Did you see the return of Terminator: Sara Connor Chronicles last night? The Terminator franchise is back in the pop culture.
And while the Skynet might be a little bit away, it’s predacesor in KPE is alive and kicking. Next week, while Karl is doing his presentation with Dave in Chicago, same other Karl is doing a live podcast with his genetic duplicate about zero downtime migrations during business hours.
(ask about the cloning how-to)
To the scene of the slaughter, which is precisely what we’re about to do our competitors in antispam and message management space. So come by tomorrow for the first announcement and general availability of the 4.0 feature set.
This is pretty big. How big? Microsoft and OWN teamed up on it and the offering crushes even what Microsoft has or will likely ever have. Yes, that Microsoft. It also takes OWN and it’s partners a mile ahead of the S+S game and instantly makes everyone, I said EVERYONE, an enterprise messaging user with the kind of scale and ___ you won’t get even in an executive role at Fortune 500.
Oh, and it won’t cost you anything more than what you’re already paying, that is if you listened to me. See ya at da bloodbath.
A little while back I decided not to play a role in the neverending SBS world drama and perpetual line of jackasses posturing for attention and influence (but seemingly uninterested in doing any real work). I’ve done so primarily to optimize my time spent at work but mostly to give myself some focus and stick to the plan – what I’ve found out is that the most successful people in this business do not play in the drama either, they are taking money to the bank and Friday’s off.
But a part of this gig and keeping the conversation open is talking to my partners, my employees, random person that guessed my work extension or got the bat phone from one of my IT friends. And so even indirectly I get to feel some of the drama. I am going to share just the three top jackasseries of the week so you can see just what you get when you become rich and famous in the SBS land and everyone brings you their dirt. Here are the three mini-blog stories:
PPT-o-Matic
Congratulations to the SBS team for releasing SBS 2008 to manufacturing! Although we’ve made a business decision not to make SBS a part of our business going forward, you can’t say no to free training and we should be familiar with the product regardless of whether it’s going to be raised in a support request twice or make $20 mil a quarter. So I sent the link to a few folks:
What is shameful here is that all the seminars are free and that the negative commentary came from my own team. The complaint was that it was a very basic and at best a sales presentation for SBS. Now this is shameful for two reasons: 1) Of course it’s a sales presentation, Microsoft’s webcasts are always dripping with sales junk and worthless notion of “market size” and “opportunity” selling the dream of fortunes to those only clinging to the hope of success and 2) most SBSers are not highly skilled IT engineers that will ever concern themselves with anything out of the scope covered by a wizard. So Microsoft designed the first training to target it’s core SBSer base – stop whining, it was free and you got paid to learn. Worth checking out.
Successful Sale of Jealousy
Got plenty of jealous (some even angry) commentary about Arlin selling out to Microsoft. Oh dear god no, more people will try to use Grove now! 🙂
Personally, kudos to Arlin. He has done what no other SBSer organization has been able to – to sell Microsoft on committing some serious support to the SBS community and actual business training. In a single step he’s set a bar to entry into the training and an application to make sure people really focused on growing a business aren’t stuck in a conversation with guys like Geek Squad Dave pounding their chest at how great of an ethical consultant they have become.
Seems like a good deal to me. Personally, I feel this one is more about jealousy that someone finally managed to bring Microsoft to the table and put their pen to the checkbook. To be honest, I’d throw some of my people into this if we hadn’t already packed our schedules. Worth checking out.
Triumphant Ignorance
This one belongs in a class of its own so I’ve saved it for last:
BOB ONE-WPC ZERO.
No matter how you want to score this, my request for comments from those who found the last Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference to be worth the effort has yielded no responses. What it did get was yet another Inner Circle member, who reported that the 2008 event was a waste of time. There haven’t been many reports from smaller VARs. But if I were Microsoft, I’d worry considerably about the number of award winners and Inner Circle members who said they only sent skeleton crews, or even just one person
If you are going to the Microsoft World Wide Partner Conference for presentations you’ve failed. Miserably. At concept and at understanding the opportunity:
“Let me see. The richest, most successful IT company in the world. The most successful IT companies that have partnered or won with Microsoft all in one place for a week. The $2K entrance fee keeping out the riffraff. Ability to communicate and try to find opportunities in this pool. My god, a person could transform their company through the relationships made there. So much business, so many relationships to st..
But nah, screw it, I’m here for the great breakfast and PowerPoint slides I can watch later!!!! I am here for Microsoft!!!” FAIL.
Folks, I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again and I will keep on repeating it no matter how many of you don’t have the balls to admit the following to yourself: If you want to be the best, you have to strive to be like the best and the only way to do that is to learn from the best. So another fall comes, another collection of riff-raff festivals where people will fall over one another bitching about the exact same problems they had the previous year, at the exact same point in business maturity as they had last year, with the exact same process they had the last year and next year they will come back to the same place, albeit marginally richer, to bitch and moan about the same troubles they have had for years without an ounce of motivation or ability to make something better of themselves.
You gotta aim higher. There is no shame in being successful. But for that to happen you need to let go of your insecurities and the need to be the king of the wadding pool and maybe strive to be the last person in the Olympic race. Not everyone is destined to be IBM. But don’t sell yourself short either.
Anyhow…
This is the life and times of SBSers. Is it any surprise that the more successful people don’t pay attention to it? As you can see, not really.
Of all the magnificent failures I get to deal with @OWN, from servers blowing up to SLA going up in smoke to earthquakes and difficult vendors, one of my most disappointing failures in 2008 is that I’m practically unable to do anything for the businesses that are in the path of Hurricane (or TS) Fay..
For years Own Web Now and my partners have done all we can to provide some free last minute relief for people about to be punched, lights out, by a hurricane. Everything from offsite backups, FTP space to move critical files up, ETRN when the power goes down so that mail can still get there, ExchangeDefender, etc – your usual ad hoc last minute stuff that the business either didn’t plan to get or simply could not afford.
Should one business provide free services to another business, in an emergency, even if their competitors had invested money (and thereby traded away some competitive advantage) – isn’t that unfair? Perhaps, but sometimes there is a little more to things than just pure cutthroat business competition. Sometimes it’s the economic survival of the ecosystem that we live in, and the same system that has made it possible for us to become what we are today. On a personal level, Florida is where I live and Florida (lottery) paid for me to go to college (Go Gators! Hooray for socialism!) so it’s not like I don’t owe it the slightest bit of proactive help when I’m in a position to do so.
Unfortunately, this year we are just swamped and in this down economy we are doing all we can to just keep up with orders, support and the new products we’re launching. So it saddens me to admit that this year we are just not in the position to do what we’ve been able to do over the past few years. It sucks.
So we sit here and hope for the best. Let it rain!
So you still haven’t taken the time to go stand in the Apple line or enjoy being crippled or stuck in the past? Get with the times! But fear not, you don’t have to be restricted to browsing technology that doesn’t even live up to what we had more than a decade ago on the desktop.. thanks to Iris Browser by Torch Mobile.
Based on WebKit, featuring touch screen control, SSL, zoom pan and tap navigation, etc.. Free too.
If you’re not going to step into the future, this is a substitute to check out for sure.
While Tim is still trying to figure out how to integrate ExchangeDefender into his company, I’m feeling good knowing that some of the policies we have established a long time ago are finally starting to be used by the spammers. It’s one of the things we do here very often – if we were to SPAM the world, what would we do? (then we sit down and find the ways to crush it)
One of the things we integrated years ago covered the topic of extension masking, in the scam similar to the one outlined on Tim Barret’s blog. Basically, the spammer either attaches or links in a dangerous attachment that doesn’t look too dangerous. It’s all done by masking the extension to get by the user. For example:
This is a text file:
Vlad is great.txtThis is an executable:
Vlad is great.txt.exeThis is an executable that idiot users click on:
Vlad is great.txt .exe
So a few years ago we integrated two checks – first, does the extension get masked by another extension and second, does the attachment or link include an excessive amount of spaces in it. If it does – poof.
Now.. That’s hot!
This strain by the way has been going on for weeks now and we’ve locked down over 75,000 hosts for spraying it across the Internet. This one shows a familiar Youtube shell but links to a random web site with the virus linked on it with a masked extension.
Also of note, question came up: Why do these viruses always get spread by random web sites on the Net??? Well, because those web sites got 0wn3d. Do you really think a hacker or a script kiddy behind this is going to register a domain name and serve their traffic off their own site? Heck no. Let others pay for it, you just work on controlling your botnet.
Anyhow, thats what we do at ExchangeDefender all day long. That and read your email. We hit delete. A lot. Ok, sometimes we forward too – but only if its funny!
P.S. Oh, and if you’re wondering how I did that bubble thing in the screenshot – feature of the new SnagIt 9.0 – Betsy and Kristina have been hooking me up new copies of it for years, best damn tool in the shed.
I don’t know if this is a uniquely American trait, but the sense of entitlement is just huge in the IT space. We want it all. We want it now. We want it free.
Does anyone for a moment consider that things actually cost money?
From production staff, to satellite uplinks, to broadcast staff, to bandwidth required to distribute content, to market it, to deliver and support it – oh, and a few hundred million to grease the wheels and obtain the “rights” to the certain content people want to see.
Most people don’t like to face reality that things simply cost money. Best example of this ignorance is all over this Digg discussion titled: NBC Olympics video site snubs Linux, older Macs. In a nutshell, Microsoft handed a boatload of $$$ to make sure the digital Olympiad 2008 broadcast over the Internet was powered by Silverlight. They made a business decision to invest money into the event and process that would expand the installation base of their software. It is that simple.
But it angered the entitled people. The no DRM people. The information needs to be free people. The liberty or death people. Bah. These guys wouldn’t even spend $100 on an operating system, but demand a digital broadcast from China free of charge. Here is the best argument I’ve seen so far on the topic:
itsthebrod said: Last I checked, no one is forcing you to use Linux or old Mac versions. Stop bitching for the choice YOU made. Jesus, this is one reason Linux fanboys are one of the most annoying groups of people on earth: they make a decision to be a tiny minority and use Linux as their OS and then bitch when the world around them doesn’t cater every piece of software to them…
The counter-argument follows:
magic6435: That has got to be the dumbest comment i have ever read on digg…. so mabe they wanted to save some cash and not blow another 2 grand on a new mac if their powerpc is still doing what they need it to. or maybe they wanted to use and support the open software moment. there is no reason for the content NOT to work on these systems. its a matter of companies artificially mucking things up for certain techs.
Welcome to the power of choice.
You chose poorly.
You see, the beauty of living in the free world and enjoying all the benefits of the free markets is that you have the power to choose. It’s your right. The beauty of free markets for corporate citizens is that we too have a power of choice – on how we make our investments. So in the same way that you selfishly choose one alternative over another, corporations choose one alternative over another. The right to broadcast Olympics isn’t free. The right to broadcast the college football game isn’t free. That right has to be bought, and every time there is a transaction to be made someone pays for it.
In this case, Microsoft paid for it. And they offer it under the terms they set. Take it or leave it. Nobody is forcing you. Nobody is snubbing you.
Microsoft chose the format to broadcast the Olympics with. You chose an operating system that does not have the capabilities to watch the Olympics. Thats all there is to it.
Now the delicate dance that the creators (such as the music industry) and distributors (iTunes, Best Buy) and consumers (us) do in order to determine just what the right amount of money, DRM and restriction is acceptable so that everyone walks away from the deal happy and content…. that’s a much longer blog post. But in the end it comes to the exact same conclusion – it is all about the choice.
… to let someone else change things.
One of the most awesome things that we’ve learned from opening up the development process, the feature requests, bug tracking and shortly even community participation is that we are no longer the change agent. Given that we sink our money, sweat, tears and blood (if you haven’t spilled blood into a gadget or computer you are not in IT) it’s a little unbelievable that we don’t call the shots but really – we don’t – our partners do.
What’s the hardest thing to do? After begging for money and meeting the bills or deciding which projects to scrap? Firing people and making large changes to the structure of the company, offerings, portfolio.
No matter how great or positive the change may be, it will piss someone off.
Not because it hurts them directly, but because they will feel like they have been left out and their input, feelings, thoughts or concerns never made part of the process. It’s one thing to dismiss someone, but to not even ask. That hurts people.
So the lesson in transparency is to involve people in the process. Let them know when they are doing great. Let them know when they suck. Stay open about what is doing well, what is doing terrible, which team members are kicking ass and which ones are just dragging it behind them.
So when things change… they aren’t a shock and nobody is surprised. Prepared, hopefully.
Final warning: You should not read this blog post. Under any circumstances. Ever.
I love Los Angeles. Best place on earth. Tons of energy. Tons of people. Tons of opportunity. I’m here on my second leg of ExchangeDefender 4 tour and I always make it a point to make a religious pilgrimage – and as you’re about to find out, it is a very religious experience – there is nothing you can do to get closer to afterlife (legally) than the below.
Some people like to wrap themselves in a bed sheet and stand with thousands of other smelly men in the middle of a desert so they can throw a tiny rock at a rather large rock. I like to stand in a line for hours with a bunch of girls not hot enough to get into a club, all for a little nutritious goodness.
If you’re a foreigner, this would be a good time to go dust your furniture, wash the dog, etc. I’m in a rather good mood so this is about to get dangerous.
My dear pal Robbie could never quite appreciate the beauty of the type of food we eat here in America. I must admit, I find it intimidating at times, but that which does not kill me can only make me fatter. So a few years back Robbie and I started talking about the “Luther Sandwich” which I have yet to try. But every time I am in Los Angeles I make it a point to go to Pinks – a family hot dog Hollywood legend since 1939.
Earlier in the day I was looking over ExchangeDefender 4.0 core infrastructure and had a good cause to celebrate. I got to meet up with one of my partners from Los Angeles, Garett Chipman from TVG Consulting. We had the complete “The Hills” experience, eating at a nice restaurant in West Hollywood, on the sidewalk, etc. I got a pizza that seemed to have more veggies than cheese and dough so naturally I had some room left for dinner. And after a long day at work, what better dinner treat before bed like the following options:
So Many Choices….
As I mentioned, Pinks is as much of a hotdog stand as it is a Hollywood tourist attraction. However, when you do show up between 11pm and 3am the place is more of a last call of sorts for bar hoppers and people looking to hang out. On a beautiful LA evening in August (68 F, coming from Orlando in the 90’s with 200% humidity and Dallas hitting in 100’s, this is heaven) there is nothing better than hanging out in a line waiting for a dog. Just in case you’re wondering, I’m not the only guy there, at the time my turn came there were well over 100 people here with the line wrapping around the building.
So how do you stay popular in Hollywood and become a tourist attraction? How do you stake that claim? Why put pictures of celebrities all over the joint. Name sandwiches after celebrities. Here are a few choice pics, enlarge for the actual description:
The Hollywood “Walk of Fame” Dog: All-Beef STRETCH Hot Dog topped with Yummy Coleslaw & Chopped Tomatoes.
The VIEW Dog – TWO All-Beef Hot Dogs in one bun, Topped with Mustard, Onions, Chilli, Cheese & Guacamole.
Brooklyn Pastrami Dog – All-Beef Hot Dog, Topped with Mutard, Pastrami & Swiss Cheese.
Planet Hollywood – Polish Sausage, Grilled Onions, Grilled Mushrooms & Bacon. But wait! Topped with YUMMY NACHO CHEESE.
The Gustavo Dudamel Hot Dog (these are getting progressively more disgusting as you get further in the line)
The “Mulholland Drive” – 10″ Stretch Hot Dog, Grilled Onions & Mushrooms, Bacon, Topped with Nacho Cheese.
Three Dog Night – Hot dog even I didn’t have the courage to order. It’s three beef hot dogs, three slices of cheese, 3 slices of bacon, wrapped in a GIANT tortilla, topped with Chilli & Onions. Oooo lawd.
The Millenium Dog – 12″ Jalapeno dog, chopped tomatoes, lettuce, chili, grilled onions, topped with guacamole.
The Olympic Rings Dog – I actually got this one. I know. I know. 10″ Stretch hot dog. Yummy Barbecue Sauce. Topped with our Famous Onion Rings.
The Ozzy Spicy Dog – “Hot as Ozzy Osbourne”
The Building Process
The hot dog assembly process is pretty impressive. First you are greeted by the assembly engineer that takes your specs and verifies the request.
He then lays out little aluminum/plastic napkins to lay the dogs and buns on. Then, from the metal chest I can only assume is heaven, god creates hot dogs which are carefully placed into the buns.
The hot dog then goes down the assembly line for bacon, cheese, nacho cheese, chili, etc.
The finished product is then delivered to you and explained. The people in front of me were really hungry. My order is on the right. Olympic dog, chilli cheese bacon dog and two plain mustard dogs.
Here is a closeup of the artwork.
How many calories is that? I don’t know, but I did get a diet coke to offset it. Three of them. I was concerned about not taking in enough sodium yesterday I suppose. Gotta get your vitamins.
Now here is where it gets graphic. This is the clean side of the hand after eating the Olympic dog and the chili dog. What you can’t see is the back side, covered in chili oil that will give my hand an orange stain for weeks.
All done.
Have you saved any room for desert?
Of course. I’m not an animal! Waiiit.. Wait a minute…
But of course! Randy’s doughnuts in Inglewood! I believe “Lardo” the doughnut mascot from The Simpsons was actually concieved as a parody of this very doughnut stand. Not sure though. But the doughnuts are delicious.
If you’ve made it this far, I applaud you 🙂
So a call to action. Please register for TechEd Preday in Australia. Find the one they call Robbie Upcroft and bring him a hot dog. Frozen, Corndog, Olympic dog. You name it. Look around Robbie, you will see Wayne Small attached to him. Wayne will be asking you for your business card. Everyone to bring Robbie a hot dog and present it to him gets two beers on Own Web Now / Vladville, Wayne will be your official beer distributor.
Update: Of course this blog post is for the ladies. Who loves ya, baby? With Playgirl out of print, I got your back: Where else on the Internet can go find an IT blog that gives you a shot of a few hundred weiners all in one blog post? That’s right! Vladville! You’re welcome.
Today’s guest blog post comes courtesy of the page 18-19 of the latest issue of the Harvard Business Review. I think it sounds eerily similar to the attitudes we’re seeing in the IT field these days and felt it was relevant enough, so here it is for your consideration. Enjoy:
History has lessons to teach about the role of denial in the decline of companies. The stubborn refusal of the U.S. automobile industry to admit changeability of consumer demand is one of the best examples.
The Model T was introduced in 1908, and over the next two decades the Ford Motor Company sold more than 15 million of these cars. But by 1927 sales had flagged so severely that Henry Ford discontinued the line in order to retool his factories for its successor, the Model A. To make the change, he shut down production for months, at a cost of close to $250 million. This chain of events was disastrous for the company, because it allowed Chrysler’s Plymouth to gain market share and permitted General Motors to seize market leadership.
Why did Henry Ford, who was such a visionary in the industry’s infancy, fail to see that the Model T was about to run its course and that a smooth transition to a new vehicle was essential? Evidence of his signature model’s declining fortunes was everywhere apparent at the time. But Ford dismissed sales figures documenting the Model T’s declining market share, because he suspected rivals of manipulating them. One of his top executives warned him of the dire situation in a detailed memorandum. Ford fired him.
Ford’s blindness resulted from a conviction that he knew what customers wanted: basic transportation. He was equally convinced that this desire would never change. His favorite slogan about the Model T- “It takes you there and it brings you back” – captured his myopic view. What Ford didn’t grasp is that every product or service has two components: the core (the product’s primary purpose) and the augmented (additional functions and features). In every industry the border between the two inevitably shifts over time. (For another take on Core and augmented products, see Theodore Levitt’s The Marketing Imagination)
In 1908 the automobile was mostly core: It got you there and back again.
By the 1920s, however, the world was changing, whereas the Model T wasn’t.
The full piece is well worth the time to read it (and the magazine’s $20 newsstand price) and is written by Richard S. Tedlow, rtedlow@hbs.edu
And yes, I read the Harvard Business Review – as should you.
© 2005– Vladimir Mazek
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Content is provided AS-IS without warranty of any kind.
