Skip to main content

Breast Cancer & Software

The Susan G. Komen "Stomp for the Cure" was last weekend.  I've been doing this event for about the last 8 years as it covers both my love for snowshoeing and supporting breast cancer research.  But this year has been different with the fiasco of Komen cutting off and then restoring funding of Planned Parenthood, in what was viewed as a very political move by some of it's leadership.

What does this have to do with Software.  Well it's about how an organization can confuse it's mission for it's self.  There was no confusion for their donors, the mission was women's health and not the Komen foundation.  The talk at the snowshoe was all about how they would not have participated if the funding was not restored, with many still very ticked off at Komen.

Back to software.  I suspect this is the same thing that happened to Microsoft in the mobile market.  They used to own the smartphone segment and being Microsoft, it appears they expected the market and developers to stay with Microsoft.  They didn't.  The iPhone was easier to use, beautiful and provided a larger benefit to users.  When the developer tools were released developers flocked to create apps for it.   Even though developers needed to learn a new language, libraries and framework (Objective-C, Cocoa, etc) they flocked to it.  Microsoft mobile fortunes dried up.

What was Microsoft's mission in mobile?  It appeared to be "because we are Microsoft" which does not mean a lot to consumers or developers.  Apple's mission appears to make products that are easy to use and beautiful to look at and hold.  Beauty evokes is a strong emotional response, you don't see may weeds in vases for valentines day.

So what is Google's mission statement.  Surely it must be more than "not Apple and not Microsoft".  And RIM?  They used to be enterprise security and communications, but that appears to be not enough anymore.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Still Life

 Life is never still, at least I don't think you would want it to be.  That's why so many of us (i.e., retired care free people) travel.  Keep seeing new things and places.   Well the Hurricane so far inland was a new thing and one I would have rather forgone but life is what happens.  Life keeps moving. Except a still life is forever and captures a slice of time frozen in a painting.  This is from a wooden bowl of pears onboard our ship during dinner one nice.  Again, just thought it looked nice. Enjoy.
Post a Comment
Read more

3rd Try is a Charm

I've been trying to draw / paint these barns for a couple of years but never felt or got them right.  This time I think they turned out right. So What went wrong before and what's right now with this drawing?  This time, the light was right.  It's coming from the upper right and the shadows just looked right.  The other thing is the corn field on the left had to "be in season", otherwise it's just a plowed field.  I had taken other photos from different angles but they never felt right.  This angle has the road, power lines, corn field, etc. all leading to the right.  The shadows on the lower right helps fill in that corner (don't forget about the corners!).  The last part is trying to draw (ink paint maybe) the trees in the background.  Not so easy when they are kind of a blob is green shades. So yeah, it's composition that is king.  Many times I just don't see it until the drawing / painting is finished and when it's right it feels goo...
Post a Comment
Read more

So THIS is My Style?

 If I play around long enough my style will appear.  I'm guessing that this is kind of it.  I'll keep working on other techniques in watercolor but for now this appears to be my style. I do like it and others appear (to my face) to also like this.  Not every one of my paintings is a success.  About 1/3 so far, but when they do I am rather pleased that anything good comes out of it at all. I do love color.  Color is happy and outdoors is full of color, be it the west or back east with the greens.  Color color color. Also doing some painting on hot press paper and see how that goes. Later......
Post a Comment
Read more