Sunday, April 27, 2003

Changing channels So I decided to start blogging again last week after a long pause.  What inspired me to take this on again was good software actually.  Like many geeks and longtime members of the "industry" I am multi-platform.  I was raised on Macs in school thanks to Dan'l Lewin, I went to college and spent even more time on Macs and got my technical roots on Unix, found Windows after Windows 95 made it a competitor.  I have several Windows PCs at home, and a 17 inch iMac.  I spend my days on a Compaq Tablet PC (probably one of the most exciting PC's I have ever owned) so when I come home at night and have time to play I am always looking for fun new things to do on any of my machines. Last week I discovered iBlog, a smart client blogging tool for OSX that copied the iLife suite of applications from Apple in UI.  I liked it because it was simple, took advantage of my Mac's power, and worked offline.  I hadn't seen an app like this on Windows so I thought I would give it a try because I liked it much better than the Web based UI of Radio 8 from Userland which is powering this blog.  I am not digging on the crew at Userland, but I just hate it when developers try to force what should be a solid local client app into a Web UI, the experience always leaves much to be desired.  Then along came FM Radio this week ...  It is good stuff, dare I say what Radio should have been from day one.  As a result ... I have moved over all of my posts from the past week to my Radio Weblog and am going to take the iBlog site in another direction.  7:55:27 PM    comment []

Nature abhors a vacuum Right now there is a vacuum in the tech industry IMHO, we are all struggling to find the next big thing that will fill it. Every company that hasn't been delisted from the market and laid off half of its staff is looking for it. I feel lots of undercurrents starting to brew but none of them really getting traction yet: - The return of the smart client programming model - P2P - Social software - Blogging - Collaborative software If you follow the predictable cycle of innovation and introduction of new technology into the market presented in Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm" or even believe that most of the macro-economic theories apply to technology products, you can see that our industry is at a cross roads. The tech market is maturing, our products are becoming pervasive in society and business. We are at the tipping point of comoditization at many layers of the eco-system if not already there. Welcome to the crux of the vacuum ... Entrepreneurs and visionaries are off searching for the next new big thing with little capital available in the market, and the Big Co.s are trying to preserve and existing business model and jump through every hoop possible to make the street's estimate next quarter. For the most part as an industry we are just putting bricks in the wall and trying to build it higher, not changing the way we build walls. Something has got to give ... The entire computing eco-system is locked in a business model that keeps us all on a treadmill. We must introduce a reason to upgrade your hardware/software/devices/etc. every 12 months or the revenue dries up. Trying to find that value that will actually get people to pay that upgrade tax is getting harder and harder. It has been incremental improvements and the slow march forward of making the basics work better that has kept the biz alive. What will buy our industry time while we experiment, learn, and create the next big thing that will build on the PC and the internet? Ray Ozzie recently wrote a piece for CNET that got me excited because it strikes on the fundamental promise that I think will move our industry forward at all levels of the stack. Communication, not the protocol kind ... good old human to human kind Making it just work technically, making it natural, making it simple, making it work they way humans work Ray calls it the "Interpersonal Computer" ... I love it I argue that communication was, is, and will be the killer app for computers of all shapes, sizes, and forms. It was the crowing achievement of the last 10 years. I have met few people who disagree that email, Web browsing, and IM were the initial few miles of track that were laid during the last few years for a communication railroad that will blanket the earth eventually. Allowing for us to share anything with anyone at anytime. The Personal Computer gave us the complex programming surface in which to build new communication tools, the internet and Web gave us the network to connect all of these PCs and devices together, but we have so far to go. Ray knows this and has made major inroads in the way people use their PCs to work and share in the form of Notes and Groove . Despite these inroads ... it is still too hard to do the basics and Ray doesn't build the basics, he builds on top of them. For example: I still can't share high res photos or digital video with my parents or friends easily. The learning curve and steps required to accomplish this simple scenario are overwhelming to the average computer user. Our options are email attachments and Web sites ... both are too hard for my Dad to deal with and inefficient technically. Neither of them are natural either. This has to be solved! I still can't use my DSL line and my PC as my primary voice communication mechanism. This has to be solved! I still have to go looking for content on the Web and manage thousands of emails a week by hand. I waste countless hours doing this each week! This has to be solved! It is too hard to do anything other then send an email, and the scenarios that we are not delivering on as an industry are too compelling to ignore. Who will get it? Who will make it approachable? Who will realize that the next wave of computing will not be driven by a Web browser with more features or CSS standards support. Who will realize that adding funny icons and photos to IM apps isn't going to solve the problem of not having a universal and trusted ID that I can use to securely identify myself and others? I don't know ... but he who does will reap the spoils. Maybe if we could get the vision of Ray together with the business savvy of Microsoft and the product design of Apple ... we could get close. I wonder ... 7:35:11 PM    comment []

To blog or not to blog ... My wife and I are sitting in the office and were checking out the new dev centers on MSDN to see if there was anything new or cool. We started noticing the prevalence of blog links in letters from the editor and other places. We started linking around and began to notice just how many people at Microsoft are blogging actively and openly. This thing is catching on here. I think it is great for the world to have this kind of access to Microsoft and its employees. I can't help but ask the question ... where does the line between the rights of the individual to share ones own thoughts and free speech intersect with the goals and rights of the company and its objectives?? When will we see the first blog used in a court case? I believe in the value of an open and honest dialogue between companies and markets. It is a reality. But does every individual represent the company when they start a dialogue? I wonder if Dave and the smart lawyer types over at Berkman at Harvard and spending some cycles thinking through this. I am sure if they are not that it will start happening somewhere sometime. Companies are not countries. You lose many of your rights when you accept a job that are protected when you are on the street or at home. This is why companies employ countless well trained and skilled marketers and public relations teams ... to control the message and perception of the message. When will we all be asked to stop blogging or face "disciplinary action" Not everything that you may have in your head is worth blogging about when it comes to work ... 7:34:25 PM    comment []

Chandler 0.1 Released This thing really fascinates me. Wish it wasn't done under open source, but I have dreamt of a p2p PIM for quite some time now and really wished someone would do it. Looks like someone did ... I will have to download it and start playing ... 7:33:51 PM    comment []

Ray's Back Just noticed that Ray Ozzie is back on his blog after 3-4 months offline. Sounds like he has been quietly observing much like I have. I think it is going to be fun having him back around and watching his thoughts. I like Ray, he is one of my favorite people that I have ever met in Software. Hyper smart, yet relaxed and approachable. Wish I worked around more guys like that. His brother Jack is a gem too. Welcome back Ray ... 7:32:03 PM    comment []