Business

Many sites have their street address location in an unstructured html page which has a wide range of uses. From making searches for your local computer store easier to plotting hiking trails. The currently problem is getting this info into a structured format which can be geocoded.

MetaCarta has an api to retrieve some of the information, though not street level accuracy.
http://labs.metacarta.com/

True local provides data services
http://www.truelocal.ca

And digital reasoning have a GeoLocator product for retrieving data from unstructured documents.
http://www.digitalreasoning.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3

These are fine for large commercial systems, though they are not of much for every day consumer use in tasks like adding a contact to your address book. This task would be seam less if there was an open source project developing this software.

The project could be based on gpl or some other open source license making it free for commercial use. After this key piece of technology is available to every one things like address books, map creating and searching can become seamless.

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear Indemnification caluses and softare is "inexperienced attorneys", Smith Hopen an intellectual property firm sums it up well.

Indemnifying Software Development Projects

Steve Jobs does a fine job at spin with his letter at. http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/

He says.

ipod sales = money maker
itune sales = lots of work for not much money
no drm = more ipod sales
drm = music industry's requirement

Well done letter at pointing the finger at the music industry and taking the heat off of him. The last thing Apple wants is to have DRM associated with them, so if they can have it associated with the Music industry then all the better. This is a good strike to prevent the music industry releasing a DRM free player and web site combo while implying DRM was all Apples idea.

I would place my bets on that most people who steal music online do it because it is easier then buying dvd's and waiting for it to come in the mail (or goto store), copying to computer then to your player.

From my stand point is you can't stop people from stealing, you can only make it easier to buy then to steal.

Seeing companies commit number 6 is painful.
6. Hiring Bad Programmers

http://paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html

Evan Williams has started Obvious Corp and here is his writings on the new model.
http://evhead.com/2006/10/birth-of-obvious-corp_25.asp

Beauty is in the eye of the holder Beholder, A pretty design might distract from the content which means it would look out of place. For example if you are selling cheap used clothing then a good looking design might make people think you are expensive. A plain site may do best in that case.

What is need its making sure you pay for what you need rather then concerning about paying for what you get.

Isabel Walcott has a good write up on the difficulties with developing an online community. I seen many cases where her numbers for Business Development, Features and SEO would not apply though for the most part it is a good start.

http://iz.typepad.com/isabel_walcott/2006/09/audience_develo.html

Many times I have attempted to explain to clients why I hold off on showing them work in progress and it never works very well. Joel Spolsky has wrote an article up on why it is difficult for programmers and non programmers to see the same thing.
The Iceberg Secret, Revealed

In any society if the people truthfully dislike their leader then that leader will be replaced. Long ago Microsoft applied this by developing great development tools. They managed to get people to use their libraries and their platform. From there the developers created better applications which in turned won over more users to their platform, other wise known as Windows.

Now, the same thing is happening with google, they are releasing lots of tools that developers can use like Calendars, Maps and many other apis. Their platform is the web and their massive server rooms. The latest volley in this is the Code Search .

Now to the average person this is completely useful, though for the developer it can be very useful. Soon the developers will integrate this into the tools they use every day. This will be done so they can easily find code samples to make their job easier and build applications faster.

The way google will get ahead is quite simple, make code that is good to use on their platform rank higher then something that would work on say some other empire. This way over time plenty of applications will be using parts of googles api's, web site, databases and so on.

If you are questioning why is google building such simple gadgets that will not make as much money as their adwords, adsense product. Then most like you have not taken account into what happens when you went over the people.

Brick by brick google is taking over the web and using the power of the search to do this.

There are many sides to developing a product, do you want a Grand Slam or do you want to build more slowly brick by brick.

Tom Evslin talked about his experience with VisiCalc and how it would of never came about by asking people what they want. VisiCalc solved a problem that people never knew they had.

Tom Evslin - DON’T Ask the Users What They Want!

Seth Godin - Another brick in the wall

Some thing to chew on.

Startup Hiring

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.

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 ?

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

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”