Ho John Lee’s Weblog

Today was a moderately exciting or irritating day to be a investor in public technology companies. Google’s CFO, George Reyes, apparently forgot that he was webcasting to a public group of investors rather than conferencing with an in-house team at the Googleplex during the Q&A session at the Merrill Lynch Internet, Advertising, Information, & Education conference: (Yahoo/AP News)

Q: Looking back to Q3 2005, was there anything in there that was maybe sort of one-time in nature that accounted for such strong revenue growth…?

A: So we went through a period of probably 18 months where we thought we had…well, let me characterize it…we had what was called a RevForce initiative–Revenue Force–which was really a team of really very bright technical engineers that were trying to tweak and optimize the ad system, and not–you know in very very responsible ways [Don’t Be Evil!]–and that sort of paid off nicely with the fruits of that labor.

• Freer cash flow: Moving money without banks - Your Money - International Herald Tribune
  IHT article by Thomas Crampton on his experience using an online currency exchange service instead of a bank for an international fund transfer to pay for his apartment.
  (tags: travel finance howto currency exchange business ecommerce)
• Dow Theory Letters
  Richard Russell’s 12 criteria for an ideal business, originally written in the 1970s
  (tags: startups business investing)
• ACM Ubiquity - WHY FEATURES DON’T MATTER ANYMORE: THE NEW LAWS OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
  #1 - More features isn’t better, it’s worse. A list of user centered design issues by Andreas Pfeiffer in ACM Ubiquity Vol. 7, No. 7.
  (tags: technology design usability personal software)

• Kevin 2.0 » Blog Archive » Origami video: the real deal?
  Pointer to video by one of Microsoft’s PR firms which appears to be the not-yet-announced Origami device.
  (tags: microsoft pr advertisement media mobile video rumors origami)

• CNN.com - France confirms strain of bird flu - Feb 24, 2006
  Avian flu has been making its way out of Asia, and is starting to turn up in Europe. Also recently in India and Africa.
  (tags: global health h5n1 avianflu)

• Dynamic Einstein
  Add your own blackboard text to a famous black and white photo of Albert Einstein
  (tags: humor fun einstein photo graphic image generator science history)
• Om Malik on Broadband : » Here Comes Open Source Telecom
  Roundup of open source projects making headway in commercial telecom - Asterisk, Nagios, OpenVPN, Snort, XORP
  (tags: opensource networking startups voip)
• banditsnomore: Methodist Army of Davids?
  On top-down vs bottom-up organizations in the context of church communities
  (tags: social networking church society culture methodist)
• Schneier on Security: Do-it-Yourself Keyboard Logger
  Pointer to DIY hardware keylogger, plus interesting discussion about defending against keylogging attacks.
  (tags: security diy keylogging spyware software hardware hacking)

• Om Malik on Broadband : » The New Office Space
  Jackson West’s list of San Francisco coffee-and-wifi cafes suitable for the web2.0 startup lifestyle.
  (tags: sanfrancisco web2.0 culture food startups)
• The Korea Liberator » Congress Criticizes State Dep’t on NK Refugees
  A total of zero (0) North Koreans have been offered asylum or refugee status in 16 months since unanimous passage of NK Human Rights Act. Embassy personnel have apparently refused to help.
  (tags: korea northkorea us government policy state congress refugees)

We went to see Curious George at the movies this weekend. We were probably at the old end of the target demographic, but my 9-year-old and I have spent many hours reading Curious George stories together since before she could actually read, and we both enjoyed the movie. Unlike many current kids movies, this one doesn’t have a frantic, over-the-top feel to it, and the soundtrack by Jack Johnson is pleasantly calming.

A few thoughts upon reflection:

My passport expires in a couple of weeks, so I’m about to send it off to get a new one. This one has been well used, I had an extra set of pages inserted a few years ago. This time I’m going to request a 48-page passport to start with, instead of the standard 24-page version.

The photo in my current passport is ten years old. Since then I’ve gotten rid of my eyeglasses and lost around 30 pounds. Between not looking exactly like my passport photo, and an ever-accumulating set of entry and exit stamps, it can sometimes take a while to clear passport control. I usually explain that I’ve taken up marathon running.

• False Modesty: When Disclosing Good News Looks Bad (PDF)
  Paper by Rick Harbaugh and Theodore To on game theory, price and status signaling, and incentives for and against disclosing “good news”, such as academic degrees, career accomplishments, restaurant cleanliness. In general the “worst” member of a bracket
  (tags: economics gametheory research price signaling markets)

• Learning from Sony: an external perspective (DanK_VBFeb06.pdf)
  Dan Kaminski’s editorial in February 2006 Virus Bulletin on the problematic relationship between antivirus software vendors and DRM-using media companies, following the recent Sony rootkit episode.
  (tags: security antivirus sony drm media legal policy society publishing)
• Nicholas Carr - Open Source and the Utility Revolution (PDF)
  Presentation slides drawing an analogy between the evolution of the electrical power business (small local generators replaced by large plants with distribution grid) and IT services today.
  (tags: business strategy history technology software services)
• Boing Boing: Fighting bird flu with fermented cabbage air conditioners
  Pointer and comments on LG Electronic’s anti-avian-flu air conditioner, featuring a kimchi-extract-coated filter.
  (tags: korea korean airconditioner avian flu h5n1 kimchi culture humor)

• Lessons from the Sony CD DRM Episode - sonydrm-ext.pdf (application/pdf Object)
  Final paper by Ed Felten and Alex Halderman reviewing the Sony DRM rootkit incident
  (tags: drm security privacy cd rootkit sony marketing digital media publishing distribution society legal history)
• Johnnie Moore’s Weblog: Podcast: Zopa Revisited
  Podcast with Zopa founders James Alexander and Dave Nicholson, on peer to peer lending, new competitors Prosper and Mogo, and who participates in peer to peer lending.
  (tags: zopa podcast mp3 prosper mogo p2p lending startups finance)
• Combating Terrorism Center - Harmony and Disharmony: Exploiting Al-Qa’ida’s Organizational Vulnerabilities
  Report from West Point (US Military Academy) reviewing strengths and weaknesses of Al-Qaida, with English translations (from Arabic) of captured source documents.
  (tags: strategy terrorism government global security business organization startups)

There’s an interesting new report out today from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (the US Military Academy), titled “Harmony and Disharmony: Exploting Al-Qa’ida’s Organizational Vunerabilities“, which has some useful insights for entrepreneurs and corporate managers as well as for those dealing with global jihadist movements or with a general interest in global security issues.

The report is based on a collection of captured documents which have been recently declassified, and examines some of the strengths and weaknesses of the Al-Qa’ida organizational structure. The merits of a 21st-century, networked, mobile, internet-enabled insurgency have been observed elsewhere at length, as summarized by James Na at Korea Liberator:

• Yahoo! UI Library
  Javascript library for building web user interfaces, now available from Yahoo under open source (BSD) license.
  (tags: javascript yahoo opensource software tools web2.0)
• Yahoo! Design Pattern Library
  A collection of design patterns which recur in web user interfaces, with examples. Now available as open source (BSD) license.
  (tags: software design pattern example web2.0 yahoo user interface library)

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an ad from HP noting the 25th anniversary of the HP12C calculator.

Unlike most contemporary personal computing technology, the old HP calculators have been nearly indestructable and are utterly reliable. This may have limited the market for HP calculators, in that there aren’t any consumables and there isn’t much of a replacement cycle either, but it’s a relic of the old-school HP that also made indestructable electronic bench equipment and atomic clocks (and mostly turned into Agilent). HP still seems to sell enough new units to keep them in production.

I’m not sure exactly how old my calculator is at this point, but it dates back to some time in the early 80’s, in the days before personal computers and ubiquitous internet access on college campuses, when being able to run repeated calculations without heading to the computer lab was both a luxury and a competitive advantage. At the time I also had an HP 15C and 16C, which were well-used in various projects before going on “permanent loan” years ago.

Is Google headed for a downturn? Not only is it featured in a generally negative cover article in this week’s Barron’s, but now it’s featured on the cover of Time as well. These magazines cater to very different audiences, so turning up on both at the same time could be considered a sign that Google is reaching a peak of sorts on both the financial and general cultural fronts.

There’s a long tradition of things going badly for companies and people after getting this sort of high profile magazine cover treatment. If Google turns up next on the cover of People or Entertainment Weekly they’re probably doomed…

Update 02-12-2006 18:31 PST: John Battelle suggests that having made the cover of Time, Google has “jumped the shark”, while Matt Cutts offers a recent historical perspective of Google’s non-shark-jumping behavior while simultaneously demonstrating effective link baiting technique.

Yesterday I went to see an exhibition match between the Korean and Costa Rican National Teams at the Oakland Coliseum. These are basically training games for the World Cup series starting later this year.

The Korean team did unexpectedly well in the last World Cup series in 2002, making it all the way to the semifinals, which precipitated huge street celebrations and instant celebrity status for the entire team. My wife, who generally has no interest in organized sports, was getting up at 3 in the morning to watch the games on Telemundo, which is representative of the level of interest among the general Korean community.

• Barron’s Online - In the Drink - February 13, 2006
  Cover article detailing a generally negative view of GOOG share price (currently around $360) based on growing expenses, click fraud and ad pricing issues, and reversion to the mean multiple of the peer group, to $188 ish per share.
  (tags: google search internet business investing advertising strategy)
• Jeff Matthews Is Not Making This Up - Google: “Thesis Schmesis”
  On Blue Nile and FTD quarterly conference call comments on inflation in click bid fees for paid search at Google, and declining effectiveness of paid search for driving business to their sites.
  (tags: google bluenile ftd paidsearch advertising auction marketing business strategy investing)
• Internet Outsider: Blue Nile Disses Search; Evidence Mounting
  Henry Blogdet with a little more on Blue Nile, FTD conference call comments on increasing per-click costs and shift away from paid search due to decreasing effectiveness.
  (tags: google bluenile ftd paidsearch advertising marketing internet business investing)
• Kumquat Computer PH Invert Parody Humor Comedy
  Corporate business humor, loosely inspired by misadventures at Hewlett-Packard and other large companies.
  (tags: humor business consulting management culture hp)

• AT&T Warns Apple, Others, Of Patent Infringement
  AT&T is claiming patent rights to coding methods used in MPEG-4 not covered in the MPEG-LA patent portfolio. This would affect a range of new digital video products, including newer iPods.
  (tags: mpeg video compression codec iptv patent legal licensing policy)
• ipBS: How to get your missed TV shows with Azureus and Bittorrent
  Detailed instructions for using RSS and Bittorrent to locate current video programming
  (tags: howto iptv video bittorrent)

• VMware Server
  VMware is releasing a free version of their product for virtualizing a single hardware server platform to multiple Windows and Linux server instances. See also Xen project for free Linux-only virtualization.
  (tags: linux windows server virtualization sysadmin)
• The Future of Web Apps workshop (London, UK, February 8, 2006)
  Event wiki, with notes from presentations on building web applications such as del.icio.us, Flickr, Mint, and others.
  (tags: web2.0 software service webservices development design wiki)

I had been trying to arrange my schedule to get to the Future of Web Apps workshop this week in London, but sadly things didn’t work out. Actually, I didn’t even manage to get to last night’s SearchSIG to see edgeio’s first public demo here in the Bay Area, so perhaps it’s not surprising I couldn’t get a trip to the UK sorted out.

The good news is, there’s a conference wiki with lots of presentation notes, including comments on del.icio.us, discussions on how Flickr evolved, some thoughts on approaches to building discoverable URLs for data, the merits of Ruby on Rails. and a detailed discussion on the implementation approach and specific costs for the DropSend service.