The Demise of Microsoft and RIM

To stay on top of the world of technology, a company needs to be bringing new ideas to the market and reinventing itself. For example, take the cases of Yahoo and MySpace - two ground breaking Internet technology companies in their heyday. Look where they are now. Yahoo, the once darling of the Internet, did not seem to know who they were and the direction they were going. Yahoo's home page is a mess of services that seems to be piped in from Internet sources.  All I wanted was a search without all the rest of the stuff Yahoo was trying to provide and was forcing me to consume. I was a Yahoo user but switched to Google just because of the simpler search home page. Google grabbed the search market by offering a simple yet powerful search engine and then providing additional services to their search clients, some fairly standard but useful – Gmail and Docs, others very innovative – Maps and Earth. When Goggle sees something that they think would enhance their users’ experience, they acquire - YouTube. Let's face it, not all innovations are going to work and as all Googlers know, we are all their beta testers. Some of their innovations have failed but at least they try. MySpace was another great idea that went nowhere. With respect to MySpace, whether it was poor marketing or lack of direction, Facebook came along with a similar idea and drowned it.

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It is this lack of renewal that will take down two technology giants - Microsoft and RIM. If you think about it, Microsoft has not created anything. In the early days, Microsoft made its claim to fame by striking a deal with IBM to have a copy of MS-DOS on every computer it sold. Microsoft did not create MS-DOS. IBM approached Gary Kildall to negotiate a deal with him to acquire his operating system known as CPM. Kildall had philosophical problems with IBM and refused to deal with them. Because Bill Gates was making a name for himself in the new computer industry by writing code for the first personal computer, the Altair 8000, IBM approached him. As timelines were short, Gates bought the rights to CPM and rebranded it as MS-DOS and licensed it to IBM under the name of PC-DOS. With his lawyer father's help, Gates got a sweetheart commission from every computer sold using "his" operating system. (By all rights, if he was still alive, it should have be Kildall who should be travelling the world with Melinda, giving away billions of dollars). With the boom of personal computers in the early 1980's, this commission made Microsoft very rich.

As there is little money to be made hardware, IBM is no longer selling personal computers and Microsoft is a multi-billion dollar organization. Microsoft’s other products are copies of technology on the market. Windows was fashioned after Apple's operating systems and the MS-Office products followed other productivity tools on the market like LOTUS 1-2-3, WordPerfect, and Paradox. It is simply the size of Microsoft that forces users to install its products which are designed to work best in its operating systems that are already installed on computers. Microsoft has been taken to court by smaller competitors to stop them from forcing personal computer users to use their browser.

Microsoft's answer to the booming MP3 player market, Zune, which was released 5 years after the iPod, was removed from the market in 2011. Their recent attempt to break into the cell market is not going as planned and now, with the release of Windows 8, they are trying to break into the tablet market, long established by Apple and Google. Being a follower and an imitator, Microsoft will not be the company that is was in the days of Bill Gates. The cell phone market has long been dominated by companies like Motorola Mobility (recently purchased by Google) and Nokia, who is losing market share to Apple and Google. Now comes Microsoft trying to get in long after the races have begun. They are repeating this error by just announcing that they are getting into the tablet market with their Surface tablet. Once again, the tablet race started with the iPad 2 years ago, which is equivalent to a prehistoric period in terms on technology innovation. With the sale of desktop and laptop computers declining, Microsoft is not going to be selling as many operating systems as they have sold in the past, and as they attempt into the cell phone and tablet market is so far behind, the future of Microsoft is not looking good.

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RIM came out with a very innovative product in 1999. Imagine a product that was so innovative, that you can get your email, answer your phone calls and have a host of productively tools in the palm of your hand. It was a wonderful tool and many people, still swear by it including President Obama, who refused to give it up in spite of it being a national security threat and Oprah who called it one of her favourite things. The problem is that RIM rested on its laurels and other manufacturers took the smart phone idea and ran with it giving us the iPhone and Android phones with hundreds of thousands of apps. They tried to produce other attention-getting products, like the Blackberry Bold and the PlayBook tablet but those products lacked the innovative nature of the original Blackberry. Even with a new CEO, RIM will have a very difficult time recovering from their lack of attention to the demands of the innovative-hungry technology market. They are hoping that their Blackberry 10 will be the saviour of RIM but it appears to be yet another device incompatible with the rest of the suite of productivity tools used by businesses.

The technology market is constantly searching for the next big thing. Microsoft and RIM are both trying to be players in this new technology marketplace using old technology operating strategies that got them to be big players in the market in the first place. Unfortunately, those strategies need to change if they planning to survive. RIM is supposedly trying something new with its new operating system but it may be too late as iPhone and Androids are well embedded in the market. Microsoft has released Windows 8, an operating systems design to be used on phones and tablets in a well-established market, as Google and Apple have a sizeable head. For both RIM and Microsoft - too little, too late.

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Tablet Wars

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Since Apple released its first iPad in April of 2010, there is not doubt that it has been a run away success. In the last quarter of 2011, Apple sold over 15 million units. It has change corporate society and the classroom with executives and students using it for a document retrieval and note-taking. It has also started other computer manufacturers marketing their own version of tablet technology. Some of these competitors have been successful like Samsung and ASUS while others like RIM and HP have failed to penetrate the market.

Some say that there is really not a tablet market, instead, there is the iPad and then there is everyone else. Similar to the early days of the personal computer wars when there was Apples and the so-called, "PC-compatibles", the market found a place for both types of devices and the smaller manufacturers were weeded out like Radio Shack, Atari and Xerox. What is evident is that the tablet wars is based on the diversity of app available. Smaller manufacturers seem to be resting their laurels on the strength of their stand-alone product but what the consumers want is a devices that can be multi-purpose and can easily morph from a play thing and a work device. The power and the breadth of apps available on the iTunes and the Android Play stores are hard to beat.

The weakness of tablets is that they are not productivity tools. It is hard to type on them with the on-screen keyboard and the productivity software tools have not caught up to the richness of the tools available for personal computers. This is not a bad thing. It just means that buyers must understand what they are buying and salespeople must guide them to the appropriate tool. A colleague recently bought a tablet and quickly discovered that it was not appropriate for doing his doctoral paper-writing.

As I said in an earlier post, I had not intention of buying an iPad but the tablet technology is hard to resist. I found one that suits my personal and business productivity quite well and seem to bridge the gap between a table and a laptop. As I am not an Apple person, never having owned an Apple productivity product, and being a Google user, I decided to purchase an ASUS Transformer, The Android Play store, although not at extensive as iTunes, has more than certainly met my needs for apps. The attached keyboard is a great bonus, allowing me to use the full tablet screen for productivity and adding the power of an additional battery.

It will be very interesting to see where all this technology is headed. The desk-top computer is fast becoming old technology, laptops seemed to be divided into notebooks and larger screen models, and the tablet market is splitting into two definite directions and fast evolving to produce newer, faster and more full-featured models. Just as cell phones changed the way society works and plays, the introduction of tablets into the marketplace will be a milestone in the way we interact with technology.

Freak Shows via Technology

Before the current age of technology, the only way a person could gawk at the so-called "freaks" - the bearded lady, half-ape/half-man, world's shortest man - was when the travelling circus came to town. The interested person would pay their 25 cents, pass through a high-guarded turnstile and ooo and ahhh at the spectacular. The sad thing about this system is that most of these "freaks" were outcasts from society and the only way they could making a living is to degrade themselves by appearing in these types of shows. John Merrick, the Elephant Man, was probably the most famous of these types of people.

Modern morals and technology has changed the nature of these freak shows. On one hand, people is today's society who have such anomalies are treated with much more compassion and we would not think of putting them on public display. Yet, on the other hand - there is reality television. Reality television allows modern-day freaks to be put on public display and allow those interested to view them as they are, coping with every day life - and either, glad to be witness to a situation that is so much worse then more - or on the flip side, watching freaks living a envious lifestyle. And the titles of the show beckon those curiosity seeks to their TV's just as the barkers outside the tent urge the passer-by's to pay their quarter. For example:

Sister Wives
Little People, Big World
The Little Couple
Katie plus Eight
Keeping up with the Kardashians
The Real Housewives of OC (DC, NJ)
Jersey Shore
The Bachelor
The Bachelorette
Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew
Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List
Kirstie Alley's Big Life
Sarah Palin's Alaska

And the rumour was that Octo-Mom and the ex-JetBlue flight attendant was talking about a reality show.

These people are different from the average person and are capitalizing on it.  I'm sure they are getting more than a quarter per person. Jon and Katie, and others I'm sure, have become very wealthy because of their notoriety. The sad thing about it is because of technology, these people's 15 minutes of fame is hitting us from multiple media sources and lasting far too many seasons.

Battle of the Giants

Image via CrunchBaseThroughout the development of modern technology, there have been products and services that have come and gone. Some have transformed into other products and some companies have gone in a completely different direction. Companies like IBM, Borland, Lotus, WordPerfect, WordStar and Netscape are have played a part in software and hardware development over the course of the past few decades. There have also been some memorable battles, with companies vying for supremacy and copyright. Lotus sued Borland claiming that the Quartto Pro had the same "look and feel" of 1-2-3. And then there was the browser wars. Microsoft's dominance in PC operating system software settled many battles by introducing MS Office. I was a committed WordPerfect user but when over to the dark side by sheer force (I still look for the Reveal Code screen).

It look as if a modern battle is brewing. Facebook is set to release an email service. Some are saying that this would be the death of other Web-based email services like Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail. As Facebook has 500,000 users across the world, a Facebook email could take a bite out of the market. Not being a Facebook user, I hope that loyal Google followers support Gmail as Google is known to abandon under-utilized applications. I do not see this happening as many thousands, including myself, have chosen Gmail as my primary email provider. Google, on the other hand, has tried to get some social networking into their suite of products and has failed. They claim not to be completing to Facebook.
I think that the result of this battle would be that Facebook users will have access to an email program and that Google will lose some of this Gmail users, but provide other services to tempt users to stay. Gmail is one of Google's primary services and I don't see it going away or there will be some very angry people and lost credibility in Internet services.

No matter how it works out, I think that the clear winners will be the users of FaceBook and Gmail.

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Textbooks' Coming of Age

Image via WikipediaI have been teaching for over 25 years and one of my biggest frustrations is textbooks. Not only are they costly for the student but they are almost out of date by the time they are printed and not a valuable reference to the student after graduation. New academic textbooks are a $4.5 billion industry and the used textbook market is pegged at $4 billion.

A new company called BookRenter.com is trying to capture some of that market by making books available to students who send them back after they are done. Not a bad idea but there is still the problem of the currency of the materials. The only way to go is digital. With digital books, students will be able to read materials that is more relevant, the prof can select part of one text and part of another, and there is no paper to waste which should keep the tree-huggers happy. It's a win-win all around.

Digital book, newspaper and textbooks have been slowly making their way into our lives. Currently you can get a digital copy of your daily newspaper, your favorite best seller and an e-copy of an academic textbook usually accompanies the physical copy. I think that print media is slowly disappearing and evolving into digital content. Steven Ballmer said that he believe print media will disappear in 10 years. Futurist Ross Dawson said that newspapers will cease to exist in the US within seven years followed by Britain and Iceland in 2019, and Canada and Norway a year later.

I think we have an obligation to teach students how to read digital content. It involves a different set of skills than reading printed text. Modern kids are considered digital natives because they are in tune with FaceBook and Twitter but that does not mean that they know how to use digital technologies to educate themselves.

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What is the Sony Walkman like NASA's Space Shuttle?

Image via WikipediaI love technology! One of the reasons I love technology is that it is constantly changing, improving and generally make life better and certainly more interesting. I've been lucky enough to witness some of the great technological advancement in history. Cool thing about technology is that every generation can say the same thing. From the invention of fire and the wheel to microcomputers and space travel, technology is a wonder to its generation. Some technologies stay around for a short time while other linger for decades
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Image via Wikipedia
Two technologies that have been around for 30 years are being retired in the next few weeks. The Sony Cassette Walkman, first introduced in Japan in 1979 and sold 3,000 units in the first month. It is amazing to me that this product is still around given the popularity of MP3 players. Even though the iPod has been around for 9 years, the cassette technology was still being manufactured by Sony. The other technology that is retiring is the space shuttle Discovery, set for its 39th and last flight on November 1st. Discovery, the oldest shuttle in NASA's fleet, and first launched in 1981. Not only is this the end of Discovery but also marks the second to last flight of the entire space shuttle program. The last flight will be made by Atlantis in late February of 2011.

Both technologies were introduced three decades ago, have changed the way we work, play and opened up our world to new adventures either by allowing us to carry music with us or by seeing the world from a different perspective. We have moved so far forward since the 80's to embrace new technologies but the Sony Walkman and the space shuttle will forever be pop culture items of technology just as the "brick" cell phone. I think it would be fitting if the Walkman was taken on board Discovery's last flight and released into space. A fitting end to two great technological icons of our time.

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Microsoft Does Not Have its Head in the Clouds

Image via CrunchBaseJust the other day, I posted my thoughts about Microsoft's second entry into the cell phone market, and how its impending failure will cost CEO Steve Balmer his job. I also wrote that I felt MS was not an innovator. Today, I read a couple of news reports to further my beliefs about MS.

The first report was a press release from MS about the "retirement" of Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie. (Chief Software Architect was actually Bill Gates title before he stepped away from MS). Ray Ozzie, one of the developers of Lotus Notes (and don't hold that against him) was responsible for MS development of cloud computing. The other news item related to this story was one I came across in Businessweek. "According to some of the technology portfolio managers whose mutual funds drew the highest scores from Bloomberg Rankings as of September 2010, the hot theme in technology is cloud computing" 


So here we have MS "retiring" his CSA who is responsible for cloud computing developmental, and not replacing him, and, on the other hand, cloud computing becoming a hot commodity. Once again, MS is falling behind in technology, not being an innovator and become more of a distance follower. 


Ozzie's departure is the latest in a long list of executive house clearing. Microsoft announced the resignation of entertainment chief Robbie Bach in May, and Office division head Stephen Elop in September to become CEO of Nokia. In 1999 and 2000, it lost Paul Maritz, who had been a top executive, Brad Silverberg, who led development of Windows 95 and Internet Explorer; as well as Nathan Myhrvold, the company’s chief technology officer. 

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With all those brainiacs gone, who's left to take the blame, Mr. Balmer?

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From DOS 1.0 to Windows 7 - Nothing's Changed

There is very little doubt that Microsoft has played a big part in the computer revolution. While Apple software and hardware has always been proprietary, MS was willing to sell its operating system to any manufacturer making an IBM-compatible computers thus attaining a huge market share. The market share lead to users naturally adapting software products that interfaced very well with DOS and then Windows which lead to MS Office becoming the de facto standard office productivity tool.

The problem with MS is that they are not innovators. From their beginning, DOS 1.0 was not a Bill Gates creation. He bought the rights to an operating systems called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) from Seattle Computer Products and adapted it to IBM's specifications. MS Office products have been dominant but other office tools pre-date them. The word processing program WordPrect was available in 1980 (MS Word in 1983) and the spreadsheet Lotus 1-2-3 was released in 1983 while MS Excel first surfaced in 1987. Just the power and reach of Microsoft's operating systems has caused these other tools to virtually disappear. The early  Windows products were thought of by many to have a similar look and feel as the Apple operating system of the same time.

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThis lack of innovation is now evident in MS attempt to enter the cell phone market. After Blackberry and Apple has taken over the market, here comes MS trying to do for cell phone what they did for microcomputers. It was not surprising that there first attempt failed. They are not the only player in the market and they do not know how to deal in an area where they do not have a virtual monopoly. After the failure of Vista and the success of Windows 7, they are trying to carry that success to the cell phone market. With Blackberry and the iPhone deeply entrenched, I believe that their second attempt to produce a cell phone will fail again.

They are in a market place where they do not know how to play the game - a market place that calls for innovation and that is crowded with non-MS products. The failure of the first cell phone caused MS CEO to lose his bonus - the failure of the Windows 7 cell phone will cause him to lose his job.

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The End of the Light Bulb

Image via WikipediaTechnology evolves. The abacus evolved to the super computer and the Wright Brothers flyer in to the jumbo carrier and the space shuttle. Technology reaches another ones of those important evolution milestones today. This one was comes after 140 years of very little change. In 1870, Thomas Edison found a way to make a long lasting filament within a glass encasement glow with light. Since that time, the light bulb has changed very little. Today's light bulb shape is about the same as it was in Edison's day but the filament last much longer. This week, the GE company closed the last of its plants making incandescent light bulbs.  Although the incandescent bulb was the reigning electric bulb across the world for close to century and a half, it is no longer the best technology in terms of energy consumption. To save energy, the incandescent bulb will be virtually outlawed within 4 years and will be replaced by compact fluorescents which consumes 75% less power. 


If Edison were alive today, he would not be able to identity a CD as the evolution of his phonograph but he would still be able to recognize the light bulb. I cannot think of another technology that lasted so long in its almost original form.

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Is is a Phone? Is it a Tablet? No, it's Both!!

It is interesting to watch the cell phone and Internet tablet market. Cell phone have been around for many years and it has been fun to watch how the technology has improved, how the phone have gotten smaller and how the features have evolved. From the original Motorla "brick" released in 1973 to today's smart phone has been quite the evolution. And it seems that the evolution is reaching a point where these hand-held devices are so packed with features that the phone capabilities is a small component of the actual device. The ads often lists the features and you need to read the fine print to see any specs about the phone capabilities. Apple suffered the consequences of not focusing on the phone when they released the iPhone 4. Great toy but the phone was hard to use due to the antenna design.


Now with the introduction of the Internet tablets, the line between phone and computer is becoming narrower. Apple, once again, found that out the hard way when they did not have phone capbilities in their iPad. Of course people still bought them but were dissappointed with the lack of a phone and camera which seems to be the defacto standard for hand-held devices.
One player noticably missing from the mix is Microsoft. Bill Gates and company has been given much of the credit for the computer revolution but does not seem to embrace the cell phone market potential. Microsoft has never been innovators. Even their original software product, DOS, was a copy of CPM. They have tried serveral time to enter the market with dismal failure and a new attempt is on the horizon. MS is so far behind the leader, they will never catch up.

By the end of this year, the smart phone / Internet tablet market will be heating up. With iPad competitors on the horizon, MS in the market, RIM fighting to maintaining its smart phone lead, Apple releasing new devices and Nokia trying to maintain its cell phone market lead, it going to be a very interesting time for hand-held technologies.

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The Dangers of Social Networking

There has been much talk in the media lately about privacy issues with regards to social media but there are many other risks associated with this Internet phenomenon. There is no doubt that social media sites can be fun and are a great marketing tool but just as in real life, these sites attach those who would like to illegally profit or hurt users for their own gain or for misguided motives.

Image via CrunchBaseWhat also seems to be emerging is a couple of stigma's associated with being a Facebook user. Two recent studies have found that students who use Facebook have lower grades than non-users. One study was performed by a psychologist at the Open University of the Netherlands found that Facebook users have 20% lower graders as compared to non-users. Another study at Ohio State University found similar results claiming that Facebook users have significantly lower grade then non-users. As with all research, I'm sure that there was some confounding variables in these studies and both make the statement that Facebook was probably not the direct cause of lower grades but the distraction of playing games, chatting with users and reading updates could have distracted students from their studies.

And then there's a study from the University of Toronto that found Facebook users to be narcissistic. The study examined 100 students and found a direct correlation between the amount of time someone spends on Facebook and how narcissistic he or she is. What the study was  unclear on is whether narcissistic people are more likely to use Facebook or if Facebook plants narcissism into their personalities. The study also found that many Facebook users have low self-esteem. What this indicated that Facebook users are not getting the attention they want in the real world so they turn to Facebook for acceptance. I hope some one does a similar study on Twitter and I'm sure that the narcissism scale would be through the roof for most Twitters.

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Location! Location! Location!

Location! Location! Location! So has been the cry of realtors when buying a house. It's all about the location. Now it seems that some people are using Internet technologies to identify their personal location. Location services have been around for a while with online services like FourSquare, Yelp, and Gbanga. Now with the addition of Facebook's Places, use of location-based social networking will escalate.  Therefore, not only will you be able to tell everyone on the Net everything about you, but now you will be able to indicate where you are, minute by minute. Some stores and other organization have used location-based services as a marketing tool. For example, go to your favourite coffee shop, register that you are having a coffee, repeat 4 more times and get a free beverage on your next visit. Sounds fun?

Here's my problems with location-based services. Now Internet dwellers will not only have a place to post stupid and insignificant 140 character thoughts online but they will also be able to tell us exactly where they are - like I care! The other problem fuels the privacy debate. Have you been watching the news lately? There is more stuff about social networkers available to the public than they may be aware of and now they are going to be telling everyone where they are going, hanging out and vacationing - in real time! Beside coffee shops taking advantage of knowing this, how about other less reputable organizations that would love to know how you spend your day and where you are - spammers and house thieves come to mind.

George Orwell created Big Brother to watch and rule over the people of Oceania in his novel, 1984. In the society that Orwell describes, everyone is under complete surveillance by the authorities. The people are constantly reminded of this by the phrase "Big Brother is watching you". Sounds to me that Big Brother, (aka location services / social networking), is not forcing himself on netizens, rather netizens are voluntarily giving themselves into the folds of Facebookia.

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Hi Tech Conspiracy Theory?

Did you hear the one about the young computer expert / hacker who comes across some damaging information about a mega-corporation and before you know it the hacker is being sought by the police for a crime the person is suppose to have committed? Of course the crime is not real. It was set in motion by the mega-corporation using computer technology to change and/or delete part of the hacker's computerized records. This type of conspiracy theory was made popular by the 1995 movie called The Net with Sandra Bullock. Do you think this could happen in real life?

Case in point is is the story of Julian Assange. You may know him better as the founder and editor of WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing Web site that published tens of thousands of pages of Pentagon paper regarding the Afghanistan war. He was being sought on a arrest warrant in Sweden for rape and molestation charges. The spokesperson for the Swedish prosecutor's office said that they and, I quote from the CNN article, "didn't have more detail about when the alleged crimes occurred or who the alleged victims are". Assange denied the charges on the WikeLeaks Twitter page. Strangely, within a few hours of the story breaking, Swedish authorities dropped the rape accusations. 

Could Assnage be living Sandra Bullock's nightmare? We will have to wait and see how this story unfolds but I do find it curious how all this transpired. It would be interesting to hear on what evidence the charges were first laid and the circumstances on why they were dropped. Any chance the US government is involved? Makes you want to go .... mmmmmmmm???

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iPads vs eReaders

Image via WikipediaIn a past blog post, I was critical of iPad, not knowing how they fit in the marketplace. I have borrowed an iPad and have been trying to decide how it could possibly fit in my work or leisure activities. What I am discovering is that the iPad is a great eReader but I'm not going to be shelling out a minimum of $500 for an iPad and use it as an eReader.  That would be like buying an computer and use it as a paperweight.

I enjoy reading and have considered buying an eReader. As I see it, there are three problems with eReaders. Firstly, they are only black and white. That is not a problem for most people as eReaders are replacements for novels which are usually black text on white paper. But here's my next problem with eReaders - they do not provide a way to read Web pages. I would like a way to be able to read e-stuff (digital journals, e-newpapers, news feeds, my email) as well as novels and eReaders do not have this facility. Lastly, each book seller has it's own version of an eReader. Chapters/Indigo in Canada and Borders in the US  has the Kobo, Amazon has Kindle, Barnes and Noble has the nook. And to complicate things further, there are over two dozen other eReaders with many different file formats. I'm sure they will be standardized soon, just as VHS won over BetaMax.

So here's my message to the eReader developers - standardize your formats, upgrade to colour and Web browsing capabilities, keep it moderately priced, and I'll be first on the list to buy one

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The Two Faces of Google

Image via WikipediaThere are two interesting developments over that past few days that shows the two sides of Google. The first is the lawsuit brought on Google by Oracle. Oracle recently purchased Sun Microsystems that developed Java. Oracle is suing Google because the Android mobile operating system is based on Java and Google has not paid any royalties. Oracle is saying that Google is using the Java Micro Edition which is not part of the open source licensing agreement. Google is saying it has developed its own Java virtual micro environment and that the lawsuit is an attack on the open-source community.

The other story relates to Google and Verizon Communications putting forward a joint proposal to the Federal Communications Commission on net neutrality. Net neutrality is the concept that implies all users of the Internet have equal access and bandwidth to all part of the Internet. This means that large corporation will not have priority over personal communications online. Your online bill comes to you as fast as an email from a friend. What Goggle and Verizon is suggesting in its proposal is that net neutrality is applicable only to part of the Internet but suggest blocking content and application on wireless platform.
So on one hand, we have Google claiming the rights and privileges of the open-source community but on the other hand, they are saying that they want to limit access to part of the Internet. These actions clearly show the two faces of Google and how they spin the facts and the technology to suit there influence on the Internet. I do not know enough details about the Oracle lawsuit to make judgement on whether Google infringes on Java's licensing agreements but I do know that limiting the Internet by giving special treatment to a group of users is wrong.

In the early days of the Internet, I used to give talks to novices about how to use this emerging technology. At the beginning of my talk, I would lead a discussion on who owns the Internet. The most popular response was Bill Gates. I would assure the group that no ones owns the Internet but now it appears that Google is trying to take it over. Let's hope that they do not succeed!

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Blackberry in Trouble

Image via CrunchBase

In the past few weeks, Blackberry has been very dominant in the news. Rumors about a tablet PC started when RIM purchased the BlackPad.com domain name. RIM also introduced their latest Blackberry model to be known as the Torch. This model and their latest operating system is RIM's answer to the iPhone and the up an coming Android phones. But things are not looking good for the Canadian cell phone company. A recent statistic claims that half of all current Blackberry users are either considering switching to will be switching to different hardware.

An additional  nail in the Blackberry coffin is the problems RIM has been having with the United Arab Emirates. Because of the strong security on the phone, the UAE feel that the phone can be used by spies and circumvent security. Apparently RIM has come up with a solution to this problem or they could possibly lose 500,000 customers.

Blackberry are great phones (I use one but I'm in the 50% above). Cell phones have become more than just devices for carrying on conversations and organizing personal data. They have become Web surfing tools and social media organizers. These is something Blackberry did not keep up on and iPhone as well as other competitor has surpassed them on. Now, Rim is trying to get caught up and I think its too late. They should focus on being the choice for the business client with enterprise wide services. That is there niche and they have been very good at doing that. The personal Blackberry is fading and soon will be gone.

RIM made the Blackberry one of the first predominately used smart phones and because of that, they have huge market share. Unfortunately, they sat back on their laurels for too long without seeing the potential of the single-user. These single-users need a different set of tools than used by the business client and thus, will be switching to a phone that can provide that need.

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Catch the Google Wave but Bring a Life Jacket

Here today, gone tomorrow. Google Wave, much touted as the next great real-time collaboration platform is gone. Introduced with great fanfare in May of 2009, it never caught on for a variety of reasons. Too much competition, too complicated and too narrow a scope, this latest jewel in the Google crown fell off earlier this week. Once again, Google releases a much hyped-product and then, for lack of use, pulls it off the shelf. Only one million user implemented the Wave which is considered low adoption in the world of cloud application. Compare this number to the tens of million who are using Google Buzz - a much less complicated product.

My beef with Google is, again, why are we the extreme beta tester for its products? Sure one million may not be a big  number in the realm of the Internet but what are those users going to do with their Wave-based collaboration projects? Google, in its attempt to organize the world's data, releases products in a hurry to see who will climb on board. If the wagon is not full - the users are sunk. Because their products are free, Google feels that it hold no responsibility to support affected users. Compare this to a recall on other types of consumer-products. Just ask Toyota.

In closing, I am at a distance learning conference in Madison, Wisconsin. When I received the program a few weeks ago, I was particularity interested in attending a session that discussed the academic uses of Google Wave. The session was scheduled for today. When I arrived at the room where the session is to be held, there was a sign posted on the door - "Session Canceled"

Before getting on a Google boat, be sure you are wearing a life jacket.

Google is After your Health Records

Image via Wikipedia

Google knows where you live and where you surf online. If you own an Android phone, they probably know who you speak to and who's in your directory. Now they are after your health records. Does that scare you as much as it scares me?

Two Google engineers are presenting a paper at USNEX HealthSec 2010, part of the 19th USENIX Security Symposium, which runs from August 11-13, 2010 arguing that current health records are static and they have a way to change that - of course they do. Their mission is to organize the world's information and your health records are part of that information. They plan to do this by using the Google Wave federation protocol. This  protocol is based on open source code that permits Wave servers from different organizations to cooperate and is designed to present updates from many sources in a format that is compatible for medical record keeping in a distributed environment.


If there protocol is generally accepted by the medical community, watch for ads in your mailbox for Viagra and Lipitor.

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• The perils of privatised health records | Michael Cross (guardian.co.uk)
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Google is After your Health Records

Image via Wikipedia

Google knows where you live and where you surf online. If you own an Android phone, they probably know who you speak to and who's in your directory. Now they are after your health records. Does that scare you as much as it scares me?

Two Google engineers are presenting a paper at USNEX HealthSec 2010, part of the 19th USENIX Security Symposium, which runs from August 11-13, 2010 arguing that current health records are static and they have a way to change that - of course they do. Their mission is to organize the world's information and your health records are part of that information. They plan to do this by using the Google Wave federation protocol. This  protocol is based on open source code that permits Wave servers from different organizations to cooperate and is designed to present updates from many sources in a format that is compatible for medical record keeping in a distributed environment.


If there protocol is generally accepted by the medical community, watch for ads in your mailbox for Viagra and Lipitor.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The perils of privatised health records | Michael Cross (guardian.co.uk)
• Personal Health Records Use Growing (informationweek.com)
• Google now integrating its own Google Health service into your search results (downloadsquad.com)

Gulf Oil Spill was not Caused by Technology

Image via Wikipedia

The oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is a huge environmental disaster that will take decades to clean up. Thousands have lost their livelihood, vacationers will be staying away and dozen of specifies of wildlife will be toxic or gone for many years. Good news is that it appears the leak has been stopped and soon, the relief well will be able to permanently plug the leak. Of course, we cannot forget the 11 men who died and those who were injured when the well exploded on April 20th

Since the explosion, all efforts have been directed to stop the leak, and so should they. As it appears that an end is in sight for the leak, the press is going to shift to the cause of the explosion that started this mess. I'm sure it will take many months to determine the exact cause and the insurance companies will be watching very carefully. Some of this press has begun. I came across an article that quoted Mike Williams, the rig's chief electronics technician, saying that there were many problems and red flags on the rig but the most puzzling is that he computer screens on the rig would turn blue with no data coming through. What they may have been seeing is known, in the tech world, as the Blue Screen of Death - BSOD. 


In my opinion, the Gulf oil spill was not caused by the BSOD or any other technology. It was human error. People love to blame technology when things go wrong but it is not often the technology that went wrong - it was how it was used or how it was implemented or how it was designed. If they were getting BSOD on the rig, they should have questioned it and got it fixed. That is a human failing. Considering what was at stake, any usual technology malfunction should have been addressed. 


Computers are often used for mission-critical applications that can caused deathly consequences if they fail. It is up to use human to monitor technology carefully to ensure that it is operating as necessary so that the Blue Screen of (virtual) Death does not lead to real deaths.