. In order to score brownie points with Spanish business promoters, Ex-Sight positioned itself as a Spanish company. But when it works with investors, it probably positions itself as an Israeli company. And I'd be willing to bet that in order to get the World Cup business, it positioned itself as a Brazilian firm.

Whatever it takes.

P.S. Ex-Sight's blog is here.

P.P.S. For those who are biometrically inclined, here's a comment that I left on the Dvorak post back in the day:

Update – I am a member of the Biometrics group on Yahoo!, and I posed my question there. Dr. James Wayman posted a thorough response, and while I won’t attempt to reproduce the whole thing here, Dr. Wayman did say that one way to perform facial recognition calculations is via vector analysis in which a single vector may consist of the pixels from the image. Thus, it is correct to state that it is possible to use 46,000 “features” in facial recognition comparisons. Dr. Wayman referred to the definition of “feature” in ISO/IEC SC37 N3971, and although I haven’t reviewed that document, I trust Dr. Wayman on this one...

Scanning through all of the Dvorak comments, I was unable to find any reasonable explanation for the "12 miles away" claim.

Voting fun - don't let the customers see the sausage being made

Technically this is not a business story, but it certainly has a business application.

Today is primary election day in California. My usual routine is to go to the polling place when it opens at 7:00 am, vote, and then head to work. Today my routine was a little unusual, since polling places have been moved around this year. I found the new location, found the actual polling place, and then had to find parking. I ended up parking underground - underground parking in Ontario, California - go figure. (A few minutes later, when I left the polling place, I discovered that I had parked in the business' "employee parking" area.)

So I went up to the actual polling location, which in California is designated by a bunch of signs (mostly of the "no electioneering here" variety). Right at 7:00, I walked into the room where I was supposed to vote, and got to observe the polling workers, who were clearly not ready for any voters to arrive.

The most visible (and audible) polling person was a guy who was standing there, loudly questioning a woman. "Where are you going to put the name register?" he continuously asked, and not in a helpful way. It also became clear that he was not the person running the polling place; he was just the person standing around and asking questions. The woman took the name register from a table on the left side of the room to a table on the right side of the room, and then took it back to the left again.

Meanwhile there was a woman in the back of the room who was on the phone. I think that she was the person in charge, but I'm not sure. She was telling someone that they hadn't received something or another that they needed.

After I stood there for a couple of minutes, the guy stopped asking questions and turned around and saw me. "Can I help you?" he asked.

"I'm here to vote," I replied.

He explained that they weren't quite ready yet, and that voting couldn't start until a particular person said that the polls were open.

Someone else noted that it was ANOTHER person that was supposed to say that the polls were open.

Then everyone went back to doing whatever they were doing - one woman on the phone, the guy asking questions, and everyone else just standing around.

By this time it was 7:05, and I was thinking to myself, "Do I really want to be the first person to cast a vote at THIS precinct?"

As everyone continued to scurry around, I turned around, walked back to the underground parking, and drove off to work.

The one bright spot is that when I get back to the polling place before 8:00 pm - that is, IF I get back to the polling place before 8:00 pm - the polling workers will presumably know what they are doing, and perhaps loudmouth guy will have gone home to ask unhelpful questions of his neighbors.

The bad thing? That underground parking was pretty limited, and by the time the Democrats come to vote (you know the deal - Republicans vote early, Democrats vote late), there won't be any parking available.

I miss my old polling place. The parking was more flexible...

He forgot "social" - the John Heckers jargon sentence from hell

John Heckers crafted the following sentence:

“We need to seamlessly engage 24/7 initiatives through best-of-breed actionable, client-facing items and proactively create 24/365 niche markets through backward-compatible, future-proof enterprise-wide e-services without turnkey systems.”

I think Heckers fit just about every bit of jargonese into that sentence. One word that was missing was "social." However, Heckers wrote that sentence in 2009; I'm sure if he rewrote it today, he'd sneak "social" in there somewhere.

Needless to say, Heckers opposes jargon. Usually. Read this to see the three instances in which jargon SHOULD be used.

And if you really want to look at best of breed, here's the game for you.

And before you brag about your 24/365 service, look here.

P.S. I subsequently realized that Heckers did forget one term that is commonly used.

TDB represents a paradigm shift in the way database applications are developed.

On consultants

From a piece written by Dr. Tom Sant. Presented without comment.

[I]t’s in the consultant’s self-interest to make the buying process as complex as possible and to minimize the meaningful differences among vendors. The consultants prefer to keep the vendors at arm’s length from the actual customer and to focus the customer’s attention mainly on the consultant’s ability to manipulate a huge amount of data. That’s why the RFPs they issue are so complex....

But what happens when a consultant is a recipient of an RFP? Geoffrey Day:

When seeking someone to solve a complex internal problem, attempts to standardize complicated, subjective qualities such as intuitiveness, decision-making prowess and other consultative intangibles, can cause project results to turn out less than adequate, even downright unacceptable. In fact, attempting to force narrow specifications on the process of finding or hiring a consultant can doom the chances of project success, souring such companies on consultants in general and further tightening their specifications for future projects.

That’s why in most cases the best response to the unsolicited RFP is to first scan it to see if you (the consultant) remotely qualify. Then (when you don’t) you should "respond" by tossing it away or sending it on to someone who does. In the event that you DO qualify, special steps can be taken to win the RFP, though these actions may well be outside the bounds of the conventional RFP process.

Again, presented without comment.

(empo-utoobd) When social companies become anti-social - who you gonna call at Google?

I've brought this up before, but it's relevant to bring it up again. When Google "permanently disabled" my YouTube account a few years ago, not only was I not informed why this was done, but I was offered no way to contact any real live person by phone, email, or whatever to find out why my account was permanently disabled.

However, in a way I can't be disappointed. As I myself have noted, I am not a Google customer. Google's customers are the advertisers that pay them money to advertise on the service. I don't pay them a dime, so I mean nothing to them.

But what of Google's true, paying customers? Let's take a look at the story of Pat Irwin Design:

While, as "Warren De Zeez" stated, there are Google 'freeloaders' in the world, there are also a very large number of legitimate, paying CUSTOMERS of Google who from time to time, need support which goes beyond a message board of other users looking for answers to the same problem, or an email form which only leads to a pre-formatted response and a link to the same, fruitless message boards.

I am responsible for twenty(+) clients who pay a very large amount of money to Google for Ad Words campaigns, totaling well over 40,000 per month. I personally use Google Checkout to process 15k a month in transactions, with Google taking a 2.9% cut off the top. In either case, I have NEVER been able to reach anyone at Google to resolve either technical or billing problems. It is irresponsible for a company, such as Google, to NOT provide at least a minimum amount of telephone support for customers who are actually making financial transactions with them.

In addition to not providing telephone support, it appears they intentionally make receiving ANY kind of support a laborous, frustrating and time consuming process. Do I really have to fill out three different forms, read eight different FAQ's and scroll through six different message boards to find a departmental email? Only to receive a form letter stating, "We're sorry you're having a problem with...."

Bullocks to Google!

This story was posted as a comment to a Los Angeles Times article that described the inability of others to talk to a real live person at Google. David Lazarus' article spent some time on the story of Steve Gillette, who was getting repeated text messages from Google that appeared to be part of an identity theft scam. Lazarus wanted to talk to someone at Google, but couldn't. In the end, the journalist Lazarus ended up making contact with a real person at Google (Jeff Pulver used similar pull to get his YouTube account restored), and discovered that someone had keyed in Gillette's mobile phone number by mistake. So the fact that Gillette couldn't contact someone about this is a failure, right? Wrong:

Once it became clear to Google's computers that the texts and calls were going unanswered, the company stopped bugging Gillette. In this way, Freund observed, all's well that ends well.

"The situation was self-resolving," she said.

Unfortunately for Google, some of these situations are self-resolving in other ways. Commenter Tony Lush:

Google has lots of employees, but no people, so I advertise with their competitors.

Incidentally, I originally discovered this Los Angeles Times story courtesy of a Lauren Weinstein share. Now Weinstein, who notes that many complaints about Google are actually misunderstandings, also notes that many people have difficult getting any type of answer from Google.

In many cases users claimed they had attempted to obtain clarification of their concerns from Google directly without receiving substantive replies, and/or had attempted to obtain information from Google Help Forums -- but received no answers, inadequate answers, or conflicting answers from Forum participants. Usually no official responses were forthcoming, according to these submissions

The irony of all this? Google, and its competitors such as Facebook (and no, you can't call Facebook either), are often classified as "social media" companies.

Yeah, social. Like people talking to each other.

Just don't have any expectations of being able to talk to the service provider.

Are you dedicated to your principles? The story of Stanley Moore

One day on the radio, Colin Cowherd was discussing a rumor that the Yankees were for sale. Cowherd noted that in the end, everything has its price. Perhaps not everything, but it's surprising to realize what we will do for financial or other gain, no matter how "principled" we may believe that we are. It should be noted that I personally believe in the concept of original sin, but even if you don't, you'll probably admit that at least some people will sell themselves out. I don't know if this story is true, but it illustrates the point:

At a dinner party one night, a drunk Churchill asked an attractive woman whether she would sleep with him for a million pounds. “Maybe,” the woman said coyly. “Would you sleep with me for one pound?” Churchill then asked. “Of course not, what kind of woman do you think I am?” the woman responded indignantly. “Madam, we’ve already established what kind of woman you are,” said Churchill, “now we’re just negotiating the price.”

Which brings me to Stanley Moore.

As a Reed College student, I had certainly heard of former Professor Stanley Moore. To Reed's credit, it didn't hush up the story - in fact, I was a student at the college when it formally apologized to Moore.

Why did Reed College apologize? Because it fired Moore during the McCarthy era. While many good people did bad things during the McCarthy era, this is especially troubling for a place such as Reed College. In fact, Reed's firing of Stanley Moore can be compared to the Los Angeles Lakers losing in the second round of the NBA playoffs two years in a row - excusable for others, but inexcusable for the Lakers, or Reed.

Here is the story of Stanley Moore, courtesy the Oregon Historical Society:

[T]he House Un-Americans Activities Committee (HUAC)...sought to expose American communists throughout the 1950s, and in 1954 Moore was subpoenaed along with other suspected leftists. In a public hearing in Portland, Moore pled the Fifth Amendment when queried by the committee about his political beliefs. His testimony resulted in his suspension from the Reed faculty. Moore criticized McCarthyism in an open letter to the public by arguing that academic independence and tenure should protect his job: “It is an abuse of power for an employer to question an employee about his politics. It is a travesty of justice to do so in an atmosphere created by pressure from influential demagogues.” Thanks to the support of his colleagues and students, the principle of academic freedom endured “the most definitive test during the entire McCarthy era.”

In August 1954, the college trustees held a hearing to decide Moore's fate. Under pressure from the media and the generally conservative population of Portland to punish Moore, the trustees contended that his refusal to answer charges amounted to professional misconduct. Moore replied that academic freedom meant employment criteria based on professional ability, not personal political beliefs. Moore contended that his promotions and reputation as a scholar and teacher proved he was a competent professor.

As he expected, Moore won the argument but lost his job.

After a period of Churchill-like wilderness years, Moore eventually joined the faculty at the University of California, San Diego. The university web site records the coda to the story of Moore:

Moore waited 24 years to surprise both sides by telling the Oregonian in 1978 that he had been a member of the Communist party when he came to Reed but that he had left it before the HUAC hearings began. While still describing himself as a Marxist (albeit a "more critical one") he said he quit the party 18 months before the HUAC hearings because, "I couldn't stomach the American organization's kowtowing to Moscow on the so-called 'doctor's plot,' which had been announced in January 1953 and was declared a 'fabrication' shortly after Stalin's death just two months later."

Thus, had Moore been willing to accept the authority of his interrogators, he could have passed the trustees' political test. That is, he could have told them, truthfully, that he was not now a Communist. But as he stated at the time, he had decided not to do so in order to help Reed defend its historical attachment to academic freedom "against the fickle tides" of public opinion.

So if Stanley Moore had just done what Lucille Ball did, he might have gotten off the hook. But he didn't.

Would I be willing to do that? Or, since I'm not a Marxist, would I be willing to do what Daniel did in Daniel chapter 6?

Does Sirius XM suffer from a lack of differentiation?

Television was supposed to be the technology that would liberate us from the base, crass banality of radio. Within a decade, however, television was described as a "vast wasteland."

Cable television was supposed to be the technology that would liberate us from the base, crass banality of over-the-air television. However, cable telvision's major "innovations" were HBO (slogan: "We say @#$%& a lot") and Showtime (slogan: "We say @#$%& more than HBO").

Which brings us to satellite radio, originally dominated by two competing firms, which eventually consolidated into a single firm. And Rocco Pendola isn't impressed with the result:

Mel [Karmazin] runs Sirius XM like a cluster of New York radio stations. He made the move from broadcast radio to satellite and, for all intents and purposes, got right to programming Sirius XM’s channels like the standard Clear Channel or CBS offering.

Karmazin hired loads of old terrestrial radio guys (some incredibly talented ones, for the record) and instituted the types of policies (e.g., voicetracking) that contributed to the almost-complete demise of the AM dial and FM radio’s pending extinction. The things Mel does with Sirius XM are the exact same types of things that caused your disenchantment with traditional radio and triggered your hatred for Clear Channel. Very little distinction exists between satellite radio and your run-of-the-mill terrestrial radio outlet.

An eHow article notes two positives of the Sirius XM experience. First, the stations are available over a wide area, without interference - an important point if you regularly drive from Los Angeles to Phoenix, but not as important if your commute takes you from San Bernardino to Orange County.

The second point?

Sirius ... also lacks censorship, because its listeners are all voluntary subscribers.

See my comments on HBO vs. Showtime, above. Now this presumably resulted in a difference in Howard Stern's show, but I wouldn't know - I haven't heard Howard Stern in years.

Which indicates another difference. You know how the New York Times and many other services are located behind a paywall and are therefore uncool? Well, Sirius XM is behind a paywall also, which means that more people hear Ryan Seacrest or Rush Limbaugh every morning than hear Howard Stern.

Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, provided that the paid service offers a good deal of variety that makes up for its cost. However, even if you don't believe Rocco Pendola's negative outlook, I can obtain a much greater variety of sounds from a free service such as last.fm or Pandora than I can from Sirius XM. Now perhaps the threat is overstated - this was supposed to kill Sirius XM back in 2009 - but the threat is still there.

Why? Because Sirius XM shares one feature with terrestrial radio that even Mel Karmazin's worst enemy can't overcome - the concept of pre-programmed channels. No interactivity - you get what you get, and there are only 130 slots available to get it.

Even iHeart Radio, Clear Channel's online initiative, doesn't have such limitations. Sure, iHeart Radio allows you to listen to pre-programmed radio stations, but it also allows you to customize stations to your liking. So far I've programmed a Brian Eno station and a Royksopp station. Sirius XM wouldn't let me do that. I'm not sure how Clear Channel makes money off of its custom radio stations, but if nothing else they provide Clear Channel with a wealth of intelligence about listening habits.

(empo-plaaybizz) When you cannot play the game

Taking the lead from others, I've spent some time on this blog discussing how gaming mechanics can contribute to business. When a business introduces game mechanics, this gives certain people an incentive to buy additional products and services from the business. And I'm not just talking about Zynga; there are a number of companies that offer badges or points or things that you can earn by buying stuff or doing stuff that benefits the business in question.

But what when the game is broken, and the incentive is lost?

I'm not going to name the company, but its name rhymes with "bartrucks." This company offers a rewards program in which you can earn benefits as your purchases from the company are tracked. The company also offers smartphone apps which facilitate purchases - if you register a gift card with the company, you can use the app to use your smartphone to make purchases which are subtracted from the gift card.

For the last few months, I've been using the "bartrucks" gift card to track my purchases, and when I recently acquired a smartphone again, I began using the "bartrucks" Android app to make my purchases. To do this, I start the app, see how much credit I have on my gift card, and then press a button that reveals a barcode that the "bartrucks" employee scans to complete my purchase. I can then go to another tab on the app and see how I'm doing on earning my rewards.

Usually.

About a week or two ago, I went to look at my rewards, and I got a message saying that reward information was unavailable and to try again later. I tried a little while later, and still couldn't get my reward information. A day or two later rewards data was available again, but it really put a damper on the game when you didn't know your score.

But a few days ago it turned more serious. As I mentioned, the app allows you to see your gift card balance and make a purchase; after the purchase is made, your gift card balance is immediately updated.

Usually.

Over the weekend my wife and I walked into our local "bartrucks," each armed with our smartphones. (We are a smart family.) In turn, each of us walked up to the person behind the counter - I won't reveal what they're called, but it rhymes with "turista" (whoops, forget that) - and made our purchases.

After I made my purchase, I noticed that my displayed gift card balance wasn't updated. The same thing happened to my wife, so we both checked with the "turista" who confirmed that our purchases went through.

But I didn't know how much value I really had on my card.

At the same time, there was an outage on the rewards side of the app - another of those "reward information is unavailable" messages.

So now I don't know how I'm doing on my reward level, and I don't know how much money I have to make purchases. And because the amount of my purchase was almost as much as my gift card balance itself, I didn't know whether I even had enough money to buy one of the tiny products that "bartrucks" sells, much less one of their larger products.

So what happens when you don't know your score, and you don't know how much time is left on the clock?

You take a time-out. Don't play. Don't buy anything.

Thankfully, that outage cleared up a few days later.

But the game is certainly less fun when you can't play.

Expectations for the public Facebook

Perhaps you've seen the joke that states that Facebook has gone public because even THEY couldn't understand the privacy settings.

Well, that's not the exact reason, but as of now Facebook is a publicly-traded company, with shareholders - and with shareholder expectations.

For better or worse, our investment climate expects public companies to continue to make more money, to make more money than they did last year, to grow faster than they did last year, and to consistently beat expectations. If you do outstanding business one year, and then do the same outstanding business the next year, you're a failure.

So now that the public has a significant stake in Facebook's ownership, how will Facebook respond to these expectations?

Last Friday, Jody Swaney started a Google+ thread on this topic. Those of us who participated in the thread all agreed that Facebook needs new revenue streams to meet those shareholder expectations.

But where will Facebook get new revenue to pile on top of its existing revenue? Will it need to introduce a premium tier paid service to complement its free service? If so, what would be included in the premium tier? Will Facebook come up with new forms of advertising revenue? Will it come up with new ways to take a percentage of third party sales (Melina M) - perhaps with a "Facebook apps" store? Will it do other things in the mobile arena (Michael Sweeney) to increase revenue?

And if Facebook can come up with a new revenue stream from its userbase, remember that Facebook has a pretty big userbase. While I'm fond of saying that over 80% of the world is NOT on Facebook, the fact remains that there are around 900 billion Facebook accounts. Keith Tackel did the math - if you can get just $10 a year from 200 million of those accounts, "that is some serious money!"

Of course, it will remain to be seen if Facebook can be one of the few tech companies that benefits from consistent leadership and continued innovation - in other words, the next Microsoft. (Apple strikes out on the "consistent leadership" measurement.) But as a public company, Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of Facebook's team presumably realize that new rules now apply.

On rural sourcing

The pendulum swings, and some (not all) jobs that once went overseas are now coming back to my home country of the United States.

But they're coming back to rural areas, thanks to the rural sourcing movement. GigaOM wrote about this over a year ago:

Managers thinking of establishing virtual teams may have visions of the best and brightest in New York, San Francisco and Shanghai dancing in their heads. The untapped workers of rural places and small cities like Kanab, Utah or Augusta, Ga. probably feature less often. Now the proponents of a still embryonic but expanding trend known as “rural sourcing” are trying to change that....

While salaries in Milford, Penn. may not be as low as those in Mumbai, India, some often-overlooked costs associated with outsourcing abroad — such as greater management oversight, cultural miscues and occasional long-distance travel — are lower with rural-sourcing. Plus, many workers enjoy living in these slower-paced places, while bringing employment to struggling towns is sure to generate good will.

Plus, the workers can see horses from their "office" windows.

It turns out that Becky McCray has co-authored an entire book on modern small town business, which was reviewed at Business Insider:

Small Town Rules notes that the recent economic changes have altered the ways small businesses must operate to survive. The result is a new small town paradigm for businesses of all sizes, with advantages and disadvantages altered in illuminating ways. For example, [Barry] Moltz and McCray note that geographic location, once advantageous because “Craftspeople wanted to be located near raw materials.…Merchants had to be on the trade routes”, is an eliminated factor....

“Turning the disadvantage of a rural location into an advantage of lower cost, rural sourcing captures jobs that otherwise might be outsourced overseas. Rural service firms claim a number of advantages over global firms: shorter supply chains, better data security, intellectual property protection, cultural compatibility, and convenient time zones.”

However, I'd add the warning that complete cultural compatibility cannot be assumed. There are portions of this country in which Californians are regarded by some as aliens from another planet. Anyone from Silicon Valley, El-Lay, or even California's Inland Empire should keep this in mind when venturing forth to small towns in the Carolinas. Of course, the people in the Carolinas must also remember that the avocado-eating, latte-sipping Yankees are people too.

Why e e cummings wasn't involved in tech - capitalization is important!

I was reading an old software review of a business intelligence software package and was struck by the lack of capitalization in the web version of the review.

It integrates with J2EE application servers from ibm WebSphere and bea WebLogic...

BEA? Told you it was an old software review. Now I was able to figure out that the review was supposed to be talking about the acronym-using companies IBM and BEA. But this excerpt is a little more problematic.

Though WebFocus requires it planning and deployment...

If someone looked at that phrase in isolation, the person would probably conclude that the writer was not a native English speaker. When you realize, however, that "it" should be capitalized as "IT" (information technology), then the phrase has an entirely different meaning. Let's face it - delivery of lunch requires planning and deployment, but it doesn't necessarily require the type of specialized skills possessed by many...well, some information technology professionals.

P.S. I actually wrote this post a couple of months ago, but didn't publish it until now because...well, just because.

Pressure cooker

No, I haven't written anything in the Empoprise-BI business blog, or any of my other blogs, in the last few days. I'm involved in three major projects at work, and my brain has been pretty much incapable of conceptualizing or writing blog posts on top of that.

But it could be worse. I could be a short-order cook.

To make it as a short-order cook, you must be able to keep a half-dozen orders in your head while cracking eggs, flipping pancakes, working the counter, and refilling coffee cups.

And at a restaurant like the Tastee Diner, in Bethesda, Md., the orders come in verbally, not on a ticket.

Chocolate chip pancakes, scrambled with sausage, order of french fries, rye toast — they're small tasks. On a busy day, though, they add up to a tough job for Shawn Swinson.

"My first month here, I was ready to walk out the door," he said.

Asked what it feels like when he's in the middle of rush hour, Swinson said, "Like you're in an insane asylum. It's almost unbearable."

Swinson has learned to handle the pressure. He's an island of calm, even when the orders are flying. But Swinson's boss, manager Frank Long, says very few people can keep up without losing their cool.

"It's singularly the most difficult job in this type of operation," Long said. "Four cooks. Five waitresses. Bus staff. Host. Getting them in and out."

Speed and accuracy are at a premium — especially when the customers are multitasking, too. Lunchtime is the worst, Long said.

"People may have an errand to run. Maybe go to the bank and pick up dry cleaning, and eat. All within an hour, whatever time they have."

So the next time that I'm sitting at my desk, working in a (mostly) climate-controlled office, dealing with emails that arrive every few minutes...

I need to remember that it could be worse.

Dividing the cloud, and the Empoprises FECES Rule of Corporate Me-Tooism

Jesse Stay was not happy.

Don't get me wrong - I love Google, but what ever happened to, "Go Web"?

Jesse's comment was prompted by a Google Official Blog post entitled "Get stuff done in the cloud. Go Google."

Of course, Google isn't the only vendor claiming that they can provide the cloud. I've previously noted that Oracle defines "the cloud" as "the data that you can access on a machine running Oracle hardware and software." And, of course, you have SkyDrive (from Microsoft) and iCloud (from Apple) and IBM cloud products and Dropbox and everyone else.

And we thought that there was one cloud out there.

But this is what happens with your cool technology term of the data. Whenever a term becomes trendy - whether it's "cloud" or "Internet" or "integrated software," every marketer worth his or her marbles runs forward to claim that their company - and only their company - can provide the trendy buzzword that everyone's talking about.

In fact, I've developed the "FECES Rule" to explain this behavior - whoops, I should call that the "Empoprises FECES Rule." Or the "Empoprise FECES Rule of Corporate Me-Tooism." Here it is:

Trust me, if FECES suddenly became a trendy acronym that all the cool kids were talking about, then you would have Microsoft, Google, Apple, Oracle, IBM, and everyone else climbing over each other and loudly declaring, "We are FECES."

I then concluded:

And they would be correct. :)

Of course, there are disadvantages to jumping on the trendy bandwagon. What happens when the bandwagon is no longer trendy?

When I first started working in biometrics in the 1990s, the trendy term was "client-server." So you can bet that all of the stuff that I wrote talked about our client-server architecture.

But by the year 2000, things were changing, and all the cool kids stopped talking about "client-server" and started talking about "multi-tier." Around this time my employer changed its system architecture, and therefore you can bet that all of the stuff that I wrote talked about our multi-tier architecture.

At this point, I would become highly amused when I'd see something written by another company trumpeting its client-server architecture. This company had jumped into the trendy client-server pool a few years back, but hadn't yet realized that the pool was getting dirty and the lifeguards and swimmers were gravitating to the new pool next door.

And yes, I would laugh at those bozos who were still talking about client-server when everyone knew that multi-tier was the way to go. Yes, me - the non-trendy guy - would put others down for not being trendy.

And now the cycle is repeating itself again, as everyone fights to claim their own share of the cloud. Well, at least until the cloud becomes criticized for speed or security or other issues, and the pendulum swings back toward local management of your own data.

P.S. Please note that the Empoprise FECES Rule of Corporate Me-Tooism is copyright 2012 John E. Bredehoft, and that this FECES Rule is superior to all other supposed FECES Rules out there. This FECES Rule was specifically developed based on my early 1980s experience with "Paddy O'Futniture" jokes on USENET. Can Google or Pinterest claim that? I think not.

The book of Job as a business primer?

In an April post in my tymshft blog, I discussed the repurposing of Sun Tzu's The Art of War as a business book. In passing, I made the following statement:

Eventually I may look at whether the book of Ecclesiastes may be useful as a guide for business....

(If you're familiar with the tymshft blog, you know that it's all about a statement from Ecclesiastes, "There is nothing new under the sun.")

I haven't gotten around to writing my own take on Ecclesiastes as a business book, but this came to mind when I was reading an interview with Kim Reynolds. Reynolds, who has commented on this blog before, is the creator of QwikR.me, a site that actually does something useful with QR codes.

One of the interview questions asked Reynolds to recommend three books. Her response:

All three of my top book recommendations come from the Bible: Genesis (How it all began), Job (Perseverance in the face of adversity), and Revelations (How this chapter ends).

I'm going to concentrate on the middle recommendation - the book of Job.

For those who haven't read the book, it concerns a man named Job who experiences great calamities. By the middle of the second chapter, Job has lost his livestock, his sons, and his daughters, is covered with sores, and is scraping the sores with a piece of broken pottery.

And his wife is nagging him.

Sounds like the life of an entrepreneur, doesn't it?

While we tend to fix our eyes on the success stories, the truth is that most businesses fail, and those that don't fail often just plug along. We put everything into our businesses - Reynolds makes the point that an entrepreneur might as well just forget about the eight-hour day - and there are times when it all turns to ashes.

And perhaps as we walk away from the bank - or the bankruptcy court - some well-meaning friends come by and offer that dreaded advice - "you're doing it wrong." Why was the entrepreneur stupid enough to base a 2005 business plan on MySpace or Nokia?

Now perhaps the entrepreneur doesn't suddenly get a visit from the LORD like Job did in chapter 38, but at some point the entrepreneur takes a step backward, analyzes what happened to the business, realizes what he/she could have done, recognizes the things that he/she couldn't have foreseen, and then goes on to a new life.

When Braeburn Capital invested in Google - a fiction story (obviously)

[OCTOBER 1, 2012: THIS POST IS (POSSIBLY) FICTION. YOU'RE PROBABLY LOOKING FOR THIS.]

The activity in the second floor suite of a Reno, Nevada office building was a little unusual on the morning of April 31.

"Why do we need to have interns?" asked Gene in an exasperated tone.

"Because the parent company has to put them somewhere," replied Michael.

"I know." Gene was gathering his paperwork for the morning executive staff meeting at Braeburn Capital, an investment company based in Reno. "But they're so - interny."

"Tell me about it," replied Gary. "The last one arrived at the office dressed in black with stars in her eyes. Within five minutes she said that her life had been ruined."

Michael smiled. "Well, the new intern will last at least six minutes this time around. The first part of today's meeting will be about bowling night."

"Shh," whispered Gene. "I hear someone outside."






"Welcome to Braeburn Capital, Steve," said Michael as he shook the new intern's hand.

"Thank you, sir," replied the new intern. "This is - well, it's insanely great."

Gene managed to stifle a groan. "You're just in time for the morning staff meeting."

They filed into the small conference room, sparsely decorated with a few pictures of i-somethings and some paintings of the Nevada desert. Steve was excited, and was talking a mile a minute.

"I mean, I see this as the opportunity of a lifetime. My parents taught me about everything, and really instilled a love of design in me. My dad always said that he couldn't decide whether to name me Steve, or Steve." He chuckled. "And I'm ready to work 80 hours a week and love it for this internship."

"Well, Steve, we won't be flying a pirate flag here," replied Michael as he smiled. "But rest assured, your work for us this summer will be extremely important to the parent corporation. Even though Braeburn Capital is way out in Reno, Nevada, rest assured that our work here is very visible back at headquarters in Cupertino."






Having dispensed with the business about bowling night, as well as a request for someone to clean the espresso machine, Michael was ready to get down to business.

"Gary," asked Michael, "what are your recommendations for Braeburn's investment portfolio?"

Gary, usually brief and to the point, elaborated his words a little more this morning for the benefit of the intern. "Well, Michael," began Gary, "Braeburn Capital continues to manage the cash assets of Apple to the best of its ability, with the long-term goal of maximizing the cash position of the parent company. This allows Apple to continue to invest in research and development, acquisitions, and other expansion efforts."

Steve was listening intently.

"While Braeburn always works within the highest ethical standards of Apple and always works within the law, we also take pains to always maximize shareholder value. The very fact that Braeburn is located in Nevada, rather than California, is a testimony to our commitment to our shareholders."

Michael and Gene nodded approvingly. Steve was soaking it all in.

"Therefore," Gary continued, "I have just checked the markets, and I have come forth with a recommendation this morning. This recommendation, however, will need approval from Cupertino - we can't act on it alone."

Steve's eyes were wide open - as were Michael's and Gene's. They had no idea that Gary was planning on making a significant recommendation this morning - those happened only every so often, and usually after extensive consultation among the entire staff.

"Gentlemen," continued Gary as he handed out folders to the executives, "I am recommending that we forward a request to Tim Cook to significantly increase our position in Google."

A frown began to cross Steve's face, but Michael and Gene didn't notice.

"Increase our position in Google?" asked Gene. "Over a quarter of our funds are invested in Google already. Isn't it dangerous to put all our eggs in one basket?"

"How much of an increase?" asked Michael.

"Don't worry, Gene," replied Gary. "As long as I'm here, it would take a major rally for me to put more than forty percent of our funds into any company - even Google. But Michael, forty percent is precisely what I'm recommending. If you look at Table One in the handout, coupled with the anticipated growth in Figure One, I think that all of you will agree that this is the prudent action for Braeburn to take."

"Excuse me," said Steve quietly, as he left the room, went into the bathroom, and closed the door. The executives could hear Steve loudly sobbing.

Michael heaved a sigh of relief. "At least he didn't scream at us for abandoning the Macintosh Way."

Gene suddenly thought of something. "Michael, did we remember to have someone bolt the bathroom windows so they couldn't be opened?"

"I don't remember," replied Michael. "But the last intern to jump out the window only had a broken leg. I think this guy was a gymnast if I remember correctly - he'll be all right. But getting back to business," Michael continued, "I wonder if a forty-five percent investment would be the right thing to do in this circumstance...."







References: Entity Details, Braeburn Capital Inc., Nevada Secretary of State; Alex Scrivener Google+ post