December 2007 – Page 2

14/100 Presentation Skills for a New Conversation

Okay. The 10/20/30 Rule – Itâ€™s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. The Lessig Method – the functional opposite of the 10/20/30 rule and best illustrated by the man himself (scroll to the bottom for video). In both … Continue reading “14/100 Presentation Skills for a New Conversation”

Okay.

The 10/20/30 Rule – Itâ€™s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.

The Lessig Method – the functional opposite of the 10/20/30 rule and best illustrated by the man himself (scroll to the bottom for video).

In both cases the focus of the presentation is to capture attention though they use drastically different approaches. Pick one of them.

Essentially you want to avoid this:

Worst Powerpoint Slide Ever

From Seth Godin’s Blog. Used without permission

I think it’s tragic that I’ve seen powerpoint slides in $BIG_CORP that may have beaten this one to the title of “Worst Powerpoint Slide Ever”.

[Chris Brogan’s 100 topics]

Why most Enterprise software sucks

Joel writes about in house software: Thatâ€™s the second reason these jobs suck: as soon as your program gets good enough, you have to stop working on it. Once the core functionality is there, the main problem is solved, there is absolutely no return-on-investment, no business reason to make the software any better. So all … Continue reading “Why most Enterprise software sucks”

Joel writes about in house software:

Thatâ€™s the second reason these jobs suck: as soon as your program gets good enough, you have to stop working on it. Once the core functionality is there, the main problem is solved, there is absolutely no return-on-investment, no business reason to make the software any better. So all of these in house programs look like a dogâ€™s breakfast: because itâ€™s just not worth a penny to make them look nice.

which is essentially why most Enterprise software sucks.

The Third Party Application Market on Phones and PDAs

On my Newton, I downloaded maybe 20 apps. I bought two over the wire. I even bought one in a retail package. On my Palm vX, I bought two apps. A Paris City Guide and a VT100 Terminal app. On my other phones and devices between then and now I’ve downloaded two apps. One was … Continue reading “The Third Party Application Market on Phones and PDAs”

On my Newton, I downloaded maybe 20 apps. I bought two over the wire. I even bought one in a retail package.

On my Palm vX, I bought two apps. A Paris City Guide and a VT100 Terminal app.

On my other phones and devices between then and now I’ve downloaded two apps. One was a Telnet/SSH client for my SonyEricsson K800i which was so bad that I never used it and certainly never bought it.

The other was yesterday when I bought and downloaded Sonic the Hedgehog for my 5G iPod (the one I have donated to the kids, secure in a iFrogz Tadpole wrap).

I’m beginning to think that, based on my experience, the third party application market on Phones and PDAs might be a bit of a sham. I’ve spent hundreds of pounds on software for my Mac so I’m not averse to spending a bit of cash when something catches my eye.

The logic remains. I’ve only bought software for 3 devices. My Newton, my Palm vX and my iPod. Not one purchase for any of my phones in the past.

I think this is what will make the big difference in the PDA market. I think we’ll see an explosion of sales for the iPhone in third party applications even with the premium Apple will demand for signing.

That Tsunami on the Horizon: it’s the iPhone…

RoughlyDrafted visits the news that the iPhone is already beating the stuffing out of competitors in mobile phone operating system usage. With iPhone demonstrating considerably better statistics in terms of market share, it must be absolutely galling to some: The most recent market share numbers are particularly embarrassing for Microsoft, especially after CEO Steve Ballmer … Continue reading “That Tsunami on the Horizon: it’s the iPhone…”

RoughlyDrafted visits the news that the iPhone is already beating the stuffing out of competitors in mobile phone operating system usage.

With iPhone demonstrating considerably better statistics in terms of market share, it must be absolutely galling to some:

The most recent market share numbers are particularly embarrassing for Microsoft, especially after CEO Steve Ballmer announced in January that Apple wouldnâ€™t capture more than two to three percent of the market and described his own Windows Mobile platform as having or soon acquiring 60 to 80% of the smartphone market.

Ever seen Minority Report? In the film, Tom Cruise plays a cop who, through the assistance of precognitive sun-loungers, can solve murders before they happen. The precogs are pale, bald and skinny. What we missed in the film was they had a not-quite-so-good brother called Steve. He was bald, pale and kinda avocado-shaped. His predictions were pretty much 100% wrong so they kept him in a different room where he could play with his own poo.

Windows Mobile isn’t going anywhere soon, up or down in marketshare but it’s another market outside Windows for x86 markets where Microsoft is being beaten senseless with a large rubber anatomical facsimile. They’re losing money hand over fist in the games consoles. By 2005 they’d lost over $4 BILLION. They’re also going to have to pay out another BILLION or so replacing XBox 360 consoles. And they’re congratulating themselves that in Sept 2007 they got better sales figures than the Wii. Yup, 5% better despite the release of HALO 3. Brilliant, lads. You’ve chewed through more than 5 billion dollars and you’ve just edged past the Wii…for one month. I can’t wait to see your next trick.

It should also be an embarrassment for Benjamin Gray of Forrester Research, who just released another report insisting that IT departments shun the iPhone and limit their support to platforms that are dead, dying, or obscure in North America, such as the Palm OS, Linux, and Symbian.

Quite. But I’ve covered the Forrester report previously.

The rest of the article is very well written so go read.

Another gem regards why Apple didn’t run with Symbian.

It turns out that just like the original Mac System, Symbian is hamstrung by the compromises they took on in order to get decent performance on old hardware. Now, as the hardware has matured, the system remains archaic and though Symbian claims a large market share, it’s firmly divided into three separate binary-incompatible camps, a Japanese version, a version from Nokia and a third from Sony-Ericsson. Despite the investment they have, they are only licensees of the software and therefore it’s unlikely there’s going to be an overhaul of the system to bring it up to date.

A Symbian developer explains, â€œNokia is more or less stuck with Symbian since it doesn’t have the competence nor the time to make a new OS from the ground up. Its only alternative, in practice, is to go Linux, which it is of course experimenting with, but it’s still not an easy path to go.

This sort of explains where Nokia are going with the Nokia 770/N800/N810 platform. Sure, it doesn’t include mobile phone features but it’s going to give them a solid developer base when they get round to releasing later hardware especially since they have promised a WiMAX version sometime in 2008. Preparing for the VoIP onslaught – oh you better believe it?

iPhone’s OSX is just starting out, less than 6 months in the public domain and it’s making big waves. There may be some ups and downs in the near future but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was followed by an Apple TV SDK sometime later.

As Guy said earlier:

“Symbian, Palm and Windows Mobile can have third party development, so they are better”

David’s retort was

“iPhone is beating the stuffing out of them without an SDK. What do you reckon will happen in February when it’s available?”

And I went to all that effort too…

I downloaded the cool CTU ringtone for iPhone inspired by “24” and eagerly loaded it onto my iPhone. Of course….no-one rang me all day so I didn’t get to quickly take the call, stand up in the middle of the training course and say “National Emergency, I gotta take this!” What is that all about? … Continue reading “And I went to all that effort too…”

I downloaded the cool CTU ringtone for iPhone inspired by “24” and eagerly loaded it onto my iPhone.

Of course….no-one rang me all day so I didn’t get to quickly take the call, stand up in the middle of the training course and say “National Emergency, I gotta take this!” What is that all about?

Mood: Sad 🙁

This echoes how I feel about programming

It’s a bit rude so if you’re easily shocked, go here instead. Related posts: iPhone. 4. Computer Programming for Everybody Can you feel it? I’m so full of interesting information, I feel like the latest edition of something or other.

It’s a bit rude so if you’re easily shocked, go here instead.

Actually, this is quite annoying

Intuit recently issued an update for QuickBooks which, due to some fuckedupness deletes the entire desktop folder. That’s pretty serious shit right there. RixStep, the whiner of the week, was caught by this bug but blames Apple. I’m not sure how “unsafe” code written by Intuit really qualifies as being Apple’s fault considering that the … Continue reading “Actually, this is quite annoying”

Intuit recently issued an update for QuickBooks which, due to some fuckedupness deletes the entire desktop folder. That’s pretty serious shit right there.

RixStep, the whiner of the week, was caught by this bug but blames Apple. I’m not sure how “unsafe” code written by Intuit really qualifies as being Apple’s fault considering that the Intuit developers must, at some point, have tested their code on a Mac OS X system. Sure – there are bound to be bugs in Mac OS X – every system has them – but this is what testing is for. We can all justify the release of unsafe code but deleting the entire desktop folder? Not acceptable. I’ve seen this kind of problem before, in the olden days when Bungie was an independent company they released Myth 2 which had the possibility of wiping out large amounts of your Windows install. Eep. Bungie released a fix pronto and said sorry.

Rixstep, however, points the finger at Apple and not at Intuit. Oddly.

His reasons:

Steve Jobs came back to Cupertino triumphant. Not only did he get to finally run his own company but he came with the world’s most fantastic system in his suitcase. A system the Grade A Idiots already ensconced in Cupertino have done their best to destroy.

Did anyone else miss the NeXT takeover of Apple in 1997?

The greybeards at Apple responsible for the bugs that he complains about are actually NeXT greybeards. It’s nothing to do with KoolAid. It’s nothing to do with Apple’s head honchos and their file system APIs. It’s absolutely 100% to do with the “world’s most fantastic system”. Where do people get this kind of hyperbole? That a CEO waltzes in with an entire management team and a new operatiing system in return for $400 million. And it’s still the fault of the OLD guys at Apple when there’s a bug and a problem? Catch a grip. Apple is NeXT. The same fusty old NeXTies who built the world’s most fantastic system are the same fusty old buggers making Mac OS X. Blaming it on a nebulous “Apple” is just fairy tales designed to help you sleep at night. You seriously think there are areas of Mac OS X that Jobs doesn’t make his presence felt at? Do yu think for a second that once this bug affected Mac users that there wasn’t a high level meeting to find someone to go and explain how it was Intuit’s fault? At risk of certain death from their Steve Vader leader?

The solution is, of course, is that if you don’t like it go back to using OpenStep.

Unless of course it wasn’t actually the world’s most fantastic system….to be honest, the post reads like the inane ranting of a stalker.

The Rixstep blog spends most of it’s time complaining about Mac OS X. But mostly it’s a damn good read. It would be nice to see a post about why, if Mac OS X is so broken, Rixstep’s writers continue to use it.

Catering for the Power User

Rxstep takes issue with lackingareas of Mac OS X. The lack of an Advanced button and the lack of supported GUI theming. OS X has no advanced button. There’s no way for professionals – for developers and admins – to get beyond the confines of the tilded user home area and see what’s really going … Continue reading “Catering for the Power User”

Rxstep takes issue with lackingareas of Mac OS X. The lack of an Advanced button and the lack of supported GUI theming.

OS X has no advanced button. There’s no way for professionals – for developers and admins – to get beyond the confines of the tilded user home area and see what’s really going on in the file system or the network using tools available from Apple.

Professionals assigned OS X have no recourse except to take to the command line – and this with a company renowned (infamous) for how it’s eschewed the command line all these years.

The problem here is the definition of “Advanced”. Are we talking about the mythical pwer user? Mac Professionals? Mac OS X SysAdmins? Seasoned UNIX Hackers? Fusty old NeXTStep types? How do you even begin to cater for all of these groups?

You do what Apple did. You create an interface that is simple, subtle and shallow for the 80% of users and for the remaining 20% you expose the command line and create kick ass developer tools. My frustration with Windows is that the GUI tools are simply stupid with windows that cannot be resized in table view dialogs and theres no obvious way to expose that information in the command line (like I’m going to relearn DOS in 2007!) My frustration with Linux is that it’s engineered piecemeal and feels disconnected – one minute I’m safe in GUI-land and the next minute I’m in advanced GUI designed by the developer who didn’t think to ask anyone if it looked like ass.

It’s obvious OS X users want the opportunity to customise the look and feel of their systems; not being permitted to do so ‘legally’ means they will resort to ‘illegal’ approaches. And history shows they’ll use these illegal approaches if that’s all that’s available.

It’s obvious to me, as someone who meets a lot of Mac users and Mac OS X installs, that theming is a 20% solution. The tools are there for people who want them. And the providers of these tools provide the warranty (i.e. nothing).

It’s frustrating enough trying to explain to someone who’s 70% blind how to do this or click that when the dock can be moved to three sides of the screen. If they could move the top menu as well it would be an absolute nightmare.

It’s not that I disagree with the sentiment. I just think there’s bigger fish to fry than “Advanced” buttons and themes. They need to work on the bugs, they need to fix security holes. Maybe theming will become important in 2037?

Apple is trying to be all things to all people. Whereas Linux GUI interfaces attempt to cater to small subsections of the population with the unhelpful suggestion that you can change the Window Manager to suit. That’s not a solution for anyone other than the 0.2% of the population which can be bothered. Similarly the Windows interface is designed for Windows users and the absolute horlicks they made with the almost simultaneous release of Office 2007 and Vista and the completely different UI paradigms for both. Ribbons? What’s that you say?

Apple’s approach is not going to please everyone but that’s why they ship the extra tools. It’s why the BSD subsystem is no longer optional. Previous to Mac OS X 10.0 shipping there was debate about whether Apple would ship the system with Terminal.app or whetherit would be a developer-only option. Apple is walking the fine line betwene providing a UI that my mum can use and providing a UI for the Alpha Geeks.

13/100 The Best Parts of Marketing

marketing: the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling. To be honest, advertising is good fun. Putting an ad together and then seeing it in the flesh is fun. But other than that, the only part of … Continue reading “13/100 The Best Parts of Marketing”

marketing: the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling.

To be honest, advertising is good fun. Putting an ad together and then seeing it in the flesh is fun.

But other than that, the only part of marketing I really enjoy is the result. Now others may disagree and I’ve been known to talk animatedly about this product or that product which means in a very real sense I do a lot of marketing.

We discussed a few days ago on our company Jabber server that the RDF (Reality Distortion Field) is the core asset of marketing. If you can convince someone, even for just five minutes, to rethink their position and reconsider their preconceptions, then you’ve just hit the sweet spot of marketing.

Making someone believe.

[Chris Brogan’s 100 topics]

ERP! Pardon me!

Sig writes about Business Process Software. This discussion came out of an alleged “Firestorm” about how enterprise software is “unsexy”. It’s not just about how business process software isn’t glamourous because the subjects in enterprise software only excite a small subsection of people (I’m sure there’s a niche for Business Process geeks). It’s about how … Continue reading “ERP! Pardon me!”

Cases in point:

User Interface – user interface doesn’t have to look bad though sometimes you’d think it was a pre-requisite. Placement of items, text settings too small in any browser, an insistence on using modal pop-ups and, in general, anything designed solely with Win/IE5 in mind. A lot of people think that improved UI is just like adding a bit of AJAX eye candy here and there. But just like in anything, and as I have re-iterated time and time again to UI-challenged Linux advocates “eye candy that has no actual function is just eye candy.” every time they say that either Mac OS X has too much eye candy or that Linux can have just as much eye candy. They don’t get it now, they won’t get it tomorrow.
UI Testing – would it be too much to expect that they test the user interface on someone who didn’t build it? Things I like in Web interfaces for example – make sure the tab key is set right so you can tab sequentially to the fields you need to use. A certain application I have to work with daily fails in this simple requirement miserably requiring a mix of mousing and keyboard in order to complete all of the fields – including those which must be completed before the task can be completed. Are your widgets and UI conventions set up with a beginner in mind? Would someone new to the application know what they are doing?
Response time – having two progress bars seems pointless considering there’s only built into the browser. But when one progress bar completes and then the other one starts, you’re left with a feeling of frustration and doubly so when the task fails with some obscure SQL Server error and a developer-written excuse which basically says “Blame Microsoft”. Classy stuff. If your software is going to crap out, try and make it crap out near the start so users don’t get forty minutes into a report preparation using your arcane reports interface and then it fails (and no, you can’t hit back). This is one of the areas of Mac OS X that frustrates so much. People see the spinning pizza of death and assume the machine is locked up because it’s processing. It’s as much a fault with behaviour as with the system that most people don’t realise they can click to another app and continue working. The issue might be that humans are single-tasking, computers multi-task.

According to the article, Enterprise software falls in one of two categories

The Easily Repeatable Process (ERP)

Processes that handles resources, from human (hiring, firing, payroll and more) to parts and products through supply chains, distribution and production. The IT systems go under catchy names like ERP, SCM, PLM, SRM, CRM and the biggest players are as we know SAP and Oracle plus a long roster of smaller firms.
The Barely Repeatable Process (BRP)

anything that involves people in non-rigid flows through education, health, support, government, consulting or the daily unplanned issues that happens in every organisation. The activities that employees spend most of their time on every day. Processes that often starts with an e-mail or a call. A process volume, measured by time and resource spent at organisations, probably larger than for the Easily Repeatable Processes.

My day job consists of the BRP stuff. It’s mostly user requests, a small amount of which could be relegated to a bland FAQ or knowledgebase – though in terms of absolute productivity I believe a dedicated person is better at handling this than trying to rely on a rudimentary expert system or worse, a wiki.

I am, however, a big fan of automation. Anything to remove the “tedious” from the day is a good thing. I don’t want to be called about an alert regarding log files on some obscure server, I want the alert to kick off a housekeeping process. I understand there’s an element of trust in there but that has to be balanced with resource planning, you have to balance the cost of log file space with the costs of not having the logs available when you really need them.