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A look inside the Microsoft Home

Today, MSN Tech takes you on a tour of the Microsoft Home.


“A shining steel, geodesic structure where food appears upon command, robots handle all manual chores and families in unisex jumpsuits gather around the hologram station before tucking themselves into their sterile sleeping pods for the night. Does this fit your general vision of the home of the future? Blame that on Hollywood. What might the average American home look like in the next few years? This big question floats around the Microsoft Home, situated within a building on the company’s main corporate campus in Redmond, Wash. The home’s mission: To explore ways technology could improve our daily lives in the near future.”


Per the web page on our corp site, “Located on Microsoft Corp.’s Redmond, Wash. campus, the Microsoft® Home is a concept facility that models technology that might enhance life at home five to 10 years from now. Microsoft uses the facility to research and test future consumer technology concepts and explore how people use technology in the home. The Microsoft Home is housed within Microsoft’s Executive Briefing Center. Although it’s not a stand-alone house, the Microsoft Home simulates a domestic environment including a front door, entry/foyer, kitchen, family room, dining room, entertainment room and bedroom.”


More information:



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At BMW, “Risk-taking is part of the job”

At BMW, “Risk-taking is part of the job.” But rick-taking can also hit your customer’s perception of your quality, and potentially their overall satisfaction.


In the recent issue of BusinessWeek, there’s a brief look at BMW in “BMW’s Dream Factory, which provides a view in how the company is “sharing the wealth, listening to even the lowest-ranking workers, and rewarding risk have paid off big time.” (Also see this related article, The World’s Most Innovative Car Factory.) From the article on taking risks:



“Launching into a riff on the wonders of melding the virtual world with the nuts and bolts of an automobile, Vögel says the next generation of BMW 5 Series and 7 Series sedans will be the most Net-savvy cars on the road. And if he’s right, it’ll be because Vögel had the vision to see the importance of the technology and the gumption to build it so everyone at the automaker could recognize its potential. “We are encouraged to make decisions on our own and defend them,” says Vögel. “Risk-taking is part of the job.”


From the best practice ideas in the article:



  • DEEP-SIX THE EGOS   Rigorously screen new hires for their ability to thrive as part of a team. Promote young talent but hold back perks until they’ve shown their stuff.

  • BUILD A SHARED MYTHOLOGY   New hires learn about 1959, when BMW nearly went bankrupt. Its recovery remains the centerpiece of company lore, inspiring a deep commitment to innovation.

  • WORSHIP THE NETWORK   Teams from across the company work elbow to elbow in open, airy spaces, helping them to create informal networks where they hatch ideas quickly and resolve disagreements.

  • WORK OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM   The sleek Z4 coupe exists because a young designer’s doodle inspired a team to push his concept even though management had already killed the program.

  • KEEP THE DOOR OPEN   From the factory floor to the executive suite, everyone is encouraged to speak out. Ideas bubble up freely, and even the craziest proposals will get a hearing.

Balance this effort with BMW’s overall rank in quality: previously, BusinessWeek reported that…



“BMW ranks 27th out of 37 brands in overall quality. No, the Ultimate Driving Machine isn’t conking out on the highway: BMW tied with Toyota brand for third place in terms of quality defects. It was complaints about iDrive and other softer design issues that shoved Bimmer down in the overall rankings. Owners of BMW’s new 3-Series also complained that the window and door lock mechanisms either were hard to reach or use.”


“What if you want the latest gadgetry without having to read a manual as thick as a phone book? According to the latest Power study, Lexus is the brand to beat. Toyota’s luxe nameplate is No. 1 for fewest defects and No. 5 for fewest design flaws. Says Ivers: “Lexus has the functionality, just not the complexity.” What a concept.”


So you can take innovative gambles (as BMW did on the iDrive), and possibly take a hit to the perception of your overall product quality. At least they heard the feedback from their customers and responded. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons BMW went to great lengths recently to make the iDrive simpler and easier to use, as PC Magazine reviewed recently in their Technoride article, “MidCourse Correction for BMW’s iDrive.”


(More here on the challenges around iDrive.)


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FC’s “Talk to Our Customers? Are You Crazy?”

In Fast Company, there is a good article (quick read) from the July issue, Talk to Our Customers? Are You Crazy? by Ian Wylie. The author looks at how Credit Suisse is working to “think different” about its customers.



“Stephan Kubler spends each and every working day spying on Credit Suisse customers. He’s part of a small team led by customer-experience renegade David McQuillen, a 36-year-old American who’s challenging the top executives at the blue-chip Swiss bank to get out of their Zurich offices and–gulp!–meet some customers.


…says McQuillen: “You need to go out and talk to customers to find out what they want.”


“You can do this stuff in two or three days–you don’t have to spend half a million dollars on research. Just go and observe.” 


I completely agree.


I was asked recently how much I interact with customers. I’ll argue not enough, but as I’ve noted previously, we run surveys, focus groups and lots of meetings to talk about customers. I meet with people across the company and hear what their customers — our customers — are telling them, asking from us, lamenting about and (in some cases) giving us praise. I get more out of visiting with customers in retail shops, on the road, in formal gatherings (sometimes in our Executive Briefing Center – here’s one example), via phone and email. And I share this with the people I work with across the company: some people are better at getting the word out than I am, but I work at being an advocate every day for our customers and partners…


And our execs hear the word on the street, too: this from Fortune Magazine:



“[Steve] Ballmer asked [Kevin] Johnson to work closely with [Ray] Ozzie and run organizational interference for him. Before this new platforms job, Johnson had spent 2 1/2 years running Microsoft’s sales, where he talked to customers every day. He shares Ozzie’s user-first obsession more than any other top executive, and the two bonded immediately.”


And this from Kevin Turner in the Mercury News:



“I travel around the world. It’s a global job talking to customers and partners and our people. Here I’m meeting with an all hands. I’m meeting with customers and partners and having the same spirited discussion and take it a back to our people.”

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Articles I’ve read this week, 10.19.06

Here are a few articles I’ve just re-read during the commute to the office this week. (Not by car but via mass transit, a great alternative especially in wet weather.) Thankfully, most are available for download, making it easy to save for later reading on mobile devices.


Steve Clayton’s blog (MS), on Wired’s article Microsoft: where are we going tomorrow?


Speed Demons – BusinessWeek’s look at how smart companies are creating new products — and whole new businesses — almost overnight. Also of interest is the subsection on 37signals: Programming At Warp Speed: “The lesson: Create a simple product as fast as you can, then get feedback from customers and make it better.” By Steve Hamm, with Ian Rowley in Tokyo – March 27, 2006


Don’t Hand Me That Gu Ge – Forbes, August 14, 2006 – Google is searching for a winning strategy in China. Also see Schmidt Defends Google’s Cooperation With China from April 2006. 


Staying Cool At Nokia, By Jack Ewing, with Moon Ihlwan in Seoul – July 17, 2006 – BusinessWeek looks at “how new design chief Alastair Curtis keeps the hot handsets coming.”


Fast Company on Integrity Matters – “So say the folks who took our latest survey, by a huge margin. Too bad they find it in such short supply among today’s leaders.” From: Issue 98 | September 2005 | Page 52


The Elements Get Some Style – Wired, Issue 13.10 – October 2005. Philip Stewart, an Oxford ecology professor, has his improvement on the table of the elements, modeled after the Andromeda galaxy.


Meet Marvell – Forbes, August 14, 2006 – “It has quietly and ruthlessly become the superhero of the chip industry, thriving in every market it has entered and making its founders billionaires.”


Just Don’t Call It Retirement – By Sarah Lacy – March 06, 2006. A look at Carol Bartz’ retirement from Autodesk. I worked in the mid 90’s at Autodesk, in Carl Bass’ division, with Carol Bartz in the CEO slot.


BusinessWeek on The Plot To Hijack Your Computer – By Ben Elgin, with Brian Grow – July 17, 2006 – “They watch you surf the Web. They plague you with pop-up ads. Then they cripple your hard drive.” See Also Spyware Underground


PC Magazine’s The Worst Products of Q3 2006 – “Here’s a list of the worst products we saw in the third quarter of this year.”


Play By Play In Podcast – BusinessWeek, by Mark Hyman – March 13, 2006 – “First it was blogs. Now podcast mania is catching on quickly in the sports world. The PGA Tour has a podcast … sports talk fix. They can be found at the Web sites listed or at podcast clearinghouses podcastalley.com, podcast.net, and itunes.com.”


BW’ s Stephen H. Wildstrom on discussion on Net Neutrality in The War For The Net’s Future – July 17, 2006. Also Wildstrom’s podcast on Net Neutrality: “… phone and cable companies on one hand and big Internet players like Google and Microsoft on the other, want you to believe this is about freedom and innovation.”


How To Win at Everything – Secrets and advice from Americas biggest winners from Men’s Journal (August 2005). Of interest: the general positives that Lance Armstrong cites. In the same issue is an informative article on the “The Great American Checkup” by Chip Brown, which covers the exec checkup at the WellMax Centre for Preventative Medicine in California.


Here’s an excitinig job: Fortune on the Corporate bank robber (05.17.2006) – “It’s a fantasy job to rob a bank. It’s the greatest. I get hired by banks around the country to help tighten security policies.”


BW on Going Global For An MBA – Info on studying abroad, at international B-schools. By Jack Ewing, with Kerry Capell in London and Andrea Zammert in Frankfurt – March 13, 2006


Cleaning Up Boeing – Can outsider Jim McNerney rid the scandal-plagued aerospace giant of its rot? He’s off to a strong start. By Stanley Holmes – BW, March 13, 2006


Space: The Digital Frontier – Stephen H. Wildstrom looks at PC storage solutions. BW, MARCH 2, 2006


Fortune’s Real Estate Survival Guide – “Hear that sound? There’s an ill wind blowing through the housing market. Here’s what the end of the boom means for home values, the economy, and you.” By Shawn Tully, FORTUNE Magazine Senior Writer, May 11, 2006


BW’s Annual Tech Buying Guide Slide Show (November 7, 2005). It’s from a year ago, but an interesting list. Also see Dive Into HDTV, Music, Lights, Action With One Click, The House That iPod Built, The Call Of The Web Phone and High Tech For The Road.


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In the same issue of BW is “Mosh Pits” Of Creativity – Innovation labs are sparking teamwork — and breakthrough products. By Joseph Weber in Chicago, with Stanley Holmes in Seattle and Christopher Palmeri in Los Angeles – November 07, 2005. See right for their “best practice ideas.”


PC Magazine on Windows Vista and your games – 07.12.06 – They “dedicated hours of playtime to the latest prerelease version. Here’s the scoop.”


In “Attention Technology Shoppers!” Jeremy Kaplan asks if you can buy good gear at big box stores, and takes a look at the deals and the chaff.


And from Business 2.0 Magazine…


The Business Traveler’s MacGyver Kit – “It’s cheap, compact, and filled with everything you need when things go wrong on the road. Pack it up, put it in your suitcase, and forget about it–until disaster strikes.”


How to build a bulletproof startup – Michael V. Copeland and Om Malik present their 16-step guide to help you turn a great idea into a great company. May 24, 2006


The Art of Shaving’s strategy: A cut above  – (06.22.2006) An article on the Art of Shaving’s flagship store in NYC.


Freedom of the Press – “Lulu.com founder Bob Young wants to liberate authors from the tyranny of the book-publishing industry.” By John Heilemann – May 18, 2006


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Article: there’s “no immunity” from security vulnerabilities

This weekend I blogged that when it comes to security on your computer — whether it’s a Mac or a PC — it pays to be prepared no matter what platform you use. I received feedback in comments and via email on the post. Today I received a link in the mail to the article “No Immunity for Macs,” by Mitchell Ashley on both Linux Insider.com and Mac News World.com, who writes… 



“The fact of the matter is that despite Apple’s work to maintain the image of Macs as secure devices, researchers are concentrating much more heavily on finding underlying security vulnerabilities in Mac software. As a result, we are seeing security patches for Apple software now on a regular basis.”


The point I made this weekend is that no one is immune, and everyone should protect themselves, Mac or PC. IMHO, there is no “safer” computer.  I have both at home and I wouldn’t think of hooking either computer up to the network without adequate protection.


The author of the article also includes his top things to do Mac OS X users should do to secure their computers, which I’ll suggest applies across the board (and some look familiar, having made similar suggestions in past posts):



  1. Don’t be complacent. Don’t be a victim: be prepared.

  2. Apply security updates. With Windows, turn on Microsoft Update and Automatic Updates. With Macs, apply any OS security patches as available.

  3. Use a bi-directional personal firewall.

  4. Practice good WiFi security connections. See my post on What’s so bad about unprotected wireless?

  5. Use AntiVirus (AV) software.

  6. Use good security practices with Windows virtualization.

I noticed that PC Magazine has a Security Suite Smackdown, Part I on their site: “These apps aim to give you an impregnable defense, protecting you from every threat under the connected sun. Antimalware—antivirus, antispam, antispyware, antiphishing—if it’s out there, they’re against it. Add in firewalls, content filtering, parental controls and keylogger detection, and you’ve got a online suit of armor that’s theoretically proof against any and all threats. And the armor has done a reasonably good job, by and large.”


More info:



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