I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
I had my Freeview boxed installed today, in time to watch Boston Legal in HD.
It was impressive. First up 3 News was clear and solid. The pictures flipped from wide to 4:3 frequently but the aspect looked good all the time.
Boston Legal looked great. It was a bit strange being able to see the make up on Denny. Shirley definitely looked a bit older in HD.
The little ‘uns are excited about Kids Zone.
It’s all about trade off’s. Watch Boston Legal in HD and watch ads. Or time shift normal TV and no ads on MySky.
I’m pretty sure that Sky won’t let you record their HD shows either so the dilemma will continue. Time Shifting is far more useful that HD.
The Freeview box isn’t as ugly as expected but the remote is cheap and nasty. The UI is pretty raw and EPG seemed to be an hour out on some modes. Another remote and set of instructions joins the coffee table and the grandmother babysitter has zero chance of turning the system on by herself.
If you have a flatscreen with HDMI, FreeView is a no brainer, even if just for Kids Zone. I suspect many will extend their stacks and have both FreeView and MySky HD.
Broadcast TV is so broken and so in conflict with consumers. As HD roles out the broadcasters gain a short respite but as the glass arrives near the doorstep the Internet has to win.
There has been a lot of talk about raising productivity in New Zealand.
Forgive my amateur economics here but …
In the software industry productivity is something you can measure easily and I think should be something that software company managers should be very aware of.
The goal of productivity is raising real incomes, for both the business - and as important - for staff.
Many employees would think that improved productivity means that they work harder. To me that is not the point. As managers our challenge is to raise productivity using the resources that are available to us.
A formula for productivity at the dawn of the industrial age might look like this.
Productivity = Labour * Plant Multiplier
If you don’t have any Plant or Equipment then your Plant Multiplier = 1
Productivity = Labour * 1
This is what we have is we just sell time. This is the services industry.
To raise productivity this century the Plant Multiplier is Capital.
Productivity = Labour * Capital
Capital allows us to take the time to build things so that rather than labour hours directly leading to productivity, those labour hours can be used to build earning machines that earn money (and pay tax) themselves.
Earning Machine = Labour * Capital
So
Productivity = Earning Machine * Management Quality
Putting all of this together
Productivity = (Labour * Capital) * Management Quality
In this equation, the two biggest scalars are Capital and Management Quality. So productivity is best influenced by good management. It is a manager’s responsibility to increase productivity and lift labour rates for macroeconomic benefits.
So in the transition from Services to Products a key performance indicator is Revenue Per Employee (or Profit per employee to normalize costs but you know what I mean).
It is a huge milestone for a software company when Revenue Per Employee derived from a Product sales is higher than what the employers chargeable revenue would be. At that point you have crossed the chasm.
The time required to fund the employee to get to that point is the capital required to fund a software company.
So there it is. Mathematical proof that you should be thinking about Productivity.
New Zealand IT personality Brent Baldwin was one of the flyers who died yesterday at the Whenuapai air base doing what he loved doing.
I’ve known Brent since 1999 and had the pleasure of spending a bit of time with him over the last 6 months. So full of life, so enthusiastic, so professional - one of those true gentlemen you enjoy spending time with.
Brent has been on the forefront of Business to Business commerce and procurement for many years and is well known as the commercial guru in this space.
My thoughts are with his family. Brent was one of the good guys and a real loss to the industry.
If you’re anything like me you wake up at 3 in the morning and remember something you haven’t done and often have to get up and do it so you don’t forget again.
I’ve been looking for a Getting Things Done (G-T-D) type application that was fun and easy to use.
I think I found it. Things: http://culturedcode.com/things/
Still in beta but looking good. The Tag based metaphor seems to work.
I’ve assigned Option-T as a hot key to pop up the Quick Entry pane. This makes it real easy to throw in tasks and sort them out later.
I’m enjoying using it and already feel more in control. It has some team functionality that I’ll play with next week and an iPhone version coming so expect it to have a service/sync component.
Metabase is XML so good scope to have fun with that as well.
The phone wars are about to heat up again with the 3G iPhone just around the corner.
The 3G Blackberry has been delayed slightly but their issue will be their browser. No developers I know develop specifically for the BlackBerry browser, but with the iPhone having a mainstream browser you do think about how your app might render on an iPhone.
It also seems that one of the major iPhone developer limitations, the ability for apps to stay resident in the background, has been fixed in the recent sdk builds.
Active Sync makes the iPhone accessible in the Enterprise (some would argue killing Windows Mobile in the process) and we’re starting to see some neat little ‘meshed’ productivity apps coming out that live both on your Mac, Phone and Web like EverNote.
I use a number of BlackBerry apps but they are not as easy to use, and screen constrained.
I still prefer the hard keyboard of the Blackberry but I have both a BB and an iPod Touch with me most of the time. So as apps get delivered on the iPhone I might trade off the keyboard.
I’m sure Apple has learned a lot about their soft keyboard over the last year so seeing how that performs in the new version of iPhone software will be interesting.
I had the dubious honor of judging at the half baked challenge last night.
In a ‘least worst’ decision the Silicon Welly All Star Team took it out. This is a group of people that you wouldn’t want to get trapped in a lift with. Their idea made little sense but they did manage to take at the prize primarily due to their gratuitous use of powerpoint (keynote).
While more fairer on the eye the much fancied Code Blacks made almost no sense at all. There pitch was so nebulous it was hard to find something solid to criticize, but at least the 4 attempts to try to save the the pitch provided some satisfyingly cringeworthy moments.
The highlight of the presentations was the ‘post hockey stick’ revenue curve presented by the Silicon Welly team.
That was cool. (Thanks GregD).
From JoeB in the UK …
http://www.christiaanpostma.nl/
Click on clock on the left, and then click on ‘3’ in the bottom right, sit back and watch.
Quite interesting being close to National’s broadband announcement and seeing the responses. A good case study on the political process.
Firstly David Cunliffe. I believe DC would have loved to have done this but it got stopped by Cullen and H1 after the Digital Summit, then the health hospital pass.
So he used the old ‘make up something and argue against that’ approach.
National’s plan as presented would inevitably reinforce the position of the incumbent, Telecom, as the dominant fibre provider.National’s plan replaces a narrow-band monopoly in the nineties with a
new broadband monopoly.
Err not sure where that came from, but good politics.
Next was the EPMU. They got right in there with their cause …
“If John Key thinks there is the skilled workforce available to start rolling out a project like this within the next year he may need to think again as there is an international shortage of telecommunications workers and our members are already working huge amounts of overtime simply to keep the network maintained and roll-out Telecom’s modest cabinetisation program.
Very opportunistic, but nice.
NZ First was a classic. Good emotion with headlines of Telecom Deal Outrageous and use of rapacious
And nice suggestion of a conspiracy with …
“If Mr Key has done a deal with Telecom he should come out into the open and explain what is going on. Taxpayers need to know exactly why they should pour $1.5 billion into the most rapacious company New Zealand has ever known,” said Mr Woolerton.
Note the jumping on the ‘beat up Telecom’ bandwagon there. That should get some oldie votes.
And NZ First want to just buy Telecom back anyway.
“Mr Key has acknowledged that telecommunications has been a market failure in New Zealand so perhaps it is time for New Zealand to take back the industry, like it has with Air New Zealand and will do with the railways system.
Must be great to be able to throw out policy when you have little chance of having to actually do it.
This election is going to be fun.
Update at 4:30pm
Dunne goes for the high ground …
Dunne: NZ needs broadband, not bickering
Press Release by United Future at 4:11 pm, 23 Apr 2008
UnitedFuture leader Peter Dunne says the future of New Zealand needs a vastly improved broadband infrastructure, not the current bout of political bickering.
“John Key has proposed a $1.5 billion broadband plan with the declared intention of strengthening the New Zealand economy so that we can compete in a global market,” he said.
“Everyone agrees that’s a good idea, but all we’ve heard so far is the Minister of Communications carping that National is being opportunistic and handing too much monopoly power to Telecom; New Zealand First is similarly outraged that Telecom is getting too much money; and ACT has delivered the standard libertarian rant that hates the Government collecting or spending any money at all.
“Surely the point is that widespread, superfast broadband is a good thing for the New Zealand economy and the only question is: how do we get there?
“It’d be excellent if politicians spent more time working out the answer to that question and not simply whacking each other over the head and feeling they’ve accomplished something.
“If direct government investment like Mr Key proposes is not the answer, then I’d like to hear two things from the critics - first, what is the alternative, and second, why has it not happened to date,” said Mr Dunne.
Very sensible.
Just back from hearing John Key deliver his broadband investment speech at the Wellington Chamber of Commerce event.
2008: Achieving a Step Change - Better Broadband for New Zealand
“- If dial up could deliver Trade Me, who knows what might be delivered by fibre to the home.”
Some thoughts
- It was the first major policy announcement from National, and probably a good choice of policy areas to start with.
- It was great so see some vision and leadership.
- It didn’t lock in a particular model - which at this stage is a good idea.
- I like the approach of being clear about a number of principles that will guide process towards a solution.
- The approach acknowledges the need to work with the private sector.
- National, and especially Maurice, must have listened and been working hard in the background since the digital summit. Great to see they listened.
- Kudos to the hard work the New Zealand Institute did on quantifying the public benefit
As I’ve mentioned before I think our industry can have some pride at moving this from a technical issue, to a business issue, to government policy. To have politicians come to terms with the complexity of our industry, the commercial sensitivities but fully understand the importance is a good win.
This is good stuff and vital to NZ. Most reasonable people would agree. Looking forward to hearing what you guys think.
Let rip.
Congrats to Grant on his deal with Axon.
Axon acquires content expert Office Automation Software
When I saw the announcement in ComputerWorld I noticed a new advertising device they had used. Quite clever.
The image that looks like a feature story is actually a paid link (I assume) to the press release on the Axon site.
Good to see some marketing innovation in NZ.
The TimeCapsule I ordered turned up today.
Setup was easy and now the Mac’s in the house are wirelessly backed up. Good for peace of mind.
Just a few years ago thinking you would have a terrabyte of storage in your house seemed a bit ridiculous.
What now seems ridiculous is that you can’t afford to offsite backup to your ISP. Backing up your home laptop to your home NAS seems to be only a small step along the reducing risk continuum.
I hope there is a seamless iPhoto Server coming soon. The hardware and network is in place for it.
Somehow today I grew giant icons on my desktop.
It took me a while to find how to put them back. Command J allows you to alter desktop Icon Size and Grid.
Fun to hang out at the Small Biz Expo today.
We won an award last night, blog entry here …. Accounting Software the Winner on the Night.
I did a quick presentation at lunchtime on starting a business. Here are the links to check out from that presentation.
Saw the new HP sub $1000 machine reviewed here. It includes Vista and wifi so is pretty compelling for students or anyone wanting a personal computer they can take anywhere. Seeing the controversy on the Mac Clone you start to wonder what hardware really costs.
It was good to see some small business people looking at new business models using technology. Jacqui from http://www.getahead.co.nz shouted me a coffee and showed me what she was doing.
There seemed to be a real buzz around the show. It is so different and a lot of fun working in the small business space compared to enterprise software.
Question of etiquette. How do you address an ex Shortland Street actor? This has happened to me twice now. Last year at Foo Camp. And today in the front row of my session.
You feel like you know them, but can’t use their character name. You have no idea what their real name is. You can’t say ‘how is the acting going’ because they are here listening to you. So you kinda just ignore it and feel awkward.
Any tips appreciated.
I just remembered a great tip for working with an external mouse on a Mac. I had forgot to set it up when I changed machines.
I use a Microsoft Intellimouse with a Click Wheel. The Click Wheel is great for scrolling but you can also Click. I set it up to Expose that without reaching for the keyboard I can shrink all windows down and pick the window I want.
It took me a while to find where you set up the Click Wheel to launch Expose. It’s not under Mouse Settings but under Expose.
Under System Preferences> Expose & Spaces set ‘All windows’ to Mouse Button 3.
This will change your life.
Also don’t forget the two fingered right click.
Anyone in a sales focussed company is aware of The Call.
The Call can be horrible thing that causes stress to all people in the sales team. People loose sleep over The Call.
The Call is: What do you commit you will sell this month (or quarter)?
The Call is not your target, it is the deals and revenue you commit to for the period.
The Call cascades down the organisation. The board asks the CEO. What’s your call for this quarter? The CEO asks the same of the global sales manager, who picks up the phone to each national sales manager, to each divisional sales team leads and down to each sales rep.
The Call is therefore necessary, especially in a public company. I first learnt about The Call at Quest (I got sales educated at Quest which I’m very grateful for).
In our team at Quest we had a simple deal classification model. Pipeline were deals you were working on, Stretch were deals you might make, but the important number is your Commit. What do you commit you will close? You call your Commit number.
The trick with The Call is put a number that is high enough that you won’t get fired and low enough that you are 100% going to make it. You do not want to miss your call number as you can imagine the cascading questions that come down from the top. You don’t want a question from the top.
Another phenomena in sales land is ‘the secret deal’. The secret deal comes directly out of the call. It is the deal your sales manager does not know about. You don’t want it in your call number. It’s your ‘get of jail card’, it’s your big commission cheque. Every sales person has their secret deal.
Selling is one of the big buzzes in the tech world. You can build great stuff but it means nothing until you sell it. But until you make your quarter number, you live under the pressure of: The Call.
Google data center locations …
If I was laying a new fibre link from NZ to Australia I know who’d I’d be talking to. Chuck in a bit of power and DC should be on Helens Jet to Moffat Field now.
One of the enduring data modeling scenario’s that seems to come up for me every few years (even going back to the old Glazier days and the PerOrg debates Pat) is modeling the relationship between people and the organisations they belong to.
Seems simple when you start but you end up balancing a series of trade offs.
The most basic model is the vCard one. The organisation is not modeled. In Outlook there is a copy & paste new contact from same organisation feature which saves you retyping common organisation information on each contact - but the organisation is not modeled.
You would think that people and organisations is a simple structure.
But as you start to test the model you run into a few issues.
- Are you sending something to a person or the organisation they belong to?
- If someone changes organisation do you still want to track the person?
- How do you address a role within the organisation where the person is unknown?
So you quickly get into a complex meta modeled structure like one below.
While you can now store the natural data relationships, the problem with this model is that UI to manage it quickly becomes complex.
I haven’t looked at this problem for a while but interested to hear how other people have modeled people and organisations.
Rob Hamill sent me this during the week …
A kiwi bloke made this in his flat
…but he had to break it all up because he shifted flat this week…
so what are doing with your spare time?
A week into the MacBook Air and I rate it.
I went for the cheapest one, 80GB hard drive and 2 GB of ram. The disk is only 4800 rpm so it’s no rocket ship but doesn’t seem slow.
The thinness is fantastic. You just take it with you.
The one USB port has not been a problem at all. I just plug into my Dell 24″ monitor which has 3 ports. Also the new Apple thin keyboards have a USB port as well.
I had a few pleasant surprises as I migrated across machines. Copying my iTunes directory meant that my iPod Touch was still in sync. Wasn’t expecting that.
I have a big external drive connected to my Dell monitor so TimeMachine works well. Whenever I plug in it just chugs away. Though Apple is doing some stupid things with TimeMachine over AirDisk. Here one day and gone the other … Apple says Time Machine over AirPort Disk is unsupported feature
The Remote Disk feature works well. Don’t miss having an optical drive at all.
The biggest pain is the ongoing lack of an iPhoto or iTunes server. Can’t believe no one has done this yet.
Still feels like the Air will have a fashion life of 20 minutes as SSD prices come down and new Mac products are released in a few months.
The existing MacBooks are still absolutely fine and it will be interesting to see what they do with them in the next revision.
My dream is still the form factor of an Air, 120GB+ SSD, and ability to drive a 30″ external monitor.
Over the last few months we’ve seen a number of significant computing opportunities arrive that provide access to massive markets for new ideas.
Developing applications inside FaceBook was a good first start.
The iPhone SDK is a big game changer. Reports are coming in that the iPhone is the biggest mobile computing browser already. Whatever you think the iPhone is huge and a number of companies are seizing the opportunity.
Today we heard about Google App Engine. This allows you to deploy your application into Google’s server cloud. Just write your code, load it up and promote. This reduces barriers to entry significantly. Amazon has been doing this for a while but what is different about Google App Engine is the that it allows you to link into Google Accounts.
Check out this simple list management program … http://to-done.appspot.com/
You login using your google credentials. So imagine all the little useful applications you can write that leverage that simple logon mechanism.
But looking a bit further out this post from David Recordon nails what gets me excited.
Imagine if Google Accounts added support for the (upcoming) OpenSocial REST APIs. All of a sudden, each of these App Engine sites could start injecting activity and querying for activity across each other.
and
If done right, this really could be the first shipping glimpse of the distributed social web that there is to come.
Winer has some strong thoughts as well - Early notes on GoogleApps
I’m really pissed at Microsoft. Why? They wasted billions on Vista when they should have been virtualizing Windows and making their developers’ investments apply to the net. I know it sounds outlandish, but it really isn’t. Amazon doesn’t offer EC2 for Windows, just Linux. And I’m stuck with two Windows boxes at my hosting company, hosting a dead fucking end. My bet on Microsoft in the late 90s just ran out of gas.
Microsoft is investing big on virtualization, and data centers, so while not at the party yet there will be a big push from them in this space in the next year. There is a lot of .Net code out there waiting for this and .Net developers will demand it. They’re invested and don’t really want to learn a new languages like Ruby, Cocoa or Python.
Regardless, computing is moving away from the traditional ‘build an application over an operating system’ model of past at frightening speed. There is so much opportunity opening up right now as the technology world shifts into this new ‘application in the cloud’ model and incumbents don’t get how big a shift this is.
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