Monthly Archives: April 2020

04/30/20

Re-Opening V Re-Visioning

Comes now the heady prospect that states within our glorious Union may soon be freed from COVID19 timeout and thereby businesses, both large and small, will be allowed to re-open.

What is the first task? Re-Visioning.

There will be no “one size fits all of y’all” plan as all states and businesses are different. Businesses are different.

What is painfully true is that the business environment we knew pre-COVID19 will not magically re-appear. There will be no going back to the past to define the future.

It is a new ballgame.

A new ballgame requires a new business plan. A new business plan requires a re-visit to the original Vision, Mission, Strategy, Tactics, Objectives, Values, and Culture of the company in light of the changed environment and marketplace.

Business planning building blocks graphic

The future will NOT be the past in a new dress or with a sleeker haircut or some great RayBans. It will be dramatically different.

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04/29/20

Japan Abandons China

Relations between Japan and China have always been dicey since before World War II, so a new development between them is not a huge surprise.

The nature of the development in this instance is.

Japan has funded a program — as part of its COVID19 economic stimulus package — to financially support companies who move their manufacturing from China back to Japan.

In addition, the program also supports companies who move their manufacturing from China to another Asian country whose main qualification is — Not Made In China.

This comes on the heels of a very simple impetus — the realization of how much Japanese manufacturing had moved from Japan to China.

Why did they move in the first place you ask? Cheap labor. Cheap cost of finished goods because of the cheap labor, prison labor, child labor, lower environmental standards (if any at all), and cheaper materials.

Japan acted pretty damn quick. No wasted time.

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04/29/20

Software — An App v A Feature

I read a comment on this blog from a guy (Jim Grey) who makes extraordinarily insightful comments. He hasn’t made a lot, but the ones he’s made are shrewd and well written. He writes an interesting blog I read from time-to-time.

He got me thinking about something at the juxtaposition between apps and software features.

He raised the question — is Zoom an app? Well, of course it is.

But, will Zoom one day be a feature in a larger more extensive piece or suite of software? An offering from a broader software company? I expect the answer to that is also “of course.”

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04/28/20

President Trump Owes Bank Of China Millions

Last week, Politico breathlessly announced that “Trump Owes Tens of Millions to the Bank of China.”

The story was totally wrong. It was a fabricated story. It was fake news.

The story revolved around a financing secured by an office building located at 1290 Avenue of the Americas. It was a nice office building and the Trump Organization — the President’s real estate operating company, now run by a son — owned a minority interest of 30%.

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04/28/20

Unmasking China

The world wants to know what exactly China knew about its most recent gift to the world — the virus that creates COVID19.

What did China know and when did they know it; and, why didn’t they  tell us?

China is bristling at all the attention. President Trump recently indicated his unhappiness with China for their failure to be forthcoming on the subject and said there would be consequences, but not until COVID19 has run its course.

Since before President Trump announced his candidacy in 2016, Donald J Trump has been a skeptic and a critic when it comes to China. It appears he was correct on all things pertinent to China.

We have a clear indication of the Chinese attitude when delving into their recent dialogue with Australia.

Australia and China are keen trading partners with more than 25% of Australian exports going to China. Australia annually sells China $235,000,000,000 of coal, iron ore, wine, beef, tourism and tertiary education.

Chinese tourists love Australia with more than 772,000 Chinese visiting Australia, staying on average 43 nights, and spending more than $12,000,000,000.

The second highest number of travelers come from New Zealand. These 534,000 New Zealanders spent on average 10 days and $2,600,000,000.

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04/27/20

Facebook Messenger Rooms

It had to happen. Facebook noticed that Zoom was crushing it with their video meeting business, so Facebook decided to expand its existing Messenger video capability into something they are calling Messenger Rooms.

Like Messenger (700MM daily users — can that possibly be right?), a written chat product, Facebook expands that vision and calls its new Messenger Rooms a “video chat product” developed to serve the needs of their quarantined Facebook Messenger community.

Mark Zuckerberg differentiates Messenger Rooms from Zoom by suggesting, “All the products out there were primarily focused on enterprises and we thought that there was an ability to do something in the consumer space. It’s meant to be more casual.” Of course, he spoke via video chat from his home to accentuate just how homey the new FB product truly was.

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04/25/20

The Amazon Third Party Data Shuffle

Amazon, the Bully of the Boardwalk when it comes to eCommerce, sells things on its powerful website for third parties. They also sell their own private label products.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of  data captured thereby. Take a second and imagine what data such an assignment might generate — popularity of product, names of buyers, pricing info?

So, there has been a persistent “rumor” that Amazon has been using this third party data to decide what items to make for its own account. Act surprised to learn that Amazon makes its own private label offerings — 158,000 such products at last count. Wow!

Immediately, your ethical alarms begin to signal. The red light goes on, it twirls, the siren sounds.

When asked by the US Congress, Amazon gave this answer:

“Well, no, of course, we don’t use third party data to determine what things we might private label, make for our account, but, but, but we might use something we call ‘aggregated data.'”

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04/25/20

Altwork — The Ultimate Work Station

I rarely tout products, but today I make an exception for Altwork, an innovative inventor and manufacturer of computer work stations. If you are a ultra-computer user, a coder, a writer, a visionary — this baby is for you. [Or, if you are just a Tech Gadgeteer. Go for it, amigo. You earned it.]

What you are looking at is a work station set up with a 49″ Samsung ultra wide monitor. The Altwork work station also allows you to configure it as a standup desk.

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