The World's Greatest Links...Right After My Brush With A Crazed Swine Flu

I'm just back from a week's vacation in Mexico with my lovely girlfriend and I haven't dropped dead of swine flu yet. Sadly, I'm spending this renewed gift of life weeding through emails in my Outlook inbox, fighting trojans on my home desktop, catching up on the news and trying to re-engage with the world.

BTW, if you get some time to spend in sunny Cabo San Lucas, I highly recommend it. Here is a picture of Medano Beach, the main swimming beach in Cabo. Very nice. Notice the lack of swine flu...

One of the things I really don't like about vacations is coming back and having to go through hundreds of emails. Long ago, I had set up a number of rules on Outlook to manage the flow of emails and route them into various folders, but I ran out of space for new rules which resulted in my main inbox being overrun with spam, newsletters, etc. It took a lot of time to sort through them each day.

Today, on a whim, I created a new rule for the massive amount of emails I get from Twitter now. It worked! Has anyone noticed this? Is this some new upgrade from Microsoft? If so, I'm really happy. I'm going to be creating lots and lots of new rules from now on.

On a sadder note, I returned home to discover than my virus, trojan and spyware protected home computer had become infected with Virtumonde. I, being an experienced, spyware removal expert, spent many hours yesterday scanning, quarantining, deleting and repeating. No luck. Now, my computer has been taken over by the trojan and...get this...locked me out of my own computer. Looks like I'm going to have to do a repair installation of XP. Good times. I liked it better on the beach!

Here are some links I've come across yesterday and today that I've found interesting...

Om Malik shares some interesting stats of the usage of applications across PC, Mac and Internet platforms.

Microsoft has released the private beta of a slick looking emergency social networking thingy called Vine. Brier Dudley calls it Twitter plus Facebook on steroids.

I've read last year than super-hyped Dubai was going to be able to withstand a commercial and residential housing correction, now according to a story in the WSJ, not so much.

Those of us who own and love our PocketPC's tend to get snippy when people talk about how groundbreaking the iPhone is. Yes, the GUI is pretty slick but I've had a 3G touch screen smart phone for years and years now. It's not new. So, while I'm encouraged than Microsoft and Verizon are working together to continue to improve the experience, headlines like these, "Microsoft, Verizon in Talks to Launch iPhone Rival", drive me mad. Talk about burying the lede (emphasis added):

Verizon has performed well despite not having the iPhone. On Monday, the company reported solid first-quarter results in its wireless business, edging out AT&T in net customer additions.

Jeez.

Interview with George Spohn at Satellite 2009

One of the more interesting industries I work with is the satellite industry. Characterized by extremely large upfront capital expenditures, this adjunct to the overall telecommunications field had some hard times caused by overcapacity issues in the early part of the century. Since the onset of the war in Afghanistan, and the military's embrace of the use of civilian bandwidth to support the warfighter, along with the sudden growth in popularity in both satellite radio (XM/Sirius) and satellite TV (DirecTV- note, I am a subscriber to this fine service), the industry has been growing at a healthy solid rate.

Each year, one of the main industry get-togethers is the Satellite show held here in Washington DC. This year, I took a video camera down to the show and interviewed some of the movers and shakers in the industry. One of those leaders was George Spohn, Vice President, North American Sales & Marketing at Thrane & Thrane. Thrane & Thrane is the world´s leading manufacturer of equipment and systems for global mobile communication based on sophisticated satellite and radio technology. I've know George for years. He is one of the smartest people in the satellite industry, and I'm glad I got the chance to pick his brain about the trends he is seeing.



Go to YouTube if you can't view it here.

Were you at the show? What do you think the greatest opportunity is for the satellite industry now? It's greatest challenge?

Social media and government 2.0

There has been a lot of interesting discussions and events recently about the intersection of government, social media and web 2.0. Broadly described as government 2.0 or gov 2.0, there was even a way-cool barcamp like event, Gov2.0 camp last week. Even a traditional government IT event like FOSE was a-buzz with chatter about terms like twitter, conversation, brightkite, etc.

At FOSE, I had the privilege of interviewing two leaders in the field of marketing IT services and products to government customers both directly and through channel partners. I think you'll find their insight invaluable.

First, I sat down with Brian Grainger of SpectraLogic's federal group. Go to YouTube to view the video, if you can't see it here:



Second, I spent some time talking with Ed Bursk. Ed is a long time marketing leader behind the marketing campaigns at KORE Telematics, Nortel Networks, Alcatel/Lucent and other technology companies. Go to YouTube to view the interview, if you can't see it here:



What do you think about Ed and Brian's views of government spending priorities? Will the stimulus money actually hit the streets this year in an impactful way?

What I Learned at Satellite 2009

I've spent the past two days at the Satellite 2009 trade show. Given the overwhelming negative news these days, I'm thankful to spend some time with individuals and companies that are doing well, making money and excited about the future. The industry seems to be in a much better place than 2001 and seems poised to motor through 2009.

Here are the main takeaways:

1. Satellite operators and services companies have multi-year contracts that buffer them from somewhat from quarter to quarter fluctuations in the economy.

2. By and large, most satellite companies have remained immune to the leverage mania of the past decade and are in reasonably good financial shape.

3. The government continues to buy a huge amount of commercial satellite capacity.

4. Satellite capacity is at 90% utilized and there isn't a big number of new satellites going up in the next few years so pricing power and margins will remain good. There is no glut, like in 2001.

5. With utilization so high, current issues are interference mitigation and squeezing every last drop of data through the pipe.

6. Communications on the move (COTM) is again a hot application for both the military and commercial customers. I particularly liked the AT&T CruiseCast in-car satellite TV.

As with the FOSE show, I interviewed a number of people about their take on the show, hot trends, etc. We'll be polishing those up over the next few days and releasing them out into the wild...

Brand New Straight to the Point Podcast with Ed Bursk

I've been interviewing marketing executives as part of the "Straight to the Point" series for almost two years. One guy I've been working hard to schedule is Ed Bursk. Ed is a marketing consultant who has worked with numerous technology, networking, telecom and government IT companies in his career and has a wealth of knowledge and best practices. His experience includes Nortel Networks, Alcatel/Lucent, KORE Telematics and others. Take a listen to the interview and let me know what you think?