Finding the right niche, and filling it correctly, is most of the battle.
Yes... if I look at a few of the more successful recent startup software companies or new software products, most of them are in niches that existed for quite a while, but (apparently) no one thought were there. All of these companies learned about another business, perceived an IT need that was not being met, and successfully fulfilled that need. The following are just a few examples, to give you an idea what I mean by 'learning another business'
Accounting software. Yes, much bookkeeping software already exists, but one company noticed that there was no package available that was 1) in Dutch, 2) Easy to use for lack of (unnecessary) features, and 3) able to get non-accountants going quickly. They targetted home and small office users, with success
Gym software An older example, but one of the best known ones, and one of the earliest small business niches to be recognised. Many companies discovered (independantly) that there was software to do accounting, software to work out training regimens, and software to track client training progress, but nothing that integrated all of these functions. Someone discovered this niche, and now there are quite a few packages that fulfill all of the IT needs of gyms.
Power plant maintenance and safety management software With power plants being the domain of big, wealthy firms, you'd think they would already have decent software to coverall aspects of this. Not so, apparently. One student wrote a package to do data mining and efficiency improvements for a nuclear power plant, as his graduation project. He turned it into a business,, and now he is talking to many large European energy suppliers to sell his software. You can find profitable niches even in heavy industry, apparently.
Pattern generation for embroidery machines I kid you not. Years ago I found out that patterns for embroidery machines were all made by the machines' manufacturers using record-playback... I asked to have a custom one made, and was quoted a price of about $500 for a simple pattern. I thought of starting a business, and sell software able to create patterns from scans to shops with such machines. Shops would be able to embroider custom designs onto jackets and such for $15 rather than $500. I never actually did it, but I know that the manufacturers of embroidery machines have only recently started to offer such software.
This last example also illustrates the point against having too strong a competition. I could have been successful selling this software, but I could never have competed against the manufacturers, once they got into the action. I suppose being first to market wil allow you to outdo the larger competitors, but it will not last. Don't let such products be your only products. Or hey, you could get lucky and be bought by the larger competitor.
Niches for software and IT services abound. Look around you, especially at areas where IT services seems 'too expensive', like small businesses, bakeries, mom&pop stores and such. Look for businesses with particular needs, and think about how IT can fill those needs.
What about parody movies like space balls? Can Lucas sue them because they made money?
That's not the point, despite the fact that it came up in the article. In the case of Spaceballs, and the parodies by Weird Al for example, the works themselves are the parody. In the Booble case, the content is not intented as a parody but as a 'serious' service that they hope to exploit profitably.
The Booble people hope to capitalise on the marketability of the name; to claim that the name is a parody is a sad excuse. I could, for example, start manufacturing cars, call the company Dorkswagen, and claim that it's 'only a parody of Volkswagen' when challenged about the similarity of the names.
Our grandchildren will no doubt think our own prose long-winded and overly eloquent. They themselves will communicate solely by Powerpoint presentations and SMS-messages.
So, Democrican or Republicrat?/blockquote>
Neither, I vote in the Netherlands:) If you must know, my interests are neither left wing, right wing, nor something in between. I vote for whomever is the most individualistic of the lot.
If you think this is about MS being evil, you're dead wrong. This is about MS having a 10 billion dollar liquid slush fund and governments wanting their piece of that pie.
Nonsense. MS is being fined under clearly defined EU laws (which incidentally also set an upper limit to the fine). They are not being sued on a whim or out of greed. And looking at the way MS behaved in the past, like strongarm tactics against PC distributors, embrace-and-extend, dumping, using their virtual monopoly on the OS to lock out vendors making competitive services or products (browsers, digital photo development etc), I think the EU commission might have a rather good case.
Isn't the government supposed to be working for us? Aren't our rights supposed to be first and foremost in their minds? There is a balance to be maintained, and our rights are not unlimited, but more and more across the entire globe the individual is lost.
Politicians have lost sight of us individuals in the 'big picture'. Try talking to them or correspond with them (on silly patents, for example) You'll find that they do want the best for us, but in the way you would want the best for your kids. So we're important as a whole, but we are not supposed to make important decisions ourselves. Daddy knows best.
This is partly because of the view politicians have of the world, which depends on who they speak with. Individual citizens will find it hard to gain an audience, but special interest groups and perhaps activist groups have access to politicians. The problem with this setup is that a fight between activists and big business often looks like a fight between vague, intangible rights versus economic sense. Few politicians concern themselves deeply over fundamental rights.
What was the name of that car that was a joint effort by Alfa Romeo and some Japanese car manufacturer? That one deserves to be on the top 10 of worst cars... ahhh, the flair of Japanese design combined with rock-solid Italian engineering. Ouch
Since the list was supposed to include US-built cars only, this Ukrainian jewel, as well as many Soviet cars did not make it to the Forbes article."
And not all of them deserve to be on that list. Sure, most Soviet-era cars look like crap, but they got the job done. Many of them were cheap to buy and run, easy to repair yourself, and would start in the coldest of winter. No need to take the car back to the shop if something breaks, just take a long some duct tape, a few paper clips, some rubber bands and a bottle of vodka, and you're all set for that long journey! (The bottle of vodka is to barter with other motorists for gas or parts)
I've had some limited experience with Soviet cars in their natural habitat. I'd like to nominate one of these cars for the 'worst car ever'. The older models of the Lada Niva. Not a bad car in itself, but as an 'all terrain' vehicle it was a complete joke.
Also, there is nothing inherently better about the metric system of measurement, vs. the english system of measurement vs. any other standardized system of measurment.
Actually there is.
Imperial measures are handier in practical applications of weights and measures, ie. when you are dealing with a lot of halves and quarters. The Imperial system was devised to make division of units easy; which was rather handy on a market or a construction site. Especially in medieval times: most people didn't know much arithmatic, but they could deal with halves, thirds and quarters very well, and the imperial system of weights and measures helped them.
The Metric system is less suited to such situations, but it is far easier to calculate and convert metric measurers, especially if the calculations are very complex. I was under the impression that the American scientific community already uses the metric system for this reason.
So each system has its merits. The difference seems to be that, while people eventually become used to dealing with Metric units in everyday life, doing complex calculations in Imperial units remains hard no matter how much you practice.
'Hands' are used to measure the height at the withers of a horse.
Which makes perfect sense. Why be boring and use 'feet' to measure a horse's height, when you can come up with a different measure just for the purpose! All in favour raise your 'hands'!
But in much of the rest of the world, horses are measured in centimeters.
I will probably never understand fully why anyone would fall for an e-mail scam that is clearly not legitimate.
People fall for it because it looks legitimate.
This scam isn't new either; just a few weeks ago I got some mail about updating my Citibank account (which I don't have). The mail look legit, with few (if any) spelling errors. It contained a link to some weird server, but the description of the link contained a URL to Citybank, to make it look like a URL without a description (like so: http://www.citibank.com. Heh, someone thought this scam was good, apparently. It's been translated to Dutch and spammed around, with only the name changed to a Dutch bank and pointing to a site made to look like the bank's.
The average person doesn't know these simple tricks, nor are they aware of the bug that changes the URL shown in the address bar. Yes, the American (or glbal) public is that ignorant... you cannot expect everyone to know about this stuff.
I'd prefer a world where I didn't have to be careful with my email address. I want to post it on a website so that people can just click it and send me a mail, without bots harvesting the adress and crapflooding my inbox. I want to put it in my.sig on sites such as this one, and Usenet.
I applaud any effort that will reduce spam and send the spammers to jail. Perhaps some day, we can have spam-free email again like in the good old days...
Once your foot is sufficiently in the door, certifications mean little or nothing to hiring companies.
Correct, but a certification can help getting that foot firmly wedged in there. When a company receives a bick stack of applications for a tech job, they may cull the stack by looking at certifications.
The perceived value of certifications differs from company to company, but also depends on the field of IT you're in. From what I've seen, certifications for programmers matter little, but they do for DBAs... I wouldn't know about network guys though.
The days of the technical college (or certified, they are basically the same thing) IT worker are long gone.
Technical college? Wow... Our company went from requiring a Masters degree in the pre-dot.com days, to hiring everybody with approximately the correct body temperature, during the boom.
Microsoft did not file this patent under US juristiction, only in New Zealand and the European Union.
True, but why? I have no idea... but I'll make a wager on MS submitting this patent application in the US in the near future. You can either shrug this off with an 'Oh it's not in the US', or you can think about it and prepare for when MS does get a US patent on this.
I wonder why they only filed in those regions and not (yet) in the US... Perhaps because they expect to have to actually defend their application in the EU, as opposed to the USPTO where they know it'll be approved without a hitch.
"I think it's going to be a non-issue, legally. I just don't think the patent will be accepted," he said. "This is Microsoft doing its aggressive best to protect its interests. [Sam Hiser of OpenOffice.org]"
Mr. Hiser seems to have a rather poor grasp of the US legal and patent system. No doubt he knows how it is supposed to work.
1) In the real world, you can file for a patent on literally anything, and it will often be granted no matter how ludicrous. With patents on one-click shopping, patents on putting a small trackball on top of a mouse, and patents on swinging sideways on a swing (I kid you not), Microsoft will have no problem winning a patent on XML data from Office.
2) Once they have been granted the patent, good luck fighting it in court. No matter how silly the patent actually is, and no matter how much prior examples there are of applications sharing data with XML, I think you'll have a hard time fighting off Microsoft unless you have exceedingly deep pockets.
This is wrong on so many levels... They are effectively forbidding you to manipulate your own data! Office documents are not like the Office application. Hell, they are not even like 'rented' data which you have licenced (as the MPAA would claim is the case with DVDs). Microsoft owns Office, but I own the documents I produce, and I reserve the right to do whatever I want with the data in them!
It has always been difficult to read such data into applications other than the one used for authoring. This has so far always been a technical issue (and one associated with many products, not just Microsoft's). Now, Microsoft will effectively make it illegal to use non-Microsoft tools to interpret the data. For me, this is another important point to take to management, if and when they will consider alternative products.
Yeah, replacing the ostensibly offending code is nice, but it won't get me off the hook if I've already been using something that has been found to be infringing.
I'm not sure how US laws work in this case (or our own European ones, for that matter), but I would assume that SCO could not do a lot to companies using Linux, if these companies have obtained the software in good faith. Even a demand for a cease-and-desist order would be mitigated by a reasonable judge, and a company that obtained the infringing code unwittingly and in good faith, would be given reasonable time to comply and replace the offending code.
On the web, you can at least do something about most of these animated pop up ads. But I've seen them on TV as well! They haven't appeared here in Europe yet, but I've seen them on some episodes of Southpark and Futurama that I downloaded. In the middle of the show, a small blue backdrop appears in the lower right corner, and in front of it a man in a suit promotes the next show that will be on. It's soundless but animated and extremely annoying. You can't click him away, or even skip over it (if you have a Tivo) if you don't want to miss part of the show you're watching!
I really hope this sort of thing will not become more pervasive in television programming...
One person in the book had one of those, and some people in India (I think) hacked into his vision system and ran an ad for a roach motel or something in the bottom right corner of his vision 24 hours a day.
Could have been worse... could have been the Goatse guy... animated!
Slashdot Mirror
Accounting software. Yes, much bookkeeping software already exists, but one company noticed that there was no package available that was 1) in Dutch, 2) Easy to use for lack of (unnecessary) features, and 3) able to get non-accountants going quickly. They targetted home and small office users, with success
Gym software An older example, but one of the best known ones, and one of the earliest small business niches to be recognised. Many companies discovered (independantly) that there was software to do accounting, software to work out training regimens, and software to track client training progress, but nothing that integrated all of these functions. Someone discovered this niche, and now there are quite a few packages that fulfill all of the IT needs of gyms.
Power plant maintenance and safety management software With power plants being the domain of big, wealthy firms, you'd think they would already have decent software to coverall aspects of this. Not so, apparently. One student wrote a package to do data mining and efficiency improvements for a nuclear power plant, as his graduation project. He turned it into a business,, and now he is talking to many large European energy suppliers to sell his software. You can find profitable niches even in heavy industry, apparently.
Pattern generation for embroidery machines I kid you not. Years ago I found out that patterns for embroidery machines were all made by the machines' manufacturers using record-playback... I asked to have a custom one made, and was quoted a price of about $500 for a simple pattern.
I thought of starting a business, and sell software able to create patterns from scans to shops with such machines. Shops would be able to embroider custom designs onto jackets and such for $15 rather than $500. I never actually did it, but I know that the manufacturers of embroidery machines have only recently started to offer such software.
This last example also illustrates the point against having too strong a competition. I could have been successful selling this software, but I could never have competed against the manufacturers, once they got into the action. I suppose being first to market wil allow you to outdo the larger competitors, but it will not last. Don't let such products be your only products. Or hey, you could get lucky and be bought by the larger competitor.
Niches for software and IT services abound. Look around you, especially at areas where IT services seems 'too expensive', like small businesses, bakeries, mom&pop stores and such. Look for businesses with particular needs, and think about how IT can fill those needs.
The Booble people hope to capitalise on the marketability of the name; to claim that the name is a parody is a sad excuse. I could, for example, start manufacturing cars, call the company Dorkswagen, and claim that it's 'only a parody of Volkswagen' when challenged about the similarity of the names.
Our grandchildren will no doubt think our own prose long-winded and overly eloquent. They themselves will communicate solely by Powerpoint presentations and SMS-messages.
I have... What's your point?
This is partly because of the view politicians have of the world, which depends on who they speak with. Individual citizens will find it hard to gain an audience, but special interest groups and perhaps activist groups have access to politicians. The problem with this setup is that a fight between activists and big business often looks like a fight between vague, intangible rights versus economic sense. Few politicians concern themselves deeply over fundamental rights.
Speaking of ugly and crappy...
What was the name of that car that was a joint effort by Alfa Romeo and some Japanese car manufacturer? That one deserves to be on the top 10 of worst cars... ahhh, the flair of Japanese design combined with rock-solid Italian engineering. Ouch
I've had some limited experience with Soviet cars in their natural habitat. I'd like to nominate one of these cars for the 'worst car ever'. The older models of the Lada Niva. Not a bad car in itself, but as an 'all terrain' vehicle it was a complete joke.
They did that 3 years ago, or didn't you notice?!
Actually there is.
Imperial measures are handier in practical applications of weights and measures, ie. when you are dealing with a lot of halves and quarters. The Imperial system was devised to make division of units easy; which was rather handy on a market or a construction site. Especially in medieval times: most people didn't know much arithmatic, but they could deal with halves, thirds and quarters very well, and the imperial system of weights and measures helped them.
The Metric system is less suited to such situations, but it is far easier to calculate and convert metric measurers, especially if the calculations are very complex. I was under the impression that the American scientific community already uses the metric system for this reason.
So each system has its merits. The difference seems to be that, while people eventually become used to dealing with Metric units in everyday life, doing complex calculations in Imperial units remains hard no matter how much you practice.
But in much of the rest of the world, horses are measured in centimeters.
This scam isn't new either; just a few weeks ago I got some mail about updating my Citibank account (which I don't have). The mail look legit, with few (if any) spelling errors. It contained a link to some weird server, but the description of the link contained a URL to Citybank, to make it look like a URL without a description (like so: http://www.citibank.com. Heh, someone thought this scam was good, apparently. It's been translated to Dutch and spammed around, with only the name changed to a Dutch bank and pointing to a site made to look like the bank's.
The average person doesn't know these simple tricks, nor are they aware of the bug that changes the URL shown in the address bar. Yes, the American (or glbal) public is that ignorant... you cannot expect everyone to know about this stuff.
I applaud any effort that will reduce spam and send the spammers to jail. Perhaps some day, we can have spam-free email again like in the good old days...
The perceived value of certifications differs from company to company, but also depends on the field of IT you're in. From what I've seen, certifications for programmers matter little, but they do for DBAs... I wouldn't know about network guys though.
I wonder why they only filed in those regions and not (yet) in the US... Perhaps because they expect to have to actually defend their application in the EU, as opposed to the USPTO where they know it'll be approved without a hitch.
1) In the real world, you can file for a patent on literally anything, and it will often be granted no matter how ludicrous. With patents on one-click shopping, patents on putting a small trackball on top of a mouse, and patents on swinging sideways on a swing (I kid you not), Microsoft will have no problem winning a patent on XML data from Office.
2) Once they have been granted the patent, good luck fighting it in court. No matter how silly the patent actually is, and no matter how much prior examples there are of applications sharing data with XML, I think you'll have a hard time fighting off Microsoft unless you have exceedingly deep pockets.
This is wrong on so many levels... They are effectively forbidding you to manipulate your own data! Office documents are not like the Office application. Hell, they are not even like 'rented' data which you have licenced (as the MPAA would claim is the case with DVDs). Microsoft owns Office, but I own the documents I produce, and I reserve the right to do whatever I want with the data in them!
It has always been difficult to read such data into applications other than the one used for authoring. This has so far always been a technical issue (and one associated with many products, not just Microsoft's). Now, Microsoft will effectively make it illegal to use non-Microsoft tools to interpret the data. For me, this is another important point to take to management, if and when they will consider alternative products.
That's right...
On the web, you can at least do something about most of these animated pop up ads. But I've seen them on TV as well! They haven't appeared here in Europe yet, but I've seen them on some episodes of Southpark and Futurama that I downloaded. In the middle of the show, a small blue backdrop appears in the lower right corner, and in front of it a man in a suit promotes the next show that will be on. It's soundless but animated and extremely annoying. You can't click him away, or even skip over it (if you have a Tivo) if you don't want to miss part of the show you're watching!
I really hope this sort of thing will not become more pervasive in television programming...