Ones and Zeros

Where I work I had a manager once that used to like to give our customers their reports in PowerPoint.   And whenever there’s a presentation on any project, naturally someone wants to make a powerpoint document for it.  It’ll be reliably full of bullet points in the usual telegraphic grammar style.  And the presenter usually just reads the damned thing.

So I sit there contemplating the more useful and pleasurable things I could have down with this particular hour of my life.  Like have a cavity drilled and filled, getting a root canal.  Or installing Windows Vista.

So it’s with delight that I came across this:

Design by Mark Goetz.  And see information presentation guru Edward Tufte as well.  Presentations CAN be made well in PowerPoint or KeyNote (on the Mac).  Here’s a few tips:

• Use the presentation to highlight key points.  Don’t list everything.
• Presentations should provide a framework to discuss a topic, not everything you’ll say.
• You should already know what you want to say.
• Whatever you do: don’t read from the slides!

I think people get into bad presenting styles because they don’t like speaking in front of a group and they’re afraid they’ll forget something.  Well, that’s what your own notes are for.  The presentation is to communicate ideas to others, not to remind yourself.  Watch good presentations on YouTube from Lessig, and the TED.com presentations have some good examples too.  And Google as always provides a wealth of resources, YMMV.

But Powerpoint, as typically used, is an abuse of technology.  The trick - as always - is to use the technology instead of letting the technology use you.

I really like the idea of 3D printers.  Here’s an especially nice one large enough to make buildings out of what’s basically a printable concrete:  Giant 3D printer

And, for something really useful, how to save a wet cell phone.  Certainly baking it in the oven (on warm) didn’t work all that well for me once.  Note, this is not guaranteed to work, but it’s better than nothing. How to save a wet cell phone.

Last, a wonderful example of visualization.  This is the color wheel seen in flickr photos from around the year.  All visualizations are abstractions and summaries of real data, yet the best of them show something new in the process.  See Flickr Flow.

It’s curious.  In a world becoming more and more open-source and using more and more open-source software (OSS) Apple is thriving being proprietary.  They are using OSS in some areas, and are participating in open source projects as well.  WebKit in their Safari browser is one major example.  Yet much of their core system software is and will remain proprietary.

Certainly they’re successful.  Measured in name recognition, units sold, $20 billion plus of cash in the bank, or stock price they’re clearly a major force.  (I wish I still had my stock grant from my employee days!)

The argument in open source circles is that a proprietary effort like Apple’s will always fail in the long run when compared to open source.  IBM became a major driver of Linux, Microsoft has felt the pinch more and more, and even the federal government and DoD are proponents of Linux and open source software.  How is Apple not merely surviving, but thriving being proprietary?

I think it’s two fold.  First, while Apple is using open source software, they’re just using it where it’s not a key part of their company’s added value.  Second, they are using their proprietary software in an integrated ecosystem of software systems that all work together.  This provides a “user experience” that enough customers value over Apple’s competitors.

By leveraging open-source software (OSS) in non-key areas Apple frees up engineers and effort on their key proprietary areas.  This is a no-brainer.  Yet many companies fail to do this.  Apple’s using Mach UNIX as their base OS on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad avoiding rewriting the OS.  They spend their efforts writing more complex layers on top of the OS to provide a richer computing environment.  Better graphics, animation in the UI, richer audio, apps like iPhoto, Aperture, the iWork suite are all enabled by this as a random grab-bag of items.  By comparison Microsoft writes everything - they’re working twice as hard and getting rather less the same result.  Their last several releases have suffered by many measures.  Apple focuses only on writing the software that’s key to their system.

But Apple embraces the proprietary and customers (despite the grumbling about DRM) embrace the Apple products.  MP3 players existed before Apple, but the iPod massively expanded that market to the point where it is dominated by Apple.  Smart phones and smart phone apps existed before the iPhone,  but Apple’s remade that market as well.  Through these innovations they’ve fostered the development of things like podcasting, and created a whole new developer market for iPhone apps.

I believe they key to their success in proprietary software is that they’re creating a very well integrated software ecosystem.  Having an iPod is richer with iTunes, they enhance each other.  You get used to this, then find the iPhone works very well with iTunes too. It’s a natural upgrade path.  The lack of the involved setup and configuration necessary with many Windows software systems helps tremedously.  the Mac systems just feel right, things fit well.  The Windows seems clunky, a moved window isn’t refreshed smoothly - it’s the little things that make a system feel like it is working well.

It’s an ignored truism in software that customers just want to get something useful done.  It’s geeks like me that want to spend their time messing with software.  Yet even I want to focus on the things I want to play with - not the boring configuration & setup stuff on the way.  The Mac/iPhone software ecosystem allows me to do that.

This singular focus on how things feel and work smoothly comes, I believe, from Steve Jobs.  Certainly Apple is much larger that Jobs and all employees are important to Apple’s overall success.  But the leader stamps a personality on the company.  Jobs is famously driven a high standard of usability.  His equally famous control on information and access allows Apple to work on something till they’re happy with it and not be bound by a schedule to they are ready to release.

That’s a key point.  In engineering it’s said that there are three things: schedule, quality, and features.  You can control two, but the third must flex.  If Apple drives quality and features, then schedule must be flexible.  Their control on public information allows that.

So a way for companies to compete against OSS is to use their proprietary work to provide a smoothly integrated environment, a software ecosystem.  OSS efforts have a hard time with this since the level of coordination and interaction required is high.   Most OSS efforts (barring Linux itself perhaps) are smaller and more loose.  The weak point of current OSS projects is their democracy and openness.

(Note: I’m a proponent of OSS and have contributed to OSS projects.  I used OSS daily in my work. But I find it interesting that Apple’s been contrarian and successful in their proprietary efforts.  That probably isn’t a universal solution for companies facing OSS competition though.  Most companies can’t maintain the high standards of quality necessary the Apple solution.)

Senator Jim Bunning has now apparently raised his block against extending unemployment benefits.  His stated motivation was to impose fiscal pay-as-you-go discipline by saying “Tough Shit” to Americans.  But in May 2007 Sen Jim Bunning voted for $120 billion for the war in Iraq.  He’s comfortable going into debt for war against a country that didn’t attack us (Iraq), but not for US citizens who’ve lost their jobs due to financiers.  Financiers that are already bailed out.

There’s also plenty of spin going on to attempt to make sense of Bunning’s effort. Michelle Malkin’s saying that he just wanted everyone on the record for example. Others have said that unemployement benefits cause people to NOT look for jobs.  The first is clearly overkill.  The second is ridiculous for anyone who’s been laid off.  Frankly unemployment benefits won’t replace any reasonable salary.