It turns out that he is using Office 2007. I found this interesting since he tends not to pursue “cutting edge” technology, but was curious to see what this new version had to offer so I dived right in. I am an Office 03/04 user and have not been enticed into making the move up (not that I could on my MacBook Pro) so this was a new experience for me.

My first impression is that Microsoft did an amazing job visually with the navigational metaphors and ontologically with the icons and object definitions. This version represents a giant leap forward in how users interact with Office. It is colorful, stylish and organized in what appears to be a very thoughtful manner.

There is only one problem: if you have ever used Word prior to this version none of it makes any sense.

I spent a tortuous 30 minutes groping my way through the pretty icons, carefully constructed menus and pseudo menus, flowery pop-ups, dialogs and Help material only to develop a dislike for a piece of software unlike anything I have every experienced before.

Part of my anger was a simple distillation of frustration for not being able to achieve a simple task (one that I could have managed in less than a minute using a previous version). However, a much larger component was the realization that Microsoft took a piece of software that served a purpose and mangled it to the point that it no longer does so…at least for those of us who have used a prior version.

Ignoring for a moment the cynical position that Microsoft doesn’t care about existing users because of a dearth of competition and the tremendous inertia of the world’s existing .doc document corpora, the only a rationalization that I could come up with for this behavior is that the design team got so caught up in being cool it stopped being good.

This is another of the great temptations in software development, one that is exacerbated for the need for software to evolve (read: require an upgrade to be purchased in the commercial world). Sometimes a thing is Good Enough and tinkering can only lead to it to be Less So.

Software is a tool. Tools provide a function. The value of a tool is directly proportional not only to the function it provides but in how it provides it. It is sometimes easy to lose this perspective.

The coincidence of coming across these two perspectives whilst independently pondering this topic is less epiphany and more a slap to the forehead since it seems like something that I have always known, but never realized. Nevertheless, coincidence being the seed of awareness I take this intersection of information as validation of my desire to learn more as I believe that it represents a key improvement in the approach to developing better software.

The idea of gathering the input of “representative users” and trying to build a single User Experience from that corpora simply doesn’t make sense to me any more. 

Once my mind embraced this concept it set to work creating all sorts of troublesome ramifications. Traditionally—if there is such a thing in iterative development—iterations require the participation of the user early and often. Forgetting for a second the increase of resource demands on the development team, the introduction of multiple logical users interacting with the system takes the developer/user interaction model to a new level as it would seem to quickly introduce a need for a high degree of coordination between what might be competing inputs.

Perhaps one possible way to address this would be to develop a “meta architecture” that itself may be iterated (albeit with much pain). Such a design would focus on the means by which each user profile would be served by looking at the architectural characteristics of the requirements (as derived independently), not the features themselves.  As Cooper points out, it is not as simple as looking at feature anomalies; it requires complete evaluation of the overall way in which the system is interacted upon by each persona.  

Following this train of thought…if the differences are based upon divergent user expertise interacting with the same basic information techniques such as “toggling” features or “modes” might be the proper approach to accomodating both sets of needs. If on the other hand the demands on the system vary widely it may mean that independent interfaces are developed from the beginning and there is increased focus on abstraction between the UI and the back end (often talked about, even more often “whiteboxed”).  Again, architectural decisions at this level do not lend themselves to the same ease of iteration as the pursuit of a single mindset implies so there is much to be said for an increased level of “surveying” to occur before building.

At this point I have more questions than answers but the feeling of rightness this concept brings has piqued my interest greatly; I feel a shift in my philosophical approach to software development. It is fertile ground for exploration, one that I will be spending significant time contemplating more fully in the coming weeks.

After the shock of being able to take a virtual drive up and down the street in front of the DMV office I started to wonder how in the world they got this footage. It isn’t traffic cameras because the angle is wrong and you can literally navigate up and down the street while looking side to side. After “driving” toward the beach for a bit I noticed the hood on the vehicle. Apparently Google has access to someone who drives around in cars with a multi-view camera of some sort. (Note to Google: don’t drive west after 3:00pm because most of your westbound footage will be a giant sunburst.)

Overall a pretty cool idea and a testament to continuous improvement on the whole maps thing. On the other hand, it’s time to start being more aware of how little privacy we will have in our “public” lives going forward.

I’m off to mow my lawn now in case today is the day the black car rolls by to immortalize my shrubbery.

What are the odds that you can reach out to the Rimkins and enlighten them on the need to have a Mac client for the Blackberry?

Yeah, yeah, iPhone…

Problem is that the corporate world is miles away from Technology Fashion as it struggles to get Exchange (or worse, Notes!) to integrate with handheld devices. So, while having the ability to play the White Stripes (album cover and all) on company phones is cool, it just doesn’t help justify the average IT budget when it comes to belt hardware.

Like it or not Blackberry is the 800 pound gorilla for remote business–not just the suit & tie crowd–but even those forward thinking organizations that allow jeans and grungewear into the office. By not having a workable answer in this space you are making it hard for those who think Macs have a place outside of the Creative department.

Third party apps like PocketMac have tried to bridge the gap but is not the same; direct vendor support is needed to validate putting brushed metal low profiles keyboards on The Desktop. With respect to this piece of weaponry it just isn’t there (heck VMware and Parallels can’t even crack this nut).

From the pleas and head scratchings popping up on the various forums this is a growing problem–one that needs your help. Who knows, with Microsoft running after them from the Windows everywhere juggernaut Rim might be willing to give it a shot.

Sword of Righteousness: The unwavering belief that a given design or process is the only True Way to solve a problem. All alternative approaches are not only inferior, but are by definition submitted by authors of limited intellect or who are evil saboteurs. This social armament is typically wielded by technical alpha males as a means of establishing and maintaining control of a project’s design and/or architecture.

Shield of Propriety: A specific form of Corporate Judo whereby the wielder applies arcane (and often conflicting or nonsensical) Company policies to drive a technical decision in a desired direction. The Shield may be applied subtly (“I really wish we could implement X but it would have to approved the Corporate Cabal and we all know how long that will take.“) or as a weapon (“Legal says we have a zero tolerance policy toward Open Source software so you will need to find a commercial package that will run on Apache.”)

Corporate Judo: The ability to use a corporate opponent’s mental momentum against them to a desirable end. In its most refined form the CJ practitioner is able to gain approval for increased staff to perform legitimate company business while assuaging the fears/demands of others in wholly unrelated topics. “Bob, I know that The Mgmt is really concerned that all source code in the company be formatted the same way so I have put in a request to hire two (grade A) developers to ensure that my project conforms.“

We are not talking about your garden variety public back scratching here. What was repeatedly pointed out is that the partnerships were created in a manner that openly acknowledged the discrete role member each played. What wasn’t presented was the iPhoneSearchMailServerKludge. Apple built a cool phone. It will only do phone/computer. Cingular has a voce/data network. It will only do network (OK, some email pushing, but lets call that higher order data networking for the sake of this argument). Yahoo has search and email. It will only do search and email. Google provides Internet gizmania, none of which will appear as a core part of the phone either.

Google and Yahoo together? Or as Schmidt said, “mergere without merging…” The only way this type of ménage a poisson can be explained is that a common object oriented design philosophy, the creation of a separation of concerns, has been transmogrified into a business construct.  In other words, unlike the usual conjoined corporate atrocity most public announcements of this size typically try to sell, each MegaExec stood up and effectively said, “we are here because this scene allows us to do what we do independently, but as part of something that is collectively useful.”

Forget the phone, this is news. For decades the IT world has been about monolithic domination. IBM kicked it off with the Big Iron and Microsoft ran off with the desktop. The result of this was a multitude of half hearted “standards” bodies, coalitions and technology cabals aimed at allowing the second tier players to compete. The vast majority of these efforts did little more than create financial craters where IT budgets used to be.

The Steve–through vision, thought harvesting or simple desperation–has just announced to the world that we are about to take a right turn very quickly. As is the case with well developed large scale applications, large scale corporate partnerships are going to begin to be defined by the interfaces presented.

Google cut a path into the into the technology wilderness embracing technologies that allow vendors, clients, customers to have a simple and clean, neigh… disinterested way to leverage each others resources without requiring intimate knowledge of each party. This sort of “Black Box” concept–the one that the XML/Web Services types have been crowing about for years–allowed Google to literally explode onto the scene and has unleashed a torrent of new thinking and creation on the internet. With these tools in hand has come a level of freedom that has been missing since the early PC days. Freedom for the technoratti anyway.

Heady stuff and exciting, but largely obscured from the view of the non-technical. Rejoice oh Ye of “The Rest of Us,” The Steve has just announced that you are about to be free… at least free enough to take advantage of Apple’s multi-hundred patent solution (but that is a story for another day…)

As with virtually any other open source project there is a place where users can tell the code creators what else they would like for free. The difference here is that in addition to posting just the request users are able to post just how much they are willing to pay for it. Thus, effectively creating a bidding situation for the time of the developers and a clever way to infuse cash into the project…all while subtly reinforcing the concept that this stuff has value.

The site states that the numeric values are not “bounties”, but it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see where this could go. Heck, the money may not present an opportunity for outsiders to work on stuff, but it is most assuredly affecting internal development focus.
Call me crazy, but I think we may be seeing the future of software development here.

It is during these times that the societal aspects of group interaction overshadow the collective efforts needed during construction because problem resolution typically cannot be reduced to simple tasks. As a result the nuance of body language, intonation and other real time queues~key to working through societal issues~are lost in the asynchronous world of on-line collaboration. Rather than improve a situation, this lack of “human factor” tends to exacerbate problems.

Therefore, in my opinion for any dispersed organization to be successful over the long run it is important that direct human interaction occur on a regular basis so that project/process deconstruction can be addressed as needed. This doesn’t mean that the entire organization needs to aggregate concurrently in a single location every X months but that like a pond, a little fresh water needs to be circulated about now and then to keep it from becoming stagnant. Moving “key” players (and sometimes the not so key players) between encampments is a vital component in preventing simple operational problems from incapacitating the organization.

While many open source projects have been able to develop complex and functional applications without such direct communication, they have not had to do so under time, budget or client constraint. These groups are able to function because they deliver what the builders want functionally when they are able to complete development individually. By removing external drivers the development environment is not required to deal with non-technical issues and the need to introduce the societal complexities of “failure” (in time, effort or functionality) rarely exist.

This purity of environment also explains how so many open source types can be wildly successful at developing software in a public forum, but are utterly incapable of functioning in a corporate environment for a sustained period of time (but is a story for another day…)

A good example of this is the recent article describing Chevy’s gamble on user created content for one of its ads. While this area is definitely on the cutting edge for marketing people, the story itself was widely reported and discussed months before wired was able to get a story typeset, printed and mailed.

Does this mean the end of Wired? Not any time soon~heck, the gadget ads should keep it going for the foreseeable future if nothing else~but I do think it means that as a source of information for it be relevant Wired has to transition from what is it and will it? to why is it? and why didn’t it?

did i say automobile? ha ha! it just looks like it supports automotive (“cigarette lighter”) ports. turns out that there is apparently a similar configured port on planes and that these are not compatible with that handy little source of energy on your car’s dashboard. good thing there isn’t a need for power while in a vehicle (he says typing away on the front seat of the Wagon Queen Family Truckster). once again apple demonstrates its determination to provide fashion over function.

Finally, it is interesting to note that the device doesn’t have a transformer. Cool and light, but i am a little worried that this also means there is one less line of defense between the motherboard and power anamolies.