Friday, March 29, 2002

"Humor is: not only to see your own limits and weaknesses, but to accept them." (Dr. Ruth Pfau)

Thursday, March 28, 2002

Word of the Day - Jeremiah 9:23-24

This is what the Lord says: "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord , who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight," declares the Lord .

Tuesday, March 26, 2002

DesktopStreaming: Web-based screen sharing

This is an interesting tool, however unfortunately the pricing is prohibitive. It allows you to view the desktop screen of your customers via the Web. The customer only needs http/web access. He points his web browser to a specific address. A small ActiveX control is downloaded which then sends (streams) the customer's screen content over the web to the support technician. Both users can share mouse and keyboard control. I tried it and it did work very well.

Thursday, March 21, 2002

Slashdot | Scientology Uses DMCA to Delist Critic's Website

Scientology forces Google to remove links to critical web site.

Update 3/22/2002: some pages of the Scientology critics site xenu.net are back in the Google index.

Tuesday, March 19, 2002

Reed's Law: Beyond Metcalfe's Law to the Power of Community Building

This is a "classic" article about value creation in networks. The value of broadcasting networks grows linear with network size, transaction network value grows with the square of the network size (this is Metcalfe's Law) and group forming network (GFN) value grows exponentially with network size. The notion of "potential connectivity" is introduced. I think this is a brilliant article.

Monday, March 11, 2002

The Inventor of the Segway About Being an Entrepreneur

"The word entrepreneur is associated with success and adventure. From my life, the only thing I can tell you that's consistently associated with entrepreneurship is failure, and the only thing consistently associated with invention is frustration," he said. "There is a long road between the idea and the reality."

Friday, March 08, 2002

The conversation continues...

An interesting series of articles on Internet technology published by Esther Dyson and Kevin Werbach, both of VC firm EDVenture Holdings Inc.
CYBERPOSIUM 2002

The Cyperposium web site has webcasts online from this year's conference. I did particularly like the ones with Esther Dyson (EDVentures), Matthew Szulik (RedHat) and Bruce Claflin (CEO of 3COM). There's also archives from last year's conference with a session held by Tim Koogle (CEO of Yahoo).

Esther Dyson talks about her difficult job of "making CEO's listen". "It's good to tell the truth, with one exception. You shouldn't tell people you are smarter than they are, even if it's the truth ... especially if it's the truth!". She believes that an important job of a CEO is to "absorb uncertainty".

Tuesday, March 05, 2002

Build Systems, Not Companies, on Open Standards

This article makes the point that while open standards are essential to create industries and markets, and it makes sense to build products on open standards, it's usually a bad idea to base a company's business model on open standards.

"Think ASCII and TCP/IP. Think Web browsers and servers. Think SQL and ODBC. All revolutionary once upon a time, all beneath notice today. No sane business would position around any of them. Yet that is precisely what many of today's Java-centric and XML-centric vendors are busily doing... The problem with basing business strategy on open standards is that, like a fire stoked with home furnishings, it eventually leaves everyone homeless ... In the long run, when the dust settles and everyone is in agreement, open standards offer no differentiation and erode competitive advantage along the axis that has been standardized. Survivors are forced to rethink their strategies and offer value in wholly new ways ..."

Monday, March 04, 2002

My first WinXP crash

Most interesting is not the crash itself (although it appeared suddenly on a system which was running the final WinXP version fine for 4 months) but what happend afterwards. Look at this PDF file.

Two days later I actually got an email from Microsoft stating that "the analysis of this crash has been completed". Wow. They point me to a Knowledge Base article which states that either my hardware or antivirus software may be the issue. Hm. I don't think so ...

What's so interesting about this whole thing is that, besides online update, it's another "brick in the wall" to make people actually believe that software is not a product, but also a service, and consequently make them continuously pay for it ...

Friday, March 01, 2002

HRworks

German web application for employee relationship management (employee information portal, travel expenses, holiday planner) offered as ASP model or licensed software.
Is Microsoft getting ahead of itself? - Tech News - CNET.com

Interesting article on Microsoft's MyServices/Hailstorm strategie. I think they might have to start over this whole thing. The use cases they showed us at the PDC in LA were all not very convincing. And of course there is this big issue with hosting everything in a central system under control of Microsoft.