Yahoo CEO and co-Founder Jerry Yang stepped down as top dog on November 17. The move does not come as a surpise to anyone, amid plummeting Yahoo! stock prices, a failed acquisition by Microsoft, and the demise of a possible advertising deal with Google.
A Yahoo! insider says that while they didn't find out about Yang's departure until about 5:00pm this afternoon, the mood around the Sunnyvale office was "pretty damn good." He admits that "[w]e're all pretty used to bad news by now, so we're all just saying 'what now?'" However, he does say that he likes the open direction that Yahoo! has been taking, arguing that because of som
e repeated setbacks for the company, it has been willing to try new things.
"As an employee, I feel as though this is one of the best times to be working for Yahoo! When you're in second place, you're more willing to try new things and experiment. It's a great time for young people with good ideas to be recognized and excel. Yahoo! is full of opportunity and resources just waiting to be tapped.
"A little fear goes a long way," he grins.
Yang will remaion on the Board, and will return to his old role of Chief Yahoo! Shares are expected to rally a little bit tomorrow on the news - shareholder value has dipped by almost $31 billion since the failure of a huge acquisition offer from Microsoft in the spring.
"Over the past year and a half, despite extraordinary challenges and distractions, Jerry Yang has led the repositioning of Yahoo! on an open platform model as well as the improved alignment of costs and revenues," says Chairman Roy Bostock. "Jerry and the Board have had an ongoing dialogue about succession timing, and we all agree that now is the right time to make the transition to a new CEO who can take the company to the next level. We are deeply grateful to Jerry for his many contributions as CEO over the past 18 months, and we are pleased that he plans to stay actively involved at Yahoo! as a key executive and member of the Board."
Founded in 1994 by Stanford Ph.D. students David Filo and Jerry Yang, Yahoo! began as a hobby and has evolved into a leading global brand that has... [more]
Just got back from day two of CanUX 2008. The schedule was packed, but it seemed to go quite quickly which means I wasn’t bored or overwhelmed. There was a nice balance of content and activities, and again, great food!
In the first session, Luke Wroblewski from Yahoo talked about web form design and why web forms suck. He spent some time talking about forms in general at the beginning, but devoted most of his talk to redesigning a Boingo form. He listed his ten best practices, and had clear and thorough reasons for each. I thought it was a good way to illustrate the concepts. Luke finished by advocating gradual engagement, and challenged everyone to consider whether or not a form is actually needed. I’ll definitely be picking up a copy of his book.
The second session was on UX Swimlanes, presented by nForm’s own Yvonne Shek. A UX swimlane is a document that provides a bird’s eye view of where you are in a project, by communicating a story or scenario. The document consists of vertically stacked lanes for different audiences, all illustrating the same concept. The executives have a lane with a comic strip, the UX/creative types have a lane with a workflow diagram, etc. It’s a neat concept, and I wish we had more time to explore it. You can find some comic panels to use here, and a Visio template for swimlanes here.
After lunch we had a long session on creativity, facilitated by the Banff Centre. We broke into three groups: one worked on collages, one explored drumming, and the group I joined focused on improv. Everyone seemed to enjoy the session! I found the activities we took part in were more applicable to leadership than to creativity, but I still had a great time. My favorite activity in the improv group was the last one. Working with a partner, you start off by saying “I have this great idea for a party…” and they follow with “yes, but…” and you keep going until the facilitator stops time. Then you switch, and do “yes, and…” instead. It’s incredible how wild the latter ideas became! Great tool for brainstorming.
The final session of the day was A Better Method for Designing with Developers. Jerome Ryckborst shared with us his experiences using the “Five-Sketches-Or-Else” method of getting developers and potentially other team members involved in design. It’s a really intriguing concept that I’m keen to try out. You can find most of Jerome’s presentation here.
After dinner was a “Show & Tell” reception where anyone could get out their laptop and show others what they are working on. It was neat to see some of the projects that attendees are focused on. Tomorrow is the final day of the conference, and the schedule is packed once again! You can read about day 1 here. I’ve been uploading photos here and I posted a few additional thoughts here.
Back in the early days of mobile, I once saw someone walking around proudly talking into a cellphone (the size of a toaster, naturally). Much to his chagrin and my amusement, it rang. Now you too can walk around talking into your phone to no one at all (though admittedly for less lame reasons)! Google's voice-enabled iPhone search, while coming later than Microsoft's TellMe service or Yahoo's oneSearch capability, was launched to the iPhone Apps Store today, though it was earlier announced that it would come out last Friday.
Users speak regularly into the phone with their query, Google's servers process the speech and convert it to text where it is sent to search servers, and then the results are returned to the users on his or her iPhone, often taking advantage of the iPhone's location-determining functionality.
The New York Times reports that "The Google system is far from perfect, and it can return queries that appear as gibberish. Google executives declined to estimate how often the service gets it right, but they said they believed it was easily accurate enough to be useful to people who wanted to avoid tapping out their queries on the iPhone's touch-screen keyboard."
This move could end up spelling big business through advertisements, particularly when used for location-based questions.
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. As a first step to fulfilling that mission,... [more]
Previously, we covered the Canadian wireless spectrum auction, which promised to increase wireless competition with seven new companies awarded licenses. One of these new entrants was Shaw Communications, acquiring $190M worth of spectrum in BC, Alberta, Winnipeg, Saskatchewan, and Northern Ontario. Unfortunately, the Globe and Mail reports that everyone's favorite elephant-in-the-room, Global Economic Uncertainty, has led Shaw to put off plans to launch a wireless service for "at least a year".
During the time Mr. Shaw and his team weighed options, economic conditions deteriorated, giving the executives even more confidence in their ultimate decision. In a bad economy, families stay home and watch more television, so the company has decided to invest in its cable offerings for now, such as adding more high-definition programming.
"We felt it more prudent to develop our core business right now, and not divert any of our attention away from our mainstream products. It's like you don't want to buy the neighbour's house when your house isn't fixed up," Mr. Shaw says. "It's really about where do you put your money and at what time. And we think this is the best spot to put it in right now, and that the time will come for cellular."
People prefer TV in a recession? Bothersome, but valid. I'd say people will also prefer the Internet, but I suppose that still falls under Shaw's core business. A new wireless service would have to compete aggressively on price and service, and the ROI on building out wireless infrastructure is likely not strong enough at this time.
This move in contrast to other spectrum buyers Quebecor and Globalive. Quebecor recently announced plans to go ahead and make use of their spectrum space with an $800M 3G network in Quebec. Ontario and Western Canada should still see some wireless competition courtesy of Globalive, which has pledged to launch wireless service in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Ottawa, starting in the 2nd half of 2009.
Shaw has experienced rapid and successful growth within the cable, satellite and telecommunications industries over the last several decades. With... [more]
Bits Republic presented its case for data mobilization at the 24th Angel Forum held at SFU Harbour Centre on Monday. Their mission is to make one's information accessible anywhere in the world, as well as acessible online and off. As such, they introduced the My Own Bits (MOB) platform, which not only hosts documents but also alerts clents to changes in those documents, and also have access to their documents even when they aren't on the Internet. Bits Republic also stressed the end-to-end nature of their security solution, with documents encrypted before thye leave the computer or origin. The document is also hosted by Bits Republic, but they can't sThe MOBS platform has been established and is (according to Bits Republic) ready for implementation, and the company is now ready to begin tackling different markets with targeted products.
MOB-PS is targeted at professional firms such as lawyers, and would cost $1,000 a year. MOB-BR is aimed at creating data rooms for virtual Mergers and Acquisitions. Finally, Bits Republic has created MOB-EMR, which targets the medical market and would cost $1,200 a year.
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