Bolg - The Chris Blanc Weblog

While they keep our eyes busy by wiggling their fingers around a “cloud computing” strategy, the Google guys are up to something else: they want to seize the real killer app, which is the freeware browser/email combination.

Most people don’t like to look at it this way, but the major uses people have for the internet all date back to 1980s uses:

• News — from reading Prodigy and AOL to massive aggregators like Digg and Slashdot.
• Address book — what do most people really use social networking for? Connecting to real life friends so if that Yahoo! email address expires, they can still reach them.
• Documentation — Google is like a giant library if you know where to look. Who keeps track of the links? Del.icio.us, or maybe your browser.

People aren’t going to go with cloud computing, which has only one real value: if paired with virtual machines, it gives companies the ability to dynamically scale their web presence. If your hits suddenly quintuple, and you’re running a virtual machine that’s distributed over a cluster, you can increase its resources and you’ll handle the load — a big advantage over having one machine, one website.

But do you really want to edit your documents on a web page? Especially after you’ve shelled out for a high-powered machine, this is unlikely. What’s more likely is that you’ll get a combination offsite backup and application installation solution, kind of like Iron Mountain or Mozy.com crossed with Apple’s app store. (I mention this in an earlier post as something Microsoft should do.)

All of these indicators, however, come back to one idea: that the browser is here to stay. To their credit, the Microsoft guys figured this out, but their browser team was not agile enough — probably thanks to layers of middle management — to make a competitive product on all fronts, and those weaknesses were brilliantly exploited by hackers and ploddingly exploited by Mozilla.org.

Now Firefox has a huge chunk of browser market share, with probably more to come with the excellent 3.5, which may be the fastest, most stable and most well-designed interface yet. Did I mention that 85% or more of the Mozilla’s teams funding came from Google? That is kind of interesting, since Google has since released their own browser, Chrome.

It’s part of a two-stage strategy. The first was to weaken Microsoft through an indirect attack, using Mozilla which is open source and freeware and non-profit and so “good” to most people, and the second stage is now coming true: make Chrome work best with the Google applications they’re hoping to convince us to use.

As you can see above, they’ve started that move already. Google apps work best with Google chrome. But you’re not being forced to use it. It will be your choice, whether you want these added and optional features or not.

Much as Google’s strategy is to use a search engine to sell advertising, their strategy here is to get you to use their apps so they get better tracking data. The big weakness of search is that most searchers are not the consumers advertisers want; the solution is to get people using applications and site features and so getting a chance to offer them customized advertising, and offering coupons and the like to those who are the ideal customers.

This is completely unscientific, but it seems to me that the mosquitoes in Houston have mutated. They are now much more consistent about skimming the ground, flying up your pants leg, and biting you high on the ankle, right above the sock. I’m sure some researcher is going to find a gene, call it UPL1 (Up Pants Leg 1) and show us all how this strange mutation was brought on by the convergence of near-tropical climates, heavy rains and tasty blood-engorged calves. I think I want to live and work in a reconstructed space station that admits no critters, at least until next November when the cold starts slowing down the little beasts.

The integrated installer has been a dream of mine for ages:

PC-BSD exclusively features the Push Button Installer (PBI), a push-button software installation wizard with a wide range of applications. The latest version of the Push Button Installer improves PBI self-containment to increase reliability.

The Add / Remove Programs tool and the Update Manager have been consolidated into “Software & Updates.”

^{^}

Why separate between system updates and software? Or installed packages?

If Microsoft is listening, they’ll see a great opportunity here: a one-stop software shop. Imagine if you could search windows software and freeware and install it with a single click, straight from Microsoft.

If other UNIX-like operating systems are listening, they’ll see that for all their advances (Debian) in managing ports, users still want more: a single interface to manage every bit of code they have.

My friend Brian launched a blog about being involved with IT startups and how to survive with your sanity intact. Check it out:

http://acidshark.com/

From an interview with Tim Bray:

When the web came along people shrieked with glee and universally abandoned all those rich immersive responsive pre-internet applications and ran into the arms of the web.

I can remember like yesterday content management conference that was held sometimes in the middle late nineties and it was a woman from a large manufacturing company talking about the content management for the technical documentation, which was a pretty big project, and she said, “Oh it was so great when the vendors all brought in the web interfaces because it forced them to get rid of all these weird cascading menus and options that nobody ever used, and brutally simplified everything down.”

At the end of the day the interface the browser presents is something that people are comfortable with. Over the years since then I have regularly and steadily heard them saying: “We need something that is more immersive, more responsive, more interactive.”

Every time without exception that somebody said that to me, they have either been a developer or a vendor who wants to sell the technology that is immersive or responsive, or something like that. I have not once in all those years heard an ordinary user say, “Oh, I wish we go back to before the days of the web when every application was different and idiosyncratic…”

On the other hand richness is a good thing but I would rather take an old fashioned point of view and if you look at the world’s most popular actual real Internet applications you’ll see things like Google and Facebook and Wikipedia, and so on kind of which I play all day web applications, and they are rich all right, they are rich because they expose you to lots of deep high quality content and allow you to communicate with interesting people and I think a dollar with that kind of richness is worth a thousand dollars of things that wiggle when you put the mouse over them.

Interactivity is important but you know what else is really important? The back button. Ordinary people who have to use computers to get their daily jobs done, are sitting there in the web browser they really like the back button because applications are confusing, nobody has ever done an application that isn’t confusing some times and when you are confused you say “I will just get back out of here”. Anything that discards the function of the back button is a step backwards.

Bray’s approach is to study the web as interface, and not as a programming technology as most do, because what made it powerful was that instead of creating programs to manipulate documents, it created documents with the minimal features of programs: navigation, text highlighting, linking and indexing.

And then all of a sudden twelve fifteen years ago, there was this platform burst out to the sea that scaled to billions of users and millions of servers, was radically heterogeneous and it didn’t matter whether you were a Mac Linux box talking to an IBM box, you couldn’t even tell most times, it just worked. And that was the web of course. ^{^}

Much like Windows XP finally tamed the desktop by standardizing it, the web standardized information.

Since then, as Bray hints, we’ve been walking backward toward proprietary and inconsistent interfaces that substitute bells and whistles for quality of navigation. The web is about information.

People don’t want to “do web,” they want to use the web to find what they need. That may be research; it may be a simple interface like online banking or passport applications; there’s other stuff, but that falls under the category of weird social stuff that probably attracts only a small segment of the population, and generally not those who serve important roles because those don’t have the time to dicker around with the web all day.

For all the rollouts of high-tech websites I have seen lately, few are beating a basic Blogspot or Wordpress installation because interactivity is not what brings people back to a website; information or function (online banking, etc) does. If you have the function, you don’t need the interactivity, which is why as Bray points out, many of the most successful websites are coming to us with 1997 technologies.

A long time ago, while at a girlfriend’s house, I picked up and read her roommate’s copy of The Millionaire Next Door. It confirmed things I’d already known, and had some valuable life lessons in addition to ideas on managing capital.

This morning, someone sent me an article which summarizes many of the points it made. I’m excerpting and editing part of this to give you a rough idea of how important this knowledge is.

Who is the prototypical American millionaire? What would he tell you about himself?(*)

* I am a fifty-seven-year-old male, married with three children. About 70 percent of us earn 80 percent or more of our household’s income.

* About two-thirds of us who are working are self-employed. Interestingly, self-employed people make up less than 20 percent of the workers in America but account for two-thirds of the millionaires. Also, three out of four of us who are self-employed consider ourselves to be entrepreneurs. Most of the others are self-employed professionals, such as doctors and accountants.
* Many of the types of businesses we are in could be classified as dullnormal. We are welding contractors, auctioneers, rice farmers, owners of mobile-home parks, pest controllers, coin and stamp dealers, and paving contractors.

* About half of our wives do not work outside the home. The number-one occupation for those wives who do work is teacher.

* Our household’s total annual realized (taxable) income is $131,000 (median, or 50th percentile), while our average income is $247,000.

* On average, our total annual realized income is less than 7 percent of our wealth. In other words, we live on less than 7 percent of our wealth.

* Most of us (97 percent) are homeowners. We live in homes currently valued at an average of $320,000. About half of us have occupied the same home for more than twenty years. Thus, we have enjoyed significant increases in the value of our homes.

* We live well below our means. We wear inexpensive suits and drive American-made cars. Only a minority of us drive the current-model-year automobile. Only a minority ever lease our motor vehicles.

* We have more than six and one-half times the level of wealth of our nonmillionaire neighbors, but, in our neighborhood, these nonmillionaires outnumber us better than three to one. Could it be that they have chosen to trade wealth for acquiring high-status material possessions?

* As a group, we are fairly well educated. Only about one in five are not college graduates. Many of us hold advanced degrees. Eighteen percent have master’s degrees, 8 percent law degrees, 6 percent medical degrees, and 6 percent Ph.D.s.

* Only 17 percent of us or our spouses ever attended a private elementary or private high school. But 55 percent of our children are currently attending or have attended private schools.

* On average, we invest nearly 20 percent of our household realized income each year. Most of us invest at least 15 percent. Seventy-nine percent of us have at least one account with a brokerage company. But we make our own investment decisions. ^{^}

This list is from 1996, but the same basic principles are going to be true today. Filed under psychology because being ready to be wealthy is a state of mind.

It’s exciting: as this recession winds on, the smarter people are getting tired of the inaction and the fear, and starting to launch their dream projects because, well, why not? No one’s got anything to lose. I love that spirit, like the activity right before a hurricane hits.

Here’s Jesse’s company:

http://uhlconsulting.com/

I knew this man was a fantastic guitarist, and it’s interesting to see where he takes it. Check his tunes out here:

http://www.myspace.com/gransassoband

The larger a company gets, the more time it must spend in internal communications to make sure everyone’s on the same page.

The lesson I learn from this is that leadership in small groups who remain focused on solving problems is more important than process or lack of process.

The good open source software and the good closed source software share this tendency: small groups, engineers unhindered by unnecessary complication and bureaucracy, strong leaders and clear goals.

I think there’s one other obvious thing that most people forget to mention: there should be a frontier, or unconquered space and challenge, to the project. That fosters a sense of both play and adventure, and we need that to really engage ourselves.

There will be a fair amount of talk in the future about creating winning software because right now, our software is good but not great. Just like our operating systems were kind of schlocky before Windows XP raised the bar, our software is kind of schlocky. It handles major use cases and outside of that, it may crash or behave unpredictably. It may just perform below the desired level.

Interestingly, the only solitary person who can ensure that good software gets made is the manager. The programmer can do so much, and then comes crashing up against standards or other people. Marketing can only do so much. Design teams can only do so much. But a manager can foster the right environment, and the engage his or her “user-centric” viewpoint to make software that treats the user right and does all of what they need to do.

But that, too, is a task that requires a sense of play, a clear goal, and discipline among the team, or even that grand vision does not get conceptualized.

This is radical stuff. So radical that Cali and Jody rolled ROWE out in several divisions over a couple years before fully briefing CEO Brad Anderson on the program (he’s now an enthusiast). Today, nearly all of the 4,000 headquarters employees are working in ROWE and there are plans for pilots among retail employees this year (which will be interesting to watch).

The results have been spectacular: an average 35% boost in productivity in divisions working in ROWE and a decrease in voluntary turnover by 52-90% depending on department. (Interestingly, involuntary turnover increased among ROWE workers—while it might seem like slacker paradise, shirkers have no place to hide when the only measure of work is results. What’s more, as the number of meetings fell, collaboration and teamwork improved.) Just as important, employee engagement and other “soft” metrics (like energy and hours of sleep and family time) went up significantly.

The basic principle: people can do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done. Period. You can come in at 2pm on Tuesday. Leave at 3pm on Friday. Go grocery shopping at 10am on Wednesday. Take a nap or go to the movies anytime. Do your work while following your favorite band around the country. ^{^}

Most of these articles try to blame an external force, like Generation Y-Me coming into the workforce, so that it seems we all must react to it.

Instead, we should just ask ourselves: why not?

Not all jobs will work with ROWE. In fact, most won’t. But for industries where creativity is needed, I think it’s a good idea. It’ll get us out of the rhythm of work at desk, go to meeting, wonder what’s for lunch. It’ll bring a breath of joy into the workplace and make it seem less obligatory, reducing resentment.

But the number one reason for this kind of workplace is a very simple one: it gives people a new way to play, and if work becomes play, it gets done the same as before, but with much of the mind active and seeking innovation.