Tech Firm Implements Employee ‘Zero Email’ Policy

While this works for communications and collaborations within the company, they are still looking for opportunities to reduce using email for external clients and partners.

Best of luck…people are still “STUCK” and getting “PUSH”ed through this POP/IMAP/SMTP technologies (baggage from early 1980s). Are we up for getting back to today (if not, back to the future) and stay relavant with today’s technology trends and culture.

The day when external clients and partners are comfortable to see a business card without email address would be my happy day. Now…thats something to wish for.

• Corporate mistakes, within market listed NGOs, must be made public.
• Board of Directors, of these market listed NGOs, involved in the decision making process must declare their stand and/or resolution to fix the problem that they have created.
• We have the concept of “Limited” companies, just in case a bunch of these failures show up in the face of public
• INVESTMENT IS SUBJECTED TO MARKET RISKS. Risk takers on poorly managed NGOs must not reap profits in the name of a bail-out.
• Letting a company die because of their failure, would correct the system that tries to abuse the government/public funds otherwise.

One thing is very clear in my mind, private lives and/or mistakes of the corporate citizens should not drain the economy without a celling point. And that celling point MUST be the loss of ownership and liquidation of the company.

Creating any lenience, in the name of a bail-out, would challenge our constitutional concepts such as laws enacted as well as on-par non-human entities participating, with equality, in the economic reality.

We can have Western outlook and even lifestyle, if we really want, but don’t have be too much of a CAPITALIST. DON’T FORGET THAT WE ARE DEMOCRATIC and are collectively responsible for the INDIA’s economic prosperity and its downfall.

I don’t think few elements (Citizens/NRIs/POIs/OCBs/any other FDI allowed investors) operating INDIAN NGOs should determine the downfall INDIAN economic wealth. We have experienced non-accountability over wealth/public funds being extorted in the interest of few in the INDIAN Political system. Why should we let such a thing happen in the NGOs as well?

We need some celebrity icons (like APJ, Anna and Bajaj) to influence change. The systems we have in place must be operated and evolved efficiently to increase our economic prosperity and global stance..PERIOD.

In INDIA making things happen through the politicians, with the kind of political climate we have, towards a nationalistic cause benefiting the INDIAN economy might be a humongous task. Would they at least sit back, relax and don’t work on this one (bail-out of NGOs operating in INDIA), if we yell and scream enough?

This is just my perspective (now, may be I am being too much of a nationalist than a politically correct commoner), but why would I have to hold it to my heart….hmm…

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-rallies-troops-in-brutally-honest-burnin/

Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop is:

• Not a Nokia veteran
• Not Finnish
• Not a relaxed person within his company
• Headed the most profitable business unit of Microsoft (Of course, I am talking about Microsoft Office)
• Paints the reality to the rest of his Nokia team.
• Trying to regain market share of this giant 140 year old company

After reading the memo transcript, my thoughts got re-winded immediately to a note related to Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie in 2008 (Wired Article: Ray Ozzie Wants to Push Microsoft Back Into Startup Mode).

Microsoft was set out to reach their customers, more often than their year long product update release cycle (whether the customer liked a new release or not). After couple of years this change, we are still paying more for two fat products that Microsoft is making most of its money (Windows and Office). So they haven’t been able to crack their problems with just software sales. They are now into the cloud and adding services as one of the key revenue generator.

Intel is trying to capture the growing mobile market and working hard to get its processors into the mobile phones. After being too complacent with the desktop/laptop market, it did realize that there will be more mobile phones than traditional computer systems. This recent statement “We must build, catalyze or join a competitive ecosystem” from Elop, after a year long partnership with Intel, could mean trouble with Intel alliance and a death to MeeGo, but that thought would get answered in due course.

I think both Nokia and Microsoft are working on the same problem. While Microsoft has taken this step couple of years ago, they are still working harder to get their market share in the Cloud, SaaS and the next generation models (mostly around social and convergent computing). A healthy and value-adding ecosystem of products (hardware and software) along with services (PaaS & SaaS) will eventually become a great pay-off to Microsoft and Nokia.

Coming from Microsoft, the Nokia’s CEO is trying to renew the partnership with Microsoft. I hope that they two do well together.

My thoughts:

• Core of Apple iOS and Google Android comes from Unix, which gets hidden by the ecosystem built around the same. So, in a way though these platforms are Linux variants, they don’t have the spirit of Linux in them.
• MeeGo on the other hand is a true Linux variant supporting native application development using the super fast and close to processor technologies (Of course, I am talking about the raw C/C++ power in the phone).
• Intel and Nokia have been working on MeeGo for a while now. Nokia must release a MeeGo based product as soon as possible (and before its too late for MeeGo to see the light).

Takeaways:

• Change is the only constant and knowing when to change is very important.
• Constant market study, agility and self-introspection without ego are crucial.
• Leadership is needed to push people out of their comfort zone and help them succeed in making the company grow.
• Transformation is not a easy task.
• It takes good engineering team, that takes advantage of customer insights and  minds, to turn-around a company selling Software and/or Consumer Electronics.
• It takes a team, willing to stick around, stay together, be bold and creative, to endure and get out of tough times.

Now we know that laws are man made. Lets look at this recent news “U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet“.

Why would the government want to make sure that you don’t use encryption algorithms to secure our conversation, unless there is a backdoor entry for them to peek into?

• They want to know, if we are communicating anything that would harm the public interest
• Pre-emptively/Non-Intrusively monitor the communications, as if the messages are sent in “clear text”
• Don’t invest anything big, like computing farms and heavy duty super computers, to decode the messages being sent

Here is what I see as a problem and thereby an opportunity:

• Are we thinking that the security measures that the government is uses aren’t good enough to keep us secured?
• Blanket Judicial Approvals/Orders to start monitoring communications based on a BROAD classification of PREJUDICE, STEREOTYPES and DISCRIMINATION. I DON’T complain that this is unfair. We all have experiences to justify WHY this is a necessity or otherwise.
• Blanket approvals to monitor cause too much overhead for those who try to:
  • Monitor
  • Comply
  • Abide to the rules
• Huge rewrite of software applications that use encryption tools and techniques
• There is very little transparency on the systems that would try to use the backdoor entry points
• Would these initiatives come with the clauses where the backdoor entries are recorded and documented for future judiciary review, in an non-repudiation basis?
• A BIG UNKNOWN on how many new exploits would be targeted towards the backdoor entry points

All this reiterates my usual point

Security is a perception and its usually governed by factors beyond our control. In this case, “beyond” is a relative term, where few perceive it being finite while others don’t.

We all know that amount of effort went towards creating a SECURE infrastructure. The whole Trusted Computing Platform and Common Criteria Evaluation initiatives are now very much questionable. If privacy is not controlled by my choice (Opt-In/Opt-Out), why have a Trusted Platform/Products?

I know that commenting on these sensitive topics are taboo, since it is sometime to do with freedom of speech?

Being high endurance sport, it was great to run with more people around. Thanks for all those who ran with me, especially the ChennaiRunners.

Without any long runs this year, I am venturing this weekend on this Chennai Give a Life Half Marathon, assuming that my night walks have kept my appetite to run.

This week the mantra is:

Eat...Sleep...Run...REPEAT

If you are running this weekend, my best wishes to you…happy running.

OLPC Project is very jealous of this news post. Hail the INDIAN team work !!!

I will write about my experience in using it…when I get a chance.

Disruption to businesses due to an outage caused by Airtel Infrastructure today (8th April 2010) is just an example how much we depend on Internet Service. Fortunately, this service problem was only for Chennai, Tamil Nadu area. I just became a victim of it, since it pushed a scheduled demo with one of my overseas client.

http://beta.thehindu.com/business/article391966.ece
http://www.fonearena.com/blog/2010/04/08/airtel-broadband-internet-down.html

Telephony/Internet Services Provider market in INDIA is very lucrative and has attracted too many players (literally creating a dump of foreign direct investment to secure INDIA business). Business Continuity is a key for sustenance, with Number Portability in the radar, glitches like these would define customer loyalty.

Now on the other side, if you are already mobile savvy and have a good phone, please revisit your need on “Peek”. Smart Phones and Computers (Nokia N73, Samsung Corby, HTC Touch Pro 2 and N900 or any other phone that costs more than Rs. 10,000.00) are far more full-featured than Peek. Why would you want to carry a device just for email?

If you position any phone with “EMAIL” as the most important feature, I would tend to rethink. BlackBerry’s business model is all about a good email client and efficient (at a low bandwidth network) communication device. With 3G (high bandwidth network) and social communication, even email is getting irrelevant these days. BlackBerry has lived its days, it either reinvents itself or get perished. Do you have a BRICK?

I like NDK, so much for the raw power . This release of NDK would be a great addition to Game Developers for Android and would seed some cool games for Android. So far iPhone and Symbian based Mobile OS phones were poised to dominate as great gaming platforms. Now it doesn’t have to hold true.

For now, lets just assume Google doesn’t get forced to trade Java for C/C++ layer, of the Android OS stack. Go Native!!!