Being popular helps mask your mistakes
Google may be seen as top of its game but it has launched some real failures too.

I was having a discussion about us Brits, how we always knock success and act with jealousy, I told the story that in the US someone going past in a swanky car would get the “Next year that’ll be me” comment but in the UK its “Why does a bastard Ba****d like that get such a swanky car, and not me, that’s not fair”.

We just have a different view on life and don’t accept that’s a. its not fair and b. you have to work for success. Maybe that’s why we have such a poor youth employment record compared to other countries.

So this got me thinking, there is usually a love hate with Brands, at the moment everyone has a go at Blackberry and Microsoft, years ago it was IBM and Lotus, now Apple and Google can do no wrong – or can thay?

Everyone loves Google, except for those pesky funny looking street view cars a few years ago but do you realise that Goggle has had many failures along the way?

1. Google Answers
Google Answers was Google’s marketplace for knowledge. Users posted a question and the amount they were willing to pay for an answer, and then researchers would answer the question. The community was too small and the service could never compete with Yahoo’s answers service.


2. Google Buzz


Google Buzz was a social platform for sharing content that was incorporated into Gmail. Buzz met heavy criticism and raised numerous privacy issues among users. It was discontinued in December 2011.

3. Google Latitude

Google Latitude was a location-based app that allowed users to find some of their Gmail contacts by proximity. It failed mostly because it was creepy.


4. Nexus Q


The Nexus Q was Google’s multimedia player challenge to the Apple TV. The problem was that the product was $300 and it didn’t really do much. At least it looked cool.


5. Google Wave


Google Wave was a classic case of “over promise, under deliver.” Google touted it in glowing terms at launch, but it never really lived up to the hype. The product was confusing and it didn’t really have a clear value proposition.


6. Google TV


Google TV was a smart TV platform launched in 2010. The implementation was clumsy and the products were not well-received. It’s rumoured that Google TV could be re branded as Android TV.


7. iGoogle

iGoogle allowed users to created a customisable homepage with widgets such as weather and content feeds. The company initially announced they would migrate the social features in 2012.

“With our new focus on Google+, we will remove iGoogle’s social features on January 15, 2012. iGoogle itself, and non-social iGoogle applications, will stay as they are,” said Bradley Horowitz, then vice president of product.

As it turns out, the other features weren’t all that useful so Google canned iGoogle in November 2013


8. Knol

 This one I don’t even remember, Knol was Google’s challenge to Wikipedia. The site was plagued by plagiarism and poor sourcing, which ultimately led to its demise. Also, the concept of monetising knowledge was too strange


9. Web Accelerator


We disliked this when it arrived and we still don’t like Google Toolbars. Web Accelerator was a proxy server that sped up web surfing times by caching certain types of info. There were some privacy concerns and the product was buggy. It even kept users from watching YouTube videos

10. Lively


Another Google barely known. Lively was Google’s online 3D universe, similar to Second Life. Lively was too complex and didn’t offer enough customisation for users. It was barely six months old when Google killed it.


11. Google Print Ads

Yep, at one point Google started producing print ads in nearly 800 newspapers. It was Google running backwards and the revenue just wasn’t there.


12. Google Building Maker

Google Building Maker allowed users to make 3D models of buildings to be used in conjunction with Google Earth. Building Maker was too ambitious of a project and a community never developed around it, so the service was retired in 2013

There you have it, Googles lemons, or turkeys if you prefer. Every brand does it at least once, they might be good ideas but if the support form the user or buyer is not there then it will flop. Did I tell you that the IBM PS/2 was a brilliant computer concept, well it was and its architecture is still in use today in Mainframes. IBM went about selling them in such a way that they demonstrated that they couldn’t market free beer. 

21 things you really need to know  as XP goes “End of life” in 4 days

Einstein’s Secret to Amazing Problem Solving

(and 10 Specific Ways You Can Use It)

 

I have always had a soft spot for Einstein. He died at exactly the same time I was born and unknowingly, muntil recently,  I have been using his quotes all my life, That is sadly where our similarities end, Did I also ever tell you that I quote Sherlock Holmes too…………….

Einstein is quoted as having said that if he had one hour to save the world he would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution.

This quote does illustrate an important point: before jumping right into solving a problem, we should step back and invest time and effort to improve our understanding of it. Here are 10 strategies you can use to see problems from many different perspectives and master what is the most important step in problem solving: clearly defining the problem in the first place!

The Problem Is To Know What the Problem Is

The definition of the problem will be the focal point of all your problem-solving efforts. As such, it makes sense to devote as much attention and dedication to problem definition as possible. What usually happens is that as soon as we have a problem to work on we’re so eager to get to solutions that we neglect spending any time refining it.

What most of us don’t realise — and what supposedly Einstein might have been alluding to — is that the quality of the solutions we come up with will be in direct proportion to the quality of the description of the problem we’re trying to solve. Not only will your solutions be more abundant and of higher quality, but they’ll be achieved much, much more easily. Most importantly, you’ll have the confidence to be tackling a worthwhile problem.

Problem Definition Tools and Strategies
The good news is that getting different perspectives and angles in order to clearly define a problem is a skill that can be learned and developed. As such, there are many strategies you can use to perfect it. Here are the 10 most effective ones I know.

1. Rephrase the Problem
When a Toyota executive asked employees to brainstorm “ways to increase their productivity”, all he got back were blank stares. When he rephrased his request as “ways to make their jobs easier”, he could barely keep up with the amount of suggestions.

Words carry strong implicit meaning and, as such, play a major role in how we perceive a problem. In the example above, ‘be productive’ might seem like a sacrifice you’re doing for the company, while ‘make your job easier’ may be more like something you’re doing for your own benefit, but from which the company also benefits. In the end, the problem is still the same, but the feelings — and the points of view — associated with each of them are vastly different.
Play freely with the problem statement, rewording it several times. For a methodic approach, take single words and substitute variations. ‘Increase sales’? Try replacing ‘increase’ with ‘attract’, ‘develop’, ‘extend’, ‘repeat’ and see how your perception of the problem changes. A rich vocabulary plays an important role here, so you may want to use a thesaurus or develop your vocabulary.
2. Expose and Challenge Assumptions

Every problem — no matter how apparently simple it may be — comes with a long list of assumptions attached. Many of these assumptions may be inaccurate and could make your problem statement inadequate or even misguided.

The first step to get rid of bad assumptions is to make them explicit. Write a list and expose as many assumptions as you can — especially those that may seem the most obvious and ‘untouchable’.

That, in itself, brings more clarity to the problem at hand. But go further and test each assumption for validity: think in ways that they might not be valid and their consequences. What you will find may surprise you: that many of those bad assumptions are self-imposed — with just a bit of scrutiny you are able to safely drop them.

For example, suppose you’re about to enter the restaurant business. One of your assumptions might be ‘restaurants have a menu’. While such an assumption may seem true at first, try challenging it and maybe you’ll find some very interesting business models (such as one restaurant in which customers bring dish ideas for the chef to cook, for example).

3. Chunk Up

Each problem is a small piece of a greater problem. In the same way that you can explore a problem laterally — such as by playing with words or challenging assumptions — you can also explore it at different “altitudes”.

If you feel you’re overwhelmed with details or looking at a problem too narrowly, look at it from a more general perspective. In order to make your problem more general, ask questions such as: “What’s this a part of?”, “What’s this an example of?” or “What’s the intention behind this?”.

Another approach that helps a lot in getting a more general view of a problem is replacing words in the problem statement with hypernyms. Hypernyms are words that have a broader meaning than the given word. (For example, a hypernym of ‘car’ is ‘vehicle’). A great, free tool for finding hypernyms for a given word is WordNet (just search for a word and click on the ‘S:’ label before the word definitions).

4. Chunk Down

If each problem is part of a greater problem, it also means that each problem is composed of many smaller problems. It turns out that decomposing a problem in many smaller problems — each of them more specific than the original — can also provide greater insights about it.
‘Chunking the problem down’ (making it more specific) is especially useful if you find the problem overwhelming or daunting.
Some of the typical questions you can ask to make a problem more specific are: “What are parts of this?” or “What are examples of this?”.

Just as in ‘chunking up’, word substitution can also come to great use here. The class of words that are useful here are hyponyms: words that are stricter in meaning than the given one. (E.g. two hyponyms of ‘car’ are ‘minivan’ and ‘limousine’). WordNet can also help you finding hyponyms.

5. Find Multiple Perspectives

Before rushing to solve a problem, always make sure you look at it from different perspectives. Looking at it with different eyes is a great way to have instant insight on new, overlooked directions.

For example, if you own a business and are trying to ‘increase sales’, try to view this problem from the point of view of, say, a customer. For example, from the customer’s viewpoint, this may be a matter of adding features to your product that one would be willing to pay more for.

Rewrite your problem statement many times, each time using one of these different perspectives. How would your competition see this problem? Your employees? Your mom?

Also, imagine how people in various roles would frame the problem. How would a politician see it? A college professor? A nun? Try to find the differences and similarities on how the different roles would deal with your problem.

6. Use Effective Language Constructs

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula for properly crafting the perfect problem statement, but there are some language constructs that always help making it more effective:

Choosing Cloud computing?

You’d better count the cost before and not after!

We are being approached by at least 3 companies a day that are pushing us to sell their clod facilities to our clients and they say  we will get rich out of doing this.

Unlike most companies we are interested in the long term relationship and not the quick kill. We don’t employ and have a high turnover of high commission salesman.

Say “cloud” to anyone at cmx business computing and we all get the same thoughts, “Double glazing, PPI, Endowment mortgages, extended warranties” all get rich quick schemes for the dodgy seller wheeler-dealer spiv salesman”

So by now you think cmx is anti-cloud – WRONG.
There are many reasons the cloud can be the right answer but you have to look at the question first. So many cloud consultants are like the cartoon. “The answer is yes, now what’s the question?”

Talk about cart and horse. Before you decide to use the cloud you need to know why you haven’t used it before and why you want to use it now.

Lets do the consultancy bit first and ask questions. That’s what a consultant does.

What is the cloud? Really!
Do you have good fantastic broadband No? – forget it
Are you replacing a server and frightened by the cost?
Are you trying to save money?
Do you want Data Backup
Do you want to share data
Do you have a cashflow restriction?
The downside
Conclusion

What is the cloud? Really!
The cloud is storage or programs that you access using the Internet. The trouble is the company supplying the Cloud service could be as big as Apple or Microsoft or as small as Phoenix – who are they you ask? 10 years ago my son had some friends, they borrowed a garage from one of their number, set up a server, setup a company and offered on-line storage. They were ahead of their time and the problem? They were sixteen and the dad wanted his garage back after six months so they closed it all down. They did it ethically but how do you know if your cloud storage company isn’t small and in a mates garage – You don’t, unless its a big company
  
Do you have good fantastic broadband No? – forget it
If the answer is no then don’t even think about it. Broadband comes in two flavours, what you get down to your site and what you send up. The up is always faster than the down unless you have a balanced service which to most people is unaffordable. The reason is quite simple what you send up is simple, like asking Google about ” who is the Queen” what you get back is millions of characters of information called search results, you press one click on an entry and you get a whole lot more. Up does not usually need to be fast.

When you use the cloud for email, data or anything the UP has to be at least a useful speed. Anything slow is useless and lets face it most of North Essex and Suffolk is slow on broadband, so forget the cloud.

To see how fast your broadband is go to speedtest.com.

Are you replacing a server and frightened by the cost?
Several years ago Microsoft had a low cost server package for small business. This had everything and by the time it was installed the cost of the server was between £2k and £8K. Microsoft have removed this and replaced it with the full package which costs £8k to £15k. Big companies will pay this as it hasn’t changed for them but small companies cant afford it. So they are offered the cloud. We can supply a Server for small business with Exchange like email for £2k-£8k but not everyone can, so you can keep it in house.

Are you trying to save money?
If you go to the cloud you won’t, it will cost you three times as much. Microsoft make their money by pushing you on to the cloud. If you buy Microsoft Office on a PC you will pay around £200. Most people keep a computer for five years, we have some running and 11 year old version of office. If you go on the cloud, that will cost you £10 a month, over five years that’s £600. Five users = £3,000. See the plan? Save yourself and buy a replacement server and we can supply one with an email system that’s a fraction of the cost, by avoiding Exchange.
Do you want Data Backup
If you are a sensible one man band you will want data backed up somewhere else apart from your place of work. If your backup is within 100 metres of your system, you don’t really have a backup.

So the cloud, send it up overnight, job done, It will cost you a lot and it will be single generation, for more information on what this means ask us. If your broadband is slow the initial backup will be slow. The questions to ask your self is who owns the data and how safe is it? 12p/Gb/month at Rackspace. That’s £216 = VAT a year for the average 150Gb data storage of most companies or over £1,000 for five years.

It’s the ideal answer for  a small single premises business, but a  better answer is Macrium, its free, and a small GOOD QUALITY USB disk unit for £100, make a full backup once a month / week make a full backup and take it to your mothers, a friend, a relative anyone that you don’t mind seeing once a week. I had a client who gave it to their cleaner, she was 60 and it was secure.

Do you want to share data
This is the best reason for the cloud, collaborative sharing for small companies. Things like email, diaries, forms, photos data. Well I have news for you. If you are a big company then do it yourself. If you are small then use the cloud but use the free services that are available. Use ActiveSync with your Google mail, iPhone or iPad.

 Do you have a cashflow restriction?The biggest reason for using the cloud is spreading the cost. You wouldn’t go to a loan shark to borrow money so why not lease the equipment? It spreads the cost over five years and is a low fixed amount, usually around 6%. The best news is that you can claim this 100% against tax. So you get maximum tax efficiency, spread the cost and save money by buying your own server.

The downside of the cloud.
Apart from the cost which is a big consideration what about reliability and there is a big debate about who owns your data. If you use online CRM there is no export facility so you cannot move onto something like ACT! without re-entering the data.

What happens if there is a fire on a local exchange or in the datacentre. If they are a big concern then your data will be replicated elsewhere. But even the big guys have problems. This is a Telstra Exchange and data facility which was down for months and affected 65,000 subscribers. The cost was in the tens of millions in lost business and now the lawyers are involved it will be sorted out eventually but what happens in the meantime?

So if you live in a big city, have fast broadband, need to share your data and have plenty of money then the cloud is maybe a good idea. However if you have 2Mb broadband, 150Gb of data five exchange email accounts and use Sage and ACT! then forget it and I think that’s most of the SME’s in North Essex and Suffolk. We can advices who to go with and we can be independent because we don’t make a penny setting the cloud up for you like those wonderful knowledgeable pressure sellers I talked about earlier.

This is it, in just over a fortnight you will be a target, Its open season on XP users

Its true, you share the same operating system as the banks, NHS and over a third of computer users but what does it all mean.

As far as us IT people are concerned your computer and this car have a lot in common. First off all please understand you are using an old banger, its a 12 year old computer operating system, now look at your car, is it younger than that? Obvious really, wasn’t it?

OK so you have XP whats all the fuss?
Here is Microsoft’s take on this https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/endofsupport.aspx

Basically it means that every XP computer system is fair game for every hacker aged two years or over. They now have something to do that’s easy and no one is going to stop them. If you think it hasn’t been a problem why should you bother then I can remind you that XP has had 361 known vulnerabilities, of which about 40 have never been fixed.

Whats a vulnerability?
One persons vulnerability is another persons ease of use, there are 65,500 holes in Windows which are there to be useful. Also the code can be broken like a moneybox can be opened. The idea is that someone can get into your computer and exploit its weaknesses.

What can they do?
Run some code that will make your machine part of a botnet (Think of the “borg” from Star Trek. The can install some searching software and key logging software. If I tell you that we can access any computer that comes in and we don’t need a password, you should be worried, its easy. So when someone gets in they can mess about with whats stored in there or any keystrokes you make.

I would know wouldn’t 1?
Yes like you know when you are infected with a cold or after you have been robbed, yes you will know but its usually too late, these guys don’t want to be detected or their software found and they are very good at it. OK there are obvious things  like blackmail / ransomware but they get you to load that. You machine has slowed down since the day you bought it but have you really noticed and how would you really know anyway.

What are they after?
3 numbers, sixteen numbers and four numbers. That’s your security code on the back of your card, your card number and the expiry date. This will be stored on your computer somewhere if you have ever typed them in to buy something. Remember the VeriSign, that says your safe? Well it doesn’t apply to your computer only theirs. Bear in mind that in most countries chip and ppin doesn’t exist, even in the United States its signatures and card holder not present checking.

Most people don’t check their credit cards, surprising but true and would you notice £9 or £10 here or there occasionally? One of our clients didn’t we took them on and found the code in a couple of hours, they had been milked for £8,279 over the last three years in little amounts

I have anti virus installed
Well done, but how do you know its working? also we are not talking about viruses, just malicious code, your computer runs all sorts of programs with a problem, whats one small new one that tell the AV to ignore it? Did you know that in 2006 Norton had all their program code stolen by hackers, guess why they wanted it?

So your AV might miss it. How many of you run malware searches, thought not, I advise you start now.

I sit behind a firewall.
You mean the thing in your £39 BT router? well they are cheap for a reason. If you had a Jupiter firewall it would cost you over £9,000. Would you trust a cheap liferaft or the best you can get? By the way there are some wireless routers that send out their password when reset. Its an un-fixed fault.

Both cheap firewalls and free Anti Virus are like using a condom with a hole it it, sorry to be crude but you might find out when its too late.

OK but should I worry
Not on April the 8th but when the first system is cracked which could be a bank, or similar the word will spread and then they will start falling like dominoes. Its easy money.

Generally I wouldn’t bother, if the system is doing what it should then there is no valid reason to upgrade it, but if you don’t like the reliability and security of old bangers than yes. The problem is to leap from XP to Windows8 which I would recommend you will need some nifty transfer programs, which we have, to avoid all that setting up again.

Conclusion
If you have updated your car because you fancied it then you obviously can afford to lose some money. Whats a few thousand here or there? If you haven’t or had to then this is another thing thats vulnerable.

Did I tell you that this doesn’t just happen to other people, my daughter suffered Identity theft, affected the whole family but at least when my Debit card was cloned online because of a security breach at RBS NatWest picked it up and blocked it. New card arrived in 2 days. Did you know theres no protection on most debit cards? Now there is a thought.

How scientific thinking is all about making connections

When it comes to the field of science, making connections between those dots of knowledge seems to be just as important. In The Art of Scientific Investigation, Cambridge University professor W. I. B. Beveridge wrote that successful scientists “have often been people with wide interests,” which led to their originality:

Originality often consists in linking up ideas whose connection was not previously suspected.

He also suggested that scientists should expand their reading outside of their own field, in order to add to their knowledge (so they would have more dots when it came time to connect them, later):

Most scientists consider that it is a more serious handicap to investigate a problem in ignorance of what is already known about it.

Lastly, science writer Dorian Sagan agrees that science is about connections:

Nature no more obeys the territorial divisions of scientific academic disciplines than do continents appear from space to be colored to reflect the national divisions of their human inhabitants. For me, the great scientific satoris, epiphanies, eurekas, and aha! moments are characterized by their ability to connect.

Start making connections and getting creative

I’ll leave you with some suggestions for improving your own ability to make connections.

1. Add to your knowledge – the power of brand new experiences

After all, the more knowledge you have, the more connections you can make. Start by reading more, reading more widely, and exploring new opportunities for gathering knowledge (for instance, try some new experiences—travel, go to meetups or take up a new hobby).
As researcher Dr.Duezel explained when it comes to experiencing new things:

“Only completely new things cause strong activity in the midbrain area.”

So trying something new and forcing a gentle brain overload can make a dramatic improvement for your brain activity.

2. Keep track of everything – especially in the shower

As Austin Kleon suggests, take a notebook (or your phone) with you everywhere and take notes. Don’t expect your brain to remember everything—give it a hand by noting down important concepts or ideas you come across. As you do this, you may remember previous notes that relate (hey, you’re making connections already!)—make a note of those as well.

3. Review your notes daily – the Benjamin Franklin method

Going over your notes often can help you to more easily recall them when you need to. Read through what you’ve made notes of before, and you might find that in the time that’s passed, you’ve added more knowledge to your repertoire that you can now connect to your old notes!
In fact, this used to be one of Benjamin Franklin’s best kept secrets. Every morning and every evening he would review his day answering 1 simple question:

“What good have I done today?”

Here is his original daily routine.

Intelligence and connections: why your brain needs to communicate well with itself


Research from the California Institute of Technology showed that intelligence is something found all across the brain, rather than in one specific region:

The researchers found that, rather than residing in a single structure, general intelligence is determined by a network of regions across both sides of the brain.


One of the researchers explained that the study showed the brain working as a distributed system:

“Several brain regions, and the connections between them, were what was most important to general intelligence,” explains Gläscher.


The study also supported an existing theory about intelligence that says general intelligence is based on the brain’s ability to pull together and integrate various kinds of processing, such as working memory.


At Washington University, a research study found that connectivity with a particular area of the prefrontal cortex has a correlation with a person’s general intelligence.


This study showed that intelligence relied partly on high functioning brain areas, and partly on their ability to communicate with other areas in the brain.


Aside from physical connectivity in the brain, being able to make connections between ideas and knowledge we hold in our memories can help us to think more creatively and produce higher quality work.

Connections fuel creativity: nothing is original

Steve Jobs is an obvious person to reference whenever you’re talking about creativity or innovation, so I wasn’t surprised to find that he has spoken about making connections before. This great quote is from a Wired interview in 1996:

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something.

Jobs went on to explain that experience (as we saw in the image at the top of this post) is the secret to being able to make connections so readily:

That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.

Maria Popova is arguably one of the best examples (and proponents) of what she calls “combinatorial creativity.” That is, connecting things to create new ideas:

… in order for us to truly create and contribute to the world, we have to be able to connect countless dots, to cross-pollinate ideas from a wealth of disciplines, to combine and recombine these pieces and build new castles.

… something we all understand on a deep intuitive level, but our creative egos sort of don’t really want to accept: And that is the idea that creativity is combinatorial, that nothing is entirely original, that everything builds on what came before…

My favorite part of this talk is Popova’s LEGO analogy, where she likens the dots of knowledge we have to LEGO building blocks:

The more of these building blocks we have, and the more diverse their shapes and colors, the more interesting our castles will become.

Author Austin Kleon is someone who immediately comes to mind whenever the topic of connections and remixing art comes up. Kleon is the author of Steal Like An Artist, a book about using the work of others to inspire and inform your own.

Every artist gets asked the question, “Where do you get your ideas?”

The honest artist answers, “I steal them.”

Kleon is inspiring because he’s so upfront about how the work of other people has become part of his own work. He’s also keen on the phrase I quoted from Maria Popova above, that “nothing is original”:

Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.

If you’re looking for advice on creating more connections between the knowledge you have (and collecting even more knowledge), Kleon’s book is a great place to start. He offers suggests like:

• carry a notebook everywhere
• read a lot
• keep a scratch file