I was mailed the other day by a Google recruiter, asking if I was interested in working there. My first reaction was to say no (and that’s been my final reaction too) but I took a bit of time to examine why. This actually started out as a comment on MJs recent post and has turned into a bit of ramble.

I’ve always been a bit *thingy* about Google. I think it’s because I worked at Inktomi during the “search engine wars”. Google came along and stole the Yahoo! search engine provision from Inktomi (which consequently went against Yahoo! - everyone started using Google directly instead - ironically, Yahoo! ended up purchasing Inktomi in 2003).

During 2001/2002, Inktomi ran a few marketing campaigns designed to win back the Yahoo! account - I remember seeing a big truck with a poster board on it driving around Santa Clara saying “Yahoo! - Google is stealing your customers” or “Do you, uh, Google?” For a while, Google actually blocked Inktomi employees from using their search engine while at work. We could all access Google via dial-up or some other subnet, but anything that was specifically Inktomi had been blocked.

So why did I turn down the possible job? (This wasn’t an offer of employment, just an expression of interest). I think it was because I was intensely loyal to Inktomi - they gave me almost 4 years of a great career and let me live in London, Boston and San Francisco while really learning a shedload about the IT industry. I still see Google as a large reason why Inktomi ended up going under (the other large was reason was the 2001 post-dot-com recession), and thus a reason why I ended up not being able to stay in the US (my visa ran out when my job did). Seems silly when I write about it, but at the same time I still feel it - even knowing it’s silly.

Today I use Google for searching due to lack of any real alternative - given that I use Safari for browsing and I can’t change the search engine used in it, and that nowhere else that I know of gives comparable results. I don’t use Google Maps because their coverage of N. Ireland is poor. I occasionally use their image search, although I’ll just as often use Altavista for that. And I don’t really use anything else they have - Orkut, Gmail, Gcal (if it can be called that). I still feel like a bit of a sell-out for using them.

Once OmniWeb 5.5 comes out in Universal (or when I switch back to PPC mac - OmniWeb on my MacBook is a bit flaky) I’ll be able to try out using other search engines again. I know it’s a bit of a cop-out (I could after all just bookmark Yahoo! for example) but the convenience of typing in the search box means I’ll not switch till my browser supports it.

Update:Thanks to Zimba™ for pointing out that I could change my default search engine in Safari (and also pointing out I’d missed out the paragraph explaining why I didn’t want to work for Google).

Last couple of days we’ve been running SyncBridge in a production environment and adding some last minute features, future proofing, feedback about APIs and turning off debug messages. It’s been error free for a while which is so nice. It’s not a bad feeling when people using the app in production manage to find some bugs that you never even considered could occur.

We also have new icons. They’re simple, iconic, abstract and suitable for an app that you might run once or twice.

“Once or twice?” I hear you say?

Yes, once or twice. The beauty of SyncBridge is that it ties into the system so well that when you make changes in iCal, these are automatically communicated to SyncBridge and, if you have a net connection, these are then sent to the server automagically.

Anyway, I’ll finish up with some of the best feedback I’ve ever seen.

Dave Winer riffs off Google Checkout being “baaad mmkay” because one day his “idea of Google soured, it was an instant flip”. He says they started to act like Microsoft. I’m wondering when they started this and in what ways. I know people have a lot of opinions about Microsoft and their success has certainly brought them contempt (and Dave is absolutely right that their success made them arrogant and left us with browsers that were malware-riddled as well as behind the times.)

Google on the other hand doesn’t seem, in my opinion, to have done anything like Microsoft. I don’t hear stories of Eric Schmidt throwing a chair across a room in a fit of rage. We don’t have embarrassing videos of Larry Page dancing around at a developer conference. Google have not been convicted of leveraging a legal monopoly to illegally destroy competitors. Or did they bundle Orkut with Sketchup and Google Maps so that we’d be forever nagged at to use their branded products?

Dave makes it out to be a trust issue. That he doesn’t trust Google. I don’t trust Google either. Nor do I trust Microsoft. I don’t even trust Apple (and that’s the devil I do know). And I certainly don’t trust Dave Winer. Never met the bloke.

I just get the feeling that Apple dominates the headlines when they’re popular because everyone wants to see them and the iPod take a fall. Similarly with Google we have some wanting to be the person who predicts their downfall.

If you’re going to criticise a company, be less vague. Does Google Checkout mean that Google wants to be the identity czar of the Internet? Dave really complains about companies being untrustworthy.

It’s not the companies, Dave, it’s the people. If someone doesn’t pick up the hotel bill they promised, it’s because a person didn’t do their job. It’s not a big conspiracy. There might be a reason - maybe you pissed off the CEO. Maybe someone who looked like you hit on his wife. There’s always reasons and it boils down to people.

Anyway. I just realised I totally missed the summer solstice. It must be all the world cup fervour. I can honestly say I’ve spent less than 5 minutes watching some men kick an inflated bladder around a field and that it was more than enough.

Technorati Tags: google, trust

It never occurred to me until yesterday just how much SyncBridge has been my little child.

When I first created the sync engine, it wasn’t allowed out of the house, although I occasionally sent photos to close relatives (I was using it to synchronize between multiple user accounts on my machine, and I made a simple movie and sent it to MJ (who was on the other side of the world at the time)).

Then it grew up a bit, and I let it out to play with some well trusted supervision. (I added a simple GUI and sent the code to MJ and we started sharing calendars).

Then it went through puberty, and I taught it to be trustworthy and it earned my trust, and generally got more exposure to the real world (I fixed a lot of bugs and tested it! We also showed it to more people and talked/blogged about it).

In human terms, SyncBridge has reached the age of 16 or so. Legally able to leave home and earn money, but still with protective parents who want to make sure it’s well behaved and well adjusted in society.

Yesterday I installed the SyncBridge server for the employees at Mac|Sys and they all installed the client on their local machines. This morning, they started sharing in earnest. It’s like seeing my kid go out to work for the first time - I’d be ruffling SyncBridge’s hair if it had any

So far, we’ve had only one real issue which has been with people renaming each other’s calendars. I’ve added a simple fix and everything continues along nicely. The biggest eye-opener so far has been in ensuring that people know how to use the software. What we think is blindingly obvious just isn’t to people who’ve never used it before. Good thing MJ has written docs - tonight we’re planning to add them to the app!

Currently looking very likely to have our semi-public beta start this weekend. By semi-public I mean we’ll let those people who volunteered use the software - this will be the first time the app goes to someone we don’t know personally.

Biggest possible hold-ups for the beta are infrastructure things: getting the server upgraded to handle SyncBridge software properly, getting a support issue/bug tracker available to the world at large, etc.

Biggest possible hold-ups for going live (aside from heretofore undiscovered bugs) is setting up mundane things like a bank account, some kind of shopping basket, etc.

All the things mentioned above are underway, and we’ve got a month or so before our target go-live date (August 1).

Sorry I haven’t posted this earlier - I got another request for it in an e-mail today, so I feel prompted to do so now. Hopefully this will get added to the standard RubyCocoa install. I’ve been using the wrapper without issue for about five months, during the development of SyncBridge.

Usage: install RubyCocoa and drop this somewhere in Ruby’s library path. If you have any issues with it, please let me know.

You can download the wrapper from our downloads page (or directly by following this link).

Technorati Tags: rubycocoa, ruby, syncservices

Mac-Sys now have a blog. It’s just getting started and not linked from the main page as they build up some content but it’s certainly there.

Mac-Sys Ltd was started 3 years ago (this week) by yours truly and is currently the only Apple Authorised Service Provider in Northern Ireland. The team there are some of the best guys I’ve ever worked with. You can’t buy enthusiasm like that.

Their blog will cover tips and tricks, how to deal with a dropped iPod or Powerbook, what to do if your Mac is crashing continuously and other useful tidbits. It’ll hopefully usher in a few more business blogs too as there are several PC companies who use Mac-Sys for Mac servicing (put it like this - any company in NI that says they can fix Macs or iPods? They bring them up to Mallusk to see Mac-Sys!)

Mac-Sys also had a preview of SyncBridge yesterday and they were really pleased with it. “Really really nice” was one of the comments made. As they’re a beta site, it’s nice to hear that kind of feedback. Mac-Sys is a heavy user of iCal for group scheduling via WebDAV and they know how primitive a solution that is so SyncBridge has been something they’ve been waiting for.

While we’re talking about anniversaries, this summer will be the 8th birthday of NiMUG, the Northern Ireland Mac User Group.

I think there need to be a serious change in the way PR and branding companies work.

Traditional PR speaks to me of Press Releases, champagne receptions, dead tree mailshots and funny little pointless desk accessories emblazoned with our brand and logo.

Seriously. They spoke to me of this.

I can’t think of how much out of our plan that would be. Our business cards are the only dead tree products we plan to produce. We’re intending to be 100% Bedouin so desk accessories would be useless. Mailshots? For an internet company? Sure we intend to have a SyncBridge launch party but that’s more to do with being the only Mac software company in Northern Ireland and wanting to do something with the local MUG involving an all-new branch of CocoaHeads as well as my friends in Mac-Sys the only Apple Authorised Service Provider in the province. Yeah, sure, that’s closer to traditional PR but the people turning up I consider to be my friends!

I read a couple of PR blogs. One I recommend is Piaras Kelly: Public Relations from an Irish Perspective and I also read Guy Kawasaki’s Blog for extra inspiration. There’s a couple more but these ones are always worth a look.

The Scobleizer, arguably the hottest tech news this quarter, speculates Microsoft holds traditional PR in unreasonably high esteem and they should be paying more attention to the grassroots. He cites Apple and Google as companies which have ensnared the grassroots.

I think it’s deeper than that, of course.

Microsoft has lost the Alpha Geeks. In their place they have trolls like Dvorak, Thurott and Enderle who spend a lot of time thinking of ways to rile up the Mac and Linux crowds who are still not wise to their tactics.

I know some smart people who swear by Microsoft and sometimes I wonder if my faith is misplaced.

When I was writing RPGs, it was my opinion that we should always have one book “in production”, one about to “launch”, one “in research” and one “winding down” in sales. This, I thought, would ensure that we always had plenty to work on while, at the same time, making sure there was enough money coming into cover costs. As it happened some of the books sold really well, some sold poorly and some sold like hot cakes (in chronological order) and I could have made it a career, if I’d wanted. It didn’t work out that way but it was my first taste of sales, resource planning, production and demand. It was also my first taste of “Real Artists Ship” which is something that I’ll always remember.

Last night in the wee small hours, we debated the release schedule and also the finished products we would release. I’d like to take a moment to ask you, the reader, what you think we should finish first. These are still just “codenames” so bear with us.

• SyncBridge
• SyncBridge GE
• SyncBridge 30

Enticing?

Technorati Tags: syncbridge

SyncBridge is the flagship product. The application that will enable you to share and edit the calendars of family, friends and colleagues all using iCal. It’s the biggest product of the three, with the most complexity and obviously the most features! I’m using it at the moment and the flexibility over iCal/WebDAV is simply amazing! I know it’s been “nearly done” for a while now but we want to make sure it’s rock solid for deployment!

SyncBridge GE is the edition of SyncBridge that will allow you to view and edit your Google Calendar from the relative safety of iCal. Progress on this has been very quick and we reckon we could release very soon.

SyncBridge 30 is the edition of SyncBridge that will allow you to use iCal to view and edit your 30Boxes calendars. We’ve needed to feed back some changes to the 30Boxes team at 83Degrees and we’re getting good results from them.

I guess I’m asking you, the readers, what you use. Which has the greatest urgency for you? Do you want SyncBridge immediately so that you can get sharig those calendars with friends and family? Do you want to get jiggy with Google Calendar and be able to edit it and view it offline froma rich desktop client? Are you a big fan of 30 Boxes and can’t consider any other online calendaring solution? Is there another online calendar that you simply cannot do without? We will listen.

After that, we’ll be wanting to talk to you again about other itches that need scratched. Would you care to suggest any? If you poke us, we’ll likely leak some future product ideas in the comments

Aidan posted about making technology (and concepts) a bit more accessible to the rank and file of internet users. There is a followup which says that a big problem with accessibility of new technology is the language barrier. In Europe alone, most people seem to speak their own language and English (except the English, who speak neither).

Why would you ignore the 80-odd million people in Germany? What about France? Spain? China? They have money too!

We’ve secured the French and Spanish translators….a few more to go I reckon!

If you consider yourself an entrepreneur, achieve something by reading this entry on the Creating Passionate Users blog.

We’re traditionally taught that we have to under-promise and over-deliver if we want to create satisfied customers. We have to exceed a customers expectations by setting the expectations correctly.

Well, this post says BOLLOCKS to that.

We should be aiming to create CUSTOMER DELIGHT through the use of unexpected context. What the heck does that mean?

The most sterling example is - imagine an airline allowing you to change your economy flight ticket without slapping on a huge fee? Imagine if, due to the fact “a filled seat now is better than a filled seat later today”, they actually gave you a credit on your account?

I have some ideas on this but I’ll need to check with Aidan later on whether we can do them. I think it’d be cool.