kaiyen: pepper

kaiyen: pepper

the life and times of Allan Chen

Latest Posts

Novell bets on Google Wave to replace its struggling GroupWise platform « Boy Genius Report

Novell bets on Google Wave to replace its struggling GroupWise platform « Boy Genius Report.

This is one of the most…amazing things I’ve read in a while.  I would normally say “exciting” because it is also that.  But it’s so exciting that it’s amazing.

I won’t lie – I’m not a big fan of Groupwise, and I say that while working at a university that uses it.  I know that Novell’s suite can be very powerful when implemented in the right environment, but I’m not sure that a university is the right one.  Just too many variables at play for something that needs to be fairly controlled yet is not pervasive (such as Outlook via Exchange – of which I’m not a huge fan, either).

But of all the things I thought Novell would do, to base their next e-mail generation on something like Google Wave is BOLD BOLD BOLD.  Wow.

March 22, 2010 Articles from the Web, Work-related, , , 0 Read more >

the sanctity of our electronic data…

NB and caveat:  I say “we” a lot in this post.  I do not mean the “we” that is my organization and/or the university at which I work.  I mean academia in general.

There has been a lot of debate – everywhere, but especially in academia – about outsourcing.  Lately, this has been e-mail.  The most notable and commonly used has been Google mail for Education. Their suite of products offers quite a few features but, by a mile, the major feature used is mail.  Integration with existing user accounts, maintaining domain name, etc – Google has done a good job (though I have mentioned before about how I don’t think they’ve done a good job developing their products beyond an initial stage).  Microsoft has entered the fray with their live@edu product, which is obviously aimed at schools.  It integrates well with Active Directory from what I’ve heard, so it’s ready for what many schools are already using for directory management.

However, that’s mostly been just e-mail.  And even then, there is a lot of debate about whether it’s “safe” to have one’s e-mail data off-campus.  There is this opinion that one’s e-mail is apparently too important to outsource.  Now, presuming that FERPA security and privacy rules have been met, it doesn’t make any sense to me.  First, if an accounting or law firm can outsource, then so should a school.

But, fundamentally, what makes our e-mail so special?  What makes our data in general so special?  What’s wrong with outsourcing?  At the very least, we are looking at a less expensive option, with sufficient security (again, presuming that a school’s counsel is comfortable with FERPA compliance), and a whole lot more engineers and system administrators running and maintaining the system.

I have been putting forth an effort to provide substantial network-based, enterprise-level storage for the faculty and staff at the law school.  Of course, I want to work within the university infrastructure first.  But we still run into the same issue – fewer system administrators, fewer people managing the servers.  We have some great staff at the university that are dedicated to their jobs, but you can’t compare the admin to system ratio and economies of scale (in both human and monetary capital) that a big outsourcing company can provide.

This proposal means putting all of one’s data on someone else’s storage solution, off-campus, and in the “cloud.”  In some cases our data might be across the country.

But what’s so wrong with that? Why is our data so important that we can’t accept this as a possibility?

February 27, 2010 Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts, Work-related, , , , 0 Read more >

why not blame apple?

This is a post I started…a while ago so it’s sad that I’m only getting to it now.  Anyway…

Over the last few months at the viral and national marketing level, there has been a “war” going on about ATT’s 3G coverage.  This has been fueled mostly by disgruntled iPhone users that aren’t getting the kind of data speeds they want.  ATT’s coverage is spotty, it’s 3G coverage is even spottier, etc.

There have been protests held where users try to overload the ATT network (not best link, but wanted to provide something…) by using a lot of data-intensive apps all at once.  Then Verizon has been attacking ATT’s coverage quite aggressively, with ATT striking back with their own advertising campaign.

The funny thing is…why is no one blaming Apple?

Apple was the one that said that

  • the iPhone would be branded as an Apple product and initially (and for quite a while) sold at Apple stores
  • would not be branded at all as an ATT product
  • advertising for it would be for the phone, not for the carrier
  • Apple would get a big cut of the sale price of each phone

Supposedly, when Apple approached Verizon and it’s huge network about this, Verizon refused.  ATT acquiesced.

So if it’s Apple that forced the iPhone to go to ATT (heck, whatever if it ended up on T-Mobile or Sprint, which has even worse coverage in general?)…why keep blaming the provider?  Why not blame the manufacturer that had such ridiculous stipulations?

Addendum:  PC  World did a test of data transfer speeds of the various carriers, and ATT came out on _top_.  Hm.

February 25, 2010 Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts, , , 2 Read more >

I used to day dream

Now I merely fantasize.

No, I don’t mean anything like that.  Get your mind out of the gutter.

Before, I used to day dream, at least occasionally, about other schools calling me up someday asking how we (and, arrogantly, I) had managed to do something really cool.  About being asked to deliver a keynote at a conference.  About being a rockstar…at my job.

No, I just fantasize about stuff like being a professional baseball player or a superhero.  I always day dreamed about that stuff, of course, to some extent, but it seems like I’ve lost the other stuff and all I have is about how I’m saving the world.  So I feel like calling it “day dreaming” isn’t right anymore.  These aren’t dreams.  These are fantasies.

I’m not sure where, over the last couple of years, I lost my ability to day dream about my own ambitions, my own goals.  I do know that I need to get it back.  That I need to have not just aspirational but practical goals of my own that require more than just determination.

People say that if one doesn’t dream when they’re sleeping, they eventually go insane.

What happens when you stop day-dreaming about what you might be one day?

February 12, 2010 Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts 0 Read more >

Amazon is dead. Wait. No it’s not.

Amazon’s stronghold on e-book pricing crumbles, will renegotiate with Macmillan and HarperCollins « Boy Genius Report.

There has been so much talk about how the iPad and iBooks store has been destroying Amazon.  Specifically, its ability to negotiate rock-bottom (and below-cost) prices for ebooks because they had such a dominant position in the field with the Kindle.  The link above, from BoyGeniusReport, was one of the first really substantive ones I read.  Another one has come out about the third major publisher, Hanchette – also associated with the iBooks store to come out with the iPad – putting the strong-arm on Amazon.

The main link on this post is rather significant, in that it includes a quote from Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp and in a rather level-headed statement, states that

We don’t like the Amazon model of selling everything at $9.99. They don’t pay us that. They pay us the full wholesale price of $14 or whatever we charge. We think it really devalues books and it hurts all the retailers of the hard cover books

This statement is quite telling.  First, Amazon has been selling Kindle books at below cost.  Presumably, this is some kind of strange reverse complement, “razor-blade” scenario.  The Kindle at a relatively high price, and then the books somehow below cost to help drive the justification of buying a Kingle (you need titles, after all, just like one needs to launch a video game console with lots of games right off the bat).  I’m not sure how Amazon is able to handle that much of a loss per book but let’s look a bit deeper.  It might also be Amazon trying to be a middle-person in a two-sided market, where it heavily subsidizes the cost to the buyer in order to produce enough content to make the whole thing worthwhile.  The “charge” to the publisher is the reduced value.  It’s not quite a perfect fit for what I’m studying right now in class but it’s close enough.

First, all Murdoch wants is to charge end-users the actual cost that Amazon is paying.  Okay, that’s actually not so bad.  Other than deviating from the established norm, Amazon is at least now operating at cost.  And considering how many Kindles are out there, they still have a high user base with books that will likely be no more expensive than those available on the iPad.

Second, the comment about value is intriguing.  Even if the prices are exactly the same on the iPad as the Kindle, then “value” to the end user is about the same.  The only difference will be psychological effect of sunk cost – having already bought the Kindle – or other factors.

One rather significant one is that I can go a month without charging my Kindle.  When’s the last time you’ve done that with anything that involves a backlight, LED or LCD screen?  Even if you turn WiFi, bluetooth, etc off you’re looking at a significant decrease in battery life.  And, let’s not forget that while you’re going to get a HUGE surge in iPad purchases at first and possibly an even bigger dent in Kindle sales, I really wonder whether it will, even over just a few months, level off on both sides.

One thing that will also be interesting is whether users will be “imprisoned” by the iPad once they get it.  Not that I am not committed now to Kindle books since I got one, but once you get an iPad, you are unlikely to go out and buy a Kindle if you think it is a better fit for your reading needs.  Unless you are a voracious reader, and the battery life for the iPad just doesn’t fit your needs.

February 8, 2010 Articles from the Web, Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts, 0 Read more >

Review: Judith White, Management, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University

Management 713:  Introduction to Sustainable Development
 At a glance

  • 1 unit course first offered Fall 2009
  • Workload:  Heavy final paper
  • Teaching Style:  Discussion
  • Interest in students: High
  • Relevance to outside world: High

Overall Professor Rating: 2 (though this might be because this was the first time the course was offered)

Overall Course Rating: 3 (should be higher, but it needed more organization

Note:  Like many 1-unit courses, Professor White proposed this course as a full, 3-unit class to the department.  Apparently, they decided that it was best to do this on a trial basis as a 1-unit course and to see how it went.  However, as I have learned this quarter, this can lead to inconsistencies.  In this case, while I think the workload was a bit up and down, it was more that I didn’t really know what was going on, what was expected of me, etc, from class to class.  We only met 3 times, but I think I got far more confused than I should have been in 10 or so hours of class time.

About Me

I haven’t done one of these reviews in a while.  The truth is that 1) I have gotten worn down a bit by the program so I have been less motivated to write about my courses and 2) I have a bit of senioritis.  In fact, I just came home from an 8 hour marathon session with my Capstone team, to work on our first case.  But the truth is that I do care about providing useful information to my fellow classmates and those that might take these classes down the road.  So I’ll spend a bit of time now writing…

I started the program almost 3 years ago – March of 2007.  I am now in Capstone, which is, as you can imagine from the title, the final course in the program.  During the past years, I have had trouble finding good, expansive reviews of faculty and/or courses.  So I started writing these.   There are lots of sites out there that provide feedback and rates – ratemyprofessor is the most notable. The SantaClaraMBA Yahoo group also has a big database of comments and lots of additional information in its message archive. That database can be a bit hard to wade through, and the comments are short and often just link to other threads, which are themselves pretty short and superficial. Only here can I write as much as I want  🙂

I review professors from a variety of perspectives.  First, I explain the context(s) under which I took the class.  Time of year, time of day, etc.  Then I talk about the quality of the class and the professor, and finally about the professor as a person.  After all, we are trying to learn about our interactions with people, so knowing that side of a teacher is critical, too.  So these would be interactions outside the classroom, etc.  I also just write whatever it is that I think is relevant or will be helpful to others.  That is my overall goal.

The facts

I took MGMT 713 in Fall Quarter, 2009.  The course, “Introduction to Sustainable Development,” started off, I believe, as an undergraduate class that was proposed to the MBA program.  Professor White has been with the school, apparently, for some time now – she is not a new hire.

This is a 1-unit course that the school was evaluating for possibility of conversion to a full 3 unit one.  It is offered again this quarter, Winter 2010, as  1 unit.

To be clear, this course is about environmental sustainability in business management.  I was worried that it would be about how to keep a company going (sustainable…), but was glad when my fears were allayed.  Now, it did take about 3 very confusing e-mails to figure that out, but at least I got the facts straight in the end.

Them’s the facts (slim as they are). Now read on for the review. (more…)

January 30, 2010 Reviews of Professors, , , , 0 Read more >

foreground




foreground

Originally uploaded by kaiyen

There is a really great spot north of the Golden Gate Bridge, to the eastern side, that offers a really spectacular view that is not photographed nearly as often as from, say, the Marin Headlands. Not that it’s inaccessible or anything. It’s on the grounds of Fort Baker.

This particular night, the sky was not cooperating, going from a solid gray in evening to a very slightly textured look as the night went on. While I’m happy with some of the photos of that night, they didn’t feel like anything different than what I could get on most nights.

So…I decided to try something different.

I had to use a flashlight to even see these plants in order to focus on them. And I opened the lens wide so that I could blur out the bridge just a bit.

I’m not sure it’s even a good photo, but I like it, and it’s different, and sometimes we have to make ourselves try something in order to keep our minds fresh.

December 16, 2009 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

more thoughts on Google diaspora

A few days ago, I wrote about my thoughts on how Google is going nowhere in particular, and everywhere in general.  I was being generally being pretty fair about it, but the fact is that with all the power and personnel that Google has, why are there still so many items disconnected?  No integration, having to invite the same 5 people to each of 4 different Google Apps that are supposedly all part of the same “suite” of tools.

And, again, google seems to be missing the boat on a few things.  For instance, if I were looking at Google’s market opportunities, I would not only revisit the integration with TripAdvisor’s wealth of information, but let’s look at how TomTom has added Google features to their latest GPS units. If you get a TomTom unit, then you aren’t getting a whole lot.

Now, to their credit, you can go to Google Maps and then send the address to your TomTom Live unit.  That’s pretty cool, and it is something Google did.  So kudos for them.  But for the most part, it’s about pulling traffic data.  And…that’s far from disruptive.  It’s far from anything special.

But…why can’t I search google from my TomTom?  Get Google reviews from it, in exactly the way I suggest they do with TripAdvisor?  Why…is Google just presuming that everyone will come to them, rather than the other way?

sigh.

December 12, 2009 Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts, , , , 0 Read more >

Review: Hiking around Bishop’s Peak in San Luis Obispo, CA

the trail

On a sunny late morning in mid September, I set off towards Bishop’s Peak in San Luis Obispo, which is a decent-sized hill/mountain/whatever featuring a number of trails up, down, and around.  Most start off pretty steeply, then either fall off or, if you’re headed to the peak, almost 1800 feet higher in elevation from the trailhead, just keep going up.

I have not done a lot of steep, sustained hikes lately so I went with a more flat route.  Starting from the Patricia Lane trailhead, I went along Felsman Loop.  This is a bit of up and down, but we’re talking mostly 30 feet from trough to crest so not too hard at all.  Due to time, I cut the loop basically in half by going across the Shady Grove trail, then back down, splitting off to the left when I reached the Cattle Pond to get back to the trailhead.  The pond, by the way, is a dry indentation in the ground.  I wonder when was the last time any cattle actually congregated there.

rock and branchIt’s an easy hike other than the inclines.  Part of the beginning of the loop is even paved, though right after you swing around the Water Tank it feels like you’re trying to circumvent security or something – you’re on a 1′ wide trail that falls off the hill quite steeply to one side, and hugs the fencing on the other.  But indeed it is the trail.

It’s a fairly exposed trail so bring sunscreen and/or a hat, though there are patches of trees that provide some shade.  Overall a nice hike, and one I wish I could have devoted more time to.  I did the loop – Felsman>Shady Grove>Felsman in about 1.5 hours, stopping for pictures along the way.

December 10, 2009 General reviews, , , 0 Read more >