Maria Expounds

Marketing implications of benchmarking Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer

2011-08-30T14:33:00.000-07:00

Benchmarks for Browsers Material for this table from Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols blog “Firefox 6: A Firefox too far?”
Benchmark system: · Gateway DX4710 · Windows 7 SP1 · 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor	· 6 GB RAM · Intel GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) 3100 · Netgear Gigabit Ethernet switch · 60 Mbps cable Internet connection.
White cells indicate best scores	Firefox 6	Chrome 13	IE 9	Comments
1. Acid 3 compliance with web standards (JavaScript, CSS, Extensible XML, etc.)	97	100	95	Max score = 100; higher is better
2. HTML5 Test	313	340	130	Max score = 400; higher is better
3. Mozilla Kraken 1.0 JavaScript benchmark	7588	4928	17052	Lower is better
4. Google JavaScript V8 Benchmark Suite	3614	7677	2193	Higher is better
5. Peacekeeper JavaScript benchmark	4588	8010	8343	Higher is better
6. SunSpider 0.9.1 oldest JavaScript benchmark	931	289	253	Lower is better

Comparing browsers with benchmark programs can reveal browsers’ strengths and weaknesses, and possibly implications for the browser product strategy. The ZDnet blogger Steven Vaughan-Nichols chose six benchmarks.

Comparing the performance of several browsers on the same very capable computer with a high-speed connection is the most objective way to see which browser

enables you to browse the web faster
displays the most web page types with no problems
supports most-used web applications
taxes your local PC the least.

Of course, the configuration of your local PC, both hardware and software, especially the operating system, and your web connection will greatly affect how any program, including browsers, works.

Acid 3, the first benchmark in the list, tests for a collection of widely used browser features such as memory usage and web tools such as JavaScript, CSS, XML. It’s a general baseline rather than optimized for any particular aspect such as JavaScript. Four of the benchmarks mentioned here test for JavaScript.

The second benchmark, for HTML 5, is the one I am most interested in because HTML 5 is a new standard that adds capabilities with productivity benefits for users. For example, it shifts some of the ‘heavy lifting’ of web applications like Flash to the ‘cloud’ rather than making your local PC do the lifting. It obviates plug-ins – no more downloading plug-ins before certain web tools work.

HTML5 was accepted as a standard less than a year ago so HTML5-type web pages aren’t very common yet. This might be why the newer browsers, Firefox 6 and Chrome, benchmarked about the same whereas Internet Explorer (IE) lagged significantly. The product strategy implication may be that IE decided to adopt new standards more slowly because it’s more important to take the time to make new versions better backward-compatible in order to maintain an workable upgrade path for IE's huge number of existing customers, especially those in enterprises who tend to be slow to upgrade.

Chrome is the newest of the three browsers so it has a smaller ‘installed base’ that it must ‘bring along’ and less legacy code with which it must be compatible.

Firefox is neither the oldest browser nor the newest but it has the most frequent releases of the three browsers. It already has the largest market share (see table below) and its users tend to be naive and early adopters. So why run the release treadmill so much faster than the competition? Frequent releases do deliver new features faster, but releases always also include fixes such as for security holes and compatibility problems.

The last four of the six benchmarks in the table above are for JavaScript. Good JavaScript performance is really important because it’s the main language for browsers and websites. It’s also used in applications that are outside of web pages such as PDF, site-specific browsers, and desktop widgets.

It’s surprising that Firefox 6 didn’t ‘win’ Kraken (the third benchmark in table above) because it is Mozilla's own JavaScript benchmark. They must identify which aspects of Kraken are causing Firefox to get low marks. In any case, Mozilla should either optimize Firefox for Kraken or adjust the benchmark. Mozilla’s marketing department must be distressed that they cannot use their own benchmark, or any of these six benchmarks in their campaigns. I should investigate Firefox's strategy to compete against Chrome.

Google aced Acid3 as well as its JavaScript benchmark, V8. So, either Google used the benchmark(s) to guide Chrome’s development, or V8 was designed for Chrome, or the good match is an honestly fortuitous intersection. Optimizing the product for certain benchmarks is not only good engineering practice, but good marketing too.

Firefox came in last by a wide margin in the SunSpider (last benchmark in the table above), the oldest JavaScript benchmark. This could mean (I am guessing) Firefox may have some fundamental incompatibility with JavaScript, and/or of the three browsers, Firefox has drifted the furthest from older JavaScript, or other attributes that affect the benchmark such as poor memory management, a very important browser problem. Nevertheless, market share wins over performance against benchmarks. Whatever the benchmark results may be, Firefox is almost twice as widely used as IE and Chrome (statistics from the W3C School).

Malware are Market Drivers

2011-07-06T12:24:00.000-07:00

This 6-page PDF, Ten Myths for Safe Web Browsing sophos-myths-for-safe-web-browsing-wpna.pdf cites data from 2008 about how malware can hitch rides on web page content and browser plug-ins into your computer (or mobile device). I have a few maybe grasping at straws hopes:

1. Browsers have been updated a zillion times since 2008 so might have gotten smarter against malware.
2. Ditto for plugs-ins and extensions such as ActiveX, Flash, Acrobat.
3. With HTML5, maybe plug-ins will be a thing of the past.
4. The software of your browsing platform should have gotten smarter too.
5. Ditto for 'local' security software, cleaning apps and operating systems.

What's this got to do with marketing?

Evil-doers such as malware writers are market drivers. They are getting smarter too so their products create demand for new browsers, operating systems, plug-ins, and (surprise, surprise) demand for new security applications. Software standards like HTML5 help to vitiate vulnerability from plug-ins. No doubt cloud-based security products are enjoying strong growth.

Neglecting the allure of maliciousness for its own sake and the two other motivators of malware (see footnote)*, I believe the commercial disseminators of malware are motivated by advertising and industrial espionage. There is real business value in infecting users' platforms. Malware can commit fraud by re-directing users to click-throughs. Pay Per Click advertisers pay for 'fake' clicks generated by malware. Is it too paranoid to suspect manufacturers of platforms and system software of using malware to build-in obsolescence or to covertly co-market with publishers of security or performance acceleration software?

At the end of this white paper is an ad for Sophos' 'end point security solution.' The fact that the authors point out these ten vulnerabilities ought to signal that their product protects against those malware entry points, but marketing pieces may not always comply with 'the truth, the whole truth...'
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*Malware allow evil players to use your computer to do their deeds without your knowledge. Another high-value motivation for malware infection is theft of credentials and/or data.

Delivering value through co-marketing

2011-03-11T21:10:00.000-08:00

After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, many people, organizations and companies donated their products and services to help the victims. Tide, a laundry detergent by Proctor & Gamble, sent a truck with washing machines, clean water and Tide detergent to the disaster area to provide clean clothes for victims. Now there’s no argument that clean clothes are not as critical as food, medicine or shelter, but having clean clothes makes people feel better. And dirty water carries disease so cleanliness is a health benefit. This excerpt from the Tide website summarizes how the program has expanded.

Critics say, why wash clothes rather than give the victims new clothes or clothes with “Tide” emblazoned on all sides? Because that isn’t interesting anymore. Cynics bray, “It’s a crass advertisement!” Of course it is! But it does no harm and delivers value. It is not manipulative to demonstrate how your products or services help users.

One goal of marketing communications is to inform audiences of the value of your products and services in a likeable way that is easily understood and will motivate people to take action.

I suspect Tide struck co-marketing deals with the trucking company and the washing machine maker to create goodwill for the companies.

From the blog New Orleans.com

The Tide "Loads of Hope" truck was built right after Hurricane Katrina, and Tide laundry detergent instantly sent it, outfitted with 32 Affinity washers and dryers provided by Frigidaire, down to New Orleans…

Such advertisements do not hamper others from donating their products or services. Most high technology consumer products are made by a group of vendors ranging from pure intellectual property, to chips, to software. The “Intel Inside” campaign is an example of a formerly no-visibility component manufacturer co-marketing with its systems partners to gain brand awareness.

The biggest challenge in co-marketing is to assemble partners that each bring a clearly differentiable value so that the combined messages from all partners reinforce each other, for example, how Tide and the washing machines work together, how Intel processors and computers work together.

30 Mistakes that Startups Should Avoid

2010-10-12T17:28:00.000-07:00

The adage, “an ounce of prevention…” applies to startup teams, especially first-time ones. They can make mistakes that forever weaken or even kill their ability to succeed. Most mistakes made at the formation of the founding team can be corrected, but those affecting voting rights, equity distribution and ownership rights, can become fatal. Two additional groups of mistakes can also be ‘permanent disabilities’ or ‘mortal wounds’: dealing with investors and operating the company. The VLAB and its sponsor, SNR Denton, presented a panel discussion among a venture capitalist (VC), two well-experienced startup entrepreneurs, and an attorney to discuss 30 mistakes and give advice on ways to avoid them.

A list of 30 mistakes that startups should avoid comprised a handout for the audience. The two VCs on the panel concentrated on mistakes to avoid in forming the startup team and in ways of working with investors. The experienced entrepreneur mostly talked about operations. The attorney focused on mistakes in team formation and in working with investors.

A few counter-intuitive points, especially for first-time startup teams, and my succinct advice:

“Recruit friends and family for the founding team” might be the worst decision for the startup. A startup’s seed funds often come from “FFF”, friends, family and fools. They took the biggest risk and had the most faith in the startup. The emotional relationship aside, the entrepreneur literally owes them. They are already ‘on your side,’ are highly motivated, and you already know them so they are easy to recruit. But they may not be the most knowledgeable and experienced people for your business. The relationship that pre-dates the startup may bias any merit-based compensation model.
"Money from any source is equally good” is not true. This is where your own attorney who knows the vast and ever-changing array of business terms, and is experienced in negotiating funding terms can save you from being ‘diluted out’ of equity through successive rounds of funding. By the way, one of the mistakes is to take venture money too early and venture funding is the most expensive money that you can accept.
“Anticipate the market by introducing the most capable, high featured product with the most disruptive technology as possible” can be fatal. It does seem contradictory that VCs greatly value ‘disruptive technology’ yet discount valuation if you still have R&D to do. The sweet spot is to have products or services whose technology is already proven and paid for, preferably by somebody else, and the market has already been primed by somebody else.
“We will hire a fancy attorney when we get bigger” can mean that attorney-come-lately must repair or ameliorate the damage from mistakes you’ve already made. There is truth in the adage: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

The free-flowing, 90-minute discussion touched on many useful morsels such as how to connect with VCs and angels. Dave McClure said ‘you must have had 3 previous interactions with me before I will consider talking to you about your startup.’ Most of the advice was to know the mistakes and avoid them and to exercise good business sense.

Did you know you needed or wanted "Pinned Shortcuts"?

2010-09-16T14:49:00.000-07:00

I used to think of browsers as lightweight utilities whose sole purpose was to ‘deliver’ me to the Internet. I thought that the tasks that improve the quality of user experience such as ease of navigation, clarity of brand,… were the responsibilities of individual websites. I was both right and wrong.

Browsers have the vaunted position of arbitrating the user interface for all websites. The beta release of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer v9 (IE9) seems to reveal that Microsoft has designed-in ways to co-market websites by making their brands more visible and persistent, enabling the ease of repeat visits and to some extent, the stickiness of user-selected websites. It seems that personalization, customization, the ability to make browsers look and act the way you want are the key competitive factors nowadays. One feature that groups some of these benefits is “Pinned Shortcuts.”

Like a lot of new features, the way Pinned Shortcuts work and the value it delivers are a little hard to grasp. Marketing dogma used to say the goal is to give customers what they need and want. Nowadays, features that correctly predict what customers didn’t know they needed or wanted are on the right path to marketing nirvana: customer delight. ZDnet’s Ed Bott gives an explanation and example of Pinned Shortcuts (as part of a 5-page long discussion of IE9).

“The rest of the browser interface remains intact when you use a pinned shortcut. The Favorites and Settings menus are still in their assigned place. You can also open new tabs in the same windows as the pinned site, a feature that initially had me concerned. The point of promoting specific sites is to help those sites stand out, not just to arbitrarily create extra tab groups. But in practice, I’ve found the design useful, even addictive. It didn’t take long for me to begin creating groups of three or four related tabs for a common activity. For example, I have my blog’s home page pinned to the Taskbar, and I usually open Google Analytics and the WordPress dashboard for the site. Keeping those three tabs in a single group makes it easy for me to click the ZDNet icon on my Taskbar and find one of those tasks, which previously were scattered among dozens of open tabs.”

The browser business is crowded, competitive and moving fast. IE9 is not unique in offering such a feature. Mozilla’s Firefox 3.6 update and Firefox 4 beta have similar and same features by other names. Here is a 2010 table that rates ~50 attributes of 10 browsers that was likely done before the release of Chrome and IE9 beta.

The extremely vibrant and creative browser extensions sector, that really lets the user customize the experience, deserves its own blog post! Stay tuned.

Flash Mobs x Farmers' Markets

2010-08-17T16:54:00.000-07:00

I heard that the First Lady Michelle Obama is encouraging grocery merchants to expand into under-served markets as a way to make 'healthy foods' more available and thereby fight obesity and can provide other societal benefits.

Lower demand for health services therefore lower costs
Lower incidences of pre-natal and developmental problems
Higher productivity (fewer sick days)
More optimistic outlook (less likelihood of anti-social behavior)

Under-served markets are under served because the profit potential is too low to justify the investment. Technology offers ways to streamline processes that reduce costs which could improve the business model.

Most American middle class residential neighborhoods are near one or more supermarkets that sell fresh foods at reasonable prices. But many inner-city, low-income or 'ethnic ghettos' are not served by large food markets. Those residents must rely on private or public transportation to access supermarkets, or must patronize local 'bodegas,' convenient stores or 'roach coaches,' operators who sell food out of a vehicle. These local enterprises have been 'blamed' for serving high-fat, high-calorie, low nutrition foods that increase the likelihood of becoming obese.

So, how might Short Messaging Systems (SMS), event management SaaS and local mobile advertising (LMA) facilitate the delivery of fresh foods to deprived neighborhoods?

I believe that mobile devices such as cell phones are well penetrated even into under-served neighborhoods. These devices can deliver SMS and local advertising directly to consumers. Consumers can convey to farmers (by using free SaaS for event management, or aggregation or auction) the foods they commit to buy at negotiated prices. Farmers can confirm when and where the foods will be delivered. It reduces risk and wastage. Vendors of complementary products such as bakers or fishermen can join. Once the sellers are on-site, local mobile advertisements can recruit ad hoc consumers. Thus, a combination of flash mobs with farmers' markets.

Such a direct distribution system can foster a local ecosystem of entrepreneurs. For example, if strawberry farmers deliver a load of fresh strawberries, neighborhood entrepreneurs can plan to make and sell smoothies, tarts, pies, jam, juice... I heard a while ago that a cupcake entrepreneur in New York City was using exactly this process to sell home-made cupcakes to workers in high-rise office buildings.

Of course, nothing is so simple. Our society has organized large urban centers to be far from food-producing areas. With major farming conglomerates, it is not cost-effective for farmers to cater to niche markets. Also, we have woven a pervasive and robust regulatory fabric that discourages direct marketing especially of foodstuffs. But every market has the potential to support niches. Perhaps community farms, urban gardens,... motivated entrepreneurs are yet to create good solutions?

Google Voice: Quality of Service, so far

2010-06-29T16:38:00.000-07:00

Google Voice started out as a Silicon Valley startup (GrandCentral) whose value proposition was 'one number for all your phone access lines, for life.' News articles say that Google has improved the original GrandCentral service. Good (that's a 'd' on the end, not a 'g'), but not good enough.

A free service deserves a lot of forgiveness because it is FREE, but every product manager knows about market requirements that are check-box items, ones that the target audience thinks are 'givens,' that if not delivered, the whole product or service gets bad-mouthed. One such check-box item for any voice-based product is voice quality.

Ideally, one spends resources to cover the minimum set of check-box items to a 'no objections' level, but really invests in honing the differentiating features to make them better than customers expected. A successful marketing slogan that some vendor has promoted was "delight the customer".

Google Voice's voice quality is not good. There are drop-outs, echos... probably those packets were assigned low priority in the network. That is not good for a voice-based product.

On the positive side of the balance sheet, what differentiating factors does Google Voice have that might compensate for poor voice quality?

FREE service. That pricing structure is becoming a check-box item. Google has made 'free' an intrinsic part of their brand and have driven most B2C web application to follow.
Users can choose their own phone number from a set of numbers. Google doesn't make it easy but it's worth the effort. Most people use a monthly flat fee for national calls so 'local area codes' are less of a differentiating benefit than they used to be.
Integration with other Google services such as delivery of message notices to your mail box, not only your Gmail mail box. This is a win-win for the user and for Google. It's called cross-marketing where products help each other.
Voice to text -- The accuracy is not great but the benefit is users can access voicemails with email. If I miss a crucial word or two, I don't have to linearly hear the whole audio message from the beginning to try to catch the words I missed. The added benefit is I have a written version that is editable and shareable.
An unusual feature is Google Voice announces callers and users must click a key to accept the call. Not very effective in screening spam calls, but they must consider users with no visual caller ID capability.
The feature I like best is the ability to put the "Call Me" icon on any web presence where I can add HTML. That feature increases my customer intimacy. My readers can interact with my content by adding text comments or talk to me for free by using Google Voice.

Other features such as making free calls or sending text messages within the US, ringing all specified devices at the same time, creating custom greetings for different incoming callers are nice but not "delightful."

Why Keep Supposedly Landline Phone Service?

2010-06-16T13:36:00.000-07:00

I would LOVE to get rid of my landline but I keep the it because

Back in the Dark Ages, landline calls to 911 allow the operators to locate the physical location of the phone based on the 'the other end of the landline circuit.' I had erroneously believed that the landline will save a few seconds because 911 operators can look up the landline's physical address. This is no longer a good reason to retain a landline because e-911 has been implemented for mobile services as well as for VoIP phones. It might be harder for 911 operators to locate you, but they are able to do so.
Starting back in the Dark Ages and continuing to today, credit card companies use the landline's caller ID to verify your identity. That use-case is fraught with security problems but it's still more convenient to activate credit cards by calling from the landline than going through the newer authentication hoops constructed by credit card companies.
Service providers such as phone and cable companies have hidden landline fees into bundles of services such as Triple Play. Their pricing schemes make subscription fees for bundles lower than buying only the services you want, such as omiting the landline.
Even though landlines aren't circuit switched anymore (no longer a dedicated circuit), they are actually VoIP, people erroneously believe that landlines are still dedicated lines and therefore provide more clear calls with fewer or no dropped packets. This is NOT TRUE. There is legislation in process to prohibit network managers from prioritizing service for marketing reasons -- meaning 'landlines' get higher network priority and therefore better call quality than, say, mobile calls.
Calls made on the landline are 'sunken,' I've already paid for it whether I use it or not whereas if I use per-call fees for mobile calls, I save a little bit by using the landline instead of the mobile phone. Most people pay for both -- landline as well as monthly cell phone charges -- whether they use either phones at all. Why?

Many people have had the same landline number for years so they keep it for the convenience of their friends and vendors. I think nowadays, with web pages being constantly updated with no notice, people are more used to a continual flux. The deciding factor for whether to keep the same number is entirely based on how easy is its to 'migrate' or export your contacts to your new number.

I recently signed up for Google Voice. It's a step toward enabling anyone to reach me at any time, easily and for FREE. Thanks to VoIP (voice over internet protocol) advanced features, Google will connect anyone with me using any of the devices that I specified such as the landline, or the mobile phone, or both, or some other device, without revealing my phone number!

Try it! Click the image.

Comparison of Video Performance: Microsoft (WMV) , Apple (QT) and Adobe (FLV)

2010-06-09T13:12:00.000-07:00

I've had a bad attitude about Flash (Adobe) performance, especially because it doesn't seem to be supported by 64-bit browsers. I've used WMV (Microsoft) as my default video player because I have a windows machine, but I do play games that use Quicktime (Apple) and Flash (Adobe) so have some experience with all three video players.

This ZD blogpost tests these three players on three machines:

Thinkpad X200, a newer Windows machine
MacBook Pro 13, a newer Mac
Thinkpad T60, an older Windows machine

Here's an excerpt of the results
Average usage rate for Firefox.

Older Thinkpads and MacBooks

Results are fairly close. For newer machines (chart on right), Wave wins by having the lowest percentage CPU usage while Quicktime edges ahead of Wave in remaining battery by 2%. For older machines (chart above), Flash wins in both categories. Quicktime couldn't finish playing the test movie before its battery ran out.

Adobe has improved Flash a great deal on the Windows platform rendering invalid most of the arguments against it.

The ZD blogpost has good comments on how the various players do or do not support hardware acceleration and the authoring companies' reasons. Might be too geeky for my readers.

Another Giant Leap for Mankind: Synthetic Life Achieved May 20, 2010

2010-06-06T20:23:00.000-07:00

J. Craig Venter is not known for charm, but he is undoubtedly one of the most effective scientists of all time, certainly on a par with Isaac Newton, though they both stood on the shoulders of giants. Dr. Venter decoded the human genome; in fact, his own genome. He personally dived the Sargasso Sea to collect hundreds of yet-to-fore unknown organisms and will decode their genomes thereby enriching our knowledge and likely opening new opportunities to enrich our lives.

Do take the time to view Dr. Venter's May 20, 2010, 18:18 minute video explaining the synthetic life project.

So, why haven't the news channels been yammering about it 24/7 like they do for comparatively trivial events? I am unencumbered by any real knowledge so this is pure speculation, but I suggest that the reason for relative disinterest is Dr. Venter has already set up the scaffolding for a commercial venture to exploit this achievement and therefore it is too crass. News people might say that they don't want to be unwitting (or unpaid) advertisers for Dr. Venter. Or maybe the science necessary to explain the project well is too esoteric and the ramifications too mind-boggling for journalists to capture?

I believe that Dr. Venter has already convened a legal entity that has filed patents for his truly innovative processes. I believe that license terms have already been drafted and funding and partnership deals are already underway for joint research, etc. therefore the traditional route for reporting scientific breakthroughs, namely publish in Nature, has already been rejected. So is this a case of a highly structured marketing plan negating the free publicity of a news frenzy?
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The Science Channel has already broadcasted two one-hour programs on synthetic life -- one about the project itself and another with bio-ethicist and a priest, hosted by Paula Zahn who did everything she can to sensationalize and sound the alarm about the dangers and threats this discovery may pose.

Feedback from a MicroBiologist
Talked to a microbiologist who I trust today. She said she had read some of the discussion in the science community about Venter's announcement. They seem to feel that what he and his team did was a proof of concept, putting a puzzle together, not a big step forward. The pro-Venter faction say that people scoffed at the Wright brothers as well.

I can't help thinking that Venter's personality probably did not win him many supporters. Politics pervade all endeavors.

Your Online Reputation

2010-05-30T16:17:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I was in a breakfast talk with Zia Yusuf. One of the topics was about online privacy. Zia said that he has given up on trying to maintain any privacy online. I completely understand what he meant, yet I was shocked that he had ‘given up.’ There is a lot of finger pointing about how especially social networks like Linkedin and Facebook betray our privacy, but the information about us that exists online, putting aside things that are uncontrollable by us such as what others say about us or being tagged in a photo or note, is derived from what WE post online about ourselves. So I believe that we are responsible for online content about us. It is up to us to pay attention, be thoughtful, and actively manage our online profiles and reputation.

Most online profile forms ask for a lot of information such as home towns, profession, affiliations such as alma mater, religious practices, volunteer activities, friends and family. People post voluminously about their opinions, products that they use and services that they patronize. Some such information would seem to be harmless. Whether or not I like broccoli won’t seem to have any consequences until the day I bid for a job to market broccoli. Merchandisers are already mining social networks for consumers and advocates ("influencers"). On the other end of the ‘innocuousness’ spectrum is information about our political activities. It is the duty of citizens to be politically engaged, to vote and support candidates, but many decision makers who can significantly affect our lives would penalize those who disagree with their politics. One company offers a tool to monitor employees' activities on social networks! Now, one’s political donations are searchable on the web!

So far, I've only talked about the public web. There is a huge, perhaps even larger body of content on 'private' webs. Most social networks claim that their sites are protected from search spiders, as are many databases such as voter logs, employment databases, criminal records, phone logs... but that information is accessible, ultimately with a court order.

What recourse or remedy do we have, if we’ve already blabbed too much, or the ‘wrong’ stuff about ourselves, online? Some obvious steps are:

Do a web search for oneself to see what’s out there.
Revise our online profiles
Delete material that we no longer want known about us
Tell our social media contacts not to tag us
Start posting information that we want known about us. There are few and fuzzy grey lines between ‘being positive’ and shameless self-promotion, or uber-political correctness.

More drastic steps to 'fix' over-exposure can be to end affiliations. There are already services to repair and promote one’s online reputation! One example, and I am not at all endorsing this service, is Reputation Defender. I have only read a few pages of their web site but their service indeed resonates. Building a brand online, and everywhere else, is recommended by everyone, including our Moms. One is indeed known more by reputation than by facts.

Use Domain Names for Business and Personal Purposes

2010-05-12T19:49:00.000-07:00

I own domain names mainly to promote my business. I have one domain name that is the 'primary,' as well as several others. These are the reasons why I have several domain names:

It's worthwhile to own domain names that relate to my business because if someone's search keywords are similar to keywords on my sites, they will still find my primary site. The purpose is to optimize my business web site's search rank, a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.
I own domain names that might be used against my business so that competitors cannot buy those names. For example, if my primary web site were "RevGen Group," I also bought the domain names "RevGen_sucks" and "I_hate_RevGen".
I bought several similar or related domain names such as "RevGen_Consulting" and "Web_Marketing_Strategy" for feeder-sites. These clumsy domain names are useful because they are keyword 'farms.' I put content there that are full of key words and phrases that relate to my business, as well as links to my primary site. In-bound links improve the web site's SEO. These feeder sites increase traffic and improve my main web site's visibility in search results.
I redirect all traffic to my business blog to my primary domain name. The benefits of doing this are:
   1. My business blog has an easier to remember URL
   2. A text link on my primary web site to my blog helps visitors get to my blog
   3. I can manage my blog with a blogging applications without having to log into the ISP that hosts my primary web site.

Some families buy domain names for web sites with family news. The global Tseng family has such a web site! (It's in Chinese.) It has news, photos and a forum for members to interact.

Many people are very passionate about certain causes so they buy domain names for a web presence where they promote their causes. A very well-known one is MoveOn.org.

Still others buy domain names from Registrars who are also ISPs because they get a bundled deal where the ISP gives you free email forwarding with your domain name. For example, if I bought the domain "mariatseng" I could have mail addressed to 'maria@mariatseng.com' forwarded to me.

Domain names are very inexpensive and can be very useful.

Digital mobile sensors can save your life, and reduce healthcare costs

2010-02-23T14:15:00.000-08:00

This is a very interesting and informative 17-minute video that gives an overview of some of the wireless medical sensing devices that are available to consumers today. The speaker (Eric Topol) gives statistics on chronic diseases (diabetes, heart failure, sleep apnea), and their cost impact in money and quality of life. He cites Wired magazine articles that show the consumer acceptance of continuous monitoring of physiological processes.

Please take the 17 minutes to view this video.

Order your Virtual Personal Assistant around with your voice

2010-02-16T19:12:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of services planned for the semantic web (SemWeb), many of which are not about the human interface. The SemWeb is supposed to be optimized for data to interact and for machines to interact, but at some point, it must deliver value to humans or we won't build them.

'Agent' is used to describe an action such as conduct a search, make a reservation, buy tickets... Examples of more complex actions may be to infer your intent and initiate a series of actions now and in the future based on a set of contextual conditions, like a sell order to your stock broker.

Wouldn't it be great to have a digital personal assistant that understands your intent, in the correct context, that will continuously learn who you are, your preferences and decision criteria, and slave away endlessly without taking offense even when you're surly and not politically correct?

Here's a 43:18 minute video in which Tom Gruber of Siri explains a lot, at great length, and gives a great demo. It is worth your time and attention. Siri is an iPhone app launched in mid-2009 and is 'free.' It's not 'real' artificial intelligence, not 'real' natural language... but still quite compelling. Tom will explain.

KEYNOTE: The Game Changer: Siri, a Virtual Personal Assistant from Semantic Universe on Vimeo.

Predictions: Future of the Web in 2020

2010-01-07T11:55:00.000-08:00

My summary of a long article at:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/010410-outlook-vision.html?page=1
13-slide slideshow with data on web usage. That page has links to related content and whitepapers
http://www.networkworld.com/slideshows/2010/010410-outlook-vision.html

My comment
Most of the research projects mentioned in the article will fundamentally change the architecture and premise of the TCP/IP protocol. I hope Vint Cerf (now with Google) will improve our understanding of the relative impact of these research projects and the risks and opportunities for commercialization. Or give the Google point of view on which vendors might take which critical roles to bring which of these innovations to market.

Article Summary
These innovations might be implemented on the Internet in 10-15 years. They will be tested now on a virtual networking lab being built by BBN Technologies called GENI for the Global Environment for Network Innovations.

Key Topics with brief opinions by moi

Virtual networks like GENI
Content-centric networking where content types are assigned names so end users can choose content types to 'subscribe' to, thereby getting more relevant data and avoiding some spam.
Software defined networking intends to shift intelligence to an external, user-programmable controller, giving users more control. Bad news for router folks.
"Floating Cloud' concept where only the tier value is sent, to manage immense routing tables. The problem with all abstractions is information loss.
"Sometimes On" wireless networks, aka 'opportunistic networks' where one device that does not have access can leverage a peer, connected device to relay messages.
Davis Social Links intends to substitute the universal addressability of IP addresses with social links to provide a layer of security, like in Facebook where the propagation of a message is authenticated by 'verified friends status.'

Wonderful Mobile Applications

2009-09-08T15:01:00.000-07:00

I love it that the mobile phone is becoming the 'most accepted' mobile device, so vendors are packing more and more features into it. Of course most users use it for voice calls and texting, but the integrated camera is opening many new ways to use the mobile phone. Most people don't know that many mobile phone camera also have rudimentary photo editing capabilities too. I take a picture of something and send it by phone to someone to show him/her that what I see, and ask them to comment.

Some TV shows demonstrate how the police are using the cameras in their mobile phones to take photos of suspects to send to colleagues and witnesses thereby getting information faster and keeping third parties safer. Forensics shows tell us that cell phones can help law enforcement people track the time and location of phone calls. We see that by-standers are capturing photos and VIDEOS with important information for law enforcement and the news media.

We already know that browser-enabled phones let us browse the web, such as to 'do' email, use search or map addresses. The problems are often, the display on the phone is very small so it's hard to see detailed web pages; and the keyboards are small and often require repeating several key strokes to enter information. There are shortcuts and built-in auto-text, but most people don't want to make the effort to learn and train their devices -- and rightly so. Devices must be intuitive and easy to use. Well, better user interface have already been built. A large virtual display as well as virtual keyboards and other ways to control the display were developed for the heads-up-display and user interface for fighter pilots. Voice input is also available, as is eye-movement tracking. The hurdles to consumerizing those technologies are market acceptance and cost.

There's a web application where you take a picture of the bar code of an item with your mobile phone, then the application searches the web, and using its GPS (or by communicating with the cell tower closest to your location), it tells you where the same item is available nearby and the price of that item. Helps you to shop better!

Many, many diverse, useful, charming and ingenious applications are available if only people knew about them! There are so many choices of ways that mobile applications can improve our lives.

The type of application that I am currently enthusiastic about is 'augmented reality.' No, it's not a game or like those 3D movies. Such applications give more information about your surroundings, based on what you ask it to find out. F'instance, you're driving in an unfamiliar part of town and want to know whether there is a police station or hospital nearby. Or you're a child who's lost and wants to let your mother know how to find you. By taking a few photos of your immediate surroundings, the mobile application will figure out where you are and you can send that information to your Mom. Augmented reality applications can help you.

In countries other than the US, mobile phone service providers have partnered with vendors to do bill processing. You can pay bills with your phone. In other words, your phone provides similar services as credit cards.

This post is quite long enough so I'll stop now, but my main message is, a personal mobile device such as the phone can improve our lives in many, many ways, in addition to making phone calls and sending text messages.

A very important problem that inhibits consumers from choosing and using so many capabilities is the relatively high cost of data services. That's a huge, complex topic that is receiving a lot of research and discussion. Maybe I'll do a little homework and write about it next time.

Managing online credentials

2009-08-06T14:26:00.000-07:00

Managing one's web credentials is a very important topic that is especially relevant to privacy, especially for social media sites. Do web users have too many different credentials and find it troublesome to manage them?

There are primarily three ways to 'remember' your credentials:

Use storage and retrieval methods that are at your end:

biometric authentication e.g., your fingerprint recognized by your computer. Biometric authentication only controls access to your local, individual computer. What happens when there's a software error, for example, with your biometric software, or when you move from versions of operating systems, change computers, or are a victim of malware? Or when your computer is damaged? As of now, more intelligent authentication methods such as face-recognition are not yet commercialized.
Cookies or Browser-based which means your username and passoword are stored on your computer.
A pass-worded document on a hard-drive or a piece of text saved on another device such as a mobile hand-held
(God forbid) a hard copy such as a Post-it note stuck to the bottom of your PC
In your head or in your wife's head

Storage methods that are 'remembered' by the websites that you must log into such as your bank account, social networking sites like FaceBook, and/or other subscriptions. Some sites are more secure than others. Most just use cookies; others encrypt and validate through sophisticated methods. Most subscription log-in pages should have a way for you to ask them to email to you a new password, but you must get your username right or answer their security questions so that they can send the new password to the correct email address. The better ones will send you a new temporary password that you must change immediately.

Many web sites that provide primarily content (such as newspapers or blogs) now post 'share' links to popular social networks like Facebook, del.icio.us... but they are relying on those networks to check your credentials.
Store your credentials in a central place on the web, either at a provider like Google or Verisign, or elsewhere.

One such initiative is OpenID where groups of web sites agree to 'recognize' the log-in credentials of other web sites. You will see sites that say you can log in using, for example, your Facebook or Twitter credentials. Google has integrated their applications with a single sign-in. Once you log into Google, you can use many (if not all) Google applications such as the calendar, documents, Wave, Feedburner, etc.

The normal progression of a new product's path to the market is:

introduce point solutions
then offer a 'swarm' of incompatible solutions that don't work together,
followed by ones that interoperate meaning they're not 'native' but do work together
and, finally, after technologies, standards, licensing deals, APIs or open source code have been worked out, and the market is mature enough to support profitable pricing models, we will have 'end to end' or 'universal' solutions.

I hope we've attained the 'swarm' stage for tools to manage credentials. Some strategies that people on the social network have confessed to using:

Use the same credentials everywhere. This is ok provided those credentials are 'strong.' "Strongness" means username and password that are hard to guess. There are programs that test for credentials so they're not just guessing.
Use variants on the same credentials. This is better than 'the same' but the complexity might make it just as hard to manage as altogether different credentials. You can create 'protocols' for yourself like in the paragraph below after 'strong passwords.'
Using your browser's 'remember me' is not very secure.
Many sites now use your email address as a unique username. That is easy to find out or guess. Many people use their ISP's email address so when they change ISPs, it can become a problem (although ISPs have gotten smart and keep those users active instead of deleting those addresses). So, many web sites now rely 'solely' on your password for authentication.

Here are tips on how to create STRONG usernames and passwords:

8 characters or longer, use one or more capital letter(s), one or more number(s), one or more special characters (some authentication software have limitations such as you cannot use a dot, or underscore)
A good way to make strong passwords is to use the first letters of words of song lyrics, such as "Oh Say Can You See! 1776" to create the password: "Oscys!1776"

It's a good idea to build two levels of credentials: high and low. For 'high,' such as to access your online bank account, change the password frequently. You can change only a part of it, for instance, from "OsCys!1776" to "Oscys!1778" for the month of August.

For low level credentials such as your subscription to a newspaper, it doesn't really matter that much if someone accesses your account. I make my username and password the same, such as "mariatseng" as username, and the same string, "mariatseng" as the password.

It is critical that you remember the rules (protocols) you made up to create usernames and passwords, such as 'same username and password for magazine subscriptions' but for important applications, use 'email ID as username and patriotic song for password.' It's ok to write your rules down because whoever is spying still must discern the specifics.

There's lots more to say about this topic, and there are lots of experts, entire fields in computer science for security and encryption.

Toshiba laptop's stupid marketing mistakes

2009-07-09T15:08:00.000-07:00

This blogpost is about Toshiba's marketing strategy. Toshiba made some bad decisions. Many people believe that marketing is about advertising or public relations or marketing communications. Yes, marketing includes all of those functions, but it also includes product management: deciding what products to build, their features, pricing, roadmap through its lifecycle. Product management makes the build versus buy decisions, selects which partners are needed, the terms of the partnerships, the product's position relative to other products... the many decisions that determine the satisfaction of the targeted customers. I hope this post shows the mistakes that were made in the marketing of my new Toshiba laptop.

I bought a Toshiba Satellite A355-S6924 a month ago because its hardware config looked good for that price. I thought I can live with Vista until I upgrade to XP7 later this year. A few weeks ago, I rated the laptop highly at Toshiba's web site and at Amazon. Now, after a month's intensive use, I have buyer's regret.

Toshiba's pricing strategy of near-zero pre-loaded software (Vista only) means a lot of the cost of ownership is 'shifted forward' meaning you have to buy almost everything. I knew this going in, but who could have imagined that a system utility like a Bluetooth stack would require the end user to purchase a separate license? As it turned out, it did NOT require an end user license; a poorly written message made it seem so.

This machine does not have embedded Bluetooth support, you have to use a dongle which I have from my previous laptop. Imagine my surprise when a dialog box popped up saying the Toshiba Bluetooth stack's 30-day trial use license has expired. No link, no advice, no further comments, nothing.

That message wasn't about any end user license, but was about an OEM license. Why is Toshiba telling me, an end user, about the need for an OEM license? That message would have been more useful had it said something like, "The Bluetooth dongle that you are using does not have a license to use Toshiba's proprietary Bluetooth stack. Please contact its manufacturer for help, or use a Bluetooth dongle that has a license for Toshiba's Bluetooth stack."

Why did this even happen? Windows XP SP2 has an embedded Bluetooth stack. It's not as capable as the Toshiba stack, but it's there. However, Vista does not use that stack. Why didn't Vista include a low-feature stack to help Windows XP customers migrate? Poor marketing.

It's a bad marketing decision to make Bluetooth support proprietary, and not offer some kind of limited continuing support. Now that interface with mobile media devices is becoming increasingly important, being suddenly dead in the water with Bluetooth, especially having enjoyed it for 30 days, creates bad customer sentiment.

Toshiba's other stupid marketing strategy mistakes:

1. Toshiba doesn't give any information about which Bluetooth dongles have Toshiba licenses thereby missing an opportunity to co-market with those OEMs. You can make money from co-marketing, you know? And your customers like having choices.

2. End users who are not IT-savvy won't know what the hell this licensing esoterica means. There is no help at all from Toshiba's 'expired' message to ANY help for end users to solve this problem. On Toshiba's user forum, the question "How to buy a license for the Bluetooth stack" is posted, but is 'locked' so no one can post comments. There is NO ANSWER given. I've searched the web and found NO ANSWER elsewhere. Bad customer communications, bad support management.

Fortunately, I know that BlueSoleil, a vendor of Bluetooth software, will support the dongle that I already own. After registration at their web site, I downloaded BlueSoleil 6, a stack that supports many, most, if not all of the profiles that the Toshiba stack does. Unfortunately, it's available for free for only a 15-day trial after which BlueSoleil will only transfer 2 MB files. This is a good marketing practice by BlueSoleil for two reasons:

First, the 'free trial expiration' message appears on day 1 so you're forewarned and might buy early instead of waiting for the end of the trial period. Second, the message includes a link to BlueSoleil's online store where you can immediately buy a license for $29.99 with no interruption in your use of Bluetooth. BlueSoleil solves the problem instead of posting a cryptic message that doesn't apply to end users, then not giving any way to enable the end user to continue to interface with Bluetooth devices.

I am shocked and disappointed that Toshiba, a well regarded consumer electronics brand, does such a poor job of end-user marketing and support.

Oh, while I'm in rant mode, let me warn you that Toshiba's tech support, while free, is NOT KNOWLEDGEABLE. I called to get help with accessing the pre-loaded free trial of Microsoft Office. My call was dropped, no call-back. I had to navigate again through the n-level deep voice messaging, call another number, more 'press 1 for...' 'press 2 for...' ... to reach another randomly selected support person, explain my question again... He suggested searching the hard drive for hidden sectors. The software was there. That was a good experience.

I asked about getting a recovery disk. He said it's not Toshiba's policy to give out recovery disks. After a crash, call again and they will ship a disk; you pay for shipping. That would incur an unacceptably long downtime for me, so after hasseling the guy, asking to talk to his supervisor, he said he'd send me a recovery disk. A month later, nothing arrived.

I complained to a geek friend who told me that I don't need to buy Toshiba's recovery CD because the machine has a utility for you to create your own recovery CD. Sigh.

I am afraid of what else I'll find out, as I continue to try to use this laptop.

Non-Technical Resources about the Semantic Web

2009-03-26T14:14:00.000-07:00

I've been posting information-rich coments on other people's blogs. Why not post them on my own blog too? The cut/paste from various places caused the various font crazies in this post. I guess HTML isn't as transportable between applications as I had hoped.

The primary source of info, more reliable than Wikipedia, about the Semantic Web (scroll down past the technical stuff)
W3C Semantic Web http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/
That page has lots and lots of links. Suggest you start with the FAQ http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/SW-FAQ
Recent interviews with Tim Berners-Lee.
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/
- “What is the future of the internet”, BBC Radio 4 Interview (9 July 2008).
- “Sir Tim Berners-Lee Talks About the Semantic Web”, Transcript of the Podcast Interview with Paul Miller (February 2008); the sound version can also be accessed on-line.
- The Semantic Web in Action, by Lee Feigenbaum, Ivan Herman, Tonya Hongsermeier, Eric Neumann, and Susie Stephens, Scientific American, 297(6), pp. 90-97, (December 2007). This is an early but good article, with case studies of commercial applications!
- Interview with Tim Berners-Lee, Business Week, April 2007.
- Tim Berners-Lee on the Semantic Web, Video on MIT Technology Review, March 2007 (the video of the interview can also be accessed).
- The Semantic Web Revisited, by Nigel Shadbolt, Tim Berners-Lee and Wendy Hall, IEEE Intelligent Systems 21(3) pp. 96-101, May/June 2006.
- Le Web Sémantique: un interview avec Ivan Herman , by Xavier Borderie at Journal du Net, développeurs, June 2006. (Interview in French.)
- The Semantic Web, Scientific American, May 2001, Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila.
- (more archived material at the page)

I filtered for Cisco’s SP customers because I was posting a comment on a Cisco blog. Here are the 4 results when the W3C page is filtered by “telecom.” http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/public/UseCases/ Select filters (right side) for IT, or multiple filters. Most use cases are for drug discovery because those are already very large and well annotated databases.

There are many, many special interest groups all over the place, ranging from very technical to almost fantasy-oriented. If you seek, you shall find!

Emergence of OpenSocial for the Social Web

2009-03-03T00:55:00.001-08:00

Social networking is all the rage. I personally belong to more than 17 such networks ranging from the archaic but trail blazing Yahoo Groups to the latest darling, Facebook. Let me whine again: I need a competent, flexible, customizable content aggregator!!!!!!

It seems that social media is following the normal growth path for new markets and technologies.

When a market or technology is new, players use 'walled gardens' to capture and defend market share. They use proprietary code, user interfaces, tools and of course content. An example is AOL during the first ten or so years of the public Internet.
As more players enter the growing market, product features and interfaces become increasingly varied and tools become simultaneously more capable and more complex. Examples are different social networking platforms optimize on selected capabilities. Socialtext does wikis well; Jive differentiates itself with its forum capability; WebEx seems optimized for realtime meetings and communications...
Despite a proliferation of ingenious dashboards, single (or limited multi-) function notifiers, and cross-platform tools, users want better productivity to manage identities, authentication, profiles, content and contacts.
Users now want interoperability, ease of use, standardized interfaces and the transcendence of 'walled gardens.' They also want to be able to selectively share a body of content.
Enter the "open" model. Open source, better DRM (digital rights management), not just interoperability, but overlap operability. We're seeing 'openess' emerge in the segments for routers, browsers and I hope soon, content.

Social Web Q&A with Google’s Kevin Marks is a good blog post that clearly outlines the Open Social initiative. It's a consortium of Internet players that intend to leverage existing code where possible, create open sourced tools where needed. They use the familiar 5 layer 'stack' as a conceptual model. The consortium is led by the most resource-rich player, Google. There's lots more detail and overall, is good news.

Read it, it's great.

Posted using ShareThis

Assumptions about human nature

2009-02-26T14:53:00.000-08:00

Re bad behavior, graft and corruption...

I hope you agree that a fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives is the assumption about human nature. The Left believes that in a benign environment, humans are naturally good and it's abuse that triggers bad behaviors. The Right believes that people are naturally selfish, jealous, greedy, power hungry...

So the Left tries to create Eden so that people can express their natural goodness while the Right tries to build policies that channel vile urges in constructive ways, like use self interest to control prices.

I believe that graft, corruption, evil, all those bad things have been with us all along. With the Enlightenment and the more general acceptane and practice of Humanitarianism, I think global society, overall, has gotten better. But with the Information Age, we find out more about more of the bad stuff.

Soap opera, crime shows, newspapers, magazines, pulp fiction, even literature, seem to deal with the bad aspects of human nature. The types of media that try to communicate positive stories do not enjoy as broad an audience. So I guess whatever human nature may actually be, we enjoy learning about the evil aspects.

US' main exports: Raw Materials?????

2009-02-19T16:06:00.000-08:00

I just saw an expert on TV saying because the US' main exports are raw materials (fertilizers, grains, lumber), not manufactured high technology goods such as electronics and semiconductors. The expert infered that therefore the US is like Third World countries (who export oil, intelligent, ambitious, hard-working people), destined for low standards of living and poor prospects. This kind of comment betrays an ignorance or willful denial of how world trade works, and the value of intellectual property.

Are "exports" measured by mass, volume, monetary value, political impact, social impact or by another metric?

US companies manufacture semiconductors or consumer electronics products overseas because they can get higher margins than manufacturing in the US. When the products are sold, say, from Thailand, where the factory or assembly plant are, to Korea, that export is counted as a transaction between Thailand and Korea -- the US doesn't seem to be a participant. However, a part of the revenue is repatriated to the US where Intel and Apple and many of the parent companies live. When a Ford car is exported from say, Germany where it's manufactured, to the UK, that's counted as a German export, but Ford's home office in the US gets some of that money.

Even better than the money from manufactured goods is the money from intellectual property such as software. When a PC is sold anywhere in the world, Microsoft gets a license fee for the operating system, for Microsoft Office Suite and for other applications such as the web browser. In fact the MAJORITY of the cost to make PCs is for license fees, not the hardware.

The US invented the advertising model, the most effective revenue generator for web-based businesses today. Every time a web user, anywhere in the world, clicks on a Google ad, Google gets paid for that click. Without exporting any physical item, Google, a US company, is enabling anyone with web access, anywhere in the world to use its intellectual property and web services.

It would seem that whereever that expert on TV got his data about US exports, that source has neglected to include US exports in the form of graduate students, basic science and technology, financial services, business models (like all those internet businesses) and other high dollar value assets that have 'long tails,' meaning they generate many daughter products and services.

If restricting this discussion to concrete exports only, how about the trucks, tanks, airplanes, bombs, ammunition, medicine, ... used in US and NATO bases around the world? (True, a lot of consumables are sourced locally, but especially weapons and high technology tend to be manufactured in the US or under US license.) Those are US exports. We also export, via the inumerable US-funded or supported NGOs, the vendors that support US bases, our troops who give away candy, toys, personal hygiene products, books, blankets, tents, shoes, construction equipment and materiel... to local populations. Those exports do not generate money for the US economy, but they do stimulate the US economy.

To me, the highest impact US export is content. All the movies, videos, music, web content, t-shirts, chachkis... luridly illustrated in multi-faceted, multi-media -- in every conceivable way -- for the world to see what it's like to live in America and think like an American.

In addition to generating money for the US, the content informs the world on the American culture, attitudes, ways to do things... that have long tails indeed.

Gift Giving

2008-12-17T13:56:00.001-08:00

I thought that the primary reason for gift giving is to show affection, affinity... good feelings toward the recipient. Sadly, even though we are suppose to appreciate gifts regardless of their value because "It's the thought that counts" but in practice, we assign value to gifts based on how much they cost!

In some cultures, giving gifts is a way to demonstrate the giver's prestige -- the bigger the gift, the more wealthy the giver and perhaps by inference, the less wealthy the recipient in comparison. So, a disproportionately large gift is an insult.

Apparently, some cultures accept the practice of going into debt in order to give a big gift, one that signifies, or even bolsters one's station in society. If one is the leader of the group, one is expected to give bigger gifts than people who hold a lesser role. In some cultures, the size of the gift for each role is codified.

In olden days' etiquette, you were not supposed to reveal to the recipient the monetary costs of a gift. The recipient is supposed to appreciate the thought and guess the value for themselves. In that same apparently passe etiquette, carefully wrapped and decorated gifts demonstrate the thought and care that went into creating or selecting the gift. I hear that in the old Japanese culture, the way a gift is wrapped and presented contain specific meaning about the relationship between the giver and the recipient.

Re-Gifting
It seems many people feel that the monetary cost of a gift, and whether it's 'new' or used, designates the giver as generous or a cheapskate. Well, what about say, a gift of the Cullinan Diamond (one of the stones in the British Imperial State Crown), but it's old and was previously owned? It is clearly a 're-gift' but is it a cheapskate's gift?

What about giving money as a gift? The aforementioned passe etiquette definitely states that giving money is crass but nowadays, it seems to be OK. If someone gave money that their employer gave them, to another person, is that re-gift also a cheapskate gift? What about gifts that didn't cost the giver any money: Donald Trump shares his knowledge on real estate deals; an artist gives a performance, a friend gives emotional support... are gifts also considered 'cheap' because they didn't cost the giver money?

O. Henry's short story, "Gift of the Magi" (podcast) is heart-warming, about gifts that don't cost much but are very meaningful.

Mashup Camp: loved it

2008-11-26T16:04:00.000-08:00

My friend Nancy Tubbs (founder of Full Calendar) let me know about the November 2008 Mashup Camp in at the Computer History Museum. It was a highly intellectually satisfying 3-day event. The chief cat herder, Information Week's David Berlind, did a great job -- kudos to him.

I'm a semantic web enthusiast so was delighted to learn that the huge company, Thomson Reuters, has a tool, OpenCalais, that conducts semantic searches of unstructured text to extract names, addresses (many other terms) and provides more information about them... using Thomson-Reuters' proprietary database, then marks up the text using RDF. The results are exportable as XML. Great way to find patterns and enhance market research, for relationship mapping and other ways to mine unstructured content.

Here's OpenCalais's page for what it can do for bloggers using WordPress or Drupal (not Google's blog tool, Blogger with a capital B)

I am so proud to have voted for the top winning mashup named "Empowerment." It was written by Dean Mao over a 12-hour period. His mashup is a Firefox extention that does three things:

searches for key words on any web page, email message, blog...
runs them through OpenCalais for resources which can be text, images... and displays those resources in a 'pop-up' when you hover over a highlighted term
you can add your notes to the resources, and others can see your comments.

You can download Dean's Firefox extension, Empowerment, at
http://www.mashupcamp.com/wiki/index.php/SpeedGeeking8#Session_2_-_Table_9:_Dean_Mao_--_Context_Sensitive_Firefox_Addon_.28Winning_Entry.29 and also access Dean's contact information.

The second highlight of the Mashup Camp is the talk by Tim O'Reilly. I believe he's the guy who coined the term "Web 2.o." Below are a the 'take-aways' that I noted:

Read the O'Reilly book, "Web 2.0, A Strategy Guide"
"Data is the value unit" and Tim cited several very creative forms of data such as the sequence of gene bases (amino acids) are unique name spaces as are Twitter hash tags. The value-add is to derive meaning from data sets.

Several mashups scared me. One did the following: instead of updating one's resume from one's memory or experience, why not do continuous updates using one's web citations? Another mashup will search the web and create a tag cloud for a given term. So you can search the web for yourself, and present your tag cloud as your resume.

All those callow people who've trustingly laid out in numerous social networking or other web presences (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Plaxo, SecondLife, blogposts, comments to blogs...) all their half-baked political rants, not carefully thought-through venting, intimate and casual activities... all that information can be aggregated to form their online social graph (a Facebook term). Even the pattern of one's cell phone and credit card usage can reveal one's movements and choices.

The other wonderful thing about Mashup Camp is its web site. There were real-time tweets, blogs, pictures and lots and lots more information. If you missed the camp, you can still get so much information from the web site. Make sure to check out the "Mashup Backchannel."

This blogpost is getting too long. I'll write a second post about people I met, other mashups that I loved...

--Maria

How a depressed person can self-help; how friends can help

2008-11-15T11:31:00.000-08:00

Clinical depression has a physiological component but also a behavioral one. The way someone thinks and acts can affect mood and alleviate symptoms of depression. A very destructive symptom is inertia, the inability to 'get going,' to keep swimming through the cold oatmeal. Friends and family can help by overcoming the inertia, for example, by suggesting "Let's go for a walk" or "let's chat to put things in better perspective."

Two "erroneous thinking" processes to recognize and change:

Exaggeration: a bad external situation such as a serious illness or loss is exaggerated into "I am a bad person, everyone is bad, the world is doomed and nothing will ever get better."
Magical thinking: "My life is terrible because I was born during a thunderstorm," or "If I got that job, my life will be perfect."

Buy or borrow the paperback "Feeling Good" by David Burns. Its companion workbook will help the depressed person analyze his/her thinking and behavior and build a plan to change it.

Some behavioral changes that the depressed person, friends and family can help to make:

Get medical, dental and vision checkups to discover and treat any problems. Physical illness can trigger or worsen depression.
Deliberately structure a varied daily schedule, a different schedule every day. Plan at least one activity for the day. Be realistic. Can be something pleasant like 'send a note to a friend' or a pragmatic task like 'change the bedding.' Cross activities off the list when done.
Exercise three times a week for 30 minutes in each session. It doesn't matter what exercise you do or how vigorously, do something continuously for 30 minutes.
Prepare regular, diverse meals with some each of protein, carbohydrates, fat. Many depressed people feel it's not 'worth it' to cook for themselves. I say "who is more worth the effort than yourself? Who would appreciate your effort, properly?"
Maintain personal grooming: shower, shampoo, brush teeth, comb hair, trim nails.
Improve the immediate environment: adjust temperature to slightly cool (68-70 degrees), pick up clutter, clean house and do laundry, add more light (use timers to make sure lights come on and stay on), add good stimuli such as music, pleasant scents, visual cues such as flowers, photos of loved ones and good memories, a pet
Meet people, even if passively: sit in a coffee shop and people watch, stroll through a shopping mall, attend church, go to the library or a park. Joining a volunteer group will give a regular occasion to meet people. The goal is to distract depressive thoughts.
Sleep. Make it a habit: go to bed at the same time, get up at the same time. Timers that automatically turn off lights will give the cue "go to bed." When going to bed, go to sleep, don't read, watch TV... Keep the room dark and quiet (wear eye mask and ear plugs if you have to). Get up at the same time even if you haven't slept enough.

Most important: get a treat every day. Write a list of treats and choose one everyday, even if it was not a good day:

Build ego by giving a compliment or citing an achievement: "I helped somebody," "I cooked a good meal," "I cleaned the kitchen," "I improved my mood."
Increase interests by doing a favorite activity: toss a few hoops, hit a few balls, talk to a friend, read a novel, watch a movie, do a hobby. Browse a new shop (fancy or ethnic supermarkets can be interesting).
Increase relaxation: get a massage (you can give yourself one), take a long hot shower, use a back brush or defoliating glove to stimulate your skin, play music and dance, sing in the shower, do stretching (borrow from the library books or DVDs on Yoga or pilates)
Bost mood: Eat a favorite food, an exotic fruit, new flavor of sorbet. Find a happy story; ask friends, read blogs or from TV -- find a nice story.
Pamper yourself: try on your own nice clothes, jewelry, perfume... or ones in a shop. Take yourself out for breakfast. Try a temporary hair color. Play music and/or read during a bath. Get a nice soap, body wash, hand lotion. Use the hot tub (someone you know might have one, or get a one-time pass at a health club)...

--Maria