Monthly Archives: February 2009

EarthLink, Short Term Profit but Long Term?

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I worked for EarthLink three different times so it always holds a special place in my heart. It is tough to read things like this though. With all the cuts they’ve done, they were profitable in 2008 but really what does the future hold?

I’ve talked to the few people still there and it really is just a skeleton operation technically and eventually that will need to be cut. It really is too bad since there was always so much promise but really not as much execution.

All of this leaves EarthLink without a clear growth strategy. Once dial-up dies off, the company has no wireless or fixed infrastructure of its own to offer competing services. And even though cost-cutting has helped the company return to profitability, it won’t help solve the company’s fundamental problem, which is a lack of future strategy.

The Numerati

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If asked for a list of books which give a basic overview of the things I do as a coder, I usually suggest Microserfs, Hackers and Painters and maybe something like The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Now though, I think I’ll add The Numerati to that list. It isn’t that my work makes me one of the Numerati but it does give a view of how the world is changing and what sorts of things computer systems will be handing in the future.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. My only quibble was the lack of real meat in the discussion about the math and the systems but it’s understandable since this was a book for the mainstream not geeks like me.

The ability to take large amounts of data and analyze it would seem to be something only companies would be able to do but I think individuals can do their own now. You could use the combination of EC2, Hadoop and Mahout and become a Numerati yourself.