Michael Maoz

All I wanted was to order a replacement cartridge for my ink-swilling HP OfficeJet 5610, standard issue. I went to the site where our company has a corporate account. Nice search feature. But I wonder how much this cartridge costs versus a competitor? Now THAT would be interesting. But 692 reviews of a product that [...]

[Read more →]

One of the first discussions parents used to have with their children as they emerged into teenagers might have been dating, jobs, savings, and responsibility. But it wasn’t mine with my oldest daughters. It was not about the person they are, but about the persona they want to be known by on the internet.  As [...]

[Read more →]

One great part about summer is the spike in non-work related conversations. Weekends at the shore, dinner with friends, tennis with university and graduate students from near and far. I can’t leave well enough alone, though, and usually start asking questions about how others use technology, and specifically their use of mobile devices and the [...]

[Read more →]

If there were 100,000,000 leaders, would anyone be a leader? I’ve thought about this since beginning the process of having an occassional weblog. Every now and then I get a stinger email from a reader that includes a reference to the head of someone elses religion (mine has no head, which likely explains why I [...]

[Read more →]

The joys of home ownership. Mortgages, cleaning services, lawns, plumbers, roofers, electricians, carpenters – it’s like you have hooked up a powerful vacuum cleaner to siphon off your cash from a declining asset class. But it does give a person a view into the world of consumer retail operations from the outside. It’s not that [...]

[Read more →]

As I listened to the US President Barack Obama answer questions about healthcare reform Wednesday night on television, my mind kept going over the scenarios from my own family: on forms submissions, claims to insurance companies, incorrectly-cancelled services, failed notifications, denials of coverage, faulty claims codings, failures to inform or support – that my family [...]

[Read more →]

After 11 years living in the United States, I moved homes. There is a lot to learn about deceptive business practices from realtors and bankers, and about insurance companies that automatically raise your rates because you have a less-tony postal code (but 11 years without a claim).
What really struck me during the move was the [...]

[Read more →]

Buyers of goods and services have certain intentions in mind when they establish a business relationship with a business. In the case of health insurance it is to stay insured in time of need. You think that is obvious as an unbiased outsider, but most insurance companies breaks the implicit promise in their relationships by failing [...]

[Read more →]

Watching the Google Waves from the near distance, searching Topsy for something about Turvy but knowing only Bing would understand my true context, I listened to Mahler’s cowbells and mandolin in Symphony #7 and waited. Yeah, it sounds nuts, and it is pretty spacey. Just like when I am on a conference call with a [...]

[Read more →]