A random blog

This blog is moving.

2006-07-04T11:24:00.000-05:00

Well, I finally got around to setting up my own domain and new blog. So this will be the last post for this blog. The new blog will be located at: www.brandonwhichard.com. Here is the new RSS feed for those of you using feed readers.

As my friend is fond of saying, you could give away bars of gold and people would complain about how heavy they are. So with that in mind, I'd like to say thanks to the Blogger team for all their free service for the last several years.

See you at the new blog.

Identity Management Buzz: Episode 2

2006-06-25T00:01:00.000-05:00

The second episode the Identity Management Buzz is now available. You can subscribe to the podcast RSS Feed here. You may also subscribe using this iTunes link. There is also a link below to the Odeo version for those that wish to listen directly in your browser.

powered by ODEO

Scruming

2006-06-19T23:08:00.000-05:00

I am well on my way to becoming a ScrumMaster. I will be attending this training class this week. Got any good topics or questions I should ask? One topic I am most interested is is "How to avoid wagilefall?" I let you know how it goes.

Burton Catalyst

2006-06-12T19:28:00.000-05:00

I will be attending the Burton Catalyst conference this week. If anyone else is there drop me line.

Should I lend on Prosper

2006-06-05T23:16:00.000-05:00

I love this direct person-to-person lending service from Prosper. I have been thinking about becoming a lender but for some reason, I just can't do it. I was only going to use a small sum to try it but something is holding me back. Why, I have no idea? Has anyone used this? Any opinions? Maybe I should just open another E*Trade CD or make another deposit to ING...

Dress slacks: Flat Front or Pleated?

2006-05-31T20:59:00.000-05:00

A question for my millions of blog readers. Do you prefer flat front or pleated dress slacks? Please post a comment. Thanks.

Lost Finale

2006-05-24T22:23:00.000-05:00

Wow, I am still digesting tonight's Lost Season Finale. I definitely think the guy Sawyer shot was the person who appears in the training videos. If you have Tivo, go back and look at his hair when he is lying down dead at about the 51 minute mark.

I think the "Quartatine Sign" was pulled off the sky which is somekind of Truman Show style roof.

I did call that "Herny Gale" was indeed the leader of "The Others."

Let the long wait for season 3 begin!

My new work podcast

2006-05-22T22:30:00.000-05:00

That's right, the world did need a podcast about Identity Management. Luckily, Nick and I are the ones to bring it to you. Our podcast is titled: "Identity Management Buzz." You can subscribe to the podcast using this RSS feed or if you pefer iTunes use this link.

Intranets Suck

2006-05-11T19:41:00.000-05:00

Cote was talking about Intranets and how they usually "suck." I have always wondered why thousands of people can collectively edit Wikipedia but corporations insist on deploying overly complicated content management solutions? What if anyone in the company could add or change any page on your Intranet wiki? If it works for Wikipedia, why won't it work in the Enterprise?

Access to Analyst Reports

2006-04-27T21:36:00.000-05:00

37 Signals recently released their new book Getting Real online as a ebook. They give away a few chapters that are designed to entice you into buying the whole book. I would like to see the same idea applied to analyst reports. For example, an analyst could put part of the report online for free and then charge a nominal fee to get the full report. Alternatively, an analyst could give away some reports and charge for others. The key though is to reset the price point for analyst reports. 37 Signals charges a very reasonable $19 for one copy of the book and $49 for a site license. When is the last time you purchased an analyst report for under $20?

Google Calendar Thoughts

2006-04-16T11:53:00.000-05:00

Like everyone else, I have been playing with the much anticipated Google Calendar. Overall, I think it's a very well done. It has all the AJAX style stuff you would expect from Google. I like that it is only loosely coupled with Gmail as well. I imported my calendar file from SunBird in just a few minutes and everything worked as expected. It's also great to see Google support the iCal standards and provide RSS feeds. I have no doubt we will see more integration and some cool mashups out of all this.

One use case I hope they work on is: "Schedule a Meeting." It is great I can share and see other people's calendars, which is a step in the right direction. Now, what they need to do is to provide a wizard style interface for scheduling a meeting. This interface would allow me to select the invitees and then show me a graphical schedule of availability and allow me to pick open times for a meeting. Right now, this is a multi-step process where you must first subscribe to everyone's calendar, look at availability, and then schedule the meeting. Some way to automate this would be outstanding. Exchange does this very well today. You can select invitee and schedule a meeting without having to subscribe to their calendars.

There is no doubt Exchange is the definitive market leader when it comes to calendars. There is one key use case that Exchange does not solve: "Schedule meeting across different companies." Google and it's hosted calendar is in the perfect position to solve this. If Google does this, then they may revolutionize how we use calendars. Let's hope the do.

Maps from Lost Blast door

2006-03-31T14:07:00.000-06:00

Here are two links that have the map that was shown on the blast door in the last Lost episode. Map 1 and an Map 2.

Of course, I have no idea what is going on still.

Enterprise Software pays off in decades not years

2006-03-27T23:05:00.000-06:00

Everyone wants immediate ROI for everything they buy. Who doesn't want immediate gratification? I know I do, why shouldn't large corporations want it. Truth be told is Enterprise Software pays off over decades. Take online bill pay. How long did it take to deliver on that promise? I would guess at least 10 years, maybe more. Of course, now large banks enjoy significant savings and consumers have been freed from the misery of check writing. It took awhile but it paid off.

If the customer really wants immediate ROI they should do the following:

1. Immediately stop buying all new software.
2. Keep every process the same.
3. Stop delivering new stuff.

In the short-term they will save, if that is what they really want. Otherwise, except the fact that what is deployed today will payoff down the road. That is the reality.

NCAA tournaments

2006-03-26T17:44:00.000-06:00

Congrats, to George Mason for making the Final Four. It's been fun watching their tournament run. March Madness is simply awesome, so much excitement. I only wish we could have this for college football. Can you imagine filling out an 8-team NCAA Football bracket? Now, that would be madness!

Ridding the Pine

2006-03-25T16:59:00.000-06:00

Assume for the moment you are Marissa Meyer the V.P. of Search Products and User Interface at Google. You have brought the world phenomenal applications such as Gmail and Google Search. What would use as your business email client? Probably Gmail? Maybe Thunderbird? No, you would use the ancient email program Pine:

"I use an e-mail application called Pine, a Linux-based utility I started using in college. It's a very simple text-based mailer in a crunchy little terminal window with Courier fonts. I do marathon e-mail catch-up sessions, sometimes on a Saturday or Sunday. I'll just sit down and do e-mail for ten to 14 hours straight."

I know Google believes in minimalist UI design but wow is this extreme!

Bracket Aggregators

2006-03-18T14:43:00.000-06:00

With all these Web 2.0 companies launching, I am surprised no one has created a NCAA Bracket Pool Aggreator. This way I could do my picks once and then enter all the brackets on ESPN, CBS Sportsline, Yahoo, etc... What we really need is somekind of Gartner Magic Quadrant for NCAA Men's Basketball bracket sites. Then we would all just use the one that is in the top right that has both vision and the ability to execute.

No back to watching the games. So far so good, my final four is still alive.

Ranch 616 Restaurant Review

2006-03-12T12:19:00.000-06:00

I tend to eat the same places over and over. I been trying to venture out more and eat some of the smaller local places here in Austin. This weekend I went to dinner with some friends at Ranch 616. It was very good and I would recommend it. It is mostly southwestern style dishes. Some of the choices included: fish tacos, duck, and steaks.

Chip had one of the largest meals I have ever seen served. He had a rib-eye that came with a friend egg and a side of enchalados. He only finished half, which was still impressive. I had steak, mashed patotoes, and some shrimp. It was all very good. Check it out if you get the chance.

Session 3: Postgres

2006-03-11T14:52:00.000-06:00

Next up. Infor about Postgres.

- Missed speakers name... Will post later

- New features in postgres

Native windows support,
point in-time recovery
Tablespaces
Seavepoints
Two-phase commits
Roles

- In 8.1 all you have is roles. When you create a user you give them a role. No more unix style rights and permissions.

- Performance improvements include:

In-memory index bitmap scan
Improved butter management
Autovacuum
Vacuum cost delay
Background writer

- Advanced features:

Roles
Inheritance
Table partitioning
Rules

- Inheritance -- Take a parent table with common information. The child table then extend attributes that are specific to a specify application.

- Partitioning -- In 8.1 you can use subtables for breaking a big table into smaller based on things like date.

-
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Austin Bar Camp Session 2: Marketing Cluetrain Style

2006-03-11T14:16:00.000-06:00

- Tara Hunt from Riya is giving a presentation on Cluetrain Marketing. She is going over what cluetrain is and how to apply it.

- Dude, Doc Searls is in the house sitting two seats in front of me here at Austin Bar Camp. We are officially cool.

- Don't target the current thing or idea. Understand what needs will be in the community tomorrow.

- Reward your superfans. Gave examples about Apple and the "Spread Firefox" movement. Does not mean money, more about attention.

- Get involved in the community. Hire someone from the community.

- Be your own customer. What you buy it? Would you use it?

- When seeding a community be ready to back off. If your idea doesn't take then stop look at it. Pushing to hard my create enemies.

- Tools to use tagging, blogging, bookmarking, and social networking.

- Don't take yourself too seriously.

- Where to begin:

Who to you server?
What is your core strength?
Wht is your core score? Number of users, number of photos (flickr)
What action can you take today?

- Good prez. It was fun to watch Tara present Cluetrain in front of Doc. She seemed nervous and did a great job.

First session at BarCampAustin -- getting Shit and Getting Shit Done with Blogs

2006-03-11T12:12:00.000-06:00

Presentation by our favorite Redmonk Analyst Michael Cote.

- He is talking about to use blogs, wiki's, search appliance, etc within the Enterprise.

- Cote's requirements for "Enterprise Blogging Systems":

Self registration
Multi-user
Easy to setup and run: you'll do all the work
Multi-platform (for scaling)

- His advice is to do all this yourself as a skunkworks internal project. Don't wait for IT, they won't like it at first...

- The system he used included: Roller, Lyceam, WordPress, and Hosted....

- Other stuff you will want to have behind the firewall: aggregators, search, wiki's, and RSS. You need to create your own blogsphere within the Enterprise. Recommends using Newsgator Outlook plugins for new tech people.

- Best bullet point of presentation: "But I got shit and got shit done."

- There was some discussion about Stock (Wiki's) vs. Flow (blogs).

- Lots of discussion about how to sell blogs in an enterprise.

- Excellent session. Lots of discussion. Could not blog it all since I needed to chime in.

Attending Bar Camp Austin

2006-03-11T12:07:00.000-06:00

I am too cheap to get a pass to SXSW interactive but Bar Camp Austin is just the right price -- free. This is my first bar camp and I hoping it's good. I will try to post about the session throughout the day.

The photo stream is here.

Re: Cote on Enterprise Agile

2006-03-05T17:52:00.000-06:00

Cote has a good post on Enterprise Agile. All too often the consultants and academics of the world punt on providing advice on how to apply an idea to your work environment. It's great to see Cote taking this issue head on. That is how can enterprise software vendors use and apply agile. Here are some of my ideas building from Cote.

Re:Scrums-of-Scrums needs work:
This is all about fighting the fiefdom mentality. If you have multiple teams, then at some point infighting will start. Each team will think the other team is a bunch of idiots. If they are geographically separated, then this divide will start faster and grow deeper over time. To combat this you need to make sure at least some people are rotating amongst the various teams. This helps minimize the amount of animosity. Also, you have to find first-line managers who are willing to reassign resources without making it an emotional endurance test. If employee A has the skills to something on team 1, then let him move and encourage it. The single most important thing though is to make sure the teams understand they are working on one collective product. Instilling a common vision in everyone helps keep everyone on the same page

Re: Sales and Marketing
The truth about enterprise software is it's more like consulting then consumer software. A consultant engaged on a long-term project needs to cultivate a good client relationship. Most enterprise software revenue actually comes from maintenance. So what should the software sales rep be selling? First, he has to sell only the features in the product. Now, in return for towing the line on features, he should be able to sell predictability and reliability. That is the software is going to release on time every time. Everyone knows software releases are late and sometimes moslty lacking. Agile fixes this if nothing else. You should be able to easily predict when your going to release. As far as presenting the road map to customers, limit your discussions to only the story cards done in the first few iterations. This way you have them in the bag by the time customers are hearing about them. Enterprise software is more like a marathon then a sprint. You will never have all the features done for all the customers. However, if you deliver on time, then you are way ahead of the crowd. More importantly, customers will start to appreciate this thus preserving your maintenance revenue.

Re: Support:
Make support its own agile team. This group should be responsible for creating all hot fixes. All hot fixes should be rolled into quarterly service packs. Service packs should only contain bug fixes, no new features. Most importantly, make sure this team is staffed with people who like the firefighting that comes with the job. Support can't be a dumping ground for low performers. Think about it, support is one of the most important parts of the company. They are chartered with working with the customers at the most difficult times. If you don't staff it with good people, say goodbye to the maintenance revenue.

Re: Upgrades
If you are delivering package software then it's impossible to give customer new releases more than a few times a year. Ideally, I think you have one major and one minor release every year with service packs every quarter. The upgrade rarely works and mostly fails because it has been tested in a controlled environment. The best option is to replicate a real customers environment and test the upgrade on that. If that is not possible, then find the largest customer you have. Chances are they were already planning on testing your software before it goes into their production environment. Commit yourself to working with them to test the upgrade. Both sides win here, your largest customer gets preferred treatment and you get to really test the upgrade.

Okay, that's it from me. I think this is a great topic and would be very interested in how others are doing Enterprise Agile.

Health Insurance

2006-02-26T17:38:00.000-06:00

This month Fortune's cover story is about the troubles GM is facing g. One of the reasons cited is the high cost of GM's health benefits. It is with some irony to me at least that the State of Maryland is passing a law to force WalMart to increase it's health care benefits.

Reactive politics at it worse. When are we going to wake up and address the real problems concerning health insurance?

What side is you analyst on?

2006-02-26T16:51:00.000-06:00

I finally bought a new car this weekend bringing to end the long and sometimes painful car buying process. As with any major purchased, I tried to do as much research as possible. Like most, my main concern was determining the actual market price for both my trade-in and the new vehicle. The Internet is great for finding this information with countless web sites offering seemingly "insider information" on what dealers pay for cars.

In the end all these sites have to make money and therefore they all have some kind of motivation. Like many industries, the automotive information web sites fall into one of two broad catergories: buy side and sell side. I have become a devout Consumer Reports online subscriber and I believe they are the truest buy-side analyst. That is they take no money from manufacturers/vendors and don't offer any consulting services. They provide reports and analysis that is written for consumers and ultimately paid for by consumers. Knowing this I took advantage of several of the Consumer Reports buying services. The most important reports were the pricing reports for both my trade-in and new car. With this information in hand, I ventured out to the dealership to start negotiations.

I produced the Consumer Reports information to the dealer and made my offer. In the spirit of Getting to Yes, I felt I had identified an unbiased source of information, shared that information with the dealer, and made what I felt was a fair offer based on this market data. The dealer then counter offered using reports from Kelley Blue Book, which not surprisingly listed the car at a higher price. The difference is the Kelley information is listed for free. From what I can surmise, Kelley makes it's money by selling advertising to among others car manufactures and dealers. To me this makes Kelley a sell-side analyst. The most important customers to Kelley are the dealer and car manufactures and therefore it's only natural the Kelley prices were more "dealer friendly."

There is a need for both the sell-side and buy-side firms, I accept that. I only wish that sell-side firms would become more open about their bias. This doesn't just apply to Kelley Blue Book but all analyst firms across a variety of industries. It would be great if all these analyst firms just posted the percentage of revenue the received from the various manufactures/vendors. No one is saying they shouldn't make money, it would be great if they were more up front about it.

Frameworks vs. Point Products

2006-02-20T10:44:00.000-06:00

There is always a fundamental conflict when developing enterprise software. Enterprise customers want as much out-of-the-box functionality as possible while still having the option to customize everything. Enterprise customers expect your product to be simple yet flexible. These goals are diametrically opposed. If you remove options you make it simple but at the cost of flexibility. This dilemma leads enterprise software vendors to choose one of two paths: the framework or the point product.

Software vendors wishing to “sell high” to CXO’s will usually opt for the framework approach. Here the fundamental assumption is that it is impossible to build the functionality that every customer needs into the software. Instead, these frameworks provide a set of building blocks (SDKs, UI Widgets, etc) that will be used by deployment consultants to actually build the system the customer wants. These products have the ultimate flexibility to do virtually anything the customer desires but come at a high cost in the form of consulting and deployment fees. Applications like Tivoli, Seibel, and SAP all fall into this category. The theory though is the customer gets exactly what they wanted when it finally rolls into production.

In contrast, the world of point products is just the opposite. Instead of selling high, these products are squarely targeted at individual contributors and first line managers. In this world budgets are much smaller and there is no money to pay for long deployments. The point product must include all the necessary functionality needed to solve the problem out-of-the box. This is the domain of products like database backup tools and source control systems. The strength of these products is that they do one thing very well, which is also their inherent weakness. If the customer needs some additional functionality they can not easily build it themselves.

Most enterprise customers usually have a mix of both frameworks and point products, which inevitably leads to internal clashes within the enterprise. The CXO’s want their organizations to use the frameworks so that they can get economies of scale to reduce costs by consolidating vendors. The CIO usually says something like “why do we have 3 different source control systems. It’s a waste of money.” The first-line managers and department heads are driven to get their jobs done faster and don’t want to give up the functionality or productivity gains provided by point products. This internal strife is the state of most large corporations. There is constant ebb and flow between using centralized frameworks and deploying decentralize point products.

So if you are building enterprise software you will have to navigate this minefield of conflicting needs. Many vendors want to try and be both a framework and a point product but these vendors usually end up with products no one wants. A better strategy is to embrace one end of the spectrum and build toward the other. Along the way it is important to identify the right buyer for your products. Engaging CXO’s with point products or selling frameworks to line managers is only going to waste time.

Most people lump all Enterprise Software together and define it as the software used within businesses. The reality is Enterprise Software is a multi-faceted market with various types of customers. To be successful you have to segment these customers and most importantly decide which ones you are not going to be targeting. Once you know that your chances of success just went up.

Seilevel Presentation

2006-02-15T22:49:00.000-06:00

Tonight, the Austin chapter of IEEE in conjunction with Austin Software Process Improvement Network (A-SPIN) hosted a presentation entitled Beyond the System Shall - A Journey from Good to Great Requirements. I'd like to thank both IEEE and A-SPIN for putting this on, it's great to see more of these types of events going on in Austin.

The presentation was given by two product managers from Seilevel. Here is a description of Seilevel taken from their home page:

"Seilevel is a professional services company that creates software requirements documents for Fortune 1000 companies. Leading companies turn to us to define their requirements because of a proven approach to software requirements that saves you development dollars and maximizes resources. Seilevel gets the requirements right, so our clients get their software right."

While I thought the speakers did a good job delivering the presentation, I have to say I disagreed with virtually everything they said. As Seilevel states they are in the business of "creating requirements documents." I think this whole mission is just missing the bigger picture. No one cares about better requirements documents, people want better software products. The goal should not be to create the longest most detailed requirements document but rather do whatever is needed to create the best products to succeed in the market place. Sure, defining requirements is an important part of building products but the requirements document is not an end goal.

The Seilevel presentation started by citing a lot of facts and figures about how bad requirements lead to failed projects. No disagreement here. If you work in software then somewhere in your professional life you have encountered this. Seilevel's message is that you need "good" requirements to be successful.

I was disappointed but not surprised that they totally passed on defining what a good requirement really is. Virtually everything written about requirements says something like "most people do a poor job of collecting requirements." At this point that sentenence it's just another meaningless platitude. What no one does is really take up the challenge of defining precisely what a good requirement is. Put a developer, a tester, and a product manager in the same room and ask them to define the word requirement. You'll get three different answers. For that matter stick two Product Managers in the same room and you'll still have multiple definitions.

The rest of the presentation outlined several requirement tools and how you can use them when defining requirements. These included use cases, state tables, decision trees and click-action trees. The tools themselves may in some cases be useful but I felt much of this is really more design than requirements. Again, I was disappointed that the presenters did not address the question of design vs. requirements head on. Instead, they just agreed that there are multiple opinions on this subject.

The one requirement model that really stuck out was the click-action tree. I have to say I think this whole idea is way off the mark. You can see a screen shot of a click-action tree here. Now, this example defines the behavior of a log-in page in some cryptic form. I don't know if anyone finds this type of definition natural, I surely don't. Furthermore, in the time it took to create this you could have easily mocked up the actual login page in HTML or PhotoShop. In a matter of minutes you could have just drawn a wireframe on a whiteboard too. Why would you go out of your way to create another artifact in an awkward format that will need to be updated ongoing basis. I would argue using this format would actually make developing the UI harder.

Maybe I have been drinking to much Agile Koolaid but tonight's presentation really enforced my belief in the whole less is more concept. The focus needs to be squarely on the product and making the product better. If your goal is to create great requirements documents then I think Seilevel can help you. If your goal is build great software, then I'd suggest looking elsewhere.

Novel approach to getting job leads

2006-02-14T18:25:00.000-06:00

Naill Kennedy is out looking for a new job. I like his idea of using his blog as a way to get some job leads. I also like his answers to Frequently Asked Interview Questions. Will a day come when we all get jobs via our blog...? Probably not, but Naill is definitely creating his own brand.

I like the stuff about moving from dev to product management (a.k.a. the dark side) too. I can relate.

More on roadmaps

2006-02-07T21:56:00.000-06:00

The team over at 37 Signals warns about the perils of roadmaps but can you really get away with not having one? The reality is it depends on what you are building. If you are building enterprise software then you almost always need one. Even for an agile enterprise software company you are probably looking at a release cycle every 6 months. The fact is your enterprise customers need to plan, budget, and staff these upgrades. Sure it would be great if all software was delivered as service over the Internet but this is simply not the enterprise way.

If you build an enterprise roadmap here is my advice:

Only include specific details about the next immediate release. Ideally, you should have a few features in the bag that you know will get in. Of course, they need to be compelling features. Make sure to have dev do the most important features first. This way you minimize the chance of missing.
Keep some of the stuff in the bag. Ideally, you want to give out only as much information as necessary. So if you are planning some stuff that's on the release bubble then keep it yourself. When I say keep it to yourself I mean tell no one -- not the Sales Engineers, Account Reps, or your pets. Once it's out, it's out. Under promise and over deliver.
This one is obvious but important. Know the audience. If you are talking to the press and analysts then talk about the themes and the business impact of the new release. Skip the details about the bug fixes and minor stuff. Now, if you are talking to your customers and the guys who actually use the software, then you will want to drill down. Chances are they want to hear that you fixed the weird screen rendering problem. If they use the software everyday they care about this.
For more that 6 months out only talk about themes. The goal is to give some broad statement that will act as a conversation topic. You really want to engage your audience and get feedback about your ideas. The goal is to make the last phase of roadmap prez a requirements gathering session.

Roadmaps are tricky but done right both sides win. The customer gets a sneak peek at the new stuff and you get some requirements validation.

Roadmaps

2006-01-23T23:14:00.000-06:00

If you work in Product Management, then at some point you have to give the roadmap presentation? Rather than talk about the hypothetical let's look at a real roadmap. Here is the latest FireFox roadmap? What do you think? Is it a good roadmap? Why or why not? Please post a comment. I will give you my thoughts in another post.

Move Review: Enron "The Smartest Guys in the Room"

2006-01-23T22:19:00.000-06:00

If you like documentaries, then I highly recommend Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. I am sure most of you know the story but this documentary really lays out the time line well. It also provides some interesting personal history about the major players: Ken Lay, Skilling, etc...

Two things really come out. The first is how many people and events Enron affected. Some of these include the presidential race, blackouts in California, and Wall Street corruption. Enron touched them all in some way. The second is how many different companies/organizations were a part of this. Almost everyone traded morality for money: lawyers, auditors, banks, brokers, SEC, etc. Enron was the eye of the storm but they definitely did not act alone.

Walled Gardens and Apple

2006-01-13T16:58:00.000-06:00

There is a good interview in Business week with Clayton Christensen author of Innovator's Dilemma (which I highly recommend). Christensen makes the case that Apple's recent iPod success will come to a hault because of Apple's proprietary products. I give Christensen a lot of credit for making this call while Apple is seemingly unstoppable. Far too many authors only do this after the fact when the answer is obvious.

In many ways you could rename the Innovator's Dilemma the law of walled gardens. Every company that has a chance to create a walled garden trys to. The examples are endless: Apple, AOL, Phone companies, Cable Companies, etc. In the end most of the walls come down and the company that created the walled garden is banished. Think AOL vs. Google.

The easy answer would is to assume the management at these companies are a bunch of idiots. Given it happens so often, this can't be right. There are many smart people running large corporations. A better explanation is that the allure of creating a walled garden is simply too strong. If you do it and it works you will make tons of money. At least that's what it must look like from inside the walled garden. It's like forbidden fruit. Wherever there is a walled garden there is oppurtunity for change. If you run a business that depends on a walled garden then mark my words change is coming.

Orginal Link from Cote.

Lost -- The 23rd Psalm

2006-01-12T23:21:00.000-06:00

After weeks of reruns, Lost finally returned with a new episode last night. Most of the episode was devoted to Eko's and his backstory. We learn of his violent past as an warlord. We can now add Eko to the growing list of Lost surviors who are cold blooded killers. I think this is more evidence that somehow the Lost surviors are bound by a need to redeem themselves in some way. Almost all of them have a violent past.

We did finally get a glimpse of the "monster." I am not really sure if the smoke was the monster or prevented us from seeing the monster. It did seem more like an island security system then a monster but who knows.

The biggest revelation came when Michael was in front of the computer IM'ing with Walt. We see Michael reading the text but when Jack walks behind Michael and looks at the screen it is blank. My guess is Michael is seeing some kind of vision. Similar to visions Shannon and Said saw of Walt...

Like all Lost episodes, this one leaves a lot of questions. How did a plane from Africa get to the South Pacific? No, idea... Maybe they aren't in the Pacific but who knows?

One predication for you. I predict we will learn that Locke kills his father who betrayed him. You read it here first.

Get your ticket futures for the BCS

2006-01-07T15:21:00.000-06:00

Here in Austin the euphoria of Texas wining the National Championship still reigns supreme but it's never too early to start talking about next year's college football season. If you think your team has a chance at the BCS, then you should check out Ticket Reserve. They sell futures that entitle you to buy a BCS bowl game ticket at face value should your team make it. You can check out the prices for each team here.

Not surprising Texas leads the way at $125 with USC at $100. It should fun to watch the prices change during next season.

NFL Horse-collar rule

2006-01-02T16:25:00.000-06:00

Sadly, the NFL regular season has come to an end. Unfortunately, the Cowboys missed the playoffs. Overall, I thought they had a pretty good year though. Hopefully, Parcells will be back next year.

Before the season started there was a lot of talk about the new horse-collar rule. What's interesting, I did not see the horse-collar penalty actually called for the entire season. I can't say I watch every game but trust me I watched a lot. Seems like this a meaningless penalty. Maybe the NFL competition committee will change it next year...

Eliminating the expenses of the expense systems

2005-12-23T18:33:00.000-06:00

What if all large companies stop using internal travel systems? What if they just told their employees to use the Internet site of their choice or travel agent of their choice? What if corporations just said to their employees you are pretty smart people just do what makes sense for you? What if corporations gave all their employees corporate credit cards that were automatically paid by the company?

How much money would that company save by not having an expense system? How much money would that company save by not having a poorly built internal travel system? How much more productive would employees be?

Sure there would be a small percentage of employees who abused this system. Would this abuse cost more than building and maintaining internal system?

Don't think it will work? Why not try a small pilot?

Foam Soap

2005-12-20T09:46:00.000-06:00

This weekend I discovered foam soap. I never really thought about soap and wasn't unhappy with regular old liquid soap until I found the foam soap. I highly recommend it, it feels like lotion and leaves little or no residue after you rinse.

Top 3 NFL Draft picks

2005-12-07T17:06:00.000-06:00

On PTI, Mel Kiper Jr. gave his top three NFL picks:

1. Reggie Bush
2. Matt Leinart
3. Vince Young

Bush is obvious but I was surprised Young was as high. Maybe Vince will go pro...?

Firefox 1.5 first impressions

2005-11-29T18:40:00.000-06:00

Just installed the new Firefox 1.5 Gold release. Not a ton of new features but it is noticeably faster. Kudos to Team Firefox.

Lost Episode -- Collision

2005-11-24T13:18:00.000-06:00

This week's episode of lost was a little slower paced then usual but had some nice character development of Ana Lucia. In Ana Lucia's back story we learn she killed the man who shot her while she was a police officer. This means we now know that Sayid, Sawyer, Kate, Jin-Soo, and Ana Lucia have all killed someone. Not sure if this means anything...

In the previous episode Ana Lucia is speaking to one of "the others" who said the only take the good people. Could it be the others are somehow leaving the people who have committed some kind of sin? Who knows?

There was reference by both Sayid and Ana Lucia that they feel like they are already dead. Possibly more fuel to the fire around the theory that everyone on the island is already dead? I know, probably not...

In next week's previews we hear Kate ask "Do you believe in ghosts?" The appearance of ghosts is one of the unexplained occurrences in Lost. We know Jack saw his dead father and both Sayid and Shannon saw the ghost of Walt. So far we have not seen any super natural force on the island. Everything has been explained with some kind of logical yet however unlikely explanation. It will be interesting to see how the appearance of ghosts is explained.

Mike Tyson sings the Monster Mash

2005-11-23T18:13:00.000-06:00

Wow, Mike Tyson may be the worst singer ever...

Out of Office Blogging

2005-11-23T14:55:00.000-06:00

I have noticed that some bloggers post a message saying they are going out of town, on vacation, or are just too busy to blog. I always wonder why? Isn't the point of blogs that everything is asynchronous. A blogger is neither compelled to write nor is the reader compelled to respond. Isn't that a central tenet of blogs? I don't think you need to tell me that you don't have time and will not be blogging.

Is there some expectation that A-list blogs must tell us they won't be blogging? If so, why?

Next up can we all stop sending Automatic Out of Office Messages for holidays. I predict over the Thanksgiving weekend there will be 3 million out of office messages sent. Someone do the math on the waste of computing power for that.

Oh, by the way, I will be in the office, checking email, and blogging nonsense all week.

Diggdot

2005-11-21T22:03:00.000-06:00

Here is a cool idea from Diggdot. It takes the feeds from Digg, Slashdot, and del.icio.us/popular and consolidates them into one feed. It says it even remove the duplicates.

This would be a great feature for next generation RSS readers. Instead of just showing my feeds, it would be great if the RSS reader organized all the posts and automatically removed the duplicates. Sort of like Google news...

Diggdot via TechCrunch

Dodgeball fix

2005-11-21T21:47:00.000-06:00

I got a note from the Dodgeball support team today. They have fixed the Brentwood Tavern venue so we should be able to start checking in there again.

I know Dodgeball has been slow to take off here in Austin. I still think it is a great idea for a service. I agree though the service does need some work. I think the Dodgeball team needs to work more with the venue owners to grow the service. How about some drink specials for anyone who sends a dodgeball message from a venue...?

Super Small

2005-11-07T20:16:00.000-06:00

I was at Best Buy this evening visiting my plasma tv that I will one day buy. While there, I saw the new iPods. I knew they were small but pictures simply don't do them justice. These things are tiny and impressive.

More RSS splicing

2005-10-31T22:05:00.000-06:00

I like the idea of splicing more and more stuff into my blog. I am using feedburner which supports flickr and del.icio.us. Feedburner does a good job and I'd like them to support splicing any rss feed that I want to add. I'd like to add my digg feed and a feed of my Netflix reviews. That would be cool. How about it Feedburner?

It's not always about process

2005-10-31T21:48:00.000-06:00

There are tomes written about the software development methodologies. Most all of the major books on software focus on process whether it be waterfall, agile, or something else. Sometimes though, it's important to remember that humans are emotional beings.

Give me a team where the members have a high degree of mutual respect for each other and I bet they are successful. Process is important but it alone will not solve everything. Take inventory of where you work. Does everyone respect each other?

Who will die in the next episode of Lost?

2005-10-30T22:54:00.000-06:00

Unfortunately, Lost is in reruns for the next few weeks. Until then we can only speculate on who is most likely to die in the next episode. My money is on Jin-Soo dying. We have already seen his second backstory and he barely speaks English making his character less central then the others...

What do you think? Who is going to die?

The ultimate gadget

2005-10-30T15:21:00.000-06:00

My brother was shopping for a new mobile phone and asked for a recommendation. His request was a familiar refrain, he wanted a device that was a good phone and was also good for email. It's such simple request but it remains an elusive device.

There's still nothing that blends the functions of both email and voice. You can have a great phone like the RAZR (which I own) or a great email device like the Blackberry. Sure there are a variety of other compromise devices like the Treo but are any of them any good? Some early adopters do use the combo devices but they lack mainstream appeal. The more a device tries to be all things to all people the worst it becomes. Cauvin has some good comments and pointers on the myth of convergence that nail this point home.

Of course convergence of phones, cameras, music players, and email is driven in part by the premise that people will only carry one device. Conventional wisdom says the consumer will only carry one thing and therefore everything must converge to that device.

The real problem is size though. My pockets limit what I can carry but not how many devices I will carry. Devices like the RAZR and iPod Nano are great examples. Each device takes existing functionality and makes it smaller, a big reason each device is so successful. That is the message for manufactures. Make it smaller and the consumer will come. How about a credit card size camera that fits in a wallet, an iPod Shuffle with all the functionality of the iPod Nano, a laptop that weighs under a pound and a Minority Report style mobile phone to start?

I have a secret...

2005-10-29T18:45:00.000-05:00

I really like all this Web 2.0 stuff. I like reading about these new companies and services and I like trying them out too. In fact, TechCrunch is one of my favorite feeds.

The NASDAQ is at 2,000 and has been flat for about 5 years. The mainstream world doesn't know nor care about Web 2.0. I'm pretty sure something can't be overhyped if no one knows about it. I don't see how this a bubble...

I say bring on more Web 2.0. It's the best thing that has happend to the tech world in 5 years.

Adding del.icio.us links to blog

2005-10-23T19:14:00.000-05:00

I spliced in my del.icio.us links to this blog. Make sure you are subscribed to this feed if you want to get them. If you are subscribed to the direct blogger feed then you will not get them.

Not back to regular programming.

Ask questions forget assertions

2005-10-22T21:50:00.000-05:00

The initial idea is just a starting point-- not a blueprint, but a question. It might help if they were expressed that way. Instead of saying that your idea is to make a collaborative, web-based spreadsheet, say: could one make a collaborative, web-based spreadsheet? A few grammatical tweaks, and a woefully incomplete idea becomes a promising question to explore.

Ideas for Startups

Very well said.

First impressions of Flock

2005-10-22T16:30:00.000-05:00

Well, I love browers and trying new stuff so I figured I would give Flock a try. It has a nice built-in blog editor, which I am using to write this post. I like the integration with del.ici.us as well. It's nice to have all this stuff built right into the browser. There doesn't seem to be any spell checker for blog posts though. That's disappointing. Probably a 1.0 feature they are working on. The browers seems to render fast which it a nice too. Overall, the Flock team has done a very nice job. I don't know if it is enough though. I assume the Firefox team will be adding stuff like this as well. Regardless, though it's nice to see more innovation in browsers. It always good to have choices.

USC beats Notre Dame

2005-10-15T18:45:00.000-05:00

What a game between USC and Notre Dame. The ending was crazy. The officials did a good job keeping it under control. Two things stood out to me. Reggie Bush is a phenomenal running back and Matt Leinart probably won his second Heisman trophy with his QB sneak.

Who knows though? It is a long college football season...

The Opensource Wifi Mesh Network

2005-10-10T22:51:00.000-05:00

Everytime I use free wireless, I think this should be everywhere. Thanks to Google, the people of San Francisco are getting it. The citizens of Philadelphia are getting it too. I wish Austin would get with the program. We have a lot geeks in Austin and seem like an ideal city for more wifi.

Anyway, since free wifi is aways off (at least in A-town), I was thinking there should be kind of grassroots effort. Here's the idea. Make it simple to let people enable their home wifi connections to become part of a bigger open mesh network. Anyone willing could add their wifi connection to larger mesh. Most home networks sit idle all day, it would be cool if we could find a way to donate and take advantage of all this unused bandwidth. Personally, I would be very happy to loan out my connection in exchange for using someone else's when I am on the road.

Sort of like Bit Torrent meets the network.

Java better than C at memory management?

2005-10-10T22:39:00.000-05:00

Could it be? JVM's are better at managing memory than the C programmer? What's next? Ruby considered a real programming language. Where will the craziness end.

Lost Episode -- Orientation

2005-10-08T23:34:00.000-05:00

Wow, another fantastic episode of Lost. I am simply amazed at how this show continues to be so great. There was so many things to analyze in this episode, it's nearly impossible. The one thing that I caught was the reference to the name Kelvin. As we know Desmond says Kelvin died wating for his replacement. I am pretty sure that Kelvin was the name of the guy that gave Hurley the numbers he used for the lottery. Can anyone verify this? I may need to buy the DVD's for season one.

It looks like there are several new Lost hidden sites. One for the Dharma Industries and another for the The Hanso Foundation. I haven't been able to login to them but I am sure there is some good info in them...

XM coming to DirecTV

2005-09-30T18:37:00.000-05:00

Sweet, XM is coming to DirecTV. I always wanted to try XM and now I will get the chance. Any opinions on XM?

Austin City Limits iTunes iMix

2005-09-30T18:30:00.000-05:00

Scott D. has put together an excellent ACL iTunes iMix (Requires iTunes). All the music and none of the heat or dust storms. You can beat that!

Go Vols -- Victory over LSU

2005-09-26T22:39:00.000-05:00

I will admit I watch too much football. I also take college football way to seriously. At halftime of the Tennessee LSU game, the Vols were down 21 - 0. I was irrationally upset and on the verge of breaking my TV. Luckily, I didn't.

The Vols roared back to win the game in overtime. Go Vols! Great comeback!

More Lost -- Genetic Mirror Theory

2005-09-23T19:40:00.000-05:00

We all know the Lost numbers must mean something. Check out the Genetic Mirror Theory, it could be a red herring but it sounds like it is on the right track. Also, make sure to check out th Lost site using these instructions:

oceanicflight815.com

click barcode.
type in "theislandiswaiting"

I am starting to this it is somekind of Matrix type altnerate reality. Maybe something like from the movie The Others.

God, I love this show.

Lost -- Season Premiere

2005-09-23T19:04:00.000-05:00

The Lost Season Premiere was fantastic. The opening scene was phenomenal. Very well done. My brother sent me the following Lost nuggets. Some are more obvious then others but a few are very revealing.

1) The guy who Jack met at the stadium is the same guy who is in the hatch. Please note that when they were leaving he said to Jack, "see you in the next life".

2) Jack marries the woman he helped walk again (see flashback from season 1. He was no longer married to her when he got on the plane that crashed...likely a growing back story)

3) The guy that died who Jack did not get to help because he was with the woman is Shannon's father. Jack has now been there for the death of Shannon's brother and dad. Likely a building back story....

Update: The medic announces that the second patient is "Adam Rutherford" when Jack is working on his future wife in the ER. It happens 9 minutes into the episode. It's quick, I had to listen 5 times to hear it. Shannon's last name is Rutherford as well.

4) When Shannon sees Walt in the forest he whispers something that is not audible. If played backwards Walt is saying, "Press the buttons, no buttons bad". Hence, Jack should have type something on the keyboard when starring at the screen with the blinking cursor when Locke came in. Audio is on the the link provided below.

5) Also, there is significance in the mural that Jack was looking at when he first entered the hatch. We can't figure out what that is. Video is provided on the link below.

6) The Hatch has the words "Quarantined" on it. Please note that this was printed on the inside of the hatch which means that the OUTSIDE where they are living is what is quarantined not what's inside the hatch.

7) Also, I have heard a theory that the guys on the boat who took Walt were actually older versions of the people on the island. Also on the attached is a supposed script outline of the opening scene for next week which may lead me to believe this is accurate.

Here is the link with more information.

Good stuff!

Austin n Hurricane Madness

2005-09-22T20:46:00.000-05:00

Cote said it best Austin is going balls out. It's madness down here with all the hurricane stuff. People are hoarding bottled water like it is the end of the world. Even I took the drastic step of going to the grocery. Normally, I have no food in the refrigerator. The frig now has some food just in case.

I like everyone else has watched the weather channel. I am pretty sure they have no idea. So far they are off by a 100 miles from yesterday. Let's hope the whole thing weakens and is a lot less severe than everyone thinks.

What does Enterprise mean?

2005-09-20T21:41:00.000-05:00

Over on Signal vs. Noise, there is a post about "What does Enterpise mean?" Make sure to read the comments, they are pretty funny.

My take is that Enterprise software must:

support lots of Operating Systems (Windows, Solaris, AIX, Red Hat, SuSE, and HP-UX)
support lots of App Servers (Weblogic, Websphere, Jboss)
support two Web Servers (Apache and IIS)
support lots of Databases (Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, MySQL)
support a high-availabilty cluster configuration
have a good backup and recover story
allow the data to be exported into Excel
support exporting data to another database so you can run crystal reports
have a robost user/rights/roles model
support single sign on via LDAP and Active Directory
have somekind of dashboards
have customizable email notfications

Once you have all this, then you are ready to write your software to solve some business problem.

VPN Tip

2005-09-20T21:37:00.000-05:00

Here's a quick word of advice. Never install two VPN clients on your machine. Nothing good comes of it. This reaffirms my belief that the worst software is written by network companies.

When I real the world there will be no VPNs.

New Products

2005-09-17T17:41:00.000-05:00

Products that solve obvious and compelling problems always do well. I just saw this innovative power strip that does just that. Who hasn't had a power strip with outlets blocked by bulky adapters? The solution is obvious and simple you wonder why someone did not do this sooner. It's a great example of outside-in thinking.

Now, there is a lot talk this week about Gillette's new five-blade Fusion Razor. You must read the Onion's story if you haven't already. While the razor is getting lot of press, it seems to be base on inside-out thinking. Aren't most people already getting a close shave today? There are so many razors with multiple blades that it doesn't seem to really matter. Why should I upgrade? How does it make my life simpler?

A work blog

2005-09-06T22:10:00.000-05:00

I am thinking about creating a work blog for my new job that would be focused on Identity Management. I was trying to decide what kind of voice and tone the blog should have. I want it be focused around work but I don't want to come off as a shill. Does anyone have any recommendations for good work blogs? Is it even possible to have a work blog that is good and informative while not being filled with propaganda? Do you think you should blog about the competition? What would you be interested in reading?

Writely is on the right track

2005-09-06T21:54:00.000-05:00

Eventually, a web-based word processor will replace MS Word. I am not sure when or what the tipping point will be but Writely shows the time is getting closer. I have been playing with the beta release and it's pretty good. It uses all the Ajax style stuff and has all the basic Word functionality. Entering text is simple and it includes a spell check as well. It also moves the document storage online which is nice. Instead of edit, upload, and repeat you just click on the doc you want to edit and save your changes in the browser.

As much as I like Writely, I am not sure if it has enough to get people to replace MS Word. I like to use the rule that something must be ten times better than thing it replaces. Otherwise, the status quo rules. I think Writely needs something else to really create a mass exodus from Word. My suggestion would be to use Writely as a bridge to get the mainstream to Wikis. Writely is really a Wiki in Word's clothing. Now, a group wiki is ten times better than a Word doc.

College Football Conference Rankings: Week 1

2005-09-04T23:10:00.000-05:00

It was a good weekend of college football. If you picked TCU to beat OU then immediately go to Vegas.

I debate endlessly with my friends (isn't that what college football is for) about which college football conference is the best. Below is the rankings we use to determine who is on top. Thanks to Chip for compiling the numbers,

A conference's poll power number is the sum of 26 - rank for all that conference's teams in the AP and USA Today polls. For example, Texas' contribution to the Big 12 number would be (26 - 2 ) + ( 26 - 2 ) = 48.

Here are the rankings:

SEC: 167 = (23+23)+(21+20)+(16+15)+(13+13)+(10+11)+(0+2)
Big 10: 133 = (22+22)+(20+17)+(15+16)+(11+10)
Big 12: 116 = (24+24)+(19+21)+(9+9)+(5+5)
ACC: 110 = (18+19)+(17+18)+(12+14)+(4+4)+(1+3)
PAC-10: 77 = (25+25)+(7+6)+(6+8)
Big East: 30 = (14+12)+(3+1)
WAC: 17 = (8+7)+(2+0)

Let the debating begin!

Tip on DVDs

2005-09-04T19:48:00.000-05:00

I have been using the long weekend as an opportunity to catch up on some Netflix DVDs. I loaded one of the discs today and the DVD Player displayed an error "No disc found." Hmm, so I tried it on my computer and same message. Well, I went to Netflix to report the problem and have them send me a new DVD. On the error page they wrote the following tip:

"Try wiping it with glass cleaner and a paper towel from the center hole to the outer edge. Never wipe the DVD in a circular motion, and never rub the DVD."

I was thinking there was no way this would work but why not try. To my surprised it worked and the DVD played perfectly. I would have thought glass cleaner would damage a DVD but obviously not.

Vols 3rd in Athletics Cup Rankings

2005-08-31T21:49:00.000-05:00

How about those Vols.

Better Instant Messaging

2005-08-28T22:19:00.000-05:00

Google Talk was all the rage this week. Some people liked it, while others did not. I don't have much to say about Google Talk other then to say it is no better and no worse than the other instant messaging services.

Instant Messaging is another good case study for product management though. Here you have a market with 4 strong competitors with services that are virtually identical and none remarkable. The first rule of product management is to develop compelling positioning. So what would you do if you were the product manager for an Instant Messenger service?

One possible position would be to become the instant messaging service for business. Virtually, every company uses instant messaging. Sure the internal IT group may not like it but we all use it anyway. Overtime everyone in the company seems to informally gravitate to one IM service, which becomes the defacto IM service for the whole company. No one IM service seems to have a dominate position though. Each company is different and usually settles on a different IM service.

To capitalize on this trend you could build business features into your instant messaging client. Look no further than online meeting services such as Webex for a compelling feature set. Webex provides a good service but is very costly. The technology behind webex is not all that different than IM though.

Webex installs an applet on your machine which allows you to share your desktop and enables chatting once inside the meeting. An instant messaging client could easily replicate these features. Every Webex I have ever attended included a regular dial-in phone number as well. Here instant messaging services would have a huge leg up on Webex by adding voice support that already exists in most IM services. Best of all the IM service is free, a price that will be hard for Webex to match.

The goal would be to add enough features so that everyone installs your IM client since it provides support for online meetings. You would develop a compelling position as the Instant Messaging service of business. Now, that would be a good point of differentiation and enviable position to have.

The summer book trifecta

2005-08-28T21:38:00.000-05:00

I am recommending a box set of books for your reading pleasure.

To understand how people make decisions read Blink. Gladwell does an extraordinary job detailing how we all make decisions in the blink of eye without even knowing it. We are exposed to so much information everyday that the human mind must create subcouscous rule sets to process it all. We decide who to date, who to hire, and what to buy without even knowing it.

After you finish Blink then read All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin. This book describes how to sell products in this era of information overload. Rarely, does the best product win, it is the product with a the best story. When you buy an iPod you are buying much more than an MP3 player. You must build products on the edges and remember you will only get the blink of an eye to convince the customer.

Of course, some of the snap judgments we make turn out to be wrong. Sometimes the stories we tell ourselves are wrong. That's what Freakonomics shows us. At some point we have to step back and re-evaluate our rule sets. Maybe child safety seats don't make children safer?

Three great books with interlocking and overlapping concepts. Each book offers another piece to the puzzle. Make sure to check them out.

An iTunes playlist from Scott

2005-08-26T17:36:00.000-05:00

Scott knows music and I pressed him to create an iTunes playlist for me. It is eclectic and very good. Make sure to check it.

Bingo! Cheap Strong Authenication

2005-08-24T21:06:00.000-05:00

Sometimes you see a product that is both brilliant and simple. Today, I saw a short presentation on Entrust's Identity Guard which was just that: brilliant and simple. Identity Guard provides strong authentication by using a simple bingo type card. Go here to see the demo (Flash Required).

Every user is issued one of these grids that can be printed on your company ID badge, a credit card, or just about anywhere. When you login you provide your user name and password as always and then you are asked to provide letter or number from the corresponding coordinates given. For example, if you are asked for A9 then you look at the grid for the entry at column A/row 9. Every user gets a unique grid of numbers that is randomly generated.

Printing the cards is cheap and if you lose it you are assigned a new grid. The idea seems so good that I was wondering if I missed something. What do you think? Is this as a good a solution as I think it is?

The Word on Blogger

2005-08-20T18:11:00.000-05:00

This week Blogger announced some integration with Microsoft Word. In the post they offer the following explanation as to what prompted this integration:

Last July, a few of us visited the Democratic National Convention to see political bloggers in action. Many were using Microsoft Word to post their reports. It was a multi-step process that didn't look like fun, but for citizen journalists, punctuation, spelling and grammar are important. That got the Blogger team thinking about how to help Word users to become bloggers.

So here is another product management case study. You have to give the blogger team props for doing some customer visits to see what actual users where doing. My question is did they take this feedback and act on it in the best possible way?

I am sure there were many requests to add Word integration to blogger but is that really the solution? Did they adequately address the true customer need? Personally, I think what the Blogger users are saying is the current blogger editing tools are not very good. I doubt the Word bloggers use more than 1% of Word's features when editing a blog post. I would also guess there are numerous Word formatting quirks that will trip up the Blogger integration. My take is the Blogger team missed out on a great opportunity to really address the true customer need: a better Blogger editor.

What they could have done is sat down with those Word bloggers and tracked exactly what features of Word they were using. They could have taken those features and found a way to introduce them into Blogger. Look no further than Gmail as example for good online editing.

The team over at Flock have a totally different way of looking at editing in a browser. They are pitching this whole idea of a two-way web. Here is a good post covering some of the features of flock.

Does the world really need another web browser? Personally, I don't know. I do know that I am trying to publish from my Web browser more and more. Whether it be del.icio.us, flickr, blogger or whatever. I would give the team at Flock credit for really trying to tackle the root problem of publishing on the Web. They are on to a good customer pain point. Of course, they may or may not be successful.

In the end it all comes down to analyzing customer feedback and acting on it. Clearly, there is a customer pain point around publishing on the Web in general. Blogger has offered one solution and Flock will offer a different one. We will have to wait and see which way is better...

The scoop on Rally

2005-08-20T17:54:00.000-05:00

At a recent happy hour we were talking about Rally Development. Rally offers products and services to help with Agile Development. Rally received a initial round of funding of $3.5 million and one of the investors was Mobius Venture Capital Brad Feld is a manging director at Mobius and has a blog. He mentions Rally in some of his posts so if you are interested you should subscribe to his feed.

Tags rule

2005-08-16T20:37:00.000-05:00

Baus and Mark Fletcher have taken a few shots at the idea of tags. I must say I love tags and use them all the time.

See Cote's write up on why tags rule.

Make sure to read the comments between Baus and O'Grady too. O'Grady really nails it as to why tags are so useful. He makes several good points. I think he hits a home run with his comment on bloglines:

"where mark and i definitely differ is in limiting tagging to non-text sources. let's take his baby bloglines. do i want my feeds to show in one massed list of information, or would i prefer to group - or tag - them so as to be more digestible? personally, i prefer being able to tag my feeds into similar, related groups." -- O'Grady

I would go even further and say anytime you have a set of folders or directories then you probably should have tags instead. It is important to separate how the data is stored (folders and directories) from how it is grouped (tags). Gmail does this nicely using labels.

New Job @ Sun

2005-08-14T22:03:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow I start my new job at Sun Microsystems. I will be a product manager in the Identity Management group. It should be a lot of fun to delve into the world of identity management. Of course, I have a lot to learn. If you know of any good resources on identity management, please post a comment.

Now on Dodgeball

2005-08-08T12:26:00.000-05:00

I was prompted by Cote's post to sign up for Dodgeball. It's now available in Austin. Feel free to add me to your list if you want.

Ad on Redmonk and Ads on blog

2005-08-08T12:07:00.000-05:00

Stephen from Redmonk asked for some feedback about running ads on the Redmonk blogs. I figured why not answer those questions here since my answers apply to all the blogs that I read.

Redmonk: How would you feel about us advertising on the home pages of our blogs (possible), or in the individual full-text feeds (less likely) themselves?

I have no problem with blogs running ads or running them on your homepage. This goes for all blogs not just Redmonk. If you can make money with your blog or web site then more power to you.

Redmonk: Would you walk away? Do you not care?

I would not walk away and if this helps you create more free content then I would encourage you to put ads on the site. This also goes for all blogs as well.

A word of caution though, I personally find RSS ads very ineffective. I don't believe I have ever clicked on an RSS Ad. I probably click on a Google Ad about 0.5% of the time but pretty much never for RSS Ads.

Super Size Me -- Movie Review

2005-08-06T11:42:00.000-05:00

Super Size Me definitely has an agenda to show how fast food is bad but the movie is still really good. I thought the stuff about advertising and marketing was most interesting. Especially, when he shows the first graders pictures of George Washington, Jesus, Wendy, and Ronald McDonald. It really was no surprise that all the kids knew Ronald McDonald. If you had a 1.5 billion dollar marketing budget everyone would know you too.

The question I was left with is when if ever do we expect the government to step in and put restrictions. I agree McDonald's has the right to sell its products and clearly we as the American consumer want it. Is there ever a time when we need someone to stop ourselves though? There are laws that control who can buy alcohol and tobacco. There are laws banning the sales of all narcotic drugs. Will there ever be a law banning French fries? Should there be?

We could all just stop eating this stuff that would solve the problem but I admit I like the fires and I like the sodas... Easier said then done.

No such thing as a free lunch.

2005-08-04T18:33:00.000-05:00

I am really impressed that Google provides most everyone a free lunch. Seems like a great perk and one that would increase productivity as well. The problem with a perk is it quickly becomes an entitlement. It's like the technology adoption cycle first everyone is excited about it (sweet free lunch), then assumes it will always be there (we eat there all the time), complains that something is not right about it (do they always have to serve chicken), and finally it is taken away (what? no free lunch, I am updating my resume).

The economy must be doing well because some of the dot-com perks are back and that's cool. My advice to the Google employees is load up on the Eggplant Ratatouille while you can, one day you will have to eat at Subway with the rest of us.

Divergence

2005-08-04T15:42:00.000-05:00

Anyone who thinks the iPod, mobile phone, and camera will merge into one device should read this article by Al Ries. I think the lesson is build something that does one thing very well.

Via Cauvin.

The good programmer myth

2005-08-04T15:21:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading Joel's article Hitting the High Notes where he discusses the merits of hiring "good programmers." My thought is there are no "good programmers" just different programmers. Really, what you want to do is hire the person that best fits the open position. If you are looking for someone to help with the front end then he probably needs to be a javascript/HTML expert. It is probably not all that important that he wrote Lisp in college or can implement a red-black tree. If he is an expert in writing cross browser javascript then he is probably the best person for that job.

When hiring take stock of your organization and what your organization values. Are you a process driven organizaition or more of a lone gunman/hacker style? Is it expected that all code have a design specs and unit tests? If so then you should find someone that has similar ideals.

In the end you are much better served finding the right person for that position rather than searching for the subjective good programmer.

Movie Review: Fog of War

2005-07-27T21:06:00.000-05:00

There was some news today about the U.S. starting to think about withdrawing troops from Iraq. It was somewhat fitting then that I watched Fog of War last night. Fog of War is documentary that consists mostly of interviews with Robert McNamara. It chronicles his life with specific emphasis on both WWII and Vietnam. What is most interesting is how much McNamara discusses his rationale and internal thinking about so many issues.

I know the idea of watching a two hour interview may not sound all that good but trust me it is riveting.

Metrics on mail

2005-07-17T23:39:00.000-05:00

I really like the idea of email stats. Given how much time everyone spends sending, reading, and responding to email, it's surprising something like this doesn't already exist. Some stats I would like to know are:

How many emails did I get broken down by day or hour.
How many of those emails do I respond to.
How many emails did I compose and send broken down by day.
How long it takes for me to respond to an email on average.
Who sends me the most email.
Who do I send the most email to.
How much time I spent in my email client.
How much spam I get everyday.

As they say before you can improve you must measure. Maybe it is time to start measuring email...

More Freakonomics

2005-07-12T20:43:00.000-05:00

Freakonomics is a great book and I highly recommend it. The New York Times just published another Freakonomics column. Looks like all these child safety seats may be unnecessary.

There is something very refreshing about someone just fact checking everything from car seats to the fall in crime rates. It got me thinking that every company should have a Chief Freakonomics Officer (CFO). A real CFO who fact checks all the stuff about a corporation. When the CEO says we missed earnings because of external economic conditions then that gets fact checked. Or when the CEO says earnings are up because the new corporate strategy it taking hold then that gets fact checked too.

I bet the results would be interesting...

Orginal link was from Seth.

Odeo is open

2005-07-10T22:18:00.000-05:00

Odeo finally opened it's doors to the public this week allowing me to get an account. I know there was some invite-only beta but alas, I was not chosen for it. With iTunes rolling out it's new podcast version of iTunes last week, I figured Odeo wouldn't really be that a big a deal for me. As Cote put it, the iTunes release was "the last nail in the coffin for other podcasters." Since I love both iTunes the app and the store, I tended to agree with this analysis.

Having used Odeo for a few days now, I must say I was wrong. I find the Odeo interface to be a lot simpler for finding and subscribing to podcasts. Also, they have done a nice job minimizing page reloads. This is going to be weird to say but iTunes the client app has more latency than Odeo the web app. Don't believe me? Search a podcast on both iTunes and Odeo. In Odeo you can subscribe in one-click and the page does not refresh. In iTunes it takes about 3 pages to subscribe and each refreshes.

Odeo also has tags built right into the app. That's nice since tags are the new defacto way to organize and find information. Tags allow for the creation of a community that shares information and makes it simpler to find information. Odeo will undoubtly benefit from this and it should become even easier to find new and interesting podcasts.

Apple did do a great service for us all by adding the podcasts features though. It's a lot simpler to just have iTunes update the feed and download the podcasts. That's a great feature and the native integration in iTunes is much simpler than either iPodder or the Odeo Syncr.

Personally, I see iTunes and Odeo as excellent complementary tools. I am going to use Odeo to manage all the podcasts that I subscribe to. I am going to use iTunes to download just my Odeo feed. In the end, it is about using the right tool for the right job and luckily these are some great tools. Congrats to both Apple and Odeo for great products.

Good T&C's practice

2005-07-09T22:43:00.000-05:00

Here is the kind of language that should precede all online terms and conditions legalese stuff:

"Okay - here's the deal - we want to keep making everything you do with us simple, efficient and convenient. We've created a way for you to get all your account information electronically, via email and secure messaging at ingdirect.com. All you need to do is click the "Accept" button below to let us know that you want communications sent to you electronically and to enroll in our cost saving paperless way to bank. It's that simple. Here's all the legal language that goes along with any good idea, but basically it just says that you are okay with electronic communications:"

ING Direct get its.

Agile equals trust, Waterfall equals CYA

2005-07-04T17:18:00.000-05:00

Agile Management offers this:

Where there is low trust, there must be documentation, verification, audit and potentially punishment. Where there is a lack of trust, there is fear. Where there is fear, there is a lot of people taking cover and protecting themselves. Such protection is waste - muda. It takes the form of overly long schedules, overly detailed specifications, precise plans and elaborate change procedures to track all of the changes, audit trails and assigned accountability and responsibility - there must be a scapegoat.

There is a lot written about software development processes and methodologies. I think in the end it comes down to trust. In an organization where there is trust, things will get done quickly. When you lack trust then you have CYA syndrome and everything crawls. Does your organization have trust?

More on mail

2005-06-28T20:19:00.000-05:00

I find the whole competition between Gmail and Yahoo Mail fascinating. It is excellent case study for product management. On one hand you have Gmail which doesn't use folders and has gone so far as to make it hard to delete mail. Their whole philosophy is save and search. There is even a cottage industry of GreaseMonkey scripts that add a delete button to Gmail. As I have written before, Gmail has taken a stance of trying to solve the email problem in a new way.

Yahoo Mail has gone the other way and decided to make its new Web email look more like a desktop client. They are betting that people will want to continue to file their email in folders.

"We asked Ethan Diamond, one of the Oddpost founders and now a Yahoo Mail product manager, to compare Yahoo Mail to Gmail. Diamond said he believes most e-mail users still favor using folders to organize messages"

If you have been to a product management class or read a book on product management, then you have heard the familiar refrain of "get customer feedback." Study the customer, listen to the customer, etc. What very few books or seminars discuss is processing the feedback. I am sure both Yahoo and Google gathered a lot feedback on what people wanted in web email. I am also confident that product managers from both products feel they have the right solution. So who is right? Will mainstream email users file in folders or archieve and search? Which PM was right? Which PM is going to have hear his development team say something like "I told you we should have done it like the competitor, but you didn't listen."

You can quote me on this

2005-06-25T11:55:00.000-05:00

What no Swingers quotes in the top 100 movie quotes of all the time? Inconceivable!

Cauvin has entered the blogsphere

2005-06-22T21:27:00.000-05:00

I am not sure why it took him so long but Cauvin has entered the blogsphere. Welcome!

Get your Freak-onomics on

2005-06-19T00:12:00.000-05:00

Freakononics is freaking awesome. This book discusses some of the most compelling issues of our time: crime, race, abortion, and parenting just to name a few. Levitt is economist by trade and a good one but rather than spending his time calculating GDP's and pouring over interest rates, he applies his skills to social questions. What factors make someone a good parent? Why did crime go down in the 1990's? His answers will surprised you. Levitt has enlisted the help of Stephen Dubner and together they deftly guide you through a captivating analysis of some of today most interesting and controversial subjects. I highly recommend the book.

After finishing the book, I started to wonder what kind of analysis Levitt could do about the web. For example, think about all the data in Web Server Logs. I wonder what he could do with all that data. What would his analysis of stuff like Adwords and Adsense show? That would be very interesting...

Book Review: Blink

2005-06-18T17:06:00.000-05:00

Gladwell's new book Blink has already gotten a lot of ink in the blogsphere but I figure I would chime in anyway. I found Blink to be an insightful and entertaining read. Gladwell is a master storyteller and finds a way to weave together academic research with exciting prose.

The book delves into the instantaneous thought process that we all unconsciously use in that first instance when we are exposed to something. For example, when you meet someone new you unconsciously develop an opinion in that first second you meet them.

The book is chock-full of stories and examples. My major takeaway was the blink instinct can be a good barometer for making a decision. Sometimes you may not be able to verbalize why you think something and chances are that is blink instinct kicking in.

Gladwell also gives plenty of examples of where our first instinct can be wrong. His example about how most CEO's are very tall is fantastic. Sometimes someone just looks the part so we make up our mind that they are the right man for the job. The guy is tall so he must be a leader. Look around your office are many of your managers taller than the average person? Hmm... wonder why? Is your boss a Warren Harding (a dashing tall President who most historians to consider the worst President)?

Most importantly, Blink made me much more aware of the snap judgments I unconsciously make on a day-to-day basis. Just being more aware of them has been beneficial.

Do users know what they want?

2005-06-18T00:00:00.000-05:00

There has been a lot of public outcry about Google obfuscating the delete button in the ever popular Gmail. Seems as if there is a vocal and active user base who want a simple way to delete Gmail messages. There is even a GreaseMonkey script that moves the delete button to a more prominent position in the UI.

I find the whole delete button debate to be a good case study for prioritizing features and user feedback. From everything I have read and heard Google has intentionally buried this feature because they want to change user behavior. The reason they gave everyone two Gigs was so we would never have to worry about storage. Removing that constraint means it is possible to keep all your email for virtually forever. Next Google adds search on top of Gmail's unlimited storage and you have a new paradigm for email. No need to delete a message and forget all the filing in folders. Google's world is about archiving and search.

Okay, well that is all well and good and Google does make a compelling case to change the way you manage your email. That doesn't change the fact that a whole bunch of people want to delete email. We all get emails we know we will never read again so why not delete. Maybe users just prefer to delete some stuff. Of course, most likely it's straight up inertia. We have always been able to delete email before and why not now? In fact, the corporate IT folks have trained us to delete email. Haven't we all gotten the "you have exceeded your mailbox limit" message at one time or another?

So how does Google decide what to do? Does Gmail's product marketing stick to their guns and continue to hide the delete button? Do they cave and let us return to our familiar deleting ways? Maybe a little moderate middle ground, add an option to show the delete button in user settings?

I think it comes down to power. Google has an extraordinary brand and the wherewithal to attempt to change user behavior. It would seem Google is so powerful it can shape how we use computers, even if that is not exactly what we want. Hmm, is that good or bad? Who knows better Google or the end user?

Transparent features

2005-06-14T23:17:00.000-05:00

There is a good post by Adam Smith on how IE 7.0 will implement tabbed browsing. Looks like you will need more memory to keep all the tabs and toolbars open. What is more impressive is the comments. Bruce Morgan the dev manager for IE 7.0 writes a response detailing Microsoft's decision. You can agree or disagree with Microsoft but at least they are transparent about the decision.

Given all the retro-fitting and backwards compatibility issues, I think MS is at a huge disadvantage to Firefox. I bet the developers at Redmond talk amongst themselves about how IE just need to be rewritten from the ground up.

Defying Conventional Wisdom

2005-06-08T21:27:00.000-05:00

Some of the best observations are those that defy conventional wisdom. Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart interviewed Steven Johnson author of Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. His thesis is that some popular video games, TV shows, and movies are actually making society smarter. I have not read the book and have no idea if this is true. However, I agree video games are increasingly complex. Take Madden football. It takes some serious time and effort to learn and play well. Maybe it does make you smarter...

Slashdot has a post about recommendations from both Microsoft and Netgear to write down your password. This seems like good common sense. If you pick a good password that is hard to guess, then it is going to be hard to remember. Go ahead and write it down just be careful not to lose it.

I also think it is okay to swim when there is lighting but that is just me saying that. No one with any real credentials. I just think getting struck by lighting is very unlikely, in the water or on land.

Social Networking sites ar only an infrastructure

2005-06-07T23:25:00.000-05:00

Over on CNet there is a post discussing the failure of social networking sites. The author makes several good points about the current limitations of the most popular sites like Friendster and Orkut. I think the article is a bit harsh but it is a sure sign that social networking is in the trough of disillusionment in the technology adoption cycle. Really, that is good news though, it just means we are one step closer to getting some value out of social networking. As with all new technologies, everyone must hate it before it becomes useful.

The number one complaint about social networking is there is nothing to do at these sites once you are registered. Of course, some sites oriented sites like Flickr have been successful (see AVC for more examples). The difference though is Flickr is really an application running on top of a social network. Sites like Friendster and Orkut are just a base infrastructure like Application Server. Like any infrastructure technology, social networking will get commoditized and the money will be made with sites that can build fun interesting application on top of social networks.

The big winner in the social networking will be the site builds a few good applications on top of a social network and also provides tools to its users to build new stuff. A site that will allow me to create all kinds of different groups: you child's soccer team, happy hour friends, or the local church group. A site that allows me to interact with the whole group in different ways: share pictures, message boards, blogs, or collect dues. A site that doesn't try to invent something new but instead focuses on making all the stuff I do easier.

Oceanic Air: Hidden Lost site with previews

2005-06-05T22:21:00.000-05:00

By now everyone knows I love the show Lost. The season finale was very good and did include some surprises but there was no big "reveal." Instead there were a lot of cliff hangers for next season. Hey, what can you expect.

However, I just found out that there is a very clever hidden teaser site for Oceanic Air. For those of you who do not follow the show, Oceanic Air was the Airline of the flight that crashed. The site looks like a real airline site and is full of easter eggs and hidden links with information about next season. Very cool. Here is a list of the secret links I have seen:

Hidden link to what looks like a crumpled script page from next season. On the side there are some notes and it says "No mapinguari! Not Yet!!!" Mapinguari is fictional Bigfoot type creature. Very consistent with what we have seen of the "monster" on Lost.
There is also a link to a hidden page showing seat assignments for the flight. If you enter Hurley's lucky numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42) on the main page in the Traveller's section, then you will be taken to the seating chart. Once you are at the seating chart, click on the same lucky numbers as before in order. Make sure you click on the actual row number. Once you do that you will be taken to a flash trailer for next season. The trailer says "They are NOT the survivors they thought they were." Hmm, what could that mean...
Also, on the seating chart page you can click on the same seat numbers but this time click on the actual blue boxes and you will get random information about each character.

If you are a fan of Lost, then you will definitely enjoy this site. I am sure there are more hidden links and easter eggs. I will post them if I find any more. Something to keep all the Lost fans busy until next season starts.

Thanks to my brother for the orginal link.