Have you seen the size of a regular iPod next to the Treo?
Now put both of them next to my Nokia 6610. They are HUGE. I take my phone with me everywhere, 24 hours a day. I refuse to deal with a large bulky piece of equipment.
Sorry if I missed something here, but aren't ALL businesses market driven?
Marketing driven, not market driven. Sure, most businesses want to increase their market share and give the market what it wants. The difference is some companys, like Microsoft, don't do anything unless they can market and sell it. Other companies, like Sun with Java, IBM with much of their R&D and many, many other companies will actually produce products/research for other reasons than direct sales. These products may be released for good PR, to increase the overall market or whatever. Many other industries operate in a similar manner. It's like DMB allowing trading of live recordings. Why do they do this, it doesn't directly make them money...
I think this mentality is why you see so much opposition to FOSS from Microsoft. Gates and Ballmer think they NEED to be paid for everything that comes out of Redmond. The idea that they would give something back to the community is totally foreign to them. As a result their public image is continually tarnished and they are painted evil.
But it was driven by Mircrosoft's recognition that the future was in distributed computing which used standards like XML and SOAP (which was not obvious at the time, even if it is in hindsight), and was not simply marketing-based decision, which made it a perfectly accurate response to the question.
It WAS simply a marketing-based decision. They wanted something to compete with Java and bolster their sales of Visual Studio and Windows. They may have made a good product along the way, but their motivation is ALWAYS to sell more product and get more people to use Windows.
Hitler wasn't exactly 'non-capitalist'. From
wikipedia:
The Nazi's use of socialist rhetoric appealed to disaffection with capitalism while presenting a political and economic model that divested "socialism" of any elements which were dangerous to capitalism, such as the concept of class struggle, "the dictatorship of the proletariat" or worker control of the means of production.
Actually, according to the article, fear of a communist revolution was one of the main reasons Hitler and the Nazi party was allowed to come to power.
You do realize that most of those countries actually have national healthcare systems?
Actually I know little about the healthcare in any of these countries. I would assume China has national healthcare, being communist and all. All I know about healthcare in India is the reports of leprosy and meningitis. Our healthcare system may not be great, but at least you don't see much of this.
As far as the Russians, I googled their healthcare system and found this:
The newly restructured Russian Ministry of Health and Social Development has announced modernization of the Mandatory Medical Insurance system in Russia as one of its primary goals. The current Mandatory Medical Insurance system is inadequate and unable to guarantee access to the population not only to quality, but in some cases to basic healthcare treatment.
That's because those programs are a hybrid where the government pays money into the current patchwork private system. It combines worst of both worlds, but it's not the only way to do it.
Sure, there are other ways to run healthcare, but I'm willing to wager that whatever the US Government comes up with will be worse, not better. Actually, come to think of it there is currently a healthcare system the US Government does run right now. Good old Uncle Sam provides healthcare for all of our military people - and I'm sure we've all hear horror stories about them, but I'll go ahead and share one.
I have a relative that married a girl in the US Navy. While on active duty the US government generously provided the 'depo' shot as birth control. What they didn't tell her is they only administer it at half strength to keep costs down - so surprisingly she got pregnant. Why would the US government run a national healthcare system for all of it's citizens any differently?
Unless you can show that no nation besides the USA and a few third-world countries are economically viable, your assertion is proveably false.
Ummm... no. There is no way to determine if a country that is currently socialist would be more economically successful if they were more capitalist. It's all speculation. My point was, and is, that any time the US government gets involved in any system, the system becomes less economically viable. I'm not saying that we couldn't improve our healthcare system, but in this country, I don't think government run healthcare is the answer.
Well, maybe that's because most of the people in places like Germany like it there, whereas leaving India and making twice the money sounds like a really good idea.
The German economy has been weak for the last 10 years. I'm sure if there were viable jobs, we would see German workers here too. I think the point is "making twice the money", although it's probably way more than twice for an Indian or Chinese worker. Hell, if I could move and make twice the money, I'd probably do it.
just about every other developed nation on this planet (and many lesser-developed ones) already have a national healtcare system. Are they all unemployable?
Well, I don't see too many US companies importing talent from most 'developed' nations. Seems like most people are coming from India, China, other asian countries, former USSR and eastern Europe. I don't hear about many programmers being imported from Germany, Great Britain, Canada, Sweden, The Nethernlands and other countries known for their great socialist programs. I definitely don't think the added cost would make us more employable.
Also ignoring that a huge fraction the money going into our current system is wasted on the costs of accounting related to shuffling payments between the multiple middlemen involved in each treatment.
Yeah, this would go away. You think we have beauracratic costs now, wait until we get the US Government involved. Do you know anyone on Medicare or Medicaide? The amount of paperwork is RIDICULOUS. Our Government is not know for it's efficiency anyway, if we get them involved in healthcare there is no way the paperwork waste will go down.
A privatized system is no guarantee of economic prowess.
No, you are absolutely correct, but a government run system is a certain guarantee of a lack of economic prowess.
that FISA can apply to you, if the Intelligence agencies can pull together enough evidence that you are a terrorist, or support terrorists, or a hacker, etc
Thought that was the whole point of the patriot act - they don't need 'evidence'. They can use all of these means to investigate you, just in case you might be a terrorist, spy, jaywalker, whatever....
What would it matter if they stood up? They'd just be voted out of office next time around and replaced with the people they oppose. Too much money is being thrown around for a voice or a thought to matter.
Seems to me this is the whole problem with the Democratic party right now. If they would get together and come out against with war, all the spending, all the civil rights violations, etc... they might actually differentiate themselves from the Republicans. Right now, the only two issues they are willing to stand up for are gay marriage and abortion - neither of these issues are going to win over the 'average' American. I would think it would be much easier to sell a 'We want to bring your sons and daughters home safe' platform than a 'We want to make sure Bill and Jim can get married' platform.
Ummm.... which part of it is not bad? OK, here's an easier question, which part of it would have stopped the 9/11 attacks?
We definitly need something in place
We have something in place, it's called the Constitution. What we need is for the law enforcement and intelligence communities to do their JOB within the restrictions laid out by the Constitution for protection of our freedoms. If this requires more funding and more people that's fine, lets give it to them, but let's not circumvent our freedoms just to make someone's job a little easier.
Expiration dates? Big deal. Congress could revoke or modify the laws at any time irregardless of expiration date.
Perhaps, but it seems to be more difficult to get Congress to repeal a law than it does to just let it die. Look at the assault rifle ban. It wasn't repeales, it expired and wasn't renewed. If Congress didn't like it, why didn't they repeal it before it expired???
I wouldn't suggest that we get rid of healthcare benefits, but our government needs to address these costs.
Of course the only way for the government to address those costs is to raise taxes, which doesn't solve the problem. Actually it probably makes it worse, people like you and me would get hit hardest by taxes in a national healthcare system making us even less employable. The only other way out I see is for the government to regulate the industry, setting caps on the amounts doctors can make. Of course, it works for the NFL...
...when it comes to labor, it is somehow unfair that people get rewarded in a capitalistic fashion, so Congress increased hiring of foreigners and sped up the offshoring of technology.
Not that I agree with it, but I think some of the thinking about keeping the labor cheap was to continue to stimulate the economy. If some of the high paying technical jobs had to suffer to keep the stock market high and economic growth going, Congress thought that was an acceptable tradeoff. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked. In fact, I would argue that it may have helped fuel the crash. If the labor market had not been held down by Congress in the late '90s it might have become cost prohibitive to keep all those dot coms going at the time, slowing the economy and preventing the bubble.
One more thing: iKE is a bad name. If you punch iKE into Google, you get everything except your software. That's a bad place to start from. Try to develop a more unique name. It will help with customer brand recognition, ensure that you don't step on any trademarks, and generally make it easier for your customers to connect with you.
Yes, that is a problem with the iKE name. Unfortunately we have lots of time and money invested in it, and can't leave it completely. OTOH, our current marketing push is for a site called GetMyWorkDoneFaster that promotes the product as providing actual targeted solutions, rather than a generic workflow collaboration software.
1. I don't see your software in the advertised links on the right of the Google results. Why not?
Internal reasons - we were advertising, but have changed direction. Also, they keywords we were targeting are VERY expensive. Much more cost effective to optimize our natural search results.
2. This tells me you guys aren't trying very hard. Not a single link from a press release, a software site like Tucows, a blog, SOMETHING. You have to talk about your product!
3. This tells me the same thing as #2. You have to talk about your product!!! There are tons of "announce" newsgroups specifically for you to announce your product! Use them! They'll get picked up by websites that relay this info, and indexed by Google.
Good points, although there are links out there that Google hasn't picked up.
4. Have you added your URL to the DMOZ directory? Why not? DMOZ will get picked up and replicated by hundreds of sites!
Actually we did, months ago, but last I checked the DMOZ editors had not added a link yet. Seems like DMOZ is incredibly slow.
5. In the above post, you mentioned "Groove" 4 times, and iKE 3 times. How will people trust your product if you pound into their heads that it's just like this other product?
My post was mostly for comparison with a particular product. Our regular marketing doesn't compare iKE with any particular product.
6. Have you asked any magazines or bloggers to review your software? Why not?
Again, a good idea.
In short, the problem is not your website. Your problem is that you need to advertise.
Interestingly enough, in my mind, every one of the items you mentioned would fall under the category of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in my mind. Build more links, write better copy and advertise.
Your original post, at least from what I understood, advocated that a site with a good product shouldn't have to be optimized. I was just attempting to show an example of a site with a good product that hasn't risen to the top of the search engines.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess your time has no value. Nor the $$$ worth of apps you get that come with the Mac that you would have to buy in the Windows World.
Nope, both have value plus my money also has value. That's why I run Linux on a PC.
Would you want to work in a shop that allowed someone to publish that?
If the money was good enough I'd work for Microsoft.
Hell yeah.
Only thing I can't figure. Only guy I know with an iPod has a SMOKIN hot wife. Maybe it's a cover.
Wow, how small do you want your devices to be?
As small as possible.
Have you seen the size of a regular iPod next to the Treo?
Now put both of them next to my Nokia 6610. They are HUGE. I take my phone with me everywhere, 24 hours a day. I refuse to deal with a large bulky piece of equipment.
Sorry if I missed something here, but aren't ALL businesses market driven?
Marketing driven, not market driven. Sure, most businesses want to increase their market share and give the market what it wants. The difference is some companys, like Microsoft, don't do anything unless they can market and sell it. Other companies, like Sun with Java, IBM with much of their R&D and many, many other companies will actually produce products/research for other reasons than direct sales. These products may be released for good PR, to increase the overall market or whatever. Many other industries operate in a similar manner. It's like DMB allowing trading of live recordings. Why do they do this, it doesn't directly make them money...
I think this mentality is why you see so much opposition to FOSS from Microsoft. Gates and Ballmer think they NEED to be paid for everything that comes out of Redmond. The idea that they would give something back to the community is totally foreign to them. As a result their public image is continually tarnished and they are painted evil.
But it was driven by Mircrosoft's recognition that the future was in distributed computing which used standards like XML and SOAP (which was not obvious at the time, even if it is in hindsight), and was not simply marketing-based decision, which made it a perfectly accurate response to the question.
It WAS simply a marketing-based decision. They wanted something to compete with Java and bolster their sales of Visual Studio and Windows. They may have made a good product along the way, but their motivation is ALWAYS to sell more product and get more people to use Windows.
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid." Han Solo, outspoken skeptic of the Force
One of the most mis-featured pages I've ever seen!
No doubt. You would thing Forbes could afford to hire a web designer that doesn't have his head up his ass.
Maybe I should send a resume.
Yes: Commies. :P
And Socialists
That's a very ignorant statement. Hitler...
Hitler wasn't exactly 'non-capitalist'. From wikipedia:
The Nazi's use of socialist rhetoric appealed to disaffection with capitalism while presenting a political and economic model that divested "socialism" of any elements which were dangerous to capitalism, such as the concept of class struggle, "the dictatorship of the proletariat" or worker control of the means of production.
Actually, according to the article, fear of a communist revolution was one of the main reasons Hitler and the Nazi party was allowed to come to power.
Not that he wasn't evil...
If he used it as the webserver for these pictures, I would say the fire department is probably on it's way already.
Or at least the guy making the fries at the local McDonalds.
You do realize that most of those countries actually have national healthcare systems?
Actually I know little about the healthcare in any of these countries. I would assume China has national healthcare, being communist and all. All I know about healthcare in India is the reports of leprosy and meningitis. Our healthcare system may not be great, but at least you don't see much of this.
As far as the Russians, I googled their healthcare system and found this:
The newly restructured Russian Ministry of Health and Social Development has announced modernization of the Mandatory Medical Insurance system in Russia as one of its primary goals. The current Mandatory Medical Insurance system is inadequate and unable to guarantee access to the population not only to quality, but in some cases to basic healthcare treatment.
That's because those programs are a hybrid where the government pays money into the current patchwork private system. It combines worst of both worlds, but it's not the only way to do it.
Sure, there are other ways to run healthcare, but I'm willing to wager that whatever the US Government comes up with will be worse, not better. Actually, come to think of it there is currently a healthcare system the US Government does run right now. Good old Uncle Sam provides healthcare for all of our military people - and I'm sure we've all hear horror stories about them, but I'll go ahead and share one.
I have a relative that married a girl in the US Navy. While on active duty the US government generously provided the 'depo' shot as birth control. What they didn't tell her is they only administer it at half strength to keep costs down - so surprisingly she got pregnant. Why would the US government run a national healthcare system for all of it's citizens any differently?
Unless you can show that no nation besides the USA and a few third-world countries are economically viable, your assertion is proveably false.
Ummm... no. There is no way to determine if a country that is currently socialist would be more economically successful if they were more capitalist. It's all speculation. My point was, and is, that any time the US government gets involved in any system, the system becomes less economically viable. I'm not saying that we couldn't improve our healthcare system, but in this country, I don't think government run healthcare is the answer.
Well, maybe that's because most of the people in places like Germany like it there, whereas leaving India and making twice the money sounds like a really good idea.
The German economy has been weak for the last 10 years. I'm sure if there were viable jobs, we would see German workers here too. I think the point is "making twice the money", although it's probably way more than twice for an Indian or Chinese worker. Hell, if I could move and make twice the money, I'd probably do it.
just about every other developed nation on this planet (and many lesser-developed ones) already have a national healtcare system. Are they all unemployable?
Well, I don't see too many US companies importing talent from most 'developed' nations. Seems like most people are coming from India, China, other asian countries, former USSR and eastern Europe. I don't hear about many programmers being imported from Germany, Great Britain, Canada, Sweden, The Nethernlands and other countries known for their great socialist programs. I definitely don't think the added cost would make us more employable.
Also ignoring that a huge fraction the money going into our current system is wasted on the costs of accounting related to shuffling payments between the multiple middlemen involved in each treatment.
Yeah, this would go away. You think we have beauracratic costs now, wait until we get the US Government involved. Do you know anyone on Medicare or Medicaide? The amount of paperwork is RIDICULOUS. Our Government is not know for it's efficiency anyway, if we get them involved in healthcare there is no way the paperwork waste will go down.
A privatized system is no guarantee of economic prowess.
No, you are absolutely correct, but a government run system is a certain guarantee of a lack of economic prowess.
that FISA can apply to you, if the Intelligence agencies can pull together enough evidence that you are a terrorist, or support terrorists, or a hacker, etc
Thought that was the whole point of the patriot act - they don't need 'evidence'. They can use all of these means to investigate you, just in case you might be a terrorist, spy, jaywalker, whatever....
America needs to heal its society, not crush all opposition.
Exactly - couldn't have said it better myself.
What would it matter if they stood up? They'd just be voted out of office next time around and replaced with the people they oppose. Too much money is being thrown around for a voice or a thought to matter.
Seems to me this is the whole problem with the Democratic party right now. If they would get together and come out against with war, all the spending, all the civil rights violations, etc... they might actually differentiate themselves from the Republicans. Right now, the only two issues they are willing to stand up for are gay marriage and abortion - neither of these issues are going to win over the 'average' American. I would think it would be much easier to sell a 'We want to bring your sons and daughters home safe' platform than a 'We want to make sure Bill and Jim can get married' platform.
I already have to have my rights violated to leave the state by PLANE OR BOAT!
You could swim.
That's why they shouldn't be allowed to tack on extra 'crap' like this or pork.
Absolutely, if there's one government reform I would like to see, I would like to see Congress put a stop to this. Let's vote on one thing at a time.
While it has its problems, it is not 100% bad.
Ummm.... which part of it is not bad? OK, here's an easier question, which part of it would have stopped the 9/11 attacks?
We definitly need something in place
We have something in place, it's called the Constitution. What we need is for the law enforcement and intelligence communities to do their JOB within the restrictions laid out by the Constitution for protection of our freedoms. If this requires more funding and more people that's fine, lets give it to them, but let's not circumvent our freedoms just to make someone's job a little easier.
Expiration dates? Big deal. Congress could revoke or modify the laws at any time irregardless of expiration date.
Perhaps, but it seems to be more difficult to get Congress to repeal a law than it does to just let it die. Look at the assault rifle ban. It wasn't repeales, it expired and wasn't renewed. If Congress didn't like it, why didn't they repeal it before it expired???
I wouldn't suggest that we get rid of healthcare benefits, but our government needs to address these costs.
...when it comes to labor, it is somehow unfair that people get rewarded in a capitalistic fashion, so Congress increased hiring of foreigners and sped up the offshoring of technology.
Of course the only way for the government to address those costs is to raise taxes, which doesn't solve the problem. Actually it probably makes it worse, people like you and me would get hit hardest by taxes in a national healthcare system making us even less employable. The only other way out I see is for the government to regulate the industry, setting caps on the amounts doctors can make. Of course, it works for the NFL...
Not that I agree with it, but I think some of the thinking about keeping the labor cheap was to continue to stimulate the economy. If some of the high paying technical jobs had to suffer to keep the stock market high and economic growth going, Congress thought that was an acceptable tradeoff. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked. In fact, I would argue that it may have helped fuel the crash. If the labor market had not been held down by Congress in the late '90s it might have become cost prohibitive to keep all those dot coms going at the time, slowing the economy and preventing the bubble.
That's because it hurts a lot.
You just need more lubrication.
One more thing: iKE is a bad name. If you punch iKE into Google, you get everything except your software. That's a bad place to start from. Try to develop a more unique name. It will help with customer brand recognition, ensure that you don't step on any trademarks, and generally make it easier for your customers to connect with you.
Yes, that is a problem with the iKE name. Unfortunately we have lots of time and money invested in it, and can't leave it completely. OTOH, our current marketing push is for a site called GetMyWorkDoneFaster that promotes the product as providing actual targeted solutions, rather than a generic workflow collaboration software.
1. I don't see your software in the advertised links on the right of the Google results. Why not?
Internal reasons - we were advertising, but have changed direction. Also, they keywords we were targeting are VERY expensive. Much more cost effective to optimize our natural search results.
2. This tells me you guys aren't trying very hard. Not a single link from a press release, a software site like Tucows, a blog, SOMETHING. You have to talk about your product!
3. This tells me the same thing as #2. You have to talk about your product!!! There are tons of "announce" newsgroups specifically for you to announce your product! Use them! They'll get picked up by websites that relay this info, and indexed by Google.
Good points, although there are links out there that Google hasn't picked up.
4. Have you added your URL to the DMOZ directory? Why not? DMOZ will get picked up and replicated by hundreds of sites!
Actually we did, months ago, but last I checked the DMOZ editors had not added a link yet. Seems like DMOZ is incredibly slow.
5. In the above post, you mentioned "Groove" 4 times, and iKE 3 times. How will people trust your product if you pound into their heads that it's just like this other product?
My post was mostly for comparison with a particular product. Our regular marketing doesn't compare iKE with any particular product.
6. Have you asked any magazines or bloggers to review your software? Why not?
Again, a good idea.
In short, the problem is not your website. Your problem is that you need to advertise.
Interestingly enough, in my mind, every one of the items you mentioned would fall under the category of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in my mind. Build more links, write better copy and advertise.
Your original post, at least from what I understood, advocated that a site with a good product shouldn't have to be optimized. I was just attempting to show an example of a site with a good product that hasn't risen to the top of the search engines.