“More than three out of four (75.1 percent) of those who experience search engine fatigue report getting up and physically leaving their computer without the information they were seeking – either “always,” “usually” or “sometimes.”

If that’s not a clear sign that Internet is getting more and more flooded by spam, and regular users have more and more trouble finding the informations they want - then I don’t know what is… Search have to improve significantly over the next few years, and I wouldn’t be so 100% sure if its going to be Google who will come with the best new “search design”. History is full of “big and proud” companies, which everyone thought will stay “big and proud” forever - but they (almost) never did.

This neat feature can be seen from two perspectives - both equally interesting and gaining more and more “tracking” across various blogs:

first is the issue of some kind of cross-social network “OpenID”-like mechanism, that would allow users to see all their friends from various social network sites in one place (and import those contacts to  various soc. networks as well) - instead of having to login to facebook.. to myspace.. to linked in.. to beboo… and all other sites one of which your friends happen to use. Of course from technological point of view such “open network” is more than possible,  and few companies (like Microsoft of Google) already started to work on prototype versions of thereof. However, the main issue I’d see here, is… what good can come to facebook or myspace or any other social network site, from such open system? Nothing. The strength of any website comes from its users’ visits - and by eliminating the need to go to one website, login, see the ads (SEE THE ADS!), interact, click on something - by eliminating all that through some easy to use open network ID / API - all participating sites will loose. (Of course all their users will win big time - at least until that open ID network API starts to distribute text ads like… Facebook Ads Distribution system )

So as you can see, the basic idea behind using such open ID, is that whoever became the dominant design for usage of thereof, is going to be ultimate winner of the whole social networks market. Simply because by having all friends from all networks in one place, users wont have any incentives to go back to those networks anymore.

Which leads us to the conclusion: those who controls the dominant “user interface” of one system, are automatically on the best position of getting most $$$ / benefits. What flock is trying to do by adding “transparent facebook & twitter integration” is (very  clever, indeed) stealing users from those sites - and eventually, monetizing on them…

What’s the second issue?

I’m waiting for Firefox to became a platform. Not just for web 2.0 apps like flock. And not just for “Firefox >>stupid little<< plug-ins”. I’m waiting for Firefox to became full grown web applications development platform, with its own SDK allowing to integrate as many features and as many websites as user (and developers) wants. Facebook platform was a huge success, for sure. But imagine how many users Firefox have, and how many sites (not just Facebook) it presents daily to all those users - being effectively their “user interface” to Internet. For millions of people “Internet” is their web  browser. Why not monetize of this?

No, its not about RubyOnRails (or?) - the above quotation come from brilliant book “Fast Second - How Smart Companies Bypass Radical Innovation to Enter and Dominate New Markets”, which was shortlisted as finalist of Financial Times Book of the Year 2005.

The idea presented in this book is simple - smart companies are waiting for the new market to become dominated by so called “dominant design” - and decide to invest only when they recognize that particular market has stabilized, and both consumers/users and producers learned how to use/produce the technology everybody wants.  In short, its what Robert Murdoch was trying to do, when he bought MySpace, but unfortunately, from where we are now, it seems MySpace wasn’t so dominant design after all…

The above quotation, describes the early stage of new market colonization - when a new market see a vast amount of entrants, all of which believe that only their idea is the right one, and only their product will make hundreds of millions of dollars. The problem is, they are the only one who really believe so, and even worse - their ideas, although interesting and original, usually struggle to reach break-even point, and generate enough incomes to stay afloat. Nevertheless, precisely because the market is so new and so hot, there’s vast amount of cash available from various VCs and investors, who are willing to put it into even wildest ideas of the “new market entrants”, in order to be the first who find that holy grail of the new market - a “dominant design” which will eventually wipe out almost all of the competition, and grant them thousands of % of return.

By now, you probably guesses already I’m talking about web startups and the situation which we have in 2007. Tens of web startups are getting ridiculous financing in Series A, B or C investments. Hundreds or even thousands of others are desperately looking for their chance to “get a few millions of investments” as well. But the problem is - only a handful of those, really make any money. Within last 3 weeks, I spoke with several web startups looking for financing and the story was always the same “the idea is great, we need 2-3 years, and only then we will generate hundreds of millions - therefore what we need is couple of millions to stay afloat for those 2-3 years”.

Are you kidding me? WHERE IS THE MONEY? If it doesn’t make any money for 2-3 years, if it can’t reach break-even - what’s the point in investing?  Doesn’t it make much more sense to wait for the first dominant design to appear on the market, and invest only then - even if that would mean we get 10% not 80% of the company?

 ”Whatever the logic that channeled vast quantities of equity and venture capital into companies that showed no signs of generating revenues, it was eventually exposed for what it was.”

The above is from the same book - and no, its not about web startups scene in 2007. Its about Internet bubble of end of 1990s. If you remember those days, honestly, do you recognize any similarity between then and now?

a “&quot” ? ehhm.. sorry?

seems like bugs are here to stay - no matter how big you are, and how huge your quality assurance budget is… what’s the trick to learn then?

It’s easy. Make sure you have descent, formalized quality assurance process. Don’t trust “I will do it myself” and “it worked for me” people. When it comes to software testing and business-critical applications, one thing you really don’t want to happen is the “ouups”-thing, in wrong place and wrong time. Invest in your quality assurance process. Don’t be afraid to spend 20% of your software development budget on QA.

And if you do it right, I guarantee, that the only thing you will be worrying about is minor bugs like the one above.

“&quot” ? Who cares. At least it works. Let’s fix it and then back to work…

So despite everyone around being more and more bound to facebook, and touting it as the “next web platform, the one and only website we need” - sorry guys, I’m not buying it. However big, facebook is just that - a website. Sure you can meet lot of friends there, make great connections and build facebook apps - but thats still a closed platform - facebook’s platform. You can’t do everything you want there, you can do just what they allow  you to.  It was always like this - and it will remain this way. Not just on facebook, but everywhere - on every single web site out there (counting google too of course).

So what could be the true next web OS platform? Well, not a website of course. A browser. Or more precisely - a browser’s standard (though, one thing I’m sure is that there will never be just one standardized browser).

In his recent post about standardization  of Ajax UI in the future, Joel (the one from the software ) proposed a very interesting idea of some piece of the code, so called “NewSDK” getting catched in the browser:

“But then, while you’re sitting on your googlechair in the googleplex sipping googleccinos and feeling smuggy smug smug smug, new versions of the browsers come out that support cached, compiled JavaScript. And suddenly NewSDK is really fast.”

All the above is very interesting of course, but hey, sky is the limit - why write only “Ajax NewSDK”? Why not complete webapp SDK. When your browser is no longer a browser but provides a complete SDK - it’s effectively becoming more than a browser - a programming platform on its own.

Imagine web widgets installed not on your facebook account, but on your browser (no, not just google-bars etc. I mean REAL applications installed on the browser) - connecting together not just your facebook friends but ALL your friends from all social networks. Imagine being able to select which SDK, which web standard you want to upload to your “browser-OS” and run natively (single sign-on anyone? Office 2.0 to stay?) - and which one you just don’t want to use anymore.

Imagine browser being your desktop, your place of work, your PC… whoow, say that again? Yup. The problem with Joel’s theory is that “caching SDK on my browser” means installing software on my computer. So if it really is going to happen, if we really are going to see browsers becoming new web platforms - then it means “Personal Computer getting personal again”.

But hey, thats not that bad. After all, we all loves our PCs. And despite all the “net is the new thing” stuff, everyone single person I know have their own PC at home. So I believe it will take a while before we really starts becoming so “free” to use “our documents anywhere we like”. PC is here to stay - its not longer the only elements of our home network, but still an important part. But the way we are using it - will change. Behold facebook and microsoft, for the power of Internet is not in PC vs. Web fight, but in connecting both world together and melting the border between then - the border which for most of us is our web browser.

The day when my next OS appears to be giant web browser with just some top-layers apps constantly caching streams of data from various websites out there is the final destiny for sure. But what’s the first step from where we are here to where we are suppose to be then? Build more browser/web apps. And FireFox/IE, please let those apps integrate better with user’s browsers. We are sooo tired of “helpful” browser plugins like google of yahoo-bar. We want full grown apps now. Its the next natural step. Let the browser be your platform.

First of all it seems like the idea of “office 2.0 - PC no more” is getting more and more popular as top “big boys” as I call them, are all announcing their own version of effectively the same thing - online version of an office suite.

• Google announcing the launch of Presently, their Web-based Powerpoint clone. Interestingly enough, one would have expected presentation software to be the most obvious application to move to the Web first instead of the last.
• Yahoo! announcing the purchase of Zimbra, a developer of a Web-based office productivity and collaboration suite.
• Microsoft announcing the it would integrate Web-based storage and collaboration into it’s desktop office productivity suite.
• IBM announcing that it would ship it’s own branded version of an Open Source clone of Microsoft’s desktop productivity suite.

And thats all good news of course!

But the problem still exists, if I’m a business user, and I want to use those office suites then I need to feel I still have control over the data I’m editing. In other words I don’t want to use Google storage of Microsoft storage - I want to use “my harddrive” - my own storage.

But what is “my harddrive” in the age of Internet? I guess its not longer the real harddrive on my computer (although it could be of course - if I’d be really paranoid). Instead I bet that the “new harddrive” of the future will be grid-based storage systems like Amazon S3, Google File System or Parascale

What we need to see in macro scale is those systems to get adapted for the needs of end-users, normal folks like you and me. Not just developers and web 2.0 startups. I want to have my own “space” (storage) in Internet, one that I know I control in 100% - but one that is there online, and which I can access from anywhere I like. And that storage is already our there in form of storage grid systems - all I need now, is somebody to make it available for “private users” like me.

Then step 2, would be providing some kind of API, a connection between those online office suits and online “private” storage systems. This way, using my “online text editor” I could choice WHERE I want to save my file - and I wouldn’t be forced to use Google File System - I could use anything I like incl. my good old “off-line” harddrive.

Of course such “storage solution for the masses” could be an excellent solution also for other online apps - as I believe the more stuff people will do online, and more and more they will need they own “private” storage out there - one that is not limited to any “corporate” system, but which is fundamentally their own.

Sounds like a business idea? Sure it is. I bet that one day “MyHardDrive.com” or however it will be called, will be one of only couple of online storage standards, and it will make a really good money. A REALLY good money.

 ”I have had some minor success using Odesk.com. I’ve hired one guy hourly there, that was a mistake. He told me he was having Internet problems and couldn’t upload his work, so I gave him a little leeway and then I missed the deadline for disputing his hours and got stuck with the bill. He is supposedly still supposed to be finishing for me so he can get new work for me, but it has been 2 months.”

I think I should get used to it, but I can’t. It’s always a shock to  find people who really believe that the right way to work on Internet project is to “find programmer, find designer and let them to the dirty work”.

Sorry guys - it almost always fails. Single programmer can do  only really small projects (if he is good - that’s another story). If you have two (or more) - you instantly jump into problems with project management. That’s one of the main problems with ODesk and hiring “freelancers” - you always end-up being 2nd on their priority list (daily job is usually first) and you always have comunication & project management problems. Plus they are almost always crap. And in case of problems - they can disappear in the middle of the project! Oh yeah!

Solution? There are two. First is simple - build your in-house team (if you can  afford it). It will be expensive but you will get a lot more control (if you can handle it of course). Second - if you want to go off-site - hire a team, or even better, a company specialized in projects which you want to build. There’s plenty of offshore companies out there, small specialized software houses, working with their clients on-line, and doing really good job. Why not use one of them.

ODesk, eLance, Guru… if you really believe its possible to build “clone of ebay” for $50 in two weeks - go ahead, try it. But if you are in business and your software project is really critical - then you better invest good money and don’t expect $10/h developers to be great. World is one market now, there’s millions of other people who want to do their projects, but only few good developers. And those developers will work with those who pay most - simple as that.

Pay more than usual. Include bonus for successful project delivery. Get team of programmers (who worked together in the past) or specialized development company. Learn more about software project management, quality assurance etc. And I guarantee you will start having better results, and getting better software..!

Now I understand why they need to sell those shares to Microsoft - and get some extra cash… presto!

Would you like your business plan to be indexed by Google? Your financial statement / report? Your private or business sensitive data? hmm…

The thing about Google on-line apps, is that although it is revolutionary, extremely useful and just simply great, its still… Google. And that means you don’t control your data anymore - they do. Your files are on their servers, your data is indexed by their bots. But, your will say, they don’t appear in search results! So what? If its not on your computer - do you really control it anymore? With some kiddie or private docs its no problem -  but I’m sure many businesses will have serious headache figuring out just how secure their on-line documents really are.

Solution? Quite simple I think. Office 2.0? Software as service? YES! But keep your sensitive data off-line on your computer, or at least on some private, secure storage online. Its secure only if you control and own it. Just like you don’t put all eggs in once basket when it comes to business decisions, in exactly the same way its somehow strange to let one company handle everything about your online presence - search, office apps, data storage… its just too much to feel secure anymore!

But how much of it is marketing hype, and how many of those are hard cold facts? There’s a never-ending battle “ruby vs. rest of the world” going on out there, and we don’t want to add our bits to it. We agree RubyOnRails IS very nice framework. It DOES have some extremely interesting programming ideas and solution built in. But is it SO damn good to abandon every other web programming language like Java or PHP? We seriously doubt it.

We think that for some people, Ruby really IS the programming language of choice. But for majority of people (usually those with the loudest voice ) Ruby isn’t really about best programming techniques. Its about grass being greener somewhere else. Its about wild west where everything is so fresh, and so colorful - until after few years… its not so colorful anymore

Why? Because however great RubyOnRails wouldn’t be - its still just a framework. And in truth, you can do EVERYTHING - every single thing - that is there in RubyOnRails on any other web development platform like PHP or Java. It’s not about programming language guys. Its about software engineering. Its about how well can you organize your code - not which fancy shirts do you wear this season.

Take a look at this story - we seriously think, its just the beginning of RubyOnRails “recession”. Something which might be “live or die” experience for the whole RubyOnRails community.