Linux Foundation Announces "We're Linux" Winner

In December 2008 The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, launched a “We’re Linux” video contest. The goal of this contest was to get linux fans around the world to create a one minute video to further the adoption of the Linux operating system. On April 9, 2009, The Linux Foundation announced the winner.

I have watched the winning video and the two runners-up. The videos are well done and as a Linux fan I like them, but if I was a MAC or PC user they would not get me interested to try Linux. I am the type of person that needs a little bit of substance. If the target audience for this competition is non-Linux users, I believe the target audience has been missed. Apple and Microsoft are able to spend millions of dollars on all sorts of research to uncover the the needs of their target audience and that gives them an advantage over their open source competitors. Having said that, the winning video is evocative. This is the winning video.

The next video is the first of the two runners-up. The visuals are very interesting and engaging. I could see this video appeal to those with strong visual arts backgrounds.


The Origin… from Agustin Eguia on Vimeo.

The second of the two runners-up videos is French and a lot of fun.  It is also comedic in tone. To me, this video is for Linux users and not non-Linux users.

I spent more time at The Linux Foundation website and I found a Linux video submission that speaks to me, a computer power user. What I like most about this video is that it is direct and to the point. When you watch, you know who extactly the video is speaking too. This is a good starting concept. I would have liked to see this ad with better copy, visuals and music. If this video was as polished as the first two, maybe it would have won or been a runners-up.

@dmgerbino

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Next Version of Ubuntu - 9.04

The Ubuntu developers will be releasing the next version, 9.04, on April 23, 2009.

The feature I am most looking forward to is desktop UI Gnome 2.26 with its much improved CD burning capabilitis. The Gnome website says “Although previous versions of Gnome already had an easy way to burn CDs and DVDs, as of GNOME 2.26 this has been expanded to a whole application dedicated to disc creation: Brasero.”

The developers also worked to significantly improve the already fast boot perfromance.

I have been using Ubuntu since version 7.04 and every release has seen this Linux distribution get better and better.

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Improving Your Bank Efficiency Ratio - Part 1

One of the ratios closely watched in the banking community is the efficiency ratio. The efficiency ratio is defined as Non-Interest Expense divided by the sum of Net Interest Income and Non-Interest Income. The lower the ratio the better.

An example of efficiency ratio from Wikipedia is as follows:

“If expenses are $40 and revenue is $80 (perhaps net of interest revenue/expense) the efficiency ratio is 0.5 or 50% (40/80). Efficiency ratio is essentially how much you spend to make a dollar. In the above example, they spent $0.50 for every dollar they earned in revenue.”

In today’s down economy, companies are laying off employees and budgets are being cut. These are expense saves and many companies try to improve their efficiency ratio by way of expense saves. I am all for reducing wasteful spending, but now is the time to sell. The turmoil with the big money center banks is perfect for all us community banks to take business away from the big banks.

So what is the plan? Let’s keep it simple. We should all do the following:

  1. Protect your existing customer base. Make sure you know who your best customers are and keep them happy. These are not just your most profitable customers but also your champions, those customers that like to talk about you and refer you to others.
  2. Increase your service and products per household. Do you know how many of your customers only have savings products and no checking products? How many checking customers who have no savings products? Customers with out debit cards or not using their debit card? What about internet banking, bill pay, direct deposit, eStatement status? All these products and services add spread income, non-interest fee income, reduce expense and affect the customer life time value.
  3. Focus on acquiring deposit rich customers. A simple segmentation strategy within small business and retail markets that focuses on high average non-interest deposits should be your focus.

These simple strategic steps will have a far greater effect on lowering your efficiency ratio than cutting expenses. They will also improve your bank’s profitability.

The ideas above are a simple broad stroke of what can be done simply. Each institution has its own capabilities to refine further for efficiency and maximum impact.

What are your thoughts?

Part 2 of this series will further explore protecting your existing customer base.

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New York Times Home Delivery Issues

I told many people about my New York Times #NYT delivery guy waking me up Sunday morning at 6:45am by using the door knocker until I woke up.

Everyone I told, thought the delivery guy was nuts for doing that. I am glad I reported the behavior to the NYT customer care center.

Why did the NYT home delivery guy wake me up? Because I dared to call and complain that for two Saturdays in a row, I only got the Sunday advance sections and no Saturday paper. I really liked the New York Times customer service reps comments about the home delivery guy waking me up by saying he is not supposed to do that. DUH!

New York Times Home Delivery = Fail

New York Times Customer Service = Pass

@dmgerbino

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Ubuntu 8.04 LTS - First Impressions Part Two

I spent some time this weekend exporing the new Linux Ubuntu 8.04 release. As I said in part one, I really enjoy how much snappier it is. All weekend long I made sure the 3D UI, compiz, was turned on. I found it to be much smoother then in the previous two versions.

During my second round of testing I focused on my Citrix connection to work.  I had no issues and with the 3D UI turned on I actually got some of the fancy window open and close affects witht he Citrix windows that were running on a Windows 2003 server at work.

I played several type of videos at several sites, YouTube etc and had no issues.

The only glitch which I shoud report, is the Update program leaves windows fragments on the desktop after checking for updates.

So  what is the bottome line? For me, I got a whle,bunch of updates, the core OS, the UI, and many programs and continued using my computer without any major issues. To me the is a huge success.

I strongly urge you to give Ubuntu a try.

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Ubuntu 8.04 LTS – First Impressions

I upgraded my Linux installation on my Toshiba Tecra M2-S430 laptop from Ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 LTS. For those of you not familiar with Ubuntu, it updates every six months. However, they started a Long Term Support (LTS) version for those who do not want to upgrade every six months. LTS versions receive support for three years.

I used the upgrade feature from within my install, clicked a couple of confirmation boxes and went to bed. I woke up to find the upgrade complete and just one more confirmation box to cleanup the install. A few minutes later I re-booted and I was on the new version.

My very first impression was this is faster. The Gnome interface, the browser and even Open Office all while running the advanced 3D interface (Combiz).

The only negative so far is two applications that were installed outside of the built in install program did not work. One was a beta product (hey it’s a beta) and the other was the Citrix client which could be due to Ubuntu running Firefox beta.

Over the weekend I will do more testing.

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What the Hell is Wubi? - Ubuntu Linux 8.04

What is Wubi? The Wubi website says “Wubi is a Ubuntu installer for Windows users that will bring you into the Linux world with a single click. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other application. If you heard about Linux and Ubuntu, if you wanted to try them but you were afraid, Wubi is for you.”

I first used Wubi with the 7.04 release of Ubuntu Linux. I has been wanting to install Linux on my Toshba Tecra laptop for quite awhile but I never had the time to clean things up and repartition the hard drive.  Activities that require advanced PC skill which I have. I heard that WUBI can install Linux into a virtual drive on my Windows XP system. I cleaned up 5 gigs of space and within minutes I had a working Linux computer.

I stayed with this install until the 7.10 release came out last October (2006). My linux install was stable and I was able to continue to work as I had before. I got to learn a few new apps and all was good. Well the system ran a bit slow. The hard drive was trashing and I as running Linux in a non standard fashion. So I backed up my system to I could split my meager 40gb hard drive into 2 partitions. I took my freshly burned Ubuntu 7.10 CD and installed Ubuntu Linux 7.10. The install automatically re-partitioned my drive. The install was just as simple as a Windows install. Since this new install was a native Linux install it ran much faster than my Wubi install. 

So what did Wubi do for me? It got me to test Linux. There is always the LiveCD method but a disk based install is better.

What is great about the next version of Ubuntu Linux, version 8.0, is that Wubi is a part of the install so you can test it. This is what the offical Ubuntu site has to say, “

Wubi

There is a new installation option for Windows users. Wubi allows users to install and uninstall Ubuntu like any other Windows application. It does not require a dedicated partition, nor does it affect the existing bootloader, yet users can experience a dual-boot setup almost identical to a full installation. Wubi works with a physical CD or in stand-alone mode, by downloading an appropriate ISO to install from. It can be found on the root of the CD as Wubi.exe. A full installation within a dedicated partition is still recommended, but Wubi is a great way to try Ubuntu for a few days and weeks before committing dedicated disk resources.”

 
If you are a Windows user I challenge you to give it a try when Ubuntu 8.04 is released later this week.

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Person 2 Person Lending - P2P

Mashable.com published an article this afteroon titled, “5 Ways to Lend Online”. It still amazes me how many people in banking have never heard of person 2 person lending, a disruptive lending practice dating back to at least the summer of 2005. In the summer of 2005 Zopa.com started in the United Kingdom. I first became aware of P2P lending in February of 2006 when I read Interview with P2P Lender Prosper’s Chris Larsen By Jim Bruene of  NetBanker.com. Ever since then I have continue to read and study these new services. When I would discuss this with bankers I would get comments like only people who we do not lend to would use this kind of service or businesses would never use something like this. Well they were wrong on both accounts. People with great credit are using these services as are small businesses.

This type of lending will start to affect banks and credit unions. The volume is still small but it is growing so we do need to watch. If you are curious about some of the current statisrtics regarding P2P lending you can read the First Quarter 2008 results for Prosper and LendingClub courtesy of NetBanker.

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Save the Pies for Desert

I have never understood the wide use of pie charts. Through most of my 20+ year career I have done my best to avoid them, only giving in to senior management when I knew it is a losing battle. Early in my career, I did use pie charts. What led me to stop using them was how they distorted the data or how the visual relationships were misread. I must admit, there is one perfect pie chart and it can be seen below. The main link to this post titled “Save the Pies for Desert”, was published by Data Visualization expert Stephen Few in July/August 2007. This and other articles can be found in the library section of his perceptualedge.com web site.

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