Tag Archives: Business

Save us from the NASDAQ Neo!

Posted by Tom Schultz on February 20, 2011 None comments

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“Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure it was real? What if you were unable to awake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world, and the real world?” – Morpheous, The Martix

That kind of sums up the previous NASDAQ bubble and perhaps even more so the current building bubble.

The NASDAQ is starting to bubble again.

Now I really hope that we’re not heading into a technology bubble, and I’ll tell you why.

I live in Michigan and from my perspective, industry in the United States is pretty much on the way out. My hope is that a the new industry of technology and services replaces material and goods. That might be kind of a bold statement but let me see if I can explain why.

Simply, I think we should be preparing for the demand of it. Technology and services are going to get more popular all around the world and I think the United States should be leading the way as far as that goes. We have the tools we need to really own this area but we seem to be lacking the motivation.

Neo, sooner or later you’re going to realize, just as I did, that there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. – Morpheus, The Matrix

It is possible that all these companies (Pandora, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Skype) are trying to walk the path. It is possible that technology companies may be more financial responsible than they were 10 years ago, but I guess that’s a ride we’re about to embark on.

It would be amazing to see these companies leading the way for a solid base to turn the United States into a true leader in this area. These companies have some of the greatest talent in the industry and they have seen all of this before so I think we could be on stable ground. What I hope will happen is that this boost in the technology industry can be contained and fully utilized to help it move in where other industries are leaving.

So here’s to an exciting future in technology!

Search Engine Wars

Posted by Tom Schultz on November 24, 2010 None comments

Search Engine

We use search engines every day, some times whether we know it or not. Ask anyone what search engines they know and Google.com will most likely be at the top of the list along with Yahoo.com and now Bing.com.

These companies make a lot of money and employ a lot of people these days(GOOG, YHOO, MSFT). They have been the kings of their hill for a while now. They have been unchallenged and some undefeated. It might be time for things to change.

Lately a lot of little search engines have been popping up, blekko.com and duckduckgo.com in this case. I think these search engines have the same spirit that Google had when it was first starting out. Google just wanted to be a little bit better than it’s competition and when they were rejected they set off on their own. Providing users with search results that were slightly more accurate than their competition was enough to earn them the spot they’re in today.

So the question is, “How long until they are dethroned”?

That time might not be so distant in the future.

Blekko and DuckDuckGo Merge!

http://www.skrenta.com/2010/11/blekko_partners_with_duckduckg.html

These two search engines each provide some simple to use and unique features that can help users find the information that they’re looking for.

So I’m pleased to announce blekko’s first search partnership, with fellow search startupDuckDuckGo. When DuckDuckGo users search on a term which matches one of blekko’s seven auto-fired slashtag categories, DuckDuckGo users will see results from blekko. (The seven auto-fired slashtag categories are health, colleges, autos, personal finance, lyrics, recipesand hotels.

So now you can use some of blekko’s “slashtags”!

As part of this partnership Blekko users will have access to DuckDuckGo’s “Zero-Click Info” on a site-by-site basis. Zero-Click Info helps users find the most relevant information on sites and search terms without having to click on search results.

And you can use DuckDuckGo’s “Zero-Click Info” solutions!

Google has been releasing features a lot lately and it’s funny because it seems like they’ve been just throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks. If this is true then Google is in a whole lot of trouble. Because these smaller search engine companies have much less over-head and seem to care much more about their users.

I don’t think there’s been enough competition in the search engine market and I’m very glad to see duckduckgo.com and blekko.com joining forces.

Motivate Me!

Posted by Tom Schultz on June 24, 2010 2 comments

Ok, more than a cry for help, I want to know what motivates people in the technology industry.

Some of you may say…”Oh, it’s obvious. We’re in the coolest industry of our time.” or “Um, have you seen these gadgets lately????”
But, I think there’s more to it than what initially fires our neurons.

Quote of awesomeness…

Unfortunately, you can advertise in all the right places, have a fantastic internship program, and interview all you want, but if the great programmers don’t want to work for you, they ain’t gonna come work for you.

That’s from the first line of Joel Spolsky’s post titled “A Field Guide to Developers“.
If you think you have this problem then READ the article.

ParticleTree.com has some brilliant writing and information that should be read on this topic as well(and many other topics).

http://particletree.com/notebook/on-motivating-programmers/

This awesome video has a good explaination that kind of falls in with Joel Spolsky’s view.

Jason Fried of 37signals has an interesting outlook on this idea of motivation as well.

So what are some things that motivate us?

Make money a non-issue. Salaries don’t have to be extravagant.
Give us a real purpose and direction.
Try your best to make us comfortable(Chairs, noise, etc).
Attempt to reduce destructive politics and micro-managing.
Don’t burn us out, we do that on our own.

The Apple iPad

Posted by decoy on January 27, 2010 2 comments

Let me preface this by saying I’m not an Apple fan. I own exactly one Apple device — an old iPod Photo — that I rarely use. I tend to skip Apple products altogether mainly because of their DRM and the infamous Apple tax… higher prices for prestige.

However, I was excited when I first heard about their new upcoming event. Many thought Apple would be cutting the iPhone loose from the ailing AT&T network and opening the door for Verizon. Many others speculated the time was right for Apple to release a tablet PC… especially after seeing domains like iSlate.com being bought by shell companies to Apple’s name. And the people who guessed tablet PC were right… but how right were they?

Is it fair to call the iPad a tablet PC? It is certainly a touch screen device, but out of the box it’s a single user, single program machine. Apple boasts that the iPad can get up to 10 hours of battery life, but that should not be difficult to accomplish if only one program can be run at a time.

The iPad should be great for watching video on the go. Does it have an HDMI output? No. Does it have a DVI output? No. It can use an adapter to output VGA/D-SUB so you can connect it to a projector though. You have to use an adapter? What happened to simplicity and ease of use?

Does the iPad screen have an aspect ratio of 16:9 or 16:10 so movies will look great? No, the iPad’s screen has an aspect ratio of 4:3… just like owning an old fullscreen TV.

But how much storage does it have? For $499 you can get a 16 GB version and for $699 you can get a version that tops out at 64 GB. Only 64 GB? It’s a portable device, so that’s probably OK. I can hook up an external drive to it when I need more storage. Wrong. The iPad has no USB ports, FireWire ports, or eSATA ports… not even any card readers.

Apple’s video iChat works great to connect people around the globe. At least the iPad will have that. Sorry, the iPad doesn’t have a camera on the front. Or back.

So what’s the up-side to this device? Does it do 3G? It will in fact do 3G, but you’ll have to throw in another $130 for the 3G capability. The capability… not the service. If you want an iPad with a 64 GB SSD with 3G capability, you’re looking at coughing up $829. Indeed a hefty price tag for features that netbooks at half the price can do better.

In all fairness, the iPad could work well as an e-reader, but reading from a bright, glossy screen isn’t likely to be easy on the eyes compared to the competition’s electronic ink.

It seems like the iPad could be good at so many things, but the it makes concessions on every front and does nothing well. Is this all part of Apple’s plan? It’s easier to make a better device when the device can be improved upon easily. Has Apple set it up so the 2nd and 3rd generation iPads will rock our socks? I sure hope so, because the 1st generation iPad is clearly an oversized iPod Touch (or a limited iPhone if you have $130 to burn on data only 3G capability) that suffers from very obvious ailments.

AMD’s chance to gain power

Posted by Tom Schultz on November 15, 2009 1 comments

I know I’m a little late on news here but I just read this(IEEE Spectrum) and I thought it was kind of interesting. Apparently Intel is paying AMD 1.25 billion united states dollars!

Can you say “give me a raise”…if you work for AMD that is.

They say that 1.25B was “a small multiple” of what they may have had to pay in court. Now my question is, what kind of position does this put AMD in for the future? Their stock jumped 16% on the news and their market cap is only 4.38B, so 1.25B is over 25% of what they may be worth. The down side is that AMD hasn’t posted a profit in a while.

The interesting part is that AMD doesn’t just make desktop processors anymore right? They also have ATI and a few other irons in the fire. So my question is “what is AMD going to do with their 1.25 billion?”

AMD’s processors have kind of let people down in the last few years but they’re starting to turn things around by doing things like making a processor that is capable of breaking the 7Ghz barrier(Gizmodo).

We’ve heard a lot in the past of AMD’s grand plans for new processor platforms and their crazy modular ideas but what is really feasible and what would be generally accepted and bought by people?

I think it could be time to start watching AMD again because there should be some crazy stuff coming down the pipes from them. I mean heck what could you do with 1.25 billion?

The 5S methodology(Programming Style)

Posted by Tom Schultz on October 21, 2009 None comments

What is the 5S methodology?

5S is the name of a workplace organization methodology that uses a list of five Japanese words which, transliterated and translated into English, start with the letter S. This list is a mnemonic for a methodology that is often incorrectly characterized as “standardized cleanup”, however it is much more than cleanup. 5S is a philosophy and a way of organizing and managing the workspace and work flow with the intent to improve efficiency by eliminating waste, improving flow and reducing process unevenness.

– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5S_(methodology)

Shall we dive a little deeper?

Google account of Twitter employee hacked

Posted by Tom Schultz on July 16, 2009 1 comments

Ok, so this is a “retweet” of PCWorlds article aboout how the google account of a Twitter employee(s) was hacked a while ago. Since you can access nearly all of your google accounts with a single login this caused quite a chain of events. Not only was some of the individuals gmail accounts compromised but also google docs and The Business Insider has screenshots of some of the information that was compromised. Now in the article they mention that no twitter accounts were compromised due to this breach only some twitter employees personal accounts.

Pointless Rants

Rants that are usually about technology