Social Networking Data

I've been looking at the various social networking technologies, and I've been intrigued by the degree to which they focus on sharing information that seems like there is no conceivable reason to share. Example: I'm listening to "X" or I just bought "Y". In other cases, I can see real privacy concerns being an issue. Then I realized how much of this stuff I was actually making notes about and even googled around a bit for information on music artists that I hadn't heard of.

I've been listening to music most of the work day in the background and fortunately the iPod is able to tell me exactly what I've been listening to. In the spirit of the times, I'll share. So the three most listened to albums are:

1) Anna Netrebko's Russian Album.

Netrebko's voice has been described as dark, but it seems perfect to me in this album. I also have her doing Aria's from La Traviata with Rolando Villazon, but I much prefer this album, in general and day to day.

2) Wynton Marsalis's Black Codes (From Underground)

Marsalis remains one of my favorite musicians and an indispensable part of my daily life, despite my overall lack of enthusiasm for the latest and somewhat dreary From the Plantation to the Penitentiary album. Black Codes is a classic from an amazing and creative talent.

3) Helene Grimaud's Beethoven: Piano Concertos

Stunning. This album will take you to another place.

Not sure what is to be done with this information, but it's a minor contribution to the personalization of the web.

Good Reads

A few books I've snuck in over the last month, all of which I'd recommend:

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee: there is a reason that Coetzee received the Nobel Prize in literature, epitomized by this book, which is both extraordinarily difficult to read and almost impossible to put down. The book deals with complicated topics in such sparse text, that it seems like the literary equivalent of a spring trap: an ugly thing designed as a masterful piece of craftsmanship that traps the reader in a painful grasp. Far and away the best book I've read this year.

The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins: ever since the Selfish Gene, a really great book, Dawkins has been an indispensable popularizer of evolutionary theory. The Blind Watchmaker is quite good, piggybacking off the deist conception of life as the bi-product of a designer (where have we heard this recently?), to illustrate how evolutionary processes actually work. The most striking point by reference to the popular imagination is this: there is no point, or more properly, no fixed design. Infinitely better than the cringe-worthy God Delusion, this is a book that really ought to be required reading for high school students taking biology courses.

Corporate Finance: A Valuation Approach by Simon Benninga and Oded Sarig: ok, I confess, I had to read this book for a class, and the class was given by the authors. I probably would not have read this otherwise. (An interesting aside: both professors commute from Israel to Philadelphia to teach. I thought I had a bad commute!) However, I have done a series of courses on corporate finance touching on the topic of valuation and have read several books on valuation. This book continually gave me new insights into how to approach valuation problems, which, as I've noted, are a persistent challenge for entrepreneurs and software startups. The book is worth reading on its own, or at least worth knowing someone who has read it.

Moorestown Running Company

In the software business many people know Bob Bickel, who helped build up Bluestone Software through an IPO and sale to HP. After that, he ran HP's middleware business and then went on to build out JBoss (the company), which he in turn helped sell off to Red Hat. Pretty amazing guy.

I've had several people ask what Bob's up to these days. I had a chance to stop by his latest venture, the Moorestown Running Company. The store specializes in running gear and does a full fitting program to get runners paired up with the right shoes. Turns out that I am suffering from some moderate to serious pronation, and the folks at MRC were able to get me fitted with shoes with extra support. They feel great and I feel like I've lost another excuse not to exercise.

Moorestown is the tech center of the east coast (we like to think so anyway), stop by for a pair of sneakers on your next visit to the area.

Selling your IT Business

Like many people in software, I have cycled between large, established companies and startup opportunities. In recent years, I've focused more on large scale projects in bigger companies, but I've always tried to stay in tune with what's happening in the startup world. My interest in managing young software businesses was sharpened when I co-founded a company, which as ultimately unsuccessful, at the bottom of the dot.com crash. The thing I realized then was that I really did not understand much about valuations and financial measures. Over time, I've found that many other entrepreneurs struggle with these issues, so my first piece of advice to early stage companies that are looking to sell or raise capital is always: make sure you get a good finance person to help you. It can be hard to get a CFO involved at a very early stage, so this may have to be a board member with some knowledge of finance. Any capital of quality will have a huge advantage over the entrepreneur in this area, so this is one of the most important areas to manage, since it impacts the value entrepreneurs will realize from their venture. (Ironically, finance has changed for me from something of a weakness to an area in which I am much more comfortable, but this took a lot of time and pain.)

Anyway, there's a book I want to recommend for entrepreneurs that I just finished reading: Bob Chalfin's Selling Your IT Business. This is a very readable, easy to understand guide to the many of the legal issues involved with doing a business, including valuations. I don't think it can be a replacement for assistance, but it's a great overview for anyone thinking about selling a smaller business and wants to understand many of the core issues involved in the process. I know Bob from an investment project I've been involved with, so I can also say that he lives this stuff.

The Master and Margarita

As many of my friends know, I am a huge fan of Russian literature. Though I do not speak Russian (aside from a few holiday greetings I picked up as a kid), there's something intangible about Russian novels that I cannot find in any other national literary tradition that persists through translation. Perhaps it is the modernity of Russia's literary golden age or perhaps it is purely a personal bias brought on by my youthful recollections of exported Russian culture. Whatever the case, I still respond strongly to the works of Gogol and Dostoevsky, even on multiple readings.

I have not had a lot of time to read books for pleasure recently, but I did have a chance to revisit Bulgakov. The Burgin/O'Connor translation of The Master and Margarita is entrancing. Within the first few chapters, I found myself unable to put the book down: the first description of Pilate's trial of Yeshua is irresistible. I read one complaint on-line on the translation, but it reads wonderfully and is supposed to be quite true to the original. Definitely recommended.

Check out new links

I've started to add some more links of interest: specifically, to friends who have been doing innovative things in the field of applied distributed computing or internet services. This is not meant to be exhaustive nor to point out all the blogs I look at: you should use feeddo to keep up on that kind of thing (if you aren't using feeddo, you really should be). I've added Cameron, Hal, Rod, Mark and Edwin K. recently. If you don't recognize the first names, they are all worth getting to know.

New England Fall

Cameron got it (almost) 100% right: New England in the fall is for a time the most glorious place on the planet. What he missed: the great traditions of chasing pa'tridge and timberdoodle starting in October, which are the only appropriate source of loud noise generation I can think of for this time and place...

Some of my happiest memories are of hidden coverts surrounded by stone walls near abandoned homesteads and the crisp fall air in the northeast. It just doesn't get any better than that.

iPhone opens up

This is a great move, turning the iTouch from a closed marketing platform into a portable, internet-centric computing system.

Personal Inspirations

If you haven't already seen it, take a few minutes to look at Carnegie Mellon computer science professor's now famous "last lecture." Here's a man that is leaving life with elegance, courage and a sense of purpose. It's in the lives of "ordinary", extraordinary people that I'm finding the biggest sources of inspiration these days.

Another example: a friend of mine left a Wall Street position for military service after 9/11 because he thought it was the right thing to do. He completed his service and at the same time set up a charity called "Give to the World", which uses US troops to get basic supplies in to war torn areas where humanitarian organizations are unable to reach. This is worth checking out as well. My favorite quote from one of the founders is this: "Someone once said to me, 'you can’t save the world.' Hopefully one day, no one will ever believe a word of it."

Hong Kong

A semi-sovereign state now administered by the Chinese government, Hong Kong gives the appearance of an entirely different country from China itself: Chinese by ethnicity and culture, to be sure, but very different from the mainland. The city will be more familiar to westerners, though I would not describe it as western per se. This is a truely international city. While I was there, I saw plenty of British, Japanese, some Americans, French, Indians, and of course the majority Chinese population. The city is lit by neon and dominated by tall buildings, both offices and apartments with awesome views.





This is a mature economy. Sometimes Hong Kong is more reminiscent of parts of Tokyo, than Shanghai. Hong Kong continues to seek immigrants "of quality", which I take to mean professionals. The residents are clearly wealthy by world standards or in fact by American or European standards. The main economic driver is in finance, though retail and shipping are visible as well. A night time cab ride wound up behind two different Ferraris in 20 minutes. Hong Kong is certainly suggestive of the level of economic development that major Chinese cities will reach in time.

Hong Kong, of course, maintains it's own financial system (though currency is issued by private banks: my Hong Kong dollars were issued by HSBC). The Hong Kong stock market is highly successful. In fact, Hong Kong seems to be almost a pure capitalist system. Like the Chinese cities I visited, Hong Kong felt utterly safe. It also seems like a very attractive place to live and work. I can't think of a better location for sampling authentic foods from around the world, night after night.

Beijing

A note from the seat of the central government. Beijing is more interesting from a tourist perspective than Shanghai, though I have only been able to see things from a taxi en route to meetings. The buildings in Beijing are different: the layout is typically large and low, with buildings occupying a whole city block. The city has a feel of strong growth as well, but more planned and orderly. The feeling is less international and more distinctly Chinese. The air in Beijing was decidedly cleaner than Shanghai.

Private business is everywhere, but so are government offices. The government employees I met were extraordinarily smart, serious, but also very friendly. I saw little difference in form or function from what you might expect in the US. The more I travel, the more I learn that despite our differences, people everywhere are people: same basic concerns, same basic desires, not always the same perspectives on everything.

The food in China is amazing. Two evenings ago, I had traditional peking duck from a hickory wood fired oven. Most of the food I've had has been delicious, but the duck was just awesome.

As you drive by Tiananmen Square, you can see the new opera house, which is set to open shortly. Opposite the square is the smiling portrait of a benevolent looking Chairman Mao. The city is also a city of contrasts: as you drive past Mao, you also drive past a mini-Rodeo drive, replete with shops for Swiss watch brands that routinely sell for over 20,000 USD. Another striking statement on how much things have changed here.

The red government buildings are another study in how things have changed: does the red represent communism or prosperity and good fortune? Both or neither?

I write from Hong Kong, now administered by the Chinese government, yet under a completely different system. I have talked with Hong Kong natives who describe the arrangement as a family reunion, where earlier concerns have largely been put to rest. Again, not what I might have expected as an outsider and the different systems are another interesting contrast in China.

The excitement over the olympics is infectious. I picked up some souvenirs for the 2008 games at the airport. I have never traveled to the olympics before, but being in Beijing during the games may be worth the effort.

Shanghai

I just wrapped up a week long business tour in Shanghai, where I had the opportunity to meet with executives at MNCs doing business in China. Fantastic experience and I'll try to share some thoughts on this in a follow-up note. Just a few quick observations now.

It's difficult to describe the explosive growth and the level of investment that is happening here: I have not personally experienced anything comparable.

I did not know what to expect when I came here and my number one takeaway from the trip is this: you have to come to China to begin to understand what it is like here and to have any clue about what is happening here. I can say frankly that reading the western press does not prepare you for the experience at all.

The Chinese people are open and frank, as are westerners living here. The presence of European shops and the ubiquity of American and European brands was surprising. Retail business is huge here, and families appear to be always out and always shopping. Prices vary dramatically, depending on where you shop. A full dinner (and a couple of beers) at a popular Shanghainese restaurant topped out at 6 USD. On the other hand, a tall cup of Starbucks coffee was nearly 4 USD! There is clearly wealth asymmetry. Workers live in small and old apartments. On the other hand, nice Western style apartments appear to cost on par with Manhattan.

When you talk to the Chinese about how the country is governed, they talk about understanding the Chinese government in terms of Confucius, not communism. The people are fiercely proud of the success here and the middle class and business class seems very supportive of the government. I got no sense that this was anything but honest: in fact, Chinese were also quite willing to make critical comments on specific issues and openly acknowledge problems they face.

The best and brightest are said to go into government here. One executive compared the party education as on par with top MBA programs worldwide and emphasized that the leaders are thoroughly schooled in liberal economics.

There is a very strong entrepreneurial spirit here. I have talked with small business owners as well, some of whom fled China, then Hong Kong, only to return to live in Shanghai.

An amazing place. And I think it's fair to say that this is only the start of China's resurgence.

Marketing for Dummies

Having a platform for multiple consumer products is a marketers dream, especially if it can give effective differentiation with economies of scale in production. The danger of course is that the differentiation is not strong enough to prevent the lower margin product lines from cannibalizing higher margin products. Of course, the challenge is to make sure that all products are attractive to at least some segment of buyers. Wharton runs all MBA students through a great multi-period market simulation that really drives this home.

The ability to exploit a platform is why the iPod Touch was inevitable. On its face, it looks like one of the best moves Apple has ever made. But when you look at what they didn't include, the picture changes: no email client, no microphone, no bluetooth. Think about that for a moment: an Internet device without email. Wow. I'd say that it's not really an Internet device after all, just an incremental feature on the iPod.

Folks, people buy the iPhone because it is a phone. People won't buy this in lieu of a phone. People will buy the iPod Touch because it looks like the Internet device it isn't and because the last generation of iPods break too easily. Hopefully, the next iteration will get it right, because I know a lot of people that want the device that they are marketing but not selling, myself included.

Eternal Life

I was saddened to see the news that Luciano Pavarotti passed. There is nothing like the human voice as a musical instrument, though only a handful of singers have the capability of moving a crowd to tears by virtue of their natural gifts.

I have little hope for a life after death. But some people will live forever, or at least as long as civilization lasts. Pavarotti is one of them.

Becoming human

BecomingHuman.org is a web-based presentation on paleoanthropology. It is a great example of how interactive multimedia can be a much better learning tool than television. Of course, this also requires active engagement on the part of the user, which makes the target audience necessarily smaller. If every university department produced one introductory resource like this, the world would be a much richer place.

Edwin Khodabakchian's new blog

I wanted to point people to Edwin Khodabakchian's new blog. Edwin was the CEO of Collaxa when it was sold to Oracle back a few years: he and his team built out the first commercial BPEL implementation, which is widely recognized as being the best of breed product for service orchestration and process management. He's up to some cool, new stuff (more on that soon): this will be one of the "must subscribe" feeds in the tech field. Edwin has a unique way of looking at product development: he's one of the few people that are able to consistently blend simplicity and beauty in a software product.

Service Platforms and SOA Enablement

Demed L'Her and I wrote an article for SOA World that discusses how service platforms are emerging as key enablers for SOA. This is one of the more important trends in application integration. Demed is a Product Manager at Oracle responsible for a range of integration technologies; he's been doing a ton of work in Oracle Fusion Middleware. He's also a nice guy.

William Vambenepe joins Oracle

I'm pleased to report (or rather point to a reportrx) that William Vambenepe has joined Oracle to work in the enterprise management and SOA spaces. I worked with William a bit back at HP middleware and followed his work in the management standards space for some time; I think everyone that's worked with him is impressed by both his professionalism and smarts. It's great to see the talent inflow at Oracle continues.

Money for Nothing and Checks for Free

If you want to understand a bit more about what is happening in the markets, I highly recommend the IMF working paper "Money for Nothing and Checks for Free". If you are pressed for time, take a look at the graphic summaries throughout the paper.

Two things strike me in all of this:

1) The leveraged positions on some of these investments (in particular in hedge funds) on securities is almost an inversion of the historical norm of banks with required asset reserves for loans. The fact that these securities were not only over-valued but in some cases are unable to be valued is alarming

2) The subprime loan segment just blossomed a few years back as the economy was coming out of a recession via a major injection of money for the central bank (of course depressing interest rates); after today's rate cut, it's unclear that what Fed policy is going to look like. Could this mean things are really that bad? Obviously the equity markets didn't think so.

PS: Mauro Guillen of the Wharton School pointed me to this paper.

Oracle Coherence 3.3 released

In short order, the Oracle folks in Boston have gotten a new release of Coherence data grid software out the door. I expect that we'll see a very broad footprint for the Coherence software, both in Oracle software and with customer deployments across industries. There's a good computerworld article that discusses this in more depth.