OwenBloggers: Sam - MBA 2008

HBS cases I'd like to see - the AAPL NDA

In part three on an ongoing series, we take a look at one of my favorite companies, the almighty Apple...

Launched just last month, the iPhone 3G has already sold over 3MM units. Taking advantage of the "computer in the palm of your hand" concept, Apple has opened up the platform for development by 3rd party software companies. Current favorites include Twitterific, Facebook, Google, and a whole host of other applications sold exclusively through the iTunes store in the hopes of presenting a seemless and integrated user experience.

Or is it?

There has been much discussion around the blogosphere about the Nondisclosure agreement (NDA) that goes with becoming an iPhone developer. You see, the only way to get your application onto the iPhone is through iTunes, and the only way into iTunes is through Apple. In order to do that, a developer has to be certified by Apple, a process that involves, amongst other things, signing an NDA that severely restricts the developers' ability to discuss anything iPhone related with basically anyone anywhere.

As I understand it, NDA's preventing developers from disclosing details to the public aren't that uncommon, but ones limiting access to their peers are. By imposing these restrictions, which are effectively the price of entry, Apple is limiting the developer community's ability to help each other troubleshoot and offer other forms of support. Which in turn slows down the development/revision cycle and pretty much guarantees a crappy 1.0 product (the NDA also precludes beta testing).

All this from a company that's notorious for their secrecy and "proprietariness," so much so that there are those that say that it's the sole reason that APPL and MSFT aren't revered in scale and scope.

This one feels like a job for Dave Dilts, Oh He of Strategic Management of Technology. Some of the things I'd like to see discussed include:

• AAPL is a relatively small (but growing) fish in the Koi pond of personal computers. But when talking about the iPhone, are they a computer company, a phone company, or something else entirely?
• No help with debugging, troubleshooting, or beta testing means inherently less stable products. Are program crashes blamed on the software or on the iPhone in general? Are you more likely to hear "#$%^& Facebook crashed on me again," or "#$%^& iPhone, why doesn't it 'Just Work'?" What are the long term implications of that for AAPL?
• Developing for Windows or the web represents a larger market than developing for the Mac. At what point does AAPL start to worry about alienating all their outside developers? Or is that their strategy, to make sure all the toys are their own?
• If this is a case of "His Steveness" being his oft-referred micromanagerial self, at what point does the company start feeling hamstrung by that attitude? How does the Pepsi Incident factor in to that decision?

[Photo credit: Chris Radcliff via Flickr]

HBS Case I'd like to see - MFST and YHOO

In part two of the series, we look at the attempted MSFT takeover bid for YHOO.

According to the bloggerati, MSFT's take-over bid for YHOO stemmed from their desire to shore up strategic holes in the online search area, specifically tied to search-based advertising revenues (currently dominated by GOOG). Whatever the real reason, Chief Yahoo (his real title, if the ads are to be believed) Jerry Yang responded with a resounding "Ummm, yeah ... I don't think so." A subsequent proxy "fight" involving the never-good-news-when-he-gets-involved Carl Icahn and a week of Ross and Rachel style will-they-won't-they guessing led to MSFT's abandonment of the negotiating table followed by YHOO's utter lack of a public response. And while it seems that this might be best served as a finance case, I'm again thinking strategy and would love to read discussions about:

 
• What were the real reasons behind rejecting the buyout offer?
 
• Who made that decision? Was it Yang? Was it the Board? Was it both?
 
• How much was communicated to the employees during the talks? Who made those decisions?
 
• When Icahn got involved, how did the strategy change? Or did it not change?
 
• Rejecting the buy-out suggests that YHOO thinks their long term strategy is more profitable than the buy-out. What is that plan?

[Photo credit xenolon via Flickr]

HBS case I'd like to see - the Netflix meltdown

Your thoughts on their relative effectiveness aside, its hard to deny that the case study is a staple of the MBA diet. From Erik-with-a-"K" Peterson in first mod's LTO to Wal-Mart in mod 3's Core Strategy, stopping briefly in mod 2 to visit with Arthur Dief as well as the gang at Southwest Airlines during Core Operations, my first year at Owen saw a significant number of hours devoted to pouring over the pages of the all-too-familiar classpack, highlighter in hand and Excel standing at the ready. Add to that the hours spent discussing, writing, polishing, and paring down to fit inside the sometimes-questionably-low word limit, and its fairly safe to say that the case study represented a significant portion of our lives at the Owen School.

Now that I'm out and in "the real world," a handful of recent events have me wondering what would appear in the pages of the HBS case if there were a HBS case written about them. Over the course of the next few posts I'm going to explore a few of those stories.

Netflix's August meltdown

Like a lot of people, my wife and I subscribe to Netflix. The combination of easy online tools, no late fees, and set-and-forget movie rentals appeals to both of us. In fact, we spend less on Netflix than we did in late fees at Blockbuster, which in itself translates to an incredible amount of value for us. Just last week Netflix found itself in crisis mode. Its normally storied operations went dark for 3-4 days. And while the details haven't yet been forthcoming, what we do know is that the "outage" affected nearly 50% of its distribution centers. As it turned out, operations were restored by the end of the week. In a show of good faith, Netflix has offered to refund 15% of the monthly charge to those affected. Not being familiar with Netflix's books, I can't say how that will impact their bottom line for the quarter/year, but I'm thinking it might be recouped in customer goodwill.

Some of the questions I'd like covered in the case include:

• What happened and how was it fixed?
• What were the disaster recovery plans in place?
• How was the decision made to pull the plug?
• How were the decisions made to inform the public?
• Who was on the crisis management team? How were they organized? And how was the team built for nimbleness?
• What discussions went on around the decision to compensate those customers affected by the outage?

This one feels like a Core Strategy case to me, perhaps written by the Dynamic Duo of Deans (are they still teaching Core Strategy?).
Up next, the second part of the series: YHOO and MSFT: the take-over wars.

[Photo Credit super-structure via Flickr]

Death by Powerpoint

Given the sheer tonnage of PowerPoints I've found myself wading though recently, I thought I'd share a bit of comic relief poking fun at that all-too familiar presentation tool.
Enjoy.

J.K. Rowlings' 2008 Harvard Commencement Address

JK Rowling gives Harvard's Commencement address. One of the best speeches I have heard in quite some time.

Part 1 of 3.

Part 2

Part 3

Information overload

For the past few weeks, I've had very little to do with my time. Sure, there's been a round of golf here, an errand or two there, flurries of calls over the impending house purchase (cleared the last contingency last Friday, we're good until the walk-through and close), and some moving logistics to deal with, but the vast majority of my calendar has been, as they say, "unscheduled."

But I don't really do all that well with tons of unscheduled time on my hands. My wife would disagree, but I'll point her to my use of the word "tons." The difference, as they say, is *all* the difference.

Sure, a vacation, such as it is, has been nice, but even *I* have my limits. And apparently 4 weeks is my limit.

As the uber-geek that *always* plugged in, I've spent some time recently playing with all the new and cool social web 2.0 apps cropping up on the net. Of course there's twitter, one of my favorites. But there's also Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Pownce, FriendFeed, Tumblr, and the brand new Plurk.

Oh, and let's not forget my *ever-popular* blog at OwenBloggers.com ...

Yes, many of these "services" are simply glorified time-wasters (I'll let you pick which is which), and once I start actually working for a living many of them will most likely fall by the wayside, but it does get me thinking about my already over-fragmented lifestyle.

Do I really need *more* ways to split my attention? The horcruxian promises of web 2.0 aside,do I really need more places to look, more windows to keep open, and more media to track?

No, I didn't think so ...

[Re-posted from my Tumblog]

Information overload

For the past few weeks, I've had very little to do with my time. Sure, there's been a round of golf here, an errand or two there, flurries of calls over the impending house purchase (cleared the last contingency last Friday, we're good until the walk-through and close), and some moving logistics to deal with, but the vast majority of my calendar has been, as they say, "unscheduled."

But I don't really do all that well with tons of unscheduled time on my hands. My wife would disagree, but I'll point her to my use of the word "tons." The difference, as they say, is *all* the difference.

Sure, a vacation, such as it is, has been nice, but even *I* have my limits. And apparently 4 weeks is my limit.

As the uber-geek that *always* plugged in, I've spent some time recently playing with all the new and cool social web 2.0 apps cropping up on the net. Of course there's twitter, one of my favorites. But there's also Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Pownce, FriendFeed, Tumblr, and the brand new Plurk.

Oh, and let's not forget my *ever-popular* blog at OwenBloggers.com ...

Yes, many of these "services" are simply glorified time-wasters (I'll let you pick which is which), and once I start actually working for a living many of them will most likely fall by the wayside, but it does get me thinking about my already over-fragmented lifestyle.

Do I really need *more* ways to split my attention? The horcruxian promises of web 2.0 aside,do I really need more places to look, more windows to keep open, and more media to track?

No, I didn't think so ...

[Re-posted from my Tumblog]

No trees were harmed in the writing of this post.

The other day I got "looped into" an email conversation that was somewhat tangentially related to an ongoing project in one of my classes.  For me, getting CC'd on the 15th email of the chain has always felt a little like walking into a room full of laughing people - you don't exactly know what's going on but you really hope they're not laughing at you.

As I dug through the impossibly long email chain, I ran across an email signature that just made me laugh.  No, it wasn't one with a joke or a cool quote; rather, it was one of those "this email is privileged information and we will come for you in the middle of the night if you cross us" email signatures.  You know, the ones typically appended to the bottom of emails from lawyers and/or consultants.  The ones that are attached to UNencrypted emails ...

This morning as I avoided doing actual work (also known as cruising the RSS feeds), I ran across a post by Mike Arrington at TechCrunch in which he ... expresses his displeasure ... with the "Please don't print this email" signature that's all the rage these days.  And while I don't share Mike's level of distaste for those signatures, I do, from time to time, question their effectiveness.  I sometimes wonder how many people have said, "Well, since you asked nicely, I guess just the once I'll skip printing it out!!"

Now, back to avoiding doing real work ...

Technorati Tags: consultantese, MBA, Net Impact, Owen, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Techcrunch, Vanderbilt

Overheard this morning

MBA #1:  Actually, my goal is to be in a Harvard Business School case study.

MBA #2:  But a good one, right?

MBA #1:  No.  A bad one.  (pause)  I want to be Eric Peterson.

Technorati Tags: Business School, MBA, Owen, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Vanderbilt

Data (in)security - Georgetown joins the fold

A few weeks ago my wife received a letter from the Davidson County Election Committee informing her that her name, social security number, and address was, along with similar information on many many other people, saved on a laptop that was stolen from a downtown office.  At the time I wrote a somewhat irate blog posting that made its way on to Nashville Metroblogs.  At the time we decided to post it some place other than OwenBloggers because of its limited bearing on life at business school.

It seems like a week doesn't go by without a story about unsecured data.  A quick Google News search for "stolen laptop personal data" reveals a disturbing number of stories, many covering events from the past 6 months.  This week is no different, with a piece from the Washington Post about yet another stolen laptop that contained unencrypted personal information.  This one was from the Georgetown University Student Affairs office and contained information on some 38,000 students and alumni.

Georgetown finds itself in some pretty esteemed company, including the likes of the British Royal Navy (600,000 people's information stolen), the State of Maryland (10,000 people), Boeing (382,000 people), Home Depot (10,000 people), and ING U.S. Financial Services (13,000 people). 

Personal laptops that contain unencrypted sensitive personal data are one thing, but these are all major institutions that, presumably, come with their own IT departments that get paid (or perhaps, got paid) for thinking about this sort of stuff.

I understand that its hard to keep track of every single employee's laptop and, more importantly, exactly what they have on it, but can we not agree that an Excel file with sensitive information on 38,000 people might need to be tightly regulated? 

Technorati Tags: Business School, MBA, Owen, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Vanderbilt

Case studies - are they enough like real life?

The case study is a staple of the MBA diet.  Most of the classes I've had here at the Owen School have partaken in that age-old tradition - most were in print, but some actually embraced the new media revolution and presented online or video versions of themselves, including my personal favorite (think: dog and checkered hat).

A recent article in BusinessWeek profiles the Dean of the Columbia Business School, R. Glenn Hubbard.  In response to complaints from prospective employers that MBA grads weren't good at dealing with ambiguity, Dean Hubbard and his team created the Decision Brief.  The key to the Decision Brief is data, or the lack thereof - briefs intentionally contain very little data in an effort to replicate the murkiness of the real world.

Its true that many cases are presented very linearly - by the time the hero/heroine settles into their plush, Italian leather chair and turns to stare at the snow falling outside the window of their corner office, you pretty much know where the case is headed.  A couple pages further into the case and you pretty much know which parts you can skip/skim and which parts you should read more carefully.  And by the time you get to the exhibits you know which one or two are the most important, neglecting development of the skills needed to sift through piles and piles of junk and pull out the one or two gems of information.

Perhaps what's needed is a progression from the traditional case - which would teach, among other things, how to think about this sort of stuff - to the more ambiguous Decision Brief.  Or perhaps we should eventually do away with the traditional case study altogether, throw students into the deep end, and let them figure it out.

Incidentally, anyone who's taken Mike Shor's Game Theory class will find this oddly reminiscent.  Shor forgoes the traditional HBS cases (and, as a happy consequence, the accompanying $100 class pack) for short memos of his own composition.  Typically only a page long, Shor spends fully half that space extolling the virtues of the leather that covers the chair in the office overlooking the snow (seriously, some of the funniest $%^& you'll read in business school).  The problem is only defined in a round-about way, and there's very little data provided.  Its up to the team to "make it work".

What do you guys think?  Are cases too linear and straightforward?  Or is it necessary to learning?

Technorati Tags: Business School, Columbia Business School, HBS case study, MBA, Owen, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Decision Brief, Vanderbilt

Yes, we're *that* nerdy

Overheard at lunch today:

MBA #1:

We could sell them Montana.

MBA #2:

We could ... what's the appropriate discount rate for an entire state?

Technorati Tags: Business School, MBA, Owen, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, corporate valuation, Vanderbilt

Multitasking, continuous partial attention, and mindfulness

The other day I sat in yet another team meeting.  Like most meetings, this one saw a handful of people sitting around a table, each separated from the larger group by an open laptop.  As has been the case many times before, this group was trying to do entirely too many things at once.  In addition to the multiple conversation threads bouncing around the table (only one of which, I'm sorry to say, had anything to do with the assignment that was the actual basis of the meeting), each of us had multiple things going on our respective computer screens - feed reading, Twitter, IM, online shopping, and the ever present time and attention stealer of email.

The consequence of this, somewhat obviously, is that none of us were paying as much attention to the tasks at hand as we should have been.  And although we had outlined a semi-clear agenda for the meeting, at times it felt like we could have made our way through the list somewhat more expediently if we had simply focused on one thing rather than many.

In a world that's becoming increasingly crowded with all manner of gadgets and gizmos that are supposed to help us reclaim our time by making us more efficient, it seems that all we're really doing is becoming more efficient at splitting our attention.  Many people I know are not only proud of the fact that they do multiple things at once, they say that its the only way they can get everything, or even anything, done.

Linda Stone at the Huffington Post wrote a nice piece about Continuous Partial Attention.  Put very simply, Stone argues that while "traditional" multitasking (the act of pairing one action that requires higher level thought with another that is more routine - walking and chewing gum, eating lunch while filing papers, writing a blog post while listening to music, etc) seeks to create opportunities to be more efficient (aka get more things done), CPA seeks to keep continuously informed.  Those deeply immersed in CPA (like yours truly, I hate to admit), are, much like Johnny 5, always looking for input - email, news, videos, or whatever our shiny nifty device can put in front of us right this very second.

On the other side of the proverbial coin we have the idea of "mindfulness," or being fully invested in the moment in which you find yourself.  Some people advocate reducing distractions by minimizing or quitting applications, turning off email notifications, putting the crackberry in your bag, and many more.  Others say we should remove all possible distractions by making liberal use of Quit and Off buttons.  Still other say multitasking makes up stupid and should be avoided at all costs.

For the typical professional-type (including MBA's), there's the constant struggle between focus and not shutting yourself off from the world around you.  But understanding that there's quite a bit of situational variance, together with the realization that you can, in fact, go "off the grid," if even for an hour of two, might help in getting us to focus and cross off the to-do's that much more quickly and with higher quality output.

Technorati Tags: Business School, continuous partial attention, MBA, Owen, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Productivity, multitasking, puppy, Vanderbilt

Jumping into the WayBack Machine on the interwebs

Yesterday a friend of mine asked me about graduation requirements for the Marketing Concentration here at the Owen School.  As is the case with most graduate institutions, the Owen School is continuously learning and reevaluating itself and its requirements for graduation.  This past year the marketing department changed the requirements for the incoming first year class, while the second year class had the choice of following the old or new requirements.

The only problem is that the department's website only lists the new requirements.  While it makes sense that most people visiting the department's website are prospective students and therefore need the requirements to which they'll be held, it does make it a bit more difficult to find the information that for some reason I forgot to save on my computer.

Enter the Internet Archive.

Over at archive.org they have a tool called the "WayBack Machine."  You type in the URL and hit the conveniently titled "Take Me Back" button and the archive spits out dated links to different versions of the page in question.

Once again, the interwebs save my bacon ...

Technorati Tags: Business School, Marketing, MBA, Owen, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Internet Archive

You gotta own it

A few days ago I was pointed towards a blog written by the Dean of the Darden School.  Like our own Dean Bradford, Dean Bruner writes about current topics in the business world.  If you haven't had a chance to peruse his blog, I highly recommend it - I've found his posts both thoughtfully written and thought provoking.

In his most recent post, entitled Owning Mistakes, the Dean starts with a story about jazz greats Stefon Harris and Wynton Marsalis and how a mistaken note very nearly derailed a performance.  He ends with a discussion about owning up to one's mistakes and in the process makes what I think is an incredibly important distinction: Its not about laying blame; its about maintaining momentum.

As I read through Dean Bruner's piece, I couldn't help nodding my head.  All too often these days we hear deflections like "Its not my fault," "I did everything I could," "I don't know what else I can do," and many many more besides.

My own recent history, I'm embarrassed to say, is littered with the detritus of these and other excuses.  At the beginning of this past mod my team was charged with creating a professional, commercial grade presentation that made clear and concrete recommendations on how to make the business better.  The specifics aside, some 7 weeks later I stood in front of the class and hid behind the phrase, "Well, it wasn't exactly easy to get [the sales reps] on the phone."  And while that seemed to placate the judge (or perhaps he was simply too polite to call me on it), I have to say that looking back, the real answer to his question was "No, I didn't get it done."

But is the time we spend pointing fingers, or deflecting those pointed at us, time well spent?  Or should we be using that time either to fix the problem at hand or to ensure that we don't again find ourselves in the same predicament?

Technorati Tags: Business School, MBA, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Vanderbilt

Only 211 days, 21 hours, 55 minutes, 15 seconds left until graduation (give or take)

I know the blog has been relatively quiet as of late, but the run up to the end of the mod is usually a bit of a bear, and this one was no exception.  Between the semi-impossible Healthcare IT project that led me to be utterly disappointed by a few of the General's finest, to the slightly-more-than-semi-impossible Corporate Valuations final that demanded I actually justify the buck-oh-five in shiny plastic beads current price tag of Vonage, to the Business Forecasting final project that had me seeing the wrong end of 3am for the first time in a long time, I can honestly say that, although I had a great time doing it, I am not really all that sad that its over.

What ever happened to drinking beer, sleeping late, and playing golf during your second year of business school?

In other news, I signed and faxed my job acceptance form the other day.  There are a bunch of reasons we decided to accept the offer - good job, good fit, good long term growth opportunities - and one of these days I'll go into much more excruciating detail about all of them.  For now, I won't gloat over having a job, especially when I see all the extra pain my classmates are going through these days, running from information session to networking event to interview and trying to fit a few classes in between.

Before this post gets any more Doogie-Howser-closing-credits-like, I'll sign off.  I'll try to post more about the new job, the new batch of classes, or really anything you guys want to hear about in the coming weeks.

Right after I take a nap ...

Technorati Tags: Business School, Health Care, MBA, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Vanderbilt

80 people on a conference call, 3 using the mute feature

In my other life, the one that I occasionally visit on breaks from business school, I spend some of my time teaching for the Princeton Review.  Its something I've been doing for a number of years now and have, for the most part, really enjoyed.

Part of being a teacher is keeping up with continuing education.  For us, it pretty much revolves around changes the testing service has recently made to the test (for me, its the MCAT).  We do this in a series of topic-specific conference calls.  The conference calls are for the entire country, so teachers from all 50 states dial into the call to hear about changes TPR has made to teaching strategies in an effort to adapt to changes in testing procedures.

For the past 40 minutes, I've been on one of these conference calls with some 80 other teachers.  As I dialed into the call, the automated voice told me how to mute and un-mute my line.  When the moderator started the call, she told us how to mute and un-mute our lines.  When the lecturer started, she again told us how to mute and un-mute our lines.  You'd think that pretty much everyone would have their lines muted, right?

Not so much ...

Right now I'm listening to about 10 people typing, 1 guy with a horrible cod sniffle and sneeze, and one other guy talk to someone in the background.  I think it might be his dog ...

Technorati Tags: Princeton Review, conference call, teleconferences

The best blog idea that never got written

I know I haven't written in a few weeks now, and to the three people who regularly check this space for new installments of obsequiousness, I apologize.  Life has been, as they say, pretty hectic.  Between finding a job for the summer, making connections for the long-term employment hunt, selling my old car and buying a new one, teaching, a surprisingly filled social calendar, and those pesky classes, I have had very little time to do much of anything.

First, a few updates, bulleted list-style a la Tony "The Walking Sports Encyclopedia" O.

       
• I've put in quite a bit of time doing the networking thing trying to establish relationships ahead of the full-time hiring cycle next year.  So much so that my cell phone bill is fully double its normal number.  Last month I went some 175 minutes over my allotted 450 minutes per month; most months I'm lucky to log 175 minutes total.  Translation: its probably time to start watching the cell phone minutes.  Luckily there's an OSX Dashboard Widget that does just that (I'm on Verizon, but I'm sure you can find one for your service provider).
   
• Spent the predominant part of the day yesterday at my friend Cecil's house.  CPT hosted a cookout/Final Four watching get-together.  The food was really very good, the basketball was a bit on the boring side.  Maybe that's because its mathematically impossible for me to win any of my three bracket pools.  Or maybe its because I slept through the second half of the Georgetown/OSU game.

As for the best blog idea that never got written, I honestly couldn't tell you.  I have a bunch of ideas that never got written, but I can't really tell which is the "best."  For that matter, I can't tell which ones are good and which are bad.  I'll let you be the judge:

   
• A post on teaching MCAT classes, comparing experiences on both sides of the classroom and how it has given me more appreciation for what the Professors at Owen must go through.
   
• A post on selling my old car and buying a new one, specifically discussing how my b-school experiences helped (think Professor Froeb's "Low Value Customer" discussion).
   
• A post discussing the newly released b-school rankings - now that we've jumped into the 30's, is the official message going to switch from "Ranking aren't everything" to "Look!! Our rankings went up!!"?
   
• A post detailing the job-search craziness that was my Spring Break.  What began with a few strategically placed cold-call emails quickly morphed into a flurry of phone interviews with a few very interesting companies and an offer or two being extended.  More interesting, I think, was the soul searching slash spousal consultation that came next.
   
• A post about my work on next year's Net Impact conference, which the Owen School will be hosting.  If it helps, his post will probably have a reference to Knute Rockne and the Gipper.
   
• In a day an age with ultra-portable laptops, Wi-Fi at every corner Starbucks, high speed internet in very nearly every hotel room known to man, and email on your SuperWidgetGadgetPhone, why do people still use "Out of Office" email replies?

Which one should I write?  Leave your vote in the comments.

Tags: Vanderbilt, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Business School, Business School Rankings, MCAT, Spring Break, internship, Out of Office, Net Impact

Chris Pirillo on Long Term Competitive Advantage

Windows Vista Help ~ Chris Pirillo

“Competitive advantage” is no longer a strategy, gang. Someone’s gonna deploy it faster (and possibly better) than you. And if you’re worried about the DOJ hounding you about being unfair, have your legions of lawyers figure out how to make it fair - the same lawyers that [with gratitude] sent Jake and I a C&D for serving your community when you did not (seeding a torrent of Vista’s beta).

Chris Pirillo, one of the most ardent Microsoft evangelists in the blogosphere, has some harsh words for his favorite company.  Seems Chris switched to Vista, got incredibly frustrated with things not working, and decided to switch back to XP.  Now, in true geek fashion, he misses Vista and in ever-so-slightly tweaked that M$FT can't figure out a way to get it done right the first time.

 In our recently completed Core Strategy (AKA Strategic Management) class, we talked a bit about sustainable competitive advantage - what is it that sets you apart form every other company out there?  Chris presents an interesting idea - you can't totally rely on LTCA.  At some point you have to deliver.  Otherwise LTCA, much like credibility and trust, can be lost.

Tags: Vanderbilt, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Business School, Windows, Vista, XP, Pirillo, sustainable competitive advantage

Download movies from Amazon directly to your TiVo - Amazon UnBox on TiVo

This morning Engadget reported that the Amazon UnBox video download service is now available through your TiVo.  What does that mean?  It means that you can buy or rent movies, download them to your TiVo, and have them waiting for you to watch whenever you're ready.

Sounds a lot like the long-rumored TiVo/NetFlix partnership, if you ask me.

Movies are approximately $4 to rent and $15-$20 to buy.  Television shows average $2 per episode to buy, similar to the iTunes music store.

There are, however, a few catches to the UnBox/TiVo service:

• If you rent a movie, you have 30 days to watch it.  Once you start watching the movie, however, you have 24 hours to finish it.
• Movies can not be transferred from your TiVo to your computer using TiVoToGo, regardless of whether you rented or bought them.
• Movies can be downloaded from Amazon to both your TiVo and your computer (at least as far as I can figure out the fine print).

I'm still trying to figure out how buying a movie through UnBox adds any sort of value.  Seems to me that either I leave the movie on my TiVo indefinitely or I download it every time I want to watch. 

What do you guys think?

Tags: Vanderbilt, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Business School, Engadget, Netflix, TiVo, Amazon, Amazon Unbox, iTunes Music Store, downloadable movies

Switch back

Last weekend I found myself, as if coming awake from a dream, standing over the counter at my local Apple Store, a slightly more worn credit card in one hand and a sleek black cardboard box in the other.

Just under 60 minutes passed - with nearly half of those spent in the car navigating my way home from the Hill that are Green - before I was happily typing away on my brand new MacBook Pro.

As the two people that peruse this space with any sort of regularity (both of whom are related to me) might remember, I've been "in the process" of finding an appropriate home for my not-so-very-old and no-so-very-used Thinkpad.  Well, I finally succeeded in finding it that good home, and thus began my journey back to the land of the MacHeads.

That's right, I said "back."  As I mentioned in my previous post, I had, until jut before school started, been a card carrying member of the MacHead Nation, although I followed something of a circuitous route to get there.  See, my very first computer was an original Mac, the one without the hard drive.  Well actually, my first computer was a TRS-80 (kickin' it old school with a tape drive and everything), but my first real computer was a Mac.

Some 4 years later I inherited an IBM clone made by Xerox.  This was still in the pre-Windows days, when the real geeks were running DOS, coding in Pascal, and not quite realizing that they were destined for a life of flickering screens, command line acrobatics, and precious few social engagements.  You know, back before it was cool to be a geek.

And thus began a progression of IBM clones that saw me go from DOS to Windows 3.1, then to Win95/98, and ultimately Windows ME.  And then, in mid-2003, as I was preparing to switch jobs, I took the plunge and bought a Mac.

And it was like coming home ...

Now, let me be clear about something: I don't hate Windows.  I don't hate PC's.  I think, ultimately, a computer is nothing more than a tool to get things done.  I think your choice of computing platform should be based less on what other people say or do and what works best for you; if you're more comfortable on a Windows machine, use a Windows machine.  If you're more comfortable on a Mac, use a Mac.  For that matter, use a hammer and chisel if that's what works for you.

So now here I sit, happily typing away on a Mac that I've named Lisa, trying desperately to edit this post down to some digestible length.  My next post will probably deal with some other switch-related issues: Parallels (yes, I still run Windows), Outlook (yes, that Outlook), Entourage, Quicksilver, Qumana, Yojimbo, Adium, Growl, TextExpander, and a few others.

Tags: Vanderbilt, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Business School, Apple, Macintosh, MacBook Pro, Commodore 64, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Lisa, Parallels, Outlook, Entourage, Quicksilver, Qumana, Yojimbo, Adium, Growl, TextExpander

Lenovo recalls Thinkpad 9-cell extended batteries

Engadget is reporting that Lenovo is recalling a bunch of laptop batteries that were sold between November 2005 and February 2007.

The recall is only for the extended life battery (the 9-cell version pictured at right - the one that sticks out the back of your computer), not the standard 6 cell battery.  What does that mean?  It means that if you didn't buy an extra battery for your computer, you're more than likely not affected.

If you think you're battery might be on recall, you can go here to find out.  There's a small applet you can download that will automatically tell you whether your battery has been recalled or you can type in the serial number of your computer.  More complete directions are on the site.

Why are they being recalled?  Apparently if you hit them on a corner they develop the tendency to "overheat".  Not sure what that means, but that's what they're saying.

I know of three people - including myself - that have been affected by this.  If you have an extended battery for your Thinkpad, you might want to head over and make sure yours isn't on recall.

Tags: Vanderbilt, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Business School, Thinkpad, Lenovo, battery recall, Engadget

Pssst ... check out the NEW new blogger ...

So we've added yet another Accepted Owen Applicant Blogger to the mix. As you can read in his bio (you have to scroll pretty far down the page to find him), Jared hails from Atlanta, GA by way of our Nation's capital and is, like Serdar and Colleen before him, most likely deeply regretting sharing his picture (not because its a bad picture, but because we're going to plaster it everywhere).

Jared comes to us as an experienced blogger, having run his own blog and podcast for a few years now. You can check it out at 20somethingmarketing.com.  I particularly like the video blog and, of course, the podcast entitled "I Just Got Into Business School and All That I Got Was This Podcast About The iPhone".  Funny funny stuff.

You can subscribe to his podcast via RSS or through iTunes (warning: the link will pop open your iTunes music player and try to connect to the iTunes music store).

Tags: Vanderbilt, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Business School, 20somethingmarketing.com, podcast, iPhone

Three OS's on one computer? Apparently its do-able.

Every now and again you find a piece of software that is truly remarkable.  My most recent addition to that list is Parallels Desktop.  Their most recent beta version (RC3) has this cool feature called Coherence, which lets you run Windows and Mac OSX at the same time, one right on top of the other.  Apparently it works for Linux, too, although I'm not sure whether you can run more than one virtual machine at a time.

There's also a migration tool built into the new beta version - download an applet on your Windows machine, connect the Windows and Mac computers via ethernet cable, click click click, and viola, instant clone of your PC on your Mac. 

If I had only known about this before I went out and bought a copy of XP the other day ...  Oh well, you live and you learn ...

Upgrade is free to all those with a current Parallels licence. 

Check out this video posted on YouTube.com (via Wired News Cult of Mac).

Tags: Vanderbilt, Owen Graduate School of Management, owenbloggers.com, Business School, Parallels, youtube.com, Mac OSX, Windows XP

The Best Of ... January 21, 2007

Over on my other, now-defunct blog (link omitted on purpose) I used to have a feature I called "In the News: People Who Are Completely Missing the Point" in which I'd take a quick tour of the week's (or, as it ended up being, the month's) headlines that smacked particularly of silliness (for example, then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert's interpretation of "Do as I say, not as I do.")

More recently I've been getting into reading a bunch of the tech evangelist blogs - Anand Iyers' Artificial Ignorance, Chris Pirillo, Jason Kottke, Tim O'Reilly's O'Reilly Radar, David Pogue's Pogue's Pages, Rory Blyth's Neopoleon, Robert Scoble's Scobelizer, and Seth Godin, to name but a few (I have something like 150 feeds in my Google Reader right now.  I'm going to have to trim some feeds, cause it takes upwards of a half hour to go through everything, but that's another post altogether).

In particular, I've been intrigued by Chris Pirillo's weekly featured links (the most recent of which you can see here) and Robert Scoble's Link Blog (which makes use of Google Reader's Share feature).

In the spirit of those and other blogs, I thought we here at OwenBloggers.com - or maybe just me here at OwenBloggers.com - might perform a similar service.  So here, in no particular order, are a few links from around the web this week that I found interesting.

• Most Overlooked Tax Deductions (via Lifehacker, original post on HRBlock.com)

  Since tax season is right around the corner, and being a good MBA student is all about maximizing ROI (or is it return on capital? return on assets?), you might want to check some of these out.  Personally, I'm toying with the idea of deducting all my clothing expenses as "work-related uniform expense," seeing as my beloved business school requires business casual attire.

• How to Annoy People Using Instant Messaging (via Web Worker Daily)

  Chuckle-worthy tongue-in-cheek send-up of the annoying IM-er.  Raise your hand if you know someone like this.

• President Bush set to announce a shift in health coverage (via WashingtonPost.com)

  As part of the Health Care MBA program here at the Owen School, I've spent quite a bit of time thinking and discussing the distinction between patients and health care consumers.  A central theme of Dr. Keckley's Introduction to the Health Care Landscape class, the topic has been touched upon in all three of our other core HC MBA classes (HC Clinical Immersion and HC Business Immersion, both with Dr. David Owens, and HC Business Fundamentals with Dr. Larry van Horn).  As a matter of fact, this very issue came up, by my count, thrice last week alone.  My point?  Its pretty cool to be taking classes that are so "real time," classes that don't have any textbooks because by the time you write it down and publish the book, the lion's share of health care policy and thinking have changed.

• A little iPhone humor never hurt anyone (via The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

  seems more like a Microsoft strategy, to tell you the truth, but still funny.

• Top 10 Marketing Podcasts (via Guy Kawasaki's How to Change the World)

  Just last week my Product and Brand Management class here at the Owen School (taught by new professor Steve Hoeffler) touched on the rise of new media in marketing.  I was intrigued by the idea when it was mentioned in class, but, as per normal, my attention was drawn by other things the moment class ended.  Later that day I stumbled across Kawasaki's post (for those of you that don't know, Kawasaki was the first Apple Evangelist ever).  Although I'm not the biggest fan of PodCasts (I always seem to leave my iPod on my desk at home), it did make me think about how, now that web advertising is so incredibly pervasive, things like Podcasts, blogs, and evangelism are being used to influence brand perception.

• Vanderbilt Commodore Men's Basketball team beat the Kentucky Wildcats for the third time in a row (via VUCommodores.com)

  and for the third time this season the 'Dores had me on the edge of my seat until the very last second. What a game - Cage, Foster, Byers, and Gordon were all on fire.

• Download Coffee (or at least its effects) (via Download Squad)

  Somehow I don't think Starbucks is all that worried.

 

What are some of your favorite links for the week?

 

 

Technorati Tags: Vanderbilt - Owen Graduate School of Management - MBA - OwenBloggers.com - Business School - links - evangelism - Google Reader -

One down, five to go ...

The above is a video shout-out to Brie and Doug - there's never going to be a time that that's not funny ...

This morning we took Professor Hoeffler's Marketing final.  As I'm sure you've read on other pages of this blog (including mine, I think) it was a live case about the PS3.  One nice thing about the final was that it was during a regular class period (exams officially start on Saturday), so it kept us from having two finals on one day.

Next up is accounting, 1pm Saturday afternoon.  I really need to hit this one out of the park, I mean really go after it with extreme prejudice.

After that we have Operations on Monday afternoon, and Finance Tuesday night (6pm-9pm, I know someone in the administration is having a good laugh about that one).  Those of us in the Health Care MBA program (including OwenBloggers.com very own Asif, Heather, Tyler, and yours truly) have two more finals after that - Professor Owens' Health Care Immersion on Wednesday morning (8am, I know someone in the administration is having a good laugh about that one, too, putting it a mere 11 hours after the Finance final ends) and Professor Keckley's Health Care Landscape.  Should be interesting, to say the least.

And finally, for those people in Hoeffler's Marketing class, here a little "remember when" ...

 

 

OK, what's next?

 

Technorati Tags: Vanderbilt - Owen Graduate School of Management - MBA - OwenBloggers.com - Business School - tivo - ps3 - youtube - marketing - finance - health care MBA -

A breath of fresh air

You can't get more direct than this.

Technorati Tags: Vanderbilt - Owen Graduate School of Management - MBA - business school - Seagate - hard drive - CEO

So THAT'S how they did it

 

Technorati Tags: Vanderbilt - Owen Graduate School of Management - MBA - Owenbloggers.com - Red Sox - Youtube.com - Mastercard -