Rumors Spread by Internet & What To Do About It

Honorable Ajay Prakash Sawhney,

In light of the viral rumors about kidnappers spread by social media such as Facebook and WhatsApp, and the recent mob killings of innocent people, I would advise you to proactively step in to curb rumor-mongering on social media. Proactive communication is particularly critical in this day and age – especially for us looking to engage our communities and fight back rumors online.

You Are Tracking Me

I want to start this blog by saying that one essential part of Internet services providers’ business model is tracking users. Without tracking users and collecting usage data, Internet service providers will not be able to provide services and solutions that are customized to a specific user or user group. So, it is a must for companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and even Apple, to track users. As a savvy user of all these Internet services providers, I am comfortable continuing to use these services. And here is why.

Mandatory Adoption of LastPass, or NOT?

Though 1Password and LastPass are handy tools for students, faculty, and staff to keep the record of their passwords of various websites, these tools will expose the core assets of Harvard Kennedy School to significant cybersecurity risks, if the school mandates all employees and students to use these tools.

I am the CIO for Massachusetts

Governor, imagine the Government of Massachusetts acting as an intermediary: facilitating collaboration, connecting people and providers and coordinating ground-breaking public service delivery models. Government as a Platform (GaaP) is the foundation that allows the government like us and non-governmental organizations to delivery next-generation public services to everyone who is working and living in Massachusetts.

What a Failure

This is about the failure of my short-lived start-up: BetterFood+. 

The idea was to promote the importance of having breakfast and the concept of healthy breakfast to the group of white-collars in metropolises in China. We wanted to adopt the subscriber model and enable the users to pre-order their (hopefully healthy) breakfast for the next one week. After receiving their orders, we would prepare their breakfast by leveraging both in-house capability and outsourced suppliers and by also strategically considering the food’s shelf-life. In the last step, we would station at certain central business districts during specific timeframe to deliver pre-packaged breakfast to paid users on a daily basis. The idea was simple but the complexity of operation was way beyond our capability and imagination. Even though we started from a “minimum variable product (MVP)” and tried to test the product-market fit as much as possible, we couldn’t manage the actual monetary cost of operation during the initial testing period, the unexpected talent drain quickly after the launch, and the most lethal attack to a start-up: offering a product / service that no one wants. After a brief, one-month operation, we shut it down.