It's been a while since I've done any geek stuff on my blog, so I thought I'd announce a few things. 1) I just install Ubuntu on my desktop PC at home. I'm looking to just play around with Linux again, since I'm kind of bored with Windows. 2) My dad found an old iMac G3 this weekend at a garage sale for $10 and bought it for me. So now I have this really OLD iMac sitting on my desk. It's running OX 9.5. It's quaint, but not really usable so I don't think it's going to stay long, however; it did get me thinking... perhaps I could purchase a 20" G5, used, and put that on my desk. That would give me three different operating environments to play with simultaneously, how cool would that be?
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Don't Put This In Your LinkedIn Profile - From Gizmodo
How Apple Lost the Next iPhone
The Gourmet Haus Staudt. A nice place to enjoy good German lagers. And if you are an Apple Software Engineer named Gray Powell, it's also a nice place to make the honest mistake of losing the next-generation iPhone. UPDATED
Gray Powell—a North Carolina State University 2006 graduate and talented amateur photographer—is an Apple Software Engineer working on the iPhone Baseband Software, the little program that enables the iPhone to make calls. A dream job for a talented engineer like Powell, an Apple fan who always wanted to meet Steve Jobs.
On the night of March 18, he was enjoying the fine imported ales at Gourmet Haus Staudt, a nice German beer garden in Redwood City, California. He was happy. [UPDATED] After all, it was his birthday. He was turning 27 that very same day, and he was celebrating. The place was great. The beer was excellent. "I underestimated how good German beer is," he typed into the next-generation iPhone he was testing on the field, cleverly disguised as an iPhone 3GS. It was his last Facebook update from the secret iPhone. It was the last time he ever saw the iPhone, right before he abandoned it on bar stool, leaving to go home.
It a simple, honest mistake in the middle of celebration. Something that anyone, from Steve Jobs to Jonathan Ive, could have done. Knowing how ferocious and ruthless Apple is about product leaks, those beers may have turned out to be the bitterest of his life.
(Almost) Impenetrable Security
Until now, Apple's legendary security has always worked perfectly. Perhaps there was a blurry factory photo here, or some last-minute information strategically whispered to some friendly media there. But when it comes to the big stuff, everything is airtight. At their Cupertino campus, any gadget or computer that is worth protecting is behind armored doors, with security locks with codes that change every few minutes. Prototypes are bolted to desks. Hidden in these labs, hardware, software and industrial-design elves toil separately on the same devices, without really having the complete picture of the final product.
And hidden in every corner, the Apple secret police, a team of people with a single mission: To make sure nobody speaks. And if there's a leak, hunt down the traitor, and escort him out of the building. Using lockdowns and other fear tactics, these men in black are the last line of defense against any sneaky eyes. The Gran Jefe Steve trusts them to avoid Apple's worst nightmare: The leak of a strategic product that could cost them millions of dollars in free marketing promotion. One that would make them lose control of the product news cycle.
But the fact is that there's no perfect security. Not when humans are involved. Humans that can lose things. You know, like the next generation iPhone.
Lost and Found
Apple security's mighty walls fell on the midnight of Thursday, March 18. At that time, Powell was at Gourmet Haus Staudt, just 20 miles from the company's Infinite Loop headquarters, having his fun. Around him, other groups of people were sharing the jolly atmosphere, and plenty of the golden liquid.
The person who eventually ended up with the lost iPhone was sitting next to Powell. He was drinking with a friend too. He noticed Powell on the stool next to him but didn't think twice about him at the time. Not until Powell had already left the bar, and a random really drunk guy—who'd been sitting on the other side of Powell—returned from the bathroom to his own stool.
The Random Really Drunk Guy pointed at the iPhone sitting on the stool, the precious prototype left by the young Apple engineer.
"Hey man, is that your iPhone?" asked Random Really Drunk Guy.
"Hmmm, what?" replied the person who ended up with the iPhone. "No, no, it isn't mine."
"Ooooh, I guess it's your friend's then," referring to a friend who at the time was in the bathroom. "Here, take it," said the Random Really Drunk Guy, handing it to him. "You don't want to lose it." After that, the Random Really Drunk Guy also left the bar.
The person who ended up with the iPhone asked around, but nobody claimed it. He thought about that young guy sitting next to him, so he and his friend stayed there for some time, waiting. Powell never came back.
During that time, he played with it. It seemed like a normal iPhone. "I thought it was just an iPhone 3GS," he told me in a telephone interview. "It just looked like one. I tried the camera, but it crashed three times." The iPhone didn't seem to have any special features, just two bar codes stuck on its back: 8800601pex1 and N90_DVT_GE4X_0493. Next to the volume keys there was another sticker: iPhone SWE-L200221. Apart from that, just six pages of applications. One of them was Facebook. And there, on the Facebook screen, was the Apple engineer, Gray Powell.
Thinking about returning the phone the next day, he left. When he woke up after the hazy night, the phone was dead. Bricked remotely, through MobileMe, the service Apple provides to track and wipe out lost iPhones. It was only then that he realized that there was something strange that iPhone. The exterior didn't feel right and there was a camera on the front. After tinkering with it, he managed to open the fake 3GS.
There it was, a shiny thing, completely different from everything that came before.
He reached for a phone and called a lot of Apple numbers and tried to find someone who was at least willing to transfer his call to the right person, but no luck. No one took him seriously and all he got for his troubles was a ticket number.
He thought that eventually the ticket would move up high enough and that he would receive a call back, but his phone never rang. What should he be expected to do then? Walk into an Apple store and give the shiny, new device to a 20-year-old who might just end up selling it on eBay?
The Aftermath
Weeks later, Gizmodo got it for $5,000 in cash. At the time, we didn't know if it was the real thing or not. It didn't even get past the Apple logo screen. Once we saw it inside and out, however, there was no doubt about it. It was the real thing, so we started to work on documenting it before returning it to Apple. We had the phone, but we didn't know the owner. Later, we learnt about this story, but we didn't know for sure it was Powell's phone until today, when we contacted him via his phone.
Gray Powell: Hello?
John Herrman: Is this Gray?
G: Yeah.
J: Hi, this is John Herrman from Gizmodo.com.
G: Hey!
J: You work at Apple, right?
G: Um, I mean I can't really talk too much right now.
J: I understand. We have a device, and we think that maybe you misplaced it at a bar, and we would like to give it back.
G: Yeah, I forwarded your email [asking him if it was his iPhone], someone should be contacting you.
J: OK.
G: Can I send this phone number along?
J: [Contact information]
He sounded tired and broken. But at least he's alive, and apparently may still be working at Apple—as he should be. After all, it's just a stupid iPhone and mistakes can happen to everyone—Gray Powell, Phil Schiller, you, me, and Steve Jobs.
The only real mistake would be to fire Gray in the name of Apple's legendary impenetrable security, breached by the power of German beer and one single human error.
Additional reporting by John Herrman; extra thanks to Kyle VanHemert, Matt Buchanan, and Arianna Reiche
Update 2: I have added the bit on the $5,000 (in italics) and how we acquired the iPhone, as Gawker has disclosed to every media outlet that asked.
The Complete Lost iPhone Saga
To stay up to date on all things Gizmodo...
Send an email to Jesus Diaz, the author of this post, at jesus@gizmodo.com.
Your version of Internet Explorer is not supported. Please upgrade to the most recent version in order to view comments.Loading comments ...In order to view comments on gizmodo.com you need to enable JavaScript.
If you are using Firefox and NoScript addon, please mark gizmodo.com as trusted.
'); jQuery.cookie(_cn, _cn_d, { path: '/', expires: 365 } ); 
via feeds.gawker.com
Monday, April 19, 2010
Ning: Failures, Lessons and Six Alternatives
And in other news, Ning, the so-called "network of social networks" decided to manage itself out of business today by telling it's clients "f-you, pay me!" Not a very intelligent move on the part of a web 2.0 model business. The name of the game, guys, is ad revenues. And you get ad revenues by getting large volumes of traffic. Ning apparently doesn't have large volumes of traffic, so they rely on the customer to pay for everything. Personally I was never all tht impressed with Ning anyway, so it'll just end up on the social network pile like Friendster and AOL. Just in case you want to visit, I'm setting up the ITIL Sage Network over on socialgo.com, you should come check it out! http://itil.socialgo.com
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Let's not kid ourselves about how innovative we are.
This is just too cool! How close we are to this reality today... it's almost like someone was planning it the whole time.
Should the CEO stay out of technology?
Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.
George Colony (CEO of Forrester) offers some interesting insight he gained during a private dinner with 15 Chief Information Officer’s during the recent Forrester IT Forum in a post titled “CIO’s to CEO’s: Stay out of Tech“.
During this meeting, Colony and his team asked the CIO’s the following question:
How do you raise the tech IQ of your CEO?
The response from the attendees were surprising. Colony reports that the majority of the CIO’s he spoke with agreed that CEO’s should ’stay ouf of tech’. Colony provides three key statements from the participants:
1) “The CEO should trust IT to get it right.”
2) “CEOs are about making the company successful — not on the minutiae of tech.”
3) “The CEO is about results, not tech.”
These are interesting statements…and if you’ve been a CIO or around CIO’s for any length of time, you might agree.
But, like Mr Colony, and with the utmost respect to these 15 CIO’s Mr Colony spoke with, I disagree. Brian Blanchard provided a great response to these statements while trying to answer “Should CEO’s stay out of IT?” Rather than argue what Brian has already done a wonderful job of arguing, I’ll let you jump over and read his response…but an
An interesting piece from Blanchard’s response:
In today’s market, business leaders, much like the consumers they serve, understand the benefits and the risks of technology. In the digital age, these stakeholders often have the technical IQ required to partner with the IT organization to affect true innovation and produce sustainable business value. However, this requires the CIO to evolve. The CIO must open their team to partnerships that generate success and results. These new opportunities and partnerships require CIOs to make a paradigm shift away from types of statements made in your meetings.
Agreed…this is exactly what Gene and I have been saying for years and formalized in our Cutter IT Journal paper titled ”The Futureproof CIO” (shameless plug).
Rethinking the Question
Rather than rehash what Brian has said in response to the CIO’s statements, Let’s take a second to recast the basic question “Should the CEO stay out of technology?”
Let’s think about how this question would sound if we changed ’technology’ with other areas of the organization.
- Finance: Should the CEO be involved in Finance?
- Sales: Should the CEO stay out of Sales?
- Operations: Should the CEO stay out of Operations?
If you’re anything like me, you’d answer a big fat NO to all three questions. The CEO should NOT stay out of any of these areas. So why should they stay out of IT/Technology? They shouldn’t.
Now…the CEO shouldn’t necessarily be involved in the day-to-day operations of any of these areas but she has to know what’s happening and understand the basics of each aspect of the business.
The role of the CEO, as Colony states, is:
Tech is changing your customers, and your customers will change your company. It’s a dynamic that CEOs must wade into up to their hips — it can’t be left to marketing or to IT/BT. Only the CEO has the wide view to make the connections between external tech change and the company, and the power to ensure that the company responds in a way that benefits its customers.
While I disagree with the idea that “only the CEO ha the wide view to make the connections…”, I do agree with the overall premise. The role of the CEO today is to combine all the strengths of the organization into a cohesive strategy to move the company forward.
If the CEO were to ’stay out of technology’, an extremely vital piece of the overall strategy would be missing. The role of the CIO today should be to open up the IT/ Technology world to the rest of the organization so that all aspects of technology can be used to grow the business.
Today’s business IS technology. Even if your organization makes paper, your business revolves around technology. You’ve got technology in the manufacturing area, technology in the IT space and technology in the marketing/sales area.
The CEO needs to be as knowledgeable and involved in technology as in any other area of the business.
-->Tagged as: business, CIO, IT, Leadership, management, Technology
I've followed Eric's blog for several years. He has some fantastic insights. One thing I would say in response to this post... If the CEO is having to get into the IT area, then he doesn't have a very good CIO, and he certainly doesn't have a CIO he can trust. So if you can't trust your CIO to handle your IT initiatives and projects, why not get a new CIO?
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Baby's First Cubicle: The Most Depressing Toy Ever? [Bad Ideas]
Baby's First Cubicle: The Most Depressing Toy Ever?
It's all about expectation management, you see. If you make your kid think he can be president, he will grow up disappointed. Tell him he's headed for a life as an office drone and at least he'll be mentally prepared.
For a mere $2,500, daddy's little office drone gets all of this:
Furniture features:
* Flat desk area
* Left and Right built-in mouse pads
* Bench seat that fits two children and offers storage inside for supplies
* Two locking cabinet doors
* Computer wiring stores safely inside ventilated cabinet.
* Locking castors keep unit from rolling during use.Computer equipment features:
* Think Centre PC
* Internal DVD-ROM
* 1GB RAM (minimum)
* 160GB Hard Drive (minimum)
* 10/100 Ethernet
* Microsoft® Windows
* Sound Card and 2 External Speakers
* Surge protector
* 19" Widescreen Flat Panel LCD Monitor
* Custom Little Tikes Learning keyboard and Tiny Mouse (colors are subject to change without notice)Computer Warranty: 1-year parts and labor.
Pre-loaded educational software:* Millie's Math House®
* Sammy's Science House®
* Bailey's Book House®
* Trudy's Time and Place®
* Thinkin' Things®Boy, I really missed out on these 21st century toys when I was a kid! [Young Explorer via Dvice]
Send an email to Adam Frucci, the author of this post, at adam@gizmodo.com.
Your version of Internet Explorer is not supported. Please upgrade to the most recent version in order to view comments.Loading comments ...In order to view comments on gizmodo.com you need to enable JavaScript.
If you are using Firefox and NoScript addon, please mark gizmodo.com as trusted.
'); jQuery.cookie(_cn, _cn_d, { path: '/', expires: 365 } ); via feeds.gawker.com
Came across this on Gizmodo and thought it was pretty funny.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
