Author Archives: Robert Eastman

Robert Eastman is a consultant, researcher, client services manager, and analyst with experience across discrete, process, and high tech companies. Manager, mentor, trainer for defining, creating, and delivering exceptional value to clients. Bob is continually scouting new ideas, best practices, technologies, opportunities, and exceptional insights that cross traditional boundaries and jurisdictions.

Average lifespan of a major league baseball

February 25, 2011 – 1:30 AM

Tweet of the week candidate! RT @jyarmis: @bobfartall Fact: Average lifespan of a major league baseball: 5 pitches.”

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10 Best Practices For a Better Website

February 17, 2011 – 9:32 AM

Reposted from The SMB Research Blog… Have you read enough pieces yet on what makes a great website? You have probably seen quite a few articles and posts addressing this.  We here at SMB Research know we have seen a lot of material. (SMB Research includes at least one fairly good article on SMB Research’s Top 20 Favorite [...]

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SMB Research’s Top 20 Favorite Reads of 2010

January 5, 2011 – 7:16 AM

What was the best SMB or technology-related piece you read this past year? When we at SMB Research started talking a few weeks ago about what we thought were some of the most interesting and valuable articles from 2010, we realized that once again this year there has been a great deal of very good [...]

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Princeton New Year’s Invitational Competition

December 10, 2010 – 9:54 AM

New post over at the (unaffiliated) Saint Joseph’s University Track & Field and XCountry website, http://sjutrackxcountry.wordpress.com.  (I am not an alumnus, just a fan, and a Saint Joseph’s University parent.)    

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St Joseph’s University Cross Country at Van Cortlandt Park

November 24, 2010 – 10:31 AM

Nancy and I traveled to New York City on Saturday (20th) to watch the St Joseph’s University’s (almost) last Cross Country meet for the season: the IC4A / ECAC (InterCollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America) / (Eastern College Athletic conference) at Van Cortlandt Park in Bronx, New York.

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Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer’s Guide (Sneak Preview)

November 5, 2010 – 10:18 AM

Over on my alter-ego, The SMB Research Blog (re-posted with my own permission…) Data Center Infrastructure Group (DCIG, www.dciginc.com), and SMB Research are nearing completion on the DCIG Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer’s Guide. While you will have to wait just awhile longer, we don’t mind giving you a sneak peek at some of the [...]

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Great Learnings from Boston’s Small Business of the Year Awards

October 15, 2010 – 10:33 AM

SMB Research was very pleased to be able to attend the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce’s 26th Annual Small Business of the Year Awards yesterday (Oct 14, 2010) at the Colonnade Hotel. Emceed by WBZ Radio’s co-Anchor of “WBZ Morning News” Ed Walsh, the event itself was flawlessly put together and efficiently executed, for a [...]

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Vince Papale, St. Joseph’s University Hall of Fame Inductee

October 15, 2010 – 7:59 AM

Interesting to see who St Joseph’s University is inducting into its Athletics Hall of Fame tomorrow, October 16: The roster includes Vince Papale (class of 1968), whose story was told in the movie, Invincible. While the move tells the story of his improbable football career with the Philadelphia Eagles, the story of Mr. Papale’s cross-country [...]

Posted in Arts & Entertainment | Comments (1)

A New Language Found

October 6, 2010 – 8:48 AM

There is a fascinating article, “Rare Find: a New Language”, by Robert Lee Hotz, in today’s (October 6, 2010) Wall Street Journal about a new language, called Koro, discovered in India’s Arunachal Pradesh. The Wall Street Journal reports that there are currently some 6,909 languages existing today (with many of these dying off every year), [...]

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Happy Independence Day, this 4th of July

July 4, 2010 – 9:05 AM

A repost:  Hardly a 4th of July passes that I do not think of some most amazing 4th of July circumstances. No one tells it better than Joseph Ellis in his 2000 book, Founding Brothers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000):

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Happy Bloomsday

June 16, 2010 – 7:41 AM

In honor of James Joyce and Bloomsday, I repost my entry for Bloomsday last year. Another Bloomsday has snuck up on me, as it does every year.  This most famous of literary days – celebrating the single day in the life of Leopold Bloom wandering around Dublin depicted in James Joyce’s book, Ulysses – has [...]

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Steal This Blog Content

April 27, 2010 – 11:24 PM

SMB Research, where I spend much of my time these days, has now had our blog content illegally copied multiple times, and we are, sadly, hardly alone.  It seems apparent that too many people either do not bother to learn the ins and outs of intellectual property and copyright, and how to properly blog, before [...]

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An Introduction to Supply Chain Management from ASU

April 12, 2010 – 10:05 AM

If you are new to the world of supply chain management, there is no dearth of sources and resources for you to tap into to learn what supply chain management is, and what it means for you.  There are also no dearth of sources to find out where these resources are.

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The New Complexity Management

February 18, 2010 – 9:15 AM

I have had a working assumption for awhile – we all have one or a few of these, don’t we? Something to keep the mental gears oiled and in good working order when our minds are not otherwise actively or productively engaged? One of my working assumptions – stay with me on this – is [...]

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Your Bureaucracy is No Excuse (a rant)

January 21, 2010 – 8:22 PM

How is the customer service you have been getting lately? Our customer service should be better than ever, shouldn’t it? After all, the slackers and underperformers have all been laid off.  This should result in our getting better customer service than ever. Sadly, the tale I am about tell is, I fear, more common than [...]

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Sizing up Small-to-Medium Business (SMB)

January 13, 2010 – 1:45 AM

What is the difference between a “small” business, and a “small-to-medium” business?  (caution: shameless self-promotion).  Read my commentary over at the SMB Research Blog.

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Job Satisfaction At an All-Time Low

January 13, 2010 – 1:31 AM

What does it say about us and about the state of our capitalist system that job satisfaction is, according to one report at least, at an all-time low? Everyone, in my opinion, ought to be disappointed and concerned about this. At a time when we have more and much better management education than ever before, [...]

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Do I Know You? Identity Authentication in the Real and Digital Worlds

November 11, 2009 – 2:41 PM

I had occasion recently to sit down to talk with Reliable Identities‘ Wes Kussmaul, accomplished entrepreneur, author, and prolific Internet tinkerer.  Wes experienced early success founding the Delphi Internet service.  (Some of the more seasoned among you may remember Delphi as being one of the early online services, along with CompuServe, Prodigy,  and AOL.) These [...]

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Thoughts and Readings on The Software Maintenance Fee Model

October 26, 2009 – 8:06 PM

As I read the transcript of Oracle’s recent 1Q2010 results, and some analyst reactions to it, I am more and more intrigued by the market forces at work in the third-party support area.  As almost everyone knows, maintenance and support fees are the lifeblood of many enterprise vendors.  While maintenance and support from an end-user’s [...]

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Tweet of the Week – From Tommy Lasorda

October 23, 2009 – 5:25 PM

Tommy Lasorda, officially Special Advisor to the Chairman (as if he really needs a title) of the (just-eliminated-from-the-NLCS) Los Angeles Dodgers proudly proclaimed his initiation into twitter on October 3rd – at the mature age of 82 years old.

Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Culture | Comments (1)

Twitter Down – On U.K.’s National Poetry Day

October 8, 2009 – 1:48 PM

Twitter has been down for some 3+ hours this morning – and it’s National Poetry Day in the U.K. today. No one is going to convince me that this is a coincidence.  Perhaps I have seen too many movies or something, but I feel certain that this Twitter is down because the U.K. wants Twitter [...]

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Passwords (Not) As Easy as 123

October 7, 2009 – 8:02 PM

Wired’s Kim Zetter reports over at the Threat Level blog (“Most Common Hotmail Password Revealed!“) that “a researcher” did a study of the compromised Hotmail, MSN, Live.com passwords and found that “123456″ was the most common password. Are you kidding me?  C’mon people, we can do better than this. If this wasn’t so damn pathetic, [...]

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Supply Chain Risk Management

September 4, 2009 – 1:39 PM

No sooner did I finish reading this morning’s Wall Street Journal article, “Swine Flu Remains Mild as Vaccine Advances” when I saw former colleague’s Bob Ferrari‘s tweet and blog post about his upcoming session on supply chain risk management at the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals 2009 Annual Conference in Chicago.

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Labor Day 2009

September 4, 2009 – 11:26 AM

Netting It Out is not about politics, and never will be. That said, with Labor Day, 2009, upon us, I cannot help but stop to think about our current state of affairs in the employment area.  It is difficult not to be concerned on this  Labor Day:

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Two Looming Afflictions: The Flu, and Depression

September 2, 2009 – 4:12 PM

At the risk of ending your summer on a down note, two recent health-related stories have caught my attention. While these stories would be of interest in their own right, they are of particular interest now, coming during the ongoing debate on U.S. health policy.

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