Whether or not you agree with the casting of Scar-Jo in the role of Major Motoko Kusanagi, this trailer has us pretty excited about where the live action version of Masamune Shirow’s classic anime looks to be headed, with incredible visuals and thrilling action.
Why the next great SaaS company will look nothing like Salesforce
For years, a truism in software investing was that the value of application software lies in data, not in technology. Companies like Salesforce, Workday, and ServiceNow are valuable because they are the “system of record” (SoR), or single source of truth, for their customers’ most valuable information, such as customer records or employee data.
As a result, they become deeply embedded in their customers’ business processes, making them hard to rip out. That gives them tremendous revenue predictability and pricing power. The technology itself — databases combined with workflow engines — is not particularly innovative; it’s the information captured by the technology that’s important.
The newest crop of software applications turns this logic on its head. They mimic consumer companies by using technology as a “wedge” to gain widespread adoption and don’t even try to become systems of record.
Instead, they are “systems of engagement” (SoE), meaning apps that employees actually use to get their work done. For example, take Slack, which Forbes recently identified as the most valuable private cloud company.
The data in Slack is either low value (“water-cooler” conversations) or already lives in existing systems of record. The same is true for many other fast-growing apps, like Intercom (customer interaction), Clari (sales), Culture Amp (employee feedback) and Front (shared inbox).
Digging deeper, the specific areas of technology where these companies have innovated are ones that historically people have ignored — integration and design.
At big companies, integration is the ugly step-child of any product roadmap: everyone wants it to work, but no one wants to work on it. Here’s an example: a senior executive at a leading SaaS company tells me that twenty people from different groups across the company show up for the “billing meeting”, where it’s decided how billing will integrate with core features. But no one wants to work on the billing team, creating those integrations.
Startups have capitalized on that by creating high performance, scalable integrations, solving hard technical problems like how to sync without putting excessive load on the underlying system.
Entire companies, such as our portfolio company Okta, for single sign-on, or Segment, for analytics, are now built on integration alone.
Integration companies, while not glamorous, can build market power by positioning themselves at the center of an ecosystem and creating an “ecosystem network effect”, whereby they become a de facto standard. Okta and Segment are both on their way to achieving this.
But most new applications use integration to gather, organize, and analyze data. They win the hearts of their users through great design. That’s no small challenge, given growing data sets, shrinking screen sizes, and ever shorter attention spans, which is why the concept of design has become a huge differentiator.
It works because it’s a win-win. Startups creating systems of engagement get users and revenue, by leveraging data in the systems of record. They also increase the data’s value, by using it more and adding to it. That makes the big software vendors happy, as (they believe) it increases their customer lock-in and helps them become more of a platform.
What’s not clear is whether this will continue. Large companies like Salesforce want to innovate through technology. For example, the center-piece at this month’s Dreamforce, its annual conference, is a new artificial intelligence (AI) initiative marketed as “Einstein”, which layers predictive models over its existing applications.
Conversely, once a startup’s product is being used every day like Slack, it may start keeping more information within it and over time wean people off whatever they were using before (Outlook, Sharepoint, etc).
The game-changer could well be artificial intelligence: if AI software could extract signal from the unstructured product feedback in Intercom or the sales forecasting information in Clari, the data in those systems could become more valuable than the limited fields captured in today’s systems of record.
But that’s a long way off. For current startups, the message is clear. Don’t try to be Salesforce to Seibel, Workday to Peoplesoft or Coupa to Ariba. Those battles are over, and won’t be repeated. Instead, use technology — integration, design, perhaps machine learning or AI — as your wedge into the market.
Play nice with existing systems, and then analyze how people are using your product. Feed that back into new product development and drive more engagement, ideally creating a virtuous cycle between usage and design that keeps you ahead of competitors.
For examples of who does this well, look no further than the large consumer companies. It’s no coincidence that the two most awe-inspiring enterprise businesses today (AWS and Google Apps) both have a consumer heritage.
That’s the winning strategy for today, and most likely tomorrow.
Featured Image: Ismagilov/Shutterstock
via TechCrunch
Why the next great SaaS company will look nothing like Salesforce
The Cognitive Dissonance Cluster Bomb
Posted November 12th, 2016 @ 7:55am
Earlier this week CNN.com listed 24 different theories that pundits have provided for why Trump won. And the list isn’t even complete. I’ve heard other explanations as well. What does it tell you when there are 24 different explanations for a thing?
It tells you that someone just dropped a cognitive dissonance cluster bomb on the public. Heads exploded. Cognitive dissonance set in. Weird theories came out. This is the cleanest and clearest example of cognitive dissonance you will ever see. Remember it.
This phenomenon is why a year ago I told you I was putting so much emphasis on PREDICTING the outcome of the election using the Master Persuader Filter. I told you it would be easy to fit any theory to the facts AFTER the result. And sure enough, we can fit lots of theories to the facts. At least 24 of them by CNN’s count.
Generally speaking, the greater the persuasion, the more cognitive dissonance you get. Trump is – in my opinion – the greatest persuader of my lifetime. I expected this level of cognitive dissonance. Next time you see a persuader of this magnitude, you can expect the outcome to be cognitive dissonance in that case too.
This brings me to the anti-Trump protests. The protesters look as though they are protesting Trump, but they are not. They are locked in an imaginary world and battling their own hallucinations of the future. Here’s the setup that triggered them.
1. They believe they are smart and well-informed.
2. Their good judgement told them Trump is OBVIOUSLY the next Hitler, or something similarly bad.
3. Half of the voters of the United States – including a lot of smart people – voted Trump into office anyway.
Those “facts” can’t be reconciled in the minds of the anti-Trumpers. Mentally, something has to give. That’s where cognitive dissonance comes in.
There are two ways for an anti-Trumper to interpret that reality. One option is to accept that if half the public doesn’t see Trump as a dangerous monster, perhaps he isn’t. But that would conflict with a person’s self-image as being smart and well-informed in the first place. When you violate a person’s self-image, it triggers cognitive dissonance to explain-away the discrepancy.
So how do you explain-away Trump’s election if you think you are smart and you think you are well-informed and you think Trump is OBVIOUSLY a monster?
You solve for that incongruity by hallucinating – literally – that Trump supporters KNOW Trump is a monster and they PREFER the monster. In this hallucination, the KKK is not a nutty fringe group but rather a symbol of how all Trump supporters must feel. (They don’t. Not even close.)
In a rational world it would be obvious that Trump supporters include lots of brilliant and well-informed people. That fact – as obvious as it would seem – is invisible to the folks who can’t even imagine a world in which their powers of perception could be so wrong. To reconcile their world, they have to imagine all Trump supporters as defective in some moral or cognitive way, or both.
As I often tell you, we all live in our own movies inside our heads. Humans did not evolve with the capability to understand their reality because it was not important to survival. Any illusion that keeps us alive long enough to procreate is good enough.
That’s why the protestors live in a movie in which they are fighting against a monster called Trump and you live in a movie where you got the president you wanted for the changes you prefer. Same planet, different realities.
—
You might enjoy reading my book because you like movies.
And you might love my startup’s new app for geostreaming your location to a friend as you approach your meeting spot. Here are links:
WhenHub app for Apple: http://apple.co/2eLL3Oh
WhenHub app for Android: http://bit.ly/2fIb6L7
Redesigned Object Editors and Database Search in dbForge Studio for MySQL v7.2
We are glad to announce the release of the new version of Devart’s MySQL GUI tool –
dbForge Studio for MySQL v7.2!
via Planet MySQL
Redesigned Object Editors and Database Search in dbForge Studio for MySQL v7.2
The fundamentals of photography as told by the US Navy in 1948
The fundamentals of photography as told by the US Navy in 1948
The principles of photography really haven’t changed all that much since its early beginnings. The technology has come a long way, the recording mediums have evolved, but the fundamental principles are still the same. You still need a light tight box (your camera body), something to project light from your scene to the inside of the box (a lens), something on which to record it (film or a sensor) and a way to control the exposure (shutter).
In this 1948 training film from the US Navy, we learn about the history of photography as it stood at that time. We take a look at the original camera obscura and how it evolved into the bleeding edge technology of mid 20th century. That technology may be a far cry from where it is today, but some things never change.
Generally speaking, the process for making photographs has gotten much easier over the years, although the basic anatomy hasn’t really changed. Whether you’re shooting DSLR, mirrorless or even a cellphone, it’s still basically the same. The shutters in some cases might’ve moved from physical to electronic, but it’s still there.
But, technology moves on. Cameras are now typically much smaller than their historical counterparts. They have advanced electronics built in with doohickies you can hook up to them for specific purposes. Flash triggers, optical and audible camera triggers, GPS, WiFi grips and dongles, and all kinds of gadgets are available today. You can even use Arduinos and tablets to control them remotely and automate tasks.
The workflow after taking the shot is a lot less messy, too. We don’t need to worry about the expiration date of film or paper or whether our chemicals are still active. No longer do we need to deal with the chemicals. Although, I would argue that I spend far more time at the computer after a shoot now than I ever did in the darkroom with film. That time aspect is one of the reasons I still shoot film for some projects.
Even if you’re not planning to shoot any film, it’s a fascinating look at the technology as it stood 70 or so years ago.
Did you spot any cameras in the video that you own? Or have used? Still use? What technological camera advancements have you loved the most? Which advancements in camera technology do you feel have been a step backward? What camera technology could you not live without today? Let us know, and tell us your thoughts in the comments.
[via Reddit]
via DIYPhotography.net – Photography and Studio Lighting – Do It Yourself
The fundamentals of photography as told by the US Navy in 1948
Valerian (Teaser)
Luc Besson’s latest sci-fi film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets looks like a futurist’s wet dream, with eye-popping visuals, and a lighthearted, but action-packed world which brings back memories of his classic The Fifth Element. We can only hope it’s as much fun.
Three Simple Things That Can Keep Trump Out Of The White House
Americans woke to the stunning news yesterday morning that Republican Donald Trump had defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton to be the 45th President of the United States.
The surprising outcome of the election is not sitting well in many major cities, where marches and riots have broken out.
A day after Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, campaign divisions appeared to widen as many thousands of demonstrators — some with signs with messages declaring “NOT MY PRESIDENT” — flooded streets across the country to protest his surprise triumph.
From New England to heartland cities like Kansas City and along the West Coast, demonstrators bore flags and effigies of the president-elect, disrupting traffic and declaring that they refused to accept Trump’s victory.
Flames lit up the night sky in California cities Wednesday as thousands of protesters burned a giant papier-mache Trump head in Los Angeles and started fires in Oakland intersections.
Los Angeles demonstrators also beat a Trump piñata and sprayed the Los Angeles Times building and news vans with anti-Trump profanity. One protester outside LA City Hall read a sign that simply said “this is very bad.”
Videos from some of the different protests around the nation are illustrative.
There is paplable anger in the streets of major cities, along with rioting, arson, and chants of “Not my President.”
Some, like the woman below of questionable citizen status, are calling for violence because she didn’t like the outcome of free and relatively fair elections.
“If we don’t fight, who is going to fight for us? People had to die for your freedom where we’re at today. We can’t just do rallies, we have to fight back. There will be casualties on both sides. There will be, because people have to die to make a change in this world. Trump, enough with your racism. Stop splitting families. Don’t split my family.”
Calls to assassinate President-Elect Trump have blanketed social media, where pro-Hillary progressives almost seem to be a some sort of virtue-signaling contest to see who can have the most dramatic meltdowns.
A grasp of basic civics seems to be common among many of the protestors.
I have good news for these anti-Trump protestors. There are three simple things you can do to keep Donald Trump from becoming the President of the United States.
1. Nominate a candidate for whom people will want to vote.
Presidential elections, more than any other kind of election, are driven by inspiration. The candidates who win Presidential elections inspire people, as Ronald Reagan did in 1980 and 1984, and Barack Obama did in 2008 and 2012.
When many voters feel that the nominee was selected by people within the upper reaches of party because it was “her turn,” and that the nomination was rigged by the party to exclude worthwhile challengers, it turns off voters.
Likewise, voters tend to prefer candidates who are good public speakers, who have energy, and aren’t under at least five known current federal investigations for influence peddling.
2. Ensure that you motivate people to go to the polls on election day.
Directly tied in with “nominate a good candidate” is “inspire the people.” You have to give them a message that reasonates, that makes them beleive that your candidate has vision and focus and a plan for success. You also have to convince voters that it is vital for people to actually show up on election day and cast their ballots, which Mrs. Clinton simply did not do.
Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy was one defined by an attitude of “I deserve this,” and “my political enemies are unworthy.” Neither sentiment inspired people, despite overt media cheerleading for the campaign.
3. Vote.
In the end, it all comes down to voting. We vote to elector a slate of electors (the electoral college), and the slate of electors are pledged to represent each state so that we avoid the tyranny of mob rule. We are a Republic, because the Founding Fathers were wise men, reasonably concerned that direct democracy invariably leads to an idiocracy.
We’re now seeing turnout data flowing in from across the country, and it clearly shows that people simply did not turn out to vote. Both Trump and Clinton had fewer popular votes than 2012 loser Mitt Romney, and of course far less than the winner of the 2012 contest, our current sitting President, Barack Obama. Like it or not, Trump is our President-Elect because he inspired some surprising segments of the populations—including female and minority voters that pollsters were so certain were going to vote for Hillary—and eked out (at least) 279 electoral college votes, while an uninspiring Clinton amassed just 228.
So there you have it:
- Nominate a candidate for whom people will want to vote.
- Ensure that you motivate people to go to the polls on election day.
- Vote
Do that, and you can avoid Donald Trump becoming your President… in the 2020 Presidential election.
The fact remains that he is going to be your President for four years starting on January 20, 2017, and unless you are un-American enough that you’re going to start an insurrection because you didn’t like the outcome of a free and fair election, that’s simply the way things are going to be.
The post Three Simple Things That Can Keep Trump Out Of The White House appeared first on Bearing Arms.
via Bearing Arms
Three Simple Things That Can Keep Trump Out Of The White House
Watch the first Valerian trailer reveal a promising Fifth Element successor
Among science fiction films, Luc Besson’s 1997 epic The Fifth Element enjoys special status as a classic that’s unique among others in the category, with an indulgent, artistic flair and beautiful set pieces that differ dramatically from the more drab and worn environs of movies like Star Wars and Blade Runner. Valerian and the city of a Thousand Planets, Besson’s upcoming sci-fi film based on a successful graphic novel, looks like it will boast a strong, similar signature style.
I don’t want to put the cart ahead of the horse here, but it’s going to be great and we’re all going to love it so much.
via TechCrunch
Watch the first Valerian trailer reveal a promising Fifth Element successor
Testing and verifying your MySQL backup strategy presentation
From the IAOUG Gold Coast OTN Day, Ronald Bradford gave a presentation on “Testing and Verifying your MySQL Backup Strategy”. Details in this presentation included:
- Product options
- mysqldump
- mysqlpump
- mydumper
- Xtrabackup
- MySQL Enterprise Backup
- LVM/SAN Snapshot
- Filesystem copy
- Binary log backup options
- B&R Strategy considerations
- Time to backup
- Time to restore
- Consistency
- Flexibility
- Partial Capabilities
- Cost
- Technical Requirements
- Testing & Verification
- Using Failover
More information about mysqlpump available in MySQL 5.7 can be found at Introducing mysqlpump, playing with mysqlpump and mysqlpump reference manual.
Thanks to Pythian and more4apps for hosting the event.
via Effective MySQL
Testing and verifying your MySQL backup strategy presentation
New Stock, Forward Grip, and Magazines from HERA Arms
German manufacturer HERA Arms, whose parts are imported, distributed, and sold retail in the U.S. by LAN World, is about to release their CQR stock and forward grip for the AR platform, plus what appears to be a V2.0 of their AR-15 magazines.
The CQR stock is certainly a unique design, looking more like a precision bolt-action rifle stock (i.e. sniper-style stock) than a typical AR stock. Beyond the shape of the buttstock portion itself, this look is furthered by the fact that it includes the pistol grip all in one monolithic piece. Going by this photo, it appears to offer a handful of sling attachment points including a QD socket option, spacers to adjust length of pull, maybe a cheek piece riser, and some sort of storage compartment (edit: LAN World informed me that it’s a monopod area) on the bottom rear.
It will be available in black, FDE, and OD Green. Apparently this stock was designed for use by European NATO countries ramping up to deal with terrorist threats, and HERA currently has it in several military/police bids.
But the unconventional aesthetics of the stock are at least matched by those of the forward grip, which definitely brings to mind the FN P90. No idea at this time if the ATF would consider it a “vertical forward grip” and therefore make it a no-no on a pistol, but we’ll work on running that down. It does appear to integrate a QD socket, clip point on the bottom, hand stop, and angled grip. From the visible bolt heads in the photo, it’s possible or likely that grip panel sections will be swappable.
Also seen in the photo above is a rear-on view of HERA’s new magazines. I like the look of putting the grip texture on the front and rear but not the sides, and the look of the flush-ish baseplate. Note the magazines are prominently marked “5.56 NATO” along the front of both sides and “CAL 5.56” along the bottom of both sides. If they manufacture a 300 BLK and maybe other specific caliber-marked versions in the future, I’ll be very interested.
Left-side view. Clearly they’re planning on releasing a few colors. On a personal note, my 4-year-old daughter now likes to say “flat dark earth” when people ask her what her favorite color is. Haha, love it.
Don’t worry, Californians and residents of other “ban states” that prohibit “assault weapons” “features” like a pistol grip. HERA has you covered, too. The simple addition of a solid plate in the triangular area behind the pistol grip makes it, well, no longer a pistol grip. The result is one of the least weird-looking “compliant” stocks I believe I’ve come across. Perhaps the best part is that this aluminum plate is removable should the owner leave that state or if the laws change (insha’allah).
Fancy, feature-rich German parts tend to carry impressively-high price tags. Apparently that isn’t the case here, though. LAN World says the MSRPs are to be as follows:
• CQR Stock: $119 for standard version, $124 for AWB-compliant version
• CQR Forward Grip: $39
Cool. TTAG will be borrowing a CQR set for review (and some new mags when they’re ready). Stay tuned.
via The Truth About Guns
New Stock, Forward Grip, and Magazines from HERA Arms