September 9th, 2008 — Events, Science, Science & Technology, Shared News, humor
38 Second dramatization of the end of the world, scheduled for sometime Wednesday
We noted in a previous post that some people are worried that when they turn on the Large Hadron Collider it will create a black hole that will turn the earth into a “shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter” a…
September 8th, 2008 — Shared News, bad code
A tongue-in-cheek reply to my addition to GOP.com’s BarackBook.
Read More...September 8th, 2008 — Shared News
ABC/WaPo: Obama 47%, McCain 46%.
CBS: McCain 46%, Obama 44%.
CNN: McCain 48%, Obama 48%.
Read More...September 5th, 2008 — Shared News
“Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can’t be taken on its own merits.”
Read More...August 30th, 2008 — Misc, Shared News
One of the problems with Comcast’s new 250 GB bandwidth cap is that, as Om points out on GigaOM, it’s metered without a meter. Comcast doesn’t provide you with a central tally of all your data use. The company instead suggests its customers install bandwidth metering software on their machines and then add up the numbers. Its FAQ reads: “Customers using multiple PCs should just be aware that they will need to measure and combine their total monthly usage in order to identify the data usage for their entire account.” Got multiple home machines consuming data every day? Better bust out that spreadsheet — and get ready for some wild guesstimates. After all, you can’t just install a bandwidth metering application on your Slingbox.
The Slingbox is only one example of why the absence of a central bandwidth meter for your account is not inconvenient, but a central flaw in Comcast’s cap. More and more devices are bringing video to the living room, in turn consuming huge amounts of bandwidth. Most of them are not computers, but home entertainment devices with simplified interfaces that don’t burden their users with complicated stats and settings. That makes for a good user experience — unless you’re a Comcast customer that’s already using a lot of data and the box in your living room is busting your bandwidth-capped behind. Continue reading on Newteevee.com.
Read More...August 28th, 2008 — Research, Shared News
Swiss scientists have discovered that children above a certain age are driven by both genes and social factors to share with others even if they don’t have to. The Associated Press reported this week that the scientists gave kids in different age ranges tasks to divide candy amongst each others.
Three and four year olds were always trying to keep all the candy for themselves, but seven-to-eight year olds were trying to share fairly with others most of the time, even if that meant getting less candy for themselves. From the article:
“The study, published in the British journal Nature, could help explain how humans developed the ability to cooperate in large groups of individuals who are unrelated, the researchers say.”
To be fair, the AP article doesn’t mention file sharing at all, and I doubt the actual study does - but it still soundds like a perfect explanation for the dynamics on P2P networks to me. The study even confirmed that nobody likes leechers:
“But generosity had its limits. (…) (T)he older children were reluctant to let their counterpart have twice as (much candy) as themselves.”
Read More...August 19th, 2008 — Shared News, Voting
It’s a curious problem: how do you compare two completely unrelated voting systems and say that one is more or less secure than the other? How can you meaningfully compare the security of paper ballots tabulated by optical scan systems with DRE sys…
Read More...August 19th, 2008 — Shared News
A reaction to McCain’s recently announced technology policy. (Stupidly unclear in the video: the initial graph is U.S.’s global ranking in broadband penetration — so starting high (#5) in 2000, and declining to #22 by 2008. The rankings are based on OECD data.)
There’s also a version at YouTube (but please watch in “high quality”).
(I resisted the cheap shot “[sic]” at “and free to chose among broadband service providers.” Will someone please get them to fix this?)
Read More...August 16th, 2008 — Shared News
So, finally I have collected enough new Moon optical illusions to justify posting them as a collection. Individually posting each one, wouldn’t make sense any more. Agree? Even though the idea isn’t something we haven’t already seen before (through rel…
Read More...August 13th, 2008 — Bill's Views
Yesterday I went to another in a series of Product Management related breakfast discussions, the last one was on The Philosophy of Product, this one was about creating a value proposition. Once again Ellen Grace was an excellent host and facilitator of a great conversation.
Here are some of the key take-aways I had from this discussion:
A value proposition is a multi-layered and multi-faceted thing. Depending on what level you are at and what view you take the answer to “what is the value proposition?” may be very different.
Read More...
It seems to me that not much has changed between the version of the bailout bill that got rejected in the house and the one that got passed in the senate except for the addition of some pork.
How about some real oversight?
How about some help for the people in the troubled mortgages that are causing this crisis of toxic debt?
How about some regulation to address the root cause of this crisis?
How about some rules about ceo pay with teeth for those companies seeking help?
Come on people take the time required to rationally think this through. Fear is not a good reason to pass stupid legislation.
Yesterday I went to another in a series of Product Management related breakfast discussions, the last one was on The Philosophy of Product, this one was about creating a value proposition. Once again Ellen Grace was an excellent host and facilitator of a great conversation.
Here are some of the key take-aways I had from this discussion:
A value proposition is a multi-layered and multi-faceted thing. Depending on what level you are at and what view you take the answer to “what is the value proposition?” may be very different.
Here’s my idea for the day, “Distributed Open Social Networking” free for anyone to take and implement.
Take wordpress or similar self publishing platform and add a few features to it to make it into a distributed social networking platform.
That’s it. Maybe it exists, I dunno I haven’t gone looking for it yet.
One of the advantages would be that you own your own data, and you get to choose what platform to use so long as it complies with the open specification. No more choosing what platform to use.
In my last post I made a key assumption, that piracy is stealing. Recently I was in a conversation where someone challenged that assumption and made me think.
Laws around the world are, by and large, representations or codifications of our collective sense of right and wrong, our morals in other words. In my previous article I built on the assumption that piracy was stealing and therefore bad and consequently laws would eventually catch up to technology and find ways to legislate enforcement theft related crimes online as well as they do in the real world and that would lead to a reduction in piracy.
However, if you think back to when you were young, at the same time we are learning that stealing is bad we are also taught that sharing is good. From when we are tots we are encouraged to play nice and share our toys with our friends. Sub-cultures such as the Grateful Dead live tape trading scene were created around the idea of sharing. Current social networking trends are built around sharing what we are doing, pictures of what we are doing, what bands we are fans of, our favorite movies, etc…
Today there are millions of people sharing files online. Are they all morally corrupt, choosing to be bad and steal? Or are they morally sound, being good and choosing to share? If the latter then perhaps what’s being called piracy today falls into the moral bucket of sharing (good) vs. the moral bucket of stealing (bad). If that’s the case then the industry cannot expect laws to eventually catch up and enforce anti-stealing laws online as a way to curb piracy since laws rarely make illegal what the moral majority considers right. This would mean that the whole industry needs to think about radically new ideas for how to monetize content.
Obviously just because everyone is doing it doesn’t mean it’s right or good, so this train of thought also has flaws, but in a follow up post I want to explore some radically new monetization models or concepts that might stem from the assumption that piracy is sharing vs. stealing.
The Internet is not above or beyond the reach of the law. Already we have laws in place around the world that address various aspects of the Internet and the impacts the Internet is having on existing laws.
In pretty much every country in the world stealing is against the law and people seem to understand this and generally don’t steal. There will always be the ongoing cat and mouse / cops and robbers game, but that represents a small fraction of society at large.
Why is it then that people who have never and would never shoplift CDs and DVDs from their local store are doing the same thing online every day? And what will happen in the future?
I see three main factors that drive the online stealing behavior, 1) the content is free, 2) the content is easy to get and 3) there is a perception of anonymity or at least some sort of security in knowing that “everyone else is doing it, and they can’t catch everyone”.
There are many companies and technologies that have benefited directly and indirectly from this wave of theft. In this article I’m going to focus on BitTorrent, because they are the predominant protocol being used to facilitate theft and piracy of content online. By various metrics BitTorrent traffic makes up somewhere between 40% and 70% of internet traffic and as far as I can tell the majority of those bits are from pirated content.
BitTorrent has split into two entities like many P2P companies / protocols. One is the open source based protocol and community developing and maintaining that protocol. The other is the private company focused on the commercialization of that protocol. What’s going to happen to these two entities and others like them going forward?
First let’s look at the open source version. This version will get into a cat and mouse game with the authorities and laws of various countries worldwide as the lawmaking bodies of these countries begin to apply the same basic principles that exist in the real world to the online world. This will force more visibility by law enforcement into the workings of ISPs, network operators, businesses and creators of software systems. While I acknowledge that this game will never end, and be very costly for both sides I feel that it is inevitable and ultimately a good thing. Just like the real world law enforcement never ends and is costly, but it creates a society where stealing is rare and that is definitely a good thing. It is the increased effort to participate (both in time and money) and the increased risk of getting caught that will cause people to abandon the pirate behaviors and to adopt commercially viable, legal alternatives.
So what does that mean for the commercial version of BitTorrent? It means that it will have to change substantially at a technical level to differentiate itself from the open source version. In order to sell its technology it needs to provide an assurance of a quality of service. If at any moment the protocol can be inspected and altered because of suspected illegal activities companies will not want to use the protocol. Therefore BitTorrent will have to signal to the networks and authorities somehow that it is legitimate and to not adversely affect its operation. Furthermore it needs to do this in a way that does not allow the open source version to copy and imitate it otherwise it is of no use as a differentiator.
Once successfully separated from the open source cousin BitTorrent the commercial version will have no “install base”, no “millions of users” because the new legitimate protocol will be incompatible with the open source version. This definitely deals a setback to the commercial version of BitTorrent and would affect its ability to attract new customers. Furthermore the ongoing cat and mouse game being played out by the open source BitTorrent version will negatively affect the brand and image of the company and keep large businesses wary of doing business with BitTorrent, as they are today. In the long run I feel that these technical and market based factors could cause the downfall of the commercial version of BitTorrent.
I’m writing my iPhone review fromy iPhone appropriately enough using the wordpress app. Overall I have to say that apple has knocked it out of the park with their combination of form factor, user interface and application framework. My iPhone has really become more of an Internet connected device, allowing me to do things like write this blog post and visit my favorite websites. Since I’ve had it I’ve been using about 7 megs a day from July 13th - 24th in data according to the internal usage stats. But what this means is that my battery life is totally horrendous, I end up plugging it into my car on my drive home to keep it from turning off, and today while using it a lot at a tradeshow I actually plugged it into my laptop for a little recharge. I suppose it might once again become just a phone at which point the battery life would once again be acceptable, but until then I’m waiting for an extended battery pack option to come out.
Another thing I’ve been happy with I’d call quality, it’s been ten times better than my last phone the Cingular 8525 by htc.
As for bugs I’ve had it reboot spontaneously a few times while trying to finish the installation of a couple apps. But that could be apple or the app maker since it didn’t happen with all of the apps.
One other feature I’d really like to see is full resolution photo uploads. I don’t use my phone as a music device since I use rhapsody for that so I don’t connect it to my computer often enough to make syncing with iPhoto convenient . If it weren’t for photos I don’t think of ever have to connect it for syncing.
Oh and one more bonus… I was able to setup access to my corporate email account without having to contact IT!
That’s my iPhone review after 10 days of fully addicted usage.
I just watched a short presentation at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit from Mark Randall of Adobe Systems Dynamic Media Devision. He articulated clearly something I have been thinking about for a while which is the technology and business process that need to come to being in order for content owners and aggregators to monetize their content in an online environment.
Eventually I believe that the metadata and monetization systems will connect content owners with distributors in a way that allows the content to be free in terms of where it can go and yet still be tracked and monetized. Take this example: You produce a video like a TV show and in the metadata indicate where the ad avails are. Also in the metadata is which avails the aggregator can change. In the end the consumer views a video with a few ads and both the content owner and the aggregator can monetize their respective avails.
The standardization of meta data, the handling of that data and the revenue flow between different members of the creation to consumption chain have a long way to go before this becomes reality, but I think that’s where online entertainment is headed.
After seeing someone on video us the words”game changing” and ” massive growth” I made a promise to myself to not use those phrases.
Interesting mention by Tony of the importance of the enterprise space going forward.
The fact that twitter won the global 250 award was surprising to me, I have started to count it out.
Big media’s big comeback panel didn’t really reveal any new insights.
Albert Cheng from abc was wellspoken.
John Edwards from move networks mentioned local caching servers to enable superbowl scale.
Thomas Lesinki talked about the cloud based movie/media locker concept.
This post was the first one written using the wordpress app on my iPhone.
I went to a breakfast discussion on the Philosophy of Product this morning. It was a small event at Il Fornaio in San Jose hosted by my friend Ellen Grace Henson of Marketing Mechanics fame.
Here’s a snip from the breakfast description and invite:
Merriam-Webster’s definition of “Philosophy” includes a: a theory underlying or regarding a sphere of activity or thought b: the most basic beliefs, concepts, and attitudes of an individual or group.
When it comes to the definition and development of products and services, every company operates from a “Philosophy of Product” whether this is implicit or explicit. Also, the stated philosophy (We are customer centric.) may differ from the actual or implicit operating philosophy (This is cool technology. We just need to find the right market). No matter what your role in helping to deliver your company’s product to market, your efforts are impacted by this philosophy of product.
It was one of the most interesting product management / marketing discussions I’ve been a part of. In the back of my mind I kept thinking how there isn’t really a product marketing / management discipline in our educational institutions. Like myself, most of the people came from other disciplines into this one over time out of desire, necessity or accident.
So what is my philosophy of product? I’m not sure I have a crisp definition, but a few thoughts:
When I asked a successful entrepreneur for his thoughts on how he built his success his response was simple. Focus on creating value, everything flows from that. Another bit of marketing wisdom from him was that perception precedes reality ( I have found this to be true, but with the caveat that without real value the perception creates a fragile reality that does not stay long ).
There are a lot of great technology ideas and anyone can take dictation from customers and build to spec. But what I find is rare is the ability to distill specific customer requests and unspecific market information into clear statements about what a product should do without addressing how.
Creativity is enhanced when focused within well defined boundaries. This breakfast itself was a good example of a good boundary that led to a creative discussion.
Those are the important ones that come to mind right now. I’m looking forward to the next discussion forum.
I read a lot of RSS feeds, 197 at last count, mostly for work, some for other interests. It’s really the only way I can find the time to keep up on things. With google reader I can organize and categorize feeds, share them and even search within them. So in case you’re wondering what I read here it is my OPML file from google reader.
I also like the fact that google reader let’s me “share” news that I think is interesting. That news feed is then pulled into this blog and displayed here in my Shared News category.