The one-way web, or Microsoft Office vs the Internet

A friend of a friend who's organizing a hike made a route map in Google Maps. He then took a screen shot, put the image on a PowerPoint slide, and attached the file to his email invite. Wouldn't it have been easier to leave the map online and give out the URL? More convenient for recipients, too, to be able to zoom in/out on the map.

David will point out that not everyone feels comfortable publishing their whereabouts for the whole world to see, but I don't think Map Guy's selective use of the web was driven by privacy concerns. Instead, for him and many, many others, the Internet is more readily accepted as an information source than authoring tool.

A while back, for instance, I did some freelance writing for an ad agency. I started the project in Google Docs, and my contact and I worked on it together over the web. In the end, he asked for the document in Word, so he could "format it for production". The text was destined for someone's website though, and (as so many of my non-tech friends have complained) Word formatting isn't always consistently transferable into content management systems.

Non-tech folks aren't the only ones under the Microsoft Office spell. I've gotten more Excel spreadsheets than I can count from people who (a) are in the business of selling online storage and (b) agree they'd be better off if the info were kept in an online database. But I guess Word/Excel/PowerPoint create the magical feeling of having composed an actual document. And somehow users choose this sense of completion over productivity and convenience.

It doesn't have to be this way, does it? I think the first step towards widespread SaaS adoption is helping people shake off their irrational MS Office dependence.

October 25, 2007 at 12:27 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Dogs, cats and SaaS

I've been terrorizing friends, relatives, stores I shop at, etc, trying to convince them to do more online. I can't help it when I see someone collect event RSVPs by phone or manage group schedules using printed forms.

Last week I told Jeff that I feel like I spent the last decade in a bubble. People in the outside world have so much less contact with technology than I realized. I'm still trying to digest his response - that yes, people spend much more money on their pets.

Because I've also been meeting a lot of soon-to-be pet owners. While volunteering at the animal shelter, I've noticed there tends to be clear dividing lines between dog people and cat people, not to mention fans of Beagles vs Poodles, Boxers vs Labs, etc. I was surprised when a woman spent ages gazing at a ferocious Pomeranian with matted hair. She wanted a Pomeranian; she's always been a Pomeranian person.

Maybe the same kind of self-identification explains why my friend Tara was initially hesitant to post photos on the Flickr account I set up for her non-profit? She said she's just not a social networking person. But since she does see herself as a media person, Flickr/YouTube/etc became acceptable tools after I brought up Richard Rosenblatt's notion of ChannelMe.

My mom, too, put off building a website for her research group until I signed her up for TypePad. She insisted that HTML = computer programming and she's not a computer person. I reminded her that back in 1990, she was one of the first professors at her university to get on their email system - via Gnus/Emacs! We aren't always rational in choosing labels for ourselves.

I guess the moral of the story is, people *don't* want easy, affordable technology solutions. Or dogs. They won't adopt what they can't relate to, no matter how many seemingly logical reasons you give them. Last Saturday I took a class on improving shelter dogs' communication skills. Could the same tricks improve adoption rates for technology tools? Maybe I'll find out once I try them out.

October 23, 2007 at 12:54 PM | | Comments (7) | TrackBack (1)

Sharecropping the long tail, for real

My mom was telling me about a Taiwanese ex-tech-exec. Weary of city life, he packed up and moved back to the family farm. There he came up with an unusual business model for entering the chic but not always profitable local/organic produce market.

He set up a website where he offered parcels of land for lease. Tenants get to decide what to plant; they also have the option to tend to their own crops, or outsource as much work as they'd like. Some spend many hours each day on the farm. Others sit back and wait for emailed photos. Most visit once in a while with friends and relatives in tow. That's my farm, they'd say.

Not all tenant-farmers succeed. Some harvest only a handful of fruits or vegetables, or end up empty-handed. But they're in it mostly for the experience anyhow. The farm owner, on the other hand, makes money either way - with no worries about whether his crops will survive natural disasters, how his produce will be priced by the market, what government subsidies he's eligible for, etc.

Reminds me of TrendWatching.com's notion of the "experience economy". Business is no longer defined by marketing products and services based on their usefulness. Instead, it's all about Curated Consumption for Trysumers eager for Status Lifestyles.  (These people are such masters are coining catchy phrases!)

September 20, 2007 at 12:49 PM | | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Because time is not infinite...

I keep replaying my conversation with Bert last week-

Bert: We're putting up a website for Vlad...
Me: (Nod)
Bert: because he had an a brain aneurysm.
Me: A what?
Bert: A brain aneurysm.
Me: What is that - and is he ok?
Bert: He passed away.

It took a very long while before I was able to understand the news. It doesn't seem possible that Vlad could be gone. As Bert said, you can't help expecting him to walk through the door. You can practically feel the energy he brings into the room.

Just days before, Vlad reassured me that my desire to step back and reevaluate my career is not unusual: "It is actually a normal thing that happens to most of us in our thirties. All of a sudden, it hits you that life is passing very quickly... so you have the need to make sure you are doing the right things, because time is not infinite." Sadly, neither of us had any idea just how finite time would turn out to be.

Looking back at the interactions I was fortunately enough to have with Vlad, I'm certain that he did the right things - both as CEO of 3Tera and in everyday life. He lived passionately and joyfully. He was always bursting with enthusiasm for whatever's at hand. When the going got tough, he'd keep smiling his warm, infectious smile...

If you've ever met Vlad, I'm sure you know what I mean. Please leave a note on Vlad's log of memories. Thanks!!

September 09, 2007 at 06:20 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Brave New World

1. A long, long time ago, a friend of a friend quit her job at a big name law firm, cashed out her 401(k), divorced her husband, got a tattoo and moved to Guatemala. She said she wanted a new life. The purple highlights I got this afternoon brought unexpected enlightenment; I'm starting to understand how she felt.

2. Vlad says he's seen it coming for a while, but the first sign I remember is Lance telling me in July that numerology-wise, I'm in a 9 year; a good time to prepare for new beginnings. A couple of weeks later I came across Anne's What Rinses You With Happiness post. Around the same time I had a long email exchange with Ramiel about the importance of doing work that's an offering from one's heart.

But it was my cat Sara's sudden illness that finally made me stop and think. While frantically shuttling her between neurologists and radiologists and internal medicine specialists, I realized how little relevance data centers and servers have to my real life. As her condition deteriorated, I decided to take a step back from the Internet infrastructure world - at which point she passed away.

I met Sara 10 years ago, while making the unlikely transition from investment banking into web hosting. So many adventures she's seen me through! As I bid her a sad goodbye, it's time, too, to get ready for what's next.

3. I'm planning to take a few months off to volunteer at the Washington Humane Society,  brush up on Chinese, re-learn Hindi... We all have wish lists that we set aside until we have enough money and more time. But as Anne wrote in another post, experiences are what make us feel rich. And as Sara's so unexpected demise shows, "more time" isn't something to be taken for granted.

I'm sorry this means I won't be blogging about tech stuff any more, or going to any tech conferences. Sorry because of all the friends I've made through these channels, but I hope we'll stay in touch!

4. When I wrote my ice harvest post last week, I felt like I've been going around in circles. I had made the same arguments before, in not very different words. I was disappointed in myself for having nothing new to say. It's time to set sail from Prospero's island; wish me luck!

August 30, 2007 at 01:30 AM | | Comments (32) | TrackBack (1)

links for 2007-08-22

August 22, 2007 at 01:26 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

links for 2007-08-21

August 21, 2007 at 01:28 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The Ice Harvest

1. From the Thomas Jefferson wiki:

"In the winter of 1802-1803, the summer's harvest of wheat was safely stored in barrels and barns. Monticello overseer Gabriel Lilly had to wait for freezing temperatures before he could harvest his next crop: ice from the Rivanna River. Every available neighborhood wagon was assembled to bring ice from the river to the newly constructed ice house..."

Jefferson made ice cream, drank chilled wine and astonished guests by putting iced-filled coolers on the table in July. Unfortunately, as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos might point out, such luxuries required a great deal of undifferentiated heavy lifting. Gabriel Lilly's hard work didn't make Jefferson's drinks any colder than that Heineken in your refrigerator. Which might explain why ice harvests aren't so popular any more.

2. My experience at EV1Servers was in some ways similar to Lilly's at Monticello. I spent long hours explaining to customers that while we instantly swapped out their failed hardware, their apps won't be back online for some time yet because we've still got to reinstall their OS, after which they could restore their data...

At the time, my understanding of "good service" was limited to being available and responsive and empathetic. But the ability to reach me 24/7 didn't make customers' lives any easier than a virtualized utility computing platform such as 3Tera's would have (disclaimer: I am on 3Tera's advisory board). Just as Jefferson never imagined that there'd be ice makers in kitchens across America, I had no idea it'd be possible for customer apps to auto-migrate themselves from failed hardware onto other resources on the network.

3. Bob Warfield's comment made me realize something troubling about Rackspace's attitude towards virtualization. (BTW, check out Bob's post on web hosting world domination.) Rackspace is selling its upcoming VMWare-based service like an ice harvest, which takes tremendous expertise and herculean efforts to coordinate.

Amazon and Microsoft, meanwhile, present their platforms as no-brainers: *of course* you can have redundancy and scalability! Ray Ozzie even promises low latency access to users anywhere in the world - at the "lowest, lowest possible cost". Which story do you think the public would prefer to hear?

4. As a former customer, I found Rackspace's Fanatical Support nearly as indulgent as Jefferson's ice house. My account rep was sooo amazingly attentive! But luxury is a concept that evolves with time.

Back in 2001, all I needed was a secure, reliable place for my totally self-contained code and data. But if I were to start another web-based business today, I'd want a hosting provider that offered application frameworks/APIs/machine images (and maybe even data sources!) I could leverage. I'd look for a community that provided opportunities for social networking as well as access to collective knowledge.

Sadly, it seems every traditional web hosting wagon has been called down to the frozen river. Oh well. Leave it to Amazon, Microsoft and perhaps Google/eBay/Salesforce.... to fulfill these new wishes.

5. Last night I had a long email exchange  with Jason from Fortress ITX. He said compared with production-quality managed hosting, EC2 leaves so many questions unanswered. I'm sure early refrigerators also didn't deliver on every wished-for feature. Thankfully their inventors persevered instead of spending their time hauling heavy blocks of ice.

August 20, 2007 at 05:17 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Only 7 percent!

I was talking to Charles Jolley and Chris Bauman from SproutIt yesterday. They're exploring the possibility of marketing their email management app through the hosting channel. Their reasoning is, web hosting providers already have relationships with zillions of businesses. This puts them in an excellent position to give customers technology recommendations.

A convincing myth, this is. And one that lots of folks in the web hosting business believe in - even Peer 1's Ted Smith, a super brilliant guy who I've learn something enlightening from in every conversation.

Ted is surprised that a significant proportion of respondents in Rackspace's virtualiztion survey (PDF) weren't interested in testing virtualization through a hosting provider (36%), or hosting mission critical applications on a 3rd-party-managed virtualization platform (29%). Why such low confidence if these companies are ALREADY using an outsource provider for key IT infrastructure?

Ted concludes that hosting expertise might not necessarily translate into virtualization expertise, but I think the problem goes deeper. According to Rackspace's survey, 40% of its customers are very familiar with virtualization while another 34% have some hands-on experience. 57% already use virtualization for internal infrastructure. Rackspace, on the other hand, is still taking baby steps towards its first virtualization offering, making it a late adopter relative to most of its customers.

It makes sense, then, that 67% said they prefer testing or reading up on virtualization themselves, while just 7% expected to learn about it from Rackspace. Not quite the level of influence Charles and Chris envisioned, is it??

August 17, 2007 at 01:47 PM | | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

links for 2007-08-17

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