Daniel W. Rasmus

February 26

Is Pursuit of Search Hurting the Realization of Information Management?

The robot that goes through your desk and discovers just what you want when you want it seems like the ideal invention. That is, until you want something else next to it or like it, and then you have to send your robot out to look for that too. As I was pondering this “feature”recently, I was struck by a bigger industry question: are investment in advertising-based search by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo impeding the development of better information management tools? I think the answer is YES!

Search is very successful, but for day-to-day work, I find it pretty useless. It doesn’t use the metadata in my system, or across my web of associations to help me cluster and organize, reveal and suggest. It just does what IBM”s chess programs do for chess – put a brut force algorithm in place to single-mindedly go after the piece of information that I happen to have top of mind.

My machine, my Net-life, however, is much richer than the last thing I asked for. If my machine, the Net, my information providers, paid as much attention to what I was doing, as they do to where I have been (in order to suggest ads to me) then they might actually suggest meaningful information to me, either from my own collection or from elsewhere. My metadata can inform my experience.

I believe the future of information management is overdue for a technological disruption, and all of this pandering to search will seem meaningless, and the business models built around them so trivial and confining, as soon as information starts finding you.

4:45 PM GMT  |  Read comments(1)

February 08

The Future of Haiti

Haitians today have the best of our hearts aimed at them. Long suffering from misguided American and European intervention and bouts of attention and abandonment that should make them feel victims of global ADHD, it is time we give more than our hearts. We need to give the best of our minds to Haiti too, and to co-create the 21st century with the people of Haiti. Unlike most emerging markets, Haiti has very little in the way of industrial age baggage. They have limited manufacturing and limited physical infrastructure. In the United States, following the financial collapse, everyone wants to get back to how it was before, rather than taking the time to think about what it should be tomorrow. I would love to see Haiti take on strategic planning at its deepest level and decide what they want to be as a nation, and how they want to work with partners to build that vision. much of what little they had in the capital was destroyed. Rather than rebuilding to the history of their former French occupants, perhaps they should dream bigger. I don’t want to be specific because I think the West needs to go out of its way to avoid imposing its vision on the Haitian people. We have already proven incompetent at that task. Haiti is a strategic void right now. So instead of having a place in the world imposed on Haiti, I would love to see Haiti step up and own its vision of the future. I hope that they find a way to be first among the future given this painful opportunity to build a new city, perhaps even a new model for other nations. The knowledge economy is calling, perhaps Haiti will be the first to hear it.

6:00 PM GMT  |  Read comments(1)

February 01

iPad, what I wanted and what we got

So the iPad hype is over and as friend and mentor Faisal stated today, a Hitler video on YouTube may have taken down the product before it shipped. Why? Well, it isn’t the features. The features that are missing and the design misfires and the naming brouhaha stem from the failure of Steve Jobs to understand that his vision should not be Apple’s strategy. The product looks like it was crafted out of a more is better approach. People like the iPod Touch and the iPhone, so let’s give them a really big one. And as I tweeted the other day, charismatic leaders can’t abandon market research.

iPad isn’t a strategic product. It doesn’t demonstrate vision. It also hasn’t shipped yet, so either the naysayers are wrong, Apple pulls back and innovates (which would be the right strategic move) or they go forward and see what happens, knowing that they have good power under the hood that could be repurposed with new software. Remember, this is not their first foray into a new platform. The transition from the old Mac OS took awhile to get right (if you think they every did, or that you just don’t care about running Apple OS8 apps anymore). They had, as the video suggest, and opportunity to change the game, but they went well below that with their execution. The downside for the PC industry is that now the plethora of tablets coming out will create a new Wild West. That may be good and it may introduce a victor unseen in today’s landscape. The tablet format is sufficiently different that just tweaking an existing OS may not be the answer. The answer may lie in innovation and invention we haven’t see yet. So far no one stands on the strategic high ground. We’ll just have to shake off our disappointment and see what happens.

Jobs will likely find his Black Swan in a Hitler video. Like the end of Starship Troopers (the movie) the answer to the demise of the iPad may well not be the huge marketing might and R&D of Microsoft and  HP, Lenovo and Acer, but a modest guy in a bedroom editing room putting subtitles over a Der Untergang clip.

Here is my evaluation of the features I said I wanted to hear about earlier:

 

= this symbol denotes neutral not negative

And if you haven’t seen the Hitler video yet…

4:25 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

January 27

Check out my new blog on strategy

I will continue to comment on a variety of items here, including the future of work and the forces that will shift that future, but I wanted to focus on strategy as well. Come visit http://danielwrasmus.wordpress.com/ to engage in a dialog about strategic planning, scenarios and how to effectively use them in your organization.

I look forward to the conversation.

10:27 AM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

January 26

The Apple Tablet – What I Hope to Hear Tomorrow

Apple is a very strategic company today. Most of that comes from the charismatic leader they have in Steve Jobs. It also comes from a board of professionals that apparently have encouraged the company not to over reach. A new platform for Apple is a big deal. They dominate in their niches, even in PCs, where they own the mindshare of the avant-garde of the computer industry that defines the edges of what is possible with technology in society.

So now I’ll put my geek on, and talk technical. Here is what I hope to hear tomorrow when the iTablet, TouchPro, MacPanel, iSlate, MacBook Slate, Mac Slate (or whatever) is announced.

• An entirely new operating system, based on the kernel of MacOS but very similar in feel to the iPod touch. It will,however, need a pen-based input alternative, because as most iPod Touch and iPhone users will tell you, the touch experience is great, but one can loose productivity through its inaccuracies (wrong touches, multiple backspacing, especially in vertical mode). And multi-tasking. The OS must be able to do more than one thing at a time.  I think this will be the most interesting aspect of the announcement. Microsoft’s choice was to expand the Windows platform, as it has since the pen-enabled version of Windows XP, to embrace pens, and now touch. But if you start with touch, as Microsoft has shown with Surface, you should fundamentally rethink the experience, and perhaps even the OS, to optimize for the new experience. Apple has the opportunity to be a strategic leader by breaking with the past and demonstrating innovation through a new OS that builds on current security and networking for instance, but opens up new “vistas” in its user experience.
• No larger than 12 inches, preferably 10.1 or so. Netbook-sized, but only the screen.
• Very very very thin and very very light.
• Multi-touch – I know, given.
• Real storage. Apple always skimps on memory and disk. It’s cheap, don’t, especially if you are planning on changing the multimedia game.
• New graphics chips – low power, but high performance – first to use some new breakthrough that isn’t widely watched
• Some kind of cool new battery technology that is thin and supports a minimum of 5 hours of use. 8 would be better, but seriously, who can’t plug in someplace within a 5 hour operating time that isn’t living in a blackout.
• Full bluetooth stack support immediately. Tablets are great until you go to write the great American graphic novel, then you need a keyboard. Mice, headphones, controllers, also necessary. Of course, all the regular wireless stuff as well (802.11N and backward compatibility).
• Full IP telephony support, perhaps a partnership with Skype. Don’t just go after the gaming market, redefine communications as well. Video and voice.
• iPhone integration. Really really cool iPhone integration that makes the relationship seamless and the iPhone more than a device to synchronize. If they do it right, the iPhone becomes an important portable peripheral, including an input device, that when docked, doesn’t just sit there and pump data back and forth, but can act as a extra screen, and input device, a previewer of sites that eventually become favorites (so Safari would synch too). Integration done of WiFi not bluetooth (bluetooth network OK, pairing not)
• New AppStore model that includes all kinds of apps, like Quicken and Office, along with content. The rumored integration with Amazon would be a good strategic move for both, especially if this device is the heir apparent to the nascent eBook market. My bet is a good, reasonable priced tablet becomes the precursor to the demise of the eBook market because people don’t want to carry anything that big around with everything else they need. I’m betting on convergence, vs. divergence.
• Floating UI – Nothing fixed in place. All UI elements can be moved around or hidden.
• Software integration with Windows through QuickTime/iTunes so media of all types streams to other platforms through a non-OS layer. All of this and Windows compatible file sharing.
• A new application development environment with real openness, something like Ruby, including the concept of scalable applications across the phone and the tablet.

Well, if I don’t stop typing they will announce before I get these out. Let’s see what tomorrow holds.

1:52 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)