Passion and a willingness to forego the immediate monetary awards and focus on pursuit of building something that you can be proud of. Pride is a sentimental thing and you would think that it wouldn’t have much place in a subject area as clinical as programming. Yet if all programs were written in the same manner pride and sentiment couldn’t be identified in the code you write.

The fundamental question I guess is, how do I get my product to my existing customers and furthermore how do I convince my potential customers that my product is right for them. So now that you have that question answered how do you start answering the next question, what do I need a website for (is that a relevant question today)? Do you need the website to advertise product only or do you need to advertise product with a value proposition? The two are fundamentally different approaches to selling product. Selling a product as a product where your customer already knows what it is requires no real upfront up-selling but if you are offering something of tremendous value that needs to convince the customer – well you have two different types of websites really. Its also pretty clear to me that there is a significant difference between a service-related vs product-related website, especially when it comes to its design. A product-related website has a shorter point of action, or call to action whereas the service-related website has a slightly longer one. Generally service oriented websites offer a service and with that service comes a portfolio and I generally look at a portfolio before I contact the owners. A product related website goes from homepage to product in a matter of one click, two at the most. A simple example comes to mind, Takealot, which I use to look for DVD’s and electronics. If I hit the homepage it generally takes me two clicks at the most, often one, to get to the product I am looking for, but that is because I know what I am looking for.

Another important question is one that addresses your current brand footprint – if you have little influence or footprint how are you going to make an inroad into those that do have a bigger brand footprint. How would you as the customer requiring the website measure that brand footprint? What other activities do you plan with the exercise of promoting your brand? Often PR activities and activities on the web run on separate budgets and often with separate teams of people, at least in my experience. How do you bring the brand footprint of your website closer to your other PR activities? Are you going to create a blog on your website to promote pre- and post PR activities? Once you have established that how will you ensure that there are continuous activities to promote the content on the website and to keep it current.

I think from the above a few elementary questions can be formulated to possibly help drive someone with no real knowledge of what goes into building websites make an informative decision.

I have been thinking, today mostly, and indirectly a lot recently as well about my life and the way I live and how my perspective takes shape. Today and yesterday specifically I thought about superheroes and our incessant need in society to have the superhero effect in our lives and what I mean by that is that to me it seems as if we want ultimate or absolute solutions in our lives. You know where we are always in a winning situation and where we are strong enough to force whatever life throws at us into a submissive hold and be victorious. Recently I watched Captain America and before that I watched X-Men and all these superheroes have these abilities that make them omnipotent, almost invulnerable. Isnt that the whole point then? Invulnerability is the one thing all of us so badly want because we just cannot face losing or having to deal with the reality that life is as much a part of being vulnerable as it is about trying to be a superhero.

The thing that struck me is that my life does not seem to want to accept a middle-ground, you know where a superhero has all these powers that make all his foes ultimately more vulnerable than him or her, I don’t have an ultimate or absolute. There is no middle ground for a superhero, they are just more powerful and more absolute than I will ever be. So if I cannot live that absolute life where do I find the middle ground? Where is the acceptance? At what point in my life do I realise that I cannot have the absolute of anything, because ultimately I pay the price – death. But in other facets of life an ultimate or absolute is not always the answer. Striving for the ultimate answer to everything will lead to disappointment. There has to be peace somewhere.

I attended Internetix, an event hosted by Internet Solutions, yesterday with the theme focusing on commerce. Commerce as we knew it a few years ago will not be relevant in a few years from now, simply because our habits change. Our habits change for one main reason – cultural influence, which includes our peers. In my opinion a young person will more than likely adopt a habit because his/her friend has adopted it. Think smoking, drinking, drugs, etc. Other things like natural curiosity is less likely in my opinion, because as kids we learn from our parents or caretakers and our sense of opinion is formed by these individuals. Think about cars for instance, a young man may buy the same brand of car that his father bought because his father told him as a child that its the best there is, and conversely the rebellious young man may buy a different brand of car just to make a point, and not necessarily because he has an affliction for said brand. Ok, so how does that tie up with the Internetix event and a small screen. I’ll explain.

Technology manufacturers want all your attention (read attention economy) and to get it they will go to many lengths to make your transition from one environment to the next as easy as possible, without leaving their “technology cage”. Let me substantiate this even further with some clear examples of technology that creates a “virtual cage”, which tries to create a seamless environment. Microsoft has several products and services that people use at office and at home, as well as away from home. At the office you typically have a desktop/laptop with Windows on it, at home you may also have a desktop/laptop with Windows on it, but you may additionally have a Windows Live account (Hotmail) that you also use with your XBox, which you can coincidentally use with a Windows Phone 7 powered device. To me that already seems like a deliberate attempt at creating a continuous state of “connectedness”. If you are a developer and you work with Microsoft technology the line seems very clear. My guess is that Google are trying to replace the desktop with their tablet devices, because it would complete a loop for them, because most users of Google services such as GMail and Google Docs are tied into spending more of their time using Google services, creating a sense of dependency and more than likely we involve others in that dependency and get them involved. I use dependency because we have become “dependent” on the services through our mobile devices, PCs, laptops, iPads, etc. So its not really about the mobile screen but about the services and the continuous supply of information, and more importantly the interaction with others, and ultimately our reliance on these services. The interaction with others is exactly what technology companies want, they want to log your interactions, and use it, for good and bad, in my opinion.

I read this article and this one, and I also considered the event mentioned earlier, where they demoed Lync Server and showed how seamless you can switch between a mobile device and a desk phone whilst remaining on the same call, with no interruptions. It also showed you people can collaborate on the same document. From the articles it seems to me that Microsoft have become the best selling console gaming device in the US and if you think about it carefully its a pretty important space to command. I just dont see Microsoft dominating the mobile space, but thats also not the entire point. The point is that Microsoft has the potential to be present in your daily life, for the entire day. If you use a desktop as stated above and you play some XBox at home against friends and you have a WP7 device then you are going to be online for a big portion of the day and that is the point. In the same breath consider the Lync example, add some Skype and a pinch of XBox Kinect and you have the potential for some interesting services. Services that can be synched with a mobile device of your choice, keeping you connected the whole time.

At my previous employer I remember that their one goal was to tie the loop and keep users engaged in your environment by combining all the services they used into a single logged-in environment.

I know it sounds weird but my thinking is that the majority of applications that are written are aimed at multi user environments and the majority of them use some form of data to build some sort of experience, so its only natural to think that they collect the data too. Google does it through its search and so does many other of the big tech companies. The value in collecting the data is in being able to disseminate user habits and find marketing niches. In my previous job I worked at a company that developed a software solution that used a workflow of some sort. The same workflow was used by various organisations, only with their organisation-specific data, but with the same process. GMail is a prime example of this – we all send and receive email with GMail, but the data is differentiation, and that is what Google ultimately wants.

I am still relatively unsure of where SaaS sits as a definition for me personally. Does it mean I get to use something like Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel on my current desktop connected to a licensed copy on a server? Or does it mean I get to use it in the GMail way where I access email through my browser? I guess its the fact that some of these apps reside in a browser that confuses the issue for me somewhat because to me it seems like because it runs in the browser its a web application. Does SaaS imply that a browser is simply a “wrapper” for GMail because GMail can run in various other guises – such as a mobile app or as a Chrome add on, for example. Does SaaS then mean that the underlying technology is provided as a UI agnostic element? Could I therefore build an entire suite of apps of my own based on these technology components? My thinking is going too far, so before I get to a point of no return I’ll return to my initial question.

If SaaS acts as a mechanism for allowing others to use your application infrastructure then surely the act of collecting, disseminating and analysing the usage data can give rise to providing Data as a Service. Implement a workflow and collect the data, simple concept really.

Mainstream society portrays a tendency of masochism very well, and before I define this further I’ll try and see what it, masochism, means. If you do a search for masochistic, you might find this page that will lead you to this page and if you look at the key points from “Self-defeating personality disorder” then it seems like we see that appearing in every facet of our society, yet we try to cover it up with our material achievements. “A pervasive pattern of self-defeating behaviour” is indicative of how we make movies isn’t it? Most movies portray characters that are already in a defeatist state – the focus of which is then to see these characters go from this defeatist state to something better. We love movies about demons, vampires and evil things because we like the evil, because we seem to want to find a justification for the evil. Lately vampire movies feature a “good vampire” or a “good bad guy”. Why don’t we ever see movies that stay with the good and end with the good. Is that even possible?

The defeatist and masochistic nature reveals itself far more in how we live our lives. People claiming to be the “meanest bitch” or “not caring who they offend” are all examples of masochism in my mind. You are hurting yourself because you want to portray a particular image to the world. You know the “I-don’t-give-a-shit” attitude, which is really screaming “I want lots of love and attention”, especially when you don’t get the love. Having a don’t care attitude reminds of a documentary I once watched about lions and buffaloes, where the lions were hunting the buffaloes as young lions and how eventually the hunting took its toll on them physically as they grew older because of the injuries they picked up while hunting. The injuries did not affect them as much when they were young but eventually as they grew older became more apparent. The same analogy can be drawn for people who have an attitude of “don’t-care” when they are younger, because eventually your soul gets weary of being like that.

We are so unlike nature because we always tend to seek the humanistic element in nature, the thing that suits us. Instead nature just is, it asks no questions or gives no answers, it just is. Why are we not like that? Death is such an equaliser yet we discriminate, we try to make ourselves better than others. There is a very fine line between who you are now and how you are living your life now, and how it all could change in an instant. An instant which would make you no better than anyone else.

Saying you are a bitch is a sign of a person with a small and pitiful ego deeming it necessary to make themselves appear meaner to make up for what they lack on a personal level. You will generally find these people to be the same proponents of drinking every weekend (all in the name of having a good time). They generally associate themselves with the typical crowd – ones who deem their material wealth (measured in both monetary and achievements) to be the epitome of achievements in life. They also tend to be the ‘neat and clean’ crowd, yet you have to wonder what the ‘neat and clean’ appearance must cost them, both personally and otherwise. I am pretty sure many individuals sell a piece of their soul to achieve this. The ‘neat and clean’ lifestyle often reminds of how we always try and disassociate ourselves from the poor and the sick.

What am I trying to say here? Life is not a predictable thing, you cannot always live it the way you imagine it, perfectly in your mind. Therefore you must be accepting of people, and be open to what they offer, rather than be a “bitch”. I have so many more thoughts around this though.

You know the types that studied some art or DTP related course at college, yes those! They assume that they automatically qualify as web designers by default because their so called artistic decree allows them to. Wake up please and smell the pot of sour paint – if you don’t know what HTML stands for as a start then you are NOT qualified to put web design in a sentence, let alone assume that you are.

I have worked with at least two DTP designers who assumed they were web designers by default and strangely all of them have the same attitude – a total disconnect from the semantics of the web having an interest in their Photoshop world only. I mean please, designing for the web and designing for DTP require different mindsets and different understanding. Firstly the web has design constraints that cannot be ignored, unlike DTP which seems to only be limited to the size of the document. I associate DTP with heavy weight graphics, deep and dark colours whereas designing for the web is lighter in terms of graphics.

I also find that some graphic designers will force a design onto the information and not let the information determine the flow of the interface. I prefer information to flow naturally, without design impedance.

Just a rant I wanted to express.

A couple of truths have come to bare themselves to me over the last 6 months or so, and its time to face up and be all grown up about it. Firstly, a day really is only so long, there is no infinite time in a single day and working more after hours certainly doesn’t make the time extend beyond the usual. Thus it is crucial that you effectively plan tasks and deliver on them. I have started with a small activity at work, which seems to kind of work, by making a list of 10 objectives/work items and marking them [done] as I complete them. After that I then do another 10 and so on. The thing with this approach though is that I often find myself not giving myself room to review what I have done. Reviewing your work is as important as doing it, so where is the correct balance? I wonder.

We need structure in our day because without it we might panic and do things like madmen.

Linux is better than Windows, Ruby on Rails is better than ASP.NET MVC, PHP is better than ASP.NET, Google Docs is better than Microsoft Office. Yada yada. Its all relative to the individual – thats my guess, simply because better in your perspective is not better for me and vice versa. Even though I have vain ambitions to learn Ruby or Python, I currently know C# and saying to me that I can do things faster and quicker with the latter seems like a rather pointless argument. Theoretically speaking I should be able to learn either Ruby or Python quickly but my general feeling is that both are best suited for running on Linux/Unix systems and honestly it seems kinda pointless trying to do development in a Windows environment with either because you already have .NET available. I really don’t take PHP developers who develop on Windows seriously. Why? Because its a contradiction in my book.

The tendency for open source CRM packages is to become commercial – this is a fact that nobody can deny. The reason is understandable because an open source product cannot financially stable if its completely “free”. CRM packages are complex pieces of software that do all kinds of weird and wonderful things such as managing your interactions with your customers and most importantly saving those interactions giving you a history. CRM packages are also useful because you can tie it in with a commercial product offering that creates one or product catalogues and allows you to interact with your customers by sending them detailed product information or by running promotions.

Before I dive into why commercial CRM packages are problematic I think I should define a CRM a bit further, not from a wiki definition but my own, because its my perception of a CRM that shapes my idea of what it is and what problem it solves. A CRM package really comes down to one thing, the value you place in your customers and the length you will go to in keeping your relationship professional. By professional I mean by not making an idiot out of yourself because you forgot about the topic of a previous conversation. In essence that is what I think a CRM is supposed to help with, help build rapport with customers – not do. The do part is up to you.

Windows based CRM solutions are a world of pain on several levels not the least of which is the fact that you will have to spend loads of $$$ in buying software that is needed apart from just the CRM. Microsoft Dynamics CRM requires SQL Server and Windows Server, and if you simply think in terms of licensing per user the costs quickly add up. Sure, the product itself might be awesome but if you think about it a CRM will require time and resources for setting it up and keeping it up and running. I can only imagine what the installation process for dynamics CRM will be and the time it will take. In fact you will also need training – which will not be free. All the other commercial CRM makers do this, especially those that run on a MS technology stack. Its a greedy money making business nothing else really.

Yesterday I asked our IS manager if Sage CRM can provide us with a demo or test environment for the CRM and guess what we have to pay for it, even if we have already bought a license for it. How am I suppose to develop against a product that gets shipped to us and gets installed in a production state? There is no room for testing against it, to do business specific things like workflows and integrate product data. Whats the point if you cannot take the existing CRM and mould it a little and customise it. Instead you get stuck with a huge bill to pay for training and installations.