For a long time, software has been measured and marketed on the basis of features. Ever increasing feature lists have arguably been the life-blood of software upgrades for at least the past decade.

Though obscured by the hype, one valuable aspect of the Web 2.0 phenomenon is a backlash against such feature-laden software. For the sake of convenience, I’m going to call this idea “feature frugality”.

Feature frugality should be a critical consideration for all software developers. Why? Because every feature carries additional cost, and that cost must have some corresponding benefit for the end user.

What does an additional feature cost? Well, most obviously, they cost development time. They also cost requirements definition and QA/testing time. Then there’s time supporting users when there are inevitably bugs in the code written to implement that extra feature. Even ignoring bugs, there is additional time to adequately document how to use the extra feature and perhaps even teaching or training users.

With all that investment of time and money, the need for there to be a benefit for users should be self-evident. Keep in mind, however, that it can be valid for the end-user benefit to be indirect: e.g., a feature that (ethically) gathers metrics on user interactions might not have any direct and immediate benefit to the user of the software, but might help a company better understand how people actually use their software, and allow them to focus their development efforts on better supporting common tasks in future releases.

The bottom line is that features need to earn their place in a product. Developers and software companies need to carefully consider and be able to justify the inclusion of each and every feature in their software.

Whether intentionally or otherwise, there appears to be an interesting social experiment occuring today, in the form of a spam message that has been widely distributed in the past few hours. Multiple copies of the same message regarding the finanical collapse of the National Australia Bank have got through the spam filters and appeared in both my personal and work email accounts overnight. The emails reference one of several (presumably spam or phishing) websites, and contain claims that the NAB is about to collapse.

The text of one such email is shown below:

Subject: National Bank goes bankrupt?!

People starting panic withdrawals, some of the accounts were reported
closed due to technical reasons, many ATMs are not operating.
Does it seem that one of the Australia’s greatest goes bankrupt?

The full story could be found here: http://www saltnlight-e com/news.php

Well, hope that isn’t true… Anyway You’d rather check your balance…

From my point of view, what will be interesting to watch is whether there is any significant real-world reaction to the emails. Hopefully there are not enough gullible people in the world to create a problem of any significance for the NAB, but I imagine stranger things have happened. A quick check of the National Bank website shows that they are at least aware of the issue, having put up a hoax alert.

More interesting is whether this is just people playing power games and testing their distribution network of zombie computers, or whether there is a real financial motive behind this – movements in the stock price for example. Or perhaps it’s really is just a social experiment by a bunch of academics exploring the level of trust people place in email messages?

Start Altitude: 10m (Bangkok)
Peak Altitude: 2800m (Taktsang)
Sleeping Altitude: 2200m (Paro)

Ater a week in Thailand, our flight from Bangkok Airport was scheduled to leave at 5:50am, meaning an obscenely early start from our hotel in downtown Bangkok. At the airport, we arrived well ahead of Druk Air staff, who eventually showed up sometime after 4am. Whilst waiting, we met a lovely couple from Brisbane who were also heading off to Paro to do the same trek as us. Although we assume that we would be trekking together, they ended up walking in the smaller World Expeditions group.

Unexpectedly, our flight actually had a brief stop-over in Kolkata in eastern India; well, not really a stop-over, since those of us on the plane didn’t even disembark, but passengers alighted and boarded around us.

Once on the final leg to Paro, the scenery was apparently pretty spectacular, with views of Everest, Kanchen Junga and other Himalayan peaks. Unfortunately, we were seated on the wrong side of the plane to see most of this :-/. Despite that, however, the scenery was still pretty impressive, as was the spectacular landing into Paro. Apparently, the Airbus 319 we were flying in is pretty much the largest plane that can actually land at Paro; certainly anything with a wider wingspan would surely be clipping trees and valley spurs as the plane banked from side-to-side on approach, based on how close the mountains, trees and houses appeared to be to the wing tips on our descent.

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