Ontology is Overrated is a PodCast I recommend you listen to if you are interested in finding out more about organizing information. Clay Shirky gave this speech at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, held in San Diego, California, March 14-17, 2005. Clay talks about why conventional ways of organizing information via. categories and hierarchical trees is flawed and discusses alternatives, such as search. This is in line with my thoughts, some of which are here and comments from Surfulater users our Forums. Continue reading “Ontology is Overrated”
Creeping Featuritis
Kathy Sierra over at Creating Passionate Users recently wrote an article Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak which I’m sure will resonate with everyone reading this. Kathy wants companies to stop adding features to products, for features sake, even if that means losing some potential customers. Continue reading “Creeping Featuritis”
ZDNet gives Surfulater a welcome boost
Interest in Surfulater has reached a new high this past week, which is very welcome indeed. It is difficult for small companies to get the message out, about new products. We don’t have big PR budgets, don’t wine and dine with the big end of town and tend not to have amassed close contacts with industry movers and shakers. Continue reading “ZDNet gives Surfulater a welcome boost”
Securing Information – TrueCrypt
I’m fanatical about backing up my work. Writing software is complex and costly business and the thought of losing work and having to do it over is one I don’t care to entertain. I backup to an off-site server several times a day, and to other PC’s including my Notebook which has everything on it I need to allow me to continue working, if something should happen to my Desktop PC. Continue reading “Securing Information – TrueCrypt”
Surfulater V1.70, B0.0 released
There has been interest in being able to grab images from other programs and paste them into Surfulater articles. For example copying an image from a Microsoft Word document and pasting it into Surfulater. This is obviously a good idea and opens Surfulater up even further in its ability to organize your information, regardless of where it comes from. Continue reading “Surfulater V1.70, B0.0 released”
On Google
Well the fact of the matter is Surfulater is barely visible on Google (apart from paid ads). So I’ve been been doing some research to try and see how we can rectify this sad state of affairs. It is pretty obvious that if folks can’t easily find Surfulater when they do a Google search, then the chances of them becoming a customer are pretty slim. Continue reading “On Google”
On the Pod with Dan Bricklin
I’ve just finished listening to a G’Day World Podcast with Dan Bricklin. I can’t tell you much I enjoyed listening to Dan being interviewed. The interview covers a lot of ground, starting from the time he wrote VisiCalc right through to what he is doing today. Continue reading “On the Pod with Dan Bricklin”
What Every Good Marketer Knows
I enjoy reading Seth Godin’s blog. It is an easy read and helps keep the brain juices flowing. Unfortunately I’ve fallen behind these past few weeks and am just playing catchup now. One noteworthy entry for May that I wanted to mention here is What Every Good Marketer Knows Here are a few snippets: Continue reading “What Every Good Marketer Knows”
Surfulater V1.65, B0.0 released
Surfulater V1.65, B0.0 has just been released. One issue that has been on the todo list for a while was to enable images to be copied and pasted from your Web Browser into existing Surfulater articles, in addition to text. Continue reading “Surfulater V1.65, B0.0 released”
Knowledge Lost
Two articles caught my eye in last weeks Melbourne Age IT section. The first was about two Californian business men who are setting up cruise ships 5.3km of the coast of Los Angeles where they will employ 600 software developers per ship and have them working 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week. These foreign workers will be classed as seamen and be able to come ashore without requiring visa’s. The ships will cost $US10M a piece to fit out. At first I thought this had to be an April fools day joke, but apparently they are very serious about this. One has to wonder where we are heading with such goings on. I guess the ships aren’t heading anywhere and what about the workers?
The second article was about the large numbers of qualified IT staff that have been let go from Australian companies in the last 3 or so years in the name of downsizing. It seems that these companies are now realizing that they’ve lost a vast amount of knowledge from this process, knowledge that will be quite costly to recover, assuming of course that it can be. This also ties in with offshore development (and on cruise ships) and makes me wonder whether all of the valuable information that is built up off-shore can be transferred back to its owners, or do they write that off in exchange for the money they save using off-shore development.
As far as I’m concerned building and retaining knowledge and the intellectual property that flows from that is fundamental to the long term success of any business. It’s what gives us the edge.