The most outrageous out-sourcing scheme I heard lately is the out-sourcing of the online ads clicking.
Online ads are paid per click, i.e. 4 cents everytime someone actually mouse-clicks on it. Obviously online ads agency such as Google or Yahoo would benefit from this kind of out-sourcing but that will be unethical (really?). So who else would hire housewives in India or Srilanka to click ads for them?
It turned out competitors may do that too. Massive amount of no-results-what-soever clicks will cause competitors lose money and lower the efficiency of their ads. They have probably already complained to Google or Yahoo. Now here is another new fraud problem for Google and Yahoo to solve.
Archive for March, 2005
Our-sourcing
Wednesday, March 30th, 2005Finding the right people
Tuesday, March 29th, 2005The most important thing in management is finding the right people. With the right people, everything will work out. With the wrong kind of people, no matter how hard you try, it is still going to be very difficult.
But it is not easy to find out whether someone will be a good fit or not. So we conduct interviews. Think about it as a marriage, how long do people spend together on average before they decide to get married. Then there’re still a substantial percentage of marriages fall apart, some after many years. This sounds totally hopeless.
The good news is that it is not entirely clueless. Good managers are sort of like good marriage counselors. They hone their skills in listening, probing, and obsverving. They pick up thin slices of clues that may indicate potential red-flags. They trust their “gut feelings”. It is not easy.
This Weekend
Sunday, March 27th, 2005This weekend is a weekend for friends. A number of us old college friends got together for lunch/dinner, some discussions and friendly poker games. It was quite fun.
In this day and age, the complexity of technology has caused the never ending thin-slicing of people’s time, attention and job functions. There are fewer and fewer human interactions that are truly neccessary. I found get-together with friends has become a luxury now. So we make a point to travel to places just to meet friends. And we have established an unwrittern rule that whoever travel a long way to a different place, all the friends have to make an effort to get together. Not just for the traveller’s sake, but more of a good excuse for the local friends.
iPod Accessory
Friday, March 25th, 2005The game doesn’t end when you bought an iPod, it just got started. There are a number of wonderful accessories you can buy that will enhance your music enjoying experience. Here are some that I like:
- The Shure E3C earphone – way better than the default earphone from Apple – if you like earphones.
- Bose QC2 noise cancelling headphone – if you go on an airplane these days, almost half the people are wearing those, amazing.
- NaviPot remote control – I hook my iPod to the main stereo in the living room, this not only allows me to control the iPod from a distance, but better yet, I can program iPod into the macros of the universal remote control. So now it is seemlessly integrated into my stereo system.
- iTrip – nice compact design, beam music to FM receiver, requires a good radio an empty channel.
- The BMW iPod interface – jokingly to be the most expensive iPod accessory – can’t tell you how it works yet as it is still not working. more later.
RSS
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005I finally got the RSS working. Now, you can add this blog to your my.yahoo.com by simply click the “+ My Yahoo!” button on the upper-right corner of this site.
The key is to success is to ping Yahoo about your site changes. This can be easily done in WordPress by adding “http://api.my.yahoo.com” to the write options->update service. Initially I didn’t put “http” there and it didn’t work. Now you can even go to Yahoo page->Add Content and search for this site. It will popup in search if you put in the key words Technology, Manage, and Toys.
Dell X300
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005Leo asks about X300. So here’s a few things about it. I like the X300, the centrino wireless is much more responsive than the external wireless card. Compared to the much bigger/powerful D600 it replaces, I don’t feel it is underpowered at all. Especially after the memory was upgraded from 256MB to 640MB (very important). Very nice size and functionality. I think Thinkpad are all solid machines, but I just like the look and feel of the magnesium alloy case much more than the black rubber from IBM.
The only thing I miss about the D600 is the S-video output, not found on the docking station for X300, also missing is the DVI connector (that’s OK though, unless you have a high-end HDTV).
Leo – if you do decide to go with big blue though, you should try to hook up with an IBM employee (I know a few if you don’t) to get the 20% employee discount. Nobody knows anybody works for Dell (or Apple, for that matter, darn it!) though.
Apple Stock
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005Apple stock (AAPL) is at almost all-time high right now. Call me crazy but I still like it and would recommend it. It had a great run last year because of the somewhat unexpected success of the iPod mini. You don’t buy a stock based on what is already known and factored in. In this case, what I think that hasn’t been factored in are Apple’s strengh in broader computer product designs.
Apple has a 2% market share in personal computer. I think people should forget about the concept of personal computers and think about instead devices with computer in it (for example, your cell phone is actually a computer). What happened to electric motors in the turn of last century will happen to computers next. Instead of having one computer to do everything mediocrely, specialized smart devices (appliances and consumer electronics) will take over.
If you look at the synergy and buzz generated from vendors providing accessories to iPod, you can understand how to become a leader in the new $100 billion marker of consumer appliances. Look around your house and think about what Apple can do to your other appliance what it did to the CD player with iPod. For that, Microsoft, Sony, Philips, RCA and etc all have a long way to go.
From Leadership to Management
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2005In the last a couple of years, the pendulum has swung completely back from the “leadership” talk to the fundamentals of “management”. In the 90s, “managers” are inferior drones to great leaders. Then there’re Enron and the internet bubble, that sure changed the perspective of management theory in some subtle ways.
Yes, great leaders still lead with great vision and pursuasion. But now people start to value great managers too. The “touchy feely” class at Stanford business school is the most popular elective class. I’m reading a really long article in recent issue of HBR: “What Great Managers Do” – talking about how to find individual strenghs and weaknesses in your group and design your strategy around those. Think about it, that is an 180 degree turn from the BHAG (Big Hairy Adacious Goals) days.
Mac Mini
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2005After months of “thinking about it”, I finally decided Mac Mini is the one I want for my next computer. All four lines of current Mac computers are very attractive (PowerMac, Powerbook, iMac, and Mac Mini). But given that I’ve already got a very good notebook computer – the Dell X300 for work, and 3 LCD panels at home – one of them 20inch with DVI connection, the Mac Mini makes the most sense. Not to mention that the cost is much lower than the others.
The only thing I need to do before the purchase would be buying some APPL shares – I wish I had done that when I bought the first of the three iPod (1st, 2nd, and 4th generation). I’ll discuss more about the iPod next time.
Make money on computer deals
Monday, March 21st, 2005Over the last a couple years, I heard from various people that someone keen on shopping online could make money on cheap deals of computer/electronics. Let’s take Dell for example, the scheme works like this: you find some really good deals of Dell computers and buy a bunch of them, and then sell them to others with a small profit (but still lower than normal price).
I found this to be quite an unreliable business for many reasons. One of them being Dell would never allow other people make too much money off their products. Being Dell, it is all about relentless execution on cost.
Sure enough, I just found out there has been a delloutlet.com that recycles pre-configured computers (many of them certified open boxes) on the cheap. This sort of competes with people selling similar stuffs on eBay or other market places.