Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

Earlier today I posted a bunch of tweets where I expressed skepticism about the idea of storytelling as it relates to marketing. I decided that I can't really expand on the idea in the 140 character Twitter universe though, so here it is:

Stories are good, but only if they are connected to the product or service that you're attempting to promote.

It's not that people don't enjoy a good story; they do. It's that if your story isn't related to what you're working on, it doesn't really get you anywhere. Let me explain that with an example - have you ever watched an ad on TV, and then sat back and asked the room: "What product was that for?"

Those ads are often celebrated by Madison Avenue types, but the dirty secret is this: they represent an expensive failure. If no one knows what the ad was promoting, the company that paid for it might as well have lit a stack of hundred dollar bills on fire. It would cost less money, and might have qualified as an amusing stunt :)

Disconnected stories suffer from the same problem. You might get praise, you might get readers - but you won't get prospects. Why? Simple - no one reading your disconnected story will relate it to what your company does, and a decent proportion of the people who read your disconnected story aren't interested in what your company does anyway. The raw number of readers just isn't that important - the number of readers trying to solve a problem your company can help with is. You don't want to get overly excited by the first number and lose track of the second one.

The important thing here is to keep your eye on the ball. The ball is "promote your products and services", and yes - stories are good. Those stories have to be related to your products and/or services though. If they aren't, you might as well be off writing the "Great American Novel".

Technorati Tags: pr

When a company rolls out a concept car that has an associated iPhone app that controls it, you know that you're looking at a product that's gone from viral to mainstream:

At the touch of an iPhone app, the streamlined rear end of the one-seater pops up to make room for two more people. The adjustable rear end conserves energy by maximizing aerodynamics. The idea, company founder Frank Rinderknecht says, is to create lightweight, streamlined and efficient zero-emissions "individual mobility" that can adapt to suit the driver's needs. The iPhone controls everything from the canopy - there are no doors - to the ignition.

One of the knocks Smalltalk sometimes takes is the "doesn't play well with others" thing - the notion that it;s a world unto itself. I did a screencast showing how easy it is to hook ObjectStudio and iTunes up this morning - I thought a short post on it might be a worthwhile follow-up.

If you're working on a Mac, pretty much everything can be driven with AppleScript. On Windows, COM serves the same role. So if you fire up ObjectStudio, you can jump straight into that world of APIS by loading the OLE support:

Once you've done that, you can open a browser and define a new class. I just created one in the ObjectStudio namespace, descended from Object, and added one instance variable: 'dispatcher'. The example talks to iTunes (the Windows version). The #initialize method looks like this:

initialize
	"Initialize a newly created instance. This method must answer the receiver."

	| ole |
	super initialize.
	ole := OLEObject newProgId: 'iTunes.Application'.
	dispatcher := ole dispatcher.

That 'dispatcher' object can now invoke various APIs that iTunes understands. So I created a workspace script to try things out:

| model |
model := ITunesModel new.
model setVolume: 100.
model play.
(Delay forSeconds: 10) wait.
model pause.
model nextTrack.
model play.
(Delay forSeconds: 10) wait.
model pause.
model release.

That sets the volume (a property), navigates to the next track, plays, and then pauses. The #release at the end does this:

release
	super release.
	dispatcher release

Since COM uses external Windows objects, we want to ensure that they get released. I'll be adding a simple ObjectStudio GUI to this tomorrow - stay tuned to Smalltalk Daily for that!

The important take-away here is this: using ObjectStudio 8, you get all the power and productivity of Smalltalk (including all of the VisualWorks libraries) - and you still get to play natively with the Windows APIs. That's why it's Vista Certified.

Technorati Tags: objectstudio, com, windows

I'd love to know what's driving this small trend:

Last month we reported a potentially important change in search-market share trends: After years of steady decline, Yahoo's domestic share numbers (YHOO) had increased for five months in a row. Well, the good news continued in January, with Yahoo's share jumping a half-point to 21%, per comScore.

I've fallen into the "Google is the default" behavior pattern, mostly because I use Firefox, and that's the default choice there. Yahoo isn't really the default choice anywhere, so this kind of rise has to be related to positive choices being made. The numbers are small, but interesting nevertheless.

Hat tip Guy Kawasaki.

Dare Obasanjo wades into the Facebook privacy issue with some words of wisdom:

At the end of the day, many people would like to use technology to solve what is essentially a social problem instead of adjusting their behavior. The bottom line is that even though it is technically possible for Facebook to delete my private messages from your inbox when I decide to delete my account, it would be harmful to your user experience AND it doesn't buy me anything since you've already seen the content. The real solution is for me not to have sent any messages to you that I'll later regret in the first place.

Even if you can un-send or delete content, you can't possibly delete all of the memories of it. I've had long conversations with my daughter about this: the stuff she and her friends put on Facebook over the next few years may well come back to haunt them when they hit my age. We had it simpler: no one was recording our youthful indiscretions.

Technorati Tags: social media

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at how to use COM from ObjectStudio to drive a Windows application. Since I've done something similar on the Mac using AppleScript, I thought I'd recapitulate the work using COM and ObjectStudio. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Driving iTunes with ObjectStudio from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Facebook has given up on the controversial new terms of service and goe back to the old one:

Well, that was pretty fast. Facebook has reverted to its prior terms of service -- due to a backlash from some users, media outlets and privacy groups -- while it works out a new version.

The funny thing about being a community driven company is that you have to pay heed to the community. Facebook realized that, and did the right thing here. MInd you, "the right thing" means that they listened, and realized that they have to be more transparent about this kind of thing in the future. There's a lesson there for all of us.

Technorati Tags: social media, pr

This is good news - the next gen Google phone (the G2) looks better than the G1. While I love my iPhone, it's good to se someone keeping Apple on their toes. There's a video of the G2 on Gizmodo - follow the link.

Technorati Tags: g2, android, iPhone

I finished reading a very timely book last night: Niall Ferguson's "The Ascent of Money". It's a great primer on the basics of money and lending - if you're a novice in that field (like me) trying to understand some of the reporting you see on CNBC, it's a great place to start.

Not only is it timely (he finished it in May of 2008, just as some of the credit mess was starting to really bubble), but it's written for the layman. Highly recommended.

Technorati Tags: history, money, economics

Today's Smalltalk Daily covers a basic "Getting Started" question: how do you load components into Cincom Smalltalk? After watching this (click on the image below), you should follow up with this screencast, to get an idea about what components you should load to make the environment easier to use.

You can also watch on Vimeo:

How to load components into VW from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Here's the video of Dick Heijink's WebTerminal talk from ESUG 2008 - you can grab the slides here. Click on the image below to watch:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Web Terminal: Less Code, More RIA from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Michael Lucas-Smith explains

Technorati Tags: opengl, graphics

Nicholas Carr should read more widely:

There's a real poignancy to Kurzweil's dream of bringing his dad back to life by weaving together strands of DNA and strands of memory. I could imagine a novel - by Ray Bradbury, maybe - constructed around his otherworldly yearning. Death makes strange even the most rational of minds.

Charles Stross wrote that book already (heck, tons of other books in the same vein exist, I'm sure) - "Accelerando".

Technorati Tags: books

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks forward at the next major release of our Smalltalk products - there are some changes coming in the way the product looks, and the way the development tools visually present information. That said, it's still a ways to release (scheduled for late summer/early fall 2009), so some of the stuff shown today is subject to change. With that said, click on the image below to watch:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

New Icons in Cincom Smalltalk from James Robertson on Vimeo.

or on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, graphics, icons

I think Matt Asay makes a fundamental mistake in agreeing with this comment by Robert Thomson from a Poynter Online piece:

But one of the -- Google -- I mean, the harsh way of just defining it, Google devalues everything it touches. Google is great for Google, but it's terrible for content providers, because it divides that content quantitatively rather than qualitatively. And if you are going to get people to pay for content, you have to encourage them to make qualitative decisions about that content.

That's just completely wrong. What Google does is pretty simple - it makes it easier to find content that gets "voted up" by linkage. If news sites aren't findable through that mechanism, then it says a lot about those news sites - people simply aren't reading them and linking to them. You can dislike that relationship all you want, but it's real. What it means is that news brands are relatively weak. If you have a strong brand (like, say, Engadget) - then lots of people flock to your site.

The problem is this: the days of generalist news are ending. The death of newspapers is a symptom of that. Why do we go to Engadget during events like CES? Because we know that they'll have comprehensive, focused coverage on the tech/gadget niche. What are most papers focused on?

There's a reason that the Wall Street Journal is doing better than most of their paper bound competition - they cover a focused niche (market news). The Washington Post, or the NY Times (etc)? None of them have a focused niche, and in the online news market that's being born, that's a problem.

Technorati Tags: newspapers, media

Bruce Perens drops an interesting thought in the midst of an article about open source licensing - and I think it's worthy of discussion all on its own:

But most companies, even large ones, aren't yet completely able to cope with the implications of software licensing. At your next departmental meeting, ask how many people have clicked "Yes" on a license of a web site or software application while at work. Then, ask how many of those folks are authorized to enter into a contract on behalf of the company.

It's got to be an enormous number, especially given the number of online apps people use. Now add in the large (and growing) number of people who work remotely at least some of the time, and the problem just explodes. There's a whole web of assumptions surrounding software licenses that simply doesn't work anymore.

I'm not sure what can, or even should, be done about this - but there are probably a bunch of corporate lawyers who would prefer not to have to ponder the issue...

It looks like Facebook just took a lot more ownership of the content people upload to the site. The Consumerist notes an interesting change in the terms of service:

Now, anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later. Want to close your account? Good for you, but Facebook still has the right to do whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense it if they want.

So as they (The Consumerist) say, don't upload anything you think you might ever want private; it's all public, forever.

Update: Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook responds.

Technorati Tags: social media, marketing

I've been wondering how Twitter was planning to make money, and now we're seeing the plan - it's a first derivative from advertising:

Thau says Twitter is developing a range of analytics and metrics products and services built around the information contained in "tweets," the e-mail and text messages that pass through its platform. "We can measure the tweets," he says. "We're trying to figure out what are the appropriate metrics around engagement and how to convey those."

How would that work? Would Twitter sell that directly? Would Twitter users be happy to see contextual advertising? How contextual can that advertising get at 140 characters per post? Who are the potential buyers of these analytics?

Technorati Tags: twitter

Dare Obasanjo has an interesting observation about Google's culture:

This expectation that a new Google product will need massive adoption to justify its investment or be cancelled within four months, as was the case with Google Lively, will be a significant dampener new product launches. Reading Paul Buchheit's post on the early days of Gmail I wonder how much time he'd have invested in the project if he was told that Google would cancel the project if it's user base growth wasn't competitive with market leaders like Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail's within four months.

This isn't a huge surprise, but Dare is one of the few people paying attention to the transition: Google has gone from "small and innovative" to "big and conservative" much more quickly than a lot of companies. It took Microsoft a lot longer to get there, but then again, their initial growth was slower.

The more interesting question is this: between the economic slowdown and things like Sarbanes/Oxley, the IPO market is just dead. Where's the challenge to Google going to come from?

Technorati Tags: innovation, corporate culture

This week's podcast is from ESUG 2008 - Dick Heijink's talk from about the CosmoCows WebTerminal project. It's a VW based "Rich Internet Application" framework they've built for their own use. You can grab the slides here - to listen now, click here.

If you have feedback, send it to smalltalkpodcasts@cincom.com - or visit us on Facebook or Ning - you can vote for the Podcast Alley, and subscribe on iTunes. If you enjoy the podcast, pass the word - we would love to have more people hear about Smalltalk!

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, esug08, ria

Well, at least we know this much: it was probably a mistake to let PC do brain surgery :)

If you're still yelling about "Web 2.0", you're chasing last year's trend (which means that marketdroids chasing after "marketing 2.0" are really behind the curve). Don't take my word for it - Robin Wauters has done the research:

So why do I say it's [ed: searches for "web 2.0"] fading? For one, because the number of startups that contact us and include the term Web 2.0 in the subject line or message is visibly dropping (and that's a good thing), and I hardly ever see it mentioned anymore on other technology blogs and news sites either. That's not really tangible, so I took a look at the number of mentions of the phrase across the web, and they seem to be decreasing significantly, reflecting my feeling on this.

Follow the link for Robin's conclusions, and links to the actual research. In the meantime, it looks like you don't want to pump your product up by using the "Web 2.0" phrase.

Technorati Tags: web, google trends

Ted Neward explains :)

My wife wasn't entirely pleased with the color contrast between the walls and floor once the vinyl floor for the bathroom went in - so it's back to the paint bucket for a two tone job. Joy :)

I like Fail Blog - and this is - well - special:

If you exist in the public eye at all - as a reporter, as a marcom type, as a product representative (etc, etc, etc) - nothing you say in public is private anymore. Nothing. If you talk in a public place, assume it will be broadcast. If you use Twitter - even with protected tweets - assume it will get pushed out. If you have a blog, assume lots of people will read it.

Why do I mention this? Mathew Ingram brings up a recent example of how badly things can go when a public person fails to understand this. Take it as a cautionary tale.

Technorati Tags: PR

It looks like Microsoft is getting ready to take the retail plunge:

Without detailing the plans, Microsoft said it has hired David Porter, a 25-year Wal-Mart veteran, to lead the effort. Sources say that Porter's mission will be to develop the company's retail plans and that the effort is likely to start small with just a few locations.

In general, this sounds like a good idea - especially given the success Apple has had with it. However, Apple has one huge advantage: they own the entire hardware ecosystem, and that makes their stores much more of a destination - the genius bar being the obvious example.

I'm not at all sure what Microsoft can do there. They could focus on the consumer end (Zunes, XBoxes) - the success of the XBox might make it easier to make a real effort on Zune promotion, for instance. The obvious question to me though, is this: would Microsoft consider entering the Windows OEM market themselves?

Technorati Tags: microsoft, windows, consumer sales

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we continue with yesterday's ListBox example - and cover multiple selections, and how to get the current selection(s) from the listbox. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

ObjectStudio ListBoxes - more properties from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

I'm sitting in my office, which looks out on the street. Last night and this morning, we have had a pretty stiff breeze blowing. Fortunately, we haven't lost power - our lines here are underground. Unfortunately, this morning is when the county collects recycling.

Why do I say unfortunately? Well, a lot of the recycling bins got knocked over in the wind, either overnight or this morning. The various items - papers, plastic and metal containers, etc - are just loose in these bins. When they fall over in a stiff breeze, the result is windblown garbage everywhere.

The irony? If this stuff were all put in the trash, it would be bagged and weighed down - and pretty much immune to the wind. The attempt to be more thoughtful by recycling is having the net effect of spreading trash all over my neighborhood (this is hardly the first time that lots of wind has coincided with recycling day).

So the irony is - at least in my neighborhood - recycling efforts have led to more trash being blown into the woods and ponds in the neighborhood.

Technorati Tags: trash, recycling

Looks like Smalltalk is being used at the University of Catalonia.

Technorati Tags: education

I'll be putting together a video demo tomorrow - one of the Web Velocity engineers created a Photo Browser demo script, and I think it should make a decent demo. Stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: web velocity

Google has added an interesting option to GMail - you can opt in to have your signature appended with your location. As Wired notes, this might not always be desirable, so you want to be careful about opting in:

The obvious argument is centered around privacy. Sometimes it's trivial, like when you send a note to your boss saying you're sick, only to have your e-mail signature rat you out by announcing that you're sitting behind home plate at the ballpark. More seriously, there's e-stalking and the open invitation to unwanted guests. Also, letting everyone know where you are all the time is just creepy. As a society, we're not ready for that yet.

They note that Latitude (Google's new location awareness for phones) has the ability to broadcast a fake location. Yahoo has similar faking capabilities in their location awareness apps. In the meantime, there are some amusing aspects to this. They determine your location via your IP address. So, if you tie into the network via a VPN, you could get some funny results. I could make it look like I'm located at Cincom corporate HQ pretty easily, for instance :)

Technorati Tags: location awareness

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at the ListBox widget in ObjectStudio - how to use the basic properties in a UI. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Using ListBox widgets in ObjectStudio from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Yet another update that requires restart, but Apple - like Microsoft before them - is slowly numbing me to that. No, the irritation is with Safari. I had to drive my wife to work today, because one of the cars is in the shop. I set the Mac to reboot and took off. I came home to see Safari prompting me "do you really want to quit?", and restart timed out on that.

Sigh. Who died and made Safari god? When I tell my system to reboot, why does a browser get to veto that with a useless dialog box?

Technorati Tags: stupidity, safari

Nicholas Carr reports a big cloud computing move by IBM:

Today, as a new era in computing dawns, IBM announced another deal, this time with Amazon Web Services, a pipsqueak in the IT business but an early leader in cloud computing. Under the deal, corporations and software developers will be able to run IBM's commercial software in Amazon's cloud. As the Register's Timothy Prickett Morgan reports, "IBM announced that it would be deploying a big piece of its database and middleware software stack on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. The software that IBM is moving out to EC2 includes the company's DB2 and Informix Dynamic Server relational databases, its WebSphere Portal and sMash mashup tools, and its Lotus Web Content Management program ... The interesting twist on the Amazon-IBM deal is that Big Blue is going to let companies that have already bought software licenses run that software out on the EC2 cloud, once the offering is generally available."

This is going to have a pretty big impact on how software like this gets sold and licensed.

Well, the basic functions of the powder room are back in action:

At least it'll take my (deleted) again :)

Now we have a floor - the equipment comes next, plus the patch job on the wood floor in the hallway:

Here's the audio-only for the talk by Julian Fitzell on Seaside at ESUG 2008. Grab the slides here.

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we use a code example in ObjectStudio to demonstrate an immutability problem - and then show how to work around that problem (as opposed to fixing it - on some projects, a work-around may be an appropriate short term solution). To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch on Vimeo:

Working Around Legacy Immutability Problems from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

David Meerman Scott:

People want to do business with people. We're human, and we crave interaction with people who know us. When you build content especially for your buyer personas, you build a relationship with people before you ve even met them.

How about the opposite case? Have you recently visited a company Web site or blog and said, "Wow! These guys understand me!" Didn't it make you feel different from how those boring old sites you usually see do?

When online content seems created by some nameless, faceless corporate entity, it doesn't entice us. And we're just not interested in doing business with that company. A corporate-brochure site will never start a World Wide Rave.

That's why we keep the Smalltalk website updated on a daily basis, and why we try to keep things real on the blogs. It's also why there's a TalkBack widget right there on the left side of the blog - I'm chatting with someone now, as it happens :)

Technorati Tags: customer service, conversational marketing

I've posted a few photos of our bathroom remodel job; I really didn't think that priming and painting it would be a full day job. I should have remembered from past painting tasks that bare drywall just sucks up primer like a herd of drought stricken animals presented with an oasis :)

At least the painting is basically done - we'll have to put ceiling white on the ceiling, and touch up whatever gets scuffed during the rest of the project, but that's small stuff.