The Upside of "Zero Privacy" - Is it any wonder that public concern about privacy has risen dramatically during the last decade? Self-help and advocacy books abound, with titles like I Love the Internet But I Want My Privacy Too! and Privacy for Sale: How Big Brother and Others Are Selling Your Private Secrets for Profit. Hundreds of privacy-related bills have been proposed in the U.S. Congress and state legislatures. So is there a benefit to the consumer from any of this? Walter Kitchenman, an economist at Purchase Street Research, seems to think so.  He estimates that because of information sharing among financial firms "mortgage rates in the United States are as much as two full percentage points lower" than they would be otherwise.

Secret Codes - We've all faced it at one time or another. The "Check Engine Light" appears on the dashboard of our car and we dutifully take it to the dealer to have it checked out. It turns out to be a loose gas cap or some other seemingly trivial issue. It then costs us $120 to have the mechanic turn the light off. We then think "Gee what a dumb user interface. Why didn't a message light up saying that the gas cap was loose?" Poor design, right? Well, sometimes a bad interface is intentional. The auto manufacturers have made a conscious decision to make it very difficult to service our own cars, thus sustaining the legion of auto dealerships.

Testers? We don't need no Stinkin' Testers! - There was a time when the term "beta" was once used to describe a brief, private final round of software testing before it was released to the public. A new sloppy trend in software development has arisen to release very unfinished software as "beta" and just let the customers test it. "Heck, so what if they find lots of bugs." these manufacturers say, "We said it was 'beta.'"

True Grid - So you need more processing power? Well you could go out and spend thousands of dollars for the latest in new hardware technology. Or, if you work in an office with lots of PC's, you could use this growing but decidedly lower tech solution. Wachovia linked hundreds of already-deployed desktop computers into a grid, taking advantage of every machine with available processing time. The results were stunning. A job that used to take all day or overnight could now be completed in under an hour, allowing Wachovia to make exponentially faster risk and pricing decisions.

Wicked Innovation - The proliferation and permutation of viruses and worms offers a superb case study in wicked innovation and innovative wickedness. Michael Schrage asks "Why do such innovations succeed? What can and should we learn from their continuing success?" Just as society better understands health by better understanding disease, markets better appreciate healthy innovation by grasping the dynamics of pathological innovation (registration required).

From Punched tape to Megapixels - Jakob Nielsen, renowned computer usability expert,  muses on the future of computing power. For instance according to Moore's Law by 2034, we'll all own computers that runs at 3PHz CPU speed, and have a petabyte (a thousand terabytes) of memory, half an exabyte (a billion gigabytes) of hard disk-equivalent storage and connects to the Internet with a bandwidth of a quarter terabit (a trillion binary digits) per second.  Just what could we possibly do will all of that power?  Ahhh, the wonderful possibilities!

Playing Old Records (No Needle Required) - Finally! You can explain to your spouse why you've been saving all those old LP's.  The Library of Congress is financing research into a new method of capturing and preserving old sound recordings without making contact with the recording surface by using a camera and special software.  How does it work?  A camera takes thousands of precise sequential images of the groove and then stitches the images together, measuring the shape of each undulation and calculating the route a stylus would take along the path. Next, image-processing algorithms are used to detect any scratches or spots of dust and deletes them. Then software simulates the stylus motion, and the results are quite amazing (registration required).

Your next software project needs...Anthropology? - We don't need no stinkin' anthropology!  Do we? Come to our next free 90 minute "Taste of Success" seminar focused on High-Tech Anthropology. A high-touch solution for a high-tech world.  Bring your toughest software project stories to share.  See you on June 24!

Fantasy becomes Reality - A rogue economics professor sat down to play a video game and found, well, a country. From socialist utopia to cut-throat capitalism, virtual worlds are leaving some players rich, others poor, and some on the SIMS mob hit-list.

World Wide Mind Meld - David Bradin, a patent attorney, felt like a talented scientist forever lost in the world of research.  He was intrigued when he heard about a web site called InnoCentive.com that posts scientific problems from clients and awards money for the best answer. He then dashed off a quick answer to one of the posted questions and forgot about it until he received an email a few weeks later. His reward?  $4,000.  Darren Carroll, CEO of InnoCentive, launched the company three years ago to confront the skyrocketing cost of research and development.  His clients need answers to key problems fast and they don't care who solves them.

Hurry! Sign up for a Menlo Class.  - The Menlo Summer class schedule is out.  Summer is a great time to buckle down and learn the real secrets of software success. 

Need a Speaker for an Upcoming Event? - We love public speaking (yes, we really do!) and are happy to deliver inspiring messages focused on business success with information technology. Call us at (734) 665-1847 to schedule your next event. Look here for a list of some of the topics that we’ve spoken about in the past.