The main criticism I’ve gotten on my last post is that I didn’t really say what I’d do better.  This post is to try to alleviate that.  I’m going to write, very roughly, what I would have tried to say.  But before I do let me just make my point right here: Announcing a product is about selling that product, if you don’t sell it to your intended customers then you’re just wasting the effort.

That said, below is my very quickly written rough draft of the points I’d try to hit if I were Scott Guthrie making that post.  In italics is me explaining why I’d hit those specific points.

Hi,

Here at Microsoft we have two goals.  First, to make great products that people want to use.  Second, to convince developers like yourself that our products are worth using. 

Yes, it seems a little cheesy.  I’ll admit that.  But that’s sort of the point.  What you’re trying to do here is to (a) humanize yourself while (b) lowering yourself to a level below the person you’re trying to sell to (the last sentence is basically a socially acceptable way of bowing and saying “we’re not worthy”).  No one ever closed a deal by trying to be cooler than the person they’re selling to.

Today we’re introducing a program called WebsiteSpark which we hope will accomplish the second goal.  It’s basically a way for you to get free development software, support and business resources from Microsoft.  In giving you this we hope to prove to you that our tools are not only worthy of your business but the best available tools for what you want to accomplish.

Honestly, I personally would prefer not to reveal what the program is this quickly and if it was a one-on-one sale I wouldn’t.  But people on the web tend to get annoyed if you don’t get to the point quickly which necessitates putting this info out there up front.  Again notice the subdued tone.  If you’re trying to win new customers you’re coming in at a disadvantage because they’re already using something else.  So you don’t want to get in their face because that will push them back into the arms of your competitor.

Before getting to what software this program specifically includes I want to point you to a few studies.  These studies were conducted by independent agencies and compared our development tools to other leading tools in the space. 

<Insert Studies Here>

We’ve also prepared some cost analysis so you can see how much you’d save in implementation costs between the WebsiteSpark Program and a Linux/Apache based solution.

<Insert Cost Analysis Here>

This is the crux of my argument.  My biggest problem with how ScottGu introduced this program is that he didn’t give any reasons why people would want to switch to Microsoft tools.  He just said “we’re giving them away for free" which again, to me, says “we think you’re stupid enough to jump to our platform based solely on the word free".”  That’s not the way to start a new business relationship.

If you’ve come this far in the post we hope you are at least considering Microsoft Development Tools for your next project.  Remember, we’re not asking you to switch this very second.  Just give us a chance and see what we can offer.  That’s what the WebSiteSpark program is all about.  Giving you a “no money down” way to try our tools and see what we have to offer. 

Speaking of which, let’s go over what WebSiteSpark Includes:

I’m not going to put the list here but I did want to make a point about the list.  In it he makes no attempt to sell the actual products.  He just lists them as if people who aren’t Microsoft Developers are going to know exactly what they are and what advantages they represent (which is unlikely with products like Expression Blend that aren’t commonly known among open source developers). 

When you’re trying to sell someone on something you have to give them all the information they’ll need to make a decision.  Don’t expect them to go hunt down the details themselves.

One last thing I would have added…

One last note to our friends in the development community that advocate for other tools.  We understand a lot of you look on Microsoft with suspicion.  We accept that and even own up to causing it to a large extent.  We’re not asking you to trust us right off the bat.  But again, the tools are free.  So why not try them out and over the next few years see how we act towards you.  See how we’re open to starting a dialogue about your concerns and how we’re willing to work with you to address those concerns.  If you do I think you’ll find we’re a trustworthy partner to have.

And that’s about it.  I actually don’t have anything on the disclaimer section.  It’s fine as disclaimers go so this ends my little virtual post.  I’m not saying what I put above is great and if I was actually making the post I’d spend days going over the exact wording to make sure I really nailed it.  But hopefully it at least makes the point that announcing something is about selling it not just about telling people of it’s existence. 

If you don’t sell the thing you might as well not release it at all.

Let’s get one thing straight up front.  I’m a Microsoft developer.  Proud MSDN Universal Subscriber.  Etc…  I’m not some Ruby on Rails guy set out to bust Microsoft’s chops.  I like Microsoft Development tools.

But honestly, this is just obnoxious.  From Scott Guthrie (Vice President of Microsoft’s Developer Division)…

I’m excited to announce a new program – WebsiteSpark – that Microsoft is launching today.

WebsiteSpark is designed for independent web developers and web development companies that build web applications and web sites on behalf of others.  It enables you to get software, support and business resources from Microsoft at no cost for three years, and enables you to expand your business and build great web solutions using ASP.NET, Silverlight, SharePoint and PHP, and the open source applications built on top of them.

Free software?  What could be wrong with that?!?  Well, this…

WebSiteSpark provides software licenses that you can use for three years at no cost.

I have a lot of friends who are independent developers and who use RoR, Python, et al.  I have had many, many, MANY heated debates on their choice of development tools vs. my choice of development tools.  In those debates the one thing that’s clear is they sincerely believe in an “economic disparity” between how much it costs to develop for Microsoft platforms and how much it costs to develop for LAMP (which technically stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP but for the purposes of this post I’m redefining the P to stands for PHP/Ruby/Python/et al…)

That’s the problem with WebSiteSpark.  It’s essentially a trap.  The impression Microsoft is giving makes it seem like a very thinly veiled attempt to trick developers into using Microsoft technologies because then they’ll be stuck with them.  From lower in Mr. Guthrie’s post…

WebsiteSpark is a 3 year program.  There is no obligation to continue to use any of the software after the three years is over, and there are no costs for the three years other than a $100 program fee at the end of the three years.

At the end of the three years, WebsiteSpark participants can optionally choose to purchase all of the software in the WebsiteSpark program via a $999/year package.  This includes 3 copies of VS Professional, 1 copy of Expression Studio (including Blend and Sketchflow), 2 copies of Expression Web, and 4 processor licenses of Windows Web Server 2008 and 4 processor licenses of SQL Server Web edition that can be used for production deployment.

See, that comes across as disingenuous to me and that’s the problem.  I’m not against the WebSiteSpark program per se.  I think a lot of the “economic disparity” between developing LAMP apps and developing Microsoft apps is imagined and I think $999 a  year for three team members is actually a pretty good deal.

But don’t pretend people can just use Microsoft products for three years and then drop them with no consequence (as if all the products designed in that time won’t need to be updated).  Don’t throw out “no obligation” as if it means anything in the grand scheme of things.

Bottom Line: Free shouldn’t be the selling point here.  The selling point needs to be “Developing with Microsoft products really is cheaper than developing LAMP solutions and we’ll prove it to you.  Here are some free products to try it out”   That’s the case Microsoft needs to make to independent developers.  Not “we’ll give you free products.”  Ideally the message Microsoft needs to get across is “our products will make your job easier and make your projects cheaper even without the free products”.  Only then will they start to woo developers away.

Addendum: To Mr. Guthrie, if you should stumble upon this in your web travels, please fix your Silverlight tutorial.  The WaterMarkedTextBox was removed from the product so it’s really annoying to find it used in your beginners tutorial.  Sorry to call you out in public but I used said tutorial months ago (thanks btw) and this issue was already there.  And it still hasn't been fixed.  Given the main Silverlight site points to your tutorial as a starting point that's bad for all of us who believe in the product.

Well, the good news is Internet Explorer finally supports the <canvas> element (a huge personal pet peeve of mine).  At least, sort of…

Google just announced the launch of Chrome Frame, a new open-source project that will allow Chrome's rendering engine to run within Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6,7, and 8. This plugin, which is available now, will give developers the option to ask users if they would prefer to switch to the Chrome rendering and JavaScript engine. Users simply continue to use Internet Explorer and the switch will be completely seamless, with no noticeable changes to the user interface

How pathetic is it when your competitors have to add basic features to your product? 

Keep in mind, in the case of the <canvas> element EVERY OTHER BROWSER supports it at this point and has for at least a year.  IE was the sole hold out.  Not only had they held out so far but they refused to guarantee they’d implement it in IE9. 

It’s ridiculous. 

When Microsoft reformed the IE team (after disbanding it a few years earlier) the promise was they’d restore  IE to a first class browser.  2 versions later that’s yet to happen.  While on the other end of things Microsoft doesn’t seem to do adequate testing of other browsers in regards to their corporate products like Sharepoint. 

So they’re basically disappointing their customers on both sides.

Hopefully having Google make a fool of them (yet again) will be the kick Microsoft needs to get IE back in the browser war.  Because right now it’s just an embarrassing afterthought that corporate customers are forced to use.

Yesterday Galan Graham reported the new iPhone update (3.1) was preventing him from connecting this his Exchange server. 

If you're like me, you probably ran the iPhone OS 3.1 update late Friday along with all the other Mac OS X updates. And perhaps, like me, you found your device no longer syncing to your company's Exchange 2007 Server. I, for one, assumed something had changed on the back end. After all, a dot-one update is a bug fix, so there shouldn't have been anything major to watch out for. But I learned Monday it was the update itself that was to blame.

What Mr. Graham would go on to discover is that in version 3.0 the original iPhone and iPhone 3G falsely reported support for Hardware Encryption to the Exchange Server (neither device actually supports Hardware Encryption).  Apple, without warning, fixed this bug which left all the iPhone and iPhone 3G customers out in the cold (the 3GS does in fact support hardware encryption so it still works). 

Two things to note here…

1.  The two older iPhones have been claiming to support encryption they actually don’t for the last 3 months.  Therefore exposing user data (at least to a limited extent). 

2.  Apple then “fixed” this without warning which cut off all those users (again without warning) and gave them no way to reconnect (other than to convince their IT departments to lower the security requirements or downgrade their phone). 

At first, I didn’t comment on this.  I wanted to see how Apple would respond before I did.  Today, courtesy of CNet’s Jim Dalrymple, that response came…

“iPhone OS 3.1 is working properly with Exchange Server 2007," Apple representative Natalie Harrison told CNET News. "We added device encryption information to the data that can be managed by IT administrators using Exchange Server 2007. The policy of whether to support iPhone 3G, in addition to iPhone 3GS, which always has on-device encryption, on Exchange Server 2007 is set by the administrator and can be changed at any time.”

So no apology, no admission of guilt and honestly no evident shame whatsoever. 

This is why Apple will never be a trustworthy business partner.  Business professionalism is all about taking the needs of your partners, vendors and customers into account and trying to act in a way that is the most beneficial for the entire supply chain.  Because good businesses realize that harming any part of that equation will eventually come back and harm them.

Apple simply doesn’t seem to care.  For consumers that have no real NEED from their computer I suppose that’s ok.  But for companies that require their computers to get actual work done I can’t see trusting a company that acts in this way.

Addendum: Despite what the last couple posts might indicate I haven't turned "anti-Apple".  I just realize their hubris limits them in some important areas and as their popularity grows I think it's important to point out what applications they shouldn't be trusted with.

In an article entitled "Apple Flubs iPod Event, Marketing Changing?" Bnet's Erik Sherman wonders why everyone seems to have glossed over Apple's most recent announcement of a camera enabled iPod Nano and a new focus on iPod Touch gaming. 

The new products were “a snooze fest for any Apple fans expecting new, must-buy products”. People knew about the new products coming out and were disappointed when the expected video camera addition to the iPod touch didn’t appear. Instead, the video capability is going into the new iPod Nano. Roughly 40 minutes into Jobs’s presentation, Chris Nuttall from the Financial Times live blogged, “I’m sorry, but can we get to some news” and later added, “so yes, the nano looks great, nice iTunes improvements, but underwhelming otherwise”.

Have you ever been disappointed by someone?  I mean really let down.  And they try to talk to you or explain what happened but you just tune them out because you really don't want to hear it at that point.

To a lesser extent I think that's what happened to Apple.

Now I'm going out on a limb here and assuming Apple meant to have a camera integrated into the iPod Touch to introduce.  Manufacturers were already making cases with holes for a camera, a teardown of the device shows an empty place where the camera should be, etc...

Plus the fact that Steve Jobs, a master of spin, couldn't even come up with a good explanation as to why there's not a camera seals the case for me. 

At least on the high end the 3rd Generation iPod Touch was meant to have a camera.  But when the announcement came, it didn't.  Anyone who reads rumor sites probably knows why that is.  There was a problem with the camera module that made it impossible to get out the door in time.  That's perfectly reasonable.  These things happen.  But here's where Apple went wrong: They let their pride get the best of them.

Apple could have come on stage and said "Look, we wanted to have a camera in the high end iPhone but there were technical issues.  So we're going to hold the high end model back a few months and instead only release these new, lower cost models." 

At that point everything's forgiven.  People understand technical issues occur and are unavoidable.  No one's going to hold it against them.  But instead Apple, by staying silent, took responsibility for it themselves.  They said "We didn't include a camera in the touch and that's by design" which is where everything went wrong.

By having too much pride to admit a technical glitch Apple disappointed their audience and caused that audience to tune out everything else they said.

Because of that Apple basically threw away a valuable marketing opportunity and created a bunch of negative coverage to boot.  It's a rare misstep from a company that's built its business around image but a good lesson for all of us.  There's a reason Pride is considered the most deadly of sins. 

On the Games...Mr. Sherman's other point is somewhat valid but I think the "iPod is a game device" meme is more of a marketing push than it is a company direction. There's a lot more to being a game machine than just showing off cool games on your platform.  There's purchasing exclusive games, paying the developers of quality games to port to your platform, etc...  Apple will have some success in games because it's much cheaper to develop for the iPod Touch than it is to develop for Sony or Nintendo but  I wouldn't put them in the same league as far as the game market is concerned.

Carol Bartz, still the relatively new CEO of Yahoo, went on record today saying she would have given the company to Microsoft for their original asking price.  Here's the quote...

If Carol Bartz were Yahoo's CEO when Microsoft was offering $33-$34 per share for the company last year, would she have taken the deal that Jerry Yang shot down?

"Well, sure. You think I'm stupid? I mean, let me see... $15, $34, yeah, I think so," she said on CNBC this morning.

Now I don't disagree with her.  I think Yahoo should have taken the deal.  But it's just not something you say at this point.  Let me explain...

As much as I like to think of myself as a "just get the job done" type of guy my experience in software development has taught me a very important lesson.  Great software products only happen when those who are building them feel passionate about the job. 

Because there's not just one way to develop software.  Architects, Engineers, and other professions that build things tend to have a blueprint for what they're doing.  An Architect, for example, knows where to put the doors and windows based on specifications given to them by the person initiating the job.   An Engineer knows where to place components based on heat distribution.  And so on...

Software developers on the other hand are out in the wilderness.  There are a million different opinions regarding proper UI design and proper coding technique.  So a software developer has to be dedicated to sift through those techniques and determine how to do a job properly.  At the same time it's very easy for a software developer to just "phone it in" designing a program as they go along.

Which is why it's imperative to make your software designers feel like they are doing something important.  Because that's how you get them to  put forth the effort required to do it right.

Ms. Bartz statements do just the opposite of that.  By saying she would have jumped at the acquisition offer she's basically framing the company as something she'd get rid of all together if she could.  She's lessening it in the eyes of the world by representing it as an acquisition target rather than a company that's actually trying to accomplish big things.  That sends a message to her developers that basically says "I don't think all that much of you or this company"

That's not a message that will bring out the best in her developers.

Tim O’Reilly (the book publisher/conference promoter) has a piece up on TechCrunch today about his vision of “Governement 2.0”.  The basic gist of his argument is this…

But as with Web 2.0, the real secret of success in Government 2.0 is thinking about government as a platform. If there’s one thing we learn from the technology industry, it’s that every big winner has been a platform company: someone whose success has enabled others, who’ve built on their work and multiplied its impact.

A little personal aside.  I did not have the best of parents.  By 18 they were pretty much done with me and I had to learn to survive largely on my own.  I managed that because I knew technology very well.  I worked on PCs and very quickly worked my way up to consulting.   But in order to make it through life as a 19 year old technology consultant I had to get really good at it. 

So I got really good at it. 

One of the things that made me good was learning one simple rule: Technology planning isn’t about technology. 

I’ll return to that later but let me focus back on Mr. O’Reilly’s piece.  His mantra is “Government needs to be a platform” and I don’t disagree with that.  But that’s really not a difficult thing to do. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the work itself is easy.  But it’s straightforward.  It doesn’t require a lot of philosophical discussion.  Just take the internal programs you have, look at your database calls, translate those into web service API calls and then implement.  From there you simply define what should be publicly available data and what should not and make the appropriate APIs publicly accessible. 

It’s a complex technology question but not a philosophical one.

But here’s the curve ball.  That won’t solve the problem.  See, my problem with Mr. O’Reilly and the pundit class in general is not that their intentions aren’t good.  Just the opposite.  I think their intentions are good but they don’t have experience in actual problem solving .  Because when you have that experience you realize the hardest part of problem solving is defining the problem.  Mr. O’Reilly walked into this thinking “access” was the problem and that has led him to “platform is the answer” but he’s wrong about the problem so his answer doesn’t fix anything.

More importantly it’s obscuring the real problem.  The real problem with Government information is that it isn’t collected in a way that makes it useful.  There’s always been a wealth of government information online from agricultural statistics to FBI files and a simple web crawler could make much of that information available in a programmatic way.  But the information itself is flawed.  It isn’t collected with an eye towards what it will be used for.

Access isn’t the problem information collection is.

So creating a platform, while a nice side goal, doesn’t solve the problem. 

If you want “Government 2.0” to work than you need to talk to people who would use the information and see what they need from the Government.  In other words, talk to Farmers and Nurses not Scoble and Jarvis (with no offense to Robert Scoble or Jeff Jarvis). 

From there the Government needs to design actual programs.  Again, they should certainly design a platform to make those programs and make that platform available to others but in the end they need to focus on making useful software for people and designing a platform that helps them do that.

That’s the final point.  That’s what Mr. O’Reilly misses.  Yes there have been companies that created a platform and were then made successful because others used their platform for something they never would have dreamed of.  But in those cases the original company still had their own goal to accomplish.  They made a great platform because they were filling their own needs.

So I go back to my original point.  Technology planning isn’t about technology it’s about solving a problem and often the solution to that problem has little to do with technology.  In this case a platform is just one step in the solution of a much bigger problem.  So focusing on it as the solution is counter productive.

Addendum: I forgot to make one really important point.  If it were me, if the President of the United States showed up at my door and said "Tom, work this data access thing out", I wouldn't be looking at any of this right now.  As I said above, the biggest problem right now is finding a way to learn what people want/need from their government in order to accomplish what they want to accomplish.  Collecting that information is a monsterous problem in and of itself (and no, holding a Government 2.0 conference is not even close to a solution).  Anyone who is really serious about solving this problem needs to first look at finding what the American public as a whole could use from their government because until you know that you really don't know what problem you're trying to fix.

Sorry for the unexpected hiatus.  Honestly we’ve been having, on average, “106 degree high” days while at the same time there are fires burning all around meaning there’s all kinds of bad junk in the air.  Plus I’ve been fairly busy at work AND trying to plan the coming weekend.  Bottom line: It hasn’t been an environment that’s conducive to sitting down and putting together organized thoughts.