Content Matters

A Secure Yet Simple Password Strategy On the Cheap

Another day, another major site getting hacked. This time it's eBay and, possibly (and frighteningly), Paypal. 

Everyone knows that passwords are a horrible way to protect your information, but until finger scanners or other systems are in widespread use, we don't have much choice. And, even where finger scanners are used (Android and, on a limited basis, iOS), you still need to provide a backup password for when the swipe doesn't register.

There are a handful of basic rules for passwords which we all know by now:

• Passwords should not be words that appear in the dictionary
• Passwords should have a mix of upper and lower case
• Passwords should have a combination of letters and numbers
• You should not use the same password on multiple sites

Yet, despite the fact that we know these rules, most people break them all the time. It's simply too difficult to remember dozens or hundreds of passwords.

The best approach is to use a secure password manager. Personally, I'm a fan of 1password. Their protection is about as strong as you can find, they have a simple browser plugin, and they support multiple platforms and devices (OS X, Windows, iOS, etc). Other password managers include LastPass, KeePass and oneSafe. I strongly recommend you use one of those tools. But, for those who don't want to pay for a password manager, or choose not to use one for other reasons, there are still ways to keep secure.

Here's an approach that I'd used previously, before I adopted 1password. It's free. It's fairly safe. And it's still easy to remember the password for hundreds of websites.

1. Start with a basic password you'll remember but that's not that obvious. For this example, I'll choose falcon.

2. Always capitalize one letter in the word. Now it's faLcon.

3. If possible, change one of the letters to a number. How about faLc0n

4. Add the current year to the password. faLc0n14 (or better yet split the year into two parts - like 1faLc0n4). Then, each January, update the password, so it becomes 1faLc0n5 in 2015, etc.
At this point, you have a fairly unique password that consists of a mix of numbers and letters, does not represent a word in the english language, etc. It can still be beaten by brute force (i.e. a computer trying tens of thousands of combinations) but would not be easily guessed.

5. Now - here's the key part. For every website, take the 1st 2 letters of the URL and insert them at the beginning or end of your password. So, for Facebook, the first 2 letters are fa. If I put the f at the front of my password and the a at the end, my Facebook password becomes f1faLc0n4a. For Yahoo, my password would be y1faLc0n4a, etc.

Now, I recommend you modify this approach to your own requirements. Perhaps you put the numbers in the middle of the base word. Or, maybe, instead of the first 2 letters of the URL, you take the last 3 letters before the .com suffix. Make it your own. But there's no excuse for using weak passwords or using the same password on multiple sites. 

It's Hard to Disrupt From Within: One Reason the Apple-Beats Deal Could Make Sense

There's no questioning that Apple has been a disruptive force in the market. Whether it's digital cameras, GPS devices, or the original Walkman, Apple has completely changed the way we use electronic devices, bludgeoning many companies in the process. And they've clearly disrupted the way in which we buy music. While iTunes brought order to a chaotic world of illegal downloads, together with Amazon, it's a major reason why Tower Records is no longer here.

 

But in each of those cases, Apple was the disrupter, not the company being disrupted. The one possible exception was when they disrupted the market for standalone iPods by adding that feature to the iPhone, but they were moving customers to a more expensive device in the process, so it wasn't a terribly difficult move.

 

But disrupting from within is not easy. Anyone who's ever tried to bring out innovative new products at an existing market leader can attest to that.

 

When I was with Crowd Fusion, one of our clients was Tecca, a startup funded by Best Buy. Tecca was a mobile-first content provider with great video and blog content on consumer electronics. They also provided a barcode scanner, which returned reviews and pricing from BestBuy, Amazon and Google Products.

 

Tecca could have been a great differentiator for Best Buy, driving greater value for customers who come into their stores. But, although they had incubated the company, Best Buy could never fully embrace it. After all, users of the app might see that prices were lower at Amazon. 

 

And that's the dilemma faced by all legacy companies, when trying to disrupt their own business. Too many people have their bonuses tied to preventing that disruption. And that could be the challenge for Apple and iTunes.

 

For several years, analysts, bloggers and consumers have been waiting for Apple to jump into the streaming audio market with a Spotify-like offering. And, just like the annual Gene Munster predictions of an imminent Apple TV, their streaming audio has so far been a unicorn. They've danced around the edges (iTunes Radio) but held off on building what seemed the obvious next step. And while there are many strong arguments against building an Apple television (low-margin business where consumers only replace a device once a decade), the arguments for streaming audio are much more compelling. So, what's held Apple back?

 

The reality is that iTunes today is a $28 Billion per year business for Apple (using estimates from Horace Dediu). And while the largest part of that is the App Store, iTunes music is still a multi-billion dollar business.

 

Now, I don't know how much the average iTunes user spends on audio downloads per month, but my guess is that Apple would willingly trade those users for a predictable $10/month subscription service. That's not what makes them worry.

 

But when you look at the streaming audio market, most of the companies in that space have used the freemium model. Take Spotify, for example. As of a year ago, Spotify had roughly 6mm paying customers and 24 mm active users. So, they've been able to convert about a quarter of their users from free to paid. As freemium services go, that's pretty impressive. But, for a company like Apple, with billions of iTunes transactions potentially at risk, that can be very scary. The idea that millions of iTunes users might stop paying for downloads, and instead use a free streaming service could mean huge disruption to Apple's iTunes business. 

 

The freemium model makes sense for consumer subscription products, as it's an inexpensive way to drive brand awareness. How would Spotify attract an audience if it required a subscription? Instead, by bringing new users on board for free, they hope to upgrade some of those users to paid over time. 

 

Beats Music took a different approach. They decided to buck the trend and not go freemium. Instead, they used a "free trial" approach, where new users could sign up for a trial of the service, but would then have to either subscribe or quit after the trial ends. Unlike Spotify and other rivals, Beats could rely upon its brand to drive awareness, while also partnering with other companies to spur trials. At launch, Beats Music partnered with AT&T, so users could simply add the service to their monthly mobile bill.

 

And that's why Beats Music is not nearly as scary for Apple as Spotify, Rhapsody or even YouTube. There's no free option with Beats. And, because they're buying an existing business, it will be more difficult for managers throughout Apple to sabotage it, even if they do see it as a threat.

 

I'm still not very bullish on this deal. As I'd previously written, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. But it could be that Apple management, realizing how difficult it might be to disrupt iTunes from within, saw this as a less difficult approach.

 

 

 

 

 

Why the Apple - Beats Deal Makes No Sense

When the news first hit of a potential Apple acquisition of Beats, it didn't make a lot of sense to me. Having given it another day to think about it, it still makes little sense to me.

There are two core parts to the Beats business: hardware (headphones and speakers) and streaming audio. Let's take a look at each.

 

Hardware

Beats hardware products are headphones, earbuds and portable speakers. Their headphones and earbuds are not particularly innovative - they use the same basic design that other manufacturers have used for decades. Their portable speaker, the Beats Pill, is basically a me-too version of the Jawbone Jambox. Beats products are not of particularly high quality. I owned a pair of diddy beats earbuds. They had decent, but unspectacular sound quality. The left channel died about a month after the warranty expired, but that happens with many earbuds. 

 

But the key issue here is that Beats are not particularly innovative.  Some have suggested that the Beats team would be able to help Apple create a great iWatch.

 

This is not a Google - Nest deal, where you're bringing on a team of design engineers who are rethinking everyday items. It's not Square, who have brought point-of-sale to the mobile device. There's no real innovation here. Instead, this is a company that has created a cool brand around decent quality products. Beats does offer a cachet of cool. At least for now.

 

But Apple doesn't need to rely on others to provide coolness to their products. Apple products are already cool. And while Apple's coolness seems to have staying power, Beats are more of a fashion statement for teens, and you can look at brands like Abercrombie to see how fleeting that position can be.

 

Streaming

Beats created what they hoped would be a Spotify killer.

The Beats Music service launched to great hype, but has struggled to gain traction. I have not used the service, so have to rely on reviews that I've read, but in a market crowded with entries, Beats did not particularly stand out. The UI got good marks, but the core functionality was not very different for that of Spotify, Slacker, Rdio or Google Play. It wouldn't seem that difficult for Jony Ive''s team at Apple to build a comparable service. Some tout the existence of contracts with the record companies as an asset, but all of those contracts will need to be reassigned or renegotiated, and I'd guess it wouldn't be too hard for Apple to strike comparable deals on their own.

 

Two days in and I'm still baffled

With $151 billion in the bank, the $3.2 billion deal is not a huge financial strain for Apple, but it is significantly more than they've paid for any other acquisition. And the deal itself still doesn't make much sense to me. Beats hardware is a bit of a fad that could collapse as fashions change. Their streaming service seems OK, but it's hardly unique. But Tim Cook and his team are smart and I'm sure there are things that I've not considered. But for now, this deal makes little sense to me.

Fourteen Deals Yahoo Could Do With The Alibaba Proceeds

There's lots of discussion of what Yahoo! should do with the proceeds of the Alibaba sale. Some are calling for a dividend (boring), while Josh suggests a bold move would be to buy a controlling stake in Twitter.

And while the core advertising business continues to drag, I don't see any simple deals that would really reverse that. So, while Yahoo should continue to make small, strategic technology deals, I'd look elsewhere for the big deals.

Yahoo still has a huge footprint in both Finance and Sports, so why not double-down on those? And two important, emerging opportunities for Yahoo come in Video and Mobile, so those need attention as well.

Assuming Yahoo has $10 Billion to go shopping with, who should they buy?

In the Finance space, there are a number of interesting content plays that could reenergize their Finance pages and give them some unique content. Stocktwits, the online community for active traders, provides the best insights into financial events as they happen. Just watch the StockTwits page for a tech company during their earning release and you’ll see what I mean. Estimize, who crowdsource earnings estimates, M&A rumors and now economic data, could provide an innovative reason to visit Yahoo pages. TheStreet.com has been rapidly building their video content and would be an attractive fit, provided they could convince Cramer to stay on board for a few years. Yahoo could probably acquire those three companies for around $350mm.

While ESPN has now surpassed Yahoo Sports in traffic (according to ComScore), Yahoo is a close second. It may not be ideal timing, but if I were Marissa, I’d give Jim Bankoff at Vox Media a call. While the new Ezra Klein-led Vox.com may not be a great fit, SB Nation would be a great addition, while Curbed could open up some new opportunities. If they couldn’t get SB Nation, I’d see if I could pry Deadspin from Gawker and would also take a look at Bill Simmons’ long form site Grantland. I might also look to pick up either Narrative Science or Automated Insights, both of which offer technology which automates short editorial articles from statistics. Yahoo already uses Automated Insights for personalized summaries of fantasy sports results, but could expand its use across multiple verticals.

Video is a big area of focus for Yahoo, and one where they’ve had success, though the numbers aren’t yet big enough to move the needle. If I were Yahoo, I’d look at Funny Or Die, or perhaps see if IAC might part with CollegeHumor.com in order to drive short-form video and bring more of an edginess to their offerings.

That leaves mobile and social. There’s a lot of interesting activity there. I think the valuations for SnapChat are too high, and I could see it going downhill after an acquisition, but maybe Yahoo could make a play for Whisper or Secret.  And, of course, a content site like Buzzfeed or Distractify could drive a lot of social engagement on mobile and the desktop.

If you were Marissa, what would you do with that pile of cash?

Bad Idea of the Day: LinkedUp

From the Guardian comes word of a new app - the cleverly named LinkedUp, which they describe as "Tinder for your professional network".

The app uses the LinkedIn API to access a user's professional contacts, and has a Tinder-like interface to quickly browse pics and profiles.

Let's think for a minute about how bad an idea this truly is. 

For most of us, our professional network consists of current and former coworkers, clients, your next potential boss and more. What could possibly go wrong?

I can only imagine the alerts from LinkedIn: you've just been endorsed for the following skills...

According to founder Max Fischer, "I think it helps people feel a little more comfortable about people. I was looking through some profiles earlier today and the tag line says "You must love sports and dogs" or "I really love this hockey team." 

Wait - I thought that's what Facebook already does. It captures your social graph, your interests, your experiences and more. But it does that in your social circle, not your professional circle. In other words, people who are less likely to adversely impact your career if things don't go quite right.

There could be worse ideas for dating. Perhaps a "classmates.com" for prison parolees, or an app that sits on top of the national sex-offender registry. And, I'm sure there will be those who find LinkedUp to be a useful app. But, there's a reason we don't have a single social graph, covering our business and personal lives. And most of us prefer that those world's do not collide.

 

 

 

LinkedOut? LinkedIn Shuts Out CRM Partners

Based on this post from Zoho CRM, it appears that LinkedIn has cut its CRM partners to just two - Salesforce and Microsoft. And, if you visit the LinkedIn Developer page, it becomes clear that they have chosen to work with just those two partners. 

In an environment where APIs and web services are at the core of innovative web applications, LinkedIn is taking a step backwards towards a walled garden. From a financial standpoint, I understand it. LinkedIn has an incredibly unique and valuable database. And SalesForce and Microsoft not only have the huge installed base, but also the deep pockets to make this a hugely profitable partnership. 

The exclusivity may make sense from a short-term revenue standpoint, but it's certainly not providing value to many of its users. I don't know the terms of LinkedIn partnership deals, but hopefully they can come up with an access plan that could make sense for some of the smaller, upstart providers like Zoho, Nutshell and others. 

 

Twitter Buys Gnip; What Are the Repercussions?

Twitter is buying social media firehose Gnip, it's largest distributor and among the largest social data aggregators.

On the surface, this could make sense. Twitter has been looking to monetize its data, and simply being a wholesaler doesn't let that business scale. As Rob Passarella notes, the deal is a clear sign that Twitter is focused on its data business.

But the acquisition raises a few interesting questions.

Data aggregation platforms are typically most successful when they are independent. Aggregators thrive because they can be "Switzerland", neutral and unaffiliated with any providers. It's what makes acquisition of aggregators difficult. Once they are acquired, they lose that independence. I've seen this happen many times in the financial data business.

So, the two questions this deal raises in my mind are:

1. What will the other Gnip data partners do, now that Twitter has acquired them? Beyond Twitter, Gnip partners include Facebook, Google+, FourSquare, Tumblr, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Instagram, Disqus, StockTwits, Estimize and more.

While many of these partners may be content to allow their data to flow through Twitter-owned Gnip, I can see some (Facebook/Instagram, Google/YouTube) looking to exit the service.

2. What will this mean for DataSift? Gnip competitor DataSift is the other leading provider of the Twitter firehose, along with Facebook, Tumblr, G+ and many others. Will Twitter still sell its firehose via DataSift? Will Gnip gain strategic advantages due to its new parent? And, will Google or Facebook to jump in with an offer to buy DataSift in response to Twitter's acquisition of Gnip?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Out of the Ruins: Lessons from Thunderdome

Yesterday's announcement by Digital First Media's John Paton, that DFM would be shuttering it's Project Thunderdome has provoked quite a bit of chatter. Much of that came in the way of schadenfreude, or "patonfreude", as Lucia Moses called it.

And, some of that is to be expected. John Paton has a big personality and he was not shy about touting the bold steps that DFM was taking in an effort to redefine their business. But most of the response was supportive, recognizing that bringing change is difficult, and we should celebrate the efforts, regardless of the results.

Ultimately, there were many huge challenges that DFM and Project Thunderdome faced.

As Mathew Ingram notes, a private equity-backed structure, does not lend itself well to long-term experimentation with new models. 

But digging more deeply, there were many structural issues. 

The basic idea behind Thunderdome was to create a centralized newsdesk to handle all big, national stories, with local properties handling local news. In many ways, that made sense, and DFM assembled an all-star team of digital news professionals, led by Jim Brady and Robyn Tomlin to lead it.

But that model may have been one of the big challenges for DFM. 

While shared resources make sense, transformation of a business from print to digital can't be done by a centralized, shared unit. Innovation is not something that can be created externally and dropped into an organization, as though by an Amazon drone.

As Ken Doctor notes: "Thunderdome wasn’t universally received well within the company. Talk to the locals and you heard grumbles. Traffic to the new Thunderdome sections didn’t impress them. They didn’t like national imposition on local news judgment."

Successful transformation has to come from a blend of new and old. Embedding new capabilities, while empowering existing editorial resources, is probably the best path to success. Of course, there is always resistance to change, and we've seen many cases where the legacy organization rejects the implantation of an innovation team. But it seems that positioning Thunderdome as the future, and the local papers as "the past" left DFM with no bridge to navigate the present.

 

With Office for iPad, Microsoft Aims to Drive Its Cloud Services

The long-awaited Office for iPad was launched today.

Office for iPad is clearly aimed at driving users to adopt Microsoft’s cloud-based tools. It’s fine as a document reader, but to edit or create documents requires a $99.99 per year Office 365 subscription.

To access cloud-based documents, which is the primary way you'll work with documents, they have to reside on Microsoft OneDrive (the relabeled SkyDrive service). There’s no option to access your docs on Dropbox, Google Drive or any other third party platforms. You can get a free OneDrive account with 7 GB of storage, but for those who actively use Dropbox or another service, the idea of adding another cloud host for documents doesn’t make much sense. That leaves an opening for tools like QuickOffice Pro, acquired by Google, which integrates with both gmail and Dropbox.

The applications themselves seem robust. They didn't just take the desktop apps and shrink them; clearly a lot of effort went into building device-appropriate apps. I'll leave full reviews on these to others, but my quick thoughts are that the apps themselves are solid.

If you're an active MS Office user who doesn't use Google Docs or Dropbox, Office 365 and OneDrive would make a lot of sense. But, for the gmail/dropbox/google docs crowd, I don't expect much takeup. For me, the biggest benefit might be to use the PowerPoint viewer as a way to more easily run PowerPoint decks from my iPad to a projector. I typically use Keynote for that, but they're not 100% compatible, so a solid PowerPoint viewer will be great for that occasional need.

The big winner here is Apple. Microsoft has resisted developing iPad-specific versions of Office applications because they still held out hope that those applications could ultimately sway users to buy Windows Mobile-based tablets. Clearly, Apple is winning the BYOD war by a large margin and this serves as Microsoft's endorsement of that. Where that leaves Microsoft's mobile strategy, in the long run, is an unanswered question.

 

The Simple Change that Could Dramatically Improve Hotel Customer Satisfaction

If you knew that a specific feature of your product annoyed 40-50% of your customers, what might you do?

And if you knew that you could remove that annoyance by spending pennies, how quickly might you try to solve that?

That’s what I thought.

And that’s why it’s so frustrating to see how business hotels have either a total lack of understanding or lack of interest in the needs of business travelers. 

Like most of you, my phone is now my alarm clock. And my bedtime reading is done on an iPad. Yet, when I check into a room in a typical business hotel, I find a nightstand like this:

So, my next step is to start moving the furniture, pulling the nightstand out to access the electrical outlets. And what I usually find is a rat’s nest of electrical cords and no empty sockets, like this:

Think about it, the last thing that a guest thinks about before they go to sleep in their hotel room, is how annoying it is that they have to move furniture and untangle electrical cords.

These pics were taken at the Hyatt Regency Denver, but it could be any number of high end business hotels I’ve stayed at in recent years. 

Ironically, the less expensive hotels tend to have figured this issue out. I stayed in a Hyatt Place hotel (Hyatt’s budget line) in Kansas City earlier this week and, not only were there ample outlets right by the nightstand, there were ports to plug HDMI, VGA and RGB cables into the flat screen TV. Perhaps it’s no surprise that these mid-level hotels have gotten it right. After all, they also provide free WiFi and other amenities.

What the business hotels have to learn is that, for most business travelers today, this is our ideal nightstand: 

Most of us don’t need a fixed clock radio. I automatically unplug the alarm clock when I check-in, so I don’t accidentally learn that the previous tenant set the alarm to go off at 4am. And while we do need a phone in the room to call room service or the front desk, we don’t need it to be at our bedside. I’m sure that in the pre-mobile phone days, travelers might have sat in bed chatting with family on the hotel phone, but those days are long gone. The phone over on the desk suits our needs just fine.

For now, I’d be happy to see hotels simply bolt a small power strip to the nightstand or headboard, so I can plug in. For now, I carry a Belkin mini power strip when I travel, but I still have to move furniture and unplug things to use it.

Installing a power strip is a simple and inexpensive fix that hotels should implement immediately. If you could make a dramatic impact on customer satisfaction for a few bucks, wouldn’t you do it?

note: this post is not intended to critique the Denver Hyatt Regency. It's a great hotel, with a terrific gym and the staff are fantastic. I would glady stay here again next time in Denver. But this is a fix that Hyatt and their peers should implement immediately.