Creation
Microsoft Needs Vision, Here It Is
I’ve been thinking for a few weeks about Microsoft, and what they’re doing wrong. What are they doing wrong; quite a bit, but what if they’ve managed to set up an integrated platform, under our noses. They could easily bring us something that no one else can, in short order. No competitors can catch up, not Google, not Apple, no one, if they take the proper path.
Microsoft has before it a golden goose, it’s up to them to decide whether to continue starving it or to feed it. The first step is to look at where they have already invested: everywhere, from the enterprise through to the cloud and mobile systems. They have a wide base and a tall hierarchy, but they aren’t capitalizing as successfully as they could or even should be.
Why are they failing? It comes down to 3 reasons: horrific marketing, horrific web presence, and lack of integrated focus. The one I’m primarily wanting to touch on is their lack of integrated focus, because without it they are gone, but I’ll touch on the other two.
A few weeks ago, Microsoft released an update to their Office Live system, something that has been around for nearly 3 years, and yet many people still have no clue about. Why; why doesn’t anyone know about this? It is common for people to bash Microsoft, because they don’t offer a cloud alternative for the desktop Office Suite, but it’s simply not true. Who’s fault is this? It’s the marketing department, they haven’t bothered to promote the platform; it’s also partly due to how confusing Microsoft’s web presence is, it’s anything but simple. Their presence exists in two ends of the spectrum: a mangled mess of links to variations of systems on their main domains and a group of domains that can be hard to find, because of a lack of directions to them. So what they need is a simplified interface, and user direction, from both marketing and a user experience standpoint.
Microsoft, regardless of their poor marketing and website design, has a unique opportunity. Microsoft, is the only company to have an operating system on 4 platforms(enterprise, desktop, mobile, and consoles), a web presence that includes search, email, and cloud systems(enterprise & consumer), high-quality desktop software, and near-universal hardware support. The one thing they are missing in integration across all of these levels, and it makes them look like they are wandering aimlessly. The need to figure out what to focus on, and how to make the entire system more seamless.
My first recommendation to them is to start with the future of the desktop, quick boot systems that allow near instant access to the internet. I propose that they provide a hybrid-OS offering using an instant-on system, that provides access to a browser and several other basic applications. The next recommendation, is one I’ve already made, clean up your web interfaces to make them more user-friendly, and make your cloud systems more prevalent. After you’ve dealt with these issues, you’re ready to more actively promote systems like Live Mesh, that will allow you to integrate and sync cloud data, across multiple systems; I recommend purchasing DropBox to help with this. The should continue to work on integrating Office and their cloud systems, during this.
In the foreseeable future, the majority of what we will be doing, will be on the internet, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t need our fully developed operating systems. Using a hybrid-OS approach, they will be able to provide both instant-on support for average use case, while still providing the ability to switch over to the full system for heavier workloads. This is what we need in the next few years, ChromeOS can match you in the first, but not the second, except via remote-desktop support. One issue with instant-on systems, is trying to get universal support, but Microsoft is at an advantage as it’s already worked with low-level compatibility, are there going to be hitches, I’m sure, but they should still have some ability to solve this problem, along with manufacturers.
Next step is to make their web presence more coherent and simple. Promote your integrated services together, rather than splitting them across different domains, you have two live office platforms, three email services, and a search engine, and none of them are connected in a highly sensible way. You’ve also failed at promoting these from your main website, because of the kludgy method of navigation and association among your many many products. Simplify. Simplify. Simplify. Simplify. It’s all about simplification so that your users can find what they are looking for; help them out.
Now, you’re doing okay on this next thing, you’ve got Skydrive and Live Mesh, as well as Office 2010 integration with Office Live, but you can still do so much more to make it simple. Google is kicking your ass as simple collaboration, you need to get this right, and make sure you’re doing it better than they are. You need to get syncing to both the cloud and to other devices down, that’s why I recommend you purchasing DropBox, it would provide a great starting point. This is going to be one of the key changes you need to get right, and get it right, now. The sooner you get people using your system and having it seamlessly integrated between the desktop-mobile-cloud the better you will be.
Maybe they’ve been working on this in the background, and they’re just failing to compile the parts, or they have failed to have vision as to what they actually have, and how it can be connected. Either way, it seems that Ballmer is stumbling in providing his teams the ability to create a fully integrated system, either he has the vision or he doesn’t; I’d go with the latter. Now, is when they need to make the move, get to work on bringing your teams together, so they can create a seamless experience, and hire new marketing people.
An Antithetical Post On How Narrowing Is The Key to Curated Data
So this whole thing about curation , has my head in a state, where I am seeing the data, meta-data, and users, as distinct entities in three-dimensional space. I’d love to provide an image of how they are related, but I can’t because when it comes to placing them in a 2-D or even 3-D state, there is warping and tunneling between these objects, outside of the third-dimension, to maintain proper relations.
Still here? Good. This post may be a bit vague, I’m going to try and keep it simple and understandable, for you as well as myself, I’m already a bit confused after several hours of trying to map this. If you would like to discuss this, for a more in depth, though possibly less coherent form, feel free.
To begin, we have three entities: data, meta-data, and users. These entities all have various ranges of relationship, which go from near to distant, and occasionally don’t exist. To describe the range as an example of friends, “Those best-friends, with very similar taste, are near(1), friends, much different taste(2), acquaintances, similar taste(3), acquaintances, different taste(4), and people you’ve never met(0).” We’ll approach range using this method, based on relational distance, between entities.
Data is, in my view, the front facing objects, whether that be text, images, video, or even tactile objects. Data itself exists in a weak presence, as far as to what value it represents, when coupled with meta-data, it becomes stronger.
Meta-data is data about data. It is the entity that is manipulated and understood, to provide us with relationship information, on any level. There are many forms of meta-data, temporal, location, authorship, topics, etc., that provide us with fantastic ways of connecting data, but often times it includes disparate entities, that aren’t necessary.
The user in my case is a human which interprets the regular data, and may create tags of meta-data, but can be a machine in which case it is likely to work with meta-data, either directly or in composition of meta-data from data sources.
Now that the entities are somewhat defined, I can get into the discussion of how these various entities are connected in creating relevant connections, both in basic terms, and user specific terms.
Often times, the simplest way to construct a relevancy map between data objects, is to use meta-data about the objects, social-bookmarking tools work this way by way of topical tagging, the distance between objects is the range of 4. Making the system a bit more complex you add methods, you take your tagged set, and add in user selection, by how much a user likes various items to manipulate what topics they are likely to see, this is in the range of 3 because it is still picking out items by topic which is a very wide. Or you can provide what your user’s friends have read recently, this is still in the range of 3, because by adding in what other people read, can narrow the area of focus, it’s possible to be in areas that the user doesn’t care as much for. If you add in what the user’s friends like, rather than just what they read, you get closer to the range of 2.
In order to get to the optimal range 1 you have to add two more things to your system: direct relations between data-objects and concentrated interaction between users, these can both be defined explicitly by users, and can be shown as a simple social-graph, with one object/user in the center, and the closest elements near by. Direct-relations, which are somewhat like Techmeme, can be created on a broad scale by a user-based system of bundling links to content, based on relationship. Concentrated Interaction is a bit more complex, because it requires an analysis of interaction, but presents an interesting system, helps reach the range of 1.
Note: If you treat Users like data-objects, which they are in a database, you can apply meta-data, to make the concentrated interaction, more specific by what topics the user is most familiar.
So I’ve discussed 5 ways in varying levels of implementation to reduce the range of relevancy.
The use of tagging to create a quick reduction in the range of relevant data.
User selection to narrow down what topics the user likes, or aggregate content that the users friends are looking at.
Further narrow it down by what these friends like.
Allow Bundling of content that is directly related.
Analyze the concentrated interaction graph to narrow down trust sources.
I’m sure I’ve lost someone in this antithetical pile, as I had to get this off my head it was driving me crazy, and I’m going to call it the beginning of a new arcling, to be adjusted down the line. So if you are interested, I’m sure that we can possibly make it a bit clearer by having a discussion.
To Give Up A Dream
After a week of no programming or coding of any sort, I’ve realized I’m no longer interested. This makes me a bit sad, and makes me question the past decade. The idea of being a programmer was my dream from a young age, and now I’m realizing it depresses me. Giving it up feels like a betrayal, but at the same time I feel as though a weight is being lifted from me.
I can now focus on what I love, but I don’t know what that is. I’ve been through many phases and experiences over the last 5 years. In high-school, I focused on drafting(architectural & mechanical), engineering fundamentals, basic number theory, and economic theory. For my short period of college, I focused on philosophy, biology, and computer science. Since then, I’ve focused on systems, business, and customer service areas. Through out, I’ve done simple design work for friends.
My problem is I now get to choose where I want to go and I have rubbed such broad stokes of things that I enjoy that doing that is hard. Luckily, I have three things going for me, my age, knowing the areas I enjoy, and having a very simple set of needs.
To give up one dream, I am opening myself up to the many others that lie before me. I’m re-writing my life from this point, with a new perspective, and a new passion. This is a path less taken, I’m choosing to give up to move forward and find a happier medium, a happier me.
Thoughts are Evolutionary: The Idea for Arclings
Do you really want to keep pushing ideas out, but have problems fleshing the concept out fully? Or maybe you just want to express the basis of an idea really quick, get feedback, and iterate. The problem with current systems is it’s hard to keep track of the evolution, if you post a lot of other stuff around it.
Micro-blogging lets you throw the idea out there, but doesn’t allow much room for the idea to evolve, or tracking this evolution.
Blogging in the conventional sense is much too concrete(though I’m doing it right now). I find the preconception of blogging to be you must push out a full thought. Why?
I propose a release quick, release often blogging structure and build arc’s as your story develops, making branching trees using link structures. Let the ideas build over weeks, or months, rather than waiting for one single burst of insight, and fleshing it out on the spot.
I propose using story arcs, along with links to the latest preceding events in the evolution, and trackbacks to the succeeding story events. Though this is possible in the current evolution of blogging systems, it’s complicated. I want an Arcling platform that makes the connection process easy, if not intelligent in managing the tracing of the structure.