Necessary But Not Sufficient

I just finished reading 'Necessary But Not Sufficient' by Eli Goldratt. Its basically a Theory of Constraints (TOC) novel for IT. I am thankful to my good old friend Arun Sahlam for lending me this great book.

It establishes a novel concept which says that technology is necessary but it's not sufficient. It basically means that if we don't change our old business rules along with the technology we may never get full benefit our of a new technology. For example in a big manufacturing company estimating requirement is a mammoth task so when this was being done manually, companies adopted approach of doing this calculation exercise only once a month.

After many years when they started using software, they didn't really see any improvement in output. Reason was not the software, it was because company was still doing this calculation exercise once a month when they had means to do it every week.

This book talks about how new age software companies which will ultimately command majority market share will not only be selling software but convincing and educating their customers to change their age old business processes as well. Only this combination can succeed in long run.

Interestingly book also says that how software developers earlier and some still do take pride in producing a sophisticated looking system because that kind of proves that they can create some technically complicated stuff like that. Truth is however that a complicated product does not always mean a good product and a simple product does not mean that its not useful or is not technically advanced.

A case in the point is Google, which still happens to be one of the most simplest yet technically advanced website. So our responsibility as software developers should be to create simple, straight-forward products which user can learn quickly, yet it has all the power and functionality that's required from it.

My suggestion to everybody involved with software development is borrow or buy but do read this great book.

MS advertises Windows Mobile devices in India

In a clearly visible agressive marketing campaign Microsoft is advertising about windows mobile powered phones on behalf of device manufacturers. I saw recent ad with devices from i-mate, O2, HP, Motorola and HTC. Interestingly in India Symbian dominates the mobile OS market with Nokia leading the way in terms of device shipments.

India being 2nd most populous country in the world and with a swelling mobile subscriber base, it makes perfect sense for Microsoft to advertise windows mobile powered devices and in-turn make its mobile os popular and replicate the windows success once again with mobiles.

Another interesting fact is that there is no piracy concerns for a mobile OS as of now as its pre-installed on devices so Microsoft will surely get its royalty from manufacturers :-)

For those of you interested in buying windows mobile powered phones, here are some communication channels:

Website - http://www.microsoft.com/india/windows/mobile/

For i-mate - SMS SMART A to 8888 or Call 011-41523030/90, 41523730
For O2 - SMS SMART B to 8888 or Call 9350263618
For HP - SMS SMART C to 8888 or Call 1800-4254999, 30304499
For HTC/Dopod - SMS SMART D to 8888 or Call 9910193399
For Motorola - SMS SMART E to 8888 or Call 1800-111211, 39026686

If you buy one from these guys, tell them that I told you about them, they may give me some commission ;-)

For those who are thinking, what to do with such a phone - Just post a comment to this blog or mail me at sachin AT palewar DOT com

My company develops business solutions for mobiles and mobile field force, for more info please visit our website www.palewar.com

Search Engine with a difference - Mahalo

As par definition on their website - www.mahalo.com:
Mahalo is the world's first human-powered search engine powered by an enthusiastic and energetic group of Guides. Guides spend their days searching, filtering out spam, and hand-crafting the best search results possible. If they haven't yet built a search result, you can request that search result. You can also suggest links for any of our search results.

I heard its CEO speaking about their ideas on LifeOnline. I think they have a mountation to climb and they have just started but even with what they have done so far they have managed to make searching a pleasure on many popular search terms. Check them out.

Apple joins Browser War

Apple is going to introduce windows version of its popular browser - Safari. I can see a lot of excitement in store on browser front. Recently Firefox and Opera have been winning a lot of loyal users for themselves. I am sure some of Mac lovers but Windows users will be lapping up the Safari on their windows PCs.

While announcing about Safari for Windows - Steve Jobs made another important announcement that Apple will allow developers to develop applications for iPhone by way of tapping safari, which is a good news but what exactly it means is not yet clear to me.

If it just means that we will be able to only open some mobile web applications and won't be able to run any offline applications from third-party developers on iPhones, then I don't really see anything to be happy about.

Anyway lets wait and watch for next 16 days as iPhone is going to be launced on 29th and we may start getting some more info after that.

Cheers!

Chat from your Mobile

Atul Chitnis informs on his website about the release of Mundu IM V4. Mundu IM v4 is an Instant Messaging client for mobile devices. Initially for PalmOS and Windows Mobile based devices.

Using Mundu IM v4, you can (via GPRS, WiFi, CDMA, etc.) access all your IM contacts on Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, AOL and generic Jabber services while on the road - and all at the same time. No PC required!

You can chat with your contacts, send them photos and other stuff from your device, and even (between selected services) do a cross-service chat - you can have a conference with users on different services as if they were all on the same service.

To read more and download free trial, please visit - http://messenger.mundu.com/prd/php/smartphone.php