Business

Interview: Dirk Hohndel on Intel's Open Source Technology Center

Dirk Hohndel is a hacker-turned-businessman, now Chief Linux and Open Source Technologist at Intel. At this year's Desktop Summit, Hohndel will give the opening keynote about the role that large companies play in open source, and how the open source community can work effectively with them.

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0 CommentsPosted 26 Jul 2011 by williamfromtexas

Why it's logical to go radical

Not long ago, I was in the audience at a symposium organized by the leaders of the Henry Ford Health System, a $4-billion-a-year health-and-hospital company based in Detroit. The organization's leaders had called the symposium to explain to local executives why they were making the biggest strategic bet in the system's history since its founding by Henry Ford himself back in 1915. » Read more

1 CommentPosted 22 Jul 2011 by Bill Taylor

Interview: Claire Rowland of Fjord London on user experience and design

Claire Rowland is Head of Research for Fjord London, an international digital service design agency and has worked extensively in user experience research and design. Recently her focus has been on a shift in user experience from the desktop toward services delivered through multiple platforms of widely differing form factors and the cloud. Her research and recommendations relate to what this shift means for what users expect from their devices, and what effective design, across platforms and the cloud, looks like.

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0 CommentsPosted 21 Jul 2011 by williamfromtexas

Pittsburgh, Zappos, and what one has to do with the other

There is something about Zappos that intrigues people. Maybe it’s the radical transparency. Perhaps it’s just a cult of personality. Or it could just be that people love to order shoes and have them on their doorsteps the very next day. There’s a lot to admire, for sure. » Read more

0 CommentsPosted 18 Jul 2011 by Rebecca Fernandez (Red Hat)

How to tell if you’re a natural leader

I’ll bet you know a natural leader. Maybe you are one.

Maybe you’re a mom who started a support group for the parents of children with special needs.

Maybe you’re a concerned citizen who mobilized a group of preservation-minded neighbors to halt the destruction of a venerable old building.

Maybe you’re a churchgoer who convinced some of your fellow parishioners to help mentor at-risk kids.

Or maybe you simply organized your company’s first softball league. » Read more

2 CommentsPosted 15 Jul 2011 by Gary Hamel

Lessons in customer service from the best and worst companies on Twitter

Twitter offers customer service access on problems that you couldn't have reached before: the little things. (I've heard they count.) There's a huge opportunity for companies to interact with their customers in a way they haven't before, but a lot of them are still ignoring it. Or worse, they think they're using it, but they're completely missing the point.

BT (Before Twitter) » Read more

4 CommentsPosted 15 Jul 2011 by Ruth Suehle (Red Hat)

Interview: Thomas Thwaite, designer and technologist, peeks into the future

Thomas Thwaite, designer and technologist, is perhaps best known through his Toaster Project. The Toaster Project was an attempt to build a toaster from raw, self-mined materials. The project exposed the complexity of seemingly simple and everyday technology. It leaves us to wonder how technology will change our lives in the future, and shows how we all need others to get even simple products.

I contacted Thomas to ask him about his projects, his views on technology and what makes him tick. » Read more

0 CommentsPosted 14 Jul 2011 by williamfromtexas

Open For Business: The importance of trademarks, even for an open source business

Though it might seem to contradict the open source way, I believe it is essential for an open source project to register and protect its trademark.

Think about it: You spend hours upon hours creating a project, writing code and building a reputation. The code is free, so anyone can use it, but your reputation--that’s your business. How do you protect it, if just anyone can come along and use your name? » Read more

5 CommentsPosted 12 Jul 2011 by Tarus Balog

The responsibility in open source

I’ve written before about the genuine renaissance open source software represents and the vast implications that openness provides. I’ve admitted that computer science, based on its relative unwillingness to share great ideas, has lagged behind other hard sciences in its understanding of how and where value is created. » Read more

2 CommentsPosted 11 Jul 2011 by Brian Gentile

Marketers: It’s time to reinvent creativity

By now, I'd wager cold, hard cash that you've heard it all before: marketing's just not good enough, cool enough, interesting enough, fast enough, real enough, tough enough, slick enough, noisy enough, responsible enough.

And, as rousing and convincing as those arguments are, you've probably also concluded that the state of the art as it stands is, truth be told, more than OK to get the job done.

Yet, while we might not want to admit it, I bet we all know it: we can--and should--do better. » Read more

0 CommentsPosted 8 Jul 2011 by Umair Haque