Twitter (FxNxRL)
Ads / Sponsors
More Content
Google Search
Site Rank
Powered by
My FOSS Work
Groups, etc.
Introducing the Developer Facet
Sticky Postings
WYSIKSWYGBNQ
Friday, January 14. 2011
WYSIKSWYGBNQ = What You See Is Kinda Sorta What You Get But Not Quite.
Audience: The Social Media Killer
Friday, January 7. 2011
Meanwhile, Twitter seems a little less vibrant. Is it because all the cool kids are playing with Quora? Partially. After all anyone with a real job only has so much time to dicker with this stuff, unless you're a rare beast: a Professional Social Media Guru that's a real job. So maybe Twitter is a little less shimmering with excitement because really interesting people are spending less time on it.
But that isn't all. That only explains part of it.
I think the dampening of Twitter is something that's been repeated many times with other trends – most notably blogging – and the common factor is audience. I think audience kills.
Along with a few million people, I signed on to Twitter about two years ago (call me a just-past-the-bleeding-edge adopter). What was compelling about it was the community. Chances you were going to find someone interesting, or even be followed by someone interesting were pretty high. That's exciting.
Then it became a mass phenomenon. People stopped talking to their community of followers and stated talking to their Audience. Many people stripped character from their tweets, so they didn't run a risk of offending their Audience. Characterless marketing opportunity opportunists joined in droves. Now I get endless series of follows who have triggered off some word I've used. Say the dreaded "Search Engine Optimization", expect to get followed by 35 so-called experts, half of whom promote the same methods I labelled as absolute garbage in the tweet that triggered the follow! No dialogue, no engagement, not even an argument. Just follow on keyword. These aren't people, they're applications. It's not a conversation, it's not anything.
The result is low grade ore. Generic, bland grey goo. Repetitions of repetitions of the mildly informative, rehashed. It's not spam, it's not interesting. It's a fire hose of information with few gems. The vibrancy is increasingly hard to find.
This decay is all down to Audience. Many blogs were great – when almost nobody read them. Now they write to their Audience, mostly with corresponding non-offensive blandness. Twitter offers diminishing returns, thanks to Audience. Facebook continues to survive, but only if you "friend" people you stand a chance of recognizing in a police lineup, which severely limits scope. LinkedIn has gone from a way to connect to people with specific skills or knowledge to ways to connect to people with a mail address. Now there's value.
I see MetaFilter is charging a nominal amount ($5.00) to create an account, mostly to keep the spam out. Maybe this is the kernel of a good idea. Maybe the cost of joining a community should increase as the membership grows. Maybe someone will develop an automated value ranking system that makes connecting to a site a low cost proposition for high value individuals, and vice versa. I'd sign up for that. Screw the audience.
Spam via Zoominfo, Another in the Don't Trust Series
Monday, January 3. 2011
One of the great things about maintaining your own domain is the ability to put up a good fight when it comes to spam. It's a real battle. This domain has been registered since the late 90's, when an open Internet meant that just about anybody could harvest contact information from domain registration databases.
The result is that my main personal mail address has been inundated with spam for nearly 15 years. It's not just inbound. This domain has been used as a forged mail source more than once. In one incarnation, the home page here maintained a debunking of various bullshit claims that appeared to have come from me, so at the very least those with the wherewithal to visit the site would not get scammed. Like it or not, I'm on the vanguard of the spam fight.
For the past decade or so I've created a unique forwarding address for every thing I sign up for. Over the years it's gone from a simple "name of service at ambit online dot com" to incorporate a random string, to eliminate the "anyone could have guessed that" defence.
This has led to some interesting results. From exposing criminal theft of data at two companies, to partner misbehaviour at Salesforce (see my Don't Trust Salesforce.com post).
This morning I was met with two pieces of spam from my tracking address for ZoomInfo.com, both personally addressed using my name. One was from audio@execwebtraining.com, one from audio@webcareertraining.net. Clearly both are from the same source, and the body of the message includes the same contact information: Executive Education, P.O. Box 31, Devault, PA 19432, 1-888-669-6067. My opinion: anyone who does business with a spammer using a generic name and running out of a post office box is a complete fool.
This spam not only contained my name, but it was addressed to an address that contained "zoominfo" plus six random alphanumeric characters. Obviously this is came directly from Zoominfo's databases. The odds of a guess on the random string alone are over one in two billion.
When this sort of thing happens, I normally contact the source and try to find out what the issue is. It's either theft of data or unethical behaviour from a partner. Both are serious, and possibly criminal, bad behaviour. So I went to the zoominfo.com site, started down the "support" path. Zoominfo is structured to deflect support away from anything that requires them to expend staff time. That's an early indicator of a poor customer service philosophy. Honestly I just don't have the patience to eventually get to some form buried five levels deep, only to get an auto-response suggesting I consult the crap I just waded through. It's just easier to go public.
So here's the simple bottom line: Either Zoominfo has been hacked and has a big problem, or they have lousy partner selection criteria, which is possibly a bigger problem. Either way, they need to come clean in a public way, and fast. Their credibility with me has just taken a huge hit. Not that that makes for much of a change, really.
Meanwhile, I'm off to update a tracking address. If the spam follows the address, I'll know it's a partner problem. Unless Zoominfo is completely asleep at the switch, there are likely to be updates to this coming soon.
Silicon Valley – Adjusting to the Internet's Long Tail?
Tuesday, September 28. 2010
As Max Levchin observes, angels have an interest in lower valued exits. He concludes that the positioning of super angels as VC alternatives has resulted in a “lack of visible significant innovation”. While Levchin's observations are correct, I'm not certain that it's the angel's fault.
Instead, I think we're reaching the “long tail” of the Internet, and we need to look for innovation elsewhere. The big hits in the Internet space have all had to do with providing analogues of existing human behaviours, and the number of untapped behaviours is diminishing. A preponderance of incremental innovations – with corresponding low exits – is only to be expected.
We have been so focused on Internet related innovation for the past decade and a half (and software for the decade previous) that for a lot of investors seem to have forgotten that there are alternatives.
It's not that there's a shortage of demand for innovation. There are many areas that need great minds and risk capital. Unfortunately those aren't the opportunities that can be exploited by a bright kid with six months programming experience. They're big, capital intensive, long term projects that need teams of highly skilled people to address them. Some of these problems are critically important. They need to be solved if we're going to preserve our current lifestyle, if not ensure our survival.
If the investment community wants to innovate, it's going to have to stop looking for the ultimate solution to determining how to rank “influence” on Twitter, and instead look for better transportation solutions, better solar power generation, methods to scrub carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, local power generation and distribution, and solutions for other truly important problems.
While North America becomes increasingly concerned about it's own relatively trivial problems like how to make an even cooler handheld device, our ability to innovate – our very concept of innovation – is collapsing in on itself like a dying star. Meanwhile, Asia is fast becoming the true leader in innovation and unless we pull out of this “make it big on the Internet” vortex, it won't be long before we're buying critical technology from abroad.
Let's not blame the angel investors. Levchin says “we should aim higher.” He's right. The question is whether or not we know which way is up.
On Development Teams
Friday, September 25. 2009
Earlier today Amy Stephen and I had an interesting discussion on development teams, I thought it worth organizing and preserving. Because it's a bit of a threaded conversation it takes a little work to follow the flow, but there's no easy way to sort it out.
One of the most interesting things here is that even though I tend to take a bit of a hard-ass "no prisoners" approach to the problem, and Amy is fairly close to my polar opposite, we actually look at the fundamental problem in nearly the same way.
| AmyStephen | Wondering about the market potential of the promise of a 1 day workshop that can turn a dysfunctional group into a high performance team. It's puzzling to watch a dysfunctional group where members keep barriers to entry high and engage in intense, private battles within. |
|---|---|
| FxNxRl | Lets see... the seminar starts with a real-time attitude and teamwork survey, then lists who should be retained and who fired. |
| AmyStephen | That might do it – if management would so empower. Typically, you'll find spineless leadership behind dysfunction. |
| FxNxRl | Indeed. I have done consulting assignments where I had to tell the person who hired me that they were the main problem. Awkward. |
| AmyStephen | So, how would you sort out the understandably frustrated's from those who might be, shall we say, squelching innovation? |
| FxNxRl | Most of the time it's pretty easy to tell one from the other by simply talking to them face to face. |
| AmyStephen | I used to think that I could tell quickly but now I am doubting my early instincts. It's a bit unsettling, in fact. I can't tell. |
| FxNxRl | What's difficult is to unmask the passive-aggressive ones. Usually high-value team members who kill things by "contributing". |
| FxNxRl | It is impossible to tell when there's distance involved, and it can be difficult in person too. |
| FxNxRl | I once managed a team where I had to use source code control metrics to track project progress. Every time a project was really doing well, the lead developer would step in to "help" and the project would nearly stop. There was no way to fire him... |
| AmyStephen | Yes, it's tricky when the one causing the problem has a great deal of authority. You have to control the process to figure it out. |
| AmyStephen | Source code control can be a great tool for lots of challenges simply because people who are traumatized can see justice/hope |
| AmyStephen | That is, provided they can commit to it, of course. Otherwise, it's just another situation where they have to face this barrier. |
| FxNxRl | Yup, and it's hard data in an environment where everyone has some emotional involvement no matter how hard they try not to. |
| FxNxRl | Development without revision control is art, not engineering. |
| FxNxRl | The very first thing is to put proven development methodologies in place. If there's strong resistance, fire the dissidents. |
| AmyStephen | lol - I definitely do not agree, but I understand. Many times, your skeptics are simply people who think for themselves. |
| AmyStephen | In fact, you can bag anyone who's onboard with change too quickly. Everyone should resist process changes if they are moving forward. |
| FxNxRl | I realized, at about age 45, that I had become the "asshole manager" I loathed at 25. Team results trump individual brilliance. |
| AmyStephen | In general, I think it's a bad idea for mgmt to plunk a set of "productivity tools" on an engineer's desk. Best to let them pick. |
| FxNxRl | Well yeah, you can't say "effective Monday everyone is using SVN and methodology X". The method of change is critical. |
| AmyStephen | I'm a HUGE believer in team. I think, though, the strongest teams are built from a complementary collection of individual brilliance. |
| FxNxRl | But the guys who say "never did it that way, ain't gonna start now" and then dig in? Well they can do it "their way" elsewhere. |
| FxNxRl | So am I... and I have seen effective teams operate in mayhem. It's all about getting complimentary characters. |
| AmyStephen | That's why it's important to involve them. Good engineers know what productivity aids are needed and welcome it. They resist "silly" |
| FxNxRl | I have seen highly effective teams with vastly different cultures. You could NEVER take a person from one of those teams and put them in the other. It's all about getting people who work well together. |
| AmyStephen | Absolutely! I've worked on a team like that 2 times in my life. When you have tasted it, you know what it is & why it's worth having |
| FxNxRl | I've also become friends with people who I've let go as a "parachute in manager/jerk". They found teams where they fit & r happy |
| AmyStephen | Yes - there's a chemistry that cannot be ignored. In MBTI, it's the middle 2 indicators that can sometimes predict compatibility |
| AmyStephen | Yes. That's best. A self-directed work team w clear boundaries and focus and empowerment. It's how "grown-ups" should be treated. |
| FxNxRl | Dated though it may be I'm a huge MBO fan. Here's what we need to do, tell me what you need to do it, then get it done. |
| FxNxRl | as long as it's legal and ethical I don't care how it gets done, just that I can measure progress and that there is progress. |
| AmyStephen | I don't think common sense is ever dated. Keeping a focus on "what this is really about" is always good. |
Amazing Code Repository Visualization (Joomla)
Saturday, May 30. 2009
This is amazing stuff. The description from the YouTube page says it best: "This Code Swarm provides an animated visual representation of the changes made to the Joomla! source code since 2005. The names that appear are the users who have made changes to the source code. The stars/highlights represent commits made to the Subversion repository. The histogram to the bottom left displays activity. Look out for the date displayed in the right hand corner."
That "instance" floating around in there is me. Even without the "holy cow, that's me!" factor, this is a wonderful visualization tool.
Let's Just Call it the Canadian Conference Board of Incompetence
Monday, May 25. 2009
What is perhaps most informative is this quote from the response "The Conference Board regularly produces custom research. Our guidelines for financed research require the design and method of research, as well as the content of the report, to be determined solely by the Conference Board." [Note to conference board: that is how you cite sources.]
This quote suggests that they take full responsibility for the incompetence, sloppy methodology, poor fact checking, and many other faults in their work. They appear to either be completely disconnected from reality or to be fully aware that they have no credibility whatsoever.
I suppose it doesn't matter which.
MySQL's Post-Oracle Future
Tuesday, April 21. 2009
One of the oddities of Sun's acquisition by Oracle is that Oracle now owns the MySQL trademark. They also employ the largest concentration of developers who are familiar with the code base. What they don't control is the code, and who they no longer employ is a lot of the key people who got MySQL to where it is. So what's next?
From Oracle's viewpoint, there are three likely scenarios:
- Ignore MySQL, let the remaining team go, hope it dies.
- Try selling it off.
- Embrace Open Source and continue to improve mySQL.
Consider each of these options.
Oracle Ignores MySQL, Hoping for a Withering Death
There's revenue associated with MySQL. It might be a trickle from Oracle's perspective, but it's more than enough to keep a good medium sized company running smoothly. Tens of millions of sites have absolutely no interest in moving to a new database manager, and there's heaps of MySQL specific expertise out there now. The MySQL revenue stream isn't going away soon. If Oracle tries this strategy, the MySQL code will soon emerge under a different name, and the resulting business will probably be all the more nimble for it's passage through Sun and Oracle. Not a likely scenario but good for MySQL nonetheless.
Oracle Sells MySQL
Good luck. Can you say embarrassing writedown? Sun's billion dollar acquisition of MySQL is right up there on the "WTF" scale, ranking with eBay's purchase of Skype and Google's acquisition of YouTube, all for stupid money. [Side note: M&A groups should refrain from hiring people who come out of the derivatives world.] Even then, name a buyer at any reasonable price. I can't think of one.
Oracle Embraces FOSS
Initially this looks like we're getting into geek porn fantasies. What can Oracle actually give MySQL that aligns with it's corporate interests?
There are some patents, well past the end of their productive life, that Oracle could release. This could give MySQL a few neat features that would improve performance. But these are small incremental gains at best. There's also no selective release here. Once those techniques are in a GPL code base, they're up for grabs by any open source project.
They could dump lesser versions of various core technologies into MySQL in order to set up a smooth transition to their proprietary products. This would introduce a lot of the "bloat" that made MySQL so popular in the first place. I think we'd see more nimble forks appear in no time. Not a great strategy.
Then there's the philosophical differential. The one thing that's evident from my work with Joomla, and my observation of other solutions in the same space, is that success in open source is all about building a strong collaborative culture around the product. While this isn't incompatible with running a profitable business, it is incompatible with the traditional "destroy the competition" approach. On the surface, capitalism in open source is not going to mix well with the capitalism as warfare.
Then there's the culture clash of Alpha Geek versus Alpha Capitalist. For a good example of this we need look no further than a blog post from Michael Widenius. He writes "Mr. Ellison, you are undoubtedly a master tactician. However, thinking two moves ahead in the open source world is not good enough. You need strategy. Long term, meaningful, viable strategy. You need to think years ahead, not just to the next fiscal quarter." There's nothing quite like a bonehead mix of arrogance and ignorance for your first move. Anyone who thinks Oracle got to the position it's in by purely tactical moves that look "two moves ahead" is clueless. Then the icing: Widenius closes with "I'd love to speak with you about it". Well, consider condescending to picking up the phone, buddy. If you think Larry's going to read your blog and give you a call, you might consider getting back onto your meds (or off of them, either way a state change is in order).
Beyond Strategy, what About Mission?
If you take a step back and look at the mission behind Oracle's numerous strategic moves over the years, you see their overarching mission: destroy Microsoft.
What's most interesting about this is that this ethos is also deeply ingrained in the thinking of many open source developers. It's a small step from "freedom from proprietary software" to "freedom from Microsoft" because Microsoft is the biggest, most obvious first target.
So there is a possibility that despite the cultural differential, Oracle may be viewing open source as a strategic weapon. It's also worth noting that along with Sun, Oracle gets the services of Johnathan Schwartz, who has demonstrated a crystal clear understanding of the open source model. As Mitchell Ashley notes in "Converging on Microsoft", Oracle is now in a good position to strike at Microsoft at a time of relative weakness.
If Ashley is right, Larry Ellison will become an active evangelist for open source, using Oracle's position to drive at the core of Microsoft's space. I'm sceptical of this. I don't think the enterprise world is ready to accept the idea of mission critical applications as open source, and I don't think Oracle's enterprise business is served well by this just yet. That won't slow Oracle down one bit. Johnathan Schwartz can become Oracle's open source advocate, speaking for that part of the business. Open source is walking its way up from the bottom, from compilers to operating systems, through servers and databases. At each stage it takes a little time to gain credibility and foothold, but the value proposition is compelling. If Oracle backs MySQL and proves that it is a viable solution in Oracle's original space, then it not only helps them advance their mission, it helps advance open source.
Predictions
Either way MySQL – or at least the code that is currently MySQL – is going to come through this just fine. That's the GPL in action: it's simply not possible acquire and kill good code.
I think we're going to see the third scenario. Oracle's support of Sun's open source technologies will be strong and unconditional. But this support won't extend to their enterprise applications. Not until the market is ready.
Whether I'm right or wrong, we'll see something happen quickly, within two quarters of the closing of the acquisition.
Social Media: Why Facebook; Why Twitter?
Wednesday, March 11. 2009
I realize now that part of the bad reputation that social media has with middle-aged adults is due to the fact that most of these people are parents, and everything they know about social media sites has come from their kids.
This led me to a great insight. Good social media sites are malleable to individual users, and that's what makes them so powerful. I am certain that my Facebook experience is vastly different from that of your average teenager's, and that's a good thing.
A middle-aged friend recently asked me about Facebook and Twitter, with the subtext "I don't 'get' either of them." I've reworked my response a bit in hope that it will be helpful to others:
The main purpose of Facebook is to get found by people you already know but have lost touch with, think of the people you would invite to a high school reunion. Simple as that. It's also good for keeping up on the big stream of small things that winds up being news in a nominally mundane life. It works well if you're not "always on" the net. You can pop in every week or so and catch up. If you ignore the clever little time-wasting applications and notification noise, it's a useful tool. In short, Facebook is good at making an electronic link to people you already know.
Twitter is much more geared to making new connections and is really something for those of us who are "on the 'net" most of the time. What it's best at is finding new clever people, and getting breaking news. Information travels very quickly in Twitter, and to a large extent it's filtered to the interests of the people you follow, which means you get more information about the things you care about. As a writer, it's also superb at making you edit things down. The 140 character limit is brutal, but it enforces the practice of a clarity that can carry into other writing.
So how did I do? Is there anything else that "defines" these sites?
Competition entry by David Cummins powered by Serendipity v1.0
Latest Movies
Rio (2011) Movie Review [8/10]
Hop (2011) Movie Review [3/10]
Paul (2011) Movie Review [6/10]
Syndicate This Blog
Feedburner
Categories
Geek Blog
On Development Teams
Amazing Code Repository Visualization (Joomla)
MySQL's Post-Oracle Future
On the Enforcability of the GPL
More Controversy: the Joomla Extensions Directory (JED) and the GPL
Simplifying Joomla Template Layouts
How to: Ubuntu PHP Remove Suhosin
Joomla 1.5.8 is... is what??
"IBM May Quit Technology Standards Bodies" WSJ Screams
Links
- On this Site
- Related Sites
- Cool Free Stuff
- Cool Web/Developer Stuff
Administration
Top Exits
developer.mozilla.org (10)
php-gtk.eu (10)
www.groklaw.net (10)
www.joomla.org (10)
www.michaelgeist.ca (9)
venturemedia.ca (7)
www.upi.com (7)
rowellphoto.com (6)
www.google.com (6)
Comment Submissions
Finally, should you choose to ignore this and undertake any action to have comments removed, you agree to compensate us and/or anyone we designate at the rate of US$2,500 per hour, in addition to any legal costs, be they reasonable or otherwise.
In short: spam at your expense and peril.