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Cloud computing

Hey! You! Get onto the right cloud!

Posted May 25, 2011

cloud

I dreamed I died and went to computer heaven. And lo, I had passed to the next realm, and found myself standing before the great and awesome entrance to my celestial reward, and there was a nerd in a business suit with no tie holding a tablet. And lo, upon that tablet was my life story, and he was regarding it with clinical detachment.

“Welcome to the Bill (formerly Pearly) Gates,” he said. You have been sent to this entrance because your office was completely PC and Microsoft windows-based. Unless you select the negative option, you will be assigned to our cloud.” And lo, I looked beyond him and I saw a very well-organized cloud looming up over his shoulder. And it was not a pleasant-looking cloud, but clearly a very efficient and huge one, centralized and massive, and subject to perhaps too much intrusion by the viruses, worms and other minions of Hell that loomed beneath. Was this the cloud in which I wanted to pass all eternity? I was not sure.

And then I noticed that somewhere over to my left there was another entrance to heaven entirely. It was staffed by a group of friendly-looking young androids in relaxed garb, and they were beckoning to me. “Over here!” said one. “We have a cloud, too!” said the other. I sauntered over, ignoring the baleful eye of the guardian of Bill’s Gates. “Once you reject our cloud, we won’t be responsible for the consequences,” the angel muttered darkly.

“Welcome to Sergey & Larryland!” said the jolly androids that flocked around the other entryway. “We have no Gates here!” said one. “We’re an open system!” They all started to sing. “I’d like to teach the world to browse in perfect harmony!” and dance about. It was jolly, but a little unnerving.

And in the distance, I beheld a very tasty and friendly-looking cloud, puffy and white and a lot less organizational and looming than the one I had seen previously. It made me a little nervous, though. It was obviously a relatively new cloud, and I would have to abandon my customary Outlook to enjoy it to the fullest. Learning a new e-mail system, one that I had always employed for personal use, and using it for heavy-duty lifting… the idea sort of scared me.

“Get over here!” said the guy by the big, scary Gates. “Come on in!” said the gaggle of Googlers. The two clouds reared up before me, each with its own allure and uncertainties. And in my dream I knew that I would be here in heaven for a long time and the choice that I would make at this crossroads would last until the end of time. “I don’t know!” I screamed in my dream. And I was sorely confused.

And then from the vault above God him/herself appeared in a huge Hybrid Cadillac Escalade and his/her voice was like thunder. “Some mistake has been made!” he/she said. “You are not ready! Be gone!” And I was spun, yelling my head off, back into the mortal realm that lies beneath the cloud, where I found myself in my bed, my remote hard drive that stores all my essential information by my side.

“Thank God,” I said, hugging my local hardware. ”The clouds are beautiful, but there is plenty of time for that!” And then I rose, dressed, and went to work, my flash drive with all my documents on it resting happily in my very own personal pocket.

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E-Mail

Get Gmail. Now. Or else.

Posted April 15, 2010

During the course of the last year or so, I have detected a trend in corporate life that bears momentary scrutiny, then universal action by anybody who wants to remain standing in the years to come. It’s this: your corporation has the right to look at your e-mail.  Mostly, they will not do this, because they know that once they do, you’re probably cooked. So they do it with increasing regularity, but only to people against whom they want to build a case. And once they do, there’s a 99% shot that case is made.

Let me put it another way. No matter how careful you are, no matter how thoughtful and responsible, there are things in your e-mail that are against corporate policy. Did you send that smutty little joke or picture you found amusing to friends around the nation and the world? Did you make a nasty comment about your boss to a colleague? About a colleague to your boss? Did you try to flirt with somebody in language not totally appropriate to the Board Room? Did you troll the internet for saucy stuff that might shock the General Counsel? Did you argue with your spouse about the cost of early childhood education, conversation that took up the better part of a week and many working hours?  How about your divorce? How much company bandwidth did you occupy during that period? Last November, when that search firm was talking to you, did you reply on Outlook? Having an affair, were you? Are you? How long an e-mail chain did that create on the Company’s dime?

My pal Bannister runs a Marketing firm. One day the head of Security came to see him. Seems an employee of his, let’s call him Burns, had been acting suspiciously. His subordinates were worried about him. So Security, which works for HR, checked his e-mail. Whoa. Loads of objectionable stuff. Porn, mostly. Some random trolling for unmentionables on Craigslist. A record of random, mysterious assignations. And that was that. Burns had to go. They had it on paper. Too much of him had leaked out into an official record that is checked only when a certain bell has tolled.

Then there’s my friend Dorkin. He’s in the Tech Sector. Everybody seems very relaxed there, but they’re really not. They’re just as corporate as anybody, they just wear backpacks instead of briefcases. His boss hates him.  They both know it. Recently, his boss tried to move against him, but he failed, in that case. So it’s pretty clear he went to HR and said, “How can I get rid of this guy?” And HR said what it generally says more and more these days, “We have the right to look at his e-mail.” And they do, you know.

Even the erased stuff. Even the stuff you erased years ago, when you were having that mid-life crisis at 40. Remember what you were into then? Uh-huh. Like an open book to them, that is. So they checked on Dorkin, and guess what they found. Bad things. Not bad things if you compare him to Slobodon Milosevic or Bernie Madoff or even the guys at the SEC who made Bernie Madoff happen. But bad enough, by corporate standards. Personal things. Ooky things for your boss, his boss, and the head of HR to know about you. Isn’t there something on your system that might fit that bill?

They had a talk with Dorkin. It was not pretty. Now he’s hanging on by a thread. And there aren’t a lot of opportunities for a guy at his level in Chicago, or anywhere, for that matter.

The game has changed. Electronic communications has gained a powerful ubiquity in our lives. The trail of our existence is left like snails leave slime over every digital surface we touch. Just ask Tiger Woods. There’s nothing private anymore, once it hits the cloud.

So we have to change. If it’s business, stay on the system. If it’s funny or warm or stupid or personal or revealing or random or candid in any way, on the other hand, get yourself a Gmail account and use it. Anything else, you’re like a dog rolling over to show its tender belly in the face of a predator. You’ve been warned.

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China

China and Google: Two nations at war

Posted March 23, 2010

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather live in Google than in China. That’s why, as the armies line up today to begin what could very well be a protracted war between these two great nations, my home will be flying the flag of the guys from Mountain View, not Beijing.

First of all, people who live in Google have 20% of their time to do whatever they want. That’s a really nice thing for all those citizens of Google to enjoy, since it’s my understanding that citizens of China have less than 1% of their time to do what they want, unless what they want involves riding a bicycle, in which case they have almost 100% of their time to do that.

People in Google can dress as they desire, pretty much, as long as they don’t wear a tie or uncomfortable shoes. Most citizens of China, on the other hand, don’t have that range of options. They can either wear pyjamas or, on special occasions, business suits with constricting neckwear. I have seen pictures of people in China dressed rather informally, in slacks and tee shirts, but it’s my suspicion that those people probably work for Google there, or wish they did.

Citizens of Google, also, don’t live under onerous censorship, unless you count the residents of YouTube, which is so clean it practically squeaks. Those who live in China, on the other hand, never get to see anything the government doesn’t want them to see. This can get boring, as anybody who has been forced to view a local access government-run cable channel can tell you. Imagine long city council meetings on every TV channel, and the results on those meetings the predominant form of information on the web. Pretty dreary, huh?

While the average Google person makes about as much as his or her Chinese counterpart, those with more senior titles and positions can do better. Most of us like there to be some upside, at least conceptually, and the citizens of Google enjoy that aspirational dimension in their everyday lives, while your Chinese worker does not.

Of course, the Chinese have Chinese food everywhere, readily accessible 24/7/365.  It’s almost impossible to get good Chinese food in Mountain View, and those serious about the effort have to travel almost 90 minutes to San Francisco to enjoy anything comparable.

I realize that I’m rooting for the underdog here, at least in terms of military might. The Chinese have millions of soldiers, with guns and rockets and bombs and everything. Google has nothing but Sergey, Larry, Eric and a cadre of some 10,000 souls in uniform and ready for the coming engagement. China has clever weapons, like poisoned toothpaste. Google doesn’t. So time will tell who will prevail in the end. One thing is for sure. Nobody’s ever made any money betting against Google.

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bingstuff

I want to be acquired by Mark Zuckerberg

Posted March 9, 2010

I just spent a couple of days in San Francisco, the land of the nine-digit idea.

Every town has its prevailing topic of conversation. In Los Angeles, it’s Julia and Tom and Ari and who’s in turnaround and who just dumped their agency to go with another agency another guy just dumped. In New York, it’s hedges and wedges and bonuses and who just got that six-acre estate in Connecticut, or lost it, who’s acquiring what and which and who.

In Miami, it’s corned beef or cocaine, depending on your demographic. And in San Francisco, it’s all about the guy who just turned 30 and received $300,000,000 for his little company that didn’t do anything all that different from any other company except that it made Google (GOOG) or Facebook nervous, so they had to buy it to sleep at night.

It’s never eight digits. Nobody ever sold their start-up, which provides hosting for micro-packages that skim information for dweezles, for $10,000,000, or even $99,000,000. It’s always more than $100,000,000. Nobody works for chump change. Several older guys, who are now in their, like, mid-30s, have turned around two or three start-ups, monetizing each one for nine digits, and are now once again hard at work in a strip mall above a Starbucks (SBUX), honking away with a couple of engineers at a social network that will hopfrog over Facebook and integrate user experiences into a interface that will fuse their brains to the digital ecosphere.

I don’t mind telling you it all made me kind of jealous. I’ve been working at a pretty big job for quite some time, and according to my calculations I would have to work for another 1,816 years to approach a nine-digit payday, and after taxes it would certainly come out to only eight digits, or if Mr. Obama has his way, only seven.

Worse, the lifestyle out in the San Jose-Mountain View-Redwood City-San Francisco-East Bay axis is almost insultingly humane. People wander in at 10. Everybody dresses like their mommies just put their outfits together for their first day of Kindergarten. Healthy food and beverages are supplied in big, shiny refrigerators. Nobody seems to be yelling. At dinner, I heard a story about a boss that did yell and throw chairs around, but he’s out of the business now, having monetized his start-up for, that’s right, nine digits. He’s old now. Over 40,  think.

I figure my only chance to hit this vein of California gold, is to execute a three part strategy:

1. Spend more time in San Francisco, getting to know people there and taking a lot of meetings;

2. Invent a bunch of applets for the Apple IMachines — IPods, IPads, IPhones, or conversely, some kind of user experience that in some way piggybacks on Facebook, annoying Mark Zuckerberg to the point where he feels he has to pay me to go away, acquiring my little start-up and subsuming it into his huge corporate body the way an antibody eats a microbe;

3. Get to know as many venture capitalists as I can, and learn the way they talk. I learned several new terms hanging around with them yesterday, but I’m not going to share them with you, because knowledge it power and you could certainly be thinking about this kind of stuff right now instead of wasting your time worrying about sales, customers and daily operations.

The business of America is not business. It’s monetizing vaporous start-ups that involve mystical social networking. As of right now, I’m getting with the program. Time is money.

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Eric Schmidt

Government by Google

Posted February 25, 2010

You’ll have to excuse me but I’m just so excited that I can barely type. I just finished watching Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, elsewhere on this site, and the implications of what he said for our nation just fill me with hope or something.

Knowing all the problems that we face as a country, and the difficulties our government has to face in trying to solve them, it’s good to know that somebody who really knows how to run something is thinking about the big picture.

Some things that Mr. Schmidt said:

  • It would be very, very easy for Google to track and measure all the activities of the government. All they’d have to do is ask.
  • He doesn’t understand the way legislation gets bogged down with earmarks and special-interest riders, etc., and would love to get in there, observe, record and measure all the activities of our legislators and others in the Administration who are making policy;
  • He is absolutely flabbergasted that the government has not invited a firm like Google in to monitor and measure its activities.
  • The Founders of this nation — presumably excluding those who wrote The Federalist papers — envisioned a country without a strong, centralized government. They wanted the states to make all the important decisions.

Not since the old segregationist days of the 50s and 60s have I heard that persuasive argument used with such aplomb. It was followed by a rather genial, populist statement opining on how a lot of the key decisions in our society should be made on a local level. This would presumably include pesky questions on subjects like… copyright, maybe? Who can say. One thing is for sure: nobody’s against localism. Localism is the new Quality.

I know this has been a tough time for America. So it’s nice to know that a smart, efficient business entity is on hand to provide policy guidance, surveillance and measurement, bringing business rigor to the messy process of governance.

Not too long ago, another society effected a smooth merger of government, business and the military, so that each would efficiently serve the needs of the others. Let’s see. Their symbol was a bunch of white birch rods bundled together. What did they call that again? I can’t quite remember. But I do recall that they succeeded in making the trains run on time.

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GOOG

Google the Underdog?

Posted August 28, 2009

ballmerThe massive machinery of the tech business is mobilizing against a common adversary. That’s right, in spite of all it’s done to transform our world and define free, open digital space, nobody in the business seems to like the Goog (GOOG). In fact, the operators of the Death Star in Redmond (MSFT) have reportedly taken the point on a new “screw Google” strategy that they are rolling out in Washington.

It’s always amazing to me how the most rapacious monopolistic capitalists — opponents of even the most rational regulation that might affect their revenue picture — hump it to Washington for highly targeted relief when they think a certain form of regulatory action would hurt their adversaries. The bottom line here seems to be that nobody is against ALL regulation. They’re just against the unfair government intervention that has something to do with THEM.

I’ve heard it in confabs, gatherings and business meetings, and you read about it in the reports of those sagacious analysts who have done us so little good over the years, particularly recently. Goog has jumped the shark. Goog is going to invade your backyard and drain your above-ground pool. Goog this. Goog that. Boo!

Now here comes Microsoft to lead a band of other fiercely independent competitors who are seeking to make Washington do what they can’t — squash the Goog before, like a wild beast acquired as a baby, it grows to adult size and eats every living thing in sight. Dailyfinance.com reports that “one source familiar with the meetings says, ‘Law Media Group has several people who work full-time on Google-bashing. Everybody knows Microsoft is trying to throw roadblocks at Google and knock them off their game. Microsoft is trying to harm Google in the regulatory, legal, and litigation arenas because they’re having problems with Google in the competitive marketplace.’”

No question that the Goog has pushed the envelope and continues to do so. Scanning books before they asked for permission to do so, for instance. Or doing creepy things with your gmail. Like, a few months ago I wrote a friend of mine on my gmail account, beginning the note with my usual inane salutation: “Dude!” As I continued to type my message, I noticed that a number of ads were scrolling down the righthand side of my screen. “Wax your surfboard!” one of them said. “Surfing vacations!” said another. That gave me the hiccups for a minute. They tell me that whole process is automated and they’re NOT reading my mail. And of course I believe them.

At the same time, you’ve got to wonder about the whole strategy of the anti-Googlers. First, because in my view Google is smart. Second, because if you bring down the biggest, snazziest ship in the armada the rest of your fleet may be sucked into the downdraft. Third, perhaps most importantly, has Washington, once engaged, ever produced a little bit of regulation? And would we all truly benefit from the closing of that frontier?

Follow Stanley Bing on Twitter at twitter.com/thebingblog

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Facebook

Would YOU pay for YOUR webcruise?

Posted August 17, 2009

twitterRupert Murdoch says that he plans to put his content, which covers the known world and some others as well, behind a firewall so that people will have to pay for it. He thinks the future of web content will be pay-as-you-go. Today’s New York Times has a nice puff piece today about the Financial Times, which also charges people for access to its content on the internet. So on the one hand, there seems to be a groundswell moving to make charging for content the hipster move on the web.

On the other hand, the only really hot spots in the cloud are free. Would anybody pay for YouTube? If it cost 5-cents per tweet, would there be so many tweeters? How about Facebook? Would millions of lonely, homebound losers be encapsulating their lives in all their digital splendor if they had to whip out a credit card to do so? Or Google? Would we thoughtlessly search a billion times a year if at the end of every month we were awarded a bill that tabulated the cost of every click?

My opinion is that media has always been driven by advertising that users can choose to entertain or ignore. Even newspapers — which would seem to break that mold by charging a pittance for their content — have been subsidized by their advertising for centuries. The moment I hit a site that asks me for money, I simply navigate to calmer waters.

How about you? The big media outlets are all abuzz with the financial plans of online entities to move to a new business model based on subscriptions. Would you pay for the stuff you do online? I mean, the clean stuff?

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Google

Yahoo loves Bing, but nobody loves them together

Posted July 30, 2009

seppukuAs usual in the internet space, nobody can do anything without being torn a new one. Example #1 for the week: Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) making nice. Lord, from the resulting bloggery you would think that Paris had just fallen to the Nazis. Jason Calacanis, founder of Mahalo and a webster guru par excellence, was perhaps the most dramatic, declaring that “Yahoo committed seppuku today,” and going on to say that, 

The once proud warrior of the internet space laid down its sword,  knelt at the feet of Microsoft and gutted itself today. There was no honor in this death, it was one brought by the shame of losing to  Google and a lack of faith in one’s ability to compete in the space they created. To be clear, Yahoo didn’t need to do this deal,  Microsoft did. Ultimately Yahoo will look back at this moment as the second — and perhaps fatal –mistake in their epic history.

Now, Jason may be wrong and he may be right. I do know that the coming together of YHOO and MSFT creates a search entity with about 30% market share. You know who has most of the other 70% (GOOG). So you can see a certain rationale to why the two upstart behemoths wanted to do it.

Still and again, you can’t belch in this particular business sector without people yelling at you. And after thinking about it, you know what? I agree with them. I think any attempt to build scale against the Goog is a misconception at best, and a dangerous misstep at worst.

Society is drifting in a very clear direction. We’re moving toward a day when most of our random thoughts, our videos, our music, our pictures of our vacations, graduations and holiday gatherings, our business plans, our poetry and our daily communications with each other — all will be in a gigantic cloud that floats like a giant group mind above and around us. We will be like one gigantic beehive, our collective consciousness gathered for our convenience in one centralized location, the cloud.

Who will own that cloud? You know who (GOOG).  I find that comforting, don’t you? Well? Don’t you?

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Earnings

Earnings? We’ve got ‘em!

Posted July 17, 2009

tragedyandcomedyIt’s earnings season again, as you may have noticed, and we’re into the whole crazy song-and-dance, this time hopped up on a nice mix of optimism, desperation, greed and fear. In short, business as usual.

Those who look for improvement have reason to feel somewhat satisfied. The shorts have plenty to work with too.

So here you have today’s news, where Google (GOOG) reported an 18% increase in net income off a 3% rise in revenue — this during the worst economy since Rome salted the fields of Carthage. The reaction was, of course, muted. “Google earnings beat expectations,” wrote paidcontent.org, then added, “but revenue growth keeps slowing.”

Of course revenue growth is slowing. At this point, a company whose revenue is down 5% can tell its investors that it’s kicking the doors off the barn. Be that as it may. Everybody keeps writing about each individual earnings statement as if Company X should somehow have avoided living in the same atmosphere we all breathe.

When things turn around and the economy comes back, the coverage will shift, naturally. Then every headline will cite Company X’s amazing turnaround in revenues and earnings per share, and laud its senior management for the excellence of its vision and size of its boni.

It’s summer. Everybody wants to sit back and wait for things to change in some meaningful way or other, and in the meantime have a sandwich and a little snooze. So I thought I would offer a simple template for reporting companys, bloggers, financial journalists and analysts to use so we can all ignore the boring details — all of which are utterly driven by the marketplace, almost none of which are really anybody’s fault.

First I’ll provide a press release that, if altered with taste and discretion, may be suitable for printing by blogs, online news sources and wires verbatim. Then I’ll offer a short, subsequent article for those who report on such things in old-style print outlets, webzines, aggregators and online newsletters. Just plug in the numbers and there you’ll be, ready to hop on the phone and market yourself to CNBC or head out to McGonigle’s for a little liquid refreshment, not necessarily in that order.

Come to think of it, that sounds like a bit of work. I think I’ll get to it on Monday. Let’s take the rest of the day off.

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Bing

Is Bing good for Bing?

Posted July 9, 2009

BingcrosbyI’ll be honest with you. I have mixed feelings now about this whole Bing thing. David Pogue in the New York Times gives Bing The Search Engine a nice little writeup in the paper today, saying that “in many ways, Bing is better.”

A few months ago, that would have been about me. Now it’s not. It’s about this other guy. I’m happy for him and all that. But what good is that doing for all the other Bings who used to be the Bings that people thought about when they thought about Bings?

My friends have said that this whole hyper-awareness of anything Bing will be a positive thing for this particular Bing. And it’s true… there are more of you commenting on my thoughts here in this space. The only problem is, your comments aren’t about anything germane to any other subject than Bing The Search Engine, which from now on I think I’ll just call BingTSE, or perhaps Bingtsey, for short. Your comments tend to be things like, “I hate the threading,” or “there are certain aspects of its algorithm I like.”

That’s very interesting, I am sure. But not to me. I mean, what does it do for me personally? Like you, that’s essentially first, second and third on the list of what I care about.

Most depressing to me, the original Bing, is what’s happened on Google. I feared it would be this way, and those fears have been realized. Before Bingtsey came along, if you searched “Bing” it was all about me and Bing Crosby. There was also a Chinese doctor who got his share of hits, and when Steve Bing acted up in some way he was there too. Now the whole front page is about boring stuff pertaining to Bingtsey and his pals. I don’t mean it’s boring in itself, but since it doesn’t pertain to me, Bing, it is ipso facto less interesting than anything that does.

More importantly, it doesn’t help my brand one bit.

I am somewhat mollified by a couple of things. First, I remember that little paper clip that Microsoft (MSFT) tried to introduce into our Windows universe a few years ago. He died. What was his name? Bob? Ned? Fred? Ed? Nobody misses him, in any event. Second, I never bet against Google. True, they are right now showing lack of competitive acumen by allowing their Bing search results to be dominated by their rival. But in the end, will Bingtsey oust the Goog (GOOG)? In other words, I know that I’m going to be around until they drag me kicking and screaming onto the obit page. Can we say the same for Bingtsey?

It’s just possible, in short, that in the end I may well be the last Bing standing. Time will tell. Meanwhile, I’m ready for Chrome. Perhaps you are too. I wonder what the guys who make the real, shiny stuff are feeling about it right about now.

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