DataWebTect

I have been looking for a Nintendo Wii for long time and spent so much time that I was not even able to blog anything. My son had his birthday before Christmas and wanted a wii. Therefore, my wife and I searched the entire web, queued up in front of Target stores, EB games, Game stop but with no success.  Even now we call the game shops to see if we can get one. This was the only birthday where my son did not get any gift.

I even wrote to Nintendo telling them about my woes and they responded that they know that the system was in short supply and that they are trying their best to improve the availability.

This lead me to couple of observations. Why do the manufactureres create such hype and are not able to meet the demand?

 We have drawbackwards talking about the retail strategy to hold back the supply for whatever reason even though it said it had 4 million units.

  Nintendo had every reason to pump the market with the product so that it could have literally eliminated Sony’s competition, but it held back and I am hoping it could be for the safety issues. See it in action  Wii damage , Wii Video, Wii Rage . Later Nintendo recalled the straps to be replaced with the stronger string.

As a result there is a class action lawsuit on Nintendo for the problems created by Wii. Given all this, my suspicion is that Nintendo might be working on improving the product. While this will be beneficial to the product in the long run, Nintendo has lost the biggest revenue potential during the holiday season.

Don Norman talks about the simplicity in design and found his site through Joel’s post. Simplicity is  a myth because it never sells.  In his essay, he points out the toaster with multiple controls and a SUV with tons of controls on the steering wheel in Korea. Having many controls gives a false sense of control to the user. I happen to do the same thing with my purchases and if you think about it you would be doing the same. It is inherent  in Human nature to compare and pick the one with more complexity even if you do not use them. Even the iPod is complex if you try to use it the first time. A simple nano has more than five functions and the notepad has 23 menu items and you may never have noticed.

In software development also, we always strive for simple design but will end up becoming complex by the time it is released. It is bound to happen, we tend to “goldplate” the product, even if the customer wants it or not but to show that we put our due diligence and give a false sense of “more bang for the buck” for the customer.

1. I graduated as an electrical engineer

2. I dream of becoming a millionaire
3. I liked the  speeches of Osho at one point of time.

4. I was schooled in a village

5. I had to take the driving test more than once to pass it.

This post was created because of reading Christine Kane. I tag Christine.
Others tagged are Decker Marketing, Michael Parekh, Rands in Repose , Tom Kyte

An interesting post from Alexander about the way you approach work. It is true when you like your job you are in a bottomless hole. In this stage you are in a saturation of your existing competencies and pretty saturated an doing okay. There is no motivation or enthusiasm to do work and excel at it. It is going to be a daily grind which over a period of time you get bored and lose your attention to the determent of your future. When you love your job then things turn abruptly , now you will find going to work is something you look forward to and something you enjoy.  Also,  you will be more productive and  motivated.  These are all said and good but there could be real life situations wherein you are in a dead end job with no future, then you really need to rethink. Nowadays, some concerns are going backward to the times wherein the individual growth is sacrificed to the benefit of the corporation by keeping the employee in the same position fearing that the there would not be anybody available to complete the job of the employee whom you are promoting. This is a completely ridiculous philosophy which could contribute to the elimination and extinction of creativity. If you know you are not going to get promoted or not going to be awarded then there is no Self actualization as per Maslow.

The above is a very familiar theory which is a true reflection of the current situation. In the modern high tech jobs, the first three are not relevant as they are highly paid and all those needs are satisfied. The Esteem and self actualization are the two things that motivate people and if they are not satisfied, the organization loses not only the productivity of the employee but also the benefits of the employee being engaged to created additional streams of income.

A thought provoking post by Jeff of Intel Blog, where he discusses the different frameworks and methodologies followed by the IT group. I cannot agree more. Each corporation goes through the different architectures such as SOA or ITIL as well as the process methodologies such as Six Sigma or CMMI.  Typically, the big corporations are innovators and pioneers who try out new methodologies and publish  the papers  about the benefits.  Later others try to follow just for the hype and some senior management golf gossip. Typically these are not implemented to the fullest extreme and by the time the small companies are in the stage of completing the previous methodology, a new methodology sprouts up because of the shortcomings in the old methodology.

Regarding the Zen Master, I have never heard about that(maybe it is just me) and looks like Intel is becoming a pioneer in that direction.  Looks like a cool idea and we will wait for  more updates. Very good story about the dogs barking about their shadows.