Before Yahoo Mail became a big deal, it didn’t have its own URL (its currently mail.yahoo.com). The URL was www.yahoo.com/r/m1. This URL hasn’t been promoted or used for about 10 years now but it still worked. My brain’s automatic typing reflexes simply remember that URL as a habit.
As of this week, it finally died! Now when I without thinking type www.yahoo.com/r/m1 I get this error message:
I guess it will take me a while to remember mail.yahoo.com as a replacement…
Microsoft has released a new site on SharePoint 2010.
In the site, you will find information on SharePoint 2010 for developers and it professionals.
There are some interesting announcements in video format here that are worth exploring. In the developer video, they show SharePoint integration into Visual Studio 2010. There are a few new bits in here:
It was widely announced that Google will be releasing a new operating system called the Chrome OS that will be initially deployed to NetBooks but will hopefully compete with Windows on the desktop.
Yawn…shades of 1995 when Java OS, Oracle OS, Network Computer etc. tried to do the same thing.
If you want a OS replacement for Windows on your NetBook, you can get it today – its called LINUX! Acer, Dell, etc. all have Net Books that will come with LINUX today. And if you want to run Google’s browser, you can download it for free.
Can you even call Chrome OS a new operating system when you’re just repackaging LINUX? KDE and GNOME aren’t operating systems, so why is Chrome?
"The operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no Web," the blog post said. "So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome--the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to rethink what operating systems should be."
Huh? Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS, and LINUX were all designed with the web in mind.
COREL had the same vision in mind when they created COREL LINUX. They had WordPerfect, CorelDraw, etc. (even at the time much more sophisticated applications than Google Spreadsheet is today) and they couldn’t sell any more office licenses because Microsoft had a lock on the desktop and was killing them in the office market. So they made a big splash (and almost killed the company) investing heavily in desktop LINUX, the supposedly Windows killer.
BE Operating System was an entirely new OS developed in 1991. Unlike the Chrome OS or Corel, it wasn’t a rehash of LINUX with a new set of apps thrown on top of it. It was an entirely brand new operating system from the kernel upwards. It had the same ambitious target – replace Windows with a better operating system. It had a niche following originally as a replacement to the Apple Operating System (since the BE OS initially only ran on Power PC Chips and not Intel) and then as a Windows replacement. The company could not gain enough market share and eventually was bought out by Palm.
The same reasons why these operating systems didn’t survive will cause major challenges for Google. I found this table from Microsoft to challenge the proposition of the Network Computer:
| PC | Network Computer | |
| Operating System | Windows | Proprietary / Incompatible |
| Mobile Support | Excellent | None |
| Applications | > 100,000 | Limited / Incompatible |
| Development Tools | Choice | Limited to Java |
| Device Support | Thousands | Proprietary / Incompatible |
| Device Model | Windows | None / Incompatible |
| Manufacturers | 2,500 | Few |
| Networking | Choice | Requires high speed net |
| Availability | Now | Limited |
| Printer Support | Thousands | None |
| Scalability | Excellent | Poor |
With using LINUX, Google can solve some of these issues (scalability for example). But even OS X for example has less third party support than Windows and far less partners and applications and it is fairly mature. Google will have none of these advantages.
In Excel 2007 (and 2003), you can share a workbook. This allows users to simultaneously update the same file:
This feature is used in many enterprises for collaboration, especially in departments such as Finance or Planning where there are lots of shared figures, budgets, plans, etc.
There are some interesting features that allow for some rich collaboration scenarios simply within a single Excel file:
When moving to SharePoint as a document management platform, this feature is no longer supported:
More than one user cannot simultaneously make changes to a shared workbook that is stored on a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site. If you want to store your workbook on a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site, you should do so only after the collaboration effort through sharing is complete.
Document libraries by design only allow one person to edit a document at the same time. In addition, they support check-in and out to provide locks on documents during the editing process. When a user grabs a file for editing from SharePoint, they edit a file on their local machine and then when done it is saved back to the central document repository.
Excel Services allows for running of Excel files within the SharePoint server, but only in read only fashion. Excel Services is great for read only dashboards, charts and graphs but isn’t a collaboration service.
For more information on the different options for Excel collaboration, see Microsoft’s article on the subject.
I was on TheServerSide.NET which is one of the leading Microsoft .NET community sites and typed in “SharePoint”. The result I got was this:
I thought that was kind of amusing, so I tried a few other Microsoft product names:
Based on the various blog posts and articles, here is what we know from the publically available information on SharePoint 2010:
This is just a preliminary list – Microsoft will be publishing more information when the public beta is released this summer. Stay tuned as more details about the next release comes out.
One of my colleagues ran into a major Project usability problem when he started filling in the cost column manually. He actually did it by right clicking on a cell in the cost column and selecting “fill down” which he thought might like in excel just copy the formula. In Project, this copies values and overrides the calculations normally done, e.g. cost = rate * number of hours.
Here is what Project assumes when you type in a cost into the Cost Column:
1. Normally, the cost column is calculated based on the rate (in this example $100 / hr) * the number of hours.
2. If I type in a number into the cost column, I can replace the calculated cost with a new cost – in this case, I have specified it to be $1200.
3. Project takes the cost I typed in and calculates the DIFFERENCE between takes the original calculated cost and what I typed in as a FIXED cost, e.g. in this case $400. If you insert the Fixed Cost Column, you will see this value.
4. If you do not understand what Project has done, it becomes really confusing as to how to get rid of the fixed cost. Simply changing the duration or hours doesn’t remove the cost. For example, if I change the duration to 2 days it doesn’t recalculate the cost to be $1600 – it keeps the $400 in fixed cost and makes the total cost $2000.
5. If you have added a fixed cost my mistake, the simple way to fix the problem is to set the fix cost to $0.00 manually. This resets to the default behaviour and now your cost is calculated normally. See below – now that I have changed the fixed cost to $0 I can easily change the duration and the cost is calculated correctly.
I have been using Microsoft Project for ages and didn’t know this behaviour existed. I found this problem because one of my colleagues was not an experience Project user and started filling in values like in Excel. However, this is nothing in Project that warns you or points you to the solution – it took me digging through help and google to figure it out.
If you are new to Project, keep this simple lesson learned in mind – do not manually change the cost column. Let Project always calculate it for you. If you have a specific fixed cost for a task, then insert the Fixed Cost column and type it in there. This will avoid a lot of confusion.
I have posted previously on bugs in Facebook, and I ran into another one just this morning.
Facebook has a friend suggestion feature that lists people who you might know based on how close they are to your existing friends. It’s a great way to find people but I found a bug in it. It presents you a list of potential friends and for each one there is a little X that you can click to take the person off the list (e.g. it was a bad suggestion and you don’t know them). Here is the bug: if Facebook runs out of further suggestion, only the text disappears and the picture stays behind. 
If you go back to the home and come back in, the whole lists resets and the problem goes away.
I was at a client site this week and they currently have Confluence and are moving to SharePoint 2007 and wanted to understand the differences between the two products. I have personally implemented both products in different environments and like both of them. Each as its strengths and weaknesses.
Here is a side by side comparison:
| Confluence | SharePoint 2007 | |
| Company | Made by Atlassian in Australia. In my experience, Atlassian has wicked customer service, a great support network, etc. | Made by Microsoft. SharePoint is one of Microsoft’s most successful products and Microsoft has made a major commitment to the product. Support in my experience is standard product support but doesn’t have the tender love and care you get from Atlassian staff. |
| Consulting Support | Limited, but in some markets quite good. Look for open-source experts as Atlassian has strong ties to the open source community. The software itself is Java based. | Huge consulting market from small shops to major consulting companies such as Accenture. One of the major pluses of the platform is the talent pool to help implement and configure it. |
| Price | Free if you are a non-profit company and you ask them nicely. Server license is available ranging from $800-12000 depending on number of users. | Pricing starts at about $5000 but for intranet cost is per named user at about $75-94 a user. 200 users would cost about $20,000 vs. about $4,000 for confluence. |
| Search | Good with confluence content and Microsoft documents. No federated search model included. Did you mean feature allows for synonym searches. | Enterprise level search engine with relevance ranking, synonyms, large scale searches (up to 500,000 documents easily and up to 50 million in theory), and federation model. Out of the box search can index other web sites, file servers, etc. and plugins through third party products can index other systems such as OpenText, Oracle, SAP, etc. |
| Look and feel customization | If you’re changing the logo or basic colours you’re fine. If you want to create a whole new interface, you will find it a challenge. Confluence uses SiteMesh templates which are a set of XML/HTML files that need to be customized directly. In my direct experience (and I have done lots of HTML editing), wading through the library of templates is not a trivial undertaking. | SharePoint supports customization at multiple levels through separation of layout, look and feel, and master pages. SharePoint Designer is provided as a GUI based tool for creating new themes as well. Template system is significantly simpler than Confluence in my experience to customize. |
| WIKI | Stronger than SharePoint in supporting WIKI mark-up. Rich text editor is not bad but not as strong as SharePoint. | WIKI template provided as a site template. WIKI mark-up is limited to embedding links in text, but rich text editor make WIKI mark-up less needed in most cases. |
| Security | LDAP based. Authorization model is 100% stored in Confluence, so groups need to managed within the product. Single Sign On is not provided. | SharePoint is Active Directory based by default. Single Sign On is provided with Windows using Internet Explorer – users already logged into Windows are automatically logged into SharePoint. Groups in SharePoint can map to Active Directory groups which makes management somewhat easier than Confluence. |
| Web Parts | Confluence supports a plugin model and there are some available. Product availability is small in comparison to the third party web part market for SharePoint. | Long list of web parts are supplied out of the box for SharePoint. Massive third party market for Web Parts including integration with major vendors such Oracle, SAP, OpenText, etc. Web Parts can be easily built in .NET if custom parts are required. |
| Document Management | Version control, linking and embeddable. However, there is no check-in/out, content types, workflow, etc. | Much stronger in SharePoint including features such as check-in/out, content types, meta-data, integration with Office 2007, workflow, authorization models, etc. that are typical of an enterprise document management system. |
| Integration with Office | No support. | Very strong integration as long as you’re on Office 2007. |
| Other Features | Blogs, discussion forums, etc. are provided. | Too many features to name, but SharePoint is an enterprise portal with dozens of additional features including: reporting integration, dashboards, dozens of web parts, workflow, forms server, etc. See this link for a complete list of features. |
Comparing the two products is a bit of an apples to orange comparison because the markets for each are quite different. Confluence is primarily a collaboration tool for small to medium size enterprises. SharePoint is an enterprise portal that includes collaboration but also dozens of other portal features.
In my direct experience, SharePoint is more user friendly for end-users – creating pages, changing content, managing documents seems to be more intuitive than in Confluence. If you’re a power WIKI user then its less of an issue but I handed it to an HR department and found they struggled with it. SharePoint requires a lot of pre-configuration to get it right but if its set up right I find the adoption tends to be easier.
If you really want a strong WIKI collaboration tool and don’t have much money then Confluence is a very good product. The support you will get from Atlassian is awesome and they are constantly improving it. However, if you’re looking at enterprise collaboration, document management, search, etc. then in my experience you may be looking at an upgrade to SharePoint in the long run as your user base becomes more sophisticated.
The White House announced to great fan fare that it would be releasing data feeds of its public information collected by hundreds of agencies within the US government. They have launched the first iteration of this service.
My interest in this feed is to use this data to build mash-ups, visualization applications, and web applications that use this data. There are many such applications that use existing data feeds such as Amazon data, Google Maps data, Microsoft Live data, etc. in interesting ways. Amazon in particular has had an XML based REST API available for years (in fact Amazon sells a book on how to use it) For example, Frucall provides a mobile comparison application that uses a variety of publically available APIs to compare products across retailers and present them to your mobile device.
So with hundreds of data feeds, imagine the visualization, comparison, calculation and searching applications that could be built on US government data. As well, imagine then directing these applications to mobile devices, XBOX 360, IPhones, Blackberries, etc. in formats that work ideally for those platforms.
Unfortunately, based on what has been launched, this vision is not really feasible. Here is what I can see from what is currently available:
So while its great to see the information being public, the US government has a long way to go before they have a useful API that could be used for application development purposes. Given that Googgle. Expedia, Amazon, etc. have had these APIs for many years, its a lot of fanfare and not a lot delivered for this service debut – dumping a bunch of files onto a directory was a victory in 1999, not in 2009.
I was downtown the other day and snapped this with my cell phone camera. Apparently, this bill board needs Windows Activation!
As users of SharePoint start using lists they start taking advantage of a very intuitive and highly configurable information management tool. Users who have been using Excel or Access in the past start seeing SharePoint as a kind of rapid application development platform for building structured data applications. However, this is where SharePoint’s list architecture breaks down because simply:
SharePoint is not a database!
Part of the problem is that business users designing lists are not familiar with basic database concepts - they just want to store their information. Part of the problem is false advertising by consultants and/or Microsoft that SharePoint is a miracle platform that can do anything - it does some things well but replacing your SQL server or even Access database isn't one of them. The other problem is there is no really good way for surfacing bi-directionally data from a database into SharePoint – the business data catalogue works only in read only mode and does not allow for updates back to the underlying data store.
Here are a list of some features that a database has that SharePoint does not support - the moment you need these features you will need a real database.
These features are considered basic in databases – they have been around for decades and even the most primitive databases such as Access or FileMaker Pro have most of these features.
Lists are great for flat, changing content especially when attached to unstructured documents. At least in the current version, lists are not substitutes for databases and shouldn’t be considered so. If you need a database, then you are better off building a proper database and using SharePoint as a front-end for surfacing that data through reports, dashboards, etc. or as a host for data entry components such as InfoPath forms or custom build web parts.
Sites like Pandora and Hulu block IP addresses not originating from the United States. The solution for the past 6 months or so has been to use Hotspot Shield which proxies your IP address behind an US address.
As of today, this no longer works. When you load up a video, you get the following:
Pandora still works thankfully…
NOTE: There seems to be a solution to this problem – thanks to the comment below! If you clean out your browser cache and then reconnect to hotspot shield it seems to work. I suspect this is a temporary solution until Hulu starts blocking this new batch of servers.
When is the old world media going to get that the Internet is global and find a solution for all this rights territory nonsense?
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (affectionately known in our circles as “MOSS”) is now at what should be at the peak of adoption. The product has been on the market since 2007 and there is a new version coming in a year.
Yet with many of our customers, we find that MOSS has been implemented but barely gets off the ground. There a few reasons why this seems to be happening:
Why does this happen? What is missing from most MOSS implementations? In my experience, there are a few common causes:
If you are an IT Director or department champion for SharePoint, I strongly encourage you to think about these issues BEFORE you start an implementation. We see many cases where organizations start thinking about these issues after the first implementation has already failed and the organization has soured on the platform because there was not enough investment in managing the project and an eager IT department ready to roll out a service.
| With a new Terminator movie coming out, I started thinking about the ways that on the Internet now we need to try and distinguish the humans from the robots. There is already a “war” going on out there between humans and sophisticated robots for control of Facebook, Hotmail, Gmail and other web 2.0 services. |  |
One of the more annoying “fronts” in this war is CAPTCHA (“Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart”). This reverse Turing test is what is used on many sites to test to see if you are human and not some automated robot.
The problem is that these tests are like antibiotics – the more they get used the more sophisticated the robots. Early CAPTCHA tests were easily broken by bots so they have evolved into more and more sophisticated tests. Now the number of hoops and the readability of these tests are so bad that human beings can barely pass them.
The challenge is how to make a test easily answerable by a human being but yet heuristically difficult enough to foil a software program.
Google is experimenting with new techniques to try and simplify the experience of verification – see below.
Even using this technique, Google has to specifically pick the right images:
However, while the images will be randomly rotated, they will be carefully selected. First, Google will exclude images for which its own computers can readily identify the top, such as photographs showing landscapes with blue sky (easily detected), text (easily recognized) or portraits of people (there are many facial recognition applications on the market). Then, it will screen out images that humans find too difficult to orient (for example, abstract art, or overhead views, that don't have a readily identifiable top) by conducting a sort of opinion poll.
Google is relying not just on individual results but collective results. The heuristic picture composed from millions of clicks is what will power the analytics so that Google can reliably detect bots instead of humans.
One of the cooler features that sets Live Earth/Maps apart from Google Maps is the birds eye view.
Take a look at this building in Google Maps:
Now take a look at the Bird’s Eye view of the same building in Live Earth/Maps.
The four views are available if you hit the rotate button in the interface – these are actual photographs taken from different angles.
The difference in understanding heights of buildings, features around buildings, etc. is significant – imagine if you’re doing some house hunting and you see a neighbourhood you like. Wouldn’t you like to see the increased detail and vantage points that you get from this orthogonal view instead of just the top down view you get in Google maps?
Adsense in general does a good job of targeting ads based on the content of your site. I have adsense running on my blog and I find that it does a reasonable job of putting ads that are somehow connected to my content. If I’m writing about Microsoft Project, the reader gets ads on Microsoft Project.
Adsense seems to have one basic problem – it cannot distinguish between positive and negative content. Here is some content that I found on a random site:
Java is EVIL, it's the work of the devil, made to collect your
souls and to turn you into brainless slaves of hell.
If you like Java, you will lose your soul to be damned
for eternal torment in hell.Demons and devils will feast on your soul
for all eternity.
So stop using it now to save your soul.
Or the holy inquisition will come for you and burn your flesh to save
your soul, because the devil must not collect more souls or nobody can
prevent Armageddon.
Java is evil, using it is BLASPHEMY , only heretics and
witches like Java.And heretics and witches shall BURN !
Java = programming language written by SATAN in Hell's Kitchen in 666 minutes ! ! !
I of course didn’t write this and for the record, I have used Java for many many years and I don’t think I’m going to Hell. I posted this to prove a point – Adsense will now show ads that promote java products. This is a sample of what Adsense delivered on this site:
So the question is for advertisers – do you really want your company being linked to content such as this simply because it has a few key words in it? Is there a way to heuristically analyze content to filter this out (or even better, target the negative content for example to anti-Java advertisers?)
One of the more confusing aspects of Microsoft Project is Task Type. Task Type can be set to "Fixed Units", "Fixed Work", or "Fixed Duration" for each task.
How to Set Task Type
You can set task type in a couple ways:
1. If you select a task or tasks and go to task information (under project in the menu or right click and its there as well) you will find task type in the advanced tab.
Effort Driven
There is also a check box (which is checked by default) that says that tasks are “Effort Driven”. When this is checked, it is assumed that work stays constant even if you adjust the other two measures. So for example, if you change a 40 hour task from 1 week duration to 2 weeks duration, project will keep the 40 hours of work but decrease the number of resources required to compensate (only 50% of a resource in this case).
This may not be what you want and I find particularly with using Fixed Duration having this turned off is highly desirable because want to adjust the work, not the units. For example, what I want is to tell project, “I want to schedule this task with 1 person for 2 weeks” and have it calculate work to be 80 hours. If I adjust the schedule to be 3 weeks, I want the work to increase by 50%. Similarly, if I am working in Fixed Duration and I double the resources, I want the duration to stay constant and for the work to double. This will only happen if “Effort Driven” is turned off.
How Task Type Works
Any task can be adjusted using three measures: Units, Duration or Work. Because each measure is dependent on the other, at least one of the other two must be impacted. By changing the task type, you are telling project which measure you are going to adjust and which measure should be automatically re-calculated. Below is a chart that shows how Project reacts based on the task type:
| Field that you change | Field calculated if the task is Fixed Units | Field calculated if the task is Fixed Work | Field calculated if the task is Fixed Duration |
| Work | Duration is recalculated | Duration is recalculated | Units are recalculated |
| Duration | Work is recalculated | Units are recalculated | Work is recalculated |
| Units | Duration is recalculated | Duration is recalculated | Work is recalculated |
Basic Tips for Using Task Type Efficiently
Here are some basic tips to using Task Type efficiently and to avoid confusion:
Scenarios to use Specific Task Types
Fixed Duration
I used Fixed Duration when I have a good understanding of the schedule and the team and I want to calculate cost/effort. A good example of this is doing a plan for requirements gathering interviews. I know that I have 2 weeks of interviews, 1 week of documentation and 2 days of client review and I know that I need a Business Analyst and a Technical Architect in each one at 100%. Fixed Duration works really well because I can adjust the schedule really easily and the work effort is calculated for me.
Another good use for Fixed Duration is % allocations for overhead resources. Project Managers for example tend to be used on an overhead basis for the duration of the project on a fairly constant basis. If the project takes longer you will need more project management. It’s also easier to think of assigning a PM at 30% to a project for the entire duration than to say, “I need 85 hours of project management for this project). With Fixed Duration, you can simply assign the PM for the entire duration and adjust the % allocation and the work effort is automatically calculated.
Fixed Work
A good use of Fixed Work is when you want to try and fit a fixed amount of hours into a fixed schedule. By fixing the work, you can adjust the number of resources you need to impact the duration. For example, let’s assume you have 1280 hours of work and you want to try and jam that work into a fixed 8 week period. With Fixed Work turned on, you can set the allocation of resources to 400% in order fit the fixed amount of work into a duration you wish.
Fixed Units
I generally find that using Fixed Units is my least desirable option simply because in most real world scenarios adjusting the number of resources required is the most flexible option.
One scenario where Fixed Units might be appropriate is for department planning. In a department, the number of fixed units is constant (the number of full time employees) and as a Director you want to know how much work your team can produce. What tends to happen in these scenarios is the queue of work is constant and the duration flexes – you end up telling the poor person at the end of the priority list that their project won’t get done until next year.
In this case, setting Fixed Units would allow you to lock in the resource pool based on the size of your department and then adjust the work to calculate the resulting schedule. Based on the schedule, you would then be able to tell your stakeholders how many projects can be done in the coming year.
I hope that provides some guidance on how to use this key function in Microsoft Project – I have found even very senior Project Managers do not fundamentally understand how Duration, Effort and Units work together and how to model them in Microsoft Project. If you understand the conceptual framework and the rules that Microsoft Project uses, you will find that there are less errors in your plan, less confusion and less tearing your hair out when you find Project adjusts your numbers in ways you didn’t intend.
As part of the latest Microsoft Instant Messenger update, there is a Live Writer tool now included as part of the Windows live toolset.
It’s free and having now written a couple posts with it, I can attest that it’s quite good:
This will definitely make my life easier as a blog writer…thanks Microsoft!
One of the key features in Microsoft Excel is its ability to fill data based on existing values. Excel is smart enough to extrapolate and auto-fill values based on your existing ones.
Click on the black box in the corner of any cell and drag. Excel will fill the cells automatically. The fill handler works both horizontally and vertically.
Here are some tips on how to use the fill handle for values:
The Fill Handle can also be used to fill formulas. Here is an example:
The product in c2 is a formula =A2*b2 and the sum is a formula A2+b2. Now let’s assume that you have a series of values and you want to have the same formula repeated:
If you select the cell with the existing formula you can use the fill handle to automatically fill down the right formula for the other rows. It automatically figures out that as you move down rows it should adjust the formula so that A2 * b2 becomes A3 * B3, C4 * B4 and so on.
There is also another way to fill in the cells. If you select the cell you want to copy and then select a region and paste, it will fill the values in the same way. It again automatically adjusts the formula so that it makes sense based on the new row that it now occupies. This works both horizontally and vertically.
One last tip on filling – there are cases where you will want the value in your formula to not change as it moves from row to row. Take this example:
In this case, if you simply do a standard fill in Excel this is the result:
The solution to fixing constants is to name them. Named values in Excel do not change when filling. To name a cell, click on the cell and then in the left box type in a name for the cell.
Then when you create the formula, use the name instead of the cell address, e.g. instead of B1 * B3 we will now set the formula to InterestRate * B3. By using a named cell, Excel assumes these values are constants in formulas and doesn’t adjust them automatically.
Decades ago in Canada, funds were created to encourage television production of Canadian Content. These programs were funded by the cable companies and regulated by the CRTC. These funds were created to share "Canadian Stories" in a sea of American television content that because of their inherent scale could be produced easier and cheaper.
The CRTC is now entertaining a proposal to create a similar fund through taxation of ISPs (and therefore all Internet subscribers) to fund Canadian television producers so they can continue to produce "Canadian Stories" created by Professional Content Creators. This proposal is supported by industry lobby groups such as ACTRA, Society of Composers, SOCAN, etc.
These folks want to tax every Internet subscriber (e.g. practically everyone in Canada) 3% of revenue (which of course means the price will go up by 3% to compensate) from the ISPs that provide us Internet Access.
This proposal shows a complete misunderstanding of the difference between a regulated, limited, and centralized Television Industrial Complex model and the Internet - a fundamentally distributed, decentralized and long tail model of content distribution.
Here are some fundamental differences that these lobbyists fail to acknowledge in their proposal:
The CRTC is in the business of regulating traditional centralized content broadcasting and is therefore bought into the fundamental model assumptions of the television age. Canadian Television Producers who are in favour of this model seem to be wanting to keep their existing model and apply it to the Internet, because if they simply wanted to make money from content there are easier more direct Internet models available that do not require a tax on consumers. The Canadian Producers advocating for this proposal and the CRTC if it accepts it simply are trying to implement the old television age model and apply to the new Internet content model so that these folks do not have to migrate to a new way of creating, distributing, monetizing content. In addition, the entire proposal continues to question the fundamental value of funding "Professional Content Producers" as the bastion of Canadian culture when there are potentially millions of Canadians who are creating "Canadian Stories" themselves on a daily basis through blogs, Facebook, etc. Do we really need Gordon Lightfood, Colin Mochrie, the CBC, etc. to have a monopoly on culture creation when anyone in Canada can easily tell their own stories?
I particularly love the last picture - low resolution announcement board has links to web sites in it....
For those who are young enough never to have seen one of these, here are some details:
Maybe we should along with the rural broadband fund establish a government program to upgrade small towns cable access feeds so they can have access to those fancy TV guide scrolling ad versions we have in the big cities?
In the media, the old traditional form of Push media is being replaced by user generated content, collaboration, and Pull from users. The distinction between producers and consumers has been blurred so that online news hubs become more like information radiators than centralized distribution points.
Software development, in my opinion, is going through a similar revolution to the mainstream media. It is happening in a slower fashion because the software "industrial complex" is still highly engaged in generating software through the traditional means and because it generally works especially for large enterprise applications. However, in certain spaces and where consumers of software are engaged, the traditional model of a software development team pushing out software that is consumed by a user is starting to break down.
In order to make my point, let me give you a few examples:
In addition, users expectations have changed dramatically has Web 2.0 has encouraged them to collaborate, blog, share information and build their own customized spaces. When a 12 year old can over night create their own blog, organize a protest online, share pictures, integrate Google Maps, and add dozens of widgets to their personalized home page, the idea of waiting 3 months for the next software "release" by an ivory tower software team quaint at best and non-responsive at worst.
In the corporate world, IT departments are struggling with this challenge in application spaces that encourage collaboration and customization with end-users. Business users do not want to wait 3 months for a static report - they want a drill down BI tool that allows them to build their own "application" (whatever that now means). In the portal world, IT departments are struggling with how much control they provide their end-users to redefine the underlying structure of meta-data, document types, user profiles, etc. In the SharePoint world for example, its difficult to tell where the "application" stops and user generated content begins because the platform is designed to encourage modification and collaboration by office workers.
On the other hand, the risks and challenges that the software development life cycle has helped solve over the past 20 years have not disappeared because we have moved from a code centric, monolithic, and IT controlled software development cycle to a collaborative, distributed and user centric model:
Software development methodologies have good answers to these challenges and over the past 20 years have matured to address these issues through test driven development, source code control, build management, project management, quality assurance, etc.
As an industry, we have a similar challenge to the mainstream media - how do we adapt these worth while processes so that we can continue to deliver high quality software to our customers while adapting to an environment where our users are going to be creating software with us in a highly collaborative manner? How do we recreate the software development life cycle for a Web 2.0 world?
