Software views

Some thing to chew on.

Startup Hiring

Using Java as an applet is good for where you help the users fix the problems with applets. This is based on my experience for developing a Java Applet for a domain named administration system. After a few months of operation the Java Applet was too difficult to support. It is might be ok for the admin interface, though I recommend AJAX for the front end and Java is fine for the backend.

AJAX compared to Java is not that great, expect the reality is the main stream market likes AJAX allot more. By using a java applet you will limit your user base.

Why it is this way is quite simple, if there is a problem it is too hard to fix. The multi step process to get the errors, email them or speak to you over the phone is very difficult process. Most users would rather not answer the survey. Microsoft made sure Java never made it main stream, hence the billion dollar lawsuit they lost.

Your clients, the ones using a admin interface may be willing to use a Java applet interface and fix problems when the come up. Expect only if you provided features that Java could do better then what AJAX could do and your competitor does not offer a better system.

In war the need for innovation can be very clear, for example a Knife can still do a very effective job. Once the gun came about, knifes become only useful in the niche cases.

Watch out that your tools do not go the way of the knife. Still being able to do the old job just fine confuses the issue, tell you see how much better the new tool can do its task.

Mood views looks threw blogs and reads the mood tags off of livejournal blogs. The recording of many peoples personal thoughts have opened new ways of getting feed back. It could provide new means to direct advertising campains, for example say you have a magic product that can cure creative problems. When there is a dip in people felling creative it may be a good time to feature that product.

Mood views

When a customer calls your company with a difficult problem does your company have a way to solve it ?

Having a escalation support procedure in place is often needed for web sites which can be difficult to use. Forwarding the most difficult problems to more trained staff often points out problems with the site.

The problems have to be solved as well, other wise things can turn sour fast. For example
Mark Evans writes about a customer service problem with HP.
Mark Evans

How much is this costing HP for having a poor procedure ?

Eli Portnoy talks about his travels on creating Emerging Demographics Inc which has properties much like jobloft.com expect targeting the Latino market.

Startup ceo

HireWorkers.com
LatinoHire.com
BuenaChamba.com

Nisan Gabbay has been writing one review a week on some of the popular startups and their history. Much time and effort is spent on his reviews which produce a good end result. See his posting on why you should subscribe.

Some of his reviews include companies like MySpace, Flickr, Craigslist, Rent.com

Start up Reviews

All of the developers I have hired have different skill sets and abilities to produce softwave. Some developers on specific tasks would take half the time of others. Some could handle clients directly well and some not.

Just as I avoid taking on projects which will fail, good developers will avoid working on projects which have poor infrastructure or choices of tools.

Paul Graham writes up on how choices of infrastructure and languages affect who you can recruit.

Great Hackers

Jobloft.com has created a job site specific for the Retail, Food Services and Hospitality & Tourism. There are some niche requirements for this market and it will be interesting how things play out for them.

About Jobloft.com

JobLoft.com

Bill Burnham post on Walled Gardens brings up some issues which are taking place in the market. Currently users are moving away from Walled Gardens towards free alternatives or to publishing packages suited more for their needs.

The way things are going now is that ebay and similar sites will go threw some hurting times as the people who prefer free listings or cheaper ones. That does not mean ebay will simply die out as there will aways be a demand for paid services where there are free ones. Has
The Village Voice brought the end to New York Times

There is a free bus in Halifax, Nova Scotia called Fred, though it may cut into taxi cabs business it does not stop those who want or need a cab. Just like a free bus will not destroy the cab business a free listing site will not destory ebay. Ebay has all ready made its direction clear by cutting out the lower paying customers and will most likely improve services to suit the ones who stay.

Human nature does not change much over the course of time and what we are seeing on the Internet is the market re-balancing its self tell the pendulum swings the other way again.

Bill Burnham on rss and google

The Walled Garden “Hit List”

In the latest battle on distros, Ubuntu has been started by using Debian source code as its foundation. For a long time Debian has been a great product expect its developers are more concerned about development then marketing.

The weaker marketing from Debians standpoint has opened a spot for Ubuntu and other distributions to copy from them. This is what open source is all about. By Mark Shuttleworth starting with Debian, Ubuntu has an instant set of users and developers.

From the source code Mark Shuttleworth has been building a new community which will provide the product with the help of Mark Shuttleworth's investment. With any investment there is always demaind for a return.

His plans are to generate revenue by handling the installation and escalation support. There is a fair amount of install and escalation support needed for Microsoft and this would not change if users switched to a Linux desktop. The only thing that changes is the initial cost for the Operating system its self.

With that in mind, this is a really a battle of call centers and ubuntu is the carrot.

http://ubuntu.com

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarkShuttleworth

http://www.forbes.com/home/technology/2006/09/05/linux-ubuntu-opensource_cz_mr_0906shuttleworth.html

Currently many business being created on the Internet today are simple combinations of existing ideas.

1. Subtraction: Removal of components (Simpler content management system tuned for a specific niche.)
   


2. 
   Multiplication: Add modified copies of existing components (More hosting space)
   


3. 
   Division: Separate product into individual components (Google maps api allows for the creation of sites which only need parts of the whole)
   


4. 
   Unification: Extend the use of an existing component so that it provides additional value (Otherwise known as Mashups - Google maps and a crime database to display crimes on a map)
   


5. 
   Dependence: Change the relationship between the product and its environment (Load balanced web sites, backup and fail over systems)
   

This is known as “Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT)".
Paul Eisenberg has a post with some classic examples

The last time I did a review on Stephen Colbert's web site it had some issues. Stephen mentioned on his show it was due to a server crash, which on the Internet often happens. This made me just a little disappointed in his online performance, or lack of.

Stephen Colbert has said he hates the Internet, maybe because the Internet Business is bit by bit taking over his world even if likes it or not. The good news is it is my opinion that the talented people like Stephen Colbert will been the main show soon enough.

Currently the show has a massive potential for its online counter part which may come to bear fruit. I am placing my bets on a upstart like rockboom.com taking the audience vs Colbert being able to keep his.

Hopefully the changes keep coming as this battle will be interesting fire fight between the old and the new.