Working better together - collaborative people, companies, and software,

Bill Gates has lived his whole career with one business model. And it isn't open source as you and I would know (/love) it. Either:

• He's just stuck in a model and can't understand the massive, amazing, staggering leverage that comes from having a really huge community work on the same software project. (His comments about "If you invent something, you should be able to charge for it" would suggest he's still living in a world where he, or his company, write all the software.) This leverage is the thing that is so attractive (to me) about open source. It's also the primary thing that gives me joy - the ability to be part of such an amazing, creative community.
• He simply has to be a good doobie, and preserve - as long as possible - the model he has lived in his whole life (or else see his, and his shareholder's asset value vaporize.

Given that people say he's so bright, it's gotta be the latter. Or else he's just another old dog that can't learn new tricks.

Posted by Jay Batson at 02:03 PM | Permalink

Talk about something that makes people interact with each other! This combines people working with each other (to make cool designs), and adds good music.

This device comes from Switzerland. I wonder which bar in the U.S. will be first to have it?

Posted by Jay Batson at 12:35 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I'm looking at ways to extend Chirp by offering web-based interfaces to Chirp (so you can work on your project info when you don't have your computer with you.) And as I scour the landscape for technology choices, I'm struck by the proliferation of types of web applications.

When I look at applications themselves (distinct from frameworks), I see three basic types:

• Content management systems
• Wikis
• Blogging systems

And these are all (of course) built these days on some kind of framework, like Spring, Ruby on Rails, or Grails.

The question that occurs to me? Why have these three types of applications emerged as separate application types? Aren't they all just variations on content presented through web servers? I look at each and see:

• Content types, e.g. body content, sidebar content, etc.
• Layout controls, indicating where each content type will appear, along with how it appears (e.g. all of the content, vs. blog-style “intro” and “read more”)
• User access controls
• etc.

Seems to me that as each of these three types of web applications mature, they're looking more and more alike. Maybe somebody should really abstract these properly, and create one system that is adaptable as needed.

Of course, then again, maybe “applications optimized for a purpose” make them more friendly for users. I guess I have more to learn here.

Technorati Tags: Software

Posted by Jay Batson at 05:43 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I've long been a participant in the IETF, and a strong promoter of its standards, and its efficacy as a way to get vendors to implement the same thing for interoperability's sake. But lately, I've begun to consider whether open source software is going to overshadow the role the IETF has traditionally held, and change how “standards” are created. “Code trumps all.”

What made me start thinking this was when I checked in with the progress of the Eclipse Communications Framework project (also see the beta version of a new project website here). While the ECF is far from a perfect example, what started to dawn on me was that these guys are moving pretty fast to implement a nice way for collaborative communications to be realized in applications, and if they're successful, and the code is in open source, it could become the defacto standard for how application software does collaboration in a few yesrs.

The new idea for me here was when I looked at how fast the ECF is moving to affect how software is working, vs. how quickly (nee, slowly) the IETF SIP, and in particular the SIMPLE work has impacted collaboration software. The ECF guys are creating a framework that is protocol independent, but their first (and compelling) implementations are done using the XMPP protocol.

Technorati Tags: Collaboration, Software

Continue reading "Open source proves that code is better than standards" »

Posted by Jay Batson at 09:07 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It's not new news: Find a market need, build product to meet the need, and grow.

However, this works if you have the capital to make it work as simply as that. If you don't, you have to find ways to:

• Pay the day to day bills - yours, and your company's - while you grow;
• Pay for the development, marketing, and support of your product.

How to do this? Often, startup companies will do consulting work to bring in the cash to build the business. And therein lies interesting things.

Technorati Tags: Software

Continue reading "Experiences funding growth of a self-funded startup" »

Posted by Jay Batson at 12:37 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I'll admit: maybe I've not gotten the Blog thing quite right yet.

But I do know when I see one that is good. I define good as one that:

• Is “well-written” (in the sense of the art of writing);
• Has content that is thoughtful. Somebody actually had something useful to share;
• Made me feel I knew something new and useful when I'm done.

Running an internally-funded software company is great fun. It's also tricky. I've been the CEO of a venture-backed startup, and while it (too) has tricky stuff, there's usually some asset somewhere - money, people, technology - that can be deployed to solve a problem. There are fewer assets in an internally-funded company.

So this blog, produced by a small software vendor, is a “good” blog in my opinion, because it meets my definition of a good blog, and it's all about how to help make a small software startup better. Kudos, Patrick McKenzie, on a terrific blog.

Posted by Jay Batson at 03:30 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Technorati Tags: Collaboration, Software

Continue reading "Collaborative Technology Conference report - everybody's got their own priorities" »

Posted by Jay Batson at 01:37 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Ok, so Apple has announced it's annual Apple Design Awards contest, wherein they give awards for application software that they feel shows programming genius. But the geniuses at Apple (whom I mostly love), are just so clueless about helping Mac's succeed among business users.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Microsoft, Software

Continue reading "Miscommunication? Or, mistaken strategy?" »

Posted by Jay Batson at 05:13 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)