Topic: business

A friend of mine, Ali Akbar (@aliakbar), has made me aware of an interesting development going on with the domain he bought, googleappsengine.com (note the “s”). When he bought it, he approached me asking if I would be a blogger for the site, with intent to blog about Google App Engine news and announcements on the domain. He seemed quite excited about it, and, as a fan of Google App Engine, saw this as the perfect domain to write under since Google didn’t seem to be using it.

On Friday, without even time to set up the blog he was intending to create, Ali received the following very generic letter from Google (which he shared with me), asking him, in a very bullied fashion, without any offer to even make it right, to surrender the domain or face legal consequences:

Dear Sir/Madam:

Google is the owner of the well-known trademark and trade name GOOGLE, as well as the domain name GOOGLE.COM. As you are no doubt aware, GOOGLE is the trademark used to identify our award-winning search engine, located at www.google.com. Since its inception in 1997, the GOOGLE search engine has become one of the most highly recognized and widely used Internet search engines in the world. Google owns numerous trademark registrations and applications for its GOOGLE mark in countries around the world.

Google has used and actively promoted its GOOGLE mark for a number of years, and has invested considerable time and money establishing exclusive proprietary rights in the GOOGLE mark for a wide range of goods and services. As a result of its efforts, the GOOGLE mark has become a famous mark and a property right of incalculable value.

You have registered, without Google’s permission or authorization, the domain name googleappsengine.com (the ‘Domain Name’). The Domain Name is either confusingly similar to or incorporates the famous GOOGLE mark in its entirety, and, by its very composition, suggests Google’s sponsorship or endorsement of your website and correspondingly, your activities.

Your use of the Domain Name constitutes trademark infringement and dilution of Google’s trademark rights and unfair competition. Your use of the Domain Name is diluting use because it weakens the ability of the GOOGLE mark and domain name to identify a single source, namely Google. Further, your registration and use of the Domain Name misleads consumers into believing that some association exists between Google and you, which tarnishes the goodwill and reputation of Google’s services and trademarks. Moreover, your registration and use of the Domain Name is also actionable under the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (’UDRP’). Under similar circumstances, Google has prevailed in numerous UDRP actions. These decisions are located online at www.icann.org/udrp/udrpdec.htm.

In view of your infringement of our rights, we must demand that you provide written assurances within 7 days that you will:

1. Immediately discontinue any and all use of the Domain Name;
2. Take immediate steps to transfer the Domain Name to Google;
3. Identify and agree to transfer to Google any other domain names registered by you that contain GOOGLE or are confusingly similar to the GOOGLE mark;
4. Immediately and permanently refrain from any use of the term GOOGLE or any variation thereof that is likely to cause confusion or dilution.

Sincerely,
The Google Trademark Team

What???!! “You have registered, without Google’s permission or authorization, the domain name googleappsengine.com (the ‘Domain Name’).” So wait - now I have to get Google’s permission before I get any name that even resembles the Google trademark?

I am astounded at the bullyish nature of this letter, and to assume that anyone that buys any name even resembling the Google trademark to be a violation against their trademark name. Google clearly hasn’t been very good at defending this in the past - just searching with their own search engine, I’m finding tons of examples of sites using the Google name in their own domain name (yes, I “Google’d” it):

googlefight.com
googlesystem.blogspot.com
googleguide.com
googlealert.com
googlerankings.com

The list just gets started from there…

Now, let me preface this with the fact that I am not a Lawyer, but I did learn this in Law class in college. The “Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy” which Google references can be found here, and in the document, it states:

c. How to Demonstrate Your Rights to and Legitimate Interests in the Domain Name in Responding to a Complaint. When you receive a complaint, you should refer to Paragraph 5 of the Rules of Procedure in determining how your response should be prepared. Any of the following circumstances, in particular but without limitation, if found by the Panel to be proved based on its evaluation of all evidence presented, shall demonstrate your rights or legitimate interests to the domain name for purposes of Paragraph 4(a)(ii):

  (i) before any notice to you of the dispute, your use of, or demonstrable preparations to use, the domain name or a name corresponding to the domain name in connection with a bona fide offering of goods or services; or

  (ii) you (as an individual, business, or other organization) have been commonly known by the domain name, even if you have acquired no trademark or service mark rights; or

  (iii) you are making a legitimate noncommercial or fair use of the domain name, without intent for commercial gain to misleadingly divert consumers or to tarnish the trademark or service mark at issue.

Based on Ali’s approaches to me, there was no intention for commercial gain, nor to tarnish the trademark or service mark at issue. I also have e-mail to prove his demonstrable preparations to use the domain in connection with a bona fide offering. Let me also add that my intention to blog for him was simply in my own support of the Google App Engine. I personally had nothing huge to gain from it other than possibly a little exposure from what could possibly be a good blog.

Let me also add that Trademark issue is a very different issue than the Copyright issue I mentioned before with the Mormon Church and Wikileaks. That issue was about Wikileaks knowingly stealing the content owned by the Mormon Church and using it for unintended purposes. This issue is simply about using the Google domain to further promote Google and its properties. Ali had intent to do such, and with my limited knowledge he should have every right to do so.

What if Facebook were to go after my other blog, FacebookAdvice, or even the book I co-wrote, “I’m on Facebook — Now What???“? What about my friend Nick O’Neill’s AllFacebook, or my other friend, Justin Smith’s InsideFacebook. What about my other blog, OpensocialNow? Does this mean I’m the next target to be bullied by Google?

Of course, GoogleAppsEngine.com isn’t my domain, and I don’t know what would make Ali feel better, but my suggestion to Google is to apologize to Ali for such a rude and inappropriate letter to what may be one of their biggest fans, and make right with him. How about, instead of threatening to take it away from him, offering him at least some swag and a little money for the domain? Come on Google - let’s not be evil here. I know you’re better than that.

As for Ali, last I heard he is not backing down. It’s a David vs. Goliath battle, but let’s hope Google can be a little better than Goliath in this case and just back down a little.

What do you think? Am I wrong on this issue? Is this just the same as the copyright issue I mentioned earlier? I’m very interested to hear your thoughts - this seems very unfair to me.

Photo courtesy http://mathmath-ecomm.blogspot.com/2007/11/google-is-useful-but-worried.html

Applying the right technology solutions to enhance business growth is something Bjorn Espenes, CEO at Infopia, is passionate about. As a growth company itself, Infopia delivers a SaaS (software as a service) eCommerce platform for businesses who need to manage the common operational challenges that growth creates. Things like inventory management and merchandising, order management, and shipping and fulfillment all work together in a seamless online system.

Infopia is the "next step" for many of the savviest online sellers looking to grow their business. Titanium and Platinum PowerSellers on eBay not to mention multi-million dollar merchants have dramatically improved revenues with Infopia.

Espenes sits down with Brad Baldwin from Rocky Mountain Voices and shares the Infopia story and highlights the business problems Infopia solves. Espense shows why he was recognized as one of Utah’s "Top 40 Executives Under 40" and a member of vSpring Capital’s v100 Entrepreneurs.

Download This:iPod

Allan Young plugged my last post in a piece he wrote about the potential of arson as a scapegoat of housing-bubble hardships.

His post reminds me of a similar report of arson, this time related to government rent control.  In Thomas Sowell’s excellent book, Basic Economics - A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy, he explains that in places where the government puts price ceilings on rent to make housing more affordable, rental properties often suffer major losses, and many owners end up torching their own properties to avoid suffer ongoing losses.  This trend is well-documented, by the way.  Introduce rent control in a city, and you can bet the level of arson in that city will increase.

So a socialistic program intended to make housing more available will actually make it less available; and because artificially low rents ensure that existing housing is filled while reducing profit incentive to build more housing, renters who might have a place to live under a free market system are forced to flee to another city without rent control, or become homeless.

Yes, it’s just another example of the way the perverse incentives of socialism love to backfire.

Anyway, the arson connection is interesting.  The Government should look at the real-world incentives of policies it creates, which often trigger results exactly opposite of those it intends.  The incentives leading to crash of the housing market demonstrate the exact same principle, but I’ll cover that tomorrow.

(Sorry it’s been awhile since my last blog - it took me several days to figure out how to get my Flip video imported and exported to and from iMovie. To make a long story short, if you want to export from iMovie and have both picture and sound, you must import your source as something other than MP4 or AVI.)

This is the first article in my “Utah Startup Series“. Starting today I will be circling Utah to find the best and most innovative startups in Utah, and featuring them here on Stay N’ Alive. If you have a hot startup (early to even late stage) and would like to demo for me what your product can do, please contact me - if I have the time and like your idea I’d love to come out and take a look at it!

While at Web 2.0 Expo I had the opportunity to meet with Bungee Labs, a local, well funded Utah company who had “Platform as a Service” down before Google even started thinking about their App Engine. In our meeting they demoed their Bungee Connect “IDE” (written entirely on the web). You can see the video below.

My thoughts - you have to see this stuff in person to understand the full ramifications of what they’re doing. One of the cool things about their service vs. Google’s is they actually integrate with Amazon’s EC2 service (which was announced during Web 2.0 Expo), so you can actually host your other stuff on Amazon’s EC2 platform with the same licensing as your Bungee Connect account. Their licensing structure is very appealing as well - Bungee only charges based on the number of registered user sessions using their platform, not traffic, not bandwidth. If I understand correctly, it’s all based on the number of users actively using your application on their platform. For Facebook and Social Media developers this is appealing, as most Applications are rated based on Application use, not number of users or traffic. With Bungee you only pay for the users that actively use your system.

Overall, the guys at Bungee were Rockstars at Web 2.0 Expo. With their announcements about EC2 integration, flexible licensing terms, features on TechCrunch, EWeek magazine, and a dozen other publications, you can bet Google has a watchful eye on them. Ironically, it was interesting seeing Kevin Marx, head guy over the OpenSocial (and other) efforts at their party on Thursday evening.

Bungee will be presenting at our Social Media Developers meeting this coming Tuesday, showing us a simple “Hello World” example on how to build a Facebook App using their platform. Follow me on Twitter and if we can stream it live you can watch it via my Ustream channel. After demo I may just write my own Facebook App to try out their system - it should be interesting.

Bungee Connect Demo - Web 2.0 Expo from Jesse Stay on Vimeo.

Last nights episode of The Office provided some great lessons on sales. Jim takes a potential client out golfing in an effort to try and score the guys business. Here are a couple of good takeaways:

• Never take non-sales people with you on a sales call
• The line between persistence and being pushy is very very thin.
• Always let the client win the game but get the account.

Good stuff:

In highly entrepreneurial hot spots like Silicon Valley, San Francisco where I grew up, Route 128, Washington DC, Seattle, Los Angeles where an impressive raft of social networking and new media startups has sprouted, and biotechnology-focused San Diego, critical mass of entrepreneurial activity organically attracts venture capital. In other words, a rich “ecosystem” - where entrepreneurs can assemble readily available capital, talent, and relationships - can only come about when entrepreneurs first satisfy the initial criterion of creating innovation and value to a significant degree. In emerging hot spots such as Colorado, Utah or “Silicon Slopes” where I currently reside, New Mexico, and Pittsburgh, the march towards critical mass is accelerating and their ecosystems are becoming more robust.

When critical mass is achieved, the eagerly welcomed venture capital that forms to service innovative startups becomes a hot topic of conversation. Networking groups begin to get together to talk about how to raise money from venture capitalists. “Consultants” come out of the woodwork claiming expertise in helping new companies attract venture capital. Venture capitalists are looked upon as “masters of the universe” and treated like rock stars. University business school programs institute curricula aimed at instilling students with an understanding for the process. MBA grads and finance majors from those same university business schools decide they want to become venture capitalists. Local business magazines hyperventilate upon the sexy subject. Entrepreneurs talk in awed tones about their peers who have successfully attracted funding. Angel groups form and hold workshops or seminars about the process of fundraising. Websites with glossaries of mysterious VC lingo spring up out of nowhere.

We have glamorized venture capital beyond reasonableness. We spend an inordinate amount of time, energy, and attention on the subject of venture capital and end up mythologizing it. Because we talk about it so much - in such reverent tones - entrepreneurs unfortunately fixate on it at the expense of other critical components to building great companies. Would-be entrepreneurs start to reason that they must get venture funding in order to “really do something.” It is a convenient excuse to do nothing. Because we talk about venture capital so much, some of us start to see raising capital as the ultimate measure of success. “If I could just raise one million dollars, things would be different.”

Can we talk less about venture capital and more about great ideas and business building? Sure there are some programs that mix in subjects like building a great management team, hiring best practices, networking and relationship building, but venture capital gets the overwhelming majority of attention. What we need more of are entrepreneurs with the ability to figure out if their pet idea is something worth pursuing. At the very least, we need workshops and seminars that help entrepreneurs figure out if their idea, frankly, sucks. We need to talk more about making sure that our ideas are unique and bring some sort of new value to the world. We need to talk about how to execute better than your best competitor. We need entrepreneurs that can focus on the essentials of building great companies.

What entrepreneurs ought to realize is that venture capital follows true innovation and execution. It goes where the action is. It does not precede the action. Entrepreneurs who are willing to put the work in to become savvy about the whole process will come to understand that raising venture capital is relatively easy when compared to out-thinking and outrunning your best competition. It is much easier than keeping customers ecstatic. Raising venture capital is immensely easier than finding and acquiring the scarcest resource of all, great talent. Raising venture capital is not the end game. We need to stop perpetuating the myth.

I’m thinking about starting a series on this blog of hot startups that I find interesting in Utah. I’d really like to show to the world the great startup scene that Utah has to offer - hopefully other bloggers in the area can pitch in and join in this effort as well. I am relatively new to Utah, and am just getting to know the scene out here, so please don’t take this the wrong way. My hope is that this is only because I’m new to the area - honestly, I only know of one or two established startups. I know of many that are “in the works”, but only a few have an actual business model with customers and revenue stream (or venture/private equity/angel funding to hopefully get to that revenue stream). I’m hoping I am just not “in the know”.

Do you have an up-and-coming startup you’d like me to feature? Do you know of any that stand out to you? I really am hoping those in Utah can step out of the woodwork and share via the comments (I monitor FriendFeed as well so you can also comment there) what you know. I hope to then pick out the best and try to get the word out about what you’re doing. Speak up, or forever hold your peace!

For any interested, here is a handful of my recently published video game works after my visit to Baton Rouge two weeks ago.

The 10 Most Underrated Consoles (GamePro) — The road to modern video games is littered with the corpses of noble game consoles who flew too high to the sun. Here are the 10 best under-achievers of all-time.

Not Every Politician Hates Video games (Crispy Gamer) — At a VIP game developer event in a secluded upstairs San Francisco lounge, a well-dressed man in his 50s is making the rounds. “Hello, I’m the mayor of Baton Rouge.” “Do you just walk around calling yourself a mayor?” asks one doubting attendee. “No, I’m really the mayor of of Baton Rouge…” (more…)

View the original post.

I love photography. There is nothing I enjoy more than a beautiful photographic work of art. I just came across these amazing pictures on Digg and I thought I’d pass the link on to you for your viewing pleasure:

Click here for cool photographic art

I took up photography about five years ago as a hobby. I need to dedicate more time to it and I need to get a lot better. I’m going to make it a goal to get the camera out more often and do this thing that I really love. Life is too short not to! OK, now I’ll embarrass myself. Here are some links to several of my photo sets on Flickr. I hope you enjoy them:

Streets of San Francisco. I took these pictures walking back and forth from my hotel last year at Mac World.

Heber Valley. I took these photos on Memorial Day 2007.

New York City. I took these pictures while in NYC for Ad:tech (or was it Search Engine Strategies?) this time last year.

All my pictures on Flickr can be accessed here. Enjoy!

My network has been incredibly valuable to me. I cannot overemphasis the importance of building a large, broad, and deep network full of people who provide multi-directional value. Here are a few tips I’ve learned about building and maintaining a good network:

• Number 1 rule: You must provide value to your network. Don’t expect to have a network very long if you’re always taking from those inside your network.
• Be courteous to your network. Don’t spam (sorry I broke this rule the other night) your network.
• If you want to get someone in your network ask them to lunch. There’s no better way to get to know someone then to meet them over lunch.
• If you want a favor from your network be sure to supply back a favor.
• Always be responsive to people in your network…return calls and emails asap.
• Make your network more than a network - make them your friends.
• Be quick to refer business to your network without any expectation for compensation.

What networking rules do you live by?

Google brand equity. Someone thinks Google has the highest brand equity in the world. I disagree. If a better search tool came along you, me, and the rest of the world would dump them in two seconds. They may have “equity” given the value of the company but they have no real loyalty.

China has more Internet users than the US. They also have more than 300 million English speakers. By comparison, the US has a population of 300 million. Also, check out this month’s excellent National Geographic issue all about China.

Rand nailed the FLDS Texas debacle.

The world’s fuel and food crisis is turning into a real mess. I’m following events as they unfold on OAS. Ethanol: You could feed an adult male for a year on the corn it takes to produce one tank of gas for an SUV.

More turmoil at Twitter. For me, Twitter has come to symbolize all the problems with Web 2.0: Hubris on behalf of its founders, facilitation of the “look at me” culture, “pick me, pick me!” VC money, no real business model, bad content, and continual service outages…

Speaking of which, I missed the Web 2.0 Expo this week. It looks like some cool things are coming out at the conference, but I haven’t seen much coverage on the mainstream blogs. I think a lot of people are just over it.

I blogged this week about the death of Podcasting. On a related note, I think that Hulu is going to be much bigger than YouTube. Why? People like professional premium content over crappy user generate content - including the 18 to 30 something demographic. Copyrighted premium content is out on YouTube and in at Hulu. Prediction: give Hulu two more years and it will pass YouTube’s viewership.

As time goes on I find less and less value in Facebook. However, over time, I am finding more and more value in Linkedin.

OK, I’ve had as string of “glass is half empty” posts. Happiness coming soon…

In the mean time, have a FANTASTIC weekend!

“@kevinrose how do I get you to follow me back???” - anonymous self-proclaimed “social app guru”

This is Part 2 of a series that explores the science of Social Media Measurement. Let me preface this post by saying that this is a lighthearted post trying to come up with a simple measurement regarding a hugely successful social web service.

Previously, I explored the measurement of popularity, novelty, and attention on the very popular crowdsourcing news aggregation site Digg. My post was based on an arcane academic study involving the half-life of popularly “dugg” items. It turns out that stories frantically “dugg” by Digg members that make it to the coveted front page have a half-life of only 69 minutes. That’s a lot of work for a relatively short period of attention. Having that knowledge should prove useful to some marketers.

Why do we want to be able to measure social media? Why should we attempt to develop metrics? The ability to measure our efforts gives us valuable information to guide changes or course adjustments. It gives us baseline comparisons to measure against. It allows us to set measurable goals. It also helps us to make decisions when considering outside consulting help. In the social media space, there is a preponderance of self-styled “social media gurus” or “social app gurus” who try to trade off of non-existent influence. Like snake oil salesmen, they make grand claims about their reputation and expertise but their products or services are essentially worthless. Perhaps a few hard measurements could help marketers and advertisers identify the frauds from the really reputable experts.

This time around, I’d like to keep it a little lighter with a simple measurement I came up with to measure that amorphous quality called influence. This is a light-hearted attempt and nothing nearing the scientific exactitude I cited in my previous post. I consider influence as much more important than popularity, novelty, or attention. Indeed, influence implies popularity and attention. More specifically, I’m measuring influence on the hugely popular Web service known as Twitter. Twitter is a micro-blogging or mobile blogging service that essentially asks the question, “What are you doing right now?” When used correctly, it can be a helpful service for networking, sharing ideas, and staying abreast of buzz.

Twitter’s format is conducive to understanding and measuring influence because of its reciprocal structure of “follows” that makes for easy measurement. You can elect to “follow” other members of the Twitter service. Every time someone you are following “tweets” about something, you will get that update on your cell phone. People who elect to follow you are “followers.” Your followers get an update every time you twitter about what you’re doing or thinking.

Initially, most people “follow” their friends and family but eventually move to following other people on the Twitter network. Implicitly, people follow each other because they find each other interesting. I wouldn’t want to be following someone who is telling me and the whole world, “I’m going to the bathroom.”

There is a small group of highly influential members of Twitter that are so interesting and have such important thoughts to share that they quickly draw a whole army of “followers.” Their follower bases grow organically, naturally, and virally because they add a lot of value to the network and their followers. They don’t need to actively campaign for followers. Not surprisingly, their follower base is much larger than the number of people they follow.

There is also a larger group of sycophantic, self-branded “social media gurus” or “social app gurus” that have very little actual influence. We all know a few of these “leaches” and if they weren’t so spammy, they’d actually be mildly amusing. They are actively trying to get more followers. They spend a lot of time in self-promotion mode. They kiss your butt and play nice so that you might decide to follow them. They trade “follows” like high schoolers in a popularity contest. So instead of “I’ll vote you for best looking if you vote me for most popular,” they say “I’m following you so will you please follow me too?”

Not all “social media gurus” are frauds. However, you can spot the ones that are frauds when they try to build their follower base by asking truly influential Twitter members questions like this, “@kevinrose how do I get you to follow me back???” This is one case of a self-proclaimed “social app guru” asking Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg and a member of Twitter, to follow him. How inane is this? Please get a life.

So let’s get right into the Twitter Influence Ratio. It’s very simple really and very similar to the price to earnings or PE Ratio found in stock investing. In the financial PE Ratio - you get an idea of how much in earnings you getting for every dollar you pay for the stock. It’s a nice, convenient measure of how much value you’re getting or your bang for the buck.

Stock Price / Earnings = PE Ratio

EMC Corporation: 15.56 / 0.77 = 20.21

In the above example, EMC Corporation (EMC), a data storage company, saw its stock close at a price of $15.56 for the day. During the last twelve months, EMC earned $0.77 per share. Dividing $15.56 by 77 cents gets you a PE Ratio of about 20.21 - pretty simple right? Essentially, what the PE Ratio tells you is that for EMC Corporation stock, you are paying approximately $20.21 for every one dollar of earnings. Like I said, bang for your buck.

With the Twitter Influence Ratio, we’re going to try and get a read on someone’s true influence level. It stands to reason that if you are interesting, have neat thoughts, and add value to the network, people will naturally gravitate to you and “follow you.” Some of the most influential members of Twitter have many more followers than people they follow. So the Twitter Influence Ratio will attempt to express this relationship as;

Followers / Following = Twitter Influence Ratio

Example: 533 / 609 = 0.875

In the above example, one such self-branded “social app guru” has 533 followers and is following 609 others. This gives him a Twitter Influence Ratio of only 0.875 which means this person is not very influential. Intuitively, you ought to have more followers interested in what you have to say than the number of people you’re following. One might say that 533 followers is nothing to sneeze at. I agree, but the fact that this person has so many followers and is following so many more makes it highly probable that he is what is known as a “friend whore” or “follow whore.” Like the desperate high schooler, he’s just trading votes. Someone with a TI Ratio of less than 1 but is only following 30 others is probably not out there actively trading votes or follows. If I were looking for a consultant, I would run away from this guy and find someone more influential.

Let’s take a look at some folks who are truly influential. The aforementioned Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, is one of the most influential members of Twitter. As of this writing, he has a Twitter Influence Ratio of:

18,416 / 72 = 255.77

The Twitter Influence Ratio attempts to give you a sense of how influential someone is. In Kevin Rose’s case, for every one person he follows, he has just over 255 persons following him.

Justine Ezarik, or iJustine, a talented web designer is another influential member of Twitter:

12,652 / 1,047 = 12.084 Twitter Influence Ratio for iJustine

Of course, the TI Ratio doesn’t always work. If I claimed that it did always work, you could peg me as one of those phony, self-branded “social media gurus.” In the case of Robert Scoble, one of the most influential journalists and bloggers in the technology industry, he actually has a really low TI Ratio:

20,939 /21,243 = 0.985

Scoble’s a journalist so he has to follow as many people as possible to get the scoop. He is basically following as many people as he has followers. His Twitter Influence Ratio is almost a ratio of 1.

Well, there you go, the Twitter Influence Ratio is not a perfect measure of influence. But it does give you a sense of who is truly influential and who is just pretending. OK, this will probably be the last time you here me talk about the Twitter Influence Ratio. Tell that “social media guru” or “social app guru” you know to stop his Twitter spam before you “unfollow” him!

Update: I just found someone, Andreas Gohr, who wrote a script to tell you if someone on Twitter is likely to be a spammer. It’s based on the same principles as the Twitter Influence Ratio and is very well thought out. It helps classify users on Twitter in these categories: Newbie or Social Climber, Twitter Spammer, Twitter Caster, Notable, and Socially Healthy. Good stuff. My friend, the “social app guru” is definitely a Twitter Spammer.

American Way has a whimsical article in their April 15 issue which profiles distinct-looking, non attractive amateur models, and how they’re making one New York agency popular with advertisers seeking greater image authenticity.

DiNardo, at 6 feet tall and 170 pounds, with stringy locks held back by a headband and tufts of hair encircling his chin, could be any random guy you’d pass on the street. And that’s the reason that Simon Rogers, owner and CEO of Ugly NY, wants to represent him. “Tom’s very arresting, isn’t he?” Rogers says admiringly.

Ugly commissions range from an occasional few hundred dollars to $2,000/shoot — hardly substantial, but gravy for people who were never looking to model in the first place. I love seeing people zig while others zag and get rewarded for it.

I recently blogged about Podshow changing their name to Mevio. Its now official. The most telling part of the release is this line:

The makeover represents a shift from the “podcast era” to an era of premium, episodic Web content, the company said.

Translation: Podcasting is dead, the long tail means fail, and we’re going to try to get into something that actually makes money.

I like ValleyWag’s take on this:

The company’s focus will shift away from being a codependent enabler of enthusiastic amateurs and their “content” and towards semi-professional Web video — though, from what we hear about PodShow’s studio operations, “semi-professional” is a generous description. Meanwhile, podtrepreneurs everywhere will be haunted by recurring dreams of PodShow founder Adam Curry wearing black robes and carrying a sickle.

On a separate but somewhat related note, Twitter just launched in Japan. I think Twitter will be huge in Japan. That’s not a compliment.

My blog went down…again.

I got the following error when I logged into BlueHost:

2008-04-21 15:20:33: Performing MYSQL maintenance. ETA 30 minutes.

Shouldn’t you guys be doing things like that at 3 am instead of 3 pm?

I’ve been with  BlueHost for sometime now. I went with the company because I wanted to support a local Utah business but my site goes down way too often due to problems at BlueHost. I often wonder how much my site has gone without my knowledge.  I know I’m on a shared server and I know its just a blog but should that really matter? In my line of work and throughout my network I am often asked where I would host a company Web sites. I have never recommended BlueHost and I never will. I don’t even know if they have some kind of enterprise solution and I don’t care to find out. I’ll keep sending people to MediaTemple for that stuff.

Just to be fair I should say that their support is decent.

At any rate, I hope that BlueHost cleans it up. I’m sure they could tell me how great they are but I’ve been unimpressed. Maybe the CEO should stop talking about how much he hates Microsoft and build a hosting service I can be proud to recommend.

Just my $0.02…

On FacebookAdvice.com I am starting a new series on “What You get From Facebook Pages”. Over the next week or so I’ll cover several topics on how you can best optimize Facebook Pages for your business. In the first article I’m covering the default widgets and applications that are installed when you set up a Facebook Page. Read more about it here.

Need some help getting a Facebook Page set up for your Organization? I do consulting! Contact me at jesse at staynalive dot com and I’ll get you setup with a plan on how you can utilize Facebook to bring your company more customers.

Prompted by the rumblings of activist hedge funds Harbinger Capital and Firebrand Partners last month, I wrote about the New York Times (NYT) and its evolving technology assets. I found the Times to be surprisingly forward-thinking in its investments in the online world. As a strategic investor, it has made some fairly impressive investments in innovative startups that could solve the riddle of monetizing online news and content. Its investments include bets on blog advertising networks, news aggregation websites, blogging platforms, video sharing sites, job search engines, mobile Web technology, and advertising management technology.

The question really is, will the newer investments and initiatives take hold in time to stem the bleeding? Traditional classifieds advertising, the lifeblood of old line newspaper operations, is quickly disappearing as cheaper online alternatives destroy that business. The Times just released its earnings report and it isn’t pretty. The latest quarter resulted in a $335,000 loss compared to a $23.9 million profit in the quarter a year earlier.

My sense is that Harbinger and Firebrand are getting the Times for a bargain if indeed they can insert their own directors onto the board and fix some strategic errors. The company has agreed to expand the board to 15 seats from 13 but this proposal will need to be approved by shareholders. I expect that disgruntled shareholders will consent.

Here are some notable points or ideas sparked from the earnings release:

• Overall revenue dropped but circulation revenue actually increased 25%. This was made possible by raising prices on newspapers like The Times and The Globe. This to me seems ridiculous. Physical, cellulose-based newspapers are no longer premium products. The short term boost in circulation revenue will quickly fade as customers flee to online news sources. Younger readers are already there and older readers will soon be there. The strategy should be to gently help older readers make the transition from paper to Web. In order to do this, the company should actually be lowering prices on newspapers to increase readership. Content should then be written and presented in such a way as to encourage usage of online properties the company controls.
• The About Group, the company’s Web division, showed healthy gains in revenue and income. Online efforts are working so continued investment in this space is imperative. I’d look seriously at buying news aggregation and crowdsourcing website Digg.com - a company that has been trying to sell itself. It’s one of the Web’s most popular websites and it has been for sale for quite some time. Perhaps the asking price has been lowered.
• Local search and local advertising is the next big thing on the Internet. Venture capitalists are looking for the next generation of startups that will displace first generation local services like CitySearch (IACI) with intelligent application of search engine technology, search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), and geostamping technology. The best implementations are probably still being stewed over by entrepreneurs, but some existing acquisition candidates include Zillow.com, Local.com, LocalBizNOW, ZipLocal, and Smalltown.

As I have said before, “if creative destruction is going to happen, you might as well do it to yourself.”

I get e-mails very regularly from recruiters asking for either a referral or for me to work for their client. Most, if not all, come to me in the form of a generic e-mail, very little personalization, and obviously no care for me as a developer. Here’s one I received today, and my response - it’s my hope that recruiters, which since they generally don’t Google us developers beforehand so probably aren’t reading this, will take this advice to heart. They will have much more success by doing so! (BTW, I’m very confused by this - first they say there’s an unemployment low, then they say timeliness is critical because employers grab candidates quickly. If you’re a developer, believe the first one - getting a job should be easy, and the power is in your hands.):

Good Afternoon All,

I’m writing to touch base with each of you, regarding your present employment situation. The unemployment low has continued in Utah and has created a tremendous need for talented IT Professionals across the state of Utah.

We current have open opportunities for .Net and Java developers, in addition to Technical Project Manager and Business Analysts. If you are presently looking or know anyone that might be, please contact me directly.

In this market timeliness has become critical, some employers are hiring very quickly to grab the best candidates available. If you have thought at all of looking, don’t delay, get in touch with me today.

All the best,

And my response:

First of all, I’m an individual, not an “all”. Secondly, I strongly suggest Googling the names of those you contact, get to know them, and approach them only if first, they fit the description, and second, you can personalize with them a little. I talk to developers on a daily basis, and they hate recruiters because of this. You will get much better response by doing so.

Without Googling me beforehand, I will respond with the above every time - please do your research before contacting me!

I’m off to adtech this week in San Francisco. If you’re heading out catch me at the Sapha booth (#6564).

See you there and have a great week.

Salt Lake-based MediaFORGE, a company I thought had passed away, launches a cool new interactive ad widget. Check it out:

Its good to see these guys are still around and kicking! Have a nice weekend!

Decades ago I had a friend tell me this question was posed to their High School class. I never found out what the class concluded.

Over the years I have thought often about the answer to this question.

My earlier conclusion was that professionalism meant a separation of work and personal life.  This is something that I think the older generation is better at.  The younger generation seems more transparent about personal matters in the workplace. 

As the years go by, however, my experience doesn’t support this conclusion as a definition of professionalism.  I find many professionals are actually quite personable.

This has caused me to re-evaluate the answer to this question.

I think the answer I would give now is that professionalism means ownership.  It means responsibility and accountability for producing the appropriate results.

I walked into a CostCo last week looking for a large household item.  I found a smiling attentive employee with whom I asked where I might find the item I was looking for.  He said “I’m new here,” and shrugged his shoulders.

There was this moment of pregnant miscommunication.

No doubt he was unable to help me due to his present unfamiliarity with the store layout, but as a customer I felt neglected.

I thought to myself, “Well, are you going to get someone for me who knows where this item is?” And then I realized I had, perhaps, misaligned expectations for customer service from a new employee at a wholesale warehouse selling everything from car tires to margarine.

Then the light bulb went on—a more professional employee would have “owned” my problem.  They would have found someone who did know where my item was and would have walked with me until my problem was solved. 

Suddenly I realized I had the answer to my decades-old question: Professionalism means ownership.   Ownership of issues.  Ownership of assignments.  Ownership of tasks.

My thanks go out to the anonymous clueless employee.  After several decades, I finally have my answer.

How would you answer this question?

Mike J. Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com
 

I’m going to step away from my normal focus on Social Media because the inner-geek in me just couldn’t resist. Recently Chris Pirillo posted a challenge that I just couldn’t help taking on. In it, he criticizes a post by Preston Galla of ComputerWorld stating “5 Reasons Vista Beats OS X”, and he makes some very good points. I admire Chris a lot because he’s one of the most unbiased Geeks I know, except when it comes to the Mac. Chris and I would get along well.

I too am a Mac user, in fact, the post I am typing at the moment is on MarsEdit on a Macbook. I absolutely love my Mac, and thus far have not found a preferred Operating System for development and desktop environment to work on, at least as a software developer (I should note that actually, most of my software development is over Terminal on the Mac, over to a Linux Server, my preferred server OS).

I will be the first to admit however that the Mac does have its flaws, in particular Leopard. I do run a Vista Ultimate machine, and I love it too, but for different reasons. Let me give 5 real reasons, and Chris, if you’re reading I would love to hear your response to this, why Vista, at times can be better than a Mac, in particular Leopard. Here are 5 reasons in response to Chris’s challenge that I think really make sense:

1. It’s all about the media. Chris, I’m not sure if you’ve used Windows Media Center to its full extent, but sit down, set up a Windows Media Center machine/server, and then set up an Xbox 360. Be sure your server has a good TV card or two in it as well. Now, sync the two, and begin watching TV live over your home network. Add on a Media Center Extender to another TV in your house and begin streaming live TV on another channel to that TV as well. Now, on one of the extenders, open up some music, maybe even from your iTunes library on your PC (assuming it’s not DRM protected, stupid Apple). Go on over and visit the videos you have stored on your PC. Install some MCE plugins, and begin browsing your videos on Youtube, or even Netflix watch now movies. Got HD? MCE supports it. Go to the sports section, see all the sports games playing currently and what their scores are, surf through all the sports channels (all in HD!). Go in and schedule to record your favorite TV Series. AppleTV isn’t even near ready for this (although I so desperately would love to see them do it!). Heck, turn off MCE even and start playing some games, or rent a movie. If you can point out a Mac combination that can do that, I’ll jump for joy!
2. The corporate environment. As a CTO and entrepreneur, I simply cannot force everyone onto a Mac. I have first, the expense of the learning curve and integration between Mac and PC, and second the cost of the Macs themselves. I can get a PC for under $500 these days. The closest equivalent to that is the Mac Mini, which still, at the equivalent PC level is more expensive. Now, add to that the expense of Parallels so those that need Windows apps like Quickbooks Corporate editions and others. True, integration with Exchange is possible, but is still pretty limited when compared to Windows. In the end I’m looking at a pretty expensive IT budget. Again, I think a Mac is an excellent development machine, and would still encourage a Mac for my developers due to their need to develop in cross-platform environments, but it just doesn’t make sense cost-wise across the entire company.
3. Hardware compatibility. I agree - there are a lot of options when it comes to supporting hardware for a Mac, but, can I just get a decent wireless print server that works with the Macs in my household? What about print drivers that work across the network with Windows-connected printers? Leopard fixes some of that, but it’s still not anywhere near compatible as the Vista machines are. Is it Mac’s fault? No, but it is a strong point to buying Vista. What about shuffling around every time I need to connect to a projector because Macs use the non-standard VGA/DVI adapters? I’m sure the readers can come up with more unsupported hardware.
4. Finance Software. I touched on this a little earlier, and Galla very broadly covered it in mentioning supported software, but his claim was not backed by specific examples. Simply saying, “Vista runs more software” is an opinion, and Chris, as you point out not necessarily proof that Vista is better. However, one thing I do have issues with is the vast array of Windows Finance software (aka Small and large business versions of Quicken and Turbotax) but lack of within Leopard. I run a very small business at the moment, and frankly, Quickbooks for Mac is simply too much for me. I’m looking for something more like Quicken Home and Business until my business gets large enough for me to hire an Accountant. There’s also the flip-side to that in that if you run a very large business, there are no enterprise versions of Quickbooks for Mac. This is why both my Father, and Father-in-Law who are CPAs do not use Macs. For now, I’m stuck to slowing down my machine with Parallels any time I need something like that, which, IMO is a hack.
5. It’s all about the animated wallpaper! Can your Mac run animated pictures of waterfalls, running streams, or flowing lava? My Vista machine can. Come on - you have to admit that’s something my Vista machine can do that my Macbook can’t, don’t you? So long as we’re going to praise the Mac UI this is one really cool feature I’d just love to see on my Mac. There are also other cool UI features on Vista that I like, even though I think Mac trumps them as a whole.

So, those may or may not be big things to some, but that is my list, and you asked Chris. Of course I could always come up with 10 more things that Mac beats Vista in, but my point is, as they told us when I was a Sales person at Computer City as a teenager, there are strengths to each OS - it’s important to evaluate what works best for you and your situation, and choose accordingly. Now, I ask my readers, are there any reasons (supported by true, concrete facts) that you feel Vista beats Leopard or the Mac in general?

My friend, Lisa Ann Thomson, a local writer and author sent me this question:

Hello! I have a quick question (or maybe a very complicated question) for all the entrepreneurial types I know:

How do you divide equity and ownership amongst founders of a company?

More specifically, I have a friend (seriously, it’s a friend, it’s not me….) who is involved in the very beginning of a start up. There are three of them. One had the idea and development of the product. My friend is doing the business plan, initial sales contacts/meetings, and developing partnerships. I don’t know what the third person is doing.

Is there a formula or are there resources to which you can point me to guide in the division of ownership and equity? Your insight is appreciated.

I responded along the lines of money and time put into the business, who had the idea, who will be the CEO, and the issues regarding future dilution.  

What are your thoughts? Please sound off in the comments.

Thanks.

Good PR gets Robert Scoble to break news for Cemaphore product. 22 Finalists named for the Utah Innovation Awards. Solera raises $5m from Canopy Group and the MWCN entrepreneur of the year for 2008 award goes to Amy Rees Anderson of Mediconnect Global, Inc.

Jared Youtsey a senior developer from Configuresoft and Warren Wilbee, a Microsoft Architect Evangelist sit down and discuss how to utilize Microsoft’s WorkFlow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation for building workflow enabled service oriented solutions. Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is the programming model, engine and tools for quickly building workflow enabled applications. WF enhances a developer’s ability to model and support business processes. Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is Microsoft’s unified programming model for building service-oriented applications. It enables developers to build secure, reliable, transacted solutions that integrate across platforms and interoperate with existing investments.

Microsoft ISV Architect Evangelist John Wiese sat down recently with Karl Treier, Chief Technology Architect for Bluespring Software, to talk about building a solution on Microsoft Office Open XML, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Windows Workflow Foundation, and other Microsoft .NET 3.x Framework technologies. They also had a chance to discuss the benefits of Microsoft Early Adopter Program for ISVs and the ISV Concierge site.

How should SmartClient technology integrate with web solutions? VP Development at Vertafore Chris Kinsman talks with Microsoft Architect Evangelist Bruce Kyle about how and why SmartClient deployment of Windows Forms deliver the most value to its financial services customers in the AMS 360 product. And he describes how the Software + Services (S+S) company uses Internet Information Services (IIS) 7 in Windows Server 2008 to the update the data center.

Are you trying to produce a fantastic user experience on the Web? Come spend 15 minutes with Kapil Tundwal and Mohan Dhandapani from Quark’s emerging technologies and Warren Wilbee (ISV Architect Evangelist for Microsoft). Their discussion provides a crisp view of the real world experience of a large software company who is leveraging Silverlight for use with their commercial software package

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, released to manufacturing recently is designed with a single unified-code base for both on-premise and on-demand deployments. It enables customers to choose the right deployment model for their specific business and IT needs with flexibility to change deployment models over time. Sanjay Jain sits down with Doug Wofford President & CEO, and Keith Beindorf VP Product Development of 422 Group to discuss their insights into build/buy/partner decision making process as well as share some key learning and experiences on developing with the MS CRM 4.0 platform.

Boy, I had kind of a strange week. I am really learning (or relearning) that keeping a positive attitude makes all the difference when dealing with difficult situations. At any rate, here are some random thoughts I had from this week:

Skype is a great tool for group collaboration via chat or VOiP. I really love the service.

81% of Americans are disappointed with the direction of the country. My thought is this - what are 81% of Americans doing about it?

I heard a guy on the radio make a very good point this morning. He said that although communication has advanced by light years over the last 50 years the message is still bad. I agree with that. The quality of the message is still very bad. Blogging has helped to flatten out the dissemination of news but I still think blogging is a poor quality channel.

People are really starting to talk about “Web 3.0″. Real or fake is still to be seen. The one thing I know is if Web 3.0 is anything like Web 2.0 and you want to get in the middle of it, well you better move to the bay area.

It was nice to see Phil have a moment of clarity. You rarely see that kind of genuineness (is that a word?) anymore.

The Japanese are building real Transformers:

Although this week was tough - at least I’m not this guy:

At least the guy has a good sense of humor and still posted it on YouTube. That’s got to be staged! Funny!

Have a great weekend!

William Borghetti, founder and CEO of Sendside Networks, is no stranger to big ideas–he sold his last startup, Campus Pipeline, to Sungard after automating inefficient “stand-in-line” processes at Universities. Now, in the same way FedEx® revolutionized traditional mail with overnight delivery, Sendside Networks aims to provide an entirely new way for individuals and organizations to interact and transact electronically. Borghetti and team see a future where businesses replace paper, postage, and delivery time. Instead Borghetti expects businesses to offer an exchange of rich, interactive messages, documents, even full-blown web applications in a trusted messaging environment free of spam, fraud, and phishing scams.

Borghetti’s shares the story with Brad Baldwin from Rocky Mountain Voices and explains why Sendside created an entirely new technology offering for sensitive and confidential communication. Sendside believes SMTP and “bolt-on” solutions (like encryption) just can’t extend SMTP’s life. To protect its vision, Sendside created an IP arsenal filing 16 patents.

Want to send or receive secure messages with complete tracking and guaranteed retraction–even after someone opens it? Sendside Networks opens for public sign-up on April 3, 2008.

Download This:iPod

I’m selling the domains below - please make an offer if you are interested by emailing me at ctknud “at” gmail dotcom…

ASSEENONWEB.TV

CLICKAGENT.NET

DENALISCIENTIFIC.COM

FAMOUSONTHEWEB.COM

LEGAL-CAST.COM

MOUNTAINWORX.COM

SMALLBUSINESSQUESTIONS.COM

UTAHBIZCAST.COM

UTAHBUSINESSRADIO.COM

UTAHTECHCAST.COM

WHATOFFERDOIRUN.COM

DAZ Productions is a market leader in 3D graphics software and content creation. DAZ may be most well known for its “Victoria” line of articulated 3D figures and their popular and active Artzone.com community, a social marketplace for sharing art and exchanging ideas.

The DAZ Studio software –available as a free download, allows anyone to create their own 3D digital figures and content. The figures can be loaded into 3D posing and rendering applications to be posed or animated and then rendered. In addition, a wide variety of clothing, hair and other accessories are available for purchase which can be applied to the figures to achieve different looks.A variety of other support content is available from DAZ as well including such categories as vehicles, buildings, trees and plants, furniture, weapons, etc.

Christopher Creek, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President, describes the business model to Brad Baldwin from Rocky Mountain Voices, and then persuades Baldwin to pose inside a laser scanner that creates a 3D wire-frame model of his own body in 17 seconds.

Download This:iPod

Engadget tells the story: “So last week Deutsche Telekom, owners of the global T-Mobile brand, sent Engadget a late birthday present: a hand-delivered letter direct from their German legal department requesting the prompt discontinuation of the use of the color magenta on Engadget Mobile. Yep, seriously.”

If you read the legalese, the company says it “holds trademark protection for this use of this color in connection with its products and services around the world.”

Since when could you copyright a color, even in connection with a product or service? Ridiculous — otherwise Apple could sue any computer-maker that used the color white (though white’s not really a color, so that opens another can of worms).

Atta way to exploit legal muscle, T-Mobile. Nice form. Really. This totally makes me want to stay with you instead of jumping to AT&T’s iPhone.

OK, first I should probably disclose (for those of you who do not know) that I am the former VP of Business Development at Podango. I left Podango in October 2007 to pursue other opportunities. I’ll comment more on that below but first let me get into this Valleywag story.

Well it looks like someone pissed in a programmer’s cheerios! A former code monkey (I remember the kid but I won’t mention his name - it doesn’t matter) tried to rat out Podango to Valleywag over his pay and funding. The ’story” goes something like this:

“Podango, a podcast advertising network, acquired GigaVox Media in 2007 and launched several shows including Girls Gone Geek. Michael Arrington had the exclusive report on the news. ‘Something tells me it’s going to do okay,’ Arrington wrote. That has turned out not to be the case. At least, that’s according to one Podango employee who tells us he’s had trouble getting paid. ‘I was a developer for podango.com for 2 years,’ the tipster writes. ‘I left Podango 3 weeks ago due to lack of funding.’” 

This “developer” goes on to remark:

“My last 2 pay checks where paid thanks to home equity loans taken out by [the] CEO and president. I have also had a hard time getting my final pay check from them. They claim they are unable to pay me ( $400 after advance repayment ) until they receive funding. The last few months I was at the company they kept promising funding would be coming ‘this friday we should have it…’ was said at least 4 times. In the 2 years I worked there, I never once heard the term “profitable” mentioned, only the far off idea’s of being snapped up by [some] big company…”

OK, where do I start with this? Doug and Lee were always very transparent about things. Sometimes that blows up in your face. I have found that talking to developers about funding is about as useful as talking to accountants about coding. That seems to apply here. I do know that Podango has or had (I don’t know where things stand at this point) a commitment from a Utah-based funding source. I also know that it has taken a little longer to get the money than was originally hoped. So what?

The thing that pisses me off is this comment:

“In the 2 years I worked there, I never once heard the term “profitable” mentioned, only the far off idea’s of being snapped up by [some] big company”

This is the typical brain dead crap you get out of junior programmer types who think they know how to run a company. First, you can’t get to “profitability” without a defined revenue model - that’s step one. Podcast advertising is so new and, frankly, unproven that developing the business model is still very much a work in progress. As the guy who was tasked with figuring that part out - I can tell you it was hit from every possible angle. Profitability isn’t what you go after in the first start up phases - its top line sales - what we call “proving out the model”.

Second, due to regulation like Sarbanes-Oxley, the only real chance a tech company has for an exit is to be “snapped up by some big company”. IPO’s and the accompanying regulation are way too expensive for most content driven Internet companies. So you have no idea what you’re talking about.

I could get into a whole bunch of dirty laundry on the podcasting industry and the inner workings of my former employer, but what’s the point? I wish Podango the best! I sincerely mean that! Lee and I had our disagreements but he’s a good guy. Doug was always great to work with! I hope their funding comes through and that the business model works out. I really hope the rumors about home equity loans are just that…rumors. I don’t think they deserve to get personally cut down on Valleywag by disgruntled former employees. Lastly, I hope that Podcasting as an industry can find its way.

Finally - to the “developer” who kicked all this off - all you’ve done is prove that you’re disgruntled, uneducated, and shallow. For you to go to Valleywag and bag on Podango over $400 just shows what kind of tool you are. If the claim about the home equity line is true then I find it amazing that you would bag on a guy who put his house up for cash to pay you. Does it get any lower than that? You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

Get a clue.

Jordan Clements has been managing partner of Peterson Partners since its inception in 1995. Prior to co-founding Peterson Partners, Jordan was a partner in a San Francisco Bay Area law firm, where he practiced corporate and business law. He holds a law degree from Brigham Young University. He currently serves on the boards of several portfolio companies, including Energy Solutions and 3form.

 Recap
Jordan spoke of many important principles in buisiness and investing. Among them were:
1) Borrow skills from others to complement your weaknesses.
2) There is no coorelation between successful entrepreneurs and formal education.
3) Beware of excessive goal setting; things can happen outside of your control that
     can prevent you from achieving them.
4) Be patient with your career. Career planning is a process of elimination.
5) The golden rule is definitely true in business. Treating others well is in your best
     economic interest.

IDG News (whom I freelance for) reports: “Microsoft’s brand power has been in sharp decline over the past four years, an indication the company is losing credibility and mindshare with U.S. business users, according to a recent study by market research firm CoreBrand.”

I enjoy seeing fat business cows get a proper market cleansing.

(more…)

A Quality Management System, sometimes referred to as a Total Quality Management (TQM) System, is a simple concept that will dramatically improve software production quality over time.

Companies that don’t have a quality system are commonly reacting to production and support issues due to omissive events.

A simple rule of thumb is to ask yourself how many fires your development team has put out this month.  If any come to mind, then chances are you don’t have a proper quality management system in place, and should read on…

I remember early in my career I struggled to get my employees to follow our procedures.  Whenever we’d encounter a production problem with our software, it would inevitably be a result of someone not having completely followed an established procedure. 

We would have a big discussion about what should have happened, and about how “we can’t forget to do that next time,” yet we’d experience the same omission later.

I would get frustrated because I could never seem to find a way to get my team accountable for following our established procedures–until I discovered the “Quality Management System.” 

A Quality Management System has the following three elements (the Three P’s!):

1. Process (documented–most of us have processes or procedures we are supposed to follow.)
2. Proof (a separate checklist, or “receipt” that the process was followed for each software release.)
3. Process-Improvement (a discussion, and then an addition or adjustment to the documented process.)

Most companies have an established–and hopefully documented–software development process.  (If you don’t you can download one from my website for Waterfall, or Agile here.)  This is the first ‘P’ and should be in place at every established development shop.

A great question to ask the team is “How do you know the process was followed for each release?”  This is where you may get the deer in the headlights response.  This is the second ‘P’ and is the piece missing from most software development shops.   

Think of this ’Proof’ document as a checklist accompanying each software release.  The checklist would include every major step in the documented process, names of team members performing specific functions, and locations of final source code, test scripts, install files, etc.  The checklist would also require a series of quality checks.  Ie: Were requirements signed off by the customer, stakeholder, tester, and developer?  Was the help file updated with the new release number and appropriate functionality?  Was the source code checked in?  Where is it located? 

As problems occur, the checklist would be added to so that the product would be protected against a similar failure in the future. 

The governing driver considered here is that one particular problem might broadside the development team once, but after the process is improved, that problem should never occur again.

For example, you might have a stored procedure that goes into production without a “Go” statement at the end.  After the error is discovered, and fixed in production, your team should have a discussion and conclude that a checkbox needs to be added to the quality document stating “All Stored Procedures Confirmed to have ‘Go’ at the end.”

From that point on, whenever a stored procedure is moved into production, the developer presenting it must check for ‘Go’ statements at the end and then sign their name at the bottom of the checklist.

This is the difference between process improvement, and hope.  Many companies view process improvement as a discussion and some verbal affirmations.  What they are really doing is “hoping.”

Actually, the “act” of process improvement is physically altering a written process or procedure.  This is the real definition of process improvement–the third ‘P.’

The final endpoint of a quality management system is to achieve excellence.  I’ve heard excellence defined once as “Crisp execution of established procedures.”

You can’t have excellence without procedures, proof, and process-improvement.

Mike J. Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com

Lately I’ve been meeting with a lot of budding entrepreneurs to talk about ideas they have or businesses they have started. I really enjoy getting together and talking with like-minded people. Just today I met with a fellow Westminster grad who has built a great little outsource programming shop. On the side, he and his developers bang out ideas that he comes up with. The problem is that they come up with a good idea then another cool idea comes along and they move on. So they’ve built some cool stuff but they’ve never really taken their extracurricular activity anywhere. Why? Well, as he admitted to me, there’s no focus on one idea.

I can relate! I’ve been through it myself and I’ve seen it with countless other entrepreneurs. About a year ago I came up with a new process for myself for evaluating my own ideas and whether or not they are worth pursuing. I’ll give the first couple of steps because they are the most important.

First, I write the idea down on a document I have with a bunch of other running ideas. I write down why I like it and some potential URLs. Second, and this is the most important step, I shelve the idea for a month. That’s right, I put it away, let it ferment, and forget about it. I figure if I still like it a month from now then it may be worth taking to step three. Step three is to talk to 10 people I trust about the idea and get their opinion. I also contact potential customers to assess if they really have a need for my idea. If that goes well then you act on/think about team, money, product dev, etc, etc, etc…

Since implementing this process I took an idea (that wasn’t originally mine but I did come up with the business model) all the way to a funding offer. We didn’t take the money. Some people would say that was a mistake - it wasn’t for so many reasons. Many, many other ideas sit as words on a document and that’s probably all they will ever be.

That brings me to another point. The thing I see more often than anything else is a good idea hatched by the wrong team. Good ideas are a dime a dozen. So the real challenge is finding the right team to take the idea all the way to exit. I love the idea of finding the right team then wrapping a great idea around that team - an idea that FITS that team. Stop trying to make your team fit your idea. Most of the time it doesn’t work.   

OK, so let me embarrass myself and drop some of my ideas that have never made it past the 30 day test (meaning I dumped the idea for some good reason). I’d love to get your take…

- A “techmeme” type site that tracks finance/economy news and blogs. Revenue model = ads

- A area code or address proximity restaurant guide for mobile devices. Revenue model = ads

- A Google Q&A phone service. This would be like the 411 service in NYC. So a person or a small business would call a 800 number, enter their credit card number, then speak with a Google expert. I think a lot of people with SEO and adwords/adsense questions would call. Since Google’s support sucks this idea could have legs (until Google un-sucks their support). Revenue model = per minute charge to talk.

- A “hot or not” type site for ranking celebrities on the A,B,C and D list. Revenue model = ads. I own the domain FamousOnTheWeb.com and I thought it might be a good idea for the domain. Americans are obsessed with celebrity.

- Ultimate online guide to tech trade shows. Revenue model = ads and affiliate deals with conference promoters.

- I’d love to wrap an idea around another domain I own: AsSeenOnWeb.TV. Any ideas? 

Why do most of these ideas stink? Because they’re mostly content plays. In order for a content site to make any real money you need a lot of traffic. In order to build traffic you need a lot of money. I think you see where this is going. Legendary Silicon Valley investor Ron Conway recently said that of 200 ideas he has none of them are Internet content plays. The Google help line idea has a huge upfront investment and numerous other problems that disqualify it. The URL’s? Well I think you can build a business around a good URL (Business.com is a great example) but these URL’s aren’t that great.

At any rate…what are some of your ideas?

Contrary to popular belief suggesting that radical transparency is the best modern way to operate a business, Apple has circled its competition by being radically opaque, according to Wired Magazine.

No other company has proven as adept at giving customers what they want before they know they want it. Undoubtedly, this is due to Jobs’ unique creative vision. But it’s also a function of his management practices. By exerting unrelenting control over his employees, his image, and even his customers [while endorsing secrecy], Jobs exerts unrelenting control over his products and how they’re used. And in a consumer-focused tech industry, the products are what matter.

Though I believe Steve Jobs is a management anomaly, there’s obviously more than one way to make an honest buck. In any case, follow the Wired link for an insightful and challenging viewpoint on closed communication.