Flock Browser

Well, I downloaded the Flock Browser and I’m blogging from the blog editor in it. Nice work guys!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Google Gears and the death of the desktop

I was reading up on how to make a webapp available offline. I want offline runnable webapps. The biggest argument I allways hear about webbased (business) apps is: “Yeah OK, but what if my internet connection fails?”

I’ve got a whole array of ready made answers to these questions but in the end, the best answer should be “No problem, it just keeps runnig, with a cached dataset, look”.

So a while ago I stumbled on Google Gears. This holds the promise of achieving just that. Among a lot of blogs on this, I came to this one: Google Gears Takes Web Apps Offline. Look at the comments.

So what’s wrong with GG? A lot I think, lemme explain. On this post, on another blog, I commented about the problems we traditionally had with desktop apps such as problems of deployment, cross platform compatibility and maintainability. Yes, you have to install a webbrowser extension (users often dont trust these anymore), you have to copy some files from a website (again: users often dont trust these anymore), and then run the app locally.

The next issue I have with this is that the entire app has to be written in Javascript. I felt like being thrown back in the stoneage (about 10 years ago in IT land).

I want apps that just run, without installing anything on the client side. I’m probably living in utopia…

I think the desktop is going to die, but not at the hand of Google Gears…

ERP solutions of the future

The advantage that ERP systems have is the centralisation of data and applications. When we go to new customers we see a lot of excell islands all over the company.

The disadvantage is often that for small companies they are not affordable. Especially when they want customisation, which is often why they want a certain erp system in the first place.

So how can we address this? How can we make it affordable for small companies to have a piece of custom software?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said at the Seoul Digital Forum amongst other things when asked to define web 3.0: “applications that are pieced together” and also ”very customizable”. (See the video on youtube)

With todays web 2.0 apps that all have interfaces and api’s, I believe he could be right! (think about freshbooks invoicing data that was written in Basecamp)

So, you make your pick from the web 2.0 apps out there (one or more) and provide the glue between them and maybe add some extra’s. Such services you could sell that to the customer. He ends up with an app that costs a fraction of the cost of a full fledged erp system, with the customisation benifits!

This could be the next wave for Web applications!

Custom Software differentiates you and your business

It is often debated whether to buy a standard package for your business administration or resort to custom software. In this post I explain my vision on this.

In today’s computer governed world, there is imho no business process that has not been implemented in software somewhere. If you google enough, I’m sure you will find something that could support your business. Maybe you will have to tweak your processes a bit but you should get a fit.

But wait a minute! SHOULD you tweak your business processes?

I vote NO!

What differentiates you and your business from all the other folks in your neck of the woods? They all sell apples, the same apples.

I believe it is how you sell your apples and how efficient your supporting business processes are. When it comes down to it, you do things just a little different to your neigbour. And you should! That’s what makes your business!

So, if you and fifty other applesellers use the same supporting software and hence business porcesses, your competitive advantage over them fades.

To resolve this, I say you should use a standard package and implement the things that separate you from the lot, in custom software.

Integrating Script.aculo.us with Asp.Net

I’ve been playng for a while with ASP.NET AJAX Extensions. and I like it. Having studied Rails, I was missing some things I missed from Script.aculo.us so I tought that it was impossible no one would have used Script.aculo.us with ASP.NET. My collective memory (google) led me to this article: CoreWeb :: Script.aculo.us, Prototype and Asp.Net Best Friends Forever

I will check it out tonight and see what I can learn from that.

Are Desktop Applications dead or not?

Antonio Cangiano blogged a response to a claim that Desktop Apps are dead: Desktop Applications are not dead!

This is going to spark a hot debate it seems.

Here’s my take on it: as a µISV, I don’t care much about the underlaying technology of my customers. Why? Because I’m never able to know who is going to buy my software and what environment they will run the app in. Also, because I have many small customers, instead of e few large ones, their technology choices are even more diverse.

So what do I do? I work with web based apps. This way, I only have to make sure that the software I make will run on one (virtual) machine, over which I have complete control.

The only thing I have to worry about, is the several browser flavors out there. But I find that it’s not that big an issue.

So how do you feel? Are Desktop Applications dead or not?

No more Beta’s please

As Micheal Mcderment, founder of Freshbooks said in his post from more than a year ago: I’m tired of Beta.

I can agree with that. But I would even go further: not even a “New” tag or anything.

Why?

It all has to do with subconcious customer experience. Whenever I see something marked Beta, I get the feeling the developers are trying to say te me: “Hey don’t come nagging about this or that feature that is not there or not fully functional. We said it was Beta OK? Leave us alone allready!”

Of course this is not true, they just want to get early responses from customers. Totally fitting Agile methods.

So what can you do to have a better customer experience? Give it a release number and a roadmap. Maybe give them insigt in your product backlog.