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Posted by Richard Ziade on December 22, 2007, 08:11PMCrossing The Dictator : Apple's Ugly Side
[Disclaimer : This post isn't intended to provide legal guidance or advice of any sort and should not be taken as such.]
See the thing with dictators is they can appear to be really good people. They can do good things that help their subjects. Yeh, the elections are rigged, but so what? They give everyone jobs and prosperity. They speak with clear direction and unbounded confidence. The masses need someone to lead them. Hell, many societies don't even have a value system. Yet things don't get out of hand because their Dear Leader will get out the big stick if he needs to and they know it. And that's ok. Because he knows best.
A couple of months ago, I blogged here that Apple knows best. I was primarily talking about design in that post. I noted that Apple doesn't do things like beta programs or illicit feedback. They just put stuff out. For the most part, the stuff is good...really good. So we blindly follow.
The blogging community does its part and then some. We spread gossip. We talk about their products. We point to their patent filings. We do our part to contribute to the Apple mystique. We create buzz. And Apple has slyly used the viral aspects of the Web and blogging in particular to spread their religion.
Well now the dictator's cleaning house. The thing with dictators is there actually doesn't need to be a real threat, just a perceived one. A few days ago Think Secret, a popular Apple gossip blog, shut down in compliance with an agreement they reached with Apple.
Now, Fake Steve Jobs has been visited by Apple's goon lawyers. He's been notified that a few of his posts are "actionable" (legal-speak for "we can sue you"). The letter politely ends with a list of Fake Steve Jobs' personal assets.
Fake Steve Jobs is Fake Steve Jobs. Not real Steve Jobs. Fortune magazine and the Wall Street Journal haven't once confused the two. He is a commentator commenting on a public figure. It is a parody blog. What that means is that Daniel Lyons, the author behind the site, knows he's not the real Steve Jobs (unless of course, he's suffering from delusions of grandeur). He isn't attempting to spread false truths. The entire premise of the site is grounded in parody.
Twenty years ago, Hustler magazine put out an especially nasty parody where it portrayed Jerry Falwell, a popular Protestant minister, having sex with his mother in an outhouse. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Hustler magazine prevailed. In essence, the case clarified the right to parody, make fun of, mock, deride, imitate and crudely insult public figures.
Apple is picking off the easy targets. Fake Steve Jobs is not Time Warner or the New York Times. He's a blogger that can more easily be bullied by dipshit lawyers that can threaten his livelihood. Also, regardless of the merits of their assertions, they can drag Lyons into a protracted, costly, ugly fight that would most likely lead to him backing down.
What the blogging community needs is clear precedent that extends the free speech protections outlined in the Hustler v. Falwell case to include bloggers. I'm a blogger myself that has criticized behemoths like Microsoft, Google and Apple. I don't want to think twice before I blog.
Apple is setting a frightening precedent. It's signaling to other companies that with the right amount of bullying, you can shut down the bloggers you don't like. It's ironic considering that the blogging community is generally extremely supportive of Apple. Microsoft takes beatings on a daily basis yet we don't see this kind of nonsense from them.
One thing the blogging community can do is stop hyping and spreading the buzz about Apple's products. Popular sites like Gizmodo and The Unofficial Apple Weblog can help signal to Apple that they need to back off or the free ride is over.
Apple needs to know that the same makeshift PR machine that helps hype its products isn't actually its own PR machine. Putting out shiny new products doesn't afford you license to selectively muzzle certain voices.
From the Falwell v. Hustler Magazine opinion:
Posted by Richard Ziade on December 20, 2007, 03:58PMAt the heart of the First Amendment is the recognition of the fundamental importance of the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern. The freedom to speak one's mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty -- and thus a good unto itself -- but also is essential to the common quest for truth and the vitality of society as a whole.
Software's Obesity Epidemic
So I'm trying to streamline my software life today and one of my pass-times is to fish around and listen to new music before it "graduates" into the hyper-organized world of iTunes. My need was simple: a lean, low-overhead MP3 player that can load in a snap and not be in my way or slow my system down. I fished around a lot and couldn't really find anything to my liking.
Then I thought about Winamp. For those old enough to remember, Winamp set the bar years ago for media players way back when MP3 had come into our lives. It was small, fast and completely badass. It did what it was designed to do beautifully. Here's a snapshot of what Winamp looked like for years:
Nothing crazy. A media player. Shuffle. Playlist support. Worked just fine. So I decide to go to Winamp.com to grab it. Well, it turns out Winamp has grown up a lot since version 2.0 (pictured above). The new version has all kinds of features and a "Pro" edition with even more features. But in looking for something lean, Winamp's svelte physique was no more. In fact, he'd gained a lot of weight:
The above is a chart of Winamp's installer file size as it has evolved from version 1.0 through today's version 5.5. The bars represent kilobytes. Version 1.5 of Winamp comes in around 350kb in size. The current version nears 9MB (or 9000kb) nearly twenty five times the size.
Now I know, there are all sorts of new features in Winamp 5.5 that are missing in 1.5. And some of them may be worth a boost in size. Let's say version 5.5 is, oh I dunno, five times better (a tall order if you ask me). That still doesn't warrant a 25X increase in installer size...which will translate into a larger memory footprint, a greater demand for CPU cycles, and so on.
The unmitigated piling on of features is an evil thing. It's like a Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet. Yeh, its great to be able to eat as much as you want for one low price. The problem is your stomach is only so large and you start feeling gross after awhile. When I wear my product manager hat, I like to follow one particular rule: before adding a new feature, weigh its benefit against its cost. It's cost in terms of complexity, dilution of the broader value of your product, its performance impact on your product and...is it adding to the overwhelmed (gross?) feeling of using unnecessarily bloated software.
Digging around, I was able to find a huge list of all the old versions of Winamp on oldversions.com. I grabbed version 2.0. It has the one feature the newer versions don't: it's slim and fast and loads in a split second. And yes, it actually feels good to use something so lean and efficient.
Posted by Richard Ziade on December 19, 2007, 05:04PMCool Web-Based Outlining Tool : Listas
Anyone that's used the creamy-smooth OSX-based OmniOuliner can appreciate the value of a good outlining application. If you're a Windows user, that appreciated gives way to envy. Listas is a cool, dead simple web-based outliner that does the job pretty admirably.
Posted by Richard Ziade on December 18, 2007, 10:57AMThe Return Of The Thick Client
The New York Times has an article up about how faster chips are leaving programmers in the dust. In short, all these multi-core CPU's coming out are really hard to program against. Programmers have to write "parallel programs" to fully take advantage of the additional lanes on the CPU highway that AMD & Intel are laying down. It's complex stuff and Microsoft is putting some of its biggest brains on it.
One of the hottest topics in technology today is the advent of utility computing. Increases in bandwidth and computing power has many industry observers asserting that the bulk of the CPU labor doesn't really need to happen on the PC under your desk. Services like Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Salesforce.com have proven that you can deliver a lot of the common computing tasks in a centralized way. No more installation DVD's. Just visit a URL and start using centrally hosted software.
It's pretty damn convenient. But in its current incarnation, its drastically lacking the richness and highly interactive experience associated with desktop applications. Anyone who's used Excel 2007 and Google spreadsheets notices the difference almost immediately. Of course, Google spreadsheets is brand new and running in your browser. So it's not exactly a fair race...yet.
For Microsoft, it makes a hell of a lot of sense to invest heavily in optimizing their software to run as close to the metal as possible. Today, Google is investing in the web browser as the "platform" to deliver their applications. That's going to have to give at some point if they seriously want to compete with Microsoft. No matter how much you trick out Ajax, it's not going to come anywhere the power and capabilities of applications like Microsoft Word and Apple's Keynote, for example.
So where does this leave the promise of rich internet applications (RIA's)? I tend to agree that applications will stop being installed on DVD's and CD's. Boxed software will undoubtedly go away. But the delivery mechanism doesn't tell the whole story. There's still the issue of "platform." If CPU's are outpacing software development, Javascript, AJAX and the plethora of browsers that sort of play nice are just going to end up playing catch up. They're way too high up on the stack to realistically leverage advances in hardware.
If we're truly looking to marry the power of rich software with the reach of the Internet, then we have to look to the players that have viable platforms that can continue to evolve and stay in lock-step (or at least near lock-step) with the ever-accelerating pace of hardware: Microsoft and Adobe. In Adobe's last Flash update (Update 3), they've added multi-core CPU support. You can also bet that Microsoft's Vista and Silverlight will also play close attention to taking advantage of the latest hardware features.
The challenge for Google - if its really serious about going after Microsoft's bread-and-butter productivity software business - is to somehow find a way to lock into and take advantage of a platform that is: (a) universally available and (b) malleable enough to scale up and evolve as hardware improves.
Two years ago, I half-jokingly argued that Microsoft should buy Adobe. At the end of the post, I winked that Google should buy Adobe instead. I agree that we're headed towards massive server farms and a world of utility computing but that trend shouldn't be confused with the clear competitive advantage of delivering powerful software to the desktop. Think Photoshop. Think mind-blowing 3D games. They can all make it over the wire...but you still need that rig - and the platform that knows how to take advantage of it - under your desk.
Posted by Richard Ziade on December 13, 2007, 11:11AMAsha Veza : Using Design For A Great Cause
I wanted to share a great story of using design for good. There's a little shop in Brooklyn's Park Slope called Asha Veza. Asha Veza (the name combines the words "hope" in Hindi, and "connection" in Bosnian) sells women's clothing but with a twist: all of the apparel is created by women surviving and at risk of trafficking or sexual exploitation in Calcutta and Bosnia. 100% of Asha Veza profits go to create sustainable economic opportunities for women with few options and little hope.
I've been to the shop myself and the clothing is both unique and really beautiful. The care and craftsmanship that goes into the blouses, jackets, scarves is truly exceptional. Asha Veza is the brainchild of Shanti Crawford, a field worker who was born in India. She also designs many of the garments sold at the shop.
Asha Veza is located at: 69 5th Avenue (between Prospect Place and St. Marks), Brooklyn, NY 11217. Their telephone is (718) 783-2742. The shop is a short walk away from the Atlantic Ave/Pacific Street station in Brooklyn. If you're looking for a truly unique gift for someone, be sure to check out Asha Veza.
Posted by Richard Ziade on December 12, 2007, 01:16PMFlash : All Things To (Almost) Everyone
A few days ago, a major update to Adobe's Flash Player (specifically Flash Player 9 Update 3) was let loose. This was a major update for Flash. It includes enhanced video support (H.264) as well as multi-core processor support for better performance. If you visit Adobe.com as of this posting, you'll see that Flash video is a major part of Adobe's Flash story...and rightly so. Flash is an excellent video delivery platform.
But Flash is a lot more than that. It's evolved into a full-blown software platform. It does a lot of different things these days. Along with its leadership position in delivering Internet video, countless games have been built on Flash. It's also the medium of choice for ultra-glossy promotional destinations for big budget movies and high profile games. On top of all that, along with Flex, Adobe's excellent RIA platform, it's a cross-platform for delivering business applications. That's a lot of hats to wear, and for the most part Flash wears them well...for the most part.
At Arc90, we invested early in the Flex strategy. Not long after Flex 2 was released, we had applications running in production on the platform. There were a few kinks here and there - many expected with a young software platform - but overall it's been the right decision for ourselves and our clients.
With the update to Flash last week, all hell broke loose. Through an obscure, poorly-documented change to how Flash handles Basic HTTP Authentication (in short, it hardly did before, and now it doesn't at all), every one of our Flex-based software applications broke. The modification is not a bug. It's a security fix as far as Adobe's concerned.
A few things went wrong here:
- We didn't know what changed. This update was all about video. There were other changes and fixes in place, but you really have to dig to find out what's changed. As for this particular change, you had to do some serious investigating to find out about it. If we're going to ask our clients to rely on Flash as the "OS" to run the business software we build for them, we need a better way of finding out early how their applications may be impacted.
- The Mysterious Propagation Of Flash. We've got a few thousand users that regularly use one of our Flash applications. When we found out about the problem, we had no idea if or when it would start impacting our users. There isn't a single resource that we could find that clearly outlines how the operating system we're relying on – Flash - updates itself to our user base.
- Adobe Decides On The Update, Not Us. On a related point, we can't stop the update from happening. There are countless organizations out there that are still running Windows 2000. How can we expect them to tolerate a software platform that updates itself depending on whether a user visits Youtube?
- Adobe's Flash/Flex HTTP Support Is Lousy. There's no other way to put it. At Arc90, we believe in leveraging agreed-upon standard protocols. While SOAP and AMF support are baked into the the Flex framework, HTTP service support is half-hearted at best.
In all fairness, Adobe has been very responsive on this issue. Emmy Huang, product manager for Flash player, got back to us very quickly and conceded they could've done a better job at informing the development community of this change. Also, it's worth noting that we appear to be in the neglected minority in terms of utilizing truly RESTful protocols to talk to Flash applications. Still, if you're going to support HTTP services, why not properly do so?
At Arc90, we are big believers in Adobe's strategy around Rich Internet Applications. The sheer power of the Flash runtime, the elegance of the Actionscript 3 object model and the exciting possibilities of bringing all these great applications to the desktop via AIR are all key reasons why we are steering our energy in Adobe's direction.
Still, we need the right backing to continue to confidently evangelize Adobe's platforms to our clients. We quickly patched our current applications to work around the change. Still, we can't help but feel hesitant about what comes next.
I'll end this post with a quote from one of our key clients in response to this whole episode: "How do I know this isn't going to happen again?"
Posted by Richard Ziade on December 10, 2007, 09:41AMFree Illustrations At Dezignus
Dezignus generously shares fairly high quality vectors, images, shapes and icons via their blog. This stuff is on par with vector work that you'd typically have to purchase elsewhere. Very cool. Posted by Richard Ziade on December 6, 2007, 10:48AMWeb Clips For PC's With Snippage
For all the Windows users out there envious of Apple's new Web Clip feature in Leopard, check out Snippage. Both tools allow you to cut out any portion of a web page and have it live on your desktop. Snippage still feels pretty experimental and lacks some features, but it's a nice start.
Posted by Richard Ziade on December 5, 2007, 02:37PMDel.icio.us And The Unwashed Masses : Why Del.icio.us Is Still Just a Dorky Web App That Your Mom Could Care Less About
Read/Write Web points to something I find both sad and a little perplexing: del.icio.us, the granddaddy of social bookmarking sites, isn't catching on. They don't really dig into why it isn't catching on. Still, it's a bit disappointing. I ran an Alexa chart and the results were even more disappointing:
Note: I always take in Alexa charts with the proverbial grain of salt.
So what gives? Why is a service that is as cool and useful as del.icio.us not able to catch on? Some theories:
- Nobody really needs a way to centrally store their bookmarks. The browser is just fine. Ouch. This one hurts. As much as we'd like to think that the sea level of technology is rising and lifting us all towards enlightened levels of productivity and social interactions, reality is quite different. Most people keep a few bookmarks - their bank, some news page (CNN and such), a handful of special interests...and that's it. Most people also don't need their bookmarks centrally stored. They use one computer and their bookmarks are on it.
- Most people don't understand what del.icio.us does. Another big factor. Read/Write sort of alludes to this by pointing out that 8 of the top 10 delicious tags are technology related. Ask your uncle what del.icio.us is and he'll probably just tilt his head and lose interest almost immediately. Also, del.icio.us' web presence isn't exactly inviting. I've always loved its minimalist style, but for the uneducated, it doesn't help a whole lot. Compound that with the 15-minute tutorial that "tagging" deserves and you're left with a real challenge.
- People don't feel compelled to share del.icio.us with others. Unlike viral sites like Facebook and Youtube, you don't need to go back to del.icio.us to reap its rewards. If I find a worthwhile link on del.icio.us, I'm just going to share that link with others, not its representation in del.icio.us.
I personally love del.icio.us. I think it's a great service and I don't mind taking the time to evangelize it. However, I think there is a lesson learned here: sympathize with your audience; appreciate what they don't understand (or don't care to understand); and finally...figure out what you're really going after.
It could well be argued that del.icio.us targets a niche need (bullet #1 above) and not much else. I'm skeptical of that excuse though. The needs and wants can get pretty blurry if the value is there. It's more a matter of making that value accessible. And good, thoughtful, empathetic design is the only way to get there.
After all, nobody really needs an iPod. Or do they?
Posted by Richard Ziade on December 4, 2007, 04:14PMPlay Any MP3's On Just About Any Page With Yahoo!'s Easylistener
Easylistener is a very slick, Flash-based music player that will play just about anything linked to at a URL destination. Imagine pointing this player to your favorite music blog (or music RSS feeds) and...you're done! A playlist of all the songs is automatically created. Damn cool...and a slick interface to boot.
Fear & Self-Loathing Among The Un-Blogged Bloggers
I'd like to share a little experience I've had within the walls of Arc90.
At Arc90, we put enormous value on contributing and being active in the Arc90 Blog and Lab. We view the blog and lab not just as fun diversions, but a key part of our marketing and PR. We've found its a great way to share our ideas with the community as well as showcase some of our capabilities.
About six months ago, we'd put in place a semi-controversial "(dis)incentive plan" that actually amounted to some disincentive if you didn't contribute to either the blog or lab. In other words, your contributions to the blog and lab would be factored into your review - positively or negatively.
The plan was met with some controversy. Many at Arc90 didn't like the sound of it. Nevertheless, for a good couple of months following, blogging activity ramped up. Still, a frighteningly large percentage of Arc90'ers never bothered to blog at all...to this day.
The lesson learned, for me at least, is this: not everyone blogs. In fact, despite the staggering growth numbers, most people don't blog. In fact, most people don't want to blog. I'm not just talking about Arc90. I'm talking in general.
So what is the old blog-o-sphere left with? Loud mouths? Extroverts? People who obsess over their Feedburner subscription stats? Dare I say...Scoble-types? Um, yeh. Pretty much. Bloggers, by design, are a bit full of themselves. You sort of have to be to presume that anything you write hundreds of times a year is worth reading.
Throughout this exercise, a common occurrence at Arc90 was what I like to call "The Great Blog Post Struggle." People would labor over draft over draft of that ideal blog post. Revising, tweaking, lopping off chunks only to feel painfully unsatisfied when it came time to publish. Very often, the work never saw the light of day. The possibility of a stupid or ill-received post was paralyzing to them. Fear and their lack of Hubris did them in.
So I say to the un-blogged bloggers-to-be at Arc90 - and everyone else out there in the world: just blog! Your flaws, insecurities, fumblings, idiosyncrasies are the secret sauce of blogging. Don't bother trying to become a journalist. You're not one...and nobody wants to read a magazine article anyway.
Posted by Richard Ziade on December 3, 2007, 05:08PMFacebook's Biggest Crime
Between privacy concerns, an ugly lawsuit and a ridiculous valuation, Facebook is wading through some rough waters these days.
The Onion has that special ability to somehow capture shades of truth in their satire. Facebook - and it's founder Mark Zuckerburg - has no doubt made some bad moves, but few could deny that their biggest crime is their successful rise to date. Enter The Onion:
A Handful Of Free Stuff From...Microsoft?
There's a lot of really good free software out there. There are many lists out there that flaunt free software for just about anything. And you've gotta love the freeware/open-source story: the lone developer (or small team), churning out something cool for the betterment of mankind...and the well-deserved ego stroke. It's a very cool thing.
So it's just a little bit funny to throw out a few excellent tools from the big bad Evil Empire from Redmond: Microsoft. Everyone knows about Google's well-publicized "20% of your time to do whatever you like" rule. Well, it turns out the kids at Microsoft have some time to play around as well. Here are three excellent free tools that I've stumbled on:
XML Notepad 2007
Anyone that grapples with XML in any sort of way can appreciate XML Notepad 2007. It's a visual (read: not code-centric) XML editor. No more breaking XML markup or squinting to decipher where something lies. XML Notepad presents a tree view of the XML structure along with editable fields for filling in values. This is a great tool for business users that need to edit XML.
SyncToy 2.0
A Microsoft tool that's easy and intuitive to use? Welcome to the (hopefully) new Microsoft design aesthetic. SyncToy is an excellent just-the-right-set-of-features syncing tool that doesn't do too much but nails what its advertised to do very well. If you've ever needed to sync external drives or backup documents, SyncToy is perfect for the task.
RSS Bandit
RSS Bandit isn't officially handed out under the Microsoft banner, but the pet project of Microsoft's own Dare Obasanjo (you can track his RSS Bandit work here). It's a full-featured RSS reader for Windows that isn't the most user-friendly, but has a breadth of features (Newsgator syncing-support, meme-tracking, and many others) that is seriously impressive for a free RSS reader.
You can find some other free stuff from the caring folks at Microsoft by visiting their download center.
Posted by Richard Ziade on December 2, 2007, 06:55PMFree Mini Icons
I'm a bit of an icon addict. Get your fix with some quality mini icons.