As I have discussed previously, My blog is hosted on Blogger, Google's blogging platform, and I really want the freedom to easily move my blog from Blogger to another platform such as WordPress. Though it is possible right now, it is not easy. And in any case it is not possible to bring your comments with you.
In my previous article on this, I discussed the fact that what I really wanted was for third parties, namely Disqus and Profy, to support importing comments and blog posts, as they are both platform agnostic (Disqus for comments and Profy for blog posts). As it stands, they both do a good job of allowing content to be managed outside a blogging platform but to be published on any of them. But neither Disqus and Profy support importing so you end up in some ways abandoning you old content, at least from a portability perspective. At the time that I originally wrote about this, I implored both of them to support importing.
A few days ago an important piece of the puzzle came together. Blogger just released the ability to export not just my blog, but my blog comments in XML form. This should make it extremely easy for Disqus and Profy to support importing into their platforms.
And so I have two things to say.
First, thank you Google. Thank you for releasing me. You could have made this hard. You could have clung to me proclaiming something about having to pry me from your cold dead hands. But instead, you offer a gentlemanly escape route, and it is, indeed, appreciated.
And second, and most importantly, a personal plea to Daniel from Disqus, Svetlana from Profy. Please guys, please go ahead and support Blogger imports! It should be easy now, right? I'll be your best friend... please don't make me beg!
Monday, June 30, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
Dreaming Of Better User Interface
Many years ago someone, I think it was Jean Louis Gassee, head of Apple Products at the time, said something I have always kept with me. The essence of the idea is that speed is an important element of user interface.
At the time, this was a bit of a radical concept. It was in the early graphical interface era, circa 1990s, and we all thought about interface in terms of widgets and metaphors. And so the idea of responsiveness as being as critical as how the system is visually and structurally designed was a bit radical until you thought about it for a few seconds. And then it was obvious.
Well yesterday, I had a couple of those types of insights that take me away from the basics of icon design and interaction flow.
It started with me sitting next to someone on the subway who was reading the New York Times. It is the newspaper I read every day. But only online. I had read the paper already for the day. And yet, looking over the shoulder of this reader, it became clear that I really had not read the paper. There were so many articles that I would have wanted to read, and ideas that I had not absorbed reading the paper online. From over someones shoulder, I was absorbing much more information than I was from my own PC web browser.
It got me thinking about just how poor a user interface window an LCD screen is. In a giant double fold newspaper, I can see *far* more than I can see on a computer screen. And I can change pages and go back and forth with ease. In fact, paper is an amazing user interface. I blows computers away.
Then later I went to the CenterNetworks/drop.io party and I was talking with David Parmet about virtual offices. We were talking about how much more cost effective not having an office is, and how unnecessary so much corporate real estate is. And yet today I am having a meeting with two relatively technical folks that could not be had online. Skype just wouldn't do the trick. It turns out that in person is the only way to do this particular meeting that will be part demo and part brainstorm. Emotion matters. The physical matters. Such meetings require full communications bandwidth. But I yearn for a computing environment that will let me express more of me, and received more from others.
The point is that the biggest thing we are missing right now in user interfaces is communications bandwidth. I am not talking about bits per second, but sensory input/output per second. I feel like computers currently allow us to transmit perhaps 10% of what we can transmit in person, or perhaps 30% of what we can transmit on paper.
The next generation, or perhaps several generations ahead of computers need to allow us to communicate more of what we want to communicate. That means more surface area. More depth. More sensitivity. More dynamic range. More resolution.
I feel like software designers are reaching diminishing returns in terms of user experience. To make dramatic leaps forward, physical interfaces need to get radically better. At the party last night, people were playing with Wii, and Guitar Hero, both incredibly minimal examples of enhanced sensory input. Both huge hits. People crave the ability to physically interact with technology in new richer ways.
I also think display technology is an area ripe for innovation. Holographic screens, wall projected screens and heads up displays need to be "consumerized." Many years ago the concept of virtual reality was introduced. The interface was based on the idea of glasses with embedded screens that allowed us to see radically larger surface areas. As I recollect, the system tracked head movements so that you could explore 3d space by turning your head.
A much simpler version of these early virtual reality exploration glasses would be great for modern interface exploration. These concepts may sound a bit too geeky, but I think the right execution could easily have us seeing this kind of stuff as very mainstream. These are the kinds of things that I would personally be thinking really hard about if my plate were not already incredibly full.
The bottom line is I think we are craving better interaction and communication with our devices, and there is not nearly enough thought and funding going into this area. I could rant some more about the waste of effort going into things like one too many social networks. But I won't since most of you know I feel not enough resources are going into things that really matter. But perhaps some of the great entrepreneurs who read this blog and are trying to figure out what the next big thing is will think about some of these ideas. I'd love to chat about this some more so please leave comments or write offline.
At the time, this was a bit of a radical concept. It was in the early graphical interface era, circa 1990s, and we all thought about interface in terms of widgets and metaphors. And so the idea of responsiveness as being as critical as how the system is visually and structurally designed was a bit radical until you thought about it for a few seconds. And then it was obvious.
Well yesterday, I had a couple of those types of insights that take me away from the basics of icon design and interaction flow.
It started with me sitting next to someone on the subway who was reading the New York Times. It is the newspaper I read every day. But only online. I had read the paper already for the day. And yet, looking over the shoulder of this reader, it became clear that I really had not read the paper. There were so many articles that I would have wanted to read, and ideas that I had not absorbed reading the paper online. From over someones shoulder, I was absorbing much more information than I was from my own PC web browser.
It got me thinking about just how poor a user interface window an LCD screen is. In a giant double fold newspaper, I can see *far* more than I can see on a computer screen. And I can change pages and go back and forth with ease. In fact, paper is an amazing user interface. I blows computers away.
Then later I went to the CenterNetworks/drop.io party and I was talking with David Parmet about virtual offices. We were talking about how much more cost effective not having an office is, and how unnecessary so much corporate real estate is. And yet today I am having a meeting with two relatively technical folks that could not be had online. Skype just wouldn't do the trick. It turns out that in person is the only way to do this particular meeting that will be part demo and part brainstorm. Emotion matters. The physical matters. Such meetings require full communications bandwidth. But I yearn for a computing environment that will let me express more of me, and received more from others.
The point is that the biggest thing we are missing right now in user interfaces is communications bandwidth. I am not talking about bits per second, but sensory input/output per second. I feel like computers currently allow us to transmit perhaps 10% of what we can transmit in person, or perhaps 30% of what we can transmit on paper.
The next generation, or perhaps several generations ahead of computers need to allow us to communicate more of what we want to communicate. That means more surface area. More depth. More sensitivity. More dynamic range. More resolution.
I feel like software designers are reaching diminishing returns in terms of user experience. To make dramatic leaps forward, physical interfaces need to get radically better. At the party last night, people were playing with Wii, and Guitar Hero, both incredibly minimal examples of enhanced sensory input. Both huge hits. People crave the ability to physically interact with technology in new richer ways.
I also think display technology is an area ripe for innovation. Holographic screens, wall projected screens and heads up displays need to be "consumerized." Many years ago the concept of virtual reality was introduced. The interface was based on the idea of glasses with embedded screens that allowed us to see radically larger surface areas. As I recollect, the system tracked head movements so that you could explore 3d space by turning your head.
A much simpler version of these early virtual reality exploration glasses would be great for modern interface exploration. These concepts may sound a bit too geeky, but I think the right execution could easily have us seeing this kind of stuff as very mainstream. These are the kinds of things that I would personally be thinking really hard about if my plate were not already incredibly full.
The bottom line is I think we are craving better interaction and communication with our devices, and there is not nearly enough thought and funding going into this area. I could rant some more about the waste of effort going into things like one too many social networks. But I won't since most of you know I feel not enough resources are going into things that really matter. But perhaps some of the great entrepreneurs who read this blog and are trying to figure out what the next big thing is will think about some of these ideas. I'd love to chat about this some more so please leave comments or write offline.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Dangerous New Chris Anderson Theory: We No Longer Need Logic
While I do not know Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, I would imagine he is a decent fellow. And by any measure, he is a smart fellow. But the purpose of this piece is to attempt to stop an idea that he is promoting that I consider to be neither decent, nor smart.
First, as many of you know, I have, in the past, taken Chris to task for what I called the voodoo economics of his theories around the idea that everything digital will be free, and how wonderful that will be. And yet, regardless of what I may say, there are many defenders of his theories around free.
But In the pages of this month's Wired Magazine, Chris proposes a new framework for thinking about science and logic that is so utterly irrational that I cannot imagine any serious thinkers flocking to his side. And yet, despite the ridiculousness of Chris's arguments, they must be addressed, because they may cause serious social harm.
Rather than summarize Chris's thesis, let me just quote him. First, Chris's accurate summary of a core tenet of scientific method:
And then Chris puts forward what I will call the Anderson Theory. It is based on the idea that with massive stores of data, most notably Google, we do not need such scientific methods any more. With such huge amounts of data we can establish much more detailed correlations, therefore making formal logic and scientific method irrelevant. Chris says:
So there you have it. Correlation is enough. Causation is irrelevant.
My argument against The Anderson Theory is centered in formal logic. For those of you that have never thought about the difference between correlation and causation, think of it this way. If we discover that in certain situations A and B are always present, that may very well be interesting information. But it is critical to know the direction of the relationship or causation. Does A cause B, does B cause A, or does C cause A and B. Without knowing the answer to this question we cannot derive anything useful or actionable about the fact that both A and B are often present at the same time. For Chris Anderson to suggest otherwise is, in my view, exceedingly dangerous.
As I see it, the most significant danger here is not in the hard sciences, where wacky thoughts like this will be dismissed out of hand, but in social science, or perhaps what would best be referred to as "pop" social science.
In this context people are always trying to use statistics via correlation to prove socially harmful theories and to justify harmful strategies including, for example, the horrific concept of eugenics. One of the more famous examples of such correlation based logic is the widely debunked 1994 book The Bell Curve, where authors Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray theorized that Blacks have lower I.Q.s than whites, and that the discrepancy is likely genetically based.
What would flow from this kind of thinking of course is a framework that potentially justified all kinds of race based social service and educational inequities based on the idea that such money could be better spent. Why give everyone the same education if some are ultimately less capable than others? In fact The Bell Curve was nothing more than faux science being used to prop up a political agenda. I fear people with outlying agendas gaining credibility through a reduction in rationality and rigor.
The point is that wacky memes often take off on the Internet regardless of their validity, provability, or reasonableness. People often reason in a manner to prove their underlying world view or political framework. If a seemingly credible person like Chris Anderson proclaims it OK to loosen the rigor with which we analyze the world around us, it will give comfort to those with less noble intentions.
Armed with Google, the lesser, or less noble among us will be "proving" all kinds of baseless social concepts, blessed with a patina of credibility from The Anderson Theory. But we cannot allow this to be. Requiring the establishment of not just correlation but causation in our arguments, is one of the primary backstops against evil intent in public discourse.
First, as many of you know, I have, in the past, taken Chris to task for what I called the voodoo economics of his theories around the idea that everything digital will be free, and how wonderful that will be. And yet, regardless of what I may say, there are many defenders of his theories around free.
But In the pages of this month's Wired Magazine, Chris proposes a new framework for thinking about science and logic that is so utterly irrational that I cannot imagine any serious thinkers flocking to his side. And yet, despite the ridiculousness of Chris's arguments, they must be addressed, because they may cause serious social harm.
Rather than summarize Chris's thesis, let me just quote him. First, Chris's accurate summary of a core tenet of scientific method:
Scientists are trained to recognize that correlation is not causation, that no conclusions should be drawn simply on the basis of correlation between X and Y (it could just be a coincidence). Instead, you must understand the underlying mechanisms that connect the two. Once you have a model, you can connect the data sets with confidence. Data without a model is just noise.
And then Chris puts forward what I will call the Anderson Theory. It is based on the idea that with massive stores of data, most notably Google, we do not need such scientific methods any more. With such huge amounts of data we can establish much more detailed correlations, therefore making formal logic and scientific method irrelevant. Chris says:
There is now a better way. Petabytes allow us to say: "Correlation is enough." We can stop looking for models. We can analyze the data without hypotheses about what it might show. We can throw the numbers into the biggest computing clusters the world has ever seen and let statistical algorithms find patterns where science cannot.
So there you have it. Correlation is enough. Causation is irrelevant.
My argument against The Anderson Theory is centered in formal logic. For those of you that have never thought about the difference between correlation and causation, think of it this way. If we discover that in certain situations A and B are always present, that may very well be interesting information. But it is critical to know the direction of the relationship or causation. Does A cause B, does B cause A, or does C cause A and B. Without knowing the answer to this question we cannot derive anything useful or actionable about the fact that both A and B are often present at the same time. For Chris Anderson to suggest otherwise is, in my view, exceedingly dangerous.
As I see it, the most significant danger here is not in the hard sciences, where wacky thoughts like this will be dismissed out of hand, but in social science, or perhaps what would best be referred to as "pop" social science.
In this context people are always trying to use statistics via correlation to prove socially harmful theories and to justify harmful strategies including, for example, the horrific concept of eugenics. One of the more famous examples of such correlation based logic is the widely debunked 1994 book The Bell Curve, where authors Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray theorized that Blacks have lower I.Q.s than whites, and that the discrepancy is likely genetically based.
What would flow from this kind of thinking of course is a framework that potentially justified all kinds of race based social service and educational inequities based on the idea that such money could be better spent. Why give everyone the same education if some are ultimately less capable than others? In fact The Bell Curve was nothing more than faux science being used to prop up a political agenda. I fear people with outlying agendas gaining credibility through a reduction in rationality and rigor.
The point is that wacky memes often take off on the Internet regardless of their validity, provability, or reasonableness. People often reason in a manner to prove their underlying world view or political framework. If a seemingly credible person like Chris Anderson proclaims it OK to loosen the rigor with which we analyze the world around us, it will give comfort to those with less noble intentions.
Armed with Google, the lesser, or less noble among us will be "proving" all kinds of baseless social concepts, blessed with a patina of credibility from The Anderson Theory. But we cannot allow this to be. Requiring the establishment of not just correlation but causation in our arguments, is one of the primary backstops against evil intent in public discourse.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Watching People Watch Yahoo Is A Bit Sickening
I guess I just don’t like the whole Wall Street mentality much. It is fascinating to me to watch all the Wall Street types pontificate about what Yahoo should do. It seems to me Wall Street is *always* focused on the wrong issues. Yahoo is a technology company, and to get out of the *purported* mess it is in right now, it needs one thing: new products that people want to use more and that monetize more effectively. And Wall Street has no intelligent insight into whether Yahoo can do that or if so, how.
So the idea that any bean counters outside the company can, based on what the current stock price is, or was during the last year, reasonably opine on the correct strategy regarding whether they should sell out seems crazy. Most of these analyses are skin deep. “Their stock peaked at X and now it is at 70% of X so if someone offers them 110% of current price they should sell.”
Bull.
I am not saying that Yahoo should or should not have sold to Microsoft. I am not even saying Jerry is the best CEO for Yahoo. I don't think he has been in the chair long enough to know. But I am saying that folks like Joe Nocera of The New York Times eviscerating Jerry for not selling are…, well lets just say, I am not convinced by their arguments. The analysis seems to be based on the idea that Yahoo’s best days are behind it, and senior executives leaving is some proof of that.
First of all, given where the company is, senior executives that have been there a long time may be *the reason* Yahoo is where it is now. To suggest that the company sucks, but all the people that brought it there are awesome is kinda dumb.
Second, the idea that any manager can or should manage to stock price or Wall Street demands, particularly in a tech company, is absolutely insane.
For example, Wall Street chafed when Amazon started its Web Services cloud computing initiative. Anyone with a brain now knows that AWS is one of the most important and strategic initiatives at the company. Another example, Wall Street doesn’t like Verizon laying fiber. It costs too much! Visionary ideas, right up until the very second they pay off, are considered distractions. Wall Street doesn’t like anything that they don’t understand or that isn’t an immediate hit. But Wall Street *loves* a good liquidation. Sell off the assets and give the money back to the shareholders. Don’t be an idiot and manage as if you are actually running a company!
Of course I shouldn’t just limit my criticism to Wall Street. Tech writers who have not done much more that write about tech – probably just on a blog – are for the most part out of their league on this stuff too. In truth, writing about product and corporate strategy is just a bit different than doing it. And even then, there are very few writers that seem to even be trying, except at the most superficial level. It is easier to just whine about Jerry.
And even calling for Jerry’s head wouldn’t be so bad if they had some special insight about him or what he should be doing (other than, of course, selling Yahoo). But they don’t. They seem to be doing it because its fun. This is bloodlust. It’s exciting. Like watching a no-holds-barred bare-knuckled street fight where someone is guaranteed to be carried out on a stretcher. Few of the people writing about this stuff, particularly the ones who are suggesting that Jerry is an idiot, really have much of a clue. But piling on, I am sure, is certainly more fun.
And so, what is the point of all of this?
There is nothing wrong with analyzing Yahoo. There is plenty more that can and should be discussed beyond the obvious fact that Yahoo can’t catch Google in search. Yahoo still has enormous assets, enormous traffic and great potential. But as far as I am concerned, there is little discussion about real next steps regarding product strategy. And at this point, as I see it, that is really all that matters.
So the idea that any bean counters outside the company can, based on what the current stock price is, or was during the last year, reasonably opine on the correct strategy regarding whether they should sell out seems crazy. Most of these analyses are skin deep. “Their stock peaked at X and now it is at 70% of X so if someone offers them 110% of current price they should sell.”
Bull.
I am not saying that Yahoo should or should not have sold to Microsoft. I am not even saying Jerry is the best CEO for Yahoo. I don't think he has been in the chair long enough to know. But I am saying that folks like Joe Nocera of The New York Times eviscerating Jerry for not selling are…, well lets just say, I am not convinced by their arguments. The analysis seems to be based on the idea that Yahoo’s best days are behind it, and senior executives leaving is some proof of that.
First of all, given where the company is, senior executives that have been there a long time may be *the reason* Yahoo is where it is now. To suggest that the company sucks, but all the people that brought it there are awesome is kinda dumb.
Second, the idea that any manager can or should manage to stock price or Wall Street demands, particularly in a tech company, is absolutely insane.
For example, Wall Street chafed when Amazon started its Web Services cloud computing initiative. Anyone with a brain now knows that AWS is one of the most important and strategic initiatives at the company. Another example, Wall Street doesn’t like Verizon laying fiber. It costs too much! Visionary ideas, right up until the very second they pay off, are considered distractions. Wall Street doesn’t like anything that they don’t understand or that isn’t an immediate hit. But Wall Street *loves* a good liquidation. Sell off the assets and give the money back to the shareholders. Don’t be an idiot and manage as if you are actually running a company!
Of course I shouldn’t just limit my criticism to Wall Street. Tech writers who have not done much more that write about tech – probably just on a blog – are for the most part out of their league on this stuff too. In truth, writing about product and corporate strategy is just a bit different than doing it. And even then, there are very few writers that seem to even be trying, except at the most superficial level. It is easier to just whine about Jerry.
And even calling for Jerry’s head wouldn’t be so bad if they had some special insight about him or what he should be doing (other than, of course, selling Yahoo). But they don’t. They seem to be doing it because its fun. This is bloodlust. It’s exciting. Like watching a no-holds-barred bare-knuckled street fight where someone is guaranteed to be carried out on a stretcher. Few of the people writing about this stuff, particularly the ones who are suggesting that Jerry is an idiot, really have much of a clue. But piling on, I am sure, is certainly more fun.
And so, what is the point of all of this?
There is nothing wrong with analyzing Yahoo. There is plenty more that can and should be discussed beyond the obvious fact that Yahoo can’t catch Google in search. Yahoo still has enormous assets, enormous traffic and great potential. But as far as I am concerned, there is little discussion about real next steps regarding product strategy. And at this point, as I see it, that is really all that matters.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Can Open Source Save Symbian From a Ford Taurus Fate?
Today, Nokia announced that it is buying the shares in Symbian that it does not already own and taking it open source. Clearly the intent is to shore up, and some would say save its hugely profitable smart phone product line.
Ok, so the first thing the Symbian/Nokia fanboys will say in the comments to this article is that Symbian doesn't need saving -- after all it has a 65% worldwide share of the smart phone market.
But of course anyone with a pulse that has tried an iPhone, seen an Android demo, or looked at either SDK, knows that Nokia has plenty to worry about.
The problem is that open sourcing Symbian will not fix its problems. Symbian's problems, if fixable, were just as fixable as a closed source OS.
There are two basic issues:
First, no one wants to develop for Symbian. While I have never developed for the Symbian, I have heard the reason people don’t like it is because its hard. With both the iPhone and Android, you can get something cool – really cool – up and running in a few days. Apple's development tools are the same five star drag and drop tools that Mac developers use. These kind of easy super productive tools get developers excited.
But actually, the reason developers are more jazzed about Apple and Android is irrelevant. The fact is that given the number of Symbian compatible handsets in the market, there should be tens of thousands of serious developers, hundreds of thousands of people who have dabbled, and thousands of great, world beating, phone defining apps.
But there are not.
To be clear, I am sure there are thousands of apps of some sort. But super cool, exciting in 2008, world-beating apps, not so much. While hard statistics are not yet available, it looks to me like there are already more iPhone developers than Symbian developers. And while this is hardly scientific, it is based on the extraordinary number of iPhone SDK downloads in the few short months that it has been available.
The second issue is that there is nothing sexy about Symbian based phones. Regardless of your own personal "I have a Symbian phone and love it" opinion, the market (press, developers, users) is fawning over iPhone and Android. Fawning is the always-present side effect of sexy. There was, several years ago, a general excitement about Nokia's smart phones. But today, all such excitement has essentially evaporated.
Of course the counter argument is that Nokia is still winning the checklist wars. For most things demoed on the iPhone or Android there is some equivalent on some Nokia phone somewhere. But in every case it is some far less compelling analog. And as European masters of design looking west will often remind us Americans when looking at our Ford Tauruses and Chevy Trucks, style matters. Ironically, Symbian has become the Ford Taurus of the smart phone market. Functional. Yes. Large market share. Yes. Ugly throwback to an older time. Indeed.
In short, Nokia's problem is that Symbian is just not pretty. It's not slick. In 2008 design terms, both its consumer facing and developer facing interfaces are far behind the times. And unfortunately, open source just isn't a very good strategy for fixing ugly. Of course at this point I am not sure there *is* a good strategy available, open source or otherwise for fixing Symbian.
Ok, so the first thing the Symbian/Nokia fanboys will say in the comments to this article is that Symbian doesn't need saving -- after all it has a 65% worldwide share of the smart phone market.
But of course anyone with a pulse that has tried an iPhone, seen an Android demo, or looked at either SDK, knows that Nokia has plenty to worry about.
The problem is that open sourcing Symbian will not fix its problems. Symbian's problems, if fixable, were just as fixable as a closed source OS.
There are two basic issues:
First, no one wants to develop for Symbian. While I have never developed for the Symbian, I have heard the reason people don’t like it is because its hard. With both the iPhone and Android, you can get something cool – really cool – up and running in a few days. Apple's development tools are the same five star drag and drop tools that Mac developers use. These kind of easy super productive tools get developers excited.
But actually, the reason developers are more jazzed about Apple and Android is irrelevant. The fact is that given the number of Symbian compatible handsets in the market, there should be tens of thousands of serious developers, hundreds of thousands of people who have dabbled, and thousands of great, world beating, phone defining apps.
But there are not.
To be clear, I am sure there are thousands of apps of some sort. But super cool, exciting in 2008, world-beating apps, not so much. While hard statistics are not yet available, it looks to me like there are already more iPhone developers than Symbian developers. And while this is hardly scientific, it is based on the extraordinary number of iPhone SDK downloads in the few short months that it has been available.
The second issue is that there is nothing sexy about Symbian based phones. Regardless of your own personal "I have a Symbian phone and love it" opinion, the market (press, developers, users) is fawning over iPhone and Android. Fawning is the always-present side effect of sexy. There was, several years ago, a general excitement about Nokia's smart phones. But today, all such excitement has essentially evaporated.
Of course the counter argument is that Nokia is still winning the checklist wars. For most things demoed on the iPhone or Android there is some equivalent on some Nokia phone somewhere. But in every case it is some far less compelling analog. And as European masters of design looking west will often remind us Americans when looking at our Ford Tauruses and Chevy Trucks, style matters. Ironically, Symbian has become the Ford Taurus of the smart phone market. Functional. Yes. Large market share. Yes. Ugly throwback to an older time. Indeed.
In short, Nokia's problem is that Symbian is just not pretty. It's not slick. In 2008 design terms, both its consumer facing and developer facing interfaces are far behind the times. And unfortunately, open source just isn't a very good strategy for fixing ugly. Of course at this point I am not sure there *is* a good strategy available, open source or otherwise for fixing Symbian.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Killing Ontologies/OWL In The Semantic Web?
Friday, I wrote a piece about my belief that we need to rename and reposition the Semantic Web as The Graph Web. My position is that the Semantic Web is hard to understand, and is poorly positioned in the minds of the public, and also that the package of ideas that represent the Semantic Web is too complicated as a starting point.
In Friday's piece, I made a statement that it seems made people believe I wanted to eliminate the idea of ontologies in the Semantic Web. Again, for those of you that are not experts in the Semantic Web, that would be most of you, ontologies are like a categorization system for the information in your database. It is a little like del.ici.ous tags but much much more rigorous and complicated. In any case the intent of my original piece was not to suggest we eliminate ontologies and so I want to clarify.
what I said was:
The thing I was trying to get across was the "for the basic message" part. The idea that I am proposing is a blend of marketing and product marketing/positioning, perhaps with a little bit of product design tweaking, though that may not be necessary.
The main point here is that by simplifying the basic message of what the Graph/Semantic Web is, it will spur adoption. The Wikipedia page for the semantic web is a mess. It is unreadable by mere mortals. And I suspect strongly that almost no one outside the tiny Semantic Web community knows what it is.
So my point is that by creating a *baseline* concept that is properly renamed to the Graph Web, that eliminates stuff that people can't understand in five minutes of conversation, we will be allowing the concepts promoted as "Semantic Web" the full opportunity to flourish. OWL, the semantic web ontology language, and ontologies need graph based data. Graph based data does not need OWL and ontologies. And so reformulating the baseline concept of the Semantic Web to being about graph data on the web is a much easier to understand initial concept.
This does not mean killing ontologies. What it does mean is that you present an initial package of ideas as a starting point of understanding that does not include ontologies except perhaps in some really trivial or simple way. Once people get the baseline concept they can graduate to a higher level of sophistication, which includes ontologies in a more substantive way.
Broadly speaking, the idea is that when you are creating new concepts, you can't force everyone to understand and accept all of them at the same time -- that is if you are looking for widespread adoption. For widespread adoption you need to create layers, or concentric rings, or whatever metaphor you want to use. You have to give people simple bite size chunks that can be usable and useful without understanding anything else. You can't take a first grader and start teaching them assembly language. You have to do it in phases.
In my last post I got a bit of feedback from people saying that we *need* ontologies to some things. And I don't deny that. Similarly, we need chemotherapy too, but only for people with cancer. It would not be prudent to suggest that everyone receive a course of such treatment just for good measure. On the other hand we do suggest everyone eat their green vegetables, brush their teeth, and exercise regularly. Some things are for the many, and some for the few.
It appears that James Hendler, father of the Semantic Web ontology system, is doing some very interesting work regarding using ontologies in very simple ways, which may fit nicely into my stripped down initial world view a baseline "Graph Web" view of the world. I do not know for sure whether I would consider it simplified enough, as I have not actually read his new book, Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist. But certainly, from talking to him, that sounds like the intent.
Right now, the positioning of the Semantic Web is not clear. The name is not clear. The concepts are not clear. The purpose is not clear. This is a shame because with a focus on the mindset and needs of the regular work-a-day developer, this stuff could be very appealing. And with layering, it can be easily understood. But right now the only people I know that are really jazzed about ontologies have a PhD, after their name. And so if the goal, as I think it should be, is ushering in the next wave of the web, call it 3.0, the excitement has to extend to people with a few less letters after their name.
In Friday's piece, I made a statement that it seems made people believe I wanted to eliminate the idea of ontologies in the Semantic Web. Again, for those of you that are not experts in the Semantic Web, that would be most of you, ontologies are like a categorization system for the information in your database. It is a little like del.ici.ous tags but much much more rigorous and complicated. In any case the intent of my original piece was not to suggest we eliminate ontologies and so I want to clarify.
what I said was:
First, all the stuff that seems too difficult and not immediately beneficial must be stripped away from the core concept and message. This means, for the basic message, ontologies must go. We must stop talking about them because they just confuse people. And they are not needed to get the most important benefits.
The thing I was trying to get across was the "for the basic message" part. The idea that I am proposing is a blend of marketing and product marketing/positioning, perhaps with a little bit of product design tweaking, though that may not be necessary.
The main point here is that by simplifying the basic message of what the Graph/Semantic Web is, it will spur adoption. The Wikipedia page for the semantic web is a mess. It is unreadable by mere mortals. And I suspect strongly that almost no one outside the tiny Semantic Web community knows what it is.
So my point is that by creating a *baseline* concept that is properly renamed to the Graph Web, that eliminates stuff that people can't understand in five minutes of conversation, we will be allowing the concepts promoted as "Semantic Web" the full opportunity to flourish. OWL, the semantic web ontology language, and ontologies need graph based data. Graph based data does not need OWL and ontologies. And so reformulating the baseline concept of the Semantic Web to being about graph data on the web is a much easier to understand initial concept.
This does not mean killing ontologies. What it does mean is that you present an initial package of ideas as a starting point of understanding that does not include ontologies except perhaps in some really trivial or simple way. Once people get the baseline concept they can graduate to a higher level of sophistication, which includes ontologies in a more substantive way.
Broadly speaking, the idea is that when you are creating new concepts, you can't force everyone to understand and accept all of them at the same time -- that is if you are looking for widespread adoption. For widespread adoption you need to create layers, or concentric rings, or whatever metaphor you want to use. You have to give people simple bite size chunks that can be usable and useful without understanding anything else. You can't take a first grader and start teaching them assembly language. You have to do it in phases.
In my last post I got a bit of feedback from people saying that we *need* ontologies to some things. And I don't deny that. Similarly, we need chemotherapy too, but only for people with cancer. It would not be prudent to suggest that everyone receive a course of such treatment just for good measure. On the other hand we do suggest everyone eat their green vegetables, brush their teeth, and exercise regularly. Some things are for the many, and some for the few.
It appears that James Hendler, father of the Semantic Web ontology system, is doing some very interesting work regarding using ontologies in very simple ways, which may fit nicely into my stripped down initial world view a baseline "Graph Web" view of the world. I do not know for sure whether I would consider it simplified enough, as I have not actually read his new book, Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist. But certainly, from talking to him, that sounds like the intent.
Right now, the positioning of the Semantic Web is not clear. The name is not clear. The concepts are not clear. The purpose is not clear. This is a shame because with a focus on the mindset and needs of the regular work-a-day developer, this stuff could be very appealing. And with layering, it can be easily understood. But right now the only people I know that are really jazzed about ontologies have a PhD, after their name. And so if the goal, as I think it should be, is ushering in the next wave of the web, call it 3.0, the excitement has to extend to people with a few less letters after their name.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Memo To The Semantic Web: Drop “Semantic” And Become The “Graph Web”
For some time now my team and I have been working on a new web service called Kloudshare. This is not a product announcement, but I mention it because it provides context for what I have on my mind.
Kloudshare is a graph database platform implemented as a web service. The concept of a graph database is that you can create data objects of any type and connect them to other objects at will. Within this structure you can easily query the graph for items of a particular type or items that are connected to items of a particular type that have a particular characteristic, etc.
If you have never though about graphs or taken a computer science class this may all seem a bit abstract. But trust me when I say it turns out that thinking in terms of graphs is a much easier way of thinking about data than what most of us do today. Specifically, representing information in a graph is *far* easier than doing so in a relational database.
When we started developing Kloudshare, we had no idea that it at all related to the work that the semantic web community was doing. But over time, one of the things I came to understand was that the semantic web is based on the idea of the web becoming one big graph database. And so it was appealing that there was a group of people who saw the world, in part, in a similar way to how we do. Unfortunately, the differences in thought beyond that baseline are quite substantial.
The Semantic Web concept is broken into two parts. The first part is the graph database concept, which they refer to using three separate expressions: triple stores, SPARQL, and RDF. A triple store is really the graph database. RDF is the format for the data when it comes out of a triple store, and SPARQL is the language for querying the database. These parts map conceptually very neatly to our work on Kloudshare.
The layer above this data store is called the OWL, or Web Ontology Language. This ontology layer is why the semantic web is called “semantic.” The concept of the ontology layer is to define what the objects in the graph database mean so that when I say an object is a “cat”, we can all know what cat means and how cats related to other objects around them, what they are related to, etc. In my view, this is where the semantic web, as a broad-based concept, begins to fall apart.
Ontologies are great for defining small, controlled, well-defined universes. But the web is not that, and never will be. I am not saying that ontologies have no use, but I am saying that they have use to a relatively small group, or in a few narrow situations. For example defining what a person is on the web, or an event or appointment would be very useful. But trying to create a broad layer of “meaning” for data on the web and presenting that as a primary goal of the semantic web just muddies the waters. This is exacerbated by the fact that OWL is a bitch to learn and understand. Moreover, the semantic part of all this, despite fervent denials, smacks of AI, an abject failure, and makes people roll their eyes instead of roll up their sleeves.
And so, in order for the ideas of the Semantic Web to succeed as a mainstream platform, the concepts and efforts must be re-focused.
First, all the stuff that seems too difficult and not immediately beneficial must be stripped away from the core concept and message. This means, for the basic message, ontologies must go. We must stop talking about them because they just confuse people. And they are not needed to get the most important benefits.
Second, we must simplify our terminology. The expression “graph database” is a single solid term. RDF, triple stores, and SPARQL are diffuse terms as well as being more abstract and harder to understand. When describing what this is all about and you need to use three terms to get your point across, people’s eyes glaze over.
And finally, we must focus on the one benefit that developers will immediately relate to, which is ease of development. It turns out that thinking in terms of graphs is far easier than thinking in terms of tables and relations. The semantic web community is so busy trying to sell a utopian vision of data access that they are burying the lead, which, for a typical developer, is in large part, about ease of development and time to market. Of course you can’t sell that message when you have to talk about OWL, which is the exact opposite of easy. The whole ontology concept has taken the Semantic Web, or whatever we really should be calling it if we drop semantics, and made it both hard to understand and hard to implement. It has also made the real benefits much harder to see.
As I see it, a much better name for the Semantic Web would be the “Graph Web.” People have already taken to the term “social graph”, and on some level I suspect people can already picture the concept, extended beyond just connecting people. The Semantic Web unfortunately needs a fresh start. Changing the name would cause people to take a very much-needed fresh look.
Kloudshare is a graph database platform implemented as a web service. The concept of a graph database is that you can create data objects of any type and connect them to other objects at will. Within this structure you can easily query the graph for items of a particular type or items that are connected to items of a particular type that have a particular characteristic, etc.
If you have never though about graphs or taken a computer science class this may all seem a bit abstract. But trust me when I say it turns out that thinking in terms of graphs is a much easier way of thinking about data than what most of us do today. Specifically, representing information in a graph is *far* easier than doing so in a relational database.
When we started developing Kloudshare, we had no idea that it at all related to the work that the semantic web community was doing. But over time, one of the things I came to understand was that the semantic web is based on the idea of the web becoming one big graph database. And so it was appealing that there was a group of people who saw the world, in part, in a similar way to how we do. Unfortunately, the differences in thought beyond that baseline are quite substantial.
The Semantic Web concept is broken into two parts. The first part is the graph database concept, which they refer to using three separate expressions: triple stores, SPARQL, and RDF. A triple store is really the graph database. RDF is the format for the data when it comes out of a triple store, and SPARQL is the language for querying the database. These parts map conceptually very neatly to our work on Kloudshare.
The layer above this data store is called the OWL, or Web Ontology Language. This ontology layer is why the semantic web is called “semantic.” The concept of the ontology layer is to define what the objects in the graph database mean so that when I say an object is a “cat”, we can all know what cat means and how cats related to other objects around them, what they are related to, etc. In my view, this is where the semantic web, as a broad-based concept, begins to fall apart.
Ontologies are great for defining small, controlled, well-defined universes. But the web is not that, and never will be. I am not saying that ontologies have no use, but I am saying that they have use to a relatively small group, or in a few narrow situations. For example defining what a person is on the web, or an event or appointment would be very useful. But trying to create a broad layer of “meaning” for data on the web and presenting that as a primary goal of the semantic web just muddies the waters. This is exacerbated by the fact that OWL is a bitch to learn and understand. Moreover, the semantic part of all this, despite fervent denials, smacks of AI, an abject failure, and makes people roll their eyes instead of roll up their sleeves.
And so, in order for the ideas of the Semantic Web to succeed as a mainstream platform, the concepts and efforts must be re-focused.
First, all the stuff that seems too difficult and not immediately beneficial must be stripped away from the core concept and message. This means, for the basic message, ontologies must go. We must stop talking about them because they just confuse people. And they are not needed to get the most important benefits.
Second, we must simplify our terminology. The expression “graph database” is a single solid term. RDF, triple stores, and SPARQL are diffuse terms as well as being more abstract and harder to understand. When describing what this is all about and you need to use three terms to get your point across, people’s eyes glaze over.
And finally, we must focus on the one benefit that developers will immediately relate to, which is ease of development. It turns out that thinking in terms of graphs is far easier than thinking in terms of tables and relations. The semantic web community is so busy trying to sell a utopian vision of data access that they are burying the lead, which, for a typical developer, is in large part, about ease of development and time to market. Of course you can’t sell that message when you have to talk about OWL, which is the exact opposite of easy. The whole ontology concept has taken the Semantic Web, or whatever we really should be calling it if we drop semantics, and made it both hard to understand and hard to implement. It has also made the real benefits much harder to see.
As I see it, a much better name for the Semantic Web would be the “Graph Web.” People have already taken to the term “social graph”, and on some level I suspect people can already picture the concept, extended beyond just connecting people. The Semantic Web unfortunately needs a fresh start. Changing the name would cause people to take a very much-needed fresh look.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
The False Hope Of Apple's Snow Leopard
The problem began several years ago. The processor community realized that despite the fact that they could continue to make chips with smaller transistors, they could no longer make chips with substantially faster clock speeds. There were two separate but related problems.
First, when adding more clock speed to chips, they were beginning to run too hot. Second, this heat generation was a reflection of energy consumption, which in turn meant that the cost of operation of new processors would be too high. And so the industry shifted direction and decided to put more processor cores on the same chip, but without increasing the clock speed. And so, what began was an urgent race to figure out how to leverage multiple processors in a mainstream computing environment.
Last week, Apple announced that their next operating system, Snow Leopard, is going to revolutionize computing by taking much better advantage of these multi-core processors. And perhaps in relative terms, as compared to Leopard, XP or Vista, this is true. Apple’s multi-core handling technology is called Grand Central and indeed I am sure it will bring important speed improvements. But from everything I can tell, there is nothing here that is going to bring back the kind of performance doubling speed increases to all applications that we used to see.
The problem is that most algorithms and program logic cannot be made to run better across many processors. This is not a swipe at Apple, because the problem is indeed industry wide. It’s just a recognition of basic logic principles, and an admonition to not get your hopes up as it relates to the real long-term impact of the industry’s efforts in this area.
The problem of multi-core computing is really very simple. As most of us have experienced, every problem *can’t* be solved better or faster with more people. Some problems can be solved faster by adding a few people, but most problems cannot. In truth, most problems can best, or only be solved by one person at a time. And so it is with computing. The vast majority of problems can only be solved by one logic thread at a time. The reason is obvious. For most process-oriented work, step B is based on the results of step A. And step C is based on the results of step B, and so on.
Of course there are definitely problems, and important problems, that *can* be solved by multiple processors. In fact there are problems that can leverage every single processor you can throw at it. Graphics is one such problem. Similarly, most every conception of how we model human or near human intelligence can infinitely leverage parallel computing. This includes old school AI techniques like neural networks, and new conceptions of how to model the brain’s neocortex like the promising work at Numenta, a company founded by creators of the original Palm Pilot. Additionally, parallel computing will solve many other far more mundane problems. So I am not saying we will not continue to see significant benefits from shrinking transistors.
But the problem is with that core thread, the main “thinker” inside the computer. You might think of it as the ringmaster. That guy is just not getting any faster. Though it may learn to leverage a couple of processors to some degree, it will top out very quickly. This core thread is at the heart of PC performance today, and its days of rapid speed gains are finished. For now, all we will really see are impressive, domain specific performance increases. Some of these will indeed be important. But the era of wholesale speed improvements tied to new processor generations is gone, probably forever.
First, when adding more clock speed to chips, they were beginning to run too hot. Second, this heat generation was a reflection of energy consumption, which in turn meant that the cost of operation of new processors would be too high. And so the industry shifted direction and decided to put more processor cores on the same chip, but without increasing the clock speed. And so, what began was an urgent race to figure out how to leverage multiple processors in a mainstream computing environment.
Last week, Apple announced that their next operating system, Snow Leopard, is going to revolutionize computing by taking much better advantage of these multi-core processors. And perhaps in relative terms, as compared to Leopard, XP or Vista, this is true. Apple’s multi-core handling technology is called Grand Central and indeed I am sure it will bring important speed improvements. But from everything I can tell, there is nothing here that is going to bring back the kind of performance doubling speed increases to all applications that we used to see.
The problem is that most algorithms and program logic cannot be made to run better across many processors. This is not a swipe at Apple, because the problem is indeed industry wide. It’s just a recognition of basic logic principles, and an admonition to not get your hopes up as it relates to the real long-term impact of the industry’s efforts in this area.
The problem of multi-core computing is really very simple. As most of us have experienced, every problem *can’t* be solved better or faster with more people. Some problems can be solved faster by adding a few people, but most problems cannot. In truth, most problems can best, or only be solved by one person at a time. And so it is with computing. The vast majority of problems can only be solved by one logic thread at a time. The reason is obvious. For most process-oriented work, step B is based on the results of step A. And step C is based on the results of step B, and so on.
Of course there are definitely problems, and important problems, that *can* be solved by multiple processors. In fact there are problems that can leverage every single processor you can throw at it. Graphics is one such problem. Similarly, most every conception of how we model human or near human intelligence can infinitely leverage parallel computing. This includes old school AI techniques like neural networks, and new conceptions of how to model the brain’s neocortex like the promising work at Numenta, a company founded by creators of the original Palm Pilot. Additionally, parallel computing will solve many other far more mundane problems. So I am not saying we will not continue to see significant benefits from shrinking transistors.
But the problem is with that core thread, the main “thinker” inside the computer. You might think of it as the ringmaster. That guy is just not getting any faster. Though it may learn to leverage a couple of processors to some degree, it will top out very quickly. This core thread is at the heart of PC performance today, and its days of rapid speed gains are finished. For now, all we will really see are impressive, domain specific performance increases. Some of these will indeed be important. But the era of wholesale speed improvements tied to new processor generations is gone, probably forever.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Staying Out Late And Discovering Its a Small World
One of the things that staying out late does is mess with my blogging schedule and so I don't do it very often. But last night I made an exception, and after the Semantic Web panel, I had some great conversation over drinks with James Hendler, one of the fathers of an important piece of the semantic web.
Interestingly James is one of the authors of a piece of the semantic web that I find problematic called OWL. This is the part of the semantic web that relates to building ontologies. And so it was fascinating to discover that he, in large part, shares my concerns and criticisms regarding OWL's complexity and its inaccessibility for regular developers.
In any case, what was most interesting about all of this is how it lead to an incredible small world moment. Several months ago, Jim wrote an email on the W3C mailing list, where he quoted and posted a link to a blog post I did called The Death of The Relational Database. The funny thing is I didn't realize until waking up this morning and checking that this is the same James from the W3C who had quoted me.
In any case this is what James said at the time:
The blog at [1], whether we agree with it or not, is why I say we run the risk of missing Web App developers if we (i) don't provide a fragment like OWL Prime, and don't pay attention to the "full" world-- this is clearly someone who gets part of the Sem Web picture and wants things to go that way - The author (who has some credibility in development space as you can see if you read his bio) is saying the RDBMSs don't have what future Web apps need, and that graph based stuff seems to be the right direction, but he says:
>Unfortunately, the semantic web is proof that while a little
> geek is good, but too much geek is, well, too much geek. The
> problem is that the people that created the semantic web
> were just way too smart. In fact if you read even the watered
> down Wikipedia description of the semantic web, it sounds
> like useless abstract gobbledygook. As a result, the semantic
> web is too great a leap from the tried and true relational
> database. In fact, it doesn't even feel like relational database
> users were a target audience for the semantic web architects.
> But whether they were aggressively targeting mainstream
> database developers or not, the gap between the two
> methodologies is far too great not only because the semantic
> web is hard, but because relational tools are being greatly
> simplified, which just increases the gap.
when I talk abut onramps, easier ways to get started, and semantics compatible with Web Developer needs, this is what I had in mind -- this just says it much better than I did...
Last night, James shared great detail about his thinking about these issues, and it was refreshing to talk with someone with such a blend of academic rigor but also a grounded practical perspective. In short, staying out last night was well worth it.
Interestingly James is one of the authors of a piece of the semantic web that I find problematic called OWL. This is the part of the semantic web that relates to building ontologies. And so it was fascinating to discover that he, in large part, shares my concerns and criticisms regarding OWL's complexity and its inaccessibility for regular developers.
In any case, what was most interesting about all of this is how it lead to an incredible small world moment. Several months ago, Jim wrote an email on the W3C mailing list, where he quoted and posted a link to a blog post I did called The Death of The Relational Database. The funny thing is I didn't realize until waking up this morning and checking that this is the same James from the W3C who had quoted me.
In any case this is what James said at the time:
The blog at [1], whether we agree with it or not, is why I say we run the risk of missing Web App developers if we (i) don't provide a fragment like OWL Prime, and don't pay attention to the "full" world-- this is clearly someone who gets part of the Sem Web picture and wants things to go that way - The author (who has some credibility in development space as you can see if you read his bio) is saying the RDBMSs don't have what future Web apps need, and that graph based stuff seems to be the right direction, but he says:
>Unfortunately, the semantic web is proof that while a little
> geek is good, but too much geek is, well, too much geek. The
> problem is that the people that created the semantic web
> were just way too smart. In fact if you read even the watered
> down Wikipedia description of the semantic web, it sounds
> like useless abstract gobbledygook. As a result, the semantic
> web is too great a leap from the tried and true relational
> database. In fact, it doesn't even feel like relational database
> users were a target audience for the semantic web architects.
> But whether they were aggressively targeting mainstream
> database developers or not, the gap between the two
> methodologies is far too great not only because the semantic
> web is hard, but because relational tools are being greatly
> simplified, which just increases the gap.
when I talk abut onramps, easier ways to get started, and semantics compatible with Web Developer needs, this is what I had in mind -- this just says it much better than I did...
Last night, James shared great detail about his thinking about these issues, and it was refreshing to talk with someone with such a blend of academic rigor but also a grounded practical perspective. In short, staying out last night was well worth it.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Tim Berners-Lee Joins Panel Tonight
The panel I am moderating tonight at the Linked Data Planet Conference has been joined by the creator of the semantic web, and indeed the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee. Just print this pass and bring tonight. Again, the conference is at the Roosevelt Hotel here in New York City at 6:30pm.
Hey Buddy That's Just Your Opinion. Duh!
This morning, I was reading Robert Scoble's shared items in Google reader, and noticed an item Robert had shared from Blogger Steve Garfield. Garfield's post was a response to a piece that Scoble had written reflecting his view that kyte.tv was going to kill Qik and Flixwagon, in the cell phone video space. Steve disagrees with Robert's analysis.
Now I don't have a horse in this race. I haven't yet used any of these products and have no idea which is better.
But what killed me is how Steve starts off his rebuttal, first quoting Scoble and then taking him to task.
So here's the issue. Attacking someone's *opinion* piece with the retort that it is just their *opinion* is just plain dumb.
Now I don't mean to be too personal with Steve. Lots of people use this rhetorical tactic, which is in fact why I find it so annoying. And perhaps Steve was just having a bad day, so I will give him a pass. This is not about Steve Garfield specifically, but about the type of response technique he uses here.
And yet, as I have learned in my last 6 months of blogging, this is a fairly standard response. Here Steve says "you can't know this as a fact." Indeed. That's what freakin' opinion is! How in God's name can you know as a fact, something that is a prediction. It wouldn't be an opinion if it was known as a fact. It would be some freakish super power – some mystical heretofore unknown future telling ability.
And yet this seems, in the blogosphere, to be the starting point for a huge swath of comment response.
Now again, to be fair, the rest of Steve's piece seems reasonably argued, though again I am quite ignorant when it comes to this arena. Indeed poor Steve is getting singled out and caught in the shrapnel from my growing annoyance over this type of argument. There are many thousands of others perhaps far more deserving than Steve, so I apologize in advance.
Anyway, this is to all the other blog commenters who include in their rebuttals this kind of empty response. It would probably strengthen your argument to omit the obvious fact that an opinion is, well, an opinion.
Now I don't have a horse in this race. I haven't yet used any of these products and have no idea which is better.
But what killed me is how Steve starts off his rebuttal, first quoting Scoble and then taking him to task.
"I don’t see how Qik or Flixwagon can beat Kyte anymore in the cell phone video game. What do you think?"I replied:Robert,
Your title of, "Why Kyte.tv will kill Qik and Flixwagon in cell phone video space," is your opinion, will probably get you a lot of views, but you can't know this as a fact.
So here's the issue. Attacking someone's *opinion* piece with the retort that it is just their *opinion* is just plain dumb.
Now I don't mean to be too personal with Steve. Lots of people use this rhetorical tactic, which is in fact why I find it so annoying. And perhaps Steve was just having a bad day, so I will give him a pass. This is not about Steve Garfield specifically, but about the type of response technique he uses here.
And yet, as I have learned in my last 6 months of blogging, this is a fairly standard response. Here Steve says "you can't know this as a fact." Indeed. That's what freakin' opinion is! How in God's name can you know as a fact, something that is a prediction. It wouldn't be an opinion if it was known as a fact. It would be some freakish super power – some mystical heretofore unknown future telling ability.
And yet this seems, in the blogosphere, to be the starting point for a huge swath of comment response.
Now again, to be fair, the rest of Steve's piece seems reasonably argued, though again I am quite ignorant when it comes to this arena. Indeed poor Steve is getting singled out and caught in the shrapnel from my growing annoyance over this type of argument. There are many thousands of others perhaps far more deserving than Steve, so I apologize in advance.
Anyway, this is to all the other blog commenters who include in their rebuttals this kind of empty response. It would probably strengthen your argument to omit the obvious fact that an opinion is, well, an opinion.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Moderating a Panel On Semantic Web Tomorrow at Linked Data Conference in NY
Tomorrow I will be co-moderating a panel on the semantic web at The linked Data Planet Conference here in New York City. Our panel is at the Roosevelt Hotel at 6:30pm. For a free pass to the event, click here(pdf), and for more general information about the conference go to www.linkeddataplanet.com.
It should be an interesting event and evening and if you are in New York, I encourage you to stop by and say hello.
The full panel participant list is as follows:
Panel Leader: Marco Neumann, New York Semantic Web Meetup
Moderators:
Hank Williams, Founder and CEO, Kloudshare & Eric Hoffer, Second Integral
Panelists:
Sergey Chernyshev, CTO, Semantic Communities LLC
Dan Connolly, Research Scientist, W3 (tentative)
Christine Connors, Global Director, Semantic Technology Solutions, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Taylor Cowan, Emerging Solutions Principal, Sabre Holdings, Travelocity
Richard Cyganiak, Reseacher, DERI and Project Leader D2RQ
Nic Fulton PhD, Chief Scientist, Reuters Media
Marc Hadfield, President and CTO, Alitora
Savas Parastastidis PhD, Architect, Technical Computing, Microsoft Research
It should be an interesting event and evening and if you are in New York, I encourage you to stop by and say hello.
The full panel participant list is as follows:
Panel Leader: Marco Neumann, New York Semantic Web Meetup
Moderators:
Hank Williams, Founder and CEO, Kloudshare & Eric Hoffer, Second Integral
Panelists:
Sergey Chernyshev, CTO, Semantic Communities LLC
Dan Connolly, Research Scientist, W3 (tentative)
Christine Connors, Global Director, Semantic Technology Solutions, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Taylor Cowan, Emerging Solutions Principal, Sabre Holdings, Travelocity
Richard Cyganiak, Reseacher, DERI and Project Leader D2RQ
Nic Fulton PhD, Chief Scientist, Reuters Media
Marc Hadfield, President and CTO, Alitora
Savas Parastastidis PhD, Architect, Technical Computing, Microsoft Research
Tim Russert Inspires Thought About The Future of Video Journalism
Tim Russert, Washington Bureau Chief of NBC News, and the moderator of Meet The Press died on this past Friday. His passing has consumed a significant amount of my attention this weekend. Personally, I was saddened because, bizarre thought it may seem, I really felt as though I knew him. And I really liked him. More importantly, a big part of the reason I liked him, aside from who I felt he was as a person, is that he really changed the nature of political journalism. He educated me. He gave me insights that I couldn’t get anywhere else.
The weekend of Russert retrospectives has gotten me thinking about the role of video journalism in our culture.
Historically, print based journalism has been perceived as being more important and more prestigious than video journalism. But for me, Tim’s passing reminded me that that is certainly not a valid lens through which to look at modern reporting and analysis. And it has also gotten me thinking about the fact that video journalism is essentially missing from the web.
Yes, you can indeed see Meet The Press online, and CNN shows lots of clips on the web. But these are broadcast properties being delivered over the web. There is really no such thing as web native video journalism.
In point of fact, the web is full of blogs, bloggers, and text. And yes, there is emerging a platform for audio journalism through things like the Gilmor Gang and This Week In Tech. But where are the participatory video shows? There are lots of people looking into a webcam and talking. But there is nothing that reflects the compelling nature of what we see on CNN, or what we see in text form on the web. There is nothing that really leverages what should be possible using off the shelf Internet technology, webcams, and a bit of production polish.
It should be possible to produce web video based shows that have the rough look of something you might see on broadcast. I’d love to see web-based panel type shows with a moderator, where you could actually see the participants, each likely in a separate webcam-enabled location. Production in such a scenario could be tied together through a central broadcast system like Mogulus.
Seeing how someone responds, what they look like, and what their interaction looks like is hugely valuable to making assessments. Imagine, for example, if we only had raw text or stump speeches to judge our presidential nominees. Text is critical, but just like we want to actually meet people before we work with them, the multidimensional nature of observing people in real interaction can be hugely valuable, even critical, to really understanding someone and their thoughts or position.
So for me, the fact that the creator of modern political video journalism has passed is a terribly sad event. But I am hoping that the focus on his passing can at least help us to envision how we can use the web for the next phase of video journalism. There is no silver lining here, but perhaps, at least, a tad of inspiration.
The weekend of Russert retrospectives has gotten me thinking about the role of video journalism in our culture.
Historically, print based journalism has been perceived as being more important and more prestigious than video journalism. But for me, Tim’s passing reminded me that that is certainly not a valid lens through which to look at modern reporting and analysis. And it has also gotten me thinking about the fact that video journalism is essentially missing from the web.
Yes, you can indeed see Meet The Press online, and CNN shows lots of clips on the web. But these are broadcast properties being delivered over the web. There is really no such thing as web native video journalism.
In point of fact, the web is full of blogs, bloggers, and text. And yes, there is emerging a platform for audio journalism through things like the Gilmor Gang and This Week In Tech. But where are the participatory video shows? There are lots of people looking into a webcam and talking. But there is nothing that reflects the compelling nature of what we see on CNN, or what we see in text form on the web. There is nothing that really leverages what should be possible using off the shelf Internet technology, webcams, and a bit of production polish.
It should be possible to produce web video based shows that have the rough look of something you might see on broadcast. I’d love to see web-based panel type shows with a moderator, where you could actually see the participants, each likely in a separate webcam-enabled location. Production in such a scenario could be tied together through a central broadcast system like Mogulus.
Seeing how someone responds, what they look like, and what their interaction looks like is hugely valuable to making assessments. Imagine, for example, if we only had raw text or stump speeches to judge our presidential nominees. Text is critical, but just like we want to actually meet people before we work with them, the multidimensional nature of observing people in real interaction can be hugely valuable, even critical, to really understanding someone and their thoughts or position.
So for me, the fact that the creator of modern political video journalism has passed is a terribly sad event. But I am hoping that the focus on his passing can at least help us to envision how we can use the web for the next phase of video journalism. There is no silver lining here, but perhaps, at least, a tad of inspiration.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Tim Russert Dies at 58
Tim Russert, the host of Meet The Press and the Washington bureau chief of NBC died of a heart attack today.
Tim was, in my mind, the most important and best political broadcast journalist in the country, and perhaps the best in my lifetime. I watched him religiously, and as I watch the coverage on MSNBC and his colleagues both report on and eulogize him, I am hugely saddened at the loss.
Bits Experts Should Get To Know Atoms Experts
I have been blogging this week about the role of IT in the economy and I wanted to address one concrete thought that has been in my head for a while.
It seems to me that one of the most important things that experts in bits can do is become expert in, or partner with someone, who is an expert in atoms. This might mean mechanical engineers, or physicists, or chemists, or civil engineers, or heck even chefs.
In my view, the growth curve potential of moving bits around is shrinking. This not to say there is not growth yet to come, but the truly more open and explosive playing field is in using bits to help us move and organize atoms.
I guess you could say, atoms are the new bits. Cross discipline use of computing technology is where the next revolution will occur. We are just at the beginning of a world where we have devices that can "print" physical stuff. They are called 3D printers. Its new, and its not broadly useful yet, but I do believe we are close to an inflection that will make 3D printing mainstream. Another similar area that I think is coming is the ability to "print" clothing. Imagine taking raw cotton, putting it in a device, downloading a pattern, and printing a finished fitted pair of jeans.
The key to achieving these kinds of innovations involves cross disciplinary training. And though we now have extraordinary CAD tools for modeling physical things, that modeling needs to get much better to allow us to innovate in the physical realm in the same way we are innovating in the virtual realm.
My point with all of this is we need to broaden our perspective on what is possible and what is useful. The realm of the atoms should be our next frontier. Think of it as World 2.0 instead of Web 2.0.
It seems to me that one of the most important things that experts in bits can do is become expert in, or partner with someone, who is an expert in atoms. This might mean mechanical engineers, or physicists, or chemists, or civil engineers, or heck even chefs.
In my view, the growth curve potential of moving bits around is shrinking. This not to say there is not growth yet to come, but the truly more open and explosive playing field is in using bits to help us move and organize atoms.
I guess you could say, atoms are the new bits. Cross discipline use of computing technology is where the next revolution will occur. We are just at the beginning of a world where we have devices that can "print" physical stuff. They are called 3D printers. Its new, and its not broadly useful yet, but I do believe we are close to an inflection that will make 3D printing mainstream. Another similar area that I think is coming is the ability to "print" clothing. Imagine taking raw cotton, putting it in a device, downloading a pattern, and printing a finished fitted pair of jeans.
The key to achieving these kinds of innovations involves cross disciplinary training. And though we now have extraordinary CAD tools for modeling physical things, that modeling needs to get much better to allow us to innovate in the physical realm in the same way we are innovating in the virtual realm.
My point with all of this is we need to broaden our perspective on what is possible and what is useful. The realm of the atoms should be our next frontier. Think of it as World 2.0 instead of Web 2.0.
Commenter Says: Food, Clothing, and Shelter Are a Given
Yesterday I wrote a piece on whether Web 2.0 matters. The gist of the article was based on comments, which I agree with, by Jim Cramer, suggesting that there is an overly frivolous focus to the web 2.0 world.
One of the comments was from a reader who felt that my perspective was too pessimistic, based on how great the world really is. He said:
There are several points I would like to address here. The first is that I do not believe talking about where our attention should be focused for best benefit of our planet and our future is doom and gloom. But that said, I do feel it is important that we look at the world realistically, and some of us may be a bit more optimistic than is called for.
The commenter here says that 4-6% of our economy is farming and the rest have the luxury of laboring on purely comfort focused endeavors. I realize that many of us in the tech world are in fact focused on the business of doing our business, and less so on broader economic or world concerns. We also may, by and large, be well off enough not to realize the economic woes faced by others. And so I thought I would help clarify a few things.
According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, our economy expended $13.8413 trillion in 2007. Of that $2.6898 trillion went to government (federal, state, local), $2.1254 trillion went to investments and capital equipment (homes, IT, transportation, industrial equipment), and finally, personal consumption expenditures were $9.7342 trillion. In other words, personal consumption is the stuff that people spend their money on outside of taxes, and conversely it is also how most of our money is made. It is useful to break this down:
Durable goods................... 1078.2
..Motor vehicles and parts...... 441.2
..Furniture and household
...equipment.................... 416.1
..Other......................... 221.0
Nondurable goods................ 2833.2
..Food.......................... 1336.4
..Clothing and shoes............ 370.5
..Gasoline, fuel oil, and other
...energy goods................. 364.2
..Other......................... 762.2
Services........................ 5822.8
..Housing....................... 1465.9
..Household operation........... 531.1
....Electricity and gas......... 226.9
....Other household operation... 304.2
..Transportation................ 358.4
..Medical care.................. 1689.3
..Recreation.................... 402.2
..Other......................... 1375.8
If you will note, only $402 billion out of $9.7 trillion, or around 4% of our economy is entertainment. Most of the money goes to things like medical, food, energy, clothing and shelter. So the idea that most of our economy or jobs are comfort related and food, energy, and shelter are a given, is to say the least, not accurate.
More importantly, energy and food are not only not givens, for many they are becoming unaffordable. While I am sure everyone knows we are in the middle of an energy crisis, some may not know but there is a world wide food crisis as well. The cost of food has increased 46% in the last year, and many more people around the world are starving. This is caused, in large part, by the substantial acceleration in the quality of living in places like China. They are consuming more and the world can't produce enough. The same issues relate to energy, where China is consuming more, and there just is not enough production to support the planet's needs.
None of this is me trying to be doom and gloom. I believe that information technology has and will continue to help us attack the most important problems our planet faces. But if we believe as the commenter does, that there are not looming problems and serious issues to address, we, as a community, can't participate in crafting solutions.
We cannot believe that all that is left to do is amuse ourselves. I do not mean to pick on my commenter, and I do hope he is not offended. But I think it is important for all of us to be properly armed with the facts. Because you can't hit the nail on the head if you can't see the nail.
One of the comments was from a reader who felt that my perspective was too pessimistic, based on how great the world really is. He said:
"Why the doom and gloom. Don’t underestimate the magical powers of a capitalistic, post-industrial, well post-agrarian society. Because western society is so efficient at food production—only 4-6% of our economy is farming—that means the rest of us (94-96% of our economy) have the luxury of laboring on purely comfort focused endeavors. Just walk around any major city viewing the myriad of businesses and ask yourself which companies are really focused on energy, food production, shelter, health, and education. In the information age, comfort gets the lions share of attention; food, clothing, and shelter are essentially a given."
There are several points I would like to address here. The first is that I do not believe talking about where our attention should be focused for best benefit of our planet and our future is doom and gloom. But that said, I do feel it is important that we look at the world realistically, and some of us may be a bit more optimistic than is called for.
The commenter here says that 4-6% of our economy is farming and the rest have the luxury of laboring on purely comfort focused endeavors. I realize that many of us in the tech world are in fact focused on the business of doing our business, and less so on broader economic or world concerns. We also may, by and large, be well off enough not to realize the economic woes faced by others. And so I thought I would help clarify a few things.
According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, our economy expended $13.8413 trillion in 2007. Of that $2.6898 trillion went to government (federal, state, local), $2.1254 trillion went to investments and capital equipment (homes, IT, transportation, industrial equipment), and finally, personal consumption expenditures were $9.7342 trillion. In other words, personal consumption is the stuff that people spend their money on outside of taxes, and conversely it is also how most of our money is made. It is useful to break this down:
Durable goods................... 1078.2
..Motor vehicles and parts...... 441.2
..Furniture and household
...equipment.................... 416.1
..Other......................... 221.0
Nondurable goods................ 2833.2
..Food.......................... 1336.4
..Clothing and shoes............ 370.5
..Gasoline, fuel oil, and other
...energy goods................. 364.2
..Other......................... 762.2
Services........................ 5822.8
..Housing....................... 1465.9
..Household operation........... 531.1
....Electricity and gas......... 226.9
....Other household operation... 304.2
..Transportation................ 358.4
..Medical care.................. 1689.3
..Recreation.................... 402.2
..Other......................... 1375.8
If you will note, only $402 billion out of $9.7 trillion, or around 4% of our economy is entertainment. Most of the money goes to things like medical, food, energy, clothing and shelter. So the idea that most of our economy or jobs are comfort related and food, energy, and shelter are a given, is to say the least, not accurate.
More importantly, energy and food are not only not givens, for many they are becoming unaffordable. While I am sure everyone knows we are in the middle of an energy crisis, some may not know but there is a world wide food crisis as well. The cost of food has increased 46% in the last year, and many more people around the world are starving. This is caused, in large part, by the substantial acceleration in the quality of living in places like China. They are consuming more and the world can't produce enough. The same issues relate to energy, where China is consuming more, and there just is not enough production to support the planet's needs.
None of this is me trying to be doom and gloom. I believe that information technology has and will continue to help us attack the most important problems our planet faces. But if we believe as the commenter does, that there are not looming problems and serious issues to address, we, as a community, can't participate in crafting solutions.
We cannot believe that all that is left to do is amuse ourselves. I do not mean to pick on my commenter, and I do hope he is not offended. But I think it is important for all of us to be properly armed with the facts. Because you can't hit the nail on the head if you can't see the nail.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Does Web 2.0 Matter?
A few days ago I read an article in Silicon Alley Insider (SAI) that has gotten me thinking about the idea that the current Web 2.0 bubble might really be much less significant than we really think it is right now. The piece was a discussion of thestreet.com’s Jim Cramer, and his views about the current state of the web.
SAI paraphrases Cramer as follows:
And then one commenter writes:
Indeed.
But even then, I think what is most interesting is not the economics of this, though that is important, but the broader issue of “significance.” Not everything has to be important of course, but do we really need, as an industry, to spend so much time focused on MySpace, or Facebook, or Twitter? Why are so many of our brain cycles trained on yet another way to engage in less than substantial chatter with each other, while people starve and we suck the last bits of fossil fuel out of the ground?
Yes, yes, I am *not* discounting all the real and important work that is going on by lots of great, smart, dedicated people. But I am suggesting that there is not enough of that going on. More importantly, we, as an industry, don’t seem to be all that interested in it. Why is every tech blog (mine included) focused on so much irrelevant crap? The answer is because apparently *that* is what people are interested in.
But the truth is, aside from Google, the stuff that seems to get the most attention really isn’t making much of a difference to our planet. The real issues facing us are things like energy, food production, shelter, health, and education. But instead we inside bubble 2.0 are focused on yet another Twitter outage.
As I see it, what really matters at this point is how we take the human condition to the next level. This relates to our physical well being and also to our emotional and spiritual well being. The last point about the spiritual is not at all about religion, but the idea that how we feel about ourselves and whether we are really good and really “doing good” is important. This is part of the reason I feel so strongly about the acceleration of piracy, which I don’t think is spiritually healthy, or economically beneficial either for us as individuals or as a society.
But the main point is that I would love to see more of us focused on how we can increase our productivity and in so doing increase our planet’s sustainability. Yes, I will grant you that communications tools like Facebook do indeed have the ability to increase our productivity, particularly inside professional environments, and this *is* significant. I just think that our obsession with finding new ways to Super Poke each other is getting to be a bit much.
SAI paraphrases Cramer as follows:
While Silicon Valley tech firms soak up capital and task engineers to develop "fancy ways to deliver music and games," Rust Belt survivors are buying back stock and trying to solve real global problems with advanced materials and alternative energy sources.
And then one commenter writes:
I completely agree with his sentiment regarding Silicon Valley. What is going to happen when most of a consumer's discretionary capital is tied up making purchases of energy, food, and paying down the mortgage.
Indeed.
But even then, I think what is most interesting is not the economics of this, though that is important, but the broader issue of “significance.” Not everything has to be important of course, but do we really need, as an industry, to spend so much time focused on MySpace, or Facebook, or Twitter? Why are so many of our brain cycles trained on yet another way to engage in less than substantial chatter with each other, while people starve and we suck the last bits of fossil fuel out of the ground?
Yes, yes, I am *not* discounting all the real and important work that is going on by lots of great, smart, dedicated people. But I am suggesting that there is not enough of that going on. More importantly, we, as an industry, don’t seem to be all that interested in it. Why is every tech blog (mine included) focused on so much irrelevant crap? The answer is because apparently *that* is what people are interested in.
But the truth is, aside from Google, the stuff that seems to get the most attention really isn’t making much of a difference to our planet. The real issues facing us are things like energy, food production, shelter, health, and education. But instead we inside bubble 2.0 are focused on yet another Twitter outage.
As I see it, what really matters at this point is how we take the human condition to the next level. This relates to our physical well being and also to our emotional and spiritual well being. The last point about the spiritual is not at all about religion, but the idea that how we feel about ourselves and whether we are really good and really “doing good” is important. This is part of the reason I feel so strongly about the acceleration of piracy, which I don’t think is spiritually healthy, or economically beneficial either for us as individuals or as a society.
But the main point is that I would love to see more of us focused on how we can increase our productivity and in so doing increase our planet’s sustainability. Yes, I will grant you that communications tools like Facebook do indeed have the ability to increase our productivity, particularly inside professional environments, and this *is* significant. I just think that our obsession with finding new ways to Super Poke each other is getting to be a bit much.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
History Being Made: Mom Wants An iPhone
First, to put this in context, I am not exactly a young kid. And so my mom is not of what one might call the technology craving generation. I think she thinks it’s interesting but it does not come easily for her. I bought her first computer, an iMac, in 2000. She loved the color, but it was never exactly a match made in heaven.
As a product designer, I have always worked on consumer facing technology. And my mom has always been the gold standard for the target customer in my head. I have always had in my mind the idea that I was making products for her. I defined design success as making stuff not only easy enough for her to use, but compelling and relevant enough that she would actually care to use it.
I don’t think I ever reached that second standard. And up until recently I don’t think anyone else has either. I have bought her Palm organizers, digital cameras, the iMac, and other stuff. I have always thought I could expose her and entice her into really being interested in something electronic. She has always been moderately enthusiastic to start, but the energy is always short lived.
But this time I think it’s different. My mother has never independently inquired about a technology product, until now.
First, about a month ago she called me in the middle of the day to ask me if I was familiar with the iPhone. Calling in the middle of the day is odd. Asking me about some tech product is odder still. But the most odd thing about it is that I had already shown her an iPhone and we had spoken about it several times. But somehow it just didn’t stick.
This time it was different. One of her peers, a client, had given her an iPhone demo. She obviously hadn’t really gotten it before. But this time, she was excited. “Yes mom, I am familiar with the iPhone… I showed it to you before remember?”
“Oh yes, but I didn’t realize this is what that was.”
Now, fast-forward thirty days, to Monday June 9th, the day of the new iPhone announcement.
“Hi Hank. Did you hear about the new iPhone? It’s $200. Are you going to get one?”
Ok, so she didn't exactly announce that she wants one. But as we talked, the body language came through the phone loud and clear. My mom has been converted. Steve Jobs has done something I have never been able to do. He has made my mom lust for a piece of technology. He has, I think, turned her into a fan boy of sorts. And so this is now, for me, a fascinating and very close to home social experiment. Will she actually buy one on her own? Will she really learn it? Will this really stick? I don’t know. But after a lifetime of trying to get my mom to be curious about a technology product – any technology product – I am looking forward to finding out.
As a product designer, I have always worked on consumer facing technology. And my mom has always been the gold standard for the target customer in my head. I have always had in my mind the idea that I was making products for her. I defined design success as making stuff not only easy enough for her to use, but compelling and relevant enough that she would actually care to use it.
I don’t think I ever reached that second standard. And up until recently I don’t think anyone else has either. I have bought her Palm organizers, digital cameras, the iMac, and other stuff. I have always thought I could expose her and entice her into really being interested in something electronic. She has always been moderately enthusiastic to start, but the energy is always short lived.
But this time I think it’s different. My mother has never independently inquired about a technology product, until now.
First, about a month ago she called me in the middle of the day to ask me if I was familiar with the iPhone. Calling in the middle of the day is odd. Asking me about some tech product is odder still. But the most odd thing about it is that I had already shown her an iPhone and we had spoken about it several times. But somehow it just didn’t stick.
This time it was different. One of her peers, a client, had given her an iPhone demo. She obviously hadn’t really gotten it before. But this time, she was excited. “Yes mom, I am familiar with the iPhone… I showed it to you before remember?”
“Oh yes, but I didn’t realize this is what that was.”
Now, fast-forward thirty days, to Monday June 9th, the day of the new iPhone announcement.
“Hi Hank. Did you hear about the new iPhone? It’s $200. Are you going to get one?”
Ok, so she didn't exactly announce that she wants one. But as we talked, the body language came through the phone loud and clear. My mom has been converted. Steve Jobs has done something I have never been able to do. He has made my mom lust for a piece of technology. He has, I think, turned her into a fan boy of sorts. And so this is now, for me, a fascinating and very close to home social experiment. Will she actually buy one on her own? Will she really learn it? Will this really stick? I don’t know. But after a lifetime of trying to get my mom to be curious about a technology product – any technology product – I am looking forward to finding out.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
iPhone Background Processing: Not Fixed But Halfway There
Yesterday, unless you are on another planet, you know that at Apple’s annual World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple announced a new iPhone, and showed off a bunch of cool new applications. They also made a few new announcements about their software development kit (SDK). For me the most important of these was around a new feature for app developers relating to background processing.
We asked Apple for background processes
Several months ago I wrote a fairly popular article on why the iPhone needed background processes. The gist of my argument in that piece is that background processes are needed for three things. To allow applications:
They heard us… kinda
And so, it appears that, at least to some extent, the rallying cry worked. Apple announced a new mechanism for receiving background notifications. We (meaning all of us, not the “royal we”) did make a difference.
Specifically, since the solution will not be available until September, I must assume that this feature is a late addition in response to the noise over this issue since March when Apple initially announced the SDK. To see Apple responding directly and quickly to market requests is indeed refreshing.
Unfortunately, Apple’s response does not go far enough, though this first stab at the problem is compelling. Apple has fully solved the first problem in the above list, which is being notified about external events, including things like inbound messages.
The way it works is that application developers will be able to send messages from their web servers to Apple servers. In turn, Apple’s web servers can directly push notifications to iPhones. Apple’s stated design goal here was to skirt the need for developer accessible background processes by implementing their own single background notification process that all developers can effectively share.
This is indeed a great solution for notification. Unfortunately it does not eliminate the need for additional developer accessible background services.
We still need other background services
Apple’s new solution resolves the first of the three above points. You can now build an instant messaging client for the iPhone. Unfortunately, you still can’t do things like:
As I explained in the last article, these are important functionalities for really delivering on the full potential of the phone as a developer platform. I am particularly excited about the idea of my mobile phone being able to detect information about the world around me, and notifying me of relevant things in my environment. With the new GPS functionality I’d also like to be able to track my whereabouts. Where did I go today? How long did I stay? I believe this kind of almost “agent-like” functionality is a hugely compelling application class that is not being enabled by the current application model, but should be.
Mobile Me reminds us of a fourth reason background functionality is key
Interestingly, beyond the application categories I had considered in my last article on this subject, Apple’s introduction of Mobile Me is a vivid additional demonstration of the need for background processing. Mobile Me is a cloud based system that among other things, allows contacts, email, and calendar information to be synced to your iPhone in the background.
Mobile Me looks great, but I wonder why I as an application developer am not being given the tools to write such an application. Of course I have not seen how it actually works, but presuming that it really does sync in the background, I am left wanting to ask Mr. Jobs why I can’t do that too.
Apple’s “background apps take too much power” argument
In Apple’s defense, their argument is that background applications take too much power and add too much complexity. Yesterday they held up Windows Mobile as the straw man for why you don’t want background processing.
But of course we all know that because something has already been done a bad way doesn’t mean there isn’t a good way to do it. So I accept the argument that in considering these options, complexity and power consumption are critical considerations. But I reject the notion that they cannot be addressed.
The solution
As I see it, the solution to this problem is a special *very* slow task manager specifically for background tasks. The idea is that applications can register to run background tasks on some periodic but very infrequent basis. They would be allowed to execute a very small number of instructions, and they would be set to run at most every few minutes. In this way, it would be possible to do some very quick processing at very long intervals. By making the background processing very lightweight, no Windows style task management would be needed, and worries about battery power would be essentially eliminated.
Additional functionality could be tied into the GPS and the new notification system to allow background code to be triggered to do specific things when, for example, the user’s location changes, or some external event happens. This would allow for applications to do things like respond in the background to user movement.
The bottom line is that I do like the idea of specialized services to handle background needs in ways that are battery friendly. Hopefully the new notification system is the first in a series of such services that can truly take mobile platforms to the next level.
Related:
The Awkward Marriage Of Google And Apple in Mobile
We Have The iPhone Because Steve Jobs Has Big Brass Balls
Apple Says: We Weren't Lying, AIM *will* Be A Turd
The Anti-iPhone: Google's Android
Apple's iPhone SDK Inhibits Real Mobile Innovation
The iPhone Doesn't Suck - duh
We asked Apple for background processes
Several months ago I wrote a fairly popular article on why the iPhone needed background processes. The gist of my argument in that piece is that background processes are needed for three things. To allow applications:
- to be notified about things happening in the outside world, such as notifications of inbound instant messages or email.
- to notify the user about things happening locally. An example might be an alarm clock.
- to broadcast information about the users current situation to the outside world such as his/her location or presence.
They heard us… kinda
And so, it appears that, at least to some extent, the rallying cry worked. Apple announced a new mechanism for receiving background notifications. We (meaning all of us, not the “royal we”) did make a difference.
Specifically, since the solution will not be available until September, I must assume that this feature is a late addition in response to the noise over this issue since March when Apple initially announced the SDK. To see Apple responding directly and quickly to market requests is indeed refreshing.
Unfortunately, Apple’s response does not go far enough, though this first stab at the problem is compelling. Apple has fully solved the first problem in the above list, which is being notified about external events, including things like inbound messages.
The way it works is that application developers will be able to send messages from their web servers to Apple servers. In turn, Apple’s web servers can directly push notifications to iPhones. Apple’s stated design goal here was to skirt the need for developer accessible background processes by implementing their own single background notification process that all developers can effectively share.
This is indeed a great solution for notification. Unfortunately it does not eliminate the need for additional developer accessible background services.
We still need other background services
Apple’s new solution resolves the first of the three above points. You can now build an instant messaging client for the iPhone. Unfortunately, you still can’t do things like:
- build an alarm clock.
- write an app to broadcast your mobile location, unless you stay exclusively in that application. So no taking phone calls and no letting your phone go to sleep.
- write code that *responds* to notifications. All the new notifications do is send a message to the user. They can’t trigger code execution.
As I explained in the last article, these are important functionalities for really delivering on the full potential of the phone as a developer platform. I am particularly excited about the idea of my mobile phone being able to detect information about the world around me, and notifying me of relevant things in my environment. With the new GPS functionality I’d also like to be able to track my whereabouts. Where did I go today? How long did I stay? I believe this kind of almost “agent-like” functionality is a hugely compelling application class that is not being enabled by the current application model, but should be.
Mobile Me reminds us of a fourth reason background functionality is key
Interestingly, beyond the application categories I had considered in my last article on this subject, Apple’s introduction of Mobile Me is a vivid additional demonstration of the need for background processing. Mobile Me is a cloud based system that among other things, allows contacts, email, and calendar information to be synced to your iPhone in the background.
Mobile Me looks great, but I wonder why I as an application developer am not being given the tools to write such an application. Of course I have not seen how it actually works, but presuming that it really does sync in the background, I am left wanting to ask Mr. Jobs why I can’t do that too.
Apple’s “background apps take too much power” argument
In Apple’s defense, their argument is that background applications take too much power and add too much complexity. Yesterday they held up Windows Mobile as the straw man for why you don’t want background processing.
But of course we all know that because something has already been done a bad way doesn’t mean there isn’t a good way to do it. So I accept the argument that in considering these options, complexity and power consumption are critical considerations. But I reject the notion that they cannot be addressed.
The solution
As I see it, the solution to this problem is a special *very* slow task manager specifically for background tasks. The idea is that applications can register to run background tasks on some periodic but very infrequent basis. They would be allowed to execute a very small number of instructions, and they would be set to run at most every few minutes. In this way, it would be possible to do some very quick processing at very long intervals. By making the background processing very lightweight, no Windows style task management would be needed, and worries about battery power would be essentially eliminated.
Additional functionality could be tied into the GPS and the new notification system to allow background code to be triggered to do specific things when, for example, the user’s location changes, or some external event happens. This would allow for applications to do things like respond in the background to user movement.
The bottom line is that I do like the idea of specialized services to handle background needs in ways that are battery friendly. Hopefully the new notification system is the first in a series of such services that can truly take mobile platforms to the next level.
Related:
The Awkward Marriage Of Google And Apple in Mobile
We Have The iPhone Because Steve Jobs Has Big Brass Balls
Apple Says: We Weren't Lying, AIM *will* Be A Turd
The Anti-iPhone: Google's Android
Apple's iPhone SDK Inhibits Real Mobile Innovation
The iPhone Doesn't Suck - duh
Monday, June 9, 2008
Henry T. Nicholas III
I have been wanting to comment on the story of Henry Nicholas for a few days. Nicholas was the founder and CEO of a chip company called Broadcom. He is one of the richest men in the world.
There aren't many circumstances when a billionaire is indicted(pdf link) for such bizarre and self destructive behavior as dealing dope, or being exposed for building a massive underground sex lair next to his mansion for engaging in sex with prostitutes.
I became familiar with Nicholas during the late 90's when some of my work was hardware related and I was working on a product that might have required Broadcom communications chips.
In any case the point is I have been wanting to comment, but I really haven't had anything to say worthy of a blog post. Then I read this great article on news.com and after that I realized that the only thing I could say about the matter is to suggest that you read it. I certainly never knew the guy, but somehow it is, for me, a disproportionately distressing story, and the details are riveting.
There aren't many circumstances when a billionaire is indicted(pdf link) for such bizarre and self destructive behavior as dealing dope, or being exposed for building a massive underground sex lair next to his mansion for engaging in sex with prostitutes.
I became familiar with Nicholas during the late 90's when some of my work was hardware related and I was working on a product that might have required Broadcom communications chips.
In any case the point is I have been wanting to comment, but I really haven't had anything to say worthy of a blog post. Then I read this great article on news.com and after that I realized that the only thing I could say about the matter is to suggest that you read it. I certainly never knew the guy, but somehow it is, for me, a disproportionately distressing story, and the details are riveting.
The Nuance of Entrepreneurial Openness
Brad Burnham at Union Square Ventures recently wrote an excellent blog post about the value of openness, and shares his empirical observation that there is great value in being open about your business plans as a startup. This is not a new meme, and in fact New York entrepreneur Charlie O’Donnell from Path 101, and former Union Square Ventures associate, coined the term “anti-stealth” to describe the concept of total openness when launching a new company. The idea of anti-stealth is that you tell people everything you are doing and that this will benefit your ability to execute.
Brad suggests that every time you share something about you business you will learn more than you will be giving away. In other words, in conversations about what you are doing, the informational trade balance will always be in your favor.
I generally agree with this thesis, but I do believe that, as with everything in life, there is room for nuance.
Some of the nuance I am addressing relates to level of detail. I think if you have a real estate web site idea, or an idea for how to sell books online, that there is little benefit to keeping that secret. In fact I would go as far as to say that there are very few market related ideas that are worthy of stealth. I would never say that there are no such ideas, but there certainly aren’t many. Of course the problem here is that everyone thinks *their* idea is the one idea that needs to be kept secret, so let me clarify.
The one thing I think you want to consider keeping secret are special “executional” techniques. These are often key technical or “technical-ish” insights that are hard won but easily copied. For example, imagine it has taken you 6 months to figure out the secret to building something that will cut your cost of operation by a factor of 10, or perhaps will lead to a 10x growth rate over your competitors.
Lets assume it will take you another 6 months to finish the rest of your product, but it might take an already in-market, or coming-to-market competitor a month to build it into their product. In that situation, I think you might very well be wise to keep your insight to yourself to give you a maximal opportunity to leverage it.
Admittedly, this is tricky if this insight is the key to making people interested in your business. So even in this situation it might be wise to share, but in a more cautious way. For example there is a significant difference between sharing verbally and sharing in writing where someone can pore over your every word. Providing an overview of your insight verbally might be just as beneficial as writing it down, and less risky.
For example there are certain aspects of and a certain level of detail about my current efforts that I will talk about, but will not blog about. Another technique is what I call casual compartmentalization, which is total openness, but with different people about different aspects. In many respects this is a natural behavior and not a strategy since you can’t tell everything to everybody if you don’t write it down publicly.
On another front, if your idea is something that benefits the functionality of your product but cannot be specifically observed, there may be no reason to ever share that. For example, we know Google provides great search results, but we don’t know all of their algorithms. Another example Brad uses is that we don’t know Coke’s secret recipe. There are some companies that could be appropriately described as having “secret recipe” technology, and that is indeed worthy of keeping secret.
The bottom line is I generally agree with the concept of being open and sharing. But I don’t think every single “ah ha” moment needs to be laid out in a detailed written roadmap for your existing or would be competitors. So go ahead. I agree with being open. But I don’t think that means you can’t keep a few secrets.
Brad suggests that every time you share something about you business you will learn more than you will be giving away. In other words, in conversations about what you are doing, the informational trade balance will always be in your favor.
I generally agree with this thesis, but I do believe that, as with everything in life, there is room for nuance.
Some of the nuance I am addressing relates to level of detail. I think if you have a real estate web site idea, or an idea for how to sell books online, that there is little benefit to keeping that secret. In fact I would go as far as to say that there are very few market related ideas that are worthy of stealth. I would never say that there are no such ideas, but there certainly aren’t many. Of course the problem here is that everyone thinks *their* idea is the one idea that needs to be kept secret, so let me clarify.
The one thing I think you want to consider keeping secret are special “executional” techniques. These are often key technical or “technical-ish” insights that are hard won but easily copied. For example, imagine it has taken you 6 months to figure out the secret to building something that will cut your cost of operation by a factor of 10, or perhaps will lead to a 10x growth rate over your competitors.
Lets assume it will take you another 6 months to finish the rest of your product, but it might take an already in-market, or coming-to-market competitor a month to build it into their product. In that situation, I think you might very well be wise to keep your insight to yourself to give you a maximal opportunity to leverage it.
Admittedly, this is tricky if this insight is the key to making people interested in your business. So even in this situation it might be wise to share, but in a more cautious way. For example there is a significant difference between sharing verbally and sharing in writing where someone can pore over your every word. Providing an overview of your insight verbally might be just as beneficial as writing it down, and less risky.
For example there are certain aspects of and a certain level of detail about my current efforts that I will talk about, but will not blog about. Another technique is what I call casual compartmentalization, which is total openness, but with different people about different aspects. In many respects this is a natural behavior and not a strategy since you can’t tell everything to everybody if you don’t write it down publicly.
On another front, if your idea is something that benefits the functionality of your product but cannot be specifically observed, there may be no reason to ever share that. For example, we know Google provides great search results, but we don’t know all of their algorithms. Another example Brad uses is that we don’t know Coke’s secret recipe. There are some companies that could be appropriately described as having “secret recipe” technology, and that is indeed worthy of keeping secret.
The bottom line is I generally agree with the concept of being open and sharing. But I don’t think every single “ah ha” moment needs to be laid out in a detailed written roadmap for your existing or would be competitors. So go ahead. I agree with being open. But I don’t think that means you can’t keep a few secrets.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Paul Krugman Joins The Freetards
I used to have a lot of respect for Paul Krugman as an economist. That is until I read his latest column in today’s New York Times. The gist of the piece is that the Internet is killing the old economy, but that new business models are replacing the old ones. I think we can all agree on the first part. But the part about the new business models, where does he get that? Answer: Rolling Stone magazine!
Here’s the quote:
First, as a news flash, publishing, touring, merchandising and licensing are not new revenue streams! Artists have always made money from these sources. So the question is, are there *increased* revenues from publishing, touring and merchandising to offset declining record sales? There is no evidence of it.
The music industry is indeed hemorrhaging. And it is possible that the music business declines and nothing replaces that revenue. But for Krugman, an internationally noted economist, to suggest, based on a Rolling Stone article, that new revenue streams are effectively, replacing the old ones is shameful. While I would not expect Krugman to maintain scholarly standards in a general interest paper like the New York Times, I wouldn’t expect him to entirely abandon such standards either, particularly in the field of his expertise.
I guess if Maureen Dowd had written this I wouldn’t be so exercised. But Paul Krugman seems to have entirely departed the field of professional economics.
Here’s the quote:
Rolling Stone recently published an article titled “Rock’s New Economy: Making Money When CDs Don’t Sell.” Downloads are steadily undermining record sales — but today’s rock bands, the magazine reports, are finding other sources of income. Even if record sales are modest, bands can convert airplay and YouTube views into financial success indirectly, making money through “publishing, touring, merchandising and licensing.
First, as a news flash, publishing, touring, merchandising and licensing are not new revenue streams! Artists have always made money from these sources. So the question is, are there *increased* revenues from publishing, touring and merchandising to offset declining record sales? There is no evidence of it.
The music industry is indeed hemorrhaging. And it is possible that the music business declines and nothing replaces that revenue. But for Krugman, an internationally noted economist, to suggest, based on a Rolling Stone article, that new revenue streams are effectively, replacing the old ones is shameful. While I would not expect Krugman to maintain scholarly standards in a general interest paper like the New York Times, I wouldn’t expect him to entirely abandon such standards either, particularly in the field of his expertise.
I guess if Maureen Dowd had written this I wouldn’t be so exercised. But Paul Krugman seems to have entirely departed the field of professional economics.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
"Defining Deviancy Down" On The Internet
As I have recently pondered the state of the Internet, I have somehow been reminded of the phrase “Defining Deviancy Down” coined by the late Senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Moynihan first wrote the term in an article in American Scholar magazine in 1993. Defining Deviancy Down (sometimes stated as Defining Decency Down) became a popular meme in the 90s as it seemed to strike a chord as people tried to make sense of where culture and society had gotten to in the preceding decade.
The basic idea is that we had moved the bar for what we, as a culture, defined as acceptable, down. What Moynihan said was “we have been redefining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the ‘normal’ level in categories where behavior is now abnormal by any earlier standard.”
Specifically, what Moynihan was talking about were things like broken families, releasing mentally ill onto the streets and other destructive social patterns. And yet, while the ills I am talking about do not rise to Moynihan’s standards, I do believe the phenomenon is comparable. The Internet has indeed facilitated a new era and new type of Defining Deviancy Down.
The gist of my concern is that anonymity and or the lack of face-to-face interaction has created a willingness to engage with each other, particularly strangers, in ways that would not be acceptable in person. This relates to things as wide ranging as flame wars on web forums to more economically and socially significant things like music piracy.
For example, it is very easy to steal someone’s music when there is no perception of interacting with a human being. Most would not have the chutzpah to walk up to artist and to take a copy of their music without asking permission. Most would be ashamed to do such a thing. But on the Internet there is no opportunity for “interactional” guilt. Such acts are totally anonymous, and as a result totally depersonalized.
The point is the Internet is an incredibly powerful platform that has already demonstrated and will continue to demonstrate almost unlimited capacity for good. But there is a dark side. The depersonalizing nature of the Internet has the capacity to make us, at times, less concerned about each other as individuals.
Unfortunately, some of us are coming to accept this depersonalization as inevitable. And thus we are Defining Deviancy Down. We are redefining what is acceptable by suggesting that in this new technology era, errant behavior can’t be helped. But, notwithstanding the technology, I believe it can. It must. We must. Each of us, one at a time, can do our part. And the first and most important step is resetting our declining standards. Because we can’t live up to standards if we don’t have any.
Moynihan first wrote the term in an article in American Scholar magazine in 1993. Defining Deviancy Down (sometimes stated as Defining Decency Down) became a popular meme in the 90s as it seemed to strike a chord as people tried to make sense of where culture and society had gotten to in the preceding decade.
The basic idea is that we had moved the bar for what we, as a culture, defined as acceptable, down. What Moynihan said was “we have been redefining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the ‘normal’ level in categories where behavior is now abnormal by any earlier standard.”
Specifically, what Moynihan was talking about were things like broken families, releasing mentally ill onto the streets and other destructive social patterns. And yet, while the ills I am talking about do not rise to Moynihan’s standards, I do believe the phenomenon is comparable. The Internet has indeed facilitated a new era and new type of Defining Deviancy Down.
The gist of my concern is that anonymity and or the lack of face-to-face interaction has created a willingness to engage with each other, particularly strangers, in ways that would not be acceptable in person. This relates to things as wide ranging as flame wars on web forums to more economically and socially significant things like music piracy.
For example, it is very easy to steal someone’s music when there is no perception of interacting with a human being. Most would not have the chutzpah to walk up to artist and to take a copy of their music without asking permission. Most would be ashamed to do such a thing. But on the Internet there is no opportunity for “interactional” guilt. Such acts are totally anonymous, and as a result totally depersonalized.
The point is the Internet is an incredibly powerful platform that has already demonstrated and will continue to demonstrate almost unlimited capacity for good. But there is a dark side. The depersonalizing nature of the Internet has the capacity to make us, at times, less concerned about each other as individuals.
Unfortunately, some of us are coming to accept this depersonalization as inevitable. And thus we are Defining Deviancy Down. We are redefining what is acceptable by suggesting that in this new technology era, errant behavior can’t be helped. But, notwithstanding the technology, I believe it can. It must. We must. Each of us, one at a time, can do our part. And the first and most important step is resetting our declining standards. Because we can’t live up to standards if we don’t have any.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
TechDirt's Mike Masnick: A Researcher With No Research
Mike Masnick at TechDirt has become an avid follower of my writing and claims himself to be an effective "debunker" of my position in support of the importance of copyright. His claim is that I should do more research, and that my crazy writing shouldn't be in such a fine blog as Silicon Alley Insider. And yet it appears that Mr. Masnick, who runs research firm TechDirt and is presumably in the business of doing such research has *absolutely no* such research to back up any of his counter arguments at all. In fact the basis of almost every claim he makes about why I am wrong appears to be, because he says so.
While my time is short today, lets at least take the first few points in this post.
1. I said:
First, if music goes down, so will every other form of copyrighted material including ultimately books, movies, TV, etc.
Masnick said:
This assumes that without copyright, content creation goes down. There's no evidence to support this. In fact, we see more content creation today than ever before in history, and most of it is not because of copyright in the slightest.
My Comment:
First of all as far as I know we still have copyright laws in this country. But Masnick says copyright isn't important to the creators of that content. How do we know this? Because Masnick says so. And I am sure most movie makers, book authors and publishers, and TV producers agree that they could continue to make their products without copyright. I am sure Jeff Zucker agrees. I am sure Bob Iger agrees. I am sure all those writers who get book advances agree. But what about YouTube? What about the blogosphere? Last time I looked Star Wars Kid had neither a TV nor Movie deal for his famous clip.
2. I said:
Second, there is no evidence *at all* that free music on the Internet is an effective (i.e. successful career building) marketing tool.
Masnick said:
That's simply untrue. Mr. Williams may not have found such evidence, but it's only because he didn't look very hard. The number of bands who exist solely because of their ability to build a following on the internet is rather large at this point, with plenty of bands crediting the internet's ability for easy distribution and marketing for their own ability to exist.
My Comment:
Again Masnick's response appears to be you are wrong because I said so. And again that incredibly insightful TechDirt research team seems to be MIA. Fascinatingly I started the Free Music Research Project to see if I could find any artists that have effectively used the Internet promotion for anything other than to get noticed by a label. We are still in fairly early days, but so far no qualifying artists have been submitted. Kevin Kelley and Jaron Lanier have both also aggressively been looking for such artists and they haven't found any either. I am not saying that there aren't any, but at this point any evidence is elusive. Personally I suspect that there may be one somewhere. But probably not three.
3. I said:
There have been no blockbuster successes that have come from, for example Garageband availability. I don't think you could even count more than a handful -- if that -- internet-based artists making a living from music.
Masnick says:
Of course, that depends on how you define "blockbuster" success. Williams seems to define it narrowly to suit his purposes, and that completely undermines his argument. Bands like the Arctic Monkeys created the following that turned them into a huge success via the internet.
My Comment:
Of course, the Arctic Monkeys do not fit the criteria, but not because they aren't big enough, but because they aren't an Internet band. I will happily concede that the Internet has been helpful to labels in discovering artists. In fact the the Internet is now a primary research tool for label A&R departments. And such is the case with The Arctic Monkeys. All of The Arctic Monkeys major success, like best selling records, and major radio play, came after they signed with a label in 2005.
And if they were so successful, or expected to be so successful without a label, why sign with one? Why not just keep that big pile of Internet cash to yourself? Oh and even if you discount that the Arctic Monkeys are a label band and just accept Masnick's contention that they are an Internet blockbuster, one single band does not make a movement. In fact it doesn't even qualify as a "handful".
There is much more to address in Masnick's prolific post, but the continuation will have to be left to another piece. Debunking Masnick is a full time job.
While my time is short today, lets at least take the first few points in this post.
1. I said:
First, if music goes down, so will every other form of copyrighted material including ultimately books, movies, TV, etc.
Masnick said:
This assumes that without copyright, content creation goes down. There's no evidence to support this. In fact, we see more content creation today than ever before in history, and most of it is not because of copyright in the slightest.
My Comment:
First of all as far as I know we still have copyright laws in this country. But Masnick says copyright isn't important to the creators of that content. How do we know this? Because Masnick says so. And I am sure most movie makers, book authors and publishers, and TV producers agree that they could continue to make their products without copyright. I am sure Jeff Zucker agrees. I am sure Bob Iger agrees. I am sure all those writers who get book advances agree. But what about YouTube? What about the blogosphere? Last time I looked Star Wars Kid had neither a TV nor Movie deal for his famous clip.
2. I said:
Second, there is no evidence *at all* that free music on the Internet is an effective (i.e. successful career building) marketing tool.
Masnick said:
That's simply untrue. Mr. Williams may not have found such evidence, but it's only because he didn't look very hard. The number of bands who exist solely because of their ability to build a following on the internet is rather large at this point, with plenty of bands crediting the internet's ability for easy distribution and marketing for their own ability to exist.
My Comment:
Again Masnick's response appears to be you are wrong because I said so. And again that incredibly insightful TechDirt research team seems to be MIA. Fascinatingly I started the Free Music Research Project to see if I could find any artists that have effectively used the Internet promotion for anything other than to get noticed by a label. We are still in fairly early days, but so far no qualifying artists have been submitted. Kevin Kelley and Jaron Lanier have both also aggressively been looking for such artists and they haven't found any either. I am not saying that there aren't any, but at this point any evidence is elusive. Personally I suspect that there may be one somewhere. But probably not three.
3. I said:
There have been no blockbuster successes that have come from, for example Garageband availability. I don't think you could even count more than a handful -- if that -- internet-based artists making a living from music.
Masnick says:
Of course, that depends on how you define "blockbuster" success. Williams seems to define it narrowly to suit his purposes, and that completely undermines his argument. Bands like the Arctic Monkeys created the following that turned them into a huge success via the internet.
My Comment:
Of course, the Arctic Monkeys do not fit the criteria, but not because they aren't big enough, but because they aren't an Internet band. I will happily concede that the Internet has been helpful to labels in discovering artists. In fact the the Internet is now a primary research tool for label A&R departments. And such is the case with The Arctic Monkeys. All of The Arctic Monkeys major success, like best selling records, and major radio play, came after they signed with a label in 2005.
And if they were so successful, or expected to be so successful without a label, why sign with one? Why not just keep that big pile of Internet cash to yourself? Oh and even if you discount that the Arctic Monkeys are a label band and just accept Masnick's contention that they are an Internet blockbuster, one single band does not make a movement. In fact it doesn't even qualify as a "handful".
There is much more to address in Masnick's prolific post, but the continuation will have to be left to another piece. Debunking Masnick is a full time job.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
The Awkward Marriage Of Google And Apple in Mobile
The relationship between Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google and Apple Inc., on whose board he sits, must, at times be incredibly awkward.
Google is developing Android, an open source operating system for mobile phones that is directly competitive with Apple’s iPhone. One would think that Apple would not be happy with this, and would ask Schmidt to step down. Yes, I know Schmidt leaves the room when they talk about the iPhone in board meetings. But this still must feel a bit like Apple having Microsoft on its board.
But here’s the thing. Apple *needs* Google.
Like it or not, Google is and probably will continue to be Apple’s most important iPhone developer. Google “gets” mobile in an incredibly deep way. And they are passionate about it. This “getting it” thing stems, in part, from Google’s pioneering almost every great idea in online mapping since the concept was invented. Mapping is also an incredibly deep area to mine, and depending on what you are trying to do, it can be very expensive work with no immediate opportunities for monetization. Perfect for Google. Not so great for anyone else.
The interesting thing about all of this is that, if you think about it, mapping is far more important to a phone than playing music or particularly watching movies. That’s not to say that music is not important. But if you let your imagination run wild, you can see that the potential for location based services and mapping tied to a mobile Internet connected device is profound. And no one on the planet is likely to do that better than Google.
Unfortunately for Apple, this cuts both ways. Apple loves the work Google does on the iPhone. But Google is so passionate, they want every phone on the planet to be as cool as the iPhone so they can deliver great experiences for every phone. Hence Android, a free operating system that they are expecting to license to almost every major cell phone manufacturer. For Google, volume matters, profits not so much. For Apple, that formulation is reversed. From Apple’s perspective, that has got to suck.
More unfortunately for Apple, Google is now demonstrating features that, in this arena, are far more sophisticated than anything Apple has shown or is likely to show on the iPhone without Google’s help. The most stunning concept they have demonstrated is a kind of virtual reality for cell phones.
This new feature is based on a part of their web based mapping service called Street View. Street View allows users to go to a particular location and to see the street in moving pictures. You can turn 360 degrees and even walk down the street and get a kind of animated walk through effect.
What Google demonstrated was that Street View has now been implemented inside Android so that when you move the phone it detects where you are and what direction the phone is aimed, and shows you the view of the street on your phone. As you move the phone, the view changes. The effect is stunning. Of course this is much easier to see than to read about and so I recommend viewing the video below.
Presumably, at some point, these kinds of features will find their way into the iPhone, but probably not without Google’s help. But Google’s innovation in this area means that, in some respects, Apple is really beholden to Google. This is because Google is the only company with the real chops and resources to deliver mobile mapping in a truly robust way (not including Microsoft, which is unlikely to develop for the iPhone).
And what Google is demonstrating is just the first little peek into what location based mobile services will bring. Google is baking programming interfaces (APIs) into Android that will allow *all* Android application developers to leverage their mapping and location based tools. So far there is little evidence that that will happen on the iPhone to the same degree, at least in the near future.
And so, while Steve Jobs is used to having the upper hand with his partners like the now supplicating record labels, this relationship is different. Indeed, Steve may hate the whole idea of Android, but he may soon need to get used to his new Google overlords just like the rest of us.
Related:
We Have The iPhone Because Steve Jobs Has Big Brass Balls
Apple Says: We Weren't Lying, AIM *will* Be A Turd
The Anti-iPhone: Google's Android
Apple's iPhone SDK Inhibits Real Mobile Innovation
The iPhone Doesn't Suck - duh
Google is developing Android, an open source operating system for mobile phones that is directly competitive with Apple’s iPhone. One would think that Apple would not be happy with this, and would ask Schmidt to step down. Yes, I know Schmidt leaves the room when they talk about the iPhone in board meetings. But this still must feel a bit like Apple having Microsoft on its board.
But here’s the thing. Apple *needs* Google.
Like it or not, Google is and probably will continue to be Apple’s most important iPhone developer. Google “gets” mobile in an incredibly deep way. And they are passionate about it. This “getting it” thing stems, in part, from Google’s pioneering almost every great idea in online mapping since the concept was invented. Mapping is also an incredibly deep area to mine, and depending on what you are trying to do, it can be very expensive work with no immediate opportunities for monetization. Perfect for Google. Not so great for anyone else.
The interesting thing about all of this is that, if you think about it, mapping is far more important to a phone than playing music or particularly watching movies. That’s not to say that music is not important. But if you let your imagination run wild, you can see that the potential for location based services and mapping tied to a mobile Internet connected device is profound. And no one on the planet is likely to do that better than Google.
Unfortunately for Apple, this cuts both ways. Apple loves the work Google does on the iPhone. But Google is so passionate, they want every phone on the planet to be as cool as the iPhone so they can deliver great experiences for every phone. Hence Android, a free operating system that they are expecting to license to almost every major cell phone manufacturer. For Google, volume matters, profits not so much. For Apple, that formulation is reversed. From Apple’s perspective, that has got to suck.
More unfortunately for Apple, Google is now demonstrating features that, in this arena, are far more sophisticated than anything Apple has shown or is likely to show on the iPhone without Google’s help. The most stunning concept they have demonstrated is a kind of virtual reality for cell phones.
This new feature is based on a part of their web based mapping service called Street View. Street View allows users to go to a particular location and to see the street in moving pictures. You can turn 360 degrees and even walk down the street and get a kind of animated walk through effect.
What Google demonstrated was that Street View has now been implemented inside Android so that when you move the phone it detects where you are and what direction the phone is aimed, and shows you the view of the street on your phone. As you move the phone, the view changes. The effect is stunning. Of course this is much easier to see than to read about and so I recommend viewing the video below.
Presumably, at some point, these kinds of features will find their way into the iPhone, but probably not without Google’s help. But Google’s innovation in this area means that, in some respects, Apple is really beholden to Google. This is because Google is the only company with the real chops and resources to deliver mobile mapping in a truly robust way (not including Microsoft, which is unlikely to develop for the iPhone).
And what Google is demonstrating is just the first little peek into what location based mobile services will bring. Google is baking programming interfaces (APIs) into Android that will allow *all* Android application developers to leverage their mapping and location based tools. So far there is little evidence that that will happen on the iPhone to the same degree, at least in the near future.
And so, while Steve Jobs is used to having the upper hand with his partners like the now supplicating record labels, this relationship is different. Indeed, Steve may hate the whole idea of Android, but he may soon need to get used to his new Google overlords just like the rest of us.
Related:
We Have The iPhone Because Steve Jobs Has Big Brass Balls
Apple Says: We Weren't Lying, AIM *will* Be A Turd
The Anti-iPhone: Google's Android
Apple's iPhone SDK Inhibits Real Mobile Innovation
The iPhone Doesn't Suck - duh
Monday, June 2, 2008
The Free Music Success Research Project
This post initiates a research project to analyze the success of "free music" artists in the marketplace. As such, I need your help. I am interested in capturing a list of artist that give away their music but make money on tour. Below is a form for capturing information about such artists (not visible in feed readers). My intent is to analyze the marketplace hopefully with the help of other interested parties.
This is an ongoing project, and as such, I will be posting regularly about it. The live version of the list is here.
Why?
Last week I wrote that I disagreed with Michael Arrington’s perspective on copyright, which, to summarize, is that music will be all eventually be free, and that this is a good thing, and that artist can make money from touring, merchandise, etc. He also believes in light of this we need to rethink copyright, though he does not specify exactly what he thinks this “rethinking” means.
There were comments and some responsive blog posts, which disagreed with my statement that there are no artists giving away their music on the Internet and making money. Specifically what I said is as follows:
To clarify, one point in that statement, I do believe that free music has helped bands get signed by record labels. What I was referring to was free music as a successful means of making an ongoing living, not of getting the attention of a record label.
While I am confident about my position, I must admit it is very difficult to prove, on an absolute basis, a negative. Nevertheless I am very interested in getting to a consensus on this issue. To that end, I am initiating the Free Music Success Project. The goal of the project is to find all artists that are giving away their music free on the internet, who are not and have never been signed to a label, and who are making enough money to support themselves in some reasonable way via touring and merchandise. Note that I do not consider living with family and making lunch money or in a van without a home to suffice for "making a reasonable living."
The Process
The first task in this project is to find artists/bands that might meet the criteria. To make this a bit easier I have defined some criteria for inclusion in the list which are as follows:
Once the potential bands have been collected, we should be able, in most cases, to determine the maximum gross revenue of these bands by multiplying the venue size by the ticket price, and adding those together for each appearance on the tour. More rigorous analysis of real contenders will probably require exploring actually attendance and typical venue payment models. Of course this research is not statistically meaningful since it is voluntary and not a survey, but as a first step, particularly for defining the universe I think it should prove valuable.
Note that there are two reasons I am specifying Myspace pages as a requirement. First, I am not looking for artist that have given away one song as a promotion at some time. The idea is to find artists that, as a career choice, are not selling their music, but are giving it away and making money on tour. This is significant because it is the premise of the "free" movement that artists should be able to survive on just touring. So if you have chosen to give away your music, there is precious little reason not to do it on the biggest site, which is Myspace. Additionally, specifying one website makes it easier to manage the process and investigate artists.
I fully recognize that doing things this way is not necessarily the best way to prove my point since my opponents will be able to put forth one band and those who are intellectually dishonest will present this one band as proof of their point. But I do believe that it is entirely possible that there are no artists that meet the criteria, and that at best there are a statistically insignificant number of such artists. By doing this in public, I am totally willing to be proven wrong. As such, I hope my opponents will contribute aggressively since it should be easy to prove that there are lots of such successful bands.
This questionnaire is the first step at understanding, in a serious way, the scope of the issue. So for now it would be great to just collect a list of bands that could at least *potentially* meet the criteria, and to get a sense of their earning potential. From there, we can introduce more rigorous processes.
This is just a first step in a project which I hope will evolve. As such, please leave any suggestions regarding methodology in the comments or send them to whydoeseverythingsuck@gmail.com.
This is an ongoing project, and as such, I will be posting regularly about it. The live version of the list is here.
Why?
Last week I wrote that I disagreed with Michael Arrington’s perspective on copyright, which, to summarize, is that music will be all eventually be free, and that this is a good thing, and that artist can make money from touring, merchandise, etc. He also believes in light of this we need to rethink copyright, though he does not specify exactly what he thinks this “rethinking” means.
There were comments and some responsive blog posts, which disagreed with my statement that there are no artists giving away their music on the Internet and making money. Specifically what I said is as follows:
Second, there is no evidence *at all* that free music on the Internet is an effective (i.e. successful career building) marketing tool. There have been no blockbuster successes that have come from, for example Garageband availability. I don't think you could even count more than a handful – if that – Internet-based artists making a living from music.
To clarify, one point in that statement, I do believe that free music has helped bands get signed by record labels. What I was referring to was free music as a successful means of making an ongoing living, not of getting the attention of a record label.
While I am confident about my position, I must admit it is very difficult to prove, on an absolute basis, a negative. Nevertheless I am very interested in getting to a consensus on this issue. To that end, I am initiating the Free Music Success Project. The goal of the project is to find all artists that are giving away their music free on the internet, who are not and have never been signed to a label, and who are making enough money to support themselves in some reasonable way via touring and merchandise. Note that I do not consider living with family and making lunch money or in a van without a home to suffice for "making a reasonable living."
The Process
The first task in this project is to find artists/bands that might meet the criteria. To make this a bit easier I have defined some criteria for inclusion in the list which are as follows:
- Must have page on MySpace where they give away their music (i.e. mp3 downloads)
- Must have page somewhere on the Internet where the artist publishes a touring schedule that includes dates, location, and venue names.
- Must not be a cover band or wedding/event band. In other words the artist must primarily be in the business of creating and performing their own music.
- Must be a U.S. Based band (makes verification and research of venues easier)
Once the potential bands have been collected, we should be able, in most cases, to determine the maximum gross revenue of these bands by multiplying the venue size by the ticket price, and adding those together for each appearance on the tour. More rigorous analysis of real contenders will probably require exploring actually attendance and typical venue payment models. Of course this research is not statistically meaningful since it is voluntary and not a survey, but as a first step, particularly for defining the universe I think it should prove valuable.
Note that there are two reasons I am specifying Myspace pages as a requirement. First, I am not looking for artist that have given away one song as a promotion at some time. The idea is to find artists that, as a career choice, are not selling their music, but are giving it away and making money on tour. This is significant because it is the premise of the "free" movement that artists should be able to survive on just touring. So if you have chosen to give away your music, there is precious little reason not to do it on the biggest site, which is Myspace. Additionally, specifying one website makes it easier to manage the process and investigate artists.
I fully recognize that doing things this way is not necessarily the best way to prove my point since my opponents will be able to put forth one band and those who are intellectually dishonest will present this one band as proof of their point. But I do believe that it is entirely possible that there are no artists that meet the criteria, and that at best there are a statistically insignificant number of such artists. By doing this in public, I am totally willing to be proven wrong. As such, I hope my opponents will contribute aggressively since it should be easy to prove that there are lots of such successful bands.
This questionnaire is the first step at understanding, in a serious way, the scope of the issue. So for now it would be great to just collect a list of bands that could at least *potentially* meet the criteria, and to get a sense of their earning potential. From there, we can introduce more rigorous processes.
This is just a first step in a project which I hope will evolve. As such, please leave any suggestions regarding methodology in the comments or send them to whydoeseverythingsuck@gmail.com.
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