Comments on: RIP, Software — But are We Replacing it With Something ‘SaaSy?’

By: Joe McKendrick

Joe McKendrick — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 14:06:32 +0000

Thanks, great observations about the “Beta” factor. Actually, many of the traditional vendors have seemed to offer version 1.0 as a “beta” as well, leaving it to the users that purchased their wares to provide bug reports, which hopefully get fixed in a “1.1″ release six months later! In fact, some wily vendors make their first public release “2.0″ to avoid that perception! (But, alas, we all know it’s still “1.0″!)

By: Paula Thornton

Paula Thornton — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 05:41:02 +0000

The concept of Beta is a sad vestige of a System Application Engineering paradigm that can’t seem to make a shift. It’s like creating a business and then insisting that it doesn’t change. The principles of the methods were never realistic and somehow still continue to be embraced.

And then the participants in that process wonder why it doesn’t work (or worse, blame the requirements)…talk about denial.

By: Jeremy Thomas

Jeremy Thomas — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 03:34:06 +0000

Great point about how we should demand qualify for SaaS products. It seems a lot of vendors get around the quality issue with the notorious Web 2.0 disclaimer, “Beta” (check out http://news.com.com/2010-1032_3-6151032.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-5&subj=news over at CNet.com). This is a cop out, especially when vendors are charging for their services.

By: Paula Thornton

Paula Thornton — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 19:50:21 +0000

Start paying attention to transitions in your own work. There are several ‘documents’ I create that I’d rather publish using a wiki (if one were currently made available to me behind a firewall — lots of talk, no results), primarly because they are image intensive. With a background in Technical Writing, I have continued to be an anti-document proponent. A document is simply a ‘view’ of relevant data.

In 1995 at MCI, when intranet pages were still accessible only by IP address, we used a phenomenal object-relational database to drive dynamic pages. There was no html. Indeed there was very little code because a lot of the function was managed inside the database. The technology was bought by Informix and never leveraged for its original internet/intranet potential.

>From an Experience Design perspective, content is best provided ‘exposed’. Word documents, PowerPoint presentations etc. all have to be opened and examined. These are barriers to inspection/consumption.

Flashback to 1990 when I asked Bill Gates face to face, “When are you going to separate your applications from the data (files) they create?” His response: “I don’t understand your question.” He still doesn’t.

Two critical points in history that, had they been different, these 2.0 conversations we’re having would be history by now.