Michael Jackson and the Internet

The most interesting thing that Michael Jackson took with him on his journey to the other side ... was the Internet.

I'll probably never forget where I was when the King of Pop passed away. I was sitting in a lecture on Inventory Management at SJSU when my iPhone started buzzing. Looking down, I noticed a CNN News Alert which, to my surprise, stated that Michael Jackson had gone into cardiac arrest. Quickly, I went to the accompanying mobile link to read the background on what was going on. It was true, Jackson had suffered cardiac arrest but nothing regarding his passing had yet posted. So, like any techno-savvy affectionado I did what was required of me ... I tweeted this news up to Twitter to share amongst those who may have not heard yet. This however, was just the beginning.

Around 3:00pm, a colleague turned to me and said "Did you hear that Michael Jackson died?" No way! I turned to my iPhone and what I experienced was the last real power that was Michael Jackson.

I quickly hit some major news outlets mobile site's, Google News, CNN, MSNBC. Each site began loading but after about 30 seconds, my request timed out and stopped. Google News actually behaved a little different. The site displayed a "We're Sorry" page, believing that I was sending malicious requests to it. I moved onto other sources. Drudge Report was the first sighting where I could actually confirm that the world did believe that MJ was gone. The front page read "The King is Dead" in big red fonts. However, after following their story, I found myself on the front page of TMZ stating "Michael Jackson Dies." Amazingly, I had found myself looking at the first reports of MJ's death from a celebrity gossip column. A short time after, the major news outlets began confirming and reporting the news and the Internet itself seemed to recover.

As I looked back over the event, the biggest thought I had besides MJ's death was "How could one man's death bring down the enter Internet?" In the days after, I read a few interesting comments about the event. On the radio, I heard that after his death, MJ's sales on Amazon.com went up a staggering 700% from it's normal sales. His music sales soared on iTunes and Amazon to gain the top positions. It was almost eery to see that his untimely death was the most powerful promotional tool he had since the 80's.

On Google's official blog, they reported that searches for Michael Jackson had "skyrocketed" on the news to "Volcanic" levels as labeled by their Google Trends service. The trends service had already had piqued interest of Farrah Fawcett, Harrison Ford and Jeff Goldblum's death (Harrison Ford and Jeff Goldblum was a hoax that was quickly snuffed).

The Internet site Slashdot.org reported that many sites including Twitter, CNN, MSNBC, AOL and Yahoo could not keep up with the traffic and the geographic monitoring tool, Keynote, reported major latencies. What's most impressive however was how Google itself thought that the raw searches of Michael Jackson from various points was a mass attack on it's systems and attempted to protect itself, while every other service was inundated and crashed. It appeared that news of his death had people scrambling to verify authenticity of the reports as it had seemed just so unreal. The Internet had quite frankly met it's match, and the King of Pop had been declared the winner. Amazing.

No one can argue Michael Jackson's legendary pop icon status and global appeal. I can still remember studying his dance moves (take a look at the video at the end) to take out to the dance floors when I was in high school and in similar ways, we all have our MJ connections that will allow us to remember him. The way news of MJ went across the Internet was revolutionary and showed that one single event can cause a demand that even the most powerful Internet services could not handle. It was quite spectacular to experience MJ's influence just one more time, even it was just on my phone. In the end, "The Thriller" delivered one last time.

Madoff ... 150 years!

Holy cow ... this guy received quite the punishment. As Planet Money reports, Madoff's sentence was 1 day for every $1.2 million worth of fraud. The map you see is of his "disruption zone" (wsj.com). Those New Yorkers must be celebrating.

How this guy got away with this is amazing. Especially when a "Ponzi Scheme" was named after the guy (Charles Ponzi) who had done the same thing 90 years ago. Apparently it didn't take that long to forget.

Golf Anyone?

Happy Friday Everyone!

I've told a few people about this but I thought I'd share it out to those who'd like to hit a few golf balls from their keyboard. World Golf Tournament is a pretty cool site that allows you to hit some golf balls on some very nice looking courses and it's all for free. All you need is a bit of patience and a quick mouse trigger finger to get going. See you on the green!!

Don't be a Baboon!

Just when you think you've got it all figured out ... someone calls you an ape. Well, not literally, but in the context of fragile situations (in this case the economy) Bob Sutton relates the behavior of Baboon's with behavior in the workplace. Take a quick read through his article "Beware the Baboon Boss" to get an idea of how your boss is observed in unpredictable situations. Bob describes that apes will "glance obsessively toward the group leader" to look for telltale signs of warning or actions. Every 20 seconds ... no wonder monkey business is around.

I first heard of Bob's research on HBR's IdeaCast (podcast) on "How to be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy" and found the relationship intriguing. In the interview, Bob discusses his premise, the Toxic Tandem, as a double whammy where managers hole themselves up and self preserve while, in tandem, subordinates look to them feverishly for information about the unpredictable environments they find themselves in. When in this state, hypersensitivity of subordinates needs to be focused on to dispel any myths or rumors to ease uncertainty among rank and file.

The partial article "How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy" can also be found here. Have fun!

The Age of Wal-Mart

For a company so revered by business schools as the example of efficient capitalism and the envy of top companies in the Fortune 500 why does it seem like Wal-Mart emphasizes loyalty and integrity in such a double-standard. Historically, Sam Walton's vision was strategically focused on rural areas to provide everyday low prices ... but at what costs? The former top executives live by Sam Walton's strategy and continue to drive down costs to provide proper living prices for these areas.

But has Sam Walton's strategy stood the test of time? Should Wal-Mart continue to operate in the same fashion that he set, or is it time to adjust it's focus towards better corporate social responsibilities in 2009? Take a look at CNBC's in-depth focus on Wal-Mart's business ... do you agree with it's costs and benefits?

A New Look

If you think you've hit the wrong blog ... don't be fooled. I've finally settled on a decent looking one for my Web 2.0 tastes. I'm still working out some of the functionality like subscribing to the feeds, search, and other nuances.

Head over to btemplates.com for some new looks to add to your own blog.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Schwing!

Jeopardy ... SNL Style

LOL! Just in case you missed it. Sharing it out to all my SNL Jeopardy fans.

"We meet again Trebek"

The Information Search (aka How-To, How-To)

I had an interesting discussion with a colleague the other day about a Podcast that I was listening to on NPR called Planet Money. The discussion centered around the topic of an entrepreneur who had, to date, been unpaid for their services from a major commercial mall who was going through bankruptcy protection. The interesting aspect of the conflict was that the entrepreneur was only owed $200 dollars and her occupation ... a clown.

Now, the basis of this story doesn't center around this particular story (although if you want to hear it, click on "Hear Fears of a Clown") but rather around how he could subscribe and listen to Podcasts in general. I thought about the question for a moment and it dawned on me that there was something bigger than listening to a Podcast that was the issue ... I just couldn't put my finger on.

The underlying question wasn't about the Podcast but rather about how can we access something (whether online or not) when I have no idea how to get it. The notion that he had was "I know podcasts exists, but how do I get to them?" For most individuals, the Podcast story could likely have been substituted with any other idea that has come up in casual conversations and have piqued interested. For example "How to solve a Rubik's cube", "Where's that Homer Simpson soundboard" or in this case "How to subscribe to a Podcast". The information was out there, in mass amounts I might add, so why was this seemingly simple question, something that appeared to be difficult?

Confused, I began mulling the reasoning behind it ...

• Was it that he wasn't familiar with what a Podcast is? (Podcasts on Wikipedia)
• Maybe it was because he wanted some insight into the value of a Podcast? ("Opinion Leaders" in Marketing)
• Possibly, the steps on how to get a Podcast is confusing?

In the end however, I settled on the fact that it's quite possible that people, who are interested in this information don't know the method required to get from point A (where they are sitting blankly in front of your computer terminal) to point B (listening to your podcast). It turns out that "How-to", how too-ing something is something of a skill.

Most of us nowadays just Google something as our entry point when we desire this information. But this action in itself is clearly not the preferred method of research. Some of us prefer to contact your opinion leader of choice, some prefer to look it up in books, while others desire other methods. Granted, this may be a generational difference between Gen X, Y and Boomers. The web search however, is probably one of the most used entry-points into rational information gathering. So much so now, that there is a website dedicated to doing this for you. Don't believe me? Take a look at the video ...



... let's try it with our Podcast example, click on this link. So now we have some results, and generally, the top hits are where we want to be. After clicking on that link, I see that NPR has a subscription link there to iTunes, and once I've clicked there, I find that iTunes opens and I can confirm the subscription there.

Amazingly, this entire process took only 3 clicks from beginning to end. So this begs the question, was it really that I knew how to do this any better than anyone else? Not necessarily. I've been asked things many times where the first thought in my mind was No, I don't know the answer ... quickly followed by ... but I can Google it and find out ... and therein lies the mystery to how we rationally problem solve in this era of on-demand information.

Anyway, back to the clown. On a follow up Podcast, it turns out the clown still hasn't been paid. It mostly had to do with the ranking that she fell into when creditors demanded assets back from the mall. As you can guess, she was low on the list. Geez ... just pay the clown.

Mobile Phone Bloggin'

Well, I think I've set this up correctly. If you're reading this then
apparently I know what I'm doing.

For those of you that use blogger.com and want to blog while on the
run, you can set up your account with a secret word in the email
postings. It is fairly simple (I did it while listening to my Finance
instructor (blog for another day :P )). There's also a way to send a
picture to have it post to your blog. I'll figure that one out at some
point.

Halfway finished with midterms and getting closer to summer! w00t!

Listen To My Heartbeat

Today, I finally had the chance to hear the baby's heartbeat. How cool! It's good to hear from the little one.

I also was able to record the heartbeat on my phone and upload it here. The loud noise you hear at the beginning is the baby kicking and then the heartbeat gets louder. Finally, a little bit of feedback from the little one.

A Flatter World ...

A few weeks ago I had the chance to watch a video in my Business Management class from NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman on his "World is Flat" ideas. Now, globalization is a novel but something that is far from a recent event. His ideas however took the omniscient view of globalization and distilled it down into Globalization 3.0 where individuals drive worldly changes. Friedman realizes that this Globalization version grew up while he was sleeping and essentially leveled the playing field with other countries.

Frankly, the levels of convergence (the computer, application interoperability, outsourcing, offshoring, open sourcing, insourcing and informing) that Friedman discusses is eerie at times, especially in moments where he replaces the age old adage of "eat all your food because there are starving people in the world" with "eat and get smart because there are people out there that will get your job." I thought his presentation was well represented and opened my eyes to many of the changes I had not thought of. Another takeaway I had was the great role that technology has played in leveling the playing field and in the future ... it will only get flatter as technology creates opportunities that are equal across the world.

I don't know how familiar everyone is with Friedman's view but I was taken by surprise. I ended up picking up his World is Flat book and plan on reading the details behind his thoughts. I've also posted a video of his presentation at MIT for those that want to take a look. Enjoy!

Top IT Places To Work

Again with ComputerWorld's rankings, we made it. This time we were up 56 places from last year. What a HUGE jump!

Hello World!

So I decided to go back to blogging after my hiatus after doing some creative writing on the net. I decided that there is too much work in trying to come up with something novel and would rather blog on the notions and ideas that I am running across day-to-day. I don't think I'll have a specific subject, just plan on rambling about whatever piques my interest at the time.

A work in progress ... :)