My friend Brian launched a blog about being involved with IT startups and how to survive with your sanity intact. Check it out:
Acid Shark
April 2nd, 2009The web as interface
March 24th, 2009From 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.
The secret lives of wealth
March 22nd, 2009A 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.
My friend Jesse launches his new company
March 19th, 2009It’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:
Ian Anderson launches a band
March 19th, 2009I knew this man was a fantastic guitarist, and it’s interesting to see where he takes it. Check his tunes out here:
Creating winning software
March 15th, 2009The 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.
Revamping work
March 15th, 2009This 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.
How mainstream media retook the web
March 15th, 2009It was believed at one point that the Net would democratize the media, offering many new voices, stories and perspectives. Yet the news agenda actually seems to be narrowing, with many Web sites primarily packaging news that is produced elsewhere, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s annual State of the News Media report. ^
This news tidbit never got the coverage it should have, if you ask me.
Go on to your favorite small blog. The person or persons who own it probably write a lot of things, but many focus on what’s going on currently.
They get that information from bigger blogs or other small blogs.
Those get it from other blogs.
When you follow the chain up to the top, there’s the New York Times, Wired, The Economist, The Atlantic, Salon, CNN, Slate, AP, UPI… big media.
They’re the ones with the resources to unleash trained writer-researchers (“journalists”) across a wide spectrum of knowledge, and process it all to determine what should go out the door.
Over the past few years, they’ve quietly retaken the web, because the web cannot generate its own news other than for local events. If there’s a Star Trek convention in town, I can write up a report on it. But how was I to know that rising grain prices predicated war in El Salvador?
The one thing they haven’t figured out how to do is profit from it. If they want other people to cite them, they must give content away; if the newspaper is free on the web, why buy it — it’s free. One business model might be giving it away only to other content producers, but then everyone will have a blog. You could give it away by number of hits produced in turn for the newspaper web site, and sell banner ads, but I think the web economists are just starting to figure out that people can ignore non-linear advertising.
Should be an interesting future for this issue as it gets resolved.
The inequality of relevance
March 15th, 2009A nifty information pattern shows up in today’s tech news:
An important underlying principle in congestion control and network optimization is that every user has a “utility function.” A little bandwidth is worth a lot per bit. An SMS text message can easily cost 0.01 cents per bit, and is obviously worth more to the user, or he wouldn’t be sending them. Nobody would be pirating DVDs at this price, though, as this is almost $1,000,000 per GB. So the “utility” of extra bits decreases as you get more of them. The trouble is, the core of the Internet has no idea whether any particular packet holds those expensive SMS bits or those throw-away DVD pirating bits. ^
This pattern is eternal as the universe, as it’s one of the building blocks of the universe. To avoid entropy, no two things are ever equal. If things get equal, which they would if they ever existed in an absolute or universal sense, there would be no ability for energy to move between states as opportunities opened or failures happened. This universe needs tragedy and hope as the foundations of its locally unstable and chaotic, but globally stable and orderly, design.
This is why in business we have trouble coming up with an absolute or universal value for a tomato. First, that value must be measured in currency which itself changes in value; second, a buyer must be found. Finally, that buyer has different needs and abilities. To a poor person, a tomato is only worth so much before they give up and buy a rutabaga; to a wealthy person, the quality of the tomato determines its value; to a starving man on a desert island, a tomato is worth more than our wildest dreams.
The shifting sands of power in the knowledge economy
March 15th, 2009We have a new type of rule now. Not one-man rule, or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decision.
They are representatives of abstract forces who have reached power through surrender of self. The iron-willed dictator is a thing of past.
There will be no more Stalins, no more Hitlers.
The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident. Inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push. – William S. Burroughs, Interzone, Viking Books, 1989
In a time when the world is connected by digital networks, when memes have greater impact than bombs, and when history has ended and been replaced by a new kind of playing field, we are in an age when the knowledge economy makes sense.
We are no longer competing for brute strength.
We are no longer competing for sheer wealth.
What we’re competing for is the right answer, and to find that, we have to be open to all possibilities, and then have razor-sharp minds to pick the right one.
It’s the intellectual equivalent of living in a cyberpunk novel, dodging the yakuza and living by your wits, hacking your way through with each day unsure of the next.
Sounds fun, when you put it that way — may that guide you to see more possibilities than disappointments in today, whichever today whenver you’re reading this.