Snap Inc has joined the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, which sees consumer internet companies cooperating to stop the spread of terrorism and extremism online. Facebook, Google and YouTube, Microsoft and Twitter formed the GIFCT last month, and tomorrow it will host its first workshop with fellow tech companies plus government and non-governmental organizations. Read More
Google today announced a small but important update to how Google Calendar and Microsoft Exchange can work together going forward. It’s not unusual for a company to still use both Google’s G Suite tools and Microsoft Exchange in parallel and with this update, G Suite admins can now allow their users to see real-time free/busy information across the two systems. This means tools… Read More
Minecraft’s “Better Together Update” is rolling out now in beta, for players on Windows 10 PCs and Android devices. That means players on either platform with the beta installed will be able to participate in games from either type of device, together in cross-platform play. This update was originally revealed at E3 back in June, and includes other feature additions like… Read MoreGlibness is a disease that's particularly virulent in Silicon Valley, politics, entertainment and the executive suite. Someone has an insight (or gets lucky) and then amasses power. Surrounded by more than they're willing to understand, they substitute the glib statement, the smirk, the cutting remark. They turn everything into a status-fueled professional wrestling match.
It's usually done out of fear, and, ironically, the fear-induced glib approach merely makes things worse, creating even more fear.
The alternative is to know what you're talking about.
To have done the reading. [I've seen this problem in boardrooms, examination rooms and classrooms across the planet].
To be able to hold conflicting ideas in your head as you consider options.
To know and respect the people who have earned a place at the table of ideas.
To have energetic engagements with people who are more experienced, wiser and more connected than you are.
To admit that you were wrong, because you didn't know what you know now, and then to chart a new path.
To ignore sunk costs when making new decisions.
The fans of professional wrestling (in all its forms) are entertained by the glib, because it releases them from the obligation to understand metaphor, to look more deeply, to engage with a logical argument.
Everyone else would rather work with people who know what they're talking about, who respect those they work with and most of all, who seek useful outcomes, not just the comfort of a short-term win.
It's easy to fall in love with the GPS version of the universe.
There, just ahead, after that curve. Drive a little further, your destination is almost here.
Done. You've arrived.
Of course, that's not how it works. Not our careers, not our relationships, not our lives.
You've always arrived. You've never arrived.
Wherever you go, there you are. You're never going to arrive because you're already there.
There's no division between the painful going and the joyous arriving. If we let it, the going can be the joyful part.
It turns out that arrival isn't the point, it can't be, because we spend all our time on the journey.
The alternative is, "My side is wrong this time, but we can learn a lot, fix it, and do it better next time."
Which path gets us (however you want to define 'us') closer to what we seek?
Which leads to better standards, desired outcomes and work we're proud of?
Which leads to leaders we can eagerly follow?
Tribal identity is an emotional reaction to a complicated world. But when tribal identity aligns itself with a downward spiral of selfish, poorly considered actions, it leads to suffering, not connection.
Not us vs. them. Sooner or later, it's us.
We can do better. Let's do better.
Amazon and its enterprise cloud division AWS have been making a number of moves to expand the company as a platform to build and host games. One of the latest developments has been an acquisition: Amazon in the last quarter reportedly quietly acquired a company called GameSparks, a “backend as a service” for game developers to build various features like leaderboards into games,… Read More
Despite an early lead with Windows Mobile and Windows CE — and spending billions on Nokia’s mobile business — Microsoft has been on its heels in the mobile device market since the one-two punch of iPhone and Android launching in 2007. The introduction of x86-compatible ARM chips and the rise of progressive web apps could drive a return to the mobile market for Microsoft. Read More
Stitch Fix has filed confidentially for an initial public offering, setting itself up for another big test for the IPO market in the near future, sources tell TechCrunch. While we don’t know exactly when Stitch Fix will go public, we do know that a handful of companies are planning to go between Labor Day and Thanksgiving. Stitch Fix only recently hired its CFO, Paul Yee, in June —… Read More
Amazon is again expanding its presence in the fashion industry with this week’s launch of yet another private label brand, The Fix. The new label for Prime members is aimed at women and features shoes and handbags inspired by designer trends, but available at discounted prices. Unlike designer collections, The Fix will release new styles on a monthly – not seasonal – basis.… Read More
Now that all the major cloud players have reported their earnings, we have seen some eye-popping growth numbers, particularly from Microsoft. Yet in spite of that, AWS maintains a significant market share lead, according to the latest analysis from Synergy Research Group, released last night after Amazon reported its earnings. AWS, the cloud arm of Amazon.com reported a $4.1 billion… Read More
It means "eye-like" as in the spot on a stingray that makes it appear to be looking at you.
As far as I know, there are no words for nose-like or even ear-like.
We're hardwired to be aware of eyes. We want to be seen, we're afraid to be seen, we need to be seen.
The very best way to engage with your customers is for your organization to develop some more eyes. And the empathy to use them. Not to spy on us, but to see us, understand us and treat us the way we want to be treated—like people.
Amazon may be getting ever deeper into a range of virtual products like media content and cloud services, but it is also continuing to add more features to lock down the bread and butter of its business: its e-commerce marketplace and the vast logistics operation that underpins it. Today, Amazon quietly unveiled a new service called The Hub, lockers designed to be installed in multi-tenant… Read More
Amazon reported its second-quarter earnings today, and it was a bit of a whiff — and a bummer for Jeff Bezos, who is now no longer the Solar System’s richest human and has been relegated to the unfortunate position of second-richest human. The company’s earnings came in lighter than Wall Street expected. But Amazon’s cloud server farms, AWS, once again appear to be… Read More
Amazon reported its earnings today, wherein a whiff in earnings sent the stock down around 3% and brought CEO Jeff Bezos back to reality as the, once again, second richest human in the known Solar System. In all seriousness though, this is a big quarter for Amazon as it looks to close out its $13.7 billion bid for Whole Foods. The company appears to once again be squeezing out a very small… Read More
Microsoft’s annual Imagine Cup, a global competition of high-tech student projects, reached its culmination this week accompanied by the usual pomp at the company’s headquarters in Redmond. The winner of the $100,000 grand prize and 365 days of bragging rights is X.GLU, a Czech team that created a custom smart glucose meter for children with diabetes. Read More
Ahead of its earnings later today, Amazon stock hit an all-time high during intraday trading and with it CEO Jeff Bezos’s estimated wealth hit $90.9 billion, Bloomberg reports. This number pushes the net worth of the Amazon founder past that of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, still sitting pretty with $90.7 billion, earning Bezos the title of world’s richest person. Bezos ending the… Read More
Microsoft today is launching a couple of major updates to PowerApps, its low-code service for quickly building line-of-business applications, and Flow, its business-centric IFTTT competitor. While these are obviously two very different applications, the general idea to allow businesses to leverage the data that they already generate is similar across both projects. Ryan Cunningham… Read MoreHe's a jerk, a two-timer, a double-crosser. He deserves everything you throw at him, your cutting remarks, your sarcasm, your enmity.
You're totally justified in spending a lot of time and energy in evening the score. You are the avenger.
The thing is, it's not clear that we benefit from carrying around all that vitriol. All the time we spend hating is time that we've given away to someone who hasn't earned our time. It's time we're being controlled by someone we don't like or respect very much.
Teaching someone a lesson is often overrated. Doing the lesson teaching in your head helps no one.
What happens if we walk away and make something magical instead?
You deserve it.
It’s official — Amazon has launched its Prime delivery services in Singapore, its first market in Southeast Asia. The Amazon apps went live in Singapore early last night local time, and Prime Now — an aggressive two-hour delivery service — is available to Singapore’s population of over five million people from today. TechCrunch reported that a launch would happen… Read More
Microsoft has been running a bounty program for a few years now, launching it just ahead of the release of Windows 8.1 back in mid-2013. At the time, the company was awarding up to $50,000 for exploits, in an attempt to help address any potential security issues before they could become a larger public concern. It’s a tact taken by a number of tech’s biggest names, like Google… Read More
Barely a day passes without some news about containers and that speaks to how quickly this technology is being adopted by developers and the platforms and startups that serve them. Today it’s Microsoft’s turn to launch a new container service for its Azure cloud computing platform: Azure Container Instances (ACI). The company also announced that it is joining the Cloud Native… Read More
LinkedIn is giving businesses a new way to see what kinds of audiences they’re attracting with their marketing efforts. The Website Demographics tool allows businesses to break down their website visitors across eight categories including job title, industry, company and location. After all, that’s the kind of data that we’re all providing as LinkedIn users. To connect that… Read MoreThe data shows that more than 600,000 people got arthroscopic knee surgery in the US in 2010. It's expensive and painful.
It turns out that sham surgery works just as well. That just about as many people would have found pain relief from this procedure if they had experienced fake surgery instead.
In an extensive study of elective surgeries (asthma, obesity, Parkinson’s disease, acid reflux and back pain) it was found that more than half the time, people would have had at least a good an outcome if they had only experienced fake surgery instead of the real kind.
That's worth a pause.
Same operating room, same gowns, same perception of pain--but no actual surgery. Half the people would have gotten better, which is awfully close to the number that got better from the real thing.
(Even if this number is twice as high as you are comfortable with, it tells us something dramatic about the power of suggestion).
If you don't think marketing works, and you're wondering about the power of the placebo, that's all the evidence you should need. That sham surgery on knee pain is virtually as effective as the real kind. Which means it's not a sham at all, is it?
Of course, placebos work on far more than knees. They work on the taste of wine, the effectiveness of coaching and how well we perform at work.
When they say "it's all in your head," they're actually being optimistic and encouraging. If it's in your head, you can do something about it.
