Need for Speed
By David Golding
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Recently, I decided to make a go for a really intriguing e-book. I’m usually skeptical of e-books because the authors don’t have to really suffer the typical wrath of publishers and editors like traditional print authors do and really anything goes in the electronic world. So how do you know that a particular e-book is going to live up to its claims, have good research behind it, etc.? Well, I took the dive and was impressed by the content, but not by the process.
I ordered the e-book nearly 6 months ago. I got the completed 2nd edition today. Now, in all fairness, they did say when I ordered the 2nd edition that it was not complete. But there was a promise I would get the book I ordered and in a timely fashion.
Let this be a lesson to all of us: there is a need for speed, and the internet only accelerates that desired speed. The response time on this one was a little over 6 months and in internet years, that’s like a decade. Well, maybe not that much, but it’s way too much time, especially if the book itself involves internet development tutorials. When delivering a product online, it ought to be instant, where possible. People generally expect some kind of instantaneous result. I learned this principle with a site I started back in 1999, Piano Public Domain. The site had some static links to PDF files of classical sheet music. Not long after I started the site I realized there needed to be income to finance the hosting, domain name registration, and everything else, so I started selling options to customers. It wasn’t instantaneous, and I made hardly anything. In fact, I made more from advertising cause customers were leaving for greener pastures. This year, we rolled out with a powerful site that serves this need for speed better than before, and sales have increased over 1000%.
So whether it’s an e-book or an online service, make sure that you provide something, anything, instantaneously.
If You Can’t Beat ‘Em … Sue ‘Em?
By David Golding
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I just read the latest news about Microsoft and it just adds to my angst for the company (they’ve been on my blacklist of companies for 10 years). Reuters this morning reported:
“Microsoft signed a deal with Novell, one of the providers of Linux, in which Novell paid it a lump sum in return for a guarantee that Microsoft would not sue Novell’s clients for what it calls a violation of its own patents in the Linux program.”
So now, Microsoft will let you pay them for free software. These companies don’t pay for anything other than the guarantee that Microsoft won’t turn around and sue their clients for using Linux.
Wow.
Looks like Redmond is the big bully now, if you hadn’t already thought so. They’re just roaming around threatening litigation on people. They likely wouldn’t win these “patent infringement” cases anyway; back in the 80s, they duked the same battle out with Apple over the same thing, but at that time, they were on the other side claiming you couldn’t patent the idea of a place to dump your files (“recycle bin” vs. “trash can”). And as you know, Microsoft won the case: they could copy core elements of Apple’s patented operating system. Now they want to threaten others that producing GUI elements is a violation of their own patents.
Why are they going about it this way? Because they know that when the chips fall, they wouldn’t win. So they sell the “you don’t have to go to court at all” scenario cause that’s all they can get.
Ethically, what a travesty. Using the court system, making threats, and converting it into cash is more like the mafia than reputable businesses. Or have we gotten so low that when we can’t beat a competitor, we just sue them for whatever we can drum up?
If you take your cues from Microsoft, remember this new principle they’ve added to the strategy books: if you can’t beat ‘em, sue ‘em.
Regulating the Internet
By David Golding
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I’m fed up with the unregulated nature of the internet. I love the freedom of websites to post all sorts of useful information, but come on… We have to draw lines somewhere. The obvious problem, and it’s a vicious, terrible one, is pornography. Pedophiles run free on the internet and countless families are being torn apart by pornography addictions. Folks say that there’s freedom of speech rights and all, but aren’t there also freedom rights as to what you want to view and what you don’t want to view?
I was made aware of a project about a year and a half ago calling for creating a clean port 80. I think this is the most valuable solution at the moment.
But the greater problem is this: so much of the internet is run by so many political communities that I foresee the impossibility of satisfying everyone. This last week, I’ve watched all sorts of message boards react to posts in such differing ways that it makes me believe that the internet community can never come to an agreement on anything. All in all, the sites with the most traffic have the most power and the most pull, and if they believe in something, then that is what will stay. Since there’s hardly anything to regulate their decisions, then it follows that the internet isn’t really a truly democratic community, but a monarchy of high-traffic sites.
