rebelutionary
Mike Cannon-Brookes on Java, J2EE, OSX, Open Source, Australia, Atlassian, Bug Tracking, JIRA and more...

Thursday, 27 June 2002

David replies to Adam Curry about the differences between Teoma and Google - and I have to say I agree with all of what he says: Well, Adam, if you really want Teoma to have a chance to shine, let me give you some advice. Tell them to make their submit a site process as brain-dead simple as google's. Google gets it. Period. End of discussion. That's why they're #1. When I went to submit my site on Teoma, it's like going through some porn site indocrination with windows popping up all over the place and redirects to a third-party that wants me to PAY THEM to put my site on Teoma. That's bullshit and it's exactly the reason why Teoma will remain an also-ran as long as they don't get it. You might want to tell them to read Jakob Nielsen. Finally, Teoma's usefulness as a search engine is directly related to the size of their crawled cache. If they understood that, they'd have already rolled out the red carpet on their submit a site. Unfortunately, Phd's get the hard part but they often overlook the simple stuff. The parallel I draw from this (and one of my biggest annoyances) is enterprise software companies - give me a price on your website! Don't waste my time making me email you or fill in a form just to get a price. Or give me a price range - with some indication about the different prices. I know sometimes exact pricing isn't possible for enterprise software, but is it $1000 or $100,000? That's what I want to know. Too often I see interesting software packages, hunt around for pricing, find nothing but 'fill in this form to get our bozo business development director to contact you' and I piss off. Your loss. 11:34:10 PM  comment []      Akamai v. Speedera - like a pair of whinging little kids. 5:22:43 PM  comment []      PalmSource adds Java Virtual Machine to Palm OS. Excellent! Java on the Palm - standard! 12:47:58 PM  comment []      I'm told I have to post Walsh's latest metaphor-filled piece Exploding Mushroom Theory: Ask any Information Systems Manager what their biggest headache is, and chances are the answer will be "their users". To misquote, Jean Paul Satre, when it comes to managing networks and security, hell is "other people".  [australia.internet.com] 12:47:22 PM  comment []      Teoma vs Google: Labeling Teoma a Google killer makes for a great headline, but is really rather silly. Teoma is a very good search engine, but at this point it poses very little threat to Google's dominance of the web search world. [Adam Curry] 12:44:54 PM  comment []      Console Wars: IT IS an enthralling scenario, worthy of a summer science-fiction blockbuster: three vast empires mass-produce millions of electronic drones and send them into battle. The balance of power shifts repeatedly, as technological advances and cunning tactical footwork give first one empire, then another, the upper hand. But this is no movie. It is the video-games industry, the scene of a vicious three-way fight between Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft. 12:40:44 PM  comment []      A classic email called The Color Of Our Bike Shed - oringinally from the free-bsd list and now reposted on the IDEA community Wiki. It explains a lot about management, and managing Open Source communities: "Parkinson explains that this is because an atomic plant is so vast, so expensive and so complicated that people cannot grasp it, and rather than try, they fall back on the assumption that somebody else checked all the details before it got this far. Richard P. Feynmann gives a couple of interesting, and very much to the point, examples relating to Los Alamos in his books. A bike shed on the other hand. Anyone can build one of those over a weekend, and still have time to watch the game on TV. So no matter how well prepared, no matter how reasonable you are with your proposal, somebody will seize the chance to show that he is doing his job, that he is paying attention, that he is *here*." 11:19:44 AM  comment []      paradox1x reminded me that java.sun.com has been redesigned. I love the new redesign. Much cleaner, clearer and generally seems to have less crap on it. Ahh well, entropy is certain to kick in soon enough. As he alludes, there are no applets on the front page anymore. Now if only I could find where all the old stuff I used to use is... 12:48:56 AM  comment []      Sun and Apache are now officially engaged. Jason Hunter: So now, effective immediately, Apache has access to the TCKs for all the JSRs on which it's active or likely to be active. Apache Axis already has been working to certify against the JAX-RPC TCK. Other Apache products will likely soon follow. So it looks like in the end Sun kept his promise to open the JCP to Open Source initiatives. This is really great news. [Be Blogging] 12:46:28 AM  comment []      Apple dumps Aussie PR after news coup. And now the good news, you're sacked. 12:27:51 AM  comment []      The Tiger Woods Theory: When Woods plays in a tournament - win or lose - stocks tend to rise the following Monday. Conversely, the market has exhibited a tendency to drop on the Mondays following weekends when Tiger does not play. This reminds me of so called holiday markets - during the summer months the market is much more likely to move upwards as people have a more positive, sunny attitude. The converse is true in winter months. [Adam Curry] 12:09:18 AM  comment []      Be Inc. completes takeover of Palm. Back to Palm. There's a good precedent for this kind of reverse takeover. In 1996, a floundering Apple "bought" NeXT, but within a year Jobs, Rubenstein and Tevanian were steering the ship towards sanity, and it saved the company. [The Register] 12:05:22 AM  comment []      Palm Evolutionary tree - nicely done! I remember my original PalmPilot - it really was a captivating device. [Jon Schull's Weblog] 12:03:28 AM  comment []