I think I jinxed Blogger by bragging about google so much in the last post or two. Turns out it's been having a rough week, but I'm optimistic. I'll take the blame for jinxing them this time. Hopefully the effect will be limited.
They're in the process of making all their services communicate with each other, which, to most people, will elicit a loud yawn. It uses zend or something, which is like xxxml. That is, really, really, really, extensible markup language.
I get really excited about these interoperating initiatives because the code I'm paid to work with, sadly, is the total opposite. Think decades of urgent deadlines and no budget for documentation; a handful of developers and virtually no separate end users, and you can tell why I get jealous.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Thriller, even scarier.
(If you don't see a youtube embedded video thingy, click here. I'm not sure the Facebook-imported version is up to the challenge yet.)
It starts off slow, but the chorus is priceless (~10 min. in). I haven't laughed that hard at legos since the Brick Testament.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Build a Beta Mousetrap...
So apparently google has officially assimilated blogger.com, which means the first order of business is to make it into a beta version. It's interesting to see a label that originally was not involved with marketing become a mark of some distinction. Consumers seem to be more interested and trusting of beta versions than full releases, presumably largely due to the goodwill of the big G.
Rarely do you see these apologetic labels change connotation for the better. Terms such as pre-owned, and virtual, smart, and lite/diet/free have steadily declined in popular appeal (where popularity is defined by my extrapolation to other people's heads as I sit alone except for the company of my senile computers). That's not to say that marketers have given them up altogether. It's just that even the [whatever the opposite of savvy is] of consumers have wised up.
Beta, on the other hand, is a term originally used to describe a system or product that was only barely ready, or to apologize and disclaim any responsibility for its shortcomings. Funny thing is, the new standard for beta software is head and shoulders over similar programs that have been around for years. Google maps was in beta for the Silicon Vally equivalent of a metric eon. Gmail, which caused an immediate and frantic redesign of every other web-based email client, proudly displays its beta status, as if to say, "you ain't seen nothin' yet."
A less obvious but likely more fundamental shift is the realization on an institutional level that software is a service and not a product. Certain technical metaphysicists like your humble narrator have been screaming this at varying volumes for varying lengths of time. One powerful symptom is the shying away (by the smarter companies) of the "n.0" release strategy. AOL went from 4.0 to 11.0 in the span of a year without adding (arguably) any substantial value to their product. The idea was that if you saw your buddies using version 5.0 and you were stuck on 4.1.9, that you were missing out, and should pay to upgrade to the new product.
Unfortunately, that strategy puts incentives on companies to add features rather than improve the overall product quality (or to use an about-to-jump-the-proverbial-shark buzzword, the "user experience"). Naming names would be too easy, but the end result is fragmented versions of the software requiring either separate maintenance and support strategies for each version or the abandonment of users of the older version ("forced obsolescence").
What seems to be happening is that loyalty to software vendors doesn't run deep enough to support the chunky release-fix-EOL-rerelease model. Consumers, aside from the revered but routinely screwed early adopters, expect a product to work the first time they buy it, and don't enjoy paying to have initial defects fixed. Thinking of software as a product degrades one of its best advantages, i.e., its softness: if I can't count on what I buy today working six months from now, then I have better uses for my money.
The software-as-service approach, however, makes just about everybody happier, or at least more accountable. That doesn't mean I favor exclusive, long-term contracts with larger vendors. Businesses who bought into, say, Microsoft's enterprise licenses had to wait along with the rest of us for every delay in Longhorn/Vista. I'm no economist, but it would seem to me that the ROI would tend to drop when the investment doesn't return, for example, anything.
Anyway, back to the Greek letters. With very little marketing, google has risen from (or trickled down, depending on your perspective) from a favorite tool of geeks to the only serious game in town. Whereas ask.com has to put pathetic spots in prime time TV, google seems to be doing find by word of mouth.
The reason for this, I think, is that Google grew from a community of users, who were passionately interested in research and the organization, dissemination, and preservation of information. Several of their current and emerging services started as internal tools, so there was never any desire to cut corners. Improvements are constant, but rarely disruptive. Likewise, google advertisements are ubiquitous, but so non-intrusive (in most cases) that they aren't resented.
The difference, I guess, comes down to reputation. Plenty of the big vendors have made numerous promises that were filled too late or not at all. Google, on the other hand, consistently delivers, and continues to improve smoothly. Of course, it helps to have a network-centric software engine, where there's only one instance to worry about and no legacy constraints.
I'm going to stop writing now, and leave you with a new batch of Bushisms.
Rarely do you see these apologetic labels change connotation for the better. Terms such as pre-owned, and virtual, smart, and lite/diet/free have steadily declined in popular appeal (where popularity is defined by my extrapolation to other people's heads as I sit alone except for the company of my senile computers). That's not to say that marketers have given them up altogether. It's just that even the [whatever the opposite of savvy is] of consumers have wised up.
Beta, on the other hand, is a term originally used to describe a system or product that was only barely ready, or to apologize and disclaim any responsibility for its shortcomings. Funny thing is, the new standard for beta software is head and shoulders over similar programs that have been around for years. Google maps was in beta for the Silicon Vally equivalent of a metric eon. Gmail, which caused an immediate and frantic redesign of every other web-based email client, proudly displays its beta status, as if to say, "you ain't seen nothin' yet."
A less obvious but likely more fundamental shift is the realization on an institutional level that software is a service and not a product. Certain technical metaphysicists like your humble narrator have been screaming this at varying volumes for varying lengths of time. One powerful symptom is the shying away (by the smarter companies) of the "n.0" release strategy. AOL went from 4.0 to 11.0 in the span of a year without adding (arguably) any substantial value to their product. The idea was that if you saw your buddies using version 5.0 and you were stuck on 4.1.9, that you were missing out, and should pay to upgrade to the new product.
Unfortunately, that strategy puts incentives on companies to add features rather than improve the overall product quality (or to use an about-to-jump-the-proverbial-shark buzzword, the "user experience"). Naming names would be too easy, but the end result is fragmented versions of the software requiring either separate maintenance and support strategies for each version or the abandonment of users of the older version ("forced obsolescence").
What seems to be happening is that loyalty to software vendors doesn't run deep enough to support the chunky release-fix-EOL-rerelease model. Consumers, aside from the revered but routinely screwed early adopters, expect a product to work the first time they buy it, and don't enjoy paying to have initial defects fixed. Thinking of software as a product degrades one of its best advantages, i.e., its softness: if I can't count on what I buy today working six months from now, then I have better uses for my money.
The software-as-service approach, however, makes just about everybody happier, or at least more accountable. That doesn't mean I favor exclusive, long-term contracts with larger vendors. Businesses who bought into, say, Microsoft's enterprise licenses had to wait along with the rest of us for every delay in Longhorn/Vista. I'm no economist, but it would seem to me that the ROI would tend to drop when the investment doesn't return, for example, anything.
Anyway, back to the Greek letters. With very little marketing, google has risen from (or trickled down, depending on your perspective) from a favorite tool of geeks to the only serious game in town. Whereas ask.com has to put pathetic spots in prime time TV, google seems to be doing find by word of mouth.
The reason for this, I think, is that Google grew from a community of users, who were passionately interested in research and the organization, dissemination, and preservation of information. Several of their current and emerging services started as internal tools, so there was never any desire to cut corners. Improvements are constant, but rarely disruptive. Likewise, google advertisements are ubiquitous, but so non-intrusive (in most cases) that they aren't resented.
The difference, I guess, comes down to reputation. Plenty of the big vendors have made numerous promises that were filled too late or not at all. Google, on the other hand, consistently delivers, and continues to improve smoothly. Of course, it helps to have a network-centric software engine, where there's only one instance to worry about and no legacy constraints.
I'm going to stop writing now, and leave you with a new batch of Bushisms.
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