Subject: From: Date:

RE: [ecs] new look Rob Hicks Mon, 4 Aug 2003 10:12:59 -0600

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 Mon, 4 Aug 2003 10:12:59 -0600
Mark,

The menu bar is very clean and looks fine. 

However, I have a few comments. Note that I'm offering my comments because I
care about ECS and you. 

A couple of weeks ago you asked about what versions of Linux are popular,
thinking that you would port ECS to Linux. Now, you are trying a few changes
in look and feel. Given such, I would ask. Where are you trying to get? What
are you trying to achieve? If more sales are where you would like to go, I
don't think that your technology is the issue. I believe the problem is
marketing visibility. 

If you think that giving ECS a facelift will help, I would ask who are your
intended users? What do they want? What platforms do they run? Do they need
web services? Do they want web services but with a rich interface? If so,
can you achieve what they want with your current architecture?

From past experience with ECS, I would surmise that most current and
prospective ECS users don't care about Linux. A few of us do, but not enough
to worry about. 

I would also surmise that nearly all of your prospective users will run ECS
on a Windows box. However, a lot of us are cheap so we're not running the
latest version of Windows. Most of us are probably running Windows 2000
right now, although a significant number might still be running Windows
Miserable Experience or Windows 98. Maybe it would be good to send out a
survey to your current users and find out what they are running.

I would also surmise that most of us are not using remote web services. Most
of us probably are too cheap to buy a public IP address. Most of us probably
don't have broadband and thus don't have the bandwidth to really support
remote web services anyway. Again, I think it would be nice to find out if
I'm right or wrong. 

It would also be nice to understand what features of ECS we are using. Are
we using it for home automation? At what level, X-10, embedded controllers,
etc.? Are we using it as an answering machine? What services would we like?
Do we know?

Anyway, just some food for thought.

Good luck. 

Rob






-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Gilmore [mailto:mark@markgilmore.net] 
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 6:07 AM
To: ecs@netbloc.com
Subject: [ecs] new look

I have uploaded a version with a new look (but did not incr the rev #).
Feedback welcome.

Mark Gilmore
http://OmnipotenceSoftware.com 

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