Shaking the Smartphone OS Cocktail

The difference between a mélange and a mess is balance. A mélange mixes together disparate elements into a cohesive combination by carefully balancing each part in relation to the other parts. A mess, by contrast, has no balance. It’s a jumble of confusing elements that fight against each other. It’s why one bartender can make the perfect cocktail and another a horrible brew with the same ingredients.

The smartphone OS market right now is a mess not a mélange. Rather than a handful of operating systems that compliment each other we have too many that do the same thing and fight with each other. While this will eventually shake out, at the moment it is a confusing mess for the consumer.

I’m about to step up to a smartphone. It’s been a long time coming. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure what value these devices had. They had neither the software or power that I crave in a computer nor, in most cases, the sound quality I want in a phone. Both of those situations have changed. The devices and apps have become more powerful and hence, more useful. The sound quality has also increased dramatically. This is a great time to buy these devices too. Prices are dropping and data coverage expanding.

It’s the operating systems that are holding me back. There are too many of them to choose from. Smartphones are not like old school cell phones. In my old mobile phones the operating system really didn’t matter. The carrier and phone did but not the OS. Whether you bought a phone from Nokia, LG, Samsung, or Motorola, the features of the phone and phone company (flip or stick? service in the desert?) decide your experience.

No longer. Now, like a computer, you have to decide on an OS and boy are there a lot of them. Ticking off the major ones in my head I came up with Apple iOS, Android, WebOS, Windows 7 Mobile, and RIM’s BlackBerry 6 OS. That’s five major smartphone operating systems I can come up with using no research. All with incompatible apps, offered on different devices that have different features, on different carriers, and available in different countries. If I was starting from scratch, I would need a matrix of carriers (probably only the major ones like AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and Nextel), device manufacturers (the ones I’ve mentioned plus HTC and RIM) and five operating systems. All before I got to the features of the phone. At a minimum that’s a 4X6X5. For you math geeks that means as many as 120 combinations. Even if I eliminate some combinations as non-existent, such as Blackberry OS with anything but a RIM device, it’s still a big number before heading out to look at the phones that support my X by Y by Z combination.

Complicating matters is that smartphones are only one slice of the mobile pie. I have to take into account that I might want a pad device someday. That makes the OS choice even more important since I wouldn’t want more than one mobile OS with incompatible apps. It’s bad enough that my laptop and phone will have different applications and operating systems. No need to make it three different operating systems.

It wouldn’t be so bad if there were clear distinctions between any of these operating systems and their apps. Perhaps from the point of view of the folks who design them and the analysts who cover the mobile market there is. To consumers, however, it’s all the same. You have gestures, even if they are different. You have apps, even if they are different. You have buttons and some type of virtual keyboard, even if they are different. At best, ones choice is determined by whimsical personal preferences.

The thing is, the OS matters. Just like any other computer, the smartphone OS determines what applications are available for your platform. Which operating systems a software developer writes for depends less on technical details and much more on market share. My choices will be limited by which OS app developers think will provide them the most exposure in the market. Most software companies don’t want to develop for an operating system that won’t have much market share or be around very long.

I’ve been in this industry long enough to know this won’t continue. Sooner or later there will be a shakeout and half of these operating systems will disappear. Some won’t that should but will be marginalized like Windows CE. Others will become nothing more than user interfaces in much the same way Apple’s OS turned into UNIX under the covers but has kept its Apple GUI. Still others will disappear altogether.

The problem is guessing which ones will live and which will die. No one wants to buy a device that will have an obsolete and discontinued operating system. It’s like buying a Palm device anywhere between 2000 and 2005. If you knew then what we know now you wouldn’t have. I have a desk draw full of obsolete devices like my old Palm devices.  They are, for all practical purposes, museum pieces.

I generally don’t like to make predictions (since they are frequently wrong) but here’s what I think will happen:

• Apple iOS – keeps going. Apple simply doesn’t care about the wider market. That and the cognoscenti love their Apple crack.
• Android – generous licensing will insure that it continues to evolve. It lives!
• Windows 7 Mobile – another failed attempt. Sorry Microsoft. I actually like Vista and Windows 7 on the desktop. The mobile OS is too little too late. It dies. Microsoft money insures it dies slowly and painfully. Please Mt. Ballmer, do a deal with Google and move to Android while you still can.
• WebOS – really? I get that HP paid good money for Palm but with all the other choices, why would I want this. The tablet market? And this from a company who’s last homegrown OS was HP/UX. It dies and HP switches to Android merging whatever is good about WebOS into it.
• Blackberry OS – this is a tough one. RIM has an enormous and fanatical installed base but it’s slipping. They had the first viable smartphone-like device which helped get them established. At the time you had to rely on their closed system for email. Now, that’s a liability. I’ll bet that they quietly move to something else but with Blackberry extensions so the old guard can feel happy. My guess is that it will be Android too.

Given where the market is going, the basic mobile phone probably has only a few more generations before they are all smartphones. There will be basic versions for the cheap, the Luddite, and the burner phone market. Those will still be smartphones, just lobotomized ones.

In the meantime, there are too many choices and that will hurt the market. Consumers like simplicity. Until recently, mobile phones were fairly simple devices with a small number of functions. As long as the major bases were covered (make and receive calls, SMS, a couple of toys like tip calculators) you were fine. Now they are computing endpoints with all the same problems as a laptop. Too many operating systems makes it overly complicated. It can’t continue like this.

For the smartphone OS folks who I’ve just insulted remember this: This was the same situation in the personal computer/workstation market in 1990. You had DOS, Apple, dozens of UNIX flavors, CP/M in all of it’s variants, as well as proprietary workstation operating systems. Remember IRIS? Ask your kids (huh? what’s that?) and you will feel old. I loved developing for Apollo’s Domain OS but where is it now? Next to the VAX in the Smithsonian. The market demanded simplicity, leaving Microsoft with the lion’s share. It didn’t matter that DOS was inferior to UNIX or Domain OS. Microsoft still ate their lunch. That UNIX, Apple, and a few others still exist is no solace. They are niche players now, not majors.  Windows and Linux make up the majority of the market by fulfilling different needs. They compliment each other.

Since I have to bet, I’m betting on Android. I’m locked into Verizon with no burning need to change which makes the decision easier. Choosing Android eliminates Apple and RIM devices too, further simplifying things. I almost don’t care what the phone is now. I’ll probably decide on price.

The Great Untruths

There is a difference between a lie and an untruth. Neither is true but a lie is intentional. So, when I say that something is an untruth instead of a lie I am making a value judgment. The assumption is that someone did not tell the truth but didn’t know that it was not true. Instead, they were ignorant, got too excited/upset/scared or are parroting back what might be another untruth or lie.

A lot of products fail (and some fail dramatically) because of untruths. If an untruth slips in during a crucial phase of development a very bad decision will be made and bad product will emerge.

Here’s some of my favorites.

Everyone Wants This!

You hear this from sales and marketing people a lot. Someone comes back from a trade show or customer visits and hears about a feature that “everyone” wants. There are a couple of untruths rolled into one here.

First off, who is everyone? I can’t tell you how many times it turns out that “everyone” is one person. After hearing it one time, the sales and marketing team feels compelled to ask others about it. They usually get a “Sure. That sounds good” type response. It’s really a sample size of one with all other responses coming from a poisoned well.

More importantly, people often want a great many things that they aren’t willing to pay for. There is a difference between wanting something and needing it enough to turn over money out of a limited budget. This is why there are a lot more Ford Focuses on the road than Lamborghinis. Everyone wants a Lamborghinis, just not enough to pay for it.

Finally, customers don’t often know what they want or even need. Instead, they have problems that need solving. Asking a customer “Do you need this feature?” will get you to the untruth. Asking “What do you need to accomplish your goals” will get you to what they really need to do and might be willing to spend money on.

We Can Do That Too (Version 1)

Someone (Sales, Marketing, a customer perhaps) comes to the development team with a request in the middle of a project. This is commonly called scope creep. We’ve all seen it because it happens all the time. Sometimes, it’s no big deal. Other times it kills products. You can’t just add things without ramifications.

Scope creep kills products in two ways. One, it loads products up with a ton of features that make it bloated. In the end, by trying to please everyone you please no one. You also trash your margins.

Often when faced with these requests Engineering will say “Yes! We can add that.” This is an untruth. Technical folks are, by nature, builders, makers, and fixers. It’s in the DNA. Pride comes from the ability to create something that people will say “Awesome!” to. The last thing they want to say is “We can’t do that.” So they say yes but neglect to mention that they lack the resources or even the expertise to accomplish it. Look out for the techie that says “No problem. We can do that” without first doing some analysis. You will not find out until much later that they are trying to figure out how to do something that they simply cannot do.

We Can Do That Too (Version 2)

Another flavor of “We Can Do That Too” untruth is timeline reboot. Like the new Star Trek movie. If the technical team knows that they have the expertise and resources they will instantly say yes to a new request. Wonderful! However, what they don’t tell you is that they don’t have the time. You find that out when you sit down to review a project and realize that the technical team just assumed that the timelines were extended. The real request is “Can we add this without changing the timeline?” The untruth is saying yes to that knowing that is what is meant.

I can already hear the response – good project management will head this off at the pass. That assumes that the technical folks ever communicated the new timelines to the project manager. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen technical teams develop a new timeline in their heads and never mention it to anyone. Their intention was always to stick to the old timelines but when it becomes apparent they couldn’t they extended it and added a touch of collective amnesia.

Who hasn’t heard “The trade show is in two weeks?! How come no one told me that?” Of course you did but they need to save face. It’s about pride again.

We Can Fix This

About the worst thing that can happen in the middle of product development is the realization that something is terribly wrong. You hit a technical snag that was completely unexpected. Unfortunately, some problems are too big or costly to fix. But that’s not the bad part.

The great untruth is believing you can fix the unfixable. There are just some problems that are insurmountable and this is when you shut down the project. A lot of technical folks don’t know when something is unfixable. The assume that with enough time they will come up with a solution. Before you know it every last drop of resource in the company is engaged in trying to find a solution to an intractable problem. The idea of cutting one’s losses is rejected, more out of pride than anything else. This is when you have to swallow your pride and stop fooling yourself. Then you can find a real solution like buying the technology from someone who has figured it out. Or perhaps dropping the feature that wasn’t going to generate much revenue anyway.

I’ve seen this happen with businesses too. Some businesses face a problem they can’t handle no matter how much time, effort, or money they put into it. They destroy all the value in the business in a quixotic quest to find a way out. Sometimes, the only way out is by the door. What’s especially bad about this situation is that opportunities to scrape something out of the business by changing direction, selling the business or divesting of some it its assets are lost. Here’s to tilting at windmills.

Everyone Else Already Has This

I always leave my favorite to the last. This is by far my favorite untruth. To justify more resources, a new feature, or an accelerated timeline someone will declare that you are behind the curve and this is a feature that everyone already has.

The truth is more likely that they have only made announcements. They might even be working on it. It is even possible that one company has an early version of it. Rarely is there a critical feature that no one anticipated that everyone but you has. Everyone does not have this feature yet. Freaking out over it will only cause you pain.

This type of hysteria can derail a development effort. It results in a lot of time and money going into an early feature that no one is ready to deal with yet. Not you and not your customers. The trade off is almost always dropping something that your customers really do need for something that is new. Listening to competitor’s press releases can be dangerous to your product health.

I want to stress again that no one does these things on purpose. Pride and fear are at the root of these untruths. They are powerful emotions. When the emotions are genuine they can make nothing seem like something. It can even be hard to ask questions about the validity of untruths. The people uttering them believe them and will feel like they are being attacked if you question their perceptions.

If you suspect an untruth here’s a tip: ask for time to look into it. Don’t make a decision right away. Ask sales or marketing to generate a revenue estimate for the new feature or a competitive analysis so that you “can be prepared for launch.” Ask the technical team for a revised project plan so that you can better plan your launch. Let them discover their own untruth and they will be less likely to react emotionally.

Whatever it takes, don’t let the untruth guide you.

eyeSpy With My Eye My Desktop In The Sky

I've been intrigued with the idea of server-based desktops for awhile. In the past I have toyed around with Desktop Two and the recently deceased Jooce. While interesting, they all suffered from the same set of problems. They were usually:

• slow;

• lacking in useful applications, and;

• had significant security problems.

The last item is significant. Despite what the folks at Google would tell you, most companies don't want to keep sensitive files on someone else's server. The most standout issue with virtual, online desktops (which, heaven help me, they are calling Cloud Desktops) is that there didn't seem to be enough need for them. Until now. I'll get to that later.

eyeOS overcomes the majority of cloud desktop problems. Written in PHP5, you can install it on your own internal server or even a web hosting server. It's open source to boot! This is important since it makes it easy (or even possible) to create your own web-based applications to run in the virtual desktops. The suite of applications that comes with eyeOS is pretty good but the ability to create your own makes it a much more useful platform for business.

Being able to install eyeOS on the server of your choice also goes a long way to removing security objections as well. IT can now control the security environment and does not have to rely on blind faith in a service provider. The same goes for performance. You can use your own magic and hardware to up performance levels to where you want them to be. Even installed on a web hosting platform, eyeOS had a decent response time, granted for a small number of users. That it worked at all in anything resembling a useful manner was pretty startling.

The big question that is still unanswered is “who cares?” That's the acid test for all products. Why should I spend any time at all, let alone money, on this product. As little as two years ago, I would have to have answered “ I don't care.” Today, the world is a different place. We now have a proliferation of small, Internet enabled devices including smartphones and netbooks. Many of these are too underpowered to have a full range of desktop applications – or do they?

This is why eyeOS really makes sense now. Virtual desktops have been primarily concerned with giving users a consistent and controlled desktop experience throughout an Enterprise network. That's fine except that it doesn't carry on to other devices. With eyeOS, you can set up your own cloud desktop service, that meets your standards for security, and make it available on anything with a browser.

With eyeOS in hand, you can outfit your sales force with cheap netbooks and still give them a full range of office and corporate applications. In other words, the whole desktop experience. For an added bonus, if users stick with cloud desktop for everything, you don't lose or expose your data even if they lose their PDA, smartphone, or netbook. It's not on those devices, it's on the server.

The best part is that they users don't have to do anything special to make this work. They sign into the eyeOS server and away they go. Users don't have to remember to copy files to encrypted drives or anything like that. They just do what they normally would do on a desktop computer. In terms of data security, this is a great leap forward. And the fact that only administrators can install applications is sure to please corporate security types. Fewer rogue applications in the corporate network is a good thing indeed.

eyeOS is not perfect by any means. Many of the critical applications, email especially, are nowhere near what a decent corporate application should be. However, it is clear from the Zoho widgets (downloaded separately) that you can integrate other online applications into eyeOS. With more and more companies going to web-enabled applications anyway, lack of sophisticated, standalone desktop applications is really not a problem.

Cloud desktops and eyeOS in particular, are not quite there yet. However, they are rapidly getting there. An organization that is committed to cloud desktops could make eyeOS into what it needed. Not out of the box of course but with a relatively small amount of effort.

The old fashioned, fat desktop will never go away. There are too many applications that will never port to a platform like this. I don't see programmers writing serious code on a cloud desktop. For the average wage slave, however, this would be an improvement and IT will love it.

Cloudy Skies This Week

Recent blog posts and comments I made on Twitter might give some people the impression that I'm against cloud computing. I bet I've given some people the impression that I hate cloud computing. Despise it! Want to see it die! Nothing could be further from the truth. I love the idea of cloud computing. It's the cloud computing marketing that I take issue with.

Overall, what's not to like about the cloud idea? The promise of cloud computing (notice I say promise, not reality) is the ability to only buy what you need with the option to buy more later if you want to. In that respect, it deals with one of the key problems in computing: coarse granularity in systems. If I need 10 percent of a server, I might have to buy a whole server. Someday I might need that whole server but not right at the moment. Then again, maybe never. We have wonderful terms for buying more than you need such as underutilization. The best term is “a waste of money”. So, buying only what I need when I need it is a great way to manage my budget. Same goes for software. I no longer have to buy a software package designed for fifty people for just three people to use. It's efficient and cost effective. It also makes it easier to quantify the cost of running an application.

Cloud computing is also evolution not revolution. We have been doing limited purpose cloud computing for years. It's called web hosting. And email hosting. Oh. And application hosting. Do I notice when my hosting provider adds new resources in order to add more customers. Not really. I pay ten bucks and get a chunk of resources adequate to running my simple web site and that's how I like it.

So what's not to like? Well a couple of things really. Security of a cloud is no better than security in a non-cloud data center. You still have the problems of internal espionage, external break-ins, and other Dick Tracy stuff.

There is also a migration problem. When the day comes that your application needs to move to a dedicated system (don't kid yourself – it will happen), you might have a heck of a time moving it. Unlike moving up to a bigger piece of iron, applications may have to be rebuilt to live in a different type of environment. In that way, I suppose, it is different. It's worse... and nobody wants that.

This is especially true of clouds built around service frameworks like Amazon's. At some point the application might get big enough that it makes sense to bring it in house. Worse yet, you could find yourself dissatisfied with the service provider (like that never happens!) and forced into an acrimonious divorce. This is an especially nasty problem because they have you by the data stores if you get my meaning.

These are not reasons to forgo the cloud. They are reasons to be careful. Figure these issues out ahead of time and make good choices up front. And ignore the hype. If someone slaps “cloud” on something that seems not so cloudy, be suspicious.

Remember, cloud computing is a strategy and maybe an architecture. It's not a product no matter how many times the corporate talking head says so.

Tom's Cheapskates Roll Call of Productivity and Multimedia Apps for the Truly Frugal

When I blogged about Microsoft and Netbooks, I made the statement that nobody uses OpenOffice.org because they already use Microsoft Office. While I still maintain that is true, it doesn't mean that you can't dispense with all those expensive software applications in favor of open source. That includes Microsoft Office.

In fact, it has become even easier to put together a sophisticated set of software for everyday use using only open source or freeware offerings. There is now a critical mass in productivity and multimedia applications that can be had for nothing. This is the good news.

The bad news is that the free stuff is rarely as elegant as the commercial versions. In almost all cases, the GUI leaves much to be desired and not just the eye candy part. Most free software seems to have been designed by and for computer geeks. There is a somewhat old school feel to much of it and, at times, can be downright confusing to use. If you compare software like Audacity, a sound recording and editing tool, to commercial software such as Pro Tools or even the software that comes bundled with a Mac, the interface falls woefully short. This means the learning curve is high, especially for non-professional users.

So, I now present to you my Cheapskates Roll Call of Productivity and Multimedia Apps for the Truly Frugal. The first thing you will probably note is that there is no video editing software on the list. I have never found a free video editing suite that is reliable (as in doesn't crash a lot) and so I stick with bundled commercial applications.

Office Applications: OpenOffice.org

Okay, they need to figure out the name problem. Because of trademark issues, the OpenOffice.org people have to tack on the .org to the name of the suite. That's stupid. Get a new name. No one will care.

Strengths: It's a complete office suite,with MS Office compatibility and native exporting to PDF. The Writer word processor application is a darn good word processor. The presentation and spreadsheet applications are also pretty good though not great.

Weaknesses: The Draw program is just plain lame, hard to use, and lacks features. The OpenOffice.org GUI is ugly and many icons don't look like anything. The database program seems more techie than Access and lacks application tools.

Email: Thunderbird from Mozilla

This is an example where the open source/freeware version far exceeds the commercial variety. Simply the best email client for most people with awesome anti-spam filters. Add the Lightning add-on for calendaring and you have everything you need.

Strengths: Manages multiple email accounts as one. Freely available add-ons give Thunderbird all kinds of features that are not found in other email clients without creating bloatware. The anti-spam and security features are unbeatable. It's fast and easy too. Lots of support for use with online services like Google Calender, Remember the Milk, and Trip It. Thunderbird integrates news feeds from RSS, ATOM, and Newsgroups into your email.

Weaknees: No native Exchange or Blackberry sync support. This kills it in the business environment. Yes you can have Thunderbird access the same LDAP compliant address books as a Blackberry and make Exchange available as a POP server but that's a kludge. Could also use IM support.

Browser: FireFox from Mozilla and Chrome from Google

This isn't fair of course since almost all browsers are free. Still, you don't have to live with Internet Explorer. As a side note, this is what I find so odd about the recent EU slapdown of Microsoft. They didn't seem to understand that you can install five other browsers with less effort than uploading photos to Flickr. I still don't get it. But I digress...

I could write for days about the strengths and weaknesses of these two browsers. Needless to say, they are better than IE and everyone knows it or doesn't care.

Image Editing: GIMP (Gnu Image Processor).

Despite another lousy name which makes it sound both broken and politically incorrect, GIMP is the best image editor this side of Adobe Photoshop. You can actually get an add-on that makes it look and act sort of like Photoshop.

Strengths: Up to your eyes in features and filters. You can pretty much do everything imaginable in GIMP. Lots of add-ons give you all kinds of additional image manipulation features.

Weaknesses: A lot of time add-ons simply don't work and they are always tough to install. The standard GUI is also quite hideous which is ironic given what the software does. It can be hard to do more complex manipulations that commercial software has wizards for.

Sound Editing and Recording: Audacity.

Gotta love the name which is clearly a play on words. Audacity is a sound recording and editing program with a host of features including the ability to use industry standard VST plugins. This makes Audacity a great tool for the amateur and a platform for the pro.

Strengths: Gobs of features. Does all the basics such as analog and digital recording plus lots of signal processing to clean up what you record. My favorite feature is the ability to mark places in an analog signal and export them as separate MP3 files. If you are ripping an old analog record, this is a very necessary function.

Weaknesses: No mixer. You can mix but it is not as simple of moving a bunch of virtual sliders. The interface is busy and complicated. Compared to commercial offerings like Pro-Tools, Audacity can be confusing. A lot of the plugins you find on the Internet don't work well or at all. You need to have a good grounding in signal analysis or sound engineering to do most anything.

Instant Messaging: Digsby

I've tried a lot of IM clients including Trillian and Pidgin. None compare to Digsby. What makes Digsby special is that it can handle a wide range of Internet-based messaging. Not only does it connect to every major IM system, it can also connect to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, POP email, and Online Email like Yahoo. Email support mostly allows you to preview messages and launch the real site or client, but that is more than most of the others do.

Strengths: Extensive support for all the major (and quite a number of the minor) IM networks plus social networks and email. Malleable and attractive interface with support for skins. Good Twitter support.

Weaknesses: Email support is not complete so it cannot be used as an all-in-one messaging platform. Digsby also lacks user created plugins which limit functionality compared to more open offerings such as Pidgin. It is also the only program mentioned here that is Windows-only. The website says that “ digsby is coming soon for Mac and Linux!” but that is not the same as now or even “November”.

I'm sure there are a bunch more if I took the time to think about it. What is most encouraging is that the ability exists to put together a complete set of desktop applications for nothing. You just have to compromise a bit, especially in terms of support for corporate systems and GUI. That is might be enough for some folks to pass. Too bad. They are missing out on a great opportunity in these frugal times.

Get Off Of My Cloud

With Oracle's recent acquisitions of VirtualIron and Sun Microsystems, it would appear that they are positioning themselves as a player in the emerging area of cloud computing. Last year when I was buying IT resources, the concept of purchasing virtualized resources sounded really good. No more tying up money in data centers. No more hiring people to babysit hardware and software systems. Instead, investment and attention would all be focused on developing applications that created revenue for the company. Why not just buy hunks of processor, memory, disk and bandwidth from someone whose job it was to provide infrastructure? They make money and I don't have to tie up precious capital in hardware that goes obsolete. The nice thing about applications is that they are forever. Hardware, on the other hand, is like a car – it starts to depreciate the minute it leaves the showroom.

A funny thing happen on the way to the cloud though. I began to worry about privacy and long term viability. Some data is so valuable that you don't want anyone taking a peak at it. Intellectual property records, social security numbers, patient data, and the like can't be trusted to anyone but yourself. This is not the same as Saleforce.com type data. If my data was sitting on someone's SAN, how could I be sure no one messed with it? When I rented a server that was pretty easy. I could look at the server, check out the storage, and see what the logs told me myself. Fairly basic protections could go a long way towards making me feel secure.

The public cloud however provides none of that. You know practically nothing about the security of the systems. Amazon S3 is a great idea until you realize that you are handing your data over to Amazon with only their reassurances that everything will be alright. You can't see or touch their gear because it's in the cloud somewhere. Given the proclivity of large companies to misuse data and ignore privacy, it seems foolish to give it over to a faceless cloud.

Even if you assume the best, a public cloud requires a level of trust in the provider that is unknown in recent memory and perhaps unprecedented. Do you really trust Google with your data? Do you think they will always make decisions that are in your interest and not there's? Of course not.

And what happens when the cloud evaporates one day? We've seen large numbers of online applications disappear in the recession. What makes us think that you cloud provider, especially the smaller ones, won't join them. Remember the Storage Service Provider fiasco when SSP when boom in the Internet bust? What will you do if your cloud providers goes belly up? Replacing an ISP or even a rented server is fairly easy. You find another one. Can you find another cloud to sit on quickly? And can you adapt your applications to the new cloud in time?

Note that I said “public cloud”. Building your own cloud is fundamentally different. It's just another form of cost effective architecture. That's where I think Oracle will go with all this. Given Sun's ability to deliver a data center in a cargo container, coupled with VirtualIron's software and Oracle applications, they will be able to deploy an entire private cloud to your doorstep. I envision a tractor trailer pulling up and leaving a cargo container with a data center in my back yard. One can dream can't one.

Cloud technology has a lot of advantages. That's been talked about ad nausem. You get many of those advantages even if you own it. A private cloud allows you to have the benefits of a virtualized environment without the privacy and security problems. Public clouds are risky. They might be inevitable but don't get your heads into the clouds lightly.

Who Gives a Chrome

Google just came out with the beta of its new browser called Chrome. (Note to Mozilla: You have a browser technology called Chrome too. Isn't that trademark infringement? But I digress...). Predictably, a lot of tech writers went all agog over it. "It's so fast" they said with glee. That might be, in part, because it is unencumbered by features. "Ooo. Each tab runs in it's own process" they giggled. Like that means anything to the average joe. I get that an errant Javascript program won't hang your browser, but that's a problem that even a geek encounters with low frequency.

Here is the crux of the matter: Chrome is made by geeks and ultimately for geeks. It lacks the type of basic features that most normal people want and replaces them with features that normal people don't care about. The little task manager? Nice... if you are a geek. Most people don't know what the Windows Task Manager is and that's way more useful on a regular basis.

The flaws are more obvious then the features. Where's the stupid print button? Yeah I get the "minimal interface" philosophy but regular people doing regular things need a regular old print button. If I have to look for it or remember a key combination (which is sometimes like playing Twister with your hands) it's no help.

What is readily apparent is that this is not really a browser at all. It's an advanced web application and Javascript engine. Now that I understand. There, the minimal interface makes sense since the application is going to handle all the typical application cores. That's not a browser though. It's also not unique. A very neat application called Bubbles has done this for awhile. I'm using it right now to run my Zoho Writer word processor as if it were a desktop application. Mozilla has something like it, called Prism, as well.

Which brings me to the final point. If this is ultimately meant to be a browser, then why? We already have Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Opera without even diving into the hundred or so specialty browsers. What is the point of another one? To stick it to Microsoft? That's not going to happen. Instead, Google is going to harm Mozilla, their erstwhile partner, the most. Why not, instead, contribute the technology to the Mozilla Foundation and get it into Firefox. That way you help your partner and stick it to Microsoft. If this is meant to be a next generation web application engine then "too late!" It's already been done several times over. Day late and a dollar short.

Or maybe Google's collective head has just swelled a bit too large. Perhaps, they are starting to think that anything they come up with is naturally better and should replace everything else in the world. More likely, they are callously trying to undercut their search partners so they can grab a bit more of the search revenue for themselves.

As we sit and view Google ten years after their inception, we see a company that may be losing its way. In the past year they have started to undermine their own partners, encroach on people's privacy with their obnoxious picture taking, and released ho-hum software that causes disruptions but adds little to the technology space.

Not too cool Google. Not too cool.

In the meantime, Chrome is pretty lame and its best features (from a user point of view) are already available in Firefox. If you like the interface (but with a print button!) try the Chromifox theme for Firefox. If you like the ability to peel off a tab to your desktop, you can do that already with Firefox. Get jazzed up by having a tab run as a separate process? It's called "Open in New Window". And try Bubbles or Mozilla's Prism for a Web Application engine. They are just as fast and easy.

And don't let Google screw Mozilla by undercutting the search revenue necessary to keep Mozilla alive. That's just wrong. And they call Microsoft the Evil Empire...

Once Again, The Old Beta and Switch

Okay, I love Jott! I admit it. Of course, if you read this blog, you know that already. The ability to translate voice to text from my cell phone is clearly useful. Use it to connect to on-line services like Sandy, Xpenser, or Google Calendar, and you have a truly coordinated set of services that enhances business and personal life. It is best viewed as part of a gestalt, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Now, all that is changing. Jott has come out of Beta and is charging for premium plans. That in itself doesn't bother me. Lots of Open Source projects and free Web sites do this. They have free offerings and premium offerings. That's typical and expected. Free services are supported through advertising or try to entice you to sign up for premium services. You know this going in so it doesn't bother you when it happens. If you think ads are evil (I don't) then it's up to you to decide if you want to make your pact with the Devil.

At the core of this free and premium services strategy is the idea that a basic body of functions is established in the free service and that you pay for the features that go beyond the free. Jott is clearly establishing that model. They have a free service called Jott Basic and then a couple of premium services that include additional features.

The problem is that the social contract of the Beta says that you don't take away features after the Beta and tell Beta testers to pay for them. Ultimately, We've done some work for you. We've suffered through problems that no paying customer would tolerate. The community has pumped you full of ideas for new services that could make you money. We have promoted you to friends, family, and business associates. Free testing, free ideas, and free marketing should count for something.

For the folks behind Jott, this social contract did not amount to much. The Jott Basic takes away the best and most important features - the ability to e-mail via voice and to connect to services like Xpenser and Sandy. There are still some basic links open (Twitter for example) but the most useful ones are only available from the paid subscription services.

Jott has done a Beta and switch.They have given away great features and gotten people hooked on those features. They never made it clear that these features would not stay free after the Beta. It was reasonable to assume that, like most other on-line Beta programs (ala Google or Linkedin), the feature set introduced during the Beta would be the free set. Instead, Jott has decided to break the social contract and eviscerate the free service. I'd like to see them try and get Beta testers for anything again.

What is sad is that there were so many better ways to get people signed up for premium services. For example, offering longer jotts (as they do for the highest premium service) makes sense. The Blackberry software makes sense as a part of a premium package as well. Offering new links to other services, especially paid business services, makes sense. Links to Salesforce.com or corporate e-mail gateways would have been something people would pay for. Cutting back on jotts to e-mail and links to free services comes across as a cost cutting move pushed by their accounting department. And the old fashioned desktop applications they are giving away? Sorry, totally old school and uninteresting.

I will make a prediction here. Jott usage will drop off dramatically. As good as it is, it is not tremendously useful without the e-mail and links. Rather than pay $4 a month ($48 a year) to get what we have been getting for free, current Jott users will just trail off. Oh, we'll stay signed up for the occasional use but won't be heavy users. That means that advertisers will see less value in Jott and stop using them and few people will convert to premium.

So, watch Jott over the next 12 months. Either they will be wildly successful and my crystal ball needs realignment, they will be on the verge of disaster, or they will change their offer. I'm hoping for the latter.

Jott people, if this is a Beta test of the marketing and sales program, you could have just asked first. If not, this will be as pleasant as sitting on a spike. Hope you can jump off it before you impale yourself.

Ditch the Computer for the Net - Not!

I have been fooling around with Internet desktops for a little while now. Two in particular have floated to the top of the heap, Desktoptwo and Jooce (pronounced like juice). While they have the same fundamental goals, the approach is quite different.

When looking at Internet desktops it's important to understand why anyone would want these. Basically, they claim to allow you to become free of your desktop computer or laptop. In other words, you can access your "Desktop" from any browser, presumably even on a smart phone. That is an attractive option for people who need to access files and applications from different computers and devices. If I'm visiting my family in Florida, I could, in theory, access my desktop remotely. But, as Yogi Berra once said, "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is." So, I'm skeptical.

Both Jooce and Desktoptwo (and all other Internet desktops) allow you to have personal communications and storage in your virtual desktop. That seems to be the core of it. It sounds like a nice idea until you consider the following:

1. Lot's of options exist for accessing files through on-line storage applications. Dropbox and XDrive are two I use regularly. Specialty services also exist such as Flicr and Google Picasa for pictures. Do I need another place to store and share files?
2. They continue to rely in some fashion on local machines. Jooce especially only has the ability to display or run media files such as audio, video, or pictures, and do instant messaging. Desktoptwo comes with more applications including a version of OpenOffice and a PDF reader but no video capability. Applications can't be installed on your on-line desktop. You are completely dependent on what is provided as part of the desktop or some other site on the internet. If I can keep my documents on Google Docs or Zoho, and my pictures on Flicr, do I need this?
3. The same problems exist as with all on-line applications, especially its unavailability if you are lacking a network connection or the desktop service company's servers are down.
4. I don't see how you can make real money. Desktoptwo has ads that are exceptionally annoying but I never read them. The fact is, they seem out of place on a desktop. This was true ten years ago in the age of Pointcast and other push media. Jooce doesn't have any ads at all. Maybe they hope to sell the software to ISVs...

There are real differences between Jooce and Desktoptwo that, unfortunately, highlight the problems of virtual desktops. To that end, I welcome you to enjoy these mini-reviews of each. Keep in mind, both are officially in Beta so, to be fair, these are preliminary comments.

Jooce

I like the look and feel of Jooce. It has a Gnome-like (as in Linux/Gnome interface) look that, while a bit cute, is at least visually appealing. You can customize the desktop a bit with your own wallpaper which is nice. Jooce actually gives you two desktops - a private one and a public one. The public one allows you to share files with other Jooce users. Switching and sharing files between them is easy.

Jooce is very media-centric. While you can upload (there's that tether to the local machine again) and store any files you want it only has applications for audio, video, and graphics files. While this is very limited, they are integrated into the desktop seamlessly. For example, if you open a picture, it appears on you desktop as a photo or picture that you tossed on your desktop. Neat! Audio just plays without appearing to launch a separate application. This is the true innovation of Jooce. It strives to create a desktop where applications are part of the desktop and not separate from it. This is also a weakness since the number of applications is limited (to the above add an IM application that can connect to major services and that's all) and even if available would be hard to integrate so seamlessly. They are promising e-mail soon but even viewing a PDF requires that the viewer be part of your local browser environment and hence your local machine. Go to a machine that doesn't understand PDF and where you are not allowed to install a viewer and you can't access your files.

Jooce has promise as a way to store and share files but it is still anchored to the resources available on the local machine a bit too much.

Desktoptwo

Desktop two has a more conventional look and feel. It has lots of conventional looking (kind of a KDE-ish) icons on a conventional looking desktop. It is best described as flat and uninteresting. It does have more applications including the OpenOffice.org suite, e-mail, calendar, RSS reader, IM, a website editor, blogging tool, and a PDF viewer, though I can't find a video player.

It is unbelievably slow. Slow to start up, slow to load applications, and slow to upload files. Worse yet, it often appears to be uploading files but they don't appear on the "hard drive". It appears that it it can take so long to transfer a file, especially a large one, that it is unclear that it is actually happening. This makes it too easy to start an upload, assume that something mysterious has occurred and shut down the desktop before it can fully upload the file. And the ads are really annoying.

The interface is also Flash-based which generates weird error messages. For example, while trying to empty my trash bin I got an error message telling me that the script was taking too long in this "movie". I know that is because of the roots of Flash as a media scripting applications but it is out of place here.

So, Jooce hasn't enough juice yet to be useful and Desktoptwo, in trying to be a full fledged computer in a virtual, on-line space, is slow and ponderous. The edge goes to Jooce, however, for its look and feel. In fact, I would like to have the interface on my regular desktop or phone. It is, at best, an adjunct for a real desktop but that's enough. Desktoptwo seems to be shooting for the corporate market for virtual desktops. It's got a ways to go then.

I like the idea of a desktop that runs in a browser which gives me basic functions no matter what platform I'm running it on (including a phone). On-line desktops have a while to go before that is a reality. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Virtualization Made Easy

I've worked with a number of virtualization products including VMWare and QEMU. While they are fine products and definitely get the job done, I've always had two complaints about them. First, they are tough to configure. In a lot of cases, getting a virtual machine up and running is time consuming and frustrating. The second complaint is the footprint it leaves on the system. VMWare in particular uses up a lot of system resources and can take forever to get loaded. Now, VMWare folks, don't get angry. I like your product and it is definitely industrial grade.

That said, I like VirtualBox from Sun a whole lot better. To begin with, it has a very small footprint of it's own. It loads quickly and takes up few resources. The interface is clean and easy to use. It has wizards that walk you through setting up virtual machines easily. There are presets for different types of common operating systems such as Linux and Windows variants. Setting up virtual disks is a snap and connecting to CD Image files (commonly known as ISO files) is equally easy.

Does this make VirtualBox the most robust, industrial grade virtualization system for use in data centers? I dunno. For the casual user who might want to do some cross OS development or a QA engineer testing on various platforms, this is so much easier than anything else I've tried. You don't need expensive training. You don't need the "Enterprise" addition to get anything meaningful done. And you don't need to read a manual the size of the New York City phone book or hire a consultant for the equivalent of the GNP of a small country just to do the basic stuff.

Some of the ubergeeks out there will probably assume I'm just stupid. They will argue that VMWare and its ilk is plenty easy. Argue all you want. I've used the others and this is, by far, the easiest to use and the quickest to deploy.

Besides being easy, it works very well. I have installed a variety of common operating systems, including various Windows and Linux systems, as well as more unusual ones like OpenSolaris and FreeDos. With the exception of OS/2 Warp (I don't have a floppy drive and the OS requires one to load) and Windows 98 (still don't know what that was about) everything installed flawlessly. I can't say I've had that same experience with other virtualization software.

Oh, and did I mention it was free. That's right. It Open Source from Sun. Sure, if I was deploying this in a data center I would pay for the service and support. At least I would have been able to fully evaluate what I was paying to get serviced and supported.

Virtualization is a great idea. It beats dual boot arrangement or having multiple machines. VirtualBox has made it very easy and cheap to do. It's great for the occasional or medium duty user.

Zowie Zoho

A couple of months ago I wrote about how much I hated online office applications. It seemed to me that in their haste to stick it to Microsoft, online Office vendors such as Google had created a poor imitation of the world famous productivity suite. The applications were brain damaged - lacking in basic features, visually unappealing, and without a facility for working unconnected.

At the time I lumped Zoho in with the rest. I wish I hadn't. I have spent the last month or so using Zoho Writer for basic writing tasks, especially blogging. While it is not nearly as full featured as Word or OpenOffice.org Writer, it handles most basic writing tasks well.

Zoho Writer also allows you to work offline, a critical feature to me. It downloads some number of documents to your local storage and allows you to continue to work unconnected. Afterwards, Zoho syncs up your files with the online documents. Zoho also has complete versioning (which makes syncing easy) and includes various on-line collaboration functions. It does a fair job of exporting most important file types from major competitive applications and a very good job at exporting to Blogger. It allows you to create PDFs, a feature that Word still doesn't have. One minor annoyance: Zoho Writer lacks the spellcheck-as-you-go feature found in most word processors and disables the one on Firefox. That's a bit annoying but not fatal.

One thing I find fascinating is how Zoho provides the offline capablity. It's uses Google Gears! Zoho does something that Google Docs doesn't do yet using Google technology. That's practically the definition of ironic.

I haven't spent much time with the other Office-like applications. Zoho has all the usual suspects. I am especially hesitant to say anything positive about the spreadsheet module since few are as good as Excel including the Openoffice.org one. The same is true for the PowerPoint clone. I'm not so impressed with Openoffice.orgs Impress.

I have to admit, at least for word processors, I have changed my mind about online office apps. While not perfect, Zoho Writer is a decent web-based word processor. It is a rival to Microsoft Works and a viable alternative to Word for those who need to do simple writing tasks. I wouldn't write a book using Zoho but then again, most of us rarely write a book.