It is a buyers market, and picking the wrong wine is no longer a very costly mistake. It literally take me back to the 90′s, right before (and perhaps as) the asian and US markets conspired to jack up the prices of wines. Now that both the Asians and Americans lost their funding sources, they stopped paying exorbitantly for wine.

This is so good. The bubble has funded extensive knowhow in wines. How to extract as blockbuster a wine as possible from newly planted berries: and make a killing in the process. So there are many great wines out there. And they have no buyers, so some great ones sell for 30c on the dollar. Their future prospect is questionable: They may fold, they may redo their business model, who knows. But for now, run out and get them!

Now I do have to watch the calories, though…

I knew that i wanted to control my destiny, so I knew I needed revenues, right, fucking, now. Like I needed revenues now. So I funded the company myself but I did every horrible thing in the book to, just to get revenues right away. I mean we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this zwinky toolbar which was like, I dont know, I downloaded it once and couldn’t get rid of it. *laughs* We did anything possible just to just get revenues so that we could grow and be a real business…So control your destiny. So that was a big lesson, controlling your business. So by the time we raised money we were profitable.

Personally, I do not see ANY problem with that. In fact, despite the somehow graphic langue and maybe some over bragging, I think that Mark Pincus was/ is doing the right thing. All we have to do is wait and see how it goes…

How it works?

Every few days I am sorting through Securitypie’s spam queue. Our anti-spam engine detects most of the spam messages but there are few that it asks one of the administrators to approve. Most of those messages are targeting a single post. Assaf’s self confession “Why I miss the Soviet Union is like a spam magnet.

Why? What is so unique about those 875 words that make it different? Could it be that the desire to see “a visionary CTO with a set of brass balls. Not a Cisco kowtowing CIO” makes the difference?
It would be interesting to see how the spammers threat this post. If you have a clue, send us a comment.

However, I was disappointed and somewhat frustrated to learn that at the time (2000-2003) little thought was given by corporations to data security. Words to that effect were used, but the majority of security was dedicated to the A(vailability) in CIA and some were dedicated to the I(ntegrity). Very little (with a few exceptions) were dedicated to the C(onfidentlity).

As it turns out, what was missing was knowhow. This knowhow which is rampant across DOD corridors, was virtually non-existant in the corporate world. And the few that did understand the concepts were ex-defense employees.

So the knowhow for data security is now being built, and ever more security folk get up in the morning and say “how do I help enhance our competitive standing in the industry” vs. “how do I ensure I don’t get to clean up all the machines over the weekend”.

So – what is in this knowhow? Well, to me it appears that the knowhow consists of knowledge (theories), experience (past experiences, witnessing others, reading case studies), and language (how do I communicate to all parties involved in the activities). Or – as I will explain later – the common memories in the field (similar to the so called “muscle memory” in the organization).

Well here’s to the topic at hand: food, ”foodies” and what makes a great dish “great”.

Over the past couple of years I have become a “foodie” -  I have always loved food. But a dinner at Moto changed my understanding of eating forever. I thoroughly enjoyed the meal but was perturbed by some of the concepts at Moto: Great dishes like the squid and the amazing beet combinations contrasted the the chef’s abilities to create things that I could not bring myself to enjoy – like the nachos dessert.

The Nachos at Moto was an excellent dish. But it played with expectations that I could not resolve – Grated mango took the place of Jack cheese, Creme Anglais substitiuted for Mexican cream, and beignets instead of Nachos. The dichotomy was just too much. I repeat – the food was tasty. It was delicious (I mean – really, how bad can fresh mango, custard sauce and beignets be? Had they not been perfectly shaped like nachos!).

I had to figure it out – What made a great dish? Previously I was convinced that tasty food was good food. But here was a tasty dish that was not “great”. Obviously I was wrong – but little did I know how wrong I was!

So as usual, it was a start of a learning exercise that spanned a few years as I dug deeper into the cooking trend commonly referred to as “molecular gastronomy”. I have dined at many leading proponents of the techniques, places such as WD-50, Moto, COI, TFL and Per Se, Manresa, and others. I have had great dishes and not-so-great dishes. And I purchased books. Not your small friendly simplified cookery books, but the heavily detailed stuff that is coming out of Barcelona and San Sebastian and Chicago (the modern Meccas of avante Garde cuisine).

The answer came from the catalogs of Ferran Adria’s El-Bulli restaurant. Ferran fastidiuously analyzed the diner’s experience. He built a map of all the influences on a diner. And this map contained the answer.

But I will start with an example given by Ferran when he explains that some dishes will forever be lost on global diners. Example in point was a dish called ”Cala Montjoi Goose Barnacles”. As Ferran explains, this is not really Goose Barnacles because Goose Barnacles do not grow in Cala Montjoi. Only a resident of the Costa Verde will know that!  As for me, I: 1. did not know Barnacles were edible; 2. Did not know there was such a thing as Goose Barnacles and 3. Would not know what the heck I was eating and how to put it in context.

The diners problem would not relate to the quality of the food – no; in this case the entire dish would miss because of a lack of experiental context: The associate memories were just not there. Or as Ferran put it in his diagram – Memory is a key influencer on the diner.

Looking back I can say with conviction that Memory is probably the number 1 ingredient in a chef’s arsenal. Unfortunately, not all chef’s understand that! My proof comes from endless interactions with people who fixate on the same stuff – like the grilled chicken, the steak place, their favorite wine or their disdain from Gefilte fish or German ham hocks (are all Gefilte fish or pickled ham hocks really bad? Or is one brain cell immediately sending the all important “I didn’t like the texture when I was 7″ signal and the diner succumbing to what was really 1 bad experience too long ago to remember).

Like their security bretheren trying to cope with data security demands, all diners cannot be confronted with dishes outside their realm of understanding. All foodies can really do is try to absorb the experience the way an anthropologist would a tribal dance. Given time, the Memories will be formed and the foodie’s range of interest will increase.

It is like the early days of sushi: simple, unthreatening dishes in rolls like smoked (not live) salmon; philly rolls; spicy tuna; egg omlet; cooked crab. 20 years later and people eat Sashimi (look mom – no roll!) buy fresh tuna at Whole foods to eat raw and Ikura Uzura (salmon roe and quail egg yolk) are a standard dish.

For Japanese cuisine memories were built, language was developed, allowing us to experience more of the exquisite Japanese cuisine. And the diners understood fish more than ever before. And it took some 20 years!

Like nouvelle cusine and fusion I believe the avante garde cuisine is a trend rather than fad. I believe it will force us to learn  more about what we eat than ever before. And it is about time.

And here’s to some practical advice: can you control you mind or does your mind control you? Can you open YOUR mindto new concepts? Try that next time you see locals eating something weird at a faraway land. You might be surprised just how good those things are! And if you can’t – well, remember the plasticity of the brain. More details here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPSdWY5VdEE

Then once a pigeon is felled, the trained hounds are released. These specially trained hounds find the pigeon and bring it back into your castle unharmed and intact. Then, the pigeon is take to a special room where it is left to recover the effect of the drug. If the message carries the royal seal, which only your majesty wears, then it is reattached to the pigeon and sent – while a cryptologist reads the rest of the messages and deliver it to your majesty after it has been duly decoded.

After you get to trust our cryptologists, you may order them to perform an action on your behest your majesty, for example, to burn the message so it never reaches its destination, or to send it unharmed, based on its content. Some messages may not be of interest to your majesty, and may be taken to one of your trusted viziers for consultation to await their decision, so your majesty may be free to rule the kingdom. Others may be delivered to your majesty directly, while others may just be copied verbatim and saved for later reference.

According to the study of 300 workers, 70% of people who use the Internet at work engage in Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB). Among the most popular WILB activities are searching for information about products, reading online news sites. Playing online games was the fifth most popular, while watching YouTube movies was seventh.

In today’s world, I can’t understand how “searching for information about products” is considered not work related, unless of course the study talks about products that are not related to work. In this case, I would categorize this action as “surfing”. But then, the reports adds that “People who do surf the Internet for fun at work – within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office – are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t”.

To me, it makes a lot of sense. I’m more productive and have the time to “clean” my mind, not to mention the expsure to related technologies. 

Assaf might want to comment on the following statement: 

“Firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos on YouTube, using social networking sites like Facebook or shopping online under the pretense that it costs millions in lost productivity, however that’s not always the case.”

Having listened to an NPR special on PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) it got me thinking whether that is an angle of the astronaut’s predicament. I am talking about, specifically, the dichotomy between life in the fast lane (Iraq, Investment banking, prepping for space flight, quarter end, etc.) and life in docile Americana. Especially if you don’t live in one of the big cities.

My assumption is, that once a soldier returns or an astronaut lands, life becomes simple. You have done the deed and now it is time to rest. But if you are of astronaut calibre mentality, rest is the farthest thing from your personality. Hence you have conquered your dragon and really have nothing to look forward to. You were used to action and now life is missing rythm. And very few are like John Glen who was both an astronaut and moved to an equally hectic life in politics.

Now I have a feeling that it is the same with most of us who are addicted to our Iphones, emails and facebook updates. For us the constant shaking of the phone, the bling sounds of facebook and the chirp of inbound email becomes a part of our psyche. And when our internet dies – we get the onset of mild PTSD.

You may feel that hurtling down from the ski slopes and catching up on email on the gondola.I felt that during our spa day in Mongolia (during the other days we were bicycling all day and concentrated on that).

And I’ve devised a test for this: If both your oven (appliance important to life) and internet gateway break – who would you fix first?

/Cheers

And the most interesting dish just happened to be on the Vegetable Tasting menu. Very interesting indeed.

Hmmm. Delectable meal. Hmmm.

 It was a dish labelled: Chickpea “Croquette” – Sweet Peppers, English Cucumbers, Sesame Seed Yogurt and Eggplant Confit. Now Larousse Gastronomique defines a croquette as a “small savoury or sweet preparation…… Croquettes are shaped into corks, sticks, balls or rechtangles. They are usually coated with breadcrumbs, plunged into very hot oil and fried until they are crisp and golden…”.

So why is a Chickpea “Croquette” interesting to a group of Israelis eating at the French Laundry?

Well, because most people from Mediterranean states have another name for it. We call it “Falafel”. And whatever the disputed origin of this dish - it is THE fast food choice in Israel.

Hmmm. Falafel. (I apologize for the dark picture, I didn't want to disturb the other diners with a flash)

This was a great Falafel, on par with that served at the best Falafel stands in Israel, but for me it was a mere ball of Falafel. At any Falafel stand you’ll get 5-6 balls for about 5 bucks. Was this going to be a McDonald’s like “fast food” experience (and thus the disappointment of the meal), or was this another epitomy of world cuisine where the recognition of quality just happened to be masked by mere abundance, and thus serving as the East Mediterranean equivalent of Joel Robuchon’s famous Mashed Potatoes?

And I was immediately reminded of Dima, an Army buddy who had originally been from one of the Russian cities directly situated on the Caspian sea. In one of our discussions my mention of just how great Sturgeon Caviar can be and how lucky he was to have lived on the shores of the Caspian sea, was greeted with a shrug and the remark that he despised Caviar. Caviar for them was just plain Caviar. They had lots of it. In large jars. Everywhere.  Growing up he got fed up with Caviar. Having left Russia he became surprised at just how revered the stuff actually was by Westerners. In Dima’s perspective, Caviar was farmer food. It was not the stuff you serve at restaurants awarded 3 stars by the prestigious Michelin ”Red Guide”. 

It is a matter of perspective. For me, falafel is fast food. Great fast food, but still fast food. However, there are too few good falafel places in the US (unfortunately in the US, most so called “mediterranean” places serve soggy, microwave reheated falafel balls), so a really good falafel can and should be served at 3 star Michelin rated place. In fact, it seemed right-at-home with the “salsify croquant” and other eclectic, world dishes.

Perhaps, one day, the ancient chickpea and it’s dishes will become popular in the US. At that point it will join the other successful imports from countries such as Germany (e.g. Frankfurter and Hamburger) and France (double fried “French” fries) and Italy (Pizza). It will also join the original American dishes such as Burrito, Taco, Popcorn, Tomatoes, Chocolate, Potatoes, Corn and many more. We look the those staples of fast food and forget just how good they can be when done right. Abundance makes us ignore the greatness of these dishes.   

Returning to falafel: And like everything else around the Mediterranean Sea, falafel is way too old to have a clear history. And as can be expected, falafel has it’s place in providing fodder for the animosities between the inhabitants of the levant. So it seems the Lebanese have decided to explore suing it’s neighbor to the South claiming falafel is somehow a “controlled appelation” like Feta.

Luckily for us, in the odd chance that Lebanon succeeds, we now have a new name for falafel. We can now call it Chickpea “Croquette”. As in “Te’n li bevakasha mana Chickpea “Croquette” be’ pita, im thina, salat, veksat hamutsim. Meh-at zhug. Toda” (Translation from Hebrew: “Please give me a portion of Chickpea “Croquette”  in pita bread with tahini sauce, salad and few pickles. A little hot sauce. Thanks”).

Life is like data security: One simply cannot have a sense of security without backup plans.

Thank you Thomas Keller (owner/chef) for an amazing meal and for saving the Israeli falafel. Now that I know that my favorite fast food is safe I can rest easy and concentrate on computer and data security.

/al

* Not to be a wine bore, the wines we had were excellent: a white Mas De Daumas Gassac 2007 and Nuit St. George 1er Cru Clos de L’Arlot 2004

My inbox today carried a fresh bit of news from CIO magazine. An opinion column by Eric Lundquist, labelled “We need a national CIO, not a CTO” stipulated that CIO are a better match for US national role than a CTO. To paraphrase Lundquist’s message, CIO’s are firmly planted in the business realities of the day, while CTO focus on technologies “looking for uses”. Reminds me of the old adage of “legs firmly planted” vs. “head in the clouds”.

I firmly disagree.

Now I understand that I read CIO magazine and that is why I received this message. I also assume that by the nature of politics, all kinds of special interest groups raise their heads, so I would expect a similarly opinioned “Shepard’s Weekly” would have discussed a similar topic ”We need a national shepard, not a CTO” and that the international association of circus performers would like to propose “We need a national court jester, not a CTO”.

Joking aside, Mr. Lundquist put forth some good arguments. He stipulated that CIO can better manage a project. That CIOs hold the business first and technology second. To quote “Technologists are great at creating new companies, new products and new markets. They are not great at orchestrating lots of conflicting opinions, managing projects or – especially in the political realm – settling on the best possible choice given budget constraints and political realities.”. Mr. Lundquist is correct, but altogether misses the point.

YAPM (Yet another project manager) is NOT what the US needs. In a former life I frequented Crystal City often. There were many project managers there. 25% of them were very good. 50% were mediocre. 25% were awful. But there were lots of them. They crammed public transportation, caused the beltway to jam, and filled the cafeteria’s at lunch. You could not throw a rock without hitting a project manager for some obscure government entity.

The US needs a future. To be driven, its future needs to be based on a seemingly unachievable target. We had been driven like that many times in the past. The US developed the trasistor and the chip (which 40 years later made our lives mobile). The external combustion engine for the torpedo (which crammed power into tiny spaces). Composite materials for space exploration (and which later improved our golf and tennis games). It was a government sponsored program (DARPA) that created the Internet. Not Google, nor Microsoft, nor Facebook. Nor was it rear view mirror preening dudes on Sand Hill road on their way to their ranches outside Bozeman in a well appointed G5. No. It was the government. And for all the wrong reasons. A lot of it was due to the US government chasing the Soviet’s dream of ruling space. How I miss the Soviet’s for that reason (if only for that reason!).

While both the technology industry and the venture capital industry oppose “leapfrog” technologies (they can ”eat your cheese” and thus risky for business and are difficult to predict and thus risky for VCs, respectively), the US government should indeed drive technology forward. But not on a predictable, linear trajectory, as Sand Hill road does with social networking and other “me too” technologies, but in a hockey stick fashion. Sending a man to mars. Cloning sheep. Really analyzing our climate. Teleportation. Whatever.

For that you need a visionary CTO with a set of brass balls. Not a Cisco kowtowing CIO. And to address Mr. Lundquist’s example of the revolving doors for the national cybersecurity czar: Nor does the standard Symantec or McAfee worshipping CISO make a good cybersecurity czar.

And to conclude, Eric Lundquist is, however correct (even if for the wrong reason) in identifying the fallacy in the current dredge of proposed CEOs. None of the proposed CEO’s is a visionary. Sure, they navigated their ships admirably through the murky tempramental waters of the American economy, but none have really shown a vision for disruptive innovation. They have been keen followers, seeking the market scouts and then bearing down upon their cheese with their mighty heft. Cheese snatching should never be confused with vision and innovation. For that you need the likes of J. Craig Venter or even some “down to earth” science fiction writers. People who’d invest even if the future is still murky and the benefits, for now, unclear.

/al

PS – The opinions expressed are my own. Not my employer’s, Barack Obama’s, nor Cisco’s. As an entrepeneur and business man, I like my customers to stick with me. I dislike churn, except my competitor’s churn. I therefore dislike the term disruptive.

But I also know that healthcare for generations X Y and Z, as well as fuel costs, etc. are liable to eat up a vast chunk of our GDP, and the only way to prevent that is to increase our GDP. To increase GDP we need disruptive technologies, techniques and methodologies. I also know that the linear thinking preferred by the bankers that manage industry in general favors baby steps within established markets and does not foster disruptive technology.

Hence the opinion piece.

Similar to my phone

Trying to looks trendier, I decided that it’s about time to upgrade my not-so-new Blackberry. I just need to get ‘em to stare at my device, I thought to myself. My standards are not too high. I don’t need a camera, movies, mp3, sliders, voices or anything like it. It just need to be cool, trendy, light and above all, attune to my email habits. The first device that I tested was the iPhone 3G. I asked the doctor to land me his phone and after installing active sync server and protecting it with the SE, I was ready to go.

The good things:

The device is sexy and cool. The UI is simple to use (I do not read manuals) and intuitive. The app store is amazing. I will not be the first nor the last person to say that Apple changed the world with this application. Two big thumbs up for the idea and execution. Web surfing is great: it works fine in multiple languages, handles dynamic content well. Attachment management works well as well.

But sadly I report that the iPhone is almost unusable when it comes to handling my emails. Here’s why:

I like email. I like to send and receive. I like to be updated by email: I receive more than 200 emails per day to my inbox. This number does not include automatic notifications (e.g. content updates, log etc), regular support calls, spam, general information inquires etc. I send more than 100 emails per day. Most of them are one or two liners with some call for action. To make a long story short, I need my email-phone to be more of an email tool than a phone.

I also like to web. I read the links that are sent to me. If there’s a link embedded into an email, I’m gonna read it. my email-phone, should be capable to handle the web properly. To be Sharon worthy, the iPhone should have the following issues fixed:

• I need to search my emails.
• I need to be able to click fast, without looking on the keyboard. It looks like jagged keyboard allows me to type faster, with less mistakes. True, the built-in error correction is very nice, but it will not compensate for time.
• I need more characters in my keyboard, without the need to switch between alphanumeric, numeric and sign keyboards.
• I need more space. Make the screen rotate like the browser.

I’ll wait to see what the Android can do for me.