Month July 2007

Does PHP 5 Hurt PHP?

Sandro Groganz 43 Comments

If you follow the PHP blogs, then you are likely to have read Matt “WordPress” Mullenweg’s anti-PHP 5 rant:

PHP 5 has been, from an adoption point of view, a complete flop. Most estimates place it in the single-digit percentages or at best the low teens, mostly gassed by marginal frameworks.

He makes some good points in the post. He also manages to make himself seem like a bit of a dick 🙂

The thing that I keep wondering is if we aren’t seeing a slowdown in general PHP adoption due to other technologies being able to get a leg up while PHP 5 was in development and the succeeding slow migration from PHP 4 to 5.

Now that I work for a company creating Java-based software, I see:

Finally, with PHP 5, it is possible to build OO libraries able to compete with Java libraries as far as quality is concerned – but, well, those Java libraries already have a long market track-record, i.e. have been in production use for a long time.

My impression is that PHP 5 slowed down the development of PHP applications able to compete with similar Java-based server-side products. The problem being that migration from PHP 4 to PHP 5 consumes quite some developer resources for complex PHP applications. Additionally, PHP 4 keeps developers busy with finding workarounds for their applications due to limited OO features.

Did PHP applications lose market share or at least not grow as fast as their Java (or C#, etc.) counterparts due to the slow adoption of PHP 5? Unfortunately, I did not find an informative basis to answer this question sufficiently and would appreciate any hints.

Claros, the Open Source GMail – and Even Nicer

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

Screenshot of ClarosIt’s about time that I introduce you to Claros, a Web-based email client, including contact management, instant messaging for Google Talk/Jabber, digital Post-it-style notes – plus: it’s Open Source!

My good friend Görkem told me about it in March, when it was not public yet. Ever since, I kept an eye on Claros and saw a great product evolve.

Seems like it’s ready for prime time: Turkey’s biggest ASP/ISP has chosen Claros as their communication infrastructure offered to over 500,000 users.

I especially like the slick and easy to understand user interface – well done folks!

Try out the Claros online demo, screenshots, screencasts, etc.

Ice Cream and the Interaction of Sales and Marketing

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A few weeks ago I spent a fantastic weekend in lovely Regensburg with my wife. It was sunny and hot weather, so we decided to buy ice cream from one of the street vendors.

There was a queue of five people and while waiting at the end of the line, we were not able to see all the flavors they offer. When it was our turn, the iceman pressured us with a nervous tone in his voice to choose quickly (there were 3 others in the line behind us). After the purchase was done, my wife told me that she only bought one scoop of ice cream, although she intended to buy two, because she felt overstrained.

This story tells us the basics of sales and marketing: Marketing should provide the necessary information about all available options to customers, while sales supports them in their buying decision.

Some tips for ice cream street vendors:

  1. Place a poster with color photos and names of all available ice flavors highly visible to those waiting in the queue.
  2. Make sure your sales personal provides enough time to customers to make a decision – sales will increase. You won’t lose those waiting at the very end of the queue, because they are already crazy for your ice cream after studying the poster with flavor options.

Someone wants to start a cool ice cream business with me?

The same two tips also apply to the software business, especially because costs are much higher compared to end-user ice cream purchases. The financial risk of making a wrong decision is higher for customers when buying software and related services.

Hence, provide enough information and don’t rush potential customers – otherwise they might only buy one scoop instead of two, or nothing at all.

Empathy in Marketing and Sales

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Seth Godin’s thoughts on empathy:

The mistake most blogs and books make: they are about the writer, not the reader.

That’s only half the truth, because the art of self-disclosure lets others open up and tell you about their needs:

The idea that self-disclosure is important in relationships is no big surprise.

Ask a company founder why he started his business and you’ll hear a real-life story about a concrete problem for which he was missing an adequate solution. His story will help you  understand his product and it will also make you think about how it can make your life easier.

Empathy goes both ways.

Don’t talk too much about yourself in a sales relationship. Rather, use your personal experience with the product as a door opener to ask questions to potential customers to hear more about his needs.

Trust is All You Have

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About 6 years ago I quit my studies and started to regularly earn money. I did quite a few different things: from running my own business to being employed, from software development to marketing.

Experiences I’ve made were good and bad, but mostly good, hence I almost always enjoyed what I did. Whenever terrible things happened, I realized that in the end, all you can do is to keep trusting others.

Of course, I became more aware of what can go wrong and I became more picky on whom to trust and also to which extend. But what it all comes down to is that you cannot be happy in your work life if you refuse to trust and instead become skeptical and bitter.

Those who do not trust, they are quite easy to spot: They take all the fame for themselves and blame others. They are extremely nice to their boss and behave ugly to their subordinates. They are always under pressure and make others feel nervous.

Those who don’t trust others, don’t trust themselves and lack confidence in their own and other people’s abilities. This prevents those without trust from achieving successful results.

Lars at Web Monday in Berlin

Sandro Groganz 1 Comment

Web Monday “connects users, developers, founders, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, researchers, web pioneers, bloggers, podcasters, designers and other folks interested in Web 2.0 topics (in the broadest sense)” – as they say about themselves.

This event takes place once per month on a Monday in several cities around Germany. Today, I was flying to Berlin to spend a week in the Mindquarry office and, hey – it’s Web Monday!

Right now, I sit in the Newthinking office and listen to Lars‘ presentation of Mindquarry.

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I am happy to be here, together with 40 other attendees. Lars told me that usually it is even more people – cool! If you’re in Berlin on a Monday, check if it’s Web Monday, it’s worth being there.

I am also happy to be here because finally, I got the chance to meet with Markus Beckedahl face-to-face.

Conflicts Help Optimize Business Processes

Sandro Groganz 2 Comments

While reading Lean Solutions (thanks Judith!), I came across this paragraph:

And the one thing we can conclude for certain, based on our years of observing faulty processes, is that if you drop good people into a bad process you quickly end up with a lot of “bad” people assigning blame to each other.

I have experienced this phenomena of teams gone bad myself several times while being employed or working on the spot with customers and observing their corporate culture.

Here are some symptoms:

  • Political games or bullying kill creativity and the ability to concentrate
  • Others think about others that they are incompetent
  • … and truly incompetent people do not get fired
  • No one speaks the truth and real conflicts are being avoided
  • Emotions are being classified as unprofessional

It all comes down to a company not capable or interested in optimizing its processes, which is effectively the same as not respecting each employee’s motivation for doing a great job. This is where a lot of frustration erodes the company’s business potentials.

Japanese car producers have shown that tightly structured work processes are not the domain of Germans only :). Optimized processes are key to success. Monopolists can afford to be chaotic – but there will come the day where a competitor with much better processes will seriously attack the monopolist.

Breaking the spell of an inefficient work environment is actually simple, yet it starts with the behavior of each individual person in the company. Hence, it requires courage:

  • Speak for yourself, practice radical honesty, say how you feel
  • Don’t hold back just because others might not like what you are saying

Being good to yourself does not mean that you disrespect others or that you are a trouble maker. Quite the opposite, this is actually the best way how to show respect, because by being honest and straight forward, everyone else has the chance to react upon what you are saying (even if it means that you might realize you are wrong and act like an idiot – we are all human…).

Well, of course, if you realize that the company is still not good to you, then you’ll have to leave.

Once, each employee feels taken serious and is able to express himself, business issues instead of personal fights will regain attention. Only by clearly addressing conflicts, there’s a chance that business processes can be optimized. Conflict resolution is key to business process optimization and to support teams in striving for a common goal.

Adding Creative Commons Music to a Screencast with GarageBand on Mac for YouTube

Sandro Groganz 1 Comment

The Mindquarry screencast I wrote about before, got spiced up with the song Revolve by His Boy Elroy, which is available under a Creative Commons license.

Here’s what I did technically:

First I hit File > Export in iMovie and clicked on “GarageBand” to transfer the video to the GarageBand application included on my Mac. In GarageBand, I added the song to the audio track. It was necessary to adjust the music to the video, e.g. to highlight a switch of the topic with the music. After some trial and error, I learned how to cut, paste, move parts of the music and also that you could simply extend a part at its beginning and end (cool!).

When the audio work was done, I wanted to add the music credits at the end of the video. I added the missing clip in iMovie and wondered how I can get the extended video into GarageBand. The trick is actually, that GarageBand will automatically load the new video because it is linked to iMovie.

It was more hassle to find a way how to get the audio track imported to iMovie. I think I only found a workaround yet: 1) Export from GarageBand to high quality video (640×480), 2) Import in new iMovie project, 3) extract audio track in iMovie. I’d be glad to hear if someone knows a better way?

From iMovie, I exported the video in a format optimized for YouTube. The video settings have been described in my previous post Screencast for YouTube with iShowU and iMovie on Mac. I configured the audio settings as follows:

  • Format: AAC
  • Sample rate: 22.050KHz
  • Channels: Stereo
  • Bit rate: 24kbps