The Integrative Stream

Coke-Pepsi-Google Test

Anyone with a marketing background (or who has taken a marketing course) should be familiar with the Coke-Pepsi taste test. I’m a rabid Diet Coke drinker myself, and loudly proclaim my dislike of Pepsi. When presented with the two drinks sans packaging, I can identify them about 50% of the time. The shape of the packaging affects the perception of the product.

So then with search engines. Seth Godin points out an informal study suggesting that, in a blind test, MSN, Yahoo and Google are pretty much even.

Just as everywhere else, a lot of perception is bound up in the branding. Some of this is legacy: when Google first came out, it really was the best search engine out there. Google’s success made the space competitive again, and the other vendors have had years to catch up. In many ways, Google is still coasting on a period of technical superiority that ended at least two years ago–showing how valuable such a lead can be, and how adroit management of consumer perceptions can extend its value.

Maybe this is why Google’s hiring practices focus so much on a visible intellectual elite. A company hiring all those PhDs must be using them for something.

Printed, Shipped and Ready to Go

I just got a FedEx package with my first author’s copy of Java Enterprise in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition. It should be in bookstores and shipping from Amazon soon. I’m very attached to this book, particularly since it was the first book I ever signed a writing contract for, back in December of 1997, almost eight years ago.

As I’ve said before, I think the third edition is a great book. It’s up to date on all the technologies and tools you need to do enterprise development well in Java. One stop shopping. Makes a great Christmas gift, too.

Full Circle on Web TV

Several outlets reported today on AOL’s investment in BrightCove. BrightCove is trying to build a business piping TV over the web. It’s not a bad business, particularly as PCs have started sprouting more A/V outputs and broadband penetration continues to go up.

What really struck me was the Wall Street Journal’s headline: “Diller’s IAC, AOL to Invest In Web-TV Company”. I immediately thought they were talking about the late, unlamented WebTV, which, as you may or may not recall, tried to do the exact opposite, allowing users to access the web on their TV sets (albeit poorly). I always thought WebTV was a dumb idea, but TV over the web isn’t. We’ve come full circle.

Random Oil Policy Notes

I have a Google Alert set up on the word “Biomarker”. Google scans new materials and sends me an email once a day with the latest news stories and web site clippings containing the word. I have a bunch of alerts like this set up, and I use them to follow various technology developments.

Sometimes this service turns up some real gems. Today was an article entitled ‘Biomarkers’: Bogus hypothesis of ‘fossil fuel’, from WorldNetDaily, a conservative webzine with a pronounced tilt towards the religious right. The article suggests that biomarkers found in oil aren’t left over from decomposed dinosaurs (which, in creationist speculation, never existed) but from an ill-defined process constantly taking place somewhere underground.

The spontaneous generation theory of oil production is, to say the least, not well supported. It’s one guy from Houston and some Russians against everybody else. It would be nice if it was true – the process is supposedly ongoing, so new oil would replace what we use every day – but it’s almost certainly not. It’s certainly not well enough supported to be a rational base for policy decisions.

And that’s the real danger here. Buy into this theory, and you buy out of oil scarcity. The author is peddling a book on the idea. Again, it would be great if he’s right and oil reserves were regenerating, but if he’s wrong, I can hardly think of a worse assumption to underly national decision making.

McDonald’s in Moscow

And to call out a particular post from this weeks Carnival of the Capitalists, on the status of McDonald’s in Russia. I visited the original Moscow McDonalds in 1994, a few years after it opened. On the same trip I was–I believe–one of the first Americans to use an ATM machine in Russia.

Interested-Participant

It’s Carnivale!

This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up at gongol.com. They did a nice job with it this week (fancy presentation!) and there’s a special section devoted to posts on the late Peter Drucker.

Carnival of the Capitalists: November 21, 2005 | Gongol.com

As for me, the past two weeks were insanely busy. The next two days will be too. I spent this weekend in New Haven for the Yale-Harvard game; we lost, but a good time was had by all regardless.

Customers are Good

Cory Doctorow has a nice roundup of posts and articles about Sony’s Digital Rights Management software. The phrase “anti-customer” has been bandied around a lot on this, and while the phrasing is a little harsh it’s fundamentally correct. I don’t know if I can put it any more simply: vandalizing your customer’s computers is a bad thing. Consumer oriented companies will not benefit from treating each customer like a potential criminal.

Boing Boing: Sony anti-customer technology roundup and time-line

Fixing Software Development (some more)

Interesting stuff from Alan Cooper, by way of Philip Greenspun. No need to read if you’re not in the software biz; otherwise, worth paying some attention to.

Can we fix the software development process with innovative management?

Java Enterprise Sample Chapter

There’s now a sample chapter from the third edition of Java Enterprise in a Nutshell up on the O’Reilly web site. It’s on the JUnit and Cactus testing frameworks for enterprise apps, and while it’s not one of the ones I wrote it’s nonetheless quite good.

You can get to it via the O’Reilly catalog page for the book:

oreilly.com — Online Catalog: Java Enterprise in a Nutshell, Third Edition

The book itself should be out sometime late this month or early December. I finished reading over the last author galleys a few weeks ago, and we just finalized the index. All that’s left is the editor’s final pass followed by a trip to the printer, after which this long-delayed and long-awaited (I hope) title will be in stores.

Game Tycoon

My friend David Edery, currently Associate Director at the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program, recently launched his blog covering the gaming industry and interactive media in general. This isn’t really my industry, but everything’s connected and David’s a smart guy:

Game Tycoon

“Monroe Doctrine” for the Internet

No time to comment in any detail, but I draw your attention to this recent piece in Foreign Affairs, suggesting that recent government statements represent a “Monroe Doctrine” for the Internet. I’ve touched on this before.

Foreign Affairs – Who Will Control the Internet? – Kenneth Neil Cukier

RFID Passport Issues

A new article in Wired from security expert Bruce Schnier discusses one of the flaws in the reasoning behind RFID enabled passports.. If anything, he doesn’t hit all the points. The passive RFID technology envisioned for these passports is not appropriate for this application, as Dave Molnar points out on the PoliTech mailing list.

History Carnival

My friend Rebecca is hosting the 19th History Carnival over on her blog. Sometimes a detour into the past is a useful diversion after spending all day worrying about the present.