Distributed discussions. Ain't that great that people comment on other's people blogs? Here Sergio translates to English his earlier comment (originally in Portuguese) about one of my posts. Have to admin that he does much better job than Altavista.      

Good writing. Good writing is the basis for weblogging. Good books about how to write learn are On writing well and Style: toward clarity and grace. If you don't feel like reading books, this list might help as well:

• Avoid alliteration.
• Prepositions dangle awkwardly if you use them to end sentences with.
• Avoid clichés and colloquialisms like the plague, or you will seem old hat.
• Employ the vernacular, while eschewing arcane and obfuscatory verbiage.
• Avoid ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
• Take it easy with parenthetical remarks (however relevant), to avoid chopping up sentences (unnecessarily (we might add)).
• To ever, however artfully, split an infinitive, marks you as grammatically challenged.
• Skip the foreign words and phrases you know, n’est-ce pas?
• Never generalize.
• “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Comparisons can clog up writing as badly as alliterations and cliches.
• Avoid redundancy and verbosity, or readers will think you are repeating yourself and using too many words as well besides.
• We really get @*&%$**)!! when you use vulgarities.
• Clear, specific writing beats vagueness, we suppose. Whatever.
• Overstatement totally destroys any credibility you ever had forever.
• Understatement can, at times, perhaps shade a point to the point of its fading away.
• One word sentences? Eliminate.
• Analogies work about as well as fur on a flounder.
• “Is” just sits there. Pick verbs that do something.
• Even if a mixed metaphor sings, you should derail it.
• Who needs rhetorical questions?
• Its distrakting too punctuat, an spel rong.

Good writing is surprisingly hard.     

Stating the obvious. Do we really need reports to state the obvious? Short summary: MMS will fail. Background: MMS is hyped by wireless phone industry as a successor to SMS (Short Message Service). SMS took wireless phone people by surprise. Who would have thought that people would ever torture themselves by typing anything but phone numbers using ridiculously inadequate keyboard on standard phone? They did because the value was greater than the pain. Accidentally wireless providers could charge users for this simple service because they own a closed system. People were paying because they had no choice, no alternative. That got carriers excited: why not give people more and charge them more? They especially got excited by the "charge more" part. So their brilliant idea is to let users sends sounds and pictures. In their mind it's a given that this will be multi-billion market in just a few months. Reminds me of not-so-distant times where every web service was funded as if it was to own 100% of a multi-billion market. But I digress.

Here's why it won't work. If people wanted to send you sounds wouldn't they just call you instead of sending a message? And where will they get those sounds and images in the first place? Built-in cameras are just a novelty. The quality is terrible, it will never match even the simplest digital cameras. This thing will wear thinly very fast.

But here's the main reason: competition. SMS is crappy, over-priced service. The willingness to pay for it is a result of lack of alternatives, not the greatness of the service. But here come Sidekick and Pocket PC Phones and the SMS looks like Ford T next to a BMW. You're not in Kansas anymore, guys. No more charging me per letter sent. Now I have e-mail, IM, web browsing. If you want my money give me unlimited data transfer for a reasonable price. Then I'll subscribe to your plan.