Please Somebody Make the iPhone News Stop

I was not going to say anything about the iPhone 4 antenna thing because I thought that doing so would in effect say that I too think it is actually news.  

So instead I am going to just say the opposite -- this is not news, let's move on.  Can you believe the coverage?  Look at this search from the WSJ a few minutes ago:

If by some insufferable malady you still want to read more on this topic, try this post by Dave Winer.  I particularly like the part where he says this about Apple: "You have to count your change, and don't expect them to do the right thing, unless you twist their arm real hard, and usually it isn't worth the trouble..."

Let's move on to something...anything.

Dear Microsoft (or anyone): Please Make This

I have written a bunch about how Microsoft should just focus on the enterprise.  However, if they are committed to the consumer -- I this is what I would want:  the iTunes of PC management -- maybe it could be called iPC.

I think Windows 7 is great.  Each of the two times it was installed on my machine it ran great.  Well it did for a month or so anyway.  After a while it just seems to get full, and like someone that can breathe in but not out.  Once it gets that full feeling everything seems to slow down.

But wipe the thing clean and it smokes again.  Unfortunately, to wipe it clean is a 3 or 4 day process.  Half a day to find the my files all over the thing and back them up, half a day to reinstall the main applications, a couple of days to chase down the other apps as I discover I still need them.  I am getting better at keeping track of all of my software license keys and install files, but the install, update, configure process is taxing.  Yes I do know about the rollback feature, but it has never worked well for me.  I go back to a prior point but the bloat hangs on and the performance really does not seem to change.  The last time I did the wipe and reinstall I got 10GB of disk space back!

So I would like someone to make iPC – essentially a parallel to iTunes that would run my computers.  One of the things I like about my iPad and my iPod Touch is that any time I want I can wipe the device and reinstall everything – in just a few minutes – push restore and faster than rebooting a Windows machine my iPod is completely reinstalled.

I think it would work like this: An application that would run on my desktop, backs up in the cloud, and keeps track of everything I install on my machine from the "App Store".  It would enable me to wipe my machine clean and reinstall everything with just one push of a button – it would be an infinitely better experience.

Now the insiders are going to say either: we have that already or we tried that already.  To that I say -- if it exists sign me up, and come on already -- Bob was 15 years ago!  Let's try again.  

The Demise of Large Top Down Organizations: Will China Be the Exception?

Sometime during World War II the large centrally controlled organization started to be undermined by the rise of smaller autonomous actors.  While the Americans and the Russians are still arguing over who won the war, everyone agrees that the Germans and the Japanese lost.  And they were defeated by a scattered array of small semi autonomous units from an informally coordinated group of Allies.  D day and Hiroshima were big institutional operations for sure, but the Allies made it happen, and the coordination was minimal or ineffective. 

Ever since then the large organizations has been on the decline. The world was re-ordered and marshaling the resources of an enterprise has been in rapid evolution from centralized to decentralized.

I bring this up now because evidence of this evolution is presented to us every day.  From our ineptitude in every war since WW II, to our inability to manage healthcare cost or quality, to the steady decline in the effectiveness of our education system, or our failure to regulate the financial markets and the protection of the environment, top down administration on a large scale is failing and doing so quite spectacularly.

I have a hard time imagining that China can be exempt from this trend away from large centralized institutions.  One significant contributor to their demise is their ability to deceive themselves about reality.  I don't know about Hitler, but the Japanese Emperor clearly was not getting accurate information towards the end of the war.  Later, the fall of the USSR was sudden and dramatic because those in power were deceiving the public and probably themselves too.  It would be interesting to look into how well China is doing in assessing the effectiveness of its policies.  When in complete control of the information, changing the results reported is often easier than changing the actual outcomes.  

This will be an interesting area to watch.

Double Time

I am using the double time (2X) feature on my iPod more and more often when listening to podcasts or books.  This is not a good thing.  Sure I am taking in the information faster, but there is no question it is less enjoyable. I do not think my motivation is from a time maximization neuroses -- but rather an impatience with poor quality recordings.

There are many benefits to audio books, but the one significant new element that too often is a drawback, is the addition of the style of the person doing the narration.  A good narrator is of critical importance to the success of an audio book. And it appears that good narrators are hard to come by.  I have abandoned many books based on the quality of the narrator.  I always think I am going to go and get the printed book, but often that does not ever happen.

To all of the authors out there -- do not read your own books.  Good authors do not often occupy the same bodies as good narrators.  The two exceptions I have encountered are Steve Martin and Michael J. Fox.  If you are an author, and your skills as an entertainer are as good as these guys -- go to it.  Otherwise leave it to the professionals.

Right now I am a few hours into David Kirkpatrick's "The Facebook Effect".  The book is good, narration -- terrible.  I am quite interested in the subject, so I am sticking with it at double time.  At that pace the large inhales between sentences are less distracting.  Ever notice how something like that will charge into your brain and get louder and louder until you are ready to jump off the nearest bridge?  I have to wonder if the guy ever exhales.  My mental picture is of this guy the size of a hot air balloon and I find my shoulders up by my ears, all scrunched up and waiting for the guy to pop.  Every so often I have to turn it off and go for a walk to calm myself back down.  

On the podcasts, I find that people that come from a traditional media background seem to be filling the space in between the commercials.  This is crazy in the context of a podcast because if you don't have any content, just shorten the show.  My favorite podcast is still Rebooting the News with David Winer and Jay Rosen.  Anyone thinking of doing a podcast should follow their lead.  Packed with content but still open enough that they can pursue tangents.  It is awesome and I eagerly await each installment.  The other end of the spectrum is anything produced by Leo Laporte.  Now I really like TWIT, and Leo does an amazing job getting interesting people onto his shows.  But they crawl, and double time is definitely needed.  I think he just cannot escape his history in traditional broadcast media where the challenge has always been finding enough content to fill out the hour.

Kevin Turner has Gloves Off and is Ready to Fight

It was a sharp contrast to Steve Ballmer's presentation when Microsoft COO Kevin Turner took the stage today at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.  For every implied competitive situation in Ballmer's presentation, KT took direct aim at a competitor, and was not shy about naming names.  It will be interesting to see the press coverage, because he was handing out some juicy quotes.  Try these:

"We (Microsoft) are the undisputed leader in commercial cloud services."

"Sharepoint online is the fastest growing product in the history of Microsoft."

 "The smartphone game is just starting."

"The Go Do is don't let our customers get Googled."

"We don't want some of the customers, we want all of them."

"In a market where we were left for dead." (about search)

"Don't let Customers pay the Apple Tax".

"It looks like iPhone 4 may be their Vista."

He didn't stop there.  Without hesitation he rolled into direct assaults on Linux, VMware, and Oracle.  After Turner's show, Microsoft's 640,000 strong partner army know one thing:  General Turner is itching for a fight and he is willing to engage on not just more than one front, but all of them.  Forget Sun Tzu and wasting time trying to figure out whose enemy's enemy is the friendliest.  Let's get busy shooting.  

As crazy as it seems for a strategy, it could just be the right recipe for Microsoft.  Microsoft's partner army is so large, so deep, and so well developed -- this kind of thing just could work.  Given the press over the past few months and the morale in Redmond, Kevin Turner's energy did seem to be quite welcome.  The Ballmer / Turner 1-2 could be a knock out.

Bill Says Steve has Taste, and Steve Says Bill can Partner

In my quest to figure out what is happening in the computer business I have been thinking a good deal about how we got here.  In two separate conversations in less than a week friends have pointed me back to the 2007 All Things Digital conference where Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal interviewed Steve Jobs and Bill Gates together.  The whole thing is available on YouTube here.  There are many fine moments, but if you want to cut to the best one, go to 3:30 of part 11.  Where an audience member has just asked what they had learned from each other and Bill Gates says:  "Oh I would give a lot to have Steve's taste."  He then goes on to eloquently summarize the magic of Steve Jobs all in a couple of sentences.  

The focus moves to Steve and he talks about Microsoft's skill at partnering: "Bill and Microsoft were really good at it." and Steve further explains how Apple didn't need to think that way because they were building the "whole banana" and Microsoft needed to be good at it because they needed partners to succeed.  This could not be more true today.  While a fair amount has transpired in the three years since this interview was taped, the basic facts are as the two founders said on that day:  Apple has taste and Microsoft knows how to partner.

There has been all kinds of news out of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner conference this week about how Microsoft is going to leverage its partner ecosystem to be the biggest player in the cloud and other areas.  I don't think anyone could have said it better than Bill and Steve did in 2007.

The entire hour is very much worth watching and amazingly revealing about post PC devices, tablets, social media, multiple screens -- all the stuff we are talking about today.  Check it out.

Parsing Ballmer at WPC 2010

A couple of days ago I said that it was time that Steve Ballmer step and take a swing... at just about anything.  Today he was the keynote at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner conference in Washington DC.  

Here it is point by point:

• Thank you, Thank you, Thank you - to partners (9,500 in attendance) for taking Azure (cloud services) from 0 to 10,000 paying customers in the last 12 months.
• Cloud - A rework of the UW Speech from February - getting IT savings reinvested in services is both an opportunity and responsibility -- big emphasis on enterprise.
• Cloud - can do things that could not be done anywhere else (natural language, search...again focus on enterprise).
• Cloud - Better social and professional interactions (Sharepoint is the answer to Salesforce.com's chatter); Dynamics CRM online.
• Cloud - Server advances drive the cloud.  Managing scale is different.  Microsoft knows scale through windows update, Bing, Live, Hotmail.
• Cloud - Rich Client instead of thin client.  Smart cloud and smart/rich clients (not thin) - HTML5 is supported by MS. Cloud enabled Kinect (Natal). 
• Cloud - Windows 7 Slates and Windows 7 Phones - this is on to the consumer, uses language like "you need to see" and is different from the more concrete statements in the earlier points.

We are ALL IN together.  You want to know if you can bet on Microsoft?  If you want to help people be more productive -- you need to bet on Microsoft.  Microsoft Enterprise IT and IT management. If you don't want to move to the cloud then we are not your folks.

Here is some other coverage of his talk and the event:

eWeek's Microsoft Watch

Channel Insider

Seattle Times

My take:  He delivered on the enterprise, promised on the consumer.  Since it was an enterprise audience I suppose that works.  The slate promise was really the only new product announcement, but new product announcements were not what was needed.  There was not much encoded partner messaging -- and I think that is a good thing.  Microsoft has so much to offer the enterprise customer -- it is nice to see the focus on that and a minimum of other distractions.

Remembering the 2010 World Cup

I do like big sporting events and so I did my best to get into the World Cup.  It was a little easier to get into it before the US was eliminated, but even after that I kept watching.  The pure athleticism of the game is truly impressive.  The truly worldwide nature of the game was also refreshing.  The fact that the US was an underdog by a good margin also drew me in.  When it came to yesterday and the final I really did not have any strong feelings for either of the teams, so I thought I would cheer for the Dutch because they were the underdog.  That was until the game started anyway.  

I had not been following close enough to understand that Bert van Marwijk, the coach of the Netheraland's team, had been encouraging his team to play rough.  It was clear from the beginning that the central element of this game was what I had come to appreciate as the underlying premise in soccer:  you do what you can to injure the other guy when the ref is not watching.  Followed closely by objective number two in soccer:  do whatever you can to make it look like the other guy tried to injure you when the ref was not watching.  I admit that we have our share of violence in American football, and our share of theatrics in basketball, and it is hard for the officials in either sport to keep control of the game.  I am sure that my reaction to the way the game of soccer is played is also colored by my unfamiliarity with the game itself.  

To me it looks like all of the action in this world cup final was guys trying to break each other's legs when the ref was not watching, interspersed by occasions when the ref was watching.  This World Cup set a world record with 13 yellow cards and one red.  

Astonishingly, the one red card was not issued for the time Nigel De Jong of the Netherlands, executed a flying kick to the chest of Spain's Xabi Alonso.  An act described by the announcer as a Kung Fu kick.  Now I don't know much about soccer, but I suspect that this is extraordinary behavior.  Apparently not extraordinary enough, because the offending player got a yellow card for trying to kill his opponent.  From what I can tell, a yellow card is given out for intentionally doing something against the rules, and a red card (ejected) is either the second yellow card or a really bad version of a yellow card.  Seems to me that trying to end a players life would be in the really bad category.  Like with any sport, once a tone of lawlessness is set, the whole thing goes downhill.  

So my memory of the 2010 World Cup is going to be dominated by this scene:

Credit to the AP for the photo.

Microsoft Partners Ponder Their Future

The Microsoft Worldwide Partner conference starts on Monday at a time when many people inside and outside of the company are wondering what the company is doing and where it is going next.  Ever since AAPL passed MSFT in market cap everyone has raised the issue -- is Microsoft doomed?

The announcement last week that the KIN was dead did not help.  The Mini Microsoft blog really lit up with that one and the lay off rumors.

The consumer geek world has been amazingly silent about Microsoft -- which may be a good thing but says a good deal about where the excitement is in the industry (not at Microsoft).  John Dvorak wrote a column on Marketwatch about what Steve Ballmer should do.

The list of people giving Microsoft advice is long.  Here is a post I did summarize some of it last month.

Mark Anderson did a short interview on KPLU this week where he boiled it down to this:

• Microsoft has to decide if it is going to be in the consumer business or not.
• If yes, it needs to create a new division and get outside leadership.
• If no, it needs to double down on the enterprise.

I could not agree more.  In fact, I think Microsoft's strong position with the enterprise has been under appreciated and undervalued for a long time and mostly because Microsoft under-appreciates and undervalues it.

Microsoft has 9,000 products -- most of them are aimed at the enterprise, and many of them are quite good.  Microsoft has hundreds of thousands of partners that are in place and driving billions in enterprise business.  These are partners with substantial and established businesses with big revenues and loyal customers.  They are a significantly different group than could be found at the Google partner conference or the Apple Developer conference.

So this is it.  Monday morning Ballmer gives the keynote -- its showtime.

Are You Serious?!

Seriousness to me means having good intentions and doing your best.  Often seriousness gets a bad wrap because people equate seriousness with not having fun.  To this point I would counter with Jon Stewart.  Here is a guy that is having all kinds of fun, but is also doing his best to call the not so serious people out into the light of day.

Not Even Trying

I suppose this line of thinking started for me when I read Game Change and concluded that Barack Obama won the election in 2008 because he was the only candidate that was even trying to win.  Hillary was focussed on damage control for her husband, Edwards was chasing tail, and McCain was so bound up with his Maverick-ness that he could not put in an honest day's work.  As the book tells the story, McCain had no money because he felt it was not his job to call donors (he just did not like doing it).  Meanwhile Barack and Michelle Obama were having daily competitions to see who could make the most calls or raise the most money.  And this is the race for President of the United States!  Serious people have good intentions and try hard.  Obama was the only candidate that even showed up.

The Hardship of Moving

Marketplace did a segment this week on a GM plant closure where the workers were offered jobs at other locations -- but they had to move.  The central thrust of the piece was how unfair it was to ask employees to move to keep their jobs.  From the time of the wagon trains, we have always moved to create better lives for ourselves.  Why do we now think this is too much to ask?  

Giving the House to the Bank

The New York Times reported today that rich homeowners, and in this case rich is mortgages of $1 million or more, are much more likely to walk away from their mortgages than borrowers with more modest means.  One out of every seven mortgage of over 1,000,000 is seriously delinquent.  One out of every twelve of mortgages under 1,000,000 are delinquent.  Either one of these numbers is staggering.  Typical mortgage default rates are in the 2 or 3 % range -- this is approaching 10%.  The article goes on to explain that borrowers with means are walking away from their obligations because they just plain think they can get away with it.  

If we are going to keep our place at the top of the world heap we are going to have to work at it.  Seriously.

Microsoft's Best Investment Ever?

Does anyone remember Steve Jobs and Bill Gates getting together in 1997 right after Jobs came back to Apple?  On that August day in 1997, the companies announced that Microsoft would invest $150 million into Apple and promised to refresh the Microsoft products for the Mac OS.  

I have no idea if Microsoft held on to the 31 million shares they would have been able to buy for $150 million.  If Microsoft still owns those shares they would now be worth over $8.5 BILLION! 

Vic Maui on Google Maps (How to put Lat Lon data onto Maps)

This year I have some friends racing their sailboat to Hawaii.  The nine boat fleet left Victoria over the weekend and they should be there within two weeks.  This kind of thing is more fun than ever to track with the new web enabled tools available.  The race committee is posting the lat and lon and standings each day on the official web site.  The numbers are fun to look at, but not as revealing as a map.  

I thought it would be an interesting exercise to figure out how to put this information onto a map.  It took me an hour or so to figure out, and I think I can update it daily in about 10 minutes.  Here are the steps:

1. Use the web import tool in Excel to scrape the data off of the web site.   (Exel 2010, Data Tab, From Web...follow instructions -- very easy)
2. Build some formulas in Excel to format the data to be read by EarthPoint.  (combine the data imported, label columns -- also very easy)
3. Use EarthPoint to import the spreadsheet and create a KML file that can be read by Maps or Earth.  (just follow the instructions -- also very easy.  Hardest part is deciding on the types of Icons.)
4. Create a MyMap in Google Maps.  (Go to maps.google.com, My Maps, Create New Map, Edit, Import, follow instructions).  I did this step a few times until I got the thing to look like I wanted.  
5. Get Link to embed or email around.  (just click on the Link button on the top right corner).

Here are the results embedded: 

View 2010 Vic Maui in a larger map

Thoughts on Blogging After Six Months

This is my first post for the second half of the year.  So far I have made 170 entries to this journal and have really enjoyed the process.  I stopped a few months ago to reflect on the first 100 posts and the thoughts there are still central to my work on this blog.  My numbers have gone up and down a bit, but overall, I have now had over 2,000 unique visitors view over 7,000 pages on my blog.  I still have not many comments -- so if you have a thought, don't hesitate to contribute.  

Blog = Organize my Thoughts

The one thing I appreciate most about the process of writing is it forces me to think through my ideas.  It is pretty easy to throw out an idea in a conversation at a party and much harder to think it through enough to craft it into a blog post.  Also, I have found very interesting reading on the web that I never would have found otherwise because I make it a habit to search for thoughts similar to mine while writing.  I do want to contribute some original thinking -- not just say the same thing everyone else does.  When I find a piece that says everything I want to say, I just link to it.

Twitter = Keep Track of Links

I also make some entries at Twitter @jcleon.  These are links to articles I find that I want to go back to later.  Sometimes I will add bit of an intro, other times not.  I think I will be using Twitter more and more -- particularly after the World Cup is over.  I use backupify to back up my Twitter entries. This is a great service and gives me the ability to get the full list of links without being subject to Twitter's ups and downs.

So it has been a great six months and I am looking forward to hitting over 300 posts before the end of the year.  If you want me to write about something in particular, don't hesitate to put it in the comments.

Seven Years to the Next Bubble Bursting?

I have posted several rants in the past about Wall Street and Washington, so now that the reform bill is reaching what appears to be its final form I suppose I should follow up.

As with just about anything anymore, these complex problems seem to require complex fixes.  I thought putting Glass Stegal back in and putting greater restrictions on publicly traded companies that trade for their own account would do the trick -- but hey -- I am definitely not an expert.

Here is a good article by Gretchen Morgenson from the Sunday NY Times that more or less boils it down.

Some good parts, some bad parts, but in the end there are still going to be banks that are too big to fail.  So set your alarm clock for seven years from now and hold on for the next round of the roller coaster.

The Search for Search Confidence

We are leaving a world of workflow and entering the world of search. In order to be effective, workflow requires hierarchy and organization and alternatively, search requires comprehensiveness and speed. The pace of the migration depends heavily on our confidence that search tools are capable of finding just what we want just when we want it.  Once our confidence in search gains a foothold we will never look back.

To find a document in the workflow context, a contract for example, we would go to a contract management system which in the physical world might be a file drawer labeled contracts, but in the digital world would be a tab in a CRM system labeled contracts.  Once we understand the hierarchy and arrive at that location,  we are able to sort through and find the contract on some ordered list - probably alphabetical.

In the search context all documents of any nature involving any party would be in one giant hypothetical drawer and we would search for the contract by some indexed keywords -- probably name, maybe plus contract.  

The workflow structure is more comfortable because we have always done it that way and we like it because it is orderly and logical.  However, If we fail to find what we want in the workflow context we have to find a person who is more likely to know where it is - muttering all of the way about how people do not adopt these tools.. bla bla bla.

Anyone familiar with the experience of searching for things and not finding them, has probably adopted a process that includes widening the search until it is certain to catch the object searched for, and then narrowing until it the list presented is short enough to look through.  Whenever the list get's too short, i.e does not include the item being sought, then back up and try a different query.

This search process depends entirely on our confidence that everything is in the giant file drawer -- this is comprehensiveness, plus the ability to do many searches until the right combination of criteria are discovered -- this requires speed.  Once search achieves a certain amount of this user confidence, the workflow method of organizing/finding things is going to feel as ridiculous as an iPAQ in the age of the iPhone.

When searching for something in Salesforce.com it is difficult to back up enough to cast the net wide and get a comprehensive dataset to start with.  Just about all tab based workflow systems I have used suffer this same malady.  The purveyors of workflow style systems are notoriously bad at search -- maybe they don't think it is needed.  

Immigration Policy is Making US Insane

The parable goes like this:  If you offer a Russian anything they want, with the proviso that whatever they pick their neighbor will get twice as much, the Russian will say:  "Put one of my eyes out".  

According to this piece in the NY Times today, the parable should be revised to read:  "If you offer an American...".

The article argues convincingly that we underfund education because we want to ensure that children of immigrants are not the beneficiaries of our educational system.  We are committed enough to this idea that we are willing to sacrifice the education of our own children in order to accomplish it.  That is some extreme protectionism.

There is no question that immigration policy is a very complex issue with many variables.  Just read this paper by the UN's Social and Economic Affairs group on the relationship between policy reform and income distribution and you will gain a new appreciation for the complexity.  For a quicker reference, here is a link to the CIA World Factbook's list of income distribution showing that of the 134 nations on the list we are 45th from the end that is most polarized (Namibia) and a long way from the least polarized (Sweden).

I put in these two reference points because I still think of our country as the land of opportunity.  America is the place people want to go when they want to improve their lives through hard work -- not through a free ride.  We hear often these days that our current policy changes are socialist, and maybe they are, but we are a long way from the socialist end of the income distribution curve and our recent willingness to let the hand outs go to those that don't need them only pushes us more towards the rich get richer model.

We want our economy to grow.  In order to have growth we need immigration.  Highly skilled people want to move here (for now at least) -- so let them in.  Along the way some not so skilled people will get in too -- that is also going to work out for us in the end.

Here is a link to the posts in this blog tagged Immigration.  There you will find the numbers on Immigration showing that we have strayed from our roots and our immigration rate is well below where it has been in the past.  should loosen immigration policy.

Thinking Like the Customer

Here I am wanting to catch a little World Cup or Wimbledon action before I start in on my Saturday list.  The broadcast of sports events on the web has come a long way -- but still has a long way to go.  I remember watching with amazement when the Masters first started putting real time scoring on the web -- how cool was that!

There is no question that I am not a big time sports enthusiast.  I am not so deep in the pursuit of these activities that I already know what is going on, or that I am willing to go through a whole bunch of effort just to see a few minutes of a match.  In essence, I am a customer available for the catching -- but you are going to have to make it easy, and explain everything.

One thing I do not have memorized is the time difference between here and South Africa.  Sure I can easily find out by going to a world clock website.  But as a possible new customer, does FIFA really want to send me away from their site to figure out the time difference?  They do a great job of putting the time of the next match right on the web site, but they do not say what time it is in South Africa now. 

They could learn from the Wimbledon team.  Right there on the site they show the local time in Wimbledon, and my local time.  Thinking like the customer I see.  Clearly this is not a technical feat.  Just a simple example of understanding what it would be like to be somewhere other than where the event is occurring.  

Wait.  I still cannot figure out when the next match is going to be held -- because they do not say what time the match is starting!  So close.  I am sure the argument is that the matches play in order and they do not know the exact time -- well then, why don't they say it follows some other match.  

Come on people! I am going to mow the lawn now.  No more eyeballs for you.

Book Review: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

It has been a while since I have written a book review.  I have still been reading, but have been on a literary side road that I was not so sure how to think about.  I have never really thought of myself as a science fiction reader or as a geek.  Turns out, I identify well with both!

The reconciliation between my real and imagined selves has kept me from sharing my thoughts about these books.  Clearly my brain is a complicated place! 

Last night I just finished re-reading Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson.  This book was written in 1999, so I will not reference other book reviews this time because there is a well formed Wikipedia page about the book here.

This book could be taking over the number one spot on my favorite books of all time list.  If so it would be displacing Clavell's Noble House.

I suppose Stephenson has an advantage because Cryptonomicon is mostly set in the Philippines, Seattle, and Eastern Washington -- all places I have lived.  I am fascinated with Hong Kong, but never lived there, and really my fascination is with the pre 1997 version.

The main ideas in Cryptonomicon are really resonating with me right now for some reason.  I know I liked the book a great deal the first time around, but for some reason it didn't strike me at that time to be even in the top ten.

Most of all, Stephenson is a great writer.  There are scores of sentences in this book that are worth reading over and over and his sense of style, and sense of humor, are evident throughout.  Althought he calls himself a science fiction writer, I think of him as more of a historical novelist. Either way he is way ahead of the few other science fiction writers I have read in terms of pure literary ability.

He reveals highly complex ideas bit by bit and causes the reader to gain an understanding of a concept while deeply engrossed in a story.  This is something Clavell also does very well.  Both Stephenson and Clavell write books that are so long that by the time you get to the end you can't even remember what you did not know at the beginning.  Drawn into a thousand pages of good storytelling the time just goes by and boom, out the other end you exit with a deep and insightful new perspective on how people think in China, or how computational capacity changed the world.  Conveying the idea that fairly early into WWII the Allies had broken both the Japanese codes and the German codes but knowingly sent troops into harms way for fear of exposing what they had accomplished is not a trivial exercise.  How valuable is knowledge or capability if it cannot be put into use?  Similarly, digging into monetary systems at a macro economic scale and their relationship to confidence, security, and ultimately power is a formidable dissection.   This part ends up occupying a similarly furnished room adjacent to the code breaking dilemma in that money you cannot spend has questionable value. 

The complex relationship between Americans and the people of the Philippines is also a topic with as many stratifications as the Grand Canyon.  Overcooked expectations, assumptions, promises, and disappointment have been deposited layer upon layer from Teddy Roosevelt's administration to the present day.  Stephenson's two main characters in the Philippines are of Filipino Americans, Douglas McArthur Shaftoe, born from a Filipina and an American Marine during WWII, and his daughter, America Shaftoe.  These names only start to tell the story of how our two countries will always have a close and involved relationship.

Since the first time I read Cryptonomicon I have started several other of Stepehson's books.  Unfortunately, I have not gotten all of the way through a single one.  So now I am going to go back to Quicksilver and see what happens.  

Are You Twittering or Communicating?

During the Channel Management Summit this week it was no surprise that we ended up talking about social media.  It was interesting that we got onto the thread of how we talk about what we are doing in social media.  When using Twitter, we have a tendency to think of our activity as using Twitter, or Twittering, or Tweeting.  In fact we are really communicating with our followers.  

This tracks back to an earlier concept I wrote a post about:  The difference between the How and the What.  In this case the what is:  communicating, the how is using Twitter.

When we insert this concept into the context of channel marketing, we would do better to talk about what we are doing more than the how we are doing it.  Marketers have always had multiple ways to communicate with their customers or partners -- many hows.  Twitter is just one of those hows.  

Credit due:  Axle Shultze of the Social Media Academy deserves credit for bringing up this point.

The Bandwidth Debate: Not Boring Anymore?

Over the years, I have had to force myself to read stories about broadband deployment, net neutrality, and the FCC.  Highly regulated things drive me crazy in the first place, add in the lobbyists and long timelines to deployment, and I can always find something else to think about.

All of that changed on February 10, 2010 when Google announced their experimental fiber network.  This is a very creative way to get the debate unstuck from the mud in DC.  The FCC could be entering a new era of independence from the telcos:  they are actually installing 20,000 measurement devices in homes to see if the telcos are telling the truth about bandwidth delivered.  We already know the answer to that question.

Add to this Starbucks announcement this month of free WiFi -- their coverage map is quite impressive.  It is hard to know how fast these connections are going to be, and if it is going to be a winning business model for Starbucks, but the US is clearly waking up to the bandwidth debate.

The entrenched parties (telcos, gov, ...) have been slowing down and slowing each other down for so long that when these new parties zoom past the contrast in approaches will be quite dramatic.

The next thing to watch could be LTE.  This new wireless standard could deliver sufficient bandwidth for streaming HD TV.  This technology could be the enabler for a leap frog of the old infrastructure.  Let's hope it happens here in the US and not just everywhere else.

 (coverage map courtesy of Chandu Thota)