Lively No More

I have blogged earlier about the coming of massive, multi-player, virtual on-line worlds before. Permit me to recap here.

• Think of it as a 3D version of the web where you can see and interact with other viewers on any page/room.


• Think of it as a cartoonish version of telepresence on a budget.


• It's a natural fit for an artificial economy or other operant conditioning systems for rewarding desirable behavior.


• It might have entertainment possibilities like a more interactive form of television.


• Obviously, the role based, game playing versions of this have been very successful.

Part of the excitement in this space was the fact that other, fairly big, players were starting to join it. Well, today, one of those players announced that they were leaving the space. Google announced that they were pulling the plug on their version of this space now ironically called Lively.

I never participated in Lively so I can't speak to what the experience was like. Some say that the place was a ghost town. Others say that the performance of the client software was terrible. If you have used the service, then please leave a comment here as to your thoughts about it and any possible reasons why Google made this decision.

Feb 2009 Update:The NY Times mentioned this in piece entitled How Google Decides to Pull the Plug. It was not very in depth. Basically, Google pulled the plug because it wasn't popular. It didn't try to attempt to answer the question as to why it wasn't popular.

Innovation During a Global Recession

I read in the previous Sunday edition of the NY Times an opinion piece called It's No Time To Forget About Innovation.

Author Janet Rae-Dupree uses material from the following two books to further her advice not to completely stifle innovation during these economic hard times; Closing the Innovation Gap by Judy Estrin and Strategic Entrepreneurism by Jon Fisher.

According to Janet, Judy posits that the following core values need to be in equal balance in order to foster innovation; questioning, risk taking, openness, patience, and trust. You may have heard of this as failing fast, From the Outside In, and the long tail. She also advocates "green thumb leadership" where gardens of new ideas are permitted amidst the factory farms.

Contrast this with Jon's position that innovation must be embedded in the daily operation of the rank and file. Entrepreneurs should plan their start in a highly creative and innovative environment then sell the business to a larger, more established company in order to scale up.

I think that what most of these people are trying to say is that innovation, by and of itself, is not optimized for making money; however, innovation can open the door to profitable markets in the future. It would seem to me that the best time to focus on not making money is when there is not that much money available to be made. So, the best time to innovate is during a global recession. It's not like your competitors are going to raise their market capitalization by improving their profitability while you fritter away in the lab.

Of course, I'm not saying that you should throw huge amounts of money at it. Innovators work best when they are hungry. That's another reason why this is a good time to innovate. Think Guy Kawasaki's boot strapping.

To that end, I invite all innovators to join a newly formed and emerging community devoted to innovation on a budget. Code Roller is a place where entrepreneurs and engineers get together to produce the next generation of great applications for the web. Code Roller is a collaborative software development project life cycle management solution that combines time honored, best-of-breed deliverables and work flow with state-of-the-art techniques in social networking and crowd sourcing to deliver custom software faster, cheaper, and better by accelerating discovery. The use of Code Roller is free.

Where Angels Fear to Tread

The stock market continues its downward spiral as fears grow that the U.S. recession is taking on a more global scope. Companies of all sizes hold on to their cash, batten down the hatches, and prepare to ride the storm out as they curtail new growth opportunities and slash costs.

That's too bad, really, as this is the best time for opportunity. Ask anyone in finance when is the best time to buy stock and they'll most likely tell you to buy when everyone else is selling. Why? Because stocks are under valued in a bear market. The key to profitability is to buy low and sell high. It's pretty simple, really. However, that time honored strategy takes nerves of steel as you are most likely not going to buy in at the bottom. So, you get to watch your investment lose money and hope that it turns around before it's too late. No one said that the market is for the weak or the timid.

The same is true for any venture into a market and not just for the stock market. The time for any company to enter into a new market is when everyone else is leaving. Why? Same reason as for the stock market. The market is undervalued when everyone else is leaving. Now is the time to get good deals. Also, you will have a lot less competition as you gobble up market share.

Easier said than done, of course. You see, there's this little thing called cash flow. It's no good to dump a lot of cash to enter in to a market if you end up not being able to make payroll before you get your ROI. You still have to be prudent. You still have to make every dollar count. The best time to enter into a new market is the worst time for you to spend money which is precisely what you have to do in order to make your entrance. So do it but do it tight fisted.

That is why it behooves good company officers to reconsider out-sourcing to local startups.

This may seem counter-intuitive but start ups are in the best position for growth during a recession. Their costs are already low and, with fewer commitments, they are in a better position to cut costs even more so their pricing is more flexible downwards than their more established brethren.

It's not prudent to use any startup, of course. Some will not be able to weather the storm. Before out-sourcing to a start up, you've got to evaluate them to see just how recession proof it is. Some startups even thrive in a bad economy.

So, look for opportunity in crisis times. It may not be easy but the rewards can be great to those who are quick on their feet and willing to change the way they do business in order to adapt to the times. Remember to leverage the little guy who is hungry and more willing to make a deal happen.

jQuery and Microsoft

Technology is to software architects what stock is to traders. You are constantly on the lookout for changes in the marketplace to take advantage of an under valued but rising offering. What's that old cliché? Buy on rumor and sell on news.

You would had to have been in a coma for the past decade to have missed AJAX which is an approach to writing web applications that mitigates the disorienting page refresh of the server round-trip by having the page get the new data through a Java script call instead of reloading. To a coder, the heart of AJAX is the XmlHttpRequest object. There are lots of Java script libraries out there that abstract away the web browser differences in using this object, thus simplifying your Java script.

jQuery is one of those libraries. It competes with lots of different offerings such as Prototype, YUI, MooTools, and Dogo. Yesterday, jQuery got mentioned in a rumor that is sure to boost perception of its value over its competitors. On a promotional blog site owned by Microsoft, it was announced that Microsoft is adopting and supporting jQuery in its ASP.NET AJAX components and integrating support of jQuery in its flagship IDE VS.NET

Why does it really matter which technology to choose? After all, each and every technology mentioned here does a great job of doing AJAX. From a technology perspective, you can't go wrong; however, there are more aspects to choosing a software architecture than technology.

A smoother developer experience should accelerate the implementation phase of any project. So, with this announcement, jQuery becomes a more compelling choice for Microsoft development shops. In any work environment, you have to think about turn-around. How long does it take to replace an employee who is leaving? That means being competitive with other shops on a lot of things including pay, benefits, and how desirable your technology is. Using popular technology makes it just a little bit easier to attract and hire good candidates. Popular technology can also be a compelling sell to your customers whose I.T. departments might want to evaluate what technology you use.

For the Love of Water

I got to see a very interesting film this past weekend at the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival. Entitled FLOW: For the Love of Water, this documentary is all about the abuses of drinkable water and the resulting impact on humanity.

The film documents how industrialization has increased the amount of pollution in our drinking water. There is a growing trend to privatize the cleaning, storage, and delivery of drinkable water. In theory, governments are supposed to be beholding to the public good whereas private companies are only beholding to their share holders. What ends up happening is that the poor gradually lose access to safe drinking water. They also advocate a more decentralized approach to cleaning water, especially in under-developed countries.

Another disturbing trend that this documentary covers is bottled water. Companies take regular tap water, bottle it, and sell it at a very large profit. This profitability compels companies to grow the business of bottled water. This growth is happening so quickly that it is starting to eclipse civil sources of drinkable water.

What can you do about it? As a consumer, stop buying bottled water. It is no safer than tap water. Buying bottled water raises the cost of tap water. Not only will you pay more at the grocery store or vending machine for that bottle of water but also you will pay more in your monthly bill.

For those who want a more active role, petition your local government against outsourcing water management to corporations.

The Bane of Every Coder

I am an advocate of developer documentation. I understand why smaller, less mature ISVs and IT shops would take the quick and dirty shortcut of forgoing developer documentation. No one wants to do it. It costs money keeping that documentation up to date. Programmers should get paid to write code. Blah, blah, blah.

Larger, more mature, shops should know better. They should realize that the total cost of maintaining large systems, over time, is much less when new developers can accelerate their time to productivity by reading some well written, accurate developer documentation. Also, it's nice to throw the developer documentation at the powers that be (i.e. government, acquiring company, BOD) when they want to know what's really going on. I'll bet that Microsoft wished that they had spent some more resources on writing good developer documentation.

You don't like to do it. I don't like to do it. Nobody likes to do it. But writing quality developer documentation is like filing your taxes. Doing it is better than suffering the long term consequences of not doing it.

Ambient Intimacy is the New Collective Intelligence

I ran across this puff piece in the Sunday, September 7 edition of the NY Times promoting Facebook and Twitter. It really helped me improve my understanding of the micro-blogging, social networking revolution.

Like many people born before the age of the personal computer, I was having a hard time understanding why the new prosumer generation have no problem uploading every single intimate detail of their lives into these social networking sites. Apparently, mankind had evolved past whatever needs that the first, third, forth, fifth, ninth, and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution were trying to protect.

Well, I was wrong again. It was while attending the Start Conference that I learned that Twitter's main audience was closer to my age than my children's.

The NY Times article called it ambient intimacy and featured quotes, both expert and anecdotal, linking this phenomena to another upwardly trending phenomena known as collective intelligence.

Having lots of low commitment, casual acquaintances is important for your social development. But there is an upper limit on just how many of these relationships you can have by shear virtue of the fact that there are only so many hours in a day and you have to spend time traveling to each of these contacts and arranging a common time for both parties to meet. That was before the web which reduced the personal costs of time and distance to near nothing. Now, with social networking web applications such as Facebook and Twitter, you can maintain a much larger number of casual acquaintances than before. I have seen the future of human evolution and it is virtual.

Prosumers do use facebook in lieu of personal contact, especially if there is conflict to avoid. Gone forever is the "Dear John" letter. You are much more likely to know that you have been ditched by your girl/boyfriend by seeing pictures of them dating their new paramour in their facebook photo album.

That NY Times article also brought up the notion that these web apps solved a basic human need that was not getting met in urban environments. "This is the ultimate effect of the new awareness: It brings back the dynamics of small-town life, where everybody knows your business."