Carly Fiorina

What does the former CEO of HP have to tell anyone these days about how to run an IT organization? That was the question I had when I heard that Carly Fiorina was going to be in town this week, keynoting at a small conference called the Internet Telephony Expo. Given her turbulent tenure at HP, I joked with one of my colleagues that probably the best strategy for anyone at the conference was to listen to what she had to say and do the exact opposite.

Here is what she had to say at her keynote,

The digital home is still far from reality

Last week I went to New York to see the future of the digital den, and came home to my present-day home a bit disappointed. Hopeful, but still longing for the killer solutions that will make my life easier.

The challenges are numerous: First, the digital home should be all about delivering fantastic entertainment, not about watching how you deploy your computing resources. And unfortunately, right now the computing challenges get in the way of making entertainment any better. Second, home networks are still far too hard to setup, despite new attempts by several vendors to make things easier. The infrastructure for storing and sending music, photos, and videos to different users and different devices is also far from perfect, or even usable by anyone but the most determined techie. Third, wireless is still somewhat witless and confounding to most of us. And while broadband penetration continues to climb, having a constant Internet connection doesn’t make matters easier, more compelling, or any different today for consuming new forms of content.

Let’s look at each of these items one by one, and see where the promise of the new lies and where the challenges of today keep things from moving forward.

First, entertainment should be king, but it isn’t — yet. Both Verizon and Turner Entertainment announced downloadable game services (called Games on Demand and Gametap.com respectively) to enable anyone to play a wide variety of games for various subscription prices of up to $15 a month. While it is nice that major media moguls have set their lasers on the video gaming industry, it is still far from a perfect solution. Neither service is available for non-Windows platforms, and on Gametap they coyly say that Windows machines more than four years old will not be very gamey. Also, the pair of products will require broadband connections to download the necessary huge game executable files.

Some of this has to do with where you put your PC – the living room isn’t the most hospitable place in the digital home, and vendors are trying to make PC cases look more like VCRs and sound less like jet airplanes, and there were some examples at the show from various vendors. But there are still many wires to connect, and many protocols – and products — to ponder and purchase.

Microsoft announced its Xbox 360 will act as a media extender for any Windows Media Center PC, something that will allow the unit to play movies and music to your TV and stereo system more easily. And several vendors, including the usual networking guys, have media extender boxes too. The issue I have with this approach is that I don’t want to store my media files on any client PC and clog up its hard drive. To this end, Iomega announced a file server that can contain your photos and videos available across the home network as well as over the Internet too. All of these products will be available soon.

Second, the home network setup is far from simple. As someone who still does tech support for friends and neighbors’ networks, I can tell you that many of these installations are still very fragile and far from dependable. Wasn’t the latest version of Mac OS, Linux, and Windows XP supposed to making setting up networks easier? Well, they did, but not easy enough and we still have plenty of issues. At the show I saw new products from Pure Network’s Network Magic, McAfee, and Iomega among others that are attempting to remedy this situation. I was impressed with the demo I saw of Network Magic, but will let you know once I actually test it if it delivers the ease of use (and then, only for Windows PCs) that the demo promised.

Third, wireless home networking is another matter entirely: Either you can’t get a good signal throughout your home, or you get too many of your neighbor’s signals unintentionally. Several vendors are working on these solutions, and we should see the fruits of their labors soon. Toshiba and Lenovo are making software to sort out wireless connections more easily on their laptops. McAfee has a software solution to make setting up secure wireless networks easier, and that certainly will be a big improvement. And Netgear, Linksys, Buffalo Technology and others are selling higher-gain and MIMO antenna products to grab stronger signals from their access points and wireless cards.

Finally, broadband choices to the home are about to get more interesting, with powerline technologies finally getting out of trial mode and into paying customers’ hands. The cable and phone monopolies will have some competition from the electric utilities and major ISPs like Earthlink will also offer this service, which will involve nothing more than plugging in a powerline modem into your nearest electric outlet.

Yes, the digital den is coming soon to a home theater near you. But in the meantime, we still have lots to sort out.

The Strategy of Conflict

I first met Tom Schelling when I was on my second job after grad school, toiling in the public policy fields of Washington, D.C. I was working at a leftish think tank, working on what would prove to be a futile effort at getting our government to adopt residential building energy efficiency standards similar to what we still have with those yellow appliance labels. One of our projects was trying to join together with business leaders on energy conservation and for this work we had contracted with Professor Schelling to lead some focus groups that brought the bunny-loving, tree-hugging, energy conservation crowd together with Big Oil, Big Banking, and Big just about everything else representing those captains of industry.

Even at that tender age, I could see that the Professor (no one really thinks of him any other way) had a lot to teach me. I went out and read his seminal work, “The Strategy of Conflict” cover to cover. I still have the book, and have gone back to it several times to refer to my favorite passages. Here is one puzzle that will delight you that I remember from the book, because I got the wrong answer.

You and a friend agree to meet in New York City on a given date in the future. But when the time comes, you both realize that you have forgotten to communicate a place and a time. Yet you end up meeting each other just fine. Remember this is in the day before cell phones, BlackBerries, and other modern communicating devices. Where and when do you meet?

I will give you the answer at the end of the column, but this is the sort of stuff that Schelling is famous for. He is one of these deep thinkers that understands not only human nature at its best, but also at its worst.

Still trying to figure out the puzzle? Remember, no communication between you and your friend is allowed. Okay, I will give you a hint. Schelling has taught countless students at Yale, Harvard and now the University of Maryland. At the time he wrote his book, he was teaching at Yale in New Haven, Conn.

Schelling shared this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics, and is an interesting choice. He has consulted for presidents and policy makers and for those same captains of industry that we met with in my early career. His work in game theory, arms control, environmental policy, and criminal behavior is far reaching, influential and deep. As an example, you are kidnapped and you are given two choices over whom the kidnapper should call: your mother (who presumably loves you) or your mother in law (who presumably doesn’t). Schelling’s theories show that your mother-in-law is the far better choice to get your release for both you and your kidnapper, and proves this conjecture with panache, wit, and solid thinking that just about anyone can understand.

It isn’t often that a Nobel winner can write well, have deep thoughts that almost any lay person can grok, and not be such a specialist. I salute their choice, and glad to know the Professor is still teaching plenty of pupils. Go pick up his book today and see if you find it as interesting as I did.

So what was my answer to his puzzle? I thought noon at the main information concourse of Pennsylvania Station, because being from Long Island that is where I enter the city when I take the train. But Schelling’s answer is noon, under the clock in the middle of Grand Central Station. For his students at Yale, it was the one place they would guarantee of entering the city, and noon is as good a time as any for two people to meet. So I almost got it right, and you could argue that if my friend was also coming from Long Island, chances are we would have met in Penn Station rather than Grand Central.

TwitchGuru

Another Tom’s Hardware offshoot, aimed at the gamer in all of us. I assigned and edited stories and put together the site for its first couple of months’ of life.

Mobility Guru

This is another offshot of Tom’s Hardware and was developed by Barry Gerber and I to cover all things mobile. The site began operations in October 2005.