Big Sky Network

I moved to Boise in 2000 to take a job as Director of IT for Micron PC in Nampa, Idaho.  The division I worked for closed a year later.  And for seven more years I watched the company struggle to keep its doors open.  Last week the company announced it was filing for bankruptcy. 

The configure-to-order direct to consumer model seemed to be a promising way to make a profit in an industry which relied on expensive components with an incredibly short shelf life.   But it wasn’t to be. The PC industry experienced the worst slump in history in 2000.   In 2000, the same year as direct model PC manufacturer Gateway was doctoring its books to live up to Wall Street’s expectations,  MicronPC became distracted with the retail model which required it to invest heavily in IT, stock up its inventory and be ready to ship thousands of PC’s to the big box stores.  It couldn’t compete with the bigger PC manufacturers and the resulting financial losses forced it to abandon this new venture.  MPC’s CEO at the time, Joel J. Kocher, always a proponent of “out of the box” thinking,  diverted the company vision to web hosting, sold the PC division to Gores Technology Group, and hightailed it to Atlanta to run Interland, Inc.  He stepped down as CEO of Interland when the company was forced into major restructuring in 2005.  

Dell, in the meantime was focused on expanding marketshare and engaged in a price war in 2000 which boosted it to the number one PC manufacturer slot in 2001.    It expanded its product offerings to servers, printers, LCD’s and accessories and forged ahead into world markets.  

The top five PC manufacturers currently hold 54% of the PC market.  So who will emerge from this economy, and who will be left behind?  HP and Dell appear to be in the best position to ride out the recession, a big factor being the fact that both receive a large portion of income from overseas.

Google G1

Moving from search engines to cellular phones, Google has released the The Google Phone, or the G1, or the Android, technically, the T-Mobile G1 with Google, the first Android™-powered mobile phone. Wow – that is a mouthful. This new gadget has software developed by Google, a phone developed by HTC and the network by T-Mobile.

According to a company press release, T-Mobile G1 combines full touch-screen functionality and a QWERTY keyboard with a rich mobile Web experience, dozens of Android Market applications, and popular Google products that millions have enjoyed on the desktop, including Google Maps Street View™, Gmail™, YouTube™ and others.

The bad, I’m not seeing anything about GPS capabilities.  That is a deal killer for me.  If you ever traveled with me, you would understand.

You can read the full review at PC Magazine.  

At $179, the price is much more affordable than the iPhone.

From a press release issued by the FTC and reported on by Findlaw: A U.S. district court has ordered a halt to the operations of a vast international spam network that peddled prescription drugs, weight loss pills and bogus male-enhancement products. The network has been identified as the largest “spam gang” in the world by the anti-spam organization Spamhaus. The Federal Trade Commission has received more than three million complaints about spam messages connected to this operation, and estimates that it may be responsible for sending billions of illegal spam messages. The court has also frozen the defendants’ assets to preserve them for consumer redress pending trial.

One down, a million more to go. Lately it is the offers to help retrieve a multi-million dollar inheritance that are flooding my mailbox.

The release goes on to state: “Some security researchers believe that at one time, nearly one-third of the world’s spam e-mail came from a network of compromised computers, often referred to as a ‘botnet,’ that sent spam promoting the defendants’ Web sites. Their enterprise included participants in Australia, New Zealand, China, India, Russia, Canada, and the United States.” 

Remember those ads advertising income by sending e-mails from your computer? Guess what those people were doing?  Breaking federal laws and contributing to the spam innundating the internet.

Legitimate e-mail marketing can boost your business. So how can you prevent your e-mail marketing from being tagged as spam?

According to the press release, the defendants violated the CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) Act of 2003 by using false header information to hide the origin of the messages, failing to provide an opt-out link, and failing to list a physical postal address. Make sure you don’t violate these provisions if you engage in e-mail marketing.

e-Mail Marketing

Software such as Constant Contact can help ensure you send professional looking e-mails, newletters and surveys without violating the CAN-SPAM Act.

No, not the ability to do business on the web.  The term “eBusiness” is now redundant.  All businesses are essentially eBusinesses these days.  And it doesn’t even require a website.

IBM  has been the industry leader in eBusiness, and defined the term as the “transformation of a major business process using internet technologies.”   We’ve all seen the commercials where a business puts up a website and proudly proclaim itself an eBusiness.  Er, not really.  Simply putting up a website enhances your marketing, but it doesn’t transform your company into an eBusiness. 

True eBusinesses use the internet to make their business work better. For instance, credit card processing.  Remember those carbonless paper slips, hand swipe machines and trips to the bank to submit all of the receipts?  Now you swipe your customer’s card in a terminal and the information is sent via your internet connection to your credit card processor.  That’s a major transformation of a business process.  If you are doing this, you are an eBusiness.  Even if you don’t have a website.

It’s not the website that makes an eBusiness.  It’s using internet technology to make your company work better.  And chances are the software that runs your daily operations sends information to suppliers or customers via the internet, which makes every business an “eBusiness.”

Nokia has announced the release of an iPhone cometitor; the 5800 XpressMusic, otherwise known as the Nokia “Tube.” Slated for release in early 2009 it will feature a 3.2 mega pixel camera, 35 hours of hi-fi and a touch screen.  Hopefully it will be more affordable than the iPhone.  More details to come.