Joel on software in a fabulous article on 'Too many Ajax calendars'.
]]>"Since the Trojan Horse makes the deceptive ads look like normal Google ads, the program was nearly impossible to detect by the general public. However, Raoul Bangera, an Indian web publisher, discovered the bogus program and contacted the Google AdSense team. Bangera emailed the team a number of cases, including various screenshots, log files of an infected computer and system files as proof. The AdSense team validated the news saying, “We can confirm from the screenshots that these are fake Google ads, formatted to look like legitimate ads. We agree that this phenomenon is likely the result of malicious software installed on your computer.”
]]>Subtractive Marketing like that seldom - if not never - works. There are hundreds of examples like that in the world of IT (and not just software) that demonstrate clearly that you should not try to follow such a tactics. Your audience is not stupid, they can see what you are trying to do and they can feel annoyed by the fact that you are trying to sell to them a 'handicapped' product at a lower price.
]]>Understndably profits and choosing the right field in software is a big issue but it carries a lot less weight than the actual quality of the software itself. If you forget about the type and focus on quality and the ways that you can offer this to your customers then whatever the starting demand of the software you are bound to succeed.
Sounds to easy? Wrong... Quality is not easy. This is a lot harder than it sounds and a lot harder to implement than it is to agree that you will follow such a tactics. There are things that you will have to re-invent in yourself and your company on the way. And there are many mental obstacles which are not easy to overcome.
]]>A corporate blog should demonstrate the beliefs and feeling of the company on current matters, serve as a news center for the company or serve as a communication tool between the company and its clients.
If you do not know what to write about, then don't write anything...
]]>"This is the second time I have written to you, and I don't blame you for not answering me, because I sounded crazy, but it Is a fact that we have a tradition in our family we have Ice-Cream for dessert after dinner each night. But the kind of ice cream varies so, every night, after we’ve eatenthe whole family votes on which kind of ice cream we should have and I drive down to the store to get it. It's also a fact that I recently purchased anew Pontiac and since then my trips to the store have created a problem.
You see, every time I buy a vanilla ice-cream, when I start back from the store my car won't start. If I get any other kind of ice cream, the car starts just fine. I want you to know I'm serious about this question, no matter how silly it sounds"
"What is there about a Pontiac that makes it not start when I get vanilla ice cream, and easy to start whenever I get any other kind?"
The Pontiac President was understandably sceptical about the letter, but sent an Engineer to check it out anyway. The latter was surprised to be greeted by a successful, obviously well educated man in a fine neighbourhood. He had arranged to meet the man just after dinnertime, so the two hopped into the car and drove to the ice cream store. It was vanilla ice-cream that night and, sure enough, after they came back to the car, it wouldn't start.
The Engineer returned for three more nights. The first night, they got chocolate. The car started. The second night, he got strawberry. The car started. The third night he ordered vanilla. The car failed to start. Now the Engineer, being a logical man, refused to believe that this man's car was allergic to vanilla ice cream. He arranged, therefore, to continue his visits for as long as it took to solve the problem. And toward this end he began to take notes: he jotted down all sorts of data: time of day, type of gas uses, time to drive back and forth etc.
In a short time, he had a clue: the man took less time to buy vanilla than any other flavour. Why? The answer was in the layout of the store. Vanilla, being the most popular flavour, was in a separate case at the front of the store for quick pickup. All the other flavours were kept in the back of the store at a different counter where it took considerably longer to check out the flavour.
Now, the question for the Engineer was why the car wouldn't start when it took less time. Eureka - Time was now the problem - not the vanilla ice cream!
The engineer quickly came up with the answer: "vapour lock". It was happening every night; but the extra time taken to get the other flavours allowed the engine to cool down sufficiently to start. When the man got vanilla, the engine was still too hot for the vapour lock to dissipate.
Remember: Even crazy looking problems are sometimes real and all problems seem to be simple only when we find the solution with cool thinking.
]]>Isn't this a classic case of a pot calling the kettle black?
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If you're writing for strangers, make it shorter.
Use images and tone and design and interface to make your point. Teach people gradually.
If you're writing for colleagues, make it more robust.
Be specific. Be clear. Be intellectually rigorous and leave no wiggle room.
Takeaway: the stuff you're putting online or in your blog or in your brochures or in your business letters is too long. Too much inside baseball. Too many unasked questions getting answered too soon.
Takeaway: the stuff you're sending out in your email and your memos is too vague.
Figure out which category before you put finger to keyboard!
]]>We've read about them over and over again. An entrepreneur founds a wildly successful business and then is forced out, because he's alienated those who work with him. The common explanation is that these companies get too big for the entrepreneurs to run. They're not managers; they're idea guys. But John Gartner, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, has another theory: It's not that they just haven't been trained as managers, but they're not wired to be managers—they're hypomanics.
Gartner, who studied successful businesspeople in his recent book, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between A Little Craziness and A Lot of Success in America (Simon & Schuster, $26), says that the most successful entrepreneurs are somewhat manic in their single mindedness. "They have an offbeat idea, which they believe with messianic fervor will change everything," he says. "And their evangelical zeal gets other people on board."
Apple Computer co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs thinks his company's product will change our lives, and is a good example of this type of visionary. In fact, Gartner says, Jobs formally acknowledged the importance of evangelism in business when he made Guy Kawasaki the company's Macintosh evangelist in the early '80s. Jobs also embodied the hypomanic's dark side, and was ousted from the company in 1985 due to his mercurial management style. He returned as CEO in 1997.
It was during the dot-com era that Gartner, a psychologist, started to notice that entrepreneurs had the same manic behavior as those who consider themselves to be religious prophets. "I started to realize that all these figures on CNBC and in FORTUNE magazine shared some of the same qualities as messianic visionaries," he says. "They said, 'We are going to change the world and get rich doing it.'" In profile after profile, Gartner says, business publications described these entrepreneurs as "maniacs." To Gartner, describing someone's behavior as manic was more than an easy label—it described a specific type of behavior. Manics have grandiose visions and high energy, and are risk-taking and impulsive. A hypomanic shares some of the same characteristics of a manic depressive, but he doesn't suffer from a psychiatric disorder. "It's not an illness, but it's not normal," says Gartner. Hypomanics "don't think outside the box, because they don't even see the box."
In his book, Gartner cites J. Craig Venter, founder and former CEO of Celera Genomics, as a classic example of a hypomanic. Setting off a race to map the human genome, Venter bragged that Celera would beat the National Institutes of Health's Human Genome Project, even though the government initiative had a considerable head start. In early 2001, both announced their findings. Yet, less than a year later, the biotech firm fired Venter, because he refused to consider that the company might be more profitable as a pharmaceutical company. Venter and his foundation, The J. Craig Venter Institute, in Rockville, Md., are now at work mapping the genomes of the airborne microorganisms like fungi, bacteria, and viruses in order to study how they affect human health.
Venter's ouster from Celera shows the downside of being a hypomanic entrepreneur—these personality types can be real pains in the butt. Hypomanics tend not to listen to others' suggestions, because they believe that their ideas are the right ones. They also are impatient with others, because they believe that they must take action immediately. And they can make disparaging comments without considering that they may hurt people's feelings. While these characteristics may not prevent entrepreneurs from starting their ventures, they could become liabilities later on when the company needs loyal employees.
If you think you are a hypomanic, Gartner has some tips about how you can modulate your behavior.
* Don’t be a jerk. You may think that it's perfectly understandable for you to get angry at someone who doesn't agree with you, but you have to realize that your temper tantrum may have lingering repercussions. You may not remember what you said five minutes later, but the person you insulted won't forget so quickly.
* Don't rush into decisions. Take time to consider different courses of action. While making a quick decision may pay off in some cases, in others it may cost you your business. One entrepreneur told Gartner that his modus operandi was "ready, shoot, aim," He finally realized that it would be better if he changed it to "ready, aim, shoot."
* Don't assume that your company will be an instant success. It's good to think big, but not so big that you set yourself up for failure. Gartner says that many dot-com startups made it almost impossible for themselves to be long-term successes, because they planned to be successful from the get go. Boo.com, an upscale online retailer, bought five castles in Europe before it even had a website, he says.
Remember, you may have the best idea in the world, but if you can't work well with others, you may not be around to see it to fruition.
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Definitely worth more than a single read (although O' Reilly has left me a bit down with the book layout).
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