In my continuing plan to air out ideas that I have no time to execute, this is one that has nothing to do with technology. Its in the restaurant business. Now, to be clear, I have no experience with restaurants other than eating in them, but lack of experience never prevents me from engaging in thought experiments. And so this is the concept.
The idea is an upscale restaurant chain whose menu is made up purely of the best or most famous dishes from other restaurants. The name, "The Best."
I have no idea what a really good menu for such a place might be, but as an example, Houston's is very well known for their spinach dip. It is perhaps, the signature piece on their menu, and it is the kind of thing that would work well on such a menu.
Some items might be on The Best's menu because of the dish, others might be on the menu by virtue of the brand name of the chef. For example, a south western dish by Bobby Flay, or a Cajun dish by Emeril Lagasse. You could do this at anywhere from the lower mid to the high mid range price point, but the concept is probably a little too trendy for the very high end.
But wouldn't The Best be too competitive with the dish providing restaurants?
Well, first of all most restaurants are not that competitive with each other in specific. There are geography issues, and lots of other issues which mean that except in perhaps the smallest towns, head to head competition is almost non-existent. But what it would do for each "providing" restaurant is to provide a marketing and branding platform. They would also share in profits from the recipe which, if successful, on a national scale, could be sizable.
The basic principle here is having a restaurant where the menu is essentially curated, almost like a museum. Each dish is picked from the best of the best. And if the concept works, the value of being selected actually becomes prestigious. Perhaps some menu items are permanent, and others rotate.
The one risk for the providing restaurant is that dishes are prepared poorly, which could obviously damage their brand. The most important mission of The Best would perfecting the dish and proving that it could be executed flawlessly across the chain. Some chefs and restaurants will not be willing to take the risk in the early stages with their brand, but many others will.
In any case, I don't know if anyone else thinks this is cool, but I have been fascinated with the idea for several years now. It just seems like such a winner, but, heck, what do I know about restaurants other than how to pay the check.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Saving The Music Business
No secret here, the music business is in trouble. One of the biggest reasons is that its product, being digital, is easy to steal, and for many it appears that there is no good reason not to.
I think I have the solution. But to be honest, though I did think of it independently, with a little bit of research I was able to establish that none other than Bill Gates himself proposed a similar concept in his 1995 book, The Road Ahead.
That said, this is 2008, and based on my discussions with folks in the record business, the idea is really not one being looked at, but there don’t appear to be any good reasons why. And so I am proposing it here to try to get the conversation going.
The idea is fairly straightforward. We should not be buying bits when we buy songs, or for that matter, digital content in general. We should be buying lifetime rights to access. So when you buy a song, or album, you can freely re-download it from the cloud, you may stream it to yourself, you can load it on any device you have with full privileges, for the rest of your life.
In this scenario, the cloud manages your ownership. So if you lose your iPod, the cloud knows what songs you own and is ready to re-download them to you. If you don’t have your iPod with you, you can still go to any PC and stream music from your library to yourself.
The point of this is to give long-term value to the purchase of a song. Right now, if you steal a song, once you have stolen it there is not much value difference between having stolen it and having purchased the real thing, other than, perhaps, a clear conscience, which it appears is not enough.
As I see it, a set of managed relationships between artists and labels on the one side, and fans on the other, has great value, to both sides of the equation. As a consumer, this would allow you to opt-in to relationships with artists, fan clubs, discount tickets, notification of concerts you might like in your area etc. It is a way for fans, without going out of their way, to establish a deeper relationship with their favorite artists.
The interesting aspect of this is the politics of it. Who controls what? And there, I think I have a solution that works both technologically and politically.
There would need to be one, or several rights societies, kind of like ASCAP and BMI. They would be non-profit organizations that do one thing. They manage the database that stores the relationships between users and songs. But they would not be responsible for selling anything.
The idea is that all the types of businesses that exist today would service customers including traditional digital music stores, as well as streaming on demand vendors, and online music lockers. So, for example, Rhapsody would still offer an on-demand streaming service as well as the right to play purchased music with the additional privileges that would afford. When you log in, it would ask the central database what songs you have played recently. Essentially, your streamed play history is in the cloud, just the way it is with Rhapsody today.
But what is interesting with this new model is that you can switch from Rhapsody to Napster, and retain all of your purchases and play history. Or you could go to iTunes and re-download a purchased song you lost. In each case there is probably a service fee of some sort for allowing you to re-download music, perhaps on an annual basis, but those fees would be up to the service provider, and would presumably be driven by competition.
To touch on the details for a bit, the database would be exceedingly simple. It would store two tables. I have outlined them below, and I am sure there are other fields that I have missed. But it does, at least, suggest the framework.
User Table
user ID
last access date/time
Transaction Table
The Song ID or Album ID
user ID
Password or OpenID
the seller ID
transaction date/Time
Unit Type (e.g. single stream or full purchase)
Both the service providers and the record labels would have access to the database. The service providers would have write access, and would only have read access to a given customers history if the customer gave permission for that, which might allow the service provider to use collaborative filtering to make listening suggestions, as well as allowing the user to see what they have played or purchased and when.
The record labels would have access to the database for tallying purchases in order to bill service providers. The labels would not have permission to access individual purchase records, but could pay service providers to send messages to fans of a given artist, presuming the fans have opted in to receiving such messages.
With regard to identity, the central database would have no knowledge of who anyone actually is. Credit card information is held by the service provider, but that information, and actual identity information such as name or address is only kept as needed by the service provider for facilitating transactions, and not in the central database.
Finally, the idea of this is that accounts are not transferable and become inactive after death. But since we don’t know who people really are, we have to guess, and to make it unattractive to use someone else’s account. For this, we employ several tactics.
First, we set time limits. An account may not exist longer than the average human life. This would discourage someone from using an account since it will cut off after a certain time and then all of your personal songs go away.
Second, we say if an account is not used for several years – I am not yet suggesting a particular time frame – it becomes invalid. But most importantly, service providers create such personalized experiences and suggestions that you don’t want to use someone else’s account any more than anyone wants to share a Last.fm account.
From an economic perspective, the rights society would operate based on membership fees from labels and service providers, and it probably would make sense to have several competing rights societies for the consumer to choose from. It probably also makes sense for there to be some nominal annual fee to the consumer, but since I haven’t done any modeling around this I am not sure. The main point is that the organization needs to make enough money to operate successfully given demand.
And so, the reason I am writing this is because I want to see it happen. I have no economic incentive to do so, and am pretty busy doing my own business. But I have begun exploring this as an idea with interested parties to see what people thought.
From what I hear on the label side, they would likely be receptive to such an idea, given the state of things, but the impetus from this must come from the tech side first. This is because the labels are not capable of creating the infrastructure, and without the service providers it won’t work.
For this reason, the labels really need buy-in from Microsoft, Amazon, or some other big player or players. I don’t even suggest Apple here, though they would be the obvious choice, since the concept is a direct threat to iTunes hegemony. This threat, however, is a great reason for every other tech business in consumer facing content delivery to love this idea. It radically changes the status quo.
And so really, at the end of the day, this is a request to the big tech guys to reach out to talk about this idea. Though it may be a bit presumptuous, if I can serve as a midwife in this situation, it would be my pleasure. Because of the competitive interests involved here I do think some kind of neutral third party will be required to grease the wheels.
I think I have the solution. But to be honest, though I did think of it independently, with a little bit of research I was able to establish that none other than Bill Gates himself proposed a similar concept in his 1995 book, The Road Ahead.
That said, this is 2008, and based on my discussions with folks in the record business, the idea is really not one being looked at, but there don’t appear to be any good reasons why. And so I am proposing it here to try to get the conversation going.
The idea is fairly straightforward. We should not be buying bits when we buy songs, or for that matter, digital content in general. We should be buying lifetime rights to access. So when you buy a song, or album, you can freely re-download it from the cloud, you may stream it to yourself, you can load it on any device you have with full privileges, for the rest of your life.
In this scenario, the cloud manages your ownership. So if you lose your iPod, the cloud knows what songs you own and is ready to re-download them to you. If you don’t have your iPod with you, you can still go to any PC and stream music from your library to yourself.
The point of this is to give long-term value to the purchase of a song. Right now, if you steal a song, once you have stolen it there is not much value difference between having stolen it and having purchased the real thing, other than, perhaps, a clear conscience, which it appears is not enough.
As I see it, a set of managed relationships between artists and labels on the one side, and fans on the other, has great value, to both sides of the equation. As a consumer, this would allow you to opt-in to relationships with artists, fan clubs, discount tickets, notification of concerts you might like in your area etc. It is a way for fans, without going out of their way, to establish a deeper relationship with their favorite artists.
The interesting aspect of this is the politics of it. Who controls what? And there, I think I have a solution that works both technologically and politically.
There would need to be one, or several rights societies, kind of like ASCAP and BMI. They would be non-profit organizations that do one thing. They manage the database that stores the relationships between users and songs. But they would not be responsible for selling anything.
The idea is that all the types of businesses that exist today would service customers including traditional digital music stores, as well as streaming on demand vendors, and online music lockers. So, for example, Rhapsody would still offer an on-demand streaming service as well as the right to play purchased music with the additional privileges that would afford. When you log in, it would ask the central database what songs you have played recently. Essentially, your streamed play history is in the cloud, just the way it is with Rhapsody today.
But what is interesting with this new model is that you can switch from Rhapsody to Napster, and retain all of your purchases and play history. Or you could go to iTunes and re-download a purchased song you lost. In each case there is probably a service fee of some sort for allowing you to re-download music, perhaps on an annual basis, but those fees would be up to the service provider, and would presumably be driven by competition.
To touch on the details for a bit, the database would be exceedingly simple. It would store two tables. I have outlined them below, and I am sure there are other fields that I have missed. But it does, at least, suggest the framework.
User Table
user ID
last access date/time
Transaction Table
The Song ID or Album ID
user ID
Password or OpenID
the seller ID
transaction date/Time
Unit Type (e.g. single stream or full purchase)
Both the service providers and the record labels would have access to the database. The service providers would have write access, and would only have read access to a given customers history if the customer gave permission for that, which might allow the service provider to use collaborative filtering to make listening suggestions, as well as allowing the user to see what they have played or purchased and when.
The record labels would have access to the database for tallying purchases in order to bill service providers. The labels would not have permission to access individual purchase records, but could pay service providers to send messages to fans of a given artist, presuming the fans have opted in to receiving such messages.
With regard to identity, the central database would have no knowledge of who anyone actually is. Credit card information is held by the service provider, but that information, and actual identity information such as name or address is only kept as needed by the service provider for facilitating transactions, and not in the central database.
Finally, the idea of this is that accounts are not transferable and become inactive after death. But since we don’t know who people really are, we have to guess, and to make it unattractive to use someone else’s account. For this, we employ several tactics.
First, we set time limits. An account may not exist longer than the average human life. This would discourage someone from using an account since it will cut off after a certain time and then all of your personal songs go away.
Second, we say if an account is not used for several years – I am not yet suggesting a particular time frame – it becomes invalid. But most importantly, service providers create such personalized experiences and suggestions that you don’t want to use someone else’s account any more than anyone wants to share a Last.fm account.
From an economic perspective, the rights society would operate based on membership fees from labels and service providers, and it probably would make sense to have several competing rights societies for the consumer to choose from. It probably also makes sense for there to be some nominal annual fee to the consumer, but since I haven’t done any modeling around this I am not sure. The main point is that the organization needs to make enough money to operate successfully given demand.
And so, the reason I am writing this is because I want to see it happen. I have no economic incentive to do so, and am pretty busy doing my own business. But I have begun exploring this as an idea with interested parties to see what people thought.
From what I hear on the label side, they would likely be receptive to such an idea, given the state of things, but the impetus from this must come from the tech side first. This is because the labels are not capable of creating the infrastructure, and without the service providers it won’t work.
For this reason, the labels really need buy-in from Microsoft, Amazon, or some other big player or players. I don’t even suggest Apple here, though they would be the obvious choice, since the concept is a direct threat to iTunes hegemony. This threat, however, is a great reason for every other tech business in consumer facing content delivery to love this idea. It radically changes the status quo.
And so really, at the end of the day, this is a request to the big tech guys to reach out to talk about this idea. Though it may be a bit presumptuous, if I can serve as a midwife in this situation, it would be my pleasure. Because of the competitive interests involved here I do think some kind of neutral third party will be required to grease the wheels.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Cuil And Counting Crows
I try not to jump on the hot news stories unless I have something meaningful to add. So I honestly wasn't that interested in jumping on the bandwagon to bash (or praise) the new search engine Cuil (pronounced "cool").
That said, I was a bit curious about it and after playing with it, I have to say I think in might be, well, cool.
My test case was an actual search I wanted to do this morning. On Thursday, I am going to see my old high school friend Adam Duritz and his band the Counting Crows at Jones Beach. I haven't spoken to him since last year's reunion, and I remembered that at that time he was working on a new record, which I must confess, as of this morning, I hadn't purchased yet -- Its the startup grind that makes you forget to do stuff like that.
And so this morning, I wanted to check out the record, and to see what else might have been going on that I might have missed. So instead of Googling Counting Crows, I used Cuil. And I have to say I really liked the results.
It wasnt that it provided sites that I wouldnt have found with Google. It was that it helped put things in context. It really is, in a sense, about the user interface.
The the intriguing part of Cuil is the little panel in the top right of the screen, shown above, that lets me explore interesting information about the search subject. You can click on the different tabs, and the slick widget lets you explore different areas like the groups songs, albums, or band members. Now I have to admit, much of the information here could have been more easily found on Wikipedia. But having it available in a search engine where you can enhance your search based on information you didn't already have is very valuable, particularly if, as I assume, the overviews are built without human intervention. I can imagine in less mainstream subject areas this could be even more powerful.
To be clear, this is far from a review, because I only did one other search, which was for cooking fish, as I no longer eat meat and so definitely need to improve my skills in this area. Again the fish cooking overview was particularly helpful in this case since I was not even aware of all the valid ways to cook fish.
So the bottom line is I certainly like the idea behind Cuil. If they can provide decent search results, which others are saying is problematic, then their user interface is certainly a very appealing advantage. I can easily imagine that Cuil could become a part of my search engine mix alongside my current champs, with Google obviously in the lead, and Hakia in second place, doing a very good job with natural language search when keywords are not enough.
That said, I was a bit curious about it and after playing with it, I have to say I think in might be, well, cool.
My test case was an actual search I wanted to do this morning. On Thursday, I am going to see my old high school friend Adam Duritz and his band the Counting Crows at Jones Beach. I haven't spoken to him since last year's reunion, and I remembered that at that time he was working on a new record, which I must confess, as of this morning, I hadn't purchased yet -- Its the startup grind that makes you forget to do stuff like that.
And so this morning, I wanted to check out the record, and to see what else might have been going on that I might have missed. So instead of Googling Counting Crows, I used Cuil. And I have to say I really liked the results.
It wasnt that it provided sites that I wouldnt have found with Google. It was that it helped put things in context. It really is, in a sense, about the user interface.
The the intriguing part of Cuil is the little panel in the top right of the screen, shown above, that lets me explore interesting information about the search subject. You can click on the different tabs, and the slick widget lets you explore different areas like the groups songs, albums, or band members. Now I have to admit, much of the information here could have been more easily found on Wikipedia. But having it available in a search engine where you can enhance your search based on information you didn't already have is very valuable, particularly if, as I assume, the overviews are built without human intervention. I can imagine in less mainstream subject areas this could be even more powerful.
To be clear, this is far from a review, because I only did one other search, which was for cooking fish, as I no longer eat meat and so definitely need to improve my skills in this area. Again the fish cooking overview was particularly helpful in this case since I was not even aware of all the valid ways to cook fish.
So the bottom line is I certainly like the idea behind Cuil. If they can provide decent search results, which others are saying is problematic, then their user interface is certainly a very appealing advantage. I can easily imagine that Cuil could become a part of my search engine mix alongside my current champs, with Google obviously in the lead, and Hakia in second place, doing a very good job with natural language search when keywords are not enough.
Monday, July 28, 2008
More Dreaming Of Better User Interface
I have lots of ideas, and no time to implement most of them. And so I decided it would be fun to begin airing some of them out. They certainly will not do anybody any good in my head and perhaps some of them might catch on.
Today’s thoughts are again around user interface. A while ago I wrote about UI and the problems I see with computer interfaces versus plain old paper. Since then I have been thinking more about why the computer screen in many respects feels like such a poor user interface, when compared to paper, or more broadly, the real physical world.
I have come to the conclusion that a big part of the issue is the speed with which it is possible to “pan and scan” on the computer vs what you can do in the physical world.
With a newspaper I can quickly scan all the headlines and even quickly flip between pages to scan them. In so doing I am taking in massive amounts of information and making decisions about where I want to go.
In the real physical world, I can, in less than a second, look out of my window and very quickly determine if there is anything I should take note of.
On the computer these things are much harder. Our rate of interaction is *much* slower. To get to the heart of the matter, the best way to break down the problem is to think about two issues: zoom, and as mentioned above, pan and scan.
Zoom is the ability to step back and look at the big picture, or to step forward and focus on one specific thing in greater detail. This is a very difficult thing to do on the computer and particularly the web. We have organized information on the web in terms of pages, which is fine, but the pages are generally rather small, and changing pages is painfully slow. I want to be able to “zoom” as quickly on the computer, and the web as I do in physical world with my eyes. I want to move instantly between seeing an overview of lots of information and focusing on one specific thing.
Pan and scan goes hand in hand with zooming. Because when you are zoomed in you can’t see very much and so you need to be able to very quickly look around in a space. Again in the real world, our eyes are exceedingly good at this. But on the computer, scrolling is very slow and difficult.
Interestingly, the iPhone has highlighted the importance of zoom and pan and scan. They have implemented zooming through their new “pinch” feature which allows you to touch the screen with two fingers and pinch the display to zoom out and to do the reverse action to zoom in. Similarly, and more familiarly, you can drag your finger across the display to move around.
The popularity of these features speaks to the incredible importance of both zoom and pan and scan. And while they are great advancements in user interface, they are still, to me, not sufficiently fluid.
The physical friction of the finger against the glass with both actions makes them feel more rigid. And the speed of their operation while impressive relative to other interfaces does not really compare to our ability to zoom and pan and scan with our eyes.
Last time I wrote about this issue, I discussed the virtual reality glasses, popularized as a concept back in the early 80s, and how they were used to allow one to pan and scan by turning ones head. And while one day that might be an interesting advancement in mainstream computer interface, I don’t see people wearing VR glasses in the near future to browse the web or work on a document.
Nevertheless, the fluidity of the VR glasses experience I believe can and should be implemented on mainstream computing devices – just without the headsets.
The idea is fairly straightforward.
Imagine a computer screen that could sense the distance of your finger from it, and where your finger was in relation to the screen. For example, it could tell if your finger was 2 inches or 3 inches away from the screen and it could tell if you were in the upper left hand corner or the bottom right, or anywhere in the middle. This would be a kind of 3D touch-less touch screen.
Now imagine that this interface allowed you to control zoom and pan and scan. The closer your finger gets to the screen, the more zoomed in it gets to a particular area. The further away it gets, the more zoomed out it gets. Moving left or right would be the equivalent of scrolling left or right. By not physically touching anything, the interaction is frictionless, and therefore much more fluid, allowing it to integrate much more natually with the way the eyes work. Of course the key to this is that all zooming be instantaneous. Of course with the graphics CPUs we have, this has been long ago possible, but given the physical interfaces we have been working with, it hasn’t been particularly important.
Another challenge is that in order for this to work well, software would have to be redesigned to take advantage of the interface. The good news is that I believe an optimized browser could solve most or much of the software problem. In this new paradigm, what you’d really want is to be able to scan around a large set of pages very quickly to see what is interesting. A new type of web browser could pre-fetch and render the surrounding pages for any given page. These pre-fetched pages would be laid out on one giant virtual surface, which would give you the ability to scan around a large number of pages very quickly.
For example, imagine the New York Times rendered in this way. When you go to the home page, it renders the home page, but also all of the pages that home page is linked to, and they are laid out in some yet to be determined but well organized fashion on this large virtual surface.
By positioning your finger, perhaps 6 inches from the screen you can see all of the pages on the virtual surface, but in thumbnail form. As you move in closer, things start to become just barely readable, and you can start to make out pictures. You then start panning around for what headlines and pictures look interesting. You find something interesting, and so you zoom in (move your finger) closer. You then lock the screen there, perhaps with a button on the keyboard accessible with your other hand, and you begin to read the page.
To me, this feels like a much more intuitive way to read the New York Times than the way I currently do it online, and it might even compete with the way the physical paper feels. But the most interesting aspect to me of this is that I think it would make big bold advertising more effective, more acceptable, and perhaps even actually pleasurable, in the same way many full page print ads are today. In other words, I think this not only represents a better web user experience, but a better monetization platform than today’s web based display advertising.
Of course there is a lot to think about here, and I am sure there is already some paper somewhere by some UX guy who has proposed something similar. After all there are no new ideas.
That said, I strongly suspect no one major is actually putting anything like this together, particularly combined with the re-conceptualization of the browser, which I think could be key to fixing the web’s display ad problem.
And so I’d love to get a conversation about this going and hear what people think. I know there would be lots of things to get right here including things like a need for hysteresis to compensate for jittery hands. And I am sure there are many more details. But what I am most curious about it whether people actually agree that this would be a better way to explore information on a computer.
Today’s thoughts are again around user interface. A while ago I wrote about UI and the problems I see with computer interfaces versus plain old paper. Since then I have been thinking more about why the computer screen in many respects feels like such a poor user interface, when compared to paper, or more broadly, the real physical world.
I have come to the conclusion that a big part of the issue is the speed with which it is possible to “pan and scan” on the computer vs what you can do in the physical world.
With a newspaper I can quickly scan all the headlines and even quickly flip between pages to scan them. In so doing I am taking in massive amounts of information and making decisions about where I want to go.
In the real physical world, I can, in less than a second, look out of my window and very quickly determine if there is anything I should take note of.
On the computer these things are much harder. Our rate of interaction is *much* slower. To get to the heart of the matter, the best way to break down the problem is to think about two issues: zoom, and as mentioned above, pan and scan.
Zoom is the ability to step back and look at the big picture, or to step forward and focus on one specific thing in greater detail. This is a very difficult thing to do on the computer and particularly the web. We have organized information on the web in terms of pages, which is fine, but the pages are generally rather small, and changing pages is painfully slow. I want to be able to “zoom” as quickly on the computer, and the web as I do in physical world with my eyes. I want to move instantly between seeing an overview of lots of information and focusing on one specific thing.
Pan and scan goes hand in hand with zooming. Because when you are zoomed in you can’t see very much and so you need to be able to very quickly look around in a space. Again in the real world, our eyes are exceedingly good at this. But on the computer, scrolling is very slow and difficult.
Interestingly, the iPhone has highlighted the importance of zoom and pan and scan. They have implemented zooming through their new “pinch” feature which allows you to touch the screen with two fingers and pinch the display to zoom out and to do the reverse action to zoom in. Similarly, and more familiarly, you can drag your finger across the display to move around.
The popularity of these features speaks to the incredible importance of both zoom and pan and scan. And while they are great advancements in user interface, they are still, to me, not sufficiently fluid.
The physical friction of the finger against the glass with both actions makes them feel more rigid. And the speed of their operation while impressive relative to other interfaces does not really compare to our ability to zoom and pan and scan with our eyes.
Last time I wrote about this issue, I discussed the virtual reality glasses, popularized as a concept back in the early 80s, and how they were used to allow one to pan and scan by turning ones head. And while one day that might be an interesting advancement in mainstream computer interface, I don’t see people wearing VR glasses in the near future to browse the web or work on a document.
Nevertheless, the fluidity of the VR glasses experience I believe can and should be implemented on mainstream computing devices – just without the headsets.
The idea is fairly straightforward.
Imagine a computer screen that could sense the distance of your finger from it, and where your finger was in relation to the screen. For example, it could tell if your finger was 2 inches or 3 inches away from the screen and it could tell if you were in the upper left hand corner or the bottom right, or anywhere in the middle. This would be a kind of 3D touch-less touch screen.
Now imagine that this interface allowed you to control zoom and pan and scan. The closer your finger gets to the screen, the more zoomed in it gets to a particular area. The further away it gets, the more zoomed out it gets. Moving left or right would be the equivalent of scrolling left or right. By not physically touching anything, the interaction is frictionless, and therefore much more fluid, allowing it to integrate much more natually with the way the eyes work. Of course the key to this is that all zooming be instantaneous. Of course with the graphics CPUs we have, this has been long ago possible, but given the physical interfaces we have been working with, it hasn’t been particularly important.
Another challenge is that in order for this to work well, software would have to be redesigned to take advantage of the interface. The good news is that I believe an optimized browser could solve most or much of the software problem. In this new paradigm, what you’d really want is to be able to scan around a large set of pages very quickly to see what is interesting. A new type of web browser could pre-fetch and render the surrounding pages for any given page. These pre-fetched pages would be laid out on one giant virtual surface, which would give you the ability to scan around a large number of pages very quickly.
For example, imagine the New York Times rendered in this way. When you go to the home page, it renders the home page, but also all of the pages that home page is linked to, and they are laid out in some yet to be determined but well organized fashion on this large virtual surface.
By positioning your finger, perhaps 6 inches from the screen you can see all of the pages on the virtual surface, but in thumbnail form. As you move in closer, things start to become just barely readable, and you can start to make out pictures. You then start panning around for what headlines and pictures look interesting. You find something interesting, and so you zoom in (move your finger) closer. You then lock the screen there, perhaps with a button on the keyboard accessible with your other hand, and you begin to read the page.
To me, this feels like a much more intuitive way to read the New York Times than the way I currently do it online, and it might even compete with the way the physical paper feels. But the most interesting aspect to me of this is that I think it would make big bold advertising more effective, more acceptable, and perhaps even actually pleasurable, in the same way many full page print ads are today. In other words, I think this not only represents a better web user experience, but a better monetization platform than today’s web based display advertising.
Of course there is a lot to think about here, and I am sure there is already some paper somewhere by some UX guy who has proposed something similar. After all there are no new ideas.
That said, I strongly suspect no one major is actually putting anything like this together, particularly combined with the re-conceptualization of the browser, which I think could be key to fixing the web’s display ad problem.
And so I’d love to get a conversation about this going and hear what people think. I know there would be lots of things to get right here including things like a need for hysteresis to compensate for jittery hands. And I am sure there are many more details. But what I am most curious about it whether people actually agree that this would be a better way to explore information on a computer.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Is Apple The Worst Company Ever At Public Relations?
Apple, by most accounts, is great at public relations. But as I see it it really depends how you define public relations. Apple is great at having product launches, and at getting people speculating about what they are going to do. Apple is great at getting people excited about their products. Apple is great at making itself the center of attention.
But as I see it, Apple is horrible at actually *relating* to the public. They are horrible at creating the image of a company that actually seem like, well, humans. And the most recent, though by far not the only example of this is Apple's MobileMe launch.
David Pogue in the New York Times today writes that the MobileMe launch is a mess. Essentially, for many people the email part of MobileMe doesn't work at all and is actually *eating* emails. This is bad, but the reality is that stuff happens. Software doesn't work sometimes. Worse yet, sometimes products lose data.
But the thing about Apple is they never seem to really own up to *anything*, and this tends to make things worse. There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance and Apple doesn't seem to know where it is.
This is Pogue's take on the MobileMe situation:
And indeed the situation is horrible. But the larger point is Apple seems to have a tin ear when it comes to reasonable public behavior.
One very recent example is that Apple requires that all developers who download an iPhone software development kit must digitally sign an NDA. The repercussion of this is there can be no user groups, discussion forums, consultants, or even books in the Apple iPhone eco-system because no one is allowed to talk about developing for the iPhone. How dumb. And arrogant. And heavy-handed.
Another famous example was Apple's aggressive effort to sue a writer to reveal a source about an upcoming product launch. And yet another was the horrific iPhone price cut shortly after its product launch making the initial purchasers really feel like dupes.
All these things reflect a sense that Apple just has no concern for how its actions will play with the public. When things bubble up, Apple seems to take just enough corrective action to appease the natives. It feels like they are dancing in a circle that is unreasonably small for no apparent purpose. Why dance so close to the edge of trouble. And yet, in truth, up until now it would be accurate to say they have always done just enough to keep things under control. But I keep wondering how long Apple's hyper-arrogance can continue without some fall from grace.
Indeed, the MobileMe situation can still be fixed. But the seriousness of the technical issues here combined with the typical Apple attitude really feels like a potentially serious demarcation line. And whether it is or not, I think Apple needs to work on this part of its consumer facing behavior. Because eventually this kind or hubris always gets you in trouble.
But as I see it, Apple is horrible at actually *relating* to the public. They are horrible at creating the image of a company that actually seem like, well, humans. And the most recent, though by far not the only example of this is Apple's MobileMe launch.
David Pogue in the New York Times today writes that the MobileMe launch is a mess. Essentially, for many people the email part of MobileMe doesn't work at all and is actually *eating* emails. This is bad, but the reality is that stuff happens. Software doesn't work sometimes. Worse yet, sometimes products lose data.
But the thing about Apple is they never seem to really own up to *anything*, and this tends to make things worse. There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance and Apple doesn't seem to know where it is.
This is Pogue's take on the MobileMe situation:
I called Apple. Would the P.R. team be willing to say what the problem is? What is being done to solve it? When might it be fixed? What kind of resources or time is being spent on a resolution?
No. Apple declined to comment on any of that.
A P.R. manager did, however, offer me this official statement: "The .Mac to MobileMe transition was a lot rockier than we had hoped, and we are still having some growing pains. Some users have been having problems with their e-mail in particular, and we are trying to restore the service as soon as possible. We're very thankful for our loyal customers' patience as we work out the kinks."
Shortly thereafter, that stale, static status message on the MobileMe site was expanded to include this: "We understand this is a serious issue and apologize for this service interruption. We are working hard to restore your service."
That's about as far as Apple will go in expressing an understanding of the emotional toll the outage is causing those 20,000 people.
It's amazing that Apple doesn't recognize this situation. This is an airplane that's stuck on the runway for hours with no food or working bathroom. And the pilot doesn't come on the P.A. system to tell the customers what the problem is, what's being done to fix it, how much longer they might be stuck, and how he empathizes with their plight. Instead, he comes on once every three hours to repeat the same thing: "We apologize for the inconvenience."
And indeed the situation is horrible. But the larger point is Apple seems to have a tin ear when it comes to reasonable public behavior.
One very recent example is that Apple requires that all developers who download an iPhone software development kit must digitally sign an NDA. The repercussion of this is there can be no user groups, discussion forums, consultants, or even books in the Apple iPhone eco-system because no one is allowed to talk about developing for the iPhone. How dumb. And arrogant. And heavy-handed.
Another famous example was Apple's aggressive effort to sue a writer to reveal a source about an upcoming product launch. And yet another was the horrific iPhone price cut shortly after its product launch making the initial purchasers really feel like dupes.
All these things reflect a sense that Apple just has no concern for how its actions will play with the public. When things bubble up, Apple seems to take just enough corrective action to appease the natives. It feels like they are dancing in a circle that is unreasonably small for no apparent purpose. Why dance so close to the edge of trouble. And yet, in truth, up until now it would be accurate to say they have always done just enough to keep things under control. But I keep wondering how long Apple's hyper-arrogance can continue without some fall from grace.
Indeed, the MobileMe situation can still be fixed. But the seriousness of the technical issues here combined with the typical Apple attitude really feels like a potentially serious demarcation line. And whether it is or not, I think Apple needs to work on this part of its consumer facing behavior. Because eventually this kind or hubris always gets you in trouble.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
The Nightmare Twitter Scenario May Be Upon Us
It looks like we may have a nightmare Twitter scenario. Ok, well, when I say nightmare scenario, everything is relative, because it is just Twitter. But for those who suffer from Twitterdiction this could be a big deal.
The problem: It looks like when Twitter went down today, when it came back up it lost a bunch of follower/following connections.
Liquidsunshine said:
And Alex Iskold said:
Of course I should be able to say something about my own numbers, but while I *think* my numbers are down, I did not have my following/follower counts committed to memory so I can't be sure. But no matter, it appears something is up.
I suspect Twitter has backups, and that they will fix this, but for people who really rely on Twitter (for either emotional or serious business purposes) if so much connection data really is lost, it would be a nightmare. A sufficient amount has been written about the problems keeping Twitter up and running, and so I will not revisit them here. But it does highlight the issue of how important this kind of data is for so many people. And without a reasonable way to back up such data, it does call into question the reasonableness of relying on web based services for critical business purposes. The idea of losing contact with people and not having any reasonable way of reconstructing those relationships is certainly frightening.
If this is not solved some time later today, I think there are going to be some very unhappy campers in Twitterville. Hopefully this is only temporary.
update: it appears they are already working on fixing this as they indicated on the corporate blog, though at this hour (1am est) they are clearly not totally back to normal. Thanks to Morriss Partee for the latest info.
update 2: at 6:46am the problems still have not been fixed. This suggests that the message from yesterday saying they had fixed the problem and were propagating the data is now either inaccurate, or they rolled back to an old data set. If so, this really may indeed be Twitter Armageddon.
The problem: It looks like when Twitter went down today, when it came back up it lost a bunch of follower/following connections.
Liquidsunshine said:
Aaagh! Twitter knocked off 50 of my followers and about 30 of my "following". Wtf!
And Alex Iskold said:
My followers and following are down. First is understandable, second has to be exact. Lets revisit tomorrow.
Of course I should be able to say something about my own numbers, but while I *think* my numbers are down, I did not have my following/follower counts committed to memory so I can't be sure. But no matter, it appears something is up.
I suspect Twitter has backups, and that they will fix this, but for people who really rely on Twitter (for either emotional or serious business purposes) if so much connection data really is lost, it would be a nightmare. A sufficient amount has been written about the problems keeping Twitter up and running, and so I will not revisit them here. But it does highlight the issue of how important this kind of data is for so many people. And without a reasonable way to back up such data, it does call into question the reasonableness of relying on web based services for critical business purposes. The idea of losing contact with people and not having any reasonable way of reconstructing those relationships is certainly frightening.
If this is not solved some time later today, I think there are going to be some very unhappy campers in Twitterville. Hopefully this is only temporary.
update: it appears they are already working on fixing this as they indicated on the corporate blog, though at this hour (1am est) they are clearly not totally back to normal. Thanks to Morriss Partee for the latest info.
update 2: at 6:46am the problems still have not been fixed. This suggests that the message from yesterday saying they had fixed the problem and were propagating the data is now either inaccurate, or they rolled back to an old data set. If so, this really may indeed be Twitter Armageddon.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Memo To VCs: Every Great Idea Doesn't Fit In An Elevator Pitch
I have been thinking a lot recently about the elevator pitch.
The common accepted wisdom is that every great idea, or every fundable idea has to have a good elevator pitch. In order for an idea to be great it needs to fit neatly into a one minute description that at best knocks people's socks off, and at worst makes them extremely curious.
I have come to a conclusion about this. It's Bull.
The truth is that for some ideas an elevator pitch works great. For others, not so much. And there is no direct correlation between ease of explanation and appeal or value in the marketplace. The reason for this is simple. Some things are better seen and experienced than explained. In fact I suspect many of the best ideas fit this description.
As an example, I am a pretty big critic of Facebook, and in particular their likely ability to generate really significant revenue. But that doesn't mean it is not a great idea. And the truth is I don't think anyone could understand Facebook without seeing it. I don't think Mark Zuckerberg could have sat a VC down and said, this is my idea, (or this is the idea I stole from the Winkelvoss brothers or whatever) please invest in me. I don't think it would fly.
The reasons for this are fairly straight forward. With consumer facing products, whether we want to use something is tied to such things as utility, ease of understanding, and social context. And so much of the first two can only come from actually experiencing the product. The Nintendo Wii is a great example of this. You needed to experience the Wii to really get why it was a big deal and how fun it is. Even the iPhone fits this description. Most of the features of the iPhone existed in other phones. It is the design that makes it work.
Another area where seeing is believing is around data driven products. Visualizing data in one's head is very hard if you have never visualized it before. People have varying degrees of capacity for spatial visualization, but few of us are good enough to take an abstract description of a data model and to actually imagine exploring that data. For most people the significance of the organization of that data will be unclear when the explanation is purely verbal.
But when people are allowed to explore real data in real time, things become much more clear. FriendFeed is a good example of this. The product is almost impossible to explain because it is, in essence, a new data model. You need to experience FriendFeed to get it. And once people do get it, they tend to love it, but they have to get over the experience hump.
And so the challenge here is that many of the great ideas will not have great elevator pitches, because they can't. This means investors must either trust the entrepreneur based on reputation or blind faith, or they must take the time to really try to understand more complicated sounding product concepts. Or worse, they can just avoid any new ideas until they have been developed and tested enough to prove the demand. This is the most common strategy right now in the venture community, but it leaves lots of the best ideas undeveloped because there is not enough early stage money to help these ideas that really need to be seen to be fully appreciated. Paradoxically, I think these are some of the best ideas.
This leads me to an idea that Paul Graham from the YCombinator incubator put forth:
We need more money going into more abstract and less obvious ideas, and Paul's idea is the right way to do it. It doesn't take that much money to prove a good idea is a good idea. But often it takes more than an entrepreneur has or can raise. This is particularly true for those ideas that take more insight and time to explain than an elevator pitch affords. Only a relative, or someone who knew the FriendFeed guys were from Google would have been willing to put money into that. Thankfully they didn't need any money because FriendFeed just sounds horrible on paper. That is a case where you would have to have bet the people. But every great idea doesn't come from someone that is already a brand name. In fact some might say the opposite is true.
In any case, the point of all this is simple. Good potentially profitable ideas sometimes take time to really understand and they may take resources to prove. The venture community should spend less time and resources on the obvious and more time and resources nurturing ideas that may take more than an elevator pitch to really appreciate.
The common accepted wisdom is that every great idea, or every fundable idea has to have a good elevator pitch. In order for an idea to be great it needs to fit neatly into a one minute description that at best knocks people's socks off, and at worst makes them extremely curious.
I have come to a conclusion about this. It's Bull.
The truth is that for some ideas an elevator pitch works great. For others, not so much. And there is no direct correlation between ease of explanation and appeal or value in the marketplace. The reason for this is simple. Some things are better seen and experienced than explained. In fact I suspect many of the best ideas fit this description.
As an example, I am a pretty big critic of Facebook, and in particular their likely ability to generate really significant revenue. But that doesn't mean it is not a great idea. And the truth is I don't think anyone could understand Facebook without seeing it. I don't think Mark Zuckerberg could have sat a VC down and said, this is my idea, (or this is the idea I stole from the Winkelvoss brothers or whatever) please invest in me. I don't think it would fly.
The reasons for this are fairly straight forward. With consumer facing products, whether we want to use something is tied to such things as utility, ease of understanding, and social context. And so much of the first two can only come from actually experiencing the product. The Nintendo Wii is a great example of this. You needed to experience the Wii to really get why it was a big deal and how fun it is. Even the iPhone fits this description. Most of the features of the iPhone existed in other phones. It is the design that makes it work.
Another area where seeing is believing is around data driven products. Visualizing data in one's head is very hard if you have never visualized it before. People have varying degrees of capacity for spatial visualization, but few of us are good enough to take an abstract description of a data model and to actually imagine exploring that data. For most people the significance of the organization of that data will be unclear when the explanation is purely verbal.
But when people are allowed to explore real data in real time, things become much more clear. FriendFeed is a good example of this. The product is almost impossible to explain because it is, in essence, a new data model. You need to experience FriendFeed to get it. And once people do get it, they tend to love it, but they have to get over the experience hump.
And so the challenge here is that many of the great ideas will not have great elevator pitches, because they can't. This means investors must either trust the entrepreneur based on reputation or blind faith, or they must take the time to really try to understand more complicated sounding product concepts. Or worse, they can just avoid any new ideas until they have been developed and tested enough to prove the demand. This is the most common strategy right now in the venture community, but it leaves lots of the best ideas undeveloped because there is not enough early stage money to help these ideas that really need to be seen to be fully appreciated. Paradoxically, I think these are some of the best ideas.
This leads me to an idea that Paul Graham from the YCombinator incubator put forth:
I've tried to explain this to VC firms. Instead of making one $2 million investment, make five $400k investments. Would that mean sitting on too many boards? Don't sit on their boards. Would that mean too much due diligence? Do less. If you're investing at a tenth the valuation, you only have to be a tenth as sure.
It seems obvious. But I've proposed to several VC firms that they set aside some money and designate one partner to make more, smaller bets, and they react as if I'd proposed the partners all get nose rings. It's remarkable how wedded they are to their standard m.o.
We need more money going into more abstract and less obvious ideas, and Paul's idea is the right way to do it. It doesn't take that much money to prove a good idea is a good idea. But often it takes more than an entrepreneur has or can raise. This is particularly true for those ideas that take more insight and time to explain than an elevator pitch affords. Only a relative, or someone who knew the FriendFeed guys were from Google would have been willing to put money into that. Thankfully they didn't need any money because FriendFeed just sounds horrible on paper. That is a case where you would have to have bet the people. But every great idea doesn't come from someone that is already a brand name. In fact some might say the opposite is true.
In any case, the point of all this is simple. Good potentially profitable ideas sometimes take time to really understand and they may take resources to prove. The venture community should spend less time and resources on the obvious and more time and resources nurturing ideas that may take more than an elevator pitch to really appreciate.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
The Real Reason IPOs And Mergers Are Down
I don't want to over simplify this, but it really is instructive to look at the big picture sometimes, and so I will.
The real problem with the tech market, and dare I say the overall market, is the quest for the gimmick. The quest for the quick flip. The serendipitous, disproportionate money maker. In the last 15 years the market has *fled* from the fundamentals, leading to a psychology out of step with the concept of creating real long term value.
Lets take a look at some of the bigger economic events in the last 10 years.
Real Estate: In America, the real estate market has tanked because it far outpaced any real underlying increases in property value. It was propped up by cheap loans for people that couldn't really afford them -- particularly after an ARM rate adjustment -- and a sense that prices, totally unrelated to the fundamentals, would keep going up. In short buy a house and make money for nothing.
Energy: The big story here -- we could have been doing stuff to use far, far less fossil fuel. We, and particularly the auto makers didn't because it was not immediately urgent. Gas prices were OK and people bought the old cars. Why bother doing anything better. It will not improve next quarters earnings. That short term corporate and Wall Street focus is a killer. And while the Japanese car companies have focused on the real and obvious fundamentals of the market, the American car companies are all heading towards bankruptcy.
Bubble 1.0: Companies went public by selling ads to other companies that were selling ads back to them. Can you say shell game? There weren't enough brick and mortar dollars in the eco-system so when people began to realize that these ads didn't perhaps work as well as imagined, the whole thing fell apart. Again with the money for nothing theme.
Bubble 2.0: Amazingly, bubble 2.0 is a redux of bubble 1.0 but without the public companies, so only the VCs will be hurt. As with Bubble 1.0, no real revenue -- companies like Facebook have almost no monetization capacity relative to the size of their audience. Web 2.0 has not been able to capture enough viewer attention to make ads truly effective outside of search. And selling services for hard dollars has become much more difficult, and in some quarters down right gauche. And so the public market wised up. And acquirers are much less interested in M&A transactions that are not accretive to earnings (i.e. who wants to buy companies that are not making money... we've got plenty of unmonetizable eyeballs without your help).
The point in all of this is that we have been trained to believe that there *is* a free lunch. We have learned the false lesson that we can, or should be able to make money without making any money. We have abandoned the concept of fundamentals. And so, the tech world is frustrated that all the VC turds that used to be flippable can no longer be sold. But as with the larger economy, this is just the chickens coming home to roost.
My view on this is relatively simple. You must make money if you want people to buy you.
The money you make must not be a gimmick. It must be money you are making because you are adding real long term value to customers. If you make a lot of money, you can sell your company to a larger company, or you can take it public. The concept of IPO is not dead forever. But the idea of IPOing crap probably is.
Of course if you do actually make a lot of money, the urgency to sell or IPO your company decreases, which will of course make you more appealing when you do actually sell out or IPO. Google only IPOed because they had too many shareholders and were therefore required by law todo so begin reporting as a public company. I am not saying any of us is likely to achieve the same result as Google, but the dynamic of building a company that doesn't need to sell is the same.
The point is that we should all be less focused on exits and more focused on excellence. If that means the VC industry needs to restructure to accommodate that new reality then so be it.
The real problem with the tech market, and dare I say the overall market, is the quest for the gimmick. The quest for the quick flip. The serendipitous, disproportionate money maker. In the last 15 years the market has *fled* from the fundamentals, leading to a psychology out of step with the concept of creating real long term value.
Lets take a look at some of the bigger economic events in the last 10 years.
Real Estate: In America, the real estate market has tanked because it far outpaced any real underlying increases in property value. It was propped up by cheap loans for people that couldn't really afford them -- particularly after an ARM rate adjustment -- and a sense that prices, totally unrelated to the fundamentals, would keep going up. In short buy a house and make money for nothing.
Energy: The big story here -- we could have been doing stuff to use far, far less fossil fuel. We, and particularly the auto makers didn't because it was not immediately urgent. Gas prices were OK and people bought the old cars. Why bother doing anything better. It will not improve next quarters earnings. That short term corporate and Wall Street focus is a killer. And while the Japanese car companies have focused on the real and obvious fundamentals of the market, the American car companies are all heading towards bankruptcy.
Bubble 1.0: Companies went public by selling ads to other companies that were selling ads back to them. Can you say shell game? There weren't enough brick and mortar dollars in the eco-system so when people began to realize that these ads didn't perhaps work as well as imagined, the whole thing fell apart. Again with the money for nothing theme.
Bubble 2.0: Amazingly, bubble 2.0 is a redux of bubble 1.0 but without the public companies, so only the VCs will be hurt. As with Bubble 1.0, no real revenue -- companies like Facebook have almost no monetization capacity relative to the size of their audience. Web 2.0 has not been able to capture enough viewer attention to make ads truly effective outside of search. And selling services for hard dollars has become much more difficult, and in some quarters down right gauche. And so the public market wised up. And acquirers are much less interested in M&A transactions that are not accretive to earnings (i.e. who wants to buy companies that are not making money... we've got plenty of unmonetizable eyeballs without your help).
The point in all of this is that we have been trained to believe that there *is* a free lunch. We have learned the false lesson that we can, or should be able to make money without making any money. We have abandoned the concept of fundamentals. And so, the tech world is frustrated that all the VC turds that used to be flippable can no longer be sold. But as with the larger economy, this is just the chickens coming home to roost.
My view on this is relatively simple. You must make money if you want people to buy you.
The money you make must not be a gimmick. It must be money you are making because you are adding real long term value to customers. If you make a lot of money, you can sell your company to a larger company, or you can take it public. The concept of IPO is not dead forever. But the idea of IPOing crap probably is.
Of course if you do actually make a lot of money, the urgency to sell or IPO your company decreases, which will of course make you more appealing when you do actually sell out or IPO. Google only IPOed because they had too many shareholders and were therefore required by law to
The point is that we should all be less focused on exits and more focused on excellence. If that means the VC industry needs to restructure to accommodate that new reality then so be it.
Monday, July 21, 2008
S3 Failure Raises Questions About Cloud Design
I watched with interest this weekend as Amazon S3 went down yet again, and I thought to myself, "there but for the grace of God go I."
My company is currently developing a cloud based data service called KloudShare. And though KloudShare is basically unrelated to what S3 does, and probably has more similarity to Google's Big Table or Amazon Simple DB, they are all still data services, and so it got me thinking about how one might architect systems to avoid such messes. Because while people might forgive Amazon, I don't think a tiny startup like mine is going to have the same latitude Amazon does.
First, looking at Amazon's computing service called the Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) is probably instructive as we have been using Amazon EC2 and have had an instance running for well more than six months (probably approaching a year) without a failure. And so what is clear is that there are ways to design really massive systems that do not have a single choke point. Amazon gets it right with EC2 and less so with S3.
The big question is why S3 is structured in such a way that so many problems they have seem to bring the entire system down. Invariably, things fail. You cannot avoid it no matter how smart you think you are. But what you can often do is limit the collateral damage of failure by compartmentalizing your design. Clearly EC2 instances are quite compartmentalized.
While the data in S3 is clearly stored across separate distinct systems, I would imagine that security and access rules, and perhaps other elements are centralized, though I really have no idea for sure what their internal architecture is like. What is clear though is that as all of us in the cloud computing business think about our designs, sharding or federation of all services within the cloud into separate operational silos is critical. As best we can, we must avoid allowing one failure somewhere to bring down the whole system. Strategies to keep failure localized are critical.
One of the keys in our design has been replication, and eschewing what is known in the database world as normalization. In a normalized database design you are very careful not to store data in more than one place. You want to reference data in its existing place rather than replicate it everywhere. We avoid the principles of normalization because it is impossible to provide massively scalable systems that are normalized. But what we had never considered is that our "anti-normalization" design principle also relates to stability of design.
I think what the S3 issue is demonstrating is that distributed design is critical not just for performance but for reducing the impact of failure. Of course I am not saying that we have figured all of this out yet, and without more thought I suspect we too still have vulnerabilities in our design of the type that brought Amazon down. And so this is not an attack on Amazon but as I see it a teachable moment for all of us working on how to bring the real vision of the cloud to the world. And while it is, of course, impossible to avoid all centralized services in a cloud architecture, clearly Amazon is demonstrating the critical importance of limiting your dependence on them.
My company is currently developing a cloud based data service called KloudShare. And though KloudShare is basically unrelated to what S3 does, and probably has more similarity to Google's Big Table or Amazon Simple DB, they are all still data services, and so it got me thinking about how one might architect systems to avoid such messes. Because while people might forgive Amazon, I don't think a tiny startup like mine is going to have the same latitude Amazon does.
First, looking at Amazon's computing service called the Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) is probably instructive as we have been using Amazon EC2 and have had an instance running for well more than six months (probably approaching a year) without a failure. And so what is clear is that there are ways to design really massive systems that do not have a single choke point. Amazon gets it right with EC2 and less so with S3.
The big question is why S3 is structured in such a way that so many problems they have seem to bring the entire system down. Invariably, things fail. You cannot avoid it no matter how smart you think you are. But what you can often do is limit the collateral damage of failure by compartmentalizing your design. Clearly EC2 instances are quite compartmentalized.
While the data in S3 is clearly stored across separate distinct systems, I would imagine that security and access rules, and perhaps other elements are centralized, though I really have no idea for sure what their internal architecture is like. What is clear though is that as all of us in the cloud computing business think about our designs, sharding or federation of all services within the cloud into separate operational silos is critical. As best we can, we must avoid allowing one failure somewhere to bring down the whole system. Strategies to keep failure localized are critical.
One of the keys in our design has been replication, and eschewing what is known in the database world as normalization. In a normalized database design you are very careful not to store data in more than one place. You want to reference data in its existing place rather than replicate it everywhere. We avoid the principles of normalization because it is impossible to provide massively scalable systems that are normalized. But what we had never considered is that our "anti-normalization" design principle also relates to stability of design.
I think what the S3 issue is demonstrating is that distributed design is critical not just for performance but for reducing the impact of failure. Of course I am not saying that we have figured all of this out yet, and without more thought I suspect we too still have vulnerabilities in our design of the type that brought Amazon down. And so this is not an attack on Amazon but as I see it a teachable moment for all of us working on how to bring the real vision of the cloud to the world. And while it is, of course, impossible to avoid all centralized services in a cloud architecture, clearly Amazon is demonstrating the critical importance of limiting your dependence on them.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Microsoft Mesh Is A Metaphor For A Run On Sentence
On the day of the Microsoft Mesh announcement I wrote skeptically about the product, but given that they have just opened it up to the public, its time to broach the subject again.
What the heck is Mesh for? People are still talking breathlessly about its potential, but I can never get a clear explanation of how that potential is going to be realized.
Ok, yeah, I understand the file syncing thing. And code syncing. And versioning. Yada yada yada.
But the question is, what is it *really* for. The real world scenario seems to be based on the idea that we are going to want to run code and access data locally on multiple devices. The presumption is that we are going, in the future, to have a phone, and a laptop, and desktop, and perhaps set top box. They will each have their own storage and will want/need to access code and data that is remote, and at times will not have access to the net. And we need a *platform* for this.
The problem is I can only see one really compelling end user relevant usage scenario, and that is moving media around. It makes sense to me that I might want to easily keep my music or video collection in sync across portable devices, or on my TiVo. Beyond that, I can't come up with a single end user scenario that regular folks are going to care about. I keep looking, and every explanation is just too complicated. The descriptions are too long, the words too big, and the concepts too abstract. The master of this discussion by obfuscation is Steve Gillmor:
I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer, I will admit. But if this is what it takes to describe why Mesh is important...
Fail.
Here's the problem. How many devices is your average person going to have. A phone. A desktop or a laptop, and in rare cases, both. So first, Mesh has to be available on the phone you have. Good luck making that happen with Nokia or Apple, or Google.
I just don't see device or service providing developers (like Apple with iTunes) adopting this in a wide enough fashion to make it useful. Apple won't do it at all, and to the extent anyone else does it will it matter?
The other enemy Microsoft has is time. The target time frame for this has got to be like five to ten years. And regarding things like synchronizing word processing documents between devices, in that time I just think that bandwidth will be reliable enough that people will access stuff just the way they are starting to right now, through a browser. And there will be so many competing ways to do this, like Apple's mobile.me and iTunes and Google Apps with Google Gears that will get right to the point. And people are using or starting to use these kinds of solutions *right now*. No fancy platforms, no run on sentences, just direct easy to understand meat and potatoes.
Honestly, Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie has been thinking about synchronization for a really long time. This is what Groove, the company Microsoft purchased to get Ozzie, was doing for the preceding five or so years before the acquisition. This singular focus has carried forward to his new job. Unfortunately, sometimes when you have a hammer, and you are intent on using it, everything looks like a nail. The problem is sometimes there just isn’t a nail there so all you get is a bloody thumb. And so for their sakes, I hope Microsoft has a first aid kit at hand and a more compelling plan B.
What the heck is Mesh for? People are still talking breathlessly about its potential, but I can never get a clear explanation of how that potential is going to be realized.
Ok, yeah, I understand the file syncing thing. And code syncing. And versioning. Yada yada yada.
But the question is, what is it *really* for. The real world scenario seems to be based on the idea that we are going to want to run code and access data locally on multiple devices. The presumption is that we are going, in the future, to have a phone, and a laptop, and desktop, and perhaps set top box. They will each have their own storage and will want/need to access code and data that is remote, and at times will not have access to the net. And we need a *platform* for this.
The problem is I can only see one really compelling end user relevant usage scenario, and that is moving media around. It makes sense to me that I might want to easily keep my music or video collection in sync across portable devices, or on my TiVo. Beyond that, I can't come up with a single end user scenario that regular folks are going to care about. I keep looking, and every explanation is just too complicated. The descriptions are too long, the words too big, and the concepts too abstract. The master of this discussion by obfuscation is Steve Gillmor:
Does Silverlight intersect with Mesh to produce the Net OS? Answer: Yes. Treadwell calls it orthogonal and complementary. MicroBig language. Can Mesh support Twitter streams orchestrated by identity mapping via affinities and abstracted to devices across OS, mobile, and corporate divides via Silverlight? Yes, but it can do so much more.
I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer, I will admit. But if this is what it takes to describe why Mesh is important...
Fail.
Here's the problem. How many devices is your average person going to have. A phone. A desktop or a laptop, and in rare cases, both. So first, Mesh has to be available on the phone you have. Good luck making that happen with Nokia or Apple, or Google.
I just don't see device or service providing developers (like Apple with iTunes) adopting this in a wide enough fashion to make it useful. Apple won't do it at all, and to the extent anyone else does it will it matter?
The other enemy Microsoft has is time. The target time frame for this has got to be like five to ten years. And regarding things like synchronizing word processing documents between devices, in that time I just think that bandwidth will be reliable enough that people will access stuff just the way they are starting to right now, through a browser. And there will be so many competing ways to do this, like Apple's mobile.me and iTunes and Google Apps with Google Gears that will get right to the point. And people are using or starting to use these kinds of solutions *right now*. No fancy platforms, no run on sentences, just direct easy to understand meat and potatoes.
Honestly, Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie has been thinking about synchronization for a really long time. This is what Groove, the company Microsoft purchased to get Ozzie, was doing for the preceding five or so years before the acquisition. This singular focus has carried forward to his new job. Unfortunately, sometimes when you have a hammer, and you are intent on using it, everything looks like a nail. The problem is sometimes there just isn’t a nail there so all you get is a bloody thumb. And so for their sakes, I hope Microsoft has a first aid kit at hand and a more compelling plan B.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
In Case You Didnt Know, I Am A Nobody
Last week, there was a discussion inside the racism discussion that I found, err... interesting.
Jordan Golson from the Industry Standard was busy defending Loren Feldman, and calling the anti-Feldman protesters "self-righteous". And in building his case he argued that the Feldman might have actually *helped* the cause of the protesters by allowing people to notice how there are no prominent black bloggers. Jordan's argument goes as follows:
What follows then is what got interesting. One commenter offered me up as an example of a prominent blogger. While I am thankful for the recognition, I will totally cop to the arguable nature of the proposition. Nevertheless, Golson's response is interesting. He checks out my blog and then follows up with this fascinating retort.
Interestingly, a discussion ensues on friendfeed where the first commenter there says:
After it is pointed out that Golson himself uses a standard blog template, he then digs himself a bigger hole with this comment:
And so apparently he has fallen back on some bizarre attempt to be "supportive" by arguing that his intent wasn't dismissive and disrespectful. He was just trying to tell the world that there are no Scobles, Calcanises, or Arringtons that are black, and what a pity it is. Fascinatingly though, his argument was totally unrelated to the size of my audience. Apparently prominence has nothing to do with audience size or visibility. Prominence is based on having a pretty blog template.
When you think about his words, the real subtext becomes clear. The truth is, once he came to my site, the argument ceased to be about "prominence". He actually made a judgment about me as a person, and not my prominence. To say he couldn't "take me seriously", based purely on the color of my, excuse me, nature of my blog template is really a very different matter than discussing my visibility in the marketplace. In truth the discussion really wasn't about prominence or audience size but about who he feels is "significant" based on his own oddly subjective criteria. And for Golson, that assessment was disturbingly superficial.
Jordan Golson from the Industry Standard was busy defending Loren Feldman, and calling the anti-Feldman protesters "self-righteous". And in building his case he argued that the Feldman might have actually *helped* the cause of the protesters by allowing people to notice how there are no prominent black bloggers. Jordan's argument goes as follows:
I really doubt that one video from one sort-of well-known video blogger is going to change anyone's mind towards black people in a bad way. In fact, for me, it did the opposite. I did wonder where the black minds in tech are. Sure, there are a few, but they aren't very prominent. From my (very white) point-of-view, there are more blacks in Conservative politics (Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, etc) than there are in high-profile tech-circles.
What follows then is what got interesting. One commenter offered me up as an example of a prominent blogger. While I am thankful for the recognition, I will totally cop to the arguable nature of the proposition. Nevertheless, Golson's response is interesting. He checks out my blog and then follows up with this fascinating retort.
Like I said, not very prominent. I'm sorry, I have trouble taking someone seriously who uses a standard blogspot template.
Interestingly, a discussion ensues on friendfeed where the first commenter there says:
Who's keeping track of the dumbest comments of 2008? This one needs to get on the list.
After it is pointed out that Golson himself uses a standard blog template, he then digs himself a bigger hole with this comment:
Sure, I use that template on a blog... that I haven't updated in 2 years. My point still stands -- he isn't a "prominent" person in tech. He isn't Scoble, he isn't Calacanis. Blacks are underrepresented in tech. I didn't say I WAS prominent -- just that he wasn't. Blogging for AlleyInsider doesn't exactly make you prominent. Neither does writing for Valleywag or Industry Standard. But having 40,000 followers on Twitter? I'd say that gives you prominence. But, you know -- attack away if it makes ya feel good -
And so apparently he has fallen back on some bizarre attempt to be "supportive" by arguing that his intent wasn't dismissive and disrespectful. He was just trying to tell the world that there are no Scobles, Calcanises, or Arringtons that are black, and what a pity it is. Fascinatingly though, his argument was totally unrelated to the size of my audience. Apparently prominence has nothing to do with audience size or visibility. Prominence is based on having a pretty blog template.
When you think about his words, the real subtext becomes clear. The truth is, once he came to my site, the argument ceased to be about "prominence". He actually made a judgment about me as a person, and not my prominence. To say he couldn't "take me seriously", based purely on the color of my, excuse me, nature of my blog template is really a very different matter than discussing my visibility in the marketplace. In truth the discussion really wasn't about prominence or audience size but about who he feels is "significant" based on his own oddly subjective criteria. And for Golson, that assessment was disturbingly superficial.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Can Commenter Anonymity Lead To Identity Theft
Yesterday I wrote about the downside of anonymity on the web. I received some great comments pro and con, but one that caught my eye was comment over on FriendFeed. The comment reminded me about something that I saw happen on TechCrunch that I suspect happens all the time all over the Internet. The issue: people pretending to be other people. In the case mentioned in the comment, someone was pretending to be entrepreneur Loic Lemur and founder of video service Seesmic.
And so my question here is simple. Is there anything that can be done about identity theft, and is it a big deal?
I don’t think it is a big deal yet, but you don’t have to be particularly imaginative to see that it could be. It seems to me that one of the most troubling aspects of this is the potential for someone to say something in your name, which is indelibly searchable and attributable to you. The issue regarding Loic was particularly significant because the remarks were anti-semitic. Imagine *that* in your “permanent record” next time you look for a new job. Luckily for Loic, TechCrunch comments support his Seesmic service, and so he was able to put a video in the comments which demonstrated that he was the real Loic and what his views actually are.
But is that what it has come to? The only way to establish your identity and to prove that you *didn’t* make some statement is to make a video of yourself? And in any case, does a video contradicting something you supposedly said in writing *really* prove you didn’t say it?
Interestingly, the site owner may have a bit more insight into the provenance of a comment than the general readers of the site, since analytics software will usually indicate the IP address of the commenter. This will generally indicate the ISP and likely physical location of the commenter. But even here, if obfuscation is your intent, your real IP address can easily be masked.
One person suggested that perhaps we should have “verified” commenters, so that people cannot pretend to be other people and then say bad things in their name. This is an interesting idea, as it would at least help to allow us to take with a grain of salt, unverified comments. But unless everyone did it, it would, I think, be fairly unconvincing to say that “if it had been me who said that I would have used a verified identity.” That just sounds like the kind of guiltly thing you say when you get busted, and I am not sure it helps save your job.
The bottom line is all of these issues around anonymity have me thinking a lot about bigger picture issues. It seems to me that the Internet crowd easily dismisses the potentially negative societal impact of Internet technology. I love the technology, but as I see it, there are real social, ethical, and moral issues that need to be explored, from identity theft to music piracy, to many others. And though some have made convincing arguments to the contrary, I am not sure all of these things just fix themselves via competition and the natural progress.
And so my question here is simple. Is there anything that can be done about identity theft, and is it a big deal?
I don’t think it is a big deal yet, but you don’t have to be particularly imaginative to see that it could be. It seems to me that one of the most troubling aspects of this is the potential for someone to say something in your name, which is indelibly searchable and attributable to you. The issue regarding Loic was particularly significant because the remarks were anti-semitic. Imagine *that* in your “permanent record” next time you look for a new job. Luckily for Loic, TechCrunch comments support his Seesmic service, and so he was able to put a video in the comments which demonstrated that he was the real Loic and what his views actually are.
But is that what it has come to? The only way to establish your identity and to prove that you *didn’t* make some statement is to make a video of yourself? And in any case, does a video contradicting something you supposedly said in writing *really* prove you didn’t say it?
Interestingly, the site owner may have a bit more insight into the provenance of a comment than the general readers of the site, since analytics software will usually indicate the IP address of the commenter. This will generally indicate the ISP and likely physical location of the commenter. But even here, if obfuscation is your intent, your real IP address can easily be masked.
One person suggested that perhaps we should have “verified” commenters, so that people cannot pretend to be other people and then say bad things in their name. This is an interesting idea, as it would at least help to allow us to take with a grain of salt, unverified comments. But unless everyone did it, it would, I think, be fairly unconvincing to say that “if it had been me who said that I would have used a verified identity.” That just sounds like the kind of guiltly thing you say when you get busted, and I am not sure it helps save your job.
The bottom line is all of these issues around anonymity have me thinking a lot about bigger picture issues. It seems to me that the Internet crowd easily dismisses the potentially negative societal impact of Internet technology. I love the technology, but as I see it, there are real social, ethical, and moral issues that need to be explored, from identity theft to music piracy, to many others. And though some have made convincing arguments to the contrary, I am not sure all of these things just fix themselves via competition and the natural progress.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Does Anonymity Lead To Social Anarchy?
Last week, the racism article I wrote generated a lot of talk which was very interesting. One of the things it unearthed was a link sent from a PR person to a piece in Time Magazine about the psychology of comments and Internet anonymity.
One of the things about anonymity that struck me as I read the article, and has struck me before, is that lack of anonymity in the real world is the basis for most of our social constructs. On the Internet, we talk about privacy all the time, and there are definitely places where privacy is critical. For example communications (think FISA) and the right to engage in transactions in private is generally, I believe, a right.
But such privacy, in the realm of the Internet, strikes at one of the most basic social constructs we have. It is a concept that has been baked into keeping humans in line for tens of thousands of years. And that is "shame."
The minute we can do things in private without the ability to be seen, our freedom and willingness to engage in anti-social behavior skyrockets. Music piracy is a great example. People argue all the time that there is nothing wrong with downloading music for free off the Internet. I totally disagree, but whether you do or not, there is one thing I think few would argue. If piracy involved walking up to the artists in person and taking a copy of their songs, even digital copies that cost nothing to reproduce, people, by and large, would not do it. There is something about doing something wrong in the physical presence of the victim that changes the equation. All this crap about how it is no big deal goes away.
The same is true for discussions on the Internet. The racists who joined the chat room to harass Wayne Sutton and Corvida last week would, by and large, not have done so if they were not anonymous.
Another example is that according to Sara Lacy, the Tech Ticker chat room has become a cesspool. "the spammer/troll/abusive hater that has become the stereotype of any Yahoo chat room just ruins it for me." I suspect the deviant behavior is the ultimate result for all large anonymous chat rooms.
The truth is people that say questionable things online with the cloak of anonymity are much less likely to do so in person. And when they do, they are ostracized either officially, or more likely through social pressure, to behave in more acceptable ways. Generally, people are much less likely to do bad things if they fear getting caught, or fear being known or associated with the bad or anti-social act. This is obviously not universally true, which is why we still have prisons, and white supremacist and anti-Semitic groups. But the fear of “being-known-for” is a wonderful deterrent.
And so, what I have been thinking about a lot is the question of whether all this anonymity is really a good thing for humanity. Will it turn the web into a social wild west? And as more of our culture moves to the Internet what will *that* mean. Something that humans have refined since the evolution of homo sapiens may, in fact, be going out the door even as we speak. And so far, the signs are not entirely encouraging.
One of the things about anonymity that struck me as I read the article, and has struck me before, is that lack of anonymity in the real world is the basis for most of our social constructs. On the Internet, we talk about privacy all the time, and there are definitely places where privacy is critical. For example communications (think FISA) and the right to engage in transactions in private is generally, I believe, a right.
But such privacy, in the realm of the Internet, strikes at one of the most basic social constructs we have. It is a concept that has been baked into keeping humans in line for tens of thousands of years. And that is "shame."
The minute we can do things in private without the ability to be seen, our freedom and willingness to engage in anti-social behavior skyrockets. Music piracy is a great example. People argue all the time that there is nothing wrong with downloading music for free off the Internet. I totally disagree, but whether you do or not, there is one thing I think few would argue. If piracy involved walking up to the artists in person and taking a copy of their songs, even digital copies that cost nothing to reproduce, people, by and large, would not do it. There is something about doing something wrong in the physical presence of the victim that changes the equation. All this crap about how it is no big deal goes away.
The same is true for discussions on the Internet. The racists who joined the chat room to harass Wayne Sutton and Corvida last week would, by and large, not have done so if they were not anonymous.
Another example is that according to Sara Lacy, the Tech Ticker chat room has become a cesspool. "the spammer/troll/abusive hater that has become the stereotype of any Yahoo chat room just ruins it for me." I suspect the deviant behavior is the ultimate result for all large anonymous chat rooms.
The truth is people that say questionable things online with the cloak of anonymity are much less likely to do so in person. And when they do, they are ostracized either officially, or more likely through social pressure, to behave in more acceptable ways. Generally, people are much less likely to do bad things if they fear getting caught, or fear being known or associated with the bad or anti-social act. This is obviously not universally true, which is why we still have prisons, and white supremacist and anti-Semitic groups. But the fear of “being-known-for” is a wonderful deterrent.
And so, what I have been thinking about a lot is the question of whether all this anonymity is really a good thing for humanity. Will it turn the web into a social wild west? And as more of our culture moves to the Internet what will *that* mean. Something that humans have refined since the evolution of homo sapiens may, in fact, be going out the door even as we speak. And so far, the signs are not entirely encouraging.
Friday, July 11, 2008
What I shouldnt Be Writing About
Yesterday i got an overwhelming number of comments, personal emails, and new Twitter and FriendFeed subscriptions, driven by the my article on racism in 2008. The article ran on both my blog and on Silicon Alley Insider (SAI) where my pieces frequently run. I only got one mildly negative comment on my blog and a few more on SAI. But overall, I must say the reaction was truly heartening.
But one comment triggered something I want to share.
One anonymous commenter who identified himself as black complained about what he felt was an off topic subject for yesterday's piece. He said:
And while I responded in the comments I want to elaborate and extend this conversation. There are some people who believe I should be in a little box. "I don't subscribe to you to read about X". X being whatever they happen to not be interested in, and presumably X also being an area that they either disagree with me about or an area where I am indirectly acusing them of doing something that they don't want to be accused of... like pirating music unethically.
The point is that I write about what interests me and what I am passionate about. Now its true, I don't write much about biking here, or vegetable juice and fitness, or politics, all of which are subjects that interest me. But the reason is that I don't think I have anything interesting more than just the superficial to share on those subjects. I know something about development, and design, and business, and media and economics. And so I write about them. All of them. And yes that may make this an eclectic site for some. And my best readers that are into, for example, the business stuff take it in stride when I write about database sharding and it is totally beyond them. I think the fact that I have a deep but broad interest area and subject expertise should be a *reason* to read this blog, not a reason to be anoyed when something is outside your interest. But then my perspective is admittedly biased.
But the idea that I should not be covering the Feldman issue, and race issues, particularly when other tech bloggers are covering them, because I am black, is, to me, ridiculous. I am black. To suggest that I need to decide whether I am a black tech blogger or a black blogger is not in the cards. I am both of those things and hopefully many more.
And so, I just wanted to acknowledge all of you who read this blog. I realize that there are many people here who may find some subjects of interest to them and others not so much. Your loyalty and support has turned this from an experiment at the beginning of the year, to an early morning daily labor of love.
Thank you.
But one comment triggered something I want to share.
One anonymous commenter who identified himself as black complained about what he felt was an off topic subject for yesterday's piece. He said:
I'm black (FWIW) and a software developer. I make it a point to stay away from issues of race when having conversations with clients that drift away from whatever project I'm working on, to general social discussion. It's too easy for my work then to be evaluated from the perspective of "that black guy" who's coding, as opposed to just "the developer."
So you need to decide if you're a Black Blogger, or a Tech Blogger who is also black.
And while I responded in the comments I want to elaborate and extend this conversation. There are some people who believe I should be in a little box. "I don't subscribe to you to read about X". X being whatever they happen to not be interested in, and presumably X also being an area that they either disagree with me about or an area where I am indirectly acusing them of doing something that they don't want to be accused of... like pirating music unethically.
The point is that I write about what interests me and what I am passionate about. Now its true, I don't write much about biking here, or vegetable juice and fitness, or politics, all of which are subjects that interest me. But the reason is that I don't think I have anything interesting more than just the superficial to share on those subjects. I know something about development, and design, and business, and media and economics. And so I write about them. All of them. And yes that may make this an eclectic site for some. And my best readers that are into, for example, the business stuff take it in stride when I write about database sharding and it is totally beyond them. I think the fact that I have a deep but broad interest area and subject expertise should be a *reason* to read this blog, not a reason to be anoyed when something is outside your interest. But then my perspective is admittedly biased.
But the idea that I should not be covering the Feldman issue, and race issues, particularly when other tech bloggers are covering them, because I am black, is, to me, ridiculous. I am black. To suggest that I need to decide whether I am a black tech blogger or a black blogger is not in the cards. I am both of those things and hopefully many more.
And so, I just wanted to acknowledge all of you who read this blog. I realize that there are many people here who may find some subjects of interest to them and others not so much. Your loyalty and support has turned this from an experiment at the beginning of the year, to an early morning daily labor of love.
Thank you.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
The 2008 Definition of Racism
I was not going to talk about this stuff any more, but Louis Gray’s post on the “racist underbelly” of the web struck a deep chord. He describes how two black bloggers, Wayne Sutton and Corvida, had a live Yahoo video chat to discuss Loren Feldman and the Tech Nigga incident, and the anonymous overtly racist chatter in the video’s text chat room. It was painful to read, but I realized it provided me an opportunity to talk about what I think is a really big important issue.
Unlike in 1964, the year I was born, today few people are comfortable being labeled as racist. The successful tactics of protesting, boycotting, and social and pressure have been incredibly effective in applying shame to the label.
Unfortunately, in demonizing, racism, we have done two things. First we have driven the unrepentant racists underground, and into anonymity. And second, we have sanded down the meaning of the term so substantially that almost no acts committed by those outside the underground anonymous can be categorized as such.
The difficulty in fighting an anonymous invisible enemy is obvious. But what I really want to discuss is the issue of how we have defined racism and how, in the future, we should define it.
Today, racism’s definition is so circumscribed, that for many it is almost impossible to find a valid use case. For many, it would require calling a black man a nigger or saying, I hate black people, or doing something equivalently overt. Of course, for some, even the use of the word nigger does not warrant the racism label, since black people use it amongst themselves. It’s not fair, defenders say, to give a word to black people that white people can’t use.
Interestingly, for many, it’s also not valid to label language as racist if it not in the form of a statement. It’s a bit like Jeopardy. Any potentially racist language is not racist if you change the form to a question, or in Loren Feldman’s case, a joke. Then you can, apparently, say absolutely anything.
And so by these measures, there are many who feel that Loren Feldman’s Tech Nigga was not racist. And while it is true that the majority of people are not supportive, there are many people who are, some aggressively so.
Within this supportive group, first there are, of course, the folks that are openly though anonymously racist. I don’t have statistics but my sense is that, when hiding behind anonymity, this is not a small group. I say this based on purely anecdotal evidence such as exit polling in democratic primaries in Apalachia, support on discussion forums for Michael Richards, and, indeed, response to the Corvida/Wayne Sutton chat.
But the most troubling group to me, as I discussed on Monday, are the ones that just don’t think this kind of material is a big deal. They believe blacks are too “thin skinned” about this stuff. “What’s the big deal, it’s all in fun.” Or to protest is violating Feldman’s right to free speech. This group fascinates me, and as far as I can tell, it a not inconsequential percentage of the tech blogosphere.
Then, there is another part of the tech blogosphere that is either afraid to speak up, or feels the discussion is beneath them. I have several prominent and/or powerful friends who are bloggers who have said this. Or they have said, “I don’t want to get involved.” I have to say hearing this hurts.
And so, given how hurtful and damaging all of this stuff is, at least to us black folks, I thought I would explain why.
For many of you who are in your twenties of early thirties, there is no context for the civil rights movement. For example I have been having a discussion with Tom from TomsTechBlog, and yesterday he actually stated, in defense of the argument that protesting Loren Feldman was immoral, that threatening boycotts was actually illegal. I really don’t mean to pick on Tom because despite the fact that I think he is really ignorant of the facts and the social context of these issues, I truly believe he is a decent person.
But the fact that he holds such views, and many of you do, means there is still more that needs to be said. And so, a little context.
As background, I was born in Harlem, in the midst of the civil rights movement. My father was an active participant in that movement. His best friend was Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, to whom he served as counselor. Adam (as he was affectionately known to everyone in Harlem) is, to this day, the most productive legislator in the history of congress as well as the most powerful black legislator in congressional history. He is revered in Harlem, the community I grew up in, and to which I have returned to live.
As a child I was present as amazing things were happening. I observed as great people planned and fought so that I would have opportunities that they did not. Despite having a master’s degree in education and before getting his law degree, the best job my father could get was as a sorter in the post office. The civil rights movement mattered on so many levels. Not that I fully understood what was going on, but it was happening all around me, and I could not miss its import. They fought the evil ideas, and the evil people. And they won. And in so doing they helped to change the country.
Admittedly and thankfully, this country is far, far better today. And the reason my father was able to go from being a mail sorter to practicing law and later to become a judge, and the reason that I can write this blog, and do the work I do, is because of the many great people, white and black, leaders and followers who protested, boycotted, and resisted. I view peaceful resistance and dissent, as not only a right, but a responsibility for those of us who value decency, and indeed democracy.
To suggest that the right thing to do is to be silent in the face of racist words, or worse, to suggest that not being silent, or that protesting or boycotting or threatening boycotts is wrong, is to wipe away and invalidate what, for me, is the part of American history that has made my life possible, that is, peaceful protest. And what is apparent to me is that there is a current, younger generation that has in many cases never known about things that are recent enough for me to actually remember.
And so the point is, context is important. Damaging words can and do lead people to bad places, and to do bad things and to feel bad thoughts. Adam Powell’s instituting a prohibition on members of congress from using the word nigger on the floor of the house was important because words really do matter. And bad words and ideas cannot just lay unaddressed.
Coming back to Tech Nigga, there are those that say that its all just words, and that words are just, well, words. It’s just jokes, and so how harmful could it be.
To those who would diminish the significance of the hurt caused by such words, I would ask that you trust me when I say that you are mistaken.
Words matter.
Words influence minds. Minds influence mouths. And hearts. And fists. And paychecks. And guns.
Words matter. In fact almost nothing matters more than words, simple though they are.
And so if words matter, and words can hurt and do damage, how do we define that damage. And how do we define when we are participating in that damage. In short, the definition of racism needs a refresh.
What is racism in 2008?
It is more than just calling someone a nigger, or a nigga. It is more than shooting someone 51 times. It is more than just skipping a resume because someone has a “black sounding” name. And it is indeed more than having hate in your heart.
In 2008, racism is appeasing the evildoers. It is making jokes that no one finds funny, or even that a few misguided ones do. It is categorizing large swaths of people with words and language that hurt them, even if you have no idea why. It is questioning the morals of people when they stand up to defend themselves against language that seeks to further diminish an already weak social standing. In 2008, racism does not require a white hood, or a lynch mob. It does not require that you hate. Yes, the lack of such obvious indicia does not mean there is no racism. Indeed, I know racism when I see it, and I hope you do too.
Unlike in 1964, the year I was born, today few people are comfortable being labeled as racist. The successful tactics of protesting, boycotting, and social and pressure have been incredibly effective in applying shame to the label.
Unfortunately, in demonizing, racism, we have done two things. First we have driven the unrepentant racists underground, and into anonymity. And second, we have sanded down the meaning of the term so substantially that almost no acts committed by those outside the underground anonymous can be categorized as such.
The difficulty in fighting an anonymous invisible enemy is obvious. But what I really want to discuss is the issue of how we have defined racism and how, in the future, we should define it.
Today, racism’s definition is so circumscribed, that for many it is almost impossible to find a valid use case. For many, it would require calling a black man a nigger or saying, I hate black people, or doing something equivalently overt. Of course, for some, even the use of the word nigger does not warrant the racism label, since black people use it amongst themselves. It’s not fair, defenders say, to give a word to black people that white people can’t use.
Interestingly, for many, it’s also not valid to label language as racist if it not in the form of a statement. It’s a bit like Jeopardy. Any potentially racist language is not racist if you change the form to a question, or in Loren Feldman’s case, a joke. Then you can, apparently, say absolutely anything.
And so by these measures, there are many who feel that Loren Feldman’s Tech Nigga was not racist. And while it is true that the majority of people are not supportive, there are many people who are, some aggressively so.
Within this supportive group, first there are, of course, the folks that are openly though anonymously racist. I don’t have statistics but my sense is that, when hiding behind anonymity, this is not a small group. I say this based on purely anecdotal evidence such as exit polling in democratic primaries in Apalachia, support on discussion forums for Michael Richards, and, indeed, response to the Corvida/Wayne Sutton chat.
But the most troubling group to me, as I discussed on Monday, are the ones that just don’t think this kind of material is a big deal. They believe blacks are too “thin skinned” about this stuff. “What’s the big deal, it’s all in fun.” Or to protest is violating Feldman’s right to free speech. This group fascinates me, and as far as I can tell, it a not inconsequential percentage of the tech blogosphere.
Then, there is another part of the tech blogosphere that is either afraid to speak up, or feels the discussion is beneath them. I have several prominent and/or powerful friends who are bloggers who have said this. Or they have said, “I don’t want to get involved.” I have to say hearing this hurts.
And so, given how hurtful and damaging all of this stuff is, at least to us black folks, I thought I would explain why.
For many of you who are in your twenties of early thirties, there is no context for the civil rights movement. For example I have been having a discussion with Tom from TomsTechBlog, and yesterday he actually stated, in defense of the argument that protesting Loren Feldman was immoral, that threatening boycotts was actually illegal. I really don’t mean to pick on Tom because despite the fact that I think he is really ignorant of the facts and the social context of these issues, I truly believe he is a decent person.
But the fact that he holds such views, and many of you do, means there is still more that needs to be said. And so, a little context.
As background, I was born in Harlem, in the midst of the civil rights movement. My father was an active participant in that movement. His best friend was Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, to whom he served as counselor. Adam (as he was affectionately known to everyone in Harlem) is, to this day, the most productive legislator in the history of congress as well as the most powerful black legislator in congressional history. He is revered in Harlem, the community I grew up in, and to which I have returned to live.
As a child I was present as amazing things were happening. I observed as great people planned and fought so that I would have opportunities that they did not. Despite having a master’s degree in education and before getting his law degree, the best job my father could get was as a sorter in the post office. The civil rights movement mattered on so many levels. Not that I fully understood what was going on, but it was happening all around me, and I could not miss its import. They fought the evil ideas, and the evil people. And they won. And in so doing they helped to change the country.
Admittedly and thankfully, this country is far, far better today. And the reason my father was able to go from being a mail sorter to practicing law and later to become a judge, and the reason that I can write this blog, and do the work I do, is because of the many great people, white and black, leaders and followers who protested, boycotted, and resisted. I view peaceful resistance and dissent, as not only a right, but a responsibility for those of us who value decency, and indeed democracy.
To suggest that the right thing to do is to be silent in the face of racist words, or worse, to suggest that not being silent, or that protesting or boycotting or threatening boycotts is wrong, is to wipe away and invalidate what, for me, is the part of American history that has made my life possible, that is, peaceful protest. And what is apparent to me is that there is a current, younger generation that has in many cases never known about things that are recent enough for me to actually remember.
And so the point is, context is important. Damaging words can and do lead people to bad places, and to do bad things and to feel bad thoughts. Adam Powell’s instituting a prohibition on members of congress from using the word nigger on the floor of the house was important because words really do matter. And bad words and ideas cannot just lay unaddressed.
Coming back to Tech Nigga, there are those that say that its all just words, and that words are just, well, words. It’s just jokes, and so how harmful could it be.
To those who would diminish the significance of the hurt caused by such words, I would ask that you trust me when I say that you are mistaken.
Words matter.
Words influence minds. Minds influence mouths. And hearts. And fists. And paychecks. And guns.
Words matter. In fact almost nothing matters more than words, simple though they are.
And so if words matter, and words can hurt and do damage, how do we define that damage. And how do we define when we are participating in that damage. In short, the definition of racism needs a refresh.
What is racism in 2008?
It is more than just calling someone a nigger, or a nigga. It is more than shooting someone 51 times. It is more than just skipping a resume because someone has a “black sounding” name. And it is indeed more than having hate in your heart.
In 2008, racism is appeasing the evildoers. It is making jokes that no one finds funny, or even that a few misguided ones do. It is categorizing large swaths of people with words and language that hurt them, even if you have no idea why. It is questioning the morals of people when they stand up to defend themselves against language that seeks to further diminish an already weak social standing. In 2008, racism does not require a white hood, or a lynch mob. It does not require that you hate. Yes, the lack of such obvious indicia does not mean there is no racism. Indeed, I know racism when I see it, and I hope you do too.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
YouTube Heading For Catastophic Fail
As I have already written, I don't think much of YouTube from a business perspective. But each time you look it just seems like things keep getting worse.
There are really several axes for my bearish YouTube perspective.
First, they do not seem to be making any money on the ads they show. Most recent calculations suggest CPMs in the $1 range.
Second, according to the Wall Street Journal, it appears they can only monetize the 4% of their inventory that they have content licenses with. The reason? They fear they will be sued by content owners for attempting to monetize illegally uploaded stuff that they do not have licenses for.
Third, according to the same WSJ article, Google claims to be generating $200 million a year in advertising on YouTube, I strongly suspect that, given that 96% of their content is not even available for monetization, that the cost of operating YouTube, primarily bandwidth, is close to or exceeds that $200 million.
But the fourth reason is the biggest deal of all. I think they are going to lose the Viacom lawsuit in a really big way. If that happens, not only will there be a massive liability, but it will open the doors to everyone else sitting on the sidelines letting Sumner Redstone do the hard work. YouTube will be torn apart by plaintiffs like piranha going after fresh bloody meat.
Why do I think they will lose? Well, in my gut I just have never bought the idea that they had no idea what was on their service and no way to control it. But it was really Mark Cuban who crystallized the issue for me. Mark says its all about porn.
In the early days of YouTube, I was always amazed that there was no porn. Dirty word searches never triggered anything "interesting." How could this be? Porn is always at the cutting edge of new stuff. How could YouTube avoid it?
But since that time I had really forgotten about the issue, until Mark brought the subject back front and center.
Google's argument is that they have no way of policing the content on YouTube. And I would totally buy that if they did not have such an absolutely awesome program for rooting out porn. From day one, YouTube was essentially porn free. Google argues that it deserves protection from the safe harbor protections of the DMCA because they are an ISP with no control over their content. But clearly, at least in the area of porn, they have absolute control, and they exercise it.
This will all come out in the lawsuit. And when it does, I think YouTube will lose safe harbor protections, and ultimately Google will be responsible for every single piece of content on the system.
Can you say Aremgeddon?
There are really several axes for my bearish YouTube perspective.
First, they do not seem to be making any money on the ads they show. Most recent calculations suggest CPMs in the $1 range.
Second, according to the Wall Street Journal, it appears they can only monetize the 4% of their inventory that they have content licenses with. The reason? They fear they will be sued by content owners for attempting to monetize illegally uploaded stuff that they do not have licenses for.
Third, according to the same WSJ article, Google claims to be generating $200 million a year in advertising on YouTube, I strongly suspect that, given that 96% of their content is not even available for monetization, that the cost of operating YouTube, primarily bandwidth, is close to or exceeds that $200 million.
But the fourth reason is the biggest deal of all. I think they are going to lose the Viacom lawsuit in a really big way. If that happens, not only will there be a massive liability, but it will open the doors to everyone else sitting on the sidelines letting Sumner Redstone do the hard work. YouTube will be torn apart by plaintiffs like piranha going after fresh bloody meat.
Why do I think they will lose? Well, in my gut I just have never bought the idea that they had no idea what was on their service and no way to control it. But it was really Mark Cuban who crystallized the issue for me. Mark says its all about porn.
In the early days of YouTube, I was always amazed that there was no porn. Dirty word searches never triggered anything "interesting." How could this be? Porn is always at the cutting edge of new stuff. How could YouTube avoid it?
But since that time I had really forgotten about the issue, until Mark brought the subject back front and center.
Google's argument is that they have no way of policing the content on YouTube. And I would totally buy that if they did not have such an absolutely awesome program for rooting out porn. From day one, YouTube was essentially porn free. Google argues that it deserves protection from the safe harbor protections of the DMCA because they are an ISP with no control over their content. But clearly, at least in the area of porn, they have absolute control, and they exercise it.
This will all come out in the lawsuit. And when it does, I think YouTube will lose safe harbor protections, and ultimately Google will be responsible for every single piece of content on the system.
Can you say Aremgeddon?
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Verizon Dumps Loren "Tech Nigga" Feldman. Blogosphere Crys Foul
Loren Feldman and video production company 1938 Media are in the news again. The story is that Feldman recently got a video distribution deal with Verizon Wireless on their mobile VCast service, and that deal was pulled yesterday because protesters feel Feldman is a racist. This comes on the heels of a similar deal with C|NET/CBS announced several weeks ago that seems to have been put on "hiatus", which I presume is a polite way of saying canceled.
The history of this is as follows.
Almost a year ago, Loren Feldman posted a video he wrote, produced and starred in, called "Tech Nigga." In it, he questions why there aren't any black tech bloggers, and then in a supposedly satirical manner, pretends to be one, and imagines what it might be like. Feldman employs a fake black accent, dons gold jewelry, and uses every other conceivable stereotype that could be packed into three minutes including discussions of "bitches and hoes."
The video was indeed offensive, but perhaps what was more offensive is other audio clips Feldman has produced saying things like "black people are lame" and essentially breaking down how horrible black people and black culture are. It is truly amazing material that doesn't get nearly as much play as the Tech Nigga stuff, but it should.
In previous coverage, I have organized the relevant audio/video clips here.
In any case, I was offended from the day Feldman produced these pieces. But people have a right to be offensive on the Internet.
My real problem came when people started to give Feldman a really large platform. I initially wrote about this problem several months ago, when Feldman appeared on a panel here in New York, talking about mobile video. But this was small potatoes compared to when Mike Arrington, the most powerful man in the tech blogosphere, became Feldman's best friend and seemingly set up interviews with Kara Swisher from the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital, Dan Farber from C|NET/CBS, and many other "A-List" bloggers and Internet stars.
I publicly commented to Kara about her support for Feldman and got a nasty private email from Loren. He said he was writing to gloat over his success. To me it smacked of some attempt at intimidation. But whatever, it was totally low class and inappropriate.
In any case, the blogosphere support trend was disturbing but still no big deal. But when it really starts to become a big deal is when huge corporations like C|NET/CBS or Verizon decide to start distributing content from someone who "guiltlessly" produces "entertainment" like Tech Nigga.
Thankfully, it appears that both the C|NET deal and the Verizon deal have gone away.
But that is not the interesting part of this story.
What is really fascinating to me that so many top level bloggers are supporting him. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch suggests the reaction might be some kind of conspiracy tied to another Feldman controversy related to Shel Israel. Mathew Ingram frames it as a free speech issue, and thinks "it would be nice if there were some voices on the other side." Mark 'Rizzin' Hopkins from Mashable seems to think if you have a problem with Feldman you should just not watch but shut up about it. Tom, from Toms Tech Blog agrees with Mark that if you don't like it you just shouldn't watch, but that protesting is out of bounds. More interestingly, in the comments on the TechCrunch article, Tom questions the morality of protesters, presumably black, who are petitioning Verizon. He seems unswayed by the idea that targets of racist material might be angry, or hurt, and that it might be totally within *their* rights to protest.
To me, it is amazing that all these guys seem, on one level or another to support Feldman. It is also totally clear in the comments that they are all incredibly out of touch with the vast majority of their readerships who "get" why Verizon would drop him and seem to fully support the decision.
The concept that this could be a free speech issue is bizarre. Verizon has every right to not air the content of people who they or a large part of their audience find offensive. Mathew Ingram works for Toronto's Globe and Mail, and as an example I suspect none of their reporters are (at least publicly) racist. It is certainly Globe and Mail's right not to hire such people or distribute their work. Free speech means you are free to speak anywhere that will have you, not that you are free to speak wherever you want. It is not your right to speak on Verizon's service, or on C|NET/CBS, or anywhere that thinks your presence would not reflect well on them.
And if a bunch of black people decide they don't want to be Verizon customers over an issue like this, and they choose to make that public, that is their right as well. As I see it, free speech worked perfectly in this situation. Feldman has the free speech right to be offensive. I have the free speech right to be offended, just as the constitution intended it.
The bottom line for Feldman is that it turns out that free speech doesn't mean free from the consequences of your speech. Hopefully, that, if nothing else, is a useful lesson.
The history of this is as follows.
Almost a year ago, Loren Feldman posted a video he wrote, produced and starred in, called "Tech Nigga." In it, he questions why there aren't any black tech bloggers, and then in a supposedly satirical manner, pretends to be one, and imagines what it might be like. Feldman employs a fake black accent, dons gold jewelry, and uses every other conceivable stereotype that could be packed into three minutes including discussions of "bitches and hoes."
The video was indeed offensive, but perhaps what was more offensive is other audio clips Feldman has produced saying things like "black people are lame" and essentially breaking down how horrible black people and black culture are. It is truly amazing material that doesn't get nearly as much play as the Tech Nigga stuff, but it should.
In previous coverage, I have organized the relevant audio/video clips here.
In any case, I was offended from the day Feldman produced these pieces. But people have a right to be offensive on the Internet.
My real problem came when people started to give Feldman a really large platform. I initially wrote about this problem several months ago, when Feldman appeared on a panel here in New York, talking about mobile video. But this was small potatoes compared to when Mike Arrington, the most powerful man in the tech blogosphere, became Feldman's best friend and seemingly set up interviews with Kara Swisher from the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital, Dan Farber from C|NET/CBS, and many other "A-List" bloggers and Internet stars.
I publicly commented to Kara about her support for Feldman and got a nasty private email from Loren. He said he was writing to gloat over his success. To me it smacked of some attempt at intimidation. But whatever, it was totally low class and inappropriate.
In any case, the blogosphere support trend was disturbing but still no big deal. But when it really starts to become a big deal is when huge corporations like C|NET/CBS or Verizon decide to start distributing content from someone who "guiltlessly" produces "entertainment" like Tech Nigga.
Thankfully, it appears that both the C|NET deal and the Verizon deal have gone away.
But that is not the interesting part of this story.
What is really fascinating to me that so many top level bloggers are supporting him. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch suggests the reaction might be some kind of conspiracy tied to another Feldman controversy related to Shel Israel. Mathew Ingram frames it as a free speech issue, and thinks "it would be nice if there were some voices on the other side." Mark 'Rizzin' Hopkins from Mashable seems to think if you have a problem with Feldman you should just not watch but shut up about it. Tom, from Toms Tech Blog agrees with Mark that if you don't like it you just shouldn't watch, but that protesting is out of bounds. More interestingly, in the comments on the TechCrunch article, Tom questions the morality of protesters, presumably black, who are petitioning Verizon. He seems unswayed by the idea that targets of racist material might be angry, or hurt, and that it might be totally within *their* rights to protest.
To me, it is amazing that all these guys seem, on one level or another to support Feldman. It is also totally clear in the comments that they are all incredibly out of touch with the vast majority of their readerships who "get" why Verizon would drop him and seem to fully support the decision.
The concept that this could be a free speech issue is bizarre. Verizon has every right to not air the content of people who they or a large part of their audience find offensive. Mathew Ingram works for Toronto's Globe and Mail, and as an example I suspect none of their reporters are (at least publicly) racist. It is certainly Globe and Mail's right not to hire such people or distribute their work. Free speech means you are free to speak anywhere that will have you, not that you are free to speak wherever you want. It is not your right to speak on Verizon's service, or on C|NET/CBS, or anywhere that thinks your presence would not reflect well on them.
And if a bunch of black people decide they don't want to be Verizon customers over an issue like this, and they choose to make that public, that is their right as well. As I see it, free speech worked perfectly in this situation. Feldman has the free speech right to be offensive. I have the free speech right to be offended, just as the constitution intended it.
The bottom line for Feldman is that it turns out that free speech doesn't mean free from the consequences of your speech. Hopefully, that, if nothing else, is a useful lesson.
Monday, July 7, 2008
The Software/Web Business Is Hard As It’s Ever Been (Or Harder)
One of the things you might believe if you read the press over the last few years is how much easier it is now to start a tech company than it used to be. And on some level this is true. There are open source tools, and servers are cheaper, and we now have Amazon Web Services, making hardware costs much more predictable.
But this sort of talk belies the longer term truth. Website development *did* get very expensive during the last bubble of the late 90s. The need for server farms and expensive database products did shoot the cost up. But if you look at the history of the computer business, where we are at now in terms of costs is probably similar to where we were in the 80’s and early to mid 90s. Most of the cost was in manpower. That was the case then and it is the case now.
Just as it has always been, huge teams of people were not the key to success. One or two, or at most a handful of really smart people generally made everything happen inside a development effort. In fact Lotus 1-2-3, the seminal “killer app” from the 80s was written by one guy, Jonathan Sachs, and designed by another, Mitch Kapor. In short, little has changed in terms of development.
The big difference between then and now is really not the development process, or the resources required to create a great product. The difference is in what it takes to get noticed.
In that era, despite the fact that we have viral marketing and blogs and such, I would argue it was *easier* to get noticed than it is today. There was less noise, fewer people who fancied themselves the next Bill Gates or Larry and Sergey. And during those days, regular folks actually *expected* to have to plunk down $399 for a copy of 1-2-3. A single good review in a major PC magazine actually triggered real revenue for most products. And if your product was good, that was very likely to happen.
Today, if you make a communications related product, you *can* go viral. But those products tend not to make money. People confuse fast user growth with success but they shouldn’t.
And so, while it is no easier to launch a successful product, today you have lots of people, lured by the purported ease, that are throwing more junk into the breech. The good news for people that are really doing something useful is most of this stuff really is insignificant. But noise is still noise. If you need proof, you should check out killerstartups.com. It is a daily compendium of everything that anyone is doing that is new. Not good. Of course the quality ebbs and flows. But subscribe for a month if you really want to get a good sense of the almost deafening cacophony of mediocrity.
But again, the point is that to build a compelling product is no easier than it ever was, and to find actual paying customers is, today, much harder than it was in the pre-Internet era. In short, don’t believe the hype.
But this sort of talk belies the longer term truth. Website development *did* get very expensive during the last bubble of the late 90s. The need for server farms and expensive database products did shoot the cost up. But if you look at the history of the computer business, where we are at now in terms of costs is probably similar to where we were in the 80’s and early to mid 90s. Most of the cost was in manpower. That was the case then and it is the case now.
Just as it has always been, huge teams of people were not the key to success. One or two, or at most a handful of really smart people generally made everything happen inside a development effort. In fact Lotus 1-2-3, the seminal “killer app” from the 80s was written by one guy, Jonathan Sachs, and designed by another, Mitch Kapor. In short, little has changed in terms of development.
The big difference between then and now is really not the development process, or the resources required to create a great product. The difference is in what it takes to get noticed.
In that era, despite the fact that we have viral marketing and blogs and such, I would argue it was *easier* to get noticed than it is today. There was less noise, fewer people who fancied themselves the next Bill Gates or Larry and Sergey. And during those days, regular folks actually *expected* to have to plunk down $399 for a copy of 1-2-3. A single good review in a major PC magazine actually triggered real revenue for most products. And if your product was good, that was very likely to happen.
Today, if you make a communications related product, you *can* go viral. But those products tend not to make money. People confuse fast user growth with success but they shouldn’t.
And so, while it is no easier to launch a successful product, today you have lots of people, lured by the purported ease, that are throwing more junk into the breech. The good news for people that are really doing something useful is most of this stuff really is insignificant. But noise is still noise. If you need proof, you should check out killerstartups.com. It is a daily compendium of everything that anyone is doing that is new. Not good. Of course the quality ebbs and flows. But subscribe for a month if you really want to get a good sense of the almost deafening cacophony of mediocrity.
But again, the point is that to build a compelling product is no easier than it ever was, and to find actual paying customers is, today, much harder than it was in the pre-Internet era. In short, don’t believe the hype.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Introducing Identi.ca. RIP Twitter
This is what I said on May 5, 2008
And indeed it has happened. Evan Prodromou, creator of Wikitravel decided it was necessary, and so he built it. My name for it was Twitshadow. Evan's name: identi.ca. Identi.ca is a twitter clone website based on laconi.ca, his open source distributed twitter framework.
The basic concept is twitter style microblogging, but where instead of one company operating servers, anyone can set up interoperable laconi.ca servers. Think of the way email and email servers work in a highly distributed, fault tolerant way. Another good metaphor would be the less well known but perhaps closer analog XMPP. The server interoperability is based on a new protocol called OpenMicroBlogging.
From a business perspective, under normal circumstances, Twitter's huge user base would not be easily moveable. But Twitter's down time makes people hungry to switch. Dave Winer is gleeful. And as I suggested when discussing Twitshadow, Laconi.ca can be used as a front end for Twitter. Everything you post on a laconi.ca server can be mirrored to your twitter account. The one downside of this is that they don't yet support the twitter API making it harder for 3rd party Twitter apps like Twhirl and Twitterrific to support it. But I strongly suspect both the Twitter API will be supported quickly, and these third party apps will support laconi.ca based servers soon too.
As I see it, the handwriting is on the wall.
Of course in order for this to work, more people will need to set up their own servers. I believe this will happen, just like mail servers. It will take time, but it will happen. The open source community will get involved, the code will improve rapidly, and it will soon be far more featureful and robust than Twitter.
As I like to root for entrepreneurs, this is sad. But sad though it is, I fear I must call this one. The patient flatlined July 2nd at 7:35am.
RIP Twitter.
Please send all cards and condolences here.
It is entirely possible that before Twitter makes its first penny, it will become too important to exist in its current form, and the community will feel it has to be replaced by an open source distributed framework. This should strike fear into the hearts of anyone who decides open their API. While the Open API strategy has clearly worked in terms of adoption, it may have worked too well. In fact it may have worked so well that Twitter may be killed before it has even really made it out of the womb, by people that find it so important that they can't afford to really have it be a company.
And indeed it has happened. Evan Prodromou, creator of Wikitravel decided it was necessary, and so he built it. My name for it was Twitshadow. Evan's name: identi.ca. Identi.ca is a twitter clone website based on laconi.ca, his open source distributed twitter framework.
The basic concept is twitter style microblogging, but where instead of one company operating servers, anyone can set up interoperable laconi.ca servers. Think of the way email and email servers work in a highly distributed, fault tolerant way. Another good metaphor would be the less well known but perhaps closer analog XMPP. The server interoperability is based on a new protocol called OpenMicroBlogging.
From a business perspective, under normal circumstances, Twitter's huge user base would not be easily moveable. But Twitter's down time makes people hungry to switch. Dave Winer is gleeful. And as I suggested when discussing Twitshadow, Laconi.ca can be used as a front end for Twitter. Everything you post on a laconi.ca server can be mirrored to your twitter account. The one downside of this is that they don't yet support the twitter API making it harder for 3rd party Twitter apps like Twhirl and Twitterrific to support it. But I strongly suspect both the Twitter API will be supported quickly, and these third party apps will support laconi.ca based servers soon too.
As I see it, the handwriting is on the wall.
Of course in order for this to work, more people will need to set up their own servers. I believe this will happen, just like mail servers. It will take time, but it will happen. The open source community will get involved, the code will improve rapidly, and it will soon be far more featureful and robust than Twitter.
As I like to root for entrepreneurs, this is sad. But sad though it is, I fear I must call this one. The patient flatlined July 2nd at 7:35am.
RIP Twitter.
Please send all cards and condolences here.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Building A Future Around Electricity
Energy is probably the number one crisis facing the country, and much of the world right now, and so, a few related news items have caught my attention recently.
First, former Intel Chairman and CEO Andy Grove recently talked about the idea that the best way to gain a greater degree of energy independence is to switch from burning so much oil to burning electricity. His argument is that there are a lot more clean and renewable ways to make electricity than there are to make fuels.
The second thing that caught my eye was Monday’s announcement that Tesla Motors, the company making the $100,000 electric sports car, is going to be making a $60,000 electric sedan. The thing that caught my attention about this is apparently these Tesla cars get an effective “fuel” efficiency of 135mpg.
Finally, in researching Tesla, I discovered that Toyota has announced that the next Prius, their hybrid gas/electric car, is going to get mileage of 94mpg.
In thinking about all of this it became clear to me that we *are* going to switch from being a liquid fuel economy to being an electric one. This will happen. $4 or $5 or $6 or $10 per gallon gasoline will take us there. And it will happen quickly.
Cars like Tesla and Prius will have options for fueling *and* plugging in. We will plug in at home (98% of the time) and fuel for emergencies and long trips. But it is coming. As I see it, given where fuel is at and seems to be going, in four or five years, electric/hybrid cars will be the only ones sold. Who will be able to afford an all gas car? It just won’t make sense.
In short, in the future, even as it gets more expensive, which it will, electricity is going to be king.
For those of us in the tech field, this, I think, does provide enormous opportunities. Devices will need to get smarter about how they burn electricity. Homes will need batteries, and will need to capture electricity when it is cheap, like late at night, for use when it is more expensive. Devices may be able to borrow electricity from each other in the home. We are going to want to know exactly how much power given devices are burning. I know right now I leave my computer on all the time and I have no idea how much it is actually burning. If I did I would probably cry.
Gaining control of all of this will take lots of software and silicon. I haven’t thought all of this through entirely, but it just seems to me there are lots of business opportunities in this incredibly disruptive transition. Yes I know there is already a “cleantech” investment focus, but in my mind that’s not what this is. This is not about being clean, it’s about saving money. Clean is an altruistic thing. We are in a crisis now and we need technology to save our collective, oil soaked butts. I’d call this “practical-tech”, or “cheap-tech” or even “electric-tech”. Most people, like it or not, are less concerned with “clean” than they are with “bankrupt”.
But in any case with all this talk of no high tech IPOs, I can’t help but wonder if focusing on some of these issues, issues that really will make a difference in peoples lives, could help. (Insert default polemic about the useless focus on yet another social network).
First, former Intel Chairman and CEO Andy Grove recently talked about the idea that the best way to gain a greater degree of energy independence is to switch from burning so much oil to burning electricity. His argument is that there are a lot more clean and renewable ways to make electricity than there are to make fuels.
The second thing that caught my eye was Monday’s announcement that Tesla Motors, the company making the $100,000 electric sports car, is going to be making a $60,000 electric sedan. The thing that caught my attention about this is apparently these Tesla cars get an effective “fuel” efficiency of 135mpg.
Finally, in researching Tesla, I discovered that Toyota has announced that the next Prius, their hybrid gas/electric car, is going to get mileage of 94mpg.
In thinking about all of this it became clear to me that we *are* going to switch from being a liquid fuel economy to being an electric one. This will happen. $4 or $5 or $6 or $10 per gallon gasoline will take us there. And it will happen quickly.
Cars like Tesla and Prius will have options for fueling *and* plugging in. We will plug in at home (98% of the time) and fuel for emergencies and long trips. But it is coming. As I see it, given where fuel is at and seems to be going, in four or five years, electric/hybrid cars will be the only ones sold. Who will be able to afford an all gas car? It just won’t make sense.
In short, in the future, even as it gets more expensive, which it will, electricity is going to be king.
For those of us in the tech field, this, I think, does provide enormous opportunities. Devices will need to get smarter about how they burn electricity. Homes will need batteries, and will need to capture electricity when it is cheap, like late at night, for use when it is more expensive. Devices may be able to borrow electricity from each other in the home. We are going to want to know exactly how much power given devices are burning. I know right now I leave my computer on all the time and I have no idea how much it is actually burning. If I did I would probably cry.
Gaining control of all of this will take lots of software and silicon. I haven’t thought all of this through entirely, but it just seems to me there are lots of business opportunities in this incredibly disruptive transition. Yes I know there is already a “cleantech” investment focus, but in my mind that’s not what this is. This is not about being clean, it’s about saving money. Clean is an altruistic thing. We are in a crisis now and we need technology to save our collective, oil soaked butts. I’d call this “practical-tech”, or “cheap-tech” or even “electric-tech”. Most people, like it or not, are less concerned with “clean” than they are with “bankrupt”.
But in any case with all this talk of no high tech IPOs, I can’t help but wonder if focusing on some of these issues, issues that really will make a difference in peoples lives, could help. (Insert default polemic about the useless focus on yet another social network).
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Adobe Announces Making Flash More Searchable, May Be Over Promising
Today Adobe announced that they have been working with Yahoo and Google to make Flash more searchable, and have provided them with technology help them do so. Google also provided more details here. But based on what has been said so far, I fear the announcement may be a bit of an over promise.
Unfortunately, there is no technical discussion or whitepaper to go along with this announcement, and with such a broad and important technical claim, more is needed than a one-page press release or even Google's Q & A.
Nevertheless, the problem Adobe is trying to address is an important one, and so the issue is worth some discussion.
The problem Adobe is attempting to solve is really broader than “Flash can’t be indexed” as many people today think of it.
As many developers are moving more of their application logic from the server to the web browser, indexing becomes harder. Browsers used to just grab web pages and display them. Now our browsers are becoming full-fledged application environments. They are almost mini-operating systems. And in that sense, many web sites are really more like in-browser applications than they are what we used to think of as web pages.
Flash is a leader as a technology for deploying such in-browser applications also know as Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), but many such applications are also written in Javascript. And so it is important to keep in mind that the problem of indexing RIAs is a problem for RIAs written in Javascript as well as Flash, though this fact is rarely discussed.
The core of the issue is really that web pages can be indexed and applications can’t. Or at least it doesn’t make sense in the most basic sense, to index applications. And this issue is really more conceptual than technical.
For example, if you indexed a copy of Microsoft Word on your computer, what would that mean? Would it just mean that you could find all of the text from the menu bar and the dialog boxes in Word? And would that be useful? Probably not.
Today’s flash applications, particularly those written in Adobe’s Flex application framework, are really most often views into data that is loaded from a database or server somewhere when the user runs the application. So the interesting data isn’t actually ever in the actual Flash application swf (pronounced swiff) file. In other words, indexing the swf does no good.
What happens in a typical Flash application is that the user enters some search text or clicks on some button that says, for example, show me red shoes. The app then calls the database across the web, grabs the list of red shoes, and displays them. So in order for the search engine to be able to find the fact that my application shows red shoes, it needs to provide some input into the application to make it display that information. It needs to pretend to be a user and trick the app into going into the “red shoe” state. Most importantly, if the application changes state, that state needs to be captured as a change in the URL so that it can be referenced later.
Note that this is exactly what search engine indexers do with standard web pages. The difference is that it is much easier to do it with web pages. Web links are easy to follow and so it is easy to change the state of an HTML web site, and it is much easier to see what all of the available states are. All you do is scan the page and look for all the links. In any real application, whether written in Flash, Javascript, or even C++, states are much harder to discover and generate, particularly when they may involve an expectation of clicking on some button or typing something.
What is interesting is that in the Adobe announcement they seem to be implying that they have solved this issue. But my problem is I don’t really see how. I am confident they can do some useful things leveraging Flex applications ability to support deep linking. Without getting too technical, there are things that Flex application developers can do to make their states more accessible via the URL bar, which would certainly be helpful here. But I do not see how, without much more explicit developer tools and actual work on the part of developers, that most existing RIAs, Flash or otherwise, can be broadly searchable.
So, in short, my concern is that Adobe is announcing that they can now index Flash applications by being able to manipulate state and I strongly doubt that what they are announcing works as broadly or as compellingly as the press releases implies. My suspicion is that it only really useful for a small subset of the real Flash applications out in the wild, since even if the search engine finds the text it will, in most cases, not be able to get the application into the appropriate state to show that text.
And so, until Adobe, Google, or others issue developer best practices guidelines for working with search engines, I suspect this announced technology/initiative will be more limited in its benefits than some might expect.
Unfortunately, there is no technical discussion or whitepaper to go along with this announcement, and with such a broad and important technical claim, more is needed than a one-page press release or even Google's Q & A.
Nevertheless, the problem Adobe is trying to address is an important one, and so the issue is worth some discussion.
The problem Adobe is attempting to solve is really broader than “Flash can’t be indexed” as many people today think of it.
As many developers are moving more of their application logic from the server to the web browser, indexing becomes harder. Browsers used to just grab web pages and display them. Now our browsers are becoming full-fledged application environments. They are almost mini-operating systems. And in that sense, many web sites are really more like in-browser applications than they are what we used to think of as web pages.
Flash is a leader as a technology for deploying such in-browser applications also know as Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), but many such applications are also written in Javascript. And so it is important to keep in mind that the problem of indexing RIAs is a problem for RIAs written in Javascript as well as Flash, though this fact is rarely discussed.
The core of the issue is really that web pages can be indexed and applications can’t. Or at least it doesn’t make sense in the most basic sense, to index applications. And this issue is really more conceptual than technical.
For example, if you indexed a copy of Microsoft Word on your computer, what would that mean? Would it just mean that you could find all of the text from the menu bar and the dialog boxes in Word? And would that be useful? Probably not.
Today’s flash applications, particularly those written in Adobe’s Flex application framework, are really most often views into data that is loaded from a database or server somewhere when the user runs the application. So the interesting data isn’t actually ever in the actual Flash application swf (pronounced swiff) file. In other words, indexing the swf does no good.
What happens in a typical Flash application is that the user enters some search text or clicks on some button that says, for example, show me red shoes. The app then calls the database across the web, grabs the list of red shoes, and displays them. So in order for the search engine to be able to find the fact that my application shows red shoes, it needs to provide some input into the application to make it display that information. It needs to pretend to be a user and trick the app into going into the “red shoe” state. Most importantly, if the application changes state, that state needs to be captured as a change in the URL so that it can be referenced later.
Note that this is exactly what search engine indexers do with standard web pages. The difference is that it is much easier to do it with web pages. Web links are easy to follow and so it is easy to change the state of an HTML web site, and it is much easier to see what all of the available states are. All you do is scan the page and look for all the links. In any real application, whether written in Flash, Javascript, or even C++, states are much harder to discover and generate, particularly when they may involve an expectation of clicking on some button or typing something.
What is interesting is that in the Adobe announcement they seem to be implying that they have solved this issue. But my problem is I don’t really see how. I am confident they can do some useful things leveraging Flex applications ability to support deep linking. Without getting too technical, there are things that Flex application developers can do to make their states more accessible via the URL bar, which would certainly be helpful here. But I do not see how, without much more explicit developer tools and actual work on the part of developers, that most existing RIAs, Flash or otherwise, can be broadly searchable.
So, in short, my concern is that Adobe is announcing that they can now index Flash applications by being able to manipulate state and I strongly doubt that what they are announcing works as broadly or as compellingly as the press releases implies. My suspicion is that it only really useful for a small subset of the real Flash applications out in the wild, since even if the search engine finds the text it will, in most cases, not be able to get the application into the appropriate state to show that text.
And so, until Adobe, Google, or others issue developer best practices guidelines for working with search engines, I suspect this announced technology/initiative will be more limited in its benefits than some might expect.
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