Some of you may know Chris Pirillo, some may not. I am a recent convert to his tech blogs/vblogs LockerGnome. Here is one he posted recently that made me do some thinking.  Much of what is discussed is how my career in IT has flowed.

Bobby Knight, SVP at Modis, provides perspective on how to build a great career in IT.

I want to start off by saying I am against piracy and copyright violations.

As usual the morons in Washington want to censor the internet.  Yesterday Congress held hearings on Bills S. 968 (the Protect IP Act) and H.R. 3261 (the Stop Online Piracy Act). These bills will hold entire websites responsible for any improper copyright violation.  It means that if Google has one link to possible copyrighted material its entire website would be taken down by the US Government.

Who would sponsor such crap? It’s the entertainment industry of course, the same asshats that gave us the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or the inability to purchase music and use it on various devices.

Internet censorship is a big deal. It could kill the internet as we know it. The ability to find information could be seriously jeopardized by these Bills.

The internet isn’t going down without a fight.

Americancensorship.org is creating a protest. In addition major internet companies are fighting this.

AOL, eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo and Zynga delivered a letter to members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives that argues SOPA “pose[s] a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job creation, as well as to our nation’s cyber security.” On Wednesday, they ran the letter as a full-page ad in the New York Times.

More Information About SOPA

Recently it was time for a new phone.  I decided to ditch Blackberry and try another brand of smart phone. My wife has an iPhone.  It was fun and nice and probably made me hate my blackberry more than it deserved to be hated.  It was an older blackberry that did some things well but wasn’t app friendly.

Co-workers and friends have been embracing Google’s entry into the mobile phone OS with its Android platform.  After much study and worry I decided to go to the phone store and look at Android vs. iPhone.  The thing I noticed was that the Android screens were substantially bigger, a plus as I age and my eyesight lessons.

It didn’t take long for me to chose and Android phone.  I chose the Samsung Infuse.

So what exactly made me choose the Android platform and why should you go for it?

Unless you have been on an island with Wilson, you know that Angry Birds is an insanely popular game.  If not… Angry Birds is a puzzle video game developed by Finnish computer game developer Rovio Mobile. Inspired primarily by a sketch of stylized wingless birds, the game was first released for Apple’s iOS in December 2009.

In Angry Birds, players control a flock of multi-colored birds that are attempting to retrieve eggs that have been stolen by a group of evil green pigs. On each level, the pigs are sheltered by structures made of various materials such as wood, ice and stone, and the objective of the game is to eliminate all the pigs in the level. Using a slingshot, players launch the birds with the intent of either hitting the pigs directly or damaging the structures, which would cause them to collapse and kill the pigs. In various stages of the game, additional objects such as explosive crates and rocks are found in the levels, and may be used in conjunction with the birds to destroy hard-to-reach pigs.

Just how out of control is Angry Birds. Play Angry Birds Online

Infographic Courtesy of AYTM.COM

Eransworld began its hosting run at Doteasy in the Fall of 2001.  It was my first hosted site. I chose a host that at the time offered the best bang for the buck.

Late last winter I wanted to add a plugin to my WordPress website.  It turned out that I needed a newer more secure version on PHP. I had ignorantly just assumed that the webhost was updating and patching their servers as needed.  Apparently I was wrong and also spoiled at other hosts who upgrade for free.

I sent in a trouble ticket, I requesting a PHP upgrade, my first support problem in 9 years of hosting. Their support turned out to be incredibly slow.  It took 24-48 hours for them to respond to my emails.  This aggravated  the situation.

I was told that I needed to pay to upgrade.  That’s odd PHP upgrades are a free download and it will increase their security and make their server safer.  I was informed that I had to pay because Doteasy had my site hosted on an old server and only the new servers have the newer PHP.   I explained to them that I thought this was unreasonable especially since if I were a new customer signing up I wouldn’t have to pay for the upgrade.  They just wanted to earn extra money because they hadn’t upgraded my server.

I passed.

Fast forward 6 more months.

WordPress did a major upgrade and only supported the newer PHP that I had requested months prior. At this point I couldn’t do anything with WordPress.  My whole website is run by WordPress.  This is a problem. I again contacted support.  Again I was told that I needed to pay to be upgraded and I would also have to manually migrate my website.

I decide I wasn’t going to pay for this. I hadn’t had t pay at my other hosts. I wasn’t paying at this one for a simple upgrade.  Mostly I felt unappreciated for being a customer of DotEasy’s.  This just pissed me off. I decided to purchase hosting elsewhere and transfer my domain elsewhere.  I eventually got this email.

Hello Eran,

Thank you for contacting Doteasy.

May we kindly ask why you are thinking of transferring your domain name away from Doteasy? Was it perhaps because of the one-time cPanel Setup Administration Fee US$12.95 to upgrade to the new cPanel server?

Please advise.

Thank you.

Regards,

Philip
Doteasy Customer Service
“Join the hosting revolution!”

Perhaps?

I had asked nicely. I had tried to work with them to find a solution that worked but they didn’t want any of it. They just wanted my $12.99.

I ended up moving my site from Doteasy to GoDaddy for cheaper and far superior support.

Why would a business owner fight with a customer over a small and silly charge?  I don’t get it and I strongly recommend you don’t use DotEasyHosting.

In the wonderful world of IT, people say the darnedest things…

1. Do you know what my password is?
2. I plugged my (personal device of choice) into the computer and now my computer has a virus warning.
3. Ever since you updated my computer!! I cannot get on the internet.
4. Do you know where I saved my Word file?  What name did you give it? I don’t know.  I just saved it.
5. Can I just ask one more quick question?
6. Is this going to be quick because I am in a hurry?   (WE ALL KNOW ITS NEVER GOING TO BE QUICK)
7. I lost all my work because I forgot to save it. Can you recover it?
8. I think the server is down (meanwhile there are 100 other servers still up please be more specific on what the real problem is.)
9. My (insert relative) works in IT… Can he/she come and work with you?
10. This computer is a complete POS!!!

Les Paul’s Google Doodle was so popular its become an internet meme.

Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin

Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles

Paparazzi- Lady Gaga

Pachelbel – Canon

Billie Jean by Michael Jackson

Facebook’s masive computer systems will soon be able to recognize familiar faces. Facebook is changing the process for tagging friends in photos uploaded to the social network, the company announced on Tuesday. In the next few weeks, the system will scan all images posted to Facebook and suggest the names of people who appear in the frame.

Last year, Facebook began rolling the facial-recognition feature out to a test group.Facebook’s more than 500 million users have been automatically included in the database, but the company is allowing each person to choose whether to be identified by toggling a pane in the account’s privacy settings.The tool would still scan that person’s face and figure out who it is, but it won’t display that information. People can still manually tag friends.

How To disable Facebooks Facial Recognition:

1.  Go to the “Account” tab in the top right hand corner

2. Click on “Privacy settings”

3. Click “Customize settings”

4.  Scroll down to “Things others share”

5.  Click “Edit settings” next to “Suggest photos of me to friends”

6 Choose “Disable” or “Enable” from the dropdown

This doesn’t mean that Facebook hasn’t scanned your face and taken biometrics from you. It just means that it won’t use its information to tag you in photos.   I suspect some lawsuits from this shortly.

The other day I was doing my duty as a Utah citizen, I paid my ATV registration and tax online.  I have done this for years and its not a big deal.

After a while I received a this letter from the Utah State Tax Commission.

So let me get this straight… Your super secure, incredible convenient online registration process failed? Immediately nightmares of identity theft race through my head.

The next thought was who else didn’t pay the right amount and how much in Tax Funds are missing?

I calm down and proceed to call them to pay for the missing portion. I get to sit on hold for 10 minutes only to be told that “No You can’t pay online.” and “No you can’t pay over the phone.”

How do I pay for it?

“You may mail it in or visit one of our offices”

Utah has been complaining of budget shortfalls for years.  They promote online government here almost as much as Dancing with the Stars.

Here is my gripe… This is the second time that Utah’s Online Features have failed.  Jury Duty and WTF Technology

And Now I have to drive to the worst place on earth, the Utah DMV.  Oh and they aren’t open on Fridays, thank you Ex-Governor/Presidential Candidate Jon Huntsman Jr.  Utah Government Fail.

I go to the DMV and I wait in line and they say I only owe $22.  I show them my letter.  She has to call and verify that it is $35.  Ok then the register won’t process the check.  Another call to tech support.  It finally works.  Now we have to call again to get a receipt.  Finally we get it squared away and I get to go home.

Warning: I am not a professional investor nor do I have holdings in any of these stocks. This post is merely my opinion.

Today the social network LinkedIn went public. It’s time for its investors and founders to cash in.  I get it.

LinkedIn is a network similar to Facebook but is geared more for the professional employee and job seekers.  I have been a member of the site for 7 years (2-24-2004 is my join date). Feel free to add me as a connection. I was turned onto it by a former employer and more on that in a minute.

The IPO has soared in the first four hours of trading doubling the original price. Stock: (LNKD) Good for them.  It’s great to see people build a business employ people and earn wealth.  I am skeptical however…

As a survivor of the 2000 internet bubble, I am wary of internet companies and the stock market. I was laid off 3 times in 6 months. I went from 30 job offers after my first lay off to 0 by my second layoff.  My second lay off was by my friend who turned me on to LinkedIn.  There are no hard feelings.

What is a Bubble?

A bubble is a self-perpetuating rise in the share prices of stocks in a particular sector. A bubble occurs when speculators enter the market due to the fast increase in value and to decide to buy in anticipation of continued rises rather than the principle of shares being undervalued. Typically many companies in the sector become grossly overvalued. When the bubble “bursts,” the stock prices fall dramatically and usually many companies go out of business.  The term is “bubble” is usually used in certainty only after the share prices have crashed.

Why Am I Concerned?

The stock market has been heating up over the last year. Many investors are overly anxious to invest in the market since we have had a long ugly recession. A lot of money was taken out of the market as the market nose dived.  This left a lot of cash on the sidelines and not in the stock market.  The dollar has been losing its value and investors want to cut their losses and increase their profits by investing in the undervalued stocks on the market.  This whole scenario creates more of a buying frenzy especially in the IPO market.

Do you see the beginnings of a bubble?

Enter the tech companies…

Because the stock market has been a rough ride for a while, many tech companies have decided to wait to go public because the IPO market seemed dismal at best.

Tech companies especially Internet based come and go like the dandelions in my lawn.  I believe this is the nature of the beast.  Technology changes so quickly that most tech companies last 5-10 years before technology leaves them obsolete or the fickle customer goes elsewhere. Do you remember any of these from 2000?

Pets.com - In June 2008, CNET named Pets.com as one of the greatest dotcom disasters in history. Source: Wikipedia:Pets.com

Boo.com-The Global Online Fashion Store spent $188,000,000 in six months and was bankrupt by May 2000

The next bubble inducing problem: What is an Internet Company Worth?

There are many companies in a similar situation as LinkedIn: meaning needing to or are ready to cash out some of the initial investors. Facebook, Twitter, and Groupon have seen their values surge in the private investing markets.

Internet companies like LinkedIn are tough to value as an investor. They don’t have a lot of physical capital meaning they don’t have as much equipment and product to value.

Warren Buffet recently stated, “It’s extremely difficult to value social-networking-site companies.” Source: Mashable

Facebook is valued due to its insanely large user base. It has a variety of ways to earn cash and large amounts based on its popularity. I think Facebook is large enough that its become a formable company with resources to fight off other companies.

Companies like Groupon are generating large amounts of cash so they can be valued on revenue growth. Is that enough? I am skeptical with Groupon.  I think that someone will create a Groupon Slayer site.  Google?, Facebook? Microsoft?  Groupon is ripe for purchase in my mind.

LinkedIn has a user base of 102 million or about 18% of Facebook.  The company made a profit of $15.4 million in 2010 but has warned investors that it expects to lose money in 2011. I do not believe that this equates to an estimated market cap of 35.28 billion dollars (7.84 million shares @$45 a share). As of 10:15 am the market cap is closing in on $8.5 billion, making each user worth about $8.29.

UPDATE: At $94, LinkedIn is now valued at $8.9 billion, 36 times the $243 million in revenue the company generated in 2010.

For comparisons sake, Google traded at 5.5 times its 2010 revenue at the close of trading on Wednesday, while Salesforce.com traded at 10.4 times its revenue and recently public Demand Media traded at 4.4 times its revenue.

LinkedIn has three defined revenue streams but they don’t equal that kind of value for stockholders. LinkedIn offers premium accounts for users, advertising and premium services for recruiters.

This makes me scream OVER VALUED!!!

Now what happens as the other Tech stocks who hope to IPO soon?  Will they do as well or better? I suspect that there are several who will blow this IPO away by a mile.  Twitter and Facebook.

Tech Stocks will explode as the feeding frenzy begins.

Thus I believe we are on the verge of a bubble.  Another boom and bust for tech companies.

To get an idea of how big LinkedIn is now, here are some other well-known companies with valuations in the same range:

• Tiffany & Co.: $8.9 billion
• Red Hat: $8.8 billion
• Sirius XM: $8.8 billion
• Chipotle: $8.8 billion
• Royal Caribbean Cruises: $8.7 billion
• Hormel Foods: $8.1 billion
• Electronic Arts: $8 billion
• Hyatt Hotels: $7.9 billion
• Expedia: $7.5 billion
• Seagate Technology: $7.1 billion
• Tyson Foods: $7 billion
• CarMax: $6.8 billion
• Hertz Global Holdings: $6.7 billion