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Thoughts on Corporate Collaboration Tools

The key approach to collaboration tools is to treat them like Pen and Paper. They are like Conference Rooms. They are like the telephones. Each of these tools do not have a whole lot of restrictions placed on them in the office environment. A collaboration tool is only as useful as it is used. To put barriers to use in place only reduces the number of people who are going to use them.

Take any given population of people and you will only have a certain number of people who are willing to participate in a conversation. Out of those people there will be only a small number that are willing to start a conversation. If you put barriers in the way of individuals you will reduce this number.

What is the value proposition associated with collaboration tools? Office workers generate knowledge by taking data and experience; they make a decision, and create an artifact. A successful employee will create an artifact that has a greater value than the initial data plus the cost of paying the employee to transform that data. You can increase the value of this artifact via communication. This additional value proposition is proportional to the number of people in creator’s audience who can consume the artifacts.

With this in mind, you can start to calculate the value of a collaboration tool. Once this is base lined you can then evaluate the individuals involved in this knowledge creation process and evaluate the additional value they provide by transforming data.

An example of this is found in a study from IBM. They were able to show that there is a relationship between the number of individuals in employee's address book and the amount of revenue they generated for the company. This additional revenue was ~$950 per person annually. So with this in mind, the question is: What are the tools you are using to allow people to grow their network and what tools are you using to allow them collaborate.

Moving to the Mac

So, it's been over a month now that I have had my new MacBookPro. I have spent the last month or so getting everything up and running. I have had to purchase a couple products. But right now it seems that everything is where I need it to be.

Office
I had to purchase Microsoft Office. This is the first time I have ever had to purchase Office. I have a MSDN license, so on Windows, I always used that copy of the application. Office on the Mac is rather nice, and feels like a Microsoft product. Word and Powerpoint have crashed on me several times, and that made me feel like I was back on my PC. At first I hoped to be able to use iWork from Apple, but there really are features in Office that I need. I also had couldn't purchase the Home version of office, as I wanted to use Automator actions. I'm a bit upset that there are so many different versions of office for the Mac. It seems that Microsoft likes to diversify their product line to the point of loosing focus.

Blogging
I have had to do all my blogging in ecto. The application is a good replacement for the blogging tools I have on the PC, but it still isn't as good as Microsoft's blogging tool. On the bright side, the application is still being developed and the short coming of the application can be fixed. I have owned it now for about a month and there have been several updates in that month.

RSS/NewsReader
I have been using NetNewsWire as my RSS reader. I like the application, but I miss several of the features that I loved in FeedDemon. On FeedDemon I use to set up the folder view to display all folders that had unread items in them. The view would be set up to display only unread items, and I would scan feed by feed using the control-d to mark the displayed page as read and move to the next unread section. If I came across anything that looked interesting I would flag it and put it in a bucket to turn into another RSS feed, that I run through Feedburner and import into my personalized home page, and onto my Blog. I can't seem to reproduce this workflow exactly, but I'm getting there.

Graphics
I need to get my license of Creative Suite 3 Professional transfered off my PC and onto this Mac. I have not yet done this.

Development Tools
Well, I purchased this computer to do iPhone development. I will have to say that the customer service I have gotten from Apple vs. the customer experience I got from Microsoft is like day vs. night. I was personally contacted by someone at Apple and they wanted to help me with the process of getting my keys. I had already gotten most of this done, but the personal phone call from someone who sounded like he was calling me from the Bay Area was nice.

As for web development tools, I have tried Coda and BBedit. I have yet to land on a product that I like. I want something that integrates with Subversion or CVS.

Other Cool Tools
iCalendar + SpanningSync +iPhone + iTunes = EPIC WIN! I finally have everything all synced up. On the PC this was almost impossible. I tried to get Vista's calendar, and Outlook, and some syncing tools and iTunes all to work together. It was frustrating. It was doable outside of firewalls and proxy servers, but once you get behind a proxy server the whole workflow fell apart. This one workflow alone was worth the price of admission. I'm also looking forward to getting OmniFocus and Remember the Milk setup.

BootCamp
I installed BootCamp to do Vista. I have yet to use Vista, but I can see that I I will after I get the wireless card I have up and running under Vista (btw, getting it up and running on OSX was as simple as downloading the driver and following the instructions on installing it. It just worked.) I will probably use Vista for gaming only. Sadly I'm now thinking that all Vista is good for is games. It's my new toy operating system.

Overall Impressions
The next computer my Mom and Dad get will be an iMac. I'm also going to make my sister get one as well. I'm tired of doing tech support on PC's. I spent several weeks getting rid of viruses on their machines over the last year. Also it seems that everything Just Works on the Mac. I guess you can say that I drank the Kool Aid and It's GREAT!

More on the Switch to my Mac.

Well, I crossed another huge mountain range on my journey to converting everything over to use my new MacBook Pro. I got my Wireless Modem working on the Mac. I also got Boot Camp up and running. The last large barrier to getting this all to work is getting Microsoft Office Installed and running. I am also installing Subversion in the background as I write this. This means I will have a source control system for my iPhone development activities as well as my web development activities. I have also installed BBedit, which integrates with Subversion. Honestly this is getting exciting. I guess I'm still a geek.

Sucks to be me... From Blackberry to iPhone to Blackberry Again

Well I broke my iPhone. I dropped it at lunch today and the glass shattered.

I went off to the Apple Store last night to get it replaced.  Turns out that due to the fact that the screen is shattered and nothing else is wrong I will have to pay $250 to get it fixed.  If I had damaged the phone more I wouldn’t have to pay as it would be covered. 

Personally I think I should have kept the phone at the point they told me the damage was only cosmetic and then used the touch screen and cut my finger up and then asked them if they thought the damage was only cosmetic.  Also, what seems interesting to me is that each Apple Store seems to have a different policy on this broken screen issue.  I have gone online and seen that other Apple Stores have acted differently regarding this screen issue.

I think Apple is really missing the boat on this one.  Some teenage girl was in the store before me with two broken iPods.  These iPods were banged up, and on one the screen was not working.  They were each registered to different people.  Their tech guy took a look at them spent about 10 minutes on each trying to resurrect each before handing her new refurbished ones and sent her on her way.  I couldn’t get this kind of service on my iPhone. 

When they asked me if I wanted to have them ship the phone in right now, or wait and I could call Apple care, I told them I wanted them to ship the phone now and give me a loaner and ship the repaired phone to my home, they told me they couldn’t give me a loaner as they didn’t have any.  They also told me that they couldn’t ship the iPhone to my home.  The other guy a the ‘genesis bar corrected him and told me they could ship to my home. I then asked if they could swap it out with a refurbished model, and they said no.  To be honest, I’ve been treated better by Cingular reps on this one. 

Well, now I’m back on my Blackberry (which is charging slowly) and the repaired iPhone will be shipped back to me in 2 to 3 business days.

So here are the lessons learned

• There is something about cell phones that cause companies to start to suck
  • Apple’s iPhone is the bastard child of Apple Support
  • Apple needs to carry more loaner Phones
  • Different Policies with different stores
  • ‘Policies’ changing from day to day
• Going from iPhone to Blackberry is not fun
• iPhones dropped from waist height on a tile floor will cause the screen to break

Safari on Windows: Apple's Smart Client Play

I have spent the last week now looking at everyone’s ideas on why Apple released Safari on Windows.  I think some people have come up with some rather good ideas.  Others have come up with some rather strange ideas.   But I still don’t think that all the real reasons have come out.  Lets look at several key important factors that we know about apple and their direction. 

1. It’s about software.  Steve Jobs stated this several times at the D Conference.  His point is important.  It’s about hardware, with good software.  This has always been the case with Apple. 
2. It’s about the cloud.  Steve also said that his paradigm for software included the cloud of web services. 
3. It’s about the SDK for the iPhone.  Many people have pointed out that by having a version of Safari on the Windows, it allows those individuals to develop applications for the iPhone on the Windows. 

Software
Software is important.  Having your software running on a given piece of hardware is important.  By itself there is value in having your software run on Windows.   The more software that Apple releases on a given platform the less unique that platform becomes.  The software is the user experience and the brand.  All the software that Apple releases for the Windows platform breaks the branding of Windows.  What would happen if Apple continued to release different pieces of functionality from their iLife applications for Windows.  Would people use them.  Yes.  Would people recommend them.  Yes.  Would they be more usable than the built in Windows software.  Probably.  This hurts the Windows brand. 

This also plays right into a weakness that few have exploited up until this point.  Microsoft has to allow for 3^rd party applications to replace built in Windows functionality.  As soon as this becomes hard for Apple to do, all someone needs to do is complain about Microsoft lock in.  Google is doing this right now.  I’m surprised more companies are not doing this.  Adobe should start to build Bridge into the basic operating system search, replacing the way Windows handles graphic searches.  Also, I’m not surprised that Microsoft hasn’t played this card against other platforms they are trying to gain traction on.

One final point. Isn’t Safari used to render out all those widgets in OS X?  Will this mean that those guy will now run on Windows and on the iPhone?  If the answer is yes to this question, then we now have a common development environment for these widgets.  This is an end run around Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo all at once.  This also leads to my next point.  This also provides a common platform for Cloud based Applications

The Cloud
What applications use the cloud these days.  There are all sorts of tools which use web services.  But in the end, there are only several standards that are available in this space.  The battle is still being fought.

Microsoft has been doing a lot of heavy lifting in this area with their .Net framework and the implementation of WS-* to provide inter-platform operability. All this stuff is great for fat clients and .NET  based smart clients.  But this leaves Apple and Adobe to build in support for the WS-* standards into their smart client applications. 

Oh wait, Apple has no Smart Client platform.  Or do they?  Perhaps Safari is their Smart Client Platform play.  Adobe has AIR, and Microsoft has Silverlight.  We notice with both of these platforms each company is extending their strength (Flash and .NET) into an area that is a weakness.  So what do you do if you are Apple.  You need to extend things you control, things like Safari and Quicktime.  I wouldn’t be all that surprised that if in the next 12 months you see WS-* get extended down into both of these applications.  In the mean time we have things like JSON and AJAX.  While you can’t get all the functionality out of these services as you can out of a WS-* framework.  You do get enough to handle the day to day workings of a consumer device.

I predict that Safari + Quicktime will be the Smart Client platform that Apple will move towards in the next year to create their cloud development platform.  This will be done to extend the widgets platform that currently exists today.

SDKs
I think this is going to be the true SDK for the iPhone.  If you merge Quicktime into the Canvas tag, then you truly have something.  If I had an iPhone right now, I would love to play around with some of the Apple specific tags supported by Safari.  What happens when I throw widget code at it’s JavaScript interpreter.  What happens on Windows if I do this?  I would also love to point it to a .MOV file online that has some interactive content in it.  Extend and expand this, and you have a nice save environment to build applications that won’t take down the network they are running on.

Summary
I feel that the decision to make Safari as the SDK for the iPhone is a good idea if they take some of the steps laid out above.  This is an opportunity for Apple to take control of the platform that will be used to develop “cloud” based applications.  They will leverage their iTunes / Quicktime platform on Windows and combine it with their iPod platform into a cell phone form factor, bypassing the coming standards war which will feature Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and Yahoo fighting it out to control the Smart Client Platform.

Tags: Apple, iPhone

What Type of Computer Programmer are You?

Go here to take your Programmer Personality Test

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Your programmer personality type is:

   PHTB

You're a Planner.
You may be slow, but you'll usually find the best solution. If something's worth doing, it's worth doing right.
You like coding at a High level.
The world is made up of objects and components, you should create your programs in the same way.
You work best in a Team.
A good group is better than the sum of it's parts. The only thing better than a genius programmer is a cohesive group of genius programmers.
You are a liBeral programmer.
Programming is a complex task and you should use white space and comments as freely as possible to help simplify the task. We're not writing on paper anymore so we can take up as much room as we need.

What Should Google Buy

A while back someone asked me what I think Google should buy next.  I was reminded of the conversation today by a co-worker so I dug up my response.  The post still makes a whole lot of sense even if it’s over two years old.

One: I would look for some data mining companies with some nice IP. If you choose correctly you could end up with a nice product to brand. Some nice algorithms to improve your own systems, some nice IP to own. Think along the lines of say Biometrics, pattern recognition, and data-mining. The idea is to improve your own search and to leapfrog remaining companies in this space by tying in data mining into search.

Two: GIS. Purchase some of the providers of the data for your Google Maps. Purchase the company which will scan buildings and real world structures to put into Keyhole. You might also want to pick up a nice clean multi-platform 3D engine. You also want to pick up better GeoCoding capabilities.

Three: Real time Monitoring. Traffic.com and other sites like this which provide real time data about the real world. Also look into companies which provide real time monitoring of other transportation systems.

This is all very interesting considering the announcements over the last month of so.  So how would I modify this?

One: The Algorithm.  You must always improve this.  Purchase any company that has interesting IP in the area.  You are looking for pattern recognition and data mining.  Anything that can make your index larger.

Two: The Inverse of Search.  Connecting content creators to content consumers.  AKA Advertising, Branding, Identity.  This is how Google gets paid.  If a person can search for Pizza why can’t a restaurant search for Pizza Customers?  You are looking for mediums for selling ads. 

Three: The Real World.  Any technology that is merging real world information with online information.  GIS, Mapping, Scanning, OCR, Speech to Text.

Communicaitons & Technology: There must be a better way

Introduction

Today we are swimming in communications.  While many of the tools we use to moderate our way through the morass are helpful, many are starting to show signs of wear and tear.  Some of them are downright broken.  It has gotten to the point that it isn’t unusual to hear that someone has given up answering email.  But this isn’t a new phenomenon.  I know many people who refuse to answer their phone and let the voice mail pick it up. 

What is the solution to all this mess?  Is there a solution to all this mess?  That isn’t a question I’m willing to ask in earnest just yet, let alone answer.  Before we give up on answering it, let’s start by looking at the problems and see if there is a good way out of this problem.  

First we will look at the types of communication.  Then we will address the time sensitivity of the communication. Additionally, we need to look at the direction of the communication.  Finally we need to look at the security needed in the communication.

Another Idea for a Tool

I want a tool that allows me to import into the following:

• Google Bookmarks
• Browser Favorites / Bookmarks
• Del.icio.us

The Applicaiton should take as an input:

• RSS
• OMPL

The above files should use extensions to handle categories or tags.

What I’m going to build here is a tool that will sync up a list of postings.  I currently have things in my RSS reader, my Google Bookmakrs, my browser favorites, and my Del.icio.us links.

I guess the idea here is that RSS / RDF / OMPL RSS and OMPL are really good transports for the metadata assoicated with a given webpage.  We should be able to get information in and out of each of tools that are used to create these links.

 

 

Computerized Story Telling

I found an article today on Digg about computers writing stories.  While I do think this is possible, I have yet to hear anyone getting close.  Music has been done, and done so well that it’s causing people in to rethink what creativity means.

Anyway, this is being posted so I don’t have to hunt down the paper again, and I can read it when I have time to think about it.

File Attachment: mexica_jetai.pdf (135 KB)

File Attachment: Three Computer-Based Mopdels of Storytelling Brutus, Minstrel, and Mexica.pdf (510 KB)