Either You Succeed or Explain

Added a ranking system to my blog

I added a cool feature to my blog which enables my readers to rate the posts. The feature is provided by a startup called Outbrain. After you read each post, you are kindly requested to rate it using a 1-5 star rating system. The goal is:

• Allow me to focus my posts on topics which my readers find more relevant.
• Allow you to give something back by marking the more interesting posts for future readers.

There's also one more interesting goal, but that's something we will hopefully see in the future: find more content according to your preferences. As a reader, by highlighting the relevant posts I can tell the system what are my interests and the system can suggest more posts in relevant topics which were marked as interesting.

Outbrain is still in Beta and there are many features in the works. If you're reading this through RSS or e-mail, you will not see the Outbrain ranking system. You're more than welcome to click on the post link, go to the full post in my blog and rank it there. I'll appreciate it.

Finally, if you have any feedback on the ranking or any comment, please drop me a line, either by mail or as a comment to this post.

If you need a Windows machine, don't buy it from Apple

I read this post some time ago in MacWorld claiming that buying a Mac laptop is a reasonable choice, even if you plan to run Windows. It has the same hardware as Windows PCs and Apple gives you BootCamp which allows installing Windows side-by-side with the Mac OS. When I read it, I couldn't agree more. This was a main argument when I got my Mac. There's no risk here. Well, I changed my mind. I love my Mac and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for the best machine. However, if you need a Windows machine, don't buy it from Apple.

The reason is clear: When it comes to Macs, Apple's main concern is Mac OS users. You don't want to buy from a company which disregards your needs and considers you a second class citizen. Especially when you can just as easy get a machine from a company that (potentially) gives you all the attention you will need (Lenovo, HP, ...).

Here's the example: I installed Windows Vista on my Mac with BootCamp and it worked perfectly. Installation was smooth, performance is blazing fast, nothing to complain. Then I bought a Dell 20" wide LCD monitor. It works beautifully on the Mac. On Windows, well, that's a different story. The graphic driver cannot show the correct resolution. So the image is too big, unfocused and distorted.

My MacBook Pro uses a top-of-the-line nvidia GeForce 8600M GT, so, if it was a regular a windows machine, I would simply download the latest drivers from nvidia's web site. However, on a Mac, the drivers would not install and you have to use the drivers provided by Apple. I'm not the only user complaining about it, there are many posts in Apple's support forums regarding this issue. 

Now, back to my initial claim, Apple does not care enough to deal with the problem. True, BootCamp is still in beta stages. Nevertheless, Apple is strongly advertising BootCamp's abilities as a selling point for new Macs.  Beta or no Beta, the bottom line is that it doesn't work. They explain. If it was a laptop from a different known manufacturer, I'm betting I wouldn't have the problem to begin with. From the same reason I don't have a problem on my laptop when using Mac OS, and if such a problem occurs, Apple quickly releases system updates to solve them. The resources invested in fixing BootCamp bugs are far less than the ones invested in fixing Mac OS bugs.

The lesson is very simple: If you want proper service, be part of the mainstream. To give another example to this conclusion: this is why many companies don't care that their sites don't support Firefox. This is why most countries don't provide facilities for people with disabilities. Being a minority sucks.

Being a minority also means you're special.

Some more presentation tips: engage your audience

I came across this great post by Neil Patel. I can relate to these tips and it's worth reading. Keeping up all these principals across days of training is not an easy task, but it's the only way if you want to really educate people and leave a residue.

I want to focus on talking with the audience rather than to them. Some people may find it hard at the beginning. So here's my tip: Plan discussions in advance. Find the spots in the presentation where you can turn it from talking about your material to discussing a topic.

Here's some pointers:

• Look for points (decisions, opinions) that may be controversial and ask the audience what they think. If the decision looks trivial, play the devil's advocate and show them the other side, eventually reaching the correct conclusion.
• Ask instead of tell. Before presenting your solution, ask for their solutions. The best thing is to lead the audience to your solution, but be prepared to accept other solutions as well.
• Turn audience questions back to the audience. Unless the question is about pure facts, the person asking probably already has an opinion. Hear it. Let others react. Even if the answer is plain facts, maybe the audience can deduct the answer. This only shows you're broadcasting on the same wave length.

Training tip: use Keynote's Presenter Display!

Most people who give presentations from laptops with external projectors are either not using their laptop internal display or mirroring the slide on this display. Apple's presentation software Keynote (part of the iWork suite) has this amazingly useful feature called 'Presenter Display'. Instead of just mirroring the current slide, you get a customizable display that shows you:

• Time. In a big font. I can read it from across the room. This is great since I never wear a wristwatch when giving presentations. Even if you do, constantly peeking at your watch is not recommended. It's better to just momentarily lower your eyes to your laptop.
• Elapsed time for the presentation. If I know I have X minutes for the presentation this is very useful. During a long training, I can immediately see that I'm over an hour, so it's a good time for a break.
• Current slide.
• Next slide. I can't count the number of times I started wondering what's on the next slide while talking. I know all my slides, but I sometimes forget the exact order. A quick peek at my screen is enough to recognize the slide.
• Presenter notes. I never use those, but if you do, you can get it as well.

The internal screen of the laptop is turned to the presenter and becomes your 'cheat sheet'. I can't emphasize how useful this is. I used to print out handouts to help me with determining the next slide, but this never helps since I never have time to flip pages and find the right slide.

I like Keynote. I'm a long time Microsoft PowerPoint user and I don't regret switching to Keynote. I can't say that one is better, there are many similarities and differences. However, the 'Presenter Display' feature is a real jewel missing from PowerPoint (I didn't experience PowerPoint 2007, maybe there's something similar).

Traveling again, this time to Champaign, Illinois

I'll be traveling to Champaign, Illinois, next week, to give another training. It's the second time I'm giving a training for Amdocs since I left. It's a good deal for me, it's good to have some income (allows me to extend my startup "runway") and it's also an opportunity to maintain my training skills. It's also a good break, although, last time, it was a bit long and it took me some time to get back.

I haven't been to Champaign, but people say there's not much to do there. For me it is exciting, since it is an opportunity to visit the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) at UIUC (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) For those of you not familiar with the terms, NCSA was the home of an interesting application back in the mid 90's called NCSA Mosaic. Mosaic was the first popular graphical web browser. I remember downloading the early Alpha from the NCSA site. I was a student in the Technion back then. It was a world of e-mail, FTP, Usenet and Gopher before HTTP came along. Mosaic was amazing from the very first moment, although there was only one site you could browse. It's a piece of computing history now.

BTW, while on the subject, one of the creators of Mosaic was Marc Andreessen. He has done very well with some very successful ventures, the latest is Ning. He also writes a great blog which I recommend.

See you in Champaign, Illinois.

Eclipse Europa reaches over 2.8 million downloads

These numbers were posted on Ian Skerrett's blog (see the post for exact figures) and include all the flavors of the platform. Naturally, these numbers does not represent the exact number of Eclipse users for some reasons:

• Personally, I downloaded Europa more than once and in several flavors. I did at least 5 downloads.
• In large organizations, usually one IT guy downloads the version and then distributes it to all the developers.
• Many people use Eclipse distributes like BEA Workshop, IBM Rational Application Developer and MyEclipse IDE. These people do not download Eclipse directly from eclipse.org. For example, MyEclipse claims to have over 0.5 million users.

However, this is somewhat consistent with IDC's estimates from last September, that the number of Eclipse users is about 2.27 million.

On a different note, it's interesting to see how the downloads are divided among the platforms.

I'm not sure what's the exact figures when comparing the percentage of each of the platforms, but it looks like there are not a lot of Mac users. It's even more alarming when considering that most corporate developers are not working on Macs and these are larger numbers of people who do not download directly.
Well, as I claimed in the past, I think Eclipse works better on the Mac. I promised a "drag race" between the platforms and I'll try to find some time to do it in the near future.