Archives for April 2010

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iPray

Posted on April 13, 2010 ·
As they say a picture is worth a thousand words.  Oliver Widder’s Geek And Poke series is one of my favorites… and yes, one cartoon is often worth an entire post… the pic says it all.

I just hope we won’t get in trouble..  now that the word “Pad” is on Apple’s ban list …  (is the entire feminine care industry in trouble?  will they go after NASA for using Launch Pad?)… oh, well, will they claim rights for the use of the letter “i”?

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)

Filed Under: Humor · Tagged: , , , , , , , ,
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Atlassian Security Breach and Warning. >>> Update: Apology and Disclosure

Posted on April 12, 2010 ·

crikey Well, well, hours after telling you not to change passwords, now I am telling you to change it… but this time with good reason. Minutes ago I’ve received a email from Atlassian:

We are sending you this message because we experienced a security breach and suspect that your Atlassian customer account password details (only) may have been compromised.
It is very unlikely that an unauthorised user has had the opportunity to log in to your account so far and if they have, there is very little in the way of personal information which could have been accessed. However, to minimise any further risk to your Atlassian account being compromised, we strongly recommend that you change your Atlassian account password as soon as possible using the procedure below.
Be aware that this security issue only affects Atlassian customers who created an Atlassian account and purchased one of our products before June 2008. Since then, we have been using a more secure user management system based on Atlassian’s Crowd product. When you change your Atlassian account password using the procedure below, your Atlassian customer account details will be stored in our updated Crowd user management system, which will further minimise the chance of a security breach occurring in future.
Procedure for changing your Atlassian customer account password:
1) Login to http://my.atlassian.com
2) Click “My Profile” (3rd tab)
3) Click “Change Password” (in Contact Information section)
4) Update your password to a new value
Atlassian apologises for the inconvenience caused. However, this is an extremely rare event for us and since we take security issues seriously, we are taking every precaution possible to minimise the effects of this security breach.

Sincerely/Best regards,
Glenn Butcher
Director of IT

Not fun .. and I expect to we’ll hear more from Atlassian soon.  For now they are obviously figthing whatever it is – status update from Twitter:

Atlassian had a security breach. Apologies for the confusion. Our site is experiencing heavy loads. We are working on getting back up ASAP.

Personally I am safe – I don’t have active accounts, just decided to help push Atlassian’s charity towards the finish line by purchasing 10 licences, but if you do, time to change the passwords…

Update:  co-Founder and co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes posted the details on the Atlassian blog.

Apparently an old, inactive database table that had already been migrated in July 2008 to the secure Crowd identity management system was not deleted mistakenly.  That indirectly answers the speculation about Atlassian passwords being stored in plain text format.  They are not – anymore, but they used to be, prior to July 2008.

Mike goes on to detail what was / was not compromised:  read for changes, they are resetting potentially compromised account passwords now.

He does not BS, owns up the mistake:

We made a big error. For this we are, of course, extremely sorry. The legacy customer database, with passwords stored in plain text, was a liability. Even though it wasn’t active, it should have been deleted. There’s no logical explanation for why it wasn’t, other than as we moved off one project, and on to the next one, we dropped the ball and screwed up.

They are still investigating what happened and Mike promises full disclosure, coming this week.

It’s been a bad day for Atlassian and some of their customers – but I’m glad they live up to their “Open Company, No Bullshit” slogan, and respond as expected.

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)

Filed Under: Software · Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,
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How to NOT Become an Entrepreneur

Posted on April 9, 2010 ·

bae logo I get a lot of junk email that I normally ignore, but this one ticked me off enough to write about:

Major Changes for Bay Area Entrepreneurs Workshop

Changes?  To what?  I’ve never heard about this program before.

Lowering the price of the Workshop by $500 to $1,000

Ouch!  Lowering?  And then it’s still $1,000?  Now I really have to check it out…

The Bay Area Workshop is a series of weekly, 3-hour long presentations, 8 in total for a “discount” price of $1,000, or $175 per individual session.  The “Team” consists of the CEO.  The Agenda focuses on Business Plan building, culminating in an investor presentation, and the presenters are “named” illustrious experts like “Start-up consultant”, “Go-to-market consultant”, “Marketing consultant”, “Angel investor”.

agenda

Most impressive, isn’t it?  Wait, here’s a preview: you can watch a 46-minute embedded webinar here.  No, your video did not freeze, you really are staring at one single slide (long live Powerpoint!) for close to two minutes. Never mind that you can’t read the small print and full-screen toggle does not work…. I’m sure there’s value in there … somewhere 🙂

Oh, boy. If I wanted to be cynical, I’d say this program is a tired, half-cooked attempt at delivering recycled presentations by a retired executive at a premium price. But I don’t want to be cynical, so I’m not calling it a rip-off… All I am saying is: I’m not sold, and buyer beware.

OK, here’s what I really think:

If you are in a corporate job thinking of becoming an Entrepreneur – save the money, these courses will not “make you” an entrepreneur. You should probably keep your job.

If you already are talking to potential partners, are busy building an early stage product, then you already are an Entrepreneur.  You have the drive, you did not “get it” from a bunch of expensive classes.  You may or may not get funded one day, and sure, there’s a lot to learn, but you can pick it up along the way.  There’s probably no better place to start than reading Mark Suster’s series.  Sage advice from an Entrepreneur-turned-VC.  By all means, network: go to events like SF Beta,  the New Tech Meetups in SF or the Valley, Meet real VC’s at events hosted by SVASE – wherever you start, one event will lead to another, and you will make real-life connections.

Most events will cost you $20-40, some a little more expensive, but whenever you see a 3-digit price-tag, run the other way!  And don’t even think of spending a thousand bucks just to hear from unknown instructors how you should put a business plan together.

As for The Bay Area Workshop, I saved the best for the last.  If you really have a thousand bucks to throw away, would you expect to just sign up and attend?  No, you have to apply and “qualify”:

To apply for all eight session of BAE Workshop, send your business summary to apply@baeworkshop.com. We will evaluate the submissions and notify those accepted into the program.

I’m so out of here…

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

Filed Under: Startups · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Now Tell the Difference Between Folders and Labels

Posted on April 8, 2010 ·

If you really think about it, there’s not much of a difference.  They are more or less the same.

Folders are a very old metaphor, as old as email and documents are.  Early email systems physically kept folders in separate files, and even when they were no longer separate files, basic functions like sort, search were limited within individual folders.  We got boxed in to physical folders.

The big break away from this, introduced by Gmail’s label concept was flat storage of email with only logical labels – but because labels were no longer physical containers, you could assign any item (email) to multiple folders.

The more traditional “folder-camp” was missing some of the good old attributes: drag-and-drop, nested folders (aka hierarchies)..etc – and lo and behold, little by little they all go it, the final step being the release of nested Gmail folders today.  Now tell me the difference between Folders and Labels.   They are one and the same, Labels are just more flexible Folders.

Actually, and to take this a few steps further, I’ve said before:

All folders are labels, but not all labels are folders.

But of course it’s all semantics … and I don’t want to quote my posts from a year ago … I suggest you read it (yes, shameless self-promo) because in the original post I laid out quite a few concepts for the improvement of folders / labels / tags .. whatever we call them.

I’m glad to see some of those concepts have become reality….

(P.S. Zoho – exclusive sponsors of CloudAve-  have been offering both folders and labels for a while in their Mail service, albeit kept separately.)

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

Filed Under: Personal Productivity, SaaS · Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,
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Strike for Your Beer

Posted on April 8, 2010 ·

ad_carlsberg Unlimited beer @ the workplace?  What’s more, all free?  Certainly not in the US…

But apparently it’s a “fundamental privilege” at the Carlsberg factory in Denmark. Now that management tried to limit the free flow of beer, 800 workers went on strike….

The warehouse and production workers in Denmark are rebelling against the company’s new alcohol policy, which allows them to drink beer only during lunch hours in the canteen. Previously, they could help themselves to beer throughout the day, from coolers placed around the work sites.

The only restriction was "that you could not be drunk at work. It was up to each and everyone to be responsible," company spokesman Jens Bekke said.

The stakes are high.. after all, we’re talking about access to “probably the best beer in the world”.

carlsberg_probably-the-best-_ad-campaign-3

Filed Under: Humor · Tagged: , , ,
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The Benioff Coup. I Almost Got it Right

Posted on April 7, 2010 ·

benioff reporter Watching Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff interview Mike Arrington @ Davos in January, I predicted the Big Marc was after a new job in media.  It all felt confirmed when Benioff launched a series of posts at TechCrunch (although I suspected a fellow XXXXX blogger wrote his posts).

But now it looks the other way around: Benioff stole TechCrunch contributor Steve Gillmor.

Strange.  But I could still be right.  Here’s my conspiracy theory: it’s a job swap.  Gillmor will soon take over as CEO while Big Marc will retire to his Hawaii Mansion to lazily edit TechCrunchIT.

Gartner probability: 0.01

(Yes, I know it’s not April Fool’s Day – that’s how I reacted to the TC post first.)

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

Filed Under: Blogging · Tagged: , , , , , ,
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So You Bought a JooJoo – How Will it be Serviced?

Posted on April 2, 2010 ·

I know, it’s crazy to talk about the JooJoo (formerly known as CrunchPad) a day before the iPad is released.  But the major gadget blogs do, having received a test unit – and that in itself is a bit of a PR coup for JooJoo.  They should enjoy it while it last.   Too bad it won’t turn into sales figures.  According to court documents, Fusion Garage has taken 90 pre-orders for their unit.  That is Ninety, not Ninety Thousand.

There are lots of comparisons, and without going into detail they all go like this:  for the same price as the entry-level iPad, the JooJoo comes with a bigger screen, Flash support, but clearly without the ecosystem and App Store Apple can offer.  Here’s what all these comparisons miss: where will you take it for service?

A $499 device is not a disposable gadget for most people, and guess what, it will inevitably fail.  All gadgets do.  Apple’s support is legendary, even though manufacturing quality id often questionable, Apple owners – fans walk in to an Apple store and walk out happily after full service in an hour. That’s how you turn customers into fans.  I recently had an amazing experience with Dell support (yes, I know, hard to believe) where they sent me a replacement unit for my sleek Vostro V13 before even asking me to return the defective one.

Now, how can you expect the same from a no-name company with uncertain financial background and a lawsuit to deal with?  The specs could be marvelous, but you have to ask yourself:  who you will trust for service: Apple or JooJoo?  And that’s why buying a JooJoo is a huge leap of faith.

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(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

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Competitors Rush to bring the Latest Timesinks to the Enterprise

Posted on April 1, 2010 ·

It’s nice to see competitors come together to bring the most popular timesinks productivity boosters to the Enterprise.

We’ve long been predicting Foursquare would soon hit the Enterprise, and no the wait is over, with Atlassian releasing Fourwalls.

fourwalls

There’s a lot we can learn from this app – otherwise how would I know that @barconati spends way too much time in the kitchen? (unless he is cooking a new Confluence soup).

Let’s not forget competition – how could archrival Socialtext leave this field to Atlassian?  No way… and there they are, releasing Chatroulette for the Enterprise.

A true revolution in Randomized Productivity Management (RPM) 🙂

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

Filed Under: Humor · Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,
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Dilbert on Web Design – and more

Posted on April 1, 2010 ·
Dilbert.com

Hm… I think I know which website they may be talking about:

No kidding… yes, I know it’s April Fools Day, but this is real – an accounting SaaS provider , no less.  I once speculated on a brave new business model: Ugly Service taking commissions from the sunglasses industry… but this is beyond imagination.  Ziki, the company I wrote about back then came to their senses – wonder how long it will take for Brightbooks to become … hm.. less bright? 

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

Filed Under: Humor, Startups · Tagged: , , , , , , ,
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