What I Would Do With One Trillion Dollars

It seems to be the question of the day. Well, the very first question seems to be 'How much money do we need to solve the economic problem?' US$1,000,000,000,000 seems as good a starting place as any other amount.

So, should we:

a) Give a few large chunks to a few large companies that have failed because they are too big to fail?

b) Give many small chunks to many small companies, improve the odds that a number of small businesses can do a better job than a couple gigantic businesses and restart competition?

Its instructive to look at the last time a similar situation demanded evolutionary thinking. No, I'm not talking the 1930s.

I'm talking 63,000,000 BC, right before that meteor struck and nature had a choice: save the dinosaurs or give mammals a chance.

We've seen the financial meteor hit. Rather then pour US$1,000,000,000,000 into that impact crater, how about the Small Business Administration? Want US$10,000,000 to start a new bank? Great. And there would be money left over for 100,000 more. Think Tesla could use a few more dollars to bring its car to market? How about James Fallow's Day Jet ideal? Even my brother once looked in to starting his own credit card company.

Wasn't it a good thing that mammals got an opportunity?

My One Comment on the Banking Fiasco

Apparently we like to privatize profits but socialize losses. Or maybe the management of these failed financial institutions I now own a part of returned their ill-gotten gains without notifying me yet.

On the other hand, maybe I can stay at their house during the holidays.

Building Castles in the Air

Some very smart people have been telling me 'everything is moving toward the cloud', to which I partially agree. However, I'm consistently amazed how readily the piece of iron (figuratively) on your desktop is discounted. And it's not necessarily a case of one being better than the other-- I feel its a philosophical argument-- but rather how they complement each other.

At the bare mininum, to access the cloud, you will need... something on your desk or in your lap. Furthermore, you will need an access point to the cloud, whether a cable coming out of a wall, a wireless router or wimax. The cloud will never replace these essential pieces.

What the cloud represents to me is an advancement in data mobility. How much or little you dress it up in Flash or HTML is really beside the point. It's all about the availability of data and how best to route it to anyone that needs it.

So it caught my eye when Dan Farber wrote about 'The Cloud of Unrealibiliy'. He wasn't writing about how the UI had bugs, or that he had to download too many pieces-- it was that occassionally he couldn't get at his data.

Sure systems will become more reliable over the years, but the question will remain the same-- how best to transfer your data. It may not even be reliability that is the issue in 2015, but whether your data can get from point A to point B. The railroads of the 1800s come to mind. As we move towards corporations having a greater hand in the delivery and storage of data, I wonder if the cloud will really become a series of weather systems.

In which case your data will benefit from having alternate modes of travel-- sort of a revamped Planes, Trains and Automobiles for bits.

What I Would Do With Groove

I've been getting great feedback from my previous post spawned by Groove angst. It does seem like Groove is at an inflection point and, given the state of things today, hard to see how it captures the imagination. As Don Dodge likes to put it, not only is Groove a vitamin and not painkiller, but its unclear what vitamins and minerals are even in the Groove pill.

Given that, I think it's time to dream again. After all, if you asked any Groover back in, say, 2004 if 'Offline SharePoint Cache' was their vision I doubt they would have had kind words for you.

So now in 2008, as part of the world's greatest Office Suite, don't you think its OK to be a bit more expansive? Putting on my virtual 'Chief Software Architect' hat, here's what I would do: mimic SharePoint not by copying data locally and pushing it back but by copying their architecture model.

Web Parts and Web Services

Here's a secret-- SharePoint is not concerned so much about the UI experience as it is about the data experience. Yes there are some nice icons and the color scheme is pleasing, but I'm confident SharePoint out-of-the-box won't be pushing the UI design and interaction experience. They'd much rather developers and ISVs flesh that out because, in addition to making things look pretty, they most likely also specialize their solutions for more specific business needs than a mass-market SharePoint product can do out-of-the-box.

So they have a Web Part architecture that folks like Bamboo Solutions (one of our partners) can develop against and users can drop in to their SharePoint environment.

And they have a Web Service architecture that folks like TeamDirection can use to send data back and forth from client to server and do interesting things with.

As a developer, it really is a Model View Controller architecture with the three elements being three applications working together according to contract.

If Groove is looking to copy SharePoint, then this is what it needs to copy. Better yet, because it's on the client, it will be able to do a few things only a client application can do-- most importantly integrate with data on your desktop, but also providing a rich visual experience.

Here's the vision:

No more effort with Groove Forms. No need to reinvent the arduous aspects of HTML form development on the client. Instead...

Go to Silverlight as the UI within the Groove client. This will let you leverage the current investment Microsoft is making to build a generation of Silverlight programmers. But add a wrinkle...

Make Groove a Special Silverlight Container that gives permission for Silverlight to integrate with the desktop. This allows Groove to become the world's best Rich Internet Application delivery platform. Which is great as long as you don't forget to..

Continually invest in Groove Web Services so that developers can easily pump desktop data in and out of these Rich Internet Applications and tie their current business processes together.

I am not saying Groove shouldn't talk to SharePoint. Groove needs to talk to SharePoint for SharePoint will be the way business will organize their data and processes.

But Groove's opportunity is just as big, only instead of coalescing data and process according to the macro business needs, Groove can coalesce data and process according to the micro Information Workers needs. Perhaps its a bit trite, but I do think Groove fits very well in line with Microsoft's former 'Information at your fingertips', current 'your potential' and general 'empower the user' vision.

There's nothing wrong with going back to your roots. You just have to re-dream it sometimes.

Ruminations on SharePoint and Groove

One of the great things about being a Microsoft MVP is the chance to go to the MVP Global Summit. Microsoft essentially takes the most knowledgable, most active and most vocal people in to answer lots of questions, preview what they're working on and shower you with positive vibes. The cynic would say its only smart tactics (which it is :), but judging by all the product teams representatives-- both the presenters and the note takers-- I certainly came away with the impression they listen to and value feedback.

Without going in to specifics, one of the more contentious issues seemed to be how SharePoint and Groove will work together. As Internet News reported of Ray Ozzie's and Steve Ballmer's speeches, they both received 'what about Groove' questions during their Q&A. Again without going in to details, the Groove folks are not enthusiastic on what is happening today and what is planned for tomorrow.

Of course, this shouldn't come as a surprise if you read this blog for TeamDirection was the premier Groove ISV with its bundled Groove Project Edition. The fact that I attended the conference as a SharePoint MVP is probably all I really need to say.

But I can't help myself.

Groove’s strength is its decentralized architecture, which should be the perfect complement to SharePoint’s centralized architecture. Two people gave me perfect examples of this during the conference: Matt, a SharePoint MVP I sat next to at several SharePoint sessions and Steve Ballmer. The example was being able to suck all the information from disparate sources onto your personal device and keep it synchronized.

Fundamentally this is a powerful architecture because it can centralize data on your desktop-- the flip side of SharePoint powerful architecture centralizing data on your server. In fact, it used to be Groove could house the .NET framework in its environment and thereby give developers a rich user experience with sophisticated peer-to-peer networking for gathering and updating all this data. I'd even go so far as to argue that Groove, because of its ActiveX and then .NET support, was a compelling vision of a Rich Internet Application framework.

Yes, I did say 'was', for you'll notice that the .NET framework is no longer accessible within Groove and their forms environment is too primitive for robust development. As a developer, I would love to see .NET reappear within Groove and give me the ability to integrate with desktop applications and the powerful peer-to-peer workgroup synchronization.

It doesn't even have to be Windows Forms as the UI. I'm most impressed with Silverlight and think that should be bolted on to Groove as a means to marry a better Rich Internet Application solution with a great distributed synchronization solution.

Think about it-- a unified model for accessing centralized (SharePoint) or decentralized (Groove) data with a common Rich UI tailored to the groups needs. In fact, Groove can enhance Silverlight in two important ways:

1) It could facilitate data synchronization among a group of Silverlight users without having to poll a central server.
2) It could be a recognized 'Safehouse' whereby Silverlight would be allowed to access local resources. That is, the one place where Silverlight will let you access local resources like your file system or other application interfaces.

What's the one complaint RIA developers have? You can't do anything with the local resources. How much of an advantage (and selling point) would it be if Groove could fulfill this story? I'm looking forward to providing Silverlight solutions married to SharePoint as a means bring value add to my customers working on a SharePoint hub. But I'd love to be able to take, more or less, the same UI, plonk it into a Groove spoke and provide uniformity for ad-hoc workgroups too.

I think you could even pitch 'RIA Safety Zone' in an elevator :)

Reverse Distortion Field

Michael must be right and I must be wrong. It must have been the 24" iMac I mistook as a TV, which is still overpriced but not absurdly so-- just an uncomfortable 'I don't know...' so.

I guess that HP monitor really did turn my head and framed my view of the iMac. How important is framing? Even with Apple's famed 'distortion field', my immediate comparison was to an orange, er ..., wide-screen monitor. I wasn't interested at all in the guts of what was driving the display, the computer itself.

Apple, I'm sorry for comparing the 24" iMac to a 22" wide screen HP monitor. I think the best way for this not to happen in the future is to actually come out with your own TV. I'm ready.

ReadWriteWeb had a recent poll asking what segment of consumer electronics Apple will dominate next. I think it has to be TV, not just the big hunk of plastic you put in your living room (though I'm sure it will be there), but the way TV will be done. Think iTunes, and think YouTube.

Google may or may not be regretting their YouTube purchase, but I do think Google had to buy them because Google needs to stay on top of media-- and YouTube definitely demonstrated the popularity of its media, and medium. But that hasn't necessarily followed with money.

My hunch is it will be Apple that will break the licensing logjam currently affecting Google's monetization of YouTube, and hovering like a spectre (a la the recording industry) of video. The only reason video hasn't been turned on its head like music is the sheer number of bits involved. But once it becomes as quick and easy to copy and move 4GB as 4MB, you can be sure what's coming.

Movie studios are certainly aware. I'm noticing more 'copying movies is illegal' previews in front of the movies I am legally renting. The pressure to address it, and not make the same mistakes as the recording industry, is only mounting.

Actually, if I'm Microsoft, maybe this is the best way to get in front of Apple and get a real piece of the Google content pie. But I can't imagine Google would do a deal with MSFT before AAPL, and Cupertino is just down the road from Mountain View.

My money is on an Apple/Google video content deal of some kind before the end of the year.

And an honest to goodness Apple TV.

Why Apple Hasn't Taken Over The World

I was in Fry's today, ostensibly to return an item. With resolute determination I intended to complete the transaction and head to the nearest exit. However, on my way to the nearest exit, which I swear was the way I came in, I found myself instead heading to the computer components, LCD monitors and chip bins.

Curses, Fry's had foiled my plans yet again!

As I was sauntering through the aisles, it struck me how the price of everything has either inexorably gone done, or the specifications have inexorably gone up. I almost picked up a 500GB external drive as a throw in to my purchase of jelly beans and M&Ms.

One thing that gave me pause, however, was the price of Apple's 24" monitor. $1400.

Yes it still looks nice, though perhaps an age wrinkle or two is starting to show. However, I had just walked past a lovely HP 22" wide screen monitor that had whistled to me, made me pause and think 'I want that'... and it was $349.

Don't get me wrong, I want an iPhone just as much as the next guy. But somehow I get the sense the first adopters are getting Jobbed--- er... letting their emotions get the better of them.

If you've visited my company site, you'll of course notice that we do software for Windows. 'Hey, you're just another Mac hater.' Blah blah. And you would be mistaken. I adore the Macs-- I hope to write software for them someday soon. And the iPods? Own several, of course. I even think the iPhone looks rather cute and I can't wait to see what Apple has in store for TVs.

But a 400% markup on a TV? I just can't do it-- I'll take the $349 HP TV every time.

And that is why Apple doesn't rule the world.... yet.

The First Presidential Blogger

For whatever reason, a scene recently popped into my head from the movie "13 Days". Actually, I know the reason: its that I fancy myself a corporate blogger. I imagine my blog posts affecting the captains of industry because, after all, that's how the captains of industry posts affect me. Which brings me back to the scene.

As the US and Soviet warships sailed inexorably closer to each other during the final hours of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Robert McNamara is shown at the Pentagon evaluating a giant map of the globe. One of his aides asks if he should interpret the data for the President, and McNamara responds with a revelation that the world has changed and that, because of technological advances, the middle men had been removed from the equation. In this new era, real time telemetry was, in essence, a means with which Kennedy and Khrushchev could engage in dialogue.

As I feverishly wrote the proper spin for my corporate strategy, I could imagine corporate titans across the globe analyzing my posts, laboring over nuance and looking for weakness.

But after my revelry, it occurred to me that world leaders are in the business of communication too. Remember all the CNN stories about world leaders communicating with each other via CNN stories? Of course, CNN had been on the air for quite a while, but these were the stories that legitimized it.

Perhaps President Roosevelt's Fireside Chats was the final step for legitimizing radio. The famous Kennedy/Nixon debate was the final step for legitimizing television. The question:

Would an honest to goodness presidential blog, written by the president himself, be the final legitimization of blogs? Aside from the fact that the first presidential blogger would immediately rocket up the technorati ranking, what better way for the president to communicate more directly with the people, and indeed with the world?

I can almost imagine the first presidential bloggers first post:

"My friends, I'd like to talk about the Middle East today..."

While I doubt the comments section would be of much use, just imagine the possibility that, one day, a few day-to-day thoughts could be posted by the president and read by the people.

Ten Predictions

Now that the storm of 2006 has passed, its time to welcome 2007. In the spirit of ReadWriteWeb, I offer 10 mostly web related technology predictions:

1) One of Microsoft's top 10 revenue apps will succumb to a competitor-- and not a big one.

2) A mobile application will crack the monthly top 20 for software sold.

3) A new 'solution' will appear successfully combining desktop, web and mobile. iTunes was the first of these types of apps, but with a specific mobile component (made by Apple). Maybe its a successful implementation of Adobe Flash or Apollo's coming out party. Maybe its a broad solution tailored for specific roles each user assumes as part of a larger problem. What it will do is offer a blueprint for how companies can tie three related pieces (desktop, web and mobile) together.

4) BitTorrent will get a distribution deal from a movie studio.

5) Microsoft Live will do better than people anticipate and put significant pressure on Google.

6) Google will lose its 'do no wrong' halo (Note, this does not mean Google will go broke or somehow fail to make tons and tons of money-- just lose a little Goodwill).

7) Hospitals and clinics will start investing in IT and Electronic Medical Records in a big way as a way to combat soaring healthcare costs.

8) I will purchase, download and watch a movie via my broadband connection.

9) iTunes will be licensed to a media company or consortium.

10) ClearWire WiMax will be adopted by several municipalities and put pressure on DSL and Cable broadband.

Bonus Prediction: Social metaphors will become more and more available in all types of apps-- consumer, business, scientific-- as people look for ways to establish connections beyond the TCP/IP stack and put faces, names and personal information on the other end of the web line.

Meet back in 365 days!

A New Perspective on Christmas Lights

It's been a fun few days here in the Pacific Northwest. A major storm blew through the entire region Dec. 14th and took down lots of trees, poles and power lines. As utility crews have struggled for the past few days to restore power (and I wish I could thank every crew member personally for their hard work and dedication!), you start noticing things that rub you the wrong way.

Like Christmas Lights.

My wife and I enjoy a particular holiday ritual around the lights people like to put on the exterior of their houses to show their holiday cheer. She wonders aloud over several days what it would take for one of us to hang up some lights. I wonder aloud about our lengthy list of ToDos-- and lately I've been finding particularly good success by bringing up Christmas gifts for the kids. My neighbor even got in the act this year by hanging lights of his own. It was a pitched battle until last Thursday when it all became moot.

As power is coming back online, so are the Christmas lights. I walk my dog every day and with each passing day more houses again have power, and more happy blinking porches and eaves are piercing December's gloom. But the electrical insouciance seems to be having the opposite effect on me.

We have a happy conceit that we are above Nature, which is fine as long as we seem to be. However, I've noticed our darkest hours are when Nature blithely intrudes on our stagecraft. While Seattle, and the entire Northwest, was socked by a storm, were conditions really so grave as to warrant fighting at gas stations or robbing houses in unlit blocks like my neighbors?

'Oh, this was like Katrina!'

As a measure of the storm's power, not at all-- the scale was completely different. While I may have a better understanding of unsettledness-- of moving from house house to keep my kids warm-- I fully expect my power to be on shortly and life to continue quite nicely after this hiccup.

As a measure of our conceit, inattentiveness and complacency, then sure, I'm up for a comparison. I've lived all my life in the Northwest and while this storm may be unusual, its very common-- even predictable. You don't have to go back very far to read well documented storms of yore with similar outcomes.

For instance, we had a 'famous' Columbus Day Storm back in 1962. As people compare this storm to that one the thing I notice is all the utility trucks repairing the damage look like they are from the 1960s themselves.

It's all about priorities. Schools versus Sports Stadiums. Transportation versus Development. Urban versus Suburban versus Exurban. 1950s and 1960s infrastructure versus the needs of the 21st century....

Oh wait, the lights are on. There's still time for me to hang some Christmas Lights this year.

.NET Click Once can Learn Something from a Web Browser

In my day job I get to write software and try to run a company. When I moonlight, I get to be a pundit. It's really quite fun-- while scurrying about the code preparing for a release I use one side of my brain. Once the release is out, I start writing and hopefully use the other side of my brain.

In this post I'll try to use both sides of my brain to support an argument I've presented over at Read/WriteWeb. Its a two-part article that basically states Microsoft holds all the cards for capturing the next generation of computing platform, IFF they can get past themselves and improve .NET just a little bit. That is, take a cue from what makes web applications great, apply it to the .NET framework and make rich applications great again.

The article points out how .NET can be improved, but several people claim .NET already has the feature I have in mind. I claim .NET has the marketing checkbox for the feature I have in mind, but not an actual, usable implementation of it. The market must think so to, because up to now 'Smart Clients' have gone nowhere.

When you build a web page, you write the html and include references to things that help you present a page: an image here, a nifty javascript widget there and a form button yonder. What you don't have to do is compile and link everything together-- the browser does it for you. Better yet, it uses the client machine to make smart choices about what to cache and what to update. Very rarely do you need to download all the pieces comprising a web app at one time again.

And when you need to download some pieces, you never see this:



or this:



This is the advantage web browsers and web apps enjoy over desktop apps today. The current solutions I've seen are not transparent. They involve checking for updated install files, which tend to be large for desktop apps, and reinstalling newer setup.exe packages.

I'd rather it be behind the scense and done piecemeal the web way. Two rules:

• Don't Bug The User -- they don't care they are downloading updates to the app
• Don't Bug The User -- they don't care they are reinstalling an app

When I make a change to a web application, everyone gets the updates on their next page refresh without any proclamations or calls to action. .NET apps, if they want to be smart, should do the same.

Obviously there are many ways to solve this problem, so this is just an example.

A .NET app still goes through two steps in order to run: compilation and linkage. After compilation, all the component parts of a .NET app are laid out as object files in a directory structure. Usually these object files are quite small. Then the linker performs the final assembly and produces a larger output-- executables or libraries.

What if, for deployment purposes, the linkage step is not done on a build machine, but on a clients computer? What if, when starting a .NET app, a 'smart linker' is used to check for updates by making HTTP requests once in a while to all the objects files referenced on a deployment server somewhere? Then, if it finds an object file or two has been updated, it pulls down a couple kilobytes of data, links it into the app and runs.

Then the next time user with a problem runs the app, they see the problem has been fixed and they write me a note saying, 'Thanks for fixing the problem'.

As a rich application developer and publisher, I want that.

I Resemble That Remark

Anne Zelenka posted a good commentary on her site yesterday regarding her preference for everything to be in the browser. I've been reading Anne's blog for a while now and I respect her opinions, so much so that I asked her to review our soon-to-be-released hybrid application. I hope she reviews it even more now because I think it might just change her mind.

But on to Anne's arguments. Among her points are:

• Most exciting innovations are taking place in the browser


• Browsers are the only way to develop cross-platform


• Browsers go beyond data and integrates information


• Browser experience can be made consistent


• The Browser is about me

Which leads her to predict:

"The browser will be extended to give us offline connectivity and access to desktop resources. The browser and its context provides what we need for mobile access. The browser is where it’s at, not the desktop."

Let's ignore the fact that a web browser is a desktop application for the time being because we should always strive to avoid tautologies. Instead, I believe we can reduce Anne's arguments to:

• Accessibilty


• Personalization

But let's examine Anne's points first.

1. Most exciting innovations are taking place in the browser

I'm not sure if Anne means the browser itself, or the web sites a browser points to. If its the browser itself, then true, there is a battle raging between Mozilla and Internet Explorer, but I disagree that better tabbing and RSS integration represent the pinnacle of innovation.

If its the web sites a browser points to, then I think its a push. This is the classic desktop versus webtop argument which usually reduces to what you prefer for what task. For instance, some people may be fine with Writely, some people may require FrameMaker. I gave GMail a try, I prefer Thunderbird right now. I'll probably test Outlook 2007 when it comes out, or maybe GMail will add some offline support, which is critical for me.

What I will agree with is its easier for people to try out innovation if they can get to it with a browser-- which is why I categorize this argument under Accessibility.

2. The only way to develop cross-platform.

Cross platform development has been one of those holy grails that seem more like the Easter Bunny than an actual chalice. How many cross-platform 'solutions' have come and gone? Anne acknowledges its not Java (totally agree), but there's a whole litany of attempts (anybody remember Galaxy? We almost bankrupted a previous company with that one).

I will agree there are not many choices, but that's because most companies don't want there to be many choices. As long as you have that tension, I doubt HTML will turn into a silver bullet. Because of that tension, codes extensions certainly will not. A Firefox extension will not work with IE or Safari. Same for IE or Safari add-ons. In a sense, web browsers already mirror operation systems in their lines of code demarkation.

Two additional thoughts:

2a. I do think Adobe has a shot at cross platform development with Apollo, though perhaps not so much for the 'classic' browser on the desktop, but for the mini-browser on the mobile device.

2b. I think the other possibility may be .NET. I mention this in an earlier post, but I believe Mono was the major reason Microsoft worked out a partnership with Novell.

3. Browsers go beyond data and integrate information

What about a CRM applications? That seems to integrate a lot of information. Or placing Access data tables within you MS Office documents. Or what about the latest Visual Studio development environment that maintains a rich set of constantly updating reference material online?

Two nice things about desktop applications that are designed to integrate information: a) They understand the information type so you don't have to and b) someone has designed the information layout and flow so you don't have to.

I think the issue here is really about personalization. If you don't agree with how an app lays out information, it can be arduous or impossible to change. Web browsers make it very easy to create your own, personalized mess dashboard.

4. Browser experience can be made consistent

This I just disagree with. Are all blogs consistent? Are all web apps consistent? Hardly. Maybe Anne means consistency in terms of deploying an application to users. In this case, sure, but then its more an accessibility issue (how easy is it to deploy a desktop app versus a desktop app) than an intrisic consistency issue.

5. The Browser is about me

This is Anne's most powerful point. It speaks to what's wrong with desktop software-- or even software in general. And the reason the 'browser is about me' and not the desktop app is because the web application is forced to be simple. Both the newnewss of web solutions and the constraints of the HTML world dictate simple implementations. Desktop applications, on the other hand, have rocketed past human comprehension and make people feel lost in space.

I look at a lot of the online solutions out there and I'm convinced that, while accessibility is appealing, simplicity is the real selling point. Simplicity in what you can do, in how you can personalize and, most importantly, in why one office worker can explain it to another.

I agree wholeheartedly with Anne on this point, but believe its more accidental then designed. And, if the world truly did adopt web applications exclusively, then web apps would complicate themselves so inexplicably that they would no longer be about anyone.


Another Prediction


What do I think the future is? I do think browsers will develop offline capabiity, but the real solution is software that allows for the right tool for the audience. As I said earlier, writers may need FrameMaker to write their books, but an editor would only need a PDF reader to edit it. Architects may need Autocad, but contractors may only need Visio and framers may only need a printout of their wall.

I only see one thing standing in the way-- installation that doesn't involve the user. If the browser can do it, I see no reason why the OS can't; and I'd argue .NET takes us some of the way there. Once that is solved, then installing the right application-- be it desktop, browser extension or web-- will be no different than sending a drawing to a printer. People in different roles need different views of data in different presentations. It will be the ability of *any* software to use desktop, extension or webtop effectively to address the proper presentation for distinct audiences that will determine success in the future.

So what do you think, Anne; would you still like to try my desk/web hybrid app?