isabel wang

Courtastic is right!

Would you buy DialUpISP.com (the domain name, with no customers/equipment/etc attached) for $5K? That was its owner's asking price at yesterday's DomainFest auction (spotted via DomainNameNews). No takers.

Still, if you think *nobody* uses dialup any more, you'd be wrong. The US District Court does!. According to the Washington City Paper, jurors get free dialup access while they wait to be called! How awesome is that? The service (also no takers) will be replaced with wifi in the spring though.

Kind of ironic

I listed a bunch of old books on Amazon Marketplace. I like it better than eBay: there are no upfront costs, and all you have to do is set your price. No worrying about choosing the right auction format/duration/starting price, no wondering whether you should pay for upgrades to make the listing stand out...

I like the instant results, too: 7 books were sold in as many hours. While I was dropping them off at the post office, the branch manager commented that I must do a lot of business on eBay. She had no idea you can sell stuff on Amazon. At the other end, people will think the books' new owners bought them on eBay, too, thanks to the eBay logo on the postage labels I bought through PayPal.

Amazon does ask sellers to "prominently label package with the message, Your Amazon.com Marketplace Order". It also recommends looking up each buyer's 9 digit zip code; "they'll certainly appreciate you taking the extra minute". And don't forget your return address. And use metered postage!

In contrast, eBay/PayPal replaces all of these instructions (as well as Amazon's page of links to shipping providers) with an auto-generated printout - and looks popular even when Amazon's getting the business.

"Let's not sell the physical iron...."

I stayed up until 3am to finish reading It's Not Luck, a manufacturing thriller in which a fast-thinking manager races against the clock to save three ailing companies from disaster. Against all odds, he comes up with one miraculous solution after another for near-instant turnarounds. And he doesn't even wear a cape.

The third and final story about Pressure-Steam, Inc sounded oddly familiar - even though I don't even know what pressure steam is. Our hero asks his VP Sales what it takes to increase business. The answer, as expected, is to reduce prices. The boss nods in agreement. The economy is tough and prospects are under a lot of financial pressure. What else can we do to help them out?

The VP Sales doesn't have quite as much empathy for his customers. Those weasels! "If we listen to them, they'll try to put all their financial burden on us. You know that some of our clients want us to give them spare parts on consignment. Can you imagine such guts?"

But the boss seems curious rather than outraged, so he jokes that maybe the company should offer all equipment on consignment? As a matter of fact, if we want to be really popular... "Give them everything. The best would be if we own and run the customer's need for pressure steam for him. This is ridiculous!"

But it's not. In the end, the company is saved by "selling not the physical iron but the real thing that the client wants - where he wants it, when he needs it, in the amount that he needs".

It's Not Luck is the second in a series of Theory of Constraints books by Eliyahu Goldratt. I heard about them from Dmitri, who found out about them through Vladimir. They're a fun read - especially if you work at or do business with 3Tera or Amazon Web Services :)

Kerry vs Obama

Aaron went to Camp Obama a few weeks ago. He had volunteered for Kerry as well. He said he noticed a sharp contrast between the two campaigns.

Kerry was old school. His campaign had to do lists and canned messages, which were handed out to volunteers without regard to their backgrounds. Obama's people dedicated a good half of their volunteer training session to learning about each attendee. They asked each person to think about why they support Obama - and what kinds of audiences they'd feel most comfortable sharing their enthusiasm with.

Aaron thought Obama is making a deeper, longer term investment in his supporters - which is really smart. When you ask for X hours of someone's time to help put up pre-made signs or read off telemarketing scripts, each volunteer means no more to you than just another undifferentiated source of labor. No one is put to their highest and best use.

But when you engage someone on a personal level and involve them in coming up with ways to communicate your message, you get to make use of their knowledge and tap into their contact network. Also importantly, you win a real convert who will internalize your message as their own.

I've been thinking a lot about Kerry vs Obama, especially when I talk to any kind of salesperson. It seems most sales organizations are run like the Kerry campaign. Every new hire is taught to read from the same script. Wouldn't their companies be better off if they did Camp Obama style sales training?

The one-way web, or Microsoft Office vs the Internet

A friend of a friend who's organizing a hike made a route map in Google Maps. He then took a screen shot, put the image on a PowerPoint slide, and attached the file to his email invite. Wouldn't it have been easier to leave the map online and give out the URL? More convenient for recipients, too, to be able to zoom in/out on the map.

David will point out that not everyone feels comfortable publishing their whereabouts for the whole world to see, but I don't think Map Guy's selective use of the web was driven by privacy concerns. Instead, for him and many, many others, the Internet is more readily accepted as an information source than authoring tool.

A while back, for instance, I did some freelance writing for an ad agency. I started the project in Google Docs, and my contact and I worked on it together over the web. In the end, he asked for the document in Word, so he could "format it for production". The text was destined for someone's website though, and (as so many of my non-tech friends have complained) Word formatting isn't always consistently transferable into content management systems.

Non-tech folks aren't the only ones under the Microsoft Office spell. I've gotten more Excel spreadsheets than I can count from people who (a) are in the business of selling online storage and (b) agree they'd be better off if the info were kept in an online database. But I guess Word/Excel/PowerPoint create the magical feeling of having composed an actual document. And somehow users choose this sense of completion over productivity and convenience.

It doesn't have to be this way, does it? I think the first step towards widespread SaaS adoption is helping people shake off their irrational MS Office dependence.

Dogs, cats and SaaS

I've been terrorizing friends, relatives, stores I shop at, etc, trying to convince them to do more online. I can't help it when I see someone collect event RSVPs by phone or manage group schedules using printed forms.

Last week I told Jeff that I feel like I spent the last decade in a bubble. People in the outside world have so much less contact with technology than I realized. I'm still trying to digest his response - that yes, people spend much more money on their pets.

Because I've also been meeting a lot of soon-to-be pet owners. While volunteering at the animal shelter, I've noticed there tends to be clear dividing lines between dog people and cat people, not to mention fans of Beagles vs Poodles, Boxers vs Labs, etc. I was surprised when a woman spent ages gazing at a ferocious Pomeranian with matted hair. She wanted a Pomeranian; she's always been a Pomeranian person.

Maybe the same kind of self-identification explains why my friend Tara was initially hesitant to post photos on the Flickr account I set up for her non-profit? She said she's just not a social networking person. But since she does see herself as a media person, Flickr/YouTube/etc became acceptable tools after I brought up Richard Rosenblatt's notion of ChannelMe.

My mom, too, put off building a website for her research group until I signed her up for TypePad. She insisted that HTML = computer programming and she's not a computer person. I reminded her that back in 1990, she was one of the first professors at her university to get on their email system - via Gnus/Emacs! We aren't always rational in choosing labels for ourselves.

I guess the moral of the story is, people *don't* want easy, affordable technology solutions. Or dogs. They won't adopt what they can't relate to, no matter how many seemingly logical reasons you give them. Last Saturday I took a class on improving shelter dogs' communication skills. Could the same tricks improve adoption rates for technology tools? Maybe I'll find out once I try them out.

Sharecropping the long tail, for real

My mom was telling me about a Taiwanese ex-tech-exec. Weary of city life, he packed up and moved back to the family farm. There he came up with an unusual business model for entering the chic but not always profitable local/organic produce market.

He set up a website where he offered parcels of land for lease. Tenants get to decide what to plant; they also have the option to tend to their own crops, or outsource as much work as they'd like. Some spend many hours each day on the farm. Others sit back and wait for emailed photos. Most visit once in a while with friends and relatives in tow. That's my farm, they'd say.

Not all tenant-farmers succeed. Some harvest only a handful of fruits or vegetables, or end up empty-handed. But they're in it mostly for the experience anyhow. The farm owner, on the other hand, makes money either way - with no worries about whether his crops will survive natural disasters, how his produce will be priced by the market, what government subsidies he's eligible for, etc.

Reminds me of TrendWatching.com's notion of the "experience economy". Business is no longer defined by marketing products and services based on their usefulness. Instead, it's all about Curated Consumption for Trysumers eager for Status Lifestyles.  (These people are such masters are coining catchy phrases!)

Because time is not infinite...

I keep replaying my conversation with Bert last week-

Bert: We're putting up a website for Vlad...
Me: (Nod)
Bert: because he had an a brain aneurysm.
Me: A what?
Bert: A brain aneurysm.
Me: What is that - and is he ok?
Bert: He passed away.

It took a very long while before I was able to understand the news. It doesn't seem possible that Vlad could be gone. As Bert said, you can't help expecting him to walk through the door. You can practically feel the energy he brings into the room.

Just days before, Vlad reassured me that my desire to step back and reevaluate my career is not unusual: "It is actually a normal thing that happens to most of us in our thirties. All of a sudden, it hits you that life is passing very quickly... so you have the need to make sure you are doing the right things, because time is not infinite." Sadly, neither of us had any idea just how finite time would turn out to be.

Looking back at the interactions I was fortunately enough to have with Vlad, I'm certain that he did the right things - both as CEO of 3Tera and in everyday life. He lived passionately and joyfully. He was always bursting with enthusiasm for whatever's at hand. When the going got tough, he'd keep smiling his warm, infectious smile...

If you've ever met Vlad, I'm sure you know what I mean. Please leave a note on Vlad's log of memories. Thanks!!

Brave New World

1. A long, long time ago, a friend of a friend quit her job at a big name law firm, cashed out her 401(k), divorced her husband, got a tattoo and moved to Guatemala. She said she wanted a new life. The purple highlights I got this afternoon brought unexpected enlightenment; I'm starting to understand how she felt.

2. Vlad says he's seen it coming for a while, but the first sign I remember is Lance telling me in July that numerology-wise, I'm in a 9 year; a good time to prepare for new beginnings. A couple of weeks later I came across Anne's What Rinses You With Happiness post. Around the same time I had a long email exchange with Ramiel about the importance of doing work that's an offering from one's heart.

But it was my cat Sara's sudden illness that finally made me stop and think. While frantically shuttling her between neurologists and radiologists and internal medicine specialists, I realized how little relevance data centers and servers have to my real life. As her condition deteriorated, I decided to take a step back from the Internet infrastructure world - at which point she passed away.

I met Sara 10 years ago, while making the unlikely transition from investment banking into web hosting. So many adventures she's seen me through! As I bid her a sad goodbye, it's time, too, to get ready for what's next.

3. I'm planning to take a few months off to volunteer at the Washington Humane Society,  brush up on Chinese, re-learn Hindi... We all have wish lists that we set aside until we have enough money and more time. But as Anne wrote in another post, experiences are what make us feel rich. And as Sara's so unexpected demise shows, "more time" isn't something to be taken for granted.

I'm sorry this means I won't be blogging about tech stuff any more, or going to any tech conferences. Sorry because of all the friends I've made through these channels, but I hope we'll stay in touch!

4. When I wrote my ice harvest post last week, I felt like I've been going around in circles. I had made the same arguments before, in not very different words. I was disappointed in myself for having nothing new to say. It's time to set sail from Prospero's island; wish me luck!

links for 2007-08-22

• VentureBeat » Facebook debunked
  "Because news feeds are one of the best ways to reach out to users, expect a News Feed Optimization (NFO) industry to develop just like Search Engine Optimization (SEO)"
  (tags: newsfeeds)
• VMware Launches Professional Partners Program - Software - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness
  "For every dollar of VMware software licenses sold there are $5 to $8 in additional high-margin service, training, software and storage revenue opportunities"
  (tags: virtualization)