Flowcharts and Reformation

Not too long after I started reading the draft of my undergraduate thesis, I found myself completely and totally befuddled. In my usual fashion, I had written a document that assumes a knowledge level above and beyond that of its audience, who unfortunately happened to be me, in this case. It's probably unreadable even by a specialist, unless the specialist has a browser window and is feverishly entering names and places into Wikipedia, as I was.

While I like my work to be dense, I also do not want my undergraduate thesis to read like Foucault's Pendulum, mostly because I can not keep reading my own work like this. I will go crazy trying to figure out what I was saying. So, as I often do when faced by a phenomenon of overwhelming complexity, I started making a diagram.

Unfortunately, I have no Visio, and I have neither the time or interest in customizing one of the many UML modellers out there so that it could model different personalities of the 16th Century. That's not exactly work that could be re-used. So I went to Gliffy, an online browser-based Visio clone. I was so impressed that, well, I had to post about it. While I wouldn't use it for anything too technical, it's a great (and free) workspace for people to brainstorm in. As soon as my deadlines clear up I will publish a nice "Who's Who" flowchart of the Italian Reformation. There might be as many as ten people who would be interested! Thanks Gliffy.

Probably only a matter of time before Google buys it. In an IT world so strapped for cash, one of the few business plans worth a damn is designing software that you know Google would like. Then you just wait for Page and Brin to show up with a dump truck full of money.

Hmmm, sooo . . . what else would Google want? They've got a Google Office, a Google Visio (if they buy or reverse engineer something like Gliffy). What would I make do attract Google's Mad Millionz? Or Bonus Billionz?

Would they go for a Google IDE? I think the answer would be "no". Google is primarily interested in getting people closer to the hivemind, and IDEs are a barrier to that. Granted, they DO publish a 3D editor IDE, but a 3D editor is still rooted in reality (spheres and boxes), whereas a software IDE exists in a sort of idea space that is only interesting to programmers and metaphysicians. In many ways Microsoft's voyage into the IDE is what dragged them down in recent years, and Google probably wants no part of it. Semantic constructs don't pay the bills.

There's one piece of IT functionality that Google is unusually well prepared for, and that's test automation. They've got the hardware, they've got the pipes, and they have the knowledge. They could use their black magic to spider out all UI components, track user patterns among those components, then elaborate on those patterns until the application breaks and throws an exception. Then you assign an ID to that usage pattern, ID the UI components, and attach the exception. The resulting table could then be published. It's still a little too techy for the Google market, and I mean that in the sense that only software people would care, but if you make it slick enough, you never know, Sergei might come a'knockin.

Getting all travel data in one place for the consumer would be an awesome windfall, but doing it painlessly would take some sneakiness. Kayak.com does something like this, but even they are getting sucked into the eerie Cosa Nostra atmosphere that is the travel business. Sergei has probably had enough of violent crime.

A very nifty application would be one that tells you where you'd like to live. It could use a lot of the functionality of a dating site without the stalker aspect while still being creepy enough for Google to love. The user could fill out some questions, and the application could grade metro areas and the surrounding countryside based on such factors as:
1) Land (Climate/geography, i.e., desert mountains)
2) Density (Biking to work versus having a ten acre lot)
3) Economic Activity (Wealth/Type, i.e., median income/Ford Motors, high income/Dartmouth)
4) School quality (education level of children who graduate the system, teacher/student ratio, etc.)
5) Taxes
6) Availability and size of local parks, soil quality, "off the grid" power options (solar, hydroelectric)
This is all stuff that's already in Google Earth, you'd just need some simple algorithms to sift it and match it with users. Or, creepier still (in true Google fashion), you could skip the questionnaire and just guess what the user likes based on the personal data you already have of them, then show them the place they want to live.

The creepiness, of course, is why Google is so fantastically wealthy: the Hivemind will know us better than we know ourselves. And who could put a stock price on the future collective consciousness of the human race? I, for one, am ready to be assimilated.