Tom Hume's posted some interesting thoughts on the downside of the long tail (a business model particularly suited to internet and software - more info here). His job involves a large amount of working porting applications to mobile phones, and the cardinal rule of "always test on actual hardware" is the problem. As Hume puts it " 'Write once, run everywhere.' Stare into the mirror and say it's name three times - it doesn't appear, it's just a fairytale."