Domino's Pizza, The Big Brother of Pizza

Okay, I know this is really obvious to anyone that has ordered Domino's Pizza online, but I haven't ordered pizza in a while, and it amused me.

So yeah, the pizza thing estimated like forty minutes for delivery.

 

It is really amazing how the fast food industry is, well, fast.

Almost missed this very short step of boxing the things.

And the guy got here within five-ten minutes of leaving the store. The weather is cold, so the pizza looked really hot.

The point here is that Domino's has a well designed website that exposes the tracking system they use for quality control for their staff. This exposes any problems in production, and as an added bonus, since they exposed this process to customers, hints at when to be ready for the delivery guy.

The only way Domino's could be more watchful of their Pizza is if they streamed a webcast of your pizza being made live to you... actually:

Feature Request: Any good Pizza website should not only have a tracker for the customer, but give the option of watching your pizza be made over the Internet, via webcam.

Super Bonus Points for a smell dongle you can install on your computer that simulates the smell of the place making the pizza when you are ordering. :P

Why the Zune Phone Rumors Should Be a Warning to Windows Mobile OEMs

Last time Microsoft was unsuccessful with it's OEM model that it prefers, it ditched it. That was the Zune. Before the Zune hit, there were rumors. Lots and lots of rumors. Of course, to the audioplayer makers, who used Play Anywhere, it should have been a warning. A warning to shape up or else.

And now the rumors struck again. But this time, it was on the mobile phone front. Windows Mobile OEMs should be shaking in their boots to get Windows Mobile out there, because if they don't, Microsoft will have to abandon them.

Microsoft bought Danger Inc. a while back, the people behind the Sidekick. Of course, the word is that Microsoft isn't developing a phone, and that it is just working on services may include the Zune music service:

More realistic are reports that Microsoft is working on premium mobile services based on technology acquired in its purchase of Danger Inc., the company behind T-Mobile's Sidekick device. In addition, there are rumblings about Microsoft extending the Zune music service onto mobile phones.

Of course, a failure to ship up could very quickly turn these services into a full platform. Another bit from Todd Bishop:

Windows Mobile hasn't yet stumbled to the point that Microsoft would risk alienating its mobile-phone partners by coming out with its own competing phone.

Yet.

While I don't think there will be a full-fledged Microsoft-only phone yet, or at CES, it is becoming a bigger Danger (pun intended) every day market share slides.

Windows Mobile's share may drop to 11% this year from 12% in 2007, says Chris Ambrosio, an executive director for wireless at research firm Strategy Analytics.

This all boils down to whether or not Windows Mobile OEMs will actually be useful to Microsoft. Paul Thurrott has this to say:

I’d argue that Microsoft’s relationships with handset makers is, in fact, its biggest weakness in the mobile market.

I agree that currently, phone OEMs are holding Microsoft back.

Microsoft needs to take control of its future in the smart phone market and it can’t do that unless it makes its own devices or its partner make serious, Apple-like concessions. Guess which one is more likely?

The reason there are Zune-Phone rumors in the first place can only be one of two reasons:

1. Microsoft is already making it. (Signs point to no on this one.)
2. People understand this is probably going to end up as Microsoft's only choice.

Honestly, the OEMs need to be forewarned. Microsoft will give up on you if Windows Mobile doesn't move on up soon. They do prefer you making the phones, but if it doesn't work, they will drop you. Microsoft calls OEMs partners for a reason. Partners both get good out of any relationship, and if that isn't true, then you aren't partners anymore. Get the hint. Shape up or else.

Google Starts Working Against Network Neutrality

Many different articles, starting with the Wall Street Journal have mentioned Google's recent actions against network neutrality.

Of course, typical Google fashion, it sounds nice, but it still breaks network neutrality. Paul Thurrott tells it nicely:

Google notes that its collocation agreements with network providers are not exclusive, so these companies could strike similar deals with other companies. But that doesn't obviate the basic criticism of this plan: It completely bypasses Net Neutrality by ensuring that only the biggest and richest Internet services companies can offer speed advantages to consumers. Such a practice will harm competition and innovation because smaller service providers will be artificially unable to match the performance offered by Google services.

So even though it does help the network providers reduce costs, and traffic, it breaks network neutrality, a golden rule with the Internet. If Google wants to get local servers to speed things up, it should be putting them outside of the ISP's compounds (the edge network thing). Gaming servers are setup like this all the time to defeat latency. Or it can pay ISPs, but not break network neutrality.

Here is how:

Since Google is already trying to do the same thing proposed in Mass Effect, albeit half-heartedly, it should by all means try it. (Mass effect had faster then light travel and communications, but the networks bottlenecked between planets. The way to defeat this was to cache data locally, much like Google is doing right now; however it was done neutrally based on what people accessed.)

Except, it should follow network neutrality by working with other companies (wow a network neutrality group!) to make a cache protocol for commonly used data (all the while keeping privacy standards, and only saving public data like videos, not passwords and bank transactions) to ISPs, and then getting ISPs to adopt this by subsidizing caches inside the ISP's compounds - neutrally of course.

This might take some work, and may also require the traffic sources to prioritize to it, but it should speed things up, like Google wants (especially for Google since it's data is commonly used), but without hurting network neutrality or upsetting consumers, competitors and regulatory experts.

Since Microsoft and Yahoo! have also started to step away from network neutrality as well, this is a big problem. A neutral protocol is the only right way to deal with traffic. As per my blog:

Feature Request: A neutral caching protocol that retains privacy and speeds up and reduces traffic on the ISP end, while retaining network neutrality amongst websites.

Another Thurrott snippet.

My take on this is simple: Google needs to be strongly committed to the letter of Net Neutrality, not the principle. Its current "edge caching" strategy is one that will cut out smaller players entirely, and create a less useful and expansive Internet, and one that is dominated only by the biggest Internet services providers on earth. If Google is successful, the Internet as we know it will disappear and be replaced by the Google Internet. That must not be allowed to happen.

Now replace Google with Yahoo!, Apple, NewsCorp, Microsoft, Amazon, eBay or just about any corporation with a big Internet presence. That is the risk if this is allowed to continue.

A congratulations to the ISPs and telecos that said no to Google's network neutrality breaking caching scheme.

TCO and Microsoft's PR Campaign vs. Business @ the Speed of Thought Thoughts

Idea 1: Microsoft claims that TCO of Windows is cheaper then Linux.

I'm basing this one off of Paul Thurrott's article here, which is about Microsoft claiming the same thing it keeps claiming.

But what really caught my attention was a claim made in the comments (then fought over in typical flame war fashion) that Microsoft has cheaper support (Software Assurance $800 vs. $3,000 for RedHat Linux) over the alternatives. Now it is extremely dubious to base your numbers on a comment in a thread, but it did get me thinking. About a book I once read. By Bill Gates.

The book of course, is about a decade old. But the technology agnostic advice still stands true. The book pretty much talks about a digital nervous system and what that entails. But the part that pertains to TCO suggests using off-the-shelve-components and other similar ideals.

The book urges the use of such cheap components for companies. And then Microsoft does this TCO campaign every so often.

The only hole in it is the large companies who manage their own software extensively. Silicon Valley giants who run Linux, BSD, and variants of such. But maybe this fits in with the teachings of the decade old book?

I'm not going to claim one is cheaper right now, because I'm not currently running a company that needs to crunch those numbers but it is all very interesting. Microsoft positions itself as cheaper then the competition all the time. And that holds into the writings of one of its founders.

Still, with big companies that run their own maintenance and the cost of Linux maintenance coming down this gets harder to do, but it is very interesting all around. Very interesting indeed.