Deadly Sins of Software Executives Redux

Because it needs to be reposted, here is a list of the Seven Deadly Sins of Software Executives. This orginated from a 2005 Edge Forum – Deadly Sins that Can Kill Your Software Company, but polished and modified by me:

  • Ignoring your Customers and Their Real Needs
  • Underestimating Your Competition, Direct and Indirect
  • Letting Your Focus Drift
  • Thinking that Sales is Someone Else’s Job
  • Being Naive, Unrealistic or Soft on Team Members and Leaders
  • Doing a Bad Job of Raising Money
  • Running out of Money
  • Letting Your Company Culture Define Itself Rather than Architecting It to Support Your Goals

LiveCode with Dual License / Open Source Version Coming

Runtime Revolution announced their Kickstarter to create a dual licensed open source version of Livecode. This is a major next step for the platform – you can continue to ship commercial, closed source applications under the original plan, plus there will be a way to create your own open source apps free.

LiveCode is the true descendant of HyperCard, the one-time Apple product that made it possible to program visual objects in an English like language. Runtime did though what Apple didn’t do – instead of killing a wonderful product, they made sure you can build your apps on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, and also deploy to Windows, Linux, MacOS X, iOS (yes, iPad and iPhone apps!) and Android. There is even a server-side solution.

Why use LiveCode? For one, its an extremely productive environment. The language is easy to learn – especially if you have no background in programming and do not want to become a hard core programmer. This allows specialists of all kinds – doctors, artists, chefs, etc – anyone with a specialized set of knowledge, to build applications around their specialized knowledge sets. The first company I owned, which was a translation/localization/testing company in Japan, had a set of localization tools built with the predecessor to LiveCode – which I learned to use with just the product itself and a stack of manuals…in Japanese.

Now even if you are already a programmer, or you want to pursue a career as a programmer, LiveCode is still an excellent product. You can get started sooner rather than later on building useful applications and, you learn in the process most of what you need to know conceptually that will carry you over to any other languages you might pick up later (and LiveCode is fully extensible with extensions you can write in other languages like C++).

 

Make Your X Here: Adapting to Technology That Should Adapt to Us

I recently visited an AT&T store to upgrade a phone. All the AT&T employees on the floor were using iPads to manage orders and service agreements with customers. This didn’t seem so strange to me. Using portable POS devices is nothing new after all. But what struck me is how awkward and slow the experience was. Continue reading Make Your X Here: Adapting to Technology That Should Adapt to Us

My Political Post for 2012

To quote Charles M Schultz “There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people… Religion, Politics, and The Great Pumpkin. ”  Since this Halloween and the Great Pumpkin is almost here, Ill take a momentary break and talk meta-politics. I will be as unpolitical about my politics as possible without actually talking politics. Continue reading My Political Post for 2012

Getting Links to Copyright Violations Removed from Google Part 1

We license a lot of content through the Meshbox Design division of Proactive International. Meshbox primarily focuses on original 3D content that is licensed to digital production houses, film studios and individual artists. Meshbox also makes the original Santa that is the mascot Santa for NORAD’s annual NORAD Tracks Santa site.

There are evil scum who repost our 3D content as well as are market images. Sending out DMCA takedown notices is a very tiresome task. Usually it doesn’t do much good to contact the warez site where its being given away, but more effective to send DMCA takedown notices to the sites that actually host the files.

One problem with this is that Google indexes just about everything it finds, and sometimes the warez results end up being higher in Google’s search than the original creator. Ive decided to see what I can do about that.

I found some of our models on a warez site, and already got the 3D models themselves removed from the file sharing sites that host them. However, this same warez site took our original marketing renders and reused them. These images have been indexed by Google. We are trying to get Google to remove those links to those images.

After following the reporting methods provided by Google, we’ve gotten our first feedback from Google – stating that they got our DMCA takedown notice,  but do not understand it. They also replied asking for links – which were already included in our original post. Now,  Ive followed this up with a more detailed explanation. It seems clear to me: you are linking to our images, and caching those images in the Google web search. The original images they are indexing are illegal, therefore they are copying illegally posted images into their search engine – pretty clear to me – remove the links and the associated images.

Ill follow up with updates on how this goes.

 

Software Patents are Destroying Innovation in the Software Industry

By way of reporting by Electronista, Judge Richard Posner writes in his blog entry Do patent and copyright law restrict competition and creativity excessively? Posner about how the software industry has completely overreached itself in software patents. I cannot agree more. As we’ve seen in the Apple vs Samsung trial, patents are granted for non-innovations, such as a bouncing effect when one reaches the bottom of a list on a smart phone.

Apple makes for a convenient poster child for this, but they are not alone. Most of these “innovations” are modest tweaks of the work done by others, and the only thing they do is buy time for the company that patents them first, until the time comes that those patents will get tossed. But time is all they need – time to keep other companies from implementing them. This doesn’t even equate to standing on the shoulders of giants.

Netflix Feeling the Pangs of Content Delivery Evolution

I don’t have Netflix, but I have been enjoying the Prime video service of Amazon Prime perhaps just a little too much. Every time I get close to finishing some obscure series on Prime, Amazon restocks with something I really want to see – especially intelligently written British television shows like Touching Evil and Trial & Retribution. But Netflix is feeling the pangs of a changing market. Continue reading Netflix Feeling the Pangs of Content Delivery Evolution

Hiding Your Identity: Do Not Identify and Do Not Accept

Yeah, I get spam. I get a lot of it. I do the basics, not posting my email address on public forums and the like.  People can find me though, for the most part. I am on the social networking sites. Also, there are plenty of records in existence that have my name associated with them. There are plenty of people who are much more obsessed with their privacy – I’m talking about the ones you hear about, that want to participate in the Internet. If you stayed off the grid and never got onto the Internet – then its irrelevant because you aren’t reading my blog. Continue reading Hiding Your Identity: Do Not Identify and Do Not Accept

Fallacy of the Post PC Era

I have noticed that the greatest proponents of the Post PC Era are also fans of Apple products, especially the truly loving ones.  Let me get it off my chest that I don’t believe there is a Post PC Era. The Personal Computer Industry is by nature transformative. When the portable computer and later the laptop emerged the computer was no longer tied to a single location. Likewise, when the PDA market rose, it arose as an extension to the PC market. Neither of these developments were particularly transformative until the emergence of the smart phone, which significantly predated the iPhone. Continue reading Fallacy of the Post PC Era

iOS and Mac OS Consolidation: Get Used to It, It Will Happen

 Kirk McElhearn over at MacWorld.com begins a lively discussion about Why Apple is making OS X more like iOS and how both Microsoft and Apple seem to be blending the best features of each OS. There are excellent reasons for doing this, but there are plenty of ugly ones too. Something to keep in mind is that these are not entirely separate operating systems. Apple developed iOS based on a cut down version of Mac OS X’s core technology. Keeping these two platforms in synch means a vast cost savings in support and development, and also ensures that its easier to port Apple applications to work as seamlessly as possible no matter what the target hardware is.

There are plenty of uglies to go along with the practical cost savings though. Continue reading iOS and Mac OS Consolidation: Get Used to It, It Will Happen