November 9th, 2009

SnapLogic snaps together different data flows and cuts integration costs

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 4:56 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Silicon Valley, Developer, Consultant, Snap, SnapLogic, Cloud Computing, Web Technology, Enterprise Software, Software, Tom Foremski

I recently had a chance to catch up with one of my favorite Silicon Valley serial entrepreneurs Gauruv Dhillon.

When I first met Mr Dhillon he was CEO of Informatica, one of the top software companies in Silicon Valley.

These days he is founder, chairman and CEO of SnapLogic, a startup that has built a technology platform that creates data “connectors” between different systems. For example, you could take Twitter data and run it through your business intelligence system, or connect your security system data with your HR system.

There are millions of permutations in connecting different systems and today that figure continues to rise as new APIs are published and as new web applications are developed that integrated multiple flows of data.

If you have the right connector, or “snaps” as the company calls them, you can connect any system and any application.

“When I started Informatica in 1992 we were on the cusp of the client server revolution. Today I feel the same tingle of excitement because there is another software epoch beginning,” says Mr Dhillon.

“Whenever there is disruption in a market there is the opportunity to succeed provided you are on the right side,” says Mr Dhillon.

He doesn’t like to use the term “cloud computing” because it is over used. “It seems cloud computing jumped the shark very quickly and now it is applied very broadly. I prefer to use the term that Marc Andreessen uses “business computing.”

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October 31st, 2009

GOOG is not making phones or buying newspapers

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 2:10 pm

Categories: Culture, Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Phone, Telecom & Utilities, Tom Foremski

Google’s Andy Rubin, head of the company’s Android development, would like to clear something up: Google is not in the phone-making business.

Google: We’re not making Android hardware

On October 20 I wrote: There is no Google phone

I didn’t need to call up Google to ask, I knew there was no Google phone because I have been reporting on the company since its very beginnings and know and have met their founders and most of their top executives.

Every company has a core philosophy and culture and once you understand it it helps to guide your reporting.

The Street.com originated a story that Google is working on a phone. It clearly does not understand the company.

Google is not building an Android phone, nor will it buy a newspaper, like some have said it should buy the New York Times. Google doesn’t need to be in the phone business or in the newspaper business — it can benefit from other companies being in those businesses.

People think that companies can jump from one business into another. Companies are like trains on a track — once they are on one track it is very difficult to shunt them onto another track — even if it is an adjacent track. Even if it makes good business sense (which in both these Google examples does not make good business sense.)

October 27th, 2009

Can you teach programmers to be journalists?

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 8:20 am

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Software, Software Engineering, Journalist, Programmer, Ms Taylor, Development Tools, Tools & Techniques, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Management

Megan Taylor over at PBS’ MediaShift writes about the challenges of getting programmers and journalists to work together.

MediaShift . Can Programmers, Journalists Get Along in One Newsroom? | PBS

It’s an interesting subject because newsrooms are increasingly digital and they need to add programming skills to help them publish. Also, there are all sorts of interesting media formats than newsrooms can experiment with, such as interactive maps, and data mining public databases to uncover interesting news angles.
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October 23rd, 2009

WSJ chief criticizes news aggregators - creators carry cost burden

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 8:08 am

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Wall Street Journal, Journalist, Thomson Corp., Internet, Web 2.0, Channel Management, Marketing, Tom Foremski

Hat tip to Danny Sullivan for pointing out the above panel at Web 2.0 Summit, which featured Robert Thomson, Wall Street Journal chief, and Marrissa Mayer head of search products at Google, plus Martin Nisenholtz, The New York Times Company, and Eric Hippeau from the Huffington Post, moderated by John Battelle. Title: “Whither Journalism.”

YouTube - Web 2.0 Summit 09: “Discussion: Whither Journalism?”

The reason this discussion is interesting is because Mr Thomson is a close confidant of Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corp and one of the leaders in trying to create new business models for online journalism. One of those ways is to create a paywall - to charge for content.

This has been criticized by many online pundits who believe content should be free and that Mr Murdoch, and others that want to charge for content won’t succeed.

This is a ridiculous argument because it doesn’t address the issue of how content is created and the costs in creating content. An army of citizen journalists won’t be able to fill the gap caused by fewer professional journalists. We have to figure out a way to pay for professional journalism. The Internet used to be free, people used to say that Internet users wouldn’t put up with advertising. We all know how that turned out.

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October 22nd, 2009

PubMatic helps online publishers make money

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 8:08 am

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Channel, Advertisement, Network, Online Publisher, PubMatic, Ad Network, Tom Foremski

Rajeev Goel CEO PubMatic

Online publishers need all the help they can get these days, as they struggle to make money from a fickle readership and with advertisers having many ways to reach potential customers.

PubMatic helps online publishers interface with multiple ad networks, selecting in real-time the most lucrative ads available — and that can boost revenues by as much as 300 per cent on the same ad inventory.
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October 15th, 2009

Is age-ism rampant in Silicon Valley and beyond?

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 3:03 am

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Silicon Valley, Workforce Management, Recruitment & Selection, Payroll Solutions, Human Resources, Tom Foremski

I recently blogged about an article focused on Silicon Valley’s workforce and how the author, Tamara Carleton, believes that Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials can form a potent team.

In the innovation lifecycle, if Boomers serve as advisors and Gen Xers as the entrepreneurs, then the Millennials could provide potent networkers.

A reader writes:

As a member of the Boomer Generation and a longtime Silicon Valley worker, I can only hope that it happens that Boomers become trusted and knowledgeable advisers to Gen X’ers while Millennials do the work. My suspicion is that many, if not the majority, of those laid off in the last 2 years here in SV are actually Boomers who became “too expensive” for the tech companies here and thus were sacrificed.

I am one of them and I have been to many interviews but not offered jobs that I am very well-qualified to do. I guarantee you that age discrimination is running rampant in this so-called Valley of Heart’s Delight.

Only when this ceases will companies be available to consider the vast storehouse of knowledge that Boomers could provide.

Is he right?

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September 24th, 2009

Protest of Swedish domain name rules grows

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 6:41 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Bank, Domain Name, Pirate Bay, Domain Names, Phishing, Financial Services, Internet, Security, Spam And Phishing, Tom Foremski

Pirate Bay said it is supporting protestors to Sweden’s plans to scrutinize all domain name registrations that use “bank” in their name.

The Swedish authorities want to prevent people from being duped by phishing scams. The rules would only apply to Swedish .SE extensions but protestors say that the practice could create a precedent that other countries will follow and apply to many other names in domain registrations.

The popular Pirate Bay has become a major supporter of the protestors and is collecting signatures. The protest list was started by Binero, a domain registrar.

“To diverge from the democratic country norm of problem resolution post rather than pre registration, and to do it for a common word and name like “Bank” is dangerous. It makes it legally and logically plausible for many groups to lobby for scrutinizing an unforeseeable number of other words and names pre registration as well,” said Binero CEO Anders Aleborg.

“All countries have the same problem and lobby groups like our big banks. There is a big risk that this form of net censorship might spread if Sweden does it.”

It would seem that all Swedish banks already own their domain names so any new domain registrations with the word bank in them would probably be registered for nefarious reasons.

Phishing scams are a big problem and it would seem this is a sensible measure that would protect people from being duped. It’s not clear what other names these types of regulations could also be applied against.

September 16th, 2009

Staff are causing security breaches by using their own mobile phones says survey

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 11:50 am

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Phone, Mobile, Security Breach, Cell Phone, Survey, Advertising & Promotion, Marketing Research, Telecom & Utilities, Security, Marketing

A surprisingly high number of enterprises have had security breaches caused by staff using unauthorized mobile phones at work, according to a self-serving survey commissioned by Good Technology, a provider of mobile messaging systems and security for enterprises.

This is resulting in companies being forced to support phones such as the iPhone, Palm Pre and Android based mobile phones.

About 28 per cent of companies admitted to a security breach because of unsupported mobile phone use.
Please see additional survey findings here: http://www.welcometogood.com/device_dilemma

September 4th, 2009

Using social media to turn all staff into customer service reps

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 4:00 am

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Job, Customer Service, Intuit Inc., Twitter Inc., Social Media, Product Marketing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Marketing, Enterprise Software, Software

There is a strong trend among corporations to use social media to turn nearly every one of their employees into customer service reps and evangelists.

Best Buy is an excellent example. It is using Twitter to answer technical queries and it even specifies a minimum of 250 Twitter followers for job applicants.

This is not good news for shy staff because their enthusiastic participation on Twitter of Facebook can be easily tracked and measured. Such metrics will surely be used in evaluating promotions and pay raises.

How far will it reach within an organization? That will be interesting to see.

Also, because of the blurring of personal and business lives, this means employees will be spamming their friends and family as they prove their worthiness to their bosses. This won’t make for happy staff but customers will certainly feel pampered.

Social media generated layoffs

Companies are also using social media to replace employees because of volunteers among their customers. Intuit is a good example of what could be termed “user generated layoffs.”

Here is a recent BusinessWeek article:

How Intuit Makes a Social Network Pay - BusinessWeek

For the company, this volunteer army means less need for paid technicians.

…Customers were not only asking technical questions, they were often outshining Intuit’s own tech support staff by answering 40% of the queries themselves.

…In early June the company said it is laying off 4% of its 8,000 employees. Executives say the job cuts didn’t stem directly from Live Community’s success, but Wilder points out that since Intuit’s community outreach began, “the number of calls to our customer service lines has been reduced. We don’t give out numbers, but there have been cost savings.”

This is great for Intuit but for how long? If its customers realize that their enthusiastic participation in answering questions results in job losses will they continue to be as enthusiastic?

Also, volunteers do it because they feel like it and then they generally move on to something else. Relying on a fly-by-night army of volunteers could become a problem.

This is the same difference as between bloggers and journalists. Bloggers have a day job and they don’t have to do it every day. Journalists do it every day (a great bumper sticker :)

What happens to Intuit, and any other companies emulating its example, when its volunteer army doesn’t show up for work?

August 27th, 2009

Open-source hacks - sneaky Skype trojan code released

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 4:33 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Open Source, Trojan Horse, Malware, Skype Technologies S.A., MP3, Trojan.Peskyspy, Spyware, Adware & Malware, Cyberthreats, Spyware, Viruses And Worms

Symantec reports that it has observed the public release of source code for a Trojan that targets Skype users.

The Trojan.Peskyspy records a voice call and stores it as an mp3 file for transmission later.

Once a machine has been compromised by this threat, the threat can use an application that handles audio processing within a computer and save the call data as an MP3 file. This MP3 is then sent over the Internet to a predefined server where the attacker can then listen to the recorded conversations. Recording the call as an MP3 keeps the size of the audio files low and means there is less data to be transferred over the network, helping to speed up the transfer and avoid detection.

Symantec says the threat risk is low but since the code is publicly available we will likely see “customised” threats from malware authors.

With this particular Trojan it seems malware creators would need to have a lot of time on their hands to go through hours of Skype audio files. And to find what? My skype calls are fairly mundane. I mainly call my mom on Skype. Hackers are welcome to those recordings…