Windows live writer is a classic example of an awesome software hidden inside bad packaging that yells "influenced by marketing weasels" in every screen of its website and installer.

I relate to stories and in this case I am assuming the story runs like this:

1. Someone at Microsoft has an idea about building an offline blog writer with preview feature.
2. Microsoft manages to get a team of amazingly talented designers and developers who start working on the product.
3. This team ships the first version of their product and gets a lot of appreciation from their user base.
4. The marketing weasels at Microsoft wake up and decide to take charge so they ask the team to "tweak" the installer slightly.

As of this writing, the installer of live writer is bundled with a zillion other crappy pieces of software that you are never going to use. More than half the time the installer executable posted on the site is broken and getting live writer installed (especially if you have a bad internet connection) is a nightmare.

Enter Zoundry Raven.

Zoundry Raven is free, open source and has a feature which has been a primary selling point of windows live writer for all these months.

After you've gone through a basic wizard and have configured your blog account, you can ask this application to download your blog template which it can then use to give you a preview option which in turn allows you to see how your post will look after it is published without having to actually publish the post.

Zoundry Raven is not totally clean either and has some minor annoyances. For example:

1. You have to manually turn on spelling checks when you start using the software. This is just a one time annoyance which makes sense since it needs to download the dictionary for your language. But then why don't the Zoundry guys just ship the English dictionary with the installer? That one beats the heck out of me.
2. You have to click the spell check button once after you are done writing each post since there is no auto spell check like Live writer or word, but once you get used to the habit of doing clicking the spell check button once before you post is not as bad as it sounds when you hear it for the first time.
3. You have to go into tools / preferences / affiliate links and turn the "Don't mess with my links" option to stop Zoundry guys from changing your amazon links to use their referral id and earn money from those links. A slightly shady way to make money I would think, primary because the installer did not seem to ask me if I want Zoundry Raven to change my link. A quick advice to the Zoundry guys: Either ask me upfront or turn off this feature by default.
4. Zoundry Raven has a slightly longer startup time compared to live writer but given the fact that you are not going to be opening it up as frequently as notepad the slightly longer startup time does not have a major impact on your decisions to use this nice little application.

On the plus side, Zoundry Raven has the option of running as a portable application and carrying your profile (along with your posts) on a portable drive or moving them from one machine to another is rather easy.

Put simply, Zoundry Raven is a decently good alternative to Windows Live Writers (and a particularly easy option to get away from Live Writers slimy installer).

For me windows live writer is a classic example of how an amazing product team and an amazing product can loose adaption just by letting the marketing weasels control even a small aspect of the product (in this case the installation wizard). The strategy of bundling some of your lousiest products with some of your best products and hoping that your customers will start using the lousy ones because they need the good ones desperately almost never works in a free world. The people who claim that this approach worked for windows and internet explorer often forget that the internet explorer and windows bundle worked because both of these were amazing products and they complemented each other. Put simply, bundling lousy products with good ones don't help in adaption of your lousy products.

The best that these marketing gimmicks do is take away your existing users and your credibility as a company.

How many marketing weasels exist in your organization? How much power have you given them? Just a little something to think about. If you don't think about it, your competition will.

This post is written using Zoundry Raven and I am liking it.

I will continue to switch between Live writer and Zoundry Raven. As of now, I like what I see as far as Zoundry Raven is concerned.

Assuming that you are like most people what do you think are the things that you will find most frustrating when you sit down to reflect about your life on your death bed.

I know the thought is slightly morbid, but humor me. Go on. Think about it.

What are you going to be sorry or sad or angry or depressed about when you are on your death bed?

No, it's not going to be your failures.

If you are a decently good human being, it's probably not going to be all the things you did.

Chances are, that you are going to be the most angry about the things that you wanted to do but did *not* do.

That opportunity to implement an idea that you chickened out of.

That opportunity to make friends that you missed out on.

That opportunity to make a difference in your life and the life of your loved ones that you did not work on.

That friend you did not make, that terrain you did not trek, that mountain you did not climb, that business you did not start....

All because you were too scared of playing hard and failing.

Of course you have limited resources, limited time, limited opportunities, limited talent, limited courage but if you can build a life where you can truly say you genuinely tried your level best, you will not just die happily but actually live happily and be much more effective as a person than you currently are.

Of course you might have a larger list of failures, but you will have no "could haves", "would haves", "should haves" in your life.

So the question to ask yourself every night is, did you give that personal or professional opportunity your level best? The answer has to be deeply honest.

And if the answer is yes, you are going to have a good nights sleep.... even if you failed.

At least, it will be one less thing to worry about when you are alive and one less thing to whine about when you are dying.

This less than eight minute video from Jason Garfield has everything you need to learn juggling with three balls. It has:

1. Education.
2. Information.
3. Humor.
4. Inspiration.

Go look at the video. Click the link and go through it before you continue reading. I'll wait. Honest.

Back? Now of each one of you that saw the video we are going to have two groups of people, the ones who learn how to juggle three balls in the next one month and the ones who watch the video (maybe even try once), realize how hard juggling is and then get on with their life.

Juggling, pretty much like cycling, roller skating, ice skating, dancing, clicking good pictures or any hobby involving a serious skill for that matter has one attribute. It is incredibly frustrating when you start with it so it's easy to quit and find something simpler to do.

But if you keep working hard, it slowly becomes.... fun. 

The process of picking up hobbies of this sort has a name. It's called playing hard.

People who play hard at fun often play hard at work.

Besides, if you aren't playing hard, are you even playing? Or hiding from failures and spending your leisure time sheltering your fears and doing things which are safe and boring?

Are you just responding to friends on facebook or surfing channels on television aimlessly? Or are you playing hard and having rich meaningful fun? Just a little something to think about.

The best of managers often manage by building self sustaining teams.

The best of managers often manage by building self sustaining cultures which attract the best of the best and repel the whiners away.

The best of managers often manage by weaving stories which are true and remarkable and which spread within the corridors of the organization and nudge people to do the remarkable.

If there is one thing that is common in the best of the managers it is that their management styles are all about.... managing by not managing.

How do you manage your team, organization, project or product?

Just a little something to think about.

Choosing Between Nothingness or Attempting To Change Lives.

"Nothing" is just about the riskiest thing you can do today.

Lack of resources or opportunities is not the biggest of your problems. Your personal fears are.

Everyone knows this. But most of us spend most of our time doing nothing and being afraid.

There is a funny sitcom you bump into while aimlessly surfing channels. That's nothingness.

A funny discussion on facebook. That's nothingness.

Tweeting about where you ate yesterday and how you hang out with friends. Nothingness.

A long phone conversation on politics with a friend. Some more of serious nothingness.

Why don't you drop nothingness and work on something meaningful that has a "potential" of changing lives? Maybe you do not do that because:

1. Your lizard brain is afraid of failing?
2. Your lizard brain is afraid of succeeding and things around you changing too rapidly?
3. You are just way too comfortable doing nothing and your lizard brain doesn't want to give up that comfort?
4. Nothingness gives you a temporary high and your fears allow you to feel sorry about yourself?

Failing, being made fun of, being doubted, being questioned, being criticized and being called a looser are all better than letting your fears get the best of you, hiding behind discussions, meaningless conversations on facebook and doing.... nothing.

Is facebook, television, conversations and endless arguments a back door for your fears or a hiding place for your lizard brain?

Be honest to yourself when you answer that question and if the answer is yes, try to drop these and work on something meaningful.

Next weekend you're going to have a choice between doing something meaningful and  aimlessly surfing your television.

Which one are you going to pick?

Just a little something to think about.

A Configuration For Getting In The Flow.

Is there a set of songs that you love listing to when you are coding?

Is there a particular corner of your home that triggers ideas when you sit down to write in that corner?

Is there a setting or a set of configurations in your life where all your depressions, anxieties, questions and fears are put aside?

A setting where you can focus on practicing your art?

If you answered no, why are you not working on creating these settings? Picking a soft song and listening to it every time you are distracted while coding. Picking a tiny corner of your home and moving there every time you want to write. Picking a small weapon and switching back to it every time you are unable to focus.

If you answered yes, what are you doing to increase the recurrence of these settings in your life.

After all, productivity often brings happiness. Why not work on building settings and configurations in your life that make you productive especially when you are distracted, depressed, scared or confused?

Just a little something to think about.

What's Your Contingency Plan?

Just a little something to think about from the trenches on the Cricket World Cup 2011 that India Just won.

What's your plan for the day when your star performer is unable to perform (falls sick, is not in the form, if going through a bad time or for any other reason)?

Build contingency into your project plans? Include buffer time into your project plans? Consider everyone a resource and do generic planning? Start Feeling insecure of your own team? Look for another hero?

That's what most managers and captains do.

Genuine managers and captains know that none of this is not contingency planning.

Having a team where every individual in your team can and often does morph into a star performer is usually your only human contingency plan.

If you don't have that all the other contingency that you provide for is just random documentation and a truck load of bullshit.

You know what a stale product is, right? We've all worked on them. Every product company has a portfolio of products where some products click and some gather dust on a beta build waiting for the first set of users to show up.

Even Microsoft had the classic Microsoft Bob. There is nothing wrong with having stale products started within your organization. Ideas have to be implemented before you can test their validity.

Having said that, your ability to identify a stale product early on, defines your awesomeness as an organization or a software development team.

Here are some rather simple guidelines which might help you figure out if the product you are working on a stale product or it needs more effort.

You know you are working on or dealing with a stale product when:

1. None of the best people in your organization want to work on the product.
2. When every potential client you show the product to says, "looks good" but doesn't sign up or really use the product everyday.
3. When more than two really capable marketing guys who have sold other products in the past are unable get any customers for the product.
4. When you have been working on a problem without any real user feedback for more than a couple of years.
5. When you try eating your own dog food but other departments within your own organization find the dog food too yucky to eat or too hard to digest.
6. When you find the team building more and more features in the product to impress the management or the marketing department instead of building features your customers will genuinely need.
7. When you see managers discussing technology instead of what the product should do. "Search is going to be hot. Let's see if we can integrate lucent with this product".
8. When you find your business analyst building fictional requirements based on common sense mixed with their fetish. "Let's integrate the advertising module with the time and expense module to keep a track of the time spent on advertising. Yeah! That's going to be so fu@#king cool! I bet no one out there has anything like that! That's what we should do in the next version."
9. When your development team moves to auto pilot or hibernation and stops asking why they are building the features they are building.
10. When the marketing department starts telling the development team that adding this one User Interface enhancement before next week will help them land their first customer. i.e. When you are continuously doing Demo Driven Development Cycles.
11. When one quick sniff at the product tells you that it is rotting and stinking beyond repair and everyone is just busy ignoring the problems instead of getting down in the sewages and cleaning up the mess.

Anytime you start seeing more than half of the above in a single product, you are probably working on a stale product. You are better off quitting or surrendering. Quitting is not such a bad thing after all.

How do you spot dead projects in your organization?

How do you convince your management to move these projects to the graveyard?

Just a little something to think about and discuss.