ITauthor

Until I came across this video I hadn't realised that:
  a)   TweetDeck was a UK creation
  b)   It was the work of one man: Iain Dodsworth

TweetDeck is a phenomenal piece of work to be created by one man. Hats off to the guy!

But why does someone go to the trouble (and it must have taken a serious amount of work) to create application as superbly usable as TweetDeck? To make some money out of it? How do you make money out of something that's given away free? Iain Dodsworth explains his plan:

So we all know about Steve Jobs. But, what the heck, let's trot through the well-worn path of his public life.

The early years where he hooked up with a brilliant young engineer called Steve Wozniak and got him to design circuit boards that people still consider works of engineering artistry. The huge success of the Apple II in the late '70s when the microcomputer industry was in its infancy. His immediate grasp, on visiting Xerox PARC, of the business potential of the mouse and graphical user interface. The Apple Lisa and then the phenomenon that was the Macintosh. His sacking from Apple in 1985 and the launch of NeXT (identifying UNIX as the operating system that would allow him to continue pursuing the ideas he'd been trying to develop at Apple). The $10M purchase of a division of Lucasfilm the following year (which went on to become Pixar). The transformation of that $10M into a $585M share value when Pixar went public in 1995. The stagnation of Apple without Jobs. His return to Apple in 1996 (shortly afterwards taking on the mantle of "interim" CEO - as if anyone was fooled that he wouldn't stick around). The uber-stylish iMac in 1998 (the first of the iBrands and the fast-selling Macintosh ever). The license to print money that was the iPod/iTunes application/iTunes Music Store triumvirate. The successful replacement of the old Mac OS with Mac OS X, an operating system based on the work done at NeXT. And then in 2007 the launch of a mobile phone - but not just any mobile phone - of course it's not - this is Apple, so it just has to be, indisputably, the best mobile phone ever.

So that's all well and good. But out of all his background of success and his personal qualities - his obsession for beautiful hardware design, his extreme attention to detail, his ferocious determination to protect Apple's intellectual property, his own personal self-branding, his Wonka-esque control over what information comes out of Apple - out of all this, what is it that makes people follow Jobs, and hang on his every word, like no other business leader.

For an answer, look no further than this footage from Apple's sales conference in Hawaii in October 1983:

It's his passion, his complete commitment and his palpable belief in the importance of what he's saying that make this so totally captivating. If Jobs had been an army recruiting sergeant, looking for recruits to fight the evil Big Blue, I'd have enlisted on the spot. 

As a manager who never set out to be a manager (but who, nevertheless, is trying to be a good manager) Scott Hanselman's recent follow-up interview with Chris Sells about management struck a chord with me and I wanted to share it.

Among the things Scott and Chris discuss are:

• Being an advocate for the people you manage
• Getting things done means ignoring emails ("At Microsoft you either write code or you delete email")
• "No meeting Wednesday"
• Weekly or daily task setting and progress reporting
• Prime motivators for getting things done: shame and fear

Chris talks about Scott reduced posting to Computer Zen since becoming a manager. I think what he's saying is: you can be a good manager, a good website contributor, a good husband, a good father - but you only get to choose one of the above.

I'd like to think that's not true.

Please note: This video is from Microsoft's Channel 9 website and (I'm guessing) is the copyright property of Microsoft, or maybe of Scott Hanselman. Go to the original page on Channel 9 to see the video in its Channel 9 context, complete with comments.

Other links:

• Channel 9's RSS feed: http://channel9.msdn.com/Feeds/RSS/
• Hanselminutes on 9 Web page: http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/HanselminutesOn9/
• Hanselminutes on 9 iPod feed: http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/HanselminutesOn9/feed/ipod/
• This particular video: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Glucose/Hanselminutes-on-9-Follow-up-6-months-later-with-Chris-Sells-on-Managing-People-and-Your-Time
• Scott's audio podcast: http://www.hanselminutes.com/

Thanks to my colleague Jim for sharing this via Facebook.

Brian Eno has created an ambient music application for the iPhone. The blurb at http://generativemusic.com/ says:

Developed by ambient pioneer Brian Eno and musician/software designer Peter Chilvers, Bloom explores uncharted territory in the realm of applications for the iPhone and iPod touch. Part instrument, part composition and part artwork, Bloom’s innovative controls allow anyone to create elaborate patterns and unique melodies by simply tapping the screen. A generative music player takes over when Bloom is left idle, creating an infinite selection of compositions and their accompanying visualisations.

Fortunately, for those of us without iPhones, there’s a Flash version of it for the PC. Go to this URL, turn on your speakers and click around:

http://www.nuigroup.com/bloom/bloom.swf

I love listening to spoken-word audio on my iPod,, but, on the whole, I don’t like listening to audio from a Web page. Partly this is because the sound card on my Dell Vostro 1700 is extremely poor and picks up interference from the hard disk drive. But mainly it’s because I like to listen to audio when I’m walking the dog and when I’m commuting to work in my car.

Most of the time this means listening to podcasts and usually these days, where audio is available on a Web page it’s in MP3 format and it’s also available as a podcast. But in some places audio is still only available as RealAudio, which has to be played on your computer using RealPlayer.

So, if you’re like me, you need a way of getting audio that’s only available in RealAudio format off a Web page, into MP3 format, and into your iPod or other MP3 player.

My particular case was that I wanted to listen to the well-known audio documentary “Ghetto Life 101”. This is available from Sound Portraits (http://soundportraits.org/on-air/ghetto_life_101/) as a RAM file. Alternatively you can find a collection of David Isay documentaries, all as RAM files, here: http://www.talkinghistory.org/isay.html.

So here’s one way of doing this (this relies on using Firefox as your browser):

1. Download and install Firefox if you don’t already use this as your browser.
2. Once you’ve installed Firefox, download and install the DownloadThemAll Firefox add-on.
3. Browse to the Web page containing the RAM file you want to play on your MP3 player. For example, try going to http://www.talkinghistory.org/isay.html.
4. Choose Tools > DownloadThemAll! Tools > DownloadThemAll!
   
   The DownloadThemAll! dialog box opens, listing all the downloadable files on the Web page.
5. Unselect any selected Filter checkbox and enter *ram in the Fast filtering field. This will select just files with the .ram file name extension.
   
   In this screenshot I’ve used the filter *isdn*ram, because the page I’m processing has three versions of each RAM file and I only want the ISDN-quality files (which all have “isdn” in the file name)
   
   
6. In the Save files in field, enter the location where you want to save the file(s).
7. Click Start!
8. Download and install FormatFactory.
9. Start FormatFactory and click All to MP3.
   
   
10. Click Add File.
11. Select all the RAM files you downloaded.
12. Click OK.
    
     
13. Copy the resulting MP3 files to your MP3 player, or drag them into your music folder in iTunes and sync your iPod.

If you’re downloading a lot of files, you might like to give them all the same artist or album tag. To do this really easily, right-click this link and download and install ID3-TagIT (note: this link points to a zip file containing an .exe file – always run your virus scanner on any executable file you download before running it).