You can quibble with parts of this speech by Paul Graham (one of the developers of Viaweb), but I found this part interesting in terms of the Jacksonville economy:
With this amount of noise in the signal, it's hard to tell good hackers when you meet them. I can't tell, even now. You also can't tell from their resumes. It seems like the only way to judge a hacker is to work with him on something.And this is the reason that high-tech areas only happen around universities. The active ingredient here is not so much the professors as the students. Startups grow up around universities because universities bring together promising young people and make them work on the same projects. The smart ones learn who the other smart ones are, and together they cook up new projects of their own.
One of the somewhat hidden treasures of the First Coast is FCCJ, known nationally for its technological programs. In the long run, I think, the school is important because it can bring together creative people and get them working together on projects that will have long-term impact.
Another example of things that make the Internet great ...
Ever wonder why Yahoo! is called Yahoo!, or why SAAB is written all in caps? Or just curious about who, exactly, McDonald's and Kawasaki were named after? Well, wonder no more.
The Wikipedia -- a free, user-created encyclopedia -- includes a list of company name etymologies, running the gamut from ABN AMRO to Zeus. (Well, technically from 3M, since they start with numbers, but that doesn't sound as good.)
Coming on the heels of this article, I'm beginning to wonder how any work gets done in England. Today, the Guardian offers a book excerpt that ponders why we're so obsessed with being busy:
For all modern society's promises of leisure, liberty and doing what you want, most of us are still slaves to a schedule we did not choose. Why have things come to such a pass? Well, the forces of the anti-idle have been at work since the fall of man.
We're not about to urge people to try making a living out of playing the lottery, but for a couple of guys in Missouri, figuring out the math behind the luck turned a Pick 3 game into a sure thing.
The numbers the lottery drew in Thursday's midday Pick 3 game were 4-5-2 in the regular drawing and 1-4-4 in a bonus drawing that Seidel says guaranteed him a 20 percent return on the $23,000 of chances he and his friends bought, at $1 a pop.That was an easy $4,600 in profit that they cashed in on Thursday afternoon and Friday.
"It was just a business transaction," Seidel said of the plan Friday, after reaping the bulk of his winnings from a Dierbergs store, where a manager ushered him and his friends in a back room to dole out several thousand dollars.
When Comcast made its unsolicited bid for Disney back in February, it seemed like an odd move: Comcast is an infrastructure company: It's supposed to just supply the pipes that companies like Disney provide the programming to send down.
In an in-depth interview with Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast (Jacksonville's cable operatore). we find out how the company is looking at the future, and why the Disney deal was so important to the company:
Like a card player who has tipped his hand, Mr. Roberts acknowledged with the bid that Comcast needed more exclusive programming to complement its national cable network. The combination would have transformed Comcast from an ordinary cable operator - of the type that are increasingly being treated by Wall Street like reliable but slow-growing utilities - into a media company with the clout to battle Time Warner, Viacom and the News Corporation.
Following up on the last post, here, via Gizmodo, is a review of another, non-Apple, traveling access point:
SMC has thrown the kitchen sink into its traveler’s access point, a street price $99 device that has the full complement of Wi-Fi options
This is a little on the techy side of things, but this discussion on using Airport Express in hotel rooms might be of interest to business travelers (or the sort of people who bring their laptops/WiFi devices everywhere they go).
The conversation started with the author explaining how he used his AX to bridge a wired connection to his laptop. The real value, though, might be in the comments readers have added:
We've done something similiar to what Colin Smith described above. We had three people that needed to work together in the hotel room, so one of us connected to the hotel LAN network, charged the $10 to their room and then created a wireless network using their powerbook. Then the two other people connected to that powerbook wirelessly.
This review of a Willing Slaves, a book by Madeleine Bunting is the sort of thing that makes you wonder why we bother to work at all.
Hard work was supposed to bring wealth and satisfaction. Instead, argues Bunting, with an abundance of statistics and anecdotes to back her up, it has brought worry, illness, poverty and debt. Why do so many of us voluntarily submit ourselves to low, low wages, long, long hours and high stress? Why do we willingly enslave ourselves?
Mark Hurst's claim to fame is popularizing the idea that customer experience matters, that it's not just nice to have, say, a website that's easy to use, but that it's vital for a company's bottom line.
In his blog, Hurst is now talking about why advertising isn't the key to keeping customers:
The most effective companies realize that they can't succeed on advertising alone; the customer matters. For those companies operating online, customer experience isn't a list of "website usability guidelines." Instead, customer experience requires a transformation of the company's strategy, backed up by the organization, investing with a reasonable budget.
This is what's cool about the Internet. A Microsoft intern gets to have dinner (as part of a group) with Bill Gates — and through the intern's blog, everyone can get a peak at this once-in-a-lifetime sort of opportunity.
Jeff Maurone writes:
In ten minutes there was a donut or toroid of geekdom surrounding Bill that was three or four people deep, but after a few minutes I had worked my way to the front and got to spend about two hours standing with him, talking to him, and mostly listening to his responses to other people's questions.
(On a sidenote, and perhaps just because of my own geekery, I love the preciseness of "toroid" in that description.)
Working at a call center anywhere has always seemed like a tough job, but it the Indians who have recently taken charge of a large chunk of that market seem to be having a particularly hard time adjusting.
Now, to help the industry survive there -- and to cut down on employee turnover, which can top 100 percent -- the outsourcing call centers are trying to help Indians seem more American.
Reports the Los Angeles Times:
The Indians responded according to their own deepest natures: They were silent when they didn't understand, and they often committed to more than their employers could deliver. They would tell the Americans that someone would get back to them tomorrow to check on their problems, and no one would.Customer satisfaction plummeted. The U.S. clients grew alarmed. Some even returned their business to U.S. call centers.
Realizing that a new multibillion-dollar industry with 150,000 employees was at risk, Indian call centers have recently embarked on much more comprehensive training. New hires are taught how to express empathy, strategies to successfully open and close conversations, and above all how to be assertive, however unnatural it might feel.
Posted by tgibbons at 06:09 PM
Here's another kinda-personal-finance sort of thing -- but one that fits well within the "news you can use" focus of Getting Ahead.
With the number of options and technological changes in television sets, simply buying something to zone out in front of in the evenings has become ever more complicated. To that end, Technology360 offers a primer on how to buy a television.
TV buying is much more complicated than it used to be.In the past 50 years, there haven't been many features to pick from, and once optional things like UHF tuners, remote controls, color, stereo and cable channel tuning have all become standard. The main constant over the years was a choice of picture size.
Now, there are SIX different decisions to make and the choices within decisions keep changing. This confounds even the experts. So don't feel alone in your quest!
I find it somewhat ironic that the big box electronics retailers have all moved to non-commissioned -- which often means not as well trained -- sales staff at a time when the products they sell have gotten more complicated.
Standford Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig has compiled a collection of quotes from Jack Valenti, who has stepped down as president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, where he was the industry's chief lobbyist.
Valenti, of course, has been a staunch opponent of various forms of technology that do not include digitial rights managment schemes, while Lessig is one of the foremost proponents of freedom of ideas, acclaimed for arguing "against interpretations of copyright that could stifle innovation and discourse online."
The best Valenti quote, I think, is his statement arguing against the VCR, which has created a hugely profitable distribution channel for the film industry. When the device was introduced, though, the movie lobbyist said:
"[Some say] that the VCR is the greatest friend that the American film producer ever had. I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."
This squeezes into the personal finance category enough to fit into the Getting Ahead blog, I think.
FindYourSpot is a website that will help narrow down where you'd be happy living (Jacksonville, happily, scored high on my list.)
The quiz goes through size of cities, cost of living, type of climate and other intangibles that you might not think of while considering your options. If nothing else, it's not a bad way to kill a few minutes.
Greece has been getting ready for the Olympic Games for years, with the country having spent billions of dollars on facilities and venues. Still, with the Opening Ceremonies just weeks away, there's concern that the entire event might be a fisaco.
No matter how the Games go off, the events will provide plenty of fodder for executives looking ahead to the next Olympics -- and, we might suggest, to the organizers of Super Bowl XXXVIII.
Already, Wharton Business School has taken a look at the problems facing the Olympics and what they mean from a marketing standpoint:
“At the end of the day, a lack of ticket sales hurts Athens far more than the International Organizing Committee” for the Olympics, says Rosner, who is co-author of a book titled, The Business of Sports. And this may be appropriate. “The lack of organization, whether real or perceived, by the Athens organizing committee has made people wonder whether these games will be a disaster,” Rosner notes.
Just another public service announcement, reminding you to update your virus software, for your own protection and for other's.
All those virus-laden e-mails you've been seeing? Yep, things are getting worse:
The number of new viruses detected during the first six months of 2004 is up 21 per cent on the same period last year.The first six months of the year have been characterised by a number of big-name viruses - most notably Sasser and huge number of Netsky variants.
Canadian blogger (and Tucows tech guru) AccordianGuy has some interesting thoughts on why breakup e-mails listing what's wrong with the break-up-ee (if that's a word) in bullet listsare becoming more common.
His guess: the effects that PowerPoint has wrought upon the culture.
I think that the "Dear Jane" emails that those people received were inspired by elements of office culture: PowerPoint, project post-mortems and annual performance reviews. Of the people who told me that they were dumped via email, all of their boyfriends worked white-collar jobs in which they either sat through or made PowerPoint presentations.
When I did a story on PowerPoint last year, I was amazed to find that there's widespread hatred of the program. Much of the opposition comes from people who believe that the way PowerPoint forces presenters into dumbed-down, overly simplistic presentations doesn't just make for boring meetings, but actually warps the way people think.
Creative director Hugh MacLeod -- famous for the cartoons he draws on the back of business cards -- offers a primer on how to be creative.
Why being creative is important is summed up in his eighth point:
8. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.Nor can you bully a subordinate into becoming a genius.
What's often missing from discussions about creativity (but isn't from this one) is how much hard work is required to be creative. Oftentimes we act as though some people are just naturally creative and others not; more realistically, I think, creativity is like any other skill that must be honed and practiced.
I mentioned the NYT's article on credit below. Here's some other interesting Sunday business stories I came across (while all of you, of course, were reading my interesting business story):
A Boston Globe survey of 572 delegates to the Democratic National Convention found that the majority spent less than $500 during their stay here and that more than half never ventured into the city's neighborhoods, confining their stay to the convention floor, hotel ballrooms, and the air-conditioned comfort of their chartered buses.
(This is similar to what happened in Savannah during the G-8 Summit: By making security tight, so that leaving the convention center is difficult, and then compounding it by having all of the food and entertainment you need at the meeting site, visitors are unlikely to head off the reservation.)
When the Portland archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in early July, it was trying to protect itself from hundreds of millions of dollars in damages sought by people who claim they were sexually abused by priests. It's the same strategy often used by corporations faced with legal judgments they can't afford to--or don't think they should have to--pay.
Who is right? The answer is far from clear, but a visit to Wisconsin Dells, a sprawling collection of water parks and roller coasters about 60 miles north of Madison, offers some clues. Many people here felt that their incomes were not keeping up with costs anymore, and there was a gnawing sense among some that the rich were getting richer. At the same time, most people expressed guarded confidence that job opportunities would improve.
If that was the flood, here's the deluge: So far this year, the number of new toothpastes -- meaning new brands, flavors, functions or packaging -- is a jaw-dropping 96. And that's just a microcosm of what's happening in the entire oral care category.
Their decision also provides a revealing case study for executives, business school professors and water cooler conversationalists: How should CEOs make such pivotal personnel choices? Should age, bottom-line cost or character be the decisive factor? Was there a third way that would have allowed the two massive egos to share the same court? Or should their failure to put personal differences aside have gotten both of them fired?
I recently purchased a new car, giving me the opportunity to deal first-hand with credit reports, credit scores and inaccurate information.
While reading the New York Times yesterday, it was interesting to see that having to tussle with the credit reporting industry is becoming a more widespread issue. (free registration required.)
Mr. Graham, 41, who lives in Oxford, Mich., and owns a business making foot and ankle braces, learned how hard it can be to clean up one's credit history, even when it is soiled in error.Sometimes the dispute is over a small sum. Other cases may involve identity theft or something as ludicrous as being listed as dead. (It happens.) But once bad information is on file, removing it can be difficult.