Open Thoughts on Software, Business, Life

Food Zombies - A Tasty Top-Down Shooter Game

2012-01-23T08:00:00.003-05:00

Over the past few years, I've written various blog posts covering my son's interest in programming.

Billy is a high school junior now, and his efforts over the past 4 years have spanned from creating interactive virtual playworlds and sharing LUA scripting code in ROBLOX, to cool programs for the TI-84 calculator, to Block Dude Evolved for iOS devices (a port of the classic TI-84 Block Dude game), to Prom Checklist for high school girls to keep track of all their prom-related details on their iOS devices, as well as Prom Checklist West, a branded version for Cherry Hill High School West where the proceeds will go to the school's "project graduation".

His most recent effort brings him back to his area of passion...that is game development for iOS devices (iPod Touch, iPhone, etc.).

Food Zombies is his craziest, most entertaining game to date.

While Food Zombies is a classic top-down zombie shooter, it's also good clean (and unique) fun since the zombies are fast food (in the form of pizza, fries, donuts, pies, etc.):

The power-ups are, naturally, good-for-you fruits:

And since this a shooter game, it offers many different weapons to satisfy even the pickiest food-slaying cravings:

I highly recommend the flame thrower. :-)

Anyhow, if you have an Apple iPod Touch or iPhone and you can't get enough of top-down Zombie shooter games, then I recommend you satisfy your cravings by giving Food Zombies a try.

Oh yeah, one final note for those Block Dude Evolved fans out there. Billy has just finished a major 2.0 version of the game that adds in a bunch of new features. The game is working its way through Apple approvals, so stay tuned!

Block Dude Evolved

2010-07-24T16:21:00.008-04:00

My son's first foray into programming started a few years ago playing ROBLOX; a virtual playworld where kids can create and customize the look and behavior of their own online worlds. I wrote a couple of posts including "Professor ROBLOX: Class In Session" covering how ROBLOX is actually shaping the lives of future programmers since kids use the Lua scripting language to customize the behavior of their worlds.

My son moved on past Lua and taught himself TI Assembly Programming and Visual C++. His goal: create games for the TI-84 graphing calculator so he and his middle-school friends could play games rather than pay attention in math class. :-)

With the rise of the Apple iPod Touch and iPhone, he has launched headfirst into Objective-C and delivered "Block Dude Evolved", a recreation of the all-time classic TI calculator game called "Block Dude".

Block Dude Evolved is a puzzle game. The goal is to move your little man across obstacles and out the exit door on the level. The challenge is that you need to pick up and move blocks to help you climb over obstacles that are between you and the door. You can only step up one block at a time, so if you are facing a wall two blocks high, then you need to grab a movable block and plop it down so you can climb up. The first level is pretty simple, but the levels increase in difficulty after that.

The controls of Block Dude Evolved are pretty simple. To move the little man left or right, you just tap those sides of the screen. To climb up a block, just tap the upper portion of the screen. If you are standing next to a block that can be picked up, just tap the block and you will lift it above your head. Then you simply move to where you want to be and tap the spot where you want to drop the block. If you want to exit out of the game, just tap two fingers at the same time.

Block Dude Evolved has a Settings dialog that enables you to customize the look:

For example, you can choose the Future look:

Or the Revamped look:

Anyhow, if you have an Apple iPod Touch or iPhone and yearn for the days of classic brain-puzzle games, then I recommend you give Block Dude Evolved a try.

Job Trends: Spring, WebSphere, WebLogic - what a difference a year makes!

2010-05-11T17:21:00.017-04:00

Last year I wrote "Job Trends: Tomcat, Spring, Weblogic, JBoss, EJB" where I discussed the trend towards "Lean Software" and the role that Spring plays in this important movement.

A lot has happened over the past year. CIO's have identified Virtualization and Cloud computing as their top two strategic technologies for 2010. Lean Software has become even more of a Business Technology Imperative than it was a year ago. And, the job market over the past year has been challenging at best.

With that as a backdrop, let's see what the job market looks like for Spring Java developer skills versus the other industry heavyweights.

The chart nicely illustrates that Spring Java developer skills (green line) have been on an inexorable path upwards for the past 5 years. WebSphere Java developer skills (blue line) are next and have been on a downward path for the past year and a half. WebLogic Java developer skills (orange line) round out the chart and have been relatively flat over the past few years.

Conclusions?
Companies continue to value lightweight application infrastructure skills (i.e. Spring) since this provides them a way to create applications more quickly and therefore be more competitive. More speculatively, I believe that Virtualization and Cloud computing initiatives are accelerating this trend since these initiatives are forcing enterprises to take a hard look at how they are building and deploying applications...and to take measures (and hire talent) that dramatically simplify the process.

Since I work at the SpringSource division of VMware, I have a keen interest in the health and vibrancy of the Spring community. I'm happy to see that even in a tough job market, the demand for Spring Java developer skills continues to grow.

Credits: I used Indeed.com to generate the chart above. Indeed.com searches millions of jobs from thousands of job sites and provides a neat service that lets you see job trends for whatever search criteria you may have. My criteria was Java Developers that have Spring, WebSphere, or WebLogic skills. Click here to go to Indeed.com to see the latest view of my chart above.

I LIKE PI(E)

2009-09-12T11:24:00.004-04:00

Things that make you go hmmmmm....I never realized that when looked at it in the mirror, 3.14 can be both mathematical and delicious:

MMMMM.....PUMPKIN.....PIE.....

SpringSource + VMware: My VMworld 2009 Interview

2009-09-07T10:00:00.006-04:00

I had the chance to sit down with John Troyer to discuss SpringSource, VMware, cloud computing, and breaking down the barriers between Development and Operations...live (at the time) on the show floor at VMworld 2009.

VMware Fanboy

2009-09-05T21:00:00.001-04:00

After arriving at SFO airport earlier this week, I just had to stop and snap the photo below:

The placement and timing of the ad was special since 1) I'm excited to be joining VMware as part of the SpringSource acquisition, and 2) I flew in to SFO in order to attend VMworld 2009 (the event was ginormously huge with lots of great sessions, excited attendees, and impressive partners).

I've been a fanboy of VMware for years: I've been an avid and happy user of VMware's products, and earlier this year I declared VMware the "Virtualization Big Dog" as part of my "Big Dog" series of posts.

In that post I compared VMware with Microsoft, Citrix, and Red Hat, and I concluded by saying "As long as VMware stays focused on creating great solutions to customer problems and honestly assesses the threats posed by the other market players, they should be able to retain their market leadership status for many years to come."

I love working for companies that provide REAL VALUE to customers, and I look forward to joining VMware as soon as the deal closes and extending its market leadership from virtualization to the cloud and beyond.

Multiple Languages, Multiple Platforms: Choice Is A Good Thing

2009-07-16T12:42:00.004-04:00

Over the past decade or so, the Microsoft vs. Java landscape has been summed up as follows:

Microsoft: Multiple languages, single platform.
Java: Single language, multiple platforms.

In "Java yields to other languages on the Java Virtual Machine" Paul Krill from InfoWorld covers the fact that Java is no longer the only language in town when it comes to creating applications that run on the Java Virtual Machine.

Languages such as Groovy, JRuby, and Scala are just a handful of languages beyond Java available for the JVM.

The fact is that over the past few years the landscape has changed to be:

Microsoft: Multiple languages, single platform.
Java: Multiple languages, multiple platforms.

Why is offering a choice of languages important? Neil McAllister provides some good reasons in "We need more polyglot programmers". The emergence of other languages targeting the proven and scalable Java platform is a good thing for the Java market. It will help keep the Java platform vibrant and expand its market reach.

Neil makes the point that Groovy "offers a Java-like syntax but is actually a dynamic language, similar to Perl, Python, and Ruby. It gives developers the safety and stability of the Java runtime but frees them from the often-restrictive Java syntax.".

All of these points factored into why SpringSource added Groovy and Grails into our portfolio of product offerings.

Bottom-line: Choice of language and platform is a good thing...for developers, customers, software vendors, and the market in general.

Harry Kalas - Outta Here!

2009-04-18T16:49:00.004-04:00

Philadelphia paid tribute today to Harry Kalas, the voice of the Philadelphia Phillies. Kalas passed away earlier this week and the fans filled Citizens Bank Park to pay their respects and to hear Harry Kalas' close friends and colleagues share their thoughts and feelings.

I think Mike Schmidt summed it up the best in his eulogy when he said that Harry Kalas' life was "bountiful".

I think we should all strive to lead "bountiful" lives.

While I've never met Harry Kalas, he has been a part of my life for many years. Thinking of him reminds me of my father who taught me to love baseball and the Phillies. My dad was my little league coach, and he came to watch me play baseball through high school, college, and even into my 30's when I played over-30 baseball with some of my old high school buddies.

I visited my dad's grave today to spend some time reminiscing with him about the great calls that Harry Kalas made over his broadcasting career, including:

"Long drive! It is....outta here!
Home run...Michael Jack Schmidt!"

We definitely heard that call many, many times.

Unfortunately my dad passed away before hearing one of Harry's best:

"The 0 - 2 pitch...swing and a miss...struck eem out!
The Philadelphia Phillies are 2008 World Champions of Baseball!!"

So long Harry. We'll miss you.
And if you get a chance, please say hi to my dad for me.

For those who weren't Phillies fans or for those who want to reminisce along with me, here's a handful of Harry's best calls:

And here's a nice tribute to Harry Kalas by Comcast:

Google App Engine Is Groovy Baby!

2009-04-08T12:04:00.004-04:00

The SpringSource Groovy team and the Google App Engine Java team worked together to make sure that Groovy works on Google App Engine now that App Engine supports Java: "Seriously this time, the new language on App Engine: Java™"

Guillaume Laforge, of SpringSource, has a great post about how to "Write your Google App Engine applications in Groovy".

Check out some initial Groovy sample apps running on App Engine:
http://myowngroovy.appspot.com

Here you'll find the standard "Hello World" app, a Google Maps, Google Geocoding service, Flickr mashup application, and more.

10 Rules For Building A Great Organization

2009-03-28T23:12:00.003-04:00

I'm reading "Enough. True Measures of Money, Business, and Life" by John C. Bogle, the founder and former CEO of Vanguard Mutual Fund Company. In the book, Bogle offers 10 Rules for Building a Great Organization:

Make caring the soul of the organization.

Forget about employees. (Vanguard instead uses the term "crew member")

Set high standards and values - and stick to them.

Talk the talk. Repeat the values endlessly.

Walk the walk. Actions speak louder than words.

Don't overmanage.

Recognize individual achievement.

A reminder - loyalty is a two-way street.

Lead and manage for the long term.

Press on, regardless.

A pretty solid set of rules if you ask me.

Job Trends: Tomcat, Spring, Weblogic, JBoss, EJB

2009-03-26T12:27:00.013-04:00

Forrester recently described a trend that they refer to as "lean software" in their paper entitled Lean Software Is Agile, Fit-To-Purpose, And Efficient. They state that "lean software is emerging as the antidote to bloatware" and that "the trend toward lean software has been building for years, but the worldwide recession is accelerating it".

Forrester mentions SpringSource as one of four companies at the forefront of the lean software movement. This is due to our leadership within the Spring, Apache, Groovy and Grails communities, as well as our active encouragement, via SpringSource dm Server, of enterprise OSGi as the basis for next-generation application infrastructure.

Since Spring and Apache Tomcat play an important role in lean application infrastructure strategies, I've researched what the job market looks like for developers with Spring and Tomcat skills as compared to EJB, Weblogic, and JBoss skills.

I used Indeed.com to generate the chart above. Indeed.com searches millions of jobs from thousands of job sites and provides a neat service that lets you see job trends for whatever search criteria you may have.

My criteria was Java Developers that have Tomcat, Spring, Weblogic, JBoss, or EJB skills. Click here to go to Indeed.com to see the latest view of my chart above.

The chart nicely illustrates that Spring skills (green line) are in highest demand, well ahead of the others, and has been on a steep incline for the past year. Weblogic skills (blue line) are next and have remained fairly flat over the years. EJB skills (red line) and Tomcat skills (orange line) are neck and neck behind that, with JBoss skills (black line) tracking behind Tomcat but on a similar path.

NOTE: I've been asked why I did not include Glassfish, Geronimo, or WebSphere CE in the above chart. The reason is simple: they were effectively zero on the graph and therefore statistically irrelevant for my analysis.

UPDATED ON MARCH 30 2009:
Let me reiterate that the point of this post is to show that Spring and Tomcat Java developer skills are as easy to find in today's job market as other popular enterprise Java developer skills. With that said, I've been asked why I did not include WebSphere in the chart above. One could argue that WebSphere as a brand is broader than the other items in the search criteria, but I've modified the criteria to include it; the chart now covers Java Developers that have Tomcat, Spring, Weblogic, JBoss, EJB, or WebSphere skills.

Click here to go to Indeed.com to see the latest view of the chart above.

Conclusions?
More and more companies are looking at lean application infrastructure to help them remain competitive, and the difficult economy is only accelerating this trend. These businesses not only need to feel comfortable with the technologies they embrace, but they also need to make sure they can easily find people experienced with the technologies.

Since I work at SpringSource, I have a keen interest in the health and vibrancy of both Spring and Tomcat. I'm happy to see that Spring and Tomcat are doing so well in the job market for Java developers. This fact will help my customers feel more comfortable choosing SpringSource Enterprise and SpringSource tc Server to power their applications.

Credits: I'd like to thank Indeed.com for providing this valuable job trends service on their website. It provides a great way to understand the past and current directions of whatever type of job you may be interested in.

JVM as a Service: Mashup Azul and Amazon

2009-03-19T23:42:00.006-04:00

This may be a crazy stupid idea, but I was having a conversation today about the kinds of things that make sense to be "as a service". Amazon EC2 and S3 are essentially compute as a service and storage as a service.

Since I'm a Java guy, I wonder:
Does it make sense to have a JVM as a service?

Why? Because while running Java workloads on Amazon may be cool for scale out scenarios, it does nothing to help with scale up scenarios for Java workloads. The classic JVM is a limiting factor in scale up scenarios because the more memory it has to deal with the more garbage collection time becomes a real performance issue.

Azul Systems offers a JVM compute appliance that illustrates the logical model of what I have in mind. Basically the Azul appliance centralizes JVM processing onto a machine designed to provide low response times, pauseless garbage collection, and efficient huge memory management. Basically each server has a JVM proxy that hands off processing to the compute appliance.

So, what if we mashup Azul with Amazon?

That is, what if we take the Azul JVM appliance concept and make it a cloud service? That could enable any EC2 instance running a Java workload to leverage a model where a JVM proxy on a given EC2 instance hands off its processing to a JVM as a Service. That JVM as a Service could then centrally handle dynamic scale up/scale down of JVM resources as well as eliminate the nasty garbage collection performance issues once and for all.

Now all we need is the JVM gurus at Azul or Oracle/BEA JRockit to get to work on it. I want my JVM as a Service guys, and I want it now!!! :-)

If you are a JVM guru, feel free to chime in as to why this idea is stupid and could never possibly work. Or if you have an equally outrageous "as a service" idea, please share.

Top 20 Most Commonly Used Open Source Licenses

2009-03-11T15:48:00.004-04:00

My recent post "Tim Yeaton Snares Black Duck" gave me the encouragement to check out what Black Duck is up to these days.

While surfing the Black Duck Software website, I came across a very useful page worth bookmarking:
Top 20 Most Commonly Used Licenses in Open Source Projects

Black Duck's site says that they update the data in the table below on a daily basis, so please click over to their website for the latest data:
There is nothing unexpected or overly shocking in the data. For example, I have known that GPL 2.0 is the dominant open source license. I always thought the Apache 2.0 license was a little more prevalent, but the data is not far off from what I expected. GPL 3.0 appears to be doing really well since it is already above the Apache 2.0 and Mozilla Public License.

Anyhow, I figured I'd share the link. I'll certainly visit it periodically to stay abreast of the open source license landscape.

App Server SmackDown Panel 2009

2009-03-09T09:59:00.007-04:00

I'm participating in a panel discussion focused on New Application Server Frontiers at SD West on Thursday March 12 2009 from 10:15 am - 11:45 am PT in room 204 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, Calif.

The Panel is moderated by Chris Haddad, Burton Group vice president and service director, and the panelists include:

Shaun Connolly, SpringSource
Adam Gross, SalesForce.com
Rich Sharples, JBoss Division of Red Hat
Larry Cable, Oracle (BEA)
Jerry Waldorf, Sun Microsystems
Savio Rodrigues, IBM

Chris Haddad from Burton Group describes the session as follows:
"Cloud, server componentization, declarative programming models, and innovative application frameworks are forcing structural IT change and opening new server frontiers. Application servers, development frameworks, and tooling are adapting at either an evolutionary and revolutionary pace. ‘New Server Frontier’ panelists will describe how application stacks will either encourage exploration or strand teams and applications on a legacy island."

I simply describe the session as: App Server SmackDown Panel 2009!

Come see the fun!

For more information on SD West 2009, please visit: www.sdexpo.com.

One other note, SpringSource's Colin Sampaleanu will also be presenting a session titled: "Spring Framework 3.0 - New and Notable," on Friday, March 13, 8:30 am P.T. — 10:00 am P.T. in Room E at SD West. So if you want to hear the latest on Spring, then please go to Colin's session.

Virtualization Big Dog: VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, or Red Hat?

2009-02-27T10:29:00.009-05:00

I was catching up on industry news today when I saw the following eWeek post: Red Hat Is Getting Ready to Take on VMware

It has been a while since I've written a "Big Dog" article, but this topic is worthy; so here goes.

Who is the virtualization big dog?

VMware is the incumbent big dog, of course. They have a compelling portfolio of offerings that are proven, feature-rich, and getting better all the time. Moreover, while I was at Princeton Softech, I was an avid and happy user of VMware's products.

Virtualization is big business these days and will only get bigger since it plays a fundamental and foundational role in cloud computing. VMware is faced with competitors interested in chipping away at their market dominance:

Microsoft and its Hyper-V is clearly targeting VMware

Citrix and its XenServer are focused on undercutting VMware

Red Hat continues its bottom-up commoditization strategy

Just for fun, I've compared/contrasted the players in the Virtualization market with the players in the Enterprise Middleware market back in 2003/2004:

VMware and BEA: Early/dominant market leaders driving innovative technology
Microsoft and IBM: Huge players who think/execute over the long term
Citrix and Sun: Xen ignited these market dynamics; Java made the middleware market
Red Hat and JBoss/Tomcat: The power of bottom-up market groundswell

The middleware market leader was BEA Systems. IBM was the much bigger player applying top-down market pressure and working its usual long-term plan to gain market dominance. Sun was the vendor responsible for the technology that made the market but never became the market leader. And JBoss and Tomcat were generating significant and unyielding bottom-up market groundswell.

How did it play out? BEA became so focused on fighting IBM at the high end that they ignored/denied the bottom-up groundswell: BEA Chief Downplays Open-Source Alternatives. Alfred Chuang never gave credence to the JBoss or Tomcat threat and ultimately BEA got swept up by Oracle.

Bob Pasker (founder of Weblogic) had an interesting post after BEA got acquired by Oracle: JBoss (and possibly Tomcat) should never have happened. "JBoss launched an innovators dilemma attack against BEA, not with a revolutionary product, but with a revolutionary business model, one that BEA couldn’t hope to copy without cannibalizing its existing revenue stream. BEA fell right into the trap."

That Was Then But This Is Now
While there are some interesting similarities between the middleware and virtualization markets, the market dynamics today are clearly different. The open source model has clearly made its mark across many software markets. Neither Microsoft nor VMware are denying the power of open source or the threat that companies such as Red Hat pose to their business.

Add in the fact that VMware has Paul Maritz (ex-Microsoft executive) as their CEO and that changes things as well. While I don't like the article's title, I do agree with much of Chris Mellor's points in: VMware's one-trick pony: Destined to be a platform?. Chris highlights Maritz as an inspirational leader who has a great feel for where the market is heading.

So with all of that said, my answer to the question:

Who is the virtualization big dog?

VMware

Bottom-line: As long as VMware stays focused on creating great solutions to customer problems and honestly assesses the threats posed by the other market players, they should be able to retain their market leadership status for many years to come.

Programming Language Popularity

2009-02-20T17:45:00.007-05:00

My 13 year old son has been programming in Lua, TI Basic and Assembler, ActionScript, JavaScript, and he's into C++/Dark GDK these days. While I've mostly focused on Java for the past few years, I've programmed in a wide range of statically typed and dynamically typed languages.

Since my son is just starting his programming journey, I naturally wondered:

What are the most popular programming languages these days?

I used tiobe.com and langpop.com to answer this question. Both sites provide programming language popularity statistics and rankings, and I was happy to see that Java, C, and C++ rank in the top three on both sites.

What I like about both of these sites is that they gather information across a wide range of search engines and websites in order to generate a popularity score. Neither site is focused on declaring the "best" programming language or the language in which the most lines of code have been written. They simply provide information that, as TIOBE states, "can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system."

TIOBE Programming Index for Feb 2009
TIOBE gathers information from Google, MSN, Yahoo!, and YouTube to calculate the ratings, and they have a great web page that defines how the TIOBE index is assembled. Below is a summary of the top 20 programming languages for February 2009. I especially like how they compare against last year's ranking so we can gauge how the language is doing year over year.

Below you will see that Java has been #1 the past two years. C++ and C# are on the rise. Visual Basic, PHP and Perl have declined however. I also find it interesting that while Ruby and Python generate a lot of buzz, neither has risen in rank over the past year.

LangPop Normalized Comparison on Feb 2, 2009
Below is LangPop's Normalized Comparison Chart that combines the data gathered across Yahoo, Craigslist, Amazon, Freshmeat, Google Code, and Delicious for 29 different programming languages. Click on the chart to see it more clearly.

Java is #2 behind C. Visual Basic is much lower in ranking than in TIOBE's ranking. Python, Perl, and Ruby are slightly higher than in TIOBE's results.

Conclusions?
Since I work at SpringSource and focus on enterprise Java (a la Spring) and dynamic languages that run on Java (a la Groovy/Grails), I'm pretty happy to see that Java not only maintains its relevance but continues to dominate as a top programming language.

With that said, the interest in dynamic languages such as PHP, Python, Ruby, and Groovy clearly tells me that developers crave more productivity and less complexity. Another reason I'm happy to be at SpringSource, since simplifying enterprise Java is our area of focus and passion.

Credits: I'd like to thank TIOBE and LangPop for maintaining and sharing the information on their website. They provide a valuable service and I will continue to visit their sites to stay abreast of how the programming language landscape evolves over the coming months and years.

Tim Yeaton Snares Black Duck

2009-02-14T17:49:00.006-05:00

I agree with the sentiment behind Dana Blankenhorn's post asserting that it is "Happy days for Black Duck". As Dana states:

Bookings were up 42% year over year, and service revenues were up 65%.
Black Duck has secured $9.5 million in new financing, including $4.5 million in loans.
Black Duck recruited Tim Yeaton, once vice president for worldwide marketing at Red Hat, as its new CEO. He was given credit there for driving the acquisition of JBoss, still one of the biggest open source merger deals ever.

Having had the pleasure of working closely with Tim Yeaton before, during, and after Red Hat's acquisition of JBoss, I'm happy to see him join Black Duck as CEO. I'm quite familiar with some of Black Duck's offerings from prior due diligence efforts that used Black Duck to scan source code for the open source licenses contained within the code. Definitely useful for understanding any potential legal exposure you may have when acquiring medium to large code bases.

Anyhow, as Dana Blankenhorn points out, Tim Yeaton drove Red Hat's acquisition of JBoss in June 2006. Tim truly understood the value and strategic importance of expanding Red Hat's footprint to include middleware. And while the integration of the two companies was challenging (as are most integration efforts), Red Hat clearly benefited from the move.

Tim Yeaton did a great job of making all of the JBoss team feel comfortable and welcome at Red Hat. And when I left Red Hat in March 2008 for some "Purposeful Risk-Taking", I publicly thanked Tim and others at Red Hat / JBoss for making the experience a great one.

With Tim at the helm, I do indeed hope that there are "happy days" ahead for Black Duck.

Einstein on Relativity

2009-01-21T18:55:00.003-05:00

I just ran across the following quote by Einstein:

"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity."
Albert Einstein

I never thought of Einstein as a marketer (or a comedian for that matter), but he does a great job of communicating his theory in familiar yet memorable terms. And he made me laugh out loud while doing so.

Top 10 Application Development Products for 2008

2009-01-02T16:24:00.000-05:00

I just viewed eWeek's new slideshow by Daryl Taft listing the Top 10 Application Development Products for 2008.

SpringSource dm Server is listed in the top 10 along with such products as Microsoft Windows Azure, Google App Engine, Amazon CloudFront, Adobe Flash Catalyst, Apple iPhone SDK, and others.

UPDATED Jan 4, 2009:
Daryl Taft also posted his Top 10 Application Development Stories of 2008; where SpringSource plays a nice role in the following stories:

OSGi (Open Services Gateway initiative) makes a big splash: Eclipse, NetBeans, the Spring Framework, Apache and others are looking to OSGi as the future of their Java deployment environments. Others see OSGi not only for deployment but for its programming model, which is starting to encroach on Java EE APIs.
The Spring Framework wins converts: Spring has become a leading player in enterprise Java because it helps to simplify development as opposed to Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) and J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) or Java EE (Java Enterprise Edition).

Now that's a great way to kickoff the New Year!

SpringSource In My Step

2008-12-13T12:49:00.005-05:00

Since the news is starting to leak out, I'll make it official.

I'm honored to say that I've joined SpringSource as VP of Product Management.

Having left JBoss / Red Hat about 10 months ago for a little "Purposeful Risk-Taking", I've been able to lose 25 pounds, reconnect with family and friends, work at and then close down a social web startup, and help a great colleague and friend spin off some of the technology called SocialPass.

Over that time, I worked in an advisory role with a handful of companies including SpringSource, which gave me the chance to get to know Rod Johnson, Peter Cooper-Ellis, Adrian Colyer, Mark Brewer, Greg Schott, Herb Cunitz, Mitch Ferguson and some of the others at SpringSource. They really have a great team!

Having been in the middleware business for about a decade, I did a lot of homework on SpringSource. I discussed SpringSource’s opportunity with Peter Fenton (Benchmark), Kevin Efrusy (Accel) and Rob Bearden, of course. I talked with a variety of SpringSource customers, prospects, and partners and was simply amazed at how many applications are running on SpringSource technologies.

My assessment: If SpringSource stays true to what it stands for, executes well, and focuses on delivering real customer value, then we have a great opportunity ahead of us.

Bottom-line: I’m excited to join the SpringSource team and help them execute on their vision of delivering customer value by simplifying the development, deployment, and support of enterprise Java and Web applications.

It's great to have an added SpringSource in my step right before the holidays.
:-)

Founder Factory

2008-11-15T12:49:00.004-05:00

I spent this past Thursday at the Founder Factory event in Philly; hosted by the MAC Alliance and Philly Startup Leaders. The well-attended event was held at the World Cafe Live (a pretty cool venue) and highlighted local entrepreneurs, advisors, and investors.

A great mix of perspectives was provided by folks like Josh Kopelman, Steve Goodman, Gil Beyda, Lucinda Holt, and Bob Bickel who shared war stories on their most successful and not so successful experiences.

I especially liked the three Fishbowl sessions focused on DuckDuckGo, DropCard, and GoBYO.com. Basically, the founders of these young companies gave a 5-10 minute overview of the business to the audience and panel of experts. They then ended with a handful of questions for the panel in order to get their thoughts on their business idea, ways to scale their business and/or drive revenue, etc. Lots of great questions, dialog and ideas ensued. Will these businesses succeed? Only time will tell. Kudos to the founders for having the courage to open themselves (and their business babies) to the constructive criticism that these sessions are designed to provide.

Click here for Twitter coverage of the event

Click here for an official recap of the event by Blake Jennelle

I was excited to see the entrepreneurial spirit of Philly alive and well, and I look forward to more of these types of events in the future.

Transfer of Confidence

2008-11-08T09:08:00.005-05:00

I learned very early in my career that the key to a successful sales process is:

Transfer of Confidence

Nobody likes feeling foolish. And when purchasing a strategic software solution, people are putting their reputations on the line. So, focusing on making them feel comfortable and confident that they are making the right decision is paramount.

This Transfer of Confidence technique applies much more widely than software sales, however. What is at the heart of the Treasury's rescue package strategy? Transfer of confidence.

To illustrate my point even further...what do you see when you look at the picture below of Barack Obama's first press conference since becoming President Elect?
I see a Transfer of Confidence. Rather than speak at the podium alone, Barack Obama chose to surround himself with his very smart and capable team. His implicit message? The quest for Change will be difficult, but we are not alone in this quest. We will succeed.

Transfer of Confidence is a powerful concept. It is not a gimmick to be toyed with. For it to work properly, you need to use it truthfully and wisely.

Don't Let The Sun [Microsystems] Go Down On Me

2008-11-06T08:47:00.006-05:00

I got to thinking about Sun Microsystems after reading a Motley Fool article entitled "Meet the New Sun, Better Than the Old Sun":
"Sun Microsystems ain't what it used to be. Once a premier purveyor of enterprise-class Unix servers with a little bit of software on the side, the new Sun relies on virtualization-friendly blade servers, storage arrays, and open-source software. And that's probably a good thing... Big-iron server sales are dropping like hot potatoes. Sun's workstations haven't been much of factor for years."

I broached the above topic with a buddy of mine and we pondered ways that Sun could change their downward slide. Sun does indeed have an arsenal of hardware and software assets, but how long will it realistically take them to right the ship? Or do they need to be acquired in order to start heading in the right financial direction?

With that said...

what do you think of Apple as Sun's savior?

My initial reaction to this was...Apple's brand is all about shiny, elegant, and easy to use hardware and software objects, so how much of Sun's offerings would be worthy of the Apple brand? Let's assume the virtualization-friendly blade servers, storage arrays, and open-source software that Motley Fool mentioned above are worthy, how would such a move help Apple?

It would help Apple in its fight with Microsoft...on many fronts.

Part of Microsoft's strength has historically come from the sheer number of developers it has creating applications that target its platforms. I still crack up every time I watch the classic "Developers, Developers, Developers" Steve Ballmer video.

BUT...have you noticed the sea change that has happened over the past two years? I see nothing but oceans of Mac laptops at all the developer events going on. Apple has become the new cool for developers.

And if Apple, by acquiring Sun, was to inject some of its MOJO into Java...well that could inflict further pain on Microsoft. Moreover, an acquisition of Sun would position Apple nicely in the emerging cloud-platform market (see Microsoft's Azure Services Platform for where they're headed).

I, like many, would love to see the Sun rise again somehow. In these trying financial times, can they do it on their own, or do they need someone like Apple to get them through the difficult times?

Phillies Win World Series!

2008-10-29T23:59:00.002-04:00

'nuf said.

It Ain't Over 'til It's Over

2008-10-28T10:43:00.004-04:00

Last night I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes:

"It ain't over 'til it's over."

by Yogi Berra

How many business deals have you lived through that you thought were signed, sealed, and delivered only to have the deal implode at the 11th hour?

Rather than hit my head against that same wall of pain over and over, I use Yogi's quote as a reminder to work every project, every deal all the way through the finish line. While some deals may still implode, at least it won't be because I took my eye off the ball before the last out was made.

Speaking of last out...the reminder for this post came from last night's World Series game. I am a long-suffering Phillies fan, and the fightin' Phils were looking to close out the Tampa Rays in the 5th game of the World Series. They were up 2 - 0 early on, but after 6 innings of cold, miserable driving rain, the game was finally postponed in the 6th inning, tied at 2 - 2.

As of this writing, they're looking to finish the game tonight. Weather outlook? Cold, possible showers....and snow flurries. Aarrgghh! The baseball gods are clearly pissed off about something.

Maybe I'll ask Yogi to put in a good word with the baseball gods, while I continue to root my team on: Let's Go Phillies!!

Sumo or Judo: What's Your Strategy?

2008-10-25T18:12:00.005-04:00

Rather than take on bigger competitors head to head using a Sumo technique...

...I find it infinitely better to use distinctive competence as the leverage for a classic Judo move that flips the competition on its head.

Distinctive competence is the unique and valuable strength that sets you apart from the competition, and Judo is all about using leverage, speed, and agility to your advantage. Combining the two gives you the best shot at winning.

I use this Sumo vs. Judo analogy all the time. In my opinion, the Judo guy in blue is having far more fun than the small, scrawny [and likely frustrated] guy in the Sumo picture at the the top.

UPDATE: For Sumo enthusiasts...yes, I realize that Sumo is much more than brute force and requires leverage and speed like Judo. My business point lies within the memorable pictures above. A picture is worth a thousand words of detailed explanation. Which fight would you rather be in? :-)

Free Tribes Casebook

2008-10-16T09:45:00.005-04:00

In support of his new book, Tribes, Seth Godin launched the accompanying FREE Tribes Casebook (I am a coauthor) which contains over 200 pages of great examples of Tribes.

My article, ROBLOX Virtual Playworld, can be found in the Tribes Casebook on pages 85 - 87.

Click here to Download the FREE TribesCasebook.pdf

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed contributing to it!

Half Full

2008-10-07T18:56:00.005-04:00

With the current financial crisis (and its collateral damage), it is indeed trying times for many these days.

What do I do to get through tough times?
Simple. I go for MAXIMUM COMFORT by wearing my favorite "Half Full" shirt, by Life is Good.

I find that simply wearing this shirt lifts my mood and the mood of others around me.

So if life is getting you a little down...take a deep breath and think "Half Full!"

What Is Inbound Marketing? A Great Path To 0 and 100!

2008-10-03T17:15:00.003-04:00

Interesting question being asked on the HubSpot blog:
What Does Inbound Marketing Mean To You?

"Some use the term digital marketing, some online marketing, and still others -- particularly ourselves -- inbound marketing.
What do you make of these terms?
What does inbound marketing mean to you?"

Before I answer the question, let me list 2 key questions marketers are (or should be) asking themselves:

How do I enable prospects and customers to find and interact with the unique value I have to offer?
How do I convert those interested prospects into paying customers?

Related questions from the CEO / Business Owner would be:

How do I reduce the costs of acquiring customers...to 0?
How do I increase conversion rates...to 100%?

0 and 100 represent nirvana of course.

Inbound Marketing (which leverages the power and reach of the Internet) represents a modern approach to adjusting the dials/knobs that have an impact on answering these questions.

For example, increasing your number of website visitors and increasing the rate at which those visitors take your specific call to action (buy, download, etc.)... drives your costs towards 0...and conversion rates towards 100%.

So, with that said, my answer to "What Is Inbound Marketing?" is:

A Great Path To 0 and 100!

Meme(me)

2008-10-01T09:20:00.003-04:00

From John:
1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.

Lawson Software CEO Did Not Just Say That, Did He?

2008-09-27T19:28:00.003-04:00

I just stumbled across a PRECIOUS interview by ZDNet of Harry Debes, Lawson Software CEO, who claims:

"SaaS industry 'will collapse' in two years"

Debes is clearly not a fan of Saas or cloud-computing:
"This on-demand, SaaS phenomenon is something I've lived through three times in my career now. The first time, it was called 'service bureaux'. The second time, it was 'application service providers', and now it's called 'SaaS'. But it's pretty much the same thing, and my prediction is that it'll go the same way as the other two have gone: nowhere."

"People are stupid. History has shown it repeats itself, and people make the same mistakes."

"The success of Salesforce.com, in my opinion, has to do with their product being good, not because it's SaaS."

Debes looked closely at the SaaS model, but found issues:
"as we did the maths, we realised we could get killed. It was going to take us seven to 10 years before we made any money. That's nonsense. So we reversed our plans."

"because all your costs are up front and your revenue is over a five-year period, the more you sell, the more you lose. You don't break even till the four-and-a-half-year mark, but here's a bigger problem: there's no guarantee that that customer is still going to be yours in four years' time."

Customers find the SaaS business case straightforward, so why don't you like it:
"Getting signed up as a SaaS customer is fast, but getting out is just as fast, whereas traditional software is like cocaine - you're hooked. It's too difficult and expensive to switch providers once you've invested in one. If it were easier to jump ship, a lot of people would've hit the eject button on SAP a long time ago."

"It isn't about locking people in. People lock themselves in....The cost of moving is too high...When the sunk costs have been fully depreciated, customers effectively run the software for free, thereafter. Whereas, if they went to Salesforce.com, it'd cost them a million a year because they're paying for ongoing licensing and maintenance."

One word comes to mind after reading this interview: Wow!

UPDATE ON SEP 30 2008:
Savio Rodrigues of InfoWorld Open Sources and IBM fame picked up on my post with his own take on Harry Debes' comments:
"Lawson's CEO refuses to give in to peer pressure"

Savio makes a good point that choosing SaaS as a model is a non-trivial business decision and should NOT be driven by peer pressure, market buzz, etc. Savio also states that "Hopefully we'll arrive at a solution to SaaS as a component of the overall software market."

I agree 100% that SaaS is a component of the overall software market (i.e. it's NOT a panacea).

My issue with Debes' comments above is how he states his case for why SaaS makes no sense for Lawson. He talks little about customers needs or value. He actually seems antagonsistic towards customers...he calls them stupid....and seems giddy at the prospect of locking them into a solution.

I get the math Savio, but unlike you...I do not extend kudos to Mr. Debes for what he said above.

Debes could have simply stated that using an expensive enterprise sales model to sell SaaS solutions is a recipe for disaster...from Lawson's perspective.

Companies like Salesforce.com and SugarCRM have a more cost effective sales model....out of necessity. If they had a fleet of enterprise sales reps, they would be out of business.

SocialPass In Action - TicketMaster Demo

2008-09-27T10:47:00.004-04:00

Over the past few months, the Ringside Networks development team created a really cool piece of technology called SocialPass. SocialPass provides a very simple way for website owners and website developers to embed social capabilities within their existing website.

The video below provides a brief overview of SocialPass and then demonstrates how visitors to TicketMaster.com, for example, can use SocialPass to socially engage their their friends via email, Facebook, and Twitter in order to attend a concert together.

Direct link to this video on YouTube

Bottom-line: The social web offers the opportunity to directly energize the people who care most about your unique value. And encouraging these people to spread the word with their trusted friends can yield powerful results.

Social Web Power Quote: Hyundai

2008-09-24T21:03:00.003-04:00

Eric D’Ablaing of Hyundai states:

"We need to think about giving the users
the ability to connect with one another,
which is the real interactivity of using the Web.
This will allow
brands to be the connection point
between two or more parties
and not just a connection point to the brand."

Businesses that enable their website visitors to actively engage in social activities around their content (ex. ask friends to go to a concert with them, help them decide what to buy, take advantage of a compelling "deal of the day", or share recipes and compare tastes) stand to learn a lot about who their brand advocates and superconnectors are.

The social web offers the opportunity to energize the people who care most about your unique value. Enabling [and encouraging] these people to spread the word with their trusted friends can yield powerful results.

Source of Hyundai Quote:
Measuring the Influence of SocialMedia, Digital Influence Group

Social Web Power Quotes: Hasbro and Jupiter Research

2008-09-22T09:00:00.001-04:00

Anne Marie Kroisi of Hasbro states:

"I think it will just be a natural way for
the next generation of purchasers to
share with their peers, share product reviews,
share ideas, talk to people."

Marketing professionals focused on consumers at retail and brand websites are beginning to understand that social influence plays a big part in both consumer brand sentiment and online [and offline] sales.

Ms. Kroisi's quote really takes shape when paired with the following statistic from Jupiter Research:

"Social network users are
3 times more likely to trust peer opinions
over advertising when making purchasing decisions"

So while acquiring website visitors via Google or Yahoo search ads is the norm today, it appears acquiring targeted visitors based on people and their relationships can be much more powerful...if done properly.

Enabling your website visitors to leverage the power of the social web directly on your website is one way to encourage people to interact with their friends around your unique content and brand.

Source of Hasbro Quote:
TNS Media Intelligence Report

Source of Jupiter Research Quote:
Measuring the Influence of SocialMedia, Digital Influence Group

Social Web Power Quote: BabyCenter

2008-09-16T08:17:00.005-04:00

Tina Sharkey of BabyCenter states:

"A brand is not what a company says about its product.
It’s what a friend tells a friend."

Social destination sites like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, and FriendFeed are enabling connected consumers to shape brands...with or without official brand involvement.

Many brands are realizing they need to understand how to participate in the Groundswell, as Forrester describes it. I agree with Forrester that it is important for brands to spend time on the social destination sites and engage consumers in whatever way is appropriate.

I also believe that it is critical for brands to figure out how to make their own websites social. I am not necessarily talking about adding Forums and Blogs to the website. If that makes sense for the brands, then they should do that.

I am talking about socializing the actual web pages and content that consumers interact with directly. Facilitating friend-to-friend connections and conversations around specific website content helps consumers get valuable input from friends...which directly impacts brand value.

Source of Quote:
TNS Media Intelligence Report

Is Lehman Failure Equivalent to Katrina's Levees?

2008-09-15T19:13:00.003-04:00

Wall Street was mauled today by the news that Lehman Brothers filed bankruptcy, Bank of America buys Merrill Lynch, and AIG stock price off 60% on financial market fears.

While I am inherently an optimistic guy, I can't help but equate Lehman to one of the first levees to break during Katrina. After the first couple of levees broke, there was a disastrous domino effect that remains fresh in people's minds today.

So, I am hopeful that the AIG levee is somehow bolstered by the Fed this week. If AIG is spared, what other AIG's are out there that we need to worry about? Hint: look at the companies heavily into Lehman and Merrill and some of the other heavily distressed financials.

If AIG falls this week, then we really may have a Katrina effect on our hands.

Red Hat Acquires Qumranet: Tactical or Strategic?

2008-09-05T19:03:00.005-04:00

I just saw the news that Red Hat acquired Qumranet for $107M:
"The acquisition includes Qumranet's virtualization solutions, including its KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) platform and SolidICE offering, a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), which together present a comprehensive virtualization platform for enterprise customers."

While the price seems a little high, this is not a surprising move since Red Hat leverages libvirt as its pluggable hypervisor layer that supports Xen, KVM, and other virtualization technologies. This move now gives Red Hat much more control over KVM, offsetting their relative lack of control over Xen, for instance.

This announcement begs the following question, however:

Is this a strategic or tactical move by Red Hat?

My initial reaction is that while virtualization is arguably a strategic capability, this move by Red Hat feels very tactical and inward-facing (i.e. garner more control over KVM). And while the SolidICE appears to be really cool desktop virtualization technology, I fear it will get lost within what has been a very confusing Red Hat desktop strategy.

OK, so if I don't consider this move strategic, then what kind of strategic move would I advise Red Hat to make?

Red Hat is strong on the server with both RHEL and JBoss/Metamatrix, but they are generally weak in management of that stack. Yes, they have Red Hat Network, JBoss Operations Network, and other technologies, but their management story is incomplete and tactical in execution.

A strategic move would be for Red Hat to acquire both Virtual Iron and Hyperic.

This would give them impressive management capabilities....across virtualization, networks, storage, middleware, databases, etc.

Would my suggestion cost Red Hat more than $107M? Of course it would. But it would establish Red Hat as a real player in the management software market in a way that complements their leadership positions in the server operating system and middleware markets.

Those are my 2 cents. I'd love to hear from you if you disagree or have other strategic suggestions for Red Hat.

Google Reader In Action

2008-08-26T13:00:00.008-04:00

In response to my "10 Tips for Listening and Sharing on the Web" article, I received many requests from people who wanted more details on how to get started with Google Reader. Some people were having problems subscribing to certain RSS feeds. They asked me to create a video that shows how to get started with Google Reader in 5 minutes or less.

So, by popular request, click on the image below to go to my Google Reader In Action video:

The video above was recorded using Jing, "the always-ready [FREE] program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere." It's made by TechSmith, the same people who created SnagIt, Camtasia Studio, and Screencast.com.

NOTE: This was my first official recording using Jing, so let me know what you think.

Genie In The Bottle

2008-08-25T13:00:00.004-04:00

Interesting Harvard Business Publishing article entitled "What Apple Knows That Facebook Doesn't". Umair Haque wrote the article and contends that markets, networks, and communities "are strategic weapons of shock and awe". And his thinking on platforms is that "the most useful way to think about platforms today is simply as markets."

The article contends that Apple's iPhone 3G platform is not about a platform to be manipulated, but rather a market to be made. The iPhone's App Store is at the heart of that statement; it's the genie in the bottle with potential for great magic. Apple and its partners are able to bring products to market in a way that provides value to consumers.

On the other hand, Umair thinks Facebook has effectively let its genie OUT of the bottle by focusing on making Facebook a platform instead of a market. "If advertisers are subsidizing apps for people, Facebook's market will always be distorted - because advertisers need consumers more than consumers need advertisers today."

This implies that Facebook partners (ex. app developers) are limited in how they can participate in a way that truly provides value to consumers. Moreover Facebook appears to be trying to put the genie BACK IN the bottle by identifying and highlighting great applications; this move could cause a negative backlash by app developers and Facebook users if not handled properly.

If Facebook spent some significant time thinking about how they can extend the reach of their platform so that it provides value to lots of websites (not just Facebook.com) and visitors to those websites (not just Facebook users), then that could be a powerful genie. Facebook Connect is a step in that direction, but it still feels too much "platform" and not enough "market".

I do not want to imply that platforms are unimportant; you just need to structure them properly so the market potential is optimal. Google, for instance, has built a platform (i.e. Indexing and Search) upon which an Adwords ecosystem flourishes.

On a related note, this platform vs. market thinking got me thinking about open source business models. In Matt Asay's "Sifting open-source wheat from the chaff", he rightly points out that paid-for support of open source technologies "is not a compelling enough argument for most would-be buyers".

While open source technology and support can provide the basis for a core platform and business, it is the commercial, differentiated offerings built on top of and around that core that drives the enduring market opportunity for customers, vendors, partners, etc. Easy to say, but in may cases hard to do, since it requires a delicate balance.

As Jim Whitehurst of Red Hat states: "If the open-source movement, now in its second decade, is to realize its promise for vendors and investors, more of its purveyors will need to get the message soon."

Bottom-line: Thinking in terms of platforms and markets helps ensure business plans are designed to keep the proverbial genie in the bottle...the results of which can be quite magical. A bottle without a genie...is just a bottle.

Professor ROBLOX: Class In Session

2008-08-23T12:15:00.005-04:00

KidsLike.info has been reviewing various systems designed to teach kids programming, such as Scratch, Alice, Greenfoot, Python, and Java. As I've mentioned previously, Randy Pausch helped launch the Alice project as a way to "pay it forward and shape the lives of lots of future programmers.

ROBLOX offers the same potential as Alice and KidsLike.info agrees. Further, they left a comment on one of my ROBLOX-related posts asking if I could post some of my son's code in order to help other young people understand what ROBLOX code actually looks like. Great idea! I brainstormed with my son and he offered up the following short snippet of code that shows how he makes it easy to explode things within the ROBLOX world:

-- Scripts for creating, placing, and exploding bombs.

bin = script.Parent
local player = bin.Parent.Parent

-- Create a bomb where you clicked. Keep a reference to it so you can explode it later.
function onButton1Down(mouse) 
    mouse.Icon = "rbxasset://textures\\GunWaitCursor.png"
    if (player.Character.Head.Position - mouse.Hit.p).magnitude < 50 then
        local P = Instance.new("Part")
        P.Name = "Bomb"
        P.Size = Vector3.new(1,1,1)
        P.Anchored = true
        P.Position = mouse.Hit.p
        P.BrickColor = BrickColor.new(26)
        P.Parent = player.Character
 
        mouse.Icon = "rbxasset://textures\\GunCursor.png"
    end
end

-- When you press q, explode all the bombs you created and watch all the stuff explode!
function onKeyDown(key)
    key = string.lower(key)

    if key == "q" then
        local g = player.Character:children()
        for i = 1,#g do
            if g[i].Name == "Bomb" then
                local a = Instance.new("Explosion")
                a.Parent = game.Workspace
                a.Position = g[i].Position
                wait(0.1)
                g[i]:Remove()
            end
        end
    end
end

-- Bomb tool selected. Hook in my own function for ButtonDown and KeyDown.
function onSelected(mouse)
    print("Action Tool Selected") 
    mouse.Icon = "rbxasset://textures\\GunCursor.png" 
    mouse.Button1Down:connect(function() onButton1Down(mouse) end)

    mouse.KeyDown:connect(onKeyDown)
end

bin.Selected:connect(onSelected)

ROBLOX is an event-based system that leverages Lua as the programming language. In the code snippet above, my son overrides the default events (i.e. onButtonDown, onKeyDown, etc.) and plugs in his own EXPLOSIVE extensions.

The code above essentially enables you to click anywhere to plant bombs wherever you want them, and then press the 'q' key to invoke your mayhem.

Good fun...good fun. :-)

Who's the BOSS? JBoss ESB and Drools, of course!

2008-08-05T12:51:00.003-04:00

InfoWorld recently awarded the Best of Open Source Software Awards 2008 (aka the 2008 InfoWorld Bossies).

Last year, JBoss garnered awards for JBoss Seam and JBoss Rules (aka Drools).

This year, JBoss continues its winning tradition.

JBoss Drools wins for the second year in a row, achieving top honors as the Best Business Rule Management System:
"JBoss Drools is a worthy rival to leading enterprise competitors Blaze Advisor and JRules, but is available free under the Apache open source license. It combines a very fast runtime engine, a full-featured rule repository, excellent Eclipse-based developer tools, and support for Excel-based decision tables, allowing rules to be written and maintained by business analysts. The developer group is large, and the project moves fast. Drools even has one feature the market leaders lack: the capability to import rules from almost any other BRMS."

JBoss ESB garners an impressive victory as the Best Enterprise Service Bus:
"Part of the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform that combines process orchestration supporting BPEL and jBPM, security and registry services, and the Drools rules engine, JBossESB bolsters integration and service mediation with transformation and content-based routing, business rules and policy management, and both service- and human-based workflow. There's room for improvement in areas like adapters and change management, and some of the SOA suite's functionality currently requires third-party add-ons. But JBoss is already busy on improvements."

Kudos to the JBoss ESB and JBoss Drools communities for showing who's the BOSS!

Do Blog Post Titles Matter?

2008-08-04T15:57:00.005-04:00

I am conducting an [arguably unscientific] experiment to see how subtle title changes can greatly affect how much attention a blog post receives. While my experiment is still in process, I've actually seen enough to share my results.

On Tuesday July 22, I posted an article entitled:
"Product Management Tips for Listening and Sharing"

On Saturday August 1, I posted the same article using the title:
"10 Tips for Listening and Sharing on the Web"

The content of the posts were identical except for how I formatted the 10 bullets. In the first, I used regular bullets and in the second I used numbered bullets.

While the "10 Tips..." post has only been out for a couple of days, it has already generated 5 times the number of readers as the original post. This is impressive since I really tried to stack the deck against it. For example, I posted it on Saturday morning (weekends get the lowest number of readers), whereas the original post went out on a Tuesday (which typically generates the highest readership).

So, why the big difference?

Read 7 Reasons Why Numbered Blog Post Titles Work for some of the rationale.

I agree that numbered titles are more appealing. I also think the original title appealed to a more specific audience (i.e. product managers) whereas the "10 Tips..." title appeals to anyone interested in listening and sharing on the web.

Bottom-line: Titles do matter! So, if you're going to spend time creating a blog post or writing an article, devote a few extra cycles on creating a title that will grab the attention your effort deserves.

Interested In More Blogging Tips?

5 Tips for Efficient Blogging: Mike Volpe of HubSpot offers pragmatic advice

How to get traffic for your blog: Seth Godin offers a bunch of useful tips; 56 to be exact

Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog: Post on "I'd Rather Be Writing" blog with a TON of useful links to related articles

My Friend Jon: The Flip-Flopper

2008-08-03T11:27:00.003-04:00

My buddy Jon Maron posted his first article on his new blog. He's declared to the world that he's a flip-flopper and proud of it!

I encourage you to read Jon's "I am a flip-flopper". It's timely (due to the current presidential race) and timeless (people change their minds every day).

Above image licensed under the free Creative Commons Attribution License.

10 Tips for Listening and Sharing on the Web

2008-08-02T12:16:00.005-04:00

In my recent article Product Managers: Chief ***holes or Value Creators?, I stated: For both proprietary and commercial open source software, the Product Manager needs to focus on creating a product that people will actually buy! And to do that, the Product Manager needs to listen to the market in order to understand their Buyers and Users.

So how can a Product Manager (or any business owner for that matter) be as efficient and effective as possible listening to the market? And how can they easily share the information they gather with other stakeholders interested in learning and understanding?

Below is a list of FREE tools/websites/tips I currently use for Listening and Sharing as part of my daily routine. Please note that RSS Feeds are at the heart of my system. If you are new to RSS, please read: Google Reader Help Center: What is a feed? What does it mean to subscribe? Also note that these tools do not replace but add information (in an automated, scalable manner) that complements my usual face to face/phone/email conversations with customers, prospects, partners, coworkers, etc.

1. Key Websites: Start off by creating a list of the best sources of online information (news, articles, opinions, blogs, online communities, industry analyst sites) for your product's industry, buyers, users, key influencers, etc. If you are drawing a complete blank, start with Alltop, which attempts to collect "all the top" stories across the web. Be sure to ask others (including some of your customers) what sites they read. Try to make a NICE BIG LIST and always keep your eyes and ears open for new sites to add to your list. You can always trim the noise and useless sources of information later. Be sure to include any public forums or online communities (ex. Facebook Groups) that are engaging in discussions related to your areas of interest.

2. Google Reader: Subscribe to as many of your Key Websites as possible using an RSS Feed Reader. I use Google Reader which is free and easy. Any good reader will do. If you don't already use an RSS Reader (ex. you subscribe to email alerts instead), then I strongly suggest you move this task out of Email and use RSS Feeds instead! Why? Because email is an inflexible closed system that is already likely overloaded; whereas RSS Feeds are designed to enable you to more easily GATHER, ORGANIZE and SHARE articles that you find useful with others. More details below on how I use Google Reader.

3. Google News and Blog Search: Your list of Key Websites is not enough. You need to identify the key terms for your area of focus and setup RSS Feeds from Google News and Google Blog Search (and any other useful search sites; such as Technorati) for the various search criteria that you want to track. You will likely setup multiple feeds across your search criteria (ex. your product, your competitors products, key industry terms, etc.). This is not an exact science, so it's OK to tweak your terms and recreate your feeds until you get a good flow of information going!

4. Delicious Social Bookmarking: While you can use the organization and favoriting features built into Google Reader, I prefer to use Delicious to store and organize my bookmarks. Click here to learn about Delicious and Social Bookmarking. The Delicious Toolbar Buttons (Bookmarklets) make the process of creating bookmarks easy. I use tags to help me organize my bookmarks. For example, look at my Ringside Networks Delicious page to see my favorite articles, and click on the "Recommended" tag to see how it displays only those articles tagged as "Recommended". If you don't like Delicious, Magnolia is another social bookmarking site worth considering. More details below on how I use Delicious.

5. Small and Shareable Links: Sometimes you want to share a link to an article that has a really long URL. I use TinyURL for turning long URLs into teeny-tiny URLs. So, http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/blogs/productmarketing becomes http://tinyurl.com/2vzwqp. Be sure to setup the TinyURL Toolbar Button which makes creating a TinyURL just one click away. NOTE: I use TinyURL when I need a short URL and don't mind obfuscating (hiding) the original URL. I tend NOT to use TinyURL when I want/need to use the real links (ex. when referring to pages on my company website, I want to keep track of other sites that link to pages on my website).

6. Social Media Firehose: The Social Media Firehose leverages Yahoo Pipes to tap into what people are saying and sharing across the realm of Social Media (ex. Flickr, Twitter, Friendfeed, Digg, etc.). It's as simple as plugging in your search terms, any sites you want excluded from the search, and clicking Run Pipe. After the search runs, simply add it as a feed to your reader in order to track the conversations happening on the Social Web. For those interested in just searching Twitter conversations, Summize (now Twitter Search) is a good tool for doing just that.

7. Forums and Online Communities: If your company offers a User Forum or if you are aware of any independent forums focused on your area of interest, then you may want to subscribe to a feed focused on the the topic areas you are interested in. For example, the Ringside Networks forums are at http://forums.ringsidenetworks.org/ and I tune into the User Forums rather than the Developer Forums. When I was at JBoss, I also subscribed to the User Forums.

8. Social Following and Aggregation: If you have a handful of key people whose commentary you like to follow closely AND who use Friendfeed to aggregate their blogs, twitters, and other social activities, then you should create an account on Friendfeed and follow them. You can also subscribe to your Friendfeed feed within your reader, if you want.

9. Website and Content Analytics: Inbound Marketing (where you help yourself "get found" by people learning about and shopping in your industry) is an important process for small to midsize companies to understand. Since CONTENT is the fuel for the Inbound Marketing machine, it is critical for Product Managers and Product Marketers to understand who's viewing the content on their website, how they are finding the content, how often they are viewing, etc. Why? Because if you're going to spend time creating content, you should use tools to measure how successful / useful that content actually is. At JBoss, we used Eloqua and SalesForce.com as key components of our "marketing machine". We're a much smaller company at Ringside Networks, so I use Google Analytics to analyze website traffic, and I've been considering HubSpot to help me get fancier with improved search engine optimization, etc. HubSpot also offers two FREE tools worth mentioning: Website Grader and Press Release Grader. Both provide a nice summary of what's working and what can be improved. Finally, SEO Pro's Link Checker is a useful free tool that analyzes who is linking to your pages. Just plug in your link and after a little while it will list all of the places that link is referenced.

10. Private Wiki / Intranet: For the files and information that can not be stored publicly, leverage your corporate intranet or create a protected section off of your wiki. My main point here is for you to MOVE THE FILES AND INFORMATION THAT EXIST ONLY ON YOUR LAPTOP INTO AN ACCESSIBLE PLACE! Why? Because people get hit by busses. People leave companies. Other people could benefit from information you have...if it wasn't locked up on your laptop. Yes, you will need to keep some information private and on your laptop. For all of the other useful information, give it wings and make it free! At JBoss and Red Hat, I stored most of my useful yet private information on our Private Wiki (behind our firewall). NOTE: You can still leverage Social Bookmarking for links to files that are on your Intranet. Just remember that only fellow employees who have access will be able to view the documents; all others will get an error accessing the link.

So that's my list of tools and websites use for listening and sharing. Since Google Reader and Delicious are tools that I use day in and day out, let me go into a little more detail on how I use these important tools.

How do I use Google Reader?
Let's start with a screenshot of my Google Reader at this very moment:

On the left, you will see that I have my Feeds organized into Folders (ex. Analysts, Product Management, Marketing, Ringside Networks, etc., etc.). This helps me organize the flow of information and enables me to keep on top of the more important folders (ex. keep their unread counts near zero).

So while I'm drinking my morning coffee, I read through they key areas and do a quick triage on the other folders to see if anything else is worth spending time on. If I want to flag an article for followup, I click on the Star in Google Reader, which adds it into the Starred Items list. I use this list as a lightweight way to keep track of links that I'd like to chew on for a while (ex. articles I may refer to in one of my future blog posts).

UPDATED: In response to requests for a "how-to" video, I posted "Google Reader In Action" which shows how to get started with Google Reader in less than 5 minutes. The video walks you through subscribing to search results on Google News, Google Blogs, and the Social Media Firehose.

How do I use Delicious?
Whenever I come across a web page or article worth bookmarking and sharing, I use the Delicious Toolbar Buttons to save a link to the article. I usually specify a one or two sentence description as well as one or or more tags.

More interestingly, I use Delicious to automagically populate the Recommended Reading section of the Ringside Networks Social Business web page.

How does this work? I leverage the Delicious Linkrolls feature to show just the articles with the the Delicious "Recommended" tag within a specially formatted list. I also use this feature to keep track of notable mentions of Ringside Networks by the media. See the Ringside Networks Media Coverage section of the Ringside News page as well as the Delicious "RingsideBuzz" tag to see how this works.

What About Online Talking?
The list above is focused on online Listening and Sharing. I intentionally did not cover tools for online Talking (ex. Blogs, Wikis, Forums, IRC, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) since I believe people should get good at Listening and Sharing before making the leap to Talking. If you just can't wait to get started Talking, then I suggest you create a blog and post to it on at least a weekly basis. Also post comments in response to other people's blogs and articles, as well as answer questions on Forums.

UPDATED: For a good overview of why you should blog and how to go about it, read Gopal Shenoy's "Five reasons why I blog and my eight blogging recommendations".

How Are You Listening and Sharing?
Are you using any of the tools I mentioned above? If so, how are they working out for you? If not, what are you using? I'm always looking for tools that help me work smarter, so if you have any goodies, please share.

References
For your convenience, here is a list of the various tools and websites that I mentioned above:

Alltop

Google Reader

Google News

Google Blog Search

Technorati

Delicious

Magnolia

TinyURL

Social Media Firehose

Summize / Twitter Search

Friendfeed

Google Analytics

HubSpot

Website Grader

Press Release Grader

SEO Pro's Link Checker

Social Web Example: ROBLOX Virtual Playworld

2008-08-01T10:18:00.009-04:00

In prior posts, I provided a definition of social web as well as how household-name businesses such as Jeep and Nike are embracing the social web in order to more closely engage their respective communities of passion.

In this post, I'd like to focus my attention on the intersection of the social web and online virtual worlds. While I find the recent news about 3D virtual worlds interesting, the highlighted examples such as Vivaty, Google’s Lively project, and the Electric Sheep Co.’s WebFlock feel a little empty and unremarkable from a "meaningful interactions" perspective.

I consider ROBLOX Virtual Playworld a much better example to explore. Why? Because it is an online destination that not only satisfies kids' social and entertainment needs but also addresses their hunger for creativity and learning.

To get a better feel for what ROBLOX is all about, just view the following video which illustrates ROBLOX in action:

Click here to view this video on YouTube.

ROBLOX enables 100's of thousands of kids to interact and play within virtual worlds while learning design, engineering, science and programming. I find the educational aspects so remarkable that I wrote a post earlier this year stating that ROBLOX was grooming our future open source developers.

Since that post, my son has spent countless hours designing, building, and scripting his own customized virtual worlds. For example, he created a very popular Baseball Stadium where you can almost smell the grass on the field while having fun throwing, fielding, and hitting the baseball. It is a modern stadium complete with hot dog stands and a giant blimp hovering over it.
He spends a lot of time using the ROBLOX Studio development environment PROGRAMMING the behavior of the elements/objects within his worlds. For example, he creates complex 3D behaviors within the world by calling mathematical functions that enable the bat, for example, to swing at a wide variety of angles rather than just back and forth. He also adjusts the impact on the ball so that it bounces off at varying speeds.

He leverages the "social" features of the site (beyond the Forum, Wiki, and Blog) including "friending" other people on the site, sending email-like messages to each other in order to ask and answer questions, chatting online while playing within a particular world, voting for "favorite places", etc.

Using my 7 Key Attributes of Social Web Applications, I think ROBLOX scores pretty well. Every user has an Identity; the information is not rich likely due to the fact that we are dealing with kids so onlineprovacy is important. Their Reputations are based on how they conduct themselves online as well as the quality of the places and/or scripts they create. They don't offer much in the way of Presence. People can strike up Relationships with eachother, but not nearly as robust as what you get on sites like Facebook. You can't really Group your friends as far as I can tell. Conversations happen via Forums, chat, and their built in email/messaging system. And Sharing happens all the time since people can share objects, scripts, places, etc.

ROBLOX Business Model
Standard membership in ROBLOX is free and provides the ability for kids to receive an avatar, play within the worlds, as well as design, build, and save a single place of their own. ROBLOX also offers Builders Club which is a premium service that gives kids the ability to create and manage multiple places. It also enables players to earn ROBLOX currency (called "ROBUX") which can be used to purchase premium items in the ROBLOX catalog that enable much greater customization of avatars and interactive creations. I like the fact that ROBLOX offers a free way for kids to get started and then charges extra for increased value.

Bottom-line: ROBLOX provides a great example of how combining the social web and online virtual worlds provides value beyond entertainment and social interactions. As they say on their website, ROBLOX believes "in the theory that kids learn best by making things - by engaging in the creative and complex process of imagining, designing, and constructing. Provide them with a safe and nurturing place to build, give them the requisite tools, and let them play."

NOTE: ROBLOX has a great web page for parents who want to learn more.

i-legions Commits Brand Suicide?

2008-07-30T11:01:00.007-04:00

I stumbled across an article by Jennifer Leggio of ZDNet that illustrates the art of brand suicide in this day and age of the social web:

‘Branded community’ leads to trademark morass

Basically, Jennifer received a cease and desist letter from i-legions claiming that her use of the phrase "branded community" constitutes trademark infringement. Denise Howell of ZDNet commented on this issue and provided a good link regarding Trademarks.

Legalese aside, what makes this situation precious is the irony involved.

i-legions is "The only company whose Branded Communities® generate real revenue as they enhance user interaction with your brand".

The letter from i-legions was specifically in response to an article entitled "Enterprise communities: build or join?" which highlights Mzinga, a provider of online communities and social networks for businesses. One could say they help companies build "branded communities".

That means...Mzinga...is....a competitor. Aha, now I get it!

So rather than compete on the value of their solution, i-legions' recipe for social web success is to legally govern what people can and can't say. Do I have that right? Well, that makes perfect sense since i-legions, after all, is "The only company whose Branded Communities® generate real revenue...".

So, while i-legions positions themselves as social web leaders and brand experts, I hope their advice to their prospective customers regarding this issue is to "do as I say and not as I do".

SIDE NOTE
Trademark infringement is an important issue to understand, and I am on record regarding the importance of protecting trademarks. See my What Do You Stand For? post regarding the Hibernate trademark.

This i-legions situation, however, is not about infringing on an established product name, company logo, etc. Instead it appears focused on someone's ill-informed desire to govern the "descriptive fair use of words in the English language" (i.e. not trademark infringement)...especially by [or in reference to] their competitors.

Goodbye Randy Pausch

2008-07-25T10:20:00.008-04:00

Last August 2007, Randy Pausch was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. His doctors estimated that he had 3 to 6 months to live.

After almost a year, the sad day has finally come. WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh reported this morning that:

CMU Professor Randy Pausch Has Died

Carnegie Mellon posted "An Enduring Legacy: Randy Pausch Inspired Millions" that summarizes Randy's life and legacy.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article entitled "Randy Pausch: Find and Follow Your Passion" that described the key lessons that resonated with me after reading Randy's book (The Last Lecture) and viewing the various YouTube videos of his speeches and interviews; read my article for links to his book and YouTube videos.

I am among millions of people who have been inspired by Randy's story over the past year or so.

In his 6 minute commencement speech at Carnegie Mellon this past May, he described the importance of Finding and Following Your Passion:

In reference to his terminal condition, he stated:
"We don't beat the grim reaper by living longer. You beat the reaper by living well and living fully. For the reaper will come for all of us. The question is what do we do between the time we're born and the time he shows up. Because when he shows up, it's too late to do all the things you always wanted to get around to..."

To make his point more urgently and succinctly, he uses a cliche (he likes cliches):
"It is not the things we do in life that we regret on our deathbed, it is the things we do not."

Goodbye Randy Pausch and Thank You for sharing and preserving your life lessons for all to continue to enjoy long into the future.

You will be missed.

Product Management Tips for Listening and Sharing

2008-07-22T22:00:00.001-04:00

Reposted as "10 Tips for Listening and Sharing on the Web".

Read "Do Blog Post Titles Matter?" for why this article was reposted.

Wrapping My Head Around Microsoft Live Mesh

2008-07-21T20:48:00.005-04:00

In late April, I started seeing interesting articles regarding Microsoft's Live Mesh that were stating that Microsoft "is bringing its developers onto the Internet in an interesting new way" with Live Mesh. My gut was telling me that this was important stuff, but I did not have the time to dig in.

In May, my gut started rumbling again after Matt Asay (whom I'm a big fan of) posted "Where did Microsoft's ambition go?". The key parts of his post that stuck with me were:
"Microsoft does need ambition on the web....makes me think the company has too much cash to be able to see a future where it's largely irrelevant, awash in tablets but a nonentity on the web that stitches them together."

No offense Matt, but based on my experience over the past two decades, one should never, ever count Microsoft out. Ever. Remember OS/2, remember Netware, remember Netscape?

Since I've been spending the better part of this year focused on the Social Web, I left myself a todo to spend some time figuring out Live Mesh, especially after reading the "Full text of Ray Ozzie Mesh Memo". The quote that stuck with me was:
"Community on the web once meant “group communications”, largely through rudimentary tools such as email, IM and IRC, message boards and newsgroups. Today, the action has shifted toward using composite communications tools and platforms that mash together content, applications and commerce, all within the context of group interaction. These social platforms are altering the way we connect and coordinate, establish identity and affinities, and build reputation."

That quote showed me that Microsoft (or at least Ray Ozzie) gets it! So, if Microsoft is able to execute on this vision, they will resurrect themselves once again.

Anyhow, over the weekend I finally spent time on my todo. I came across a very informative video by Ori Amiga from Microsoft that really helped me understand Microsoft's Live Mesh strategy and MOE (the Mesh Operating Environment). In the hour-long "Programming the Mesh" video, Ori shows a number of demos covering the native Mesh feeds, applications using Mesh, a Silverlight client that supports working on and offline, a custom Facebook application that syncs Facebook photos with Live Mesh, a Mac client that sends photos to Live Mesh, and LINQ queries over Mesh objects.

Pretty...cool...stuff.

I also read an article by Steve Gillmor on TechCrunchIT , where he stated that Microsoft Live Mesh is "essentially a rewrite of Notes replication over open protocols with FeedSync combined with an atomization of social media primitives into a new platform on which to build applications that are identity rather than hardware or native OS-centric. Today, we see Live Mesh as about virtualizing files from the containing device over a Web hub, but at a deeper level, the Mesh is as much an information router as a bit traffic cop. How to act on the data becomes more strategic than the underlying job of moving things around to follow the user."

It is great to see that Microsoft realizes the importance of weaving basic social primitives into the experience of the users of their platforms. You can be sure that I will be following the progress of Live Mesh as it continues its rollout over the coming quarters.

Bottom-line: I just knew when I joined Ringside Networks that we were at the center of something pretty big. Folks like Google and Facebook get it...and what I've seen of Live Mesh, I believe Microsoft gets it as well.

Product Managers: Chief Assholes or Value Creators?

2008-07-18T19:44:00.007-04:00

I was interviewed recently regarding the similarities and differences of the role of Product Management within proprietary software, commercial open source software, and community open source software settings. We actually used the Pragmatic Marketing Framework - which I know and love - to guide the discussion.

While there are indeed some differences between proprietary and open source models (which I'll cover in a future post), the Product Management fundamentals are pretty much the same. Moreover, the main point that I made was:

For both proprietary and commercial open source software, the Product Manager needs to focus on creating a product that people will actually buy! Plain and simple.

I actually have a quote I use as an internal mantra that helps ensure I stay focused on creating valuable products that solve real customer problems:

"Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one..."

My point here is that a Product Manager needs to check their OPINIONS at the door. Any Product Manager that starts off a feature discussion with "in my humble opinion" runs the risk of being...you guessed it...the Chief Asshole.

While some may strive [and deserve] that lofty title, I'd rather be known as a Value Creator who focuses on solving problems and driving real value for my customers, partners, community, company, coworkers, and investors.

Moreover, since the Product Manager communicates with a wide range of people - both internally and externally - it is important his/her decisions are based on well founded information.
Above is an ugly diagram that I've used over the past decade to illustrate the various conversations a Product Manager has to handle over the course of a product's lifecycle. So, the Product Manager has the opportunity to make a BIG [positive or negative] impact on the success of a company.

Another one of my favorite internal dialog quotes comes from Jerry Seinfeld:

"Who are these people??!!"

For any new product offering, one of the first places I focus is on understanding and documenting the Buyer Personas. After all, how the heck are you going to create real value for customers if you don't know who's buying? User personas, while not the same, are also useful to understand. UPDATED: Here's a good article covering the difference between the two: "Buyer Personas And User Personas"

Understanding who these people are provides a solid foundation for the Product Manager to more effectively gain insight into market and customer needs so s/he can integrate, translate, and communicate this information - in a variety of different forms - to the various stakeholders involved in the product lifecycle.

While Product Managers must maintain positive working relationships with all stakeholders, I feel the relationship between the Development Manager and the Product Manager is most important since this is where the critical translation of the "what and why" into the "how and when" occurs.

While a bit scary, the closer a Product Manager and Development Manager can come to a Vulcan Mind Meld, the better.

So in closing, don't be a Chief Asshole. Be a Value Creator instead. Why? Because it's much more fun when you actually create products that 1) solve real problems, and 2) people are willing to pay for!

Want to learn more about the role of Product Management?
I suggest you read the following FREE e-book from Pragmatic Marketing:
The Strategic Role of Product Management: How a market-driven focus leads companies to build products people want to buy.

Consumerization of Software: Social Web Maturing Before Our Very Eyes

2008-07-17T17:29:00.008-04:00

Fueled by our use of Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google, iTunes, Twitter, YouTube, etc., the consumerization of software has been a growing movement over the past few years. The benefit of this wave is software that is more engaging and intuitive. No expensive training required.

Most of these next-generation websites and applications sit at the heart of the Social Web, and whether corporate IT likes it or not, many employees are using these consumer technologies during work hours.

Having spent many years in the enterprise software space, I realize that corporate IT prefers MATURE technologies. So, let's take a look at two examples (Twitter and Facebook) of how things are maturing within the Social Web Landscape.

Twitter
Just scour through Twitter to see how people/workers have been using it to communicate their whereabouts, thoughts, opinions, among other things. You also don't have to look very hard to read about Twitter's repeated issues with scalability and downtime. The issues have happened often enough that some have moved away from Twitter to Friendfeed; choice is good.

Believe it or not, I am happy to see the issues with Twitter's scalability and the resulting uproar from the consumers. Why? Because it is useful for people to be reminded that anything on the web that becomes popular so fast has to deal with scaling issues that can derail it. So plan for it and be ready to deal with it.

Moreover, I believe the public airing of the dirty laundry helps drive things more quickly towards improvement; which in turn helps the overall market mature more quickly. Finally, Twitter's move to acquire Summize is just another proof point of how quickly this market is maturing.

Facebook
Another potential saga worth watching is Facebook's rollout of its latest round of [pretty extensive] changes to the Facebook Platform. Let me draw your eye to an interesting thread on the Facebook Platform Developer Forum.

The Facebook Platform team posted "We're Launching the New Profile Design to Users Very Soon":
"This is a quick heads up that we're going to start opening the new profile design to selected users. We're finalizing all the code, and the profile will be available to users you can see as soon as 24 hours from now, though it might take a few days before you see any of your users on the new site as they decide to opt in. So get your applications ready!"

Just look at some of the responses:

"We would appreciate it if you are able to make the new profile design at http://www.new.facebook.com/ fully functional and let us test our apps for a few days before opening it up to users. You and all of us risk alienating users if you open up the current new design to users already, and they start seeing broken features, both from you and from our apps, right?"
"Facebook should consider itself as an operating system. We are the app designers. Right now, the operating system designers are doing a poor and unprofessional job at releasing new functionality. In the end, it is the users who will be hurt....Are you listening, Facebook?"
"I don't think Facebook could have handled this transition any worse. Every time I have looked into doing some work to move our apps to new API, I have run into issues/bugs and have just given up. Facebook needs to: 1. Get their stuff together and working. 2. Once they have the functionality working and more importantly documented properly, so all the Facebook API libraries can be upgraded (not just PHP), then they need to give the developers 1 month to upgrade and test their apps. The 1 month time should only start after they have a good beta in working condition.... 3. And only then they should start opening up the new system to the users, and that too in phases. Hopefully someone in Facebook is going to wakeup and realize this is a major mess as of now."

I point out the above not to hang Facebook out to dry, but to state the fact that I am happy to see this type of open dialog on such an important topic. It shows me that while Facebook can be handling its new rollout better, some of the developers targeting the Facebook Platform 1) care about their users, and 2) understand what is required from a mature platform.

Conclusion
While I've focused on examples of consumerized software within a less-than-mature light, Corporate IT skeptics also need to understand and appreciate the sheer number of members being served every minute of every day on platforms like Facebook. Frankly it is mind-numbingly impressive. Furthermore, I'd argue that Facebook is a great example of Web 2.0 and SOA in action; this is not tinker-toy software. But that's a blog for another day.

Bottom-line: The consumerization of software is well underway, and it is fascinating to watch as the Social Web matures before our very eyes.

OFF TOPIC: Roller Coasters and Billy Joel with Liza

2008-07-11T12:34:00.008-04:00

My daughter Liza turned 17 this week and she got her driver's license on her birthday. I'm both very excited and a little freaked out. She can't be 17 already, can she?

In order to properly celebrate the momentous occasion, I flipped her the car keys yesterday morning and we headed out for a father/daughter day.

The weather was a perfect 85 and Sunny as Liza drove us to Hershey PA for a day of roller coasters at HersheyPark and a night of Billy Joel at HersheyPark Stadium. This marks my fourth Billy Joel concert over the years...but was Liza's first chance to see him in action.

After arriving at HersheyPark, we quickly headed over to check out the brand new roller coaster: Fahrenheit. While Fahrenheit is a good new coaster, our favorite of the day was easily Storm Runner which launches you from 0 to 72 mph in 2 seconds....what a rush!

We rode all the major rides during the day and grabbed a bite to eat...and some yummy funnel cake...before walking over to HersheyPark Stadium for the concert. We couldn't wait for the show to start...especially after hearing him warm up earlier in the afternoon.

I have to admit, it is pretty cool (and a little strange) having a daughter who likes Billy Joel as much as I do. I mean, the dude is 59 years old and hasn't made a new album in over 15 years. BUT his songs are CLASSICS, so that helps explain how he is able to bridge the generation gap.

Before the concert started, we debated what song he would open up with. I figured it had to be an upbeat song...so maybe "We Didn't Start The Fire" or "Only The Good Die Young". Liza thought he'd start with "Miami 2017" (aka "Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway"), which is one of my favorites...but a bit obscure for the average fan...so maybe not.

Anyhow, Liza was dead on; Billy Joel kicked off the concert with Miami 2017, followed quickly by the amazing "Angry Young Man"...how do his fingers move so fast on the piano???

Liza almost passed out when Billy Joel started playing her favorite: "Don't Ask Me Why"

Ever the performer, Billy Joel rattled off a range of hits as well as a few of his obscure classics (for the true fans in the audience). His encore ended, as expected, with the classic "Piano Man". There is simply NOTHING like listening to a stadium full of people singing this song...it just leaves you with goose bumps. Very cool!

Alas, all great days must come to an end. So at 11:30pm, we headed out on our 2 hour drive home. We reminisced about the great thrill rides we enjoyed during the day....but mostly we just turned up the volume on the car stereo and listened to more Billy Joel songs the whole way home.

Randy Pausch: Find and Follow Your Passion

2008-07-06T10:37:00.007-04:00

I read a book entitled "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch. Randy is a Professor of Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction and Design at Carnegie Mellon University. And he is also battling pancreatic cancer; last August 2007 he was diagnosed with 3 - 6 months to live.

Randy covers a range of different accomplishments in his book, but he has found a way to "pay it forward" on a grand scale by pioneering the Alice project, which is free educational software that teaches students computer programming in a 3D environment. Alice looks really cool and reminds me of my "The Future of Open Source" post, where I described how Roblox (a 3D world not dissimilar to Alice) is grooming our next generation of developers.

Anyhow, this book struck a chord with me on a variety of fronts. Since my father-in-law died of pancreatic cancer and my own father died from brain cancer, I can relate to what Randy's family is going through.

Randy is only a few years older than me, so I just chuckle at how some of his childhood dreams and travels feel so familiar to me. For example, Randy's sport was football, mine was baseball. While neither of us made it to the big leagues, we both had coaches who taught us the importance of learning the fundamentals; a lesson that can be applied to almost every aspect of life.

The following "Last Lecture" presentation was given at Carnegie Mellon on September 18, 2007. The Last Lecture series asks professors to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. Ironic given the fact that Randy is actually facing his own demise. Anyhow, this inspirational presentation by Randy Pausch offers a nice summary of what's covered in his book:

As if the above presentation was not enough, this past May 2008 (9 months after his diagnosis) Randy gave a 6 minute commencement speech at Carnegie Mellon that is absolutely worth watching. His key point of inspiration to the audience:

Find and Follow Your Passion

Passion does not come from things or money. It comes from things that fuel you from the inside. Passion is grounded in people and what they think of you. Achieving your goals is not easy, so use your passion and the help of people who respect you to break through the "brick walls" that you encounter along the way.

For your convenience, below are a series of links to Randy Pausch videos starting with his Last Lecture in September, his interview with Diane Sawyer in April, and his Carnegie Mellon commencement speech in May.

Randy Pausch - The Last Lecture Presentation on September 18, 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Randy Pausch - Part 1 of April 2008 Interview with Diane Sawyer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZbOQqtDAW0

Randy Pausch - Part 2 of April 2008 Interview with Diane Sawyer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDIf4D4SQFo

Randy Pausch - Part 3 of April 2008 Interview with Diane Sawyer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O8FvH_k2k4

Randy Pausch - Part 4 of April 2008 Interview with Diane Sawyer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2HWTrDTsv0

Randy Pausch - Part 5 of April 2008 Interview with Diane Sawyer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSx-AB4JhvQ

Randy Pausch - CMU Commencement Speech on May 18,2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcYv5x6gZTA

Social Web Market: The Long Tail, Skinny Head, and Beefy Middle

2008-06-30T11:00:00.001-04:00

I read an interesting article by Chris Anderson entitled "Debating the Long Tail". In it he responds to an article by Anita Elberse, a Harvard Business School associate professor, who challenges his long tail theory's predictions.

The difference of opinions arises from the fact that they have different perspectives on where the head ends and the tail begins...which actually dovetails nicely with how I've been explaining to people where Ringside Networks fits within the Social Web Market Landscape.

I start off by drawing the standard long tail diagram. In my diagram, I refer to the Skinny Head which is where the "blockbusters" reside that Anita Elberse writes about. We also, of course, have the Long Tail which is where the large volume of niche offerings exist. I add a section, however, between the two that I refer to as the Beefy Middle.

The Beefy Middle changes some of the debate of where the head ends and the tail begins since it provides an area between the two. Let's look at a diagram of the Social Web Market Landscape to get a better feel for what the Beefy Middle entails. The # of Sites is on the X-Axis and the # of Profiles (i.e. registered users) is on the Y-Axis:

The Social Web's Skinny Head is the domain of the large social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, Orkut, and LinkedIn. It also houses the most popular social applications such as YouTube, Flickr, Delicious, and Digg. These represent the major hubs of the social web.

The Social Web's Long Tail is the domain of personal blogs, websites, and simple social web widgets and gadgets. Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect define the far left of the Long Tail since they are designed to bring social capabilities to the long tail of simple websites.

This leaves the Social Web's Beefy Middle. This area is where most corporate websites reside. This is the market area that Ringside Networks is focused on as well as solutions from companies such as Acquia (i.e. Drupal), Jive, and Lithium.

The websites that reside in the Beefy Middle already have their own database of registered users (thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands) along with some semblance of profile data (i.e. credit card info, newsletter registration, etc.). It is usually NOT desirable for these websites to create a social network that is separate from and does not reside on their existing web property. These companies want/need to integrate their existing users within a larger social context.

Moreover, these companies have their own systems that manage their own content and data which is further reason for using a social web solution that integrates well with their existing systems.

Finally, these sites typically have web applications (or are planning web applications) that they would like to enhance to have a social context that enables the applications to connect to and run on multiple sites including the major social networks like Facebook.

The market requirements of the Beefy Middle are challenging since it is almost a given that the existing registered users are already socially represented on two or three of the Skinny Head sites as well as countless sites across the Beefy Middle and Long Tail.

This means that these companies need to define a social web strategy that enables their website to operate as a spoke that can easily plug into the major social web hubs. They also need to give their registered users the ability to map their social identities to the social hub(s) of their choice. This minimizes duplication of profile data and maximizes the ability of users to quickly and easily engage their broad network(s) of friends.

So there you have it; the Long Tail, Skinny Head...and Beefy Middle. My guess is the term "Beefy Middle" won't be as widely used as "Long Tail", but hopefully it helps illustrate the portion of the market that Ringside Networks is focused on serving.

UPDATED: Seth Godin recently posted "The Long Tail and the Dip" in which he describes an area that exists between the Head and the Long Tail. He refers to it as "the second pocket" which is where successful, profitable niche products exist. It's cool that Seth sees the need to discuss this region of the market...but hey Seth...it's called the Beefy Middle! :-)

If you'd like to learn more about how Ringside Networks addresses the needs of companies in the Beefy Middle, please check out the Social Business section of the Ringside Networks website for a range of examples and articles related to the rapidly moving business of the Social Web.

Social Window Shopping

2008-06-25T13:39:00.012-04:00

Back in the stone ages (i.e. before the Internet), people would get together with their friends for a day of window shopping.

Going from store to store, comparing and contrasting the alternatives, placing items of interest on layaway, and ultimately making a purchase based on the input of friends.

The web, of course, has changed this dynamic by making it very easy to shop online. Sites like Amazon.com have User Ratings and Reviews applications that allow any member to post their thoughts on a particular item. They also have Wishlist applications that enable people to set aside items that they are considering for purchase.

While these applications provide a great source of information to the shopper, they are still missing the crux of what made window shopping so powerful; namely the input and social camaraderie of friends.

Why is this important? Well, if you look at the chart below from Forrester's "Data Chart of the Week: Who Do People Trust?", you will see that the opinions of friends or acquaintances who have used the product or service is what people value and trust the most.

With the advent of the Social Web, we are at a point where e-commerce websites can start to bring the power of social interactions back to the shopping process.

Social Window Shopping Example
Let's look at an example where you are shopping for running shoes on Sneaks4Geeks.com. You've narrowed your search down to your top three choices by reading all of the anonymous reviews and ratings. It's time to kick it up a notch and get your friends involved!

While you already have some friends on Sneaks4Geeks, you also want to get the opinions of your running friends on Facebook and the Nike+ community.

Sneaks4Geeks uses this really cool Social Window Shopping application that enables people to interact with and get shopping advice from their friends on a range of social sites. The Window Shopping application developers had the mentality of "write once, social everywhere" when they created the application, so they chose Ringside Networks to help them achieve this goal.

So on Sneaks4Geeks you add your top three running shoe choices into the Window Shopping application and reach out to your running friends on Sneaks4Geeks, Facebook, and Nike+. You include the note: "Help me choose! I'm considering the following running shoes for the Broad Street Run in May. What's your favorite?".

Since the Window Shopping application is also integrated into Facebook and Nike+, my friends across all of these sites can respond to my request from within the Window Shopping application available on their particular site. They place their vote for one of the running shoes and provide an insightful comment back.

After a little while, you tally the votes, read the comments, and make your purchase based on the input of your network of friends. For those friends who responded with an opinion, the Window Shopping application automatically thanks them and shares the results of your purchase.

You happily trot off with a new pair of running shoes, and your shopping experience reminds two of your friends that their running shoes are getting pretty worn out...maybe it's time for them to get some new running shoes from Sneaks4Geeks!

Conclusion
For any Social Web initiative to succeed, it is important to find the area of passion that will truly drive social engagement. In the example above, enabling people to shop and interact with friends for their thoughts and opinions touches on a critical area of passion for many people.

Please visit the Social Business section of the Ringside Networks website for more articles on the Social Web and to learn more about how Ringside Networks helps facilitate scenarios such as the Social Window Shopping example covered above.

Social Web Tip: Start With Passion

2008-06-24T19:41:00.004-04:00

In my past two posts, I wrote about two very successful social web communities, the Jeep Community and the Nike+ Community.

What do these communities have in common besides well known and established brands?
PASSION

Just look through all of the pictures and videos posted by the Jeep community to get an idea of how ravenously passionate they are about their Jeeps. Similarly, the Nike+ running community just loves getting together for running events, talking about the latest running gear, etc.

Jeep and Nike are big companies with established brands and healthy, growing communities.

How about we look at an example where the seeds of passion are just being planted?

I recently caught up with a friend of mine who has launched a new site called Greenthumbr:

Bob McWhirter loves gardening and while he has only just started building the Greenthumbr community, the world is definitely full of people who love everything green too. So he has fertile ground upon which to grow a thriving membership.

Passion comes in big and small packages. Moreover, passion can start relatively small, but with the help of the social web, BIG things can happen!

Look at Barack Obama's rise to prominence as a perfect example of how the social web can amplify passion. While some people knew about Barack Obama 18 months ago, his MyBarackObama.com website as well as his Barack Obama Facebook page have attracted and energized millions of active and passionate followers.

So, my social web tip for you is to find the PASSION in your community and feed it, nurture it, encourage it, revel in it, wallow in it. And before long, you just might see the strong roots of a thriving social web community take hold.

Social Web Example: The Nike Plus Community

2008-06-23T08:00:00.001-04:00

In a prior post, I provided a definition of social web. Some may read that post and ask the question: "But are real companies actually embracing the social web?"

The answer is an unequivocal: Absolutely!

I have already illustrated how the Jeep Community is an extension of Jeep.com that engages its passionate community directly as well as promotes the large number of Jeep communities that exist on social web sites like Facebook, Yahoo, etc.

The Nike+ Community is similar in that it engages its passionate member community directly from its own website. It is different in that it does not overtly interlink with other Nike communities that exist on other social web sites. At least not nearly as much as the Jeep Community site does.

The picture below shows the entry point for runners to track their mileage. A cool feature is the Community mileage counter that is constantly counting up the collective mileage posted by the Nike+ community. Kind of reminiscent of the McDonald's "100 Million Served" counter. Neat touch.

The next picture shows the entry point for finding and sharing events that the Nike community would be interested in. Nike clearly wants to encourage their community to run together and interact.

Nike also provides an information-rich blog entitled "Inside Nike Running". They have experts writing on a range of topics. So for the community members who primarily like to read and listen, they have a great resource. Nike also provides a Forum for members who are more vocal and want to share their own thoughts.

While the site is a little over-polished for my tastes, it absolutely provides a branded way for Nike to engage its community around an area of PASSION.

I searched on Facebook to get a feel for how Nike is expanding its Nike+ community by engaging with Facebook members directly. While there are a variety of Nike+ groups created on Facebook (ex. the "Nike+ Challenges" group), none of them appear to have a lot of momentum which may be due to the fact that the Nike+ website already has a lot of engaging content.

I really like the "Nike+ Running Monitor" Facebook application and how it connects Facebook and Nike+ website members.
"The Nike+ Running Monitor is connected to the Nike+ website, giving you the ability to share your running information with the Facebook Network.You have the ability to add your profile summary, runs, goals, challenges and much more so you can show off how well you are doing and to keep you inspired!"

Nike clearly has a great strategy for engaging its passionate community with useful information and tools that enable them to feel part of the larger community. If you look at each of the screenshots above, you will also see how Nike makes it easy for community members to find their running products and learn more about them. It's a great noninvasive way to market/advertise to people who actually care about the products.

What's the bottom-line benefit to Nike? Customer loyalty, word of mouth referrals, increased brand equity, and increased sales. They also likely have a much higher ROI on their product-related advertising since they are engaging well qualified customers directly.

Further Reading:
Why Build Social Applications into a Website?
Why Develop a Facebook Application?
Social Media: Rent or Own?
Search Advertising vs. Social Applications

You can find even more recommended reading in the Social Business section of the Ringside Networks website.

Social Web Example: The Jeep Community

2008-06-20T10:28:00.007-04:00

In a prior post, I provided a definition of social web. Some may read that post and ask the question: "But are real companies actually embracing the social web?"

The answer is an unequivocal: Absolutely!

Let's take a look at the Jeep Community for example. Jeep has devoted a section of their Jeep.com website to engaging their passionate member community via the social web and doing so in a wide variety of ways.

Scrolling down the page reveals much more:

In the above pictures you can see that Jeep enables their community to interact with a wide range of social applications: picture sharing, video sharing, games, special offers on merchandise, Jeep event calendar including marketing events such as “Jeep King of the Mountains”, and a ton of links to Jeep groups on Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo, Flickr, YouTube, etc.

Jeep is clearly a posterchild for how to effectively engage a community via the social web. Their Jeep Community site is effective since it enables their community to rally around their PASSION. And Jeep has done this in a way that increases the value of their own web property (Jeep.com) as well as taps into the power of the large social networks such as Facebook.

What's the bottom-line benefit to Jeep? Customer loyalty, word of mouth referrals, and increased brand equity.

Further Reading:
Why Build Social Applications into a Website?
Why Develop a Facebook Application?
Social Media: Rent or Own?
Search Advertising vs. Social Applications

You can find even more recommended reading in the Social Business section of the Ringside Networks website.

Social Web Defined

2008-06-19T19:29:00.004-04:00

There's lots of talk about social networks like Facebook, social applications like FriendFeed, social computing and the socialization of the Internet.

All of these exist within the world of the "social web".

As I see it, the social web is all about sprinkling "social" magic pixie dust onto every website, yielding something like this:

...where the orange elements in the "Your Website" item represent social applications (ex. a ratings/comments application) that people and their friends interact with. These social applications can/should also be accessible via the big social networks such as Facebook, but that's a topic for a future post, so let's get to a definition.

While the term "social web" is being used more and more, there's not yet a good definition out there. Wikipedia's definition of social web was pretty anemic, so I updated it with the results of the following as well as my thoughts on the 7 Key Attributes of Social Web Applications.

For lack of a good definition, I went through the thought process below to see what I could come up with:

So, my proposal is:
"Social Web is defined as people interlinked and interacting with engaging content in a conversational and participatory manner via the Internet."

These may or not be the right words, but I wanted to start somewhere in order to get the conversation started. My goal is to make it both descriptive and simple. Too many definitions get too deep into the underlying technology or provide comparisons to the semantic web...which is still a fairly esoteric concept for the average person. It should be interesting to see how the definition on Wikipedia evolves over time.

So what do you think? Is the above definition too confusing? Can you come up with something simpler?

Facebook Counters Google's OpenSocial With fbOpen

2008-06-02T20:32:00.007-04:00

A week ago the rumors heated up that Facebook would open source its platform.

And today Facebook made good on the rumor by launching the Facebook Open Platform (fbOpen). On the Facebook Open Source Projects, they list fbOpen and the other open source projects (Thrift, MemcacheD, ...) they are involved in.

What is fbOpen? According to the website it is:
"a snapshot of the infrastructure that runs Facebook Platform. It includes the API infrastructure, the FBML parser, the FQL parser, and FBJS, as well as implementations of many common methods and tags."

Or put more simply:
fbOpen is an open source reference implementation of the Facebook platform.

This is a similar statement to:
Apache Shindig is an open source reference implementation of the OpenSocial specification.

In my "Social Networking Big Dog: Facebook or Google?" post, I draw a comparison of Google and its OpenSocial Foundation to Sun and its Java Community Process.

I'll extend that comparison further by equating fbOpen and Apache Shindig to be logical equivalents to the J2EE Reference Implementation. The primary difference between these two efforts, of course, is that OpenSocial provides a specification for the Apache Shindig reference implementation, while fbOpen is simply a snapshot of code from the already implemented, deployed, robust, and successful Facebook Platform.

So this news begs a couple of questions:

Does it matter that fbOpen is not based on a specification but is simply "a snapshot of infrastructure"?
Does it matter that implementations like Apache Shindig have a common specification (OpenSocial) to base their efforts on?

Before answering the questions, you should consider the success of open source projects like Hibernate and the Spring Framework, both of which did NOT implement the predefined J2EE specifications. Instead, they both defined new and better ways of doing things. Good technology trumped agreed-upon specification.

One final note. I expect that all or parts of these reference implementations will be leveraged by a wide range of people and companies interested in extending them to suit their specific market/product needs. Similar to how companies like BEA, IBM, Sun, Oracle, and JBoss all created their own J2EE application servers that implemented the specs as well as included piece parts of the reference implementation.

This matches what Ringside Networks has been doing by integrating and extending Shindig in order to provide a production-ready implementation of OpenSocial. Moreover, since our open source social application server already provides extensive Facebook platform compatibility, we'll look at fbOpen to see how we can leverage it so we can spend less time implementing Facebook compatibility and more time on our unique value add.

I'll elaborate much more on the Ringside Networks product strategy in upcoming posts.

Bottom-line:

Only time will tell if Facebook launched fbOpen in time to slow or stall the momentum of Google's OpenSocial Foundation.
Open code is better than closed code; but open does not necessarily translate into vibrant community.
Only time will tell if Facebook's community will be open and vibrant enough to generate significant momentum (and code) of its own.

Social Networking Big Dog: Facebook or Google?

2008-05-29T00:47:00.008-04:00

I just finished Day 1 at Google I/O, and the experience compelled me to write a sequel to my previous "Open Source Big Dog: Red Hat or Sun?" post.

So my second "Big Dog" question is simple:

Who is the social networking big dog?

The answer really boils down to Facebook vs. Google.

I know, I know...I can hear the screams of what about My5, what about HiSpace, what about....just stop...please stop!

Recent events CLEARLY point to the fact that the fight is between the two masters of social kung fu: Facebook and Google.

OK, enough kung foolery...let me get serious and start my explanation.

I was very impressed by the turnout at Google I/O (Google's 2 day developer conference). If anyone doubted Google's commitment to developers, then Google I/O should firmly prove that they understand the value of developers.

Being an old time Java guy who worked at Bluestone Software and JBoss, I couldn't help but feel that Google's conference had the same type of energy and raw excitement that the original JavaOne conferences had back in the early days. The sessions had a decent amount of ad-hoc demos and unscripted moments; they were clearly not pre-approved, hermetically sealed or highly polished...which is a good thing!

The comparison with JavaOne gets even more interesting if you consider how Google and its OpenSocial compatriots (Bebo, Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, mixi, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING) are ganging up on Facebook.

This soooooo feels like Sun and its Java Community Process members ganging up on Microsoft in the late 1990's.

Why is Google rallying the troops against Facebook? Well, if we look at the latest growth stats for the top 10 social networking sites in the US, Facebook continues to put up HUGE numbers with 98% growth from March 2007 to March 2008. They clearly have strong momentum. And my guess is that even Steve Ballmer would be impressed with the number of developers that Mark Zuckerberg and team have been able to attract to the Facebook platform.

Since Google really really needs an open (and crawlable and indexable and searchable and monetizable) Internet, it is not surprising that they have taken a page from Sun's playbook. Google, with its OpenSocial foundation, is preaching the values of openness and "write once run anywhere". And since Facebook is not part of OpenSocial and is not open source, Google is calling out the walled-garden Facebook platform as closed and therefore not as good...much like Microsoft was and continues to be painted by Sun and others as closed (i.e. not part of the Java Community Process...and not relevant in open source).

Unlike Microsoft, however, Facebook appears to be taking bold steps towards shedding its "closed" image: Facebook To Open Source Facebook Platform

If Facebook does indeed open source its platform, it will be sending a strong message to the market that it does not plan on relinquishing its leadership and momentum to Google or anybody else.

And as Bob Bickel wrote in his latest blog post: "For the true power of the Social Web to be delivered, there will need to be more steps toward openness."

Why? Because openness helps accelerate the market and gets vendors focused on delivering value to customers rather than duplicating efforts on base infrastructure. It will also help the smaller Facebook continue to compete against the much bigger Google and friends.

So, who is the social networking big dog?
At this point in time, the power of the superpoke goes to:
Facebook

They've got the lead and they have strong momentum.
BUT...don't count Google out! After all, the game is really just starting.

And for those interested in who I'd like to see win the battle between these big dogs? Neither. I want them both to continue to compete and succeed, which will further accelerate the market for everyone involved. Moreover, at Ringside Networks, our Social Application Server provides compatibility for both Facebook and OpenSocial, so I see Facebook and Google as important partners in this fascinating and fun corner of the software market.

7 Key Attributes of Social Web Applications

2008-05-24T09:33:00.006-04:00

The Social Web enables website visitors to come together around shared interests and become active contributors rather than just content browsers. By making the connections between people much more visible, social websites are able to enact a network effect of participation and engaging interactions that result in vibrant communities and compelling user generated content.

This all sounds good, but...

what exactly makes an application social?

what are the key attributes of a social web application?

Since social web applications are built to encourage communication between people, they typically emphasize some combination of the following social attributes:

Identity: who are you?

Reputation: what do people think you stand for?

Presence: where are you?

Relationships: who are you connected with? who do you trust?

Groups: how do you organize your connections?

Conversations: what do you discuss with others?

Sharing: what content do you make available for others to interact with?

Social web applications need not exhibit all of these features, but the more attribute areas they cover, the more engaging they are likely to be.

Examples of social web applications include:

General: Blogs, Walls/Forums, Picture/Video Sharing and tagging, Favorites/Social Bookmarks, Feeds, Events, Email/Messaging, Notification, Invitation, etc.

Commerce-Oriented: User rating and reviews, Referral programs, Wish List, Wedding/Baby Registries, Gift List, etc.

Brand Enhancement/Awareness-Oriented: Forums/Walls, Games/Contests, Polls, Goal Tracking/Rewards Programs, Advertising Engine, etc.

So, to better answer the question of "what exactly makes an application social?", I encourage you to ask yourself which attributes are exhibited by each of the examples listed above. And if a particular social web application doesn't cover a particular attribute, how might it be enhanced to do so?

Getting Back In The Ring

2008-05-18T20:13:00.006-04:00

Well, it's been three months since I left Red Hat to take a little time off before finding my next challenge. It hasn't really been "time off" per se, since I've been real busy hosting an exchange student from Switzerland, visiting nine colleges with my daughter, also enjoying time off with my wife and son, completely redoing the landscaping around my house, reestablishing old friendships, working out regularly (down 15 pounds), and working with a few open source companies in an advisory capacity on the side.

But, as I stated in my "Purposeful Risk-Taking" post, I wasn't planning on taking too much time off since I wanted to reinvest my experience in another open source endeavor.

So Monday May 19th will mark my first official day at Ringside Networks where I'll be handling Product Management and Marketing; operating at the intersection of our technology, the market, and our customers.

As I've said many times in the past, I look for jobs that enable me to love what I do and who I do it with.

As far as loving what I do, Ringside Networks is focused on the business of the social web and bringing the power of social applications directly to corporate websites and business applications. This is a fast-moving market area and an exciting opportunity. My "Focus on Meaningful Website Traffic" post is just the first of many blogs to come about this emerging market. So, I've clearly got "love what I do" covered.

How about "who I do it with"? Well, I feel privileged to be joining a team of folks that I've worked with in the past at Bluestone/HP and JBoss/Red Hat. While each of us will have our own areas of responsibility, we know what it takes to work as a team and move forward together as a company. We all firmly believe that teamwork, execution, and respect for employees, customers, partners, and community is the way to win in the market.

So, I'm getting back in the ring with Ringside Networks!

If you'd like to have a Ringside seat, I suggest you become a Friend of Ringside and sign up for the Ringside Networks newsletter so we can keep you abreast of all the action as this really cool market area heats up.

XAware Gets Your Data Working Harder Than You

2008-05-13T11:32:00.009-04:00

I had the opportunity to meet with the folks from XAware a while ago and came away very intrigued by their technology, value proposition, and momentum.

For those not familiar with XAware, they are an open source company focused on simplifying the complexities of data integration. According to their website, “XAware’s mission is to be the world’s most popular way of integrating data and applications.”

Basically, XAware provides technology that executes distributed queries across multiple datasources so the integrated views, formatted as XML, can be more easily consumed and manipulated by Web 2.0 dashboards. applications, other integration infrastructure components such as ESBs, or XML query and reporting tools.

What I like about the technology is that it leaves the application data in place, in contrast to tools for extraction, transformation and loading, which perform "data movement" to create a new copy of data. People don't need more copies of data, they need to access their existing data more easily...and that is XAware's focus.

How many of you have heard something like the following request? We need a new Web 2.0 dashboard component that "just" grabs our existing call center data and displays it by region.

For developers, the word "just" can be a four letter word...especially if the data for the above request is spread out across multiple databases, systems, applications, etc. XAware does a great job simplifying the problem and enabling developers to focus on creating applications rather than dealing with data access and integration complexities.

So, the technology and value proposition sound good...but how are they doing from an awareness/momentum standpoint? Well Bill Miller, XAware Executive Chairman and CTO, had an interesting blog a few weeks ago: ">1,000 XAware Downloads per Day"

So, let's add a little more context to this impressive statistic. XAware announced last November that they would flip their technology from closed source to open source, and they announced the general availability of XAware 5 on March 11, 2008. Below is a chart of their monthly download pace over that timeperiod:

So, they have averaged over 15,000 downloads per month since their GA release, and at 13 days into May they are already over 10,000 downloads. Putting this into perspective, successful open source middleware projects like Spring Framework and Hibernate had paces of 10 - 15,000 downloads per month in their earlier years, so XAware's pace is impressive and worth keeping an eye on.

Bottom-line: The technology, value proposition, and momentum all look positive, so stop working so hard for your data and give XAware a try!

OFF TOPIC: Taking the Wayback Machine to 1978

2008-05-03T15:10:00.011-04:00

Well, the day finally arrived for the reunion I mentioned in my "30 Years Later" blog posting in February. While I've not attended my high school or college reunions, this reunion was cool since I've actually managed to stay in touch with a good many of my grade school friends.

I kicked off reunion day with a round of afternoon golf at Rancocas Golf Club with my long-time good buddy Jim McKee (3rd row, 4th from left in photo below). It was a sunny day, 70 degrees....we both hit some good shots...and the bad shots...well...who really cares when it's 70 degrees and sunny?!!

After a quick cleanup, Jim and I hopped into our wayback machine, set the dial for 1978, and prepared ourselves to mingle with the 8th-grade graduating class of St. Peter Celestine School:

Here's my attempt to name all of the people in the above picture:

Top Row: Pete Oswald, Bill Nicoletti, Neil Webber, Greg Saldutti, Bart Heenan, Eric Basting, Tony Maladra
2nd Row from Top: Pappy Strasser, Sandra Davi, Joan Walsh, Teresa Patterson, Peggy Wysocki, Melissa Shannon, Faith Long, Sandy Rodio, Brian Ehrman
Middle Row: Billy Cark, Srikanth Rajan, Bruce Wnek, Jim McKee, Shaun Connolly, Mike Camardo, Mark Marrazzo, Joe Messina, Jeff Wahl, Steve DeLuca, Charlie Spencer, Anthony Spica
2nd Row from Bottom: Lisa Staas, Patty McGrogan, Mary Beth Cunney, Maureen Haney, Amanda Gamel, Carol Durso, Karen Graham, Teresa Driscoll, Irene McClure, Teresa Ianuzzi
Bottom Row: Amy O'Brien, Jackie Verme, Mary Micale, Sister Nancy (Principal), Monseigneur Sharkey, Sister Wanda (Teacher), Ms. Flynn (Teacher), Nora Burdenski, Eileen Moriarty, Mary Jean Bellino

About 25 of the 40 or so kids in the picture attended the reunion along with a handful of others who attended but moved on prior to our graduating year. I was able to recognize almost all of my ex-classmates. Apologies go to Tim, Melissa, and Maureen for my awkward struggle to remember your names. What can I say? I'm sure this won't be the last of such senior moments for me. :-)

It was great catching up on what everyone has been up to over the past few....decades. Ouch, that hurts.

Among the attendees, we had nurses, engineers, teachers, one retired teacher launching her own boutique store in Princeton, IT consultants, a handful of small business owners, homemakers, a CIO, a forensic accountant, an anesthesiologist, etc., etc.

Many had children under the age of 10. My 8th grade best buddy Bill Nicoletti (top row, 2nd from left) has 3 kids (a 3 year old and 1 year old twins) with a 4th child on the way. Yikers! I felt like the old guy in the crowd with my 16 year old daughter and 13 year old son.

Even our physical education teacher, Mrs. Andress, showed up...which was really cool. We reminisced with her about how she used to march us through our warmups, rotating our heads to her commands of "left, center, right, center, left, center...". Many of us also fondly remembered our winter weekend retreat to Andress Farm out near Hazleton, PA. It was wickedly cold with a fresh foot of snow. The giant hill across the street from the farmhouse kept us busy sledding all day long!

Lots of classic photos were shared. We had some fashion plates in our class back then...as well as folks like me who were ideal candidates for the TLC show What Not To Wear. Gotta burn those old photos before they fall into the wrong hands! ;-)

The time flew by and a great time was had by all!

UPDATE ON MAY 13:
Click here to view the online photo gallery of the St. Peter Celestine 1978 Class Reunion.

A WORD OF THANKS
While I am sure many folks had a hand in making this reunion happen, I'd like to personally thank Patty McGrogan-Fost, Kevin Brake, and Irene McClure for taking the lead on hunting everyone down, arranging the venue, sending out all of the invites, etc.

Well done and thank you!

Open Source Big Dog: Red Hat or Sun?

2008-04-29T17:48:00.012-04:00

So my question is simple: Who is the open source big dog?

The answer to the question as stated is likely IBM.
You're welcome Savio. :-) IBM, of course, benefits nicely from its investments in Apache and Eclipse and has done a lot to make Linux what it is today. But IBM is not betting the farm on open source, so let me tweak my question to be:

Who is the open source [as a business] big dog?

The answer really boils down to Red Hat vs. Sun.

Red Hat is the incumbent big dog, of course. They have a nice portfolio of Linux and JBoss Middleware offerings. And Red Hat's financial performance last fiscal year was quite impressive.

Red Hat however continues to suffer from [re]breathing its own air. "Red Hat Announces Improvements in Organizational Alignment to Focus on Top Priorities" just underscores Red Hat's "business as usual" approach.

The above "news" simply talks about how folks like Cormier and Pinchev (long-time executive team members) will "Assume Responsibilities to Enable and Accelerate Growth". Snore. I'd like to think that that's been their focus for the past few years.

They've clearly done a great job convincing Jim Whitehurst (new CEO last January) that there's no need to add fresh talent to the team. Hey Jim, you already have the A-Team, so there's no reason to change things. Just look at last year's financial performance after all.

Call me naive, but while Red Hat's financial performance has been quite good, the measure of "big dog" status needs to go beyond that. Red Hat can continue to grow nicely off of its Linux and JBoss Middleware businesses, but "big dogs" need to aggressively lead the charge into new areas. Which requires fresh blood with fresh ideas, in my opinion. Asking people who are good at executing on "business as usual" to aggressively expand into new areas does not work.

Meanwhile....Sun is busy marking its own territory in its quest to be the big dog.

Jonathan Schwartz's recent statements make Sun's strategy pretty clear:
"Everything Sun delivers will be freely available, via a free and open license (either GPL, LGPL or Mozilla/CDDL), to the community. Everything. No exception."

Sun sponsors a portfolio of open source technologies arguably wider than Red Hat's portfolio...from OpenOffice to Java to NetBeans to Glassfish to OpenSolaris to...

The acquisition of MySQL.

Sun not only added a database to their footprint, they added a great team (Marten Mickos, Zack Urlocker, etc.) with a strong open source pedigree. If Jonathan Schwartz manages the acquisition and integration properly, he will listen to and value the input from the MySQL team. MySQL's success and market momentum has been impressive and Sun finally seems to have a better appreciation of the importance of momentum and what it means to lead the market.

Matt Asay's article entitled "Ubuntu + Sun = Very good idea" expands further:
"But Sun does recognize the importance of momentum for it right now, and it wants the favor of open-source developers pulling its way. With MySQL and Ubuntu in its court, it's hard to see how it could possibly be less sexy in the market."

While Sun is making great strides, I need to see more from them before I entirely buy into their ability to execute. Sun's open source portfolio doesn't have enough #1's in it to overtake the current top dog. Moreover, Sun has historically stumbled and fumbled in executing on its software strategy. The transition from McNealy to Schwartz, who has been leading Sun into new areas, came just in time. But I still need to see more. While Sun gets "community"...they don't have a strong history of success in the software business. And their commitment to open source almost came too late.

So for now, my answer to the question "Who is the open source [as a business] big dog?" is:

Red Hat

But Red Hat needs to realize that past success does not guarantee future dominance. Red Hat needs to improve its ability to grow into new areas. It needs to make its ability to expand its footprint a strategic weapon.

Focusing purely on business as usual may yield some solid results over the coming year, but will ultimately result in decreased momentum...

...and the crowning of a new open source big dog.

UPDATE ON MAY 1:
I got some private emails about this post. I believe Matt Asay hit the nail on the head in his "Former JBoss executive to Red Hat: Don't rest on your laurels".

This post is purely based on my desire to see Red Hat step up and lead. And I mean lead beyond Linux. To Matt's point...a response of "we already are" just proves they are missing the point entirely.

Frankly, IBM, HP, Oracle and others set the table for the Linux market (years ago, they all poured a ton of marketing $$'s and other resources into putting the "Enterprise" in Linux). Yes, Red Hat did a lot too, but they benefited greatly from the sugar daddy investments in the Linux market.

Red Hat's move into middleware (i.e. beyond Linux) illustrates the fact that those same sugar daddies are likely NOT interested in helping Red Hat market themselves beyond Linux. It is up to Red Hat to prove it can do that themselves. And they need to prove that they can do it beyond middleware as well.

So, yes, execution is very important, but maintaining and increasing momentum is critical! Otherwise your competitor with the mojo will be more than happy to be the big dog. In this industry, it’s not an either or. If you want to stay on top, you need momentum and you need to execute.

And as Matt stated: "this isn't intended to be a rant against Red Hat." As the big dog, I simply expect a great deal from them....as should others.

Focus on Meaningful Website Traffic

2008-04-25T16:53:00.008-04:00

I'm a regular reader of Seth Godin's blog and his "Silly Traffic" posting struck a chord with me.

Rather than get excited at and obsessed by silly website traffic numbers, Seth thinks "it’s more productive to worry about two other things instead.

Engage your existing users far more deeply. Increase their participation, their devotion, their interconnection and their value.
Turn those existing users into ambassadors, charged with the idea of bring you traffic that is focused, traffic with intent."

One way to engage users more deeply and groom ambassadors is to integrate social applications and social networking into your existing website.

My friends over at Ringside Networks recently launched an offering designed to "Bring the Power of Social Networking to Every Website".

What does this mean exactly? Well, let's look at Ringside's latest customer news:

Haddonfield Running Company enhances brand and builds customer ties online with Ringside Social Application Platform. They do not sell products on the web, they simply want to build and improve their brand. They are leveraging Voomaxer, a Facebook social application for runners, and providing application users the ability to interact via Facebook, Runningco.com, or both.
Fulcrum Gallery unites art lovers across Facebook and their own e-commerce website using Ringside Social Application Platform. In order to open up new revenue streams, they have created a custom social application called “What Is Art?”. This application highlights a selected piece of abstract art and allows users in both Facebook and the Fulcrum Gallery websites to comment. These comments are posted on users’ feeds to friends, inviting them to add comments and rate comments. Fulcrum Gallery is offering weekly incentives for the most popular comments.

Both are great examples of opening up new and compelling ways to interact with prospective customers and giving them a reason to increase their participation, devotion, interconnection and value.

So are you focusing on driving meaningful interactions with your website visitors?

Or are you just being silly?

Who Invented Open Source?

2008-04-02T09:33:00.004-04:00

I stumbled across this Federal Computer Week article - "Sun founder extols open source for government" - and wondered if it was an April Fools joke. The quote that caught my eye was: "We invented open source," McNealy declared in a tone that dared anyone to challenge the claim, and he listed its advantages."

Wow...McNealy invented open source...that was news to me. I thought folks like Stallman, Perens, Raymond, and Augustin played an important part in the early "open source" days...but McNealy? Hmmm....let's see if Wikipedia's definition of Open Source can clarify.

Just as I thought...no McNealy mentioned there. As a matter of fact, I always thought McNealy struggled with understanding the benefits of open source. For example, let's look at "Sun’s McNealy: Java won’t be open source", Government Computer News, March 24, 2004. McNealy stated that “We’re trying to understand what problem does it solve that is not already solved”. I must say that a lot has changed since McNealy's departure from Sun.

Anyhow, enough about McNealy...when we all know that the real story is How Microsoft invented open source. Back in November 2001, Bill Gates was quoted as saying: "The reason that you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines, and the BIOS of that should be open to everybody to use, and all the extensibility should be there."

This article explains a lot actually, and I'd argue that the core of Bill Gates quote still sums up Microsoft's open source strategy: Microsoft feels their pervasive platform enabled the rise and success of open source. Moreover, Matt Asay recently wrote a good article summarizing Microsoft's continued dilemma with open source.

So, in closing, I think it's safe to say that neither McNealy nor Gates invented open source...because it was actually....me....yeah...it was me! I invented open source....way back when I was married to.....uhhh....Morgan Fairchild....yeah....that's the ticket!

Business of Open Source

2008-04-01T10:47:00.005-04:00

I read Cal Evans' blog entitled "Thoughts on Open Source, Running a Company, and OSBC"; in it he chronicles his thoughts from OSBC last week. Since I'm a JBoss guy, what initially caught my eye was the fact that he mentioned JBoss, and ex-JBossians, a couple of times in his rant.

I want to state first that I agree with MANY of the points Cal makes; I'll get to those after I touch on the points I had issues with.

I'll start off with his biggest rant that businesses were bastardizing (my word, not his) the intent of "open source" by trying to monetize the projects. My initial reaction is "what do you expect to hear at the Open Source BUSINESS Conference".
:-)

Also, he seemed to imply that ex-JBossians have sold out: "Developers seem to be willing to sell out for bucks these days." To quote Marc Fleury...great code just doesn't fall from the sky. Nobody should have to apologize for paying great developers to do what they love to do full time.

I'm not sure which ex-JBossians Cal was referring to, but I know, for example, that the Ringside Networks guys created and launched a new project and company at OSBC. All of the code is out in the open and that team is actively recruiting folks to participate in their project. I actually think it's healthy for people from JBoss, Red Hat, and other open source companies to branch out and start new projects/companies. It helps ensure that open source continues to expand its reach and useful footprint.

The business of open source can be done the right way...and it can be done the wrong way...which leads to some of Cal's other points:

"Free Download!=Open Source": I WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree. 'nuf said.
"Business people who work with open source consider it a business model": Open source is not a business model...it IMPACTS the business model. With easy and free access to the source code and binary distributions, open source takes an adoption-led approach to the market. It enables users to decide if the technology is worth using and if the project is worth interacting with. This results in a different approach to sales and marketing. Some things need to be done differently...otherwise you risk disaster for the business AND project. Do NOT confuse having a business associated with an open source project as selling out, being less transparent, etc. At JBoss, we worked hard at making sure we kept a balance between JBoss the company and JBoss the projects.
"Hire from your community": Relates to the business point above. Business and community CAN coexist. Professional Open Source leverages the $$'s generated by the business to further grow the community of interest, ensure future vibrancy of the projects, add new projects/technologies, etc.
"Transparency is the new black": Agree. This is actually what makes open source powerful! You can't afford to be half-pregnant here.
"Outsource everything that is not a core competency": Don't get me started on this topic! :-) I agree with your point 1000%; this is the basic core vs. context argument. If you try to outsource what makes you different...then what do you really have.
"If you take yourself too seriously, no one else will take you seriously at all": I also have issues with people who take themselves too seriously. Anybody worth their salt wants to be the best at what they do, so drive and passion do not necessarily equal "too serious". I find the most down to earth people are those that love what they do and who they do it with.

Good thoughts Cal...thanks for sharing.

Next-Gen Project Management?

2008-03-29T16:10:00.005-04:00

After my last blog on Projity's OpenProj and Project-ON-Demand, I surfed around for recent articles covering the latest in Project Management software.

There was eWeek's "Next-Gen Project Management" which covered offerings from LiquidPlanner and Lunarr. I read this article a couple of times in order to figure out what exactly makes these two particular offerings "Next-Gen". To be honest, I was completely underwhelmed.

Project Management software has been around for a while...so when I see an article touting "Next-Gen", I want to see something that offers more than subsets of the standard "table stakes". I want to see something designed to change the game!

This is why I wrote about Projity. They appear to have all of the important "table stakes" project management features, and they have mixed in both open source and SaaS as game changers. This is a great start, but in an industry that has arguably rehashed a lot of the same-old, same-old stuff for the past 20 years....I'd like to see Projity kick it up a notch further.

What do I consider "Next-Gen" project management? An open source offering, available in standalone or SaaS models, that kicks it up a notch with social features that really add value and help projects come in on time, under budget, and with the minimal resources required.

So, that means, I'd like to see Projity leverage its strong open source and SaaS foundation and mix in social networking features that enable people to capture their thoughts, comments, ratings, pictures, videos, whatever for a given task (or set of tasks)...and gain leverage from the power of social interactions and socially-generated information.

Providing an easy way for people involved in the project to discuss and annotate the tasks with timely, context-appropriate information (text, audio/visual, etc.) that can help the collective group make better decisions...well that's valuable....and that would truly start moving the project management market to the "Next-Gen".

Projity: Open Source Project Management that is SaaS-y!

2008-03-27T13:13:00.004-04:00

I spent 12 years (1988 - 2000) creating Project Management software at Primavera Systems , and since I'm an open source guy, I always figured it was a matter of time before an open source alternative emerged that was good enough to disrupt Microsoft Project.

Well, that time has come. I recently downloaded Projity's OpenProj, and for those who still think that "open source" means less feature/function....well think again.

OpenProj offers all of the typical project management bells and whistles found in products like Microsoft Project...only in a more approachable, open source offering. After installing OpenProj, I started off by opening some of my old Microsoft project files and poof...they opened up right away and looked great.

I still need to play with it more deeply, but the product feels nicely polished. This, of course, made me curious as to who is behind the company. A look at the management team yields expertise from Scitor (which always boasted nice graphics) and WebProject (one of the early hosted, web-based solutions).

I have not yet tried out Projity's Project-ON-Demand, which is their hosted SaaS (software-as-a-service) offering, but at first blush, it appears to offer much of the feature richness of OpenProj directly in the browser.

So for those who don't want to install software, you can use Project-ON-Demand. For those who prefer a desktop app, OpenProj is a great choice.

IBM's Interest in EnterpriseDB

2008-03-27T12:30:00.005-04:00

Like a few others, I found IBM's choice to make an investment in EnterpriseDB kinda interesting. Matthew Aslett (the 451 group) got the following quote from IBM in explanation:
"IBM has become a minority shareholder of EnterpriseDB. This affords us an opportunity to continue to participate in, and gain further insight into, the open source community. This complements other experiences such as with the Linux, Apache and Eclipse communities and previous investments we’ve made in Red Hat and Novell. IBM has been a long-time supporter of Open Source communities, and we continue to see interest among our clients for Linux and other Open Sources solutions. This investment supports our overall strategy to support Open Source solutions in the marketplace to further enable our customers to implement business-critical solutions"

If I'm in EnterpriseDB's shoes, I'm digging this quote since being thought of in the same breath as Linux, Apache, and Eclipse sounds like strategic company to me. After all, in my opinion, a large part of Red Hat's success can be attributed to the early investments and marketing done by IBM (as well as HP, Oracle,and others) on its behalf.

The quote above also tries to minimize the importance, of course, but why would IBM invest if it just wanted an arm's length relationship?

To me, this move is a typical IBM long-term strategy play. They are always looking 5-10 years down the road (which equates to 1-2 Big Blue Dog Years). And while EnterpriseDB is not going to immediately displace Oracle for the high-end database needs, they still have an interesting market opportunity.

Savio Rodrigues (IBM WebSphere dude) posted on this topic and asked the question:
"What do you think, does EnterpriseDB have a brighter future by targeting Oracle users that want "Oracle like features for MySQL prices" or by targeting MySQL users who have "hit the wall"?"

Since EnterpriseDB is built on Postgres (which has been around a long time and is quite stable) and since they provide an Oracle compatibility layer, my answer would be "Yes" and "Yes". I think they compete for general database business with both Oracle and MySQL.

Bottom-line: This investment by IBM gives them a potential future play that neither their DB2 nor their Cloudscape/Apache Derby investments address directly. Now we just need to wait 1-2 Big Blue Dog Years to see how it all plays out.

UPDATED: The EnterpriseDB One-Two Punch
Savio replied to my blog with "I agree in principal that EnterpriseDB will continue to go after Oracle & MySQL. But in practice, they need to pick one segment to be their primary focus, or else they risk less than optimal results in both."

While I agree with Savio that focus is usually a good thing, my experience at JBoss, for example, also taught me that sometimes you've gotta lead with a one-two punch. At JBoss, we had momentum from new application development projects AND momentum from BEA migrations. Both were valid and lucrative focus areas. We actually had solid WebSphere migration business too, but we treated those more opportunistically than strategically since battling IBM is always more complex.

Anyhow...my point is that if EnterpriseDB's Oracle compatibility is any good, then over the longer-term, they can drive solid business. Ex. think through the Oracle upgrade cycle (when faced with moving from an older version to a newer version....should I consider EnterpriseDB??). The combat with MySQL clearly will heat up over time...but I still think they need to milk the Oracle opportunity.

I'm just a Philly guy who loves a nice one-two punch. :-)

OFF TOPIC: McCain Just Lost My Vote?

2008-03-19T21:29:00.007-04:00

This post is a bit of an inside joke for my fellow Bluestone crew.

I stumbled across the following article: McCain Embraces Tech Executives For White House Push - TechCrunch Interviews Carly Fiorina

Carly Fiorina was HP's CEO when HP acquired Bluestone in 2001. Bluestone pretty much got lost in the shuffle after HP acquired Compaq...or as I like to describe it...when the giant anaconda swallowed the wildebeest. Yes folks...it was physically possible for HP to swallow Compaq...but it looked ugly going down.

Anyhow, I always got the impression Carly was positioning herself for politics, so the above news is not a shocker. It's just that my Carly-nerve...twitch twitch...is still sensitive after all these years.

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer my CEOs to have a vision and drive a company to success. Looking at the performance of HP CEOs over the past decade...I must say that I'm impressed with Mark Hurd's performance.

My momma taught me that if you can't say something nice, then don't say anything at all.
:-)

Purposeful Risk-Taking

2008-03-01T08:52:00.008-05:00

In Matt Asay's article "Executive moves: Shaun Connolly leaves Red Hat", he covers the fact that I have chosen to leave Red Hat and take a little time off before finding my next challenge

In a prior blog, I asked "When Was Your Last Giant Leap?". In it, I stated that, in my opinion, the best changes, the sweetest changes, the most impactful changes are those where you make a conscious and informed decision to "go for it".

So, I have decided to go for it. In answer to a couple of Matt's points: No, I don't plan on staying out of the game for too long....and Yes, I am hoping to reinvest my experience in other open-source companies.

But first, I do have some family plans in March and April...starting off by literally smelling the flowers with my wife at this week's Philadelphia Flower Show, then hosting an exchange student from Switzerland in March. I will continue to help my son hone his programming skills on ROBLOX. And since my daughter is a high school Junior, it is time for a College Road Trip of our own. I'm not THAT overprotective, am I? ;-)

I feel privileged to be in the position to be able to take some time off between challenges, and I have the JBoss / Red Hat team to thank for this. Thanks to Marc Fleury, Bob Bickel, and Joe McGonnell for recruiting me to JBoss. Thanks to Rob Bearden, Brad Murdoch, Tom Leonard, Ben Sabrin, Rich Friedman, Francois Dechery, Michel Goosens, Steve Raby, Matt Quinlan, Katie Poplin, Martin Musierowicz, and Sacha Labourey for the pleasure of working with a strong and motivated JBoss management team.

Thanks to the talented JBoss Core Developers (Bill, Scott, Adrian, Bela, Gavin, Mark, Mark, Tom, Dimitris, Max, Thomas, Ivelin, etc., etc.), the platform productization team (Andy, Patrick, Ryan, Alex, Fernando, etc.), and the support team (Francois, Luc, Stan, etc.) for creating and supporting technologies and products that continue to delight the community and customers.

Thank you to the JBoss Community, Customers, and Partners for your continued passion, interest, and help in making JBoss a success.

Thanks to Tim Yeaton, Todd Barr, Aaron Darcy, Iain Gray, Ed Boyajian and team, Mark Entzweiler and team, Charlie Peters, Deb Kane, and Deb Delegge for making Red Hat home for the JBoss team.

And finally, thanks to Craig Muzilla, Jon Atkins, Aaron Darcy, Rebecca Goldstein, Rob Morrison, Pierre Fricke, Burr Sutter, Rob Cardwell, Ken Johnson, Rayme Jernigan, Keith Burres, Kevin Barfield, and too many others to name for continuing to lead the charge...and while I'm at it, well done at JBoss World Orlando!

OK...OK...I see that I've exceeded my time limit on thank you's!
So, I will simply close with a few choice quotes:

"Do or do not... there is no try." - Yoda
“The most difficult thing for people to say in 25 words or less is good-bye.” - Anonymous
“Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.” - Dr. Seuss
"Smile well and often, it makes people wonder what you've been up to." - Anonymous
"Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life." - Anonymous
"I'm on my way, I don't know where I'm going, I'm on my way, I'm taking my time, But I don't know where..." - Simon and Garfunkel
“You and I will meet again, When we're least expecting it, One day in some far off place, I will recognize your face, I won't say goodbye my friend, For you and I will meet again.” - Tom Petty

And last but not least: "Onward!" - Sacha Labourey

OFF TOPIC: 30 Years Later

2008-02-16T10:02:00.009-05:00

I received an invitation to attend a 30-year reunion of my St. Peter Celestine 8th grade graduating class. Wow! I did the math and yep...it's been 30 years.

Of course I had to rummage through the old pictures and stuff to see what remembrances I could dig up from this byegone era. I kinda felt like Indiana Jones in search of ancient treasure. After a little digging, I found the picture below of me and three of my 8th grade amigos:

My friends are from left to right:

Bart Heenan: currently lives in Virginia Beach and is CEO of Morphix Technologies. 20 years ago, Bart and his wife Karen set me up on a successful blind date with my [future] wife; and we have been happily married for 18 years.

Steve DeLuca: currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area and is a Portfolio Manager at Spinner Asset Management. I ran into Steve a couple of years ago at an Investors conference in San Francisco.
Bill Nicoletti: currently lives in Wilmington Delaware and is President of Visual Innovations. About 10 years ago, Bill and I played on an "over 30" baseball team together.

Yep...that's me on the right...pretty scary!

Lest I wallow in remembrances too long, I've come to the sobering realization that I was actually younger than my high school Junior daughter and I was one year older than my 7th grade son.

30 years goes by so quickly!

Technology News at JBoss World

2008-02-14T16:22:00.003-05:00

While the news for Day 1 of JBoss World focused on the Enterprise Acceleration initiative, Day 2 unveiled the product and technology news.

For customers chomping at the bit for our ESB-based solution, the team announced the arrival of the new SOA Platform.

For folks interested in new community technologies, they were greeted with news around three new OSS projects:

The RHQ project is a joint effort between Red Hat and Hyperic focused on providing common services for infrastructure management. This project will provide the basis for the upcoming JBoss Operations Network 2.0. We've had a long standing partnership with Hyperic and this project represents the fruits of our joint engineering labor over the years.

The DNA project is a new JBoss.org project, spearheaded by the MetaMatrix team, focused on providing an open source repository and tools that make it easy to capture, version, analyze, and understand the fundamental building blocks of information, models, service and process definitions, schemas, source code, and other artifacts. This is just the first project designed to address the complex and varied needs of SOA governance.

The BlackTie project, while not yet launched, is arguably my favorite of the three new project announcements. Why? Because I have been competing with BEA for many years and hopefully the name of this new project is an indicator of what it's about...namely freeing Tuxedo customers from the yoke of their massive maintenance fees.

Anyhow, that's the tech news for today at JBoss World...we hope you enjoy it.

ROBLOX Redux

2008-02-06T09:11:00.000-05:00

In my Future of Open Source blog, I posed the question: "Are online destinations like ROBLOX grooming the next generation of open source developers?".

What leads me to ask this question is how platforms like ROBLOX are encouraging our next-generation of developers to interact with its cloud-based platform and create and extend virtual worlds using collaborative approaches that are arguably at the heart of professional open source development.

John Shedletsky (aka Telamon), a ROBLOX developer, picked up on my post and wrote a great article drawing the corallary between the ROBLOX model and the open source model.

He begins by illustrating the fact that there are Multiple Levels of Engagement (Basic User, Intermediate User, Advanced User, and Power User); his simple pyramid diagram is quite effective
He describes the power of Massive Peer to Peer Collaboration
He discusses how ROBLOX uses Economic Incentives to encourage production of high-quality content.
He closes with how an Exposure to Engineering at an early age influences the future

So, I'd like to thank John for his post. I could not have described things better. I do believe that sites like ROBLOX are absolutely shaping our next-generation of developers. And since it promotes what is arguably an open source collaborative methodology, I maintain my assertion that they are shaping our next-generation of professional open source developers.

The Future of Open Source

2008-01-30T20:08:00.000-05:00

Matt Asay ponders "what happens to the open-source development community if the world moves to cloud-based computing?".

His blog provides an interesting angle on a discussion I had over the weekend with my 12 year old son.

My son is hooked on the ROBLOX Virtual Playworld, which is a free online Multiplayer game where you play in user-created worlds with blocks. When I asked my son what he likes about Roblox, he said: "Roblox combines Legos and scripting...two of my favorite things!". My reaction was "Scripting? Show me what you mean.".

So he proceeded to show me Roblox Studio, a development environment where you can create your own customized "Place" and publish it to the Roblox servers. It's actually a pretty cool development environment. Roblox enables you to customize the behavior of elements in your virtual world via the open source Lua scripting language.

For example, you can add special "admin" doors to buildings that only let in people with the right permissions. Actually, my son likes setting up the door so all people without the necessary permissions explode upon contact with the door. Typical 12 year old. :-)

Anyhow, there's extensive online help, a community forum, a developer's blog, and the ability to freely share Places, Objects, and Scripts.

It is cool to watch my son develop his online world; he scours through the shared online scripts, grabs a script that sort of does what he wants, modifies it to suit his needs, tests and perfects it, then uploads it to the server. He laughs out loud when one of his friends explodes upon contact with his new "admin" door.

So I will ask a question in response to Matt's original question:
Is Roblox, and other online destinations like it, grooming the next generation of open source developers?

UPDATE ON FEBRUARY 6, 2008:
I wrote "ROBLOX Redux" in response to a followon blog written by one of the ROBLOX developers that details the corallary between the ROBLOX model and the open source model.

A BEA-utiful Week

2008-01-18T22:07:00.000-05:00

I've heard that Larry likes to play with his food before he eats it, so I was not surprised to see Oracle finally tuck into its latest meal: Oracle to Buy BEA Systems for $8.5 Billion.

The demise of BEA as a standalone company is actually bittersweet for me since I've been competing with BEA since 2000. Back then I was one of the Bluestone crew. We had a GREAT team and GREAT technology and competed vigorously against BEA. IBM was barely a blip on the middleware radar screen.

January 2001, we got bought by HP. We had a company meeting at a local hotel where Kevin Kilroy, Bluestone CEO, and Bill Russell, VP/GM HP Software, announced the news. I vividly remember Kevin's inspirational statement "We're going to bury BEA in the parking lot!". We were all excited at the opportunity to accelerate the fight against BEA and dominate the market.

In July 2002, HP announced that it was abandoning middleware and mothballed all the great Bluestone technology. I left HP shortly afterwards eager to leave the middleware market behind. [interesting note: In Dec 2005, JBoss obtained rights to open source the ArjunaTS technology, which was a key piece of the Bluestone stack.]

But then, this little thing called open source began to change the game in the software market. Marc Fleury and the GREAT core JBoss minds were building the JBoss Application Server and it was being downloaded like crazy.

In 2004, Bob Bickel, Tom Leonard, and Joe McGonnell (all around great guys from the Bluestone days) were at JBoss and looking to ramp up the team. They reached out to Rich Friedman and me. This open source stuff really looked like a game changer and frankly I still had a bad taste in my mouth over how the Bluestone thing played out.

So, I signed up for Round 2 against BEA. The chance to fight alongside some of the old Bluestone crew, as well as guys like Marc Fleury, Sacha Labourey, Rob Bearden, Brad Murdoch and the talented core JBoss developers was just too good to pass up.

At JBoss, we loved it when Alfred Chuang continually downplayed the impact of JBoss on BEA's business. It just added fuel to our quest to provide more and more value in our JBoss Enterprise Middleware portfolio and help free customers from the shackles of vendors like BEA. Since 2004, we've built out a full middleware stack: multiple platforms, developer tools and frameworks, management tools, etc. all powered by our great open source projects at JBoss.org.

I kinda like Bob Pasker's take on things in his "JBoss and possibly Tomcat should never have happened":

"While BEA was looking “up” at its biggest competitor IBM, JBoss was busily undercutting BEA at the bottom end."
"JBoss launched an innovators dilemma attack against BEA, not with a revolutionary product, but with a revolutionary business model, one that BEA couldn’t hope to copy without cannibalizing its existing revenue stream. BEA fell right into the trap."

In many respects, the middleware game was BEA's to lose. They were the 800LB gorilla back in 2002. I definitely left Round 1 of that fight battered and bruised.

In many respects, IBM and JBoss ganged up on BEA in Round 2. While this round has spanned a few years, the standalone BEA has finally toppled.

Gotta love a great fight!

UPDATE ON JANUARY 20, 2008:
My blog above was taken by Bob Pasker as gloating and disrespectful of BEA. Bob wrote Respect your Competitors and Its Not About Open Source as followups. Since Bob was co-founder of Weblogic, I respect and appreciate his reaction; hence my choice to update my blog entry.

I feel compelled to reiterate "The demise of BEA as a standalone company is actually bittersweet for me". I didn't say this just to say this; this is how I feel. I will miss competing with BEA as a standalone business. Moreover, BEA will not be going away or closing their doors; they have been acquired by Oracle. So I don't view what I say above as kicking sand in someone's face when they're down.

Bottom-line: I wrote my blog above as a way to capture the fact that BEA has played a significant role in my work life for the past 8 years. And I consider Oracle's acquisition of BEA as signifying an end of an important era.

Heineken DraughtKeg and JBoss Developer Studio

2008-01-13T15:07:00.000-05:00

Zack Urlocker's article - Heineken: Disrupting a Commodity Business - combines two of my favorite subjects; disruptive business models and beer. Zack describes that "instead of trying to innovate based on a new flavor or new style of brewing, Heineken focused on creating a packaging system that provides a better customer experience", a la the Heineken DraughtKeg.
The focus was on "improving the experience, accessibility or convenience of a product", and "Development of the DraughtKeg took Heineken nearly 10 years and it cost them more than $15 million dollars to build a new production line."

There's some similarity between what Heineken has done and what we at JBoss have done with our new JBoss Developer Studio. We're not focused on changing the key "flavors" (open source project technologies). Instead, we are focused on integrating our technologies in a way that improves customer experience. This kind of effort requires investments above and beyond the creation of the key ingredients.

JBoss Developer Studio has been created for our customers interested in having an out-of-box developer desktop that works seamlessly with our JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. JBDS includes fully integrated and tested Eclipse plug-ins, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, and an entitlement to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. RHEL is optional, of course, since JBDS also runs on Windows, but it's great for anyone interested in leveraging RHEL 5 for virtualizing their developer machines (ex. emulate n-tier architecture on a single developer's box)...which is pretty cool.

JBDS is available as a $99 software-only subscription, and the support is decoupled from it so we can keep that price low and affordable. Our Red Hat Developer Professional goes for $3500 and that provides developer support and access to ALL of our certified distributions including JBDS, JBoss EAP, JBoss Portal, JBoss jBPM, JBoss Rules, our upcoming SOA Platform, as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. So...a ton of bits...and developer support in the use of any/all of the bits.

JBDS may not appeal to all developers...just like the Heineken DraughtKeg may not appeal to all beer drinkers out there. So, folks who prefer to consume our community technology in an a la carte manner by combining Eclipse, our JBoss Tools projects, JBoss AS, JBoss Seam, etc. with community support, they can continue to do so.

Bottom-line: Customer/user choice is key. At JBoss, we are focused on creating great technologies at JBoss.org and integrating our technologies in a manner that provides real customer value with JBoss Enterprise Middleware.

Now off I go for another pint of Heineken from the DraughtKeg in my fridge. Mmmmmm.....beer!

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.3 is here!

2008-01-10T21:04:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday January 8, our awesome JBoss development team released JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.3. Kudos to the entire team for another great effort!

JBoss EAP 4.3 was a customer-driven release. The top two requests from our JBoss EAP 4.2 customers were to upgrade our messaging and web services technologies, and the team delivered.

JBoss Messaging provides a high performance messaging infrastructure and is a fantastic upgrade over the prior JBossMQ component. While JBossMQ has served us well over the past few years, JBoss Messaging is now the messaging architecture for JBoss EAP 4.3, 5.0, and beyond.

JBoss Web Services now fully supports JAX-WS which will really satisfy many of our customers. This also further rounds out our Java EE 5 capabilities.

JBoss EAP 4.3 includes JBoss AS, Hibernate, JBoss Seam, and many other components; more details can be found at http://www.jboss.com/products/platforms/application/components.

JBoss EAP 4.3 has been tested with many different operating systems and databases; more details can be found at http://www.jboss.com/products/platforms/application/testedconfigurations.

Documentation and Release Notes can be found at http://www.jboss.com/docs/index

For existing customers, the new release is available on both the JBoss Customer Support Portal and Red Hat Network.

Subscriptions for JBoss Enterprise Application Platform are immediately available directly from Red Hat, on the Red Hat Store, or from Red Hat resellers. For more information, visit http://www.jboss.com/products/platforms/application.

JavaPolis, JBoss, and JSF

2007-12-18T20:57:00.000-05:00

Catching up on news from this year's JavaPolis brought me to the results of the whiteboard votes that were conducted.

JBoss came out as top vote getter for the "which application server do you use?" whiteboard vote. The vote results were:

JBoss = 85

WebSphere = 47

WebLogic = 45

Just Servlet = 38 (I guess this is Tomcat?)

Other = 31

GlassFish = 24

Whiteboard photo for Application Servers and Web Frameworks

I especially like the almost apologetic comment in the WebSphere column: "but not my choice".

The results of "which web framework do you use" voting was also interesting in that the top 3 frameworks were:

JSF = 60

Struts = 60

Spring MVC = 58

Since the new JBoss Developer Studio provides Eclipse tooling for JBoss Seam, JSF, Struts, and Spring...as well as includes the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform...it's cool to see how our new offering hits the mark on the most popular application server platform and web frameworks out there.

Thanks to the folks at JavaPolis for sharing these whiteboard results. Pretty cool and easy way to poll the attendees!

Golden: Commercial Open Source - Can It Scale?

2007-12-01T10:59:00.000-05:00

Bernard Golden of Open Source Maturity Model (OSMM) fame had a similar reaction as I did to the blog by Savio Rodrigues that asserts OSS business models don't scale.

I countered Savio's assertion with "Scaling a Software Business (open source or otherwise)".

Bernard Golden countered Savio's assertion with "Commercial Open Source - Can It Scale?" where he makes a range of worthwhile points:

"What this strikes me as is a failure to really come to terms with what open source means to IT, and, by extension, the software industry. It is judging open source by the standards of proprietary software business models and finding it lacking, instead of thinking through what business opportunities are made possible by the new mode of software distribution."

"His argument fails to fully comprehend the power of price elasticity, richly explored by Clayton Christensen; simply put, reduced prices don't mean less money is spent on a given item; reduced prices increase the customer base by more than enough to increase total market spend."

"What is important to recognize about all of these open source businesses is that they follow a publishing model and sell subscriptions. And, like all subscription-based businesses, they scale slowly, but are, nevertheless, able to grow to very large scale and can be phenomenally profitable... By contrast, licensed software companies can grow much faster, but tend to have problems later on when it becomes difficult to find new customers to fork over large upfront signing fees."

"The key to successfully scaling a software business (and this is true for both open source and proprietary software businesses) is to generate sufficient leads and to efficiently manage them well enough to create a viable business, defined as sufficiently profitable on a sufficient revenue base. An efficient sales process, applied to the very large lead base made possible by price elasticity, can certainly achieve success on even a 3% close rate."

"We haven't even begun to see the potential for commercial open source (or for that matter, community open source). It will so transform the IT landscape that, in the not-too-distant future, we'll look back on the bit-coercive proprietary software world and marvel that it existed at all - and that it was so small."

Mr. Golden states much more elegantly what many of us OSS vendors have been saying for a while now. And as he points out, the landscape is still changing...which should make the next few years a lot of fun.

Scaling a Software Business (open source or otherwise)

2007-11-29T20:44:00.000-05:00

OK, I've grabbed the bait Savio Rodrigues (of Big Blue fame) has cast for me. Savio's a good guy and we've traded opinions in the past, so here we go again.

Savio asserts "The OSS business model is great to grow from $0-$50M, but very difficult if you're trying to get to $100M.".

In my inimitable Philly style, my response is: Dude, that same statement can be made of most software companies, open source or not.

Let me use Princeton Softech (non open source) as an example. I was there before JBoss, and my focus was to help them grow to $50M and beyond. So I helped build and launch their database archiving solutions for Oracle E-Business, PeopleSoft, Siebel, and JD Edwards. In order to scale the business, we expanded our footprint beyond the generic archiving solution, to application-specific solutions. This scaled the business and increased valuation enough to entice your Big Blue to buy them recently...so be sure to treat my friends well! ;-)

So let me now use JBoss and Red Hat as examples.

To establish and build the business, you've got to start with great technology and A players. You then need to focus your business model on selling the right stuff. In the case of JBoss, we sold 75% subscriptions, 15% training, 10% consulting. Why? Because subscriptions have higher margins than training and consulting.

Once you've got momentum going on one product, you scale the business by:

Expanding your footprint (new products, product lines, solutions, etc.)

Expanding your reach (channel business, partners, geographies, etc.)

The focus when I joined JBoss in 2004 was to grow the footprint beyond the application server into a full middleware suite of products (Hibernate, JBoss jBPM, JBoss Rules, JBoss Portal, etc.). Add in our upcoming SOA Platform (based on JBoss ESB), and the fact we added MetaMatrix earlier this year, and you've got a nice footprint.

On top of that, Red Hat has a pretty cool strategy for the RHEL business, has a solid Channel focus that includes JBoss, and offers a global reach.

All of that adds up to a multi-product line company with decent reach. You take that into customer conversations and you're able to drive strategic decisions rather than single product discussions.

[Added on Dec 1]
To those who think “The support-only OSS business model does not scale.”. Uhhh…I disagree. It may take a while to build up a base, but once you do and you can keep renewals at a good level, it’s a very scalable model. It's actually quite similar to the maintence revenues traditional software companies treasure. The subscription model is the gift that gives day in/day out.

IBM is famous for its 10 year strategies, so I encourage you to visualize this over the long term and let me know if you're still having problems seeing the model scale.

Legitimate Open Source Strategy or All Wet?

2007-11-23T11:40:00.000-05:00

Call me old fashioned, but I like reading the hardcopy version of the SD Times...and over the weekend, I caught up on some of the back issues.

One of the articles I read was Curl Opens RIA Tools to Community. I definitely scratched my head for a few minutes after reading it. Not to pick on Curl (since I don't really know them or their products all that well), but I cringe when I see statements like:

"We want to remove the concern that Curl is a proprietary platform," said Richard Treadway, vice president of product strategy at Curl. "We are releasing things above the platform that are fairly mature."
Curl will not release its runtime to the community, Treadway noted, because it's important that the runtime exist only in one version that is solid and can run anywhere.

Believe me, I realize that open sourcing previously proprietary software is a complex process, but it feels to me like Curl's strategy is to leave one foot on the [proprietary] dock and one foot on the [open source] boat...and firmly commit to neither.

My experience tells me that in situations like this...you get all wet!

I racked my brain for an example of a company that voiced a similar strategy and avoided getting wet.

Sun made similar statements. Their initial open source strategy excluded Java Standard Edition because they feared doing so would open the doors for competitors to fork Java.

I actually think Sun got a bit damp before they corrected their strategy by rolling out OpenJDK which put them firmly on the [open source] boat.

Bottom-line: Sun's a big company and can afford to get a little wet...but smaller companies that face credible open source alternatives need to get it right the first time.

Microsoft's Open Source Strategy

2007-11-21T19:53:00.001-05:00

Microsoft's Bill Hilf Reveals Its Open Source Strategy caught my attention, as well as July's Microsoft's Open-Source Strategy Coming Into Focus.

I found Dana Blankenhorn's response interesting, and I have to agree with many of his points.

Microsoft's stance on open source is pretty clear to me:

Microsoft has no plans on flipping any of its flagship products to open source. Period. The effort vs. reward equation just does not make sense since it would be a HUGE effort to make the code consumable by a community.
Microsoft sees some value in understanding open source; hence its investments in Port25 and CodePlex.
Microsoft sees some value in open source technologies that run on or interoperate with its platforms and products.
Microsoft sees some value in enabling people to see (but not touch) parts of their code; as evidenced by them Releasing the Source Code for the .NET Framework Libraries. This is not open source, but it does yield some benefit to developers targeting the .NET platform.
Microsoft will aggressively fight/compete with products (open source or closed source) that pose a threat to its core products. Hence, Bill's points re: Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Now, while I do work at Red Hat, I should also disclose that I know and respect Bill Hilf. We started working together a few years ago on the JBoss / Microsoft alliance. At that time, we agreed to set aside the Java vs. .Nyet (sorry Bill) debate and focus on better serving our developer and production users that target Windows. Among other things, we focused on interoperability (Web Services, etc.) and have participated in various plug-fest workshops over the years.

So, I have to admit that I'm disappointed to see Bill Hilf dance around the questions and hide behind such FUD as proprietary software "guarantees".

As much as I hate to say it, Microsoft could learn something from IBM's strategy. They make no bones about it: they work in the open source on piece-part components that they Bluewash into their closed-source products. While it's not a pure open source business model...it's clearly an open source strategy.

C'mon Bill, drop the FUD (that's Ballmer's shtick, not yours) and just say it as plainly as I have above.

Larry's Groundhog Day

2007-11-16T20:28:00.000-05:00

I was reminded this week of one of my favorite movies, Groundhog Day. It's the story of an egocentric man who finds himself repeating the same day over and over again.

What triggered this reminder was Larry Ellison's closing keynote at this year's Oracle OpenWorld.

But before we get to that, let's look back a year ago...at last year's OpenWorld where Larry's quotes are best summarized as:
"Red Hat...Red Hat....giggle giggle...Red Hat...Red Hat"

Bottom-line on last year's speech: Larry grabbed Red Hat Enterprise Linux...rebranded it Oracle Unbreakable Linux...and declared Red Hat, Inc. public enemy #1.

Fast forward to this year and the headlines read... "Larry Ellison levels guns at Red Hat". Sounds familiar...but with a year to prepare, I've gotta believe Larry's speech writers and product marketing folks have something special to share.

"Oracle has been in the Linux business for a year now. With the Red Hat code all we did for the first year was fix bugs". Hmmm...funny, this is not an issue that I've heard from customers...but Larry's a smart guy, so let's move to the next point.

"Now Oracle is growing a lot faster than Red Hat. Red Hat has been growing too because it is a growing market." I always think of Pierre Fricke's blog whenever a comparison like this comes up.

"Oracle VM takes on VMware". OK, OK, this sounds important since it's "one of the biggest software launches in the company's history". I'm almost giddy with anticipation....until I look at the product website. Is it just me or do the key features of Oracle VM sound an awful lot like...Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform which was released last March as I recall?

Anyhow, since I'm the middleware guy at Red Hat, I'll leave the details of how accurate my assessment of Larry's Groundhog Day moment is to the Linux and Virtualization experts out there.

Moving on to a topic of keen interest to me, you gotta love Oracle's interest in BEA. I can see it now, Oracle finally acquires BEA and Larry promises he will "fix" the BEA products. Soon after, Larry introduces the revolutionary OraLogic Server 11g and explains that he will raise the price on the product because BEA customers feel that the products have been priced too low for too long.

Now that's real innovation and customer value!

Prochain Arret Neuchatel

2007-09-30T04:20:00.000-04:00

I write this from the Swiss Air Lines business center in Geneva...awaiting my flight back to the US.

I've been in Neuchatel the past few days for the quarterly meeting of the JBoss TBOD (Technical Board of Directors). Sacha Labourey chairs the two days of meetings of the JBoss technical leaders. We covered a wide range of business and technical topics (OpenJDK, Java EE 6, etc., etc.) over the two days. It's a good way to ensure that we synchronize our thoughts once a quarter. And it offers a great chance to generally catch up with folks face to face...during the meetings...after the meetings over food and drink....etc.

Speaking of food and drink, the meeting nicely dovetailed with the annual Neuchatel Wine Festival. It's 3 days of food, drink, and general partying into the wee hours. I took some time on Saturday to wander around the town and found myself at around 1:30 completely famished.

No worries there of course, since every kind of food and drink is right here for the asking. I kept it simple by ordering "la choucroute et une bier".

As I lifted the beer to my lips, I toasted another successful TBOD meeting...and then tucked into my dish.

Mmmmmm....sauer kraut with various sausages and a beer never tasted so good!

Who's the BOSS? JBoss Seam and JBoss Rules, of course

2007-09-16T09:34:00.000-04:00

InfoWorld recently awarded the Best Open Source Software for the Enterprise (aka the 2007 InfoWorld Bossies).

Gavin King and the JBoss Seam community were given top honors as the Best Web App Server Framework in the Platforms and Middleware category:
"Seam is a Java EE-based framework that helpfully combines Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) 3.0 and Java Server Faces (JSF), and delivers important new benefits that include handling the thorny problem of stateful page flows, simple construction of CRUD applications, AJAX and Web 2.0 interfaces on server-based applications, reporting enhancements, and an extensive business-rules capability."

And speaking of business-rules capability, Mark Proctor and the Drools/JBoss Rules community were given top honors as the Best Business Rule Management System in the Software Development category:
"Measured by enterprise-grade features including sophisticated tools for developers, graphical interfaces for business analysts, and fast runtime performance, JBoss Drools lags only Fair Isaac's Blaze Advisor and ILOG's JRules. At the current pace of development it will not lag them for long."

Both of these communities have been quickly building out innovative features designed to simplify application development. When used together and along with JBoss jBPM for Business Process and Workflow, the speed with which a robust, AJAX-enabled, business process and rules-driven application with full CRUD capabilities can be created is mind-numbingly impressive.

Anyhow, kudos to the Seam and Drools communities for showing who's the BOSS...the Best Open Source Software.

What's in a Subscription?

2007-09-07T21:15:00.000-04:00

So, it's been a busy couple of months of business travel. With lots more to come in September and October.

My travel has mostly focused on meeting with customers and partners to understand their needs, share our strategy, and discuss ways we might be able to help them.

In these discussions, I typically cover our strategic roadmap and development model for the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and other JBoss Enterprise Middleware products.

Since the Red Hat / JBoss business model is built on selling subscriptions, the discussion leads to the definition of a Subscription.

Put simply, a Subscription is comprised of:

Software bits
Patches and updates to the bits
Support in the use of the bits
Legal assurance

While there's much more to say about each bullet point, that's basically the definition in a nutshell.

Since our products are open source, some people associate subscriptions with just support. In my Open Source Business Models: Definition of Support posting, I make the case that our customers need more than just support...which is why we are in the business of selling Subscriptions.

When Was Your Last Giant Leap?

2007-07-01T16:34:00.002-04:00

A few years ago, I participated in a two day session with Bill Treasurer of Giant Leap Consulting. Bill's focus is on helping people and organizations be more courageous.

Founders of open source projects and companies exemplify what Bill would call "purposeful risk-taking". It takes courage to put your passion and work out there for all to see.

Two recent events reminded me of taking Giant Leaps:

My friend and prior coworker Ibrahim Abdelshafi is headed back to Egypt to be the CIO of one of their top financial services companies. Ibrahim has been at Primavera Systems for the past 15 years and has done a great job leading the development team there. He periodically considered a move back to Egypt to be closer to his family, but figured he'd seriously think of it in 3 or 5 years since he was really enjoying himself at Primavera. A conversation with an old friend from Egypt led him to more conversations....and bada bing....Ibrahim was faced with a Giant Leap decision. He leaves for Egypt on Tuesday.
My daughter Liza will turn 16 this July but will not be home for her sweet 16th birthday. She is currently participating in the Experiment in International Living and is in Europe for the entire month of July. I have tried to raise my kids to be open to life's opportunities, and I feel the EIL program will open her eyes to the much bigger world out there. This is definitely a Giant Leap for Liza who has never been away from home for an extended period of time...and frankly...a Giant Leap for me as her parent who still can't believe it's been 16 years since she was born.

As they say, the only constant in life is change. Many of us are spectators for these waves of change. In my opinion, the best changes, the sweetest changes, the most impactful changes are those where you make a conscious and informed decision to "go for it".

So, when was your last giant leap?

Whether it's in open source, business, or life, I'd love to hear your giant leap story.

Open Source Business Models: Definition of "Support"

2007-06-21T09:23:00.000-04:00

Interesting thread on InfoQ regarding open source business models:
http://www.infoq.com/news/2007/06/open-source-models

Rod Johnson and Stormy Peters are engaging in the debate of which model is better: "Create & Support" vs. "Pure Support". This topic has gone round and round in the past, and I think the heart of the debate lies in the definition of "Support".

The "Pure Support" model should actually be called "Technical Assistance" since it focuses on helping people get over technical issues, find workarounds, etc.

Technical assistance is important, but what happens when the issue requires a bug fix...or a refactoring of some of the code? Then what?

The code can be changed...but who manages that change? And if that code is part of a complicated stack of open source technologies...who is managing all the patches and branches of all those changes?

Also...who ensures that change is committed upstream so that future releases of the technology benefit from the change? If the changes are not committed upstream...then who will maintain that fork for the X-years lifecycle that enterprise customers demand?

Let's be real. While enterprise customers need technical assistance, they also need patches and updates to the versions of the software they have deployed today...and they want the peace of mind that comes with knowing that their fix today will still be there in future versions if/when they upgrade.

So, this explains why we at JBoss hire the key technical leaders from the projects that comprise our middleware portfolio. THIS is Professional Open Source.

Professional Open Source is not just Technical Assistance.

So, How's Life After Marc Fleury?

2007-05-15T08:59:00.000-04:00

I was at the Red Hat Summit in San Diego last week and we had a capacity crowd of attendees, with lots of press and analysts attending the event as well. There was a lot of interest in our Open Source Architecture and our Developer strategy.

A variety of people also asked the question: "So, how's life after Marc Fleury?"

My thoughts on Marc's departure remain unchanged from my JBoss Reloaded blog in March. "Marc was never shy to speak his mind, and that fact helped keep JBoss in the news as much as our great technology did. Marc's persona fueled love/hate feelings forever preserved on the Internet; if you Google "Marc Fleury", you will get hundreds of thousands of hits. Love him or hate him, you have to give Marc props for taking a huge risk in 1999 and creating a software business that was valued at $350M in June 2006."

The recent article by Tom Sanders accurately quotes me in some aspects but sums things up in a misleading way. I do not think that "Marc Fleury's oversised ego stood in the way of partnerships, according to JBoss vice president - product management. ". And I do not credit our continued growth to Marc's departure.

I believe my thoughts above are clearly stated in my JBoss Reloaded blog. Marc Fleury absolutely has a lightning rod personality, and that fact helped make JBoss the success it is today. As part of Red Hat, however, JBoss Reloaded is less about one person. Things are different because folks like Sacha Labourey and Bob McWhirter have their own way of doing things. The new look at JBoss.org is just one example.

While I am quite happy with the success JBoss is having as part of Red Hat, I do not credit that success to one person joining...or one person leaving. We've got a great team of folks focused on the success of JBoss.

So, how's life after Marc? Fast-paced, exciting, and in the eye of the open source storm. While some things have changed...other things remain the same.

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.2 Beta is Available

2007-04-27T13:38:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday, we announced our New Development, Distribution, and Support Model for JBoss. As followup to that announcement, we have released the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.2 Beta. Congratulations to the development team and community for helping us pull this Beta together!

You can access the Beta download from the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Downloads page.

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform integrates the following open source JBoss technologies for building, deploying and hosting enterprise Java applications and services:

JBoss Application Server 4.2
Apache Tomcat 6
JavaServer Faces 1.2
JBoss Clustering, Cache and Messaging
JBoss Transactions JTA
Hibernate
JBoss Seam

This Beta Release represents an opportunity to evaluate the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform before its widespread production release. It is intended as a technology preview in order to allow users to explore its capabilities and evaluate its suitability for their needs. Please deploy it in testing and evaluation environments only.

Your feedback on this technology preview is valuable to us, and is an integral part of making this the most stable Enterprise Application Platform possible. Please raise any concerns that you have or issues that you encounter by opening an issue in our JIRA Issue Tracking System at http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBPAPP. Please bear in mind that the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Beta is a technology preview and will not have a support SLA until its final release.

Driving Developer Preference

2007-04-24T07:29:00.000-04:00

JBoss' success has hinged on grassroots adoption by developers and users of our open source technologies. Thank you for your support over the years! With our relaunch of JBoss.org, we are hoping to fuel that innovative spirit further and keep our users informed and excited about our new technologies and directions.

There are many types of developers, of course. While many will download our open source components and tools and support themselves via our forums and wikis, many corporate developers just want a set of solid tools they can use and a well tested platform to develop and deploy on. While they may think innovation is cool...and will factor it into future applications...stability is what gets deployed today. They have a job to do and want vendors like Red Hat to make their lives simpler.

At Red Hat, we are focused on driving preference for our Open Source Architecture as early in the development lifecycle as possible. So, we are building on the grassroots relationship JBoss has with developers and consolidating our developer-related efforts into a single strategy across all of Red Hat.

Towards that end, we have launched the following new subscriptions:

Red Hat Developer Professional is designed for corporate developers and individuals.

Red Hat Developer Enterprise is designed for Independent Software Vendors, larger development organizations and mission critical development projects.

Red Hat Developer Studio is an Eclipse-based development tools environment that integrates tools for Linux, Java, and Web 2.0 application development.

The first two offerings provide full access and developer support for ALL Red Hat certified products (Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise Middleware, etc.) under a single subscription. We want to make it as easy as possible for developers to get access to any/all of our certified bits and support them in the use of those bits as they're developing their applications.

The Red Hat Developer Studio subscription is due out in the summer timeframe and will integrate all of our Eclipse-based tools, including the Exadel Studio Pro and Ajax technologies, into a development environment that works well with and includes our certified platforms. So, developers will not only get the tools but also access to our certified JBoss and Red Hat Enterprise Linux platforms.

This is a first step, of course, and as always, if you have cool ideas for other things we should be doing to help developers, just let us know.

OFF TOPIC: Thank You Sir, May I Have Another

2007-04-08T14:30:00.001-04:00

I had the pleasure of spring skiing with my family in Alta, Utah this past week. This was our first time skiing "for real"...meaning taking a lift that brings you up to 10,450 feet.

If you've never skied in April...do it! And if you are looking for a nice place to stay, check out Rustler Lodge in Alta, Utah.

Thank you Rustler...we look forward to our next trip to Alta.

Typical of any vacation, I returned to a ton of emails...but one email in particular caught my eye. The email was from Andy Oliver, longtime JBoss developer now doing his own thing at Buni.org.

Andy read the two blogs I posted on March 31 right before I headed out on vacation. Admittedly, those blogs could have used a bit more editing...but I had a plane to catch and slopes to conquer so I quickly wrote and posted them and put up my "On Vacation" sign.

Anyhow, Andy's email basically said: "Dude....write less!".

Good advice for bloggers in general...and I'd like to thank Andy for the Buni-slap...I really do appreciate the feedback.

Building A Great Open Source Architecture

2007-03-31T11:16:00.000-04:00

For the past 3 years, we have been busy building out JBoss Enterprise Middleware as the Open Source Platform for SOA. During this time, we have been very consistent in our stance that SOA needs to be Simple, Open, and Affordable. We contend that SOA technologies should be available to all, not just the privileged few who can afford the HUGE license costs.

This approach delivers real value to our customers. And since joining Red Hat last June, there are more and more people around the world who want to understand our strategy, product roadmap, etc.

I use a set of 3 graphics to describe our product strategy. These are designed to illustrate how I see the open source market - one graphic for last year, this year, and next year. The color coding on the slides is meant to illustrate the level of pain (threat level) that proprietary vendors are feeling due to open source competitors.

Needless to say, Operating Systems a la Red Hat, Web Servers a la Apache, Developer Tools a la Eclipse, and App Servers a la JBoss are causing high and severe alert levels for the proprietary vendors. Portal, Business Process Management (BPM), and Integration markets have been gaining ground and should generate strong momentum into 2008 and beyond.

I actually use these graphics for two purposes: 1) to explain to people how open source is penetrating software market areas that are relevant to Red Hat / JBoss, and 2) as a radar screen, of sorts, that I personally use to help identify strategic areas of opportunity/expansion.

For example, looking at the pace of BPM, Portal, and Integration, I ask myself: what things can I do to accelerate those areas. This is why you have seen JBoss spend considerable time and effort over the past two years on building out technologies such as JBoss jBPM, JBoss Rules, JBoss Portal, and JBoss ESB.

So, mapping all of this back to the bigger Red Hat Open Source Architecture strategy yields a product map that looks something like this:
This architecture, from left to right, covers the typical lifecycle areas of Develop, Deploy, Secure, and Manage. I believe we have a pretty impressive array of open source technologies in our architecture today, and I point you to the the recent reactions of some of the major sofware vendors in the industry as proof positive that the threat levels I illustrate above are accurate and real.

In my Open Source Strategy: Freeing Great Technology blog, I outlined the different approaches we take towards expanding our base of open source technologies. With this in mind, I encourage you to stay tuned over the course of 2007 and beyond as we continue to rollout new technologies and services focused on driving real customer value. The fact that this will have the net effect of turning up the heat on our proprietary competitors is icing on the cake.

What areas will we expand into next? Well...you'll just have to wait and see, now won't you? ;-)

Then they fight you. Then you win.

2007-03-31T09:46:00.000-04:00

Mohandas Gandhi's quote actually goes: "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win."

This quote has been a rallying cry for many years at Red Hat, and is oh-so-appropriate given the shenanigans going on in the software market these days. Let's focus on two major proprietary software vendors shall we? In order to protect their identities, I will simply refer to them here as....Thing 1 and Thing 2.

Thing 1 says he will just take our technology and make it his own. He reasons that this will help him deliver more value to his customers. Hello!! The BIG COSTS for customers are in the layers on top. I suggest you read my Building A Great Open Source Architecture blog for an illustration of the technology areas I refer to and how open source is poised to deliver more value in those areas.

Now...let's talk about Thing 2. They offer an entry level product that is "based on open source" as an onramp to their complex, proprietary, and expensive stack of products that they are really focused on selling. And in the process....get this...this is the best part...they claim they are actually more open source than we are. Now THAT is great marketing folks! They have a tiny sliver of their stack "based on open source" and that makes them more open source than JBoss. Read my blog on Open Source Community for my thoughts on that topic.

Anyhow, the interesting news is that Thing 2 is spending time building and marketing what I call a bridge to the past. They have built some tools that help people move away from our innovative and fully featured open source platform for SOA to their low-end "children's edition" onramp. The problem is that their onramp only provides a thin sliver of the functionality that people need for their SOA initiatives....so....oh darn....I guess that means people will just need to buy the other complex proprietary stuff in their portfolio...for real license $$'s. This "bridge to the past" will truly be the gift that keeps giving....only their customers are not the ones receiving the gift, if you know what I mean.

So why are Thing 1 and Thing 2 fighting us so vigorously?
Because they are not happy that we are successfully building out a complete open source platform for SOA that not only encompasses the Operating System and Application Server...but also covers the market areas of Portal, BPM, and Integration among others.

They see our big picture. They see our great technology and services. And they will do whatever it takes to preserve the lock-in and huge license fees provided by their big proprietary stacks.

Thing 1 and Thing 2 are more focused on trying to slow us down, rather than on delivering increased value to their customers. And I believe customers and the market in general are smart enough to see that.

What Do You Stand For?

2007-03-24T19:05:00.000-04:00

I've spent the better part of my career as a software developer, bouncing back and forth between Product Management/Marketing and Development since 2000, and programming since the mid-80's before that. In my transition to the Marketing "dark side", I have to admit that it took me a while to get what "Brand" really means.

Yeah, yeah, I know...it's simple stupid! Kleenex, Band-Aid, Google, and Coca-Cola are examples of good brands with well established trademarks. It's easy to spot good brands....but....how do you think they got to be valued brands in the first place? How much effort did it take for them to build real Brand Equity that fuels their business?

Red Hat spends a lot of time, money, and effort on establishing our brand. Red Hat has been named the industry leader in delivering customer value 3 years running. In order for our brand to maintain its value, we need to ensure our trademarks are used in a proper and consistent way. If not, then legally we can lose our trademarks. For example, "elevator" used to be a registered trademark but the owners allowed their trademark to be used unchecked as a generic name and ultimately lost their trademark protection. Band-Aid, on the other hand, has protected its trademark over the years and maintained its brand equity.

Red Hat and the proper use of the Hibernate trademark was a topic of debate in the news recently. Since I am not a lawyer, have no desire to be a lawyer, and want to avoid legal debates on this topic, I will simply point folks to the Red Hat Trademark Policies page which contains links to our detailed Trademark Guidelines document and Trademark Style Sheet/Usage document for the official details.

When you look at the details of the Hibernate issue closely, it really comes down to the importance of protecting the brand equity built up in the registered trademark. There are guidelines for how to properly use trademarks, such as Hibernate, and following these guidelines is really not an onerous task. Allowing people to not follow the guidelines is a sure path to losing your trademark and subsequent brand value.

Bottom-line: If you cherish the value of your brand, then every now and then you will need to defend what you stand for.

OFF TOPIC: Is Mode-F Aptly Named?

2007-03-24T09:48:00.000-04:00

My kids have been complaining that the special Windows keyboard we have acts weird, forces then to scream at their friends when they are IM'ing, and at times, displays a series of never ending "/" characters or just refuses to display any letters whatsoever.

I'm an electrical engineer by education and have been in the software industry for 20 years, so I've ignored their complaints, assuming they are overstating the situation as kids sometimes do.

Well...as I was sitting at the family computer this morning, sipping my coffee, reading through the land of news and blogs....the keyboard starts getting a mind of its own. With no rhyme or reason, EVERY LETTER I TYPE IS IN ALL CAPS. Toggling caps-lock sorta helps but causes other issues.

I begin to search online forums for some help and I see mention of the "Mode F" button. I toggle the Mode-F button and get a stream of unending "///////////" across my screen. Hitting the Escape key about 1000 times seems to solve the problem, and things go back to normal...for a few minutes.

Then the fun just repeats itself over and over like a frustrating scene from Ground Hog Day.

Well as they say here in Philly....Mode-F me? Well Mode-F you.
I quickly called my uncle Tony...and needless to say there is one less keyboard in the world today. :-)