Sheer Brilliance

Asshole Driven Development

I think Scott has a really big book outlined by this blog entry. My last company featured 90% of the listed management techniques at any given meeting.

I don't even know where to start. Perhaps a job at one of the nicer places.

I suspect it all springs from enforcing engineering style management on what is inherently a creative process. You can get a room full of painters and force them to turn out the same dreck over an over again. But a copy machine would be faster and cheaper and the painters know it.

Here's a fun story that I witnessed second hand (warning: asshole management and hookers!). The iMind Debacle

Twitter is Fucking Stupid and We All Know It

Update several years later (March 2010):

Twitter is 'hot', but it's still dumb. But what the hell do I know?

I'm old.

Twitter has to be a top contender for the future poster child of Web 2.0. So I'm sure they'll get bought for millions by some moron. Ok... so let's see... a 'service' that let's you txt your 'friends' with pointless info about what you're doing. Ahh... how cool is that!

For the love of the sweet baby jesus why is this interesting to anyone over the age of 12?

You've got email, IM, sms and all that other stuff... so why not just send your buddies a constant stream of updates via one of those? Thats right, because they'd quickly get tired of you. So at least with Twitter they can ignore you guilt free. "Yeah John, I've got your twitter feed right in my bloglines.. you're trip to the dentist was like performance haiku... ". Now that's some value proposition for the biz plan!

How is twitter going to make any money? Ads? Perhaps, although there's little reason to visit the twitter website when you've got the feed. what else? dunno (I guess I'm not creative enough).

About the only thing left is to get VC funding or get 'big' enough that some larger company will buy you.

A) VC/Angel Funding - Great way to get paid while you screw around and build your resume. Double bonus if you can pontificate well enough to get noticed by digg or People who really really care about knitted AT-ATs! Triple bonus if you can get invited to speak to some Web 2.0 conferences. Just be sure to bail just before it becomes apparent to all that there is no business model, all your users get bored after a few weeks, and that the investors are out a few hundred thousand each (they tend to get cranky about this).

B) Strategic Buy Out - Now this is the new exit strategy of choice. If you get a little of A you don't even have to eat top ramen three times a day and your kids can get some shoes w/o holes in them. Just have to hang on long enough for the magic to happen. But you really need some marketing smarts to have any hope of this occurring. This option isn't about the tech (sorry geeks) it's about perception and user volume. So for get about scaling, just fake it long enough.

And it's not just me:

http://wisdump.com/web/twitters-is-dumb-but-im-stupid/

http://www.chrisknudsen.biz/305/if-i-used-twitter/

http://news.com.com/The+case+against+Twitter/2010-1038_3-6187291.html

And another one:

http://sheylara.com/2007/05/27/twitter-is-stupid-and-were-all-narcissists/


Here's a defense of it...

http://news.com.com/In+defense+of+Twitter/2010-1038_3-6187323.html

She's happy to get the assignment (and be paid), but not THAT happy.



I suppose I'm just annoyed I didn't think of it. Although if you set the bar this low... hum....

iPhone Haterz

The haters are out in force about the iPhone non-SDK.

But they've missed the key point.

The web 2.0 (sucks!) stuff has services built into safari that it can use. Think about that for a minute. The javascript environment in the browser provides services to the javascript application. These are not web services back on some server. They are services IN the browser.

That's pretty interesting.

A big complaint about web based apps is lack of native platform functionality. This kinda does away with that. Well defined services offered up via a browser local connection url would provide a nice sandbox for the apps to run in. Say: safari:/phone/dial?number=555-3928 And you get back a little xml doc when it's done. Sweet!

It also makes the safari for windows release even more interesting. Suddenly those iphone apps will work on your windows and mac without changing a thing. Development becomes really streamlined. Now I hate javascript more than most... but something like javafx or gwt should be able to get at those services too. Then your talking about something that's looking more and more like a really good approach.

Also notice that you don't have to deal with the service provider to get your app out there. The haters probably don't realize it but not all phone service providers will let you just offer up your native phone app for free. You typically have to pay and get your app hosted by the service provider.

Dunno... I'm not at the WWDC... perhaps I'm smoking crack. But I'm started to think Apple's onto something.

Oh yeah... There's about 0% chance I'm dropping ~500 bucks on one of those things no matter how cool they are.