Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Bob's 2009 Crystal Ball

Well, I guess it's time for me to dust off the old crystal ball - and (again) publicly humiliate myself by making some predictions for what will happen in the upcoming year. I've been loath to do this in past years - but as part of my new "happy place" resolution - I'm going to put myself out there and predict some winners and losers in 2009.

The Winners:

SaaS-based Solutions. We have all seen that the rise in Software as a Service (SaaS) applications are on the rise this past year. I think this trend will only continue in 2009 as companies are still in a really "unsure" position and continue to turn the lights off at an astounding rate.

I think most of the "big" cuts will wrap up in early Q1. The problem (and opportunity) is that now businesses will be left with 20% to 50% less people to do 100% of the work that needs to get done. Since the cuts have been (in most cases) all across the board - there are now even less IT folks to go around and they've got their own problems to deal with - and chances are good that your project won't be one of them.

SaaS implementation won't just be the domain of some Web 2.0 software, but I think that companies will also want to be able to offer the packages that they've traditionally bought as on-premises apps as internal SaaS applications as well. This means that ISV's and software vendors better get a solid SaaS strategy - and get it NOW. ISVs and software vendors also should take a good, long look at being in the financing business - offer customers multiple, flexible ways to pay for their software. The more flexible, the better.

Truly Agile Development. A few years ago offshoring development was all the rage, but now some of the same companies that were early adopters of offshoring are bringing their development efforts back in-house. Why? Productivity. It's sort of the same model that I've seen with folks who are trying to re-develop their aging software in .NET. They throw a bunch of money and resources at it - and because .NET is so complex and has so many moving parts - almost 100% of the time these projects miss their deadlines and budgets by a mile.

While that may be somewhat acceptable during "flush" times - that kind of nonsense will come to a grinding halt. The needs of the business don't change - and I would even argue that as competition heats up - time frames compress and business needs even grow larger. The need to preserve market position, the need to grow the customer base, the need to be ever more responsive to the needs of the marketplace, etc.

The companies that figure out how to do agile development that actually delivers value in a timely fashion will thrive. Those that don't won't.

Projects With Measurable ROI. Gone are the days of "someday" ROI. Gone are the days of "squishy" ROI. Now, as in the last downturn, companies are struggling with budgeting decisions and only those projects that can demonstrate measurable ROI will get funded. By measurable ROI I mean - "How much will that project deliver to my Q1 profitability?" or "How much in hard dollar (yen, euro, pound) savings can we count on by June?"

It's even more important to have not only measurable targets for increased productivity, decreased staffing needs or other metrics - but software vendors and consultants will have to commit to the "when" question as well. "WHEN can we see those savings?" That's going to put pressure on developers and consultants to be able to actually deliver what they say - on time and on budget.

Apple. Even though their stock is down (along with the rest of the world) - they have a history of innovation and they just have the knack of giving people devices that work they way they should. Their hardware is "pretty" and fairly reliable. Their software - although limited only to their hardware - is pretty easy to use, while at the same time build on a robust Linux core.

They no-doubt will pimp the variations of iPod Touch models (think "nano" versions), and may even hint at a new iPhone model. Plus, with Apple, there's always the possibility of "one more thing" - something that no one has even thought about yet that they've been working on in secret for years on. That's the fun (and frustrating) thing about Apple - you just never know what they'll do next. One thing's for sure - they'll

The Losers:

Traditional Client-Server Applications. I don't mean ALL client-server applications - because, let's face it, the browser is one of the worst application delivery vehicles ever invented. The browser only solves one part of the problem - the one that has plagued companies since the dawn of time: deployment. Specifically, deployment of traditional client-server applications.

You know, the ones that has a client you have to install on every single separate client computer. The ones where you have a "dumb" server and a "heavy client" that does most of the heavy lifting... those things will become deader than a doornail.

Does this mean that native client applications (ones that run outside the browser) will die completely. No way in hell. There are applications that simply demand they be native client applications (ones that talk to the serial port for scanners, bar code readers, cash drawers, or that have to access local files or other shared resources).

"Thin" will be "in". Thin, native clients that load quickly but still have native user interface elements and that don't rely on the Internet to be "up" will always have a place in business. In 2009, IT managers, software vendors and ISVs will be looking for tools like Servoy that can deliver the best of both worlds - while at the same time meets their needs for on-time, on-budget development.

.NET Deployments. I know, it's sort of an oxymoron - but .NET is seen as a more agile technology especially with companies with large scale COBOL applications or who are struggling under the weight of proprietary C++ applications that are crying out for updates.

The sheer speed of the changes in business and the ever-increasing need for ISVs and software companies to meet the needs of their stressed-out, under-funded, over-worked customers will be the determining factor in their own survival. I've never personally seen any .NET deployment that is able to be adapted quickly and efficiently to the changing needs of business (if you have - please feel free to comment!).

Offshoring. If you've made it this far in this post - you'll know the reasons why. I do have some personal experience with this - and even though workers here "charge more" than programmers and companies in "developing nations" - the results speak for themselves. I've talked to several companies who are scrapping their entire offshore operations and bringing them back in-house.

One manager I know from a major company (who asked not to be named) summed it up pretty well: "I found out that adding 65 people to our project (for the price of 9 US-based folks) - wasn't all it was cracked up to be. They would say 'yes, yes, yes' to everything but nothing would ever get done. It looks like most of the stuff they've worked on for the past 2 years will have to be re-written from scratch here." DOH!

Sun. And, last but not least, I'm afraid Sun will have to take some drastic actions in 2009 in order to continue their operations. Their $1 billion purchase of MySQL this year (as well as the tanking market for high-end servers) has seemed to take a huge toll on the company's balance sheet, forcing them to layoff 6,000 workers.

They're still struggling with finding a business model for their open source initiatives, and I'm not sure they'll find the answers they need in 2009. They've already open-sourced most of their products (Solaris, Java, MySQL, Java FX, etc) and now that they've done that they are finding it hard to put the Genie back in the bottle and make money off of their technology. Short of becoming an uber consulting and support company - I'm not convinced they will be around to see 2010.

Well, there you have it - my predictions for 2009. This time next year I'll make sure to review them and also make some other BS predictions for 2010...

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Microblog: My Happy Place

It's good to take a break every now and then. I wasn't particularly looking forward to the downtime between Christmas and New Years - I wasn't against it by any means - but it usually means that my neglected "honey-do" list is the top priority.

Not this year.

I decided to actually take time off - and just relax a bit. Take a few motorcycle rides (thanks, hon!), read a couple of popcorn-for-the-mind mystery books (rather than technical and business journals), spend time with the kids, and just plain sleep.

I never realized I missed sleeping so much. I actually slept for 12 solid hours last night! Really. Me.

I'm usually the one getting up at 3:00am or 4:00am and getting a few hours of work done before going to the office - but not this week. I just actually watched some movies, went to bed early, and slept late.

I've actually been in a good mood - in fact, my daughter had a sleepover with her friend here the other day and I made some dinner for them. Both she and her friend asked "Why are you being so nice to us?"

Huh? That really got my attention. She continued on saying "Whatever you do dad, stay in your 'happy place'."

Kids say the most interesting things. I guess she's right - I've been "going" 10,000 miles per hour for so many years that I guess it just became "normal" for me to get out of my "happy place."

It's cool to finally get there again. I'm going to try to stay in my happy place more in 2009...

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Microblog:: Twitter Spam

Deep breath.... deep breath... OK. For those of you that have a compelling need to Tweet more than 15 times per day - here's my personal advice: Step AWAY from the keyboard (or cell phone or whatever).

The whole point of Twitter, and Pownce and Tumbler and ______ (your social network here) is that you share something RELEVANT with your followers. It's NOT a free-for-all.

If you're posting more than 10 Tweets per day - then you're a Twitter Spammer (you know who you are). Stop it! No, really!

Rather than posting what you're reading - or the fact that you just posted and "can't believe it" - there's another medium for you - it's called a "blog." You can rant the whole day - and no one will care (trust me!).

But putting out 150 status "updates" a day is just too damn much. No one CARES! Instead, take a deep breath (get your HANDS OFF the keyboard - no one cares that you took a deep breath) and form some funny or interesting thing to say, and then (and ONLY then) post it to your followers.

We're (I mean I'm) tired of all the spam. If you post and see your own face (only!) on the the entire first page of your XYZ feed - just say NO. NO to posting inane details of what you're doing. NO to inane details of a trip or who you're @ hanging with. NO BODY CARES.

NOW, I'm going to Tweet this post....

Friday, December 26, 2008

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Night Before Christmas

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, well maybe my mouse;

The MacBooks and Minis were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Jobs soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of video-gaming danced in their heads;

And mamma in her thong 'kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled down for a long winter's nookie nap,

When down on my Dell there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the Vista Windows I flew like a flash,

Tore open the laptop and threw up because it took me 4 minutes to come out of "sleep" because damn Bill Gates decided to do yet another hack and patch job on the crappy OS... but I digress.

Yada yada... home invasion by a stranger with a fetish for "magic" animals... sniffing and stuffing stockings... blah, blah, blah...

"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night."

Monday, December 22, 2008

IRL - RIP

NOTE: For those of you over 40: IRL = "In Real Life"

So last week when Apple announced that it would pull out of MacWorld next year, and, oh yeah, by the way, Steve Jobs won't be doing the keynote THIS year... people went absolutely bat s**t.

There were 1,000,000 blogs on the topic - rife with speculation that Mr. Jobs had a spat with the organizers (IDG) and that they simply were "taking their dollies and going home." To add insult to injury - they offered up a Jobs Replacement - Phil Shiller. Now, I don't know Mr. Shiller personally, and I'm sure he's a great guy and everything, but geez... he for SURE no Steve Jobs.

Apple's cold press release about the fact that they were just dumping MacWorld - right before the show (January 6-9, 2009) was about as childish and stupid as you can get. It's like getting dumped via a text message.

Would it have killed them to have Steve get up and say "Nothing new... and one more thing... we got NOTHING new to pimp." Then in February or March, just come out and say that due to _______ (insert standard corporate crap here) they are "re-aligning" their tradeshow strategy with market conditions... or something?

The "other" big show that's going on at exactly the same time is the once-huge CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas. There was a time where this show was like the old COMDEX show - 150,000 people strong. Where you would physically age while waiting for a cab. When the crappiest, dirtiest, keep-your-socks-on-at-all-times-people hotel room was going for $395 per night. Last year, not so much. This year, even less "so much."

I don't know if it's just a reflection of the recessionary times we live in - or whether people just really don't give a crap - but it seems like (to me at least) that tradeshows in general are just sucking wind. They're expensive for both the attendees as well as the exhibitors (I've been both, many, many times). Yeah, it's cool to get all the useless swag to give to your kids and all, but really - what function do these live, in-person events really play?

We live in a world of 140 character "blogs". A world full of "status" messages on social networking sites, and a world in which 25% of the paper wealth of everyone just vanished overnight.

And it's not just tradeshows. It's user conferences and gatherings. Just last week Novell just canceled their "BrainShare" (user) conference because a bunch of the people said they weren't coming because of restrictions on their travel budgets.

Personally, I say - good riddance. I think it's important to meet with customers face-to-face. There are certain things that Twitter, and emails can't convey. However, I think that the power of meeting with people IRL is the fact that they all share a certain love for a product, service or industry and they want to be around others who are like-minded.

The problem is that with technology being what it is - phones, and Skype and online meetings and webcams are slowly taking the place of speakers, presenters, drinks in the bar and good old fashioned business card exchanges.

I guess the change in the way we interact together was (is) inevitable. There was a time when I had physically printed manuals for all the software I used sitting on a bookshelf. Now I either just use the online help (usually F1 on a PC application) - or I use Google as my online manual. I don't need no stinkin' printed manual - and I don't need to go IRL with other folks to find out about any new developments in my industry.

I get 24 hour news, 500 blogs that report the absolute latest and greatest, etc. However, I think that if shows like MacWorld and CES go the way of COMDEX - a little bit of humanity goes with it. And once it goes, it's very difficult to get back.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Microblog: #$%& Microsoft!

So I installed the new IE 7 patch - or rather, I should say that Microsoft installed it FOR me. Then I did a restart - and got a HANG. Ok, no big deal - this happens all the time! So, I'll just restart.

Restart, get welcome screen. HANG.

Restart. Get welcome screen... hard drive spinning for 11 minutes... HANG.

Restart. Get welcome screen... pause.... hard drive spinning for 14 minutes. Login. Loading (except QuickLaunch toolbar not showing)... start up mail client. HANG.

Restart. Get welcome screen... pause.... hard drive spinning for 11 minutes. Login. Loading... loaded. Choose "Turn Off" from options.

Restart. Finally back and running. THANK YOU Microsoft - you've managed to push me even closer to buying a Mac!

Microblog: Short Attention Span Theatre

NEW FEATURE: Microblog entries. This is when something is just so stupid or insane, I must comment on it IMMEDIATELY. I'll label them as such, so you don't have to read them if you're not interested. Here's the first one:

12 Second TV! Are you kidding me? Has the whole world just gone to hell in a handbasket? I mean - are we going to all be reduced to a 140 character and 12 SECOND attention span?

According to TechCrunch - the site 12seconds.tv is coming out of beta - AND has a new iPhone application. This app will allow you to put 3 photos and - yep - 12 seconds of audio together and post it on their site. Ouch! I already have twitter feeds, yammer feeds, and social media to deal with - and NOW someone gets the great idea to have Twitter - but with video? Seesh... it's a sad, sad day, people.

DO SOME WORK! Spend some MONEY! Stimulate the economy! Quit watching 12 second ANYTHING.

I Am Therefore I Tweet

My social media experiment these past couple of months has been... interesting to say the least. Like most social newbies who finally figure out what Twitter is - I was posting about 10 times per day. Yes, I was "that guy" - who told my 4 followers all the inane details of the boring crap I was doing everyday.

I was checking Twitter incessantly - and adding people that I was "following" like it was no tomorrow. I would hit "refresh" multiple times per day - and read all the posts from all the people I subscribed to. I would tweet from my iPhone, from my browser, from a friend's computer... I sounded like a damn Minah bird - tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet!

Then I got a life.

As I cut down on the number of times per day that I would tweet and would read the posts on Twitter, I noticed something interesting things:
  1. I actually got more work done
  2. People don't really care what I had for lunch
  3. Some people "spam" Twitter like a 5 year old with 100+ tweets per day (I've stopped "following" those people)
  4. I look forward to the tweets with funny, observant or useful information
  5. Only about 20 of the 50+ people I "follow" have anything interesting to say
These observations have lead me to be a better Twitter citizen. I now post only stuff that I think other people might be interested in, or might find useful. I've pared down my "following" list to just over 50 people that I actually want to hear from (mainly geeks).

I decided that if I wanted to indulge the "eating ham sandwich" side of me - that I should either set up a separate account for "blather" - or just do like everyone else and post that stuff on my Facebook page.

Then, just as I had completed the Twitter 12 step program, my wife suggests that we try using Yammer - a Twitter rip-off that is meant just for people inside of a specific company (people can only join yammer if they have the same email extension - e.g. @mycompany.com).

Well, Hallelujah! Within the first 24 hours most of the company was on Yammer and were... well... Yammering away. This time, though, no one put what they were eating for lunch. They said what they were working on, what projects where coming online, what interesting sales prospects were saying, comments and suggestions from customers... you know, real "work" stuff.

It's still in the experimental stage, but the results are pretty cool. We have employees in 6 timezones all over the world - and it's cool to be able to get a sense of what they're working on. I'm not sure how to explain it... but it's easier than sending an email, it's less intrusive than IM, and it's fast. The best part is - if no one want to read it (or respond to it), then it's up to them.

If you don't respond to an email or IM, then you're rude and sometimes will cause more than hurt feelings. But if you don't respond to a tweet or yamm (?) - then it's no big deal. You're broadcasting you status - hoping to be helpful, or to give people an idea of what you're working on. You can also ask for feedback, have people check out a link, spread the word about a new success story. It's like a living, Internal newsletter.

Well, with all this social media (special thanks here to Brenda Christensen for keeping the social media banner flying for Servoy!) - my wife (the "other" Brenda) came to me with another suggestion for a useful, online tool that would track what people were saying about any topic. It was basically a free service that would search some sites for any keyword you entered, and show you results on what was being blogged, twittered, etc.

Now I already have a Goggle Alert set up for some key terms - and that works great. But it's limited to what the mighty Google indexes - and not the rest of the world. The site that Brenda suggested - yacktrack - will show you the results of your keyword search across several sites (including Friendfeed, Technorati, Twitter, Google blog search, etc.). It's a pretty interesting service (free for now). The results are interesting - although if you are looking at the blog results, there's no link provided to the actual blog.

I found that the source of the search Google Blog Search - was much more efficient. But, it's nice to have a single service where you can enter a term, and get an overall feel for what the talk is on a topic, then if you're interested, you can always drill down to the actual search engines and get your "hands dirty".

Whew! Now I can finally Tweet-Facebook-LinkedIn-Plurk-Yammer about this entry!

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Expectation = Reality

So the wife and I were watching a show that was recorded on our DVR (nothing fancy - just the default Motorola default box) - and we ran into a problem. We were about 20 minutes into a 2 hour show - trying to fast forward through the commercials - when the show just jumped to the end.

Well, since she had the remote - my deduction was simple: "You must have pressed the wrong button", was my immediate diagnosis. So, she tried again with the same result.

Now, everybody KNOWS that men are the superior species when it comes to working a remote control - so I smugly held out my hand for her to "hand it over, woman!" (silently, to myself of course). The remote to men is like having a second skin. My fingers just instinctively knew where to go - and so I restarted the show, forwarded about 20 minutes in, and then expertly hit the fast forward button... and... it did the same damn thing.

"You must have pressed the wrong button" came the smug reply. DOH! I hate when that happens.

After about 15 minutes of monkeying around and neither of us getting it to work - we were forced to, gulp!, watch the show in REAL TIME. Oh, the horror! We had to sit through all the commercials and the 2 hour show actually took 2 hours to watch.

We've only had a DVR for about 3 years or so, and my expectation is that the thing would work flawlessly every single time. Our "old" DVR (MOXI - also based on Moto hardware) had a button on the remote that would let you skip 30 seconds forward at a time - a perfect way to "zap" the commercials. It also included a very, very nice GUI that was easy, intuitive and looked nice. However, after about a year that model just "died." So I went to get a replacement at the cable company.

Our "new, upgraded" model ("Twice the capacity!" and "HD recording!") - promptly took the single-click commercial-zapper feature away and forced us to fast forward through the commercials (I guess the network advertisers were pissed at the previous functionality).

The new GUI was designed by someone who had obviously never used it to actually try to record something. It was (IS!) an absolute abomination in terms of look and feel and usability. It took us about a month to get adjusted to the new GUI and the new 15,000 button remote (again, designed by someone with absolutely ZERO clue on how people actually USE it to watch TV).

That got me thinking about how my expectations have changed about devices I use everyday - and it raises my expectation on how things "should work."

Another example is my phone. Now that I have an iPhone 3G - my expectation of what a phone "should" be able to do are forever altered. I can never go back to a non touchscreen device, nor a device that doesn't have games, music and a full Internet browser on it. I just "can't" do it.

My expectation when I first bought the phone was that I would occasionally use the browser, and probably listen to a few tunes now and then and maybe, just maybe install a few games or other "useless" applications that came along.

Wrong. I have 4 full screens of crap that I actually use all the time. Stock quotes, weather, movie times, 3 or 4 games, social media updating apps - I use all of them all the time. My expectations of what a phone "should do" are now permanently changed.

Same thing with the software I use. Before I started using Servoy - I was writing browser-based applications in ASP or JSP or ColdFusion or Lasso. That meant code. LOTS of code. Code for database connections. Code for business rules. Code for SQL. Code for parsing data that came back to the database. Code to update data. Code to delete data.

All of this was way before things like AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) - and the Web 2.0 functionality (where the whole browser pages doesn't reload - just the parts you change or update). If I had to code that stuff now - there would still be all the other legacy stuff to code - plus a whole new layer of other stuff to code (the AJAX stuff).

With Servoy, I can simply drag fields to forms, write simple scripts (called "methods" in Servoy) to change field color, or perform a calculation or whatever, and then I can simply open a browser and all that stuff "just works" for me - exactly the way I designed it.

If there is a bug (and there will be - for 100% sure!) - rather than getting a cryptic "Error at line 33" browser message that isn't helpful at all - I can now even fully debug the browser based application - complete with breakpoints, variable watching, etc. All the stuff I would expect only when writing and debugging code for a native (non browser-based) application.

Just for grins - I downloaded a sample AJAX application from the Internet - a simple app that included basic CRUD functionality (CReate Update Delete). It had 4 HTML pages and had about 550 lines of code. I was able to re-create BETTER functionality in Servoy with 6 lines of code and ZERO HTML pages. It took me about 9 minutes to complete.

Not only will I never go back to the "old" way of creating browser-based applications - who knows where the technology will go from here. What's the next new thing? What else will poor application programmers have to learn in order to get rich, full-featured applications out the door? AND, more importantly, what will that do to all the applications they've already built the "hard" way?

*Shutter*

At least I'll never have to worry about it...

Monday, December 15, 2008

The Media Is Dying

It used to be that I subscribed to and (mainly) read about 15 monthly periodicals - mainly business and computer stuff - but some others as well. While I still get some "hard copy" magazines - I find that I get most of my news from online sources.

I won't wax nostalgic about how I love the feel of the magazine rather than a cold screen, or the fact that I like to keep 1,000 old copies of all these magazines in the bathroom, etc.

Both types of media have their benefits. The paper ones are good to take on the road, or curl up with on a rainy day. The digital versions contain more details, are more up-to-date and can contain links to other relevant data.

There are downsides to both types of media as well. On the printed media side: Wastes paper, there are increasingly more ads than editorial pages, it's costiler for the publisher to produce and mail, it's outdated the minute it's printed because of the long lead times required for the production process.

On the digital media side... well, there's not many. Now that I have an iPhone, I can browse almost anything almost anywhere - and a lot of sites now have content that's specifically formatted for mobile devices. The one thing that is really, really, really annoying about these digital versions of the pubs I surf on a regular basis is that they've become nothing more than an advertising delivery vehicle.

Every site from eWEEK to Inc to FastCompany to ComputerWorld to MacWorld... all of 'em are so choked full of ads that it's nearly impossible to read the content. Almost all the sites will take really a really nice piece of editorial and chop it up into 12 bite-sized pieces that force you to click through page after page - for the sole purpose of refreshing the ads on the page in hopes you'll click and they'll get $0.15. Or, if they are getting paid per impressions - they serve up the most ad impressions possible - to the extent that 75% of the entire space is dedicated to flashing, whirrling, popping up ads.

I, for one am just sick to death of it.

But, I have a secret weapon. It's a little, tiny link that's usually tucked away at the bottom of the page - or for braver sites - right under the headline. It's called "Print".

Yep - print. That's my secret weapon.

Now before I get a load of email from the tree-hugging-Prius-driving-Berkenstock-hemp-wearing of you out there - I don't actually print the stuff on paper. You see, when you hit the "print" button - each site will re-format the article you're looking at into a "basic" format that doesn't have 1,000 ads on it. It will usually have one ad at the top - but other than that - the article appears the way it would in a "normal" magazine.

You can then easily read it, see the illustrations, click on links, etc. in a much more readable form.

I get the fact that these "old school" media companies are making money the only way they know how (advertising) - but I wonder if they actually even read their own sites?

First there were news "portal" sites. Yahoo especially comes to mind - where you would go to get an update on what was happening in the world. Then the newspapers and magazines came online - and they also had their own spin on the world and dozens of "new" stories every day.

Next, came the bloggers. The good, bad and just plain bitchy ones. Pretty soon you needed to get an RSS reader just to keep up on all the articles, news items and new blog entries that came out 24/7. As the number of content sites kept increasing - it has come to the place where it's almost too much content.

Now you have the Social Media revolution. In the world of Social Media - people you know (or at least people you follow) alert you in 140-character bytes, write on your "wall" or "poke" you to alert you to what they are reading and finding interesting.

The large-player media companies are starting to get "lost". All their content is also content that is picked up, chewed, further analyzed and regurgitated by bloggers all over the world - sometimes with much better results than some of the clap trap coming from "big media."

Then there's the issue of physical newspapers and magazines shutting down completely. There have been a number just this year. All of those "real" reporters who have years of experience and have established a "name" for themselves - have, for the most part, quit or been fired.

What do you do if you're an out-of-work reporter? Yep - you start a blog - and keep on reporting. That means that now these big media companies are competing with the people that used to work for them. The people that don't have a lot (or any) advertising on their site - and who focus on just one thing: a good, informative, timely story on stuff people want to read.

And that, at the end of the day is all that matters.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Thank You Microsoft!

In the "true spirit of Christmas" - I just wanted to take a couple of minutes and sincerely THANK (yes, thank) Microsoft for all it's done for me this year:

THANK YOU for making an operating system with more holes in it than Swiss Cheese;

THANK YOU for installing numerous patches without my permission and then force-quitting all my running applications while you performed a restart without asking - and then greet me with a "Updated!" bubble once I finally get signed back on;

THANK YOU for doing the above forced restart overnight - while I was backing up to an external drive;

THANK YOU for hosing my presentation during said restart - about 1 hour before I was scheduled to give it to a worldwide audience;

THANK YOU for not having a single iota of creative, innovative thought in your entire company - but rather just copying whatever everyone else is doing (i.e. Silverlight = Flash, Aero look and feel = Mac, Excel = Lotus 123, etc. etc.);

THANK YOU for coming out with an even MORE bloated and completely useless operating system that requires users to upgrade HARDWARE to even run it;

THANK YOU for popping up 1,000 dialogs asking me if "I'm sure" I want to launch a program, send an email or anything else that might, possibly involve anything a real person would do during the day;

THANK YOU for .NET 3.x - it truly is 100% incompatible with 1.1 and 2.x;

THANK YOU for trying to get into every sector of every marketplace ever conceived of - and mucking it up so badly - that other companies can actually compete in the space (i.e. MSNBC, Zune, etc.);

THANK YOU for the promise of even more bloatware in the coming Windows 7 - and for the complete breaking of the naming conventions you've used for all other OS releases - that'll make it even MORE confusing for my family and in-laws when they all ask if they should upgrade;

THANK YOU for increasing the stock price of 3M making sure that older people and non-technical folks cram their monitors with stickies on it with step-by-step instructions for changing the audio or monitor settings (or any other settings for that matter);

THANK YOU for waging battle against open source and for making sure all your software only works well on Windows - it's helped me to learn other software and operating systems that I would have never tried on my own;

THANK YOU, Microsoft for all you do to make life (between restarts and patch upgrades) marginally tolerable.

Thursday, December 04, 2008

In Social Media We Trust

My entry into the social media realm has been very interesting - to say the least. I've stayed mainly with the mainstream services: FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pownce (shutting down Dec 15th), Jabber, etc.

I've even been able to amass some "friends" on each of the services. I've been pretty careful about who I will add as a connection in each of them - but I was reading an article by Mike Elgan from ComputerWorld the other day that really gave me pause.

He was talking about the fact that it's possible for scammers, theives and other miscreants to "hijack" the identities of people you may really know - and pose as them - in order to gain your confidence for an a scam attack at some point in the future.

He points out some really interesting points: in the social media world we will trust another person who we (think) we know as a "friend." Now that person can see all of our other friends and their profiles. But what I never really stopped to think about was just how easy it would be to steal someone's identity and pose as that person.

Mr. Elgan calls it "How to steal friends and influence people":

Step 1: Request to be "friends" with a dozen strangers on MySpace. Let's say half of them accept. Collect a list of all their friends.

Step 2: Go to Facebook and search for those six people. Let's say you find four of them also on Facebook. Request to be their friends on Facebook. All accept because you're already an established friend.

Step 3: Now compare the MySpace friends against the Facebook friends. Generate a list of people that are on MySpace but are not on Facebook. Grab the photos and profile data on those people from MySpace and use it to create false but convincing profiles on Facebook. Send "friend" requests to your victims on Facebook.

As a bonus, others who are friends of both your victims and your fake self will contact you to be friends and, of course, you'll accept. In fact, Facebook itself will suggest you as a friend to those people.

Yikes! Just think about that for a minute. Someone out there could be on another social media site right now using your name, your photo and your profile to lure people into a scam, or worse. Now, the bad news is - the damage may already be done.

As a precaution, I would suggest that people who are "into" the social media scene (and who isn't these days?) - check out some of the other social media sites by searching for yourself. If you find a fake that's on there - you owe it to yourself to report it to the appropriate service and get the "bad" profile removed.

I've never had to deal with this personally (thank goodness) - so I'm not sure what the policy would be. Do you get to keep the profile up there - but you just take over the username/password? What happens when you want to join that same network after the offending profile as been removed? Can you even keep your same name (your real name) - or will it be blacklisted?

GREAT! Just one more thing to be paranoid about...

If any of you out there have experience with this - or know of someone who does - be sure to leave a comment.

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Let The Carnage Begin

"Things always seem to get worse before they get better." If that quote holds any truth - then we're about to see things get worse.

The early indications - besides the Wall Street seesaw, the housing meltdown, weak "Black Friday" and the credit crunch - are starting to make themselves known. In the tech world - when social networking sites start closing (and/or get acquired) it's sort of the canary in the coal mine biting the dust.

This week a couple of sites announced that they were going into the deadpool - Pownce (co-founded by Digg’s Kevin Rose) and Twing announced they were shutting down. This comes on heels of the death of other sites over the past 4 months - sites that were fairly well funded and had some "good press." Some of them were even founded by very successful entrepreneurs. Here's a small sampling:
  • Eyespot ($3.7 million in Oct 06)
  • Uber ($7.6 million in funding - May 2008 - cofounded by former Friendster CEO and NBC West Coast president Scott Sassa)
  • Wallop (from Microsoft's Research Team)
  • Fleck (€225k - based in Netherlands)
  • Social.FM ($5 million in funding)
  • TripHub ($15 million, founded by Josh Herst, an early member of the Microsoft Expedia team)
  • MatchMine ($10.5 million, founded by Mike Troiano, CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Interactive and Brandscape)
  • Akimbo ($56 million, investors including AT&T and Cisco)
  • Capazoo ($12 million)
  • etc, etc, etc.
My prediction is that we'll see a lot more of these bubble-2.0-social-media-with-no-business-plan company hitting the skids this month and on into the middle of 2009. I mean, didn't ANY of these people learn ANYTHING from the first bubble?

TIP #1: Eyeballs do not necessarily equal money.

TIP #2: You need money to stay in business.

TIP #3: Just by having a screwed up name that no one can pronounce doesn't mean you'll get money.

TIP #4: See tip #2

Speaking of folks that may have had too much Turkey - the good folks over at Twitter have turned down a $500 million (mostly stock) offer from Facebook.

Um.... yeah. Half a billion dollars for a site with zero business model - and a huge cost structure. Good plan! I know, I know you're "...working on a monetization plan for the middle of 2009...". Good luck with that.

Again, see tip #2...

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Servoy 4.1 Released!

Yes, I have been in a cave for the past couple of weeks... but the reason has been that I've been working on getting Servoy 4.1 ready for release - and today, ta da - it's finally here. I've written another blog entry with the gory details over at the Servoy corporate blog: http://blog.servoy.com.

The main uptick in this version (well, there are a few which you can read about here) - is the fact that you can create objects on-the-fly - and still have them "bound" to the Servoy infrastructure. What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

Well, here's the deal: In other environments, you can also create objects on-the-fly, but you have to also do all the coding to "hook them up". In Servoy 4.1, all you need to do is to create them - and they're automatically hooked up. They function in the web automatically, will auto-save automatically, will data broadcast changes automatically, etc.

That's with a single line code - the code that creates the object. Nice.

The interesting thing about the new capabilities in Servoy is that you can create just about every type of object that you can when you're in the IDE, but you can do it on the fly. This includes the ability to create new forms, fields, tabpanels, buttons, portals, etc. These are all just objects that would normally get created by Servoy at runtime anyway - but Servoy 4.1 now gives you programmatic control over their creation as well.

Basically, all of the properties you have available at design-time in the IDE are now programmable. You can create custom forms from scratch, or based them on existing forms. You can create headers, footers, leading and trailing summaries, title footers, title headers, etc. This means you can create complex reports that are sub-summarized by multiple columns - all on-the-fly at runtime.

Oh yeah, and you can also attach methods (scripts) to all of the events that you have on all objects (including forms) as well. That allows you to specify what happens when events fire on the form or object level (onDataChange, onFocusGained, onFocusLost, onDoubleClick, etc.).

Another interesting thing about Servoy 4.1 - is that it allows you to create data-reated objects at runtime as well. You can create relations between tables as well as valuelists that can have custom values as well as ones that are based on a database (or relation). Now, that's revolutionary. I don't know how the engineering team managed to pull that one off - but's really an awesome feat!

If all of that wasn't enough for you - beacause you can modify EXISTING forms at runtime as well - you can totally customize the user interface per user group - or even individual users. You can re-assign existing fields to different database columns, add columns (or remove them) from a listing, add a new tabpanel, etc.

There's a new example file with the 4.1 download (which, by the way is the FREE Community Edition with free Developer and 5 concurrent clients for non-commercial use!) - that's called "servoy_sample_solutionModel" that gives you an idea how you can build a 100% dynamic data viewer with both list views and data entry views.

Also, if you're around TOMORROW, Wednesday, December 3rd at 10:00am PST (1:00pm EST) and you want to see more - I'm doing a webinar entitled "What's New In Servoy 4.1". The webinar is an hour long and is free - but you do have to register here to attend.

If you haven't tried Servoy out before - now's a great time to check it out! If you're even thinking about creating a SaaS (Software as a Service) offering - or you're ready to modernize your application - having a look at Servoy is well worth your time!
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