Tech Revolution

It’s nuts but as usual, there’s mad line up for the iPhone on release day. It’s three in the morning and yours truly is sitting with a few hundred others in one of those lines. More on the iPhone once I get my hands on one.

My iPad has been put to good use for nearly three months now. The new shiny infatuation thing is over, and it’s embedded into my daily routine. While friends and colleagues don’t know entirely what it’s good for, I would miss it if I didn’t have it. It’s found a useful place between my notebook computers and my (new Android) smart phone.

For starters, it’s my morning and mid-day news reader. It’s where I get my news, weather and market updates. Throughout the day, I get my emails through either my phone, iPad or PC – whichever is most convenient at the moment. Occasionally, I peruse through Word or PDF documents on the iPad. I find it better than going through the file on a PC sometimes. I’m not sure what it is… but I think it has something to do with the touch features for navigation, zoom, and page flips — which I don’t have on the PC (no the touch pad on my Macbook Pro still doesn’t quite cut it).

Videos rock on my iPad. On my five hour flight to Vancouver last month, I put the iPad to test, over the in flight LCD video or laptop. The iPad was far more pleasant (just getting the video into the iPad wasn’t so convenient). I’d also download TV videos from iTunes for downtime viewing, and that’s working for me too. Music… not so much. I got an Apple Nano for that.

Web and YouTube surfing – oh yeah baby. No wifi issues with my iPad.

Touch screen… totally kills it for any of the other non-Apple touch screen gadgets I’ve ever had: my ancient Archos 405 (which had already found its way to the local designated electronics disposal site for recycling long ago – what a piece of crap), my HTC Touch Pro, or Motorola Milestone Android phone.

What else now? Oh yeah. Magazines. I checked those out, and some are quite nice and convenient. I’m still a little undecided between the iPad version vs. the paper copy. One thing though, the iPad version doesn’t start to stack up mags in my bathrooms — until they’re ready for the recycling bin. I use Zinio for most of my downloaded mags, but please something about that stupid few second start up video and page flip rendering lag folks. Maxim and Stuff mag look sharp on the iPad but the couple or few second wait is something to put up with.

Sure, I wish it could do more, but for what it is, nothing else I’ve seen so far comes close it. I like its fast start up, long battery life, low key portability, and app stability. I have bugaboos about some of its shortcomings, but none which are remotely close to making its way to my electronics disposal pile.

The iPad is definitely a winner. Now on to iPhone 4!

I took time out from Disney World with the family this afternoon to pick up my iPad pre-order. It wasn’t a do or die deal, but since I managed to land the pre-order deal (despite living outside the U.S. where the iPad isn’t available yet), I thought I’d grab one to see what the commotion’s all about.

After an hour boogey to and from the Florida Mall where my iPad awaited, I cracked open the box and checked it over. Ahhh… the smell of factory brand new stuff.

I’m still checking it out, and I hope to have more the share once I get a handle on it. It’s working with iTunes, and I’ve loaded a couple new apps and media files, but I still need a little more time. So far, it’s looking good. Despite the shortcomings I’ve heard so many times over, it’s still looking like Apple has another winner on its hand.

More to follow soon…

Henry

p.s. I picked up my pre-order just before 3pm, and they still had units in stock. Sure, the store was busy and there were more guards than staff at the door front, but I didn’t see any long line up at that time, nor people falling over each other to get their hands on the newly launched Apply marketing dynamo.

We live in a system where we must play by the rules. We don’t have a choice. And sometimes the rules aren’t fair — there’s an unfair advantage against our favour.

One such system deals with the government and taxes. Don’t mess with that. Sure, there are ways to challenge it, but they’ve got a whole lot of resources behind them. There’ll be a lot more on this in future posts, but for now, I’m just ranting about something that’s been bugging me since yesterday.

I got this letter from the tax department saying I owe them money for last year, plus a 24% penalty, plus interest. That’s a doozy… except I paid them in full last April. In fact, I overpaid them several thousand dollars before the due date. The problem it seems they took that money as payment for this year (which isn’t even due until next month), while last year remained unpaid. Duh! Seems like a clerical error… with a mechanical assessment of penalties. If someone with common sense actually looked at all of this, the extra administrative work ahead isn’t going to be needed.

Now, I don’t have a choice but to deal with this. With the tax department, you gotta deal with them because they got the power to whack you in as many ways as they’d like… take your home, your car, garnish your wages, seize your accounts, throw you in jail, whatever it takes – by their rule book.

They play in a game where a lot of folks try to dodge them. Some folks even try to cheat big. A lot of folks don’t understand nor like them. Surely some would even like to do them harm, if they could. On that playing field – whether it’s right or wrong – those tax folks can play rough. Sometimes even nasty in our view.

The point in all this that you can’t fight big moving machines… systems – with head-on force. If you want to go to battle… if the battle is worth the cost…. there are ways to go about it without getting destroyed (metephorically speaking). Much more on this in future posts.

Until next time, stay sharp and don’t standing in front of the moving machine.

Henry

Apple rocked its first day of iPad sales of reportedly over 100,000 units, and that’s money in the till three weeks before its release date. Before anyone goes to start bashing on this, ask how many things have I ever created, and sold in a single day – whether it’s an app, a service, a product of my own or someone else’s? The first day sales number for Apple deserves attention worth learning from – for our own gain of course.

Now granted some of those sold units were probably picked up by opportunists, who are out to make a few quick bucks by reselling outside the U.S. where the iPad won’t be available on April 3. If you have a look on eBay for instance, you’d see a 64GB WiFi iPad (retailing through Apple at $699) pre-selling for over $800. Quick easy profit.

Not all the Apple pre-sales are to opportunists though.

While the iPad still needs to prove itself as a product on the market, the numbers show Apple’s doing something right. What is it that makes stark raving mad fans? What is this formula, and how can you apply it to your success? Let’s keep discussing…

Until then, stay on top.

Henry

Today’s the first day for iPad pre-sales, before Apple officially releases it’s new product on April 3.

The Apple store’s closed for updates, and should open in just over an hour to take orders for the iPad. If EBay is any indication, iPad sales are going to be strong. I checked a couple times last week, and noticed pre-sales of some iPads were bid up to more than $400 over full retail (e.g. 64GB WiFi version with $699 MSRP).

Sure, it’s hype. But Apple’s making the right moves to have it’s fans frothing at the mouth for more. The fans are frothing and drooling for the iPad, and soon for iPhone 4.0. You know, there is formula to this. Imagine it working for you… like having businesses and employers climbing and falling over each other – like stark crazy mad fans – just to hire you.

I’ll come back to this formula some time, but for now, I need to go back Firefox to keep hitting the refresh button on the Apple store to see what’s up.

Until next time, keep learning the right moves.

Henry

Working at different levels in information privacy and security, I get to see all sorts of people play games on each other. The same goes for other areas across our information tech space. Where there are competing interests, there are games to be played… project management vs. QA, management vs. architecture, users vs. support, and the list goes on for dirty pool, backstabbing, cheating, blame, and whatever you might consider as workplace gamesmanship.

A lot of folks are just in it for themselves and could care less (by action) about doing the right things. In the privacy and security space, I’ve often seen people go far out of the way to avoid or short circuit the topic, just so they can meet their ends – at other’s expense, including the real stakeholders. It’s rotten, and in my opinion, it’s partly due to a lack of capability and structural maturity… but that’s for another discussion.

It’s not pleasant when the game is on you. When your interests are screwed over. It’s those times you gotta step back and say it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t in the big scheme of things. As long as people are driven with greed, there will always be some form of gamesmanship. It’s the way it has been, and probably the way it will be far into the future, even when we’re all long gone.

This perspective keeps coming back to me often lately, and I suspect it has to do with my sister’s passing late last year. I still think about her occasionally, and get this sort of hollow feeling – like a part of me has gone missing. We grew up together, and I’m reminded every now and then I won’t get to talk with her again. With her passing and the recent passing of another friend, and now another family member being diagnosed with cancer, I can’t help to think – who gives a shit about the games.

Life is bigger than that. Our time is limited, and the games must not dictate the life we live. The games mustn’t keep us from the things that are important to each us. The gamesmanship means nothing when the big game’s over.

That said, I hope I can be a constant reminder that you are important, and you have a purpose in life – whether or not you’ve found it yet.

Until next time, live life fully with purpose.

Henry

Last week I finished writing a security assessment report, which provided a set of recommendations based on several possible scenarios.

The problem for my client was one of his people advised against the security assessment, and swore to speak out against every recommendation — even before he’s seen them. It seemed he believed there was very little security risk. The assessment… the move of over a thousand servers from data centre to another, roughly 50 miles apart. The migration also involved highly sensitive data in some cases.

The report was accepted, since the scenarios made sense to the client. The scenarios were possible, and probable in several cases… like the transport truck getting into an accident, rolling over and strewing servers across a highway; or a technician accidently dropping a server while uninstalling it from a rack; or even the facilities guys misplacing and losing track one of the hundreds of servers in the move.

It’s just hard to get why the one guy wanted to fight the assessment – irrationally it seemed – all along the way. Whatever the reason, he reminded me of folks who convince themselves things can’t go wrong until that "oh sh*t" moment happens.

That dude stuck in my mind over the weekend, like a news story of another guy who probably believed nothing bad could happen over fifteen years ago. The story? The news articles goes on about a guy who thought it would be fun to tie himself to a car in a beach parking lot. Sounds bad so far, but no, he wasn’t going to try to water ski on pavement behind a moving car… the trick was to paraglide with just wind power… you know, the paragliders you’d see at resorts with boats towing a person floating six or seven stories up in the air. Not a bad idea at first, and it worked to the extent the guy got up to float ten stories up in the air. The problem was the paraglider was held up by wind alone – over a paved parking lot. What the guy didn’t foresee was the wind could stop and go the other way. In his case, it did, driving him straight down into the pavement. Either the guy didn’t see it coming or had that "oh sh*t" moment a split second before making his fatal impact.

That sucked. It was a bad day for news story dude, which could have been avoided. As I loop back to the security assessment story, I gotta say there are folks who ask themselves "is this a good idea" ahead of time, folks who take precautions before leaping, and folks who just leap because it’s easy or fun. I just believe you should be careful not to follow too close to the latter type.

Last year, I attended this ad survey session by a marketing firm. It’s one of those workshops where a bunch of guys are locked up in a room with a facilitator, who poses a bunch of questions. The questions are meant to get feedback on a particular product, brand, ad campaign or whatever. At the end of the session, you get paid cash and you put it all behind you once it’s over. The sessions I’ve been to have a group guys with something in common, and were held in rooms with  two-way mirrors for video recording.

Anyway, at the session last year, the facilitator posed a bunch of questions about a car maker and its upcoming ads. The car maker wanted to jump on the green bandwagon, so some of the questions tried to draw feedback on what the group thought of their marketing angles. One of these questions had to do with what the participants thought about going green by switching to electric cars. Well, for the open discussion, I threw in a few point for reality check. Not sure the facilitator liked it, but it sure brought good discussion. What I pointed to was that electricity [for the electric cars] still had to come from somewhere. We could switch from burning gas in cars to electricity, but we’d still have to burn something to get that electricity. In 2008 with the U.S. for example, over 71% of the electricity comes from burning coal or gas (see Department of Energy pie chart below).

We’d have cleaner running cars but we’d still pollute the environment. Is that really green? Switching to electric cars could be a good start, but we need to be real by looking ahead at the next real problem. This isn’t to say the problems can’t be solved. It’s just easy to fix one problem, assuming it will solve the overall issue. It’s also easy to ride a popular idea from marketing, while piling up the problem elsewhere… and this takes me to the whole idea of "green" data centers. I don’t fully understand the idea yet, but I plan to have a look with an open mind.

What I know about data centers, from the years working in them, is they chew up electricity like there’s tomorrow, produce loads of heat and put out truck loads of decommissioned hardware containing hazardous waste. Heck, I was even caught in a halon (an ozone depleting fire suppression agent banned in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol) dump while working away in a locked up high security government computer room (I’ll save that story for another time).

If you have any thoughts on the "green" data center idea, feel free to comment. We’re all still learning.

Until next time, stay real and be green.

Henry

p.s. Just to close the loop on the ad survey session, the group agreed on the point around the electricity problem around the green idea. That discussion ended pretty pretty quick however, since that wasn’t the direction the facilitator wanted. I got my cash in the end regardless.

Recently, I broke one of my top rules which is to know my audience.

You see… I wrote what I thought was a good security assessment report. In my enthusiasm I forgot the report was not for my client, a government security department, but for its customer which had a line of business that nothing to do with security. The sin? Writing the report with complex concepts and language for the wrong customer. Worse, the actual audience was a manager, an executive. Although the report was eventually accepted with just a few changes, it created some angst and tension nonetheless. It just wasn’t clear to some folks.

Had I written the report for the right audience, the hassle would have been avoided. It wouldn’t matter what I know or how much I know if the person who’s paying the bill doesn’t see the value. As far as the customer’s concerned, my expertise could just be gibberish globblygook if he doesn’t get it. And in this case, the customer’s opinion mattered in terms of dollars, given his enterprise role within a large government organization.

Well, lesson learned and back to work. More on knowing your audience in future posts…

Until next time, keep adding value.

Henry