Eric Feng on Tech

For Anyone Working with Large, Messy Datasets

2012-02-09T22:27:00.000-08:00

Google Refine is a fantastic tool for refining large, messy datasets. I'm about to crack it open to refine down a million row csv. Wish me luck.

http://code.google.com/p/google-refine/

Chromium Alloy

2012-02-07T22:25:00.000-08:00

My response:

Pantheon of Tech Companies

2012-02-02T02:12:00.000-08:00

Google: Athena, for its commitment to knowledge
Apple: Apollo, shining in its brilliance
Facebook: Hermes, the swift trickster
Amazon: Hephaestus, the shrewd and capable

Microsoft: Poseidon, god of the sea of desktops
Oracle: Hades, collector of dead souls and patents
Yahoo: ?
AOL: ?
IBM: ?
Adobe: ?

Any ideas? Would love to see this illustrated.

No One Should Care About Piracy

2012-01-31T20:48:00.000-08:00

Everyone in the content industry loves to talk about piracy as if it's a hugely important issue. It's dumb. Honestly. Dumb.

Piracy occurred on the Internet because of two roadblocks.
1) It was hard/too expensive to buy the content.
2) Marketing was flimsy.

See, for the vast majority of consumers, buying content (as opposed to pirating it) isn't really about "supporting the artists." Yes, we all want to support the artist, but we can do it by cheering them at concerts or telling our friends about them. Why do we buy? Because that's the easiest way to get it. Because we don't want to go around asking our friends for a copy that we can "burn." Because we don't to hassle ourselves copying the textbook on the school photocopier.

Yes, in the digital age, copying has become easier. But...our demand for speed is higher than ever. And downloading is only a small chunk of that speed. Navigating the Internet to find the torrent, downloading it, etc. That's the real time sink. That's frustrating and confusing and ugly.

That's why point 2 is so important. Marketing is nothing but glorified consumer education. It has two jobs: to teach consumers why they need need need your product and to show them how to get it. The second part is taken for granted in established markets. But it's hugely important for new markets.

That's been a big problem for digital content. Consumers have been really confused about how it all plays it. If I buy a song...do I own it? Or does it have some weird DRM thing? Maybe country specific? I'm a digital geek, but I don't even fully understand the rules of all the mini-markets out there.

But these problems are being surmounted one at a time. People understand iTunes. They understand the App Store and Kindle. While piracy will always exist, especially in poorer markets, it's not the persistent problem people think it is. Because piracy is just the result of markets with poor information, poor consumer education. Where the market equilibrium price hasn't yet been found. Where the mainstream consumer is still confused.

So don't blame piracy on the consumer. And don't regale us with your morality. Just get your act together and build a decent market.

The Social Network Platform: Bully Pulpit or Runway?

2012-01-28T12:05:00.000-08:00

Social is a big word these days. If you're doing a startup, it's got to have a "social media strategy" and a plan to "go viral/hockeystick." But what is social? Has the social network made us more social?

For that, look no further than your News Feed. What is it composed of? Birthdays, impressive photos, clever quips. What we understand from this is that social is less about communicating and more about expressing. And when you comment or like someone's update, generally, it's not communication, but applause or participation in the original expression. Even posts celebrating last night's drunken revelry are less about sharing an important message and more about sharing who you are. And when we have hundreds of friends who we see twice a decade, we are our Facebook profile.

Expression of self. Identity.

Facebook itself began not with the stream, but with the profile. Facebook's Timeline extends this idea, allowing us to share out life stories. No communication happens when you can scroll back to my baby pictures. Yet, Facebook is willing to take on this tremendous design risk and create this impressive engineering trick to support it.

When you think about something like Twitter or Google+, we come to see why the product in implicitly built more on communication than expression. Twitter has always been about the stream and, by extension, no permanent sense of _identity_ is built up. You express not yourself, but your ideas. Google+ has circles. But, circles are not tools for expression. Now, I don't mean to rule out expression on either of these platforms. I merely contend that they are stronger platforms for communication of ideas than expression of self.

What does this mean? First off, I do not think Google+ or Twitter should necessarily change. They are vastly different products. Twitter itself has termed itself the "central nervous system" of the Internet. Google+ was created to unite Google's disparate products and make sharing easier. Neither of these are fundamentally about identity.

And you can see what happens when you try and mix the two. RockMelt, the "Facebook browser," hasn't seen adoption. Why? Because it's leveraging an expressive network to make communication easier. Google Buzz failed for the same reason — trying to build a competing expressive network on a communication platform. Even though expression and sharing are intertwined, every product can only prioritize one. Tumblr chooses sharing. Pinterest chooses expression.

In thinking about social, we can then understand that within its emerging cacophony, there are clear trends emerging. Surely, expression versus identity is just one. But recognizing them will help us understand the true state of consumer demand and perhaps the future of social media.

Musings on Open Graph

2012-01-25T05:58:00.000-08:00

Facebook's Open Graph is a really neat idea. It takes the Timeline and makes it less about writing Happy Birthday on someone's wall and more about being the *backend for our social lives.*

Even better, it allows more data from outside Facebook to be integrated into Facebook. Which means Facebook can worry less about building features and products (as Google has done, with Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Reader, etc) and making Facebook "stickier" for users, because now, developers are building their apps on Facebook's APIs, so even if you leave Facebook, you're not actually leaving Facebook.

This is akin to when Google made the genius move of creating/buying Adsense. So no matter where you went on the web and no matter how long tail your query was, Google made money.

If Open Graph sees widespread adoption, I really wonder how Google can counter. I had a brief moment today where I thought maybe Google could integrate their Siri-counter, Majel, with an Open Graph+. Link Majel's commands with an Google+ Graph. So I can "checkin" with Foursquare on my phone and have it automatically post to Google+. And "checking in" becomes linked to the app, but also is separate from it.

Problem is, with Facebook, third parties see it as a marketing opportunity. With Google+, I don't get the same feeling and there's a much great fear of making yourself vulnerable via data sharing.

Let's Get Crazy Nerdy

2012-01-21T03:10:00.000-08:00

Working on Facebook integration for my app today, I'm astounded by their scope and ambition. The Open Graph and Timeline is going to ensure Facebook's dominance of social for years to come. Even after Facebook's novelty has worn off, they're ensuring their place as part of the "backbone" of the Internet. Honestly, it's incredible Google never pulled this off. It's like how Amazon beat Google to the punch with EC2. Or Apple beat them to market with Siri. This stuff is supposed to be Google backyard. Cloud computing, artificial intelligence and signal processing. And now, Facebook's Timeline beats Google to building a PLATFORM for identity on the Internet.

Honestly, if it weren't for Android, I would be questioning Google relevance. I may like Google+, but it isn't anything _new_. Google's employees need to be much, much more daring in their 20% projects. Projects that are completely new to market and only the crazy early adopters will love.

Give me a Chrome extension that records everything I do on the web and produce a meaningful conclusion for me, from all that data.
Give me a web app that watches me on my webcam, using facial tracking to record emotional reactions to site.
Give me an Android app that is always monitoring every single possible non-battery draining input (microphone, speaker, gyroscope, accelerometer, ambient light, approximate location, on and off cycles) and tell me about my lifestyle.
Give me waterproof NFC stickers that I can sew inside my pants.
In fact, give me NFC everything.
Give me webcams for my bathroom, my kitchen, my entire house, so Google can recommend things for me.

Facebook is all about making everything social. And they've pushed the boundaries of social to every part of the web. Google, do the same. Give us the opportunity to seamlessly and passively give you all the data in our lives. The people who don't trust you? Whatever. Let us, the early adopters, give you our information so you can give us recommendations. Then, let the naysayers judge.

Facebook isn't just about the newsfeed anymore. It's about the Open Graph, absorbing social information from every corner of the web. Google, its time to move beyond search and beyond the web. It's time to start soaking up unreasonable, crazy, and stupid amounts of information and pushing the boundaries of algorithms and their potential in improving our lives.

*Experimenting with how I want to post things. I love blogger's interface, but am not fond of its engagement levels. Still waiting for "Publish to Google+" to become much more integrated.

The Backend of Backrub: The Tragedy of Google App Engine

2011-09-10T22:45:00.001-07:00

Google's control over the client experience is ever-growing. What looked foolhardy to many at the time, namely the launch of Google's own browser, makes complete sense today. From the latest security patches to an HTTP replacement, Chrome is changing how the backend of the web works...without the users ever noticing, thanks to its auto-updating mechanism. Android, its own incredibly successful client software, no doubt is doing the same. Google Search is still as magical as ever. And Google's backend servers are no doubt magically being more efficient than anyone else can imagine.

What can we take away from this? Google really understands the backend. And increasingly, they control it.

There is one thing that doesn't make sense to me then. Which is, namely, Google App Engine.

I'm not sure what Google's trying to do here. They recently raised the price of App Engine, casting a considerable shadow of doubt about their intentions with the platform. Google is not the first mover in this field - Amazon's EC2 came way before they did. Not only that, they are the most open or flexible - Amazon EC2 is. So, by raising prices, what is Google trying to accomplish?

All this is clearly coincident with the return of Larry Page to power and his intention of streamlining Google's product line. While Google shutting down many of its services make a bit of sense (more wood fewer arows), changing Google App Engine is a different story.

GAE is Google's most ambitious backend play. Looking at EC2 - it has been a huge success story. Every time one of Amazon's servers goes down, half of the most successful startups go down with it. EC2 is the foundation for tomorrow's successful companies, even ones that have begun to achieve real scale.

Google needs to be willing to take the hit on Google App Engine. A win there would be huge - consumers on Google browsers or smartphones, hitting Google servers, probably using Google services, which are integrated with a simple line of code, instead of an additional library. Taking a loss of a few million a year is more than worth it. All the optimizations that Google likes to talk about at conferences can just be baked in, with the default turned on. All the HTML5 improvements, everything that Google seems to be pushing for, can be effortlessly pushed to the client.

I understand the need for Google to streamline their products and make sure they make sound business sense. But Google App Engine has the potential to be such a strategic play that their current strategy of just making it another hosting service seems shortsighted at best.

Cursor vs. Pointer

2011-08-12T02:40:00.000-07:00

In PCs, there are two distinct types of input - the keyboard and the mouse. The mouse controls the pointer and the keyboard controls the cursor. This duality - the pointer which spastically leads the way and the cursor which patiently and ponderous congregates forward - is inherent in how we use the computer.

The cursor is the do-er. He moves forward, one space at at time, each letter painstakingly paced forward. The ant, plodding forward, dull and seemingly unaware of what's beyond its little box. There is empty space that must be filled.

The pointer flies unweighted by place and responsibility. From the pointer comes all of modern computing. From the command line, we bloomed into the desktop, two dimensional space. Its utopian happiness arises from its simplicity. It zooms! And when it gets lost, it runs around in circles until you find it. It cannot pontificate - the best it can do is hover. It cannot commit - it can only click.

A click. A peck on the cheek. A dollar under your pillow.

The pointer is beauty and whimsy. Without the pointer, there is no Paint memes, no Photoshopping. No cheesy transitions in homemade movies. The pointer wears may masks, from the arrow to the hand, the hourglass to the spinning rainbow.

Yet the cursor also has its own charm. If the pointer is free, flitting from place to place, the congress of the keyboard mysteriously will the cursor in magical directions, disregarding continuity and Newtonian physics.

One moment here, then vanishing only to turn up a space away. It exercises complete Ctrl (if you will) over space and time, moving text, images, anything that dares to enter its selection. I have had dreams when the cursor, selected me, hovered over me. Mysterious master hands contemplated the X, C, and V. Will I be cut from history? Cloned and distorted? Or simply overwritten?

From the cursor's heights, he can call upon the wisdom of the ancients. Windows into alternate universes kept on tab. Another, a spotlight into command over space.

What is the PC without each? Without the pointer, it is Ommwriter. Without the cursor, it is the iPad.

Perhaps most interesting is that the greatest unification of keyboard and pointer happens when both vanish in FPS games. Then, the pointer is just the perspective and the cursor is just the shortcuts. It is in these games when the computer most vanishes and virtual seems the most real.

Given how many hours we spend in front of our computers, how much we represent ourselves in these pixels, it is certainly worth a meditation of how different these two most fundamental parts of computing are.

Google is Plus'ing all Its Properties

2011-08-05T01:35:00.000-07:00

Google Plus is creating a wave in Google. It may just be frontend...but it's how we, as customers, see Google. It really matters. Google Search, Gmail, Blogger, Google News, and now Google Docs. Obviously, Google Images, Videos, Translate, though those are considerably more lightweight than those others, being more tools than destinations.

It's nice to see a refresh of Docs today. Honestly though, it just reminds me that they still haven't implemented offline.

8 Useful Blackberry Apps for Those Migrating from iPhone/Android

2011-08-03T08:38:00.000-07:00

For those who may find themselves migrating from Android or iPhone (for whatever reason, though I'm sure it's not voluntary :P), here's a list of apps that might make you feel a little more at home on your new device. I was surprised myself when I put together this list - I had assumed that Blackberry was little more than a wasteland of RIM and script kiddie apps. Turns out not, especially with Google providing more than half a dozen nice little apps.

Enjoy!

Google Apps (Search, Gmail, Maps, etc): http://www.google.com/mobile/blackberry/
Evernote: http://www.evernote.com/about/download/blackberry.php
Dropbox: http://www.dropbox.com/blackberry
Ebay: http://mobile.ebay.com/blackberry/ebay-on-blackberry
WhatsApp: http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/2360
Foursquare: https://foursquare.com/blackberry
Windows Live Messanger: http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/687?lang=en
Weather Channel: http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/3624?lang=en

(We're not including Facebook, Twitter, Google Talk, Youtube, etc apps that are included automatically.)

Bing and Skylight

2011-08-02T21:20:00.000-07:00

Apple has learned from Google what Microsoft should have learned 5 years ago.

I remember a few years ago, when Google first release Google Docs, I debated with my roommate (now Microsoft employee) on the merits of cloud computing vs client computing. I agreed with him that bandwidth doesn't allow a truly first class experience and client apps will always be superior. Yet, I felt that the importance of collaboration vastly exceeded any desktop 'feel' or features.

Especially with the launch of Bing, Microsoft went about competing with Google completely incorrectly. Bing remains a money sink of billions of dollars...2.6 last year, 2.3 the year before that, etc...let's estimate maybe...7 billion total lost?

Let's toy with some hypotheticals.

What if Microsoft had decided to do something different with that 7 billion dollars? Say, build the largest server farm this side of Google? At 7 billion, even imagining a hefty price tag of $5000 per server (including overhead), that's 1.4 million servers, even ignoring economies of scale. Recently, it was estimated that Google had 0.9 million servers.

What might Microsoft have done with these servers? My answer: Windows Skylight.

Windows Skylight would be Windows with the Internet fully baked in. You would login to Windows and immediately, the computer would start syncing your data and your chosen apps to the local computer. Every copy of Windows (well, every authentic copy of Windows) would have a Skylight folder, much like Dropbox, that users, third party applications, and web browsers could access and use. Users would get 5 GB and third party applications would be allocated a few dozen MBs (to save any settings, etc that you wouldn't want the user to see, but would need local access to). The Internet would seep into every conceivable part of Windows. Like Google's social bounty, Microsoft would tie bonuses to how much "skylight" it could shed on their individual products. The Internet would cease to be tied to the browser, but would trickle down the every part of the operating system, not as a "feature", but as a new default.

From there, integration with Facebook and Skype and even Google would no longer be the threat it is today. They would become plugins to Microsoft apps, useful and even indispensable, but only providing data, never directly interfacing with customers. The power of the cloud would be harnessed by Microsoft's machine. And with 7...10...20, whatever billion dollars it took to build the infrastructure behind this, how it would push Windows to the forefront of innovation would be breathtaking.

The funny part is that, while Microsoft has failed to do this, someone else has: Apple. Apple has stepped forward to meet Google head-on. As Google creeps the cloud downwards with Chrome, Chrome OS, Android, and Google Apps, Apple has made an assault on the clouds with the Mac App Store, iCloud, and iTunes Match.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has decided that a square box skin is the real innovation. And while touch is definitely changing our interface, the Internet is fundamentally changing computing, what we think we can actually do with our computers. The iPhone was revolutionary because of touch, but it was only useful with Internet (music and games don't count).

It is naive to think that Microsoft could have done this five years ago. Large companies don't seem to understand innovation - only defense. Even Google is conceding that scale slows. "Put more wood behind fewer arrows."

But I rather enjoy naivety.

Gmail will be relegated to enterprise and Google Plus DM's

2011-07-20T02:30:00.000-07:00

Gmail is now just a legacy support system and DM for Google Plus.

Gmail+, Calendar+, Documents+, Reader+, YouTube+. The benefits of having the social graph rolled out across all of Google products are completely obvious. What is Blogger, soon, but Google Plus posts with customized templates?

Also, the benefits of a more open Circle model would be great. Make 'em optionally publicly editable and optionally follow-able.

Please just hurry up and do it, Google.

Chatbot Business

2011-07-18T02:41:00.000-07:00

Business ideas for whoever is running those sex chat bots

1) Long tail: the beauty of many web services is that they serve to capture the long tail through free services. So why just collect credit card information? If the chatbot isn't able to collect credit card information in the first 10 minutes of conversation (depending on how well the conversation is going), why not just convert downwards. If the stingy won't pay money, make them pay in email addresses. Clearly, if they've invested in 10 minutes of chatbot conversation, they're a captive audience. Why waste that?

2) Groupon: the power of social is unraveling the web - why not apply it to chat bots? If enough people submit their email address/credit cards, reduced price for everyone! Obviously there may be quite a few fake people, but if it means you collect email address, still a win!

Blogger's Draft Layout

2011-07-09T08:04:00.000-07:00

Draft.blogger.com is the best thing to happen to blogger since...ok, I've always hated Blogger's layout.

I'm also coming to realize just how much of a difference a good, clean layout does for a product. The Internet really has grown up.

Facebook Search

2011-06-23T21:34:00.000-07:00

Facebook will not and cannot do search.

Why? Because what so many people seem to forget is that search is a tough, tough problem. Sure, it's easy to say that "social search" provides such a rich dataset that it will improve search's relevancy tremendously. But there's one BIG problem with that. Spam.

What is spam? It is someone wanting to pay money to be at the front of the line. Link farms, SEO consultants, an entire industry currently exists for break down Google's algorithm and beat it. Now, if Facebook were to open up to search, that industry would turn its sights on Facebook and how to "beat it." Like PCs and viruses, success breeds leechers.

Oh, but it won't matter! you say. I'll be able to filter out the spammers by who I'm friends with! Yes, kind of. Except, if your friends are not so great at nuclear physics and you'd like to read up on it, what are you going to do?

Well, Facebook can build a relevancy based on everything and then tailor it to me! Once again, yes, kind of. Because it's a tough problem to solve, trying to guess expertise and intelligence based on what you write and who you friend on Facebook. And even tougher when you consider consultants around the world will be devising ways to crack the code that you haven't even written yet. And finally, even harder when Facebook accounts are easily compromised because the majority of their userbase isn't exactly the most security savvy people out there (as LulzSec proved). Some of my very intelligent friends have fallen prey to Facebook spam schemes. I probably will too, eventually.

And all this will slowly detract from Facebook's core experience - status updates and the News Feed. Why then, should Facebook attack its core reason for being, all in the hopes of "social search", an unproven, largely failed (what happened to the idea that Twitter Search was going to overtake Google?) idea, being able to take on Google, the biggest name and Ph.D. count on the Internet?

Social search is a great idea - so great that Google and Bing are trying their best to tack it onto their own engines. But social is a much more interesting one.

Why Technology Is So Great

2011-06-23T02:30:00.000-07:00

I dislike beauty. Tranquility, skipping stones, seashell sounds, sepia photographs. Looking at it, I feel this endless languor encroaching, a thousand kisses and an endless love and acceptance of now. The hopeless forgetfulness, that we might be immortally young and happy like this forever. The last evening of summer. The first time you got drunk wanted to write it all down. And you couldn't understand why she didn't love you.

Much better to debate iPhone vs. Android.

Skype purchase

2011-05-16T07:56:00.000-07:00

Overpriced, yes. But you can see why it's an appealing idea. Skype is a "verb" now and the idea of telling my Kinect "Skype Kyle" is definitely pretty cool. And, clearly, Skype doesn't really have any future as a stand-alone company. Calls and video calls are pretty much...calls and video calls.

Facebook Send

2011-04-26T00:39:00.000-07:00

Today, Facebook introduced their new send button. Like everything else, sites will need to implement it themselves, but it's still a powerful new way of sharing. Facebook is increasingly demonstrating that it is going to build a better personal messaging system (though, I still think that, without labels or folders or any organizational system aside from "people", it can't replace email). It's breathtaking how good they are at social.

Two things I have to say about this:
1) Facebook needs a more automatic way to create groups. Like iPhone's automatic foldering system, I want to be able to use the send button, but have Facebook remember the group easily. I don't want to have to label it or formally create it. The group exists in the sending. Metadata is bureaucracy.

2) Gmail needs social labels. It's such an obvious idea to me. I hate that moment when I debate sending something to my friends, because I know that they're busy or are meticulous about having a zero inbox. I just want to share it, but beforehand, tell them "Hey, this is just for funsies" or "This could be really important for your job." But, of course, doing this right is no picnic.

With Facebook "Like" and comments and questions and groups, Facebook is increasingly demonstrating that it thinks it can build a better web - one that is tied to an identity and is easier to participate in. And so far, they've been doing amazingly.

Bandwidth Caps

2011-04-12T20:26:00.000-07:00

There is no arguing for bandwidth caps. They are technically and economically stupid.

What they are attempting to do is resolve the network congestion issues. Sure, set the caps however high you want - we'll still hit it. I recently bought a USB 3.0 hard drive for work and marveled at the transfer speeds...until I remembered that Thunderbolt is out and transferring an entire movie high def in less than 5 seconds is now possible. And to think that not ten years ago, hard drives measured in terabytes was only for industry giants and today you can buy it from your local Walmart.

Sure, you could say that no one really needs to use more than 150GB of "Internet" per month. But anyone will realize that in less than 5 years, we'll undoubtedly be using service that rapidly hit up against that limit. Hell, a family of four, in five years, will easily be watching at least 1 hour/person/day x 4 people x 31 days = over 120 hours of online video a day. If we assume that it's all HD quality, at around a gig an hour, you're barely scrapping by the 150GB cap. Not to mention any audio streaming, browsing, online backup.

It's ridiculous. It stifles the most basic, taken-for-granted kind of innovation - hardware innovation. Just lay down some more optic fiber. The Japanese and Koreans are doing it. Why can't we?

Google's PageRank

2011-04-11T23:09:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about this today...

Google's search algorithm used to rely on sites linking to other sites. The thing is that, before "social networking", websites, blogs, and forums were the people's Facebook walls, where they posted about things that they cared about/wanted to share. When more and more people are sharing links through Facebook, what does that mean for Google's search algorithm?

Color

2011-04-07T19:09:00.000-07:00

Techcrunch has a great article on the "App of the Month" in the blogosphere: Color. Color is a photo sharing app. But unlike any other photo application, it got $41 million in funding off the bat. And it is the most inquisitive app out there.

Brilliantly, Color uses the microphone, GPS, and any other indicator to automatically group people's photos together. It's not exactly a huge deal, but it's still a brilliant implementation. Techcrunch emphasizes that it's speed that makes the difference. It's true. But the reason why speed is so important is because no one cares about tagging and all that other stuff. A look at any inbox's attachments will show that. Filenames are carelessly created, no meta-tagging is ever done. People don't want to spend their lives filling out meta-information. That's why Facebook shifted over to personal streams, as opposed to profiles, and why Google is doing Smart Labels. Meta is bureaucracy. Meta is paperwork. People just want to get that stuff out of the way so they can do what they love.

When it comes to products then, it's clear that you need to identify exactly why people are using your product. Remove everything else in the way: registration, tagging, saving, filtering, sending. Do it, get it done, get out.

Done.

Google Chrome

2011-04-06T21:39:00.000-07:00

I search a damned lot more because of the Omnibox. Crazy.

Light Peak

2011-03-17T03:19:00.000-07:00

Before this, I used to think that Light Peak was cute, but kind of unnecessary for average Joes. But now, having worked on a video team for a bit, I see how formidable a use case it is. Just the ability to not only transfer, but work on video files or large numbers of high resolution images on external hard drives will undoubtedly change how we use them. Instead of dumb backup, they become actual hard drives.

It's a small thing, but when you're considering purchasing a MacBook Air, with only 128GB of space, probably only 100GB of which is usable, it makes delicious sense.

iPad 2 and Flash supply

2011-03-08T06:15:00.000-08:00

A recent NY Times article on iPad 2's impressively low price really got me thinking about the economics of it all. Apple has this great position right now - massive sales, no serious competitors for miles (Motorola Xoom has a bit to go before it threatens the iPad, especially with Android not being fully developed for tablet for another few months, while Google irons out the kinks). It's kind of like what iPhone had when it first came out. A "category-defining product."

Except Apple's learned some harsh lessons. Steve's experience with the Mac (and it being eclipsed by Windows) and iPhone (with Android outselling it) cannot be pleasant for him. Especially when he is absolutely sure that Apple has a better product.

What Apple no doubt wants to duplicate, then, is the success of the iPod. Where the only competitors were half-hearted attempts to mimic an interface that was imprinted into the consumer's mind (Zune) or just cheap music-playing flash drives that Apple could eventually price out when they had firmly established their design, brand, and ecosystem.

We can easily imagine such a world - the iPad being the dominate tablet, with all others being cheap imitations. Unfortunately for Apple, Google has entered the market and is bent on creating a competitive operating system. And Apple knows that, given enough time, Google will eventually catch up...95% of the way. Which is close enough that consumers may not know the difference. Especially as, unlike the iPod, tablets are essentially one big screen. There's no iconic design or clickwheel. Just software.

Apple's only choice is just to create such ubiquity in these few years, when consumers are being introduced to the iPad and tablets in general, that everything else seems like a cheap imitation, like Zunes to the iPod. Even now, Android phones feel less premium than iPhones.

How can Apple do this though? Google is quite formidable in software development. Apple has decided, then, to go after the weak underbelly of the Android tablets - the hardware. And not the "fragmentation" FUD, which Google will undoubtedly slowly remedy over time. No, instead it will be the physical chips. By making those strategic partnerships with manufacturers, Apple gets to horde flash memory in the short run, forcing competitors into high prices and lower margins. And given the decentralized nature of Android manufacturers, if they find it to be not so profitable, their efforts may flounder as they look to more profitable, short-term pastures. Kind of like iPod competitors...no one cared to compete because the initial cost of setting up an ecosystem, plus the already slim profits they'd have to maintain to get devices into consumer hands, just wasn't attractive.

I feel like this almost happened to Android phones, up until the Nexus One came out. Aside from the Droid, most Android phones had a second-rate feel to them. No one was excited about Android phones. And while it's easy to say, "Oh, don't be silly. It was just the economics of it," I don't think we should underestimate the "cool factor." Early adopters, mobile developers, and journalists all want to be on the leading edge of the "next big thing." Android just didn't have that feel until Google came out swinging with the Nexus One.

Apple is definitely playing a tight game...and they have to. And while so many people think it's inevitable that Android or even Windows tablets will split the market and Apple will just be the "high end", like PCs or smartphones, I think we shouldn't forget about the iPod. Apple is a smart company and more than understanding business and economics, they understand consumers desires. And that understanding isn't just good for design, it's good for business.

Gmail's Mute

2011-03-01T09:25:00.000-08:00

Today, I learned about the "mute" function in Gmail. It's for ignoring a conversation.

Amazing.

Also, Google, please implement "Google Messages" - unified conversations across Gmail, Google Chat/Talk, Google Voice, Google Docs chat. Even if the conversation doesn't make a whole lot of sense because they're in different contexts, having them all there, in one place, in chronological order, would be hugely helpful.

Organize around people!

How to setup a drag and drop file sharing web server on Mac

2011-02-17T19:25:00.000-08:00

Recently felt frustrated by services like mailbigfile.com or even ge.tt, simply due to limitations in upload/download speed on their end. (Note: I would highly recommend Ge.tt to anyone who doesn't want to go through the effort of setting up their own server. I'm not affiliated with them, but they're a great service, beautiful interface, and fastest I've seen around.)

I work on a media team, so we often need to transfer large files (several hundred megabytes) to people outside the company (thus ruling out using the company's servers). I dabbled with the idea of creating a P2P cloud, where I could create torrents of files and share them. However, it wasn't ideal, as leechers aren't able to immediately find peers torrents without a sufficient number of seeds - it can take a few minutes. Also, it would require duplicating files across multiple servers, which seems unnecessary. Finally, not everyone, certainly on their work computers, has bittorrent software.

The other day, I had a realization of how dumb I was being. Why use torrents when I can just do a direct P2P. Wonderfully, OS X has an Apache server built in, making my life a few installs easier, and following these directions, I had a simple, drag and drop, file sharing solution. By mounting the folder on my coworker's computers (within the LAN), they could easily share files.

Still, it was incomplete - while the location was easy enough for me to understand, my coworkers loved how Ge.tt just gave them a link - they didn't need to think about it. At first, I thought Automator could help me, but Automator has a half-baked implementation of variables (you can't use them wherever) and soon I realized that I would need Applescript. I googled around, but couldn't find anything. So I learned a bit of Applescript and set this up.

To do this:

Mount the folder to your local computer.
Right click and select "Folder Actions" (something like that, varies on versions of OS X)
Add a new script with the following (make sure to make the all-caps changes)

property dialog_timeout : 30 -- set the amount of time before dialogs auto-answer.
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
try
  tell application "Finder"
   --get the name of the folder
   set the folder_name to the name of this_folder
   set the clipboard to ""
   repeat with current_file in added_items
   display dialog "I JUST PUT RANDOM CONFIRMATION TEXT HERE"
   set the clipboard to (get the clipboard) & return & "BASE DOMAIN AND DIRECTORY HERE (in my case it was http://myusername.dyndns.org/~mycomputerusername/" & (the name of current_file as text)
   end repeat
  end tell
end try
end adding folder items to

Optional: create an alias to place on your desktop for easier access.

Hooray, I just contributed my first bit of code to the Internets. If you're reading this and you think it's good, please link/tweet/otherwise share. I know there must be lots of people out there who would find this useful, especially in companies (where upload/download speeds are much faster than Ge.tt could ever manage).

Microsoft and Nokia

2011-02-13T20:43:00.000-08:00

What an obvious announcement. Nokia's announcement that it will begin adopting Windows Phone 7 as its smartphone platform was its only real choice. I'm a huge Android fan, but the alignment of interests was too good. Nokia needed to preserve its brand...and with dozens of Android handsets in the market already, joining that crowd would have easily crowded Nokia out. In fact, Nokia's very special relationship with Microsoft is undoubtedly making other manufacturers a little more wary of the platform. Microsoft may have 10 handsets out, but I don't see that many more in the works. Nokia's suffers less of a chance, here, to just be one among many, another commodity.

So it makes sense. And, initially, it may seem to be a potential step back from open source. But that's not what I'm thinking about.

What I'm rather excited about is its potential for web apps. Right now, we've got iPhone, Android. Blackberry is struggling, but is still a dark horse contender. If WP7 becomes a viable platform in its own right, developing apps for three or four separate platforms, with all the version control issues that arise from that, becomes hugely problematic. Maybe not for Foursquare or Facebook, but for any other web startup, it's tough and tougher. Not to mention that if you have a great app idea and you start it off in iPhone, chances are that someone else will see it, love it, and build it for Android within weeks. Web apps allow you to uniformly deploy across all platforms.

I know that reality remains far away. Blackberry and WP7's browsers are laughable (so developers tell me) and we still do not know how sustainable their market share is. But, for those of us who are foolish enough to believe in openness and all that feel-good jazz, there's definitely a lot of silver lining to this closed-source cloud.

Game-based Learning

2011-02-09T04:06:00.000-08:00

There are certain buzz words among educators. One I've been thinking about lately is "Game-based learning."

I'm a gamer myself. I have long admired the power of games to focus our thinking and delight us. We memorize and practice and persevere in the face of impossible odds. It is no wonder that teachers, seeing our endurance, have wanted to capture it into learning.

And I have no doubt that it can work. Given the right game mechanics, the correct amount of socialization, games do have tremendous potential for learning, especially for brute memorization of content. Yet, is this why we are learning? All the time, I often think back to the physics or calculus that I pored over in my childhood how useless it is to my present day. Yet why do we learn it? Part of it is, yes, we teach a million children physics in the hopes that one might someday be a physicist (rough odds, but close enough). But honestly, I believe the trials of schools are given to us for us to teach ourselves how to...teach ourselves.

Truly immersive games, the kind with 3D characters and plots, baby us through our educations. They don't give us the freedom and challenge to think for ourselves. Sure, we might memorize the periodic tables and score higher on our SATs, but will these students still be able to learn after the game is over?

Don't get me wrong - games clearly have a place within education. But I favor simpler games, games that focus our attention on the problem, not immerse us in a magical world in an effort to teach us science. Games should still give us enough room to think, so that we remain focused on the material...and not just beating the game.

Social Networks

2011-02-07T19:11:00.000-08:00

In another study that confirms common sense, teens aren't using email as much! Facebook and Twitter lack that odorous burden of obligation - that just anyone can email you and it sits there, in your inbox, needing a reply. Can you imagine if every status update of even your top 20 friends was emailed to you?

Instead, Facebook and Twitter have created the idea of the stream - you put things out there into the public. The requirement of participation has vanished and even the bar of participation has been lowered to a single click (like!). We live in this perpetual stream of information anyway - Facebook's just turned it into a game.

It's odd, but ever since Facebook unveiled its Messages platform, I constantly am reflecting upon how much sense it makes. At first, I was stunned by how limited it was - that conversations would be wholly organized around persons, that they would all blur together. I told myself, "We all have relationships with many different contexts. This groups everything into one context."

Yet, when I find myself searching my inbox, I realize that it's not true. I don't really use labels, except occasionally. The majority of my labels are applied by filters, filters that are generally, "if I get emails from this person, apply 'work' label." While I'm sure there are people whose inbox are chaotic enough and themselves gmail-savvy enough to use labels effectively (I've seen them - they have labels that extend for pages), that's not me and that's definitely not the majority of the human race. Facebook Messages, while very imperfect, are built around how we actually categorize our conversations - by people.

And while we still need things like Gmail for our work and productivity, how much longer will this be true? Phone calls remain vital, but text messaging has made them niche, formal. And unlike sms, the Facebook platform will continue to evolve. Rather selfishly, I would love to see them implement social labels, a pipe dream that I've had for a while. Much like Facebook Groups, it makes sense to allow members of the conversation to help organize it. Labels would become less personal and more contextual, per conversation (obviously, letting your friend add labels might mean a proliferation of "lol" and "omg" labels, undesirable in the pristine Gmail inbox).

No doubt Facebook will come up with its own solution (the stupefying genius of Groups should be clear to anyone, just the iPhone's folders). Still, I'm very excited to see what's next.

WebM

2011-01-18T23:27:00.000-08:00

I did a paper on h.264 vs WebM in college and it's funny that Google's made this move. I feel like a lot of people may poo-poo the move, but it's definitely a smart move. Such a vast majority of people use Flash still that Google's removal of h.264 support doesn't affect normal consumers. And with Firefox and Opera decidedly on the WebM side, it's a powerful consortium of browsers. Out of the internet-savvy audience, I'd say that the majority use one of the three browsers. Most people who use the default browsers (IE and Safari) aren't the type who really care about HTML5 anyways and are likely to stick to Flash for years to come.

If it were just a question of browsers, I'm pretty sure that this single stroke would wipe out any question. The only question, in my mind, is mobile devices and, in the next few years, TV sets. The hardware will be supporting h.264 and hardware manufacturers tend to be much more risk-averse. The iPhone/iPad alone occupy such huge market shares and mindshare. Companies are building out for those devices, simply because of the prestige. And their videos will all be encoded for h.264.

Without a doubt, we'd all benefit from a future with WebM. We can only hope that the next year will bring additional hardware support and no patent lawsuits.

Why Google has already won with Chrome OS

2010-12-20T21:28:00.000-08:00

So many blogs are talking about what Chrome OS needs to do to "win", but honestly, I don't think it really matters. Google knew from the get-go that Chrome OS was never going to replace mainstream computing - Windows, OSX, or even Ubuntu. Yet, in the age of the iPad, I have yet to see anyone realize how Chrome OS doesn't need to replace anything in order to win.

In the press, Chrome OS is suffering from the same issue as the iPad. Part of it is that Google released an unfinished software to the press. You can definitely see them bending under their own promise to release Chrome OS "this year". And, it's such a state of beta right now, I know that in a few months (or rather, in a few releases), the inevitable "redemption" blog posts will start coming out ("I trashed Chrome OS when it first came out, but while my trashing still stands, Google has done a lot of work on it and Chrome OS can occasionally be handy. I told you it had potential!").

The other part is that Chrome OS isn't supposed to fit in under any of the "mainstream" computing standards. Chrome OS isn't supposed to replace anything - it's just supposed to make one thing a lot simpler. But, when the press reports on it, it has to report to an audience that only understands the current state of technology...hence, the press has to compare it to that standard. But Chrome OS is still incredibly useful - having a living room computer you can just leave there, without needing to charge it or even think about. And while I doubt I would buy a Chrome OS laptop myself, on my Dell Latitude E4310, I have a second "power button" that is supposed to fast-boot. I can imagine Google working with hardware manufacturers to implement Chrome OS as the fastboot option.

For Google, though, Chrome OS doesn't need market share at all. Even if it became widely adopted, Google might see a few million...maybe enough to pay for the engineers that work on it. But what it will do is continue to encourage developers that the web is the place to develop applications. In doing this, it loosens Window's grip on the consumer mind. Sure, that might drive a lot of consumers directly into Apple's hands. Yet...that's even better A world where Apple suddenly has 20% of the computer market share is one where developers no longer can just build a Windows application (especially as Apple owners tend to be the "target market", being more affluent) and web applications become the way to go.

Already, whenever I use an Apple product, aside from Adobe's software and Office, I spend all my time in the browser. I've argued in the past that the Internet, and now web apps, have made it possible for mainstream consumers to switch at all. Imagine if Google or Youtube were Windows-only applications. Apple desktops would be littered with virtual machines.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing what the next few months will bring for Chrome OS - especially in terms of cheap, cheap hardware, ubiquitous SSDs, and built-in connections. I cringe at the inevitable bloatware and gaudy designs. I know that it really won't change my day-to-day work computing. But for Google at least, I'd say that even a stalemate will be a win.

Lamebook

2010-11-22T17:41:00.000-08:00

Update: They fixed it. Yay Facebook!

I just started liking Facebook and they go and do this.

Try posting "lamebook.com" to Facebook. You get this:

Honestly, I don't give a damn about lamebook. I briefly looked at it and it's funny...but nothing special. But that's precisely it - it's just another website. This one in particular does Facebook parodies. Oh, and is engaged in litigation with Facebook.

As of today, whenever you try and post a link from lamebook or even type lamebook.com, Facebook doesn't let you. It's incredible!

I can't imagine Facebook doing this very often, but the very fact that Facebook has decided to block a site, simply because they disagree with it, is...kind of the definition of censorship. A lot of other services do protect their users (like Google Instant's censorship), but they don't prevent access completely - in the end, it's up to the user.

Worst of all, Facebook has just debuted their email system, where we get our username@facebook.com. Unless Facebook reverses this decision, it'd be hard to imagine adopting it as a service. God forbid there is ever a Facebook browser - would lamebook.com constantly 404?

I certainly hope that Facebook is mature enough to make the right next steps.

Internet Punctuation

2010-11-09T20:43:00.000-08:00

Google is the question mark. Facebook is the exclamation mark.

Every time I'm in my browser and I have a thought that ends in a question mark, I go to Google. And every time I have thought that ends in an exclamation mark, I go to Facebook/Twitter.

Obviously, regular thoughts, that would normally end in periods, are literally just things that I think. But I wouldn't be surprised if another service came along to dominate the infamous ellipses. Like the question mark and exclamation mark, it is a punctuation that leads elsewhere. The period is inert. The ellipses begs reflection. And reflections need a place to happen.

Internet Punctuation

2010-11-09T20:26:00.000-08:00

Facebook is wrong to not let Gmail import my Facebook contacts. Facebook can do all it want to point out the hypocrisy of Google (over Google's Orkut export excuses), but it doesn't mean that Facebook is going the right thing. You can import Facebook contacts on Yahoo, Aol, and Microsoft email. This is our data, not Facebook's, and how it is used should be judged by us, not Facebook's strategic planning to leverage its way into the Internet.

Facebook's greatest advantage is obviously its social graph and thus it is loathe to give it away. But, it seem to me, that Twitter is going fine, despite allowing anyone to grab its social graph.

No matter how you spin it, Facebook is doing the wrong thing here.

Lars' departure to Facebook

2010-11-01T18:39:00.000-07:00

Perhaps we all must come to this realization - that a movement we joined, an idea we believed in, has moved on without us. That all good things come to be taken for granted and thus come to an end.

Recent report about Google are a little dismaying, though they make some sense. Google has grown up, shaping up. No more late nights with Dr. Pepper and Cheetos. Time for morning jogs and oatmeal breakfasts. Google Apps and Android are perhaps the most obvious examples of this. In Google Apps, Google has had to build a sales force and customer service. In Android, they've needed to compromise with carriers. The closing of Wave signified that Google isn't just a free-for-all playground anymore.

As always, success has now penned them in. It's painful to see. Google is a search company. They do a lot of other stuff, but all their money comes from search. And so must all their priorities. At first, I was blinded by the all-encompassing simplicity and beauty of the search box. So simple, so flexible, so useful. And search, guided by keywords, will never go away.

But when we turn to Google's push into mobile - Android - we start to see how search begins to be distracting. Without a doubt, search is incredibly useful - but so many aspects of the actual operating system, small things really, are ignored. Something like Expose, an integral function in OS X...you don't see Google coming up with it.

And then the end of Wave. That was odd, coming from Google. That something so obviously...engineer-y would be shut down. Why? I admittedly didn't use Google Wave that much, but only because there was no compelling use case. Nothing I couldn't do in Google Docs instead. But that's never been what Google Wave was about - it was an incredible technology, built in seclusion in sort of the ultimate Google Labs. They gave him a check and he ran with it. And made a great product.

Maybe it's just me, but I kept expecting Google would make another revolutionary product. Like Gmail, still (in my opinion) the best free webmail out there. But I've come to realize that might not be Google's destiny. They're not a movement. They're not an idea. They just a great company with some great people.

Also, I'm personally pretty happy that so many Googlers have gone to Facebook. Google's ideas on open source and great APIs are just phenomenal. No doubt they'll carry those ideas over.

Frameworks and Communities

2010-10-27T11:21:00.000-07:00

Today, a coworker came in, excited about Sinatra, the Ruby web framework. It was cool, having him describe it to us, show us how simple and flexible it was. This same guy had been exploring Ruby on Rails for a while and I guess he found something better.

Listening to him, I realized something. For me, a completely novice programmer, it's really about the framework or the language. I really just care about the community. I am always reminded of what my friend Jason words. Asking him one day (he hopes to write someday) if he'd want to write the next Harry Potter, he said no. Even with all the money and fame it would come with, it's not really what he would want. For him, and I suspect for most writers, it was about "connecting with people who are like you."

The world is filled with a lot of different kinds of people. And while knowing all sorts is great, in the end, I think I'm happiest when I'm working with people who are like me, who I can understand and vice versa.

I think it's really important to think about things that way. In tech, we really get lost in specs and features and flexibility. But I think community matters a lot. At least it does for me.

I hate programming environments

2010-10-13T17:37:00.000-07:00

Maybe this is just a me thing, but I hate setting up programming environments. They are, literally, the worst part of programming. I mean, debugging is frustrating, but as a beginner programmer, I don't mind so much. I feel like I learn a lot while debugging (well, at least I learn how ridiculously careless and stupid I can be). But setting up a programming environment is neither productive nor instructive. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but almost anytime I try and setup Google App Engine or Ruby on Rails on my laptop, I always am missing something. I follow the directions as closely as I can, but inevitably, something silly breaks. It'd be like having to troubleshoot Microsoft Word before you can use it for the first time, combing through forums and search engine results, when all you want to write is a little poem.

I know this is such a minor criticism and is probably revealing more about my own ignorance than anything, but honestly, when I'm learning a new language and am really excited about it and am ready to try out my first Hello World program, nothing is worse than spending an hour or two trying to figure out why it won't work.

I guess, in conclusion, I want to buy a Mac. October 20th, Macbook Air update, here we come!

Facebook Groups and Gmail Labels

2010-10-12T12:47:00.000-07:00

Facebook Groups is brilliant

Clearly, Facebook Groups is an incredibly clever and brilliant solution to Facebook lists. It harnesses the kind of energy that the Internet has in spades - obsessive neatness. It's the same energy that created Wikipedia (a need to correct knowledge errors) and the same reason so many tech nerds keep their computer desktops spotless. Everyone loves keeping a sanctuary of neatness in their lives, whether it be their beds, desks, or computers.

Facebook, I think, is harnessing the same energy. Not everyone will make Facebook Groups. Honestly, I went on and made one, to see what it was like, and then decided that was enough. I think most people will do that. Or else why would Twitter work? We just want to post something (kind of like how I write here), and we don't really mind who sees it.

But in our social circles, there's always that person that's exceptionally good at organizing people. The one that you depend on when you're not sure who to call or what to do on a weekend night. And when you do, you get the same answer, "I dunno, what do you want to do?" Someone eventually says, "We're doing this. I'm going to invite these people. And we are going to rock this party." And it rocks.

Facebook Group harnesses the same thing. Someone steps up to the plate and organizes the group. Depending on the group, it may or may not be you, but we all find it useful.

Facebook Groups = Social Labels?

What does this have to do with Gmail labels? Well, as I wrote when Buzz first came out, Buzz is fundamentally a label that professes a private/public split. In both the technical and figurative sense, a "buzz" is an email that is public. However, it hasn't been terribly successful (I think this has to do with culture. If you're building an online community, it needs culture, not just roads - see my previous post about building social tools vs. online communities). In addition to lacking any sort of culture, what Facebook Groups has revealed is that the public/private binary is perhaps too limiting. Perhaps we don't just post privately and publicly, but to different contexts, different groups.

Which is why the idea of Gmail labels become all the more interesting. You see, Buzz could have had Facebook Groups all along. Buzz was a "public" label. Buzz should have created social labels. Public ones could have been like Twitter hash tags. Private ones, like mailing lists or, now, like Facebook Groups. Mailing lists are great, but they're hopelessly linear, not supporting specific comments, "likes", editing, etc. And the analogy was not beyond Google's grasp: shared folders in Google Docs.

Collaborative != Social

Of course, my ramblings here seem to contradict what I've said before. "Google shouldn't be building social how's (how is this useful?), they should be building social why's (why should I join?)." I go back on that a little bit. Facebook is a fantastic social tool. Google, with its Gmail and Google Docs, isn't. They're productivity tools. Collaboration does not equal social.

Always an interesting space to watch.

Python Decorators

2010-10-07T20:58:00.000-07:00

Today, I finally understood what decorators in python are.

If we have the functions:

eatBreakfast()
eatLunch()
eatDinner()

The decorator would be:

def eatingProtocol(meal):
   def manners(*args, **kwargs):
   washHands()
   meal(*args, **kwargs)
   wipeMouth()

And we'd have:

@eatingProtocol
eatBreakfast()

@eatingProtocol
eatLunch()

@eatingProtocol
eatDinner

It took half an hour to get to this.

Techcrunch is hilariously bad sometimes

2010-10-02T18:02:00.000-07:00

***NOTE*** Skip first four paragraphs if you value your time And then skip the rest too. :)

Today had another hilarious post on Techcrunch by Rifkin, whose last post was about why he was angry at Gmail. Spoiler alert, it's because he can't follow directions and pay his bills. And when he decides he wants to pay his bills, he's infuriated that he, one of gmail's POWER USERS (read, powerful, influential users), he's not whisked to the front of the line. Most entertaining, is the number one comment, with 118 likes, the most I've ever seen on Techcrunch comments: "It looks a bit like Google warned you fairly, you ignored it, and now you're complaining. Sorry, mate. This is your fault."

But that was just an entertaining diversion. What was I saying? Oh, yes, today's post. Today, Rifkin decided to calculate Facebook's revenues five years from now. How much, do you say? $30-40 billion. Yes. Facebook has not even $2 billion in revenue now and in five years, it will multiply its revenue by at least 15x.

Now, I don't have a crystal ball into the future, but apparently Rifkin does. Not only will Facebook be dominating social advertising (that one's pretty true and his $10 billion seems reasonable), but it apparently will be dominating games, groupon-like deals, e-commerce, online banking, email, and photos.

Now, at first, it's easy to think why this might be true. Social is, logically, the next step for the web. Unfortunately what Rifkin forgets is that it's unlikely everyone else is planning on standing still. The gaming industry has got to be one of the most nimble industries out there. Groupon or Foursquare won't just disappear. Amazon and Paypal aren't just standing still either. He pegs Facebook's e-commerce netting $12 billion. Amazon's current total revenues is $24 billion. Finally email and photos? The part where he suggested paid for email accounts will account for a billion dollars? Or that Facebook will get $1 billion off "photo schwag." Hilarious. Makes you remember that Techcrunch is just a blog.

Not to say that the article wasn't worth reading. The article reminded me that Facebook does have an uncomfortable monopoly on social networking, just like Google in the old days. But what it also made me realize is how portable our "online identities" really are. Everyone is theorizing about Facebook lock-in, but honestly, I don't think it's that bad. Sure, our "friends" list is pretty thorough these days. But Facebook isn't making money off our contact list. It's making its money off our continued engagement with the site. Reading the News Feed, updating our status, and sharing bits of our lives. I used to have a site where I did that too. Xanga. I used to update religiously. Sure, my posts were longer than status updates (well, I guess I really haven't changed too much), but it served a similar purpose. When I started using Facebook, at no point did I ever try and "import" my old posts. I just pointed any interested parties at the url and left it at that.

This means that when the Facebook competitor comes out, moving won't be hard. Sure, we might want to move our friends list over, but that's just (relatively) static data. More importantly, if we start using that product every day, then we'll naturally update our friends list. We all had our contacts list before Facebook. When we came to Facebook, did we friend every single one? Of course not.

That's why I don't think Facebook's going to be making $40 billion anytime soon. Social is great, but don't mistake social with Facebook and don't think that Facebook integration spells commoditzation for everyone else. Facebook might be able to squeeze money out of startups like Zynga or Foursquare. But when it decides to take on Amazon in e-commerce or Google in email, it's going to take a lot longer than 5 years to become a major competitor.

Thoughts on GigaOM's Google Me article

2010-09-19T13:36:00.000-07:00

GigaOM's article on Google's social push was quite interesting. Their hypothesis is as such: social is not a widget or a new thread in the fabric of the web. It's not about bringing social to the web. Instead, the web will increasingly be drawn into the social.

I find myself agreeing. I write things here, but I don't intend to post them to Facebook. Largely, this journal is for myself. Facebook is a place for sharing personal things. This blog is a place for rambling. Twitter is a place for quick opinions.

The internet has long enable boundless communication. Barlow's declaration was true - the Internet is an entirely New World. But, no one is interested in walking around in an endless, open highway. Highways are only interesting in that they lead somewhere. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

It's unfortunate, because Google's strengths have always been in infrastructure - both in terms of its data centers, but also its products. All of them having been about "getting out of the way." Facebook has built its brand around building a place to share - about building walls, instead of roads, to continue to the analogy.

Obviously, Google can't just let Facebook be, anymore than Microsoft could let Google be. And an engineer's thinking will be "why solve a solved problem?" Why duplicate Facebook? There's no winning that market and the network effect ensures that you're crippled from day one.

We can look back a few years to find a reasonable answer. Bing. During Google's dominance, it seemed like there was no possible way anyone could beat Google. Its market share crept up year after year. We were all sure that the last holdovers were just old people and default homepages. A lot of energy went into building alternative solutions - Q&A sites, semantic web, etc. But in the end, you either beat 'em or join 'em, and the Q&A sites are all open to indexing and semantic web hasn't really changed how we surf.

It wasn't until Bing that Google's market share creep has slowed. Google obviously takes them seriously, given the changes we've seen in Google search mimicking Bing. And Bing, despite its "decision engine" marketing, decided to confront Google head-on and has succeed because of it. Why? Because of instead of trying to be clever, they have been direct. And they have benefited from the years of training and expectation that Google has taught us consumers - type in keywords into a box and you'll get some links. Consumers understood it from day one. And growing market share is always easier than growing a market.

Google's strength has always been around taking a basic product and iterating to excellence. Gmail is evidence of this. And while Gmail still doesn't have nearly the market share that Yahoo or Hotmail do, no one will say it is a failure. Google Me can be the same thing, if Google commits to it.

We don't want another road or more plumbing. We don't want a new "clever take" on social or a new "fundamental" technology. We like Facebook. If Google thinks their network will be better, they need to prove it head on or not at all.

Rental Economy

2010-09-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

The controversy of the Autodesk EULA ruling brought up a very interesting trend in digital intellectual property. Piracy, of course, has long been a difficult issue. The music industry has seen plummeting profits and the movie industry is similarly worried. Now, technically, piracy cannot be stopped without serious changes in the law governing ISP behavior. Even if BitTorrent traffic is throttled, other protocols can be used. So long as there is digital connections, piracy is inevitable...even natural. Honestly, if you have a song and your friend asks you if he can listen to it, you aren't going to refuse him. Art craves audiences.

For the most part, I don't think that's what the industry should be worried about either. While we all once hypothesized that all digital content would be freely shared and everyone would participate in the creation and consumption of digital content, it's beginning to be pretty clear that creation isn't in everyone's genes. Some people just want to remix or just plain consume. Not only that, but also we've realized that just because we can pirate, doesn't mean we will. While there are many people who will, it seems that a significant portion of the population, if not the majority, will purchase digital content if the barriers (both in money and effort) are sufficient low. Certainly the type of music most vulnerable to piracy, pop music, where seeders are plentiful and bandwidth is all-you-can-eat, hasn't disappeared - Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber still arrived. Fact is, fans still buy things. And you can't gift a pirated CD.

How, then, should industry be reacting? The obvious way is the walled EULA gardens we see in the App Store or Hulu. Why pirate when Hulu has them? However, reality attests to the insufficiency of these gardens. What is then?

For the answer, I look to the publishing industry, which has had a long time to watch and prepare for the inevitable wave of piracy. Unlike the music industry, they have not, for the most part, sued anyone. Sure, they have been slow to adopt digital formats, but caution is understandable. What they have interfered with is Amazon, the iTunes of ebooks. How? They've prevented Amazon from subsidizing their books. In doing so, they are protecting the value of their books. Unlike movies or music, books have a long history of being cherished and passed down. How many people pass down records? VHS? Like any good economic asset, books have value today because they have value tomorrow. The publishing industry recognizes that and wants to transfer that notion, that books have inherent value (and not just cost + profit margin), to the digital age. Prices play a multifaceted role in capitalism - both as a barrier to entry but also as a measure of value. This stands for both the producer and consumer.

In other words, don't undervalue your content and we won't either. We might pirate it, but if we love it, we will buy it. Why? Because life isn't about saving money, just as it isn't about making money - it's about valuing what you love.

Apple TV requires commentary

2010-09-05T22:25:00.000-07:00

In thinking about Apple TV, the obvious comparison is to Google TV. Announced within the same year, based on competing platforms, they're a match made in blogging heaven. Apple versus Google, the epic battle!. Except, I think this battle's already won - Apple's got it. And it's not because Apple has better marketing or because it's more "fashionable" - those have always been the easy arguments. It's about what we can fit into our lives. Engadget expresses the idea very eloquently - basically Apple TV fits in where our VCR used to be. Google TV is trying to muscle into where our cable box IS. Apple TV is wonderfully cheap and a wonderful replacement to that aging VCR or even DVD player. More importantly, Apple TV is right about what people want out of their TVs. Google has always been a company that believes in the limitless potential of technology. But Apple understands the simple functionality of appliances. Sometimes, a TV is just a TV. Sometimes, that's all you want out of it. There will always be the geeks that will flock to Google's vision. Hell, I'm one of them. But that doesn't mean that it will ever make it past hobby. If I really wanted a full browser and apps...why wouldn't I just hook up a small desktop to my TV?

The only thing that I think Google's got going for it is that Google's good at the plumbing. Android.

Problem is, Apple's got leverage. Apple's got the iOS ecosystem and all the wonderful gaming potentials that arise thereof. And without set tops in living rooms, Google's expertise will have to give away to market power.

There's only one company, in my humble opinion, that's got this right: Microsoft. Xbox. Xbox could completely displace Apple TV or Google TV, is the right deals fall into place. What husband/son wouldn't play evangelist to their wife/mother if Xbox had all the movies and TV shows she wanted? Combined with Kinect, Xbox has a pretty compelling story to tell. I'm not buying a 360, mind you (why would you buy a 5 year old computer?), but I'll definitely be in line for the next Xbox.

So, Apple TV, I wish you well. Google...if you're going to do Google TV, adjust your expectations please. Limitless potential does not mean limitless markets - adoption is going to be slow. Less Google Wave arrogance and more Gmail patience please. And Microsoft...bring Kinect to Windows 8 please!

PS - The sad thing is that Sony actually has a wonderful story to tell here. The PS3, PSP, Sony Pictures, etc, Sony could very easily give Xbox a run for its money. Alas...some things are not to be.

At Home

2010-08-22T21:00:00.000-07:00

I'm realizing that I may consume too much tech news.

Today I went for a walk. Near the pond in our backyard, I saw a dragonfly, perched on a branch. These are things that I remember that the Midwest has. You forget these things when you're in New England.

Re: Wired's The Web is Dead

2010-08-19T19:10:00.000-07:00

Wired, in one of those delicious, Google-juicing stories, declared that the Web is dead, that the future on the Internet will be apps. Beautiful little apps and safe closed gardens are the looming world of tomorrow.

Please.

(Followed by a few sassy snaps and side-to-side head movements)

Certainly, we've learned over the years that the Internet is an industry like any others. Google's ability to effortlessly scale any product and thus out-compete anyone else has turned out to be largely untrue. Sure, search is still dominated by Google. But Bing is at least usable and people are spending more and more time on Facebook anyways. The upwelling of individual expression, now that anyone can publish themselves to the entire world, hasn't happened. Sure, we tweet or blog, but overall, we still follow the giants of the industry, we still go to the movies (or at least pirate them) that are made by big studios. The web is still surfed by people and the Internet isn't there to revolutionize society. It's here to improve communication and make it easier for us to participate. It's lowering the bar...but not everyone has the activation energy to participate.

Perhaps most salient to Wired is the failure of the Internet to pay the bills. For content providers like them, web advertising has not been adequate replacement for print. Part of the reason is that you can ignore ads much more easily on a webpage - they're off to the side. I guess, in print, they take up whole pages. A bigger part of the reason is that advertisers have better metrics than ever. Wired doesn't get paid unless we click on the ads. Wired did get paid when we didn't look at the print ads.

Finally, Wired argues that the web has "reached adulthood." It's just time for it to grow up. And growing up mean apps. Here, they gesture vaguely at human nature. "Look, people are buying apps. Therefore, people will buy apps." Great, thanks Wired. Descartes could learn a real lesson from you: I think therefore I will think.

Unfortunately for Wired, in trying support their untenable position, they have completely ignored the most compelling part of the Internet: the open accessibility. They can be forgiven for it - they are writers, not developers. But this is a big deal. Sure, the web has problems: different browsers sometimes render things differently, some websites are blocked, etc. But the ability to write a webpage and put it up for anyone to see...that's what made the web so successful.

What Wired seems to have forgotten, is that before the advertising wasteland of the Internet, there were applications. See, Windows was basically the ONLY operating system. So if you developed a software for Windows, it basically ran everywhere. Still does today - even the Mac fanboys run Boot Camp. Why didn't the Internet just become a giant app store? Partially because the stuff we threw up in the beginning was simple stuff, stuff you didn't need to build an app around. But also because a webpage was by default connected, software development wasn't a big release date - it was release early, release often. Put it out there and then make it better, based on what your customers said, over time.

So the pros of the web didn't go away. But what about the cons that Wired brings up? Honestly, apps are nicer. They don't have lag. They don't bring up horrid memories of Geocities. They just feel nice.

Funny thing is, we didn't really care about this until the iPhone came out. Which lead me to thinking, touch actually has a lot to do with it. We don't mind a certain level of roughness in our computers - we use them for work. But our phones and TVs, we expect a certain level of polish. Especially phones. We want touch-ability. But what Wired is forgetting, is that the web isn't precluded from that level of polish. In its current state, it is. But, if the standards committees ever just move out of their deliberations and push HTML5 out, the web actually has the potential to become a lot smoother, a lot more real-time. A lot more app-like.

See, what Wired is complaining about is the sad state of webapps, especially in the mobile web. And it is sad. Even Gmail, which is perhaps the most polished webapp out theres, pales next to the Android Gmail app. But this isn't a problem of the web - it's just a problem of the current web specification. And proprietary software has long filled in the gaps. Macromedia Shockwave (remember that?) and then Adobe Flash did what the web could not. The iPhone's App Store is doing what the web cannot yet do - enabling deeper, device-level access (like the camera or accelerometer) or offline support. The iPhone also had the unique position of being the only viable smartphone for a while. Which, like Windows in its day, means that developing for the iPhone means you can reach just about anyone you care about.

But undoubtedly, if HTML5 came out today, with all those things enabled, we'd see a shifting of the tides. As mobile becomes a real website development consideration instead of an afterthought (only the prominent web properties have mobile versions of their sites) and deeper device access is allowed, the strengths of the web, which have never gone away, will regain importance. The web is not dead. The web was just napping while the iPhone revolution happened and it's scrambling to catch up. And the web is kind of big now...so it doesn't move very quickly anymore. :)

Admittedly, the problem of money doesn't go away. One hopes that advertising will learn to adapt to the web, as advertising agencies become filled with young people who grew up on the web and are hungrier than ever, but that isn't an answer either. At some point, we need to be able to pay for the services we use. I've thought about it a lot and just because advertising works for Google doesn't mean it will or even should work for other online services. The web is increasingly diverse: content, service, search are all different products - it makes sense they may have different revenue streams. We start to see potential in micropayments and virtual currency; time will tell what actually works.

So dear Wired, I admire you for your link-baiting but also am glad you brought up the point. I had been thinking about it myself - the web certainly seems to be more and more mundane. The joy for "surfing the web" and discovering new sites has shifted to the app stores and finding a cool new app. But after reading your article and seeing my worries put down in words, you have helped me come to realize how senseless they were. Which is, in the end, all we can real ask of you. Thanks Wired!

Zynga and Public-ness

2010-07-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

I was reading the NYTimes article on Zynga and began wondering what this is going to mean in the future. Zynga's only been around for a few years and has amassed millions of gamers. Just the other day, a Starcraft 2 commentator I follow gushed about Zynga's potential to bring "gaming to the masses" and growing the market for all games.

The interesting thing about Zynga is that a huge number of people who don't otherwise play "hardcore" Starcraft or Halo-like games have joined in on the fun. But this is also all taking place during a tremendous time of privacy flux. Many people don't know about how public their actions on Facebook actually are. Just as surely as Facebook has been largely sanitized by its tremendous publicness (as we take it for granted that potential employers will be using it for mine for personal data), what does this mean for Zynga? Will this mean that online games will become acceptable? Or will we become ashamed of our Farmville pasts? It's a trivial question, but an interesting one, in a time of privacy fluctuations. Clearly, Zynga owns all this data on us and can choose to make it public, for obviously promotional reasons ("Hey, your friend ____ loves Farmville. You will too!"). What will our bosses think when they find see our Farmville stables? Will they be impressed? Will they be playing Farmville too? Or will they think it disturbing that you've been checking in once an hour throughout the weekday?

Note: what a tremendous coup for Zynga, becoming The Face of online casual gaming. In a sector that is filled with spammy advertising and dubious intents, building a brand is an incredible asset.
Also note: I don't play Farmville myself. But I am a gamer and am currently fighting the urge to buy Starcraft 2 in...4 days? Yikes!

If I can dream...

2010-07-19T23:53:00.000-07:00

A lovely premise for a show. Reality TV, except only with beautiful people.

Problem is, these people want to be stars. And, as you can see with any celebrity, people only want to know about you when you have secrets to keep. Which makes the stars of "If I can dream" wholly uninteresting.

Why I think the iPad should be doing better

2010-07-19T23:42:00.000-07:00

Lack of Flash means that something very important is missing...

Re: Techcrunch Facebook article

2010-07-19T22:23:00.000-07:00

A recent Techcrunch article had a notable quote that Facebook is much like Ebay in its early days. "[Ebay] has all these buyers and sellers, a large dominant group. If you want to sell, where are you going? Until consumers get a viable alternative, they’re going nowhere else."

It's easy to forget the days of Ebay, when it seemed like they had an absolute monopoly on auctions. How could anyone beat their network effects? The buyers came because the sellers came because the buyers came. Entire businesses opened up around it. It was the marketplace of the future.

That is, until Amazon opened up its store to third-parties. And suddenly, it was obviously that while Ebay wasn't disappearing anytime soon, its position also was not as secure as we thought it was.

The network effect is funny like that.

By the way, Windows Phone 7, based on Engadget's review and videos, is beautiful. It makes you realize that network effect isn't everything. That App Store and compatibility and market share be damned, a good product can still win. Let's see if Microsoft can manage to make WP7 good enough to survive.

Net Present Value Positive

2010-07-16T09:21:00.000-07:00

It's interesting when arguments about the environment and labor standards say that "in the long run, this will cost less/save money." It makes you realize the value of economics and a strong banking system. Net Present Value (NPV) is such a tricky thing, as discount rate and risk management factor in. But in the end, the point behind all these banks is to estimate whether the NPV is positive or not. And while it may be the case that net present value is positive, without a good banking system, it will never be realized.

The argument can then be made that developing countries are making all these "stupid" decisions about their future because of the lack of a strong banking infrastructure. And the sad thing is that without industry, a good banking system will never exist.

Oh economics, how wonderful yet infuriating you are.

2010-07-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

It's funny seeing people's outrage against Google's moves in China. Sure it's controversial, who are you going to switch to? Bing? Even assuming product substitutability, Bing hasn't moved out of the China market. Yahoo? What stands have they made? Google's stance may be imperfect, but please, don't threaten a boycott when there are no alternatives. It's like threatening to boycott BP...and buying from Shell. Are you kidding me? All the oil companies have blood on their hands, BP just happens to have oil on our shores too.

Form and Function

2010-07-12T23:47:00.000-07:00

Despite Google's philosophy of form following function, when it comes to computers, which are general function devices...how does form follow all functions?

Is this why Apple's devices make so much intuitive sense to us?

Beauty is much more than just beauty. It is investment in the future, a building of trust between the producer and consumer.

Google App Inventor

2010-07-12T23:37:00.000-07:00

A few times every year, Google releases a new product. This time, it's Google App Inventor, a simple tool for building simple Android applications.

There have been a few blog posts on Gizmodo and Techcrunch discussing the potential impact. The general consensus has been that this will result in a lot of sub-par apps being submitted to the app store, but at the same time will bring more people into the fold and encourage people to develop apps.

I'm with the optimistic crowd (big surprise, eh?). I definitely realize that this will generate a huge number of plain old terrible apps, like Geocities before it. What is important is that Google is, for the first time, really highlighting what makes Android so great: it's open.

For most people, we don't really care what is open source or not. I think have the reason I like Linux is because it's free, not because it's open. It just so happens that open often means free. And being open has meant that lots of hardware suppliers have adopted Android more readily, accepting it as a lesser evil to Microsoft's cruel value hegemony over the PC manufacturers.

But, from the endpoint consumer perspective, all I notice is that the iPhone experience is a little nicer, a little more buttery. Android...I can install some custom ROMs, but I doubt most people do that. The main thing is that the features that have distinguished Android up until now - background processing, universal search - are just a "magical" update away from being on the iPhone. So, Google here is emphasizing what Android can do that iPhone cannot and will not, namely, be open.

Apple has explicitly said that it will not allow things like Adobe Flash to be frontends for app development, because it results in terrible apps. Apple wants its App Store to be professional and slick. Google says, heck, we know that the App Market isn't great. But in the words of Stalin, quantity has a quality all its own.

By allowing everyone to participate, even if their apps are terrible, you get that wonderful Wealth of the Network effect. People will create apps for niches that you won't think of, haven't heard of, and don't care about. Google is saying, "Android is a tool. Your phones are tools. Make use of them." This, of course, contrasts strongly with Apple approach, which is, "Here is the iPhone. Hold it correctly."

Joking aside, Google is making the right move here. In a recent email conversation with my mom, she kept referring to my Nexus One as my "iPhone." I cringed a little, but I can't say I blame her. To her, a smartphone that is not a BlackBerry is an iPhone. Android, clearly, has always had and still has a branding problem. Even for the college students who know what Android is, it is still second fiddle to the iPhone. If my education in economics has yielded me anything, it is that competing head on with incumbents in imperfect markets is a fool's game. Especially against a competent and alert incumbent.

The smartphone space is pretty crowded and it's going to be rough for anyone to distinguish themselves from the omnipresent iPhone. But I think Google's making the correct strides. After all, all you need is that moment where Android does something, however small, that the iPhone can't. That's why iPhone's "There's an app for that" campaign was so brilliant.

But no matter how many apps are in an app store, you can't cover everything - the best you can do is get out of my way and let me use my phone however I want. What Google is counting on is the college student organizing a conference building their own conference app. What Google is counting on is the little girl, revolutionizing lemonade stands with delivery lemonade...and building an app to help take orders in her neighborhood. And Google wins when she sets up her stand with the sign, "Want lemonade? There's an app for that."

Parenthetical Trust

2010-07-08T20:04:00.000-07:00

Depending on how much I trust a given writer, upon seeing a parentheses, I will scan forward a given number of words, just to make sure they close the parentheses.

Anyone else do this?

I definitely like Bing

2010-06-29T00:12:00.000-07:00

I just want to say this: I definitely like Bing. Why? Because it has really made Google move.

I think Google likes it too. Sort of how I want a puppy someday because it will force me to walk it once a day.

Seriously though, Microsoft has just been on fire these days. Kinect, Windows Phone 8, Windows 7, Bing, IE9, Office 2010 with Skydrive. Why couldn't you have these back in 2006, instead of Vista? I cannot fathom just how much Microsoft would be dominating right now if that were the case.

Another Google and China Post

2010-06-29T00:05:00.000-07:00

I'm coming to realize these days that I'm pretty conservative. The point was struck home so much more when I saw Google's update on China today and I immediately defended China in my mind. A lot of it is just playing devil's advocate, but a lot of it isn't.

I was listening to this week's This American Life episode, where a perspective of an Iraqi on the American occupation is given. It's pretty easy to understand their indignation. Sure, America helped them out of a bind, with the whole dictator thing. But gratitude doesn't build countries. And right now, Americans, from a different culture and even hemisphere, are dictating how government should go. Let's even leave aside the difficulties of having an army pretend to be police. Just focusing on the government, why should Iraqi's think we have any idea what we're doing, when we hardly understand the difference between Sunni and Shiite (I honestly still don't) after being there for nearly a decade.

This comes back to Google. Sure, I personally believe in a lot of Google's ideals. That freedom of information will lead to better outcomes for everyone, in the long-run. But from China's perspective, it's the US, once again, dictating how China should run its society, from a hemisphere away. Don't forget, China's quite a bit older than the US too. Now that may be cultural arrogance, but arrogance overlaps with pride, and it's unlikely that China will let an upstart like the US or especially Google tell it what to do.

That freedom of information, which is fine and dandy for the US, may lead to some serious instability for China. Not five-o'clock news, wow, there's a sit-in on the local college campus, but some serious regime destabilizing. Iffy? Maybe? Well you can't have it both ways. Here we are, lauding the Internet as "revolutionary" and "turning our society upside-down", and why should we be surprised when China bridles a little bit. And when you're responsible over a billion or so people, maybe it's ok to err on the side of caution. Wouldn't you?

And for anyone who thinks China should have a little revolution, that maybe a regime change is in order, you're highly wrong. Because after the bloodshed that China experienced during its last civil war and the difficult times in its aftermath, no one, Chinese or anyone with a shade of empathy, wants to see that again.

I believe in a lot of what Google does for information, for the Internet. I also believe that the Chinese government makes a lot of mistakes. But to believe that Google is in the right and China is in the wrong would be too simple and too convenient. Ideals and prose are nice, but logic must drive discussion and compromise must drive policy. China has the right to censor. The real question is how to determine what level of censorship is best for the Chinese people.

Legos!

2010-06-27T20:30:00.000-07:00

Legos are the best.

I cannot estimate the sheer joy Lego gave me as a child. I remember how numb my hands would feel after a bout of Lego-building, digging through my little bin for the right piece. I never got around to sorting my legos, probably because I never had that many, but I remember my neighbors just having bucket after bucket of the stuff, sorted by color.

Lego, in my mind, is really a testament to just how magical a simple product can be. Beautiful and sturdily designed, we make them into whatever we wanted them to be. And while there were lots of advanced pieces for the more devoted, for the most part, you just needed the regular old bricks to make something wondrous.

I hope, when I grow up, I can make something as wonderful as Lego.

Android Leapfrog

2010-06-15T22:13:00.000-07:00

With the recent preview of the Motorola Droid X and the release of the HTC EVO 4G, it feels like the tides are turning against the iPhone. I think Jobs can see it too. When you look at the Android OS, it really begins to feel solid, being slightly less beautiful but just as functional as the iOS. The hardware, too, is catching up, with HTC and Motorola have specs on par or surpassing the iPhone. iPhone 4 really only has one advantage: beauty. Front facing cameras are undoubtedly on their way, gyroscope coming, and chips getting faster than Apple can update them. Battery life is great...but can hardly be a "deciding factor." But iPhone's beautiful design and Retina Display simply can't be matched.

Of course, Stevie knows this was coming. And while he is probably disappointed that the world is, once again, lacking taste and choosing Android, he isn't surprised. In the last update, he has made it clear, once again, what Apple is: a luxury electronics brand. All the "revolutionary features" are centered around ensuring that the iPhone is unmatched in beauty and ease of use. Apple knows that the market is young and they have the lead. They will probably keep the lead for few more years. But what Apple is doing is reminding the consumers of who Apple is, what its principles are. So that when consumers eventually start making the transition to Android, they'll always consider the iPhone an "upgrade" and once disposable income allows, will switch back, just as the hip and well-off are switching to the svelte MacBook Pros.

Most interestingly, Google probably won't do much to chase after Apple. Google's goals will have been accomplished - establishing a strong presence in mobile, so that they can influence the design and expectation of mobile around their favorite platform and product: the web and search. I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple relent on some of its unfortunate positions on Google Voice or Goggles or, for goodness sakes, Gmail. Or maybe HTML5 will make the question irrelevant. And by next Google IO, I would not be surprised if Google turns its attention to the other industry heavyweight, Microsoft, who will be coming out swinging with Kinect and Windows Phone 7's holiday seasons. With Android being the incumbent and Google TV and Chrome OS out in force, the 2010 holiday season looks to be dominated by not by the Apple vs. Google feud but the Google vs. Microsoft one.

The Windows Phone 7 Countdown

2010-05-27T21:06:00.000-07:00

Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 is about to come out and many of us wonder if it is too late for them. With the iPhone about to have multitasking and Android filling in a lot of its most annoying holes, is there room in the market for the Windows Phone?

To look at this from an economic point of view, the most basic question is: how powerful is the network effect for mobile phones? Obviously, if Apple, Google, and Microsoft were to all start off from ground zero, there would be no question that Microsoft would grab a big chunk of the market. But clearly, Apple and Google will both have a sizable lead by the time Microsoft comes ambling along.

A big argument for the iPhone has been the power of its apps and the slickness of its UI. Power of apps = indirect network effect. Like the Xbox's value increases with the number of games, each platform benefits from the number of its apps, making them more flexible and useful to consumers. The slickness of its UI = intrinsic value. Hardware means little to nothing these days, with companies tripping over each other to build the next, slightly juicier phone. So, the value of phones (and computers in general) comes from how friendly its UI is.

Now, both the iPhone and Android have launched marketing campaigns about how many apps each platform has. But at this point, both have reached a point where all of the important apps (read: non-games) have crossed over to both platforms. iPhone still has better games, but Android is caught up everywhere else. Microsoft will have only a few hundred apps when its phone hits the shelves, nothing compared to the tens of thousands on its competitors. If the network effect is in any way powerful, then Microsoft is in big trouble. The funny thing is that, based on my own experience, apps are...not that great. On any given day, I use about a dozen apps, most of them Google apps. Microsoft will obviously supply their own equivalents on their phone. Aside from that, I use a banking app, Facebook, Twitter, and Pandora. Once again, Microsoft will obviously have their own equivalents on their phone. Apps are like desktop applications - I use a few, but most of my life is centered around the browser, email, and the office suite.

Well, if the indirect network effect isn't that great, how about intrinsic value? Well, after looking at Android and iPhone, both UIs are pretty solid now. And looking at Microsoft...basically, they have a new home screen. It's tiled, fashionable widgets. Nice, but how big of a difference is that going to be?

Well, let's think about recent successful, duplicating products. Gmail. Sure, there were other clients, but this one was free. And had lots of free space. But more important than that, that free space reflected how we worked. Email takes space. We needed more space. And Gmail was designed around the necessities of email.

The iPod. There were lots of mp3 players. Why did the iPod take off? Because it was beautiful, taking into account that our digital devices are now part of who we are, just like any other fashion accessory. It was simple. With iTunes, it made purchasing and managing music simple, without filenames and folders and backups. We don't want to see Track01.mp3 instead of our Billy Joel. Once again, a product designed around use.

In a lot of ways, the iPhone was built around this. The interface is simple and beautiful, designed, as the iPod was, around how we use it. So has the iPhone beaten Microsoft to the punch?

In some ways. But in other ways, the first one up the hill gets all the arrows. The iPhone still doesn't have a great multitasking metaphor. Or a smooth notifications metaphor. Why? Because the world has changed since iPhone was launched. People use their smartphones differently now. Consumer expectations have changed since 2007. People now use the phones as their connections to everyone else. Not just for email and browsing the web, but for finding their friends or a good restaurant, instant messaging and navigating a city. If Microsoft's new interface is really that much better, their intrinsic value might be their saving grace. After all, the market has proven that good product, even when it's late to the market, can still win out in the end.

It's going to be a tough fight for Microsoft. And, given a recent post the Microsoft expects to move 30 million phones by the end of 2011, I would expect no less from them. They've still got a lot of smart people and a lot of power in the market. People still use Windows. And in some ways, this world of apps is Microsoft's strong suit - they provide some of the best developer tools in the biz. It's no wonder that Google is moving fast to power up Android's browser, with it swimming laps, literally, around even the iPad. Google needs to move everyone to webapps, and fast, before the heavy weights of apps come in swinging. When Rubin said, in a recent interview, that the next 6 months of Android will be exciting, he better be right, because the Windows Phone clock is ticking.

With the iPhone as definite market leader, Google needs to change the equation to catch up to and pass Apple. They need make Android better in a way that Apple just can't match and will stick out in the minds of consumers (Android's cloud to device messaging could be just that, if properly integrated with third-party apps, Google TV, and Google's core apps). Because if they don't, they'll be fighting for second place with Microsoft. Which Google definitely does not want to do because when you're fighting for second place, even when you win, you lose.

Here's another thought: As phones become more powerful, maybe it's time for Microsoft to run a sort of "boot camp" for the iPhone OS and have a way to run iPhone apps on Microsoft phones. After all, the original iPhone or even the 3G have nothing compared to the power of Snapdragon 1 Ghz chip or the upcoming dual processor chips, not to mention the Tegra chipset. If the network effect is really that much more powerful, why not subvert it entirely by allowing consumers to virtualize into iPhone or Android? Thousands of apps...now running on Windows Phone 7. Maybe there are some IP issues with the iPhone, but Android's Dalvik virtual machine is open-source, right? Why not?

Google IO

2010-05-21T22:31:00.000-07:00

Google IO has come and gone and I think it is safe to say that Google has impressed. It's incredible to think just how quickly Google is always moving. In some sense, many of its releases, like an online Android Marketplace, were expected. But expected by the Internet, which moves faster than any other enterprise or marketplace we've seen. In what other marketplace could we see the skyrocketing of a single company from a 100 grand angel investment to over $100 billion market cap (obviously, Google), or another company go from a few hundred users to nearly half a billion (and no doubt soon-to-be one billion) in just five years. The Internet truly moves quickly and Google has shown an ability to keep pace with it.

Ok, I'm finished gushing. What has been made clear this week is the Google will soon out-pace Apple. The iPhone's immense lead has been largely squashed. The iPhone still is more beautiful and more polished than any of the Android handsets. Its operating system is still the standard for mobile. But as of this week, Android's latest iteration has largely caught up with the iPhone, the latest phones have surpassed the iPhone, and the adoption is finally achieving iPhone levels (though, the Q1 numbers are overly optimistic - iPhone adoption undoubtedly will pick up in the summer, with 4G). All in a year and a half. The iPhone had over a year's head start, being released in mid-2007, and Android being the latecomer in late-2008. But in two years, Android is being compared, in some ways unfavorably but in many ways favorably, with the iPhone. Yes, it took Google three years, but they have done it.

Their success was largely because Apple has failed to produce more revolutions, with the iPhone largely remaining static over the last three years (the "updates" were largely patches, with push notifications and multitasking being obvious) and Apple resting on its huge market share. The iPad is great...but ultimately, it is not a revolution. It won't take Google three years to duplicate the experience. Apple will be lucky if it even takes one year (this Christmas season will undoubtedly be competitive).

Google hasn't produced any revolutions and I really don't think its the kind of company that ever will again. Google is great at iterating and slowly but surely achieving full potential. And I definitely do not begrudge Apple's success - they certainly deserved the billions they made - they introduced an amazing product, took a huge risk, and thus ought to reap the reward. But for us consumers, seeing Google's incredible progress, as they place more and more pressure on Apple, this IO has been a tremendous step forward for the entire marketplace.

In addition to all this, I am intensely curious to see how Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 will fare by the time it is released. With Android marching ever onwards, the iPhone set for multitasking and a front-facing camera, WebOS revitalized by a HP adrenaline shot and RIM still stalwart and steady, the mobile space is looking more crowded than ever and it will be interesting to see Microsoft, which has been on the upswing lately, will carve out a place for its mobile operating system. Considering we haven't seen any confirmed hardware, let alone release dates, it seems we won't be seeing anything until at least the Christmas season, whereupon Android may already be pushing out its next big update and pushing out Microsoft's last foothold on the mobile market.

Classes Feedback

2010-05-09T11:38:00.000-07:00

If Yale's classes feedback were more like the rest of the internet, Directed Studies comments would be filled with...

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Thinking more about my black box idea...if everyone in the world were to get a black box today, would anyone be alive by the end of the day?

It's weird how much sense open standards make

2010-05-07T01:55:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about what it means to have tens of thousands of developers working for you. Look at Microsoft or Google. So many brilliant people. Yet, Google has clearly mastered fast-paced iteration and development in a way that Microsoft cannot yet match. Read a list of Google product launches. It speaks for itself. So much so that it's kind of a problem - Google kind of sucks at developing a coherent product strategy. Sure, it has its big projects, like Android or Gmail or Chrome. But all in all, Google's little releases of Latitude or Goggles or Google Reader Play don't make a whole lot of sense - they mostly seem like a collection of pet projects.

And that's honestly what they are. 20% projects. And in order to make them work, in order to organize engineers, Google engineers, people who have been hired because they're brilliant and restless and crazy, is a problem almost as difficult as organizing the Internet itself, the chaotic, anyone can throw up a website, the best ideas rise to the top, Internet.

Sure Google could probably create and benefit from in-house proprietary standards. But one of the hardest problems in the world is education. Each time you create a proprietary standard, you're creating an arbitrary thing that someone else, down the line, has to learn. Even if it's just a tiny little adjustment to an open standard, it makes it that much more annoying. Education isn't an easy process and developers have already spent years learning the open standards that already exist. I'm guessing they don't feel like learning a little standard that someone hacked together during their 20% time. Just like the free food or massages, Google's figured out that engineer time is more valuable than anything else and if that means sacrificing a small amount of competitive advantage giving away your standards or adhering to someone else's, so be it.

After all, in the end, Google always wins at scale.

The Black Button Metrics

2010-05-05T15:42:00.000-07:00

After watching the Black Button, I immediately began wondering about human behavior. Obviously, most people would push the button, given a high enough payoff.

What if they were given the chance to push it twice? What if there were decreasing marginal returns? Increasing marginal returns? What if, each time you pushed the button, someone else would get a similar black box, thus increasing the odds of you yourself being struck down?

My Irrational Fear of Facebook

2010-05-02T23:40:00.000-07:00

I'm not terribly fond of Facebook. I'm not entirely sure why. It's just a website. Sure, it's a tremendously popular one and a potentially powerful one. The Internet has always distrusted it, because it has been so closed, instead of open. It's also been eroding at user privacy for some time. But honestly, if you look at things from Facebook's perspective, it makes a lot of sense. Facebook's got a very unique position on the Internet, housing "real" identities, instead of throwaway user names. So, it's got to protect that data - hence closed. But that data also opens up tremendous opportunities for Facebook and its users. Facebook really can socialize the web in a much more...human and simpler way than email or Myspace ever could.

So...looks evil from the outside, reasonable from the in. So does Apple. So does Google? Why, then, do I have a fear of Facebook that is not shared for these other companies?

I have a theory that I thought of tonight. It has to do with company vs industry growth. See, with Apple or Google or Microsoft, once they dominated an industry, they have usually looked to grow the market, instead of just themselves. Naturally, because they owned most of the market, they would stand to benefit the most. But even accidental altruism is nice.

Facebook, however, does not. It hasn't aimed to grow the market. Sure, a lot of people have signed up for Facebook. But other social media sites have not seen growth at well - instead they have been shrinking. Facebook's growth has been at the cost of other social networks.

I think this is not just because "Zuckerberg is evil" but due to the nature of Facebook. See, Facebook, without its users, is just an empty shell. There is no inherently useful or revolutionary technology there. No innovation. Sure, there's chat and Newsfeed and it's damn fast given how much data and simultaneous users there are. But these are incidental and incremental. The first user of Facebook would find it useless. However, the first user of Google or Windows+Office or a Macbook would not. Sure, it wouldn't be quite as useful, but there is still some intrinsic value to the products. Facebook is just like the Boogie Man...terrifying and invincible but in reality just an empty sheet.

Consequently, Facebook has not been releasing tools into the Internet ecosystem that help out anyone, regardless of what social media platform you're from. Instead, all data streams lead to Facebook. Because Facebook's entire value lies not in doing things first or doing them better, but "being cooler" and "having more friends." If Facebook was serious about building up social media, instead of just itself, it would have allowed Facebook users to friend Myspace or Orkut users. But it didn't. Why? Because it realizes that then there would be no compelling reason to join.

So I think that's it. Like Mean Girls, Facebook is useless in itself. Facebook knows this. So Facebook will do everything it can to control its users and their data, quashing all resistance.

It's pretty scary, no?

The Internet is not a philosophy

2010-04-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

A recent Newsweek article was discussing Apple's moves with the iPad and what it might mean for journalism. One of the more provocative things said was that "The Internet is not a philosphy. It's a distribution mechanism. The laws of physics did not change when the airplane was invented, nor have the laws of economics changed because the Internet exists...you make money on the Internet the same way you do everywhere else - by having something people want and forcing them to pay for it."

The statement was so bewildering, I read it twice. In some sense, it's true - newspapers still need to pay for their staff. The fixed costs behind content creation have not changed. I see why Mr. Lyons might be frustrated with "free content" mentality - he works hours on his stories, sees millions of readers and derives only a few pennies derived from each. He sees staff cuts and lean times. But he is allowing his frustration to cloud his judgment.

See, the laws of economics did change because the Internet exists. The variable costs have dropped to nearly zero (no matter how much publishers complain about bandwidth costs, these costs are still nothing compared to the cost of delivering dead trees) and the markets have expanded to the entire wired world. I found his article on Digg. After I read it, I published it to Twitter and am now blogging about it. In the pre-Internet world, there is no way that I would have read his article and an even smaller chance that I would have communicated it to my friends. He has already benefited tremendously from me - perhaps not from my wallet, but from my attention and participation and recommendation. All of this at virtually no cost (a few cents for bandwidth) to him.

Not only that, Lyon is wonderfully ignoring that the Internet isn't just a distribution mechanism. Unlike his paper delivery trucks, the Internet allows everyone to have their own publishing platform. And because that means everyone gets to talk, instead of just the guy in the Newsweek offices...well that's going to require a new philosophy. In as much that democracy vs. monarchy is a philosophy change, a shift in the distribution of power is going to require some new philosophical thinking.

But these are all old and familiar arguments. And certainly, if one of Lyon's friends were to point them out to him, he would probably still respond, "Well, who's going to pay for my salary?" Well, maybe you were over-paid to begin with. Maybe, like the literate monk who is displaced by the printing press, it's time to figure out a new way to get by. Or maybe I'm an immature college student who knows nothing about "how the world works." In which case, please please implement a paywall. If it works, I'll be the first the admit I'm wrong.

Bulldog Days

2010-04-20T17:53:00.000-07:00

It's Bulldog Days again. The pre-frosh are here in force. And as a senior, I can self-righteously agree that they are wholeheartedly annoying. They're worse than tourists - they're shoppers, unconscious of their presence in a community. To them, this is Yale, Capital Y. To us, it's yale. I'm not entirely sure what that means, though many have tried to define it, but it's a place and a process, not an item.
Seeing them has made me reflect on what I'd tell a pre-frosh about Yale. Good classes, good people, good parties, good...what? It's Yale, a place I grew up a little bit more, where I failed and fell and am every day trying to get up again. But...that doesn't exactly help. Instead, I can only resort to cliches about great classes and engaging conversations, incredible people and beautiful architecture. And I feel false about that. That's not what Yale is to me.

See, I've found that in my most intimate, disarming conversations with my friends, that's not what we feel Yale is. We agree that it's good to be here, that we love it here, but most of the time, it's a tough place and a place that wears on you. You pay a lot more than the sticker price to be here.

It's hard to be here. You see, you're barraged with so many "incredible" opportunities and "incredible" people that you spend so much effort trying to live up to these opportunities and feeling like a failure for not taking advantage of everything. I've been told all my life that I have incredible potential inside of me. During high school, this wasn't a problem - I felt like I was living up to my potential, mostly because I was doing better than almost everyone else (in academics). But at Yale, the ceiling has been raised - you meet all these people who are overwhelming awesome. And that's great and all...but honestly, we're all still just kids. And sometimes...no, a lot of times, it's just scary.

Part of me thinks that this is all some kind of lame excuse. But I've talked with enough people now to realize that this isn't just me making lame excuses. Yale is scary. There are lots of people who are smarter than you. And not just in art history or philosophy...but in your best subjects too. And coming from high school, where I felt so safe amidst your achievements and accolades, this was hard to deal with. I stumbled a lot. Honestly, I did plenty of retreating from reality, a lot of self-loathing. It happens.

It's weird...I'm a senior, almost done with Yale. What have I learned? What have any of us learned?

I think the best word to describe it is "citizenship." Dean Hicks is always harping on this. I remember him saying something about it during that first week of Yale, in the Berkeley Library. It sounds like a terrible propaganda bit, but it's been an important lesson for me. You're here at Yale. Relax. You've already proven yourself. Now is not the time to be grasping for ever greater heights. Now is the time to figure out who you are, where you belong in this community, and how you can contribute. It's not about doing better than everyone else; it's about doing what you can.

So pre-frosh (at least, Berkeley pre-frosh), my message to you is pay attention to your Dean. He's a smart guy and he knows you better than you realize. Also, please stop clogging up the dining halls - how hard is it to grab some food!

People actually read this!

2010-04-09T00:04:00.000-07:00

Apparently, two people have left comments on my posts! My friend Crystal and the guy who runs linuxtidbits. Thanks guys - blogging is tough when you don't see comments, especially when you feel like you're just ranting.

Blogging is such a strange thing. You say a whole lot of stuff...to your computer. To no one. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, where you know your friends/followers will probably see it, you have no idea who's reading when you blog. I think that, more than anything, has made blogs flag in the face of Twitter and Facebook. Performers need an audience. Without them, we lack context. In almost all other forms of communication, we moderate and customize our message to our listeners. In blogging, we are left with the vacuum of the internet, where nobody and everybody is listening.

Really, before the internet, the closest thing we had to blogging was messages in bottles, notes scribbled on bathroom stalls, and shortwave radio. (Ironically, a lot of blogs are read on the toilet or in a dark room late at night. Not a lot on the beach though.)

Either way, thanks for listening to my rants everyone. And thanks to those who have bothered to comment!

Buzz's quiet brilliance

2010-03-29T13:58:00.000-07:00

Checking my email today, I realized something about Google Buzz: it's just a label. Literally, if you want to search Buzz posts, you simply type in "label:Buzz."

So what? you might ask. It's just a convenient way of searching through Buzz. Doesn't make Buzz, a mostly failed product, brilliant.

Well, that's the interesting thing. Labels were a Gmail thing. And, honestly, most people still don't get them. But once you do, they can rock your email world - things can be dynamically, and not statically, organized. Imagine if you could do that with your friends - instead of friends from home and college being artificially grouped into "location" folders, you could dynamically rearrange where everyone was, based on what their shared interests were. Sweet!

Well, the worst part of Labels, though, was always that you had to set up filters for them...or even apply them individually. It's a pain, especially when most emails aren't important enough to spend the time to do that. When the occasion arises, however, I have often found myself shifting through dozens of emails, wishing I had been better at applying labels.

This is where Buzz's quiet brilliance plays in. Buzz is a label...that others have created!

There have been plenty of times when I have been loath to send an email because I am worried it may be too frivolous and take up inbox space. This is especially true when sending group emails. Right now, as part of my campus job, I get dozens of emails with the title [Sub Request] that occupy huge tracts of inbox space. My personal solution has been to create filters and labels...but this took time and a comfort with Gmail that not everyone shares.

Buzz clearly solves this problem. To start with, Google has kept it simple: Google has recognized that the major divide in communications in the future is not business/personal, but actually public/private. Hence, Buzz (public) and inbox (private). However, I could not be surprised to see, as Google Apps continue to proliferate, if separate "work" Buzz-boxes appear.

All this, is essentially Google taking its favorite features and attempting to export it to others. Labels are excellent productivity tools and one can easily imagine, if everyone in the world were using Gmail, that social-labeling would be an obvious feature. Google Docs' shared folders are a direct parallel to this.

There's a reason that Buzz has not superseded Facebook or Twitter - it's just not the same thing. Buzz isn't a social space - it's a social label. Right now, we assume that the divide in communications is best served by having separate platforms (email vs facebook/twitter), but Buzz recognizes that both can exist on the same platform because they all are fundamentally communication. It obviously can't replace Facebook, any more than having a six-pack with your friends can replace going to a bar, but it offers something a little different.

Unfortunately, too many people still compare Buzz to Facebook, Twitter, and Friendfeed. Surely, Google has invited the comparison, by linking Buzz to Reader and Twitter. And, brilliant as social-labeling is, it does not mean that Buzz will succeed. Eventually, though, social-labeling, as an idea, will succeed and we will look back and wonder why we didn't see such an obvious idea.

Two words that explain why creative content will still make money despite piracy

2010-03-13T20:37:00.000-08:00

Bottled water.

Musings on Copyright

2010-03-13T19:27:00.000-08:00

I'm reading about copyright for one of my seminars, called Information Economy. While the effects of piracy on music sales are still unclear, I much prefer the study done by Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf, revealing that effects are little to nothing. It's a matter of selection bias: those who are time-rich and money-poor tend to pirate, but it is doubtful they would have bought in the first place. This rings true to me: I myself pirate, but do not have any particular interest in music. However, the advent of incredible music videos, ranging from Ok Go, Lady Gaga, or Taylor Swift, have piqued my interest.

Of course, there is a chance that, without music industry intervention, piracy could hit the mainstream and achieve a sufficient level of convenience that the selection bias could slowly disappear. According to another paper, crude modeling shows that consumers will only pay if the cost of copying is too high (basically, if the cost of copying is equal to price). Of course, copying being virtually costless, this pricing strategy can only work if you increase transaction cost, aka, create a penalty or tax on copying.

The interesting question is really whether resources should go towards supporting a system that is looking more and more ungainly and unnatural in the new technological ecosystem. What, then, is the alternative solution?

Apple has presented one: build a compelling consumer experience. Make is so compelling that leaving it (aka, jailbreaking) is costly, thus upping the transaction cost of copying. Then, lower prices to a more rational level and watch the money flow in.

The funny thing is that it worked. I think what Varian may be forgetting is that there is a transaction cost of buying music too, one that is often greater than the transaction cost of copying. That, for the majority of current customers who are time-poor and money-rich, this is the biggest impediment. The price means little to nothing to them. A dollar a song makes sense to them. They don't think economically.

Adding onto this is that piracy is great for maintaining immense collections of media that would normally take millions of dollars to maintain on a corporate server. Most creative works pay off in their first few years, or maybe decades. As great as the movie Pandora may be, how much money will the actual movie be making 10 or 20 years from now? I guarantee that the vast vast majority of its potential profits will be made within the first 10 years. If it has sequels, we can expand that to 20. Maybe.

Let's play a quick game: in the past year, think back to all the movies you've watched. How many of them were from before the year 2000? And of those, how much did you pay for them? Most likely, you watched them through Netflix (if you did indeed pay). Let's say you payed $10 total (the monthly Netflix subscription cost). Discounted back to 2000 (assuming a modest 5% interest rate), that's $6.14 of value that you've forked over.

Now, try the exercise again, except with movies from before 1990. Getting tougher, right? Star Wars? Let's be generous and assume you've watched $8 worth of movies. That's $3 dollars, discounted backwards.

Now, current copyright law gives the average copyright holder about 100 years past the death of the author. Say authors die young and that the copyright is effective for say...130 years (they write something in their 30s and they die before Social Security). The current value of $10 expended at the end of that time will be less than $0.02.

Now, let's look on the supply side. To keep a constant catalog of 100 year old material and have the bandwidth for legal purchase, not to mention support staff and the like. And the stuff we're producing isn't staying the same either. It's full color, often HD, sometimes even more than HD, maybe even 3D. On top of that, we've got commentary, deleted scenes, etc, etc, etc. And it's more likely to keep getting bigger. Let's cut it at an even 10 gbs per movie. Great. Even if there are only 100 movies made a year, over the next hundred years, we're looking at 100 terabytes of information, at least, assuming DVDs stay that same size. Probably at least an exabyte, if information bloating keeps up.

How, I ask, is the film industry planning on keeping these titles available for purchase, when most of them probably won't be relevant after 10 years and won't be remembered after 20. How could an industry justify keeping an exabyte of media on the ready, if 50 years later, no one's buying. Even those that are generating some income, say one terabyte worth, that's 0.1% of its inventory having any sales.

This situation is ridiculous. Copyright is the main problem here. Sure, artists deserve recognition and reward for their work. However, the cost of policing and maintaining this collection is surely beyond any industry's desire or capacity. And, seriously, 20 years after an artist creates a song, is it still contributing to society that much? And if it still is, hasn't it really been completely integrated into the culture, so that it's more of a commodity than an innovation?

To sum this up, the copyright lobbyists did their job too well. They've extended copyright beyond industry capacity and public interest. Seriously, if a scientists invented a cure to cancer and Lady Gaga wrote a song, twenty years later, the scientist will have stopped receiving royalties, but Lady Gaga will still having the checks coming? Doesn't anyone else find this absolutely insane? The creative industries have got to let go and stop squeezing money out of every song they can, to the detriment of the less lucrative songs. 20 years is a long time to rake in the dough. Maybe afterwards, they can retain the right for commercial distribution, but give the consumers who own the music the right to freely copy and distribute and remix as they please!

Google Buzz Sucks

2010-03-12T20:46:00.000-08:00

A few weeks has passed now and when I go to Gmail, I almost never see any updates to my Google Buzz box. Why is this? In my opinion, this is because Google has failed to recognize the most important aspect behind social networks. This is not critical mass or openness, but simply "coolness" aka a sense of community.

Not to beat a dead horse, but Facebook is the gold standard behind successful social networks. Started by a nerd to meet girls, it's ballooned into an ubiquitous social site where, if you're not on, you're either receiving Social Security or you don't exist. How? Certainly, Facebook did not have any critical mass. Sure, it managed to achieve critical mass, but it did not have millions of users on day one. It grew slowly at first, and organically. It earned its users, but because it earned them, its users are loyal.

Google Buzz didn't go for this. It's clear what they were going for: critical mass. Google was so sure that if they simply packaged it in as part of Gmail, millions of users would start using it. With half a dozen other services (Twitter, Blogger, Google Reader, Picassa) feeding into it, it would be a logical hub for other social networks.

Problem is, no one cared. Sure, some people use it, but because it wasn't opt-in, people didn't really care about it. While opt-in can be bad for things like browser choice, opt-in is at the core of every social network. Think about it - if in high school, a lunch table was opt-out, no one would have cared. A table is just a table. It's the opt-in - coming up to the table and asking to sit down - that anchors you to the community. That makes you want to contribute - you've got skin in the game. In fact, the harder it is to participate (aka, the cool tables), the more desirable the community. Once again, I point to Facebook's brilliant strategy of sticking with the Ivy's first...then colleges...and then the rest. Of course, Google, while my favorite company, doesn't do cool - they do useful, they do clean - but all these things are the opposite of cool. Don't be evil. Unfortunately, "coolness" is always a little exclusive, always a little evil. (Of course, Facebook is less "cool" now than just plain mandatory. But that's fine - they don't need to prove themselves now. Google Buzz still does.)

I listen to a few podcasts and it seems like there is a group who loves Google Buzz - the tech stars. To them, though, it's broadcast and not community. They bring their audience automatically. It doesn't really matter for them. So Google's open-table is great for them. They want cheap tickets to their performances. They want everyone to come and listen to them.

The sad thing is that there was an easy way for Google to actually make Buzz cool. The same way they made Gmail cool. Just make it a beta product, but with no invite limitations. They've been using it internally for months. Perfect! They have the perfect seed community: Google engineers. Sure, that may not have the same allure as checking out drunk college party snapshots or airbrushed profile pictures, but they are definitely respected and admired among the techies.

Sure, it may not have millions of users immediately, but it will have something more important: a sense of community. Joining Buzz (as a Gmail Labs product perhaps) would mean joining in on an ongoing conversation. You would get to see what people are "supposed" to post on Buzz, as opposed to just hooking up your Reader's shared items. You can establish a sense of community, a culture. After that, Google's best marketers have always been the thousands of college students who love their products and go home and teach their parents and siblings how to use it.

Sure, Buzz probably won't replace Facebook, but I doubt it was supposed to. Buzz being in Gmail means it could be a sort of clean Facebook - status updates you could share with your boss or family. Facebook was born in college and is going to have a lot of trouble wiping away those alcohol and hookup tainted roots. No one cares about Facebook's "groups" - we may know about them, but thinking about who should be in what group, especially when your friendships are always fluctuating - is painful. Buzz can define its own culture, a new "posting" space - one that Google's engineers can lead the way in creating.

Sure, this means Buzz will grow slowly. Maybe only get ten million users after its first year. But as long as invites or sign-ups are unlimited (don't make the Wave mistake of limiting invites to a ridiculous number like 20), at least it will actually have opt-in, community-educated, active users. Users that will be actively recruiting other users to an exciting new site and not just confused ones who aren't even sure what Buzz is.

What if Google made Windows?

2010-03-08T22:52:00.000-08:00

First off, I love my title here. Total Digg juice.

But seriously, what if Google were to assume control of the Windows platform? How might they change it? As is obvious, Windows is nice, but certainly it hasn't undergone any revolutions in the last decade. Sure, there are lots of great small innovations, but Windows hasn't really changed to meet the changing nature of the Internet.

Also obvious: Google has.

So how might Google, the Internet's favorite big brother, change Windows and, in my opinion, make it better?

I think the first thing would be to simply everything. Make Windows just one version. Simple. None of this Professional, Personal, and Ultimate versions crap. Just make it Windows.

Also, fold in everything. Just sell me ONE VERSION of Windows, with everything included. And that includes Office. Make it expensive, sure, but just make it the default and make it cheaper. (Blah blah, people can customize, for a slight discount too, but otherwise, make it all the same.)

Next, put all my stuff in the cloud. Sure, create a local copy. But make it so that I can log in on anyone else's Windows machine and access my data by pulling it from the cloud. Automatically. Also, pull all my basic preferences. Basically, make it look like my home computer. You don't need to download the files - but make it look the same and when I need to use something, temporarily download it. Unless it's music or video, in which case, stream it. Best of all, since there's now only one version of Windows, every computer will have the all the software necessary to, for example, view a PowerPoint. And then, when I log off, sync it all back up, and then delete all local copies.

Basically, the platform network effect isn't good enough anymore. Software development is too easy, too cheap. Developing complex applications for multiple platforms may be hard, but the everyday software isn't. Network effects these days is more about the seamlessness of experience.

Imagine using a friend's computer, logging in as yourself, and it's as if you're on your own computer (albeit a little slower, depending on their Internet). Now imagine my annoyance if I find out my friend has a Mac or is running Linux. Total drag. Sure, you can build a web-based solution for the Mac and Linux people, but it won't be that shiny, happy seamless solution that I'll expect. And that means, just like in the old days, non-Windows users will feel out of the loop.

Even better - you get a constant source of revenue. You can charge consumers money to store their stuff in the cloud. Say...$10 bucks a month for 100 gigs. That's $120 a year or nearly $400 bucks over the average Windows life-cycle. Well worth it. And, while not everyone will pay, a lot of people will for the convenience. And those who don't, can just keep doing their local files...but it'll become rapidly be a thing only paranoids and Linux-geeks do. Let's not even talk about how great this would be for stopping pirates. SaaS can't be pirated.

Of course, there are a lot of problems with this. Security is huge here and at this point, it might be an insurmountable obstacle. Interestingly, privacy wouldn't be - the revenue isn't rooted in advertising. Windows would benefit from a huge push into the cloud and into tech relevancy. Everyone else would spend years struggling to catch up (both because of the necessary server scale, and because Microsoft's world class Office suite is just impossible to build overnight. Google Docs is only working because it's free and it's convenient.). But if you stop thinking of Windows as just a solid but tasteless platform, and more of a seamless experience...people will never want to leave.

Also, this would just be for us vanilla consumers. (Though it'd be easy enough to give Enterprise their flavor of Windows server that would do the exact same thing...only strictly in-house.) But it would recapture the public imagination as to what an operating system is...and what it can do. I've even thought of a clever name for the product: Windows Skylight.

Ballmer is right: most of the computing still should be done on the client-side. Bandwidth isn't where it needs to be yet. Google Docs is still a gimped version of Office. So, instead of trying to but Windows up into the cloud, why not bring the cloud down into Windows, embedding it into its deepest levels?

Of course, this would be a ground-up re-imagining of Windows. And it would require incredible amounts of resources and, more importantly, clarity of vision to the point of irrationality. But I feel that this is the way forward to Windows.

Chrome OS is a clear demonstration that Google understands this model and plans on implementing it. They're smart...but they're still new to OS. The tools will be still light and the adoption will be slow. 5 second boot-up times? No one cares. It's STATELESS COMPUTING that matters. Windows Skylight will wipe aside any threats from Google and once again relegate Apple to being "elegant, but impractical." Linux...well, Linux just doesn't have the focus or resources to compete.

I really like Microsoft products, but I use them less and less these days. Partially for convenience, but partially because I just have this feeling that Microsoft doesn't get it. That it won't be offering me the most innovative products, because it doesn't live in the same world that I live in - namely, the Internet. But a move like this would address both issues and bring me, and many many others I suspect, back into the fold.

Help Make Buzz a Better Place!

2010-03-04T01:25:00.000-08:00

First off...I like Buzz.

I agreed with the creation of Google Buzz. Email has the tremendous problem of being a one-size-fits-all sort of communication: regardless of how many people you're emailing, email is the exact same and occupies the same space, and ergo carries the same weight as an email from your mother. Also, there are a lot of emails you'd love to share with everyone, but, not wanting to push it into their sacred inboxes and being that oh-so-annoying spammer, you refrain.

Gmail was legendary because it fixed this with conversations...sort of. It helps us organize the actual text. But what it failed to do was help us organize the intent of the email. Google Buzz acknowledges that not all emails are created equal and gives us a way of making different flavors of email.

Ok. Onto my main point: I do not like Buzzes that are just Google Reader shared articles.

I think what I find most annoying with the linking of Buzz with Reader (no offense people who do it), is that I don't come to Buzz to read the news. Gmail is for communicating with people, not for consuming news, and upon seeing 12 Buzzes demanding my attention, I assume that people I know and follow have written something interesting. It's a way for me to listen to them, even if we don't see each other often. I would prefer at least some personalization and commentary. At least with twitter, people don't just post the link - they add a personal summary. And that summary dominates the tweet, occupying the most characters.

It's just like in high school English class: I want to hear your voice. And yes, that often involves talking about what you find interesting in the news. However, I want to hear why you found it interesting. If I just wanted to consume interesting news, I'd look to Google's news algorithms ("Recommended for you" is getting pretty spot on these days). What I'd much rather prefer is to be able to initiate a conversation with you, my friend, about a topic you find interesting. And if you don't find it interesting enough to post your own thoughts on it, why should I?

I post this because I think Buzz, nascent as it is, has the potential to be something very useful to all of us. It's not a social network (a la Facebook); it's "public email." It will help de-congest our inboxes and open up new communication formats (think chatting privately in someone's room vs at a noisy party where anyone can join in. Different formats, different conversations, all uniquely valuable). However, because Buzz is so young, setting up the right expectations is really important.

If you agree with me, there are two things you can do to "Help Make Buzz a Better Place". The first is please comment on the stories you share or just unhook your Reader from your Buzz and post links that you'd not only like to share, but also to talk about. The second is to unfollow those who don't - not to be vindictive, but simply to make your Buzz inbox a little more personal the next time you sign in. And you can always keep following them on Reader. :)

Thanks guys!

iParadigm continued

2010-01-27T21:30:00.000-08:00

After thinking a little bit more about the iPad, I've actually come to the conclusion that Apple has done the right thing. Software paradigm shifts are not easy. Hardware paradigm shifts are even harder. Apple's primary goal, right now, is to get hardware into people's hands. To make ereaders that third device that people will carry with them. For now.

That's why the iPad fails to innovate. Because they want everyone with an iPhone to buy one. To pick it up and simply use it - not have to train through a paradigm shift. The iPhone replaced existing hardware and addressed the major pain point of existing hardware - the user interface. The iPad has to first create an entirely new market (Kindle is a joke guys).

That's why it's not innovative. That's why it's so cheap. That's why they're having it available worldwide at the same time. It's all the drive adoption.

Once those devices are in user's hands, Apple then has all the time it needs to innovate on the user interface. To change the software. That's the beauty of touchscreens, after all. Any button you can think of is just one upgrade away. And Apple has done this in the past, waiting until MacBooks had achieved real market power before introducing multitouch. That way, Apple isn't just a niche, it's a market leader (note everyone else scrambling to include even just two finger scroll, much less Expose).

I, for one, will hold out until next year. The second generation will definitely include a front-facing camera (this generation's processor is not fast enough, in my opinion, to safely do video) and multitasking (again, the processor/battery issues). And hopefully, by then, the market will have achieved a sufficient level of adoption that interface innovation will begin to happen.

iParadigm

2010-01-27T13:05:00.000-08:00

The iPad is a redeemable disappointment. Why?

First, the iPad is a nice tablet. Probably the nicest out there, especially for such a price. It builds off a fantastic iPhone operating system and introduces ebooks to the mainstream (the Kindle is cute, but not really going to revolutionize anything). It will undoubtedly be a success, as it is a fantastic device. But for a new product line from Apple, I think we all expected a lot more.

Today's announcement was just a change in format. A new device to read books on, watch movies, and browse the internet. But Apple's revolutions, in the past, have never been about format, but about interface. And this change in interface breeds a revolution in content. The mouse...changed everything. It created the desktop paradigm, the idea that our computers were not just terminals with blinking lights and buttons, but virtual spaces. The iPhone brought the touchscreen and multitouch into the game. It made our iPhones touchable, interactive in a whole new way. Our computers now had a texture.

What does the iPad do? It changes the form factor a little bit. But, I ask, what can I do on the iPad that I could not do on the iPhone?

One might say that the iPad was over-hyped and that I'm just tripping on my own expectations. But a look at 10gui proves this wrong. Sure, the iPad is a big iPhone. But it means that suddenly, there is room for all 10 fingers, instead of just our thumbs. Sure, the iPhone is touchable, but only to a limited degree. The idea of full, 10 finger multitouch would be incredible - a touch computer that engages my entire hand.

Part of this problem is the iPad's ties to the iPhone. While a brilliant business decision, leveraging the App Store, the iPhone OS's paradigm is tied to the thumbs. If the iPad had much more multitouch and built this into system-wide gestures, it would have revolutionized how we interact with our applications. Our fingers would not just be pointers (a la Windows Tablets) or pinchers (a la iPhone), but gateways to powerful gesture access. Sure, it may take some consumer education, but a look as to how MacBooks have already leveraged multitouch is a peak into the possibilities.

I think the greatest amount of innovation that comes with the iPad actually comes from Apple's partners. The data plan are tiered, yes, but carriers are now forever dumb data pipes that we subscribe to month by month, instead of signing away 2 years of our lives. I think we can all breath a big sigh of relief upon hearing this.

The other partner was of course the publishers who will be releasing their ebooks here. This jump will open up the ebook market, but Apple, Google, Barnes and Noble, etc. Publishers are showing that they are ready to move forwards, finally, and hopefully they will begin to take full advantage of the possibilities of the internet and the iPad.

I said at the beginning that the iPad is a redeemable failure. I say this because it has yet to be released and iteration has infinite potential. Better multitasking and multitouch still can change our we interact with our new iPads. But the problem is that with each month, the consumer's impression of how their iPads "should" work will be more and more ingrained and the chance for the paradigm shift fades more and more.

Paradigm shifts are undeniably difficult and expensive. Consumers are stubborn. But the potential here is also undeniable. We've got some ways before we hit the Minority Report interface, but the iPad definitely has the potential, if Apple chooses to unlock it, to bring us a lot closer.

iPhone appliance vs Android browser metaphor

2010-01-21T09:52:00.000-08:00

I just read Jesus Diaz's Gizmodo post. I consider Jesus to be a little arrogant, but here, I thought he spoke very clearly to the "app" metaphor on the iPhone. As we all know, the App Store has been a runaway success for Apple, changing the iPhone from a brilliant little device to a revolutionary platform. And it's not just because the iPhone was the first full computer you could carry around in your pocket. Nor is it because it did touch right. These things may appeal to the tech nerds, but the success of the iPhone can, in my mind, but attributed to the app. These apps are not applications anymore...they are appliances.

Consumers definitely love appliances. I do too. There's something very comforting about knowing where a certain functionality is. Even if my bed could seamlessly transform into a bathtub at the push of a button, I'm not entirely sure I would want that. I like knowing where my bed is and where my bathtub is. It's the same with computing. I think that this was the success of the desktop metaphor...it gave consumers a feeling of where. That's why people still save things to the desktop - they understand where it is. A lot of consumers out there hate poking around the file system. It doesn't really make sense to them.

The iPhone app metaphor takes that further. Each app transforms the iPhone into an entirely new device, an appliance for gaming, calling, or playing music. The home screen is simple - apps organized into a simple grid, much like buttons on a microwave or calculator, both consumer friendly appliances. Once you enter an app, it takes up the whole screen and is the only thing that is running. It is an appliance. Simple, brilliant.

This makes a lot of sense for Apple. Apple has always been about making computing simple. Apple has done its best to make the underlying computer is hidden away - everything from its hardware to its software to its retail stores tells us this. And this is why the iPhone is such a breakthrough device. It promotes simplicity above even common sense ideas like migrating data between apps (even copy paste for a while!).

It is interesting, then, to turn to Android and realize that Android has its own metaphor - that of the browser. Android tricks you into thinking it is the desktop metaphor, with its home screen that can be filled with whatever shortcuts you want. But, all you have to do is look at the hardware buttons - back and search. Menu is useful, but obvious. Home is a safety net, meant to catch users who have gotten lost and yearn for the iPhone home button. But Android's two primary buttons, and the ones I find myself using the most, are back and search.

These two functions are unique to browsers. While you can search on the desktop as well, it is not key to the desktop experience and certainly would not deserve one of four hardware buttons. But in the browser, Google has made search not only useful, but also a twitch response to any information we might need. It is so fundamental that Google Chrome is dominated by the OmniBar (essentially search, with some leftover http mess that Google would probably rather have consumers forget about). And it is so fundamental that Android has search in the much-coveted bottom right of the screen - the easiest place to access for right-handed people.

Back is also something fundamental to the browser, but obviously unheard-of in desktop. When was the last time you imagined going "back" in Windows? Back only makes sense inside of the browser - where you have one window that you are moving forward or backward in. It's a strange transition at first, but once you get used to it, Android's back button is indispensable - of course I can surf the web, click an email link, write and save a draft, and then go back to the web page on I was on. Why not?

Android's metaphor is clearly that of the Internet. Hyperlinked applications and universally searchable data. Those of us native to this space will understand it well.

It is no wonder, then, that Apple and Google seem to stand head-to-head on the mobile front. Their design philosophies are so fundamentally opposed - the appliance vs the web page. And it is no wonder that Google has had trouble attracting app developers - people might pay for apps, but who will pay for webpages? But in the end, I doubt Google is too bothered by this. Android doesn't need to dominate Apple - it just needs to achieve a large enough following that its web-centered interface is readily understandable to the layman. That iPhone users might sometimes find themselves wishing for a back or search button. And even if Apple adopts anything like that functionality and crushes Android, Google will win. Because, as they have always maintained, all Google wants to do is bring the Internet and search the the mobile phone.

2010-01-17T10:59:00.000-08:00

Student Tech flashmob: Subtly break a laptop (create a fake internet connection) and have a beautiful girl stand in front of the laptop, looking puzzled (not confused) and concerned (probably with her hand on her chin).

2009-12-28T09:42:00.000-08:00

I was just thinking about the terrorist incident a few days ago and a comment I heard on TWiT, "In the future, not sharing your information will be viewed as anti-social."

If Google Goggles for human faces were implemented today and combined with Facebook data, would this help or hinder anti-terrorism efforts? We're all so concerned with government cameras and facial recognition; what happens when everyone has that technology? When we're all watching each other?

My first reaction is the recoil in horror, imagining suspicious or just plain nosy passengers snapping pictures of every Muslim or Arab onboard. And these ugly incidents will undoubtedly occur. But after the dust has settled, and new social norms have set in, will it make us better? Realizing that the Muslim or Arab might share a mutual friend with you?

And will it actually deter terrorism? The main problem with terrorism is the anonymity of terrorists, being able to blend into the crowd. If facial recognition becomes a widespread and cheap technology, will that no longer be the case? Maybe the terrorists will begin using face-altering surgery? Will this increase in capital costs and sophistication make them more easily caught?

Well, it was a thought. As always, technology will just be another useful tool, a fun plaything, and never quite the solution we hope it to be.

What happens to a dream relinquished?

No poetry to mourn its loss.

No strident voices or teary eye,

Just a knowing look and silent sigh.

2009-12-08T17:59:00.000-08:00

So, I thought about this yesterday. I've been writing here in this really formal language. I don't know why exactly. It's silly because no one is reading it, so formalism carried beyond my personal style is really just...wasteful and silly.

Google Goggles are watching you

2009-12-07T13:51:00.000-08:00

How much longer before Google links their Goggles technology with some basic facial recognition technology and an index of our Facebook (or Myspace or Twitter) profile pictures?

How much longer before http://abstrusegoose.com/114 becomes a reality?

Content, the Last Emperor

2009-12-04T02:54:00.000-08:00

Clearly, Murdoch would be crazy to do it. Because he'd lose a lot of traffic. Because people will just go to other newspapers. Because it's just mean.

I think there's something more important than just losing traffic though. That's just looking at it through the eyes of the Internet. More importantly, making a deal with Bing (or even Google) would cripple and limit the future of News Corp. It'd be the same kind of deal as Yahoo made with Microsoft. Sure, it brings in a bit of money now, but at the cost of innovation. Innovation is hard and painful and without the threat of bankruptcy, companies generally don't like re-inventing themselves or their business model.

See, assured of this revenue stream, they'll stop frantically looking for new revenue streams (or will be less willing to take risks to find them). Newspapers are dying for good reason - they were among the last of the information economies to come to terms with the Internet and now are suffering the consequences (who would be using Craigslist if the local newspaper had offered their content online and their classifieds for free, but charging a little extra to put your listing in the front, like Google). The first step to fixing your problem is admitting that it exists, not band-aiding it by blackmailing others.

If the newspapers go down this route, not only will it be bad for the Internet, it'd be bad for them, putting them at the mercy of a single search engine (only exclusivity is worth paying for) and establishing a relationship that will only serve to make them fatter and slower and more and more obsolete. In the meantime, Microsoft will be harvesting metadata that will allow it innovate into the future.

Face it, Murdoch, content isn't king. And sooner content realizes this and stops living a ridiculous Forbidden Palace-style delusion, the better.

The Evils of Free

2009-12-04T02:21:00.000-08:00

I love Google. You do too. We all love Google because it is not evil, it is free, and it works really well. Well, the evil part is starting to get controversial, but for the sake of non-shouting-angry-words conversation, let's just say it's not evil.

A lot of people's biggest problem with Google is privacy. Google is sucking up information not only from the web, but from our lives. But I actually don't care. I believe privacy is (largely) dead. And looking at the surfing norms of my little sister, it'd hard to believe otherwise.

My biggest problem with Google is how it is taking over the Internet.

To being with, Google is the Internet. When we try and think of an internet without Google (and other search engines), it's hard to imagine. Finding any sort of information on the internet is impossible. I google everything, without even thinking about it (Ctrl-K is the best shortcut since sliced bread). And today's announcement of the Google Public DNS only intensified the fact that Google is the Internet. In about a year, I will undoubtedly be booting up my Chrome OS netbook to make a DNS request through Google's servers to login to my Google Account to go to Google Reader. Yup, Google is the Internet.

The logical counter to this is, "Well, the competition is always just a click away." If you don't like Google, just don't use them. Google's Data Liberation Front assures us that we can always leave. And, at least in search, Google has some real competitors. However, Google is always entering new markets, markets where people have been building companies for years, until Google drops its free product and crushes it.

Nothing wrong with that. Consumers love free. And what's more, most of these are open-sourced, which means that if Google doesn't play nicely, we can always just build our own, right?

The problem is that when Google does this, the competition is no longer a click away. Just like Walmart or Microsoft before them, Google is trying to put everyone else out of business. The Internet is a competition for time and eyeballs. Any successful company, regardless of what they do, needs some sort of search. And Google's made a lot of money off search. A successful company, with profits to reinvest, might create niche search markets (like Mapquest) is just stemming more search traffic away from Google. Or they might, like OpenDNS, profit from working with Yahoo instead of Google.

Google has a lot of great visions for the Internet. They want to make it faster and more open. And by open, I mean free. In the end, Google would just love it if the Internet was one big, flat, open plane, filled with information about everything. In fact, it would be even better if the entire Internet was served through Google.

The problem with this is that it might be killing innovation. Unless you're ready to completely refute capitalism, Google's entry into markets is destroying market creativity. The "mom and pop" websites are being overrun because they can't scale and thus live off the lower margins that Google can (sound familiar?). So even if they offer better products or incredible features, Google's code bombs clear the market.

This, of course, isn't just a problem with Google. It's a problem my friend Chris has raised about open-source in general. Open-source is a sort of programming communism, except scarcity finally isn't an issue because you can copy paste resources to infinite. But, is capitalism really that bad? Is it bad to reward innovation? My problem isn't with free or with open-source, but whether these can provide a similar level of innovation as the markets have in the past. While open-source might innovate faster in small-strokes, does it really have the vision and stubbornness and sometimes stupidity to see a potentially visionary and revolutionary idea through? To create new markets and not just improve or expand the existing?

Well, clearly this post (which is free) isn't figuring that out anytime soon. But it's something I finally realized tonight (Chris, you were right, as always) and thought I might share here.

Hotel Facebook. Someone needs to write a parody song now. "You can logout any time you like but you can never leave!"

Twitch to Click

2009-12-02T13:02:00.000-08:00

Everyone is buzzing about touch. Touchscreen phones, touchscreen laptops, and above all, tablets. The Apple Tablet has become legendary for both its universal tech-lust and perpetual coyness. The iPhone has captured our imaginations with its beauty and simplicity. No keys! Just an achingly beautiful and responsive touch screen. But, like the great consumer products of our nation, we hunger for something more. We hunger for the iPhone Supersized.

Touch technology seems to be the new way of interacting with our computers. The Apple tablet would be just one giant screen. One giant beautiful glossy screen.

But what does this mean for computing? Changing the way we interface with our computers will undoubtedly change the way we use them. The point and click mouse brought the computers to the masses and the iPhone brought it to our pockets. How might a tablet change us?

To find that answer, you need only look at a tablet. Interface-wise, what is it? It's a giant output. Sure, we might have soft keyboards, but intuitively, we will begin to see digital media differently on a tablet - we will view it as consumers. On a traditional computer, the keyboard occupies almost as much space as the screen. Input and output, physically as well as conceptually, are balanced. This has made for a revolutionary equality between consuming and producing. It is just as easy to view text as it is to produce it. This quality has made the Internet an unprecedented place in knowledge exchange.

However, with a tablet, the paradigm shifts. Consuming is smooth and multi-touchy and gorgeous. But producing will be slower, more awkward. Even if Apple produces a soft keyboard as intuitive as the iPhone, the keyboard will no longer occupy physical, and thus conceptual, space.

It sounds a little crazy. But think about it this way. When we surf the web these days, we usually do so with our fingers hovering about the keyboard. Input is literally a twitch away. But with the tablet, bringing up the keyboard is an click and not a twitch (any prodigious user of keyboard shortcuts will testify to the huge difference) and doing so will cut down screen space. Input becomes a chore and even a punishment.

Obviously, the tablet isn't going to lead to the destruction of the generative internet. I promise YouTube comments will still be as prolific as they are stupid. And we won't do all our computing on the tablet; it'll only be for couch-computing. But there will still be a subtle shift. You may choose to click a relevant advertisement instead of choosing to "google-twitch" it. You may comment a little less on your favorite blogs. You may hold off a little longer on making your own blog post, maybe wait until you get up off the couch and back to your desk.

Some people might argue that this might even promote better behavior. Filter out those impulsive comments (FIRST comments jumps to mind). But wasn't that the point of the internet - infinite information, infinite shelf space? That the bad comments will simply be ignored? More importantly, an increase in professional content and less amateur content may lead to better content in the short run, but will it lead to more participation in the long run? I doubt it.

I'm currently writing this on a netbook. I had this thought during class and just felt like writing it down somewhere. But what if I had a tablet instead of a netbook? Would I have bothered? Or maybe I would have told myself to wait until I got back to my room, where I have a real keyboard, and then forgotten the post entirely.

My point here isn't that we should reject or even feel guilty about lusting for a tablet (mmm...tablet). But I did want to introduce this idea, that we might prepare for the future and hopefully adapt to preserve the generative and participatory nature of our web.

2009-11-30T13:54:00.001-08:00

I am more convinced that ever that APIs are the way of the future. Why? The internet's most powerful and popular app was built on the API. And that is email.

2009-11-27T22:23:00.001-08:00

A lot of hubbub has been made of the coming conflict between Facebook and Google for dominance of the Internet. Facebook, being the fastest growing site in the world, with hundreds of millions of members, seems poised to change the way the internet works. Or, more accurately, it seems poised to change the way the interest is trusted. The unit of the internet used to be webpages. Bits of knowledge that linked to each other. Facebook wants to change the filesystem, with persons being the new unit.

Google, of course, tried to push into this market as well with Orkut, but clearly that is losing to Facebook on all fronts. And the "social web" seems to only be growing in importance. The idea of social recommendations for products, where most of the money in advertising is sure to lie, could threaten Google's revenue stream. And certainly, while Google may be awkward at navigating the social web, they have shown that they have the persistence and the innovation to break into markets they are not native to.

Why, then, is Google taking this lying down?

Google has one fabulous trick up its sleeve. Just as Facebook threatens Google because they propose to change the paradigm of the internet, Google is going to do it one better - by changing it right back. Google is going to make the Internet not only personal, but ubiquitous and it is going to do this through its smartphone operating system, Android.

I think Google realizes that at this point, they're just too big to trust. They've been sucking up our infomration for years now and no one is going to volunteer more information to them. The image of Big Brother is just too strong. So Google plans on disappearing into the operating system, creating services that are indispensable to us and still allow Google to monitor us in the background.

And they'll reach further than Facebook. Sure, right now it may seem like it's just Google search in our pockets, but it's definitely a revolution and one that Facebook, which has yet to release an Android client, has yet to respond to (though certainly advances in Facebook Connect have made leaps). Google will be in our pockets and all the information that is vital to us, our email, our documents, our favorite places, and even our pictures, will be in Google's cloud. It'll just be so convenient to keep them there, with Android so well integrated with Google's services.

Facebook, in the meantime, is still firmly rooted in Web 2.0. Interactive, social, and personal, but still based on its website. Google, with Android, will be with us everywhere we bring our phone. I don't know about you, but I bring my phone everywhere except the shower. And soon, Google will be with me everywhere too. And if they ever use Android to power, say, a radio shower that syncs to your Google account and your music library, Google will be there too.

I know I'm probably overstating things here. Certainly Android is not entirely under Google's control. Certainly the mobile world is still young and Facebook still has plenty of time to catch up. But for the average user, Android is Google. And Facebook is running out of time fast and certainly won't be able to pump out or support a new operating system, like Google has. Eventually, Facebook will have to come over to the Google platform. But at that point, Facebook will be playing in Google's backyard and the odds will have significantly changed.

2009-11-02T14:05:00.000-08:00

An interesting phenomenon is that people at Yale do their laundry (sometimes, very expensive laundry) and leave it unguarded for hours. A person could easily walk away with laundry in the dryer and tracing this person would be incredibly difficult.

Why then, does no one steal laundry? It's a pretty portable, expensive, and untraceable good that is readily and pretty publicly available.

2009-10-13T22:32:00.000-07:00

In my humble and uninformed opinion, healthcare is such a mess because it doesn't scale well. Even though it theoretically should be servicing every single person in the US, expertise cannot be scaled and basic service cannot be commoditized. Everyone feels like they deserve the best doctors and personal treatment.

Never mind

2009-10-04T02:46:00.001-07:00

http://www.ubuntu.com/support/services

Silly Linux ruminations

2009-10-04T01:54:00.001-07:00

Linux's biggest failing is its lack of customer support.

Yes, there are companies like Red Hat that offer support. But average users?

And don't tell me there are forums. Yes, there are forums or even IRC channels. But I, first off, am intimidated by the forums, which often assume a lot of familiarity with computer language than I have, and I consider myself a slightly above average user. And IRC channels? Point me to the website where I can download IRC please. ;)

That's not even the point. What I really want to say is that Linux is not just a product. It's a community. And that doesn't just apply to its programmers and developers. That applies to its users. And whenever a new user comes aboard, they are scared and intimidated and wondering if they should just shell out the hundred bucks for Windows or just go buy a Mac. I was lucky enough to have a college suitemates who generously donated their time to teach me some of the basics. Yes, I could have read the forums. But I didn't know they necessarily existed and the language in the forums is not addressed to newbies like me.

Everyone says Linux is a community. That its greatest strengths is its community. I don't know how exactly, but if this community could be directed not simply to code, but also to provide support for those who are trying out Linux for the first time and are feeling a little confused and lost, I think Linux has some real mainstream legs.

Paying for Participation

2009-09-25T00:43:00.001-07:00

It is one of the great challenges of the "Web 2.0" to monetize the participatory culture. Can you imagine monetizing brainstorming sessions? Or a teacher offering pennies to the kids who will raise their hand? Contribution to a community, once valued with dollars, become almost worthless.

Ads have been the traditional answer.

StackOverflow is an excellent example of a knowledge based participatory culture that rewards members with prestige, based on their contributions.

Can this knowledge sharing model be transmitted to creative work sharing? Can creativity be participatory? Clearly, sites like fanfiction.net have shown that it can. But what will the be monetization?

What will it be a platform for? For brand broadcast? Or author discovery? Will the next Stephanie Meyer be found in the forums?

Of course, participatory websites also have one tremendous weakness: they are nothing without their users. They offer almost no innovation, and what little innovation they do provide is incidental and not core to the experience.

And because the internet has infinite shelf-space, competition is just a click away. Community exodus is just too easy. Of course, there is an immediate jump to lock-in. How do you lock your members in? The problem, is of course, that your users are already suspicious and suspicion grows exponentially with forum posts.

Lock-in, then, is no longer a viable option. Instead, you must rely on mind-share and inertia and community. And that means, however you tax your users, you must tax them very very lightly and maintain their goodwill at all times.

Unlimited vs. Per-Unit Data

2009-09-05T16:00:00.000-07:00

I often wonder what the internet would have been like if ISPs had banded together and introduced per-GB or tiered data plans. Obviously, the internet would be tremendously different that it is today, with users metering and rationing their usage.

Today, I wondered what the world would have been like if telegraph services had evolved differently. If telegraphs were wired to every home and everyone had their own telegraph machine. I leave out telephones, which obviously achieved this kind of ubiquity, because I believe that the backend to our telephone system is different and because people on the phone are 'tying up the line', it would make sense that they should pay by the minute.

I'm imagining a world where everyone owns their own telegraph machine, which has an unlimited data plan, though during busy hours, there might be some latency. Aside from the awesome visualization of an old-timey mustached man loling for the first time with piano music in the background, would this have changed communications? The idea of unlimited communication with the rest of the world, or at least with the rest of the nation, has obviously transformed our day - one has to wonder what effect it might have had on the 19th century. An easy to use typewriter that would transform sentences into Morse code and back, so that any citizen could have joined into the conversations. And hubs, where telegraphs could be split and amplified and broadcast.

I'm sure I missing a huge number of technological hurdles that would have had to be overcome, but it's interesting to think about.

Open Source Software

2009-08-19T23:18:00.001-07:00

During college, I was introduced to the idea to open source by a few of my suitemates. At first, I considered it crazy, the idea of giving away an entire operating system for free. Then, delving further into the open source culture, I came to realize its logic and efficiency. Sharing code costs you nothing, but allows for tremendous innovation, as people can now pick up the Linux kernel and freely adapt it.

Is closed-source software just an aging dinosaur, meant to be eventually relegated to niche markets? Listen to any Linux user and they will tell you, and probably convince you, that closed source software will. But, at the end of day, will you actually switch from Windows? Doubtful.

And the reason for this goes deeper than simple consumer inertia. There are distros of Linux that especially catered to providing a smooth transition. And the pull of free has demonstrated itself over and over again on the internet. So if Linux and open source software in general is faster, safer, and most importantly, free, why hasn't it become a significant force in the PC environment?

The reason is that Microsoft, and its closed source brethren, are still innovating faster than Linux. And its not in a way that the Linux community understands or even cares about. Microsoft's innovation is in education, aka marketing. Linux may duplicate and even innovate every feature, but innovation isn't about just inventing the wheel, but getting other people to start using it. The man who invented sliced bread didn't actually make millions. It was Wonderbread, who brought this innovation to the masses and educated them as to why it was so useful and important and indispensable, that made the millions. Microsoft, with its marketing and customer relations team, is out there, bringing the innovation to the consumers. Or, putting it another way, dragging them kicking and screaming into the future.

Nor do I think the business model of software-as-a-product is going away. Consumers have demonstrated, year after year, that they're willing to pay for it. And while it was generated billions for Microsoft, even that may not be enough. Microsoft, with its tremendous advertising budgets, is sometimes unable to educate the consumer. Vista, being a recent example.

Linux will never be able to do this. Culturally, they're incapable. OSS just doesn't care about consumers. They are a culture of developers. To any OSS users, have you ever tried teaching your own mothers to use Linux? How successful have you been? Probably not very. The problem is that OSS may be superior, but it is unable to teach consumers, because it expects them to learn it, for their own good. Companies like Microsoft will always be patient with their customers, if for no other reason than that they are paid to be. (I honestly think if any open-source developer spent a year working at a Starbucks, they'd think twice before suggesting the coming obsolescence of Microsoft. You think Ubuntu newbies are bad now? Just imagine the trolling if Sarah Palin and Howard Dean both ended up in the same "adobe-flash" thread.)

I guess what I'm saying is that we, as consumers, are immature, idiotic babies that have to be spoon fed and reassured and coddled. And doing so requires the type of resources that only closed-source software can generate. Having companies that will smack the consumer into submission, force feed them their technological veggies, and then be the willing receptacle of all the complaints, mostly unwarranted, is irreplaceable. Linux cannot and will not fill this void. The majority of consumers, in any given field, are idiots. I love computers, but when it comes to fine wine, I am probably have all the manners of a Microsoft fanboy on a Linux forum thread. Catering to idiots, like you and me, is what closed-source companies are for.

My friend told me, "There will always be a place for companies like Microsoft and Google." I will respond that "There will always be a place for Linux." Linux will always be necessary, both as a check to the forces of greed and a place of innovation. But Linux will and should never 'go mainstream.'

Chrome OS

2009-07-24T11:31:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of chatter about Google Chrome OS recently, and I am of course stewing in my own opinions. A lot of them are unqualified and ridiculous (like most things on this blog), but I like to hash them out there anyways.

First of all, I think Chrome OS is a great idea. Not just for Google, not just for "the ecosystem", but because it will be a great product. Everyone may say that a browser-based operating system already exists, a la Ubuntu or Moblin, but neither really understand, nor are invested in, the internet platform. Google is. And that fact alone will ensure that the frilly bits of any normal operating system will be eliminated. Chrome OS will be faster and more efficient than the other operating systems. There will be a cost, but the idea that Chrome OS is instant-on means that dual-booting will not be the burden that it has been.

The idea of instant-on cannot be over-estimated. I am currently stuck on the Chrome browser, primarily because of its instant-on feel. When users have a choice between booting up into their native Windows, which takes the prequesite 30 seconds, or booting into Chrome OS, which might take 5 seconds (if Google comes through), they will choose Chrome. The need for "I just need to do a quick check of my email/facebook/news/blogs/etc". The iPod Touch's wild, if much more muted, success demonstrates that.

In addition, as booting into Chrome becomes habits (and it will, as anyone who sits down in front of their computer and finds themselves automatically at their favorite site will tell you), people will be increasingly reluctant to switch over to their native OS for their favorite apps and find webapps 'that will do.' I'm talking about Gmail and Co, of course. Sure, Microsoft Office offers more functionality and has user-interia on its side, but Google has cleverly turned the table, making sure user inertia is on its side. Especially with the ability to automatically open any file in Google Docs (something you can only do inside Gmail at this point), users will just shrug and deal. Few are loyal to MS Office. We use it because it is convenient and powerful. But honestly, the majority of the power is rarely used and we'll switch over whenever it becomes inconvenient.

Finally, there is the question of adoption. Because many have argued that Google Chrome OS is just another flavor of Linux. This is true - but not to the manufacturers. Just like Google Maps, Scholar, and a host of other services, there were those who existed before it. But the negotiating ability that Google has is unparalleled. The billions that sit behind Google's initiatives speak for themselves and speak quite articulately. To challenge the OS market, you need money to wheedle and cajole a reluctant manufacturing base and an unwilling public into a Brave New World.

Don't get me wrong here. I will be getting Windows 7. It looks fantastic and I can't see myself leaving Windows behind, easily for another 10 years. But Google OS will find its niche in this ecosystem, and I believe it will be a very considerable one indeed.

Chrome and Tabs

2009-07-24T11:14:00.000-07:00

After using Google Chrome with my dual monitor setup, I cannot go back. The ability to split off a tab into a new window without that tab reloading itself is absolutely brilliant. Ever since I first used tabs, I have been trouble between the dichotomy between the two. While I understand they are different architecturally, for the user, they are treated as one and the same. And for me, the browser that best reflects my thought and work processes is the one I will be most likely to use.

While I am merely an anonymous blogger at this point, I cannot emphasize enough to Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft, and Opera to quickly follow in Chrome's footsteps here. Especially for those of us with larger monitors, windows are no longer 'windows' in our mind. They are simply 'groupings' of similar tabs. And the ability to organize my tabs however I'd like, while seemingly insignificant, is a major step forward for the user-interface and the advancement of the 'internet platform.'

CAPTCHA and the Singularity

2009-07-10T15:15:00.000-07:00

It's quite funny that computers, as powerful as they are, still cannot manage to figure out CAPTCHA. I mean, they can do voice recognition, transcription, and decent text and handwriting recognition. But not CAPTCHA.

I imagine decades hence, when singularity arrives and AI have taps on all our communications, the rag-tag human resistance will communicate entirely in CAPTCHA.

CAPTCHA Revere: The robots are coming!

I kind of like Bing

2009-07-08T23:11:00.000-07:00

Today, with the annoucement of Google's Chrome OS and the natural flurry of blog posts, I decided I'd step back and give Microsoft's Bing a try. I know I am a bit of a Google fanboy, and after reading all the irrationally exuberant comments today, I thought maybe now was a good time to take off my Google hat and let it air out for a while.

And you know what? I kind of like Bing.

It took a little while for me to come around to this. There's a natural prejudice in the web ecosystem against Microsoft. And so, I definitely went into Bing looking for flaws. And it impressed me, nonetheless.

I'm actually not very sure how good it's actual search results are. Honestly, I'm sure given enough years, Microsoft will slowly refine its results so that the two are nearly indistinguishable. People seem to have an unfounded belief that Microsoft engineers are somehow inferior to Google engineers and thus naturally have worse results. I really doubt that. Google just has a lot of expertise in this area and it's going to take Microsoft a while to catch up.

What did impress me with Bing is the user interface. One my friends, Chris, would berate me for this, but this actually matters a lot. And I'm not just talking about shiny new buttons or random pictures on the homepage. I'm talking about intuitive user interface elements. Like the left column for organizing results. Or the self-loading endless image results. Or the self-previewing video. Google has long professed that its goal is to get you off of Google's pages and to your destination as quickly as possible. Microsoft would rather you play inside its pages. It brings you the information so you hang around and judge which result would be best, instead of repeating and refining searches. Bing, for example, would never have a "I'm feeling lucky" option - it would go against this design principle of creating a "Bing experience" and not just a stop and go Google search.

In the end, I'm probably going to stick with Google. There are two reasons (keeping in mind my Google hat has been safely put asi...wait, where did it go?).

One is having used Google all my life, I understand how to Google. I speak Googlese. When I first started searching on aol or askjeeves (shudder), I might enter, "What is the tallest mountain in the world?" Now, I would simply Google, "mountain tallest." "What carcinogens might I find in my house?" becomes "household carcinogens." Google, over the years, has slowly trained me to be a good searcher with the good old carrot and stick model: good querys were rewarded with fast results and bad ones punished. And as I found that Google can find anything on the web, so long as I worded my query correctly, I came to see any failed searches as a failure on my part - for not having worded the query correctly. It became a relationship of sorts and just as Google is always trying to understand me, I am always trying to understand Google.

I recognize this doesn't hold true for the general population. And for people not Google-trained, the friendly user-interface of Bing holds its appeal. But ultimately, a bad query is a bad query. The customers who are unable to word queries that Google can understand will probably face similar frustations at Bing. And worse yet, Bing , with its 'stay awhile and listen' attitude might face the brunt of the frustration. With Google, if the result you wanted isn't in the top 10, you rarely keep going. Most likely, you then step back and re-examine your query. With Bing, no amount of extra information and related searches is going to make a bad query return good results.

The second reason is why I'm a Google fanboy. It's trust. The cynic will tell you it's just brand and advertising, but all of these point back to the same idea: I trust Google. I trust it to deliver me the best search results. And I have no quantifiable metrics either. But time and time again, Google has delivered me the results I wanted, when other search engines resulted in frustration. Sure, I've had to refine my search, but there's a wonderful feeling of inevitability to it, like I'm Sherlock Holmes, following the trail of my dastardly nemesis, "that funny video where the guy does the different dances from different decades."

Bing might be just as satisfying an experience. But it has yet to earn my trust. The sad thing is that it probably won't get to. I'm happy with Google. Unless it violates my trust in a major way (cough Facebook cough), I'm willing to work out our differences in how to best search for Spanish flan recipies.

Before I close, I want to say this about Bing. It lives up to its name: a decision engine. It's great if you don't really know what you want. Bing is a great destination - it's pleasant to look at, has a consistent look and feel (something to be cherish in the chaos of the internet), and has great information from around the web. It's wonderful for just grazing on bits of the internet. And it's truly encouraging to see Microsoft actually join the field (msn and live don't count). But if you use search engines as vehicles, instead of destinations, as I do, then Google's philosophy and more importantly, its results, remains the logical choice.

Search Recursion

2009-07-03T19:07:00.000-07:00

"bing & google"

Myspace: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

2009-07-03T17:38:00.000-07:00

With Facebook surpassing Myspace in all critical parameters, the most important of which being hype, I've been thinking a lot about how anyone would turn Myspace around. They still have quite a few users, but I doubt people are incessantly logging onto Myspace just to poke their friends, nor do I think anyone assumes their new-found friend will have a Myspace account they can 'friend.'

With it becoming painfully obvious that Myspace has no future if it continues down its current path, as Facebook's 'little brother,' I'm sure its CEOs are now scrambling to find a new strategy to inject new life into the site.

The painful thing about social networking sites is that the more popular they are, the more useful they are. Myspace, of course, was successful early on, with a reasonably wide appeal. Only, it never became the thing. And by that I mean, it never became unusual for someone you know not to be on Myspace. Myspace may have had a hundred million people, but it was never a social norm. In fact, it increasingly became characterized as an 'emo' space, where pages would automatically play strange music and people typed in all caps.

Facebook, on the other hand, has become a bit of a social necessity. My mother, the other day, asked if I could help her set up a Facebook page. For me, whenever technology has become widespread enough that my mother is asking about it, it has clearly become a social necessity.

Myspace, then, faces a difficult choice. Does it try to win back users? But with what? Obviously, it can't win in pure social networking terms: it has less users and the users it does have probably have Facebook pages as well. It must compete in its strong suit. What are those? In my opinion, it is Myspace's customization.

The desire to make yourself 'stand out' is still with us. We may have temporarily forgotten about it, but people love to distinguish themselves. Granted, part of the reason Facebook became popular is because it was clean and simple (though it certainly has changed since then). But not everyone wants to be clean and simple. People love to stand out and Myspace has always excelled in that. To excel here, Myspace simply has to nuture this aspect of its site in a responsible way. Provide simple, powerful ways for people to design their own sites. People will never put their facebook page on their business cards. But if you provide a powerful set of tools to make beautiful, appealing, and informative sites, where users have full control of what gets displayed and how it looks, people may begin to. Facebook has created and forced its standards on us. Myspace can benefit off this by being the place where creativity and freedom flourish.

Of course, none of this is news. But I did want to emphasize that Myspace, in order to suceed, must focus on what it's good at. But that also mean casting aside what it's bad at. And Myspace's biggest weakness, right now, is its lack of users. Therefore, Myspace needs to adopt Facebook Connect.

In one fell swoop, the burden of maintaining two online identities disappears. Myspace no longer has to compete with Facebook for users. It can embrace them. Through the Facebook platform, Myspace can create a way for Facebook users to notify each other of changes on their Myspace account, much in the same way Twitter statuses can be linked to Facebook. Myspace can become a second page, a personal page, that users can link to off of their Facebook page. A way for a person to distinguish themselves and stand out from the blues and whites of Facebook.

Nor can Facebook really stop them. Yes, Facebook can deny Myspace access to its platform, but only at the risk of raising further concerns of its Big Brother attitude and adding hype to Myspace as a less oppressive alternative. Much in the same way Palm has linked its Pre to iTunes, Myspace can capitalize and then expand off of Facebook's success.

In the end, I probably would prefer it if Myspace did not adopt this strategy. Facebook needs a legitimate challenger and Myspace is the only viable alternative at this point. And there are disadvantages too, as Facebook could easily make Myspace redundant by dupliating this feature and allowing users to create a separate 'MyFacebook' page of their own to customize. But it would still take them a while and in that narrow time space, Myspace may regain the users and more importantly, the momentum it needs to remain relevant.

MMOs

2009-06-17T22:56:00.000-07:00

At some point in our lives, we were all inspired by the idea of MMOs. A virtual world! A world we can design and sculpt. We dreamed of a world uninhibited, where magic was real and we could do anything we could imagine.

It doesn't take much experience to realize that the world of MMOs today is not like that at all. Instead, we have games were we click mythical dragons to death and are awarded with new items. Wonderful. When we finally have the power to create any type of world we can imagine, we recreate our own world...except dressed up with pointy ears and ridiculous cleavage.

Honestly though, we all sort of knew it was coming. People bring their own hells wherever they go and a world without scarcity and disappointment wouldn't feel real and certainly wouldn't be addicting. And I'm ok with that. I'm certainly a flawed enough human being to understand that. But what has really disappointed me is the utter lack of imagination. Here we have game designers whose entire job is to come up with new and interesting ways of interacting with a computer and with other people and what kind of innovation do they give us? A new system where you can chain attacks? The ability to jump? Jet packs that don't actually let you fly but just hover really quickly?

It just seems like all the developers in the world are too busy gathering around WoW's tent, breathing heavily and hoping for a glimpse. It's the same problem with these 'iPhone clones.' The point is never to copy. The point is to outright steal and then just MOVE ON. Picasso said that. Sort of. But for god sakes, there's no point to trying to beat WoW anymore. Anyone who's looking for a good point-and-click MMORPG is going to go to WoW. Sure, you can try and make yours free but...what's the point? There are already a dozen MMOs already trying to do that. And it's yielded them nothing.

Of course, game designers need to do something with their time, so they're bound to keep trying these little trinkets they keep hoping will lure gamers away. And I don't blame them. But as a gamer, I'd love to see them take some real risks, build some real games with some NEW GAMEPLAY, and not just new gameplay 'features.'