Innovative Insight by Erin Joyce (bio )

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January 23, 2009, 6:30 PM

Techs Challenge WaPo on White House and Tech

The Washington Post ran an interesting article this week about how aides to the Obama Administration ran into a lumbering bureaucracy of the government as they began to move in after Tuesday's inauguration ceremonies.

The article reported:

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

For the most part, the article reads like a bunch of Mac users coping with a moving into a Windows shop. Even more interesting, however, is how readers comments actually advanced the story, while taking issue with how it was reported. Comments by IT managers and tech-savvy readers helped provide some context, such as pointing out that six-year-old software running laptops these days is fairly common, given that Windows XP is still widely used on many corporate PCs, including, it would appear, many in the U.S. Government.

One reader warned in a comment:

As soon as some major slip up occurs and a Gmail account is hacked, they'll learn ... the hard way.

This article is abusive to both the outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration. It shows a lack of critical thinking and awareness by the author, the copy editor, and the WP staff.

The other major point many of the comments made is this: before you get the government to buy all new Macs for the Mac-centric Obama-ites, consider Linux!

Open source has been finding more than a few converts in the U.S. Government. Could the White House be the next spot it lands? If the buzz around Windows 7 builds into solid upgrades when it ships this year, Linux may have to wait.

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January 16, 2009, 9:42 AM

Of text, Twitter and a plane landing on the Hudson

"There's a plane on the Hudson. I'm on the ferry going to pick up people. Crazy."

And so went one of the Tweets from the ever-expanding Twitter-ers who, for many people, broke the news about the jaw-dropping emergency plane landing by a US Airways pilot yesterday after the plane's engines failed.

(By the way, Janis Krums, the Florida man who posted the picture of the plane floating on the Hudson river while all the passengers were getting out, has been on Good Morning America so far this morning, and on MSNBC. "The last few hours have been intense. Thanks for all the support.")

How did you find out about the plane that landed on New York's Hudson River yesterday afternoon? I got an email-, then a text, then phone calls and then was able to watch the live story unfold on CNN.

But talk about a crowd-sourcing story. The site Social Media Today has another round up of how they got the news. Via texts to their mobile device, for the most part via Twitter feeds.

Not being close to a TV at the time, I clicked on CNN.com to see what they had. Pictures but not video yet.

Then over to the NYTimes.com Web site, which had posted an alert headline atop its home page. Later a blog post started to relay what the reporter had seen on CNN, and eyewitness accounts -- by then flying in via text and other mobile devices.

The NYT Web site may have been slow to cover the story compared to other news organizations, but it would later publish a fascinating package of coverage -- its own reporting, eyewitness accounts from passengers, from witnesses who sent in accounts, videos and pictures of what they say unfold on the Hudson yesterday.

Amazing. One of my favorite headlines on the Times' coverage: E-Mail Note: 'I Landed in the Hudson'

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January 14, 2009, 7:00 AM

Tech Resolutions That Will Make it in 2009

So here we are that still-early, not-so-new part of the year, when the resolutions that wash over us in the giddy, early days of a year year start to wane. It's make or break time for resolutions.

Plenty of them won't make it through the year. But sometimes the year that just closed out was so pivotal on its own that resolutions just happen. And stick. I think this is going to be one of those years, on a personal level and for the technology industry's IT sector.

So, if a steely resolve came over you this year, may you enjoy the change you're bringing to your life, and the industry.

If you're a programmer, developer or technology professional, I also hope your resolutions for your profession touch these three areas:

Elevate software engineering's best practices;
Treat Network security as National Security (and do so by thinking globally, and acting locally);
Spend more face time with your software's end users;

As for #1, 30 of the most respected security organizations just released U.S. and international cyber security organizations just released a list of the most common programming errors that constitute the bulk of security problems with software today. It's a real eye-opener.

In one helpful passage that does more than just put the issue in context -- call it high relief -- the SAN announcement asked several of the participants why they think this effort is that important.

This one by Tony Sager of the National Security Agency's Information Assurance Directorate, caught my eye:

There needs to be a move away from reacting to thousands of individual vulnerabilities, and to focus instead on a relatively small number of software flaws that allow vulnerabilities to occur, each with a general root cause. Such a list allows the targeting of improvements in software development practices, tools, and requirements to manage these problems earlier in the life cycle, where they can be solved on a large scale and cost-effectively.

The SAN report went on:

"Shockingly, most of these errors are not well understood by programmers; their avoidance is not widely taught by computer science programs; and their presence is frequently not tested by organizations developing software for sale.

The impact of these errors is far reaching. Just two of them led to more than 1.5 million web site security breaches during 2008 - and those breaches cascaded onto the computers of people who visited those web sites, turning their computers into zombies." Other errors include CWE-89, failure to preserve SQL query structure, which gives rise to SQL injection attacks, one of the favorite attacks of hackers.

As our Richard Adhikari reported, the list comes amid heightened concerns about Internet security. Experts have expressed fears that cybercriminals will have a bonanza year in 2009 because governments are preoccupied with the global recession.

This is why security, and improving how programmers design software, are resolutions that I'll be following in 2009, and hoping to see improved in a dramatic way this year.

Change, I’ve found, happens in little increments, which then grow into dramatic differences. But they start in little steps.

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December 30, 2008, 2:30 PM

Facebook vs. Breastfeeding Moms

Facebook's done it again -- proving anew how much fun and useful social networking sites can be as a result of another "controversy."

This time it's over how much skin is allowed when moms post pictures of themselves breast-feeding their children. Facebook decided that one of its Facebookers, Kelli Roman, showed too much skin and took her picture down.

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt told Reuters that the site takes no action over most breast-feeding photos because they follow the site's terms of use but others are removed to ensure the site remains safe and secure for all users, including children.

"Photos containing a fully exposed breast (as defined by showing the nipple or areola) do violate those terms (on obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit material) and may be removed," he said in a statement.
"The photos we act upon are almost exclusively brought to our attention by other users who complain."

Soon, a protest page called "Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!" went up, followed by events like a Dec. 27th online gathering that organizers claim attracted over 11, 000 people for its first ever M.I.L.C. (Mothers International Lactation Campaign) event.

Well, of course breast-feeding's not obscene and no one's saying it is, especially Facebook, which made it clear that plenty of breast-feeding images are on the site. But on the Web, sometimes all it takes is bit of conceit, such as suggesting that Facebook is against the natural way of feeding an infant, to stoke protest.

In this case though, everybody who posted, or read through some of the posts, are winners. Why? Because they're giving form to what's appropriate in public -- online and in the physical world.

In this case, the public square is Facebook. Many members made the point well to some of the moms who think it's OK to let everything hang out with their breast-feeding images: If you don't like it, then create your own community.

(It's even a chance to point out to some posters that slapping LOL at the end of every sentence is just annoying and distracts from their message.)

To the debate I might add, breastfeed all you want in public and likewise, show all the breast-feeding images you want on your pages. But do it in the same way we humans honor the social contract in public gathering places: be polite and discreet.

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November 24, 2008, 5:36 PM

Wither Palm?

Can Palm be saved? Or is the third place smartphone maker past its turnaround point, as Judy Mottl asked in her story today.

After Palm's news of layoffs amid the economic downturn and following another quarterly loss, the drumbeat has begun for the smartphone maker. Barron's quotes Global Crown Capital analyst Pablo Perez-Fernandez saying the holiday season could mark the beginning of the end for Palm.

Despite the recent addition of two Apple brainiacs John Rubinstein and Mike Bell, analysts and more Treo fans are now thinking the same thing: how long Palm can last in the face of fierce competition in the smartphone market and rivals putting slick devices into the market at an even faster pace.

As a longtime Treo devotee from a legion of Palm PDA fans of over a decade, it's hard to see this happen.

My beef for some time has been how the software on the device has just not kept pace with mobile innovation.

It was a slide we hoped wouldn't happen, but one we could see coming three years ago when Palm, having already split itself into two companies - one hardware, one software - sold its software unit that developed the Palm operating system to Access Systems of Japan for $324 million.

At the time, Treo owners debated Palm's ability to support the software on the device with the division out of the house. Palm would later pull itself back from the brink with a $44 million payment to Japan's Access Systems for a perpetual license of the Palm OS operating system. Gartner's Ken Dulaney thought that the Palm OS would likely be history within five years -- with or without a long-term license. As he told InternetNews.com then:

"The likely destination is a Palm OS based on Linux, similar to the operating system Access is selling to phone companies."

That could be one way to secure Palm at this point.

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November 18, 2008, 1:45 PM

What Jerry Yang's memo didn't say
So maybe Yahoo will get a sale of itself after all, now that Jerry Yang has agreed to step down after the media portal has found its next CEO. His memo has the usual lower-case approach, but was way too vague in my view. Without giving away specifics in a memo he knew would be circulated to the media, Yang might have mentioned the strength of the ad platform, or cited metrics on growth, or even referred to bright spots that came out of the most recent earnings results -- anything to highlight the assets for which Microsoft would have paid dearly.

As Yang wrote in his memo, "we believe the time is now right to transition to a new ceo who can take the company to the next level." Whether that's a price approaching the $32 a share that Microsoft dangled back before the credit markets imploded, we shall see.

Onward, upward!

Here's the full text of Jerry Yang's memo to the Yahoo-ers yesterday

From: Jerry Yang

Sent: Monday, November 17, 2008 5:03 PM

Subject: update

yahoos -

i wanted to address all of you on the news we've just announced. the board of directors and I have agreed to initiate a succession process for the ceo role of yahoo!. roy bostock, our chairman of the board, is leading the effort to identify and assess potential candidates for consideration by the full board. the board will be evaluating and considering both internal and external candidates and has retained heidrick and struggles to help in this effort.

i will be participating in the search for my successor, and i will continue as ceo until the board selects a new ceo. once a successor is named, i will return to my previous role as chief yahoo and continue to serve as a director on the board.

last june, i accepted the board's request that i assume the ceo role to restructure and reposition the company as a whole in order to more effectively meet the fast-changing needs of both users and partners. since taking on the ceo role, i have had an ongoing dialogue with the board about succession timing. thanks in large measure to your tireless efforts, we have created a more open, competitive yahoo! and we believe the time is now right to transition to a new ceo who can take the company to the next level.

despite the external environment we face, the fact remains that yahoo! is now a significantly different company that is stronger in many ways than it was just 18 months ago. this only makes it all the more essential that we manage this opportunity to leverage the progress up to this point as effectively as possible. i strongly believe that having transformed our platform and better aligned costs and revenues, we have a unique window for the right ceo to take ownership over the next wave of mission-critical decisions facing the company.

all of you know that I have always, and will always bleed purple. i will always do what I think is right for this great company. while this step will be an adjustment for all of us, i know it's the right one. i look forward to updating you on this process as soon as the board has developments to share, and will continue to do everything i can to make yahoo! fulfill its full potential.

thank you,

jerry

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November 10, 2008, 1:04 PM

iWIP, Hot Topics and More iNews Stuff
I think I'm gonna make Monday promotion Monday for InternetNews.com. You can call it shameless self promotion if you have to but I really have to give a shout out about this week's InternetNews.com Week in Preview.

This week, the podcast, which we call iWIP for short, is giving listeners some gems on the future of Microsoft's operating system, as well as why the latest "porn mode" privacy feature in Firefox may not be so private after all. Check it out!

Also, our Hot Topics section has a great roundup on the Social Web's evolution and the attempt to make some money from all those users generating content.

Don't miss the expectations around Windows 7 after Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference and its WinHec hardware conference and one of the most comprehensive roundups of stories about smartphone apps that have blossomed in the wake of the iPhone app stores. Just a few cool things that we offer in addition to the Latest News. It's a great way to get your Monday and your week kick started.

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October 22, 2008, 5:07 PM

Venture #3 from Bill Gates: bgC3

The just-launched tech blog TechFlash.com has the scoop on the next move from Bill Gates since he retired from day-to-day at Microsoft last June.

It's a company now called bgC3 LLC, and public documents describe it as a kind of "think tank," according to Eric Engleman and Todd Bishop, the former Microsoft reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and one of the minds behind TechFlash.

The company, which apparently has its own logo, is housed in a Kirkland, Wash., office not far from Gates' home. The report has some detail on what bgC3 is about:

Federal trademark filings provide more clues -- describing bgC3 as a think tank, under a generic trademark classification that corresponds broadly to areas including "scientific and technological services," "industrial analysis and research," and "design and development of computer hardware and software."

Not a bad story to help launch the new blog by the Puget Sound Business Journal. As for what bgC3 stands for, the bg part is easy (Bill Gates), but an "insider" tells TechFlash that C stands for "catalyst", and not company 3 as some had guessed.

And so unfolds the next chapter of How Bill Gates is Changing the World. The speculation on this company is that it will help nurture all kinds of innovation beyond just plain technology. Investment in research and development historically suffers during economic downturns, so the timing of the new think tank could give a lot of tinkerers, scientists and innovators' heart to keep the faith in the strength of their ideas.

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September 23, 2008, 10:49 AM

The Android Has Landed

T-Mobile G1_brn_Google Talk.jpg NEW YORK -- T-Mobile has taken the wraps off the much-ballyhooed Android phone with Google and HTC at a splashy media event here, helped by a surprise appearance by Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

Cole Brodman, CTO and chief innovation officer for T-Mobile, USA, predicted that the G1 phone would change the mobile browsing experience, especially for U.S.-based consumers, who until now, he said, haven't had many compelling experiences with the mobile Internet.

"We're going to change all that," he said. "How? By using open systems, and open standards."

Andy Rubin, senior director of mobile platforms for Google, said open sourcing the Android platform will be key.

"Because the platform is open, we think Android is somewhat future proofed because it has openness built in."

The live announcement is here.

Expect it to be a consumer device first, said Brodman, but they hope to see some update with business users. That would help explain why there is no support for key applications such as Microsoft Exchange. But Rubin said the platform can read Word documents, PDF and Excel files.

"There's a great opportunity for third party developers to bring an Exchange components to the device."

Starting price is $179 when it hits the market. Commercial launch date is Oct. 22nd. It features a pop-up screen to enable users to use a QWERTY keyboard.

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September 5, 2008, 1:20 PM

Amazon: Moving ahead of iPod News

If you're going to launch a media download service, rule #1 is to make sure you don't announce it within shouting distance of Apple's upcoming iPod release news next week.

That's the take on Amazon's release of its download service, which the e-tailer rolled out this week. The streaming media service offers a wide selection of movies and television shows. Very nice line up, actually.

But what's the fate of Unbox? Why it's got a new name, according to Amazon:

Of course, Apple has an AppleTV strategy that awaits its own closeup and the buzz is that next Tuesday's iPod release party will feature news regarding AppleTV, which hasn't been as big a hit since it came out.

MacWorld's got some recent juice about it, as does Motley Fool.

At any rate, back to Amazon. It's got a lot of slick offerings and builds on its early success with music downloads. as well as Amazon's larger plan to be a major online seller of digital content: software, services, music and yes, movies.

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August 22, 2008, 12:47 PM

Texting VP choices (and hoaxes)

Nice piece on Politico.com about the hoaxes that have hit people's mobile phones after Democrat Sen. Barack Obama's campaign announced it would text people when the vice-presidential running mate choice was announced (it's widely expected to be by tomorrow).

No, it won't be Olympic swimming hero Michael Phelps, and, no, it won't be Hillary Clinton on Obama's ticket, as some of the fake txts have "announced."

What the story does convey, is how Obama's campaign is using the Web and online media to generate excitement and chatter about the candidate, especially since he has recently slipped in the polls against that other presumptive nominee for President, Republican Senator John McCain.

The L.A. Times quotes new data from Nielson to point out that Obama pulled in 3.3 million unique visitors to his site, BarackObama.com, in July. That's compared to 1.6 million unique visits to McCain's site, JohnMcCain.com:

But McCain picked up some ground there, gaining 353,000 unique visitors in the month, compared with 239,000 by the Obama site.

The place where McCain really gained ground was website video streams. Possibly because of McCain's controversial ad comparing Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, total streams viewed on JohnMcCain.com more than doubled in July to 1.01 million, Nielsen said. (The ad was immensely popular online, although it didn't appear on the site until July 31). Videos viewed on Obama's site dropped to 502,000 in July from 967,000 in June.

The Obama campaign still enjoys a stronger presence online; its fund-raising success early in the primary is credited with the campaign's ability to topple the Clinton machine. And although McCain has admitted he's not computer savvy, it's looks like his campaign has studied how Obama's using the Web. This is getting interesting.

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August 19, 2008, 4:15 PM

Latest Leaked Palm Treo: Slick Move

Just as I was getting this close to throwing over my Treo 700 for (what else?) the latest 3G iPhone, out comes the latest leaked details on the next Treo about to hit the market. Fan site treopro.net got some juicy details after Palm apparently put a flash demo up on its site, then later yanked it. It would appear that the folks at Palm are taking a page or two out of Apple's own buzz-making marketing playbook.

So far, so good on the Treo Pro's design and looks. For those of you who have found the pull of the thin iPhone a growing force, the design of the Pro should give you heart.

Here's one of the demos making the rounds today on YouTube.com:

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August 5, 2008, 1:14 PM

Cautionary tales about reputations and online vendettas

Andrew Ross Sorkin’s DealBook column in today’s NYTimes offers up a fascinating and downright scary take about an online vendetta against a Wall Street banker that apparently led to his resignation from Credit Suisse.

The banker, Steven Rattner (not the developer, however), recently left the investment bank, according to the article, after an extra-marital affair five years ago with a married woman. But what’s interesting is how, years after it ended, the woman’s husband decided he wanted to hurt some more.

As Sorkin writes, It is a cautionary tale about the fragility of reputation on Wall Street and elsewhere: **

Kelly Cosgrove, the woman with whom Mr. Rattner had an affair, was married at the time to an Australian named Tommii Cosgrove. And after he learned of the affair, Mr. Cosgrove decided to make it his life’s mission to damage Mr. Rattner. And with Mr. Rattner’s resignation, he may have succeeded.
Mr. Rattner, who is apologetic and contrite, did not commit a crime. He did not violate Credit Suisse’s code of ethics. His affair was not with a subordinate or a peer — Ms. Cosgrove had no relationship with Credit Suisse.

He added, “I love my wife and my kids more than life itself.” But he also said he was willing to be interviewed for this column because it offered a cautionary lesson. Once Mr. Cosgrove pushed his allegations to the Internet, Mr. Rattner said, there was nothing he could do to stop it. “It’s just amazing to me,” he said, describing Mr. Cosgrove’s persistence as “viral.” “And there is no way to fight back.” ** Well, there is a way to fight back online, which is to make sure you’re side of it is being heard and to get your story out there too.

The case reminded me (in a small way) of a disgruntled source who insisted I change a story I wrote about AOL’s e-mail relaying policy. The policy was changed as a way to combat spammers on the ISP’s network, but it was penalizing plenty others who don’t spam.

I saw a post on Slashdot from a legitimate user who was being penalized by the policy. I reached out to him for comment and quoted him as one who had been wrongly penalized. But he felt I had mis-portrayed him and proceeded to launch tirade after tirade asking for changes on the story. I was happy to follow up, I wrote back to him, but I didn’t where or how in the story I made him look like a spammer. The story was how people like him who are legit users were being penalized. I suggested a follow up with him to help clarify. On it went.

Then it got nasty. One link he sent to further “discuss” contained malicious code. Right there, I ended the discussion of any follow up, clarifications or changes. He later created a wiki page that tried to damage my reputation as a journalist. (And deleted my comments that discussed the issue; so much for fair play).

The Rattner case in the NYTimes article is serious business, involving his family, his job and his reputation in his community. We see this all the time on the Web but this case really drives the point home. At least, by way of this article, the tactics of the person who conducted the vendetta are also being exposed.

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