Why Rafe Needleman is Just Plain Wrong

Rafe is a long time PC industry analyst and writer that I've been reading for years and years.  So I hate to write this piece but I just have to.  His latest article for Business 2.0 is titled this:

Is Outlook the Next Windows?

How companies accessorize Outlook -- and the danger in doing so.

By Rafe Needleman, December 04, 2002 [_Go_]

If you are skimming over the table of contents in the magazine or just look at the heading and subheading of this article then you'd think that there is something technically wrong or even dangerous with "accessorizing" Outlook.  That's not the thrust of the article at all.  What he actually means is that its dangerous for the company making the enhancements to Outlook not for the users of the product.

Here's the start of the article:

Outlook itself is not just an application but also a platform for software, like Windows. There are enough Outlook users to make a nice market (according to Microsoft (MSFT), there are 300 million users of Office, the suite that Outlook is bundled with). So, for obvious reasons, many software companies look at this and see a nice business opportunity.

That's right.  It is a nice business opportunity.  Sure it isn't an Oracle size opportunity but a lot of us aren't looking for that.  We're building businesses that solve real problems for customers.  And if the best place to solve a customer's problem is at the Outlook level then so be it.

Rafe goes on to say:

But developing for Outlook is not the same as developing for Windows. People write applications for Windows. Outlook, though, is an application itself, and for it you write plug-ins and companions -- two options that give me the willies.

To sell an application add-on, you first have to convince somebody who bought the application that it's incomplete. With an operating system, this is part of the deal -- it's a shell by design. Plug-ins are grudge purchases (or subscriptions, which is how many of the newer products are sold).

Yes.  So what?  This is a business choice.  You factor it into your overall business model and marketing plan.  One of the benefits to this approach is that when you build to Outlook you don't have to convince people to migrate client software, to worry about upgrading their applications and to change how they do their daily work.  It just gets better -- within the framework of tools they already know.  Note -- I'm not saying that this is necessarily an easy thing to convince people -- but try convincing them to move away from Outlook when they get it for "free" as part of office.  Now that's a big marketing challenge.  The honest truth is that it is just plain hard now a days to convince people to buy software at all when so much of it is free.

Next Rafe says:

And developers always have to worry that the next version of the target application either will be incompatible with their plug-in or, worse, will include its functionality. And the better the application product is, the more likely it becomes that the latter will occur. If your solution is likely to boost sales of the app, you're going to end up fighting Microsoft when the company builds it in (unless the Redmond behemoth buys your company outright, which you cannot count on). Talk about being a victim of success.

Yup.  But this is always an issue when you deal with Microsoft.  Or with Apple.  Sure Microsoft could put our functionality into Outlook.  But they could also put anti-virus into Windows and kill Norton.  Or they could put drawing tools into Office and kill Adobe.  Look at what Apple did to Karelia with Watson [_Go_].  This is the nature of being a small (or even large) software developer today.  There aren't any "safe" places in the ecosystem to create products anymore:

• If you enhance an office suite then you face Microsoft
• Enhance the Mac and Apple might bury you
• Want to play in the database world then you could be SQL Server'd to death, have an Oracle sit on you or get "freed" by MySQL

But then again .... Were there ever any safe places?  I've been shipping software products since 1987 and while I'll admit that once upon a time it might have been easier but it was never safe.  The high tech industry has always been hugely competitive. 

So I think Rafe's thesis really is that it is hard to build a company by enhancing a product rather than an operating system.  That's a good thesis but everything is hard right now.  Also as more and more companies slow down the pace of moving to newer versions of Windows and Office, the strategy of "enhance NOT replace" becomes much more viable. 

Bias Disclaimer: I run one of those companies, Inbox Buddy, which "accessorizes" Outlook.  We made an intentional choice to build our email technologies on top of Outlook and don't regret it for a second.

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BlogStreet: How Useful Are Blogs and Wikis for Sharing Knowledge

BlogStreet has just announced a survey that they are hosting to look into this:

BlogStreet is hosting Sébastien Paquet's survey on the usefulness of weblogs and wikis for sharing knowledge. Please go here to fill in the short multiple-choice questionnaires.

- Weblog Survey
- Wiki Survey

Definitely worth filling out.

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Why No Pictures Lately?

I've gotten a few questions recently as to why I've slowed down including pictures and screenshots in my blog entries.  There are really two reasons.  First the blog template I'm currently using doesn't let me embed pictures as easily as I'd link since it has a tendency to wrap strangely.  And while I'd like to fix that, I'm don't really have the time right now.  Second and much more importantly is that I'm just about out of space on my Radio installation.  If you look to your Radio Status Center on the right hand sidebar you can see a section "Cloud status".  Mine is down to 4% which means that I'm close to out of disc space for my Radio blog.  If you have your Radio blog hosted on the UserLand servers then keep an eye on this number.  A lot of us have been using Radio for close to a year now which means that we're running out of space.  I know that UserLand is working on this but they don't have a fix yet so you might want to keep the images to a minimum.

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Rant: When Are Permalinks Coming to Email Newsletters?

Here's my rant of the day -- when Are we going to get email newsletters with permalinks?  I keep seeing things in emails that I get that I think "Damn.  I'd blog that but its too much work".  You have to go to their site and find it and then copy the link.  Now it's not really that much work but it would be a LOT more convenient if there was simply a permalink on each item.

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Bombing ... The Closet ???

You have to love Google News.  You just plain have to:

Aker's West Texas home was hit by a dummy bomb accidentally dropped from an Air Force F-177A Nighthawk on a practice run from Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

Although the dummy didn't contain explosives, it pierced the roof of Aker's home, flew across a bathroom and slammed through a wall into a closet.

Aker was in her home with her two children when the bomb hit. Her daughter was at her side, but her son was in his bedroom. All three were unharmed. [_Go_]

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CAPTCHAS

CAPTCHA = "completely automated public Turing tests to tell computers and humans apart".  This is interesting to me since it involves Spam but it amazes me that they got ABC News (and then Slashdot) coverage for this.  It's not all that complex or all that sophisticated.

But these automated computer programs - known as Web robots - have what may be a fatal flaw: For all their ability to seem otherwise, they're not human.

So researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are designing software that can serve as an online gatekeeper. If you can't prove you're human, you won't get in. [_Go_]

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Oops!  DeKlezzing Yourself

I guess I should have added this to the last post.  Directions and software to deklez yourself. [_Go_]

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Danger Will Robinson!  Danger!  FixKlez is Making the Rounds (Again)

If you follow the virus world at all then this is no surprise.  If not then you should read it (at least if you are on a PC).  I just got the following email last night:

Klez.H is the most common world-wide spreading worm.It's very dangerous by corrupting your files.

Because of its very smart stealth and anti-anti-virus technic,most common AV software can't detect or clean it.

We developed this free immunity tool to defeat the malicious virus.

You only need to run this tool once,and then Klez will never come into your PC

And then there was an attachment, FixKlez.com.  I checked who sent it to me and it was "TrendMicro" -- the makers of an antivirus program.  So that looked legitimate but ... I don't use TrendMicro -- I use Sophos.  So why is TrendMicro sending me anything?  So I checked the McAfee virus database and saw that this is one of the ways that Klez is spread -- by posing as an antivirus tool.  Yikes.  [_Go_]

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