F2 :: Form & Function

While Jason Hiner’s article, “Sanity check: Will startups or big companies have a bigger impact on tech in 2008?,” focuses on tech companies, I think his predictions are applicable to pretty much any sector. Taking some license with his list you can distill the following:

Start-ups…

1. Use their nimbleness and focus to take advantage of specific opportunities that big companies have not figured out how to crack.
2. Struggle with resources as a result of credit crunches or a slowing world economy.
3. Witness major consolidation, with some going under as they run out of money and/or don’t have a product that has differentiated itself in the market and others being acquired by competitors or big companies.
4. Create new markets and new opportunities with ideas that fly in the face of conventional wisdom.

Big companies…

1. Use their experience and deep pockets to patiently wait for markets to mature, become profitable, and eventually revolutionize certain aspects of work and play.
2. Take ideas that had big potential as a startup and do the hard work of building an infrastructure to systematize and channel that potential into a sustainable success.
3. Repeatedly fail to execute on ideas that they should be able to get right because of a lack of focus and/or having too many cooks in the kitchen.
4. Use their resources and scale to successfully bring great ideas to the masses and thereby make a major impact on culture and daily life.

So, it would seem that the form an organization takes (i.e. start-up or big company) should be largely dependent on its function. If you want to be cutting-edge and innovative, stay small and keep your demographic focus limited. If you want to develop infrastructures and scale-up, have sufficient staff and broaden your sights to include a wider demographic base.

A few months ago I took some time to play around with Writely. My curiosity was two-fold: it seemed like a pretty cool tool, but more importantly the organization I work for was (and still is) in the midst of a SharePoint roll-out and I was interested in researching other collaboration options. Well, since that time Google has acquired the product and has extended it, adding spreadsheets to the mix.

Now, my adoration of Google has been expressed here before so I may be a bit biased, but this is just awesome! Honestly, I’m not even sure where to begin listing what makes this so great. Is it the fact that its use doesn’t require any special software (since it’s browser-based)? Is it the relative ease of use (since most people are comfortable with browser-based tools)? Is it the cross-platform nature (once again, due to it being browser-based)? Is it the cost (FREE!)? Is it the ability to invite collaborators who don’t have Google accounts? Is it the fact that it’s not a Microsoft product?

Maybe that last one is a little unfair. But I’m sure you could find plenty of your own reasons to love these products (like the fact that you can download your document in HTML, RTF, Word, OpenOffice, or PDF format, or that you can insert funky lookup functions — GoogleLookup(”Baltimore”, “population”), GoogleFinance(”FXE”), etc. — into your spreadsheets).

BTW, I’m not putting this in the Form category, but it’s still in beta (is that the Web 2.0 perpetual beta?) and chances are they’ll bring some folks in to pretty-up the interface once they’ve ironed-out any functionality kinks.

How long have I had my homepage set to Google? Well, actually, at work it’s set to my Protopage, but I’ll save that for another post.

A vast majority of my time online is spent looking up information and I have yet to find a better place to start than Google. I might even go so far as to say that it has made me (and the rest of us) smarter. Of course, when I’m not online and don’t have easy access, and want to look something up, I start feeling dependent! Regardless, it’s a great tool and has helped expand my knowledge base. And I’m just focusing on their search tool, the wealth of other tools available — Maps, Reader, Video (a.k.a GooTube), GMail, etc. — are deserving of their own entries (and will probably get them in due time).

So, we all know Google works well, but its simplicity of design only adds to its spectacularness (is that a word?). All that white space with a minimal number of elements (I just counted 28 words, 1 input box, and 2 buttons): they certainly cut to the chase. This makes it one of the most user-friendly sites around. And just to throw in some additional value, especially for those who don’t embrace a minimalist aesthetic, there is the ever-morphing homepage graphic.

They may appear to be taking over the world, one Web 2.0 app after another, but for some reason I don’t really seem to care. Viva Google!

If I had a dime for every email I’ve been forwarded about some missing girl, chocolate chip cookie recipe, or Nigerian bank deal…It’s too bad that the people who would really benefit from knowing about Snopes seem to be unaware of its existence. If they were, there might be less junk in my inbox everyday. I’ve responded to these folks with links to the pages describing the hoax, but rarely with any effect.

Regardless, Snopes offers a vital service to the internet community (or at least those willing to take advantage of it).

Welcome to F2, the FiniteState Form & Function blog. As you can see, this is the first entry. But don’t fret, I will be back with some real content before you know it! Until then you can read what F2 is all about.