My Toaster Won't Make Cookies!!

With every release of new technology a million so-called experts jump up and start shouting about all the things that are wrong with it. I’m as supportive of critical analysis as the next guy, but I’m also a strong proponent of “appropriate analysis.” Too often people attack new technology from the wrong direction. The iPhone and the UMPC are two great examples of this…

My Toaster Won’t Make Cookies! Many of the complaints I hear about the iPhone and UMPC strike me as exactly this sort of argument. Let me present a fictional argument about toasters that exemplifies the flaw in so much of the talk about both UMPCs and iPhones.

Reviewer: “Toastmatic says they are releasing a new toaster…but it won’t make cookies!” Toastmatic: “Well, no. It’s a toaster after all.” Reviewer: “But no cookies? I just bought a toaster oven from Mastertoast and IT makes cookies!” Toastmatic: “Well sure, but our toaster is for, well, making toast.” Reviewer: “But the toaster has the technology necessary to make cookies. So why would you prevent users from making cookies by designing your toaster with vertical slots??” Toastmatic: “Because 90% of our customers only WANT to make toast in their toaster. Vertical slots are easier to use when making toast. We found that if users want cookies they prefer the normal oven. As a result we’ve focused on providing a really excellent toaster. Plus by focusing on toast we have a device that makes toast with the push of a single button. If it made cookies we’d need lots of additional controls that would needlessly complicate it.” Reviewer: “There you have it folks. A device that is doomed to fail. Toastmatic really missed the boat on this one. Fortunately I still have my Mastertoast toaster oven so I won’t have to go without cookies!”

The Moral of the Story The UMPC is not meant to replace your desktop. It isn’t designed to replace the laptop of a heavy-use business person. The UMPC is an “at the coffee shop, around the house, email while watching TV, on the airplane, short business trip” device. Critiquing it from any other point of view is as silly as complaining that flashlights make a terrible lamps for the living room.

The iPhone is not meant to replace the business person’s blackberry or the hard core PDA user’s Windows Mobile Device. It is meant to offer “easy interface, internet checking, phone answering, music listening, fun video watching” functionality to a user base that doesn’t even know that the phone they have NOW lets them install software!

So, to the reviewers of the world, I implore you! Please look very carefully at the purpose of new technology before ranting about its failures. To do otherwise fails to serve your readers. Let them know how well new toasters makes toast, not how badly they fail when you put cookie dough in them.

Identifying Installation Files

When I bought my newest PC, I started keeping my program installation files. I do this because I don’t necessarily want to upgrade if I need to reinstall something - this isn’t a cost issue; I’ve just learned that if I’m happy with a program version, I’m not necessarily happier with a new version (as is probably obvious by the fact that I’m still using the “classic” Windows interface, above).

But I’m not quite disciplined enough to remember to erase the installations when I decide not to keep a program, so I’ve got quite a collection at this point. And as a result of some PC problems over the weekend, I ended up trying to clean out the folder where I save them.

I’d never given much thought to the program properties of the installation files we make - I know that checking them for correct descriptions, version numbers and digital signatures is a part of our QA process, but pretty much had that in the “necessary evil” thought pile, or maybe even the “unnecessary overhead” one. But trying to figure out what installation files went with what programs on my PC made clear to me the value of that info. I didn’t have that many installation files that I wasn’t able to identify without running them, but the ones I had were pretty irritating (and I wasn’t in the best mood to start, given that my PC wasn’t booting well, or writing CDs).

Anyway, it’s nice to see that following the rules does have a point, at least once in a while.

Random iPhone Thoughts

Everybody’s thinking and writing about the iPhone, so here’s my 2 cents worth ….

As a consumer - I never bought an iPod because my 2 top requirements for an mp3 player are that I can use it with gloves on (this is Michigan, and I walk to work), and that I can easily replace the battery (I may not have been born with a battery curse, but I’ve definitely picked one up somewhere, batteries tend to die when I’m nearby). The iPod doesn’t let me do either of those, and I doubt the iPhone will either.

As a developer - there’s not a definite statement that the iPhone won’t allow third-party apps, but that’s the way it looks. Too bad for us, if it’s true.

As a market watcher - Microsoft imitates a lot of Apple’s successes, but I can’t see them ever adopting the “closed to third-party apps” approach. Michael Mace wrote about the consumer vs. professional audience, and I think he’s called that exactly right. In fact, I think he’s written the best commentary on the whole thing, and anyone who’s interested in the iPhone and hasn’t read that yet should do so.

Caching vs Copyright

One of the top requests we get for NewsBreak is that we download and cache the web pages that the “Read More” links go to. The reason people want this is that many news feeds don’t provide the full story. They just give you a teaser. If you’re off line this means you can’t read the entire story without going back online. Annoying, I know, especially for those feeds that only give you like one line of the story.

So why don’t we do it? I’m glad you asked! Read on for the full story… How a Newsfeed Works Before I go into the details I’ll offer the world’s shortest lesson on RSS. No technical details here. Just the nuts and bolts of where the content of a news feed comes from. When you subscribe to a newsfeed you get a specific bunch of content. We, as the news reader, have no control over this content. The provider determines how much you get, whether images are included, etc..

So if the provider only wants you to read the first two lines, all we can provide you with are the first two lines. If the provider sends the entire article, we give you the entire article! Unfortunately, most providers only send one or two lines of a story and then include a link to the whole thing.

The Economics of Newsfeeds Why do they do this? Another excellent question! The fact of the matter is that these sites typically make money when people actually visit them. Unique visits, click throughs, ad clicks, and other typical “web money makers” provide the source site with income. If they send you the entire story, you never visit the site, and they never make their money! For many sites the news feed isn’t so much a service as it is a teaser to get you to visit the actual site!

The Trouble with Caching: Part I This brings us to the problem. If we start going out to the links in a news feed and grab the entire page that it leads to, we’ve just killed the potential income that the source site hoped to make. When you read the article offline not only can this bypass their metrics (means of measuring hits) but it may even eliminate the ads completely. Needless to say the providers

really really really

don’t approve of this!

Technical Note: Yep…this is a simplification but the general point is valid. The sites want you to visit, not download their pages. The Trouble with Caching: Part II Here is the really ugly one though. Copyright. If we go out, grab an entire web page and copy it to your device, we’ve just duplicated copyrighted content.

Is this legal? Maybe it is but maybe it isn’t. To my knowledge this hasn’t been played out in court yet (not in the situation we are in anyhow.)

Do I want Ilium Software to be the company CNN, Disney, Time-Warner, or others send their lawyers after to resolve this issue? Do I need to answer this one? :)

And this isn’t just a legal issue. We’re in the business of selling software. Copyright is a big deal to us. There is no way we are going to do anything that even comes close to violating the copyright of someone else. It goes against our core beliefs as individuals and as a company.

The Moral of the Story For now, I don’t intend to put page caching on our list of new features for the next version of NewsBreak. Anything is possible of course and we never close the door completely on a good idea. At the same time, until we hear something that solidly invalidates the problems listed above, it just isn’t something we feel comfortable doing.

ePochette-eMappe-eCarpeta: Translating Software

Lots of people want to know if we’re going to release localized (that’s the same as “translated” for those of you not in the biz) versions of our software. So far we’ve always said “Sorry, not yet.” Of course this leads to the inevitable response of “WHY??” Good news! I’m about to tell you!

It comes down to one simple thing. Support.

Language Barrier I’ve got this theory about localized software. If a person wants a localized version of the product, there is a very good chance that they need localized support for the product. As many of you probably know, we think that amazing support is part of what you pay for when you plop down your hard earned cash to buy something from Ilium Software. It’s like one of our product’s features.

We do this really well in English, but the minute you start talking about other languages we’ve got a problem. This isn’t to say that no one here speaks a second language. The problem is that either not many people here speak the language or we’re just not very good at it!

And this doesn’t only go for support. Try doing QA on a product that is in a language you can’t read! We test pretty darn vigorously and something like this just doesn’t fit with the way we like things done!

But You’d Make More Money! Yeah, we know. There is a good chance we would sell more software if we had localized versions. In fact this comes up all the time here in “our direction for the year” meetings. But at what expense? A few extra sales with limited support that leaves the customer unhappy? We just don’t see a big advantage to that.

We Don’t Care! Localize Anyhow! And we might. We have a few things going on that may require localization. That might make the decision for us. And we still haven’t finished weighing the value of a localized version with limited support against the value of only selling what we know we can support really well.

So there you have it. The secret behind why you haven’t seen ePochette, eMappe, or eCarpeta hitting your favorite software store. Feel free to throw your opinions violently back at us! We’d love to hear your thoughts on this!

Tag - I'm It Too!

Ellen walked into my office this morning and told me I’d been tagged, and I had no idea what she was talking about. It sounded like a bad thing at first, but I’ve found out that it’s just my turn in an online game of tag that’s been going on for a few weeks now. Doug over at Just Another Mobile Monday chose me. The rules are pretty simple, I have to tell everyone five things about myself, and then I get to choose five unsuspecting bloggers to tag next. It’s like a big ol’ chain letter. So here are my five things; I’ll try to make it as fascinating as possible:

1. This June, I will finally get my Bachelor’s Degree in web development, after eight years of going to college full-time. That’s right: I’ve changed my major four times, and dropped a heck of a lot of money in the process, but it’s almost over, and I can’t wait. I actually want to take a year off and then start working on a Master’s, but I haven’t found a program yet that interests me.
2. I love to read. I don’t get a chance to do it while I have classes, but I read three books while I was on my winter break. I read Lamb and Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore, and Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.
3. I have two cats. Seuss weighs 22 pounds likes people food, including lettuce and pasta. Campbell weighs 14 pounds and does not like people food. Unfortunately, he eats everything else, inlcuding duct tape, wood, and plastic. (Don’t call the Humane Society - he has a chewing addiction. I’ve tried several methods to stop him, but none work. He was never weaned right. If anyone has ideas, I’m not kidding, I’d love to hear them.)
4. I had my dad make me a wooden Christmas tree this year, so Campbell wouldn’t eat the branches. It was pretty darn cool, too, but the cat still chewed through three of the limbs. That’s determination!
5. I collect Converse hightops. Right now I have eleven pairs. I’m trying to pick a favorite pair as I’m typing, but that’s too hard. I think it’s a tie between the red plaid, the ones with comics printed on them, or the black ones with little skull and crossbones on them.

So, there you have it. That’s me, in a nutshell. So now I get to tag five more people. And let me tell you, it wasn’t easy trying to think of five people - this game has been going on for a few weeks now, and a lot of bloggers have already been tagged! I chose:

1. Jimmie Geddes (GadgetsontheGo)
2. Sammy McLoughlin (PalmAddict)
3. Todd Ogasawara (MobileViews Blog)
4. Warner Crocker (GottaBeMobile)
5. Doug Miller (Daily Gadget)

Tag, guys, you’re it now!