Aaron Worsham | Sazbean

Aaron Worsham / Sep 24, 2008

The impossibility of speed

speed1 Microsoft, founder, organizer and social chair of the Desktop First Foundation, now sees through their own well trenched oppositions and admits that maybe, possibly it makes some sense for some applications to simple live out on the internet. They now join Google, Yahoo, Apple, Salesforce.com, NetSuite, ZoHo, Meebo, Zimbra, as well as an uncountable number of neuvo-funded startups who have banked on the internet as the universal delivery platform for the future.

Oh, also, Google and Amazon agree that users get antsy when they have to wait more than half a second for their application to respond, affecting customer satisfaction and repeat usage. Google’s VP Marissa Mayer recounted having experienced a 20% drop in usage for results delivered as little as .5 seconds slower than typical.

Possibly not for the first time, your customers are demanding the convenience and portability of online web applications while still clinging to expectations that web applications should consistently respond as fast as desktop applications. An immovable object just shook hands with an irresistible force.

The problem with web applications, frankly, is the web. Months of tuning web code can save seconds in application speed only to be lost in the network through slow routing, lost packets, or bandwidth throttling. This is the impossibility of speed on the internet. You have very little control out there.

To keep up with our need for speed, we will have to move more and more interface code off the server and onto the desktop’s browser in the form of Javascript. Google’s chrome team seems to agree, focusing their performance efforts for web apps on a high speed Javascript engine. SproutCore, famous for running Apple’s MobileMe web platform, is a fully modeled MVC framework in Javascript perfectly suited for this kind of application. Servers could begin to revert back to simply offering data storage. Instead of pageviews, we may soon be tracking information requests. An online ad industry addicted to clicks and impressions may have to get back on the wagon and find a whole new model (they’re so agile). This could be interesting.

I’ll just suggest this to any kid starting out the web development world: Learn JavaScript

Photo attributed to pctalbot @ Flickr CC

Aaron Worsham / Sep 19, 2008

More important work to do

Today, Web 2.0 technology just may be passing from the “cool kid’ phase to the business-to-business phase. ~ Jim Kerstetter

earth_in_hand Webware.com is reporting on the Web 2.0 Expo in New York with coverage of the change in tone and tenor of conference towards profit minded business tactics. At the same conference Tim O’Reilly stood on stage earlier this week to chastize the online community for focusing on the wrong problems.

“Stop throwing sheep and do something worthy” ~Tim O’Reilly

Meanwhile, ReadWriteWeb is talking about the effects of the credit crisis to online business in the valley, forcing some uncharacteristic introspection.

It seems to me that our industry is being called out on the carpet for its cavalier attitude towards the world surrounding our snow globe. The media is looking out over our heralded accomplishments and wondering how they are helping solve the bigger problems. As quickly as they were to laud accolades at our feet, they have turned a critical eye to our creations. I’m only disappointed it took such dire circumstances to shift the focus back towards the people who need our help most.

While the world may not need another social news aggregator or user generated photo disbursement site, it sure as heck can use our ingenuity. There are economic problems, communication problems, logistic problems, translation problems, analysis problems, coordination problems, deployment problems and social science problems that people are working to solve with online tools. Great accomplishments are happening in academia, government and the private sector, though few were likely to hear about them before now. That may soon be changing if, believing Jim’s quote earlier to be accurate, we are passing into the business to business phase of our evolution. Attention can help motivate people towards great innovations, as I believe President Kennedy understood all too well in 1961.

For our small part I think Sazbean can do better at delivering information on the potential of online technology for social change. It will be a small thing, but the only things that didn’t start out small are those that never started at all.

photo attributed to aussiegall @ flickr CC

Aaron Worsham / Sep 17, 2008

The Establishment thinks we are stupid

People are stupid. History has shown it repeats itself, and people make the same mistakes. ~Harry Debes, CEO of Lawson

tanakawhobuilding That was a pullquote from an interview with ERP software company Lawson’s CEO Harry Debes. He was answering the reporter’s question on whether software companies had learned anything from previous attempts at making Software as a Service models work. Clearly, he is not a fan of Salesforce.com, a competitor and SaaS poster child.

Debes makes an enthusiastic case for the merits of traditional software sales over the distributed revenue model of SaaS, which he claims prevents companies from making big returns quickly. He may be right.

My contention with his argument focuses on his well worn and rehearsed counter claim that customers of traditional software vendors are free to use a software package indefinitely once the upfront investment is paid off, saving them money over time. Does anyone still believe this fable? Are we no smarter than we were in the 90’s, or are CEOs simply that far out of touch.

When financial institutions start falling, the press tends to shed light on their spending habits. If what Mr. Debes is putting forth were true, then surely the 138 year old Lehman Brothers investment bank would be one of the big benefactors to those savings over times. And yet, they spent over a billion dollars last year in new software. Surely you would expect a financial institution to exemplify the ideals of conservative spending, find any way possible to save money while delivering on their customers needs. Yet I know that most financial companies spend large percentages of their revenue keeping up technology. For companies of lesser means, there are still forced upgrades, maintenance agreements, obsolescence, migratory requirements that all lends force to the gale that blows up the costs of keeping companies running. Has any publically traded company reported in their SEC fillings a year after year decrease in the spending of technology? Should we be so blind as to assume that hardware, network connectivity, desktops, communication equipment all required new, expensive versions but that the software remained untouched, free from budgetary expenditure?

We now all know the truth masking the lie. Traditional software would all be free, if we never needed to upgrade. Software as a Service may not reap those immediate returns that you are so eagerly seeking, sir, but do not attempt to misdirect the truth that as long as innovation is a competitive advantage and progress proceeds in a forwardly direction, we will have to pay someone to keep us in the game.

It is unfortunate for the Harry Debes of the world that corporations are slowly but inevitably being inflitrated by open minded technologiest who are apt to question the status quo. You see, Mr Debes, I believe that people are not stupid. We do and will learn from our mistakes. We have already learned some lessons the hard way. Should you be sitting across from me in your next ERP sales call, I will be more than happy to fill you in on our progress so far.

(photo by tanakawho)

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