Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Would you buy fewer features if given the option?  Imagine, for example, being given the choice of a brand new vehicle with a five channel stereo, GPS navigation system, and luxury heated seats, or a bare bones vehicle.  Now imagine, all other things being equal, that they cost the same… Who wouldn’t go for the tricked out vehicle?

That’s Joel Spolsky’s contention in Simplicity.  It’s also Donald Norman’s view when he says that Simplicity is highly overrated.

People want choices.  Choice is good.  More choice is better.  Nobody understands this better than US consumer marketing people.  When I returned to Canada from living in the United States after seven years, do you know what I missed the most?  Choices. Choices at the grocery store.  Choices at the book store.  Choices at the electronics store.

Choice sells.  Joel says:

With six years of experience running my own software company I can tell you that nothing we have ever done at Fog Creek has increased our revenue more than releasing a new version with more features. Nothing. The flow to our bottom line from new versions with new features is absolutely undeniable. It’s like gravity. When we tried Google ads, when we implemented various affiliate schemes, or when an article about FogBugz appears in the press, we could barely see the effect on the bottom line. When a new version comes out with new features, we see a sudden, undeniable, substantial, and permanent increase in revenue.

Exactly!

Why is it that every new version of Windows has more features, more options, more stuff?  Why did Apple add video to the iPod?  Why do hot-tubs come with sound systems?  People buy features.  You may not need all those features.  You may never use all those features.  But you can take comfort in the fact that they’re there, knowing that you got value for your money.

This lesson has been largely lost on the telecommunications industry.  Instead of delivering feature rich, complete services, the MBAs in the bowels of these companies toil away figuring out how to deliver new “products” that nobody really wants.  The first time I heard someone describe caller-ID as a product, my jaw hit the floor.  After I got over my astonishment, the same person went on to describe caller-ID block as another product.  Some bean counter with an aptitude for linear programming had obviously determined that by selling all of these features separately, carriers could maximize revenues.  A product of monopoly-coddled inbreeding, it never occurred to them that they might someday be subjected to competitive forces. 

That day is here.  The bundling started by VoIP carriers like Vonage, and now being perpetuated by new cable entrants will lead to an arms race as incumbents and upstarts duke it out for feature supremacy.

Hallelujah.  We shall be delivered from the tyranny of the Bells, brothers and sisters!

Internet journalists are being imprisoned in ever greater numbers, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.  For the first time, two bloggers have been imprisoned, Arash Sigarchi and Joshua Wolf. 

IRAN: 1
Arash Sigarchi, freelance
IMPRISONED: January 26, 2006

Sigarchi, a former editor of the daily newspaper Gilan-e-Emruz and a Web blogger, was sentenced to three years in prison by an Iranian appellate court on several offenses, including insulting Supreme Guide Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and propagandizing against the Islamic Republic in his online blog.

Sigarchi had posted entries and given interviews to Western radio stations that were critical of the government’s harassment of fellow bloggers. He was originally given a 14-year sentence by a revolutionary court in Gilan in February 2005.

UNITED STATES: 1

Joshua Wolf, freelance
IMPRISONED: September 1, 2006

Wolf, a freelance blogger and videographer, was jailed in San Francisco for refusing to turn over to a federal grand jury a videotape of a 2005 protest.

The case pending in a federal appellate court hinges on whether Wolf has a First Amendment or common law right not to turn over his videotape. On August 1, a federal judge ordered him to jail for refusing to turn over the tape. He was incarcerated for 30 days before a two-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered him free on bail while his appeal was pending. On September 11, a three-judge panel for the same appellate court revoked Wolf’s bail at the prosecution’s request. He returned to jail on September 22 even as his appeal was pending.

Wolf taped clashes between demonstrators and San Francisco police during a June 2005 protest by anarchists against a Group of Eight economic conference. Wolf sold footage of the protest to San Francisco television stations and posted it on his Web site. Investigators are seeking Wolf’s testimony and portions of his videotape that were not broadcast. A federal grand jury is investigating possible criminal activity, including an alleged attempt by protestors to burn a police vehicle.

I just got tagged by Andy Abramson in a game of blogger tag, via Jeff Pulver.  The game is pretty simple.  Most bloggers are known by their blogs.  Publish five little known facts about yourself, and then tag five of your blogger pals to participate.  Here goes:

1. You may have seen the odd post here about hot peppers, but that’s really only scratching the surface of another of my hobbies.  Gardening has been an enduring obsession in my life.  I’ve owned three homes in the last 20 years, and installed at least 10,000 square feet of flower beds in them.  That’s about a quarter of an acre of gardens.
2. I seriously considered a career as a musician.  I played the piano, french horn, and cello as well as singing in choirs throughout most of school. I was once a “pickled boy” in a performance of Benjamin Britten’s St. Nicholas Cantata. In fact, I hated mathematics until 11th grade, when I learned what a computer was. A year later,  I got my first job in the computer industry, working part-time at Digital Equipment’s Kanata facility, packing backplanes and other boards into shipping boxes.
3. Although many people know I enjoy wine, I was and still am, a serious beer geek.  I brewed my own, off and on, for 15 years, going so far as to maintain a collection of unusual beer yeasts in petri dishes in my beer refrigerator, and making my beer from scratch by mashing my own malts.  Few ordinary beer drinkers can tell you the difference between alpha and beta amylase, and the temperatures at which they operate in the mashing process.  You can taste it though.  Similarly, most don’t care about the differences between saccharomyces carlsbergensis (lager yeast) and saccharomyces cerevisiae (ale yeast).  You can taste that too!
4. I’m a fan of indigenous peoples’ art, especially the art of native North American peoples.  Some of my favorite artists include woodland artists Norval Morriseau and Daphne Odjig, plains artist Jane Ash Poitras, and west coast artists Bill Reid, Don Yeomans, and Robert Davidson.
5. You may also know from reading this blog that I enjoy travel, especially when it includes adventure sports like scuba.  However, during the seven years my family and I lived in Seattle, we became avid hikers and mountaineers.  Annually, I’d participate in at least one multi-day backpacking expedition in the mountains, or on the beaches. The photo below was taken halfway between Rainy Pass (on the North Cascade Highway), and the Canadian border — a six day backpacking trip on the Pacific Crest Trail with no road access, just a few backpackers and the bears.

Next up: Andrew Hansen, Jon Arnold, Randy Morin, Matthew Saunders and Craig Fitzpatrick.  Tag!  You’re it!  And let’s see if we can get Om Malik to play along too…

In a fascinating development, the Indian VoIP market (which was deregulated in 2002) now seems to be closing ranks again.  Call center operators, among others, will have to publish the names of the companies they do business with, and a wide ranging list of offshore operators like Skype and Vonage are banned. 

Om Malik writes: “For a country which views itself as part of Planet Technology, its government is failing to take into account the changing telecom and technology environment.” Tom Evslin goes further in his piece titled India Shoots Self in Foot, noting that you can’t do business with offshore factories that you can’t call.  The India Times has more detail also.

Short sighted, indeed.

What are all the fashionable press people writing about for the launch of any new Microsoft OS?  The stories debunking Microsoft’s system requirements are de rigueur, of course.  BetaNews takes a poke at Microsoft’s claims yesterday, quoting from a whitepaper by analyst firm iSuppli. 

Microsoft’s claims are a little ludicrous, which makes them an easy target.  They’re saying Vista will run on an 800Mhz processor, with 512M of RAM, and SVGA graphics.  And maybe it will… just.  After all, I’ve got a 400Mhz Pentium 2 with 192M of RAM in my basement running Windows XP, which I use for a file server.  It meets the Windows XP minimum requirements, but it’s not much good for anything else.

Equally, though, iSuppli’s contention that the minimum requirements for Windows Vista are 2G of memory, and a 3Ghz processor are also off the mark.  I have Vista RC2 and Office 2007 TR2 running on:

• A 3Ghz desktop with 1G of memory, and an older graphics card.  Aside from the fact that there are no aero graphics, it runs just fine.
• A 2.7Ghz desktop with 1G of memory and a new graphics card.  It also runs great here.
• A 1.4Ghz laptop with 1.25G of memory and a very old graphics card.  It’s a little sluggish, but for general use (ie. editing some documents, and doing a little email while watching the hockey game) it’s not too bad.

Want to know if your PC can run Vista?  Go check out Microsoft’s Vista upgrade advisor.