Spolsky, Lookout and when Better is actually Worse

Today, Joel on Software wrote about Outlook 2007’s recent search performance fixes, and mentioned Lookout.  I had a couple of thoughts about the article.

First – I’m so pleased to hear such nice things about Lookout when it hasn’t been updated for nearly 3 years 🙂  Thanks! 

Second, Joel wrote that “Microsoft finally put Lookout up for download…”.  He makes it sound like it was down for a long time; I think the total down period was between 4-7 days.  I know people like to think Microsoft buys products to squash them, and it’s easy to cite this downtime as an example of it.  But I know for a fact that was not true in this case.   I hope people won’t conclude that.

Third, while lots of people really liked Lookout, it did lack some key features which were put into Windows Desktop Search.  Most notable is that WDS actually indexes new & changed email in real-time.  Google Desktop Search does this too, but Lookout never did. 

But it brings up an interesting point which requires some background. Building incremental indexing in Outlook is quite tricky.  The problem is that changes can happen in your exchange mailbox while Outlook is not running.  When you next start Outlook, you need to make sure these changes are reflected in the index.  Because Outlook/Exchange don’t have APIs to do this efficiently, the only real way to do it is to start combing through folders trying to find what changes exist.  There are a whole bunch of nuances (cached mode, exchange mode, internet mode, online/offline, etc) and many APIs available (OOM, MAPI, CDO, ECS, etc).  When you try to make it work across the 4 different Outlooks (OL2000, OL-XP, OL2003, OL2007), each one presents a new set of problems.

So, Lookout punted on real-time indexing, and elected a “wake up every hour when the user is idle and index then.”  While this approach isn’t perfect, it is much much simpler.  And, it turns out that users usually don’t need to search for things which were sent to you less than an hour ago (although some did complain).  But the biggest benefit is that because it’s not trying to be real-time, it is much less prone to bogging down your system doing indexing.   And “system hogging” is a problem which both WDS and GDS took a long time to get right.  Reading reviews of these products indicates that even today, they still are pretty resource intensive.

In my opinion, this is a classic example of “Better is the Enemy of Good”.  The indexer doesn’t really need to be real time, even though it is “better” to be real-time.  If you weren’t confined by the limits of Outlook & MAPI, my thoughts on this would probably be different.  The fact that people are still talking about Lookout after both Microsoft and Google have continued to work on real-time indexers for 3 years is proof to me that in this case, better is actually worse.

Ironically, RIP Don Imus

The reason Imus had a show in the first place is because he’s a controversial jerk and prone to saying ridiculous things. 

What got him fired is that he’s a controversial jerk and prone to saying ridiculous things. 

I don’t really mean that he is a jerk.  I have no idea.  He’s just a jerk on TV because that’s what we want from his as an entertainer.   We build these guys up because they are whacky, but when they get too whacky, we shoot them down.  This firing is too close to censorship for my taste.  I don’t agree with what he said, I don’t watch his show, and I never intend to.  But he shouldn’t have been fired; it’s a slippery-slope.

Multi-lingual ballots are a bad idea

In the continuing controversy over whether we should have voting exclusively in English or not, one point seems to always be overlooked:  Who translates the ballot, supporting documentation, etc?  Translation is a subjective thing.  For any significant body of text, there are no two translators that would translate in exactly the same way.  The tone, use of vernacular, and subtle word choice can dramatically change a reader’s perception to a body of text.  If we have ballots in multiple languages, we can’t preserve the original author’s tone, and therefore, the original text is void.  I know that “yes”/”no” translate fairly easily; but the supporting text does not. 

If our goal is to have everyone voting fairly – on the same initiatives – then we have to distribute identical material to everyone.  Unfortunately, this means the ballot has to be in one language.  For now, that language is in English.  If the majority wants to change the language to something else, they can put up an initiative to change the language.  Whichever we pick, there should only be one.

Online signup and Online cancellation

Usually I’m pretty “anti-law”.  That is, more laws are not good – especially around software.  However, with more and more scams coming online, there ought to be a law which is quite simple.  If you allow someone to signup for a recurring-billing product online, you must also provide a simple way for that user to cancel the service online.  Like most of us, I accidentally got sucked into one; and now I can’t get out.  I knew I was treading on thin ice when I signed up, and now I am really regretting it.