This morning Glyn Moody retweeted this article, it seems that  maker of “Downfall” , Constantin Film Distribution has taken steps to oblige the likes of YouTube to take these parodies down on the grounds of copyright infringement.

First, I’ll have to admit that part of me is little uncomfortable about a film extract depicting a man directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people being used for comedy purposes. But I’ve had it pointed out to me that, culturally, it might actually be part of the healing process to depict this evil evil creature in a darkly comic light. Besides, there’s plenty more publically accessible content that is a whole lot more distasteful out there.

Next I’d add that I don’t think these clips do infringe, since in most cases they represent less than 2% of the original I would say that they represent fair use. But I am neither a Lawyer nor a Texan judge, so my views on IPR law aren’t overly special.

Whatever the law, and whatever the dubious tastefulness of these parodies, Constantin film is making a mistake in blocking these parodies. If Constantin were smarter, they’d have promoted them, hell if I were the company I’d have found a developer to build an app that made it easier to create the parodies and hosted it on my website.

This bad call on Constantin film’s part neatly presents the division between the people that “get” the notion (and power) of the creative commons and those that don’t.

Evidently Constantin film is a “don’t”.

Todd Lapin acknowkedges that his little’un is already iPhone savvy – but still… I found this video awesome.

Edit save reload,
tab to the error console
Javascript sucks so

(Gary Barnett 4.00 AM 30/March/2010)

This morning Apple’s homepage looks like this :-

Apple's home page on 18th March 2010

This is a powerful and touching tribute, and one that says something to me about Apple too.

I’d like to express my condolences to Mr Yorks family and friends.

Oh yes, my blog was hacked. So, an afternoon of trying to figure out what happened has culminated in a frech install and a restore – Thank goodness for backups eh!

Essentially :-

• It is silly to equate the PC market with the handset market
• Err… So “Unix” won did it? Now I thought Linux wasn’t Unix….
• So windows was successful because it provided a platform for other people to make money..and Apple has provided a way to help developers make money, and ensures consumers don’t install rubbish on their phones and that’s bad?
• WinMo isn’t comparable to Android – but Java is and that hardly created an exciting apps ecosystem
• Oh and Symbian is open sourced because its backers know it’s dead

It is silly to equate the PC market with the handset market

They are not the same – the handset is an appliance, the PC is not. Handsets are more readily likened to games consoles. So it’s immediately pointless to draw conclusions from the history of the PC market and apply them to the handset market.

Err… So “Unix” won did it? Now I thought Linux wasn’t Unix….

When Eric says:

And isn’t it entertaining, boys and girls, how thoroughly Unix won? Both OS X and Android are Unix underneath.

My second most immediate response was “Err…. actually the Android is based on Linux, which really is not Unix – but then you should know that? So are we all now going to say Linux is Unix ? Unix FAILED – it broke into different factions (initially dozens) and then we saw a slow consolidation then along came Linux which effectively wiped the board of all but a couple of Unix variants (And IMHO – AIX and HP-UX are the only two Unixes that have any legs on them). It’s important not to rewrite history by deluding ourselves that Linux = Unix and that that’s all good. Because it misses the fantastically important point that the success of Linux is that it does some very low level stuff, really well and there’s no point in differentiating your product on the basis of how pointer references are hashed in some obscure part of the kernel.

The success of Linux lies in people agreeing that having choice at the kernel level isn’t all that interesting.

[My first most immediate response was - "Don't patronise me you....."]

So windows was successful because it provided a platform for other people to make money..and Apple has provided a way to help developers make money, and ensures consumers don’t install rubbish on their phones and that’s bad?

Here’s the thing – Windows was successful because it provided a means for other people to make money – true. But SO HAS APPLE!!! The AppStore would not have the massive number of apps if Apple hadn’t provided a very clear mechanism through which people could publish and monetize their software.

WinMo isn’t comparable to Android – but Java ME is and that hardly created an exciting apps ecosystem

It’s not really fair to compare WinMo and Android, first let’s look at WinMo vs J2ME. Which was more successful? Well the numbers would indicate Java… it’s running on a hell of a lot more phones than WinMo, let’s face it. But again, – Has J2ME created a vibrant apps marketplace? No – because device vendors didn’t want to support an open market place – 1) because they wanted to control everything 2) they had genuine concerns about stability 3) App portability across phones is a nightmare

Android is much more analogous to J2ME than it is WinMO – WinMO (arrogantly) tries to mandate device function while J2ME tries (valiantly) to provide device flexibility – at the expense of app portablity. Android is trying to do a very similar thing to J2ME, and will suffer the same challenges as a result.

Oh and Symbian is open sourced because its backers know it’s dead

The competitive dynamic between Linux/Android and OS X can be understood in the same way. OS X is playing a control game and Android a ubiquity one. We can expect the outcome to be the same: when the bazaar meets the walled garden, the walls will eventually come down, crushing the life out of the garden.

This is why Symbian is now open-source in spite of having no inheritance from Unix-land; its backers have figured out that a control strategy collects short-term gains over a ubiquity strategy but simply cannot compete in the longer term against open-source Android and open-source

Aww puhlease …. Symbian open sourced because it’s backers have figured out that OSS is the way to go??? Nah… Symbian was dying so they took a wild punt at OSS’ing it (As Sun did with Solaris) and it’s not helped Symbian (or Solaris for that matter).

The key weakness in Eric’s post (and position) lies in the assumption that the Andoid vs iPhone battle can be understood in the same way as the PC vs Mac battle  – and it simply can’t be.

Oh I should add that I am an iPhone fanboy, and proud to be so

So, here’s the short version:-

• iPhone vs Android isn’t coke vs pepsi, it’s coke vs virgin cola
• It’s disingenuous to say that the iPhone is for “Play” and the Android for “Work”
• Today the iPhone strikes a much better balance between the desires of consumers vs developers
• Consumers don’t care about “open” they care about “now”
• Multiple Android distros is BAD for Android, not good
• Flexibility and choice are attractive to developers but often a nightmare for consumers
• Multiple formats and screen sizes represent too much choice
• I’m not sold on “Open Google” in the way that many commentators are
• Its just not clear which will win, but right now iPhone is still well ahead

iPhone vs Android isn’t coke vs pepsi, it’s coke vs virgin cola

The first point I disagree with is that the comparison, for basic users, between the iPhone and Android is like Coke vs Pepsi. While I think there’s a good chance that Android will close the gap (I don’t think it’s certain as I’ll explain) right now the comparison is Coke vs Virgin Cola.

As Peter acknowledges, the iPhone app market place is dramatically larger and deeper. Although I’m sure that the Android marketplaces will continue to develop rapidly.

The Coke vs Cola analogy is interesting because we know that the essential ingredients (or features) of Coke and Cola are pretty much the same, Coke beat Virgin Cola on a host of levels that extend way beyond the simple features of the beverage but two of the reasons are particularly relevant -  Coke had brand (perhaps most important) and Coke had distribution. Android phones don’t have anything like the brand clarity of the Apple iPhone; Google is a fantastic brand, but that’s not the brand the device manufacturers are pushing, they’re selling their own brand – because they’re rightly worried about giving up their brand identity. The second issue, distribution, is also important. iTunes and the AppStore have a massive established base that right now is unrivallable.

It’s disingenuous to say that the iPhone is for “Play” and the Android for “Work”

I’m not convinced by the “style difference” that Peter says exists when it comes to apps for iPhone vs Android. To begin with, it’s a little disingenuous to imply that iPhone developers play on our baser instincts (by offering us porn) while Android developers feed our souls (by unlocking the power of the phone’s “inner” unix machine). There are many more business apps available on the iPhone (in addition to the games, and silliness) and indeed, my iPhone satisfies my inner geek immensly by giving me a VNC client, so that if my fingers were really tiny I could write this blog on my Ubuntu laptop via my iPhone – how cool would that be!!

Peter makes a sterling attempt to convince the reader that the ability to write your own ‘nix shell scripts is a boon for non-techies but I simply don’t buy the idea that “rough but workable tools” are for “all comers of the enterprise”.

Today the iPhone strikes a much better balance between the desires of consumers vs developers

Many developers hate the closed garden that Apple’s Appstore represents, and Apple seems not to mind giving them new reasons to dislike the restrictions that are imposed. But it’s a question of balance. Apple is trying to balance the provision of a great place for people to find nifty apps for their device, and the provision of a great place for developers to publish and monetize apps they sell. This isn’t an easy balance to strike, and Apple’s policy would seem to be to err on the side of the consumer rather than the developer.

So I find it difficult to beat Apple up for protecting the integrity of its appstore. It is possible, of course, to spin this by saying “Apple is cynically protecting it’s marketplace” but that would be a little bit like saying “Coke is cynically protecting it’s logo” or “The lion cynically killed the gazelle”. Of course Apple has to protect the integrity of the AppStore, and I’ve no doubt that there are plenty of parents across the globe who are delighted to see Apple moving against the smutty apps. I think Apple will need to adjust its stance over time, but right now there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of new apps in the queue for the app store.

Consumers don’t care about “open” they care about “now”

I’m not convinced that “open” ecosystems always produce more innovation than closed ones, but I certainly believe they’re more likely to. So I do believe that the relative openness of the Android platform offers greater potential for future innovation than Apple’s closed alternative, but the problem is that consumers don’t care. They wont pick an Android over an iPhone because it is based on a better moral framework, or because it offers a better path to choice and innovation, they’ll pick Android over an iPhone based on their current desires rather than their future needs.

Multiple Android distros is BAD for Android, not good

I also disagree with Peter when he says “it’s a java world”, and that the emergence of new android distros is a good thing. I agree that some folks are indeed “relentless tinkerers” – but the idea that it would ever be a good idea for an enterprise to put a nice custom interface on top of Android hardware is an absurd one for the vast, vast majority of enterprises. Yes, if you’re Fedex and you want the perfect UI for the 30,000 devices you give to your drivers, but for most organisations the  “tinkering” with the UI layer of an operating system should be punishable by death.

Flexibility and choice are attractive to developers but often a nightmare for consumers

In the early days of Linux the ability to control or modify absolutely anything was seen as a key selling point. But then the reality that only a tiny, tiny, minority of people actually do modify their o/s (Less than 1% of Linux users ever compile the kernel. I’ve compiled it 100’s of times – and have even successfully compiled it twice..).

My development experience does, however, echo Peter’s – TTHW (Time to Hello World) is a really significant factor in establishing developer affection for a platform or technology, and the openness of the Android platform does mean that TTHW is shorter than for the iPhone. If the world were exclusively populated by developers then the iPhone would be dead and we’d all be using Droids, although as one of my developers pointed out, if the world were exclusively populated by developers we wouldn’t need phones at all – We’d all be communicating via the WOW forums.

Multiple formats and screen sizes represent too much choice

Apple has the good fortune to know precisely what screen format and size it needs to address, but the Android O/S doesn’t – so the Android has to provide support to different device formats and capabilities. Again, I have to agree that this leads to greater choice, but I worry that it inevitably leads to too much of it. Writing Java Apps for phones is made so horrid and unpleasant precisely because of the differences between devices – so on one hand you have the school that tries to implement support for this, while on the other you have the (Microsoft) school that effectively mandates device characteristics – neither of which results in much success. As Peter points out in his blog there are already Android apps that will run on some devices and not others and we all know how awful Win ME phones are…

Apple, of course, controls both the o/s and device.

I’m not sold on “Open Google” in the way that many commentators are

Again, Peter points out some of the issues here in his blog, but takes a slightly more generous view of Google’s motives and likely plans. Google has shown (as per the Google Maps example in Peter’s blog) that it’s not as keen on “open” as some of its cheerleaders would have you believe.

Ultimately, it’s the ecosystem that will keep Google open, and (I believe) it’s the ecosystem that will force Apple to be more open over time.

Its just not clear which will win, but right now iPhone is still well ahead

If I really did know who would win, I wouldn’t be blogging, I’d be sipping a marguerita on my private island.

But my wild stab is this.

• The Android platform needs to offer less choice, not more if it is to win.
• Apple will need to offer more choice not less if it is to extend its lead.
• There is an opportunity for Adobe to offer an easy to develop, app store enabled, Android client platform for bizapps (Air for mobile)
• If there were any justice in the world we’ll be writing most of our rich internet apps using HTML 5 in the near future (To paraphrase Captain Sensible – you gotta have a dream.

“Financial crisis,
Stalled too many customers
CEO no more,”
he wrote.

The article encouraged readers to come up with their own haiku, and here’s mine…

Absent strategy,
customers will leave
time to get hair cut

• Employee morale is at a deeply low point across Europe
• This is a far cry from Bill Thomas’s vision of Fun, Impact and Operational Excellence
• It is not to0 late but HP has got to work hard to re-engage with European Employees
• My advice – close the chapter, re-engage, retain some of the old EDS values while blending them with HP’s

Employee morale is at a deeply low point across Europe

HP Enterprise Services is having a gnarly time of it at the moment. The loss of the DWP desktop deal with Fujitsu (which also has one or two HR challenges to deal with) named as preferred bidder and tipped as most likely to replace HP could be spun as just a set-back, but combined with the level of employee unhappiness that going on strike implies it’s clear that HP’s most senior executives need to step in.

Morale within the former EDS organisation astonishingly low across Europe (most notably in the UK and Germany), with employees expressing a mixture of despair and anger at the scale of the redundancies in Europe and serious pressure on salaries.

This is a far cry from Bill Thomas’s vision of Fun, Impact and Operational Excellence
At HP’s annual analyst event in 2009, Bill Thomas (then the GM of Europe) characterised his vision using the four words “Fun, Impact and Operational Excellence”. It’s fair to say that EDS was never a “cosy” place to work, but the company managed to attract and retain some really formidable talent  in deal-making, service delivery and hard-core technology expertise.

One of the things that Bill Thomas, and his boss Ron Rittenmeyer, were absolutely focussed on was operational excellence. Bill was able to express his enthusiasm for operational excellence in more moderate terms than Ron, who was almost violent in his insistence on it – But it was always clear that both shared the same passion and both were very willing to reward employees that delivered.

Clients picked up on this. In 2008 I spent an evening in the company of a civil service mandarin who had nothing but good things to say about his EDS account director and the EDS relationship as a whole. He wasn’t interested in how “cool” EDS was, or how “exciting” their solutions were, he was happy that he had a partner that cared about his success.

It’s not the same today, despite the fact that HP Enterprise Services actually has more capabilities post-merger, and still cares every bit as much about client outcomes.

It is not too late but HP has got to work hard to re-engage with European Employees
HP’s services arm now has a European workforce which feels that is has been badly treated in terms of pay, conditions and empowerment.  If HP doesn’t take proactive steps to re-engage the company will find it increasingly difficult to replace the talent that it will inevitably lose.

Without some corrective action HP’s business will suffer.

My advice – close the chapter, re-connect, retain some of the old EDS values while blending them with HP’s
HP needs to move to close this chapter in its employee-relations history. First, the outstanding grievances need to be resolved. Next the company should cancel the pay freeze and provide a transparent process through which employees can see how their efforts will be rewarded. The company also needs to establish and fund a retention program.

Finally, in order to move on HP needs to acknowledge those elements of the EDS values that won the company business – The Texan focus on “outcomes” (which helped to keep clients) and the suited conservatism (which helped to win larger clients who don’t want “funky” preferring “formal”) and then blend in HP’s  reputation for  innovation (something that EDS did a lot of but was never quite able to leverage).

HP Services has a level of capabiliy that is only matched by IBM in terms of its, depth, geographical coverage and basic pulling power. The key in services, unlike perhaps the hardware business, is to focus on profits as well as cost….

If you’re in a hurry;

• Overall the session ticked pretty much all of the boxes
• Guest speaker William Shatner did a nice job of talking about collaboration
• IBM’s approach to partners gets better and better
• IBM understands the value and importance of “Open” – even if there is still plenty to do
• But There wasn’t enough talk about how consumable lotus services are by other apps
• Project Vulcan offers a view into the future of the Lotus offering

Overall the session ticked pretty much all of the boxes

The session did a great job of covering all of the necessary bases. The session opened with the (now de rigeur) kick-ass drum and violin combo,  followed by a really superb pitch by Bob Picciano. I was especially pleased to see the extent to which Bob emphasised the role of partners and “openness”. Bob also announced his move to Director of Sales for Software Group (a role where his experience, and understanding of partners will be really valuable). Bob is succeeded by Alistair Rennie, who I first met (and was impressed by) over a decade ago in his days at Websphere.

The session also delivered a slew of key announcements, the most notable of these (for me) were;

• Lotus Connections 3.0 – Extended mobile access and Social Analytics
• Lotus Live – Now has 18 million users after only 18months.
• Lotus Symphony 3.0 due in Q2 – based on the OpenOffice 3.x codebase, contains improvements to the user experience, functionality and stability of Symphony as well as support for Visual Basic Macros in xls files.
• Lotus Traveller – Now available on a bunch of phones (including iPhone)

Guest speaker William Shatner did a nice job of talking about collaboration

Bob’s opening was followed by William Shatner, who gave a good pitch on Collaboration – nice to have an entertaining guest who can tie his piece into the theme of collaboration.

IBM’s approach to partners gets better and better

As it happens, I think that 2010 is going to be a hugely important year for partners. I’m writing a piece on the topic that (essentially) talks about – Redefining “we”. Traditionally when vendors say “We” they mean themselves… in the future “we” is going to have to mean them plus their partners.

You’d expect the GM of Lotus to be smart enough to acknowledge partners – especially when standing on a stage in front of 5,200 of them. But this was more than just lip service. The importance of partnership came up over a dozen times in the session, here are a couple of quotes:

“You should never doubt the role that YOU the lotus community have played…”
“Our strongest foundation is the technology that YOU have, the solutions YOU’ve built..”

IBM understands the value and importance of “Open” – even if there is still plenty to do

I was sitting next to Bob Sutor during the session, and couldn’t help nudging him and asking him if he felt a little bit of pride at the extent to which his decade of work on evangelising “openness” seems to be paying off.

IBM is really serious about openness – from open standards to ease of integration. IBM has made it very easy for third parties to create components and applications that can be plugged into the lotus foundation. This is good stuff for partners and customers.

Not enough talk about how consumable lotus services are by other apps

My only caveat where it comes to the open story is that much of the emphasis is on integration with Lotus – with lotus at the core. I’d like to see more discussion about how components from Lotus can be consumed by other apps – I’d like to use Quickr as the repository for an application we’re building for example.

Project Vulcan offers a view into the future of the Lotus offering

The final segment introduced us to project Vulcan pitched as the next generation of Lotus Notes combining email, calendaring, profiles, to do lists and social analytics. It will also include filtering and intelligence to increase the relevance of content as well as using social analytics to suggest content or actions.

The goal is to make Vulcan an open platform, supported by public services and APIs. Several bloggers have pointed out the apparent similarity with Google Wave, and there do indeed appear to be common ideas, which isn’t a bad thing by any means.