Archives for September 2009

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Oh, No – Yet Another Windows Release?

Two years ago I wrote: Windows Seven in 2010. Does Anyone Still Care?

I simply don’t get it: Vista is barely out, nobody seems to like it, CIO’s refuse to upgrade, analyst firms tell them to wait, individual users who tried it switch back to XP, others time their new PC purchase so they can still get an XP machine – generally speaking Vista was as poorly received as the ill-fated Windows ME.

Apple is gaining market share, the major computer manufacturers are offering Linux PC’s, the Web OS concept is getting popular, applications are already on the Web – can anyone clearly see the shape of personal computing in 2012? (Yes, I know MS plans for 2010, I’m just adding the customary delay.) Will it still matter what OS we use to get on the Internet? How can Microsoft be so out of touch?

I was right and I was wrong.  Right in the assessment, but not foreseeing that Vista would turn out to be such a disaster, that Microsoft would be better off releasing its final version under a new name:

Make no mistake, the accelerated move to Windows 7 is a marketing decision, not a technical one. Vista became such a disaster that Microsoft finally realized no amount of marketing can save it: it was better the abandon the shipwreck and start with a clean slate, a “new” Windows product.

And so it happened, and millions of Vista victims end up paying the ransom to get out of the trap and get the version of the OS that actually works: Windows 7.  Which means by late 2009, but mostly 2010 we’ll be where we were supposed to be in 2007.   But now, as people count down the days till they can escape Vista and upgrade to Windows 7, Mary-Jo Foley who is always amongst the first to scoop out Microsoft’s plans is already talking about Windows 8, as early as 2011 or 2012.

It’s almost like Microsoft got infiltrated by secret agents who plot to alienate most of their customers.  Because it’s hard to imagine why on Earth we would need yet-another operating system.  Windows is not an application, it’s a friggin’ operating system whose job is to get us into applications and get out of the way. Assuming Win7 finally works, MS should leave us alone licking our Vista-inflicted wounds, instead of dumping another OS on us.  Have they not learned from the Vista fiasco?  Users don’t want to upgrade their OS every two years, they just want to use their computers and be left alone.  How can Microsoft be so out of touch?

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

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The Vista Movie

OK, I admit.  The title over-promises, the post under-delivers.  This won’t be an exciting thriller. In fact it’s outright boring.  Like watching paint dry.  But that’s exactly the point, Vista took a good minute to delete a single file ( I got bored after 18 seconds and stopped recording).

Must be a giant file…. NOT.  It’s not 1.1GB, not 1.1MB, it is 1.1KB.

Of course some would say it’s just a perception… and they are probably right.  Ransom paid, and I’m sure by the end of the year this whole 3-year nightmare with Vista will appear just that… a nightmare.  Never happened.

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

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Amazing Sand Drawing Art

From the Youtube description:

Kseniya Simonova is a Ukrainian artist who just won Ukraine’s version of “America’s Got Talent.” She uses a giant light box, dramatic music, imagination and “sand painting” skills to interpret Germany’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine during WWII.

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I’m Productized Again – This Time By Dell

dellz First there was Nokia, with the secretive, luxury, yet-to-be-released Nokia Erdos.  Back then I said:

Come think of it… I think I Open Source my name.  Apple, Dell, Sony, BMW, Mercedes..etc, I’m looking forward to your Erdos models.  Just don’t forget to send a courtesy unit.

Dell listened: they are coming out with the Latitude Z luxury notebook, the first notebook to charge wirelessly.  Whose next?   BMW?  Mercedes?

I’ll be happy to add these brands to My Z-life.  Just remember to send a courtesy product 🙂

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Best Intention Derailed: Using Photos Out of Context Amounts to Abuse

Ed Yourdon’s tweet drew my attention to a rather disturbing article: Children Are Sold for Sex in America’s Capitol:

Guest blogger Melissa Snow of Shared Hope International discusses their new public awareness campaign to address child trafficking in street prostitution in Washington, DC.  Child sex trafficking happens all over our nation’s capitol, sometimes only steps from the White House and blocks from a symbol of the end of slavery — the Lincoln Memorial

It is a shocking article, and if indeed is true, then raising awareness is the right thing to do.  But the author stepped over the line with the photo she is using for illustration:

Photo by Ed Yourdon via Flickr

There is nothing wrong in using Flickr images with a Creative Commons licence, and the owner of the photo, Ed Yourdon is properly accredited.

But this is not just an image.  It’s a real girl, a living person with a face and name, who is quite recognizable by her family, friends, adversaries.  Using her in this article places her in the wrong context, implying that she is an (unwilling) child prostitute.   The author has no information about her, and Ed, who took the picture makes it clear he thinks it is the wrong context in a comment to the article.

The sad irony of the matter is that the author is clearly passionate about fighting childrens’ abuse – yet using this image in this context is a case of abuse in itself.

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ToonDooSpaces: Comics-based Social Network for School Kids

Zoho is mostly known for their Web-based productivity and business software, but sometimes they venture into … hmm… unproductivity.   In the past year or so close to a million cartoons were created @ ToonDoo, and that number grows by 3-4 thousand every day.  (Hey, even I contributed onesmile_wink)

Today they have announced  ToonDooSpaces, private comics-based collaborative space for classrooms, be it school or kindergarten level.  (Remember when FaceBook – actually TheFacebook at the time – was strictly limit to the confines of actual colleges?)   What can you do @ ToonDooSpaces?  Here’s how the kids at one of the pilot schools explain:

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Even before this launch, ToonDoo has been used at hundreds of schools including Auburn High School, US, Totino-Grace High School, US, Leawood Middle School, US, Korea International School, Korea, Mount Scopus Memorial College, Australia, Lake Superior College, US and many others -  apparently all the way to college level.  That said I think ToonDooSpaces will be most favored by the younger ones.  Here’s a detailed review by Kevin Hodgson who has been using ToonDooSpaces in his class for months:

All spring, my sixth graders (11 and 12 year olds) were fully engaged in the use of our ToonDoo Spaces site. They would walk in the door and immediately ask: Are we going to make comics today, Mr. H? And they give a little shout of “Yeah!” with a fist pump when I say “yes” (after we do whatever other work we have planned).

Here’s an interactive video showing off more of ToonDoo’s features:

 

But hey, I’m writing a business / technology blog, so let’s get serious here. smile_wink   I often talk about Freemium (more here), and I think this is a perfect showcase.

toondoomatrix

Remember, Freemium takes patience – in this case ToonDoo has been available for over a year, attracting hundreds of thousands of users before the launch of the “premium” version, Spaces.

And here’s something else: I guess the inner child must have died in me a long time ago, how else do I have the most fun on the Pricing Page?  The fact is, we often talk about the need for transparency, and how SaaS should be easy not only to learn, use, but to buy, which includes price information, without having to endure lousy sales calls.  Well, it doesn’t get any easier:

 

Move the cursor along the users / months axis, click anywhere, and voila! – there’s your price quote.   SaaS companies, take notice: you can get rid of the kiddie appearance, but should offer a pricing tool this easy.

Now I am off to create a cartoon(doo). smile_shades

(Disclaimer:  I am Editor of CloudAve, a Zoho-sponsored group blog.)

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MinTuit: What’s Next After the Intuit / Mint Deal

mintuit TechCrunch50 could not have asked for a better start:  they get to announce that personal finance startup Mint winner of the $50K grand prize @ TC50 two years ago just got acquired for $170M.

Great exit for a startup – not so sure about concerned users.   But the big question today is why it made sense for Intuit and what the future holds for Mint and its users.  The consensus is that first of all this has been a defensive move.  Mint started to bite into the Intuit / Quicken pie, and Intuit just had to stop it.

There is some irony in this deal: the playbook had been written by Microsoft, against Intuit.

Continue reading

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I’ve Got Productized by Nokia

It’s not every day one sees his family name as headline on TechMeme.  Well, if that name is Scoble or Arrington, sure, but for the rest of us it’s a red-letter-day…

Well, it just happened to me, courtesy of Nokia, and the shiny new Nokia Erdos luxury phone.  Last I checked a few years ago, they could not keep up with demand for the $5K Vertu phones in platinum, gold and diamond casings.  The Nokia Erdos will only have brushed aluminum casing, but it’s stuffed with hi-tech, like the OLED display, a rising keyboard, 5 megapixel auto-focus camera with Carl Zeiss optics, etc.  Here’s a promo video:

(Why is this, and all other copies on Youtube so blurry?)

Anyway, back to Nokia.  I’m a little pi***ed that they did not ask me … but in the end, it’s OK.  I don’t get productized every day, after all.   Just remember to send me a test unit, Nokia!

Come think of it… I think I Open Source my name.  Apple, Dell, Sony, BMW, Mercedes..etc, I’m looking forward to your Erdos models.  Just don’t forget to send a courtesy unit.

Related posts:

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)

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Vista Update Drives PC Into Perpetual Reboot Cycle

My Vista-based laptop gave me the Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown screen: this is where you have the options to start Windows normally or select one of several “safe” driver- and service-less modes to boot.  I picked normal, the system booted .. end of story.

Except… I walked away for a little while, and 15 or so minutes later when I came back, the computer was in the same stage.  So I repeated the process… and guess what:

Coming back a little later again, I saw the computer at the ugly reboot screen again.  What was going on?  This is a few weeks old laptop with hardly anything installed on it, is it already dying?

I got lucky: for the first time in my life, Vista’s Problem Reports and Solutions actually found the answer:

After you apply update 973879 on a computer that is running an x64-based version of Windows Vista or of Windows Server 2008, you may receive a "Stop 0x0000007e" or "Stop 0x00000050" error message within 10 minutes after system startup.

Well, not exactly, I dug into what these errors were, and my computer behaved rather differently, basically playing a game of perpetual reboot.  Still, I figured I would go ahead and uninstall this update – I even got lucky, I could simply remove it without having to resort to the more torturous Method 3, that involves a Windows Preinstallation Environment.  (Yuck… I don’t like the sound of it.).

Voila!  My PC is in working condition again… and I just hope in won’t become total crap in the two months left before it gets rescued by Windows 7.

 

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)

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Salesforce.com: Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?

Is Salesforce.com’s glass for SMBs half full (of lemonade)  or half empty?  I borrowed the lemonade metaphor from Venturebeat’s post announcing Salesforce.com’s new Contact Manager offering for (very) small businesses.

On second thought we should use orange juice as a metaphor – as in disappearing orange juice, by Tropicana which offers less juice in a redesigned pitcher for the same price, and even tries to sell it as a benefit to consumerssmile_angry

Salesforce.com “pulled a Tropicana” with the announcement of their $9 Contact Management edition, and the funny thing is, nobody seems to have noticed it. No, the media duly buys what Salesforce.com PR sells, welcoming the new edition as “giving something back to the little guy” , “breaking through a price barrier”, “making it affordable for SMBs to get in the Cloud”.

Nobody bothered to do some fact-checking, which would have unveiled that in the new Edition is in fact offering less for the same price, a’la Tropicana.  Salesforce.com has pulled off a price increase and it went largely unnoticed.

sforce1Prior to this announcement the lowest-priced edition of Salesforce CRM, the Group Edition was priced at $9 per user per month, and it is now increased to $35.   The few media outlets that noticed this refer to it as temporary promotion for August, that has now expired.   Let’s see just how temporary it was: the “promo” started not in August but in June, and not in 2009, but 2008.

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This promotion was supposed to expire in July of last year, but it did not – and I correctly predicted it would transition into a permanent price-cut, without much fanfare.  Indeed the $9 pricing lasted over a year.  And just for the record, prior to dropping the price to $9, CRM Group Edition had cost $20 – so the $35 new price is definitely not just ending a promotion, it’s a price hike of several notches.

But forget history, let’s look at value: having a Contact Manager functionality is certainly useful, although I suspect Google Apps (which is integrated with this Salesforce.com offering) will also offer enhanced Contacts functions.   Still, nice – for 2 users only, as that’s the maximum number  allowed for this edition.  Talk about 2-person companies, let’s remember that Salesforce.com used to offer a free single-user Personal Edition CRM.  I’ve just checked my dormant account, it’s still working – but the offering is no longer available for new users.

So let’s see: from free CRM for one user, later $9 CRM up to five users, we’ve gone to $9 Contact Manager for two users.  Quite an improvement.smile_sad

Now if you have 3 users, the lowest entry point to Salesforce.com is now Group Edition at $35 per person = $105 vs. the previous price of $27.   And if you have 6 users, you no longer qualify for Group Edition, your entry point now is Professional Edition at $65 per user.

Oh, well.  Math lesson over, it’s a nice sunny morning, time for my glass of OJ ( not half full, not half empty – just full.smile_tongue)

(Disclosure: I’m Editor of CloudAve, a group blog sponsored by Zoho.  This article is cross-posted there.)