The biggest start-up in the world or an old behemoth trying to buy its way out of an early grave?

  

Unquestionably, the recruitment and hitching of Marissa Mayer's star to the aging, aching, ailing Yahoo brand and logo could only have been viewed as a positive move for a company that had completely lost touch with the times it lived in, and had thus left many with few reasons to believe. Anymore.  

Yahoo somehow had let it all slip away; formerly glittering bejewelled crystals of sand poured out through the widening pores of a veritable pillar of salt of their very own making, converted into a cold, hard new composite that was interlaced with the reality that the dream was almost over. 

It piled up around the foundations, and walls, and once it began to seal off the windows and cut off the light, a previously precious "warmth" was gone. And there's a huge difference between feeling "cold" and looking "cool" in the high stakes business of high tech - or in this case, make that mobile tech.

Marissa has been on a shopping spree like almost no other for the past year, and has thrown some twenty-plus start-ups into her shopping cart (presumably using a much more mobile-friendly and up-to-date provider for the online transactions!) since taking the reins at Yahoo. Kudos to her for realising that the linchpins of the company's online image and business, Yahoo News, Yahoo.com and various online communication tools all needed a serious kick in their low-tech rears. 

But it's historically been all about advertising, and less about end users of Yahoo. My men on the street tell me that today there is a whole new vibe (maaan) on the 17th floor of their Manhattan offices, with a clear and purposeful switch to start-up atmosphere with teams of engineers running amok riding the new wave. Someone smart (I wonder who?!) made the conclusion that mobile media (make that mobile life!) was the way forward - yet there won't be any Nobel prizes for coming up with that pearl of wisdom. At other companies, it is neither the way forward nor the future. Why? Because that "future" is already here - it is now. Today.

The fact that Yahoo are so far behind is a total indictment of how long and how deeply they have been asleep at the wheel. Somehow, as a shareholder, pictures like the one above, with Ms. Mayer arm-in-arm with a bunch of kids and tech geeks, does not exactly make me go all warm and fuzzy nor all "oh-ah" as I check the share prices which are far from romantic. Profits rose recently, but revenue had slipped, again. 

"I'm pleased with Yahoo!'s performance in the first quarter," Mayer said in April, 2013. 

"I'm confident that the improvements we're making to our products will set up the company for long-term growth."

While I am glad that our Marissa has confidence, that is hardly a surprise for such an over-achiever, yet it is not enough to keep most of us warm at night. They can create a tech locker room nerdy boys club type of office all they want, and engineer the bejesus out of their creaky old rusty ship but there is one critical aspect that I think that Ms. Mayer should not let get buried in her clear desire to be "one of the lads" - hmm, better make that "one of the lasses" so I don't get bullwhipped for being sexist or politically inappropriate, via some social media tool, on some no doubt ultra-modern uber-mobile technology!

To what do I refer? Well, we will have to go back to web presence 101 for that one. It was called "web content" for a very good reason. I continue to be appalled at the lacklustre (often that's at best, sadly) and much too occasionally woeful excuse (at worst) for content that appears on many news items and blog posts directly associated with the Yahoo brand. 

It's all very well recreating the great-free-snacks-and-pinball-machines-and-basketball-hoops playroom already hash(tagg)ed to death by the likes of Microsoft, Google and Facebook - but engineering can only do so much. You can build the most accurate and pristinely perfected car out of some magnificent engineering, all you want, but what if someone fills the tank with diesel and not fine grade unleaded? It's not going to be long before the inevitable stall.

It's all about end user and that user's experience, hands on, when it comes down to it. Mobile versions of the major Yahoo online offerings will only carry the car so far - unless the gas fueling it is of the highest quality possible. In this case, the analogy is that the content is the gas. You can go ahead and spend millions developing the new tools, but unless you attend to issues to do with the content accessed by those tools - you can forget it. Content is king, with a capital K, and there is still much work to be done.

Now it's not shocking that Ms. Mayer is heavily focused on engineering and product development - that's her core expertise. But as CEO, she needs to dive into the deeper end of uncharted waters, and address the content posted with the Yahoo brand tagged to it, especially the Canadian franchise. There are still way too many posts (blogs in particular) with titles and a blank space beneath, or a sloppily written excuse for content with typos, grammatical errors and words that mean nothing at all - collectively implying that the people she called back to head offices for "phoning-it-in" continue to do so - only they do it now from head office. Need an example? Here is an opening sentence on a blog from today, October 10, 2013, on the announcement of the first Canadian writer to win the Nobel prize for literature:

"Celebrated Canadian short-story writer Alice Munro, who announced her retirement earlier this year, has won the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Canadian-based to earn the honour."

Did you spot it? These people ripped Yahoo off, and I sincerely hope she knows it. There were one or two names in particular who regularly posted titles with zero content, and I have a funny feeling that these people billed Yahoo for producing "x"such pieces per month, and no one bothered to check the content. Or the blank space beneath the title. It was, is, and should always be a total professional embarrassment to all senior management at Yahoo, and that means Ms. Mayer too. 

Yes, I know she bought tumblr, thereby accessing some real content (making a nice change), but it cost her over a billion dollars to do so. It's hard to call your company "The biggest start-up in the world" when you can afford to buy other real start-ups for over one billion dollars to boost your own brand! To date she has acquired over twenty of those real start-ups. 

In terms of content, calling Yahoo a "big start-up" is disingenuous. It's only like a start-up in terms of where it's not today, in relation to where it should be, already being a household name and part of the zeitgeist. Yahoo the "start-up" is a true oxymoron. One that Ms. Mayer is not going to get away with much longer. Yahoo will officially be a 20-year-old in 2014, and guess what - it's time to grow up. "Girl, you'll be a woman, soon!" [Urge Overkill, natch!]

But ya gotta give the girl a break - she's trying, at least. It probably is a little cooler to be a yahoo today. But the baby is all grown up, or should be. And we had a honeymoon, which is shortly going to be over too. Either Mayer and Yahoo deliver on the promise of transporting the brand into this decade (or beyond) or I fear that Ms. Mayer will be visiting that beyond in the form of the circumference outside Yahoo world, maybe even before all those young engineers hit their big 3-0. 

Marissa - we think you can do it. You probably know you can do it. But engineering is just the mechanics. You need the gas and you need the best drivers - and that can only come with a renewed and reinvigorated overhaul of that dirty word - content. When the day comes that you can look into the Yahoo mirror on the wall, and tell it that you are more than content with your content, then that's the day to yell "Woohoo" into the mirror of Yahoo! ;) - Kevin Mc 

A lunchtime eaten up by the magic in the molecules!

"What I would do is come up with an expression that while being even bizarre, could readily summarize the order, and be readily memorable. It raised an important question for which there was no clear answer: is it okay to remember the ordering of my alluring alkanes by not wasting my time on memorization, but by creativity, and then use the precious time to go further ahead in the textbook? 

This approach was the alternative to having to repeat-repeat-repeat things in my head, which was as boring as Sundays, and did not seem to require “intelligence”, in my mind. I did my best to construct grammatically correct (or bloody close!) sentences for my tools of the trade, so then I was performing a service to both English grammar and literature. “May Edward punch Bob?” is a perfect sentence, with a subject, an object, a verb and punctuation. Even Mrs. Crawford would be forced to concur, under enormous pressure from the Judge, as an expert witness for the prosecution.

“I would remind the witness that we are not here to debate the relative virtue of the English language, as compared to organic chemistry. No! Answer the question, Madam, or I will have you in contempt! Is the sentence that young Carrington constructed to outline the ordered ascension of the alkane series grammatically correct or not?

“Yes, your honour, but…..”

“Silence! Yes or no will suffice, Madam. I must instruct the jury to acquit, given that we are not here to compare chemistry with English. Rather we are here to decide if there has been an abusive misuse of the “Beloved Bard’s” language, in a chemistry class. In the latter question, even the expert witness for the prosecution has been forced to admit that Carrington’s grammar was sound.”

“Objection!”

Overruled, counsel. Bailiff, unchain the defendant. Young man you are free to go, and you can continue to use perfectly constructed sentences as a tool of the trade in the pursuit of your beloved chemistry.

I knew that the Judge would see things my way!

In Stephen McConkey’s case, like myself and molecules, he literally had numbers running through his head, 24/7. He used to remind me of those slot machines in the arcade, with the wheels turning, sequentially ending up with three red strawberries. You could see McConkey’s eyes glaze over, the cogs racing, and then the numbers appearing in his eyes, as he had the answer.

“Max, we have just completed half of our day at school, this means we have only three point five hours to go, or, two hundred and ten minutes, or if you prefer, twelve thousand six hundred seconds, or at an extreme, twelve point six million milliseconds to go until freedom! Not bad Max!”

It wasn’t that he had actually learned that, per se. It was that he had a calculator for a brain, and once the penny was dropped into the slot, boom, the wheels turned and the numbers flew, and out popped the answer. So he had a gift, and he used it to sail through any mathematical problem. Most of us loved it, but it sometimes came with a derisive retort from a boy who hated school with a passion.

“McConkey, I am gonna slap you. You manage to take the good news that half the day is finally over, but manage to take what’s left and magnify it up by millions!”

Similarly, Parker Cornell also had chemistry in his veins; he lived, breathed and probably shat out more chemistry than most boys ever learned about the subject. It used to amaze me how a boy (or girl) could come to school, see a subject they had never taken before, and be so brilliant at it. It was as if it was in their genes or something. Parker was a star, from day one. What I loved about him was the fact that he was never arrogant or cocky about it, he just talked to you about it like some old professor from Oxford or Cambridge. 

“No, Max. That’s not how it works. Vulcanization has nothing to do with Star Trek, at all. It is a process where polymer molecules are cross-linked and cured, in the presence of sulphur atoms, forming an extremely strong covalently-linked polymer, used in the manufacture of rubber. It is used in, for example, car tires. No big shock that the process was discovered by none other than Goodyear, in 1839.”

He would correct you without a moment of humour, or condescension. He also had a photographic memory, which made him a double threat. We would test him occasionally, bringing in a page from a chemistry book two years ahead of where we were, let him look at it, then ask him questions. He had it. But he was one of those boys who had the gift, but was not a sociable one, nor was made for regular society. He stood out, but only quietly, preferring not to be noticed and wanting no attention. Of course, these type of kids usually had a rough time of it for being swots, but he seemed to escape the focus. One time though, a boy from the year above us started picking on him in the line for the canteen, calling him a woman, and a swot and kicking his ankles. 

Poor Parker, he really had no idea what to do and it was painful to watch. I had been there often enough, and I didn’t need any more kicking myself. But the hero of our year arrived at a perfect moment. The thing I loved about Rodney was he was a man’s man, tough as nails, but never once in seven years of school did I see him pick on anyone weaker than himself. He only picked on boys older than himself, if they went looking for it. When he saw an older boy who was not even particularly hard, picking on an easy target from our year, he would step in and take control of the situation. He beat the living shit out of the boy who had picked on Parker, warning him at the end that if he ever spoke to Parker again, he was a dead man. 

Word spread real fast, and Parker Cornell never had a tough moment again in that school. Rodney knew Parker was not cut out for it, he just wanted to be left alone to do chemistry, and he never bothered anyone while doing it. So he was now a “free” man. Shaking hands afterwards, they made a strange couple, cut from entirely the opposite ends of life’s rich tapestry. On the one hand, there was Parker, a soft lad, rotund, soft spoken, shy, who hated sports and was truly academically brilliant. Then we had Rodney, a tough guy, athletically built, confidence pouring out of every pore, a ladies man, fantastic at all sports, and academically uninterested. 

“Thanks a lot, Rodney, I didn’t expect you to help, but I am sure grateful that you did, he would have killed me, I know.”

“No worries Parker, but I will expect you to let me look over your shoulder in multiple choice tests in chemistry from now on, haha! My God, if I can get even half of your score in chemistry, my parents will be convinced I must have cheated, haha!”

This would be a classic example of symbiosis, I thought. Two different species co-existing together and both benefiting from the situation. The tough guy and the swot, one benefiting via protection from parasites and attack from superior specimens, the other benefiting via being able to utilize other forms of survival skills. We all were good at different things, but if we were to combine our gifts, we might be unstoppable, and we could rule the world! In an ironic twist of fate, the boy who had picked on Parker, and got sorted by Rodney, would take his own life by carbon monoxide poisoning in the garage at home, a few years later.

So, yes, some people just had natural learning gifts, which gave them huge advantage over everyone else. I decided that any little trick I could employ to even the score somewhat would be allowed. May Edward punch Bob was burned in my memory. As were many other expressions. All was fair in love and war, and school, as I said, was war. Anyway, no one keeps all this stuff in their heads forever, you only had to learn it now, to move on. As adults there are no more exams, and you can easily go to a book or the computer to check on which chemical does this or that. So we do what we have to do to get to the point where we don’t need to do exams anymore and can just enjoy doing what we love, which is experiments!

More and more experiments, with my beloved magical molecules...."

[Excerpted from THE MOLECULES  by Kevin Mc - available now on Kindle at Amazon]

Pacificism or the red line - it's a very fine line in an increasingly complicated world!

It was hardly a struggle to find a subject of relevance to discuss this week, what with the crisis in Syria deepening and the congregation of military might that has been arriving in the Mediterranean Sea over the last weeks. Things have surely and sorely come to a head and the question now is clear: what is Barack Obama (and the rest of the world) going to do about it?

Obama called for an end to Assad's dictatorship back during the "Arab Spring" of 2011, though there was little done to follow through on that demand, but it probably solidified Assad's resolve to not let America further dictate it's own agenda to countries it has no business meddling in - Assad had seen the result of that meddling, as we all have. So Assad and his regime dug their heels in deep against the rebels and fully engaged the civil war that continues on over two years later.

The President himself did not retain full support for his stand on Syria when he made public his sentiment that the use of any chemical weapons in Syria would be a "red line" - the reason that this created a problem is that it essentially implies that one is forced to take action when that red line has been crossed - unless one is prepared to lose credibility and come off as a blowhard and yet inherently weak. He tied his own hands with his red line speech.

You know? I think the world, and certainly the youth of the world, might still today have a very different take on this man than what became his reality, and/or is now more evident after more than four years in power. It is quite poignant to this writer that a man who was given a Nobel Peace Prize (for essentially having achieved nothing at that time) is the President who has also ordered more drone kill strikes from remote control posts than even his predecessor, George Bush.

For someone who was seen as a pacifist, and who got elected in essence to end two wars, he has quietly expanded Bush's drone program and killed more of the "evil-doers" in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen than ol' George and all the other presidents combined. And for the record, he has gone on the record to state that he is not against war, per se, only "dumb wars". He mustn't have seen Afghanistan as a dumb war because he did send out an additional 33,000 troops as part of "the surge" in 2010, of which many at home did not approve. 

It can't have been easy for someone who ran on and was viewed as being a pacifist, but who entered power in a situation involving two major ongoing wars and a less geographically defined "global war" against terror. I think everyone thought that both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would be mere history shortly after his tenure began, but that was hardly the case. Just as he promised to close "Gitmo" as an election promise, yet to this day the naval base at Guantanamo Bay is fully operational and still houses close to 200 prisoners. 

A supposed pacifist became a reluctant wartime president who has run into trouble even on home soil for the sheer volume of executions-by-drone that he has ordered in countries over which the US has no legal authority. Now, given his "red line", we are faced with the US launching missiles into yet another country in the middle east, the full consequences of which are hard to predict in such an unstable part of the world in such times of global instability. 

Putin has made it clear he does not approve of military strikes and there are Russian ships in the vicinity, including some recent new deployments to the region which are hardly coincidental, as the Russians have implied. Interestingly, the fiercely loyal David Cameron of the UK has been forced to pull out of supporting the move and this strengthens Putin's warnings to the US that it must not take military action against Assad and Syria. 

But what to do? With over 100,000 people killed since the civil war began, and apparently increasing evidence that chemical weapons have been used, and the UN inspectors now safely out of harm's way, Obama feels forced to act. Quite how much of his desire to act comes purely out of concern for those on the ground, or, as a way to rekindle support during the latter years of his rather miscalculated presidential term and leave a stronger legacy, well, I will leave that one to the history books! But overall it is probably wise to give him the benefit of the doubt. 

Perhaps the most telling thoughts come from the man himself:

"I respect the views of those who call for caution, particularly as our country emerges from a time of war that I was elected in part to end. But if we really do want to turn away from taking appropriate action in the face of such an unspeakable outrage, then we must acknowledge the costs of doing nothing," he said recently in reference to his decision. 

I tend to agree with him regarding his comments that basically we all think something should be done but we all also enjoy the luxury of not having to be the one who rubber stamps it or actually does it. 

"Frankly, you know, part of the challenge that we end up with here is that a lot of people think something should be done, but nobody wants to do it.",  Obama said on Friday.

Ironically, the consequences in the middle east might be manageable given that various Arab countries are also outraged at the use of chemical weapons, but it might be further north in Russia where things could get very shaky. Putin is a loose cannon who stands behind Syria, and we all know he likes to get under Obama's skin when he can. But surely not even he is stupid enough to escalate this into something more, and return us to, at best, a new cold war, or by far at worst, some totally pointless version of WWIII. 

In any case, and considering that the UK has pulled its support, Obama asked Congress to weigh in on and back his decision to hit Syria with Tomahawk cruise missiles that can hit a target with an accuracy of fifteen feet or less when fired from open waters. By asking for complicity, this move ultimately should reflect the will of the American people, and not just its administration.

Given what occurred in Syria, it is an extremely delicate and tough decision to make; one that only the President himself can sanction when it comes right down to it. I don't envy him that decision, but then again, that's why he gets paid the big bucks and gets all the fame and glory that he enjoys so much. 

My big decision now is whether to get my butler to bring me another pot of Demonic Dark Roast, sourced in deepest Brazil, or whether the morning is sufficiently developed to allow one to partake of a stiff bloody mary with fresh ground mixed pepper grains and an extra splash of hot sauce! ;) - Kevin Mc