Random...

RSS to go mainstream

2005-06-25T11:54:00.000+10:00

Today's news that Microsoft will build support for RSS into the next browser and its next operating system (Longhorn) is good from at least two perspectives. Making it easier to subscribe to a feed has to be the number one benefit. Today, that is still difficult and confusing for many people.

And while there are some rumblings about Microsoft being late to the RSS party, their support means that RSS has now gone definitely gone mainstream. That has to be good for everyone.

Comprehensive coverage of the news is on Alex Barnett's Blog

Testing Qumana

2005-06-16T10:31:00.000+10:00

I'm having a look at Qumana, which is a weblog editor. I've been look for a convenient editor for use with the various weblogs which I maintain, so I was eager to try it. The installer didn't place any shortcuts on my desktop nor icons in the system tray as suggested in the documentation, but I successfully launched it from "Program files" and my initial impressions were favourable: straighforward interface, spell checking and thesaurus.

Unfortunately, it failed when trying to configure it for the Active Weblog, which uses Movable Type. Qumana found Movable Type's xml-rpc.cgi file ok, but produced this error when testing the set-up. I couldn't find any relevant support information of the Qumana site and I expect to forward this post to them for assistance.

In stead, I configured the system for use with blogger, which went smoothly and writing this quick post is my first experience with Qumana.
Later:
Unfortunately, when posting this item, a number of glitches appeared:

The image url was mangled by Qumana and did not display until I edited the HTML.
The title of the post did not apear on Blogger, I had to manually edit it.

So my initial impression is that it's not ready for prime time. That's a pity, because the world is waiting for an editor that makes posting to Weblogs as easy as writing an email and sending it.

Still later:
I received a prompt reply from Tris Hussy at Qumana asking for more information on the image display bug. I tried to replicate the image problem and found that I had mistakenly entered a backslash (rather than forward slash) in the image URL. Interestingly, this did not stop Qumana from displaying the image, but covered up the error until that post was published to Blogger. So it was caused by a combination of my poor typing and Qumana covering up that error. The other problems remain as stated above.

Powered By Qumana

Poster children for the evolution

2005-06-14T11:21:00.000+10:00

Jon Udell and Dave Winer, always educational and entertaining. New post on Active Weblog

My Booth is bigger than your Social Software

2005-06-03T13:34:00.000+10:00

Over at Bill's place, he's musing about the size of booths (known as stands in our local lingo, Strine) at the AIIM show in Philadelphia. Oh, Oh, you're thinking, Marius is going to have another post about trade shows too... [more at ActiveWeb]

Building it, one blog at the time

2005-06-01T13:41:00.000+10:00

I'm in the process of gathering my consulting and other ambitions into a new company, Active Web Communications. Its focus will be to assist businesses to better take advantage of the Web, both from a Market Commmunications and from a Systems Integration perspective. We haven't yet seen the lower end of the Content Management Market mature, while RSS and Weblogs are "Crossing the Chasm". Low cost software and hosted applications are bringing new challenges for software vendors and their customers. It's an exciting time to start a new business. Anyway, I won't bore you with more of the details here now.

Sufficiant to say that the company has a Weblog of its own. Subscribe to the feed and follow along! I'll be posting my web business related pieces there from now on and focus here more on shorter pieces about technical obsessions. I also hope to give this blog a design make-over soon.

Anyway, check it out. I just wrote a piece at Active about the prospects of Sensis.

A tale of two shows, CeBIT and PacPrint

2005-05-27T08:19:00.000+10:00

I've been "beta testing" a business advisory service which we're launching on July 1 and had reasons to be at both CeBit Sydney and PacPrint in Melbourne this past week. What a contrast...

CeBit felt like just another IT show, only with a New Zealand pavilion. It wasn't much different from the computer shows in years gone by, although Wireless Networking and mobile companies had replaced hard drives and mother board vendors. Of course, there were the AIIA stands and the national stands, subsidized by their respective governments, but as a show, it didn't work for me. A very, very pale imitation of the Hannover CeBIT show. Moreover, the question that hung in the air at CeBit was "What is the target market of the show?"

At PacPrint in Melbourne, it was abundantly clear who the audience were: Printers, people and companies involved in "Ink On Paper" technology. You knew who they were and why they were there. They were looking for that printing press or some other piece of technology which might make their business more productive or improve their quality of service. There was a sense of excitement and interest which seemed sorely lacking at the other show.

Of course, there was as much Information Technology on site at Jeff's Shed in Melbourne as there was at CeBit. Powering not just the presses and ancillary equipment, but of course also on stands like Adobe's. An important software category at the show was workflow. Printing equipment is expensive, and needs to be constantly "kept fed" in order to provide a return for their owners.

Workflow is a hot topic and efficient execution determines profit and loss for commercial printing companies. It's good to see an Australian software company, Quote & Print doing well there. They are an example to many in the software business: start with a customer's problem and help them solve it. When there are a number of customers with that same problem, you've got yourself a business. As long as you run it well and stay in touch with the customers, which is exactly why Dave Bell and his company, Quote & Print were at the PacPrint show and not at CeBIT. Simple, really...

The future of Enterprise Content Management?

2005-05-24T04:32:00.000+10:00

I usually scan over the Penton email newsletter about Content Management because James Brown is an entertaining writer and Content Management is one of my continuing interests (passions?). In his last email, James announced a new series of articles on Penton Europe's CM365 site, the first of which was entitled "The future of Web Content Management", by Adrian Kershaw, Fatwire Software's General Manager for Northern Europe.

I read the article and was surprised that, while mentioning personalization and news, it did not mention Weblogs, RSS and aggregation. I left a comment to that effect, as the web site invited readers to "Add a comment to this article" and hoped to engage Adrian and others into a conversation about how RSS might impact ECM.

Unfortunately, it looks like comments are a one way street at CM365. Four days later, my comment still hasn't turned up on the site.
So we might well ask:

Why give customers the ability to leave comments when they don't show up on the site?
What do Enterprise Content Management vendors think about Weblogs and RSS?
What are they afraid of?

We are left with the impression that Content Management Vendors are not looking to learn from the Weblog/RSS phenomenon. They no longer call themselves CMS (Content Management Systems) vendors and have re-branded themselves as being in the "Enterprise Content Management" business. And of course there is a whole industry which is supported by the ECM market: the Analysts, the "Journalists" and the Trade Show organizers. Needed, because customers are confused by the bewildering array of vendors and price points. And in some cases, customers are coming to realize that the Emperor has few clothes and that they're very expensive.

There are millions of users of Personal Content Management Systems (a name which ECM vendors might prefer over "blogs"). Sure, blogging tools are in many cases, crude and unpolished. Users put up with the rough edges because the tools serve their purpose, they allow them to communicate in a way that they couldn't before. It is "Comments, RSS and Aggregators" that lets them turn one-way communication into a conversation with whoever they imagine their readers to be.

That's not to say that there aren't interesting problems to be solved when managing large amounts of content or that it isn't useful having a predictable framework to build a web site, but one would think that Enterprises would want to communicate as well as manage their content.

Weblogging is disrupting the CMS market and vendors will ignore it at their peril . The Innovator's Dilemma and Solution by Clayton Christensen (not to mention the Cluetrain Manifesto) should be required reading for ECM vendors.

Oh… and Adrian, I feel you describe the past of Web Content Management, rather than its future, no matter what Rupert Murdoch or Forrester might have said. Like you, they have a particular perspective which is not be shared by literally millions of bloggers.

Hopefully last post about Gmail/SMTP

2005-05-21T09:51:00.000+10:00

After 2 days of email experiments, I took the plunge this morning and paid US$25 to smtpauth.com to provide a server which (hopefully) works in most places, is silent (doesn't alter the "from" details) AND sends a copy to an address which you can set up in their control panel. The recommended setting is port 2525 and they provide a utility to sniff out which ports are OK to use if necessary. Not bad for a Pommy company...

So now I have:

One set up in Outlook, usable at home, airport, on holiday at work.
All my outgoing emails automatically archived on Gmail
All my incoming emails forwarded by the server(s) to Gmail, which in turn I access with Outlook.

Maybe Mrs Google will do this some day without the pain which I had to endure over the past few days, but for the moment, I'm happy.

Almost Perfect Gmail

2005-05-20T16:07:00.000+10:00

Earlier this week I thought I had hit upon a neat way of being able to send emails from outlook no matter where I was, no matter which email account I used. If only it was true.

Two things happened:

Google isn't as friendly with their SMTP server as Earthlink was. They insist on putting xxxx@gmail.com as the sender ("Return-Path" in the email header) of the email while Earthlink used the "User Information" field in Outlook as the Return-Path, which of course you can set to any email address. The result is that using Gmail's SMTP, emails look like they come from a Gmail account, while using Earthlink's SMTP server, they look as though they come from my "native email address", which they do. Pity... I might have to check out one of those commercial SMTP services after all.

The other thing that happened was that I was at a company which blocks port 465, which is what Gmail uses for its authenticated SMTP. I guess they don't want their staff to use Gmail at work...

I continue to have my mail server forward email to Gmail and "pop" Gmail with Outlook. That way Gmail does my spam detection and inward archiving on the way to my inbox. It would have been nice to archive the sent mail as well. Mrs Gmail... please!

[update: I took the plung with authsmtp.com]

Small Business accounting

2005-05-20T14:12:00.000+10:00

I've spent the past few weeks talking to small / medium business people about the ambitions for their web presence and how the web might finally deliver what it promised 10 years ago.

Most of them wouldn't know about Service Oriented Architectures, Content Management Systems and Adwords. But they know what they want, having web sites that really work for them. They want up-to-date web sites which connect to their back office systems and they want closed loop marketing. On my part, I'm excited that much of the tech "coming down the pike" has potential to make a real difference to SME (or SMB in US-speak) organisations. And most of them don't know what's going to hit them. Well.... that is as long as the vendors of small business accounting software pick up the ball and run with it!

My experience is that accounting systems only allow one way traffic (for example, export customer details but not synchronise their details with other systems). While that might have been for good reasons in the past, it will be unlikely to satify those who have a vision of integrating Customer Relationship Management and Accounting information on a self-service web site.

It would appear that the Yankee group in their recent report believes that also, according to this InfoWorld article. [By the way, Infoworld, I hate your habit of providing re-directed links to vendors in articles, particularly when they fail].

"In the Yankee Group DecisionNote, called "Intuit Dominates Best Software and Microsoft in SMB Accounting Application Market," which was driven by the raw survey data generated from another report called "Small & Medium Business Applications & Web Survey." In the latter report Yankee Group is encouraging vendors to consider redesigning products to better work with a service-oriented architecture and give customers a choice of on-demand or on-premises delivery models."

I'd be very happy with a hosted accounting system which automatically adapted itself to changing accounting and tax rules and which I could access from anywhere.

In the mean time, the rumour is that Microsoft's next accounting system integrates closely with MS Office, surprise... surprise. I would call that swimmming against the stream.

Using Gmail authenticated SMTP on other email accounts

2005-05-16T15:03:00.000+10:00

Many networks are set up to make it impossible to send emails when your mail server is not on the same network (they block port 25). As a frequent traveller and itinerant, this was a real pain for some time. The usual recommended option is to change your email client (outlook in my case) to use a local mailserver, which is painful to have to do regularly. For a while I created different profiles for every network I used, but that was still a right nuisance.

Then I noticed that Earthlink, who I was my ISP while in the USA, implemented "Authenticated SMTP", which allowed me to use their mail server, no matter which network I was on. And because there is no reason why you can't use different mail servers to send and receive, I simpliy reconfigured all my other accounts to use Earthlink's SMTP.

Recently, I've been looking for alternatives to Earthlink, why pay $20 per month just to use their SMTP server? A number of suppliers will allow you to use their authenticated SMTP server for an annual fee (check the sponsored links on this search). I was about to pay up when I realised that Google's free email service, Gmail, uses Authenticated SMTP. Why pay if it's available for free? So I edited my settings in Outlook to use Google's SMTP settings for sending "from" all of my email accounts in three easy steps.

The first step:

Enter "smtp.gmail.com" in the Outgoing Mail Server field

The second step:

Click "more settings" and then on the outgoing server tab. Check "My Outgoing server etc." and click "log on using", then enter the user name and password of the gmail account.

The third step:

Check "This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL)" for the Outgoing server (SMTP) and enter 465 in the box.

That's it (read Google's set up page for more detailed instructions)
[Update: I spent hours figuring out how I could cleanly send a copy of all my sent (outlook) emails to Gmail. I have come to like their way of archiving. I just noticed that when you use GMail's SMTP server it also stores the email. Doh... Gmail rocks!]

[Later: It is not as perfect as I had hoped, see post]

[ Latest: I paid for a commercial SMTP service, see post]

Some of you are doomed!

2005-05-10T16:00:00.000+10:00

That was the clear message at the recent Software 2005 conference.

The most eye-opening session included top CIOs and corporate technologists from BP; Kaiser Permanente, a big health-care provider; Lockheed Martin; and Unilever. These corporate leaders weren't here to flatter the assembled software executives. David Watson, the CTO of Kaiser Permanente's IT group, stared out into the audience and said, "The quality I get from you people is abysmal."

Enterprise software is definetely Not Hot, 'Software as a Service' is Cool. IT manager pursue technology fashions, just like teenagers' haircuts and spring fashion. But even allowing for that, the writing for the traditional software is on the wall. What is going on here is more than just a fasionable trend. Salesforce.com has hit a sweet spot with many companies. And when Intuit has 4 million online customers, it shows that this is not just for large enterprises either.

On a personal note, I recently started using Jotspot to help manage some projects. For me, Jotspot made 'Software As A Service' relevant. It's a nifty collaboration environment based on some of the ideas from wikis, mixed with a powerful brew of project management features. I'm addicted!

Sure, there will probably continue to be a place for enterprise software and shrink wrapped applications, but if I was starting a software company today...

From Password Hell to Password Heaven

2005-05-01T11:09:00.000+10:00

Jon Udell is a technology writer whose weblog consistently enlightens and challenges me. His mix of technology and common sense is terrific. He regularly throws a unique light on new technology and the way we can use it. In his latest article for Infoworld about the impact on collaboration, he wrote:

Lightweight single sign-on is one reason why. Nic Wolff’s clever bookmarklet-based solution has been a life-changer. Managing yet another password was the main obstacle in the way of adopting disposable services on the Web. Now a single pass phrase generates unique and strong passwords, no secrets are stored locally, and the master secret never travels over the wire. As a result, new services seem frictionless.

As it turns out, a few folks hit on the same idea. This is the one Jon originally wrote about, another is at onepassword.com. I just installed the latter, it works great in Firefox as well as Internet Explorer.

Blow me down! How could I possibly have missed that until now? A secure single sign-on across as many sites as I like? How had I missed an item with so much potential to make my life easier? Well... I was on an extended sailing break when he wrote it. I'll never do that again (ahem)!
[Update: It looks like Jon agrees that this idea needs broader exposure, he just did a screencast of the bookmarklet version]

Caught in the headlights

2005-04-23T04:40:00.000+10:00

Over the past week, most commentators found reasons why Adobe acquired Macromedia. I haven't seen a lot of comment about why Macromedia let itself be acquired. This was no hostile takeover.

Macromedia did a great job building products for Creative Professionals, but failed dismally to make themselves relevant to customers beyond that core.

Were they really thinking that they could make Flash a serious application development platform? And get "street-cred" with the Python, Ruby and .Net crowds?

Why didn't they shake up the Content Management Systems market with a modestly priced system when they had a unique distribution channel (Web developers) to do so? No, they clung desperately to trying to sell Dreamweaver or its cousin (Contribute) to folks who simply want to update the text on their website.

After hyping the benefits of rich media for years, it must have been galling for Rob Burgess to see the runaway success of Google with simple text ads. Along the way, Macromedia didn't find a way to plug into the runaway success of Blogging. No, they were caught in the headlights of their own failures. A juicy offer from Adobe was easy to accept.

Adobe buys Macromedia

2005-04-18T22:46:00.000+10:00

I thought it was surprising to to see Steve Elop take over the reins at Macromedia earlier this year. Rob Burgess had seemed well established in the CEO role. At the time, the press release said that "Burgess will be focused on mergers and acquisitions" and today we found out which merger he was talking about. [via Techdirt]

It's good to be reminded...

2005-04-10T06:59:00.000+10:00

Away from the Web, my passion is sailing. I like sailing because it puts you back in contact with two of Nature's basic elements, wind and water. At various times it's peaceful, exciting, relaxing, potentially dangerous and even embarrassing (for example, allowing a boat to come into unplanned contact with the other element, earth).

Of course I have tried to combine the two passions with various degrees of success. I've enjoyed keeping a weblog of my "adventures" with Te Moana, our sailboat. I've also tried to start a mailing list about my kind of sailing, coastal cruising. It's been a bit of a failure. Why? Because I simply haven't managed to get it to critical mass. In my experience, a list typically needs around 100 members before there are enough regular writers (3 or 4?), as most people are by nature lurkers. And when there is no regular flow of messages, the list doesn't become part of your "life".

So why couldn't I get a enough people to join? Well, I'm part of a minority - those in their late fifties with a intense on-line habit. Most of the people in my age group don't get it, they didn't grow up with computers. And guess what, at the cruising club, I am amongst the younger group of participants. Coastal Cruising is what people do when they get some more time (and money) for themselves. So, for information and interaction, they are firmly wedded to face-to-face meetings (hard to beat a drink at sunset with some friends on the back of a boat somewhere) and Ink-On-Paper publications.

It's good to be reminded before we start a project to make sure the target audience is aligned not only with its aims but also has the capacity or inclination to take advantage of it. Social Software, like weblogs, wikis and yes, mailing lists generally need a two way conversation and many people still see themselves as consumers rather than participants.

Customer Service

2005-04-07T10:14:00.000+10:00

We have this coming to us. The Head Lemur mocks all forms of, but particularly web based, customer service. If only he wasn't right.

The full story at OK/Cancel

From badly designed forms, to websites which are not "connected" to the business. Of course, informative web sites and responsive customer service departments do exist, but all too often the experience is horrible.

Our industry (that of designing websites) is still challenged to design sites which properly relate to customers and their perspective. And we don't spend enough time helping make sure that there is a free flow between a site and the company behind it.

Tracking results

2005-04-05T09:50:00.000+10:00

While Google has been diversifying beyond pure search to broaden its appeal, they don't have to be reminded where the payback is coming from: Driving traffic to sites in return for payment.

Smart customers of Google's Adwords track their results very closely and implement a variety of strategies to monitor their Return On Investment. One of the companies which has a suite of products to assist with that, is Urchin Web Analytics. Google just acquired them. Expect very close integration between Urchin's software and Google's.

A long way to go

2005-04-04T15:25:00.000+10:00

It's been an eye opener talking to some small business people recently about their perspective on the Web. One business has a (pretty ugly) website which doesn't even list its street address, another doesn't have a website and its emails bounce because the mailbox is full. Both are relatively successful businesses in the services and manufacturing sectors.

auDA, the Australian Domain name authority, recently announced that there were now in excess of 500,000 .com and .net domains registered. Many representing the calling cards of businesses who are still grappling with this new medium.

It would be easy to dismiss these businesses as laggards, but away from the bleeding edge, where I've spend most of my working life, it's all about where the next dollar is coming from. And when it comes to a website or other areas of IT, they need a trusted party who gives them the right advice. Who is that? Where do they find it?

The Customer Uprising

2005-03-24T11:04:00.000+11:00

I just spotted this "find a human" database which helps customers bypass voicemail systems (US only at this stage, unfortunately). A tribute to the appalling record of service by many companies and the enterprise shown by their customers.

Waiting for Microsoft

2005-03-23T16:15:00.000+11:00

"Portals magazine" has an article which suggests that the world might be waiting for Microsoft to build the Content Management System (CMS) to end all Content Management Systems. It suggests that IT mangers are playing a waiting game until they do...

At my old company, FirmwareDesign, we sold a number of different systems and successfully helped developers implement them. But we pulled out of the market, there were too many different Content Management Systems around at at that time for us to achieve critical mass and be commercially (rather than just technically) successful. Unfortunately, the situation hasn't changed much over the past few years. Very few players are profitable. One would have expected market consolidation to have occurred by now and so reduce the number of vendors and systems. Meanwhile there is no clarity for those who have money spend. Too many products, too much risk.

Why is that so?

Any individual Designer/Developer worth their salt will use techniques to improve their productivity and reduce the drudgery of HTML hacking. Before long, that starts to look like a Content Management System. Inevitably, such home-brew systems reflect the capabilities and prejudices of the individual or his/her organization. In many cases, these system are quite effective, although they typically suffer from a lack of documentation and a heavy reliance on the knowledge of a few individuals. Their development cost is "invisible" and sometimes it seems like every developer has built one. Invariably, there is a rationalisation for not using a commercial CMS.

The role of a website within an organization is still evolving and maturing. Business Managers (and a substantial proportion of IT Managers) still have uneven expectations of what to expect from an intranet or public website and only vague perspectives of design and development methodologies. This means that a lot of customers are not in a position to pick the right system. They feel lost before they even start.The easiest decision is not to make one at all.

It should not be surprising that when Business Managers and uninformed IT managers select a Content Management System, it sometimes turns into a multi-million dollar disaster. And when Designers/Developers are left to make their own decisions, a site gets delivered often on budget but with an inadequate feature set, poor long term support and non-existing documentation.

Another challenge is that the market is made up of organizations of all shapes and sizes, their websites need to be matched in price and functionality. There isn't just one successful way to build or maintain a web site. A Content Management System needs to be matched with a particular site and more importantly its owner/operator. In some cases, it needs to be easy to use and configure, even though it might only be suitable to a particular kind of site, at other times it needs to adapt and evolve over time and will consequently be more complex to maintain and configure.

Of course, it's difficult for the sales people of even the most reputable Content Management Systems to say "Sorry, our system is not suitable for your company". Let's face it, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The truth is that there simply isn't one system capable of managing the site of a newspaper, a multinational enterprise and a plumber, equally well.

Microsoft stopped developing the CMS it acquired , probably because it didn't match their technology integration direction. Any new offering from Microsoft is likely to require the customer to use other closed Microsoft technologies like MS-Office, Sharepoint, etc. And there is no reason to assume the market will jump at the opportunity to upgrade its "Infostructure" just to manage its website or intranet. There is even less reason to assume Microsoft can come up with an "All Things To All People CMS".

What is much more likely to occur is what happened in the Accounting Software market (which Microsoft is desperately trying to buy its way into). Certain packages have come to dominate ecological niches such as Small Business in Australia, or Very Large Enterprises With More Money Then Sense and are doing very well thank you. It is unlikely that one system or even one vendor will dominate the accounting software space. The CMS market will similarly have to evolve to excel in particular niches, some broader than others, but individual markets all the same. It was interesting to see Bill Rogers (Ektron CMS) focus on niches in his latest newsletter. That just has to be the way forward. And of course once a system is successful, Microsoft will decide at some time whether to compete or acquire. Mind you, what if an open source CMS became a market leader?

Webservices overview

2005-03-13T06:08:00.000+11:00

OK, I'll bite...

Tim Bray just blogged a neat little "links essay"with an overview of web services standards, including some of the tit-for-tat going on around Soap v Rest.

His reason for doing this (other then preparing for his speaking gig) was to provide google juice to his gig at the www2005 conference.

I wouldn't mind being there, actually...

The challenge of running viable conferences

2005-02-08T15:09:00.000+11:00

Mick Stanic seems to be surprised that he couldn't run a blogging conference and charge people only $150. Every time we ran a conference in the FirmwareDesign days, our customers complained that we were charging too much (average $495), while we consistently lost over $40,000 in putting the conference on. We had something to gain (promote our tools). Who stands to gain from giving blogging tools away for free?

Unfortunately, you need to charge around $1000 to make a conference happen and come out with a modest profit. That means you'll miss out on the hip bloggers without cash and you'll get a corporate and goverment audience who will be there to listen rather than contribute.

Yahoo to acquire Six Apart?

2005-01-19T08:19:00.000+11:00

This Blogging thing occasionally throws up questions at unexpected times or from unexpected sources , like this one in an email from Jonathon:

You may have already seen this:
http://www.internetstockblog.com/2005/01/yahoo_lacks_a_b.html
What do you think?

But my question is: what in heaven's name is he doing reading Internetstockblog? Jonathon is one of these characters who disavows financial motives. He would never be caught reading the Australian Financial Review or the Wall Street Journal, let alone obscure tip sheets.

Anyway, the answer to HIS question is easy. No professional investor (Joi et al) would invest in a startup (SixApart) without an exit strategy. Yahoo would seem a natural and logical exit for them and a nice way to cash in their chips. Blogging is a bigger business than what a couple of squirrels can keep the hands and heads around. And I admire the way that Mena and Ben have managed to survive the process of growing their business.

The answer to MY question is also easy, but still manages to surprise me occasionally. The power of syndication, linking and trackback keeps us informed in a way and at a speed we would not have held possible 20 years ago.

Now I'm sounding like an old man. Back to work...

Vendor Wars

2005-01-17T08:35:00.000+11:00

PC v Mac, Open Source v Microsoft, .NET v J2EE, you have to wonder what we go on about occasionally. Is anyone outside the IT industry and Geekdom really interested? No, they just view us as an oddity. Doc Searls calls it Vendor Sports when he sees this played out in the media.

Ordinary folks simply ignore it, just like I don't bother with the sports pages in the paper. They dismiss it as much to do about nothing. But is it? Barracking for one side or another surely is part of our make-up? I'm not qualified to expose the deep psychological underpinnings for this, but it is clearly built into us.

There is an interesting difference in the IT industry between the Apple and Microsoft vendor sports. Apple has a very articulate and vocal following which is out of proportion with the 2% market share which the Macintosh achieves. Microsoft users are on the whole less vocal (perhaps more pragmatic as they don't feel they have anything to prove).

Interestingly, Apple and Microsoft themselves have diametrically opposed views when it comes to allowing their employees to discuss issues related to their companies. Apple's litigious attitude to staff (or even outsiders) who dare speculate on its future products or direction is well known. On the other hand, Microsoft employees are actively encouraged to discuss work related issues on their weblogs. Would Apple tolerate Scoble's rants? Or others daring to criticise its products?

It seems clear that Microsoft is using its employee weblogs to put a more human face on the company. And doing a good job too. It doesn't look stage-managed like some corporate weblogs (no matter how well done). They found a natural way to improve their communications with the key influencers in their market place. How long will it be before we see other industries be smart enough to realise that having a human face adds to their bottom line (dare I mention James Hardie?).

Sunset at 1770

2004-10-30T08:22:00.000+10:00

Sunset at 1770
Originally uploaded by mariushendrik.

Just trying out posting pictures from Flickr to this weblog.

Lonely Publishers

2004-10-14T09:12:00.000+10:00

In a previous life, I had the opportunity for a period to knock around with a bunch of CEO's of book publishing companies. While they were terrific after-dinner speakers, they (on the whole) were clueless about Interactive Media. With a notable exception: Lonely Planet, an innovative publisher of travel books.

I remember pointing out advertising revenue possibilities for their web site to someone on their web team. But they were way ahead of the game. They feared that advertising on their site or in their books would threaten their position as an source of independent travel information. So they started licensing their content to AOL and Yahoo, receiving royalties rather than earning their own advertising revenue. And they focussed their website on building an ongoing relationship with their readers, while using it to collect real-time feedback on their guides.

Today, they still don't promote anything other than Lonely Planet branded products (of which there are now many more) on their site, but I just noticed that their latest venture now makes it even easier for any company to add Lonely Planet content to their own site. So, if you had a travel agency, you could easily add Lonely Planet travel destination descriptions and recommendations to your own site. In principle the same as what they've been providing to large providers like Yahoo and AOL, but "sliced and diced" to suit another market. They have succeeded admirably in balancing the need to protect their brand while making the most of their valuable content.

As for the other publishers, their web sites still look like hard-to-navigate-brochure-ware and no doubt they still do after-dinner speeches about the evils of parallel importing and Amazon.com.

Surfing while Cruising

2004-08-16T09:12:00.000+10:00

Joy and I are cruising the Queensland coast up to the Whitsunday Islands for seven weeks in our catamaran, Te Moana.
Anyone who knows me would wonder how I could do without internet access while on a 7 week cruise. The answer is of course that I can't. For the benefit of others who are similarly addicted to email and weblogs, here's what I use to stay in touch.

Normal ISP access via mobile phone is slow and expensive, there are better alternatives for both GSM and CDMA phones.

Modern GSM phones (I have a NOKIA 6100) have access to the General Packet Radio Service
(GPRS). It needs to be enabled by the phone company (in my case, Optus). GPRS is reasonable in speed (56k if you're lucky) and works anywhere within normal GSM phone range. You don't get charged by connection time, but by the amount downloaded. It is even possible to receive phone calls while it's connected. Optus charge between $3.30 and $5.50 per Mb downloaded (more details from Optus). I successfully posted messages to the Te Moana website from 5-10 Nautical Miles off the coast.

Joy has a CDMA phone with the theoretical advantage of wider coverage, particularly out to sea. Telstra provides a digital data service, CDMA 1x for its customers. It seems more expensive and hasn't been rolled out to all of the CDMA network. You can purchase a PC-card to connect directly to a laptop. I did not further investigate this as it seems expensive at $10 per Mb downloaded.

For me, the pleasant surprise of this trip has been that quite a few of the marinas in Queensland have wireless internet (802.11) installed. I'm writing this from the marina at the Mooloolaba Yacht Club, where I've had excellent, fast (not quite up to downloading large MP3 files, but eminently usable for everyday browsing) access. Even if you don't have a WIFI card in your laptop, an external adaptor is available at the marina office. I'm taking out a subscription which works across all marinas which are covered by Marinanet for $30 per month plus $0.11 per Mb. So while I'm at a marina with coverage, I can satisfy my 10Mb/day habit for a couple of dollars a day.

The marinas with coverage are:

• Mooloolaba Yacht Club
• Gladstone Port Authority
• Scarborough Marina
• Abel Point Marina
• Keppel Bay Marina
• Bundaberg Port Marina
• The Wharf - Mooloolaba

There are of course other alternatives which require special equipment (sat phones etc.) As a casual cruiser with a modest budget and only coastal ambitions, I did not explore those. Oh, and just in case you're wondering these are just personal opinions and I have no commercial interest in any of the above services. And of course, as always, Your Mileage May Vary.

Writing with Browsers

2004-08-02T17:25:00.000+10:00

Over the past few weeks Jonathon and I have had a conversation about the writing interface for Weblogs and a more general discussion about writing and collaboration on the Web. After Tim Bray, even Clay Shirkey has now weighed in with his frustrations. It will be fun to watch this unfold over the coming year. These are issues where we are simply not well served and no doubt some solutions will come forward. I'm not sure what the difference between writing and authoring is in this context, the lines are blurred. But it will be fun to keep an eye out for how things will develop, and I don't think the innovation will come from Microsoft or Macromedia.

Web Publishing

2004-07-23T07:15:00.000+10:00

For some years now, it has been possible to edit websites without client-side software, like I'm doing here with Blogger's nice new editor. At the big end of town, most Content Management Systems (CMS) include nifty editors like Ektron's.

But Macromedia keeps building products which come in a box and get installed on a desktop machine. They acquired an early CMS (Allaire Spectra), but ditched it soon after. Do they believe that server based tools will disappear if you ignore them?

2004-07-19T09:55:00.000+10:00

If I can't see you, you can't see how dirty I am...