aaron evans

I’d like to annouce the availability of SmugMugExport, a SmugMug iPhoto plugin. SmugMugExport is free, open-source software that is distributed under the BSD license.

The goal of SmugMugExport is to provide a simple interface for uploading files to SmugMug. The goal of the plugin is not to provide a complete interface to all of SmugMug’s features.

If you’re not familiar with SmugMug and you use some free photo-sharing site, you should really consider SmugMug. SmugMug costs $40 a year but provides the following features:

• unlimited storage
• high-resolution uploads and downloads
• a liberal linking policy
• cheap printing
• “web 2.0″ features like RSS, Atom, neat APIs, tags, etc
• nice looking themes
• much more!

This is a beta release. I think it works pretty well but I’d love to find out if you can break it. If you find a bug, send me an email with the details and I’ll try to fix it.

BusinessWeek, 2001

Q: What is the future of Apple Computer?

A: Silicon Graphics.

Q: That bad?

A: Maybe it’s a little bit different. But if you look at proprietary computer companies, whether it’s Digital or Silicon Graphics (SGI ) or Apple (AAPL ), I think the fates are all relatively similar. We know how the movie ends. It’s just a question of what happens in the middle. Apple has a very little customer base. If you look at the economics, it has been extremely hard for Apple to get a return on its R&D with a shrinking volume base. It’s not to say that Apple’s products aren’t innovative or cool, but the economic factors here are so overwhelming, it’s very hard for them to swim against that tide.

Good thing he looked at the “economimcs”.

Our Sony DVD player is aging and I’ve started toying with the idea of replacing it with an HD player. The obvious wrinkle is that there are two incompatible, competing formats for HD players and discs: Blu-Ray and HD DVD. I did some research and I believe HD DVD is going to win but I’m not confident enough to buy an HD DVD player quite yet.

There are a few basic issues related to adoption of the players: technological differences, studio support, and cost. While HD DVD is currently only winning the ‘cost’ factor, I think this factor trumps the other differences.

First, related to technological differences, the formats are more or less the same with the exception of disc capacity. A Blu-Ray disc holds more than an HD DVD disc. I don’t think that, at this time, users are affected at all by the lower capacity of HD DVD discs. HD DVD discs can hold something like 8 hours of HD footage. That’s better than a DVD and I’m sure it’s good enough for consumers. I think this is basically a non-issue.

Next, regarding studio support, Blu-Ray appears to be winning the battle of studio support thus far. The big studios who do not support HD DVD are Sony, Disney, Fox, and MGM. Disney appears to be softening their stance and may support HD DVD soon. HD DVD does have the backing of the adult film industry and this may prove very important in driving HD DVD player and disc sales.

Finally, the issue of cost is at this point clearly in favor of HD DVD. The cheapest HD DVD player can be purchased for around $300 while the cheapest Blu-Ray player is around $500. In addition, the cost of producing HD DVD discs is much cheaper than Blu-Ray. This is important for relatively smaller studios such as those in the adult film industry. They’ll clearly favor creating HD DVD discs in the short term.

Complicating this comparison is the fact that Sony is bundling a Blu-Ray player in the PS3 console. Sony is losing money in an attempt to push Blu-Ray players onto consumers. It’s not clear how much money either format has behind it and is willing to spend on their format.

At this time, the picture of who is winning is murky. Blu-Ray disc sales are beating HD DVD sales but the total number of discs sold is so small that this lead is fairly meaningless. In terms of number of players sold, Blu-Ray is winning if PS3 sales are counted. When only standalone players are considered, HD DVD players are selling much faster than Blu-Ray players. At this point, it’s clearly too early to draw any conclusions about who will win based on sales or discs or players.

I think that HD DVD players may be the big electronic item for this Christmas. This is especially true if Wal-Mart can sell a player for less than $300 as is rumored will happen. Any consumer with an HD TV who is looking to replace an aging DVD player will see the letters ‘HD’ before ‘DVD’ and understand that this is the player they want for their HD set. I think the Blu-Ray names hurts Sony in this respect but it’s not necessarily clear how Blu-Ray discs relate to DVDs. Advertising will have a lot to do with the public’s perception of what each format is.

In any event, as long as Blu-Ray players are hundreds of dollars more expensive than HD DVD players, there is no way that people will buy the more expensive players, even if studios initially support Blu-Ray. Consumers who buy an HD DVD player are unlikely to even know that not all studios support their player until they try to buy find some movie from MGM or Sony. When that happens, they’ll simply opt for the standard DVD of that movie and play it in their HD DVD player which will nicely “upconvert” it to high def.

The only scenario I can see that would make Blu-Ray gain more traction is if the cost of Blu-Ray players fell to within $50 of HD DVD players. At that price differential, consumers would then start to question the features of the two types of players. If this happens, I can see HD DVD losing the format war fairly quickly. However, i think that the HD DVD cost advantage will play out for at least the next year or two.

After the initial bumb in HD DVD player sales at Christmas, I’d imagine that over the next year all of the studios (except Sony) will start supporting both formats. Over the next several years, Blu-Ray will die a slow death and eventually studios will start abandoning it in favor of HD DVD. When the first studio makes this move, we’ll know that the format war has ended.

I’m reading Joel’s book Joel on Software. The book is fun to read and I agree with most of what Joel has to say. A lot of the content is five years old but most of it doesn’t sound dated.

Joel has some annoying tendencies as a writer that bothered me. The most annoying tendency I’ve found is the repeated use of the strawman argument. He has some other annoying tendencies but the book is nevertheless a fun read.

I just read the chapter title The Iceberg Secret, Revealed and it may be my favorite, perhaps just because it’s a bit of a rant against MBAs running software projects. Here is a nugget:

If there’s one thing every junior consultant needs to have injected into their head with a heavy duty 2500 RPM DeWalt Drill, it’s this: Customers Don’t Know What They Want. Stop Expecting Customers to Know What They Want. It’s just never going to happen. Get over it.

Instead, assume that you’re going to have to build something anyway, and the customer is going to have to like it, but they’re going to be a little bit surprised. YOU have to do the research. YOU have to figure out a design that solves the problem that the customer has in a pleasing way.

This is funny. With respect to design of any product, I can identify the following models for designing products:

1. Safety Through Mimicry: When design is done by committee, no one wants to propose an original design that is contentious and be wrong. That’s a good way to lose your job. So, simply point to something else that appears to work (your previous product or a competitor’s product) and copy it. This model effectively avoids all of the perils of designing a product. Unfortunately, you’re never going to build anything that people want and can’t get elsewhere.
2. Safety Through Market Research: The design committee has an original idea of combining features of popular product X and Y and calling it Z but nobody wants to risk making Z without knowing, in advance, if the design will be popular. Enter market research. This is a good way to validate what customers want today. Unfortunately, the product you’re building won’t be ready for sale for another 18 months.
3. Non-Safety Through Original Design: In this model, there is no design by committee. Instead, you have a few highly talented people with tremendous power over the design of products who identify what they believe will work in the marketplace. Prototypes of new products are built and market research may be used to see what public reaction will be to the product. If the product fails, no one is fired but lessons are learned.

In any event, Joel’s iceberg chapter is primarily focused on the notion that software is much like an iceberg in that you only see 10% of it. In other words, about 10% of the time spent designing software relates to what it looks like. I think this might be a bit low but perhaps in Joel’s domain it is true. I’d probably push the 10% to 15% or possibly even 20%. It really doesn’t matter; the point is that an overwhelming majority of the time spent designing a software system relates to how it works rather than how it looks.

Joel’s claim is that non-programmers simply do not understand this. Joel lists some interesting corollaries of this claim. For example, if you show business people a mock-up that looks great, they will assume that the product is just about done.

Joel’s solution to this misunderstanding is to simply not show non-programmers the UI for uncompleted features. Joel also recommends that managers make sure that everyone knows how development is progressing with respect to the schedule, not the ui. This, of course, assumes you have a schedule for your product that engineers have agreed to. If you lack such a schedule, your project is more or less hopeless.

Twitter has officially taken off. Even I have a twitter page.

I think twitter really took off a few months ago. In my view, the turning point for twitter’s popularity was the 2007 SXSW Interactive Conference. This conference is a gathering of people who are on the cutting edge of technology and twitter was a big topic. A lot of those people seem to think twitter is going to be big and they should know, right?

In my experience, if you explain twitter to someone, even a technologically savy person, they will basically laugh and say that it’s a really dumb idea. Who wants to hear little snippets of uninteresting chit-chat?

I do and I think that these people will eventually come around on twitter. The gut reaction that people have to twitter reminds me of the reaction that people had to the web or to blogs not too long ago. I think it’s important to differentiate between the medium and what people are saying on the medium.

When the web or blogs first started, you had a bunch of early adopters creating content and it was generally uninteresting to read. How many horrible geocities pages existed in 1996 and how many really bad blogs are still being created today? The turning point for these mediums was when people with interesting things to say started creating content.

So, that leaves us with the question: can you say something interesting in 140 characters or less? The answer is a resounding ‘yes’ provided you don’t try to always say something interesting and you can link to other sites. Interesting people create interesting content on pretty much any medium.

The other point I wanted to raise was the wealth of interesting twitter-derived applications that I expect in the future. Recall that RSS and Atom are the syndication formats that inspired the so-called ‘Web 2.0′ and they allow cool applications to be created by easily accessing the data created by other sites. The missing element before twitter was a really simple way for groups of people to create content to syndicate. Twitter Vision may be the first of many interesting twitter applications; I think it really only scratches the surface or what people are going to think of in the near future.

World famous tech pundit Walt Mossberg reflects on the miserable experience PC of buying a PC:

The problem is a lack of respect for the consumer. The manufacturers don’t act as if the computer belongs to you. They act as if it is a billboard for restricted trial versions of software and ads for Web sites and services that they can sell to third-party companies who want you to buy these products.

I thought PCs had been this way since at least the late 90s. Something tells me Mr. Mossberg is a happy Mac user.

I told someone the other day that they could Google me and I’d show up. Today, I tried that and it didn’t work. Googling ‘Aaron Evans‘ shows no sign of aarone.org. I’m still in their index; just search for aarone.org and this site shows up. I’ve seen Google leave me out of their results for a day or so but I usually show up in the top three. Let’s hope I show up again.

Well, I have to ask myself how “good” other search engines are at finding me:

• Microsoft’s live search has me at number 4
• Yahoo has me at number 4
• Altavista has me at number 3

Look’s like they’re all pretty consistent although I’d say Altavista does a slightly better job (I’m kidding).

Note: I think I figured out what the problem was. An improperly configured .htaccess file caused non-root links to show up as 404s. Doh!

iTunes2web 1.1 has been released. It should now run properly on Intel Macs.

I’ve built it before but I seem to always forget how it’s done. Here are the steps:

1. Configure, build, and install neon 0.25.5. You must use the specific version required by subversion and at this time, subversion requires 0.25.5. Configure neon as follows: ./configure --with-ssl=openssl --enable-shared
2. Build and install Apache 2 as instructed from Apple’s developer site (don’t worry about configuring Apache as a webdav server).
3. Download the latest version of Subversion 1.4 source
4. Configure, build, and install Subversion using the configure options given at the second link above.