Here’s a great article that crystalizes some ideas I’ve been struggling with. More Evidence of a Maturing Software Industry talks about the slowing of the upgrade cycle for software like Microsoft Office. This is definitely a trend in mass market and some enterprise software, but there is still plenty of room for innovation in emerging niche markets. For example, the very idea of an RSS aggregator didn’t exist a few years ago, and it still hasn’t hit mainstream uptake, so there is plenty of growth ahead for that particular segment.
However, the nature of software development is becoming more of an assembly-line process, much of which can be outsourced to India. The “stripping down” of software development is leading to organizations whose core competency is software architecture and product management, not the actual coding. How long before even those processes are outsourced?
When you think about it, the only home office jobs necessary will be sales and marketing. Sales, because nothing will every replace the face-to-face meeting, and marketing, because a market’s culture is a critical element of marketing.
The reason I personally have been struggling with this is because I write software. I love software. It’s challenging, creative and fun. I’ve written a software platform used by some of our customers to manage their customer data. Until recently I viewed this as the strategic “secret sauce” for Escalan, the proprietary advantage we can leverage into a large company. But last year I had an epiphany: it’s not the software that is our advantage, it’s our expertise in how to use it to help companies make more money on the Internet. And that expertise is rooted in marketing. Thank God. So you won’t see much in the way of features and benefits about the software on our site (aside from the link above). Instead, we take a problem-oriented focus. We seek first to understand exactly how a company needs help with their marketing and only then do we consider whether our product is a fit for the problem at hand.
Well, it’s about time. Yahoo recently launched an RSS aggregator, and it’s not bad. It allows me to have my favorite feeds right on the My Yahoo home page, which has been my home page for a few years now. Once they get the glitches out, I hope Yahoo pushes the envelope in terms of user interface. Given their success with consumer-focused services, I have high hopes.
This is a very important step. Now it’s only a matter of time before MSN, AOL, Earthlink etc. jump on the bandwagon. Which means that my prototypical mainstream user – aka my mom – will very likely be using RSS regularly sometime in 2005. Woo hoo!
Talk about morons, here’s the prototype. This article takes Google to task for planning to introduce an email service. The writer assumes it will be a free webmail service a la Hotmail. I really really really doubt it. Rather, my guess is that Google plans to allow email publishers to introduce AdSense ads in their newsletters, something many have been calling for. If so, Google has actually found an excellent niche that makes them stand out from Yahoo, MSN et al.
This morning I had coffee with Alycia Jackson of Keybank. I met Alycia through Colorado Business Leads, and we’re working on a joint promotion with a few other members.
Alycia handles both business and consumer banking. Keybank has tons of products for small businesses, including free checking (even free checks!), merchant accounts and a huge variety of loans. (Need a boat?)
Also, Alycia is quite the traveler, having spent several years in Thailand teaching English. Give her a call at 303-984-0421.
It’s days like this that remind me why I love living in Colorado
Copper Mountain, Colorado
This is the view near the top of the Super Bee lift. I was shooting into the sun, so there’s a slight glare, but I kind of like it.
If you ski straight ahead, it drops off into a short but quite steep bowl, then levels off into some gnarly bumps that will leave you gasping for air.
This is another shot from the back side of the top of Super Bee lift, rotated approximately 90 degrees to the left (East?).
Our house is so stuffed full of stuff from the holidays it’s spilling into the garage and there’s barely room for the Ferrari. It might be time to finally get a storage shed.
This is fascinating. Fred Langa of Information Week did an interesting test that suggests a lot of legitimate email is being blocked as spam.
Today I met with Mary Heidbrier of MLJ Financial, whom I originally met through Colorado Business Leads.
MLJ Financial specializes in health insurance for small businesses. Mary brings a very interesting perspective to the business. Prior to joining MLJ, she managed a doctor’s office. There she got an up-close-and-personal look at the insurance companies, learning exactly what they cover and, more important, how well or badly they treat their customers.
So if you’re looking for health insurance, make sure you give Mary a ring at 303-440-0399 ext. 13
Good article on negative “self talk” that can affect your productivity. I used to think the whole “power of positive thinking” idea was a little hokey and unrealistic. But then one day I realized that, even if you don’t practice positive thinking, there is absolutely no value in negative thinking. And I found that if I stopped the negative thinking, life was a whole lot more enjoyable.
It doesn’t mean I go around whistling while I work and projecting a peace vibe. I just don’t let things get me down.
Here’s a tip: wear a rubber band on your wrist and snap it every time you have a negative thought. After a while you’ll start to realize that you can monitor and control your thoughts, which opens up a world of possibility.
I’m serious. Try it. I did it for over six months and it made a huge difference in my life.
Update: I noticed I’m getting a lot of visitors to this page, so obviously this is something a lot of folks are thinking about. So I decided to create an anonymous survey about the topic. I will publish the results here once I reach 100 respondents. Click here to take the survey.
Couldn’t resist. This is a picture of my fiance that I took earlier this evening with our new digital camera. Isn’t she beautiful?
