New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is no Sorkin hero

If Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, The West Wing) was writing the story of Yahoo and he got to Marissa Mayer’s surprise entrance yesterday as Yahoo’s latest CEO, here’s how he would probably play it: the brilliant, tough, beautiful, charismatic engineer defies her Google glass ceiling and, through sheer vision and clever example, saves the pioneering Internet company. That’s how Sorkin would play it because he likes an underdog, loves smart, well-spoken people, and revels in beautiful if slightly flawed characters and happy endings. But in this case Aaron Sorkin would be playing it wrong.

To be clear, were I in the position of Yahoo’s board I would probably have hired Marissa Mayer, too. On paper […]

What if Steve Jobs — The Lost Interview isn’t available in my country?

Then you can stream it here.

If you try this link from the USA or any other country where there is already a distribution deal for the film then you’ll just get a trailer. But if you are connecting from Pakistan or some other country where there is currently no distribution, then you should be able to stream the film.

Once there’s distribution in your country through, say, iTunes or similar services, this link will revert to showing just the trailer.

 

 

 

 

Put LIBOR on Yahoo Groups

LIBOR, the London InterBank Offered Rate, has been in the news lately as heads begin to roll in London and soon New York now that it’s clear LIBOR was manipulated by big banks, affecting the value of hundreds of trillions worth of financial instruments. This is a complex topic and it will be awhile — perhaps years — before it is clear how or even if you and I were damaged by these shenanigans, but everyone seems to agree that it can’t be allowed to happen again. But how? To make this happen I think we need a new understanding of what “transparency” means in financial transactions in the 21st century.

Transparency is supposed to mean […]

IT class warfare — It’s not just IBM

Back in April I wrote a six-part series of columns on troubles at IBM that was read by more than three million people. Months later I’m still getting ripples of response to those columns, which I followed with a couple updates. There is a very high level of pain in these responses that tells me I should do a better job of explaining the dynamics of the underlying issues not only for IBM but for IT in general in the USA. It comes down to class warfare.

Warfare, to be clear, isn’t genocide. There are IT people who would have me believe that they are complete victims, powerless against the death squads of corporate America. […]

Steve Jobs — The Lost Interview is on iTunes, but don’t tell anyone

My little film about Steve Jobs has finally made it to iTunes (now on Amazon and YouTube as well!) as a $3.99 rental, but you wouldn’t know it. Deeming the film “too controversial,” Apple has it on the site but they aren’t promoting it and won’t. The topic is “too sensitive” you see. It isn’t even listed in the iTunes new releases. You have to search for it. But it’s there.

Maybe I’m not even supposed to tell you.

Of course there is nothing controversial or insensitive about this movie, which everyone including the critics seems to like. It’s a different look at an interesting guy and some people seem to take […]