Well of course the good old days were not that great in many ways but in other ways I miss them. I’m talking about the early days of computers – say 30 years ago or so. Back then computers lived in locked air conditioned rooms with raised floors. They were only loosely connected (networked) if at all. The only people who could get close to them were highly trained professionals. “Regular people”, if they used a computer at all did so through a tightly controlled access. They were mostly limited to specific applications with functionality that was limited to what they needed to do as defined by others.

Users pretty much could not mess up the computer. They didn’t have access to the tools or the privileges to do so. Tech support was easy. Companies had people who could answer questions about the software which was limited. If there was a hardware problem there was a hardware contract that brought in someone to fix or replace it. Data was all backed up at a central place. Oh it was a simple era.

For those of us who could program it was a very cool time. We were special people. And we didn’t have to spend our weekends helping friends and family with their computer problems. If we got a call in the late at night or on the weekend from someone with a computer program it meant we were going to get more money in our pay check. Not only that but the person on the other end of the call was at least something of an expert – someone who spoke your language. Some times I miss those days.

Oh in my heart I know that it is great that my Dad can use his laptop to send email to his kids and grand kids. It’s wonderful that he can write his sermons using a word processor. Sending him pictures over the Internet means he gets to see pictures of his grand children more often and more easily. I love getting pictures from my son while he is still in New Zealand snowboarding. It’s pretty cool that I can keep track of non-tech friends and family via Facebook. Being able to Twitter with people all over the world is pretty amazing and I’d miss it if it went away. Like wise the ability to share information via blogs or discuss local politics using threaded discussion forums opens the world to more people.  So I wouldn’t go back to the old way. Well most days I wouldn’t. :-) But some days … well some days I miss the simplicity and the feeling of being special because of computer knowledge and access.

So I have learned a few things about women over the years. One of them is about “would you like to …” You see women will ask a man “would you like to” and follow it with something no man in history has ever wanted to do of his own free will. Now when a man asks “would you like to” he is asking if doing the said thing will make the person more happy than not doing it. For example “would you like some food?” Or perhaps “would you like to go to the baseball game.” If one answers “no” that is fine. It was a real question.

A woman uses that sort of question the way a man asks “would you please do me a favor and …” In other words the ask is for something the askee wants the asker to do that they may or may not want to do.

I learned rather quickly that when a woman asks a question like this she really expects a “yes” answer regardless of the request. At first I thought that meant they wanted a man to lie. In other words, the wanted the man to say “yes I would like to do that” no matter how distasteful the task was. Well I was half right.

They do want the man to say “yes” but they don’t want it to be a lie. They want to man to actually want to do the thing. Really! Now that can be hard for a guy to understand. We don’t really want to lie but we do get asked to do things we really would rather not do. So to learn to live with myself I decided that a woman was really asking a different question. “Would you like to change the litter box?” translates to “Do you love me enough to change the litter box?” Now that question I can honestly answer (to my wife anyway) “Why yes I do!”

That way I don’t have to lie and my wife is happy because I change the litter box. It’s the difference between a literal question and an idiomatic interpretation. I pass this bit of wisdom off to you guys who are not yet married or who are recently married.

There is only so much time in the day and frankly I don’t always make the best use of it anyway. So there are some Web 2.0 tools I just don’t use. Mostly because I just don’t see enough value in them for the time they would take. I could be wrong about some of them and maybe I just don’t “get” them. But here is my list.

Second Life – Yes I have an account and I’ve wandered around it. The idea of lectures online is one I understand but since I use tools like LiveMeeting on a regular basis I don’t see the added value of Second Life. Well there is that free price but still.

Delicio.us I just don’t get tagging. I’m sure there is value here and perhaps one day someone will sit me down and demo lots of good stuff but for now I don’t have time. When I find stuff I really like I blog about it.

FriendFeed Yes I know that Robert Scoble is raving about it and I’m sure it is wonderful for him. But what would it replace and is the change worth it? I have no time to really dig into it and frankly I’d need a better explanation of why I should drop something else to replace it with this. My needs are different from Robert’s.

Flickr – Sounds really cool but I don’t take all that many pictures. And when I do I either email them to a few people, post them on Facebook (rarely), add them to my personal home page or even add them to my Space here. I do have an account and perhaps one day I’ll give it a real go but right now it seems like a great tool for other people. For people who are “in to” photography.

Now I do use Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and I blog. And I read a lot of blogs. So I’m not a complete Luddite. But really there is only so much time in the day and I am trying to have something of a life outside of cyberspace. And there is this day job that seems to take a lot of time as well.

So anyway, I am open to hearing from people who think I should re prioritize some of my time and pick up one of more of the above. Or suggest something else I am ignoring.

A bunch of years ago I worked with (as in supported some of their computer activity) with Avon Products.  The way they worked back then was to come out with a new product/sales catalog every two weeks. They started working on each catalog a year and a half in advance. The first step was to figure out what products to sell and what prices to sell them at. The next step was to have people developed and create those products at that price point. Yes, you got it. They didn’t start with what products they had but what products they wanted to sell. That pretty much defines a marketing driven company to me.

The product driven company starts with people who develop products deciding what to create and then having the marketing people figure out how to sell them. Most computer/software companies seem to be in this category.

I’m not convinced that one way is better than the other but they are different. In the first case if the products do not sell it is fairly reasonable to blame the marketing people. After all they made the decisions of what products AND how to sell them. Unless the development process fails to live up to what marketing asked for they are, if not blameless, less responsible. On the other hand in product driven companies there is often a lot of finger pointing when a product fails. Since product developers usually run the company in a product driven company and we know how self confident those people can be (I’m in that category and guilty of thinking I know best on occasion) it is easy to blame the marketing people. “We have the best product and they are not selling it right!”

I’m not sure this is always fair though. Years ago when I worked for Digital Equipment they came out with a technically great PC called the Rainbow 100. I loved mine. But the market didn’t because it was not 100% compatible with the IBM PC that was out and which was the thought leader in the market. I remember a technical person and a marketing person arguing about it. The technical person said “You guys would be just as happy if we resold IBM PCs under the Digital name.: The marketing person replied “Yes, that we should sell and make money on.” The technical person just could not get that customers would prefer a product he “knew” to be “inferior.” We see this all the time though when the market picks one product as being better and the people who developed it just don’t understand (VHS v. Beta anyone).

I think that in the long term a company needs a balance. Marketing and product people have to work together. But in the long run I think if a company is going to lose the balance in one direction or another the marketing driven company may be more long lasting and even more profitable. On the other hand the product driven company may be the way to really drive innovation and the state of the art.