Eclipse Takes the Lead

Two years ago I was complaining about how heavy IDEs are. Not sure if any of Eclipse contributors read my blog, but it looks like Eclipse is taking the lead in this area. The Eclipse Foundation readies a browser-based IDE.

While this is still a baby step targeting only HTML and JavaScript development, it is in the right direction. While to my knowledge Eclipse will become the first browser-based IDE, it is not the first web-based development tool. Yahoo Pipes and content management systems are just a couple of examples. If you know other good examples, please let me know.

This is what I would like to see next.

Real Example of Collaboration in Google Wave

Even though Google Wave has not left Google Labs yet, I came across a real good example of using it for collaboration. The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) invites to join its Waves.

Social Networking + Cloud Computing = …

This news is more than two months old, but I found it noteworthy. Back in March Microsoft moved its suite of Office applications into the cloud. That was a prerequisite of the following step. In April a Microsoft lab cross-pollinated Facebook and Microsoft Office, thus allowing to use social networking for collaboration on Microsoft Office documents.  Well, this is more than one year after Google released its Facebook application for Google Docs. Nonetheless, this is a brilliant application of social networking besides sharing photos, posting statuses, and so on. I want to see a software development application on Facebook next!

It’s automation! HP job cuts point to shifting IT skills

HP officials have repeatedly said that automation, not lower labor costs, are the key to increasing margins.

“As we look back over the last five to 10 years, most of the activity in the services organizations as a broad industry statement was focused on the location of jobs, geographic locations of jobs and a lot on labor arbitrage,” said Anne Livermore, the executive vice president of HP’s Enterprise Business, in an HP transcript of Tuesday’s investor call.

“We think the next five to 10 years is all going to be about who can best use technology to automate the delivery of services and that no company is in a better position than HP given our technology leadership to use technology to automate the delivery of services,” said Livermore

More here.

It’s a Blow for Java Community!

It is an old news, but I could not believe my eyes when I read it. James Gosling left Oracle and it looks like it was not very peaceful. The disagreement came up over the JCP process. I am really concerned about the future of GlassFish, not to mention OpenESB and other projects. Even more troubling as Gosling said that “lots of talented folks leaving and trying to figure out what to do next in their lives”. Personally, I take this news as there will be less open-source development. Although things got a little bit softened, but nonetheless, Java would be stronger with Gosling working at Oracle.I wish him the best.

JDK is open-sourced, but there should be an efficient governance process with multiple sponsors similar to the Eclipse Foundation. But having multiple JDKs from different vendors, I do not see much support for a single platform. I think more likely Java will start forking into multiple dialects, similar to C. I would be happy to be wrong, but time will tell.

How to Lose a Job

I recognize that the subject is very controversial, especially after the April unemployment report got released with “alarming” numbers showing that the US national unemployment rate is at 9.9%. But this post is about what one should be aware of so he/she does not join those who are desperately looking for a job. Hopefully, it will also help those who is looking for job.

I will leave obvious things not related to competition per se (e.g. inappropriate behavior).

1. Poor performance. This sounds very straightforward at the first glance. It is very broad and can be applied to organizations as well. For example, someone works very efficiently and produces a product that no one needs. This example falls also into this category.
2. Division of Labor. It comes in different forms. For example, outsourcing for services, build vs. buy for products, etc. In the first case, if the job is not directly related to the primary business, it is likely it will be outsourced. In the second case, if you create/develop a product, that helps the primary business, but is similar to existing ones, the chances are very high that the product available on the market will replace your product sooner or later (this is known as the threat of substitute products or services in Michael Porter’s five competitive forces). The only viable alternative in this case is to spin off that product, but one should be aware of consequences of direct completion (in essence, this is a move from one Michael Porter’s forces to another – competitive rivalry). Speaking of outsourcing abroad, there is some temptation to protect the local job market, but doing so we would get some relief at the cost of our future. But Murray Rothbard put it in a more elegant way (see Myth 10).
3. Automation. Even though this is one of forms of division of labor, I decided to list it separately. Humans started to lose badly to machines. There is an opinion that unemployment in early 2000s was caused more by automation rather than outsourcing. So if the job can be automated, it will not last long.
4. Merger of direct competitors. There is not much you can do as this a threat of direct competition with counterparts from the other company.
5. New entrants. This is another Michael Porter’s competitive forces. If the job position is well paid and it is a known fact, likely it will drive demand to take it. To maintain the job in this case, the entry level should be very high.

In general, from the economics point of view unemployment is a form of resource misallocations. But this does not mean that the unemployment rate is a good economic indicator as it may be misleading and resource misallocations tend to change from one form to another.

Shortcomings of Rating

In recent years one could observe a mass proliferation of all kinds of ratings and applying their results to many activities in our life, often without full understanding how rating are collected and what shortcomings they have. I do not pretend to cover all problems with ratings, but will describe a few.

First of all, when I say ratings I imply a request to express a personal opinion on some matter. This leaves, for example, credit ratings out of this topic. Ratings I am referring to aim at collecting personal preferences. Ratings come in many different flavors. For example, in the Internet ratings come from “Like” in Facebook, to “Thumb up” and “Thumb down” in YouTube, stars, X’s, numbers and so on. In real life, you could see, for example, a request to fill out surveys on a customer service call or just fill out some information as part of a profile creation process. Now we can talk about shortcomings of ratings.

1. Context often is not captured. This includes things like your location, people you are with, your feelings, etc. Using this rating to “help” you will result in inappropriate advices. For example, while visiting Arizona you ranked a good ice-cream shop where one can get a good chill, but now you visit Alaska and want to find a place to eat and stay warm, and the system that studies your preferences now suggests a good ice-creamery just around the corner. The take-away from here is ratings are not solely linked to the subject being ranked. Whoever finds out a way to capture as many parameters as possible during the rating process provided that the other two problems with ratings are solved (where applicable), will be golden.
2. Effort is not taken into account. This is my favorite. A typical example. You call technical service and it takes 1 minute to solve your problem. The next thing the technical service does after your call is it sends a survey “How did we handle your support call?” that requires 15 minutes to fill out. As you can imagine, not many people would respond to those surveys. In most cases, technical support in these cases will receive very few responses “Met expectations”, if any.
3. Incentives to cheat. This one is difficult, but an example will help. Management of the building where I lease an apartment every once in a while sends a survey “How do you like living here?”. The problem is this is a large company that uses every bit of information to maximize its profits. So, if I respond “I like it”, next time when time comes to extend my lease, I may see a higher number in my new lease than, for example, in case if I reply “I hate it and plan to move out”. This is also known as perverse incentive in economics.

Because of these problems, ratings/feedback collected in many cases is useless and do not show the true picture. What other problems with ratings did I miss?

The Global Information Technology Report from WEF

The World Economic Forum continues to publish interesting and useful information. Today it published the Global Information Technology Report 2009-2010. My analysis will follow soon.