Business
The Unsustainable Pattern of Phenomenal Growth
Feb 8th
This post is actually a bit late for me. It’s something I’ve been talking about with friends, family, and colleagues for quite some time now but just haven’t gotten around to putting it into words. Well, I will procrastinate no longer.
I’m sure we have all come to the conclusion now that phenomenal growth, year after year, is unsustainable. It is simply unfeasible for a business, country, or anything else to continue to have double digit growth year after year and not have some sort of meltdown. While the problems that plague our economy are quite complex, one of the basic weak points in its failure is that plans were made only for continued expansion, and no one ever thought to plan for contraction.
It wasn’t just modest expansion either – no, we collectively as an economy planned for big expansion. The future was so bright that we had to wear those proverbial shades just to manage to walk out the door in the morning. People would always need our services, and markets would always be expanding. The thought that things could ever go backwards completely seemed to slip our collective minds.
Then we awoke from this dream-like state. We now realize that things can’t go up forever, and like Newton discovered almost 400 years ago, what comes up, must come down.
Companies, like ours, that lived within its means, didn’t take on substantial debt, and stuck to single digit year after year expansion just might have the fortitude to weather this storm. Companies and individuals that lived beyond their means, bought more than they could ever hope to afford, are in trouble. For years I told colleagues that slow growth was best and patient, simple business principals with low-cost but sensible means of self-sustainable would be the way to go. A lot of people agreed with me, but in general that business model was thrown out the window several decades ago.
Now I don’t want any of this to sound like an “I told you so”, because its not. But if any of what I’m saying seems to come off as that, then it’s probably repressed frustration from years of hearing about how a company like ours would never become big time because we weren’t outsourcing and taking on a huge debt load or investors to grow 30-50% year over year. Both directly and indirectly, I was told, “You’re too small”. Well, so we were. Big deal!
Now being small and agile seems to be an advantage. We’re not exposed to complex debt instruments or nervous investors. Sure, some of our clients are, and we’ll invariably suffer in this depression recession, but I don’t think we’ll be in such dire straits that many firms twice or three times our size will be.
That said, there’s no way to know what the future holds. We are all in for a rough ride for sure, but one thing is for certain: The pattern of unsustainable growth is simply not an option anymore. If you want to grow as a business or even an individual, you have to work to make it happen, prove why it should happen, and be able to back that up with the need for it to happen. The economics of my grandparents and their parents are back, and this is a good thing.
The 80/20 Rule on Credit Card Security
Aug 2nd
Our web hosting company, OCS Solutions, like any other hosting company, has to deal with one of the highest rate of fraud orders in business. For some reason, web hosts are targeted more often than most other types of vendors.
Because of this, we often require new customers from overseas to fax or securely send us a copy of the front and back of their credit card. While most of them are used to this policy (we are not the only ones that do this, many online merchants now require this), some are not, and it can cause quite an uproar.
Ironically, asking for a photocopy of the front and back of a credit card is no different than handing a credit card to your waiter or at a convenience store. You're proving you have the card in your physical possession. But, when conducting online commerce, most people are actually more cautious than they would be in conducting real world transactions, where the opportunities for fraudsters and criminals are actually greater. It's a classic manifestation of the 80/20 rule, putting 80 percent of effort into securing something that is likely 20 percent of the threat.
I'm not saying that there aren't security risks in online transactions, because there are. Consider this though – most people wouldn't order from a site that didn't have SSL (i.e. https://), but give their credit card number freely over a cordless phone that can easily be listened to with over the counter supplies and little to no expertise. Ironically, it's considerably harder to “listen in” on a non-secure web connection than it is to tap a phone.
So when I see someone have a problem with sending in this sort of verification, I do understand where the fear comes from, but am puzzled as to society's consistent misapplication of security. One customer called their bank and the representative said that it 'sounded suspicious' and recommended them not to do it. They said that this policy made it sound like we had a “credit card copying facility” behind the scenes. That same customer would not have been able to order from many online retailers now that require this proof.
Unfortunately, these myths make honest retailers trying to avoid getting screwed by credit card fraud and protect their own security look like xenophobic paranoids.
Amazon S3 Outage
Jul 20th
Starting at roughly 11 AM Central Daylight Time, Amazon's S3 service went down and has been down ever since, even at the time of this writing. This 6+ hour outage is the latest in a string of outages that have plagued Amazon's Web Services since their initial offering.
The outage has affected Blingee, which we provide services for, in addition to other popular online services like Twitter, Second Life, Basecamp, and more.
This outage has seriously weakened our confidence in Amazon's Web Services. A provider of this size should not have these kinds of outages. I will be eagerly awaiting a detailed explanation. Our customers spend quite a bit of money with Amazon, and if I'm going to recommend something, I want it to be a good service. Unfortunately, right now, I can't say that Amazon's Web Services are.
Please Google, Add a Task List to Google Calendar
May 14th
Google Calendar has been out now for over 2 years.
In that time, I have been a vocal advocate for a task-list feature to be added to Google Calendar, and I'm not alone.
Back when I used to use Outlook, I used the task list extensively. While most of that has been replaced by things like Unfuddle for my software projects and a paper notebook I carry around for notes, I really miss having a task list on my computer now that I use Gmail instead of Outlook.
Shortly after its release, ZDNet speculated on Google adding a task list to its Calendar product, and even found pieces of code in it that seemed to indicate one was in the works, but we're still 2 years out from that and no progress has been made. Many improvements have been added, like little weather icons, public events, Outlook sync, etc., but not one mention in Google's Calendar blog about the addition of, or even plans to add it.
Having a task list just makes sense. Sure you can create events on a calendar and then set reminders, but that's not really a clean way to do it. You can also add the task-list widget to iGoogle, but I don't use iGoogle. Even if I did, I'd like that in my calendar, not on my start page.
Please Google, add a task list!
Network Solutions Shenanigans
Mar 1st
I felt this story was so important for anyone who has ever searched for or bought a domain to read that I'm posting about it here as well:
Ahead of the Curve
May 24th
I had an interesting e-mail conversation with my good friend Ted Newkirk about Web 2.0 buzzwords like podcasting, RSS, and other related terms. If you're into technology and follow its trends and advancements, you know these words well. So well in fact that for some people they've become parts of their daily life.
If you're reading this post, chances are you're one of those people who read blogs, listen to podcasts, or know about (and possibly use) RSS. What's easy to forget is that we make up a slim minority of Internet users, and it's important that we keep that perspective in mind.
I hear colleagues in my field say things all the time like “everyone uses RSS” and “of course they'll listen to a podcast”, when in reality, they are only talking about 1-3% of Internet users in general. This isn't to say this small portion is better, it's just different.
The vast majority of Internet users communicate through e-mail almost exclusively and do not use social networking tools or web 2.0 technologies in their daily life. Ted illustrated this point well with this comment:
I watch about 3 hours a week of specialized programming related to business, politics, or Las Vegas (or a combination of the three). This doesn't include podcasts. I'm talking about actual TV shows. It dawned on me that if I just listened to them as a podcast, I could get through them much faster and easier. With TV, you have to be around a TV even if you are just basically listening to the show. Even if you tape it and watch it later, you have to be around the TV.
Naturally, I figured that each of these shows would have a podcast. They are popular shows. Guess what… none of them did. I was amazed. It kind of reminded me that the stuff we take for granted as everyday stuff is ahead of the curve for most people.
What I take from this, and what I think is the most important part of this observation from Ted, is that while it's fine to live in the future and use these exciting new technologies, if you're designing Web 2.0 technologies or thinking about implementing them in your website, it's important to remember that only a small portion of people are using these things. Even though some of these concepts like podcasting and RSS have been around for several years, the general public isn't there yet. To assume that “everyone will use it” or even that they will know how is a mistake.
That said, don't let that stop you from implimenting things. Technology doesn't advance without people to advance it. But true innovation is born out of noticing what people need and providing it for them, not deploying new advancements just for the sake of having them.