It's frustrating to see that in 2007 people just don't quite get it when it comes to technology and how to make it user friendly. J.D Power sent out a postcard to people living in apartments. It included a URL and a pin number to enter. The two things that are frustrating about it are the URL and the PIN.
This really shouldn't be that complex of a thing. The URL should be something easy to type. But instead of giving users something simple for a url, such as "ApartmentSurveyOnline.com", they tell people to type "http://www.apartmentsurveyonline.com/main.php". There is no need for this. The first example will work. It's a lot less to type and leaves a lot less room for error.
The same with the PIN that was sent. Why force users to type "0037878G". Why doesn't "37878g" work? There is nothing to tell the user that it's case sensitive let alone the need for the leading zeroes. The reason I figured it out is that I saw it was php file and assumed it would be case sensitive. How many users tried it once and when it didn't work moved on to something else?
It may seem trite. However when you're trying to encourage people to donate their time to your for-profit venture, making it as easy as possible is important.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Lompoc's WiFi Brings Red Ink
The frustrating thing is that we've seen communities do this before when it comes to building their own bandwidth. In this case it's just a new form of it.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,274728,00.html
A $3 million plan to blanket Lompoc, Calif., with a wireless Internet system promised a quantum leap for economic development: The remote community hit hard by cutbacks at nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base would join the 21st century with cheap and plentiful high-speed access.
Instead, nearly a year after its launch, Lompoc Net is limping along. The central California city of 42,000, surrounded by rolling hills, wineries and flower fields more than 17 miles from the nearest major highway, has only a few hundred subscribers.
That's far fewer than the 4,000 needed to start repaying loans from the city's utility coffers, potentially leaving smaller reserves to guard against electric rate increases.
Lompoc isn't alone. Across the United States, many cities are finding their Wi-Fi projects costing more and drawing less interest than expected, leading to worries that a number will fail, resulting in millions of dollars in wasted tax dollars or grants when there had been roads to build and crime to fight.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,274728,00.html
A $3 million plan to blanket Lompoc, Calif., with a wireless Internet system promised a quantum leap for economic development: The remote community hit hard by cutbacks at nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base would join the 21st century with cheap and plentiful high-speed access.
Instead, nearly a year after its launch, Lompoc Net is limping along. The central California city of 42,000, surrounded by rolling hills, wineries and flower fields more than 17 miles from the nearest major highway, has only a few hundred subscribers.
That's far fewer than the 4,000 needed to start repaying loans from the city's utility coffers, potentially leaving smaller reserves to guard against electric rate increases.
Lompoc isn't alone. Across the United States, many cities are finding their Wi-Fi projects costing more and drawing less interest than expected, leading to worries that a number will fail, resulting in millions of dollars in wasted tax dollars or grants when there had been roads to build and crime to fight.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
National What Safety Month?
Yep, it's national internet safety month.
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/06/06/do-obama-and-lieberman-think-the-internet-is-dangerous/
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/06/06/do-obama-and-lieberman-think-the-internet-is-dangerous/
Does Joe Lieberman hate the internet? Is Barack Obama trying to scare you? Welcome to National Internet Safety Month. Its sole purpose? Reminding America how dangerous the internet is.
I’m not kidding. That’s the gist of an official resolution, quietly signed by 18 U.S. Senators in both parties at the end of May (including Senators Obama and Lieberman). Senate Resolution 207 specified that the month of June provides Americans an opportunity to “learn more about the dangers of the Internet.” Got anything positive to say about the net? Save it for July, pal. June is for commending organizations which “promote awareness of the dangers of the Internet.”
They might as well call it internet-is-dangerous month. But let’s look at some of their examples. What constitutes a danger? If someone puts a filter on your computer to censor it — it’s dangerous to disable it! You can say this about America’s youth — more than 3 out of 10 can de-activate censor-ware, according to the Senators’ own statistics. Congratulations, kids! Whoops, I’m sorry — I mean…danger!!
MS For And Now Against Software Patents
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/06/09/bill-gatess-flip-flop/
In today’s New York Times, I make the case against software patents, comparing a 1991 memo by Bill Gates to today’s battle between Verizon and Vonage:
[Microsoft general counsel Brad] Smith has argued that patents are essential to technological breakthroughs in software. Microsoft sang a very different tune in 1991. In a memo to his senior executives, Bill Gates wrote, “If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.” Mr. Gates worried that “some large company will patent some obvious thing” and use the patent to “take as much of our profits as they want….”
It’s not surprising that Microsoft — now an entrenched incumbent — has had a change of heart. But Mr. Gates was right in 1991: patents are bad for the software industry. Nothing illustrates that better than the conflict between Verizon and Vonage.
Vonage developed one of the first Internet telephone services and has attracted more than two million customers. But last year, Verizon — one of Vonage’s biggest competitors — sued for patent infringement and won a verdict in its favor in March.
The Times has strict word-count limits, so I didn’t have the space to discuss some of the details of my argument. Here is an in-depth analysis of Verizon’s patents. And here is a longer discussion of Microsoft’s change of heart on software patents.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Southwest Airlines and Fuel Options
Reporters and analysts aren't gods. They have their own prejudices, motivations and short comings. Often they provide great insight. Other times they leave me wondering if they know what they're talking about.
This last fall a bunch of business articles popped up in the news about Southwest Airlines and fuel hedging. It was frustrating reading some of them. I had looked into options trading as a means of getting decent returns when the stock market. I felt the basics were, well, pretty basic. Yet I would see articles that were clearly written by people who didn't know the basics of the trade. How do you report on news as a journalist when you don't understand what you're reporting on. You don't need to be an expert but surely one needs to know some of the fundamental ways in which it works. Some of the articles were written in a way that had it been about a murder case it appeared the reporter didn't understand that there were defense lawyers, the prosecution and a judge and/or jury.
Unfortunately I didn't tag any of those nor can find a good example of them right now. You will know them when you read them because they imply that an option is a fixed-price. That is, if I buy an option for fuel at $100 for 2008, I will have to buy it at that price when it's due. The problem is that options for commodities do not work like that. One should know that just by looking at SWA's annual report. As it stated in 2006, "The financial derivative instruments utilized by the Company primarily are a combination of collars, purchased call options, fixed price swap agreements."
How does one write about the company without looking at their financial reports? And at that without coming across that? If you did you would see that there are different types of financial derivative instruments.
I would define the main types this way :
Call options - The right to buy but not the obligation to buy (hence the name OPTION).
Fixed Swap - An obligation to buy at a fixed price.
Collar - A means to make money if there are large fluctuations in price up or down.
They're more complex than that and there are more specific options. For example flex price swaps don't have fixed price. But the point of this is not to get into the details of options but to point out that Southwest has various choices when it comes to options.
Gambling?
Once you better understand that there are different types of options that help address different situations, you can better understand what Southwest Airlines is doing. The problem is that even articles where they don't seem to understand what it is SWA is trying to do. An example is this column from the USA Today :
Hedging is a gamble; a hedged airline could pay more for fuel if prices drop, but I think Southwest is safe as the possibility of oil prices dropping below $40 or $50 a barrel is highly unlikely.
Hedging is a gamble? No, it is not. Go to dictionary.com and look the word up for yourself. Hedging is not a gamble. It is something you do to reduce risk. Which would you say "I went to Las Vegas to hedge" or "I hedged my bet..."? A hedged airline will have higher fuel costs than other airlines at some points in time. However, as I just pointed out it's not 100%. Not all of their options are an obligation to buy. If prices drop sharply enough, they will simply not exercise their options. They will have the cost of the fixed price swaps. But if that's only 30% of their fuel needs, than the other 70% will be at market costs + the price of the options. When I say the price of the options I mean the price of purchasing the contract itself. The contract will specify the cost and the time but there is also a cost to that contract. But in such a case where the market would unexpectedly swing in one direction, in this case prices drop much lower than anticipated, SWA also has it's collars to help take the sting out of the situation.
Why would they use a financial instrument like a collar if they didn't think prices were going up very much or dropping very much? Because they don't approach their projections as absolutes. They know there are chances of them being wrong. They know about probabilities. They're using the collars as a way of insuring themselves in the event that they are very wrong either way.
Once you realize the different choices Southwest has and why they use things like collars, the light bulb should go off. They are in fact not hedging their fuel to make money off of the investments. They do it because they're hedging against the risk of fuel prices changing in ways that they don't foresee or aren't able to cope with. That is, it's an insurance policy. Just as we have insurance in case we cause a car accident or someone burglarized our home, Southwest uses this hedging as insurance for fuel prices.
This last fall a bunch of business articles popped up in the news about Southwest Airlines and fuel hedging. It was frustrating reading some of them. I had looked into options trading as a means of getting decent returns when the stock market. I felt the basics were, well, pretty basic. Yet I would see articles that were clearly written by people who didn't know the basics of the trade. How do you report on news as a journalist when you don't understand what you're reporting on. You don't need to be an expert but surely one needs to know some of the fundamental ways in which it works. Some of the articles were written in a way that had it been about a murder case it appeared the reporter didn't understand that there were defense lawyers, the prosecution and a judge and/or jury.
Unfortunately I didn't tag any of those nor can find a good example of them right now. You will know them when you read them because they imply that an option is a fixed-price. That is, if I buy an option for fuel at $100 for 2008, I will have to buy it at that price when it's due. The problem is that options for commodities do not work like that. One should know that just by looking at SWA's annual report. As it stated in 2006, "The financial derivative instruments utilized by the Company primarily are a combination of collars, purchased call options, fixed price swap agreements."
How does one write about the company without looking at their financial reports? And at that without coming across that? If you did you would see that there are different types of financial derivative instruments.
I would define the main types this way :
Call options - The right to buy but not the obligation to buy (hence the name OPTION).
Fixed Swap - An obligation to buy at a fixed price.
Collar - A means to make money if there are large fluctuations in price up or down.
They're more complex than that and there are more specific options. For example flex price swaps don't have fixed price. But the point of this is not to get into the details of options but to point out that Southwest has various choices when it comes to options.
Gambling?
Once you better understand that there are different types of options that help address different situations, you can better understand what Southwest Airlines is doing. The problem is that even articles where they don't seem to understand what it is SWA is trying to do. An example is this column from the USA Today :
Hedging is a gamble; a hedged airline could pay more for fuel if prices drop, but I think Southwest is safe as the possibility of oil prices dropping below $40 or $50 a barrel is highly unlikely.
Hedging is a gamble? No, it is not. Go to dictionary.com and look the word up for yourself. Hedging is not a gamble. It is something you do to reduce risk. Which would you say "I went to Las Vegas to hedge" or "I hedged my bet..."? A hedged airline will have higher fuel costs than other airlines at some points in time. However, as I just pointed out it's not 100%. Not all of their options are an obligation to buy. If prices drop sharply enough, they will simply not exercise their options. They will have the cost of the fixed price swaps. But if that's only 30% of their fuel needs, than the other 70% will be at market costs + the price of the options. When I say the price of the options I mean the price of purchasing the contract itself. The contract will specify the cost and the time but there is also a cost to that contract. But in such a case where the market would unexpectedly swing in one direction, in this case prices drop much lower than anticipated, SWA also has it's collars to help take the sting out of the situation.
Why would they use a financial instrument like a collar if they didn't think prices were going up very much or dropping very much? Because they don't approach their projections as absolutes. They know there are chances of them being wrong. They know about probabilities. They're using the collars as a way of insuring themselves in the event that they are very wrong either way.
Once you realize the different choices Southwest has and why they use things like collars, the light bulb should go off. They are in fact not hedging their fuel to make money off of the investments. They do it because they're hedging against the risk of fuel prices changing in ways that they don't foresee or aren't able to cope with. That is, it's an insurance policy. Just as we have insurance in case we cause a car accident or someone burglarized our home, Southwest uses this hedging as insurance for fuel prices.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Is ColdFusion Dying?
Ben Forta has a nice response to an article in ComputerWorld that lumps ColdFusion in with Cobol and Netware. I think the best part of his response is simply thinking twice about even responding. This article looks as though it was written with little if any knowledge of programming languages. When that occurs you have to wonder if ComputerWorld is printing it because they think it's good journalism or simply that they're fishing for attention.
The problem I have is not the implication that ColdFusion is dying. As a contractor working with it, I've seen demand for it change over the last few years. It seems that companies aren't dropping it so much as avoiding it. And, this is just based on my experience, it seems as though demand is so-so but more so fueled by their being less and less ColdFusion developers in the market. I think some of the house cleaning is occurring because those using it actually expect people to have some skills resembling a software engineer (as they should). I don't think it's going to go away anytime soon. It's not dead but I wouldn't call it thriving.
My biggest beef is with this statement
Superseded? Superseded in what sense? Number of users that claim to use it? Number of developers who claim to be capable of writing in the language? Number of companies the language's proponents say use the language? No offense to RoR and Python but I fail to see how they've superseded ColdFusion in that sense. Ruby on Rails may do that at some point but isn't there now. For Python it's more that I'm baffled as to how it's being mentioned. I don't think most folks at this point would associate it with web applications. And in the case of Python, I'm not sure I've ever seen even on classified add looking for someone with that skill. I'm sure they're out there but even together they're just not in demand as a job skill as much as ColdFusion. And if they're not that, how is that they've superseded ColdFusion?
The problem I have is not the implication that ColdFusion is dying. As a contractor working with it, I've seen demand for it change over the last few years. It seems that companies aren't dropping it so much as avoiding it. And, this is just based on my experience, it seems as though demand is so-so but more so fueled by their being less and less ColdFusion developers in the market. I think some of the house cleaning is occurring because those using it actually expect people to have some skills resembling a software engineer (as they should). I don't think it's going to go away anytime soon. It's not dead but I wouldn't call it thriving.
My biggest beef is with this statement
This once-popular Web programming language -- released in the mid-1990s by Allaire Corp. (which was later purchased by Macromedia Inc., which itself was acquired by Adobe Systems Inc.) -- has since been superseded by other development platforms, including Microsoft Corp.'s Active Server Pages and .Net, as well as Java, Ruby on Rails, Python, PHP and other open-source languages.
Superseded? Superseded in what sense? Number of users that claim to use it? Number of developers who claim to be capable of writing in the language? Number of companies the language's proponents say use the language? No offense to RoR and Python but I fail to see how they've superseded ColdFusion in that sense. Ruby on Rails may do that at some point but isn't there now. For Python it's more that I'm baffled as to how it's being mentioned. I don't think most folks at this point would associate it with web applications. And in the case of Python, I'm not sure I've ever seen even on classified add looking for someone with that skill. I'm sure they're out there but even together they're just not in demand as a job skill as much as ColdFusion. And if they're not that, how is that they've superseded ColdFusion?
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
ColdFusion 8 - Scorpio
If you're wondering about what some of the specific new capabilities that ColdFusion 8, Scorpio, will be giving developers Ben Forta's blog has a nice peak. Scorpio will open up some of the settings on a per application level instead of the current situation where to try to do so, you need to run separate instances of the CF application server. This should make it easier for developers working on applications where different users have different features available to them.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Goldman Sachs Pulls Out Of Real Salt Lake Deal
As reported by the Deseret News, Goldman Sachs real estate investment arm Whitehall has pulled out of it's deal with Real Salt Lake. For their investment, they were going to own 50% of SCP Worldwide's Real Salt Lake. Typically these investment funds put their money into a project with a 3-5 year time horizon. Whitehall has over $30 billion in real estate investments and recently purchased the John Hancock tower in Chicago for over $300 million. What happened that caused Whitehall to pull out at the last minute?
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Chelsea FC On YouTube
I noticed the Guardian recently announced a deal with Chelsea FC to show news clips and archived footage on YouTube. It'll be co-branded and have it's own section. Could this be the sort of thing soccer fans in the States have been waiting for to keep tabs on their favorite team? As it is now they get some news from internet news sites and even less from channels like Fox Soccer Channel Gol TV, and Setanta. And if they want to watch a game from 5 years ago? Well, they're lucky if it's on DVD.
Could the next move be for YouTube to provide paid programming featuring current games?
Could the next move be for YouTube to provide paid programming featuring current games?
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