Amazon Does It Right

Internet Technology , Net Attitude , On Demand , e-Business , patrickWeb November 25, 2008 01:58 PM

Vertical

The first issue of PC Magazine back in the summer of 1981 was a thrill to read and it was sad news this week that Ziff Davis Media has decided to cease publishing the magazine. "The viability for us to continue to publish in print just isn't there anymore," Jason Young, chief executive of Ziff Davis, said in an interview. This was not unexpected as all of us know that the print media business has been in a ten-degree nose-down dive for a number of years now. The more significant aspect of PC Magazine has been the early and innovative focus on "vertical".

I got to know Bill Machrone in the early 1990's. Bill had been the founder and editor-in-chief of PC Magazine. I also had the pleasure of meeting Bill Ziff on a few occasions. Both "Bills" were early believers in "vertical". Ziff Davis had the approach of publishing magazines such as Car and Driver, Popular Electronics, PC Magazine, and Computer Shopper that entertained the "enthusiasts" -- people who cared a great deal about specific technologies and products -- not generalists but those who were passionate about a particular topic and wanted to go "deep". Today we would call such market segments "vertical".

You might say that much of the evolution of the web in the early years of the new millennium has focused on "horizontal" applications and content. Many millions of users swarm to sites that are a foot deep and miles wide -- Google search where you can find anything, eBay and Amazon where you can buy or sell anything, music and photo sites where you can enjoy any kind of media, and Facebook or MySpace where you can meet anyone. Enter Tony Tjan, CEO of Cue Ball Group, a venture and growth equity firm based in Boston.

Tony has put forth a perspective blog post in a posting (now on the home page at Harvard Business Publishing) that the generation of the web now evolving will certainly be more "verticalized and editorialized". Tony says that current behavior will continue as we use use large, incumbent, generalist (horizontal) sites like Google and eBay, but at the same time, there will be a strong movement toward more specialized sites. He hypothesizes that this will allow a better balance between "authoritative, expert-endorsed content and broad, less bounded user-generated information". He adds that the advertisers will follow this trend as they sharpen their focus. See Tony's full story here.

One of the best examples of a truly vertical site I can think of is what has been developed by Knovel Corporation. When I entered engineering school more than forty years ago (is that possible?), I used a slide rule and engineering reference manuals. I think of them as the first of four generations of using engineering and scientific data. The second generation was web-based data with PC's for standalone and separate analysis. Knovel Corporation (pronounced nah-vil) introduced the third generation about five years ago -- "Knovelized" data with deep search and a high degree of interactivity. Knovel brings boring reference manuals to life and in the process saves engineers and scientists many hours of effort. It is a good example of an information service that is available "on demand". The fourth generation of Knovel's vertical site currently being launched includes Ajax-based interactive graphs built with Mathematica. With no software on the PC other than a standards-based browser, the new generation of tools allows the engineer and scientist to dive deep, find the most arcane of formulas and then interact with them deeply and graphically to solve a design challenge or fulfill a research project. For millions of engineers and scientists around the world, this will be the next generation of the web -- information and tools at their fingertips -- reliable, relevant, and fast.

Disclosure: Tony and I are both investors in Knovel Corporation and members of the board of directors.

Other references to Knovel on patrickWeb

Gadgets , Media November 23, 2008 06:15 PM

IBM Happenings: October 2008

The month of October was a busy one for IBM, filled as usual with a slew of announcements in hardware, software, and services, but the highlight for the quarter has been a speech by IBM Chairman Sam Palmisano in which he outlined "A smarter planet: the next leadership agenda" at the
Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on Nov. 6, 2008.

Sam has lead a number of global conferences on innovation over the past five years to raise consciousness about how the world of business has been changing. At the Business Leadership Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia eighteen months ago he described how globalization has evolved -- international companies became multinational companies and have now become globally integrated companies. As IBM has preached and practiced, becoming a globally integrated enterprise means locating operations and functions anywhere in the world based on the right cost, the right skills, and the right business environment. (IBM now has more than 10,000 employees in China and more than 50,000 in India). But now the world has changed -- again -- and leaders of businesses and institutions everywhere have a unique opportunity to transform not just the way the world is but the way the world works.

Sam said that the crisis in our financial markets has "jolted us awake to the realities and dangers of highly complex global systems". He went on to describe how the movement of information, work and capital across developed and developing nations is just one aspect of global integration. New factors are entering the equation -- global climate change, environmental and geopolitical issues surrounding energy, and the global supply chains for food and medicine. "We are all now connected -- economically, technically and socially. But we're also learning that being connected is not sufficient. Yes, the world continues to get "flatter." And yes, it continues to get smaller and more interconnected". All this pales in comparison to something happening that holds even greater potential.

In a word, Sam says, "our planet is becoming smarter". What he means is the infusion of intelligence into the way the world works. This is being made possible as the world becomes densely populated with electronic chips. Not only a couple of billion people on the Internet, twice that with mobile phones but also tens of billions of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags will allow for much more automation and efficiency across entire ecosystems—supply-chains, healthcare networks, cities… even natural systems like rivers. As all of these become interconnected, they will be able to "talk" to one another and share information about where they are and what they are doing. An enormous amount of information will be created from cars, appliances, cameras, roadways, and pipelines. Sam painted a future where supercomputers will turn mountains of data into intelligence that can be "translated into action, making our systems, processes and infrastructures more efficient, more productive and responsive—in a word, smarter".

Not only will it be possible to implement a smarter interconnected world -- it will be essential to our survival. The growth of the past decade has caused a lot of inefficiencies to creep into our global systems. For example in electrical production, there are losses of electrical energy because the grids are not "smart" enough to avoid brownouts and to intelligently distribute excess energy where it is needed. Congested roadways in the U.S. cost $78 billion annually in wasted time and fuel. Consumer product and retail industries lose about $40 billion annually due to supply chain inefficiencies. Healthcare systems don't link diagnosis, to drug discovery, to healthcare delivery, to insurers, nor to patients. On top of that, the planet's water supply is drying up, one in five people lacks access to safe drinking water, and half the world's population does not have adequate sanitation.

Sam says that our financial markets problem will be analyzed for decades, but he says one thing is already clear. Financial institutions did a great job of spreading their risks around but they were not able to track what risks they actually had and quantify them. That uncertainly undermined confidence and things unraveled from there.

The good news is that all the challenges Sam described lend themselves to systems and technology solutions. There are many proof points already. Sam did not talk about IBM's role but he obviously did not pick examples that his competitors worked on. Stockholm's automated traffic system has resulted in 20 percent less traffic, a 12 percent drop in emissions and a reported 40,000 additional daily users of public transport. Intelligent oil field technologies increase both pump performance and well productivity—in a business where only 20-30 percent of available reserves are currently extracted. Smart food systems such as one now running in the Nordics use RFID technology to trace meat and poultry from the farm through the supply chain to supermarket shelves. ActiveCare Network monitors 2 million patients in 38 states for the proper delivery of injections and vaccines.

All of these projects and many more lead to competitiveness in a globally integrated economy. "From the boardroom to the kitchen table, people everywhere are ready, eager for a new way of doing things". Sam called it a "time for courage and vision, a period of opportunity". The New York Times summed up the speech as "IBM Has Tech Answer for Woes of Economy". Certainly a lot of opportunity for IBM but the speech also relates to the company's corporate responsibility.


Complete index of IBM Happenings

IBM , Internet Technology November 13, 2008 06:41 PM

The Pepper Ball Log

One of the joys of having a personal web site is the feedback received from people around the world. Through the years -- since 1994 -- this has been a source of much learning for me. Once in a while I receive a flame or barb of criticism or crazy question but for the most part the feedback has been very sincere and thoughtful. Of the many subjects I have written about on patrickWeb, the one single thing that elicited the most feedback is The Pepper Ball.

In a posting in 1996 I said that my all time favorite, most used gadget was my electric lighted pepper mill. I happen to like pepper on food so it had a practical application but I think what I liked most about it is that every time I used it, it made my wife or kids or guests laugh and that made me laugh. I would always say, "I don't know why everybody doesn't have one of these". But then my family surprised me at Christmas in 1997 with "The Pepper Ball".

Not only has this single item from the gadgets section of my site caught a lot of interest, it has made me a member of the virtual technical support department to the world's pepper ball users! I have gotten emails from many asking where to buy one, but most have asked how to add additional pepper to the device. After so many emails about the Pepper Ball, I decided to establish The Pepper Ball Log to share some of the inquiries. Chef'n is a leading innovator in the kitchen housewares industry and it seems to be a company moving in fast forward with a passion for innovation. An inventive young man, David Holcomb, had an idea in the early 1980's to shake dry flakes of garlic with the Garlic Machine. It also used to be that the only cracked pepper you saw was if someone dropped the shaker on the floor -- until Mr. Holcomb invented the Pepper Ball.

Most people that visit patrickWeb are looking for stories about WiFi, blogging, or Internet technology, motorcycles or music, but the subject that results in the most emails is the Pepper Ball. I hope you enjoy the log that follows.

November 7, 2008

Hi there, I purchased a much wanted Pepper Ball without concern of how to refill this handy little gadget until I was checking it over for cracks before throwing out the wrapper. I thought $20 was a bit much for a throw-away, but I'll be danged if I could figure out how to refill it as my eyes just aren't the best. Thanks to your consideration of helping others, I have been able to successfully fill the ball :) Thank you so very much! Sincerely, Christina

Thanks again, it really does mean a lot to me :)

July 22, 2005

November 27, 2003

Hi! I contact you because I'm looking for where to buy (in France , Belgium or Luxembourg ) the "Pepper ball" created by " Chef'n " I saw that you talk about it on your website and I tried so many website or shop, but it seems impossible to be delivered in France !!! This is a present I would like to do and I was minding to know whether you would be able to help me in finding a solution. Looking for an answer.

May 24, 2003

Of the many subjects I have written about on patrickWeb, the one thing that continues to elicit the most feedback is The Pepper Ball. I first wrote about it in 1996 in the gadgets section of patrickWeb. For some unknown reason, it seems I have become the technical support department to the world's pepper ball users! I have gotten emails asking where to buy a Pepper Ball, how to repair one with broken handles, but mostly asking if I could explain how to refill the pepper supply. Yesterday I got an email from a frustrated man in Virginia Beach, Virginia who wrote, "How do you (or can you) refill the damned thing?"

I am hoping that the following explanation will make a match for people doing web searches looking for the answer. If you look at the Pepper Ball picture carefully, you will see a rectangular shaped area on the left side. It is about 3/4" wide and 1 1/2" long. By pressing on this "door" toward the bottom of the Pepper Ball, it will slide open. I use a small funnel to fill it so I don't have to chase peppercorns around the kitchen floor.

January 3, 2002

I came across you on Google search. I have ones of these too that I received as a gift years ago. One of my favorites too. Just recently the metal grinder broke off. I am not sure if it can be soldered or not. Kind of a can't get to area and gluing doesn't sound healthy. Would you happen to know where I could purchase another? I live in Allentown, Easton, Bethlehem, Pa area. Thought you might know and I guess I could call the company too. Appreciate a response and Happy New Year! Sue

Order a Chef'n Pepper Ball
Other patrickWeb stories about gadgets

Gadgets November 10, 2008 10:19 AM

Oxinium

Like most people, I had never heard of Oxinium. I vaguely remember the Table of Elements from high school chemistry. Near the middle of the chart is Zirconium, a chemical element with the symbol Zr and atomic number 40. Zirconium is a lustrous, gray-white metal that has no known biological role but due to significant advancements in technology, there is a new derivative material called Oxinium -- Oxidized Zirconium -- that is an extremely hard and highly scratch-resistant ceramic like material that has proven to be a superior metal for use in knee replacements. Not only can I spell oxinium now, I can walk on it -- literally.

Although the knee joint may look like a simple joint, it is actually the largest and one of the most complex.The knee can be thought of like the hinge on a door, except that the knee not only bends back and forth but also has a complex rotational component that occurs as we flex and extend the knee. The knee is formed by the junction of three bones: the femur (the thigh bone), the tibia (the shin bone), and the patella (the kneecap). These bones are connected to each other by strong ligaments. Because of the location of the knee and the way we use it -- or perhaps torture it -- the knee joint is also more likely to be injured than is any other joint in the body. For those who are fortunate enough to avoid a serious injury they instead will likely wear it out.The combination of wear and tear, high longevity, and a desire for extended quality of life, are resulting in rapid growth of orthopedic surgeries to replace our knees.

The procedure of knee joint replacement is called a total knee arthroplasty (TKA). This surgery involves replacing your knee joint with a manmade one. In total knee replacement, each prosthesis is comprised of four parts. The tibia component has two elements and replaces the top of the shinbone (tibia). This prosthesis is made up of a metal tray attached directly to the bone and a plastic spacer that provides the load bearing surface. The femoral component then replaces the bottom of the thighbone (femur). The oxinium implant that rotates as we bend and flex our knee is said to be nearly 5,000 times more abrasion resistant than the cobalt chrome knees that had been used for many years. Projections are that the oxinium component will last 30-40 years. (Since I am 63, that should be enough!) The oxinium component on the end of the femur rests on a piece of plastic that replaces the worn cartilage -- in my case completely worn out -- that is made from Ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE). This special polyethylene has the highest impact strength of any thermoplastic made. The polyethylene surface is inserted onto the tibia component so that the weight is transferred metal to plastic not metal to metal. During the operation any deformities are corrected -- I had my fair share of these -- and the ligaments are balanced so that the knee is stable and has a good range of movement. The articular surface of the patella is removed and replaced by a polyethylene button cemented to the posterior surface of the patella. The new kneecap then slides smoothly on the front of the knee joint.

More than a half-million knee implant operations are carried out each year around the world, mostly for patients who are over the age of 65. The new materials, such as oxinium, are now making it possible to replace knees in people in their forties, and we will soon see millions of knees replaced per year. A British company called Smith & Nephew claims to be the leader in manufacturing of the components and the tools to install them. They are projecting revenue of nearly $4 billion for the year.

There are some pictures of what into my new joint in the photogallery. There is also a lot more to the story -- both leading up to the need for a knee replacement and the process of having it done and the rehabilitation. Stories to follow.

Other patrickWeb healthcare-related stories

Healthcare November 6, 2008 12:08 PM