Written on June 30, 2007
| by RP Mickler |
|
I had a client this last week politely suggest that she wasn’t interested in being found on the Internet. I was helping her with branding and positioning strategies – setting up a web presence, identifying keywords, developing backwards links – all so that Google could find her business easier. Alas, “That’s not how I work,” she suggested.
I respect her decision in the context of suggesting technology is an undesirable layer between her and her clients, but it got me to question: is a business – any business – truly real without search? If you cannot be found by the consumer electronically, if your business is invisible in an ocean of competitors, is your business real?
It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to suggest the typical consumer has come to rely more on Internet search than on Yellow Pages or any other printed listing or directory. Even receiving the Yellow Pages – on my doorstep, at least – becomes a ritual of escorting the book to the trash can in the garage. To me, none of those businesses or listings exist. I don’t use them. What does exist is Google.
And at least when I use Google to find products or services, those who’ve spent time on refining their online presence and have optimized their search profile receive my business. I am easily directed to the most relevant supplier of a need. All of the other 177,000 pages of other suppliers may just as easily not exist. They are, categorically, irrelevant.
In an era of intense competition for dollars and attention, and if the Internet is the exclusive medium and modality for search on anything from cell phones to GPS devices, mapping systems in card, and on desktop computers, and if your small business cannot be found – if you are deemed irrelevant by Google and simply do not exist in the mind of the consumer… how can you execute your business plan?
I think this idea about relevance can even be extrapolated to individuals: if a person cannot be found (via social networks, a MySpace account, a blog, a website, an email address) through search, do they exist? Perhaps that might explain the draw for hundreds of millions to establish their own footprint on the web – to say, in some part, “I am here” and “This is who I am”, reaffirming their own state of being and ensuring to some degree immortality, for our footprints are rarely erased from the Internet. The electronic echoes of “us” on the Internet and on hard drives across the world will far exceed our own lifespan.
To the small business, I think search irrelevance is dangerous. It is a sure-fire way to become ignored and to lose out on new prospects and new opportunity.
To the individual, I think search irrelevance is diminishing in a humanist way – we’re invisible to friends, family, colleagues – are we really here if others cannot find us? And, after you are gone, did you really exist at all? Decartes “thought” and therefore “he was”. Maybe we “search” and therefore “we are”?
R
Written on June 26, 2007
| by RP Mickler |
|
—–Original Message—–
From: Ricardo
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 11:16 AM
It was a pleasure having you as a instructor and the class was a great addition to my educational status, thank you! Am I wasting my time seek a future in this industry and more so in security and if not what would suggest? Thank you for your time.
Ricardo
* * *
Hey Ricardo -
Thank you, and you pose a great question.
It is my opinion that technology, over time, becomes more ubiquitous. That is to say that technology becomes easier to understand, deploy, and use; technologies that do not simplify like this are often eliminated from the market by Darwinian forces. If we are to believe this, then we can see that, ultimately, all technology is a commodity and will eventually be valueless.
We see this in the marketplace. Huge amounts of processing and memory and bandwidth capacity is offered at increasingly lower prices. And we see it in the labor market. Where five companies would hire five managers, five engineers, and five programmers, now we see that five companies may outsource to one manager, one engineer, and one programmer – and off-shoring is a very attractive option to achieve the highest quality at the lowest possible cost.
So given that, the future of IT in corporate environments looks bleak – IT is becoming a public utility, offered by cities and vendors for fractions of the cost (if not for free). Increasingly, IT departments are under pressure to prove value – to illustrate, in material terms, how they improve the bottom line. This is very difficult to prove; 72-percent of all IT projects fail, according to the Gartner Group, and budgets have increased on average perhaps 5-percent over the last 5 years – and that’s during an economic upturn. IT departments are busy trying to maximize economies of scale, do more with less, meet regulatory and business requirements, outsource itself, and constantly demonstrate value, even though it’s not given the budget to innovate, to create with technology.
Even in college campuses, we see IT programs enrollment falling significantly (except in game design). In fact, this is the real area of IT growth: IT not as a business utility, but, IT as an artistic medium. IT for design, for electronic media, for games and entertainment. This is where all of our new young talent is heading off to, and it just represents the ubiquity of the technology.
The problem isn’t connectivity or management or security or programming… it’s _content_. So, successful IT graduates will do very well in creative arts and in using the electronic medium as a pallet. There is huge demand for talent in this area, but, limited use for talent in the corporate world with IT.
Ultimately, even software will move to subscription-based licensing where a majority of commercial home and business applications will be hosted by 2nd parties. Microsoft is, right now, preparing for Windows Live – Windows ran across a browser, hosted by 3 massive server farms the size of football fields in Seattle to serve millions of customers… and managed by exactly 100 employees. Businesses, instead of having to buy licenses and install them on PC’s, will automatically receive Windows and Office through online subscriptions… PC’s become dumb terminals, no local server in a business, reduced risk for the business as all disaster recovery and security is pushed to the vendor, and the business completely abandons having any IT presence whatsoever – they rely on managed services that are like expensed utilities. And all physical and operations security will be managed by somebody else… those 100 employees (grin).
This may sound bad but there is a silver lining. New tech could be introduced that shifts this pattern and spurs more innovation – the energy issues we’re facing, for example, or, the need to move beyond silicon in chip processing… the race to beat Moore’s Law by 2018, for example. This could spawn rapid innovation and transfer more dollars to corporate IT, maybe even revitalize the industry. Things could, and very well might, change on a dime.
However, where everything is a commodity, there’s a constant problem of proving value. This is why IBM got out of the PC market – no money in consumer electronics. This is why I got out of running IT organizations – no fun in constantly reducing headcounts to meet budget projections and stifling innovation. All CIO’s are under increasing pressure to demonstrate value, or, partition the IT department and outsource large sections of it for cost savings.
And this is what you will face in this industry. How are you different from everybody else? From a 2nd party integrator/consultant? From a Guatemalan who can do the very same job, from Guatemala mind you, for $5.00/day? What differentiates you from the mass of other options and choices a company has? How do you use _content_? Is your skill with IT blended with something else that brings value – like an understanding of business processes? How are you positioned for the baby boomer release in the next 10-15 years – will companies want you, your skillset, your talent, and why? All of these are pertinent questions and relate to your answer.
Watch for massive restructuring when the boomer-generation leaves the ranks in the next 10-15 years. My guess is that corporations will actually eliminate or massively reduce their existing IT footprints at this time as the old-guard leaves. I could be wrong – but I do believe that most firms, who do not consider IT a core competency and just want IT as a utility, would be more than happy to get the same capability but at greatly reduced liability and expense… i.e., through a vendor instead of hosting it themselves.
Finally, security. A future in the IT security industry. I believe, Ricardo, that technology becomes easier to use over time, more ubiquitous. The phone, for example, is entirely secure and you don’t need special training to use it. Online banking, entirely secure, no training; ATM’s, cell phones… security is all around us, wrapped into the tech we use and the products we buy… but very very few people actually _handle_ security or need to _know_ about it. It’s just part of the fabric. If you ask me, security and best practices of IT Governance – ultimately – will just become part of the fabric (grin).
R
Written on June 20, 2007
| by RP Mickler |
|
Disintermediation is the removal of an intermediary – a middle-man – from a supply chain for a product or service. In e-commerce, strong disintermediating forces are introduced with web self-services and, with disintermediation, the business model transforms into a leaner and more efficient process. For example, disintermediation allows SouthWest Airlines to bypass a travel agent by having the consumer book their travel plans directly. Such self-service introduced convenience to the consumer and value in the form of lower fares.
A recent ad campaign by Century21 has realitors telling me that they cannot be replaced by a computer. That they provide a value greater than what a machine can provide.
A decade ago – when travel agents were being disintermediated by web self-service technologies – there was a lot of similar rhetoric that we hear echoed in today’s realtor, that the realtor cannot be replaced because “… a computer cannot do what I do.” I recall telling travel agents at the time: “In the future, the process of securing travel arrangements will be point-n-click, and consumers will enjoy booking their own travel through nearly automated means via websites.”
Oh how they laughed. Couldn’t possibly happen. They said that the industry was too nuanced, there were too many laws and licenses, that SABRE was too complicated and could never be shared, that the consumer preferred delegation of these details – and most of all – “… a computer cannot do what I do.” They were, of course, referring to all of the “special touches” that the travel agent provided.
Unfortunately for the travel agent, I was correct in assuming travel would be commoditized: that the act of booking travel would become a familiar utility that anyone could use and that market forces would compensate with complementary services to compete with onground agents. What agents do exist today do so because they understood their niche business model, they transcended from being a simple commodity and became difficult to disintermediate, and can charge premium for their service because of it.
Inasmuch, I don’t think much has changed from ten years ago. It’s a fact: self-services disintermediate, stream-line economic efficiencies, extend value to the consumer experience, and are attractive to consumers in terms of price and convenience. We’d be hard pressed to assume realty will go any other way.
“What we find is that selling real estate is intensely competitive. Consumers have more information, they demand more services, and they have more agents and business models to choose from than ever before. Consumers are demanding more services and agents are responding by providing an ever-widening range of services,” said
Professor Steve Sawyer of Penn State’s School of Information Sciences & Technology.
For the realtor, competition is driving down their margins, forcing intense consolidation in their industry, and demanding the realtor skimp “personal touch” services in favor of more volume – the
definition of commoditization. This is why I balk at these commercials. “…A computer cannot do what I do…” is a false presumption. On the contrary, a computer can do what you do – faster and cheaper for every transaction, and the consumer will be more than happy to take advantage of it; just look at
Zillow and
RedFin. Commercials like these are like a public appeal for mass-denial – “This isn’t really happening! Keep calling me to sell your house!” – and don’t do much to prepare the realtor to learn from the travel agent’s experience: to niche, to specialize, to refine their value proposition, to prepare for an era where their services are reduced to a point-n-click process. Truly, today, the realtor should be asking themselves: in a world of mass automation, how will I position myself as a realtor? What value will niche my services and make me indespensible? How can I use automation and self-services to get closer to the customer but not get displaced by it? And if their answer isn’t codified into their business plan, or if the answer simply isn’t sustainable in the face of deepening competition, then viability is questionable.
I’m not saying the profession is doomed but I am saying that realty is going to become more democratized, more commoditized; this will change the sustainability of the industry and force niches and specializations, whereas a bulk of the transactions become more automated. I am also suggesting that we’re on the crest of a huge die-off in this industry, an evolution – mass extinction – on the horizon.
I guess it’s ironic to me that Century21 would choose a medium like television for this message. It’s as if they didn’t realize that, today, a majority of consumers DVR their favorite shows and fast-forward past commercials; amusingly, the realtor becomes a 2-second blip and blur, silenced by the push of a remote control and quickly forgotten.
R
Written on June 18, 2007
| by RP Mickler |
|
On June 4-6, Yuval Ben-Itzhak, CTO of Finjan Digital Technology, presented evidence for a new form of hosted attack at the Gartner Group Summit held in Washington DC.
One form of this attack is to break into a legitimate website and insert an invisible document sourcing an HTML page uploaded by the hacker. Instead of defacing the website, the code now sits invisibly on the legitimate server.
Another form of this attack is to distribute the code through 3rd party advertising networks. People who run websites and blogs will subscribe to 3rd party ad feeds to generate revenue. An add that has been manipulated to store the same malicious code can be unintentionally downloaded and displayed on the website without the knowledge of the owner.
The code captures the IP addresses of visitors that come to websites. Those addresses are accumulated by the hacker. The hacker can then use the captured IP addresses from visitors to mask their own malicious webpages. This means – to anti-malware solutions that detect the malicious websites and rely on databases of known-bad IP addresses – the bad website isn’t recognized or detected, allowing it to infect visiting users.
“The reality is that commercially-driven hackers are using new sophisticated
methods, such as dynamic code obfuscation and evasive attacks, to bypass
traditional signature-based and database reliant solutions, which were not
designed to detect dynamic web scenarios,” said Ben-Itzhak.
“The combination of evasive attacks with code obfuscation techniques
significantly enhances the capability of sophisticated hackers to go
undetected.”
No successful defense yet other than to periodically review your website for compromise. Ben-Itzhak’s group tried to track down the offending 3rd party advertising network distributing the malicious advertising but was unsuccessful in finding them.
The emergence of this kind of attack just goes to suggest that the modern day hacker is a more clever hacker, one more interested in obscurity and economies of scale effects rather than defacing a website once they get an opportunity.
R
Written on June 15, 2007
| by RP Mickler |
|
StreetView is a new integrated service with Google Maps. Google has commissioned folks in several large markets (New York, Los Vegas, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, and others) to run around town with a 360-degree camera, taking street pictures at ground level. The following is an example of New York’s Flanders Square:
Using the service, anyone can drag an icon across mapped streets and zoom in to StreetView. You have about four levels of zoom control and limited panoramic control of the image, but you can rotate it on a single plane to the right or to the left.
As you might imagine, some interesting images have been immortally captured by this service. Women sunbathing in bikinis, men exiting adult shops and strip clubs, at least one person picking their nose, and a staff attorney of the Internet privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Kevin Bankston sneaking a cigarette and walking to work. “Sneaking” because Bankston was supposed to have quit smoking.
Again, Google redefines what a tool like an online map is by allowing for emersive interactivity. If taken to a logical extreme, it won’t be long before all of our homes and businesses will be viewable – not just from an arial shot but from street level – and in doing so, Google continues to challenge our society’s notions of privacy in the name of technical capability.
R
Written on June 14, 2007
| by RP Mickler |
|
Microsoft has tightened the screws on Vista activation as to contain their problems with software piracy. Microsoft’s Genuine Advantage Program (GAP) (a software stub that is installed from Windows Update) tests the validity of the Windows installation and will notify an end user (quite obnoxiously) when their Windows license is out of compliance.
Machines that fail GAP – euphorically referred to as “non-genuine” – will suffer a number of performnce penalties:
1. A Constant Desktop Warning. Every time you login, boot, and use Windows, it will complain.
2. Aero and ReadyBoost features are disabled in Vista, crippling the best new features of the o/s.
3. Non-critical software updates through Windows Update are denied.
4. Possibility of the system moving into a “reduced functionality” state. Interesting: the partner communication from Microsoft suggests that …”In reduced functionality, users will experience no desktop, no start menu, or task bar, and Windows Vista will be limited to the default web browser for one (1) hour periods.” So, after a period of time, Vista will become functionally crippled in every useful sense.
So the moral of the story is to understand your licensing state; particularly important for small businesses who don’t want to be dragged down by Microsoft’s attempts to sure-up their piracy problems.
Genuine Management Software can be found here.
Piracy Reporting can be done here.
How to tell if you’re running a legimate Microsoft license can be found here.
R
Written on June 12, 2007
| by RP Mickler |
|
Yeah, so I changed the blog to interact better with my new website layout. The color scheme and layout is more of a match and I’d been using the same template for years. It was simply time for a change!
Pardon our dust as we’re revamping the core Mickler & Associates, Inc. site. If your curious about my thoughts on the new site design (perhaps you might be interested in the rationality behind the change, especially if you’re a student):
1. Personalized. There’s a lot more of my mug now to relate services back to me and to establish a more visual relationship with the customer. I can also feature customers easier in this format.
2. Scaled Formatting. One of the big problems with the last design is that it didn’t scale well in various browsers or dimensions, and some visual aspects in FireFox or Opera didn’t come across in Explorer. Now the scale is fixed and consistent across browsers and screen sizes.
3. Interactive. I like this layout because I can build more interactivity through drop-downs and lead-ins, to take the visitor/customer directly to content both on the blog and in the website.
4. Easier Navigation/Easier Maintenance. The last navigation system (built on mouse-overs and graphic hotspots) was a real chore to update.
5. Elaboration. I can now expand in ultimate wordiness on products and services easier than in the last format; customers can now jump to specific areas and services.
6. Page Statistics. With the break-out of my most frequently visited content (like my Documents section), I can now tie stats back to each area of visitation rather than just the one page. In fact, I can break statistics to more granular levels within the site to see where people are visiting.
7. More Ads. I could generate more AdSense content with this format; let’s hear it for advertising revenue! Nothing wrong with that…
8. Cleaner Layout. I like this because it’s not animated; it’s easy to load with very simple graphics; very few areas of Javascript (just one, to conceal my email address from spammers under the about page) – it’s all about better performance and usability. It also conforms to a lot of the look and feel of the Technology Reflections Newsletter. Eh, see! I can pull you right to it like that, clever, eh?
So anyhow, those were my thoughts behind the new design, and I’m very interested in your thoughts! Commenting here on the blog would be great and, yes, not all links work yet… but it’s coming! I just wanted to get the framework loaded. Thanks for everybody’s patience during the transition.
R
Written on June 11, 2007
| by RP Mickler |
|
In the current version, attackers can malicious code to harm target machines with minimal user interaction. It is recommended that anyone running Yahoo! Instant Messenger upgrade to the latest version to defend against this vulnerability. All computers running old versions of Yahoo! instant messenger should also update to the latest version.
The problem concerns the Yahoo Webcam Upload ActiveX control (ywcupl.dll) which attackers could use to cause a stack-based buffer overlow by assigning a long string to the “server” property then calling the “send()” or “receive()” method. Upgrading the product will replace the vulnerable *.dll file.
R
Written on June 8, 2007
| by RP Mickler |
|
A new class of portable computing is emerging and for less than $600.
Via’s NanoBook.
Via’s Nanobook has a 7″ screen, clamshell form factor and a full QWERTY keyboard. Weighing 850g (1.9 lb), the reference design offers a 1.2 GHz VIA C7 CPU, the VX-700 chipset, and up to 1GB of RAM. Connectivity comes with WiFi, BlueTooth, 2 USB ports, DVI, and a 4-in-1 card reader. And the battery isn’t that bad – 4.5 hours with XP installed; less with Vista.
NanoBook competes with Samsung’s UMPC and Palm’s Foleo.
A full computer that can actually be used on an airplane. Imagine that!
R
Written on June 6, 2007
| by RP Mickler |
|
Using Vista? Hate the annoying challenge/licensing message each time that you try to connect to another box when you use RDC? Here’s the fix. Regedit:
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client
Add the following DWORD Value: AuthenticationLevelOverride
Set the hexidecimal value to 0 (zero).
No longer will you be interrupted when you try to connect to another machine.
Another annoying thing when connecting with RDC 6: the awaiting system attempts to verify your credential with [ip address]/username and it fails, of course. The fix for this is to edit the credentials and write in a new credential as:
[domain]\user
[password]
So: MYDOMAIN\username, for example. You’ll find that the RDC dialog will actually switch domain context when you express the username in this way. Jesh!
And finally, after you do all of this, you can be as productive as you were with RDC 5….
R
Leave a Comment
|
