Month: April 2005

Craig’s List: Killing Classified One Click At A Time

The cadre at Geek News Central links to an article called simply Craig Who?
Classifieds are dead to me. I never look at them. My wife wants to have a latin inscription above our door that reads: This home furnished by Craig’s List (in Italian: Questa sede ammobiliata da List del Craig).
Yet another sign that newspapers and media companies may not be getting the message quite yet.


Hey! More on this happy story here!

XCache Technologies: Still Kicking in the Pacific Northwest

Wayne Berry and the crew at XCache Technologies is still kicking, with their interesting mix of software and hardware HTTP compression solutions.
The software is designed for IIS/ISA, while the hardware is a front-end for Web servers.
I had a chance to meet Wayne a few years ago, and was impressed by his dedication to Web performance. He also encouraged me to write some of the articles that you see at WebPerformance.ORG.
Check them out if you are looking for an IIS compression solution.


Disclaimer:
I am not paid or compensated in any way to promote the products of XCache Technologies.

Microsoft: Caving to the Right-Wing Demagogues

I really try to stay away from political issues, as I am considered an enemy alien living in the US at the will of the DHS.
But if ANYTHING stated in this article is even remotely true, Microsoft has shown that it is morally bankrupt.
I would love to hear some comments from Scoble, Mini-Microsoft, Charlie Kindel, or Dare Obasanjo.
If this is a true reflection of Microsoft’s approach to openess and acceptance, I take back any positive things I said yesterday.
I want this to not be true. Please tell me this is not true.


Scoble says he is definitely not going to be happy if this is true.
Mini-Microsoft agrees with Scoble and me. This in and of itself is worthy of a comment: that the three of us agree on anything means that a plague of locusts is likely to descend on my garden.
Although I want to hear what BGates and SBallmer have to say on this.

PowerPoint: Evil, Doom and Desperation

Cliff Atkinson points out how the PowerPoint Nazis rule corporate life. [here]
Cliff’s message in Beyond Bullets is simple: escape the drudgery of a point-by-point breakdown your ideas. Tell a story. May it evocative, descriptive, invigorating, or even scary. If the audience hears a story, it is far more likely that they will remember what you said, rather than the quality of your PowerPoint Template.
I personally hate PowerPoint. I use it; but I hate it. I get most passionate when I can take a real-world example and explain it to my audience, and link it back to the core concept I am talking about. When I do that, I never look at the slide, I look at the audience.
If you spend more time looking at your own slides, or even the printed handouts you have in front of you, you might as well not be there. Your audience needs to feel that you are the one speaking to them, not Faceless Corporation, Inc.
Beyond Bullets ties directly into the concepts you can read at Scott Jones’ blog. As a member of the SalesBuilders team, they have helped moved solution and consultative selling to a new level. But the trick to this is that you have to develop a relationship with the person you are selling to (Parts 1, 2, and 3).
For introverted geek types, like myself, the hardest part of relationships is the relating part. But if you have a compelling story, and a means to show how compelling the story is, then the difficulties simply melt away.
Find the one topic you can talk to hours on, and live that message.

Microsoft Exodus — My thoughts

There has been a lot of commentary on the departure of Lenn Pryor from Microsoft.
This is sort of an unusual topic for me, as for years, people have heard me preach that I would never work for Microsoft. But I am now saddened to see some of the signs of decay and inertia that have affected other large technology giants.
It was an innovative company. Parts of it still are. Microsoft dominates large portions of the server market, as well as having a complete control of the desktop ecosystem. All other desktops are “me toos”, although the Apple crowd will dispute this. But Apple develops many things because they know that Microsoft will, not because they are being innovative.
So, what now? A new OS? New Apps? What is Microsoft going to do to define the next 20 years of computing?
Or will they? Or have they run their course? Are they a foundation, not a spire?
Microsoft will be re-born. As what, I don’t know. But in 10 years, it will not be the same company we have known for the last 20 years.
Or it will be gone.

I’ll Add My Voice to M. David’s Comments

All:
The browser doesn’t matter anymore. So get on with it, and develop something interesting.
M. David’s rant.
I use browsers in this order:

  • Firefox: 60%
  • FeedDemon: 25%
  • MSIE: 10%
  • Opera: 5%

I am likely not alone. FeedDemon is my RSS reader and it is built on MSIE. Firefox is used for browsing, and I don’t do much of that anymore. Opera is for random Web development and other weirdness.
But in five years, browsers will be used infrequently, as desktop information integration over HTTP becomes the norm.

Siebel CEO Says They Can Do Better

Jeff Nolan sums it up nicely:

gee, ya think?

He is referring to the C|Net Article here.
Siebel is a company that just epitomizes the arrogance and greed that ran the valley for those fleeting years, and that has been punished so mightily since 2000.
I do not hold a warm place in my heart for Siebel.

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