I don't think there's a lot of reputation risk for her, here... I'm pretty sure that if Yahoo continues it's current course, the majority reaction will be "Well, Yahoo was a sinking ship anyway, there's not a lot she could have done" but if Yahoo makes a comeback she'll be hailed as a miracle worker.
For proof of this, see Marc Andreessen's comments in TechCrunch[1]:
Andreessen also said he's "super-happy" for Mayer, because she's ready to step into a CEO role at a major tech company.
But can she actually turn Yahoo around? Andressen declined to offer any suggestions for areas that the company should pursue, and he also cautioned that it's hard to think of many Web companies that succeeded in turning themselves around.
"On the other hand, it's hard to overestimate how screwed Apple was in 1997," Andreessen said. "Tech comapnies can in fact be turned around. The problem is, there aren't a lot of Steve Jobs characters running around."
Basically, if she makes it, she's "a Steve Jobs character" and if not, well, it's hard to turn tech companies around.
Don't be so sure. Nokia was a sinking ship before Elop joined and now he's wearing most of the blame. Sure, he could have hitched Nokia's wagon to Android instead. But given that Google own competitor Motorola and are selling the killer Nexus 7 at no margin, they aren't exactly an ideal partner either.
All you need to do is look at how the tech press/community is ALREADY talking about this. See the quote from Andreessen[1] that I already talked about or, alternatively, another TechCrunch article that just got published:
What a time for Marissa Mayer to take control at Yahoo. She'll need all the smarts she can lay her hands on to revive an ailing Yahoo.[2]
It's already being set up so that the expectation is "she'll probably fail, because ANYONE will fail" but if she succeeds she's a miracle worker or "a Steve Jobs character".
Elop scrapped everything Nokia had dumped years of R&D into and turned the company into Microsoft's (Elop's former employer) puppet. Nokia could have made an instant comeback if they had just built a few semi-decent Android phones, but they are now locked in to Windows. Elop's case is atypical.
But it sounds like this is exactly like those kludges.
Instead of detecting which browser the user has and saying "best viewed in X" where X is some other browser, how about detecting which features you need, and then giving a clear error on which were missing? This is better in many ways, for example if the next update to a browser adds the missing features to it, then it will just work on your site.
What would confuse them? You can customize the warning message to be as clear as you want. The benefit your users get is your page will actually work the second their browser can support it, not when you officially define browser X to be "acceptable".
The current standard deviation between our salaries is less than $5 and we’ve improved our profitablity since implementing this over a year ago.
It sounds more like this policy is to guilt their employees to accept less money (thereby improving profitability) and less about keeping employees happy...
His HN profile immediately talks about running Reddit's servers. And he's using the same recognizable username. I don't know how more obvious it could have been.
In this economy, employers can afford to be picky and potential employees will put up with a lot
While I agree that it's important to make sure you hire good employees, "because I can" is not a good reason to make the hiring process as painful and drawn out as possible.
"Plivo is not a direct competitor with developer-friendly Twilio, but is targeting larger businesses in need of scale."
I'm confused how this is different from Twilio - my understanding is that Twilio gets most of their revenue from large businesses in need of scale, as well.
One of the features that I feel sets it apart from Twilio (but that admittedly isn't very well documented) is that you can configure an application to be direct-dial. In layman's terms, you can use Plivo via SIP for an internal phone system and configure how different numbers/extensions are handled when dialed from the SIP phone.
"He added that it was 'entirely possible' that the spammers had faked the message formatting to make it look like it originated on a phone.
However, he added, there was no doubt that the number of malicious programs written for Android was on the increase. Given that he said: 'The reason these messages appear to come from Android devices is because they did come from Android devices.'"
Sorry, what? "It's possible I'm wrong, but because people are writing malicious programs for Android, I'm actually right."
I struggle to think of Apple as innovative - I consider them iterative. They DO make amazing, fantastic products. With few exceptions, however, their products tend to be things that are iterative improvements over already existing technology.
For example, iPhone and iPad - both of these concepts (smartphone and tablet) already existed. Only, a lot of them were shitty before Apple came along. They basically swept through and fixed everything that was wrong with these devices, but it's not like they came up with the idea for a tablet or a smartphone.
Apple doesn't create new product areas, it grabs an area and disrupts the status quo by offering significantly improved user experiences. In that pursuit they have really innovated in various areas, from UI design to manufacturing to logistics.
The fact they haven't created a new product area by themselves doesn't mean they don't innovate at all.
Yes tablets had existed in the past but did any of them have scaled down, touch optimised UIs ? All I recall is full blown Windows which was probably the biggest reason they didn't succeed.
Yes tablets had existed in the past but did any of them have scaled down, touch optimised UIs?
Yes. None of them were widely commercially successful though. Products that come to mind include the Crunchpad (which I'm not sure actually made it to market), the Always Innovating Touchbook and the Pepper Pad. Of these, the Crunchpad was most similar to the iPad.
So no, Apple didn't invent a new product area with the iPad. They were just the first to find commercial success in that product area.
I guess it feels that way because tablets until the iPad were an insignificant stagnated market, whereas we did have markets for computers, phones, music players, etc.
So, I'd argue it's still a huge improvement over an existing product area, with the added bonus that it created a market. Products existed, but no significant market for them was available.
The iPhone's improvements over Blackberries and the like of the time were as impressive as the iPad's improvements over Windows tablets, for example, but one doesn't feel the iPhone a new product area.
Yes, I spent most of '99 writing a custom GUI system for a tablet. We were even considering ARM (StrongARM) for the CPU, but ended up with an x86 clone. The system was running Linux, NanoX and used Opera as the browser. The widget set was written from the ground up to make it light weight and touch friendly.
Yes, true, Apple was the first one to put touch optimized, scaled down UIs on these tablets. But wasn't that exactly the original argument? Again, this is Apple taking an existing technology and polishing it to make create a great product.
Touch versus stylus wasn't iterative. It was revolutionary. "Swipe to unlock" wouldn't even have been practical in the prior resistive touchscreen/stylus paradigm.
