Having a Good Friday?
I have today, Good Friday, off from work. The wife doesn't. And in my history of working, about half my employers have given it as a holiday and the other half didn't. So what's up with this? Here are a few thoughts, all based on observations, but no hard data (so feel free to dispute me in the comments section):

Regional variation - Companies based in the South seem to give it off more than other regions; that whole Bible Belt, Red State/Blue State thing.

Foreign Variation - Asian based companies, including the two I have worked for, seem prone to give it as a holiday. This may be surprising, but keep in mind the very large Christian population in Korea and the fact that Japanese companies, in general, try to keep their foreign workers happy by loading them up with more holidays than many U.S. companies.

Replacement by Non-Religious Holidays - My guess is that some companies wanted to keep constant the number of holidays they gave, and the advent of secular holidays and the wish to deemphasize religious holidays allowed some companies replace Good Friday with MLK Day or another non-denominational day off. In fact, those public schools that give today off usually call it "Spring Weekend" or something else without religious undertones.

Industry Variation - This is where I don't have a feel. I have only worked in tech, which is split. Any observations in other industries?

Update: The Blogosphere is even split: Instapundit is taking today off, but most bloggers seem to be business as usual.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 8:05 AM (Permalink)
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Cellphone Cameras - They're Here, They're Staying
Techdirt links today to several clueless analysts who say that cellphone cameras are just a "fad" or that they should be stomped out (Dvorak is becoming more and more a curmudgeon in his old age). Techdirt (rightly) dismisses these claims, and I am posting here the same comments I left in the Techdirt comment section

These analysts need to get out more as well as look at the history of the digital still camera (DSC), which surpassed film cameras in volume last year. The first DSCs had really poor quality - barely better than toys. Add a learning curve, customer demand and Moore's law and you have great, low cost DSCs on the market today. Same thing is happening to camera phones. Here a few of the camera phone trends:

- 1.3 Megapixel camera phones will be the dominant resolution by numbers sold by the 4Q of this year. In fact, ALL new camera phones by the majors going into production use at LEAST 1.3 megapixels. The only phones with lower resolution are for secondary markets and by the lower tier cellphone manufacturers.

- 2 Megapixel camera phones are already hot items in Japan. Quality on these things is GREAT. The screen swivels back and around so it is pretty close to handling a "real" DSC.

- Market data has worldwide penetration of cameras in cellphones at 25% this year and 33% next year, and it would probably be higher if the supply chain could be managed. Individual cellphone vendors - think the top brands - plan to have as many as 2/3 of the phones they produce to have cameras by the end of this year with no plans to back off that number in 2005, 2006, 2007...in fact it will go up.

- The carriers (Sprint, Verizon, etc.) love them since it raises ARPU - average revenue per user - so are going to eventually give the camera away for free anyway to make more in the monthly statements, which is already pretty much the case in Japan and Korea.

A fad? Just like cellphones themselves are a fad, I guess.

The interesting part will be seeing how all the players in the camera phone supply chain work out and which business models succeed. This is what I am getting paid to do and it is extremely interesting to both watch and participate in.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 9:15 PM (Permalink)
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Outsourcing We Can All Support
I'm agnostic on outsourcing in that it is an economic and business decision best left to individual companies. You know that "freedom" thing we have applies to businesses as well as individuals and the government should butt out or it will just make things worse.

On a personal level, I would prefer that American companies hire fellow 'mericans, but I am not going to get upset or personally malign people who say outsourcing benefits more Americans than its displaces (since it's true). If a company can bend over backwards and structure its business to hire on-shore, great, but if it makes economic sense for that company to hire overseas, I say go for it.

So while in San Francisco last week, I was taking a cab from downtown to SFO and (of course) had a lefty cabbie (whom I will refer to as "LC"). We started talking about outsourcing, and while he was vehemently against it, he thought outsourcing government agencies was a good idea. I thought this was a fun topic to explore, so the two of us - left wing isolationist and right wing free trader - went through the cabinet agencies and discussed what could be outsourced:

Defense, State, Homeland Security - Even Lefty Cabbie felt these were best left stateside. Although many of our men and women in uniform are overseas, they are U.S. citizens and not "outsourced".

Treasury - LC thought we could print our coin and currency overseas to save money. I didn't mention that the U.S. government actually does this for other countries (i.e. we are the "outsourced country" for much of the printing and engraving in the world) since our technology is pretty advanced in this area. There is also the security issue of having the "world currency" printed somewhere else.

Agriculture, Interior, Commerce, Labor - By definition these probably stay state-side, and we both agreed on this (Jim would probably have something to say about outsourcing our park services). Although from an irony standpoint, it would be funny to outsource the Commerce and Labor Departments.

Education - We both agreed this is a pretty worthless bureaucracy. They teach no children. They build no classrooms. Give it to India.

Justice - LC actually didn't have anything bad to say about Ashcroft, but I think he was making sure not to screw his tip. State-side.

Transportation - Even though I loath the person running this, it probably stays here.

Energy - Hell, we already outsource our energy needs. Let's outsource the whole lot of them.

Veterans Affairs - We argued if this was a cabinet level post (I was right - it is), and since our veterans are here, so is this agency.

HHS - To be honest, neither one of us remembered this as a cabinet agency. Since it isn't so important that neither a relatively involved Lefty nor Righty could remember it, let's send it overseas.

HUD - Ditto HHS.

OMB - We didn't remember this one either (it's like HHS and HUD), but I vote for seeing if the Indians can figure out our budget any better than we can.

EPA - I thought this was a full cabinet post, LC thought it was part of Interior. We were both wrong. Like OMB it is a cabinet rank member and he thought should stay here (I thought it should be eliminated, but since I wanted to make it to the airport alive didn't mention this opinion).

Overall, a fun conversation. Just trying to name all the cabinet agencies was half the fun. I gave him a big tip, told him to invest it wisely (hah), and went on my way.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 9:12 PM (Permalink)
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Waffles - It's What's For Breakfast (And Running for President)
Yeah, Google Bombs are sophomoric, but it's a part of the game we play in the blogosphere.

More info on the Waffle Google Bomb. And then there is the Air America thing.

This is getting silly.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 9:22 AM (Permalink)
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The "Uncle" School of Management
My regular readers - if I ever had any - might notice that my blogging has taken a steep downturn lately. This is because my manager is practicing the Uncle Management Method^TM: giving me more and more projects until I yell "uncle!"

I hit that point this week after being assigned yet another project, being loaded to the point that actions are starting to slip through the cracks. In addition, my travel schedule has ramped to 2-3 days a week, and all of this has meant that my blogging career has taken a steep nose dive. When I was first started traveling on this job, I would actually write blogs in the air for later posting, but I don't even have time for that lately.

Not that I am complaining. Being busy and working is much better than sitting and staring out a window all day. I still plan to keep this blog, but it will probably only be a few posts a week until a few of the projects are under control (at which point I will probably get more projects).

posted by Director_Mitch @ 10:37 AM (Permalink)
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