SEO Tips and Tricks 2012: Pretend You are Something Else

by Dmitry Kirsanov 15. February 2012 13:01

SEOHow about to own the official page of your country? No less! Create a page of your country (or state, city, district – whatever is more relevant to your country) and place huge banners throughout the city claiming something like “We have X and Y and now we have the Facebook page! What are you waiting for, like us!”. Instead of X and Y you can place what your country is known foremost and what your people are proud of. More...

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The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (and Apple Notebook)

by Dmitry Kirsanov 14. January 2012 00:31

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

This article explores the controversial product placement of Apple in the recent adaptation of Stieg Larsson's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".

 

Prior to my recent movie experience, I was blissfully ignorant of the purported deficiencies of Apple notebooks. To be exact, the film appears to suggest that they could be among the most poorly engineered notebooks in existence. These were my thoughts as I walked out of the theatre, the echoes of the movie still lingering.

 

The financial cost to Apple for this product placement in "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" remains unknown. The film is a fresh offering from David Fincher, graced with performances from Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, and set to the haunting tunes composed by Trent Reznor. However, the product representation in this film may be one of the most egregious I've ever witnessed.

 

To begin, believe it or not, the movie seems to imply that Apple MacBook Pros have a near-monopoly on the Swedish market. Indeed, it may remind you of the widespread use of Sony Ericsson mobile phones in Daniel Craig's other famous movie, "Casino Royale," even boasting capabilities that the real-world devices can only dream of.

 

Midway through the film, the protagonist's computer abruptly fails, the repairman declaring data recovery impossible. Is this what users should expect from their Apple MacBook? To replace her MacBook Pro, she embarks on a perilous adventure, rather than conveniently utilizing the warranty. Does the movie accurately portray the struggles of dealing with Apple's warranty system? 

 

As an aside, the film does accurately represent the irretrievability of data from a MacBook Air. However, it's worth noting the faulty device in the film wasn't an Air model.

 

The third “fact” gleaned from "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" is that MacBooks are easy to hack. In the original book, Lisbeth Salander (the titular 'Girl') is portrayed as Sweden's preeminent hacker, with detailed accounts of her exploits. However, the film fails to highlight this crucial aspect of her character. Instead, we observe a punk girl seemingly breezing through MacBook security systems.

 

"But the files are encrypted!" one character protests, only to be dismissed with a casual, "Please…" Is the movie implying that the encryption within MacOS is deficient or even nonexistent?

 

Shifting gears, Stieg Larsson himself was an avid Apple fan, and his trilogy is peppered with Apple devices. However, the books manage to integrate these elements seamlessly into the narrative without the overt product placement that plagues the movie. 

 

This adaptation, coming only three years after the original Swedish film, seems to have a single-minded goal: to serve as a drawn-out, insipid advertisement for Apple and Volvo.

 

I won't delve into the critique of the movie itself, as my experience was undoubtedly colored by my prior reading of the book. Suffice to say, the performances and music were noteworthy, yet the film might leave you underwhelmed if you've read the book. Or, perhaps, if you happen to be a MacBook owner.

See the forest behind the trees

by Dmitry Kirsanov 8. November 2011 11:29

Today I was walking by the city and suddenly seen the car of one of our local IT companies. The motto on the side of the car said – “we see further”. Yeah, right.

For years it was a dream of each and every CEO to look one step further than others. To be what they call “visionary” or even “strategist”. To keep the hand on the pulse of technology, you know. To use possibilities before others react.

However, funny thing is that most of them don’t see the forest behind the trees. They fail not only to predict, which is more or less ok, as sales guy is not necessarily an analyst. They fail to see the trend in their own niche, living processes inside their own organization. So what you can read in LinkedIn and similar resources is mostly chewing out the same “enlightening” gum .

The biggest and most consumed chewing gum these days is the cloud. Cloud computing that is. Without understanding of what cloud is, usually CEOs think about the same features of it:

  • No more server room, we can place everything in the cloud, so this will save us money.
  • All of our clients will use our solution which is placed in the cloud, so we won’t funk up with servers and this will save us money.
  • We will save money on IT staff – less nerds in staff is always good.

Et cetera.

Recently I met a solution plan which was designed with pink glasses of SAAS (Software As A Service). That is a currently successful corporate application which is about to “go cloud” so all customers will use one web site and won’t need to install the application locally. The (rather hidden) problem is – this application will require administrative privileges on customer’s Active Directory, which means – all computers of the company. And all customers will use the same instance of that application. And there are nuclear power plant operators among the customers.

I would say – “one ring to rule them all”, but you remember the story, right?

Corporate PR specialists run into social networks without insight. They don’t understand the consequences, they are just playing poker. They don’t understand, for instance, that what they are doing is less effective than using a computer program to do the same thing. And when they are starting to use that program, they themselves become useless, as creativity (the only genuine thing that computers don’t have, but can imitate) can be borrowed through outsourcing or simply dismissed.

The same is with HR and some other specialties – it becomes more automated, then it will become a “cloud” application and then it will become part of someone else’s responsibilities to operate that application. Which will always be more effective than most human specialists.

These days, creativity, speed and precision alone are not enough. You need the knowledge, which is always neglected and seems like always will be. ‘Enlightened CEO’ was the core of the dot-com bubble problem and is the same with any technology-related  hype. Because technology is based on knowledge and decision-makers just lack it.

Look at the top players in IT business. The most successful ones are the ones founded and led by scientists, not by entrepreneurs. Talking about software companies, Apple and Google were found by scientists. Microsoft as well. When CEOs were not scientists, like in Google, they didn’t make any technological decisions, like what their product will look like and how it will work.

However, most other IT companies are led by entrepreneurs, sometimes with insignificant experience in IT, who make key decisions. And fail.

So, the morale of the story. You can’t just use someone else’s knowledge and experience, mainly because you won’t have complete access to it, but only to public portion of it. You must have your own. And prove to yourself that you have it.

 

The devil, as you know, is in details. There was a  time when you could just copy what others did and chances are – you would be fine (remember IBM PC?). These days, with the cloud and SAAS and other buzz terms that may come to your mind, the frontier is much wider and you should be a great analyst in order to understand why someone else’s solution works this way with such success – because there are many details which are hidden from view, hiding somewhere in the cloud and won’t apply to your case.

Think what you’re doing, don’t look at others.