Credit card fraud and stalled innovation

A set of credit cards and a keyboard. Credit card fraud is just a click away.

Credit card fraud has always fascinated me. I am intrigued by how easy it is for the criminals. I am astonished at how little is being done to stop it. I wonder why proven solutions are not being rolled out. Innovation is too slow in this area. Scroll down if…

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Legacy systems, a definition

Legacy systems come in many forms, here a Data I/O Model 29B

When we want to replace software systems, we often start calling them legacy systems. Sometimes we call legacy after we have made the decision to switch. Sometimes legacy is used as a pejorative to precipitate change. Keep reading for a discussion on a definition of legacy systems.

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Switcher’s curse and legacy decisions

These dolls have been cursed with switcher's curse maybe.

Switcher’s curse is about conservatism in a world of constant change. There are many fallacies and biases which cause us to stick to legacy decisions. Switcher’s curse is a a fallacy that causes us to switch when we should stay. Keep reading about the challenges of legacy and how to…

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Security backlash in the henhouse

The flock is surprised. A chain link fence blocks their access to the front yard.

I had a grand plan, but something happened. I was going to automate my little hobby henhouse. I created a video and a blog post where I reached out to all of you for support. And you responded: you sent me comments and blog posts. Henrik Söderqvist went as far…

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When cloud services disappear

A can of fermented baltic herring - all you have left when your cloud service disappears?

When Nest decided to brick all Revolv devices they gave us a strong reminder: sometimes cloud services disappear! When the once search giant Altavista petered out, no one cared and few noticed. The users had already moved on to Bing, Yahoo or Google. Perhaps a few young people reacted, reminded…

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Fail fast applied

Casimir Artmann in a meeting room

When I wrote about the fail fast fallacy, Gene Hughson and Casimir Artmann replied on their blogs: “the need for design” and “fail is not an option“. We decided to create a video together to get a more lively discussion going. Gene asked us how well our joint video was…

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The fail fast fallacy

A bunch of lemmings rushing over the edge of the abyss. Is this how the fail fast people treat innovations?

Is fail fast a fallacy? It didn’t take long before Microsoft had to take Tay offline. The story made a big splash online, with many news sites writing about it and friends alerting friends on social media. Business Insider wrote that it was “hugely embarrassing for the company.” Wall Street…

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Technology permeats innovation

An engineer in the throes of innovation?

Casimir Artmann asked “is this innovation” on his blog. This sparked a debate on Yammer (sorry, internal, cannot share it with you) about what the IT department can do in the innovation space. One of the commenters pointed out that innovation cannot start in IT. It has to flow from…

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Worthless ideas and valuable innovation

Ideas as lightbulbs. How much are they worth?

Information is so durable that not even a black hole can destroy it. So what happens with a ubiquitous commodity that is more durable than even space itself? It quickly becomes worthless, even worse than worthless. Consider ideas: no sooner do people come up with ideas than they try to…

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Innovation – Resistance is Futile

Resistance is futile

The great white sharks have been swimming in the oceans for eons, some sixteen million years at least. Will the great whites be disrupted from the oceanic ecosystem after having survived so many changes in the past? It does not seem very likely. Nor did it seem very likely to…

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