Invention: The Next Software

Posted by Gregg at 11:58 AM in Emerging Technology

In May 2002, MIT Technology Review article, Nathan Myhrvold, former Microsoft CTO unveiled a concept called the Invention Factory. At this week's MIT ETC 2003 Myhrvold expanded on the concept in his keynote speech. Mhyrvold believes that "invention" can be institutionalized has the potential, in itself, to be the next boom industry. more

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Immelt for President?

Posted by Gregg at 11:47 AM in Emerging Technology

Jeff Immelt, GE's CEO delivered the Day 2 Keynote at this week's ETC 2003 at MIT. It's easy to imagine him transferring his skill from the corporate realm to the political. more

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Rich Grasso, Scapegoat

Posted by Gregg at 01:27 PM in Human Capital

The amount of Rich Grasso's pay is not the point. From the standpoint of corporate governance, which was the banner being waved around his resignation, it's the NYSE board that approved his deal. Grasso did not embezzle, defraud or cook the NYSE books. He simply cut himself a sweet deal - which was approved by the board of directors and members of the New York Stock Exchange. In fact, all CEO compensation in public companies is approved by the board, yet, we've heard relatively little about their role over the last few days. Over the last two years, Directors of scandalized companies have managed to stay out of the spotlight. Directors supposedly represent the shareholders - they are the check on management teams that lose sight of what's in the shareholders' best interest. Whether you agree or disagree with the amount of Grasso's pay it's unfair to paint him as the bad guy. He did what we all do - negotiate the best deal you can. more

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No Blackout for Spam

Posted by Gregg at 02:42 PM in Information Industry

Between 4:00 PM Thursday and 6:00 AM Friday I got 27 spam email messages. Considering that I live in NY and over 50,000,000 people were without power from Canada to New Jersey it's amazing that the barrage of spam didn't miss a beat. Do the utilities have something to learn from the email marketers? more

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Was it ever really AOL?

Posted by Gregg at 02:48 PM in Information Industry

There's been a lot of talk recently about AOL / TW changing it's name. Personally, I've always had a hard time getting AOL to cross my lips when describing the world’s largest media company. AOL made a brilliant move in merging with TW, they leveraged inflated stock to buy real assets across all media categories. more

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The Wireless Home

Posted by Gregg at 01:33 PM in Emerging Technology

It's too easy to pass up. Buy an access point for about $50, plug in a couple of cables, an adapter into the USB port on your computers or Tivo and you've got a home network. Ironically, the most trouble you're going to have is with the most mature technology in your configuration - the MS operating systems that you're running. Adding a few more inexpensive devices and the infrastructure you've just built for less than $200 lets you share music, photos and video on multiple devices around the house. Should've bought that GE fridge that scans the UPCs and places my order with Webvan. more

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A Moment of Silence

Posted by Gregg at 01:40 PM in Thoughts

For a few years from the late 80's through early 90's I lived in SOHO on Thompson Street. One of my most memorable visuals was how the towers of the WTC loomed over the neighborhood -- they looked even more enormous in contrast to the low rise, homogeneous skyline of SOHO. Today, looking for a way to privately commemorate 9/11 I walked over the corner of W. Broadway and Spring. It's just a short walk from my office so I arrived at about 8:45. It looked like a typical weekday morning, a thin but steady stream of people headed to work, people just walking by unaware of the significance of the time or location. But, when I looked across the street there was a man about my age gazing south in the direction where the towers were. A few minutes later the man left and a woman took his place. I walked back to my office - maybe someone came and took my place. I don't think anyone else noticed what we were doing and I think that's a good thing -- I can't imagine anyone in this city that doesn't understand the significance of today but I'm glad the world didn't stop at 8:46 either. I hope those more directly affected than I can someday feel the same way. more

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Analysis of the Jobless Recovery

Posted by Gregg at 01:52 PM in Human Capital

This artclie last week in the Christian Science Monitor does a nice job of explaining why we're in the midst of economic recovery but jobs are not being created. more

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Why RSS is a Big Deal

Posted by Gregg at 01:55 PM in Information Industry

There’s so much really useful information on the web but how many of us really have the time to regularly read through the content on the 20 or more sites that would supply us with valuable information regarding our personal and professional interests. Not many, I’d bet. That’s the beauty of RSS feeds. Sites using the RSS protocol deliver summaries of a site’s articles into a news reader on the desk top. Remember the promise of push technology? RSS delivers on the promise. more

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Job Boom?

Posted by Gregg at 02:07 PM in Human Capital

Is the cover of this month's Business 2.0 which heralds the coming job boom supposed to make us feel better or is it just merely a case of using statistics to tell any story the author would like us to believe? The premise of the cover story is that aging baby boomers will create a shortage of workers as they leave the labor market to retire. They leave out just a couple of critical factors like the movement of "less skilled" jobs to countries with a cheaper labor supply and that US workers who have lost these jobs to call centers in Ireland and software development shops in India will have to learn new skills. What's coming is not so much a labor shortage as a redistribution of Human Capital. more

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