Scribblings

Monday, July 09, 2007

Steve Jobs' Greatest Presentation


Our communications coach mines Jobs' introduction of the iPhone to offer five lessons for making an unforgettable pitch



After a gorgeous afternoon of golf a few days ago, my nephew seemed
anxious to get home, even skipping out on my invitation to dinner. He's
a graduating high school senior, so I assumed he wanted to hang out
with friends. I was partly correct. He wanted to hang out with friends
in line for the new iPhone.



Leave it to Apple (AAPL) Chief Executive Steve Jobs
to create a frenzy that gripped every gadget fan in the country. The
hype, however, started with what I consider Jobs' best presentation to
date—the introduction of the iPhone at the annual Macworld trade show
in January.


After watching and analyzing the presentation, I thought about five
ways to distill Jobs' speaking techniques to help anyone craft and
deliver a persuasive pitch.


1. Build Tension


A good novelist doesn't lay out the entire plot and conclusion on
the first page of the book. He builds up to it. Jobs begins his
presentation by reviewing the "revolutionary" products Apple has
introduced. According to Jobs, "every once in a while a revolutionary
product comes along that changes everything…Apple has been fortunate to
introduce a few things into the world." Jobs continues by describing
the 1984 launch of the Macintosh as an event that "changed the entire
computer industry." The same goes for the introduction of the first
iPod in 2001, a product that he says "changed the entire music
industry."


After laying the groundwork, Jobs builds up to the new device by
teasing the audience: "Today, we are introducing three revolutionary
products. The first is a wide-screen iPod with touch controls. The
second is a revolutionary new mobile phone. And the third is a
breakthrough Internet communications device." Jobs continues to build
tension. He repeats the three devices several times then says, "Are you
getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one
device…today Apple is going to reinvent the phone!" The crowd goes
wild.


Jobs conducts a presentation like a symphony, with ebbs and flows,
buildups and climaxes. It leaves his listeners wildly excited. The
takeaway? Build up to something unexpected in your presentations.

Read More Here

Confessions of a Linux Fan: 10 Things You Might Want To Know Before Switching Over To Linux

Original Post

Linux fans (myself included) love to argue to Windows users how much
better the Linuxes are than Microsoft Windows. Now don't get me wrong,
I am not posting this to disprove that Linuxes, BSD's,
or any of the *nixes are better than Windows, they really are. However
(and there's always a however) we tend to be very selective on what we
tell you when it comes to the minor details. Take this as a confession,
as an admission of those details you might not necessarily like about
Linux.

1. The basic
installation of most mainstream Linux distributions is very easy, but a
first time user might run into trouble when trying to depart from the
defaults.

Some Linux distributions have Live Cd's, others have very user-friendly GUIs.
However you might find that sometimes the Live CD installer, or the
pretty GUI does not work because the installer does not have the right
graphics drivers. In that case, you either need to find an alternate
installation CD,
or change the options at the boot screen. We don't tell you that this
might happen because 90% of the time, the installer will work fine out
of the box.

2. If you want a proper Linux installation, you are going to have to mess around with the partition table.

I
see a partition table, and I know how to read it, for a new user, it
might as well be written in [name exotic language of your choice here].
Yes, there are tutorials out there, but if you miss a step, for example
forget to flag the /boot partition for booting, you might find yourself
with a Linux install that does not want to boot up. We forget to tell
you this because most installers either create a partition table for
you, or just install everything into one partition, and Linux will
still work either way, and chances are you will not be able to tell the
difference.

3. You will have to learn how to use the command line.

Regardless of how GUIfied
Linuxes have become, a lot of operations still require the command
line, so you better be ready to learn how to use it. Besides, in the
strange occurrence of a system crash, chances are it will revert to a
stable command line interface. We don't tell you this because we,
hardcore Linux users, *love* the command line, and the power of the
command line is one of the major appeals of Linux. We truly believe
everyone should love the command line as much as we do.

4. All those pretty effects of wobbly windows and cube desktops require some work from the user.

In most distributions, you will need to install Beryl/Compiz/Compiz Fusion in order to get those effects. Ubuntu Feisty comes with a slightly-watered-down version of Compiz, with wobbly windows, transparencies and a cubed desktop. For burning window plugins, active corners, etc, you will need to install Bery/Compiz Fusion... which will require some command line and some configuration. I believe the next version of Ubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon) will indeed come with Comiz-Fusion.

5. Yes, more hardware works with Linux than with Windows. No, not all hardware works 100% like it's supposed to.

This
is specially true with some mainstream peripheral manufacturers. They
have the bizarre notion that Linux users do not need/use peripherals so
they do not publish drivers for Linux. Luckily we have a huge base of
very capable programmers that are willing to reverse engineer drivers
to make the peripherals work with Linux. Unfortunately, because they
are not the manufacturer's drivers, the hardware might not work 100% as
intended all the time. Infamous for this is Logitech, to name one.

6.
If you need/want to install a package not included in the repositories,
or install from source, you might need to do some research.


Because
Linux is very modular, not all dependencies and libraries are installed
by default. If you install an application from the repositories, the
install application will automatically figure out the dependencies that
need to be met. If you are installing an individual package, or from
source, you might need to do some research or read installation
instructions and READMEs and install the required dependencies prior to installing the application.
7. Most mainstream software manufacturers forget about Linux.

You will not find Photoshop for Linux, you will not find Microsoft Office for Linux, you will not find iTunes for Linux. This is especially true for the gaming industry, which has completely overpassed
Linux. This is a blessing in disguise however. Once again, Linux
developers/knights in shining armor have developed native programs,
most of them open source and free (as in beer and free as in speech),
to substitute their commercial cousins. Once again, some are better, some offer the same functionalities, and others are just mediocre. Luckily, we also have Wine, and its commercial cousins, Cedega
and Crossover Office, which offer a port to a lot of Windows programs.
This solution, however, will require in most instances, some work (read
command line) from the user.

8. Linux is not for the meek of heart.

Linux
is about being free; about having options. There are literally
thousands of options for every single aspect of Linux, beginning with
your distribution of choice. When you've picked out a distribution, you
will want to choose window manager (Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Fluxbox....).
Once you have that, you will want to customize your desktop theme:
wallpaper, icons, window border shape, color and size, panels,
launchers.... Last but not least, you will have tons of options for
every program (for internet browsing for example, you might want Firefox, or SwiftFox, or Opera, or Konqueror, or ie4linux...you
even have command line/text based web browsers). Basically, if you are
an undecided person, you will be overwhelmed with choices.
9. Linux is almost entirely virus/trojan/spyware free, but you will still need some kind of protection.

Protection
for Linux usually means a firewall, either installed in your computer,
or in a router/hardware firewall. This, of course, implies a little bit
more work for the user.

10. Linux assumes that you are an intelligent person.

As
such, it assumes that if you log in as administrator, you know what you
are doing. You can do a lot of damage as administrator. You can
literally screw the whole darn system with a single mistyped command on
the command line. Luckily, for the most part, you will be logged in as a lowly user.
Assuming
that you are intelligent also implies that you can customize
everything, and if you break something while customizing the system to
your needs, you will know how to fix it, or be willing to work hard and
learn how to fix it.

As a final thought, i guess what we, the
Linux fans, do not tell you is that for the most part "Linux is for
power users, and Windows is for n00bs"
(I've seen this posted somewhere). So think about what I've posted, and
if you are not willing to "geek" around a little, Linux is not for you.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

WSDL 2.0 approved as an official W3C Recommendation

Original Link

WSDL 2.0 has finally been approved as an official World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation on June 27 2007. The Web Services Description Working Group
has been working on the standards for more than 6 years. The
recommendation was due on the 31st of December 2006 but has received an
extension to the 30th of June this year.


There has been much debate about whether WSDL 2.0 is the long
awaited and improved successor of WSDL 1.1 (the de facto standard up to
now) or of no relevance at all. Mark Little has written an extensive post on this matter here on InfoQ. The main changes from WSDL 1.1 to 2.0 are:


  • Changes in the naming of WSDL components, e.g. portType has been renamed to interface
  • Removal of message constructs
  • Support of additional Message Exchange Patterns
  • Support of other type systems than XML Schema
  • HTTP binding, which supports POX(Plain Old XML)/REST-style services