Destiny

Created while watching Jeopardy.

Wake-up Call

My Android phone had to beg and plead
To be upgraded to Lollipop.
This upgrade really has nothing I need
But it did make my Clock app just stop.

Tech entrepreneurs become billionaires
Selling products at which we all curse.
They go on making money ‘cause nobody dares
Point out these things could scarcely be worse.

Everyone hates Tim Cook and Bill Gates
Yet we keep buying stuff from these thugs,
In spite of the need for constant updates
Just to fix the last update’s bugs.

We care more about toasters than about toast,
Buying products that flew or just flopped.
I’d issue a wake up call right in this post,
But unfortunately, Clock app has stopped.

Viral Topics of the Week

The Vision Thing

There are basically three ways that technology companies develop and maintain their “vision” of the future:

1. Let engineering drive.
   
2. Use marketing/product management to gather requirements, feedback, etc.
   
3. Have an all-knowing dictator.

The first approach tends to produce incremental improvements of the same basic products. The engineers all know how to improve what they’re already building, but not necessarily how to completely blow it away. Many such companies tend to engineer themselves into oblivion. Anybody remember DEC?

The information gathering approach is probably the most widely espoused (if not necessarily used). Theoretically, this leads to building what customers want, but the results tend to be very conservative. Customers don’t necessarily know what they want, and modest proposals achieve consensus much more easily than radical new ideas. Some companies start out being very innovative, and then settle into this how-can-we-help-you model. I suspect Google, the king of Web analytics, fits this category.

The all-knowing dictator model, at least as exemplified by Apple, is obviously very successful … if you have such a person. Pretty tough to pull off otherwise.

There’s actually another model: copy other successful companies. Microsoft has managed this, occasionally adding a bit of innovation, throughout its history. Windows came from Xerox (via Apple). C# was Java. Windows Phone was Windows Mobile was … whatever else they’ve called it … back to the original smart phones they copied from. XBOX was Nintendo or Sony or whoever’s gaming system.

Maybe there's yet another model to consider: crowd-sourcing. Just give everybody the tools to make their own cool things, and see what emerges. The mobile app industry may ... just may ... be going in that direction.

No Place Like Home

From the entire lexicon of nerd words, I think the most misused, overused and abused must be home.  Sure it conjures up images of comfort and security and good cooking, but as Thomas Wolfe observed, "you can't go home again."

In the early years, home meant a user's personal folder ... the place where his or her documents, settings files, etc. were stored.  It was denoted $HOME, or simply ~/.  Of course, saying there's no place like ~/ lacks romance.

I think it was in the early 1980's that keyboards began to sport a home key.  That was when computers got personal, and having such a key made them seem more folksy and down-to-earth.  Of course, the home key didn't actually take you home.  Mostly, it just scrolled to the top of whatever document you were working on.

In the early 1990's, the Web came along, and people started talking about home pages.  The home page was the starting point of a Web site, the page you'd see first, and which could take you to the other pages on the site.  So browsing someone's Web site was like visiting their home.  Bring gifts.

Meanwhile, Microsoft began to distinguish "Home" and "Professional" editions of its software.  They figured "Home" users might naïvely shoot themselves in the foot, whereas "Pro" users would do so knowingly.

More recently, Microsoft decided that the familiar Office user interface, the one that garnered the hearts and minds of millions, helping make Microsoft the juggernaut it became, the interface that made Office nearly ubiquitous on administrators' desktops, and forced the competition to imitate respectfully ... yes, that interface should be scrapped.  They replaced it with a set of ribbons, activated by tabs at the top of the window.  The advantage to ribbons is that all the clear, unambiguous text that used to be in menus was replaced by pretty little pictures with one or two word titles.  And, of course, one of the tabs is labelled "HOME."  In Word, this brings up a ribbon of the more common typography options.  Somehow, seeing "Calibri (Body)" does not conjure thoughts of home for me.

Of course, I'm waiting for the control that whisks me back to the farm in Kansas, with Auntie Em by my bedside.  Then it will all seem a horrible dream.

Microbe?

I was going to write about the secret of happiness, but the recent revelations about a possible merger between Microsoft and Adobe come first.

The New York Times reported on a secret meeting between the CEOs of Microsoft and Adobe to discuss how to contain Apple’s growing dominance in mobile devices. Reportedly, a merger between the two giants was one of the options considered.

Now the really interesting thing about this is that neither Microsoft nor Adobe has any credible mobile device. This would be like Häagen-Dazs and Fruit-of-the-Loom teaming up to take on Toyota.  Apart from Java Chip underwear, what have they got?  Sure, Microsoft has been trying to upset Adobe’s Flash supremacy with Silverlight, but that’s just Microsoft being Microsoft. Actually, Adobe attempted to do the same thing to Macromedia before they relented and took the “If you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em” route.

Microsoft has made several unsuccessful forays into the mobile device operating system game, the latest one being on the market for less time than the product announcement took. It seems that having smart phones run the same OS as desktop computers may not be as appealing as having smart phones that are useful.

As for Adobe, their presence in the mobile market is currently limited to having a few apps that run on various iThings. Adobe has re-invented itself more times than … well, than Apple. First they were the printer software company. Then they were the graphic arts and photo-retouching software company. Then they were the other document company (Xerox being the document company.) Then they were the rich internet applications company. Now they’re the rich internet applications and other documents company.

Wouldn’t Microsoft be better off marrying Google? At least Google has Android, the principal rival to Apple’s mobile software. Of course, a Microsoft/Google merger would be like a love affair between Glenn Beck and Nancy Pelosi.

And if Adobe’s going to sell out to some other giant, maybe they should consider Google. At least they’re both in the Internet applications arena. And after all, what are mobile devices but Internet browsers? Even phone calls these days are done over the Internet.

Anyway, what are they going to call this Microsoft Adobe hybrid? Microbe?

About that secret of happiness thing? Relax.