Posts from DevUtah BusinessContributers

February 8, 2010

With companies merge, employees leave one company for another, and new members of the workforce land their first jobs, many individuals are trying to form new teams. Regardless of the situation, most organizations encourage open and candid discussions between staff members among employees throughout the organization. These differences in perspective can elevate teams to a higher level of performance. Differences in opinion and/or outright conflict is natural, and it can be very productive. The key is how to use conflict to our benefit so we can reach these higher levels of performance.

So how does one operate on a conflicted team? We still need to be able to create a win-win solution for the team and the organization. How do we use conflict to our advantage?

1. Acknowledge Conflict
Acknowledging conflict can be uncomfortable, yet once the conflict is recognized and discussed the team will feel a sense of relief. People tend to be more effective when they can agree to work together and find mutually satisfactory solutions to common problems.

2. Gain Common Ground
Is there common ground between the parties involved in the conflict? Put the conflict in perspective based on the team’s goals. If everyone is committed to a common purpose, they should be willing to address any issue that may affect the team’s final outcome.

3. Understand Each Point of View
Gaining an understanding of difference perspectives does not necessarily mean gaining agreement on all sides. Here we must take the time both to understand and be understood as we gain information from all sides.

4. Attack the Issue(s), Not Each Other
Bickering or fighting with someone on the team is an unwanted stress, yet the issue needs to be addressed in order for the team to maximize its potential. The goal is to reach a solution that allows everyone to achieve individual/team goals without violating anyone’s values.

5. Develop an Action Plan
a. The team will outline specific steps that each person on the team will take in order to reach the team’s goal. Each person will be accountable for his/her role in the action plan, and the plan will be written on paper so that each person is aware of his/her responsibilities to the team.

As team members utilizes this five-step process to address issues and conflicts, they will see more win-win situations and the team will increase their levels of productivity.

» Giveaway: 12 Boxes of Golden Grahams cereal

by Jason Alba

LinkedIn for Job Seekers for $49.95 $25. Check out all the specials here.

Seriously (or is it, cerealously)…. 12 boxes of Golden Grahams cereal.

Not a book, not a DVD. Cereal

You know how this is done (if you don’t, read about other Monday Giveaways here)… the question is:

What was your funniest or most awkward job experience?

Leave your answer in the blog comment, below! Good luck!

Dear FTC: this cereal giveaway is possible because of General Mills. I’m not touching the boxes, they’ll ship it directly. I’m just a blogger trying to have fun. Go chase someone else. This is for legal residents of the US who are 18 or older, although I have no idea how they are going to determine that. I didn’t even get 12 boxes for myself… any other questions, Mr/Ms FTC? If so, contact the person who left an email address here.

» Superbowl Ads Miss Social Opportunity

by Janet Meiners

I watch the Superbowl for the ads. My favorite ads tell stories and engage us - which is what marketing is all about. This year’s favorite was from Google - a brand that rarely does any traditional advertising - let alone during the Superbowl. Here it is:

What’s fascinating is watching how the various brands combined online and offline advertising. This is the mainstream and what it says to me is: they still don’t get it.

Godaddy gets it and has for years. Their commercials (though offensive) drive people to their site. Intel measures (and hopefully responds to) reactions on social sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Social networks are an incredible opportunity to engage with people and see reactions. You spend millions on an ad and now you have a way to see how you did - and get immediate feedback. As Gary V points out people watch TV with a laptop and read the newspaper with an iPhone. They’re watching and commenting online. And sometimes the brands they are talking about are there responding. But most aren’t.

NBC announced they are changing how they air the Emmy’s because of Twitter. Instead of going live at different times in different time zones, they are considering making it live. Otherwise people on the East Coast spoil it for the West Coast. Worked for the Golden Globe awards - viewership was up 14%.

We’re going to see more and more merging between TV and social networks. More synchronizing. More tapping into celebrities from 1 medium to transfer some of the star power to another (like Dooce). Yes there are times when a mainstream star like Ashton Kutcher goes onto Twitter and the fame just transfers. There are more crossing over from online stardom to a mainstream reach.

Who or what is next? Have any more examples for me?

» Build 424: Functions and Array Operators

by Phil Windley

The latest build of the Kynetx Rule Language (KRL) provides a significant upgrade in capability with the addition of functions. We've also added some new array operators that take advantage of functions to make using arrays easier.

KRL supports functions as first-class objects in the expression language. KRL supports only anonymous functions, but they can be given names by binding them to a variable in a declaration. Here's an example:

pre {
  add5 = function(x) {
           x + 5
         };
}

Functions are evaluated statically (e.g. the environment they are defined in, not the environment they are executed in determines the binding of free-variables) and can be recursive. Here's an example of a recursive function in KRL:

pre {
  fact = function(n) {
            (n <= 0) => 1
                      | n * fact(n-1)
         }
}

Functions are declared using the keyword function and contain optional declarations followed by a single expression that returns the result of the function when executed. To see this, consider the following example which uses Newton's method to calculate square roots (taken from Section 1.1.8 of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs):

sqrt = function(x) {
    average = function(x,y) { (x + y) / 2 };
    good_enough = function(guess, x) {
       v = (guess * guess) - x;
       v < 0.01 && v > -0.01
    };
    improve = function(guess, x) {
       average(guess, (x / guess))
    }
    sqrt_iter = function(guess, x) {
       good_enough(guess, x) => guess
                              | sqrt_iter(improve(guess,x), x)
    };
    sqrt_iter(1.0, x)
}

Functions can return functions as values and functions can be passed as the arguments to other functions and operators in KRL. The following example defined a generalized summation function that sums the numbers from a to b incrementing using inc and applying the function f to each term:

sum = function(f, a, next, b) {
  (a > b) => 0
           | f(a) + sum(f, next(a), inc, b)
};
inc = function(x) { x + 1 };
cube = function(x) { x * x * x };
sum_cubes = function(a, b) {
  sum(cube, a, inc, b)
}

We could define a function that creates incrementor functions. When given a number, it returns a function that increments by that value:

inc_generator = function(n) { function(x){ x + n } };
inc = inc_generator(1);
inc_by_2 = inc_generator(2);
inc_by_25 = inc_generator(25);

Being able to write functions adds significant power. More so with some of the other languages changes we have in mind for the next few months.

Weve also added several new array operators in recent builds. Most notably, array references now work as follows:

a = [1,4,3,6,5];
b = a[1]

This would bind the value 4 to the variable b. Note that array references only work for arrays of one-dimension, so c[1][2] is not allowed (presuming c is an array of arrays).

In addition, there are a number of new operators available for arrays. The following array operators are now available (in addition to length which has been previously available):

sort - sorts the array. With no argument, sorting is done in ascending order. The argument "reverse" causes sorting to happen in descending order. The argument can also be a function that takes two argument and returns a boolean value which will be used as the comparison function for the sort.
filter - filters an array, producing a new array. The operator takes a function argument that takes a single parameter and returns a boolean value. The return array contains elements for which the function returns true.
map - modfies an array from mapping a function to each member of the array. The operator takes a function argument that takes a single parameter and returns any value. The array returned from map is the result of applying the function to each member of the original array in turn, collecting the results into a new array.
head - returns the first element of an array without modifying the array.
tail - returns an array that is identical to the orginal array except without the first member.

You could use these like so:

pre {
  f = function(x) { x < 4 };
  g = function(y) { y * 2 };
  a = [1,4,3,6,5];

  b = a.sort(); // returns [1,3,4,5,6]
  c = a.filter(f); // returns [1,3]
  d = a.head(); // d has the value 1
  e = a.map(g); // e has the value [2,8,6,12,10]
}

Operators are fairly easy to add and handy to have, so if you have ideas for other operators, on arrays, strings, and so on, just let us know.

Tags:

» Front Page News: Utah Blogger Dooce Signs on with HGTV

by Janet Meiners

I’m a little late on the draw on this one but as you may know by now Utah blogger Dooce has signed a contract with HGTV (here’s the press release on PRNewswire). What does that mean exactly? I’m not sure. It looks like she’ll blog on their site. Anyway, a prophetess is never appreciated in her own country. Even though as the article points out — she’s #26 on Forbes 30 most-influential women in the media list (not online - just “media” - Oprah is #1).

Notice that the comments on the Forbes article are a lot of congrats to Dooce - because again, her audience is the type to read and comment on articles online. If that’s the sort of feedback you want, it’s smart to add someone like Dooce to your lineup.

It kills me that we have some of the world’s most successful social media phenoms in Utah (like Heather Armstrong and Blendtec) and yet they are often not known. But I find that the offline and online world rarely collide - except that they are now more. Why? Because TV is tapping into some of that online fame to draw a new crowd or at least take advantage of the cross over (something the Super Bowl advertisers could stand to do more of).

At least the Salt Lake Tribune had the story on the front page (hey Tribune, what’s with not putting your blogs in the navigation on your site?). What’s more they quoted me in the story. About her rabid fans (appropriate isn’t it, see her posing with her dog, both looking very approachable and not rabid at all). My friend Bill saw that I was quoted and choked on his burrito. To which I say: I’m not called Newspapergrl for nothing.

Leslie Mitchell wrote the story and I know her from Twitter. She’s got a great deal blog called “One Cheap Chick” that you should follow if you want to be up on the latest bargain.

Congrats to Heather Armstrong!

» Why Doesn't Your Cause Marketing Generate as Much Money as the Super Bowl?

by Paul Jones

An open letter to my friends in the nonprofit world. Dear Nonprofit Marketer:The Super Bowl was yesterday. It attracted the largest TV audience for any TV show ever in the United States with 106.5 million viewers. The Winter Olympics are a few days away. The World Cup is about 4 months from now. So I'm opening up Peabody's Way Back Machine to a post I wrote in 2007 that asks, 'why doesn't your

February 6, 2010

» Redirectionless OAuth Credentials Exchange

by Phil Windley

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

Am I missing something here? Twitter is working with select partners to test what is variously being called OAuth delegation or browserless OAuth credentials exchange method (not sure why browserless since it's not about the browser, it's about the redirection).

The bottom line is that in an effort to be more user friendly, this removes the redirection to the Twitter site where you authoirize access by letting the third-party site (the site being delegated to) collect and then pass along the user's username and password to get the OAuth credentials. Abraham Williams captured the POST headers from Seesmic Look and they clearly contain the username and password.

I don't see how this can be a step forward in secure third-party access to APIs like Twitter. Once users start being allowed--even required--to (again) enter usernames and passwords into third-party sites, they'll be ripe for phishing attacks. Maybe I'm misunderstanding this based on the scetchy information available, but it looks phishy to me.

Tags: oauth identity security

» Keep Your Profiles Updated

by The Betty Factor

I had a significant change in my life on December 31, 2009, as that was the day my family and I sold off our ownership positions in SOAR Communications to my former business partner.

Interestingly, it didn’t hit me until two days ago that I needed to make changes to all of my various public Internet-based profiles (and biographies) to accurately reflect my new reality. Which leads to the point of this blog post:

When was the last time you reviewed and/or updated your public profiles (and/or bios)?

For me, it had been WAY TOO LONG.

In taking a personal accounting, I realized I’ve got profiles on

Facebook,
LinkedIn,
Plaxo,
Google,
Flickr,
Twitter, and (of course)

on two blogs/Websites:

Politis Communications, and
The Betty Factor.

So I’ve now started that process (as shown in the photo above), and I plan to spend this morning reviewing and updating ALL of my public profiles/biographies.

And if you haven’t done so lately, I recommend you do the same:

Review and update each of your public profiles and biographies today.

I’m going to add this as a once-a-quarter task to my calendar to make sure I stay on top of this task in the future. I hope you do so too.

» Increase Website Speed & Cut Bandwidth Costs for FREE!

by Matt Heaton

Several months back I took my wife and five children on a 7 day Disney cruise (I *HIGHLY* recommend it by the way, and I’m a hard person to please ). Whenever I go on vacation the first thing I take care of is making sure that I have internet access. Thankfully, I was able to use my Verizon MiFi card while in most ports, but while at sea I had to use Disney’s on board satellite internet. It was extremely slow.

This got me thinking of how I could best increase the internet speed for our clients that have slow internet connections at no cost to them. I decided on using mod_deflate. I had used mod_gzip in the past (Almost 10 years ago) so I was familiar with how it all worked and it was simple to set up. Mod_deflate basically takes certain types of files and compresses them at the server level and then sends those smaller files to you. Images, zip files, etc don’t compress well (And so we don’t compress these, but HTML files, javascript files, css files, etc compress very well. Often we see 80% compression levels on those type of files. These files are then decompressed on the client side automatically and used. This is all transparent to the user, except that download/page load times are much faster for the user (10-25% faster).

However, there is a severe problem with using mod_deflate that no one seems to have solved. Using mod_deflate requires *significant* CPU usage on the server to use. The problem is that often CPU resources are maxed out. If you use mod_deflate while the CPU(s) are maxed out then the servers become even slower and all websites on the server will appear very very sluggish. For this reason most web hosting companies don’t use mod_deflate, and for good reason.

However, at Bluehost/Hostmonster we have a great solution for this problem! Some of you may have read a previous blog post where I mention that Bluehost/Hostmonster have a proprietary CPU protection system. Using, this system we track CPU usage in realtime. We then wrote a patch to the Apache web server (This is what serves your websites to your browser) that interfaces with our CPU protection system. This patch checks our CPU usage twice a second and if CPU usage exceeds a certain threshold then we temporarily suspend mod_deflate. When there are unused CPU cycles then it reenables mod_deflate. By implementing it this way we get all the benefits of mod_deflate with none of the detriments of excessive cpu usage causing slowdowns.

The first full day we ran this it lowered our bandwidth consumption about 600 Mbits a second (With very conservative settings). When we run it with aggressive compression we save over 1 Gig/s of sustained bandwidth. That is considerable savings/speedup for something that took about 4 days to develop, test, and deploy!

Now, next time our family goes on a cruise Bluehost/Hostmoner sites will appear much faster!

Thanks,
Matt Heaton / Hosting by Bluehost.com

» Untitled Post

by Thom Allen

YouTube Video Marcus Miller – Burning Down The House

One of my favorite Bass players.

February 5, 2010

» Wunderkammer: Feb 5th, 2010

by Matthew Reinbold

This Sunday the Colts will play the Saints in the annual excuse for over-the-top sport glorification known as the Superbowl. It’s then that I’ll say a sad farewell to a wonderful distraction for another seven months. Football or not, however, the links never leave. Here’s what stuck the week of Feb 5th, 2010.

Vector Magic – An online service that allows a person to upload a bitmap image and have it converted to vector. I keep Inkscape and its reasonably good “Trace Bitmap” functionality around for this purpose but Vector Magic works in a pinch.
Marble Magnets! – a really simple craft one can do with any printed designs that has a very impressive result.
Twitter Spinner – I’m fairly cool on this web service built on top of twitter with the exception of its ability to auto-rotate profile and background pics. It probably wouldn’t be that hard to do one’s self and might be a great way of displaying information that is not timely enough to tweet but does occasionally change (maybe promo an upcoming talk?).
The Great Reboot – John Robb lays out the properties necessary for core processes that can withstand systemic shocks (ala the global credit crisis):
- Resilient to rapidly propagating global shocks (an inevitable outcome of a global system that is too large, fast, and complex to control).
- Highly productive in their ability to produce everything from food to products to energy (they produce wealth). Networked innovation.
- Extremely efficient and low cost. This stems from: shorter distances, less energy, less space, less time, less mass, and less information (as in, less management overhead required).
I think I just read a book about that kind of thing.
Evoke Game Trailer – While on the topic of sustainability its worth mentioning a new online game called Evoke – A Crash Course in Saving the World that launches on March 3rd. It challenges players to tackle such world problems as poverty, hunger, sustainable energy, water security, conflict, disaster relief, health care, education, and human rights.

EVOKE trailer (a new online game) from Alchemy on Vimeo.

This has all the makings of some very preachy gameplay. However, given its laudible ambitions I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Quirky – Crowd Sourced Product Creation and Fabrication – Crowdsourcing seems to be extremely hit or miss. Either the wisdom of the masses produces a fantastic result or it degenerates into chaos. Quirky seems to have creating some interesting products thus far. The challenge will be whether they can keep it up.
Don’t Just Hash those Passwords! – Algorithms like MD5 and SHA256 are great for encrypting large tracts of text. However, their most beneficial aspect – their speed – also makes them susceptible to brute force dictionary attacks. The solution? Use an algorithm that’s slow as hell. The speed difference is unnoticeable when doing once (like logging a user in). But when attempting tens of thousands of combinations those subtle differences add up to a big security gain.
37 Signals Rework Trailer – 37 Signals first book, Getting Real was cute but extremely narrow in focus (“When all you have is a hammer…”). Their next book, Rework, again picks easy-to-loath workspace practices and binds them together into a tepid anthem. I’m sure it will be a hit:
Peace between Silverlight and Flash Developers? – something this level headed is destined to be ignored:

“It’s fair to say that anything outside of your comfort zone is going to be frustrating to learn. Over time, you’ll come to realize that each language was developed a specific way to have specific strengths and weaknesses, and you’ll find knowing them all will help you be a better developer. Which makes you a better expert. Which only helps your users. So… how does it hurt to be closed minded to anything?”

That reminds me – I had started one of those “Learn X in a Week” online courses but the language didn’t have the ease, speed, power, or sheer sexuality that programming in ColdFusion had. Suppose I need to adjust my expectations and try again. :p
FontSpring – Web-ready fonts at affordable prices. Because spending $345 per client for a type face eats into the margins.

That’s it for what I found interesting this week. What ended up sticking in your browser tabs?

» Does Your Website Deserve to be Ranked?

by SEO.com

3 clues of what your site may be missing.

I have a buddy who once had a crush on a girl friend of mine. But in all honesty, he simply did not deserve her due to some bad decisions and a rough personal history. So I found myself trying to explain to him that to be with a girl of that caliber, he had to be the kind of man she would want to be with. He had to “deserve” her.

No, this is not a lesson on relationships. However, the idea of attracting website visitors is similar. In search engine optimization, and with our websites in general, we do things with the intent of deserving a good ranking. We use a number of methods to target a specific market and we seek for quality links to link back to our sites. But do our sites really deserve it? Do our sites really deserve to rank well? Unfortunately, we live in an age of entitlement, and all too often people think they deserve things without having to do the work to merit the prize. Sometimes we make bad site decisions, or sometimes we do nothing at all, and yet how many of us still entertain an expectation that we deserve better rankings, or that people should notice us?

Think about it for a minute or two, and forget about what matters most to the Search engines. What attracts you personally to a website? A need or a want of some kind? The design? Images? Usability? Obviously a good website will satisfy the individual in some way and entices them to return. So do we really care how poorly designed a website is as long as it satisfies our needs, offers a certain level of enjoyment, or does not require much effort on our part?

I am not advocating poorly designed sites. Search engines may not care specifically about what your site looks like on the surface, but people do. And perhaps this is where my concern comes to light. If we are not careful, we can get warped into a paradigm of search engine optimization which tends to optimize solely for search engines and not for the people who use them. So I think it is fair to ask whether our SEO efforts are as much for humans as they are for search engines. Maybe we blame the search engines or maybe we blame ourselves for the tunnel vision; but either way we are not going to deserve high conversion rates or a return on investment (ROI).

It is often easier to market a site through paid links, submitted links, and advertisements than to produce a well-optimized website that naturally attracts attention. But perhaps we create a false sense of “optimized security” when we run a PPC campaign, or a link building campaign. Are we merely trying to compensate for our site’s shortcomings by using superficial antics to build up links or paying to try and woo the good rankings? Sure, you can generate a lot of links and maybe even drive a lot of traffic but if those high bounce rate statistics are any indicator, your site likely needs some work to retain your audience and entice people to keep coming back.

So what is the solution? We should remember that SEO is not a dichotomy of search engines and site design. Nor should it be. Good site design is an inseparable part of SEO. So what can you do to help your site deserve more attention?

1) Site Redesign or Facelift? Think Simple.

Does your site still look the same as it did 10 years ago? And if your site is not that old, does it look like a website from the 90s? A complete site redesign may not always be plausible for some businesses, but you should consider those things that can be done to give your site a modern digital facelift.

Making your site more “current” does not mean adding every bell and whistle known to modern Web technology. Small site upgrades done right can fit in naturally and go a long way to upgrade your online image. Just look at the DrudgeReport.com, it has had practically the same simple design for the past 10 years and it still receives droves of traffic in the millions. On the other hand, design changes done wrong can be quite noticeable, – have you ever seen someone with bad or overdone plastic surgery? Of course there are other factors that determine whether or not you receive traffic, but investing in your website design is a key part of the equation.

2) Write Great Content

Why does great content on your site make a difference? It has been shown that a majority of people respond primarily to web site looks and visuals, but great content keeps your visitors coming back for more. This might include such things as interesting articles, blogs, videos and other media. Incorporate something unique and intriguing to make your site stand out.

Equally important to the type of content on the site is the manner in which it is presented. Is your content high quality? Does it offer something of value? Is your blog article readable and easy to understand, or full of grammatical errors?

3) Establish Trust

Trust. You often hear this word a lot in regards to the online presence of websites. Establishing a good reputation requires hard work and a lot of time, and doing what is ethically necessary to make your website stand out as something exceptional and credible. With the exception of a few lucky sites, the status quo might not cut it anymore.

On another note, get active in social networking. Get to know others in the business and your industry, and use social networking tools to promote your online presence.

I fail to understand how some people who have badly designed or outdated sites will pay for SEO services, but all they want to do is build links. I suppose if that works for them then so be it, but there is more to SEO than just link building. You can put as much makeup and cologne on a stinky rotten fish as you want, and link to it from a thousand locations; but a painted rotten fish with links is still a rotten fish.

Become the site that truly deserves the good ranking. What good is being number one on Google when no one wants to stay on your site because it stinks?

» My daughter cut her own bangs (related to your job loss)

by Jason Alba

LinkedIn for Job Seekers (the DVD) for $49.95 $25. Check out all the specials here.

My three year old daughter cut her own bangs this week.

Actually, the appropriate word is not “cut,” it is “butchered.”

Just like every other kid in the world, she found some alone time with a mirror and scissors, and she had just seen my wife trim her bangs. So it was something she wanted to do.

At first she was pretty proud of the job she did. But as people started noticing and talking about it (with a snicker here and there) she started to realize that her haircut wasn’t “cute” and she started to really worry about it. Tears flowed again and again, and it was clear she was pretty traumatized.

In her young mind she figured she had done a horrible job, and all the world knew it, and many would laugh at her.

It was devastating.

Just like my job loss, and your job loss. I remember the feeling of thinking I had a big sign around my neck that people would look at. I don’t know what the sign said but it was something like:

Loser.

Unemployed.

Unemployable.

Broken.

Jobless leper.

You know what? I was wrong to have thought that. Just like my daughter was wrong to have thought her haircut was the end of the world. Let me tell you why.

Her hair is amazing. She has this wild, curly hair that is … I don’t know how to describe it other than it is beautiful, like a lion’s mane (okay, you really have to appreciate lion manes, but work with me here). We get a lot of compliments about her hair, and I’ve loved it from the beginning. It really is awesome.

Because she has these big curls, and her hair is seemingly unruly, there really isn’t a rhyme or reason to any particular style she has. She only ever has one style, which is best described as awesome.

Those unruly curls, however, have completely diminished anyone’s ability to see that she butchered the first 2 inches of what used to be hair (it is very, very short).

YOU JUST CAN’T TELL.

Same with my job search. I had that imaginary sign, and it devastated me, and I felt like an outcast, and that was not doing anyone any good. I’m sure it hurt how I presented myself at networking meetings, in interviews, etc.

But it JUST DIDN’T MATTER.

Especially now, in today’s economy, those things JUST DON’T MATTER.

Don’t let your imaginary sign hamper your road to success… take it off and throw it in the imaginary garbage can, and move on.

My daughter has moved on from the drama of this event, and she is back to normal. When you are back to your normal self you’ll perform much better.

» Subscription Models are Chic

by Phil Windley

Image representing Dave McClure as depicted in...

Image via CrunchBase

A recent blog post by Dave McClure, the investor in charge of the Founders Fund seed investment program makes the assertion that "subscription models are the new black" and we've lost a decade of innovation by people living off the table scraps of Google's $10B pay-per-click ad system. (Warning: the blog post is pretty raw.)

In a seeming non-sequiter, he moves on to talking about passwords. But pay attention, because what he's really doing is talking about friction in subscription models and the friction that they inpose. I think it's interesting that the iPhone app store, for example, still requires that I type a password when I purchase an app on my iPhone given that they have a good identification based on the device. Of course, what they're doing is using the password for authorization. Making sure it's me who's purchasing the app.

Tags: subscription revenue kynetx identity

» Twitter

by Jesse Stay

A common complaint amongst Twitter developers has been that Twitter’s OAuth, the authentication process you see when you click the Twitter login button on a 3rd party website and go to a Twitter-looking page with a “Allow” or “Deny” button, is too complicated. Mainly, from a user experience perspective, users are required to leave the 3rd party site completely in order to log into Twitter, then get redirected back to the 3rd party site again. If anything breaks along the way, the user is left wondering what to do, and valuable logins, purchases, or registrations could be lost. Facebook has solved this by enabling users to do all the login process via Javascript they provide that produces a popup. Users can log into Facebook without ever leaving the 3rd party site. It appears, based on a thread on the Twitter developers list, that Twitter is planning to one-up Facebook by allowing users to log in to 3rd party sites without ever even needing a popup or any type of redirect, and they’re already testing it with select partners.

The topic came up when other developers noticed that the site, TwitPic.com, was allowing direct Twitter logins right on their own website and somehow posts from TwitPic were showing up with the TwitPic name and link next to the post on Twitter. This normally isn’t possible without enabling OAuth login because Twitter has disabled the functionality for any non-OAuth produced Tweet. In fact they have said in June of 2010 they will be completely removing the ability to login through Twitter on 3rd party sites via plain-text authentication. So how is TwitPic doing it?

According to Raffi, an Engineer on the Twitter API platform team, Twitter is currently working on a new “OAuth Delegation” standard that will allow applications to allow users to log in via Twitter on their own sites, while still maintaining the control over Apps that OAuth gives providers and users. So, on TwitPic, for instance, you can log in to TwitPic.com with your own Twitter username and password right on the TwitPic site itself, yet you’ll still have full control on Twitter.com to revoke access to TwitPic at any time you want to. In addition, Twitter, at any time, can remove TwitPic’s ability to publish or access the Twitter API since they still have to use OAuth to make Twitter API calls.

If the hints in the developers list thread prove true, developers will be able to take the plaintext username and password, still store them somewhere, but in order to make calls through the Twitter API they’ll have to somehow send an OAuth key with their requests to Twitter along with some way of identifying the user. My guess is, in essence, the app will send a one-time login on behalf of the user to Twitter (most likely via a secure SSL encryption channel or similar), and Twitter will return to the app an OAuth token to make API requests with on behalf of that user in the future. In my opinion, this is still no different than storing an OAuth Token in a database that would give apps the same access as their Twitter username and password.

Security Concerns

While storage may be no different, I’m sure there will still be those concerned about this approach. For instance, what happens when users get used to entering their Twitter usernames and passwords on 3rd party websites and decide to do so on a malicious website? We’ve seen how used to entering Twitter credentials people get with websites that look like Twitter itself with the rampant phishing attacks recently.

Maybe Twitter is feeling comfortable enough that they can be proactive about such misuses and password collection. The risk is still there though and hopefully the OAuth Delegation Twitter is getting ready to launch will cover this problem.

Partners

Thus far, it seems TwitPic is one of the partners testing this new delegation standard Twitter is working on. Several others were mentioned in the developer discussions about this as well. For instance, Seesmic Look is also taking similar credentials without any OAuth redirect, yet still shows the “Look” source in Tweets generated with the app. One developer pointed out the information that could be retrieved from the new requests, and the security of it all is a little concerning.

Whatever it ends up being, the winners will be desktop and mobile client developers. Right now developing a mobile or desktop app involves deep integration into the browser in order to legally get the user logged into the app. It is why we see so few native desktop clients and so many AIR apps. AIR is a browser-based solution.

I’m very interested to see what happens. The Twitter team is supposed to announce more details very soon and I’d like to find out more about what this means for developers, how secure it is, and how much recoding I’ll have to do to enable it in my app. Whatever it is, you can bet it will be one step simpler than the currently more-simple solution which Facebook provides. This is getting very interesting! Let the API wars begin…

February 4, 2010

» change the world

by Jesse Stay

Recently here in Salt Lake City we had the opportunity to have Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google visit. While I didn’t have the chance to see it, reading about it, he seemed to talk about a common worry I hear throughout this State. Here in Salt Lake City and around the area we have a lot of successful businesses! From my Uncle’s Freeservers.com, to Omniture, to Mozy, to Novell, Wordperfect, and many others, there’s no shortage of success in this area. It’s a hotbed of talent and technology the world doesn’t give enough credit for. The problem is that we have no Yahoos or Googles or Facebooks or Microsofts to give us credit for that success. We have no home-grown success story that didn’t eventually sell out for big bucks to one of the big West Coast companies. I think this is a common problem for many areas. Why is this?

Eric Schmidt tried to come up with his own reasons in response to Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, who (Hatch) stated, “We get a corporation going and it has some tremendous ideas and all of the sudden someone comes up from Silicon Valley and buys it and takes it back there.” Schmidt responded, saying, “I don’t know whether [improving the situation means] globalizing the business. I don’t know whether we need more venture capitalist presence in Utah or maybe just more experience building the businesses from the startup. It’s not that businesses aren’t getting started, it’s that once started they aren’t growing the businesses fast enough.” So what is it that keeps the Googles or Microsofts from staying in Utah (and other states) rather than staying here and growing to compete with the big guys?

I’ve suggested the PR problem before. That’s just one problem Utah has – a lack of enough tech bloggers to get the word out to Silicon Valley. One other common problem I see in Utah is we get greedy. I’m not even saying that’s a bad thing. Too many Utah startups are focused on the money rather than an underlying cause that motivates their revenue stream. That’s part of the reason Utah businesses have been successful – we have some of the smartest business people in the world right here. Even Eric Schmidt confirmed that, stating that “Utah is one of the best places to do business.” We know how to make money! Unfortunately that’s what differentiates us from the West Coast companies like Google however.

I argue it all revolves around cause. Let’s look at Eric Schmidt’s company itself, Google. Everything they do centers around one central cause, “Do no evil”. It doesn’t even matter if they have purpose. Everything they do must be done “the right way”, even if they lose money from it. Some even argue this has become a PR pitch for them as well. Google is willing to lose money for their cause, yet they are also making money because of it. It’s an amazing strategy.

Facebook also does this well. I’ve done a lot of work with Facebook with 2 books on the company and several apps written around their platform. When you interact with them and their employees, you get a common theme from them: They are doing all they can to enable people to share in bigger and better ways. Their vision is to help you share without risking privacy. Everything they do revolves around that – their revenue model is built around their cause.

Twitter is building “the pulse of the internet”. They want to enable better communication between anyone in the world. They’ve forgone revenue to ensure that takes place (yet they’ve been able to raise a ton of capital, I realize, but I argue that’s part due to their cause).

I see the same thing from company to company in the Bay Area and even up in tech hotbeds like Seattle (home of Amazon, Microsoft). These guys all drive revenue based on purpose! While there are currently a few exceptions, I don’t quite see this in Utah and other states, especially amongst the larger startups. It’s all business.

Eric Schmidt also stated that “It’s not an attitude problem, it’s an availability problem. To me, it’s recruiting new talent into the state and growing new talent. It’s really people and expertise and that’s the way to make it happen.” Guess what drives and keeps talent? Motivation. If people have cause to work for they come, and they stay, and they work hard at it. I remember at BackCountry.com (a Utah company), our mantra was “We use the gear we sell”. Employees loved that because all kinds of incentives were given to get employees using their cool gear, and the employees loved that!

80% of Utah’s population is in the Salt Lake City area. Schmidt suggested this was an incredible opportunity for people to connect. I think we just need motivation to encourage that connectedness. Motivation is what makes the Googles and Facebooks and Microsofts of the world.

If you’re a startup, anywhere, what are you building on top of? Where are your foundations? Are you building for money or for purpose? I know as I build my business I’m going to be thinking much, much more about changing the world and less about the money I make as a result of that. The money will come naturally. That is how you build Google, and keep it there.

What’s your cause? What businesses do you think do this well? Please share in the comments.

EDITORS NOTE: 2 Companies in Utah that I think are doing really well at this are Phil Windley’s Kynetx and Paul Allen’s FamilyLink. When you interact with them you can sense their cause. It bleeds through the company. People are sacrificing time and money just to be sure their cause is getting through. As a result, Paul Allen’s company was recently ranked one of the fastest growing companies on COMScore, and recently, according to Compete.com, surpassed his old company, Ancestry.com in traffic. Cause eventually pays off! I encourage you to learn what they do – they won’t be going away any time soon.

Source of Eric Schmidt Comments: http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_13630231

» die Bücher (the books) – Suarez’s Freedom

by Matthew Reinbold

Freedom is the released sequel to Daniel Suarez’s Daemon (which I recently also reviewed). Given how much I enjoyed the author’s debut novel the expectations were tremendously high. After an automated software task co-opts much of the world’s wealth and information infrastructure, how much more could there be to say?

Despite the fact I devoured this book in less than 24 hours, there’s Yippee-ki-yay mother planting plenty more.

The book begins immediately after the events of the predecessor. Those who have willingly become a part of the Daemon’s systems are organizing in ever-increasingly complex and self-reliant ways. These self-contained communities, called holons, represent an attempt at societies “devoid of bullshit”. As a character explains early in the book:

“Holons are the geographic structure of the darknet. Any dark net community lies at the center of an economic radius of one hundred miles for its key inputs and outputs – food, energy, health care, and building materials. Balancing inputs and outputs within that circle is the goal. A local economy that’s as self-sufficient as possible while still being part of the cultural whole – a holon – thus creating a resilient civilization that has no central points of failure. And which through its very structure promotes democracy.”

This is the kind of story that could only be told in an age like ours. It is a rebuttal to industrial era businesses’ end game: one that demands 10,000 mile supply chains, just-in-time manufacturing, a lowest wage globalized workforce, relentless upselling, dehumanizing bureaucracy, wars to ensure energy production and delivery, control of political will, and more.

Suarez’s holons are in rural America. He wisely realized that it would be these small, self-reliant communities that would be most receptive to the Daemon’s message. Just two weeks ago I called home after hearing that many in Timber Lake, SD (population ~400), had been without power for at least 5 days. A cold front had descended and continually coated power lines until the weight became too much to bare. Once one pole fell, the rest followed. Within a 24 hour period more than 6000 downed poles cut electricity for a nearly 2000 square mile region. Yet my parents were watching the Vikings play in the NFC championship game, generator keeping the necessities (like football) on. The heat is largely provided by a corn stove – fuel that is just a walk to the grain bin away. Canned goods were in the basement. Beef was in the chest freezer. There was no problem waiting to be reconnected to the larger world’s status quo. What would be a riotous disaster in a major metropolitan area was a minor inconvenience here.

Self-reliance is a way of life for these people; survival depends on it. When Suarez begins the book’s “Corn Rebellion” he’s not enacting a self-serving plot device but channeling the sensibilities of life and decency forgotten in an executive-boardroom run world.

“You know, I worry about you. You and your brother. I know it hasn’t been easy. I… there’s no real jobs anymore. I feel like I’ve let you down.” Fossen started to tear up.

She hugged him tightly. “Dad, you didn’t let me down.” She looked back up at him. “You taught me everything I need to know: self-reliance, self-respect, community. Just don’t be surprised if actually put it to use.”

Suarez’s book isn’t just a fantastic work of science fiction. If we truly want security, if truly want a sustainable way of living, if we truly want something better than corporate serfdom and a pile of debt while we self-medicate with video games and social media, we have to relearn the lessons that were lost on the road to industrialization. Freedom hints at just such a way.

» Question: If a job seeker has no money, what can he GIVE?

by Jason Alba

When I figured “it” out (it = my job search), everything changed.

The biggest change was in my happiness and excitement. I was jazzed about life and my job search.

Why?

Because I had figured out what I could GIVE.

I couldn’t give money, or lunches, or anything that would be out-of-pocket.

Even $10, like what I blogged about yesterday, was out of the question. How could I give $10 to someone when one of my kids needed food, or shoes, or ____ (there’s always something, right?)?

But then I figured “it” out. I could give something to those who needed it most (my fellow job seekers) that would be much more valuable than money, or a free lunch, or breakfast.

This was even more valuable than my TIME.

I could give them an introduction to someone they needed to know.

A networking introduction.

Try this: Go to a job search meeting (you know, the ones that meet weekly) and listen for an opportunity. When someone says they are looking for contacts at XYZ company, or in ABC company, or with this-or-that job title, say “talk to me after the meeting, I have a lead for you.”

If you listen hard I bet you’ll be able to pass on names to at least five different people (I’m assuming you are out networking the rest of the week, and increasing your own personal network). The best I’ve ever seen this was at a network meeting in the Minneapolis area (Lonny Gulden knows all the networking meetings there). There were about 100 people in the room in a big circle. As people gave their 30 second pitch, others in the room would jump up and walk a business card over to them and say:

“Talk to me after the meeting, I have a contact at that company for you.”

It was AWESOME.

When I went to network meetings and started doing this I became happier. I didn’t go to GET, I went to GIVE. And GIVE. And GIVE. And my demeanor changed. And my focus changed. And my relationships at those meetings changed.

And others started to give ME leads.

Don’t worry about not being able to give buck$ and food – focus on giving contacts (what’s better, doing a virtual introduction).

I bet your job search will change.

» Instant-On Cause Marketing

by Paul Jones

One of the remarkable things about the Internet is the way it enables you to turn on a cause marketing campaign in about an hour.Old style cause marketing relied on the old media, which is a little like an electric stove. Turn it on and after a while it’s hot.By contrast, cause marketing on the Internet is like a gas stove. Turn the dial and the heat is on.Short case in point. The small website

» Map It

by Bootstrap Business

If your exit isn’t planned, your exit will be forced. I was forced into some unanticipated business exits because of 9/11, as were countless small businesses. Obviously, nobody could control 9/11, but it taught me to think more seriously about exit strategies, planned and unplanned. Bad exits can also come if the competition tramples over you or the wave moves away. If a bad exit comes, you and your partners need rules to govern that (see chapter 5, “Make the Rules, Live the Rules”); however, good exits need just as much planning.

Drafting an up-front exit strategy uses many of the same startup tools you’ve already employed. Keep in mind, though, that when you plan your business with your exit strategy up front, you aren’t just looking to break into the market. You’re looking to break in, and thinking about how to get out. In this way, one of my favorite exercises is competitive landscape mapping. This kind of mapping obviously gives you an idea of where to put your product in the market, but it also indicates how long and well you can operate and how you ought to exit.

I talked briefly about this model in chapter 3, “Power Tools.” Remember the gourmet root beer? In that example, we plotted out regions and price as we determined just how viable our market opportunity would be. In this chapter, we will plot products and price. Considering your competition, this is what they will be most interested in. Knowing where your competition stands tells you how to best use that for your exit. The energy expended up front gives you power at the end.

As you enter the market, diagram your competitors and the segments they play in. Are they high-cost providers? Low-cost? What breadth of service do they offer? By taking time to draw out the landscape and understand where you operate in relation to your competition, you can deliberately position your company to fit.

This little exercise will also tell you who will be in any fistfight you get into—or, if you play it right, which way you can turn to get away from the fight. The companies that your chosen space runs up against will be your most aggressive competitors. While competition helps them, they will, in some degree, want you out. Buying you might be a viable option. Definitely, the companies that border you are potential acquirers. If, you have a large gap, though, you’ll have a larger market opportunity, which means it could take you longer to have a high-dollar exit event.

Let’s consider a retailer in the outdoor market. We’ll use the vertical axis to plot competitors’ pricing. On the horizontal axis, we’ll label competitors’ specialization through the gamut of outdoor sporting equipment. You should have something that looks like this:

Competitive Matrix

The next step is to identify the key players. Fill in your matrix so that you put these companies where they fit into the market. Make this accurate: bigger market shares need bigger circles. Go through each of the competitors in the context of your competition. Map the coverage and look for the gaps. For example:

Wal-Mart is a low-cost, low-quality provider that competes mostly in the camper, trailer, and family camping sections.
Outdoor World competes in the camper and trailer market, but they are a higher-quality, higher cost provider, so you place them in the top left quadrant.
Sportsman’s Warehouse competes in the family camping and hunting markets, and pushes into the hiking markets, covering a fairly large area. They are a mid-range to higher-cost provider.
Back Country provides online, mid-range cost, focusing on higher quality but primarily the hiking and high-altitude market.
REI is very high quality, focusing primarily on the camping, hiking, and climbing market.
Kirkham’s competes directly with REI but at a much lower cost.

Your matrix is shaping up nicely. It should look something like this by now:

Competitive Matrix Stage 2 Now that you have the landscape drawn out, examine the holes. Where are the overlaps? Can you compete at potential intersections? The larger the hole, the bigger the opportunity; however, it will take more effort to fill and more time to build to an exit event. If your venture fills a smaller opening, one of two things will happen—one, competitors at your borders could try to acquire you; or, two, they will strike aggressively and
cross the line to compete in your space.

My personality fits best with small holes. I like to fill them and plan for quick-liquidity exit events. In fact, the map we drew above is one that Ron and I used right before we acquired Campman.com. We chose to fill a small hole right at the intersection of Back Country, Sportsman’s Warehouse, and Kirkham’s. We were able to sell the company within a year.

The area you choose to enter determines what type of exit you will have. If we had tried to go nose-to-nose with Wal-Mart, we would have been stomped flat. It takes far more money and time for that kind of fight than what I was willing to invest. I learned a long time ago that you have to look for the niche and fill the space. That brings success.

Porter’s Points – Map It

Consider your competitive landscape map not only in terms of your potential market presence, but your potential market absence—that is, determine at the outset how you are going to go out.
Don’t take on the big market players at the heart of their empires. Look for a niche where a few smaller players overlap and build up to a sale.
Keep in mind all the possible variables in your competitive landscape map. Location may be important for some, but don’t forget product, price, and quality.

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