Fallout from the Google Bomb

Paula's been doing most of the posting lately, because I've been writing a lot of articles on the TOWER Software corporate blog. I've tried to be careful about letting work articles bleed over to this blog, but I couldn't resist this topic.

Simon, in a gutsy, possibly career-limiting move, publicly questioned the reason for TOWER Software's existence. The question he posed is: With search tools like Google available, why bother to organize or file anything? Just let the algorithm find it for you.

This is one of the "big three" strategic challenges that my company faces. I've got it and the other two written on my whiteboard at the office. (No peeking!) We've been thinking about how to address these issues at TOWER Software for quite a while, but it's been an internal discussion.

Not any longer. It's in the blogosphere now; Gordon has already posted his response. Here's mine.

Google is not magic

When Simon titled his controversial article "Why Bother Organizing?" he stated that you could dump all your electronic content into a big pile and have Google sort it out for you later. This is true. But he also implied that organization itself is unnecessary. This is absolutely false.

Google organizes things all the time. That's what it does. "Organizing the World's Information" is Google's mission statement. Google is nothing but a gigantic indexing and organizing engine -- and it has plenty of help.

Google deploys an untold number of automated spiders, crawlers and bots to find information and index it. Google employs a small army of software developers and mathematicians to tweak and maintain the PageRank algorithm. Companies and individuals notify Google when they create their websites. There's an entire industry devoted to helping Google find things.

We're part of it, too. Every time we click on a search result, we're voting on how high Google should place the webpage in its index. Every time we make a hyperlink, we help Google relate information. Every time we write a webpage that includes title and meta tags, we're helping Google organize the web.

Without this massive amount of support and assistance, there's no way that Google could present the results it does. Google search results don't spontaneously appear. Creating order out of chaos requires organization, and organization requires work. That's not a slogan: that's the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

What Simon's really talking about in his post is far more personal: "Why should I have to organize this information?" The magic of Google is not that it creates something (search results) out of nothing (a big heap of disordered junk). The magic of Google is that it has so thoroughly abstracted the hard work of organizing from the end user that technically savvy folks like Simon don't see it happening. Brilliant!

When you look at it this way, the challenge that Simon posed is not really an existential question for TOWER Software and other players in the ECM industry. It's an execution question. The challenge is to dramatically improve the design of ECM solutions so that systems appear to organize the information without human intervention.

Always trust your audience.

I was recently reading an article about comic Phyllis Diller in Smithsonian Magazine. She recently donated a 48-drawer card catalog of one-liners to the Smithsonian.

I thought the archive was an outstanding example of a personal knowledge library. The information age accelerates the need for a personal library, but the problem has been around long before the computer. A card catalog may be a low-tech del.icio.us, but the problem they solve is similar.

I also thought Phyllis had an insightful metric for what stayed in the files and ultimately the success of a joke: If the audience laughed, it was funny. "You never blame the audience" she says. Period.

That seems obvious, but how often do people cling to bad ideas that flop? Bad designs that users don't like? Documents that do not make their point clearly? Training guides that confuse? It is human nature (and, human ego) to assume we know better. If our audience doesn't understand or appreciate, they must be wrong. Sometimes we do know better - sometimes innovated ideas are not recognized by the greater public until later. But a majority of the time it is as easy as the Ms. Diller's audience test: The definition of funny is making someone laugh.

Internet Radio finds

I love my Sonos. ahem, I mean Dean really loves the Sonos I got him for Christmas.

One of the unexpected benefits of the Sonos, besides having music playing allover the house 24/7, is the internet radio stations that come with the Sonos system pre-loaded. When our computer is not connected, The Sonos can still play from the Internet radio list. The list has some hits, some misses, but amongst all that I found a pretty cool little internet radio station: Martha's Vineyard Radio.

They play an eclectic mix of 80s and 90s that ranges from REM, U2, Elvis Costello to Blues Traveller, Wallflowers, and Belle and Sebastian, then randomly they throw in stuff like a evening blues show and some other random but good genres. It makes a nice alternative to the iTunes library.

Dean is busy engineering a way to hook in our Sattalite radio (XM) stream, so prety soon we will be able to play any genre of music, any time, all over the house. Heaven. I'm willing to go on a starvation diet to buy more Sonos parts, because there are still parts of my house that I don't yet have covered in music.

Which reminds me of a post that Gordon blogged about - some products invoke emotional attachment. iPod was one, but I've found a new love - Sonos. If only all products were that huggable.

Lightbulbs

Yesterday our closet light bulb burned out. This managed to coincide with a current news item - California legislators are proposing to ban the incandescent bulb in favor of energy efficient light bulbs.

I have to agree with the desired end state - use the power of government influence to control energy consumption and reduce the power hungriness of the average California household. But the means are all wrong. They shouldn't be banning incandescent light bulbs, they should be taxing them.

My closet light bulb demonstrates the challenge. The ceiling fixtures in our townhouse have a decorative glass cover around the light bulbs. Dean was all excited to replace the current incandescent bulb with one of our newfangled energy efficient bulbs. (Not necessarily out of environment concern - more that I can never again make him climb a ladder to change the light bulb....). Unfortunately, Dean's plan was adverted - the energy efficient light bulbs are actually a fraction larger than their incandescent counterparts. The glass cover doesn't fit. And so instead of an energy efficient bulb, an energy hogging incandescent went in.

Which led us to conclude that the right answer is taxation. There are always those for whom aesthetics (or, engineering necessity) requires a standard incandescent bulb. The market driver now is to by the old bulbs, because at the point of sale they are cheaper. Even if their lifetime cost is less, consumer behavior is very sensitive to upfront cost. So to change behavior, instead of enacting an outright ban, California should just tax incandescent light bulbs at 200%. Most consumers would buy the energy efficient bulbs, but those who needed the older bulbs for a specific cause could still purchase them. Ultimately supply and demand would also influence price, and the less-demanded incandescent bulbs would be more cost more. This would eventually also replace the need for incandescents for old fixtures - consumers like us would realize that it may in fact be cheaper to replace old closet light fixture than to pay the incandescent tax.

United Sux

United Airline Sux. Our customer service nightmare with them continues. After cancelling our flight, sending 400 people into a customer service line with one representative, and having a completely worthless phone system, we finally gave in and flew Delta airlines out of Baltimore so we could make it home for the holidays. Then, to add insult to injury, United lost our luggage for three days after telling us no less than three times that it was "being sent".

We managed to make it to Denver and back without incident (Which means, we were "only" 30 minutes late..."), and the only human being we can reach so far in customer service is when we call after hours and talk to the India call center. So far they haven't exactly been helpful. Fortnately we're back home again, but United stil owes us $1400, and by my account, a free flight or two... which is why I'm proud to announce that Delta Airlines is the new official airline for the Thrashers!

Christmas in Tennessee

Merry Christmas! Dean and I are on the road visiting family, so we won't be updating the blog much this week.

We had a little adventure getting home for the holidays this year as United Airlines cancelled our flight and failed to provide us with anyway to travel before Tuesday (Which is um, after Christmas...). The entire story is pretty long and probably boring - the short version is United Airlines has quite possible the worst customer service ever. They also have one of those annoying speech recognition phone systems, which is particular irritating because you feel compelled to yell a string of explitives at it, and then it talks back to you and says "I'm sorry, I didn't understand you..." We ultimate ended up buying a last minute ticket with Delta Airlines and it still took three trips to the airport to retrieve our luggage.

But we finally arrived and Christmas with the fam was fun as always. We wouldn't want you all to miss the experience of celebrating Christmas in Tennessee, so we posted a picture of us hanging with Elvis on Christmas. Cheers!

Sonos!

Dean got to open his Christmas present early this year - a Sonos whole-house audio system, and a new set of Focal/JMLab speakers to play music in the living room.

Having made Dean spend all our hard earned savings on boring furniture over the years, I decided that instead of more uphostery Dean could buy a sweet stereo system for Christmas. I did some research and discovered that audiophile geek was a specific sub-genre of ubergeek - and I was a total n00b. Lucky for me, Anthony was an audio zenmaster in a former life. Sonos, litle grasshopper. Sonos.

Dean and I visited our local stereo geek store (Tweeter) on Sunday and picked out our Sonos bundle. Next we needed speakers, so we could play our music in the living room. Enter the speaker room. Two comfy chairs, an array of CD/DVD players and amplifiers, and a wall of speakers. The sales person gave us a demo - the Polk sounded nice, the Infinity solid but a little crisp.. and the Focals sounded like a glass of expensive french wine. C'est épatant! The speakers were a bit more than we wanted to spend... but as luck would have it, last year's model of speaker was on sale for 40% off - making them the same price as the Polk speakers. Sold! (2006 was a good vintage).

Like all good Chrismas gifts, the best ones are as fun to unwrap as to use. First, we set up the speakers. Did I mention these babies are très magnifique? They weigh a ton. Dean says this is a sign of a good speaker. I say, this is a sign that Dean will be carrying them in from the car.

Having set up our speakers, it was time to unwrap the Sonos. As I mentioned before, I am a total stereo n00b. The Sonos was blindingly simple to set up. The entire set comes in a cute little box and setting it up is as easy as plugging cord A into Tab B and pressing the on button. Setting up zones was easy, and the software we installed on our computer was even savvy enough to find our music library automagically. Brilliant.

The Sonos is so well designed, its worthy of its own blog entry where I can rave about it. That will have to wait until another day, I have audio heaven to visit now.

Shyness and eye contact

Dean and I just completed a circuit of holiday parties this weekend (one Christmas, One Jewish - we just have to attend a Kwanzaa festival and I think we'll be good).

So here is my thought for the day - I've always been an extrovert, and I love a good party for the people watching. One thing I noticed this weekend made me want to do more research. Do shy or introverted people make less eye contact because they are shy? Or is it the lack of eye contact that makes someone shy (because as they develop conversation skills, they fail to connect with people because they are not making eye contact?)

The psychology of this fascinates me. Must research. Results will be posted later (probably after New Years)

Simplicity Sells Out

It's a rare occasion when I disagree with such pundits as Joel Spolsky and Donald Norman, but this is one of those times. As covered on Slashdot, they now say that simple designs are inferior to complex ones.

Donald Norman wrote two articles on the subject. The first article makes the claim that simple doesn't sell; given the choice, most consumers will select the product with more features and more options. To his mind, the market has resoundingly refuted the notion that less is more. But is this a matter of common wisdom or market failure?

When you buy a product for the first time, you're never quite sure whether it will do the job. Economists call this situation one of "imperfect information". I'd argue that in cases like this, consumers tend to overbuy. They think, "I'll take the Swiss Army knife over the Petit Chef knife because hey, one of the blades is likely to work." It's called Satisficing. You might not get the right thing, but at least you'll have something.

But you'll find that the opposite is true among experts who know what they're buying. Mechanics and surgeons, for example, will have an array of tools, each crafted to do just one simple operation. They know the right one to use for any given situation. The complexity of a multipurpose thingamajig is likely to get in their way.

You'll also find that folks who are very wealthy -- for whom buying decisions are less risky -- will also choose products that do one thing and do it well. It's why a good watch can command a price of thousands of dollars, when feature-crammed smartphones sell for much less. They both tell time. The accuracy is roughly the same. But less can be more.

Norman's other article takes issue with Google's simple user interface. Google's search interface appears to be a clear case of less is more to most people. Norman feels that the interface is worse, because Google's many other features are "hidden" on other pages, while Yahoo and MSN have their features up front, right where the user can get at them.

Assuming the user can find them, of course. Here, Norman makes a common mistake, and one that should probably be the subject of another blog article. A web site is not a software application. Everything that ends in "google.com" is not part of the same product. Google's philosophy appears to be that each tool should stand on its own, like a of screwdrivers. Each feature is individually addressable through a its own URL. Yes, you can get to these through a menu. But Google's innovation is to put the Google search, the thing most Google users want, front, center and uncluttered. If I want Froogle, I'll go to Froogle.com. If I want maps, then http://maps.google.com is the place to go.

Joel's simplicity article argues that if "simple" means "has less features" then your product is doomed to fail over the long term. I agree with him on this point. But he understates the value of doing one thing well. And adding more doodads to gadgets is not the way into most people's hearts. The humble teddy bear outsells the most amazing interactive storytelling synchs-with-my-computer-using-firewire audio-animatronic stuffed entertainment companion, despite its lack of features.

As one contributor to the Slashdot discussion of the anti-simplicity articles noted (and as Paula commented not too long ago) Joel himself took issue with the notion of more features being better in his article on Choices=Headaches. Simple generally means easier to learn and easier to use. And for most users, that can be a very compelling feature indeed.

Solving what you can't touch.

We're working right now with my government program to try to achieve "synergy" (I hate that word...) between different programs that are working on related goals. For example, getting the collaboration program to coordinate with the network bandwidth program and both to coordinate with the data center hosting program. It sounds easy, but in big organizations the hardest thing to do is to coordinate different groups.

The issues are not technology related at all - they're about program schedules, culture, information exchange, and building relationships. Except, somehow we're convinced what we need is ... more technology. Lets just implement service oriented architectures! that will fix it! How about a search engine? If we could just search better we would work together better!

All silly.

It is not a technology problem we have. If it were, it would be solved. It is easier to solve problems with real, tangible things. Technology problems are tangible, and discrete. I can build a better search engine. I can make all my applications communicate with an XML webservice. That part is easy. The hard part are the non-tangibles. Who gets my priority? What information should I share? How should I communicate?

Abstract thinking is hard. Which is why we should all do more of it.

Simplicity sells

I'm a copycat. But I love the point being made so I'm repeating it. Simplicy sells.

Joel on Software wrote last week about the "9 ways to turn off" your next version of Windows. Macword wrote about how Microsoft is messing up the Zune because they're making it more complex instead of simple like the iPod.

Good grief - even the economist gets it. The point is, customers don't really give a flip what makes sense to YOU, they care about what is best, easiest, and simple for them. Duh.

Bond, James Bond.

Dean and I have returned from a fun holiday weekend with the family. Grandmammas turkey dinner was yummy as always, the girls beat the boys in charades; and the turkey hash the next day was even yummy again, and Georgia won a nail-biter of a football game over Georgia Tech.

The Thrasher clan also headed out to see Casino Royale. It may be the best Bond film ever. It was certainly the most riveting 144 minutes of movie I've seen in a while. None of that goofy go-go gadget arm invisible cars and such that populated recent films. The Bond girl isn't flat for once (character wise! she still has boobies!); Bond is gritty in a Steve McQueen kinda way; and Daniel Craig dispels any rumors that you need to be a brunette pretty boy to play James Bond. In fact, he's the second sexiest blond I've ever seen! teehee

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Dean and I bribed Gordo and family with half a dozen glazed donuts so we could check out their new Wii. Having now played the Nintendo, I predict the Wii will come out ahead in the console wars. I don't even have to play the PS3 orXbox 360. Despite the goofy name, the Wii is fun, cheap and accessable. Microsoft and Sony may battle it out for the "hard core gamer" crowd (males 18-35), but this Wii thing will be selling to the masses. Lots and lots of masses. And that includes the female masses. First, the Wii includes making your own "Mii", which is remarkably similar to The Sims, an already breakout hit with the ladies. Second, the controller looks just like a remote control - which makes it very accessable to the first time gamer. That and the entire thing is cute! This means the wii is gonna be a hit with just about everyone else under the age of 18 - and probably a few those 18-35 folks too. I mean face it, its just fun to jump around your living room. (though unfortunately, I'm too big to do somersaults on the couch like Ruben and Link.)

Change happens.

Dean and I both have strategy meetings going on this week, so we've both been thinking about corporate vision and strategy. Gordon sent over a great link to Survival is not enough by Seth Godin. I haven't read the book yet, but he makes some great points. Like most business books though, half the points are worthless; the rest are case studies. Good of Mr. Godin to bulletize his to book for me though, saves time.

Here is my even shorter synopsis of his short summary:

• Change happens. Technology has caused change to happen faster than it used to.
• Corporations that don't change, get defeated
• Companies that introduce a different product to market quickly may find that they can create a 'runaway' success
• People (bosses and employees) fear change. Change is different, and human instinct avoids differences, prefering habit. But not changing is actually worse. (ed note: See "Who Moved My Cheese")
• Change presents opportunities for individuals, and for companies to grow
• Companies need to have a culture of "Change equals opportunity" rather than "Change equals death" (or change equals risk?)
• Companies should try to 'evolve'. Change is constant. Better to create a culture of change than to create a 'change plan'. A change plan is an oxymoron.
• A company that has a culture of change, attracts individuals that seek change, opportunities, and new capabilities.

I'm published!

So my company now has a corporate blog, and my first article on it just went live! So without further ado, please visit TOWER Software and read my article about the importance of metadata.

Humans are fault tolerant.

Here's an autoblog thought from last night's dinner conversation*:

Dean: You know what most software gets wrong? Its not fault tolerant. Computers need perfection.
Paula: ... but humans are fault tolerant.
Dean: Yeah - exactly. You can flub your words, misspell, whatever, and humans figure it out. This is why people like google. I can type in micsrosoft and it still lists www.microsoft.com at the top of the search results.
Paula: That's also why I like google maps. I can type "Krispe Kreme, Washington DC" and Google finds me the nearest source of hot doughnuts. Mapquest has better directions, but I have to always type the street address... ok now tab to the city text box... crap, VA is at the bottom of the state dropdown box...it's too hard.
Dean: This is where everyone goes wrong in software design. They expect smart users. But people are dumb and lazy. That's why they prefer humans to machines. Humans are fault tolerant - computer software should be too.
* unfortunately, since autoblogger is still run by pet monkeys who type our conversation up, this is heavily paraphrased. Spelling and grammar errors are the fault of the monkey.

Speaking Too Soon

Two weeks ago, Gordon posted the sunniest column about the dreaded developer Death March I've ever read. It offers some great advice about how to survive a ridiculous project with crazy deadlines.

It was also written one day too soon.

My response is three weeks too late.

These facts are related.

Night Owls

I'm not a morning person. Neither is Paula, though she can fake it with enough coffee. A key attraction of our trip to Spain is that the country is populated entirely by night owls.

The daily rhythm of life in Spain apparently goes something like this:

8:00 am      Wake up
9:00 am      Eat breakfast
9:30-ish     Arrive at work
2:00 pm      Eat lunch
4:00 pm      Disappear
7:00 pm      Drinks and tapas
8:00 pm      Shopping
11:00 pm     Dinner
1:00 am      Bed?

So you can plan on four or five small meals scattered throughout the day, all served later than you might expect. This may be partly due to Spain being pretty far back in its time zone. It certainly stayed light very late when we were there in Sepetember.

Note that all times shown above are approximate. One of the striking things about Spain was the absence of clocks. It's hard to picture a British or German town without its large clock tower. In the United States and Canada, practically every bank has a scrolling sign that displays the time and temperature. But in Spain? It's not important. If you listen carefully, you might hear a church bell ringing, but that's done only to signify that time is passing, not what time it actually is.

Most shops don't list hours of operation. You can tell which ones that cater to tourists, because they bother to post small signs saying "Back soon". Don't take it literally. This may mean five minutes or two hours. The sign is just to reassure those with an overdeveloped sense of punctuality. Time, in Spain, just doesn't matter as much.

We found this totally relaxing, especially coming from America's uptight east coast. We're five hours behind London, darn it, which makes us five hours behind. And by golly, we'd better stay three hours ahead of those nuts in California. And that takes work. The planet doesn't turn itself, you know.

Speaking of relaxing, we were never able to figure out why all the shops and restaraunts closed around four or five pm. We used it for naptime. A siesta seemed appropriate, especially if we wanted to go all night. We're Night Owls, but we're a bit out of practice.

Spain is not Mexico

Travel is good mental exercise. It forces you to re-evaluate your assumptions about people and places. It also helps refine the way you look at home when you return.

One of the reasons why Paula and I picked Spain was that we each had a passing familiarity with the language. Of course, when I say "passing familiarity" I mean that we've driven past the endless billboards on Interstate 95. We've also consumed our fair share of tequila and nachos. We figured that we'd at least recognize enough words to get us fed, drunk, and to the nearest washroom.

We knew, of course, that Spain is not Mexico. But as much as we prepared ourselves for that, our brains were still buzzing from cognitive dissonance throughout the trip. Paula has relatives in San Diego and had visited Tijuana. I spent many holidays and an entire summer once with my relatives in Las Cruces, and have vivid impressions of Juarez.

It was worse for me than for Paula, I think. The part of Andalusia we visited reminded me very much of the American Southwest. It was, after all, where they filmed the Spaghetti Westerns. So while the language was similar, and the countryside and climate were familiar, everything else was dramatically different.

We were somewhat prepared for the food. We love tapas. It was one of the main reasons we chose to visit Spain. But it was strange to sit in restaurants, listening to the language and reading the menu, and knowing that there won't be a tortilla in sight. I don't believe we saw a single item containing corn on any menu, anywhere. Corn is native to the Americas, as was the potato, but while the potato was in evidence, corn was shockingly absent.

We were not prepared for the wealth of Spain. Our experience of Mexico is sadly limited to marginal border towns. It's hard to break the link between that and Spain, onetime ruler of the largest empire on earth, gateway to the wealth of the New World, and master of the seas through the Spanish Armada. One look at any of Spain's magnificent Cathedrals shows you that this was once the mightiest nation on earth.

Of course, we're comparing Madrid and Seville, present and former Spanish capitals, to shaky border towns in the hinterlands of Mexico. A comparison between Mexico City and Madrid might be more fair. But that was our experience, and probably one shared by quite a few Americans that visit.

Autoblog

I was just noticing how its been a while since either Dean or I wrote on our blog. Our laziness has a few good explanations*, we have each been spending brainpower writing for our respective internal corporate blogs, and we've been traveling around quite a bit. The truth is, we talk about bloggable subjects all the time - we just never get around to blogging them. What we need is autoblogger™! Autoblogger™ is a hand widget that records all our conversations, senses intelligent dialog**, automatically does a speech-to-text conversion on our chat, and posts a draft to blogspot for us.

Of course, given today's speech to text technology, what would really happen is we would say something like "What we really need is a tool that converts our speech into text and posts it online for us" and what we would get is "slutty feel, he need essay fools that desert our speech and boast daft incline forests." But I'm still waiting, maybe Google*** will do it!

* excuses
** coherent
*** Hint hint, Mikal!