The Qwikster Debacle – What we can Learn from it

Nothing reminds you so quickly of the fact that even CEOs of major corporations are human than when they royally screw up.  When they come right out and admit it in short order, you really wind up dropping a lot of whatever agitation you feel at their six-or-seven-figure salary.  Suddenly you just want to forget it all, take them out somewhere and buy them a beer. Maybe I’m letting my nice-guy side show a bit here.  Some of the angriest Netflix refugees would surely say so.  That does, though, seem to be about where a lot of the Netflix community is after the cancellation of the fascinatingly wrong-headed disaster known as Qwikster. How did such a beloved company fall so far so fast?  And what do we have to learn from it?  Let’s go to the instant replay. The quick and dirty summary – and it’s both Following a July 2011 price hike that was huge and poorly received (even as price hikes go), Netflix made the decision to branch off its DVD business from its streaming business.  Netflix would still handle all streaming content.  The DVD side of their business would be split into a separate company called “Qwikster.”  A blog post from Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO , first apologized for the company’s bad communication, and then gave a brief summary of the coming changes. Despite the fact that there seemed a genuinely contrite tone in his post, reaction to the announcement was swift and toxic.  One user responded with the comment “I’m afraid your letter will go down as the oddest suicide note in history.”  Perhaps having seen it, Hastings, in turn, remarked three days later, “In Wyoming with 10 investors at a ranch/retreat. I think I might need a food taster.” The bad press and worse customer reaction piled on unmercifully.  Whatever reasons that there might have been for the change from an internal perspective, customers could see no immediate way that this benefited them, and a lot of ways that it didn’t.  Customers would have to keep two separate accounts with separate information.  When you rated movies on one service it wouldn’t show up on the other.  This just seemed to make everything more complicated for no good reason. This is the end Finally, not a month after the initial announcement, Netflix issued their surrender.  In a contrastingly curt note, Hastings announced that the changes would be scrapped.  User reaction to this was split.  Some were just so agitated by everything that had happened that they weren’t in the mood to applaud much of anything.  Others appreciated that the company was listening to their customers, admitting to an error, and changing course. What fallout will come from this whirlwind remains to be seen.  One minor unknown is the fate of by-mail video game rentals.  This was originally packaged as one of the few new benefits to Qwikster.  Whether or not it will still happen is undetermined

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The Qwikster Debacle – What we can Learn from it

A Comparison of Lesser-Known Tablet PCs

The tablet PC is where it’s at, and the computing world is reacting accordingly.  This means that in addition to the biggest names like the iPad and Kindle variants, a number of also-rans are jumping into the fray.  Our review explores some of the tablet alternatives that have received the most positive attention. Motorola Xoom The Motorola Xoom came out in February of 2001 and was considered one of the first major competitors to the iPad.  A primary reason for this was the introduction of Android 3.0, the Google-based operating system developed specifically for mobile and tablet devices.  Indeed, most of the early reviews of it highlighted the system’s efficient processing and ease of use.  Though benchmarking Androids suffers from inherent measurement problems, the Xoom typically scored high. What a difference a year makes, though.  The Android has become the new hot OS, available in more than three dozen different tablets.  This has caused the Xoom’s shine to wear off a bit.  Recent reviews of it aren’t nearly as glowing as ones from earlier in the year.  Given that the price hasn’t really come down and is still hovering at around $600 with a 2-year contract, it may have lost whatever edge it might have had. Looked at in a vacuum, though, it still seems a good piece of technology.  It has some odd design points, such as speakers and a power button in the back, and a docking station for video output.  It also includes an inclinometer, accelerometer, magnetometer and barometer!  In terms of computing power and usability, it still seems like a solid selection, and one that the market continues to embrace. T-Mobile G-Slate The G-Slate was next on the Android parade.  That seems to have opened up the floodgates, as a slew of other tables subsequently jumped on this new OS.  This was good for the G-Slate, since at the time the lack of a large application library was one of its down sides.  The price of $530 with a 2-year contract didn’t help matters, though T-Mobile apparently took this criticism to heart, as it’s now available for $299 with the same deal. As for the tablet’s specifications, the new feature used to attempt differentiation from other tablets is a pair of 3D cameras on the tablet’s back.  This produces an old-style dual-color image, and purchase of the tablet comes with a pair of red/cyan glasses.  Reviews of this feature were lukewarm. Overall, counting in physical and technical aspects, the G-Slate was at the time considered a major contender, with reasonably fast surfing, few bugs and comfortable handling.  User reviews on the whole since its release have been moderately positive, and support for it appears to still be going strong

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A Comparison of Lesser-Known Tablet PCs

How to Find a Good Gaming Server Host, and Keep Them

It’s time for you to go pro.  No, we don’t mean playing World of Warcraft for money, though we couldn’t fault anyone who did.  We mean running your own gaming server.  You’ve got some game that you want to dedicate your own machine to, and you want it done right. This means that you can’t settle for it being on your home machine: it’s good to have it the server right in front of you, but you don’t have the resources to make sure that, for example, the power always stays on, or the network never, ever hiccups.  You also wouldn’t mind an expert at the wheels if something seriously goes wrong. Where to begin? In a literal sense that is the first question you want to ask.  Before you go anywhere with any prospective host, you need to ask them whether or not they will host this kind of server.  Even if you are on your own machine, some hosts won’t allow this for reasons ranging from network stability to security.  Contact them and get a solid answer.  Make sure you get a guarantee that they will try to give you warning if, for some reason, they can no longer host you. The next thing you want to do is get your own machine.  For this type of service even a Virtual Private Server isn’t good enough.  You run the possibility of using resources like mad, to the point that you shouldn’t be surprised if you need more than one machine.   For the most part forget about using any type of cloud services as well.  Even if you’re permitted to, you run the risk of racking up a fortune in service-hour fees.  If you must use the cloud, keep it to something that you’re not going to use every few seconds, like nightly backups of data. Make sure that you hop your server up right from the start with all of the juice it will need.  Get your RAM , your dual or quad-core CPU , and whatever else you need.  Even if you choose to start low, make sure that you have room to expand easily. Finally, depending on a lot of factors related to your game’s popularity, you might want managed service.  This all depends, though, on precisely what “managed” means from them.  This brings us to the next point.

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How to Find a Good Gaming Server Host, and Keep Them

Google Dart – Ready or not, a new Language Arrives

When the king of search engines speaks, the tech world listens.  When it announces that it’s going to start speaking in a new language, though, the tech world gets a little concerned. Such is the story of Google Dart .  Early information about the new programming language was leaked a month ago.  What raised concerns in the IT world, though, was an internal memo stating that Google had the long term goal of using Dart to replace Javascript .  To a programmer, that’s not too far removed from hearing that someone has the long-term goal of replacing English. Google stepped back a bit and stated that there’s no reason that Javascript has to be headed to the trash bin.  In all fairness, what was posted was likely just optimism about its acceptance as opposed to antagonism against Javascript or anything else.  Given the programming world’s reaction, that’s a good thing.  Not only is Javascript largely considered to be thriving, but some feel that it is more relevant than ever. The only constant is change Nevertheless, Google has stated that there are problems with Javascript that are too ingrained in its design to be fixed from within.  Given its age (it was introduced when Bill Clinton was in his first term), it’s reasonable to suppose that a lot about it might not be keeping up with the times, especially given the recent explosion of portable viewing platforms. Moreover, Google is now about as famous for its alternate services like Google Earth as it is for its search engine.  Even a modest increase in efficiency in the programming back-ends used by these services alone would have a multiplier effect that’s hard to even calculate.  For the rest of the web, Google is helping the transition by releasing a compiler that will translate Dart code into Javascript for any browser or application that is not yet capable of running it. What are the goals of Dart? On their technical specifications sheet, Google outlines the following objectives for the Dart programming language: Create a programming language that is structured, yet flexible. Give Dart a “familiar and natural” feel.  Some have already noted its similarity to Javascript

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Google Dart – Ready or not, a new Language Arrives

A Preview of the AT&T Fab Phone Five

The number of competitors entering the phone market is increasing with breathtaking speed.  Making it clear that they have no intention of just letting the iPhone monopolize the market, AT&T this week revealed that it will be selling no less than 5 new Android phones .  We give you here a brief review of each of them. Motorola Atrix 2 The Motorola Atrix was well received upon its launch in January 2011.  The Atrix 2 doesn’t look to reinvent this new line, but it does sport a number of positive upgrades. What is the most important improvement is probably a matter of taste.  Ourselves, we loves us some graphics.  The Atrix 2 improves this in both its input and output.  The screen is increased to a crisp-looking 960

coLinux: can Linux and Windows co-exist?

The logo for Cooperative Linux , more popularly known as coLinux, sums up the attempted approach to the platform.  Placing the Windows logo and Linux penguin in opposite ends of the yin yang summarizes not just this software, but the problem it is attempting to address.  With a few UNIX, Macintosh and scattered other exceptions, the hosting world is torn between Windows and Linux.  This means that webmasters are similarly torn.  While the strong and weak points of each are well known, the bottom line is that whichever you prefer, there is an advantage to having each of them. Some users solve this with multiple machines: an answer doesn’t get much easier, but that’s certainly not the cheap route.  A bit more common is to have a dual-boot machine.  This presents its own problems, though, namely that you don’t want to have to be constantly rebooting just to switch back and forth between the two. A marriage made in … ? coLinux works by allowing the installation of a kernel on the host OS (usually some Windows variant, but it can be anything, so long as it sends certain types of operating data the installation needs to run).  Unlike other methods of virtualization, though, Linux doesn’t quite so much run “under” it as “down and across” from it. The term “cooperative” is meant to signify the fact that, once installed, the kernels of the Linux OS and host OS work together, communicating back and forth with each other as needed to share machine resources.  The Linux kernel accomplishes this by converting the two operating systems into equal coroutines. However, in order to work properly, especially since most hardware isn’t set to handle talking to two different masters in two different languages at once, the host OS still holds instructive sway.  So those two coroutines are still slaves to it, and any Linux hardware requests get sent through it. Does it work? For the most part, it does.  Our surveying of both different review web sites and coLinux’s own FAQ seem to indicate that it does most of what you need it to do.  This is a major piece of software though: with everything that a modern computer is capable of doing, something this complex is bound to have areas of deficiencies.  Here are some of the biggest problems reported: Problem #1 – Multiple CPUs aren’t supported The one that is probably most relevant given current technological trends.  If your machine has more than one processor, then it appears coLinux can run, if you only give it access to one of the cores.  This may be tricky, though, and could introduce some of its own problems.  No better solution to this from coLinux’s home site is given.

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coLinux: can Linux and Windows co-exist?

What you Really Bought your iPad for – The Best Free Games

All right, you win.  We give in.  Yes, you’re interested in browser standards and security protocol and upgrades to scripting languages and all of that.  You’re also interested in blowing up pigs with a group of cheesed off birds.  Who isn’t? We’re going to take a time out today from our usual serious discussion of what is new in the wacky world of web hosting and computer tech and talk about the important stuff: getting high scores.  Here are some of our favorite iPad time wasters. Angry Birds We’re going into this article under the assumption that you are behind the times on simple PC and tablet games.  For this opening, we have to.  Angry Birds has taken the browser gaming world by storm.  With more than a 1/3 billion downloads in total, it has been called “the largest mobile app success the world has seen so far.” You are a bird.  You are angry.  You are angry because your eggs have been stolen by some particularly rude pigs.  You are going to show them a lesson by launching yourself by slingshot into their house of walls, bricks, and other miscellaneous construction material.  If you can kill them all somehow (falling, crushing them under a wall, blowing them up, etc.), you move on.  The game has already spawned the “Seasons” and “Rio” sequels, with “Magic” coming out soon. Doodle God This just might be one of the most zen games ever made.  You’ve been upgraded from bird to God in this one.  Your goal is to make the world.  Your supplies are the 4 elements.  But wait: if you combine fire and earth, you make lava!  Now, what can you combine with lava?  Not all combinations do something interesting, though, so you need to think through your alchemy.  If you get stuck, a hint is provided to you after a certain amount of time. Now God can’t exactly have all the fun, can he?  Doodle Devil lets him have his due.  Other Doodle God sequels include one that apparently has you saving the princess (don’t all games eventually come down to that?) and Doodle Farm, which is on the way. Plants vs. Zombies If you somehow managed to miss this one you’re in for a true undead delight.  Your house is under attack.  You are ready with your defensive stockpile of … plants.  A peashooter takes out the first wave.

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What you Really Bought your iPad for – The Best Free Games

Exploring The Social Networking World

Facebook , Twitter , and probably soon Google+ , get most of the analysis of the social networking world.  With that comes most of the attention of advertisers.  This is the billion-user World Wide Web, though.  For every bar that all the cool kids are hanging out at, there are plenty of local bars near them with people spending money the same as anyone else. These local hangouts, though, can often be a little less friendly to marketing sharks.  Let’s face it, too: you’re not interested in being one.  You just want to advertise your services to people who might honestly be interested.  Even the local dives have ads posted in them.  To do so simply requires that you understand the scene, and treat it with respect. So let’s drop the metaphor and look at some of the smaller but still popular social networking sites.  For our purposes we are going to focus on native English sites that mostly have at least 1 million users.  If you can speak other languages then there are many very large ones that represent good alternate markets. CafeMom CafeMom has been growing tremendously, and is on the verge of breaking through “niche” status to become one of the web’s bigger players.  An outgrowth of ClubMom, this social networking site panders to the moms who need an outlet that they can share with other moms (men are specifically barred from registering).  General socializing happens here, but also advice and support for just about every mothering need out there. What the advertiser should know : CafeMom is very advertiser friendly.  If you are offering a physical product of some kind, you should consider sending free samples: this is one of the draws the site uses to get people to register.  Remember that the goal of this site is to make the lives of the mothers there easier.  Make sure that whatever you are advertising is geared towards that, even if indirectly. Care2 It’s a sign of how huge the World Wide Web has become that a site with 14 million users is considered 2nd-tier.  Care2 hasn’t rushed to growth, but has been slowly building their user base since 1998.  The reason is that this is not a site that puts profits first.  Care2 is a social networking site for activists.  It allows individuals to work with each other, discuss issues, and most importantly find concrete ways to channel their energies into effective social change. What the advertiser should know : Care2 takes their commitment to social values seriously.  This includes their approach to advertisements.  They have on their site a long explanation of what their advertising principles are.  Read it.  Make sure you can convince them that you will enhance their site, not just draw from it

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Exploring The Social Networking World

The BlackBerry outage – How Critical Was the Failure?

Was it just a few years ago that BlackBerry got the kind of endorsement that marketers dream at night of?  Then-candidate for President Barack Obama revealed that even he had fallen for the allure of the “Crackberry.”  Estimates are that the company made another $25-$50 million just on that word alone.  There had to have been some legendary parties when that news came out. Since then the BlackBerry’s fortunes haven’t been much better than Obama’s.  It was already struggling to maintain relevance before this week.  Then the Great BlackBerry Outage hit.  Word started coming in from Europe, the Middle East and Africa that users’ messages and emails weren’t going out.   Research In Motion (RIM), makers of the BlackBerry OS, acknowledged the problem and pinpointed its source, but were not able to stop users in Canada and US from getting hit next as well. What got hit hardest, though, was the reputation of the BlackBerry itself.  Now with a tablet and smart phone world that is bursting with alternatives, the question comes: is it time to move on from the BlackBerry, or is this just a series of nasty bumps that loyal users will be rewarded for seeing them through? Putting the outage into context This wasn’t the greatest year for BlackBerry to start out.  What was once their market to lose is now the market they’re starting to lose.  While 2010 sales were strong, the iPad series alone seized a sizable chunk of the BlackBerry’s user share.  These devices brought with them a parade of competitors that further squeezed the former king of portable devices into a defensive corner. To try to keep up with the iJones’s, BlackBerry is attempting to reposition itself with its own Playbook tablet.  Supplanting the BlackBerry OS in the new device will be QNX , a Unix-based operating system that BlackBerry says will take over its handheld market as well as of the BlackBerry 8.  RIM is supporting all of these changes with a developer conference next week.  A feeling of “betting the farm” is setting in with all of this, and with some of the accompanying headlines, there is a growing concern that this may not be a winning bet. The technical side Let’s get away from economic commentary and examine the actual problem.  Not much information has been released just yet.  What we do know is that within RIM’s infrastructure a core switch failed.  This happens all the time: what usually doesn’t happen is redundant backup systems not kicking in like expected.  RIM routes all of its customer traffic through BlackBerry servers.  This centralization provides a high level of security, one of the BlackBerry line’s main selling points.  You don’t exactly want the president’s emails peeked at.   It also creates a single point of failure.  Even with this single point having its own backups within it, it proved to be too much of a technical bottleneck. Once the breakdown occurred, a spectacular backlog of data started to pile up.  It’s believed that this is why the problem eventually spread to the Americas, though no solid information has confirmed this.  As of this writing the problem appears to be subsiding, but this is also not confirmed.  Research In Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis posted a 2-minute video apologizing for the outage.  He explained in it that he wished he had more information, but that he would continue to communicate as the problem got resolved.  It was a honest, honorable response to the situation that offered no excuses, but that simultaneously confirmed that the problem was serious. A reminder about vulnerability There is one quick lesson we can get from this incident.  Without making any judgments on how understandable an error this was, we can perhaps take this as a reminder that even today, with every attempt in the world to provide security and redundancy, outages can and will still happen.

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The BlackBerry outage – How Critical Was the Failure?

The BlackBerry outage – How Critical Was the Failure?

Was it just a few years ago that BlackBerry got the kind of endorsement that marketers dream at night of?  Then-candidate for President Barack Obama revealed that even he had fallen for the allure of the “Crackberry.”  Estimates are that the company made another $25-$50 million just on that word alone.  There had to have been some legendary parties when that news came out. Since then the BlackBerry’s fortunes haven’t been much better than Obama’s.  It was already struggling to maintain relevance before this week.  Then the Great BlackBerry Outage hit.  Word started coming in from Europe, the Middle East and Africa that users’ messages and emails weren’t going out.   Research In Motion (RIM), makers of the BlackBerry OS, acknowledged the problem and pinpointed its source, but were not able to stop users in Canada and US from getting hit next as well. What got hit hardest, though, was the reputation of the BlackBerry itself.  Now with a tablet and smart phone world that is bursting with alternatives, the question comes: is it time to move on from the BlackBerry, or is this just a series of nasty bumps that loyal users will be rewarded for seeing them through? Putting the outage into context This wasn’t the greatest year for BlackBerry to start out.  What was once their market to lose is now the market they’re starting to lose.  While 2010 sales were strong, the iPad series alone seized a sizable chunk of the BlackBerry’s user share.  These devices brought with them a parade of competitors that further squeezed the former king of portable devices into a defensive corner. To try to keep up with the iJones’s, BlackBerry is attempting to reposition itself with its own Playbook tablet.  Supplanting the BlackBerry OS in the new device will be QNX , a Unix-based operating system that BlackBerry says will take over its handheld market as well as of the BlackBerry 8.  RIM is supporting all of these changes with a developer conference next week.  A feeling of “betting the farm” is setting in with all of this, and with some of the accompanying headlines, there is a growing concern that this may not be a winning bet. The technical side Let’s get away from economic commentary and examine the actual problem.  Not much information has been released just yet.  What we do know is that within RIM’s infrastructure a core switch failed.  This happens all the time: what usually doesn’t happen is redundant backup systems not kicking in like expected.  RIM routes all of its customer traffic through BlackBerry servers.  This centralization provides a high level of security, one of the BlackBerry line’s main selling points.  You don’t exactly want the president’s emails peeked at.   It also creates a single point of failure.  Even with this single point having its own backups within it, it proved to be too much of a technical bottleneck. Once the breakdown occurred, a spectacular backlog of data started to pile up.  It’s believed that this is why the problem eventually spread to the Americas, though no solid information has confirmed this.  As of this writing the problem appears to be subsiding, but this is also not confirmed.  Research In Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis posted a 2-minute video apologizing for the outage.  He explained in it that he wished he had more information, but that he would continue to communicate as the problem got resolved.  It was a honest, honorable response to the situation that offered no excuses, but that simultaneously confirmed that the problem was serious.

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The BlackBerry outage – How Critical Was the Failure?

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