Are There Ways of Being Paranoid Without Being an Asshole? — Software Defined Talk #45

After discussing the Horns of Moses and beard butter, we talk about how big companies seem to always “miss it.” We use a recent write-up of Nokia as the launching point, and sort of conclude that the problem is: people get fat and happy and don’t stay “paranoid” enough. We also discuss ad blocking and how little most tech vendor marketers probably care about the topic. Brandon gives a good rant on how to do marketing right: have a great product.

Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes, RSS Feed.

Show Notes

• If you like video, see this episode’s video recording.
• Get your hair and beard cut in Austin, axe shaving not mandated. Also, beard butter.
• The Horns of Moses, also beard butter and the Mohamed icon in the Supreme Court.
• Nokia downfall analysis, “Who Killed Nokia? Nokia Did.” Also, there’s a new book on Blackberry/RIM.
• Don’t fuck up the culture.
• Ad blocking from a marketer’s perspective … the “if we just had a white paper” anti-pattern. Brandon: “You don’t generate demand, you only capture demand.” (If you want some extensive ad blocking talk, check out Back to Work episode #239.)
• Spiceworld write-up on Spiceworks from Coté. Check out Speaking in Tech episode #179 for more on Spiceworld.
• Mesos in Azure.

BONUS LINKS Not Covered in Podcast

• Hashicorp (Vagrant, etc.) introduces new products: Otto: Development and deployment made easy and Nomad: A Distributed, Highly Available, Datacenter-Aware Scheduler.
• Shipping is hard.
• Goodbye, Bimodal IT, we hardly knew you? “It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that the bimodal IT model neatly mirrors the bifurcated application types described as ‘systems of record’ and ‘systems of engagement,’ with Type-1 IT responsible for systems that keep track of transactions, and Type-2 responsible for externally-facing applications that interact with important constituencies.”
• “In conclusion, one can say that Gartner has accurately identified a crucial tension in the proliferating demands on IT, and prescribed a model to enable IT to respond to them. However, setting up two organizations won’t necessarily resolve the tension, and may, in fact, exacerbate it as the two groups vie for resources and influence.”
• Wardley proposed “Tri-modal” with “Pioneers, Settlers and Town Planners.”
• Twitter monkeying around with >140 characters.
• What’s new in OpenStack “Liberty” release?
• Amazon’s Market Antics?  Just a matter of time before Google stops responding to Apple and Amazon searches and all sorts of other childish tit-for-tat.
• “Java: planned obsolescence” from Paul Krill, more from Coman Hamilton.
• What happened to Boundary?

Recommendations

• Brandon: Global Entry is totally worth it. Also, The Magic Kingdom at Disney World.
• Matt: new noise-canceling headphones, Bose QuietComfort 20 .
• Coté: you can now get uncooked black beans at Costco.

Michael Coté works for Pivotal — a sponsor of The New Stack.