The FuzzyBlog!
Marketing 101. Consulting 101. PHP Consulting. Random geeky stuff. I Blog Therefore I Am.

Tuesday, August 13, 2002

Network World Talks About Blogging Very nice, very nice.  Network World has a decent blogging article: http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2002/0812blog.html They mostly focus on the state of Utah stuff but they do quote two people from the blogging community: Dave Winer and yours truly (i.e. me).  Jon Udell is cited but not quoted; more the pity -- Jon knows this area cold.  The writer, John Cox, did an incredibly thorough interview with me 2 fridays ago.  We were on the phone for about 1.25 hours and he really, really took the time to ask the right questions and actually listen.  Nice Job John.  Thank you. 7:51:08 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Need a Graphical Windows SCP Client?  WinSCP Works SCP, for those not familiar with it and still using FTP, is a secure copy company (Secure CP hence the SCP) that lets you move files to and from *nix boxes easily.  Given that FTP sends passwords in the clear, I've pretty much banned FTP for any real work I do.  And, even though I've actually taught my (mostly) non *nix partner how to use command line SCP, given the detailed mess of directories on a Windows 2K or later system for your personal data, asking her to use a command line SCP tool made me feel like I was clubbing a baby seal.  Sure she could survive it but it just wasn't nice.  A quick Google and Poof!  Like magic I had found WinSCP, an Open Source, freely downloadable GUI SCP client.  There was a $79.95 commercial SCP client but when there's a free version, you have to ask "why...".  A quick download and it just plain worked.  I used it today to move a bunch of files up and down from our sites and it worked great for us.  One tip -- if you are using the keyboard to select files to upload then SPACEBAR does the selection.  Oh and contrary to some opinions, this is Open Source with a good user interface.  It's a standard Windows app.  Pictures below.  Recommended. Home Page: http://winscp.vse.cz/eng/ Download: http://winscp.vse.cz/eng/download.php FAQ: http://winscp.vse.cz/eng/faq.php Screenshots: http://winscp.vse.cz/eng/screenshots.php Quick Screenshot Summary:     Is the interface perfect?  Clearly not.  No interface is perfect.  The FTP client I pay $39.95 per year for annoys the ever loving snot out of me at times.  One of the ways I look at interfaces and Open Source is to apply Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crud So I look at it as sure there are cruddy Open Source interfaces and, perhaps, 90% of them are crud.  But that 10% is damn good.  The same statement can be made about the interfaces in commercial software; 90% are crud and that 10% is damn good.  Perhaps commercial software should uniformly have great interfaces but we all know that's not the case, let's NOT kid ourselves here.  If commercial software had uniformly good interfaces, would there be such discontent with our high tech products.  Bear in mind that to the user, if the software doesn't crash and doesn't lose data, the interface is all they perceive.  They don't know about elegant back ends or internal code.   7:31:21 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Cool!  New Themes for Radio http://themes.userland.com/newsItems/viewDepartment$new%20radio%20theme Thank you 8:51:24 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Too Funny! From a subscription I found on Jake's most excellent blogroll when I needed some urls for Radio specific icons (explanation coming), this absolutely hilarious, totally inside the blog world humor: http://www.davezilla.com/index.php?p=1277 It will mean very, very little to those outside our little community but for those who get it, it's a hoot and a half or just plain "frothy good fun". 8:19:41 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Thanks Russ!  Now for My Take on Rebol It's amazing how relationships develop in BlogSpace.  On ?Sunday? I got a nice comment from Russ in Spain (not Russ in Washington who writes about Radio).  I responded and mailed it to him (tip: I recommend this if you want to build "community" around your blog; it works) as well as posting it.  He fired back.  I shot him some private thoughts on Groove, having been recently forced into using the rather large beast that is Groove.  He then posted his Groove thoughts.  Of which I pretty much agree although I am harsher (some of which is platform bias since the time of day when I need groove, I'm no longer working on Windows).  He then draws an analogy with a new thing called Rebol.  He argues that Rebol won't succeed because of privacy.  My take is different and one that I emailed to Joe Friend a few months ago (I apologize if I already posted this, I intended to but never did).  [Approx Date: June 17] Hi Joe, Here's a couple of thoughts based on the obligatory 3 minutes of site surfing. a) Sounds interesting b) Proprietary but not wanting to admit it. c) Requires client side software: http://www.rebol.com/express-form.html This is a huge disadvantage for you I would think. I don't know that much about indonesia but I would think that getting sw updates distributed would be a nightmare. And, I have rarely seen a client side vendor that doesn't regularly update.  They all claim they don't but they always do and even the best of the self updating schemes require a full update from time to time.  If it's of any size at all (and I think it has to be) that would be a nightmare. d) Requires their own server. "To obtain an evaluation copy of our REBOL IOS Express client and a user account on our Express server, fill out the form below. Please provide enough information to help us understand your interest." My guess is that developing stuff on their server from your location would be hard / time wasteful. e) It's not open source. I know I sound like a broken record on this one but, more and more, I see the entire software biz dramatically changing within the next 2 - 5 years. And what I see is people moving to much more Open Source -- even for primary applications (office is the real exception). It's unclear to me that you can launch a new software product as a small company effectively -- and this is where the innovation happens. People can understand paying Microsoft, Bea, IBM or Sun for software but it's hard to make a big $$$ committment to a small company.  Sure we can argue about Radio being an exception  but Radio has huge momentum from the years of effort Dave put into Frontier and UserLand isn't a new company. For almost every single category today you can find an open source equivalent that is as good as the proprietary solution if not better. And, while the support model for OS stuff is *different*, that doesn't mean it's bad at all. It's bizarre but it just plain works. Try hanging out on the php-general mailing list sometime and you'll be surprised at how quickly problems are resolved. Additionally I just plain find the quality in Open Source to be so much higher on certain projects that it is just bizarre by our standards. These people just plain care about their work. Drupal is an outstanding indication of this. I don't know all the team but Kjartan, one of the leads and my primary contact, is just plain unbelievable about this. I've honestly never seen anything like it -- and I used to think that I did a good job back when I had my company. I can (and am) learn from him. My gut read of people in high tech, and I really don't think I am wrong about this, is that people are just plain damn sick to death of crappy software quality. We all feel that "well I paid for this, it should just plain work". I find it so unacceptable to pay for products when the Open Source version works better. Sure the UI may be lacking but when it works that's all that really matters (as long as it is basically usable). Look at my essay yesterday about Driving Customers Away. Within 2 hours, Hanan, one of my readers, popped up with a free alternative. And, realize too that "bugs", are highly user perception right now. I felt that JASC the company was bug ridden based on how they handled support@company.com. To some extent we are all looking for reasons not to purchase stuff when there are problems. I just don't have the tolerance for crap that I used to.   None of us do.  None of us do.  If you're going to charge me then you damn well ought to be perfect.  That may be a crappy ass attitude but it's increasingly common.  We tolerate things from our legacy vendors (MS, Adobe, Lotus) that we just won't from new companies. Disclaimer: Highly vertical markets are an exception as they always are. Disclaimer: Enhancements / addons to proprietary products are an exception as are low priced utility software. f) If you need communications protocols then I'd look at the Jabber stuff. It's actually pretty damn good. I'm gearing up to do some work in python and php on this if you need real feedback, wait 2 - 4 weeks. g) I found this interesting: http://www.rebol.com/email-problem.html Whenever I see people wanting to replace email, my alert meter goes up 50%. I'll be the last one to say that email is perfect -- but the core store and forward messaging concept is so damn strong that I find it hard to imagine something replacing it well -- without ending up just as email is. And, then, all we did is make a silly, proprietary vendor richer without solving the problems. I am a huge email fan because, even when the servers go down, etc, the mail just keeps flowing. We all make a big deal out of "it's in the email, didn't you get it? Oh, I'll resend it" -- but this is the new equivalent of "The dog ate my homework". It's just not all that true. Bias disclaimer: I have a new product coming out in this space that adds into Outlook and makes email, well, suck less. Pre-release details available soon. This doesn't mean that I am wrong about this, it just gives you perspective.  I have a commercial interest here so that may affect your perception.  Be that as it may. h) The company is just plain foolish, imho. IOS is a registered Cisco trademark and they are setting themselves up for a lawsuit. i) You can't establish platform technology at present unless you are giant or it's free. This is going to fall into some kind of small nichey space unless they change direction and, based on my read of the management team, they won't. You either understand this or you don't. I find it very interesting that no one on the senior team ever built an Internet protocol / RFC. That's bad. Summary The product looks interesting. I see the issues of a client side piece being the most problematic. I also can't see making a strategic committment to any kind of "platform" technology without it being fully open source. Gah! This ended up as an essay. I should go boolean more often. That's ok. I'll merge it into an blog soon enough. A lot of my stuff originates from this so I never mind writing emails. Scott 5:09:49 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Programmer Humor I just got this as the sig line in an email from a friend who's been offline far too much lately (since he's a reader, that's a subtle nudge -- "rejoin us in the blogging world"): :: "Real programmers don't work from 9 to 5. If any real programmers are around at 9am it's because they were up all night." All too true but there does exist that even rarer early morning breed of programmer who finds that there are so few people, emails and instant messages from say 3 am until 9 am that it's a good time.  These programmers leave around noon.  So they around at 9am because their work day is almost done.   4:24:25 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This