Connecting the dots ...
“Thank you for calling T-Mobile… All of our representatives are ….
… Current wait time is: 1 hour 9 minutes! “
No, this is not a joke, this is for real. They do offer a call-back option though. 
Tags: Customer Service, Customer Disservice, Customer Support, Technical Support, T-Mobile
“The internal logs of at least 40 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines reveal that votes were time and date-stamped as cast two weeks before the election, sometimes in the middle of the night.
Black Box Voting successfully sued former Palm Beach County (FL) Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore to get the audit records for the 2004 presidential election.” full article here.
Related Posts:
AJAX Patented. WTF?
Tomorrow I am filing a patent for:
…. you name it. I’ll hold the whole country hostage
Update (2/23): Everyone responds in shock.
Update (2/24): Rich Media patent hype – is AJAX safe? – good article, originally showed up here as a trackback. Neil, where are your manners, trackback without a link? I’m deleting the trackback, but since the article is worth a read, I’ll point to it – with nofollow.
Tags: AJAX, Patent, AJAX Patent, Rich Media
TechCrunch recently featured Blogbeat, a nice-looking blog analytics solution, a’la Measuremap. I have doubts regarding their business model: after 30 days trial, $6 month. That’s not a huge sum in itself, but when a pro-level blog platform (TypePad, Blogware ..etc) costs $8–11 a month, an add-on to it for $6 is relatively expensive.
That said, I wanted to give it a try. It’s way off. This morning it showed 70 less visitors then StatCounter, but I thought it may be caused by time zone differences (the new calendar day starting at different hours). However, by the afternoon the gap between the two systems grew to 115, so BlogBeat is definitely missing a few “beats”. 
Tags: Blogs, blogging, BlogBeat, MeasureMap, Blog Analytics
(Updated)
This post is a continuation of Web 2.0 in the Enterprise – Round 2 in which I reflected on some thoughts brought up by Stephen Bryant in Five Reasons Web 2.0 and Enterprises Don’t Mix.
The Web 2.0 in the Enterprise TIE event I previously referred to was hectic, trying to cover way too many subjects in 90 minutes, with one common underlying assumption: Enterprise means large corporations. The theme of the night was how these Web 2.0 technologies and business/communication approaches will “seep in” to the large enterprise from the bottom up.
What is then Enterprise Software? Typically SAP, Oracle et al come to mind, and I can hear the roar “Enterprise Software is Dead” – well, is it?
If we define Enterprise Software as the traditional heavyweight, expensive, pay-huge-license-fees-upfront, then try-to-implement-forever model it is certainly challenged from two ends, by Open Source and the SaaS model. But there is another definition that is largely being overlooked:
Software that allows a company to conduct it’s everyday business, supporting most of the core, fairly standard business processes any company performs repeatedly.
With this definition, Enterprise Software has a whole new, largely unpenetrated market to enter: that of small businesses, referred to as the SMB or SME segment. Such enterprise functionality has traditionally been beyond reach for a typical small business, for two major reasons:
SaaS is the right answer for both, since it allows the SMB user to start using the functionality without an upfront investment, does not require implementation, upgrades, maintenance, worrying about backups and security ..etc.
Of course several Open Source packages are available completely free, which is a perfect solution for the cost problem, but I think most of these packages are by geeks for geeks; i.e. you really have to be quite IT-savy to implement, integrate, upgrade them, and as we stated most small businesses simply do not have that type of resource. Yes, that means the Silicon Valley tech-startups are not a true representation of the SMB world 
Likewise, I don’t believe SOA, best-of-breed packages working together are an option for the SMB market, for the same reason. They will play an increasingly critical role in larger enterprises with a professional IT organization, but for a few more years SMB’s are far better off with integrated, All-In-One type On-Demand solutions.
Of the Web 2.0 companies Stephen mentions in Five Reasons Web 2.0 and Enterprises Don’t Mix two are offering Integrated On-Demand solutions:
Back to the economics: if SMB’s could not in the past afford Enterprise Software, the same held true for the Software Industry: they could not afford SMB’s, since there was just no way to make the numbers work. The cost of customer acquisition vs. the very low license fees made it an uneconomical model, whether via direct or channel sales.
Once again, technology comes to the rescue: the Internet, and largely Search Engine Marketing changes everything. Joe Kraus, Founder of JotSpot and previously Excite sums it up:
“ Ten years ago to reach the market, we had to do expensive distribution deals. We advertised on television and radio and print. We spent a crap-load of money. There’s an old adage in television advertising “I know half my money is wasted. Trouble is, I don’t know what half”. That was us. It’s an obvious statement to say that search engine marketing changes everything. But the real revolution is the ability to affordably reach small markets. You can know what works and what doesn’t. And, search not only allows niche marketing, it’s global popularity allows mass marketing as well (if you can buy enough keywords). “
Another benefit of SEM is that while traditional advertising can pick the right demographic groups, it cannot pick the right time, only a fraction of the target audience is in “change mode”, looking for a solution. That’s the beauty of Search Engine Marketing: obviously if you are searching, you have a problem and are looking for a solution, which is half a win from the vendor’s point of view.
Small Business Trends recently published a survey on “Selling to Small Businesses”, which supports the increasing importance of SEM: “A full 73% of vendors attract small business customers through search engine results”
Finally a quote from Ziff Davis again: “Products for the long tail and SMB market, where 72 million businesses spend $5k or less each year, are a much easier play” Wow, I don’t know where those numbers come from, but if I were a SMB-focused software vendor, I’d certainly like them … there’s a goldmine out there. 
Update (2/22): Perfect timing for this report to come out just now: U.S. SMBs to Spend $2.2 Billion on Software in 2006, Says AMI-Partners
Update (4/17): Interprise Suite (recently debuted at Demo 2006) claims to be “The FIRST Accounting / ERP / CRM Solution to Bring the Power of the Internet to Small and Mid-sized Business“. While I take issue withe the claim to be “first”, considering the breadth of functionality it’s definitely an option to consider for SMB’s .
Related posts:
Stephen Bryant lists Five Reasons Web 2.0 and Enterprises Don’t Mix (hat tip: Espen Antonsen). He cites his personal experience of having worked in an innovative small software company that could not close deals with the slow enterprise behemoths. “What we needed was a shorter sales cycle, a very, very big salesforce, or some combination of the two”
One of the key changes we’re experiencing today is that the traditional big salesforce becomes obsolete.
Next I will talk about how Enterprise Software “comes down” to the SMB sector – but for the sake of readability, it is in the next post.
P.S. Stephen, perhaps one day we’ll hear about the pig-killing job in Tuscany
Update (2/23): The Doctrine of Slow and Old: Big Business and New Applications
Update (2/25): Giving enterprise software practices an ‘angioplasty’
Tags: Enterprise Software, Web 2.0, TIE, Sales, Enterprise Sales, Demand Generation, SAP, Oracle, Wiki, wikis, Socialtext, Jotspot, NetSuite, SugarCRM, salesforce.com, web20enterprise, business model, social software, CRM, ERP
(Updated – see bottom)
No, this is not another post about the cartoons and the violence that followed. Instead, I’ll present three unrelated cases of what I consider extremities of Freedom of Speech – going to far, or none. 
1.) Right-wing British historian David Irving was sentenced to three years in prison Monday after admitting to an Austrian court that he denied the Holocaust — a crime in the country where Hitler was born. He is 67 years old, was arrested last year for a speech he made in 1989 in Austria. The Holocaust is a historical fact, a disaster in human history, and source of long-lasting shame and guilt especially in Germany and Austria. That said, it was a speech, and should be dealt with accordingly: ignore the old fool, or challenge him at any public forum. But nobody should go to prison for years for simply expressing their views, however stupid and insensitive they are.
2.) Forget the old fool, look at these cute girls … aren’t they adorable? So innocent-looking. Who would believe they are Prussian Blue, a white-supremacist band performing all around the US, and publishing their CD’s full of hate-lyrics like this:
“Soon will come a great war, A bloody, but holy day. And after that purging, Our people will be free… And the forests will echo our grace, For the brand new dawn of our Race.”
“Aryan man awake, How much more will you take, Turn that fear to hate, Aryan man awake.”
“Let the cities burn, let the streets run red, if you ain’t white you’ll be dead.”
Quotes from the “Nazi Olsen Twins” (as they are often referred to) : “Men like Adolf Hitler and Rudolph Hess are heroes to our cause…Adolf Hitler was a great man who was only trying to preserve his own race in his own country.”
The girls can freely perform and call for violent acts all in the name of Freedom of Speech.
3.) Just how far does our Freedom of Speech go? The Rolling Stones were censored during their halftime performance at the Super Bowl XL in Detroit. TV censors deemed two lyrics too sexually explicit to be broadcast and they were cut from the three-song show. During “Start Me Up,” the racy last line about a woman so hot, “you make a dead man come,” was silenced. A whole generation grew up listening to the Stones. Hundreds of millions have heard Start Me Up, including the censored line… they were not about to say anything new. Let me say this again: in the same country where the neo-nazi hateful trash can be performed, the Rolling Stones get censored.
Something’s wrong, terribly wrong here.
Update (2/20): Related posts:
Update (2/21): A really thoughtful article about Mohammed Cartoon Madness and Understanding. Freedom of Speech is a right that should not be abused. Some things can not be regulated by law, but should be subject to self-control, common wisdom, decency, respect for others. Duncans comment below made me realize I didn’t express myself clearly: self-control, respect .. etc are subjective, and I did not mean those to be enforced by some outside authority, but the persons exercising their rigth to Free Speech.
Tags: Freedom of Speech, Holocaust, Prussian Blue, Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger, Censorship, White Supremacism, Racism, Hate, hate crime, neo-nazi, aryan, cartoons, decency
This isn’t so much a complicated process in bad need of angioplasty than a case of simply stupid waste:
My parents keep on receiving a ton of mail from the CA Dept. of Health regarding the Medicare prescription changes. So far so good, let’s keep them informed… although I am not sure why the same flyer gets mailed again and again. However, since they clearly have English indicated in their profile, why on earth do they have to be sent every single page in 12 (!) copies, in the following languages: English, Spanish, Armenian, Russian, Cambodian,Chinese, Farsi, Korean, Laotian, Tagalog, Hmong, Vietnamese ???
So much for the environment … and wasted taxpayer money
Tags: Business Process, BPR, Waste, Bureaucracy, CA State, State Government, Government Waste, Medicare
I’ll be moderating another SVASE VC Breakfast Club session on Thursday, February 23rd in San Francisco. It’s an informal round-table where up to 10 entrepreneurs get to deliver a pitch, then answer questions and get critiqued by a VC Partner. We’ve had VC’s from Draper Fisher, Hummer Winblad, Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Mohr Davidow, Emergence Capital …etc.
Thursday’s featured VC is Pascal Levensohn, Founder and Managing Director, Levensohn Venture Partners. Event Information and registration is here.
These sessions are an incredible opportunity for Entrepreneurs, most of whom would probably have a hard time getting through the door to a VC Partners. Since I’ve been through quite a few of these sessions, both as Entrepreneur and Moderator, let me share a few thoughts:
See you on Thursday … and now I get to show off my cool Zvents button: 
Update: I’ve just discovered Pascal has a blog, and refreshingly enough, it’s his personal views, not the typical business blog.
Tags: Venture Capital, VC Breakfast, Funding, Startups, SVASE
This is my most meaningless post. Ever. Just helping Steve Rubel to construct a little meme-tracker-race.
Taking a clue from Scoble’s Brrreeeport test for web/blog search, he now wants to compare Memeorandum and Tailrank by counting Breememe -related posts.
OK, let’s see.
Tags: Memetrackers, Breememe, memeorandum, Tailrank, Brrreeeport
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