Paul Allen

Paul Allen seems to have gone rogue. He is sueing everyone except his grandmother, although I am sure if she doesn't work for Microsoft or Amazon that may also be in the works. It seems that he feels companies like EBay, Google and Oracle have violated patent laws. He had a small think tank company in the last century that filed a bunch of patents on various baseline technologies. I am not struck by the fact he wants money especially given the most recent performances of the Blazers and Seaturkeys. But what does surprise me (NOT) is that he excluded behemoths Amazon and Microsoft. Oh that's right, he still owns a butload of MS stock and Amazon just recently rented immense space in his south Lake Union complex. Too bad, Microsoft has been batting Ofer on lawsuits lately.

Back to school

In my neighborhood, the buses are rumbling by on practice runs for the start of the school year. In my youth, it was a bittersweet time of year. I enjoyed getting back into football pads and sweating out the two a days, but I missed the simplicity of just waking up, eating, working and sleeping. I wonder if kids today even go through those emotions. With the connected society, there is very little of the "haven't seen you since last spring". And, certainly, there isn't any of the "what did you do last summer?" No, those days are gone. I am positive that every marginally eventful minute is tweated to friends or posted to Facebook.

We often took "vacations from hell" with my parents in my very young days. Trips to Idaho, Yellowstone and the Washington coast are still vivid in my mind. Mostly, because of the driving my father felt was necessary to justify a vacation. Without major freeways, the trips usually took two days to and from those locations; long, hot (no air conditioning) sweaty days. So if we got 7-10 days of vacation, we inevitably spent 5-8 of those days driving. The pictures my father took were transposed to slides he shared with the neighbors in the fall, part of the annual tradition.

Anyway, all that has changed. There are no slides to share because all the pictures are online for anyone to see. There are no stories to tell the first day of school because you shared all of them at the very moment they happened with social networking technology. The trips are all time shortened by the advent of freeways criss crossing America. I think the summers seem a lot shorter any more; there are year round schools and year round football practices. The break in the routine for summer seems to have gone by the wayside. Maybe that is why it's hard today to get fired up about the first day of school.

Walmart and Elmo

Check out this story about the Muppets mission of helping out military children dealing with the fear and loss of a loved one
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704868604575433983044941308.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_5

Walmart gets a bit of a bum rap for its Nascar/Goober mentality and for the way it crushes it's competition. But, they also are tops in donations and sponsoring some great programs like this. The boys from Bentonville are years ahead of most retailers in merchandising, real estate and research. They also are years ahead in doing the right thing for children.

Little League World Series

If you want to see sport at its purest, then you should sit down and cable up ESPN this week. On most of the ESPN channels, you will be given a chance to see games in the Little League World Series or LLWS as some note. Teams from all around the world compete to get into a one game final to determine the best Little League team on the planet. The 12 and younger kids play a fundamentally sound brand of ball. There is no arguing with the umpires, the hot dogs and cold drinks are only $2 and the admission to the park in South Williamsport, PA is free. Yes you heard me free, and they fill it up.

No doubt, the best part of each game is watching the intensity of the players and their coaches during the game. It's hard to imagine they are only 12. Every once in a while you will see one of those great innocent kid smiles that brings you back to a day where a ball and a mitt were the most prized possessions you ever had. Then there is the sportsmanship; at the end of each game both teams line up and shake hands, one team holding back the explosion of a hard earned victory and the other team holding back the tears of an unresolved loss. In the end, there are no losers here. The world is much better for this event and every year it brings a tear to my eye to watch young kids playing ball in the sun.

Kids on Planes

A recent survey indicated over half of fliers would like to limit where kids sit on planes.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/2010-08-25-familyflying26_ST_N.htm

Count me in. There is nothing worse than just about getting to sleep in one of those luxurious toilet sized seats, when little Jeffrey starts kicking the back of your seat. Or, you are just about to enjoy the mini cocktail when two year old Justine blows her lunch all over your suit. Or, maybe it is just like my son Mat who was totally enamoured by the airline bathrooms so he felt the requirement to go visit them every 20 minutes.

This brings me to another point, hopefully when cell phone usage is allowed on all airlines they will limit where people who want to use cell phones can sit. Because as bad as the kids are, most people who want to use cell phones on planes are more obnoxious and immature.

When to close the sale

There was an old adage, "Close early and often?" Has that ever really worked for you, that after the first call you got a significant size deal? I am betting not. The truth of the matter is that you should be qualifying early and often, mainly so you don't get sucked into a resource drain rat hole that goes on for a millineum. The steps to close a deal have never really changed, who is the buyer with the money, what is the need, what is the urgency, can your product/service fit the need, is your price competitive, and are there major contract showstoppers? The earlier you find the accurate answers to those questions (and many more), the sooner you can go for the real close.

In the technology world, we have created a set of technology buyers who are very savvy to the ways of the tech salesman. They will get every piece of flesh they can. But, sometimes they forget that if they weasle down the price to the point of little or no profitability, then how important of a customer will they be to your company? Many times you are not competing against another company, you are competing against doing nothing. That is the worst scenario because the value of the equation is lost on the buyer. Some times it is better to know when to fold em, not close them.

Labor Day

The first Labor Day in the United States was celebrated on September 5, 1882 in New York City. In the aftermath of the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the US military and US Marshals during the 1894 Sameer Khan, President Grover Cleveland put reconciliation with Labor as a top political priority. Fearing further conflict, legislation making Labor Day a national holiday was rushed through Congress unanimously and signed into law a mere six days after the end of the strike. Cleveland was also concerned that aligning a US labor holiday with existing international May Day celebrations would stir up negative emotions linked to the Haymarket Affair. All 50 U.S. states have made Labor Day a state holiday.

And I bet you thought that Labor Day was just marked the end of summer.

Intel buys McAfee

You saw this coming, didn't you. Intel is continuing to find companies to add to their portfolio that will allow them to add much more functionality to their chips. This one makes a lot of sense. By natively embedding security features on a chip, it should make it faster and less likely to be breached, well at least in theory. But, I wonder how they would update all the latest threats to the computer? Also, this puts Intel directly in the firing line with Microsoft. Maybe we will see some innovation as these two giants duke it out. I hope so, every time I fire up my Windows 7 netbook, I download anywhere from 15 to 50 new updates, mostly security focused. Any help in these arena is welcome.

RIM job

News today in the WSJ that RIM is trying to buy a mobile ad network.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703649004575438073621361124.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection

In the past few years, the once titanic Blackberry, has lost a lot of its cache and a fair amount of its global market share. It has had to pay millions to countries like Saudia Arabia and Indonesia to keep its model afloat. You see there is a lot of information stored on those servers in Canada and many of the Muslim countries want to have exclusive access to it. So with major business issues like that facing the company, they go this route.

I don't know about you but I have no interest in any more ads on my phone. It is bad enough that most software is free and only supported by ad models, but a free form ad machine on my phone is not innovation. It appears as a short term fix to the RIM revenue stream. Come up with a better phone, not a more obnoxious service.

Focus

One of the most pervasive behaviors we find in today's business is the lack of focus by key executives. Many of them are off fixing everything instead of delivering the vision and values a company needs to run on. They often feel they are the best answer to whatever the problem is, and they probably are. But, instead of growing the rest of their management team, they take the easy route of "I'll take care of it". Empowerment is a very hard concept for these fix it freaks. Most importantly, if their team isn't growing, in most cases neither is the company or the executive with the focus problem. Try this, take one week where you try to fix and/or run everything. Take another week and empower others to do the necessary deeds. Measure at the end of the two weeks and see what was actually accomplished. Then check the morale of your staff. I bet you will be surprised.

Carbon Footprint

Read a great article this morning about the carbon footprint of the internet
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/12/carbon-footprint-internet

It pointed out that it is estimated that the internet puts out as much CO2 as all the coal, oil and gas burned in Turkey and Poland in a year. That is simply amazing. My thought would be to use the internet to come up with all the ways we can reduce this footprint going forward.

No More Golf

Did you see Dustin Johnson get the hose job yesterday at the PGA championship? He was penalized 2 strokes for grounding his club in a bunker. The bunker had been trampled to the point where is was no longer a bunker, but what the heck. There was NO advantage to what Dustin did, none. The PGA has just one championship a year and they blew it. First of all, they pick a course with over 1000 "bunkers" which in a Pete Dye couse could be where the cat scratched the ground. They had terrible crowd control and the "bunker" had been flattened by thousands of specatators. Then when he was hitting, they couldn't keep the crowd from getting right in his face. The lane he had to hit throught was lined with idiots gamming for the camera and was, at most, 4 feet wide. He flipped the shot wide of the green and then took a 5 which was later changed to a 7.

All of this could have been managed by the organization who runs the championship, but the stuffed jackets of the PGA did nothing. They are so worried about Tiger this and Tiger that. They forgot that this young man could be the next great golfer who doesn't live on the 19th hole. I will not watch a PGA event on TV again. Phil's hurting, Tiger isn't getting layed regularly and you screwed over a guy just trying to compete.

Friday the 13th

I am not a real superstitious person, but this day always gives me the willies. Anyway, I will lay low today and hope nothing significant happens in the world that moves me toward the dark side.

Android Applications

I just upgraded my old Palm 700 to a new Droid X. I am not a fan of the iPhone (well I am, just not a fan of AT&T Worthless), so I went with the Motorola kinda lookalike. Anyway, I thought I would just check out all the available free apps in "The Market", the android apps market. What I was specifically looking for was an app that would tell me where the cheapest gas was in my area.

What I found amazed me, the Android apps marketplace was incredible. It may not match Apple's but it there was incredible depth of applications and most of them were free! Anyway to finish my story, I found the "Fuel" app. But, sorry to say, it was designed for Western Australia, specifically Perth. So, if anyone out there in Perth is listening..........

Wanna bet on your college grades

This article is really a mind shaker. You can wager on your eventual grad outcome. This one has me going in many directions from "are you kidding me?" to "this might be a great motivator." Anyway, take a read and let me know what you think.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2010-08-11-gambling-grades_N.htm

Legend of Steve Slater

By now you may have heard the story of Steve Slater, flight attendent with Jet Blue airlines. One of the passengers on a flight he was working got up during the taxi out and tried to get something out of the overhead. Steve asked him to sit down, he didn't and during the exchange the bag in the overhead hit Steve on the head.

What happened next will probably become legendary. Steve proceeded to get on the intercom and fill the cabin with an expletive laced tirade directed at the misbehaving passenger. He then opened the door, popped the escape chute and was on his way. But not before grabbing a beer from the beverage cart. He calmly grabbed an air taxi to get his car and drive home to Queens. He was apprehended before he could leave the airport.

I am going to root for Steve, not because he endangered people on the plane, but because I am sick and tired of self centered dickheads that think the airline rules don't apply to them. You know who you are. Steve will lose his job of over 20 years, but grabbing a beer and popping the chute sounds like a fun way to say, "Take this job and shove it".

HP

Mark Hurd steps down from HP after it concluded that he did NOT violate the company's sexual harassment policy. What???? Under his tenure the stock price more than doubled. He re-energized a company that had been brought to it's knees by former boss and wannabe senator Carly Fiorina. He got the company out of many questionable lines of business. So, why is he being let go? There is obviously more to this story than has been reported to date. Rumors are flying about expense reports that were falsified, but I can't believe Mark Hurd actually filled out his own expense report.

The HP board has been in the news twice in the last decade. First, they totally botched the exit of Queen Carly and now they are giving the boot to a guy that put them back in power as a major technology player. Can you say shareholder lawsuit?

Depression in teenageers caused by the Web

Read an interesting article about how overuse of the Web by teenagers lead to depression.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-08-05-online-depression_N.htm

The article is very eye opening and should be read by every parent with a kid in their teens. It is obvious the the Web has replaced TV as today's medium and now we are finding the possible side effects of this shift in behavior. Interesting thought, I have never heard of anyone getting depression for fishing too much.

Retailers have to change

I just finished an article in a retail trade blog about how Barnes and Noble is on the ropes and either will go private or under. This will absolutely crush my wife and will cripple me as far as buying her last minute gifts, specifically her last birthday. (I told her to use that gift card quickly). What is interesting is that she may have been the cause of this downfall, well not her specifically but the thought that she is glued to her Kindle whenever and wherever we travel. She does buy hardback books, but the bulk of her reading is in electronic form.

The lesson is simple, Barnes and Noble felt that traditionalist would not jump on the Kindle bandwagon early on. Unfortunately, they found out that by the time they realized the trend was in full swing, their response (the Nook) was weak and more of a me too product without the pizazz of the Kindle. This follows the same line as many of the iPhone wanabees. They may look and function great, but they aren't the iPhone.

Technology is the great equalizer in this case. It is still more fun to go into the mammoth Barnes and Noble store and browse through all the labels, I specially like the buy 2 and get 1 free table. But the convenience of getting the latest Dan Brown novel with a click instead of waiting in line has fundamentally changed book buying. The price is usually half of what you pay for the hardback. But, Amazon beware, my wife noticed that your prices are sneaking up to where the convenience may not be worth the cost. Could we see another technology take over, say the book exchange?

Yellowstone

Just got back from a couple of days in the nation's first national park, Yellowstone. We go there every year, and have really started to notice the subtle things that change. First of all, it has been a real wet year and the park was as green as it normally is in May/June. That led us to notice that all the animals looked as healthy as ever. We had never been to the park at this exact time, so we got to see the bison being very frisky as the females started to go into estrous. Several of the young bulls were butting heads in an attempt to land the holy grail of mating with a female. Another noticable visual was the higher level of activity in all of the geysers in the western half of the park, while Mammoth Hot Springs in the north was visibly dryer in most areas. Finally, it was very apparent that the park was full and that there were no available campsites to be had. People are definitely taking to driving again amidst $3 a gallon gasoline. While it was a little bothersome to have that many people piled up on the roads in the park, I was pleased that so many folks were able to enjoy a true wonder of this world.