Big news:  Cisco Systems is officially acquiring Latigent, the company I co-founded about five years ago.  After many (sometimes very stressful) months of working on this, it’s finally a done deal.  This is a huge win for our customers and for Cisco's, and it’s been one of the most interesting and exciting processes I’ve ever been involved in.  (It’s also been killing me that I haven’t been able to talk about it!)  Now I’ll officially be a Cisco employee, and I’m getting ready to pack up the family and move to Massachusetts.

Selling a startup to a technology giant like Cisco was certainly a fascinating experience--it’s one of the experiences a tech geek like myself dreams of having.  I learned an incredible amount in the process; it’s one of the most educational (and did I mention stressful?) experiences I’ve ever gone through.  I also met a ton of really incredible new people at Cisco, had a few nerve-wracking moments, and learned a lot of invaluable information about what it takes to play in the big leagues.

The Cisco folks were incredible throughout the entire process.  The whole company, top to bottom, is the best at what they do.  I’ve only worked in smaller privately-owned companies before (around 5,000 employees), and it’s an entirely different world working in a large (60,000+ employees) publicly traded company.  I came away from the process very impressed with the entire organization, thrilled to work with some exciting new people, and a bit dazed by the whole thing.  And now it’s just exciting (and satisfying) to think that a product that I helped develop and nurture being used by millions of people across the world.

Just in case you weren’t aware, Latigent makes (made) business intelligence solutions primarily marketed at the call center market.  I had a blast developing and supporting the product, it gave me a great opportunity to take some really cool technology coming out of the Web 2.0 revolution and leverage it for enterprise business intelligence.  I think I can safely say that we were the first business intelligence company to fully embrace rich Web technology, and to my knowledge we were the first with a 100% Web-based interface.  It was an incredible opportunity to introduce next-generation Web technology to the enterprise using business intelligence.  It was quite a ride, and the last chapter didn’t disappoint, either.

We didn’t build Latigent to sell it—that’s just kind of the way the cards fell.  We targeted the call center market primarily because that’s the world Chris and I both came from, and Cisco just happened to be one of the heavy hitters in that market.  Our products sit wonderfully on top of Cisco products, their customers love our product--it’s a great marriage.  And so when they decided to explore other reporting options for their call center products, they brought us in for a potential OEM relationship.  Long story short, the whole process ended in Latigent being absorbed into Cisco, it worked out better for both parties.

Chris and I will be working at Cisco for at least the next three years.  I’m incredibly excited about the opportunity; we’re being given the chance to make significant contributions and directly impact products and technology shipping from one of the largest and most important technology companies in the world.  And in spite of its size, Cisco is one of the most accessible and receptive companies I’ve ever seen, always looking for suggestions and opportunities to improve their products and help their customers—their commitment to be the best is truly remarkable.  And after being able to peek behind the curtains, I think it’s safe to say that you’ll be hearing a lot from Cisco in the upcoming years, in a lot of areas—their vision is very exciting and they are deeply committed to it.

I’ve been told that I’ll be able to continue blogging as usual, which I’m obviously happy about because I really love blogging.  I’ll be able to continue writing about the usual topics that I’m interested in, and hopefully have some exciting new topics to talk about.  Obviously I won’t be able to talk about everything I do and see at Cisco, but hopefully I’ll be able to provide some insight about the exciting things developing at Cisco and how they relate to the broader technology community.  Hopefully this fresh perspective on things and the lessons I’ve learned during this process will make the content on this site better and more interesting.

I’m extremely excited about this change, and I’ll see you Cisco folks in the office ;)

UPDATE:  Cisco stock just tagged a new annual high today, no doubt propelled to the moon due to their brilliant acquisition of Latigent ;)

I've noticed something since I started blogging, a nice little hidden side benefit that I've never really heard anyone talk about before.  The popularity of your various posts tells you how many people are interested in the topic you're blogging about.  If you're an entrepreneur, I'm sure you can see how this would be invaluable information.

For example, a few weeks back I posted a business idea I had for an online, Web-based data modeling tool.  This is a tool that I personally would love to use, and half the reason I posted it on my blog is because I knew from experience that Google would pick up the post and I'd get a gauge on how many other people need this as well.  I had no idea if I was the only one on Earth who saw the utility in this, but it turns out that there are quite a few people looking for something like the tool I described (a bunch of inbound traffic in my referral logs is what prompted the post you're reading).

Now, if you know anything about search engine optimization, you know that blogs are traffic magnets.  (They're rich in inbound link, Google appreciates original content, and their content is regularly updated, among other reasons.)  This means that if you post something on a blog, your post will usually float up to the top of the search results:

One of the primary benefits of being at the top of an extremely targeted search result is that you have a pretty good bearing on how many people are actually looking for that particular thing, and what search terms they're using to find it.  This is like conducting marketing research with your target audience, for free.

If I were trying to see what the market reception would be like for an idea, I would post it in my blog, it's the perfect gut-check.  Some people will inevitably worry that someone will steal your million dollar idea, but  I wouldn't worry so much about that--as someone smart once said (name escapes me): "If you have a truly great idea don't worry about protecting it, you will have to beat the people over the head with it."  That's the Marketing Department's job :)

In case you weren't aware, XBox 360's have a 100% failure rate.  I thought I had escaped until mine broke late last year.  Microsoft graciously sent me a replacement unit, which worked fine until about a month ago, when the DVD drive stopped working.

So I called Microsoft support today and spent over an hour of my life on hold, only to find out that it was going to cost me $100 to have the DVD drive fixed.  On a console only 9 months old.

Apparently Microsoft still has not solved their hardware problems, even on brand-new units, and they will stick you with a bill as a result of their incompetency.  I was a big fan of their willingness to replace defective units, but they just destroyed all that goodwill in 60 minutes.  They lost a loyal customer over $100, which will now go towards buying a Nintendo Wii, which my son wants anyway.  Whoever set this asinine policy needs to be fired and/or given a lesson in economics.

Do not buy XBox 360's, they still suck.

(Thanks for reading my rant, sometimes it's gratifying knowing that the Internet is listening :)

It’s always fun to try to predict how technology will evolve in the future.  Sometimes we’re right and sometimes we’re wrong--but usually only in terms of timeframes.  Even the most outlandish predictions end up coming true eventually.

I believe that one of the milestones of the next phase of Internet evolution will be the mass realization that there is no fundamental difference between different types of messages, except for the way they are transmitted.  A message is a message is a message.  Emails, voicemails, phone calls, text messages, blog posts, podcasts, and instant messages—they are all just packets of information at their core, after you strip away the chrome.  Programmers are very familiar with this concept, most other people are not—yet.

This idea is making its way towards mass comprehension though, thanks to services like Twitter, GrandCentral, and the iPhone (ok, so the iPhone isn’t a service, just bear with me…).  These services blur the lines between instant messages, blog posts, and text messages by making them almost interchangeable.  They generate buzz solely for the reason that they allow people to use some types of messages in ways that were previously only available to other types of messages.  (For example, Twitter simply allows people to use blog posts in a way more traditionally associated with instant messaging and text messaging, and it’s generated an insane amount of hype.)

The reason why I think this idea is so key to the next phase of Internet evolution is because there is so much value to be had from handling all types of messages in the same way.  The iPhone generated alot of buzz because it allows its users to manage their voicemails in the same way they manage their emails, using a visual inbox format (GrandCentral allows you to do the same thing, as I noted in my review earlier).  But ALL types of messages should be handled this way, in my opinion.  Then just marry a feed reader like Google Reader with this universal inbox system and they will make a baby that generates more buzz than you’ve ever seen--a true mobile identity platform.

But the real reason this excites me is because as people begin to handle all forms of messages in the same way, using the same system, this will lead to a more cohesive and unified concept of online identity.  As messages start to be seen as more of a nebulous blob of information, and less of a “text message”, or “voicemail” or “email”, people will start to realize that they *should* be able to handle and manage them in an efficient manner, regardless of what type of message it is.  We're just reaching this point now with the recent evolution in voicemail handling systems.  This will eventually lead to a greater appreciation of and need for a universal message inbox, a unified contact list, and eventually a converged messaging identity.  They will realize that there is no good reason why they can’t use the same identifier/identity for all of these different types of messages .  A converged messaging identity turns every person on the network into a network node, resulting in a true network of human beings.

I’ve been forecasting an eventual converged/consolidated online identity system for well over a year now, and I’m starting to see the first hints of it actually happening now with releases like Twitter, GrandCentral, and the iPhone.  I truly believe that it’s only a matter of time before people demand it, as their level of technological sophistication rises.  The bits and pieces of technology that are a part of this evolution are starting to float to the surface and gain visibility, if not mass acceptance.  Only time will tell how far off I am on the timing of these developments.

UPDATE:  I just realized that I have some invites for people to get into the beta for this, if you're interested leave a comment or email me.  All invites are now gone, sorry.

Do you think that in five years you will still have a home number, a work number, a cell number, and multiple email addresses?  I don’t, I haven’t for a while.  I’m a pretty firm believer that in a couple of years we’ll only have one ID which will work converge all incoming and outgoing communications channels.  I think that eventually it’ll take the form of a URI (e.g. jasonkolb@atmy.name), but for now I’m pretty pleased to have narrowed down all my phone numbers to one number.  As of yesterday, I only have one phone number, at least until I get to use my URI.  I have seen the future of personal communication, and Google GrandCentral is on the right track.

I got my beta invite for Google GrandCentral the other day, configured everything, and I am floored.  THIS is the personal communication service that I’ve been waiting for.  It takes the best features of a Blackberry, an iPhone, and a softphone, and combines them in a Web service.  The only thing it’s lacking is mobile device integration, although if you have a mobile device capable of playing MP3’s it does that as well (albeit over a Web site—better get an iPhone for that).

I hadn’t heard of GrandCentral until recently, when I stumbled across it on one of the Google blogs.  It’s a free service (purchased from a startup by Google) that uses VOIP to converge all of your phone numbers (and, email, if you want—but I’ll stick to my own domain name thanks) together into one point of contact (an endpoint mashup?), and spreads a tasty layer of VOIP functionality on top.  As you switch mobile service providers, jobs, and home numbers, you just need to update GrandCentral and it will automatically redirect your one, permanent GrandCentral phone number to the new number.  It’s all transparent to your callers, they don’t need to know about or care which phone you’re picking up--you can change numbers to your heart's content.  And you have the option of ringing all your phones at once if you like, and picking up whichever phone is most convenient.  I have mine set up to ring my mobile all the time, my Gizmo soft phone when I’m online, and the house phone if it’s a friend or family.

I remember when I was working at my first call center, and I figured out how to program the old phone switch to reroute calls going to my desk phone to ring my cell phone.  I thought that was just the coolest thing, mostly because I could be away from my desk without anyone knowing.  Everyone thought I worked insane hours, I’d always answer my phone at 10PM   Well, this is far cooler than that.  GrandCentral appears to be a graphical user interface on top of a subset of their call routing engine.  If you’ve never worked with phone switches before, most of the functionality will be completely new to you.  If you have, you’ll be jealous of the user interface.

GrandCentral consists of an inbox, where you can see your voicemails (remember that nifty “visual voicemail” feature the iPhone has?  This has it too.), an address book (where you set up your contacts), and some settings (where the magic is), that’s it.  If you’re not familiar with that iPhone visual voicemail feature, it shows you your voicemails in an email-like list and lets you choose which one you want to listen to.

The contact list is where you start to see some of the real richness of this system.  I was able import all my contacts from Outlook, which gave me a fully populated contact list.  What’s really cool is what you can start doing once you have that populated contact list.

You can very easily set up some basic call routing against your contact list, such as sending certain contacts directly to voicemail, routing some to your cell phone and others only to your desk phone, set up custom voicemail greetings for certain contacts, send some contacts directly to voicemail, and even block certain contacts from calling you completely.  You can also set up groups of contacts and administer them as groups.  GrandCentral even keeps a history for each contact, so you can see when they called you and from which number.

Using the GrandCentral settings you can tweak the way calls are handled even further.  You can do things like screen out callers who don’t have a number, or aren’t in your contact list.  You have the option of being notified of new voice mails via Email or SMS.  You can even have it screen out spam phone calls (telemarketing calls), choosing whether to send them directly to voicemail or blocking them with a "Number out of service" message.

GrandCentral also lets you record calls, switch phones mid-conversation, even answer the phone while someone’s leaving you a voicemail.  And, for people with an online presence, it gives you a nifty little widget (check out the right side of my blog to see mine), which lets people enter their name and number, and GrandCentral will call them, call your phone without showing them your number, and connect you.  Kind of like an electronic secretary that never sleeps.

Needless to say, I love this service.  Now, I only have to give out a new phone number one more time in my entire life.  At least until I can start using my URI, that is :)  Google just earned some love from me, buying this company was a smart move.

Nick Carr wrote an interesting post about a popular ad-blocking plugin for FireFox.  I never really gave these plugins a second thought, because online ads don't really bother me.  Apparently they bother 2.5+ million people though, judging by the number of downloads of the software.  Nick brings up a very good point, which is that most of the free Internet is funded by ads, and if this type of plugin became viral or popular it could ruin the monetization model of many major Internet companies.

But this also brings up an interesting tangent which I haven't seen discussed much.  That is, if you had the choice, what types of ads would you block, and which would you leave?

I'm not a marketing major or anything, but it seems to me that ads can be broken down into two major categories:  ads that are pushed to consumers, and ads which consumers pull to themselves.

Push Advertising

In the Push method, advertisers try to convince consumers that they need their product.  In some cases this can be a good thing, if the consumer is already in the market for what the advertiser is pushing.  In the worst cases, such as spam, it can be annoying and even deceptive.

The most common type of Push advertising is the shotgun approach, where an advertiser blasts an ad at a large group of people, hoping to reach prospective customers.  This can be effective, although it is very inefficient, and very annoying to everyone but the interested buyers.  In fact this type of advertising is SO annoying that people use DVR's and products like the FireFox plugin to block them.

I've also noticed that the weaker the product offering, the more annoying the ad--sometimes even resorting to trickery and deception.  When products can't stand on their own two legs, advertisers have to rely on Whack-a-mole games and "You've won $25,000" gimmicks.  Although I'm fully able to ignore these, they are annoying and it's tempting to install something to block them.  Thankfully, however, they are in the minority of the ads I see.

The helpful type of Push advertising happens when a niche content provider exposes new and useful products to his or her audience, related to their content.  For example, when a self-help blogger offers a speed-reading course to his readers based on what he thinks his audience will be interested in, this is actually helpful.  This provides value to both the content provider, the advertiser, and the consumer, a win-win all around.  In my opinion this is the most efficient and unobtrusive type of advertising, and one that is really booming thanks to the ease of producing content on the Internet.  However, there's also a very real temptation for content producers to compromise their values to make a quick buck.

Pull Advertising

The inverse of the Push method is the Pull method.  This is where consumers are actively looking for information about a product or market segment, and advertisers are able to put product information in front of them.  This form of advertising is relatively new with the Internet.  The only other forms of Pull advertising I can think of are the classifieds section of the newspaper and booths at trade shows.

The epitome of the Internet Pull method is a Google search, where someone searches for "fruitcake", and gets a list of fruitcake vendors alongside a list of search results showing fruitcake history, ingredients, etc.  To me, this is helpful information, and there are many times when I do a Google search for a product with the sole intention of looking at the AdWords ads for vendors.

The Internet represents both the Push and Pull methods in abundance.  I think that there are definitely times when advertising can be helpful, but there are also many more forms of advertising which are annoying and even deceptive, and which I would love to see wiped off the face of the earth.  I also think that Nick is correct about the ad-blockers, if they're obliterating ALL types of advertising from the Internet then they could be blocking ads of value as well, reducing the value to both the advertisers, content producers, and even the consumers.  While we're getting rid of the annoying and useful ads we should definitely be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water.

I’ve recently been faced with the prospect of moving, which means that Jessica and I need to decide whether to rent or buy a home for at least the next three years.  I’ve been leaning towards renting.  When I tell people this, the majority of the time their reaction is something along the lines of “You’d really want to rent for that long?  Why throw away your money like that?”  I suspect that this reaction is because the real estate craze of the past few years (with the help of the gurus selling real estate investment expertise) has beaten the idea that real estate is the “best” investment into the everyone’s heads. 

Well, I’m not buying it (pun intended).  I did buy a home a few years ago (in my bachelor days), and then sold it two years later for a very nice profit.  But, that was not the same environment or marketplace as today, and it was my first home so I was able to get an FHA loan for nothing down, so there was no money tied up in the investment.

Now I’m looking at potentially buying my second home, and it just don’t make sense.  After running the numbers it looks to me like buying a home is a luxury that will cost a LOT more money than renting, even over a significant length of time.  The only compelling reason I could find to purchase a home would be because I wanted to make some radical modifications to the home that wouldn’t be allowed if I rented.

Since Google didn’t come up with any worthwhile, objective resources on the topic of renting vs. buying when I was looking, I figured I’d throw what I came up with out here on my blog.

Let’s start with the three things you will hear if you ask a real estate agent why you should buy instead of rent.

“Your Home Will Appreciate in Value!”

This is not necessarily true.  Believe it or not, prices can and do go down in free markets.  And guess what, that’s exactly what they’re doing right now.  Home prices have diverged too far from the median income (thanks to eFinanceDirectory for the charts) :

Prices are beginning to level off, and soon they will fall back to levels that the average person can afford.  The only reason prices shot up that high is because of bad lending practices (see: subprime mortgage crisis) and the fact that Americans can’t say no to debt.  Japan ran into the same situation a few years ago, and their past looks very much like our future:

Prices definitely appear due for a correction.

“You Will Build Up Equity in the House!”

This argument is making two huge assumptions:  that the value of the house will not go down (iffy), and that the Federal Reserve will not dilute the value of the equity that you DO have (if you take that bet, I have a nice bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in…)  Equity is not liquid.  I can’t buy milk, cereal, stocks, or bonds with equity.  And when the home value goes down, so does your equity.  You also must keep in mind that as the value of the dollar declines, so does the value of your equity.  Every time the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates or injects money into the economy (as they’ve been doing on a regular basis lately), your equity loses value (even though the number on your statement stays the same).  In order to just break even, you’d need to be able to invest your equity, which you can’t do without taking out a home-equity loan, and then you’re fighting an uphill battle against the interest rate again. 

“Your Interest Payments are Tax-Deductible!”

Yes, this is also true.  But you also have to balance this against the increased monthly payment that comes with buying (in other words, is the net money output greater with renting, or with buying minus tax deductions?), and the fact that there are other potentially more effective tax-reduction techniques (such as starting a small business).

So those are the arguments you typically hear when you talk to someone about buying a house.  But there are also a few things that don’t normally get brought up, but you should definitely take into consideration.  You won’t normally hear about them, because they don’t make the housing industry any money:

Money up-front/Opportunity cost

Spending money is easy.  Using it to make more money requires education.  But if you are an entrepreneur or investor who is able to take a sum of money and make more money out of it, you have to consider the opportunity cost of having your money locked up in your house.  You’re no longer to invest your down payment or monthly equity payments into other markets, and that money is very illiquid (I think that’s the word for not easily liquidated…)  Your money is tied to your house until you decide to move--you can’t even make interest off of it (which means you're losing money to inflation).

Closing Costs

When you sell your house, you will pay a lot (usually $2500 to $5000) in closing costs.  This will further subtract from your equity, and any diminish any gains (or increase your losses) you take away.

Ease of Moving

A home as an investment is that it is only worth what other people are willing to pay for it.  I laugh when I hear reports of people unable to sell their homes for “market value”, because what they obviously MEAN to say is that they’re unable to sell they’re home for what THEY think the house is worth.  Market value is whatever they’re able sell the house for on the open market, even if it’s lower than what they paid for it.

Which brings up the biggest problem with buying a home, especially short-term (less than 10 years in my opinion).  When it comes time to sell, you have to deal with selling.  Which means that you have less leverage in whatever you buy next because you have contingencies on your contract, which is not attractive at all to a seller.  It takes longer to move, because you have to actually sell your house first.  You may have to spend money to make sure that your house passes inspection, and it certainly has to be up to code.  When you’re renting, you don’t have to deal with any of that.