Between IT, Media and the Litterbox

The Rapture of 2011

Mr. Camping believes that at 6pm  EST we all will be experiencing the second coming of Christ, that we will have massive earthquakes that will last for five months and all faithful believers and chosen ones will be selected and being taken to the heavens and the rest will be banished to hell.

So, set your alarm clocks and make sure you are sitting down. The shit might hit the fan hard, at least, if you believe in such a thing. I am an Atheist, although not with any disrespect to anyone who believes in (a) God, but for me this message really doesn't control my life at this point.

Somehow it does remind me a bit about the years prior to 2000, where the millennium bug was causing for some major feelings of panic with a lot of people. Right now, I hear a lot of people mentioning that it was a hoax, but with that I at least can say that there actually was a problem. And people who were used as consultants to fix that problem know just as well, there was an actual (big?) problem.

For the people who are not know with what the millennium bug was, a small recap. To save memory space in the earlier computers, programmers decided to mention the current year with a two-digit number. The computer would than assume automatically that the numbers prior to that would be 19. So, the year 88 was actually 1988 (so, actually it was a century bug instead of a millennium bug). Of course they knew that this was a design flaw at that time, but first of all, even they did have the idea the problem would be fixed later on when more memory was available, and second, it saved memory space which was very valuable at that moment.

And it was not that the problem was not fixed in the following years. The problem was that a lot of systems were still in use after 20 years, that nobody every expected to be still used. And this was usually with banks, power plants, factories, governments... all the institutions that had to invest a lot of money in the original software and would/could not replace it if it was not broken.

Outside of that, almost everything that existed had no problems. Your personal computer, if purchased somewhere in the late '80s, begin '90s had no problem whatsoever. But the threat was real; because if you for example would have an account overdrawn status on December 31st, 1999 at an un-patched bank, the next day it would write it as still an overdrawn status on January 1st, 1900 (because of the automatic addition of the '19'). That would add up to 100 years, everyday an overdrawn fee. That bug would cost you around $1,224,000 on overdraft fees, at least, if you were banking at Chase Bank. But this is a tiny example. Although people with knowledge about this bug knew it was a serious threat, we also knew it would not end the world. The fix was rather easy... more or less it meant every two-digit year had to be transformed into a four-digit yes, or every function that handled a year needed to do that. 

It was not difficult, but there was a lot of software to go through. Although not widely known, but there has been software impacted by the millennium bug, but not nearly enough to cause any damage. And contrary popular believe, this is simply because the critical companies that owned the software, were well informed and took correct action. Although some people - especially without knowledge on the matter - panicked and also called for the end of the world - it was not that severe.

But right now, we have this Rapture scheduled for Saturday. According to Mr. Camping the proof is in the bible. I don't mean any disrespect to any believer, and I do not know the Bible well enough to make any statement upon it, but it is in contrast to the millennium bug which  was actually confirmed by a lot of people with knowledge about the case. Right now, there is only one man.

So, my agenda is booked for well beyond next Saturday. This is a 'bug' I cannot help with.

The Second Browser War, HTML 5 and some catching up

I haven't been posting for a little while. This had nothing to do with lack of enthusiasm or lack of things to write about, but I seriously did not want to spend any time on IT related stuff outside of my work. Yes, yes, it has been again a period of time that all my work existed of nitwits in the field trying to involve themselves with things they have no experience with, and pushing their will through.

You know the deal. Being at work, having collegues and superiors telling you they really know a lot better what to do with their no training and no previous successes, against your training and 20 years of experience on the job, praised by clients and partners.

I know, that is life, you win some, you lose some, and you need to know what battles to pick. And usually, it is not worth even the time or aggravation. But the biggest aggravation right now is the lack of knowledge about what can and cannot be done.

For one project, I have decided to bring in HTML instead of Flash, although I still absolutely favor the use of Flash. But since a lot of people in the office use Apple devices, most of them are in the state of mind that Flash is bad, since Apple does not want it to run on their devices. Which is like telling Darwin was wrong simply because evolution is not part of the Bible; A lot of people agree, but people with knowledge of the matter know better. This is one of the things why I LOVED BlackBerry's new Playbook commercial on television; "We Run Flash!" - which was practically the whole message of the commercial.

Anyway. So while there has been a sigh of relief when I decided to work with HTML again for one site, people don't realize that suddenly you are back in the ages of browser wars. The First Browser War (BWI) was played out from about 1997 till 2001 with Internet Explorer on one side and NetScape Navigator on the other.

A browser war has no winners whatsoever. Users have no personal gain in any of the browser winning or losing; but it will take a lot of money for companies to work with the different browsers. And now it is even worse, with making apps or mobile web apps for iOS, BlackBerry, Android or even plain mobile browsers.

But it is not only that why I hate being back caught in the Browser War; but there is so much possibility lacking. Designers nowadays are not trained to know what can and can't be done in HTML and HTML+CSS sites compared to Flash or Silverlight productions. For example, I work with one designer who can't get rid of using Avenir as a font in all his designs for this project.

Avenir has two major problems: It has not bold state. This means, even when you import it in Flash, you cannot use bold and regular texts trough each other, because  the bold and the regular texts are two different fonts. And since Flash cannot handle two fonts in one TextField, it is end-game. 

On the other hand, in plain HTML, forget about using any un-installed fonts. No matter how much you wish for it, you cannot plainly use uninstalled fonts and expect more then 40% of all the browsers to be able to cope with it.

But believe me, that font has caused a lot of problems. Because designers lost their way with knowing what can and can't be done on certain platforms. Can I blame the designer? Sure, partially. Because when you hire someone, you might expect that person to know what he or she is doing. But on the other hand, the browser war is absolutely causing this too. Not only as a designer, you need to be so aware of the differences between the different browsers; what works on one, does not work on the other.

HTML 5 and CSS3? As I mentioned before in a posting, since it is first of all not even a defined standard, it is actually not of complete use yet. The other thing of interest is, even though you can use it now, and soon you can use it fully, it will take still up to 3 years before more than 90% of the browsers can accept your code... if we are lucky.

And this is why I really cannot stand Apple's attitude. There is one technology in the world that was supported by more browsers than Java script, reached almost a 100% of market integration - which means almost all people can see. It made sure all of the incompatibilities were dealt with - or almost all - which saved a lot of companies a lot of time and money, and provided users with a more stable environment too.

And then Apple comes along and says 'No!'. Keep in mind, this is not because of their 'battery draining' arguement, that ZD-Net had displaced long ago already with showing and testing the Flash player on Android and BlackBerry machines. But simply because of a dispute between the former partners in crime; Adobe and Apple. Because that's it.

In my opinion, businesses should demand Apple to accept Flash, and make it at least a possibility to run on an iPad. It would make the world of designers, developers and users a lot easier and more streamlined. It would cut production times in half, and build stronger teams. And I would rather put my time in learning new possibilities in a technology to advance, than to put that time into learning how to make old things work for each and everyone.

Sure, it is only my two cents... but a company's millions of dollars worth...

Let's talk about xxx

It has been written before on many blogs, the .xxx top-level domain name (TLD) has been officially approved by ICANN.This means that besides the well known .com, .net, org, info etc., you now also can order the .xxx domain.

Now, there are many reasons why you might want it, and many why you don't want it. But it all ends up with two conclusions; no one wants it, and everyone will buy it.

First, a little bit of history. Everyone knows that when mentioning xxx we are talking about pornographic websites, actually, the hardcore pornographic websites. When the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) came around and started to set up a voluntary rating program, there were different types of ratings. G (General Audiences), PG (Parental Guidance), PG-13 (Parental-Guidance and over 13), R (restricted) and NC-17 (Not admitted under 18).
Still, this did not qualify all movies. Pornographic movies were lacking any kind of rating. Hence the X, which meant there was no rating (or-unrated). So, quickly the x-rating was associated with pornography. But there were a lot of unrated movies, also non-pornographic movies, which actually introduced the term 'unrated'.
But within the world of pornography there was quite a difference between soft and hard erotica. Which soon introduced the xxx-rating, which is not an official rating at all. But it means it is the most explicit (hard) form you will find.

Back to the story.

A specific domain for anything erotica actually sounds like a good idea. Just like .com for commercial productions, .info for informative, .org for organisations, .gov for government... it makes total sense.

Better yet, you can block the .xxx TLD in any kind of filter, which actually adds to the safe surfing habits that parents need to get working with their children.

But, if you are a bit more known with how the internet works, and how companies on the internet work, the .xxx domain will only have the opposite effect.

It is not worth worrying about legit, professional and self-respecting erotic and pornographic websites. It is a business, just like any other, and any kind of 'good' erotic website will classify themselves like that. This will make sure that filters like Net-Nanny or even the built-in filters from FireFox, Internet Explorer etc. will filter it out and block the visit of the site.
To be honest, it is of no use for an erotic website that minors are visiting it. Minors have no way of paying for adult services online using a credit-card. So there is no money to be made there - legally.

It is the less-legit websites you have to worry about. The ones that try to make money from relatively three things:
- Selling you memberships to their or related sites.
- Showing you advertisements (also in form of content for other sites - so the more material you see, the more money they earn).
- Form a hosting platform for malicious software.

The reason why this is the worrisome part is not so much even for the malicious software, but because the money is earned by showing you as much as possible content. Because they show content as being the advertisement itself.
But these sites do not try to earn money by getting you to become a subscriber to one of their advertising sites (although they earn a bit through it, it is not a lot). They just try to create the page-views, trying to show you more, and more, and more. These sites are preying on surfers who stumble by, and get hooked up by clicking on one image or movie after another.
Especially minors are a target audience; they can see a lot of content without having a credit card or any kind of age restriction. And they generate a lot of pageviews - bannerviews.

These sites do not profit from a .xxx domain name. The .xxx domain name forces you as a surfer to explicitly look and categorize a site as being pornographic. So there is no 'accidentally' stumbling upon.
This explains why these kind of less-legit sites are absolutely not interested in this. Because filtering works too well, which will put them mostly out of business.

But if these sites will not move to .xxx, there is not legit site who will do this then. Because, if this market still exists on the .com levels, why corner yourself in the .xxx field?

So, in the end, the .xxx TLD has no functionality whatsoever. It will not do what it is supposed to.

But still, every company will buy a .xxx domain name. And I mean every company, not only the erotic ones. Because, if you are Nestle, for example, you do not want anyone else to have a nestle.xxx domain name. Or worse, a boyscouts.xxx or girlscouts.xxx domain name. Coca-Cola.xxx, salvationarmy.xxx, sarahpalin.xxx ... you name it. All these companies will buy 'their' .xxx domain names to prevent abuse of their names or brands.

At $75 per domain name registration, while a normal .com address is 'only' $34 without any rebates - there is only one big winner of this .xxx TLD happening, which is the ICANN itself.

They said themselves to be expecting 250,000 registrations this year. Well, that is a nice $18.75 million dollars. That is one way to print your own money.

 

 

Scrollbars are the source of all evil

As a graphic designer and a schooled usability designer I find myself so often in the position to defend good design aspects against horrible alternatives. And more often then not I have to quote different usability research done by major companies like Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Logitech, and also new usability trends.

And in the world of usability there are three nightmares. Three banes of desctruction of everything usable, and they are the following:

- the Keyboard

- the Mouse

- the Scrollbar

Now, the first two are not that difficult to imagine, also because of its history.

A keyboard is an input device

t that needs to be able to provide all the letters of the alphabet, all the numbers, often used special characters and basic ways to navigate through a computer. And because the functions of a computer and its operating system increased, we have now additional buttons hooked up to the keyboard. The keyboard is not a logical device, but it's design is almost necessary. It is difficult to build something that needs to have 101+ keys in one single device. The weird thing is, that the 'non-computer' alternative is extremely simple: the pen or pencil. So, you do have the pen-tablets, but since we are dealing with computers here, it takes a lot of work for a computer to flawlessly understand you hand-writing. So keyboard it is. We'll have to deal with it.

The mouse became the input device that nature itself tested as being a failure as an input device. Corpal Tunnel Syndrome. The reason why the mouse showed up in the first place is because computer were able to create dynamic user interfaces on a screen. So, you could show a button on the screen, but a button invited the behavior to push it. Well, especially back then, you could press your finger to the screen as hard as you wanted, it would not budge. So, we needed a 'digital'finger. And the mouse it was. Now, Apple was smart, and thought it through; if the mouse mimics your index-finger, you only need one button: the push. If you push a real-life button with two fingers, it still does the one thing it was destined to do. For years and years, Apple kept with this functionality. Too bad they finally gave in and put extra functions into the mouse; including different ways of touching it. The PC/Unix mice were worse, with the 2,3,4,5 buttons to click on, and the combinations. True, you could trigger more functions with it, but it was not getting easier to understand it.

And then, indeed, the way of handling a mouse could be so devastating after longer use, that it did cost companies and insurance companies millions and millions of dollars. Still, the mouse is around. Also here, a pen-tablet does a magnificent trick, representing the surface of the screen, and you can write, move and tap like you would do in real-life too. but people love to stick with their mouse. Why? I really cannot say; unless you play games. A pen is a horrible game interface.

But, finally, there it is. The scrollbar.

This one is the easiest to explain why it is a bad interface element, and it is backed up with so much research that you would think it is an easy thing to convince people of this defective user interface element. But noooooh. Actually, the scrollbar, and scrolling itself, is amazingly difficult to debunk.

The scrollbar, just like the keyboard and the mouse, has been invented because of a problem in technology, or actually, an added bonus to a computer over real life. Because, a computer is only limited to 'virtual' space by the storage size and processing power it has. This means, that visually, you can create an image of 1 mile by 1 mile. Still, your screen is not 1 mile by 1 mile. So, now, instead of the good old days when all computer programs were built to run on exactly a certain screen, a screen is more or less a window to a virtual world that lives inside your computer. You do not always see everything.

And like with a real window, where you can pop your head out and look around, scrollbars were introduced to provide you with a way to show content on your screen that is too large to fit on your screen. So, in this scenario, scrollbars still feel correct. Hey, they are a blessing with content that simply is too big. For example, I design a poster, and I have to see parts of it in detail before I send it out to the printer. The poster is simply bigger than the screen, so I need it.

But suddenly, with the coming of the internet, the scrollbars needed to be used for a necessary evil. The loading times. When you designed a web page in '93 in Mosaic, dragging in your web page on your 2400 baud modem, it could take up minutes to load up a normal page. As an internet developer, one of the requirements were that a page needed to load up within 30 seconds before people would lose interest. So, it was impossible to require people to load up multiple pages if that was absolutely unnecessary.

And there was no javascript around to cut content up within the page, delivering a different kind of interface to go through big parts of content.

So, there was no choice, a long text simply had to be shown in a big page, which automatically received a scrollbar. In that time, it was the bane of design at the academy, because it was ugly, it took up extra space, and it worked horribly. Especially with mice that still included the rolling ball, that was prone to collect dust-bunnies and stopped moving from time to time - hell on earth.

But technology caught up; we have broad-band internet, larger screens and can script any text field to use different ways of navigating. You would think that we all would have caught on... but no.

If you go to an honest designer, someone that is creative, knows the ins and outs of the subject matter, and is highly regarded by other designers, preferably even awarded, and ask him to make a design for an internet page, chances are that you won't see scrollbars. You will see some beautifully designed ways to navigate through content. Usually page-oriented.

Why?

For hundreds of years, it has been a natural way to 'flip' through text. This is not that that is now outdated, it is because of something different. Keep in mind, the ancient Greek, Egyptians and Romans had scrolls too. Long pieces of paper used to write upon.

One of the reasons why pages and books and magazines work as a container of content, just like the Kindle for example does too; a page provides a container for text. A whole page has an emotional volume. When you read a book, how many times don't you say 'you want to read one more page'? A page is a good way to bookmark, to refer to, to di-sect large quantities of information. An index in a book works because it simply says; Chapter 5, Page 40. So you know, if you go to page 40, you will be at chapter 5.

A long text in a scrollable text field is not that forgiving. You cannot easily say; I am about 45/98 of the text (because you don't see line numbers). Or read the index. Because an index needs to be programmed, and with dynamic texts that is practically impossible. If you pull a text of 2,000 lines and want to program links and an index, you will lose extra space for keeping that index in there. But more importantly; if you like scrollbars so much, why do you need an index? Isn't an index to prevent the use of scrolling originally?

Think about that.

Not only that, scrollbars have the 'visual feedback' to have the bar that actually does the scrolling, the handler, increase or decrease in size if the text is longer or shorter. But if you have a long text, it is often impossible to use. Also, it will scroll often too fast through the text, making it more an annoyance than a blessing.

Scrollbars are only a valuable interface system for content that is honestly too large to fit on your screen. Text has the flexibility to fit anywhere. It can be broken up per word if you need to, or it can fill up your whole screen. So there is no need for scroll bars. Just flip through texts.

I have been running different projects without scrolling for multiple years with success and raving reviews with only flipping texts, for entertainment companies, universities and have even been awarded for one of those. In projects together with NYU and also Rutgers we have applied this many times, sometimes we even had to replace scroll functions in older projects for page flippers.

But still, a lot of times, I get the question from some clients simply that they want a scrollbar. There is no reason why, except they see them on other sites too. Argh!

Praise has to be said though, because just before finishing this posting (also with horrible scrollbars, I need to kick some blog-engine-producers around ;) ) I received a near-perfect design from not even a professional designer who got it right on the money, and he absolutely made my day.

 

Who is Cassandra Kubinski?

When I came to the United States about 5 and a half years ago, I pretty quickly started to work with a company in New York City. There, within this small crew of people, was a girl who was actually writing content for our web productions. But during a private conversation I had with her a little bit later, she told me she actually was a singer and was working to finance her first steps in her singing career.

Well, to be honest, in New York, everyone is a singer, just like everyone in Los Angeles is an actor. Hey, I have been one telling since I was 15 years old, that I owned a company. Sure, I never did something with it... but I told it anyhow. It makes you look interesting, at least when you are 15.

Anyway, as an example of her work, she then sent me two songs by email that she wrote, produced and had recorded. And what really amazed me that these were two very well written, very well composed and performed songs. No pretences to create pop-songs, she had written the music she felt most comfortable with, and felt passionate about. And still, a couple of her songs of her albums are in my favorite playlist on my iPod.

Now, the reason why I bring this up is that this morning, when I was driving to work and I had to miss out on my satellite radio because my car is in the garage, I hooked up my iPod in the car and two of her songs got through. So, between Gorrillaz, Five for Fighting, Fatboy Slim, the Verve... there was Cassandra Kubinski. A singer who is still recording, who is still performing and putting her heart into it and delivering very good music without a lot of money or any major radio station play time.

That is actually where you see real creativity. I usually deal with clients who want what they want out of a commercial point of view. A site has to perform and generate revenue. Hey, it is what I often say here too; if you are a commercial company, you need to make a profit or plan to make a profit in the foreseeable future. If you don't, your business has no right of existence.

But that's business. And to be honest, Businesses and original creativity do not often get along. A commercial business usually wants to make a profit using a tested concept. Real creativity is, well, something that did not exist before. It just has been 'created'.

And it is done by people who have passion, who have, inside, the urge to create something, to make something up that was not there before. I am not talking about people who deliberately chose this line of work as a profession, but like people who do this because something inside of them tells them that they have to.

And that often delivers the most astonishing productions. It can be a painting, a story, a movie, a statue, a concept, a simple poem on a piece of a handkerchief... or like in this case, beautiful music.

Sometimes I think businesses should take a moment and actually think about that. That quality of productions is not about how much money you put into a production process, or how you handle your legal paperwork to control as much code as possible or buy into productions. Quality of any kind of production always has its roots with someone who really cares and is passionate about what he/she is making. And it only has to be this one person.

But, working in a commercial business and running another one myself, I too sometimes forget to appreciate that. But it is the passion of people like Cassandra that actually give a lot more color to this world.

Steve Jobs or Innovation does not require creativity alone

I don't like Steve Jobs. This does not mean that I know the man, this does not mean that I would not like the man if I knew him on a personal level - maybe he is one of the most like-able guys around. But I don't like the man. Let me rephrase it - I don't like Steve Jobs as the CEO of Apple. But's lets be honest, he does not deserve the medical problems he has.

Apple stock plummeted when Apple announced the temporary leave of absence of the CEO - and the company lost $20 billion or corporate value within the day. That hurts. And in my opinion that means that investors don't think Apple has the strength to go on on its own if anything would happen to Steve Jobs that would cause him to be out of the running permanently with Apple. It sounds to me that people who (think they) know a lot of investing and corporate businesses simply do not have the trust in Apple to survive if Steve Jobs would be gone.

Now, I don't like Apple too much, but I do walk around with my iPod which I love and let's be honest, they make pretty beautiful designs and make the IT world think about usability again. My not liking of Apple is more about the details; the vendor lock-ins, the controlling of what you can and cannot run on their devices and the treatment of their audiences and customers.

But one of the things you have to give a hand to is that Apple at least made IT companies rethink what was happening and should be happening. Microsoft is beaten around about usability since Apple start introducing OSX, Google tries - and is partially successful - to participate in this competition to become the people's choice on devices too.

But now rises the question, is it Apple or is it Steve Jobs that we are fans of here? Steve Jobs has not been responsible for neither the iPod or the iMac - which in its turn started the revival of the Macintosh computers. Neither was he the man behind OSX. So my question is if he is a real innovator. With my knowledge about the world of IT and about Apple, I would say he is not. But without him - for certain - Apple would not have flourished like it did since the early 2000's. Keep in mind, Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy in the late '90s, and that was after the introduction of the iMac and OSX, and development of the iPod was already going on strong. When Steve Jobs returned to the helm of the company, things started to look up.

So I think Apple makes a perfect example that innovation does not require creativity alone. OSX - especially when it was introduced, was a whole new way of presenting an OS. Microsoft has not come close to the user experience yet. On the other hand, Apple has not come close to the integrity of Windows yet (yes, sure, there will be a lot of you out there flabbergasted by that remark, but talk to the people who really need to work with reliable systems for corporate platforms... there is a reason why Apple stopped their server OSX production and never got a hold of that market; it is *nix or Windows).

Apple alone has redefined the concept of a handheld device. And they did these innovations both with and without Steve Jobs on the helm. There are some very creative people working in Cupertino who do not get all the credit they should receive. And they do not receive the trust of their investors that they should.

Steve Jobs is a charismatic man, and when you hear him talk in all simplicity you feel comfortable and you want to agree with what he is saying. Standing in his casual clothes, walking around - he is a salesman on a high level and knows the game of how to engage people. And then he has the products to engage people with. Even though the products might have better competition out there; if I have to listen to a sales pitch of Steve Jobs or Steve Ballmer chances are I would be more inclined to buy something from Jobs than from Ballmer... even though I might resent the choice later on.

So, yes, in my opinion Steve Jobs is a huge portion of the success of Apple, although the company behind the man should deserve a lot more credit for the success of the company. But then, you cannot avoid the reality that without someone who knows how to bring it to the market - that company might as well be doomed.

Why I am done with Craigslist

I am done with Craigslist. And I know I am not alone in this, but for trying to get a message out to someone in a certain area it was a good medium, but it is now lacking any kind of respect for people who honestly use the system.

Besides the work that I do on a 9-5 basis, I also own a photo studio with my wife. Not one that you come into for a portrait picture for your passport, but a photostudio for hire. For that, we usually like to work with new models to add to our network, so we can use them in photo shoots for companies that we work with.

Craigslist used to be a good place to reach out to would-be models in the area and we have created some excellent working relationships with models, make-up artists and hair dressers through it. But Craigslist, like many other sites, started digging their own grave right from the beginning. The reason is a social media and free access.

Although everyone wants everything for free, it is anything but a recommended business model. Not only because of financial shortcomings, but more that you actually give everyone access to your product. For sites like eBay and Craigslist this is actually a blessing; more audience and more products delivered by the audience actually makes the site grow.

But not everyone is a good competitor. You let people participate in business transactions - what both Craigslist and eBay deliver - who have no real experience or value in the market. With my own IT company, I more or less deliver web productions. They are reasonably priced, starting about $5,000 and up. There is no way of advertising on Craigslist when someone who does not know the market and who sees every $100 as an extra $100, that offers a site for about $500 or even lower. Of course, as clients usually realise, there is a reason why a web production costs $5k with me to start out with. But not after they spend more money than that in that $500 site.

But it hurts the market. It is impossible to set up a business. A good friend of mine trades in antique books and sells them to avid collectors and celebrities. These books range from $1,000 to about $20,000. He first started trading them using eBay in the mid-late '90s. It was no problem, it was a perfect spot for buyer and seller to meet each other.

But as eBay grew more popular, and other people who had no idea about the market and its value, started crowding the site, offering what they thought were antique books for rediculous prices, not understanding that what they were selling might not have been wordt anything. But when someone who is not a trader in the market, wants to sell a product he/she thinks is very valuable, they will not lower the price. It is not a job for them. And so many people started putting their books in the site against weird and unrealistic prices, that people who were honestly interested in these antique books did bypass eBay as a solid source. And eventually my friend also stopped using eBay. Right now it is very difficult to find real solid sellers with a grip on reality on eBay. Sure, you can get amazing deals if someone does not realize the value of something for sale, but finding that is not a job anymore... it is pure luck and you cannot depend on it.

Anyway, eBay created the online trading market, but is also the main contributor to the destruction of it. And the same thing goes for Craigslist. Craigslist became so popular as the online free classifieds site, that of course it created a giant audience, and received many classifieds to publish online.

But here it became a market of trash. We see it a lot in the search for photo models. There are now so many so-called pro-photographers whose only goal is to have a woman in front of their camera, in a seedy lot. And they offer services for nothing - or for any kind of 'physical kind of payment'. Not really valid, but you see it a lot.

But even that is something you might overcome if you are an honest photo studio. But because of these 'false' postings, Craigslist had to come up with a way to report these for removal. But since Craigslist itself did not want to spend time on this, they decided to build an automated system; if a certain number of people say that your advertisement is incorrect, it is automatically taken offline. This hugely backfired. Because, it is extremely easy to have 5-6 maybe 10 personal accounts on Craigslist, and having them all flag a certain ad takes it offline - without any kind of check.

And this happens all the time. We cannot keep a single posting online anymore without it being flagged and removed from the website. And it is not only with the photo site; the same goes for the antique store of my wife or my own IT company. Taken all offline, simply by the people who are not able to get their own productions sold and don't want any competition.

This is seriously destroying a solid market. I have no problems paying for a marketing service, because I am weary of any free or cheap services nowadays; but those DO have the biggest audiences - which is where you want to be.

To bad, I do not know where to go now to reach a huge audience without immediately having to fight with an automated system that kills the advertisement industry.

A little bit of trust restored...

This morning the news came through that the government in the Netherlands has rejected the criticized cybercrime report that I wrote about yesterday in a lengthy blog posting on this site.

If you are known with the Dutch language and would like to be flabbergasted; here is the url to the complete report:

http://www.fabers.nl/Cybercrime%20281210.pdf

So, gladly this one has been rejected. Is that a guarantee for the future for other sort-like reports; I don't know but I wouldn't count on it.

The question still remains... someone paid for this report, decided that Faber was theagency to have the research done by. Probably it has cost a lot of money.

But I won't go into that .

Not right now ...

Hey! Are you a usual suspect too? According to the Netherlands you are...

So, let's talk about privacy. I know, I did that in the past, but it is still a very delicate issue. There is something to say for giving up a bit of privacy for more security, but there is a big problem if the giving up the privacy doesn't have anything in return.

Today, a report will be presented in the Netherlands mentioning that covering your IP address online is suspicious behavior and as soon as this is noticed, the police should be tracing every move you make online. Also, producers of adult productions should be tracked precisely online because it is a more high-risk group that might be involved in child pornography.

Excuse me?

I am not kidding you. It is in Dutch, but you might use a translator to read this text: http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2694/Internet-Media/article/detail/1303654/2010/12/28/Internetcriminelen-gaan-te-vaak-vrijuit.dhtml

Let me rephrase it; if you are in any way related to production of adult oriented material you should be under surveillance because you are more likely to be involved in creation of child pornography.

Then, if you cloak your IP address, you are showing suspicious behavior.

These two points in this report are absolutely stunning! The bad part is, this report will be used as a guideline for fighting cybercrime in the Netherlands. The fact is, simply put, that this is not about privacy anymore, it is about pointing out suspects and finding possible criminals. You are actually guilty until proven innocent.

First of all, cloaking your IP address is not suspicious behavior. As a blogger responded on this article, it is like closing your curtains. It does not mean you are a criminal or that you do things inside your house that are of criminal intent. It might be that you simply prefer to remain unseen. Even though it might look suspicious, which I can understand it does, it does not mean you are a suspect of anything.

IP cloaking might actually enhance your security and of your network; simply because it might prevent trojans of getting access to your servers. And not only that, actually with a lot of systems IP cloaking, or the use of a proxy server, is absolutely recommended. Ask any corporate network administrator.

But I do still get this train of thought. If you do not understand the world of IT, you might think hiding your IP address is a sign of suspicious behavior. I know the government would like to have a grip on information and information about personalized behavior - it might well decrease crime. But it doesn't work.

The reason why it doesn't work is because you have three personalities that commit crime; The smart ones, the dumb ones and the unstable ones.

The smart ones you will  not get. These are the people who know to hide their tracks, or have the dumb ones to the work for them. These people are three or four steps ahead and are not by any means scared by these tactics.

The dumb ones, well, these are the people doing the dirty work or following orders, or are simply not smart enough to hide their tracks. Online or offline, these are the people that get caught. And they should.

The unstable ones, no matter in what kind of crime, are the ones you do not control. They are not acting out of rational thought, they do not think about the law or that they are a suspect. They get caught, still, their crime rate on or offline will not go down.

The smart ones and the unstable ones you will not catch, no matter what you do. The dumb ones are easy to track, they most of the time do not even use IP cloaking if they are already known with it.

And then the absolutely amazing one; if you are into adult movie making, you are more likely to be involved with child pornography. That means that if you are a cop, you are also more likely to be a criminal; they both have to do with crime. It makes no sense. Another one; if you are a banker, you are also more likely to be involved with counterfeiting money. If you are a judge, you are also more likely to be a white-collar criminal since they both have to do with crime and both do not get their hands dirty. It makes no sense whatsoever. I have a photo studio and once in a while we shoot nude scenes with models; am I now on the most wanted list?

It is ridiculous and this report will not stand when it is being critizised by real IT and criminology experts. Not only that, but even following up and tracking all the people suddenly becoming suspects will be a very costly thing with too little results. What worries me, and the thing that is the point of this posting is that governments do listen to these reports. Politicians with no required knowledge in the field of IT will read these outcomes and form their opinions. Opinions that are difficult to remove.

But it is scary to know that these are the steps taken these days, to create a false idea of security.

Will the uncloaking of IP addresses make it safer on the streets? Will tracking every adult photographer and camera team for loads of money make your neighborhood safe again to walk around at night? Or will there be more money put in these actions, and since there are limited security budgets, take away this money from where it really matters.

Come on people, use your mind. If you want to do real research that fights crime everywhere; make it worthwhile for the police and departments of justice to work for national and international security. Don't let the guys in blue on the street put their asses on the line every day for a little amount of money, respect them more. Give crime investigation units enough money to keep up to date with the latest technology to find, and fight the smart criminals, take these down and not let them slip away.

That, in my opinion, would create a lot more on and offline security.

But who am I?

Sometimes IT is not all problematic at all.

Today is for me a day completely dipped in IT that I cannot do anything about. I mean, I like to complain, or explain or dive deep into problems with IT, but actually, today, I am really impressed about how far IT has come.

I am in the hospital today, not for myself but for my wife who is having surgery today. Because of the type of surgery, we ended up with this religious hospital St. Mary's Medical Center in Langhorne, PA. Being atheists ourselves somehow we were a bit hesitant, but you know what, the quality of someones work has nothing to do with religion. Better even, we were both pretty impressed. My wife, who is an M.D. herself about the medical know-how, and I, with my experience in IT with the technical side of this hospital.

My wife actually has a remote surgery done by a robot. Usually this should worry me, because, well, we all know about problems that could occur with computers and related appliances - but this is the first time I have the idea - in this hospital - that everything is extremely well under control. I am just sitting here, with wireless access everywhere and allowed cell-phones - so even from a working point of view, I am actually completely on the go here.

But not only that, because of the use of robots and the remote surgery, they are actually able to have surgery on my wife with the minimum of impact on her body. Of course, it still is major surgery, but it is good to know that these days it is not only about fixing what is wrong, but also about the aftermath, making sure that what had to be done, has been done absolutely well. And this is then the moment that you have to rely on technology while not being in control, just like stepping into an airplane... and you know what... it seems like there are things in IT that are absolutely going extremely well... and I guess this Hospital, among many others in the country (I hope) is taking care of it amazingly. So a little shout-out to St. Mary's Medical Center in Langhorne, PA; Nice work! And thank you very much.

Sex sells part 3: Opportunities and Pitfalls

The last two days I have been writing about using sex as marketing for your production or website, as a matter of attracting attention. In part-2 I also mentioned that it is very important to now your audience very well to know how to use it to make sure it is not offending or actually damaging the product.

Sex is an amazing asset to a marketing campaign; and again I do not mean pure nudity or pornography, I mean sexuality and sensuality in its subtlety and triggering a fantasy in which it might be related to your production, the way Axe, Victoria's Secret and Nivea might use it (and the many fashion designers).

But besides the many pros to using sex as a marketing feature, there is a major con too. Sexuality tends to be blinding. It is very difficult to balance on the fine line you should draw of where to go and where not when using sex in your marketing. If you use it too little, the marketing campaign relying on it might not have the required impact. But using it too much might kill the whole product right away. Finding this line is extremely important, and stay your course.

On my own website, at www.dialect-line.com, we actually decided to just use it slightly by working together with a model who is more or less the 'face' of the company. Too many IT companies are showing 'artsy' and 'in touch with the world' or 'nerdy' people.  But for an online company, it is in the end not what makes it work, but how a user perceives the product. It is like buying a car. You want to know about the engine, but in the end it is the performance and the looks that makes it work for you, not the thought about the robots creating it. The same thing goes here in our site, we want to show that it is about the freedom that you get, the hint of something attractive. One of the reasons we work with a model and with photography; it is not about who we are, it is about what we can deliver.

On the other hand, we also own a photo studio, which you can find at www.cantanopy.comwhere everything is completely different. Since we are not selling 'our studio' but using it more in other productions, we actually put the sensuality deeper in the content, not so much in the immediate look and feel. Showing a sexy photo is what most photo studios do, and our target audience is here the companies who already decided working with our company and needing a photographic solution; the 'sex' was already in the first site, here we need to show that we are solid.

The other target audience for this site are actually models that we work with or who want to work with us. This audience isusually posing for these kind of photos, you don't buy them with 'sex', because they know it is the product. They need to have the idea it is a professional studio, reliable and that is the major ambiance the site needs to spread. The photo's are simply examples.

So these are two examples I can offer you from my own portfolio and how I use it. But as I have experienced it more often, when companies want to incorporate 'sex' in their site, it is very difficult for them not to adjust their requirement of amount of 'sex' in it. Because it is intoxicating, during presentation it is easy to 'want more'. It is like seeing a sensual photo but then wanting more. That is the power of sex in marketing, but also the pitfall. It is exactly this 'tease' and the wanting for more that makes it so powerful. But if a manager or a project owner 'demands' that more simply because he/she is persuaded by it; it is a big problem sometimes to say NO.

But if you deliver 'more', a campaign can go from teasing to trashing. Your product might be related in the media or with your clients as trashy, over done, not-classy. And it can simply damage your company, even killing it.

Don't underestimate the power of sex in a marketing campaign. If you keep playing by the rules and information in the last three blog postings, you might understand that sex is a state of mind, it is a tease, a perfectly balanced way of attracting someones attention to your product, and want them to want more.

Also, don't think it is not fit for certain target areas. Even religious productions, medical, scientific or corporate productions can absolutely benefit from it. As long as it is designed with the correct target audience in mind. It does not mean showing off a human body in full nudity, or accenting certain body parts or poses. It can be the look in someones eyes that the audience might feel attracted to, a sexy smile, a message that is extremely subtle, but is enough to get people interested and wanting.

Doing it well might be very rewarding for your audience, but in the end; for you.

Sex sells part 2: why it might be a solution to your marketing problem.

Yesterday I wrote a posting on this blog about comparing regular sites to erotic websites, and why that bird doesn't fly. I mentioned that erotica hooks into a primal, genetic need that attracts our attention, and how other commercial websites need to create a market. Sex does not, it is there, just like there is always a market for food, health-care and hygiene.

The comparison that a client wanted to make with his own website to an erotic one does not hold up, but, as I pointed out, it is not weird that people, especially web masters or project owners, wantto make that comparison. The sex industry is always considered a 'I do not know about that' kind of industry because people find it still uncomfortable to talk about it, but actually it is worth thinking about it if you want to do marketing.

The title of yesterday's post was 'Sex sells, cars don't', and I am simply stating a fact there. No matter how bad the economy will get, sex will always sell. So from a marketing point of view, or a commercial point of view, there is a huge market there. Still, when mentioning 'Sex sells' people immediately think about porn, but it is more than that.

When I was working with a previous employer in Europe, which was a large IT consultancy firm, I had to deal with a lot of Powerpoint presentations. Not because I liked it, but I could not stand the way how managers threw in clip-art, created 70+ page slideshows that would take hours and people would doze off. So, at one moment, I got the green light to take a presentation for a large bid on a project, the manager promised me not to touch it after I had delivered it, and so I went to work. The first thing I put in there were photos, still related to the subject on the slide (after managing to compress the presentation to about 8 slides instead of 70) but always showing a beautiful woman, usually in casual or business attire, with a slight hint of erotica in it. I don't mean nudity, but the way she looked, that you saw her leg, the clothes that she was wearing, a hand in her neck; subtle elements. It would never offend you, the photos would always be great quality. But it would make you fantasize a bit.

The results were excellent, we won the bid and not only that, the manager who actually held the presentation mentioned that it was the first time people really were focused on what they saw. Even though they might have been attracted by the visual and not 100% with the content, it is still better than falling asleep.

The problem after that presentation is that my life started to become all about presentations. Actually, so much even that I started my own photo studio and actually provided the photos myself. But it is one of the scenario's where sex also sells. Sex is not all about procreation, porn and nudity, it is a built in remote control for human beings to pay attention.

One of the brands that make excellent use of it, besides the reigning Victoria's Secret of course, is Axe. In Europe even more so than in America, the message is simple; you use Axe, you get all the female attention you need. No matter what your looks are. Of course, it describes women as being completely mindless just being controlled by smell, but it is not a brand orienting on women. It has to play into the feeling of men.

Nivea actually does it very well too. But by bypassing Axe for younger men that point more towards mature men, mentioning good looks and often showing a woman, gorgeous, paying a lot of attention. Simple, playing into the feeling that a man still has his attractiveness, but it is not about being on the hunt anymore.

Throwing a bit sexiness in a website for marketing purposes can do amazing things. But doing it well is extremely difficult. It does not mean; throw in a photo of a woman in a bikini or lingerie - because it will simply have the opposite effect. You have to sit down with your marketing firm, and mention that you want to add sex. Not 'make it sexy' because many marketing firms think adding a glossy shine over images or icons, or imitate apple, means 'sexy'. Sex is different. Sexy means 'Looking good'. Sex means 'it attracts you and grabs your attention'. But, if your marketing firm comes up with the earlier mentioned woman in bikini or lingerie; fire them.

Know what your brand is about and who your target audience is. Diet Coke / Coca-Cola light in Europe did that excellent with their 'Coca-Cola Light Man' and was completely targeted at women. A smart move; not only was it introduced mainly for women who were watching their weight and started to get concerned about health issues; women also usually are the person in a household responsible for buying groceries (no stereotype intended here).

Cars, on the other hand, are mostly bought by men. So putting a bit more attention towards how sexy a car could be, might not damage car sales. Right now usually car sites or commercials are about technology, miles per gallon. Who cares! You want to know how people would see you driving in it. Why do you think men in their midlife crisis want another car? Because they want to drive green? Forget it. But also, car commercials should never turn off women, because buying a new car is usually done by man, but never without approval. So it should be sexy, but not offending.

So, always know exactly who your target audience is, and if it is a consolidated audience, you might want to try to start researching of what 'sex' might mean to that audience; how it could offend but mostly, how it subtly can grab the attention but still highlight your product. If the market is too broad, it might be a big problem, but as said before, sex does not have to be about nudity or pornography. It is something normal, a natural attraction that we all recognize.

Used well, it might just give your site or product the marketing edge you need.

Sex sells, cars don't.

"Our site is not performing well. We need to compare it pornography. Porn sites get you to exactly what you want right away, and on our site people have to find what they are looking for."

This is honestly part of a discussion I had with a client last week about his website, a car buying website. It took me a while to try to convince him from the error in that comparison he just made, but I failed miserably. Maybe that is to be expected, once a man's mind is focused on sex, it is not easy to snap it out of it.

But it is an interesting analogy that he made, which actually ties in to having an audience. Because companies often like to compare their sites and numbers with the most influential and high-grossing category of sites on the web; porn and erotica. But there is a major flaw in doing that.

First of all, don't mix information up; yes, the erotic on-line industry makes billions of dollars. But on the other hand, if you check on an average, the income per site is not that amazing. Of course this is an industry where there is hardly any quality control and are literally millions of competitors. I actually wrote about this in an earlier posting here on this blog.

But it is not even that, it is about the subject. For most of the people, sexual scenarios and content are an immediate attention-grabber. And I am not even talking about explicit pornography, any sexual related matter simply grabs someones attention. Sex sells, it is simple as that.  A main part of that is that it is literally in our genes. The majority of people get aroused when they see anything involving sexuality or arousal of other people. And second of all, people like to be aroused. It pure biology. Even the most subtle hint of sexuality can attract immediate and precise focus.

Buying a car? Not so much. I mean, dealing with a car dealer who with his fake Colgate smile tries you to sign up for 7 years of monthly payments adding up to 5 times the actual value of the car. And most of the cars do not make you look cool. Car dealers, financial institutions to handle insurances. I love driving cars, I love cars, I hate buying them.

So, you have fun and arousal on one side, banks and car-dealers on the other side. Instant-satisfaction compared to 7-years of pain and misery. Do I really need to spell it out?

But also, sex makes us (and I will speak for the male part of the population) blind. Sure, it sounds like fun, but it is really true. This is a huge selling point. Why do you think you can rent a multi-million dollar movie on you on-demand from your cable provider for $4, but if you want to watch a couple-of-thousand dollar erotic movie, you actually have to fork over around $15. Strange? Not really. Sex sells, in this case, literally.

So, instead of just comparing your site with an on-line erotic site, keep in mind that most likely you are comparing apples and oranges. What it should make you think about is how you might make your site more tempting, more appealing to at least make it more pleasing for the visitors. But unless you want to own an adult site, do not compare your site to one. It simply is not that easy.

WikiLeaks and reality

Right now the news subject in IT is WikiLeaks and how more and more payment providers are cancelling the opportunity to send donations to the website. It raises a lot of anger within a lot of the Internet population and these financial institutions have been under attack, mainly with Distributes Denial of Service attacks, trying to slow the servers down, probably crashing them, rendering the payment portals useless.

My personal opinion? I actually agree with the opponents of the WikiLeaks website. A controversial thought to have online right now, but I will explain it simply why I think that this site is in my opinion a serious threat. In my opinion, WikiLeaks is a huge threat to the freedom of speech. I know most of the people who are pro-WikiLeaks say that closing the site down is a threat to the freedom of speech, but I cannot see it that way.

Because, right now it seems that no matter what you hold as a secret, is public domain. Secrecy is not a new thing, nor is it a bad thing. We as adults keep it a secret for children that Santa does not really exists.  How many people keep a lot of their income secret from the IRS? What if someone at church suddenly reveals that you have a subscription to Hustler magazine? Not everything is everyone's business. If certain secrecy covers up things that are absolutely against the law, it is another thing. But if it is not, some things are simply not of any of your concerns.

Actually, it seems now to be the sole objective for WikiLeaks to get classified documents and reveal them to the public. If it was not for classified information and secret operations, America and Europe most probably would have been victim of many more terrorist attacks in the last few years, because what is open to you, is also open to terrorists. It is already incredibly difficult to keep a secret these days, let alone with a site like WikiLeaks.

It does not mean that ignorance is bliss, but you have to read information, no matter what kind of information, in the right context. And that is what is missing at WikiLeaks.  It is just like someone who has no medical experience, feels an ache in her head, and demands the latest pain re-leaver advertised on the television from her Doctorr, against her Doctor's advice. People think too often they know what is going on.

When a medical report says that the success-rate of spinal surgery has doubled in the last 10 years, most people will read this as an amazing thing and that spinal surgery is now so safe. A medically trained person might know that that means that the success rate went from 0.5% to 1%, which still means 99% chance of failure.

And not only that, but what do you care if the US has secret agents here and there in the world, including their addresses, risking their lives for our freedom. What difference does it make in your life if you are not directly connected to what is going on?

Don't get me wrong, I do not think everything is good in the world. There are a lot of bad things going on in the world that the world should know about. Look what banks do to the economy, or hidden politic scandals that actually do cost only money because some senator spends millions of dollars on his personal home. Fine. Share it with the world. But don't reveal everything that you receive as classified information. Don't reveal it simply because you want to reveal it, because it gets you in the news, because it will deliver more hits to your site. That is no noble cause, that is pure capitalistic behavior; everything for you own personal gain.

If WikiLeaks showed a bit of regulation, self regulation that is, that was not pointed towards traffic, I would be a supporter of the site. Like I have mentioned in an earlier post; not everything needs to be public. And if that is your opinion, which is absolutely fine of course, but I would like to ask you if you have all your information publicly available on your facebook account.

Ella for Spam... R.I.P.

Openfield Software is out of business. Yes. I just found that out. The builder of one of the best anti-spam software for outlook available is no more.

Well, it hasn't been around since about 2 years. The 1st of December, 2008 they closed their doors and went the way of the dodo. I know, I always deliver the latest news.

Well, but that's reality, so many small companies, even the ones who actually make a good product now and again, rise and drop dead like flies. Tell me about it, I had one too. What is actually so sad is that probably nobody ever even noticed, only if you were working at the company.

I had no emotional connection to Openfield at all except that I bought the spam filter a long time ago because it simply worked perfectly for me, until their plug-in had a problem after 2 years, and I tried to look on their website if there was a new version available. But alas, they are no more.

Well, in this case after a weekend of giving thanks; Openfield, rest in peace.

I have absolutely no clue who you are!

It might sound a bit weird, but I do not remember my daughter's frist words. Nor do I actually care that I cannot remember them. Ah, that sounds harsh, doesn't it? So, I am a bad dad now? I don't think so. My daughter is the most important person in my world, and love her with all my heart and everything I have, but I simply do not remember what her first words are. Neither did we archive her photos in a photo album, we do not have a lock of her first hair and I cannot remember what the time was she was actually born. It was night, and it was late... that is what I remember.

What I do remember is the look on her face, that grin, when she looked at me in the middle of the Starbucks while she was not able to walk yet - or simply refused - and stood up, and simply ran away. No first steps, the first achievement was running while I chased her through the store.

I also remember the moment we tried the first 'real' food with her, you know, the pureed vegetable mix that taste like the inside of a car-tire, what the chair was she was sitting in, and where we got it.

I remember walking with her in a baby carrier through our street to do the groceries back when we lived in the Netherlands. Sure, not completely manly to walk around with a Baby Bjorn, and I do not mean to be with that, she loved it, giggled and wiggled her little legs while she got attention from all the women in the street - who almost all then seemed to be 80 year old plus.

I remember the smell of her hair while I held her and talked to her in gibberish, a quality I still do - at work mostly.

What I am trying to say, society cannot tell me what I do have to like or not like to be a good parent. I don't love her less than another parent, maybe even a lot more. It has nothing to do with the things you remember. I am very sensitive for experiences, emotions, and I almost remember anything that triggered a certain emotion ith me.

This is also why I always feel a bit weird when a project owner knows what his/her audience is thinking, should be doing. With their noses in the reports, scanning every single detail and trying to understand what people are doing on their site.

My opinion: It doesn't work.

Planning user behavior is just as reliable as predicting the weather; you can be completely off. It can 23 days of sunshine and mild North-Western winds, but tomorrow might be freezing cold, 10 inch of snow. You don't believe me? Remember the blizzard in the middle of August in Jeruzalem, I thought in 1996? I'll rest my case.

Use reports only to see what is being used or not. If you have 10 products in your website, and daily 1,000 visitors, and 1 out of those 10 products is never viewed, there is something wrong. But when all products are being viewed, only one is being viewed 3% less than the others; let it slide. Don't worry. You cannot predict the people who are visiting your website. You might, and you might get it right, but usually the changes you make might hurt the business before it will help.

I work for a client that not likes, not loves, but adores reports. In every little detail, everything needs to be viewed, and if one day is showing a slightly less number than the day before, it is broken and needs to be replaced. The replacing takes time, and usually is replaced with something worse, which in it's turn will be replaced again a bit later on. Resulting in a declining number of visitors every single week.

Don't think you know your visitors if you don't know them by name, and what they like to do and how they would prefer to spend their spare time. If you do not drink coffee with them on a regular basis and talk about the latest game or what the dog has done wrong this time... you don't know them.

Ah, beauty... let's be superficial for a moment.

Last Sunday morning I picked up a lovely young woman from the train station. Beautiful, in my opinion, kind, and very well willing to take her clothes off as soon as we get home after I introduced her to my wife.

- Excuse me? What's that? No madam, this is the right blog...

People who know me a bit better know that we also own a photo studio, and like to shoot all kinds of photography; from stock, to corporate sites and presentation shoots and all kinds of model shoots, also including lingerie, nudity and erotica. We are Dutch, and believe me, in the Netherlands that is not such a big deal as it can be in certain parts of America.

Photography is a passion of ours, and we are lucky enough to actually earn some money with it too. Like IT and media, it is another thing that I really am passionate about. You can check out more, by the way, about our studio to simply Google on 'Cantanopy Photography' or surf to http://www.cantanopy.com. Nice plug there, heh?

Anyway. We work a lot with models, sometimes for shoots that create their portfolio's to get into the modeling world, sometimes for family portraits, or - like next week - to work with politicians and lawyers for their business, and sometimes for some esthetically nudes or erotica. It is fun, especially to see the results.

I love the results of photography. Not only are they practically instantaneous, without long developing times and prototyping, but you immediately see if something works out as you have it in your mind.

I actually had a long email discussion with a partner photographer from Wisconsin, about when a staged photo would be good. In my opinion it is if the photo achieves the effect that you are looking for. For a press photo that might be the shock-value, for erotica it is if you can get someone in the mood too, for portraits it is to capture the person's personality in a single photo. No matter what it is, it requires staging. A photo, is not the same as real life. Especially when it is un-staged. A press photo shows a snapshot, but also only one view. If you see a dirty little kid holding a broken toy, with as a backdrop a building in rumbles, it might sound like a war aftermath. But you should always question the photographer; maybe it was taken on a square in Venice, Italy, where they were at a stage in renovating a building and first had to tear it down, and this kid was literally a kid dirty of playing around in the rubbish there and accidentally broke his toy because of that.

I am not trying to disprove photography here, I only try to show that a photo might be achieving a certain effect through smart staging. As it is with photography. I can let you in on the secret that erotic photography is not an erotic experience on set. It is all staged. It is work, a business. The posing is a job, the nudity has no erotic effect, it is a tool, the model is a prop. She happens to be naked, she is directed in a certain pose, and the photo is taken. On to the next shot. But the result might be one of the most arousing things you have ever seen.

So, although the taking of a photo happens with a push on the button, it requires a lot more work to get to that point when you deal with staging. It is not so hard to understand that.

It is the same with an IT project, and I think any kind of project. It is the result that counts. If it is a game, that it is enjoyed. If it is an application, that is a tool to help people to be more productive, if it is a database, that it stores, orders and maintains data and so on.

If the results are good, the way to get to those results are not so important. If a game is extremely enjoyable, player might overlook bugs and problems. A movie which story is so good, might have bad special effects without having any negative effect.

So, the quality of the result and effect absolutely has priority over the quality of the production itself. One of the best games I remember from being younger was Strike Commander by Origin, seen as one of the best game producers from it's time. It was no surprise that the coding of it was so extremely bad, amateuristic at times, and a programmer's nightmare. Still, the result was excellent.

I hear a lot, at work, about how things should be built better. One programmer wants open source, the other one wants another way of organizing and writing code. The CEO wants things to be on time and within budget.

For me? I want a production to do what it should do, within time and done good enough that we can easily re-write code or replace code and add in code to maintain it and stable enough that it will stand strong.

As it is with taking a photo. If I look at a photo that I have taken, with all the posing, propping, lighting, post-production and I am happy about it, and people comment on it. I am a happy guy, and I don't mind at all our studio is small, not dealing with the top-of-the-line million dollar equipment. As Earl Miller once stated; most of his published photos in the '90s were actually shot with a Samsung compact 36mm camera, without any special kind of lighting or filters.

 

A cat, a dog and a bad economy

We recently upgraded our household with an addition called: 'dog'. I have never been much of a dog-person, maybe because I simply never had one in my youth, but I am more of a cat person. Cats are easy, take care of themselves mostly and like you to do exactly as they please.

Now, a dog is a whole other story. It's cute, gives you a lot more companionship than a cat, but requires a lot more work. Even though I am a cat person, I do have to admit that having the dog is more rewarding.

Now, we decided to go with a smaller breed, a terrier. Sweet, cute and a ball of energy. We knew this before we got one from the rescue. And it does require me to wake up even earlier than the 4am I was used to each day, and since we are crate-training it, it might add a couple of more weeks of howling in the house at night. Also, with Halloween yesterday night, there is this whole ego and attitude thing going on; the smaller the dog, the bigger the attitude, and while our ball of fur did everything to ignore an even smaller ball of fur, the charge and the accompanying noise of the other squeaker simply got our dog's water boiling until he could not resist anymore while we held him short, and the other person actually lengthened the leash. And a smack-down was introduced. You actually saw the larger dogs around smiling; 'amateurs'.

A dog requires more training, more time, more devotion to get the best out of it compared to a cat. Our cat knows exactly what she wants, while our dog tries to find out exactly what we want. And of course, our dog and cat are not mixing well together until they've learned to deal with each-other.

Sounds familiar?

When you would deal with a company that is there to service you; don't settle for a cat, request a dog. A cat is cheaper, easier and faster to deal with... but gives you less personality in return. A dog requires more time from you, more input, more care, but will get you what you need.

In the end, this might result that putting AND more money AND more time and devotion in a project or product, delivers a more rewarding result. But in this time of bad economics, people want to save, cut spending, especially where it would require more work too. So probably, this is the era of the cat, not of the dog.

Still, I see a huge market opportunity here for dogs in the IT industry. But that might just be me.

The Good, The Bad and the Extremely Hard

As some of you know, the last couple of days I have spent visiting my best friend in Seattle. He lives in Vancouver BC, and I live in the New York / Philly area, so we try to find at least one weekend a year to meet each other on the west coast - and until now that has been steady Seattle. I have told in my previous posting that one of the reasons is that Seattle also doesn't seem to distract us too much. Usually we get in a brainstorming mood right away, and we don't get out of it. This guy is absolutely gold in that perspective. And we have a blast getting in that mood, cling on to a concept and not letting go. This weekend was actually so good, we had twoconcepts, of which one will be turned into a company probably next month, and the other one a new kind of production, that we were able to conceptualize, build and test in this weekend. That is the good thing, having this time together with someone in a like-minded state of mind - going for it, and let the hours a day fly by. Actually, we have spent most time of the days in the hotel room (A shout-out to the Mayflower Park Hotel for upgrading us free of charge to a suite) just going out for breakfast and a meal at night.

So, it sounds good maybe, and we had a blast. Still, there is a bit of a bitter taste. Because I am writing often about how to set up businesses, how to do the right things, avoid the wrong things, and try to visualize. I and we have been working on numerous projects that might one day make a lot of money. But as many business owners know - hitting a jack-pot is tremendously difficult. Most of the time, you spend money and time without seeing a dime in return. We know that. But, one element that is easily overlooked is trust. Not of yourself, although that is #1. But you need the trust and support of people around you. Not the constant questioning of what you believe in around you. That you do not have to prove yourself all the time.

My wife is extremely supportive in this - and I have learned I am extremely lucky with that too. Because - my friend and I - have not been financially very lucky in the endeavors we had on our own. We had to pull the plug on our company in '99 when our first set of clients did not pay, and we have a number of extremely good concepts and designs and no means of producing them. We personally lost a lot of money in those days - and those being the days of being a carefree twentier without any responsibilities lay a foundation of life for when you become married, a parent... and life goes to another plane.

Believing in what you are doing, but without support from your surroundings is an extremely hard thing to do. It is like being religious in a land full of atheists - or the other way around. You have to go and do what you believe in - but it is a lot harder to do. My friend is absolutely someone who will become very succesful, even though he does not always realize it - he is absolutely golden in the things that he does. I do not know a better server manager, brainstormer and overal nicer guy than him.

Keep your head up buddy.

So... Seattle, rain, coffee, brainstorms, more coffee and more rain... a lot more rain.

Tomorrow morning I will be taking my place on the airplane, comfortably on the last row - which is my favorite spot (nobody bugging behind you, and you can lower your back a bit without bugging someone else). I really like flying, and I don't mind flying coach. Anyone thought I would be done with flying once I did it more frequently - and now that I do - I still love it.

This time my trip will take me to from the east to the west, and I will be going to rainy Seattle meeting my best friend over there and stay there for a couple of days. We have been practically growing up together, both with more than a standard interest in computers in the time that having a computer at home was still a rarity. Because of that, and also our interest in games as early-teens that still existed out of Q-bird, Pac-Man and the early Sierra's and LucasFilms', we got mostly interested in the creation of concepts. Concepts for games, concepts for everything actually.

And that formed our friendship, and even when, about 18 years later we both moved away from the little country in western-Europe; I went to the New York area, and he ended up in Vancouver, a slight 5,000 miles apart. That didn't stop us. Life has changed a lot for us both, but when we meet, somehow we always end up again doing what we like best; coming up with ideas. Brainstorming. And although Seattle doesn't really have a lot more to offer to us than Starbucks', honestly, that is the best place to be when you want to brainstorm.

And I have been working with many people in my career that spans over 17 years of web development. Professionals in design, development, art direction... you name it. But I never have found anybody who has a talent for the most important thing about any creation; brainstorming. Even when companies support brainstorm sessions, they hardly are done right. Often it is forgotten that the best ideas spark when you are comfortable, you feel at home, are with people you respect and like to be with.

And the most important part of a brainstorm is to have someone who is, as I call it, an 'accelerator'. Coming up with an idea is an expertise, but taking an idea and mold it and make it better is a whole different expertise. Usually, in a brainstorm session they simply put people who are the Seniors in their field in a project. But more often than not they do not bring anything to the table because it takes a mind-set to get into a brainstorm session. You have to be in an open and creative mood, and not everyone can do that.

And in this scenario, more often than not, Seniors are often defending their territory - and keeping themselves safe. A Sr. developer might not be willing to go in a direction that is unfamiliar to him if he doesn't know if he could realize the concept that is about to appear. And a brainstorm session should absolutely be unbridled, no holding back.

But having only creatives in a brainstorm session is a wrong approach too. I am a creative, and sparking an idea is what happens to me on a daily basis. Some are hopeless, some are brilliant. But the problem is, it is always an idea in its primal state. I cannot get beyond that by myself. If you have 10 people like me in a brainstorm session you might end up with 10 brilliant ideas - but none that is going into the right direction yet.

Having an 'accelerator' brings brainstorming to a whole other level. For this you need to understand how creativity works when it comes to creating a spark and a new idea. You literally need a 'spark', but just like a real spark, it requires ingredients. And that can be anything; a vision, a word, smell, touch, memory, emotion... it doesn't matter. But once an idea has sparked, you actually have to 're-spark' it to go to a next level - to see the concept in more depth. To think of new things. A creative can't do this that easily. Because what caused the idea were the ingredients, and they might have come from anywhere. But if there is an idea, and it is not yet formed, it is hard to get new ingredients out of that idea to boast it to another level.

Hence the 'accelerator'. This is someone who has the power to understand the idea from a creative's point of view, takes it, and immediately puts it in perspective. Not in reality, in perspective. This person sees the possibilities, enlarges the playing-field so to speak. He takes the idea, and mirrors it but with all new ingredients that will spark more ideas by creatives.

And, right up until know, working in and with companies that are major players also in the entertainment, creative and IT industries... I can honestly say I only have met one person in my whole life who has mastered this ability.

A brainstorm between me and my friend is never without results. And we have books full of concepts and excellent ideas that are immediately ready for production. And not only are those results relevant, they are perfectly valuable. We have used a couple of them, but mostly we write them up, always pondering about how we ever could produce it. Or, looking back talking about why we didn't ever do anything with the idea. But the reason for that is simple, for us, we like the process. On my own and with my own company, I build things. But of course, building and content management will take about 95% of the time. And it is the brainstorming that we like the most. So, we have a multitude of ideas and just a tiny percentage actually worked out.

But that doesn't matter... we have three full days of sitting around, moving from Starbucks to Starbucks and just write down ideas and ideas and ideas. Most probably all to end up in a bookcase again and that we will be looking back in 20 years and wondering why we did not do anything with those ideas. Ah, the good life.

The 80/20 rule and how that applies to our banks, and why we keep allowing their abuse.

Some numbers are always disturbing, because we usually do not want to know about them. The most favorite, that rules almost everyone's daily life is the 80/20 rule; On average, a person produces 80% of it's activity in 20% of the time. Or, in other words, at work you do 4 days worth of work on Monday. It doesn't mean of course you are only active on Monday, but there are 8 hours in a 40-hour work week that delivers most of your productivity.

But the more scarier element that fits the 80/20 rule is that 80% of all the people are not able to take a decision completely on their own judgment. This means that in any election about 80% do let the media, or preachers influence their opinion so much, that they base their vote completely on this, without it being influenced by their own opinion.

Keeping this in mind, it is not strange that usually in any large corporation, about 80% of the employees are the workforce, and 20% are in a leading-role, someway or another.

This does not say anything about someone's personality. For example, it is known that many of the real leaders in the (corporate?) world are also showing quite some signs of sociopathy. And personally I think, it should be like that. A real leader of a large business that also involves taking difficult decisions, should by a bit disconnected with social life. How else could you fire a large portion of your workforce if you are trying to stay friends with everyone and not lose sight of the goal of the company.

I have had to fire people three times in my career, and hated every single time doing it. I can run my own little company, where the collaboration is still on a personal level. But simply decide on someone's future in a split second is not for me. But, the good come with the bad I guess. It is a responsibility that I guess comes with the job.

But then, people in those jobs are expected to behave like that. You don't want to see Steve Jobs mourning over anteannagate, or Steve Ballmer over Vista. They should be disconnected from emotions and do what they need to do; run a financially successful company. If you like it or not, that is the role of a CEO. A commercial company has no right of existence if it is not able to turn a profit. If a commercial company creates loss after loss, the company's future is diving 6 feet under.

Except... my favorites... the banks. So, let me recap very quickly before I bring everything together underneath the equal divider: Banks. 80% of the people are not able to make a self-influenced decision and leaders of commercial companies should be a bit sociopathic.

Hello bank! And let me direct it immediately to Chase bank, my favorite. True, I started out as a happy customer, but I think I have been able to formulate my own decision here. I have already did proof once here that Chase (but also your own bank) is allowed to cancel your credit-cards without reason and without you falling behind on payments or having a negative change in your credit history.

Now, Chase is using two more things that should really make you worry: Double Pending and Future Checks.

Let me start with Double Pending. Recently, Chase bank has included a new thing to make a lot of money. When you make a debit-card payment, say at a gas station, there is asked if there is a reserve amount available. Like, let's say $50. You fill up the tank, and the final amount seems to be $43. What used to be normal is that the $43 would be deducted from your account in pending until the payment went through.

But nowadays, Chase is allowed to deduct the reserved amount andthe actual amount in pending. Yes. They actually put $93 in pending payments. The good news is of course that once the payment went through the whole pending time-frame, only the $43 will be deducted from your account. But in the meantime, before that actually happens, the $93 will be taken out of your account. This means that if you have $60 in your account and you fill her up for $43, $93 will be put in pending and you willend up temporarily at at -$33, leaving you in the goodwill of the bank to charge you with overdraft protection fees or not.

I had this actually happening with me last week while booking a return ticket from New York to Seattle, later this month, and Chase deducted $800 in pending payments, while the tickets were $400. A quick phone-call to Continental airlines quickly showed that they did not make a mistake, which was verified by the single verification email I had received. But suddenly I noticed this new addition to the 'pending' description on the Chase website, describing clearly in the fine print that they are now allowed to deduct the reserved amount and the actual amount of a payment for an undefined period of time.

Then there is the Future Check, which is actually a nice one too, which you can try all by yourself. First of all, drive up to an ATM machine and use the new check-deposits. Forget to endorse the check and deposit it. If you try this at the register, you will be asked to sign it before depositing it. But, like magic, you can deposit a check without any problems and without any endorsement. It will be in your account tomorrow.

Now try another thing; give a check which signed date is next week, or even better, next year. Even this is not handled anymore. To make sure two payments were spread equally through the month, I provided two checks to someone, one marked this week, one marked in two weeks. This person accidentally deposited both checks at the same time, and they both were deducted at the same time. So these last two paragraphs already completely show that two security elements of a check (the date and the endorsement) are completely ignored by banks.

I have found my new bank. This was the final straw. And that combined with the new commercial Chase aires on the television now, telling everyone how they help rebuilding the economy of america with all the goodwill in the world. Yeah, right. But there comes in the 80/20 rule. They say it in a commercial, and 80% of the people will feel better about a bank like Chase and will actually flock to them or not leave them. And I am just a single preacher here, so my reach is not that of national television. But maybe I reach one or two people out there. And I am not asking to leave Chase, but I do ask you to make sure what your bank is doing and if it is right for you. Because those people running banks are just running commercial companies, which are set to make a profit... and they will. And if they do not care about their workforce as employees, how can you expect them to care about a small time checking-account holder who is fighting the bad economy on his/her own?

Hang on!

I don't want to talk about failing sites anymore, or business plans around sites and online productions. Really, today I am too busy trying to keep my eyes open to go into that again. But I am asked so many times why some sites are failing and the answer is actually too obvious. So, I am not going there. This morning alone I have been in a meeting for over three hours trying to explain to a client the visions of an investor. And those visions are clear: Have more traffic so we can sell advertisements. Ah, such a nobel goal.

Anyway. My clients' response is each and every time explaining the reason why they have less traffic but that their traffic is much better. Sigh. I do agree with this client, that there is a world of difference between good traffic and bad traffic.

Good traffic exists out of active users. They come to your site and are interested and active. Bad traffic are people who are sent to your site under false pretenses and don't do anything. They are completely useless, for everyone.

But, the fact is, at this moment internet advertisement is shallow. Very shallow. It is purely about traffic. So, and advertisement sells for more money on a busy site than a quiet site, even if the busy site's traffic is all immediately moving on. C'est la vie.

Nice morale heh? I am against bad traffic, but sold my soul to the devil by saying you should utilize it if you want those nice advertisements on your site. Am I two-faced?

Well, there are two things here; I love a good site, and as many of you have read here previously, in my opinion a good site is a site with its own content. I don't like sites that try to rake in money with advertisements. But, and here comes my business-cap... if you want to make a profit so that you actually can run your website, you need advertisements or paying customers. And as a newcomer that second option might be hard if you are not featuring very naughty-dressed ladies on your site. So advertisements, here you go!

So, I am not talking about a failing site, or dealing with the business. No. Today I am in a good mood, and just saying that you should run your production like you think it should. But don't change your course drastically. If you do, your production is not your production anymore. And that might lose all it's charm of it completely. If you hit such a scenario, see if there are ways to incorporate gathering traffic without straying from your original plan.

And just, hang on.

What if your site is a dieing gnome with an attitude problem?

Panic. Your site does not perform well and investors are asking questions. Now, it is known that panic can create a lot of unwanted decision-moments, and usually you are not thinking most straight to take these decisions in that moment. So listen to all the other advice, telling you to relax. And in no way, not a single way, try to defend your number by bringing down the competition.

In the story David killed Goliath with a well thought off action. Even though taken in a time of panic, he was clear in his mind, picked up the stone and put it in his slingshot... and leveled the giant. Bravo. But when your site is a David-sized site and it is taking it up against a whole world full of Goliath's, prepare to take a beating.

I have mentioned in the past that there is a lot of competition out there. And yes, it always leaves room for expansion or newcomers. But, I never mentioned this is easy. And if you built your site or production with other people's money, you know you have to have a report available for them.

Most likely you have told your investors that you can easily win from the competition, because what you have as a product is far more superior. Of course. If you didn't say that, they would not invest in you or your company. But when it seems that things are not going good, also not long after your deadline for success, you can do a couple of things.

1. Face defeat. It could be a decision if you work from your business plan and you really do not see a change in success in the near future happening. You better can spend your time working on another project.

2. Continue working on the project if you are under the honest impression that the production will become profitable in any way in the near future.

3. Defend your production.

All three options are not bad options. Of course you will defend your production, at one moment in time you thought it would really be a profitable product. But the market seems to differ. That does not mean your production is bad or wrong. It might not have been the right time, or circumstances might not have made it the success you hoped for.

Sometimes, you have to plow yourself through a period of hard times. If you hold on to a project, it might actually turn profitable at one moment. The question is; when? And do you have the passion and  the finances to wait it out?

Giving up is also sometimes simply the wise decision. It does not mean you have to give up everything, maybe even simply relaunching in a different way, with the knowledge you have now.

But a person I know very well tried to tell a major investor in his project that although it was failing in the eyes of the investor, that it was still outperforming Facebook. And it honestly was in his report. Facebook, the giant with over 15 Billion page-views a month was being outperformed by this little speck with 56,000 page-views a month. Still not bad, but even page-views per visitor was 60 for Facebook for the respectable 50 for this small site.

I was able to prevent that line of text to be in the final report before it was sent out. The site of this performing is nice, only the audience buildup is going slow but steady. But, the business plan says it should have been massive by now. Too bad, the concept is good, the site looks good, and the performance for visitors is great.

So, what should this person do? A good site, unique actually... but simply not making the money, and generating a monthly loss. If his site survives probably the next year or two years, chances are it is going to be big. I literally do not have any advice for him except not to pick a fight with a giant like Facebook. It is not even worth comparing, especially because the site is not even a competitor.

But I really do not know what to advice him. Maybe because I have been in a sort-like state once before and I decided to quit. And till this day, I do not know for sure that that was the right decision.

Simply Professional...

My car is not dead, nor is it dieing. Actually, with the most recent stat inspection it was told - after explicit inquiry of it's to be expected life-span of my 10-year old ol' faithful - it was mentioned that I should be able to get at least another 2-3 years out of it. The same person advised me last weekend to maybe start slowly looking for another car.

Was there something wrong with his professional insight this or the last time? Was there something wrong with the car that he did not see? Did he try to sell me something else? None of the above. This person has proofed to me in the last couple of years to be very skillful and good at his job, and I value his opinion tremendously. So when during an oil change he calls me in, and mentions a slight rattling sound underneath the humming of the engine resulting in the advice to start looking slowly for a new car, I am not even going to doubt him.

He is the expert and he has shown many times that he knows what he is talking about. He has revived my ol' faithful many times, and made me from a corporate-car driver into someone who actually cares about his own property. So, I am going to prepare myself for sweet goodbye's in the following 2-3 months and find a new replacement.

To find someone like that in the car repair industry is a god-sent. So, why is that so strange in the IT world? True, bits and bytes keep working nicely. Technically a site by code can always run if maintained correctly. Pac-Man games from the early '80s are still running fine. Code is probably the most durable thing you can buy with your money. But sometimes you want to have someone near you advising you honestly about your IT endeavors. It is what a consultant really should be. Looking at your site or production, giving the goods, the bads and the ugly's.

IT is a major business, and consultancy a major part of that. Companies earn millions and millions of dollars with it, and a consultant doing a big project is worth more money than a consultant, well, consulting. But, let's be honest, is such a consultant really worth more?

My car guys - a plug here by the way for East Penn Automotive in Fairless Hills, PA ( www.eastpennautomotive.com ) - are not a filthy rich couple of people owning a super luxurious repair station. They don't advice an expensive repair if your car doesn't need it and they actually covered so many costs for me personally so many times that I doubt if they overall ever earned a dime on me. And it is not that money part that makes them valuable to me, it is that I trust them. I trust that what they say is what I need to hear. And sometimes I might not like the answer, but they are there to help me, and in their professional way, they do - every time again.

It is my hope that at one time a lot more consultancy firms in IT would become professional like that. There is so much IT work still to do before the market ever would be saturated, that literally consulting could earn a lot of money anyway.

So... time for me to shop... dealing with car-dealers. Bweach... another such fine breed ;)

The curse of useless information, or the revenge of the percentage sign.

Believe me, sitting right now at the airport, waiting for my family to arrive from the Netherlands is a blessing. And with that I mean driving to Newark during traffic hours, finding a parking space and then pushing a pathway through disoriented passengers who seem to have to hit the brakes of their trolley immediately once they do not understand where they have to go - usually in the middle of the path. Anyway, finally, when I have gotten my cup of coffee, opened up my laptop, it is a blessing sitting there. I don't mind the intercom blurting out hardly understandable messages to hardly understandable people walking around, or even the woman yelling to every fresh-of-the-plain passenger that they need to keep moving. I can completely shield myself from those noises of useless information to me; I am used to that anyway.

First of all, on the web you receive a lot of useless information; at least, useless to me. Even this woman who is repeating the 'move on' message is shouting that to people for who it is important. Or maybe not that, but it is indeed important that those people keep moving. On the web, on the other hand, I get so much information that is directed sort-or-less to me (it has my email address in the bar at least) even though it is completely useless. But even spam has some reasoning behind it. I mean, I move each and every day 160 spam emails to the deleted items folder (Like some people take the number of 'friends' on Facebook as a gage of measuring popularity, I am still of the generation who considers the amount of spam to measure my popularity.

But somewhere, in Nigeria, Russia, the US or the Netherlands there is this kid who spent $15 hard earned dollars buying into a bot-net to send out spams to so many people hoping he will strike rich. But I am actually moving this story towards the worst kind of useless information: Really unsolicited information. I mean, you ask what number comes after '3' and you get an explanation why numbers are in a certain order. And after half an hour of listening to rambling of your discussion-partner, you still did not receive that answer.

Now, how did I come to that?

Today I have spent almost 4 hours working on a report. The worst kind of report; the 'you have to explain to an investor why your site does not receive the amount of visitors that you have promised the investor' report. What makes that report even worse; it is not your production but youget the project of trying to explain it. And the explanation is simple; your site is simply not a winner. Pick up the pieces and go on. But of course, since that is not an option, you have to tell the story in such a way that it eventually sounds like it is successful anyway. And then there is, the most horrible element of any language ever; the percentage sign.

Because, if your site earns $1 per signed up visitor, and you had only one out of two, you have only earned $1. Not fantastic. So, you need to 'sell' it like 50% of all the visitors to your website actually signed up. Now THAT is an amazing number. Of course, in the end, you only have $1 in revenue. But somehow, that doesn't seem important.

And to cover that 50% and get anyone's attention away from the $1, you are going to explain why everything is excellent in your production. And there is where the useless information comes in. It is not lying, it is not bad, but it is a total waste of time. Like said, $1 income on a web production after the deadline you have promised to become a millionaire from it, is a failure. And every minute wasted on it, is money slipping down the drain.

The official report should actually have said that you made $1, the project has not met the expectations. Close up shop and do something else. Find a new endeavor.

Let me take a last sip of the coffee, my family has arrived.

Too much Automation?

Google will be launching their 'priority inbox' feature in beta today on their GMail system. This feature is there to make life a little bit easier for maintaining the GMail inbox. Because, as Google mentioned, GMail users are more and more dealing with vast amounts of email to deal with, including loads of unimportant mail. So, to make this work, GMail is going to filter out the important emails and put them in the top of the inbox.

Now, what strikes me about this is the whole wrap about how it will help people organize their emails because it is getting too hard for many users to organize it without this. And this comes from the same company who recently lost their bid to provide state-wide over California email solutions, to Microsoft where one of their responses was about the 'old fashioned' way of how Microsoft Outlook organizes email by manual labor.

I am not in any way hooked to Outlook, but I absolutely prefer to be in control of my own email box with my own filters, priorities and rules. This is why I don't use my Gmail account anymore. True, I like it that a company like Google tries to find new ways of handling things like email, but I like my own freedom in it too. Companies like Google, but just as well Apple and Microsoft, should not forget that we should not have everything done for us. When I buy a new house, I don't want the realtor to design the interior for me upon delivery. I just don't. Sometimes, too much automation might be too much.

Everyone should play with Lego a bit more

Last week, for my birthday I actually got two Lego boxes. I always loved playing with Lego as a child and still do, and Lego was smart enough to design a couple of - quite expensive - boxes for grown-ups, ranging from 2,000-5,000 pieces. Lego, in my opinion, is the best toy-brand ever, combining durability, fun, flexibility and creativity and construction basics all in one. To be honest, a lot of my understanding of real-life elements I have learned as a child through the little building blocks.

In the academy it was actually adviced to use Lego as a way to shape concepts. It is easy, fast to use and can mend to anything you heart desires; besides and empty sheet of paper the next best thing for a designer.

Actually, when I was working with LogicaCMG, there were yearly competitions between departments to program a Lego robot to do certain kind of things.

And still, even when I worked on one of these boxes over the weekend, there were times that I wondered about the creativity and insight the designer must have had to use a limited amount of shapes and pieces to get to such a result. Especially also, because I think any programmer or designer sees the roots of object oriented programming in here too; how can you make as flexible as possible use of one single element. And all these elements together form - in this scenario - a fire department, but in another scenario it might have been a boat or spaceship with exactly the same elements.

If you play with Lego, this is extremely easy to visualize. My daughter who is 5 has no problem seeing this. Now she has made a horse-barn, but tomorrow she wants to make a house for her lego kitties (including sofa to sleep on and television and radiator to keep it warm).

Why, if it is easy for a 5-year-old to grasp, is this concept practically too difficult to understand for most grown-ups? Before the weekend a colleague asked if I could make a certain functionality in a program to accept decimals instead of integers, since this is what his superior requested who is 'wise' to avoid asking me the question directly, since she was the one mentioning a year ago that she never would use decimals. Now, of course, she thought that adding the decimal in there is easy, since it is onlya tenth of a number. But it is then obviously too hard to understand that adding the decimal feature needs to be first adjusted in the database - in which the difference between decimal and without decimal is like night and day (from the original Integer to Numeric), and all the building blocks built on top of it who are expecting an integer, need to be reprogrammed. It is like changing the bottom Lego brick in your masterpiece to a different shape; it might make your whole building tumble down.

Sometimes, the smallest changes might require the most work. I think it is time any person who is a manager or project lead should at least play with Lego a bit more. It would make the world of IT a lot easier.

You are not a Guru!

A good ex-colleague (Hi Kat!) wrote in a blog post of last week that writing in a blog is a very good way to vent some steam. And you know what, it might be absolutely true. And since it is actually IT related and I'll bet I am not the only one experiencing this on a regular basis,

If you do not have anygrasp on the concept of development, the integrity of a project and structure of a production in front-end, middle-ware, back-end and data layer, don't ever promise that someone can do anything 'quickly' because it is all automated.

Sorry, but especially that last part, the 'all automated' really, really ticked me off. In this person's mind the fact that something is automated and dynamic, so it does not require a lot of technical maintenance once it finally works, it also does not take much time to completely change it and change its functionality.

My car is at this moment in repair with a body-shop that I really appreciate and trust, and it would be something if I told them they had to replace my rear brakes including the shoes, re-align the car and check why the 'low coolant fluid' light comes up and that it should be done in about 10 minutes.

No matter how much you 'own' the project, it does not mean that everything goes as you 'demand' it to go.

Ah, and another thing. If you have a project released to thousands and thousands of people, and one person makes a comment and no-one else does, it is not an emergency to change the whole project on the fly.

Please, just like we all learn in kindergarten; Don't panic. Sit down, breath easy and count to 10. If that does not help, hit yourself in the head and come to your senses.

Sorry, I needed this :)

This product is sooooo bad... Let's use it!

There is so much crap online. There. I said it. And true, I am in my small, own way responsible for my share too. But, that's besides the point I am trying to make here. Because, well, of course we would tend to believe that the - let's not use the word 'crap' right here - not so good stuff online would filter itself out so that only the good will prevail. Survival of the fittest, isn't it?

Now, people who are in the online-development world, or actually into development of any product, IT related or not, know that this is absolutely not true. The worst productions are sometimes so very successful while the best ones die a slow death. Which is too bad, because it halts any kind of natural progress.

Take a look at Craigslist for example, I really need to find the first person who mentions this as the best site for personals and private sales available. There is not a lot of control or safety regulations. But, by now it is widely used here in the US which makes it an excellent platform to work from.

Or Facebook. From a technical point of view I still don't like Facebook a lot, but, on the other hand, I am there to be social, and a lot of people I know are on there too. So, in that perspective the goal is reached, but the means are not always the best ones available.

So, what is it actually that can make a project successful or not? Usually, on the internet the rule is if there is not a demand for something, people are not going to switch from one system to another. You can invent a wheel that runs a lot better, and is beautiful, but is still a wheel. You might have some adapters, of course, but people might not want to change their habits for something they don't feel that they really need.

Of course, if you can create something that really attracts the issue of 'demand' and creates it's own demand (Apple anyone?) you are playing in a no-competitors world for the time being. But, the other thing can be true too; there was no demand because, well, nobody was missing what you bring to the table.

It is a game of luck. I mentioned Apple who did this so very nice with both the iPod, iPhone and the iPad. There was a crowded market already, but they were able to really create a demand for theirproduct. Even though a lot of people don't know it; tablets like the iPad have been around for a long time, but you never saw them anywhere because, well, no one was buying them.

So, you would expect that there should be one sort of demand (available or self-created) for your product and not a lot of competition ordemand for a better product than the competition that could create success. But even then it might not be successful at all. The market might request a lot, but now you have to get the products to the people. Marketing is a good start, but also an expensive one. And, keep in mind, marketing does not have to be all that. As I am learning right now is that a social network might actually be the best kind of marketing. Let your friends praise your product, and send it through to people they think might be interested in it.

And then it is the waiting game. There are a million others trying to push their product through, and only one or two will be really successful, if any is at all. But, take a good look again at the most popular products online right now. Keep in mind, they started out with a loyal fan-base; not because they were so good. Craigslist - never has been good, but has an audience that is not going anywhere, so it is a good product to sell your stuff on.

Facebook, eBay, Amazon but also newer systems. That is the good thing about these times. Some people mention that the time to become successful while writing programs in your attic is long over. Well, actually it isn't. If you have your friends to help you out to be the start-audience, and built something that might not be perfect, but good enough in an area that none other is... you might be onto something there.

Hip, hip, HOORAY!!!! It's Win95's 15th birthday! Wooohoo! - Does my geekness show?

Ah, today is the 15th anniversary of Windows 95. With my roots in being an official IT geek, I actually have to relive that moment again. I was not the one standing in line all through the night. The reason was simple, I lived in the Netherlands back then and I did not wake up early for anything, no matter how much I wanted it. It was in the same time of my life I vowed never to run to catch the public transportation and never show any emotion in being really interested in something. Except in games actually.

My best friend and I were massively into games, which by 1995 were already well on the evolutionary ladder. And it was in the time we both had switched to PC's. And Windows 95, well, it promised to be the OS for games and multimedia. True, the 'Buddy Holly' video from Weezer delivered on the CD-version of the OS was in a crappy stamp-sized window, including massively wonderful sound (I believe it was already 16-bit then).

Anyway, it was in Amsterdam that we decided to buy our copy of Windows, on the 24th, in a tiny little computer software store called ComputerCollectief; actually the one real place to go in the area for a huge amount of games and software.

Back then, I remember putting both our computers in my room and start the 'easy installation' that Bill had promised us. Well, it took eventually about 6 hours to get a first version running. Ah, and that compared to the easy 1-hour installation full-up-and-running Windows 7. But, we've got it working, and it worked nice. Keep in mind that this 6-hour installation was without any internet connections, activations or security software. Even without any games. This was also because when we bought both our copies of Windows 95, we thought to be smart and buy the MS Flight Simulator 5.1 with it too... that should run nicely on Win95. Well, that was a nice surprise; it did not. So, immediately we learned how to use the command-prompt and the DOS layer of Win95 and after our beautiful installation we were up and running in DOS again. Sigh.

Anyway, thinking back, no matter how you might think about Windows, win95 was a real breakthrough for a PC OS. Well, for any OS actually because although window-user interfaces were used much earlier since Xerox introduced them on their copy machines; Windows 95 started to use a minimal user interface, since then copied in Mac OSX, Linux and many *nix distributions. To be honest, I actually think that the only real new OS design since win95 has to be iOS.

While Windows 95 was nice for the users, programmers had an issue with programming through the layer of windows to reach the hardware. This was never an issue in DOS, because you could simply through binary code get to your hardware and make it work. But now Windows had taken over, and there was now an OS running on all this hardware. Windows took care of this by providing the programmers a single interface to talk to Windows, which then could redirect the commands to the right hardware. The problem was, this slowed things down, and hardware manufacturers were not able to create new functions and technical possibilities because they needed to be accessed by the Windows-shell first. So, soon after Windows 95 appeared, there was DirectX, giving programmers and programs the ability to talk to the hardware directly.

Actually, DirectX has done a lot for the growth of the multimedia world. Because DirectX, just like Windows 95 now set up standards in what should be possible for new hardware. And that still is the case. Buy a top-end video-card or sound-card, it will tell you exactly what DirectX it is ready for, or is compatible with. It actually makes it a bit easier to shop for hardware though, although a lot of people are not aware of this (yet?).

But, 15 years ago it was that Internet Explorer 1.0 was introduced too with Windows 95. In the good old days of hardly any viruses or malware coming in. That you could turn on your computer without spam filters and security updates.

And, let's not forget, that also means that today is the 15th birthday of the Blue Screen of Death.

Cheers!

Ah, a rainy monday morning. A perfect day for an IT-rant.

Ah, it is Monday, it is rainy and absolutely cold compared to the previous blistering weeks we've had here in the north-east. Sitting then in an office that has the airco on 'freeze' and beneath the airco a fan that makes sure that everyone in the office enjoys the touch of arctic breeze around here, really makes it a good time for a bit of IT rant.

First up; Browser Cache. Enough already! There are practical uses for caching, and especially when people were still calling in all the time with their internet connection, caching made sure that files you had downloaded once, did not have to download again. But, a lot has changed and even normal internet connections share enough speed to handle uncached files for browsing. On the server side, this is a whole other issue, where caching is absolutely recommended, but client side? And it hurts the security settings too. And if the browser cahcing is gone, maybe, finally, we can have a good log-in authentication system for sites that do not lose all your settings everytime you faithfully clear your cahce. Browser caching really has to go.

Next HTML. Now, don't get me wrong, I actually like to work in HTML and still do a lot of work in it. But, please, HTML has had its longest time. It is a mark-up language, and not a solid one either. One that took 4 full versions to be where it is now, and number 5 is not going to be a whole lot different. My issue with it is that it still handles everything in 'pages'. Pages belong in a book, not on a computer. Why is it so that your whole computer is application oriented, including the navigation. But then suddenly a big part of it is 'pages'. Again, 15 years ago it was a good thing. And you could preset the layout before the files were even loaded. We are not 15 years further while most sites have a more advanced iPhone/Droid App available where they don't work in pages anymore either. HTML is mostly used these days for launching server-side applications and because of HTML, any kind of web-app builder still needs to render it's output to 'pages'. Worse, creating in 'pages' a way to mimic your own Operating-System user-interface behavior. HTML has to go... even though I know it is too hard to get rid off.

Let's see, let's get to OS security software next. The software does not need to go, worse, we need it. But because of the anti-trust conviction on Microsoft, now about 10 years ago, Microsoft is not allowed to ship out any kind of security software with their software. Now, from a monopoly perspective, this is good. For us, users, it's not. Because it is known that a computer is already receiving malicious software and attacks within the first 12 minutes as it is hooked up to the internet. If you just had a fresh installation of your computer, you first need to go out online to get your security software, making you actually vulnerable to potential threats right then. Although companies that are not considered a monopoly (like Apple) they can actually bundle this software, but since most of us are Windows users, this is a serious problem that the internal firewall for Windows does not handle.

And then, the last for today. Let's kill the mouse. Singlehandedly it is the input-device causing more carpal-tunnel syndromes than anything else. It is absolutely an non-precise and almost useless interface element designed about 23-25 years ago for creating the possibility of point-and-click interfaces. It is still an 'off' input device that in no way mimics the behaviour it tries to show. Especially when you work with a conventional mouse, that you have to lift up, move, and put back again on the desk to give it more space to move. Especially when you work with multiple desktops. I love tablets or precision pointing tools, and they absolutely decrease the chance of any carpal-tunnel syndrome too. I do like the scroll-wheel though.

Alright, that should be enough ranting for right now. I have had my coffee now, I should be good for the rest of the day.

To infinity, and.... into a brick wall.

What do you do when someone comes up to you and starts to tell you that you have to make 2+2 equaling to 5. And I mean afteryour maniacal laughter. You would tell him that it simply is not possible. At least, I hope. If not, I would like you to stop reading immediately.

Of course, it will hopefully not happen that someone comes up to you with that request, but let's be honest, how many times did you receive a request to do something that is simply not possible. For programmers for example to have a search query run faster than is technically possible, or for designers to upscale a 640x480 image to poster-size without losing it's quality. It just can't be done.

But these things you can explain. An element cannot fall faster by itself than it's terminal velocity, and no matter how much the protest, there will be enough proof to have it explained. But what if what you have is not so easy to explain?

Today I received a phone call from a client, mentioning that the conversion rate from visitors to registered users was lower than expected and that investors were disappointed. After a check, I saw in our reporting that we were able to get 5,4% of all hits on the website, to be turned into registered users. And this also included all the repeat visits, so the conversion number was even higher. I tried to tell him that the industry standard for a 'high' conversion rate is about 3%, so that our 5,4% is exceptionally high.

But that was not what he wanted to hear, it needed to be higher. Because in their opinion, 5.4% means that 94.5% is slipping away. And that is a high number. Once money is involved, people tend to look at it from that perspective. But 94.5% is not that much actually, if you consider a couple of things:

- We only allow people older than 18 to sign up, and only in the US. Any visitor from outside that target audience is not participating

- Signing up only is interesting for people who, right now in this economy, are in the market for an expensive luxury item (which we don't mention before they come to the site).

- We request quite some personal information, something that is not recommended by a lot of security companies andwe do not have a encryption certificate. So a lot of 'red flags' why people should not sign up.

But we still hit an exceptional 5.4%. That is 180% compared to the industry standard of a 'high' sign-up rate. But how do you explain that if someone thinks it is not enough. It is like flying into a brick wall, and if anyone has any idea how to deal with that, I would like to learn.

Identity theft? We are almost giving it away online.

Zack Whittaker posted a very interesting article on ZDnet about the danger about the information we all post online nowadays ( http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/google-ceos-social-media-warning-impending-information-armageddon/5940?tag=content;feature-roto ). And he absolutely has a point there. As some know, I am not a complete fan of social networks, although that is more because, well, I am not that social and I like to keep things private.

But, I have this blog, and recently started using Facebook more actively to also build up a network, which again can be very beneficial for my own companies. So, the things I put online are the more superficial ones, because I am not at all interested in putting anything I do, see or am online. First of all, I like to experience things first-hand. It is like people going on vacation taking only pictures and actually at home see what they actually have missed. I do not understand it when you are going somewhere, you non-stop want to update your status on Twitter or Facebook. On the other hand, if boredom strikes, well, anything is up for grabs I guess, even with me.

But a lot of mostly younger people, as mentioned also in this article, are less protective about their information. Including home addresses, provocative photos of themselves and opinions better kept to themselves. It might not hurt maybe immediately, but as you grow up you notice that a lot of information online might hurt haunt you for quite some time.

Probably, because this is happening so massively, the future generation sees this as a normal issue, since they all have that problem. But still, even then, there might be things in your past that you rather would like to forget. The Google CEO mentioned the possibility of changing your name when you reach adulthood, but that will not solve the problem, simply because I know enough adults who just as much share everything they do online.

I am still an supporter of having a secret persona online, and the possibility to have different identities. It is a virtual world out there, wo why not be virtual yourself? It happens all the time in MMORPG's and social networking games, even dating back to the earliest pen-and-paper RPG's (Anybody out there remembering DragonLance, Forgotten Realms or Ravenloft?), so why not do it now here. Personally, I think it might be a (virtual) life-saver.

I don't know what BlackBerry should do about giving up their security, but any decision is a bad one

After Blackberry decided to work with the Saudi Arabian government to provide them access to the encrypted communication layer that their cellphones use, also India is now demanding such and a couple of other countries are waiting in line. Although, personally, I am not difficult to persuade to grasp the point of view of 'security', but I cannot find it here. I do understand the business decision for Blackberry to work with the Saudi Arabian government - there are a lot of International corporations working there, and since Blackberry is still mostly a business smart-phone, they needto be connected in Saudi Arabia, just like with the off-shoring corporations in India. But this is a development that is at least fishy.

One of the good elements about a Blackberry (I have none, by the way, I am still working on a dreaded Win mobile) is a solid and well encrypted communication method. This is one of the features you cannot give up. But again, Saudi Arabia and India are too big areas to ignore, just like the Google threat to leave China - they are new and up-coming markets and to be a player there you have be playing by the rules.

But when the rules change during the game, it starts to smell. I am all for catching the bad guys, but this is another nail in the coffin for privacy. Anyone remember the Raptor story? That the CIA had developed the Raptor technology, being able to scan millions of emails to look for threats. And with the information 'if you don't have anything to hide, you don't have anything to fear' it was defended by government officials. OfficiallyRaptor was never user,  but like in my last post, it is information I do not want to know.

And even here in the US we are in a country that respects your freedom. But Saudi Arabia, India, Libia? Freedom is a whole different term even there. True, when it comes to crime-fighting you want to give the government agencies the possibility to get there. But if so much more gears in that clock are broken, why not fix that first before taking away another bit of privacy.

Europe is going into a whole wrong direction too with the data collection and storage. Every email, page visit is stored there now for six months. But it is not only that, it now appeared that a lot of ISP's did not store it securely and it is easy to access. And it is such an amount of data it is almost impossible to mine. But even if the technology was impossibly perfect, the agency accessing it should be flawless too, without any corruption and without any anterior motives.

Keep in mind, the criminals we have to be afraid of are the smartones. And the smart hackers use 10-12 proxy servers to hide their identity (and even the dumber ones, it is easy to set up), making it almost impossible to mine their data correctly. And smart criminals or potential terrorists in the any of the previously named countries will encrypt their encryption. These kinds of demands like Saudi Arabia and India make do not prevent crime, it will drive the feared criminals to become even more cunning, and more difficult to trace and get behind bars.

The only people who are suffering from a decision like that, just like with the Raptor program, are the people who are not planning anything, who are not aware of anything, and just live on. It is then our lives that loses another bit of privacy.

But, from another perspective, when people provide more information about themselves than anyone should on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, I might be a lonely soul shouting in the desert. But not on my BlackBerry at least.

Information you really don't want to know

Recently, the site of WikiLeaks has been capturing quite some attention. First of all for publishing all the secret Afghanistan documents, but last week also about threatening to publish security information about human rights activists around the world, causing a real security issue for people who are defending human Rights. Not only that, WikiLeaks mentioned to not publish the information if the Human Rights Organizations paid up $700,000.

Now, I am quite clear in my position over this; if it is up to me, WikiLeaks would be taken down right this same day. The reason is not even only the 'right to know' information that is published, but because it is absolutely unimportant information to practically all of us.

First of all, we do not always have the right to know. Even if we think we have, just like many people think they have the right to copy all the music for free, and share the rips of DVD's on the web. There is no right in the world mentioning that. Also, claiming to have that right is useless. And, the right to know is different to have the right to share. WikiLeaks biggest problem is that they publish information that they do not have the right to publish for. The information is not theirs. It is honestly a form of illegal file-sharing, but then on an information scale. So, there goes the 'right' issue.

But who cares even about that, the information serves us no purpose. And this is why I say that:

You really do not want to know how a lot of things work. If you do, buy the book 'How Things Work' on Amazon which reports to you how a dishwasher works, how hard-drives store their data and how a camera can put a visual source into a picture. But other than that, believe me, you want and need to know the things that involve your daily life.

For example, you don't want to know how the company is run and how the code is programmed of security companies. Simply, because if you would know, you would not trust it anymore. You don't want to know how Homeland Security is run, or what happens behind the screens with the senator, governor or president we all love or hate. It would give us a whole different perspective in life.

For example, take you tax dollars. Add all our tax-paid-dollars a year up, and see the huge amount it will turn into. Then, take a look what you get back for it... you do not want to know. The technical level of your hospital? Don't want to know. Worse, why is it that one department in your hospital has the newest technology, and the next department in the same hospital cannot even afford decent staff? You really do not want to know.

Why haven't we got Bin Laden yet? What happened in Roswell and where is Area 51 and what's in it? Really, don't want to know.

Or closer to home; What happened with the bail-out money that the banks received? Who is actually keeping track of your money at the bank? Who holds your current mortgage?

All these things you do not want to know. Why? Because they simply would make your life miserable. I have seen many things behind the screens during my time as a technical consultant and even now. And elements we completely rely on, that we think are so stable, so good, are doing mostly good at upholding that image. Look at Sun Micro-systems, when they were bought by Oracle, it suddenly became clear how inefficient the company worked, how absurtly expensive the machines were compared to what they did, and how bad the company was run. Sun was long time seen as the most innovative computer company in the world.

Really, believe me, you do not want to know all the things. It is not important. How bad do you want to know where the human-right-activists in China are? What is it to you? And what were you planning to do with this information? That information is with a reason not made public, because your need to 'know' this information is causing major security issues and most probably will cost lives.

So one final time, believe me, you don't want to know.

And you are not on a need to know level.

Advertisement Galore - Why it doesn't work

My last post was about banners, and how they can ruin a perfectly good site simply by sticking on it like a 20-year old traveling suitcase. The worst part that I did not even went into yet was, they don't work. Please, believe me.

A project that I work on launched a nation-wide television commercial last week, with the idea that it would grow an immense audience. And with that, we included ads and links on the homepages of the same nationwide network, grossing millions of visits (not visitors) a month.

But it simply did not work. The difference with an ad campaign and without was 3:1. True, we had three times as many visits, but to be honest, that does not add up. Exposing your product to millions of American viewers, and getting only three times the amount of visitors that you had without any advertising simply does not work.

It is not shocking news. The advertising world is changing rapidly. When I go to the cinema, in the past I remember to be bombarded with commercials. Nowadays it is a 'first-view' program and trailers, and maybe a commercial highlighting the popcorn and M&M's you can get in the lobby. Advertisement doesn't work that well anymore.

And I am a web designer and developer. I know how to build stuff, and make it work. I cannot sell it. Getting an audience has always been a mystery to me. Until a good friend of mine took some time to explain to me the currently successful way to advertise; social networks. Now, I am absolutely known with the social networks; I know how they technically work (and most, even the huge ones, are barely able to run correctly), what is good and bad about them, but I don't understand them. I never been a 'social guy'. Although I did meet my wife in a bar, I never have been the kind of guy to just go out, meet people. And a social network sounds a bit the same to me. I simply do not understand them, and what they do for me.

So, after this friend told me how you can actually use a network also for business purposes, I promised myself to do it. Finally doing something with my Facebook account that I had not touched for a long, long time simply because my life was fairly good without it.

And it is work, I have to say. For me at least. I love it to write, to talk with old friends, and it feels good. And the first step is familiarize myself with the system and setting up a network. But since I am also running my own company, I need to know how to set up my business and get an audience in the social network too. The simple fact that I am not familiar with it, doesn't mean my potential clients are not either.

So even though I know it is a new road for me, I know it is absolutely necessary. And this is where I think my client with the nationwide ad campaign will be missing the boat on this. To be honest, that side including advertisements is grossing as many visitors ad my wife's online local antique store - and I am absolutely serious about that.

Banners! ARGH!

Sometimes working on an IT project, even ones that are not your own, and is based on a concept of another, feels like art. You start with nothing yet, and shape it into something good, or, as good as possible - because we all know that sometimes with some projects, you cannot do better than that.

And then you finish the project, and you can take a step back, and actually admire your work. Do it fast though, because if you look at it in a week, you find a hundred new ways of improving this same project again. In this scenario, it is such a good thing if this project was your own project, or a project for a non-profit organization, or an offline project. Because, in any other scenario, the next people working with your creation are sales people who will smack banners on your product.

And then it starts.

A long, long, long time ago banners really raked in money. So having a couple of banners, say a nice 3 or 4 would not make you rich, but it would add nicely in your account if you had a nice amount of visitors. Of course, if you are a commercial company, 'even more money' is always better then 'already a lot of money', so you want to sell more. Because, what you can do once, you can do again.

Nowadays, banners are not worth a lot, so especially commercial companies even add more banners to the mix to get money in. But, eventually, killing the original production.

Having banners on your website is like cholestorol in your blood. You actually need cholestorol for the creation of the cell-skins (or whatever the correct medical explanation is), but too much of it can be a serious health threat. Also, showing a lot of banners seriously slows your site down. This is not so much because of the banner itself, but also of the system you are using to count the impresisons, loading the banners etc. Every banner is nowadays handled as a seperate web page, has it's own source code, even if it is a static JPG image. Programs like DoubleClick add a lot of extra functionality while loading up an advertisement. If you then also have a flash banner, it can even have it's own complete source code, maybe sometimes adding thousands of lines of code to your original page.

And of course, your nice production would not look better. It would be like watching Rembrandt's Nightwatch with country-stickers on it from all the visitors who have seen it. There is your work of art, disgusted by visitors who initially were interested in your product.

So, keep it clean. As a designer, make sure you discuss the possibility of banners in the site, and design them already in the site, locking the amount of possibile banners for this production. Then, it can be easily told to sales-people that they can only sell those two places. Nothing more.

Not that they will listen, but at least, you did your job.

So, next time when you deliver you production to a company that will most likely smudge it with banners, take a quick look, then turn away, like a good old-fashioned tear-jerker goodbye in a Humphrey Bogart movey. 'We always will have Paris'. (is that a Humphrey Bogart movie?)

Hmmm... a well executed project, what a bummer!

I am actually a bit surprised today. It is Monday, the 9th of August, and everything is relaxed. Now, this is surprising because last Friday and today we are launching a major advertising campaign, and for it a bunch of our sites and sites of a major worldwide media enterprise has to be changed, and from tonight commercials will be aired in 17 major cities in the countries.

And actually, everything goes fine. Nobody breaks a sweat. Finally, after 15 years of working in IT with larger and smaller teams in web development and with numerous big launches and updates behind me, there was always this crunch-time. To be honest, I actually like that. The stress building up, it makes you push a little bit further, make things that usually happen in one day, take only an hour and still be good. And then, after the launch, there is this enormous relief, this euphoric feeling. Really like creating a real accomplishment.

And it is not there. Not the stress, not the euphoric feeling either. Actually, it feels like just another Monday, what usually is not considered to be overall 'good'. Anyway. When I look back at this major upgrade, it is actually well organized, even after we only heard about this deadline 3 days before it was due. The planning went fine, my team did their work on time and even the client was immediately available. So, in many cases, it went as it should.

But let's be honest. How many of you out there handling IT project management, have ever seen a major development process happen as planned, and that even the two setbacks that we had were covered in the 20% pre-calculated time?

I am actually disappointed in the lack of 'accomplishment' feeling. That is actually too bad, that being good at something (and I mean credit to my whole team and the client's) is actually boring.

How to waste money in IT 101

Of course, I have my own, personal vision here in my part of the IT-world. I am in contact with a lot of companies, including some of the world's major media companies, IT companies, retailers, Universities and governments and sometimes I am quite honestly, worried.

I do what I like, that's my work. I, my company or the company I work for, faces a project and a problem, and I try to find a creative solution. The typical 'thinking outside the box'. I think I am good at that. I hope so, because usually I am a mess and too chaotic for thinking inside the box. A box in a solid space, no room for creativity, so I like to be outside the box, and tell people inside of it how to do it.

But I really like what I do, and really enjoy working with my colleagues who I respect, and in return, I also gained their respect and although we are not all rocket-scientists here, I dare to say we can easily outperform most other IT companies out there.

Now, this is where my worry is. That outperforming is not because I think we are the best around. I never have the goal to be the very best, because it lets you lose focus that being better than 80% is excellent already, and being at the top means there is no one to learn from. And believe me, there are always a lot of new things to learn.

In my communications with other companies (and being the VP in the company I work for that are usually also the IT-managers and seniors, and occasionally board members and executives) I tend to be open, honest and strict, but also add a lot of humor to the conversations; I want people to know they can just act normal with me, because it is when business people let their guard down, they are honest in what they want and are looking for, instead of putting so much effort to look so important.

And then, suddenly, the floodgates open and usually in a first conversation I receive quite some insight in that company's IT problems.

For my own company, also an IT company, I deal a lot with governments and educational corporations. And usually I notice that these people are a lot more strict in what they are saying, as if they know they are more 'watched'. But eventually, their actions speak more than a thousand words.

I run some major projects from my own company, have some quite impressive clients that a lot of other larger IT consultancy firms would be jealous of, and quite recently I received the request of a major media company if I would like to be in the race to rebuild their complete worldwide website. I mean, I did not ask to be in their, they actually came to me.

My company is in my attic in my house. It is the whole of two computers and a photo studio. The attic is not even finished yet and I am working on it now for about two and a half years. Don't worry, I run my servers off-site ;)

But what I am trying to get to, to move this story in one solid direction, is that my clients deliberately decided to work with this tiny little company, in an attic, existing of one devoted guy and a number of connected free-lancers over their major-ICT partners that they had before.

Again, I like what I do, and I hear that that usually is the reason why companies like to work with me, which I am delighted about of course. I take pride in my work and a client is important to me. I don't want to become a large IT company. I have worked for them, and I loved my time there too, but I know that once there is no passion in work, quality drops.

Last year, I got a request to participate in a bid for a small project for the New Jersey government. The reason why is because this certain department wanted to work with another team than the current partnerswho controlled their websites for years and years. And so I have received a bit of insight in this project and the past of this department and her partners. And then it worries me to see, even in this small area of all elements involving the government, how much money is absolutely wasted. And this, honestly, is not the governments' fault, but because of lack of passion and knowledge of a lot of IT-ers around. Are they to blame? I honestly do not know; you would suppose that the person or department managing a bid should have the knowledge. But then, they are outsourcing because they do not have this knowledge in-house.

I think it mostly has to do with the lack of knowledge and also a bit of greed on IT-consultancy firms. I know it happens usually that on a project requiring 20 IT-ers, there are 2-4 highly-qualified people carrying 80% of the project, and teaching the other 16-18 consultants - if they are capable or not. I have been there. I have worked for one of Europe's major ICT-consultancy firms and the goal of being on a project is to be hired with as many fellow-consultants as possible, and not make the deadline. Because at one moment, the client could not get you out of the project, because usually there was too much work done already.

This is nice financially for a consultancy firm. But let's be honest, there is a lot of money wasted, work-passion wasted and washed down the drain, creating more IT-drones. And if you have looked around in the world of basic education here in the US, but also in Europe and I guess everywhere... money can be spent much wiser since it involves our children's future. But think about security, healthcare, safety. I can tell you that you do not want to know how the code is written for some of the major safety systems in the world.

So that is why I try, with my tiny little company, to just add my share to honest and good IT work. At least, the best I can. I hope you can join in there too.

What is my beef with Case Bank?

So, what is actually my beef with Chase Bank in my last two posts? As I explained, it is not really about money, but something much more important.

Chase Bank closed an account of mine yesterday without ane satisfying explanation. And it is exactly that what me beef is. Because I know that no satisfying answer will come. The reason why is that I know very well that no one has a clue why my account was blocked. People at Chase Bank who were unfortunate enough to talk to me during the last two days are not to blame, their computer scenario simply tells them that information cannot and may not be given.

Dealing with many clients requires a certain amount of automation. This is very understandable. Financial security requires privacy. Also understandable. But if you are aware of the technical inside of a program, and the instability of it, thing don't sound so understandable. As any programmer, but especially any software architect knows is that a (web) application is a complex thing, with tons of room for error. And even when you build a flawless code, the platform that runs it has tons of room for errors, and then the browser that runs it, then the Operating System and even just the hardware in you computer or device might cause problems.

Then knowing that for example Chase also relies on third party software which might face the same amount of errors (and in their defense, just like any other bank or online organisation) AND the security and privacy rules going on preventing any kind of insight why anything has happened, makes it easy to understand why Chase Bank does not give out information. Even if this was an accident, by an error or by human error, they simply do not know.

Automated systems take care of a lot of work, but also makes you lose oversight. And this is my beef I have with Case bank; they are a financial organisation, taking care of my personal money accounts. They should be the financial experts. But really, they are not. They have no clue. It is literally they lost a sock of my money and their only answer is that they do not know what has happened to it and that they are not going to do anything about it.

I am usually for automation, but it would be nice if not everyone depended blindly on it, especially not if you claim to be an expert in anything relying on it.

Why you still should not trust Chase bank with your money.

In my posting yesterday I mentioned the action taken by Chase bank to abruptly close a credit-card account in good standing, without any reason except mentioning that it was closed based on information they received from the credit bureau and that they were not able to open the account again. I also mentioned I am one of those people who examine their credit-reports up close and also by my profession, know the risks of identity-theft and the impact it has. And believe me, my credit-report has been marvellous, and a lot better even compared to the date I got this card.

An initial contact with Chase bank did not get me any closer to an answer. I am not looking for the card to be reinstated, I have lost all my trust with Chase bank immediately (if it is about my own earned money, a financial institution does not get any second chances) and will also move my checking account away from there. But what bothers me is simply the lack of reason, and the firm statement that there is nothing that Chase bank can or will do to provide me with a solution or answer.

I wonder how they would respond when I would decide paying the remainder of the balance on the card, without any reason. Well, we all know what will happen then; collection agencies, credit-score drops, revoking my mortgage (which, thank God is not with Chase bank) and making life simply horrible.

This is the basic part of dealing with banks. They are allowed to bend you over and sodomize you, while you have to take it with a smile. But there is no service in the other direction. This is one of the good things that they have taken care of in Europe, where banks are monitored with a national bank, who sets the rules, so that not a bank alone can take any action. But here in the US, things are slightly different.

What I worry about though is that such an action, that completely is not based on any solid information, might actually impact my credit score. And there is simply nothing I can do about it except filing a dispute. And a dispute is never in a hurry with a bank.

But Chase bank responded in more detail though. So I was so hoping that there might be a single person somewhere in that company that would take the time to sit down, and dig into the chain of command to find out what has been going on. Again, if it was closed because threatening behaviour of identity-theft, then all praise goes to Chase bank. But, they did not. At least, providing me without any information means in my vocabulary that that did not happen.

If there is anyone who has experienced similair actions from their bank (preferably Chase bank of course), drop me line. It would be time that banks took their financial responsibilities a little bit more serious.

Why you shouldn't trust Chase bank with your money.

I am a normal, law abiding citizen, looking out for my finances and working in the back-end of IT, I know how easy it is to get your identity stolen, so I follow my credit-report closely. I have moved to the US almost five years ago, and as any other immigrant knows, it is a though job to get your credit score built up from absolutely zero.

I am also a brand-loyal person. Once I feel comfortable with a brand, if it is food, a store, a restaurant or a, well, bank, I stick with them. And so I also ended up with Chase when I was still working in NYC when I came to the country. I opened my account there, and lived happily ever after for at least four and a half years.

After one and a half year, with my credit score still crawling slowly up to mid-500 range, Chase offered me a solid credit card, for $2,500. I was happy as a clam. I make a very good living, but without a credit-score you can't get anything done. And to build up your credit, maintaining a credit card adds a lot of points.

So I paid with it, made sure my monthly payments were in on time and everything went peachy.

Then, suddenly, quite recently, let's say, about 20 minutes ago I checked my online account and notice that my faithful credit-card has been closed. Tadaaah. So, with my knowledge and not having received any warnings or messages about this, I called Chase. Of course I got the answer that was to be expected, the person who sounded as if he still had problems reading the words from his monitor, let alone that he understood what he was saying: 'We cannot give you information about that. Chase has decided to close your account permanently because of information from the credit bureau.'

Come again? Like said, I faithfully, every month, check my full credit report through TransUnion completely. No late payments, no problems and a shiny 700+ credit score. There is not even an out-of-place speck on my report. Of course, the scores of the other two credit bureaus are different, but good to excellent. All at least 200 points higher than when I started the account.

Gone. Chase decided. So, this is what Chase is up to then? Now, I will not mourn this card, I don't need the credit card and this closing will not affect my life in any significant way. But it is the principle that without any warning, not even through their fancy on-line alerts, they can close an account based on nothing. What if you are a person that does need a card because you need it to pay your electric bill this month. Too bad. Your rent? Sorry. Mortgage? It is sunny outside, you don't need a home. Food? Ah, you can live a month without.

I have written way in the beginning of this blog why I don't trust banks, but Chase, you absolutely just shine in absolute untrustworthy behavior. And yes, this immediately reflects on my checking account which I will bring to a more pleasant bank. I do not trust any bank, but you proofed my point, so I probably cannot do any worse. Or do you want to close my checking account yourself and keep the money that is still in it? Such a move seems right up your alley.

Anyone else have had sort-like adventures in finance? Drop me a line.

Why you shouldn't trust Chase bank with your money.

I am a normal, law abiding citizen, looking out for my finances and working in the back-end of IT, I know how easy it is to get your identity stolen, so I follow my credit-report closely. I have moved to the US almost five years ago, and as any other immigrant knows, it is a though job to get your credit score built up from absolutely zero.

I am also a brand-loyal person. Once I feel comfortable with a brand, if it is food, a store, a restaurant or a, well, bank, I stick with them. And so I also ended up with Chase when I was still working in NYC when I came to the country. I opened my account there, and lived happily ever after for at least four and a half years.

After one and a half year, with my credit score still crawling slowly up to mid-500 range, Chase offered me a solid credit card, for $2,500. I was happy as a clam. I make a very good living, but without a credit-score you can't get anything done. And to build up your credit, maintaining a credit card adds a lot of points.

So I paid with it, made sure my monthly payments were in on time and everything went peachy.

Then, suddenly, quite recently, let's say, about 20 minutes ago I checked my online account and notice that my faithful credit-card has been closed. Tadaaah. So, with my knowledge and not having received any warnings or messages about this, I called Chase. Of course I got the answer that was to be expected, the person who sounded as if he still had problems reading the words from his monitor, let alone that he understood what he was saying: 'We cannot give you information about that. Chase has decided to close your account permanently because of information from the credit bureau.'

Come again? Like said, I faithfully, every month, check my full credit report through TransUnion completely. No late payments, no problems and a shiny 700+ credit score. There is not even an out-of-place speck on my report. Of course, the scores of the other two credit bureaus are different, but good to excellent. All at least 200 points higher than when I started the account.

Gone. Chase decided. So, this is what Chase is up to then? Now, I will not mourn this card, I don't need the credit card and this closing will not affect my life in any significant way. But it is the principle that without any warning, not even through their fancy on-line alerts, they can close an account based on nothing. What if you are a person that does need a card because you need it to pay your electric bill this month. Too bad. Your rent? Sorry. Mortgage? It is sunny outside, you don't need a home. Food? Ah, you can live a month without.

I have written way in the beginning of this blog why I don't trust banks, but Chase, you absolutely just shine in absolute untrustworthy behavior. And yes, this immediately reflects on my checking account which I will bring to a more pleasant bank. I do not trust any bank, but you proofed my point, so I probably cannot do any worse. Or do you want to close my checking account yourself and keep the money that is still in it? Such a move seems right up your alley.

Anyone else have had sort-like adventures in finance? Drop me a line.

The only law is the outlaw

It is not something shocking, but we have to face it that the internet is the largest anarchy in the world. Or maybe that's just it, it is not 'in' the world, but expands beyond the physical boundaries. We are still colonizing this virtual space, and it is still the terrains of the outlaws, where rules are created but do not hang on.

Take the international copyright-laws. Who is going to actually arrest people for breaking those laws? I am a big promoter of copyright, especially since I am creating a lot of creative productions myself and when someone uses it, I would like to be compensated for it. And technically, it is not too difficult to uphold those laws; as long as you know who the person is who actually made the original copy and shared in on the internet.

But it is not even that. It is viruses, phishing, disturbing behavior, illegal content and breaking in everywhere. If you hook your computer up to the internet I thought it was now an average time of 2,5 minute before the first port-sniffer already checks your computer.

Everywhere around the world governments and legal companies try to create some order in this virtual world, but the problem is; where is it? Who can actually set up any laws? Although I am so pro copyright, who ever is upholding those laws on the web? Is that a chosen official on the web too? Are these laws not country-oriented while the internet surpasses those boundaries? Or, in other words; I think that what is needed is a very simple thing; let's treat the internet as it's own geographical location. Including police, government and laws.

Of course this might sound like being against the 'laws' (or the lack thereof) on the web, but let's be honest here, history has proven time and again that mankind is not able to live in an anarchy-state without problems. It is good for the bad, but bad for the good. Hackers that steal money are also p*ssed if their stolen money is stolen from them too.

Back when I was younger, I played Dungeons & Dragons with my friends on Sunday nights. And I tried to play a so-called chaotic-evil character once, which is a character that really only thinks about him or herself. I was warned that this was a very difficult kind of thing to play, because it is difficult not to live according any laws. For example;

A hacker steals money so that he can use this money to buy stuff.  But this is already a wrong perception of anarchy; why legally buy things with money. Why is the buying part of this transaction suddenly legal. It does not make sense.

Someone is illegally downloading music to put on an expensive, legally bought iPod. People download illegally games to run on their $4,000 computers that they just have bought.

Do you get my point here? It does not make sense. I have read the response once on an IT site from a kid who downloaded his illegal music in massive amounts. His response was that if he had to buy all the music to fit on his iPod, it would cost him $10,000 and he did not have that money.

This is what I mean, it is not so much that there are no laws, but there is no-one to enforce them. And even if the 'criminal' is caught, the cat-and-mouse game of physical location of servers can throw anything off balance.

No, my idea is to start something like a governing environment online. Not maintained by countries, since the internet is not physically bound to any. A whole new thing, that not only upholds the laws, but also teaches. It gives everyone a real identity, like a passport. If treated like this, suddenly complete new business models for the music and entertainment industry might rise up, that are profitable for both the producers as the consumers.

Concepts like these are not new. In the late 20th century Swiss watch maker Swatch already introduced internet Time, that for anyone on the web was exactly the same.

Of course, everything sounds easy... but like the wild west a couple of hundred years ago... it takes time to get rid of the idea that the only law is the outlaw. But be patient, it is bound to happen, and there is a lot of money to be made then... probably a lot more than there is right now.

What, you want to put something on my to-do list? Let's Fight!

A good friend of mine will be hopping on the plane with her husband today towards Japan for a one-way trip. I will miss her not only because she has been a good friend, she also meant a lot for my own company. But what the special part about our friendship was is that we could fight in the office, where we have met in the past, and actually appreciate each other more at that moment.

Well, not directly at that moment. People that usually work with me can form a quick opinion; you can look at my work and judge it by the result, or look at it and judge it by result in its environment. And with that I mean that - yes, I am an interaction designer and not all of my production are always user-friendly. Strange you say? A product is a result of the production-line and the environment it is in. If you have the best architect for the design of a house, but you only give him 2 hours to draw the papers, it will not be his best work. You might be the best programmer in the world, but if your boss pushes for a deadline 2 weeks earlier than your own deadline, chances are that the work will not be perfect. And dealing in an environment where there is more than one person trying to pull the ropes, well, it can get a horrible project then.

And I come from a family that does not mind arguments, heated arguments even. So I can bend a lot along wishes of people, companies etc. In the end, the one responsible for an element is the one who had the most influence in my opinion, unless it is a proven mistake. Some projects are not worth spending so much energy on.

But if something really seems like a mistake, like a donkey I can put my ass in the sand. Sometimes it has also to do with the fact that people rather deal with me than with the owners and bosses of the project, that I usually deal with. But like said, I don't mind a conflict, a heated discussion at work. Better yet, I applaud it. Here in the US I have noticed that a lot of people are acting their role instead of working it. Nobody wants to say 'no' to the boss, and also in meetings the boss is always right? Excuse me? If the boss is so good, then why did he need to hire you? Why did he need your expertise in the company.

Having an argument usually gets people from the actor role into their own self, revealing passion about certain subjects, which brings up real information. If I say no to a certain development, or halt it, I might not see all the point of views. So if you would come up to me and say I need to do something because you want it, doesn't make sense to me. If during an argument that will follow suddenly your real reasons appear, which might range from anything for budget, business, your personal career, clients or whatever, I can balance out the importance and make a more solid decision. Still, I might decide not to do it, but there is then a better understanding.

One thing about arguments on the work-floor is that you have to know that it is business, not personal. If you ever work with me we might end up in a major discussion. But as soon as it is over, everything should be okay. It is not a personal quarrel. I don't hate you, and I hope you don't hate me. It should actually strengthen the relationship.

And with this friend, Rebecca, it has been the same way. I think through the arguments we had at the beginning we actually started up a great working relationship. I hope everything works out perfectly fine for her and her husband in the far, far away.

Enough of HTML 5! Have you ever taken a good look at it????

I have mentioned the hype around HTML 5 before. And still, and maybe even more, I do absolutely not understand why there is so much going on about it.

Well, actually I do know, but I prefer not to. I have been working with HTML since '93 when I had to work with the only real browser out there; Mosaic, nothing more than a simple tool to read html pages. No dynamics, no scripting. Nothing.

And HTML was about to grow, because in the following years leading up until 1999, it needed to be prepared for everything that was happening online. And oh it did so not live up to it's task. That was not HTML's fault, but more the two major browser-makers with an attitude; Internet Explorer and Netscape. And none of them was able to handle HTML in the same way. Which had a bit of a side-effect, working with web sites so much as I had; I needed to know every little trick there was to know to make sure sites ran exactly the same in all the browsers, and more important; they needed to look the same.

HTML allows a lot of tricks, because it is full of loopholes that you can use to trick a browser with so you could change the behavior of a browser a bit.

But HTML is and always has been a bit of an odd thing. It was there to simply present things on a sheet of paper (or screen in this case). And you read a site like a book, being a stack of papers. It can show a picture, text, references to other books and papers. It is a horrible, old-fashioned thing for a multimedia machine like a computer. But I learned to love HTML. Because, no matter how you slice it, if you deal online, you need to deal with HTML. But, as mentioned in an earlier blog-post; the real fun stuff you do with other technologies, plug-ins and scripts.

NO MORE - they say. NO MORE shall we use plug-ins for playing video, playing audio and showing real-time images.

Excuse me? Now, did anyone take a look at the new HTML 5 line-up? If not, here http://www.w3schools.com/html5/default.asp is a good place to start. HTML 5 is the thing that ultimately will kill HTML. I do not know if that is actually a bad thing, but let's be honest, take a look at the W3Schools site and read through it.

Sure, it is nice to show video and audio and create an image on a canvas. But WTF?!?!?! You have to script an image? Now, all designers under us, raise your hands, how many of you are going to script out an image? It feels like being back in the good old QBasic days when as a 12 year old boy I was programming 320x200 images with lines and dots.

Even with laying multiple png's on top of each other in div's you get a way more impressive effect. And the video? I know everyone wants to bash Flash or Silverlight, but please, you have so much more control over it so you can use video completely interactive, including masks, dynamic masks, and sprites in both others. That is comparing Blu-Ray (Flash/Silverlight) to VHS (HTML 5).

Audio? Wow... we can stream audio now? So we might hit the mute button asap because we do not want our boss to know what we are doing behind our computers? It is all easy, but where can I mix my streaming sounds, pan them through stereo. Hi Mono-Walkman (HTML 5), have you seen my iPod (Flash/Silverlight ... hmmm, maybe not a good match here ;) ).

Is everything bad about HTML 5?

Not at all. HTML 5 is not a bad thing. But it is not even close to a replacement or a threat to real use of mulltimedia technologies as Flash and Silverlight. What I am afraid of is that a lot of nit-wit CEO's are going to enforce the support for multimedia  in HTML 5 instead of Flash or Silverlight because Apple says so, and that the word is on the street that you should. And a lot of money will be put into this, for a result that is most probably not as what they had envisioned. And there it goes, a lot of money and time down the drain.

So, what is good about HTML 5. I personally love the new form features and data validation. It saves the creation of new code to handle it. It is easier, but not something we could not already do in scripting and AJAX. Nevertheless, it is a welcome thing, being able to handle it in the browser itself. But - please - is that worth waiting 11 years for? 11 years it has been since the last major HTML update. Let's see, 1999, that would be like working now on the millennium bug. A little bit late isn't it?

My company and I will support the use of HTML 5, but we will have to keep everything compatible with older browsers too, so we need to support HTML 4 also. Tadaah. Enough new work. Please, if possible, ladies and gentlemen at the HTML 5 workgroup. Just, stop. Take a coffee, or a Frappuccino, and take the day off. You know what, take the whole year off. HTML 5 is not going to make a major change, and only will cost us all a bunch of money. And I, for one, am not happy to invest valuable money and time in something that literally does not make any noticable difference at all.

Enough of HTML 5! Have you ever taken a good look at it????

I have mentioned the hype around HTML 5 before. And still, and maybe even more, I do absolutely not understand why there is so much going on about it.

Well, actually I do know, but I prefer not to. I have been working with HTML since '93 when I had to work with the only real browser out there; Mosaic, nothing more than a simple tool to read html pages. No dynamics, no scripting. Nothing.

And HTML was about to grow, because in the following years leading up until 1999, it needed to be prepared for everything that was happening online. And oh it did so not live up to it's task. That was not HTML's fault, but more the two major browser-makers with an attitude; Internet Explorer and Netscape. And none of them was able to handle HTML in the same way. Which had a bit of a side-effect, working with web sites so much as I had; I needed to know every little trick there was to know to make sure sites ran exactly the same in all the browsers, and more important; they needed to look the same.

HTML allows a lot of tricks, because it is full of loopholes that you can use to trick a browser with so you could change the behavior of a browser a bit.

But HTML is and always has been a bit of an odd thing. It was there to simply present things on a sheet of paper (or screen in this case). And you read a site like a book, being a stack of papers. It can show a picture, text, references to other books and papers. It is a horrible, old-fashioned thing for a multimedia machine like a computer. But I learned to love HTML. Because, no matter how you slice it, if you deal online, you need to deal with HTML. But, as mentioned in an earlier blog-post; the real fun stuff you do with other technologies, plug-ins and scripts.

NO MORE - they say. NO MORE shall we use plug-ins for playing video, playing audio and showing real-time images.

Excuse me? Now, did anyone take a look at the new HTML 5 line-up? If not, here http://www.w3schools.com/html5/default.asp is a good place to start. HTML 5 is the thing that ultimately will kill HTML. I do not know if that is actually a bad thing, but let's be honest, take a look at the W3Schools site and read through it.

Sure, it is nice to show video and audio and create an image on a canvas. But WTF?!?!?! You have to script an image? Now, all designers under us, raise your hands, how many of you are going to script out an image? It feels like being back in the good old QBasic days when as a 12 year old boy I was programming 320x200 images with lines and dots.

Even with laying multiple png's on top of each other in div's you get a way more impressive effect. And the video? I know everyone wants to bash Flash or Silverlight, but please, you have so much more control over it so you can use video completely interactive, including masks, dynamic masks, and sprites in both others. That is comparing Blu-Ray (Flash/Silverlight) to VHS (HTML 5).

Audio? Wow... we can stream audio now? So we might hit the mute button asap because we do not want our boss to know what we are doing behind our computers? It is all easy, but where can I mix my streaming sounds, pan them through stereo. Hi Mono-Walkman (HTML 5), have you seen my iPod (Flash/Silverlight ... hmmm, maybe not a good match here ;) ).

Is everything bad about HTML 5?

Not at all. HTML 5 is not a bad thing. But it is not even close to a replacement or a threat to real use of mulltimedia technologies as Flash and Silverlight. What I am afraid of is that a lot of nit-wit CEO's are going to enforce the support for multimedia  in HTML 5 instead of Flash or Silverlight because Apple says so, and that the word is on the street that you should. And a lot of money will be put into this, for a result that is most probably not as what they had envisioned. And there it goes, a lot of money and time down the drain.

So, what is good about HTML 5. I personally love the new form features and data validation. It saves the creation of new code to handle it. It is easier, but not something we could not already do in scripting and AJAX. Nevertheless, it is a welcome thing, being able to handle it in the browser itself. But - please - is that worth waiting 11 years for? 11 years it has been since the last major HTML update. Let's see, 1999, that would be like working now on the millennium bug. A little bit late isn't it?

My company and I will support the use of HTML 5, but we will have to keep everything compatible with older browsers too, so we need to support HTML 4 also. Tadaah. Enough new work. Please, if possible, ladies and gentlemen at the HTML 5 workgroup. Just, stop. Take a coffee, or a Frappuccino, and take the day off. You know what, take the whole year off. HTML 5 is not going to make a major change, and only will cost us all a bunch of money. And I, for one, am not happy to invest valuable money and time in something that literally does not make any noticable difference at all.

Apple and the rules of the playground (and the players are chosing sides).

Was it first Apple alone preaching against the use of Adobe's Flash, striking up a dangerous front against the most used multimedia platform around, more and more the IT world is taking sides, and most of them are actually with Adobe.

It is not about Flash, or Adobe, but how a single company like Apple, tries to dictate the world what technologies should or should not be used. And although they are still a small player in the desktop-computer field, with their mobile devices like the iPod, iPhone and the iPad they are the leader. And not only that, they have an image that is 'hip'. The son or daughter of the CEO you have to pitch your products to tomorrow has an iPad, and so while you try to pitch your Flash production, the question will come if it also runs on the iPad.

'No sir, it does not. But it does run on all other platforms!'

Don't even try it. Just pack your stuff and leave. Even though Apple products only cover a small amount of web users, they have the image of being everywhere. And there you are, as a small-company developer, trying to earn a living in Flash, C#, or whatever other kind of expertise you have... not able to sell simply because you are not a Mac.

Well, I am not a Mac. I am a PC. Sure, I do have my iPod, and I love how it works. But even I will not push myself to develop for the iP* line. Simply because I do not believe in the investment I have to make in it, for something that will be undone in the near future. As it seems now, and now that Adobe teamed up with 19 of the 20 top mobile device producers in the world, it feels as if there is another front forming, trying to tell this company in Cupertino to walk in line again.

This has nothing to do with setting up the boundaries of your own devices. It has nothing to do with what they are or are not allowed to do. People's careers are at stake here, incomes for families, while Apple kicks out apps from their app-store simply because they want to. Most developers creating flimsy productions would not care too much, but the couple that put a lot of time and money in it, actually will lose, and will lose dearly.

Somewhere in the last few years, Apple decided to play God. And with a whole bunch of loyal followers it actually starts to feel like a religion within IT.

The thing that I am a bit afraid of is that this 'war' that is going on will end up with us being the loser in any way. Don't get me wrong while reading the above semi-rant; Apple brings something to the table that I try to fight for with my clients for a long, long time; introducing a user experience. And they slapped people in the faces with interfaces, making the world aware. But somewhere along the line it went wrong.

Let me be quite clear here, apple is not an inventor, but more innovative. They take something that is already there, polish it up like pimp-my-ride and create something amazing. Something that a lot of corporations should start doing.

But if this scenario of the world against Apple would run it's course, it would go wrong too. Because at this moment, Apple is one of the only familiar innovative players around. Taking that out of the line-up would get us to a more steady, but more dull market. So I like Apple in that role, it would only be so much better if they would play nice. Because, let's not forget, Apple is not a big player out there; Google, Microsoft, Dell, IBM, HTC for example are around too, taking sides now with Adobe, that has been bullied by Apple. You know the rules of the playground...

Internet Everywhere! Wooohooo!

Woohoo! I have Internet in my car. Well, actually simply by carrying around a MiFi (a mobile Wi-Fi device using 3G) I turn my personal being in a Wi-Fi element. Nice, with all the to-be-proven-in-the-future radiation and everything that comes with it that I do not want to know.

Am I happy now? Well, sort of. I got this little device because my wife needs to be on the road much for her store, and I like to accompany her. But with my work hooked to the computer, it made that quite impossible. So, last Friday we actually gave it a try, driving from Philadelphia to Merrimac, New Hampshire, for about five and a half hours.

I love driving. It relaxes me, even when I end up in a traffic jam, it will not really get to me. I don't like standing still, but it has no use making a fuss about it. I can drive behind a 145 year old driver in an SUV who has got his accelerator jammed at 20mph without flashing my lights or honking the horn. My wife lives a bit of other ritual, let's say, a bit more vocal. That is why I actually enjoy driving behind the wheel, or with my wife at the wheel, because it is always entertaining to me.

But now there is MiFi. Internet everywhere. I was actually working! Laptop, iPod and my mobile phone hooked up through Wi-Fi. I actually see that I can use Skype very well over my iPhone now everywhere I have a 3G connection, eliminating my need of a separate phone. All nice and well. But...

...I was working. Now, don't get me wrong. I like work, and I work a lot. My 8 hours a day at the company, then an unlimited number of hours at my own company and photo studio. Enough work. And now I actually made the car into an office too. Maybe that is not such a good idea.

This trip to New Hampshire, I did not really notice my wife's commentary on the other users of the road. And I arrived suddenly in Connecticut, then Massachusetts and finally, New Hampshire without even realizing it.

You know what? I might have enough on-line time already without that. Although, it makes it easy to be in a car while you should be working. I mean, being at the beach at 5.01pm , and not a minute later ;) Hell, be at the beach at 3pm, just don't let anybody know :)

Apple is a smart company. When do they start behaving like one?

Didn't you also have an opinion about the most popular boy or girl in your high-school? The 'followers' adored them, the non-popular kids hated them, and a lot of the others just did not want to pay any attention to them.

After the last keynote that Apple gave, I thought of Apple being the popular guy at school. I was never the popular nor the 'nerd' at school, but sailed through in-between, I did not care so much. I was always amazed though by the social developments in classes and communities that make people being marked as a 'leader' and as a follower.

And Apple now has set themselves in the position to be treated like the leader. And it is a message they live by and behave like. But, just like with the high-school kids, the effectiveness and the truth of this seems thin. The most popular guy was not a leader, nor did he had leader skills - more often than not. Apple doesn't have the skills to be a leader, not in OS, not in devices. A true leader searches for what is best for the followers, in the short or long run (or both). Apple, though, prove to be the innovator on the playing field. Not in any technical way; there is not a single technical thing Apple really invented from scratch. But what I certainly have to praise, Apple makes other companies realize to pay more attention to usability and design. With the iMac they made sure people knew that a computer can look good, with the iPod they introduced a wonderful hardware interface, and OSX is still the prettiest operating system around, and with the iPhone they showed the world what you can do with touch-screen.

Although innovative on their own, none of these innovations were actually inventions from Apple, but mere modifications. I don't say this to dis Apple, because it is making something good even better. But it doesn't make them in any way a leader. In sales of mp3-players/phones maybe somewhat. But in the computer area they are still the small minority.

But, Apple uses big words, tries to threaten big players to look big too, and in the meanwhile, they are pissing the other players in the field off. Apple is big, but not that big to claim control. Parties like Google and microsoft are like the hippo's in this playing field; big, they appear friendly and they are older... but if you taunt them long enough, they will charge and they will demolish. Apple is not David against the mighty Goliath, Apple is the kid, who keeps throwing sticks at a stray dog acting all mighty, until the dog doesn't take this anymore.

It is the attitude that forms the real problem, acting like they have invented video-phone on their iPhone, which has been around for eons. Sure, Apply does it better and nicer, but it is not innovative. If Apple simply would be honest about this, and say things like "Video calling has been around for years, but was never easier to use as with the new iPhone 4." Is that so hard? But it sounds now that you we smart, making a good thing into an amazing thing. It is just marketing.

But with Apple now targeting Google againand now with not allowing adMob on their iOS4 system (why do we have to have an ad system anyway!) while others are allowed (if they are not related to device builders). These kind of things will result in FCC inquiries and lawsuits. And although, like said, Apple is big, but not thatbig. Microsoft and Google can handle a $300 million fine from the European commission alone, or more. But can Apple? Sure, they have the cash, but products like Windows, Office, Google are so integrated around the world, a government can hardly prohibit the use or sale of the product altogether. But with an product like apple, that are mostly on an easy to replace device, it is a whole other story. And with all the corruption in politics, it is a good thing to sometimes have friends, or not to make enemies.