In My Humble Opinion

I work in the media business and a couple of our publishers and heads of sales keep telling our web development team to make sure our websites support Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) as many of their customers are still using IE6.

Now I don’t know about you but I generally like to keep my browser applications (I use IE, FireFox, Chrome) up-to-date to take advantage of new versions of JAVA and Flash and other web apps that are specifically designed for web browsing.

IE6 was launched in 2003. Today the current version is IE8 and development is underway for IE9. So it begs the question why would people want to stay with IE6? Most enterprises use a 4-5 year window to plan their infrastructure upgrades. Since we are at the beginning of 2010, this implies that enterprises planning for their upgrades this year have computers purchased in 2006-2007, around the period when IE7 was launched. I understand that many SMBs in Asia will likely be using really old PCs, perhaps even as old as early generations of Pentium running on Windows95. These folks would likely use IE5 or IE6 to browse the web.

According to w3counter, as of January 2010, 49.70% of users browsing the web use variants of Internet Explorer. Worldwide IE8 accounts for 23.69% of all browsers surfing the Net. Firefox 3.5 share is 23.30%, IE7 is 15.59% and IE6 is 10.41%. Click here for other stats.

So why am I ranting these numbers? Web giants, Google and youtube announced earlier this year (2010) that they will stop supporting IE6. Youtube will do so in March 13 while Google plans a phased approach to cease supporting IE6 from March 1.

If you use IE6 to watch your favorite videos on youtube, on March 13, you will be presented with a message from youtube asking you to upgrade to either Google Chrome, Opera 10, IE8, Safari 4 or Firefox 3.6.

The campaign to stop supporting IE6 started as early as August 2008 when a band of startups launched the IE6 No More campaign (http://www.ie6nomore.com/). (more…)

Most of the people I’ve met over the last 10 years say I am a driven person. According to ‘thefreedictionary.com’ driven means ‘motivated to succeed.’

 To be honest I don’t think this is true of myself. I don’t believe what I do is largely because I want to succeed. I don’t even know what success means. Is it money? I have some but not enough to qualify me to be listed. Is it academic accomplishment? I didn’t graduate with honors nor was I recognized for having done something noteworthy at my alma mater. Is it position at work? If you strip down the flowery honoraries on my businesscard, I am a writer, photographer, videographer, editor, and a whole slew of other types of work. I am also a delivery person being asked to carry stuff for people to other people. I may have people working in the group I belong to but I am just another employee.

I know I work long hours at times to the dismay of my family. But like all the things I’ve ever done in the past, I do what I do because I love what I do. And this is what I tell anyone willing to listen, give of yourself 100% in the things that you do only if this is what you really want to do. Steve Jobs said it very nicely during the 2005 Commencement address at Stanford University.

Steve Job’s 2005 Stanford University Commencement Address

“You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true of your love as it is of work. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you will know it when you find it. And like any great relationship, it gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.” Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple Computer.

I’ve never heard Steve’s speech until moments before I started writing this blog. He is right. If you love what you do, no matter how hard, it is going to be easy (huh?).