Random Thoughts from a CTO: Technology

The hidden costs of newer technologies

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 17:07:36 GMT

Technologies continue to change. Companies must change with them or can lose their competitive edge through obsolete technology. Technology shouldn't just change for change sake, but as needs change either internally or with your customer, you should find the latest technology that can provide a solution. However, your customer, organization, and perhaps even upper management may not understand the short term costs of moving to newer technologies. So, what are the advantages and disadvantages of legacy verses newer technologies?

Legacy Technologies -- Examples include: Windows, Unix, C/C++, Visual Basic.

Advantages:

Technologies are mature, have existed for 10 or more years
Less changes to the core functionality
Tools and capabilities are extensive
Stability through years of development
Easy to get knowledge, training, support

Disadvantages:

Integration with newer technologies (hardware or software) is hard or impossible
Vendors may decide to discontinue these technologies to focus on new ones

Newer Technologies -- Examples include: Linux (especially desktop environments), Java, C#, AJAX.

Advantages:

Better availability for integration of newer products or technologies
Supports the latest and greatest in new functionality

Disadvantages:

Unstable, bugs are expected as products are used more and knowledge is gained
Frequent changes through updates and new functionality, some not backwards-compatible
Knowledge, training, support is limited to a few experts which are sometimes hard to contact
Tools and capabilities may be limited until the product is more robust

So what can the transition or adoption of newer technologies impact your goals until they become more mature?

Legacy Technologies -> High stability - > Better understanding -> Better support -> Better productivity/efficiency -> Better quality -> Faster delivery -> Highly Satisified Customers

Newer Technologies (short-term) -> Low stability -> Less understanding -> Difficult to support -> Less productivity/efficiency -> Less quality -> Slower to deliver -> Challenge to satisfy customers

I'm not to say that you should stay on legacy technologies forever, as they do have end of life and we need to move on. I am saying that during the transition of legacy to newer technologies there is a cost and expectation, until such technologies and the skills required to use them mature both internally and externally.

Most companies will go through cycles every 3 - 5 years between legacy and newer technologies, where their tools or products will transition. Customers may also go through this transition, and companies should expect some initial impact with stability, training, and supporting the newer technologies. You need to make sure that your company goals and revenue model accurately reflects the "costs" of these technology changes.

Web 2.0?

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 22:19:49 GMT

O'Reilly and Medialive are co-hosting a conference next month called Web 2.0. What is Web 2.0? It's about transforming the Web into a viable platform for people to interact beyond it's current uses. It's about integrating the best technology into a standard architecture. Take a look at the graphic below that comes from Tim O'Reilly to get an idea of what the vision is.

Richer User Experiences - Applications beyond the normal browser but interacts "live" with the Web. Some other examples I have seen are Konfabulator, Google Earth and Google Desktop.
User as Contributor - How you do is based on what people think about you. Some other examples are ranking of blog entries based on how many Furl or del.icio.us members "tag" your post.
Blogs - Blogs become conversations and contributions into of just publishing. Don't see many examples of this, I can envision something between a blog and wiki, that would allow interacting with the content more directly than just comments.
Radical Decentralization - Information passed along peer-to-peer instead of hosted on servers. We have seen this more recently with BitTorrent, and may see other ways to share information from desktop to desktop in the future.
Tagging - Being able to identify things based on categories. This is happening as well on Technorati and will continue to spread to other solutions. A whole new take on this is Rollyo.
Customer Self-Service enabling the long tail - We will see a change in advertising and other forms of ranking based on individual preference instead of deep pockets.
Radical Trust - Less security and worry about mass participation on the web. Wikipedia and other Mediawiki sites are the best example of this right now. Everything thought it wouldn't work because of abuse, bots, or other forms of sabatoge as well as information overload. Instead, it has been very successful in putting together the first "open source" encyclopedia.

What do you think? A bunch of hype to have a conference? Or is there some truth on where things are going? From my perspective, I see the future of the web being much more interactive in nature and "managed" by the masses instead of individuals. The changes that have already come about are proving this out.

Your Desktop Will Never Be the Same

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 21:51:18 GMT

For years now, people have tried to provide dymanic content that could show up on your Windows desktop. Microsoft introduced Active Desktop years ago with Windows 95, but nobody seemed to use it, the applications weren't that great, the performance was bad, and it seemed to crash your system at times. People turned it off. Microsoft didn't promote it in future releases. It seemed that the desktop was only going to be used to paste your favorite picture on as a background. As a result, I ended up maximizing all of my applications and hardly used the desktop. After all, how long could you stare at your background picture? I also started to use the Quick Launch toolbar instead of shortcuts on my desktop as a way to get to other applications. I never had to see my desktop again if I didn't want to!

I don't own a Mac, but when I visited my local Apple store after OS X (Tiger) came out, I was very impressed with what they had done with their desktop. Through what they called Dashboard, there were all these kinds of widgets that you could put on your desktop - clock, calendar, appointments, weather, news, maps -- plus hundreds of others you could download. It was awesome, and it made the desktop much more valuable. Now, in the age where many people have broadband access, dymanic content from the web on your desktop makes sense.

So, I hunted around and found out about Konfabulator, a small company that was recently bought from Yahoo. In reading their site, their free! application seemed to have the same thing that I saw on the Mac but now available for my Windows box. They too, also had several hundred other widgets you could download that peopel had contributed. So I installed it, and was immediately impressed. I got my clock, calendar and all of the other widgets I had liked showing up on my desktop. I found myself using my desktop again - no more maximized applications.

So, just when I was really getting into this new tool, I found out the Google's Desktop Search now has a version 2 in beta and downloaded it. If you haven't used this tool already, it's awesome. On your local machine, it keeps an index against your local files including email, PDFs, etc. Using Google's normal search, you click over to the Desktop tab...enter your search words, and voila...just as fast as Google's other searches, you have hits against your own machine. MUCH, MUCH quicker than Microsoft's find.

So, with version 2 they have gone one step further...now you have what they call a "floating deskbar" with sections such as Email, News, Photos, Web Clips (includes RSS Feeds), Scratch Pad, etc. The news comes from Google News and is updated every few minutes with the latest headlines. The email can show you a preview based on the email that is stored with the Desktop Search index, and also hooks up to Gmail. So you can read your mail without having to click over to your email client (or web browser). It's VERY cool.

Konfabulator: http://konfabulator.com/

Google Desktop Search: http://desktop.google.com/

Adoption of Open Source

Tue, 14 Jun 2005 15:36:21 GMT

A few years ago, we started to look at open source as an alternative place to find solutions either for our products or as part of our internal systems and/or tools. Since then, we have seen quite a change in landscape of what we use.

Why did we look at open source? Here are some of the main reasons:

Lower costs - For us to stay solely on commercial solutions was cost prohibitive. Charging initial fees was enough, but paying for upgrades was too much. This in addition to ongoing licensing fees to deliver solutions to our customers. Open source has been practically free or at least lower initial cost, and you don't have to pay addition money for major upgrades. As a result of moving to open source, it's not sure how much money we will save, but we know we won't be spending the money as quickly. We also won't have to pass along as much licensing costs to our customers.

More frequent updates - Commerical software can sometimes take forever to fix or provide the enhancement that you are needing. Given that the source is closed, you are at their mercy to fix things. Sometimes they are responsive, and most times they are not in a timely manner. Open source, on the other hand, seems to respond very quickly to fixes and enhancement request...plus they encourage feedback from end users.

Larger developer base - Given that we are in the software solution business, I know that our ability to enhance the product is limited given our resources - people or money to spend. Not the case with open source projects, many of the well known solutions have practically unlimited access to developers.

Better response - If you have a support or training question, good luck with commerical vendors. Personally, I have never had much success in paying for and getting good support. If you have, let me know! Open source seems to almost encourage feedback, and you can find or get the answers you need quickly.

More flexibility - Want the product to look and behave differently? Use themes or select from plenty of options with more coming all the time. Commerical products, especially Microsoft do provide some customization, but most products come as is. Open source seems to thrive on provide lots of bells, whistles, and options to people.

Better extensibility - With commercial software, you are pretty much stuck with the functionality you get until the next major release. Sometimes, you might find that there are strategic partnership with other commercial vendors to provide addons or interfaces. Open source, on the other hand, seems to provide extensibility out of the box. You can find plenty of plug-ins.

So, what open source solutions are we using? Here is just some of the list:

Linux - We are using Red Hat Enterprise for most of our servers, and have started to use Xandros as the desktop for many of our workstations. Our customers are currently using an older version of Red Hat and will be going to a Debian-based distribution in the near future. Migrated from SCO Unix and Windows servers and workstations.
Java - Not entirely open source, but we are using Java as our primary language for new development. Used commerical language such as Sybase's PowerBuilder.
Mozilla Firefox - Everybody in our organization is using this as the browser of choice. It's fast, friendly, and flexible! Migrated from Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Mozilla Thunderbird - We are starting to use this as a pilot to replace Microsoft Outlook as a mail and news reader. Still waiting on more enhancements in providing a better calendar solution before making the full transition.
Eclipse - We are using this platform for our Java development, and looking to use it for other kinds of development as the IDE of choice. Used to use Borland JBuilder and other text editors for changing code.
Nvu - We have moved from Microsoft Frontpage to using this as a web editor.
Bugzilla - We are using this as a bug/issue tracking solution. Migrated from a commerical solution from Rational Software.
CVS - This tool is used for our version control system. Migrated from SCCS and Microsoft SourceSafe.

Low-Tech tools: Less can be More

Fri, 06 May 2005 17:34:51 GMT

Though I enjoy gadgets as much as the next person, and my company can be consider part of the High Tech industry, I have found that high-tech isn't always the right solution. You know that high-tech isn't working for you when:

The tool takes time to administer
The tool isn't making your life better
The tool takes focus away from your work
No ROI, the cost savings aren't more than the ongoing costs of maintaining the tool.

So, here are some Low-Tech tools that I have found are much better than their High-Tech counterparts:

Sticky Notes vs. Group Brainstorming Tools - Post-it notes are probably the greatest invention in the last 20 years. Though I do use a mindmapping tool for personal brainstorming, I find that most tools like this aren't as effective in a group setting. You can write some information on a sticky note, stick it up on a whiteboard, organize a group of sticky notes whichever way you want. You can also use various colors of stickies to represent different categories of information or to represent different contributors.

Paper Pad vs. Personal Information Manager for todo lists - I have used Palm. I have used Franklin Covey system. I have even tried using Outlook. I also come back to using the ol' pad of paper to write down my todo list. As I do each task, I mark it off. If I need to rearrange, I start with a new piece of paper.

Paper Flip Chart vs. White Boards - I think white boards have their purpose, but there is something about writing on paper flip charts that allow the information to be more portable. Plus, as you complete each page, you can post each page next to each other on the wall as reference for future meetings.

Digital Camera vs. Marker Board Capture tools - If you are drawing diagrams or other information that you have captured on a marker board (or a paper flip chart) and you want an electronic version of it for sending via email, intranet or other means....then use a digital camera. Ok...so it's not as Low-Tech as the other tools, but it is compared to other alternatives such as Electronic Marker Boards. Plus, it can save time not having to reproduce lots of information by hand.

What Low-Tech tools do you end up using in your workplace?

A new model for customer support

Wed, 04 May 2005 16:59:45 GMT

I have always been a fan of the technology around blogs and wikis, and know that we have only scratched the surface on the potential of these technologies as a way of communication and collaboration.

Common Craft has a posting this week on a way to use both of these technologies to better support your customer base. Here are some exerpts:

Blogs and message boards both suffer from the same problem- they are great for presenting emerging information, but poor at organizing it for future reference. The “good stuff” that people often need and companies often want to capture quickly gets buried among all the comments and messages.
With this post, I’m outlining a potential way organizations can use blogs and message boards as a way to generate useful information and a wiki as a way to filter, archive and organize it for future reference.
These companies [a reference to Macromedia and Microsoft] are using blogs and message boards to interact with customers regarding their products on an ongoing basis. Often valuable feedback is provided via these resources but as long as it remains in the blog or board, it is quickly buried. The rest of this post focuses on how a wiki could remedy this situation.
The blogs get the conversation started and comments keep it going. Throughout the process, support team members, employees or the bloggers themselves look for emerging and valuable information that should be archived in the wiki.

The author, Lee LeFever, has some nice graphics to should how the technology and processes would work. He also provides good guidelines on how you would manage the technology efficiently.

As customers gain more access to the web through faster connections via higher bandwidth, better access through wireless networks, and use of various devices (PDAs, Cell Phones, Laptops, Tablets) to get to the web....I think this will become the next generation of customer service. Previous methods - phones, chats, FAQ's, web sites - have served their purpose but have been limited on the interaction of information between companies and their customers. I believe that Lee is on to something, and the combination of wikis and blogs could raise the bar on customer service. I know that I don't want my company to be left behind and will explore further on how to introduce this idea to our organization. Thanks Lee for the insightful post!

The future of house shopping?

Wed, 13 Apr 2005 17:05:29 GMT

As you already know if you read my previous post on Google, I really like not only the company but their various products. Now, people are finding ways to use their technologies to produce other solutions.

I ran across this website where they have combined the information from Craigslist with Google maps, as a way to easily identify where houses and rentals are located by price range. Right now, it only shows you the houses on Craigslist.

It's just a matter of time that people will be able to search the RMLS listings this way, think of the convenience! You can look on a map in the area of town that you are interested in and voila! -- you have a list of houses or rentals in that area. As the Google technology moves towards the mobile user, eventually you may be able to use the technology right from your PDA or cell phone.

And let's not stop there, what if you could use this technology for other uses like classified ads. Or, how about tied to GPS solutions? You are driving around in your car and want to see where some garage sales are around you on a Saturday morning...no problem, just access your GPS, cell phone or PDA, select Garage sales and you now have an idea of where the garage sales are and how to get there.

Hmmm....maybe I shouldn't have said too much....could be a business opportunity here!

Why I love Google

Thu, 17 Mar 2005 00:19:24 GMT

Some reasons why I really like what Google is doing:

Focus: From the beginning, Google focused on doing one thing REALLY well, world-class -- searching. Similiar search engines tried to do much more, and fell away from their primary focus over the years.
Quality: Google wanted to make sure that their search not only ran faster than others, but gave more reliable results. They won on both counts.
Usability: They were trying to make something that wowed you visually, but focused on the ease of use. Anybody can figure out Google (I hope).
Extendability: Once they had the search down for the web, they branched out to other applications of searching -- news, images, newsgroups...and recently your desktop files using Google desktop. They did all of this without losing focus on being a great search engine.
Branding: Who hasn't heard of Google by now, it's everywhere! In fact, you know you are a big thing when people use the company as a verb - "I'll go out and Google that!" or "Have you Googled yourself?"
Accessibility: Google is everywhere, as toolbars in browsers, on others' web sites, etc. Searching on Google is really a click away.
Philosophy: I read somewhere that Google enforces their employees to spend at least 25% of their time on their own pet research projects to encourage creativity. They aren't relying totally on senior people to figure out what products or features that need to be created - many of their ideas come by experimenting...WOW!

Where will Google go in the future? I dunno, but I'm gonna love finding out what next they come up with!

A frustration with open source

Thu, 03 Mar 2005 00:39:11 GMT

Don't get me wrong, I am a strong advocate of the open source community and we are using several open source solutions in our products or tools - Linux, Java, PostgreSQL Database, MySQL, Apache, Tomcat, Firefox, Thunderbird...and the list goes on.

Years ago, when I was working with Unix, I couldn't help but become confused on the various "flavors" of Unix that began to come out...all a little different. As a software developer, it becomes difficult to make sure that my product will work on Unix...instead, I have to verify each of these flavors or only say that my product works on a few of them.

So, when open source came around, particular Linux, Java and MySQL, I was hopeful that I wouldn't have to run into this again. So much for hope! Red Hat Linux, Debian Linux, MySQL, MySQL AB, Java J2SE, Java J2EE, Java J2ME...enough already. I understand that it is difficult to make "one size fits all", but it becomes a headache to understand the differences and which ones to support and use.

Am I alone in the confusion?