Outsourcing for fun and profit

Developer Ethan Nicholas quit his day job after his iPhone game iShoot became an overnight smash hit. But what if you have a great idea for a high-tech application, but no computer skills? Enter ELance.

ELance is a marketplace of tech professionals who take on contract jobs or projects. It is a great place for supplemental, or even full-time income for programmers. But for non-programmers, it is an outsourcing botana platter.

Carla White relates her success story in developing an iPhone application, like Nicholas. Except she did not program it. She outsourced it on ELance. Internet-based resource meeting places like ELance put big business concepts like outsourcing at the fingertips of your average Joe, a trend started by Kinko's (now FedEx Office) two decades ago. Moore's Law predicted ever-more powerful computers for less money each year, a fact which has democratized technology for both small businesses and individuals. The same is true with business processes, including outsourcing.

Nicholas Carr wrote a white paper for Harvard Business Review a few years back (now a book), in which he suggested that companies could no longer count technology- even proprietary technology- as a competitive advantage, because can and will be copied and improved upon by rivals. What matter more, he suggest, is ideas.

Actually making outsourcing work for you may be harder than ELance's blog suggests. There is still the considerable problem of managing the project, so that you get what you wanted. Information technology (IT) projects are notorious for running over time and budget, and not devliering what the users want in the end (read: Windows Vista). But if you can pull it off, ELance could be a perfect way to get your application built without having to spend months or years schooling up on programming.

Ironically, MIT professor and Web tech icon Philip Greenspun wrote that what is hard about developing Web-based applications is not mastering the technology involved, but coming up with an idea worth building.

So it is with all businesses, and all art, for that matter.

Hi-tech offense

How do you apply high-tech to winning football games? We've already seen improvements in equipment and stadiums, but the real technological advance in football has always come from innovative new play-calling, like the forward pass (football used to be a ground-only game, like rugby).

Piedmont, California high school coach Kurt Bryant has utilized an all-new formation, called the A-11 Offense, to allow greater play-calling flexibility, and give his under-sized team an edge over bigger, stronger, faster teams in the Bay Area. It's working.

Bryn Swartz asks in this excellent article whether the A-11 could seep into NFL playbooks. It's not as far-fetched as it sounds. I have always thought that Texas Tech Red Raider coach Mike Leach's "pass blitz" approach, a run-and-shoot on steroids, would be a great fit for the NFL. Peyton Manning is almost there already, after all.

But this new A-11 could take that idea even further than Leach did. The A-11 allows almost continuous, high-speed ball movement, which does not give the defense a chance to set and plan, but only to react and chase.

In a league that is always changing rules to allow teams to score more points in order to elevate the "excitement" factor (groan), the A-11 offense could be just the ticket.

Technology (from the Greek techne, meaning skill or art, and logia, meaning logic) is about the systematic application of knowledge to an art or skill. It is not about gadgets or hardware. In this case, it is about what businesses call process improvement. Kurt Bryant rejected the legacy process of staid old formations and play calling, and began thinking outside the tackle box.

Ironically, when the A-11 is run in a hurry-up, no huddle drill, it looks a lot like rugby! Plus ca change, plus ca la meme chose.

Technology should be useful and easy

Hence, this blog.

I am a gadget freak, even for the stuff I have not bought or cannot afford. Watching the advancement (and sometimes, regression) of technology is fascinating to me. I am not a professional technology columnist or author, just an interested citizen.

Our home is Mac. My client's work sites are Windows. I am an artist- actor, writer, musician, and have made a living using those skills. I also have a consulting business for the last 15 years or so, mostly with clients who are entrenched in the corporate Windows world. So, I've used both platforms, and am comfortable with both. There are many things I like about each, and many things I don't. On balance, I prefer the Apple experience, even at a price premium. I have used regular cell phones and smart phones, including the Palm Treo 650 (running the Palm OS, formerly BeOS), and currently, Apple's iPhone. I use Google apps a lot.

I am a tongue-in-cheek Apple evangelist at work, and the resident "iPhone expert", to quote one manager. But I am not really a Mac zealot, as much as a zealot for any technology that is useful. For most of us, useful means "easy to use, and productive, and relatively cheap". These definitions vary by user, of course, but I'm in the tech industry, both as an artist and as a consultant; I work with computer programmers and computer programs every day, and I am constantly amazed at how little importance is given to the user experience in software.

And I don't just mean for your Grandma. I mean for computer geeks, too! There are lots of useful programs out there which are just soooo complicated to use that developers make mistakes with them. Often. A lot of them. Which means business users mistakes. Which means that you, the consumer, who buys stuff (electronics, financial services, cars, home loans, etc.) from these companies may also experience these mistakes, like problems getting a refund, getting your account hacked, or delivery of the wrong item, or to the wrong address.

So, just for fun, I'll chronicle my findings of technology that gets it right: useful, cheap, and easy to use. Feel free to disagree, or compare notes.