I’ve been using an Apple MacBook Pro for a little more than 3 months now. Although I had initially written a quick review one week after receiving it, I felt I had to share with potential buyers my feelings about this laptop.

First of all, here’s my config (pretty standard): 17′ glossy, RAM 2 Gbytes, CPU: Intel Core Duo I, Hard drive: 120 Gbytes.

Positive points in my MacBook Pro experience:

• it’s BEAUTIFUL – frankly, it’s a real pleasure to open my laptop case and start working on it. I felt excited the same way every time I saw it since the very first day.
• Takes no more than 30 seconds to boot
• Exposé is really a tool that enhances your productivity whilst working in a multi-application environment
• Apple OS X is a pretty handy environment. When I write handy, I mean user-friendly. The design of the layout is beautiful (nice icons, animations, etc.) and it’s a real drag-and-drop interface
• Apple software’s extremely easy to use: all iMovie, Photo Booth, iWeb, iPhoto, etc. are nice little apps to have. Update 10:25am same day: For more advice on which applications to use, check out this post on my friend Vincent’s blog right here.
• The autonomy is everything but ridiculous: switching off Bluetooth and Airport and using everyday software like Office or Firefox, you may well reach the 3 hour waters. But you’ll have to keep browsing the Internet or using MS Word since even hacking code on any IDE or listening to music will suck your batteries pretty quickly
• Multimedia: running or burning a DVD on a Macbook Pro is like piece of cake; listening to music is also pretty natural. The remote control provided with the laptop ensures the MacBook Pro is a multimedia machine, before being a work station. Apple indeed is a multimedia company
• No virus? Let’s say very few viruses. Norton watches!
• In terms of software availability, I’ve always found equivalents to what exists in the PC world – I had to pay sometimes (open source software released later in general), but overall I never felt frustrated until recently (see Negative points)
• Connectivity: having all plugs and connectors on the sides rather than behind the screen is very handy and one more proof that Apple cares about the user experience.

Negative experiences I went through using my MacBook Pro:

• The heat: Apple not handling this real issue really is not understandable. The first hour is okay, the second hour is..still okay, but then, the heat on your hands starts to be un-bearable. It’s just HOT! See ‘How to fry an egg on a MacBook Pro’ here
• 17″ is very comfortable, but if I had to do it again, I’d probably choose the 15″ screen. Still glossy. The laptop isn’t really light nor is it open when attending a boring lecture or so. In other words, it’s a bit too big for me. But that’s very personal
• 120 Gbytes of hard drive is ridiculously low. It’s a JOKE. Because of this major constraint, I have to delete all useless or not-so-useful-in-the-short-term-files every single fucking day
• I cannot read all movie files I want. For instance, the .wmv codec isn’t free so I’ve never watched any .wmv movie on my MacBook Pro so far (I switch to my old laptop)
• The autonomy when watching a movie (down to 1 hr. 10), when using Parallels to run Kubuntu or Vista (down from close to 3 hours to 1 hr. 30 min. or so), or doing both (1 hr.) – and since I run Vista at least half of my time…
• MS Office developed for PPC CPUs, not Intel Core Duo – so many issues come up when using macros as my Macbook Pro runs an Intel Core Duo. The worse bit has to do with Powerpoint: sharing files is a nightmare as .ppt presentations don’t appear the same on other computers than on mine. Really a nightmare…I am to sleep in front of Microsoft’s warehouse when I hear that Microsoft Office 2008 is to be released
• No webcam support on MSN Messenger – so I use MSN Live on Vista – but then, because of the virtual machine (I use Parallels, which isn’t bad at all), it’s slower.
• The need for an adapter to plug the laptop to the projector; needless to say, I tend to forget it all the time
• Slow to refill the battery when plugged. From 0% to 100%, it takes about 3 hours!
• Keyboard: pain in the ass when using Vista (the Apple keyboard isn’t organized the same way; writing a mere ‘@’ on an Apple keyboard in Windows is really a pain in the ass) – why doesn’t Steve Jobs decide to go for the standard keyboard after all??? It would actually benefit to Apple Inc., not Microsoft, as more people would be eager to switch to Mac
• No 3D on Vista. The Parallels virtual machine doesn’t enable my nVidia video card. So I run Vista, it’s great, but I still haven’t had the pleasure to enjoy 3D features on it.
• No SD card plug, not cool – used to have it on good old HP nx7000 and found it great to transfer data from my digital camera
• No Visual Studio. Actually, even though I have 2 Gbytes of RAM, running Mac OS X + Entourage (the equivalent of MS Outlook for Mac) + Windows Vista + Visual Studio makes my computer start digging its crave; and I’m not even mentioning the Apple keyboard issue
• No Orange PC Card 3G/Edge to access the Internet from anywhere on the French territory
• The wireless antenna isn’t powerful at all, which means you have to stay close to the router – which harms your liberty in a way

This review won’t be static. I’m planning to update everytime I feel, for a reason or another, happy or not about my MacBook Pro.

Last thing: believe it or not, I’m planning to buy a PC on top of this Apple laptop when I can afford it. As I’ll be joining Microsoft, I really need to know every bit of Microsoft software – and since virtual machines aren’t yet so great + native multi-OS launch Apple Bootcamp is still in Beta + 120 Gbytes of hardware makes of me an economical sort of man with installing new software, I feel a little frustrated by a number of things (eg Orange PC Card 3D/Edge & Visual Studio & Office layouts look different on PCs).

Still, the design of my MacBook Pro makes me enjoy my laptop a lot! Working on a beautiful product rather than on a black plastic matchbox makes a difference, really. Addendum: To go further, I strongly Ed The Editor’s hilarious post here.

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There used to be a time when people were trying to reproduce at home the computer environment that was available at work. Office PCs were more powerful, had software that fulfilled all sorts of needs, and access to broadband Internet at no cost.

This era has long been over. Nowadays, most people drive a Porsche at home and a Skoda at the office. Back in New York City a year ago, where I was working as a financial auditor, I was granted with a crappy old Dell laptop that took about 7 minutes to boot and a decade or so to launch the accounting and auditing software we used. The end result that was I was always carrying around the United States 2 laptops: my professional laptop, and my personal one – to at least do my personal stuff and even process my audit reports in decent conditions at night. No so handy a situation…Anyways, looking back, no matter the PC, I took part of the audit process 17 different companies in 8 different States in America. Not bad, is it?

Let’s move back to the topics that interests us most here: home vs. office.

The Web 2.0 (see my definition of Web 2.0 here) used to a consumer-only buzzword until recently. But employees have been pushing hard to take it to the next level: the workplace.

Here’s a sample of 4, oops, 5 (see below) recent initiatives aiming at linking enterprise software with Web 2.0:

• Microsoft Dynamics now available in ASP mode: not only is the new release of Dynamics fully integrated with Vista and Office 2007, you may also develop business mash-ups between Office & Dynamics fully adapting to your specific business needs, or even 100% Web 2.0 apps like Windows Live Local integrating within vertical Dynamics solutions. Dynamics AX 4.0 integrated an excellent RSS feeder and uses the AIF web services framework, and, last but not least, CRM web service APIs allow for independent developments on CRM SharePoint.

• Google Apps, Premium Edition: everybody’s been writing about Google Apps recently. Many people miss the point. I’m certain it’s a great tool, but most companies can’t yet afford to use their software and store their data online as many Internet service provider networks aren’t yet fully reliable. I’m sure, as for most of the tools going at from Google Labs, that Google Apps is a good mix of collaborative tools, spreadsheet and word processor. However, I can’t see Google Apps, and even the Premium Edition of it, target anything else than small businesses (like SoHo workers: Small Office, Home Office) – making it compete mostly with free fat client software suite Open Office, the online version of MS Office and several tools available here and there on the Internet. 2 conclusions to be drawn: 1) Great move from Google, their SaaS portfolio is getting everyday more consistent and broad in terms of functional scope; 2) despite a rather unclear positioning, never underestimate Google, there should be more to come, possibly targeting more seriously the key-account market.

• Cognos buying out Celequest in Jan 2007: Celequest is a well-known Software as a Service company based in Redwood City, California. The Canadian software company aims at integrating into its business intelligence solutions features like the live SAP or SalesForce service-oriented dashboards using Ajax.

• Oracle’s Web Center Suite: WebCenter Suite enables Java developers to build Web 2.0 plug-ins on top of its traditional enterprise software Web 2.0 features such as wikis, blogs, instant messengers and search tools. This market is sort of booming, with excellent self-standing solutions appearing on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean: US company eTouch Systems offering online collaborative tools mainly based on wikis, and French promising start up BlueKiwi which has developed a fat client intra-organization knowledge management environment built on a blogging platform.

• IBM (update Friday, March 2nd 2007): sorry, how could I forget IBM’s enterprise networking initiative? Named LotusConnections, this enterprise social software suite allows for mapping employee profiles, tagging and common interest linking, bookmark sharing tools based from IBM Research’s famous Dogear, and last but not least, private blog rooms of course.

This is only the beginning of the Enterprise solutions 2.0 trend. I didn’t mention any open source software here, but I heard somewhere SugarCRM has also been getting ready for the battle.

More on enterprise 2.0 soon. In the meantime, help me understand why enterprise software stocks are trading so low if they’re to benefit from the growth of the Web 2.0 market.

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“Message from Jeremy: To all Tech IT Easy readers, who could obviously not necessarily remember the initial announcement, I have invited my friend Steve to help me try to provide you, dear readership, with everyday better technology insights. Steve’s mission statement is that there’s no mission statement: what matters most here is to raise the right issues on underlying market trends, bringing to light new software, Internet services and consumer electronic devices. Steve, the floor is yours…”

…tonight, I’m going to offer a little present for all my friends from France, my dear country of birth.

Germany has always been a kind of nemesis for us. Not to mention a couple of wars in the past century, France’s defeat in World Cup semi-finals in 1986 remains a memorable humiliation for Frenchmen.

We know that we are quite prone to lament on our alleged shortcomings when it comes to IT. Actually I have posted something in that direction myself recently : it is true that France lags far behind the US. Nonetheless, I have been quite struck in the past few months about a bunch of data comparing France and Germany, indicating that France was actually way more advanced in terms of market penetration for high-band connections (thanks to a tougher competition and a lighter regulation, my dear socialist friends). It is true that this doesn’t really mean that French are less reluctant than their German counterparts to participate to the Web 2.0 phenomenon. After all, most of our Internet “boxes” are purchased by regular families trying to cut their phone bills rather than by geeks.

So, in order to understand this more clearly I have created my own homemade indicator: the number of pages on Wikipedia.

Last July, while being bored during my internship spared time (in a remarkable strategy consultancy that I definitely recommend, Advention Business Partners), I had calculated that the number of pages in French in Wikipedia (in Wikipedia.fr, of course) represented around 25% of the English pages  (Wikipedia.com) and 75%  of the German pages (Wikipedia.de). Logical, since French speaking people (112m) are slightly less numerous than German-speaking folks (125m) ? Let’s see.

During the past two months, I have continued keeping records of these statistics. Here is the good news:

             As you may see, not only have we jumped from 75% to 80% in more or less 6 months, but the ratio of French pages is constantly improving. Actually, we are gaining around 1% per month. Even if the graph seems pretty flat, just consider that it means than in only one month, there has been a difference in the number of new entries of 5000 pages in favour of Wikipedia.fr. If this trend continues undisturbed, Wikipedia’s French pages will outnumber the German ones by Fall/Winter 2008.

OK, this indicator might seem definitely lousy, inasmuch as it doesn’t take into account any qualitative aspects : accuracy, completeness of pages, etc… However, I believe that it is yet another (modest) element to demonstrate that there is no fate for IT-illiteracy in any country. People are eager to communicate, and developing Internet connections is not so costly if fair competition conditions are guaranteed. As a consequence, I do not believe in an everlasting “digital divide”.

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I’m turning 24 today.

Best birthday present you may do me: recommend a software or Internet service that will help me increase my productivity or getting organized better. Ideally, I wouldn’t know this software or service yet.

Many thanks.

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What’s wrong with the Zune? To me, there’s nothing wrong with the Zune: it sells fairly well and customer feedbacks are positive.

However, I’ve been reading many articles and blogposts saying the Zune is a crappy product devised by a company that sucks at launching products. Namely, Microsoft.

True, Apple Inc. does a fantastic job at teasing consumers and Steve Jobs is an amazing speaker. True, Google masters viral product growth plans (need referees to join Gmail; there used to be a 3-month waiting line to get a Google Analytics account; etc. – and these 2 products are great). True, Microsoft isn’t so ’sexy’ a brand anymore after all. But who cares apart from New York yuppies? Microsoft’s genius has been in implementing its vision in an extremely consistent and yet ambitious way, building an ecosystem of top-tier companies only, and knowing what it takes to empower unknown innovations into worldwide technology standards.

When it comes to winning, there’s no such company as Microsoft.

Here’s a saying I love by Mahatma Gandi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”.

Take a look at Microsoft’s history: MS Dos, MS Excel (vs. Lotus 1-2-3), Windows NT, the XBox (which has conquered a 40% market share!), and soon, the Zune.

Time will tell if I’m correct or wrong.

Meanwhile, stay zuned.

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Blogging is about sharing. I spend, nope, invest time blogging everyday. Which means I try more or less every single day (& not always achieve, I acknowledge this) to come up with an interesting analysis or something to say that I believe is somewhat original. And when I don’t have the time or will to write, I browse YouTube, MétaCafé or DailyMotion in search for a funny, tech-related video. On the same side as me stand all active readers and semi active readers (readers who left at least one comment; thank you, and I mean thank you). These are frequently people I don’t even know (some are also friends), who with I feel honored to share a common passion, and who don’t hesitate to leave a value-creating comment whenever they feel they have something to correct / add / clarify / challenge / answer / offer / say / pretend / claim / bash. On my side also stand other bloggers. They read my blog, I read their blog. Commenting is rather sporadical, but we know we scan each others in quest for fun or learning. Bloggers watching each other also helps knowing each other better: conversation topics come quicker during real life meetings, and you know who with you’ll get along well in a wink.

Unfortunately (but you’ll help me change this ), there’s also an other side to the fence. People who don’t blog (and I respect that, blogging is an addictive pain in the ass that cannot match all personalities), and don’t feel like sharing although they would’ve hell a lot things to say. These people read blogs but never left a comment, are glad to take but unwilling to give back. I believe things could be a lot better. I know I know some of you. I’m often told “Hey Jeremy, you know what? I’m a big fan of your blog, I read it everyday”. My answer often is: “then why don’t you start a conversation, why don’t you leave comments?” I’m sure you would have a lot to bring, a lot! I’m a rather unknown blogger, not a rock star, & I don’t blog for fame or traffic or money or to be read by people who would think “hey, smart guy!” (yep, you would definitely be overestimating the depth of my thoughts) or say “hey, cool idea, I should come over here more often to take away more from this blog”. I feel honoured to have you onbard, but my motivation to blog and keep blogging is somewhat not correlated with your interests. And there should be a way to align our interests (we do have common interests or you wouldn’t read Tech IT Easy at all).

I see blogging as a learning experience, as everything I undertake in life. I share, you share. We share, together. If I say something dumb, it means I think dumb and I could get better through being challenged and corrected as in the comments after I hacked my first “Hello World” on Ruby on Rails showing I didn’t quite get it. I’m here to be challenged and learn by doing things. I don’t blog to be judged or scanned. I blog to exchange with/ discuss / argue with / meet people who with I can share and from who I can learn.

I see blogging as a sharing tool, not as a shop window. I’m not selling any product or expertise and don’t plan to whatsoever. For those too shy to leave a comment, I’m available to discuss any topic through Skype, MSN Messenger, e-mails and over coffee. Let’s make of this blog a place where you’ll give as much as you take. I’m sure we’re not even using 10% of what blogging may offer in terms of social interactions so I encourage you to participate in this amazing multilateral sharing adventure.

For those sitting on the fence, your call. I’m sure you’ll make the right decision when working on changing rather passive habits into more people-oriented ones. Thank you in advance.

Sorry for publishing such a post, but I really mean what I’ve written here. My gift: here’s one of Paco de Lucia, John McLaughlin and Al di Meola’s best pieces, Mediterranean Sundance.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEZrB_FDw4c]

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“Message from Jeremy: To all Tech IT Easy readers, who could obviously not necessarily remember the initial announcement, I have invited my friend Steve to help me try to provide you, dear readership, with everyday better technology insights. Steve’s mission statement is that there’s no mission statement: what matters most here is to raise the right issues on underlying market trends, bringing to light new software, Internet services and consumer electronic devices. Steve, the floor is yours…”

Yes, it will.

Here is a short demo of an innovative project developed at NYU’s Department of Computer Science (requires Quicktime). I find it quite impressive, but wait for what’s next !

As perfectly described by NYU’s consultant Jeff Han,”multi-touch sensing enables a user to interact with a system with more than one finger at a time, as in chording and bi-manual operations. Such sensing devices are inherently also able to accommodate multiple users simultaneously, which is especially useful for larger interaction scenarios such as interactive walls and tabletops. “

Although the first researches started way back in 1982, at the University of Toronto, multitouch has been mostly instigated by Apple (see the now legendary iPhone), and Quantum. FingerWorks, a startup which has pioneered the technology, was bought recently by the latter while the former is actually suing Apple for an alleged patent infringement on this very technology.

As usual, business-related bickerings must not hide the essential thing: this is really going to change our digital lives. In 1984, the introduction of graphical interfaces by Apple – courtesy of Xerox -, soon to be copied by Microsoft, also launched a controversial round of legal disputes, features-copying, etc… But in the end, everybody benefitted from this innovation and nowadays one cannot imagine a decent PC controlled only with a command line (of course, Unix users are alive and kicking, but even the wide majority of them always use some kind of graphical interface most of the time, right ?)

I am really confident about the future of multitouch. Not only does this allows us to zoom easily on a map with two fingers, but we will also benefit from being able to manipulate various tools, windows, and icons at the same time. Of course, the OS, which his accustomed to prioritizing tasks (processes, daemons, call them whatever you like) might find this quite uncomfortable. And it might seem somehow brain-exhausting to open a window with one finger while dragging an icon on it with the other hand: it’s like playing piano with two hands rather than one, something I personnally never achieved in 22 years despite huge efforts. Yet I am quite sure that with a bit of practice, multitouch will turn up very practical. And anyway, the next generation will have no trouble using such tools when they are fully generalized, and once again diehards geeks will be humiliated by their 8-year old brother (remember the advent of the Web ?).

Gains of productivity will surely be quite interesting….but imagine adding on top of this voice recognition: won’t all these technologies end up IN A TOTAL MESS ?

What do you think ?

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At last some discernement about who might be Dark Vador and who could be Luke Skywalker – although it’s not a metaphore I like so much. No debate about who’s Yoda though: Commodore 64, for sure. May it rest in peace.  One of the best animation featuring Steve Jobs & Bill Gates (or Mac & PCs, put it that way) I’ve watched in a long, long time.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoJeEZoFAx4]

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Ruby on Rails has been a buzz word for a while amongst code hacker circles. Right.

However I recently noticed (eg finalist at the Technology of the Year 2007 contest by developer.com Gamelan) that the hype was getting more and more professional.

Ruby on Rails is a database-driven web application development framework cherished by many independent programmers, computer science nerds and IT professionals hacking code at night from home. It seems, at least to me, that Ruby on Rails is now starting to be considered as a serious option within IT service companies and software publishers.

On Ruby’s shortcomings first:

- few web hosting companies support Ruby. Ruby indeed is interpreted on the server itself by a program named Rails, and unlike .Net or Apache (php, Java), it’s Rails isn’t really a standard yet.

- Unlike Java or .Net, Ruby isn’t supported by any major technology company. Ruby’s genuine independence may damper market adoption (no push) and cause crucial features (see next point) to be available at a delay.

- Crucial features like packaging (to my knowledge, not yet possible to build a setup file to automatize program installation) or Excel files manupulation aren’t yet available to the developer community. Catalogue extensions are under the responsiblity of..nobody. Independent passionate people take care of new developments, and since Ruby on Rails is still young, one may consider this technology to be as of today immature.

On Ruby’s advantages then:

- From a user view point, and unlike Flash or javascript and therefore Ajax, there’s no issue about Ruby applications form to differ from one browser to another – thanks to Rails interpreting the code in Ruby. In other words, Ruby web developments are compatible with all browsers and the app will always display.

- A steep learning curve: Indeed, Ruby is simple to learn and use (a couple tutorials will do).

- Productivity: the bulk of developers taking to Ruby quickly start to evangelize the language. This is a fact. . helps optimizes development of web applications with back-end databases through a crystal-clear code structure pattern: controllers, the model and HMI are well separated in the development environment. An app hacked in Ruby is very likely to be much (roughly between 15% and 30%, but it all depends on the talent of the developer behind it) shorter than the same app devised in php or Java (in my opinion the .Net framework in general and Visual Studio in particular really enhances productivity as well).

- Ruby code is highly readable, even for non geeks.

My call on Ruby on Rails: as more and more IT service companies use it, especially in the US where Ruby devs have been mushrooming, and thanks to an operational set of interfaces with all major databases (Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, MySQL, etc.), I believe Ruby will become a mainstream language for Web 2.0 and SaaS web applications requiring permanent access to relational databases pretty soon. When? I’d say within one year, the time for trainings to spread out and business clients to become less picky with yet immature development frameworks.

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I have a hard time making up my mind on which software stock could represent an interesting investment opportunity. The recent world stockmarket rally has convinced me to sell stocks I was holding to for quite a while (like Apple Inc.). I spent a quarter of it in booking my next vacations, another quarter for a birthday present to someone I love, and I hold the other half in my current account.

I’m looking for one or two companies with strong fundamentals (few or no debts, strong FCF generation, global presence, growing market, good client feedback on main products, consistent product portfolio, capacity to build win-win partnerships within its own industry, attention-raising product pipeline as I am to invest in the long-run ie more or less 4 years, managers who have become managers through internal promotions, growth strategy: I’m keener to invest on companies who grow organically rather than through repeat M&As – so no Oracle for me thanks, reasonable cash compensation to CEO – so no Business Objects for me thanks).

So, I started scanning for a company that has good value for money, looking at ratios over time and all (one ratio considered for one single year has very little meaning, you should look at the forecast curve to get a good grasp of market trends so don’t consider the present table for a decision making purpose – it’s just a tool aimed at supporting a demonstration). I have compiled this little table that shows that in 2007, Web 2.0 stocks are to be twice as expensive as enterprise software! Obviously, if you consider 2008 and 2009 PER or a PEG (price over earnings to growth, quite a relevant metric when considering Internet companies) ratio, the gap becomes sort of less significant – but I wanted to shock in order to make my point.

And my point is that enterprise software companies are not so expensive after all. The recent stockmarket rally came to prove that big caps have lots of cash to spend, & IT spendings in 2007 look very promising indeed. My call is that 2007 will be a historical vintage in the history of B-to-B software.

Furthermore, the market has become quite predictable, margins are pretty high as in the entire software industry, clients have cash to invest, and market demand is identified: basically all big accounts have had finance and HR modules installed. So the focus for software vendors will be on integrating business intelligence better, investing in more flexible CRM systems (supply chain systems as soon as there’s a market downturn). I should also mention 2 more things: 1) the relative affordability of financial software vendors although market finance is in desperate need for competitive advantage-granting solutions; 2) the hot and getting hotter SME market where Sage, SAP, Oracle & Microsoft (with Microsoft Dynamics) and many other ISVs have been at loggerheads.

I haven’t made up my mind yet, but I’m thinking of CEGID (very strong on the growing European SME market) and Baidu (the number one search engine in China – but I still have to figure out which broker allows trading with China). What do you think?

Disclaimer: as this post is about to be published, I’m an unsignificant stockholder at Boursorama, Microsoft Corp., SAP & Dassault Systèmes – all 4 companies are mentioned in this note.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekwhWjnhIYM]

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Semantic algorithms are at dawn, and will revolutionize the way we, human beings, browse the web, and organize information. Type in the Google search bar a question like “who is the President of the United States of America?”, and you get the right answer on top. Few search engines provide such a feature. This however only works with sort of dumb questions, but many research centers and companies have actually been investigating thoroughly into semantics to help democratize the technology. One may imagine all the potential applications of smart answers given by search engines.

The Google Brain below is a mock-app that used to buzz on YouTube about 6 months. I had bookmarked it and forgot it. Have a look at how search engines will combine computerized Yahoo! Answers and Kelkoo-like price comparison functions in a near (?) future. Btw, one may get an insight of how a company like Google will extend its cash generation streams: on top of online advertising, Google is likely to take a commission based on the sales generated by its semantic search engine.

Last thing: it might be Google who implements semantic algorithmics first, or not. There is still room in the search engine industry for a disruptive new entrant. Low switching barrier and cost from one search tool to another is Google’s Achille’s heel  in my humble opinion.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=QKRSViYBkso&mode=related&search=]

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Today, I’d like to tell you about a new freeware game site, which currently has the project name CWF . I think Jeremy has couple of times told that he really much enjoyed good old DOS games and if you also loved those games, this might be a community for you. CWF is not really about just old games, but the surprisingly active indie freeware scene of today. Here’s our mission statement:

The site is about quality freeware games, with a big line under quality. We try to have a large stock of games that are of such high entertainment-value that you won’t regret your download, and will probably be looking for a sequel to it after playing. The site is meant to be for the members and not just for the crew. A joint effort all around. Members are able to work for the site, and suggest things/features/games/etc. to make their mark on how it will work and how it will look.

The site is a quality freeware games site. This means that we offer games of a validated good quality. The games are either proven freeware or we have special permission from developer to have it hosted on this site. You will not find freeware tools for download on this site, unless they are used for purposes of this site.

We are not a place of abandonware, and only have legal content on the site.

However we do take pride in trying to make some of the old classics into freeware. If you remember playing a game 15 years ago and dont know where to get it anymore unless you want to break copyright laws and get it at an abandonware site, then this is the place for you. Tell us which game you are looking for, and we will see if we can get permission to host the game on this site. We call that specific project Abandonware to Freeware (Very original – we know).

The sites proudest project is to help developers make more and better quality games.

We want to assist the “indie” (independent) developers in getting more attention to their games. This also means that we will have awards from time to time giving praise to the best indie developers. There will be prizes.

You can sign up as a helper in the subforum Developer Help Project.

It has been really interesting to be part of this effort, to see how a group of volunteers try build something with minimal budget and resources. When we get this thing out of the door, I might write a bit about our development as a whole. Yes, my reasons to write about this site weren’t only to tell you about how great things will be, but also to ask you, dear readers, if any of you would be interested, and have time and skills or resources, to help our effort. Currently our coders are working really hard and any help with that is always needed. But, what I, as a business guy, think we are in most dire need of is visual identity. What our core team right now shares is the love of old/freeware games and we have a vision what we want to be, but we really lack someone with the skills to realize the design for that vision. To say it simply, our web presence sucks right now. If you or someone you know, would be interested, please contact me at kari <dot> silvennoinen [at] yahoo (dot) com or go to the forums!

Like many others, we also tried to get some money to cover hosting etc. by using Google Ads. Well, that didn’t work. So we joined Project Wonderful , which truly is a wonderful advertisement network. I’ll write a post about just Project Wonderful and how I think it has a lot of potential later on. It has really worked for us and probably for many others too.

But now, if you love old games and want to join a community of like-minded people, go now to CWF and join! Our main emphasis is right now to establish our forums and get our game catalog up and running. Write reviews, join our discussions, … , who knows, even help our development. We’re pretty sure you’ll enjoy your stay!

Like you had anything else to do on this nice Sunday…

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I owe a lot to the song entitled ‘Do the Devil’ by East Coast band The Amazing Royal Crown. I used to wake up listening to ‘Do the Devil’ during HEC competitive exams back in Spring 2003, and trust me this energizing music accounts for 95% of me succeeding: I was arriving at the exam room feeling like Rocky Balboa on the alley to the ring.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=5nsWrWA1gWc&mode=related&search=]

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I love free software. I believe free software (disclaimer: the two terms free software and open source mixed on purpose in this article although I acknowledge the 2 philosophies are different, and yet complementaries - I might write a post about the differences between the 2 schools of thought quite soon) has a positive impact on:

• innovation (anyone can contribute, so the brain pool is much larger than in any corporation)
• shaping the remote collaborative work tools of tomorrow and intercultural communication (people from everywhere around the globe work on the same project, using the same tools, commenting their code and building a community)
• piracy (instead of cracking a serial number, people will look for the equivalent free software)
• training more software developers (indeed, software development tools are free so developers are more incentivised to at least try these tools)
• the software industry in general as all industry players take this trend seriously, and either have built a strategy out of the free software trend (eg IBM promoting J2EE; and more genuinely, Sun, which has free software crypted in its DNA), or use it as a benchmark to improve their products (eg SugarCRM, Centric CRM or vTiger CRM vs. Oracle Siebel or SalesForce; Firefox or Opera vs. MSIE7; etc.). It also happens everyday that software developers contribute and delve into the code of an open source software hoping to come up with new ideas for the proprietary code of the company (s)he’s working for.

Anyways, as far as I see it, there are many articulate (ie based on FACTS) ways to support free software. What I can’t stand is people who claim things without any supporting fact. Why systematically oppose regular corporations patenting and licensing their work, and free software initiatives? Many private ventures make money out of the work of hundred thousands of unknown and unpaid developers, why would RedHat be less sort of evil than Oracle, Microsoft or Google? At least, Google, Microsoft and Oracle do pay (and pay well) their software developers for the good job they do everyday.

Anyways, although I love free software, I hate free assertions, speeches not grounded with facts. Hugo Chávez, the President of Venezuela, was one of the last persons on Earth I would’ve wanted to go and have a beer with. Now that I watched that video, I really want to go for a beer with him to question him about what free software actually is. I’m sure the guy can’t even quote one piece of software or check his own e-mail (assuming he’s got one). The following speech is one of the dumbest I’ve ever heard. Enjoy!

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=G3y3Ce4kjto]

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