Ged Carroll

Category: software | 軟件 | 소프트웨어 | ソフトウェア

Soon after I started writing this blog, web services came up as a serious challenger to software. The thing that swung the tide in software’s favour was the rise of the mobile app ecosystems.

Originally mobile apps solved a gnarly problem for smartphone companies. Web services took time to download and were awkward compared to native software.

Now we tend to have a hybrid model where the web holds authentication functionality and the underlying database for many applications to work. If you pick up a Nokia N900 today, while you can appreciate its beautiful design, the device is little more than a glowing brick. Such is the current symbiosis between between software apps and the web services that support them.

That symbiosis is very important, while on the one hand it makes my Yahoo! Finance and Accuweather apps very useful, it also presents security risks. Some of the trouble that dating app Grindr had with regards security was down to the programmers building on third party APIs and not understanding every part of the functionality.

This means that sometimes things that I have categorised as online services might fall into software and vice versa. In that respect what I put in this category takes on a largely arbitrary view of what is software.

The second thing about software is the individual choices as a decision making user, say a lot about us. I love to use Newsblur as an RSS reader as it fits my personal workflow. I know a lot of other people who prefer other readers that do largely the same job in a different way.

  • Video conferencing + more

    Video conferencing

    A couple of interesting artifacts that I found online and wanted to share with y’all.First up, video conferencing, why is it so crap and what are you going to do about it?

    Ok, we’ve had video online, we’re now living in an age of pretty much ubiquitous broadband, why do we stop with using our VoIP client of choice and use video instead.Well there is the network side of things: IP networks provide a ‘best effort’ service so the signal may be come degraded. All the pixels will get to the other end eventually but they won’t get there in the right order and the latency of the signal will depend on the slowest part of network travel that they have to make through the internet ‘cloud’ no matter what kind of pipe you have between you and your local telephone exchange, wireless hub or cable television outfit. Look at video streaming, it has errors and flaws in its signal even on my 2MB pipe AND the signal is buffered to smooth out these glitches like a CD player. With real-time interactive video conversations that is not a technical option.

    Also you may not want to have the person see you as well as speak to you, imagine if you have a bad hair day or want to lie?

    The third factor is a much more basic human system and the best way of illustrating it is by looking at the picture above. Notice how you don’t have eye contact with the people that you have a conference with because the camera’s perspective is slightly different to the view you would have if it were a real-world conversation. Notice how the men on the left and right are looking above their screens and the ladies are looking below, this is just enough for you to notice and process at a low level. It doesn’t feel natural, the conversation won’t flow as well as a real-world sit down would because the eye contact feels wrong.

    This is why video conferencing can feel so wrong, even Apple’s attempt at correcting it with a small mirror picture (the one at the bottom) to see how you look to the callers feels wrong.

    Historically the way to do that is to have the difference between camera angle and the viewing angle of the screen as small as possible. This was achieved by using big TV screens with a camera on top and the participant perched at the end of a big conference table at the other end of the room. That’s why big oil companies and George Bush love video conferencing but you’re not likely to see it adopted en masse in UK homes soon.

    Its also not exactly the most elegant solution, which the reason why I was really intrigued by this Apple patent which I saw courtesy of those nice people at AppleInsider.

    Imagine where the screen viewing area was the camera with camera elements squeezed in between the pixels on your LCD. The back-light would provide the ambient light required for the picture, you an have eye contact with whoever you are speaking with without living in a mansion and having a conference table the size of a small yacht.

    In theory this principle would also work with on mobile screens (at a lower quality-level), televisions etc. On the scary side it would also allow the omni-present two-way tele screens for surveillance like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. More content here.

    Web 2.0 and the Enterprise

    News.com have an interesting article Web 2.0 meets the enterprise how companies like IBM and Visible Path are using technologies like social networking, RSS feeds and wikis to help large companies build IT systems. News.com make a big show of how these ‘consumer’ (their word, not mine) technologies are changing the enterprise software landscape.In addition, Forrester sent out an email newletter talking about how service-orientated architecture (SOA) (simply put: enterprise-grade web 2.0-type technologies) are having an accelerated take-up with happy IT directors to be found everywhere.

    The truth is more complex than the News.com story about how the kids are showing big business the way, the process is much more complex.

    AJAX is generally a hard thing to do well so it is interesting that Michael Robertson is selling AJAX-based web services through ajaxLaunch and looking to use AJAX as a way of providing applications and widgets on top of an OS. Its an interesting take from a business head on all the utopian dreams such as the network computing meme or Netscape’s ‘the browser is the OS’-hype back in the day and an ideal way for novices to get web 2.0 see his ‘everything is moving to the cloud’ keynote here which also has a good product demo (RealPlaya required).

    Nice definition of what AJAX means to marketing people – ‘rich web applications right to your computer’.

  • Palm for sale

    The Good Morning Silicon Valley newsletter carried a story about Palm’s largest shareholders asking the company to sell out to another player while its fortunes are still on the rise. This raises concerns about Palm’s roadmap and vision if even their largest shareholders don’t believe them.

    Why sell out?

    Palm has a number of challenges to overcome:

    • Maintaining relationships with distribution channels which are different and distinct for both the Treo and PDA ranges
    • Palm needs a new OS that will have it ready for the next ten years. It could have done with that new OS in the year 2000
    • Innovation and localisation: in order to keep its head above water in the PDA market Palm needs to innovate, Pocket PC manufacturers can leverage reference designs and even sell devices at a loss to support service businesses in the enterprise. In the cell phone market, Palm needs to localise the device to meet each carriers needs.
    • Make like Dell: Palm not only needs to get better at innovation and localisation, it needs to innovate operationally; something that had a positive transformative effect on Apple. Dell is a by-word for a slick logistics chain that keeps cost down and allows for user customisation at the order stage
    • One-trick pony: when HP goes into business it is looking to sell everything from a HP9000 Superdome high-end computer to an iPaq and the services to support it. When Nokia speaks to carriers it can sell them everything from all the kit to run a network to budget phones for PAYG (Pay-As-You-Go) customers
    • Convergence: cell phones now have PDA functionality and so do iPods, Palm has unsuccessfully tried to make a convergence play with the LifeDrive and seems to have a crisis of ideas
    • Get big or get out: As can be seen from the MP3 player market, where there is a hot, competitive sector size wins because it can bring economies of scale to bear. Palm could not have taken the gamble that Apple did in terms its forward contracts for flash memory to role out a flash-based LifeDrive even if it had the vision to do so.

    Who should buy?

    A lot of the heat in this discussion centres on Research In Motion, Nokia and Apple.

    Research in Motion has never had the best product design and user experience, Palm could help them.

    Palm’s pen computing experience could be invaluable to Nokia.

    Apple is the collectively the player considered by technology pundits the people who can make a market work and has the expertise and chutzpah to make change the game devices work. Palm could bring carrier relationships and expertise.

    Why buy?

    Palm has a strong brand its name has been a by-word for PDAs for a long time. The Treo has made a name for itself amongst early adopters and has proven itself to be more adaptable than the Blackberry. Its product design has made it a success that has saved Palm up to now. However, much of the crown jewels within Palm (its distinctive look and feel) marched off with PalmSource acquisition by Access and even then there was a lot of work to be done to assure the future of the PalmOS as a modern platform.

    • If Apple wanted to build a Palm-like device it already has much of the expertise needed, arguably the best product design team in the world and it could license or buy the PalmOS software from Access. It even has the talent to build its own OS over Darwin. However, this would necessitate a hell of a lot of work during the time that the company is migrating its hardware and software to the Intel platform and rolling out new entertainment services. This means that a Palm-like Apple device is probably not likely
    • Research in Motion could poach a few of the Palm design team and licence the PalmOS software, but it has bigger issues as competitors are using the NTP case as an excuse to eat the companies lunch. In addition, services and software are more lucrative so there is already some industry signs that RIM are looking to move away from being a hardware player
    • Nokia has some of the best mobile phone designers in the world, the user experience of its Symbian phones rivals Palm. It makes sense only as a way to eliminate competition, but it would be more profitable to tempt key staff away and watch Palm nose-dive into wherever dead companies go

    Conclusion

    OK, first of all there is the question of whether Palm needs to be sold: probably not, but a shot of energy, vision and cajones in the management team wouldn’t go a miss and this shareholder action may be the boot in the backside that they need. Bottom line is that this question can get kicked back and forth for a long time to come, what’s more its an emotive area so don’t expect a consensus soon.

    If a ‘for sale’ sign went up, Palm may get a buyer, but I would expect the purchaser to come from the Far East rather than the established tech players named. I would also expect them to buy if or when the company is on its knees. Ningbo Bird, Haier, Lenovo, BenQ or HTC for example already know how to make phones, if they want cute industrial design they can buy it in as necessary from IDEO, frog design or their ilk. If the company did tout around for a buyer, you could expect the business to drop as carriers and enterprise look for alternative ‘safer’ suppliers. If the business isn’t on its knees when the for sale sign goes up, it may be by the time the deal is signed.

    The crown jewels: the PalmOS software is already available to whoever wants to licence it at a discount to Windows Mobile, the value would be in the carrier relationships and the brand recognition of the Palm name.

    UPDATE: Palm Addicts ran this piece in full, you can find it here. More related posts here.

  • Audrey 3Com net appliance

    Bob Cringely wrote an interesting article about the need for internet appliances such as 3Com’s Audrey to provide internet access for the slow adopters and laggards. internet appliance were orginally muted as an idea by Larry Ellison of Oracle as part of his network computing vision. They failed because of the topsy turvy economics that have driven PC growth, though one could argue that the iMac incorporate the spirit if not the technical specification of an internet appliance. Bob’s discussion reminded me of the small time I worked on 3Com.

    I got put on the Palm pan European PR account when the company had been spun out from 3Com and Audrey was on the horizon, my predecessor worked on Palm as part of the 3Com portfolio. Part of the reasons discussed internally for this was that Audrey had the potential to eat Palm’s lunch. Audrey was based on a more modern operating system. Even by 2000, Palm realised that its current operating system was in need of a replacement.

    Unlike Audrey, It couldn’t multitask and involved kludged layers of abstraction to work. When it worked it was brilliant. But it wasn’t ready for a connected online future and the greater demands that we will put on mobile computing devices. The upper layers of the operating system providing the user experience and handwriting were the real genius in the PalmOS.

    The lower levels were off the peg software from the mid-1990s. Back then we didn’t even have multi-tasking in Macs and most installed versions of Windows. Indeed Palm went on to buy Be Systems, who provided the software and expertise behind Sony’s eVilla internet appliance.

    Now PalmOne has different things to worry about, like how to stop Microsoft’s kamikaze antics in the handheld and mobile space. It is interesting that PalmSource has had to go and purchase a mobile Linux company due to client demand. More content similar to Audrey here.

    Revisiting this post in 2022 on the Audrey 3Com net appliances reminded of how Robert X Cringely in his book Accidental Empires talked about innovation in terms of surfing waves. Picking a wave too early would mean that you wouldn’t get much of a ride, picking it too late would leave you wiped out. Audrey was a ‘too early wave’. A stable multi-tasking operating system with easy single purpose apps is the basic technical specification for the iPad that my parents use to keep in touch wit me and the the world online. Superficially Audrey resembled the appliance like computing experience of the early iMac where everything you needed was in the box, but the iPad was its true successor as a communal communications and content consumption device. If that doesn’t sound like Larry Ellison’s net computing device and the Audrey I don’t know what does.

  • Skype

    I was recommended Skype VoIP software from my friend Uri. I had not tried voice over the net since I worked on one of the pioneers in this area, an Israeli company called Delthathree. I expected metallic sounding voices and gapped and stuttered speech as signals would be distorted and delayed by network traffic. Skype is a peer-to-peer voice over the net application, you pay nothing for calls between computers and low prices between computers and phones.

    This is nothing new Net2Phone did this back in the day, both Yahoo! Messenger and Apple’s iChat allows you to do video conferencing and voice calls. Skype has something else, sizzle.

    Skype’s client software arrived just as broadband has become mainstream. Secondly the player looks and works really well, Skype had the underground cool heritage of Kazaa – both shared the same development team based somewhere in the Latvia.

    Finally the Orrin Hatch pestilence of anything that doesn’t cost the consumer must be bad has co-opted authority against open source, P2P communities and telecoms providers against any web service they would like to tax to feather their own nests.

    Usability in the Mac OS X client is second to none and very intuitive. The call quality very good as well. At least comparable to Apple iChat. The call to phones is better than VoIP services that I have used in the past. And has the convenience of being able to be done from my Mac. Encryption of conversations would be nice just to wind the powers that be up a bit more! The way I look at it, the more we make them work to read our personal mail, the better the peace dividend in five years or so as the NSA has had to increase its computing power and write wicked cool software to cope. Hell, it would be un-American not to help be everything they can be! More related posts here. 

  • Microsoft Longhorn

    Microsoft Longhorn – As you may have seen over the past few days parts of the American media seem to think that the launch of Microsoft’s new operating system is turning into a bigger disaster than the war against terror. They’re wrong for two reasons:

    – The war against terror is majorly messed up because of poor leadership which has betrayed the countless men and women who have been serving their countries selflessly

    – Even in the unlikely event of Microsoft going bankrupt in the morning and the business and associated ‘intellectual’ properties disappearing into a puff of smoke (I sooo wish it were true), there are numerous viable alternatives from pirate Windows software (nice price, shame about the code), GNU/Linux, various flavours of Unix (Solaris, Openware, Mac OS X, netBSD, FreeBSD etc)

    Let’s put Microsoft Longhorn into perspective:

    – Whine number one – its late, duh show me an IT project that isn’t late, or over budget. Ever heard the one about the sales man who walks into a client, promises them the earth and then gives the programming team three weeks to build it and is then surprised when it doesn’t deliver. Microsoft is bigger than everyone else so does things like this on a bigger scale.

    – Whine number two – it won’t do what you promise, you’ve cut out all the good bits. Ok, I’m going to let you into an IT industry dirty secret, marketing people lie. They believe what they tell you when they have told you it, but they lie. I know they lie, because I’ve taken their lies and written them in an easy to understand format for journalists to write about. Journalists propagate those lies because they provide content that readers pretend to glance over whilst really checking out the job adverts and feeling aggrieved at the money they are paid. The content is a trojan horse to get those job adverts into their workplace because there are too many more interesting things to do in their own time. Everyone benefits from the ecosystem

    – Whine number three – its an omen of doom, Trey (William Gates III to those of us who know him well) has taken his eye off the ball and Monkey Boy Balmer has royally fcuked up, this would not have happened with Bill in charge. This one needs to be broken down into sections.

    First of all, Steve Balmer has done a good job fighting against the rabid autistic children that make up most of his employees, bringing it successfully through a shedload of antitrust lawsuits and helping put a more sympathetic government in the White House.

    Remember, Bill Gates’ video testimony helped with the finding of fact against the company in the first place and condemned Microsoft in the court of public opinion.

    Secondly, when Gates was in the hot seat the company made some shocking errors:

    • Microsoft Bob – don’t know about it? That’s because it bombed
    • The Road Ahead (first edition) – ghost writers had to tear this apart and rewrite it replacing up to 30 per cent of the content, Gates had dismissed the Internet and missed the boat. They spent hundreds of millions before they caught back up
    • Cairo – during the development of Windows’95, Microsoft spent a lot of money developing some wicked cool technologies that improved searching for data on a computer amongst other things. Cairo was designed to unify the DOS and NT based products on one state-of-the-art platform (this unification happened much later with Windows XP). Along the way a lot of cool stuff got culled, the market got an inferior product which sold despite being launched with a Rolling Stones live performance of ‘Start me up’. Windows’95 went on to be a technological wasteland and an unprecendented commerical success. Cairo still makes Microsoft Longhorn look good

    Thirdly it takes more than Microsoft Longhorn, a few penguins and unruly autistic children to take down the house of Microsoft. Why? Because thousands of IT people want to follow each other like lemmings rather than looking at alternatives that may provide their business with competitive advantage? The real compelling reason why Microsoft should not be scared of Microsoft Longhorn – politico-economics. Below is a quote taken from the I, Cringely column of August 14, 2003:

    Why aren’t Apple Macintosh computers more popular in large mainstream organizations? Whatever the gigahertz numbers say, Macintoshes are comparable in performance to Windows or Linux machines. Whatever the conventional wisdom or the Microsoft marketing message, Macs aren’t dramatically more expensive to buy and on a Total Cost of Ownership basis they are probably cheaper. Nobody would argue that Macs are harder to use. Clearly, they are easier to use, especially on a network. So what’s the problem? Why do Macs seem to exist only in media outfits? Apple is clearly wondering the same thing because the company recently surveyed owners of their xServe 1U boxes asking what Apple could do to make them more attractive? For those who own xServes, they are darned attractive — small, powerful, energy-efficient, easy to configure and manage, and offering dramatic savings for applications like streaming. Yet, Apple appears to be having a terrible time selling the things.

    I used to think it came down to nerd ego. Macs were easy to use, so they didn’t get the respect of nerds who measured their testosterone levels by how fluently they could navigate a command line interface. Now, I think differently. Now, I think Macs threaten the livelihood of IT staff. If you recommend purchasing a computer that requires only half the support of the machine it is replacing, aren’t you putting your job in danger? Exactly.

    Ideally, the IT department ought to recommend the best computer for the job, but more often than not, they recommend the best computer for the IT department’s job.

    Now another question: Why are Linux computers gaining in popularity with large organizations while Macs, which are based after all on BSD Unix, aren’t? While there is certainly a lot to be said for Linux in competition with various flavors of Windows (Linux is faster, more memory-efficient, more secure, has more sources of supply, supports many more simultaneous users per box in a server environment, and is clearly cheaper to buy), the advantage over Macintosh computers is less clear.

    Again, it comes down to the IT Department Full Employment Act. Adopting Linux allows organizations to increase their IT efficiency without requiring the IT department to increase it’s efficiency. It takes just as many nerds to support 100 Linux boxes as 100 Windows boxes, yet Linux boxes are cheaper and can support more users. The organization is better off while the IT department is unscathed and unchallenged.

    I am not claiming that every organization should throw out its PCs and replace them with Macs, but the numbers are pretty clear, and the fact that more Macs don’t make it into server racks has to be based on something, and I think that something is CIO self-interest.

    Macs reduce IT head count while Linux probably increases IT head count, simple as that.

    I didn’t come up with this very smart idea, it came from a reader. That same reader made the point that every part of an organization ought to be concerned with improving the bottom line, which is to say with being more productive. Yet IT typically doesn’t work that way.

    All you aspiring ‘Neutron’ Jack Welch’s out there, you have an ideal target to squeeze for efficiency get liquidating staff and taking technological change out of the hands of the IT director (better still fire his ass and buy the mortgage on his property for peanuts). Before you ask, outsourcing just ships the problem out of the country but not out of your life.