Mike Klein Global Fusion

Gov. Elect Walker - "Wisconsin is Open for Business"

2010-11-11T09:53:38-08:00

MADISON - "Wisconsin's open for business," is more than a slogan, Governor-Elect Scott Walker told attendees at the Wisconsin Technology Council's Early Stage Symposium in Madison. It will be how we view the future of state government and beyond government, and startups and small business will be at the forefront of that.

Walker's proposal to help create 250,000 jobs and 10,000 new businesses by 2015 has met with some skepticism, but he said the number was based on the record of Tommy Thompson's first term

via wistechnology.com

1.5 million Facebook users die per year - what happens to their profile?

2010-11-11T09:37:54-08:00

By Mike Klein & Brian Canin

Offensive material posted on dead teen's Facebook page, Madison Startup has solution

Today is Veteran's Day and we remember Justin Ellsworth, a soldier killed in Iraq in 2004. His family sought access to over more than 10,000 pages of e-mail messages and photographs from Yahoo, who denied their request. An Oakland County judge ordered Yahoo to turn over Ellsworth's digital assets. What happens to your online presence when you're gone? Does Facebook Twitter, Second Life, or Google own your personal data, photos, and videos or is there a succession plan for your heirs? What if you don't want your heirs to have access to your Facebook account? Just

Last Sunday, Cameron Lowe, 17, was attacked by youths in Australia. He fell and hit his head and later died in hospital. Police are working to have offensive material removed from a memorial Facebook page website set up by friends of Cameron.

It is embarrassing for your mom, family and friends to see your Facebook information when the unthinkable happens and you check out before your data does. Facebook users still exist in their system after their corporal existence has been snuffed out. Google, a company taking heat for making it difficult to recover your identity should it be hacked and who has only heuristics and no human interaction in the account recovery processes, will actually on request and after your demise package up your digital identity by physically burning multiple DVD's and shipping it out to your heirs via the US post office - a non-virtual and time consuming event for a very virtual company or delete your account.

There have been recent incidents among Facebook users who have died, where their accounts have been hacked and spam and porno sent to the users friends list. This is painful and embarrassing for the deceased family and friends. Twitter has death policy as of August, 2010.

According to the Jesse Davis and Nate Lustig at Entrustet a cutting edge startup dealing with the protection of digital property & assets, three Facebook users die each minute, and what happens to their digital assets are right now a hot bed for litigation and controversy. Entrustet provides an online service in what some call, but they aren't fond of, the “Digital Death Industry”, a new concept for many of us in and out of the technology world and one which is becoming more and more significant as our virtual presence becomes larger and more entwined in an ever increasingly digital world. The first Digital Death Day Conference was held October 9th in Mountain View, California.

According to Lustig, Faceboook offers a moralization of your profile, which removes your profile, and wall from Google's search results and only lets existing friends comment after you're gone.

“The problem is that most people do not know they offer it,” Lustig said. “There is no way no way to curate what goes on your wall after you die. So if someone posts an disparaging comment about you to your wall no one can edit it and/or delete it.”

Entrustet's model is very interesting. They partner with the various social media and web communities where people interact, post photos and videos as well as `manage' their online presence and digital assets.

The company's vision came from Thomas' book,"The World is Flat", who wrote about Ellsworth's family experience with Yahoo anf access to deceased people's digital assets. Friedman asked, who will sort this out?

Entrustet offers packaged services to attorneys and estate planners who are increasingly having to deal with end of life digital media asset issues on behalf of their clients. Entrustet offers clients and consumers a web based service at which the user make decisions about how their virtual property will be dealt with should they expire before their accounts do.

WTN News caught up with Nate and Jesse at their Madison, Wisconsin office just as they getting ready to embark on an international adventure.

These two entrepreneurs are moving their executive office to Santiago, Chile for a 6 month adventure in South America. Why Chile? The Chilean government has created Startup Chile, an initiative of the Chilean Government to attract world-class early stage entrepreneurs to start their businesses in Chile. They selected 25 high potential startup companies and entrepreneurs who have an innovative business plan with the potential of reaching multiple international markets. Start-Up Chile covers up to 90% of the project's budget, which includes operational expenses, investments, and human resources

“We are excited about getting to meet 25 high-impact entrepreneurial companies and collaborate and experience what it will be like to startup and run a bushiness in a another country as well as learn what Chileans think about the digital death industry,” Lustig said. "We have experienced a lukewarm reaction to our concept by some investors because it's human nature that people don't want to think about death and the U.S. military was interested, but we are not on the official procurement lists.”

Entrustet is currently a live website accepting members, the company is generating revenue and will be cash-flow positive in the near future,” Lustig said.

Members create a list of online accounts, and profiles including passwords and user names of accounts they have and how they want their digital assets handled.

The company has one major east coast investor as well as Madison, friends, family and angel financing. They are not seeking another funding round or venture capital financing for another 6-9 months as they seek partnerships with corporate web site partnerships with companies such American Express, Northwestern Mutual, domain registrars such as Go Daddy, social networking sites and photo and video sharing sites.

The company is redesigning their website, fine tuning the business model, and further prove the execution of their business plan. Entrustit currently has more than 4000 members, is utilized by 16 law firms representing 10,000 clients and has a partnership with independent music web site Broadjam, who has 120,000 members. The company has three major deals in their pipeline.

We wish them success!

Reproduction permitted for personal use only. For reprints and reprint permission, contact reprints@wistechnology.com.

An open letter to Sprint CEO — Is Sprint improving customer service?

2009-11-05T07:21:39-08:00

Columnist Note: In an open letter to Sprint CEO,Dan Hesse: Does Mr. Hesse really believe that Sprint is improving customer service? Not from our experiences. A multi-part experience nightmare! Part one.

Am I the only one completely confused and upset a with Sprint's poor customer service and customer experience or should I restate that as, Sprint's failure to improve customer service.? Please comment below and add your thoughts. My experience involves selling products under false pretext breach of contract and not honoring sales claims by Sprint's sales and customer support representatives as well as breach of contract issues. Perhaps it's time for the consumer to rise and file another Class Action Law Suit and report your company violation of consumer laws to states with strong consumer protections agencies and with records of regulatory enforcement. Haven't you had enough? In August Sprint had to to pay $15M to settle to most recent case. See story. In today's world, customer satisfaction and retention are the keys to a company's survival. Sprint is selling off its cell towers to raise money to sustain operations. Laying off employees and outsourcing its workforce to foreign countries and is losing more customers than any other cellular carrier. Perhaps that is a major reason the company is in a really poor cash position? Sprint's actions impact its' shareholders and well as its customers. Mr. Heese, Please respond to me let us help you.

Dear Mr. Hesse, Sprint Board of Directors, et al.

I am writing this open letter to you and the community at large as your public relations department would not schedule a timely interview with you or an executive member of your management team to address the following issues. They have referred me to your executive offices in an attempt to fix issues that many of my readers and I have experienced. I do not think if you know what is going on in your company. Ever since the merger with Nextel, I have been writing this column, but have held off publishing it, to give the company fair time to improve. I think over 2 years is enough. It's fun, but unnerving to watch you on TV commercials saying that Sprint has worked hard to improve customer service. Not true! A search of “Sprint Customer Service” on You Tube reveals 2,139 poor customer service videos. I will make it easy for you to see this search, just “Click here.”

Read Full Posting at https://wistechnology.com/articles/6771/

The “New Normal” CIOs and IT execs converge at Gartner Confab

2009-10-18T09:48:50-07:00

This week I am attending the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2009 for the 12th consecutive year. It is one of the largest and most important annual gatherings of CIOs and senior IT leaders. There are many influential CIO's & senior-level IT executives with ties to Wisconsin including those from Northwestern Mutual, WE Energies, Orbitz, Peace Corp., Joy Global, Rockwell, Goodyear, QBE Insurance and more….

The Symposium kicks off this afternoon with a focus on healthcare IT and wraps up with an interview with Vivek Kundra, Federal CIO of the U.S. Government.

The agenda this year focuses on the difficult task IT executives face of balancing cost, risk and growth.

According to Gartner CEO Gene Hall, “As economic indicators stabilize after the global recession of the last 12 months, you must now ensure that decision makers in your organization have the insight and systems necessary to return your organization to growth. Your role is to help your organization emerge from the economic downturn with a stronger competitive advantage than you had going into it.”

My agenda is packed with meetings with CIOs, Gartner analysts, session and presentations, mastermind keynotes and special interviews.

I will be summarizing the complex, interrelated challenges confronting you. Also, I am creating a photo gallery, podcasts and WTN broadcast from the event. So check out postings at www.wtnnews.com www.wtnnews discussions posted at the FusionCIO Linkedin Group and my blogs, here at Global Fusion and course follow me on Twitter.

The theme for this years conference will kick off early Monday morning with the Gartner Analyst Opening Keynote, which will explore “Breakthrough Approaches in the Era of the `New Normal' and examine the strategic implications of fast-evolving technologies and trends.

On Tuesday, Mark Hurd, Chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, will make a rare public appearance and return to Symposium when he spoke in 2005. Gartner analysts Donna Scott and David Cearley will interview Hurd on his plans for growth and driving customer value in the year ahead.

On Wednesday, Gartner analysts Whit Andrews and Hung LeHong will interview Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google, on the strategic direction of the company. Now that should be very interesting!

And on Thursday, Gartner analysts Brian Gammag and Neil McDonald will interview Steve Elop, President of Microsoft Business Division about various topics affecting enterprises in the year ahead, including the launch of Windows 7. What? No Steve Ballmer this year? Maybe he is off selling advertising! I have to go and grab a coat, as it feels as cold or colder than the Packer game at Lambeau today. I need to find a sports bar as CBS has Brett Favre and his Vikings playing on TV here. It's 56 degrees in Orlando today with up to 40 mph winds. Brrr.. for Orlando! Thanks for listening.

Update...Minnesota amazing win over Baltimore 4:27/pm edt never did get to see Packers!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Klein is CEO and Editorial Director of WTN Media and WTN News also well as the Fusion CEO - CIO Symposium and the Digital Healthcare Conference. Klein was named" Journalist of the Year" for 2009-2010 by the U.S. Small Business Administration and writes on for the blog, Global Fusion and Fusion Healthcare, where he has been named and one of the "Top Healthcare Bloggers" by Wellsphere. You can reach Klein at edit@wistechnology.com

Bully Bosses and the secretaries who love 'em

2009-04-22T16:25:58-07:00

Bully Bosses and the secretaries who love 'em

Here is an interesting blog posting I came across today.

Today being Administrative Professionals Day (April 22, how could you not know?), Guru thought it fitting to honor the various professions by linking to a compilation of tasks many have been forced to complete during their tenure.

Across the pond, Business Management Daily put together a list of the craziest things that administrative assistants have been asked to do by their boss.

They included:

· Inspect the boss's sandwich every day to make sure it contained no tomatoes..

· Drop off a pet's stool sample at the vet.

· Call around for a used toilet to replace one that had broken in the boss's rental house.

· Send fake rejection letters from universities to the boss's daughter as a joke.

· Take a Johnny Mathis album cover to the tailor to find material that matched Johnny's jacket.

It's Not the News. It's the Packaging

2009-04-20T06:34:36-07:00

Amid the news industry's crisis and the attendant fingerpointing over the causes, there is seemingly endless discussion these days of the pros and cons of things like micropayments, pay walls, aggregators, Google and the like. "We're being ripped off by Google and the aggregators," say the traditionalists. "We need to find some way to make people pay for our journalism. Otherwise we can't support newsrooms full of reporters and great investigative projects." "Google is not the enemy—it's driving traffic to news," say the modernists (including me). "You can't put the genie back in the bottle and get people to pay for news. There's too much competition from free sources." But maybe we're all looking at this through the wrong end of the telescope—or rather, the microscope. Maybe there is something in the news business that people might want to pay for. It's just not what some of the pay-proponents think it is. Maybe—maybe—the thing you can charge for is the package the news comes in, not the specific news items themselves. Let me explain says Mark Pots, recovering journalist.

Apple Clone Company Pystar Surviving One - year of Apple litigation

2009-04-15T18:28:36-07:00

Will Apple's software license be overturned by the courts? Apple needs a wake up call as my personal experience is that there quality, reliability are slipping and they are losing the edge of product superiority. In the last 3 months, I have replaced two IPhone that failed. My two-year old MacBook has had three repairs in three weeks , 2 logic boards and failed RAM. My IPod crashed right after the extended warranty ended. My Macbook Pro has had performance issues that Apple does not seem to be able to fix. So what's going with the competition?

One year ago, an otherwise sleepy April in the Apple universe was turned upside down by a tiny company from Southern Florida, kicking off a real-world Clone War between Apple and Psystar.

It's been a year since Psystar began selling Mac clones in defiance of Apple.

(Credit: Psystar)

Today, the essential question regarding Psystar is unchanged: does the company have the right to sell computers with Apple'sMac OS X Leopard preinstalled, as it has been doing since April 14, 2008? Psystar set off shock waves through the Apple world that week, as an army of journalists, bloggers, fanboys, and detractors set off on a manic search for anything and everything related to the company and its desktops.

Psystar emerged a year ago as a small independent system builder, the likes of which can be found in any medium-size town in the U.S. What provoked the interest and ire of the Maccommunity was Psystar's decision to ship so-called "white box" systems with Mac OS preinstalled alongside systems withWindows Vista and Linux, in defiance of Apple's licensing policies for that operating system.

Psystar recently updated its flagship product, the Open Computer, and CEO Rudy Pedraza promises that more products are yet to come.

In an interview, Pedraza acknowledged that the past year has been quite a challenge, but he's glad that at least so far, Psystar has been able to provide an alternative to Apple. "(Our customers) are people who would otherwise be unable to afford an Apple computer, and they are just happy about it."

Obama underscores commitment to restoring fairness to the tax code, $1.2 billion dollars in tax credits for Wisconsin working families

2009-04-15T08:03:09-07:00

Today, on Tax Day, President Obama will meet with several working families, just like the ones all across America, who are facing tough choices during this economic crisis. President Obama underscored his commitment to a simpler tax code that rewards work and the pursuit of the American dream and supports a future of sustained economic growth that creates good jobs and rising incomes for all Americans. Wisconsin working families will receive $1.2 billion dollars back in the pockets of Wisconsin working families as working pay tax credit. Read more at WTN News »

Are you experiencing the Netbook/NetTop revolution?

2009-04-14T18:42:15-07:00

I have now tried the original Acer Aspire and it was under-powered. Then I just tried the $800 Sony Vaio with Intel's new Atom chip and GPS enabled netbook. It is cool looking but crashed repeatably and wireless access was hard to use and did not always find the access point. The user interface is also awkward as is screen size. My next test is the new Asus and Dell 10" models.

Just a year ago, this category didn't exist. But after several Atom-powered all-in-one PCs debuted at CES in January, it's officially the hottest grouping of desktops on the market.

A category long dominated by Apple's $1,200 iMac is suddenly rife with nice-looking imitators that pack less power than traditional Windows desktops, but are also gentler on the wallet. They're a subcategory of desktop PCs called Nettops, and, like Netbooks, they're generally defined as a computing platform powered by the Atom processor that runs either Windows XP or a version of Linux. Combined with the all-in-one form factor and a smaller screen than most desktops (between 15 inches and 19 inches), they're essentially the Netbooks of the desktop category.

Photos: All-in-one Nettops

View the full gallery

"A year ago I would have said Netbooks are not going to cannibalize the notebook market. Then the economy went kablooey," said John Jacobs, director of notebook market research for DisplaySearch. Since then, many people who needed a notebook have chosen to spend $400 on a Netbook instead of the typical $800 on a full-size notebook.

"I think we'll see something like that for Nettops," he said. "Either for retirees or younger folks who don't need the portability of a notebook, and just need something to get on the Internet and do basic computing. Nettops, and all-in-ones will be very attractive devices, and we expect to see a lot of retailers who have stayed out of it will jump into it."

The all-in-one category as a whole is expected to grow to more than 6 million units in 2009, and to over 7 million in 2010, according to DisplaySearch. That's almost an 80 percent spike in shipments, which was unexpected at the end of 2008.

See full story at CRAVE: https://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10217384-1.html?tag=mncol;txt

Skype's CTO, Dan Berg "Live" on how Skype is out to change the world

2009-04-02T17:42:00-07:00

Blog update: 04/02/01 7:02/PM EDT.

Blogger's Note: This is exclusive “real- time coverage of Berg's presentation and follow up Q/A discussion that followed the announcements and release earlier in the day of Skype - iPhone application. Written by Mike Klein, editorial director, WTN News. See updated news reporting at WTN News, www.WTNNews.com.

MADISON: Dan Berg, a self-proclaimed geek since childhood, is chief technology officer of Skype, an Internet phone service owned by eBay Inc. Berg returned to his home town area last night as he was raised and schooled in Oregon, Wisconsin. He took the opportunity to talk tonight at an Accelerate Madison monthly gathering.

Daniel Berg's primary responsibility is to drive innovation and ensure Skype continues to develop great software. His mandate covers Skype's full range of products, He is developing and maintaining a global team of more than 300 staff. Dan joined Skype after 15 years at Sun Microsystems, most recently as CTO for their Global Sales and Services Division and Vice President of Systems Engineering for Sun's Emerging Markets Region. He joined Skpe in January 2009. His presentation was on the value of the network.

He began his talk with a classic 20-year-old presentation that started with the mainframe and then talked about the change to client server computing. He discussed open standards and protocols and how open standards are playing a significant role in driving innovation. He also discussed that the cloud might contain some degree of hype. He did cite Salesforce.com as an exception.

"With the cloud there will be more than goes into it such as SaaS, PaaS, and infrastructure as a service." Berg said. “Salesforce.com going good things in SaaS and PaaS.

Berg showed a corporate video that stressed how is Skype enabling the world's conversations.

Eventually, he discussed the just-released Skype application on iPhone and Android as well as competition from traditional Telco's. Berg addressed the hometown crowd on the same day Skype confirmed rumors that it would roll out its anticipated iPhone app at the CITA Wireless show in Las Vegas. This enables users of the iPhone and iPod Touch to download Skype to make free calls to other Skype users over Wi-Fi rather than a cell network.

So what's the bid deal about Skype? He said with Skype we have no servers and as users are added peer-to-peer technology expands the network. For chief information officers this can be a problem because they loose control, said Berg.

The first week of January they had 14 million concurrent users and this week now have 17 million concurrent users without adding servers.

So what's the downside Berg asked? It's hard to control outages and tech glitches." There are good and bad uses on peer-to-peer computing," said Berg.

Skype's biggest issue is security," said Berg. "Our security has not been broken with all the hackers doing bad things on the network. A good portion of R&D is how we work with firewalls.”

A few weeks back Skype introduced "Silk" an audio codec technology developed to increase audio quality. "One of the biggest complaints we get at Skype is `your quality sucks!' “Berg added.

"Video has allowed us to get to the next step. The biggest problem we have is that it's user device quality. We are now working on HD audio and video. In the next month or so Skype will introduce with another manufacturer a $15 headphone,” he said.

“Skype has 440 million registered users. We are adding 350,000 users a day. So since yesterday we have added almost a million users. We run about 20 billion calls a month and now passed ATT as biggest provider of international voice communications,” continued Berg.

So what is changing? “We are not tied to a dedicated hardware device. We are software,” explained Berg. Where do we see things going?” Communications is like water and should move around with you. The conversation should flow to where you are on any device."

"From office to car, to home, to big screen TV, Skype adds value as a user has rich experience from chat to talk to video," he said, noting that the technology does not limit the business model.”

"We do not expect existing Telco's to re-invent communications. Over time they have become a walled garden, instead of being open. It is hard for them to open up. Skype is now going beyond ATT in terms of International calls. We are changing the worked in the process,” Berg said.

So what is the winning service? “It needs to be device and network agnostic,” added Berg."

"Finding ways to monetize Skype has been difficult," said Berg.

"One of the biggest problems we have is fraud. That's why it took us so long to get the iPhone application out," said Berg.

"We would like to have everyone to have access and with that we will change the world."

When asked by the audience about how Skype compares to technology from Microsoft, Vonage and other competitors he responded with confidence, "Were better!"

"We are really working on video and trying to increase the experience for the user"

"We need to be friends with providers, who are also our foes" said Berg

Berg said Skype is very concerned about net neutrality, a threat for users and peer-to-peer technology.

Some counties like China are angry with Skype as they have hard time monitoring communications. We want to do the right thing to protect the user until laws change," said Berg.

We are working on new version of Skype "To Go" application to improve quality, said Berg.

He closed talking about net neutrality and how that is not a good thing for users and Skype as an organization. This means that Skype strongly supports net neutrality and the attempts by ISPs' to limit bandwidth and give priority to some content providers over others is beneficial for users.

As a journalist and web-based news media outlet we strongly endorse support this position. Mike Klein, Editorial Director.