2014 Jan 29

ESPN's Big Red Warning Sign

ESPN has been slowly and (somewhat) quietly investing in live Internet streaming of its sports events. Recently, that quiet broke with a series of interviews, notably in the WSJ this week. As the interviews highlight, and I find impressive, ESPN from an operational perspective treats its "WatchESPN" Internet app as on par, or nearly so, with its pay TV subscribers. The HQ control room in Bristol, CT, has parallel video feeds and trackers, and a specialized app for Damon Phillips, the head of WatchESPN, to manage the usage tally.

2014 Jan 27

The Beauty of Culture, the Incentives of DevOps

Traditional software development looks something like this: Product management defines the product specifications, gives it to technical leadership Technical leadership / architecture defines the technical specifications, gives it to the engineers Software engineering builds the product, gives it to quality assurance (QA) QA tests the product, sends it back to engineering to fix any failures, when passed gives it to operations Operations deploys the product, and maintains it in production While this process varies somewhat in steps 1-2-3 for agile development, creating more of a feedback loop, the essentials of steps 3-4-5 remain the same.

2014 Jan 23

Religion, State, and Operating Systems

A religion, a state and an operating system walk into a bar... A few weeks back, Charlie Stross wrote a great pieceexplaining the relationship between operating systems and religion. Just like religion, operating systems sprang from one "true" source, which then split, diversified, sometimes peacefully, sometimes more violently - fortunately, in the world of operating systems, violence means the silent treatment or perhaps a little economic warfare, and nothing like the Eighty Years War, the Hundred Years War, or the Spanish Armada - but continues to split as each church views its specific focus on the truth as the One True Way, and all others as heresy.

2014 Jan 22

You Cannot Absorb a Culture By Acquiring It

Right at the start of the Web 2.0 phenomenon, I heard Esther Dyson speak at a conference in New York. If I recally correctly, she was the keynote speaker. Besides her technology investments, she sat on the Board of one of the largest advertising companies. The company was concerned, justifiably, about the rapid growth of online media and advertising, and had neither the relationships nor the experience, let alone the critical culture, to build into that market.

2014 Jan 21

Putting Optics on the Target

I love incentives. They can explain strange behaviours and can help motivate people (inside and outside organizations). Incentives are all about Target's latest behaviour. After the last breach in which at least 40MM credit cards were stolen, Target's CEO is now in favour of a chip-on-card system. This is unsurprising; after all, merchants often get held responsible for fraudulent charges - and chargebacks that are validated often come with a hefty fixed fee for the merchant per chargeback - and Target is especially vulnerable after having been responsible for its breach.

2014 Jan 14

Oracle and easyJet

What does Oracle have to do - or not - with easyJet? Last week, I flew my first easyJet flight, Tel Aviv (TLV) to London Luton (LTN). Overall, the experience was positive. Purchasing online was easy, no games with return flights or Saturday night stays, the flight crew was pleasant and simple and no complaints about what is included (nothing). I have always loved transparent pricing. The boarding process in Tel Aviv was a nightmare, but that was mainly because the main terminal has no more check-in space, which meant checking in at the old terminal and then a bus to the new one, which itself turned a half hour check in process to more than two hours.

2014 Jan 13

Emmy Awards for Piracy

HBO's fantasy series "Game of Thrones" has won numerous awards, including 8 Emmy Awards (full list on Wikipedia). Yet, according to HBO parent Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, the fact that Game of Thrones is also the single most pirated TV show in the world is "better than an Emmy." I have written before, based on research done by my Duke professor, that adding digital rights management - the annoying technology that protects music and movies from copying - reduces not only piracy but also actual sales for a net loss.

2014 Jan 7

The Pogue-Mossberg Media Slam

In a period of just 3 months, the two top media technology writers - maybe the top two - have left their employers. In October 2013, David Pogue left the NYTimes to work at Yahoo. Then, at the end of December 2013, Walt Mossberg left the WSJ to start an independent company called Re/Code. Despite the decimation of old-line newspapers in the last decade, both the NYTimes, having gone through its crisis and effective purchase by Carlos Slim, and the WSJ appear to be holding it together reasonably well in the digital age.

2014 Jan 2

Even Wireless Beasts Listen When You Tweet

Fortunately for all, despite the rhyming title, this post does not announce my entry into a new career in poetry. About a month ago, a customer complaining about mobile service ended up drawing T-Mobile and AT&T into a public war over his account; even T-Mobile CEO John Legere stepped into the fray. How the world has changed. Twenty years ago, this was impossible. You could walk into the store and complain, send a fax, or write a strongly-worded letter.

2013 Dec 31

Advertising Where There Are No Customers?

Here's a conundrum: What does it mean when a company advertises for customers... in a place where almost none of its customers exist? Better yet, what if that location is particularly expensive? A friend of mine recently told me that he was diagnosed years ago with hypothyroidism. He took the medication Synthroid for several years. One day, he was reading the New York Times Sports section, and saw an as for a law firm that had a class action lawsuit against Abbott Laboratories, the manufacturer of Synthroid.