the commoditisation of browsers

One thing you often see in business is a new company produces a product, which is great, but because its the first, its not the best thing since sliced bread.

A bit of time passes, then… another company brings out a competing product, with some better features. The first company responds and the arms race begins!

After a while, all the consumers have their needs met, and so new features are not very compelling to the marketplace. So the companies start competing on other things, customer service and the like, and finally, in the death throes of the market, on price. The product has become a commodity.

Like web browsers. Sure, web browsers have mainly been ‘free’ (unless you count IE!), and netscape/MS/mozilla/apple/google et al, have been competing on features. A new ‘better’, more secure, faster, etc way to browse.

I contend, no one really cares anymore. The browser is a commodity. In the past few months, I have used, IE 6, IE 7, Safari 3, Safari 4, Firefox 2 and 3, and Google Chrome. Now the IEs arent fabulous, but its not going to kill me. Everything else? Pretty much indistinguishable. I flip with wanton promiscuity between Firefox and Safari, and scarcely know I’ve changed. Everything kinda works. I don’t care anymore. Does anyone?

Browser market is dead.

xero comments

Kelvin has an excellent commentary on Xero, NZs own online accounting provider. I suspect Xero will have some very big problems this financial year, but all power to them! My major concern is simply the burn rate, and the fact that the Xero model relies on SMEs and SME accounting service providers converting to Xero. This appears to me to be a low speed model of acquiring customers, basically organic growth. Now this strategy is fine, if you have enough money to survive until customer numbers reach breakeven point. My suspicion is Xero doesn’t.

Xero is awesome. Its a fantastic piece of software, super-easy and very useful, and everyone should be using it. I just hope Xero has enough time to enlighten the world to its superiority.

back!

Phew, a busy few weeks, finishing up last contract for a cool startup, some time in Rarotonga which is a fabulous little island in the pacific, hooning around like a crazy man (well, a crazy man who doesnt go over 40kmh) on a little scooter, getting up at the crack of dawn to throw coconuts at crazy annoying roosters, and other island enjoyments. Then, house hunting and shifting in very short order. Fortunately, we have eliminated most of our heavy furniture by donating it to various charities, and the look of relief on the movers faces was touching.

Now, everything is back working. Except me, which is fabulous!

One thing I have been doing in my ’spare’ time is investigating my share investments. I have a reasonable amount invested in shares, mostly bought on whims like “it just dropped 20%, must be a good time to buy!” (note, just because it dropped 20% doesn’t mean it can’t drop another 50%), and “I like what they’re doing” (which doesn’t mean anyone else does). And of course, Telecom. Why Greg, why?

So, I have been doing some fundamental analysis on the financial reports. Which is fun in a super-geeky, don’t tell anyone you want to impress, kind of way. I’ve found it pretty educational, and have recently invested in Restaurant Brands (RBD.NZ) and Michael Hill (MHI.NZ), so you can follow how I do! It is however, quite hard work on the NZ stock market, simply because to get the information, you need to sift through years of annual reports. So I wonder, how many people following the NZ market actually do this? Does your investment advisor?

An IQ test…

ok, so heres a little test.

You know how bacteria are dumb, and ants are smarter than bacteria, mice are smarter than ants, cats are smarter than mice, and dolphins and whales are meant to be even cleverer, and chimps and apes are pretty up there on the whole smarts thing right?

And right at the top of the heap is humans. The very top. Except that stupid guy and the drunk slapper you met at the pub the other night. Except them. But humans… we’re at the top. The peak of the intelligence scale. We’re all that. And a bit more.

Ok. Given that you’re so smart, heres a thought test….

Can you imagine, seriously imagine, something, smarter than you are? Not just a little bit smarter, like nerdy geeky guys, but a whole lot smarter? Like so smart, you can’t even begin to understand. You are to it, as cows are to us. That sort of difference.

Go on. Try.

keep trying. What would it be like?

And you can’t. Bet you. I can’t. I can imagine that such a thing would exist, but I can’t imagine how it would be. So, if such a thing were to turn up, what would we do?How would it be for us? To no longer be top of the heap, just somewhere a bit further down, with a vague realisation that there is something much greater out there, but not really having enough intelligence to work out much about it.

But… of course, no such thing will turn up. We’re the top of the heap, the pinnacle.  Yessiree, its great to be us. The top of the heap….

We are, arent we?

compulsory rests for code monkeys

im a pretty good coder. i can code pretty much anything, and it turns out pretty good most of the time.

but one thing that keeps popping up is I find myself too close to the problem. I get this kind of tunnel vision thing happening, where I see a complex solution and go for it. And my mind gets taken up with the complexity of implementing the solution. And at the time, it appears the only solution to the problem.

unless I go for a walk. If I go for a walk, or a run, sit in a park, soak up the ’sun’,  often a new, more elegant, simpler solution will just present itself. I don’t even need to look for it, it just turns up. I sorta go “Hey man, I was expecting you”, and I implement the new solution, it works and is orders of magnitude better.

So I’m trying to train myself to go for more walks while developing. Sit in more parks when I have something complex to do. Its sometimes difficult, because as with my previous post, its impossible up-front to always appreciate the complexity of a given task, but I’m trying. Because the solutions found this way save massive amounts of time and money, and exponential amounts of maintenance down the track.

Now, imagine what this looks like to anyone ‘managing’ me.

“See you!”, I call cheerfully as I wander out the door, “I’m off to sit in the park for an hour or so… I’ll still be charging BTW!”

The 1st law of software.

Law: Complex software is hard, and increasing complexity leads to exponential increases in difficulty (and corresponding likelihood of failure).

Everyone needs to understand this law. It is a law.

This law, or more correctly, forgetting this law, is the reason for “massive budget overruns”. Its the reason for all failures in IT (except the one where the dev team get abducted by aliens).

Corollary: It is impossible to completely predict complexity before starting development.

Bugger. In other words, the difficulty of your project is impossible to accurately estimate. But it will get more accurate as development proceeds.

Therefore: Keep projects small. Build small. Then add bits. If you need to build a system that appears big, build bits at a time. “Impossible!” you cry at my foolish words, “We have to do the whole system, not just bits!”. That may be true. It probably isn’t, but it may be. But you’re forgetting the 1st law. Its a law dude. It doesnt go away because the client says “You have to do the whole system!”. You will do the whole system. Just bit by bit. This process takes a lot of up-front thought, always focussed on reducing complexity. Its a harder way to develop. But, because of the 1st law, its the way that leads to the maximum chance of success.

PS. Don’t use IBM products. Anything from IBM will suck your project under faster than a greased titanic. And … sorry J2EE, .Net, RubyOnRails et al. There is no silver bullet. Not even a shiny bronze one.

the end of ferrit

Telecom has shut down ferrit, according to http://www.stuff.co.nz/4816111a13.html.

I know a lot of people will be surprised at this, principally at how long it took to shut it down. Ferrit when it launched was a massive misfire, demonstrating Telecoms complete misunderstanding of the online shopping market. Ulitimately, if you bought things off Ferrit, you paid more than if you went to the shop.

Anyone who had used the internet (at all!) understood immediately that this wasn’t going to work, and lots of various commentators commented something like “Um, Telecom, this isn’t going to work. People want selection and a bargain shopping on the internet”. Telecom however, replied convincingly, “Yes it is”. And we all went… “huh? Why?” and they said, “it just is”. And so they spent millions proving us wrong… i mean… right.

It wasn’t that the idea was necessarily wrong, simply that the execution so misunderstood the use of internet for shopping. If you can go down to the shops and buy it for the same price, for most things people will do just that. If you start to save… >=20% (I made that number up, but it sounds about right), people will buy online.

And that includes shipping. The interesting thing is that a million people told Telecom this after the launch of Ferrit, a million more must have said beforehand, it was as obvious as the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs, but… Telecom knew best. I find that fascinating…

Genetic engineering and patents…

So I was listening to a radio report (i know, who listens to radio anymore?!?) on gene modification, and patent law.

What I thought before was… some company took a seed, stuck a new gene to make it disease resistant or whatever, and then they patented that process. But what actually appears to happen is the company can actually patent the plant itself.

So anyone using that seed needs to pay the company. The capitalist part of me says, sure, the company is helping the farmer with better disease resistant crops, the farmer gets more yield, so they should pay the company. But… the bit that is whacked is that … the company took the raw materials (the seed) from a ‘free’ pool of billions of years of evolution, and thousands of years of human-guided reproduction, changed one tiny bit of that seed, and now… owns the entire plant.

And further, discovery of a particular gene or sequence, means the discoverer can patent that gene or sequence. They own it. They didn’t create it, or contribute to its development in any way, they just happened to be the first to stumble across it. But they can patent that gene.

Isn’t that crazy? Like, completely, way out whacked? Its like 300 years ago, if I had discovered oxygen, I could patent it, and charge everyone for its use.

I’m not sure I understand all of the issues involved here, but something appears to be seriously wrong with patent law and genetic engineering, in the “I don’t care if its the law, thats just stupid” category.

Anybody got more info on this?

education in the 21st century…

so I was on a plane, coming back from Cairns (which is an odd place in Australia, full of beautiful beaches and things that want to kill you), sitting in my (cramped) seat, watching the little screen and choosing a variety of movies, I even listened to (most of) “a brief history of time”, and I got to thinking… why isn’t classroom education like this?

Teaching is … a bit stuck in the past. Does it make any sense that each class or school has an individual teacher responsible for teaching a particular subject? What you want is, the ‘best’ teachers in the whole world teaching the class. I mean, algebra hasnt changed for ever, so why do individual teachers need to teach? Why not just make interactive recordings of… 10, 50? different ‘best’ teachers teaching a class. Individual class teachers would need to faciliate, but not to teach. Students could have interactive screens like airplanes, choose their lesson, ask for clarification by accessing the same lesson taught by different teachers, or ask the facilitator to assist. Gifted students could do extension exercises if they felt like it, when they felt like it. The lessons could be easily interactive with questions at the end of each 5-10minute period. Imagine doing that in a real class, for every student. The facilitators could then receive incredibly detailed, accurate assessments for every child for every class.

They can choose what they learn, and how fast, and best of all, get access to the best teachers in the world for any given subject. Now, you could argue that interaction with classroom teachers is important, but my memories are teachers explaining something as best as they were able, then getting the class to do a lot of exercises. Teaching just doesnt scale. You cant give individual attention to a class of 30 students, each with different needs.

best of all, this is all achievable, right now. You could even grab the cool seats from an airplane, kids would love those! Im not so sure about the meals though…

so like, I want to search for something on the net right, so I use google. Googles cool. It more or less gives me what I want. Yay google.

But. I live on the net right? Like, 24hrs a day (more or less, minus some beauty sleep time, which those who know me will know its amazingly effective!). And I use google for searching, maybe… 15minutes a day. And most of that time is spent looking through search results to find what I want. And I search for weird things in general.

so whats this thing about search? how come google is worth nearly 100billion dollars? because google make the best use of that time, those 15 minutes a day. I virtually never click on a google ad-word, and Im guessing you dont much either. but enough people do to earn them lots of money.

but the thing is, search is not what we want to do. We search when things are lost, when its not obvious where something is. Its the last stop on the “I wanna know” express, just before you jump off into “beats the crap outta me” junction, where no-one knows anything. I don’t want to search, I want to know.

How do we move from a ’search’ paradigm to a ‘know’ paradigm? Or are we stuck with search? The answer is the next 100 billion dollar question!