New Corporate Headquarters? Uh-Oh

From my experience there seems to be an unwritten rule that I have noticed when it comes to corporations. 

First comes the Growth phase.  You know you start off with a handful of employees in a relatively small space.  Cramped, sure but you know your going places.  You make do with what you have. 

Then comes the Getting There phase.  You move up and out.  First one building, then a bigger building, then a lease on a second, then one more across town.  You’re being noticed.  There’s a little swagger to the company step.

Then the Real Expansion phase.  Offices in other cities.  One in New York.  One in L.A.  Maybe even London or Tokyo.  You are in the know.  People come to you.  People write about you. 

Then comes the Curse.  Realizing that your home office is a real patchwork of offices throughout your home city, you decide to build a campus.  One. Big. Building.  Your Corporate mark.  The site that is on every cool commercial.  The place where everyone would kill to work.  So why is it a curse?

Because, from what I’ve seen when it comes to corporations, that is the moment just before the shark is jumped.  Sears – builds the largest tower in the world at the time; after that a long sad slide into being bought out by K-Mart.  Budget Rent a Car, a company that I am personally entwined with; moves out into a beautiful suburban building – crushed by the wheels of industry in under five years.  Bank of America – a sixty story gleaming corporate center tower in Charlotte, a few years later all hell breaks loose.

Now, it doesn’t happen to everyone.  Look at Microsoft.  The Redmond campus has been around for some time and well, …

OK, it doesn’t happen to everyone.  So of course, we should all just admire the architectural porn that Steve Jobs showed the Cupertino city council and know that it will never happen to Apple.  Just imagine – a self supporting building housing twelve thousand people.  A circular symphony of clean modern lines and glass. The capstone of Steve’s tenure at Apple.  A move that will show, without a doubt, that no one can fill the shoes of Steve Jobs.

No one.  And I mean that.  Sometimes, that in itself is a curse. 

I Will Not Be Ignored, Steve…

Q: Steve,

Could you please explain the necessity of the passive location-tracking tool embedded in my iPhone? It’s kind of unnerving knowing that my exact location is being recorded at all times. Maybe you could shed some light on this for me before I switch to a Droid. They don’t track me.

A: Oh yes they do. We don’t track anyone. The info circulating around is false.

The hew and cry that has circulated around the fact that the iPhone is indeed recording your approximate location has increased in the last few days, and during this time, Apple has kept relatively quiet.  So someone decided to ask Steve directly.  And as always, Steve’s brief answer asks more questions than it answers. 

Of course there has been the blowback that Android does it too. Yes, Android has been shown to also gather location information, but the database is limited to a much smaller list of entries and is regularly wiped by the system. But to use Steve’s own logic, Google is not tracking you either. 

So, no one is doing anything with that unencrypted by default database on my phone showing basically where I’ve been.

So, why is it there?

Of course all of this could easily be bypassed with some simple common sense.  Over the last ten to fifteen years, our privacy has morphed due to all the wonderful little gadgets out there that allow us to be the attention whores we have become.  Some of us, however, still cling to the notion that what I do, where I go and what I think is no one’s business but my own.  And there is a large number of us that really do not like the idea that people, companies, and governments are just getting bits and pieces of our lives without out immediate knowledge.  So I propose to all companies out there a simple solution.  You want to know how I am living my life?  You want to know everything about me, even the bits you really didn’t want to know? 

Pay me.

Money soothes a lot of psychic wounds.  You offer enough cash and people will allow you to set up cameras in their bathroom.   Call it “The Magic Christian” effect.  After all, Steve, you are making money off knowing more about me; all I am suggesting is a real time partnership.  You pimp me out to as many companies as you want, and I will live my life like a Kardashian.  You want to know more, pay me more.  I know, why buy the cow when you’re getting the milk for free, but time’s are changing, Steve.  The more people come to dislike the fact that this is being done without their knowledge, the more my little scenario will make good business sense. Why face a revolt, especially in times like these? 

Why Apple Is Your Psycho Ex

Ah yes, the Ex who had to know everywhere you were going.  Some of us have had the displeasure of dealing with someone who feels as if they have to track our every move.  But I bet you didn’t think that it was Apple .  You see, in the Guardian today there was a really great story about how Apple keeps tabs on where you are and when you were there in a secret file on your iPhone (and iPad) that hooks up with a file on your computer when you sync your files.   

How bad is this? Let us start with what is tracked by going to radar.oreilly.com where they first broke the news: 

All iPhones appear to log your location to a file called "consolidated.db." This contains latitude-longitude coordinates along with a timestamp. The coordinates aren’t always exact, but they are pretty detailed. There can be tens of thousands of data points in this file, and it appears the collection started with iOS 4, so there’s typically around a year’s worth of information at this point. Our best guess is that the location is determined by cell-tower triangulation, and the timing of the recording is erratic, with a widely varying frequency of updates that may be triggered by traveling between cells or activity on the phone itself.

Up to a year’s worth of unencrypted information.  Yes, unencrypted.  Which means that basically anyone could get in and see.  That is not good from a privacy standpoint.  Now, the cell phone companies all ready have this information available to people in the law enforcement sector, but in order to get it, they need a court order to do so.  If the information is on your phone, well, what’s to stop a techno-savvy officer from “accidently” seeing what should not be seen? 

Of course, the first rabid argument is that Google tried it first.  Oh, yes, the great Googly-Moogly tried the “Latitude” system, which allowed people to enable their mobile to give out details of their location to trusted contacts and ran afoul of privacy mavens for that as well.  But here’s the slight but most important difference: Google allowed you to opt into the service.  If you wanted to let the world know where you were in your private reality show, you could.  With Apple, there is no choice.  You are being tracked, whether you like it or not.  And so far, Apple ain’t talkin’.  No word as to why this was created or if this can be disabled.  So there are various theories as to the whys and wherefores, which comes back down to marketing and advertising. 

But in case you want to get mad about this, you may well be out of luck, as you forgot that ever present 15,200-word terms and conditions agreement for Apple’s iTunes program, used to synchronize with iPhones, iPods and iPads.  In it  is an 86-word paragraph about "location-based services".

“Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services.”

In other words, you might want to consider alternatives in handsets if you want to keep your life private. 

i! True Hollywood Story – Steve Jobs

A few years ago, there was a really great made for TV movie titled “The Pirates of Silicon Valley” starring Noah Wylie as Steve Jobs and Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates.  The movie was based on the book Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine.  Very good book, by the way. 

Anyway, I bring this up as there were rumors when both the book and the movie came out that Mr. Jobs was not very happy with his portrayal in either.  Although Woz states that the movie portrayal was honest, the rumor was that Steve did not like being presented as a Type A tyrant whose drive to be the alpha male in the computer world could be seen as somewhat sociopathic at times. 

So, after years of prodding, Steve will have the chance to put to rest those rumors.  According to the Associated Press, Simon & Schuster announced Sunday that Walter Isaacson’s "iSteve: The Book of Jobs" will be published in early 2012. Just in time for the apocalypse. Isaacson has been working on the long-rumored biography since 2009 and has interviewed Jobs, members of his family, colleagues at Apple and competitors. 

Now I think we all know by now what the difference is between an “authorized” biography and one that is not.  It means authoritative access to those people around the biographical person of interest as well as the center of attraction.  It means getting to the bottom of matters, to find out exactly what it is that drives a person to do the things that person has done.  It means finding the truth.

I’m sorry; actually it doesn’t mean anything like that.  Lately, it means airbrushing a person until it looks nothing like them.  In his defense, few biographers are better connected than Isaacson, a former top executive at CNN and Time magazine who has written best-sellers about Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein. But we’ve seen a few unauthorized biographies on Jobs to realize that if this comes out as a gee-whiz, boy genius True Hollywood Story, that the unauthorized bios are probably true.

Where’s Kitty Kelly when you need her? 

Not So Fast, Folks

I have found with a mixture of amusement and annoyance this thought that has permeated the blogosphere over the last year or so concerning the iPad.  Simply put, the meme that the game is over before it has even begun.  Apple won.  Everyone else is doomed.  Doomed, I tell you. 

To those people, may I present a little reality into the Jobsian distortion-field.  You see, while tablets are now white hot, while the iPad is the fastest growing electronic gadget evah, when you combine the number of users of tablet with smartphones, (you know, your iPhone, Android and the like) it comes out to only 0.3% of the Earth’s inhabitants as of the end of 2010.  That represents about 394 million users total.  That number, while quite large falls behind the following:

• Newspaper subscriptions (530 Million)
• TV subscriptions (600 million) 
• Landline telephones (1 billion)
• Total PCs (1.3 billion)
• Mobile subscribers (5.1 billion)

Now I’m not saying the market is not growing; in fact it will continue to grow at a pretty heady pace.  If it wasn’t growing, there wouldn’t be any interest and the iPad would be another “hobby” like Apple TV.  But it is rather ridiculous to call the game before the teams are even introduced.  There are plenty of players and plenty of time and room to disrupt the market.  Because, to quote Exene Czervenka, “this is the game that moves as you play it”.  And there are a lot of groups out there that can play.

The More You Know (and Shooting Star)

So what have we learned this week?  So many things.  Protestors in Libya are not using Facebook and Twitter, like their Egyptian neighbors, because both sites were heavily monitored this time.  Instead, they used the Muslim dating site, Mawada.  No doubt under the heading, Revolutionary for Revolutionary.  A good story.  This only goes to show that when presented with a problem, people figure out a solution. 

We now have the latest in robots, one that was inspired by a cheetah and a headless terminator style. The company that makes them is Boston Dynamics, the same folks who gave us the “Big Dog”.  Why Skynet finally become sentient, you now know who to damn with your dying breath. 

Google instituted changes to its search algorithm and there are definite losers, of which Associated Content is one of them.  Or, I should say, “Why is Associated Content considered a Content Farm?” Perhaps if they didn’t cause people to make mocking videos on how to boil water, I could take them seriously. Until then, “How do I wear a shoe that fits?”

After last year’s Antennae-gate Apple’s iPhone, Verizon version, does the same thing.  When you put your finger over the gap, the call drops.  The only difference is that this time no one is upset.  Those that were upset the last time apparently have been re-educated to say that this is a feature.

Speaking of which, Apple fan Dave Frommer admitted that after the initial crush on his iPad, he hardly ever uses it anymore. As Frommer is more in the creation of content camp rather than the consumer of content camp, it is easy to see how that can be, as the iPad is really made to consume more than to than create.  But don’t tell that to the fanbois. 

And finally, Om Malik of the great site GigaOm reported that his Facebook site had been hacked and that he had to go a half a day without being able to use Facebook connect.  It is a report that is both funny and sad.  May I make a suggestion?  Many of my friends have taken what I call an Amish Weekend where they completely ditch all the electronics for two whole days. Generally after the first six hours of pure hell, they finally calm down and find out what life was like circa 1988.  Only without Bon Jovi.  Its something that I would suggest along with going to a place outside a large city so that you ditch the TV and radio as well. 

It helps give you some perspective. 

Google This, H.264!

Google came out this morning and announced to the world that Chrome would no longer be supporting the video codec known as H.264, are putting more muscle behind the VP8 open source video codec, and that future versions of Chrome will support the WebM Project and Ogg Theora codecs.  This, in the tech world, is known as a really big thing. 

Why?  If you own an iPhone and you go to a site that supports video through Flash, you know exactly what I ‘m talking about.  You see, the ability for your browser to be able or not able to show you video is dependent on what your browser can or cannot read.  No support?  No video.  Just a big empty space as many iPhone users will grudgingly admit.

So Google’s announcement helps us to understand where the lines are being drawn in the Browser Wars 2: Electric Boogalo.  OK, you now have Chrome, Firefox and Opera on the Open codec side.  Actually, Microsoft is hedging its bets, as their implementation does allow for VP8 support if a codec is installed.

Which leaves Apple.  Not surprising, as Steve has been pushing H.264 like a sushi restaurant pushes yesterday’s catch of the day.  He basically threw down the gauntlet last year when he disavowed all support for Flash and told a group of print editors that basically they all needed to get on the program because he was Steve Jobs and H.264 was going to rule in the HTML5 world.

So why didn’t everyone get on Steve’s wagon?  There was buzz a while back about H.264 being free, but it’s not really “free” if you read the fine print. As Peter Csathy of Sorenson Media notes:

But, you say, MPEG LA recently announced that it will no longer charge royalties for the use of H.264. Yes, it’s true – MPEG LA recently bowed to mounting pressure from, and press surrounding, WebM and announced something that kind of sounds that way. But, I caution you to read the not-too-fine print. H.264 is royalty-free only in one limited case – for Internet video that is delivered free to end users. Read again: for (1) Internet delivery that is (2) delivered free to end users. In the words of MPEG LA’s own press release, “Products and services other than [those] continue to be royalty-bearing.”

That’s legalese for “Not so fast, Bucko”.    The reason they are doing that is presumably if they can get H.264 adoption high enough, all the other cases will be paying and therefore subsidizing this one case.  Oops.

WebM, Patent wise, it’s irrevocably royalty free. The license is about as liberal as you can get.

But there is also another reason why Google would want to move to a true royalty free codec, besides money.  And that is Money.  As in costs and a division known as YouTube.   As Jason Perlow puts it:

Everyone wants to boil down Google’s decision to remove H.264 support from Chrome as a religious choice. To me, it’s obviously infrastructure-related.

And he’s right.  While someone pointed out the costs is only around six million for the H.264 codec’s use in the Chrome browser, I will say what every businessman out there would be thinking:

Why should I have to pay for that when I can get the other for free?

Because, in business six million dollars is six million dollars.  Again from Perlow:

In 2008, YouTube also began to support HD video, which dramatically increases the amount of infrastructure required. If you have to support content in different formats and in different resolutions, you’re gonna need a much bigger boat. (emphasis mine)

I’m guessing that in capacity planning for the next several years of YouTube infrastructure expansion, the IT people at Google made a rough order of magnitude calculation for what they would need through 2013 and said “Holy Crap!”.

YouTube is huge and it is only going to get bigger.  Why should a company be dependent upon another for something essential for its daily use when they can have basically the same thing in house?  This really is not Google vs. Apple, although I’m sure some folks out there are getting some jollies from this.  This is about the bottom line.  The less formats that they need to support, the less that they need to build out in terms of datacenters and storage.  It is that simple. 

Only time will tell is it was the right choice. 

…Try the Veal, And Remember to Tip Your Waitress…

Happy New Year to all.  And since it is the new year, it’s time to climb into the Rambler and head to Las Vegas for this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. 

Of course, it would be really fun this year if there was something to see.  But there won’t be.  It looks to be a basic re-run of 2010 with some minor updates.  Do not expect anything massive or unexpected.  People are saying evolutionary, not revolutionary.  Which basically means boring.

You will see tablets.  All kinds of tablets.  So many tablets.  You will hear people gushing about tablets like new parents go on about their child.  That child’s name, by the way, is Honeycomb, the latest version of Android.  Because that is what most of the new tablets will be ready to run.  Do yourself a favor-understand that  if you have an iPad, you’ve still got the best thing out there for the moment.  But if you’re really interested, pass by all the others though, and stop by Research In Motion’s  booth to see their Playbook tablet.  Right now, if there is anything that could take on the iPad and carve out some space, it will be that.  But trust me, Apple is still king for the moment. 

Also, everyone is holding their collective breath over what Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg will say, given he will have the all important keynote address.  Breathe.  He’ll talk about his “4G” network, that isn’t 4G at all.  If you think that he’ll mention iPhone and Verizon in the same sentence, forget it.  If he does, Steve Jobs will kill him and bury him out in the desert before nightfall.

Expect Intel to be talking up its Sandy Bridge chip and PC manufacturers to present Kate Moss thin laptops.  You will also see the next generation of smartphone handsets equipped with dual core chips. Smarter, faster, but yeah, expected.  Nothing surprising or really newsworthy. 

What you probably won’t see is much emphasis on Google TV.  That was going to be the big thing this year and then…nothing.  Google is keeping mum as to what is going on (or going wrong), but the fact is, consumers just didn’t pick it up at Christmas like Google thought they would.  Again, not having the major networks on the same page also makes things difficult. 

So realize that if you’re going to the show this year, you’ll probably have a lot of free time on your hands.  Garth Brooks is playing at the Wynn Encore.  Given the show he puts on, it will probably be more exciting. Just remember, tip your waitress.  They work hard for the money.

It’s A Festivus Miracle!

Today is Festivus. In accordance with tradition, I submit my 2010 Airing of Grievances. The following have disappointed me over the past year, in no particular order:

• Carol Bartz for still not figuring out what Yahoo is, $@#$#%#^^$%!!!!!!!!!!!. Of course no one else has either, but really, she is the head Hooligan, so she should have some idea.
• Steve Jobs for not allowing Chris Chang’s company to make a really cool action figure of him. Yeah I know, someone would put a mini Darth Vader helmet on it and then make a viral video which would piss him off to no end. But really, Steve, I promise I wouldn’t skewer you too much.
• Ray Ozzie for not gathering the Microsoft developers French revolution style and storming Ballmer’s office for cancelling Courier. Of course I get the fact that Ray didn’t want his breast exposed as in the painting. But still, it would have been awesome.
• Every single TV maker in the world. 3-D. Really? After all these years and the only thing you can offer as an advancement in 3-d technology is polarized glasses? Really?
• Google. Before rolling out Google TV, don’t you think it would have been a really keen idea to get the networks to buy into it?
• Apple. Ping. The less said, the better.
• Airlines that think that voice recognition is really cool. It isn’t. It’s annoying. I have to say the same thing five times before the system recognizes it, or else do my impression of Lillith from Frasier.
• The TSA. Come on guys, I’ve been looking for a real good grope, and nothing. Am I that undesirable? I feel cheated.
• People on Facebook who immediately are up in arms when a change is made to the system. There’s a life out there. Go get one.
• By that same token, Facebook. You know if you set everyone’s privacy to the highest and let them decide to open themselves up, you wouldn’t have so many people out there screaming. Just a thought.
• Apple again for pretending to be East Germany over losing an iPhone, complete with Stasi-like raids in the middle of the night.
• Steve Jobs again, this time for telling left handed people that the iPhone is perfect and they are not.
• Viacom, for still continuing with a lawsuit that has been thrown out of court once.
• Microsoft for allowing Kin to see the light of day.
• Telecom companies that have made a standard like 4G a marketing tool. When you do things like that, then we know you aren’t telling the truth about anything, OK?
• And finally, to politicians who decry Net Neutrality really loud. Please to note that those who cry the loudest are the ones who have received huge amounts of money from the telecom companies. I still think that our legislators need to wear NASCAR jumpsuits with patches of the companies and groups who have sponsor them. Now that would be transparency I could get behind.

What I Won’t Get For Christmas

It is Black Friday and time for the things I won’t be getting for Christmas. M.I.C. Gadget’s Chris Chang just reported that they just received a cease and desist order from Apple that prevents them from creating the must have action figure of the year. That action figure? Steve Jobs, of course.

It’s a shanda, really it is. The figure actually looks good. But, you know, Steve is Steve and he’s in control. Of eveything.

Another thing I won’t be getting is a Kung Zhu hamster, which happens to be the toy of the year. That’s OK, the last thing I want is a hairy hot wheels.

Google TV is also something I won’t be getting this Christmas. Not because Apple TV is great, as I won’t be getting that either. It’s because right now the TV market is in a huge state of flux. I’m holding off until they finally combine 3D with the web with smell-o-vision with an app store with whatever they can come up with in the next five years. I figure by that time they should have it all together.

And finally when they get that together, I might finally get a gaming system. inect is the best step so far. Until that time though, I’ll continue to play real bowling, volleyball and as for dancing, well, I’ll continue to do that in the privacy of my own bedroom.

There are some things that some people need never see.