Darwinian Web posts tagged as: word

IE7's aggregator isn't impressive, but it is good enough

Posted on Thursday, February 2, 2006 at 12:37 PM (permalink)

Trying to recharacterize a quote once it is loose in the blogosphere can be a tricky business. In my initial thoughts on IE7 I wrote that it would likely kill many RSS aggregators that did little more than let you read feeds. Richard MacManus linked to this and wrote "Adam Green thinks IE7 will kill a lot of independent RSS Aggregator products, due to IE7's impressive RSS integration features." The first clause was mine, but the second clause wasn't. I don't fault Richard. He was using me as an example to prove his point, but I don't want to leave the impression active that I think IE7's use of RSS is impressive. In fact, it is just the opposite. IE7 is a very weak aggregator, but it will still drive out the other independent aggregators, because it will be part of IE.

Microsoft long ago mastered the trick of calculating exactly the minimal feature set needed to suck the air out of a market it wants to enter. They do about half of this the first time around, and eventually reach the minimal set by about the third version. Then they stop completely. This is the thing I hate the most about Microsoft's monopoly over the software market. Take a look at Excel and Word. They are basically frozen with a feature set that is over 10 to 15 years old. Microsoft knows that people aren't willing to go through the bother of switching products if most of their needs are met. More features beyond the minimal set means more bugs, so Microsoft has nothing to gain once a market is theirs. The result is a stifling of innovation. It was just this stifling that led so many in the software industry to flee to the Internet in the mid-Nineties.

My favorite example of the Microsoft effect is the graphing in Excel. It absolutely sucks. I have been using it for years, and I still have no idea how to create what I want. Each time I use it I just keep whacking away at it until I get close to what I want, and then I stop. Once when my son was creating some complex graphs for a science project, I went to some download sites and got a few shareware graphing packages. He was amazed by their power and ease of use. He asked why Microsoft didn't do graphs this well, and my answer was "Because they don't have to." I then explained my theory of the Microsoft effect. (Yes, having me as a father can be a bit tedious. My kids usually know better than to ask my opinion on software. My wife won't even stay in the room when software comes up.)

So does this mean that we are doomed to a life of mediocre aggregators when IE7 wins? I am afraid so, but I hope not. What I really hope is that Scott Karp's vision will be realized: "The New Media revolution will come when content is completely atomized and fully tagged, so that it can be remixed into perfectly tailored packages to suit every taste, i.e. truly what I want (when I want it)." But the aggregator publishers have to move fast. Once IE7 is cleaned up enough to release, it will shut down much of the opportunities to find new users. That doesn't mean that the average user is lazy or stupid. It means that they have a life, and seeking out the ultimate aggregator won't be a high priority for them.

Tags: aggregator excel ie7 microsoft rss word

David Berlind at Harvard

Posted on Wednesday, January 11, 2006 at 7:39 AM (permalink)

David Berlind's luncheon talk at Harvard's Berkman Center was interesting, but we have different approaches to predicting the future. David takes the traditional journalist's perspective of discovering who is doing what to effect change, while I try to figure out why people will adopt that change and whether they have ever made a similar decision in the past. For example, David recounted the various software, standards making, and political activities taking place in an effort to replace Microsoft Office with an open standard. While I, on the other hand, tried to find any sign of people looking for an alternative to Office. Of course Word is buggy and cumbersome, but I can't remember any time in the last few years when a real end-user has told me that they wish they could switch from Word to something else. Are they too dumb to realize they would be better off with a replacement for Word? No, I think they are too smart to waste their time looking for alternatives when they just want to get their work done. They aren't lazy, they're busy. If you want to beat Word's monopoly, you have to give people a powerful reason to switch, you can't just point out a better alternative. In marketing terms you can't just present a better mouse trap, you have to convince people that they have mice and that not getting rid of them will cause serious consequences. This isn't meant as a criticism of David. What he does serves a valuable purpose, and he certainly knows his stuff when it comes to the issue of alternatives to Microsoft. He also needs to incorporate a more market driven and historical perspective into his analysis.

I made my pitch to get David to use the term copy protection instead of DRM. He was sympathetic to the issue, but not too interested in making the change. He understands the issues of DRM so much better than I do, including the legal aspects, that he sees the problem of DRM as much greater than just not being able to move content to a new computer. He is right, but you aren't going to get people upset enough to demand change by providing more details. You need a simple hook. Maybe copy protection isn't scary enough. I'm not great at coming up with really compelling marketing terms, but I do know how to recognize them. When I find a way to describe DRM that makes people's eyes go wide, I'll know I've hit the target. If you have any suggestions for a really repulsive name for DRM, please let me know. I'll do my best to promote it.

Tags: berkman berlind copyprotection drm microsoft office word

Posts tagged as: word

IE7's aggregator isn't impressive, but it is good enough

David Berlind at Harvard