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Support the Yahoo !! Put and Call? What?

Support the Yahoo! Buy the put or the call?

I dont know the difference between a put or a call - but I think you should support Yahoo in today’s trading. Why-hoo should you? Let me tell you:

As millions of Institutional Investors read my blog and seek my advice regarding tech sector investments, I have decided to comment with some unsolicited moral porridge, something that shall stick to the ribs of investors and not run off, as tech news is want to do.

Investors! Heed me! Hold off on the Yahoo call. Yahoo’s wise, though beardless founder, has made a decision that is in the best interest of the industry at large, in the long term.

Yahoo is being helmed back to its center; back to the days when lasting architectural foundations of internet systems were made to endure and deliver value for more than one trading cycle, more than one quarter’s report.

The merger would have been a drawn out fiasco, and resulted in naught. The new fear of G-d that is Yahoo’s sweaty legacy of this non-deal, is that the preeminent engineers and smart y pants people that built the Yahoo legacy, are for a moment, back in the driver’s seat.

You, shareholder, may be currently dismayed. But what is being built under your arses is nothing short of a next generation platform for network computing and user centered, (social hate that word) networking. The type of cloud that Yahoo is moving to build and the services thereof will last much longer, nay shall endure, far better than the plethora of here and gone social me too crapola from the valley.

What the Yahoo! has done is tantamount to changing the plating of the Titanic’s deck, not the chairs - the turbines, not the band. The officer of the watch saw the iceberg in time, barely. The Andrea Dorea turned and narrowly scraped the Stockholm.

All Success, Cap’n Jerry, aye me boy, aye. All buy Yahoo on the down and show yer support for our stalwart Valley institutions.

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A business plan makes the rounds

In 2005, I left my full-time position as in-house integration analyst at a fairly successful Automotive Auction, where I created a Nextel-based, Fax-to-handset, web dispatched system used by our towing fleet, independent mobile glass repair guys, locksmiths. The system was very popular, and I thought that converting it to an open enrollment system would be a great venture.

I brought the idea to the owners of the auction, but they were technology risk averse; then I wrote my business plan / briefing, and went on the road to find an institutional investor, but I was doubtful that a lone wolf like myself would qualify for VC. Then I sought an internal position with a software or mobile services company to take me and the plan in-house with a business unit and budget allocated for this project specifically.

That one came real close - so close. I was offered jobs and contracts to just work for several folks, which I did on occasion, fruitfully - but never got the Plan funded (yet).

So here it is for all to see; maybe by opening it up, I can find a partner, investor, or just more work. There is nothing particularly proprietary about the technology, just the domain knowledge of how the "independent dispatch industry works", and my extensive surveys of the work-force that makes up the paying subscriber constituency. Oh, yes, I have also completed much architectural technology foundation stuff that is invaluable to a team of developers getting started.

As far as my ongoing market research - there is still no open portal for distributed, open dispatch services.

So, maybe you can work with me and do something with this business plan:

Obviously, we all have very strong ideas about how to qualify and fund a venture, so, here -  collaborate with me, or use it to line your smuggled amazon blue-fronted parrot's cage:

Here are the non-design documents explaining the venture's branding, external functionality, and market positioning:

Briefing 

Presentation Handout 

Mobile Comms Background Article

A Newer Presentation

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I saw a Grand Vision of Open Dispatch, So What You Say?

I designed a Web-Based fax/forms gateway to route vehicle transport requests to a motley collection of independent transport operators (tow trucks, locksmiths, glass installers)

I saw a Grand Vision of Open Dispatch - how this creates a market for the independent trades, the little guy.

I then saw that the people who submit jobs to these independents could really use an open portal to bid out the jobs, batch the jobs, control their work flow and manage the workload.

And I saw that the independent mobile operators all used Nextel - they needed tools too. Tools to work cooperatively with ad-hoc fleets, so that they might cooperate with what might otherwise be competitors.

I saw the true function of the small fleet dispatcher was to not only assign work, that can be automatic in an open portal, but to be a 'check against reality'.

I saw the virtual dispatcher application, checking progress, servicing routes, and serving he small operator, thousands of them. I created an architecture and specification of the virtual dispatcher. Since I was a real dispatcher at one time, and I had created a computerized system, I embody a rare hybrid of experience to draw upon.

I see a venture, the VC's are having a hard time - the established central dispatch software companies are seemingly blind - hmmmm.

Do you see? Join me.

 

 

technorati tags:dispatch, ventures, vencap

Creating an Arbitrage Model for Open Dispatch Mobile Services and Trades

Creating an Arbitrage Model for Open Dispatch Mobile Services and Trades

by Alan Wilensky, Sector Analyst, vCastProfiles

“…making a market is oftentimes as valuable as trading in the market…” Chicago Board of Trade Exchange Seat-holders Newsletter

Abstract

The small mobile service operator often feels like a dog - hardworking and just as often unrewarded for effort and loyalty. The automotive auctioneering business illustrates an example of this world of independent mobile services, small fleets, and lone operators; auctions touch towing, locksmiths, glass installation, and delivery services, as well as financial services asset recovery, thus exposing a unique cross section of the independent mobile services industry.

While corporate fleets reap the benefit of advanced ERP solutions wedded to sophisticated service dispatch systems, the small services operator is left in the cold, often operating without an office or staff. Indeed, the truck is the office in most cases. Even basic mobile gateway services for rudimentary mobile messaging is useless if one is unable to man a dispatcher’s web-based application terminal.

Taken in aggregate, Nextel-Belt-Clipped independents may exceed in number the entire cadre of cooperate fleet-held J2ME handsets. By using the power of advanced portal services, this market can be set in dynamic motion, unleashed, if you will, in its full potential for those submitting and receiving mobile work orders in the automotive and small services sector.

In this monograph, the author will examine the basis for an open-market, arbitrage-based exchange for mobile trades and those who push work into the portal. We will cover ratings, credentials, bearer profiles, and optimizing tool sets for virtual fleet management.

Perhaps creating such a dynamic market, enabled by the best technology, can, by an innovative operation, transform islands of semi-productive local services, into a fecund and graceful dance of mobile e-commerce.

Read the full briefing in PDF

Consultants: Mess Up Totally while being 100% Right!

Don't go against the money; what say, you say? Consultants, don't go against the opinion of the people funding a venture, or their management proxies - you will not get contracts, you will have your early termination clauses invoked, and you will be forced out the valley. Of course, you will also not be able to provide any services of value, but it seems that the valley is chock full of closed end product management hires that are basically yes-men and gals for the management. So why did they hire you?

First, some background about what a good product strategist does -people are confused until they really need a guy like me. I built my reputation by being honest and never pulling punches, all while providing action oriented, sane product / channel re-jiggering.

People who label as 'Strategists' take a lot of heat; where do you get the nerve? Well, first of all, there are two types of strategists: Corporate capital 'S' strategists, and product channel specialty small 's' strategists. I am a small 's' strategist specializing in technical, industrial, and vertical markets. Without this specialization, I should be rebuffed; with no MBA, no degree from any institution of higher learning, I need my tool belt of practical industry experience to underwrite my credibility, and to speak with authority regarding the markets that I swim in, on behalf of my clients.(visit)

The Small Semantic web - Our Tiny Semantic World

What happened to the small semantic web of our daily lives, our work, and our mundane concerns? The W3C and its cohort of bright allies have authored voluminous specifications and RFC's that make one's head ache.

And what has been the result of this academic pouring from the empty into the void?

Nothing; at least from the point of view of the software consuming public, nothing that we can see and feel. Perhaps the arcane world of semantic browser plug-ins, strange new database architectures, and verbal wrangling over, 'how the semantic web will cure our data ills", has overshot its target with the goal of either restructuring the entire universe of web information, or has a master plan  regarding Web authoring and data schemes of the near future.

But, as of now, we get zip from the Semantic Web. I say again: What about the tiny semantic web of our daily lives? Why have these ostensible geniuses not provided us with services and tools to better organize my information, by lifting structure out of the soup of my emails, bookmarks, profiles, and interests?

Please, puhleeeeze, don't tell me that these tools already exist. I have a set of del.icio.us tags that point to a plethora of plug-ins, desktop clients, and full-blown applications that have promised to bring the benefit of the semantic-shmantic web to me. They give nada.

But, I do have an idea of what a great little semantic application would do for me, if anyone would listen. I can't say if it would define ontologies with OWL, and instantiate the triple schema in RDFS. In my world, I have real needs. And, I work with real people in technical professions (skilled service trades and the IT sector) that need real 'knowledge harvesting' solutions.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that all the tools, skills, and knowledge are assembled and  right out there - currently wasting  their collective time trying to create the "Large Semantic Web", while they could, if steered right,  be delivering the very much needed, 'small semantic web', of our personal data.

For everyday folks, the blessing would be palpable; for people in the skilled trades and professions that must make sense of dispersed threads of knowledge,it could be a revolution. Here are my thoughts: