Month: October 2003

field trip to Microsoft

Directions

I had to go visit the Microsoft campus today as part of my job: we were coordinating a continuing legal education session (MSFT were hosting and presenting). I had often seen the campus outlined on a map as if it were a small town, as in the lower map on the linked page but that’s actually a good description. You drive in and are confronted with markers to the different buildings as if you were in a town. Our hosts never thought to tell us we needed a map . . . .

We had to get to Bldg 9 (central to the upper map) from the orange freeway at the left side of the map and while the buildings may have been numbered sequentially as they were built, that ordering is not useful now: a map would have helped. I would suspect there are people who have worked there for years and never get to all or even a lot of the buildings . . . . .

A casual work atmosphere, to be sure, and very collegial/clubby from what I saw. The folks who hosted us don’t work in that building and I have no idea what goes on there: the X-Box in the lobby *may* have been a clue, but I wouldn’t swear to it.
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comment spammers making an appearance

I have been getting comment spam on random entries . . . . some of it was the usual mindless pr0n links, but some was for what could be a legitimate business. I have the same question for them as I do for the people who send email spam: what makes you think I would buy from someone who obviously has so little clue about how to start a business relationship? Or even that a commodity now?

a clean well-lighted place

Apple Store – University Village

My second visit to my local Apple Store today . . . I went to the opening, but not for long and after the grand opening.

I walked around a bit, played with stuff, and found it enjoyable, if a little sterile. Perhaps that’s more an insight into how sloppy I am . . .

I like that everything is plugged in and networked, ready to play with. I’m looking to spring for an iBook, most likely the littlest one, given my financial situation, so I played with it some. Kind of hard to make up my mind when I’m used to a 2 x 1.25 GHz machine 8 hours a day. And I am totally used to the ThinkPad’s little pointer and multiple mouse buttons, to the point if someone made a replacement keyboard with a pointer, I’d want one. It’s hard to go from pointing with, well, your pointer finger to using your thumb.

And speed might be an issue. It might be worth jumping up to the G4 ‘Books. I get some discount as a UW employee, but not enough to bridge the gap. (It gets me the babyBook for $1399, without any added options. Adding the Airport card would take it to almost $1500.)

I also like the wide array of peripherals, printers, scanners, business card scanners, speakers, and the rest. Cameras were also available in abundance. And of course, lots of iPods, including some with those curious Creature speaker rigs.

Lots of traffic, lots of helpful staff. I think it makes it even more clear why Apple took this route. They’re not selling commodity hardware, but an experience, and you can’t sell that very effectively through the ads in the back of Computer Shopper. People need to handle the merchandise like they’re picking fresh fruits and vegetables.

a rising tide lifts all boats

Blogger Con: The Rule of Win-Win

A corollary to the Rule, there is no such thing as a Win-Lose. I don’t know exactly why, but I’ve never seen it happen. Microsoft dominates Web browsers, but can’t make the browser go anywhere after they own it. Lotus dominates spreadsheets, but fails to make the transition to GUIs. There must be a thousand examples. When you become the only winner, you plant the seeds for your own loss at the same instant.

Sometimes Dave Winer can transcend his penchant for ego-driven self-aggrandizement and offer an insight. The above is an excerpt from an example of that . . . .

It is perhaps paradoxical or counter-intuitive to think that 2+2 can equal 5 while 2+0=0: playing the marketplace as a zero-sum game means no one wins, even the dominant player. But perhaps that make the technology business more like art, where each new idea or paradigm is part of a continuum of ideas, than like manufacturing where the market matures more quickly and the players don’t change very often. This could also be a side-effect of the immaturity of the software business: software on a personal scale has only existed since the personal computer, or about 25 years. Many common manufactured goods reached their present form a century ago . . .

Panther preview: easily worth $129?

Mac OS Rumors

Panther is proving to be the most impressive upgrade we’ve seen out of Apple in our eight years in this business. If you have to pay $129 for an operating system, at least you can hope to get your money’s worth if not a bit more…and on this point, Panther delivers in spades.

This article mentions several of the features Apple has been touting and some other below the surface improvements (faster, more reliable networking, improved application startup times). If the new brushed-metal Finder is all we have to complain about, I’m encouraged . . . .

getting from bits to dollars — and the real cost

[Politech] Jonathan Weinberg on how to create “Net drivers licenses”
[priv]

This is what the Microsoft Network experiment was. M$ leased dial pools from major ISP’s and tried to get into the Internet business. They had spotty control of the desktop, in that they owned it, but had no access to it to leverage it into delivering services. It can be considered a failure because of entrenched ISP’s [who] were already offering more user-centric cheaper service and MSN was doomed. AOL had the right idea from a technology standpoint, and they hedged their bets on local ISPs dying out because of not having any real services. The jury is still out on that one.

What has happened is massive entry into the market by cable providers, who have a business model that is right in between cellular companies and ISP’s. They have the wire, the network, the content and the services. With things like bandwidth caps and proxies, they are slowing closing the loop around the desktop, while dangling the carrot of integrated services like pay-per-view as an incentive to get users to give up control of their desktops.

These alleged “licences” will be little more than phone numbers, but their value is that, like phone numbers, they provide a control connection, which the service providers (and law enforcement etc) can access the user to deliver services to them, and enforce policies against them as part of the agreements.

I have purposely made ambiguous use of the words “control connection” as in this context, the meaning of an empirical control, (or known
constant), an out of band link, and political control, all converge.

After all, property is just information, but media is control.

This notion of “internet driver’s licenses” was an interesting (but lousy) idea, now disowned by the RIAA, though allegedly floated by “an industry type”.

Empowerment or control? Relationships or contracts? How do you want to be treated today?

There’s an angle to this I’m too tired to work out, but it connects the telco business model (of trying to find a revenue stream from a service whose costs approach zero), the cable companies who already have inroads into content and distribution, and the folks being asked to buy these services. Do we want an integrated service with content and connectivity or do we want to buy it a la carte?

no buyer’s remorse

Lick Me, I’m A Macintosh / What the hell is wrong with Apple that they still give a damn about design and packaging and “feel”?

This is the point. Detail and nuance and texture and a sense of how users actually feel, what makes them smile, what makes the experience worthy and positive and sensual instead of necessary and drab and evil.

These are the things that are nearly dead in our mass-consumer culture, things normally reserved for elitist niche markets and swanky boutiques and upscale yuppie Euro spas and maybe cool insider mags like I-D and Metropolis and dwell. They are most definitely not to be expected of mass-market gadget makers. This is why it matters. This is why it’s important.

This is one aspect of a conversation I’ve had a few (?) times. When you consider that you’re going to spend a certain number of hours looking and and manipulating a tool, why shouldn’t it be pleasing and not just the cheapest damn thing you could get? People spend more time choosing a car that they spend an hour or two a day using, but the tools they use to make a living are what was on sale at Circuit City last weekend.

Is it wrong to care about your tools and to feel some sense of pleasure from using them?

organized labor vs disorganized thinking

SEIU Local 925

It became official last week. My working relationship with my supervisors went from collegial understanding to contractual obligation, all in a matter of 15 days. On Sept 8, there was a conversation about how best to reclassify my position as professional staff. and on Sept 23, I was informed I was going to be subject to Article 18 [Corrective action/dismissal] of the collective bargaining agreement.

Since the amount of positive paperwork in my file outweighs the negative — three performance reviews in the 6 month probationary period, culminating in “exceeds expectations” for most categories — coupled with the sudden change in direction from reclassification to removal, I’m not sure how the union will deal with this. The steward I took my paperwork to last week couldn’t understand it, and the members of the administration who heard the details were scratching their heads.

I just want out. In June, I made the offer, in good faith, to let a new position description be created around the realities of the job and that I would serve until that was done and the position filled. They declined to go that route, choosing instead the current unpleasant course.

Well, now it’s up to me, and I’m doing all I can to get out. Their education agenda, the public initiatives, the policy goals — all of that is meaningless to me now. I don’t care about a bit of it, and what’s more, I’ll be working to rule for the rest of my time there. My father asked me if I had a cloth cap. I may have to invest in one . . . . .
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things may get better but perhaps not all that much

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Reed not brimming with optimism about region’s economic future

Gary Reed has seen 30 years of Puget Sound business history from the boardrooms of more public companies than anyone else in Washington. Here are some of his observations:

The region’s economy: Reed is not terribly optimistic about the future.

Microsoft: Reed, who has been on Microsoft’s board since the company went public in 1986, warns officials not to congratulate themselves just because Microsoft and the tech boom happened to develop here. It’s just luck.

The region’s challenges: He says Seattle leaders also should recognize the area’s disadvantages. “Just geographically, a lot of companies would rather be located in more central locations, like Chicago, simply because their employees don’t have to travel as much.”

Prospects for the Port of Seattle: He said he’s unsure if the problems that prevent the region from exploiting the Port can be overcome. Unions pose an obstacle to modernization, he said, and transportation is clogged. The Port’s traffic has tumbled.

Bleagh. Not what I wanted to read right now.