Replacing humans with technology

Recently I was asked to review a product that fit in the "powerpoint killer" category of applications. Threaded throughout the marketing material were phrases that appeal to the cost cutting business manager audience who often find themselves frustrated by the effort and knowledge required to build engaging, interactive presentations or games.

"With a click of a button... " , "reduced costs without sacrificing quality...", and "replace expensive technicians and professional designers..."

These products can be fantastic tools at extending your team's abilities, inspiring your team's experts to greater tasks and saving time and money.

That said, the products also wedge themselves between you and your basic technology. If, as in our company's case, the underlying technology we build our product in is flash, then we could buy some auto-flash generation tool to save time, but we then become dependent on that tool, its developers, and ongoing support and updates, on top of Adobe and its flash product.

Once the product is entrenched, the idea of leaving the product becomes less and less feasable for your company as you "save time" in the here and now, but become more and more estranged from the core technology as your team focuses on the middleware instead of learning the basics.

Not only are you then dependant on the product's technology and what it allows or doesnt allow you to do, you then become married to the company strategy of the product. If they, say, decide that the military vertical is their most profitable, their tool will evolve to serve that vertical more than your vertical or niche.

To avoid this kind of scenario, many platforms are "open source" or almost open source. This means you can always go into the code of the platform and tweak it to suit your needs, if you have to, as well as being able to strip out the features you dont need and extend any features you like.

Flash itself allows you to extend and manipulate it down to its core, yet Adobe also provides scores of automatable, customizable components. Beyond that, a developer base of tens of thousands of independent component developers provide innumerable tools that your team can use, expand upon, or be inspired by to push your product beyond that of your competitors.

Your product IS your people, so investing in platforms, technology, and training that will extend the capabilities of your staff and bring them to a higher level of skill will always give your company a competitive edge. Any product that becomes what amounts to a crutch for your staff to save a few minutes but sacrifice learning important skills in the process, will make your company less and less able to cope with change and market demand.

In conclusion, I encourage everyone to buy tools that can be extended, stripped, pulled apart, and tweaked, and work well with all the other tools out there. In terms of platforms I use xml, google, ning.com, mediawiki, blogger, anything RSS capable, and of course my all time favorite...flash! With these tools I feel I can do pretty much anything in terms of web based applications. When spec'ing out a new RIA, I generally start with XML and defining the webservices methods and datatypes all in XML, keeping each component as discreet and plug and playable as possible, capable of using off the shelf stuff, or moving on without it depending on the circumstance.