Larry Osterman (long time MS Employee) has a good post today about how peopls within MS have started "nounifying" the word "ask". Like Larry, I think it sounds pretty silly but it got me thinking about a similar pet peeve I’ve got.

Verbifying the word “architect”. You see this a lot on technical blogs, with usage along the lines of “the last system I architected had…” or “we’re currently architecting a distributed widgetizer…”. What’s wrong with the word “design”? Do you think Frank Lloyd Wright ever said to anyone “I had a great time architecting the Guggenheim… ”? Did I.M. Pei ever tell anyone “I architected the crap out of the Javits…”? No — they were designers. Architects design and engineers build. It’s been that way since the dawn of the t-square.

I’m pretty sure I’ve got some others along these lines, but I’ll need another meeting to jog my memory.

I’ve been a FeedDemon user since it was in beta and immediately purchased a license once Nick Bradbury enabled online sales. I’ve since been a happy customer and would pay for any major upgrade down the road.

Unfortunately, Nick’s company was recently acquired by NewsGator, which makes an Outlook AddIn RSS reader by the same name. I looked at NewsGator originally (before jumping on the FeedDemon beta), but decided the Outlook integration wasn’t for me. Last year, NewsGator made some of its Outlook-based customers unhappy by going to a subscription model… and I was glad I hadn’t gone that route. 

What was previously a standalone product that worked well now had all sorts of ancillary “stuff” decorating it… they have a web edition, something called “smart feeds”, something else called “industry intelligence feeds”, some “premium” content, syncing capability, NewsGator Online, NewsGator Mobile, NewsGator Etch-A-Sketch, etc. If you’re using all that stuff, there’s no question that paying for a service that centralizes and synchronizes your RSS experience has immense value.

But what if you just want the plain-old, standalone Outlook AddIn? Can’t have it. It’s combined with these extra options into a few Consumer-or-Business bundles — only available via recurring subscription. Hmm… Glad I’m using FeedDemon, I thought at the time.

Until today, when I see that FeedDemon’s going pretty much the same route. So now the NewsGator VC team has a new plan for more renewable revenue. Oh boy.

Going forward, I have to pay an annual fee [2] to use a product that requires no on-going commitment or service from the vendor. And if I don’t pay the fee, it stops working. But, they say, I’ll get updates for a year. Sure… but there’s no commitment that I’ll see N new features added within 12 months. Or that the new features added will be compelling to me. Still, I’m forced to pay the subscription if I want to keep using the basic functionality I need.

So why do I have an issue with this subscription model? Because my basic needs don’t require any on-going service from the vendor. I’ve purchased a license to use an application. It doesn’t cost the vendor anything to support my use of that application, whether I use it once a month or spend my entire day in it. There are no servers to maintain. There is no staff choosing the latest and greatest data for me.

With a few exceptions [1], services and content should be sold as subscriptions… they provide on-going value.

Standalone applications, on the other hand, are pretty much the same on day 365 as they were on day 1. As such, they should be sold as version specific, one-time-fee, licenses.

If NewsGator released a new FeedDemon 2.0, and if it had some decent features I’d use, I’d pay an upgrade cost. But once I’ve made that purchase, supporting me as a customer doesn’t cost NewsGator a dime. If I’m not using the web edition, synchronization, custom feeds, etc, all of which would require someone to support server-based services, why am I now going to be paying for those on an on-going basis?

Given that the RSS reader space is overflowing with options, more are on the way, and many of those options are either free or open source, why would a vendor make getting at their popular commercial product less flexible?

My suggestion to Nick, Greg, and the NewsGator crew is to make the licensing as simple as possible.

• If the widget(s) you’re purchasing from us can be used standalone without any of our service offerings, it’s licensed as a product. If we put out a new version and you like it, you pay an upgrade cost.
• If the widget(s) you’re purchasing from us require any sort of on-going service, you’re going to pay a recurring subscription fee. Stop paying the fee and you no longer get the service. Email feeds, synchronization, premium content, and so on.

Look at the popular services around us… using the Netflix (content) service has on-going costs (shipping, server-based account management, etc), so I pay a recurring fee to them. Listening to satellite radio (content) requires an on-going signal and infrastructure maintenance, so I pay a recurring fee to XM Radio. Playing online games requires an on-going connection (service) and is heavily server-based, so I pay a recurring fee to Xbox Live.

Look at the standalone products around us… We bought our cars and don’t pay Honda or GM an on-going fee. The cars do today what they did when we bought them. I bought my computer and don’t pay Dell an on-going fee. It does today what it did when I bought it. I bought Microsoft Office and don’t pay Redmond an on-going fee. It does today what it did when I bought it.

Why would I want to start renting a standalone software application now?

Now the caveat:

One of the “benefits” announced with NewsGator’s acquisition of FeedDemon was that licensed FeedDemon customers will get access to NewsGator’s “Business Standard” services for two years. I do think that’s fair and I’m happy to give this stuff a try. I’ve even created a NewsGator Consumer Standard (free, web-only, like Bloglines) in advance to check it out (I think the UI for reading is clunkier than Bloglines, but it’s passable). 

When the time comes that using FeedDemon costs me extra money, I’ll have to look long and hard at how I’m consuming and using RSS feeds. Maybe at that point, I’ll have fallen in love with the service-based capabilities… in which case, I’ll gladly pay the annual service fee. If not, someone else will get my business.

Going this route is a big risk for Nick and for the NewsGator crew. Nick, in particular, has some exposure here… he’s the popular developer of several popular applications. His user base has, in a period of two months, been told that they WILL be moving toward the NewsGator system and they WILL be moving toward a recurring fee structure. 

NewsGator is betting that the existing FeedDemon customer base will fall in love with the server-based capabilities. On the other hand, any existing FeedDemon customer who just wants the basic client app that he/she has today will get a service bill at some point. On that day, RSS Bandit, Bloglines, and other readers are going to start to look pretty attractive.

UPDATE: Per Jack’s comment, it looks like they’re doing the right thing by existing FeedDemon customers. According to Nick’s blog entry today, the FeedDemon application won’t stop working once the subscription expires. The service-oriented features (synchronization, in particular) will likely stop, but that’s to be expected. I still think it’d be nice for customers who don’t need the service options at all to be able to buy a one-time, version-specific license for either FeedDemon or the NewsGator Outlook edition. Still, this is a huge step in the right direction for existing customers and a great example of a vendor listening, and quickly responding, to their customers. Well done.

[1] The exceptions I can think of are products that are likely to require heavy ongoing maintenance or support. High-complexity and/or mission critical applications. For example, we pay for several licenses to the .NET Subscription Service from Developer Express. We do this for two reasons… first, it’s high-complexity and mission-critical for us. Second, I know right up front that I’ll be making regular use of the vendor’s support staff. Build a feature-rich grid control from scratch and there are bound to be glitches and bugs. Those bugs hurt us and hurt our customers, so I’m happy to pay for support that lets us complain and get a fix or workaround quickly. I’m also happy to use that support when we have questions about how to use these controls to their fullest. Further, if we don’t renew our subscription, we lose upgrades and support — but NOT the products we originally licensed. I love their stuff and it’s worth every penny. 

Steve Makofsky (who works on the MS Longhorn team) has a post today about the difference between programmers and software developers. Like Steve, I think Eric Sink’s article on hiring does a good job of capturing the intricacies of hiring developers for a small ISV. Steve’s addition that developers “do what they have to do to ship” is about as succinct, and accurate, a summary as you can get.

I’ve felt this way for a while and try to write our open-position ads to reflect it… Here’s an opening I posted last week. If you’re in the area and fit the bill, send a resume in via Monster.

I also really enjoy the small-team, ISV experience where a developer who’s passionate about their job can work with a similarly inspired product team… and quickly get cool solutions in front of customers. No red tape, no meetings about meetings, no need to painstakingly document each pixel in advance. Just solid idea, design, and implementation.

Marcus Vorwaller, who maintains the “Best Tool for the Job” blog (a great blog, btw) wrote a post earlier today in which he describes why he feels independent podcasting will die. While I do think there’s a ton of (overblown) hype surrounding podcasting lately, I respectfully disagree that it’s going to go away any time soon. He feels that podcasting will ultimately dwindle down to 20 or 30 podcasts that “anyone cares about or will listen to”. I think that’s awfully low and, once the “me too” hype of podcasting goes away, I expect that number to still be measured in the hundreds.

I also think it’s worth noting that his post (and this one) relate to independent podcasting. Not the well-funded, corporate-driven, marketing podcasts that are pushing a product, nor the podcasts that are published from radio stations that already have an investment in equipment and talent.

Here are the reasons he gives for podcasting to die off, along with my disagreements.

1. Pocasts are time-consuming to create. This is certainly true… but you could argue that many of the better (re: interesting and readable) blogs also require an investment in time on the part of the author/content provider — I’m sure Marcus spends a great deal of his personal time on “Best Tool for the Job”. If someone is passionate about what they want to say and getting their message out, they’ll find the time. For most people, blogging is a hobby that they spend some of that precious spare time on… I don’t see any reason that podcasting doesn’t fall into the same category.

2. Podcasts don’t make money. Also true in most cases. While there are some examples of independent shows that are bringing in some money (via donations), they’re certainly not the provider’s sole source of income. But if we agree that podcasts are often put together by hobbyists who are passionate about a topic, then the fact that they’re not generating income isn’t usually a factor.

3. Podcasts are expensive to produce. I suppose this depends on the definition of expensive. $100? $500? I listen to some great podcasts that are recorded on iRiver MP3 players. Another that’s recorded with a USB microphone on a laptop. There are open source audio editors that make cleanup and editing a snap and don’t cost a dime. Nearly anyone who wants to put out a podcast will have a computer and a vast majority of those will have some sort of audio input capability. Is it ideal? No… but it can work quite well and stepping up to the next level of sound quality doesn’t have to be much more expensive than a nice DVD burner or a new monitor.

4. Podcasts are boring. There’s plenty of evidence to support this, given some of the bad stuff out there. On the other hand, there are a lot of shows that are interesting — using my personal definition of “interesting”, which is the point here. One of the podcasts I listen to centers on the world of poker. If you’re not into poker, you’d be bored stiff to listen to it. If you are into poker, you might enjoy it. I also listen to a couple of .NET development-related shows that would bore to tears anyone who’s not spending their days building software with .NET. Based on Marcus’s blog, I’m sure there are a few podcasts that align with his interests. Whether or not those also have decent quality and content he finds compelling is another matter.

5. Podcasts sound bad. I lump this in with the “expensive to produce” argument. Typically, a podcast sounds bad because the provider recorded it with the built-in mic on their laptop, while they sat next to the microwave in their kitchen and and ate potato chips out of a plastic bag. Any halfway decent studio microphone (not anywhere near as expensive as you’d think) does a fine job, as do plenty of USB-based microphones. One nice thing about the explosion around Skype and other VoIP services is that mic manufacturers are flooding the market with inexpensive, USB-based mics. I also don’t think it’s important to have a “radio voice”… like most blogs, independent podcasts are put out there by regular people. They should sound like regular people when we listen and I don’t think one needs the booming monster-truck-rally-announcer style of voice (which are usually treated with audio effects anyway) to be interesting. If your content is interesting, I’ll tolerate a bit of a nasal voice.

6. Podcasts are too long. Are there some that are too long? Probably, but it’s like any other content or form of entertainment. If you’re interested in it, you don’t want it to end. If you’re not interested in it, then you’ve got another option that’s missing from radio broadcasts — the fast-forward. There are times that some of the podcasts I listen to lose me. The topic for a given show might not appeal to me or maybe they’re doing a segment that I find boring. I fast-forward until I’m past it… and if that occurs too often with that particular podcast, I unsubscribe.

7. Podcasts are light on content. It’s the same argument as with “boring”, “sounds bad”, and “too long”. If it doesn’t hold your interest, move on. The upside to this hype is that there’s plenty to choose from. I’ve downloaded some that I thought were just horrible. I really don’t need to hear about your day, what you’re having for dinner, how your dog’s vet appointment went, or that you and your wife are vacationing in the Poconos. If your content isn’t relevant to me, I’m gone.

In any case, I’m curious what others think. Will we eventually see podcasting just plain “go away”, or as Marcus suggests, will it become the exclusive domain of existing broadcasters like NPR and radio stations?

I blogged about Podcasts last year and came to the conclusion then that there was a lot of hype around podcasting, much of it overblown, but that we’d eventually see it settle down and some real value emerge.

Since then, I think I’ve been both right and wrong.

I’ve been right in that I’ve seen some real value emerge from podcasting. I now regularly listen to a number of podcasts while I commute. There is some very compelling audio content out there.

I’ve been wrong in that the hype has yet to settle down… and yesterday’s release of iTunes 4.9 with podcasting support won’t do anything to help quell the noise.

With this release, you can now browse through various podcasts in the iTunes Music Store (all free, for now) and subscribe to those that interest you. You can tell iTunes to automatically download the subscribed podcasts into the iTunes library, where they will be synced with your iPod. The iPod also has an available software update, which provides bookmarking support for the podcasts you download (meaning you can switch to something else and later pick up where you left off).

I’ve downloaded both the 4.9 iTunes update, as well as the iPod update and here are a few thoughts. First, the good:

• First, the interface for browsing podcasts in the iTunes store is very nice. Subscribing is easy and it wasn’t difficult at all to set things up to automatically fetch podcast files.
• Second, I really like that downloaded podcasts will be bookmarkable in the iPod.
• I also think that this will be a great way to get those who are new to podcasting introduced to all the great content. Since it’s so easy to browse, subscribe, download, and sync, (oh and it’s free), the barrier to entry is much lower than in the past.
• By having podcast support in iTunes, I may not have to explain “podcast” to friends and family as much.
• The installs for both the iTunes update and the iPod software update both went without a hitch.

Now the not so good… and to be fair, my main gripe with iTunes as a podcasting client is the same as with every other client I’ve tried — an incomplete set of features.

My ideal podcast client would le me subscribe to feeds and configure them on an individual basis. I want to configure the genre, artist, and album tags in the downloaded files — per feed. I want to specify exactly where downloaded audio goes and the naming convention used for those files — per feed. I want BitTorrent support built in for feeds that provide that option. I want to be able to specify the update/download schedule the client uses to check for new files and download them when they’re available — per feed. I want to be able to specify the iTunes playlist(s) that downloaded files appear in — per feed.

So while I think iTunes is a decent client, especially for those new to podcasting, it’s far from perfect. The biggest one is being able to specify the genre, artist, and album tags. Podcast providers are all over the map with how they fill out metadata tags in the audio files… if they fill it out at all, it often varies from one show to thenext. And because the iPod’s navigation centers around this metadata, I have to update things myself if I want them to be organized correctly.

The other issue I’ve run into is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to take podcast files that are already in your library and tell iTunes to treat them as podcasts. I’ve got a bunch of old episodes from some of my subscribed feeds and I work my way through them when I’m doing yard work, errands around town, etc. And while I’m OK with subscribing to all of my podcasts in iTunes going forward, I’d really like to NOT have to re-download all of those files just so that iTunes/iPod recognize them as podcasts.

In typical fashion when a major announcement is made around an RSS-enabled product, there’s some drama and much discussion. This time, it’s centered around the tweaks they’re using inside of RSS to support the appearance of a podcast in iTunes, the “chapters” feature in enhanced podcasts, etc. But that’s to be expected and hopefully Apple does the right thing and evolves those extensions to something more straightforward down the road. In the meantime, it sounds like podcasters may have to jump through some hoops to get their content to appear correctly in the iTunes directory.

So overall, it’s not a bad release. If you have an iPod and have never checked out podcasts before, you’re set. If you’re already using a podcast client and have your own process for fetching/syncing, you may want to keep doing what you’re doing.

Currently, I listen to a number of podcasts (to be listed at some later point) and getting them on to my iPod isn’t as straightforward as I’d like. I figured I’d mention the steps I use here on the chance that someone else finds them useful or has some suggestions for improving the process.

My steps are…

1. Throughout the week, I use FeedDemon to fetch the podcast audio files from my subscribed feeds.

2. On the weekend, I copy all of those to the correct folders on our “media server” — essentially the photos/music box we use with the Tivo Home Media Option and with which I sync the iPod.

3. I run MP3Gain on all of the .MP3 format files so that their volume metadata is consistent with the rest of our audio.

4. I drag and drop all of the new files into iTunes.

5. I use a “new files” Smart Playlist in iTunes to view only the files I just added. With them displayed, I clean up the tags:

• Set genre to Podcast and year to 2005.
• Make Artist and Album consistent across each feed’s files, both new files and files previously downloaded from the feed.
• Verify the Track Number tag so that the files are listed chronologically on the iPod.

6. I sort them based on the file type column and select those that are MP3 files. I then right-click those and choose “Convert to AAC”. This can take quite a while for lots of files (or longer programs).

7. When it’s done, I remove all the MP3/new-AAC files from iTunes’ Library.

8. I then go the folder that has all those files and do two things:

• Delete the MP3 files (don’t need ‘em any longer).
• Change the .M4A extension on the newly-converted files to .M4B. This lets iTunes treat them as audiobook files — so that they’re bookmarkable and can be sped up. The iPod lets you set the playback speed to “Faster” so that files play about 25% faster, but without the higher pitch that would make the speaker sound like a chipmunk.

9. Delete older shows that I’ve already listened to, both from the iTunes library and from the drive.

10. Plug in the iPod and sync it all up.

So there you have it… all podcast files are bookmarkable, can be sped up for quicker listening, and are easily found by Genre and Artist on the iPod. Any suggestions?

With the purchase of Keyhole (URL is now redirected) a year or so ago, Google picked up an application that lets you literally “fly” from one place to the next. You can zoom and pan, like with most mapping applications, but you could then enter a “destination” address and the software would zoom back, slide over, and then zoom in to your destination — giving the sense of flying.

Today, they released Google Earth, which raises the bar even further. For starters, the base version is free (Keyhole used to be about $30 for the personal version). They have a “Plus” version, which adds GPS support, basic importing, and some drawing tools, all for $20. For $400 (and up), they have Pro and Enterprise options aimed at business uses.

This version has the ability to view layers, such as restaurants, ATM machines, lodging, and so on. They even give you layers for crime statistics, census data, and congressional districts. You can turn on off roads, political boundaries, and terrain. As you’re viewing the imagery, roads and highways are overlayed on top of the images, which makes it easy to get your bearings (much easier than Google Maps’ satellite view).

Street names overlayed on the aerial imagery make it easier to navigate	Where the hell am I?

The interface is very polished (more so than Keyhole was) and all navigation is smoothly animated (via DirectX). You can rotate, zoom, place pushpins (like bookmarks), print, email, and so on. Perhaps most impressive is that you can tilt the perspective so that the view appears to spread out in front of you (and you see the horizon). I also like how the UI tells you the current altitude of the “eye” — that is, the zoom level you’re currently at is translated into ft about the earth’s surface (see below).

Well, well worth a download. Just plan on a productivity hit while you explore.

There’s a trend I’ve noticed recently in the world of tech blogs that has turned into a pet peeve. This trend is the “I have a secret and you don’t know it” blog posting.

My RSS subscriptions are fairly focused into a few categories, but I see it occuring pretty much with just the .NET development world. Maybe other software/platform ecosystems are the same, but the tech-gadget, poker-fan, photography-hobbyist groups don’t seem to feel the need.

In any case, employees of Microsoft, regional director/author types, and other people who have access to pre-release and pre-CTP efforts are the most guilty. Yeah, http://blogs.msdn.com, I’m looking your direction. Here’s the theme, typified by breathless anticipation and a complete lack of interesting detail or value:

• Boy, I’m tired. I was up all night writing code on a new feature. I can’t talk about it yet, but you guys will love it.
• So I was just talking to [some person] over in the [some product] group and he/she showed me some amazing stuff coming down the pipe. I wish I could talk about it, but it’s too early in the cycle.
• Holy crap. I just got access to an early look at a new product some people I know are building and it’s unreal! I really wish I could tell you more.

So if you’re a blogger who finds yourself in this sort of position and you’re sitting down to write a blog post, here’s my advice… don’t. It’s annoying and you’re really not impressing anyone. Really.

In fact, you’re doing just the opposite as each of the above blog posts amounts to this: I’m an insider/important person and you’re not.

I’ve unsubscribed from a number of blogs lately because of this pet peeve… when you have FeedDemon loaded up with hundreds of subscriptions, you can’t spend time with blog posts that talk about not being able to talk about something.

Thank you for your support.

The “Baby Name Wizard’s NameVoyager” is a Java-based, web UI for looking at the popularity of baby names over time. When we were deciding on names for our newborn daughter, I would occasionally pull this up to see how common/rare a name was.

On its surface, it’s simply an area chart. For a given name or set of names, you see a names popularity expressed as “usage per million babies” over time (with decades on the X axis). From a visualization perspective, it’s interesting because it’s constantly updating as you type in a name. You can choose to view names for boys, girls, or both, and the area chart updates as you type — type in “Alex” and you’ll see Alex, Alexa, Alexis, Alexander, Alexandra, Alexandria, and so on. I like how, in addition to updating constantly as you type, it also animates the updates leaving the whole interface feeling very smooth.

Not that you’ll need to have the Java runtime on your machine in order for the applet to work.

I created a new category for the blog… InfoPorn. It’s a name I got from Wired Magazine, but is a great way to refer to a longtime passion of mine: data visualization. Most of my development experience has been with applications that take high-volume data and aim to bring the interesting bits to the surface. Charts and graphs are great, but the visualization world has exploded lately with lots of online examples, Flash applications, entirely new visualization styles, and discussion groups all cropping up all over.

With the similar explosion in weblogs and RSS, it makes it very easy to find others who are interested in data visualization, as well as pointers to cool examples online. This category will be used to link to examples, mention ideas I’m tossing around, and so on.