Robert Pogson

I came across a website today that really offended me. It contained important information from a famous brand but the colour scheme (thin white letters on a black background) and embedded legalese made finding information difficult. If that weren’t enough, they had the data I sought in a table that filled multiple screens with a single line of information across several columns with one huge column filled with legalese. There was no border=”1″ parameter so it was very difficult to know which data belonged in which row of the table…

Being detail-oriented, I viewed the source-code so that I could parse the table. It was clear that the legalese was repeated in each row so I copied the code and edited the table to be rows one line high. I also changed the background to a light colour and the text black. So simple… I then looked on the site for a contact to give feedback. There was none. An e-mail to webmaster@company.com bounced. Finally, through Wikipedia, I located the parent company and sent their sales team an e-mail with the revised source code and a snapshot. For good measure, I created a new column for the colour-code of the product and the name of the colour on the appropriate coloured background. It was like rationalizing a table in a database. Minimize duplication and speed access. The table that used to fill multiple screens now fits on a single screen with the introductory paragraph.

No word back acknowledging the feedback.

This is a company with whom I have done business for decades. It seems that recently they changed their packaging and imitated the ugly packaging on the website. In the old days they used three colours on their packages with a light coloured background. Why they went to black for packaging is beyond me. Maybe it helps them use recycled paper or something…

Anyway, I had some fun and enjoyed trying to make the world a better place. It must be my “good deed” day. This morning, I contacted a local small business selling refurbished PCs with that other OS. I suggested Debian GNU/Linux and provided some starting points. A reply contained thoughtful questions. I also remembered I had dug up a raspberry cane and forgot to plant it. Fortunately it was in good condition in my workshop and I went out in the rain to make things right. I have about half my yard roto-tilled now and seeding could happen next week. I have slimmed down my garden tractor for the final preparation of the surface. A good day, indeed.

Credit Suisse sees huge growth, “an increase from last year’s shipments of 471.7 million to 1.176 billion units by 2015″, for smart phones for the next few years with Apple maintaining a 23% share of units shipped.

If the prediction holds, by 2015 the number of PCs that are smart phones will rival the number of PCs that are notebooks and desktops today. That should mean years of fair competition for mind-share rather than the monopoly of Wintel. I expect some of that fairness to reach retail shelves of PCs this year, and not just in smart phones but in desktop and notebook PCs. Not so, today. I just checked Walmart.ca and had zero hits for Linux. Android did better. Walmart.com had a huge number of hits for Android tablets but still only a trickle for Linux. Fortunately, a year is a long time in terms of computer technology.

Ron Miller thinks so. His key point?
” once again Google is treading into unfamiliar territory. Companies tend to fail when they go outside their comfort zone (Apple’s foray into retail stores being a notable exception). My feeling is Google doesn’t know much more than it did the first time about retail. It’s just a desperate attempt to jump-start the anemic Android tablet market.”

It’s not as if Google’s smart phones did not sell. They sold well enough for their purpose, to provide a reliable platform for Android/Linux development. The same situation will likely hold for the new tablets unless Google lines up some big OEMs to push the product. Google has lined up ASUS or Samsung, both of whom know how to sell product. In its latest report, Google stated

• revenues of $10.65 billion in the first quarter of 2012, representing a 24% increase over first quarter 2011
• Google-owned sites generated revenues of $7.31 billion

Google’s total investment in Android/Linux is just pocket-change (cash = $49.3billion) for them and they are making the market for its search and app business grow by shipping more smart thingies and encouraging other suppliers to do the same. Even if users of smart thingies are not replacing their PC with a smart thing, they are increasing the hours of the day they can access Google’s services by mobility. There is no downside for Google. There would be a serious downside if they stuck with the stagnant Wintel platform. Google would not have 24% growth staying with Wintel only.