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Blog - Computing Explained
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How to Create Software - the Corporate Way |
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Find an organisation which has designed a cool looking app. Order or download it - then play with it for a while. If it's any good, put a post on a code blogging site and get someone to copy it. Don't worry too much if it looks identical, just rebrand it, for example: if it's called 'Milky Way', call it 'Galaxy'. Once you have it rolling off the production line, try to put the original competitor out of business, 'ayyy-sap'. This is essential to reduce long-term maintenance costs. Release software as a beta and fix it, well... someday (the industry standard, is measured in years). That's the de facto strategy. You can see how it looks amateurish if your upstart rival continues releasing stable software. Also, you can hike the price whenever you like if you have no competition. This is much more difficult to do if you have lots of competitors and they're all cheaper than you. Software hegemony rules! Don't even get me started on these Open Source beards. What's with fixing bugs for free? Why even bother with an economy at all - lets just eat wild berries and bang drums with our eyes closed. Crazy.
When copying, you rarely build up a portfolio of design skills to match those you would have, if you'd designed from first principles. It sounds unusual - but doesn't matter. You can make the software flabby and disorganised - like a 2 page letter, with 8 pages of P.S add-ons. It also doesn't matter if the disk spins like a cop-car's wheels on a doughnut-run. Nothing really matters, when you have no competitors. |
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Microsoft's Vista Sold Poorly Because it Primarily Focussed on New Users |
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Microsoft, PC World and other large vendors are seemingly obsessed with winning over new users - the 'one that got away' strategy. Targeting new users is all very well, but what about the huge majority of people who use PCs every day and although not 'expert' - certainly understand how to use them. Even their adverts are cliché ridden, the experts are children and anyone above teen years is presented patronisingly as someone remedial - "Look at me, I just sent an email!"
Facebook has 250 million users and a huge number of them aren't 7 year-olds, programming the home entertainment system. Most of them are just normal users who've been using a computer in the workplace for over 15 years and shouldn't need to start at the beginning when a new operating system is released. |
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The term 'cloud' refers to a large cluster of computing technology, owned by some large business entity. You, the user, might run a spreadsheet program, but instead of it being located on your computer or laptop - it's located on this large entity's computers. Generally, a 'cloud' is a huge warehouse full of rack-servers.
The arguments for this approach are generally strong in terms of convenience. This kind of activity is already common - either in web mail (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo mail, etc.), Flickr (photos), Megaupload (file transfer), Delicious (bookmarks), etc. In addition, there's the software safety aspect of keeping everything hosted, where regular backups and upgrades to software, maintain all your information. This is something which doesn't often happen on PCs, a lot of information gets left behind when upgrades occur. There is however, a comparatively weak argument regarding the economics of the cloud computing approach. Many of these applications are currently free, so the prospect of migrating all your information off your PC and onto some remote server, doesn't make long term economic sense from the large entity's perspective. How are they paying for all the computers in the cloud? |
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How can individuals, medium and large businesses make money from the Internet? |
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Like Dick Whittington's belief that the streets of London were paved with gold, some believe that the Internet is an untapped Xanadu of business opportunity. There certainly was a 'Goldrush' atmosphere accompanying early commercial expansion in the late nineties, but that led to a collapsed bubble and huge global losses. There are ways to make money and be successful on the Internet - but the scope of opportunities is more relevant to who you are, and who you represent.
Individuals and Small BusinessOn the small scale - to individuals with little or no investment seed, the Internet represents the toughest challenge. It's not that there aren't opportunities, it's just that there are so many chasing them. In addition, the competition is global, unlike in your country of origin. Many choose to open a shop, an online version of something you might find in a mall or shopping centre. There is no shortage of these businesses already, and initial dreams of virtually snipping the ribbon and watching customers virtually pour through the doors, should instantly be dispelled. Yes, you can make good money by opening an online shop and your overheads will be lower - but your competition will also be greater and someone, somewhere, will be able to get their goods cheaper (or sell in a currency more favourable to bargain shoppers). So - before you start, research your market. What's missing from the current market? What isn't currently being supplied? There are two reasons for something not being supplied. The more likely - nobody wants it. Or the less likely, but better prospect - few have thought of it.
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What is SEO and How Does it Work |
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Teaser: Since Google took the top spot for Internet searching from rivals Yahoo, the company has been very careful to issue guidelines; but also give very little away with regard to the '200 factors' which determine where your website will appear, for a search term.
Give Me Some Background PleaseBack in 1998 the company Google launched and already, by 1999, was gaining popularity across the USA and in international markets. At that time, Yahoo was the Internet king and 53% of the global market started surfing from their site. Yahoo's approach was, and is, slightly different however, with their main page acting as a directory with a search engine tacked on. There were numerous other existing search engines too, with Alta Vista being the most well known - but that was already losing market share to Yahoo, despite being younger and offering a simple search interface. Google were essentially offering a similar product to Alta Vista, so the market conditions did not look too favourable for another company to enter the fray.
Why Was Google Different?Google's main selling point was that it filtered more useful results from searches, from a very simple interface (type in the box, hit search). How exactly did it do that?
Up to this point all the search engines indexed sites - that is, they visited them with small pieces of software, took a snapshot of what information they contained and kept a record of that, so when someone performed a search, they would list the most useful pages, ranked in order. Engines like Alta Vista, Yahoo and many others used something called 'Meta Tags' to determine the relevancy of the content. These are small snippets of information kept on each page of a website. You can only see them if you right-click a Web page, select 'View Source' and search the HTML at the top of the document that opens. This meant that the site owners, were responsible for declaring what it was their sites were about. The main issue with this approach, is that it's open to abuse. In no time at all, sites were stuffing their meta-tags with the most popular terms (usually called 'KeyWords') and jumping straight to the top of rankings. |
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