June 21, 2004 03:25 PM
Stowe does Europe
Like any true blue American Stowe Boyd is doing Europe this summer - just when the airfares go up.
What a coincidence - I am too! But I'm waiting till the end of the summer, to do a house trade in Amsterdam. That way I can make it to the FOAF confab and do a series of "micro-content" dinners in NYC, London, Trieste and Amsterdam (twice.)
Here's Stowe's itinery. I definitely wanna meet his friend George.
Down and Out in London, Amsterdam, and Nice
Turns out that I will be roaming the European landmass next month, with Greg Narain, like a very small band of Vandals.
* London - I am speaking at the Symposium on Social Tools in the Enterprise, 12 July, a get-together I have blogged on a few times already.
* I will be speaking somewhere in Amsterdam on 13 July: Social Tools: Get Connected in the Post-Everything Economy. My buddy, George Witteveen is the organizer, if you are interested in learning about time/locale.
* 14-15 July, I will be in Nice, at the iDate conference, talking about the 'Third Space' that online community provides.
I look forward to meeting with Get Real readers in these cities. Contact me if you have any questions about these events.
[Get Real]
June 21, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Freeview
Four million homes have Freeview
Freeview was launched in October 2002
More than four million homes in the UK now have access to the free-to-air digital service Freeview, according to new figures.
The BBC has said that this means its digital channels, radio networks and interactive services are now available in over 13 million UK households.
Freeview was launched in October 2002 as a replacement to ITV Digital.
It allows viewers access to over 50 channels by purchasing a set-top box, for a one-off fee of around £50.
The available channels include BBC Three and BBC Four, as well as Sky News, UK History and the shopping channel QVC.
Encouraging
The BBC has also said that Freeview's rise in popularity has helped to hasten digital take-up amongst analogue viewers, while establishing digital terrestrial television (DTT) as the second largest digital platform in the UK.
"The continued growth of digital television is very encouraging," said Andy Duncan, BBC Director of Marketing, Communications and Audiences.
"The Freeview figures show that the free proposition has really cut through and is currently the single most important factor in driving digital take-up."
The news comes just weeks after BSkyb announced it was planning to launch its own free-to-air digital service later this year.
Viewers will be able to purchase a set-top box for a one-off fee of £150, which will give them access to around 200 channels, including the BBC's digital services and Sky News.
However, unlike Freeview, a satellite dish will be needed to pick up the service.
[BBC]
June 21, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Eclipse 3.0
IBM now has it's own Java client side GUI technology - called SWT. There's a battle going on over two different approaches to Java client sides GUIs (between IBM and Sun/BEA) and IBM is using Eclipse for getting their's adopted. Now Oracle is getting involved. :-)
Even better - is all the other tsuff that come along with Eclipse - basically creating a client-side 'middleware' layer.
I've already met one major social networking play that's planning on building their free, open P2P system with SWT. Watch for even sexier deep linking new standards for all this stuff.
Thank you to IBM for sticking to their guns. The customer is always right. It's one thing IBM understands.
June 21, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Lluna Project
I missed this last week when I was down.....
June 09, 2004
Jabber Virtual Presence: Swarms of Avatars
by Stowe Boyd
I am fascinated with the LLuna project, that is building on the Jabber Virtual Presence specification, to support swarming avatars of users viewing the same web location. Rather than joining a chatroom, the participants bump into each other by browsing the same web pages. (See the three figures at the bottom of the screenshot 'chatting' via cartoon bubbles. No, you don't have to speak German to participate.)
This is quite like the Eyebees technology, although it is based on the Jabber protocol while Eyebees is proprietary. In both cases, the technology is really only workable for small groups, although the Eyebee's eyes might be a better way of representing dozens of individuals, and Eyebees also includes an interesting metaphor for 'movement' that parallels real world interaction.
[pointer from Cmdr Taco: Slashdot | Do You Really Want to Meet People on the Web?]
June 21, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
SpaceShipOne
A New Frontier for Humanity
By Dan Gillmor
It's impossible to overstate the importance of this morning's privately funded space flight by Mike Melvill, who piloted SpaceShipOne into a suborbital flight 100 kilometers high. Neil Armstrong took a giant step in 1969, but this was just as important. I have huge respect for NASA, the U.S. space agency. But NASA needs the help of private explorers and industry, and of people like Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founded who funded this mission. We need NASA for the giant endeavors, but we need privately funded space flight for everything else. The first primary use of these ships will, no doubt, be tourism. A few years ago I reconciled myself to not living long enough to go into space. Now I think I have a shot at seeing my home from a distance that shows the curvature of the Earth. Tourism is only the beginning, of course. Humanity must get off this planet, in part because we are an exploring, expansionist species but also in part because the survival of the species may depend on it. This is a great step toward the new frontier. Congratulations to all. Note: There's great coverage of this entire mission, and more, at Space.com.
[Dan Gillmor]
Look - rich people get to do with their money what they want.
Governments also get to choose what to do with their money.
It just is a shame that nobody can find the time or energy to fund open source project and open standards projects.
June 21, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Put em in Jail!
I just wish this would happen more often. Then we should start locking up price fixers, war conspirators and eventually any politician who sells influence.
THEN maybe we'll have some justice.
Former Vivendi chief in police custody
June 21, 2004 | PARIS (AP) -- Jean-Marie Messier, the former chief executive of Vivendi Universal, was taken into police custody Monday in an investigation into financial wrongdoing during his time at the media and telecommunications giant, police said.
Police said Messier was being held by the financial crime brigade and could remain in custody for questioning for up to 48 hours.
Messier was ousted in July 2002 as the company's finances crumbled and its debt spiraled out of control.
French investigating magistrates are probing a massive share buyback in which Vivendi allegedly spent over $1.2 billion to prop up its own share price in the weeks following the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Messier and his top team are suspected of buying back Vivendi shares well above the authorized volumes even while the company was presenting its financial results -- a practice strictly forbidden by stock market rules.
Prosecutors launched the investigation in October 2002 after a small shareholders' group filed a formal complaint. The group, APPAC, said the actions of Vivendi's former management deceived investors and caused many of them to lose money.
Earlier this month, as part of the same probe, Vivendi's former CFO, Guillaume Hannezo, was placed under investigation on suspicion of insider trading and share price manipulation.
Hannezo served as Vivendi's chief financial officer under Messier, who had dreamed of transforming the Paris-based company from a water utility into a media titan.
Messier's buying spree racked up billions of dollars in debt and took the company to the brink of bankruptcy, wiping more than 80 percent off its share value.
Vivendi has since been working to sell most of its entertainment assets, and recently spun off its film and television arm, including the Universal studios, to form NBC Universal, controlled by NBC's parent General Electric Co.
Investigators on both sides of the Atlantic have been examining financial information provided by Vivendi during Messier's tenure as chairman.
June 21, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
1st Workshop on Friend of a Friend, Social Networking and the Semantic Web
Call for papers, come for the party or just come and hang out.
You can't be a decent standard if you don't have a conference.
Topics
The FOAF (Friend of a Friend) project explores a unique combination of themes from social networking, search engines, knowledge representation and software development. FOAF was designed as a practical experiment that would highlight the technical, social and business challenges raised by the next generation of "Semantic" Web technology. Over the past few years, the FOAF developer community has been working on standards-based techniques for publishing and harvesting machine-readable descriptions of people, the links between them, and the things they create and do. The working assumption of the project is that such techniques will underpin the deployment of the next generation of Web technology, W3C's "Semantic Web". The FOAF project was created in the expectation that these machine-readable descriptions will grow, as the Semantic Web platform matures, to cover companies, organisations, documents, groups, products, file sharing and many other aspects of life, both online and off. The time has come to evaluate these assumptions in the context of the opportunities and challenges presented by the rise of FOAF and the Semantic Web.
Social networking is a recent topic gaining much interest and publicity. Social networking sites are community sites where users can maintain an online network of friends or associates for social or business purposes: whether looking for a job, reconnecting with old friends, moving to a new area, or dating. Most of these sites are based on a centralised architecture: all users' descriptions are stored in one big database. There is, however, growing user and business interest in portability between such sites, and for sophisticated "single sign-on" mechanisms that reduce the need for data re-entry, while allowing users to manifest different aspects of themselves in different contexts. FOAF-based import/export allows such sites to address user demand for control of "their" data; however, many deployment, privacy, authentication and engineering issues have not yet been fully explored. To what extent do mechanisms such as FOAF change the environment they attempt to describe? How can the visibility of personal data be restricted to certain audiences? How can businesses make money when their customers can migrate to new services with increased ease?
This workshop on FOAF, social networking and the Semantic Web provides a first chance to discuss the unusual combination of perspectives - academic and scientific, engineering, social, legal and business - drawn together by these trends. The workshop aims to bring together for the first time researchers interested in the effects, analysis and application of social networks on the (Semantic) Web as well as practitioners building applications and infrastructure. The workshop will also try to give a snapshot of current developments, as well as setting a roadmap for the future of both FOAF and social networking - especially in the context of the Semantic Web.
Topics of interest for full papers include, but are not limited to the following:
* Social network metadata standards
* Trust issues in social networks
* Profiles of FOAF, subsets, mapping to other vocabularies and formats
* Federated digital identity, single sign-on (decentralized identity management)
* Business models for the Semantic Web (life after banner advertisements)
* Integration with desktop and mobile applications (chat, IM, P2P, Bluetooth, address books, RSS/Atom)
* Privacy, etiquette and best practice issues for aggregators
* Infrastructure for social networking
* Applications of online social networking
* Knowledge management with social networks
* Mathematical analysis of social networks
* Exchange of social network information
* Applications of online social networks
* Shared annotations
* Use of digital signatures and encryption with RDF/XML
* RDF-based search engines, data harvesting and syndication
* GUIs (browsers, editors) for FOAF and Semantic Web data
* Formalisms that address practical problems of heterogenous changing data
* Pragmatics of sharing data schemas across subtly different datasets
[it's the danbri and Libby show!]
June 21, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Gnomedex IV: Geeks gone wild
Hey gang - mind if I have a virtual heart-to-heart with you? As you probably know, life has been very busy for me down here in Southern California. I’m four years removed from Iowa, and eight years into producing Lockergnome. We announced our fourth-annual conference a few months ago, and I’ve watched it blossom into something completely different than what it was in the beginning. I hope you don’t mind my decision to bring Gnomedex back to its roots: the people.
No open bar, no Comedy Central - just a whole bunch of geeks gone wild on their own volition. Since ~50 people had signed up when we were still promoting the “liqueur” angle, we’ll be honoring that offer with drink tickets. It’s Gnomedex 4, plain and simple. Yes, we’ll have parties. Yes, we’ll have speakers. Yes, we’ll have panels. Yes, we’ll have fun. Yes, we’ll have sponsors. Yes, we’ll have WiFi. With these two adjustments, we’ll also keep the original spirit that made our convention so successful in years past. That’s what I really want (more than anything else).
So, there you have it. Gnomedex 2: Attack of the Gnomes. Gnomedex 3: Fellowship of the Geeks. Gnomedex 4: Geeks Gone Wild.
[Lockergnome]
God i hope it's not normal.
I am gettign SO TIRED of sitting in audiences, listening to the same peopel say teh same thing and then waiting for the :30 seconds you're given to ask one question. That format is SO DEAD!
Last week we just debated for 2 hours. That worked.
Chris has the opportunity of doing something new and different. I sure hope he does.
Meanwhile Supernova is this week - let's see how the hecklebot and the backchannel disrupt the flow and create something new.
June 21, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Farenheit 9/11
Here's one movie I definitely wanna catch!
And needless to say I'm a little dissappointed at Ray Bradbury. But he's old - I'll forgive him.
June 21, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
June 20, 2004 10:54 PM
I guess Meg's not coming to Supernova
Words that I don't care about*
In Technology
RSS, Atom, Typepad, Movable Type, Blogger, blogs, weblogs, XHTML, software, Google, feed, any number like "2.0" etc., and computer.
* Right now, with the caveat that maybe in the future I will care about them again but maybe not.
[Megnut]
I was thinking of doing a bunch of "micro-content" dinners on my roadshow at the end of the summer.
No one would be allowed to talk about status quo bloggy kind of issues. We'd only allow discussions of FOAF, OpenReviews, OpenEvents, Openmedia, OpenReputations, OpenListings, PeoplesDNS, PeopleAggregator, DLA kind of issues.
New kinds of everything, but not blogging.
June 20, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
TechnoDudes
I was thinking about Technorati tonight - how happy I was how that company, meme and web service was coming along.
I can jump to any new kind of micro-content - and find a place for Technorati. It's comforting to know they're there.
Here's a few of us at the first Technorati DevCon. The scene reminded me of when we did our first MacroMind DevCon - in my parnet's living room. In 1986.
June 20, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Who's missing?
In response to Dave Winer's reminiscing . I was there too.
June 20, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
BlogOn: The Business of Social Media
It looks like it's a party at Berkeley. I wonder if everyone will go eat Pizza on Telegraph when they're done?
UC-Berkeley will be hosting BlogOn: The Business of Social Media. An all-star cast of speakers are coming to talk about blogs, social networks, syndication and whatnot. Basically, it looks like a great gathering for those interested in social media.
Furthermore, they have discounts for bloggers and i’m very psyched to announce that they have scholarships for students and economically-disadvantaged bloggers. I wish more organized events recognized the importance of getting bright minds involved who don’t have the economic freedom to usually participate in these conversations.
June 20, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
The Petfrog
So this is what Ben Ceverney was working on......
Looks like a beautiful DLA device.
June 20, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Digital Communities winners
Digital Communities: Award Winners
By Howard on Technologies of Cooperation
From now on, instead of engaging in an argument that was once provocative but has grown tedious, whenever I am asked, "but virtual communities aren't REAL, are they?" I can simply point to the Ars Electronica Jury Statement for the new Digital Communities category. 40,000 Euros were awarded this year. I'll be in New York City next week for the award ceremony....
June 20, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
The Taligent Effect
The Taligent Effect
By Don Box
Several times this week, I found my self using the term "the Taligent effect."
The Taligent effect is what happens when a group of people put adherence to a software trend first and lose sight of the value of shipping software that people will actually use.
Taligent was Apple's (and later IBM's) attempt to rewrite an existing product using the trends of the day. The product was an operating system (first called "Pink" when it was at Apple). The technology trend was objects, but because the project hung around so long without shipping, the trend at the end of the project was frameworks.
What was the net artifact of Taligent? Three beautifullyproducedbooks from Addison Wesley. That's it. No DLLs or EXEs that I can see.
Apple apparently learned their lesson from the Taligent experience and ultimately bet on the software stack from NeXT that was an amalgam of the BSD UNIX kernel, a message-passing layer from CMU, and an objective C compiler and library.
It took IBM a bit longer to learn from Taligent. IBM opted to double-down and refocus their Taligent investment on the San Francisco project. San Francisco was a set of Java-based "Business Frameworks" that by the time the project was end-of-lifed" had jumped on the design patterns trend.
What was the net artifact of IBM's San Francisco? More beautifully produced books From Addison Wesley. Not being an IBM insider, it's hard to tell how much of the SF code made it into this IBM EJB-based offering, but my guess is that IBM didn't get a great return on their investment.
Given the amount of excitement over SOA, I'm confident that there are several projects that are repeating the exercise as you read this.
As always, the book will likely be better than the movie.
[Don Box]
I was there - participating in a similar excercise called Kaleida Labs. Same story - different technology. This time it was o-o multimedia.
My god - what a cluster fuck! The VP of Engineering made sure that none of the engineers would let any of the marketing people know what was going on. Lovely, just lovely. God Bless Dave Kaiser.
June 20, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Looks like they're finally getting something done at the OSAF
Here's a fascinating insight into what's going on at the OSAF.
That's right - it has been almost two years now. But it looks like they're finally gettign something done.
Go Ted - GO!
How We Work
By mitch@osafoundation.org
I thought readers might enjoy a window into how our development process has evolved. Running the overall development efficiently has always been one of the challenges at OSAF. Our first development manager, Michael Toy, decided he didn't like the commute to S.F. or the open source, non-profit genre as much...
June 20, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
DV tutorials
i wrote a couple how to's, the first is how to make "auto-movies" with all the footage we all have on dv tape, but never do anything with it. the second how to is how to record movies (dvds) to portable video players. the deal is, all these portable video players are coming out and if you own movies, you can't get them on the device you just bought, well- you can, it's just not clear how or if it's legal. the how to explains all this and more.
June 20, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Orkut goes International
So I get this message today.....
Hi Marc,We've just launched a new feature that allows you to specify the primary language of your community.
Why would you want to do this?
1. So that everyone posts in one language! As orkut.com gains more members from around the world, it makes it easier for you and everyone in your community if people can read each other's posts. This is hard to do if everyone's speaking different languages. 2. So that you can search communities by language. This way, when you're looking for new communities, you'll always find ones that you can read and participate in.
I say - "right on!"
We all need to start thinking more international! I bet this is really gonna make Orkut take off even more. Now if they only had something to do in there.
HHHmmmm - maybe like Gmail, Blogger and Google News.....in the valley of the search.
June 20, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Mt. Diablo
I live on Mt. Diablo - a big hill in Northern Cali. In fact it's my backyard - literally. The hiking trails that start at my home - go for over 15 miles.....
We went up there today - here's some shots.
June 20, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Building the synchronicity engine
Flemming Funch on matching personal needs to relevant pieces of the information tsunami:
Something needs to capture way more channels of information about you than you normally bother paying conscious attention to. At least not at the same time. What people have been saying around you recently; what clothes you're wearing; what's on your bookshelf; all the people you know; all the subjects you're interested in; all the projects you're working on. And something needs to be matching all these items with other people's items, and items in your surroundings, as a background process.
I just wonder if that's called an aggregator or not - 'cause it's more than aggregation.
We're matching up gamers at 1UP.com - not just their game collections, but also matching wishes to trade lists, what games they wanna play and when.
But certainly storing and doing something with all this stuff - is what digital lfiestyle aggregation is all about. That's why 1UP.com is starting to show what's possible.
June 20, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
My Near Term Wireless Data Services Predictions
William Luciw has some predictions....
Folks,
Let me go out on a limb here and make a few near term predictions for the remaining 2004, & 2005:
[1] Data Services which provide situated content (i.e. content+communications+purpose) will be HUGE winners
[2] Multimedia (premium, high quality) will dominate ALL high margin data service offerings
[3] DRM FUD will subside with rapid (near geometric) sustained growth of online 'multi-use' content licenses
[4] Privacy issues will subside and eventually become monetized in HUGE win-win multi-channel promotions
[5] U.S. Adoption will (unfortunately) still trail EU but Americas upside is HUGE in the next two years
[6] Carriers will stampede to embrace Alternative Communications Network models to remain access gatekeepers
[7] Alternative Communication Networks will continue to topple pricing strategies for the incumbents peaking within two years
Marc replies...
If Bill is right, there's gonna be a tremendous need for micro-content publishing systems interwoven with intelllgent ad managers.
June 20, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
June 19, 2004 12:42 PM
Euan Semple
Speaking of changing URLs - Euan Semple now has a TypePad blog. He's at the BBC and is turning out to be one of our secret weapons in the war against ignorance, stupidity and status quo.
June 19, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Intel and 3D - again
This is downright comical.
Intel has stumbled into the quagmire of 3D standards (again) and shot itself in the foot - again. This is like the fith time.
This article says it's the third - but my memory is better than theirs.
:-)
First here's the post - then I'll tell yah a story....
Intel's 3D divorce rate. Company turns back on partners three times in four years. Behind the breakups: lousy technology or loss of control?
[CNet]
OK - back to me now......
So first there was (during the era of complete dominance by Autodesk) some early Intel 3D efforts - which I can't really remember too well. Ask Avram Miller about them though. Let's call that "The 80's effort".
I was busy with our 3D product MacroMind ThreeD - and we supported RenderMan. In fact - I believe we were the FIRST company to support Renderman. It was so slow that it killed our product, but that's another story.
Then in the early 90's (during the SGI dominance phase) Intel tried to lead into the 3D space - if for no other reason - as an excuse to get people to upgrade to the Pentium 2-3-4-5 = whatever.
What they didn't realize (at the time) was that folks wanted more processor speed regardless of 3D or not, and that software would get increasingly sloppy, slower and inefficient - thereby requiring speeds of 333Mhz, 500 Mhz, 1Ghz, 2Ghz - my god - fucking 3Ghz - and we still can't get decent transparent performance!
But that's Microsoft's fault more than Intel's.
Anyway - between the years 1992-1996 Andrew Grove (Intel's CEO at the time) keynoted every single Macromedia Developer's Conference - telling us that Intel and Macromedia were working togther to build 3D prosucts and create new 3D standards.
It was clear that Marcomeia was sucking up to Intel for perceived leadership juju, while Intel was launching "Intel Inside" and wanted to be associated with the world's largest multimedia play.
BTW this incestuos dive into 3D later begat Marcomedia with their current Chairman and CEO Rob Burgess - but that's another story.
Anyway - so this article picks up the story in 2000, with the beginning of three attempts in four years for Intel to get into 3D.
So those 3 attempts, with two distinct earlier efforts - makes five.
The lessons we learned from our past mistakes about consumer demand for 3D can be applied to the current siutation:
- $1,000,000,000's in revenues are generated each year from driving, flying, killing aliens, kick boxing and saving virtual hostages - but the poor business market can't figure out how to make money from it - boo hoo hoo!
- don't worry about short term cash flow, it's probably something completely new and different which will bring the greatest rewards.
- 3d is just another enabling infrastructure with LOTS of hands in the food chain, all reaping benefits. Intel better realize that every time they change their mind, their losing rep and leadership juju (which they've spent $100,000,000s on developing in the consumer world BTW)
- Microsoft is assuming 3D is there for Longhorn. Shouldn't that be enough? And BTW GDI + DirectX is all that matters anyway....
- We're in now the era of nVidia and ATI. Intel will never keep up with them. They should just support whatever the leaders say is right.
- just like multimedia in general, the web and social networking - 3D is here forever. Get over it and help standardize - for christ sakes!
June 19, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Google Banner ads
Google introduces Adsense banner ads.
Google has recently introduced banner ads for their adsense program, so perhaps all the talk about how text ads perform better is not true.
You could argue that banner ads are a different thing, that they are richer media and thus brand advertising. But the difference is that Google's image ads do not pay publishers on an impressions basis, but for clicks, just like current contextual text ads.
Adwords works. People click on text ads which are relevant to a search because they are actively looking for something. But perhaps when ads are served alongside static content, the conversion rate is lower, and perhaps people are starting to ignore them now that the novelty has worn off. So maybe in your face image ads are back, for good reason.
The problem for Google is that image ads are not only 'in your face', they are very much in the face of a website. With the renewed confidence that content publishers now have, my guess is that CPM impressions based advertising will be back. If publishers have leverage they will want the guaranteed revenue that being paid for traffic gives them.
Google got rid of all CPM advertising making a big bet on the best of both worlds CPC model that sits in between an advertiser and publishers needs. If CPM is back is that bad news for Google?
June 19, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
My 3 Sons
My eldest son Aryeh graduated from 8th grade last week.
That was the same day my laptop lost it's second hard in 6 months.
So it's taken me this long to let you all know how proud I am of Aryeh. His brothers Jacob (L) and Aron (R) are flanking him.
June 19, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
June 18, 2004 10:13 PM
Churchill Club Event: Blogging & Social Networking: Who Cares?
Churchill Club Event: Blogging & Social Networking: Who Cares?
Marc Canter, The Devil's (or Angel's?) Advocate
Last night, the Churchill Club sponsored an event entitled, "Blogging & Social Networking: Who Cares?" As it turned out, at least 250 people who attended the event care. In fact, by the time we arrived, the Crowne Plaza Cabana Hotel parking lot in Palo Alto was already filled with Mercedes, BMWs and Porsches. (Somebody must have made money during the dot com boom.)
The whole evening had a "1994" feeling to it. There was a sense of optimism and enthusiasm that we hadn't seen since we attended the first Internet World Conference held in San Francisco in September 1994 at the beginning of the Internet boom.
The meeting was a moderated discussion with the following participants.
Panelists:
* Antony Brydon, CEO, Visible Path Corporation
* Jason Calacanis, Chairman, The Weblogs, Inc. Network
* Marc Canter, CEO, Broadband Mechanics
* Charlene Li, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research, Inc.
* Ross Mayfield, CEO, Socialtext
* Ajit Nazre, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
* David Pell, Electablog.com
* Mark Pincus, CEO, Tribe Networks
Moderators:
* Dan Gillmor, San Jose Mercury News
* Tony Perkins, Creator & Editor-in-Chief, AlwaysOn
The stage when thus set to talk about what many of the panelists described as Internet 2.0, with Internet 1.0 spanning the 1994-2002 timeframe. Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News said that blogging and social networking have now enabled the Tim Berners Lee's initial vision for the web as a "read-write" environment as opposed to the "read-only" content consumption focus of Internet 1.0.
Ross Mayfield of Socialtext put further meat on the bone by asking the question: What changes might we expect when:
1) Weblog software platforms drive the cost of publishing to zero?
2) Social networking platforms drive the cost of creating and organizing group activities to zero?
A number of the panelists pointed to the significant impact of weblogs and social networking on politics with Howard Dean's presidential campaign held up as a prime example of the savvy use of these platforms. As a San Jose Mercury News article dated 2/10/2004 said, "The forces the [Dean] campaign unleashed -- and the people who discovered they had a chance to change things -- aren't going to be rebottled anytime soon."
Dan Gillmor asked the most interesting question of the night saying, "How long will it be before a President of the United States is elected that had a weblog as a teenager?" What makes this an interesting question is that anything that we contribute to the Web is effectively "unerasable."
Staying in the political realm, David Pell of Electablog.com imagined that, "Sometime soon, maybe even now, oppressed women in Arab countries will begin using anonymous weblogs to draw attention to their plight in a way that 60 Minutes never could."
Politics aside, the real question on many people's minds was: "Can you make money doing this stuff?"
There was a significant amount of disagreement on this topic with the CEOs of the social networking companies predictably saying that "There's gold in them "thar" hills," and Marc Canter, also predictably, playing the devil's advocate, telling the VCs to "Stay away and not screw things up."
My own personal feeling is that the impact of both the social networking and weblog platforms will be significant but, speaking from a biased perspective as an entrepreneur in this space, the financial benefits will accrue to the "little guys." I believe this because, I share the viewpoint made last night that, both weblog and social networking software platforms will become open-source commodities. The value-add will come as entrepreneurs apply these platforms to under-served niche markets. These markets, by definition, will be small in scale creating many small profitable private companies but very few, if any, large public companies.
Perhaps Internet 2.0 will allow thousands of entrepreneurial flowers to bloom creating an era of "Cottage Commerce," a term coined in the early 90's by my long-lost friend, Michael Grant, formerly of Apple Computer and Macromind.
Then again, I could be dead wrong. What do you think?
Use the power of Internet 2.0 to share your comments.
-Tim Fredel, Co-Publisher, RuggedElegantLiving.com
June 18, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
The Evolution of software
I've been in the software business for over 24 years and creating music, art and video with technology over 10 years before that.
So I gotta tell yah how much it warms my heart to see images of software packaged like this.
I found these images on Russell Beattie's blog. This is one of those rare moments that I'm not copying and pasting the whole dam post (Russell's posts especially get long.)
I'm just jazzed over the prospect of buying software in cute little SD cartirdges like this!
June 18, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Bloomsday
If I was completely together I'd be celebrating Bloomsday in Dublin, and before going I would've re-read Joyce's Ulysses. I bought my first copy of the book when I was 14 years old, but it wasn't til I was in a class on epic literature at the University of Texas that I got serious... convinced the instructor to let me do a special study of Joyce's modern epic while the others were doing one of Homer's books (can't remember which). I remember writing the intense little paper that would summarize my Ulysses experience... ultimately something life 5-7 pages long, but sooo condensed. Not sure how I did it, and my Prof Rebhorn couldn't figure it out, either... normally, he said, I would expect twice this many pages, but you seem to've nailed it. Must've had something to do with the mouse in the walls of the house where we lived, who had a distinct rhythm as he pounded – something, I'm not sure what, certainly not snare drums – inside the walls. This while I typed and slashed and typed again, and Marsha slept. That was over 30 years ago, and the original Bloomsday was – so much longer, but it seems close. [Link]
Probably the thing that I hate most about my blog going down - is not missing the blogging, but keeping in touch with my blogosphere buddies.
Every year I vow that NEXT year I'll do something special for Bloomsday. This year - I was immersed in killing off malware and testing 1UP.com and completely missed Bloomsday.
I loved sitting in the Cafe St. Marco in Trieste, imagining a drunk Joyce bellowing his baritone out - while working on Ulysses. In fact he wrote a sort of practice run short book - using Trieste as the locale and a Jewish mistress - as the foible.
Entire excerpts in Ulysses came from this short book - as any Joyce follower probably knows. Anyway - I REALLY like James Joyce - and it's heartening to see Jon Lebkowsky does - too.
June 18, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Joystiq Nation
Joystiq is a new group blog on gaming from the same people who brought us Engadget. Link
Wow - coolio- just in time for me to show the Ziff editors what's up with blogging. Now I've got a coolio link to use.
In fact I saw Jason Calacanis last night (we were in the same debate) so I can bring my own unique perspective to this post.
June 18, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Freecache
FreeCache: ridiculously easy free content mirroring. The Internet Archive's FreeCache (beta) is "a system of cooperating caches to move large files of free content closer to users", providing a Real Simple(tm) way of solving problems such as this:
"Say an up-and-coming rock band, the RockLobsters, has a website that has a large file, say www.rocklobsters.com/videos/my-new-rock-video.mpg that is 5MB-1GB in size. If it gets popular, they will lose their guitars and homes to their ISP because their bandwidth bill will shoot up.
While keeping their big file on their webhost, the RockLobsters change the URL on their webpage to point to:
freecache.org/http://www.rocklobsters.com/videos/my-new-rock-video.mpg
... and this is it. Afterwards, users download the file from a nearby machine on their participating internet service provider's network. It sounds like a real Good Thing, especially for cash-strapped music artists. Though I'm not sure how well it actually works and how widely it has been embraced by ISPs.
Funny, I had raised that very issue just yesterday in the Webjay forum. Sometimes when you ask questions, answers seem to come magically to you out of left field...
(via Evan)
[Seb's Open Research]
June 18, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Tribe Caster
I'm playing with Tribecaster, a new Tribe.net feature that lets you display your so-called-friends easily within a sidebar on your blog. Each picture and name links back to their profile. Guess this is social media. It smacks of Canter.
Just look for the 
on your Tribe homepage.
Yup - I helped make sure this happened.
As time goes on - you'll start seeing more and more of these "bring it to the bloggers' kind of remote utils. ecto was the first. Blogrolling.com is another example.
I have designs for all sorts of implementations.
I met the NetFlix guys last night.......gee!
Final note: I can't get it to display in my Firefox!
June 18, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
ThisIsHowYouDoIt
I love it when there's synergy! This site, ThisIsHowYouDoIt.com, is an example both of small business (for the next issue of Release 1.0) and of the exploitation of user-generated content. It's run by Richard Cummings, formerly with EDS and now owner of a Microsoft training center in San Francisco.
The idea is simple: users helping other users via video. When he tried to do something new with his own PC, he says, "All I got was text-based descriptions. I couldn't really figure out [from them] how to do it." Since launching in September, he how has about 30 user-generated and submitted videos, for about 1000 downloads so far. The user sets the price with advice from Cumnings and they split the revenue. Most popular: How to hook up your computer to your tv, and how to play chess. My favorite *title*, though I haven't watched the video itself: "Catch Catfish with Glow Sticks and Jugs."
Interestingly, Cummings says, about 40 percent of the audience is from outside the US; payment is by PayPal. Adds Cummings: "It's as much about shared experiences as learning how to do something. If we want to improve our lives, we can buy a Tony Robbins video , but people like to learn from other people like themselves. A woman going through a problem pregnancy could really benefit from sharing someone else's experience."
So if you know how to do something interesting, or just something complicated, here's your chance to share - and to share some revenues for your expertise.
June 18, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
BoingBoing goes three columns
I'm proud to say that Boing Boing has launched a new design, one that incorporates sponsors and a cleaner look. I was down visiting with Danny Hillis today (man, talk about mind blowing) and I was very happy to hear that he reads Boing Boing regularly. My role with Boing Boing is the equivalent of "band manager" - I helped them round up the wonderful sponsors - Wired, Google (Blogger), and O'Reilly - and work out the details of how they can take the site to the next phase of it's ongoing evolution ("brain candy for happy mutants since 1988!"). Take a look!...
- Me too.
June 18, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Visualising Socialtext
Visualizing Socialtext Collaboration
The social network graph below is an illustration of the collaboration patterns of a division of Ziff Davis. For information about the team and how they have used Socialtext to cut project cycles by 1/3 and reduce group email from 100 to zero, see the case study.
Lines drawn between individuals indicate joint work editing documents and pages in the Socialtext workspace, with thicker lines indicating closer collaboration.
Tom Jessiman, the manager, is at the center -- he collaborates with different teams, and has visibility into all activity. In addition to Tom, other team members serve as bridges between the two main groupings: art/editorial/production and sales/marketing.
You can see how the art, editorial, and and production teams work very closely together, despite the fact that they are on separate floors and team members are often on the road. The strong ties and close spacing between group members indicates how the various groups (art, editorial, and production) are working closely together on a day-to-day basis.
You can also see how sales and marketing people are able to collaborate with each other -- with lower intensity but high value -- with their colleagues editorial and production. Sales/marketing team gains visibility into the upcoming editorial and release schedule, enabling more effective promotions and advertising sales. Some sales and marketing people are closer to the art/editorial/production group. These weak ties allow sales to pull in information from production as needed without being bombarded with the daily detail of production work.
In the image above, generated by Valdis Krebs' InFlow, the group on the left is on the ninth floor and the group on the right is the eighth floor. Metrics reveal a healthy pattern of more people interacting with people outside their geographic location than not. Team members have commented that not only do they do their work across floors within the space, but since they rarely see each other in person, a great deal of socializing occurs there too -- becoming "the virtual water cooler."
Before using Socialtext, the group had over 100 group emails per day in an effort to facilitate collaboration while keeping everyone informed. What the above graphs do not show is patterns of viewing activity when anyone can view work done openly. Now there is less than one group email a week, but by working openly in strong tie relationships, weaker ties can view more perhipheral information to stay informed. Reducing occupational spam from 100 to zero for this group results in a soft cost savings in excess of $1 million per year.
Social Network Analysis illustrates the value of Socialtext Workspace collaboration at Ziff Davis - cutting cycle time and communication costs with rapid creative collaboration, and improving top line value with more effective sales and marketing.
Social networks in the workplace have value at different levels of scale.
* "creative networks" are where core knowledge work gets done -- in Ziff's case, putting text and art together to build a magazine issue, and putting code and content together to build websites. Socialtext helps "creative networks" iterate rapidly, improving core business processes.
* "social networks" are where the business gets its innovative spark. "Weak ties" between sales, marketing, and creative groups help Ziff drive more sales from its creative work. Within social networks, "connectors" span groups, cross-pollinating ideas and driving cross-functional execution
* "political networks" of scales greater than 150 users are not illustrated in this example.
The Socialtext Workspace adds value at these different levels of the network. Socialtext provides Social Network Analysis and Visualization services as an indicator of collaboration patterns and value generated. The analysis uses data based on publicly visible collaboration patterns within the organization, revealing the collaborative patterns in the group:
* how closely are groups working together?
* how actively are groups collaborating?
* are there ties among workgroups?
* which group members are central to group collaboration?
If you find this story valuable, drop us a line.
Marc's note: I'm on of those guys on the 9th floor. BTW Today we get to meet with the entire 8th floor - to launch 1UP.com. With over 8 videogame editors - Ziff-Davis represents over 50% market share of videogame magazines.
Our gamer and game DLA is gonna rock their world!
Final note to Ross: "That's OK - you don't have to put my link into your Socialtext blogroll - I don't mind."
:-)
June 18, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Dead shows
Lots of great Dead shows being posted to the Internet Archives.
One of these days I wanna get the Deadbase project going - but first it's FOAFnet time. Anyway - any show at the Warfield or New Year's Eve shows - were great!
Grateful Dead: 1982-02-17. Live at Warfield Theater.
Grateful Dead: 1982-12-31. Live at Oakland Auditorium Arena
These recordings have MP3s/Oggs [from the Internet Archive]
June 18, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Metroblogging
"Metroblogging" regional group weblogs launch. Sean Bonner says:
Jason DeFillippo and I have launched Metroblogging which is the first step of global expansion of our LA blog, blogging.la. The first cities live are New York City, Chicago and San Francisco. Like b.la, we're hoping these sites will become a good street-level view of life in these cities.
Marc's note....
Hey - I'm contributing to that. All my SF stories - like the time we did the "Alice In Wonderland in Japan" party and I dscovered what Flash Mobs was all about - in my home. We served over 4000 Cosmos that night.
June 18, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Book Cover for 'We the Media'
We the Media coverHere's a jacket-cover image for my soon-to-arrive book, We the Media. The designers did a great job. We're starting to build a website to accompany the book. My goal is to have something as lively and useful as Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs site. I'll tell you more as the publication date gets closer.
I was on a panel which Dan (and tony perkins) moderated last night.
It was great to see Dan - however there wasn't any food for him - as it was all pasta and bread.
June 18, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
June 17, 2004 10:59 AM
My Blogs
So now Marc.Blogs.It is live.
It is the same as Marc's Voice - the old address - and should work with all existing aggregators.
The new subscription URLs are in ALL formats.
Blog.Canter.com is also a proxy as well.
My other more experimental blogs (Marc's Pad, Marc's Demo Voice, Marc's Journal and my 1UP.com page) are all specialized blogs - more or less for my experiemntation. You're welcome to look in, but I'll be (hopefully) aggregating all the feeds together - guess where?
June 17, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Supernova 2004
Supernova is, as expected, coming together nicely. Of course, nice is a relative word. There are always multiple fire drills in the weeks prior to an event, which I've been completely focused on recently. The good news is that registrations are going great, and we've got some fantastic sessions in store for the event.
If you're in the Bay Area, please consider joining us next week (June 24-25) for what promises to be an extroardinary gathering of innovators, thinkers, implementers, investors, and other thought leaders of the technology world.
Check out our Community Connection for the conference weblog, wiki, and other interactive tools. Supernova always generates a virtual event in parallel with the physical conference; this year, we've kicked the cyber-component up a notch.
And don't forget to sign up for Joi's Pre-Conference Dinner on Wednesday June 23. It's open to anyone who RSVPs,whether you're attending Supernova or not.
Back to the salt mines....
June 17, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Oh my god, they Wired Kevin Burton!.
"You bastards!"
So, last night, I am just minding my own business, sitting on my couch, watching South Park (on PVR, natch), when I open up the new Wired magazine and flip it open to see a picture of Kevin Burton on page 160 (in the "Cracking the Code to Romance" article).
... read more ...
[the iCite net development blog]
Heheheheeee - Jay Feinberg is qucikly turning into the world's greatest Kevin Burton expert. Oh yah, I'm quoted in that article too.
Got me agreat lead - as well.
June 17, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
I got Saloned......
Andrew Leonard wrote an excellent two-part story on social networking called "You are who you know" in Salon this week. He uses ME as some sort of foible, example nerdling.
In case you're wondering where I've been - it's called malware, adware, virus and a total headache. It's caused me to switch to MT and redo my entire digital lifestyle configuration.
Part I introduces me as some kindf of weirdo, YASNS stalker. I'm sure some people see me as that - but I'm just a software guy kicking the tires - putting this stuff through the paces, testing limits, building installed base (as we say.)
I kind of wish that Andrew had gone more into the CONTEXT of social networking in regards to DLAs. I really think that 1UP.com has the potential of being the world's first DLA. [BTW It goes live next week!] Gamers and games is a perfect context for social networking.
So is a virtual Silicon Valley, the Gay community or even dope smoking Republicans.
Part II goes into business models and trying to get at the essence of social networking. Andrew keeps quoting me throughout the series - so I guess that means I'm an expert now.
It's a great series - I highly recommend everyone to read it.
June 17, 2004 in | Permalink | (0)
Broadband Usage grows
Andy King of WebSiteOptimization reports.....
US Broadband Penetration Grows to 48.6% - Broadband Households at 38% - June 2004 Bandwidth Report
US broadband penetration grew by 0.74 percentage points in May, with 48.61% of active Internet users enjoying a high-speed connection at home. 51.39% of US home users dial into the Internet with "narrowband" connections of 56Kbps or less.* Meanwhile, the percentage of wired US households with broadband grew to 38% in May, and will exceed 50% by summer 2005. The charts below, derived from Nielsen//NetRatings and Leichtman Research Group data, show trends in connection speeds to the Internet for United States users and households.
Home Connectivity in the US
As of May 2004, most users in the US connect to the Internet using dial-up modems of 56Kbps or less. 42.53% use 56Kbps modems, 6.52% use 28/33.3Kbps, and 2.34% use 14.4Kbps modems. In total. 51.39% of home users in the US connect to the Internet at 56Kbps or less (see Figure 1).
Web Connection Speed Trends May 2004 - U.S. home users
Figure 1: Web Connection Speed Trends - Home Users (US)
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings
Broadband Growth in the US
Broadband penetration in the US increased by 0.74 points in May. As of May 2004 broadband penetration was at 48.61%, up from 47.87% in April. This jump of 0.74 points is below the average increase in broadband of 0.79 points per month from October 1999 to May 2004. Extrapolating the data provided by Nielsen//NetRatings, broadband share in the US should exceed 50% by July of 2004 (see Figure 2).
Broadband Connection Speed Trend - May 2004 - U.S. home users
Figure 2: Broadband Connection Speed Trend - Home Users (US)
Extrapolated from Nielsen//NetRatings data
Work Connectivity
Most workers in the US enjoy high-speed connections to the Internet. Most use a high-speed line such as a T1 connection, and share bandwidth between computers connected to an Ethernet network. The speed of each connection decreases as more employees hook up to the LAN. As of May of 2004, of those connected to the Internet, 79.8% of US users at work enjoy a high-speed connection, up from 79% in April. 20.2% connect from work at 56Kbps or less (see Figure 3).
Web Connection Speed Trends - May 2004 - U.S. work users
Figure 3: Web Connection Speed Trends - Work Users (US)
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings
Broadband Households versus Broadband Users
Broadband penetration can be measured in a number of ways. Two of the most popular are the percentage of broadband users among "active" Internet users, and the percentage of wired households that have broadband. One wired household can have a number of broadband users, so the broadband user measure is invariably higher than broadband households. To compare these two measures we asked Bruce Leichtman of Leichtman Research Group, Inc. to provide some figures for broadband penetration in US households (see Figure 4).
Broadband households versus broadband users - 2002-2004 - U.S. homes
Figure 4: Broadband Households versus Broadband Users - 2002-2004 - US Homes
Sources: Nielsen//NetRatings and Leichtman Research Group
The data shows that while broadband households and broadband users show similar growth trends, broadband households will break 50% about a year after broadband users. We asked Leichtman how he arrived at his data.
"Leichtman Research Group, Inc. (LRG) bases its findings off of nationwide consumer research studies conducted via telephone (to represent a representative cross-section of all US households). This data is also analyzed in conjunction with our database of provider-side research, as well as other sources - including the FCC.
LRG found that at the end of 2002 about 27% of US households that subscribed to an online service subscribed to a broadband service. At the end of 2003 the share of online subscribers getting broadband grew to 34%, and we forecast that by the end of 2004 this figure will rise to about 44%.
Note that these figures are based on households subscribing to an online service at home, and do not double count for those broadband households that also subscribe to a dial-up ISP (about 10%).
These figures are confirmed by figures from broadband providers along with the FCC. At the end of 2003 the FCC showed that there were about 26 million residential and small business broadband subscribers in the US (while the top 20 cable and DSL providers reported 24.6 million subscribers). If we conservatively estimate that 10% of these are small business it would total 23.4 million households subscribing to broadband at the end of 2003 - if this group represented 42% of all online subscribers that would imply that just 55.7 million households in the US were online - or just 52% of all households. Our data shows that 62% of all US households were online at the end of 2003."