Want to defeat the record comapnies? Just hit "Shift" . . .

This is a follow-up from an earlier post entitled "Music Industry . . . again." I have located the source document for the workaround to the copy protection features on the BMG CD's I referred to in that earlier post. The whole document can be found here. Essentially a generally intelligent person was able to defeat what is supposed to be a sophisticated copy protection scheme. Would a non-computer-savvy person have figured out this workaround? Probably not, although eventually someone would have. The thing that record companies and, to be fair, many companies forget is how globally connected information sharing is because of the Internet. The Internet: you know, record companies, that thing that enables people to steal your music and distribute it via peer-to-peer networks? Ironic that the copy protection was effectively defeated the the same backbone that enables exactly what the copy protection was supposed to protect against.

The manufacturer of the copy protection, SunnComm, initially was going to sue the gentleman that wrote the paper on the workaround. In fact, SunnComm was noted to say that, the paper was ". . . duplicitous and, at worst, a felony." Today, the SunnComm President has decided not to file litigation, as to why, no reason was given . . .

Cool . . .

A company called Cooligy has created a closed cooling system for microprocessors. Is this a big deal? Yup. As computer chips get more and more powerful and people want to be more and more mobile, and advanced cooling system like Cooligy's will be necessary to get the fastest processors out of the office and onto people's laps.

Reimagine!

Tom Peters' new book, Reimagine! is now out. I encourage you to pick up a copy from Tom's website. I've ordered my copy, but haven't yet received it because I'm waiting for Tom to sign it. Does Tom know me? Nope. Love to meet him sometime. Does the autograph mean anything? Probably not, but I'm a big fan of his, so it means a little bit to me.

Even having not yet seen the book, I am able to download a chapter of it to look at and you can to by clicking here. What's cool about this book? In a word: Everything. Note that lots of stuff is in color. Is that just for the web version? Don't think so. Color's cheap these days -- sort of makes you wonder why more people don't print books in color. Seems very effective to me. Ever seen a black and white Powerpoint presentation? Bet you haven't or if you have, I bet it wasn't really good.

There's all kinds of stuff in the margins, there's all kinds of pictures and charts in the middle of the page. There are big fonts and exclamation points in the middle of paragraphs. What's going on here? Scared? Does it not look like how a book is supposed to look? All I can say is that it looks like a good business book after I'm done with it. I write quotes and things right along the margins. I staple articles that apply right into pages. I make it so a business book is my business book -- want to borrow one I think is good? Go buy your own.

Music Industry . . . again

I've said before that this year is the year of the end of the music industry as we know it. Between the RIAA hitting the prime purchasing audience of CD's with Tens of Thousands of dollars worth of lawsuits, to information about the record labels buying information regarding downloading volumes of artists, the record companies just aren't looking that good.

Recently, record companies have been producing CD's with different digital rights management (DRM) solutions to control and/or prevent extrication of audio tracks from CD's. BMG recently roled out a DRM product that can be defeated by holding the "Shift" key on your computer as the CD loads. Give me a break. You can read the whole story here. If you want to skip the whole story and get the main point of the article, here's the comment from BMG regarding this published "hack:"

"This is something we were aware of," BMG spokesman Nathaniel Brown said. "Copy management is intended as a speed bump, intended to thwart the casual listener from mass burning and uploading. We made a conscious decision to err on the side of playability and flexibility."

Record Companies! Hello, are you out there? Build your own Apple Music Stores or go buy one from MusicMatch, BuyMusic, Apple, etc. Bear in mind that you do control the music libraries . . . wouldn't be easier to get ALL THE PROFIT from a download? No? It's not worth the investment? Really, well, ok, now how much does a CD factory cost . . .?

Occam's Razor

Ever hear this in conversation? Ever agreed with it and had no idea what it meant? Here's a simple explanation:

Occam's razor asserts, all things being equal, that the simplest explanation is the best.

Seems to easy, doesn't it? Think about it. It's pretty intuitive. Draw 2 points on a piece of paper. What's the simplest thing to draw to connect the points? A straight line. Could you draw a squigly, curvy line between the 2 points? Sure. The point is that it "proves" Occam's Razor. Understand that Occam's Razor is very convenient (read necessary) for mathematical, scientific, or philosophical models because many high-order models involve unlimited complexity. If you use Occam's Razor, you are "allowed" to get rid of most of the complexity. Understand, too, that Occam's Razor is very necessary for very abstract arguments where there is no way to provide concrete proof (i.e., tests or observations).

Chaos Theory

Here is the best description of chaos theory that is understable by a reasonably intelligent, non-scientific person. Enough said.

80/20

It amazes me how few people either know about the 80/20 Principle (sometimes called the Pareto Principle or 80/20 Rule) or how few people will apply the prinicple to their daily lives. Here's a quick explanation:

The 80/20 Principle/Rule/Mindset states that a minority of effort will usually lead to a majority of results. Seems pretty easy, right? I mean, just be reading the sentence you probably thought of instance of when the rule is true. If you sat back from the screen, you could probably think of many cases in which the rule is true.

Does it always have to be 80 and 20? No. But 80 and 20 are good illustrators of the ideas of small inputs providing huge results. Does this scare you? Maybe it should -- obviously you don't think this way about everything. For you I suggest reading "The 80/20 Principle" by Richard Koch, you can get it here at Amazon. Look at that! By spending a small amount of time on my very small site, you get to save yourself all the work of finding this book because I've done it for you. That small input of my site into your browser yield the majority of rewards!

Update your contact information . . .

That was a message I received this morning from a business associate. I thought, "Hey, what a great idea, I should do this for all my contacts." I read through the e-mail I received to find that I was going to be updating my contact information for this person through a service called Plaxo. Using the Plaxo web interface, I updated my contact information and then dug into the Plaxo service. It's really cool, I just downloaded it and I suggest you check it out yourself. Does it cost anything? Not yet, but it probably will. Would it be worth some sort of mothly fee? Absolutely.

Aura Communications

Bet you've never heard of them. Neither had I. But you will be hearing about them soon. Aura is taking (or at least trying to take) a bite out of Bluetooth. If you don't know what Bluetooth is, Bluetooth is a wireless standard pioneered by Motorola for use in device that need to communicate with each other in close proximity. Bluetooth uses radio frequency in a defined spectrum to accomplish connection.

Aura, on the other hand, uses a magnetic field to accomplish the same goal as Bluetoooth with some surprising advantages. Advantages include: singificantly improved battery endurance and security. Essentially the magnetic technology creates a "bubble" that extends a certain distance out and around the transmitter, while Bluetooth blasts radio frequency signal all over the place from the transmitter (this is what causes massive power drain).

Pay attention to the fact that much of the funding for the Aura team comes from Motorola Venture Partners, the investment arm of Motorola. Interesting to see Motorola potentially hedging its bets against Bluetooth . . .

Ever heard of BigChampagne? Me neither, until I read this . . .

Apparently BigChampagne is watching you . . . if you are downloading music from a P2P program like Kazaa. BigChampagne actually tracks volum downloads for particular songs and artists and sells the data to Guess Who? Record companies! Read the full article here, it's almost too much to believe. Although maybe this quote from the article explains it:

"The fact is, P2P is a likely distribution channel for our wares," says Jed Simon, head of new media for DreamWorks Records. "If we're going to be intelligent businesspeople, it behooves us to understand it."

Look out Nextel!

Here's a cool company with a cool idea. As a long-time Nextel fan and supporter, I was a bit surprised to see that someone had such an easy idea to compete with Nextel. Basically this service uses the existing voice capturing and playback capabilities built into cell phones to allow you to broadcast to 1 person or to many people. Surprisingly enough, you do NOT have to be on a special network to do this. Rather, you just download this software application. And I thought it was big when I could use my Nextel nationwide!

Follow up to "It's gonna get interesting . . ."

Seems I left out part of the number portability according to this article. What about transferring you land-based phone number to a cell phone or vice versa? Seems it's open to interpretation by the phone companies, but if you're one of those people that forwards phones to different phones anyway, it might be worth looking into . . . at least you can save those forwarding charges.

Might be blue times for Jet Blue

If you are one of the 5 million people that flew Jet Blue prior to Sept. 2002, you may already know what I am tlaking about. If not, read this article about the apology e-mail Jet Blue sent out to its customers for releasing customer information to the government. Feeling offended, mad enough to sue? If so, visit this website to join in the potential class-action.

It's gonna get interesting . . .

On November 24 cellular carriers will have to allow customers to keep their existing phone number when transferring to a different cellular carrier. In the past, customers have had to stay with one particular carrier to ensure that they got to keep their number that "everybody knows," regardless of that company not having the most competitive rate plans, coolest phones, etc. You can find the full FCC text here if you care.

What you will see happening as the date grows closer and certainly after November 24 is cellular companies becoming a lot more comeptitive and, most likely, cellular companies copying each other's tehcnology offerings; and in the process slamming each other in commercials. Perfect example: Verizon's new push-to-talk technology that is supposed to compete with Nextel, which Nextel has dubbed "push-to-wait."

Furthermore, companies are going to try and rope consumers into longer and longer contracts with hefty early termination fees. More than likely service providers will offer what was very expensive hardware at substantially reduced prices provided you sign a 2-year service agreement with a $300.00 early termination fee. Of course, this is already happening, check out Sprint's offer for the Handspring Treo here.

NEW VIRUS ALERT

Some brain-surgeon virus creator has disguised his/her new virus as a Microsoft update that comes to you in an e-mail. Microsoft has a policy of NEVER sending updates via e-mail -- genuine Microsoft updates can be found out the Windows Update site here (and while you're there, click on the Office Update link because, yes, there are problems with Office too). Here's the full story on this new virus.

Cool phone! Really cool!

Check it out. Can't get it here yet, but you will soon. Look at it by clicking here.

How big is your hard drive?

Check out article. These folks in California are bringing a class-action lawsuit against computer manufacturers because the usable size of their hard drives is not the same as the advertised size of their hard drives. Pretty lame if you ask me.

Here's a quote from the article: "For example, when a consumer buys what he thinks is a 150 gigabyte hard drive, the plaintiffs said, he actually gets only 140 gigabytes of storage space. That missing 10 gigabytes, they claim, could store an extra 2,000 digitized songs or 20,000 pictures. "

Let's analyze the quote above. They are essentially saying that they cannot store more of their illegally downloaded songs or downloaded pronographic pictures. What a compelling argument!

By the way, to be fair, there is a legal basis for their argument.

PDF under siege!

Several companies are challenging Adobe Acrobat's domineering hold on the portable electronic document format (read ".pdf" if you remove my insertion of the word "electronic"). Read the entire story here.

As a long-time user of Adobe Acrobat and long-time supporter of the PDF format, I can only say good luck to these other companies. Adobe almost makes it too easy though. You can download their reader free for any operating system. Download the Windows here from Download.com or for other operating systems from the Adobe Website. Additionally there are a bunch of programs for free on Download.com for various operating systems that allow you to create PDF documents from MS Word and other applications.

The best IM client gets better.

I've used the free Trillian IM client since I first came across it a year and a half ago. Trillian allows you to connect to all of the popular instant messaging protocols with one program -- Yahoo! Messenger, AOL, MSN, ICQ. They just released a software upgrade on their website to ensure continued compatibility with Yahoo! and MSN. Oh, by the way, Trillian allows you to set up secure IM connections with other persons using Trillian. Think your IM's are private without secure IM? Don't bet on it.

This year is the end of the record business as we know it.

It's pretty sad when you think about it. CD's have been overpriced for the longest time. Napster and Kazaa and Limewire all provided a way to subvert the system, albeit illegally, and to get the music you wanted for free by people willing to provide it to you. These people that used these services were the PEOPLE THAT BUY CD's! What's the Recirding Industry of America to do? Here's an idea, let's start suing all of the people that buy our product. Sounds great on paper. Wait a minute. No it doesn't. It really doesn't even sound good on paper. What was the RIAA thinking? Not only are you going to alienate your core audience of CD buyers, you're going to alienate your occassional CD buyers. The problem is that although the Internet is not as anonymous as users would like, the user data that the RIAA receives is anonymous. Case-in-point: 12-year-old girl gets sued by the RIAA. Well done. Anyobody that said any media is good media really hasn't had horrible media.

Oh, and by the way, does it seem a little bit convenient that as the RIAA starts it's attacks, Universal music group announces that they will be discounting the price of CD's? Maybe that's a smart play for Universal, but all your artists are part of the RIAA.

Also, today, Senator Sam Brownback expressed his concern for the RIAA's exploitation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (the Act that the RIAA is using as its basis for these suits). Check out what the Senator had to say in this Wired.com article.

The one's who are really going to win? Try the I-Tunes Music store by Apple. What? You don't have a Macintsoh? Neither does the vast percentage of the rest of the population. But if you're looking for proof that the model of $0.99 per song works, simply look at the volume -- 1 million songs per week. So you don't have to get out your calculator, that's about 1 million dollars per week, of which Apple gives about 65% back to the record company. Seems easy right?

Maybe not for Buymusic.com. Seems that, as usual, the simple and elegant Apple solution is just a little too hard to imitate. Not to belittle what Buymusic is trying to do, after all they are after the vast majority of us with Windows PC's. The problem is that there are different prices and different digital rights management issues and . . . see can't even easily explain it. Much easier to say $0.99 a song -- Apple wins again.

So if on-demand is the wave of the future what's that leave for CD's. In my opinion, CD's should go after a niche. Why not pick the audiophiles? You know the people that claim to be able to tell the difference between a MP3 or AAC-encoded track and a CD version of the same. Market your SuperAudio and DVDAudio stuff to these guys. They'll pay for it, most of them are used to paying $25.00 a foot for speaker cable.

Oh, and by the way . . . DVD's should look out as well.

Want a free PC?

As part of an anti-trust settlement, Microsoft has to pay. Lindows, a Linux-based Windows alternative, is willing to give you a free PC and some free software if you qualify for a setlltment -- click here to find out more.

Little more on the Sun Microsystems announcement. Check out this blog. It's interesting that they make note of Apple's PowerMac G5's -- they're making them so fast they can't keep them in stock. Very interesting. You know Apple got surpassed by Microsoft because they sort of stuck their heads in the sand and let themselves get surpassed. Is Microsoft paying enough attention to Apple? Maybe Microsoft has their head in the sand, maybe they'll be too busy paying attention to Sun . . . interesting.

The real news . . .sort of.

Looking for a dose of news every morning, try The Onion for your daily headlines. And who said there's nothing good in the paper?

Let's talk about a new way to compute.

That's what Sun's CEO Scott McNealy wants to talk about. He proposes that every user in a company should be charged $100.00 per year to use the same kind of functionality that they now receive from their Windows machine. Oh, and by the way, he's not going to send auditors around to check on your company, he'll simply take your word for the number of employees you say are using the product.

Sound revolutionary doesn't it?

What it really sounds like is fear . . . at least to your IT department and to Microsoft.

I initially created this blog to update every day. Did it happen? Nope. Is it going to happen? Not likely.

I just changed the name of the blog from Strategize to FUBAR. Why would I do that? For those of you that know what FUBAR means, you might think that I made a pretty big turn. Maybe I did, maybe I didn't -- you'll just have to wait and see.

I will still provide you with notable business quotes, but I will also provide you with cool stuff I find, my opinions, etc.

Part of my insipiration for this was Seth Godin's blog. Seth is the writer of A Purple Cow. If oyu haven't read it, I would suggest picking up a copy. Too bad for you that you won't get your shipped to you in a milk carton! In my support for and enjoyment of Seth's books, insight, etc. I wish to support him in slamming this site. Hoepfully you searched for Seth or more hoepfully you searched for the site. Either way, Michael Moore and Sharon Summerlin ripped Seth off and that's good enough for me to jump in and pass on the bad news about these 2 and their company.

"Technology happens. It's not good, it's not bad. Is steel good or bad?"

Andrew Grove was the one that said the quote above. I do not remember if it was in one of his books or in a magazine article, so I will just give him the credit for it without being able to provide a specific reference.

So I haven't been updating this blog quite as regularly as I would like because I have been away from my computer. Actually not away from my computer, but in places where it was inconvenient to jack in my computer. Why is that? Isn't this the age of wireless everything? Don't cell phones connect to the Internet and isn't there high-speed just floating everywhere through the ether?

NO. At least not yet. WiFi is definitely here, and the hardware is cheap, but you still need a wired connection on the back-end that provides the physical connection to the Internet. Oh, and by the way, for those of you that just have a wireless router, hub, antenna hooked up in your house -- a kid with a laptop and a Pringles can could be in your system right now. You see, in the rush to get to market quickly, the people behind the "WiFi Revolution" did not revolutionize wireless security. Ever wonder why that big company you work for isn't blowing wireless all over your office building -- ask your network manager, she'll tell you: it's expensive to do right.

A minute on cellular. The United States is dramatically behind the rest of the world in cellular technology. Why is that? Because our major cellular companies could not agree on a single wireless standard and our Government did not mandate a single wireless standard. Consequently, you will hear words like CDMA, TDMA, GPRS, GSM, IDEN, PCS whenever you go to get a new phone. We're getting there (AT&T Wireless is currently running 2 networks, 1 TDMA and 1 GPRS -- welcome to mLife), but we are getting there much slower than the rest of the world. I use a Nextel phone and I love it. Other people hate Nextel phones. What I like is that the phones are designed for business -- no fufu graphics all over the place, more technical menus, the radio feature, pretty good Internet service, the ability to use the phone as a wireless modem . . . I tried to switch back to AT&T fairly recently, and found that I could not live without the 2-way radio feature, the Internet, and the wireless modem features that Nextel offers, so I switched back. But regardless of who you love or hate in the wireless business, there is no one that makes a phone and offers the service to allow me to update this blog without plugging in my laptop somehow. Of course, maybe if I had the ability to update this blog with my cell phone, I would feel too tied down. Maybe I like the idea of electing not to plug in my computer. See -- not good, not bad . . . the technology is what it is.

It's funny if you step back and look at it -- the dot com revolution, the warp speed economy that was associated with all of the dot coms (before they went bust) really made it seem like technology was increasing exponentially. But was it really? A lot of the technology and a lot of the companies that became household names during the dot com boom were already developing the technology that seemed so new and cool, and, by the way, they continue to develop and implement technology now that they are again out of the limelight. Cisco is still developing new routers and switches to route Internet traffice, Sun is still building servers, other companies you've never heard of are still moving technology forward (and not just Internet technology).

Technology is happening all around us and will continue to happen all around us. If I see some cool technology that someone is using in an airport, a restaurant, on a plane, etc. I will always ask them what it is, and they will almost always answer that question along with their opinion of it. Interesting . . . we're sitting in an airplane that is a major piece of aerospace technology (ask Boeing about the technology in the wing alone) and the person wants too give me their opinion of a MP3 player.

“If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less than excellent work.”

Tom Peters, in his book The Pursuit of Wow references the quote above that was originally stated by Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM.

There's really not much to say about this quote, it is pretty straightforward and ties very directly into my explanation of yesterday's quote -- if you have a way you want to be, a thing you want to do, etc., JUST START DOING IT!

"Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right."

Henry Ford was the one that provided the previous statement, and it's been published so many times in so many different books, that I can't really remember where I first read it. Regardless of the exact source, what he says is totally true -- if you convince yourself that you cannot do something, you will not do it, while if you convince yourself you can do something, you will try (and usually succed) in doing it.

Is this a business quote? I don't know. I would answer that question with a question: Is it not a business quote?

I think one of the biggest mistakes that people in business make is to underestimate their ability to do something and usually convince themselves that they cannot do it. It's all really a mind game. I like people who fly in the face of what others believe that they can't do in a particular position in a company. There need to be people that challenge the "rules" that are pushed down upon them. Further more, people need to be willing to break through their own bounded reality of their capabilities and convince themsleves that they can do the work that is set in front of them.

Throughout my life I have found that it is so much easier for people to say "I can't." Why is that? What if we did not allow the conjugation of the words "can" and "not?" That would certainly make "I can't" a little more difficult to physically say, maybe make people think twice?

I love working in companies that are very unstructured (i.e., do not resemble the military command and control structure). Some people thrive in unstructured companies, while other people simply collapse. One thing you very rarely hear (for a long period of time, at least) in an unstructured company is that someone "can't" do something. It's almost as if the "can't-do" attitude has been banned, and if you have someone in the company that consistently "can't-do," they simply die of attrition -- after all, no one (especially in an unstructured organization, where you sink or swim based on your own ability to convince yourself that you can swim) wants to work with someone that can't do.

“Is the internet a big deal? Or is it an over-hyped fad?
I think it is a big deal. I think anything that can affect industries whose total revenue base is many hundreds of billions of dollars is a big deal.”

This quote is from Andrew Grove's book Only the Paranoid Survive. Andrew Grove is the former CEO of Intel -- you know Intel, they probably made the chip that is running the computer you are using to access this page. Don't know if you have an Intel chip? Look for the trademark sticker on your computer or laptop -- chances are you do.

I totally agree with Andrew Grove -- the Internet is a very big deal. It may seem that the Internet coolness, trendiness, even cache disappeared when all of the dot com companies went bust, but the Internet itself is enduring and evolving. For those of you that do not think the Internet is a big deal I suggest that you try a few things (taking for granted the fact that you wouldn't be reading this Blog if you did not at least know how to use a browser) -- (1) Go to the website of your credit card company, set up online access and pay your bill. Wasn't to hard was it? While you're at it, enroll in online statements and save a few trees (or, if it makes you feel better, take a small step toward thumbing your nose at the US Postal Service), (2) Go to the website of your bank and enroll for online access. Once again, not that hard was it? Now realize that something the bank gives you for free just saved you from having to print "Quick Look" statements at the ATM (and pay for them), (3) Visit some of the big sites like Expedia (you don't have to buy a ticket, rent a hotel room, or rent a car . . . but look how easy it would be if you wanted to) or Amazon (look for something you want, I'd be willing to bet you'd be hard-pressed to type in something Amazon couldn't find for you somewhere).

If you work for a company (and if you do, there's a good chance that you are using their Internet connection to access and read this Blog) think about how the Internet makes your job easier. Do you work for a big company or a small one? What's the revenue base of your company? Think it's too small for Andrew Grove's quote to apply to you? Try and think about the other few thousand companies about the same size of yours in the city you work in . . . big revenue base.

Still not convinced? Ok, let's examine why companies are trying so hard to get Internet access mobile. Get e-mail on your cellphone, access the web on your cellphone, pagers that sync with your e-mail, picture e-mail . . . I could go on and on and tomorrow there would be something new that's not on this list. Why is it, do you think, that companies are spending so much money on Internet technologies? More to the point, why is it that you spend money on this stuff if the Internet is no big deal?

In explanation of the purpose of this site -- I started reading business books by various authors while I was in college because, quite frankly, many of the classes were not very engaging, the course books were boring, and I felt like I was only getting one person's opinion (i.e., the professor's) about a particular subject. I will say that as I progressed through my courses, professors got more interesting, course books stayed about as boring, and I kept reading.

I decided that the easiest thing to collect from all these books I was reading was quotes. Why? Quotes are cheap to collect and, in many cases, I was able to pull away the entire message of a book in one single quote. There were many books I read that were boring and tedious, but I always managed to find at a least 1 significant qoute that at least meant something to me.

One of my most favorite writers in the subjects of general business, management, and leadership is Tom Peters -- expect to see a lot of quotes from him. I think Tom and I are on the same page about a lot of things -- I think we butt heads on a lot of issues (see the quote in my first entry below). I encourage you to visit the Tom Peters website and figure out why Tom uses this symbol: !

Running a close second, if not neck-in-neck, but in a totally different cateogry, marketing, is Seth Godin. It was inspiration from Seth that made me start this Blog. You will be hearing a lot from Seth on this Blog, and I will profile some of the cool companies that Seth originally profiled in some of his writing. Check out one of Seth's websites, Purple Cow . Think you know what a Purple Cow is? Bet you don't.

This is the official creation of the Strategize blog. Every day I will upload at least one business-related quote or thought along with some discussion as to the importance of the quote, my thoughts on the quote, etc.

To start off with, here is probably the most important and appropriate quote from Tom Peters in The Pursuit of Wow:

“Beware of easy solutions and ‘rules’ laid down by management gurus, starting with yours truly.”

As a side note -- I will always try to quote as accurately as possible with at least the author's name and the title of the book. If you like the quote, I encourage you to go to Amazon and buy and read the book. If you hate the quote, I encourage you to go to Amazon and buy and read the book.

As a side note #2 -- Yes, I would, in fact, at least fall into the category of a wanna-be management guru, so definitely beware of anything I have to say.