Beyond Milli Vanilli

Remember Rob and Fab?  Those two guys who lip-synched their way to a Grammy?  When it was found out they were faking the whole thing, their careers went downhill.  But that was then.  This is now.  And now is oh so different.

You see, since then we have seen actual pop stars lip synch live (I’m looking at you, Britney) and even a very good band fronted by cartoon figures (Gorillaz).  But let us look at the Japanese Girl band AKB 48.  The pop group has been around for a while and so when new member Aimi Eguchi joined up she created a buzz.  She was perfect. Maybe a little too perfect. And she was.

You see, Aimi Eguchi, it turns out, was a computer-generated composite of the real band members. Her pretty face was actually made up of the “best features” of six other members: her eyes, nose, mouth, hair/body, face outline and eyebrows were not flesh-and-blood, but cut-and-paste. 

However, not everyone was quick to notice.  Aimi had built up a huge fan base.  “The video shocked fans of Eguchi,” reports ChannelNews Asia, “who were convinced that her features were more the result of good genes than the skillful use of computer graphics.”  Below is the video that shows how they did it.

Of course the Japanese are far ahead of the US in creating synthetic characters.  Hatsune Miku is a 3-D rockstar with a huge following.  While the 3-D projection  technology is still working through the “Ghost Phase”, eventually, it will be such that you will not be able to tell the real from the unreal on stage.  With Aimi, CGI is taking the next step, and you know that Hollywood is taking notice.  What if you could create an actor that takes all the best parts of Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Chris Evans and can combine them together into an ultimate leading man?  Would the public buy it?  We are almost at that point.

As for me, I demand the Recording Academy give the Grammy back to Milli Vanilli.  They were not fakes – they were simply twenty years ahead of their time. 

ICANN haz .cheezburger?

At its meeting in Singapore, the Board of ICANN today gave final approval to the most dramatic change to the Internet in four decades — allowing the expansion of new Top-Level Domains (TLDs).  This decision will allow companies to go beyond the typical .com nomenclature to allow them to turn their own brands into Internet domain extensions.  So prepare to see .coke, .addidas, as well as .car and .bank.  Now this isn’t going to be cheap; word is to buy a .brand will cost around one hundred eight-five grand per brand name with five grand of that being an up front fee.  Oh yeah, that name will also cost twenty five grand a year to maintain.  What cord do I pull to have the safe fall on my head? 

Of course, not everyone will necessarily be granted a top level domain name. Who gets lucky depends on what ICANN decides. Smaller brands, which are brands nonetheless, obviously won’t be able to afford the names. Who gets to have hot generic names like .money or .tickets will be decided, to my understanding, solely by ICANN.  What happens when two companies with the same trademark both decide they want the same top level domain remains to be seen. Who gets to be .giants — the San Francisco Giants baseball team or the New York Giants football team?  I guess that might depend on who writes the biggest check to ICANN.

Because, let’s face it, this is nothing but a money grab for ICANN.  Neither you nor I can afford to play this game; we are talking about high rollers here.  The losers in this are the cybersquatters, those folks who have purchased every conceivable spelling of every combination of words out there and are holding them ransom.  ICANN states that this really revolutionizes the web, but they were saying the same thing when they rolled out .mobi, .info and .biz

And those have really worked out well, haven’t they?

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. 

The Letter “W” And The Number 8

Microsoft unveiled their new operating system today, code named Windows 8 (Yeah I know, not much of a code name, but at least it isn’t named after food).  It is just as has been suspected; two kinds of applications for Windows 8, one that runs in a traditional desktop, and the other pseudo-mobile apps based on HTML5 and Javascript.  Both environments have been rebuilt to support touch, but keyboards and mice will still be accepted.  Multitasking is just a pull to the center of the screen, and there is a new version of Explorer, version 10.  Yes, there will be the ubiquitous app store.  Microsoft is being coy about when this will be released into the wild, given the walk back from Ballmer’s statements last week, but it looks like it could be a done deal and sooner than later. 

Of course, come the critics.  Basically it’s the same old song and dance: that Apple is Fred Astaire, while Windows is more like Kirstie Alley on “Dancing with the Stars”.  It can move, but do you want to be seen in public with it?  The criticisms boil down to this: Microsoft needs something bold and different.  Windows 8 looks to be a sad compromise of some sort. 

Still, this is a work in progress.  There are plenty of questions, but the point that everyone seems to forget is that there are plenty of businesses out there that are not and will never be ready to uproot everything they have and move to a brand new system.  That is the reality.  They didn’t do it for Vista and they won’t do it just because the fanbois out there are urging Microsoft to be more like Apple.  Windows 8 allows them to still have all that comfortably familiar legacy while introducing the next move.  It might work, it might not.  Only time will tell.

In Order to Have a Free Market, You Need to Have Choices

One of the great things about a “Free Market” is that if you don’t like the company you are getting services from, you can always go somewhere else. 

Well, except if you’re dealing with Internet Service Providers and live in North Carolina.  Then you’re pretty much screwed.  You see, Governor Bev Purdue says that she will neither sign nor veto H.129.  Now for those who do not know, H.129 is a bill that would put restrictions on cities that currently provide internet service to its citizens (Wilson, Salisbury, Morganton, Davidson, and Mooresville), and would significantly hinder any efforts by other cities to pursue their own municipal internet services. The obvious winners in this action are Time-Warner cable and AT&T, who have spent a lot of money improving their services, er, buying politicians, er, let’s just say, they’ve spent a lot of money over this. 

Some of the provisions in H.129 state that cities:

• Shall provide nondiscriminatory access to private communications service providers on a first-come, first-served basis to rights-of-way, poles, or conduits owned, leased, or operated by the city unless the facilities have insufficient capacity for the access and additional capacity cannot reasonably be added to the facilities.
• Shall not use city resources that are not allocated for cost accounting purposes to the city-owned communications service  to promote city-owned communications service in comparison to private services or, directly or indirectly, require city employees, officers, or contractors to purchase city services
• Shall not subsidize the provision of communications service with funds from any other noncommunications service, operation, or other revenue source, including any funds or revenue generated from electric, gas, water, sewer, or garbage services.
• Shall not price any communications service below the cost of providing the service, including any direct or indirect subsidies received by the city-owned communications service provider and allocation of costs associated with any shared use of buildings, equipment, vehicles, and personnel with other city departments.

The bill ensures that companies like Time Warner Cable and AT&T will continue to be the dominant players in most North Carolina markets, even with higher pricing and speeds that often lag far behind what cities themselves can provide for its residents.

Never mind the fact that these municipalities decided to vote to band together and provide its own municipal services.  And why did they do that?  Because the Internet service providers were dragging their feet and underserving the market.  The community did not have a choice that was fast and inexpensive, so they created one.  And because they are offering their community an alternative that is better, the telecoms run and pay off politicians to curtail it. Because as we all know, municipalities should not have an “unfair advantage” over the private sector.  In this case the unfair advantage is a service that is better, faster and cheaper.  You know, those same arguments that are used when a government decides to outsource a municipal service to a private company. 

Funny how that works.

Micronokia?

Eldar Murtazin strikes again.  According to a post from the Russian, Microsoft and Nokia will enter talks next week to discuss the potential for the American software giant to purchase the Finnish company’s mobile arm. That means smartphones.  He went on to say that both side are in a hurry to complete the deal and that it could close by the end of the year.  While the rumor may seem to some as a strain on reality, Murtazin is usually more right than wrong.  Also,  after Murtazin’s post came out, Mark Squires, UK Communications Director for Nokia, issued a no comment:

We typically don’t comment on rumors. But we have to say that Eldar’s rumors are getting obviously less accurate with every passing moment.

Which, for many, means that Murtazin must have struck a nerve somewhere. 

So the question is why?  Why not?  Nokia market value is 33 billion and the company has been in profit since 1996. Taking away 9-10 billion cash after debt it sums to 23 billion. Microsoft could give its own shares to the Nokia owners and not to use any money. They would get for 23 billion a company that sells every third mobile phone on this planet plus 1/2 of the Nokia Siemens Networks (worth billions) and Navteq Corp..

After all, Microsoft is sitting on a ton of cash as well.  While people cringed at the 8.5 billion spent for Skype, the fact is, Microsoft had the cash to throw around. 

You also have to think of the patents that Microsoft would get, along with two more mobile operating systems to use/pilfer. 

So why the rush?  Because if as planned, Nokia starts to sell phones with Windows Phone 7 on them and sales start to pick up, Nokia becomes more expensive.  Better to do it now, if you’re going to do it. 

It is going to be fun to see how this plays out.

Skip Skype-ing Away

Well, Microsoft spent around 8 Billion (with a “B”) and bought internet voice company Skype last night. What is amazing is that while most people actually think that Skype and Microsoft is a better fit than Skype and Google or Skype and Facebook (the other two suitors), the deal was somehow the worst possible move that Microsoft could have done.  Doomed, I tell you.  Doomed.

I will give the fact that Microsoft’s acquisitions have not fared well.  How this is different from every other large company out there is beyond me, but let us forget that Google’s failure rate is fastly approaching that of AOL and that Apple has tasted the sour taste of failure as well.  This is about Microsoft, so we must go through the storyline that everything that Microsoft touches turns to lead.  Even when it doesn’t.

So what does Microsoft get for 8 billion dollars?  663 million total users, although most users are not active callers.  However, according to Paolo Pescatore, an analyst at CCS Insight in London. In voice services, “Skype has certainly set the benchmark and gained a lot of traction.”  Skype is a well known player.  It’s technology is fairly mature.  And unlike previous acquisitions where the question “What are you going to do with it now you have it?” was met with awkward pauses, the answers came fast and furious.  Skype on Windows Phone, Skype in Outlook, Skype in X-Box, and Skype with Lync, Microsoft’s corporate telephony services.  There are a lot of places in the Microsoft world where Skype could be used. 

Of course, analysts at Bloomberg couldn’t resist pointing out that “Microsoft’s backing of Skype may be seen as a threat by wireless carriers such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless because it could cut into voice revenue.”  Funny how the introduction of Apple’s Face Time wasn’t met with the same dire predictions.  After all, Apple is the market right now.  Microsoft is a far distant third.  One also tends to forget that Skype is available right now on Apple and Android products.  Yet the sky is falling only when Microsoft is in the room.  Funny, that. 

The question I have is the execution of the plan.  If this is going to work and really scare people, it will need to be done quickly.  No two years later-this will have to hit the ground running within the next six months.  Maybe not everything, but movement will need to be shown.  The good points are that Microsoft has now become the clear leader in video communication and that Skype’s leader, Tony Bates is staying along for the ride.  Microsoft says it will be exciting times ahead.  I certainly hope so. 

Can’t Drive 55? Blame TomTom

People love to drive fast.  The police love writing speeding tickets to people who do.  Fact of life in the driving age.  So upon hearing this morning’s story I had to chuckle.  You see, the fine folks who make the GPS units known as TomTom have been selling their data to the Dutch police.  The Dutch police have been using the data, primarily the speed of driving data, to set up speed traps throughout Holland.  When people found out about this, they were not amused.  And TomTom publicly apologized for the sale. 

Now before we go any further, according to TomTom, the information is totally anonymous.  The speed data is used  by TomTom to help people avoid bottlenecks, accidents and school zones. And in a world of fastly shifting revenue streams, as more smartphones offer GPS navigation service, TomTom has been forced to compensate for declining profit by increasing sales in other areas, including the selling of traffic data to government sources.

The traffic data helps police and government planners know where the usual bottlenecks and safety problems are so they can plan accordingly.  But the side effect is that data also lets you see the areas where people speed.  The police are unable to see just who was speeding, only that there is speeding occurring in certain places on a consistent basis.  When you know that, you know where to set up your speed trap.

The main concern here is about privacy.  Even though TomTom has said the data is completely anonymous, in the world of data, it rarely is.  It’s not hard to fathom a scenario in which data supplied by TomTom could be used to figure out sensitive information about its users, such as where they live and work.  All it takes is someone dedicated enough to do so.  That is why people are upset. 

Of course, drivers in the US have had the site speedtrap.org to let them know where the usual speed traps are.  The site has been up for years and provides you with exactly where the police regularly set up their speed traps.   No GPS unit required for that one.  Just good, old fashioned information sharing on the message boards.  The thing the internet was originally set up to facilitate. 

A Perfect Storm?

The outage at Amazon over the last two days now has been more than disconcerting. Many businesses have been sorely affected, and unfortunately at the time of this writing still are.  The social news site, Reddit has now been under “emergency read only” mode for over twenty four hours. Quora was hit hard yesterday, but seems to be slowly coming back.  All Things Digital has a list of companies that were hit, and opened up comments so that readers could add others they missed.  The list is impressive.

But unfortunately, the big question is still unanswered.  What is going on?  Amazon has been tweeting and posting as to the fixes and status, but no one has answered the basic question.  In fact, reading the messages coming from Amazon, it felt as if the public is hearing “Don’t Panic”, while all hell is breaking loose behind the closed door. As people have pointed out, it sounds more like damage control rather than a full blown explanation to their customers as to the real problem.  And for companies who are using AWS, a lack of a real explanation to what was going severely hampered their own disaster recovery efforts.  Roman Stanek, CEO of GoodData blogged:

My ops people were ready at 1:00 am PT to start our own disaster recovery, but status updates completely failed to indicate the severity of the situation. We relied on AWS to fix the problem. Had we had more information, we would have made a different choice.

The guest commentary in Geek Wire by Keith Smith, CEO of BigDoor, a Seattle startup that builds game mechanics into online publisher’s Web sites was precise about this.  BigDoor relies on Amazon Web Services for their business.  And Keith’s comments echoes the thoughts of every manager of every company hit by this outage.

There are a lot of really obvious and relatively easy things that any startup can do to avoid an all-out reliance on any single cloud provider, but those things take additional time and money – two of the most important things that every startup is constrained by.

We absolutely love AWS because of the pace of innovation and scale that it has allowed us to accomplish. But after today’s episode is over, we will have a big decision to make.

We can spend cycles designing and building technical belts and suspenders that will help us avoid a massive failure like this in the future, or we can continue to rely on a single huge partner and also continue our break-neck pace of iteration and product development.

I can’t tell you today which option we will choose. But I’m sure it will be the question on the mind of many startups across the country.

Amazon’s lack of transparency is remindful BP’s mishandling of the Gulf oil spill.  One reason why people were angered then was because officials within the company were not forthcoming about what was going on.  Companies using IaaS rely on technical communications written by technicians, not lawyers.  The idea of the internet is about transparency.  This is what happens when it isn’t. 

The More You Know (And Shooting Star)

While everyone was busy watching the budgetary hi-jinks in Washington this week, Google re-organized itself.  The reorganization is not like most in that Larry Page wants no committees and no managers between him and the people he can hold  accountable for each Google product.  Sound like Steve Jobs?  Oh yeah.  Here’s hoping it works out as reorganizations on this scale usually do not end well, as it requires a change in the culture as well as the org.

There is also a brilliant story from Reuters concerning what happened after Rupert met Myspace. For all those who didn’t read it, it boils down to Facebook.  Zuckerberg and his team were focused on product development and innovation while Myspace had become too concerned with revenue and meeting traffic targets of its Google deal.  A point which will be missed by many out there: focus on your product and the traffic will follow, not the other way around.

Oh, by the way, apparently Rupert’s other product, The Daily apparenly is not doing too well after the splashy launch on the iPad. In the words of Nieman Labs, “The Daily is losing audience over time rather than gaining it.”  How the numbers are arrived at are not necesarily the best, but if true, this would not be good news for the King of news.

And finally, while I like Pandora, knowing that via the Android app they are sending the user’s birth date, gender, Android ID, and GPS information to various advertising companies doesn’t make me very happy.  And apparently, the US Government is looking into this.  Pandora revealed that it had been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury to produce documents about its user data collection practices on Android and iOS devices. The company said that it believes the subpoena is part of an industry-wide investigation into popular applications on both platforms.

Well, that is if the government doesn’t shut down.  If so, then App makers can breathe a sigh of relief.  At least for the moment.