Mercurial

The rumors of the potential demise of SaaS seem to be exaggerated. True, there is a glut of companies, and the current business model doesn’t seem to give space to consolidation of services and customers.

The traditional providers of business software implementations are all happy and cushy in the knowledge that their cumbersome implementation, with their multi-million dollar contracts and hundreds of consultants per implementation, are here to stay: It is difficult to consider the current business without that massive attention to detail and customization on installations.

But SaaS is too young, and the processes are amenable to change still.

Businessweek’s Sara Lacy, in her article On-Demand Computing: A Brutal Slog points out the various problems that different vendors are experiencing, and the steep barriers to entry that this industry seems to have:

“SAP thought customers would go to a Web site, configure it themselves, and found the first hundred or so implementations required a lot of time and a lot of tremendous costs,” Richardson says. “Small businesses are calling for support, calling SAP because they don’t have IT departments. SAP is spending a lot of resources to configure and troubleshoot the problem.”

This is the quote that jumps at me, along with the 10 years $100 million figures: is it too soon to think of IBM and their mighty boxes, of enormous top-bottom infrastructure that gets subverted seamlessly by an innovative and surprisingly simple product? I think of dinosaurs and little animals that take their place, of open source and in-house modification instead of exorbitant consulting fees.

If configuration and user interface is the problem, there are deep issues of software architecture, openness and user experience that must and will be addressed. But all this is infrastructure, not technology.

I am almost ashamed: I have spent the brief interludes that daily life affords to try to connect my wireless gain using my trusty Ubuntu on my crusty Dell, and yet no wifi.

Yes I have read them all, and I have had as much success as s cold fusion physicist: it works, but I can’t repeat the miracle.

On other news, I started twittering again, which interesting enough of a change of pace. After the Reddit Apocalypse and their dismal views on economy, life and the future of the planet, it is refreshing to see the aggregation of random tidbits, not enough to distract but intriguing enough to explore.

Reddit fails at social media by bypassing community - you contribute and engage, but seldom with people, just with random pieces of comments. Memes arise and die within days, and the collective knowledge fades as rapidly as the collective mood changes. In Twitter at least I get a lot of links to blogs and the like. It’s got more focused content.

Why is it that work becomes so boring after a while? Why projects remains exciting, no matter how exhausting and demanding? Why is the thrill of a deadline better than the monotonous drone of the routine meeting and the impossible boring coworker?

It is all about you brain cells and their connections. Whenever you (or your activities) create new pathways, life is better, explosive, immersive, brilliant.

Repetitious tasks are death, though, and not only figuratively: they mean that little by little your pathways reduce, and your options disappear, and one day you wake up transformed into a cockroach, afraid of light and with an apple embedded on your body. That’s why meetings are emetic, and projects are exciting, even after the 16 hour a day crunches and the impossible goals: those mean growth.

Painting, as Paul Graham suggests, may have worked for 20th century dictators, but now we need more, a certain definite brain workout, and one that pay s the bills and nourish the soul, one that provides excitement and gold, one that goes along with expansion and learning of new disciplines. We need work for intelligent humans that need to learn.

This comment summarizes it all:

OLPC = One License Per Child

Reported by the Inquirer, the OLPC project is throwing away its linux pedigree, opting for the impossibly corporate Microsoft Windows.

What, I wonder, is the rationale behind it. An open-source OLPC would have been magic, even more so in poor countries, or in countries with large barriers to technology.

By making it Windows the OLPC is effectively dead; it needs a bigger platform, licenses, updates and distributors, and introduces security risks in all these countries: having an open-source laptop? Cool. Having a closed-source PC? Backdoors come to mind.

Next: get your own Asus eee

google. lower case google: you get more brand recognition and mind share by being a verb, not a brand: air is free, yet we all breath it.

Now, to the point: zephoria asks for participation in her Case Study for the HBR.

Of course, in reality, few companies have their senior management, or their possible employees, on facebook. Social media is quite recent, in geological years, although old in internet time.

But I see that, here in middle earth, people are afraid of or unaware of the possibilities of social media, opting for the more direct approach: house visit or phone message.

That said, it is interesting to see sites like linkedin generate all this interest, doubtless because people are running scared in a recession economy, and thus using all venues to enhance their employability prospectus.

Me? I do it for the social capital.

Real World Haskell has five more chapters.

Haskell came to my attention after reading all the reddit posts about it. Time to give it a try.

The great Inglehart-Weizel Cultural Map of the World.
But it looks to me as if a lot of these things could be better explained with a third coordinate; this map made me think of the cusp bifurcation, very well explained by Sir Chris Zimmerman.

via kottke, that got it from strange maps. Of course!

Just decided to install a nice ftp at home. Basic tools and all, but decided to go ftpd, and then take it from there.

Afterwards I need a nice way to work with gigantic databases.

I am confident that the One Laptop Per Child will have the effect which is the educational equivalent of the nutritional disaster that imported formula has had on the poor parts of the world.

Is this a broad generalization, or is this post by Atanu Dey actually on point?

The famous OLPC irks me because of the arbitrary definition of “poor parts of the world”, and it has a big shadow reminiscent of “white man’s burden” all over it.

At the same time, I see how communication and free access to networks can create more open, egalitarian discussion, and that in turn might be good.

But I am reading a lot on the OLPC because I am interested in getting those little shiny laptops here in NC:

• Huge income diaprity between classes? Check.
• Limited access to education? Check.
• Low life expectancy? Check.
• Human rights abuses? Check.
• economy in turmoil? Check

I think that the USA qualifies as well as any other country.

While interesting to suggest giving an OLPC, what is it that makes it insulting?

It doesn’t go to a “kid”, it goes to a school system, which will then have to pay to maintain it. They’re actually having trouble unloading the devices, from what I’ve heard.
My dad immigrated from Africa, and I find that device obnoxious and insulting. I’ll certainly never own one.

Although I am interested in OLPCs for some places in USA, since the whole thing “3rd world” doesn’t apply anymore.

What about getting these to children living in restrictive conditions in poor areas of the world, with little or no access to effective education? What about children living in areas with huge mortality index and decreased life expectancy?

That would bring a new intriguing and fascinating redefinition of 3rd world. As Friedman says, the world is flatter than we think.