What’s the traffic like? No, not on the notoriously backlogged US-101 cutting through Silicon Valley, not on Route 128 around Boston, not even “The Four Oh Five” in Los Angeles. I mean the traffic through your office’s Internet connection.

A friend of mine who administers a mid-size business network says the lion’s share of traffic across his broadband connection is Spotify. “It was the highest packet TX/RX set on the WAN, by a very large margin,” he wrote to me.

In the 1970s, if employees were allowed to listen to music in their offices and cubicles, it was probably on a transistor radio. In the 1980s, it was a Walkman cassette player, and later on, a CD player. Of course, starting in the early 2000s, everyone listened to an iPod or another music player through those ubiquitous ear buds.

Today, workers listen to streaming packets across the Internet. Perhaps it’s music over Spotify or Pandora. Perhaps it’s an Internet radio station offering some classic rock or talk shows. Nearly every broadcast radio station, of course, promotes streaming services, often specifically targeting business workers in their cubicles.

The irony, of course, is that sometimes those workers are streaming Beatles, Black Eyed Peas, Björk or Bieber packets from the very same radio stations whose signals are permeating their offices. In fact, the audio fidelity is usually higher on that old-fashioned transistor radio.

That’s why in my own office, I don’t stream music over the Internet. What’s playing is my own music library (ripped from CDs and stored in iTunes) or a local FM station using a 15-year-old Grundig YB-400 receiver.

Of course, not all offices are near good radio stations. Radio signals don’t always penetrate the bowels of modern concrete-and-steel buildings. I’m not condemning the use of Internet radio, Spotify or Pandora, per se — but I am concerned about the bandwidth they consume. When those services’ high-QoS packets dominate our business networks and Internet connections, we should pay attention to this trend.

What does streaming media mean from a developer perspective? If you are building a streaming media service, please please please make sure that your service is not wasteful of bandwidth. A single user’s bandwidth impact is trivial. Dozens or hundreds of users are not trivial.

Be a good citizen by build good caching into your player apps, so that you can lower the required QoS on your packet headers. Perhaps even offer the option to adjust audio bitrate and compression (“CD level” vs “FM Quality”) so that long-term streamers can reduce the network load.

Does your organization have a problem with streaming media consuming too much bandwidth? Do you have HR policies that prohibit their use, or firewall policies that shut them down? Tell me what you think.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Want to pick a little fight? Talk about football. If you’re in most of the world, the 2014 World Cup is already looming on your horizon. If you’re in the United States, then you’re probably thinking about next month’s Super Bowl XLVI, the big matchup between American Football teams. (This year, I’m rooting for my native New England Patriots. Prefer the New York Giants? Let’s take it outside.)

Sports. Politics. Religion. Those are all tiny little trivial fights. If you want a big fight, look at reactions whenever Facebook changes something. The vitriol flies as millions (billions?) of users rage against Facebook’s audacity, whether it’s something minor like friend recommendations or something major like the forced migration to the new Timeline personal profile. (I like Timeline. Disagree? Let’s take it outside.)

• Sometimes services change in order to attract new customers.

• Sometimes services change in order to fend off competitors.

• Sometimes services change in order to directly drive revenue.

• Sometimes services change in order to improve customer lock-in.

• Sometimes services change in order to reduce costs or improve profit margins.

• And sometimes services change in order to increase customer satisfaction. (In my experience, that’s rarely the driver.)

My neighborhood has a wonderful grocery store. About a decade ago, it was looking a bit rundown. A competing supermarket did a major remodeling – and shortly thereafter, so did our neighborhood store. The results were terrible. Too few shelves, a wide-open arrangement that was pretty but had less merchandise. A few months larger, the store remodeled again. It had no choice. But each time the store changes (and the owner continues to experiment and innovate) we find the disruption annoying — then can’t find our favorite foods. We don’t like the change. After a few weeks, we get used to it. And then we don’t like the next remodel. Hey, that’s just how life is.

While the owner may say that he’s remodeling in order to make the store nicer, most of the time he’s motivated to drive revenue or cut costs. As long as he doesn’t make the store much worse in the process, and thereby lose too many customers, it’s a good business move.

What about software? When we talk about products like Microsoft’s Visual Studio or the Eclipse JDT or IBM’s DB2 – you have a lot of choices when it comes to change. Since software is delivered as bits, you can choose to upgrade to the bits or not.

• You can choose to install the new bits as soon as they come out – maybe the upgrade solves a specific problem you had, swats a scary but or offers some compelling features.

• If you’re nervous or on a budget, you might wait for first point release or service pack or even hold back for next major release.

• You might decide never to upgrade.

• Or, if the upgrade is sufficiently obnoxious, you might switch products altogether.

That only works when software is a product. What about Software-as-a-Service? When you use Facebook or the Google Calendar APIs or a hosted code repository or a hosting package, you aren’t using software. You are using a service. You aren’t buying or licensing software. Your ability to upgrade, or to sit back and wait, is totally at the whim of the service provider.

Some service providers, of course, give customers the option to migrate early to new versions of their service, or to temporarily delay the migration. Some do not give you a choice. When you buy bits, you are in control. When you use a service, you are not in control. Whether it’s Facebook, your code repository, the layout of your local supermarket or the television channels carried by your local telecommunications provider, you can either go along with the change or find a new service provider.

Sadly, few consumers understand or appreciate that services are services. They don’t understand why they can’t stay on Facebook 2008. They don’t understand why the changes don’t reflect their own desires.

That’s not how it works. Facebook isn’t making changes for the benefit of its existing customers. It’s making them in order to help its own bottom line by creating new money-making opportunities for itself and its partners, while also encouraging users to spend more time on the site (so they see more ads). The company is betting that while many customers will complain, relatively few will actually leave the service. Plain and simple.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Whose fault is it when data is stolen? It’s rarely blamed on the programmers.

If a company executive leaves a laptop filled with confidential data in a taxicab, you probably wouldn’t blame a software developer. Instead, you’d presumably ask, why was that data on the laptop to begin with? I’ve often wondered why corporate executives have access to customer card information in the first place, and why security policies allowed such data to be downloaded to any end device, especially a not-locked-down laptop. But you wouldn’t blame the programmers.

If an unencrypted data backup tape disappears en route to a secure offsite facility, you’d yell at a sysadmin, not at a C++ coder. “Why wasn’t the data encrypted?” you’d want to know. “How could it be written in plain text?” That’s the fault of the backup software, or again, security policies – not programmer who wrote the applications whose data is being backed up.

Now, who do you blame when hackers violate credit-card terminals? My family’s local grocery store – Lucky’s in Millbrae, Calif. — was recently penetrated by so-called skimmers, who tampered with in-store card readers and grabbed up to 500 customers’ credit card numbers. As far as we can tell, our credit card wasn’t compromised – but you can trust that we’ll be scrutinizing the Visa bill extra closely from now on.

Certainly, you can blame Lucky’s, for not ensuring the physical security of those devices. But what about the back-end programmers for the grocery chain? How about the embedded developers of the card reader’s firmware? Or how about any number of applications that were involved, from the credit-card clearinghouse to the bank? Could programmers be anyway responsible? Could they have done something, anything, to prevent this incident?

The reality is, well, no. It’s unlikely, especially since the devices were physically tampered with. But even so, it’s impossible for programmers to anticipate every possible scenario, or to model every type of threat to a complex web of applications developed by many companies, and administered by many companies.

No series of locks and alarms can truly prevent a home from being targeted and robbed by criminals – or burned down by arsonists. And there’s an increasing awareness that there’s nothing that developers can do to sure today’s modern interconnected application 100%. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

AnDevCon III – the third iteration of our Android Developer Conference – will be coming back to the San Francisco Bay Area from May 14-17, 2012.

At first, we scheduled AnDevCon III for April 2012 (and publicized that in the show program we gave away at the conference). But then in mid-October, Google announced that Google I/O – its two-day tech conference for all things Google, not just Android – would be on April 24-25.

“That’s not good,” we said. So our team went back to the drawing board and found some great dates in late June – and began gearing up for a public announcement.

But then Google decided that Google I/O needed to be three days – and they changed their dates to be June 27-29. Which happened to overlap the second set of dates we had selected for AnDevCon III.

In the words of the bowl of petunias in Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” we said “Oh, no, not again!” Back to the drawing board.

Unless Google changes its mind (again), AnDevCon III will be May 14-17, 2012. As before, the first day will be pre-conference workshops; the other three days will be filled with technical classes.

We are very excited about AnDevCon III. We aren’t anticipating many changes from AnDevCon II. However, there will be lots more coverage of alternative platforms beyond smartphones and tablets. Thus, you’ll see more embedded Android sessions, an expansion beyond the single class we had on the Android-based Google TV, and also a deeper dive into Arduino.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Flash doesn’t run on Apple’s iOS devices. That’s not news, of course. Flash has never run on the iPhone, iPod touch or the iPad. This was a big deal several years ago, especially when the iPad was introduced – how could Apple claim that the tablet provided access to the Internet when so many popular Flash-based websites wouldn’t work?

Pundits declared Apple arrogant in its refusal to install a Flash runtime on its iOS devices. In early 2010, Adobe claimed that the Apple was creating a closed ecosystem with its portable computers, and that Flash was an open technology.

In April 2010, Steve Jobs fought back with his thoughts on Flash. He argued (convincingly in my opinion) that the opposite was true: that Apple, by pushing Web developers to use HTML5 instead of Flash, was on the side of open standards, and that Adobe’s Flash was a closed proprietary system. Jobs further argued that Apple had never seen a Flash implementation that performed well on portable devices.

Since that time – a year and a half – iOS’s lack of Flash has become less and less of an issue. As a consumer who owns both a iPhone and an iPad, certainly I found fewer and fewer websites that relied upon Flash. And although you can run Flash on Android devices (and I own both Android phones and tables), to be honest, this was never a significant reason for me to pick up an Android device instead of an Apple one.

In large part, that’s because developers of popular websites did exactly what Jobs predicted. They either moved away from Flash entirely, or created parallel graphics display systems that sniffed out iOS devices and offered them an HTML5 experience.

Once a website starts down that road, it’s nearly inevitable that the site will abandon Flash altogether sooner or later. I won’t miss it.

It looks like Adobe won’t miss it either. On Nov. 9, the company’s official blog wrote that “Flash to Focus on PC Browsing and Mobile Apps; Adobe to More Aggressively Contribute to HTML5.”

The blogger, Danny Winokur, an Adobe vice president, wrote, “HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively. This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms.” Yes.

What’s the future of Flash? Adobe says that it is still developing it as a PC-based technology. Adobe has turned its Flex development environment over to the Apache Software Foundation. Flex has been open source software for some time, and while Adobe is expected to continue contributing to its development, Apache will now be calling the shots.

I wonder how long Adobe will hold out on Flash. As a desktop-only platform, it’s not very compelling. The future belongs to HTML5.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Every time I make a restaurant reservation online, I am sent an email survey after the meal. Every time I get my car serviced, I’m asked about my satisfaction. After I buy something from an increasing number of online merchants, I’m asked to rate the transaction. Stay at a hotel. Watch a movie. Send an e-card to a friend for his birthday.

“Thank you for booking your recent reservation through OpenTable. We would appreciate your feedback about your experience at Ruth’s Chris Steak House?” asks OpenTable.

“As a valued HHonors member, your feedback is important to us. We invite you to take a few minutes to complete a survey about your stay at Hilton Anaheim,” requests Dave Horton, Global Head of Hilton Hotels.

“Thank you for staying at Millennium Knickerbocker Hotel Chicago. We would appreciate it if you would spare a minute of your time to share your opinion of the hotel with us. Your evaluation of our people, facilities and services will provide us the opportunity to work toward serving you better on your future visits,” writes David Cockburn, Senior Vice President of Operations for the U.S. Region of Millennium & Copithorne Hotels.

“We understand you recently had work completed at your Acura dealership and wanted to be sure we’re meeting your service expectations. Your experience is unique and we’d appreciate hearing about it,” says an unsigned Acura email.

If you don’t fill out surveys, you are reminded and reminded. Acura sent out three reminders to fill out the post-service questionnaire, on Oct. 13, Oct. 14 and Oct. 17.

At least CaféPress is offering some compensation for my time. But no, I don’t want to fill out a survey every time I stay in a hotel, eat in a restaurant, get my oil changed or buy a t-shirt.

Post-transaction surveys make sense. One reason is metrics – they truly want to see their scores rise. This is true both of the local Acura dealer and also of the Acura nationwide organization, which needs to learn about both exceptional and troubled dealers.

Another reason is to deflect customer complaints, especially public ones that can harm the merchant’s reputation. Cranky consumers love flaming online and bricks-and-mortar vendors on Yelp or Twitter.. The theory is that if Hilton gets me a survey fast, perhaps I’ll be less motivated to go onto Yelp. Plus, of course, Hilton has an opportunity to intervene and get me to retract my diatribe.

The downside is that I’m drowning in a sea of post-transactional surveys. My family had three cars serviced in October. To date we have received 10 – 10! – survey requests about those service visits.

Let’s look at this from the software development perspective. It is easy to set up the online surveys with Web landing pages, automatic emails, and reminder tracking for non-responders.

In fact, it is too easy to set up those surveys. Because the incremental cost of each survey is approximately US$0, we have no reason to hold back from surveying every transaction, no matter how small. We have no reason to hold back from sending reminder after reminder after reminder.

We are not serving our customers. We are harassing them by burying them in requests for customer feedback.

Next time a line-of-business manager asks you to set up an automated post-transaction survey with lots of emailed reminders, please bring up this possibility…. Or at the least, add it to the survey.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

If you don’t measure, you don’t know how you’re doing. You don’t know what works and what doesn’t. You can’t figure out what to fix. And you can’t determine if your fixes actually work.

Do you make coffee? Every morning I make a pot at home. For many years, I’ve scooped out the coffee until it looks about right. Most mornings the coffee tastes good. Some mornings it’s incredibly delicious. Some days it’s too strong. Some days it’s too watery.

That changed in September, after I read an article in the New York Times, “Tipping the Balance for Kitchen Scales.” The author, Farhad Manjoo, uses making consistently delicious coffee as one of his anecdotes. He explained that if you use volumetric measures (like a scoop) you’re not getting a consistent amount, due both to variations in the density of the substance as well as in the accuracy of eyeballing the quantity.

Following Mr. Manjoo’s advice, we purchased an inexpensive Oxo digital kitchen scale. I tried scooping out coffee the old way, and then measured the results. The average was around 120 grams, which made pretty good coffee — but there could be a 20-30 gram swing. Even so, 120 grams wasn’t bad.

Then we started experimenting. 120 grams. 110 grams. 100 grams. 80 grams. 70 grams.

It turns out that my family loves the coffee when we use 75 grams of ground beans per pot. That’s significantly less than what we had been making. Each day our morning coffee is consistently perfect. (A pound of beans goes a lot farther too, yielding 6.0 pots instead of 3.7 pots.)

Put down the coffee scoop and open your development dashboard. How efficient are your architects, developers, designs, testers, managers? Do you know? Have you measured source lines of code created per day? Analyzed function points? Looked at defects or security flaws per KSLOC? Counted the requirements added or changed per iteration? Elapsed time per defect remediation? Variation from time or cost estimates per feature? Time spent on non-refactoring rework? Developer time spent on non-development activities?

There are a gazillion metrics specified by ISO and CMMI, as well as other best practices widely known in our industry. Do you use them?

If you don’t measure, you don’t know what is working well, and where you need to improve. If you don’t measure, you don’t know if your fixes are making things better or are making things worse. If you don’t measure, you can’t drive toward consistent performance and consistent delivery.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

I’m sure that many of you are – to be blunt – tired of reading about him already. The number of obituaries, tweets, Facebook posts, columns and remembrances treats Steve Jobs like he was a head of state, a major movie star, a world leader.

Even if you don’t own a single Apple product, even if you’ve never seen a Pixar movie, you have been affected by Steve’s drive, determination and vision. Steve wasn’t always right, but he never stopped innovating, never stopped trying to improve the world (and sell products).

There is no doubt that the early days of the personal computer revolution were massively influenced by the Jobs/Woz Apple ][. And that was only the beginning.

The Lisa and Macintosh brought the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointing Device) out of the laboratory and out to consumers. NeXT truly was a next-generation vision that influenced today’s Macs. There’s the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, Toy Story, Finding Nemo and so much more.

Of course, the influence of Jobs’ vision went far beyond Apple, NeXT and Pixar products. As a tastemaker, nearly every competitor tried to emulate Jobs’ products while simultaneously differentiating from those same products. Most competitors failed.

On a personal note, my interactions with Steve Jobs were very few, and limited to a few short conversations at press events and trade shows. I can’t say that I truly knew the man. I’m not sure that I would have wanted to work for Steve. But I have incredible respect for him.

Let me share two messages. The first is from the Apple board of directors, which wrote,

Finally, please read the personal comments by the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, who knew Steve fairly well.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Something funny happened to me down at Microsoft’s Build conference, held this week in Anaheim, Calif. Something rare. Something unusual.

I’m talking about the new look-and-feel of Windows 8. The Metro user interface. The seamless transition that it encourages between devices in many different form factors – desktops, servers, tablets and phones. The user experience looks fresh and compelling, and frankly is the most innovative update that I’ve seen to a Microsoft desktop operating system since Windows 95.

As mentioned above, it’s rare for me to have that type of reaction. I didn’t have it upon seeing the first iPhone, for example. In fact, Apple has only done that two me twice, with the MacBook Air and the iPad. (Both of which I purchased promptly when they appeared in stores.)

In fact, I can only think of a few other times I had that reaction. Upon seeing the launch of a particular version of Mathematica (I forget which version). At the launch of the Cobalt Cube, an innovative small-business server that Sun Microsystems acquired and killed. Steve Jobs demonstrating the second-generation NeXT pizza-box workstation. Not many others.

Downloading and installing the Windows Developer Preview, including tools, onto one of my lab machines is on my todo list. (Microsoft gave every paid attendee at Build a Samsung tablet with the Win8 beta and tools preinstalled, but those were not offered to press attendees like yours truly.)

What about the developer angle? Microsoft appears to be making it easy to retrofit existing Windows applications to behave nicely within the new Metro user experience; in fact, the company claims that every app that runs under Windows 7 will run under Windows 8. (Presumably, that’s for Intel x32/x64 apps and not for ARM applications.) The Metro experience is driven by JavaScript with HTML, but can also be implemented using C#, C++ or Visual Basic using XAML. No rocket science there.

Another big push with Windows 8 is to HTML5. While Silverlight and other plug-ins will still be supported, and there’s indeed a strong commitment to Silverlight, the message was clear: HTML5 is the future. That’s welcome news, of course – with Apple also on the HTML5 bandwagon, it’s the safest bet in town.

Finally, there’s the push to touchscreens. Microsoft is using the touchscreen to differentiate Windows from Mac OS X. Apple has been very clear that (at least under Steve Jobs) that touchscreens were for mobile devices, and not for iMacs. A plethora of computers built for Windows 8 – including desktops and notebooks – will have touchscreens. Let’s see where this goes: If consumers choose Windows because of this, expect Apple to embrace the touch as well.

As for now – I look forward to seeing how well the developer preview runs on a four-year-old Asus X50RL laptop. Should be interesting!

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Jobs is arguably the most influential computer-industry executive alive today. While he certainly shares the top shelf with the likes of Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Google’s Larry Page, IBM’s Sam Palmisano and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, for years Jobs has been in a class all by himself.

No modern tech titan has been so intimately involved with every aspect of the business. When you look at the patents, the design decisions, the marketing concepts and the purity of execution, Jobs defined what it means to be a hands-on manager with vision.

On Wednesday, Aug. 24, Jobs announced his resignation as CEO of Apple. You’ve undoubtedly read countless stories in the general media, analysis by pundits, and tweets by your friends. At this point, don’t read too much into anyone’s prognostications; we’re all extrapolating from very little data.

For example, we don’t know how many of Apple’s recent decisions were inspired by Jobs, and how many came from Tim Cook. The newly promoted CEO had held down the fort and ran day-to-day operations during Jobs’ illness.

On the short term, Apple has many Jobs-blessed products and plans in the pipeline. But what happens when that pipeline runs dry – and when the industry shifts?

Bigger changes must come soon to Apple’s product and service mix. How much will those changes affect the company’s trendsetting sense of design, ability to create entire new technology sectors, its willingness to go it alone, its minimalistic marketing, its one-sided relationship with partners, its arrogant disdain of the media, its rampant paranoia and secrecy? Nobody knows.

Take design, the area that showcases Steve Jobs’ personal leadership and vision. When it comes to new products (beyond those already in the pipeline), Apple’s designers can either try to emulate the past by designing around a hypothetical WWJD (What Would Jobs Do?) style, or follow the instincts of a new chief designer – even if that means going in a new aesthetic direction.

Let’s hope for the latter: If Apple goes into a WWJD navel-searching spiral, that would be a disaster. You can’t invent the future by copying the past. For the sake of Apple and its customers, Cook must demonstrate strong leadership and truly make the company his own.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

The IBM Personal Computer was introduced on August 12, 1981. The IBM Selectric typewriter debuted July 31, 1961. What a world of difference between the two devices – but both made a tremendous mark on global business and on today’s society.

My introduction to the IBM Selectric came in the 1970s. Through high school and then into college, I earned good money typing term papers, theses and dissertations. A good typist could earn serious money, especially if you were both fast and accurate – and, without adopting any false modesty, I was both. At first, I used a Smith-Corona cartridge typewriter, but in college I had easy access to lots of Selectric typewriters.

The Selectric II was heavenly. I could type like the wind on that beautiful, perfect, silky keyboard. Because you could change the golf-ball-shaped head, I could offer grad students and professors a couple of different typefaces – and even insert italics instead of merely underlining for emphasis. (I charged extra for pages with italics.)

I still own that Smith-Corona typewriter, and occasionally fire it up to frighten editorial interns. I never did purchase a Selectric typewriter, though. They were far too expensive, and worse, they earned a reputation for frequent breakdowns that required costly service contracts or ruinous repair bills.

The Selectric typewriter, with its type ball and lack of moving carriage, took up very little space on an office desk, and for many businesses, was a wise investment for turbocharging secretaries and typing pools. The mag tape version of the Selectric – which I never used – was a stepping-stone to the world of dedicated word processing machines. IBM made word processing machines, but that market was dominated by Wang.

It was the ridiculously high cost of dedicated word processing machines that led to early adoption of the IBM Personal Computer in many companies. A floppy-based IBM PC and printer and word processing software (such as MultiMate) was much less expensive than a Wang machine.

When the IBM PC came out in 1981, I was working as a programmer for System/370-series mainframes. Some IBM sales guys (black suits, white shirts) came out and demonstrated the IBM PC to a rapt audience. They left one with us to evaluate – this was the original model with the 4.77MHz processor, a floppy drive and a green text-only monitor. We had no idea what to do with it. Eventually, the IBMers took it away. Certainly we didn’t miss it.

Mainframe programmers didn’t want the IBM PC, but secretaries and other office workers did. The IBM PC found a place (especially when the IBM PC/XT appeared in 1983 with its built-in hard drive) doing simple office tasks – like word processing, a true business-critical application. (Secretaries weren’t happy with the IBM PC, since its early word-processing software wasn’t anywhere near as a versatile and reliable as the Wang machines machines. But the hardware and software improved rapidly, and the cost savings was huge.)

Except in the sciences and in special applications, the IBM PC was often considered a piece of office equipment, not computing equipment. A company’s IT staff rarely got involved with these stand-alone appliances, any more than they would have maintained Selectric typewriters or Wang word-processing machines.

When did IT become involved? For most organizations, the tipping point arrived by the mid-to-late 1980s, when administrators began supporting custom software, terminal access and local-area networking. The drivers for LANs, of course, was to provide shared access to expensive laser printers and file servers. Distasteful though it was to many glass-house professionals, it was clear that the IBM PCs were computers, not office equipment.

Thanks to innovations like Lotus 1-2-3 macros, Novell NetWare and the need to build and support business-enhancing software written in BASIC, Turbo Pascal and dBase II, the IBM PC turned into a true enterprise IT resource instead of a glorified typewriter. The Selectric was dead. Long live the IBM PC.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

When my friends and family visit restaurants, one of our favorite games is, “spot the typos on the menu.” Now, I don’t claim to be the best proofreader in the world, but spelling and grammar errors jump out at me. And while I make tons of typos in my own writing and emails, it’s because I’m often rushing and careless, not because I don’t know how to spell the word.

A typo on a restaurant menu elicits a chuckle or two — and that’s all. However, one study has shown that spelling errors on e-commerce websites can drive away business.

Similarly, nothing makes a commercial email scream “scam!” than typos in emails. Are you going to trust a half-off offer from your favorite coupon purveyor or an important notice from your bank if something is obviously spelled wrong?

In a recent BBC News story, “Spelling mistakes ‘cost millions’ in lost online sales,” the reporter said that “sales figures suggest misspellings put off consumers who could have concerns about a website’s credibility.”

The BBC story quotes William Dutton, director of the Oxford Internet Institute, as saying, “In these instances, when a consumer might be wary of spam or phishing efforts, a misspelt word could be a killer issue.”

Okay, I’m sure that we all agree that customer-facing websites and email messages should have good grammar and spelling. What’s the process for ensuring that? Does your development team have one? Who writes all the web copy, and who checks and proofreads your websites and email messages to make sure that the copy is clean? What about database entries, such as product names or descriptions?

The BBC story blames poor education for the proliferation of typos on websites, as well as an increased informality on the Internet. Maybe that’s part of it. Certainly not all programmers are good spellers, and when a coder is in coding mode, he or she may not be in proofreading mode.

However, my belief is that most of the typos and spelling errors are created by busy programmers who know how to spell – but are typing too fast and who aren’t paying attention. It’s also caused by copying/pasting text that hasn’t been written by a professional copywriter, and by a lack of serious proofreading.

Everyone needs a proofreader. Everything should be proofread before it goes live. (“Spellcheck” is not a proofreader.)

We recently had a small error on one of our websites. A mailto link was set up with a prepopulated subject line – but nobody had specified what the subject line should be, and so the programmer simply wrote one. Unfortunately, what he wrote had a very minor typo – instead of describing our company as BZ Media, he typed BZ MEdia by mistake. Whoops. A small mistake, but one that a customer called out to our attention. How embarrassing.

Look at your processes. Do you have competent proofreaders? Are they seeing everything that a customer or partner might see before it goes live? If not… well, you know what do to.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick