As the title suggests I know I’m being a bit of a jerk here.  But Don Reisinger’s piece on eWeek today was just…really bad.  I mean, it did get me thinking on the topic (see my “4 things” below) but it is just laughable and I had to share it with someone.

Apologies to Mr. Reisinger in advance (because Lord knows I’ve written a laughable post or two in my time).  His first point…

1. Revamp the Pre: The Palm Pre is in desperate need of attention. The device pales in comparison to the iPhone. It's not only oddly designed, it lacks the "wow" value that the iPhone has. In a space where Palm is attempting to compete with Apple, that's a major problem. To turn things around, Palm needs to go back to the drawing board with the Pre and deliver a revision that reflects the current design requirements consumers have.

Note two things here.  One, the Pre came out well after the iPhone so telling them to go back to the drawing board with “current design requirements” in mind ignores the fact that they had those requirements in mind in the first place.  Two, he’s suggesting they take their cues from Apple.  That’s important later.

2. Work on WebOS: WebOS has quickly turned out to be more trouble than its worth for Palm. Theoperating system seemed like a fine idea to differentiate the product in the beginning, but it didn't resonate with consumers. Palm needs to take a step back and evaluate what's really needed in WebOS and eliminate all the rest.

OK, so he doesn’t like the Pre because it’s not like the iPhone and he doesn’t like WebOS.  Fair points.  So what’s this…

7. Stay true to Palm: At the same time, Palm needs to be Palm. Part of the allure of Palm products in the past was that they offered a unique take on mobile computing.

And this…

8. Consider licensing WebOS: Licensing WebOS would only work if Palm fixed its platform first, but there is an opportunity for the company to license its software to other phone vendors and perhaps some electronics makers.

And this…

10. Forget about the iPhone: Palm needs to totally forget that there is an iPhone competing against its Pre. When the company first announced the Pre, it made it all too clear that it was gunning for Apple.

So design with the iPhone in mind but forget about the iPhone.  WebOS sucks but consider licensing WebOS and though I dislike both Palm’s flaship product and it’s OS they need to, above all else, stay true to themselves.  Okey Dokey.

(Oh and Palm was all too clearly gunning for the iPhone? I don’t know about that)

Moving on…

4 Things Palm Could Actually Do To Make a Comeback

1.  Partner with Adobe: People aren’t going to develop for WebOS.  There are just too many other platforms.  But Adobe is building a platform that will run on Android, Symbian and Windows Phones.  So Palm’s only chance is to put it’s full weight behind Adobe and hope to create an “Us against Apple” coalition.  That’s just the only “App Strategy” I can see working for them.

2.  Focus on One Device: They simply don’t have enough resources to be dividing them.  They can always use older models as low end entries (like Apple does very successfully with the iPhone).  But a company the size of Palm needs to be completely focused on making one big push if they want to succeed.

3.  Hit the Pixi Price Point: This is the hardest goal but the reality is Palm will never be considered the premium option against the iPhone.  Meaning they can’t be more expensive than an iPhone.  With iPhone’s going as low as $199 that means hitting $99 (or at least $149). 

4.  Find a Niche to Serve: Palm needs to find a small niche that has enough people to keep the company alive so it can stop worrying about survival and focus on building it’s product.  Because no one does their best work with a gun to their head.  For example Palm could put a special effort into making it’s phone the best phone for Stock Brokers.  Fund a back end that focuses on pushing info to them as quickly as possible, make a specialized app that helps them trade from the phone easily, etc…  Basically they need to make their phone the premium option for a small but lucrative group (and hopefully sell that group services that will generate more revenue)

Palm has huge issues right now and the numbers certainly aren’t on it’s side.  But the same was true when it’s founder was trying to convince companies that the PDA was a viable concept based on a block of wood and a seemingly arcane writing style.  Challenges are meant to be overcome and Palm has a history of doing just that.

It seems (ex-)Infoworld writer Randall C. Kennedy has a pseudonym named Craig Barth who is the CTO of Devil Mountain Software.  Devil Mountain Software, or Exo.performance.network, is the vendor that claimed Windows 7 maxes out the memory of 86% of the PCs they monitor (a number they say is in the 20,000 range). 

Before I get in to this let me say that truth is always good so Kudos to Larry Dignan and ZDNet for exposing this.  But I have a couple issues with the whole story.

On Randall C. Kennedy = Craig Barth 

Randall C. Kennedy was always a “shockjock”.  The man specialized in writing stuff that was designed to get a reaction.  I, for example, have quoted Mr. Kennedy twice on this blog.   Once when his headline was “Streamed Office Will Kill Web Based Office Software” and the other was “Why Chrome OS will fail – big time”. 

Given that I don’t see what the problem is with a pen name.  Authors have used pen names to create entertainment since the beginning of time and no one blinked.  Because in the end people realized the world is better when people can write unencumbered. 

Clive Hamilton’s The Problem of Pain helped millions deal with the loss of a loved one and it would never have been written if C.S. Lewis had been forced to use his real name. 

(It is odd that Kennedy used his real name as  his pen name and a fake name as his business name but in a world where everyone wants to be a celebrity I can see his reasoning)

On Windows 7’s Memory

My biggest issue here is that people think this discredits his findings while ignoring the fact that common sense discredited his findings.  It really doesn’t matter if the person who made these claims was Randall Kennedy, Craig Barth or Donald Duck.  We should treat statements on their validity NOT on who made them. 

That said, what should discredit this is common sense.  To explain that statement let me quote the original Computer World story…

Most Windows 7 PCs max out their memory, resulting in performance bottlenecks, a researcher said today.

Citing data from Devil Mountain Software's community-based Exo.performance.network (XPnet), Craig Barth, the company's chief technology officer, said that new metrics reveal an unsettling trend. On average, 86% ofWindows 7 machines in the XPnet pool are regularly consuming 90%-95% of their available RAM, resulting in slow-downs as the systems were forced to increasingly turn to disk-based virtual memory to handle tasks.

The 86% mark for Windows 7 is more than twice the average number of Windows XP machines that run at the memory "saturation" point, said Barth.

OK, so you basically have a company saying  “We have customers we can’t reveal which gave us raw data that we won’t show you which says 86% of new computers have a serious performance flaw that no one else has noted”.

Are you kidding me?  How many different news outlets have tested Windows 7?  Now ask yourself, of all those news outlets, shouldn’t a lot of them have noticed this?  Maybe not the specific problem but at least noticed a serious slow down. 

That’s not even counting sites like Anandtech that run every test under the sun. 

(For the record,  Kennedy/Barth still defends their findings: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9159158/Metrics_vendor_defends_Windows_7_memory_claims)

Conclusion

This is a gossipy headline that I’m sure will get more attention in the days to come.  But the real problem here is how several news sources can report on information that’s unverifiable from a company they did no due dilegence on (being their contact at the company was fictional and thus far their biggest customer doesn’t seem to know who they are).

For those not paying attention (and why would you) Kevin Smith got kicked off a plane because people of his size are required to buy two seats on a full airplane and he didn’t.  He tweeted his outrage (and has continued to do so in a gloriously self promoting manner) which caused some media outlets to pick up the story. 

That’s all fine with me.  Celebrities self promote.  It’s in the job description.  My problem is when people try to turn this into a “power of new media” story.  See Caroline McCarthy of CNet (bold by me)…

This may be the best example we've seen yet of how Twitter and other forms of new-media mass communication are shaping that old industry known as public relations. Nobody walks around with a Twitter follower count or blog URL painted on his or her forehead, and many extremely popular bloggers still live in relative physical anonymity, which means that the customer relations business is like a game of Minesweeper--you can never be sure what might blow up in your face.

PR and customer service are two different divisions of a company. But this incident shows how, in the Digital Age, the two are increasingly overlapping. With Twitter, many companies are conducting customer relations in the public eye, and a company's response to a high-profile disgruntled customer may require dispatching the PR team. Good communication between the two is obviously key.

At the same time, Smith's situation may be a fairly unique one. He's a high-profile individual with a loyal cult…

The last sentence, a journalistic hedge, hints at the point I’m trying to make here.  This is news BECAUSE it’s Kevin Smith and because he’s trying to get attention.  If the year was 1997 and a celebrity of Kevin Smith’s stature put out a press release the same thing would have happened.  The “Digital Age” didn’t change anything.

For example Ivana Trump, a smaller celebrity than Kevin Smith (no pun intended), didn’t even need a press release to get her story in the news…

Ivana Trump was tossed off a plane in Florida Saturday after she got into a shouting match with screaming kids running in the aisles, police said.

Trump, 60, became even more belligerent when flight attendants on the New York-bound plane tried to calm her from yelling at the children, officials said. 

In truth, you don’t need to be a celebrity if your story is unique enough and you’re willing to make a fuss.  In fact you don’t even need to actually get kicked off the plane.  Ask Kyla Ebbert…

Apparently the outfit Kyla Ebbert wore on the “Today” show Friday was acceptable for a national television audience of millions, but not quite up to the rigid standards set down by Southwest Airlines.

Ebbert, accompanied by her mom and her attorney, appeared with Matt Lauer to discuss a recent incident in which she was at first asked to leave a flight before it departed fromSan Diego to Tucson because the flight attendants felt her attire was too revealing. When she convinced them that she would adjust her outfit to meet their requirements, she was allowed to remain onboard.

Finally, just to prove the point I’d like to give one more example that’s found on Twitter.  I found Nate Abbott while scanning other Tweets from @southwestair…

Where was his media storm? Since Twitter is such a high publicity venue you’d think it would have been enough to at least get him on the local news. 

For the record I do agree on the Customer Service point.  It helps SouthWest Air, and really any company, to be available in as many ways as possible.  Including Twitter.  So I think it’s great they have a Twitter account and a blog to provide help. 

But the reason for this post is to refute the idea that “everything’s new in the digial age”.  Almost nothing is new in the digital age, it’s just faster.  If Kevin Smith had called a tech support line and made a fuss the news story would be just as big.  Companies need to realize that ALL FORMS of customer service are PR and act accordingly.  Because that has always been and will always be the case.

Today Jason Calacanis posted his take on Google Buzz.  In typical Calacanis style it’s as inflammatory as it is informative.  Despite that his point is pretty clear and simple: Google Buzz is better than Facebook.  As he succinctly puts it…

Google Buzz 1.0 is better than Facebook after six or seven years.

I have to admit I was a little disappointed in Mr. Calacanis because I think he’s missing the point in a big way.  Which in itself is a big deal because I think Entrepreneurs and VCs are the two groups that need to understand what Google Buzz truly is.

Let me explain what I think Google is up to.

The important thing to remember about Google is that it wins if the open Internet wins. It’s essentially the center of gravity for the web and more importantly it’s the internet’s #1 provider of ads.  So as long as the Internet grows Google will grow almost as fast.

This is the nature of their business.

But that puts them in an awkward spot because on one hand they want to encourage the Internet to grow while on the other they need to impede the growth of any one site else it become “the next Google” and take Google’s place as the center of gravity.  So it has to strike a balance by encouraging the small while disrupting the large. 

That’s the beauty of Google Buzz.

Buzz is not about beating Facebook or Twitter it’s about commoditizing them. If Google can make Buzz the place people check for updates than they can elevate Facebook’s competitors to the same status as Facebook itself. That fosters competition which in turn creates the need for interoperability. Once interoperability becomes an issue Facebook’s walled garden comes tumbling down.

More importantly Buzz keeps the next Facebook from rising up. By becoming the defacto delivery mechanism Google can create a great equalizer of sorts. A way to make sure every company has access to a user’s “social graph”.

Which brings us back to Google’s initial goal. Facebook holds the key to the user’s friend list right now and that threatens Google’s central place on the web.  If Google can commoditize that friend list it can create an environment where there are 30 little Facebooks and they (ideally) all get their ads from AdSense. 

(the same goes for Twitter obviously)

But don’t get distracted. Google isn’t trying to “beat” Facebook. They’ll be perfectly content to have Facebook still out there as long as the company’s no longer a threat. 

That’s what VCs and Startups need to know.  Because knowing that  gives you the chance to capitalize on what Google’s really trying to do which is to empower those who want to compete on features. Google’s trying to bring down the walled garden that keeps other social sites out and if they succeed they’ll elevate a lot of deserving startups as a result.

I think I “get” the iPad in a way most people still can’t.  A business week article posted today illustrates that fairly clearly…

Don't get me wrong. I am a fan of the iPod Touch and therefore get the point of the iPad. I often use the Touch to catch up on e-mail, catch up with friends on Facebook, and send tweets to Twitter. When I travel, it becomes my newspaper and—thanks to the Amazon Kindle application—a less-than-ideal book reader. I even use it to catch video from time to time. The iPad had me at the bigger screen. Then again, I am a tech enthusiast.

I've talked to a lot of people who don't seem to get what the iPad is for, no matter how many times I explain it to them. Dave Letterman joked about it in his Top Ten list on Feb. 1. Among the surprises in the $3.8 trillion federal budget: "A $1 billion research grant to figure out what the hell the iPad does." On Saturday Night Live, Weekend Update host Seth Meyers said: "This week Apple released a thing that does stuff that its other stuff already does."

With no offense intended, if you think you “get” the iPad because you have an iPod Touch than you’ve missed the point.  The iPad is a bet on the future not on the present.  It’s about meeting a need that is imminent not one that’s necessarily here yet. 

Let me walk you through the thought process that Apple appears to be using.  Two points…

Point #1 - Once documents start moving to the cloud people are going to want a way to view those documents on the go. In the same way that people carry a notepad to meetings now they’ll want to pull up documents in the future.  They need a device that focuses on viewing device (as opposed to PCs, laptops and netbooks which make huge concessions for data entry).  The same is true of paper media like books and newspapers.  People need a way to carry around these digital representations.

Point #2 - People aren’t going to redefine the page.  Digital documents will continue to be based around 8.5” by 11” dimensions just as Roman Chariots defined the Space Shuttle’s booster rockets (The link says false but it really isn’t if you read the “Origin” section below).  So paper will be the form factor that defines the mobile devices we carry around with us in the future. 

In the end we come to a point where we can define a need people will have.  The device in question will have to be roughly the size of paper, small enough to carry around, able to access the Internet (or “Cloud”) and able to display documents in as pleasing a way possible.

That need is what brings Apple to the iPad.  The important point is that the iPad’s competition isn’t the iPhone or the iPod it’s Paper!

Think about this for a second.  Apple didn’t bother with a camera, they used an aspect ratio that forces video scaling, and made all kinds of other concessions to get the device out the door.  But what did they make sure to get right?  What did they spend a big chunk of their presentation on?? 

iWork for the iPad and a Book Store.

So Apple is not being secretive about this.  The conclusions I’ve laid out are obvious based on what Apple has done and said.  The blogosphere is so focused on “media” that they’re forgetting the rest of the world.  The iPad is positioning itself to replace paper of every kind and that’s why it’s important.

And Yes, it might not be an instant success but that’s all the better for Apple.  They don’t need the money now and time just means a chance for further refinement.  When the need finally becomes apparent Apple will be 2 generations ahead of the competition (just as they are with the iPhone now).  Again I say, the first generation iPhone was missing some pretty key features too (most notably 3G). 

In conclusion, “getting” the iPad is about looking beyond today’s needs.

A little set up is required for this one so bear with me…

The business section of The Atlantic shares my reaction to reading the most recent unemployment numbers.  Their article, entitled “Unemployment Rate Fall to 9.7%, But 20,000 Jobs Were Lost?”, elaborate by saying…

The national unemployment rate declined in January to the seasonally adjusted rate of 9.7% from 10.0% in December, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The rate beat consensus expectations of remaining unchanged at 10.0%. But even though the national rate declined, 20,000 more jobs were lost. That was worse than consensus expectations, where economist expected a gain of 15,000 jobs.

So why did this happen? The answer is that the numbers were “seasonally adjusted” for January…

Remember, the reported number is seasonally adjusted. It says that in January, we had 14.8 million unemployed Americans, which is about a half million fewer than the 15.3 million unemployed in December. Sounds great, right?

Maybe, maybe not. If you don't adjust for seasonality that changes. A lot. Then, January had 16.1 million unemployed, while December had 14.7 million -- an increase of 1.4 million jobless Americans.

In other words December is a month of Holidays and more people were hired specifically for that month.  Those people were then “laid off” in January but the unemployment rate doesn’t count them which is why the rate went down even though the number of jobless went up.

At this point you’re probably wondering why I’m writing about this on a tech blog.  Because the journey to getting that explanation led me through the Government’s data repository site Data.gov.

For those who haven’t read my posts in the past I’m not a fan of Data.Gov.  I applaud the idea but the effort itself is so badly done that it’s next to useless. The perfect example of this is the fact that job statistics aren’t published on the site. 

In fact, I couldn’t find much of anything useful.  The closest I found was a report entitled “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics”.  The description said…

Each month the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program surveys about 150,000 businesses and government agencies, representing approximately 390,000 individual worksites, in order to provide detailed industry data on employment, hours, and earnings of workers on nonfarm payrolls.

So I clicked on the little CSV icon…

and came to this…

Yes, apparently I need Java to download a simple CSV file (CSV stands for Comma Separated Value and is basically a text file with values separated by commas) .  So I went along with it and that brought me to this…

Which finally led me to this (In a pop-up if you can believe that)

A few things to note here…

1.  The whole point of Data.gov is to make the data sets available to programmers.  But this has so many loops to jump through (Java, Popups, redirects, etc…) that you’d need a sophisticated crawler to actually get the info (which defeats the whole point)

2.  Data.gov goes on about how many data sets they have available and what a success the site is because of that.  But if they’re just reposting links to department websites that existed before the site was put up than is it really successful?

3.  In the end Data.gov didn’t have the employment data that’s distributed to every major news organization.  So how effective is this initiative if the Dept. of Labor isn’t even putting all it’s most recent data on the site?

So again I go back to the point I try to make regularly here which is that doing anything (no matter how ineffective) is not better than doing nothing at all.  Every time someone praises the success of Data.gov what I see is the cover up of a system that doesn’t really work at all. 

Dick Brass, who headed Microsoft’s TabletPC and E-book efforts a decade ago, has an interesting piece in the New York Times today.  The issue he’s trying to address is the decline of Microsoft and the causes behind it.  In his own words…

But the much more important question is why Microsoft, America’s most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future, whether it’s tablet computers like the iPad, e-books like Amazon’s Kindle, smartphones like the BlackBerry and iPhone, search engines like Google, digital music systems like iPod and iTunes or popular Web services like Facebook and Twitter.

The flaw in his logic starts in the first paragraph.  Microsoft hasn’t “brought us the future” in my lifetime. 

Windows 3.1 wasn’t the future it was a copy of Apple.  Word wasn’t the future it was a copy of Wordperfect.  Excel’s the same with 1-2-3.  Exchange and Lotus Notes. DirectX and OpenGL.  Internet Explorer and Netscape.  MSN and AOL.  Etc…

Microsoft was never good at bringing the future as much as they were good at being fierce competitors. They could take a competitor’s product, match it feature for feature, then expand on that and sell it for a cheaper price.  That’s how Microsoft has always succeeded.  By, to quote the famous phrase, embracing and extending. 

Which brings me to Mr. Brass’ theory on the cause of Microsoft’s decline…

What happened? Unlike other companies, Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation.

…

For example, early in my tenure, our group of very clever graphics experts invented a way to display text on screen called ClearType. It worked by using the color dots of liquid crystal displays to make type much more readable on the screen. Although we built it to help sell e-books, it gave Microsoft a huge potential advantage for every device with a screen. But it also annoyed other Microsoft groups that felt threatened by our success.

In this part I think he’s right and wrong.  He’s right in that Microsoft has never developed a system of internal innovation but he’s wrong in thinking that’s the problem. 

The problem is Microsoft has forgotten it’s role in the computing eco-system

Microsoft is not the innovator.  They are the ones who bring other companies innovations to the masses.  That’s why the company can’t deal with internal innovation.  Because that’s never been it’s strength.  People don’t expect innovation out of Microsoft and that includes their own internal department heads. 

Which brings me to Mr. Brass’ second example…

Another example: When we were building the tablet PC in 2001, the vice president in charge of Office at the time decided he didn’t like the concept. The tablet required a stylus, and he much preferred keyboards to pens and thought our efforts doomed. To guarantee they were, he refused to modify the popular Office applications to work properly with the tablet. So if you wanted to enter a number into a spreadsheet or correct a word in an e-mail message, you had to write it in a special pop-up box, which then transferred the information to Office. Annoying, clumsy and slow.

With all due respect the VP of the Office Group was right.  The TabletPC was a bomb and it wasn’t poor Office integration that killed it.  To Compare the TabletPC to an iPad is like comparing a wheel barrel to a Ferarri. 

When Microsoft tries to “bring us the future” it doesn’t work. 

If Microsoft wants to slow it’s decline it needs to dump it’s massive R&D budget into competing against actual products from other companies.  That is where they can win.  

At the same time Microsoft Employees need to realize that their company works best when they compete.  Microsoft didn’t create the game console but Xbox Live is still the best online game playing experience.  There’s a lot of innovation that can be done in Microsoft’s traditional role as competitor and Microsoft employees need to realize that and be proud of it.  Rather than going off and trying to invent something new they should look at how to better something existing.

If they do I'm confident they'll succeed at it.

Addendum: Can anyone even think of a product category that Microsoft created and then succeeded in?  Off the top of my head I can't.