Windows 7 Was ( Not ) My Idea

I am sure you have seen the commercials where you have various "every man" characters claiming that their suggestions for Windows 7 helped to make it into the product that it is today. The commercials end with that catchy phrase "I'm Joe Blow, and Windows 7 was my idea." I guess the message that we are to take from this is that Microsoft spent years listening to its customers, and incorporated the best of their ideas into this fabulous new product.

I installed Windows 7 about three weeks ago with the idea that I wanted to take an honest look at whether or not I should move away from Mac OS/X. I will admit I went into the exercise with a pretty significant bias, but I also work on Windows every day in the context of my day job, and truly believe that the .NET programming language is simply awesome.

Within the first three weeks, I have had the following things occur:

• My Start menu was cluttered with stupid little applications like Stickies and other applications of no value, all of which I had to go in and remove one by one.
  
• Although I was a member of the Administrators group on the machine, I did not have administrator privileges on the box. I could not write files where I wanted to, I could not install applications in particular locations, and had to use the 'Run As Administrator' function just to compile code.
• I could not login as the administrator without running some special command to enable the administrator login.
  
• I was unable to download an attachment because Microsoft thought I should have anti-virus software installed before I did. I literally COULD NOT download something until I installed what they thought was an acceptable amount of protection
• Then came the icing on the cake. I was installing Symantec Anti-Virus on the machine so that I could get past the ridiculous security measures forced on me by the operating system, and I got the famous Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD).
  

The BSOD has been around since the early days of Window NT, and has taken on legendary status for Windows users. It is the thing that strikes fear into the hearts of millions, as it can mean the end of your Windows installation and the beginning of days of recovery time. I digress...

So, I went thru the recommended steps ( starting in safe mode, running system recovery, etc. ) and although my good friends at Windows 7 told me that they could not repair my machine, it somehow came back to life anyway, minus a few pieces of software that I would have to reinstall. No big deal, right?

Well, no. How is it that Microsoft has not moved us beyond this wretched error handling? Why are they still building an operating system that you can't restart if you install a bad piece of software? Have they not yet figured out how to isolate starting the operating system reliably, and give us something that really is better?

Windows 7 is just a ghost of Windows past. They still clutter the install with mindless crap, they still can't figure out how to give you a simple environment to work in, and it still crashes the same way it did 10 years ago.

Here is my idea for Windows 7:

Start over. No, I mean really start over. Hire different people. Don't listen to the idiots on the street who think they know what they want. Give us something we did not know we wanted or needed, and make it so great that we will pay you ridiculous premiums to have it. Make it so simple that we can't believe we haven't had it all along, and make it work like something built in 2010 should work. And for the love of all things holy, may we never see the BSOD again.

I'm Scott Barstow, and Windows 7 was ( not ) my idea. Not even close...

Oral Roberts Dead at 91

I just received a note via email that Oral Roberts died as a result of pneumonia complications at the age of 91. As one of the ( relatively ) few alums of Oral Roberts University, I am immediately both saddened and uplifted.

I went to ORU at a time when things were really going poorly. The school had just finished construction on the exterior ( and some of the interior ) of the City of Faith, a hospital whose vision was to combine both faith and medicine as the conspirators of healing the body. The City of Faith was draining money from the university in astounding amounts, making it difficult to operate. During this same time period, Oral was convinced that his time had come, and sequestered himself in the Prayer Tower on campus until enough money was raised to keep the school going. Oral received much publicity ( most of it bad ), and was lampooned nationally during a time when so-called "televangelists" were making idiots of themselves almost weekly.

Perhaps I am biased, but I never put Oral Roberts in the category of Jim Bakker or Jimmy Swaggart. He never had a moral failure with regard to fidelity to his wife, and though you may criticize him for his tactics or handling of certain situations, he was a true visionary. He built ORU from nothing, in a city that most people would never go to if they had the choice. Not only did students show up from around the country, but also from around the world. The institution is thriving again today due to his willingness to turn loose of the reigns, remove his son from leadership, and put the school on a new course. I can't imagine that it was easy for him to watch as his son made a mockery of his legacy, but in the end he did the right thing and was ( thankfully ) able to see the school returning to it's true mission before he passed away.

If you went to ORU, you generally walked away with at least two things. First, the friends you make there are unlike any other, and I can't explain why that is, but its almost universally true. Second, you understand that the career you choose has a purpose and meaning beyond just making a living, and that ALL work has intrinsic value. You don't have to be a pastor to make a difference. Oh, and you know who "The Fourth Man" is.

I am grateful for Oral, his life's work, and the school that he founded. Without him, I would not have the life I have today. It's that simple.

Rest in peace, Oral. Well done, good and faithful servant.

What We're Not Talking About

With the flurry of blogs and info being spewed out between yesterday and today about the coming of the Google Phone, the battle for mobile device supremacy is getting ready to escalate once again. Google is moving out of software and into the hardware business.

What's interesting to me is not that we have two companies ( Google and Apple ) bashing each others skulls in on a daily basis, but rather there is a third that is conspicuously absent. Has anyone read any articles or reviews of the latest Microsoft Windows Mobile offerings lately? If you have, you had to dig to find them. Microsoft is not only not in the game, they are not even on the sidelines. They are watching from their luxury box as the battle ensues.

Whenever you hear or talk about Microsoft, someone will inevitably say something like "But they have all that cash, they will be back." I used to think that, but I am not so sure anymore. If the pundits are right, and if we are all using our mobile devices as our primary means of communication in 3-5 years, then shouldn't we be seeing something from Microsoft now? Do we really expect that they have a Steve Jobs type of guy waiting in the wings that can deliver the right product to put them back on the map? It's clearly not Ballmer.

Microsoft has no history of any kind of success in the consumer device space, save the XBox. Zune was awful, and Windows Mobile is just as bad.

Microsoft used to be the enemy. They were hated by many for their monopolistic, predatory ways of doing business. Now, they are not even a part of the conversation. I would take being hated and relevant over being relegated to obscurity any day.

Who vs. What

I remember reading an interview with the head of M&A at Google ( at the time ) where he was asked a series of questions about what made the companies successful that Google had targeted for acquisition.

One of the first points he talked about was the fact that it was extremely rare that a successful company was not headed by a partnership at the top. It was his position that two heads were almost always better than one, and that three rarely worked.

I have been thinking a lot about this topic lately, in light of some of my own personal circumstances. I have not ever run my own company, but have observed several very successful ones from the inner circle. They seem to share the following characteristics:

1. The partners almost always have a distinct set of skills that make them uniquely valuable to the partnership. Traditionally in a tech company you would have the guy that can sell and the guy that can build it, but it's not always been that clear of a distinction.

2. The partners have the freedom and willingness to challenge each other openly, sometimes literally scream at each other, and be better for it in the end.

3. There is implicit trust.

4. There is agreement on the vision for the company.

Given how important people are to the success of a company, I ask the question: Is the 'Who' just as important ( or more ) than the 'What'?

If you have the right people, I could make the case that you will come up with the right idea if you have the patience for it. I also think ideas and what a company does often change drastically over time, but if you have the right people you are able to stay on course and adapt. I think the concept of the "eureka" moment is highly overblown. Most really great ideas come about by having a hypothesis and testing it, then adjusting appropriately.

I don't think you can say the same for the 'What' side of the equation. Merely having the idea is not enough. You either have to be able to pull it off yourself, or have the right people around you to make it all happen.

So, which is it? 'Who' or 'What'? Let me know what your experiences have been, and if you think I am way off.

Update On My GoogleVoice Voicemail Experiment

A few weeks ago, I ported my mobile phone voicemail to GoogleVoice. After a few hiccups getting started, I am now comfortably settled in to using this as my only source for voicemail.

What I like about it:

1. I love that regardless of what number I give out ( and I am now only giving out my GV number as the way to contact me ), all of my voicemail winds up in the same place. I no longer am having to hunt down messages in ( at least ) two places.

2. I no longer have any space constraints for my voicemail inbox. It's absurd that phone companies are still limiting voicemail space, and I can now archive all of my voicemails without worrying about whether my mailbox will fill up.

What is less than ideal:

1. As many have talked about, the speech to text translation rarely gets close to the actual message. I generally have to play the message, even though I get the text via email.

2. If you are in a remote spot, with little to no web access for your phone, #1 becomes a much larger issue. Because you can't play the message from your phone, but have to be on the Internet to play it, there have been times when I have not been able to listen to messages right away.

This second item has been rare, mainly because I am not in remote spots very often.

Overall, I have not missed visual voicemail on my iPhone, and intend to keep on using GV as my voicemail destination.

Do You Think Craig Newmark Cares?

I was reading some news this morning, and came across this post about Craigslist blocking Yahoo Pipes, and indirectly a mash-up for a company called Flippity.

There are cries abounding in all the major technology news sources. How could Craigslist block someone trying to use their data in new ways? Isn't that what the web is all about? If you know anything about the owner of Craigslist, the answer is not just no, but hell no.

Craig Newmark did not start Craigslist to make money, or to have a cool app. If you read the story of the founding of his company, and his core values, it had nothing to do with making money or being "the next big thing." He was looking for an easy, familiar way to connect buyers and sellers. It is remarkably simple, remarkably good, and is not in need of a raft of new features. This last part is just scandalous to developers in web land.

What I love about Craigslist is that even though it has achieved massive scale, the vision and the reality remain largely unchanged. If you bought or sold something on Craigslist three or seven years ago, the experience is still largely the same today.

Craigslist has one thing going for it that all of us that write software for a living crave: Acceptance by the marketplace of the vision of the product from the beginning. It is extremely rare, and I for one have no issues with them doing whatever they think is right for their product. It's pretty clear that they have not been wrong a whole lot. Maybe they know best and should be entrusted with maintaining the vision.

Sacrilege, I know.