Apple vs. Thinksecret Controversy

Filed in General Interest, March 6, 2005, 10:52 am by

Shape of days blog has put out an objective  commentary on the issue. It helped me clear up the facts behind it and i have to say i am with Apple on this. As Shape of Days says this is not about bloggers’ rights but about basic legal issues.

“Avalon”che is coming – part 1 – lessons from history

Filed in Uncategorized, March 5, 2005, 1:20 pm by

Maybe because Microsoft Longhorn (code name for the next Windows version) is more than a  year away, there does not seem to be much noise about “Avalon” the new UI technology from Microsoft  that is part of Longhorn. I am starting a series of posts on Avalon to both gain awareness as well as raise awareness.  Anyone is welcome to post on this subject with your ideas and thoughts on this subject. The last tectonic shift that happened in the PC industry was the shift from DOS to Windows. It is very interesting from a strategy standpoint  to look back on this and see how Microsoft engineered  this shift and used it deftly to displace the then-leading products –  Wordperfect in Word Processors and Lotus 1-2-3 in spreadsheets.
1.  Here is a pretty complete extract from a book that chronicles extremely well,  with a lot of statistics,  the rise of MS Word and MS Excel. Of course, after achieving dominance, it used the now-famous suite strategy  by creating MS Office and  converted the dominance to total domination of the market.
2.  You can see the insider’s view  on this interesting Chris Pratley post. Also observe from the many comments on this post, how anything  about MS creates so much polarization. 3. I am sure many of us remember that old champ of wordprocessing Wordstar.  How Wordstar faded is documented well here. 4. James Gleick of Chaos fame has a superb article on Microsoft on his site. Next up:  Smart Client Technology & Avalon

High-Pressure Steam Engines and Computer Software

Filed in General Interest,Management,Technology, February 26, 2005, 8:10 pm by

Here is an interesting link read comparing development of steam engines and software engineering. I particularly liked this paragraph – “A second reason for the number of accidents was that engineers had badly miscalculated the working
environment of steam engines and the quality of the operators and maintainers. Most designs for engines
and safety features were based on the assumption that owners and operators would behave rationally,
conscientiously, and capably. But operators and maintainers were poorly trained, and economic incentives
existed to override the safety devices in order to get more work done. Owners and operators had little
understanding of the workings of the engine and the limits of its operation.” Enjoy. Ganesh

Harold and Kumar – guilty pleasure

Filed in Uncategorized, February 21, 2005, 1:23 pm by

Happened to watch ‘Harold and Kumar go to white castle’ last nite (with Sundar for those of you who might know him) and it was such as fun riot.  Of course, after the movie is over, I realized how  juvenile the jokes were and why I even laughed at them in the frst place.  Maybe because some of them were so irreverent!!. Certainly worth a rent if you do not have anything else to do on a weekend. disclaimer: do not watch tis movie with kids around.

Interesting thing of the day site has record number of visitors

Filed in General Interest, February 19, 2005, 3:28 pm by

Joe Kissell says on his blog that he had a record number of visitors due to boing boing’s link. Such is the power of the uber-blogs.