Graham Glass, etc.

IBM and PHP

According to this press release, IBM is throwing its weight behind the PHP language and environment. I wasn't familiar with PHP, so I visited the Zend site and read about the latest 5.0 release. From what I can tell, PHP has evolved into a dynamically typed version of Java. Almost everything in the language is the same as Java, except that variables can point to any kind of object and type checking is done at runtime. For an ex-Smalltalker like me, this is actually pretty cool. If you know Java, you could probably learn PHP in a couple of hours. In addition, PHP now has really nice integration with XML via its SimpleXML technology. IBM could presumably evolve PHP much faster than Java, so it wouldn't surprise me if PHP became its favored language over the next few years. This also aligns well with one of my predictions for 2005.

Awesome Bathroom Sink

While in Japan, I stumbled across an awesome sink design that allows you to wash your hands with soap and then dry them without ever touching anything! There are no visible soap dispensers, water taps or air driers.

Here's how it works. The sink has an overhang with icons going from left to right that indicate soap, water and hot air. To use the sink, you first place your hands under the leftmost icon to get soap on them, then move under the middle icon to wash them, then move under the rightmost icon to dry them. Voila!

Click on the picture below to get a full-size picture of the sink.

Pictures from Kyoto

If you're interested in some photos of Kyoto, an old capital of Japan, then check out my new photo album. I hope they'll inspire you to visit the area!

How Wealthy are You?

I live in the U$A, which is well known for its emphasis on the accumulation of wealth. Which brings up an interesting philosophical question: What is Wealth?

An obvious definition is "wealth is the total monetary value of your assets minus liabilities", but I think a more useful definition is "wealth is experiencing the things that you value". This definition takes into account the fact that many valuable things cannot be purchased with money, and that wealth is more of an emotion than a number.

An enlightening exercise is to create a prioritized list of the things that you value and then figure out how many of them you are currently experiencing in your life. Here is a selection of items to get you started:

• health
• a good night's sleep
• reading a good book
• friendship
• romance
• passion
• international travel
• financial security
• children
• pets
• jewelry
• enjoying a sport
• good food
• fashion
• laughter
• music
• a sense of purpose
• art
• good weather
• nice car
• big house
• flowers

Many people with a large wealth based on the assets-liabilities definition find themselves to be poor based on the experiencing-your-values definition. I bet that people are happier when they make choices based on the latter.

How to Produce Good Software, Part 5

In part 4, I described the initial rapid prototype phase of product development. In this part, I focus on the power of simplicity, which contributed to the widespread awareness of products like Glue

Many people are surprised that we achieved this with a marketing budget of zero. One key aspect was licensing policy; there was generally a free, unsupported standard version and a for-fee, supported professional version. But this did not create the biggest buzz.

By far the most important thing was that we created products that people loved.

So how do you create software that people love? I think the main ingredient is simplicity, which provides many benefits:

• the product is memorable
• the product is fun and easy to use
• the product documentation tends to be smaller
• the product is often easier to test and maintain
• the product demos well, much better than slideware
• the product spreads by word of mouth

Indeed, at one company we believed simplicity to be our number one competitive advantage and decided to brand the company around that concept. In other words, we wanted to occupy the mental slot for “simple” in the minds of our target audience.

There is a lot more to simplicity than just, say, designing an elegant set of APIs. Simplicity must manifest itself in every aspect of the user experience, including:

• the company web site
• the product home page
• licensing
• download
• installation
• documentation
• the APIs (when relevant)
• the user interface (when relevant)
• support (including issue tracking)
• upgrading

If you keep all these aspects simple, users will love you, promote you and otherwise help you succeed. They will also assume that simplicity is a widespread corporate value since it manifests in so many areas. However, if one or more areas introduce unnecessary complexity, it can spoil the whole experience and users will assume that simplicity can’t always be relied on.

Creating products that exhibit simplicity is hard. It is not particularly challenging to make simple features easy to use, but it is much tougher to make complex features easy to use.

My design mantra is undoubtedly “user experience comes first”. I ask engineers working on a particular feature to design the user experience first and refine it until it exhibits simplicity. I usually act as the gatekeeper, often sending an engineer back to the drawing board until the feature is crystal clear to understand and use. Only then is the supporting design and code developed. This is an iterative process, because sometimes the design and code provides insights which in turn affects the user experience.

There are several companies outside of the enterprise software marketplace that have a strong reputation for simplicity, such as Apple and Google. In these specific cases, the quest for simplicity comes from the top down and is demanded by the founders; it is essentially a core company value.

Steve Jobs strives for sparse simplicity in products such as the Mac, Mac/OS, and the iPod. Steve is an integral part of Apple’s development cycle, and if a product doesn’t come up to his high standards, it doesn’t ship.

Brin and Page are also well known for their desire for sparse simplicity. When I first tried Google, I was surprised by the simplicity of its home page. I remember wondering what the fuss was about, because the home page was so minimal it didn’t look like it really did anything! Shortly after, Google became my favorite search engine. A few months later, I noticed that the home page had changed subtlety, and become even simpler; they had moved some of the special options to a separate page and then linked to them from the home page. I was impressed by what was obviously a conscious and relentless desire for simplicity. This value continues to be evident in other products such as Google mail and Google maps.

In the next part, I'll describe the planning and development of product releases.

A Night at the Opera

My high school in the UK was affiliated with the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden and was often asked to supply singers for the children's roles. I was lucky to have a good voice and ended up singing in three different operas: Carmen, Tannhauser and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The last opera in the list was the most memorable because I got to sing the part of Mustardseed, which also involved dressing up in a yellow suit with wings. It was a fantastic experience for a 14-year old, and I still get nostalgic whenever I'm near a stage.

In the picture below, I'm in the upper-left hand corner, not looking too happy about stroking the neck of the donkey.

Lightning Calculators Explained?

Here's an article about Daniel, an autistic savant who can perform calculations in the blink of an eye. Apparently, Daniel "sees" numbers as shapes, colors and textures. To perform a calculation, he imagines the shapes of the numbers to be crunched and then almost immediately sees the shape of the answer. There is no intermediate thought or calculation in the usual sense of the word. Although the article doesn't discuss an explanation in much detail, it sounds to me that Daniel makes novel use of the brain's visual transformation capabilities to perform mathematics.

A visual cortex contains special circuitry that specializes in parallel processing of two-dimensional visual data. It literally performs millions of calculations every second to convert the raw input from our eyes into the stereoscopic images that we experience. A rough equivalent for the visual cortex can be found in everyday computers, which include a graphics chip containing special circuitry for performing massively parallel mathematical operations on 2D and 3D images in order to rotate, shade, and otherwise manipulate them.

A computing whiz could figure out a way to use a graphics chip to perform high-speed matrix calculations by mapping the matrices to an image, telling the chip to rotate the image, and then mapping the resulting image back to the answer. I bet the same thing is happening in Daniel's brain.

This brings up several interesting questions. For example, might there be a way for everyday folks to perform a similar kind of mapping, harnessing specialized parts of the brain for uses that they were not intended for? In the future, I have no doubt that we will finally figure out how the brain works and then start designing enhanced brains that have this kind of functionality built in. Awesome!

Japanese Trivia Question

Here's a Japanese Trivia question: What is the significance of the following sequence: approach, pay, bow, bow, clap, clap, pray, bow, leave?

Answer: This is the sequence that you use when praying in a Shinto shrine. You approach the main area, toss a coin into a box, then bow twice to show respect for the gods. Next, you clap your hands to grab the attention of the gods, make your prayer in silence, bow one more time in respect, then leave the area. More information is located here. Congratulations to Simon Guest for getting the correct answer!

The Gates, Japan

I'm currently touring Kyoto, which was one of the capitals of Japan before Tokyo. Note also that Kyoto is an anagram of Tokyo! Many of the shrines and templates that I've visited have Tori Gates, which are large orange archways that are thought to purify anyone who passes through them. Some of the arches are huge and placed over roadways. In America, this would probably be advertised as drive-thru purification!

Anyhow, since I visited The Gates Exhibition in New York last week, I couldn't help but notice the similarities between a Tori gate and a Central Park gate. Indeed, the Fushimi Inari Shrine has large numbers of gates arranged into walkways that look remarkably like those in New York, although without the billowing curtains. I encourage you to click on this link and see for yourself.

Karaoke Taxi?

I had a great time last night singing Karoke, and did indeed attempt Bohemian Rhapsody. My favorite Karaoke song is now Everybody wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears (who also incidentally just released a great new album called "Everybody Loves a Happy Ending").

On the way to my first business meeting, I found myself softly singing some of the songs from the previous evening and wondered whether the concept of a Karaoke Taxi would be popular in Japan. The idea is that you could order songs from a device in the back of the taxi and then sing along to them on the way to your destination. This could be a great way to pass the time, and I would definitely use this service. Each song would add a small amount to the fare, allowing taxis to make additional incremental revenue. I'm not sure how many people would enjoy Karaoke without also having a drink, so perhaps the taxi could also have a Saki dispenser!