Databases selected: ABI/INFORM Dateline, ABI/INFORM Global, ABI/INFORM Trade & Industry THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Business Technology: Best of the Business Tech Blog / Excerpts from Recent Entries at WSJ.com's Tech Blog Ben Worthen. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: May 20, 2008. pg. B.6 Abstract (Summary) Competitors get extra points for bells and whistles, but Mr. Roberts knew that any time spent designing extra features would come at the expense of more basic functions. Businesses Take Avatars, Go Home Ninety percent of forays by businesses into virtual worlds -- animated online communities where people can do things they do in the real world, and some things they wouldn't -- fail within 18 months, according to the tech researchers at Gartner Inc. Over the past few years, businesses have raced to set up storefronts in these virtual worlds, notably Second Life, in order to test new products, grab some publicity, and maybe even make a few bucks by selling digital versions of their products. Full Text (932 words) (c) 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission. Keeping It Simple Pays Off For Winning Programmer A tournament for computer programmers crowned a champion Thursday. The winner's secret: avoiding bells and whistles, and asking questions until he knew exactly what the judges wanted his software to do. We won't pretend that this story is sexy. But it's certainly instructive. The majority of tech projects miss the mark somehow: They're either delivered late or fail to meet expectations, or both. Two of the main reasons for this are poor communication between the information-technology department developing a system and the businesspeople who intend to use it, and an influx of new requirements that cause a project to get derailed. Tim Roberts, who bested nine other finalists to win the "component design" competition at the TopCoder Open in Las Vegas, made up his mind from the get-go to do everything in his power to avoid these pitfalls. (TopCoder is a software-development company that structures the work it's hired to perform as competitions that freelance computer programmers participate in.) On the prior Monday at noon, Mr. Roberts and his competitors received their instructions: Design a computer program that can calculate relationships between TopCoder programmers. They were given six hours to complete the task. Mr. Roberts says that he spent the first hour reading through the project's requirements and asking "at least 30 questions" of the person who wrote those requirements. Once he understood exactly what was required, he set about designing a system that met those requirements -- and nothing else. Competitors get extra points for bells and whistles, but Mr. Roberts knew that any time spent designing extra features would come at the expense of more basic functions. Instead, he focused on making sure that his software worked and that he finished by the deadline, which he did -- by three minutes. Mr. Roberts, who designs systems at Axiom Investment Advisors by day and usually participates in competitions after the rest of his family is asleep, found out that he won the $25,000 first prize Thursday afternoon. He says that he planned to celebrate by doing "about four hours of work." Businesses Take Avatars, Go Home Ninety percent of forays by businesses into virtual worlds -- animated online communities where people can do things they do in the real world, and some things they wouldn't -- fail within 18 months, according to the tech researchers at Gartner Inc. Over the past few years, businesses have raced to set up storefronts in these virtual worlds, notably Second Life, in order to test new products, grab some publicity, and maybe even make a few bucks by selling digital versions of their products. But many of these shops are now vacant. Last summer, the Journal wrote that "Second Life storefronts for Best Buy's Geek Squad, Sun Microsystems and Dell were all deserted, and American Apparel's was virtually boarded up." Time magazine labeled Second Life one of the worst sites on the Internet and called corporate efforts there "a case of some CEOs trying too hard to be hip." Despite the staggering failure rate, Gartner remains bullish on the potential of virtual worlds. It predicts that by 2012, 70% of organizations will have established their own virtual worlds. The key is that businesses need to develop their own virtual worlds organized around their brand, not open stores inside broader worlds like Second Life. Businesses don't know who the people in these public virtual worlds are, and therefore have a difficult time anticipating their needs. A brand-specific virtual world will give businesses an opportunity to interact with the customers in new ways. Gartner points to targeted virtual worlds like Habbo Hotel and BarbieGirls as models. Developing your own world sounds daunting, but Gartner says it shouldn't cost more than $50,000. Tech Must Empower Workers More: Gates Information technology has permanently changed the way that work gets done. But it's just beginning to help individual workers. That's the message Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates imparted to about 115 business leaders at his company's annual CEO summit last week. Mr. Gates said that IT -- and in particular the PC and desktop software -- was responsible for the productivity boom in the late 1990s. Since then, the cost of computer equipment, Internet connectivity and just about every other technology, with the notable exception of business software, has gone down. This should open up a wealth of new opportunities for businesses. In particular, it means that if businesses want access to information, "it shouldn't be a budget-busting thing to make sure it's available," Mr. Gates said. Mr. Gates said the primary beneficiary of these new projects will be the average worker. The dirty little secret of most business software is that it's designed to help managers track information, not to help individual employees do their jobs. Mr. Gates said the next wave of productivity will come from technology aimed at making information available to workers and helping them communicate. This being a Microsoft event, Mr. Gates trumpeted Microsoft products that he thinks will help achieve his vision. The audience received a lengthy demonstration of Microsoft's SharePoint collaboration software. Mr. Gates also demonstrated a new touch-sensitive computer screen that he says is a more natural way to navigate through information. (Businesses may want to wait before investing in it, though: The screen didn't respond to Mr. Gates's touch for about 15 seconds, enough time for him to ask if something was wrong with the system a couple of times.) Incidentally, while Mr. Gates has become a pretty good public speaker, albeit still not a natural, his PowerPoint slides are still pretty boring.