Disqus - Latest Comments for gyehuda

Re: Product Safety: Grey/Black desk lamp. Approximately

Gil Yehuda — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 02:04:27 -0000

Same here. The greenlight E176533 18w bulb in our bathroom blew out today. When we changed it, we noticed burn marks and melted plastic by the base where the glass is connected. Very concerned. We plan to replace them all with some other brand.

Re: Microsoft Tag Shuttering In 2015, No One Scans - by Brian Proffitt

Gil Yehuda — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 20:09:44 -0000

There is an entire list of people doing so on Tumblr.http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrc...

Re: Saving Lives With the Ambucycle

Gil Yehuda — Thu, 01 Aug 2013 20:08:59 -0000

Not a particularly new story. The guy who runs Uri's Pizza in Jerusalem started using his pizza delivery motorcycles as ambulances for Zaka (first responders after a terrorist attack), and did this many years ago when there were many such attacks in the city. He came up with the idea since he uses motorcycles to deliver pizza, it's the fastest way though the traffic, and figured it would be the fastest way to get first aid to a scene. A lesson in innovation, use what you already know.

Re: Celebrating Civic Hacks @ the White House

Gil Yehuda — Wed, 24 Jul 2013 12:29:27 -0000

And a pleasure to join you at the sessions!

Re: GitHub Helps Clueless Coders Go Open Source

Gil Yehuda — Fri, 19 Jul 2013 17:27:39 -0000

They are not forcing anything. If you wish you can still publish unlicensed code (protected by copyright, but unlicensed). Users beware, since if you use that code, the developer can sue you for using the code he shared on Github. "It's a trap." Github allows you to set such traps to your unsuspecting users. But now it allows well-intentioned social coders to express their license giving permission for others to use the code legally.

Re: How Do We Know Maimonides Was a Rationalist?

Gil Yehuda — Fri, 24 May 2013 15:58:16 -0000

I like this post, and agree with your position. If you have not seen these books, you may enjoy Maimonides: Reason Above All by Israel Drazin http://amzn.com/9652294314 (and some of this others). In addition to providing both evidence and argument to this point, you may find his examples interesting too. Moreover if you read the Amazon reviews you'll find your "4 sons" of reactions from cheers to jeers to this claim.

Re: Why Did Yahoo! Ban Telecommuting for Employees?

Gil Yehuda — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 17:36:54 -0000

Jacob, you suggest: "As far as I know Yahoo! hasn’t implemented any type of social collaboration solution." Not exactly true. There's actually a significant amount of social collaboration technology within the company -- ranging from old-school to the latest social-business products; from IIRC, IM, email groups, online forums, ideation forums, wikis, stream-based collab as well as real-time collab technologies, screen sharing, video conf, IP phones soft-phones with video, on brand new laptops and phones. Moreover we are updating on some of this technology, and Marissa made some significant improvements to the collaboration landscape already, ideas that are familiar to people working up the road at Google. Remember, she's a digital native.(You'll be glad to note that I gave her a signed copy of your book when she joined the company.)

It is unprofessional for me, as an employee, to comment on an internal matter related to this news, one that impacts the private and confidential relationship between a relatively small number of highly valued employees and their employer. So I won't comment. Sorry, I know people are interested, but its really not a public matter.

Instead, let me challenge this keen interest people seem to have. The news and buzz paints a very counter-intuitive policy. So you have to wonder if people are missing some relevant information and filling it in with speculation. I'm glad you have realized this and are giving her the benefit of the doubt, knowing that she's no fool. Your readers benefit from the fact you realized there is always more than meets the eye, and that knee-jerk reactions to news sound-bytes are not the best way to evaluate collaboration strategies.

Re: “Yes, Keep Moving”: Marissa Mayer’s First Memo to Yahoos (Natch!)

Gil Yehuda — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:49:16 -0000

FWIW, I know employees who did stop by to say Hello yesterday. Marissa was very nice to them, they chatted about a few things for a few moments, and then let her go to her next meeting, parting with a "welcome aboard." This might seem like an empty invitation for people who are too afraid to take it, but for the people who took her at her word, they found that she was sincere and looks forward to meeting employees.

Re: Is Adoption the New ROI of Collaboration?

Gil Yehuda — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 15:40:46 -0000

"Adoption is the new ROI" is a pill not worth swallowing. It's misdirection. Never confuse effort with result. Adoption is not a goal, nor a return. It's an interim step towards the goals. It's important, but it's not the goal. Business is about making money or saving money. If a tool helps you do one or the other -- measure it. If not, well, it might improve the quality of your workplace, it might invite potential serendipitous opportunity, it might be fun to do, but it's not ROI.

So why is Yammer selling this line? I think Yammer has demonstrated their ability to get adoption, but that's about it. So when you have a good adoption story, you say "look we did it, we have the 'new ROI'" It's like running a race, getting tired, and declaring that where you stopped running is where you really intended to stop all along.

Jacob, your suspicion is correct, adoption is a KPI, not an ROI. Converting the adoption to value is the next challenge (after getting that adoption). For Yammer, they have to convert their adoption rates to profit (or exit http://allthingsd.com/20120... and for Yammer users, they too have to convert adoption rates to real profit (by using tools to drive their business value).

Re: How to Disconnect from Web Tracking

Gil Yehuda — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:28:52 -0000

Fascinating. I downloaded the plug-in and see that by refreshing this very page, 21 sites are informed, including: netdna-cdn.com, btbuckets.com, appspot.com, tumblr.com, siteapps.com, google-analytics.com, woopra.com, and many others. Facebook, Google, and Twitter get updated too (not Yahoo! or Digg though). I love reading RWW, and I see that many other companies are informed of that fact too.

Let's play a thought experiment: Let's say that everyone who visited RWW would block these updates. Would RWW make enough money to sustain its operations and pay the writers? Presumably, they could sell a subscription to this blog, or perhaps the bloggers could continue writing but without getting paid. Maybe run a month sponsorship drive like the local NPR stations where you spend a day pleading with us to donate money to keep the blog going commercial free? How would that work for RWW?

I'm asking this seriously -- could a pure-private web enable the kind of quality that we get today or would it make the internet less interesting for commerce?

Re: An Insider's Guide to Technology Analysts

Gil Yehuda — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 18:51:59 -0000

As a former analyst myself, I agree with the author on this (assuming that he really meant the "research reports" are secondary -- not the act of doing research -- which is very important).

Research reports prove that we studied a field, that we understand a larger question and how to address it, that we can articulate a finding that is relevant to you -- but our clients had questions that were usually one or two levels more detailed than any signle report. They were buying access to us. Consider also, reports become outdated within a year or two, but analysts get more valuable every year -- we were really selling an appreciating product, not a depreciating one.

Yes, it is a bit counter intuitive and confusing, especially since the apparent item of sale was the subscription to the reports. Some firms (like Altimeter group) have transcended the subscription model by making their reports open to all -- so you have a clear idea of what you are buying from them. Research is important, but the analysts are the product.

Re: Yahoo Open Sources Its Apple App Store Killer

Gil Yehuda — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 18:29:07 -0000

Cade, thanks for covering this story. We think Mojito will be awesome and will help developers build great applications. We have built a few ourselves. By publishing the source code we are inviting others to join us in developing this code to make it even better. We think highly of the underlying Javascript technology so want to invest in it and in the community that built Node.JS. We want to help make it easier to develop great apps that can run on all sorts of tablets, web browsers, and phones - at internet scale.

Just a comment about the article's very ambitious title: I can't say that we plan on killing Apple's App store anytime soon :-) I hear they have plenty of apps on their store and many very happy customers too. And hey, if you want to download Yahoo!'s Livestand to your iPad, you're going to be visiting the Apple App store to download it. And we hope you do. ;-)

Gil Yehuda, Director of Open Source and Open Standards, Yahoo! Inc.

Re: What is the Future of Email?

Gil Yehuda — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:49:38 -0000

Here's another reason email is not going away so soon: privacy. Consider the next time you order books online, or better yet, medications. Or maybe you are applying for a job somewhere. You'll be asked to provide some contact information -- probably an email to get some sort of receipt, confirmation, and notification of the transaction status. Do you really want to give those companies access to your social network? of course not. Do they want access to it? of course they do.

There are some things we hope don't find their way on our social networking sites. Sure, email is not necessarily immune to being disclosed beyond your reach either -- but it's better than having your drugstore posting it on your twitter feed or facebook wall that they have your rash creme ready for pickup :-).

Re: I’m joining SAP AG.

Gil Yehuda — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:00:14 -0000

SAP is fortunate to gain one of the top minds and most respected professionals in the field of enterprise collaboration. And I hope you have a great time at SAP too. Congrats on an exciting piece of news.

Re: Data.gov to be Open Sourced for World-Wide Deployment

Gil Yehuda — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 18:54:01 -0000

"upvote" on Alex's comment. He is right on the mark (as usual). This move is helpful, but it's also important to view it with healthy skepticism. Putting code on GitHub is just code on GitHub. You can read it. You can make your own copy and modify it. All good. But when you have a government committed to data transparency, one that provides services via transparent and inspect-able channels -- and can do so in a manner that protects civic data, the citizens, and government functions -- then you have something potentially game-changing. To have this, you need the government commitment. And to get there, you need a committed group of people who are willing to invest in this code and infrastructure to make something useful out of it. The good news is that it can be done. The question is who will step up to the plate? (and with what motives?) I guess we have to watch and see.

Re: Milk Street Cafe on the Verge of Closing on Wall Street

Gil Yehuda — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 23:28:49 -0000

A shame indeed. Marc is a good person and runs a fine establishment. I enjoyed MSC in Boston for many years and was glad to see him expand to a new market on Wall Street. The #occupy folks have demonstrated the unintended consequence that results from thoughtlessness -- they have hurt the very type of small business-owner that they claim to support. Had they thought about the movement carefully and productively, perhaps it would be remembered for something good. Unfortunately history will record this protest as a drain on societies resources and the loss of good opportunities. One only has to see how many of the protester are wearing nikes, north face jackets, gap shirts, and live in EMS-purchased tents to see the hypocrisy in their message. A shame that Marc's business is one of the many victims.

Re: Big Question (Answered): \"Can an Open Source Project be Closed to the Public?\"

Gil Yehuda — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 19:03:38 -0000

An Open Source project can be less than 100% open. And that is not the same as "closed to the public". Project publishers make a choice about how open they want to be. And they use governance, licenses, and all sorts of plans/deals to make this happen. Of course, the more purely open, the more they get the benefit of pure open source. But sometimes they are not really looking for that value, they are looking for something else. So they will use partially-open tactics. It's the reality of the business. Yes, it does not sound clean. But let's not be so naive.

Re: What's This I Hear About Proprietary Open Source?

Gil Yehuda — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:28:25 -0000

Scott,
Maybe this analogy will help. I think of Open Source as having many of the features of a religion. Heroes, legends, faith, community, long neck beards at OSCON, etc... Most religions have at least one or two major schisms that separates orthodox groups from pragmatic adherents. All groups claim to honor the tenants of the faith, but they disagree on some important details. Your definition of Openness is an orthodox one. Companies tend to lean toward the reformed variation. Orthodox open source benefits the developer community at the cost to the corporate entity. To the orthodox, you are either open or closed. The corporate entity still wants to hold onto power (it's their nature), so they create degrees of openness. It's amusingly similar to the tension you see in the history of populist vs. structured religions.

Truth is we don't allow open to be disassembled into degrees -- copyright law does. And as much as Open Source tries to repair the copyright act, it depends on it too. And thus there are degrees of openness because there can be. Google can do what it did. Reality will report its success. And critics will challenge them. All quite natural and unsurprising, and certainly fun to watch play out.

Re: What's This I Hear About Proprietary Open Source?

Gil Yehuda — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:05:13 -0000

Scott, reality check -- Open is not a binary state, it's a spectrum that balances control and participation. FOSS projects choose a spot on the spectrum. Some simply post code online but never take any input or participate with the community. Not particularly open -- but at least you see the code (depending on the license you might have many options to use it). Some work with partners in a coordinated meritocracy (e.g. Apache or Eclipse project) -- more participation, less control. Some just dump code on Github and walk away. Slap on a license and it's technically "open source". Of course, some models are better than others. But the project author decides.

"Proprietary Open Source" sounds like Kosher Pork -- and it's not that kosher. But the good news is that people like you can see if for what it is and call it out. In that sense it's open for analysis and critique. A publisher can choose how open they want to be on the spectrum, and the community should read the message and react appropriately. If the message is "you can read my code, but I don't want your participation, thank you", then read the code if you want, and don't expect to participate. POS is a form of open-washing -- posing to be open; but it's still more open than closed. If the publisher thinks this is what they want, reality will prove them right or wrong. And the *community reaction is in control of that reality*. That's the power of open source. More thoughts: http://www.gilyehuda.com/20...

Re: http://moneypreview.turner.com:86/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2011/snapshots/CS2560785.html

Gil Yehuda — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 02:10:21 -0000

Sharon is quite a special place. I lived there for about 11 years and still feel attached to it. It's charming, friendly, just out of the way, but not far from where you want to visit. It has some unique qualities that make it unlike some of the neighboring towns, and yet, it is New-Englandy -- with trees, a lake, sleepy streets, 4 real seasons (autumn being the best), and many nice people.

Re: Hadoop Creator Doug Cutting Talks About Why He Got Into Open Source

Gil Yehuda — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:43:23 -0000

Klint, I agree with you. These tools are a beneficial result of the tech world, that can be used for many other applications and industries too. And Cutting serves as one of the great examples of someone who "gets it" at a very visionary level. Not only did he see how to bring technology that was locked in Google (though published about) to be made available to all, he showed how Open Source platform-plays help technology live beyond the confines of one company. Today, many companies owe a great debt to these kinds of decision, and to those who enable their success.

I'm fortunate to be working for the guy at Yahoo! who brought Doug in to develop Hadoop beyond the lab and into the world of high-scale production. And we are repeating the pattern with many other technologies that are being published as Open Source, for the very reasons you state above.

Re: Thou Shalt Have No Other Jobs Before Me: Geek Fanatacism Lights Up Same Part of the Brain as Religion

Gil Yehuda — Tue, 31 May 2011 15:04:29 -0000

Thanks for this very insightful (and inciting) article. I think you are on target. I find that many of my neighbors (now that I live in Silicon Valley) are adherents to the Gadget-tarian religion. They worship at the Church of Fry's Savior, Congregation Best Buy, or the Apple Store Ministries every Saturday and Sunday. They express their faith by buying items with decreasing shelf lives, and they engage in constant text study (The Writings of PCworld, Dr Dobbs, Computerworld and the Gospels according to Gizmodo, Engadget, Slashdot, and Wired). It is a faith dedicated to progress, and largely resistant to learning lessons from the past. It has prophets and judges, but has replaced the priesthood with consultants; replaced the psalmists with bloggers.

It has all the trimmings of a religion. And this is both wonderful and scary. In fact, those who understand the inner dynamics of religious communities (formation, fragmentation, loyalty, mythology, etc.) are in a good position to be effective in dealing with community dynamics. And yet, fanaticism is also associated with many strains of religions too. Religions are responsible for many of the good in the world (feeding the needy, giving hope and meaning to those who suffer). It is also responsible for much of the bad in the world too (wars, intolerance, manipulation). Let's hope this gagetarian religion becomes a blessing to humanity, and not a pursuit of inept materialism. I pray it does not run out of battery life before leaving us with a better world.

Re: Big Data and The Benefits From The Bubble

Gil Yehuda — Wed, 11 May 2011 15:42:43 -0000

Jeff makes an excellent point in his critique. There are great minds who work on the science of getting people to click ads by using Big Data engines (including the one that the company Jeff currently works in supports). And it's not the most exalted pursuit. (Neither is making rich people richer, filling out insurance forms, and extracting unreplenishable resources from the planet in order to watch race cars circle a track for hours -- but we do these too.) And Andy, you are correct to note that even if there is another bubble burst, there will be remnants from this big data activity that benefit humanity (beyond better ad-clicks -- which does pose benefit to retailers , but not as much high-brow benefit to humanity as a whole). This tempers the critique.

Consider this is a version of the more general business issue -- it's the "what should we work on?" question. Pharma companies have provided us with multiple solutions to erectile dysfunction, and have even solved problems we never knew we had, like restless legs. And they did so because these are profitable ventures. Why have they not solved "more important" problems that plague humanity? AIDS, cancers, irregular verbs (just kidding). Perhaps economic drivers are not always aligned with human priorities.

We are irrational. Ask people what they consider important, and they will tell you. Measure what people really do and you'd infer a different priority list. Big Data is a big deal these days. I don't see the trend going away soon. I am confident we can use these technologies to solve important problems. But the economic drivers reflect more of the reality of our priorities, not what one might claim to be our priorities. I hope smart people are watching the Big Data activities closely to figure out how to use these powerful technologies for other uses too. Then we need to put economic fuel into those investments.

Re: The Adaptive Social Business Strategy (Framework)

Gil Yehuda — Mon, 02 May 2011 12:52:25 -0000

I agree with Peter's comment -- the framework is not social -- it's far more typical to most other business initiatives. In my opinion, this is what makes it so relevant and important. Moreover, this finding is consistent with what other thought leaders in this space have found to be true (I'm thinking of one of the recent Altimeter reports). Whereas "social" is the topic, the process of business is still business. You still have to pay attention to goals and measurements and processes etc. Real companies still operate as real companies -- and trans-formative initiatives like "social" remind me of prior initiatives like "Quality" (in the late 80s), "ERP" in the early 90s, and "e-business" in the late 90s.

I think it's very healthy to view a social initiative as a business initiative, and not imagine that employees will self-organize the way consumers do around cool ideas. Employees still operate in a mechanism that operates with governance (we have managers and corporate goals) and marketplaces (we get salaries and bonuses) -- so our behaviors are impacted and changed via the mechanisms of business transformation.

Yes, Social is different -- it is by definition more inclusive, egalitarian, and flatening to an organization. But I was very impressed with this framework because it makes sense to the way I think business think about initiative. just my opinion :-).

Re: Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut Down After Budgets Cut

Gil Yehuda — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 18:23:03 -0000

Reminds me of one of my favorite sculptures by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. The tree holds down the axe that cut it. In this case though, the axe only chopped a little branch, the one it needed for its handle. And the tree took its handle back. http://www.allinfo.plus.com...