| The Ultimate Business Machine Technology, business And, not least, about by: Bernard Teo
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Sat 31 May 2003 Search this WeblogCategory : Technology/searchphrase.txt Now, I'm really glad I took the trouble to understand the PHP code running this weblog. Adding just about three lines of code, I'm now able to let people search the weblog archives for articles containing the phrase they have entered. Google has been leading people to this weblog when they search for things like "mail server os x". But when they get to here, they see only the latest day's edition. I've never seen anybody having the time to go search the archives manually for the relevant articles. So, in yet another effort to make this particular corner of the blogosphere a friendly place, I've added the Search Weblog button on the left. (Try searching for "alfred hitchcock"). It's just a simple function - only able to match the complete phrase you've entered, nothing more (for now). If you're interested in the source code, you can download it from the Weblog Tutorial page on the right. Fri 30 May 2003 The phpbb2 Bulletin Board SystemCategory : Commentary/phpbb2.txt After a day with phpbb2, I think it's got fantastic potential as a content management tool. It boggles the mind (to use a hackneyed phrase) to think that these (including YabbSE) are freely downloadable tools, easily set up in minutes, and have (in the case of phpbb2) great documentation, too. I'm going to use phpbb2 over YabbSE because it seems slicker and better organised (especially in the way the code is packaged because I'd like to study the code). Behind the software, I think, is a supremely gifted designer (or group of designers). Do you realise that this is an Open Source Project and nobody is paid anything to do it? Any business can benefit from these tools. You can run a help desk for the users of your product. Your users can help each other. You can set up private discussion groups for internal staff, contractors, management, etc... You can capture useful knowledge, facilitate communication, arbitrate disputes. You can move the info around - from the private to the pubic domain and back. And, because the code is available, you can extend it to work with other parts of your business system. But the question I'm pondering is : how come this method of development works? The developers, designers and testers come from all over the world. Many likely have never met face to face. They don't get paid (at least not directly from the project). They're fast. The whole thing just works. I love the design because they've thought of most things and they do the 80% most common tasks very well. And you don't really need to read the manual. Is it the Open Source nature of things? These guys may be fast because they can grab code from all over the place to re-use in the system? Is it because they know how to make the good trade-offs? Is it because they live on the cutting edge, not just of technology, but also of a new way of living which requires an ability to think, negotiate, arbitrate and communicate, within a framework of self-restraint and understanding for the rights of the commons? It's a different world from the plodding nature of most in-house IT departments. I just know we've got to learn something from this. Creating a CommunityCategory : Commentary/community.txt I wrote this weblog because I really had a hard time finding other people interested in the things I had written about here - technology and innovation, building a business, systems thinking, art and design, and of course the Mac. I've always felt the Mac was central to making this particular combination work. And part of the purpose of writing this weblog was to describe how life can get a bit more interesting when you start making these connections. I've attended Mac Users' Group meetings (in the days of Lynette Herbert), monitored the discussions at Mean, and also the Mac Users' Group forums - all to no avail. They're usually about the latest gadgets, configuring stuff, etc. And I'm more like the pianist who doesn't want to spend any more time than is necessary peeking inside the piano. So I wrote this weblog to see if I can find other people of a like mind. Sort of like, build it and hope people will come. If you've come back regularly to read this weblog, it may be because you're looking for the same thing, Windows users included. So why not connect? You never know where that might lead. Write in, Join the dialogue. Ask questions about MySQL, running an IT project, making Mac and Windows work together, books to read, etc... And maybe, just maybe, end up helping to create a unique community. Thu 29 May 2003 The Ever Resilient Me@nerCategory : Commentary/resilient.txt Found TUBMac linked to from this page at MacSingapore. Scroll down to the Singapore section. I suppose "the ever resilient ME@NER" means me. Thanks, guys, for the mention. Kristian@soundingblueCategory : Commentary/soundingblue.txt Kristian@soundingblue.com has posted some very nice pictures. Great talent. Wish I could do shots like these. Go look. The Creative EconomyCategory : Commentary/creativeeconomy.txt I'm half-way through "The Creative Economy - How People Make Money from Ideas" by John Howkins. It's a wonderful book, so far, and so full of gems. It's been a long time since I've had so much pleasure from a "serious" book. There's this quote fom Terence Conran, the designer: "Creatvity is hard to define. It's mostly straightforward but there's also something magical, almost spiritual, about the process... You need to know the history of things and to be able to see a gap in the market." "You need to know the history of things". Quite akin to what Steve Jobs said about needing to have a wide range of experience so that you will have enough dots to connect. Which brings me to something written about in yesterday's STREATS - "Former oil man refines hair salon idea" - about someone hoping to copy the success of the QB (for Quick Beauty) chain of hair shop, by bringing a Balinese element into the mix. A phrase in the report stands out: "That he had no experience in the beauty business did not daunt him". I believe that the basic idea of a quick, no-frills hair cut is incompatible with the languid, sensory experience you would associate with a Balinese spa resort. To create that ambience, you would need lots of wood, which takes up space - a reported 600 sq feet when compared with the 200 sq feet needed by the spartan Japanese-style QB Shops. It's that gestalt thing again. There's an expression the architects like to use: "the design must have integrity". The design, as a whole, must resonate - through the expression of each part keeping faith with the objectives of the whole. This guy (or more likely, his investors) could lose his shirt. I'm not saying he won't succeed; it's great that people are willing to try new businesses. But I believe that he'll be making changes to his trajectory, if he were to eventually succeed. A Digression - About the Epson C1900 AculaserCategory : Technology/digressEpson.txt Google is hitting this weblog in search of answers to "colour laser printing" and "Epson C1900 Colour Laser" - probably because these were mentioned in previous posts. My log file shows that they're coming from Mac users. In case they're looking for the answer to : "how do you get the Epson C1900 Colour Laser Printer to support Postscript printing from OS X machines", the answer is : The Epson sales reps and local tech support people may say that the Epson Aculaser series does not yet support OS X for Postscript printing. But they ought to know better. If you buy the Epson C1900 with the Postscript option, and if you're a Mac user, you'll get an OS 9-based CD. Open up this CD from an OS 9-based Mac, and look for the PPD file that is associated with this printer. It's called "EPSON AL-C1900 PS3". Copy this out and put it in the OS X machine. I place mine simply under "/Library". Then, when you're asked to give a PPD file when you're setting up the printer in OS X's Print Centre utility, navigate into "/Library" and select the PPD file you placed there. And that's it. You get great Postscript printing from the Aculaser. Actually, because of OS X's Quartz technology, you can get close to 90% of the quality of a Postscript printout, even without using the Postscript option. But, with the Postscript option, fonts look great even at very small point sizes, and they look more refined. Hope this helps. (And this method should work with all the other printers in the Aculaser series). Wed 28 May 2003 The hardest thing in lifeCategory : Commentary/hard.txt The hardest thing in life is to get people to think. If you're a software developer or vendor, that's the one that will wear you down. For example, I've described in the previous post about the user who wants the sun to rise from the east, and another who wants the sun to rise from the west, and they both refuse to budge. This happens all the time. If you're an outside contractor, there's an added twist - you'll find both guys supporting each other's position with great enthusiasm. It's that old Asian feeling about "family and sticking together" kicking in - only now you're the outsider, so good luck with all that shit. We can laugh about it when we get some distance from the memories. But believe me, it is no laughing matter because a lot of sofware projects fail. Not for technical reasons. But for a failure in project management. I'll try to summarise the problems with software projects. One is, we're dealing with technology. And that makes people feel that they ought to be throwing around buzzwords so that they can sound like they're in the know. But I'm trying to explain that we can deal with the technology from a purely descriptive level and still get a lot of work done. The second point leads from the first. Because people lack the confidence or even the awareness that you can visualise the system purely in terms of the data flows, they haven't build a mental framework they can use to think three or four steps into a problem. That's why it's so hard to make them see where their requirements collide with that of another party. The problem is compounded by that peculiar Asian need to save face and look after your own family (whatever you define it to be). So there's a gridlock you can only break with a lot of tact, doggedness, and (I daresay) idealism. You literally have to force people to face the trade-offs. There's a lot of incentive to just cop out, and go through the motions of building the system. After all, what do management know about technology? But, like they say, be sure your sins will find you out. I don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill (to quote a phrase). But you can't build The Ultimate Business Machine if you cannot build the system to run it on. It's a problem that is hard to solve. Tue 27 May 2003 Making the Trade-OffCategory : Commentary/tradeoff.txt If you should ever find yourself managing IT project, there are two things (I hope to persuade you) that you should have. One is the ability to see the system in terms of pipes, reservoirs, and taps. Let me explain. You should start off by imagining how each part of your organisation could work better if it has the kind of information you hope the system will produce for you. Then you imagine going around and placing the taps so that people could get the right information, on tap, when they're needed. Then you work backwards to see how you can collect that information. That's when you design the piping system to suck the information from wherever they are being produced. And bring them towards the reservoir, which is the database system you will use to collate and store that data. From the reservoir, other pipes bring the information back to the taps. So there's a circulation. It's important to visualise that circulation. For example, in an insurance application, the premium you charge for an insurance policy has to cover the costs of all the claims incurred by policies of a similar type. So you will want to set up the system such that information collected by the claims department is sent back towards the underwriting department so that the pricing of new policies can be automatically adjusted. That should make sense, right? But most systems don't have that feedback loop. Two is the ability to make trade-offs. E.g., to get useful statistics, you've got to have a structure, so you can compare like with like, apples with apples. But the users may rebel against a structure and want to enter data free-form, simply because they can then record anything under the sun. This is like having a user who wants the sun to rise from the east, and another who wants the sun to rise from the west, and you say OK to both. Even God can't do that. (Or can He?) I've observed that this is somehow hard to get people to do. But you've got to think three or four steps into a problem before you can see where they collide with another "must-have" requirement. Then you've got to make the trade-off. There's no free lunch. So you see, to do IT well, you don't need to be buzz-word compliant (three-tier, four-tier, Java, for heaven's sake). You've just got to be capable of logical thought, be intellectually honest, and be a decent human being. Welcome to the human race. Mon 26 May 2003 The CommonsCategory : Commentary/commons2.txt Talking about the Commons. I had the chance to spend almost three weeks in Boston once - because I had the luck to be attending SIGGRAPH and then MacWorld - and I remember the Boston Common. It's a nice wide open green space in downtown Boston. The Boston Common and The Tragedy of the Commons - somehow I've always got them linked. I suspect I must have first come across this phrase while trolling the Harvard Square bookshops. I believe the Asian psyche could benefit from a cross-pollination with this Western notion of the need to have self-restraint while using a shared space. Too often, the Eastern notion of "family first, harmony above all" gives people a license to leech. The Tragedy of the CommonsCategory : Commentary/commons.txt I've finished reading "The Third Chimpanzee" by Jared Diamond. Where it ends, and "The Future of Ideas - The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World" (by Lawrence Lessig) takes off, is this concept of "The Tragedy of the Commons". Life is all about making trade-offs. There is no such thing as a free lunch. "Economists distinguish rivalrous and nonrivalrous resources... A rivalrous resource presents more problems. If a resource is rivalrous, then we must worry both about whether there is sufficient incentive to create it and about whether consumption by some will leave enough to others... If a rivalrous resource is open to all, there is a risk that it will be depleted by the consumption of all. "This depletion of a rivalrous resource is the dynamic that biologist Garrett Hardin famously termed 'the tragedy of the commons'. 'Picture a pasture open to all,' Hardin writes, and consider the expected behaviour of 'herdsmen' who roam that pasture. Each herdsman must decide whether to add one more animal to his herd. In making a decision to do so, Hardin writes, the herdsman reaps a benefit, while everyone else suffers. The herdsman gets the benefit of one more animal, yet everyone suffers the cost, because the pasture has one more consuming cow. And this defines the problem: Whatever costs there are in adding another animal are costs that others bear. The benefits, however, are enjoyed by a single herdsman. Therefore each herdsman has an incentive to add more cattle than the pasture as a whole can bear. As Hardin describes the consequence: "'Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit - in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.'" Sun 25 May 2003 The Hair-Cut MachineCategory : Commentary/haircutmachine.txt I had my hair cut at a Japanese-style S$10/10-minute hair-cut shop. It's a great example of a business machine. Please read Seah Chiang Nee's excellent summary of the current state of business in Singapore - "A sign proclaims $10 for 10-minute haircut and I realised why" - which could be dugged out from a Google search. Firstly, it's clean. And they promise to get it done in 10 minutes. Because of SARS, I didn't want to hang around in close proximity with 10 other people for more than 10 minutes. So that was fine by me. The barbers/hair-dressers (mostly girls) look trendy enough to risk a try. So, the business proposition was right on the money. Next, they solved the problem of pilferage (the hand-in-the-till problem) by using a machine to collect the money. You slot a $10 note into a machine and get a waiting card. In one fell swoop, they did away with the cost of having a cashier. And collected useful statistics. For example, the owners can have (if they want to) accurate records of the day's takings, the pattern of use (e.g., are they busier in the morning, noon or night?), how long people have to wait, the time each customer took (I've seen one done in five minutes, some in fifteen), which of their crew worked the fastest, the slowest, etc...? All these can be used to fine-tune the system. Another part of the system concerns the need to be hygienic. They have a steriliser at each workstation - for the combs, brushes, vaccumn cleaner nozzle - anything that comes into contact with the customer. The cloth that keeps away the falling hair does not come into direct contact with your neck. They use a disposable liner. They were creative in finding ways to be hygienic and ended up with a "unique selling proposition". And here is a good example of the concept of "triage" in action. There are many other services a hair salon offers - a hair wash, hair colour, manicure, even gossip, and a constant stream of chatter designed to create opportunities to sell more services. The $10 hair-cut shop pruned away at these possibilities to select only those they want to offer as a finely integrated package - quick, reasonably priced, hygienic, no-chatter, and, because they only do hair-cuts, they need a much smaller space than any other salon, which results in lower rents and greater flexibility in finding available shop space, and greater turn-over (say, $360 per hour, for a six-seater shop, multiply by 10 hours from 10 am in the morning till 9 at night, equals around or above S$1500/day, assuming 40% capacity). I believe the best business ideas are those that emerge as a finely balanced gestalt. If you can do that, and it makes money, and you can run it using mere mortals (e.g., you don't have to worry about an up-and-coming David Gan or Georgie Yam stealing away your customers - because there's no time). Now, if you can do that, what do you do? Open as many branches, as fast as you can. Read more ... |
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