A Day Early, and a Dollar Short
Show Notes
In Other News
Happy Birthday, Dan Frey
Nokia refuses to license VP8 patents to Google after the search giant comes to terms with MPEG LA.
Google Kills Frommers…no more print books.
Smartphones Are Killing Impulse Purchases At Checkout. Shoppers used to [...]
The post Episode 140 – The One Where Jere Starts His Own Podcast appeared first on Android Buffet Podcast.
Guru returns with new thoughts.
Show Notes
Special Feature – Hurricanes and Power Outages
Biolite Camp Stove – charge your cell phone using twigs, pellets, or other things that burn. Make a cup of tea at the same time
Crank-charging your cell phone would take hours and you’d likely get rather [...]
The post Episode 120 – Please Pause for Station Identification appeared first on Android Buffet Podcast.
As a Yahoo(YHOO) shareholder, I was thrilled with the news that Marissa Mayer would become CEO. I share her
engineering background, but found it difficult to explain to outsiders exactly how this changed the game for Yahoo, particularly in terms of the company’s ability to attract top engineering talent. I’ve always had a hard time convincing non-engineering management that engineers are not Legos- they don’t all have identical skills and speeds. In fact, there’s a power law, where the top engineers are an order of magnitude more productive and innovative than the rest.
Though it is true that the man-month is mythical, there is also a powerful network effect that can be unleashed by having talented engineers interact in unstructured ways. This is the secret of Google’s(GOOG) 20% time, and Facebook’s(FB) famous Hackathons.
I was pleased then, to see “Marissa Mayer To Board: Yahoo Needs More Engineers” at Business Insider this morning.
We know what one of those ideas is, and it’s pretty simple: Mayer wants to hire more front line engineers – a lot more.
According to a source familiar with Mayer’s conversations with Yahoo’s board prior to her hiring, she told the board that a quick examination of its headcount and org structure made it clear to her that the company does not have the kind of engineer-to-everyone else ratio that Google or Facebook has, and that fixing that ratio would be among her top priorities.
This might seem like an obvious move, but consider that before Yahoo’s board hired Mayer, it considered making Ross Levinsohn CEO. One of his first moves was going to be to get rid of thousands of engineers by shipping off Yahoo’s ad tech business.
Likewise, Carol Bartz’s signature move was shipping Yahoo’s search business – and many of the engineers running it – off to Microsoft.
The post Marissa Mayer Gets It – New Yahoo CEO Wants More Engineers appeared first on Inelegant Investor.
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Jere is tired, so we did a slightly shorter show.
Show Notes
Episode 79 – Don’t Let the Androids Bite is a post from Android Buffet Podcast – Hungry for Android? Get all you can eat at the Android Buffet Podcast…live on Mondays at 10PM Eastern. All Rights Reserved.
It’s back to being just the two of us, CES is over, and we’re back to business. Guru answers the question…who is George Gareau?
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Show Notes
Episode 78 – Who is George Gareau? is a post from Android Buffet Podcast – Hungry for Android? Get all you can eat at the Android Buffet Podcast…live on Mondays at 10PM Eastern. All Rights Reserved.
Eastman Kodak(EK) surged 35% today, building on yesterday’s gains. Investors were reacting positively to two pieces of news released by the company. On Tuesday morning the company announced it was restructuring from three reporting segments to two.
Under the new structure, Kodak has reduced its number of segments from three to two – the Commercial Segment and the Consumer Segment – which will both report into a newly created Chief Operating Office. The Chief Operating Office will be led by Philip Faraci, who will continue to serve as Kodak’s President and Chief Operating Officer and by Laura Quatela, who was recently named, alongside Faraci, as President and Chief Operating Officer of Kodak. Faraci will focus on the Commercial Segment and the company’s sales and regional operations, and Quatela will focus on the Consumer Segment and certain corporate functions. Both individuals will report to Antonio M. Perez, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, as will the positions of Chief Financial Officer, Chief Technical Officer, Chief Marketing Officer and General Counsel.
“As we complete Kodak’s transformation to a digital company, our future markets will be very different from our past, and we need to organize ourselves in keeping with that evolution,” Perez said. “This new structure simplifies the organization, focuses it more precisely on our consumer and commercial customers, and puts the right people in place to capitalize fully on the tremendous technological capabilities of Kodak. These business structure changes also allow us to allocate resources more productively, continue to significantly reduce administrative costs, and improve efficiency. We are confident that these changes will support our efforts to make the most of our opportunities.”
This led to a significant jump in the stock price, but it is unclear why. The company has rearranged furniture, but ultimately not addressed the key problem which is that the company needs cash now. While this change may lead to cost savings and/or increased profitability, it certainly won’t do so in time to help the company with its current dire situation.
After the bell on Tuesday, the company released a second announcement. In it, the company announced that it had filed patent infringement lawsuits against Apple(AAPL) and HTC. The claims were similar to previous claims the company has made regarding infringement by phone and tablet devices of a series of ridiculously broad patents. Interestingly, Kodak did not file any claims against Google(GOOG) or Motorola(MMI). Kodak has been in discussions with all of these firms for sometime and been attempting to sell its patent portfolio. This is a desperate, last-ditch attempt to force a settlement or purchase, but it is unlikely to result in any cash quickly enough to avoid bankruptcy. Despite this, shares were up 35% on Wednesday.
Mr. Market is in a manic mood and his bid this company up significantly in the last two days, but the common stock is still worth what it was before Tuesday’s open- nothing.
Disclosure: The author holds no position in any stock mentioned
Don’t Be Fooled By Eastman Kodak’s Dead Cat Bounce is a post from Inelegant Investor – Something of Value. All Rights Reserved.
Image by John C Abell via Flickr
Our special guest this episode is Steve McLaughlin, the Door to Door Geek, co-host of Linux for the Rest of Us, LinuxBasix, Android App Addicts, and the recently launched Droid Nation. “You too can run Linux each and every day and feel safe and productive doing anything you set your mind to.”
Show Notes
Episode 77 – Door-Bell is a post from Android Buffet Podcast – Hungry for Android? Get all you can eat at the Android Buffet Podcast. All Rights Reserved.
How things change over the years is astonishing. A few short years ago, the idea of storing so much of your personal information on remote computers would be
worrisome. In fact, the ability to get all that information in the cloud would be limited, with slow internet connections.
Now, everything is Cloud Cloud Cloud. Now, as we mentioned before, never put all your eggs in one basket. always keep copies in multiple places. But backup services are a separate issue for another day.
What we were looking for in a photo service was not what everyone was looking for in such a system. Some people want their photos to be social.
Flickr,, for example, states that its mission statement is twofold…to help people make their photos available to the people who matter to them, and enable new ways of organizing photos and video. There are tons of great images on Flickr, and it has a great community if your goal is creating a community around photo sharing. There are a lot of serious photographers on Flickr who want to share with other serious photographers.
Flickr offers a free service, and a $25 a year Pro account. The Pro account gets you unlimited uploads, storage, and bandwidth, and ad-free browsing. But Flickr is run by Yahoo, and Yahoo’s performance of late has been less than stellar.
Google’s Picasa is also popular, and is transitioning to Google Photo, which is part of Google’s rebranding of their services with an eye toward social. As part of its integration with Google Plus, the service now allows unlimited photos, but the terms of service allow Google to use the uploaded photos to display, and for promoting services royalty free.
Facebook has become one of the most popular places to store photos. However, it suffers from the same pitfalls as other services. It is free, but the quality and organization is limited by Facebook’s desired function.
So, we went to Smugmug. It is the most expensive option, but with that comes reliability and control. Most serious photographers agree that it may not be a place for sharing, but it is a place for photographers.
Smugmug offers unlimited uploads, a variety of privacy and safety options, prints, customization, and is ad-free. You can use your own domain name(Power Account) and customize your gallery theme. All photos are backed up, and you can download your entire collection easily. They offer three levels…Basic($40/yr), Power($60/yr), Pro($150/yr).
The Basic account allows for most of the functionality you could want. The Power account adds the ability to use your own domain name and further customize the site, and it adds video support for clips of 20 minutes or less, and right click protection to prevent people from saving your images. The Pro account is for those who sell their photography.
And if you like to share your photos, Smugmug supports sharing to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Posterous, and WordPress. If you don’t want people to share from your galleries, this can be turned off. You can also turn off external linking of all kinds. So, you keep control of your photos, but you have the power to do whatever you wish with them. It has given us a chance to take our photos out of an archive where they were never seen, and start getting them in presentation order.
What do you use for your photos?
Choosing a Cloud Photo Service is a post from Gadget Wisdom. All Rights Reserved.
The first episode of 2012.
Show Notes
Episode 76 – It’s 2012 is a post from Android Buffet Podcast – Hungry for Android? Get all you can eat at the Android Buffet Podcast. All Rights Reserved.
In this holiday week episode, Jere and Guru chat some more.
Image via Wikipedia
Show Notes
Episode 75 – Twas the Night of Boxing Day is a post from Android Buffet Podcast – Hungry for Android? Get all you can eat at the Android Buffet Podcast. All Rights Reserved.