My little partnership - Stuff4Gigs.com

For a long while I've had this burning desire to do something different, something that was my inception. Don't get me wrong, I love what I do as a day job but I wanted to have something that I incubated and launched, just to see what it was like.

For those of you that know me personally will know that I've been involved with music for most of my life now, on and off. I was always annoyed by how much stuff costs in Australia vs the rest of the world. A cymbal for example that retails in Australia for $400 can be got in the USA for $200. There are tons of examples like this; frankly ripoff behavior of government charges and distribution channels that pass on their tax to the reseller and finally the end customer.

Some time ago, while I was in Australia on a home visit, I talked with my brother about how cheap everything was in America and it would be great to capitalize on the demand with such a strong dollar - building something together.

We discussed the idea of building an online business, selling direct from America to Australia, focused on the music scene - doing proaudio, lighting, sound and musical equipment.

Well after many months and delays in getting it running - practically a year from first discussing it, its up and running. It's called www.stuff4gigs.com and focuses on all the things above.

So if you're into music and do gigs in Australia, New Zealand or the UK, please feel to check us out. We're focused on the international market and strive to get the best prices to you from wherever we can get them.

If there's something you want that we don't have, please just let us know at contactus@stuff4gigs.com and we can source it for you.

Cheers! Hope to see you soon.

Why Windows 8 may struggle in the enterprise

 I read with interest today Alex Williams article on TechCrunch about Why Windows 8 will do fine in the work world.

He makes some interesting points but also missed some very key points that I think forms the foundation of why he may be incorrect and really underscores why Microsoft’s Windows earnings are down.

Anyone who has actually used Windows 8 as a desktop OS will know just how frustrating Window 8’s bi-modal interface is. I continue to assert: Windows 8 makes a great touch/tablet interface but at the present will face challenges for desktop usage. The constant switching back and forth between the Start Screen and other apps is frankly time consuming and annoying.

The worry for Microsoft has to be certainly on the enterprise desktop front. I was at Microsoft when Vista was released and had to do PR associated with it. Enterprise’s wholeheartedly rejected it because of very good reasons, such as stability, performance and resource overhead. While Windows 8 exhibits none of those issues, it has many of its own especially around the Start Screen interface which center on the fact that Windows 8 is a consumer play, not an enterprise one.

Canon T3i 18.0MP Digital SLR Camera with 18-55mm IS Lens - Digital (Google Affiliate Ad)

My personal belief is that Windows 7 will remain the mainstay of enterprises; small and large with Windows 8 used as a secondary device strategy to solve “the iPad issue”. I think that the Surface will do very well in market – as a Windows “light” option on ARM.

Lets take a look at Alex’s rationale for a moment and provide commentary against them.

·      It’s time for enterprise customers to do a refresh from the still widely used Office 2003.

I totally agree with this statement, but I don’t get how it’s necessarily linked to Windows 8. After all, to solve this issue I can use Windows XP to deploy Office 2010 to and many enterprises have done this. In the migration to Office 2013, if customers deploy Windows 7 they have much less user interface impact and re-training requirements. So there’s a much better argument to be made for Windows 7 than Windows 8 on the desktop.

·      Windows 8 represents the consumerization of IT in a package that the CIO understands.

No it doesn’t. Consumerization of IT is about user choice, not the CIO’s. The CIO understands Windows for sure…the Intel version. My bet is that user’s choosing something like Surface will be with the Windows RT version as an iPad substitute. The CIO isn’t going to want to hear that 99% of their enterprise applications wont run on the Windows RT version. And that existing management tooling can’t manage it.

So what the CIO is getting, certainly for the RT version (today), is really Office. Windows RT is just the shrink-wrap Office came in. Important sure, but it still has the same issues as iPad that are currently causing concern, namely management, corporate compliance, security and governance.

·      Microsoft got the user experience right with the tiles and the Metro-style UI.

The user experience is pretty and definitely makes sense for tablets and touch devices. However it’s kludgy as a desktop interface, certainly for right now. Give it a year or two and eventually users will warm to it, just like they did with Windows XP. However right now the CIO will be super concerned about retraining and productivity and I'm afraid in this economic climate, they just can’t afford to create significant business impact.

·      Windows 8 represents one platform that is available across multiple screens — desktop, mobile, ultrabooks, etc.

ARM and Intel are fundamentally different platforms. So you really have two platforms you have to think about. Thus it’s the platform everyone is used to (Intel) vs the one that’s emerging that has little enterprise applications written for it.

I remember talking with a major enterprise customer that said to me; “…We have over 1000 applications and we segment them into groups according to business priority of A, B and C class applications…”

How does this customer adapt their 1000 applications to Windows 8 on ARM? I’ll tell you; when their application developer does. And then charges them a pretty penny for the “upgrade”.

Now you could make the argument that HTML5 will change all that. Maybe in time however this vision is still a long way off in the enterprise.

So if you had the choice between not paying for the app upgrade now and staying on Windows 7 vs upgrading EVERYTHING to a “single screen” Windows 8, what would you choose?

·      It’s like chasing cats trying to manage cloud best of breed hell – you still need a corporate standard. Windows 8 fits the bill.

Gone are the days of “corporate standards” I’m afraid. This is a naïve statement out of touch with today’s enterprise that has now past and is a legacy. The flood of mobile devices entering the enterprise already wrecked that notion.

The real game is managing applications and data, not the platform. The enterprise applications of today are being targeted for more than one platform including iOS and Android. Look at Salesforce as an example of that.

·      Legacy apps will work on Windows 8, making the transition to the new operating system relatively simple.

Big assumption. Sure customers that tested apps on Vista (brave people them) or made the transition to Windows 7 will probably have a lot easier time but there is still a helluva lot of customers on Windows XP and its not easy switching out a user from the platform and pulling all their personalization and data along with them…

But the issue of application compatibility is still important and an enterprise would be foolish to not do their due diligence and test applications on Windows 8. Go tell a healthcare provider to do that, and circumvent HIPPA in the process.

·      It is inconsequential that Microsoft is not the most far out in front innovator. Over time, the enterprise that adopts Windows 8 will catch up to market innovation.

There is a real disconnection in this statement between innovation and market platform penetration. Plus I think the real challenge is getting application developers to develop enterprise applications specifically for the Windows 8 platform. And despite Microsoft’s best efforts that’s something that will be a long tail effort with much of the enterprise market sticking with Windows 7.

Defend that statement Alex. 

·      The CIO can consolidate under Windows 8.

With limited native app support (even with Microsoft Office) how do they expect productive users from the outset? Why not put them on a platform they know until the market adoption catches up.

·      The Surface, which runs Windows 8 RT, doubles as a laptop. It’s ready for the knowledge worker to do the day-to-day work that needs to get done.

Now this I agree with. It’s the only real statement Alex made that makes sense.

As I stated before the Surface is an excellent form factor for a secondary/mobility device. But even then, it’s naïve to assume that all enterprise applications will work on it. I think the fact that the 32GB Windows RT Surface blew out its ship date is a very encouraging sign for enterprise app developers to target that platform specifically.

·      Windows 8 has built-in mobile device management and security, making it enterprise class.

I’m sorry, but platform features alone don’t make anything enterprise class.  The Mac has device management features and security and it certainly isn’t enterprise class. What makes an enterprise platform is a broad set of capabilities inclusive of enterprise application support. I’m not sure that exists today.

Let’s be clear. Windows 8 wasn’t even designed for the enterprise. It was designed to win back the hearts and minds of the consumer. That’s perfectly reasonable for Microsoft to return to its roots and try to change the game, though I think its dangerous to assume that the platform is suitable for every use case, certainly right now with low awareness and enterprise app support.

·      “…Big business has good reason to adopt Windows 8. But small and medium-sized businesses are far better off, in my opinion, of not adopting Windows 8. Their choices are just too numerous. They have their choice of platforms such as Google Apps or Zoho. They can use Dropbox or Box for keeping documents in one place…”

WTF?! If anyone was ripe for Windows 8 it’s the small business. Their needs are much less complex and apps like the ones Alex mentions are easily consumable on Windows 8.

Alex’s article fails to convince me of my own belief.  I still believe Windows 7 is a great operating system that meets the needs of business today. I believe Windows 8 RT and Surface will continue to gain market interest and eventual enterprise developer interest simply by virtue of the fact of Microsoft’s installed base.

It wouldn’t surprise me to see enterprises waiting until Windows 8 has a good consumer penetration (user interface training in the home) before deploying due to the training challenges.  That could be a couple of years away from now.

There are numerous enterprise challenges that Alex has ignored in his article that can’t be ignored such as:

• ·      Lack of Enterprise application support for both Windows 8 Intel and ARM (RT)
• ·      Lack of support from security software – VPN etc
• ·      Considerable re-training effort
• ·      Interface out of step with todays applications 

Had Microsoft delivered a “compatibility mode” like they did with Windows XP, enterprise probably would have been quicker to adopt. Until these challenges are solved, Windows 7 will remain the mainstay of the enterprise. 

The case of the MacBook Pro and ReflectionApp

Recently I got a MacBook Pro Retina. Actually its not so recently...I've had it now for 4 months!

Wonderful hardware. Really nice design. The screen is unbelievable plus its so quick!! But anyone who says to you that the Mac experience is way better, easier, has less bugs...whatever...is in my opinion clearly smoking crack and doesn't do any real work on it. I've had nothing but:

• Application crashes
• Poor application functionality compared to equivalent Windows apps
• Bugs in hardware
• Bugs in software

One of my favorite bugs is the fact that I cant use Bluetooth and Wifi at the same time. Bear in mind the MBP Retina is a Wifi only device means that the moment I want to actually for example...work...the wifi drops out. Does it with my Bluetooth headset or the magic mouse. Charming Apple, charming...

Anyhow that's not what we are here to talk about. I promised the case of the MBP and Reflection.

So part of my job lately is to demo our new MobileNow software to customers, utilizing my iPad. ReflectionApp is a fabulous little app (also look at AirServer) that allows you to use the AirPlay protocol to project the iPad on your desktop. 

I installed it and lo and behold it didn't work. Did lots of troubleshooting. Checked ports that were open; some were and some weren't. I contacted Reflection and in troubleshooting also tried the AirServer app...which did the same thing. The support teams of both these organizations, I'd have to say are slow. Very very slow at responding. They tried their best over a long period of time and neither of them could get to a low enough point of troubleshooting to actually diagnose the fault.

I tried removing apps, changing the firewall etc etc. To no avail. 

Then my colleague Doug Lane says to me today on a call... "Oh I've seen that...It's the CheckPoint VPN client". So I go about testing it. Here's what I did:

1. Stop the CheckPoint VPN client from running 

2. Go into Finder, and then Applications, and drag the EndPoint VPN client to the trash

3. Then open a Terminal window and navigate to /Library/Extensions and look for the Kernel Extension (kext). Its called cpfw.kext. 

4. As its a directory you have to type sudo rm -rf cpfw.kext

5. You then supply your password.

6. Reboot

After you reboot it will all be back to normal...ReflectionApp now works. Except for the fact you now can't VPN. Hey but at least you know what it is now right? Go yell at CheckPoint. 

:)

Update: Oct 19th. This could also fix other Airplay related issues such as projecting your MBP to Apple TV. Try it and see. Come back and comment if it also fixes it.

Australian labor party economic management and compentency

Saw this in my personal email today. Not sure how true it is but nonetheless very interesting...

COMMENT FROM ROSS GREENWOOD (Financial presenter on Australian morning TV show)

Lesson # 1:
         
Why the U.S. was downgraded:
           
* U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
* Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
* New debt: $1,650,000,000,000
* National debt: $14,271,000,000,000  

* Recent budget cuts: $38,500,000,000
           
Let's now remove 8 zeros and pretend it's a household budget:
        Annual family income: $21,700
        * Money the family spent: $38,200
        * New debt on the credit card: $16,500
        * Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
        * Total budget cuts: $385
           
Got It ?????

OK, now Lesson # 2:
          
Here's another way to look at the Debt Ceiling:
           
Let's say, you come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup in your neighbourhood ... and your home has sewage all the way up to your ceilings.    What do you think you should do?
           
Raise the ceilings, or pump out the (ummmm) "effluent"?


Lesson # 3 :

in Australia today

Right now the Federal Government is at pains to tell everyone - including us, the mug-punters, and the International Monetary Fund, that it will not exceed its own, self-imposed, borrowing limits.

How much?    $200 billion.   And here's a worry.

If you work in a bank's money market operation; or if you are a politician, the millions turn into billions and it rolls off the tip of the tongue a bit too easily. But every dollar that is borrowed, some time, has to be repaid. By you, by me and by the rest of the country.

Just after 5 o'clock tonight I did a bit of math for Jason Morrison (Sydney radio presenter). But it's so staggering its worth repeating now.

First thought: Gillard, Swan, Wong, and before that Rudd, and all of the Labor Cabinet call these temporary borrowings, a “temporary deficit”.

Remember Those Words :  TEMPORARY DEFICIT.

The total Government debt will end up around $200 billion.
So here's a very basic calculation... I used a home loan calculator to work it out..... it's that simple..
$200 billion is two hundred thousand million dollars.

The current 10 year Government bond rate is 4.67 per cent. I worked the loan out over a period of 20 years. Now here's where it gets scary .... really scary.

The repayments on $200 billion come to more than one and a quarter billion dollars - every month - for 20 years. It works out that we - as taxpayers – will be repaying $15.4 billion in interest and principal every year .. $733 for every man woman and child - every year.

The total interest bill over the 20 years is - get this - $108 billion.

Remember, this is a Government that just 4 years ago had NO debt. NO debt.

In fact, it had enough money to create the Future Fund, to pay the future liabilities of public servants' superannuation, and it had enough to stick $20 billion into the Building Australia Fund .....

A note was sent to me, which explains that the six leading members of the Government, from Ms Gillard down, have a collective work experience of 181 years, but only 13 years in the private sector.

If you take out of those 13 years the number that were spent as trade union lawyers, 11 years, only two years were spent in the private sector.

So out of those 181 years:

- no years spent running their own business  
- no years spent starting their own business
- no years spent as a director of a family business or a company
- no years as a director of a public company
- no years in a senior position in a public company
- no years in a senior position in a private company
- no years working in corporate finance
- no years in corporate or business restructuring
- no years working in or with a bank
- no years of experience in the capital markets
- no years in a stock-broking firm
- no years in negotiating debt facilities with banks
- no years running a small business
- no years at the World Bank or IMF or OECD
- no years in Treasury or Finance.

But these people have plunged Australia into unprecedented debt.

Well, in a way you can't blame them. It's clear the electorate did not do their homework, because the Government is there by right.

Ah, but they are Labor and people vote for them because Labor is good for the working family - right???

Hire the Jessicas, fire the robots.

Recently I bought a hot new car. Ive always liked cars having owed a variety of different ones including turbocharged rally cars like Mitsubishi Evolutions etc.
One type of car Ive never owned is a V8. I guess Ive always been put off by the petrol consumption though recently I had the joy of driving an American muscle car as a hire car (thanks Hertz BTW!) as a bump up from the one I was originally scheduled to get. Nice! Everyone loves good service right?

This car so inspired me that I went out and bought one. I got a 2010 Chevrolet Camaro 6.2 Lt V8 manual in fire engine red.  Beautiful car. Its the "bumblebee" sort...and wonderful sounding out of second gear especially. Despite the traction control it still manages to get a little sideways in the wet....anyhow I digress. It was a treat and something pretty special.

As I was buying it, I really liked the buying experience that I got from the dealer. Great service and I felt special. Like really great service. They literally let me take this car out, on my own with my wife and no-one from the dealership with me to annoy me. The car sold itself and the dealership literally had me.  
I bought a few options with it and later had to go back to that dealer to get them installed by their service department.
Here's where things start to go sour, simply from one person. The specialness started to fade. Rapidly.
Its these kinds of people you need to purge from your organization. They aren't exactly assholes but they wreck your company. And you should get rid of them.

I walk in the door, fresh from driving it in. I'm feeling good. A couple of guys are eyeing off my car.
I go to drop my keys and register it in. The service advisor barely bats an eyelid. Zero smile. Monotone voice. No expression. You know the type I mean here: total lack of enthusiasm, no passion and dead obvious he hates being there. A bad attitude....sort of like some of the flight attendants you meet.  They do their job but that's it - like a robot. That's all you'll get from them.
This one guy took my day from being upbeat and happy, to flat. I felt un-valued. It nearly wrecked the whole experience.

This is not the sort of person you want in your company, and really you should warn them once and fire them the first time you hear it again. Which is what made me even more annoyed. They sent me a survey to fill in from surecritic.com (which touts itself as "Actual customers, trusted reviews") to ask me about my experience that would be put up publically. I commented honestly on my experience, that I got what I wanted done but that was it and the service advisor was unfriendly. Here's the kicker, they didnt publish it. Every review up there is glowing. 5 stars all round. Trusted reviews? My ass. This was simply a paid for and vetted showcase of an "everything is fine" attitude. Like those customer testimonials you see in some places. And frankly this is the last service they will get from me.

Now right off the back of me discovering that they were filtering their "trusted reviews" I got a call from Fedex. Recently I opened a business account with them and they were calling to welcome me....again. I was still pissed from finding out about the filtering and was rather blunt to the sales girl. Shes nice and asks how she can help. I said to her: "Why the heck am I still getting calls from you guys every week welcoming me. I must have had about 50 calls from you. Cut it out already!! Im busy!"
Im already waiting for the "well sorry sir...we will get it sorted" company line style of response.
Instead she fires back, "Oh its only been 50? maybe we might stop calling at 60 calls!"
She totally disarms me and I break into laughter.  Its clear from her customer manner that she is a real person, not a call center type reading from a script. We end up having a productive chat about Fedex shipping rates that really I hadn't planned on having. She questions and inquires. I feel better about Fedex simply because of this nice girl, Jessica and her sense of humor. She wants to follow up with me on Monday. Cool no problem. She made me feel valued.


You see in business its the Jessicas you want. The ones that demonstrate real enthusiasm, passion and value to the customer. You want to hire them and put the others away behind closed doors away from customers. Pay them lots of money because the Jessicas are what will keep customers coming back time and again.
Fire the customer service robots. They wont kill your business overnight, but it will happen.

Whats with the Qantas "taxes' inequality?

This past Christmas year my wife and I decided we wanted to go home to Australia for Christmas. Before we left Australia I was a pretty regular flyer, with Platinum status and had accumulated a bunch of frequent flyer points...386,000 to be exact and just enough for all four of us to travel at 96000 points per person. I had thought it would be a pretty low cost way to fly home...or so I thought!

I managed to get seats and book - but there was a nasty surprise with nearly $700 per person in taxes from Qantas. Holy crap! I wasnt impressed but figured that it was probably the same with every other airline so I book and paid. And then promptly wept at the $2800 shell out for what I thought was going to be a pretty free flight.

Recently though I have started flying with Delta. Delta also fly to Sydney and just as an experiment, I thought I'd check and see what the price for their frequent flyer seats would be.
For their flight it was going to be 100,000 per person in miles, but get this, a measly $119 in taxes per person!!! That's a whopping $2,300 price difference between Qantas and Delta!!

Now you can imagine how incensed I was. Taxes are taxes and should be consistent across all airlines. So I called Qantas. Their excuse? "Well part of our taxes and charges also includes a fuel surcharge of nearly $400".

Hell no. Hang on a second.

When I book a flight, whether through points or dollars, I expect that I have paid my way. That should include the cramped little seat, the fuel and the food. Why am I now paying for more fuel on top of a ticket price?

"That's the policy sir" was the polite response "but we will forward your comments to management"

What still doesn't add up to me is that there's still something funny going on. $700-$400 does not equal $120.
The explanation was that the taxes are different from different countries. Again I objected. "I'm leaving from a US port. I'm not leaving from Australia. How is this calculation made?"

Now I know the Australian government loves to tax people to death, though I have now asked Qantas for a cost breakdown and to understand why there is such a shocking ripoff of a tax difference between Qantas and Delta for exactly the same route of LAX to SYD return.

I'm waiting with bated breath :)

Update 3/1/2012

Just got a response from Qantas. The fuel surcharge is a whopping $543.60. That makes the math now correct. With the difference from Delta of around $120, that equates to around the $670 Qantas charges in total. But the big question is how does Qantas justify such a massive surcharge that no other airline charges? After all, the plane fills up in America paying the local price and then fills up in Australia also paying the local price (despite the fuel hedging schemes).
Nevertheless this is a pretty stupid move from Qantas. This surcharge pricing is quite out of step from anyone else operating on this route. I know who I'm flying with next to Australia...

iOS 5.0 woes and a solution!

Ive learned my lesson with Apple upgrades. At least so I thought!

Ive had my iPhone 4 for awhile now, even when I was at Microsoft in fact. I was pretty happy with each successive version/software iteration but I have learned an important lesson. Never upgrade on the day that the update comes out. This search gives you an idea of just how many people have "release day" fails, in many instances because the Apple activation servers just cant handle the load and fail, meaning your update fails and you are now stuck in the manual restore process. Not fun. So I leave it for a few days and update. Thankfully the update goes well for both my iPhone and my iPad 2. I'm relieved thinking the worst is behind me. I'm wrong and notice two things.

1. My iPhone now runs horribly slow and apps like the music one, start crashing out and the battery runs out really fast. Like not even doing anything on it all day, and its flat by end of day.

2. My iPad has similar app crashes and its battery also runs out mighty quickly.

I ask my friends whether they have seen the same and notice an interesting correlation.Of the friends with problems we all use the wifi on the iPhone.

I switch off wifi on my iPhone and everything is now back to normal. Apps run fine, battery life is good and performance is fine. Weird issues when Im driving along and the phone would become unresponsive (as it was searching so hard for wifi networks) have also disappeared.
I switch it off on the iPad, same deal. All is back to normal.

So it appears that the wifi stack is the culprit. Question is, when will Apple fix it?