Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

“We’re certainly in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime set of economic conditions. The perspective I would bring is not one of recession, but the economy is resetting to a lower level of business and consumer spending based largely on reduced leverage in the economy. Our model is things go down and they reset. The economy shrinks and then it doesn’t rebound. It builds from a lower base effectively.”

–Steve Ballmer

Good old Skippy – just a tad smaller, while you pay the same.

Recently, the United Nations ruled that tasers are a form of torture. According to the UN’s Committee Against Torture, “The use of these weapons causes acute pain, constituting a form of torture.” And given the increasing number of taser disasters and deaths in the US and Canada, it was long due that someone took attention of this.

Now let’s think about this for a second. The moment you give a non-lethal weapon in the hands of someone, they are more likely to use it than a lethal weapon simply because it is non-lethal. And with everything else, you run the risk of abuse — when something is non-lethal, the abuse is likely to be more frequent.

For instance, a cop is less likely to shoot someone who is abusing him or her but a lot more likely to tase someone because he or she knows that the weapon is non-lethal and therefore, can be used a lot more frequently without (deadly) consequence. As a result, we have a lot of people who would otherwise not have used a gun use a taser.

So what does this mean for TASER International? I remember seeing a recent Wallstrip where they talked about how TASER International is trying to get into the regular consumer products industry.

One of the two points that they brought up was the potential for lawsuits when tasers start replacing the pepper-spray. It’s one thing for cops to use them — but it’s quite another when everybody and their brother starts using them. Imagine that frat party, with tasers thrown in for fun. Or imagine kids getting hold of them from their Mom’s handbag.

The other point was of course the NRA — they are perhaps one of the most powerful lobbies in this country, and having tasers replace guns in the home-protection market is probably not in the NRA’s best interests.

A quick look at TASR’s stocks tells us that they are a long way off from their 2004 high of $31.65, trading currently at $13.04. So, this UN ruling is probably not going to help them, either. After all, imagine a consumer product that’s deemed a torture device by the UN.

Of course, for all we know, it may have no bearing whatsoever on how the stock ends — everyone knows that cigarettes cause cancer, but that certainly hasn’t put a serious dent in tobacco sales around the world. Right?

Today, just about everything is being outsourced to external agencies. So why not outsource giving people the pink slip, right?

Apparently, that’s exactly what some people do. In an article titled Meet Rebecca. She’s Here to Fire You, Inc.com talks about the business of firing people.

These people can supposedly handle the paperwork to even performing the actual unpleasant act of talking to an employee. It’s an interesting, albeit dark, read.

I wonder what the statistics are on anti-depressant medications in this profession.

Someone at work today gave me a copy of John Bogle’s article on the need for Democracy in Corporate America.

While I don’t necessarily agree with everything that Mr. Bogle postulates, it most certainly is a rather interesting article. Worth a read.

Paul Kedrosky talks about an interesting NYT article on how hedge funds and private equities seem to change career options for people who might otherwise consider going for an MBA.

The interesting thing about this is the fact that I in fact do know several people who are at those cross-roads.

While being a quant-jock definitely has its advantages in terms of pay and big fat bonuses, it also tends to burn out a lot of people quite fast. On the other hand, all it takes is a few years on the market as a quant and you are set to do whatever you want a wee bit later. But does having that top B-school MBA really help you in those particular areas that you work on, as a quant? That is the more interesting question.

The other thing that came to my mind was this — to what extent does this apply to other areas, besides finance? In IT, going anything above a Solutions Architect (or its equivalent) with just a technology degree is rather hard, in most places. But are there other areas where an MBA does not particularly matter? Say, Biotech?

It would be interesting to see if there are similar patterns in other industries, besides finance.

Forbes/Starmine are out with their list of the top stock brokerage analysts (sell-side) from last year. Also included is their “rare-bird” list of analysts who not only successfully picked stocks but also accurately predicted profits.

For those interested, Forbes has also gives a brief overview of their methodology used for shortlisting and selection.

Among the top pickers, Atlantic Equities’ Chris Hickey and Stanford Group’s Erik Olbeter have software and IT in their portfolio while Wachovia Securities’ Jennifer Fritzsche and Janco Partners’ Donna Jaegar have wireless and telecom in theirs.

Surprisingly, none of the top earnings estimators seem to have software or IT in their portfolio. However, there were two that looked at wireless and telecom — Stifel Nicolaus’ Christopher King and UBS’ John Hodulik.

And oh, I expect the Cydonian to be fully shocked (or pissed – take one) at one of the companies the pickers have listed.

Yes, I am back to having multiple posts in a single blog entry — I figured that this is better than having several dozen smaller entries.

DemoCamp Cincinnati

Thursday evening was DemoCamp Cincinnati, which was quite fun. A bunch of folks showed up and we had a couple of talks, one of them by a new startup called Mercury Grove. They presented their neat product called Collab which was rather interesting. They seem to have some very interesting people working there, and I just found out that they have a blog, too.

Click to see more pictures from DemoCamp Cincinnati

Ubuntu Adventures on a Dell e1405

So, I decided to upgrade my Dell notebook from Dapper to Edgy Eft. I have a Dell e1405, which like all notebooks, has the most obscure devices you can ever find (and ergo, is the hardest to find device drivers for). Now, I could not get a lot of things to work on Dapper, so I figured that Edgy Eft would be better.

So I received an email today from Flickr telling me I would need to merge my Yahoo! account with my Flickr username, and that they have set a deadline for doing this. Apparently, if I did not, I will lose my Flickr account.

Now, Flickr is a great service. It rocks. It has a ton of cool features that people love and more importantly, it has a wonderful community. And I signed up for Flickr before they were a part of Yahoo!, so I have what’s called an “Old Skool” address.

But here is the problem – I am not a big fan of Yahoo!’s UI and nor am I a big fan of Yahoo!’s customer support. Secondly, my Yahoo! account tends to get a lot of spam, and sometimes I wonder if they even have a spam-blocker in place.

Ever since Yahoo! acquired Flickr, I knew that this was going to happen eventually. However, I just kept hoping that it would not, or that they would let the older members keep their accounts the way they are.

Sadly, that was not the case. Quite honestly, I am a little annoyed and upset at this incident. And as it turns out, so are the majority of “Old Skool” Flickr users.

Problems with merging accounts

So, as a Flickr (and an occasional Yahoo!) user, the following are a list of problems that I see with merging the two.

• Usability and convenience issues: You see, you are asking your original user-base (those that made you popular and and helped you become big) to do something that a large majority do not want to. This is like saying, “Oh thank you for being the first guys to help us out. To show our thanks, here, jump through a hoop, out of a plane and put these chains around your neck.”

• Signing up for a Yahoo! account: You see, a lot of Flickr users do not have a Yahoo! account. So, when you try merging without a Yahoo! account, you are asked to register for a new account. Not only that, it is usually hard to find a username that matches your Flickr name. In fact, it is almost impossible to find a Yahoo! username that you’d like because almost all of them are taken. So, you end up with an obscure Yahoo! username. And today, it is yet another username/password combination you will have to remember, one that you never asked for (and probably a complicated one at that, considering how hard it is to get a Yahoo! username of your choice).

• What if you have anothe Flickr account associated with your Yahoo! account?: If you have two Flickr accounts, one associated with your Yahoo! account and one from before, you cannot merge the two. So, I ended up deleting the Flickr account that was associated with my Yahoo! account and merged my regular one with the Yahoo! one. Now imagine if I had a few gigs of photographs — this would have been hell.

• Personal Information: As a lot of Flickr members have indicated, signing up for Yahoo! requires personal information. Sure, you can lie about it, but that’s not the point. Why are you being asked for something that you did not want to do in the first place? The way I see it, you are asking your existing customers to do something that is very clearly distasteful to them.

• Alienating a userbase: The userbase of Old Skool Flickr is from folks who have been using it for a while, the guys who helped make Flickr big. And this is the core group that Yahoo! is alienating with this move.

• Sharing of accounts: With Flickr, you could share your account with someone else, say a friend. But what if you had an existing Yahoo! account? Giving the keys to your Flickr account is one thing, giving the keys to your email account is something else.

User feedback — Listening to your users is important

Ideally, Flickr/Yahoo! should have consulted its userbase before this move. But that did not happen — a quick look at the forums and some of the messages there sums up the situation quite well.

“That’s really dumb. I don’t like yahoo and I don’t like my yahoo account. I don’t like anything about yahoo. I didn’t like it that yahoo bought flickr but I was fine with it as long as they didn’t mess with it. Well, now they have. They’re going to slowly destroy what makes this website great, just you wait. Flickr, why did you sell out to such capitalistic pigs? I take pride in being an old skool member. Furthermore, if it’s only 5% of us who still use our old logins then why not let us! If we really want to use yahoo mobile whatever then we’d have switched over by now! Now I have to create a yahoo account with all kinds of numbers because my name is already taken. Thanks!” — JPhilpson

“We signed up early on cause we believed in what Flickr was offering at the time, and the direction it was going in… There are many many other photo services out there, that we chose not to join cause we believed in the community of Flickr…

When Flickr ’sold out’ to Yahoo, they basically turned their backs on those of us that believed in them enough from the beginning to give them money to start/keep going…

The reason we are the minority around here is simple, Flickr forgot about those of us that have supported it from the beginning long ago and have been forcing Y!ID for new members ever since…It’s offensive to be told that we, the ones that helped support this site for so long, are now the reason everyone’s experience is getting worse…

Same rules apply on the Internet as do in real life… ‘Never forget where you came from…’ “– justj

“I’ve seen this before, with LaunchCast and mailing lists, which were great before Yahoo took over and they became unusable.

I’ve invested too much time in Flickr to risk all my work being lost by having to muck about with Yahoo mail.

I don’t want to worry about all my photos being deleted or losing my Flickr friends and all their photos. ” — jovike

(Ed: Incidentally, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that happens — I know several people (with paid Yahoo! e-mail accounts) whose mailboxes were empty one fine morning.)

“It’s pastures new for me. I’ll be letting all my accounts expire rather than put up with more Yahoo-based nonsense. Flickr is the new Starbucks.

Flickr is not the adventure playground it once was. The experimental, alternative vibe it had in the days before Yahoo is long gone. After the buyout was announced there was some question as to whether the new owners would kill the golden goose. It’s been a slow death, one accomplished through a thousand cuts. As jovike says above, the focus should be on the subscribers. But it isn’t. It’s because Yahoo have never had a good grasp of customer service.

My existing photos could live on in cyberspace, marooned but visible to anyone who wants to visit the museum. But the new Flickr would rather reclaim the trivial amount of server space that requires. So my legacy and those of other old timers will just disappear.

So much for posterity and cyber-heritage. And there’s still that old human rights record. And the censorship, both deliberate and accidental. The new Flickr is arbitrary about what it allows, and bumble-footed about fixing mistakes.

So it’s on to pastures new. Someone else will be doing interesting, user-focused photo projects. I can give a startup the benefit of the doubt. But when a company so big gets it so wrong, it’s time to put aside lingering affections and move on. Thanks for the good times. Thanks for the fish. Long Live Flickr.” — flickrthrope

“My wife and I currently share our flickr account. Can we each use our own ID to access our flickr account? Or will we have to share 1 yahoo ID?” — xftwitch

“How are they going to be processing our refunds? I have read enough bad things about them in this forum that I can’t in all good conscience stay with Yahoo. I honestly didn’t know alot of the privacy issues that were raised here. I’m not going to make any useless remarks about yahoo. I just want my money back. How do I do this?” — ceriess

“Having to translate an email/password page is a weak attempt at an excuse. It would be better to at least be honest and say hey, Yahoo bought us, they want this community linked in to their other services. They own us and that’s just the way it is. The sugar coating and fabrication of excuses is even worse than having to actually merge.” –Thomas Hawk

I could go on, but of all the posts, I was able to see very few (if any) that were even vaguely in favour of the switch.

One of the first lessons in usability, business or technology is that you should listen to your users. Yet, Flickr/Yahoo! very clearly did not. In fact, they went ahead and did something that was explicitly distasteful to their users, to the point that some of the pro users want to know if they can get a refund from their account. And others are linking to things such as “A Brief History of Yahoo! Acquisitions“.

And one wonders why Yahoo! is faltering.

It’s a mistake only when you refuse to correct it

Flickr has given its users a deadline, however there still is time for Yahoo! to stop and correct this, particularly considering the amount of negative user feedback that is being generated.

Flickr/Yahoo! still have the time to go back on this, but I doubt if they will. Given Yahoo!’s track record in such things, I really doubt anything will change. Some will stay, some will move on but Flickr has already made the first move of screwing over its users.

That cannot be a good thing. Secondly, lot of the Flickr users that are complaining are Pro members — this means that they are not just users, but they are customers.

Customer is King, and the King is not happy

Dear Yahoo! and Flickr,

The customer is king. Despite everything that you may believe, the customer determines whether or not you stay in business. And nobody is more important than those that helped you get where you are today. The least you can do is listen to them.

Go on, go on to the Flickr forums and read the posts. If you still do not care for what your users have to say, it is more than a tad unfortunate.

There is another company I know that actually listens to its users.