Randy Arnold's Blog

A friend of mine in the MeeGo community brought my attention to an interesting concept he calls MeeGoVerse, which translates common gaming elements to real-life work as a sort of “massive multiplayer” endeavor.  One important aspect is the use of achievements to reward people for attacking necessary community evils, like bug reporting.  I can envision Meegon badges for each achievement.  People love to contribute, and especially be recognized for it.

Badges can be found in unusual places and contexts.  While updating my LinkedIn profile recently I took stock of a couple of icons I had not really thought much about before.

Right there beside the YOU indicator you’ll note an in and, next to it, a circular array graphic.  The first indicates  a Premium account, meaning for one that you get to harass potential connections with InMails.  Very valuable when I was searching for a new job two years ago.  The circle of circles shows profile viewers that I’m a member of an OpenLink network and thus open to said harassment.  Fair, after all, is fair.  

Now, LinkedIn calls these badges, which strikes me as a little amusing.  I didn’t earn them; I paid for one and selected the other.   So I feel a bit like a fraud.

To be completely fair, Premium membership means a lot more than a small quota of outgoing spam potential each month– it also indicates that your profile can be fully browsed by those outside your network.  So it’s a useful icon to display, sure, but I still can’t quite call it a badge.

In my opinion a badge is earned.  So if LinkedIn wanted to go that route, your number of recommendations could be one.  Why not allow members to show that count up there with the other so-called badges?  Occasional boilerplate recommendations notwithstanding, it’s at least more legitimate than the other two examples.

Even more appropriate, though, would be badges based on actual, personal accomplishment.  Wouldn’t it be cool to have a common protocol for such a thing, that meant the same thing to everyone and could be deployed in any context?

Mozilla has just such a concept in mind.  It’s called the Open Badges Project, and here’s a summary of the scope and intent:

We’re building an open platform that will enable anyone to issue, collect and display badges. Providing learners with new ways to get public recognition for their skills and achievements.

Their PDF draft paper shows they’ve put quite a bit of thought into this, and I think Mozilla is in a good place to push such an idea.  I imagine support will be built right into Firefox, and since the specification is open, I also expect Open Badge support to at least be made available to all browsers.  And this could possibly be extended to employment, providing a way for job applicants to quickly and easily demonstrate competencies.

I’m really intrigued by this, so I’m going to wriggle my way into the Mozilla community and learn more.  I also have some related thoughts on the dreaded subject of internet karma, so stay tuned and definitely browse the Mozilla materials.  I think they’re onto something!

Anyone ever watch the 1990 movie Crazy People?  An advertisement executive (played with nutty magnificence by the late great Dudley Moore) cracks up under the stress of lying to people for a living and ends up in a mental institution.  At some point he enlists the aid of residents to help him create marketing campaigns after the bluntly-honest-but-hilarious ads that landed him there become popular.  You can read the wiki article to get an idea of the results, but watch the movie if you can to get the full effect.  Other than some bad acting by Darryl Hannah, it’s cute.

Why am I recommending films to you?

Because when I think of Nokia’s flagship N8 smartphone, I think of how well it would fit into one of these crazy campaigns.  I can picture a sharp photo of this beautiful handset on a blank background, accompanied by pithy captions like “The Nokia N8: Quirky But Cool” or “Cover the Logo and Everyone Will Love It”.  

I write that last one only half in jest, because I truly suspect that Nokia’s now-uncool brand is doing more harm to this product than any aspect of the product itself.

There are plenty of reviewers eager to climb onto the “Symbian Sucks” bandwagon and trumpet the UI failings.  And they exist.  I used an N8 for a week courtesy of WOM World Nokia and certainly had my share of WTF moments.  Thing is, none were major.  Every one was a very minor inconvenience, and some have been since corrected by quick updates.

My own history with cell phones puts me at odds with the big league reviewers.  I had never really used one prior to 2005, when Nokia hired me to ensure their quality (I was told my ignorance would aid in objectivity).  My first phone was a Nokia 3000-something, and the next one was an N80i, so to me the Nokia Way was the only way.  I found S40 and S60 both incredibly easy to navigate for a novice.  They fit the crazy way I think, maybe.  So when my mom handed me her Motorola Razor (remember them?) one day, I was stumped.  I couldn’t even make a call without instructions.

The point is that ANY device user experience is going to have its idiosyncracies.  If you favor one strongly or have limited experience, every other UX is going to feel like failure.  That doesn’t excuse the perplexing approach that Nokia took with Symbian touchscreen devices– some N8 functionality feels buried, and finding certain features should see the user rewarded somehow.  And there are parts so counterintutive that if you don’t access them often enough you will quickly forget they’re even there, much less how to engage them.  That said, my oldest son has an N8 and Just Uses It.  Easily.  Contentedly.

Call performance was great.  Audio was great.  The feel and weight were perfect for me (I like a solid phone).  I did encounter two serious issues: the first N8 I received from the Nokia Developer Champions program would not work at all, and the second has a flaky battery that has twiced refused to take a charge (solution: place phone in ziploc bag, place package in freezer for ~4 hours, remove and thaw.  Funny, but fixed).

But bottom line: it really isn’t bad.

Not the hyperbolic End-of-the-Earth bad that some detractors would have you believe.  Nowhere near the “unusable” epithets ladled on so gleefully by biased reviewers encamped in competitors’ fields.  Quirky, yes.  Maddening, occasionally.  But cool, always.

And why not?  The cool starts even before the unboxing.  Nokia has been working hard at minimizing packaging.  The N8 comes in just about the most efficient box possible.  It takes up about one-fourth of its predeccessors’ volume.  So chalk one up to environmental responsibility.

Then there’s the N8′s camera.  I shouldn’t even need to mention this legendary appliance.  12 megapixels of Xenon-flashing goodness.  There is no competition.

And despite the odd interface aspects, they lie underneath a beautiful touchscreen where black is truly black, even under our white-hot Texas sun.  It is a pleasure to stroke.

As I noted in comments on yesterday’s article about Nokia’s balancing act on the make-or-break margin, it’s become cool to bash Nokia these days, kicking a downed dog for offenses that are forgiven of other competitors.  It started off warranted, because Nokia had indeed grown fat and complacent on steamrollered victory, but has now reached a point of pointlessness.

If the N8 had been an Apple product, there would have been some grousing over the omissions and silly stuff, and it would have stopped once the charismatic Steve Jobs convinced everyone that the emperor still had clothes.  There would have been updates promised, and delivered.  But that success at public relations magic is to Apple’s credit, even as I disagree with the common and disingenuous “you’re holding it wrong” aspects.  It’s hard to argue against the results so aptly demonstrated in Apple’s rising profits.

But Nokia doesn’t have Steve Jobs.  They have Stephen Elop, who’s still struggling to master the gift of persuasive gab.  When I drill down on Nokia’s troubles, I can’t help come away thinking that they really come down to a need for clear, strong leadership combined with a clear, compelling message.  The UI and branding parts are starting to materialize… now if only the leadership can instill confidence in customers and stakeholders.  The difference would have made the N8 a must-have device for 2011 rather than a phone we love in secret.

I wrote in May of last year asking, only partially rhetorically, if this would be a make-or-break year for consumer electronics giant Nokia.  And like many other pundits, I’ve offered my previous employer sound survival advice on more than one occasion [1][2][3] .  Based on recent financial reports, nobody listened.

All facetiousness aside, here around the halfway point of this year it makes sense to look at the company’s situation again and see if any of Nokia’s remaining strengths can lift it up and turn it around.  

Capacity and Reach

The one thing I was constantly impressed by when working for Nokia was the company’s manufacturing and distribution prowess.  Its supply chain depth and expertise is second to none.  Bottom line, Nokia can build and deliver like nobody’s business.

If that was all it took to put out the world’s most desired and respected consumer products then Nokia has the deal sewn up.  But the best logistics in the world don’t make up for shortcomings elsewhere.  It just means you can ship more of what nobody wants than anyone else.

Mechanics and Innovation

One of my complaints as an employee was that there didn’t appear to be a clear Nokia product identity.  Yes, there were certain shared characteristics within product families but nothing that ever shouted “Nokia!”.  I heard colleagues and customers express the same concern but somehow word wasn’t getting where it was needed.

While I’m discouraged by some Nokia moves the past few years, I’m thrilled to see the branding part coming together.  I can look at an N8 and E7 and see the relative DNA.  I can see Symbian Anna and MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan interfaces and know that, despite significantly different underpinnings, the user interfaces are produced by a design team with a cohesive vision.  Love those squircles!

Some other peeves are being addressed, like pentaband capability on high-end models.  Combine these progressions with Nokia’s winning camera and display technologies and you have a really compelling offering.  In fact as far as I can see Nokia has failed to capitalize on what it does better than most.  Yes Symbian was too slow to evolve, and still has some quirks, but customers will ignore some annoyances IF the device does certain, expected  things Very Well.  Apple proved that with the first iPhone iterations, omitting features that other smartphones already had but creating a highly-compelling user experience that led zealots to not only overlook but even defend iPhone shortcomings.

Nokia needs to cultivate zealots of its own, and actually had a powerful contingent until touchscreen devices became de rigueur.  I’ve been harping on the company to improve its outreach efforts, and see promising signs here and there, but still no heavy PR push as is needed.  But that may well be largely device-driven; Nokia’s best product, the upcoming N9, doesn’t run the Windows Phone 7 OS on which Nokia has pinned its future.  Outreach campaigns may well be waiting, understandably so, for those Microsoft-powered phones.

Conventional Wisdom

The analysts, however, are already writing Nokia’s epitaph.  Many believe Nokia has already passed that make-or-break point.  Tomi Ahonen has been especially critical, which is interesting given his more favorable assessments in the past.

And when you read glowing reviews that pick the N9 over iPhone, you wonder if there isn’t a sort of self-defeating insanity infecting Nokia’s upper ranks– given that CEO Stephen Elop has hinted that the amazing MeeGo-capable N9 will be a one-off product.

Reinvention

But the reality is that no company is dead until it’s, well, completely nonfunctioning.  Nokia is hurting now, hunkered down and licking its wounds.  It may well not survive long enough to be a power player again, especially if the stock keeps declining.  Its prospects certainly haven’t been helped by Elop’s original provocative statements about impending product endings.  But… the company still has a wealth of resources, and I believe it can pull itself together and succeed again.

When I was a Nokia employee (2005 through 2009) it was easy to get caught up in unrealistic expectations.  Say what you will from the outside, within the company there was an energy, a living spirit of Can-Do that could have led to greater things– had it not been squandered by executive arrogance.

That focus on possibilities served the company well in the past, as it morphed from one distinct industry to another, and can again.  A fog of complacency settled over the upper ranks during the late 2000s, and maybe the resulting rapid market loss was necessary to shock them out of it.  Some analysts believe that Windows Phone may well be the vehicle to launch it out of the ashes.  And there are also interesting things going on with S40!

Assuming Nokia can hold on through the next year or so, it also has some exciting technologies in the wings.  Like solar charging and haptics on steroids.  I’m cautiously optimistic my favorite employer can fly again!  As a stockholder I need to be.

I’m going to confess something that’s likely to cost me Twitter followers, kill future career prospects and launch a mild Comment war:

I’m not much of an app user.

And I can’t understand those who are, either.  Well, I can align with the casual user.  The few utilitarians out there.  Those discriminating sorts who reserve their precious device storage space for more valuable content.  Like songs, photos and LOLcats.  

But there’s a whole world out there just begging for more cute and clever applications it seems.  And forget fart apps; enter cool apps into Google and you’re rewarded with 165,000,000 results, with mostly gas-free iPhone goodies bubbling up to the surface.  That’s a LOT of interest.

The race to claim the biggest app repository is reaching mind-numbing numbers, with Apple’s trademark-protected App Store still possessing a commanding lead of over 400,000 little software blobs in its clutches (and has actually breached 500,000 including inactive apps).  And if that doesn’t boggle your brain, rapidly-expanding Android is on track to beat Apple’s bragging rights by July or August of this year.

I’m usually happy with the basic pre-installed stuff and a few extras here and there.  Load me up with maps, weather, geek utilities, some games and a full-blown web browser and I’m happy.

The last bit says it all.  Forget local apps stealing precious finite device resources– I’ll take the internet, thank you, and everything on it.  With relish.

That means high octane HTML5, naturally, and even proprietary technologies like Adobe’s Flash.  Yes, I agree with most of the complaints but just think of the number of Flash games out there.  No application store necessary.  The internet is increasingly the way to go.

Which is why I rolled my eyes every time I heard someone complain that Nokia’s Maemo “didn’t have any/many apps”.  So what.  Maemo had a killer Mozilla-based browser.  And are you really going to dig your way through 400,000+ listings in someone’s virtual store?  There’s no search engine good enough, nor time in the world.  Assuming you were so curious, the only way you would ever see what’s on the bottom is by inverting the listing.  But then, rank hacking notwithstanding, the more useful blobs bob to the top anyway.  So most shoppers will sift through the more obvious offerings and anything floating just below the cream line can only dream of daylight.

Interestingly, Microsoft’s mobile app count is growing faster than device adoption, leading to a software top-heavy situation.  That will in turn dilute their value unless and until phone sales take off.  For a saturated market of products heading toward free, that’s not good.

Web apps make sense in many ways.  They tend to be cheaper to develop, cover more platforms, and are easier to maintain.  Monetization, though, can be more of a challenge.  But if you’re reaching more people, then you’re increasing the chance of alternatives like voluntary donations… so turning a profit with mobile web sites can be simply a matter of the model.  There’s even room for subscription solutions as long as the price is below the typical user’s pain threshold.

Multi-platform app stores like AppCentral, Appia and Intel’s AppUp are a good compromise.  Even Amazon says it intends to go that way with its service.  What this could mean to single-platform servicers like Apple remains to be seen.  Would the company so eager to protect the term “App Store” (failed) go so far as to prevent others from selling software for its products?

Who cares.  Give me an open ecosystem powered by MeeGo, Mozilla and the internet and I’m good.

Want to stop productive bug reporting in its tracks? Want to get the trolling rolling? Toss a flaming “Works for me!” into the mix and stand back.  

I’ve often described the title of this piece as the most devastating insult one techie can inflict on another.  It’s surely one of the more popular. And while in many (maybe most) cases it’s dropped in perfect innocence, this little innocuous phrase tends to land with the force of a nuclear bomb.

Bug triage is a progressive process.  After the initial report, others join in to share their experience and a living, breathing, sometimes-viral organism develops.  Those afflicted with the bug take co-ownership of the report, as do those working to resolve it.  They may see anyone poking in to coo a cavalier “works for me!” as an affront.  A theft of discourse and productivity.  And a blatant example of trolling.

It’s especially an issue in open source communities, where much if not all of the work involved is strictly volunteer.  Pointless infringements on precious time are not taken lightly.  And unless the poster is a sociopath, they surely don’t want to develop a troll’s reputation.

But what if the alleged agent provocateur really is innocent?  There’s actually value in the remark if it’s sincere.  A valid “works for me” becomes a control, an example of an environment or set of conditions where the bug has failed to manifest.  A bug-free control can aid in troubleshooting by enabling investigators to better identify critical environmental differences.  In fact the more “works for me” contributions there are, the quicker the culprit can be identified.  It lurks in the unique shadows of the bug originator’s domain… and can often be something really simple.

Obviously bug triage depends on collaboration and, to some extent, healthy competition.  But successful bug resolution is best accomplished by avoiding ego-driven contributions on either side.  That means no taunting, and no rash assumptions.  Consider your words carefully.  If you have no stake in the bug, just observe from the sidelines if at all.  And if personality conflicts emerge, they’re best taken out of the bug stream and handled between the adversaries.

Keep on (de)bugging!