Removing Hulu integration with Boxee is a lose/lose idea for Hulu, Boxee, Content Providers and Users.  Let’s break it down.

Content Providers:
The content providers want eyeballs because eyeballs mean revenue. To gain those eyeballs content providers want NEED to expand across multiple delivery services. Discontinuing a popular cutting edge LEGAL content delivery frontend like Boxee is shortsighted and hurts the content providers’ revenues.

Hulu:
Hulu is an early leader in delivering almost real-time media content via the Web. Boxee took the Hulu idea and enhanced it with direct integration into their (very slick) Media Center application. Viewing Hulu on Boxee is still a Hulu experience and it retains the revenue stream for the content providers.  Discontinuing Hulu on Boxee upsets a lot of loyal Hulu users who access Hulu content solely via Boxee. No more Boxee integration means less Hulu viewers. This hurts Hulu which hurts the content providers and Users.

Boxee (aka the users!):
Boxee has a loyal following in the Home Media Center space. Boxee is producing a socially integrated media center experience. Think Facebook for your Movies/Music and TV. The potential of services like Boxee are huge for Hulu and their content providers. The market Hulu is destorying by nixing Boxee consists of consumers that are Hulu’s IDEAL customer. Your average Boxee user will consume more Hulu content with a larger audience on their HDTV’s than the typical Hulu user chained to their monitor in front of their keyboard. Plus, Hulu/Boxee users can go viral with media via Boxee’s built in “recommendations” feature. Taking Hulu off of Boxee discourages a large subset of Hulu’s power users and encourages media torrents. This hurts the consumer which hurts Hulu which hurts the Content Providers.

How did we get here?
The problem is that the Content Providers agreed to sign up for Hulu but are poorly equipped to understand how Hulu, and their content, integrates with other “new media” products. When an application like Boxee writes their code to support Hulu the networks feel like their control on content distribution is slipping. The predictable result: the networks freak out and demand that Hulu discontinue Boxee support. This is short sighted. Content Providers want NEED Boxee as a legal frontend to the content which generates revenue for them on Hulu. However, Content Providers don’t understand the entire situation, feel threatened and would rather take their ball and go home. Dumb!

The media companies who want consumers to view their content so they can monetize the activity via advertising have just removed one of the most creative and legal ways for them to accomplish their prime directive with the added beneift of advancing the stereotype of clueless “old media” and alienating loyal fanbases.

What else can you say to that? While you’ll be discussing this article I’ll be resuming my commercial free torrents.

I feel the mini9, except for a few keyboard oddities and a slightly dim screen, was a great purchase. If I’m not on the Internet, computers have little value to me. Everything I do requires that I am connected. I may not match the needs of every user so YMMV.

Which brings me back to the cloud. I was at the ConnectWise conference last week where several panels discussed the threat the cloud poses to traditional IT consultants (the cloud supplants internal IT services, thereby lessening the need for IT service providers). I’ve been thinking about the cloud threat and how to move forward in a way that benefits my clients and my business.

I believe a lot of consultants will fail as their bread and butter is moved offsite to cloud services provided by Google, Microsoft and others. To remain viable, consultants will have to focus on providing their own cloud services or focus less on managing technology and more on integrating existing cloud services into business processes.

We are still a few years away from mass cloud adoption, but as I type this out on my 2lb notebook on free WIFI, I am reminded the future always gets here…eventually.

It’s a good read, but there is a page and half that has had a major impact on me, showing me where I have a huge blindspot in business and how I stop my own progress.  This page and a half is possibly the most important material I’ve read in a book in several years (for me it applies directly).

The author talks about the Fallacy of Planning in a business setting. He ranks plans in this order:

1. Very Good
2. Good
3. Best
4. Fair
5. Poor

Why is Good ahead of Best?  Simple, to arrive at Best takes orders of magnitude more planning than Good.  Also, who defines Best?  How much time is spent creating the Best plan?  Will Best stand the test of time?  Can everyone agree on Best?  Would Good work just as well as Best in the real world?  Is Best satisfying the client’s need better than a Good plan?

Choosing the “Best” plan leads to Paralysis by Analysis.  I know this firsthand!  Good plans allow for quick action and constant improvement. The most successful people in the world have acted on Good plans that they have refined over time.  An actionable plan is more successful than a plan that never leaves the drawing board.

Personally, I’ve fallen into the Best trap many times.  There is no such thing as a “Best” plan.  Going forward the “Best” plan will be the “Good” plan that I can put into action and refine over time!

A lightbulb went off in my head when I got this concept.   Thank you Harry for this valuable lesson.

Just like Email became Gmail, it appears Google intends to replace the PC with the GC (Google Computer).  The Google Computer will run Chrome as an OS and a suite of Apps Google will provide in the cloud.  Once Google picks up a decent finance package (Intuit has already moved a lot of their apps to the Web) and some sort of CRM (Salesforce – web based) Google would have a compelling package for businesses.

I think Google is the most disruptive technology company in the world.  Google has stated they want to be integrated into people’s brains.  Laugh if you will, but it shows the level of their ambition.

I am an unapologetic VMWare fan, but this is a huge screwup. Tomorrow will be interesting.

This occurs within 24 hours of Gmail going down for an hour. Anyone think too much success is leading to sloppiness at these companies?

As an HP reseller I have always been anti-Dell, but given recent events with HP we’ve committed to switching to Dell.

Our goal was to obtain a Dell Premier login, thereby freeing us to order equipment on the web at significant discounts. With our Dell Premier login our margins are almost triple what we received as HP resellers.

Dell operates on a direct model, where all Dell equipment is purchased from Dell or resellers like us. HP forces resellers to purchase from distributors like Ingram Micro or Tech Data. This was a big part of our decision to switch. Low margins coupled with an incredibly difficult ordering process from distribution pushed us towards Dell.

The event that finally pushed us over the edge is HP’s ridiculous process for registering warranties. Warranty registration was taking 20 minutes of our time for every HP product purchased. When we bought this to the attention of a Channel Manager we were asked to provide proof of our sales to qualify for support. Completely unacceptable. The previous 15 years of goodwill were wiped out over a period of six months as HP dropped the ball on providing solutions to simple problems.

Let’s make this clear HP. We are trying to sell your products. You should grant us acceptable margins and provide clear and reliable avenues of support. When we need support we are not interested in filling out your Channel Manager’s spreadsheet so that we can get the help we need. You didn’t keep your end of our bargain and you have been replaced. We’ve moved on.

Goodbye HP.

Examples of Cloud Computing include Google Apps, Apple’s MobileMe and  Amazon’s S3.

A brief history of how we arrived at this point in computing history. A few decades ago all of the brains of a computer lived in huge mainframes. Terminals (aka “green screens”) connected to the mainframe and processed user input. The terminal relied on the mainframe for all computational tasks. In the 80’s, the personal computer took off and the processing was moved from a central mainframe to the local desktop. Today, we’ve come full circle back to the centralized mainframe model, except now the mainframe is a distributed group of computers spread across many datacenters, aka “the cloud”, and your web browser is the terminal.

In Nicholas Carr’s book Does IT Matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage the author puts forth the hypothesis that we are approaching a Star Trek level of computing: ubiquitous access to IT resources, to the point that IT is no longer a competitive advantage in business but rather a utility like Electricity. Carr argues that innovations in IT are so quickly copied and commoditized that there is little competitive advantage to being on the cutting edge of technology.

Carr recounts that less than 100 years ago major companies were formed based on the strategic advantage of placing plants near railways for distribution of goods. Furthermore, placement near the few available sources of electricity offered short term, but sizable advantages to manufacturers.

Carr argues that IT will follow the same path as railways and electricity: quick adoption of new technologies and standards continually reduce competitive advantages for early technical adopters.

Carr raises some interesting points, but completely glosses over the value of upper management in matching a company’s needs to the market’s available resources.

Cloud Computing offers a rigid set of services. Customization is rarely possible. Rather than fit the technology to your business, Cloud Computing dictates that the business is fit to the available technology.

Is there a business benefit to adopting a Cloud environment? My opinion is we are still a few years away. However, companies like Intuit are aggressively pursuing delivering their traditional shrinkwrap applications over the Internet. The transition to Cloud Computing is just now beginning, but as Carr points out, there is little advantage to being on the cutting edge!

The email very honestly lays out the issues Apple had with the transition to MobileMe.  The reason I’m posting it here is that Apple does the right thing.  They come clean about the issues and then give subscribers an extra month for free.  When most service providers have outages (I’m talking about you TimeWarner) they are not forthcoming with refunds or credits for downtime.  The only thing Apple could have done better would have been to be in communication about the issues sooner.

More companies should follow Apple’s lead and own up to their faults with proactive credits.  The body of the email can be read by clicking :

We have recently completed the transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Unfortunately, it was a lot rockier than we had hoped.

Although core services such as Mail, iDisk, Sync, Back to My Mac, and Gallery went relatively smoothly, the new MobileMe web applications had lots of problems initially. Fortunately we have worked through those problems and the web apps are now up and running.

Another snag we have run into is our use of the word “push” in describing everything under the MobileMe umbrella. While all email, contact or calendar changes on the iPhone and the web apps are immediately synced to and from the MobileMe “cloud,” changes made on a PC or Mac take up to 15 minutes to sync with the cloud and your other devices. So even though things are indeed instantly pushed to and from your iPhone and the web apps today, we are going to stop using the word “push” until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too.

We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks.

We hope you enjoy your new suite of web applications at me.com, in addition to keeping your iPhone and iPod touch wirelessly in sync with these new web applications and your Mac or PC.

Today was different:  I forgot to take my cellphone to work.  Without my cellphone, I was not interrupted by text messages, twitter updates, brightkite posts, automated SMS alerts and phone calls.  A direct result of removing these interrupts, a highly productive morning.  This unintentional experiment has reinforced the value of being less interrupt driven.

In the span of 24 hours these new opportunities grew to be approximately 1/4 of the revenue we did in all of 2007.

We could not have predicted any of this and none of it is certain.  The swings in potential revenue wreck havoc with the best laid plans of the small business owner.  Navigating through these tough times with opportunities that come and go so quickly requires intestinal fortitude or blissful ignorance.

I’m hoping I can stay blissfully ignorant.  Intestinal fortitude is overrated.