Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
Category: Business
The value of a college education in software engineering fields has always been up for debate. While the early days of our profession nearly required some form of academic exposure to so much as interact with a computer, the microcomputer revolution of course changed all that, and people have been debating how to gauge the quality of information workers ever since.
Some of our biggest role models in tech. never finished school (e.g., Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc.) but that doesn’t stop many large tech. companies from heavily frowning on applicants who don’t have Comp. Sci. chops; some firms require college diplomas as a prerequisite for consideration.
Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho, weighs in on the debate in a recent blog entry entitled, “How We Recruit - On Formal Credentials vs. Experience-based Education.” While the blog entry is fairly specific to the India talent-pool, it is at least partially of general application. Some highlights:
Based on a few years of observation, we noticed that there was little or no correlation between academic performance, as measured by grades & the type of college a person attended, and their real on-the-job performance. That was a genuine surprise, particularly for me, as I grew up thinking grades really mattered.
He goes on to talk about their efforts to create a sort of technical trade school that feeds into Zoho, much like IBM’s recent efforts at partnering with schools like Neumont University to provide Big Blue-heavy curriculum. From an employers perspective, it doesn’t get any better than that: having a years-long track record of a candidate’s ability to use your stuff when they finally apply for work.
Sridhar is evasive on exactly how Zoho evaluates new job candidates:
One question that comes up often: if you don’t look at formal credentials, what do you actually look at? This is a surprisingly difficult question. In fact, doing full justice to it would take me a series of posts, and take me into some deeply philosophical territory, which I will attempt some other time. At one level, the answer is very simple (â€go by gut feel, i.e use your human gift of judgment†- yeah, I know, what a cop-out), but at another, it is exceedingly hard. The difficulty comes from the simple observation: any formal rule-based system involving human beings is very easy to game and will be gamed.
If the CEO can’t easily articulate the hiring philosophy, makes you wonder how the troops manage to apply any kind of consistent benchmark. This pretty accurately reflects the state of confusion around gauging a job applicant’s potential fit in our industry.
What are your opinions on the value of college education in our industry? Do you require it of your potential employees? Do you look down on peers without a degree? How do you identify top talent?
Thursday, March 15th, 2007
Category: Advertising, Business
Not for the first time, alternative models to page views are in the news.
This time, comScore has announced a new “visits” metric. “AJAX” is cited as one of the motivations.
comScore Media Metrix today released its monthly analysis of U.S. consumer activity at top online properties and categories for February 2007 and introduced a new suite of metrics based on site visits. The visits metric, defined as the number of times a unique person accesses content within a Web entity with breaks between access of at least 30 minutes, is a way of measuring the frequency with which a person views content, thereby illustrating a key component of user engagement. Included among the new suite of metrics are: total visits, average minutes per visit, average visits per visitor, and average visits per usage day.
As technologies like AJAX change the Internet landscape, certain measures of engagement, such as page views, are diminishing in significance for many Web properties, said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix. The introduction of these new metrics based on visits provides an alternative for measuring user engagement that tells us how frequently visitors are actually returning to the site to view more content.
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
Category: Business, Calendar, Email, Google, Office, Showcase
From the You-Know-When-Ajax-Has-Gone-Mainstream-Dept, Google announced today it will be offering businesses a premium service for its key productivity applications, at $50/user/year. The package includes:
- Access to office-style applications - Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Page Creator. No presentation package yet - perhaps Google should acquire S5 :-).
- Access to communication applications - GMail (@your-own-domain), Google Calendar, Google Talk (voice/IM).
- Access to Google Homepage (maybe corporations could deck this out to become their intranet homepage?)
- Control panel to manage the domain
- Ads can be turned off
- Storage at 10GB/user
- Integration with organisation’s sign-on and email infrastructure
- Phone support
The apps themselves are available to anyone, but the integration and extra services come with the premium service. Google provides this comparison table.
The giant elephant in this room is your company’s data sitting on Google’s servers. In the absence of an “Apps Appliance” sitting inside the firewall, there will always be a major proportion of the market unwilling to commit to a solution like this - increased risk of data loss, theft, and manipulation. Google’s pure-external model keeps things nice and simple, but it’s not for everyone.
Zoho, for example, offers “in-premise edition” to run inside an organization’s network. Similarly, Zimbra’s collaboration app. It’s also becoming possible to make your own stack, with apps like Wikicalc and the various wikis, though nothing as comprehensive as Google’s offering. It’s feasible MS will move their apps in that direction too.
The comparison among these approaches will be worth watching in coming months. For now, though, it’s great to see how much Ajax and the web has evolved in the past two years, with Google providing a lot of the inspiration. From TechCrunch: “Beyond competition and concerns, tonight is a good time to recognize the incredible force of innovation that Google is as well. Its nearly full-service suite of sophisticated, integrated online services is something of historic proportion.”
Thursday, December 14th, 2006
Category: Business, Microsoft, Usability
If you’ve read any tech news in the past 24 hours, you’ll now be familiar with the meeting Bill Gates held among influential bloggers, ahead of next year’s Mix conference. Aside from learning what’s on Bill’s Zune, we get to hear his views on the future of web apps, thanks to a question from Liz Gannes. She asked him which apps should live in the browser and which should not, one of the key questions in Ajax and one we have touched on in the past.
He replied that the distinction would come to be silly from a technical standpoint, but that the necessary movement toward web APIs does present challenges on the business side. “One of the things that’s actually held the industry back on this is, if you have an advertising business model, then you don’t want to expose your capabilities as a web service, because somebody would use that web service without plastering your ad up next to the thing.â€
His solution wasn’t very specific: “It’s ideal if you get business models that don’t force someone to say ‘no, we won’t give you that service unless you display something right there on that home page.â€
Then for the tease: “And, you know, [inside the browser and outside the browser are] moving towards each other, but there’s still a bit of a barrier there, and new technology, things we’re working on, really will change that.â€
Saturday, December 2nd, 2006
Category: Business
Steve Rubel says page view metrics have four years to live.
The page view does not offer a suitable way to measure the next generation of web sites. These sites will be built with Ajax, Flash and other interactive technologies that allow the user to conduct affairs all within a single web page - like Gmail or the Google Reader. This eliminates the need to click from one page to another. The widgetization of the web will only accelerate this.
This is a dirty little secret in the advertising business that no one wants to talk about. Media companies love to promote how many page views their properties get. They’ve used the data to build equity. They will fight it tooth and nail to protect it, perhaps by not embracing interactive technologies as quickly as they should. But that’s not going to stop the revolution from coming.
As the page view platform crumbles, there’s going to be a shake out. Everyone is going to scramble to find a metric that helps them compete for ad dollars. Enjoy the show.
The question then becomes: What alternatives will be used? Ryan Stewart suggests more emphasis will be placed on how much time people spend with a website, and also an “interaction rate” - how much interactivity there is (mouseclicks etc).
Another likely trend is rotating ads - ads that change periodically and update according to page context.
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006
Category: Business, Office
In CNN Money, Om Malik talks about the shift to online apps.
The browser is the new OS. Yes, we’ve heard this before, and if you’re quietly groaning right about now, I can understand why.
It’s been 10 years since a barefoot Marc Andreessen graced the cover of Time magazine and trumpeted how the browser would make the operating system irrelevant. By uttering the unthinkable, he brought the ire of Bill Gates down on Netscape. Now, Netscape as a Web powerhouse is gone and Andreessen is no longer a magazine cover boy. Yet his vision of computing through a browser window turns out to have been prescient, if premature.
Mobile will play a major role as well.
Things will get more exciting for entrepreneurs when we all start walking around with new Internet-ready portable devices such as the Nokia 770 Internet tablet or smartphones such as the Motorola Q and Nokia E61.
These pocket-size monsters with keyboards, luscious displays, and brisk 3G connections will soon replace laptops. All they need are browsers that can access Web-based software as easily as your desktop can. (I already use a Nokia E61 to help manage my website and write short blog posts from within the phone’s browser. Soon I’ll be able to run the whole site from my phone’s browser.)
If you’re a developer or startup, you are suddenly free to write a browser-based application and quit worrying about which operating system, chip, or device your consumers are using.
It’s a scary thought for anyone who built a business around proprietary formats. But for the end user, this is the kind of future that Andreessen on his best days - and maybe Gates on his worst - had envisioned.
It’s pretty clear that MS fended off the late-90s threat of Office-in-the-cloud. What’s not clear is whether Google, Zoho, and others will produce something compelling enough to attract the mainstream enterprise market away from MS Office. For one thing, any office product will have to ensure data is secure to gain serious market share, and that probably means a server appliance running inside the firewall. Strong compatibility with MS-Office formats will be another key factor.
Sunday, September 24th, 2006
Category: Business
This survey by IT JobsWatch shows that things are looking up for Javascript programmers. Over the last year, the average salary for Brit Ajax slingers has gone up 33% from £29,375 ($55,853) to £39,228 ($74,588). I’m sure these numbers are representative of trends in many other countries. Based on my own project experience over the last few years, the lowly Javascript programmer has gone from being a servant of the “design team” to a star, whose time is often more valuable than that of the programmers that make up the traditional “application team.”
What’s ahead for companies that are developing Ajax applications (and at this stage, that seem to be just about everyone)? There are those that will double down on traditional languages and skillsets via Javascript code generators such as GWT. But there will be enough companies going the pure Javascript route to drive up salaries even further. And behind the demand will come the training and certifications, the standards, tools and blessed frameworks, and the army of freshly minted Ajax programmers to fill all of those well compensated jobs. If you’re considering selling all of your Java books and moving to a Javascript commune, do it quickly.
Wednesday, September 6th, 2006
Category: Business
Ajax is so hot that a company that doesn’t even do Ajax but instead gives away an open source Flash-based application platform for free, can raise additional venture capital funding as an Ajax application tool vendor.
Laszlo Systems, the original developer of OpenLaszlo, the leading open source platform for building and deploying advanced Ajax applications, today announced the completion of an $8 million Series C round of funding. New investor WI Harper Group led the round, joining existing investors General Catalyst Partners, Sofinnova Ventures, Mitsui & Co. Venture Partners, and other private investors.
Laszlo will use this round of funding to expand its sales and marketing initiatives, accelerate platform and product development efforts, and further strategic partner programs. Laszlo will also continue to build on the market success to date of OpenLaszlo, adopted by tens of thousands of developers and a broad range of institutions and enterprises, including over a dozen members of the Fortune 100’s largest corporations.
As a translation, “Series C” means the third round of investment. It’s an “up round,” meaning that it was more than the previous round, which was $6.25 million or $5 million depending on which press release you read. Usually an up round indicates that the investors continue to have confidence in the firm.
In all fairness, Laszlo Systems is developing support for DHTML/Ajax via their Legals Project, which has been slow moving since the release of a demo of their Ajax runtime back in March. They recently released PR3 of Legals. Before you go and download it, note that they have not yet brought up the widget toolkit, so there isn’t much to see. Wait for the beta release in early October.
Sunday, June 4th, 2006
Category: Business, Portal
Ajax homepage/portal Fold.com has folded (via TechCrunch). Late last year, we were receiving at least a couple of releases a week about new Ajax homepages, so it seemed inevitable there would be some casualties in this crowded space.
In some cases, it’s difficult to see how each of these products differentiate itself from the competition, and that’s going to be a problem when the competition includes some of the players in the industry. Some create an even bigger obstacle by requiring registration before you can even test drive the site.
Though the site is closed, the blog remains open, with the following message:
I’m currently busy working on other stuff so Fold is deactivated for the time being.
Thanks for your interest.
TechCrunch observes that Netvibes and PageFlakes both received recent funding rounds.
Maybe this is a one-off, or maybe there’s some consolidation coming up in this area. Are people really using these sites as their homepages? Their blog readers? It’s hard to gauge, as there hasn’t been much mainstream interest about them.
Wednesday, May 31st, 2006
Category: Ajax, Business
According to this post over on TechCrunch, a company called Benchmark Capital has taken a genuine interest in the Ajax desktop site Pageflakes and has even conducted a round of financing for the company.
They make mention of the Netvibes seed round that took place before and how both they and Pageflakes are competing with Microsoft’s offering of Live.com. Benchmark has also invested time and effort into other European-headquartered companies as well, including Bebo.
It’s interesting to see companies starting to get behind the “Ajax desktop” kinds of sites - PageFlakes, Protopage, Netvibes. I’ll be anxious to see what kinds of futures they really have besides just being a place for fun little toy modules that dipslay RSS feeds or keep sticky notes for each user.
Friday, March 24th, 2006
Category: Business, Office
The much-publicised AjaxWrite is only the beginning for Michael Robertson’s push into Ajax. Further to the release a couple of days ago, here’s some info on their plans:
But ajaxWrite is just the start. We have a library of applications we have been working on to replace most of the standard PC software titles. Every week we will launch a new sophisticated program on Wednesday at 12:00 PST on http://www.ajaxLaunch.com. These programs will push the boundaries of what people believe is possible today with web-delivered software. These programs look and operate much like their traditional software cousins, but are cross-platform, loaded dynamically, and are available to users at no charge. I’m convinced if you try a few of these products you will understand how the software business will fundamentally change.
The Business 2.0 blog calls it an Ajax PC strategy. An Ajax appliance must be the next logical step :-).
Hopefully the “Ajax PC” suite will work for all major browsers. Alex Russell’s recent post takes issue with the fact that AjaxWrite belies its name by working only in Firefox, and graciously suggests that the xulwrite.com domain is still available.
Monday, March 20th, 2006
Category: Business
The recent Audible Ajax podcast pointed out how the term “Ajax” has made its way into the upper echelons of the business world, with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and others having used the term. A recent “Business 2.0″ executive roundtable also covered AjaxAJAX.
One particular quote that resonated well with everyone and has already started making its way around the Next Net world (in fact, it was just used by Adam Gross in a presentation he gave at the O’Reilly Etech Conference) was Bill Burnham’s triple “A” business model:
It’s the triple “A” business model: AJAX, Adsense and Arrogance.
Despite the fact that essentially everyone in the room had embraced AJAX and many of the folks in the room had also incorporated Adsense in some way or other, everyone went out of their way to make clear that their businesses were in no way defined by the Double “A,” let alone the Triple “A.” AJAX for AJAX sake was roundly rejected — what Jeremy Zawodny called “AJAX info porn” — but there was a great appreciation for the better user experience AJAX had to offer.
Friday, February 17th, 2006
Category: Business, Games, Mobile
Opera will be producing an official web browser for the handheld Nintendo DS platform (via Anne’s Weblog):
In Opera’s agreement with Nintendo, Nintendo DS users will now be able to surf the full Internet from their systems using the Opera browser. The Opera browser for Nintendo DS will be sold as a DS card. Users simply insert the card into the Wi- Fi enabled Nintendo DS, connect to a network, and begin browsing on two screens.
Dual-head browsing …
Given Opera’s commitment to mobile Ajax, as well as the platform’s multimedia credentials, it’s pretty likely we’ll see Ajax apps running inside some of those 13 million+ handhelds. The “Opera for Devices” background info in the release mentions Ajax, even if the announcement itself is shy on the topic.
Portable browsing just became twice the fun … imagine all those Ajax games you’ll be able to play on your DS :-)! However, rumours that Super Maryo World (mentioned earlier) will make the default homepage have been vastly overstated.
Wednesday, February 1st, 2006
Category: Ajax, Business
According to this new article on the Ajax Developer’s Journal today, IBM is spearheading a new effort to promote Ajax to developers all around the world - the “Open Ajax” Coalition.
The Open AJAX initiative does not have a centralized structure or website, but is rather an idea that is being formally backed by BEA, Borland, the Dojo Foundation, the Eclipse Foundation, Laszlo Systems, Mozilla Corporation, Novell, Openwave Systems, Oracle, Red Hat, Yahoo, Zend and Zimbra. A spokesperson for one of the major backers said that Google will also be backing this initiative.
The coalition members say they “intend to promote Ajax’s promise of universal compatibility with any computer device, application, desktop or operating system, and easy incorporation into new and existing software programs.”
The article continues on, noting capabilities of Ajax, as well as the fact that this coalition is not just “lip service”. Commitments have already been started by several of the main participants (such as IBM already contributing to the Eclipse project). There are various other quotes from notables in the community as well, including Mike Milinkovich (Eclipse), Scott Dietzen (Zimbra), and Steve Benfield (Agentis Software).
ZDNet Coverage: IBM spearheads AJAX tools at Eclipse
Press Release
Sunday, January 22nd, 2006
Category: Ajax, Business
Dion Hinchcliffe makes some good points in Why Ajax Is So Disruptive. What he’s saying here is that Ajax is more than a suite of technologies, but a new way of doing things. It’s an important point, because there’s a lot of people who assume Ajax just means a fancier UI, and is not central to “Web 2.0″ in the same way as RSS, tagging, “social whatever-ing”. Then there are many others who go the other extreme and simply equate Web 2.0 and Ajax. Dion’s post finds the right balance: Ajax alone is not Web 2.0, but is still a critical, disruptive, part of the Web 2.0 equation.
Dion discusses several disruptive aspects of Ajax:
- The End of Software Upgrades, Fixes, and Security Patches.
- Software and Data Available Wherever You Go
- Isolated Software Can’t Compete with Connected Software
- Deprecation of the Traditional Operating System
- Software That Is Invisible
Friday, November 25th, 2005
Category: Business
A new Forbes article introduces Ajax’s benefits to business in a novel way: what’s offered by the A, the J, and the X.
… It’s Asynchronous! Writely’s Sam Schillace:
“In terms of using asynchronous processing, the most significant is to send small updates back to the server from the editor as the user is working and to have the server send messages back to the editor,”
…It’s Javascript! Zimbra’s Scott Dietzen: “JavaScript and Ajax allows Zimbra to do what we have always wanted to do”. Examples include: “Right click on a phone number to make a call with your soft phone”.
…It’s XML: GOffice’s Kevin Warnock: “XML is useful because once a document is encoded into XML, it can be easily and reliably processed by many computer systems … Also, we can do part of the PDF creation process on the browser. This means we can scale our system to allow the creation of, literally, billions of PDF files.”
The article also suggests some caution on search engines and advertising opportunities.
“A complete AJAX application would be a mistake because search engines won’t be able to index it. And without a search engine, a site won’t be able to sell products.”
Search and Ajax is an interesting problem, and Backbase has some good advice on dealing with search engines (covered earlier).
