Monthly Archives: July 2013

Tablets are still luxury items

Kindle Fire HDFor Christmas, I picked up two tablets. A Nexus 7 for Lisa and the rest of the family, and a Kindle Fire HD for me to experiment and play around with. We’ve had the devices for seven months now, and my position hasn’t changed from what I wrote six months ago – I still feel that tablets are luxury items. To prove my point, here’s my experience with the two devices.

Nexus 7
The Nexus 7 is a very nice device. The high resolution screen is easy on the eyes, the form factor is great, and the hardware is well built, designed and solid. I figured Lisa would enjoy using it as an alternative to the computer for email and that she would like the bigger screen for her internet consumption, such as Facebook. I also figured she might try reading a couple of books on it. As for the kids, I figured they might enjoy playing some games or watching some videos on it.

It was tracking my usage projections for the first month, but since then, usage has tailed off considerably. In fact, it spends a lot more time in a kitchen drawer than it does in operation. I’ll occasionally see Lisa checking up on Facebook in the morning or evening, but she has reverted to spending more of her time checking her phone (a Galaxy Nexus)  for emails and status updates, and she uses our computer for any heavy email activity. Any books she’s read over this year have been old school paperbacks. The kids have reverted back to their smartphones for everything they do.

I’m not surprised that the Nexus 7 didn’t revolutionize our lives, but I’m not disappointed that I picked one up either. There still could be some compelling use cases for a tablet that will be discovered in the next year or two. For example, I’m very curious to try out Google’s Chromecast dongle paired with a Nexus 7. That could be a use case that could change how the device gets used around our house. Until then, I suspect it will just continue to gather dust in our kitchen drawer.

Kindle Fire HD
I purchased the Kindle Fire HD as an expensive toy for myself. I wanted to try out the user interface and check out some usage scenarios such as books, video watching, and apps.

Form my experience, the Fire has been awesome for reading books. In the last 7 months, I’ve read more books than I have in the past 5 years. The Fire is easy to read on, it’s extremely portable, and it’s dead simple to add content. Amazon has it wired when it comes to purchasing eBooks, and their recommendation engine is amazing once your reading volume picks up. I haven’t found the device useful for much else, so other than for reading, I don’t find myself using it.

In other words, the Kindle Fire HD is an expensive e-Reader for me. Given how much I’ve read this year, it’s been worth it. If I continue to read at the pace I’m on, then it will have been a smart purchase, although I would still contend that it is not an essential one.

Should you buy a tablet?
I still can’t unconditionally recommend tablets to people.They are content consumption and entertainment devices, and expensive ones that don’t replace your computer, smartphone or television. So unless you plan to do a lot of content consumption, I would recommend that you wait until some more compelling use cases are discovered for tablets. As I mentioned before, Chromecast is just one example of how tablets will become more useful, but my gut tells me that there are several more on the horizon.

As I said in January, tablets still can’t replace your computer or laptop. Once they do, then they will be essential devices. Until that time, they will remain luxury devices.

Book review(s): Daemon and Freedom

Daemon by Daniel SuarezAfter enjoying the William Hertling books Avogadro Corp and A.I. Apocalypse, I figured it would be a safe bet to try another Brad Feld recommendation and pick up Daemon by Daniel Suarez. I was right.

Daemon is a suspenseful, riveting, action-packed mystery thriller. It starts out with a series of events that occur in the Potrero Valley near Thousand Oaks, CA. Through an investigation of the incidents, it slowly becomes clear that they are related and being coordinated by a dead man, or so it seems. As it turns out, he’s written a computer program, or daemon, which gets initiated by news of his death and whose subsequent actions are triggered through current news events. The program incorporates elements of artificial intelligence to morph itself into something bigger and more encompassing over time, and depending on your point of view, that something can be considered either good or evil for society at large.

The story holds together really well, and kept me engaged for long stretches of time. There were a couple of nights where I was unable to put the book down and stayed up much later than I intended. To top it off, Suarez’s descriptions of the environments are very accurate and realistic. I’m pretty familiar with the Portrero Valley, and and his descriptions made me feel like a part of the story. The problem, I ended up having very vivid dreams about the characters and events of the book. Yes, the story is that engaging, and the characters are very well developed.

Suarez also does a great job of building the book to a crescendo at the end and will leave you wanting to move right onto the sequel, Freedom, which I promptly did, of course.

Freedom by Daniel SuarezFreedom continues the story from Daemon and did not disappoint me. The story moves just as quickly as Daemon, the action scenes were just as intense, and he takes the development of the characters to another level. By the end of the book, you feel a strong connection to all of the main characters in the story. My only disappointment was the climax of Freedom, which surprised me in how predictable it was. The rest of the story was full of so many plot twists that I was surprised Suarez didn’t throw a few more in toward the end of the book. On the other hand, I did find the ending satisfying and appropriate, and that’s all I’ll say so I don’t ruin the book for you.

I would strongly recommend reading both Daemon and Freedom, especially if you enjoy thrilling, action-packed books with strong characters. It’s also a great commentary on technology and how it can be used for both good and evil purposes. Suarez clearly has some opinions and biases that are apparent throughout the book, but they are done in such a way that doesn’t take away from the story.

One last word of caution before you start reading. If you are concerned about the government’s ability to monitor our electronic communication, such as the NSA PRISM program, or tend to be a conspiracy theorist, these books will fuel those thoughts. It gave me a lot to think about regarding how much of what we do is electronic and how easily it can be monitored, controlled, and manipulated. Well worth reading if you’re curious about the technology that governments, law enforcement agencies, big business, and others are using to track us.

Bottom line, Daemon and Freedom are must reads in my opinion.

Our patent system is broken

There’s (finally) been a lot of uproar lately about the increased activity of patent trolls and the number of patent litigation suits that are being brought to trial. I’ve been watching the issue, and I’m thoroughly convinced that the current patent system is broken.

A system that, as the White House recently wrote, “is meant to encourage innovation and invention” is instead being used by Patent Assertion Entities, a.k.a. patent trolls, to extort settlement and licensing fees. It’s clearly a cash grab, evidenced by the fact that patent trolls were responsible for 62% of the patent cases files in 2012, up from 19% in 2006. The problem is so big that, according to the same White House article referenced above, “some of the largest innovators in high-tech spend more money on patent litigation and acquisition than they do on research and development for new products.”

To be clear, this is a game played by those with deep pockets where the rich get richer and the poor are forced to pay up or go out of business. Who’s the big loser – the consumer, who either pays more for products and services to cover litigation and licensing costs or is denied access to innovative products and services that companies are unable to bring to market under threat of litigation.

Fortunately, the system is not broken beyond repair and can be reformed, which is important since a strong intellectual property protection system is one of the key ingredients to fostering innovation. Based on researching a few articles, here’s a collection of ideas I’ve gathered that could make a difference.

1. Allowing patents on ideas and methods is dumb
One of the bigger, if not the biggest, problem with the system is allowing method patents. Case in point, Apple was recently awarded a patent for a touchscreen dashboard. Haven’t these been around for years? How can Apple be awarded a patent for this? At best, this is an idea, not a patent. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Allowing people with money to patent them is the epitome of insanity.

2. Patents need to cover specific concepts
In addition to method patents, patents that are overly broad and generic need to be eliminated. One such example is patent number 6,385,222 for “System and methods for remotely accessing a selected group of items of interest from a database.” This is way too broad and covers nearly any application that could ever be created. What specific piece is innovative? Is there a specific technique used to access the data? Is there a specific technique used for performance? At best, this is just a collection of ideas. If there’s any innovation in the patent, it’s in how it was worded in order to get it approved by the patent office.

3. Patents need to contain innovation
Software patents tend to fit into this category. Many software patents don’t contain any real innovation. Most are common knowledge, meaning anyone with knowledge of software could independently replicate the “invention” without any knowledge of the patent. Software patents suffer from a couple of fundamental issues. First, since software can be created by anyone with access to a computer, creating code is cheap and easy to do. Unlike the time and effort it takes to get a new drug formula approved, granting a 17 year monopoly on software is not necessary to encourage people to innovate in this area. Second, software technology is moving too fast for patents to remain valid for longer than 2-3 years, if that. Granting software patents only serves to inhibit innovation and competition, not foster it.

4. A patent owner must be using the patent to assert claims
If the owner of the patent is not using it, then it cannot assert claims against it. This could accomplish two things. First, it keeps trolls from simply suing people who are innovating since the trolls don’t have any products or services that use the patents they are asserting. Second, it keeps companies from amassing patents because they have the money to pay for the patent process. If the company isn’t going to use the innovation, then they shouldn’t be able to patent it. Or if they do patent it, there is a timeframe they have to either use it or sell it to someone who will.

5. Hold patent trolls responsible
Last, but possibly most important, patent trolls need to be held responsible when their claims are denied or their patents are invalidated. At a minimum, they should be forced to cover the fees for the defense in cases they lose. In extreme cases, they should be prosecuted under existing anti-trust or criminal laws. Either way, the idea is to eliminate frivolous lawsuits and force the trolls to think twice before launching lawsuits indiscriminately in the hopes that someone will settle or something in their claims stick.

Trying to do all of these at once is not feasible. I would strongly recommend implementing reform in small steps in order to start pushing some reform through as quickly as possible. The bigger and more ambitious the bills, the longer things take to get through. I’m all about fast tracking at this point.

I’m encouraged by the first attempts being made through the introduction of the “Patent Litigation and Innovation Act of 2013″ introduced by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., in the House (H.R. 2639) and the “Patent Abuse Reduction Act of 2013″ introduced by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in the Senate (S. 1013).  I’ll be watching the progress of these bills and hope that it is the beginning of a significant overhaul to our currently broken patent system.

If you’re interested in reading more about patent reform, here are a few articles that I used to research this article that you may find interesting:

What is Yahoo!’s strategy?

After last week’s acquisition spree of BigNoggins Productions, Qwiki, and Xobni, Yahoo! has acquired 15 companies in the last nine months. Looking over the acquisitions, it’s hard for me to make heads or tails of Yahoo!’s strategy. They’re acquisitions have consisted of mobile applications and gaming companies (Astrid, Summly, Loki Sudios, GhostBird Software, Milewise), social applications (Stamped, Snip.it, Alike, Jybe, Tumblr), gaming (Playerscale, Bignoggin Productions), video (Rondee, Qwiki), and email/CRM (Xobni).

In my experience, acquisitions are generally done for the following reasons:

  1. Solidify a market position
    Acquiring an upstart in a market you already compete in can help to solidify your position by bringing in more products, services, and talents to enhance your competitive positioning.
  2. Add revenue
    Acquiring a company that is generating significant cash, preferably on the bottom line, can improve your balance sheet and provide funds for investing in other areas of the business.
  3. Acquire talent
    If you know a company’s team really well, you may want to acquire their talent, in addition to their product and revenue, in order to infuse new ideas and talent into the existing business.
  4. Defensive positioning
    In some cases you may want to acquire companies to keep them from falling into the hands of your competitors.

Based on the style of acquisitions Yahoo! has been making, #3 seems to be the strongest possibility, with #1 a remote possibility, but neither these strongly support the range of the acquisitions they’ve made. In fact, it’s not clear to me what their strategy is regarding the acquisitions.

In any case, from my experience, acquisition sprees generally don’t have a happy ending. Of source, there are always exceptions to the rule, but acquisitions are hard, especially when it comes to integrating them into the existing company. The acquired companies usually have a hard time giving up their autonomy and taking direction from superiors (a reason why many people left to start their business to begin with), and existing employees are unhappy their projects have been passed over in favor of the new, shiny toy that executive management has purchased (and is forcing upon them).

I suspect that Yahoo! is going to have a lot of challenges integrating these new “toys” into their existing collection of products, and I am very curious to see how this story turns out. Unless Marrisa Mayer and her executive team has some insight which I am not aware of (which could quite possibly be the case), I suspect that we will see a number of write downs and product shutdowns in the coming years when Yahoo! is forced to shed the weight of these acquisitions.

So what would my advice be? It’s better for a company to focus on growth from within, and then supplement their portfolio and talent, on an occasional basis, with strategic acquisitions that strongly support the existing business. In other words, I wouldn’t recommend going on a shopping spree and buying companies to see what sticks. Instead, it’s better to pinpoint acquisitions that service a particular need the company has.

If that is Yahoo!’s strategy, pinpointing and servicing company needs, they must be in more trouble that I originally thought because their actions indicate they have an awful lot of needs.

Book Review: The Forever War

The Forever WarAs part of my dive into the genre of science fiction, a good friend of mine recommended I read The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I’ll admit that I was a bit skeptical given the book was written almost 40 years ago, but I figured I’d give it a read since it came so highly recommended, and the Amazon reviews were pretty solid, too.

First published in 1974, the story projects a future set in the early 2000’s. The premise of the book is that we’ve started colonizing space, and along the way, we’ve encountered a hostile alien species. From there, Haldeman takes you on an adventure through both space and time. A story that is as entertaining as it is thought provoking since you have to wrap your head around the time dilation that occurs during space travel and its effects on the people who are subjected it. Without spoiling the story, the effects are more mental than physical, and well played out by Haldeman.

Interwoven through the science fiction aspects of the story are a romantic subplot and numerous political and cultural statements about the military, government, society and their interaction. Clearly, these statements are a reflection of the author’s views and his experience as a veteran of the Vietnam War, but they are well done and integrated cleanly into the story and flow of the book. I also like how the story is told from the first person perspective. It really makes the story come alive and makes you feel a part of it.

Overall, I found the book an enjoyable, fun, and fast read. I wouldn’t consider this a must read book, but I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a little entertainment and diversion this summer.

Book review: The Wide Lens

The Wide LensI’m always on the lookout for good business books as a way to expand my knowledge base and management skills. So when a friend suggested I pick up the The Wide Lens by Ron Adner, I figured I’d give it a shot.

With a subtitle of “A New Stategy for Innovation”, it’s pretty clear that the book is about developing winning go to market strategies for products and services. Adner spends a lot of time analyzing both successful and failed new product marketing strategies and uses the lessons learned to develop principles that one can use to create a successful product launch.

Unfortunately, I found the book to be a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking, where the author critiques mistakes and successes of the past to develop a future formula for success. The problem I have with this approach is that hindsight is always 20/20, and using the past to predict future does not always equate to success. So while many of his suggestions are based on solid research, I don’t agree that they can be directly applied to your current products and markets as there are too many variables in play to apply prior strategies to current markets.

I wouldn’t recommend The Wide Lens as a business strategy book. It’s an interesting read on the history of market successes and failures, and that’s what I would suggest you look to get out of it should you decide to pick it up.

Moving beyond Google Reader

Google Reader iconAlas, July 1st has come and gone, and with it so has Google Reader. An admitted addict, I had finally gotten a bit of control over my habit when Google decided to pull the plug. I had held out hope that they would reconsider, but I finally decided over last weekend that I had better try out a couple of new services.

I decided to look at three alternatives.

  1. The Digg Reader
    I figured I’d give the new Digg Reader a try since they had made a lot of waves in the tech press and appear to be serious about offering a long-term replacement. I ported my feeds over and gave it a try over the weekend. I came away less than impressed. There are too many missing features, such as remaining article count as well as the fact that articles still show up in the list after they’ve been read. I was also a bit frustrated that I could not change the order of the articles. They were always showing newest first, whereas I like to read my feed oldest first.
     

    I’m not going to give up completely on the Digg reader, but I’ve put it on the shelf for now and will give it another go after it matures a bit.

  2. Feedly
    I had used Feedly when it first came out and quickly dumped it in favor of Reader. I was very hesitant to go back, but it appeared to be the popular choice, so I figured I’d give it a try after striking out with Digg Reader.I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised. They’ve made a lot of improvement to Feedly, have provided a lot more reading options such as article view, list view, magazine view, and cards view. They’ve also done a much better job of organizing feeds and showing unread article counts. The performance appears to be better than what I remember, too. As an added touch, they’ve also incorporated quite a few of the Reader shortcuts into the product, at least the ones I use a lot.

    It’s not Google Reader, but it’s close enough. I’m going to give Feedly a try for now.

  3. Tiny Tiny RSS
    My third choice is Tiny Tiny RSS. I haven’t gotten around to giving it a spin as it requires a lot more setup work. I’m going to keep it on my list of reader options should I get frustrated with either Feedly or Digg Reader.

I’m certainly going to miss Google Reader, as are many other people. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view, I don’t have the time or coding chops to pull off what this individual did in creating his own alternative to Google Reader.

By the way, if you use Reader and haven’t exported your feeds using Google Takeout, you had better get hopping. After July 15, Google says they are deleting all Reader data. Given the way they worded their going away message, I’d say they’re serious about it.

The future for electric cars

I’ve been very skeptical about the future for electric cars. Either the cost of the electric option in a hybrid has been too expensive, the car itself has been too expensive (such as a Tesla), or the car suffers from range limitations. However, this demonstration from Tesla changed, if not completely blew, my mind:


Fast Pack Swap Event from Tesla Motors on Vimeo.

Suddenly, I see huge potential for the electric car market. If enough stations can be put in place and the process made as simple as shown in the video, then we are at the early stages of a market conversion to electric vehicles. In order to realize this potential, I believe the following needs to happen:

  1. Standardization of battery pack technology
    Without a standard for battery packs across car manufacturers, this idea is a non-starter. I know Tesla wants to build their own stations, but it will be way too inefficient for every car manufacturer to build their own stations. We need a common battery pack technology so any car can pull into any station and have its battery changed.
    Think about this way, what if every car ran on a different type of gasoline, and each manufacturer had to build its own station. It would be a nightmare. As it is, when I buy a car, I don’t worry about where I can buy gas.

    To make this work, as my friend Danny pointed out, you could make 3 standard sizes for different types of vehicles. A small pack for cars, a medium pack for trucks and SUVs, and a large pack for tractor trailers and haulers.

  2. The battery should not be owned by the user
    Why do I have to buy the battery? A battery comes with the car, and then I rent it for the lifetime of the car. It’s just like buying gas. When I pull into an battery pack changing station, I pay for the refill of electricity with a small carrying charge for the vessel and handling. There’s really no reason to ever own the battery. In other words, the station owners would own the battery.
  3. A large network of battery exchanging stations
    There needs to be a large and extensive network of battery replacement stations, just like one that exists for gas stations. In other words, there needs to be stations at Interstate exits and on nearly every street corner in town so I don’t need to worry about running out of juice on the road.
  4. Industry standardization and/or government involvement
    OK, so I’m fundamentally against the government getting involved in anything, but if we are going to take energy independence seriously, this is an area where I can see the government providing leadership. The government could provide the specifications for the standard battery packs, provide the means for recycling, and offer incentives to convert existing gas stations.As an alternative, or in addition to government involvement, the industry could step up and form its own standardization committees to develop a suitable standard. As an analogy to computers, if the computer industry had not settled on Ethernet as the standard communication protocol for computers and connected devices, the internet as we know it today would not exist. Why would I buy a computer that could not connect to the internet?

    The electric car industry needs to move away from short-term thinking and develop a longer range view, which will require cooperation and setting standards that everyone will live by. Granted, these standards may not result in the best battery technologies, but we’re not in need of the best. We’re in need of a standard that will accelerate a shift from gas to electric. So long as there is fragmentation in battery technology, that shift will forever be delayed, no matter how good the technology becomes.

I believe Tesla’s demonstration shows how close the all electric car is to becoming mainstream. It just needs a few more leaders in the industry who can develop a longer term view of the market.