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On Buyouts

July 5, 2010 in Corporations by Ezra S F | 3 comments

My friend Dan posted on Twitter about the rumored buyout of Brizzly by Foursquare. Thankfully an update says this rumor isn’t true.

What are examples of a bought software company where the bought product flourished better than before the buyout? I forget the name of the company who built a Twitter search only to be bought by Twitter. However, it Summize stands alone as the good example of a buyer well integrating something into the existing product. Of course, I’m not an authority on buyouts, so maybe there some other good examples.

From what I recall, typically the buyout means the software either dies or languishes for up to years before getting re-released as either a new brand or features in the buyer’s product. Blackboard bought WebCT back in 2005. The next 3 years were release after release of fixes to problems which often made things worse to the point customers looked to each other to be the fool who would install the release first. The grand merging of the two was pretty much just the grade center into the Classic product line. Another example, Grand Central was bought by Google in 2007 and re-launched in 2009 as Google Voice. When Microsoft bought Hotmail, the horrible performance in the years after practically built Yahoo Mail.

Because of this, I guess I ought to start researching alternatives to Brizzly…. Boo.


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The Future of Publishing

March 30, 2010 in Books / Novels / Writing, Corporations by Ezra S F | 1 comment

Yeah, I am definitely the latter consumer….


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Are Phone Books Necessary?

March 6, 2010 in Athens GA, Corporations, Gov't / Law / Politics by Ezra S F | 6 comments

Southern Pages

Southern Pages

The Georgia Public Service Commission might stop requiring AT&T to distribute paper phone books. The rationale seems to be so many people rely on the Internet and use cell phones the phone books are less useful. That only one percent of people inside the Atlanta perimeter asked for one definitely supports stopping the service. Phasing out delivery would start with with larger populations.

I have only used a phone book once in the past 5 years. I wrote about Georgia Theatre weird phone calls. The local municipal web site provided 4 generic department numbers which didn’t help me much. The last place I lived used to publish the direct line of people in the phone book, so I tried White Pages. When I also didn’t find it there, I tried the text version just in case. Sadly, none gave me what I hoped. So I ended up calling a generic number and after wasting several people’s time, left a message for someone to call me back.

AT&T is only one of three entities offering me a phone book at both home and work. Southern Pages happened to leave a bunch of them where I could take a picture. All this duplication is a waste. I feel like I should only receive at most one every few years as a backup in case online sources are down or not useful.

I would be curious how often information in the books change over a half, one, two, five, and ten year periods. I wouldn’t be surprised if 70% of numbers in phone books don’t change over 5 years.


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Google Conspiracy?

January 18, 2010 in Corporations, Gov't / Law / Politics, Interweb by Ezra S F | No comments

Found this gem called The Great Google Coverup about Google changing their minds about continuing to filter searches following a Chinese supported cyber-attack. Whether the attack origin was by Chinese government employees, corporate thieves, or kids living in their parent’s basement, accounts were compromised. Personal data fell into the hands of people who didn’t own it.

This led to this gem:

For the first time, many of us Google converts feel like the cloud, where Google wants us to organize our personal and professional digital lives, is less secure than that encrypted hard drive under the desk.

Sounds like Douglas Rushkoff didn’t understand the Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, or even GeorgiaVIEW for which I work didn’t invent impenetrable computer systems for developing the cloud systems. There are best practices which may or may not be followed. There are code improvements to counter known security holes which may or may not be applied. Personally, I think the public is doing well just to be informed there was a security breach.

Security isn’t about absolutely preventing someone from getting the data. It is about placing stumbling blocks in the way to make attempting to get the data so difficult the perpetrator moves on to an easier target. An extremely determined person or group could unwind the layers of the best security.

Gmail does encourage encryption of POP3 and SMTP. I wonder though how much communication between email servers operates through encrypted SMTP? In general, I figured email to be sent via plain text. Which is why if something is sensitive or super important, email might not be the best medium through which to transmit it.


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2nd Blackboard Blog

June 11, 2009 in Blackboard Vista, Corporations by Ezra S F | No comments

A blog without comments to me isn’t a blog. Blog posts are about stimulating discussion, so the comments are most important feature. Content without feedback is a publicity or news story not a blog. So Blackboard Blogs at educateinnovate.com isn’t really a blog.

Steve Feldman, Bb performance engineer, had the first Blackboard Inc blog with Seven Seconds. He mysteriously stopped last fall. :(

Ray Henderson, new Bb President for Learn, has a blog. Read this introduction post. He specifically wants discussion and dialog. Someone at Blackboard who understands The Cluetrain Manifesto? I am hopeful this is a sign of positive change.


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Bottle v Tap

May 2, 2009 in Corporations, Gov't / Law / Politics by Ezra S F | No comments

Its funny what people think about something we take for granted. Brown tap municipal tap water was stated as the reason for drinking bottled water. Is it a corporate v goverment thing? Is it because bottled water is so much more expensive than tap water so it must be better?

From Coca-Cola’s letter to the state of California about what is in DASANI water:

Most facilities that purify and bottle DASANI procure water from municipal water systems. At a few plants, however, water is obtained from protected groundwater sources managed by the bottling plant, with approvals from local authorities. DASANI® Bottled Water Report as required by California SB 220 (PDF)

It goes on to describe what they do to purify the water they procure: activated carbon filtration, reverse osmosis, ultraviolet light disinfection, re-mineralized, ozonation. So the municipalities get the water to within EPA standards but not FDA standards. Companies selling bottled water have to adhere to the FDA standard not the EPA. Maybe its a good thing: ”Generally, over the years, the FDA has adopted EPA standards for tap water as standards for bottled water.” FDA Consumer magazine: Bottled Water: Better Than the Tap? (Should we be worried the same overworked agency which lets us get hit with all kinds of bacteria is protecting us from bad water?)

Athens-Clarke County Public Utilities Department has a similar report where they list how the water exceeds the EPA standards.

Personally, I would love everyone producing water to publish reports about their water quality with the amounts of detected contaminants listed as is shown in this DASANI analysis example. Too bad its just an example of a typical analysis. Anyone know where the real DASANI quality reports might be found?


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Open Source Is Not Broken

December 3, 2008 in Computers, Corporations by Ezra S F | 1 comment

Cohen says:

Open-source code is generally great code, not requiring much support. So open-source companies that rely on support and service alone are not long for this world. The traditional open-source business model that relies solely on support and service revenue streams is failing to meet the expectations of investors.

The whole point is to have a model producing great code. As these open source companies try to be everything to everyone, they eventually hit the same issue as proprietary companies: Bloatware. The software starts to suck and the users abandon the ship for another product which seems to do the same job better.


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Pointless

August 14, 2008 in Corporations by Ezra S F | 3 comments

So I wanted to open a support ticket. However, in thinking about what I can ask for the company to do arrayed against what they are willing to offer for support, I realized… I am not going to get a resoultion for the ticket.

  1. It is functioning as designed.
  2. They are just going to tell us the workarounds we have already implemented.

So, what is the point? Other than distracting employees of the company with something they are never going to solve, I get no benefit. I just get to be the passive-aggressive, CYAer, paper pusher who gets to point at the fact I opened a pointless support ticket to justify my employment.

Yes, the problem could trigger a cascade of events which would result in the failure of services for about 3,000 active users. We stood at the brink twice yesterday and the day before. Because we DBAs are responsive, we saved it. The next time we will do the same.

The company is not going to release another patch for the product unless forced to do so (aka glaring security hole). So even if we could convince them of a bug, then no resolution would be provided in this version. I’ll have to replicate to see if the same problem exists in a newer version they do adequately support. If so, then I would have justification in opening a ticket.

Now… how to I identify an 8GB section archive…


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Monopoly Fears

August 10, 2008 in Corporations by Big Eazy | 2 comments

Something brought up my abandoned Friendster blog, which had a link to fiftymillimeter which used to be my favorite photography site by people in Athens prior to me even moving here. Why “used to be”? Well over a year ago, they stopped posting to the site. Sad, I know. Still, I was curious, Where are they now? I ran across Twitter-Free Fridays looking for Toby Joe Boudroux.

What I found interesting about this post was his approach to whether or not Twitter is or is not a monopoly. I agree with the first part. The last sentence surprised me.

Being at the top of an emerging market segment does not constitute a monopoly. Unfair practices, abuses of that dominance to limit fair access to resources and outlets – those are monopolistic. If Twitter struck a deal with Mozilla that blacklisted other microblogging services, we’d have something to talk about. Opening APIs freely and allowing supplemental markets to emerge hardly seems consistent with railroad barons.

Supplemental markets would be the equivalent of a railroad baron allowing new train stations or business to sell to the customers using the trains. Open APIs allow other corporations to find a niche. However, they are not a direct competitor. For example, with Twitter, the API is not used by Pownce or Jaiku. Friendfeed who fits in both the lifestream market and the micro-blog markets does use the API. More commonly, the Twitter API is used by companies like Summize or Twitpic in searching or posting content.

If economists or lawyers determining whether a company with a large market share is monopolistic are influenced by open APIs creating supplemental markets, then this could be a strategy to avoiding DOJ further scrutiny? At Bbworld / DevCon, a frequent point of pride from the Blackboard folks was the anticipation of Bb9 to have a more open, accessible, and useful API. This API will be able to do everything the current one in the Classic line can currently do. The anticipated additions to this API could benefit many supplemental markets. (Let’s just forget at the same time, they are saying API for the CE/Vista products is a dead-end development path.)

Scoring points with the DOJ (and more importantly the court of public opinion) could never hurt while trying to sue a much smaller competitor like Desire2Learn. Some characterize Bb as not likely to stop until D2L no longer exists. Who knows? I doubt even Chasen knows. Still, it would far fetched to characterize just this as making Blackboard a monopoly.

There are pleny of alternative LMS products to the Blackboard Learning System: Moodle, Sakai, ANGEL, eCollege, and many, many more. Heck, the rumor mill would indicate more and more higher education institutions are considering and even changing to the alternatives. Blackboard acknowleges institutions likely run multiple products. With Bb 9, they encourage people to use the Learning Environment Connector to single sign-on to into the other products. With the Bb9 frame remaining so they know who got them there, of course.  Don’t forget about a Personal Learning Environment,

Certainly I dislike that Blackboard hears my objections and continues to act in ways contrary to them. However, that happens within my own team. Neither group are criminal for ignoring me.


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On Oil

June 29, 2008 in Corporations, Gov't / Law / Politics by Ezra S F | No comments

Hubbert peak graph showing the world's oil production peak.

Image via Wikipedia

A while ago, George wrote about the new fees for flying. Lacey pointed out how the price of oil affects the cost of running an airline. Thoughts about these have been lurking in my head ever since. Today I have watched a couple times a speech given by Congressman Roscoe Bartlett on how oil production is about to peak. The transcript helped the second time through. (Wikipedia on Hubbert Peak Theory) I also watched A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash on Netflix’s Watch Instantly.

Bartlett quoted Thomas Friedman:

Our problem is so much worse than you think. We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy, then you want to raise taxes on the things that you want to discourage — gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars — and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage — new renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.

(Bolded for emphasis; even though italics is emphasis.)

While this may not be a strategy, Bartlett does not point out keeping our economy in a positive growth direction has been the emphasis for the past 30 years. Cheap oil keeps factories running, keeps transportation moving, and forms the basis of our plastic-based society. Without cheap oil, we could not maintain the wonderful society we have today.

In Europe, they discourage the use of oil by much high taxes on it. The cost of this approach is we would almost certainly also enter into a recession for some time. Would it be the end of the world? No.

I don’t think our leaders completely ignored the problem as Bartlett suggests. They gambled on the choice technology would make alternatives cheaper by now and conservation would bridge the gap. They wanted their party to remain in power, so they would not have Instituted policy which would cause voters short-term pain with long-term benefits (despite the long-term benefits once through the pain).

That may be the kind of leader we need, but I would be surprised for such a person to get elected President of the United States.

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