Marissa Mayer Personally Reviews Every New Hire at Yahoo

Alexei Oreskovic, in a post for Reuters:

Mayer insists on personally reviewing every new recruit, a practice that supporters say brings needed discipline to the company. Critics, however, say her high standards are hampering Yahoo's already challenged ability to fill vacancies.

​Marissa Mayer is in a tough spot. On the one hand, she knows that Yahoo must fill its job vacancies quickly enough to avoid a massive loss in productivity. On the other hand, she knows that simply filling a vacancy just to fill a vacancy would be counterproductive. It's good that she is adding some discipline to the hiring process in order to avoid making bad hires, but at the same time Yahoo isn't going to get very far in hiring good people if the process takes "eight weeks" (as it did for one individual mentioned in the post).

Interestingly enough, Mayer is apparently considering bringing some of Yahoo's jobs back to the USA from India (also noted in the post). That would go a long way towards helping to foster a more closely knit corporate culture. It would also be consistent with some of her previous decisions.​

Google Glass Pre-Banned at Seattle Establishment

Todd Bishop, writing for GeekWire:

“I’m a thought leader,” jokes Dave Meinert, owner of the 5 Point, speaking on the Luke Burbank Show at our news partner KIRO-FM this morning. “First you have to understand the culture of the 5 Point, which is a sometimes seedy, maybe notorious place. People want to go there and be not known … and definitely don’t want to be secretly filmed or videotaped and immediately put on the Internet.”

It is noted in the post that this pre-banning of Google Glass is done partly as a joke, but it does have a serious aspect to it.​

This gets to the heart of the biggest challenge for projects such as Google Glass. The biggest challenge is cultural, not technical.​ It is noted in a follow-up link in the GeekWire article that the 5 Point does in fact use surveillance cameras, but that is altogether different than what Google Glass's introduction into society will entail. People are somewhat more comfortable with the idea of surveillance cameras used in a general sweep of an establishment than they are with cameras that are directly in front of them.

Some have said that Google Glass is not much different than what we already have now, where cameras on smartphones are ubiquitous. However, it is indeed different since it is far more obvious when someone is using a smartphone to record video than it is when someone is using Google Glass. It is a tad more difficult to hide a small rectangular object than it is to hide a small blinking light.

Folks, this sort of technology isn't going to just go away. We will have to decide how best to integrate it into our societal norms and practices just as we have done with other new technologies.​

Dad Hacks Donkey Kong So Daughter Can Play as Pauline Instead of Mario

Casey Johnston over at Ars Technica has an interesting post about a father that modified Donkey Kong so that Pauline was the heroine helping to save Mario (instead of the other way around). What was his reason for doing this?

Mika notes in the video description, as well as an anonymized post to Facebook, that his daughter was accustomed to being able to play a girl (Princess Toadstool) in Super Mario Bros. 2. She wanted to be able to do the same in Donkey Kong.

This is very cool. Kudos to this father.​

'The Truth About Google Glass'

​Yup, seems about right. The Seth Rogen-esque friend had me laughing out loud. Great parody video.

Best Buy Handled Its Work From Home Program Change Better Than Yahoo Did

Julianne Pepitone, writing for CNNMoney about Best Buy's recent change to its work-from-home program:

Unlike Yahoo's blanket policy, Best Buy (BBY, Fortune 500) said some of the 4,000 non-store employees who took advantage of its work-from home program still may be able to telecommute or set flexible schedules. But as of Monday they'll no longer have the freedom to make those decisions without a manager, as they had in the past.

Yahoo made a serious misstep in how it handled the change to its work-from-home program. The now infamous internal memo detailing the change reeks of condescension, and CEO Marissa Mayer didn't do much to avoid criticism by building a nursery in her office (thus leaving her open to claims of being a hypocrite).

Best Buy, in contrast, made a smart move. It isn't eliminating the work-from-home program, but instead is restoring checks and balances to the program. It boggles the mind that employees were able to make the work-from-home decision without input from their manager. Now, at the very least, the decision will be made after a conversation with the employee's manager.​

Kudos to Best Buy for making a dramatic change without stumbling over itself (as Yahoo did).​

Why I Chose Google Maps Instead of Apple Maps For a Recent Trip

​I recently made a weekend trip to Los Angeles, California for a friend's wedding. The day after the wedding, my fiancee and I planned to visit Anaheim (renowned for its theme parks). Once we picked up the rental car in LA, I had to choose how we would get directions to the theme parks. I chose Google Maps.

At this point, you might be wondering why I made this particular selection. After all, Apple's Maps app came pre-installed on my iPhone and can be launched via Siri. I'm an iOS developer, so it's not as if I'm particularly tied to Google's ecosystem. I also was not unnerved by the reports of Australians being stranded after following directions from Apple's Maps app, nor by Tim Cook's famous apology to Apple's customers. I use Apple's Maps app all the time in my hometown, so why didn't I use it in this circumstance? The answer is simple: trust. Or rather, the lack of it.

I have encountered slight discrepancies in using the navigation directions with Apple's maps, but nothing too bad. To be fair, I've also had infrequent issues with Google Maps. However, this case was different. It's one thing for directions to be incorrect in my hometown where I can quickly adjust to errors, but it's a different story when I'm in an unfamiliar location and trying to make the best use of available time on a trip.

​An irrational decision? Possibly. But maybe not. I decided, in a split moment, to go with Google Maps instead of Apple Maps because I weighed my level of confidence in their accuracy. In this instance, I felt more confident that Google Maps was less likely to have an error in its directions.

Folks, this is an example of what Apple is up against in terms of getting customers to trust its service offerings. It's not so much a technical issue as it is an issue of perception​. Apple's Maps app didn't start too well out of the gate, but given enough time (and data corrections) it may prove to be as trustworthy as Google Maps.

You Must Know What Your Project is All About

Brian Welcker, writing for his own blog Direct Reports, had a good post about knowing when a project is headed for trouble. The lens for his post is his experience on Microsoft's file system project named WinFS. The best part:

I suspected from early on that the project was doomed to failure. What made me think this? Because when I would ask anyone involved with the project the question "What is it?", I would get a very different answer.

​If your project's goal can't be answered relatively consistently or relatively easily by the people involved in the project, then you're probably in trouble. This is indicative of either having a project that is too big/unfocused/gnarly to be completed successfully, or a project that is too ill-defined for everyone involved to be effective in delivering on its goal. I've been involved in both types of projects, and trust me it isn't pretty.

Major League Baseball Expands Use of Apple's Passbook

Erica Ogg, writing for GigaOM.com. notes:

For the 2013 baseball season, Major League Baseball is more than tripling the number of stadiums that will accept mobile tickets via Apple’s Passbook app. This year there will be 13 stadiums that will enable paperless ticketing via Passbook, MLB announced at a fan event in New York City Tuesday night. That’s up from four last season.

It is notable that MLB was an early adopter of Passbook, which launched as part of Apple's iOS 6 update last year. Passbook's quick access to ticketing information when geographically relevant (i.e. at the ballpark) makes it an excellent fit for creating a better live experience for baseball fans.

The rest of the article talks about how MLB is enhancing its "At Bat" app for iOS and Android to provide better engagement with the fans. This part of the article has two interesting data points regarding the free version of At Bat and the paid version (via subscription) of At Bat. For the free version, iOS users are 70% of the audience (though it is noted that the Android user base is growing). With regard to the paid subscription version, iOS users account for 85% of the user base. Interesting stats about the difference between iOS and Android users of the app.

Sadly, my beloved Seattle Mariners were not part of the Passbook announcement (though some hope remains since it is mentioned in the article that a few teams aren't ready to make an announcement just yet).​

Google Might Very Well Be Afraid of Samsung's Growing Influence

Amir Efrati has an interesting article for The Wall Street Journal that describes Google's growing concern with Samsung's influence in the mobile industry. Why might Google be afraid of one of its most successful Android 'champions'? Well, here you go:

Several people familiar with the relationship between the companies said Google fears that Samsung will demand a greater share of the online-advertising revenue that Google generates from its Web-search engine. Samsung in the past has received more than 10% of such revenue, one of the people said. Samsung has signaled to Google that it might want more, especially as Google begins to produce more revenue from apps such as Google Maps and YouTube, another person familiar with the matter said.

Google is worried that Samsung might hit Google where it really hurts...in the wallet. As noted in the article, Samsung sells roughly 40% of all Android devices.​ That makes them a huge beast in the market. While there has been some speculation that Google might be worried about Samsung's dominance causing an awareness issue for the 'Android' brand versus the 'Galaxy' brand, the real fear here is that Samsung will be able to start eating away at Google's profit margins. Google wants its services everywhere so that it can make more money (thus the continued support for its platform rival, iOS), but this business model is threatened if Samsung is able to get a bigger piece of the revenue pie.

Both competitors know this, by the way. Google is reportedly looking to protect itself by helping to boost competition within the Android space (as well as reportedly working on the rumored 'X Phone' via its Motorola subsidiary). Samsung, likewise, is looking out for its own interests by placing support behind the HTML5-based Tizen operating system.​

Folks, get your popcorn ready.​

LG Buys webOS From HP

Arik Hesseldahl wrote a post for AllThingsD.com that covered the recent announcement by LG that it had acquired webOS from HP:

The deal, Veghte said, will include the source code, documentation, a license to all the associated patents (HP won’t be letting those go) and the remaining user experience team.

According to the post, LG is going to use webOS in its Smart TVs (and likely will include it in additional devices in the future). webOS had some interesting UI design metaphors (e.g. its 'cards' multi-tasking feature) that have yet to be replicated in the other major mobile platforms. Unfortunately, webOS also was horribly mismanaged by HP (and before that, by Palm) and never took hold in the mobile device market. At this point, it is a given that it will not be a contender in the mobile market (thus LG's plans do not include a smartphone or tablet device).

Perhaps the most interesting part of this deal is that LG did not acquire the rights to the patents related to webOS. It says a lot about the value of software patents that HP was unwilling to ​let go of that part of its intellectual property. In any case, at least LG has acquired some of the members of the webOS user experience team.

​There's no telling how successful webOS will be on appliances such as Smart TVs, but at the very least this deal breathes a bit of new life into an otherwise defunct platform.