Archive for Computers
Software engineers don’t learn about you, the customer
Posted by: | CommentsI was trying to figure out today why most of the softwares we use everyday aren’t really customer oriented. I mean, I’m pretty sure 50% of the softwares you use do the job, but aren’t really that pleasant to use. So why it that? Well, the answer is quite simple: most software engineers don’t learn about building customer driven solutions at school, they just learn to build more efficient programs.
I’d say 75% of software engineers work like the customer was their own computer. Is it because you deal with computers 90% of your work day that the product you deliver is for the computer itself? No, there’s a third layer there and it’s called the customer. It’s easy to forget who you really work for when you never see its face. It’s also really sad because when you hear programmers talking, they’ll usually talk about the nice algorithm they’ve used and how efficient the code they’ve written is. This is all OK, but you’ll rarely hear a programmer talking about the great user experience he has managed to provide. I know programmers who still don’t believe in graphical user interfaces and who think we should still be using the old command line. That is not understanding customers’ needs and that usually ends up with softwares users hate to use.
Fortunately, this is slowly starting to change, as customers expect more and more from softwares and that is also why Microsoft is struggling with end users at the moment. This is great news and that will eventually force schools to not only focus on the technical side of computing, but also on the end user experience.
As a software engineer, I try to concentrate a lot on the user experience. Some purists will say performance and optimization is more important but I simply say do both. As a customer, keep asking better software!
Web bots - There’s no magic
Posted by: | CommentsThis is a follow-up to my previous article about the web bot. In that article, I briefly explained what the web bots are and if they were able to predict anything. I strongly suggest you read the article but it’s not a prerequisite to this article. In that first web bot post, I made a slight mention of the “2012 prophecy” and guess what? Most of the comments are about the 2012 prophecy and whether or not the world will end in 2012. I won’t be talking about 2012 in this article but I will focus on the limits of the web bots because there’s a really important concept we all have to understand: Web bots scan man-made information. This article might look similar to my previous one, but is shorter and more focused on limits of web bots. It is a reminder of the core concept of web bots.
Web bots scan man-made information
This is the most important concept of web bots because it sets the limits to what the web bots are able to predict. This also explains why it’s impossible to predict any end of the world prophecy. Why is that? The main goal of a web bot is simply to crawl the web the same way Google would do it to extract important information from websites. That important information is usually the most relevant keywords on a website put with a certain algorithm that is able to get the meaning of the sentences the keywords are used in. This information is then put in a large database and the final goal is to compare similar topics to determine if they each point towards similar conclusions.
So, if we put all the pieces together: The web contains information written by humans, the web bots crawl that information, find correlations and make predictions. If the web bots take its information from man-made sources, then what can it predict? Only things humans can predict or have control over. Does that includes the end of the world? No. There’s nothing super-natural in web bots. It’s computer technology at its best: Gather, keep and interpret information the human brain can’t.
Sure someone can argue they sometimes predict the stocks market, but I know people who are damn good at this too. They can try to predict a whole lot of stuff, but it cannot go any further than what we can predict.
We have to be careful here, because web bots do have a power we don’t have: to merge all that information across the web and try to find a correlation. So, they can go a little further than what a single human can do, but they can’t go any further than what’s possible to predict by humans.
If it was really possible to predict incredible stuff, Google would have the answer to every question. Wait a minute…They do! Seriously, it’s possible to extract relevant information from the web but it has a limit. Google use the data it collect to do a lot of other stuff than giving you search results, but they wouldn’t be able to predict things humans don’t have control over if they tried. That’s the same thing for web bots, except it’s much more smaller than Google.
Put everything in perspective
Web bot is a really nice project but I think it’s going to be one more argument for doomsday prophets in the future. It already started with videos about the end of the world and web bots predicting it would happen in 2012. There are certain things we don’t have control over and we have to accept it. There are certain parts of our lives we don’t control and we have to accept it. Computers are useful but they’re not God. I think the web bot project has a nice future but always keep in mind the web is man made and the bots crawl the web: there’s a limit to their capacities, it’s no magic.
Some examples
What’s best than a couple of concrete examples?
Could the web bots predict:
- Natural disaster: There’s not much chances, unless it’s a natural disaster we can predict. We sometimes know in advance of a tornado and are able to predict the disaster. In that case, a web bot could do the same by gathering information from websites talking about a possible disaster on a certain date.
- End of the world: Unless it’s a very obvious situation or caused by humans’ actions, no.
- Terrorist attacks: Yes. at least it can help.
- Stocks markets: Yes it can help.
- You get the idea.
Hope it’s clear
I hope it clears everything up so that it’s now obvious that it is impossible for a web bot to predict things humans have no control over.
The future of Internet Advertising
Posted by: | CommentsI posted an article about the future of Internet advertising on my technology blog Adopt A Packet and I think it might be of interest for a lot of persons at Daily Common Sense.
Internet Advertising has reached a certain limit and Google experienced it recently. They’ve recorded a drop in the number of clicks on their banners displayed all across the web. Even if they say it’s because they’ve increased the quality of their ads, which means they’re more targeted, they have to face the reality: There are more “ad blind” people than 5-10 years ago when Internet Advertising all started. Continue to read The future of Internet Advertising - AdoptAPacket.com
Introducing my new blog - Adopt A Packet
Posted by: | CommentsJust to let you know that I’ve launched a new blog: Adopt A Packet. It’s mostly aimed at techies and there’s little chances of you enjoying it if you’re not in the computer industry! It’s funny stories about the inside life of packets. Anyway, check this out. It’s fresh from today so there’s not much content but it will grow and will only get funnier with time!
Why Google succeed where Microsoft fails
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Google
Google was recently named the best company to work for by Fortune magazine in 2008, has been showing an enormous growth for the past years and seems to do everything right without a single mistake. Of course they don’t, but what’s their secret to success?
What’s right with Google business model?
There’s a lot of hype around Google and when you hear people talking about this company, it’s usually good things. One critical thing Google understood is that if you want to be a a successful company, you have to get the most talented and creative engineers available. To hire young talented and creative engineers, you have to have a good reputation because working for an ethical company is usually something important. It’s a really hard thing to get the support of the geek community because you have to build quality stuff. For this geek community it’s usually all or nothing: Either your product is the best thing since sliced bread (Google) or it’s the worst crap ever (Microsoft). Google business model is based on that: They do great products and make them available to the public at no charges. It’s also extremely easy to develop for Google applications and Google provides a good SDK so that anyone can start building applications using Google’s framework. You’ve probably seen a lot of websites online using some Google Web services and that’s the beauty of it: It’s so easy to integrate with what you’re building as a developer.
Google also understood too well what the Web is all about and it was at the same time the first failure for Microsoft. The Internet is taking more place than ever and there’s more and more applications that are “web-based”. It’s particularly great because all tools/Web applications are platform independent, meaning they can run on any operating system as long as it’s running a decent browser. Google did put a huge bet on the Internet and it paid! They don’t have a lot of desktop tools (even if they’re increasing their desktop solutions) and most of what they offer is on the Web. Google brought Web 2.0 where it should be and continues to bring it even further. They’re having a lot of success with their web applications because it’s not everybody that wants to run Windows but you still want great applications available wherever you are, on whatever operating system.
Google is gaining a lot of respect from powers user also because they love open source. A company that support open source is usually well respected among the community because it’s free stuff and everyone can collaborate. That’s what the Internet is all about: Share and Collaborate. They also actively support alternative solutions like Firefox instead of going with the big Redmond giant. That decision pays a lot because people have the impression they are different from most people.
Also, what helps Google stay competitive and bring new creative ideas is their 20% free time policy. That’s one of Google’s core policy and it states that 20% of your job time can be used for “personal projects”. That’s how Google’s best ideas are created. You employ intelligent persons and give them 20% of their time to create out of the box creative ideas: It pays. Now, who wants to work for Google? Everyone in the computer industry because Google is setting the standards. Oh, there’s also place for your creativity!
What helps Google a lot is that they’re seen as a breath of fresh air in an industry that has been dominated for too long by a single company. They also focus on the end user instead of trying to conquer the big businesses. Their goal is to bring traffic so they can sell advertisements and who’s surfing the web? End users. They offer a rich end user experience with a really large offering of awesome online products.
Google is also getting a lot of respect by participating in events not necessarily organized by Google. One of the recent example is the Google Lunar X Prize.
Google Vs. Microsoft
We can’t do a complete Google Vs. Microsoft because they don’t always compete in the same industry. Microsoft is a big business solutions provider (VS Studio, Microsoft Office, Sharepoint, etc.) and Google isn’t in that industry. I’m mostly focusing on what Google and Microsoft are competing for: The Web industry.
In fact, the focus of Microsoft on the business industry and not the end user was a big mistake. There’s still money to do with the end user, but not by selling operating systems. Money is done by bringing traffic and Google proved it because they focus a lot on providing useful web services for end users.
Microsoft didn’t do anything wrong. They just followed their 1990’s business plan instead of believing in what the web could do for them. In the last 10 years, the computer industry has changed a lot and this is mainly due to the enormous growth of the Internet. That’s what Microsoft didn’t see coming and what Google saw. The Web was an awesome tool showing great potential but you had to have a vision to see it where it is today. Google did put all their efforts in building for the Web and it’s the core of their success right now. Microsoft is still catching up on Google’s internet services. The Internet is what made Google king and Microsoft a 2nd runner.
The other thing killing Microsoft is that they don’t support the open source community a lot. They are slowly changing this because it is killing them. They’re now offering limited versions of their softwares for free, so you can use them for personal projects.
Another thing hurting Microsoft is that they’re usually forcing their users to use Microsoft only technologies, limiting you if you’re not running 100% Microsoft stuff or if you’re running Linux/Mac OS X. Microsoft has to focus a lot more on the web and that’s what they’re doing just now. People are looking for more cross operating system solutions and the operating system will soon become a matter of preference; it won’t determine what you can run and not run.
Microsoft is having some problems getting new talents because these new talents tend to go for Google instead. That’s where the importance of having the support of the geek community helps. Microsoft has a really bad reputation: Even if they’re working in it, they’re seen as the big evil software company, while Google is seen as the cool, young and creative technology company. I personally don’t hate Microsoft but I do agree that Google seems to be doing everything better.
Conclusion
I personally don’t hate Microsoft. I think they’re a great company but they have to clean their reputation because it’s mostly what’s killing them. They also have to bring their Web 2.0 applications to the same level of Google’s applications.
Google is just a breath of fresh air right now. Let’s enjoy it until the administration board gets too greedy.
Web Bot - What is it? Can it predict stuff?
Posted by: | CommentsThere’s been some sort of hype lately regarding the Web Bots and I’m really surprised there’s almost no information about it available. The Web Bot project was developed in the late 1990s mainly to predict the stock market ups and downs (Web bot and stock markets). How do they do it? It’s really simple in fact and it’s a very nice implementation of what search engines do. Web bots simply crawl the web the same way Google crawls it at regular intervals to catch new and existing web sites and detect relevant keywords. Web Bots do it just a little differently: While search engines are just “indexing” the Web and creating a Web directory, Web bots are looking for trends with the keyword relations they find. It search for keywords “standing out” in a web document but also take in consideration the content preceding and following the keyword. This data is then analyzed by a linguistic tool to determine the meaning if there’s any.
So does it work and are Web Bots reliable? well it’s kind of hit and miss. Sometimes you’ll see things predicted correctly and sometimes not. I think the project is a really good initiative and can lead to great things, but at the moment I’m more under the impression that they interpret the results in the same way we interpret Nostradamus Quatrains. What I mean is that what the Web Bots are getting out of the internet while crawling is not that clear and when an event happen a couple of days later, then we find a way to relate the data.
Being in the computer engineering domain, I think I can see where the Web Bots will succeed and where it will fail. There are fields I believe the Web Bots can predict stuff and there are field they can’t. What are these fields? Well, essentially, anything “man-made” could be predicted in some way and anything man has no control over can’t be predicted. This is for the plain and simple reason that the Web Bots crawl the Internet for data and the Internet is actually man-made. So, the only data that can be collected is data written by people/government/companies,etc. I don’t see how you can predict a natural disaster or anything like that by simply crawling the Web. The only thing you can get by crawling is facts or opinions, nothing else. The only way I can see predicting natural disasters or anything not man related is if the Web Bots actually crawls 3 000 blogs/websites written by specialists of a certain domain and that they are pointing towards a similar conclusion.
What about 2012 (Read my article on 2012) and the Web Bots? As I said, I’m not seeing how a computer can figure out what’s going to happen in 2012 simply by visiting websites published by real people. The more data Web Bots get pointing towards 2012 just means more and more people are publishing stuff about 2012 and the end of the world. Remember, the only thing they can crawl is the internet and what you find on the internet was created by real persons, not God. They will surely get a strong correlation between 2012 and the end of the world; there’s ton of websites talking about it.
So, can Web Bots predict stuff? Yes I believe it can and it’s a really nice piece of technology. I’m pretty sure preventing terrorists attacks can be done using Web Bots and also predicting anything involving human interaction. Remember, it crawls the web, written by humans so it can only predict what humans are able to predict: Just in a shorter time frame! I think it’s easy to fall into the “It can predict everything” stuff, so let’s say it’s a really nice technology which can help us predict things we wouldn’t normally see happening. There’s a lot of future in that field and it has to be pushed a lot more forward. A good project, with good potential, but be careful with what people say it predicted!
Apple’s Steve Wozniak “Work alone” inspiration
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I recently read the book iWoz from Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple inc. For people not even knowing there was a co-found at Apple (That’s right there’s not only Steve Jobs), well he’s the one who built the first personal computer. He’s not at Apple anymore and he quit a long time ago but his book explains how he managed to build the first personal computer and also is an autobiography.
I must say it was a really good reading and being a young engineer, this really inspired me a lot! I mean the guy built the first computer alone, he knows what engineering is and he’s a really credible figure. I want to point at a really precise part of the book that totally changed my way of thinking and made me realize he was actually right:
If you’re that rare engineer who’s an inventor and also an artist, I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone.
When you’re working for a large, structured company, there’s much less leeway to turn clever ideas into revolutionary new products or product features by yourself (…) You’re going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you’re working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team. That means you’re probably going to have to do what I did. Do your projects as moonlighting, with limited money and limited resources. But man, it’ll be worth it in the end. (…) When you’re working as your own boss, making decisions about what you’re going to build and how you’re going to go about it, making trade-offs as to features and qualities, it become a part of you.(…) It’s so easy to doubt yourself, and it’s especially easy to doubt yourself when what you’re working on is at odds with everyone else in the world who thinks they know the right way to do things. Sometimes you can’t prove whether you’re right or wrong. Only time can tell that.
That is just so inspiring. It’s also really true, there’s too many people in this world to tell you what you’re doing will not work and that you’re not doing it the right way. Always remember that in history, the good creative ideas were usually criticized a lot. That’s only because not everyone have a vision and is able to see a potential future where you might see one. They’ll turn you down but if you truly believe in your project, don’t let others ruin your passion, work alone! As Wozniak says, there will be a lot of sleepless nights, but in the end it’ll be worth it and you’ll be there to show what you believed in was right and that you’re taking credit for it. Taking risks is moving forward. If you don’t want to take these risks and are happy with your job/career or what your doing, please don’t be one of those telling others they’re wrong because they might just see something you don’t.
I hope that it’s inspiring you as much as it inspired me when I read it.