Businessweek writing - Ashlee Vance on TechShop, Brad Stone on Amazon & other pieces of note

It's been close to a month since I last posted on Businessweek writing and there's since been one feature and a number of smaller pieces that stood out as interesting.

The feature was by Ashlee Vance from the May 28 issue with "TechShop: Paradise for Tinkerers". I've been seeing a number of stories lately on manufacturing innovation and this definitely fit into the category with it being on the facility chain where members have access to expensive equipment to build things from plastic, wood, metal or other materials. Seems a compelling offering if someone (whether they be a hobbyist or entrepreneur) would get enough use to justify the $100/month membership cost.

It took a little bit of rooting around on the Businessweek site to find both the Vance story and other pieces as BW changed its site design, but eventually I came across the search by cover page and then tracked down the pieces below...

- "HP Innovation, One Pricey Giant Screen at a Time" on high-end product offerings (powered by Photon Engine software) in the area of large immersive displays. Interesting technology in a space sure to grow.

- "Apple, the Other Cult in Hollywood" about technology equipment and its product placement in television and film. Struck me as pretty remarkable that Apple "says it never pays for its products to appear on television or in movies."

- "Disney Bets on 'The Avengers' After 'John Carter'" on the various marketing efforts around The Avengers prior to opening day. Interesting both how important a movie's opening weekend is to its success and how much of a role Social Media plays in advance promotion.

- "Amazon vs. Publishers: The Book Battle Continues" is a longer piece than the prior three and looks at the concept of print on demand for book titles. It's solid writing from Brad Stone and is a fascinating topic as I've had excellent firsthand experience with the CreateSpace print on demand division of Amazon.

- "Hard Drives That Stretch to Infinity" on the huge and growing Cloud Computing market and offerings from large companies like Apple, Amazon and Google to smaller more established in Cloud storage market firms like Box and Dropbox.

Businessweek Pieces: USA Inc. / Cloud Computing / Hubris & Hacking

Three different feature stories from Businessweek lately that stood out to me as particularly interesting.

Cover story from the Feb 24 issue was "USA Inc.: Red, White, and Very Blue", a report on the financial health of the country as if it were a corporation. Written by Mary Meeker, it's reading that trends a bit towards the heavy for someone not financially minded, but is nothing if not in-depth (has an accompanying 460 page presentation).

Beyond the sheer weight of it, though, the story struck me as important and featured specific recommendations of what steps could be taken to improve the financial health of the country.

As Meeker writes in the beginning of her examination...

I reached three conclusions. First, USA Inc. has serious financial challenges. Second, its problems are fixable. Third, clear communication with citizen-shareholders is essential. If the American people embrace the need for bold action, their political leaders should find the courage to do what's right.

Perhaps her statement could be met with a hearty "yea, if only...", but this type of response wouldn't necessarily mean she's wrong.

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The Businessweek cover story from a week later was "The Cloud: Battle of the Tech Titans". Perhaps not as big a nut as the financial health of the U.S., but really... in terms of the Tech Business, there's not many more important topics. In June 2009 I wrote on another BW Cloud Computing feature and in the close to two years since then, the growth in Cloud Computing has been tremendous.

This latest story featured interesting compare and contrast material looking at industry establishments like Hewlett-Packard and IBM (with significant hardware and consulting services) as well as more "true cloud" providers like Amazon.

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Last (and most recent) Businessweek story I found of interest lately was "Hacker vs. Hacker" about the shenanigans at and against a top exec of Computing Security firm HBGary Federal. The hubris of this guy Aaron Barr is pretty remarkable... and almost (but, not quite) equalled in zeal on the part of the hackers taking him down piece by piece.

Quite the entertaining read.

Microsoft Pieces from BusinessWeek

Couple of interesting articles on Microsoft (and the PC business as a whole in the last) in the last few BusinessWeek issues.

The July 6 issue cover story is titled "Microsoft Defends It's Empire" and is an interesting look at how the company seems to have recognized where business (as well as the consumer market) is headed and adapted it's business model accordingly. Rather than simply expecting that everyone will maintain status quo and purchase software as they always have, Microsoft is now making more it's suite of the ubiquitous Office software available online. Additionally, the equally universal Exchange e-mail server program and Sharepoint Data Collaboration services are now available on a monthly per use basis.

This isn't a shocking move on the part of the software behemoth, but also seems to be a very solid and necessary one as IT moves more and more in the direction of this per use Cloud Computing model.

Just when you think all is well...

In what seems to be almost a complete 180 degree move from this customer-friendly approach, a second BusinessWeek article talks about the pricing stance Microsoft is looking to take with it's new Windows 7 operating system (out later this fall). "Windows 7: Microsoft vs. the PC Makers" details how company wants to roughly triple the cost of the O/S.

This is setting up a large showdown with PC manufacturers who would likely have to pass those costs along to end users (for which now is not the greatest economic climate). As Phil McKinney, Hewlett-Packard CTO for it's PC group says in the article "these are issues we still need to work out." I would think that's especially the case with the market push towards low-cost netbooks on which margins are much thinner than traditional notebook PCs.

Well, two different stories on Microsoft... one in which they seem to be the right track, the other... somewhat questionable.

Cloud Computing Revisited

I first wrote a post about Cloud Computing (at Google in this case) back in Jan 2008, prior to when I even regularly posted to this blog and just came across another in-depth story that makes the topic worth revisiting here.

The July 15 issue of BusinessWeek contains an in depth piece (with associated sub-stories) titled "How Cloud Computing Will Change Business" that shows a compelling area of technology taking off at a fast pace. The term cloud computing may not be familiar to all, but it's usage is close to ubiquitous. Everything from e-mail accounts through Gmail and yahoo to Facebook and YouTube involves information "in the cloud".

The BW story gets off to a compelling start when it references a Bill Gates speech back in 1990 (forever ago in technology time) that references three coming developments:

"1. A more personal PC"... iPhone anyone?

"2. More powerful communications networks"... granted high-speed Internet could be as far along in the US as in Europe and Asia, but should continue improving.

"3. Easy access to a broad range of information"... there you go, the aforementioned cloud (data on servers backed up by other servers).

Solid stuff.

Also of interest is some of the BW vignettes about various usages of Cloud Computing by companies. Probably most interesting to me was "How Clouds Can Change Management" about the uber-connected approach taken by the CEO of Serena Software. Small story, but a cool look at what a company can do when it really wants to take advantage of available technology.

Cloud Computing at Google

The Dec 13 '07 cover story from BusinessWeek provides a fascinating look at a small, but incredibly ambitious initiative within the company called "Cloud Computing" (I first bounced around a few catchy titles for this post, but none of them rivaled the actual BW headline... "Google and the Wisdom of the Clouds)."

The idea was hatched by a 20-something Google engineer and in short, it provides access for outsiders (i.e. Universities and other companies) to Google's computing power. As is detailed in the article, there are only a few companies around (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon) with the raw computing power to do something like this and it's fascinating to see what will become of it. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_52/b4064048925836.htm