Category: Web/Tech

Yesterday I got cranky with Microsoft about a long-standing bug in a Microsoft library that was causing problems for some FeedDemon customers. As you can imagine, I was frustrated that my work was being compromised by a known bug in code I had no control over, so I was feeling a little punchy when I posted yesterday.

Of course, I hoped that posting about the bug would get it the attention it deserved (which it did, btw). But I didn’t think about how my cranky post would affect the Microsoft devs responsible for tackling the bug (yes, folks, they are human!). I know it’s no fun to wake up and find some blogger just made your day harder.

As you can see from the comments to my post, Microsoft is on the ball – they jumped in, asked for more information, and reactivated the bug after being able to reproduce it. I have to agree with Andy Herron that Microsoft’s reaction was impressive. So, thanks for taking my criticism in the way it was intended and for taking the time to look into the problem. I look forward to seeing this bug fixed :)

Just read that Mark Fletcher is leaving Bloglines, and wanted to wish him good luck. I’ll be on the lookout for his next venture!

We’re running a short, confidential marketing survey for customers using any of NewsGator’s RSS readers. If you have a minute, please stop by and fill it out. Thanks!

I was planning to write about this topic myself, but Steve Gillmor says it far better than I would’ve in his memo to Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie. And he nails it on why attention is even more important these days:

“In a world where we recoil from attempts by spamsters, spyware, and identity thieves to steal our most personal data and use it against us, here comes Big Brother to demand our attention metadata without offering any service in compensation.”

Update: Upon reflection, it could be argued that right now Microsoft already has the upper hand here since user data in Windows is stored on the local computer rather than on the web (where governments can access it en masse). So, government access to web-based data is the single most critical issue facing the move to an Internet OS – i.e.: if your business wants to get people off the desktop and onto the web, you’d better take this issue seriously.

Tantek Çelik just announced the technology preview of Technorati Microformats Search. This has a lot of potential – very nice work, Tantek.

New “Web 2.0” companies are springing up like weeds these days, and many of them sound interesting enough to pay attention to – but who has time to really try them all? I certainly don’t, so I’ve come up with a simple filter to figure out which ones to pay attention to:

Any new Web 2.0 company that hasn’t considered the spam problem automatically isn’t worth my time.

That seems to cut out 99% of them. After all, any company that expects to graduate beyond early adopters into a wider audience must consider how it could be hurt by spammers and their ilk. If your startup hasn’t thought about this from day one, then I figure it doesn’t have much of a future.

In his post about Microsoft adCenter, Robert Scoble mentions the growth potential of “advertising-backed software.” I’m assuming he’s referring to web-based software, but I do wonder how long it will be before Microsoft enables embedding ads in desktop software as well. Switching software to an ad-supported model is something that Microsoft has considered for their own products, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see them experiment with this idea (especially since it’s an area where they could differentiate adCenter from Google AdWords).

This idea is nothing new, of course. I remember attending a Shareware Industry Conference before the first Internet bubble burst, and the place was abuzz with the possibility of giving software away and earning money from embedded advertisements. Adware companies like Radiate and Web3000 spent big bucks on the conference that year, and some of them relentlessly pestered developers to sign on with them.

It was pretty easy to tell who the adware people were, too: almost all of them were inexperienced guys with nice new suits, all juiced up on the idea of making a killing by piggybacking on our work. For the record, I tried to be cordial when they approached me, but after they kept hounding me I told them that I hated the idea and would be glad to see it die an ugly death (which it did).

Fast forward to today, and I’m seeing signs that the idea is trying to rise from its grave. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise, since software developers are trying to make a living from an audience that increasingly expects to get everything for free – free music, free videos, free software, all supported by advertising (it’s all one big media platform, right?).

I still don’t like the idea, but it may actually work this time if those involved understand why it failed the first time. One reason it failed was simply because too much screen real estate was given to advertisements, and much of it distracted from the task at hand. But I think the biggest reason it failed was because too many developers deluded themselves into believing that giving their software away meant that they could compromise their customers’ privacy (the end result is that adware became indistinguishable from spyware).

And that’s a tricky problem. As I’ve written about before, people are more willing to give up privacy on the web than they are on their own desktop. Advertisers understandably expect accurate metrics, and most people don’t seem to care when this information is collected on the web – but they do care if that information is sent from their computer to some web site. So if desktop software is going to carry advertising, someone is going to have to figure out how to give advertisers the data they need without pissing off the people using the software.

In the meantime, I’ll stick with the idea of actually selling the software to customers. I guess I prefer being HBO instead of network TV :)

Over the weekend I replaced my wife’s aging computer with a new Dell system. I continue to be impressed with Dell’s online store, and delivery was even sooner than expected. But when I booted up the computer, I was stunned by the amount of unnecessary crap on it. I had to spend quite a while getting rid of all the useless startup applications and advertisements masquerading as desktop icons.

Do other computer makers do the same thing? I don’t recall having to waste time cleaning up the VoodooPC I bought a couple of years ago.

Yesterday NewsGator suffered an outage which lasted several hours, and as frustrating as this was for us, I know it was even more frustrating for customers who rely on our service to keep up with their feeds.

A service interruption is never a good thing, but I was pleased to see how NewsGator CTO Greg Reinacker handled the situation. I’ve seen some companies suffer a similar outage yet say nothing about it. Rather than take that route, Greg posted details of the outage, and he also had this to say:

“We screwed up. To our customers who were affected – you have my personal apology, and my assurance that we’re doing everything we can to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

I’d like to add my personal apology to FeedDemon customers who experienced the outage. In addition to the work our server team is performing to ensure this doesn’t happen again, we’re also working on ways to lessen the impact on our client products if/when connectivity issues rear their ugly head.