• TechCrunch – Elon Musk on the Best Way to Eat Glass [Video]
  August 6, 2010 – I LOVE this quote:
  “Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death. …So if that sounds appealing…”
• Daring Fireball – Khoi Vinh on Tumblr and Identity
  August 6, 2010 – Intriguing. One of the things that has always kept me from going the Tumblr route is not my own concern about personal identity/branding…but the challenge I’ve had, when playing with the solution, was determining the source/ history of materials and associating textual or image content with a person other than the author.
• SaaS Blogs – Today’s PaaS Offerings: Pragmatic or Unrealistic?
  August 6, 2010 – There are elements in this post that I agree with strongly…similarly there are elements I disagree with strongly. As my thoughts coalesce it is worth of an individual post, but worth sharing at this point.
• Branden R. Williams, Business Security Specialist » blog – Why your QSA should not be your Security Partner
  August 6, 2010 – excellent insight…
• Defrag Blog – Agenda Beginnings
  August 6, 2010 – I have found the backchannel conversations from defrag compelling…and, judging by the thought process as blogged by Eric, this years event promises to challenge & inspire as well.
• Digital Money – Contactless experiences
  August 6, 2010 – The perspective on the user experience and its impact on acceptance/usage of a tender is well taken. My wife, for example, loves using her contactless card (she is a lefty and has had some issues with traditional swipe placement)…but the lack of locations offering contactless acceptance near us has her stymied.
  User experience + proliferation. two sides of the same equation.

There is always something, personally, compelling when 2 discrete blog entries touch on a similar topic…This happened, again, today.

The first post is entitled Integration is Only the Beginning: Messages from the Edge and was penned by a colleague, Peter Osberg, at PaymentsAPI.com. The second is entitled Innovating Around Restrictions – PlayOn Story by Krishnan Subramanian at the Diversity Limited blog.

I highly encourage you to read each post in its entirety. But, for the purpose of this blog, let us begin with a representative quote from each:
Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, on PYMNTS.com, there were a series of posts that have been tickling the back of my brain.

These posts, entitled Separating Fantasy from Reality in the Brave New World of Payments Innovation and Is It a Dud or Not: Views on Payments Innovation, provide valuable insight to those who are evaluating a new entrant to the payments market.

But, they are also useful if you are considering offering a new technology of nearly any sort…I greatly encourage you to read them and contemplate.

I have pulled a few small quotes from the posts that deserve additional commentary.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Branden R. Williams, Business Security Specialist » blog – 2010 Verizon Business Data Breach Report Released
  July 30, 2010 – While you should read the entirety of the report…reading Branden’s Analysis is nearly as valuable.
• TechCrunch – Firefox Just Perfected Tabbed Browsing. It’s Like Apple’s Expose Plus Spaces For The Web
  July 30, 2010 – I am a fan of data visualization in all forms, this (in particular) intrigues me as a method of visualizing the “data” of my current online behaviours.
• O'Reilly Radar – Insight, analysis, and research about emerging technologies. – Web 2.0 risks and rewards for federal agencies
  July 30, 2010 – In light of yesterday’s post concerning the value of Software Companies…it was intriguing to see the quote below in an article discussing Web 2.0 and its impact/usage in governmental agencies.
  ” “Web 2.0 isn’t fundamentally about the technology itself but how people are coming together to achieve extraordinary results,” he said, pointing to uses for idea management, ranking or ranking ideas, communication and more. “From an efficiency perspective, a lot of software meets those needs without the need for the agency to build tools, when the market is as robust as it is today.” “
• The Financial Services Club's Blog – You're all individuals, you're all different
  July 30, 2010 – While I often write/consider/plan regarding identity from a technology perspective, I freely admit that I had not truly consider the prevalence of the term in culture (specifically in entertainment). This is intriguing and warrants further thought:
  “Our identity is our key to unlocking the riches of the world or losing them. Our identity is so intrinsic to access and ownership, that it is our most important asset.
  Our identity is us. “

I had initially intended a different post for today…but, after several offline conversations based on the last two days discussing Commerce Modules, I have been convinced to change course. In the previous posts, I talked about the ability for a Commerce Module to enable a simple, quick, secure addition of supplemental software to a payment application. That set of statements has prompted discussion on the unique value that the software community provides.

Let’s begin with a bit of my personal background…

I have worked in, and with, the software community for the last 14 years. During that time I have written, deployed, supported, sold, and marketed a variety of software solutions. Barring current responsibilities, this has included large scale financials packages, development tools, retail management solutions, scientific tools, and a variety of data warehousing tools.

With one, glaring, exception I have never worked for (or heard of) a company that describes their software as “worst in the industry”. Similarly, you don’t read about software solutions being marketed as “just as good as the competition, but missing several key features.” This is due to several factors…marketing clearly being one…but it is, primarily, driven by the fact that Software Companies invest their time & resources into something that they believe in.

Often, and I am speaking from my own experience and recognize that yours may differ, this belief is generated by prior pain. The genesis of the software comes from an interaction, or realization, that there was a tangible problem that must be solved. This could be major enough to create an industry…or minor enough to provide features that are considered beneficial. But the software is built…for a reason.

This, then, is the value of the software company.

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