Scott's musings

Books: blink & Fountainhead

Scott Howlett — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:06:32 GMT

There's so much talk all the time about how kids are natural multi-taskers - they're on 4 MSN conversations, watching a YouTube video, doing an math assignment while listening to their iPod. I guess I must be old, because the extent of my "multitasking" is reading... At any given time, I'm usually reading 2 or 3 books - something on the fiction side, something from the business press and often something in politics. Of course, I don't literally read them at the same time... but you get the idea.

Anyway, I've just finished Ayn Rand's Fountainhead and Malcolm Gladwell's blink.

Fountainhead is pure fiction - a classic, I'm told by my much-better-read wife, whose writing began in the late thirties. If you like your fiction (or at least some of it) heavy on the philosophy side, this book is for you. I quite enjoyed it and read it through.

blink, is pure Gladwell and I'm not sure I'm that big a fan. This is my second attempt at blink, and I only made it to page 147 - about 1/2 way which isn't bad for something from the business press. The subtitle pretty much sums up the hypothesis - "The power of thinking without thinking".

The opening 17 pages from blink, describe the 'blink' scenario. Basically, scientist spend years proving that a statue from the 6th century B.C. is authentic. But when an expert looked at it, his first instantaneous reaction was 'fresh' - not what you'd expect for a statue that is 2500+ years old. But the expert in an instant, did what scientists couldn't do in years - that is, detect a fake.

And then, I'm reading Fountainhead - "He stopped, looking at a sketch.It was one that had never satisfied him....He had spent nights staring at this sketch, wondering what he had missed. Glancing at it now, unprepared, he saw the mistake that he made." And here, you see the same sentiment from blink and expressed 70 years earlier - that there are certain things that the brain can analyze better in an instant than it can with hours (or years) of analysis.

It's Gladwell's thesis that you can train yourself to be better at this instantaneous analysis, and to be better at figuring out what you'll analyze better in an instant than an hour. It's a powerful powerful idea, and one that I hope to explore further.

If you make it though blink, or already have, let me know what I missed in the second half.

Whoa! Sun's JavaFX goes head-to-head with Microsoft's Silverlight and Adobe's Flash

Scott Howlett — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:19:54 GMT

I was surprised when I heard the announcement that Sun was getting into the Rich Internet Application (RIA) Platform business. But they are, with an offering called JavaFX. I've dropped a couple of posts comparing Silverlight with Flash, but clearly I need to go to work and start looking at JavaFX. There's still a good chance, in my opinion, that either or both of Apple and Google get into this space as well - but beyond those 5 (Adobe, Microsoft, Sun, Apple, Google), I don't see any other competitors on the horizon. And so, what once looked like a market locked up by Adobe is suddenly wide open.

A good intro to JavaFX is provided here, by Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

I'm still tucking into JavaFX. Look for more content over the next week or so here.

Microsoft's Silverlight vs Adobe's Flash: November 2008 Update

Scott Howlett — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:48:44 GMT

A lot has happened over the past couple of weeks in the ongoing fight between Microsoft's Silverlight and Adobe's Flash. We're seeing uptake in interest in the Toronto and Canadian markets for Silverlight-based solutions (including Silverlight with Sharepoint and Silverlight for Mobile) because the experience is just that much better.

First, we received, for the first time ever, penetration statistics (aka adoption rates) from Microsoft for Silverlight. Scott Guthrie (Corporate Vice President, .Net Developer Division), who is the guy when it comes to Silverlight, recently posted that Silverlight is installed on 25%+ of PCs.

Second, Guthrie showcased a whole bunch of Silverlight apps including NetFlix and Blockbuster and another whack of stuff around HD video which is just plain cool - check out www.smoothhd.com. Note to readers - I'm not honestly sure who does HD better but the Silverlight HD at this site is stunning.

I was able to confirm, via a few customers who use Omniture, that this 25% claim is accurate. This puts them still well-behind Flash, which is often promoted as the 'most installed software in the world'. It consistently has penetration north of 95%. Still, I'm impressed with what Microsoft's been able to do with Silverlight downloads but it really has to get in the range of Flash (say 80%+) for the mainstream to give it a serious look. Silverlight penetration remains a serious concern for consumer-facing properties.

There were also some sizable announcements this week from Adobe, out of their Adobe Max conference.

First, came word, that Major League Baseball had dropped Silverlight in favor of Flash. I see this as a big blow to Microsoft - MLB seemed to be a flagship customer and was onstage at Mix (Microsoft's Web conference) in Vegas in 2007 when Silverlight was announced. The demo of MLB at Mix was amazing!

Second, came the news the the NY Times was launching an AIR-based reader (AIR is a technology that lets Flash run outside a browser). This was a shocker to me, because the existing NY Time Reader was a flagship win for Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) technology which is sort-of a big-brother to Silverlight. I had heard as well that work was underway to make the existing reader Silverlight-based, which would then allow the reader to work cross-platform (i.e. on a Mac).

In the end, I'm impressed with what both Microsoft and Adobe are doing. With this degree of competition, the enterprise (the people who pay to have these apps created) will win because the platform (Flash or Silverlight) is getting better faster through competition. Consumer will also win, because they'll get more and better applications and experiences. Stay tuned - I think this one is just getting going.

For previous posts on this topic see - Microsoft's Silverlight vs Adobe's Flash - Which is better?.

Books: Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the future of a Continent (1 of 3)

Scott Howlett — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:46:33 GMT

Every now and again, if you're open to it and you read enough, you get that great experience of having your eyes pried wide open, your ignorance exposed, your mind spun. Tar Sands by Andrew Nikiforuk provided such an experience.

Tar Sands is likely one-sided, and I must seek out opposing viewpoints. For now, I'm committed to three posts.

For now, I can only point you at Nikiforuk's Declaration of a Political Emergency. And to quote something so profound, it has not left me since I read it weeks ago:

"As Christian philosopher C.S. Lewis wrote, greed is a form of pride, and 'Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.'" - Nikiforuk, p56

Books: At Vimy Ridge

Scott Howlett — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:55:00 GMT

Steve started the "Books" tag with the short review of Break all the Rules. So, I thought I'd continue the theme. It's long been one of my favorite interview questions - "So, what have you read lately?". It's very telling, I find. One time, I was interviewing a guy for a intermediate .Net developer role. He was not that engaged until I asked him this question at which point he positively exploded about his interest in German literature; I think he was working on a Masters in the area. That completely changed the interview in such a positive way...

Anyway, one of my younger kids brought home "At Vimy Ridge: Canada's Greatest World War I Victory" from school. It was a good chance to brush up on my Canadian WWI history. It's written for younger readers :), so I was able to get through it in one night.

Some interesting facts (more detail here):

Vimy Ridge is in France (I'm just sayin'....)
Some 100,000+ Canadian troops fought in the Battle for Vimy Ridge in April 1917. 3, 598 were killed.
The defeat at Vimy was a critical blow to the Germans on the Western front
In total, Canada lost 60,661 soldiers in WWI.
Over 700,000 Canadians served out of a population of 8,000,000 -> That's almost 1 in 10. Wow!
The Canadian effort at Vimy and WWI is seen as a key part of our nationhood, leading to the Statute of Westminster in 1931 which gave Canada control of its foreign policy (now that, I didn't know)

The Canadian effort at Vimy is remembered at the Vimy Ridge Memorial in France, on "Hill 145" which is the high point of Vimy Ridge at 145 metres. It looks to be a spectacular memorial (note to self - do not go to France again, and not visit the memorial)

Now I didn't get through the whole book with my child, but I was asked the most troubling question "What do you get when you win a war?" (zeesh!), and more pragmatically "What's longer, a battle or a war?".

This is a proud part of Canadian history - I'm glad my child's library trip in primary school gave me occasion to be reminded.

Influencers: Rick Segal

Scott Howlett — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:46:55 GMT

Through a few different routes, I'm one degree away from Rick Segal. Segal was at Microsoft and I know a few folks who know him. He was also at Chapters, and back in the days he was there everyone in the Microsoft partner community wanted a gig at Chapters. He also did a stint at MicroForum, but we won't mention that.

He's currently a partner a JLA Ventures, which is perhaps where our connection is closest. JLA Ventures was part of the VC behind www.grocerygateway.com, which was imason's first big .com customer. Although I never worked with Segal, I did work with one of the other partners at JLA.

In any event, I follow Segal's blog "Doing the Voodo VCs do in Canada". He's got some amazing insight into the market and he sees a lot of proposals. Rick is part of the group that is managing the BlackBerry Partners Fund, which isn't a surprise because Jim Balsillie is on the board for JLA, so he must be seeing some pretty cool mobile stuff. If you want to get into the mind of a VC (something that you should only do after consulting with your doctor), then you should really check out Segal's blog.

Some recent posts that I thought were really insightful or just plain funny:

Jimi King and the Power of Social Media - on how everyday things are being done around social media
NYC Today & Observations - on how much you can learn by watching everyday people use technology
Why I Love Capitalism - on Joe The Plumber Gear popping up right after McCain (or was it Obama?) uttered those words...

Anyway, check out Segal here - funny, insightful and frequent.

Web 2.0: Use in unintended ways - Google is better than the CDC in monitoring the flu

Scott Howlett — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:12:05 GMT

A long long time ago (OK, it was February 2006) I wrote about Web 2.0 in a post called Thoughts on Ajax/Atlas - 9: My $0.02 on Web 2.0. What was fascinating to me -- and lots of others -- about Web 2.0 was the interesting ways that people were driving value out of their data. I spoke with a lot of customers in 2006 about Web 2.0; I emphasized that it was really important to figure out how and what unique data their proposed application would capture. I reminded them that the genius of Amazon wasn't just a great online retail experience (something other eventually copied), but how they mined their data to provide a differentiated experience (the Amazon ratings and recommendations still can't be beat to this day). And Google wasn't just a great search algorithm (which it was and still is) but it was also about how they mined their search data.

Even with that though, I was totally blown away by GoogleFlu. Basically, they've taken their search data and used it to monitor the progression of the flu through the United States. You can read about how it works here including a great animated graph that shows how their monitoring is about 2 weeks ahead of the Center for Disease Control (CDC). It's really amazing that there's such a strong correlation between people search for 'flu' on the web, and the actual rates of flu infection in the community [note, the algorithm to make the correlation is likely much more sophisticated].

Wow! Now that's Web 2.0. And it's a little bit scary... :) What else are they watching????

By the way, this little tidbit was brought to me by TED (see TED - One of my favorite sites out there). Google.org is headed by Larry Brilliant who was a 2006 TED Prize winner...

Influencers: Jane Fulton Suri

Scott Howlett — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:28:28 GMT

I had a chance to see Jane Fulton Suri speak about a year ago at the Rotman School of Business. I was really really impressed. She was speaking about "thoughtless acts", a topic she had explored over some 20 years and published a picture-book on called -- not surprisingly -- thoughtless acts. You can get on Amazon (at imason, you'll find it on our bookshelf). There's even a website - www.thoughtlessacts.com.

I was really inspired after her talk, and the book is really awesome too - it's not what you're thinking. Suri doesn't catalog the litany of bad things that people do; rather this is an walk through all the millions of things that people do to meet their needs without thinking. Most of it appears trivial in the extreme - resting a shopping cart against a pole so it doesn't roll away; using a squared railing to rest a coffee cup; using the book you're reading on the beach to shade your eyes from the sun.

What can we learn from this? Tons! What I took away from this is the realization that humans are amazingly adaptive and very innovative in their use of the physical world. If it suits our needs, we'll 'misuse' nearly anything! There's so much for the Interactive Design people that we have at imason to learn from people like Suri who cut their teeth in the Industrial Design world.

What I'd love to know, and what I'm thinking about is "how do we allow the same 'misuse' in software?"

Obama: A more perfect union

Scott Howlett — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:13:00 GMT

It's been on my list for a while to watch Obama's speech following the words of his pastor, Pastor Wright. The speech was made in March, 2008. Although I had read by Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope this speech was on my list and has been now for about 6 months... Given that it's election day and all, I sat down this morning to give it a watch... I was not disappointed.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Next up for me is the speech for the 2004 Democratic National Convention... This has been on my list now for about 4 years...

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Influencers: www.TED.com - One of my favorite sites out there

Scott Howlett — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:12:00 GMT

Do you ever visit TED?

If you don't, you should. It has one of the best collections of short talks by some of the most recognized names in science, business and politics.

I recently watched Michael Shermer's talk "Why people believe strange things". The whole 13 minute talk is entertaining but the last 5 minutes or so is pure genius, including a dissection of the Zepplin lyrics played backwards...

It's so relevant to me and the business of imason - when it comes to technology, there is so much misinformation and preconceptions; our job is to untangle this web and move forward based on science and to keep the notions of business value front and center... this is what imason is all about.

Microsoft EPS Americas - Driving Opportunity in Turbulent Times

Scott Howlett — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:50:23 GMT

It's been really interesting being down here in Redomond at the Executive Partner Summit (EPS) Americas - yesterday there was a lot of talk about roadmaps and the concept of "consumerization" which I wrote about yesterday - Microsoft Executive Partner Summit (EPS) of the Americas - Day 1.

Today, it was great hearing from both Brad Callahan (VP, North American Services) and Alison Watson (Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Partner Group) about the ongoing opportunity that "we" (Microsoft & imason) have together. Nearly everyone I've spoken to hear (both at Microsoft and from other Microsoft partners) is talking about the challenging times, plan Bs, cost cutting, general anxiety, stalled deals, and a few are just plain out calling it a recession.

What's exciting though, and both Callahan and Watson pointed it out, is that it's a great time to be in "our" (Microsoft and imason) position. From an imason perspective:

We've invested over the past 10 years in a superb partnership with Microsoft
Microsoft has the platform "in market" that really allows us to demonstrate to customers the opportunity to drive competitive advantage and cost reductions for customers.
We have the solutions experience (both across Employee-facing and Customer-facing solutions) to "make it real" for our customers
We have a fantastic team of seasoned consultants.

In short, the times ahead will be tough, be we're well-positioned to take advantage of the turmoil. I'm looking forward to tackling this one head on!

Microsoft Executive Partner Summit (EPS) of the Americas

Scott Howlett — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:25:10 GMT

I'm down this Tuesday/Wednesday at EPS. It's a pretty cool idea and one that Microsoft has been doing in other regions (Europe, Asia) for a while. Basically, it's a couple hundred executives from Microsoft partners and a couple dozen of executives from Microsoft. Over a day and a half, everyone talks about the future of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry. Very cool!

One of the most interesting things for me today, was hearing both Simon Witts (Corporate Vice President, Enterprise & Partner Group) and Rich Reynolds (General Manager, Windows Commercial Marketing). What was interesting was that they both talked about an idea that Reynolds called 'comsumerization'.

Reynolds was talking from a Windows client perspective (i.e. Vista) about how, increasingly, users expect a seamless flow between their personal computing environment and the professional computing environment - between work and home.

Witts was talking about how Microsoft was the only company working across the 'broad canvas' - mobile, desktop, web, etc; Witts elaborated on why support for the broad canvas was important:

There's a large partner & customer opportunity by breaking down silos (as an aside, partner & customer opportunity is understood to be a good opportunity for Microsoft).
Because every technology is flowing from the consumer market into the enterprise (basically from home into work)

This 'comsumerization' has been identified at imason for a while. The notion that innovation is happening at the consumer level and flowing into the enterprise (or creating pressure on the enterprise) is a 180 degree reversal from the last 20 years of computing where innovation happened first in the Enterprise and then flowed into the consumer market. I'm surprised this trend hasn't received more press.

This trend, or what we call at imason a Market Insight, is a significant driver behind our recent split into two Business Units - Employee-facing Solutions and Customer-facing Solutions. We felt it was critically important that we stay in the market where we're building solutions for consumers (technically, we still build them for our clients, but the end-users are consumers). This is where most of the the innovation is happening, and that's where we want to be!

Anyway, back to the session.... Live demo of Windows 7 is going on now as I type!

Microsoft's Silverlight vs Adobe's Flash - Which is better?

Scott Howlett — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:15:42 GMT

The recent article in Macworld (Analysis: For Microsoft shops, Silverlight 2.0 trumps Flash) has generated quite a bit of interest over the past week in the Microsoft community. If the comments at macworld.com are any indication, the article was not well-received by the Apple community.

The salient question, for me, is 'Which is better?' The answer is, it depends.

'Depends on what?' you ask. It depends on a single question, and that is 'what type of solution are you after? A solution that emphasizes experience or a solution that emphasizes function.'

When I say this, I understand the relationship between experience and function -> that is, if there's poor experience it will likely lead to poor function and vs versa.

But to really understand why this line of distinction is important, you have to look beyond the direct comparison between Silverlight and Flash. Here are the 5 important dimensions:

Microsoft vs Adobe
Microsoft platform vs Adobe platform
Microsoft community vs Adobe community
Microsoft tools (Expression Suite) vs Adobe tools (Photoshop, Illustrator, CS4)
Microsoft Silverlight vs Adobe Flash

When you look at it across these dimensions, Microsoft has the edge in terms of function. They have a very deep base for building functional solutions - it goes way beyond what's currently available in Silverlight. Everything around Microsoft (history, platform, tools and community) is built around function. And, everything around Adobe is built around experience. It's so important to consider the role of the community here - Silverlight isn't necessarily better at functional solutions; but there's a huge base of experience (both at Microsoft and at the 600,000 or so Microsoft partners around the world) in building functional apps. And, a similar story on the Adobe side with respect to experience-based solutions.

It's also interesting to note that Microsoft is edging closer towards experience (Silverlight and the Expression suite are evidence of this) and Adobe is edging closer to function (AIR, Flex are evidence of this). This will be great for the industry.

The magic of the Internet and the ongoing fragility of software

Scott Howlett — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:14:03 GMT

{There is a point to this story... bear with me...}

At imason, we've got a pretty wiz-bang Nortel phone system. One of the features of the system is that it emails me my office voicemail. My voicemail comes in as an attachment titled voice_000.wav - this feature is phenomenal and very very convenient. For about the last month now, every time I've tried to open my voice mail I've received this message "Cannot create file: voice_000.wav...":

This sort of put a damper in the usefulness of the feature and required me to get my voice mail the old fashioned way - booooooo.

Today, I decided enough is enough, it's 2008 for goodness sake, and I shouldn't need to "call in to get my messages." So, did a quick google search for cannot create file

Bingo. First result shows me that it might have something to do with my registry key. Great. I fire up regedit and go here - HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Security.

hmmm I say.. What is C:\Users\showlett\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook\1S6693YF\? So I fire up Windows Explorer and go have a look. Basically it has a bunch of files in there - it looks like every attachment that I've ever opened from Outlook since who knows when... Nothing really caught my eye but as I scrolled down and down I saw this:

hmmmm I thought. That's weird. It ends at voice_000 (99). I wondered - could it be that Outlook only allows for up to 99 file attachments with the same name? Well, I deleted the 99th copy, went back to Outlook and BINGO, it was working again!

So, what's the moral of the story?

That the Internet is magic - it took me 2 seconds to get a lead on what the problem might be.
That software is still too fragile. It asinine that it breaks at 99.
That I'm using Google's Chrome and loving it.
That I use Google's search. Live search didn't have anything useful in the top 10 entries.
That you can find some really interesting things about what Outlook users have been doing by visiting a folder that looks like C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook\1S6693YF\
That Outlook doesn't clean up this folder -> clearing temporary Internet files doesn't do it and I'm not aware of a setting in Outlook to do it.
That troubleshooting and fixing stuff is still way way way too hard.

/s.

10 things that make great desktop widgets

Scott Howlett — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:06:41 GMT

I love top 10 lists...

Seamless download and install
The widget shows non-private information
Option to load on startup
Configurable with your preferences
Uses a small amount of resources (<5MB of memory)
Has "Blink value" - value you can get in <1s. You can look at desktop widgets that run in the task tray (the task tray is that row of icons on the bottom right hand side of your screen if you're running XP or Vista) for examples of this:

a. . I can see resource utilization is high.

b. . I can see my current status is logged in and I’m available.

c. . Not good. No meaningful information here.

Has "Hover value" - value you can get in <2s. Examples:

a. . Good, but basically what I get with the blink.

b. . Good, but basically what I get with the blink.

Has "Glance value" value you get in under 10s. Example:
Provides Alerts. When something happens, useful information is brought to your attention. Example:
Easy linking to more detailed information if desired. Example: