As the buzz begins to slow on Apple’s iPhone, we’re hearing renewed rumors of the long-awaited “gPhone” from Google. While the rumors vary from source to source, there are a few consistencies, one of which is that a mobile device from Google would heavily utilize open source technologies and would most likely run on a version of Linux.

As recently as 2004, business bloggers such as Jeffrey Veen were still skeptical about the viability of open source technologies for enterprise-class business applications. Now, just three years later, it seems nearly everyone, including the Google Guys, is willing to stake their capital on open source.

The August 27, 2007 issue of eWeek, features a cover story relating how another LeapFrog, the toy manufacturer, is increasingly employing open-source solutions in their products.

Last year, when we began looking at developing our own enterprise-class Content Management System, we considered every option, including developing from scratch. We’ve got a terrific crew of talented programmers, so we knew that we had the capability to build a powerful solution from the ground up. However, we finally decided to build our LeapFrog Editing and Publishing Framework (L.E.A.P. Framework, for short) on the open source Drupal framework. The headstart provided by starting from a robust and stable codebase allowed us to both develop the finished CMS rapidly and cost-effectively, and also resulted in a more polished end product.

Our clients have been extremely pleased with the L.E.A.P. Framework, and it’s now been tested in some fairly aggressive use environments, proving capable of scaling well at a global level across multiple languages.

Open source technologies have made an impact on the global business environment. As more and more businesses turn to open source as at least a beginning point for application development, rapid deployment of more new and helpful consumer applications such as the gPhone are sure to follow.

I recently received an invitation to beta test the new social bookmarking app RSS feedreader, Streamy, thanks to Mashable.com (thanks, Pete!) I’ve been taking it for a test drive this morning, and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. Do you like the sweet Ajax user interface of Ma.gnolia, but not the slightly girly design? Then you’ll like Streamy.

The interface is beautifully slick and clean, and it has truly excellent usability. The “Start” page is the typical social bookmarking “most popular” list, which appears to be personalized (possibly based on your expressed interests, or possibly based on the subscriptions you’ve chosen). The next navigation link takes you to your subscriptions–and this is by far the slickest and most fun to use feed-reader I’ve seen so far.

You can browse for subscriptions by most popular, by topic, or you can enter your favorite feeds manually. Of course, when I say “manually” you might be cringing, imagining yourself dealing with some clunky form page. Au contraire, mon frere. The Ajax pop-up is clean and simple, a joy to use, pretty much (unless you subscribe to a few dozen feeds–I didn’t notice a place to import your feeds from another feedreader.) After your subscriptions are all in, your subscription page lists post excerpts in date order. You’ve also got a sidebar that lists your subscriptions individually–so if you want to only look at one particular feed at a time, it’s simple to do so.

Clicking on the title of a post excerpt opens the full post in another nifty Ajax pop-up. There’s also a “launch” button if you want to launch that particular site in a new window or tab. You can comment on posts internally within Streamy, which other Streamy users who are logged in and looking at that story can read–but it doesn’t appear to post those comments outside of Streamy on the originating site.

Of course, because it’s a very web 2.0 site, you can join networks, groups, and add friends. Wouldn’t be much of a social bookmarking site without that. You also have the obligatory profile page, chat, and IM functionality. Drag ‘n Drop sharing of stories and other media is a nice interesting touch. You can even drag another user into an IM window to create an instant chat room (although the metaphorical implications of literally dragging a friend into a chat room are more than I want to contemplate at the moment. It reminds me vaguely of being dragged into a nightclub to socialize when I really wanted to get some sleep. Ah, well.)
On the whole, I think Streamy is an incredibly well-made and well-thought-out application. Kudos to the gang at Streamy for building a great tool. If you can finagle an invite to join the beta, I highly recommend it.

If you’re familiar with the concept of kaizen at all, it’s probably in the context of manufacturing or other assembly-line practices, not in the context of creative work.  Kaizen is a Japanese term that, roughly translates to “continuous improvement.” However, there is a lot more implied by it than the standard Western idea of continuous improvement. There is an element of “respect for people” implied in the idea of kaizen, and three guiding principles must be in place for true kaizen: focus on results and process; big-picture, systemic thinking; and a non-judgmental, non-blaming attitude (blame-laying being considered a waste of time and energy).

As an interactive agency, we’re in a radically new industry that blends the creative with the technological. From a project management standpoint, a kaizen attitude is a great fit for process improvement, because it works well with both the very human creative elements and the very practical process and delivery elements. With each new project, we experiment, learn new and better processes, and we implement them and carry them forward into the next project. We also learn from things that didn’t work well, and eliminate those elements from the process as we go.  I’m not saying that we are formally instituting kaizen here at LeapFrog; just that the improvement process here feels, to me at least, very much like kaizen.
Often in business, instead of making small, incremental changes, you determine that you’re going to “do it right.” “Doing it right” means taking time, making preparations, setting the stage, and totally implementing a complete, fully-formed new way of doing things.

But there are a lot of problems with this approach. First, it fails to take into account the shifting, continuously moving nature of work. By insisting on completely defining both the problem and solution in detail first, a person or organization can effectively postpone making any changes …pretty much forever. Second, it fails to take into account the complex nature of change and how even a small change can have difficult-to-predict outcomes that then need to be dealt with. By trying to implement massive, all-at-once, “programs” of change, an organization is effectively tacking learning the new way, maintaining the new way (building new habits and breaking old ones), troubleshooting the new way (dealing with the inevitable “oops, didn’t think about that” items), and improving the new way simultaneously. In short, it’s a great way to set yourself up for failure.

As LeapFrog moves forward and continues to grow, we’ll need to keep improving to continue to exceed client expectations. That means improving one task at at time, one project at a time, continuously, with respect for the creative people who are part of our team and with an eye on the big picture.