google chrome - and the future of computing...

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: The cloud's Chrome lining - it's nothing less than the future if computing is at stake brothers and sisters, hang on tight to your seat cause it's going to be a wild ride... I like the chicken little movie quote where chicken little's dad says "son I got to warn you in in 3seconds I'm going to start screaming like a little girl!" - because of the catastrophe looming for a bit of context. No not really, it's not going to happen this way. It's not going to be a bomb dropping on us, but we're going to progressively move more and more things in the "cloud" (to be one of the cool kids with the cheezy jargon!). Too often on the web the early adopters we all follow us techies just slam the ball out of the park, when really something is going to take years to happen.

I see myself in the future less and less dependant on the piece of hardware I use to access information(my laptop), and more dependant on the services delivering that information(google apps). I think it is good, it makes me more productive, I don't have to have my laptop with me all the time, I can use other devices to accomplish what I need to do.

MS and Google are coming at the internet opportunity from opposite ends. Each trying to leverage their assets so they can lock us in. I sincerely wish MS would move faster, for example with mesh, I have been a windows users since the early days, and for all the whining and bitching it's still the PC platform I feel most comfortable in, and mesh is proving very useful to me.

Google also needs to move faster, because with their web centric view, they don't sit well with the scenario where you're not always online. I don't want to settle for a lesser experience as a consumer. Gmail is great, although not quite there from both a functionality and stability perspective. On the other hand MS outlook and vista combined are so darn slow, that I have no choice to accept the google compromise.

anyway amen to Google's project, it's only going to be good for me - as it will rush MS to offer something better. I just hope MS gets going before I'm gone!

TOP and OCRI for Innovation Hub

It looks like the innovation hub is making some progress. I'm very happy that Ottawa is standing up for its fair share of money regarding this kind of infrastructure. I was at the Mars center in Toronto, it's pretty impressive and vibrant place to visit and work. I'm also very happy that the site they are looking at in Ottawa is downtown. There is so much going on in the market now, this will help create even more tech activities in that area.

Innovation according to Bezos

I was reading this very interesting innovation issue of business week the other day. I'm a big fan of Bezos, because he is the example that bald people can be successful too! No seriously, every interview I read with him he is sharp, with a great dose of humour.

Anyway some of his thoughts on Innovation I like, here are a few takeaways for me:

• constraints like frugality drives innovation
• At first I thought this is another way of saying necessity is the mother of all invention. After a little bit more thinking, I think Bezos is saying my business is a low margins business and it doesn't mean I can't innovate, it means I have to be really smart about how I make money. You would think this would push a lot of process innovation, which they have done a fantastic job of at Amazon, they never ever share anything related to their infrastructure/logistic this is the secret sauce for him - but this is only one side of it.
• you have to be willing to be misunderstood to innovate
• This is cliché, and it doesn't have to be rocket science innovation where one starts to be mis-understood, it's all kinds, the little things. Make sure you check often, and check with the people who will want to pay for it, or are already paying if you can swing it!
• because it's new - companies get skilled focused, why should we do that, we don't have any skills in that area, a more stable strategy is what do my customers need? And inventory the gap in your skills from there.
• It's the CUSTOMER, get him/her on your Innovation bus if you want to go anywhere!!!

Palm come up with something new! ...Very Soon

When I read story of a battery review and custom battery door, my reaction is if this what we're down to talking about on the Palm platform and phones it ain't pretty. It a sign the company is taking too long to come up with something that will set blogs abuzz. Where is the new new thing, the stuff I know Palm for.

Paul Buchheit: The most important thing to understand about new products and startups

The more I read this guy the more I realize why gmail is such a great product. in the book founders at work he is identified as the inventor of gmail.

What is the humble approach to product design? Pay attention. Notice which things are working and which aren't. Experiment and iterate. Question your assumptions. Remember that you are wrong about a lot of things. Watch for the signals. Lose your technical and design snobbery. Whatever works, works

This quote alone could get our usability architect explain its meaning for hours. It says so many things, but I take away the following

• Design with your users, involve them
• Since there is a lot of trial and error - make sure I can do it effectively and cheaply, ie low fidelity prototypes
• fall in love with the idea of your user falling in love with your product, as opposed to be in love with the elegance or the technology I used.

Microsoft SharePoint is a rocket ship

From Networkworld this platform is becoming a juggernaut, 1B already. My perspective, we've done projects on SharePoint, and we've always ran into some API immaturity. Nevertheless I believe it's a strong platform and a powerful one, MS is making it better with each release. The market can't seem to have enough of it. The projects we have done and are doing are pushing the limit of sharepoint, because we're developing add-ons to facilitate the co-existence of our clients product with Sharepoint. This intersection of two product lines to create something that will leverage each products strength is never a walk in the park. What is required from the two products is not all there, and some serious architecture work must be done to implement the missing functionality on top of the existing API. SharePoint is in the fast lane, and we're right there, and more than ever this is really a fluid environment, one where our creativity is put to test daily.

high end software development and haute cuisine!

I'm just finished reading Kitchen Confidential. What strikes me is how much similarities there is in the perception of what is cool in cooking and what is cool in software engineering, or how similar things have to be so that an organization becomes predictable.

The perception in software development is - one you write a lot of code, and two you get to exercise your creativity all the time. Well most of the software projects out there are software where you do add-ons, new features, rarely do you start from scratch. Regarding creativity, in order to be predictable and measurable, creativity must give way to some form of processes and discipline.

This is exactly what I found while reading Kitchen Confidential - if you think you want to be a chef so that you can cook crazy things, stay home, in your own kitchen. There is absolutely no improvisation on the cooking line, it's all mechanical and very precise movements, so that at the end of the line the dish that comes out is always the same no matter the day or the time of the day.

The creativity is not in production, the creativity is when you build the menu, just like us when we design for the users. The reality sets in when you get to talk about the cost of the products on the menu, the same for us when we start to factor in the business goals.

So for predictable and successful innovation there is a process and time for everything, just like when it's lunch time it's no time to try out new things. You have to depend on talent, people, and processes to funnel the energy and creativity in the most effective way, to read more about it see some material and here we have put together.

The rise of Flash Apps!

Flash/Flex/Air are making some in-roads, and the desktop application as we know it is getting it on the chin! It's an inevitable collision. Through the adobe technologies people can leverage the connectivity and a rich user experience. The browser is still required by most of this new generation of applications, but speaking with adobe people the paradigm is shifting away from the browser and "urls".

Nothing new here right? After all we've been speaking about this since Java came about in 1995. What is different, well I've been playing with Blist a database application, like access or Filemaker, or Corel Paradox(which I worked on back in the days). There is another one called joggle a photo management package(I haven't had the chance to try this one out).

What's common about those two apps and many others- They are slick, powerful and with no compromises on the user experience. Java on the client never delivered on that. The Adobe trio does. This is a wake up call for us all working in the shrink wrap space, up and coming smarty pants entrepreneurs in a basement are coming out of nowhere with offerings that are right up there in terms of value and experience.

The downfall of the platform from what I can gather around the web is that when it's time to do computations it's not up to snuff, compared to java, which in turn is not up to snuff when compared to C++.

I think we need to look seriously in Adobe's offering because it's got some powerful tools. The platform has momentum, offers the ability to develop fast. Last characteristic, but not least, it's a great equalizer the barrier of entry to complex interactive and connected applications is lower than before. I was told once - Never underestimate the market appetite for tools that will make them look smart and talented ie make them shine!

Too often in software engineering we think of building products using tools for real men, or technologically elegant, and we forget that time to market, the ability to iterate rapidly, and provide a compelling user experience is what really matters. We have to open our minds to tools that from the first look could be perceived as unworthy, or difficult to integrate with the existing code base.

ottawa marketing campaign - 82000reasons.com

OCRI is launching a campaign to show off the benefits of doing business in Ottawa. It's about celebrating our own successes which I fully endorse, we need to do more of this. It's called 82000reasons. We can add our own videos just like we can add content, very web 2.0, let's go add your stuff, remember it's the era of the audience is in charge! You can find a very good Macadamian profile right here.

Ottawa is a great innovation place, we have great entrepreneurs, and to the last count we would be about 82000 people in the high tech business, that's a lot of good things going for the area. Let the world know about it! Find the press release of the launch here.

Microsoft and the OLPC project

It's a long time ago that bill gates was saying that people in the development world don't need a stripped down computer. They need real computers he said... Well now MS can't turn the tide away, if they want to have a shot at the developing world market they will need a stripped down version of Windows to work on this nice little laptop which will be sold to developing countries. The cost of not doing it is a new generation of geeks not knowing blip about windows, ouch!!! Remember as Friedman says in the world is flat - it's not because you're somewhere in San-Wherever-not-on-the-map that you don't have talent, and can't be using this computer talent of yours to make a living, I'm most probably paraphrasing, but you get what I mean.

With this laptop we will be putting computing power in the hands of thousands, and millions of kids who have never had the opportunity, or would never have the opportunity to see one, because it's designed with their needs and environment in mind, so that it's and efficient and useful device.

I participated in the GiveOnGetOne program I can't wait to get my hands on the machine. I will make sure to get our UX/Design team to review and give us a product assessment. It's been designed by Yves Behar, the new darling of design in the valley, and designer of the great bluetooth headset Jawbone, so it should be exciting, stay tuned!

Seek Flow!

I was at a conference back in November on Product Development and Innovation and how to measure your organization success. In one of the talks one of the speaker (Donald G. Reinertsen) on product development said "Seek Flow more than efficiencies".  Talk about rocking my belief system! Someone has to wake up early to tell me efficiencies are not important, or that to run a successful product development shop there are more important things than efficiencies.

Needless to say - It got my attention right away. The whole talk brought memories from classes at University in Operational Research Math, the classes I can honestly say I wasn't paying attention as much as I should have.

The concept he was articulating is simple enough and yet very powerful. By this quote he really means that the flow of an activity, or its pace through the system/processes (Managing the Design Factory) has to be looked into and too often is overlooked.

To give an example: Let's say I come back from the states and I need to go through immigration, and the custom agents , on avg they go through one person a minute. We could say this is a very efficient system.

The example above is unfortunately not the whole picture. What about the time I spend in the waiting queue? This is really where one can measure how things are going. Hence the flow of a unit of work(me) through the system.

The system/processes we design too often focus on the efficiency at the micro level, forgetting the whole picture. Moreover the processes we create too often create context switches, or queues. Every time one creates a queue, one creates delays and kills the flow, which in turns brings productivity down. One can really be efficient at processing a unit of work, still the whole thing be very inefficient .

How does that apply to me - Look for queues, they are an early indicator of things to come in the system. Minimize the size of the queues, and work at minimizing the number of queues in the processes. The longer the queues the longer your feedback loop, and feedback loop in a software manufacture is critical. What's the most obvious queue in Software Development? The bug list - obvious enough right! Reducing its size will improve the flow of the software development activities. He even mentioned a client of his where a developer when going for a new development task, has to pick a testing task if the amount of testing work in the bug queues exceeds 5days.

Innovation what is it?

I was at a conference on Product Innovation metrics last week. My goal was to go there an learn what my customers or prospective customers are wrestling with regarding innovation - how to measure there success and if they are on track. I heard plenty of good stuff it was well worth it, but as with all things we always kind of expect it's going to be one thing, and as you guessed it turns out to be many things that makes an organization successful at innovating. The take-aways for me:

• Innovation is about people: to use a basket ball analogy - think of your starting five - now ask yourself what are they doing right now - this will tell you right away if you're putting your money where your mouth is regarding innovation. The answer is simple they should be talking with customers,part of your advanced concept team. If they are stuck putting fires out - it won't be long that you will be out!
• Innovation doesn't all come from within - too often we resort back to the not invented here syndrome. Nimble organizations must be able to tap the ideas from outside. Think of it this way - do you believe your organization has all of the smartest people in the world on the payroll - The answer is no - so figure ways to tap the brain power outside your organization
• The only thing that counts regarding innovation is your payback. If you're not making measurable new $ because of your innovation - you aren't investing your money right.
• Innovation is not necessarily about inventing new things - the biggest pay backs out there are in New business models. Business Model really means assembling existing techniques, services, technologies in new and genuine ways. Too often we think Innovation as putting someone on the moon.
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