Why almost nothing revolutionary comes out of Europe

Recently, I overheard this one: "why is it almost nothing revolutionary comes out of Europe?" This question basically expresses a perception that can be explained.

Most tech companies in Europe don't target the world market - they target one country first, and when they dominate that, they invade the next countries. This is the reason why 1und1.de has a huge market share in Germany, and is present in USA, but is totally unknown in Denmark, which borders Germany inside EU.

Many companies dominate their own country, but do not have presence in other countries. Difference in languages, law, culture etc. separate the markets. These companies often either produce something better than the largest international companies, or ends up being destroyed in the competition. Many countries had dominating Word processor app companies, but Microsoft Word killed most of these. In other words, if the local company doesn't make a greater product, it doesn't survive. Therefore, the local population often considers local companies to produce better products than other countries. A good example is, that a typical sink faucets from USA would never have a chance on the Danish market, because we are used to more advanced systems with thermostats etc. To many Danes, it is annoying when the cold-water and the warm-water taps are separate, and to many it is annoying if the shower isn't thermostat-controlled. Also, Danes use more expensive wall sockets for electricity, than Germany or Sweden. This makes a house 0.05% more expensive, but better-looking, and few seem willing to save that money.

There are many revolutionary products from Europe, but they are probably not as highly profiled in English media. Many products are kept out of the U.S. market, for various reasons, and some get a delayed entry. When I recently went into a T-mobile shop in New York, and explained that I was from Europe, the immediate reaction was: "Oh, that's where all the cool Nokia phones are." If the initial launch isn't done in an English-speaking country, it may be old news once it gets to an English language country. In the meantime, a latecomer may have entered (or started in) an English-language market, so that the original inventor looks like the late-comer. In similar ways, products from USA that may be first-movers internationally, sometimes look like late-comers in other markets. Which phone came first? Google Nexus One or HTC Desire? Where I live, it seems that HTC Desire comes first.

You need to read news in other languages than English in order to read about tech from Europe. Microsoft thought that Great Plains would have better software than a company from Europe, but changed their minds, and is now basing their business on European software they didn't understand the power of, until they looked more closely at it.

Will Apple accept Google NaCl on iPhone, iPod, iPad?

Apple did it again - they released a great product called the iPad. However, the main reasons that people buy these products, is that it is good quality and they do things better than the competitors. However, in order to protect the business model of Apple, and in order to ensure a good overall consumer experience, Apple restricts what applications can run on their devices. Google Voice was not initially accepted in the Apple app store, but Google has a great interest in making sure, that their services are universally available. Their solution was to create a Google Voice web application, that does the job, and now Google Voice is available on the iPhone.

Google Native Client expands the capabilities of the web, so that web applications can contain codecs, 3D graphics and code that requires a lot of computations, and still run well. HTML5 includes offline capabilities, and in combination, there is a complete framework for writing offline native apps delivered via the internet. The app store will no longer be needed by those that provide apps for free, unless they have very specific needs for access to local hardware.

Apple has a choice, but if they refuse Google NaCl, they will make their products to do less than the competing Android and Chrome OS products. Apple's products will be inferior. This will work as long as there are no significant apps for Google NaCl.

Google Chrome OS includes NaCl and is basically a lowest common denominator OS, where all the applications for it can also run on other OS'es. By providing Google Chrome for Mac+Windows+Linux, Google provides a platform that is large enough to make it interesting for app developers. It's standards-based, it's Open Source, it's easy and capable, it's free, it's cross-platform and it is huge. Apple can be in or out.

Apple is free to pick the default choices on their devices, and can limit access to local storage for web apps. But competition is catching up, quickly, and Apple needs to invent more. I would not be surprised to see Apple become very active in delivering a cohesive webservice offering similar to Google's. What's next, Apple buying Yahoo? Does Microsoft have anything to offer, or have they completely lost the consumer market?

VMware converter review

Recently I upgraded to a newer laptop, and considered to virtualize my old laptop, because there are so many settings for software development, that are not easily copied. This includes search paths that depend on the drive configuration, installation of tools (cygwin etc.), and many other things. In order to be 100% productive at all times, I simply need the old laptop to be available until the new one is 100% ok.

This is possible using VMware and VirtualBox, but there was no full description of prerequisites and consequences, so I just went ahead with the solution that seemed simplest: Using VMware converter and VMware player. This is a short resume.

VMware converter can convert a physical PC into a VMware image, ready to be played inside VMware player. This enables access to your old PC from the new PC, in a window, which can be great until you have moved all the settings, files, and installed all apps onto the new PC. The first thing you need to do is to identify a PC that is suitable to receive the result of the conversion. It must:

* Have enough free harddisk space to keep the image of the old computer. If your old laptop had a 100GB harddisk with 70GB allocated (30GB free disk space), you should have at least 80GB available.

* Have the ability to share a directory as a windows file share. Not all PCs are set up for this.

* Have the ability to let the VMware converter app listen on port 80 and port 443. It is possible to use other ports, if you already have a webserver installed.

* It should use wired network, because then it only takes hours instead of days.

Your old computer should also use wired network, of course, and have a wired power connection (not running on battery) before starting. You need to install the VMware converter on both computers, and then the rest is rather easy: It is installed as a service on the "server" and on the old PC you are guided through the process. After a while, maybe 30 minutes, a progress indicator will tell you how long the entire process takes.

My old laptop was fully TrueCrypt encrypted, and I chose to unencrypt it before the conversion, just to make sure that it did not interfer with the conversion process. I am not sure that this is necessary, though.

When the process is finished, you have 2 files on the server, and you can uninstall the converter again. You can then move the files to your new PC, install VMware Player, and start using it. My old laptop was using Windows XP, and when I started it, it used 640x480 resolution in 256 bit color or something like that, and required to be re-activated. It took ages for it to load, but after installing VMware tools, it worked smoothly and nicely, with full screen resolution and full color, except that the bridges VMware networks connections did not always work. After switching to VMware NAT connections, that problem was solved.

Windows XP has to be reactivated within 3 days after doing this, because of the significant changes in hardware. I reconfigured the amount of RAM it should use, CPU settings, hardware settings etc., so that I had the final hardware configuration before reactivating Windows XP over the internet. That worked perfectly, and I could archive the old laptop. After a week, when I was completely sure that everything worked perfectly, that I didn't miss anything important, I retrieved the old laptop and wiped it by installing Ubuntu.

Except for the bridged networking problem, that was easily solved by switching to NAT, and the lack of pre-process documentation, everything went perfectly. I will do this again next time.