The Big Idea.

Lately, I’ve been wondering about Microsoft’s strategy. At times, it seems kind of listless. They look around, see what other people are doing, try to do it better. Or cheaper. Or they try to convince businesses to adopt it. It worked. For a while.

But lately, there doesn’t seem to be any unifying strategy. A search engine here, a search engine there. Some new products.

But what is the vision?

Everyone knows that Google wants to own all information.

Apple wants you to buy all of your hardware from them. Or at least they want to make the slickest shit under the sun.

What does Microsoft want? A PC in your kitchen.

I first really noticed it in Windows XP. When setting up a network, the System Properties > Computer Name tab used “Kitchen Computer” as an example description. What an idea!

The birth of Kitchen Computing

At first, I thought this was just a bad decision from a software designer acting under extreme stress. But as I’ve investigated, a pattern of kitchen computing has emerged. This pattern has been emerged across multiple divisions of the company.

Here’s an article from Microsoft’s Windows XP site. It asks “How Useful is a Kitchen PC?” I don’t need to tell you that the answer is: “very useful.” Additionally this article states that you “can use almost any serviceable computer.”

Indeed.

In this article by Jerry Honeycutt, ostensibly intended to assist in the setup of a printer on a home network, helpfully suggests that you set up your printer on the “kitchen computer.”

In another article, Honeycutt asks the age-old question: “What if Junior is using the kitchen computer to play Asheron’s Call, but you want to print a recipe for Mom’s meatloaf?”

What if, indeed.

Here’s an article on the Microsoft Office website about how to “Move Your Computer Into the Kitchen.”

It states that it’s “no wonder so many families want computers in their kitchens.”

Why with all the printing and the Asheron’s Call, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want a PC in your kitchen!

But wait, there’s more! This silicon alley insider post says that the new touch screen technology that may (or may not) be supported could be used… in the kitchen!

Finally, we come to this horrible marketing hackery. A video about Windows 7 “launch parties.” You know? Like when you got your friends together to have some wine and cheese and tell them about Obama? It’s like that, except you’ll be telling them about the great new features in Windows 7:

Notice where they’re hanging out…. In the kitchen! Just hop to 2:23 and the lady in the middle says, “everyone just crowded around the computer in the kitchen!”

So, like, what’s the point? It seems like there’s really a unified effort. Like maybe they have a KPI for “mentions of the kitchen in marketing materials.” Or maybe some big-wig in Redmond read that once technology became ubiquitous (like the telephone) it became common in the kitchen.

I fear that they may have mixed up correlation and causation though. By marketing your crap to go into a kitchen, you’re not going to make it ubiquitous and hugely profitable, you’re just gonna get it into a kitchen. And you’ll look pretty silly in the process.

Metricizin’

Yesterday, a co-worker asked me, “how much coffee do you drink?”  I answered honestly that I didn’t know.  To find out, I drew a picture of a coffee cup on my white board.  I also drew a line underneath.  Every time I got another cup, I drew another line.  (Incidentally, I also drew a smiley, neutral or grumpy face to help my co-workers know my mood before talking to me.)

I drank six cups of coffee today.  And I was only grumpy for about an hour, right after lunch.

So all this metricizin’ got me thinking about the health effects of drinking six cups of coffee per day, so I looked it up.  I performed several searches on Google to finally understand the progression of health effects as you drink more coffee.

Ask Dr. Google

I searched for “one cup of coffee per day”, then “two cups of coffee per day”, and so on, up to ten cups.  Without clicking any of the results, I was able to glean the health effects of each amount by reviewing the first page of results.  For the reader’s convenience, I have summarized the results in the following table:

As you can see, I’m right at the sweet spot, between “slightly lowered risk of death” and “hallucinations.”

Also, in case you didn’t feel like looking it up, Tachycardia means “Your heart is beating too fast.”

Your Ideas are Worthless

No, really.  They have no actual worth.  As I’ve written before, they aren’t even your own.  The ideas you think you have made are a sort of a cosmic gift, but it’s worth nothing if you don’t act on them.

No one cares that you thought of “on line” auctions in 1994.  No one cares that you thought of “mp3.com, but for videos” back in 2001.  Seriously.  No one cares.  And no one cares that you dreamt up the Next Big Thing just today.

You can talk, you can sell, you can poke, prod and cajole others to accept your ideas, but if you don’t have anything to show for it, then you don’t have anything.  All you have is an idea.

If you don’t have the time, energy and skills to plan and execute your idea, then you really don’t have anything.

So anyways, plan it out and put in the work.  Don’t be that guy who “had a great idea once.”

Seriously, Plan it Out

Write down everything.  You want to open a quirky boutique?  Really?  Is that your idea?  Write down how you’re gonna do it.  Write down where it’s gonna be located, how you’re going to pay the rent.

Who are you vendors?  Don’t know what a vendor is?  Time to find out!  Don’t know what a purchase order is?  You’re gonna have to learn!

Get a library card.

Same goes for your web-app idea.  You think you’re gonna have employees?  You’re not.  You are going to have to code it yourself.  Unless you find a programmer who’s stupid enough to work for free.  And do you really want a stupid programmer?  I didn’t think so.  But don’t worry!  The internet is a big place, and there are lots of people who want to help you.

Ok, Now Do It.  But a little at a time.

Ok, so you know there’s a lot to do.  Maybe it’s too much for you to do all at once?  Yeah.  It most definitely is. So you’ll just have to do a little at a time.

You would be shocked at what you can achieve if you just take the three hours a day you would spend watching TV and building your idea into a reality.  Or just one hour a day.  Or just one hour every two days.  Really.  It doesn’t seem like alot.  But if you commit to something, you will be shocked at how much you’ve achieved even after a week.

Imagine what you’ll have achieved after a month.

So there ya go.

Write down your idea, then work on it a little at a time.  You’ll be shocked at how much your work is worth.