Tough Road for Vista

Unsurprisingly not a lot of businesses are excited at the prospect of paying to upgrade to Windows Vista.

This may be the tipping point when we finally see businesses begin to implement Linux on the desktop. My advice? Buy Redhat stock.

XM Radio, Losing Money with More Subscribers

XM Radio posted its financials yesterday and it looks like the losses are increasing even as they add subscribers, mainly due to the cost of acquiring those customers. Much like with cell phone companies the idea is that once you have a subscriber you have a very dependable and consistent revenue stream.

Really though? It seems to me that by the time XM and Sirius have really built out their customer bases and are poised to become profitable... they are going to get hit with a nasty end around from the tech industry and telecom. Think about it, what are these satellite companies really offering? Greater choice.

But how can greater choice win against complete control? And that is what Apple and the rest are offering with mp3 players and mp3 enabled cell phones and now video iPods. Control over the media you consume.

Satellite radio's current competitive advantage is bandwidth and coverage. They have the ability to deliver a ton of content across a massive space. They are really in the business of delivering data. This is the same as moving a song, or any media, onto an iPod, nothing more than transferring data. Right now the bandwidth that moves that data onto an iPod or some other mobile device is tied to a physical broadband connection. But what happens when the cellular companies build out their networks to the point that everyone can get a broadband connection via their cellphone? Or a cell device built into a laptop? Or an iPod with cellular capability?

XM and Sirius will lose their competitive advantage, their ability to distribute content (data) in a way that others can't, and once that happens they will fade fast if they can't adapt. The companies that bring control to the when, where, and how of your media consumption will rule the marketplace. XM and Sirius are selling choice, not control.

An online web based spreadsheet, wow.

Just the other day I was thinking about how useful it would be if you could really share and collaborate on spreadsheets. Really, I was thinking about that, I am either a huge nerd or I have too much time on my hands. Probably both. Actually I was thinking about it because I deal with a merry-go-round of spreadsheets when I do my monthly forecasting at work. It would be really really nice to have a central copy and version control so that all of us could update one spreadsheet and always be assured that everyone else is looking at exactly the same thing. Of course, some people might argue that is what CRM software is for, they would be wrong. CRM is for documenting the false picture you are presenting to upper management.

Ok, so I am thinking about this and then I notice an article on c|net about how the new version of Microsoft Office is going to have a new server based system for managing spreadsheets. Oh interesting I think and continue to read. After finishing the article I am not really sure how useful this will be to the people who work on the spreadsheets. Useful to the people who make sure the wrong folks don't look at certain data, but otherwise nothing revolutionary to see here.

Anyway I was thinking if you wanted to get really fancy with AJAX you could actually build a browser based spreadsheet. I know, I know, you are probably thinking, how cool could that be? Well, pretty cool. There are number of companies out there reinventing business tools and taking them to the web. I'm not sure that a spreadsheet alone is a real killer app, but it is something that you could couple to your larger web based software project to give customers a tool they probably thought they would never have online. And you would really be taking that extra step to ensure that the data in the sheet (which would actually be in a database behind the sheet) is always the same for everyone who views it.

Well it turns out that someone is already working on it. Check it out, looks like Ruby on Rails and of course AJAX. Its small and limited in functionality now, but I'll bet this turns into something big.

Is Wikipedia a failure?

I've been hearing a lot of this talk lately and I have to wonder why it took this long. My confidence in the pedia was shaken when I read that the entry for GW Bush is updated something like once every five seconds. I went to the site and witnessed it myself by just hitting refresh repeatedly. Looks like this might have died down, but at one point every third refresh would return something like "Murderer" and then on the next refresh the White House bot would have things back to normal. Murderer or not, that is not good for an encyclopedia.

Regardless of the quality of the entries in the Wikipedia, I don't think the project is a failure. The software it has produced, and the myriad of knockoffs, may yet revolutionize collaboration software. Lord knows the intranet at my massive multinational employer pops up an article about the wonders of wikis at least once every two weeks. For all the hype, the software is fantastic for collaborating on technical documentation and business plans. At least amongst closed or small groups. And that's the problem with the wikipedia... too many people who don't have an interest in its quality, some of whom probably enjoy destroying what others have built up, have the access and the inclination necessary to have a greater impact than the people who are creating quality content.

The success of the Wikipedia was the creation of a new technology that fosters collaboration in a way that Microsoft Office probably never will. Projects like Writeboard demonstrate the real success and the future of wikis.

Re-write the Bill of Rights?

Apparently you have a right to broadband access. Somehow I don't think that our founding father's would have seen this as something that should be enshrined as a "right of citizenship". Setting aside all of the political and philosophical arguments, what does this mean to the future development and deployment of new world changing technologies?

Its one thing for government to drive the deployment of new technology for the sake of some great national interest; the railroads and telecommunications systems of the industrial age were great tools of both commerce and national defense. However, when governments take over entirely, things tend to stagnate. I understand that there is an underlying need for government to improve emergency communications systems and in someways free itself from landline communications systems. Fine. Does that mean that government should run the show? No. Does that mean that we should enshrine broadband access as a "right of citizenship"? No. Does that mean that government should reward (read: pay for services) private ventures for creating, managing, and making profitable the systems that government can use in time of emergency? Yes!

Politicians pandering for votes make our governments less agile and less capable to adapt to these longer term changes, changes that they aren't concerned with because they will be long gone from power. Enshrining broadband access as a right for all will only require that the government forever provide a backwards compatible solution for your connectivity needs. What happens when Google* wants to move on to the next technology and you are left sit on a park bench with an 802.11a wireless card that isn't supported? Are you going to sit by and let them take your "rights" away? I really hope we never have to have that debate.**

*Google is currently in the running for the contract to provide free wireless access across San Francisco.
**Surprisingly, I just couldn't set aside the political debate.

Video on the iPod, how big is Apple thinking?

I really didn't think that Apple would release an iPod with video capabilities. Steve Jobs kept saying that video on a 2 inch screen is not what consumers want. I agreed with him. Although the idea of being able download the shows you missed is super cool, I really don't think people are clamoring to watch last night's episode of Desperate Housewives on a tiny screen.

What's worse is that the new vPod doesn't support even standard definition television, the resolution is slightly smaller. A video iPod would be an incredible product if it had an output that could connect to the RCA inputs on your TV the same way that your game system does.

I'd love to see Apple upgrade the video capabilities and release a Dock that you could plug into your TV. The iPod itself could become your Tivo pretty easily actually... maybe this new video playing iPod is the first step in a very big transformation.

Not to be outdone

Since Clark has posted his credentials I guess that I am not to be outdone.

Although I've spent less time working professionally with my hands on the technology I still know a few things. While in school at the University of Georgia (wasn't that beating we handed out to Tennessee nice) I worked in the IT department there as first line tech support for the kids in the dorms. It was great fun, I got to help in the rollout of the cable modem and DSL systems that first connected UGA's dorms (they like "Residence Halls") to the internet. I also witnessed the dawn of botnets, spyware, malware, torrents, and threatening letters from the RIAA. I can say with absolute certainty that I am glad that I no longer deal with all the amazing ways that ignorant users, unleashed upon their unsuspecting and unfortefied Windows desktops and laptops, find to destroy the usability of their computers.

I have been an avid Linux user at least five years, a huge Apple fan for four, and have worked or played with all of the following:

• PHP, mySQL, Apache, and Linux (oh wait, is got that backwards, yeah, should be LAMP)
• Ruby on Rails
• Every version of Windows since 3.0
• Iptables, routing is fun
• Old, old, crappy cable modems
• Wonderful DOCSIS compliant Cisco cable modems
• Debian, Redhat, and some Suse. Have to say I stick with Debian, its the easiest but has the steepest learning curve.
• Long ago I wrote trivia programs in GWBasic (if you don't know, don't ask)

That's the shortlist, there's a lot more but I don't have the time.

First Post

I am first, this is the first post. I am so awesome!

Ok childishness is out of the way, but I promise it will return at some point. I suppose since this is the first post here in this little blog that I should introduce myself. I'm a long time techie who works in sales at a mega huge multinational IT corporation.

That's right, sales. For whatever reason I felt the need to "take advantage" of my business degree and so I went to work in most technical people's nightmare. Right now it is quite the purgatory and I'm hoping to work my way back to the technical side of things eventually.