Skunkworks

Let’s say that I am working in a software company that creates products for the self service industry. Now let’s say that this software company has a product which from features point of view is similar with the best products on the market. Also this product is very easy customizable to support different flows as per clients requests. Also let’s say that this product is actually more than a product. Is the first product made on a platform framework which can supports all possible self service transactional based applications.
For you guys to have a better idea about the selling price: we can charge up to 600$ per license and then anything between 15-25% per year in maintenance agreements.
You would say that we are in a very good position right now to take over the world of self service applications. Sadly is not the case due to the way the self service industry works and the fact that my company is small.
I was thinking what will happen if I am going to open source the product under GPL license and give the product for free (as in free beer)?
Am I going to be able to charge a small amount from the possible clients?
What should I do to manage to create a momentum?
Am I going to be able to charge a comparable amount from the clients after let’s say 6-12 months of using the product?
Am I going to be able to create a viable business model which could allow me to grow the company?
Am I going to be able to actually displace some of the heavy ones from the big retailers in US or Europe and take over the industry?

Maybe some of you guys out there can help with some answers to these questions.
Thanks in advance.

I am a proficient Windows XP user and more, but after seeing what’s Vista going to be with all the issues in relation to implementing security and the way Microsoft wants to license it, I decided that it is time for me to try to find an alternative. This was happening around a month ago after I attended a Microsoft Techday dedicated to Vista. So in the past month I used exclusively Ubuntu Linux 6.10 on my laptop. Below is the journal of what happened.

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Is funny how the IT industry goes in circles or better put it goes into a spiral. In the 70s you had only a dumb text terminal, and you could connect to an IBM mainframe and pay for the time you spent using that mainframe. In the 80s you removed your connection from the mainframe and start to use text based applications on your PC. In the early 90s you used GUI based applications on your PC. In the late 90s you used client-server applications, usually having a fat client on your PC
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Read something interesting last week. Was about an analogy between public libraries and the websites which are providing access to audio or video files. The analogy was that according to the way RIAA is opening lawsuits against this kind of sites, also the public libraries should be sued for distributing books.
Obviously the main difference between books and files is that only one person has access to that book. That book is not available in the library if somebody borrowed the book already.
Now, I know that DRM is evil, but maybe a possible compromise would be to create a DRM which will allow “borrowing” the files and then after a period of time automatically “de – borrow ” the files.
I know that every DRM scheme is going to be crack sooner or later, but maybe if you can get from every borrower something like 1 percent of the sales price for that particular file, the amount would be small enough and most of the persons will pay it.
You can add something to the scheme and allow a file borrowed to be sold if the borrower wants it.
Is the old shareware scheme but with a small twist
I think that this is where iTunes, Sony store and the others should go.
Waiting for your feedback

For months I was trying to figure out the best way to improve Gmail and integrate google calendar into it. Last week I came across a very nice firefox extension called gmail skins . It does all that and more. You can use this extension with the portable version of firefox 1.5 on a USB stick. And because a photo explains better, take a look at how my gmail looks like:

Everybody is talking these days about how the new cars will be fuel cell based, will drive without any human help and basically will change the world. What they are doing here is very good for sure, because they go away from oil towards renewable energy sources but I am sure that if you want to really change the world you need to produce a paradigm shift of a bigger magnitude. Something similar or better then the Segway will do, but would help to be a little more successful
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Around 10 years ago, it was a big hype around satellite based mobile communications and internet access.
The big 3 names were Iridium , Globalstar and Teledesic. You can check the Wikipedia articles about what happened with them. Is less important what happened is more important what can be done to avoid the mistakes. Short story below:
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I have 2 mobile phones, 1 PDA, 1 digital camera, 1 video camera. And yes I have 5 different chargers for each of the mobile devices I own.
The fun part is that all the devices have comparable electric requirements.
Is clear why all the big companies do not want to have a common standard, but I am wonder what can we do to force them to agree on a common standard and then implement it.
Wouldn’t be nice to use my Sony mobile phone charger to charge the Canon video camera, or the IPAQ I have?

After we force them ( do not know exactly how, but I am still thinking ) to have a universal charger, the next step would be to make the batteries interchangeable. I know this step is going to be partially successful, due to the difference in size between the devices, but I like to dream with open eyes.

Everybody is talking about convergence, as in one device will fit all needs, but I think is simpler to converge the electric part first, and then the electronics part.

Is weird these days how companies are talking about their employees as their best assets, but when it comes to treat the employees as the best assets nothing happens. Some times the opposite is happened. Why the company decide what is good and what is wrong for me on the internet if I am a valuable asset? Why the company is reading my email if I am a trustworthy person?
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At the company that I work for I have a domain with 25 computers and SBS Server 2000. From the SBS I am using ISA and Exchange. No need for SQL. Also we are using SourceSafe. Because most of the users in the domain are smart and know how they can defend themselves against the some time self destroying users, they are Administrators on their own computers, so no need for tight policies.
The only policy in place is the one which forces them to change the password every 60 days.

The original plan was that during the previous weekend to finalize the migration but not always everything goes as planned. Details below
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