Tech Kindred

Smog In Beijing

Chad Wathington — Sat, 03 May 2008 00:17:56 +0000

Smog In Beijing, originally uploaded by Chad Dub.

A lot of friends have asked me about what the pollution is like in Beijing. This week was particularly bad vs. my previous trips. I love Beijing, but this week was like smoking a pack a day. What looks like fog, clouds, or smoke above is smog. It was rough.

Hopefully, by the big 08.08.08, the city will have this sorted. It would be ashame to have this ruin the Olympic party.

[Semi-Off Topic] Please vote for better espresso at Starbucks

Chad Wathington — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 06:49:54 +0000

So, Starbucks has a Mix and IdeaStorm-like social network for product suggestions, called mystarbucksidea. Today, Starbucks announced a new style of brewed coffee called "Pike Place Roast" to address the common customer complaint of a burnt/bitter taste. I have complained for years about this burnt-style, and unfortunately I think it's rubbed off on other main-stream coffee providers. Dunkin' Donuts used to have some good brewed sweet stuff, but the Starbucks trend ruined it. Luckily, smaller cafes and chains have started to reverse this trend over the past few years, and now Starbucks is listening.

While I think Pike Place is a solid start, we're still stuck with the same burnt tasting espresso-based drinks. I'm not sure why they introduced Pike Place only for brewed coffee, but it seems pretty lame to me. So, I joined the social network to "share my idea," or more accurately complain. So, if you drink coffee, please take a minute to vote for it:

Vote for more mellow espresso drinks at Starbucks

I knew this network existed. But what I didn't realize is that it's a salesforce.com application. It's logical, in that this customer ideation is an extension of CRM, but I didn't know that salesforce hosted consumer facing apps. When I did a little digging, I realized that IdeamStorm is a Dell version of the same app. Mix seems to be the only custom CRM social network around. Anyone know of any others?

Python in the Cloud: Google App Engine

Chad Wathington — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:03:49 +0000

Hmm.. Google launched a new cloud-ish web development infrastructure platform called Google App Engine. Tech Crunch has an article. I wish this were Ruby based frankly or no language at all. I think AWS has it right: virtualization, restful APIs, and platform agnostic tech overall. This may drive Python adoption though, not that Python is bad. Ruby's just better ;)

Domain Specific Languages and Next Gen Functional Testing

Chad Wathington — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:25:06 +0000

I wrote a white paper for a webinar on next generational functional testing that we sponsored. The webinar consists of two very interesting talks by Jennitta Andrea and Ward Cunningham. You can view the archived webinar, which includes a small demo of the new testing product that we're building, albeit with a slight audio problem during that portion. The white paper I wrote is below. Sorry it's not in an RSS reader friendly format.

Domain Specific Languages for Functional Testing

Firefox, Oh How You’ve Scorned Me

Chad Wathington — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:14:24 +0000

My work life revolves around creating great products. Many software companies think about product development only in terms of features, markets, and price. I’m amazed that some companies actually create products without an opinion, without a point of view, without a stake in the ground. They slap a bunch of features together, name it, and expect people to buy it because it addresses their pain. The product may not solve any user pain, but as long as it has a convincing story, the companies are content. Instead of delivering value, they rely only on marketing glitz, market power, or aggressive sales tactics to hawk their wares.

However, successful product companies go beyond that. They want to delight their users. They want to create something that has a perspective beyond what potential buyers would say in a focus group. Theses companies create an emotional connection with their users. That connection buys companies a lot in terms of loyalty, even when they screw up.

My loyalty for Firefox started when I downloaded the first public release before 1.0. Not only was it substantially faster and more lightweight feeling than IE, the little things were there. I loved the tabs… I loved the extensibility. And it had those features without the annoying ads that Opera put in the free version. That engendered loyalty kept me using it throughout the last few years; even when the memory leak on Windows was awful; and even when I switched from Windows to OS X.

But, all good things come to an end. The feeling that I had – that Firefox somehow resonated with me – is gone. The latest build of Firefox crashes so much on Leopard it’s totally unusable for me. I think my Firefox hates me, and loyalty can’t transcend such severe disdain. However, at the end of the day, my loyalty hasn’t shifted very far – I’m using Camino.

The One-third Rule

Chad Wathington — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 15:32:34 +0000

If it takes you longer than a third of your development time to deploy a web application, including acceptance testing, then your deployment process is broken.

The Eco Divide

Chad Wathington — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 02:11:05 +0000

The Digital Divide was the buzzword social issue of the Web 1.0 technology boom in the US. Many people realized that with the benefits of new technology came a certain responsibility to those who couldn't enjoy its advantages. Not only was disparity in general a part of the discussion, but the long term consequences of access to the internet for the urban poor, African Americans, Latinos, and immigrants were often debated.

Ten years later, the Digital Divide isn't' gone. Ten years later, kids in the inter-city often have very little access to computers. Although that problem is far from solved, there's a new Divide to worry about.

Green is in, and it's the new frontier of social separation in the United States. In the last 2 years, green has gone from being the purview of a mainly environmentalist crowd to the upper and upper-middle class mainstream. It's become trendy to be green, and companies are honing in on the new green market. While this new consciousness is great for the environment, the beginnings of class separation are in its midst. More pointedly, being green is expensive.

On it's face, it's pretty obvious. There are no Toyota Priuses in the hood. Some of that is a style thing, however, it's also cost related. A Prius costs about $2,600 more at list than a Camry. A better comparison is the Toyota Camry Hybrid versus the regular Camry. There's roughly a $6,600 premium for the hybrid versus the base Camry. That cost difference is largely because the standard hybrid package has several items that would be options on the base model. In terms of gas consumption, if you assume that a person fills up the Camry's 18.5 gallon gas tank once a week at $3.00 a gallon, that's about $3K in gas a year. If you also assume that the Camry will reduce your gas costs by about a third given its MPG rating, that's $1K a year in gas savings. So, altruistic motives and the complexity of rising gas costs, interest, and present value aside, it will take you 6.5 years to break even on your gas savings versus the premium on the car. If you're not economically well off, does 6 years make a lot of sense? More importantly, do all the options need to be linked to the hybrid? Why can't Toyota make a base model hybrid?

There are similarities all over the map. Nau, a very cool eco-friendly clothing company, has a t-shirt for $55. Granted that t-shirt is supposed to last you a lifetime, but is someone struggling to pay the bills going to buy it? Or does it appeal only to well-paid hipsters?

The worse part of the Eco Divide is not the inaccessibility of products -- that's normal. It's the linking of a moral issue with one's ability to pay to be "good." When it costs significantly more to do the right thing, isn't that problematic? Some of the cost increase is based on the price of new technology, however, some is based in additional profit.

Being green is also starting to become a social and professional filter. If your company is green, do you hire the guy who accidentally doesn't throw his cup in recycling during his interview, or does that subtly effect your opinion? What if that guy doesn't recycle because it's a class issue?

Ultimately, green-ness is related to class in the US, and we can't ignore the link. As green continues to be hip, corporations, environmentalists, and regular people need to do their part to close the gap.